SUNDAY
That first dollar saved was the germ of a new idea.
It is a further confession of a middle-class mind that in coming down
here I had not looked forward beyond the immediate present. With the
horror of that last week still on me I had considered only the
opportunity I had for earning a livelihood. To be sure I had seen no
reason why an intelligent man should not in time be advanced to
foreman, and why he should not then be able to save enough to ward off
the poorhouse before old age came on. But now--with that first dollar
tucked away in the ginger jar--I felt within me the stirring of a new
ambition, an ambition born of this quick young country into which I
had plunged. Why, in time, should I not become the employer? Why
should I not take the initiative in some of these progressive
enterprises? Why should I not learn this business of contracting and
building and some day contract and build for myself? With that first
dollar saved I was already at heart a capitalist.
I said nothing of this to Ruth. For six months I let the idea grow. If
it did nothing else it added zest to my new work. I shoveled as though
I were digging for diamonds. It made me a young man again. It made me
a young American again. It brought me out of bed every morning with
visions; it sent me to sleep at night with dreams.
But I'm running ahead of my story.
I thought I had appreciated Sunday when it meant a release for one day
from the office of the United Woollen, but as with all the other
things I felt as though it had been but the shadow and that only now
had I found the substance. In the first place I had not been able
completely to shake the office in the last few years. I brought it
home with me and on Sundays it furnished half the subject of
conversation. Every little incident, every bit of conversation, every
expression on Morse's face was analyzed in the attempt to see what it
counted, for or against, the possible future raise. Even when out
walking with the boy the latter was a constant reminder. It was as
though he were merely a ward of the United Woollen Company.
But when I put away my shovel at five o'clock on Saturday that was the
end of my ditch digging. I came home after that and I was at home
until I reported for work on Monday morning. There was neither work
nor worry left hanging over. It meant complete relaxation--complete
rest. And the body, I found, rests better than the mind.
Later in my work I didn't experience this so perfectly as I now did
because then I accepted new responsibilities, but for the first few
months I lived in lazy content on this one day. For the most part
those who lived around me did all the time. On fair summer days half
the population of the little square basked in the sun with eyes half
closed from morning until night. Those who didn't, went to the
neighboring beaches many of which they could reach for a nickel or
visited such public buildings as were open. But wherever they went or
whatever they did, they loafed about it. And a man can't truly loaf
until he's done a hard week's work which ends with the week.
As for us we had our choice of any number of pleasant occupations. I
insisted that Ruth should make the meals as simple as possible on that
day and both the boy and myself helped her about them. We always
washed the dishes and swept the floor. First of all there was the
roof. I early saw the possibility of this much neglected spot. It was
flat and had a fence around it for it was meant to be used for the
hanging out of clothes. Being a new building it had been built a story
higher than its older neighbors so that we overlooked the other roofs.
There was a generous space through which we saw the harbor. I picked
up a strip of old canvas for a trifle in one of the shore-front
junk-shops which deal in second-hand ship supplies and arranged it
over one corner like a canopy. Then I brought home with me some bits
of board that were left over from the wood construction at the ditch
and nailed these together to make a rude sort of window box. It was
harder to get dirt than it was wood but little by little I brought
home enough finally to fill the boxes. In these we planted radishes
and lettuce and a few flower seeds. We had almost as good a garden as
we used to have in our back yard. At any rate it was just as much fun
to watch the things grow, and though the lettuce never amounted to
much we actually raised some very good radishes. The flowers did well,
too.
We brought up an old blanket and spread it out beneath the canopy and
that, with a chair or two, made our roof garden. A local branch of the
Public Library was not far distant so that we had all the reading
matter we wanted and here we used to sit all day Sunday when we didn't
feel like doing anything else. Here, too, we used to sit evenings. On
several hot nights Ruth, the boy and I brought up our blankets and
slept out. The boy liked it so well that finally he came to sleep up
here most of the summer. It was fine for him. The harbor breeze swept
the air clean of smoke so that it was as good for him as being at the
sea-shore.
To us the sights from this roof were marvelous. They appealed strongly
because they were unlike anything we had ever seen or for that matter
unlike anything our friends had ever seen. I think that a man's
friends often take away the freshness from sights that otherwise might
move him. I've never been to Europe but what with magazine pictures
and snap shots and Mrs. Grover, who never forgot that before she
married Grover she had travelled for a whole year, I haven't any
special desire to visit London or Paris. I suppose it would be
different if I ever went but even then I don't think there would be
the novelty to it we found from our roof. And it was just that novelty
and the ability to appreciate it that made our whole emigrant life
possible. It was for us the Great Adventure again. I suppose there are
men who will growl that it's all bosh to say there is any real romance
in living in four rooms in a tenement district, eating what we ate,
digging in a ditch and mooning over a view from a roof top. I want to
say right here that for such men there wouldn't be any romance or
beauty in such a life. They'd be miserable. There are plenty of men
living down there now and they never miss a chance to air their
opinions. Some of them have big bodies but I wouldn't give them fifty
cents a day to work for me. Luckily however, there are not many of
them in proportion to the others, even though they make more noise.
But when you stop to think about it what else is it but romance that
leads men to spend their lives fishing off the Banks when they could
remain safely ashore and get better pay driving a team? Or what drives
them into the army or to work on railroads when they neither expect
nor hope to be advanced? The men themselves can't tell you. They take
up the work unthinkingly but there is something in the very hardships
they suffer which lends a sting to the life and holds them. The only
thing I know of that will do this and turn the grind into an
inspiration is romance. It's what the new-comers have and it's what
our ancestors had and it's what a lot of us who have stayed over here
too long out of the current have lost.
On the lazy summer mornings we could hear the church bells and now and
then a set of chimes. Because we were above the street and next to the
sky they sounded as drowsily musical as in a country village. They
made me a bit conscience-stricken to think that for the boy's sake I
didn't make an effort and go to some church. But for a while it was
church enough to devote the seventh day to what the Bible says it was
made for. Ruth used to read out loud to us and we planned to make our
book suit the day after a fashion. Sometimes it was Emerson, sometimes
Tennyson--I was very fond of the Idylls--and sometimes a book of
sermons. Later on we had a call from a young minister who had a little
mission chapel not far from our flat and who looked in upon us at the
suggestion of the secretary of the settlement house. We went to a
service at his chapel one Sunday and before we ourselves realized it
we were attending regularly with a zest and interest which we had
never felt in our suburban church-going. Later still we each of us
found a share in the work ourselves and came to have a great
satisfaction and contentment in it. But I am running ahead of my
story.
We'd have dinner this first summer at about half past one and then
perhaps we'd go for a walk. There wasn't a street in the city that
didn't interest us but as a rule we'd plan to visit one of the parks.
I didn't know there were so many of them or that they were so
different. We had our choice of the ocean or a river or the woods. If
we had wished to spend say thirty cents in car fare we could have had
a further choice of the beach, the mountains, or a taste of the
country which in places had not changed in the last hundred years.
This would have given us a two hours' ride. Occasionally we did this
but at present there was too much to see within walking distance.
For one thing it suddenly occurred to me that though I had lived in
this city over thirty years I had not yet seen such places of interest
as always attracted visitors from out of town. My attention was
brought to this first by the need of limiting ourselves to amusements
that didn't cost anything, but chiefly by learning where the better
element down here spent their Sundays. You have only to follow this
crowd to find out where the objects of national pride are located. An
old battle flag will attract twenty foreigners to one American. And
incidentally I wish to confess it was they who made me ashamed of my
ignorance of the country's history. Beyond a memory of the Revolution,
the Civil War and a few names of men and battles connected therewith,
I'd forgotten all I ever learned at school on this subject. But here
the many patriotic celebrations arranged by the local schools in the
endeavor to instill patriotism and the frequent visits of the boys to
the museums, kept the subject fresh. Not only Dick but Ruth and myself
soon turned to it as a vital part of our education. Inspired by the
old trophies that ought to stand for so much to us of to-day we took
from the library the first volume of Fiske's fine series and in the
course of time read them all. As we traced the fortunes of those early
adventurers who dreamed and sailed towards an unknown continent,
pictured to ourselves the lives of the tribes who wandered about in
the big tangle of forest growth between the Atlantic and the Pacific,
as we landed on the bleak New England shores with the early Pilgrims,
then fought with Washington, then studied the perilous internal
struggle culminating with Lincoln and the Civil War, then the
dangerous period of reconstruction with the breathless progress
following--why it left us all better Americans than we had ever been
in our lives. It gave new meaning to my present surroundings and
helped me better to understand the new-comers. Somehow all those
things of the past didn't seem to concern Grover and the rest of them
in the trim little houses. They had no history and they were a part of
no history. Perhaps that's because they were making no history
themselves. As for myself, I know that I was just beginning to get
acquainted with my ancestors--that for the first time in my life, I
was really conscious of being a citizen of the United States of
America.
But I soon discovered that not only the historic but the beautiful
attracted these people. They introduced me to the Art Museum. In the
winter following our first summer here, when the out of door
attractions were considerably narrowed down, Ruth and I used to go
there about every other Sunday with the boy. We came to feel as
familiar with our favorite pictures as though they hung in our own
house. The Museum ceased to be a public building; it was our own. We
went in with a nod to the old doorkeeper who came to know us and felt
as unconstrained there as at home. We had our favorite nooks, our
favorite seats and we lounged about in the soft lights of the rooms
for hours at a time. The more we looked at the beautiful paintings,
the old tapestries, the treasures of stone and china, the more we
enjoyed them. We were sure to meet some of our neighbors there and a
young artist who lived on the second floor of our house and whom
later I came to know very well, pointed out to us new beauties in the
old masters. He was selling plaster casts at that time and studying
art in the night school.
In the old life, an art museum had meant nothing to me more than that
it seemed a necessary institution in every city. It was a mark of good
breeding in a town, like the library in a good many homes. But it had
never occurred to me to visit it and I know it hadn't to any of my
former associates. The women occasionally went to a special exhibition
that was likely to be discussed at the little dinners, but a week
later they couldn't have told you what they had seen. Perhaps our
neighborhood was the exception and a bit more ignorant than the
average about such things, but I'll venture to say there isn't a
middle-class community in this country where the paintings play the
part in the lives of the people that they do among the foreign-born. A
class better than they does the work; a class lower enjoys it. Where
the middle-class comes in, I don't know.
After being gone all the afternoon we'd be glad to get home again and
maybe we'd have a lunch of cold beans and biscuits or some of the
pudding that was left over. Then during the summer months we'd go back
to the roof for a restful evening. At night the view was as different
from the day as you could imagine. Behind us the city proper was in a
bluish haze made by the electric lights. Then we could see the yellow
lights of the upper windows in all the neighboring houses and beyond
these, over the roof tops which seemed now to huddle closer together,
we saw the passing red and green lights of moving vessels. Overhead
were the same clean stars which were at the same time shining down
upon the woods and the mountain tops. There was something about it
that made me feel a man and a free man. There was twenty years of
slavery back of me to make me appreciate this.
And Ruth reading my thoughts in my eyes used to nestle closer to me
and the boy with his chin in his hands would stare out at sea and
dream his own dreams.