Chapter I: Part 1

THROUGH THE MILL

THROUGH THE
MILL

_THE LIFE OF A MILL-BOY_

BY
AL PRIDDY

_ILLUSTRATIONS BY
WLADYSLAW T. BENDA_

THE PILGRIM PRESS

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO

_Copyright, 1911_
BY LUTHER H. CARY

THE · PLIMPTON · PRESS
[W · D · O]
NORWOOD · MASS · U · S · A

Affectionately Dedicated
TO
MY WIFE

“_Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward,
Grinding life down from its mark;
And the children’s souls, which God is calling sunward,
Spin on blindly in the dark._”
--E. B. BROWNING

_Note_

How many thousand pens are busy reporting and recording mill life! It is a splendid commentary on the fineness of our social conscience that there are so many champions on behalf of overworked boys and girls.

Coming now, to take its place among the multitudes of investigations and faithful records of factory life, is this frank, absolutely real and dispassionate Autobiography--written by a mill-boy who has lived the experiences of this book. So far as can be found this is the _first time that such an Autobiography has been printed in English_.

Since its appearance in the Outlook, the Autobiography has been entirely rewritten and new chapters have been added, so that the book will be practically new to anyone who chanced to read the Outlook chapters.

_Contents_

CHAPTER I PAGE

_A Mixture of Fish, Wrangles, and Beer_ 3

CHAPTER II

_Dripping Potatoes, Diplomatic Charity, and Christmas Carols_ 27

CHAPTER III

_My Schoolmates Teach Me American_ 47

CHAPTER IV

_I Pick Up a Handful of America, make an American Cap, whip a
Yankee, and march Home Whistling “Yankee Doodle”_ 59

CHAPTER V

_I cannot become a President, but I can go to the Dumping
Grounds_ 67

CHAPTER VI

_The Luxurious Possibilities of the Dollar-Down-Dollar-
a-Week-System of Housekeeping_ 81

CHAPTER VII

_I am given the Privilege of Choosing my own Birthday_ 93

CHAPTER VIII

_The Keepers of the Mill Gate, Snuff Rubbing, and the Play
of a Brute_ 113

CHAPTER IX

_A Factory Fashion-plate, the Magic Shirt Bosom, and Wise
Counsel on How To Grow Straight_ 129

CHAPTER X

_“Peter One-Leg-and-a-Half” and His Optimistic Whistlers_ 141

CHAPTER XI

_Esthetic Adventures made possible by a Fifteen-Dollar Piano_ 149

CHAPTER XII

_Machinery and Manhood_ 165

CHAPTER XIII

_How my Aunt and Uncle Entertained the Spinners_ 179

CHAPTER XIV

_Bad Deeds in a Union for Good Works_ 191

CHAPTER XV

_The College Graduate Scrubber Refreshes my Ambitions_ 205

CHAPTER XVI

_How the Superintendent Shut Us Out from Eden_ 223

CHAPTER XVII

_I Founded the Priddy Historical Club_ 233

CHAPTER XVIII

_A Venture into Art_ 243

CHAPTER XIX

_A Reduction in Wages, Cart-tail Oratory, a Big Strike, and
the Joys and Sufferings Thereof_ 255

CHAPTER XX

_My Steam Cooker goes wrong, I go to Newport for Enlistment
on a Training-ship_ 265

CHAPTER XXI

_The Ichabod of Mule-rooms, some Drastic Musing, College
at my Finger-tips, the Mill People wait to let me pass
and I Am Waved into the World by a Blind Woman_ 273

_Illustrations_

THEN THE EPILEPTIC OCTOGENARIAN LET ME GO AND THE PAUPER
LINE WENT IN BEFORE THE PARISH CLERK FOR THE CHARITY
SHILLING _Frontispiece_

FACING
PAGE

WHEN THE TRAIN STARTED FOR LIVERPOOL, I COUNTED MY PENNIES
WHILE MY AUNT WEPT BITTERLY 52

PAT AND TIM LED ME TO THE CHARLES STREET DUMPING GROUND--WHICH
WAS THE NEIGHBORHOOD GEHENNA 78

I WAS GIVEN A BROOM, AND THEN I FOUND MYSELF ALONE WITH MARY 122

“PETER-ONE-LEG-AND-A-HALF” LED US AT NIGHT OVER HIGH BOARD
FENCES 146

THE SPINNERS WOULD NOT STOP THEIR MULES WHILE I CLEANED THE
WHEELS 170

HE PLUCKED THE VENERABLE BEARD OF A SOMNOLENT HEBREW 196

THE GANG BEGAN TO HOLD “SURPRISE PARTIES” FOR THE GIRLS IN
THE MILL 246

THROUGH THE MILL

_Chapter I. A Mixture of Fish, Wrangles, and Beer_

THROUGH THE MILL

_Chapter I. A Mixture of Fish, Wrangles, and Beer_

My tenth birthday was celebrated in northern England, almost within hailing distance of the Irish Sea. Chaddy Ashworth, the green-grocer’s son, helped me eat the birthday cake, with the ten burnt currants on its buttered top.

As old Bill Scroggs was wont to boast: “Hadfield was in the right proper place, it being in the best shire in the Kingdom. Darby-shir (Derbyshire) is where Mr. George Eliot (only he said ‘Helliot’) got his ‘Adam Bede’ frum (only he said ‘Hadam Bede’). Darby-shir is where Hum-fry Ward (he pronounced it ‘Waard’) placed the ‘Histry o’ Davvid Grieve.’ If that don’t top off the glory, it is Darby-shir that has geen to the waarld Florence Nightengale, Hangel of the British Harmy!”

It was in the first of those ten years that I had been bereft of my parents and had gone to live with my Aunt Millie and Uncle Stanwood. In commenting on her benevolence in taking me, Aunt Millie often said: “If it had been that none of my own four babbies had died, I don’t know what you’d have done, I’m sure. I shouldn’t have taken you!”

But there I was, a very lucky lad indeed to have a home with a middle-class tradesman in Station Road. My uncle’s property consisted of a corner shop and an adjoining house. The door of the shop looked out upon the main, cobbled thoroughfare, and upon an alleyway which ended at a coffin-maker’s, where all the workhouse coffins were manufactured. We passed back and forth to the shop through a low, mysterious door, which in “The Mysteries of Udolpho” would have figured in exciting, ghostly episodes, so was it hidden in darkness in the unlighted storeroom from which it led. As for the shop itself, it was a great fish odor, for its counters, shelves and floor had held nothing else for years and years. The poultry came only in odd seasons, but fish was always with us: blue mussels, scalloped cockles, crabs and lobsters, mossy mussels, for shell fish: sole, conger eels, haddock, cod, mackerel, herring, shrimps, flake and many other sorts for the regular fish. Then, of course, there were the smoked kind: bloaters, red herrings, kippered herring, finnan haddock, and salt cod. In the summer the fish were always displayed outside, with ice and watercresses for their beds, on white platters. Then, too, there were platters of opened mussels a little brighter than gold in settings of blue. My uncle always allowed me to cut open the cod so that I might have the fishhooks they had swallowed. There was not a shopkeeper in the row that had half as much artistic window display skill as had Uncle Stanwood. He was always picking up “pointers” in Manchester. When the giant ray came in from Grimsby, the weavers were always treated to a window display twice more exciting than the butcher offered every Christmas, when he sat pink pigs in chairs in natural human postures, their bodies glorified in Christmas tinsel. Uncle Stanwood took those giant fish, monstrous, slimy, ugly nightmares, sat them in low chairs, with tail-flappers curled comically forward, with iron rimmed spectacles on their snouts, a dented derby aslant beady eyes, and a warden’s clay pipe prodded into a silly mouth--all so clownish a sight that the weavers and spinners never tired of laughing over it.

But while Uncle Stanwood was ambitious enough in his business, seeking “independence,” which, to the British tradesman, represents freedom from work and therefore, “gentlemanliness,” though he knew the fine art of window display and was a good pedler, he was never intended by nature to impress the world with the fact of his presence in it. He lacked will power. He was not self-assertive enough at critical times. The only time when he did call attention to himself was when he took “Bob,” our one-eyed horse, and peddled fish, humorously shouting through the streets, “Mussels and cockles alive! Buy ’em alive! Kill ’em as you want ’em!” At all other times, the “Blue Sign” and the “Linnet’s Nest,” our public-houses, could lure him away from his business very readily. Uncle Stanwood had a conspicuous artistic nature and training, and it was in these public-houses where he could display his talents to the best advantage. He could play a flute and also “vamp” on a piano. True his flute-playing was limited to “Easy Pieces,” and his piano “vamping” was little more than playing variations on sets of chords in all the various keys, with every now and then a one-finger-air, set off very well by a vamp, but he could get a perfunctory morsel of applause for whatever skill he had, and very few of the solo singers in concerts attempted to entertain in those public-houses without having “Stan” Brindin “tickle it up” for them. In regard to his piano-playing, uncle had unbounded confidence. He could give the accompaniment to the newest ballad without much difficulty. The singer would stand up before the piano and say, “Stan, hast’ ’eard that new piece, just out in t’ music ’alls, ‘The Rattling Seaman?’”

“No,” uncle would say, “but I know I can ‘vamp’ it for thee, Jud. Hum it o’er a bar or two. What key is’t in?” “I don’t know _key_,” would respond the singer, “but it goes like this,” and there would ensue a humming during which uncle would desperately finger his set of chords, cocking his ear to match the piano with the singer’s notes, and the loud crash of a fingerful of notes would suddenly indicate that connections had been made. Then, in triumph, uncle would say, “Let me play the Introduction, Jud!” and with remarkable facility he would stir the new air into the complex variations of his chords; he would “vamp” up and down, up and down, while the singer cleared his throat, smiled on the audience, and arranged his tie. Then pianist and singer, as much together as if they had been practising for two nights, would go together through a harmonious recital of how:

“_The Rattling Seaman’s jolly as a friar,
As jolly as a friar is he, he, he._”

After the song, and the encore that was sure to follow, were done, uncle always had to share the singer’s triumph in the shape of noggins of punch, and mugs of porter, into which a red hot poker from the coals had been stirred, and seasoned with pepper and salt. This would be repeated so many times in an evening that uncle soon became unfit for either piano or flute-playing, and I generally had to go for the flute the next morning before I went to school.

Uncle Stanwood had a golden age to which he often referred. In the first place, as a young bachelor he had traveled like a gentleman. His tour had included Ireland, France, and the Isle of Man. This was before he had learned to play a flute and piano and when public-houses were religiously abhorred. He was always repeating an experience that befell him in Ireland. I can record it verbatim. “I was walking along through a little hamlet when night came on. I saw one of them sod houses, and I knocked on the door. A blinking Irish woman asked me what I wanted. I told her, ‘a night’s lodging.’ She pointed to a far corner in the sod house where a pig and some hens lay, and said to me, ‘Ye can dossy down in the corner wid th’ rist of the fam’ly!’” In its time there was no more vivid story that caught my imagination than that--pig, hens, and blinking Irish woman. About his Isle of Man experiences, uncle was always eloquent. Besides all else he had a ditty about it, to the accompaniment of which he often dandled me on his knee.

“_Aye, oh, aye! Lissen till I tell you
Who I am, am, am.
I’m a rovin’ little darkey
All the way from Isle of Man.
I’m as free as anybody,
And they call me little Sam!_”

Previous to his marriage, also, he had been the teacher of a very large young men’s class in one of the churches. That was his proudest boast, because, as explained to me over and over again in after years, “It was that work as a teacher that made me read a lot of mighty fine books. I had to prepare myself thoroughly, for those young fellows were reading philosophy, religion, and the finest fiction. I had to keep ahead of them in some way. It is to that work that I owe what little learnin’ I’ve got.”

The inclinations toward the finer, sweeter things of life were wrapped up in uncle’s character, but his will was not strong enough to keep him away from the public-house.

“That’s my downfall,” he said. “Oh, if I’d not learned to play the flute and the piano!” His art was his undoing; but never did his undoing smother his golden age. When almost incoherently drunk it was his habit to whimper, “I was better once--I was. I taught a young men’s class. Look at me now!”

It always seemed to me that Aunt Millie was overstocked with the things that uncle lacked--will-power, assertiveness, and electric temper. She was positively positive in every part of her nature. She was positive that “Rule Britannia” should come next after “Nearer, my God, to Thee!” She was likewise positive as to the validity of her own ideas. Her mind, once made up--it did not take very long for that--was inflexible. The English landed nobility never had a more worshipful worshiper than my aunt. She was positive that it was one of our chief duties to “know our place,” and “not try to be gentlemen and ladies when we don’t have the right to be such.” “It’s no use passing yourself off as middle-classers if you arn’t middle-classers and why should, on the other hand, a middle-classer try to pose as a gentleman?”

She was always reciting to me, as one of the pleasant memories she had carried off from her girlhood, how, when the carriage of a squire had swept by, she had courtesied graciously and humbly.

“Did they bow to you, Aunt?” I asked.

“Bow to me!” she exclaimed, contemptuously, “who ever heard the likes!” Once she had seen a _real_ lord! Her father had been one of those hamlet geniuses whose dreams and plans never get much broader recognition than his own fireside. He had built church organs, played on them, and had composed music. He had also made the family blacking, soap, ink, and many other useful necessities. He had also manufactured the pills with which the family cured its ills, pills of the old-fashioned sort of soap, sugar, and herb, compounded. Once he had composed some music for his church’s share in a national fête, on the merit of which, my aunt used to fondly tell me, _real_ gentlemen would drive up to the door merely to have a glimpse at the old gentleman, much as if he had been Mendelssohn in retirement.

Aunt sent me daily to one or other of the public-houses for either a jug of ale or a pint of porter. Sometimes she took more than a perfunctory jug, and then she was on edge for a row instantly. When intoxicated she fairly quivered with jealousy, suspicion, and violent passion. One question touching on a delicate matter, one word injudiciously placed, one look of the eye, and she became a volcano of belligerent rage, belching profanity, and letting crockery or pieces of coal express what even her overloaded adjectives could not adequately convey. And when the storm had spent itself, she always relapsed into an excessive hysteria, which included thrillingly mad shrieks, which my poor, inoffensive uncle tried to drown in showers of cold water.

“I’ve brought it all on myself,” explained Uncle Stanwood, in explanation of his wife’s intoxication. He then went on to explain how, when he had been courting, he had taken his fiancée on a holiday trip to the seaside. While there, in a beer-garden, he had pressed her to drink a small glass of brandy. “It all started from that,” he concluded. “God help me!”

He certainly had to pay excessive interest on that investment, for if ever a mild man was nagged, or if ever a patient man had his temper tried, it was Uncle Stanwood. By my tenth birthday the house walls were no longer echoing with peace, for there were daily tirades of wrath and anger about the table.

These family rows took many curious turns. In them my aunt, well read in Dickens, whose writings were very real and vivid to her, freely drew from that fiction master’s gallery of types, and fitted them to uncle’s character. “Don’t sit there a-rubbin’ your slimy hands like Uriah Heep!” she would exclaim; or, “Yes, there you go, always and ever a-sayin’ that something’s bound to turn up, you old Micawber, you!” But this literary tailoring was not at all one-sided, for uncle was even better read than his wife, and with great effect he could say, “Yes, there you go, always insinuatin’ everlastingly, like Becky Sharp,” and the drive was superlatively effective in that uncle well knew that Thackeray’s book was aunt’s favorite. I heard him one day compare his wife to Mrs. Gamp, loving her nip of ale overmuch, and on another occasion she was actually included among Mrs. Jarley’s wax-works!

There was a curious streak of benevolence in my aunt’s nature, a benevolence that concerned itself more with strangers than with those in her own home. I have seen her take broths and meats to neighbors, when uncle and I have had too much buttered bread and preserves. I have seen her take her apron with her to a neighbor’s, where she washed the dishes, while her own had to accumulate, to be later disposed of with my assistance. There was a shiftless man in the town, the town-crier, who would never take charity outright. Him did aunt persuade to come and paint rural scenes, highly colored with glaring tints, as if nature had turned color-blind. There were cows in every scene, and aunt noticed that all the cows were up to their knees in water. Not one stood clear on the vivid green hills.

“Torvey,” she remarked to the old man, “why do you always put the cows in water?” The old artist responded, “It’s this way, Mrs. Brindin, you see, ma’am, I never learnt to paint ’oofs!” As a further benevolence towards this same man, she kept on hand a worn-out clock, for him to earn a penny on. After each tinkering the clock was never known to run more than a few minutes after the old man had left. But aunt only laughed over it, and called Torvey “summat of a codger, to be sure!”

I attended a low brick schoolhouse which in spring and summer time was buried in a mass of shade, with only the tile chimneys free from a coat of ivy. The headmaster gave us brief holidays, when he had us run races for nuts. In addition to the usual studies I was taught darning, crocheting, plain sewing, and knitting. Every Monday morning I had to take my penny for tuition.

Outside of school hours there were merry times, scraping sparks on the stone flags with the irons of our clogs, going to the butcher’s every Tuesday morning, at the slaughter-house, where he gave us bladders to blow up and play football with; and every now and then he would ask us to lay hold of the rope and help in felling a bull across the block. The only apple I ever saw growing in England hung over a brick wall in a nest of leaves--a red crab no bigger than a nutmeg. I used to visit that wall with my companions, but not to try for that apple--it was too sacred in our eyes for that--but to admire it, as it bent up and down in the wind, and to wonder how many more were inside the wall among the larger branches. On Saturdays, after I had brightened the stone hearth with blue-stone and sand, I went out to greet the Scotch bag-piper who, with his wheezy pibroch, puffed out like a roasted Christmas goose, perambulated down our road so sedately that the feather in his plaid bonnet never quivered. As this did not take up all the morning, we borrowed bread-knives from our families, and went to the fields, where we dug under the sod, amongst the fresh, damp soil, for groundnuts, while the soaring lark dropped its sweet note down on us.

But the gala days were the holidays, filled as only the English know how to fill them with high romance and pure fun. There were the Sunday-school “treats,” when we went to the fields in holiday clothes and ran, leaped, and frolicked for prize cricket balls and bats, and had for refreshment currant buns and steaming coffee. There was the week at the seashore, when aunt and uncle treated me to a rake, shovel, and colored tin pail, for my use on the shore in digging cockles, making sand mountains, and in erecting pebble breastworks to keep back the tide. To cap all else as a gala opportunity, full of color, noise, music, and confusion, came Glossop Fair, to which I went in a special train for children. There I dodged between the legs of a bow-legged, puffy old man to keep up with the conductor of our party, and I spent several pennies on shallow glasses filled with pink ices, which I licked with such assiduity that my tongue froze at the third consecutive glass. I was always given pennies enough to be able to stop at the stalls to buy a sheep’s trotter, with vinegar on it; to eat a fried fish, to get a bag of chipped potatoes, delicious sticks of gold, covered with nice-tasting grease, and to buy a Pan’s pipe, a set of eight-reed whistles on which, though I purchased several sets, I was never able to attain to the dignity and the thrill of so simple a tune as “God Save the Queen.” The grand climax of the fair, the very _raison d’être_, were the fairy shows, held under dirty canvases, with red-nosed barkers snapping worn whips on lurid canvases whereon were pictured: “Dick Whittington and His Cat,” at the famous milestone, with a very impressionistic London town in the haze, but inevitable for Dick and His Cat; or “Jack and the Beanstalk,” showing a golden-haired prince in blue tights and a cloud of a giant reaching out a huge paw to get the innocent youth and cram him down his cavernous maw.

“’Ere you are, Ladies and Gents!” screamed the barker, pattering nervously and significantly on these pictures, “Only ’riginal ‘Dick Whittington and His Cat,’ Lord Mayor o’ Lunnon! Grown ups a penny, childer ’arf price! Step up all! The band will play! ’Ere you are, now! Tickets over there!”

My tenth birthday marked the end of my boyish, merry play-life. Over its threshold I was to meet with and grasp the calloused hand of Labor. Not the labor which keeps a healthy lad from mischief or loafing, not the labor of mere thrift, but the more forbidding form of it; the labor from which strong men cringe in dread, the labor from which men often seek escape by self-inflicted death, the labor of sweat, of tears, of pitiless autocracy--the labor of Necessity! And necessity, which is not induced by reasonable and excusable circumstances, nor is the result of a mere mistaken judgment of events, such as comes through unskilled business acumen or an overconfidence in a friend’s advice, but the necessity which is rooted in carelessness, squandering, drunkenness.

For in that tenth year of my life, what had appeared to be the strong walls of my uncle’s house collapsed utterly. The undermining had been unseen, unthought of. In that year the parlors of the “Linnet’s Nest” and “The Blue Sign” saw more of my uncle than they had previously. His piano-playing and his flute solos formed an almost continuous performance from early afternoon until late at night. When he started out to peddle his fish, he would stop Bob in front of the “Linnet’s Nest” and forget his customers until I went and reminded him. The public-house tills began to draw the money that came to uncle’s from his peddling, his shop, and the interest from his bank account. But the money loss was trivial in comparison with the loss of what little business initiative or inclination he had possessed. He soon became unfit to order fish from Manchester. His former customers could not depend upon him. Uncle Stanwood had become a confirmed drunkard.

Previous to this, in spite of the incompatibility of temper between uncle and aunt, there had always been a little breath of peace around our fender, but now it fled, and the house was filled with nervous bickerings, hiccoughs, and piggish snortings. The temple of man that had been so imperfectly built was henceforth profaned. The fluent words passed, and an incoherent gurgle took their place. The intelligent gleam grew dim in those sad grey eyes. The firm strides which had indicated not a little pride became senile, tottering, childish. There was written over the lintels of our door: “Lost, A Man.”

All this was not one thousandth part so serious to the creditors who clamored for their pay as it was to aunt and me. To see that slouching, dull-eyed, slavering creature cross the kitchen threshold and tumble in a limp heap on the sanded floor was a sword-thrust that started deep, unhealing wounds. The man and boy changed places, suddenly. That strange, huddled, groping creature, helpless on the couch, his muddy shoes daubing the clothes, was not the uncle I had known. I seemed to have no uncle. I had lost him, indeed, and now had to take his place as best I could. Aunt tried her best, with my help, to keep the business going, but the task was beyond us, as we plainly saw.

But uncle fought battles in his effort to master himself. He strained his will to its utmost; postulated morning after morning intentions of “bracing up”; took roundabout routes with his cart to avoid the public-houses, left his purse at home, sent aunt to Manchester to buy the fish so that he would not have that temptation, took me with him to remind him of his promises, even sent word to the “Blue Sign” and the “Linnet’s Nest” to give him no more credit, and signed the pledge; but the compelling thirst would not be tamed. To take a roundabout route in the morning only meant that he would tie up his horse at the “Blue Sign” lamp-post on his way back; to send aunt to Manchester only meant that, with her out of the way, he had a clear road to the “Linnet’s Nest.” When I went with him, as a moral mentor, he bribed me with a penny to get me out of the way. Sometimes he left me waiting for him until I grew so miserable that I drove home alone. As uncle was a good customer, the public-houses only smiled when he sent word to them not to give him credit; they were not in the business of sobering customers.

So it was a losing fight all the way. Uncle was a coward in full retreat. He blamed nobody but himself; in _that_ he was not a coward. In his sober moments there was a new and discouraging note in his voice. He echoed the language of those who fail. He met me with an ashamed face. He looked furtively at me, just as a guilty man would look on one he had deeply wronged. His shoulders stooped, as do the shoulders of a man who for the first time carries a heavy burden of shame.

Aunt Millie, in attempting to mend matters, unfortunately used the wrong method. She antagonized her husband, sometimes beyond mortal patience. She generally waited until my uncle was sober, and then let loose vituperative storms that fell with crashing force on his spirit. She was mistress of the vocabulary of invective; the stinging word, the humiliating, the maddening word was instant on her lips. She did not have her word once and for all. If she had, it would probably have saved matters; but she kept up a steady stream of abuse throughout the time uncle was in the house. Often he was planning for a night of home when his wife would unload the full burden of her ire on him; and if only for quietness, he would leave the house altogether and find solace in the noggins and mugs.

As an onlooker, and though a mere lad, I saw that my aunt was taking the wrong course, and every now and then, like a Greek chorus at the tragedy, I would remonstrate with her, “Why don’t you let him alone when he wants to stay at home? You’ve driven him off when he was not going out, aunt!”

“You clown!” she would storm, “mind your place and manners before I turn on you and give you a taste of the strap!”

After that it became my custom, whenever uncle was getting a tongue-lashing, to say to him, in a whisper, “Don’t mind her, uncle. Don’t leave the house. She doesn’t know what she’s saying!” In secret, uncle would say to me, “It’s more than flesh and blood can stand, Al, this constant nagging. I’d not be half so much away in the public-houses if she’d let me have a peaceful time at home.”

Indeed, my uncle, intoxicated was five times more agreeable than was his wife when angered. She herself was drinking mildly, and every sup of ale fired her temper until it burned at white heat. All the bulldog of the British roared and yelped in her then. If contradicted by my uncle or me, she threw the first thing to hand, saucer, knife, or loaf. So fearful was I that murder would ensue, that several times I whispered to my uncle to go off to the “Linnet’s Nest” in the interests of peace.

Like the reports of the messengers bringing to Job the full measure of his loss, came market letters from Manchester, unpaid bills from the town merchants, and personal repudiations by my uncle’s old customers. We had to solicit credit from the shop-keepers. Failure was on its way.

One spring day in that year Uncle Stanwood came into the house in great excitement. He met my aunt’s inquiring remark with, “I’m going to ship for the United States, Millie!”

“Ship your grandaddy!” she retorted. “Been drinking gin this time, eh?”

“I’m sober enough, thank God” replied uncle. “I’ve borrowed enough money to carry me across. That’s the only way I shall ever straighten out and get away from the public-houses. It’s best; don’t you think so, old girl?”

“What about us?” asked my aunt with an angry gleam in her eyes. “What’s to become of us?”

“Why,” stammered uncle, “you see I must go on ahead and get something to do, first; then I can send for you, Millie. Think what it means for us to get away to America, where are so many bright chances! God knows but I shall be able to lift up my head there, and get a new start. I can’t do anything so long as I stay here.”

So, after the first shock had passed, it was arranged. For the first time in many days I saw my uncle put his arms around his wife’s shoulders, as if he were courting her again, and re-dreaming youth’s dream, as he painted with winsome colors this new adventure. When hope was shining its brightest in his eye my aunt’s caught the gleam of it, and in a much kinder voice than I was used to hearing, she said, “Do it, Stanwood! Do it, and we’ll look after the business while you get ready for us in the new world!”

In another week my uncle had packed his belongings in a tin trunk, had said good-by to his old-time friends, had taken us with him to the station to talk earnestly, manfully with us until the Liverpool train came in. Then we went through the gates to the compartment, and saw him shut in by the guard. Through the open window he whispered counsel and tender words, and re-echoed his new purposes. Then there was a stir, the train began to move away from us, and my uncle was plunging off towards a new world, and, we prayed, towards a new manhood, leaving aunt and me dazed at our new loneliness.

_Chapter II. Dripping Potatoes, Diplomatic Charity, and Christmas Carols_

_Chapter II. Dripping Potatoes, Diplomatic Charity, and Christmas Carols._

Contrary to his promise, Uncle did not write to us announcing his arrival. In fact, for some strange reason, no letter had arrived by the end of summer. After the leaves had gone and the trees were left stripped by the fall winds, no word had come to comfort us from America.

Aunt and I had tried to keep the shop open, but we saw every day that we had not the skill to make it a success. Already, in the minds of the townspeople, we had failed. It was not long before we were selling nothing but the smoked and dried fish with which the shop was stocked. We could get no fresh fish on credit. Even the grocer would not longer trust us, and shut off supplies. We tried to make out as well as we could, but not philosophically, on dry bread, smoked fish, and tea, with monotonous regularity. Aunt Millie was the wrong kind of person to live with in reduced circumstances. She took away the taste of a red herring by her complaints and impatient tirades against the author of our misfortune. The failure of letters, too, only increased her anger. There was heated complaint for dessert at every meal. That Scriptural word, “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is,” might have meant much to me during those hungry days.

Then our collateral had to go, a piece at a time. Bob, the one-eyed horse, friend of those early years, harnessed to his cart, brought in some money with which we could buy a little fresh stock which I tried to peddle in a hand-cart. But I could not get around very skilfully, and as I trudged over the same route where previously my uncle had gone with his humorous shout of “Mussels alive! Buy ’em alive!” people did not trade with me, but pitied me, and stroked my head in sympathy. When the stock was gone, and it was soon gone, my aunt thought that she had better give up the fight and sell out at auction!

By this time winter was full on us. There were snow and dismal winds which made lonely sounds down our chimney. Old Torvey, the town-crier, was called in for a consultation, and the auction definitely planned. The following Saturday, in the morning, while the housewives were busy polishing their fenders, Old Torvey, clanging his hand-bell with great unction, came up the middle of the road, stopping at strategic points, and when the aproned housewives and their children stood at their doors alert, he solemnly announced, in his sing-song way: “To--be--sold--at--Public--Auction--this--day--at--two--in--the-- afternoon--all--the--stock--in--trade--of--Stanwood--Brindin--at-- his--shop--at--the--head--of--Station--Road--together--with--all-- the--movable--fixtures--therein--and--any--other--items--not--herein-- mentioned--Sale--to--begin--sharply--on--time--and--goods--to--go--to-- the--highest--bidder--Terms--cash--and--all--bids--welcomed--Come--one-- and--all--Two--in--the--afternoon. Now--get--back--to--your--cleaning-- before--your--chaps--get--whom!”--this last as a sally for the women, “whom” meaning “home.”

All the afternoon, while the auction was in session, aunt and I sat in the parlor of our house, behind the flower-pots, watching all who went in. Aunt kept up a running commentary: “Yes, you go in, too, Jane Harrup. You wouldn’t come near me to buy, would you? Um, that blood-sucker, Thompson! What a crowd of vampires a sale can bring out! I didn’t think that you were looking for bargains from us, Martin Comfort. It’s beyond me how folks do gather when you are down!”

Then, when the last of the curious crowd had gone and the shop had passed from our control, there came anxious shopmen demanding the settlement of their bills. And when the last item had been paid there was hardly a shilling left. We had merely succeeded in settling the honor of our house.

The next week the town-crier once more paraded the streets of the town, announcing: “To--be--sold--at--public--auction--at--two--in--the--afternoon-- many--of--the--household--effects--of--Stanwood--Brindin--etc.” This time our parlor was stripped of its piano, several ornamental pieces of furniture, and various bric-à-brac. When the bidders had carted away their “bargains,” my aunt said to me, “Here is one room less to look after, Al. I suppose I ought to be thankful enough, but I’m not!” After that, we lived entirely in the kitchen.

So, with only a few shillings from the proceeds of the last auction, aunt and I faced the winter. We were buoyed up by the hope that Uncle Stanwood would send us a letter despite his strange silence. But day by day the coal grew less and less in the cellar, the wood was burned up, and the larder needed replenishing.

There came to our ears whispers of gossip that were spreading through the town: that uncle had parted from aunt and would never live with her again, that our financial perplexities were really ten times worse than people imagined, that we should eventually be forced into the workhouse!

Behind that door, which only opened every now and then in answer to a friendly knock, a real battle with poverty was fought. Dry bread and tea (the cups always with thick dregs of swollen, soaked leaves which I used to press with a spoon to extract every possible drop of tea) finally formed the burden of unnourishing meals. Even the tea failed at last, and the bread we ate was very stale indeed. Yet I found dry bread had a good taste when there was nothing else to eat.

It was in the middle of December that Aunt bethought herself of some herring-boxes piled in the garret over the empty shop. She had me split them into kindlings, tie them into penny bundles, and sent me out to peddle them at the doors of our friends. Aunt made me wait until darkness when I first went out with the kindling. She did not want me to be seen in the daylight carrying the wood. That day we had eaten but a breakfast of oat-cake and water, and I was very hungry and impatient to sell some wood that I might have something more to eat. But aunt was firm, so that it was six o’clock and very dark when I took two penny bundles. The cotton mills had all their lights out. The street-lamps were little dismal spots in the silent streets. Warm glows of light came from front windows, and the shadows of housewives serving supper were seen on many window blinds. My own hunger redoubled. I hurried to the first house on a side street, gave a timid knock, and waited for an answer. A big, rosy-cheeked woman opened the door, and peered down on me, saying, “Where art’?”

“Please, ma’am, if you please,” I replied, “I’m Al Priddy, and me and Aunt haven’t got anything to eat for tea, and I’m selling bundles of dry wood for a penny apiece.”

“Bless ’is little ’eart,” exclaimed the big woman. “Bless th’ little ’eart! ’is belly’s empty, that it is. Come reight in, little Priddy lad, there’s waarm teigh (tea) and ’ot buttered crumpets. Sarah Jane,” she shouted towards the rear of the house from whence came the tinkle of spoons rattling in cups and a low hum of voices, “get that tu’pence from under th’ china shep’erdess on’t mantle and bring it reight off. Come in, Priddy, lad, and fill th’ belly!”

“If you please, ma’am,” I said, “I can’t stop, if you please. Aunt Millie hasn’t got anything to eat and she’s waiting me. I think I’ll take the money, if you please, and be sharp home, thank you!”

“Bless ’is little ’eart,” murmured the big woman, “’ere’s tuppence ’apenny, an’ come ageen, wen tha has’t moor wood to sell.”

“If you please,” I interposed, “it’s only tu’pence. I can’t take more; aunt said so!”

“Bless ’is ’eart, that’s so,” said the big woman. “Is th’ sure th’ won’t eat a waarm crumpet, little Priddy, lad?”

I had to refuse again, and clutching the two pennies, I ran exultantly down the road toward home, where aunt was sitting near the very tiny light that a very tiny piece of coal was giving in the big fireplace. With one penny I purchased a warm loaf and with the other I bought some golden treacle, and that night there was not a lord in England whose supper had the taste to it that mine had.

Two days after that, when we were once more without food in the house, and when I had had but a scant breakfast, I met a rough-garbed boy not much older than myself, a homeless waif, known and condemned by the name of “Work ’Ouse Teddy.” This day that I met him, he performed his usual feat of wriggling his fingers on his nose, a horrible, silent, swear gesture, and called out to me, “Hey, Fishy, got a cockle on your nose?”

“No,” I replied, being secretly afraid of him, “I’ve not. I’m hungry. I haven’t had any dinner.”

“Aw, yer got chunks of money, you have, I knows. Don’t taffy me like that or I’ll squeege yer nose in my thumbs, blast me, I will!” and he made a horrible contortion of his face to frighten me.

“I am hungry!” I protested. “We are poor now, Teddy.”

Then I told him all our story, as well as I could, and when I told him about selling the kindling, he laughed and said, “Blow me, you codger! You oughter get your meals like I gets um. Say, now, blokey, wot you say to--well, let’s see,” and he mused awhile.

Then, “Well, say, wot would yer say to ’taters in gravy, some meat-pie, cold, and a drink of coffee?”

“Oh,” I gasped, “that would be rich.” Then Teddy winked, a broad, meaningful wink. “I’m yer Daddy, then,” and after that, “make a cross over yer ’eart, and say, ‘Kill me, skin me, Lord Almighty, if I tell!’” and when I had so sworn, he explained, “Now yer won’t let on where I keep things, so come on, blokey, I’m yer Daddy!” and he laughed as merrily as if he did not have to sleep out like a lost sheep of society or to dodge the police, who were ever on his tracks trying to get him put back into the workhouse.

Teddy led me through the open gates of the mill-yard when darkness had come on. The firemen, in the glow of their furnaces, called out, cheerily, “Blast th’ eyes, Teddy, don’t let the boss catch thee!” and, “Got a chew of thick twist (tobacco) for me, Ted, lad?” After he had given the man a chew, and had boxed a round with the other stoker, Teddy came to where I stood, and said, “They let me sleep here nights. They’re good blokes. Now, here’s where I keeps things.” So saying, he led me to a corner of the immense coal heap, and there, in a box amidst thick heaps of coal powder, he drew out a pitcher with the lip gone and only a useless fragment of the handle left. He also drew out a sort of pie plate and a small fruit basket. “I keeps ’em there to keep the dust off,” he explained, and handed me the basket. “Now we get ready to eat dripping potatoes and meat-pie, bloke.” Then he took me near the furnaces, behind a heap of coal, so that the boss watchman would not find us, and elaborately explained to me the procedure to be followed in getting so tasty a supper.

“When the mill lets out at six, me an’ you’ll stand there at the gates, you standin’ on one side and me on t’ther. You don’ be shy, bloke, but speak up, and say, ‘Any leavin’s, good folks!’ ‘Give us yer leavin’s!’ Some on um’ll grumble at you, an’ some’ll say, ‘Get off, you bloke, we’ll tell the Bobby,’ but they won’t. You’ll find some that’ll open their boxes and turn ’em inside out for you right in the basket. Then you just come over to my side, and I’ll show you. Just remember that it’s dripping ’taters an’ meat-pie an’ ’ot coffee! Don’t that make yer mouth water, bloke?”

I said that it would be a regular feast.

At six o’clock, when the clang of a big bell in the mill tower let itself out in a riot of din, the Whole inside of the factory seemed to run down with a deepening hum, then the quiet precincts of the yards became filled with a chattering, black army. Teddy and I stood on our respective sides of the big gateway, and waited for the exodus. I grew suddenly afraid that I should be trampled under foot, afraid that my voice would not be heard, afraid that I should be jailed. So I let most of the crowd past unsolicited, and then I grew afraid that Teddy would perform all manner of horrible and grewsome tortures on me if I did not try, so I darted my basket almost into the stomach of a tall man, and piped, “Got any leavings, sir?” He paused, looked me over, took the dirty pipe from his mouth as he further extended his contemplation, and said, “Sartinly, lad,” and deposited in my basket a currant bun and a slice of cold meat, and went on muttering, “It might be my own, God knows!”

The gas lights were out in the mill, and the huge bulk was merely part of the silent night, when I went across and showed Teddy what I had obtained. He laughed, “Not at all bad--for a learner, that!” he commented. “It takes practice to get dripping ’tato and meat-pie, bloke. I got it and a jug o’ coffee. We’ll eat near the bilers,” and he led the way into the yard, making me dodge behind a pile of boxes as the night watchman came to lock the gates. The firemen allowed Teddy to warm the coffee and the food, and then we sat in the glow of the opening doors, in a bed of coal dust, and ate as sumptuous a meal as had passed my lips for some time.

When I expressed my thanks, Teddy said, “Be on deck to-morrer, too, bloke. It’ll be fish then. Would you like fish?”

“I do like fish,” I agreed. “I will come to-morrow, Teddy, thank you kindly.”

“I’ll go to the gate with yer an’ give yer a leg o’er. The gate’s locked, bloke.” After many slips, Teddy at last had me over, and as he said good-night through the pickets, I said, “Will you sleep out in the snow, to-night, Teddy?”

He laughed, “Oh, no, blokey, not me. Wot’s the matter with a snooze near the bilers with a cobble o’ coal for a piller, eh?” Knowing that he would be perhaps warmer than I, I left him, and ran home to tell my aunt what a good supper I had picked up.

When I had finished the recital of the adventure, my aunt grew very indignant and gave me a severe whipping with a solid leather strap. “Shamin’ me up and down like that!” she cried. “Beggin’ at a mill gate! I’ll show you!” and I had to swear not to have anything more to do with Work’ouse Teddy.

But evidently through that experience, and on account of my having sold the kindling wood, our friends were at last apprised of the actual poverty in our house, and for a while there seemed to be no end to the little offerings of food that were brought in. I shall always remember with pride the diplomacy with which most of the food was given. When Mrs. Harrup brought in a steaming pigeon-pie, wrapped in a spotless napkin, she said, “Mrs. Brindin, I had more meat than I knew what to do with and some pie-crust left to waste, so I says to our Elizabeth Ann, ‘Lizzie Ann, make up a little pie for Mrs. Brindin, to let her see how well you’re doing with crust. She knows good crust when she _tastes_ it, and I want you to let her pass judgment on it, Lizzie Ann.’ I said, likewise, ‘Lizzie Ann, if thy pie-crust doesna’ suit Mrs. Brindin, then thy ’usband’ll never be suited.’ So here’s it, Mrs. Brindin. Never mind washing the dish, please.”

Mrs. Harrow, the iron monger’s demure wife, herself a bride of but two months, came in one morning, dangling a long, lank hare. She had a doubtful expression on her face, and, as soon as she had crossed the threshold of our kitchen, she made haste to fling the hare on our table, exclaiming, “There, Mrs. Brindin. There it is for you to tell us on’t. I bought it yestere’en down’t lower road and it come this morning, early. I was going to stew it, but then I smelled it. It’s not a bit nice smell, is’t? I couldn’t bring myself to put it in the stew. I made a pudding and dumpling dinner ’stead. Just you sniff at it, Mrs. Brindin. You know about ’em, bein’ as you sold ’em, mony on ’em. It don’t smell tidy, do it?” She looked anxiously at aunt. “Why, Mrs. Harrow,” said my aunt, “’Ares always are that way. It all goes off in the cooking. It’s nothing to bother over.”

“Uh,” said the iron monger’s wife, “come off or not, I could never eat it. I never could. I wonder, Mrs. Brindin, if you will let Al, there, throw it away or do something with it. I will never have such a thing in my house!” and she hurried out of the kitchen.

“Al,” smiled aunt, a rare smile, “here’s stew and pie for near a week.”

Our neighbors could not always be doing such diplomatic acts, and after a while we had to go back to treacle and bread, hourly expecting word from America. We had faith that Uncle Stanwood would let us hear from him, though his long, disheartening silence worried us considerably. Aunt did not go to work, because she hoped at any day to hear the call, “Come to America.” Then in desperation Aunt had her name put on the pauper’s list for a shilling a week. I had to go to the parish house on Monday mornings, and stand in line with veteran paupers--“Barley-corn Jack,” the epileptic octogenarian, Widow Stanbridge, whose mother and grandparents before her had stood in this Monday line, Nat Harewell, the Crimean hero, who had a shot wound in his back, and many other minor characters who came for the shilling. The first Monday I stood in’t, I chanced to step in front of “Barley-corn” Jack, who, unknown to me at the time, was usually given the place of honor at the head of the line. He clutched me by the nape of the neck, whirled me around, lifted up my upper lip with a dirty finger, and grinned, “Got a row of ’em, likely ’nough! Screw th’ face, young un, screw it tight, wil’t?”

I was so terror stricken, and tried to escape his clutch with such desperation, that Nat Harewell interjected, “Lend ’im hup, Jack, lend ’im hup, owld un!” and Jack did let me go with a whirl like a top until I was dazed. I fell in line near the Widow, who laughed at me, showing her black teeth; and then, while she twisted an edge of her highly flavored and discolored shawl, and chewed on it, she asked, “Was’t ale ur porter ’at browt thee wi’ uns, laddie?”

I replied that I was Al Priddy and that _I_ was “respectable.” With that, the line began to move past the clerk’s window, and there was no more talking.

In such circumstances we reached the Christmas season, and still we had no word from America. It was the night before Christmas, and a night before Christmas in an English town is astir with romance, joy, and poetic feeling. The linen draper had a white clay church in his window, with colored glass windows behind which burned a candle. The butcher had his pink pig in his window with a hat on its head, a Christmas grin on its face, and a fringe of pigs’ tails curled into spirals hanging in rows above him. There were tinsel laden trees with golden oranges peeping out from behind the candy stockings, wonderlands of toys, and The Home of Santy, where he was seen busy making toys for the world. I had gone down the row with my aunt, looking at all that, for aunt had said, “Al, there’s to be a sorry Christmas for you this time. You had better get all you can of it from the shop windows.” We were pushed this way and that by the crowds that went by doing their shopping. Once we had been with them in the Christmas spirit, now we dwelt apart because of our poverty.

“My,” commented aunt, with the old bitterness in her tone, “the fools! Parading afore us to let us see that _they_ can have a good time of it!”