feet, do you?" asked the one-eyed girl, as we turned to unload a truck.
"Now I'm not an unbeliever, and I believe in God and Jesus Christ, all
right; but I sometimes think they don't do all these things that the
Methodists and Salvation Army says they do. Somehow, I don't believe God
knows anything about my eye or that one-armed girl's getting hurt in the
roller. I used to believe everything I heard the evangelist say, but I
don't think no more that religion is what it's cracked up to be." A few
moments later she asked if I was a Protestant, too, and receiving an
affirmative, proceeded to express herself on the superior merits of that
form of faith as compared with the Catholic, against which she had all
the narrow-minded ignorance and superstition which, strange to say, only
too often characterize the better element of the class to which she
belonged. This girl's unreasonable prejudice against something of which
she knew not the first thing presented a paradox universal in her world.
The Catholic Church as an institution was her enemy, and the enemy of
all Protestants. "If they could kill you, and not be found out by the
law, they'd do it just as quick as wink, because the priest would bail
them out of hell for a dollar and a quarter." And yet, when it came to
the concrete and personal, she had to admit that all the Catholics she
had ever known were "just about as good as Protestants."
This religious discussion was carried on in a low voice, with many
side-glances toward the Catholic side of the table, as if danger
threatened were they to hear a word of it. I knew, however, that there
was nothing to fear from that quarter. There was only one religious
conscience there, and that belonged to the one-eyed girl herself. From
innumerable other instances I had met with before I had come to this
generalization: that bigotry and bitter prejudices in matters of faith,
deplorable as they at first seem to be, mark a distinct step in the
social evolution and moral development of the ignorant and degraded.
Nobody else at that table was far enough along to worry herself with
principles of faith.
"I think the Salvation Army's a kind of good religion," she continued;
"only they--" but I heard no more; we were interrupted by a flurry of
interest in the front, which spread quickly to our region, as a portly
man in an automobile coat and Panama hat made his way by the
mangle-machines and the tables. The foreman, diffident and uncertain,
was walking by his side; and from the peremptory and numerous
instructions he was receiving, it became patent that his companion was
the "boss." Everybody looked hastily, stealthily, at the Queen, who hid
her pleasure under a very transparent veil of dissembling, as she helped
us unload a truck. Never before had I heard the queen laugh so merrily,
and never before had I realized what a superb, handsome animal she was.
There was a certain rhythmic movement as she raised and lowered her body
over the truck. The excitement of the moment added a deeper color to her
always splendid rose-and-white complexion, upon which the steam-laden
atmosphere distilled perpetually that soft dewiness characteristic of
the perfect complexion of young children or of goddesses. And like a
goddess the queen appeared that moment,--an untidy, earth-chained
goddess, mirthful, voluptuous.
"She thinks she's mighty fine, don't she?" whispered my one-eyed friend.
The boss halted at the truck, and the queen looked up with ill-feigned
surprise, as if she hadn't known for five minutes that he was in the
room. He seemed the personification of prosperous, ignorant vulgarity,
and his manner, as he swept his eye carelessly over his queen's
subjects, was one of good-natured insolence. He didn't tarry long, and
if guilty of the gentle dalliance of which he was accused, it was plain
to be seen that he did not allow it to interfere with the discipline of
the "Pearl."
At lunch-time the one-eyed girl and I went off to the same corner as
before, and no sooner had we begun to divide our pickles and sandwiches
than in sauntered the foreman, munching alternately from a cylinder of
bologna sausage in one hand and a chunk of dry bread in the other.
"Well, how goes it?" he asked pleasantly, dropping his long, lank frame
upon a bundle of hotel table-linen. "Did you try my advice about
standin' slack-like?"
We replied to his question while the one-eyed girl carved a dill pickle
and a sweet pickle each into three portions.
He related how he had come to the "Pearl" six years ago, and had worked
himself up to his present job, which was not to be sneezed at, he said,
considering that eighteen dollars a week wasn't to be picked up every
day--and steady work, too, no layoffs and no shut-downs. He emphasized
the fact, evidently very important in his mind, that he wasn't married,
that he had not met any girl yet that would have him, which my companion
insisted couldn't possibly be true, or if it was, then none of the girls
he had ever asked had any taste at all. He lived at home with his
mother, whom he didn't allow to "work out" since he'd been big enough to
earn a living for her. There was a sister, too, at home, who had a job
in a near-by manufactory; but she was engaged, and going to be married
in her "intended's" vacation. Then, the foreman thought, he'd have to
get a wife himself, if he could find anybody to have him. And she
wouldn't have to work, either--not on your tintype! She would live at
home with his mother, and darn his socks and sew on his buttons, and
she'd have no washing or ironing to do, as he got his all done for
nothing in the "Pearl." That perquisite went along with the eighteen
dollars a week. Oh, she'd have things as nice as any hard-working young
fellow could give her.
"Would she have to be purty?" asked the one-eyed girl, who seemed
unusually interested in this hypothetical wife, and who took such a
lively interest in the foreman and his plans that I felt my heart sink
in pity for the poor maimed creature. Was she hanging breathless on the
foreman's reply to this question? If so, there was a certain comfort in
the gallant answer.
"No, I should say not," he replied, as I thought with gentle
consideration of her to whom he was speaking; "I don't think I could
ever trust a wife who was a ten-thousand-dollar beaut'. She'd want to
gad too much. I don't think looks count for much; and I'd think she was
pretty, anyway, if I was terrible stuck on her. Them things don't make
much difference only in story-papers. But there's one thing she would
have to be, and that is handy at doing things. I wouldn't marry a lazy
girl, and I wouldn't marry a girl that wasn't a working girl."
The engines began to give out a warning rumble, and the foreman
scrambled somewhat reluctantly to his feet, and stretching out his long
arms, started off.
"Say, that feller's clean, dead gone on you," remarked my companion,
closing her hand over mine in a pressure that was full of congratulation
and honest delight.
I scouted the idea, but nevertheless I became suddenly conscious of a
complete change in his manner from the easy familiarity of the morning
before. Instead of the generic name of "Sally," or the Christian name
which on better acquaintance he applied to the other girls, he had
politely prefixed a "Miss" to my surname. There had come, too, a
peculiar feeling of trust and confidence in him--a welcome sensation in
this horrible, degraded place; and it was with gratefulness that I
watched him disappear in the steamy vista, throwing off his suspenders
preparatory to plunging into the turmoil of the afternoon's work now
under way.
"Sure thing he is, I'd bet my life on it," she insisted, as we, too,
hurried back to the table and took up our towels and napkins once more.
"There's no mistakin' them signs, and you'd be a little fool if you
wasn't to help him along. Men's all sort of bashful, some more 'n
others, and it's a good thing to help along. I like the looks of that
fellow--he'd be awful silly and soft with his wife."
There was gentle solicitude in the voice, and looking up, I was almost
startled with the radiance of the girl's face--the face of a good woman
who loves, and who takes a generous interest in the love affairs of
another. As we leaned over the truck and began to haul out its wet
freight, she whispered to me:
"I know all about it because I've been there myself. I've got a
gentleman-friend, too, and he's awful nice to me. He's been going with
me five years, and he didn't shake me when I lost my eye. Lots of
fellows I know would have backed out. That's what I like about that
foreman. I think he'd do just the same by a girl he loved as Jim did to
me. We'd have been married this long time, only Jim's got his hands full
with a crazy mother, and he says she'll never go to any asylum s' long's
he's able to keep her; and so Jim's aunt she lives with them and tends
his mother, and it takes 'most all Jim makes, because his mother's sick
all the time, too, and has to have the doctor and be humored. But I like
a man that's good to his mother. Jim isn't overly strong, either, and is
likely to break down."
Late in the afternoon my partner was overcome by an attack of
sick-headache, and dropped with nausea and exhaustion. Mrs. Mooney and
the Queen helped her to her feet.
"It's them pickles and them rotten cold lunches you girls eat," declared
Mrs. Mooney, who was fond of talking on the nutritious properties of
food. "Now I says, the Lord only give me one stummick, and when that's
wore out he'll never give me another, and I can't never buy one with no
money, and I never put anything in that stummick at noon but a good cold
beer and a good hot plate of soup, and that's what you ought to do. Only
cost you five cents for the both of them together, down to Devlin's
place. We go there every day," jerking her head in the direction of her
crony, "and you can go along if ye have a mind to."
In accordance with this invitation, we became patrons of Devlin's the
very next day. Promptly at twelve we hurried out, sleeves still rolled
up and our damp aprons unremoved. There was no time for making a
toilet, Mrs. Mooney insisted, as Devlin's was three blocks away, and we
had only a half-hour. Across Lexington, across Third Avenue, and down
one block, we came to a corner saloon, and filed in the "ladies'
entrance." The room was filled with workmen drinking beer and smoking at
the little round tables, and when they saw us each man jumped up, and
grabbing his glass, went out into the barroom. Commenting upon this to
Mrs. Mooney, she explained as we seated ourselves:
"Sure, and what'd ye expect! Sure, and it's a proper hotel ye're in, and
it's dacent wurrkin'-men that comes here, and they knows a lady when
they see her, and they ups and goes!"
In response to Mrs. Mooney's vigorous order, "Six beers with the
trimmin's!" a waiter appeared presently with a steaming tray.
"Now eat that, and drink that, and see if they don't go to the spot,"
cried the old woman, gaily, and we all fell to, with table manners more
eager than elegant. Whatever the soup was made of, it seemed to me the
best soup I had ever eaten in New York, and I instantly determined never
again to blame a working man or woman for dining in a saloon in
preference to the more godly and respectable dairy-lunch room. We all
ate ravenously, and I, who never before could endure the sight or smell
of beer, found myself draining my "schooner" as eagerly as Mrs. Mooney
herself.
"My! but that braces me up," she declared, sighing deeply and licking
the froth from her lips; "it's almost as good as whisky." It was a
propitious moment to ask questions, and I inquired how long she had
worked at the "Pearl."
"Eighteen months, off and on. I gets the rheumatism and stay home
sometimes. I believe in taking care of yer back. I says, I've only got
one back, and when that's wore out the Lord ain't going to give me
another. So I stay home; but it's so lonesome I'm always mighty glad to
get to work ag'in."
The long, long days sped by, their torture relieved by such comfort as
we could find in the gossip of the table, and in daily excursions to
Devlin's, where I had become a regular patron. The foreman, too, added a
little variety to the monotony by coming to our table sometimes, and
shaking clothes for a few moments with us, while he gossiped with the
one-eyed girl and me, which unusual proceeding filled her romantic soul
with all sorts of happy anticipation. On Saturday morning, after he had
come and gone, she whispered ecstatically: "That fellow is stuck on
you, and I'll bet he'll be askin' you to go to the theayter with
him--just see if he don't!"
But alas for woman's dreams! The next day we saw the boss coming across
the floor, this time alone. He sauntered up to our table, began to fling
jokes at us all in a manner of insolent familiarity, and asked the names
of the new faces. When he came to me he lingered a moment and uttered
some joking remarks of insulting flattery, and in a moment he had
grasped my bare arm and given it a rude pinch, walking hurriedly away.
In a few moments the foreman came back and motioned me to go with him,
and I followed to the front of the room, where the boss stood smoking
and joking with the wrappers. The foreman retired a respectful distance,
and the boss, after looking me over thoughtfully, informed me that I was
to be promoted Monday morning to the wrappers' counter.
"And now run away, and be a good girl the rest of the day," he
concluded, with a wave of the hand, and I rushed back to the table, more
disgusted with the man and his manner than I was thankful to him for my
promotion to a job that would pay me five dollars a week.
"Didn't I tell you so!" exclaimed my friend, amid the excited comments
and questions of the others at the table. "That's some of the foreman's
doing, and I'm real glad for you--it's nothing more than what I've been
expectin', though."
This opinion was not shared, however, by the rest of my companions, who
repeated divers terrible tales of moral ruin and betrayal, more or less
apocryphal, wherein the boss was inevitably the villain. I now found
myself suddenly the cynosure of all eyes, the target of a thousand
whispered comments, as I moved about the workroom. The physical agony of
aching back and blistered feet was too great, though, for me to feel any
mental distress over the fact--for the moment at least. In the awful
frenzy of the Saturday-afternoon rush, greater than that of any other
day of the week, I did not care much what they thought or said about the
boss and me.
I was shaking my towels and napkins, and trying to look as indifferent
as I believed I felt, when the foreman beckoned me again, and stepping
aside, thrust a piece of yellow wrapping-paper into my hand.
"Read it when nobody's looking," he said in a low voice; "and don't
think wrong of me for meddling in what's not my business"; and he was
off again.
A few minutes later I read:
"You'd better give up this job. It's no place for a girl that wants
to do right. Come back Monday and get your money; and I wouldn't
stay to-night after six o'clock, if I was you, but go home and
rest. If you can't get a job as good as this inside of a day or
two, I think my sister can get one for you in her place; but you
won't stay here if you take my advice.
"Yours truly,
"J. P.
"P.S. Please don't show this, or I'd lose my job; and be sure to
come Monday evening for your money."
I made at once for the cloak-room. When I emerged, a moment later, it
was to find the narrow passage obstructed by one of the big soiled-linen
trucks, over which "J. P." bent industriously, as if he hadn't another
thought in the world beyond the sorting of table-cloths and napkins.
Suddenly he lifted up his lank frame, and seeing one of his workpeople
making her escape, he called out:
"It's not six o'clock yet!"
"I don't care if it isn't; I am going home," I replied promptly.
"What's the matter?" he asked in a loud voice, and then, as he drew
near, added in an undertone:
"You read my note?"
"Yes," I replied.
"S'pose you kind of wonder at me doing it?" he went on, moving with me
toward the staircase.
"No; I guessed right away," I answered.
We had now reached the top of the stairs leading to the street door, and
were out of ear-shot of the busy workroom. The curious faces and craning
necks were lost to us through an interposing veil of steam. The foreman
grasped my extended hand in a limp, hasty clasp as I began to move down
the steps.
"You guessed part, but not all," he whispered, turning away.
I dragged myself to the end of the block and turned into Lexington
Avenue just as the six-o'clock whistles began to blow. So much I
remember very distinctly, but after that all is an indistinct blur of
clanging street-cars, of jostling crowds. I do not know whether I had
lost my senses from the physical agony I was enduring, though still able
to perform the mechanical process of walking, or whether it was a case
of somnambulism; but I know that I walked on, all unconscious of where I
was going, or of my own identity, until I came in collision with some
one, and heard a feminine voice beg my pardon. Then a little cry, and
two arms were thrown about me, and I looked up into the smiling face of
Minnie Plympton--Minnie Plympton as large as life and unspeakably
stunning in a fresh shirt-waist and sailor-hat. She was smiling at me
like a princess issuing from her enchantment in a rose-bush; and lest
she should vanish as suddenly as she had appeared, I clutched wildly at
her arm, trembling and sobbing at this delicious awakening from the
horrible nightmare that had been my existence for so many days.
We were standing on the corner of Lexington Avenue and a cross-town
thoroughfare, and ever after must that spot remain in my mind as the
actual turning-point of my fortunes--indeed, the very turning-point of
my whole life. As I look back upon that beautiful June evening, I again
hear the rumble of the elevated trains in the street beyond, and again I
hear the clang of the electric cars as they swirl out of the avenue into
the street. Probably every man and woman who ever came a stranger to a
great city has his or her own particular secret and holy place where
angels came and ministered in the hour of need. I do not doubt it, but
I do often wonder whether every such person visits his sacred place as
often as I visit mine. I go to mine very often, especially in
summer-time, about six o'clock, when, amid the roar and the turmoil and
the banalities of the real and the actual, I recall the wondrous tale of
the Burning Bush. For there God appeared to me that evening--the God who
had hidden his face for so long.
"Why, you look as weak as a kitten--you look sick!" Minnie declared.
"You need a good cup of tea and to be put to bed, and I'm going to be
the one to do it for you!"
I was half dazed as Minnie Plympton bundled me into a passing electric
car; and then, with my head leaning comfortably on Minnie Plympton's
plump shoulder, and with Minnie Plympton's strong arm about my aching
body, I was jolted away somewhere into a drowsy happiness.
EPILOGUE
Three years have elapsed since that last day in the "Pearl Laundry" and
my providential meeting with Minnie Plympton.
The events of those three years may be recounted in almost as few
sentences, for prosperous working girls, like happy nations, have no
history. And we have been very prosperous, Minnie Plympton and I. We, I
say, because from the moment of our unforeseen meeting in the
hurly-burly of that street corner, the interests of Minnie Plympton's
life and of mine were to become, for the succeeding year, almost
inseparable.
I said we have both been very prosperous. But Minnie Plympton has been
more than that: she has been successful--successful in the only real way
a woman can, after all, be successful. Minnie is married. She is the
wife of an enterprising young business man, and the mother of a charming
baby. She has been married nearly two years, and lives in a pretty
cottage in a peaceful suburb. It was what the world would call a good
match, and Minnie declares she is perfectly happy. And no doubt she is,
else that honest creature would not be so bent upon making matches for
everybody else.
As for myself, I have been merely prosperous--prosaically and
uninterestingly, though none the less agreeably, prosperous. I do not
know whether I am happy or not. I am still a working girl, and by all
the portents of the dream-book I am foredoomed eternally to remain a
wage-earner in spite of all Mrs. Minnie's good offices. For I was born
on a Saturday; and "Saturday's child must work for its living."
Now, I do not care to be accused of a superstitious faith in
dream-books, but I do want to say that I have found all sorts of
inspiration in a philosophical acceptance of that oracle attaching to my
unfortunate birthday. If Saturday's child must work for her living, why
not make the best of it? Why not make the most advantageous terms
possible with Fate? why not work with, and not against, that inexorable
Forelady, in cooperation with her plans and along the lines of her least
resistance?
This I have tried to do. How I have done it, and what the results have
been, I shall now try to sketch with not more attention to tedious
details than I feel justified in assuming may be of some help and
encouragement to other strugglers.
I became a stenographer and typewriter, earning twenty dollars a week. I
worked hard for my money, and the day was still a long day. I went to
work at nine o'clock in the morning, and while I was supposed to get off
at five, and sometimes did, I was often obliged to work till six or
seven.
And this I called prosperity? Yes; for me this was prosperity, when I
remembered the circumstances of my beginnings.
When I met Minnie Plympton on the street corner, that hot summer night,
I was "dead broke," not only in purse, but in body and spirit as well.
She took me home with her to the two small rooms where she was doing
light housekeeping, and where we continued to live together until her
marriage a year later broke up our happy domestic partnership. A few
weeks after Minnie took me home with her I got a position in the notion
department of one of the large stores. I received only four dollars a
week; but, as our rent was small and our living expenses the very
minimum, I was able to meet my half of the joint expenditure. I worked
four months at selling pins and needles and thread and whalebone and a
thousand and one other things to be found in a well-stocked notion
department; and then, by a stroke of good luck and Minnie Plympton's
assistance, I got a place as demonstrator of a new brand of tea and
coffee in the grocery department of the same "emporium." My new work was
not only much lighter and pleasanter, but it paid me the munificent
salary of eight dollars a week.
But I did not want to be a demonstrator of tea and coffee all my life. I
had often thought I would like to learn shorthand and typewriting. The
demonstrator of breakfast foods at the next counter to mine was taking a
night course in bookkeeping; which gave me the idea of taking a similar
course in stenography. And then the Long Day began in earnest. I went to
night-school five nights out of every week for exactly sixty weeks,
running consecutively save for a fortnight's interim at the Christmas
holidays, when we worked nights at the store. On Saturday night, which
was the off night, I did my washing and ironing, and on Sunday night I
made, mended, and darned my clothes--that is, when there was any making,
mending, or darning to be done. As my wardrobe was necessarily slender,
I had much time to spare. This spare time on Sunday nights I spent in
study and reading. I studied English composition and punctuation, both
of which I would need later on when I should become a stenographer. I
also brushed up on my spelling and grammar, in which, I had been
informed--and correctly--the average stenographer is sadly remiss.
As for reading, which was the only recreation my life knew, it was of a
most desultory, though always mercenary sort. I read every book I could
get out of the circulating library which, from its title or general
character as summarized in the newspaper reviews, I thought might help
me to solve the problem of earning a good livelihood. The title of one
book particularly attracted me--a book which was so much in demand that
I had to wait a whole six months before I succeeded in getting it
through the slow and devious process peculiar to circulating libraries.
That book was "Up from Slavery," and it brought home to me as nothing
else could have done what was the real trouble with myself and all the
rest of the struggling, ill-paid, wretched working women with whom I had
come in contact during my apprenticeship. What that trouble was I shall
revert to later.