Chapter V: Part 5

At the end of the following winter the catalogue of the various activities of the gang would read like a chapter from the Hunnish Invasion. There were Saturday night excursions up to the center of the city, which led us through Water street, through the Jewish and the Portuguese sections. As we passed by a grocery store, with tin advertising signs projecting from its doorway, we would line up, and each lad would leap in the air and snap his fist against the sign, producing a loud clatter and leaving it vibrating at great speed. Before the clerks had appeared on the scene we had passed on, and mixed with the Saturday night throng of shoppers. Our next stop was before a Jewish butcher shop, in front of which, on a projecting hook, hung a cow’s heart and liver. Forming another line, the gang would leap again and catch that a resounding slap with the palm. Then one of the fellows poked his head in the shop door, and called, “Say, daddy, we’ll give yer five cents if you’ll let us take three more slaps!” On the next block, we came across a venerable Israelite, long-bearded and somnolent, watching for custom before his one-windowed clothing shop. Jakey leaped forward, gave a vigorous tug on the venerable’s beard, and we broke into a run, with a shrieking, horrified group of Jews in mad pursuit.

Our objective in this series of adventures had been the Union for Good Works, a benevolent institution, with splendid rooms, to which we went for our shower-bath; cost, five cents!

After we had taken our baths, and while we were busy with nine-pins, Jakey stood at an opposite end of the room, and plastered the frescoed walls of the Union for Good Works with the pasty contents of a silver package of cream cheese, to which he had helped himself at the stall of a large public market. That same night, when we arrived at the South End and were disbanding, Jakey set on view before our astonished eyes a five-pound pail of lard, a cap, and several plugs of tobacco, which he carried home and presented to his mother, saying that he had been to an auction!

Such are only a few of the adventures in which we indulged after a depressing day of it in the mill. One Fourth of July night we roamed over the city, through the aristocratic section, and in a wild, fanatical, mob-spirit, entirely without a thought as to the criminal lengths of our action, leaped over low fences, went through gates and ran on lawns, tramping down flower-beds, crushing down shrubs, and snatching out of their sockets the small American flags with which the houses were decorated.

The only religious declaration the gang made came in the winter, when, on dull Sunday afternoons, merely for the walk it offered and the entertainments to which it gave us the entrée, we joined the classes in the Mission. I enjoyed sitting near the aristocratic, finely dressed young woman who instructed me as to the mighty strength of Samson, the musical and shepherding abilities of David, the martial significance of Joshua, and the sterling qualities of St. Paul. Most truly was my interest centered in the jeweled rings my teacher wore, or in the dainty scent that was wafted from her lace handkerchief when she gave one of those cute little feminine coughs! How far away, after all, was she from a knowledge of our lives and the conditions under which we lived! She aimed well, but whatever she intended, in her secret heart, went very, very wide of the mark. She had no moral thrills to treat us to, nor did she ever couch her appeal in so definite a way as to disturb our sins one bit. Perhaps she did not think we needed such strong medicine. Maybe she classed us as “Poor, suffering mill-boys!” and let that suffice. We needed someone to shake us by the shoulders, and tell us that we were cowards, afraid to make men of ourselves. We needed a strong, manly fellow, just then, to tell us, in plain speech, about the sins we were following. We needed, more truly than all else, a man’s Man, a high, convincing Character, a Spiritual Ideal, The Christ, pointed out to us. But this was not done, and we left the Mission with derision in our hearts for things we ought to have respected. Some of the fellows lighted their cigarettes with the Sunday-school papers they had been presented with.

Many of the Monday evenings in winter were gala nights, when we marched to the Armory and watched the militia drill. On our return home, we walked through the streets with soldierly precision, wheeling, halting, presenting arms, and making skilful formations when “Yellow Belly” ordered.

In September, the rules were posted in the mill that all minors who could not read and write must attend public evening school, unless prevented by physical incapacity. Four of us, “Yellow Belly,” Jakey, Dutchy Hermann, and myself, had a consultation, and decided that we would take advantage of the evening school and improve our minds. But the remainder of the gang, with no other intention than to break up the school, went also, and though there was a special officer on guard, and a masculine principal walking on rubber soles through the halls and opening classroom doors unexpectedly, they had their fling.

An evening school in a mill city is a splendid commentary on ambition. There one finds ambition at its best. After a day’s work of ten and a half hours, tired, tired, tired with the long day of heat and burden-bearing, lungs choking for inhalations of fresh, cool air, faces flushed with the dry heat of the room, ears still dulled by the roar and clank of machines, brains numbed by hours and hours of routine--yet there they are, men grown, some of them with moustaches, growing lads of fifteen, and sixteen, girls and women, all of many nationalities, spending a couple of the precious hours of their freedom scratching on papers, counting, musing over dry stuff, all because they want to atone for past intellectual neglect. I was there because I wanted to push past fractions and elementary history, and go on towards the higher things. I was entirely willing to forego priceless hours for two nights a week to get more of a knowledge of the rudiments from which I had been taken by the mill.

I had a seat quite back in the room, because I had intimations that some of the gang were going to “cut up,” and that a back seat would put me out of the danger zone of shooting peas, clay bullets, and other inventions. The man directly in front of me, with a first reader in his hand, was a tall Portuguese, the father of a family of children.

As soon as the starting gong had clanged through the halls, the gang began its operations. Dutchy, in spite of his avowed intention of seriously entering the school, pretended that he could not recite the alphabet. “Bunny,” a young Englishman, tried to pass himself off as a Swede and ignorant of English entirely. While the teachers were busy with the details of organization, the air was filled with riot, the special policeman was called in, and I along with the gang was threatened with arrest. Notwithstanding that such careful watch was maintained, the two weeks of night-school that I attended were filled with such disturbances that I grew discouraged and abandoned the project.

Whenever a circus or a fête, like the semi-centennial of the city, was advertised, the gang always planned to attend, in spite of the fact that the mills would not shut down. Six of us, in one room, by keeping away at noon, could cripple the mule-room so seriously that it could not run, and the spinners would get an afternoon off. Sometimes a group of spinners would hint to us to stay out that they might have a chance. That was my first experience in a form of labor-unionism.

Some of the men we worked under in the mill had a club-room, where they played table games, drank beer when the saloons were legally closed, and had Saturday night smokers, which my uncle attended, and where he was generally called upon to “vamp” on the piano.

The gang used to haunt this club, and, when there was a concert on, would climb up and look in the windows. Finally we decided that we ought to have a club-room of our own. We sought out and rented a shanty which had served as a tiny shop, we pasted pictures of actresses, prize fighters, and bicycle champions around the walls, had a small card table covered with magazines and newspapers, and initiated ourselves into the “club.”

The evenings of the first week we occupied, mainly, in sitting in front of the club, tilted back in chairs, and shouting to other mill lads, as they passed, in reply to their cynical salutations of “Gee, what style!” or, “Aw, blow off!” with a swaggering, “Ah, there, Jimmy. Come in and have a game!” Each member of the club kept from work a day, the better to taste the joys of club life to the full. About the fourth week, after we had held forth in a tempestuous whirl of boxing bouts, card matches, smoking bouts, and sensational novel-reading, the landlord repented of his bargain, locked us out, and declared to our remonstrance committee that he could no longer rent us the shanty, because we had become a “set of meddlin’ ne’er-do-wells!”

So we went back to the drug-store corner, with its drinking trough, where we could have been found huddled, miserable, like animals who have so much liberty and do not know how intelligently to use it. For we knew that after the night, came the morning, and with the morning another round in the mill, a fight with a machine, a ten hours’ dwelling in heated, spiceless, unexciting monotony, and a thought like that made us want to linger as long as we dared on that drug-store corner.

_Chapter XV. The College Graduate Scrubber Refreshes my Ambitions_

_Chapter XV. The College Graduate Scrubber Refreshes my Ambitions_

At sixteen years of age, after three years in a mill-room, and with the unsocial atmosphere of my home to discourage me, I had grown to discount that old ambition of mine, to “make something of myself.” My body had been beaten into a terrifying weakness and lassitude by the rigors of the mill. My esthetic sense of things had been rudely, violently assaulted by profanity, immorality, and vile indecencies. I had come to that fatalistic belief, which animates so many in the mill, that the social bars are set up, and are set up forever. I should always have to be in the mill. I should never get out of it!

Recurrently would pop up the old thought of self-destruction. There was some consolation in it too. I used to feel as if a great weight rested on my bent back: that it would weigh me down, as Christian’s sin had weighed him down, only mine was not the weight of sin, but the burden of social injustice. I seemed to be carrying the burden on a road that sloped upward, higher and higher, a road dark and haunted with chilly mists, growing darker, covering it. There was nothing but a climbing, a struggling ahead, nothing to walk into but gloom! What was the use of turning a finger to change it? I was branded from the first for the mill. You could turn back my scalp and find that my brain was a mill. You could turn back my brain, and find that my thoughts were a mill. I could never get out--away from the far-reaching touch of it. The pleasantest thing I enjoyed--an excursion to Cuttyhunk on a steamer, or a holiday at the ball game--had to be backgrounded against the mill. After everything, excursion, holiday, Sunday rest, a night of freedom on the street, an _enjoyable illness_ of a day, a half day’s shut-down--the _Mill_! The _Mill_!

What difference did it make that I took question-and-answer grammar to the mill, and hid myself every now and then, to get it in my mind, or hurried my dinner that I might read it? After all, the mill, the toil, and the weakness. What difference did it make if I read good books, on my uncle’s recommendation? After I had gone through romance, there was the muddy prose of my life in the mill and at home!

Just then Fate, who served me so ungenerously as I thought, worked one more mortal into her wheel, brought one more from dreams and high purposes into the ring with me. He was a stout, pudgy-faced, lazy man of thirty, who came in to mop the floor, oil some of the pulleys, and keep some of the spare alleys cleaned.

But he was a college graduate! He was the first college graduate I had ever had the honor to work near. The overseers, our superintendent, were not graduates of a college. I was thrilled! That man, working at the end of my alley, scrubbing suds into the floor with a soggy broom, mopping them dry, pushing his pail of hot water before him, carrying a shaft pole or mopping along with a pail of grease in his hands--that man was a _COLLEGE GRADUATE_! All the dreams that I had indulged relative to classic halls, ivy-covered walls, the college fence, a dormitory, football field--all those dreams centered around that lumpish head, for the Scrubber had been to college! He represented to me the unattainable, the Mount Olympus top of ambitious effort. Suds, pail, soggy mop, grease pail, and lazy fat were transformed before me, for _HE HAD BEEN TO COLLEGE_!

What college had he graduated from? I do not know to this day. How had he stood in college? Another shrug of the shoulders must suffice. _WHY_ was _HE_ in _THE MILL_? I never paused in my hero adoration to ask that. Sufficient for me that he had been to college!

One day I made so bold as to address this personage. I went up shyly to him, one day, and said, “Could I make something of myself if I went to college?” He leaned on his mop, his light brows lifted, his cheeks puffed out like as if a frog were blowing itself up, then he said in a thick, dawdling voice, “You could either come out a thick head or a genius. It depends!” Then I made my great confession, “I’d like to go to college--if I only had the brains--and the money,” I confided. Then he seemed to be trying to swallow his tongue, while he thought of something germane to the conversation in hand.

Then he replied, “It does take brains to get through college!” and then turned to his work. I was not to be put off. I touched his overall brace, and asked, “Do you think that I might beg my way into college some day? Of course I wouldn’t be able to graduate with a title, like a regular student, but do you think they’d let me study there and try to make something of myself, sir?” The deference in my address must have brought him to attention with a little beyond his habitual speed, for he turned to me suddenly, and said, “Of course they will, you crazy kid!”

I left him then, left him with a new outlook into the future, for had I not been told by a REAL college graduate that I could get to college! Every former dream hitherto chained down broke loose at that, and I felt myself with a set of made-over ambitions. The seal, the signature, had been placed on officially. I could do it if I tried. I could get out of the mill; away from it. I could get an education that would give me a place outside it!

After that I began to fit myself for college! It was a fitting, though, of a poor sort. I did not know how to go about it. There seemed to be none in my circle overeager to tell me how to go about the matter. It was blind leading all the way.

I thought, first of all, that if I could get hold of some books of my own, my very own, that would be the first step toward an intellectual career. I had read the lives of several scholars, and their libraries were always mentioned. I thereupon resolved that I would own some books of my own.

The next stage in an intellectual career, was the reading of _DRY_ books. I resolved that the books I purchased should be dry, likewise.

So after that I found real diversion in visiting the Salvation Army salvage rooms, where they had old books for which they asked five and ten cents apiece. The rooms were so laden with old clothes and all sorts of salvage that I had to root long and deep often to bring the books to light. I also went among the many second-hand shops and made the same sort of eager search.

After a few months of adventuring I had my own library of dry books. Their dryness will be evident from the check-list which follows.

I was especially delighted with my discovery, among a lot of old trousers in a second-hand shop, of a board-cover copy of “Watts on the Mind.” Its fine print, copious foot-notes, its mysterious references, as “Seq.,” “i.e.,” “Aris. Book IV., ff.,” put the stamp upon it as being a very scholarly book indeed. I looked it through, and not finding any conversation in it, judged that it was not too light. Its analytical chapter headings, and its birthmark, “182--,” fully persuaded me that I might get educated from that sort of a book!

In the salvage rooms, where I obtained most of my treasures, I obtained a black, cloth-bound book, with mottled damp pages and with a mouldy flavor to it, entitled, “Scriptural Doctrine,” which I knew was a dry book, because it was a religious book printed in the 40’s. It undertook to summarize all the great and fearsome doctrines from the Fall to the Recovery by massing every appropriate passage of scripture under them, and concluding, with loyalty to the major premises, with stout assertions that they were all true because they were. I also found, in the same place and on the same day, a well-worn, pencil-marked, dog-eared copy of “A History of the Ancient World,” filled with quaint wood-cuts of ruined walls, soldiers in battle, with steel spears and bare feet. It was covered with a crumpled piece of paper bag, and there were only two leaves missing two-thirds of the way in the book, cutting the history of the Greeks right in two. I knew that that would be a scholar’s book on the face of it. Scholars always read about old nations and destroyed cities, and that book was filled with such records. I was pleased with it. I also picked up, in the salvage rooms, a three-volume edition of “The Cottage Bible,” two volumes of which were without covers, and one of them had most of the leaves stained as if it had been in a fire somewhere. It was an edition printed somewhere near the beginning of the nineteenth century. I bought that, first, because it was a three-volume edition on one subject; it was ponderous. Scholars always had such books. I also bought it because it had so many notes in it. Half of each page was covered with them in fine print. To me, that was the highest type of intellectual book.

I later added to the collection--a thrilling find--a well-bound copy of a civil trial, in Boston, with every word stenographically recorded, and interesting to me because Paul Revere was one of the witnesses, the ORIGINAL Paul Revere that you read of in the school books and see advertised on coffee and cigars! I wondered how such a valuable work had ever passed the book collectors who paid thousands for such prizes! I bought it in much trembling, lest the second-hand shopkeeper should be aware of the book’s real value and not let me have it for ten cents! Perhaps there might be an old document hidden in its yellow leaves! It was with such high, romantic feelings that I made the purchase, and hurried from the shop as swiftly as I could.

The book-buying, once established, kept with me persistently, and crowded out for a time the more material pleasures of pork pies, cream puffs, and hot beef teas. I turned nearly all my spending money into books. One Saturday afternoon, for the first time, I went into a large city bookstore where they always had at the door a barrel of whale-ship wood for fireplaces. I scouted through the shop for bargains, and besides sundry purchases of penny reproductions of famous paintings, I secured Sarah K. Bolton’s “Poor Boys who became Famous,” marked down to fifty cents.

My next purchases at the bookstore were a manilla-covered copy of Guizot’s “History of France,” “Life of Calvin,” a fifty-cent copy of the Koran which I purchased because it was an oriental book like the “Arabian Nights,” and on account of the thrilling legends and superstitions with which Sale has filled a copious Addenda. I also bought a fifteen-cent copy of Spurgeon’s “Plow Talks,” and a ten-cent pamphlet of “Anecdotes for Ministers,” because I reasoned that ministers always had good stories in their sermons--_ergo_, why not get a source-book for myself, and be equal with the ministers?

Week by week my stock of books grew, each volume probably wondering why it ever became mixed in such strange company. I bought no fiction, now. That was left behind with dime novels and “Boy’s Books!” I was aiming for _REAL_ scholarship now, and I might fit myself for college. I had a great longing now to align my tastes with those that I imagined would be the tastes of real scholars. From “Poor Boys who became Famous” I learned that some of the heroes therein depicted had the habit of reading any massive work they laid their fingers on, of borrowing _GOOD_ books, almost without regard to the subject. Good reading seemed to be the standard, and to that standard I tried to conform. I went into the shop of an Englishman who sold things at auction, and, among his shelves, I found a calfskin-bound “Cruden’s Concordance of the Bible,” which, I found on examination, contained the “Memoirs” of the author. That must be good reading, I judged. Any man who could compile such a mass of references must be dry enough to be a scholar. So I paid twenty-five cents for the book immediately. The same evening I also secured two volumes of Hume’s “History of England,” printed, so the Roman numerals told me, after I had laboriously sought out their meaning, before the end of the eighteenth century, and with the long “s” and very peculiar type. One of the volumes had a cover missing. Though the history did not begin until the later kings, I had the satisfaction of knowing that at least I had a Good history on my list.

Of a technical and necessary nature, I had two well-worn, and very old, arithmetics which I bought for two cents, and Binney’s “Compend of Theology,” which gave a simple and dogmatic summary of Protestant doctrine from the standpoint of Methodism. To complete my scholarly equipment, I knew that I ought to keep a journal of my doings, as every biography that I read mentioned one. So I bought a small pocket diary for that year. My library was complete.

In my reading of biography, I noted that a scholar or a student had his books in cases and that he had a study. I resolved to display my books in a study, likewise. The only available place in the house was a large front room, which my aunt kept closed because there was no furniture for it. The floors were carpetless and lined with tacks left by the last occupant in tearing up the carpet. The wall-paper was dim with dust, and the windows had the shutters drawn because there were no curtains for them. During the day the light filtered dismally through the blinds.

I asked my aunt if I might use that to study in, and she said that “it wasn’t any fret of hers.” I could. So I placed a bedroom chair, and secured a small, second-hand writing-desk, and placed them in the room. I used the white mantel-shelf for my books. I placed them lovingly on end, and according to color, and they seemed magnificent to me--my first library! I would stand before them, in proud contemplation, and whisper to myself, “My own books!”

I have read that in the midst of the rough ocean there are quiet, calm places where a storm-driven ship may ride at peaceful anchor. That dingy room, with its pathetic row of dingy, obsolete books, its bedroom chair and small desk, with the accumulated dust on the bare floor, was such a place for me.

My first duty after supper was to insert a comment in my diary. Many times I would leave the table with aunt and uncle in violent controversy, with one or another of them intoxicated and helpless, and the line would be, in significant red ink, “Dark To-day!” It was “Dark To-day,” and “Dark To-day” for weeks and months. There were few occasions to ever write, “Had a good day, to-day” which, being interpreted, always meant, “Aunt and uncle are not drinking now and are living together without rows!” For I always condensed my diary record, for I thought, “It might be read--some day. Who knows? You’d better not be too definite!”

I ceased to go out at night now, for I was determined “to make something of myself,” now that I had read “Poor Boys who became Famous.” What they had done, I might do. They had gone through hardships. I could go through mine, if only I was not so weak in body.

One night my aunt severely arraigned me for something I had not said. She heaped her significant phrases on my head, taunted me, and aroused in me the murderer’s passion. I immediately ran to my “study,” closed the door, and received consolation from “Poor Boys who became Famous” by finding that they had attained fame through patience. I resolved to bear with fortitude the things that were set in my way.

It was a very elaborate, systematic, and commendable system of self-improvement that I laid out for myself, chiefly at the suggestion of a writer in “Success Magazine,” which I was reading with avidity. “A few minutes a day, on a street-car, at a spare moment, indulged in some good book, have been sufficient to broadly train many men who otherwise would _NEVER_ have reached the pinnacle of fame,” it read, and, acting on that hint, I resolved to get at least a few minutes a day with my own great books. I would not be narrow, but would read in them all every evening! I would read law, theology, history, biography, and study grammar and arithmetic!

So my procedure would be this: After my entry in the diary, I would read a page from “The Life of Calvin,” then one of the romantic legends from the appendix to the Koran, always, of course, after I had dutifully read one of the chapters on “The Ant,” “Al Hejr,” “Thunder,” “The Troops,” “The Genii” or an equally exciting title like the “Cleaving Asunder,” the context of which, however, was generally very dull and undramatic. After the Koran I would pass to “The History of The Ancient World” and try to memorize a list of the islands of the Grecian group before the power of Hellas waned. By this time, though, I was usually unfit to proceed, save as I went into the kitchen and sprinkled water on my burning forehead; dizzy spells and weakness of the eyes would seize hold of me, and I would have to pause in utter dejection and think how grand it must be to be in college where one did not have to work ten and a half hours in a vitiated atmosphere, doing hard labor, before one sat down to study. Sometimes I would say: “No wonder college people get ahead so well--they have the chance. What’s the use of trying?” And at that dangerous moment of doubt, “Poor Boys who became Famous” would loom so large that I would renew my ambitions, and sit down once more to finish my study.

The grammar and the arithmetic I studied in the mill during any minute that I could snatch from my work. I needed help on those subjects, and I could ask questions of the College Graduate Scrubber. Sometimes I would vary the order, and read the theological definitions from “Cruden’s Concordance,” or the scriptural proofs of great doctrines in “The Biblical Theology,” with a page or two from the law trial in which “Paul Revere” had a part.

Whenever I managed to get in a good night of study without suffering in doing it, I would try to astonish the College Graduate Scrubber with a parade of what I had memorized. I would get him at a moment when he was especially indulgent with his time and say:

“Did you ever read in the Koran about that legend of Abraham, when he saw the stars for the first time and thought about there being one God?” And the Scrubber would look at me in astonishment and confess, “I never read that book. What is it?” “Why, didn’t you have it to read in college?” I would ask in amaze. “It’s the Turk’s Bible, and has the word ‘God’ in it the most times you ever saw!”

“They don’t read that in college,” he would answer. One day, when I was asking him to name over the islands of Greece, with their ancient names--to memorize which I had been working for some time--he lifted up his mop, made a dab at my bare legs, and stormed, “Sonny, you’re too fresh. Get away from here.” Seeing that he did not seem especially sympathetic towards my ambitious effort to be “learned,” I let him alone, consoling myself with the thought, “Well, how can you expect a college graduate to bother with you? Mind your own affairs, and some day you might get to college.”

The gang noticed my defection that winter and asked me what was wrong.

“I’m trying to educate myself,” I said. “Yellow Belly” sniffed, and called contemptuously: “Say, fellows! he’s got the book-bats, Priddy has.”

“Well,” I contended, “you fellows can hang around this drug-store corner from now till doomsday, if you want. I want to learn enough to get out of the mill. Besides, it’s none of your business what I do, anyway!” and with that fling I had to run off to escape the stones that were hurled at me.

_Chapter XVI. How the Superintendent Shut Us out from Eden_

_Chapter XVI. How the Superintendent Shut Us out from Eden_

The numerous quarrels in which my foster parents indulged, and during which my aunt was not averse to proclaiming loudly from the open windows insulting comments on her neighbors, finally brought a lawyer’s letter to the house in which we were living, summarily ordering us to remove ourselves from the neighborhood. Aunt flew into a passion when the letter was read, and had all manner of sharp criticism for “neighbors who don’t tend to their own faults.” Uncle bowed his head for shame, while I went to my study, shut the door, and prayed through tears that God would, in some way, give me a good home like many another boy, and that He might make aunt and uncle more respectable.

Under the shock of this notice my uncle gave up his work, and said that he was determined to make a new start in some other place.

“I’m going to see, Millie,” he said, “if I can’t get somewhere to work, in God’s world, where there aren’t saloons to tempt us. I’ll send for you as soon as I find a place like that.”

Word soon came from him telling me to give up my work; that he had secured a place in a Connecticut cotton-mill. His letter also stated that we should live in a quiet little village where there were no saloons permitted by the corporation, and that our home would be in a little brick cottage with a flower bed and lawn inside the front gate!

“What a god-send this will prove,” said Aunt Millie, “to get away from the saloons. Maybe Stanwood’ll keep sober now. Let us hope so!”

So at seventeen years of age I went with my aunt and uncle to the village, a strange, quiet place after the rumble and confusion of the city. It was well into spring when we arrived, and we found the village beautiful with restful green grass and the fruit-tree blossoms.

As soon as we arrived my uncle took us to the corporation boarding-house, a dismal brick structure, like a mill, with a yellow verandah on its face. “We’ll have to put up here till the furniture comes,” announced uncle.

The next morning I took my overalls with me and began work in the mule-room. It was a pleasant place when contrasted with the places I had worked in in the city. The overseer did not urge us on so strenuously. There was not that terrible line of unemployed in the alley every morning, waiting to take our places.

I was given a place with my uncle, and, when I had my work in hand, that first day, he would call me into the mule alley and chat with me about our new prospects.

“We’ll begin all over, Al, and see if we can’t do better by you. Maybe we’ll be able to send you to school, if we can get some money laid by. This is our chance. We’re away from drink. The corporation owns the village and won’t allow a saloon in it. Now I can straighten up and be a man at last, something I’ve shamefully missed being the last few years, lad!”

Those first few days of our life in the village, uncle’s face seemed to lose some of its former sad tenseness.

“Wait till the furniture gets here, lad,” he said, repeatedly. “Then we’ll settle down to be somebody, as we used to be.”

Then the day that a postal came from the freight office saying that the furniture had arrived, the superintendent of the mill called my uncle away from his mules for a long consultation. Then he came back in company, with my uncle, and mentioned to me that he would like to see and speak with me in the elevator room. I had only time to note that uncle’s face was that of a man who has just seen a tragedy. It was bloodless, and aged, as if he had lost hope.

What could all this mean? A mill superintendent did not usually consult with his hands except on very grave matters.

I found the superintendent waiting for me, with a very sober face. We had strict privacy. When he had shut the door, he said: “Al Priddy, I want to ask you what will seem, at first, a very impertinent and delicate question. You must give me a frank answer, even though it is very hard.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, wondering what it was to be.

“Al,” he said, sternly, like a judge, “is your aunt a regular drinker--of intoxicants?”

So that was the question! I gasped, choked, and with my eyes on the floor, confessed, “She is, sir.”

“Well,” said the superintendent, “I am very sorry for you, my boy! I am sorry that you have to suffer because of other people. We cannot allow women who drink to live in our houses. We will not allow it if we know about it.”

“But my aunt won’t drink here,” I said. “She said so, and there aren’t any saloons, sir. That is the reason we came out this way!”

“Your aunt has been seen drunk in the village already!” announced the superintendent. “What do you think about that?”

The bottom went out of the fairy world we had hoped to live in, with that news. I could only stand there, dazed, shocked, wild with the sense of our loss.

“You cannot have the house I promised,” said the superintendent. “I have told your uncle that. The furniture is not unloaded yet, and it must return. We will cover the expenses. We cannot permit the other women to suffer because of your aunt. She obtained liquor in some way and I shall look into it. You must go back. You cannot have any of our rents.”

“But, sir,” I pleaded, “won’t you give us a chance. My uncle wants to do well, and we will try and see that my aunt keeps straight too. When we get settled, she’ll change. It’s our only chance. If we go back to the city it will be as bad as before, and that was bad enough. Give us one more chance!”

“But your aunt has managed to get drunk already, after having been in town only a few days. What will it be later?”

“Oh, sir,” I went on, desperate at the chance that was slipping from us, “you are a member of the church and believe in forgiving as Christ did. Won’t you give us a chance to straighten out? It might take time, but it means so much to aunt and uncle and--and me!”

“I shall have to refuse,” said the superintendent finally. “I have to think of the welfare of more families than one. Go back to your work now, and talk things over with your uncle. I will see him again.”

I went back to my uncle and found him doing his work in a dreamy, discouraged way. The miserable hours of the morning wore on, and by noon there was no change in the unfortunate and gloomy situation in which we found ourselves.

When we had had dinner at the boarding-house, uncle went to his room and informed Aunt Millie of what had transpired. Then he upbraided her, scolded her, and called her all manner of brutal names, because he was crazed with shame. My aunt did not cry out, but merely hurried from the room and did not return while we were there.

In the afternoon the superintendent came and had a conference with uncle, the upshot of which was that uncle persuaded him to allow us to retain our work if we could find a house to rent that was not owned by the corporation. The overseer, consulted, said that there was a tenement of three rooms on the outskirts of the village which we might get, and with this prospect, uncle and I found the tragedy of our situation decreasing.

“We’ll go right after supper and look up that place,” agreed Uncle Stanwood. “We might be lucky enough to get it, Al.”

We did not find Aunt Millie at the boarding-house when we arrived, so we ate our meal together, wondering where she could be and fretting about her. But after supper we took an electric car that went past the tenement we were thinking of examining. The car was crowded with mill-workers going to the city for the evening. Uncle and I had to stand on the rear platform.

The village had been left, and the car was humming along a level stretch of state highway bordered with cheerful fields, when our ears were startled by screams, and when uncle and I looked, as did the other passengers, we beheld a woman wildly fleeing through the field toward the river. She was screaming and waving her hands wildly in the air.

“My God!” shouted uncle, “it’s Millie!” He shouted to the conductor, “Stop, quick, I’ll look after her!” and when the car slowed down we both leaped to earth and ran, a race of death, after the crazed woman.

We caught her almost near the brink of the river, and found it difficult to keep her from running forward to hurl herself in it. She was bent on suicide. But finally we calmed her, and found that she had been drinking whisky, which always so affected her, that the prospect of having to return to the city, the thought of having shamed us, had made her determine on suicide.

She did up her hair, straightened her clothes, and we three went further down the road, as far as the house we were seeking, examined the three rooms, and were fortunate enough to rent them. I came away with a light heart, for we would not have to leave the village after all.

_Chapter XVII. I Founded the Priddy Historical Club_

_Chapter XVII. I Founded the Priddy Historical Club_

One of the important items we had overlooked in securing the tenement at the border of the village was a saloon which stood next door to it! A saloon, too, that was the common resort of the village, because it stood outside the town lines! “Never mind, lad,” said my uncle, “we’ll struggle on in spite of it, you see. If only your aunt didn’t have it under her nose all day! It’ll be hard for her!” But there it was and matters could not be changed.

The first few weeks passed and found my aunt and uncle solidly entrenched behind strong temperance resolutions.

With this in mind, I began to enjoy my new situation. I made the acquaintance of a cloth designer, a young Englishman who loved books and talked familiarly and intelligently about ambition. He stimulated me to “make something of myself,” when I unfolded my ambition toward that goal. We had long walks at night and on Sundays, and I learned for the first time the joys of sympathetic friendship.

I became a regular attendant at the village church. Indeed, my whole life seemed washed of its grimy contact among the peace and simplicity of village life. To go from week to week and not see cheapness and vulgarity in the profusion I had been face to face with in the city, was dream-like and delightful. Now I seemed to be on the way toward the finer things of life.

I responded to my opportunity in a very definite and practical way. I founded _an historical society_! In my reading, I had picked up during a holiday in the city a history of the region, a history whose background was the romantic one of Indian lore and fascinating to me. I spoke enthusiastically to the cloth designer about it; he and I secured the interest of three or four other youths, and we resolved thereupon to establish an historical society, with regular, stated meetings, and lectures, real lectures!

The work in the mill with such a definite thing in mind as an historical society became less and less irksome. For the first time, I could master my duties and enjoy pleasant surroundings. I found humane conditions for the first time, and was better in mind and body because of them. In the mill we talked over the society, and resolved, finally, to call it the Priddy Historical Club. It was formally voted, too, that I should go into the city, seek out the author of the ponderous history we had read, and ask him if he would not come out and lecture to us and start the club.

To see a real, live author and talk to him! What a task for me! How I was growing in the finer things. If only the College Graduate Scrubber could know that! It was a vast task, loaded with honor, and truly symbolical of my new intellectual attainments. So I dressed myself in my best clothes, put on a celluloid collar, and went into the city.

The author was a grey-bearded man, who was also librarian of the city library. I found him in his private office, where he listened graciously to the plans of the Priddy Historical Club. He consented to come out and address us, and also said that he would typewrite a course of historical research for our use!

The author met us, one evening, in a room of the church. He told us fascinating tales of early settlers, and left in our possession typewritten sheets filled with a well-planned and complete course of study. That was the first and only meeting of the club. The fellows lost interest at the formidableness of the program, the cloth designer had too much work to bother reading on so large a scale, and I--I had other things of great moment to bother about.

In the middle of summer, a farmer across the way asked me to work for him, and though the wages were much smaller than I earned in the mill, and my aunt at first was loath to have me accept, I began work on the farm. My uncle was greatly pleased with this arrangement.

“Thank God, you have a chance to get some color in your cheeks,” he said, and aunt laughed. “It would be a good sight to have him put a few pounds of flesh on his bones, wouldn’t it?”

At last I was out of the mill, out in the fresh air all day! I stretched my arms, ran, leaped, and worked with great delight. I felt better, stronger, more inspired than ever to get ahead. But when I went home, after the day’s work, I was so sleepy through exposure that I could no longer study. “Never mind,” I thought; “if I only get a strong body out of it, it will be all right.”

So I milked cows, delivered milk to a village three miles distant, and worked about the place, all with hearty good will. Every day I would look in a glass to see if my cheeks were puffing out or getting ruddy.

On Sunday I attended the village church and worshiped near the superintendent of the mill. I shared the farmer’s pew, and though the beat of air and sun on my eyes made me very sleepy when in a room, and though the minister must have wondered why I winked so laboriously during the service, as I tried to keep awake, I always brought to mind the pleasant places into which I had been led, and joined with the minister in a sincere prayer to the God who was leading me.

But one night I went home, and, as I neared the house, I heard hysterical screams and ran as fast as I could, knowing full well what I should see. My aunt was squirming on the floor, her hair undone, and her hat entangled in it. She had on her best dress. Her face was convulsive with hate, with intense insanity. She was shrieking: “Oh, he’s killing me, killing me! Help! Murder!” I ran to her, caught the sickening odor of whisky from her lips and on examination found that there was a gash on her cheek. Then I stood up and looked around. Uncle, breathing heavily, sat at the other end of the table, before an untasted supper. His face was very stern and troubled.

“What have you done?” I shouted. “You’ve been hitting her, you coward!”

“I had to--to protect myself,” he muttered. Then he showed me his face. The blood was dropping down when he took his handkerchief from it, and there was a gash in his temple.

“She threw a saucer square at me,” he explained, in a low voice. “She had a table knife, and she’s stronger than I am, so I just had to smash her with that,” and he pointed to a stick of wood. “It saved her from murder, Al. I’m going away. It will maybe bring her round. If I stayed, she’d raise all sorts of rows and maybe get me to drinking again. She’s been out to that rum shop. I found her, when I got home, dressed as she is, trying to warm a can of soup in the frying-pan. She tried to say she hadn’t been drinking, and then we had the row, lad. Get her to bed, if you can. Get her out of the way, because when she sees me she’s sure to begin it all over. I can’t stop here, can I?”

“No, get away,” I said; “we’ve had rows enough. Send us some, money when you get work, and it’ll be all right. Come and see us, if you get a good place. We might move away from here.”

He packed his bundle, and went to the city on the next trolley-car, and left me alone to fight the matter through. I was earning four and a half dollars a week, and knew that we would have to fight hard if uncle did not send us any money. After I had placed my aunt in bed and left her to manage as best she could, knowing that her sobs would die down and a deep sleep ensue, I went out on the front step and sat down to think matters over.

“Now everybody in the village, the designer, and all your fine friends will know that your aunt drinks,” I thought. “What’s the use trying to be somebody and have these miserable things in the way!” How were we to get through the winter? It seemed inevitable that I should have to go back to the mill. The mill was bound to get me, in the long run. It was only playing with me in letting me out in the sun, the fresh air, and the fields for a while. The mill owned me. I would have to go back!

We tried to live through the winter, without getting word from my uncle, on the money I earned. Occasionally aunt would take some liquor, but she seemed to realize at last that she must not indulge overmuch. One day, growing desperate, I said to her, “If I catch you drinking on my money, now, I’ll leave home, you see! I’ll earn money to buy food, but I won’t earn it for no saloon-keeper, mark my words!” I was only then beginning to see the light in which my own, personal rights to freedom stood. My aunt scolded me for awhile at such unheard of rebellion and such masterly impudence, but she took notice of my earnestness and knew that I would keep my word.

Finally the struggle became too much for us. We saw that we could not starve longer on the little wage I was earning, so we made plans to return to the city where the mills were plenty and where I might earn more money. My aunt was only too eager to get away from a place where it was impossible to hide one’s actions.

A card came from my uncle announcing that he had returned to New Bedford already, and asking us to come and join him.

“Yes,” smiled my aunt, “I’ll bet he’s thinking of his stomach. He finds, when he’s away, that it isn’t every lodging-house keeper that can cook potato pies and things as tasty as his own wife. That’s what he’s homesick for, I’ll bet. Write him that we’ll be on hand. He means all right, but I’ll guarantee he’s half starved.”

I eagerly accepted the privilege of running ahead to New Bedford to rent a tenement. I said to myself, “Yes, and I’ll get one so far away from saloons that the temptation will not be under their noses, anyway!”

That was almost an impossible thing. The rents were excessively high in such paradises. I had to compromise by renting a downstairs house on what seemed to be a respectable street. The nearest saloon was five blocks away.

_Chapter XVIII. A Venture into Art_

_Chapter XVIII. A Venture into Art_

Once more we took up life in New Bedford, with the thunder of many mills in our ears, and the short year’s sojourn in the Connecticut village so dim a memory that it was almost out of mind immediately under the press of sterner, more disquieting things.

All the foulness of life seemed to be raked up at my feet since I had been in finer, sweeter air. I went back for a few nights to the Point Road Gang. It was composed of the same fellows save that a few of them had gone away from home, one to prison for larceny, another to an insane asylum through excessive cigarette indulgence, and those who were left had obtained some very wise notions from life.

Jakey was one of those who had gone away from home. One night he joined his old comrades. “Now, fellows,” he said, with somewhat of a swagger, “what’s the matter with being sports, eh?” “We are sporty,” announced Bunny.

“Ah, git off the earth, you!” derided Jakey. “Where’s the booze?”

“Uh, we ain’t skeered of that!” retorted Bunny, “are we, fellows?”

To show that they were not afraid of a drink, some of the gang fished up some pennies from their pockets and made a pot of fifteen cents.

“Get a can, somebody,” announced Jakey. “I’ll get the growler for you, with foam on it too.”