OUR FIRST WINTER
This first winter was filled with just about as much interest as it
was possible for three people to crowd into six or seven months. And
even then there was so much left over which we wanted to do that we
fairly groaned as we saw opportunity after opportunity slip by which
we simply didn't have the time to improve.
To begin with the boy, he went at his studies with a zest that placed
him among the first ten of his class. Dick wasn't a quick boy at his
books and so this stood for sheer hard plugging. To me this made his
success all the more noteworthy. Furthermore it wasn't the result of
goading either from Ruth or myself. I kept after him about the details
of his school life and about the boys he met, but I let him go his own
gait in his studies. I wanted to see just how the new point of view
would work out in him. The result as I saw it was that every night
after supper he went at his problems not as a mere school boy but
man-fashion. He sailed in to learn. He had to. There was no prestige
in that school coming from what the fathers did. No one knew what the
fathers did. It didn't matter. With half a dozen nationalities in the
race the school was too cosmopolitan to admit such local issues. A few
boys might chum together feeling they were better than the others, but
the school as a whole didn't recognize them. Each boy counted for what
he did--what he was.
Of the other nine boys in the first ten, four were of Jewish origin,
three were Irish, one was Italian, and the other was American born but
of Irish descent. Half of them hoped to go through college on
scholarships and the others had equally ambitious plans for business.
The Jews were easily the most brilliant students but they didn't
attempt anything else. The Italian showed some literary ability and
wrote a little for the school paper. The American born Irish boy was
made manager of the Freshman football team. The other four were
natural athletes--two of them played on the school eleven and the
others were just built for track athletics and basket ball. Dick
tried for the eleven but he wasn't heavy enough for one thing and so
didn't make anything but a substitute's position with the freshmen. I
was just as well satisfied. I didn't mind the preliminary training but
I felt I would as soon he added a couple more years to his age before
he really played football, even if it was in him to play. My point had
been won when he went out and tried.
At the end of the first four months in the school I thought I saw a
general improvement in him. He held himself better for one thing--with
his head higher and his shoulders well back. This wasn't due to his
physical training either. It meant a changed mental attitude. Ruth
says she didn't notice any difference and she thinks this is nothing
but my imagination. But she's wrong. I was looking for something she
couldn't see that the boy lacked before. Dick to her was always all
right. Of course I knew myself that the boy couldn't go far wrong
whatever his training, but I knew also that his former indifferent
attitude was going to make his path just so much harder for him. Dick,
when he read over this manuscript, said he thought the whole business
was foolish and that even if I wanted to tell the story of my own
life, the least I could do was to leave out him. But his life was more
largely my life than he realizes even now. And his case was in many
ways a better example of the true emigrant spirit than my own.
He joined the indoor track squad this winter, too, but here again he
didn't distinguish himself. He fought his way into the finals at the
interscholastic meet but that was all. However this, too, was good
training for him. I saw that race myself and I watched his mouth
instead of his legs. I liked the way his jaws came together on the
last lap though it hurt to see the look in his eyes when he fell so
far behind after trying so hard. But he crossed the finish line.
In the meanwhile Ruth was just about the busiest little woman in the
city. And yet strangely enough this instead of dragging her down,
built her up. She took on weight, her cheeks grew rosier than I had
seen them for five years and she seemed altogether happier. I watched
her closely because I made up my mind that ginger jar or no ginger jar
the moment I saw a trace of heaviness in her eyes, she would have to
quit some of her bargain hunting. I didn't mean to barter her good
health for a few hundred dollars even if I had to remain a day laborer
the rest of my life.
That possibility didn't seem to me now half so terrifying as did the
old bogey of not getting a raise. I suppose for one thing this was
because we neither of us felt so keenly the responsibility of the boy.
In the old days we had both thought that he was doomed if we didn't
save enough to send him through college and give him, at the end of
his course, capital enough to start in business for himself. In other
words, Dick seemed then utterly dependent upon us. It was as terrible
a thought to think of leaving him penniless at twenty-one as leaving
him an orphan at five months. The burden of his whole career rested on
our shoulders.
But now as I saw him take his place among fellows who were born
dependent upon themselves, as I learned about youngsters at the school
who at ten earned their own living selling newspapers and even went
through college on their earnings, as I watched him grow strong
physically and tackle his work aggressively, I realized that even if
anything should happen to either Ruth or myself the boy would be able
to stand on his own feet. He had the whole world before him down here.
If worst came to worst he could easily support himself daytimes, and
at night learn either a trade or a profession. This was not a dream on
my part; I saw men who were actually doing it. I was doing it myself
for that matter. Personally I felt as easy about Dick's future by the
middle of that first winter as though I had established an annuity for
him which would assure him all the advantages I had ever hoped he
might receive. So did Ruth.
I remember some horrible hours I passed in that little suburban house
towards the end of my life there. Ruth would sit huddled up in a chair
and try to turn my thoughts to other things but I could only pace the
floor when I thought what would happen to her and the boy if anything
should happen to me; or what would happen to the boy alone if anything
should happen to the both of us. The case of Mrs. Bonnington hung over
me like a nightmare and the other possibility was even worse. Why,
when Cummings came down with pneumonia and it looked for a while as
though he might die, I guess I suffered, by applying his case to
mine, as much as ever he himself did on his sick bed. I used to
inquire for his temperature every night as though it were my own. So
did every man in the neighborhood.
Sickness was a wicked misfortune to that little crowd. When death did
pick one of us, the whole structure of that family came tumbling down
like a house of cards. If by the grace of God the man escaped, he was
left hopelessly in debt by doctor's bills if in the meanwhile he
hadn't lost his job. Sickness meant disaster, swift and terrible
whatever its outcome. We ourselves escaped it, to be sure, but I've
sweat blood over the mere thought of it.
Now if our thoughts ever took so grim a turn, we could speak quite
calmly about it. It was impossible for me ever to think of Ruth as
sick. My mind couldn't grasp that. But occasionally when I have come
home wet and Ruth has said something about my getting pneumonia if I
didn't look out, I've asked myself what this would mean. In the first
place I now could secure admission to the best hospitals in the
country free of cost. I had only to report my case to the city
physician and if I were sick enough to warrant it, he would notify
the hospital and they would send down an ambulance for me. I would be
carried to a clean bed in a clean room and would receive such medical
attention as before I could have had only as a millionaire. Physicians
of national reputation would attend me, medicines would be supplied
me, and I'd have a night and day nurse for whom outside I would have
had to pay some forty dollars a week. Not only this but if I recovered
I would be supplied the most nourishing foods in the market and after
that sent out of town to one of the quiet convalescent hospitals if my
condition warranted it. I don't suppose a thousand dollars would cover
what here would be given me for nothing. And I wouldn't either be
considered or treated like a charity patient. This was all my due as a
citizen--as a toiler. Of course this would be done also for Dick as
well as for Ruth.
I don't mean to say that such thoughts took up much of my time. I'm
not morbid and we never did have any sickness--we lived too sanely for
that. But just as our new viewpoint on Dick relieved us of a tension
which before had sapped our strength, so it was a great relief to have
such insurance as this in the background of our minds. It took all
the curse off sickness that it's possible to take off. In three or
four such ways as these a load of responsibility was removed from us
and we were left free to apply all our energy to the task of
upbuilding which we had in hand.
This may account somewhat for the reserve strength which Ruth as well
as myself seemed to tap. Then of course the situation as a whole was
such as to make any woman with imagination buoyant. Ruth had an active
part in making a big rosy dream come true. She was now not merely a
passive agent. She wasn't economizing merely to make the salary cover
the current expenses. Her task was really the vital one of the whole
undertaking; she was accumulating capital. When you stop to think of
it she was the brains of the business; I was only the machine. I dug
the money out of the ground but that wouldn't have amounted to much if
it had all gone for nothing except to keep the machine moving from day
to day. The dollar she saved was worth more than a hundred dollars
earned and spent again. It was the only dollar which counted. They say
a penny saved is a penny earned. To my mind a penny saved was worth
to us at this time every cent of a dollar.
So Ruth was not only an active partner but there was another side to
the game that appealed to her.
"The thing I like about our life down here," she said to me one night,
"is the chance it gives me to get something of myself into every
single detail of the home."
I didn't know what she meant because it seemed to me that was just
what she had always done. But she shook her head when I said so.
"No," she said. "Not the way I can now."
"Well, you didn't have a servant and must have done whatever was
done," I said.
"I didn't have time to pick out the food for the table," she said. "I
had to order it of the grocery man. I didn't have time to make as many
of your clothes as I wanted. Why I didn't even have time to plan."
"If anyone had told me that a woman could do any more than you then
were doing, I should have laughed at them," I said.
"You and the boy weren't all my own then," she said. "I had to waste a
great deal of time on things outside the house. Sometimes it used to
make me feel as though you were just one of the neighbors, Billy."
I began to see what she meant. But she certainly found now just as
much time if not more to spare on the women and babies all around us.
"They aren't neighbors," she said. "They are friends."
I suppose she felt like that because what she did for them wasn't just
wasted energy like an evening at cards.
But she went back again and again, as though it were a song, to this
notion that our new home was all her own.
"You may think me a pig, Billy," she said. "But I like it. I like to
pick out all myself, every single potato you and the boy eat; I like
to pick out every leaf of lettuce, every apple. It makes me feel as
though I was doing something for you."
"Good land--" I said.
But she wouldn't let me finish.
"No, Billy," she said. "You don't understand what all that means to
me--how it makes me a part of you and Dick as I never was before. And
I like to think that in everything you wear there's a stitch of mine
right close to you. And that when you and the boy lie down at night
I'm touching you because I made everything clean for you with my own
hands."
It makes my throat grow lumpy even now when I remember the eager,
half-ashamed way she looked up into my eyes as she said this. Lord,
sometimes she made me feel like a little child and other times she
made me feel like a giant. But whichever way she made me feel at the
moment, she always left me wishing that I had in me every good thing a
man can have so that I might be half way worthy of her. There are
times when a fellow knows that as a man he doesn't count for much as
compared with any woman. And with such a woman as Ruth--well, God
knows I tried to do my best in those days and have tried to do that
ever since, but it makes me ache to think how little I've been able to
give her of all she deserves.
In her housework Ruth had developed a system that would have made a
fortune for any man if applied in the same degree to his business. I
learned a lot from her. Instead of going at her tasks in the haphazard
fashion of most women or doing things just because her grandmother
and her mother did them a certain way, she used her head. I've already
told how she did her washing little by little every day instead of
waiting for Monday and then tearing herself all to pieces, and that's
a fair example of her method. When she was cooking breakfast and had a
good fire, she'd have half her dinner on at the same time. Anything
that was just as good warmed up, she'd do then. She'd make her stews
and soups while waiting for the biscuits to bake and boil her rice or
make her cold puddings while we were eating. When that stove was
working in the morning you couldn't find a square inch of it that
wasn't working. As a result, she planned never to spend over half an
hour on her dinner at night and by the time the breakfast dishes were
washed she was through with her cooking until then.
She used her head even in little things; she'd make one dish do the
work of three. She never washed this dish until she was through with
it for good. And she'd find the time at odd moments during her cooking
to wash these dishes as they came along. If she spilled anything on
the floor she stopped right then and there and cleaned it up, with the
result that when breakfast was served, the kitchen looked as
ship-shape as when she began. When she _was_ busy, she was the busiest
woman you ever saw. She worked with her head, both hands, and her
feet. As a result instead of fiddling around all day, when she was
through she was through.
When she got up in the morning she knew exactly what she had to do for
the day, just how she was going to do it and just when she was going
to do it. And you could bank that the things at night would be done,
and be done just as she had planned. She thought ahead. That's a great
thing to master in any business.
In my own work, the plan I had outlined for myself I developed day by
day. At the end of three months I found that even what little Italian
I had then learned was a help to me. The mere fact that I was studying
their language placed me on a better footing with my fellows. They
seemed to receive it as a compliment and to feel that I was taking a
personal interest in them as a race. My desire to practise my few
phrases was always a letter of introduction to a newcomer.
I talked with them about everything--where they came from, what made
them come, what they did before they came, how long they worked and
what pay they got in Italy, how they saved to get over here, how they
secured their jobs, what they hoped to do eventually, where they
lived, how large their families were, how much it cost them to live
and what they ate. I inquired as to what they liked and what they
disliked about their work; what they considered fair and what unfair
about the labor and the pay; what they liked and didn't like about the
foreman. Often I couldn't get any opinion at all out of them on these
subjects; often it wasn't honest and often it wasn't intelligent. But
as with my other questioning when I sifted it all down and thought it
over, I was surprised at how much information I did get. If I didn't
learn facts which could be put into words, I was left with a very
definite impression and a very wide general knowledge.
In the meanwhile my note book was always busy. I kept jotting down
names and addresses with enough running comment to help me to recall
the men individually. I wasn't able to locate one out of ten of these
men later but the tenth man was worth all the trouble.
As the winter advanced and the air grew frosty and the snow and ice
came, the work in a good many ways was harder. And yet everything
considered I don't know but what I'd rather work outdoors at zero than
at eighty-five. Except that my hands got numb and everything was more
difficult to handle I didn't mind the cold. There was generally
exercise enough to keep the blood moving.
We had a variety of work before spring. After the subway job I shifted
to a big house foundation and there met another group of skilled
workmen from whom I learned much. The work was easier and the
surroundings pleasanter if you can speak of pleasant surroundings
about a hole in the ground. The soil was easier to handle and we went
to no great depth. Here too I met a new gang of laborers. I missed
many familiar faces out of the old crowd and found some interesting
new men. Rafferty had gone and I was sorry. I saw more or less of him
however during the winter for he dropped around now and then on Sunday
evenings. I don't think he ever forgot the incident of the sewer gas.
I enjoyed too every hour in my night school. I found here a very large
per cent. of foreigners and they were naturally of the more ambitious
type. I found I had a great deal to learn even in the matter of
spreading mortar and using a trowel. It was really fascinating work
and in the instructor I made an invaluable friend. Through him I was
able to arrange my scattered fragments of information into larger
groups. Little by little I told him something of my plan and he was
very much interested in it. He gave me many valuable suggestions and
later proved of substantial help in more ways than one.