THROUGH THE MILL

Then the Epileptic Octogenarian Let Me Go and the Pauper Line
Went in Before the Parish Clerk for the Charity Shilling

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

“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

Illustrations

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!”

Our dark home had a more miserable aspect about it than ever when we got back. “Get right up to bed,” commanded aunt, “there’s no coal to waste. You can keep warm there!” and though her manner of saying it was rough, yet I heard a catch in her voice, and then she burst into tears.

“Never mind, Aunt Millie,” I comforted, “uncle will write, I feel sure!” She looked up, startled, and seemed ashamed that I had found her crying and had struck her thought so.

“Who’s whimpering?” she cried fiercely. “Mind your business!” But I noticed that when she came in my room that night and thought me asleep, when in reality I was keeping my ears open for the carols, she kissed me very tenderly and crept away silently.

When the carols first strike a sleeping ear, one imagines that the far-away choirs of Heaven are tuning up for the next day’s chorus before God. The first notes set such dreams a-spinning as are full of angels and ethereal thoughts. Then the ear becomes aware of time and place, and seizes upon the human note that may be found in Christmas carols when they are sung by mill people at midnight in winter weather. Then the ear begins to distinguish between this voice and that, and to follow the bass that tumbles up and down through the air. Then there is a great crescendo when the singers are right under one’s window, and the words float into the chamber, each one winged with homely, human tenderness and love. So I was awakened by the carol singers that Christmas night. The first tune sung for us was, “Christians Awake,” and when its three verses had awakened us, and we had gone to the window to look down on the group, “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing,” was followed by a soaring adaptation of Coronation. It was a group of about fifteen. There were Old Bill Scroggs with his concertina, Harry Mills with his ’cello, and Erwind Nichols with his flute. Torvey was there, though he could not sing. He carried the lantern, caught the money that was dropped into his hat from the windows, and kept the young men and women from too much chattering as they approached the different stands. When they had finished their anthems, aunt called from the window, “Happy Christmas good folks. It was kind of you to remember us so. It’s real good.” Old Torvey answered back, “Merry Christmas, Mrs. Brindin. We must get along.” Then the crowd sent up a confused “Merry Christmas,” and passed on.

Then it was back to bed again to sleep until awakened by an unnatural pounding on our door below. “What is it, aunt?” I cried. “I don’t know,” she answered. “Put on your clothes and get down before they break in the door!” I dressed hurriedly, inserted the massive iron key in the lock, gave it a turn only to have the door thrust open wide by Old Torvey, who cried excitedly, as he waved a letter in the air, “It’s from Hammerica, from him!”

My aunt ran down at that, partly dressed, and screamed in her excitement. With fluttering, nervous fingers she tore open the envelope, and examined the contents in a breathless minute.

“Stanwood sent it,” she laughed, “there’s tickets for America and a money order for five pounds!” and then she gave in to a hysterical relapse which required the calling in of the green-grocer’s wife. It was a Merry Christmas!

Chapter III. My Schoolmates
Teach me American

Chapter III. My Schoolmates
Teach me American

IT was an extraordinary excuse that Uncle Stanwood gave for his neglect of us. He disposed of the matter by saying, in his Christmas letter, “I was so busy and so hard put to that I had no heart to write till I had gathered enough money to send for you. I know it must have worried you.”

His steamship tickets, however, had suddenly put us in the limelight in the town. “The Brindins are going over!” was the word that passed around. I can imagine no more perfect fame than the United States had gained in the minds of the men and women of our little town. America was conceived as the center of human desire, the pivot of worldly wealth, the mirror of a blissful paradise. If we had fallen heirs to peerages or had been called to Victoria’s court, it is doubtful if more out-and-out respect would have been showered on us than was ours when it was known that we were going to the “States.”

The impression prevailed that in America the shabbiest pauper gets a coat of gold. During the packing, when the neighbors dropped in while Mrs. Girion made a hot brew of porter and passed it around to the visitors and the workers, an America was constructed for us rivaling the most extravagant fairy-tale ever told by Grimm.

“Yis,” chattered Old Scroggs, “they’s wunnerful likely things over theer in Hammerica, I’m told. I heer’s ’at they spends all ther coppers for toffy and such like morsels, havin’ goold a plenty—real goold! Loads o’ it, they saay!”

“That’s so,” put in Maggie, our next-door neighbor. “Everybody has a chance, too. Double wages for very little work. All sorts of apples and good things to eat. Fine roads, too, and everybody on cycles; they’re so cheap out there. They say the sun is always out, too, and not much rain!”

In somebody’s memory there lingered traditions brought from America by a visitor from that country. Besides these traditions, which had to do with “gold,” “paradise,” and “easy work,” there were a half a dozen Yankee words which we dearly loved to prate, as if by so doing we had at least a little fellowship with the wonderful country. In the school-yard my fellows drilled me on these words, Billy Hurd saying, “Now, Al, them Yankees allus talk through the nose, like this,” and he illustrated by a tinpanish, nasal tone that resembled the twang of a tight piano wire. “Now, if you’re going to be American, talk like that, it’s real Yankee. Now let’s see you try the word, ‘Candy,’ which is what they call toffy over there. Only don’t forget to talk through the nose like I did.”

So I dug my hands deep in my pockets, “cocked my jib,” as we called looking pert, and drawled out in most exaggerated form, “Saay, Ha’nt, want tew buy teow cents wuth of kaandy?”

“That’s just like Yankee,” complimented Billy. So I went home, called my aunt’s attention to what I was going to do, and repeated the sentence, much to her delight.

“That’s right, Al,” she said, “learn all the American you can, it will help out when we get there!”

Filled with incidents like these, the days of our English lingering rapidly drew to an end, and every thought in my mind had an ocean steamship at the end of it. The neighbors made it a “time of tender gloom,” for it could be nothing else to a mature person, this taking up of the Brindin family history by the root for transplantation, this breaking off of intimate relationships which, through blood, reached back into misty centuries. Then, too, there was the element of adventure, of risk, for we little knew what prospects were in store for us in that strange land: what would be the measure of our reward for going there. The neighbors were very solemn, but the strange thing about it lay in the fact that there was not one, insular as the British are heralded, who thought that the proposed trip should not be taken!

Finally we came to the farewells and I made mine very concrete. As it was clearly understood that everybody who went to America attained great wealth, I told Clara Chidwick that I would send her a fine gold watch, and when her sister Eline cried with envy, I vowed to send her a diamond brooch. Harry Lomick went off with the promise of five new American dollars, Jimmy Hedding was consoled with the promise of two cases of American “candy,” while Chaddy Ashworth vowed eternal friendship when I promised him a barrel of American apples, and, on the strength of that, as my dearest friend, we mutually promised to marry sisters, to keep house next door to one another when we grew up, and to share whatever good fortune might come to us in the shape of money!

Quite a body-guard of friends saw us off at the station. “Good luck to you!” was the prevailing cry, as we sat in our compartment waiting for the train to start for Liverpool. Then the guard shouted, “All aboard!” and we were in the first, exciting stage of our great adventure.

When the Train Started for Liverpool, I Counted my Pennies while
my Aunt Wept Bitterly

I settled myself back against the leather back of the seat wondering why my aunt was crying so, and then I began to count the pennies with which I planned to purchase some oranges in Liverpool.

Our night in Liverpool, our last night on English soil, is summed up in a memory of a cheap hotel, a stuffy room, and a breakfast on an uncountable number of hard-boiled eggs. In the morning, early, we left that place and were taken on a tram-car to the dock. There I did purchase some oranges from an old witch of an orange woman, big football oranges, which when peeled were small enough, for they had been boiled to thicken the peel, so Aunt said.

On the steerage deck we were jostled by Jews with their bedding and food supplies. At ten o’clock, after we had stood in the vaccination line, the ship sailed from the dock, and I leaned over the side watching the fluttering handkerchiefs fade, as a snow flurry fades. Then the tugs left us alone on the great, bottle-green deep. There was a band in my heart playing, “I’m going to the land of the free and the home of the brave!”

When one makes a blend of bilge-water, new paint, the odor of raw onions, by confining them in an unventilated space under deck, and adds to that blend the cries of ill-cared-for babies, the swearing of vulgar women, and the complaining whine of sickly children, one knows what the steerage on the old “Alaska” was to me. The Jews owned the warm, windswept deck, where they sat all day on the tins which covered the steam-pipes, and munched their raw fish, black bread, and flavored the salt air with the doubtful odor of juicy onions. I heard the English forswear the bearded tribe, denounce them for unbelievers, sniff at the mention of the food they ate; but after all, the English had the wrong end of the stick; they had to stay below deck most of the time, and sicken themselves with the poor, unwholesome fare provided by the ship.

My aunt said to me, one day, “Al, I’d give the world for one of them raw onions that the Jews eat. They’re Spanish onions, too, that makes it all the more aggravating.”

“Why don’t you ask them for a piece of one?” I inquired innocently.

“What,” she sniffed, “ask a Jew? Never!” But when I begged one from a Jew boy, she ate it eagerly enough.

The height of romance for me, however, was in the person of Joe, a real stowaway. He was found on the second day out, and was given the task of peeling the steerage potatoes, a task that kept him busy enough throughout the day. My mouth went open to its full extent, when, after helping him with his potatoes, he would reward me by paring off thick slices of callouse from his palms. Joe said to me, “Never mind, lad, if I work hard they’ll sure land me in Boston when we arrive. I’m going to wark hard so they’ll like me. I do want to go to the States!”

In the women’s cabins, where I had my berth, they held evening concerts of a very decided pathetic kind. Like minor tunes, they always ended in a mournful wailing; for many of the women knew tragedies at first hand, and were in the midst of tragedy, so that their songs and humors were bound to be colored by despair. Carrie Bess, a stout woman whose white neck was crumpled in folds like a washboard, had wit enough to change the somberness of a morgue. She was usually the presiding officer in charge of the concerts. She was on her way to rejoin her husband, though she did not know where he was, but she said, “I’ll get on the train and have it stop in Texas where Jek (Jack) is.” And with this indefinite optimism she threw care to the winds and frolicked. She would throw herself astride a chair, wink at us all, open her mouth like a colored minstrel, and sing lustily,

“It’s very hard to see a girl

Sitting on a young man’s knee.

If I only had the man I love,

What a ’apy girl I’d be!”

Then, when the program had been gone through, with the oft-repeated favorites, like Carrie Bess’ “It’s Very Hard,” the concert would always close with an old sea song that somebody had introduced, a song which, as I lay in my berth and sleepily heard it sung under those miserable swinging lamps, amid the vitiated atmosphere of the cabin, and with the sea sounds, wind, splash of waves, and hissing steam, summed up all the miserable spirit of isolation on a great ocean:

“Jack was the best in the band,

Wrecked while in sight of the land,

If he ever comes back, my sailor boy, Jack,

I’ll give him a welcome home!”

When the numbered sails of pilots hove in sight, and the lightships, guarding hidden shoals with their beacon masts, were passed, the steerage began to get ready for its entrance in the land of dreams. The song went up, every throat joining in:

“Oh, we’re going to the land where they pave the streets with money, la, di, da, la, di, da!”

Finally we sighted a golden band in the distance, a true promise of what we expected America to be. It was Nantasket Beach. That made us put on our Sunday clothes, tie up our goods, and assemble at the rail to catch a further glimpse of the great paradise. An American woman gave me a cent, the first bit of American money my fingers ever touched.

Then the black sheds, the harbor craft, and the white handkerchiefs came into view. I strained an eager, flushing face in an effort to place Uncle Stanwood, but I could not find him.

Nearly all the passengers had left in company with friends, but my aunt and I had to stay on board in instant fear of having to return to England, for uncle was not there to meet us. I saw poor Joe, the stowaway, in chains, waiting to be examined by the authorities for his “crime.” I felt fully as miserable as he, when I whispered to him, “poor Joe!”

After many hours uncle did arrive, and we had permission to land in America. I confess that I looked eagerly for the gold-paved streets, but the Assay Office could not have extracted the merest pin-head from the muddy back street we rode through in a jolting team of some sort. I saw a black-faced man, and cried for fear. I had a view of a Chinaman, with a pigtail, and I drew back from him until uncle said, “You’ll see lots of them here, Al, so get used to it.” When I sat in the station, waiting for the train, I spent my first American money in America. I purchased a delectable, somewhat black, banana!

Chapter IV. I pick up a handful
of America, make an
American cap, whip a Yankee,
and march home
whistling “Yankee
Doodle”

Chapter IV. I pick up a handful
of America, make an
American cap, whip a Yankee,
and march home
whistling, “Yankee
Doodle”

THE full revealing of the America of my dreams did not come until the following morning. Docks, back streets, stations, and the smoky, dusty interiors of cars, were all I had seen the previous night. When we had arrived in New Bedford, I heard the noise of a great city, but I had been so stupid with excitement and weariness that no heed had been paid to passing scenes. I had gone to bed in a semi-conscious state in the boarding-house where Uncle Stanwood made his home. But in the morning, after I realized that I was in America, that it was an American bed on which I slept, that the wall-paper was American, and that the window-blind, much crumpled and cracked, over the window, was the great drop-curtain which, drawn to its full height, would show me a stage, set with a glitter of things wondrous to the sight, I exclaimed aloud, “Chaddy, oh, Chaddy, I’m in America!”

Just as one hesitates with esthetic dreaming over a jewel hidden in a leaden casket, getting as much joy from anticipation as possible, so I speculated in that dingy room before I pulled up the curtain. What should I see? Trees with trunks of chrysolites, with all the jewels of Aladdin’s cave dripping from their boughs, streets paved with gold, people dressed like lords? All, all outside, with only that crumpled blind between me and them? Thus, with an inflamed anticipation and a magnified dream fancy, I hurried across the room, and let the window-blind snap out of my nervous clutch clear to the top. I pressed my eyes close to the glass, and there—Oh, the breaking-down of dreams, the disillusionment of the deluded! There was a glaring sun staring down on a duck-yard: a magnified duck-yard, bare of grass, of shrubs, criss-crossed with clotheslines, littered with ashes, refuse, and papers, with flapping mill clothes, and great duck-house; drab tenements, all alike, and back of them the bleak brick walls of a cotton-mill!

But never mind, I was in America! Chaddy was not. The scene I had looked upon was disheartening, somewhat like a sudden blow in the face, for those box-like, wooden duck-houses were not to be compared with the ivy-covered, romantic rows of Hadfield with their flower-gardens, arches, and slate roofs! But I was in America, anyway!

We had the breakfast-table to ourselves, uncle, aunt, and myself, for the boarders had gone to work long ago, and this was our holiday, our first American day! What are those round golden things with holes in? Doughnuts? They don’t grow on trees, do they? Baked? Isn’t it funny they call them “nuts?” I don’t taste any nut flavor to them. But I could not linger too long at the table with all America waiting to be explored.

“Don’t gulp down things like that,” warned aunt, “you’ll be sick, proper sick. Chew your food!”

“I want to go out and see America, aunt!”

“All right,” she assented. “Go on out, but mind the American lads, now!”

So I left the house, and the first act done when I reached the gate had in it, crystallized, the deep reverence an alien feels for America. I bent down and picked up a handful of dirt. I wanted to feel America.

Then I walked down the street of tenements, looking for an outlet from them, and hoping to get away from the shadow of the mill. At last the tenements were passed, and I saw some vacant building lots, with huge, gaudy sign boards staring from them. It was here that I heard a voice from across the road, shouting in broad derision, “Strike him!” A group of school boys were pointing at me. In the hasty survey I gave them, I noted that they all wore round caps. Mine had a shining visor on it. I hurried along behind one of those huge signs, took out my pocket knife, and slashed off the visor. Immediately I felt Americanized. I went forth with some show of a swagger, for I thought that now, wearing a round cap, everybody would take me for a full-fledged American!

But it was not so. Under a railway viaduct, where the shadows were thick and cool, I was met by a lad of my own age, but with twenty times more swagger and pertness showing on him. When he saw me, he frowned at first, then, grinning insultingly, he came to within two inches of me, planted himself belligerently, and mocked, “’Ello, Green’orn! Just come acrost, ’ast?” Whereat, knowing full well that he was heaping slander on my mother speech, I threw caution to the winds, hurled myself at him, and was soon engaged in tense battle. The fight did not last long, for, keeping up the English schoolboy tradition, I not only pounded with clenched fists, but freely used my feet—a combination that put to nought whatever pugilistic skill my antagonist possessed.

“No fair, usin’ feet,” he complained, as he nursed a bruised shin and hobbled off, “Green’orn!”

That word, “Greenhorn,” startled me. I cautiously felt of my head, for it flashed into my mind that it was very possible, in this magic land, that English people grew green horns immediately upon arrival; but I was consoled to find that none had sprouted overnight.

I continued my exploration, and found myself surrounded on every hand by mills, tenements, and shops. The streets were very dirty: the whole scene was as squalid as could be. Yet, the thought kept comforting me, I was in America. I returned home, covered with burdock burrs, arranged in the form of epaulets, stripes, and soldier buttons, whistling with gusto a shrill rendition of “Yankee Doodle.” So ended my first morning as an American.

Chapter V. I cannot become a
President, but I can go to the
Dumping Grounds

Chapter V. I cannot become a
President, but I can go to the
Dumping Grounds

UNCLE and aunt went out that afternoon. “We’re going looking for a tenement,” said uncle. “We’ll be back by supper time, Al. Mind now, and not get into mischief.” They were gone until past the regular supper hour, and I waited for them in my room. When they did arrive, uncle seemed very much excited, and in greeting me he put five cents in my hand, and then extracted from his pocket a handful of crisp, baked pieces which he said were “salted crackers.” The only crackers with which I was acquainted were Chinese crackers, which we exploded on Guy Fawkes day in England.

“Will they shoot off?” I asked him.

“No, they’re to eat,” he answered. “There’s salt on them to make you eat more, too.”

“Where do you get them?” was my next question.

“At saloons,” he replied. “When you get a drink of beer, they have these near to make you drink more.” I looked up startled, and sniffed the breath of my aunt, who stood near, nodding her head rapidly, as if answering the questions of a Gatling gun.

“Why,” I gasped, “you’ve both been drinking! Both of you!” Aunt Millie made a stroke at my head, then lurched in doing it, and almost sprawled to the floor.

“What if we have, Impudence?” she snapped. “When did you sit in judgment o’er us, eh?”

Then my uncle, in an apologetic tone, broke in, “There, Al, lad, we only stopped in one place; sort of celebration, lad, after being separated so long. Don’t say anything about it, lad. I’ll give you five cents more.” But Aunt Millie flew into a terrible rage. “Don’t apologize, Stanwood. Give him a clout i’ the head, and let him be careful what he says. Drinkin’, eh? I show him,” and she suddenly swung her fist against my ear, and sent me stumbling to the floor. At that, Uncle Stanwood rushed at her, although he was lurching, and grasping her wrist, called, “There, Millie, that’s enough.” That brought on an altercation, in the midst of which the landlady came up, and said, “Stop that noise, or I’ll call the police. I’ll give you another day for to get out of this. I keep a respectable house, mind you, and I won’t, I simply won’t have drinking taking place here. The boarders won’t stand for it!”

“Oh, you insultin’ vixin, you!” screamed aunt, brandishing her arms in the air with savage fury, “Don’t you go to sittin’ on the seat of virtue like that! Didn’t I see the beer man call in your kitchen this morning? You hypocrite, you!”

“Oh,” screamed the landlady, leaving the room, “let me hear one more sound and in comes the police. I won’t stand it!”

“There,” cried Aunt Millie, consoled by the landlady’s departure, “I knew that would bring her. Now, Stanwood, let’s finish that little bottle before bedtime. This is our first day in America.” Uncle Stanwood pulled from his pocket a flask of whisky, and I left them sitting on the edge of the bed drinking from it.

The next morning Uncle Stanwood went to the mill where he was working, and told the overseer that he must have another day off in which to get a tenement and get settled. Then he and aunt found a tidy house just outside the blocks of duck-houses, and, after renting it, went to the shopping center, where they chose a complete housekeeping outfit and made the terms of payment,—“One Dollar Down and a Dollar a Week.” That plunged us into debt right off, and I later learned that even our steamship tickets had been purchased from an agency on somewhat the same terms. The landlady had told Aunt Millie that my uncle had been a steady drinker since his stay with her, shortly after his arrival in the United States.

“That accounts for his having so little money, then,” commented my aunt. “I fail to see where he’s making a much better man of himself than he was across the water.”

At last Aunt Millie had the satisfaction of “setting up American housekeeping,” as she termed it. But she did not find much romance in this new kind of housekeeping.

“See that homely thing,” she complained, indicating the stove, “Give me that old fireplace and the stone kitchen floor! I’ve a good mind to pack my tin box and take the next boat,” she half cried, throughout those first days of Americanization. “I don’t, for the life of me, see whatever brought me over here to this forsaken place!”

I had to share in the blunders that were made. I was heartily laughed at by the produce pedler when I asked him for “two pounds of potatoes.” The yeast-cake man looked at me blankly when I asked for “a penny’s worth of barm.” Aunt Millie did not see how she was ever going to make a family baking from a piece of yeast an inch square, when she had been wont to put in the same amount of flour a handful of brewer’s barm. On Sunday morning the baker’s cart came with hot pots of beans crested with burnt lumps of pork. We had to learn to eat beans and brown bread.

“I’m sure,” said my aunt when I brought home a five-cent loaf, “that they rise the dough with potatoes; its so light and like dried chips!” For the first time in my life I was surfeited with pastry. I bought several square inches of frosted cake from the baker for five cents, and ate it in place of the substantial food I had lived on in England. In place of making meals, when she wanted to visit with the neighbors, my aunt would give me five cents to spend on anything I liked.

The springtime was full on, and I found much pleasure in mixing with the tenement boys and girls, after school hours. While the schools were in session, however, I had a lonely time of it. But it was on those steps that I began to form a conception of what it means to be an American. It meant to me, then, the ability to speak slang, to be impertinent to adults, calling one’s father, “Old Man,” one’s mother, “My Old Woman,” and one’s friend, “that guy.” The whole conception rounded out, however, in the hope of some day becoming the President of The United States, and I was considerably chagrined, and my coming to America seemed a fruitless task, when I learned, from Minnie Helphin, a German girl, that “You got for to be borned into the United States, for to be like us ’Mericans, to be Preser-dent. My brudder, Hermann, him for to be Preser-dent, sometimes.”

I grew tired of being alone while the others went to school, so that one day, in spite of the warning that the “truant officer” might get hold of me, I went to one of the school yards, and, through the iron fence, watched all my friends at play, and immediately I said to myself, “You ought to go, too!” That night I said to my aunt, at the supper table, “I want to go to an American school.” She looked at me with a frown.

“School, is it? Who said so, the government?”

“No,” I answered, trembling in fear of her, “it wasn’t the government. I get lonely while they are at school. That’s why I want to go.”

She laughed, “Oh, we’ll soon find something for you to do more profitable than going to school. Go to school! What are you bothering me about school for? Education’s only for them that are learning to be gentlemen. You’re a poor lad, and must be thinking more about getting to work. Here we are, head and ears in debt! Up to our neck in it, right away! We owe for the furniture. That chair you’re sitting on isn’t ours. That stove isn’t paid for. Nothing’s ours, hardly the clothes on our backs. How we are to pay for it all, gets me. You’ve got to knuckle down with a will, young man, and help us out of the hole we’re in!”

“But the lad’s got to have schooling, Millie!” protested my uncle. She turned upon him with flashing eyes, and, half-crying with sudden anger, shouted at the top of her voice, “Listen to that! I’d like to know what you have to strike in this for. It’s you and your drinking’s brought us to this pitch. There you can sit, while we are head and ears in debt, nothing to call our own, and propose that this Impudent go to school. He’s got to go out on the street with the McNulty lads and get wood and coal. That will be something towards helping out. Never mind about school till the government makes him go. That will be plenty of time for SCHOOL!”

“Picking wood and coal?” I asked, with interest in this new scheme to keep me busy.

“Yes,” she explained. “I was in McNulty’s this afternoon, and Mrs. McNulty was telling me that she’s entirely kept in coal and wood by her two lads, Pat and Tim. Seems to me that you might make yourself useful like that, too, instead of bothering your little brain about getting learning.”

“I don’t like to have him out on the street,” protested Uncle, somewhat feebly.

“It’s not a case of like or dislike, this time,” said Aunt Millie, “it’s a case of got to. You don’t bring in enough to pay up everything, so you shut up! You and your fifteen dollars won’t make creation, not a bit! Get off out of this. Go to the toy store, and get a cart or something for Al to get wood in, instead of sitting there telling me what is right and what is wrong. Go on; I’m going to send him out in the morning.”

Uncle took me with him to the toy store, where I helped select an express wagon, with tin rims, front wheels that turned this way and that, and the name, “Champion,” in red letters on its sides. Uncle rode me home in it, and seemed to enjoy the drag it gave him up hill. “There,” he whispered when we reached our door, “don’t tell your aunt that I rode you. She might not like it, Al, lad!”

The next morning Pat and Tim called at the house for me. They had been generously kept at home that day to show me their “pickings.” I felt a trifle puffed up over the gaudy appearance of my new wagon, for my companions’ was a crude, deep box with odd baby-carriage wheels, and it was named, by a black smudged tar sign, “The Shamrock.” But I did not long exult, for Tim, a little undersized fellow of fourteen, said, manfully, “Now, Priddy, if we shows yer things, yer got to divvy up, see!”

“What?” I asked.

“Got to square up,” he said, and with no more ado he placed himself in my new wagon. When we were out of sight of the house, Pat gave him the handle of “The Shamrock,” and placed himself in the depths of that dilapidated wagon, and I was told to “Drawr us. Yer th’ hoss. See?”

So Pat and Tim took me to the “pickings.” In our excursions we visited buildings that were in the process of reshingling, when we piled our wagons to abnormal heights with the dry, mossy old ones. We went on the trail of fires, where we poked among the fallen timbers for half-burnt sticks. There were skirmishes in the vicinity of coal-yards, at the rear of the sheds, where, through breaks and large, yawning cracks, pieces of coal sometimes dropped through. We scouted on the trail of coal wagons through cobbled, jolt streets, and managed to pick up what they lost. We adventured on dangerous spurs of railroad track, on marshy cinder dumps outside mill fences, and to the city dumping-grounds for loads of cinders, coal, and wood.

After a washing rainstorm, in the night, my aunt would say, “Now, Al, there’s been a good rain, and it must have washed the dust off the clinkers and cinders so that you might get a good bagful of cinders. You’d best go before someone else gets ahead of you.” True enough, I would find them in the ash heaps, as black as seeds in a watermelon, the half-burnt coals, which I loaded in my bushel bag and carried home in my wagon at five cents a load. If I returned with my bag empty, there was always some drastic form of punishment given me.

Pat and Tim Led Me to the Charles Street Dumping Ground—Which
Was the Neighborhood Gehenna

Life on the city dumping-grounds was generally a return to the survival of the fittest. There was exemplified poverty in its ugliest aspect. The Charles street dumps were miniature Alps of dusty rubbish rising out of the slimy ooze of a pestiferous and stagnant swamp, in which slinking, monstrous rats burrowed, where clammy bullfrogs gulped, over which poisonous flies hummed on summer days, and from which arose an overpowering, gassy nauseation. On a windy day, the air was filled by a whirling, odorous dust of ashes. It stirred every heap of rubbish into a pungent mass of rot. When the Irishmen brought the two-horse dump-carts, and swung their load on the heap, every dump-picker was sure to be smothered in a cloud of choking dust, as sticks, hoes, rakes, and fingers, in mad competition, sought whatever prize of rag, bottle, wood, or cinder came in sight. This was the neighborhood Gehenna, in which the Portuguese, Irish, and Polish dwellers thereabouts flung all that was filthy, spoiled, and odorous, whether empty cans, ancient fruit and vegetables, rats from traps, or the corpses of pet animals or birds.

Pat, Tim, and I, in our search for fuel, met quite a cosmopolitan life on those ash-hills. There they were, up to their knees in filth, digging in desperation and competition, with hungry looks and hoarse, selfish growls, like a wolf pack rooting in a carcass: the old Jew, with his hand-cart, the Frenchwoman, with her two-year old girl; the Portuguese girls and the Irish lads, the English and the American pickers, all in strife, clannish, jealous, pugilistic, and never free from the strain of tragedy. Pat and Tim could hold their own, as they were well-trained street fighters.

“Git on yer own side, Sheeny,” Tim used to scream to the venerable Israelite; “I’ll punch yer in the plexus!” and without a word, but with a cowed look of the eyes, the old man would retreat from the property he had been cunningly encroaching upon. Then Tim’s commanding voice could be heard, “Say, Geeser, hand over that copper-bottomed boiler to yer uncle, will yer, or I’ll smash yer phiz in!” But when “Wallop” Smitz brought his rowdy crowd to the dump, it was like an invasion of the “Huns.” We were driven from the dump in dismay, often with our clothes torn and our wagons battered.

And oh, what prizes of the dump! Cracked plates, cups and saucers, tinware, bric-à-brac, footwear, clothing, nursing-bottles and nipples, bottles with the dregs of flavoring extracts, cod-liver oil, perfumes, emulsions, tonics, poisons, antiseptics, cordials, decayed fruit, and faded flowers! These were seized in triumph, taken home in glee, and no doubt used in faith. There is little philosophy in poverty, and questions of sanitation and prudence come in the stage beyond it. “Only bring me coal and wood,” commanded my aunt, in regard to my visits to the dumps, but I managed to save rubbers, rags, and metal, as a side product, and get money for them from the old Jew junk-man.

Chapter VI. The Luxurious
Possibilities of the Dollar-Down-Dollar-a-Week
System of Housekeeping

Chapter VI. The Luxurious
Possibilities of the Dollar-Down-Dollar-a-Week
System of Housekeeping

DURING the remainder of the school year, from March to June, no public-school officer came to demand my attendance at school.

“Aren’t we lucky?” commented Aunt Millie. “It gives you such a chance to help out. The instalment men must be paid, and we need every cent. It’s such a mercy that the long holiday’s on. It gives you a good chance.”

By this time I had added to my activities that of carrying my uncle’s dinner to the mill. My aunt always considered this a waste of time. “It takes Al away from his own work,” she would remonstrate with my uncle. “If he has to carry your dinner, I wish he would take it in his wagon so that he can bring back what coal and wood he finds on the street.” When that combination was in effect, she was mollified, for I managed to secure a load of fuel almost every day in my journey from the mill to the house.

This was the first cotton-mill I ever entered. Every part of it, inside, seemed to be as orderly as were the rows of bricks in its walls. It was a new mill. Its walls were red and white, as were the iron posts that reached down in triple rows through the length of it. There was the odor of paint everywhere. The machinery seemed set for display, it shone and worked so smoothly. The floor of the mule-room, where uncle worked, was white and smooth. The long alleys at the ends of the mules were like the decks of a ship. The whirling, lapping belts had the pungent odor of new leather about them, and reminded me of the smell of a new pair of shoes. The pulleys and shaftings gleamed under their high polish. Altogether it was a wonderful sight to my eyes, which, for some time, had only seen dismal tenements, dirty streets, and drifting ash heaps.

The mill was trebly attractive on chilly, rainy days, when it was so miserable a task outside to finger among soggy ash piles for coals and to go splashing barefooted through muddy streets. At such times it was always a relief to feel the warm, greasy boards of the mill underneath my feet, and to have my body warmed by the great heat. No matter how it rained outside with the rain-drops splashing lonesomely against the windows, it did not change the atmosphere of the mill one jot. The men shouted and swore as much as ever, the doffers rode like whirlwinds on their trucks, the mules creaked on the change, the belts hummed and flapped as regularly as ever.

It was very natural, then, that I should grow to like the mill and hate the coal picking. My uncle gave me little chores to do while he ate his dinner. He taught me how to start and stop a mule; how to clean and take out rollers; how to piece broken threads, and lift up small cops. When the doffers came to take the cops off the spindles, I learned to put new tubes on and to press them in place at the bottom of the spindles. I found it easy to use an oil can, to clean the cotton from the polished doors of the mules, to take out empty bobbins of cotton rope, and put in full ones to give a new supply for the thread which was spun.

I became so valuable a helper during the noon hour that my uncle persuaded my aunt to put in some dinner for me, also, so that I could eat it with him. He did this simply because he wanted me to have some reward for my work besides the fifteen cents a week he gave me. So I used to sit with him, and he would divide a meat-pie with me, let me drink some coffee from the top of the dinner pail, and share a piece of pudding. There was always a bright gleam in his eyes as he watched me eat, a gleam that said as plainly as words, “It’s good to see you have a good time, Al, lad!”

By the end of the summer I was so familiar with the mill that I wanted to spend my whole time in it. I had watched the mill-boys, some of them not much older than myself—and I was only eleven—and I wanted to swagger up and down the alleys like them. They were lightly clad in undershirt and overalls, so that in their bared feet they could run without slipping on the hot floor. They were working for wages, too, and took home a pay envelope every Saturday. Just think of going home every Saturday, and throwing an envelope on the table with three dollars in it, and saying, nonchalantly, “Aunt, there’s my wages. Just fork over my thirty cents spending money. I’m going to see the matinee this afternoon at the theater. It’s ‘Michael Strogroff,’ and they say there’s a real fight in the second act and eight changes of scenery, for ten cents. They’ve got specialties between the acts, too!”

Other temporal considerations entered into this desire to go into the mill. I wanted to have a dinner pail of my own, with a whole meat-pie in it, or a half-pound of round steak with its gravy dripping over a middle of mashed potatoes with milk and butter in them! Then there were apple dumplings to consider, and freedom from coal picking and the dirty life on the dumps. All in all, I knew it would be an excellent exchange, if possible. I spoke to my uncle about it one noon-hour.

“Why can’t I work in the mill, too?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t you rather get some learning, Al?” he asked. “You know men can’t do much in the world without learning. It’s brains, not hands, that makes the world really go ahead. I wish you could get a lot of schooling and perhaps go to college. It’s what I always wanted and never got, and see where I am to-day. I’m a failure, Al, that’s what I am!”

“But aunt says that I’ve got to go in the mill as soon as I can, uncle.”

His face grew sad at that, and he said, “Yes, through our drinking and getting in debt! That’s what it’s all leading to! It’s a pity, a sad pity!” and he grew so gloomy that I spoke no more about the matter that day.

It was one of the paradoxes of my home, that being heavily in debt for our steamship tickets and household furnishings, and both giving a large amount of patronage to the saloons, my aunt and uncle involved themselves more inextricably in debt by buying clothes and ornaments on the “Dollar-Down-Dollar-a-Week” plan. There was no economy, no recession of tastes, no limit of desire to save us. Every penny that I secured was spent as soon as earned. I learned this from my foster parents. Uncle had his chalk-mark at the saloon, and aunt received regular thrice-a-week visits from the beer pedler. On gala days, when there was a cheap excursion down the bay, aunt could make a splendid appearance on the street in a princess dress, gold bracelets, a pair of earrings, and gloves (Dollar-Down-Dollar-a-Week plan). When Mrs. Terence O’Boyle, and Mrs. Hannigan, daughter to Mrs. O’Boyle, and Mrs. Redden, the loom fixer’s wife with her little baby, came to our house, after the breakfast had been cleared away, and the men were hard at work, Aunt Millie would exclaim, “Now, friends, the beer man’s just brought a dozen lagers and a bottle of port wine. Sit right up, and make a merry morning of it. You must be tired, Mrs. Hannigan. Won’t your babby take a little sup of port for warming his stomach?” Of course, Mrs. O’Boyle returned these parties, as did her daughter and Mrs. Redden.

My uncle dared not say too much about the visits of the beer-wagon, because he had his own score at the saloon, and his appetite for drink was transcendant. Aunt had little ways of her own for pacifying him in the matter. She would save a half dozen bottles till night, and then, when he came home, she would say, “Now, Stanwood, after tea, let’s be comfortable. I’ve six bottles in for you, and we’ll take our comfort grand!”

By Friday morning the financial fret began. My aunt, as financier of the house, had the disposal of her husband’s fifteen dollars in charge. In the disposal of this amount, she indulged in a weird, incomprehensible arithmetical calculation, certainly original if not unique. In place of numerals and dollar signs, she dotted a paper with pencil points, and did some mysterious but logical ruminating in her head. Her reasoning always followed this line, however:

“Fifteen dollars with a day out, that leaves—let me see—oh, say in round numbers, thirteen, maybe a few cents out. Well, now, let me see, out of that comes, first of all, forty cents for union money, if he pays it this week; two and a half for rent, only we owe fifty cents from last week, which we must pay this, or else we’ll be thrown out. Then there’s fifteen cents for that dude of an insurance man—he says he’ll lapse us if we let it run on like we have. Let him do it, the old cheat! I don’t believe they’d plan to pay us if any of us should die. They’re nothing but robbers, anyhow. Where was I, Al? Let me see, there’s owing a dollar for the furniture—WHEN will we have it paid for?—and there’s two dollars that should be paid the Jew, only we’ll have to satisfy him with fifty cents this week, because there’s a day out.” (The Jew was the man who kept the “New England Clothing and Furnishing Company,” from whom we had bought our clothes, a set of furs, and the gold bracelets on instalments.) “This week’s bill for groceries is five dollars and sixty-three cents, the baker has owing him about seventy-five, the meat man let me have them two ham bones and that shank end, and I owe him for that; there’s some white shirts and collars at the Chinaman’s, but I want to say right here that your uncle will have to pay for those out of his own spending money. That’s too much of a luxury, that is; we can’t go on with such gentlemanly notions in this house and ever get ahead. Oh, these debts, when will they be paid! That is all I think of except the beer man. He won’t wait, whatever comes or goes. There, that reckons up to—why, how in the name of God are we going to face the world this way? I’m getting clean worn out with this figuring every week!”

After finding that she would not have money enough to go around to satisfy all the clamorants, she would proceed with a process of elimination, putting off first the tradesman who received explanations with the most graciousness. The insurance man she did not care for, so he had to be put off, but, with his own interests in mind, he would carry us out of his own pocket until some grand week when aunt would feel kindly towards him, and she would generously make up all back payments. Aunt always went to the uttermost limit of credit possibility, arranging her numerous creditors like checkers on a board to be moved backwards and forwards week by week. The beer man got his pay every week. He did not allow his bills to grow old. In arranging for that payment, aunt used to say, as if protesting to her own conscience, “Well, suppose some others do have to wait! I want to have a case of lager in over Sunday. We’re not going to scrimp and slave without some enjoyment!”

Week after week this same exasperating allotment of uncle’s wage took place, with but minor variations. Time after time the insurance would drop behind and would be taken up again. Time after time the Jew would threaten to put the lawyers on us. Time after time the grocer would withhold credit until we paid our bill, yet the beer-wagon stopped regularly at our door, and Mrs. O’Boyle, her daughter, and Mrs. Redden would exchange courtesies and bottles. And Aunt was always consoling her sister women on such occasions with this philosophy: “The rich have carriages and fine horses and grand mansions for enjoyment; we poor folks, not having such, must get what comfort we can out of a stimulating sup!”

And Mrs. Redden would reply, “Yes, Mrs. Brindin, you’re right for sure. Just warm a bit of that ale with a bit of sugar stirred in, will you, please? It will warm the baby’s belly. I forgot to bring his milk bottle, like the absent-minded I am.”

Chapter VII. I am given the
Privilege of Choosing my
own Birthday

Chapter VII. I am given the
Privilege of Choosing my
own Birthday

THE reopening of the public-schools in the fall found Aunt Millie stubbornly refusing to allow me to enter. “I shall never know anything,” I protested. But she replied, with confidence, “All knowledge and wisdom isn’t in schools. There’s as much common sense needed in getting a living. I’ll keep you out just as long as the truant officer keeps away. Mind, now, and not run blind into him when you’re on the street. If you do—why, you’ll know a thing or two, young man!”

Uncle pleaded with her in my behalf, but she answered him virulently, “Stop that, you boozer, you! We must get out of debt and never mind making a gentleman, which you seem set on. I’d be ashamed if I was you. Let him only earn a few dollars, and we’d be relieved. Goodness knows when you’re going to drop out, the way you’re guzzling things down. It wouldn’t surprise me to see you on your back any day, and I want to be ready.”

But some days later, my uncle came back home from work with much to say. “Look here, Millie, it might be good for us to send Al to school right away. If he must go in the mill, as it seems he must as soon as he can, then it’s to our advantage to get him in right away!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that he can’t go into the mill, according to law, until thirty weeks after he’s thirteen, and can show his school-certificate.”

“But he’s only just turned eleven,” protested my aunt, “that would keep him in the school practically three years. Three years!”

“Normally, it would,” agreed Uncle Stanwood, “but it don’t need to take that long, if we don’t care to have it so.”

“I’d like to know why!”

“Well, Millie,” explained uncle, “Al’s not been to school in America, yet. All we have to do is to put his age forward when he does go in—make him a year or two older than he actually is. They won’t ask for birth certificates or school papers from England. They will take our word for it. Then it won’t be long before we can have him working. Harry Henshaw tells me the trick’s common enough. Then when Al’s worked a while, and we get out of debt, he can go on with his schooling. It’s the only way to keep ahead, though I do hate to have him leave school, God knows!”

“None of that cant,” snapped aunt; “if it wasn’t for your drinking he wouldn’t have to go in the mill, and you know it.”

“Yes,” agreed uncle, sadly, “I know it!”

“Then,” said aunt, once more referring to the immediate subject of the conference, “it’s all decided that we get him in as soon as possible.”

“Yes,” agreed uncle, “we can put him any age we want, and lie about it like many are doing. What age shall we make him, Millie?”

“Better push his age forward as near to thirteen as possible,” said aunt. “He’s big for eleven, as big as some lads two years older. Lets call him twelve and a half!”

“Twelve, going on thirteen,” answered my uncle.

“Yes,” mused his wife, “but nearly thirteen, say thirteen about Christmas time, that would give him thirty weeks to go to school, and he would be in the mill a year from now. That will be all right.”

“If we get caught at it,” warned uncle, “it means prison for us, according to law.”

“Never mind, let’s take our chances like the rest,” answered aunt with great decision. “You tell me there aren’t any ever get caught!”

“Oh,” sighed uncle, “it’s safe enough for that matter, though it’s hard and goes against the grain to take Al from school.”

“Stop that cant!” thundered Aunt Millie. “I won’t have it. You want him to go into the mill just as bad as I do, you old hypocrite!”

“Don’t flare up so,” retorted uncle, doggedly. “You wag too sharp a tongue. It’s no use having a row over the matter. Let’s dispose of the thing before bedtime.”

“What else is there to settle?” asked my aunt.

“Al’s got to have a new birthday.” Aunt Millie laughed at the notion, and said, addressing me, “Now, Al, here’s a great chance for you. What day would you like for your birthday?”

“June would do,” I said.

“June won’t do,” she corrected, “the birthday has got to come in winter, near Christmas; no other time of the year is suitable. Now what part of November would you like it? We’ll give you that much choice.”

I thought it over for some time, for I seriously entered into the spirit of this unique opportunity of choosing my own birthday. “The twentieth of November will do, I think,” I concluded.

“The twentieth of November, then, it is,” answered my aunt. “You will be thirteen, thirteen, next twentieth of November, mind you. You are twelve, going on thirteen! Don’t forget that for a minute; if you do, it might get us all in jail for per-jury! Now, suppose that a man meets you on the streets to-morrow and asks you what your age is, what will you tell him?”

“I’m thirteen, going on——no, I mean twelve, going on thirteen, and will be thirteen the twentieth of November!”

“Say it half a dozen times to get it fixed in your mind,” said aunt, and I rehearsed it intermittently till bedtime, so that I had it indelibly fixed in my mind that, henceforth, I must go into the world and swear to a lie, abetted by my foster parents, all because I wanted to go into the mill and because my foster parents wanted me in the mill. Thus ended the night when I dropped nearly two years bodily out of my life, a most novel experience indeed and one that surely appeals to the imagination if not to the sympathy.

The following week, a few days before I was sent to the public-school, we removed to a part of the city where there were not so many mill tenements, into the first floor of a double tenement. There were only two of these houses in the same yard with a grass space between them facing the highway. In this space, during the early fall, the landlord dumped two bushels of apples every Monday morning at half-past eight. It was definitely understood that only the children of the tenants should be entitled to gather the fruit. No one was allowed to be out of the house until the landlord himself gave the signal that all was ready, so we could be found, peering from the back and front doors, a quick-eyed, competitive set of youngsters, armed with pillow-slips and baskets, leaping out at the signal, falling on the heap of apples, elbowing one another until every apple was picked, when the parents would run out, settle whatever fights had started up, note with jealous eyes how much of the fruit their respective representatives had secured, all the while the amused landlord stood near his carriage shouting, “Your Harry did unusually well to-day, Mrs. Burns. He beat them all. What a pillow-slipful he got, to be sure!”

Finally I found myself in an American school. I do not know what grade I entered, but I do know that my teacher, a white-haired woman with a saintly face, showed me much attention. It was she who kept me after school to find out more about me. It was she who inquired about my moral and spiritual welfare, and when she found that I did not go to a church, mainly on account of poor clothes, she took me to the shopping district one afternoon, and with money furnished her by a Woman’s Circle, fitted me out with a brand new suit, new shoes and hat, and sent me home with the promise that I would go with her to church the following Sunday morning. In passing down a very quiet street on my solitary way to church, the next Sabbath, I came to that high picket fence behind which grew some luscious blue grapes. I clambered over the fence, picked a pocketful of the fruit, and then went on to meet my teacher at the doors of the sombre city church, where the big bell clamored high in the air, and where the carpet was thick, like a bedspread, so that people walked down the aisles silent like ghosts and as sober. It was a strange, hushed, and very thrilling place, and when the massive organ filled the place with whispering chords, I went back to my old childish faith, that angels sat in the colored pipes and sang.

My days in the school-yard were very, very strenuous, for I had always to be protecting England and the English from assault. I found the Americans only too eager to reproduce the Revolution on a miniature scale, with Bunker Hill in mind, always.

My attendance at this school had only a temporary aspect to it. When my teacher spoke to me of going to the grammar school, I replied, “Oh, I’m going in the mill in a year, please. I want to go into the mill and earn money. It’s better than books, ma’am.” I had the mill in mind always. Every day finished in school was one day nearer to the mill. I judged my fellows, on the school-ground, by their plans of either going or not going into the mill as early as I.

This desire to enter the mill was more and more strengthened as the winter wore on, for then I was kept much at home and sent on the streets after wood and coal. It was impossible to pick cinders with mittens on, and especially the sort of mittens I wore—old stocking feet, doubled to allow one piece to hide the holes in its fellow. On a cold day, my fingers would get very blue, and my wrists, protruding far out of my coat-sleeves, would be frozen into numbness. Any lad who had once been in a mill would prefer it to such experiences.

My aunt kept me at home so often that she had to invent a most formidable array of excuses to send to my teacher, excuses which I had to write and carry. We never had any note-paper in the house, as there were so few letters ever written. When there was an excuse to write, I would take a crumpled paper bag, in which had been onions or sugar, or, when there were no paper bags, and the school bell was ringing, requiring haste, I would tear off a slip of the paper in which salt pork or butter had been wrapped, and on it write some such note as this:

“Dear Miss A: This is to say that Al had to stay home yesterday for not being very well. I hope you will excuse it. Very truly yours,” and my aunt would scribble her name to it, to make it authoritative.

It must have been the sameness of the notes, and their frequency, that brought the white-haired teacher to remonstrate with my aunt for keeping me away from school so much.

“He can never learn at his best,” complained the teacher. “He is really getting more and more behind the others.”

My aunt listened humbly enough to this complaint and then unburdened herself of her thoughts: “What do I care what he learns from books! There is coal and wood that’s needed and he is the one to help out. I only let him go to school because the law makes me. If it wasn’t for the law you’d not see him there, wasting his time. It’s only gentlemen’s sons that have time for learning from books. He’s only a poor boy and ought to be earning his own living. Coal and wood is more to the point in this house than books and play. Let them play that has time and go to school that has the money. All you hear in these days is, ‘School, school, school!’ Now, I have got through all these years without schooling, and others of my class and kind can. Why, Missis, do you know, I had to go into the mill when I was a slip of a girl, when I was only seven, there in England. I had to walk five miles to work every morning, before beginning the hard work of the day, and after working all day I had to carry my own dinner-box back that distance, and then, on top of that, there was duties to do at home when I got there. No one ever had mercy on me, and it isn’t likely that I’ll go having mercy on others. Who ever spoke to me about schooling, I’d like to know! It’s only people of quality who ought to go to get learning, for its only the rich that is ever called upon to use schooling above reading. If I got along with it, can’t this lad, I’d like to know?”

And with this argument my teacher had to be content, but she reported my absences to the truant officer, who came and so troubled my aunt, with his authority, that she sent me oftener to school after that.

About this time, at the latter end of winter, uncle removed to the region of the mill tenements again. I changed my school, also. This time I found myself enrolled in what was termed the Mill School.

As I recall it, the Mill School was a department of the common schools, in which were placed all boys and girls who had reached thirteen and were planning to enter the mill as soon as the law permitted. If you please, it was my “finishing school.” I have always considered it as the last desperate effort of the school authorities to polish us off as well as they could before we slipped out of their care forever. I am not aware of any other reason for the existence of the Mill School, as I knew it.

However, it was a very appropriate and suggestive name. It coupled the mill with the school very definitely. It made me fix my mind more than ever on the mill. Everybody in it was planning for the mill. We talked mill on the play-ground, drew pictures of mills at our desks, dreamed of it when we should have been studying why one half of a quarter is one fourth, or some similar exercise. We had a recess of our own, after the other floors had gone back into their classrooms, and we had every reason to feel a trifle more dignified than the usual run of thirteen-year-old pupils who plan to go through the grammar, the high, and the technical schools! After school, when we mixed with our less fortunate companions, who had years and years of school before them, we could not avoid having a supercilious twang in our speech when we said, “Ah, don’t you wish you could go into the mill in a few months and earn money like we’re going to do, eh?” or, “Just think, Herb, I’m going to wear overalls rolled up to the knees and go barefooted all day!”

If the thumbscrew of the Inquisition were placed on me, I could not state the exact curriculum I passed through during the few months in the Mill School. I did not take it very seriously, because my whole mind was taken up with anticipations of working in the mill. But the coming of June roses brought to an end my stay there. The teacher gave me a card which certified that I had fulfilled the requirements of the law in regard to final school attendance. I went home that afternoon with a consciousness that I had grown aged suddenly. When my aunt saw the card, her enjoyment knew no bounds.