THE WORKER M.A. ^ JL.J'^ JLAjLkJ work, TELL A; S, CENTER ^tate (Eolbgc of ^Agriculture At QtornEll MniuerBitH atljata, N. 1- Ktbrarg Cornell University Library PS 509.O3C4 The worker and his work; readings in pres 3 1924 014 520 534 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014520534 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK ^/ ^ '^'■^fVTTj^ A 1 -*1 1 /^ S^**L- , -f-T' -^J' > V^>, '■^'^Jr'^^^^'h'^'' ^ FLOUR MILLS, MINNEAPOLIS. BY JOSEPH PENNELL FLOUR MILLS, MINNEAPOLIS The mills of Minneapolis are as impressive as the cathedrals of France. There are places on the river where they group themselves into the same compositions, with the bridges below them, that I found years ago at Abli — only the color is different; the rosy red of the French brick is changed to dull concrete gray. The tree masses below are the same, and the old stone railroad bridge over the Mississippi is just as drawable as that over the Tarn. The beauty of the flour mills' is the beauty of use — they carry out William Morris's theory that "everything useful should be beautiful" — but I don't know what he would have said of them. There are other subjects which recall Tivoli, where the streams gush out from the bluffs or tremble and rush and roar from dark caverns between the huge modem masses of masonry as finely as they do in far-away Italy. _ Those were the shrines of the gods — these are the temples of work, the temples of our time. LIPPINCOTT'S SCHOOL TEXT SERIES EDITED BY WILLIAM F. RUSSELL, Ph.D. DEAN, COLLEGE OF EDUCATION, STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA THE WORKER AND HIS WORK READINGS IN PRESENT-DAY LITERATURE PRESENT- ING SOME OF THE ACTIVITIES BY WHICH MEN AND WOMEN THE WORLD OVER MAKE A LIVING COMPILED BY STELLA STEWART CENTER A.B. GEORGE PEABODY COLLEGE; A.M. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY; INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH, JULIA RICHMAN HIGH SCHOOL, NEW YORK; INSTRUCTOR IN SECRETARIAL CORRESPONDENCE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY "In the handiwork of their craft is their prayer " ILLUSTRATED PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY P5506 5 C-1 COPYRIGHT, 1920 BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANTf @i 11 PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A. FOREWORD To my colleagues who concern themselves with the significant work of helping young people to find their true vocations: This book has been compUed in an effort to meet the needs of boys and girls who feel the urgent necessity of selecting the right vocation. Few subjects provoke so keen an interest as that of one's life work. " The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." But there is danger in early selection and specialization before there is perspective. To be a vocational misfit is almost as tragic as to have no work at all. Two dangers have confronted the world of education: the danger of the narrow commercial or industrial training that looks for quick returns and tends to convert vocation into a blind alley instead of an open door; and the danger of the so-called cultiu-al, academic educa- tion that leaves vocation to accident and chance. Any system of education fails that does not include the philosophy, the perspective, the vision of the hmnanist, and at the same time the technical effi- ciency that contends successfully with immediate facts, details, rou- tine. We need a " curriculum of Modernities as well as a curriculum of Humanities." Literature is most valuable in giving the student an insight into vocational activities. There is hardly any field of man's work but the man of letters has made it his own. There is a great mass of unimaginative, expository composition, written by well-intentioned authors, setting forth outlines of world industries. Such material is purposely excluded here, even from the bibliography, for such reading has its place only after the interest in a particular vocation has been aroused, and that interest can be quickened only by real literature — literatiu-e that portrays the souls of occupations as well as of the men who follow them. The selections included in this volume do not aim primarily to convey knowledge of facts or processes, but to emphasize the human, social aspect of work, and to interpret it in its vital relations. They have the atmosphere of human philosophy, a sense of warm human relationships, qualities that will bring about a good imderstanding 3 4 FOREWORD between the theorist cloistered in academic seclusion and the man who to his " hot and constant task is heroically true." In the next place, the selections are taken from the works of present-day writers. Many educators agree that contemporary literature is not sufficiently represented in the school curriculum, and that students select their reading from contemporary writers without guiding criticism. A great effort is being made to have the literature of the class-room a faithful transcript of the complex life on the other side of the school-room walls. In other words, it has been strongly felt that the literature curriculum should keep pace with social evolution, even with the last phase of that evolution. Then, too, it has seemed advisable to include a variety of literary types and composition, such as thrilling narrative, graphic descrip- tion, the lyric outburst, the bit of essay as alluring as the winding road — all necessary to portray man at his work. The selections exclude for the most part those activities con- nected with the so-called fine arts and professional life, not because they are not a part of the world's work, but because justice demands that due recognition be given the worker who labors in the industrial, commercial, and occupational activities of life, with his hand as well as with his head. The great need of society is for the laborer to appreciate himself and to be appreciated by those who are not in the popular sense toilers. The reading of literature about work should lead to composition of the best type — that based on dose observation of the kinds of work done in the student's environment. Thus a style that is direct and concrete will be developed, suitable for the average practical demands of life. The selections deal with various sections of the United States, in response to the demand that students should have the opportunity of seeing local activities in literary perspective. The occupations and industries of other countries are also represented, to encourage the student to think in terms of the world. So the text has a wide geographical range, in an effort to supplement the paro- chial and sectional point of view with the national and international. That literature, particularly novels, which has acute economic crises for a background has been relegated to the bibliography. Such reading is peculiarly sombre and depressing; and the ambitious student will select judiciously what suits his needs. The text on the whole is meant to express the sane, wholesome content that FOREWORD 5 comes only when one performs to the best of his ability some piece of the necessary work of the world. Work, because it is creative, is inherently cheerful, and young people wOl miss much of the joy of life if they do not learn to work cheerfully. A text on the subject of work has a place in all schools, regard- less of their classifications, whether commercial, or academic, or technical, or industrial, for the basis of life is work, and the language of occupations should need no interpreter. Such literature seems the essential core of the English curriculum, to which must be added the literature of aesthetic delight. <— » ^ '"=:*-——_ New York, November, 1919. AC KNO WLEDGMENTS For the use of copyrighted material the author extends grateful acknowledgment to the following publishers and authors: The Ciulis PubUshing Company for Skipping, by Archie Austin Coates; the American Magazine for The Man Within Him, by Edna Ferber; Angela Morgan for Work: a Song of Triumph; the Book Supply Company for selections from The Winning of Barbara Worth, by Harold BeU Wright; The Touchstone for Nora, by Elizabeth West Parker; Doubleday Page and Company for selections from The Four Million, by William Sidney Porter, The Pit, by Frank Norris, Blazed Trail Stories, by Stewart Edward White, and Cappy Ricks, by Peter B. Kyne; the Outlook Company for Sap-Time, by Eliza- beth Woodbridge; D. Appleton and Company for selections from The Cruise of the Cachalot, by Frank T. Bullen, and Cape Cod Ballads, by Joseph C. Lincoln; Charles Scribner's Sons for The Open Hearth, by Herschel S. Hall, Work, by Henry van Dyke, and the selections from Kipps, by Herbert George Wells; Frederick A. Stokes Company for selections from Fanny Herself, by Edna Ferber, and Cotton as a World Power, by James A. B. Scherer; the Saalfield Publishing Company for the selection from The Delights of Delicate Eating, by Elizabeth R. PenneU; Harper and Brothers for the selec- tions from Your United States, by Arnold Bennett, The Silver Horde, by Rex Beach, The Iron Woman, by Margaret Deland; The Woman and Her Bonds, from Wall Street Stories, by Edwin Lefevre; Dodd, Mead and Company for the selection from The Life of the Bee, by IMaurice Maeterlinck; the Independent for the diagram by Henry J. Fischer. The selections from Brunei's Tower and Old Delabole, by Eden PhiUpotts, from A Step-Daughter of the Prairie, by Margaret Lynn, from The Business of Being a Woman, by Ida M. Tarbell, and from A Son of the Middle Border, by Hamlin Garland, are used by permission of, and ^)ecial arrangement with, the MacmiUan Com- pany, Publishers. The selections from the works of Henry Sydnor Harrison and Nathaniel Hawthorne are used by permission of, and special arrangement with, Houghton, Mifffin Company, the author- ized publishers of their works. Acknowledgment of other copy- 7 8 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS righted material is made in connection vrith the selections in the man- ner prescribed by the publishers. Grateful acknowledgment is also made to Mr. Joseph Pennell for the privilege of reproducing three of his drawings with the accompanying legends; to the Metropolitan Museum for Rodin's Thinker, and to Avery Library, Columbia Uni- versity, for generous permission to photograph the reproductions of the works of Constantin Meunier in Etudes sur Quelqties Artistes Originaux — Constantin Meunier, by Camille Lemounier, and also Le Marteleur in bronze. For most of the biographical data the editor is indebted to Who's Who. In addition, the editor wishes to express her sincere thanks to her colleagues and friends whose generous assistance and advice have made the assembling of this book a pleasure. The Editor. CONTENTS FACE Introduction 17 Work Henry van Dyke 36 From Poems Work: A Song of TRiuitPH Angela Morgan 37 From The Hour Has Struck Keep on Working Richard Eugene Burton 39 From Little Essays in Literature and lAfe The Mail-Order House Arnold Bennett 42 From Your United States The American Telephone Arnold Bennett 46 From Your United States The Telephone Directory Berton Braley 50 From Songs of A Workaday World Sparks of the Wireless Walter Saxders Hiatt 51 From Scribner's Magazine, April, 1914 Fanny Herself Edna Ferber 64 From Fanny Herself The Emporium Herbert George Wells 72 From Kipps The Romance of a Busy Broker O. Hei«iy 77 From The Four Million The Woman and Her Bonds Edwin Lefevre 81 From Wall Street Stories The Wheat Pit Frank Norms 96 From The Pit The Man Within Him Edna Ferber 108 From The American Magazine, June, 1914 A Potter's Wheel Eden Phillpotts 124 From Brunei's Tower The Riverman Stewart Edward White 131 From Blazed Trail Stories The Toll of Big Timber Bertrand William Sinclair 141 From Big Timber Cotton and the Old South James A. B. Scherer 147 From Cotton a World Power The Cotton Picker Carl Holltoay 151 From The Cotton Picker and Other Poems 9 10 CONTENTS An Apiary Maurice Maeterlinck 152 From The Life of the Bee Sap Time Elisabeth Woodbridge 153 Prom The Outlook, January 31, 1914 The Red Cow and Her Friends Peter McArthur 165 I. The Gobler. II. His Troubles. III. Human Nature in Dumb Creatures. IV. Cow Character. V. Calf Exuberance. From The Red Cow and Her Friends The Last Threshing in the Coulee Hamlin Garland 170 From A Son of the Middle Border The Power Plant Berton Braley 176 From Songs of a Workaday World The Open Hearth Herschel S. Hall 178 From Scribner's Magazine, April, 1919 The Iron Woman Margaret Deland 192 From The Iron Woman Cigar-making Henry Sydnor Harrison 199 From V.V's Eyes A Printing-Office Arnold Bennett 208 From The Clayhanger In The Quarries Eden Phillpotts 218 From Old Delabole The Incomparable Onion Elizabeth Robins Pennell 230 From The Delights of Delicate Eating Sweet Day of Rest Eliza Calvert Hall 237 From Aunt Jane of Kentucky Ivy of the Negatives Margaret Lynn 247 From A Step-daughter of the Prairie Hymn to the Dairy Maids on Beacon Street . . Christopher Morley 260 From Songs for a Little House Ellen Hanging Clothes Lizette Woodworth Reese 261 From Contemporary Verse (Magazine) The Navajo Blanket Charles Fletcher Lummis 262 From Some Strange Corners of Our Country Nora Ehz\beth West Parker 268 From The Touchstone (Magazine) The Woman and Her Raiment Ida Minerva Tarbell 270 Prom The Business of Being a Woman Shipping Archie Austin Coates 277 Prom The Saturday Evening Post, May 17, 1917 Unexpected Developments Peter Bernard Kyne 278 From Cappy Ricks The Cod-Fisher Joseph Crosby Lincoln 292 From Cape Cod Ballads CONTENTS 11 Abner's Whale Prank Thoiias Bullen 294 From The Cruise of the Cachalot The Salmon Rex Beach 306 From The Silver Horde Reclaiming The Desert Harold Bell Wright 311 From The Winning of Barbara Worth The Child-man Arnold Bennett 322 From Clayhanger The "Red-Ink Squad" Harvey Jerrold O'Higgins 327 From The Smoke-Eaters The Thinker Berton Braley 339 From Songs of a Workaday World Bibliography 340 Who's Who 345 ILLUSTRATIONS FACE Flour Mills, Minneapolis (PenneU) Frontispiece Carrier (Meunier) 40 Le Marteleur {Meunier) 70 La Moisson {Meunier) 106 L'Abreuvoir (Meunier) 150 Mineur au travail (ileunicr) 164 Pittsburgh (Pennell) 176 Mineurs Retour du Travail (Meunier) igo Portefaix (Meunier) 260 Work (Meunier) 276 Approach to Duluth (PenneU) 320 The Thinker (i?od«n) 338 TO THE STUDENT Dear Students of this Book: The purpose of The Worker and His Work is to introduce you to the varied activities by which men and women the world over make a living. Every one should contribute something to society, for which society in turn pays him money. It may be services which he renders or some commodity he sells. But whatever he has " for sale " should be worthy of him. The question, then, of one's vocation is basic, for the vocation and the income from it determine one's associates, one's leisure, recreation, and progress. Some vocations are " blind alleys " and so lead nowhere; others offer endless opportimities for increased income, promotion, pleasure, and culture. So, the matter of one's business in life should occupy a large part of one's thoughts. If you wish to get the greatest profit from the reading of this book, begin with the bibliography and get the " lay of the land," as all travelers try to do first in an unexplored field. The easiest way to do this is to divide your class into groups and let each group read a certain nimiber of works in the bibliography and classify them as to form and content. Thefollowing suggestions mayaid you in making the classification: I. Is the work an essay, novel, short story, letter, or poem? II. WTiat vocation is portrayed in the work? 1. Farm work. 2. Household work. 3. Mining. a. Quarrj-ing. 4. Business. 1. Department store. 2. Mail-order house. 3. Advertising. 5. Crafts. 1. Pottery. 6. Liunbering. a. Forestry. 15 16 TO THE STUDENT 7. Fishing. 8. Printing. 9. Civil-engineering. 10. Seafaring life. 11. Transportation and distribution. 12. Communication. 13. Founding. 14. Civil service. Other classifications will occur to you. As your fellow students make reports on their reading, record the classifications in your note-book. Then you are ready to read the selections. When you find a selection that you like, read the whole work from which it is taken, if it is a selection, and read all the works mentioned in the bibliography that treat of similar vocations. Perhaps you can add to the bibliography. After reading those works that give the spirit of the various vocations, read works on the sub- ject that give you detailed information. Find out where instruction in a given subject can be best obtained. Write to the school for a catalogue. Try to discover who are the leaders in the vocation of your choice. Such reference works as Who's Who and the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature will be invaluable to you, for they give the most recent information. Even if you have decided on a vocation, an acquaintance with other workers •will make you intelligent about the activities that carry on the world's work. With the hope that the reading of this book may help you in de- termining your own vocation, I am Yours sincerely, Vr'^<-«-*-^-'-^ THE WORKER AND HIS WORK INTRODUCTION Art and Work. — The work of the world is one of its greatest facts, and " work done squarely, with unwasted days " challenges universal admiration. The creative quality inherent in work has incited artists with some of their finest creations. All have paid their tribute to the man who " to his hot and constant task is hero- ically true"; art delights to honor the worker, whatever the scene of his activity may be — whether Forge or farm or mine or bench, Deck, altar, outpost lone ; Mill, school, battalion, counter, trench. Rail, senate, sheepfold, throne. It is no curse to earn bread by the sweat of one's brow. The artist can find no better theme on which to spend himself than that of man's quest of a livelihood, whether he be a Meunier, singing with lyric fervor in bronze; or a Thomas Hood wailing The Song of the Shirt; or a Joseph Pennell, to whom a towering factory chimney is a twentieth century campanile, and a power-house as worthy of art as the Holy Grail. We fall easUy under the spell of work. The " romance of labor," the " wonder of work " are current but not empty phrases. We see both romance and wonder, when the young engineer builds a bridge over the roaring Ganges; when the Cape Cod fisher " in his battered schooner leaps the long Atlantic swells " ; when the Kentucky farmer xip turns the soil for his hemp; when the adventurous lumberman makes inroads into the primeval forest; when tie Wyoming shepherd tends his sheep in rural solitude; when the quanyman bores into caverns of slate; when the telephone operator annihilates distance with a system of plugs and currents. All these activities constitute the world's work, and all are of absorb- ing interest to every one. They are man's efforts to exist, and exist worthily. Literatxire and Work. — Great writers of all ages have cele- brated the world's work and glorified the sincere worker. They have 2 17 18 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK felt the soul of industries and occupations, and have made their readers feel it. Homer lingers lovingly over the careful workman- ship of the shield of Achilles; to Kipling, the locomotive .007 is a creature alive and pulsing; Longfellow, Phillpotts, Matthew Arnold, Browning, follow the transformation of a lump of clay on the potter's wheel until it is a graceful, up-springing vase, instinct with life; George Eliot puts into the mouth of Antonio Stradivarius the true philosophy of work: But God be praised, Antonio Stradivari has an eye That winces at false work and loves the true; With hand and arm that play upon the tool As willingly as any singing bird Sets him to sing his morning roundelay Because he likes to sing and likes the song. Arnold Bennett stands rapt in the cathedral gloom of a telephone exchange, " with its murmuring sound as of an infinity of scholars in a prim school ever conning their lessons"; Marion Crawford presents the work of a Venetian glass-blower, whose glass looked like the juice of the pomegranate. The spectacle of a man doing work that is proper to him and who is thus " at home with his own heart " arouses the man of letters to his happiest efforts. Dreams and Work. — ^This literary treatment of work and the worker " vivifies the common round," so that work is not a lifeless, mechanical routine. It encourages one to dream a little, to phil- osophize about one's work, and so lift it to a plane of dignity where the worker is self-respecting. How charming a picture Elizabeth Browning presents in one of her sonnets! The woman singeth at her spinning wheel A pleasant chant, ballad, or barcarolle; She thinketh of her song, upon the whole. Far more than of her flax ; and yet the reel Is full, and artfully her fingers feel With quick adjustment, provident control, The lines, too subtly twisted to unroll, Out to a perfect thread. And so Work may prove The better for the sweetness of the song. INTRODUCTION 19 In referring to his Songs of Labor, Whittier expresses the wish that Haply from them the toiler, bent Above his forge or plough, may gain A manlier spirit of content. And feel that life is wisest spent, Where the strong working hand Makes strong the working brain. Work is the incidental, accidental th ing that one may do — this to-day and that next year. The continuous thing is one's attitude, one's philosophy. At one extreme is the man who is doing the thing for which he is fitted by training and temperament and is thus find- ing his work an opportunity for self-expression. At the other extreme is the man who grinds out so much service in return for so much pay, with the minimvun of thought about the work. The first gives his whole thought to the work, during working hoiu-s, and before and after; he is creating and inventing and growing constantly. His work is a pleasure and he understands the phrase, " the joy of work." On the other hand, a man may have the dull look of one who labors without interest or pleasure in the work. The two workers may do the same thing, and yet one sees only the fraction that he is making, while the other sees the total of which he is contributing a part. The latter may paste labels on a can, or round the head of a pin, or punch holes in a metal disc; yet to the mechanical process is added the thought of the social \'aJue of the whole product. There is a great deal of very hard disagreeable labor to be performed. One thing that can help relieve the dreariness and make the worker's life tolerable is the consciousness that the thing he is doing is needed and is essential to the welfare of society. Effect of the Literature of Work. — It is a rare pleasure to hap- pen upon a story, or a poem, or a sketch, in which the author has set forth some phase of industrial activity or occupation with a detaUed affection that breeds a like aSection in the reader. One's personality becomes many-sided, as he views the world through the eyes of a potter, a weaver, a glass-blower, a lumberman, a fisherman, a sales- woman, a farmer, a shepherd, a bridge-builder, a telephone operator, a saflor. In such reading, one is constantly measuring life in new terms, making new estimates, and expanding new sympathies. So the man of letters gives the reader vicarious experiences, and helps him to find his own field of activity in the working scheme of the world. 20 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK This wide experience by proxy helps to create a better under- standing among those three classes of people into which the political economist has divided humanity: the producer, the consumer, and the distributor. Without such an understanding, there can be no true democracy: the interests of the three classes are identical. A wide reading among the writers who have described the world at work gives one a true appreciation of fine workmanship, without which there can be no true culture, and without which one buys indiscriminately. America will always be a market for mis- cellaneous, inartistic wares until her people become interested in the processes of workmanship, and value it rightly. If one has ever followed actually or imaginatively the processes by which a piece of Venetian Rose Point is evolved, never again will all lace look alike or will one quarrel with the price the lacemaker asks. If one has observed the rapt absorption of a potter manipulating a piece of clay, and realized how much of himself the potter puts into each product of his skill, he will wish that the monstrosities masquerading as artistic pottery might revert to the primeval dust. It is the knowledge of processes that makes one sensitive to the quality of the finished product and considerate of the conditions under which the worker lives and works. The Worker and His Work. — One's vocation, after one's religion, is the most important fact in life, for it determines the amoimt of one's leisure, the manner of spending that leisure, and also one's associations. It is the chief means of self-egression. Car- lyle says that a man can " attain true happiness only in clear decided activity in that sphere for which by nature and circumstances he has been fitted and appointed." It must provoke one's enthusiasms, as well as one's abilities, as a modem critic happily phrased it. Unless the vocational activity stirs the creative imagination, it is inappro- priate and xmfit, and the individual will miss the satisfaction that springs from doing one's own peculiar work; For him " the world is truly out of Joint." Longfellow voices this idea admirably in his Michael Angela: In happy hours, when the imagination Wakes like a wind at midnight, and the soul Trembles in all its leaves, it is a joy To be uplifted upon its wings, and listen To the prophetic voices in the air INTRODUCTION 21 That call us onward. Then the work we do Is a delight, and the obedient hand Never grows weary . . . Sidney Lanier's conception of the true poet may well be taken as the ideal of the worker: His song was only living aloud, His work a singing with his hand. He who labors prays, provided he does not approach his work as a bungler, an amateur, a dilettante, or a drudge, but aware of the process, the perfective, and the philosophy of his work. Over- tones, as well as tones, are necessary to complete harmony. So, if the worker sees the work in its emotional, and imaginative setting, he can attain true culture whether the scene of his work be the fac- tory, the sh<^, the bank, or the dock. The practical affairs of life are not common or vulgar, unless one be short-sighted. The short- sifted see only baldness, bleakness, and sordidness. What is a vocation? It is something more than merely making a living. It is man's means of securing abundant life. It is tragic to do the work and miss the life. Hence one who works only for pay, or any irmnediate or expedient thing, fails blindly. He uses the material resources of the world for base ends. People who work are htmian because their lives are based broad and deep in the fimda- mentals of Hfe, and not in its trivialities or non-essentials. Dignity and independence characterize those who labor. Greetings and Work. — Henry Van Dj^ke says that even the speech of those who work has a peculiar flavor. In Fisherman's Luck, he asks: " Has it ever fallen in your way to notice the quality of the greetings that belong to certain occupations? " There is something about these salutations in kind which is sin- gularly taking and grateful to the ear. They are as much better than an ordinary ' good-day ' or flat ' how are you? ' as a folk- song of Scotland or the Tyrol is better than the futile love-ditty of the drawing-room. They have a spicy and rememberable flavor. They speak to the imagination and point the way to treasure-trove. " There is a touch of dignity in them, too, for all they are so free and easy, the dignity of independence, the native spirit of one who takes for granted that his mode of living has a right to make his 22 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK own forms of speech. I admire a man who does not hesitate to salute the world in the dialect of his calling. " How salty and stimulating, for example, is the sailorman's hail of ' Ship ahoy! ' It is like a breeze laden with briny odors and a pleasant dash of spray. The miners in some parts of Germany have a good greeting for their dusky trade. They cry to one who is going down the shaft, ' Gluck auf ! ' All the perils of an underground adventure and all the joys of seeing the sun again are compressed into a word. Even the trivial salutation which the telephone has lately created and claimed for its peculiar use — ' Hello, hello! ' — seems to me to have a kind of fitness and fascination. It is like a thoroughbred bulldog, ugly enough to be attractive. There is a lively, concentrated, electric air about it. It makes courtesy wait upon dispatch, and reminds us that we live in an age when it is neces- sary to be wide awake. " I have often wished that every human employment might evolve its own appropriate greeting. Some of them would be queer, no doubt; but at least they would be an improvement on the weari- some iteration of ' Good-evening ' and ' Good-morning,' and the monotonous inquiry, ' How do you do? ' — a question so meaningless that it seldom tarries for an answer. Under the new and more natural system of etiquette, when you passed the time of day with a man you would know his business, and the salutations of the market-place would be full of interest." Unfair Conditions of Work. — ^The distress arising from acute economic crises has engaged the attention of many a poet and novel- ist. At no time is human nature so shorn of its artificialities as when men are thwarted in their efforts to gain a livelihood, and demand instantly that they shall receive an adequate medium of exchange for their labor. At various periods of history, when num- bers of hand-workers have been supplanted by one operator with a machine, the material progress has left a train of woe and privation. Particularly have poets voiced the dumb woe of those who work and struggle vainly to eke out an existence. The Song of the Shirt rings true to conditions of to-day. The vials of poetic wrath have been poured out rightly upon those who exploit the labor of men and women and little children. O. Henry thinks that the man who pays salesgirls five dollars a week deserves a more thorough-going punish- ment in the future than the man who sets fire to an orphan asylum. INTRODUCTION 23 Elizabeth Browning's Cry of the Children smites our ears to-day with an accusing ring, if we listen. North and South, children are daily entering the inward closing door of the factory. Do you hear the children weeping, O my brothers ! Ere the sorrow comes with years ? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And that can not stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows ; The young birds are chirping in the nest ; The yoimg fawns are playing with the shadows ; The young flowers are blowing toward the west: But the young, young children, O, my brothers ! They are weeping bitterly. They are weeping in the playtime of the others. In the coimtry of the free. And well may the children weep before you ! They are weary ere they run; They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory Which is brighter than the sun. They know the grief of man, without its wisdom ; They sink in man's despair without its calm ; Are slaves, without the liberty in Qiristdom ; Are martj-rs, by the pang without the palm : Are worn as if with age, yet unretrievingly The harvest of its memories can not reap ; Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly — Let them weep ! Let them weep ! Attitude of the Age Toward Work. — The attitude of the age toward labor is characteristic; it is one that is conscious of the grandetir, the dignity, and the power inherent in work. There is no vain regretting of the past, that loudly deplores the antagonism be- tween modem commercial life and art. Joseph PenneU sees in the electric lights of New York a " pattern of stars, tmdreamed of by Hiroshigi." Brooklyn Bridge, leaping forward span on span across the sky, great towers thrust skjfwards to the clouds, the commercial harbor, the necessary light-house, the throbbing power-house, the roUing-mill in full blast, and likewise the worker himself — all have artistic possibilities to the artist who is pulsing with the electric currents of the twentieth century. More than most poets has Kip- 24 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK ling appreciated the workingman fairly, neither under-estimating him nor 'over-estimating him. It is not necessary to invest labor with a halo. In The Wage Slaves, Kipling has paid the workingman a tribute that must be very acceptable to the man who " dowers each mortgaged hour alike with clean courage." Machinery and Work. — ^With that same attitude toward labor, goes the modern conception of machinery. Only most recently has the machine been regarded with anything but tolerance: it was a useful thing, but hardly a thing for which we could ever have a warm, personal regard. Now, the modern thinker is evangelically preaching: the man must dominate the machine: do work with a machine in a craftsmanlike manner: it is the machine that frees you and gives you the leisure and opportunity for the larger and ever larger life. Few critics of modem life have so well expressed the relation of man to the machine as has Gerald Stanley Lee in The Voice of the Machines and Crowds. He insists that we may watch machines work, that we may control machines, but that it is not necessary to surrender our minds to a machine. Shall we be tools, or independent, self-directing individuals using a tool? If the worker's mind can be fixed on complete thoughts, or wholes, not on fragments; if he can be sensible of the poetry of the process of the work; if he refuses to be separated from the finished product, then his actual work may be rounding the head of a pin, or piercing the eye of a needle, or pasting a label on a can, but he is not a machine; he is a free and independent worker doing his share of the necessary work of the world. The finished product is his child. One may not go so far as to see with Kipling's M'Andrew " predestination in the stride of yon connectin'-rod," but most of us can sympathize with the dour Scot's engineer in his sentiment about steam and romance. That minds me of our Viscount loon, Sir Kinneth's kin — the chap Wi' Russia leather tennis-shoon an' spar-decked yaohtin'-cap. I showed him round last week, o'er all — an' at the last says he, "Mister M'Andrew, don't you think steam spoils romance at sea?" Damned ijjit! I'd been doon that morn to see what ailed the throiws, Manholin', on my back — the cranks three inches off my nose. Romance ! Those first-class passengers — ^they like it very well. Printed an' bound in little books ; but why don't poets tell ? I'm sick of all their quirks an' turns, the loves an' doves they dream — Lord, send a man like Robbie Burns to sing the Song o' Steam ! mTRODUCTION 25 To match wi' Scotia's noblest speech yon orchestra sublime — Whaurto — uplifted like the just — ^the tail-rods mark the time. The cranks throws give the double bass, the feed-pump sobs an' heaves; An' now the main eccentrics start their quarrel on the sheaves : Her time, her own appointed time, the rocking link-head bides. Till — ^hear that note? — the rod's return whings glimmerin' through the guides. They're all awa ! True beat, full power, the clangin' chorus goes Clear to the tunnel where they sit, my purrin' dynamos. Oh for a man to weld it then, in one trip-hammer strain. Till even first-class passengers could tell the meanin' plain! But no one cares except mysel' that serve an' understand My seven thousand horsepower there. Eh, Lord ! They're grand — they're grand.* Steam is the very breath of the twentieth century. Years ago, Walt Whitman asked, " Is it not possible in this age of machine and factory production to teach the average man the glory of his walk and trade? " The answer is a ringing " aye." 'Stratification of Work. — Any system of training that tends to fix the worker in a groove, or, to change the figure, that brings about a sharply defined stratification of work, is as imdemocratic and as dangerous to the principles underlying our government as is the caste system of East India, for industrial and occupational strati- fication tends to social stratification, a condition peculiarly objection- able to the western mind. A man may do one thing day after day, but he should be flexible, physically and mentally, capable of making quick adjustments, and alert to all that life holds of interest and wonder. It is the special duty of all young people to see to it that their life work does not prove a " blind alley." One of the leading educational thinkers of to-day says: " It is not his work in itself that is so destructive to the spiritual life of the industrial worker. It is rather that he has so little else in his life." Browning expresses the same thought in his Shop: Because a man has shop to mind In time and place, since flesh must live. Needs spirit lack all life behind. All stray thoughts, fancies fugitive. All loves except what trade can give? * M'Andreu/s Hymn by Rudyard Kipling. 26 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK I want to know a butcher paints, A baker rhymes for his pursuit, Candlestick-maker much acquaints His soul with song, or, haply mute, Blows out his brains upon the flute ! But — shop each day and all day long ! Friend, your good angel slept, your star Suffered eclipse, fate did you wrong ! From where these sorts of treasures are, There should our heart be — Christ, how far! Culture and Work. — ^Just so far as industrial life can base itself in those qualities that make us all kindred, and are therefore uni- versal, so far is industrial life a cultural life, and industrial education affords as liberal a culture as does the humanistic curriculum. This view is rapidly becoming the creed of the educational world. The welfare of democracy depends upon having the largest possible factor common to liberal and industrial education. Cultural occu- pation! An apparent paradox! But what a comment on society that it should be startled by such a combination of words! How poor is that individual who has not the means of securing life, and even more abundant life! The world's no blot nor blank, But means intensely, and means good, to the man or woman who has found his work and is doing it. SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY To THE Teacher I. The editor suggests that the study of the bibliography come first. The student should put a classified list of the refer- ences in the bibliography in his note-book and add to it both books and magazine articles. n. The student should be encouraged to read the entire text from which a selection is made. This reading can serve as material for oral and vnitten book reports. III. If any of the occupations and industries are represented in the student's community, he should be urged to investigate the one in which he is most interested, make a report to his class, and embody the results of his investigations in themes. IV. The student should make a study of catalogues, with a view to finding out the best schools where training in a given field can be obtained. V. Interviews with men and women who have succeeded in a given field are stimulating to the student. As soon as possible, the student should become familiar with the use of the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. In many cases, his best sources of information are recent magazines. The abil- ity to use a Ubrary intelligently is one of the first accomplish- ments of the successful student. VI. In addition to writing themes, and writing business letters for catalogues, the text can serve the student's composition needs further by suggesting fruitful subjects for debate; for ex- ample, questions of taste in advertising, business ethics, or the advantage of college training in certain vocations. Vn. The following questions and topics illustrate the kind of assignment that may be given the student: A. " Every occupation has its heroes, its discoveries, and its romances, some of which are as fascinating as military history." 27 28 ^ THE WORKER AND HIS WORK Verify this statement with reference to one of the following masters of achievement: 1. Elias Howe. 2. Cyrus Hall McCormick. 3. Wilbur Wright. 4. Glenn Curtiss. 5. Elbert Henry Gary. 6. Philip Danforth Armour. 7. Henry Clay Frick. 8. George Westinghouse. 9. Edward Henry Harriman. 10. James Jerome Hill. 11. Montgomery Ward. 12. Andrew Carnegie. 13. John Merven Carrere. 14. George Washington Goethals. B. Some suggestions for theme subjects: 1. Grandmother's Cook-Book. 2. " Ready-to-serve " and " Ready-to-wear." 3. The Relation of Food to Efficient Living. C. 1. Is there any connection between advertising and extravagance? 2. Does the value of billboard advertising offset the disfigurement of our streets, highways, and sky- lines? 3. Subject for debate: Resolved, that advertising exer- cises a wholesome influence on American life. D. Make an outline for a theme, showing how a painter, a poet, a laborer, a business man, a social worker, and a Secretary of War would probably view a foundry. E. Topic for discussion: A Good Speaking Voice a Busi- ness Asset. 1. In what vocations is it particularly essential? F. 1. Name some of the great feats of engineering and engineers? 2. Compare Kipling's, Hopkinson Smith's, and Rex Beach's methods of telling a stirring narrative as illustrated in Bridge Builders, Caleb West, and The Iron Trail. SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 29 G. What sculptors and painters have succeeded in the por- trayal of modem industry? See introduction to Pic- tures of Wonder of Work by Joseph Pennell. H. Where are the great pottery industries of the United States located? What schools give courses in ceramics? I. Make a three-minute report on the life of Miss Ida M. Tarbell. Do you agree with her views expressed in Woman and Her Raiment? J. Where are the granite and marble quarries of the United States located? Conq>are the methods of quarrying in the United States and England. K. WTiat role did civil engineering play in the recent Great War? L. Make a list of the men and women most prominent in American industrial life. M. Topic for discussion: Does the department store offer attractive opportunities for the ambitious boy or girl? N. Define the terms: job, position, wages, salary, minimum wage, trade, vocation, occupation, industry. O. Interpret the following newqjaper clipping: Three men are cutting stone up yonder in the Cathedral grounds. " What are you doing. No. 1 ? " " I am working for $6.75 a day." " WTat are you doing, No. 2 ? " "I am squaring this stone." " What are you doing, Xo. 3? " "I am helping to build that," and this worker, with mind reaching out be- yond his toil, and with a noble qjirit of partisanship with the best, points proudly up to the great unfin- ished Cathedral on the hill. (The Cathedral is the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine on Momingside Heights in Xew York.) P. Below are summaries of books, cli{q)ed from catalogues. Write similar terse comments on a half-dozen books in the bibliography. 1. The Winning of Barbara Worth. By Harold BeU Wright. In this present-day story of desert life and the national reclamation work we have as 30 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK clean and wholesome a book, as a man ever wrote; a story of big things, strong people, and high ideals. The plot, through which there nms an intense love interest, is mighty in its conception and is carried to a satisfac- tory close with the smoothness of rmming water. It is one of big incidents and rapid action, and bears a message as broad as humanity itself. — The Ministry of Capital. 2. The Iron Trait. By Rex Beach. The hero of Rex Beach's new Alaskan story is just such a man as Kipling had in mind when he wrote " If " — one who could keep his head in every emergency. There ^were plenty of things to stand up against, too — other men's scheming, lack of funds, storms, glaciers, and misrepresentation. But he won his fight against Nature as he won the heart of the unusual heroine. 3. Wall Street Stories. By Edwin Lefevre. In these intimate stories of " the Street," the author, like a keen-eyed, experienced showman, points out to the spectator the Bulls and Bears, and tells strange tales of their habits and customs. Mr. Lefevre's trenchant pen draws the different types that fill the noisy, tragic world of speculation. This is a book which every man who ever followed stock quotations will find of absorb- ing interest, and perhaps he may recognize well-known Wall Street characters beneath their disguises. Q. The work of reclaiming our western deserts challenges the imagination and appeals to each one according to his profession. Plan a talk to be given to your class, in which you explain this work of reclamation and show what phase of it interests 1. The artist 2. The civil engineer SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 31 3. The agriculturist 4. The railroad magnate 5. The student of geography The following dipping from Munsey, October, 1917, will be suggestive: " When Hakkiman Fought a Big River " " George Kennan has an eye for the picturesque in his story of ' The Salton Sea ' and Harriman's fight with the Colorado River. Ages ago the Gulf of Cali- fornia ran much farther inland than now. The Colorado River, dumping its load of silt into the gulf, built a bar across it and left the upper waters to bum out in the desert. Every three or four centuries the river, in flood, would cut through its self-bmlt barrier, and temporarily fill the basin with fresh water. "Men with imagination conceived the idea of guid- ing part of the stream permanently into such a chan- nel and using the water to reclaim, by irrigation, millions of desert acres. The story of the attempt is thrilling. One engineer after another tried and failed. Companies came and went; the project re- fused to die. At last Harriman imdertook to dam the stream with dollars. " The great enterprise was well under way when, in 1906, floods threatened to wipe out all the labor, of men's hands, and to destroy the homes and prop- erty of some twelve thousand people settled in the valley. The fertilizing stream had become a destroy- ing torrent, and the Colorado was pouring into the Salton basin more than four billion cubic feet of water every twenty-four hours. " Harriman had hurried to San Francisco to help that city in its distress. It was in April, just after the earthquake and fire. The president of the Cali- fornia Development Company hastened to see Presi- dent Harriman of the Southern Pacific Railway Company, and told him what was happening. 32 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK " There, in the bustle and confusion of temporary offices, with the ruins of San Francisco still smoking, with the facilities of his roads taxed to the utmost in carrying people away from the stricken city, with the wonderful railway system which constituted his life-work crippled to an unknown extent, he consented to advance an additional sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for controlling the river and protecting the valley. " Ten years ago the Imperial Valley yielded, from its once desert soil, crops worth twelve hundred thou- sand dollars a year. Now its cotton, barley, fruit and vegetables, and the live stock that crops its grasses, represent an annual production of ten times the amount." R. Do you agree to the following statement: " If you want to know whether you are going to be a success or a failure in life," said James J. Hill, " you can easily find out. The test is simple and infallible. Are you able to save money? If not, drop out. You will lose. You may not think it, but you will lose as sure as you live. The seed of suc- cess is not in you." S. The following diagram was made by Mr. Henry J. Fischer of Cleveland, Ohio, and is reproduced here by courtesy of The Independent. 1. What is the relation of thrift to character? 2. What is the relation of thrift to work? 3. Americans are said to be an extravagant people, and the French thrifty. What is your opinion? 4. What plan of saving would you advocate for the wage-earner, so that his old age may be independent? 5. What is your opinion of the accompanying dia- gram? Is it accurate, according to your observations? T. One critic writes: " In this day of storm and stress one cannot read Miss Morgan's poem entitled Kinship without being touched to finer issues, even in the dis- SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 33 Diagram Showing That the Habit of Saving Must be Formed and Exercised Early in Life Everything to j T^jg ^ace represents man's accu- gain and : mulating periotL Either success nothing to : or failurt is settied. No days of 20 X^ lose. : grace are allowed. This is the egotistical period — when the son thinks he knows more than his father. This space represents the son's egotism. Age of wild oats. 30 NOW OR The boy is now chang- ing his mind and con- cludes he doesn't know as much as he im- agined. He now considers his father a man of fair judg- ment. 35 The son realizes that life is a real- ity and he is not as smart as he once thought. The father was a man of master mind. NEVER Danger line. 40 97 per cent, of men here meet with re- verses and lose their en- tire ac- cumula- tions. By this age 97 per cent. have lost all. This is the age of caution as man must not speculate, for he has all to lose and nothing to gain. He looks for security, not high rates of interest. 50 After this age but one in 5,000 can recover ' his financial footing. a o t% u m ■9 •• c: o ^ ii » S a J3 ^ o a m u a in 4) 60 If you do not securely lay up during the harvest, the drouth of old age will catch you without provender at sixty. U. charge of the simplest duties. Her words carry in them a magic glow. Read this poem quietly and then aloud, and feel its warm beat and musi- cal rhythm." Carry out the suggestion in the last sentence. Write a short paragraph interpreting this poem, Kinship, found in The Hour Has Struck. Show that the following passage from the Marble Faun, by Hawthorne, chap. S, is an illustration of good paragraph structure. Find other paragraphs in this text that illustrate the laws of unity and coherence in paragraph structure. "There is something extremely pleasant, and even touching — at least, of very sweet, soft and winning 34 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK effect — in this peculiarity of needlework, distinguish- ing women from men. Our own sex is incapable of any such by-play aside from the main business of life; but women — be they of what earthly rank they may, however gifted with intellect or genius, or en- dowed with awful beauty — ^have always some little handiwork ready to fill the tiny gap of every vacant moment. A needle is familiar to the fingers of them all. A queen, no doubt, plies it on occasion; the woman poet can use it as adroitly as her pen; the woman's eye, that has discovered a new star, turns from its glory to send the polished little instrument gleaming along the hem of her kerchief, or to dam a casual fray in her dress. And they have greatly the advantage of us in this respect. The slender thread of silk or cotton keeps them united with the small, familiar, gentle interests of life, the continually operating influences of which do so much for the health of the character, and carry off what would otherwise be a dangerous accumulation of morbid sensibility. A vast deal of human sympathy runs along this electric line, stretching from the throne to the wicker chair of the humblest seamstress, and keeping high and low in a species of communion with - their kindred beings. Methinks it is a token of healthy and gentle characteristics, when women of high thoughts and accomplishments love to sew; especially as they are never more at home with their own hearts than while so occupied." V. You will find in Old Chester Tales, by Margaret Deland, a story of an untrained woman who is confronted with the necessity of making her living. Read the story and make an outline for a talk to your class, contrasting the education described in the story and the kind of education a girl receives in a modern high school. In what respects is the girl of to-day the gainer and in what respects the loser? SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 35 W. At the conclusion of your study of this text-book, make a list of the titles that you think would be appropriate for it. 'ftTiich one is most fitting? Compare: Day's Work, Rudyard Kipling. Livelihood, Wilfrid Gibson. Daily Bread, Wilfrid Gibson. Songs of a Workaday World, Berton Braley. The World^s Work (Magazine). WORK By Henry van Dyke Let me but do my work from day to day, In field or forest, at the desk or loom, In roaring market-place or tranquil room. Let me but find it in my heart to say. When vagrant wishes beckon me astray, " This is my work; my blessing, not my doom; Of all who live, I am the one by whom This work can best be done in the right way." Then shall I see it not too great, nor small. To suit my spirit and to prove my powers; Then shall I cheerful greet the laboring hours. And cheerful turn, when the long shadows fall, At eventide, to play and love and rest; Because I know for me my work is best. 36 WORK: A SONG OF TRIUMPH By Angela Morgan Workr Thank God for the might of it, The ardor, the urge, the delight of it — Work that springs from the heart's desire. Setting the brain and the soul on fire — Oh, what is so good as the heat of it, And what is so glad as the beat of it, And what is so kind as the stem command. Challenging brain and heart and hand? Work! Thank God for the pride of it. For the beautiful, conquering tide of it. Sweeping the life in its furious flood, Thrilling the arteries, cleansing the blood, Mastering stupor and dull despair. Moving the dreamer to do or dare. Oh, what is so good as the urge of it. And what is so glad as the surge of it, And what is so strong as the simimons deep. Rousing the torpid soul from sleep? Work! Thank God for the pace of it. For the terrible, keen, swift race of it; Fiery steeds in full control. Nostrils a-quiver to greet the goal. Work, the Power that drives behind. Guiding the purposes, taming the mind. Holding the nmaway wishes back. Reigning the will to one steady track. Speeding the energies faster, faster. Triumphing over disaster. 37 38 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK Work I Thank God for the swing of it, For the clamoring, hammering ring of it, Passion of labor daily hurled On the mighty anvils of the world. Oh, what is so fierce as the flame of it? And what is so huge as the aim of it? Thundering on through dearth and doubt, Calling the plan of the Maker out, Work, the Titan; Work, the friend. Shaping the earth to a glorious end, Draining the swamps and blasting the hills, Doing whatever the Spirit wills — Rending a continent apart. To answer the dream of the Master heart. Thank God for a world where none may shirk- Thank God for the splendor of work! KEEP ON WORKING By Richakd Eugene Burton Health, work, and religion are the three things which make life least a bore and most a blessing. Nor need work apologize to the other two. Work of the right kind conduces to health and becomes religion; hence the Scriptural commendation of good workmen by Solomon: " They shall maintain the fabric of the world, and in the handiwork of their craft is their prayer." It was Burke, I believe, who with this in mind offered the advice: " Work, work, and never despair; but even if you do despair, ke^ on working." He knew it for a chief antidote against hopelessness. Ruskin once said that there were three desiderata for a happy life: congenial work, not too much of it, and a fair return for one's labor. As to this last, he did not mean a mere reward in money, but a sense in the worker that his product is of use, of value to fellow-men, that he has not in this sense labored in vain. The return may come in the respect of the community, its readiness to intrust him with some undertaking of importance to the general weal — in this, rather than in the sum he is paid. The big thing is the consciousness in the worker that he is a help, not a hindrance, to the social machine; that he makes something that has beauty or utility or, better yet, both. The number of those who work in a way to illustrate Ruskin's ideal makes but a small fraction of the great army of workers. Con- sider the misfits, for one thing. It is astonishing how many folk will say to you, " My business is merely a manner of money-getting. It ia distasteful to me in the extreme, and I would get out of it to-morrow if I could. My pleasure comes from the hours outside my work." What a pity this is, for if a human being has any right, it is the right of congenial employment, the chance to do what he is interested in, that which stimulates his faculties and draws out his best endeavor. It is only by doing such work that he becomes of Taken from Burton's Little Essays in Literature cmd Life, by per- mission of The Century Co. 39 40 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK firil value to society. But for various reasons mortals go into work for other than the imperative reason of calling: because the business was handed down from father to son; because a stem necessity of self-support demanded that the first work that came to hand should be done; or, again, because the rewards wers so gUttering that repug- nance was overcome. And yet, surely, all men and women should be doing the manner of work most to their liking, most expressive of their personality; the one thing they were bom to do, and therefore can do happily and do best. Parents have a terrible responsibility here, and too often mis- conceive it, when they compel their young ones to take up some form of activity not suited to their powers. It would be well to understand that, whenever serious-minded, well-meaning young persons have a deep conviction that a certain sort of work calls them, they should be allowed to give it a trial. By doing so, either they find that it is their tme occupation, or not, and so, satisfied, turn to other work. But if they do not give it a trial, they will be dissat- isfied to their death-day. The beginning and basis of the right kind of life, then, is choosing wisely one's work. The world has no use for misfits, and the misfits are unhappy, poor creatures, when half the time it is not altogether their fault, but the fault of their environment or necessity. Think, also, of the immense number of human bdngs who work under the wrong conditions: hours overlong, work-places lacking air and light, needless harshness, even cruelty, of employers, the nature of the toil bratalizing and demoralizing. The figures would sadden, and the facts appal, could they be comprehended to their full extent. It was with this abuse of work, as it touched the children, in mind that great-hearted Mrs. Browning, half a century ago, wrote that piercing Cry of the Children which, in its white-hot passion of loving sorrow, was one of the documents of the day, and led on to our own, when industrial conditions are being bettered. Do you hear the children weeping and disproving, O my brothers, what ye preach ? For God's possible is taught by His world's loving, And the children doubt of each. Even when the physical conditions that surround the work are endurable or pleasant, that work is not what it should be that lacks CARRIER. BY CONSTANTIX MEUXIER KEEP ON WORKING 41 a sense of aim and accomplishment. It is better to make something one can take a pleasure in the making of; but how seldom is that true of the worker! Grant, with the old poet, that to sweep a room in the right spirit "makes that and the action fine"; still, to be honest, there is work and work, and it is hard to see how the labor of a man in the stockyards, in whatever spirit done, can give that inward satisfaction which ought to come from every kind of human labor, no matter how fruitless cr lowly. A fecial danger has arisen from the modem difierentiation of work, for the reason that, where once the head, hand, and heart col- laborated in a trinity of activity to the making of a seemly whole, now, with the advent of machinery, the labor has largely become partial, blind, and so pleasiu-eless. To make a pin may not be esthetic work, but it is much better than to make the head of a pin, because in the former case you are at least intelligently producing something of wholeness and usefulness. Manhood and womanhood should be retained in the work, but to make the head of a pin has the tendency to make a machine out of a human being; it is not a finished product, but merely part of the process of its making. It is a satire to taJk about pleasure in one's work under some conditions. The present-day handicraft movement is a reaction to the better conditions of work in an age past when the artisan, the workman, was also the artist, having joy of his labor, and so pre- serving his humanity. Doutbless, we shall gradually so alter the social wrongs and evUs which now make this planet appear a little damaged, and install the worker in work so congenial, so close-fitted to his aptitude and desire, that it wiU be his deejjest satisfaction and most lasting solace: that which steadies, rectifies, uplifts, and rejoices him throughout his days and up to the final rest. Nay, are we not altering our conceptions of Heaven in order to allow of happy, useful, unselfish work there — ^work, instead of the older notion of sitting around in an elegant leism-e enlivened by select music? Work, ideally, should be congenial, fruitful, and the worker aware of his worth to the world. Nobody works harder than the idler; he has on his hands the dire task of killing time. Knowing the awfulness of vacuity, he fills the day with a semblance of activity, while gnawing at his peace is a sense of the barren foUy of it aU. The finest argimient for real work is the spectacle of its counter- feit presentment. THE MAIL-ORDER HOUSE By Arnold Bennett There are business organizations in America of a species which do not flourish at all in Europe. For example, the " mail-order house," whose secrets were very generously displayed to me in Chicago — a peculiar establishment which sells nearly everything (except patent-medicines) — on condition that you order it by post. Go into that house with money in your paJm, and ask for a fan or a flail or a fur-coat or a fountain-pen or a fiddle, and you will be requested to return home and write a letter about the proposed pur- chase, and stamp the letter and drop it into a mail-box, and then wait till the article arrives at your door. That house is one of the most spectacular and pleasing proofs that the inhabitants of the United States are thinly scattered over an enormous area, in tiny groups, often quite isolated from stores. On the day of my visit sixty thousand letters had been received, and every executable order con- tained in these was executed before closing time, by the coordinated efforts of over four thousand female employees and over three thou- sand males. The conception would make Europe dizzy. Imagine a merchant in Moscow trying to inaugurate such a scheme! A little machine no bigger than a soup-plate will open hundreds of envelopes at once. They are all the same, those envelopes; they have even less individuality than sheep being sheared, but when the contents of one — any one at random — are put into your hand, some- thing human and distinctive is put into your hand. I read the caligraphy on a blue sheet of paper, and it was written by a woman in Wyoming, a neat, earnest, harassed, and possibly rather harassing woman, and she wanted all sorts of things and wanted them intensely — I could see that with clearness. This complex purchase was an important event in her year. So far as her imagination went, only one mail-order would reach the Chicago house that morning, and the entire establishment would be strained to meet it. Then the blue sheet was taken from me and thrust into the sys- tem, and therein lost to me. I was taken to a mysteriously rumbling shaft of broad diameter, that pierced all the floors of the house and 42 THE MAIL-ORDER HOUSE 43 had trap-doors on each floor. And when one of the trap-doors was opened I saw packages of all descriptions racing after one another down spiral planes within the shaft. There were several of these shafts — ^with divisions for mail, express and freight traffic — and pack- ages were ceaselessly racing down all of them, laden with the objects desired by the woman of Wyoming and her fifty-nine-thousand-odd fellow-customers of the day. At first it seemed to me impossible that that earnest, impatient woman in Wyoming should get precisely what she wanted; it seemed to me impossible that some mistake should not occur in all that noisy fever of rushing activity. But after I had followed an order, and seen it filled and checked, my opinion was that a mistake would be the most miraculous phenom- enon in that establishment. I felt quite reassured on behalf of Wyoming. And then I was suddenly in a room where six; hundred bUhng- machines were being clicked at once by six hundred young women, a fantastic aural nightmare, though none of the young women appeared to be conscious that anything bizarre was going on. . . . And then I was in a printing-shop, where several lightning machines spent their whole time every day in printing the most popular work of reference in the United States, a bulky book full of pictures, with an annual circulation of five and a half million copies — the general catalogue of the firm. For the first time I realized the true meaning of the word " popularity " — and sighed. . . . And then it was limch time for about a couple of thousand employees and in the boundless restaurant I witnessed the working of the devices which enabled these legions to choose their meals, and pay for them (cost price) in a few minutes, and without advanced mathematical calculations. The young head of the restaurant showed me, with pride, a menu of over a hundred dishes — Austrian, German, Hungarian, Italian, Scotch, French and American — at prices from one cent up as high as ten cents (prime roast-beef) — and at the foot of the menu was his personal appeal: " I desire to extend to j'ou a cordial invitation to inspect," etc. " My constant aim will be," etc. Yet it was not his restaurant. It was the firm's restaurant. Here I had a curious illustration of an admirable characteristic of Ameri- can business methods that was always striking me — ^namely, the real delegation of responsibility. An American board of direction will put a man in charge of a department, as a viceroy over a province, 44 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK saying, as it were: " This is yours. Do as you please with it. We will watch the results." A marked contrast this with the central- izing of authority which seems to be ever proceeding in Europe, and which breeds in all classes at all ages — especially in France — a morbid fear and horror of accepting re^onsibility. Later, I was on the ground level, in the midst of an enormous apparent confusion — the target for all the packages and baskets, big and little, that shot every instant in a continuous stream from those spiral planes, and slid dangerously at me along the floors. Here were the packers. I saw a packer deal with a collected order, and in this order were a number of tiny crockery utensils, a four-cent curling iron, a brush, and two incredibly ugly pink china mugs, inscribed in cheap gilt respectively with the words " Father " and " Mother." Throughout my stay in America no moment came to me more dramatically than this moment, and none has remained more vividly in my mind. All the daily domestic life of the small com- munities in the wilds of the West and the Middle West, and in the wilds of the back streets of the great towns, seemed to be revealed to me by the contents of that basket, as the packer wrapped up and protected one article after another. I had been compelled to abandon a visitation of the West and of the small communities elsewhere, and I was sorry. But here in a microcosm I thought I saw the simple reality of the backbone of all America, a symbol of the millions of the little plain people, who ultimately make possible the glory of the world-renowned streets and institutions in dazzling cities. There was something indescribably touching in that curling-iron and those two mugs. I could see the table on which the mugs would soon proudly stand, and " father " and " mother " and children thereat, and I could see the hand heating the curling-iron and apply- ing it. I could see the whole little home and the whole life of the little home. . . . And afterward, as I wandered through the ware- houses — ^pyramids of the same chair, cupboards full of the same cheap violin, stacks of the same album music, acres of the same carpet, and wallpaper, tons of the same gramaphone, hundreds of tons of the same sewing-machine and lawn-mower — I felt as if I had been made free of the secrets of every village in every State of the Union, and as if I had lived in every little house and cottage thereof all my life! Almost no sense of beauty in those tremendous supplies of merchandise, but a lot of honesty, self-respect and ambi- THE MAIL-ORDER HOUSE 45 tion fiilfilled. I tell you I could hear the engaged couples discussmg ardently over the pages of the catalogue what design of sideboard. Finally, I arrived at the firm's private railway station, where a score or more trucks were bdng laden with the multifarious boxes, bales and parcels, all to leave that evening for romantic destinations such as Oregon, Texas, and Wyoming. Yes, the package of the woman of Wyoming's desire would ultimately be placed somewhere in one of those trucks! It was going to start off to her that very night! THE AMERICAN TELEPHONE By Arnold Bennett What strikes and frightens the backward European as much as anything in the United States is the efficiency and fearful universal- ity of the telephone. Just as I think of the big cities as agglomera- tions pierced everywhere by elevator-shafts full of movement, so I think of them as being threaded, under pavements and over roofs and between floors and ceilings and between walls, by millions upon millions of live filaments that unite all the privacies of the organism — and destroy them in order to make one immense publicity 1 I do not mean that Europe has failed to adopt the telephone, nor that in Europe there are no hotels with the dreadful curse of an active telephone in every room. But I do mean that the European tele- phone is a toy, and a somewhat clumsy one, compared with the Inexorable seriousness of the American telephone. Many otherwise highly civilized Europeans are as timid in addressing a telephone as they would be in addressing a royal sovereign. The average European middle class householder still speaks of his telephone, if he has one, in the same falsely casual tone as the corresponding American is liable to speak of his motor car. It is naught — a negligible trifle — but somehow it comes into the conversation! It is the efficiency of the telephone that makes it irresistible to a great people whose passion is to " get results " — the instancy with which the commimication is given, and the clear loudness of the telephone's voice in reply to yours: phenomena utterly unknown in Europe. Were I to inhabit the United States, I, too, should become a victim of the telephone habit. ' Now it is obvious that behind the apparently simple exterior aspects of any telephone system there must be an intricate and mar- velous secret organization. In Europe my curiosity would probably never have been excited by the thought of that organization — at home one accepts everything as of course! — ^but in the United States, partly because the telephone is so much more wonderful and terrible there, and partly because in a foreign land one is apt to have strange caprices, I allowed myself to become the prey of a desire to see the 46 THE AMERICAN TELEPHONE 47 arcanum concealed at the other end of all the wires; and thus, one day, under the high protection of a demigod of the electrical world, I paid a visit to a telephone-exchange in New York, and saw therein what nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand of the most ardent telephone lasers seldom think about and will never see. A murmuring sound, as of an infinity of scholars in a prim school conning their lessons, and a long row of yoimg women seated in a dim radiance on a long row of precisely similar stools, before a long apparatus of holes and pegs and pieces of elastic cord, all extremely intent: that was the first broad impression. One saw at once that none of these young women had a single moment to spare; they were all involved in the tremendous machine, part of it, keeping pace with it and in it, and not daring to take their eyes off it for an instant, lest they should sin against it. What they were droning about it was impossible to guess; for if one stationed oneself close to any particular rapt yoimg woman, she seemed to utter no sound, but simply and without ceasing to peg and unpeg holes at random among the thousands of holes before her, apparently in obedience to the signaling of faint, tiny lights that in thousands continually expired and were rekindled. (It was so that these tiny lights should be distinguishable that the illumination of the secret and finely appointed chamber was kept dim.) Throughout the whole length of the apparatus the colored elastic cords to which the pegs were attached kept crossing one another in fantastic patterns. We who had entered were ignored. We might have been ghosts, invisible and inaudible. Even the supervisors, less-young women set in authority, did not turn to glance at us as they moved rest- lessly peering behind the stools. And yet somehow I could hear the delicate shoulders of all the young women saying, without speech: " Here come these tjTants and taskmasters again, who have invented this exercise which nearly but not quite cracks our little brains for us! They know exactly how much they can get out of us, and they get it. They are cleverer than us and more powerful than us; and we have to submit to their discipline. But " And afar off I could hear: " What are you going to wear to-night? " " Will you dine with me to-night? " " I want two seats." " Very well, thanks, and how is Mrs. ? " " When can I see you to-morrow? " " I'll take your offer for those bonds." . . . And I could see the interiors of innumerable offices and drawing-rooms. . . . But, 48 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK of course, I could hear and see nothing really except the intent drone and quick gesturing of those completely absorbed young creatures in the dim radiance, on stools precisely similar. I understood why the telephone service was so efficient. I under- stood not merely from the demeanor of the long row of young women, but from everything else I had seen in the exact and diabol- ically ingenious ordering of the whole establishment. We were silent for a time, as though we had entered a church. We were, perhaps unconsciously, abashed by the intensity of the absorption of these neat young women. After a while one of the guides, one of the inscrutable beings who had helped to invent and construct the astounding organism, began in a low voice on the forlorn hope of making me comprehend the mechanism of a tele- phone-call and its response. And I began on the forlorn hope of persuading him by intelligent acting that I did comprehend. We each made a little progress. I could not tell him that, though I genuinely and humbly admired his particular variety of genius, what interested me in the affair was not the mechanics, but the human equation. As a professional reader of faces, I glanced as well as I could sideways at those bent girls' faces to see if they were happy. An absurd inquiry! Do / look happy when I'm at work, I wonder! Did they then look reasonably content? Well, I came to the con- clusion that they looked like most other faces — ^neither one thing nor llie other. Still, in a great establishment, I would sooner search for sociological information in the faces of the employed than in the managerial rules. " What do they earn? " I asked, when we emerged from the ten-atmosphere pressure of that intense absorption. (Of course, I knew that no young woman could possibly for any length of time be as intensely absorbed as these appeared to be. But the illusion was there, and it was effective.) I learned that even the lowest begiimer earned five dollars a week. It was just the sum I was paying for a pair of clean sheets every night at a grand hotel. And that the salary rose to six, seven, eight, eleven, and even fourteen dollars for supervisors, who, how- ever, had to stand on their feet seven and a half hours a day, as shopgirls do for ten hours a day; and that in general the girls had thirty minutes for lunch, and a day off every week, and that the company supplied them gratuitously with tea, coffee, sugar, couches. THE AMERICAN TELEPHONE 49 newspapers, arm-chairs, and fresh air, of which last fifty fresh cubic feet were pumped in for every operator every minute. " Naturally," I was told, " the discipline is strict. There are test wires. . . . We can check the ' time elements.' . . . We keep a record of every caU. They'll take a dollar a week less in an outside place — for instance, a hotel. . . . Their average stay here is thirty months." And I was told the number of exchanges there were in New York, exactly like the one I was seeing. A dollar a week less in a hotel! How fe minin e' And how masculine! .\nd how wise for one sort of young woman, and how foolish for another! . . . Imagine quitting that convent with its guaranteed fresh air, and its couches and sugar and so on, for the rough hazards and promiscuities of a hotel! On the other hand, imagine not quitting it! Said the demigod of the electrical world, condescendingly: " All this telephone business is done on a mere few himdred horse-power. Q)me away, and I'U show you electricity in bulk." And I went away with him, thoughtful. In spite of the inhiunan perfection of its functioning, that exchange was a very human place indeed. It brilliantly solved some problems; it raised others. Exces- sively difficult to find any fault whatever in it! A marvelous service, achieved under strictly hygienic conditions — and yoimg women must make their way through the world! And yet — ^yes, a very human place indeed! THE TELEPHONE DIRECTORY By Berton Bealey What is there seeming duller than this book, This stolid volume of prosaic print? And yet it is a glass through which we look On wonderland and marvels without stint. It is a key which will unlock the gate Of distance and of time and circumstance, A wand that makes the wires articulate With hum of trade and whisper of romance! Somewhere there is enchantment in each page — The whirr of wheels, the murmiu-s of the mart, The myriad mighty voices of the age. The throbbing of the great world's restless heart, — Such are the sounds this volume seems to store For him who feels the magic of its thrall, Who views the vistas it unrolls before His eyes that scaroe can comprehend them all! Here is the guide to all the vast extent The wires have bound together, this will show The way to help when need is imminent. When terror threatens or when life bums low; This brings the lover to his heart's desire. That he may speak to her o'er hill and lea. This is the secret of the singing wire, To all the " world without " this is the key! From Songs of a Workaday World, by Berton Braley. Copyright, 191S, George H. Doran Company, Publishers. 50 SPARKS OF THE WIRELESS By Walter Sanders Hiatt The youths of the world are running away to sea again. But yesterday the sea had lost its romance, had become a place of prosaic traveling from an icy port to a hot one, with the tying up at the coal-blackened dock the most fanciful adventure of the voyage. The pirates, alas! had gone to work. There was naught left of the wondrous days of old but the yams foimd in the pages of " The Pilot," " Peter Simple," " Treasure Island." The American lad had quit the sea these thirty years. It had hardly kept a place in his dreams; and the word was being passed that the white lad the world around was forgetting the sea. Lo! a tiny dot, a dash or two, cuts through the air, over the sea, and all is changed — once more as it should be. To the sea was thus reclaimed enchanted, wandering fancy, and to-day thousands of American, English, German, French, and Italian youths are again treading the heaving deck on the high sea. The new lad aboard ship is Sparks. He may be nineteen and lay claim to one-and- twenty; he may have hoped to begin life as an Indian-fighter. But wireless has made of him a spanking ship's operator, one who dreams of ether waves and transmitters, condensers, trans- formers, and anchor spark gaps: an operator who can, if need there be, speak a language for any tongue, play a tune on his antenna that will ride out the most terrible of gales, bring succor to the weakest ship, snatch its prey from the wildest sea. Sparks is not tied down in restive captivity to one port or ship. His power is only short of divine. He may leap over the sea and the mountains, where he listeth. If there are no messages to send for captain or passenger, if the steady brightness of the stars blooming above and the regular roar of the waves broken xmder the bow make the watch to drag, he may call up a friend hundreds of miles to lee- ward, ask the latest news from home, make plans to meet at port ^y permission. From Scribner's Magazine for April, 1914. Copy- righted, 1914, by Qiarles Scribner's Sons. 51 52 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK six months hence and have a jolly lark ashore, when confidences can be exchanged without every gossiper afloat and every amateur on land listening in. A fellow doesn't mind telling the whole world about the perse- cutions of the skipper and the bad bunking and worse food on board — but there are some things to be kept sacred. Girls? Of course not ! If perchance Sparks is ploughing Pacific waters, say on a tramp bound around the Horn, laden deep with grain and no port to make in the ten thousand miles this side of Dunkirk, he may break the monotony of marmalade and toast, scowling skipp»er and raging waves, by calling up the station on the island of Juan Fernandez, off the coast of Chile, and ask after Robinson Crusoe's goats, his vine-clad fort, his boats, and all the rest so plainly set down on printed page. Truly, what a wonderful life leads Sparks, and truly, what a wonderful fellow he is! A right bold sea-dog is Sparks and he leads the captain a sad life. Is it Sparks or is it the captain who commands the ship? " Why, sir, I'm growing old before my time, what with reports and owner's complaints, cargo that shifts, logs that read awiy," grumbled one Old Man. " And now I have this to look after. A fellow comes aboard my ship and by the swagger of him I'm but an air wave." It is when skippers are in such frame of mind that poor Sparks learns why so many other boys quit going to sea in the good old days. Because a fellow happens to be in a hurry, to forget that the skipper is a high and mighty person, and asks him offhand, " I say, captain, do you want to send out any dope to-night? " that is no reason to set you to pacing the deck in a disgraceful rope ring for an hour, with an added quarter each time you touch a ventilator or the rail. I should say not! Then, there are times when no self-respecting fellow can hold his tongue. Take the case of Cameron. He showed the Old Man of the Iroquois how to respect a Wii'eless operator. Cameron is known from Point Barrow to the ice barriers of the Antarctic as a competent operator. The night he left that old tub in Seattle, she had taken on a whole deck-load of sheep. Sheep were even stowed about the Wireless cabin. Ttere was a holy stench, let me tell you. Cameron wasn't to blame. SPARKS OF THE WIRELESS S3 So he up and tells the Old Man that them sheep has got to come from aroimd his cabin. Did not his contract call for a first-class berth? Well, the Iroquois was just about to cast off her lines, ready for sea. " The tide is making, sir," the first was bellowing from the fo'c's'le head when Cameron went to the bridge. " If you're not suited aboard my ship, Mr. Cameron," says the Old Man, " why, you can take your things and go ashore and con- found you! " But he was that put out, he went to Cameron's cabin and helped him get his things ashore. He afterward bragged he threw Cameron, " his umbrella, his valise, coats, pants, and collars, all in a heap, right over the side upon the dock." Anyway, it was not what you would call a friendly parting. " You lack manners, sir," shouted Cameron when he got to the dock. Those were his very words. My! how mad they made that skipper! It must be that skippers are jealous. When they are about to wreck their ships, it is always the Wireless men that save them. Then the passengers and the newspapers tell how Sparks acted like a hero. That's the way it is. Take the eighty passengers of the Camino. They know how to appreciate fellows like Cameron. After clearing from Portland, ten miles off Astoria she ran into a stiff southerly gale which was soon banging away at the rate of eighty miles an hour, and God help the vessel in its path! Waves pUed up, swept the battened decks, wrecked and carried away the winches and all the tackle forward. The passengers gathered in the saloon, praying and weeping, while the storm raged. The steady plunging forward of the ship, lifting her heels out of water, kept the screw spinning in vacant air so viciously it finally broke short off and dropped to the bottom. Then the despised Sparks was told to call for help, to send out the S.O.S. of distress. With the ship drifting and the waves breaking over broadside, when it was worth your life to go on deck, Sparks repaired his disabled antenna; he braved each bolt of lightning, apt to dart down his wires to the head-phones and strike him senseless at the key. Finally, forth into the air guttered the call that brought the Watson. The Camino was towed into San Francisco harbor, with every soul safe on board. You bet those pmssengers were glad. Thqr voted Sparks the ablest seaman of the lot and his antenna 54 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK wires, stretched from masthead to masthead, the handsomeot part of the ship. It's in such times as this that Sparks loves to go to sea. Even the Old Man is then his friend. Though the brave captain may be broken-hearted at the thought of losing his commission for not having done more than human could do, he is sure to speak a good word for Sparks at the company offices. The running away of Sparks to sea, however, is not done to-day as formerly. If bred on this side of the water, he cannot jump over the back-yard fence and make for the nearest ship. He must quiet the fever in his veins, still the quick heart-beat that brings the sparkle to the eye and the bloom to the cheek, until he has passed certain school examinations. But such a school! The uninitiated peeping in would mistake the scholars for appren- tice divers, arrayed as they are with helmet-like head-pieces. A glimpse reveals the yearning of these youth to become operators. The generators and dynamos, booming and cracking as they feed the wires with the electric currents that pass into the ether as pebbles in a pool, would alone capture the youthful imagination. Then, there are other bewildering pieces of apparatus — telegraph- keys, switches, tuners, automatic message-stampers, circuit diagrams — on the walls maps of the world splashed with red dots of wireless stations, charts to show the position of all ships at sea. Since the passage of laws by nations requiring two operators aboard passenger-ships, to take watch and watch about, a dozen schools have been established to train operators. These schools are in Germany, in France, in England. In the United States there are no less than half a dozen. Some of these schools are maintained by the commercial companies supplying ships with equipment and men. The United States Navy maintains one at Brooklyn, another at San Francisco, and in both government licenses are granted to any amateur or professional operator, after a rigid examination. Wireless is a veritable disease with the American student. Some of them, long before entering these schools, work at all sorts of jobs, whitewashing neighbors' fences, carrying coals, running errands, to get money to build their own amateur stations. In cities, where landlords are captious and refuse to let antenna wires mingle with clothes-lines on the roofs, the boys not infrequently use brass bed- steads in the attics as antermae. SPARKS OF THE WIRELESS SS So going to a wireless school is dearer than play to them. Mother may have intended Sparks for a minister, father for a drug clerk, and uncle for a grocery man; but no bond can bind such a heart's desire. It is students of such fervor that are sought to enlist in the navy or sign contracts with the commercial companies. At the school there is constant practice in distress signalling. The ship in distress is by rule entirely in charge of the situation and must not be interfered with, not spoken to unless in reply to mes- sages. Thus, the Sparks in distress sends out: " S.O.S., K.P.N.," the last three letters being his ship letter. He collects his answers, selects the ship nearest, tells others to stand by and others to proceed. This team-work is exacting, sometimes exciting to distraction. One day a new Sparks related this awful tale of woe: " We have sunk by the head. All on board lost." " Send us a letter about it, then," answered a facetious operator. After two or three months at the school, attending lectures on electromagnetism, wireless engineering, learning the Continental code, the repair of equipment imder difficulties. Sparks goes up for his Ucense. The examination is in deadly earnest, too. He must know as much about Wireless as captains and pilots of ship naviga- tion. A not imimportant requirement of the license is secrecy in respect to all messages. Once the license is granted, if he elects the merchant-ship trade, he signs on with a commercial company at a beginner's salary of thirty dollars a month and all foimd. Then it's ho! and away for the wide ports of romance. He goes as assistant to a chief Sparks, to be sure, but he goes. He explores all the mysteries of the ship, of the seas, and the islands and lands bordering thereupon. The sea becomes his home, with the land as an excuse for stopping now and again. He learns how to walk with a tremendous roll, to speak lightly of mountain waves, to smoke black cigars of Havana, the lighter ones of Sumatra, to drink Madeira wines, to eat green cocoanuts and bananas and yet live; he learns to forget, too, the dusty front of Marseilles, the lonely, dreary weeks aroimd the Cape. War, famine, luxury, shipwreck, are all taken in good part. There was the investigating Sparks who went ashore to see the sights at Tampico. The " static " of the atmosphere was such that he could not talk with friends at sea, the ship was no place to stop, what with the heat, the mess made by the loading of sugar, the noise 56 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK of the winches, and the bustle of getting her ready for sea. Going ashore, Sparks met a mate who told him he should ride up-country to visit the grave of a dead patriot and buried hero. Sparks went to a livery man. Did he have a nice mount? Did he? He had the swiftest, the gentlest, the most docile donkey ever bred outside of Spain. So Sparks mounted and plunged inland, until he reached the graveside, hidden by coarse grass, overrun with ants and scorpions and beetles. He reverently began to copy the inscription in his note-book: "Que sea su juez Dios" (Let God be his Judge) . While Sparks was stooping, better to read the rest, the swiftest, gentlest donkey, possibly being of a different poUtical faith from the patriot, gayly kicked up his heels, tossed poor Sparks to earth, and bent his way homeward. Sparks, failing of finding another mount, reached the city next morning, footsore and worn, to find that his ship had sailed without him. Did he rail at the heartless skipper? Not he. " Let God be his judge," he declared sententiously and set about seeking, without too much concern, a berth on a ship bound for New York, there to report for another ship at the home office. The spirit of voyages never-ending, of adventures impossible, hovers about the traffic-manager's office, whence operators meet and are assigned to ships. " Hello! Jenkins. So you're the man I've been talking to these three years and never yet set eyes upon. That's a great yam you told me down in the Caribbean about the Kingston negro who got a shock walking under the antenna with a steel cane. . . ." " Well! well! well! And this is the sport I landed in the busi- ness. I hear you handed it to the Old Man when he asked you to call up the Don Juan de Austria and beg the loan of the key to the keelson. What was your answer? I remember now. You told him you were busy frying flying-fish on your antenna for supper, and when you got that little job finished, you intended to find out what became of the waste ether dots. I guess he found you weren't so green, at that. . . ." " Boys! look at the bulletin-board! ' The next operator reported at this office for swearing anj^where within three hundred miles of the port of New York will be severely dealt with. All improper conversation among operators must cease.' Listen to this: 'Please note that the s/s Kiruna, call letters S.F.N., of the Rederiaktiebolaget SPARKS OF THE WIRELESS 57 Lulea-Ofoten, has been equipped with wireless apparatus, to be operated by the Societe Anonyme Internationale de Telegraphie Sans FU.' Here's more of the same: ' Please note that the call letter of the s/s Bahia Castillo of the Hamburg sud-Amerikanische Damp- schiffahrts Gesellschaft is D.B.K.' They hand us stuff hke this to remember and then they wonder why fellows get mad and let off steam. . . ." " When I was at Calcutta, I did a good tvun for an old fakir and he took a shine to me. He said he'd let me know when he died. That was three years ago and, will you believe me, this voyage home, a thousand miles at sea, he rung a bell — the astral bell! — right in my cabin, and told me he was dying. He knew the code all right. . . . Well, if you fellows won't believe me. . . . It's true. No ghost story at all. . . ." " Yes, the lad at Fame Point died. They said he had heart trouble. / believe it was pure homesickness, that's what I beheve. . . ." " He was always a queer sort. WTien he got the message of his mother's death, he wrote it right out and started to deliver it to a passenger. He didn't know it was for him, couldn't believe it. You see, his mother had just been planning to have him stop ashore at home with her for a spell around Christmas-time. He had not been home for a year and more. . . ." While the chatter is running along in this wise, a lad comes tramping in, the fresh mists of the sea still chnging about his face. His ship, the Santa Rosalia, has come to port, via Seattle, the Straits of Magellan, Buenos Ayrts, Bordeaux, and Liverpool. She is going into dry dock for two or three weeks. So he is packed ofi to take a passenger-ship to Bermuda. " Glory be! " he shouts, in full joy. This is the first time he has had a passenger-ship for a year. He makes for his cabin on the freighter, expresses some French laces and curio to mother and sister, packs up, and goes to his new ship — is off for flirtations on the sly, to answer foohsh questions in pretty mouths about Wireless. A strapping man comes in from the navy-yard. He is almost nineteen, has just passed his license examination, and is yearning for a ship. He can speak French, so he is assigned to the Themis- tocles, sailing on the morrow for Grecian ports, to carry volimteers to the war. He rushes home to pack. "To the war, mother! Think of the fun I'll have! " What 58 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK mother thinks is something quite different. But these mothers are brave. She slips, unawares, a Uttle book of prayers among his things, sees that he has plenty of clean clothes, kisses her boy, and makes him promise to be good. " And do write me often, son," she begs on the door-step. What letters they are that these mothers getl How their hearts tremble at the reading " Well, we got there and put guns on our ship and they made me a naval operator. We had a fight and they run us ashore, but I sent a wireless and one of our ships came and chased them away. An- other time the Turks got us and put irons on me and I thought they were going to shoot us but they didn't because we got exchanged and now I am back on another ship. So everything is all right. You needn't worry about me though I do wish I had some more clean clothes. ..." It's only when you go to war that a fellow takes a chance. Of course. The sea is safe if you are in a safe ship. All the Sparkses afloat write this assurance home to mother from every port. They leave untold the stories of the brawlers who lie in wait at dark comers, in the foul alley-ways, who strip men of the ship and throw their bodies into the quiet river. They forget about the collision, the blow amidships some foggy night, when a ship goes to the bottom like a rock. Take the case of the steamer Narrung. Sparks had to leave mother the very day before Christmas. It was the fault of the Old Man, who hurried the longshoremen in loading her. But he got paid back for it. After she left Tilbury dock, bound for the Cape and Australia, she had head winds in the Channel and worse ones outside. In the Bay of Biscay the green seas began sweeping the ship from stem to stem. Twenty miles off Ushant, all hands thought she would founder, surely. It was a time to pick your own bur3ang-ground, with a shroud of brine. Her iron decks forward ripped up and crumpled back before the force of those waves like so much tinfoil. Tmly an honest man's weather. There was no turning her about in the teeth of that gale. The Old Man told Sparks to send out his S.O.S. It was freezing cold, so cold that he had to hold one hand to steady the other. The ship was pitching so that his wave metres varied every thirty seconds. But he got his auxiliary set working and shoved out that message just the same. The Bavaria and the Negada answered SPARKS OF THE WIRELESS 59 and this gave the Old Fussy his nerve back. He'd rather drown and go to the bottom than pay salvage. So he began turning that ship about. Before that gale and those waves breaking over, the Narrung reeled so the lookout came just short of dropping from the crow's-nest. There was an hour and twenty minutes of this work and she was got about at last. She proceeded to Graves- end harbor. Sparks had been on duty and without sleep for fifty hours or such matter, but he rolled over the side and went home to spend New Year's with mother — which was almost as good as Christmas, being unexpected. He told mother the captain caught cold, or forgot his watch, or gave some other good reason for putting back. Why worry dear mother? The iron, never-say-die spirit of the Seven Seas perforce cre^s into the blood of Sparks. It is a world of give and take, oftener taking than giving, and one must learn its ways. Thus, when the operators on Sable Island saw the fine ship Eric cast ashore by a wild March tempest, one of their number beat through the breakers aboard of her with a small wireless outfit — she having none — to trans- mit the messages that might yet save her. He braved the waves brejiking over her, worked like a fury, clambered to the masts, strung his antenna, and began sending the messages to the Aberdeen, the Bridgwater, and the Seal, which came and stood by, waiting a chance to salvage the ship, or at least save her three thousand nine hundred tons of pretty Argentine maize. A night and a day this Sparks worked, until the poimding broke the Eric in twain and he had to make a rare race back to shore. Upon the straightaway dangers of the sea are often piled the devious ones of man. Sparks may be set aboard a ship to help save her, in time of distress, because, being old and leaky and unsea- worthy, with a weak hull or a too heavy raigine in her, her owners are ashamed to even ask for insurance. Such vessels are often used in trading about which no questions should, in all fairness, be asked. It may be to the slave coasts or again in sly filibustering expeditions, when arms are needed by one band of patriots to quell the ardor of another such band. In this latter fall. Sparks is useful in transmitting code messages to a friendly Sparks ashore. A certain Sparks wears a sparkling diamond as a souvenir of a certain voyage in a certain wooden tub, fiill of leaks and daylight. 60 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK She left New York to carry vegetables to the starving city of Bruns- wick, Ga. The vegetables were done up in coffin-like cases, safely stowed away in the hold from the observation of a Spanish crew that came aboard at the hour of sailing. It was a long voyage down the coast and so confusing that the captain brought up in the islands near Progresso. Sparks was awakened from the fitful slumber of a seething tropic night and asked to get in touch with the Sparks ashore. This he did. At dawn a swarthy band of little soldiers and politicians swarmed aboard. Some of them came and smoked cigarettes with Sparks and examined " this thing wire." El general bustled into the wireless cabin, while hatches were being broken open below and arms distributed. He wanted a message sent. The fate of a nation hung by it. Sparks could not get his instrument to work. El general danced up and down. " Carrambos! Thees message, it is expect! " Sparks located the trouble. The tiny carbon sihcon detector had been broken by the curious visitors. As he started to explain this to el general, he noted that the little brown man wore a huge flat diamond in his cravat. Sparks demanded it. The dia- mond was carbon, too. El general gave up the diamond and Sparks was able to send and receive in good order. " You one great mans! I you have saved! " cried the general. Sparks also saved the dia- mond. Later he asked the operator on shore when the general would return for his jewelry. " Keep it," was the answer. " His soul is at rest. He will never claim it." The other Sparkses wink slyly when this yam is told. Can it be possible that the ancient and honorable fibbing habit of Jack Tar is inevitably connected with the sea? Odd are the tales cast up by the ether sea. A laborer on Swan Island in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the banana chain to the tropics, had his foot crushed in a tram-car accident. A surgical operation .was necessary, but surgeon there was none. The Sparks of the island wireless station had an idea. He sent out a distress call, far and wide, which was answered by the Ward Line steamer Esperanza, four hundred and twenty miles away. He explained his case. Could the ship's doctor help! The captain and the ship's doctor held a consultation. It would be a pity for the ship to turn from her coiu-se and lose thousands of dollars by the delay. The losing of a man's life would also be a SPARKS OF THE WIRELESS 61 pity. " Let me handle the case by wireless," volunteered the doctor. So he sat himself down in the wireless cabin and sent a call for all details of the case. Then, message by message, he directed the way to deaden the pain, the amputation of the foot, each stroke of the knife, the binding of the arteries to prevent loss of blood, the wash- ing of the woimd with antis^tics. When the operation was over, he kept in touch, by wireless relay from ship to ship, with his patient until danger of blood-poisoning was by. The Crusoe-like life of Sparks ashore in these out-of-the-way comers of the world lacks the changing joys and vicissitudes of Ralph Rover afloat. A daily diet of flaming simsets and simrises, of blue seas and re^lendoit luxuriance of v^etation, has not the con^joisations of even famine and shipwreck. In the sombre north- em stations the life of Sparks is dreary to a detail. Sometimes rest- lessness gets a strangle-hold. It was under such urgence that a message of distress was sent out by a Sparks from the station at Estevan Point, British Columbia. To a vessel answering, he stated that his wife and children were down with the fever and that he needed quinine. When the vessel came off shore and sent out a boat, Sparks kept the crew overtime — ^just talk- ing. As he could not produce the sick family, the wrothy captain reported the matter and Sparks lost his job. But what cared he? A wanderer bom, he wandered to the Fiji Island station, then to Xew Zealand, and finally back to the Pacific coast. The operator at Katella, Fox Island, Alaska, it is related, rather than face a winter alone, contrived to keep sixty men marooned on the island for a spell. The men were there working for a contem- plated railroad when the winter feU too soon, so they could not leave overland. Sparks was glad of their company, so glad that he did not send out a distress message to bring help for them until famine threatened the party. His reluctant S.O.S. brought the old steamer Portland. Then Sparks wrote in his log, " Left alone for the winter," an act which required as much grim courage as that of the c^tain who seals his log with the loss of his ship as the last entry. Sparks meets with real adventures now and then, just like those of the fellows on a lively shore, in this wandering about the world: adventures of the heart, adventures that lead somewhere, that are not at once swallowed up in unfathomable air or trackless waste of 62 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK water. If you are the Sparks of a tramp ship, you visit Oporto, Barcelona, Palermo, Antwerp, Callao, Montreal, Galveston — all the queer names in the geography are down as your ports of call. Always curious maiciens of wondrous beauty come aboard to see the wireless wonder. You let one such put on your ear-phones, you guide her hand at the sending key. How good and sweet she seems, how her presence adorns and purifies that staid, dingy old craft! You are invited ashore to church, to dinner. There are songs at the piano, the air is all sentiment. She seems yet more good and sweet. You tell her so — and there you are! Such matters fall out even more frequently at sea aboard the passenger-ships. Mothers and giggling daughters come trooping merrily along the boat-deck, or the wider, roomier sun-deck. " OhI here's the wireless room. Simply wonderful, isn't it? May we come in? Thanks. What a lot of wire you need to send a wire- less message! How far are we from land? Two miles straight down — isn't that a good joke! So that line aft really doesn't steady the ship? How curious! Just a fishing-line, and the fish are not biting to-day, because it's Friday." While they race along in this vein, you note the quiet, brown- eyed one by the door who doesn't ask a single question. She's the kind of a girl that makes your heart jump. When the others leave, you manage to ask her if she really would not like to stay and watch the wireless work. You exchange names, you write each other after the voyage is over. Finally, you decide to give up this wandering over the seas like a sodden derelict. You get a job ashore and settle down and live like other fellows. Sometimes Sparks quits going to sea for another reason yet. These commonplace happenings at sea, called adventures by lands- men, take a more serious turn at times, have an import altogether uncalculated. A ship grounds in a thick fog on some desolate rock, as in the case of the Ohio in Finlayson Channel. You keep the antenna cracking out your S.O.S. till the deck is awash, till help comes. Then, in the confusion of oaths and cries, of rushing to and fro, of frantic, animal-like struggles for safety, as you are about to take the last boat, you see a helpless mother or a dazed man. You stay to lend a hand, there is a slight, staggering, pitching SPARKS OF THE WIRELESS 63 motion of a ship in her last agonies; waves leap and dance about you; then a dull, sucking roar. . . . Later mother and sweetheart come to bury you, so they say — as Eccles of the Ohio at Altamonte, or PhiUips of the Titanic at Godal- ming — ^where the water flows and the grass is green; perchance a fountained monument is raised in some Battery Park to your undying fame. You are then gone — as say mother and sweetheart — free to wan- der at large, further, in the more mysterious ports of the ether ocean. FANNY HERSELF By Edna Feeber " Mr. Fenger will see you now." Mr. Fenger, general manager, had been a long time about it. This heel-cooling experience was new to Fanny Brandeis. It had always been her privilege to keep others waiting. Still, she felt no resentment as she sat in Michael Fenger's outer office. For as she sat there, waiting, she was getting a distinct impression of this unseen man whose voice she could just hear as he talked over the telephone in his inner office. It was characteristic of Michael Fenger that his personality reached out and touched you before you came into actual contact with the man. Fanny had heard of him long before she came to Haynes-Cooper. He was the genie of that glittering lamp. All through the gigantic plant (she had already met department heads, buyers, merchandise managers) one heard his name, and felt the impress of his mind: " You'll have to see Mr. Fenger about that." " Yes," — pointing to a new conveyor, perhaps, — " that has just been installed. It's a great help to us. Doubles our shipping-room efficiency. We used to use baskets, pulled by a rope. It's Mr. Fenger's idea." Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. Fenger had made it a slogan in the Haynes-Cooper plant long before the German nation forced it into our everyday vocabulary. Michael Fenger was System. He could take a muddle of orders, a jungle of unfilled contracts, a horde of incompetent workers, and of them make a smooth-running and effective unit. Untangling snarls was his pastime. Esprit de corps was his shibboleth. Order and management his idols. And his war-cry was " Results! " It was eleven o'clock when Fanny came into his outer office. The very atmosphere was vibrant with his personality. There hung about the place an air of repressed expectancy. The room was electrically charged with the high-voltage of the man in the inner office. His secretary was a spare, middle-aged, anxious-looking woman in snuff -brown and spectacles; his stenographer a blond young man, also spectacled and anxious; his office boy a stem youth 64 FANNY HERSELF 6S in knickers, who bore no relation to the slangy, gum-chewing, red- headed office boy of the comic sections. The low-pitched, high-powered voice went on inside, talking over the long-distance telephone. Fenger was the kind of man who is always talking to New York when he is in Chicago, and to Chicago when he is in New York. Trains with the word Limited after them were invented for him and his type. A buzzer sounded. It gal- vanized the office boy into instant action. It brought the anxious- looking stenographer to the doorway, note-book in hand, ready. It sent the lean secretary out, and up to Fanny. " Temper," said Fanny, to herself, " or horribly nervous and high-keyed. They jumped like a set of puppets on a string." It was then that the lean secretary had said, " Mr. Fenger will see you now." Fanny was aware of a pleasant little tingle of excitement. She entered the inner office. It was characteristic of Michael Fenger that he employed no cheap tricks. He was not writing as Fanny Brandeis came in. He was not telephoning. He was not doing an3^thing but standing at his desk, waiting for Fanny Brandeis. As she came in he looked at her, through her, and she seemed to feel her mental processes laid open to him as a skilled surgeon cuts through skin and flesh and fat, to lay bare the muscles and nerves and vital organs beneath. He put out his hand. Fanny extended hers. They met in a silent grip. It was like a meeting between two men. Even as he indexed her, Fanny's alert min d was busy docketing, numbering, cataloguing him. They had in common a certain force, a driving power. Fanny seated herself opposite him, in obedience to a gesture. He crossed his legs comfortably and sat back in his big desk chair. A great- bodied man, with powerful square shoulders, a long head, a rugged crest of a nose — the kind you see on the type of Englishman who has the imagination and initiative to go to Canada, or Australia, or America. He wore spectacles, not the fashionable horn-rimmed sort, but the kind with gold ear-pieces. They were becoming, and gave a certain humanness to a face that otherwise would have been too rugged, too strong. A man of forty-five, perhaps. He spoke first. " You're yoimger than I thought." " So are you." " Old inside." 66 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK " So am I." He uncrossed his legs, leaned forward, folded his arms on the desk. " You've been through the plant. Miss Brandeis? " " Yes. Twice. Once with a regular tourist party. And once with the special guide." " Good. Go through the plant whenever you can. Don't stick to your own department. It narrows one." He paused a moment. " Did you think that this opportunity to come to Haynes-Cooper, as assistant to the infants' wear department buyer, was just a piece of luck, augmented by a little pulling on your part? " " Yes." " It wasn't. You were carefully picked by me, and I don't expect to find I've made a mistake. I suppose you know very little about buying and selling infants' wear? " " Less than about almost any other article in the world — at least, in the department store, or mail-order world." " I thought so. And it doesn't matter. I pretty well know your history, which means that I know your training. You're young; you're ambitious; you're experienced; you're imaginative. There's no length you can't go, with these. It just depends on how far- sighted your mental vision is. Now listen. Miss Brandeis: I'm not going to talk to you in millions. The guides do enough of that. But you know we do buy and sell in terms of millions, don't you? Well, our infants' wear department isn't helping to roll up the mil- lions; and it ought to, because there are millions of babies bom every year, and the golden-spoon kind are in the minority. I've decided that the department needs a woman, your kind of a woman. Now, as a rule, I never employ a woman when I can use a man. There's only one other woman filling a really important position in the merchandise end of this business. That's Ella Monahan, head of the glove department, and she's a genius. She is a woman who is limited in every other respect — just average; but she knows glove materials in a way that's uncanny. I'd rather have a man in her place; but I don't happen to know any men glove-geniuses. Tell me, what do you think of that etching? " Fanny tried — and successfully — not to show the jolt her mind had received as she turned to look at the picture to which his finger pointed. She got up and strolled over to it, and she was glad her suit fitted and hung as it did in the back. FANNY HERSELF 67 " I d(Ki't like it particularly. I like it less than any other etching you have here." The walls were hung with them. " Of course, you understand I know nothing about them. But it's too flowery, isn't it, to be good? Too many lines. Like a writer who spoils his effect by using too many words." Fenger came over and stood beside her, staring at the black and white and gray thing in its frame. " I felt that way, too." He stared down at her, then. " Jew? " he asked. A breathless instant. " No," said Fanny Brandeis. Michael Fenger smiled for the first time. Fanny Brandeis would have given everything she had, everything she hoped to be, to be able to take back that monosyllable. She was gripped with horror at what she had done. She had spoken almost mechanically. And yet that monosyllable must have been the fruit of all these months of inward struggle and thought. " Now I begin to imderstand you," Fenger went on. " You've decided to lop off all the excres- cences, eh? Well, I can't say that I blame you. A woman in busi- ness is handicapped enough by the very fact of her sex." He stared at her again. " Too bad you're so pretty." " I'm not! " said Fanny hotly, like a school-girl. " That's a thing that can't be argued, child. Beauty's sub- jective, you know." " I don't see what difference it makes, anyway." " Oh, yes, you do." He stopped. " Or perhaps you don't, after all. I forget how young you are. Well, now. Miss Brandeis, you and your woman's mind, and your masculine business exjierience and sense are to be turned loose on out infants' wear department. The buyer, Mr. Slosson, is going to resent you. Naturally. I don't know whether well get results from you in a month, or six months or a year. Or ever. But something tells me we're going to get them. YouVe lived in a small town most of your life. And we want that small-town viewpoint. D'you think you've got it? " Fanny was on her own ground here. " If knowing the Wisconsin small-town woman, and the Wisconsin farmer woman — and man, too, for that matter — means knowing the Or^on, and Wyoming, and Pomsylvania, and Iowa people of the same place, then I've got it." " Good! " Michael Fenger stood up. " I'm not going to load you down with instructions, or advice. I think I'll let you grope your own way around, and bimip yoijr head a few times. Then 68 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK you'll learn where the low places are. And, Miss Brandeis, remem- ber that suggestions are welcome in this plant. We take suggestions all the way from the elevator starter to the president." His tone was kindly, but not hopeful. Fanny was standing, too, her mental eye on the door. But now she turned to face him squarely. " Do you mean that? " " Absolutely." " Well, then, I've one to make. Your stock boys and stock girls walk miles and miles every day, on every floor of this fifteen-story building. I watched them yesterday, filling up the bins, carrying orders, covering those enormous distances from one bin to another, up one aisle and down the next, to the office, back again. Your floors are concrete, or cement, or some such mixture, aren't they? I just happened to think of the boy who used to deliver our paper on Norris Street, in Winnebago, Wisconsin. He covered his route on roller skates. It saved him an hour. Why don't you put roller skates on your stock boys and girls? " Fenger stared at her. You could almost hear that mind of his working, like a thing on ball bearings. " Roller skates." It wasn't an exclamation. It was a decision. He pressed a buzzer — the srwiff-brown secretary buzzer. " Tell Clancy I want him. Now." He had not glanced up, or taken his eyes from Fanny. She was aware of feeling a little imcomfortable, but elated, too. She moved toward the door. Fenger stood at his desk. " Wait a minute." Fanny waited. Still Fenger did not speak. Finally, " I suppose you know you've earned six months' salary in the last five minutes." Fanny eyed him coolly. " Considering the number of your stock force, the time, energy, and labor saved, including wear and tear on department heads and their assistants, I should say that was a conservative statement." And she nodded pleasantly, and left him. Two days later every stock clerk in the vast plant was equipped with light-weight roller skates. They made a sort of carnival of it at first. There were some spills, too, going aroimd corners, and a little too much hilarity. That wore off in a week. In two we^s their roller skates were part of them; just shop labor-savers. The report presented to Fenger was this: Time and energy saved, fifty-five per cent.; stock staff decreased by one-third. The picturesqueness of it, the almost ludicrous simplicity of the idea afqiealed to the entire FAXX\" HERSELF 69 plant. It tickled the human sense in every one of the ten thousand emi^oyees in that vast organization. In the first week of her asso- ciation with Haynes-Cooper Fanny Brandeis was actually more widely known than men who had worked there for years. The president, Xathan Haynes himsdf, sent for her, chuckling. Nathan Haynes — ^but, then, why stt^ for him? Xathan Haynes had been swallowed, long ago, by this monster plant that he himself had innocently created. You must have viated it, this Gargantuan thing that ^rawls its length in the very center of Chicago, the giant son of a surprised father. It is one of the city's show places, like the stockyards, the .\rt Institute, and Field's. Fifteen years before, a building had been erected to accommodate a prosperous mail-order business. It had been built large and roomy, with plenty of seams, planned amply, it was thought, to allow the boy to grow. It would do for twenty-five years, surely. In ten years Haynes-Cooper was bursting its seams. In twelve it was shamelessly naked, its arms and legs sticking out of its inadequate garments. Xew red brick buildings — another — another. Five stories add^ to this one, six stories to that, a new fifteen-story merchandise bmlding. The firm began to talk in tens of millions. Its stock became gjlt- edged, unattainable. Lucky ones who had bought of it diffidently, discreetly, with modest visions of four and a half j>er cent, in their unimaginative minds, saw their dividends doubling, trebling, quad- rupling, finally soaring gymnastically beyond all reason. Listen to the old guide who (at fifteen a week), takes groups of awed -visitors through the great plant. How he juggles figures; how grandly they roll off his tongue. How glib he is with Nathan Haynes's millions. " This, ladies and gentlemen, is our mail dq)artment. From two thousand to twenty-five hundred pHJunds of maU, comprising over one hundred thousand letters, are received here every day. Yes, madam, I said every day. About half of these letters are orders. Last year the banking department counted one himdred and thirty millions of dollars. One hundred and thirty millions! " He stands there in his ill-fitting coat, and his star, and rubs one bony hand over the other. " Dear me! " says a lady tourist from Idaho, rather inadequateh'. And yet, not so inadequately. What exclamation is there, please, that fits a sum like one hxmdred and thirty millions of anything? Fanny Brandeis, fresh from Winnebago, Wisccmsin, slipped into 70 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK the great scheme of things at the Haynes-Cooper plant like part of a perfectly planned blue-print. It was as though she had been thought out and shaped for this particular corner. And the reason for it was, primarily, Winnebago, Wisconsin. For Haynes-Cooper grew and thrived on just such towns, with their surrounding farms and villages. Haynes-Cooper had their fingers on the pulse and heart of the country as did no other industry. They were close, close. When rugs began to take the place of ingrain carpets it was Haynes- Cooper who first sensed the change. Oh, they had had them in New York years before, certainly. But after all, it isn't New York's artistic progress that shows the development of this nation. It is the thing they are thinking, and doing, and learning in Backwash, Nebraska, that marks time for these United States. There may be a certain significance in the announcement that New York has dropped the Russian craze and has gone in for that quaint Chinese stuff. My dear, it makes the loveliest hangings and decora- tions. When Fifth Avenue takes down its filet lace and eyelet embroidered curtains, and substitutes severe shantung and chaste net, there is little in the act to revolutionize industry, or stir the art- world. But when the Ha3Ties-Cooper company, by referring to its inventory ledgers, learns that it is selling more Alma Gluck than Harry Lauder records; when its statistics show that Tchaikowsky is going better than Irving Berlin, something epochal is happening in the musical progress of a nation. And when the orders from Noose Gulch, Nevada, are for those plain dimity curtains instead of the cheap and gaudy Nottingham atrocities, there is conveyed to the mind a fact of immense, of overwhelming significance. The country has taken a stqi toward civilization and good taste. So. You have a skeleton sketch of Haynes-Cooper, whose feelers reach the remotest dugout in the Yukon, the most isolated cabin in the Rockies, the loneliest ranch-house in Wyoming; the Montana mining shack, the bleak Maine farm, the plantation in Virginia. And the man who had so innocently put life into this monster? A plumpish, kindly-faced man; a bewildered, gentle, unimaginative and somewhat frightened man, fresh-cheeked, eye-glassed. In his suite of offices in the new Administration Building — ^built two years ago — marble and oak throughout — twelve stories, and we're adding three already; offices all two-toned rugs, and leather upholstery, with dim, rich, brown-toned Dutch masterpieces on the walls, he LE MARTELEUR. BY CONSTANTIN MEUNIER FANNY HERSELF 71 sat helpless and defenseless while the torrent of millions rushed, and swirled, and foamed about him. I think he had fancied, fifteen years ago, that he would some day be a fairly proq)erous man; not rich, as riches are counted nowadays, but with a comfortable number of tens of thousands tucked away. Two or three hun- dred thousand; perhaps five himdred thousand! — ^perhaps a — but, nonsense ! Nonsense ! And then the thing had started. It was as when a man idly throws a pebble into a chasm, or shoves a bit of ice with the toe of his boot, and starts a snow-slide that grows as it goes. He had started this avalanche of money, and now it rushed on of its own momentmn, plunging, rolling, leaping, crashing, and as it swept on it gathered rocks, trees, stones, houses, everything that lay in its way. It wcis beyond the power of himoan hand to stop this tumbling, roaring slide. In the midst of it sat Nathan Hasmes, deafened, stunned, terrified at the immensity of what he had done. He began giving away huge sums, incredible sums. It piled up faster than he could give it away. And so he sat there in the office himg with the dim old masterpieces, and tried to keep simple, tried to keq> sane, with that atisterity that only mad wealth can afford — or bitter poverty. He caused the land about the plant to be laid out in sunken gardens and baseball fields and tennis courts, so that one approached this monster of commerce through enchanted groimds, glowing with tulips and heady hyacinths in ^ring, with roses in June, blazing with salvia and golden-glow and asters in autumn. There was something apologetic about these groimds. This, then, was the environment that Fanny Brandeis had chosen. On the face of things you would have said she had chosen well. The inspiration of the roller skates had not been merely a lucky flash. That idea had been part of the consistent whole. Her mind was her mother's mind raised to the «th power, and enhanced by the genius she was trying to crush. Refusing to die, it found expres- sion in a hundred brilliant plans, of which the roller-skate idea was only one. THE EMPORIUM By Herbert George Wells When Kipps left New Romney, with a small yellow tin box, a still smaller portmanteau, a new umbrella, and a keepsake half- sixpence, to become a draper, he was a youngster of fourteen, thin, with whimsical drakes' tails at the poll of his head, smallish features, and eyes that were sometimes very light and sometimes very dark, gifts those of his birth; and by the nature of his training he was indistinct in his speech, confused in his mind, and retreating in his manners. Inexorable fate had appointed him to serve his country in commerce, and the same national bias towards private enterprise and leaving bad alone, which entrusted his general education to Mr. Woodrow, now indentured him firmly into the hands of Mr. Shalford, of the Folkestone Drapery Bazaar. Apprenticeship is still the recognized Enghsh way to the distributing branch of the social service. If Mr. Kipps had been so unfortunate as to have been born a German he might have been educated in an elaborate and costly special school (" over-educated-crammed-up " — Old Kipps) to fit him for his end — such being their pedagogic way. He might . . . But why make unpatriotic reflections in a novel? There was nothing pedagogic about Mr. Shalford. He was an irascible, energetic little man, with hairy hands, for the most part under his coat-tails, a long, shiny, bald head, a pointed, aquiline nose a little askew, and a neatly trimmed beard. He walked lightly and with a confident jerk, and he was given to humming. He had added to exceptional business "push," bankruptcy under the old dispensation, and judicious matrimony. His establishment was now one of the most considerable in Folkestone, and he insisted on every inch of frontage by alternate stripes of green and yellow down the houses over the shops. His shops were numbered 3, S and 7 on the street, and on his billheads 3 to 7. He encoimtered the abashed and awe-stricken Kipps with the praises of his system and himself. He spread himself out behind his desk with a grip on the lapel of his coat and made Kipps a sort of speech. " We expect y'r to work, y'r know, and we expect y'r to study our interests," explained Mr. 72 THE EMPORIUM 73 Shalford in the regal and commercial plural. " Our system here is the best system y'r could have. I made it, and I ought to know. I began at the very bottom of the ladder when I was fourteen, and there isn't a stq) in it I dont know. Not a step. Mr. Booch in the desk will give y'r the card of rules and fines. Jest wait a minute." He pretended to be busy with some dusty memoranda under a paper- weight, while Kipps stood in a sort of paralysis of awe regarding his new master's oval baldness. " Two thous'n' three forty-seven pounds," whispered Mr. Shalford audibly, feigning forgetfulness of Kij^. Clearly a place of great transactions! Mr. Shalford rose, and handing Kipps a blotting pad and an ink- pot to carry — ^mere symbols of servitude, for he made no use of them — emerged into a counting-house where three clerks had been feverishly busy ever ance his door handle had turned. " Booch," said Mr. Shalford, " 'ave y'r copy of the rules? " and a down-trodden, shabbly little old man, with a ruler in one hand and a quill pen in his mouth, silently held out a small book with green and yellow covers, mainly devoted, as Kipp)s presently discovered, to a voracious system of fines. He became acutely aware that his hands were full, and that everybody was staring at him. He hesitated a moment before putting the ink-pot down to free a hand. " Mustn't fumble like that," said Mr. Shalford as Kipps pocketed the rules. " Won't do here. Come along, come along," and he cocked his coat-tails high, as a lady might hold up her dress, and led the way into the shop. A vast interminable place it seemed to Kipps, with unending shining counters and innmnerable faultlessly dressed yovmg men and presently Houri-like yoimg women staring at him. Here there was a long vista of gloves dangling from overhead rods, there rib- bons and baby-linen. A short young lady in black mittens was making out the account of a customer, and was clearly confused in her addition by Shalford's eagle eye. A thick-set young man with a bald head and a round, very wise face, who was profoundly absorbed in adjusting all the empty chairs down the counter to absolutely equal distances, woke out of his preoccupation and answered respectfully to a few Napoleonic and quite imnecessary remarks from Ms employer. Kipps was told that this young man's name was Mr. Buggins, and that he was to do whatever Mr. Buggins told him to do. 74 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK They came round a comer into a new smell, which was destined to be the smell of Kipps'' life for many years, the vague, distinctive smell of Manchester goods. A fat man with a large nose jumped — actually jumped — at their appearance, and began to fold a pattern of damask in front of him exactly like an automaton that is sud- denly set going. " Carshot, see to this boy to-morrow," said the master. " See he don't fumble. Smart'n 'im up." " Yussir," said Carshot fatly, glanced at Kipps, and resumed his pattern-folding with extreme zeal. " Whatever Mr. Carshot says y'r to do, ye do" said Mr. Shal- ford, trotting onward; and Carshot blew out his face with an ap- pearance of relief. They crossed a large room full of the strangest things Kipps had ever seen. Ladylike figures, surmounted by black wooden knobs in the place of the refined heads one might have reasonably expected, stood about with a lifelike air of conscious fashion. " Costume room," said Shalford. Two voices engaged in some sort of argument — " I can assure you. Miss Mergle, you are entirely mistaken — entirely, in supposing I should do anything so unwomanly," — sank abruptly, and they dis- covered two young ladies, taller and fairer than any of the other young ladies, and with black trains to their dresses, who were en- gaged in writing at a little table. Whatever they told him to do, Kipps gathered he was to do. He was also, he understood, to do whatever Carshot and Booch told him to do. And there were also Buggins and Mr. Shalford. And not to forget or fumble! They descended into a cellar called " The Warehouse," and Kipps had an optical illusion of errand boys fighting. Some aerial voice said, " Teddy! " and the illusion passed. He looked again, and saw quite clearly that they were packing parcels and always would be, and that the last thing in the world that they would or could possibly do was to fight. Yet he gathered from the remarks Mr. Shalford addressed to their busy backs that they had been fighting — no doubt at some past period of their lives. Emerging in the shop again among the litter of toys and what are called " fancy articles," Shalford withdrew a hand from beneath his coat-tails to indicate an overhead change-carrier. He entered into elaborate calculations to show how many minutes in one year THE EMPORIUM 75 were saved thereby, and lost himself among the figures. " Seven timis eight seven nine — was it? Or seven eight nine? Now, now I Why, when I was a boy yoiu- age I c'd do a sum like that as soon as hear it. Well soon get y'r into better shape than that. IMake you Fishent. Well, y'r must take my word, it comes to pounds and pounds saved in the year — ^pounds and poimds. System! System everywhere. Fishency." He went on murmiuing " Fishency " and " System " at intervals for some time. They passed into a yard, and Mr. Ghalford waved his hand to his three delivery vans all striped green and yellow — " uniform — green, yell'r — System." All over the premises were pinned absurd little cards. " This door locked after 7.30— By order, Edwin Shal- ford," and the like. Mr. Shalford always wrote " By order," though it conveyed no earthly meaning to him. He was one of those people who collect technicalities upon them as the Reduvius bug collects dirt. He was the sort of man who is not only ignorant, but absolutely incapable of English. When he wanted to say he had a six-penny-ha'penny longcloth to sell, he put it thus to startled customers: " Can DO you one, six half if y' like." He always omitted pronouns and article and so forth; it seemed to him the very essence of the efficiently businesslike. His only preposition was " as " or the compound " d& per." He abbreviated every word he could, he would have con- sidered himself the laughing-stock of Wood Street if he had chanced to ^ell socks in any way but " sox." But, on the other hand, if he saved words here, he wasted them there: he never acknowledged an order that was not an esteemed favor, nor sent a pattern without begging to submit it. He never stipulated for so many months' credit, but bought in November " as Jan." It was not only words he abbreviated in his London communications. In paying his whole- salers his " System " admitted of a constant error in the discount of a penny or twopence, and it " facilitated business," he alleged, to ignore odd pence in the cheques he wrote. His ledger clerk was so struck with the beauty of this part of the System that he started a private one on his own account with the stamp box, that never came to Shalford's knowledge. This admirable British merchant would glow with a particular pride of intellect when writing his London orders. " Ah! do y'r think you'll ever be able to write London orders? " 76 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK he would say with honest pride to Kipps, waiting impatiently long after closing time to take these triumphs of commercial efficiency to post, and so end the interminable day. Kipps shook his head, anxious for Mr. Shalford to get on. "Now, here, f example, I've written — see? — ' 1 piece 1 in. cott. blk, elas. 1/ or.' What do I mean by that or, eh? — d'ye know? " Kipps promptly hadn't the faintest idea. " And then, ' 2 ea. silk net as per patts herewith '; ea., eh? " " Dunno, sir." It was not Mr. Shalford's way to explain things. " Dear, dear! Pity you couldn't get some c'mercial education at your school. 'Stid of all this lit'ry stuff. Well, my boy, if y' don't 'ussel a bit y'll never write London orders, that's pretty plain. Jest stick stamps on all those letters, and mind y'r stick 'em right way up, and try and profit a little more by the opportunities your aunt and imcle have provided ye. Can't say what'll happen t'ye if ye don't." And Kipps, tired, hungry, and belated, set about stamping with vigor and dispatch. " Lick the envelope," said Mr. Shalford, " lick the envelope," as though he grudged the youngster the postage-stamp gum. " It's the little things moimt up," he would say; and, indeed, that was his philosophy of life — to bustle and save, always to bustle and save. His political creed linked Reform, which meant nothing, with Efficiency, which meant a sweated service, and Economy, which meant a sweated expenditure, and his conc^tion of a satisfactory municipal life was to " keep down the rates." Even his religion was to save his soul, and to preach a similar cheese-paring to the world. THE ROMANCE OF A BUSY BROKER By O. Heney Pitcher, confidential clerk in the office of Har\'ey Maxwell, broker, allowed a look of mild interest and surprise to visit his usually expressionless countenance when his employer briskly entered at half-past nine in company with his young lady stenographer. With a snappy " Good-morning, Pitcher," Maxwell dashed at his desk as though he were intending to leap over it, and then plimged into the great heap of letters and telegrams waiting there for him. The yoimg lady had been ^Maxwell's stenographer for a year. She was beautiful in a way that was decidedly unstenographic. She forewent the pomp of the alluring pompadour. She wore no chains, bracelets or lockets. She had not the air of being about to accept an invitation to luncheon. Her dress was grey and plain, but it fitted her figure with fidelity and discretion. In her neat black turban hat was the gold-green wing of a macaw. On this morning she was softly and shyly radiant. Her eyes were dreamily bright, her cheeks genxiine peachblow, her expression a happy one, tinged with reminiscence. Pitcher, still mildly curious, noticed a difference in her ways this morning. Instead of going straight into the adjoining room, where her desk was, she lingered, slightly irresolute, in the outer office. Once she moved over by Maxwell's desk, near enough for him to be aware of her presence. The machine sitting at that desk was no longer a man; it was a busy New York broker, movedi by buzzing wheels and xm- coiling springs. " Well — ^what is it? Anything? " asked MaxweU sharply. His opened mail lay Hke a bank of stage snow on his crowded desk. His keen grey eye, impersonal and brusque, flashed upon her half impatiently. " Nothing," answered the stenographer, moving away with a little smile. " Mr. Pitcher," she said to the confidential clerk, " did Mr. Max- well say ans^thing yesterday about engaging another stenographer? " 77 78 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK " He did," answered Pitcher. " He told me to get another one. I notified the agency yesterday afternoon to send over a few samples this morning. It's 9.4S o'clock, and not a single picture hat or piece of pineapple chewing-gimi has showed up yet." " I will do the work as usual, then," said the young lady, " until some one comes to fill the place." And she went to her desk at once and hung the black turban hat with the gold-green macaw wing in its accustomed place. He who has been denied the spectacle of a busy Manhattan broker during a rush of business is handicapped for the profession of anthropology. The poet sings of the " crowded hour of glorious life." The broker's hour is not only crowded, but the minutes and seconds are hanging to all the straps and packing both front and rear platforms. And this day was Harvey Maxwell's busy. day. The ticker began to reel out jerkily its fitful coils of tape, the desk telephone had a chronic attack of buzzing. Men began to throng into the office and call at him over the railing, jovially, sharply, viciously, excitedly. Messenger boys ran in and out with messages and telegrams. The clerks in the office jumped about like sailors during a storm. Even Pitcher's face relaxed into something resembling animation. On the Exchange there were hurricanes and landslides and snow- storms and glaciers and volcanoes, and those elemental disturbances were reproduced in miniature in the brokers' offices. Maxwell shoved his chair against the wall and transacted business after the manner of a toe dancer. He jumped from ticker to 'phone, from desk to door, with the trained agility of a harlequin. In the midst of this growing and important stress the broker became suddenly aware of a high-rolled fringe of golden hair under a nodding canopy of velvet and ostrich tips, an imitation sealskin sacque, and a string of beads as large as hickory nuts, ending near the floor with a silver heart. There was a self-possessed young lady connected with these accessories; and Pitcher was there to construe her. " Lady from the Stenographer's Agency to see about the posi- tion," said Pitcher. Maxwell turned half around, with his hands full of papers and ticker tape. " What position? " he asked, with a frown. THE ROMANCE OF A BUSY BROKER 79 •' Position of stenograjrfier," said Pitcher. ' You told me yes- terday to call them up and have one sent over this morning."' " You are losing your mind, Pitcher," said ^Maxwell. " ^Miy should I have given you any such instructions? Miss Leslie has given perfect satisfaction during the year she has been here. The place is hers as long as she chooses to retain it. There's no place open here, madam. Countermand that order with the agency, Pitcher, and don't bring any more of 'em in here." The sUver heart left the office, swinging and banging itself inde- p)endently against the office furniture as it indignantly departed. Pitcher seized a moment to remark to the bookkeeper that the " old man " seemed to get more absent-minded and forgetful every day of the world. The rush and pace of business grew fiercer and faster. On the floor they were pounding half a dozen stocks in which Maxwell's customers were heavy investors. Orders to buy and sell were coming and going as swift as the ffight of swallows. Some of his own hold- ings were imjjeriUed, and the man was working like some high-geared, delicate, strong machine — ^strung to full tension, going at full speed, accurate, never hesitating, with the prof>er word and decision and act ready and prompt as clockwork. Stocks and bonds, loans and mortgages, margins and securities — ^here was a world of finance, and there was no room in it for the human world or the world of nature. When the limcheon hour drew necir there came a slight lull in the uproar. Maxwell stood by his desk with his hands fuU of telegrams and memoranda, with a fovmtain j>en over his right ear and his hair hanging in disorderly strings over his forehead. His window was open, for the beloved janitress Spring had timied on a httle warmth through the waking registers of the earth. And through the window came a wandering — perhaps a lost — odor — a delicate, sweet odor of lilac that fixed the broker for a moment immovable. For this odor belonged to Miss Leslie ; it was her own, and hers only. The odor brought her vividly, almost tangibly, before him. The world of finance dwindled suddenly to a speck. And she was in the next room — twenty steps away. " By George, 111 do it now," said Maxwell, half aloud. " 111 ask her now. I wonder I didn't do it long ago." 80 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK He dashed into the inner office with the haste of a short trying to cover. He charged upon the desk of the stenographer. She looked up at him with a smile. A soft pink crept over her cheek, and her eyes were kind and frank. Maxwell leaned one elbow on her desk. He still clutched fluttering papers with both hands and the pen was above his ear. " Miss Leslie," he began hurriedly, " I have but a moment to spare. I want to say something in that moment. Will you be my wife? I haven't had time to make love to you in the ordinary way, but I really do love you. Talk quick, please — those fellows are clubbing the stuffing out of Union Pacific." " Oh, what are you talking about? " exclaimed the young lady. She rose to her feet and gazed upon him, round-eyed. " Don't you understand? " said Maxwell, restively. " I want you to marry me. I love you, Miss Leslie. I wanted to tell you, and I snatched a minute when things had slackened up a bit. They're calling me for the 'phone now. Tell 'em to wait a minute, Pitcher. Won't you, Miss Leslie? " The stenographer acted very queerly. At first she seemed over- come with amazement; then tears flowed from her wondering eyes; and then she smiled sunnily through them, and one of her arms slid tenderly about the broker's neck. " I know now," she said, softly. " It's this old business that has driven everything else out of your head for the time. I was fright- ened at first. Don't you remember, Harvey? We were married last evening at 8 o'clock in the Little Church Around the Comer." THE WOMAN AND HER BONDS By Edwin Lefevke It seemed to Fullerton F. Colwell, of the famous Stock-Exchange house of Wilson & Graves, that he had done his full duty by his friend Harry Himt. He was a director in a half-score of companies — financial debutantes which his firm had " brought out " and over whose stock-market destinies he preaded. His partners left a great deal to him, and even the clerks in the office ungrudgingly acknowl- edged that Mr. Colwell was " the hardest-worked man in the place, barring none " — an admission that means much to those who know it is always the downtrodden clerks who do all the work and their employers who take all the profit and credit. Possibly the important yoimg men who did aU the work in Wilson & Graves' office bore witness to Mr. Colwell's industry so cheerfully, because Mr. Colwell was ever inquiring, very courteously, and, above all, sympathetically, into the amount of work each man had to perform, and suggesting, the next moment, that the laborious amoimt in question was indis- putably excessive. Also, it was he who raised salaries; wherefore he was the most charming as well as the busiest man there. Of his partners, John G. Wilson was a consmnptive, forever going from one health resort to another, devoting his millions to the purchase of railroad tickets in the hope of out-racing Death. George B. Graves was a dyspeptic, nervous, irritable, and, to boot, penurious; a man whose chief recommendation at the time Wilson formed the firm had been his cheerful willingness to do all the dirty work. Frederick R. Denton was busy in the " Board Room " — the Stock Exchange — all day, executing orders, keeping watch over the market behavior of the stocks with which the firm was identified, and from time to time hearing things not meant for his ears, being the truth regarding Wilson & Graves. But Fullerton F. Colwell had to do everything — in the stock market and in the office. He conducted the manipu- lation of the Wilson & Graves stocks, took charge of the unnefarious part of the numerous pools formed by the firm's customers — ^Mr. Graves attending to the other details — and had a hand in the actual management of various corporations. Also, he conferred with a By permission, from Wall Street Stories, by Edwin Lefevre. Copjrright, 1900, 1901, by Harper & Bros. 6 81 82 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK dozen people daily — chiefly " big people," in Wall Street parlance — who were about to " put through " stock-market " deals." He had devoted his time, which was worth thousands, and his brain, which was worth millions, to disentangling his careless friend's affairs, and when it was all over and every claim adjusted, and he had refused the executor's fees to which he was entitled, it was found that poor Harry Hunt's estate not only was free from debt, but consisted of $38,000 in cash, deposited in the Trolleyman's Trust Company, sub- ject to Mrs. Hunt's order, and drawing interest at the rate of 2J4 per cent, per annum. He had done his work wonderfully well, and, in addition to the cash, the widow owned an unencumbered house Harry had given her in his lifetime. Not long after the settlement of the estate Mrs. Hunt called at his office. It was a very busy day. The bears were misbehaving — and misbehaving mighty successfully. Alabama Coal & Iron — the firm's great specialty — ^was under heavy fire from " Sam " Sharpe's Long Tom as well as from the room-traders' Maxims. All that Col- well could do was to instruct Denton, who was on the ground, to " support " Ala. C. & I. sufficiently to discourage the enemy, and not enough to acquire the company's entire capital stock. He was him- self at that moment practising that peculiar form of financial dis- simulation which amoimts to singing blithely at the top of your voice when your beloved sackful of gold has been ripped by bearpaws and the coins are pouring out through the rent. Every quotation was of importance; a half-inch of tape might contain an epic of disaster. It was not wise to fail to read every printed character. " Good morning, Mr. Colwell." He ceased to pass the tape through his fingers, and turned quickly, almost apprehensively, for a woman's voice was not heard with pleasure at an hour of the day when distractions were imdesirable, " Ah! good morning, Mrs. Hunt," he said, very politely. " I am very glad indeed to see you. And how do you do? " He shook hands, and led her, a bit ceremoniously, to a huge arm-chair. His manners endeared him even to the big Wall Street operators, who were chiefly interested in the terse speech of the ticker. " Of course, you are very well, Mrs. Hunt. Don't tell me you are not." " Ye-es," hesitatingly. " As well as I can hope to be since — since " THE WOMAN AND HER BONDS 83 " Time alone, dear Mrs. Hunt, can help us. You must be very brave. It is what he would have Uked.'"' " Yes, I know," she sighed. " I suppose I must." There was a silence. He stood by, deferentially sympathetic. " Ticky-ticky-ticky-tick," said the ticker. What did it mean, in figures? Reduced to dollars and cents, what did the last three brassy taps say? Perhaps the bears were storming the Alabama Coal & Iron intrenchments of " scaled buying orders "; f>erhap)S Colwell's trusted lieutenant, Fred Denton, had repulsed the enemy. Who was winning? A g)asm, as of pain, passed over ]Mr. Fullerton F. Colwells grave face. But the next moment he said to her, dightly consdence-strickenly, as if he reproached himself for thinking of the stock market in her presence: " You must not permit yourself to brood, Mrs. Hunt. You know what I thought of Harry, and I need not teU you how glad I shall be to do what I may, for his sake, Mrs. Hunt, and for yoxu" own." " Ticky-ticky-ticky-tick / " repeated the ticker. To avoid listening to the voluble little machine, he went on: " Believe me, Mrs. Hunt, I shall be only too glad to serve you." " You are so kind, Islr. Colwell," murmured the widow; and after a pause: " I came to see you about that mtmey." " Yes? " " They tell me in the trust company that if I leave the money there without touching it III mate S79 a month." " Let me see; yes; that is about what you may expect." " Well, Mr. ColweU, I can't live on that. Willie's school costs me $50, and then there's Edith's clothes," she went on, with an air which implied that as for herself she wouldn't care at all. " You see, he was so indulgent, and they are used to so much. Of course, it's a blessing we have the house; but taxes take up so much; and — isn't there some way of investing the money so it could bring more? " " I might buy some bonds for you. But for your principal to be absolutely safe at all times, you wiU have to invest in very high- grade securities, which will return to you about 3^ per cent. That would mean, let's see, SllO a month." " And Harry spent S 10.000 a year," she murmured complainingly. " Hany was always — er — rather extravagant." " Well, I'm glad he enjoyed himself while he Uved," she said. 84 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK quickly. Then, after a pause: " And, Mr. Colwell, if I should get tired of the bonds, could I always get my money back? " " You could always find a ready market for them. You might sell them for a little more or for a little less than you paid." " I shouldn't like to sell them," she said, with a business air, " for less than I paid. What would be the sense? " " You are right, Mrs. Himt," he said, encouragingly. " It wouldn't be very profitable, would it? " " Ticky-ticky-ticky-ticky-ticky-ticky-tickl " said the ticker. It was whirring away at a furious rate. Its story is always interesting when it is busy. And Colwell had not looked at the tape in fully five minutes! " Couldn't you buy something for me, Mr. Colwell, that when I came to sell it I could get more than it cost me? " " No man can guarantee that, Mrs. Hunt." " I shouldn't like to lose the little I have," she said, hastily. " Oh, there is no danger of that. If you will give me a check for $35,000, leaving $3000 with the trust company for emergencies, I shall buy some bonds which I feel reasonably certain will advance in price within a few months." " Ticky-ticky-ticky-tick," interrupted the ticker. In some inex- plicable way it seemed to him that the brassy sound had an ominous ring, so he added: " But you will have to let me know promptly, Mrs. Hunt. The stock market, you see, is not a polite institution. It waits for none, not even for your sex." " Gracious me, must I take the money out of the bank to-day and bring it to you? " " A check will do." He began to drum on the desk nervously with his fingers, but ceased abruptly as he became aware of it. " Very well, I'll send it to you to-day. I know you're very busy, so I won't keep you any longer. And you'll buy good, cheap bonds for me? " " Yes, Mrs. Hunt." " There's no danger of losing, is there, Mr. Colwell? " " None whatever. I have bought some for Mrs. Colwell, and I would not run the slightest risk. You need have no fear about them." " It's exceedingly kind of you, Mr. Colwell. I am more grateful than I can say. I — I " " The way to please me is not to mention it, Mrs. Hunt. I am THE WOMAN AND HER BONDS 85 going to try to make some money for you, so that you can at least double the income from the trust company." " Thanks, ever so much. Of course, I know you are thoroughly familiar with such things. But I've heard so much about the mcmey everybody loses in Wall Street that I was half afraid." " Not when you buy good bonds, Mrs. Hunt." " Good morning, Mr. Colwell." " Good morning, Mrs. Hunt. Remember, whenever I may be of service you are to let me know immediately." " Oh, thank you so much, Mr. Colwell. Good morning." " Good morning, Mrs. Hunt." Mrs. Hunt sent him a check for $35,000, and Colwell bought 100 five-per-cent. gold bonds of the Manhattan Electric Light, Heat & Power Company, paying 96 for them. " These bonds," he wrote to her, " will surely advance in price, and when they touch a good figure I shall sell a part, and keep the balance for you as an investment. The operation is partly sp>ecu- lative, but I assure you the money is safe. You will have an oppor- tunity to increase your original capital and yoiu- entire fimds will then be invested in these same bonds— Manhattan Electric Ss — as many as the money will buy. I hope within six months to secure for you an income of twice as much as you have been receiving from the trust company." The next morning she called at his office. " Good morning, Mrs. Hunt. I trust you are well." " Good morning, Mr. Colwell. I know I am an awful bother to you, but " " You are greatly mistaken, Mrs. Hunt." " You are very kind. You see, I don't exactly understand about those bonds. I thought you could tell me. I'm so stupid," archly. " I won't have you prevaricate about yourself, Mrs. Himt. Now, you gave me §35,000, didn't you? " " Yes." Her tone indicated that she granted that much and nothing more. " Well, I opened an account for you with our firm. You were credited with the amount. I then gave an order to buy one hundred bonds of $1000 each. We paid 96 for them." " I don't follow you quite, Mr. Colwell. I told you " — another arch smile — " I was so stupid! " 86 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK " It means that for each $1000-bond $960 was paid. It brought the total up to $96,000." " But I only had $35,000 to begin with. You don't mean I've made that much, do you? " "Not yet, Mrs. Hunt. You put in $35,000; that was your margin, you know; and we put in the other $61,000 and kept the bonds as security. We owe you $35,000, and you owe us $61,000, and " " But — I know you'll laugh at me, Mr. Colwell — ^but I really can't help thinking it's something like the poor people you read about, who mortgage their houses, and they go on, and the first thing you know some real-estate agent owns the house and you have nothing. I have a friend, Mrs. Stillwell, who lost hers that way," she fin- ished, corroboratively. " This is not a similar case, exactly. The reason why you use a margin is that you can do much more with the money that way than if you bought outright. It protects your broker against a depre- ciation in the security purchased, which is all he wants. In this case you theoretically owe us $61,000, but the bonds are in your name, and they are worth $96,000, so that if you want to pay us back, all you have to do is to order us to sell the bonds, return the money we have advanced, and keep the balance of your margin; that is, of your original sum." " I don't understand why I should owe the firm. I shouldn't mind so much owing you, because I know you'd never take advantage of my ignorance of business matters. But I've never met Mr. Wilson nor Mr. Graves. I don't even know how they look." " But you know me," said Mr. Colwell, with patient courtesy. " Oh, it isn't that I'm afraid of being cheated, Mr. Colwell," she said hastily and reassuringly; " but I don't wish to be under obliga- tions to any one, particularly utter strangers; though, of course, if you say it is all right, I am satisfied." " My dear Mrs. Hunt, don't worry about this matter. We bought these bonds at 96. If the price should advance to 110, as I think it will, then you can sell three-fifths for $66,000, pay us back $61,000, and keep $5000 for emergencies in savings banks drawing 4 per cent, interest, and have in addition 40 bonds which will pay you $2000 a year." " That would be lovely. And the bonds are now 96? " THE WOMAN AND HER BONDS 87 " Yes; you will always find the price in the financial page of the new^apers, where it says BONDS. Look for Man. Elec. 5s," and he showed her. " Oh, thanks, ever so much. Of course, I am a great bother, I know " " You are nothing of the kind, Mrs. Hunt. I'm only too glad to be of the slightest use to you." Mr. Colwell, busy with several important deals, did not follow closely the fluctuations in the price of Manhattan Electric Light, Heat & Power Company Ss. The fact that there had been any change at all was made clear to him by Mrs. Hunt. She called a few days after her first visit, with p>ertiu:bation vrritten large on her face. Also, she wore the semi-resolute look of a person who expects to hear unacceptable excuses. " Good morning, Mr. Colwell." " How do you do, Mrs. Hunt? Well, I hope." " Oh, I am well enough. I wish I could say as much for my financial matters." She had acquired the phrase from the financial reports which she had taken to reading rehgiously every day. " Why, how is that? " " They are 95 now," she said, a trifle accusingly. " Who are they, pray, Mrs. Himt? " in surprise. " The bonds. I saw it in last night's paper." Mr. Colwell smiled. Mrs. Hunt almost became indignant at his levity. " Don't let that worry you, Mrs. Himt. The bonds are all right. The market is a trifle dull; that's all." " A friend," she said, very slowly, " who knows all about Wall Street, told me last night that it made a difference of $1000 to me." " So it does, in a way; that is, if you tried to sell your bonds. But as you are not going to do so imtU they show you a handsome profit, you need not worry. Don't be concerned about the matter, I beg of you. WTien the time comes for you to sell the bonds 111 let you know. Never mind if the price goes off a point or two. You are amply protected. Even if there should be a panic 111 see that you are not sold out, no matter how low the price goes. You are not to worry about it; in fact, you are not to think about it at all." " Oh, thanks, ever so much. Mr. Colwell. I didn't sleep a wink last night. But I knew -" 88 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK A clerk came in with some stock certificates and stopped short. He wanted Mr. Colwell's signature in a hurry, and at the same time dared not interrupt. Mrs. Hunt thereupon rose and said: " Well, I won't take up any more of your time. Good morning, Mr. Colwell. Thanks ever so much." " Don't mention it, Mrs. (Himt. Good morning. You are going to do very well with those bonds if you only have patience." " Oh, I'll be patient now that I know all about it; yes, indeed. And I hope your prophecy will be fulfilled. Good morning, Mr. Colwell." Little by little the bonds continued to decline. The syndicate in charge was not ready to move them. But Mrs. Hunt's unnamed friend — her Cousin Emily's husband — who was employed in an up- town bank, did not know all the particulars of that deal. He knew the Street in the abstract, and had accordingly implanted the seed of insomnia in her quaking soul. Then, as he saw values decline, he did his best to make the seed grow, fertilizing a natiu-ally rich soil with ominous hints and head-shakings and with phrases that made her firmly believe he was gradually and considerately pre- paring her for the worst. On the third day of her agony Mrs. Hunt walked into Colwell's office. Her face was pale and she looked dis- tressed. Mr. Colwell sighed involuntarily — a. scarcely perceptible and not very impolite sigh — and said: " Good morning Mrs. Hunt." She nodded gravely and, with a little gasp, said, tremulously: " The bonds! " " Yes? What about them? " She gasped again, and said: " The p-p-papers! " " What do you mean, Mrs. Hunt? " She dropped into a chair nervously, as if exhausted. After a pause she said: " It's in all the papers. I thought the Herald might be mistaken, so I bought the Tribune and the Times and the Sun. But no. It was the same in all. It was," she added tragically, " 93 1 " " Yes? " he said, smilingly. The smile did not reassure her; it irritated her and aroused her suspicions. By him, of all men, should her insomnia be deemed no laughing matter. " Doesn't that mean a loss of $3000? " she asked. There was a deny-it-if-you-dare inflection in her voice of which she was not con- scious. Her cousin's husband had been a careful gardener. THE WOMAN AND HER BONDS 89 " No, because you are not going to sell your bonds at 93, but at 1 10, or thereabouts." " But if I did want to sell the bonds now, wouldn't I lose $3000? " she queried, rhaJlengingly. Then she hastened to answer herself: " Of course I would, Mr. Colwell. Even I can tell that." " You certainly would, Mrs. Hunt; but " " I knew I was right," with irrqjressible triumph. " But you are not going to sell the bonds." " Of coiurse, I don't want to, because I can't afford to lose any maaey, much less $3000. But I don't see how I can help losing it. I was warned from the first," she said, as if that made it worse. '" I certainly had no business to risk my all.' She had waived the right to blame some one else, and there was something consciously just and judicial about her attitude that was eloquent. Mr. Colwell was moved by it. " You can have your money back, Mrs. Himt, if you widi it," he told her, quite unprofessionally. " You seem to worry about it so much." " Oh, I am not worrying, exactly; only, I do wish I hadn't bought — I mean, the money was so safe in the Trolleyman's Trust Company, that I can't help thinking I might just as well have let it Stay where it was, even if it didn't bring me in so much. But, of course, if j'ou want me to leave it here," she said, very slowly to give Mm every opportunity to contradict her, " of coiirse, I'll do just as you say." " My dear Mrs. Himt," Colwell said, very politely, " my only desire is to please you and to help you. UTien you buy bonds you must be prepared to be patient. It may take months before you will be able to sell yoiurs at a profit, and I don't know how low the price will go in the meantime. Nobody can teU you that, because nobody knows. But it need make no difference to you whether the bonds go to 90, or even to 85, which is unlikely." " Why, how can you say so, Mr. ColweU? If the bonds go to 90, 111 lose $6000 — ^my friend said it was one thousand for every number down. And at 85 that would be " — counting on her fingers — " eleven niunbers, that is, eleven — thousand — doUarsf " And she gazed at him, awe-strickenly, reproachfully. " How can you say it would make no difference, Mr. QilweU? " Mr. ColweU fiercely tiated the unnamed " friend," who had told 90 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK her so little and yet so much. But he said to her, mildly: " I thought that I had explained all that to you. It might hurt a weak specu- lator if the bonds declined ten points, though such a decline is utterly improbable. But it won't affect you in the slightest, since, hfiving an ample margin, you would not be forced to sell. You would gimply hold on until the price rose again. Let me illustrate. Supposing your house cost $10,000, and " " Harry paid $32,000," she said, correctingly. On second thought she smiled, in order to let him see that she knew her interpo- lation was irrelevant. But he might as well know the actual cost. " Very well," he said, good-humoredly, " we'll say $32,000, which was also the price of every other house in that block. And suppose that, owing to some accident, or for any reason whatever, nobody could be found to pay more than $25,000 for one of the houses, and three or four of your neighbors sold theirs at that price. But you wouldn't because you knew that in the fall, when everybody came back to town, you would find plenty of people who'd give you $50,000 for your house; you wouldn't sell it for $25,000, and you wouldn't worry. Would you, now? " he finished, cheerfully. " No," she said slowly. " I wouldn't worry. But," hesitatingly, for, after all, she felt the awkwardness of her position, " I wish I had the money instead of the bonds." And she added, self-defensively: " I haven't slept a wink for three nights thinking about this." The thought of his coming emancipation cheered Mr. Colwell immensely. " Your wish shall be gratified, Mrs. Hunt. Why didn't you ask me before, if you felt that way? " he said, in mild reproach. And he summoned a clerk. " Make out a check for $35,000 payable to Mrs. Rose Hunt, and transfer the 100 Manhattan Electric Light 5s to my personal account." He gave her the check and told her: " Here is the money. I am very sorry that I unwittingly caused you some anxiety. But all's well that ends well. Any time that I can be of service to you— Not at all. Don't thank me, please; no. Good morning." But he did not tell her that by taking over her account he paid $96,000 for bonds he could have bought in the open market for $93,000. He was the politest man in Wall Street; and, after all, he had known Hunt for many years. A week later Manhattan Electric 5-per-cent. bonds sold at 96 again. Mrs. Hunt called on him. It was noon, and she evidently THE WOMAN AND HER BONDS 91 had spent the morning mustering up courage for the visit. They greeted one another, she embarrassed and he courteous and kindly as usual. " Mr. Colwell, you still have those bonds, haven't you? " " Why, yes." " I— I think I'd like to take them back." " Certainly, Mrs. Hunt. Ill find out how much they are selling for." He summoned a clerk to get a quotation on Manhattan Electric 5s. The clerk telephoned to one of their bond-specialists, and learned that the bonds could be bought at 96J^. He reported to Mr. Colwell, and Mr. Colwell told Mrs. Hunt, adding: " So you see they are practically where they were when you bought them before." She hesitated. " I — I — didn't you buy them from me at 93 ? I'd like to buy them back at the same price I sold them to you." " No, Mrs. Hunt," he said; " I bought them from you at 96." "But the price was 93." And she added, corroboratively: " Don't you remember it was in all the pap>ers? " " Yes, but I gave you back exactly the same amount that I received from you, and I had the bonds transferred to my account. They stand on our books as having cost me 96." " But couldn't you let me have them at 93? " she persisted. " I'm very sorry, !Mrs. Hunt, but I don't see how I could. If you buy them in the open market now, you will be in exactly the same position as before you sold them, and you will make a great deal of money, because thej' are going up now. Let me buy them for you at 96J^." " At 93, you mean," with a tentative smile. "At whatever price they may be selling for," he corrected, patiently. " Why did you let me sell them, Mr. Colwell? " she asked plaintively. " But, my dear madam, if you buy them now, you will be no worse off than if you had kept the original lot." " Well, I don't see why it is that I have to pay 96J4 now for the very same bonds I sold last Tuesday at 93. If it was some other bonds," she added, " I wouldn't mind so much." " My dear Mrs. Hunt, it makes no difference which bonds you hold. They have all risen in price, yours and mine and everybody's; your lot was the same as any other lot. You see that, don't you? " 92 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK "Ye-es; but " " Well, then, you are exactly where you were before you bought any. You've lost nothing, because you received your money back intact." " I'm willing to buy them," she said resolutely, " at 93." " Mrs. Hunt, I wish I could buy them for you at that price. But there are none for sale cheaper than 96J4." " Oh, why did I let you sell my bonds! " she said disconsolately. " Well, you worried so much because they had declined that " " Yes, but I didn't know anything about business matters. You know I didn't, Mr. Colwell," she finished, accusingly. He smiled in his good-natured way. " Shall I buy the bonds for you? " he asked. He knew the plans of the syndicate in charge, and being sure the bonds would advance, he thought she might as well share in the profits. At heart he felt sorry for her. She smiled back. " Yes," she told him, " at 93." It did not seem right to her, notwithstanding his explanations, that she should pay 96J4 for them, when the price a few days ago was 93. " But how can I, if they are 96>^ ? " " Mr. Colwell, it is 93 or nothing." She was almost pale at her own boldness. It really seemed to her as if the price had only been waiting for her to sell out in order to advance. And though she wanted the bonds, she did not feel like yielding. " Then I very much fear it will have to be nothing." " Er — good morning, Mr. Colwell," on the verge of tears. " Good morning, Mrs. Hunt." And before he knew it, forgetting all that had gone before, he added: " Should you change your mind, I should be glad to " " I know I wouldn't pay more than 93 if I lived to be a thousand years." She looked expectantly at him, to see if he had repented, and she smiled — the smile that is a woman's last resort, that says, almost articulately: " I know you will, of coiu-se, do as I ask. My question is only a formality. I know your nobility, and I fear not." But he only bowed her out, very politely. On the Stock Exchange the price of Man. Elec. L. H. & P. Co. gs rose steadily. Mrs. Hunt, too indignant to feel lachrymose, discussed the subject with her Cousin Emily and her husband. Emily was very much interested. Between her and Mrs. Hunt they forced the poor man to make strange admissions, and, deliberately ignoring his feeble THE WOMAN AND HER BONDS 93 protests, they worked themselves up to the point of believing that, while it would be merely generous of Mr. Colwell to let his friend's widow have the bonds at 93, it would be only his obvious duty to let her have them at 96 J4. The moment they reached this decision Mrs. Hunt knew how to act. And the more she thought the more indignant she became. The next morning she called on her late husband's executor and friend. Her face wore the look often seen on those ardent souls who think their sacred and inalienable rights have been trampled upwn by the tyrant Man, but who at the same time feel certain the hour of retribution is near. " Good morning, Mr. ColweU. I came to find out exactly what you propose to do about my bonds." Her voice conveyed the im- pression that she expected violent opposition, perhaps even bad language, from him. " Good morning, Mrs. Himt. Why, what do you mean? " His affected ignorance deepened the hnes on her face. Instead of bluster he was using finesse! " I think you ought to know, Mr. Colwell," she said, meaningly. " Well, I really don't. I remember you wouldn't heed my advice when I told you not to sell out, and again when I advised you to buy them back." " Yes, at 96 J^," she biu-st out, indignantly. " Well, if you had, you would to-day have a profit of over $7000." " And whose fault is it that I haven't? " She paused for a reply. Receiving none, she went on: " But never mind; I have decided to accept your offer," very bitterly, as if a poor widow could not afford to be a chooser; " I'll take those bonds at 96>4." -"^nd she added, xmder her breath: " Although it reaUy ought to be 93. " " But, Mrs. Hunt," said Colwell, in measiu-eless astonishment, "you can't do that, you know. You wouldn't buy them when I wanted you to, and I can't buy them for you now at 96}^. Really, you ought to see that." Couan EmUy and she had gone over a dozen imaginary inter- views with Mr. Colwell — of varying degrees of storminess — the night before, and they had, in an idle moment, and not because they really expected it, represented Mr. Colwell as taking that identical stand. Mrs. Hunt was, accordingly, prepared to show both that she knew her moral and technical rights, and that she was ready to resist any 94 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK attempt to ignore them. So she said, in a voice so ferociously calm that it should have warned any guilty man: " Mr. Colwell, will you answer me one question? " " A thousand, Mrs. Hunt, with pleasure." " No; only one. Have you kept the bonds that I bought, or have you not? " " What difference does that make, Mrs. Hunt? " He evaded the answer! " Yes or no, please. Have you, or have you not, those same identical bonds? " " Yes; I have. But " " And to whom do those bonds belong, by rights? " She was still pale, but resolute. " To me, certainly." " To you, Mr. Colwell? " She smiled. And in her smile were a thousand feelings; but not mirth. " Yes, Mrs. Hunt, to me." " And do you propose to keep them? " " I certainly do." " Not even if I pay 96J4 will you give them to me? " " Mrs. Hunt," Colwell said with warmth, " when I took those bonds off your hands at 93 it represented a loss on paper of $3000 — " She smiled in pity — ^pity for his judgment in thinking her so hopelessly stupid. " And when you wanted me to sell them back to you at 93 after they had risen to 96 J4, if I had done as you wished, it would have meant an actual loss of $3000 to me." Again she smiled — the same smile, only the pity was now mingled with rising indignation. " For Harry's sake I was willing to pocket the first loss, in order that you might not worry. But I didn't see why I should make you a present of $3000," he said, very quietly. " I never asked you to do it," she retorted, hotly. " If you had lost any money through my fault, it would have been different. But you had your original capital unimpaired. You had nothing to lose, if you bought back the same bonds at practically the same price. Now you come and ask me to sell you the bonds at 96^4 that are selling in the market for 104, as a reward, I suppose, for your refusal to take my advice." THE \\'OMAN AXD HER BONDS 95 " Mr. Colwell, you take advantage of my position to insult me. And Harry trusted you so much! But let me tell you that I am not going to let you do just as you please. Xo doubt you would like to have me go home and forget how you've acted toward me. But I am going to consult a lawj'er, and see if I am to be treated this way by a friend of my husband's. You've made a mistake, Mr. Colwell." " Yes, madam, I certainly have. And, in order to avoid making any more, you will oblige me greatly by never again calling at this office. By all means consult a lawyer. Good morning, madam," said the politest man in Wall Street. " Well see," was all she said; and she left the room. Colwell paced up and down his office nervously. It was seldom that he allowed himself to lose Ms temper and he did not like it. The ticker whirred away excitedly, and in an absent-minded, half- disgusted way he glanced sideways at it. " Man. Elec. ss, I06}i" he read on the tape. THE WHEAT PIT By Frank Noeeis The Board of Trade was a vast enclosure, lighted on either side by great windows of colored glass, the roof supported by thin iron pil- lars elaborately decorated. To the left were the bulletin blackboards, and beyond these, in the northwest angle of the floor, a great railed-in space where the Western Union Telegraph was installed. To the right, on the other side of the room, a row of tables, laden with neatly arranged paper bags half full of samples of grains, stretched along the east wall from the doorway of the public room at one end to the telephone room at the other. The center of the floor was occupied by the pits. To the left and to the front of Landry the provision pit, to the right the corn pit, while further on at the north extremity of the floor, and nearly under the visitors' gallery, much larger than the other two, and flanked by the wicket of the official recorder, was the wheat pit itself. Directly opposite the visitors' gallery, high upon the south wall a great dial was affixed, and on the dial a marking hand that indi- cated the current price of wheat, fluctuating with the changes made in the Pit. Just now it stood at ninety-three and three-eighths, the closing quotation of the preceding day. As yet all the pits were empty. It was some fifteen minutes after nine. Landry checked his hat and coat at the coat-room near the north entrance, and slipped into an old tennis jacket of striped blue flannel. Then, hatless, his hands in his pockets, he leisurely crossed the floor, and sat down in one of the chairs that were ranged in files upon the floor in front of the telegraph enclosure. He scrutinized again the dispatches and orders that he held in his hands; then, having fixed them in his memory, tore them into very small bits, looking vaguely about the room, developing his plan of campaign for the morning. In a sense Landry Court had a double personality. Away from the neighborhood and influence of La Salle Street, he was " rattle- brained," absent-minded, impractical, and easily excited, the last 96 THE WHEAT PIT 97 fellow in the world to be trusted with any business responabUity. But the thunder of the streets around the Board of Trade, and, above all, the movement and atmo^here of the floor itself awoke within him a very difierent Landry Court; a whole new set of nerves came into being with the tap of the nine-thirty gong, a whole new system of bH-ain machinery began to move with the first figures called in the Pit. And from that instant imtil the close of the session, no floor trader, no broker's clerk nor scalper was more alert, more shrewd, or kq)t his head more surely than the same j'oung fellow who confused his social engagements for the evening of the same day. The Landry Court the Dearborn girls knew was a far different young man from him who now leaned his elbows on the arms of the chair upon the floor of the Board, and, his eyes narrowing, his hps tightening, began to speculate upwn what was to be the temjjer of the Pit that morning. Meanwhile the floor was beginning to fill up. Over in the railed-in space, where the hundreds of telegraph instruments were in place, the operators were arriving in twos and threes. They himg their hats and ulsters upon the pegs in the wall back of them, and in hnen coats, or in their shirt-sleeves, went to their seats, or, sitting upon their tables, called back and forth to each other, joshing, cracking jokes. Some few addressed themselves directly to work, and here and there the intermittent clicking of a key began, like a diligent cricket busking himself in advance of its mates. From the corridors on the ground floor up through the south doors came the pit traders in increasing groups. The noise of foot- stq)S began to echo from the high vaulting of the roof. A messenger boy crossed the floor chanting an miinteUigible name. The groups of traders gradually converged iq)on the com and wheat pits, and on the steps of the latter, their arms crossed upon their knees, two men, one wearing a silk skuU-cap all awry, conversed earnestly in low tones. Winston, a great, broad-shouldered, bass-voiced fellow of some thirty-five years, who was associated with Landry in executing the orders of the Gretry-Converse house, came up to him, and, omitting any salutation, remarked, deliberately, slowly: "What's all this about this trouble between Tiu-key and England?" But before Landry could reply a third trader for the Gretry Com- pany joined the two. This was a yoimg fellow named Rusbridge, lean, black-haired, a constant excitement glinting in his deep-set eyes. 7 98 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK " Say," he exclaimed, " there's something in that, there's some- thing in that! " " Where did you hear it? " demanded Landry. " Oh — everywhere." Rusbridge made a vague gesture with one arm. " Hirsch seemed to know all about it. It appears that there's talk of mobilizing the Mediterranean squadron." " Might ask that ' Inter-Ocean ' reporter. He'd be likely to know. I've seen him 'round here this morning, or you might telephone the Associated Press," suggested Landry. " The office never said a word to me!' " Oh, the ' Associated.' They know a lot always, don't they? " jeered Winston. " Yes, I rung 'em up. They ' couldn't confirm the rumor.' That's always the way. You can spend half a million a year in leased wires and special service and subscriptions to news agencies, and you get the first smell of news like this right here on the floor. Remember that time when the Northwestern millers sold a hundred and fifty thousand barrels at one lick? The floor was talking of it three hours before the news slips were sent 'round, or a single wire was in. Suppose we had waited for the Associated people or the Commercial people then? " " It's that Higgins-pasha incident, I'll bet," observed Rusbridge, his eyes snapping. " I heard something about that this morning," returned Landry. " But only that it was " " There! What did I tell you? " interrupted Rusbridge. " I said it was everywhere. There's no smoke without some fire. And I wouldn't be a bit siuprised if we get cables before noon that the British War Office had sent an ultimatum." And very naturally a few minutes later Winston, at that time standing on the steps of the com pit, heard from a certain broker, who had it from a friend who had just received a dispatch from some one " in the know," that the British Secretary of State for War had forwarded an ultimatum to the Porte, and that diplomatic relations between Turkey and England were about to be suspended. All in a moment the entire Floor seemed to be talking of nothing else, and on the outskirts of every group one could overhear the words: " Seizure of custom house," " ultimatiun," " Eastern ques- tion," " Higgins-pasha incident." It was the rumor of the day, and before very long the pit traders began to receive a multitude of dis- THE WHEAT PIT 99 patches countermanding selling orders, and directing them not to close out trades xmder certain very advanced quotations. The brokers began wiring their principals that the market promised to open strong and bullish. But by now it was near to half-past nine. From the Western Union desks the clicking of the throng of instruments rose into the air in an incessant staccato stridulation. The messenger boys ran back and forth at top q)eed, dodging in and out among the knots of clerks and traders, coUiding with one another, and without interruption in- toning the names of those for whom they had dispatches. The throng of traders concentrated upon the pits, and at every moment the deei>-toned hum of the murmur of many voices swelled like the rising pf a tide. And at this moment, as Landry stood on the rim of the wheat pit, looking towards the telephone booth under the visitors' gallery, he saw the osseous, stoop-shoxildered figure of Mr. Cressler — ^who, though he never speculated, appeared regularly upon the Board every morning — making his way towards one of the windows in the front of the building. His pocket was full of wheat, taken from a bag on one of the sample tables. Opening the window, he scattered the grain upon the siU, and stood for a long moment absorbed and inter- ested in the dazzUng flutter of the wings of innumerable pigeons who came to settle upon the ledge, pecking the grain with little, nervous, fastidious taps of their yellow beaks. Landry cast a glance at the clock beneath the dial on the wall behind him. It was twenty-five minutes after nine. He stood in his accustomed place on the north side of the Wheat Pit, upon the top- most stair. The Pit was full. Below him and on either side of him were the brokers, scalpers, and traders — ^Hirsch, Semple, Kelly, Win- ston, and Rusbridge. The redoubtable Leaycraft, who, bidding for himself, was supposed to hold the longest line of May wheat of any one man in the Pit, the insignificant Grossmann, to whose out- cries no one ever paid the least attention. Fairchild, Paterson, and Goodlock, the inseparable trio who represented the Porteous gang, silent men, middle-aged, who had but to speak in order to buy or sell a million bushels on the spot. And others, and still others, veterans of sixty-five, recruits just out of their teens, men who — some of them — in the past had for a moment dominated the entire Pit, but who now were content to play the part of " eighth-chasers," 100 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK buying and selling on the same day, content with a profit of ten dollars. Others who might at that very moment be mu-sing plans which in a week's time would make them millionaires; still others who, under a mask of nonchalance, strove to hide the chagrin of yesterday's defeat. And they were there, ready, inordinately alert, ears turned to the faintest sound, eyes searching for the vaguest trace of meaning in those of their rivals, nervous, keyed to the high- est tension, ready to thrust deep into the slightest opening, to spring, mercilessly, upon the smallest undefended spot. Grossmann perspired in the stress of the suspense, all but powerless to maintain silence till the signal should be given, drawing trembling fingers across his mouth. Winston, brawny, solid, unperturbed, his hands behind his back, waited immovably planted on his feet with all the gravity of a statue, his eyes preternaturally watchful, keeping Kelly — ^whom he had divined had some " funny business " on hand — ^perpetually in sight. The Porteous trio — Fairchild, Paterson, and Goodlock — ^as if unalarmed, unassailable, all but turned their backs to the Pit, laugh- ing among themselves. The official reporter climbed to his perch in the little cage on the edge of the Pit, shutting the door after him. By now the chanting of the messenger boys was an uninterrupted chorus. From all sides of the building and in every direction they crossed and recrossed each other, always running, their hands full of yellow envelopes. From the telephone alcoves came the prolonged, musical rasp of the call bells. In the Western Union booths the keys of the multitude of instruments raged incessantly. Bare-headed young men hurried up to one another, conferred an instant comparing dispatches, then separated, darting away at top speed. Men called to each other half-way across the building. Over by the bulletin boards clerks and agents made careful memoranda of primary receipts, and noted down the amount of wheat on passage, the exports and the imports. And all these sounds, the chatter of the telegraph, the intoning of the messenger boys, the shouts and cries of clerks and traders, the shuffle and trampling of hundreds of feet, the whirring of tele- , phone signals rose into the troubled air, and mingled overhead to form a vast note, prolonged, sustained, that reverberated from vault to vault of the airy roof, and issued from every doorway, every opened window, in one long roll of uninterrupted thunder. In the Wheat Pit the bids, no longer obedient of restraint, began one by one THE WHEAT PIT 101 to burst out, like the first isolated shots of a skirmish line. Grossmann bad flung out an arm crying: " 'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and an eighth," while Kdly and Semple had almost simultaneously shouted, " 'Give seven- eighths for May! " The official reporter had been leaning far over to catch the first quotations, one eye upon the clock at the end of the room. The hour and minute hands were at right angles. Then suddenl}', cutting squarely athwart the vague crescendo of the floor came the single incisive stroke of a great gong. Instantly a tumult was unchained. Arms were flimg upward in strenuotis gestures, and from above the crowding heads in the Wheat Pit a multitude of hands, eager, the fingers extended, leaped into the air. All artiailate expression was lost in the single explosion of sound as the traders surged downwards to the center of the Pit, grabbing each other, struggling towards each other, trancing, starting, charging through with might and main. Promptly the hand on the great dial above the clock stirred and trembled, and as though driven by the tempest breath of the Pit moved upward through the degrees of its circle. It paused, wavered, stopped at length, and on the instant the hundreds of telegraph keys scattered throughout the building began clicking off the news to the whole country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Mackinac to Mexico, that the Chicago market had made a slight advance and that May wheat, which had closed the day before at ninety-three and three-eighths, had opened that morning at ninety-foxu: and a half. But the advance brought out no profit-taking sales. The redoubt- able Leaycraft and the Porteous trio, Fairchild, Paterson, and Good- lock, shook their heads when the Pit offered ninety-fotu: for parts of their holdings. The price held firm. Goodlock even began to ofier ninety-four. At every suspicion of a flurry Grossmann, always with the same gesture as though hurling a javelin, always with the same lamentable wail of distress, cried out: " 'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and a fourth." He held his five fingers spread to indicate the number of " con- tracts," or lots of five thousand bushels, which he wished to sell, each finger representing one " contract." And it was at this moment that selling orders began suddenly to pour in upon the Gretry-Converse traders. Even other houses — 102 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK Teller and West, Burbank & Co., Mattieson and Knight — received their share. The movement was inexplicable, puzzling. With a powerful Bull clique dominating the trading and every prospect of a strong market, who was it who ventured to sell short? Landry among others found himself commissioned to sell. His orders were to unload three hundred thousand bushels on any advance over and above ninety-four. He kept his eye on Leaycraft, certain that he would force up the figure. But, as it happened, it was not Leaycraft but the Porteous trio who made the advance. Standing in the center of the Pit, Paterson suddenly flimg up his hand and drew it towards him, clutching the air — the conventional gesture of the buyer. " 'Give an eighth for May." Landry was at him in a second. Twenty voices shouted " sold," and as many traders sprang towards him with outstretched arms. Landry, however, was before them, and his rush carried Paterson half-way across the middle space of the Rt. " Sold, sold." Paterson nodded, and as Landry noted down the transaction the hand on the dial advanced again, and again held firm. But after this the activity of the Pit fell away. The trading languished. By degrees the tension of the opening was relaxed. Landry, however, had refrained from selling more than ten " con- tracts " to Paterson. He had a feeling that another advance would come later on. Rapidly he made his plans. He would sell another fifty thousand bushels if the price went to ninety-four and a half, and would then " feel " the market, letting go small lots here and there, to test its strength, then, the instant he felt the market strong enough, throw a full hundred thousand upon it with a rush before it had time to break. He could feel — almost at his very finger tips — ^how this market moved, how it strengthened, how it weakened. He knew just when to nurse it, to humor it, to let it settle, and when to crowd it, when to hustle it, when it would stand rough handling. Grossmann still uttered his plaint from time to time, but no one so much as pretended to listen. The Porteous trio and Leaycraft kept the price steady at ninety-four and an eighth, but showed no inclination to force it higher. For a full five minutes not a trade was reported. The Pit waited for the Report on the Visible Supply. And it was during this lull in the morning's business that the THE WHEAT PIT 103 idiocy of the English ultimatum to the Porte melted away. As inex- plicably and as suddenly as the rumor had started, it now disap- pered. Everyone, amultaneously, seemed to ridicule it. England declare war on Turkey! Where was the joke? ^"ho was the fool to have started that old, worn-out war scare? But, for all that, there was no reaction from the advance. It seemed to be understood that either Leaycraft or the Porteous crowd stood ready to supjwrt the market; and in place of the ultimatum story a feeling began to gain ground that the expected report would indicate a falling off in the " visible," and that it was quite on the cards that the market might even advance another pwint. As the interest in the immediate atuation declined, the crowd in the Pit grew less dense. Portions of it were deserted ; even Gross- mann, discouraged, retired to a bench under the visitors' gallery. And a q)irit of horse-play, sheer foolishness, strangely inconsistent with the hot-eyed excitement of the few moments after the opening, invaded the remaining groups. Leaycraft, the formidable, as well as Paterson of the Porteous gang, and even the soleron Winston, found an ^^arently inexhaustible diversion in folding their telegrams into pointed javelins and sending them sailing across the room, watch- ing the cotirse of the missiles with profound gravity. A viator in the gallery — no doubt a Western farmer on a holiday — having put his feet upon the rail, the entire Pit began to groan " boots, boots, boots." A little later a certain broker came scurrying across the floor from the direction of the telqjhone room. Panting, he flung himself up the steps of the Pit, forced his way among the traders with vig- orous workings of his elbows and shouted a bid. " He's sick," shouted Hirsch. " Look out, he's sick. He's going to have a fit." He grabbed the broker by both arms and hustled him into the center of the Pit. The others caught up the cry, a score of hands pushed the new-comer from man to man. The pit traders clutched Mm, pulled his necktie loose, knocked off his hat, vociferating all the while at top voice, '' He's sick! He's sick! " Other brokers and traders came up, and Grossmann, mistaking the commotion for a flurry, ran into the Pit, his eyes wide, waving his arm and wailing: " 'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and a quarter." But the victim, good-natured, readjusted his battered hat, and again repeated his bid. 104 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK " Ah, go to bed," protested Hirsch. " He's the man who struck Billy Paterson." " Say, a horse bit him. Look out for him, he's going to have a duck-fit." The incident appeared to be the inspiration for a new " josh " that had a great success, and a group of traders organized themselves into an " anti-cravat committee," and made the rounds of the Pit, twitching the carefully tied scarfs of the imwary out of place. Gross- mann, indignant at " t'ose monkey-doodle pizeness," withdrew from the center of the Pit. But while he stood in front of Leaycraft, his back turned, muttering his disgust, the latter, while carrying on a grave conversation with his neighbor, carefully stuck a file of paper javelins all around the Jew's hat band, and then — still without mirth and still continuing to talk — set them on fire. Landry imagined by now that ninety-four and an eighth was as high a figure as he could reasonably expect that morning, and so began to " work off " his selling orders. Little by little he. sold the wheat " short," till all but one large lot was gone. Then all at once, and for no discoverable immediate reason, wheat, amid an explosion of shouts and vociferations, jumped to ninety-four and a quarter, and before the Pit could take breath, had advanced another eighth, broken to one-quarter, then jumped to the five-eighths mark. It was the Report on the Visible Supply beyond question, and though it had not yet been posted, this sudden flurry was a sign that it was not only near at hand, but would be bullish. A few moments later it was bulletined in the gallery beneath the dial, and proved a tremendous surprise to nearly every man upon the floor. No one had imagined the supply was so ample, so all-sufficient to meet the demand. Promptly the Pit responded. Wheat began to pour in heavily. Hirsch, Kelly, Grossmann, Leaycraft, the stolid Winston, and the excitable Rusbridge were hard at it. The price began to give. Suddenly it broke sharply. The hand on the great dial dropped to ninety-three and seven-eighths. Landry was beside himself. He had not foreseen this break. There was no reckoning on that cursed " visible," and he still had 50,000 bushels to dispose of. There was no telling now how low the price might sink. He must act quickly, radically. He fought his way towards the Porteous crowd, reached over the shoulder of the THE WHEAT PIT 105 little Jew Grossmann, who stood in his way, and thrust his hand almost into Paterson's face, shouting: " 'Sell fifty May at seven-eighths." It was the last one of his unaccountable selling orders of the early morning. The other shook his head. " 'Sell fifty May at three-quarters." Suddenly some instinct warned Landry that another break was coming. It was in the very air around him. He could almost physi- cally feel the pressiu-e of renewed avalanches of wheat crowding down the price. Desperate, he grabbed Paterson by the shoulder. " 'Sell fifty May at five-eighths." " Take it," vociferated the other, as though answering a challenge. And in the heart of this confusion, in this downward rush of the price. Luck, the golden goddess, passed with the flirt and flash of glittering wings, and hardly before the ticker in Gretry's office had signaUed the decline, the memorandum of the trade was down upon Landry's card and Cm-tis Jadwin stood pledged to deliver, before noon on the last day of May, one million bushels of wheat into the hands of the representatives of the great Bulls of the Board of Trade. But by now the real business of the morning was over. The Pit knew it. Grossmann, obstinate, hypnotized as it were by one idea, still stood in his accustomed place on the upper edge of the Pit, and from time to time, with the same despairing gesture, emitted his doleful outcry of " 'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and three-quarters." Nobody listened. The traders stood aroimd in expectant atti- tudes, looking into one another's faces, waiting for what they could not exactly say; loath to leave the Pit lest something shoiild " turn up " the moment their backs were turned. By degrees the clamor died away, ceased, began again irregularly, then abruptly stilled. Here and there a bid was called, an oSer made, like the intermittent crack of small arms after the stopping of the cannonade. " 'Sell five May at one-eighth." " 'Sell twenty at one-quarter." " 'Give one-eighth for May." For an instant the shoutings were renewed. Then suddenly the gong struck. The traders began slowly to leave the Pit. One of the 106 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK floor officers, an old fellow in uniform and vizored cap, appeared, gently shouldering towards the door the groups wherein the bidding and offering were still languidly going on. His voice full of remon- stration, he repeated continually: " Time's up, gentlemen. Go on now and get your Itmch. Lunch time now. Go on now, or I'll have to report you. Time's up." The tide set towards the doorways. In the gallery the few visitors rose, putting on coats and wraps. Over by the check counter, to the right of the south entrance to the floor, a throng of brokers and traders jostled each other, reaching over one another's shoulders for hats and ulsters. In steadily increasing numbers they poured out of the north and south entrances, on their way to turn in their trading cards to the offices. Little by little the floor emptied. The provision and grain pits were deserted, and as the clamor of the place lapsed away the tele- graph instruments began to make themselves heard once more, to- gether with the chanting of the messenger boys. Swept clean in the morning, the floor itself, seen now through the thinning groups, was littered from end to end with scattered grain — oats, wheat, com, and barley, with wisps of hay, peanut shells, apple parings, and orange peel, with torn newspapers, odds and ends of memoranda, crushed paper darts, and above all with a count- less multitude of yellow telegraph forms, thousands upon thousands, crumpled and muddied under the trampling of innumerable feet. It was the debris of the battle-field, the abandoned impedimenta and broken weapons of contending armies, the detritus of conflict, torn, broken, and rent, that at the end of each day's combat encum- bered the field. At last even the click of the last of the telegraph keys died down. Shouldering themselves into their overcoats, the operators departed, calling back and forth to one another, making " dates," and cracking jokes. Washerwomen appeared with steaming pails, porters pushing great brooms before them began gathering the refuse of the floor into heaps. Between the wheat and com pits a band of young fellows, some of them absolute boys, appeared. These were the settlement clerks. They carried long account books. It was their duty to get the trades of the day into a " ring " — to trace the course of a lot of wheat which bad changed hands perhaps a score of times during the trading — and THE WHEAT PIT 107 their calls of " Wheat sold to Teller and West," " May wheat sold to Burbank & Co.," " May oats sold to Matthewson and Knight," " Wheat sold to Gretry, Converse & Co.," began to echo from wall to wall of the almost deserted room. A cat, grey and striped, and wearing a dog-collar of nickel and red leather, issued from the coat-room and picked her way across the floor. Evidently she was in a mood of the most ingratiating friend- liness, and as one after another of the departing traders q>oke to her, raised her tail in the air and arched her back against the legs of the empty chairs. The janitor put in an appearance, lowering the tall col- ored windows with a long rod. A noise of hammering and the scrape of saws began to issue from a comer where a couple of carpenters tinkered about one of the sample tables. Then at last even the settlement clerks took themselves off. At once there was a great silence, broken only by the harsh rasp of the carpenters' saws and the voice of the janitor exchanging jokes with the washerwomen. The sound of footsteps in distant quarters re-echoed as if in a church. The washerwomen invaded the floor, spreading soapy and steam- ing water before them. Over by the sample tables a negro porter in shirt-sleeves swept entire btishels of spflled wheat, crushed, broken, and sodden, into his dust pans. The day's campaign was over. It was past two o'clock. On the great dial against the eastern wall the indicator stood — sentinel fash- ion — at ninety-three. Not till the following morning would the whirl- pool, the great central force that spim the Niagara of wheat in its grip, thunder and bellow again. Later on even the washerwomen, even the porter and janitor, departed. An imbroken silence, the peacefulness of an untroubled calm, settled over the place. The rays of the afternoon sun flooded through the west windows in long parallel shafts fuU of floating golden motes. There was no soimd: nothing stirred. The floor of the Board of Trade was deserted. Alone, on the edge of the abandoned WTieat Kt, in a spot where the sunlight fell warm^t — an atom of life, lost in the immensity of the empty floor — the grey cat made her toilet, diligently licking the ftir on the inside of her thigh, one leg, as if dis- located, thrust into the air above her head. THE MAN WITHIN HIM an advertising experience of jock mcchesney By Edna Ferber They used to do it much more picturesquely. They rode in coats of scarlet, in the crisp, clear morning, to the winding of horns and the baying of hoxmds — to the thud-thud of hoofs, and the crackle of underbrush. Across fresh-plowed fields they went, crashing through forest paths, leaping ditches, taking fences, scrambling up the inclines, pelting down the hillside, helter-skelter, until, panting, wide-eyed, eager, blood-hungry, the hunt closed in at the death. The scarlet coat has sobered down to the somber gray and the snuffy brown of the unromantic garment known as the business suit. The winding horn is become a goblet, and its notes are the tinkle of ice against glass. The baying of hounds has harshened to the squawk of the motor siren. The fresh plowed field is a blue print, the forest maze a roll of plans and specifications. Each fence is a business bar- rier. Every ditch is of a competitor's making, dug craftily so that the clumsy-footed may come a cropper. All the romance is out of it, all the color, all the joy. But two things remain the same: The look in the face of the hunter as he closed in on the fox is the look in the face of him who sees the coveted contract lying ready for the finishing stroke of his pen. And his words are those of the hunter of long ago as, eyes agleam, teeth bared, muscles still taut with the tenseness of the chase, he waves the paper high in air and cries, " I've made a killing! " For two years Jock McChesney had watched the field as it swept by in its patient, devious, cruel game of Hunt the Contract. But he had never been in at the death. Those two years had taught him how to ride; to take a fence; to leap a ditch. He had had his awkward bumps, and his clumsy falls. He had lost his way more than once. But he had always groped his way back again, stumblingly, through the dusk. Jock McChesney was the youngest man on the Berg, Shriner Advertising Company's big staff of surprisingly young men. So young that the casual glance did not reveal to you the marks 108 THE MAN WITHIN HIM 109 that the strain of those two years had left on his boyish face. But the marks were there. Nature etches with the most delicate of points. She knows the cunning secret of light and shadow. You scarcely realize that she has been at work. A faint line about the mouth, a fairy tracing at the corners of the eyes, a mere vague touch just at the nostrils — and the thing is done. Even Emma McChesney's eyes — those mother-eyes which make the lynx seem a mole — ^had failed to note the subtle change. Then, suddenly, one night, the lines leaped out at her. They were seated at opposite sides of the book-littered library table in the living-room of the cheerful up-town apartment which was the realization of the nightly dream which Mrs. Emma McChes- ney had had in her ten years on the road for the T. A. Buck Feather- loom Petticoat Company. Jock McChesney's side of the big table was completely covered with the mass of copy-paper, rough sketches, photographs and drawings that make up an advertising lay-out. He was bent over the work, absorbed, intent, his forearms resting on the table. Emma McChesney glanced up from her magazine just as Jock bent forward to reach a scrap of paper that had fluttered across the way. The lamplight fell full on his face. And Emma McChesney saw. The hand that held the magazine fell to her lap. Her lips were j>arted slightly. She sat very quietly, her eyes never leaving the face that frowned so intently over the littered table. The room had been very quiet before — Jock busy with his work, his mother interested in her magazine. But this silence was different. There was something electric in it. It was a silence that beats on the brain like a noise. Jock McChesney, bent over his work, heard it, felt it, and, oppressed by it, looked up suddenly. He met those two eyes opposite. " Spooks? Or is it my godlike beauty which holds you thus? Or is my face dirty? " Emma McChesney did not smile. She laid her magazine on the table, face down, and leaned forward, her staring eyes still fixed on her son's face. " Look here, young 'un. Are you working too hard? " " Me? Now? This stuff you mean ? " " No; I mean in the last year. Are they piling it up on you? " Jock laughed a laugh that was nothing less than a failure, so little of real mirth did it contain. 110 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK " Piling it up! Lord, no! I wish they would. That's the trouble. They don't give me a chance." " A chance! Why, that's not true, son. You've said yourself that there are men who have been in the office three times as long as you have, who never have had the opportunities that they've given you." It was as though she had touched a current that thrilled him to action. He pushed back his chair and stood up, one hand thrust into his pocket, the other passing quickly over his head from brow to nape with a quick, nervous gesture that was new to him. " And why! " he fiung out. " Why! Not because they like the way I part my hair. They don't do business that way up there. It's because I've made good, and those other dubs haven't. That's why. They've let me sit in at the game. But they won't let me take any tricks. I've been an apprentice hand for two years now. I'm tired of it. I want to be in on a killing. I want to taste blood. I want a chance at some of the money — real money." Emma McChesney sat back in her chair and surveyed the angry figure before her with quiet, steady eyes. " I might have known that only one thing could bring those lines into your face, son." She paused a moment. " So you want money as badly as all that, do you? " Jock's hand came down with a thwack on the papers before him. " Want it! You just bet I want it." " Do I know her? " asked Emma McChesney quietly. Jock stopped short in his excited pacing up and down the room. " Do you know — Why, I didn't say there — What makes you think that ? " " When a youngster like you, whose greatest worry has been whether Harvard'!! hold 'em again this year, with Baxter out, begins to howl about not being appreciated in business, and to wear a late fall line of wrinkles where he has been smooth before, I feel justified in saying, ' Do I know her? ' " " Well, it isn't anyone — at least, it isn't what you mean you think it is when you say you " " Careful there! You'll trip. Never you mind what I mean I think it is when I say. Count ten, and then just tell me what you think you mean." Jock passed his hand over his head again with that nervous little THE MAX WITHIN HIM 111 gKture. Then he sat dovra, a little wearily. He stared moodily down at the pile of papers before him. His mother faced him quietly across the table. " Grace Gait's getting twice as much as I am," Jock broke out, with savage suddenness. " The first year I didn't mind. A fellow gets accustomed, these days, to seeing women breaking into all the professions and getting away with men-size salaries. But her pay check doubles mine — more than doubles it." " It's been my experience," observed Emma McChesnor, " that when a firm condescends to pay a woman twice as much as a man, that means she's worth six times as much." A painful red crept into Jock's face. "' Maybe. Two years ago that would have sounded reasonable to me. Two years ago, when I walked down Broadway at night, a fifty-foot electric sign at Forty- second was jxist an electric sign to me. Just part of the town's decoration, like the chorus girls, and the midnight theatre crowds. Now — ^well, now every blink of every red and yeUow globe is cram- med full of meaning. I know the power that advertising has; how it influences our manners, and our morals, and our minds, and our health. It regulates the food we eat, and the clothes we wear, and the books we read, and the entertainment we seek. It's colossal, that's what it is ! It's " " Keep on like that for another two years, sonny, and no bua- ness banquet will be complete without you. The next thin g you know you'll be addressing the Y. M. C. A. advertising classes on ' The Yoimg Man in Business.' " Jock laughed a rueful little laugh. " I didn't mean to make a speech. I was just trying to say that I've served my apprenticeship. It hurts a fellow's pride. You can't hold your head up before a girl when you know her salary's twice yours, and you know that she knows it Why, look at Mrs. Hoffman, who's with the Dowd Agency. Of course she's a wonder, even if her face does look like the fifty- eighth variety. She can write copy that lifts a campaign right out of the humdnmi class, and makes it luminous. Her husband works in a bank somewhere. He earns about as much as Mrs. Hoffman pays the least of her department subordinates. And he's so subdued that he side-steps when he walks, and they call him the human jelly-fish." Emma McChesney was regarding her son with a little puzzled 112 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK frown. Suddenly she reached out and tapped the topmost of the scribbled sheets strewn the length of Jock's side of the table. " What's all this? " Jock tipped back his chair and surveyed the clutter before him. " That," said he, " is what is known on the stage as ' the papers.' And it's the real plot of this piece." "M-m-m — I thought so. Just favor me with a scenario, will you?" Half-grinning, haJf-serious, Jock stuck his thumbs in the arm- holes of his waistcoat, and began. " Scene: Offices of the Berg, Shriner Advertising Company. Time, the present. Characters: Jock McChesney, handsome, dar- ing, brilliant " " Suppose you — er — skip the characters, however fascinating, and get to the action." Jock McChesney brought the tipped chair down on all fours with a thud, and stood up. The grin was gone. He was as serious as he had been in the midst of his tirade of five minutes before. " All right. Here it is. And don't blame me if it sounds like cheap melodrama. This stuff," and he waved a hand toward the paper-laden table, " is an advertising campaign plan for the Griebler Gum Company, of St. Louis. Oh, don't look impressed. The office hasn't handed me any such commission. I just got the idea like a flash, and I've been working it out for the last two weeks. It worked itself out, almost — the way a really scorching idea does, sometimes. This Griebler has been advertising for years. You know the Grieb- ler gum. But it hasn't been the right sort of advertising. Old Griebler, the original gum man, had fogy notions about advertising, and as long as he Uved they had to keep it down. He died a few months ago — ^you must have read of it. Left a regular mint. Ben Griebler, the oldest son, started right in to clean out the cobwebs. Of course, the advertising end of it has come in for its share of the soap and water. He wants to make a clean sweep of it. Every adver- tising firm in the country has been angling for the contract. It's going to be a real one. Two-thirds of the crowd have submitted plans. And that's just where my kick comes in. The Berg, Shriner Company makes it a rule never to submit advance plans." " Excuse me if I seem a trifle rude," interrupted Mrs. McChes- ney, " but I'd like to know where you think you've been wronged in this." THE MAX WITHIN HBI 113 " Right here! " replied Jock, and he slapped his pocket, " and here," he pointed to his head. " Two qwts so vital that they make old Achilles's heel seem armor-plated. Ben Griebler is one of the show-me kind. He wants value received for money expended, and while everybody knows that he has a loving eye on the Berg, Shriner crowd, he won't sign a thing imtil he knows what he's getting. A firm's record, standing, staff, equipment, mean nothing to him." ' But, Jock, I still don't see " Jock gathered up a sheaf of loose papers and brandidied them in the air. " This is where I come in. I've got a plan here that will fetch this Griebler person. Oh, I'm not dreaming. I outlined it for Sam Hupp, and he was crazy about it. Sam Hupp had some sort of plan outlined himself. But he said this made his soimd as dry as cigars in Denver. And you know yourself that Sam Hupp's o^y is so brilliant that he could sell brewery advertising to a temperance magazine." Emma McChesney stood up. She looked a Kttle impatient, and a trifle puzzled. " But why all this talk! I don't get you. Take your plan to Mr. Berg. If it's what you think it is hell see it quicker than any other human being, and hell probably fall on your neck and invest you in royal robes and give you a mahogany desk all your own." " Oh, what's the good! " retorted Jock disgustedly. " This Grieb- ler has an appointment at the office to-morrow. Hell be closeted with the Old Man. Theyll call in Hupp. But never a plan will they reveal. It's against their code of ethics. Ethics! I'm sick of the word. I suppose you'd say I'm lucky to be associated with a firm Uke that, and i>erhaps I am. But I wish in the name of aU the gods of Business that they weren't so bloomin' conservative. Ethics! They're all balled iq> in 'em like Henry James in his style."' Emma McChesney came over from her side of the table and stood very close to her son. She laid one hand very lightly on his arm and looked up into the sullen, angry young face. " I've seen older men than you are, Jock, and better men, and bigger men, wearing that same look, and for the same reason. Every ambitious man or woman in business wears it at one time or another. Sooner or later, Jock, youll have yoiu- chance at the money end of this game. If you don't care about the thing you call ethics, it'll be 8 114 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK sooner. If you do care, it will be later. It rests with you, but it's bound to come, because you've got the stuff in you." " Maybe," replied Jock the cynical. But his face lost some of it's sullenness as he looked down at that earnest, vivid countenance upturned to his. " Maybe. It sounds all right. Mother — in the story books. But I'm not quite sold on it. These days it isn't so much what you've got in you that counts as what you can bring out. I know the young man's slogan used to be ' Work and Wait,' or some- thing pretty like that. But these days they've boiled it down to one word — ' Produce '! " " The marvel of it is that there aren't more of 'em," observed Emma McChesney sadly. " More what? " " More lines. Here," — she touched his forehead — " and here," — she touched his eyes. " Lines! " Jock swung to face a mirror. " Good! I'm so infer- nally young-looking that no one takes me seriously. It's darned hard trying to convince people you're a captain of finance when you look like an errand boy." From the center of the room Mrs. McChesney watched the boy as he surveyed himself in the glass. And as she gazed there came a frightened look into her eyes. It was gone in a minute, and in its place came a curious little gleam, half amused, half pugnacious. " Jock McChesney, if I thought that you meant half of what you've said to-night about honor, and ethics, and all that, I'd " " Spank me, I suppose," said the young six-footer. " No," and all the humor had fied, " I — ^Jock, I've never said much to you about your father. But I think you know that he was what he was to the day of his death. You were just about eight when I made up my mind that life with him was impossible. I said then — and you were all I had, son — that I'd rather see you dead than to have you turn out to be a son of your father. Don't make me remember that wish, Jock." Two quick steps and his arms were about her. His face was all contrition. " Why — Mother! I didn't mean — You see, this is business, and I'm crazy to make good, and it's such a fight " " Don't I know it? " demanded Emma McChesney. " I guess your mother hasn't been sitting home embroidering lunch-cloths these last fifteen years." She lifted her head from the boy's shoulder. THE MAN WITHIN HIM US " And now, son, considering me, not as your doting mother, but in my business capacity as secretary of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petti- coat Company, suppose you reveal to me the inner workings of this plan of yours. I'd like to know if you really are the advertising wizard that you think you are." So it was that long after Annie's dinner dishes had ceased to clatter in the kitchen; long after she had put her head in at the door to ask, " Aigs 'r cakes for breakfast? " long after those two busy brains should have rested in sleep, the two sat at either side of the light-flooded table, the face of one glowing as he talked, the face of the other ^arkling as she listened. And at midnight: '■ ^^'hy, you infant wonder! " exclaimed Emma McChesney. At nine o'clock next morning when Jock McChesney entered the offices of the Berg, Shriner Advertising Company he carried a flat, compact bundle of papers under his arm encased in protecting covers of pasteboard, and further secured by bands of elastic. This he carried to his desk, deposited in a drawer, and locked the drawer. By eleven o'clock the things which he had predicted the night before had come to pass. A plump little man, with a fussy manner and Western clothes, had been ushered into Bartholomew Berg's pri- vate office. Instinct told him that this was Griebler. Jock left his desk and strolled up to get the switchboard operator's confirmation of his guess. Half an hour later Sam Hupp hustled by and disappeared into the Old ]Man's sanctum. Jock fingered the upper left-hand drawer of his desk. The mad- dening blankness of that closed door! If only he could find some excuse for walking into that room — any old excuse, no matter how wild! — ^just to get a chance at it His telephone rang. He picked up the receiver, his eye on the closed door, his thoughts inside that room. " Mr. Berg wants to see you right away," came the voice of the switchboard operator. Something seemed to give way inside — something in the region of his brain — ^no, his heart — ^no, his lungs " Well, can you beat that! " said Jock McChesney aloud, in a kind of trance of joy. " Can — ^you — beat — that! " Then he buttoned the lower button of his coat, shrugged his shoulders with an extra wriggle at the collar (the modem hero's 116 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK method of girding up his loins), and walked calmly into Bartholo- mew Berg's very private office. In the second that elapsed between the opening and the closing of the door Jock's glance swept the three men — Bartholomew Berg, quiet, inscrutable, seated at his great table-desk; Griebler, lost in the depths of a great leather chair, smoking fussily and twitching with a hundred little restless, irritating gestures; Sam Hupp, standing at the opposite side of the room, hands in pockets, attitude argumentative. " This is Mr. McChesney," said Bartholomew Berg. " Mr. Griebler, McChesney." Jock came forward, smiling that charming smile of his. " Mr. Griebler," he said, extending his hcmd, " this is a great pleasure." "Hm! " exploded Ben Griebler, "I didn't know they picked 'em so young." His voice was a piping falsetto that somehow seemed to match his restless little eyes. Jock thrust his hands hurriedly into his pockets. He felt his face getting scarlet. " They're — ah — using 'em young this year," said Bartholomew Berg. His voice sounded bigger, and smoother, and pleasanter than ever in contrast with that other's shrill tone. " I prefer 'em young, myself. You'll never catch McChesney using ' in the last analysis ' to drive home an argument. He has a new idea about every nine- teen minutes, and every other one's a good one, and every nineteenth or so's an inspiration." The Old Man laughed one of his low, chuckling laughs. " Hm — that so? " piped Ben Griebler. " Up in my neck of the woods we aren't so long on inspiration. We're just working men, and we wear working clothes " " Oh, now," protested Berg, his eyes twinkling, " McChesney's necktie and socks and handkerchief may form one lovely, blissful color scheme, but that doesn't signify at all that his advertising schemes are not just as carefully and artistically blended." Ben Griebler looked shrewdly up at Jock through narrowed lids. " Maybe. I'll talk to you in a minute, young man — that is — " he turned quickly upon Berg — " if that isn't against your crazy prin- ciples, too? " " Why, not at all," Bartholomew Berg assured him. " Not at all. You do me an injustice." THE MAX WITHIN HIM 117 Griebler moved up closer to the broad table. The two feU into a low- voiced talk. Jock looked rather helplessly around at Sam Hupp. That alert gentleman was agnalling him frantically with head and wagging finger. Jock crossed the big room to Hupp's side. The two moved off to a window at the far end. " Give heed to your imkie," said Sam Hupp, talking very rapidly, very softly, and out of one comer of his mouth. " This Griebler's looking for an advertising manager. He's as pig-headed as a — a — well, as a pig, I suppose. But it's a corking chance, youngster, and the Old Man's just recommended you — strong. Now " " Me ! " exploded Jock. " Shut up! " hissed Huf^. " Two or three years with that firm would be the making of you — ^if you made good, of course. And you could. They want to move their factory here from St. Louis within the next few years. Now listen. When he talks to you, you play up the keen, alert stuff with a dash of sophistication, see? If you can keep your mouth shut and throw a kind of a canny, I-get-you look in your eyes, all the better. He's gabby enough for two. Try a line of talk that is filled with the fire and enthuaasm of youth, combined with the good judgment and experience of middle age, and you've " " Say, look here," stammered Jock. " Even if I was Warfield enough to do aU that, d'you honestly think — ^me an advertising man- ager! — with a salary that Griebler " " You nervy little shrimp, go in and win. Hell pay five thousand if he pays a cent. But he wants value for money expended. Xow I've tipped you off. You make your killing " " Oh, McChesney! " called Bartholomew Berg, glancing round. " Yes, sir! " said Jock, and stood before him in the same moment. " ]Mr. Griebler is looking for a competent, enthusiastic, hard- working man as advertising manager. I've q)oken to him of you. I know what you can do. Mr. Griebler might trust my judgment in this, but " " 111 trust my own judgment," snapped Ben GrieblM". " It's good enough for me." " Very well," returned Bartholomew Berg suavely. " And if you decide to place your advertising future in the hands of the Berg, Shriner Company " " Now look here," interrupted Ben Griebler again. " 111 tie up 118 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK with you people when you've shaken something out of your cuffs. I'm not the kind that buys a pig in a poke. We're going to spend money — real money — ^in this campaign of ours. But I'm not such a come-on as to hand you half a million or so and get a promise in return. I want your plans, and I want 'em in full." A little exclamation broke from Sam Hupp. He checked it, but not before Berg's curiously penetrating pale blue eyes had glanced up at him, and away again. " I've told you, Mr. Griebler," went on Bartholomew Berg's pa- tient voice, " just why the thing you insist on is impossible. This firm does not submit advance copy. Every business commission that comes to us is given all the skill, and thought, and enthusiasm, and careful planning that this office is capable of. You know oiur record. This is a business of ideas. And ideas are too precious, too perish- able, to spread in the market place for all to see." Ben Griebler stood up. His cigar waggled furiously between his lips as he talked. " I know something else that don't stand spreading in the mar- ket place. Berg. And that's money. It's too perishable, too." He pointed a stubby finger at Jock. " Does this fool rule of yours apply to this young fellow, too? " Bartholomew Berg seemed to grow more patient, more self-con- tained as the other man's self-control slipped rapidly away. " It goes for every man and woman in this office, Mr. Griebler. This young chap, McChesney here, might spend weeks and months building up a comprehensive advertising plan for you. He'd spend those weeks studying your business from every possible angle. Per- haps It would be a plan that would require a year of waiting before the actual advertising began to appear. And then you might lose faith in the plan. A waiting game is a hard game to play. Some other man's idea, that promised quicker action, might appeal to you. And when it appeared we'd very likely find our own original idea incorporated in " " Say, look herel " squeaked Ben Griebler, his face dully red. " D'you mean to imply that I'd steal your plan I D'you mean to sit there and tell me to my face " " Mr. Griebler, I mean that that thing haj^ens constantly in this business. We're almost powerless to stop it. Nothing spreads quicker than a new idea. Compared to it a woman's secret is a sealed book." THE MAX WITHIX HIM 119 Ben Griebler removed the cigar from his 1]^. He was stuttering with anger. With a mingling of despair and boldness Jock saw the advantage of that stuttering moment and seized on it. He stq)ped close to the broad table-desk, resting both hands on it and leaning forward slightly in his eagerness. ' Mr. Berg — I have a plan. "Mr. Hupp can tell you. It came to me when I first heard that the Grieblers were going to broadai out. It's a real idea. I'm sure of that. I've worked it out in detail. Mr. Hupp himself said it — Why, I've got the actual copy. And it's new. Absolutely. It never " " Trot it out! " shouted Ben Griebler. " I'd like to see just one idea, anyway, around this shop." " McChesney," said Bartholomew Berg, not raising his voice. lEs eyes rested on Jock with the steady, penetrating gaze that was peculiar to him. More foolhardy men than Jock McChesney had faltered and paused, abashed, imder those eyes. " McQiesney, yoiu enthusiasm for your work is causing you to forget one thing that must never be forgotten in this office." Jock stepped back. His lower lip was caught between his teeth. At the same moment Ben Griebler snatched up his hat from the table, dapped it on his head at an absurd angle and, bristling like a fighting cock, confronted the three men. " I've got a couple of rules myself," he cried, " and don't you forget it. When you get a little spare time, you look up St. Louis and find out what state it's in. The slogan of that state is my slogan, you bet. If you think I'm going to make you a present of the money that it took my old man fifty years to pile up, then you don't know that Griebler is a German name. Good day, gents." He stalked to the door. There he turned dramatically and lev- eled a forefinger at Jock. " They have got you rop>ed and tied. But I think you're a comer. If you change your mind, kid, come and see me." The door slammed to behind him. " Whew! " whistled Sam Hupp, passing a handkerchief over his bald ^x>t. Bartholomew Berg reached out with one great capable hand and swept toward him a pile of papers. " Oh, well, you can't blame him. Advertising has been a scream for so long. Griebler doesn't know the difference between advertising, publicity, and bunk. Hell learn. 120 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK But it'll be an awfully expensive course. Now, Hupp, let's go over this Kalamazoo account. That'll be all, McChesney." Jock turned without a word. He walked quickly through the outer office, into the great main room. There he stopped at the switchboard. " Er— Miss Grimes," he said, smiling charmingly, " where's this Mr. Griebler, of St. Louis, stopping; do you know his hotel? " " Where would be stop? " retorted the wise Miss Grimes. " look at him! The Waldorf, of course." ' " Thanks," said Jock, still smiling. And went back to his desk. At iive Jock left the office. Under his arm he carried the flat pasteboard package secured by elastic bands. At five-fifteen he walked swiftly down the famous corridor of the great red stone hotel. The colorful glittering crowd that surged all about him he seemed not to see. He made straight for the main desk with its battalion " of clerks. " Mr. Griebler in? Mr. Ben Griebler, St. Louis? " The question set in motion the hotel's elaborate system of inves- tigation. At last: " Not in." " Do you know when he will be in? " That futile question. "Can't say. He left no word. Do you want to leave your name?" "N-no. Would he — does he stop at this desk when he comes in?" He was an unusually urbane hotel clerk. " Why, usually they leave their keyd and get their mail from the floor clerk. But Mr. Griebler seems to prefer the main desk." " I'll — wait," said Jock. And seated in one of the great throne- like chairs, he waited. He sat there, slim and boyish, while the laugh- ing, chattering crowd swept all about him. If you sit long enough in that foyer you will learn all there is to learn about life. An amazing sight it is — that crowd. Baraboo helps swell it, and Spokane, and Berlin, and Budapest and Pekin, and Paris, and Waco, Texas. So varied it is, so cosmopolitan, that if you sit there patiently enough, and watch sharply enough you will now and again even see a chance New Yorker. From door to desk Jock's eyes swept. The afternoon-tea crowd, in paradise feathers, and furs, and frock coats swam back and forth. He saw it give way to the dinner throng, satin-shod, bejeweled, hurry- ing through its oysters, swallowing unbelievable numbers of cloudy- amber drinks, and golden-brown drinks, and maroon drinks, then THE M-\X WITHIN HIM 121 gathering up its furs and nishing theaterward. He was still sitting there when that crowd, its eight o'clock freshness somewhat suUied, its sparkle a trifle dimmed, swept back for more oysters, more cloudy- amber and golden-brown drinks. At half-hour intervals, then at hourly intervals, the figure in the great chair stirred, rose, and walked to the desk. " Has Mr. Griebler come in? " The supper throng, its laugh a little ribald, its talk a shade high- pitched, drifted toward the street, or was wafted up in elevators. The throng thinned to an occasional group. Then these became rarer and rarer. The revolving door admitted one man, or two, perhaps, who lingered not at all in the unaccxistomed quiet of the great glittering lobby. The figure of the watcher took on a pathetic droop. The eyelids grew leaden. To c^en them meant an almost superhuman effort. The stare of the new night clerks grew more and more hostile and suspicious. A grayish pallor had settled down on the boy's face. And those lines of the night before stood out for all to see. In the stillness of the place the big revolving door turned once more, complainingly. For the thousandth time Jock's eyes lifted heavily. Then they flew wide open. The drooping figure straight- ened electrically. Half a dozen quick steps and Jock stood in the pathway of Ben Griebler who, rather ruffled and untidy, had blown in on the wings of the morning. He stared a moment. " Well, what " " I've been waiting for you here since five o'clock last evening. It wiU soon be five o'clock again. Will you let me show you those plans now? " Ben Griebler had sxirveyed Jock with the stony calm of the out- of-town visitor who is prepared to show surprise at nothing in New York. " There's nothing like getting an early start," said Ben Grieb- ler. " Come on up to my room." Key in hand, he made for the elevator. For an almost imperceptible moment Jock paused. Then, with a Uttle rush, he followed the short, thick-set figure. " I knew you had it in you, McQiesney. I said you looked like a comer, didn't I? " Jock said nothing. He was silent while Griebler unlocked his 122 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK door, turned on the light, fumbled at the windows and shades, picked up the telephone receiver. " What'U you have? " " Nothing." Jock had cleared the center table and was openihg his flat bundle of papers. He drew up two chairs. " Let's not waste any time," he said. " I've had a twelve-hour wait for this." He seemed to control the situation. Obediently Ben Griebler hung up the receiver, came over, and took the chair very dose to Jock. " There's nothing artistic about gum," began Jock McChesney; and his manner was that of a man who is sure of himself. " It's a shirt-sleeve product, and it ought to be handled from a shirt-sleeve stand-point. Every gum concern in the country has spent thousands on a ' better-than-candy ' campaign before it realized that gum is a candy-and-drug-store article, and that no man is going to push a five-cent package of gum at the sacrifice of the sale of an eighty-cent box of candy. But the health note is there — if only you strike it right. Now, here's my idea " At six o'clock Ben Griebler, his little shrewd eyes sparkling, his voice more squeakily falsetto than ever, surveyed the youngster be- fore him with a certain awe. " This — this thing will actually sell our stuff in Europe! No gum concern has ever been able to make the stuff go outside of this country. Why, inside of three years every 'Arry and 'Arriet in England'll be chewing it on bank holidays. I don't know about Germany, but " He pushed back his chair and got up. " Well, I'm sold on that. And what I say goes. Now I'll tell you what I'll do, kid. I'll take you down to St. Louis with me, at a figure that'll make your " Jock looked up. " Or if you don't want the Berg, Shriner crowd to get wise, 111 fix it this way: I'll go over there this morning and tell 'em I've changed my mind, see? The campaign's theirs, see? Then I refuse to consider any of their suggestions until I see your plan. And when I see it I fall for it like a ton of bricks. Old Bergll never know. He's so darned high-principled " Jock McChesney stood up. The little drawn pinched look which had made his face so queerly old was gone. His eyes were bright. His face was flushed. "There! You've said it. I didn't realize how raw this deal was until you put it into words for me. T want to thank you. THE MAN WITHIN HIM 123 You're right. Bartholomew Berg is so darned high-principled that two muckers like you and me, groveling around in the dirt, can't even see the tips of the heights to which his ideals have soared. Don't stop me. I know I'm tallmjg like a book. But I feel like something that has just been kicked out into the sunshine after having been in jail." " You're tired," said Ben Griebler. " It's been a strain. Some- thing always sn^)S after a long tension." Jock's flat p>alm came down among the papers with a crack. " You bet something snaps! It has just snapped inside me." He began quietly to gather up the papers in an orderly little way. " What's that for? " inquired Griebler, coming forward. " You surely don't mean " " I mean that I'm going to go home and square this thing with a lady you've never met. You and she wouldn't get on, if you did. You don't talk the same language. Then I'm going to have a cold bath, and a hot breakfast. And then, Griebler, I'm going to take this stufi to Bartholomew Berg and tell him the whole nasty business. Hell see the humor of it. But I don't know whether hell fire me, or make me vice-president of the company. Now, if you want to come over and talk to him, fair and square, why come." " Ten to one he fires you," remarked Griebler, as Jock reached the door. " There's only one person I know who's game enough to take you up on that. And it's going to take more nerve to face her at six-thirty than it will to tackle a whole battaUon of Bartholomew Bergs at nine." " Well, I guess I can get in a three-hovu- sleep before — er " " Before what? " said Jock McChesney from the door. Ben Griebler laughed a little shamefaced laugh. " Before I see you at ten, sonny." A POTTER'S WHEEL By Eden Phillpotts In the course of the following week, Harvey Porter received permission to climb a flight of steps up which he had often cast long- ing glances. From the wedging-table the clay was carried straight to the potting-room, and now Harvey shared this work with other lads. He ascended, bearing a load of perfected clay, and found himself in a large and lofty chamber full of air and light, illuminated on the north and west by tall windows, and having white-washed walls. In the midst were ranges of open shelves to support the six-foot boards, and round about stood potters' wheels and turning- lathes. Men came and went, boys hastened hither and thither, and the hum of Mr. Trolley's steam-engine ascended through the open flooring. For two lathes and two wheels were worked by steam, the power controlled by the potters' and the turners' feet. But Thomas Body sat apart at the string-wheel, and a boy supplied the motive power for him. He made the large pieces, and while beside the younger man spread hundreds of lesser things turned by their swift hands from the spinning clay, on Body's board rose varied vases that obeyed no gauge, but budded and blossomed to his will. Porter was told to prepare his lump of clay for Mr. Body, and with a weight and scales he separated his mass into lesser masses, each weighing three pounds. These balls he ranged before the potter, and was permitted for a while to watch the magic business. A little shining wheel of steel stood in a basin thickly spattered with red mud, and beside the thrower were the few tools that he used — prickers, calipers, drill, and sponge. Within reach of his hand, also, were ribs of slate and tin — modeled for the inside and outside of the pot — and a wire with which he cut the finished piece from the wheel. Beside him, in the trough where his wheel spun, stood a bowl of water colored to redness. Another perpendicular wheel more than six feet high stood close at hand, and made Charlie Coysh, who turned it, look small. Its great revolution and steady progress were more fitted to master work than the steam-driven wheels, and it escaped their vibration. 124 A POTTER'S WHEEL 125 Mr. Body sat like a king on his throne. He was red to the eyes. He wore a great apron, and his sleeves were turned up to the elbows. His hands and arms shone with wet redness; his grey beard was spattered. Now he threw a lump of clay, pressed it sharply on the eye of the wheel, and crouched and cuddled over it Uke a beast over a bone. His hands seemed to merge in the liunp as he gripped it, and set his wrists, arms, and shoulders to the work. " That's called ' truing the ball,' " he explained; " but I call it ' taming the ball.' " Charlie turned fast, the potter's wheel whirled, and for a moment the clay spluttered and fought, as it seemed, while Mr. Body, with his face bent near enough to catch the splashes, laughed. " Tis the last struggle to be free! " he said; " the imtamed day fights the potter like that, just for a moment, till he feels the grip grows tight on him and he knows he's met his master. But don't you think anybody can beat him. If you was sitting here, he'd fight and b^t you again and again." In an instant the lump was steadied, dragged up to a cone, and pressed down again to a ball that every bubble of air might be expelled and the whole welded to an obedient mass. " Xow it's tame and broken," said the potter, " and in go my thimibs." He began to model. " You see the piece in your mind's eye first and work accord- ing," he said. " You see it standing before you as clear as those vases on that board. A man like Mr. Easterbrook can build a model as he goes, and turns his fancies into clay as they come into his head; and he's told me that often and often hell dream a pot finer than any that ever he's thrown and come red hot to the whed to make it; but the dream's gone, and he can't turn it into a living pot. Now I'm building a vase." His thiunbs were hollowing the heart of the clay, and he began to lift it. It rose to his touch, rounded, hollowed, billowed magically, expanded here to the belly of the vase, narrowed above to its neck, then opened again like a blossoming flower, and turned over daintily to make the lip. The clay revolved, fast at first, slower as the piece came near its finishing, for the boy at the big string-wheel watched its progress and worked at his handle accordingly. Body's shining red hands hovered, darted, turned and twisted, touched and pressed. 126 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK They were never still for aa instant. Round the pot and into it, they went, now suffering the thin clay lip to run between his fingers, now taking the whole palm to the face, now working within, and all the while slowly and subtly lifting the clay to its limits. He talked while he worked. " There's things a potter can tell, and there's things he cannot," he said; " and one thing that you cannot is how you know the clay's drawn up to its fulness, and running as thin as you dare to let it. To know when to stop when you're potting like this without gauges is an instinct; but them that don't find it come quick to them, will never make potters." The vase reached completion, and a glistening thread of light, fine as a gossamer, ascended on its rounded breast — the tiny rising of the clay between the potter's fingers. " Tis done! " said Mr. Body. Then the wheel grew still; he took his wire, cut the pot away, and lifted it carefully to its place on the board beside him. " 'Twill dry a while below, and then come back again to Mr. Godbeer," explained the old man. " Such work as this goes to him, and he smoothes and fines and takes my meaning with all his cleverness, and puts the finishing touch to the shape; but the master's pots never have touch of lathe upon them. He won't suffer it, for he hateth the lathe. It kills out the soul and spirit of a piece, in his opinion, and makes all pots equal — like the Socialists would have all men. But the paying public like for all to be suent and finished, and the shop-people know it. That's where Mr. Easter- brook's different from common men. He'd sooner see what you might call a great pot, even if it was faulty, than just a common every-day thing Uke these I'm making." The Sunday on which Porter was to serve Mr. Easterbrook arrived, and he reached the works an hour before the master. The ordeal made him anxious, but not nervous, for he knew that he could not fail. He went aloft, marked the master's clay waiting for him under wet cloths, and revolved the wheel once or twice to see that all was ready. Then an idea occurred to him, and he set about cleaning the A POTTER'S WHEEL 127 trough and making the wheel brighter and smarter far than Mr. Easterbrook was accustomed to find it. For Thomas Body attached no importance to such trifles, and liked the red clay spattered about his work as well as his person. Easterbrook arrived, and he and Porter ascended to the wheel. George Easterbrook p)erceived that Harvey had been at pains to make all clean for him, but he did not comment on the fact. He allowed minor evidences of this sort to accumulate without reveal- ing that he had observed them; but they were recorded, not for- gotten. He took off his coat, turned up his sleeves, and drew on a great overall. Then he went to a private locker and produced therefrom a few of his own tools of wood and metal, with a large diagram. It represented the various fundamental shapes of the classic vase: the great rounded amphora and hydria; the narrower, up)-springing lecjrthus; the wide-mouthed crater and cantharus; the cylix, flattened to a dish; the lebes on its pedestal; the circular araballus; the jug-shaped cenochoe. " There — look at those closely," said Mr. Easterbrook. " That's the scale on which a potter plays his music. They include every- thing that can be made on a wheel. The forms slide into each other, and the combinations of these forms are more in nimiber than the stars, because they depend upon a limitless thing; and that's the imagination of man." Harvey had taken off his coat and turned up his sleeves. Now he regarded the outlines without speaking. " In them you see almost every great, fine form that Nature can show you," explained the potter. " You might think that the world was full of beautiful outlines outside these; you might think on the calf of a man's leg; the turn of a girl's cheek, or the lines of a hunting-cat or coursing greyhound; or you might reckon there was greater beauty to be got by the seeing eye from the waves, or the cliffs, or the clouds in the sky, or the shapes of the leaves and the boughs; or the flame in the fire, maybe; or the smoke curling out of a man's pipe. You might say in your first ignorance, Harvey, that these pictures here are far short of the stir and bustle of living and moving forms that fill the earth; but you'd be wrong. The men that made these things saw better and keener and farther than any eyes that have looked out at the world since their time. 128 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK They were the most reasonable beings that the world has known; and they let nothing escape them that was worth keeping — from the twist of a shell to the shoulder of a mountain. You shall read about them in course of time. They were called the Greeks. Mr. Pitts tells that he has read here and there that all Greek art is dead, and the spirit that made it is dead; but only very silly folk can hold to that. Because their discoveries about the secrets of beauty go to the root, and only those who think the secrets of ugliness are better worth finding out will say that the Greek spirit is dead. How- ever, to Mr. Pitts you must go if you want to learn about art." The boy listened; but one word in this harangue had appealed to him with a force greater than all the rest, and that was his own Christian name. Until now Easterbrook had never called him " Harvey." To-day he did so, the word slipping out naturally in the midst of his discourse. And Porter knew, from his own experi- ence, that one does not speak to a person by a name, if only a nickname, until one has often thought of the person by that name. He was gratified — indeed, mightily pleased. It seemed that the inci- dent drew him nearer to the master. Now the potter worked, while Harvey Porter responded with every nerve instinct alert to do himself credit. Even he could see; the difference between George Easterbrook's methods and those of Thomas Body. Here was no less reverence for the medium, but greater power over it. There was mystery and magic in this man's potting. The strength behind the delicacy was concealed, for the clay twined and curled, and seemed sentient and happy in his hands. It responded without visible cause, for Mr. Easterbrook's manual labors were less in evidence than Body's. Body appeared to be doing a difficult thing well ; Easterbrook made a difficult thing look childishly easy. His pots seemed to ascend and grow like flowers off the wheel, while those of Thomas were the result of a process of labored building. The clay now rose and fell as easily as a sea-wave; it expanded, contracted, swelled, shrank, bellied to an amphora, spired to a narrow vase, then sank again, opened to a cylix or narrowed to an cenochoe. And all the time it seemed to breathe and palpitate until, the last touch given, the wheel slowed and stilled, and the stately thing born of earth and water stood created and ready for the ordeal of fire. A POTTER'S WHEEL 129 " Life flows into it from the potter's palm and fingers," ex- plained the master. " The clay is ready and willing; you feel that it is anxious to do your bidding and make swift and faithful re^wnse; yet the day preserves its own qualities for all my handiwork. There's great dignity in matter, you must know. It obeys in the measure of its power, but it imposes its own conditions on the potter. If the ignorant or clumsy hand asks the clay to do more than it is able, it refuses. It can only re^)ond within its own capabilities, and we who are skilled know them, and lift the clay to its own highest powers of expression, as the wise father trains a child gently to his finest possibility." He worked awhile, and then spoke again. " There's this difference, however: a wise workman knows his own clay, but the wisest father doesn't know his own child, so that likeness breaks down." He proceeded, moulding his own severe sense of beauty into one inert mass after another. There woke, as it seemed, a close, ob- servant, taut sympathy between him and his material from the moment it began to spin and the ball was trued. A wondrous trinity of intellect, motion, and matter worked here together. Easterbrook put it differently, however. " There's three things go to making pots, just as there's three things go to making all else," he said. " And they are matter, life, and mind. So at least I hold, though many wiser men than me deny the min d. But it looks like that to my eyes, and in the business of potting the matter's the red mud here; the life is the ginning wheel; the mind is the craftsman's, who brings wheel and earth together and creates the pot." He finished eighteen pieces in the space of an hour, and when the work was ended he gave the boy a crumb of praise. "You've done all that was needful. Joanna will be jealous," he said. " Now fetch me clean water and a towel, and teU me which you like best." He pointed to the vases, and the boy would have given much to know what specially to praise. He considered, then he selected a bold piece of somewhat opulent and involved design. Mr. Easter- brook shook his head. " Many will think the same, and many will think wrong. When many people agree about a thing, they're generally wrong." 9 130 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK. Then he pointed to a small and severe model some eight inches high. " That's the best," he said. " What will Mr. Pitts do to it, sir? " ventured Porter. " He'll do nothing to it if I know him," answered the partner of Paul. " Anyway, I hope he won't. When Mr. Pitts happens to be properly pleased with a pot of my making, he doesn't touch it. That's his way of saying ' Well done! ' to me." THE RIVERMAN By Stewast Edwaed White I rmST met him one Fourth of July afternoon in the middle eighties. The sawdust streets and high board sidewalks of the Ixmiber town were filled to the brim with people. The permanent |X)pulation, dressed in the stiffness of its Sunday best, escorted gingham Tives or sweethearts; a dozen outsiders like myself tried not to be too conspicuous in a city smartness; but the great multi- tude was composed of the men of the woods. I sat, chair-tilted, by the hotel, watching them pass. Their heavy woolen shirts crossed by the broad suspenders, the red of their sashes or leather shine of their belts, their short kersey trousers, '"' stagged " ofi to leave a gap between the knee and the heavily ^iked " cork boots " — all these were distinctive enough of their class, but most interesting to me were the eyes that peered from beneath their little round hats tilted rakishly askew. They were aU subtly alike, those eyes. Some were black, some were brown, or grey, or blue, but all were steady and imabashed, all looked straight at you with a strange himiorous blend- ing of aggression and reject for your own business, and all without exception wrinkled at the comers with a suggestion of dry humor. In my half-conscious scrutiny I probably stared harder than I knew, for all at once a laughing pair of the blue eyes suddenly met mine fuU, and an ironical voice drawled: " Say, bub, you look as interested as a man kiUing snakes. Am I your long-lost friend? " The tone of the voice matched accurately the attitude of the man, and that was quite non-committal. He stood cheerfully ready to meet the emergency. If I sought trouble, it was here to my hand; or if I needed help, he was willing to offer it. " I guess you are," I replied, " if you can tell me what all this outfit's headed for." He thrust back his hat and ran his hand through a mop of closely cropped light curls. " Birling match," he explained briefly. " Come on." I joined him, and together we followed the crowd to the river, 131 132 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK where we roosted like cormorants on adjacent piles overlooking a patch of clear water among the filled booms. " Drive's just over," my new friend informed me. " Rear come down last night. Fourther July celebration. This little town will scratch fer th' tall timber along about midnight when the boys goes in to take her apart." A half-dozen men with peavies rolled a white-pine log of about a foot and a half diameter into the clear water, where it lay rocking back and forth, three or four feet from the boom piles. Suddenly a man ran the length of the boom, leaped easily into the air, and landed with both feet square on one end of the floating log. That end disappeared in an ankle-deep swirl of white foam, the other rose suddenly, the whole timber, projected forward by the shock, drove headlong to the middle of the little pond. And the man, his arms folded, his knees just bent in the graceful, nervous attitude of the circus-rider, stood upright like a statue of bronze. A roar approved this feat. " That's Dickey Darrell," said my informant; " Roaring DicL Watch him." The man on the log was small, with clean beautiful haunches and shoulders, but with hanging baboon arms. Perhaps his most striking feature was a mop of reddish-brown hair that overshadowed a little triangular white face accented by two reddish-brown quadrilaterals that served as eyebrows and a pair of inscrutable chipmunk eyes. For a moment he poised erect in the great calm of the pubUc performer. Then slowly he began to revolve the log under his feet. The lofty gaze, the folded arms, the straight supple waist budged not by a hair's breadth; only the feet stepped forward, at first deliberately, then faster and faster, until the rolling log threw a blue spray a foot into the air. Then suddenly slap! slap I the heavy caulks stamped a reversal. The log came instantaneously to rest, quivering exactly like some animal that had been spurred through its paces. " Magnificent! " I cried. " That's nothing! " my companion repressed me; " anybody can birl a log. Watch this." Roaring Dick for the first time unfolded his arms. With some appearance of caution he balanced his unstable footing into absolute immobility. Then he turned a somersault. THE RIVERMAN 133 This was the real thing. My friend uttered a wild yell of applause which was lost in a general roar. A long pike-pole shot out, bit the end of the timber, and towed it to the boom pile. Another man stepped on the log with Darrell. They stood facing each other, bent-kneed, alert. Suddenly with one accord they commenced to birl the log from left to right. The pace grew hot. Like squirrels treading a cage their feet twinkled. Then it became apparent that DarreU's opponent was gradually being forced from the top of the log. He could not keep up. Little by Uttle, still moving desperately, he dropped back to the slant, then at last to the edge, and so off into the river with a mighty q)lash. " Clean birled! " commented my friend. One after another a half-dozen rivermen tackled the imperturb- able Dick, but none of them possessed the agility to stay on top in the pace he set them. One boy of eighteen seemed for a moment to hold his own, and managed at least to keep out of the water even when Darrell had app)arently reached his maximum si>eed. But that expert merely threw his entire weight into two reversing stamps of his feet, and the young fellow drove forward as abruptly as though he had been shied over a horse's head. The crowd was by now getting uproarious and impatient of volunteer effort to humble DarreU's challenge. It wanted the best, and at once. It began, with increasing insistence, to shout a name. "Jimmy Powers! " it vociferated; "Jimmy Powers." And then by shamefaced bashfulness, by profane protest, by muttered and comprehensive curses, I knew that my companion on the other pile was indicated. A dozen men near at hand began to shout. " Here he is! " they cried. " Come on, Jimmy." " Don't be a high banker." " Hang his hide on the fence." Jimmy, still red and swearing, suffered himself to be pulled from his elevation and disappeared in the throng. A moment later I caught his head and shoulders pushing toward the boom piles, and so in a moment he stepped warily aboard to face his antagonist. This was evidently no question to be determined by the sim- plicity of force or the simplicity of a child's trick. The two men stood half-crouched, face to face, watching each other narrowly, but making no move. To me they seemed like two wrestlers jarring for an opening. Slowly the log revolved one way; then slowly the 134 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK other. It was a mere courtesy of salute. All at once Dick birled three rapid strokes from left to right, as though about to roll the log, leaped into the air and landed square with both feet on the other slant of the timber. Jimmy Powers felt the jar, and acknowl- edged it by the spasmodic jerk with which he counterbalanced Darrell's weight. But he was not thrown. As though this daring and hazardous manoeuver had opened the combat, both men sprang to life. Sometimes the log rolled one way, sometimes the other, sometimes it jerked from side to side like a crazy thing, but always with the rapidity of light, always in a smother of spray and foam. The decided spat, spat, spat of the reversing blows from the caulked boots sounded like picket firing. I could not make out the different leads, feints, parries, and counters of this strange method of boxing, nor could I distinguish to whose initiative the various evolutions of that log could be ascribed. But I retain still a vivid mental picture of two men nearly motionless above the waist, nearly vibrant below it, dominating the insane gyrations of a stick of pine. The crowd was appreciative and partisan — for Jimmy Powers. It howled wildly, and rose thereby to ever higher excitement. Then it forgot its manners utterly and groaned when it made out that a sudden splash represented its favorite, while the indomitable Darrell still trod the quarter-deck as champion birler for the year. I must confess I was as sorry as anybody. I climbed down from my cormorant roost, and picked my way between the alleys of aromatic piled lumber in order to avoid the press, and cursed the little gods heartily for undue partiality in the wrong direction. In this manner I happened on Jimmy Powers himself seated drifting on a board and examining his bared foot. " I'm sorry," said I behind him. " How did he do it? " He whirled, and I could see that his laughing boyish face had become suddenly grim and stern, and that his eyes were shot with blood. " Oh, it's you, is it? " he growled disparagingly. " Well, that's how he did it." He held out his foot. Across the instep and at the base of the toes ran two rows of tiny round punctures from which the blood was oozing. I looked very inquiring. " He corked me! " Jimmy Powers explained. " Jammed his THE RIVERMAN 135 spikes into me! Stepped on my foot and tripped me, the " Jimmy Powers certainly could swear. " Why didn't you make a kick? " I cried. " That ain't how I do it," he muttered, pulling on his heavy woolen sock. " But no," I insisted, my indignation moimting. " It's an out- rage! That crowd was with you. All you had to do was to say something " He cut me short. " And give myself away as a fool — sure Mike. I ought to know Dicky Darrell by this time, and I ought to be big enough to take care of myself." He stamped his foot into his driver's shoe and took me by the arm, his good humor apparently restored. " No, don't you lose any hair, bub; I'll get even with Roaring Dick." That night, having by the advice of the proprietor moved my bureau and tnmk against the bedroom door, I lay wide awake listening to the taking of the town apart. At each especially vicious crash I wondered if that might be Jimmy Powers getting even with Roaring Dick. The following year, but earUer in the season, I again visited my little lumber town. In striking contrast to the life of that other mid-summer day were the deserted streets. The landlord knew me, and after I had washed and eaten, approached me with a suggestion. " You got all day in front of you," said he; " why don't you take a horse and buggy and make a visit to the big jam? Every- body's up there more or less." In response to my inquiry, he repUed: " They've jammed at the upper bend, jammed bad. The crew's been picking at her for near a week now, and last night Darrell was down to see about some more dynamite. It's worth seein'. The breast of her is near thirty foot high, and lots of water in the river." " Darrell? " said I, catching at the name. " Yes. He's rear boss this year. Do you think you'd like to take a look at her? " " I think I should," I assented. The horse and I jogged slowly along a deep sand road, through wastes of pine stumps and belts of hardwood beautiful with the early spring, xmtil finally we arrived at a clearing in which stood two huge tents, a mammoth kettle slung over a fire of logs, and drying racks about the timbers of another fire. A fat cook in the inevitable 136 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK battered derby hat, two bare-armed cookees, and a chore " boy " of seventy-odd summers were the only human beings in sight. One of the cookees agreed to keep an eye on my hqrse. I picked my way down a well-worn trail toward the regular clank, clank, click of the peavies. I emerged finally to a plateau elevated some fifty or sixty feet above the river. A half-dozen spectators were already gathered. Among them I could not but notice a tall, spare, broad-shouldered young fellow dressed in a quiet business suit, somewhat wrinkled, whose square, strong, clean-cut face and muscular hands were tanned by the weather to a dark umber-brown. In another moment I looked down on the jam. The breast, as my landlord had told me, rose sheer from the water to the height of at least twenty-five feet, bristling and formidable. Back of it pressed the volume of logs packed closely in an apparently inextricable tangle as far as the eye could reach. A man near in- formed me that the tail was a good three miles up stream. From beneath this wonderful chevaux de frise foamed the current of the river, irresistible to any force less mighty than the statics of such a mass. A crew of forty or fifty men were at work. They clamped their peavies to the reluctant timbers, heaved, pushed, slid, and rolled them one by one into the current, where they were caught and borne away. They had been doing this for a week. As yet their efforts had made but slight impression on the bulk of the jam, but some time, with patience, they would reach the key-logs. Then the tangle would melt like sugar in the freshet, and these imperturb- able workers would have to escape suddenly over the plunging logs to shore. My eye ranged over the men, and finally rested on Dickey Dar- rell. He was standing on the slanting end of an upheaved log dominating the scene. His little triangular face with the accents of the quadrilateral eyebrows was pale with the blaze of his energy, and his chipmunk eyes seemed to flame with a dynamic vehemence that caused those on whom their glance fell to jump as though they had been touched with a hot poker. I had heard more of Dickey Darrell since my last visit, and was glad of the chance to observe Morrison & Daly's best " driver " at work. The jam seemed on the very edge of breaking. After half an THE RIVERMAN 137 hour's strained expectation it seemed still on the very edge of break- ing. So I sat down on a stmnp. Then for the first time I noticed another acquaintance, handling his peavie near the very person of the rear boss. " Hullo," said I to myself; " that's funny. I wonder if Jimmy Powers got even; and if so, why he is working so amicably and so near Roaring Dick." At noon the men came ashore for dinner. I paid a quarter into the cook's private exchequer and so was fed. After the meal I ^preached my acquaintance of the year before. " Hello, Powers," I greeted him; " I suppose you don't remem- ber me? " " Sure," he re^wnded heartily. " Ain't you a little early this year? " " No," I disclaimed, " this is a better aght than a birling match." I offered him a cigar, which he immediately substituted for his corncob pipe. We sat at the root of a tree. " Itll be a great sight when that jam pulls," said I. " You bet," he replied, " but she's a teaser. Even old Tim Shearer would have a picnic to make out just where the key-logs are. We've started her three times, but she's plugged tight every trip. Likely to pull almost any time." We discussed various topics. Finally I ventured: " I see your old friend Darrell is rear boss." " Yes," said Jimmy Powers, dryly. " By the way, did you fellows ever square up on that birling match? " " No," said Jimmy Powers; then after an instant, " Not yet." I glanced at him to recognize the square set to the jaw that had impressed me so formidably the year before. And again his face relaxed almost quizzically as he caught sight of mine. " Bub," said he, getting to his feet, " those little marks are on my foot yet. And just you tie into one idea: Dickey Darrell's got it coming." His face darkened with a swift anger. I glimpsed the flare of an undying hate. About three o'clock that afternoon Jimmy's prediction was ful- filled. Without the slightest warning the jam " pulled." Usually certain premonitory cracks, certain sinkings down, groanings for- ward, grumblings, shruggings, and sullen, reluctant shiftings of the 138 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK logs give opportunity for the men to assure their safety. This jam, after inexplicably hanging fire for a week, as inexplicably started like a sprinter almost into its full gait. The first few tiers toppled smash into the current, raising a waterspout like that made by a dynamite explosion; the mass behind plunged forward blindly, rising and falling as the integral logs were up-ended, turned over, thrust one side, or forced bodily into the air by the mighty power playing jack-straws with them. The rivermen, though caught unaware, reached either bank. They held their peavies across their bodies as balancing-poles, and zig-zagged ashore with a calmness and lack of haste that were in reality only an indication of the keenness with which they fore-esti- mated each chance. Long experience with the ways of saw-logs brought them out. They knew the correlation of these many forces just as the expert billiard-player knows instinctively the various angles of incidence and reflection between his cue-ball and its mark. Consequently, they avoided the centers of eruption, paused on the spots steadied for the moment, dodged moving logs, trod those not yet under way, and so arrived on solid ground. The jam itself started with every indication of meaning business, gained momentum for a hundred feet, and then plugged to a standstill. The " break " was abortive. Now we all had leisure to notice two things. First, the movement had not been of the whole jam, as we had at first supposed, but only of a block or section of it twenty rods or so in extent. Thus between the part that had moved and the greater bulk that had not stirred lay a hundred feet of open water in which floated a number of loose logs. The second fact was that Dickey Darrell had fallen into that open stretch of water and was in the act of swimming toward one of the floating logs. That much we were given just time to appreciate thoroughly. Then the other section of the jam rumbled and began to break. Roaring Dick was caught between two gigantic mill- stones moving to crush him out of sight. An active figure darted down the tail of the first section, out over the floating logs, seized Darrell by the coat-collar, and so burdened began desperately to scale the very face of the breaking jam. Never was a more magnificent rescue. The logs were rolling, falling, diving against the laden man. He climbed as over a tread- mill, a treadmill whose speed was constantly increasing. And when THE RIVER:M.\X 139 he finally gained the top, it was as the gap closed splintering beneath him and the man he had saved. It is not in the woodsman to be demonstrative at any time, but here was work demanding attention. Without a f>ause for breath or congratulation they turned to the necessity of the moment. The jam, the whole jam, was mo.'.ing at last. Jimmy Powers ran ashore for his peavie. Roaring Dick, like a demon incarnate, threw himself into the work. Forty men attacked the jam at a dozen places, encouraging the movement, twisting aside the timbers that threat- ened to lock anew, directing pigmy-like the titanic forces into the channel of their efficiency. Roaring like wild cattle the logs swept by, at first slowly, then with the railroad rush of the curbed freshet. Men were everywhere, taking chances, like cowboys before the stampeded herd. And so, out of sight aro.und the lower bend swept the front of the jam in a swirl of glory, the rivermen riding the great boom back of the creature they subdued, until at last, with the slackening current, the logs floated by free, cannoning with hollow sound one against the other. A half-dozen watchers, leaning statuesquely on the shafts of their peavies, watched the ordered ranks pass by. One by one the spectators departed. At last only myself and the brown-faced yoxmg man remained. He sat on a stump, staring with sightless eyes into vacancy. I did not disturb his thoughts. The sun dipped. A cool breeze of evening sucked up the river. Over near the cook-camp a big fire commenced to crackle by the drying frames. At dusk the rivermen straggled in from the down- river trail. The brown-faced young man arose and went to meet them. I saw him return in close conversation with Jimmy Powers. Before they reached us he had turned away with a gesture of farewell. Jimmy Powers stood looking after him long after his form had disappeared, and indeed even after the sound of his wheels had died toward town. As I approached, the riverman turned to me a face from which the reckless, contained self-reliance of the woods- worker had faded. It was wide eyed with an almost awe-stricken wonder and adoration. " Do 3'ou know who that is? " he asked me in a hushed voice. " That's Thorpe, Harry Thorpe. And do you know what he said to me just now, me? He told me he wanted me to work in Camp One 140 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK next winter, Thorpe's One. And he told me I was the first man he ever hired straight into One." His breath caught with something like a sob. I had heard of the man and of his methods. I knew he had made it a practice of recruiting for his prize camp only from the employees of his other camps, that, as Jimmy said, he never " hired straight into One." I had heard, too, of his reputation among his own and other woodsmen. But this was the first time I had ever come into per- sonal contact with his influence. It impressed me the more in that I had come to know Jimmy Powers and his kind. " You deserve it, every bit," said I. " I'm not going to call you a hero, because that would make you tired. What you did this after- noon showed nerve. It was a brave act. But it was a better act because you rescued your enemy, because you forgot everything but your common humanity when danger " I broke off. Jimmy was again looking at me with his ironically quizzical grin. " Bub," said he, " if you're going to hang any stars of Bethlehem on my Christmas tree, just call a halt right here. I didn't rescue that scalawag because I had any Christian sentiments, nary bit. I was just naturally savin' him for the birling match next Fourther July." THE TOLL OF BIG TIMBER By Berteand WiLLiAii Sin-claie Day came again, in the natural sequence of events. ^latt, the cook, roused all the camp at six o'clock with a tremendous banging on a piece of boiler-plate hung by a wire. Long before that SteUa heard her brother Charlie astir. She wondered sleepily at his ^rightliness, for as she remembered him at home he had been a confirmed lie-abed. She herself re^onded none too quickly to the breakfast gong, as a result of which slowness the crew had filed away to the day's work, her brother striding in the lead, when she entered the mess-house. She kiUed time with partial success tul noon. Several times she was startled to momentary attention by the prolonged series of sharp cracks which heralded the thunderous crash of a falling tree. There were other sounds which betokened the loggers' activity in the near-by forest — ^the ringing whine of saw blades, the dull stroke of the axe, voices calling distantly. She tried to interest herself in the camp and the beach and ended up by sitting on a log in a shady spot, staring dreamily over the lake. She thought impatiently of that homely saw concerning Satan and idle hands, but she reflected also that in this isolation even mischief was comparatively impossible. There was not a soul to hold ^eech with except the cook, and he was too busy to talk, even if he had not been afflicted with a painful degree of diffidence when she addressed him. She could make no effort at settling down, at arranging things in what was to be her home. There was nothing to arrange, no odds and ends wherewith almost any woman can conjure up a homelike effect in the barest sort of place. She beheld the noon return of the crew much as a shipwrecked castaway on a desert shore might behold a rescuing sail, and she told Charlie that she intended to go into the woods that afternoon and watch them work. " All right," said he. " Just so you don't get in the way of a falling tree." A narrow fringe of brush and scrubby timber separated the camp from the actual work. From the water's edge to the donkey engine 142 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK was barely four hundred yards. From donkey to a ten-foot jump-off on the lake shore in a straight line on a five per cent, gradient ran a curious roadway, made by placing two logs in the hollow scooped by tearing great timbers over the soft earth, and a bigger log on each side. Butt to butt and side to side, the outer sticks half their thick- ness above the inner, they formed a continuous trough, the bottom and sides worn smooth with friction of sliding timbers. Stella had crossed it the previous evening and wondered what it was. Now, watching them at work, she saw. Also she saw why the great stumps that rose in every clearing in this land of massive trees were sawed six and eight feet above the ground. Always at the base the firs swelled sharply. Wherefore the falling gangs lifted themselves above the enlargement to make their cut. Two sawyers attacked a tree. First, with their dquble-bitted axes, each drove a deep notch into the sapwood just wide enough to take the end of a two-by-six plank four or five feet long with a single grab-nail in the end — the springboard of the Pacific coast logger, whose daily business lies among the biggest timber on God's foot- stool. Each then clambered up on his precarious perch, took hold of his end of the long, limber saw, and cut in to a depth of a foot or more, according to the size of the tree. Then jointly they chopped down to this sawed line, and there was the undercut complete, a deep notch on the side to which the tree would fall. That done, they swung the ends of their springboards, or if it were a thick trunk, made new holding notches on the other side, and the long saw would cut steadily through the heart of the tree toward that yellow, gashed undercut, stroke upon stroke, ringing with a thin, metallic twang. Presently there would arise an ominous cracking. High in the air the tall crest would dip slowly, as if it bowed with manifest reluctance to the inevitable. The sawyers would drop lightly from their springboards, crjdng: " Tim-ber-r-r-r! " The earthward sweep of the upper boughs would hasten till the air was full of a whistling, whishing sound. Then came the rending crash as the great tree smashed prone, crushing what smaJl timber stood in its path, followed by the earth-quivering shock of its impact with the soil. The tree once down, the fallers went on to another. Immediately the swampers fell upon the prone trunk with axes, denuding it of limbs; the buckers followed them to saw it into THE TOLL OF BIG TIMBER 143 lengths decreed by the boss logger. When the job was done, the brown fir was no longer a stately tree but saw-logs, each with a square butt that lay donkej-ward, trimmed a trifle rounding with the axe. Benton worked with one falling gang. The falling gang raced to keq) ahead of the buckers and swampers, and they in turn raced to keep ahead of the hook tender, rigging slinger, and donkey, which last trio moved the logs from woods to water, once they were down and trimmed. Terrible, devastating forces of destruction they seemed to Stella Benton, wholh- xmused as she was to any woodland save the weU-kept parks and little areas of groomed forest in her native state. All about in the ravaged woods lay the big logs, scores of them. They had only begxm to puU with the donkey a week earUer, Benton explained to her. With this size gang he could not keep a donkey engine working steadily. So they had feUed and trimmed to a good start, and now the falling crew and the swamp>ers and buckers were in a ding-dong contest to see how long they could keep ahead of the puffing Seattle yarder. Stella sat on a stump, watching. 0\er an area of many acres the groimd was a litter of broken limbs, ragged tops, crushed and bent and broken younger growth, twisted awry by the big trees in their faU. Huge stumps upthrust like beacons in a ruffled harbor, grim, massive butts. From all the ravaged wood rose a pungent smeU of pitch and sap, a resinous, pleasant smeU. Radiating like the qyokes of a wheel from the head of the chute ran deep, raw gashes in the earth, where the donkey had hauled up the Brobdingnagian logs on the end of an inch cable. " This is no small boy's play, is it, Stell? " Charlie said to her once in passing. And she agreed that it was not. Agreed more emphatically and with half-awed wonder when she saw the donkey puff and quiver on its anchor cable, as the hauling line pooled up on the drum. On the outer end of that line snaked a sixty-foot stick, five feet across the butt, but it came down to the chute head, brushing earth and brush and small trees aside as if they were naught. Once the big log caromed against a stump. The rearward end flipped ten feet in the air and thirty feet sidewise. But it came clear and slid with incredible swiftness to the head of the chute, flinging aside showers of dirt and small stones, and leaving one more deep furrow 144 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK in the forest floor. Benton trotted behind it. Once it came to rest well in the chute, he unhooked the line, freed the choker (the short- noosed loop of cable that slips over the log's end), and the haul-back cable hurried the main line back to another log. Benton followed, and again the donkey shuddered on its foundation skids till another log lay in the chute, with its end butted against that which lay before. One log after another was hauled down till half a dozen rested there, elongated peas in a wooden pod. Then a last big stick came with a rush, bunted these others powerfully so that they began to slide with the momentum thus im- parted, slowly at first, then, gathering way and speed, they shot down to the lake and plunged to the water over the ten-foot jump-off like a school of breaching whales. All this took time, vastly more time than it takes in the telling. The logs were ponderous masses. They had to be manceuvered sometimes between stumps and standing timber, jerked this way and that to bring them into the clear. By four o'clock Benton and his rigging slinger had just finished bunting their second batch of logs down the chute. Stella watched these Titanic labors with a growing interest and a dawning vision of why these men walked the earth with that reckless swing of their shoulders. For they were palpably masters in their environment. They strove with woodsy giants and laid them low. Amid constant dangers they sweated at a task that shamed the seven labors of Hercules. Gladiators they were in a contest from which they did not always emerge victorious. When Benton and his helper followed the haul-back line away to the domain of the falling gang the last time, Stella had so far unbent as to strike up conversation with the donkey engineer. That greasy individual finished stoking his fire-box and replied to her first comment. " Work? You bet," said he. "It's real graft, this is. I got the easy end of it, and mine's no snap. I miss a signal, big stick butts against something solid; biff! goes the line and maybe cuts a man plumb in two. You got to be wide awake when you run a loggin' donkey. These woods is no place for a man, anyway, if he ain't spry both in his head and feet." " Do many men get hurt logging? " Stella asked. " It looks awfully dangerous, with these big trees falling and smashing every- thing. Look at that. Goodness! " THE TOLL OF BIG TIMBER 145 From the donkey they could see a shower of ragged splinters and broken limbs fly when a two-hundred-foot fir smashed a dead cedar that stood in the way of its downward swoop. They could hear the pieces strike against bru^ and trees like the patter of shot on a tin wall. The donkey engineer gazed calmly enough. " Them flyin' chxmks raise the dickens sometimes," he observed. " Oh, yes, now an' then a man gets laid out. There's some things you got to take a chance on. Maybe you get cut with an axe, or a limb drops on you, or you get in the way of a breakin' line — though a man ain't got any business in the bight of a line. A man don't stand much show when the end of a inch'n' a quarter cable snaps at him like a whiplash. I seen a feller on Howe Sound cut square in two with a cable-end once. A broken block's the worst, though! That gMieraUy gets the riggin' sUnger, but a piece of it's liable to hit anybody. You see them big iron pulley blocks the haul-back cable works in? Well, sometimes they have to anchor a snatch block to a stump an' run the main line through it at an angle to get a log out the waj' you want. Suppose the block breaks when I'm givin' it to her? Chunks of that broken cast ironll fly like bullets. Yes, sir, broken blocks is bad business. Maybe you noticed the boys used the snatch block two or three times this afternoon? We've been lucky in this can^) all spring. Nobody so much as nicked himself with an axe. Breaks in the gear don't come very often, anyway, with an outfit in first-class shape. We got good gear an' a good crew — about as skookum a bunch as I ever saw in the woods." Two hundred }-ards distant Charlie Benton rose on a stimip and semaphored with his arms. The engineer whistled answer and stood to his levers; the main line began to ^x)ol slowly in on the drum. Another signal, and he shut off. Another signal, after a brief wait, and the drum roUed faster, the line tautened like a fiddlestring, and the ponderous machine vibrated with the strain of its effort. Suddenly the line came slack. SteUa, watching for the log to appear, saw her brother leap backward off the stump, saw the cable whip sidewise, mowing down a clump of saplings that stood in the bight of the line, before the engineer could shut off the power. In that return of comparative silence there rose above the sibilant hiss of the blow-off valve a sudden commotion of voices. The donkey engineer peered over the brush. " That don't sound good. I guess somebody got it in the neck." 10 146 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK Almost immediately Sam Davis and two other men came running. " What's up? " the engineer called as they passed on a dog trot. " Block broke," Davis answered over his shoulder. " Piece of it near took a leg off Jim Renfrew." Stella stood for a moment, hesitating. " I may be able to do something. I'll go and see," she said. " Better not," the engineer warned. " Liable to run into some- thing that'll about turn your stomach. What was I tellin' about a broken block? Them ragged pieces of flyin' iron sure mess a man up. They'll bring a bed spring, an' pack him down to the boat, an' get him to a doctor quick as they can. That's all. You couldn't do nothin'." Nevertheless she went. Renfrew was the rigging slinger working with Charlie, a big, blond man who blushed like a schoolboy when Benton introduced him to her. Twenty minutes before he had gone trotting after the haul-block, sound and hearty, laughing at some sally of her brother's. It seemed a trifle incredible that he should lie mangled and bleeding among the green forest growth, while his fellows hurried for a stretcher. Two hundred yards at right angles from where Charlie had stood giving signals she found a little group under a branchy cedar. Ren- frew lay on his back, mercifully unconscious. Benton squatted beside him, twisting a silk handkerchief with a stick tightly above the wound. His hands and Renfrew's clothing and the mossy ground were smeared with blood. Stella looked over his shoulder. The overalls were cut away. In the thick of the man's thigh stood a ragged gash she could have laid both hands in. She drew back. Benton looked up. " Better keep away," he advised shortly. " We've done all that can be done." She retreated a little and sat down on a root half-sickened. The other two men stood up. Benton sat back, his first-aid work done, and rolled a cigarette with fingers that shook a little. Off to one side she saw the fallers climb up on their springboards. Presently arose the ringing whine of the thin steel blade, the chuck of axes where the swampers attacked a fallen tree. No matter, she thought, that injury came to one, that death might hover near, the work went on apace, like action on a battle-field. COTTOX AND THE OLD SOUTH By James A. B. Scheres Robert Fulton, a friend of both Whitney and Cartwright, by applying the steajm-engine of Watt to override the immense ocean barrier dividing the gin from the home of the power-loom, manifolded a thousand times over the canying power of the ships; while Samuel Slater, the British pinner, by setting up from memory at Pawtucket a successful factory just three years before Whitney invented his gin, initiated in Xew England a demand for Southern cotton second only to that of the old England from which he had fled. It is Uttle wonder that the South devoted itself thenceforward with undivided attention to the production of that precious commodity for which two continents clamored, and which the South alone could supply. Certainly the Ufe of the South from this time forward revolved around the cotton plant. Earh' in the spring the negroes with their multitudinous mules begin the plowing of straight, long, deep fur- rows in the fragrant mellow sofl — the deqjer the better, since cotton has a tap-root which, if prof)erly invited, will sink four feet in searching for fresh food and moisture. Fertilizer, consisting of manure and malodorous guano, or, in later times, expensive phos- phates, is laid in the center of the b«is thrown up bj' the furrows; and the time of actual planting awaited. When first the song of the " tiutle dove " is heard, and the starry blooms of the dogwood light up the edge of the forest, and the frosts are thought to be over, come, in the old days, flocks of black women with hoes, scooping out the beds at rough intervals, followed by other women dropping careless handfifls of seed. The tender green plants, thrusting their way upward shortly, were thinned out, one stalk to a foot. 'UTien two or three weeks above the sm-face. more plowing was needful, to break the new crust of the soil, and kill weeds. Then, every three weeks thereafter, vintil the steaming " dog days " again of August, the patient plow would break the crust again and again, so that on the larger plantations the plows never ceased, but turned continually from the last furrows of far-stretching acres to break the first furrows 147 148 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK of another three weeks' task. Hoeing, meanwhile, kept the women busy with the grass and weeds. In early August the crop was " laid by," and required no more work till picking time. Meanwhile, under proper conditions this incessant labor would transform the fields into flower gardens. By June the beautiful blos- soms are blushing; bell-shaped and softly brilliant, here and there, with the magic trick of changing their colors, as a maid her clothes. Shimmering in the morning in a creamy white or pale straw dress, and closing its silky petals in the evening, the flower on the second day of its fragile life shifts to a wild-rose color, deepening by evening to magenta or carnation: all this, for three brief but brilliant days, on graceful stems knee-high, rich in glossy dark green foliage; so that the aspect of a spacious level field, with fresh blossoms budding into cream or cloth of gold, while elder sisters smile in pink and red amidst the trembling verdure, is of a splendid variegated beauty that lends to the Southern landscape half its charm. It is in this summer season the Southern children sing: First day white, next day red, Third day from my birth I'm dead ; Though I am of short duration, Yet withal I clotfie the nation. From mid-August until winter, however, and especially in that " season of mellow fruitfulness," October, the cotton shrub becomes a thing of wonder; adding to its garniture of bloom the bursting pods of snowy fleece that dominate the coloring of the fields into the semblance of a vegetative snowstorm. Then, on the old plantation, swarmed forth pickaninnies and black babes in arms, with bags and huge baskets and mirth, nimble fingers, as it were, predestined to the cotton pod, to live in the sunshine amid the fleecy snow, and pile up white fluffy mounds at the furrows' ends, chanting melodies, minor chords of song as old as Africa; the women troop home again at nightfall with poised overflowing baskets on their heads, to feasts of corn-pone and cracklin' and molasses in the blaze of a light'ood fire, within sound of the thrumming of the banjo. Cotton was and is the Southern " money crop." From autumn the banker and merchant " carry " the South on their ledgers, and scant is the interchange of coin; but when the " first bale of cotton " rolls into town behind a jangling team of trotting mules, their grin- COTTON AND THE OLD SOUTH 149 ning driver cracking out resounding triumph with his whip, money makes its anniversary appearance, accounts are settled, and the whole shining South " feels Flush." The gin-houses drive a roaring business, the air is heavy in them and the light is thick with downy lint, and their atmosphere pungent with the oily odor of crushed woolly seeds. Steam or hydraulic presses, with irresistible power, then pack towering heaps of seedless fleece into coarse casings of flimsy jute wrapping, metal-bound. These bales, weighing roughly to the tale of five hundred poxmds, pass the appraisement of the broker, swarm the platforms of the railway warehouses and over- flow to the hospitable ground; then are laden laboriously into freight cars, and, after being squeezed to the irreducible minimum of size by some giant compress, are hauled to the comers of the earth. Of the distinctive civUization of the old Southern cotton life no words could be more pertinent than Grady's. " That was a peculiar society," he said. " Almost feudal in its splendor, it was almost patriarchal in its simplicity. Leisure and wealth gave it exquisite culture. Its wives and mothers, exempt from drudgery and almost from care, gave to their sons, through patient and constant training, something of their own grace and gentleness, and to their homes beauty and light. Its people, homogeneous by necessity, held straight and simple faith, and were religious to a marked degree along the old lines of Christian belief. The same homogeneity bred a hospitality that was as kinsmen to kinsmen, and wasted at the threshold of every home what the more frugal people of the North conserved and invested in public charities. Money coimted least in making the social status and constantly ambitious and brilliant youngsters from no estate married into families of planter princes. Meanwhile, the one character utterly condemned and ostracized was the man who was mean to his slaves. Even the coward was pitied and might have been liked. For the cruel master there was no toleration. " In its engaging grace — ^in the chivalry that tempered even Quixotism with dignity — ^in the piety that saved master and slave alike — La the charity that boasted not — in the honor held above estate — ^in the hospitality that neither condescended nor cringed — ^in frank- ness and heartiness and wholesome comradeship — ^in the reverence paid to womanhood and the inviolable respect in which woman's ISO THE WORKER AND HIS WORK name was held — the civilization of the old slave regime in the South has not been surpassed, and perhaps will not be equaled, among men." During the season between the two cotton crops, " Southern hos- pitality " touches its climax. With leisure and money at command, the " big house " of the old plantation threw wide its welcoming doors across the fields, or stalked the deer amid the swamps, or hunted the wild duck and turkey and whistling coveys of quail (called pa'tridges) while the women spread the damask in the evening, and laid out the family silver to grace a savory feast that has no counterpart in all the world: fried chicken and corn pone and yams, possum, and the esoteric dainties of the freshly slaughtered pig, heape of snowy, steam- ing, home-grown rice, slices of delicate peanut-fed ham, teased with the contrasting exquisite flavors of quince and crab-apple jellies, watermelon " preserves," " cookies " and tarts and spiced brandy peaches! LABREO-OIR. BT CON'STAXTIN SIErXIER THE COTTON-PICKER By Carl Holliday Behold, amid the rows of gleaming white, The heedless negro sings, and stoops to pluck The fleecy boll. Beneath the glaring hght Of Southern skies, all thoughtless of the luck That lifts or fells earth's kingdoms and her men. He onward goes across the far-stretched fields, And sings and bends and sings and bends again. Heaping the fluffy load. Oh, power that wields! What might this common worker of the soil Who grapples with the silent dust for bread Doth hold within those fingers! Sto<^ed with toil, With every bend he spins a mighty thread That reaching forth doth hold the waiting earth In bonds as strong as is her common dearth. From The Cotton Picker and Other Poems, by Carl Holliday. Copy- right, 1907, by The Xeale Publishing Co. 151 AN APIARY By Maurice Maeterlinck I HAVE not yet forgotten the first apiary I saw. It was many years ago, in a large village of Dutch Flanders, the sweet and pleasant country whose love for brilliant color rivals that of Zealand even, the concave mirror of Holland; a country that gladly spreads out before us, as so many pretty, thoughtful toys, her illuminated gables, and waggons, and towers; her cupboards and clocks that gleam at the end of the passage; her little trees marshalled in line along quays and canal-banks, waiting, one almost might think, for some quiet, benefi- cent ceremony; her boats and her barges with sculptured poops, her flower-like doors and windows, immaculate dams, and elaborate many- colored drawbridges; and her little varnished houses, bright as new pottery, from which bell-shaped dames come forth, all a-glitter with silver and gold, to milk the cows in the whitehedged fields, or spread the linen on flowery lawns, cut into patterns of oval or lozenge, and most astoundingly green. To this spot, a sort of aged philosopher had retired. His hap- piness lay all in the beauties of his garden; and best-loved and visited most often, was the apiary, composed of twelve domes of straw, some of which he had painted a bright pink, and some a clear yellow, but most of all a tender blue. These hives stood against the wall of the house, in the angle formed by one of those pleasant and graceful Dutch kitchens whose earthenware dresser, all bright with copper and tin, reflected itself through the open door on to the peaceful canal. And the water led one's eyes to a calm horizon of mills and of meadows. Here, as in all places, the hives lent a new meaning to the flowers and the silence, the balm of the air and the rays of the sun. 152 SAP-TIME a new jonathan story By Elisabeth Woodbeidge It was a little tree-toad that began it. In a careless moment he had come down to the bench that connects the big maple tree with the old locust stump, and when I went out at dusk to wait for Jonathan, there he sat, in plain sight. A few experimental pokes sent him back to the tree, and I studied him there, marveling at the way he assimilated with its bark. As Jonathan came across the grass I called softly, and pointed to the tree. " WeU? " he said. " Don't you see? " " No. What? " " Look — I thought you had eyes! " " Oh, what a Uttle beauty! " " And isn't his back just like bark and lichens! And what are those things in the tree beside him? " " Plugs, I suppose." " Plugs? " " Yes. After tapping. Uncle Ben used to tap these trees, I believe." " You mean for sap? Maple syrup? " " Yes." " Jonathan! I didn't know these were sugar maples." " Oh, yes. These on the road." " The whole row? Why, there are ten or fifteen of them! And you never told me! " " I thought you knew." " Knew! I don't know anything — I should think you'd know that, by this time. Do you suppose, if I had known, I should have let all these years go by — oh, dear — think of all the fun we've missed! And sjTnip! " " You'd have to come up in February." " Well, then, I'll come in February. Who's afraid of February? " 153 154 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK " All right. Try it next year." I did. But not in February. Things happened, as things do, and it was early April before I gqt to the farm. But it had been a wintry March, and the farmers told me that the sap had not been running except for a few days in a February thaw. Anyway, it was worth trying. Jonathan could not come with me. He was to join me later. But Hiram found a bundle of elder spouts in the attic, and with these and an auger we went out along the snowy, muddy road. The hole was bored — a pair of them — in the first tree, and the spouts driven in. I knelt, watching — ^in fact, peering up the spout-hole to see what might happen. Suddenly a drop, dim with sawdust, appeared — gathered, hesitated, then ran down gayly and leapt off the end. " Look! Hiram! It's running! " I called. Hiram, boring the next tree, made no response. He evidently expected it to run. Jonathan would have acted just like that, too, I felt sure. Is it a masculine quality, I wonder, to be unmoved when the theoretically expected becomes actual? Or is it that some tem- peraments have naturally a certain large confidence in the sway of law, and refuse to wonder at its individual workings? To me the individual workings give an ever fresh thrill because they bring a new realization of the mighty powers behind them. It seems to depend on which end you begin at. But though the little drops thrilled me, I was not beyond setting a pail underneath to catch them. And as Hiram went on boring, I followed with my pails. Pails, did I say? Pails by courtesy. There were, indeed, a few real pails — berry-pails, lard-pails, and water- pails — ^but for the most part the sap fell into pitchers, or tin sauce- pans, stew-kettles of aluminum or agate ware, blue and gray and white and mottled, or big yellow earthenware bowls. It was a strange collection of receptacles that lined the roadside when we had finished our progress. As I looked along the row, I laughed, and even Hiram smiled. But what next? Every utensil in the house was out here, sitting in the road. There was nothing left but the wash-boiler. Now, I had heard tales of amateur syrup-boilings, and I felt that the wash- boiler would not do. Besides, I meant to work outdoors — ^no kitchen stove for me! I must have a pan, a big, flat pan. I flew to the tele- phone, and called up the village plumber, three miles away. Could SAP-TIME 155 he build me a pan? Oh, say, two feet by three feet, and five inches high — ^yes, right away. Yes, Hiram would call for it in the afternoon. I felt better. And now for a fireplace! Oh, Jonathan I ^Miy did you have to be away! For Jonathan loves a stone and knows how to put stones together, as witness the stone " Eyrie " and the stile in the lane. However, there Jonathan wasn't. So I went out into the swampy orchard behind the house and looked about — no lack of stones, at any rate. I began to collect material, and Hiram, seeing my purpose, help)ed with the big stones. Somehow my fire- place got made — two side walls, one end weJI, the other end left open for stoking. It was not as pretty as if Jonathan had done it, but " 'twas enough, 'twould serve." I collected firewood, and there I was, ready for my pan, and the afternoon was yet yoimg, and the sap was drip-drip-dripping from aU the ^)Outs. I could begin to boil next day. I felt that I was being borne along on the providential wave that so often floats the inexperienced to success. That night I emptied all my vessels into the boiler and set them out once more. A neighbor drove by and pulled up to comment benevolently on my work. " Will it run to-night? " I asked him. " No — no — 'twon't run to-night. Too cold. Twon't run any to-night. You can sleep all right." This was pleasant to hear. There was a moon, to be sure, but it was growing colder, and at the idea of crawling along that road in the middle of the night even my enthusiasm shivered a little. So I made my roxmds at nine, in the white moonlight, and went to sleep. I was awakened the next morning to a consciousness of flooding simshine and Hiram's voice outside my window. " Got anjrthing I can empty sap into? I've got everjrthing all filled up." " Sap! Why, it isn't running yet, is it? " " Pails were flowin' over when I came out." " Flowing over! They said the sap wouldn't nm last night." " I guess there don't nobody know when sap'll run and when it won't," said Hiram peacefully, as he tramped o5 to the bam. In a few minutes I was outdoors. Siu-e enough, Hiram had every- thing full — old boilers, feed-pails, water-pails. But we found some three-gallon milk cans and used them. A farm is like a city. There 156 THE WORKER, AND HIS WORK are always things enough in it for all purposes. It is only a question of using its resources. Then, in the dear April sunshine, I went out and surveyed the row of maples. How they did drip! Some of them almost ran. I felt as if I had turned on the faucets of the universe and didn't know how to turn them off again. However, there was my new pan. I set it over my oven walls and began to pour in sap. Hiram helped me. He seemed to think he needed his feed-pails. We poured in sap and we poured in sap. Never did I see anything hold so much as that pan. Even Hiram was stirred out of his usual calm to remark, " It beat all, how much that holds." Of course, Jonathan would have had its capacity all calculated the day before, but my methods are empirical, and so I was surprised as well as pleased when all my receptacles emptied them- selves into its shallow breadths and still there was a good inch to allow for boiling up. Yes, Providence — my exclusive little fool's Providence — was with me. The pan, and the oven, were a success, and when Jonathan came that night I led him out with unconcealed pride and showed him the pan — now a heaving, frothing mass of sap-about-to-be-syrup, sending clouds of white steam down the wind. As he looked at the oven walls, I fancied his fingers ached to get at them, but he offered no criticism, seeing that they worked. The next day began overcast, but Providence was merely pre- paring for me a special little gift in the form of a miniature snow- storm. It was quite real while it lasted. It whitened the grass and the road, it piled itself softly among the clusters of swelling buds on the apple trees, and made the orchard look as though it had burst into bloom in an hour. Then the sun came out, there were a few dazzling moments when the world was all blue and silver, and then the whiteness faded. And the sap I How it dripped! Once an hour I had to make the rounds, bringing back gallons each time, and the fire under my pan was kept up so that the boiling down might keep pace with the new supply. " They do say snow makes it run," shouted a passer-by, and another called, " You want to keep skimmin'! " Whereupon I seized my long-handled skimmer and fell to work. Southern Connecticut does not know much about syrup, but by the avenue of the road I was gradually accumulating such wisdom as it possessed. SAP-TIME 157 The syrup was made. Xo worse accident befell than the occa- sional overflowing of a pail too long neglected. The s3Tup was made, and bottled, and distributed to friends, and was the pride of the household through the year. " This time I will go early," I said to Jonathan; " th^r say the late running is never quite so good." It was early March when I got up there this time — early March after a winter whose rigor had known practically no break. Again Jonathan could not come, but cousin Janet could, and we met at the little station, where Hiram was waiting with Kit and the surrey. The sun was warm, but the air was keen and the woods hardly showed spring at aU yet, even in that first token of it, the slight thickening of their millions of little tips, through the swdling of the buds. The dty trees already showed this, but the country ones still kq)t their wintry f)enciling of vanishing lines. Spring was in the road, however. " There ain't no bottom to this road now, it's just dropped clean out," remarked a feUow-teamster as we wallowed along companionably through the woods. But, some- how, we reached the farm. Again we bored our holes, and again I was thrilled as the first bright drops slipped out and jeweled the ends of the ^K)uts. I watched Janet. She was interested but calm, class- ing herself at once with Hiram and Jonathan. We unearthed last 3'ear's oven and dug out its inner depths — ^leaves and dirt and apples and ashes — it was like excavating through the seven Troj^ to get to bottom. We brought down the big pan, now clothed in the honors of a season's use, and cleaned off the cobwebs incident to a year's sojoiun in the attic. By sunset we had a panful of syrup boiling merrily and already taking on a distinctly golden tinge. We tasted it. It was very syrupy. Letting the fire die down, we went in to get supper in the utmost content of spirit. " It's so much simplCT than last year," I said, as we sat over our cozy " tea," " having the pan and the oven ready-made, and aU " " You don't suppose anj^thing could happen to it while we're in here? " suggested Janet. " Sha'n't I just run out and see? " " No, sit still. 'UTiat could happen? The fire's going out." " Yes, I know." But her voice was uncertain. " You see, I've been all through it once," I reassured her. As we rose, Janet said, " Let's go out before we do the dishes." 1S8 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK And to humor her I agreed. We lighted the lantern and stepped out on the back porch. It was quite dark, and as we looked off toward the fireplace we saw gleams of red. " How funny 1 " I murmured. " I didn't think there was so much fire left." We felt our way over, through the yielding mud of the orchard, and as I raised the lantern we stared in dazed astonishment. The >pan was a blackened mass, lit up by winking red eyes of fire. I held the lantern more closely. I seized a stick and poked — the crisp black stuff broke and crumbled into an empty and blackening pan. A curious odor arose. " It couldn't have! " gasped Janet. " It couldn't— but it has! " I said. It was a matter for tears, or rage, or laughter. And laughter won. When we recovered a little we took up the black shell of car- bon that had once been syrup-froth; we laid it gently beside the oven, for a keepsake. Then we poured water in the pan, and steam rose hissing to the stars. " Does it leak? " faltered Janet. "Leak! " I said. I was on my knees now, watching the water stream through the parted seam of the pan bottom, down into the ashes below. " The question is," I went on as I got up, " did it boil away because it leaked, or did it leak because it boiled away?" " I don't see that it matters much," said Janet. She was showing symptoms of depression at this point. " It matters a great deal," I said. " Because, you see, we've got to tell Jonathan, and it makes all the difference how we put it." "I see," said Janet; then she added, experimentally, "Why tell Jonathan? " " Why, Janet, you know better! I wouldn't miss telling Jonathan for anything. What is Jonathan jor! " " Well — of course," she conceded. " Let's do dishes." We sat before the fire that evening and I read while Janet knitted. Between my eyes and the printed page there kept rising a vision— a vision of black crust, with winking red embers smoldering along its broken edges. I found it distracting in the extreme. . . . At some time unknown, out of the blind depths of the night, I was awakened by a voice; SAP-TIME 159 " It's beginning to rain. I think 111 just go out and empty what's near the house." " Janet! " I murmured, " don't be absurd." " But it will dilute all that sap." " There isn't any sap to dilute. It won't be running at night." After awhile the voice, full of propitiatory intonations, resimied: " My dear, you don't mind if I slip out. It will only take a minute." " I do mind. Go to sleep! " Silence. Then: " It's raining harder. I hate to think of all that sap " " You don't have to think! " I was quite savage. '" Just go to sleep) — and let me I " Another silence. Then a fresh downpour. The voice was pleading: "PZeare let me go! I'll be back in a minute. And it's not cold." " Oh, well — I'm awake now, anyway. I'll go." My voice was tinged with that high resignation that is worse than anger. Janet's tone changed instantly: "Xo, no! Don't. Please don't! I'm going. I truly don't mind." " I'm going. I don't mind, either, not at all." " Oh, dear! Then let's not either of us go." " That was my idea in the first plcice." " Well, then, we won't. Go to sleq), and I will, too." " Not at all! I've decided to go." " But it's stopped raining. Probably it won't rain any more." " Then what are you making all this fuss for? " " I didn't make a fuss. I just thought I could slip out " " Well, you couldn't. And it's raining very hard again. And I'm going." " Oh, don't! Youll get drenched." " Of course. But I can't bear to have all that sap diluted." " It doesn't r\m at night. You said it didn't." " You said it did." " But I don't really know. You know best." " Why didn't you think of that sooner? An3^way, I'm going." " Oh, dear! You make me feel as if I'd stirred you up " " You have," I interrupted, sweetly. " I won't deny that you have stirred me up. But now that you have mentioned it " — I felt for a match — " now that you have mentioned it, I see that this was 160 THE WORKER, AND HIS WORK the one thing needed to make my evening complete, or perhaps it's morning — I don't know." We found the dining-room warm, and soon we were equipped in those curious compromises of vesture that people adopt under such circumstances, and, with lantern and umbrella, we fumbled our way out to the trees. The rain was driving in sheets, and we plodded up the road in the yellow circle of lantern-light wavering uncertainly over the puddles, while under our feet the mud gave and sucked. " It's diluted, sure enough," I said, as we emptied the pails. We crawled slowly back, with our heavy milk-can and sap-and-rain- water, and went in. The warm dining-room was pleasant to return to, and we sat down to cookies and milk, feeling almost cozy. " I've always wanted to know how it would be to go out in the middle of the night this way," I remarked, " and now I know." " Aren't you hateful ! " said Janet. " Not at all. Just appreciative. But now, if you haven't any other plan, we'll go back to bed." It was half-past eight when we waked next morning. But there was nothing to wake up for. The old house was filled with the rain- noises that only such an old house knows. On the little windows the drops pricked sharply; in the fireplace with the straight flue they fell, hissing, on the embers. On the porch roofs the rain made a dull patter of sound; on the tin roof of the " httle attic " over the kitchen it beat with flat resonance. In the big attic, when we went up to see if all was tight, it filled the place with a multitudinous clamor; on the sides of the house it drove with a fury that re-echoed dimly within doors. Outside, everything was afloat. We visited the trees and viewed with consternation the torrents of rain water pouring into the pails. We tried fastening pans over the spouts to protect them. The wind blew them merrily down the road. It would have been easy enough to cover the pails, but how to let the sap drip in and the rain drip out— that was the question. _ ^^ " It seems as if there was a curse on the syrup this year,' said Janet. " The trouble is," I said, " I know just enough to have lost my hold on the fool's Providence, and not enough really to take care of myself." SAP-TIME 161 " Superstition! " said Janet. " What do you call your idea of the curse? " I retorted. " Any- way, I have an idea! Look, Janet! We'll just cut up these enamel- cloth table-covers here by the sink and everywhere, and tack them aroimd the spouts." Janet's thrifty ^irit was doubtful. " Don't you need them? " " Not half so much as the trees do. Come on! Pull them off. Well have to have fresh ones this smnmer, anyway." We stripped the kitchen tables and the pantry and the milk- room. We got tacks and a hammer and scissors, and out we went again. We cut a piece for each tree, just enough to go over each pair of ^outs and protect the pail. When tacked on, it had the appear- ance of a neat bib, and as the pattern was a blue and white check, the effect as one looked down the road at the twelve trees, was very fresh and pleasing. It seemed to cheer the pec^le who drove by, too. But the bibs served their purpose, and the sap dripped cozOy into the pails without any distraction from aUen elements. Sap doesn't run in the rain, they say, but this sap did. Probably Hiram was right, and you can't tell. I am glad if you can't. The physical mysteries of the universe are being unveiled so swiftly that one likes to find something that stiU keeps its secret — though, indeed, the spiritual mysteries seem in no danger of such enforcement. The next day the rain stopped, the floods began to subside, and Jonathan managed to arrive, though the roads had even less " bottom to 'em " than before. The sun blazed out, and the sap ran faster, and, after Jonathan had fully enjoyed them, the blue and white bibs were taken off. Somehow in the clear March simshine they looked almost shocking. By the next day we had syrup enough to try for sugar. For on sugar my heart was set. Syrup was all very well for the first year, but now it had to be sugar. Moreover, as I explained to Janet, when it came to sugar, being absolutely ignorant, I was again in a position to expect the aid of the fool's Providence. " How much do you know about it? " asked Janet. " Oh, just what people say. It seems to be partly like fudge and partly like molasses candy. You boil it, and tiien you beat it, and then you pour it off." " I've got more to go on than that," said Jonathan. " I came up on the train with the Judge. He used to see it done." 162 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK " You've got to drive Janet over to her train to-night; Hiram can't," I said. " All right. There's time enough." We sat down to early supper, and took turns running out to the kitchen to '' try " the syrup as it boiled down. At least we said we would take turns, but usually we all three went. Supper seemed distinctly a side issue. " I'm going to take it off now," said Jonathan. " Look out! " " Do you think it's time? " I demurred. " We'll know soon," said Jonathan, with his usual composure. We hung over him. " Now you beat it," I said. But he was already beating. " Get some cold water to set it in," he commanded. We brought the dishpan with water from the well, where ice still iloated. " Maybe you oughtn't to stir so much — do you think? " I sug- gested, helpfully. " Beat it more — up, you know." " More the way you would eggs," said Janet. " I'll show you." I lunged at the spoon. " Go away! This ain't eggs," said Jonathan, beating steadily. " Your arm must be tired. Let me take it," pleaded Janet. " No, me! " I said. " Janet, you've got to get your coat and things. You'll have to start in fifteen minutes. Here, Jonathan, you need a fresh arm." " I'm fresh enough." " And I really don't think you have the motion." " I have motion enough. This is my job. You go and help Janet." " Janet's all right." " So am I. See how white it's getting. The Judge said " " Here comes Hiram and Kit," announced Janet, returning with bag and wraps. " But you have ten minutes. Can't I help? " " He won't let us. He's that ' sot,' " I murmured. " He'll make you miss your train." " You could butter the pans," Jonathan coimter-charged, " and you haven't." We flew to prepare, and the pouring began. It was a thrilling moment. The syrup, or sugar, now a pale hay color, poured out thickly, blob-blob-blob, into the little pans. Janet moved them up as they were needed, and I snatched the spoon, at last, and encour- aged the stuff to fall where it should. B,ut Jonathan got it from me SAP-TIME 163 again, and scraped out the remnant, making designs of clovers and poUiwogs on the tops of the cakes. Then a dash for coats and hats and a rush to the carriage. When the surrey disappeared around the timi of the road, I went back, shivering, to the hoi^e. It seemed very empty, as houses will, being sensitive things. I went to the kitchen. There on the table sat a huddle of little pans, to cheer me, and I fell to work getting things in order to be left in the morning. Thrai I went back to the fire and waited for Jonathan, I picked up a book and tried to read, but the stillness of the house was too importimate. It had to be listened to ; and I leaned back and watched the fire, and the old house and I held communion together. Perhaps in no other way is it possible to get quite what I got that evening. It was partly my own attitude. I was going away in the morning, and I had, in a sense, no duties toward the place. The magazines of last fall lay on the tables, the newqjapers of last fall lay beside them. The dust of last fall was, doubtless, in the closets and on the floors. It did not matter. For though I was the mistress of the house, I was for the moment even more its guest, and guests do not concern themselves with such things as these. If it had been really an empty house, I should have been obliged to think of these things, for in an empty house the dust speaks and the house is stUl, dumbly imprisoned in its own past. On the other hand, when a house is filled with life, it is stiU, too ; it is absorbed in its own present. But when one sojourns in a house that is merely resting, full of life that has only for a brief season left it, ready for the life that is soon to return — then one is in the midst of silences that are not empty and hollow, but richly eloquent. The house is the link that joins and interprets the living past and the living future. Something of this I came to feel as I sat there in the wonderful stiUness. There were no house nois^ such as generally form the unnoticed background of one's consciousness — the steps overhead, the distant voices, the ticking of the dock, the breathing of the dog in the comer. Even the mice and the chimn^-swallows had not come back, and I missed the scmiying in the walls and the flutter of wings in the chimney. The fire purred low, now and then the wind sighed gentty about the comer of the " new part," and a loose door- latch clicked as the draught shook it. A branch drew back and forth across a window-pane with the faintest squeak. And little by little 164 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK the old old house opened its heart. All that it told me I hardly yet know myself. It gathered up for me all its past, the past that I had known and the past that I had not known. Time fell away. My own importance dwindled. I seemed a very small part of the life of the house — very small, yet wholly belonging to it. I felt that it absorbed me as it had absorbed the rest — those before and after me — for time was not. There was the sound of slow wheels outside, the long roll of the carriage-house door, and the trampling of hoofs on the flooring within. Then the clinking of the lantern and the even tread of feet on the path behind the house, a gust of raw snow-air — and the house fell silent so that Jonathan might come in. " Your sugar is hardening nice, I see," he said, rubbing his hands before the fire. " Yes," I said. " You know I told Janet that for this part of the affair we could trust to the fool's Providence." " Thank you," said Jonathan. ilTN-EUR AU TRAVAIL. BY CONSTANTIN MEUN'IER THE RED COW AXD HER FRIENDS By Petek McArthxjs i. the gobbles There are times when I wish that I had a proper scientific educa- tion. For instance, I would Uke to know just now whether tiirkey gobblers ever suffer from speaker's sore throat. Xone of the bulletins I have on hand throws any light on the matter. It would cheer me considerably to learn that gobblers occasionally suffer from aphonia or speechlessness. It sometimes seems to me that our bubblyjock is getting hoarse, though he is still able to gobble with vigor and author- ity. But unless he loses his voice before long I shall have to wring his neck — no easy job — or do without my usual amoimt of sleep. The trouble is all due to the fact that when the turkey hen tried to hide her nest she selected a bunch of long grass at the foot of a tree not far from the house. As she had been put off the cluck a couple of times to make her lay the proper amount of eggs, it was decided to let her keep this nest. When she finally got broody she was given seventeen eggs and allowed to settie down to the task of incubating Qiristmas dinners. As far as she was concerned this was all right, for she is a modest, quiet bird, whose presence would never be noticed. But this is not the case with her lordly spouse. Every morning at about a quarter to four he comes down from his perch on the ridge-pole of the stable and struts down to see if his lady has passed a comfortable night. As the grass is long and wet with dew he comes to the lawn and sends her his morning greetings, and I can tell you that a forty-pound gobbler can let out a very considerable amount of noise. He gets right imder my window and explodes into assorted sounds. Once a minute, or oftener, he lets out a gobble, until I get up and throw a shoe or a hairbrush at him. Then I go back to bed and try to sleep until it is time to get up. If there is any way of treating his vocal cords so as to stop this morning charicari I wish some scientist would write and tell me about it. From The Red Cow and Her Friends, by Peter McArthur. Copyright, by John Lane Company, Publishers. 165 166 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK ir. HIS TROUBLES Last night when we were milking there was a sudden racket on the roof of the cow-stable that scared the cows so that they stopped giving down. You would think that a man with a wooden leg was having a fit on the shingles right over our heads. The pounding, flopping, and scratching on the hollow roof made the stable resound like the big drum in an Orange parade. I couldn't imagine what on earth was happening, but it only took a step to get outdoors and then the cause of the trouble was plain. The old turkey gobbler had decided to roost on the ridgeboard of the stable and he was having the time of his life getting up the roof. He was using his wings and his tail to balance himself as he clawed for a toe-hold, and he showed none of the stately gracefulness that marks his move- ments when he is strutting around the barnyard and proclaiming his overlordship. When he reached the ridge and caught his balance with a final flip-flap of his broad tail he stretched his neck and looked around to see if any of the young gobblers were grinning at him. They were already quietly at roost with the mother hen at the far end of the roof, and the noisy approach of their lord and king made them huddle together in squeaking terror. Seeing that their attitude was respectful he settled down on his wishbone for the night. Being young and light they had flown gracefully to their chosen roost and doubtless could not understand what was ailing him when he sprawled around like that. I could sympathize with him better than they could, for when a man gets heavy and gets chalky deposits in his joints the climbing stunts he did as a boy become impossible. Time was when I could have walked up that roof as jauntily as if I were on parade on an asphalt sidewalk, but I suspect that if I tried it now I would make more noise than the old gobbler. ni. HUMAN NATURE IN DUMB CREATURES It is a mistake to suppose that any quality, habit, trick, failing, weakness, virtue or other characteristic is peculiar to mankind. The dumb creatures about the place have every one of them. If I were to watch them carefully I feel sure that I could find instances of everything from the Seven Deadly Sins to the Seven Cardinal Vir- tues, and that without leaving the barnyard. It is all very well for us to talk about getting rid of our animal natures as if that would THE RED COW AND HER FRIENDS 167 mark an upward step in our development, but what interests me is how to rid the dumb creatures of what can only be described as their human natures. It is always the human things they do that arouse my wrath or make me laugh. For instance, our old gobbler gives every evening one of the most human exhibitions of over-bearing meanness that I have ever witnessed. I thought it was only society people, and a particularly annoying brand of them at that, who had the habit of waiting untU other people were comfortably seated at a concert or theatre and then walking in, disturbing every one and perhaps making quite a few get up to make way for them as they progressed toward their seats. I thought this trick was confined to people who wished to show their importance and new clothes, and didn't mind how much they bothered other p)eople. But since watch- ing our gobbler going to roost I have come to the conclusion that this kind of conduct on the part of society people at public enter- tainments is not due to vanity or a desire to show off but to funda- mental cussedness and a wicked delight in causing as much dis- comfort as possible to other people. The old gobbler has become expert at ascending the roof of the stable and not only does the trick with ease but puts frills on it. WTien roosting time comes round each evening, the mother hen and her flock of yoimg gobblers and hens go to roost quietly and cir- cumspectly like ordinary folks. The old gobbler, on the contrary, waits arotrnd and picks up grains of oats about the stacks and hunts for crickets and keeps up an air of being busy until it is almost dark and the rest of his tribe are settled for the night — or think they are. When he finally makes up his mind that it is bedtime he stretches his neck a few times, first in one direction and then in another, and takes a look at the top of the stable with one eye and then with the other and at last makes a flying leap or a leaping fly that lands him on the ridge-board. That woxild be all right if he were satisfied after he got there, but he is not. He insists on roosting on the extreme north end of the ridge-board and he always flies up on the south end. There is no reason why he shoifld not fly up at the north end, but he never does it, and I am inclined to think from watching his actions that he flies up on the south end on purpose. Anyway, as soon as he gets up and gets his balance he starts to walk towards the north along the ridge-board. As soon as he comes to the firet of his offering he gives a sharp peck with his bill and the youngster 168 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK gets up squeaking and moves along ahead of him. Presently he has them all huddled on the ridge-board along the north end and the fun begins. The polite thing for him to do would be to step down on the shingles and walk around them, but does he do it? I should say not. He gives the nearest youngster a vicious peck that makes him jump in the air and land sprawling a few feet down on the shingles. In rapid succession he deals with the fourteen youngsters and their mother in the same way and for a few minutes the roof is covered with squeaking, sprawling, protesting turkeys. As he pecks them out of his way he walks along the ridge-board to his chosen roosting-place and when he finally reaches it he stretches his neck arrogantly while the others scramble back to the top and settle down for the night. When they have settled down the old bully settles down also with as much dignity as a dowager who had dis- turbed a whole seatful of music lovers at a concert or opera. You needn't tell me that there isn't something human about a gobbler that does such things as that. IV. cow CHARACTER It is when a fellow settles down to do the chores twice a day and every day that he gets thoroughly acquainted with his livestock. When the cattle are in the pasture field they look pleasant and pose for their pictures when people come along with cameras, but when they are put in stalls and waited on hand and — I mean foot and mouth, they develop all sorts of little meannesses — just like human beings. One little cow starts to shake her head until her horns are simply a dangerous blur every time I go to loosen her chain to let her out to water. I have had several narrow escapes from being prodded, but it is useless to yell at her, or even to use the whip on her. She will start shaking her head as soon as I lay my hand on the chain, and she keeps it up until the chain drops from her neck. Another brute has the habit of swinging quickly towards me as soon as she feels the chain loosen, and I have to side-step like a prize-fighter to get out of the way of her horns. But I am glad to record that the Red Cow, variously known as Calamity and Fence- viewer I, can be untied safely, even by a child. When the chain is opened she backs quietly from the stall and walks to the stable door in a dignified manner — unless there happens to be a pail standing around where she can poke an investigating nose into it. She is THE RED COW AND HER FRIENDS 169 always on the lookout for something to eat, and she always enjoys it better if it is something she should not have. V. CALF EXUBERANCE Last night Juno got loose, and for a few minutes there was ex- citement around the stable. Juno is a fall calf, daughter of Fence- viewer II, and owing to the scarcity of stable room she is being pam- pered and fed up for veal. At the time of her arrival the children named her Jupiter, but on second thought it was considered that Jimo would be more appropriate. Up to last night she had lived in a small calf pen at the end of the stable, but the fastening on the gate came loose and she discovered what her legs were for. She shot out through the stable door in a way that sent the hens flying over the haystacks. Then she tripped over a sheaf of cornstalks that I had dropp>ed on the ground while preparing to feed the cows, sprawled at fuU length, bounced right up and rushed ahead imtn she was brought to a standstUl by a wire fence in a way that almost tele- scoped her neck into her body. Finding that the wire fence would not yield, she said " Bah-wah " and started in another direction. Sheppy was coming around the comer of the granary Ln his most sedate manner, when the pop-eyed avalanche almost stepped on him. When last seen Sheppy was plunging blindly between two haystacks with his tail between his legs. A flock of hens that were enjoying their evening bran mash next attracted her attention, and she made an offensive straight at them. When they were thoroughly scattered she rushed the ducks from a mud puddle, and the squawking they made startled her so that she apphed the brakes and threw on the reverse. It was a wonderful exhibition of vitality, and showed what a milk diet can do for one. The next I heard of Juno was when I was stooping over to pick up a sheaf of cornstalks, and if you can pictiu^e to yourself a dignified man in that attitude with a lusty calf prancing behind him and going through the motions of getting ready to bunt you can understand the joyous laughter with which the children shouted a warning. I sidestepped in the nick of time and shooed Jxmo away to the orchard, where she could enjoy herself without getting into trouble. After the chores were done I took a pail that was as empty as a political platform and she followed me right back into the pen just like an inteUigent voter. I could do a little moral- izing right here, but it is not considered good form to talk politics just now. THE LAST THRESHING IN THE COULEE By Hamlin Garland Life on a Wisconsin farm, even for the women, had its compen- sations. There were times when the daily routine of lonely and monotonous housework gave place to an agreeable bustle, and human intercourse lightened the toil. In the midst of the slow progress of the fall's plowing, the gathering of the threshing crew was a most dramatic event to my mother, as to us, for it not only brought im- wonted clamor, it fetched her brothers, William and David and Frank, who owned and ran a threshing machine, and their coming gave the house an air of festivity which offset the burden of extra work which fell upon us all. I recall with especial clearness the events of that last threshing in the coulee — I was eight, my brother was six. For days we had looked forward to the coming of " the threshers," listening with the greatest eagerness to father's report of the crew. At last he said, " Well, Belle, get ready. The machine will be here to-morrow." All day we hung on the gate, gazing down the road, watching, waiting for the crew, and even after supper, we stood at the windows still hoping to hear the rattle of the ponderous separator. Father explained that the men usually worked all day at one farm and moved after dark, and we were just starting to " climb the wooden hill " when we heard a far-off faint halloo. " There they are," shouted father, catching up his old square tin lantern and hurriedly lighting the candle within it. " That's Frank's voice." The night air was sharp, and as we had taken off our boots we could only stand at the window and watch father as he piloted the teamsters through the gate. The light threw fantastic shadows here and there, now lighting up a face, now bringing out the separator which seemed a weary and sullen monster awaiting its den. The men's voices sounded loud in the still night, causing the roused turkeys in the oaks to peer about on their perches, uneasy silhouettes against the sky. 170 THE LAST THRESHING IN THE COULEE 171 We would ^adly have stayed awake to greet our beloved uncles, but mother said, " You must go to sleep in order to be up early in the morning," and reluctantly we turned away. Lying thus in our cot imder the sloping raftered roof we could hear the squawk of the hens as father wrung their innocent necks, and the crash of the " sweeps " being imloaded soimded loud and clear and strange. We longed to be out there, but at last the dance of lights and shadows on the plastered wall died away, and we fell into childish dreamless sleep. We were awakened at dawn by the ring beat of the iron mauls as Frank and David drove the stakes to hold the " power " to the groimd. The rattle of trace chains, the clash of iron rods, the clang of steel bars, intermixed with the laughter of the men, came sharply through the frosty air, and the smell of sizzling sausage from the kitchen warned us that our busy mother was hurrying the breakfast forward. Knowing that it was time to get up, although it was not yet light, I had a sense of being awakened into a romantic new world, a world of heroic action. As we stumbled down the stairs, we fovmd the lamp-lit kitchen empty of the men. They had finished their coffee and were out in the stackyard oiling the machine and hitching the horses to the power. Shivering, yet entranced by the beauty of the frosty dawn, we crept out to stand and watch the play. The frost lay white on every surface, the frozen ground rang like iron imder the steel- shod feet of the horses, and the breath of the men rose up in little white puffs of steam. Uncle David on the feeder's stand was impatiently awaiting the coming of the fifth team. The pitchers were climbing the stacks like blackbirds, and the straw-stickers were scuffling about the stable door. Finally, just as the east began to bloom, and long streamers of red began to imroU along the vast gray dome of sky, Uncle Frank, the driver, lifted his voice in a " Chippewa war-whoop." On a still morning like this his signal could be heard for miles. • Long drawn and musical, it sped away over the fields, armoimcing to all the world that the jMcClintocks were ready for the day's race. Answers came back faintly from the frosty fields where dim figures of laggard hands could be seen hurrvTng over the plowed ground, the last team came clattering in, and was hooked into its place, David called " All right! " and the cylinder began to hum. 172 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK In those days the machine was either a " J. I. Case " or a " Buffalo Pitts," and was moved by five pairs of horses attached to a " power " staked to the ground, round which they traveled pulling at the ends of long levers or sweeps, and to me the force seemed tre- mendous. " Tumbling rods " with " knuckle joints " carried the motion to the cylinder, and the driver who stood upon a square platform above the huge, greasy cog-wheels (round which the horses moved) was a grand figure in my eyes. Driving, to us, looked like a pleasant job, but Uncle Frank thought it very tiresome, and I can now see that it was. To stand on that small platform all through the long hours of a cold November day, when the cutting wind roared down the valley sweeping the dust and leaves along the road, was work. Even I perceived that it was far pleasanter to sit on the south side of the stack and watch the horses go round. It was necessary that the " driver " should be a man of judgment, for the horses had to be kept at just the right speed, and to do this he must gauge the motion of the cylinder by the pitch of its deep bass song. The three men in command of the machine were set apart as " the threshers." William and David alternately " fed " or " tended," that is, one of them " fed " the grain into the howling cylinder while the other, oil-can in hand, watched the sieves, felt of the pinions and so kept the machine in good order. The feeder's position was the high place to which all boys aspired, and on this day I stood in silent admiration of Uncle David's easy powerful attitudes as he caught each bundle in the crook of his arm and spread it out into a broad, smooth band of yellow straw on which the whirling teeth caught and tore with monstrous fury. He was the ideal man in my eyes, grander in some ways than my father, and to be able to stand where he stood was the highest honor in the world. It was all poetry for us and we wished every day were threshing day. The wind blew cold, the clouds went flying across the bright blue sky, and the straw glistened in the sun. With jarring snarl the circling zone of cogs dipped into the sturdy greasy wheels, and the singletrees and pulley-chains chirped clear and sweet as crickets. The dust flew, the whip cracked, and the men working swiftly to get the sheaves to the feeder or to take the straw away from the tail-end THE LAST THRESHING IN THE COULEE 173 of the machine, were like warriors, urged to desperate action by battle-cries. The stackers wallowing to their waists in the fluffy straw-pile seemed gnomes acting for our amusement. At last the call for dinner sounded. The driver began to call, " Whoa there, boys! Steady, Tom," and to hold his long whip before the eyes of the more spirited of the teams in order to con- \'lnce them that he really meant " stop." The pitchers stuck their forks upright in the stack and leaped to the ground. Randal, the band-cutter, drew from his wrist the looped string of his big knife, the stackers sHd down from the straw-pile, and a race began among the teamsters to see whose span would be first unhitched and at the watering trough. What joyous rivalry it seemed to us! Mother and Mrs. Randal, wife of our neighbor, stood ready to serve the food as soon as the men were seated. The table had been lengthened to its utmost and pieced out with boards, and planks had been laid on stout wooden chairs at either side. The men came in with a rush, and took seats wherever they could find them, and their attack on the boiled potatoes and chicken should have been appalling to the women, but it was not. They enjoyed seeing them eat. Ed Green was prodigious. One cut at a big potato, followed by two stabbing motions, and it was gone. Two bites laid a leg of chicken as bare as a slate pencfl. To us standing in the comer waiting oiu: turn, it seemed that every " smitch " of the din- ner was in danger, for the others were not far behind Ed and Dan. At last even the gauntest of them filled up and left the room and we were free to sit at " the second table " and eat, while the men rested outside. David and William, however, generally had a belt to sew or a bent tooth to take out of the " concave." This seemed of grave dignity to us and we respected their self-sacrificing labor. Nooning was brief. As soon as the horses had finished their oats, the roar and hum of the machine began again and continued steadily all afternoon, till by and bj' the sim grew big and red, the night began to fall, and the wind died out. This was the most impressive hour of a marvelous day. Through the falling dusk, the machine boomed steadily with a new soimd, a solemn roar, rising at intervals to a rattling impatient yell as the cylinder ran momentarily empty. The men moved now in silence looming dim and gigantic in the half-light. The straw-pile mountain 174 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK high, the pitchers in the chaff, the feeder on his platform, and espe- cially the driver on his power, seemed almost si^erhmnan to my childish eyes. Gray dust covered the handsome face of David, changing it into something both sad and stem, but Frank's cheery voice rang out musically as he called to the weary horses, " Come on, Toml Hup there, Dan! " The track in which they walked had been worn into two deep circles and they all moved mechanically round and round, like parts of a machine, dull-eyed and covered with sweat. At last William raised the welcome cry, " All done! " — the men threw down their forks. Uncle Frank began to call in a gentle, soothing voice, " Whoa, lads! Steady, boys! Whoa, there! " But the horses had been going so long and so steadily that they could not at once check their speed. They kept moving, though slowly, on and on till their owners slid from the stacks and seizing the ends of the sweeps, held them. Even then, after the power was still, the cylinder kept its hum, till David, throwing a last sheaf into its open maw, choked it into silence. Now came the sound of dropping chains, the clang of iron rods, and the thud of hoofs as the horses walked with laggard gait and weary, down-falling heads to the barn. The men, more subdued than at dinner, washed with great care, and combed the chaff from their beards. The air was still and cool and the sky a deep cloudless blue starred with faint fire. Supper, though quiet, was more dramatic than dinner had been. The table lighted with kerosene lamps, the clean white linen, the fragrant dishes, the women flying about with steaming platters, all seemed very cheery and very beautiful, and the men who came into the light and warmth of the kitchen with aching muscles and empty stomachs, seemed gentler and finer than at noon. They were nearly all from neighboring farms, and my mother treated even the few hired men like visitors, and the talk was all hearty and good-tem- pered though a little subdued. One by one the men rose and slipped away, and father withdrew to milk the cows and bed down the horses, leaving the women and the youngsters to eat what was left and " do up the dishes." After we had eaten our fill, Frank and I also went out to the barn (all wonderfully changed now to our minds by the great stack of straw), there to listen to David and father chatting as they THE LAST THRESHING IN THE COULEE 175 rubbed their tired horses. The lantern threw a dim red light on the harness and on the rumps of the cattle, but left mysterious shadows in the comers. I could hear the mice rustling in the straw of the roof, and from the farther end of the dimly-lighted shed came the regular strim^stram of the streams of milk, falling into the bottom of a tin paU as the hired hand rmlked the big roan cow. Oh, those blessed days, those entrancing nights! How fine they were then, and how mellow they are now, for the slow-paced years have dropped nearly fifty other golden mists upon that far-oS valley. THE POWER PLANT By Berton Bealey Whirr I Whirr! Whirr! Whirr I The mighty d}mamos hum and purr, And the blue flames crackle and glow and bum Where the brushes touch and magnets turn! Whirr! Whirr! Whirr! Whirr! This is no shrine of the Things That Were, But the tingling altar of live To-day, Where the modern priests of the "Juice " hold sway; Where the lights are born and the hghtnings made To serve the needs of the world of trade. Whirr! Whirr! Whirr! Whirr! The white lights banish the murky blur, And over the city, far and near. The spell extends that was conjured here. While down in the wheel-pits, far below. The water whirls in a ceaseless flow — Foaming and boiling, wild and white. In a passionate race of tireless might. Rushing ever the turbines through, And making the dream, the Dream come true! Whirr! Whirr! Whirr! Whirr! The dynamos croon and hum and purr, And over the city's myriad ways. The Jeweled lights all burst ablaze. And the peak-load comes on the burdened wires As the fold rush home to their food and fires! From Songs of a Workaday World, by Berton Braley. Copyright, 1915, George H. Doran, Publisher. 176 PITTSBURGH Way down below llie level road on which I stood, way on the opposite side of the liver, Pittebius^ lies, a dark, low mass, hexnmed in by its rivers, lovded fay its hills; in the hollow the smoke hangs so dense often I could not see the city at all, faot once in a while a breeze falls on the town, and the great 'white skyscrapers come forfii from the thick, black cloud, and the ^ect is glorious — ^the glorification of work, for Pittsburgh is the work-city of the world- THE POWER PLANT 177 Whirr! Whirr! Whirr! Whirr! This is the heart of the city's stir, Here where the dynamos croon and sing, Here where only the " Juice " is King, Where the switchboard stands in its marble pride, And the tender watches it, argus-eyed; Where Death is harnessed and made to serve By keen-faced masters of brain and nerve; This is the shrine of the God That Works, Driving away the mists and miu'ks. Turning the lightnings into use; This is the shrine of the mighty " Juice," Flowing ever the long wires through, And making the dream, the Dream come true! 12 THE OPEN HEARTH By Hekschel S. Hall It was a very black and a very dirty street down which I made my way that November morning at half-past iive. There was no paving, there was no sidewalk, there were no lights. Rain had been falling for several days, and I waded through seas of mud and sloshed through lakes of water, longing for terra firma. There were men in front of me and men behind me, all plodding along through the muck and mire, just as I was plodding along, their tin lunch- pails rattling as mine was rattling. Some of us were going to work, some of us were going to look for work — the steel-mills lay some- where in the darkness ahead of us. We were citizens of a city where the daylight-saving scheme was being tried out, and half-past five in the morning in that city, in the latter part of November, is an early hour and a dark one. We who were not so fortunate as to possess a magical piece of brass, the showing of which to a uniformed guard at the steel-mills' gate would cause the door to light and warmth to swing open, waited outside in the street, where we milled about in the mud, not unlike a herd of uneasy cattle. It was cold out there. A north wind, blowing straight in from the lake, whipped our faces and hands and penetrated our none-too-heavy clothing. " By golly, I wisht I had a job in there! " said a shivering man at my side, who had been doing some inspecting through a knot-hole in the high fence. " You got a job here? " he asked, glancing at my pail. I told him I had been promised work and had been ordered to report. " You're lucky to get a job, and you want to freeze on to it. Jobs ain't going' to be any too plentiful this winter, and if this war stops — good night! I've been comin' here every momin' for two weeks, but I can't get took. I reckon I'm kind o' small for most of the work in there." He began to kick his muddy shoes against the fence and to blow upon his hands. " Winter's comin'," he sighed. A whistle blew, a gate swung open, and a mob of men poured 178 THE OPEN HEARTH 179 out into the street — the night shift going ofif dutj'. Their f ac^ looked haggard and deathly pale in the sickly glare of the pale-blue arcs above us. " Xight-work "s no good," said the small man at my side. " It always gets me in the pit of the stummick somethin' fierce, long between midnight and momin'. But you got to do it if you're goin' to work in the mUls." A man with a Turkish towel thrown loosely about his neck came out of the gate and looked critically at the job hunters. He came up to me. " What's yer name? " he demanded. I told him. '' Come on! " he grunted. We stof)ped before the imiformed guard, who wrote my name on a card, punched the card, and gave it to me. " Come on! " again grunted the man with the towel. I followed my guide into the yard, over railroad tracks, past great piles of scrap-iron and pig metal, through clouds of steam and smoke, and into a long, black building where engines whistled, bells clanged, and electric cranes rumbled and rattled overhead. We skirted a mighty pit filled with molten slag, and the hot air and stifling fumes blowing from it struck me in the face and staggered me. We crept between giant ladles in whose depths I could hear the banging of hammers and the shouting of men. We passed beneath a huge trough through which a white, seething ri\er of steel was rushing. I shrank back in terror as the sound of the roEuing flood fell upon my ears, but the man with the towel, who was walking briskly in front of me, looked over his shoulder and grunted: '" Come onl " Through a long, hot tunnel and past black, curving flues, down which I saw red arms of flame reaching, we made our way. We came to an iron stairway, climbed it, and stepf>ed out uf)on a steel floor into the Open Hearth. '' Come on! " grov/led my guide, and we walked down the steel floor, scattered o\er which I saw groups of men at work in front of big. house-like furnaces out of whose cavernous mouths white tongues of flame were leaping. The men worked naked to the waist, or stripped to overalls and undershirt, and, watching them, I began to wonder if I had chosen wisely in seeking and accepting employment in this inferno. " Put yer pail there. Hang yer coat there. Set down there. Ill tell the boss ye're here." And the man with the towel went away. I was sitting opposite one of the furnaces, a square, squat struc- 180 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK ture of yellow brick built to hold seventy-five tons of steel. There were three doors on the front wall, each door having a round opening in the center, the " peep-hole." Out through these peep-holes poured shafts of light so white and dazzling they pained the eye they struck. They were as the glaring orbs of some gigantic uncouth monster, and as I looked down the long line of furnaces and saw the three fiery eyes burning in each, the effect through the dark, smoke- laden atmosphere was grotesquely weird. I watched a man who worked at one of the doors of the furnace nearest me. He had thrust a bar of iron through the peep-hole and was jabbing and prying at some object inside. Every ounce of his strength he was putting into his efforts. I could hear him grunt as he pulled and pushed, and I saw the perspiration dripping from his face and naked arms. He withdrew the bar — the end that had been inside the door came out as white and as pliable as a hank of taffy — and dropped it to the floor. He shouted some command to some invisible person, and the door rose slowly and quietly, disclosing to me a great, snow-white cavern in whose depths bubbled and boiled a seething lake of steel. With a quick movement of his hand the workman dropped a pair of dark-colored spectacles before his eyes, and his arms went up before his face to shield it from the withering blast that poured out through the open door. There he stood, silhouetted against that piercing light, stooping and peering, tiptoeing and bending, cring- ing and twisting, as he tried to examine something back in the fur- nace. Then with another shout he caused the door to slip down into its place. ■ He came walking across the floor to where I sat and stopped in front of me. The sweat in great drops fell from his blistered face, ran in tiny rivulets from his arms and hands, and splashed on the iron floor. He trembled, he gasped for breath, and I thought he was going to sink down from pure exhaustion, when, to my surprise, he deliberately winked at me. " Ought never to have left the farm, ought we? Eh, Buddy? " he said with a sweaty chuckle. And that was my introduction to Pete, the best open-hearth man I ever knew, a good fellow, clean and honest. " Mike, put this guy to wheeling in manganese," said a voice behind me, and I turned and saw the boss. " Eighteen hundred at THE OPEN HEARTH 181 Number Four and twenty-two hundred at Number Six. Where's your pass? " he asked me. I handed him the card the uniformed watchman at the gate had given me, and he walked away. As he went I heard him say to the workman, Pete, with something like a snarl in his voice: " Pull your gas down, you fool I " " Get that wheelbarrer over yender and foller me," instructed Mike, a little, old, white-haired Irishman who was, as I learned afterward, called " maid of all work " about the plant. I picked up the heavy iron wheelbarrow and trundled it after him, out through a runway to a detached building where the various alloys and re- fractories used in steel-making were kept. " Now, then, you load your wheelbarrer up with this here ma'ganese and weigh it over on them scales yender, and then wheel it in and put it behind Number Four," Mike told me. " Eighteen hundred pounds to that furnace. Then you wheel in twenty-two hunderd pounds to Number Six. I'll be watchin' for you when you bring in the first load, and show you where to dump it." It was cold in the manganese bins. A small yellow electric lamp disclosed to my eyes a great pile of angular chunks of gray metal. I found the pieces surprisingly heavy. I began throwing them into my wheelbarrow and had nearly filled it when I heard a laugh. Look- ing up I saw a big, red face framed in the one window of the bin. " Wot ye think ye're goin' to do with that ma'ganese, young feller? " demanded Red Face. " Wheel it in and put it behind Number Four furnace," I replied. " I want to see yer when yer do it," chuckled Red Face. " Yer must be some little horse! D'ye know how much yer got on that buggy? About eight hunderd poundsl Try to heft it." I took hold of the handles and lifted. I could not budge the load. Red Face gave another chuckle and disappeared. I threw out about three-fourths of the load, weighed the remainder, and found I had nearly two hundred pounds. This. I wheeled in and put behind the furnace, where it would be used when the furnace was tapped. " Why is manganese put into the steel? " I asked Pete on one of my trips past his furnace. " It settles it, toughens it up, and makes it so it'll roll," he answered. 182 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK A few days later I asked one of the chemists about the plant the same question. " It absorbs the occluded gases in the molten steel, hardens it, and imparts the properties of ductility and malleability," was his reply. I preferred Pete's elucidation. All day I trundled the iron wheelbarrow back and forth along the iron floor, wheeling in managanese, magnesite, dolomite, ferro-silicon, fire-clay, sulphur rock, fluor-spar and spiegeleisen. All day I watched service cars rolling into the long building loaded with pig-iron, scrap- iron, and limestone. I watched the powerful electric cranes at work picking up the heavy boxes of material and dumping their contents into the furnaces. I watched the tapping of the " heats," when the dams holding in the boiling lakes would be broken down and the fiery floods would go rushing and roaring into the ladles, these to be whisked away to the ingot moulds. And I watched the men at work, saw the strain they were under, saw the risks they took, and wondered if, after a few days, I could be doing what they were doing. " It is all very interesting," I said to Pete, as I stood near him, waiting for a crane to pass by. He grinned. " Uh-huh! But you'll get over it. 'Bout to-morrow mornin', when your clock goes rattlety-bang and you look to see what's up and find it's five o'clock, you'll not be thinkin' it so inter- estin', oh, no! Let's see your hands." He laughed when he saw the blisters the handles of the wheelbarrow had developed. Pete was right. When my alarm-lock awakened me next morning and I started to get out of bed I groaned in agony. Every muscle of my body ached. I fancied my joints creaked as I sat on the edge of the couch vainly endeavoring to get them to working freely and easily. The breakfast bell rang twice, but hurry I could not. "You'll be late to work! The others have gone! " called the landlady. I managed to creak downstairs. My pail was packed and she had tied up an extra lunch in a newspaper. " You can't stop to eat, if you want to get to work on time," she said. " Your break- fast is in this paper — eat it when you get to the mills." I stumbled away in the darkness, groaning and gasping, and found my way to the black and dirty street. The mud was frozen hard now, and the pools of water were ice-covered, and my heavy working shoes thumped and bumped along the dismal road in a remarkably noisy manner. The number of job hunters was larger this morning. Among THE OPEN HEARTH 183 them I saw the small man who could not " get took," and again he was peeking wishfully through the knot-hole in the fence. " You're on, eh? " he said when he spied me. " By golly, I wisht I was. Say, you haven't got a dime in your pants that you could spare a feller, have you? " I discovered a dime. I showed my brass check — a timekeeper had given me one the day before. Number 1266 — to the uniformed watchman. He waved me on, and I entered the gate just as the whistle blew. A minute later and I would have been docked a half-hour. Mike, " maid of all work," took me in hand as soon as I came on the floor and proceeded to give me a few pointers. " I kept me eye on ye all day yestiddy, and ye fair disgoosted me with the way ye cavorted round with that Irish buggy. As though ye wanted to do it all the first day! Xow, ye're on a twelve-hour turn here, and ye ain't expected to work like a fool. Ye want to learn to speU. (Mike wasn't referring to my orthographic shortcomings.) When the boss is in sight, keep movin'; when he's not, then ease up. Dig in like sin whenever ye glimpse a white shirt and coUar movin' about the plant. Chances is itll be a fifty-doUar clerk, but until ye find out for sure, dig in. Ye'll get in bad with the boss if he sees ye chinnin' with Pete. He don't like Pete and Pete don't like him, and I don't blame Pete. The boss is sohd bone from the collar-button up. He has brainstorms. Watch out for 'em." I followed much of !Mike's advice. All that day I trundled the wheelbarrow, but with more — shall I call it circvmispection? I made an easier day of it, and no one objected to my work. And as the days ran by I found my muscles tougheniog, and I could hear the alarm-bell at five in the morning without feeling compelled to squander several valuable minutes in wishing I had been bom rich. For two weeks I worked every day at wheeling in materials for the furnaces. Then for one week I worked with the " maid of all work," sweeping the floors and keeping the place " righted up," as he called it. Then I " pulled doors " for a while; I " ran tests " to the laboratory; I "brought stores"; I was general-utility man. Then one day, when a workman dropped a piece of pig-iron on his foot and was sent to the hospital, I was put on " second helping." By good luck I was sent to Pete's furnace. Pete and I by this time were great cronies. Many a chat we had had, back behind his furnace, hidden from the prying eyes of the boss. I found Mike 184 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK was right — it was just as well to keep out of his sight. I soon dis- covered that he did not like Pete. In numberless mean and petty ways did he harass the man, trying to make him do something that would give him an excuse to discharge him. But Pete was naturally slow to anger, and with admirable strength he kept his feelings under control. More than once I saw the boss endeavor to lead Pete to strike him, and more than once I saw Pete laugh in the scoundrel's face and walk away, leaving him wild with rage. I sickened at the ugly game the boss played, and wondered when it would end, and how. " Oh, I s'pose it'll come to a head some of these days," Pete said to me one day as we sat talking about the latest outbreak of the boss. " I can't stand it for always. But I'm goin' to make a good job of it when it comes." I was working nights now, every other week. The small man at the gate — he had finally '' got took " and was laboring in the yard gang — who had told me that " night-work is no good — it gets you somethin' fierce in the pit of the stummick, 'long between midnight and momin' " — he knew what he was talking about. I found night- work absolutely " no good," and it certainly did get me " somethin' fierce in the pit of the stummick." The small hours of the night, when the body's vitality is at low ebb, the hours when one moans and cries in his sleep, when death comes oftenest — they are the terror of the night-worker. To be aroused by a screaming whistle above your head at two o'clock in the morning; to seize a shovel and run to the open door of a white-hot furnace and there in its blistering heat to shovel in heavy ore and crushed limestone rock until every stitch of clothing on your body is soaked with perspiration; to stagger away with pulses thumping, and drop down upon a bench, only to be ordered out into a nipping winter air to raise or lower a gas-valve — this is the kind of work the poet did not have in mind when he wrote that " Toil that ennobles! " I doubt whether he or any other poet ever heard of this two-o'clock-in-the-moming toil. When the " heat " was ready to tap I would dig out the " tap- hole." Another " second helper " would assist me in this work. The tap-hole, an opening in the center and lower part of the back wall of the furnace, is about a foot in diameter and three in length. It is closed with magnesite and dolomite when the furnace is charged. THE OPEN HEARTH 185 Digging this filling out is dangerous work — the steel is liable to break out and bum the men who work there. When we had removed the dolomite from the hole I would notify the boss. A long, heavy bar was thrust through the peep-hole in the middle door, and a dozen men would " Ye-ho! Ye-ho! " back and forth on the bar until it broke through the fused bank of magnesite into the tapy-hole. Then the lake of steel would pour out through a runner into the ladle. This tapping a " heat " is a magnificent and a startling sight to the newcomer. I stood fascinated when I beheld it the first time. A lake of seventy-five or eighty tons of sun-white steel, bursting out of fiunace bounds and rushing through the runner, a raging river, is a terrifying spectacle. The eye aches as it watches it; the body shrinks away from the burning heat it throws far out on all sides; the imagination runs riot as the seething flood roils and boils in the ladle. Sometimes when we had had a particiilarly hard speU of work — when a heat had melted " soft " and we must throw in extra pig-iron by hand, to raise the carbon, or when the bottom had broken down and we had labored an hour or two at " flashing " out the steel that had run into the honeycombs, or when we woxild have to build up a new back wall — when something of this kind occurred and we had pulled and gnmted and sweated until we were dead beaten with fatigue and exhaustion, then Pete might be expected to put his well-known question: " Ought to have stayed on the farm, oughtn't we? Hey, buddy? " The fooUsh question, and his comical way of asking it, always made me laugh. Seeing that Pete had once been a farm laborer, the remark does not api>ear so silly, after all. It was his way of com- paring two kinds of work; it was his favorite stock jest. I know farm work, too, from pigs to potatoes, and I do not believe there is any kind of farm work known, ten horns of which would equal thirty minutes of " splashing " on an op)en-hearth furnace, in muscle- tearing, nerve-racking, back-breaking, sweat-bringing effort. " Well, it was like this," Pete began, when I asked him to tell me how he came to quit the farm and take to steel-making. " I quit farmin' and become a steel-worker the same way a fellow quits bein' a one-horse lawyer and becomes a United States senator — ^by pure accident. I was peggin' away on a Minnesota ranch at eighteen dollars a month. One summer when times got slack on the farm I 186 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK run over to Duluth to look around a bit. A fellow there offered me a job on a ore boat. I took it and that summer I put in on the lakes. The boat tied up that fall at Ashtabula. I got paid off there. I thought I'd go back to Minnesota for the winter, so I started to the depot. I met a nice-talkin' chap and we swapped a few remi- niscences. After he had gone I discovered he'd taken my roll with him. It was late and I had no place to sleep, so I went down to the railroad yards and crawled in what I thought was a car of white sand. Somebody come by and shut the door, and I didn't get out of that car till it was opened out there at that bin of spar. They needed a man here that day, so I went to work, and here I've been ever since — fourteen year this fall. I kind of got the habit of bein' round here, and I s'pose I'm done with farmin', but I tell you, some- times I fairly wish I was back draggin' down my eighteen per up in Minnesota. Them occasions don't last long, though." Pete and I were working on Number Three furnace, the latest type and the " fastest " of any in the group. Its monthly output was three or four hundred tons more than that of any other. It belonged to Pete by rights — he was the oldest man on the floor, and he was regarded by all the other furnace-men as the best " first helper " in the plant. No other " first helper " watched his roof so carefully as did he. No other could get as many heats " from a roof " as did he. For every three hundred and fifty heats tapped from a furnace before the furnace required a new roof, the company gave the " first helper " a bonus of fifty dollars. This was to encourage them to watch their furnaces closely, to see that the gas did not " touch " the roofs. One morning Pete and I were notified that we were transferred to Number Ten, the oldest, the slowest, and the hardest furnace to work of any. " Bulger " Lewis, a Welshman, a bosom friend of the boss, was to take Number Three. Pete would lose the bonus money due in thirty days. " What's this for? " he demanded of the boss. " Because you don't watch your furnace! " snarled the boss in reply. " You've touched that roof! There are icicles on it right now! " This was a lie. Pete walked over to the air-valves, jerked the lever, and threw up the middle door. " Show me an icicle in there! " he cried. " I'll give you five hundred dollars for every one you point out! " THE OPEN HEARTH 187 " Lower that door! " roared the boss. " And get down to Number Ten! Or go get your time, if you prefer! " Pete was silent for a moment. Then he threw up his head and laughed. Going to his locker, he took out his lunch-pail and started for Number Ten. " I rather think I am goin' to take a trip to ^Minnesota pretty soon — to see the folks, you know," he said to me that afternoon. Number Ten melted " soft " that day and Pete could not get the heat hot. We pigged steadily for two hours, but it remained cold and dead. We were played out when, about four o'clock, the boss came up. " Why don't you get that heat out? " he demanded. " You've been ten hours on it already ! " Pete made no r^ly. " Where's a test- bar? " He shoved the test-bar into the bath, moved it slowly back and forth, and withdrew it. " She's hot now! Take her out! " Pete looked at the end of the bar. It was ragged, not bitten off clean as it would have been had the temperatiu^e of the bath been right. " She's a long way from bein' hot," he said, pointing at the test-bar. " Don't you dispute me! " roared the boss. " If I say she's hot, she's hot! If I tell you to take her out, you take her out! " We took out the heat. And a miserable mess there was. It was so cold it froze up in the tap-hole, it froze up in the runner, it froze up in the ladle. The entire heat was lost. It was an angry crew of men that worked with sledges, bars, and picks cleaning up the mess. I was sorry the boss could not know how much that bunch of men loved him. I saw him approaching Pete; I saw him shaking his clinched fist; I heard an ugly word; the lie was passed, a blow was struck, and the long-expected fight was on. Out on the smooth iron floor, in the glare of the furnace flames — some one had hoisted the three doors to the top — ^the two enemies fought it out. They were giants in build, both of them, muscled and thewed like gladiators. It was a brutal, savage exhibition. The thud, thud, thud of bare fists on naked flesh was sickening. Once Pete trod on a small piece of scrap, lost his balance, and went down. With a beast-like cry the boss lunged forward and deUb- erately kicked him in the face. A yell of rage went up from the 188 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK men surrounding the pair. Had he offered to repeat it they would have been upon him. But quicker than his movement was Pete's as he leaped to his feet and whirled to meet his antagonist. And now again the sick- ening thud, thud, thud. That and the dull roaring of the gas as it poured through the ports were the only sounds. Ahl Thud, thud — smash! And the boss reeled, dropped to his knees, swayed back and forth, and went down, his head striking the iron floor with a bang. Pete took a bath in a bosh, changed his clothes, shook hands all round, and came seeking me. " Well, buddy, I'm off," he chuckled, peeping at me from a chink in his swollen face. " Like as not I'll be shuckin' punkins up in Minnesota this time next week. Oh, no use my tryin' to stick it out here — ^you can't stay, you know, when you've had a go with the boss. So long! " I did not go to work the next day, nor the next. I was deliberat- ing whether I would go back at all, the morning of the third day, when the " maid of all work " came looking for me. " Pete wants you to come to work," he announced. " Pete? " I said, wondering what he meant. "You said it! Pete's boss now! " "No! " " Yes! Oh, the super, he ain't blind, he ain't! He knowed what was goin' on, he did, and it didn't take him long to fix him when he'd heerd the peticlars. I'll tell Pete you'll be comin' along soon." And Mike departed. I went back and resumed my old position on Number Three, with John Yakabowski, a Pole. Yakabowski was an exceptionally able fumace-man and an agreeable fellow workman. There was great rejoicing all over the plant because our old boss was out, and there was general satisfaction over Pete's appointment to his place. This feeling among the men was soon reflected in the output of the furnaces — our tonnage showed a steady increase. Pete was nervous and ill at ease for a few weeks. To assume the responsibilities that go with the foremanship of an open-hearth plant the size of that one was almost too much for him. He was afraid he would make some mistake that would show him to be imworthy of the trust the superintendent had placed in him. " No education— that's where I'm weak! " he said to me in one of THE OPEN HEARTH 189 our confidential chats. " Can't write, can't figger, can't talk — don't knownothin'! It's embarrassin'! The super tells me to use two thou- sand of manganese on a hundred-and-fifty-thousand-pound charge. That's easy — I just teU a hunky to wheel in two thousand. But s'pose that Iimk-head out in them scales goes wrong, and charges in a hundred and sixty-five thousand poimds and doesn't tell me imtil ten minutes before we're ready to tap — ^how am I goin' to figger out how much more manganese to put in? Or when the chief clerk writes me a nice letter, requestin' a statement showin' how many of my men have more than ten children, how many of 'em can read the Declaration of Indqjendence, and how many of 'em eat oatmeal for breakfast, why, I'm up against it, I tell you! Xo education! I reckon I ought never to've left the farm — hey, buddy? " I imderstood Pete's gentle hint, and I took care of his clerical work, writing what few letters he had to send out, making up his statements, doing his calculating, and so forth. Six months passed. Pete had " made good." The management was highly pleased with him as a melter. Success had come to me, too, in a modest way — I had been given a furnace — I was now a " first helper." It was about the time I took the fxmiace that I began to notice a falling off in the nimiber of requests from Pete for assist- ance. I thought little of it, supposing that he was getting his work done by one of the weighers. But one night when there was a lull in operations and I went down to his office to have a chat with him, I foxmd him seated at his little desk poring over an arithmetic. Scat- tered about in front of him were a number of sheets of paper covered with figures. He looked up at me and grinned in a rather shame- faced manner. " Oh, that's it, is it? " I said. " Xow I understand why I am no longer of any use to the boss! " " Well, I just had to do somethin'," he laughed. " Couldn't afford to go right on bein' an ignorameous all the time." " Are you studying it out alone? " "You bet I ain't! I'd never get ther if I was! I've got a teacher, a private teacher. SweU, eh? He comes every other night, when I'm workin' days, and every other afternoon, when I'm workin' nights. Gee, but I'm a bonehead! He's told me so a dozen times, but the other day he said he thought I was softenin' up a bit." 190 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK Good old Petel I left him that night with my admiration for the man increased a hundred times. Another six months passed, six months of hard, grinding, wearing toil, and yet a six months I look, back upon with genuine pleasure. I now had the swing of the work and it came easy; conditions about the plant under Pete's supervision were ideal; I was making progress in the profession I had adopted; we were making good money. Then came the black day. How quickly it happened! I had tapped my furnace and the last of the heat had run into the ladle. " Hoist away! " I heard Pete shout to the crane-man. The humming sound of the crane motors getting into action came to my ears. I took a look at my roof, threw in a shovelful of spar, turned on the gas, and walked toward the rear of the furnace. The giant crane was groaning and whining as it slowly lifted its eighty-ton burden from the pit where the ladle stood. It was then five or six feet above the pit's bottom. Pete was leaning over the railing of the platform directly in front of the rising ladle. Suddenly something snapped up there among the shafts and cables. I saw the two men in the crane cab go swarming up the escape-ladder. I saw the ladle drop as a broken cable went flying out of a sheave. A great white wave of steel washed over the ladle's rim, and another, and another. Down upon a shallow pool of water that a leaking hose had formed, the steel wave splashed, and as it struck the explosion came. I was blown from my feet and rolled along the floor. The air was filled with bits of fiery steel, slag, brick and debris of all kinds. I crawled to shelter behind a column and there beat out the flames that were burning my clothing in a half-dozen places. Then, groping through the pall of dust and smoke that choked the building, I went to look for Pete. Near the place where I had seen him standing when the ladle fell I found him. Two workmen who had been crouching behind a wall when the explosion came, and were unhurt, were tearing his burning clothes from his seared and blackened body. I saw an ugly wound on his head where a flying missile of some kind had struck him, and his eyes had been shot full of dust and bits of steel. Some- body brought a blanket and we wrapped it about him. We doubted if he lived, but as we carried him back I noticed he was trying to THE OPEN HEARTH 191 speak, and, stooping, I caught the words: " Ought never to have left the farm, ought we? Hey, buddy? " That was the last time I ever heard Pete q)eak. That was the last time I ever saw him alive. Two o'clock in the morning. Sitting at the little desk where I found Pete that night poring over his arithmetic, I have been writing down my early eq)eriences in the Open Hearth. Here comes Yaka- bowski with a test. I know exactly what he will say: " Had I better give her a dose of ore? " Numbers Three, Six, and Ten are " work- ing." I must bestir m5rself. Two o'clock in the morning! The small man at the gate was right: Night-work is no goodl It has got me " somethin' fierce in the pit of the stxmimick " to-night. I was mistaken; Yakabowski doesn't ask his customary ques- tion. He looks at me cvuiously. " You don't look good, boss," he says. " You sick, maybe? " Yes, I'm sick — sick at the " pit of the stummick." I always am at two o'clock in the morning, when I'm on night shift. I stretch, I yawn, I shudder. " Ought never to have left the farm, ought we? Hey, Yaka- bowski? " I say to the big Pole. THE IRON WOMAN By Margaret Deland It was in the late sixties that the children played in the apple- tree; at that time the Maitland house was indeed, as poor little Blair said, " ugly." Twenty years before, its gardens and meadows had stretched over to the river; but the estate had long ago come down in size and gone up in dollars. Now, there was scarcely an acre of sooty green left, and it was pressed upon by the yards of the Mait- land Works, and almost islanded by railroad tracks. Grading had left the stately and dilapidated old house somewhat above the level of a street noisy with incessant teaming, and generally fetlock-deep in black mud. The house stood a little back from the badly paved sidewalk; its meager dooryard was inclosed by an iron fence — a row of black and rusted spears, dotted under their tines with innumerable gray cocoons. But it was no wonder that Blair, the son and heir, called it ugly — the house, the orchard, the Works — even his mother, in her rusty black alpaca dress, sitting at her desk in the big, dingy dining-room, driving her body and soul, and the bodies and souls of her workmen — all for the sake of the little, shrinking boy. Poor mother! Poor son! In the days when the four children played in the orchard and had lessons with Miss White or Cherry-pie, in the school-room in Mr. Ferguson's garret, and were " treated " by Blair to candy or pink ice-cream — even in those days Mercer was showing signs of what it was ultimately to become: the apotheosis of materialism and vulgarity. Iron was entering into its soul. It thought extremely well of itself; when a new mill was built, or a new furnace blown in, it thought still better of itself. It prided itself upon its growth; in fact, its complacency, its ugliness and its aze kept pace with one another. "Look at our output," Sarah Maitland used to brag to her general manager, Mr. Robert Ferguson; " and look at our churches! We have more churches for our size than any town west of the AUeghanies." 192 THE IRON WOM\X 193 " We need more jails than any town, east or west,"' 'Six. Ferguson retorted, grimly. Mrs. Maitland avoided the deduction. Her face was full of pride. " You just wait! Well be the most important dty in this country yet. because we will hold the commerce of the world right here in our mills! " She put out her great open palm, and slowly dosed the strong, beautiful fingers into a gripping fist. " The com- merce of the world, ri^t here.' " she said, thrusting the denched hand, that quivered a little, almost into his face. On the other side of the street, opposite the Maitland house, was a huddle of woodai tenements. Some of them were built on pfles, and seemed to stand on stilts, holding their draggled iirts out of the mud of their untidj- jards: some sagged on rotting sills, leaning shoulder to shoulder as if to prop one another up. From each front door a shaky flight of steps ran down to the unpaved sidewalk, where pigs and children and hens, and the daily tramp of feet to and from the ^laitland Works, had beaten the earth into a hard, black sur- face — or a soft black surface when it rained. These little huddling houses called themsdves Maitland's Shantjiown, and they looked up at the Big House, standing in melancholy isolation behind its fence of iron g)ear3. with the pride that is common to us all when we find ourselves in the companj" of our betters. Back of the little houses was a strip of waste land, used for a dump; and beyond it, bristling against the sky, the long line of Mercer's stacks and chinmeys. In ^ite of such surroundings, the Big House, e%-en as late as the early seventies, was impre^ve. It was square, with four great chimneys, and long windows that ran from floor to ceiling. Its stately entrance and its two cuning flights of stqjs were of white marble, and so were the lintels of the windovrs; but the stone was so Gained and darkened with smokj- j'ears of rains and river fogs, that its only beaut}- lay in the noble lines that grime and time had not been able to destroy. A gnarled and twisted old wistaria roped the doorway, and, crawling almost to the roof. loof>ed along the eaves; in May it broke into a froth of exquisite piuple and faint gre^x, and for a week the garland of blossoms, murmurous with bees, lay clean and lovely against the narrow, old bricks which had once been painted ydlow. Outade, the house had a distinction which no superficial dilapidation could mar: but inside distinction was almost lost in the commonplace, if not in actual u^iness. The double par- ts 194 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK lors on the right of the wide hall had been furnished in the complete vulgarity of the sixties; on the left was the library, which had long ago been taken by Mrs. Maitland as a bedroom, for the practical reason that it opened into the dining-room; so her desk was easily accessible at any time of night, should her passion for toil seize her after working-hours were over. The walls of this room were still covered with books, that no one ever read. Mrs. Maitland had no time to waste on reading; " I live," she used to say; " I don't read about living! " The office dining-room was of noble proportions and in its day must have had great dignity; but in Blair's childhood its day was over. Above the dingy white wainscoting the landscape paper his grandfather had brought from France in the thirties had faded into a blur of blues and buffs. The floor was uncarpeted save for a Persian rug, whose colors had long since dulled to an even grime. At one end of the room was Mrs. Maitland's desk; at the other, filing-cases, and two smaller desks where clerks worked at ledgers or drafting. The four French windows were uncurtained, and the inside shutters folded back, so that the silent clerks might have the benefit of every ray of daylight filtering wanly through Mercer's murky air. A long table stood in the middle of the room; generally it was covered with blue-prints, or the usual impedimenta of an office. But it was not an office table; it was of mahogany, scratched and dim to be sure, but matching the ancient claw-footed sideboard whose top was littered with letter files, silver teapots and sugar-bowls, and stacks of newspapers. Three times a day one end of this table was cleared, and the early breakfast,, or the noon dinner, or the rather heavy supper eaten rapidly and for the most part in silence. Mrs. Maitland was silent because she was absorbed in thought; Nannie and Blair were silent because they were afraid to talk. But the two children gave a touch of humanness to the ruthless room. " Blair, I have something to say to you before you go. Be at my dffice at the Works at ten-fifteen." She looked at him amiably, then pushed back her chair. " Nannie! Get my bonnet. Come! Hurry! I'm late! " Nannie, rimning, brought the bonnet, a bunch of rusty black crepe, with strings frayed with many tyings. " Oh, mamma," she said softly, " do let me get you a new bonnet? " Mrs. Maitland was not listening. " Harris! " she called THE IRON WO^LAX 195 loudly, ■ tell Watson to have those roller figures for me at elevou And I want the linen tracing — Bates will know what I mean — at noon without fail. Nannie, see that there's boiled cabbage for dinner. ' A moment later the door banged behind her. The abrupt alence was like a blow. Xannie and Harris caught their breaths; it was as if the oxygen had been sucked out of the air; there was a minute before any one breathed free!}'. Then Blair flimg vp his arms in a wordless protest : he actually winced with pain. He glanced around the imlovely room; at the table, vrith its ledgers and clutter of un- matched china — old Canton, and hea\'y white earthenware, and odd cups and saucers with splashing decorations which had pleased Har- ris's eye : at the files of newspapers on the sideboard, the grimy walls. the untidj' fireplace. " Thank Heaven! I'm going ofi to-day. I widi I need ne\"er come back," he said. " Oh, Blair, that is a dreadful thing to say! " " It may be dreadful, but that's the way I feel. I can't help my feeHn^, can I? The further mother and I are apart, the better we love each other. 'V^'elll I suppose I've got to go and see her bossing a lot of men, instead of sitting at home, like a lady." Sarah Maitland had gone over to her office in a glow of personal pleasure that warmed up the details of business. She intended to take Blair that morning through the 'Works — ^not as he had often gone before, tagging after her, a frightened child, a reluctant boy — but as the pyrince, formaljy looking over the kingdom into which he was so soon to come! Xobody would have imagined it, but the big, imgainly woman dreamed! Dreamed of her boy, of his business suc- cess, of his love, of his life. It was her purpose, on this particular morning, to tell him, after they had gone through the Works, just where, when he graduated, he was to begin. Not at the bottom! Xo, Blair need not start at the bottom; he could begin pretty well Tip at the top; and he should have a salary. 'What an incentive that would be! First she would teU him that now, when he was going to college, she meant to increase his allo^vance; then she would tell him about the salary he would have when he got to work. How happj- he would be! To have all the pocket-money he wanted, and a great business to look forward to; to have work — ^work! the finest thing in the world — ^all ready to his hand — ^what more could a human being deare? .Kt the oince, she swept through the morning business with a ^leed that took her people o5 ther feet Once or twice she ^aoced 196 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK at the clock; Blair was always uopunctual. " He'll get that knocked out of him when he gets into business," she thought, grimly. It was eleven before he came loitering across the Yards. His mother, lifting her head for a moment from her desk, and glancing impatiently out of the dirt-begrimed office window, saw him coming, and caught the gleam of his patent-leather shoes as he skirted a puddle just outside the door. " Well, Master Blair," she said to her- self, flinging down her pen, " you'll forget those pretty boots when you get to walking around your Works 1 " Blair, dawdling through the outer office, found his way to her sanctum, and sat down in a chair beside her desk. He glanced at her shrinkingly, and looked away. Her bonnet was crooked; her hair was hanging in wisps at the back of her neck; her short skirt showed the big, broad-soled foot twisted round the leg of her chair. Blair saw the muddy sole of that shoe, and half closed his eyes. "You're late," she said; then, without stopping for his excuses, she proceeded with the business in hand. " I'm going to increase your allowance." Blair sat up in astonishment. " I mean while you're at college. After that I shall stop the allowance entirely, and you will go to work. You will go on a salary, like any other man." Her mouth clicked shut in a tight line of satisfaction. The color flew into Blair's face. " Why! " he said. " You are awfully good, mother. Really, I " He got up and followed his mother through the Yards — ^vast, hideous wastes, scorching in the September heats, full of endless rows of pig, piles of scrap, acres, it seemed to Blair, of slag. The screech- ing clamor of the place reeked with the smell of rust and rubbish and sour earth, and the air was vibrant vnth the clatter of the " buggies " on the narrow-gauge tracks that ran in a tangled network from one furnace to another. Blair, trudging along behind his mother, cring- ing at the ugliness of everything about him, did not dare to speak. Mrs. Maitland walked through her Iron Works as some women walk through a garden — ^lovingly. She talked to her son rapidly; this was so and so; there was such and such a department; in that new shed she meant to put the draftsmen; over there the timekeeper; she paused. Blair had left her, and was standing in an open doorway of the foundry, watching, breathlessly, a jibcrane bearing a great THE IRON WOMAN 197 ladle fuU of tons of liquid metal that shimmered above its white-hot expanse with the shifting blue flames of escaping gas. Seething and bubbling, the molten iron slopped in a flashing fihn over the side of the caldron, everj' drop, as it struck the black earth, reboimding La a thousand exploding points of fire. Above the swaying ladle, far up in the glooms under the roof, the shadows were pierced by the lurching dazzle of arc-lamps; but when the ladle tipped, and with a crackling roar the stream of metal flowed into a mould, the sizzling violet gleam of the lamps was abruptly extinguished by the intol- erable glare of light. " Oh," Blair said breathlessly, " how wonderful! " " It is wonderful," his mother said. " Thomas, here, can move the lever that tips the ladle with his two fingers — and out comes the iron as neatly as cream out of a jug! " Blair was so entirely absorbed in the fierce magnificence of light, and in the glowing torsos of the moulders, planted as they were against the profound shadows of the foundry, that when she said, " Come on ! " he did not hear her. ilrs. Maitland, standing with her hands on her hips, her feet well apart, held her head high; she was intensely gratified by his interest. " If his father had only lived to see him! " she said to herself. In her pride, she almost swaggered; she nodded, chuckling, to the moulder at her elbow: " He takes to it like a duck to water, doesn't he, Jim? " " And," said Jim, teUing the story afterward, " I allowed I'd never seen a young feUer as knowing about castings as him. She took it down straight. You can't pile it on too thick for a woman about her young 'im." " Somebody ought to paint it," Blair said, under his breath. Mrs. Maitland's face ^owed; she came and stood beside him a moment in silence, resting her big, dirty hand on his shoulder. Then she said, half sheepishly, " I call that ladle the ' cradle of civilization.' Think what's inside of it! There are rails, that will hold New York and San Francisco together, and engines and machines for the whole world; there are telegraph wires that will bring — ^think of all the kinds of news they will bring, Blair — ^wars, and births of babies! There are bridges in it, and pens that may write — ^well, maybe love-letters," she said, with sly and clumsy humor, " or even write, perhaps, the liberty of a race, as Lincoln's pen wrote it. Yes! " she said, her face full of luminous abstraction, " the cradle of civilization! " 198 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK He could hardly hear her voice in the giant tumult of exploding metal and the hammering and crashing in the adjacent mill; but when she said that, he looked roimd at her with the astonishment of one who sees a familiar face where he has supposed he would see a stranger. He forgot his shame in having a mother who ran an iron- mill ; a spark of sympathy leaped between them as real in its invisibil- ity as the white glitter of the molten iron sputtering over their heads. " Yes," he said, " it's all that, and it is magnificent, too! " " Come on! " she said, with a proud look. Over her shoulder she flung back at him figures and statistics; she told him of the tons of bridge materials on the books; the rail contract she had just taken was a big thing, very big! " We've never handled such an order, but we can do it! " They were walking rapidly from the foundry to the furnaces; Sarah Maitland was inspecting piles of pig, talking to puddlers, all the while bending and twisting between her strong fingers, with their blackened nails, a curl of borings, perhaps biting on it, thoughtfully, while she considered some piece of work, then blowing the crumbs of iron out from between her lips and bursting into quick directions or fault-finding. She stood among her men, in her short skirt, her gray hair straggling out over her forehead from under her shabby bonnet, and gave her orders; but for the first time in her life she was self-conscious — Blair was looking on! listening! thinking, no doubt, that one of these days he would be doing just what she was doing! When they got back to the office again she was very brief and business-like with him. She had had a fine morning, but she couldn't waste any more time! " You can keep all this that you have seen in your mind. I don't know just where I shall put you. If you have a preference, express it." Then she told him what his salary would be when he got to work, and what allowance he was to have for the present. " Now, clear out, clear out! " she said; " good-by "; and turned her cheek toward him for their semi-annual parting. Blair, with his eyes shut, kissed her. " Good-by, mother. It has been awfully interesting. And I am awfully obliged to you about the allowance." On the threshold of the ofiice he halted. " Mother," he said — and his voice was gener- ous even to wistfulness — "Mother, thai cradle thing was stunning." aCAR-MAKING By Henky Sydnoe Harrison The car came to a standstill. " There it is. . . . Confess, Hugo, you're surprised, that it's so small ! " But Hugo helped no new-thoughter to belittle honest business. " Unlike some I could mention, I've seen factories before," quoth he. " I've seen a nuUion-doUar business done in a smaller plant than that." Actually Cally found the Works bigger than she had expected; reaction from the childish marble palace idea had swung her mind's eye too far. But gazing at the weatherworn old pile, spiUing dirtily over the bwoken sidewalk, she was once more struck and depressed by something almost sinister about it, something vaguely foreboding. To her imagination it was a littie as if the ramshackle old pUe leered at her: " Wash your hands of me if you will, young lady. I mean you harm some day. . . ." But then, of course, die wasn't washing her hands of it; her hands had never been in it at all. " Youll get intensely interested and want to stay hours! " said she, with the loud roar of traffic in her ears. " Remember I only came for a peep) — just to see what a Works is like inside." Hugo, guiding her over the littered sidewalk to the shabby littie door marked " Office," swore that she could not make her peep too brief for him. She had considered the possibility of encountering her father here; had seen the difficulties of attributing this foray to Hugo's insatiable interest in commerce, with Hugo standing right there. However, in the very impretentious offices inside — desolate places of common wood partitions, bare floors, and strange, tall stools and desks — she was assurred by an anaemic }'outh with a red Adam's apple that her father had left for the bank an hour earlier, which was according to his usual habit. She inquired for Chas Cooney, who kept books from one of those lofty stools, but Chas was reported sick in bed. Accordingly the visitors fell into the hands of ^Ir. 199 200 3^HE WORKER AND HIS WORK MacQueen, whom Carlisle, in the years, had seen occasionally enter- ing or leaving papa's study o' nights. MacQueen was black, bullet-headed, and dour. He had held socialistic views in his fiery youth, but had changed his mind like the rest of us when he found himself rising in the world. In these days he received a percentage of the Works' profits, and cursed the impudence of Labor. As to visitors, his pohtics were that all such had better be at their several homes, and he indicated these opinions, with no particular subtlety, to Miss Heth and Mr. Can- ning. He even cited them a special reason against visiting to-day: new machines being installed, and the shop upset in consequence. However, he did not feel free to refuse the request outright, and when Canning grew a little sharp — for he did the talking, generously enough — the sour vizier yielded, though with no affectation of a good grace. " Well, as ye like then. . . . This way." And he opened a door with a briskness which indicated that Carlisle's expressed wish " just to look around " should be car- ried out in the most literal manner. The opening of this door brought a surprise. Things were so unceremonious in the business district, it seemed, that you stepped from the superintendent's office right into the middle of everything, so to speak. You were inspecting your father's business a minute before you knew it. . . . Cally, of course, had had not the faintest idea what to expect at the Works. She had prepared herself to view horrors with calm and detachment, if such proved to be the iron law of busi- ness. But, gazing confusedly at the dim, novel spectacle that so suddenly confronted her, she saw nothing of the kind. Her heart, which had been beating a little faster than usual, rose at once. Technically speaking, which was the way Mr. MacQueen spoke, this was the receiving- and stemming-room. It was as Wg as a bam, the full size of the building, except for the end cut off to make the offices. Negroes worked here; negro men, mostly wearing red under- shirts. They sat in long rows, with quick fingers stripping the stems from the not unfragrant leaves. These were stemmers, it was learned. Piles of the brown tobacco stood beside each stemmer, bales of it were stacked, ceiling-high, at the farther end of the room, awaiting their attentions. The negroes eyed the visitors respectfully. They aCAR-MAKING 201 were heard to laugh and joke over their labors. If they knew of any- thing homicidal in their lot, certainly they bore it with a fine humorous coinage. Down the aisle between the black rows, Cally picked her way after Hugo and Mr. MacQueen. Considering that all this was her father's, she felt abashingly out of place, most intrusive; when she caught a dusky face turned upon her she hastily looked another way. Still, she felt within her an increasing sense of cheerfulness. Washington Street sensibilities were offended, naturally. The busy colored stammers were scarcely inviting to the eye; the odor of the tobacco soon grew a little overpowering; there were dirt and dust and an excess of steam-heat — " Tobacco likes to be warm," said Mac- Queen. And yet the dainty visitor's chief impression, somehow, was of system and usefulness and order, of efficient and on the whole well-managed enterprise. " If there's anything the matter here," thought she, " men will have to quarrel and decide about it. . . . Just as I said." The inspecting party went upward, and these heartening im- pressions were strengthened. On the second floor was another stemming-room, long and hot like the other; only here the stem- ming was done by machines — " for the fancy goods " — and the machines were operated by negro women. They were middle-aged women, many of them, industrious and quite placid-looking. Per- haps a quarter of the whole length of the room was prosaically fiUed with piled tobacco stored ready for the two floors of stemmers. The ing>ection here was brief, and to tell the truth, rather tame, like an anti-climax. Xot a trace or a vestige of homicide was descried, not a blood-qx)t high or low. . . . Cally had been observing Hugo, who looked so re^lendent against this workaday background, and felt herself at a disadvan- tage with him. He had not wanted to come at all, but now that they were here, he exhibited a far more intelligent interest in what he saw than she did or could. Oddly enough, he appeared to know a good deal about the making of cigars, and his pointed comments gradually elicited a new tone from ^MacQueen, who was by now talking to him almost as to an equal. Several times Cally detected his eyes upon her, not bored but openly quizzical. " Learning exactly how a cheroot factory ought to be run? " he asked, sotto voce, as ihey left the second floor. 202 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK " Oh, exactly . . . For one thing, I'd recommend a ventilator or two, shouldn't you? " She felt just a little foolish. She also felt out of her element, incidental, irresponsible, and genuinely relieved. Still, through this jumble of feelings she had not forgotten that they were yet to see that part of the Works which she had specially come to peep at. . . . Progress upward was by means of a most primitive elevator, nothing but an open platform of bare boards, which Mr. Mac- Queen worked with one hand, and which interestingly pushed up the floor above as one ascended. As they rose by this quaint device, Carlisle said: " Is this next the bunching-room, Mr. MacQueen? " " It is, Miss." " Bunching-room 1 " echoed Hugo, with satiric admiration. "You are an expert. . . ." The lift-shaft ran in one corner of the long building. Debark- ing on the third floor, the visitors had to step around a tall, shin- ing machine, not to mention two workmen who had evidently just landed it. Several other machines stood loosely grouped here, all obviously new and not yet in place. Hugo, pointing with his stick, observed: " Clearing in new floor-space, I see." MacQueen nodded. " Knocked out a cloak-room. Our fight here's for space. Profits get smaller all the time. . . ." " H'm. . . . You figured the strain, I suppose. Your floor looks weak." " Oh, it'll stand it," said the man, shortly. " This way." Carlisle wondered if the weak floor was what her friend Vivian had meant when he said, in his extreme way, that the Works might fall down some day. She recalled that she had thought the building looked rather rickety, that day last year. But these thoughts hardly entered her mind before the sight of her eyes knocked them out. The visitors squeezed around the new machines, and, doing so, stepped full into the bunching-room. And the girl saw in one glance that this was the strangest, most interesting room she had ever seen. Her first confused sense was only of an astonishing mass of dirty white womanhood. The thick hot room seemed swarming with women, alive and teeming with women, women tumbling all over CIGAR-MAKING 203 each other wherever the eye turned. Tall clacking machines ran closely around the walls of the room, down the middle stood a double row of tables; and at each machine, and at every possible place at the tables, sat a woman crowded upon a woman, and an- other and another. Dirt, noise, heat, and smell: women, women, women. Conglom- eration of human and inhuman such as the eyes of the refined seldom look upon. . . . Was this, indeed, the pleasantest place to work in town? . . . " Bunchin' and wrappin'," said MacQueen. " Filler's fed in from that basin on top. She slips in the binder — ^machine roUs 'em together. ... Ye can see here." They halted by one of the bunching-machines, and saw the parts dexterously brought together into the crude semblance of the product, saw the embryo cigars thrust into wooden forms which would shape them yet further for their uses in a world asmoke. . . . " Jove! Watch how her hands fly! " said Hugo, with manlike interest for processes, things done. " Look, Carlisle." Carlisle looked dutifully. It was in the order of things that she should bring Hugo to the Works, and that, being here, he should take charge of her. But, unconsciously, she soon turned her back to the busy machine, impelled by the moimting interest she felt to see bunching, not in detail, but in the large. Downstairs the workers had been negroes; here they were white women, a different matter. But Cally had a closer association than that, in the girl she had just been talking to, Corinne, who had worked three years in this room. It wasn't so easy to preserve the valuable detached point of view, when you actually knew one of the people. . . . " Three cents a hundred," said MacQueen's rugged voice. There was a fine brown dust in the air of the teeming room, and the sickening smell of new tobacco. Not a window in the place was open, and the strong steam heat seemed almost overwhelming. The women had now been at it for near nine hours. Damp, streaked faces, for the most part pale and somewhat heavy, tinned incessantly toward the large waJQ-clock at one end of the room. Eyes looked sidewise upon the elegant visitors, but then the flying fingers were off again, for time is strictly money with piecewoit. . . . How could they stand being so crowded, and couldn't they have any air? 204 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK " Oh, five thousand a day — ^plenty of them." " Five thousand! — ^how do they do it? " " We had a girl do sixty-five hundred. She's quit. . . . Here's one down here ain't bad." The trio moved down the line of machines, past soiled, busy backs. Close on their left was the double row of tables, where the hurrying " wrappers " sat like sardines. Cally now saw that these were not women at all, but young girls, like Corinne; girls mostly younger than she herself, some very much yoimger. Only they seemed to be girls with a difference, girls who had somehow lost their girlhood. The rather nauseating atmosphere which enveloped them, the way they were huddled together yet never ceased to drive on their tasks, the slatternly uncorseted figures, stolid faces and furtive glances; by something indefinable in their situation, these girls seemed to have been degraded and dehumanized, to have lost something more precious than virtue. Yet some of them were quite pretty, beneath dust and fatigue; one, with a quantity of crinkly auburn hair, was very pretty, indeed. The girl Corinne, after three years here, was both pretty and pos- sessed of a certain delicacy; a delicacy which forbade her to tell Mr. Heth's daughter what she really thought about the Works. For that must have been it. . . . " This 'un can keep three wrappers pretty busy when she's feelin' good. Can't yer, Miller? . . . Ye'll see the wrappers there, in a minute." This 'un, or Miller, was a tall, gaunt, sallow girl, who handled her machine with the touch of a master, eliminating every super- iluous move and filling a form of a dozen rough cheroots quickly enough to take a visitor's breath away. No doubt it was very in- structive to see how fast cheroots could be made. However, the stirring interest of the daughter of the Works was not for me- chanical skill. Cally stood with a daintily scented handkerchief at her nos- trils, painfully drinking in the origins of the Heth fortune. The safeguarding sense of irresponsibility ebbed, do what she might. Well she knew that this place could not be so bad as it seemed to her; for then her father would not have let it be so. For her to seem to disapprove of papa's business methods was mere silly im- pertinence, on top of the disloyalty of it. But none of the sane pre- aCAR-MAKING 205 cepts she had had two weeks to think out seemed to make any answer to the distm-bing sensations she felt rising, like a sickness, within her. . . . Her sense was of something polluting at the qjring of her life. Here was the soil that she was rooted in, and the soU was not clean. It might be business, it might be right; but no argument could make it agreeable to feel that the monej- she wore upon her back at this moment was made in this malodorous place, by these thickly crowded girls. . . . Was it in such thoughts that grew this sense of seme personal relation of herself with her father's most unpleasant bunch- ing-room? Was it for such reasons that V. Vivian had asked her that day at the Settlement why didn't she go to the Works some day? . . . She heard Hugo's voice, with a note of admiration for visible rffi- ciency: " How do they keep it up at this clip nine hours? " " Got to do it, or others will." " You expect each machine to produce so much, I suppose? " And CaUy, so close to her lordly lover that her arm brudied his, was seeing for the first time in her hfe what people meant when they threw bricks at papa on election night, or felt the strong necessity of attacking him in the papers. By processes that were less mental than emotional, even physical, she was driven further down a well-trod path and stood dimly confronting the outlines of a vast interrogation. . . . What particular human worth had she, Cally Heth, that the womanhood of these lower-class sisters should be sapped that she might wear silk next her skin, and be bred to appeal to the highly ciiltivated tastes of a Canning? . . . If there are experiences which permanently extend the frontiers of thought, it was not in this girl's power to recognize one of them closing down on her now. But she did perceive, by the growing com- motion within, that she had made a great mistake to come to this place. . . . " Now, here's wrapping," said MacQueen. " Hand work, you see." But his employer's daughter, it appeared, had seen enough of cigar-making for one day. At that moment she touched Canning's well-tailored arm. "Let's go. . . . It's— stifling here." Hugo, just turning from the bunching-machine, regarded her 206 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK faintly horrified face with some amusement. And Carlisle saw that he was amused. " I was wondering," said he, " how long your sociology would survive this air. . . ." The peep was meant to end there, and should have done so. But unluckily, at just that juncture, there came a small diver- sion. The gaunt girl Miller, by whose machine the little party stood, took it into her head to keep at it no longer. Though nobody had noticed it, this girl had been in trouble for the last five minutes. The presence of the visitors, or of the superintenedent, had evidently made her nervous; she kept look- ing half-around out of the darting comers of her eyes. Three times, as the men watched and talked about her, she had raised a hand in the heat and brushed it hurriedly before her eyes. And then, just as the superintendent turned from her and all would have been well again, her overdrawn nerve gave out. The hands became suddenly limp on the machine they knew so well; they slid backward, at first slowly and then with the speed of a fall- ing body; and poor Miller slipped quietly from her stool to the floor, her head actually brushing the lady's skirt as she fell. Cally stifled a little cry. Hugo, obvious for once, said, " Why, she's fainted! " — in an incredulous voice. Considerably better in action were the experienced Works people. MacQueen sprang for a water-bucket with a celerity which strongly suggested practice. A stout, unstayed buncher filled a long-felt want by flinging open a vdndow. One from a neighboring machine sat on the floor. Miller's head on her lap. Two others stood by. . . . Carlisle, holding to the silenced machine with a small gloved hand, gazed down as at a bit of stage-play. They had formed a screen about the fallen girl, under Mac- Queen's directions, to cut her off from the general view. The superintendent's gaze swept critically about. However, the sud- den confusion had drawn the attention of all that part of the room, and concealment proved a too optimistic "hope. The moment hap- peped to be ripe for one of those ciuious panics of the imagination to which crowded womanhood is psychologically subject. Knowl- edge that somebody was down ran round the room as if it had been shouted; and on the knowledge, fear stalked among the tired girls, and the thing itself was bom of the dread of it, aCAR-MAKING 207 So it was that Carlisle, gripping fast to poor Miller's machine, heard an odd noise behind her, and turned with a sickening drop- ping of the heart. Five yards away a girl gave a little moan and flopped forward upon her machine. She was a fine, strapping young creature, and it is certain that two minutes before nothing had been further from her mind than fainting. It did not stop there. Far up the room a " wrapper " rose in the dense air, took her head in both hands and fell backward into the arms of the operative next her. In the extreme comer of the great room a little stir indi- cated that another had gone down there. Work had almost ceased. Many eyes stared with sudden nervous apprehension into other eyes, as if to say: " Am I to be the next? . . ." MacQueen's voice rang out — a fine voice it was, the kind that makes people sit down again in a fire-scared theatre: " Take your seats, every one of you. . . . Nothing's going to hajq)en. You're aU right, I say. Go on with your work. Sit down. Get to ivork. . . ." " Air," said CaEy Heth, in a small colorless voice. Hugo wheeled sharply. ■' Great heavens! — Carlisle! . . Do you feel faint? '" He had her at the open window in a trice, clasping her arm tight, speaking masculine encouragement. ..." Hold hard, my dear! ... I should have watched you. . . . Xow, breathe this. . . . Gulp it in, CaUy. . . ." His beloved, indeed, like the work-sisters, had felt the brush of the black wing. For an instant nothing had seemed surer than that the daughter of the Works would be the fifth girl to faint in the bunching-room that day; she had seen the floor rise under her whirUng vision. . . . But once at the window the dark minute passed q)eedily. The keen October air bore the gift of life. Blood trickled back into the dead white cheeks. " I . . . was just a little dizzy," said Cally, quite apologetically. And, though the visitors departed then, almost immediately, all signs of the sudden little panic in the bunching-room were already rapidly disappearing. Work proceeded. The gaunt girl Miller, who had earned MacQueen's permanent dislike by starting all the trouble, was observed sitting again at her machine, hands and feet reaching out for the accustomed levers. A PRINTING-OFFICE By Arnold Bennett Daetus Clayhangee's printing-office was a fine example of the policy of makeshift which governed and still governs the commercial activity of the Five Towns. It consisted of the first floor of a nonde- script building which stood at the bottom of the irregularly shaped yard behind the house and shop, and which formed the southern boundary of the Clayhanger premises. The antique building had once been part of an old-fashioned pot-works, but that must have been in the eighteenth century. Kilns and chimneys of all ages, sizes and tints rose behind it to prove that this part of the town was one of the old manufacturing quarters. The ground floor of the build- ing, entirely inaccessible from Clayhanger's yard, had a separate entrance of its own in an alley, that branched off from Woodisun Bank, ran parallel to Wedgwood Street and stopped abruptly at the back gate of a saddler's workshop. In the narrow entry you were like a creeping animal amid the undergrowth of a forest of chimneys, ovens and high blank walls. This ground floor had been a stable for many years; it was now, however, a baker's store-room. Once there had been an interior staircase leading from the ground floor to the first floor, but it had been suppressed in order to save floor space, and an exterior staircase constructed with its foot in Clay- hanger's yard. To meet the requirement of the staircase one of the first-floor windows had been transformed into a door. Further, as the staircase came against one of the ground-floor windows, and as Qayhanger's predecessor had objected to those alien windows over- looking his yard, and as numerous windows were anyhow unneces- sary to a stable, all the ground-floor windows had been closed up, with oddments of brick and tile, giving to the wall a very variegated and chequered appearance. Thus the ground floor and the first floor were absolutely divorced, the former having its entrance and light from the public alley, the latter from the private yard. From Clayhanger, by Arnold Bennett Copyright, 1910, George H. Doran, Publisher. 20s A PRINTING-OFFICE 209 The first floor had been a printing-office for over seventy years. All the machinery in it had had to be manoeuvered up the rickety stairs or put through one of the windows on either side of the window that had been turned into a door. \Mien Darius Clayhanger, in his audacity, decided to print by steam, many people imagined that he would at last be compelled to rent the ground floor or to take other premises. But no! The elasticity of the makeshift pohcy was not yet fully stretched. Darius, in consultation with a jobbing builder, came happily to the conclusion that he could " manage," that he could " make things do," by adding to the top of his stairs a little landing for an engine-shed. This was done, and the engine and boiler perched in the air; the shaft of the engine went through the wall; the chimney-pipe of the boUer ran up straight to the level of the roof-ridge and was stayed with pieces of wire. A new chimney had also been pierced in the middle of the roof, for the uses of a heating stove. The original chimneys had been allowed to fall into decay. Finally, a new large skyhght added interest to the roof. In a general way, the building resembled a suit of clothes that had been worn during foiu: of the seven ages of man by an imtidy husband with a tidy and economical wife, and then given by the wife to a poor relation of a somewhat different figure, to finish. All that could be said of it was that it survived and served. But these considerations occurred to nobody. n Edwin Clayhanger left the shop without due excuse and passed down the long blue-paved yard towards the printing-office. He imagined that he was being drawn thither simply by his own curiosity — a curiosity, however, which he considered to be justifiable, and even laudable. The yard showed signs that the imusual had lately been happening there. Its brick pavement, in the narrow branch of it that led to the double gates in Woodisun Bank (those gates which said to the casual visitor, " Xo admittance except on Business ") , was muddy, littered and damaged, as though a Juggernaut had passed that way. Ladders reclined against the walls. Moreover, one of the windows of the office had been taken out of its frame, leaving naught but an oblong aperture. Through this apertiire Edwin could see the busy eager forms of his father, Big James, and Chawner. Through this aperture had been lifted, in parts and by the employment of 14 210 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK every possible combination of lever and pulley, the printing machine which Darius Clayhanger had so successfully purchased in Man- chester on the day of the Free-and-Easy at the Dragon. At the top of the flight of steps two apprentices, one nearly " out of his time," were ministering to the engine, which that morning did not happen to be rurming. The engine, giving glory to the entire estabUshment by virtue of the imposing word " steam," was a crotchety and capricious thing, constant only in its tendency to break down. No more reliance could be placed on it than on a pan> pered donkey. Sometimes it would run, and sometimes it would not run, but nobody could safely prophesy its moods. Of the sev- eral machines it drove but one, the grand cylinder, the last triumph of the ingenuity of man, and even that had to be started by hand before the engine would consent to work it. The staff hated the engine, except during those rare hours when one of its willing moods coincided with a pressure of business. Then, when the steam was sputtering and the smoke smoking and the piston throbbing, and the leathern belt traveling round and round and the complete building a-tremble and a-clatter and an attendant with clean hands was feed- ing the sheets at one end of the machine and another attendant with clean hands taking them off at the other, all at the rate of twenty copies per sbcty seconds — then the staff loved the engine and meditated upon the wonders of their modern civilization. The engine had been known to do its five thousand in an afternoon, and its horse-power was only one. in Edwin could not keep out of the printing-office. He went incon- spicuously and as it were by accident up the stone steps and disap- peared into the interior. When you entered the office you were first of all impressed by the multiplicity of odors competing for your attention, the chief among them being those of ink, oil, and paraffin. Despite the fact that the door was open and one window gone, the smell and heat in the office on that warm morning were notable. Old sheets of the " Manchester Examiner " had been pinned over the skylight to keep out the sun, but as these were torn and rent the sun was not kept out. Nobody, however, seemed to suffer incon- venience. After the odors, the remarkable feature of the place was the quantity of machinery on its uneven floor. Timid employes had A PRINTING-OFFICE 211 occasionally suggested to Darius that the floor might yield one day and add themselves and all the machinery to the baker's stores below; but Darius knew that floors never did yield. In the middle of the floor was a huge and hea\y heating stove, whose jMpe ran straight upwards to the visible roof. The mighty cylinder machine stood to the left hand. Behind was a small rough- and-ready binding dep>artment with a guillotine cutting machine; a cardboard cutting machine, and a perforating machine; trifles by the side of the cylinder, but stfll each of them formidable masses of metal heavy enough to crush a horse; the cutting machines might have served to illustrate the French Revolution, and the perforating machine the Holy Inquisition. Then there was what was called in the office the " old machine," a relic of Qayhanger's predecessor, and at least eighty years old. It was one of those machines whose worn jAysiognomies fuU of character show at once that they have a history. In construction it carried solidity to an absurd degree. Its pillars were like the pUes of a pier. Once, in a historic rat-catching, a rat had got up one of them, and a piece of smouldering brown paper had done what a terrier could not do. The machine at one period of its career had been enlarged, and the neat seaming of the metal was an ecstasy to the eye of a good workman. Long ago, it was known, thk machine had printed a Reform new^aper at Stockport. Now, after thus par- ticipating in the violent politics of an age heroic and unhappy, it had been put to printing small posters of auctions and tea-meetings. Its movement was double, first that of a handle to bring the bed xmder the platen, and second a lever puUed over to make contact between the type and the paper. It still worked perfectly. It was so solid, and it had been so honestly made, that it could never get out of order nor wear away. And indeed the conscientiousness and skfll of artificers in the eighteenth century are still, through that resistless machine, producing their effect in the twentieth. But it needed a strong hand to bestir its smooth plum-colored limbs of metal, and a q>eed of a himdred an horn- meant gentle perspiration. The machine was loved like an animal. Near this honorable and lumbering survival stood pertly an Empire treadle-machine for printing envelopes and similar trifles. It was new and full of nat^ 'ittle devices. It worked with the lightness of 212 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK something insubstantial. A child could actuate it, and it would print delicately a thousand envelopes an hour. This machine, with the latest purchase, which was away at the other end of the room near the large double-pointed case-rack, completed the tale of machines. That case-rack alone held fifty different fonts of type, and there were other case-racks. The lead-rack was nearly as large, and beneath the lead-rack was a rack containing all those " furnitures " which help to hold a form of type together without betraying themselves to the reader of the printed sheet. And under the furniture-rack was the " random," full of galleys. Then there was a table with a top of solid stone, upon which the forms were bolted up. And there was the ink-slab, another solidity, upon which the ink-rollers were inked. Rollers of various weightiness lay about, and large heavy cans, and many bottles, and metal galleys, and nameless fragments of metal. Everything contributed to the impression of immense ponderosity exceeding the imagination. The fancy of being pinned down by even the lightest of those constructions was excruciating. You moved about in narrow alleys among upstanding unyielding metallic enormities, and you felt fragile and perilously soft. rv The only unintimidating phenomena in the crowded place were the lye-brushes, the dusty job-files that hung from the great transverse beams, and the proof-sheets that were scattered about. These printed things showed to what extent Darius Clayhanger's establish- ment was a channel through which the life of the town had some- how to pass. Auctions, meetings, concerts, sermons, improving lec- tures, miscellaneous entertainments, programs, catalogues, deaths, births, marriages, specifications, municipal notices, summonses, de- mands, receipts, subscription-lists, accounts, rate-forms, lists of voters, jury-lists, inaugurations, closures, billheads, handbills, addresses, visiting-cards, society-rules, bargain-sales, lost and found notices; traces of all these matters, and more, were to be found in that office; it was impregnated with the human interest; it was dusty with the human interest; its hot smell seemed to you to come off life itself, if the real sentiment and love of life were sufficiently in you. A grand, stuffy, living, seething place, with all its metallic immobility! A PRINTING-OFFICE 213 Edwin sidled towards the center of interest, the new machine, which, however, was not a new machine. Darius Clayhanger did not buy more new things than he could help. His delight was to " pick up " articles that were supposed to be " as good as new "; occasionally he would even assert that an object bought second-hand was " better than new," because it had been " broken in," as if it were a horse. Nevertheless, the latest machine was, for a printing machine, nearly new; its age was four years only. It was a Demy- Columbian press, similar in concqjtion and movement to the historic " old machine " that had been through the Reform movement; but how much lighter, how much handier, how much more ingenious and precise in the detail of its working! A beautiful edifice as it stood there, gazed on admiringly by the expert eyes of Darius, in his shirt-sleeves. Big James, the foreman, in his royally flowing apron, and Chawner, the jom^ieyman compositor, who, with the two appren- tices outside, completed the staff! Aided by no mechanic more skflled than a day-laborer those men had got the machine piecemeal into the office and had duly erected it. At that day a foreman had to be equal to anything. The machine appeared so majestic there, so solid and immovable, that it might ever have existed where it then was. Who could credit that less than a fortnight earUer it had stood equally majestic, solid, and immovable at Manchester? There remained nothing to show how the miracle had been accomplished except a bandage of ropes round the lower pillars and some puUey-tackle hanging from one of the transverse beams exactly overhead. The situation of the machine in the workshop had been fijced partly by that beam above and partly by the run of the beams that supported the floor. The stout roof- beam enabled the artificers to handle the great masses by means of the tackle; and as for the floor-beams, Darius had so far Kstened to warnings as to take them into account. VL " Take another impress, James," said Darius. And when he saw Edwin, instead of asking the youth what he was wasting his time there for, he good-humoredly added: " Just watch this, my lad." Darius was pleased with himself, his men, and his acquisition. He 214 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK was in one of his moods when he could charm; he was jolly, and he held up his chin. Two days before, so interested had he been in the Demy-Columbian, he had actually gone through a bilious attack while scarcely noticing it. And now the whole complex operation had been brought to a triumphant conclusion. Big James inserted the sheet of paper, with gentle and fine move- ments. The journeyman turned the handle, and the bed of the machine slid horizontally forward in frictionless, stately silence. And then Big James seized the lever with his hairy arm bared to the elbow, and pulled it over. The delicate process was done with minute and level exactitude; and adjusted to the thirty-second of an inch, the great masses of metal had brought the paper and the type to- gether and separated them again. In another moment Big James drew out the sheet, and the three men inspected it, each leaning over it. A perfect impression 1 Edwin could read the characters in shining wet ink: " Bailiwick of Bursley " — A perfect jmpression! " Well," said Darius, glowing. " We've had a bit o' luck in getting that up! Never had less trouble! Shows we can do better without those Foundry chaps than with 'em! James ye can have a quart brought in, if ye'n a mind, but I won't have them apprentices drink- ing! No, I won't! Mrs. Nixon '11 give 'em some nettle-beer if they fancy it." He was benignant. The inauguration of a new machine deserved solemn recognition, especially on a hot day. It was an event. " A infant-in-arms could turn this here," murmured the journey- man, toying with the handle that moved the bed. It was an exag- geration, but an excusable, poetical exaggeration. Big James wiped his wrists on his apron. vn Then there was a queer sound of cracking somewhere, vague, faint, and yet formidable. Darius was standing between the machines and the dismantled window, his back to the latter. Big James and the journeyman rushed instinctively from the center of the floor towards him. In a second the journeyman was on the window-sill. " What art doing? " Darius demanded roughly; but there was no sincerity in his voice. " Th' floor! " the journeyman excitedly exclaimed. A PRIKTXNG-OFFICE 215 Big James stood close to the wall. " And what about th' floor? " Darius challenged him obstinately. " One o' them beams is a-going," stammered the journeyman. " Rubbish! " shouted Darius. But simultaneously he motioned to Edwin to move from the middle of the room, and Edwin obeyed. All four Ustened, with nerves stretched to the tightest. Dariiis was biting his lower lip with his upper teeth. His humor had swiftly changed to the savage. Every warning that had been uttered for years past concerning that floor was remembered with startling dis- tinctness. Every impatient reassiu'ance offered by Darius for years past suddenly seemed fatuous and perverse. How could any man in his senses exj>ect the old floor to withstand such a terrific strain as that to which Darius had at last dared to subject it? The floor ought by rights to have given way years ago ! His men ought to have declined to obey instructions that were obviously insane. These and similar thoughts visited the minds of Big James and the journeyman. As for Edwin, his excitement was, on balance, pleasm-able. In truth, he could not kiU in his mind the hope that the floor would jdeld. The greatness of the resulting catastrophe fascinated him. He knew that he should be disappointed if the catastrophe did not occur. That it would mean ruinous damage to the extent of hundreds of pounds, and enormous worry, did not influence him. His reason did not influence him, nor his personal danger. He saw a large hook in the wall to which he could cling when the exquisite crash came, and he pictured a welter of broken machinery and timbers ten feet below him, and the immense pother that the affair would create in the town. vm Darius would not lose his belief in his floor. He hugged it in mute fmy. He would not climb on to the window-siU, nor tell Big James to do so, nor even Exlwin. On the subject of the floor he was reUgious; he was above the appeal of the intelligence. He had always held passionately that the floor was immovable, and he always would. He had finally convinced himself of its omnipotent strength by the long process of assertion and reasserrion. 'WTien a voice within him murmured that his belief in the floor had no scientific basis, he strangled the voice. So he remained, motionless, between the window and the machine. 216 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK No sound! No slightest sound 1 No tremor of the machine! But Darius's breathing could be heard after a moment. He guffawed sneeringly. " And what next? " he defiantly asked, scowling. " What's amiss wi' ye all? " He put his hands in his pockets. " Dun ye mean to tell me as " The younger apprentice entered from the engine-shed. " Get back there! " rolled and thundered the voice of Big James. It was the first word he had spoken and he did not speak it in frantic, hysteric command, but with a terrible and convincing mildness! The phrase fell on the apprentice like a sandbag and he vanished. Darius said nothing. There was another cracking sound, louder, and unmistakably beneath the bed of the machine. And at the same instant a flake of grimy plaster detached itself from the opposite wall and dropped into pale dust on the floor. And still Darius religiously did not move, and Big James would not move. They might have been under a spell. The journeyman jumped down in- cautiously into the yard. rx And then Edwin, hardly knowing what he did, and certainly not knowing why he did it, walked quickly out on to the floor, seized the huge hook attached to the lower pulley of the tackle that hung from the roof-beam, pulled up the slack of the rope-bandage on the hind part of the machine and stuck the hook into it; then walked quickly back. The hauling rope of the tackle had been carried to the iron ring of a trapdoor in the corner near Big James; this trapdoor, once the outlet of the interior staircase from the groimd floor, had been nailed down many years previously. Big James dropped to his knees and tightened and knotted the rope. Another and much louder noise of cracking followed, the floor visibly yielded and the hind part of the machine visibly sank about a quarter of an inch. But no more. The tackle held. The strain was distributed between the beam above and the beam below, and equilibrium established. " Out! Lad! Out! " cried Darius feebly, in the wreck, not of his workshop but of his religion. And Edwin fled down the steps, pushing the mystified apprentices before him, and followed by the men. In the yard the journeyman, entirely self-centered, was hop- ping about on orfe leg and cursing. A PRIXTIXG-OFFICE 217 Darius, Big James and Edwin stared in the morning sunshine at the aperture of the window, and listened. " Nay! " said Big Jam^ after an eternity. " He's saved it! He's saved th' old shop! But by gum — ^by gum! " Darius turned to Edwin, and tried to say something; and then Edwin saw his father's face working into monstrous angular sh^)es, and saw the tears ^urt out of his eyes; and was clutched con- vulsively in his father's shirt-deeved arms. He was ver\- proud, very pleased; but he did not like this embrace; it made him feel ashamed. And although he had incontestably done something which was very wonderful and very heroic, and which proved in him the most extraordinary presence of mind, he could not honestly glorify himself in his own heart, because it appeared to him that he had acted exactly like an automaton. He blankly marveled, and thought the situation agreeably thrillin g^ if somewhat awkward. His father let him go. Then all Edwin's feelings gave place to an immense stupefaction at his father's truly remarkable behavior. Whatl His father emotional! He had to begin to reN-ise again his settled views. IN THE QUARRIES By Eden Phillpotts Delabole is a hamlet created by one industry, whose men and boys to the number of five hundred work in the slate quarries, as their forefathers have done and their children's children will do. Since Tudor times the slate of Delabole has come to market, for men worked here before Shakespeare wrote. I But the theatre of their toil is not immediately visible. Beneath Delabole an artificial mountain of shining stone rolls out upon the slope of the meadows, and creates a landmark to be seen for many miles. Behind these mounds the earth vanishes sud- denly, and there yawns an immense crater. It sinks below the sur- face of the land, and the mouth of it is more than a quarter of a mile across. Round about the pit stand offices, shops, and engine- houses. An iron structure ascends upon the landing-stage, or pappot- head, above a stark precipice of six hundred feet, and every way at the surface there threads and twists a network of little rails. They run round about to the shops, to the larger gauge of the main line, to the forehead of the mountains of waste stuff, whose feet are in the green fields far beneath. Here open the quarries of Delabole, and though they have been yielding slate for some hundred years, the supply continues to meet all demand. Of old a dozen separate workings stood in proximity; now they have run together, and their circumference is a mile. It is an oval cup with surfaces that slope outward from the bottom. The sides are precipices, some abrupt and beetling with sheer falls of many hundred feet, while others reveal a gentler declivity, and their sides are broken by giant steps. Here and there the over- burden has fallen in, and moraines of rubbish tower cone-shaped against the quarry sides. They spread from a point high up on the cliff face and ooze out in great wedges of waste, whose worthless masses smother good slate. The sides of the crater are chased with galleries, and burnished with bright colors spread and splashed over the planes of the cliffs. Some of these rock-cut galleries are now disused, others are bare and raw, with the bright thread of tram- 218 IN THE QUARRIES 219 lines glittering along them; but in the neglected regions Nature has retiuned to weather the stone with wonderful color and trace rich harmonies of russet and amber upon it. Here, too, growing things have foimd foothold, and bird-borne, air-borne, water-borne seeds have germinated in the high crags and lonely workings. Saplings of ash, beech, and willow make shift to grow, and the rust of de- serted tramways or obsolete machinery is hidden under ferns and grasses and wild blossoms. To the east, where falling waters sheet a great red rock-sxu-face, wakens the monkQr-flower in springtime to fling a flash of gold amid the blues and grays, while elsewhere iron percolations and the drippings from superincumbent earth stain the sides of this great embouchiu-e to a medley and mosaic of rich color. Evening fills the quarry with wine-piuple that mounts to the brim as night falls upon it; dawn chases its sides with silver, and simrise often floods it with red-gold. Sometimes, at seasons of autumnal rain, the cliffs ^out white waterfalls that thread the declivities with foam and sweU the tarn at the bottom; while in summer the sea mists find it, fill it, conceal the whole wonder of it, and muffle the din of the workers at the bottom. The active galleries wind away to present centers of attack, and terminate at the new-wrought and naked faces of the slate. These spots glitter steel-bright in contrast with the older workings. They open gray and blue where man's labor is fretting the face of the quarries at a dozen different points. Chief activity was now con- centrated upon the great " Grey Abbey " seam, imder the northern precipice, and there labored two hundred men to blast the rock and fill the tumbrils that came and went. The great slate cup is full of light; it is gemmed and adorned so that no plane or scarp lacks beauty. On a bluff westward still stand half a dozen trees that bring spring green hither in April, and make a pillar of fire at autumn-time, until the shadows swallow them, or the winds that scour the quarry find their dead leaves and send them flying. Along the galleries that circle the sides of Old Delabole are sheds and pent-roofs, where a man may shelter against the haU of the blastings; while aloft, beside the trees on the knoll, stands a white- washed cottage, high above the bottom of the quarries, but far below their surface. Other dwellings once stood here, but they have vanished away for the sake of the good slate seams on which they stood. Now only Wilberforce Retallack's home remained, and that, too, with 220 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK the cluster of trees beside it, was doomed presently to vanish. The house and its garden of flowers and shrubs might exist for a few more years, then it would follow its neighbors that once clustered beside it, like sea-birds' nests upon an ocean-facing crag. Beside the cottage there fell the great main entrance to the quarries — a steep plane of eight hundred feet that ran straight into the lowest depths and bore four main lines of tramway to the bottom, with other shorter lines that branched upon the sides. Up and down this great artery the little tumbrils ran. Steel ropes drew and lowered them. They rushed down swiftly, and slowly toiled up again laden with treasure or rubbish. Beneath the cottage, against a cliff that fell abruptly from the edge of the foreman's garden, stood two great water-wheels, jutting from the rock, and a steam-pump also panted beside them. These fought the green-eyed tarn beneath and sucked away its substance, that it might not increase and drown the lowermost workings. At the bottom of all things it lay and stared up, like a lidless eye, from the heart of the cup. Besides the great plane that bore the chief business of the quarries and by which the rock-men descended and ascended from their work, there existed another means of lifting the stone and " deads " to the surface. From the pappot-head there slanted threads of steel to the " Grey Abbey " seams, and by these also the little trolleys came and went, or the great blocks swam aloft — a mass of a hundredweight flying upward, as lightly as down of thistles on a puff of air. To the earth they rose, then the flying waggons alighted upon the tram-lines, and a locomotive carried the trucks away. Against the cliff-faces these steel ropes stretch like gossamers, and behind them, upon the rosy and gray stone, light paints as on a canvas, and makes the quarry magical with sunshine and vapor, the shadows of clouds and rainbow colors after rain. From the pappot-head the immensity of the space beneath may be observed. Like mites in a ripe cheese the men move, and among them, shrunk to the size of black spiders, stand cranes and engines, and a great steam-shovel scooping debris from a fall. From these engines come puffs of white steam, and sometimes a steam-whistle squeaks. The din of work arises thinly, like hum and stridulation of insects; but Old Delabole is never silent. By day the blast and steam-whistle echo, and the noise of men, the quarryman's chant at his work, the IN THE QUARRIES 221 chink of picks and tampers, the hiss of air-drills and chime of jack- daws cease not; while night knows an endless whispering and trickle of little soimds. Water forever tinkles through the darkness, and there is a murmur of moving earth and rustle of falling stone obeying the drag of gravitation through nocturnal silences. That iron law is written on more than senseless matter, for Delabole has its full story of human accident. You shall not walk through the streets without seeing maimed men who have lost an arm or leg in the battle, and the long years of quarry chronicle are punctuated by black-letter days of disaster and death. The rock-men are scattered everywhere — white, gray, and black. Now they combine to heave a block on a trolley, now they hang aloft on ropes or ladders, now they push the tumbrils to and from the cranes, now they control the engines and handle the great steam- shovel. Into a moraine it drives with a grinding crash, then strains upwards, and scoops a ton of rubbish at a thrust. Pick and shovel are at work everywhere. The long snakes of the air-driUs twine down the quarry sides to fresh places of attack, and a distinctive, steady screech arises where their steel teeth gnaw holes into the rock, and the dust flies in little puffs. From time to time a whistle soimds, and the midgets take cover. From a pit or ledge the last man leaps hurriedly, having lighted a fuse before departing; then a billow of smoke bursts outward, and the ignition of black blasting-powder or dynamite rends the stubborn rock-face. First comes the roar of the explosion, then the crash and clatter of the falling stone — a sound like the cry of a reced- ing wave on some pebbly beach. The cup of the quarry catches and retains the din, reverberating its concussions round and round untU they fade and die. The inunensity of the quarries might well be marked from below. Over the green pool at the bottom of the pit there passed a trestle- bridge, and around it the space, that appeared shrunk to nothing when seen from above, spread out in some acres of apparent con- fusion and chaos. A village might have stood here. The main incline sloped upward like a moimtain-side, and the whole bewilder- ing region was scored with glittering tram-lines on different planes, that ran hither and thither, rose and fell, and ended at the various centers and galleries where work progressed. The pappot-head tow- ered six hundred feet above on tie western cliffs, and round about 222 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK wheeled the amphitheatre of crags and precipices, now lifted in giant steps, now stark, now furrowed and wrinkled, and overhanging with threats of implicit peril. At this season much water was finding its way into the quarries, and the pool often rose a foot in a night. Many a rill spouted against the purple and olive sides of the slate, and from rifts and cracks in the quarry walls came threads of water. Elsewhere, over ledges and old workings, a thin rain of scattered tor- rents misted, and sometimes, when the low sun burned into the depths, it touched these vapors and set a rainbow there. Then the faces of the rock were transformed, and their wetness shone orange- tawny, gold, and crimson. One heard the eternal whisper and mur- mur of many waters, the clank of the pump, and the steady thud of the great water-wheels that sucked day and night at the tarn beneath them. The floods were drawn off by unseen ways through the side of the quarries, and the water was used aloft for the steam-engines that hoisted the slate from beneath and ran the machinery for cut- ting and dressing above. PART n The time was early autumn and the hour approaching noon. Suddenly Wilberforce Retallack, the foreman, stopped, bent his eyes on the earth, and started back as though he had been about to tread upon a snake. A layman's glance would have marked nothing but muddy soil and debris of stone scattered over it; but Retallack's eye saw more. He knelt down and started at what ap- peared to be a black hair stretched on the ground. So like a hair it looked, that he made sure it was not. Then he rose and, stooping low, quartered the cliff-top carefully for fifty yards, and left not a square foot of the surface unexamined. Two more of the hair-lines he found. They were disposed at a considerable distance from the first discovery, and lay farther inward from the quarry edge. The man had gone purple in the face, partly from continued stooping and partly from the tremendous emotions excited by his discovery. His feet shook under him and his breathing became dif- ficult. He panted and sat down suddenly upon a shelf of slate, where the ground was broken by a two-foot step. For a moment he closed his eyes; then he opened them again, drew out a pocket-handker- chief, and mopped his wet brow. He looked round him, and his expression was dazed. He drew deep breaths that lifted his big IX THE QUARRIES 223 chest; he stared blankly at the earth. The sound of blasting ascended from far below. Fiist came the thunder of the explosion, then the hiss and rattle of falling stone, lastly the echo and reverbera- tion as the noise swept round the quarry and faintly died. The e^losion aroused him, and he came to himself, stood up, and drew a whistle from his pocket. Thrice he blew it, and one of the " holla- boys " at the pappot-head marked him and ran to his bidding. " Get round to the landing-stage," he said, " and stop Mr. Tonkin and Mr. Nanjulian. They'll be coming up in a minute. And teU them I want them on the top of the ' Grey Abbey I ' " A steam-hooter announced noon as he spwke, and the boy ran off, to intercept Noah Tonkin and Retallack's colleague when they reached the surface. Five minutes later they came up in the same troUey, received their message, and proceeded to join Wilberforce where he stood on the cliff. Behind them, along a path beade the railway, strings of men were hastening away to dinner, and WQber- force said nothing until they were gone. Then he spoke. " I can't trust myself to-day," he declared. " I'm not very well, and I've got private troubles on my mind. I'm hoping my ^es are out of order, and that I'm seeing what's not there. Just look this way, you two, and teU me if there's anything the matter with me, or if it's true." He had marked the hair-Unes with stones, and now let Nanjulian and Tonkin see if they, too, observed them. They did. Then only in lesser degree than Retallack they exhibited their alarm. " My God! it's all up— it's ' good-bye,' " said Tonkin. " This means the end of the ' Grey Abbey '; and that means the end of Delabole! " To the older minds the tremendous discovery promised to put a period to their ancient industry; to Nanjulian, one of a yoimger generation, the impact of this discovery, while crushing enough, did not unman him. For the space of a week silence was kept rejecting the pend- ing catastrophe; then the hair-lines had expanded and were a third of an inch across. They extended over a surface of seventy yards, and indicated pretty accurately the nature of the imminent disaster. The overburden of the quarr>' was coming in, and the fall was un- fortunately destined to submerge the " Grey Abbey " seam. Months might elapse before the landslip: Hawkey, the manager, gave it fovtr 224 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK and, Retallack calculated that it would take six; but the end was inevitable, and no physical powers within the control of man could have held up that enormous cliff-face. The greatest fall ever recorded in the history of Delabole was coming; but when it would come remained a matter of doubt. The writing on the earth might be expected to afford data and tell the nearer approach of the down- fall from week to week. There came a morning when, after examination of the cliffs, Tom Hawkey, Retallack, and Nanjulian decided that work beneath them must cease. Preparations had long been in hand for the approach- ing fall, and it was now judged that within a week or ten days the huge mass would come down. Ample margins of safety were, of course, allowed. The last stroke was struck, the last load of the famous " Grey Abbey " slate was drawn away. It seemed unlikely that the living generation would ever look upon these galleries again. One by one the steam-engines were drawn back from their places, and the cranes and great steam-shovel taken beyond reach of danger. The tram-rails were also pulled up and all appliances of value re- moved. Hawkey and Nanjulian devoted themselves to personal superintendence of this work, and the former calculated that the fall would cover an' expanse of not much less than fifty yards, and go far to fill the green lake at the bottom of the workings. Beyond this gulf it could not reach, though it was probable that single blocks and masses of stone precipitated from the great height of the cliffs might fly or ricochet to bombard a more extended area. For this reason all machinery was drawn back to the foot of the quarries; the steel ropes that fell to the foot of the " Grey Abbey " seams from the pappot-head were also cast loose and drawn out of harm's way. For some days the face of the rocks had begun to shed fragments. Here a load of earth slipped from above; here a ton of stone, its support removed, would descend, dragging lesser boulders with it. But now an abyss opened between solid earth and the tottering precipices. They looked as though the push of a child would fling them headlong, yet they weathered some nights of storm through which the village slumbered but little, for every man and woman ex- pected to hear the thunder of the falling cliff before dawn, and many slept not, but abode in the quarry to witness the tremendous spectacle, as far as a clouded moon would show it. Yet morning after morning found the cliffs still standing, and IN THE QUARRIES 225 now daily the high ground above the quarries clear of the north face was crowded with f)eopIe who lined each edge and waited, expecting that at any moment the end might come. Work was practically sus- pended now, and in the village itself all business appeared to be at a standstill save the business of eating and drinking. Then, on the actual day of the fall a spirit seemed to get into the air and an impulse drove Delabole to the quarries. It was contrary to nature that the precipice should longer stand. Night had seen a minor slip and the folk knew, without being told, that the end had come; they poured into the quarn- and gathered along the terraces to the west and south, as though attending some great spectacle timed for a punctual hour. The workers lined the banks, and half the village accompanied them. Children were on the mounds and ledges above the quarry. They whistled and shouted and were from time to time cuffed and driven back into safety. The crowds increased and the best points of view were besieged. Pressure became exerted, and when a hundred tons of rock and earth suddenly fell from the forehead of the north face, the people, sup- posing the great spectacle about to begin, made a rush for certain points. On the open ground between the cliff edge and the office a great congestion occurred and the crowd swayed and massed. The awe and fear that had dominated so many minds in the past seemed strangely to have lifted, and here, in the shadow of the crisis, a cheerful spirit was apparent. -\n imconscious feeling that they were assembled at a show got hold upon them. The excitement of the actual demonstration for a time made them forget its significance, and not imtil afterwards did dread and despair reawaken. For the hour they were almost merry. Some sang and jested. Salutations passed, and men and women who had not met for months came together in the crowd and talked with animation of common friends and the events of their private lives. Suddenly a jagged rift, shaped like a flash of lightning, was torn across the face of the falling rocks. It appeared half-way up the precipice and began to widen as the stone slipped down. The sound of a low hissing accompanied this phenomenon; but it was not so loud as the murmur of the people. The rock slid down; then a face of harder rock that slightly overhung the " Grey Abbey " seams with- stood the rush of it and cast it to the right and left as the bow of a 15 226 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK moving ship parts the water. In a gigantic ripple of earth and stone, with increasing roar the land slipped downward, and it seemed that an invisible finger broke the avalanche and cast it to the right and left. The precipices had not fallen and as yet no more than a huge mass of their lower planes was broken away. The sound of the descending stone was not so great as a dynamite explosion. " 'Tis no more than if the bottom of the cliff had rose up and sat down again! " cried Noah Tonkin. A cloud of dust rose thinly as the falling masses spread upon the bottom; but it was not dense enough to conceal the workings. They were unhurt, and debris flowed in great rivers to the right and left, while a flood of stone and dust, thrown clear, as water over the apron of a fall, jumped the " Grey Abbey " and dropped into the green eye of the little tarn far beneath. The watchers could not believe their eyes. Inexperienced men laughed for joy. " Good fall! " " Good fall! " " All's right! " " Praise God! " Three hundred happy men lifted their voices, and some began to sing a hymn; while among the younger not a few started to descend. But Jack Keat at one point, Nanjuhan at another, called them back. " You buffle-heads — ain't you got eyes? It's not down yet! " shQute.d Keat; and Hawkey from his standpoint also shouted to the men to come back. As yet no mare than the foam of the wave had fallen. There was disorder; hope dwindled and the hymn ceased. Then fell more rock, and the great, solid, canopy of the " Grey Abbey " that had cast the first fall aside so easily and protected its precious trust, now seemed itself to move. It bellied, as though some im- prisoned monster were bursting through the solid rock; it crumpled and opened ; then those stationed below the level of the quarry saw the horizon line of the north face change. At first it seemed to rise rather than fall and the entire surface of cliff lifted. The effect was terrific, and men said afterward that it looked as though the railway and the houses and the church, far behind them, must all inevitably follow. The cliff arched, like an enormous wave, and as spindrift bursts from the crest when a billow arches, so now, along the toppling land in its tremendous descent, much lighter matter leapt and fell. Clouds of stone and earth seemtti to lift with a spring into the blue sky and sunshine, and to gleam along its crown for a second. Then IN THE QUARRIES 227 the precipice arched and its own great purple shadow darkened its base. At first it seemed that the enormous bulk of stone would cross the breadth of the quarry to assail the galleries on the other ade, and many beholders struggled back in imreasoning panic; but a moment later, as it sank and fell headfirst into the gulf below, the mass appeared to recede again and shrink into the depths that yawned to swallow it. For a few tremendous seconds the whole quarry face writhed and opened with rents and fissures all bursting downward. Light streamed up>on it and no explosions or detonations marked the fall. It uttered the long-drawn and deepening growl of a stormy sea beard afar off. The quarry was skinned to the bone and grit its teeth in agony. More cliff fell than any man had expected to fall, and the very bases of the world seemed shaken before such irre- sistible might. The earth lifted its murmur to heaven and the deso- lation was swiftly concealed by enormous volumes of dust that bil- lowed upward and ascended high above the beholders in a gray volume. The folds of it gleamed as the sun shone upon them, and the quarry was quite hidden, as an active volcano crater is concealed with smoke. The watchers could see no more, but through the murk there stiU came the murmur and groan of earth faUing and settling and readjusting itself. There was no rush into the quarries now. The men feared the strange noises and invisible movements beneath them. They under- stood the ways of falling stone and knew that the pant and hiss and whistKng from below meant a battle of rock masses beating and crushing and hurtling down upon each other, crashing together, rend- ing and grinding each other's faces, splitting and tearing and tumbling with increased speed where the splintered slopes were smoothed and groimd clear by the downrush from above. The pant and growl of all this movement died slowly, and sometimes moments of profound stillness broke it. Then again it began and lifted and lulled, now dying, now deepening. It was as though in a great theatre, made dark for a moment, one heard the hurryings and tramplings of many feet changing the scene before light should again be thrown upon the stage. Xone of the thousand people who behdd this scene had witnessed or dreamed of such an event. It affected them differently and they increased its solemnity and grandeur by their presence. Some wept and here and there a woman clung to a man for comfort and found 228 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK none. The majority of the men remained quite dumb before the spectacle. None cared to speak iirst. Then apprehension and under- standing returned; they came to themselves gradually as the solemn sounds died away beneath. They looked into each other's faces, and some laughed foolishly and some bragged that it was a poor show after all and they were going home to dinner. Hundreds prepared to rush into the quarry as soon as they could see their way and the clouds had thinned; then, by a sort of simultaneous instinct, their eyes were turned upon Tom Hawkey, where he stood alone regarding the new face of the quarry now for the first time slowly limning through the sunUt dust. Every- body began to regard him; everybody began to suspend interest in the fall and to awake interest in him. This excitement increased mag- netically; pent feeling was poured into it; his attitude suddenly became a matter of profoundest interest. How was he looking? What was he feeling? In what direction, sanguine or hopeless, might opinion be guided by the spectacle of the manager and his view of the terrific thing that had happened? Such a wave of emotion could not be directed upon the man with- out his becoming conscious of it. It struck him home and he knew, without turning his head, that the people were regarding him. He must indicate something to them, inspire them, if possible, with an impulse of self-control, a message that all was not lost. He felt pro- foundly moved himself at the immensity of the event and could not as yet judge its full- significance better than another. But apart from all that the catastrophe might mean, there was the actual, stupendous phenomenon itself. He had often pictured it and wondered what it would be like. And now it had come and transcended imagination and presented a spectacle of quickened natural forces that struck Mm as dumb as the rest. He contrasted the downfall of the north face with the dismay running through the midgets that beheld it; and for a moment the immensity of moving matter and the awful disaster to the rocks swelled largest in his mind. So doubtless the earth was smitten in still mightier scale at times of earthquake and the eruption of her inner fires. Then he looked at the people and felt that not the chaos of rent stones, but the chaos of their hearts was the weighty matter; not the new quarry presently to be revealed, but the men he led, who now, by some impulse that ran like a fire through their hearts, stared upon him and strove if possible to glean reflection of IX THE QUARRIES 229 their fate from his bearing at this supreme moment. He stood for more than he guessed, yet knew that the eyes of many waited upon him in hope to win a ^ark of confidence, or in dread to be further cast down. The cloud had risen above all their heads from the quarry, and whereas before the sunshine lighted it, now it dimmed the sunshine. Hawkey's thoughts flashed quickly. There was no time to delay, and he felt called upon for some simple action or gesture. More than indifference was demanded. His in^iration took a shape so trifling that in narration it is almost ridiculous, though in fact it was not so. He drew a tobacco pipe and pouch from his ptocket, loaded the pipe, lighted it, and cheered five hundred hearts. A wave of human feeling broke over the p>eople. They cheered Tom Hawkey. Xot a man knew why he expressed himself in this fashion; there existed no reason for doing so; but the act liberated breath and relaxed tension; so they did it and meant it. But he laughed and shook his head. " Tis for me to cheer you chaps! " he shouted. Then he joined them and the men began to pour down into the quarry. Soon only the old and women and children were left above. They gazed upon a new world as the dust-clouds slowly thinned away. The " Grey Abbey " seams had vaniEhed under a million tons of earth. Perha^ no living eye would ever look upon them again. THE INCOMPARABLE ONION By Elizabeth Robins Pennell Too often the poet sees but the tears that live in an onion; not the smiles. And yet the smiles are there, broad and genial, or subtle and tender. " Rose among roots," its very name revives memories of pleasant feasting; its fragrance is rich forecast of delights to come. Without it, there would be no gastronomic art. Banish it from the kitchen, and all pleasure of eating files with it. Its presence lends color and enchantment to the most modest dish; its absence reduces the rarest dainty to hopeless insipidity, and the diner to despair. The secret of good cooking lies in the discreet and sympathetic treatment of the onion. For what culinary masterpiece is there that may not be improved by it? It gives vivacity to soup, life to sauce; it is the " poetic soul " of the salad bowl ; the touch of romance in the well-cooked vegetable. To it, sturdiest joint and lightest stew, crisp rissole and stimulating stuffing look for inspiration and charm — and never are they disappointed! But woe betide the unwary woman who would approach it for sacrilegious ends. If life holds nothing better than the onion in the right hand, it offers nothing sadder and more degrading than the onion brutalized. Wide is the gulf fixed between the delicate sauce of a Prince de Soubise, and the coarse, unsavory sausage and onion mess of the Strand. Let the perfection of the first be your ideal; the horrid coarseness of the latter shun as you would the devil. The fragrance of this " wine-scented " esculent not only whets the appetite; it abounds in associations glad and picturesque. All Italy is in the fine, penetrating smell; and all Provence; and all Spain. An onion or garlic-scented atmosphere hovers alike over the narrow calli of Venice, the cool courts of Cordova, and the thronged amphitheatre of Aries. It is the only atmosphere breathed by the Latin peoples of the South, so that ever must it suggest blue skies and endless sunshine, c5T)ress groves and olive orchards. For the traveler it is interwoven with memories of the golden canvases of Titian, the song of Dante, the music of Mascagni. The violet may not work a sweeter spell, nor the carnation yield a more intoxicating perfume. 230 THE INCOMPARABLE OXIOX 231 And some men there have been in the past to rank the onion as a root sacred to Aphrodite: food for lovers. To the poetn,- of it none but the dull and brutal can long remain indifferent. Needless, then, to dwdl upon its more prosaic side: upon its power as a tonic, its value as a medicine. Medicinal properties it has, as the drunkard knows full well. But why consider the dnmkard? Leave him to the tender mercies of the doctor. Gourmandise, or the love of good eating, here the one and only concern, is opposed to excess. " Every man who eats to indigestion, or makes himself drunk, nms the risk of being erased from the list of its votaries." The onion is but the name for a large family, of which shallots, garlic, and chives are chief and most honored varieties. Moreover, coimtiy and dimate work uf)on it changes many and strange. In the south it becomes larger and more opulent, like the women. And yet, as it increases in size, it loses in strength — who shall say why? And the loss truly is an improvement. Our own onion often is strong even unto rankness. Therefore, as all good housewives understand, the Spanish qjecies for most purposes may be used instead, and great will be the gain thereby. Still further south, stLQ further east, you wiU journey but to find the onion fainter in flavor, until in India it seems but a pale parody of its English prototype. And again, at different seasons, very different are its most salient qualities. In great gladness of heart everyone must look forward to the dainty little ^ring onion : adorable as vegetable cooked in good white sauce, inscrutable as guardian spirit of fresh green salad, irrqjroachable as pickle in vinegar and mustard. Garlic is one of the most gradous gifts of the gods to men — a gift, alas! too frequently abused. In the vegetable world, it has some- thing of the value of scarlet among colors, of the clarionet's call in music. Brazen, and crude, and screaming, when dragged into tmdue prominence, it may yet be made to harmonize divinely with fish and fowl, with meat, and other greens. Thrown wholesale into a salad, it is odious and insupportable; but used to rub the salad bowl, and then cast aside, its virtue may not be exaggerated. For it, as for lovers, the season of seasons is the happy springtime. Its true home is Provence. What would be the land of the troubadour and the Felibre without the aS that festoons every green grocer's shop, that adorns every dish at every banquet of rich and poor alike? As well rid bouMabaisse of its saffron as of its aR; as well forget the fomme 232 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK d' amour in the sauce for macaroni, or the rosemary and the thyme on the spit with the little birds. The verse of Roumanille and Mistral smells sweet of ail; Tartarin and Numa Roumestan are heroes nour- ished upon it. It is the very essence of farandoles and ferrades, of bull fights and water tournaments. A pinch of ail, a coup de vin, and then Viva la joia, Fidon la tristessal And all the while we, in the cold, gloomy north, eat garlic and are hated for it by friends and foes. Only in the hot south can life ail — inspired pass for a galejado or jest. To the onion, the shallot is as the sketch to the finished picture; slighter, it may be; but often subtler and more suggestive. Unrivaled in salads and sauces, it is without compare in the sumptuous season- ing of the most fantastic viands. It does not assert itself with the fury and pertinacity of garlic; it does not announce its presence with the self-consciousness of the onion. It appeals by more refined de- vices, by gentler means, and is to be prized accordingly. Small and brown, it is pleasant to look upon as the humble wild rose by the side of the Gloire de Dijon. And, though it never attain to the untempered voluptuousness of the onion, it develops its sweet- ness and strength under the hottest suns of summer: in July, August, and September, does it mature; then do its charms ripen; then may it be enjoyed in full perfection, and satisfy the most riotous gluttony. Shallots for summer by preference, but chives for spring: the delicate chives, the long, slim leaves, fair to look upon, sweet to smell, sweeter still to eat in crisp green salad. The name is a little poem; the thing itself falls not far short of the divine. Other varieties there be, other offshoots of the great onion — ^mother of all; none, however, of greater repute, of wider possibilities than these. To know them well is to master the fundamental principles of the art of cookery. But this is knowledge given unto the few; the many, no doubt, will remain forever in the outer darkness, where the onion is condemned to everlasting companionship with the sausage — ^not altogether their fault, perhaps. In cookery, as in all else, too often the blind do lead the blind. But a few years since and a " delicate diner," an authority unto himself at least, produced upon the art of dining a book, not THE INCOMPARABLE ONION 233 without reputation. But to turn to its index is to find not one reference to the onion: all the p)oetry gone; little but prose left! And this from an authority! The onion, as a dish, is excellent; as seasoning it has stOl more pleasant and commodious merits. The modem chej uses it chiefly to season; the ancient cordon bleu set his wits to work to discover spices and aromatic ingredients wherewith to season it Thus, accord- ing to Philemon, If you want an onion, just consider What great expense it takes to make it good: You must have cheese and honey, and sesame. Oil, leeks, and vinegar, and assafcetida, To dress it up with ; for by itself the onion Is bitter and unpleasant to the taste. A pretty mess, indeed; and who is there brave enough to-day to test it? Honey and onion! it suggests the ingenious contrivances of the mediaeval kitchen. The most daring experiment now would be a dash of wine, red or white, a suspicion of mustard, a touch of tomato in the sauce for onions, stewed or boiled, baked or stuffed. To venture upon further flights of fancy the average cook would consider indiscreet, though to the genius aU things are pwssible. However, its talents for giving savor and character to other dishes is inexhaustible. There is no desire more natural than that of knowledge ; there is no knowledge nobler than that of the " gullet-science." " The dis- covery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the himian race than the discovery of a planet! " What would be Talleyrand's record but for that moment of inspiration when, into the mysteries of Par- mesan with soup, he initiated his countrymen? To what purpose the Crusades, had Crusaders not seen and loved the garlic on the plains of AskalcJn, and brought it home with them, their one glorious trophy. To a pudding Richelieu gave his name ; the Prince de Soubise lent his to a sauce, and thereby won for it immortality. A benefactor to his race indeed he was: worthy of a shrine in the Temple of Humanity. For, plucking the soul from the onion, he laid bare its hidden and sweetest treasure to the elect. Scarce a sauce is served that owes not fragrance and flavor to the wine-scented root; to it, Beamaise, Mojtre d'Eotel, Espagnole, Italienne, Bechamel, 234 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK Provengale, and who shall say how many more? look for the last supreme touch that redeems them from insipid commonplace. But Sauce Soubise is the very idealization of the onion, its very essence; at once delicate and strong; at once as simple and as perfect as all great works of art. The plodding painter looks upon a nocturne by Whistler, and thinkshoweasy,howpreposterously easy! A touch here, a stroke there, and the thing is done. But let him try! And so with Sauce Soubise. Turn to the first cookery book at hand, and read the recipe. " Peel four large onions and cut them into thin slices; sprinkle a little pepper and salt upon them, together with a small quantity of nutmeg; put them into a saucepan with a slice of fresh butter, and steam gently " — let them smile, the true artist would say — " till they are soft." But why go on with elaborate directions? Why describe the exact quantity of flour, the size of the potato, the proportions of milk and cream to be added? Why explain in detail the process of rub- bing through a sieve? In telling or the reading these matters seem not above the intelligence of a little child. But in the actual making, only the artist understands the secret of perfection, and his under- standing is bom within him, not borrowed from dry statistics and formal tables. He may safely be left to vary his methods; he may add sugar, he may omit nutmeg; he may fry the onions instead of boiling, for love of the tinge of brown, rich and somber, thus obtained. But, whatever he does, always with a wooden spoon will he stir his savory mixture; always, as result, produce a godlike sauce which the mutton cutlets of Paradise, vying with Heine's roast goose, will offer of their own accord at celestial banquets. What wonder that a certain famous French count despised the prosaic politician who had never heard of cutlets a la Soubise f However, not alone in sauce can the condescending onion come to the aid of dull, substantial flesh and fowl. Its virtue, when joined to sage in stuffing, who will gainsay? Even chestnuts, destined to stuff to repletion the yawning turkey, cannot afford to ignore the insinuat- ing shallot or bolder garlic; while no meat comes into the market that will not prove the better and the sweeter for at least a suspicion of onion or of ail. A barbarian truly is the cook who flings a mass of fried onions upon the tender steak, and then thinks to offer you a rare and dainty dish. Not with such wholesale brutality can the ideal be attained. The French chef has more tact. He will take his THE IXCOMPARABLE ONIOX 235 gigoi and sympathetically prick it here and there with garlic or with chives, even as it is roasting; and whoever has never tasted mutton thus prepared knows not the sublimest heights of human happiness. Or else he will make a bouquet garni of his own, entirely of these aromatic roots and leaves, and fasten it in dainty fashion to the joint; pleasure is doubled when he forgets to remove it, and the meat is placed upon the table, still bearing its delicious decoration. Moods there be that call for stronger effects: moods when the blazing poppy field of a Monet pleases more than the quiet moonhght of a Cazin; when Tennyson is put aside for Swinburne. At such times, call for a shoxilder of mutton, well stuffed with onions, and stUl further satiate yoiu- keen, vigorous appetite with a bottle of Beaune or Pomard. But here, a warning; eat and drink with at least a pretence of moderation. Remember that, but for an excess of shoulder of mutton and onions. Napoleon might not have been defeated at Leipzig. But at all times, and in all places, onions clamor for moderation. A salad of tomatoes buried imder thick layers of this powerful esculent must disgust; gently sprinkled with chopped-up chives or shallots, it enraptures. Potatoes a la Lyonnaise, curried eggs, Irish stew, Gulyas, ragout, alike demand restraint in their preparation, a sweet reason- ableness in the hand that distributes the onion. For the delicate diner, as for the drunkard, onion soup has charm. It is of the nature of sauce Soubise, and what mightier recommenda- tion could be given it? Thus Dumas, the high priest of the kitchen, made it: a dozen onions — Spanish by preference — minced with discre- tion, fried in freshest of fresh butter until turned to a fair golden yellow, he boiled in three pints or so of water, adequately seasoned with salt and pepper; and then, at the end of twenty full minutes, he mixed with this preparation the yolks of two or three eggs, and poured the exquisite liquid upon bread, cut and ready. At the thought alone the mouth waters, the eye brightens. The adventurous, now and again, add ham or rice, vegetables or a bouquet garni. But this as you will, according to the passing hour's leisure. Only of one thing make sure — in Dumas confidence is ever to be placed without doubt or hesitation. Dumas' soup for dinner; but for breakfast the imrivalled omelette of Brillat-Savarin. It is made after this fashion: the roes of two carp, a piece of fresh tunny, and shallots, well hashed and mixed, are thrown into a saucepan with a lump of butter beyond reproach, and 236 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK whipped up till the butter is melted, which, says the great one, " con- stitutes the specialty of the omelette "; in the meantime, let some one prepare, upon an oval dish, a mixture of butter and parsley, lemon juice, and chives — not shallots here, let the careless note — the plate to be left waiting over hot embers; next beat up twelve eggs, pour in the roes and tunny, stir with the zeal and sympathy of an artist, spread upon the plate that waits so patiently, serve at once; and words fail to describe the ecstasy that follows. Especially, to quote again so eminent an authority, let the omelette " be washed down with some good old wine, and you will see wonders," undreamed of by hashish or opium eater. When the little delicate spring onion is smelt in the land, a shame, indeed, it would be to waste its tender virginal freshness upon sauce and soup. Rather refrain from touching it with sharp knife or cruel chopper, but in its graceful maiden form boil it, smother it in rich pure cream, and serve it on toast, to the unspeakable delectation of the devout. Life yields few more precious moments. Until spring comes, however, you may do worse than apply the same treatment to the older onion. In this case, as pleasure's crown of pleasure, adorn the surface with grated Gruyere, and, like the ancient hero, you will wish your throat as long as a crane's neck, that so you might the longer and more leisurely taste what you swallow. Onions farcis are beloved by the epicure. A nobler dish could scarce be devised. You may make your forcemeats of what you will, beef or mutton, fowl or game; you may, an you please, add truffles, mushrooms, olives, and capers. But know one thing: tasteless it will prove, and lifeless, unless bacon lurk unseen somewhere within its depths. Ham will answer in a way, but never so well as humbler bacon. The onion that lends itself most kindly to this device is the Spanish. One word more. As the ite missa est of the discourse let this truth — a blessing in itself — ^be spoken. As with meat, so with vege- tables, few are not the better for the friendly companionship of the onion, or one of its many offshoots. Peas, beans, tomatoes, egg-plant are not indifferent to its blandishments. If honor be paid to the first pig that uprooted a truffle, what of the first man who boiled an onion? And what of the still mightier genius who first used it as seasoning for his daily fare? Every gourmet should rise and call him blessed. S\^TET DAY OF REST By Eliza Calvekt Hall I WALKED slowly dowD the " big road " that Sunday afternoon — slowly, as befitted the scene and the season; for who would hurry over the path that summer has prepared for the feet of earth's tired pilgrims? It was the middle of June, and Nature lay a vision of beauty in her vesture of flowers, leaves, and blossoming grassy. The sandy road was a pleasant walking-place; and if one tired of that, the short, thick grass on either side held a fairy path, fragrant with pennyroyal, that most virtuous of herbs. A tall hedge of Osage orange bordered each side of the road, shading the traveler from the heat of the sun, and furnishing a nesting-place for numberless small birds that twittered and chirped their joy in Ufe and love and Jime. Occasionally a gap in the foliage revealed the placid beauty of com, oats, and clover, stretching in broad expanse to the distant purple woods, with here and there a field of the cloth of gold — the fast- ripening wheat that waited the hand of the mower. Xot only is it the traveler's manifest duty to walk slowly in the midst of such sur- roundings, but he will do well if now and then he sits down and dreams. As I made the turn in the road and drew near Aimt Jane's house, I heard her voice, a high, sweet, quavering treble, like the notes of an ancient harpsichord. She was singing a hynm that suited the day and the hour: "Welconie, sweet day of rest. That saw the Lord arise, Welcome to this rejoicing breast. And these rejoicing ej-es." Mingling with the song I could hear the creak of her old splint- bottomed chair as she rocked gently to and fro. Song and creak ceased at once when she caught sight of me, and before I had opened the gate she was hospitably placing another chair on the porch and smiling a welcome. From Aunt lane of Kentucky, by Eliza Calvert HalL Copjright. 1907, by little. Brown & Co. 237 238 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK " Come in, child, and set down," she exclaimed, moving the rocker so that I might have a good view of the bit of landscape that she knew I loved to look at. " Pennyroy'll Now, child, how did you know I love to smell that? " She crushed the bunch in her withered hands, buried her face in it and sat for a moment with closed eyes. " Lord! Lord! " she exclaimed, with deep-drawn breath, " if I could jest tell how that makes me feel! I been smellin' pennyroy'l all my life, and now, when I get hold of a piece of it, sometimes it makes me feel like a little child, and then again it brings up the time when I was a gyirl, and if I was to keep on settin' here and rubbin' this pennyroy'l in my hands, I believe my whole life'd come back to me. Honeysuckles and pinks and roses ain't any sweeter to me. Me and old Uncle Harvey Dean was just alike about pennyroy'l. Many a time I've seen Uncle Harvey searchin' around in the fence comers in the early part o' May to see if the pennyroy'l was up yet, and in pennyroy'l time you never saw the old man that he didn't have a bunch of it somewheres about him. Aunt Maria Dean used to say there was dried penny- roy'l in every pocket of his coat, and he used to put a big bunch of it on his piller at night. Sundays it looked like Uncle Harvey couldn't enjoy the preachin' and the singin' unless he had a sprig of it in his hand, and I ricollect once seein' him git up durin' the first prayer and tiptoe out o' church and come back with a handful o' pennyroy'l that he'd gethered across the road, and he'd set and smell it and look as pleased as a child with a piece o' candy." " Piercing sweet " the breath of the crushed wayside herb rose on the £iir. I had a distinct vision of Uncle Harvey Dean, and won- dered if the fields of asphodel might not yield him some small harvest of his much-loved earthly plant, or if he might not be drawn earth- ward in " pennyroy'l time." " I was jest settin' here restin'," resumed Aunt Jane, " and thinkin' about Milly Amos. I reckon you heard me singin' fit to scare the crows as you come along. We used to call that Milly Amos' hymn, and I never can hear it without thinkin' o' Milly." " Why was it Milly Amos' hyma? " I asked. Aimt Jane laughed blithely. " La, child! " she said, " don't you ever get tired o' my yams? Here it is Sunday, and you tryin' to git me started talkin'; and when I git started you know there ain't no tellin' when I'll stop. Come SWEET DAY OF REST 239 on and leh look at the gyarden; that's more fittin for Sunday evenin' than tellin' yams." So together we went into the garden and marveled happily over the growth of the tasseling com, the extraordinarily long runners on the young strawberry plants, the size of the green tomatoes, and all the rest of the miracles that sunshine and rain had wrought since my last visit. The first man and the first woman were gardeners, and there is something wrong in any descendant of theirs who does not love a gar- den. He is lacking in a primal instinct. But Aunt Jane was in this respect a tme daughter of Eve, a faithful coworker with the sun- shine, the winds, the rain, and all other forces of natvire. " What do you reckon folks'd do," she inquired, " if it wasn't for plantin'-time and growin'-time and harvest-time? I've heard folks say they was tired o' livin', but as long as there's a gyarden to be planted and looked after there's somethin' to live for. And unless there's gyardens in heaven I'm pretty certain I ain't goin' to be sat- isfied there." But the charms of the garden could not divert me from the main theme, and when we were seated again on the front p>orch I returned to MUly Amos and her hymn. " You know," I said, " that there isn't any more harm in talking about a thing on Sunday than there is in thinking about it." And Aunt Jane yielded to the force of my logic. " I reckon you've heard me tell many a time about omt choir," she began, smoothing out her black silk apron with fingers that evi- dently felt the need of knitting or some other form of familiar work. " John Petty was the bass, Sam Crawford the tenor, my Jane was the alto, and Milly Amos sung soprano. I reckon Mflly might 'a' been called the leader of the choir; she was the sort o' woman that generally leads wherever she happens to be, and she had the strongest, finest voice in the whole congregation. All the parts appeared to depend on her, and it seemed like her voice jest carried the rest o' the voices along like one big river that takes up all the little rivers and carries 'em down to the ocean. I used to think about the difference between her voice and Miss Penelope's. ]Milly's was jest as clear and true as Miss Penelope's, and foiu- or five times as strong, but I'd ruther hear one note o' Miss Penelope's than a whole song o' Milly's. Milly's was jest a voice, and Miss Penelope's was a voice and some- 240 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK thin' else besides, but what that somethin' was I never could say. However, Milly was the very one for a choir; she kind o' kept 'em all together and led 'em along, and we was mighty proud of our choir in them days. We always had a voluntary after we got our new organ, and I used to look forward to Sunday on account o' that voluntary. It used to sound so pretty to hear 'em begin singin' when everything was still and solemn, and I can never forgit the hymns they sung then — Sam and Milly and John and my Jane. " But there was one Sunday when Milly didn't sing. Her and Sam come in late, and I knew the minute I set eyes on Milly that somethin' was the matter. Generally she was smilin' and bowin' to people all around, but this time she walked in and set the children down, and then set down herself without even lookin' at anybody, to say nothin' o' smilin' or speakin'. Well, when half-past ten come, my Jane began to play ' Welcome, sweet day of rest,' and all of 'em begun singin' except Milly. She set there with her mouth tight shut, and let the bass and tenor and alto have it all their own way. I thought maybe she was out o' breath from comin' in late and in a hurry, and I looked for her to jine in, but she jest set there, lookin' straight ahead of her; and when Sam passed her a hymn-book, she took hold of it and shut it up and let it drop in her lap. And there was the tenor and the bass and the alto doin' their best, and every- body laughin', or tryin' to keep from laughin'. I reckon if Uncle Jim Matthews had 'a' been there, he'd 'a' took Milly's place and helped 'em' out, but Uncle Jim'd been in his grave more'n two years. Sam looked like he'd go through the floor, he was so mortified, and he kept lookin' around at Milly as much as to say, ' Why don't you sing? Please sing, Milly,' but Milly never opened her mouth. "I'd about concluded Milly must have the sore throat or somethin' like that, but when the first hymn was give out, Milly started in and sung as loud as anybody; and when the doxology come around, Milly was on hand again, and everybody was settin' there wonderin' why on earth Milly hadn't sung in the volimtary. When church was out, I heard Sam invitin' Brother Hendricks to go home and take dinner with him — Brother Hendricks'd preached for us that day — and they all drove off together before I'd had time to speak to Milly. " But that week, when the Mite Society met, Milly was there bright and early; and when we'd all got fairly started with our SWEET DAY OF REST 241 sewin', and everybody was in a good humor, Sally Ann says, says she: ' MiUy, I want to know why you didn't sing in that voluntary Sunday. I reckon everybody here wants to know,' says she, ' but nobody but me's got the courage to ask you.' " And Milly's face got as red as a beet, and she burst out laughin', and says she: ' I declare, I'm ashamed to tell you all. I reckon Satan himself must 'a' been in me last Sunday. You know,' says she, ' there's some days when everything goes wrong with a woman, and last Sunday was one o' them days. I got up early,' says she, ' and dressed the children and fed my chickens and strained the milk and washed up the milk things and got breakfast and washed the dishes and cleaned up the house and gethered the vegetables for dinner and washed the children's hands and faces and put their Sunday clothes on 'em, and jest as I was startin' to git myself ready for church,' says she, ' I happened to think that I hadn't skimmed the mUk for the next day's chumin'. So I went down to the spring- house and did the skimmin', and jest as I picked up the cream-jar to put it up on that shelf Sam buUt for me, my foot sUpped,' sa}^ she, ' and down I come and skinned my elbow on the rock step, and broke the jar all to smash and spilled the cream all over creation, and there I was — four poimds o' butter and a fifty-cent jar gone, and my springhouse in such a mess that I ain't through cleanin' it yet, and my right arm as stiff as a poker ever since.' " We all had to laugh at the way Milly told it; and Sally Ann says, ' Well, that was enough to make a saint mad.' ' Yes,' sajrs Milly, ' and you all know I'm far from bein' a saint. However,' says she, ' I picked up the pieces and washed up the worst o' the cream, and then I went to the house to git myself ready for church, and before I could git there, I heard Sam hoUerin' for me to come and sew a button on his shirt; one of 'em had come off while he was tiyin' to button it. And when I got out my work-basket, the children had been playin' with it, and there wasn't a needle in it, and my thimble was gone, and I had to hunt up the apron I was makin' for little Sam and git a needle off that, and I run the needle into my finger, not havin' any thimble, and got a blood ^ot on the bosom o' the shirt. Then,' says she, ' before I could git my dress over my head, here come httle Sam with his clothes all dirty where he'd fell down in the mud, and there I had him to dress again, and that made me madder still; and then, when I finally got out to the wagon,' 16 242 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK says she, ' I rubbed my clean dress against the wheel, and that made me mad again; and the nearer we got to the church, the madder I was; and now,' says she, ' do you reckon after all I'd been through that mornin', and dinner ahead of me to git, and the children to look after all the evenin', do you reckon that I felt like settin' up there and singin' " Welcome, sweet day of rest "? ' Says she, ' I ain't seen any day o' rest since the day I married Sam, and I don't expect to see any till the day I die; and if Parson Page wants that hymn sung, let him git up a choir of old maids and old bachelors, for they're the only people that ever see any rest Sunday or any other day.' " We all laughed, and said we didn't blame Milly a bit for not singin' that hymn; and then Milly said: ' I reckon I might as well tell you all the whole story. By the time church was over,' says she, ' I'd kind of cooled off, but when I heard Sam askin' Brother Hen- dricks to go home and take dinner with him, that made me mad again; for I knew that meant a big dinner for me to cook, and I made up my mind then and there that I wouldn't cook a blessed thing, company or no company. Sam'd killed chickens the night before,' says she, ' and they was all dressed and ready, down in the springhouse; and the vegetables was right there on the back porch, but I never touched 'em,' says she. ' I happened to have some cold ham and cold mutton on hand — not much of either one — and I sliced 'em and put the ham in one end o' the big meat-dish and the mutton in the other, with a big bare place between, so's everybody could see that there wasn't enough of either one to go 'round; and then,' says she, ' I sliced up a loaf o' my salt-risin' bread and got out a bowl o' honey and a dish o' damson preserves, and then I went out on the porch and told Sam that dinner was ready.' " I never shall forgit how we all laughed when Milly was tellin' it. ' You know. Aunt Jane,' says she, ' how quick a man gits up when you tell him dirmer's ready. Well, Sam he jumps up, and says he, " Why, you're mighty smart to-day, Milly; I don't believe there's anothCT woman in the county that could git a Sunday dinner this quick." And says he, " Walk out. Brother Hendricks, walk right out." ' " Here Aunt Jane paused to laugh again at the long-past scene that her words called up. " Milly used to say that Sam's face changed quicker'n a flash o' lightnin' when he saw the table, and he dropped down in his cheer SWEET DAY OF REST 243 and forgot to ask Brother Hendricks to say grace. ' Why, Milly,' says he, ' where's the dinner? Where's them chickens I killed last night and the potatoes and com and butter-beans? ' And Milly jest looked him square in the face, and says she, ' The chickens are in the springhouse and the vegetables out on the back porch, and,' says she, ' do you suppose I'm goin' to cook a hot dinner for you all on this " sweet day o' rest "? ' " Aunt Jane stopped again to laugh. " That wasn't a polite way for anybody to talk at their own table," she resumed, " and some of us asked MiUy what Brother Hendricks said. .\nd ]\Iiily's face got as red as a beet again, and she says: ' Why, he behaved so nice, he made me feel right ashamed o' myself for actin' so mean. He jest reached over and helped himself to everything he could reach, and says he, " This dinner may not suit you, Brother Amos, but it's plenty good for me, and jest the kind I'm used to at home." Says he, " I'd rather eat a cold dinner any time than have a woman toilin' over a hot stove for me." ' And when he said that, Milly up and told him why it was she didn't feel like gittin' a hot dinner, and why she didn't ang in the volun- tary; and when she'd got through, he says, ' Well, Sister Amos, if I'd been through all you have this momin' and then had to git up and give out such a h}rmn as " Welcome, sweet day o' rest," I believe I'd be mad enough to pitch the hymn-book and the Bible at the deacons and the elders.' And then he turns around to Sam, and says he, ' Did you ever think, Brother Amos, that there ain't a pleasure men enjoy that women don't have to suffer for it? ' And Milly said that made her feel meaner'n ever; and when supper-time come, she lit the fire and got the best hot supper she could — fried chicken and waffles and hot soda-biscuits and coffee and goodness knows what else. Now wasn't that jest like a woman, to give in after she'd had her own way for a while and could 'a' kqjt on havin' it? Abram used to say that women and runaway horses was jest alike: the best way to manage 'em both was to give 'em the rein and let 'em go till they got tired, and they'll alwa3rs stop before they do any mischief. MiUy said that supper tickled Sam pretty near to death. Sam was always mighty proud o' Milly's cookin'. " So that's how we come to call that hymn Milly Amos' hymn, and as long as Milly lived folks'd look at her and laugh whenever the preacher give out ' Welcome, sweet day o' rest.' " 244 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK The story was over. Aunt Jane folded her hands, and we both surrendered ourselves to happy silence. All the faint, sweet sounds that break the stillness of a Sunday in the country came to our ears in gentle symphony — the lisp of the leaves, the chirp of young chickens lost in the mazes of billowy grass, and the rustle of the silver poplar that turned into a mass of molten silver whenever the breeze touched it. " When you've lived as long as I have, child," said Aunt Jane presently, " you'll feel that you've lived in two worlds. A short life don't see many changes, but in eighty years you can see old things passin' away and new ones comin' on to take their place, and when I look back at the way Sunday used to be kept and the way it's kept now, it's jest like bein' in another world. I hear folks talkin' about how wicked the world's growin' and wishin' they could go back to the old times, but it looks like to me there's jest as much kindness and goodness in folks nowadays as there was when I was young; and as for keepin' Sunday, why, I've noticed all my life that the folks that's strictest about that ain't always the best Christians, and I reckon there's been more foolishness preached and talked about keepin' the Sabbath day holy than about any other one thing. " I ricollect some fifty-odd years ago the town folks got to keepin' Simday mighty strict. They hadn't had a preacher for a long time, and the church'd been takin' things easy, and finally they got a new preacher from down in Tennessee, and the first thing he did was to draw the lines around 'em close and tight about keepin' Sun- day. Some o' the members had been in the habit o' havin' their wood chopped on Sunday. Well, as soon as the new preacher come, he said that Sunday wood-choppin' had to cease amongst his church- members or he'd have 'em up before the session. I ricollect old Judge Morgan swore he'd have his wood chopped any day that suited him. And he had a load o' wood carried down cellar, and the colored man! chopped all day long down in the cellar, and nobody ever would 'a' found it out, but pretty soon they got up a big revival that lasted three months and spread 'way out into the country, and bless your life, old Judge Morgan was one o' the first to be converted; and when he give in his experience, he told about the wood-choppin', and how he hoped to be forgiven for breakin' the Sabbath day. " Well, of course, us people out in the country wouldn't be out- SWEET DAY OF REST 245 done by the town folks, so Parson Page got up and preached on the Fourth Commandment and all about that pore man that was stoned to death for pickin' up a few sticks on the seventh day. And Sam Amos, he says after meetin' broke, says he, ' It's my opinion that that man was a industrious, enterprisin' feller that was probably pickin' up kindlin'-wood to make his wife a fire, and,' says he, ' if they wanted to stone anybody to death they better 'a' picked out some lazy, triflin' feller that didn't have energy enough to work Sunday or any other day.' Sam always would have his say, and nothin' pleased him better'n to talk back to the preachers and git the better of 'em in a argument. I ricollect us women talked that sermon over at the Mite Society, and Maria Petty says: ' I don't know but what it's a wrong thing to say, but it looks to me like that Commandment wasn't intended for anybody but them IsraeUtes. It was mighty easy for them to keep the Sabbath day holy, but,' says she, ' the Lord don't rain down manna in my yard. And,' says she, ' men can stop plowin' and plantin' on Sxmday, but they don't stop eatin', and as long as men have to eat on Simday, women'll have to work.' "And Sally Ann, she spoke up, and says she, 'That's so; and these very preachers that talk so much about keepin' the Sabbath day holy, they'll walk down out o' their pulpits and set down at some woman's table and eat fried chicken and hot biscuits and com bread and five or six kinds of vegetables, and never think about the work it took to git the diimer, to say nothin' o' the dish-washin' to come after.' "There's one thing, child, that I never told to anybody but Abram; I reckon it was wicked, and I ought to be ashamed to own it, but " — here her voice fell to a confessional key — " I never did like Simday till I begun to git old. And the way Sunday used to be kept, it looks to me like nobody could 'a' been expected to like it but old folks and lazy folks. You see, I never was one o' these folks that's bom tired. I loved to work. I never had need of any more rest than I got every night when I slept, and I woke up every momin' ready for the day's work. I hear folks prayin' for rest and wishin' for rest, but, honey, all my prayer was, ' Lord, give me work, and strength enough to do it.' And when a person looks at all the things there is to be done in this world, they won't feel like restin' when they ain't tired. " Abram used to say he believed I tried to make work for myself 246 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK Sunday and every other day ; and I ricollect I used to be right glad when any o' the neighbors'd git sick on Sunday and send for me to help nurse 'em. Nursing the sick was a work o' necessity, and mercy, too. And then, child, the Lord don't ever rest. The Bible says He rested on the seventh day when He got through makin' the world, and I reckon that vyas rest enough for Him. For, jest look; everything goes on Sundays jest the same as week-days. The grass grows, and the sun shines, and the wind blows, and He does it all." " ' For still the Lord is Lord of might ; In deeds, in deeds Hei takes delight,' " I said. "That's it," said Aunt Jane, delightedly. "There ain't any religion in restin' unless you're tired, and work's jest as holy in His sight as rest." Our faces were turned toward the western sky, where the sun was sinking behind the amethystine hills. The swallows were darting and twittering over our heads, a somber flock of blackbirds rose from a huge oak tree in the meadow across the road, and darkened the sky for a moment in their flight to the cedars that were their nightly resting place. Gradually the mist changed from amethyst to rose, and the poorest object shared in the transfiguration of the sunset hour. Is it unmeaning chance that set man's days, his dusty, common days, between the glories of the rising and the setting sun, and his life, his dusty, common life, between the two solemnities of birth and death? Bounded by the splendors of the morning and evening skies, what glory of thought and deed should each day hold! What celestial dreams and vitalizing sleep should fill our nights! For why should day be more magnificent than life? As we watched in understanding silence, the enchantment slowly faded. The day of rest was over, a night of rest was at hand; and in the shadowy hour between the two hovered the benediction of that peace which " passeth all understeuiding." IVY OF THE NEGATIVES By IMakgaeet Lynn Maldy was away for the afternoon. That was a very rare thing, for Maldy climg to the place as if it were a citadel left to her guard- ing. She held aU visiting in contempt — ^partly because of her own long experience with visitors^ — and as for her scanty shopping, she summarily relegated that to my mother, her only requirements in garments being that they should wear well and should look just like her last ones. But at one point my mother demurred. She would not buy Maldy's shoes — so she said after a few experiments — and have her hobbling aroimd in toe-pinching or heel-rubbing foot- leather. So twice a year, after Maldy's needs had for many days been p>ointed out to her, she, with many pyostponements and great final reluctance, went to town with my mother. This was one of those occasions. She had looked back many times before she was out of sight, and we, out of sheer kindliness to her, had maintained a virtuous state of conspicuous idleness on the front porch as long as she could see us. It would be a comforting vision for her to carry with her to the unacceptable experiences of the afternoon. With Maldy out of sight and a change of atmosphere, we im- mediately relaxed. Meditation fell upon us. We were not really casting about for anything lawless to do ; but still so rare an occasion as this deserved some unwonted employment. It would be imap- preciative and tame not to use it appropriately. Uneasiness sat even on Henry, while we all tacitly and inactively awaited a worthy inspiration. Our meditation was interrupted by the appearance of Ivy Hixon, the daughter of one of the renters, coming on one of her borrowing errands. She now carried a black-cracked teacup in her hand. " Mom wanted to know would your ma borrow her some saler- atus," she delivered herself. Questioning revealed that she wanted some baking soda. I arose with as good an imitation of my mother's air as I could manage, and led the way into the house. Mary followed us, and finally John. 247 248 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK Henry, who found no delight in the freckled Ivy, and hftd in fact compared her appearance to that of a grass-burr, sent an indifferent glance after us and then took himself off to the stables. For Henry the company of horses never staled. In the big storeroom of the kitchen — a mere pantry could not hold stores for a household of our numbers — we found the soda, and with as many manners as I could take on I gave Ivy a liberal helping. Ivy lingered to look around. " You've got lots of things to eat," she said. That had never seemed to me a cause for pride, but I tried to look affluent. However, I thought it better to edge Ivy back into the kitchen. My mother never talked to the renter women about the things we had. But even in the kitchen Ivy found much to comment on and linger over. I was uneasy at first; my mother was full of kindly attentions to the renter families, but the children never came to the house much. However, that prohibition appeared to belong to Maldy's administration, and to allow Ivy to remain for a while seemed to be a privilege of the day. Soon we were all talking freely and enjoying Ivy's admiration of the number and size of our kitchen utensils. She applauded the kitchen stove especially. Maldy's stove was no doubt a thing to admire, although at that time, not having the housekeeping point of view, we did not realize its praiseworthiness. A fire had been left, in Maldy's hasty after-dinner departure. Even its heat, as we assisted Ivy to admire it, seemed of a peculiarly efficient sort. Assuming technical knowledge, we displayed dampers and drafts and oven depths. Ivy looked appreciatively into the still warm oven. " Mom made a cake onsit," she said, " when Uncle Jake's folks come." It was not for us to speak of cakes. " Can you cook? " she asked me. " Some," I answered conservatively. I had once mixed up corn- bread under Maldy's impatient direction. " I can fry side-meat and potatoes and make saleratus biscuits." We had learned that renters lived chiefly on hot biscuit; when I add that they called bread " light-bread " always, I have sufficiently indicated their social standing in our eyes. " We could make a cake right now," said Ivy. She spoke as one IVY OF THE NEGATIVES 249 suggesting an enterprise, but a merely natural one to undertake. I was silent, as of course Mary was also. Said John in a moment, " Let's make a cake." John had no culinary self-respect to preserve. Anyway, he was thinking less of the adventure than of the desirable result. " You put eggs in it, and milk and lots of sugar and floiu* and butter if you got it and lard if you ain't," said Ivy glibly. " I bet you folks got all them things." " Oh, yes," I answered hastUy. " We've got everj-thing." That seemed to be acquiescence, and we stood somehow com- mitted to the undertaking. Anj'how, adventure, the more lawless the better, had been calling to us. However, Ivy Hison was not going to dictate to us in our own kitchen. Having made the suggestion, her of&ciousness expanded and threatened to take control of us all. I prepared to assert myself. " You beat the eggs first," said Ivy; " Mom took three." While I considered, ]Mary, the methodical, climbed to a shelf and brought down a cook-book. The possession of a cook-book was merely a concession to convention on Maldy's part, for she was never seen to use it and had been heard to speak contemptuously of it. Mary's lit- tle forefinger traveled down the index colmnn to cakes. " There's a good many," she said. " What kind do we want? Here's Brown Stone Front and Nancy Hanks and Five Egg and Good White Cake and Jelly Cake and Chocolate Layer and Marble and Fairy LDy '' " Let's have that," I said. Mary turned to it. " TVTiites of seven eggs, cup and a half of sugar," she began. " What do you do with the yolks? " I interrupted. I had sup- posed that an egg was a unit in cooking. Mary laboriously followed through the list of items and figures. " It don't say," she said. " Mom put 'em in," said Ivy. " Mom's cake was yallow. It wasn't no lily cake," she finished contemptuously. With the advent of the cook-book authority seemed likely to slip from her. " Mom put three whole eggs in her'n." " Let's make a big cake," said John. " Read the five-egg one," I dictated. " Five eggs beaten separately " began Mary. 250 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK " That's awful funny," said Ivy. We all looked dubious, in fact. Mary finished out the proportions of the cake, conventional enough I suppose. The final statement that the recipe would make a very large cake was decisive for every one. " All right," I said briskly. I really was not, for my part, eager for the result, but the situation began to please me. " John, you fix up the fire, and don't take Maldy's cobs. Mary, we've got to wash our hands first." That was sheer virtue; a look at Ivy's had sug- gested it. Ivy joined us in common ablution, and, I think, saw the complexion of her hands for the first time in many a day. " We must clean our finger-nails," added Mary gently, to my surprise. Ivy plainly thought that unnecessary, but followed suit, matching the novel enterprise from her own experience, however, with, " Mom digs out the baby's nails sometimes." But, that concession to elegance over, Ivy quickly resumed her place again. I turned from the towel to find her setting out a flat crock for a mixing bowl, a row of five teacups, and a fork. " What are those for? " I asked. " To beat the eggs in. The book says so. I had never seen a process like that, and was doubtful; but still many an operation went on in the kitchen on which I did not trouble to cast my eye. I was not in a position to contradict, but I tried at least to awe Ivy by reaching down an egg-beater instead of the fork. Ivy looked at it a moment, tested its movement and, unimpressed, accepted it as a matter of course. She hung over the cook-book, business in her mien, energy radiating from her elbows. Nature had dealt but meagerly with Ivy. Her hair was sandy — sandy to the touch, I fancied — her face was sandy, her hands looked sandy. Her dress, to my embarrassment, was an old one of my own; I tried to act unconscious of the fact. It hung loosely from her round shoulders and — although she was nearly as old as I — ^was far too long for her; but as she was barefooted, that was a good thing. Her scratched feet looked sandy, too. Her hair was tied with a white string, which was braided in for two or three inches from the end. I had suggested that means of security to Ellen when she braided my hair, but she did not accept the suggestion, although it would doubtless have saved me many a reproof. Whether because of this device or not, Ivy's scrawny little braid turned sharply outward from IVY OF THE NEGATI\^ES 251 her meager shoulders and, with her quick, jerky movements, bobbed about like a question mark incessantly questioning. Before we got through with our enterprise that CTorled-up arc of hair seemed to me to be making the cake, it was so active, so ubiquitous. Ivy tiUTied briskly from the cook-book and disappeared into the store-room. She was back almost instantly. " Say, there ain't but six eggs, and if we'd take them they'd know for sure. You go out and get some more. I bet the"s a plenty." Dignity compelled me to pass the order on to John. Assuming initiative, I proceeded to get out the other ingredients, but always with Ivy at my elbow, making additional suggestions. " When you're getting get a plenty. That's what Aunt Em sa}^. But Mom says when you ain't got any money — Say, ain't you folks got lots of sugar! Sa}', you could have cake every day." Her eyes saw every article in the store-room, and her tongue commented without trammel. Between times she issued orders with freedom and decision. I was always just going to, but Ivy steadily forestalled me. It seemed as if, whenever I turned to do a thing. Ivy's arc of braid was always bobbing just ahead of me. Information which I imparted to her became her own as completely as if it had never been mine. Within a few minutes she knew aU the household equipment as well as Marj' and I put together. It need not be supposed that I acquiesced readily in this system of precedence, but when there is no crevice in the front of authority where one can interpose opposition, and when one is hampered by ho^itality be- sides, where is one going to begin to assert her independence? The mixing qx)on was hardly ever out of I\ys hands. She stirred and beat and sifted and stirred, in a housewifely ecstasy of creation. The words " a plentj' " rolled lusciously on her tongue when she caught sight of our household stores. Only steady self- control kept her from altering the proportion of ingredients when abundance of butter or sugar came into view. It seemed a pity not to use more when there was " a plenty." Her imagination reached forward, and she hinted at something else to be done when the cake was off oiu- hands. But this time even John did not rise to the suggestion. I should not have supposed that one person could find sufficient orders for three. I found myself obe3dng in a sort of bewilderment. Mary was kept busy washing dishes, because, as Ivy said, the elders 252 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK would not want to find the kitchen " all gaumed up when they come back." It did seem wise to remove our traces. The eggs were beaten separately — that is, individually — and the process took some time. John thought it unnecessary, but Ivy overruled him with the words of the book. For one of comparatively limited acquaintance with literature, Ivy had remarkable reverence for the printed word. She seemed to take pride in having cooking thus connected with her stinted accomplishment of reading. At last everything was in, stirred and beaten, and beaten and stirred. Everybody, even John, had been allowed to take a hand at this; but it was Ivy's freckled little arms which gave the last loving strokes. At this moment Henry strolled in. We had got so used to Ivy that we had forgotten to miss Henry. But John, going out to find another egg to replace one which some- body dropped on the floor — we regretted it, but Ivy said there was plenty more — ^had mentioned to Henry that an enterprise was afoot within. After a little time for consideration, Henry decided to enter. He came loafing in, his hands in his pockets and a general air of mature leisure about him. I had just got out a cake-pan and Ivy had taken it from me and was buttering it with flying whisks of her fingers. She was putting a good deal of butter on it. Henry eyed the process a moment with remotely critical air. I think it was the first time he had noticed the operation at all, but it was for him to suggest improvement, now that he was here. " You're putting too much butter on that," he said briefly, with- out introduction. Ivy paused and looked at him, every freckle darting out sur- prise. She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand and eyed him above her buttery fingers. " You never made no cake," she answered. " Cake shouldn't taste of butter," said Henry, speaking calmly but succinctly, as an expert authority. " It'll make it fall," he added. Ivy, determined not to be impressed, continued to eye him as she ran her fingers round and round the pan. Henry took one hand from its pocket, lifted the mixing-spoon and let the batter drip from it while he scrutinized the compound intelligently. " It's too thin," he delivered judgment. "It's just like the book says, I guess," returned Ivy forcibly. IVY OF THE NEGATIVES 253 Ivy was really misnamed. We were all responsible for the cake, but Ivy seemed to be its natural defender. His attention called to the cook-book, Henry turned to peruse it. He wore the air of a passing authority who had no personal interest in pointing out error. He did not keep us waiting long, however, before he spoke again. " Lots of cake have raisins in them. Let's put raisins in this." Let us! Even we who knew Henry well had never seen him adopt an exploit with greater promptness. But then we were used to Henry; many a time had he gathered us to his banner as sheep to a cause. Ivy alone found him a novelty. " The book never said nothin' about puttin' in no raisins," she said. " This ain't that kind of cake." With the air of one who was bloodied but ^ritually unbowed, she stirred the cake again and bade me look at the fire. A few minutes before she would have given the order to John. Whether she acknowledged it or not, masculinity seemed to be in a stage of readjustment. Mary, returning from obeying Henry's order, reported that there were no raisins in store. It was embarrassing to us to admit that there was anything we did not have. Henry considered. Was there a substitute? He detained the putting of the cake into the oven, with a glance and a wave of the hand, while he meditated. " Raisins are nothing but grapes," mused John, " but grapes aren't ripe yet." Henry turned his eye on the window. The rest of us indicated the stages of our mental processes by discussion. Henry merely annotmced his results. " Well get some cherries," he said. Ivy, who had been impatiently heeling and toeing beside the kitchen table, burst forth. " I never heard of no cherries in no cake. I bet they'd spoil it." " They'll make it thicker," said Henry, conceding a reply to her evident depth of feeling. Ivy continued to stand by the table, smoothing and patting the surface of her cherished cake, while Henry marshaled the rest of us out to the Early Richmond cherry-trees. As a precaution he added her to the party, although she declared that the cake would fall while we were gone. 254 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK It took only a few minutes, though, for the five of us to gather and seed a quart or more of cherries. Henry dumped the lot, reek- ing juice, into the batter and stirred them in. " It's thinner'n ever," wailed Ivy, " and it looks like all git out." Henry scrutinized it carefully. " It isn't any thinner, but it's too thin yet. We'll get some more cherries." This time we got two quarts. Henry stirred them in. Another wail broke from Ivy. " It's thinner'n ever," she almost sobbed. " You've done and spoiled it." " You didn't put fiour enough into this," said Henry. " That's what's the matter." " We put all the book said," I answered. Between grief and wrath Ivy was almost beyond speech. " Well, it takes more of some kinds than others. I guess this is a thin kind." We put in three more cups of flour, while Ivy stood in the back- ground, a mute angry spirit of protest. When the flour was all in we each inserted — not the first time— a finger at the edge of the batter and tasted our compound. It tasted queer and floury. Ivy frankly made a face. " You didn't put enough sugar in this," said Henry. " Cakes take a lot of sugar." " We put in all the book said," we answered once more. " It ain't sweet enough," said Henry, tasting again. " We'll put in more sugar." We put in two more cups of sugar. The batter was now almost running over the crock, and needed very careful stirring. The cake-pan which had been ready before, was now out of the question. Henry found a small dishpan, and bade me grease it. Mary washed the other and put it away. John made up the fire once more, and tlie cake went into the oven. We thought it polite to offer Ivy the crock to scrape, but she briefly declined it. Half an hour before each of us had an eye on that crock, but now no one cared for it. Mary washed it and put it away. She also washed up the table and every- thing else, and as far as we could see there was nothing to tell the tale on us except the cake in the oven. At the end of ten minutes, as the cake did not seem to be near baked, we settled down in various ways. No further enterprise seemed desirable. We really wished that Ivy would go home, but, as she IVY OF THE XEGATIVES 255 did not seem inclined to do so, I read h^r Alt Baba. She interrupted occasionally to say, " I bet that ain't ever happened." Her attitude surprised me; I did not mind its apparent discourtesy, but I did not see why any one should demand fact in a narrative. Any occupation we had on hand was interrupted frequently while we looked into the oven. Mary took a doll and went about some serious maternal business. The rest of us collectively looked into the oven every three minutes. If that cake had ever intended to do itself credit, it lost its chance through the embarrassment of our steady watching. As it was, the baking process was curious. We watched eagerly for the moment of rising, but it never came. It did once break its temporary shell to spwut up on the middle with a small geyser-like formation, distinguished from the hopeless depression of the rest of the surface. The substance of the whole was of such a consistency that it would have taken a chemical analysis to tell whether it was baked or not. Like other Benjamin Wests, we nearly decimated the newest broom for straws — each of us used sev- eral each time we opened the oven door — but every time we withdrew them, gummy and impalatable. Time was wearing rapidly away. They might be home at any moment. Ivy declined any further tales and crouched steadfastly by the oven door. At last the cake began to recede from the sides of the pan, and Henry, returning from a brief visit to his pony, announced that it was all drjdng up and must be taken out immediately. Anticipm- tion swelled among us. We forgot to watch the drive. Eagerness secured a burnt hand for each of us. But at last the cake was transferred from the oven to the kitchen table. One last problem arose. How did one take a cake from the pan? The natural thing seemed to be to take it by the little knob in the center and lift it out. That proved unsuccessful. Henry and Ivy each had a theory; it is needless to say that Henry's was to be tried first, even over Ivy's final protest. " Now you all stand back," Henry was saying, as he selected a knife, " and I'll " Voices and wheels were heard outside. We looked at each other in consternation — consternation quite out of proportion to the offence. Panic fell upon us. Henry snatched up the cake, pan and allj and with his usual quickness of resource made for the regions of 256 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK the kitchen garden, which lay near. It was on the other side of the house from the drive, and was screened from it by some lilac bushes. At the very nearest place to the house a bit of soft, fine- delved ground lay waiting a later sowing of something, turnips probably. Henry seized a hoe which was conveniently at hand, made a hole in the soft earth, and in an instant that cake, with all its promise unfulfilled and its suspense still unanswered, was in its tomb. The dishpan was thrown to a convenient place under the lilac bushes and, the whole affair cleared up, we turned back to welcome the homecomers with as interested an air as if we had spent the afternoon merely waiting for their return. Ivy had stood looking on at the interment as if she were the embodiment of all possible mourners. Tragedy sat on her brow, and grief trembled on her lips. The moment anticipated all the afternoon was snatched from her as the child of her hands went under the soil. Even her braid had uncurled itself and hung straight and pendulous as any braid. As we turned away, I had a glimpse of pursed-up lips and hard-winking eyes, and I suspected a tear fell on the imworthy grave of that cherry-cake, the first and last of its kind. For us it was all over. We should have liked to see how that cake tasted; but Maldy always got an unusually good supper when she came back from town, as if to show her scorn of all she had seen in her absence. Anyway, we had had doubts about the cake from the first. I had never believed that we could make a cake, even when we were doing it. As we went into the house again, everybody eagerly assisting in carrying in the packages — ^with surreptitious squeezes and fingerings to help surmises as to contents — ^I saw Ivy darting homeward through the orchard. Her braid hopped up and down on her shoulders, and her slim skirt wrapped and flapped about her thin legs. The impetu- osity of her movement suggested more than mere hurry, I thought, remembering certain impassioned moments of my own. The evening went off very well, considering everything. After my mother had been away for a whole afternoon, we always had a very good time in the evening, and were allowed to sit up a little later than usual. And yet I went to bed with a sense of something im- pending. Certain matters had already called for remark. Henry IVY OF THE NEGATIVES 257 explained that we had the fire on in order to have it ready when they came home. Such thoughtfidness should have brought out ^probation, but Maldy made no comment As for the cup of soda — well, 1%-y Hixon had come for it, but why she went away without it no cme knew. Maldy was no questioner, I wiU say that for her. But die went about the kitchen that evening with a roving eye, which promised no good for us. Our sin, which had seemed mild in the b^inning, hardly equal to the occasion in fact, began to assume the appalling proportions of a crime. I went to bed meditating confession. Mary lay still for a while in her usual little fashion, and then went off to sleep. Our room was at the back of the house, and I could hear Maldy moving about below, setting all ready for the morning. Who knew what she might be discovering? Had we put away the flour-sifter and closed the sugar-bin and restored the bak- ing-f)owder to its place? I followed her movements in my imagina- tion, picturing what die was looking at. Her stq)s seemed to grow more heavy and portentous. What was she seeing now? Even when everything grew quiet underneath, I stOI listened for signs to reassure or terrorize. I sat up in bed embracing my knees, while my strained attention was fixed below. But everjrthing was so silent down there that my alertness finally relaxed and my eyes wandered to the moon-lighted spaces below my window. Even the comer of the kitchen garden, which I could see, had a sort of agree- ableness, with the moonlight and the moon-made shadows upon it. I mused a while, watching the glorified lawn, and finally, with elbows on knees and chin on hands, began to make up a story about what I was going to do when I was twenty. Suddenly I sprang from the bed and ran to the window. Out in that garden comer some one was moving. I couldn't see very plainly at first, but undoubtedly there was a moving figure there. How had Maldy ever discovered? But as I looked I saw that it was I\y's. She was greying around for the hoe we had \ised in the afternoon. I was indignant. Of course, somebody would see her — and then! She did not find the hoe, and stood for a moment unde- cided. Then she dropped to her knees and began to dig away at the soft earth with her hands. I condemned her entirely. She had got us into this, and now she was going to get us caught. And digging up cake out of the groimd, too! I felt contempt. 17 258 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK A step sounded heavily on the porch below. Maldy always walked with a curious unbending tread. She stalked straight out by the path and around by the Ulac bushes. Now Ivy Hixon had done it! She, too, heard by this time, and sat back on her heels to listen. Thus she was when Maldy rounded the lilacs and came upon her. Then she jumped up with a cry. I was almost sorry for her then, for I knew Maldy's summary handling of the renter children. Still, Ivy had brought this on herself. Maldy questioned abruptly and grufSy, standing with her hands on her hips and her elbows squared. Ivy answered, her speech all running together, until it ended in a high little wail, with a tragic gesture toward the ground at her feet. Maldy questioned further, her attitude tentative. Ivy answered again, her voice each time running up to its pathetic httle cry at the end, and her hands making their tragic movement. This was not the effective Ivy of the afternoon. I could imagine her ending with, " And I never got none of it! " To my relief, however, Maldy seemed to be relaxing. She spoke briefly but with reserve. Presently she turned toward the house, Ivy following her, evi- dently at her bidding. Ivy waited on this side of the lilac bushes, not far from my window, while Maldy went into the kitchen to get the cracked cup and the soda, I supposed. I really was relieved, though not on Ivy's account alone. Maldy returned, her bearing still amicable. But what was this she was bringing? The cup of soda, to be sure, and with it the remnant of the fresh sponge cake she had beaten up for supper — and a piece of jruit cake. I nearly fell out of the window as it came to view. Fruit cake was Maldy's choicest and best-concealed treasure. I suspected that even my mother asked her permission to use it. It was the topmost crown of our rarest social occasions. Maldy seemed always to have some, but we never caught her making it. When I have said that we never even asked her for it, I have said all. She was giving it to Ivy. She said, " Don't you eat this to-night, but you put it away and have it some time." Then she relapsed into her renter-children tone, " Now you better go right along home. Don't be hanging around here." Ivy went, cutting across the lawn and down through the shadowy orchard spaces. Her disposing of the sponge cake as she went did not seem to interefere with her speed. IVY OF THE NEGATIVES 259 The next moming Henry himself slipped the dishpan down to the yards and washed it in the watering-trough. Unfortunately Maldy was in the kitchen when he cautiously brought it in, and her eye required explanation of him. " Why, I took this out yesterday to pick cherries in," he began. " Huuf," said Maldy, and turned her back on him. She gave the dishpan a proper washing with soap and hot water and hung it up in its place widiout another word. HYMN TO THE DAIRY MAIDS ON BEACON STREET By Chkistophee Moeley Sweetly solemn see them stand, Spinning churns on either hand, Neatly capped and aproned white, Airy fairy dairy sight, Jersey priestesses they seem Miracling milk to cream. Cream solidifies to cheese By Pasteural mysteries. And they give, within their shrine, Their communion in kine, Incantations pure they mutter O'er the golden minted butter And (no layman hand can pen it) See them gloat above their rennet. By the hillside window-pane Rugged teamsters draw the rein, Doff the battered hat and bow To these acolytes of cow. Genuflect, ye passerby! Muse upon their ritual high — Milk to cream, yea, cream to cheese White lacteal mysteries! Let adorers sing the word Of the smoothly flowing curd. Yea, we sing with bells and fife This is the whey, this is the life. From Songs for a Little House, by Christopher Morley. Copyright, 1917, George H. Doran Co., Publishers. 260 'i£>- PORTEFAIX. BY CONSTANTIX MEUXIER ELLEN HAXGIXG CLOTHES By Lizette Woodwokth Reese The maid is out in the soft April light, Our store of linen hanging up to dry; On clump of box, on the small grass there lie Bits of thin lace, and broidery blossom-white. And something makes tall EUen — air or look — Or else but that most ancient, simple thing, Hanging the clothes upon a day in spring, Like to a Greek girl cut out an old book. The wet white flaps; a time just come to mind, The sound brims the stiU rooms. Our flags are out, Blue by the box, blue by the kitchen stair; Betwixt the twain she trips across the wind. Her warm hair blown all cloudy-wise about, Slim as the flags, and every whit as fair. Reprinted from Contemporary Verse, by permission of the author. 261 THE NAVAJO BLANKET By Charles Fletcher Lummis One of the striking curiosities of one of our Strange Corners is the Navajo Blanket. There is no other blanket hke it. It is re- markable that half-naked savages in a remote wilderness which is almost a desert, unwashed nomads who never live in a house, weave a handsomer, more durable and more valuable blanket than is turned out by the costly and intricate looms of Europe and America; but it is true. The covers which shelter us nights are very poor affairs, artisti- cally and commercially, compared to those superb fabrics woven by Navajo women in the rudest caricature of a loom. Blanket-weaving is the one domestic industry of this great tribe of twenty thousand souls, whose temporary brush shelters dot the northwestern moim- tains of New Mexico and the eastern ranges of Arizona; but they do it well. The work of the men is stock-raising — they have a mil- lion and a half of sheep, a hundred thousand cattle, and several hundred thousand beautiful ponies — and they also plant a very little corn. The women have no housework to do, because they have no houses — a very different social condition from that of their neigh- bors, the cleanly, industrious, farm-tending, home-loving Pueblos. They make hardly any pottery, buying what they need from the expert Pueblos, in exchange for their own matchless blankets, which the Pueblos no longer weave. The Navajo country is a very lonely and not altogether safe one, for these Indians are jealous of intruders; but it is full of interest, and there is much to be seen in safe proximity to the railroad- particularly near Manuelito, the last station in New Mexico. It fairly takes one's breath away to ride up one of these barren mesas, among the twisted pinons, and find a ragged Indian woman squatted before a loom made of three sticks, a rope, and a stone, weaving a blanket of great beauty in design and color, and with the durability of iron. But that is what one may see a thousand times in this strange territory by taking the necessary trouble, though it is a Taken from Lummis' Some Strange Corners of Our Country, by permission of The Century Co. 262 THE NAVAJO BLANKET 263 aght that few white people do see. The Navajo is a seeker of se- cluaon, and instinctively pitches his camp in an out-of-the-way loca- tion. You may pass within fifty yards of his hogan and never suspect the proximity of himian life, unl^s your attention is called by one of his wolfish dogs, which are very fond of strangers — and strangers raw. If you can induce the dog to save you for supper, and will follow his snarUng retreat, this is what you may see: Under the shelter of a jimiper, a semicircular wind-break built breast-high of brush, and about fifteen feet from point to point; a tiny heap of smoldering coals; a few greasy sheepskins and blankets Isdng against the brush; perhaps the jerked meat of a sheep hanging to a branch, and near it pendent a few silver ornaments; a bottle- necked basket, pitched without and full of cold water; an old Spencer carbine or a Winchester leaning against the " waU "; a few bare- legged yoimgsters of immeasurable mirth, but diffident toward strangers; mayhap the lord of the castle and a male companion or two playing cunquian with solemn faces and Mexican cards; the dogs, the lariated ponies — and the lady of the house at her re- markable loom. For simplicity of design, the Navajo " loom " — if it can be dig- nified by such a title — ^is imique. Occasionally the frame is made by setting two pwjsts firmly in the groimd about six feet apart, and lashing cross-pieces at top and bottom. So complicated an affair as this, however, is not usual. Ordinarily a straight pole is lashed between two trees, at a height of five or six feet from the ground. A strong rawhide rop>e, wound loosely roimd and round this, serves to suspend the " supplementary yam-beam," a straight bar of wood five or ax feet long. To this in turn is attached a smaller bar, aroimd which the ufqier ends of the stout strings which constitute the warp are tied. The lower ends of these strings are tied to a simi- lar bar, which is anchored by stones at a distance of about two inches from the ground, thus keeping the string taut. And there is your loom. On the ground a foot away squats the weaver, bare-shinned and bare-armed, with her legs crossed tailor-fashion. The warp hangs vertically before her, and she never rises while weaving. A stick holds the alternate cords of the warp apart in opposite directions, and thus enables her to run the successive threads of the woof across without difficulty. As soon as a thread has been thus loosely intro- duced to its proper position, she proceeds to ram it down with the 264 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK tightness of the charge in a Fourth-of-July cannon by means of a long, thin, hard-wood " batten-stick," frequently shaped something like an exaggerated bread-knife. It is little wonder that that woof will hold water, or stand the trampling of a lifetime. Every thread of it is rammed home with a series of vicious jabs sufficient to make it " set down and stay sot." For each unit of the frequently intricate pattern she has a separate skein; and the unhesitating skill with which she brings them in at their proper intervals is astonishing. Now, by the time her woof has risen to a point twenty-five to thirty inches above the ground, it is evident that some new arrange- ment is essential to her convenience. Does she get up and stand to the job? Not at all. She simply loosens the spirally wound rope on the pole above so that its loops hang a foot or two lower, thus letting down the supplementary yam-beam and the yam-beam by the same amount. She then makes a fold in the loosened web, and tightly sews the upper ege of this fold to the cloth-beam below, thus mak- ing the web taut again. This is the Navajo patent for overcoming the lack of our " revolving cloth-bearers." This operation is repeated several times before a full-sized blanket is completed. The smallest size of saddle blanket can be woven without changing the loom at all. All Navajo blankets are single ply, the pattern being the same on both sides. I have seen but two which had on one side a different pattern from that on the other. The range of quality in Navajo blankets is great. The common blanket, for bedding and rough wear, is a rude thing indeed beside its feast-day brother. These cheap ones, almost always of full size — about six by five feet — are made of the native wool. The Navajos raise their own sheep, shear them, card, twist, and dye the wool. The prevailing color of the blanket is natural — a whitish gray — and through this ground run cross-stripes, generallyof blue, but sometimes of red, black, or yellow. These stripes are mostly in native dyes, the blue being now obtained from American indigo. They also dye in any color with dyes made by themselves from herbs and minerals. These wool blankets require a week or so for weaving, and sell at from two dollars and a half to eight dollars apiece. They are fre- quently half an inch thick, and are the warmest of blankets, their fuzzy softness making them much warmer than the higher-priced, tighter-woven, and consequently stiffer ones. In the second grade of blankets there is an almost endless variety. These are now made of Germantown yarn, which the Navajos buy in THE NAVAJO BLANKET 265 big skeins at the various stores and trading-posts along the line of the Atlantic and Pacific Railway, which passes some twenty-five miles south of the whole line of their reservation. And remarkably fine blankets they make of it. Their ability as inventors of neat designs is truly remarkable. The cheap blankets are very much of a piece; but when you come up into patterns, it would be difficult to find in the whole territory two blankets exactly alike. The designs are ingenious, characteristic, and admirably worked out. Sometimes the weaver traces the pattern on the sand before beginning her blanket, but as a rule she composes it in her head as the work progresses. Circles or curved lines are never used in these blankets. The prevailing pat- terns are straight stripes, diagonals, regular zigzags, diamonds and crosses — the latter being to the Indians emblems of the morning or evening star. The colors used are limited in number. Scarlet is the favorite red, and indigo almost the only blue in use. These and the white of the bleached wool are the original colors, and the only ones which appear in the very best blankets. It is cmnious that these savages should have chosen our own " red, white, and blue " long before we did — they were weaving already before the first European ever saw America. The Spanish conquerors brought the first sheep to the New World, and soon gave these valuable animals to the Pueblo Indians. So wool came into New Mexico and displaced the Indian cotton, and the Navajos quickly adopted the new material. But of late there has been a sad deterioration in Navajo weaving — the Indians have learned one of the mean lessons of civilization, and now make their blankets less to wear than to sell. So an abominable combination of colors has crept in, until it is very difficult longer to get a blanket with only the real Indian hues. Black, green, and yel- low are sometimes found in superb blankets, and so combined as not to lessen their value; but as a rule these colors are to be avoided. But now some weavers use colors which to an Indian are actually accursed — ^like violet, purple, dark brown, etc., the colors of witch- craft — and such blankets are worthless to collectors. With any Indian, color is a matter of religion, and red is the most sacred of hues. The amount of it in a blanket largely determines the price. An amusing instance of the Navajo devotion to red was brought to my notice some years ago. A post trader had received a shipment of prepared coffee, half in red papers and half in blue. In a month every red package was gone and every blue package was left on the 266 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK shelves; nor would the Indians accept the blue even then until long waiting convinced them that there was no present prospect of getting any more red. The largest of these Germantown-yam blankets take several weeks to weave, and are worth from fifteen to fifty dollars. The very highest grade of Navajo blanket is now very rare. It is a dozen years since one of them has been made; the yarn blankets, which are far less expensive and sell just as well to the ignorant traveler, have entirely supplanted them. Only a few of the precious old ones remain — a few in the hands of wealthy Pueblo Indians and Mexicans — and they are almost priceless. I know every such blanket in the southwest, and, outside of one or two private collections, the specimens can be counted on one's fingers. The colors of these choicest blankets are red, white, and blue, or, rarely, just red and white. In a very few specimens there is also a little black. Red is very much the prevailing color, and takes up sometimes four-fifths of the blanket, the other colors merely drawing the pattern on a red ground. This red material is from a fine Turkish woolen cloth, called balleta. It used to be imported to Mexico, whence the Navajos pro- cured it at first. Later, it was sold at some of the trading-posts in this territory. The fixed price of it was six dollars a pound. The Navajos used to ravel this cloth and use the thread for their finest blankets; and it made such blankets as never have been produced elsewhere. Their durability is wonderful. They never fade, no mat- ter how frequently washed — an operation in which amole, the sapo- naceous root of the palmilla, should be substituted for soap. As for wear, I have seen balleta blankets which have been used for rugs on the floor of populous Mexican houses for fifty years, which still retain their brilliant color, and show serious wear only at their broken edges. And they will hold water as well as canvas will. These finest blankets are seldom used or shown except upon festal occasions, such as councils, dances, and races. Th^ are then brought forth with all the silver and beaded buckskin, and in a large crowd of Indians make a truly startling di^lay. Some wear them the middle girt around the waist by a belt of heavy silver disks, the lower end falling below the knees, the upper end thrown loosely over the shoulders. Others have them thrown across the saddle, and others tie them in an ostentatious roll behind. THE NAVAJO BLAXKET 267 The Navajos and Pueblos also weave remarkably fine and beau- tiftjl belts and garters, from two to eight inches wide and two to nine feet long; and durable and pretty dresses for their women. The loom for weaving one of the handsome belts worn by Pueblo women is quite as simple as that of the Xavajos for weaving blankets. One end of the warp is fastened to a stake driven into the ground in front of the weaver, the other to a rod held in place by a strap around her waist; so to tighten the warp she has only to sit back a little. The device for separating the alternate threads of the warp so that the shuttle can be pushed through looks like a small rolling-pin; and in the weaver's right hand is the oak batten-stick for r ammin g the threads of the woof tightly together. The weaver sits flat upon the ground; general!}^ upon a blanket to keep her manta dean, for the dress of a Pueblo woman is neat, handsome, and expensive. These belts are always two-ply, that is, the pattern on one side is different from that on the other. It may also be news to you to learn that both Xavajos and Pueblos are admirable silversmiths, and make aU their own jewelry. Their silver rings, bracelets, earrings, buttons, belts, dress pins, and bridle ornaments are very well fashioned with a few rude tools. The Xavajo smith works on a flat stone under a tree; but the Pueblo artificer has generally a bench and a little forge in a room of his house. NORA By Elizabeth West Parker When I came back from Nora's burial I found the three days' work to do; The kitchen sink piled high with sticky dishes, The beds unmade, the pantry bare; Soiled rugs to sweep, soiled floors to scrub; Besides, the countless, little, nameless things The true housekeeper's feet run after all day long And never overtake, — The tiny trivial tasks that show only when they Are left undone; Yet their accomplishment makes all the difference Between the comfort and the rub Of daily living. Yes, she, the one I loved the best of all. Who ever turned toward me the brighter side of things. Who shared with me her beauty and her song, Was gone; Gone on to higher life; and there was left for me Only the same old toil and fret, — The dirt that I must fight each hour, Knowing full well that it would conquer me. That surely they would lay me down in it at last, — To rub, and scrub, and scour, and clean, To bake, and brew, and mend For those who did not care for me at all. And she was gone, gone, gone! Yet I took up the broom and pail with strength I never felt before. Lord ! How she hated drudgery ! She would not ever talk of it. 268 NORA 269 How she laughed at those who ^)ent a good time In telling how much work they'd done that day! Yet she was tied to drudgery herself As most of us must always be, it seems. " It is to do," she said, and kept her thought Upon the book, the miisic, and the bit Of loveliness her flashing needle wrought so cleverly. She had so little strength; but with it all she loved The bird, the flower, the sky, the child — so hard That aU who neared her caught her joy in Ufe. Xo pain could ^x)fl her smile; When it was winter out-of-doors, she made you think of spring. )i\Tien I came back from Nora's funeral I worked with all my mi^t and prayed, " Oh, let me be like her I " THE WOMAN AND HER RAIMENT By Ida Minerva Taebell One of the most domineering impulses in men and women is that bidding them to make themselves beautiful. But this instinct, which has led men and women from strings of shells to modern clothes, like every other human instinct, has its distortions. It is in the failure to see the relative importance of things, to keep the pro- portions, that human beings lose control of their endowment. Give an instinct an inch, and it invariably takes its ell I The instinct for clothes, from which we have learned so much in our climb from savagery, has more than once had the upper hand of us. So dan- gerous to the prosperity and the seriousness of peoples has its tyraimy been, that laws have again and again been passed to check it; punishments have been devised to frighten off men from indulging it; whole classes have been put into dull and formless costumes to crucify it. Man gradually and in the main has conquered his passion for ornament. To-day, in the leading nations of the world, he clothes rather than arrays himself. Woman has not harnessed the instinct. She still allows it to drive her, and often to her own grave prejudice. Even in a democracy like our own, woman has not been able to master this problem of clothes. In fact, democracy has complicated the problem seriously. Under the old regime costumes had been worked out for the vari- ous classes. They were adapted both to the purse and to the pursuit. They were fitting — that is, silk was not worn in huts or homespun in palaces; slippers were for carriages and sabots for streets. The gar- ments of a class were founded on good sound principles on the whole — ^but they marked the class. Democracy sought to destroy out- ward distinctions. The proscribed costumes went into the pot with proscribed positions. Under democracy we can cook in silk petti- coats and go to the White House in a cap and apron, if we will. And we often will, that being a way to advertise our equality! Class costumes destroyed, the principles back of them, that is, fitness, quality, responsibility, were forgotten. The old instinct for 270 THE WOMAN AND HER RAIMENT 271 ornament broke loose. Its tyranny was strengthened by the eternal deare of the individual to prove himself superior to Ms fellows. Wealth is the generally accepted standard of measurement of value in this country to-day, and there is no way in which the average man can show wealth so clearly as in, encouraging his women folk to array themselves. Thus we have the anomaly in a democracy of a primitive instinct let loose, and the adoption of discarded aristo- cratic devices for proving you are better than your neighbor, at least in the one revered particular of having more money to q)end! The complication of the woman's life by this domination of clothes is extremely serious. In many cases it becomes not one of the sides of her bu^ness, but the business of her life. Such undue proportion has the matter taken in the American Woman's life under democracy that one is sometimes inclined to wonder if it is not the real " woman question." Certainly in numbers of cases it is the rock upon which a family's happiness splits. The point is not at all that women should not occupy themselves seriously with dress, that they should not look on it as an art, as legitimate as any other. The difficulty comes in not mastering the art, in the entirely disproportionate amount of attention which is given to the subject, in the disregard of sound principles. The economic side of the matter presses hard on the whole country. It is not too much to say that the chief economic concern of a great body of women is how to get money to dress, not as they should, but as they want to. It is to get money for clothes that drives many, though of course not the majority, of girls, into shops, factories, and offices. It is because they are using aU they earn on themselves that they are able to make the brave showing that they do. Many a girl is misjudged by the well-meaning observer or investigator be- cause of this fact — " She could never dress like that on S6, S8, or SIS a week and support herself," they tell you. She does not sup- port herself. She works for clothes, and clothes alone. Moreov^-, the girl who has the pluck to do hard regular work that she may dress better has interest enough to work at night to make her earnings go farther. No one who has been thrown much with office girls but knows case after case of gjrls who with the aid of some older member of the family cut and make their gowns, plan and trim their hats. Moreover, this relieving the family budget of dressing the girl is a boon to fathers and mothers. 272 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK It is hard on industry, however, for the wage-earner who can afford to take $6 or $8 helps pull down the wages of other thousands who support not only themselves, but others. Moreover, to put in one's days in hard labor to dress well, for that is the amount of it, is demoralizing. Investigators of small household budgets lay it down as a rule that as the income increases the percentage spent for clothing in- creases more rapidly than for any other item. It is true in the pro- fessional classes, and especially burdensome there; for the income is usually small, but the social demand great. There are certain industrial and ethical results from this pre- occupation with clothes which should not be overlooked, particularly the indifference which it has engendered. The very heart of the question of clothes of the American woman is imitation. That is, we are not engaged in an effort to work out individuality. We are not engaged in an effort to find costumes which by their expression of the taste and the spirit of this people can be fixed upon as appropri- ate American costumes, something of our own. From top to bottom we are copying. The woman of wealth goes to Paris and Vienna for the real masterpieces in a season's wardrobe. The great dressmakers and milliners go to the same cities for their models. Those who cannot go abroad to seek inspiration and ideas copy those who have gone or the fashion plates they import. The French or Viennese mode, started on upper Fifth Avenue, spreads to Twenty-third Street, from Twenty-third Street to Fourteenth Street, from Four- teenth Street to Grand and Canal. Each move sees it reproduced in materials a little less elegant and durable, its colors a trifle vulgar- ized, its ornaments cheapened, its laces poorer. By the time it reaches Grand Street the four hundred dollar gown in brocaded velvet from the best looms in Europe has become a cotton velvet from Lawrence or Fall River, decorated with mercerized lace and glass ornaments from Rhode Island! A travesty — and yet a recognizable travesty. The East Side hovers over it as Fifth Avenue has done over the original. The very shop window, where it is displayed, is dressed and painted and lighted in imitation of the uptown shop. The same process goes on inland. This same gown will travel its downward path from New York westward, until the Grand Street creation arrives in some cheap and gay mining or factory town. From start to finish it is THE WOilAX AND HER RAIMEXT 273 imitation, and on this imitation vast industries are built — imitations of silk, of velvet, of lace, of jewels. These imitations, cheap as they are, are a far greater extrava- gance, for their buyers, than the original model was for its buyer, for the latter came from that class where money does not count — while the former is of a class where everj- penny counts. The pity of it is that the yoimg girls, who put all that they earn into elab- orate lingerie at seventy-nine cents a set (the original model prob- ably sold at $50 or $100), into open-work hose at twenty-five cents a pair (the original $10 a pair), into willow plvimes at $1.19 (the original sold at $50), never have a durable or suitable garment. They are bravely ornamented, but never properly clothed. Moreover, they are brave but for a day. Their purchases have no goodness in them: they tear, grow rusty, faU to pieces with the first few wearings, and the poor little victims are shabby and bedraggled often before they have paid for their belongings, for many of these things are bought on the installment plan, particularly hats and gowns. This habit of buying poor imitations does not end in the girl's life with her clothes. WTien she marries, she carries it into her home. Decoration, not furnishing, is the keynote of aU she touches. It is she who is the best patron of the elaborate and monstrous cheap furni- ture, rugs, draperies, crockery, bric-a-brac, which fill the shops of the cheaper quarters of the great cities, and usually aU quarters of the newer inland towns. Has all this no relation to national prosperity — to the cost of living? The effect on the victim's personal budget is dear — the effect it has on the family budget, which it dominates, is clear. In both cases nothing of permanent value is acquired. The good linen under- garments, the " all wool " gown, the broadcloth cape or coat, those standard garments which the thrifty once acquired and cherished only awaken the mirth of the pretty little spendthrift on $8 a week. Solid pieces of furniture such as often dignify even the huts of European peasants and are passed down from mother to daughter for genera- tions — are objects of contempt by the younger generation here. Even the daughters of good old Xew England farmers are found to-day glad to exchange mahogany for quartered oak and Englidi pewter for pressed glass and stamped crockery. True, another generation may come in and buy it all back at fabulous prices, but the waste of it! This production of shoddy cloth, cotton laces, cheap furniture, 18 274 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK what is it but waste! Waste of labor and material! Time and money and strength which might have been turned to producing things of permanent values, have been spent in things which have no goodness in them, things which because of their lack of integrity and soundness must be forever duplicated, instead of freeing industry to go ahead, producing other good and permanent things. What it all amounts to is that the instinct for ornament has gotten the upper hand of a great body of American women. We have failed so far to develop standards of taste, fitness, and quality, strong, sure, and good enough effectually to impose themselves. There is no national taste in dress; there is only admirable skill in adapting fash- ions made in other countries. There is no national sense of restraint and proportion. It is pretty generally agreed that getting all you can is entirely justifiable. There is no national sense of quality; even the rich to-day in this country wear imitation laces. The effect of all this is a bewildering restlessness in costume — a sheeplike will- ingness to follow to the extreme the grotesque and the fantastic. The very general adoption of the ugly and meaningless fashions of the last few years — ^peach-basket hats, hobble skirts, slippers for the street — ^is a case in point. From every side it is bad — defeating its own purpose — corrupting national taste and wasting national substance. Moreover, the false standard it sets up socially is intolerable. It sounds fantastic to say that whole bodies of women place their chief reliance for social advancement on dress, but it is true. They are or are not, as they are gowned! The worst of this fantasy is not only that it forces too much attention from useful women, but that it gives such poise and assurance to the ignorant and useless! If you look like the women of a set, you are as " good " as they, is the demo- cratic standard of many a young woman. If for any reason she is not ablet to produce this effect, she shrinks from contact, whatever her talent or charm! And she is often not altogether wrong in think- ing she will not be welcome if her dress is not that of the circle to which she aspires. Many a woman indifferently gowned has been made to feel her difference from the elegant she found herself among. If she is sure of herself and has a sense of humor, this may be an amusing experience. To many, however, it is an embittering one! The true attack on the tyranny and corruption of clothes lies in the establishment of principles. THE WOMAX AND HER RAIMENT 275 These principles are, briefly: The fitness of dress dqjends upon the occasion. The beauty of dress depends upon line and color. The ethics of dress depends upon quality and the relation of cost to one's means. In time we may get into the heads of all women, rich and poor, that an opjen-work stocking and low shoe for winter and street wear are as imfit as tbey all concede a trailing ^irt to be. In time we may even hope to train the eye tmtil it recognizes the difference be- tween a beautiful and a grotesque form, between a flowing and a jagged line. In time we may restore the sense of quality, which our grandmothers certainly had, and which almost every Eiuropean peasant brings with her to this country. These principles are teachable things. Let her once gra^ them and the vagaries of style will become as distasteful as pKX)r drawing does to one whose eye has learned what is correct, as lying is to one who has cultivated the taste for the truth. As a method of education, instruction in the principles of dress is admirable for a girl. Through it she can be made to graq> the truth which women so generally suq)ect to-day; that is, the importance of the common and universal things of life; the fact that all these eveiy-day processes are the expressions of the great underlying truths of Ufe. A girl can be taught, too, through this matter of dress, as directly perhaps as through anything that concerns her, the im- portance of studying human follies! Follies grow out of powerful human instincts, ineradicable elements of human nature. They would not exist if there were not at the bottom of them some impulse of nature, right and beautiful and essential. The foUy of woman's dress Ues not in her instinct to make herself beautiful, it lies in her ignorance of the principles of beauty, of the intimate and essential connection between utility and beauty. It li^ in the pitiful assump- tion that she can achieve her end by imitation, that she can be the thing she envies if she look like that thing. The matter of dress is the more important, because bound up with it is the whole grist of social and eccmomic problems. It is part and parcel of the problem of the cost of living, of woman's wages, of wasteftil industries, of the social e%'il itself. It is a woman's most direct weapon against industrial abuses, her all-powerful weapon as a consumer. At the time of the Lawrence strike, Miss \^da Scudder, 276 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK of Wellesley College, is reported to have said in a talk to a group of women citizens in Lawrence: " I speak for thousands besides myself when I say that I would rather never again wear a thread of woolen than know that my gar- ments had been woven at the cost of such misery as I have seen and known, past the shadow of a doubt, to have existed in this town." Miss Scudder might have been more emphatic and still have been entirely within the limit of plain obligation; she might have said, " I will never again wear a thread of woolen woven at the cost of such misery as exists in this town." Women will not be doing their duty, as citizens in this country, until they recognize fully the obligations laid upon them by their control of consumption. The very heart of the question of the dress is, then, economic and social. It is one of those great every-day matters on which the moral and physical well-being of society rests; one of those matters which, rightly understood, fill the every-day life with big meanings, show it related to every great movement for the betterment of man. Like all of the great interests in the Business of Being a Woman, it is primarily an individual problem, and every woman who solves it for herself, that is, arrives at what may be called a sound mode of dress, makes a real contribution to society. There is a tendency to overlook the value of the individual solution of the problems of life, and yet the successful individual solution is perhaps the most genuine and fundamental contribution a man or woman can make. The end of living is a life — fair, sound, sweet, complete. The vast machinery of life to which we give so much attention, our govern- ments, and societies, our politics and wrangling, is nothing in itself. It is only a series of contrivances to insure the chance to grow a life. He who proves that he can conquer his conditions, can adjust him- self to the machinery in which he finds himself, he is the most genuine of social servants. He realizes the thing for which we talk and scheme, and so proves that our dreams are not vainl SHIPPING By Abchie Austin Coaxes Here the gray wharf, crawling with jostling men, Redolent of the barter of the world! Strange smells of unknown East and alien South, Hemp that reeks of damp Luzonian cellars, And hill on hill of bawdy-smelling hides; flattings swarming with strange sprawKng marks Seeming a tyric poem of Japan, Instead of makers' stenciled business signs. Faint breaths of cinnamon and aloe smells Mixed with the knife-sharp fragrance of the sea; Great sacks of beans, like pearls, from Italy, And logs of teak by Burmese coolies cut. And by the wharf the great ship silent sleeps In beauty, as she were some huge sea cat Stretched in the morning sim to take her ease. A slow sea dowager of swelling flanks. Her long voyage done, who waits another day VvTien, heavy-laden, she sets forth again To carry barter roimd the girdled globe. Here is the meeting-place of all the world — A nest of phantasies where sleeps Romance Under the sun of a long stfll summer mom. 277 UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMENTS By Peter Bernard Kyne Mr. Skinner thrust his head into Cappy Ricks' office and said: " I've just had a telephone message from the Merchants' Ex- change. The Tillicum is passing in." " Then," said Cappy Ricks, " in about two hours at the latest we may expect a mournful visit from Captain Matt Peasley." " If you don't mind, Mr. Ricks," said Skinner with a smirk, " I should dearly love to be present at the interview." Cappy smiled brightly. " By all means, Skinner, my dear boy; by all means, since you wish it. It just about breaks my heart to think of the cargo of grief I'm going to slip that boy; but I have resolved to be firm, Skinner. He owes us eighteen thousand dollars and he must go through with his contract to the very letter, and pay the Blue Star Navigation Com- pany every last cent due it. He will, doubtless, suggest some sort of settlement — ten cents on the dollar " " Don't agree to it," Mr. Skinner pleaded. " He has more than a thousand dollars a month going to his credit on our books from the Unicorn charter, and if that vessel stays afloat a year longer we'll be in the clear. Be very firm with him, Mr. Ricks. As you say, it is all for his own benefit and the experience will do him a whole lot of good." " I love the boy," said Cappy; " but in the present case. Skinner, I haven't any heart. A chunk of anthracite coal is softer than that particular organ this morning. Be sure to show Matt in the minute he comes up from the dock." Mr. Skinner needed no urging when, less than two hours later, Captain Matt Peasley arrived. Mr. Skinner greeted him courteosuly and followed him into Cappy's office. "Well, well, well! " Cappy began unctuously. "How do you do. Matt, my dear boy? Glad to see you; in fact, we're extra glad to see you," he added significantly and winked at Mr. Skinner, who caught the hint and murmured loud enough for Matt Peasley to hear: " Eighteen thousand dollars to-morrow! " 278 UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMENTS 279 Cappy extended a hand, which Matt grasped heartily. " You're looking fit as a fiddle," Cappy continued. " Doesn't look a bit worried — does he. Skinner? " " I must admit he appears to cany it off very well, Mr. Ricks. We had thought, captain," Skinner continued, turning to Matt Peas- ley, " that, when Mr. Ricks agreed to permit you to assume command of the TiUicutn when she reached Panama, we might have been treated to an ejdiibition of speed; but the fact of the matter is that instead of economizing on time you are about ten days in excess of the period it would have taken for Captain Grant to have discharged his cargo and gotten back to San Francisco." He winked at Cappy Ricks, who returned the wink. " You mean in ballast," Matt suggested. Skinner nodded. " Oh, well, that accounts for it," Matt continued serenely. " I came home with a cargo of steel rails." Cappy Ricks slid out to the extreme edge of his swivel chair; and, with a hand on each knee, he gazed at Matt Peasley over the rims of his spectacles. Mr. Skinner started violently. " You came home with a cargo of steel rails? " Cappy de- manded incredulously. " Certainly! Do you suppose I would go to the expense of hiring somebody else to skipper the Tillicum while I was there with my license? Not by a jugful! I was saving every dollar I could. I had to." " Er — er — Where is Captain Grant? " Skinner demanded. " Captain Grant is free, white and twenty-one. He goes where he pleases without consulting me, Mr. Skinner. He means nothing in my life — so why should I know where he is? " " You infernal scovmdrel! " shrilled Cappy Ricks. " You whaled him and threw him out on the dock at Panama — that's what you did to him! You took the Tillicum away from him by force." " Captain Grant is a fine, elderly gentleman, sir," Matt inter- rupted. " I would not use force on him. He left the ship of his own free will at San Diego, California." ' At San Diego? " Cappy and Skinner cried in unison. " At San Diego." " But you said you were going to Panama on the City of Para, the regular passenger liner," Cappy challenged. 280 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK " Well, I wasn't committed to that course, sir. After leaving your office I changed my mind. I figured the TUlicum was some- where off the coast of Lower California; so I wirelessed Captain Grant, explained to him that the ship was back on my hands by reason of the failure of Morrow & Company, and ordered him to put into San Diego for further orders. He proceeded there; I proceeded there; we met; I presented your letter reheving him of his command. Simple enough, isn't it? " " But what became of him? " " How should I know, sir? I've been as busy as a bird dog down in Panama. Please let me get on with my story. I had just cleared Point Loma and was about to surrender the bridge to my first mate when an interesting little message came trickling out of the ether — and my wireless boy picked it up, because it was addressed to ' Cap- tain Grant, Master S. S. TUlicum.' " Cappy Ricks quivered and licked his lower lip, but said nothing. " That message," Matt continued, " was brought to me by the operator, who really didn't know what to do with it. Captain Grant had left the ship and Sparks didn't know at what hotel in San Diego the late master of the TUlicum would put up for the night; so I read the message to see whether it was important, for I felt that it had to do with the ship's business and that I was justified in reading it." Again Cappy Ricks squirmed. Mr. Skinner commenced to gnaw his thumb nail. " That message broke me all up," Matt continued sadly. " It destroyed completely my faith in human nature and demonstrated beyond a doubt that there is no such thing in this world as fair play in business. It's like a water-front fight. You just get your man down and everything goes — ^kicking, biting, gouging, knee-work!" Matt sighed dolorously and drew from his vest pocket a scrap of paper. " Just listen to this for a message! " He continued. " Just imagine how nice you'd feel, Mr. Ricks, if you were skippering a boat and picked up a message like this at sea: " ' Grant, Master Steamer TUlicum: Gave Captain Matt Peasley a letter to you yesterday ordering you to turn over command of TUli- cum to him on presentation or demand. This on his request and on his insistence, as per clause in charter party, copy of which you have. UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMEXTS 281 Peasley leaves to-day for Panama on City of Para. This will be your authority for decUning to surrender the ship to him when he comes aboard there. Stand pat! Letter with complete instructions for your guidance foUows on City of Para. ' Ricks/ " Cappy Ricks commenced tapping one foot ner\'ously against the other, !Mr. Skinner coughed perfunctorily, while ]Matt withered each with a rather sorrowful glance. " Of course you can imagine the shock this gave me. I give you my word that for as much as five seconds I didn't know what to do; but after that I got real busy. I swung the ship and came ramping back to San Diego harbor, slipped ashore in the small boat and found Captain Grant at the railroad station bujdng a ticket for San Fran- cisco. I had to wait and watch the ticket office for an hour before he showed up, and when he did I made him a proposition. I told him that if he wotild agree to keep away from the office of the Blue Star Navigation Company you might think he was peeved at being relieved of his command so peremptorily, and hence would not attach any importance to his failure to report at the office. " In consideration of this I gave him my word of honor that he would be restored to his command as soon as I could bring the Tillicum back from Panama, and meantime his salary would continue just the same — ^in proof of which I gave him a check for two months' pay in advance. He said he thought it all a very queer proceeding; but, since he was no longer in command of the Tillicum, it wasn't tip to him to ask questions, and he agreed to my proposition. However, he said he thought he ought to wire the company acknowledging re- ceipt of their instructions with reference to surrendering his command — and I agreed with him that he should. ' But,' I said, ' why bother sending such a message, collect, ashore, when we pay a flat monthly rate to the wireless company for the plant and operator aboard the ship, no matter how many messages we send? Give me your mes- sage to Mr. Ricks and when I get back aboard the Tillicum 111 wireless it to him for you, and it won't cost the ship a cent extra.' " Well, you know your own captains, Mr. Ricks. Th^ll save their ships a dollar wherever thej- can; and simple, honest Old ^Man Grant agreed to my suggestion. Before he had an opportunity to 282 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK consider I stepped to the telegraph office and wrote this message for him." Matt produced another telegram and read: " ' Blue Star Navigation Company, " ' 258 California Street, San Francisco. " ' Instructions with reference to change of masters received. " ' Would feel badly if I thought any act of mine necessitated change; but since my conscience is clear I shall not worry. I always have done and always shall do my duty to my owners without thought of my personal interests, and you may rely fully on that in the present emergency.' " Well, sir, that sounded so infernally grandiloquent to Old Man Grant that his hand actually trembled with emotion as he signed it — at my suggestion. You know I'd hate to be tried for forgery. Then I shook hands with him and started for Panama once more — only this time I kept right on going; and I didn't spare the fuel oil either. Why should I? It wasn't costing me anything." Both Cappy and Mr. Skinner winced, as from a blow. Matt waited for them to say something, but they didn't; so after a re- spectful interval he resumed: " Off the Coronado Islands I sent you Captain Grant's diplomatic message. I was very glad to send it to you, Mr. Ricks, because I knew its receipt would make you very happy, and I like to scatter happiness wherever I can. The Scriptures say we should return good for evil." Cappy Ricks bounded to his feet and shook a skinny iist under Matt Peasley's nose. " Be careful how you talk to me, young man, or I'll lose my temper; and if I ever do " " That would be terrible, wouldn't it? " Matt laughed. " I sup- pose you'd just haul off and biff me one, and I'd think it was autumn with the leaves falling! " Cappy choked, turned purple, sat down again, and glanced covertly at Mr. Skinner, who returned the glance with one that seemed to shout aloud: " Mr. Ricks, I smell a rat as big as a Shet- land pony. Something has slipped and we're covered with blood. Incredible as it may seem, this rowdy Peasley has out-thought us! " " Did you get the letter we sent Captain Grant at Panama? " Skinner managed to articulate presently. UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMENTS 283 Matt nodded affirmatively. " Opened it, I suppose! " C^py accused him. Matt nodded negatively, produced the letter from his pocket and handed it to Cappy. " Where I was raised," he said gently, " they taught boys that it was wrong to read other people's private correqwndence. You will note that the seal is unbroken." " Thank God for that! " Cappy Ricks murmured, sotto voce, and tore the letter into tiny bits. " Now, then," he said, " we'll hear the rest of your story." " When did a doctor look you over last? " ISIatt queried. " I'm afraid you'll die of heart disease before I finish." " I'm sound in wind and limb," Cappy declared. " I'm not so yoimg as I used to be; but, by Jupiter, there isn't any young pup on the street who can tell me where to head in! What neist? " " Of course, Mr. Ricks, very shortly after I had rechartered the Tillicum to Morrow & Company I b^an to suspect they were shy of sufficient capital to run their big business comfortably. I found it very hard to collect; so, fully a month before they went up the spout, I commenced to figure on what would happen to me if they did. Consequently, I wasn't caught napping. On the day Morrow committed suicide the company gave me a check that was repudiated at the bank. I protested it and immediately served formal notice on Morrow & Company that their failure to meet the terms of our charter party necessitated immediate cancellation; and accordingly I was cancelling it." "Did you send that notice by registered mail?" Skinner demanded. "You bet! — ^with a return registry receipt requested." Cappy nodded at Skinner approvingly, as though to say: " Smart of him, eh? " Matt continued: " After sending my wireless to Captain Grant aboard the TiUi- cum I sent a cablegram to the Panama Railroad p)eople informing them that, owing to certain circimistances over which I had no con- trol, the steamer Tillicum, fully loaded and en route to Panama to discharge cargo, bad been turned back on my hands by the charterers. I informed them that I had diverted the steamer to San Diego for orders, and in the interim, unless the Panama Railroad guaranteed me by cable immediately sixty per cent, of the through-freight rate for the Tillicum, and a return cargo to San Francisco, I would 284 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK decline to send the TiUicum to Panama, but would, on the contraiy, divert her to Tehuantepec and transship her cargo over the Ameri- can-Hawaiian road there." " Of course," Matt went on calmly, " I had no means of knowing what freight rate Morrow & Company received; but I figured that they ought to get about forty per cent., the Panama Railroad about twenty per cent., and the steamer on the Atlantic side the remaining forty. So I decided to play safe and ask sixty per cent, of the through rate, figuring that the Panama Railroad would give it to. me rather than have the Tillicum's cargo diverted over their competitor's road at Tehuantepec. In the first place, they were depending on business from Morrow & Company's ships; and, with Morrow & Company gone broke and a new company liable to take over their line, it would be a bad precedent to establish, to permit one cargo to go to the competitor. Future cargoes might follow it! " Then, too, the schedule of the ships on the Atlantic side of the Canal doubtless had been made up already, with a view to handling this cargo ex-Tillkum and to lose the cargo would throw that sched- ule out of joint; in fact, from whatever angle I viewed the situation, I could see that the railroad company would prefer to give up its twenty per cent, rather than decline my terms. They might think their competitor had already made me an offer! Of course, it was all a mighty bluff on my part, but bluffs are not always called, par- ticularly when they're made good and strong; and, believe me, my bluff was anything but weak in the knees. I told the Panama people to wire their reply to me at San Diego, and when I got to that city, twenty-four hours later, their answer was awaiting me." " They called your bluff? " Mr. Skinner challenged. " Pooh-pooh for you! " Matt laughed. " God is good and the devil not half bad. I got the guaranties I asked for, old dear! Don't you ever think I'd have been crazy enough to go to Panama without them." Cappy Ricks jerked forward in his chair again. " Matt," he said sternly, " you have defaulted in your payments to the Blue Star Navigation Company to the tune of eighteen thou- sand dollars, and I'd like to hear what you have to say about that." " Well, I couldn't help it," Matt replied, " I was shy ten thou- sand dollars when Morrow & Company defaulted on me, and I was at sea when the other payment fell due. However, you had your UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMENTS 285 recourse. You could have canceled the charter on me. That was a chance I had to take. " WTiy didn't you grab the ship away from me? If you had done that you would be in the dear to-day instead of tip to yoiir neck in grief." " We'll grab her away from you to-day — never fear! " Cappy promised him. " I guess we'll get ours from the freight due on that cargo of steel rails you came home with." " You have another guess coming, Mr. Ricks. Youll not do any grabbing to-day, for the reason that somebody else has already grabbed her." " Who? " chorused Cappy and Skinner. " The United States Marshal. Half an hoiu- ago the Pacific Shipping Comp)any libeled her." " What for, you bonehead? You haven't any cause for libel, so how can you make it stick? " " The Pacific Shipping Company has cause, and it can make the Ubel stick. The first mate of the TUlicum assigned to the Pacific Shipping Company his claim for wages as mate "' " Matt, you poor goose! The Pacific Shipping Company owe him his wages. Yom^ company chartered the boat, and we wUl not pay such a ridiculotis claim." " I do not care whether you do or not. That libel wiU keep you from canceling my charter, although when you failed to cancel when I failed to make the payments as stipulated, your laxity must be regarded in the eyes of the law as evidence that you voluntarily waived that clause in the charter; and after you have voluntarily waived a thing twice you'll have a job making it stick the third time." " If I had only known I " groaned Skinner miserably. " Besides," ^Matt continued brightly, " I have a cargo in that vessel, and she's under charter to my company at six hundred dollars a day. Of course you know very well, Mr. Ricks, that while the United States Marshal remains in charge of her I cannot discharge an ounce of that cargo or move the ship, or — er — ^anj^hing. Well, naturally that wiU be no fault of the Pacific Shipping Company, Mr. Ricks. It will be up to the Blue Star Navigation Company to file a bond and lift that libel in order that I may have some use of the ship I have chartered from you. If you do not pull the plaster 286 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK off of her of course I'll have to sue you for heavy damages; and I can refuse to pay you any moneys due you." " We'll lift the libel in an hour," Mr. Skinner declared dramati- cally; and he took down the telephone to call up the attorney for the Blue Star. " Wait! " said Matt. " I'm not through. Before I entered the harbor I called all hands up on the boat deck and explained matters to them. They had been engaged by Morrow & Company, and the firm of Morrow & Company was in the bankruptcy court; so the prospects of cash from that quarter did not seem encouraging. The Pacific Shipping Company had made a bare-boat charter from the Blue Star Navigation Company, and had then made a similar charter to Morrow & Company ; consequently, the Pacific Shipping Company would repudiate payment, and, as president and principal stock- holder of that company, I took it on myself to repudiate any respon- sibility then and there. " Then the crew wanted to know what they should do, and I said: ' Why, seek the protection of the law, in such cases made and pro- vided. A seaman is not presumed to have any knowledge of the intricate deals his owners may put through. All he knows is that he is employed aboard a ship, and if he doesn't get his money from the charterers at the completion of the voyage he can libel the ship and collect from the owners. This is a fine new steamer, men, and I, for one, believe she is good for what is owing you all; and if you will assign your claims to the Pacific Shipping Company I will pay them in full and trust to the Blue Star Navigation Company to reim- burse me.' So they did that. " Now go ahead, Mr. Skinner, and lift the libel I put on the vessel for my first mate's account, and the instant you get it lifted I'll slap another libel on her for account of the second mate. Get rid of the second mate's claim and up bobs the steward, and so on, ad libitum, e pluribus unum, now and forever, one and inseparable. I care not what course others may pursue, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! " Mr. Skinner quietly hung up the telephone receiver. " And, by the way," Matt continued, " I forgot to mention that I requested the steward to stay aboard and make the United States Marshal comfortable as soon as he arrived. In these little matters UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMENTS 287 one might as well be courteous, and I should hate to have the TiUicum acquire a reputation for being cheap and inho^itable." Cappy Ricks muttered hoarsely. " Really, my dear Peasley, this matter has passed beyond the joke stage," Mr. Skinner began suavely. " Let me get along with my story," said he. " The worst is yet to come. My attorney informs me " " Matt Peasley," said Cappy Ricks, " that's the first lie I ever knew you to tell. You don't have to hire an attorney to tell you where to head in, you infernal sea lawj'er 1 " " I thank you for the compliment," Matt observed quizzically. " Perhaps I deserve it. However, ' we come to bury Qesar, not to praise him.' " " Well, 111 admit that the failure of Morrow & Company and the Pacific Shipping Company to pay the crew of the TiUicum puts the buck up to me, and I dare say I'll have to pay," Cappy admitted, his voice trembling with rage. " Well, that isn't the only bill you'll have to pay. Don't cheer until you're out of the woods, Mr. Ricks. Youll have to pay for a couple of thousand barrels of fuel oil, and a lot of engine supplies, and sea stores, and laundry, and water — why. Lord bless you, IMr. Ricks, I can't begin to think of all the things." "Not a bit of it! " Cappy cried triumphantlJ^ "It was an open-boat charter, my son, and you rechartered on the same basis; and, though Morrow & Company were originally responsible, you'll find that the creditors, despairing of collecting from them, wiU come down on the Pacific Shipping Company like a pack of ravening wolves, by thxmder! Don't you cheer until you're out of the woods! " " Well, I have a license to cheer," Matt replied, " because I got out of the woods a long time ago. Before the vessel saUed from this port, I sent this letter to all her creditors! " And Matt thrust into Cappy Ricks' hand a copy of the letter in question. " That will not help you at all," Mr. Skinner, who had read the letter over Cappy's shoulder, declared. " It wouldn't — ^if I hadn't sent it by registered mail and got a return receipt," Matt admitted; " but, since I have a receipt from every creditor acknowledging the denial of responsibility of the Pacific Shipping Company, I'm in the clear. It was up to the credi- tors to protect their hands before the vessel went to sea! They had 288 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK ample warning — and I can prove it! I tell you, Mr. Ricks, when you begin to dig into this matter you will find these creditors will claim that every article furnished to the TilUcum while Morrow & Company had her was ordered on requisitions signed by Captain Grant, your employee, or Collins, your chief engineer. They were your servants and you paid their salaries." " All right, then," Cappy challenged. " Suppose we do have to pay. How about that freight money you collected in Panama — eh? How about that? I guess we'll have an accounting of the freight money, young man." " I submit, with all due respect, that what I did with that freight money I collected in Panama is none of your business. I chartered a vessel from you and she was loaded with a cargo. The only interest you can possibly have in that cargo lies in the fact that the Pacific Stevedoring Company stowed it in the vessel and hasn't been paid some forty-five hundred dollars for so stowing it, and eventually, of course, you'll have to foot the bill as owner of the vessel. That vessel and cargo were thrown back on my hands, not on yours; so why should you ask questions about my business? " " But you'll have to render an accounting to Morrow & Com- pany," Cappy charged. " I'll not. They gave me a check that was returned branded ' Not sufficient funds '; they didn't keep their charter with me, and if I hadn't been a fly young fellow their failure would have ruined me, and then a lot they'd care about it! If I spoke to them about it they'd say: ' Well, these things will happen in business. We're sorry, but what can we do about it? ' No, Mr. Ricks; I'm in the clear with Morrow & Company, and their creditors will be lucky if I do not present my claim for ten thousand dollars because of that worthless check I hold. When I collected from the Panama Railroad Company for the freight on that southbound cargo I paid myself all Morrow & Company owed me, and the rest is velvet if I choose to keep it. If I do not choose to keep it the only honorable course for me to pursue will be to send a statement and my check for the balance to the receiver for Morrow & Company." "What! " demanded Mr. Skinner. "And leave the Blue Star Navigation Company to pay the crew? " " Yes — and the fuel bill, and the butcher and the baker and the candlestick maker, and the stevedoring firm." UKEXPECTED DEVELOPMENTS 289 Q^py Ricks motioned to Mr. Skinner to be alent ; then he rose and placed his hand on Matt's shoulder. " Matt," he said kindly, " look me in the eyes and see if you can have the crust to tell me that, with all that freight money in your possession, you do not intend to apply the residue to the pay- ments of these claims against the TUlicum." Matt bent low and peered fiercely into Cappy's face, for all the world like a belligerent rooster. " Once more, my dear Mr. Ricks," he said impressively, " I desire to inform you that, so far as the steamer TUlicum is concerned, 1 venerate you as a hiunan Christmas tree. I'm the \'illain in this sketch and proud of it. You're stabbed to the hilt! Why should I be expected to pay the debts of your steamer? " " But you used all the materials placed aboard her for your own use and benefit." " That, Mr. Ricks, constitutes my profit," Matt retorted pleas- antly. " She had fuel oil aboard when she was turned back on me sufficient to last her to Panama and return — she had engine supplies, gear, beef in the refrigerator, provisions in the storeroom, and clean laimdry in the linen lockers; in fact, I never went to sea in command of a ship that was better foimd." " Matt Peasley," said Cappy solemnly, " you think this is funny; but it isn't. You do not realize what you are doing. Why, this action of yours will be construed as highway robbery and no man on the Street will trust you. You must think of your future in business. If this leaks out nobody wiU ever extend you any credit " " I should worry about credit when I have the cash! " Matt retorted. " I'm absolutely within the law, and this whole affair is my picnic and your funeral. Moreover, I dare you to give me per- mission to circulate this story up and down California Street! Yes, sir, I dare you — and you aren't game! Why, everybody would be cheering for me and laughing at you. I haven't any sympathy for you, Mr. Ricks. You got me into this whole mess when a kind word from you would have kept me out of it. But, no; you wouldn't extend me that kind word. You wanted to see me get tangled up and go broke; and when you thought I was a dead one you made fim of me and rejoiced in my wretchedness, and did everything you could to put me down and out, just so you could say: ' WeU, I warned 19 290 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK you, Matt; but you would go to it. You have nobody to blame but yourself.' " Of course, I realize that you didn't want to make any money out of me; but you did want to manhandle me, Mr. Ricks, just as a sporting proposition. Besides, you tried to double-cross me with that wireless message. I knew what you were up to. You thought you had pulled the same stunt on me I pulled on you, and that letter to Captain Grant contained full instructions. However, you wanted to be so slick about it you wouldn't get caught with your fingers in the jam; so you forbore to cancel my charter. You figured you'd present me with my troubles all in one heap the day I got back from Panama. I'm onto you! " " Well, I guess we've still got a sting in our tail," Cappy answered pertly. " Slap on your libels. We'll lift 'em all, and to-morrow we'll expect eighteen thousand dollars from you, or I'm afraid, Matthew, my boy, you're going to lose that ship with her cargo of steel rails, and we'll collect the freight." " Again you lose. You'll have to make a formal written demand on me for the money before you cancel the charter; and when you do I'll hand you a certified check for eighteen thousand dollars. Don't think for a minute that I'm a pauper, Mr. Ricks; because I'm not. When a fellow freights one cargo to Panama and another back, and it doesn't cost him a cent to stow the first cargo and cheap Jamaica labor to stow the second, and the cost of operating the ship for the round trip is absolutely nil — I tell you, sir, there's money in it." Cappy Ricks' eyes blazed, but he controlled his temper and made one final appeal. " Matt," he said plaintively, " don't tell me that a Peasley, of Thomaston, Maine, would take advantage of certain adventitious cir- cumstances and the legal loopholes provided by our outrageous maritime laws " " To swindle the Blue Star Navigation Company! " Mr. Skin- ner cut in. " Swindle is an ugly word, Mr. Skinner. Please do not use it again to describe my legitimate business — and don't ask any sym- pathy of me. You two are old enough and experienced enough in the shipping game to spin your own tops. You didn't give me any the best of it; you crowded my hand and joggled my elbow, apd it would UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMENTS 291 have been the signal for a half holiday in the office if I had gone broke." " But after all Mr. Ricks has done for you " " He always had value received, and I asked no favors of him — and received none." " But surely, my dear Matt," Skinner purred, for the first time calling his ancient enemy by his Christian name — " surely you're jesting with us." " Skinner, old horse, I was never more serious in my life. Mr. Alden P. Ricks is my ideal of a perfect buaness man; and just before I left for Panama he informed me — ^rather coldly, I thought — ^that he never mixed sentiment with biisiness. Moreover, he advised me not to do it either. To surrender to him now would mean the frac- turing, for the first time in history, of a slogan that has been in the Peasley tribe for generations." " What's that? " Cappy queried with shaking voice.- " Pay your way and take your beating like a sport, sir," Matt shot at him. He drew out his watch. " Well," he continued, " I guess the United Stat^ Marshal is in charge of the Tillicum by this time; so get busy with the bond and have him removed from the ship. The minute one of those birds lights on my deck I just go crazy! " " Yes, you do! " screamed Cappy Ricks, completely losing Ms self-control. " You go crazy — ^like a fox! " And then Cappy Ricks did something he had never done before. He swore, with a d^th of feeling and a range of language to be equaled only by a lumberjack. Matt Peasley waited vmtil he sub- sided for lack of new invective and then said reproachfully: " I can't stand this any longer, Mr. Ricks. Ill have to go now. Back home I belonged to the Congregational Church " " Out! " yelled Cappy. " Out, you vagabond! " THE COD-FISHER By Joseph Crosby Lincoln Where leap the long Atlantic swells In foam-streaked stretch of hill and dale, Where shrill the north-wind demon yells, And flings the spindrift down the gale; Where, beaten against the bending mast. The frozen raindrop clings and cleaves. With steadfast front for calm or blast His battered schooner rocks and heaves. To some the gain, to some the loss. To each the chance, the risk, the fight: For men must die that men must live- Lord, may we steer our course aright. The dripping deck beneath him reels, The flooded scuppers spout the brine; He heeds them not, he only feels The tugging of a tightened line. The grim white sea-fog o'er him throws Its clammy curtain, damp and cold; He minds it not — ^his work he knows, 'Tis but to fill an empty hold. Oft, driven through the night's blind wrack. He feels the dread berg's ghastly breath, Or bears draw nigh through walls of black A throbbing engine chanting death; But with a calm iinwrinkled brow He fronts them, grim and xuldismayed. For storm and ice and liner's bow — These are but chances of the trade. 292 THE COD-FISHER 293 Yet well he knows — where'er it be, On low Cape Cod or bluff Cape Ann — With straining eyes that search the sea A watching woman waits her man. He knows it and his love is deep, But work is work, and bread is bread, And though men drown and women weep The hungry thousands must be fed. To some the gain, to some the loss, To each his chance, the game with Fate: For men must die that men must live — Dear Lord, be kind to those who wait. ABNER'S WHALE By Frank Thomas Bullen In a previous chapter I have referred to the fact of a bounty being offered to whoever should first sight a useful whale, payable only in the event of the prize being secured by the ship. In conse- quence of our ill-success, and to stimulate the watchfulness of all, that bounty was now increased from ten pounds of tobacco to twenty, or fifteen dollars, whichever the winner chose to have. Most of us whites regarded this as quite out of the question for us, whose un- trained vision was as the naked eye to a telescope when pitted against the eagle-like sight of the Portuguese. Nevertheless, we all did our little best, and I know, for one, that when I descended from my lofty perch, after a two hours' vigil, my eyes often ached and burned for an hour afterwards from the intensity of my gaze across the shining waste of waters. Judge, then, of the surprise of everybody, when one forenoon watch, three days after we had lost sight of Trinidada, a most extraordinary soimd was heard from the fore crow's-nest. I was, at the time, up at the main, in company with Louis, the mate's har- pooner, and we stared across to see whatever was the matter. The watchman was unfortunate Abner Gushing, whose trivial offence had been so severely punished a short time before, and he was gesticulating and howling like a madman. Up from below came the deep growl of the skipper, " Foremast head, there, what d'ye say? " "B-b-b-blow, s-s-sir," stammered Abner; " a big whale right in the way of the sun, sir." " See anythin', Louey? " roared the skipper to my companion, just as we had both " raised " the spout almost in the glare cast by the sun. " Yessir," answered Louis; " but I kaint make him eout yet, sir." " All right; keep yer eye on him, and lemme know sharp "; and away he went aft for his glasses. The course was slightly altered, so that we headed direct for the whale, and in less than a minute afterwards we saw distinctly the great black column of a sperm whale's head rise well above the sea, scattering a circuit of foam before it, and emitting a bushy, tufted burst of vapor into the clear air. " There she white-waters! Ah, 294 ABXER'S WHALE 295 H-o-OO-o-o-w, blow, blow! " sang Louis; and then, in another tone, " Sperm whale, sir; big, lone fish, headin' Tjeout east-by-nothe." " M right. Way down from aloft," answered the skipper, who was already half-way up the main-rigging; and like squirrels we slipped out of our hoops and down the backstays, passing the skipper like a flash as he toiled upwards, bellowing orders as he went. Short as our journey down had been, when we arrived on deck we found all ready for a start. But as the whale was at least seven miles away, and we had a fair wind for Mm, there was no hurry to lower, so we all stood at attention by our respective boats, waiting for the signal. I found, to my surprise, that, although I was conscious of a much more rapid heart-beat than usual, I was not half so scared as I expected to be — that the excitement was rather pleasant than otherwise. There were a few traces of funk about some of the others still; but as for Abner, he was fairly transformed; I hardly knew the man. He was one of Goliath's boat's crew, and the big darkey was quite proud of him. His eyes sparkled, and he chuckled and smiled constantly, as one who is conscious of having done a grand stroke of business, not only for himself, but for all hands. " Lower away boats! " came pealing down from the skipper's lofty perch, succeeded instantly by the rattle of the patent blocks as the faUs flew through them, while the four beau- tiful craft took the water with an almost simultaneous splash. The ship-keepers had trimmed the yards to the wind and hauled up the courses, so that simply putting the helm down deadened our way, and allowed the boats to run clear without danger of fouling one another. To shove off and hoist sail was the work of a few moments, and with a fine working breeze away we went. As before, om- boat, being the chief's, had the post of honor; but there was now only one whale, and I rather wondered why we had all left the ship. Accord- ing to expectations, down he went when we were within a couple of miles of him, but quietly and with great dignity, elevating his tail perpendicularly in the air, and sinking slowly from our view. Again I foimd Mr. Count talkative. " Thet whaleTl stay down fifty minutes, I guess," said he, " fer he's every gill ov a hundred en twenty barl; and don't yew fergit it." " Do the big whales give much more trouble than the little ones? " I asked, seeing him thus chatty. " Wall, it's jest ez it happens, boy — just ez it happens. I've seen a fifty-bar! bull make the purtiest fight I ever heam tell ov — a fight thet lasted twenty hours, stove three 296 THF WORKER AND HIS WORK boats, 'n killed two men. Then, again, I've seen a hundred 'n fifty bar'l whale lay 'n take his grooel 'thout hardly wunkin' 'n eyelid — never moved ten fathom from fust iron till fin eout. So yew may say, boy, that they're like peepul — got thair individooal pekyewlyarities, an' thar's no countin' on 'em for sartin nary time." I was in great hopes of getting some useful information while his mood lasted; but it was over, and alence reigned. Nor did I dare to ask any more questions ; he looked so stem and fierce. The scene was very striking. Overhead, a bright blue sky just fringed with fleecy little clouds; beneath, a deep blue sea with innumerable tiny wavelets dancing and glittering in the blaze of the sun; but all swayed in one direction by a great, solemn swell that slowly rolled from east to west, like the measured breathing of some world-supporting monster. Four little craft in a group, with twenty-four men in them, silently waiting for battle with one of the mightiest of God's creatures — one that was indeed a terrible foe to encounter were he but wise enough to make the best use of his opportunities. Against him we came with our puny weapons, of which I could not help reminding myself that " he laugh- eth at the shaking of a spear." But when the man's brain was thrown into the scale against the instinct of the brute, the contest looked less unequal than at first sight, for there is the secret of success. My musings were very suddenly interrupted. Whether we had overrun our distance, or the whale, who was not " making a passage," but feeding, had changed his course, I do not know; but, anyhow, he broke water close ahead, coming straight for our boat. His great black head, like the broad bow of a dumb barge, driving the waves before it, loomed high and menacing to me, for I was not forbidden to look ahead now. But coolly, as if coming alongside the ship, the mate bent to the big steer-oar, and swung the boat off at right angles to her course, bringing her back again with another broad sheer as the whale passed foaming. This manoeuver brought us side by side with him before he had time to realize that we were there. Up till that instant he had evidently not seen us, and his surprise was cor- respondingly great. To see Louis raise his harpoon high above his head, and with a hoarse grunt of satisfaction plunge it into the black, shining mass beside him up to the hitches, was indeed a sight to be remembered. Quick as thought he snatched up a second harpoon, and as the whale rolled from us it flew from his hand, burying itself like the former one, but lower down the body. The great impetus we had ABXEflS \\'HALE 297 when we reached the whale carried us a long way past him, out of all danger from his struggles. Xo hindrance was experienced from the line by which we were connected with the whale, for it was loosely coiled in a space for the purposein the boat's bow to the extent of two himdred feet, and this was cast overboard by the harpooner cis soon as the fish was fast. He made a fearful to-do over it, rolling completely over several times backward and forward, at the same time smiting the sea with his mighty tafl, making an almost deafening noise and jxither. But we were comfortable enough, while we un- shipped the mast and made ready for action, being sufficiently far away from him to escape the fuU effects of his gambols. It was im- possible to avoid reflecting, however, upon what woidd happen if, in our unprepared and so far helpless state, he were, instead of simply tumbling about in an aimless, blind sort of fury, to rush at the boat and try to destroy it. Very few indeed would survive such an attack, imless the tactics were radically altered. Xo doubt they would be, for practices grow up in consequence of the circumstances with which they have to deal. After the usual time spent in furious attempts to free himself from oiu' annoyance, he betook himself below, leaving us to await his return, and hasten it as much as fxjssible by keeping a severe strain upon the line. Our efforts in this direction, however, did not seem to have any effect upon him at all. Flake after flake ran out of the tubs, imtil we were compelled to hand the end of our line to the second mate to splice his own on to. StiU it slipped away, and at last it was handed to the third mate, whose two tubs met the same fate. It was now Mistah Jones' turn to " bend on," which he did with many chuckles as of a man who was the last resource of the unfor- tunate. But his face grew longer and longer as the never-resting line continued to disappear. Soon he signaled us that he was nearly out of line, and two or three minutes after he bent on his " drogue " (a square piece of plank with a rope taU spliced into its center, and con- sidered to hinder a whale's progress at least as much as four boats), and let go the eaA. We had each bent on our drogues in the same way, when we passed our ends to one another. So now our friend was getting along somewhere below with 7200 feet of IJ^-inch rope, and weight additional equal to the drag of sixteen 30-feet boats. Of course, we knew that, unless he were dead and sinking, he could not possibly remain much longer beneath the surface. The 298 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK exhibition of endurance we had just been favored with was a very unusual one, I was told, it being a rare thing for a cachalot to take out two boats' lines before returning to the surface to spout. Therefore, we separated as widely as was thought necessary, in order to be near him on his arrival. It was, as might be imagined, some time before we saw the light of his countenance; but when we did, we had no difficulty in getting alongside of him again. My friend Goliath, much to my delight, got there first, and succeeded in pick- ing up the bight of the line. But having done so, his chance of dis- tinguishing himself was gone. Hampered by the immense quantity of sunken line which was attached to the whale, he could do nothing, and soon received orders to cut the bight of the line and pass the whale's end to us. He had hardly obeyed, with a very bad grace, when the whale started off to windward with us at a tremendous rate. The other boats, having no line, could do nothing to help, so away we went alone, with barely a hundred fathoms of line, in case he should take it into his head to sound again. The speed at which he went made it appear as if a gale of wind was blowing, and we flew along the sea surface, leaping from crest to crest of the waves with an incessant succession of cracks like pistol-shots. The flying spray drenched us and prevented us from seeing him, but I fully realized that it was nothing to what we should have to put up with if the wind freshened much. One hand was kept baling the water out which came so freely over the bows, but all the rest hauled with all their might upon the line, hoping to get a little closer to the flying monster. Inch by inch we gained on him, encouraged by the hoarse objurgations of the mate, whose excitement was intense. After what seemed a terribly long chase, we found his speed slackening, and we redoubled our efforts. Now we were close upon him ; now, in obedience to the steers- man, the boat sheered out a bit, and we were abreast of his laboring flukes; now the mate hurls his quivering lance with such hearty good-will that every inch of its slender shaft disappeared within the huge body. " Lay off I Off with her, Loueyl " screamed the mate; and she gave a wide sheer away from the whale, not a second too soon. Up flew that awful tail, descending with a crash upon the water not two feet from us. " Out oars! Pull, two! starn, three! " shouted the mate; and as we obeyed our foe turned to fight. Then might one see how courage and skill were such mighty factors in the apparently unequal contest. The whale's great length made it no easy job for ABNER'S \MIALE 299 him to turn, while our boat, with two oars a-side, and the great lever- age at the stem supplied by the nineteen-foot steer-oar, circled, backed, and darted ahead like a Kving thing animated by the mind of our commander. When the leviathan settled, we gave a wide berth to his probable place of ascent; when he rushed at us, we dodged him; when he paused, if only momentarily, in we flew, and got home a fear- ful thrust of the deadly lance. All fear was forgotten now — ^I panted, thirsted for his life. Once, indeed, in a sort of frenzy, when for an instant we lay side by side with him, I drew my sheath-knife, and plunged it repeatedly into the blub- ber, as if I were assisting in his destruction. Suddenly the mate gave a howl: " Stam all — stam aU! oh, stam! " and the oars bent like canes as we obeyed. There was an upheaval of the sea just ahead; then slowly, majestically, the vast body of our foe rose into the air. Up, up it went, while my heart stood stiU, until the whole of that immense creature hung on high, apparently motionless, and then fell — a hundred tons of solid flesh — back into the sea. On either side of that moimtainous mass the waters rose in shining towers of snowy foam, which fell in their turn, whirling and edd3ang around us as we tossed and feU like a chip in a whirlpool. Blinded by the fl}dng spray, baling for very life to free the boat from the water with which she was nearly full, it was some minutes before I was able to ' decide whether we were still uninjiu-ed or not. Then I saw, at a little distance, the whale lying quietly. As I looked he spouted, and the vapor was red with his blood. " Stam aU! " again cried our chief, and we retreated to a considerable distance. The old warrior's prac- ticed eye had detected the coming climax of our efiorts, the dying agony or " flurry " of the great mammal. Turning upon his side, he began to move in a circular direction, slowly at first, then faster and faster, imtil he was rushing round at tremendous speed, his great head raised quite out of water at times, clashing his enormous jaws. Torrents of blood poured from his spout-hole, accompanied by hoarse bellowings, as of some gigantic bull, but really caused by the laboring breath trying to pass through the clogged air passages. The utmost caution and rapidity of manipulation of the boat was necra- sary to avoid his maddened rush, but this gigantic energy was short- lived. In a few minutes he subsided slowly in death, his mighty body reclined on one side, the fin uppermost waving limply as he rolled to the swell, while the small waves broke gently over the carcass in 300 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK a low, monotonous surf, intensifying the profound silence that had succeeded the tumult of our conflict with the late monarch of the deep. Hardly had the flurry ceased, when we hauled up alongside of our hard-won prize, in order to secure a line to him in a better manner than at present for hauling him to the ship. This was effected by cutting a hole through the tough, gristly substance of the flukes with the short " boat-spade," carried for the purpose. The end of the line, cut off from the faithful harpoon that had held it so long, was then passed through this hole and made fast. This done, it was " Smoke-oh ! " The luxury of that rest and refreshment was some- thing to be grateful for, coming, as it did, in such complete contrast to our recent violent exertions. The ship was some three or four miles off to leeward, so we reck- oned she would take at least an hour and a half to work up to us. Meanwhile, our part of the performance being over, and well over, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, lazily rocking on the gentle swell by the side of a catch worth at least £800. During the conflict I had not noticed what now claimed attention — several great masses of white, semi-transparent-looking substance floating about, of huge size and irregular shape. But one of these curious lumps came floating by as we lay, tugged at by several fish, and I immediately asked the mate if he could tell me what it was and where it came from. He told me that, when dying, the cachalot always ejected the contents of his stomach, which were invariably composed of such masses as we saw before us; that he believed the stuff to be portions of big cuttle-fish, bitten off by the whale for the purpose of swallowing, but he wasn't sure. Anyhow, I could haul this piece alongside now, if I liked, and see. Secretly wondering at the indifference shown by this officer of forty years' whaling experience to such a wonderful fact as appeared to be here presented, I thanked him, and, sticking the boat-hook into the lump, drew it alongside. It was at once evident that it was a massive fragment of cuttle-fish — tentacle or arm — as thick as a stout man's body, and with six or seven sucking-discs or acetabula on it. These were about as large as a saucer, and on their inner edge were thickly set with hooks or claws all round the rim, sharp as needles, and almost the shape and size of a tiger's. To what manner of awful monster this portion of limb belonged, I could only faintly imagine; but of course I remembered, as any sailor would, that from my earliest sea-going I had been told that ABXER'S \^TIALE 301 the cuttle-fish was the biggest in the sea, although I never even began to think it might be true until now. I asked the mate if he had ever seen such creatures as this piece belonged to alive and kick- ing. He answered, languidly, '" Wall, I guess so; but I don't take any stock in fish, 'cept for provisions er ile — en thet's a fact." It will be readily believed that I vividly recalled this conversation when, many years after, I read an account by the Prince of ^Monaco of his dis- covery of a gigantic squid, to which his naturalist gave the name of Lepidoteuthis Gritnaldiif Truly the indifference and apathy mani- fested by whalers generally to everything except commercial matters is wonderful — hardly to be credited. However, this was a mighty revelation to me. For the first time, it was possible to imderstand that, contrary to the usual notion of a whale's being unable to swallow a herring, here was a kind of whale that could swallow — ^weU, a block four or five feet square apparently ; who lived upon creatures as large as himself, if one might judge of their bulk by the sample to hand; but being unable, from only possessing teeth in one jaw, to masticate his food, was compelled to tear it in sizable pieces, bolt it whole, and leave his commissariat department to do the rest. Wiule thus ruminating, the mate and Louis began a desultory conversation concerning what they termed " ambergrease.' I had never even heard the word before, although I had a notion that ililton, in " Paradise Regained, " describing the Satanic banquet, had spoken of something being " gris-amber steamed." They could by no means agree as to what this mysterious substance was, how it was produced, or imder what conditions. They knew that it was sometimes found floating near the dead body of a sperm whale — the mate, in fact, stated that he had taken it once from the rectum of a cachalot — and they were certain that it was of great value— from one to three guineas per ounce. WTien I got to know more of the natiu-al history of the sperm whale, and had studied the literature of the subject, I was no longer surprised at their want of agreement, since the learned doctors who have written upon the subject do not seem to have come to definite concltisions either. By some it is supposed to be the product of a diseased condition of the creature; others consider that it is merely the excreta, which, normally fluid, has by some means become concreted. It is nearly always found with cuttle-fish beaks imbedded in its substance, show- ing that these indigestible portions of the sperm whale's food have in 302 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK some manner become mixed with it during its formation in the bowel. Chemists have analyzed it with scanty results. Its great value is due to its property of intensifying the power of perfumes, although, strange to say, it has little or no odor of its own, a faint trace of musk being perhaps detectable in some cases. The ship now neared us fast, and as soon as she rounded-to, we left the whale and pulled towards her, paying out line as we went. Arriving alongside, the line was handed on board, and in a short time the prize was hauled to the gangway. We met with a very different reception this time. The skipper's grim face actually looked almost pleasant as he contemplated the colossal proportions of the latest addition to our stock. He was indeed a fine catch, being at least seventy feet long and in splendid condition. As soon as he was secured alongside in the orthodox fashion, all hands were sent to dinner, with an intimation to look sharp over it. Judging from our slight previous experience, there was some heavy labor before us, for this whale was nearly four times as large as the one caught off the Cape Verds. And it was so. Verily those officers toiled like Titans to get that tremendous head off, even the skipper taking a hand. In spite of their efforts, it was dark before the heavy job was done. As we were in no danger of bad weather, the head was dropped astern by a hawser until morning, when it would be safer to dissect it. All that night we worked incessantly, ready to drop with fatigue, but not daring to suggest the possibility of such a thing. Several of the officers and harpooners were allowed a few hours off, as their special duty of dealing with the head at daylight would be so arduous as to need all their energies. When day dawned we were allowed a short rest, while the work of cutting up the head was undertaken by the rested men aft. At seven bells (7.30) it was " turn to" all hands again. The " junk " was hooked on to both cutting tackles, and the windlass manned by everybody who could get hold. Slowly the enormous mass rose, canting the ship heavily as it came, while every stick and rope aloft complained of the great strain upon them. When at last it was safely shipped, and the tackles cast off, the size of this small portion of a full-grown cachalot's body could be realized, not before. It was hauled from the gangway by tackles, and securely lashed ABNER'S WHALE 303 to the rail r unnin g round beneath the top of the bulwarks for that purpose — the " lash-rail " — ^where the top of it towered up as high as the third ratline of the main-rigging. Then there was another spell, while the " case " was separated from the skuU. This was too large to get on board, so it was lifted half-way out of the water by the tackles, one hooked on each side; then they were made fast, and a spar rigged across them at a good height above the top of the case. A small block was lashed to this ^ar, through which a line was rove. A long, narrow bucket was attached to one end of this rope; the other end on deck was attended by two men. One unfortunate beggar was perched aloft on the above-mentioned spar, where his position, like the mainyard of INIarryatt's verbose carpenter, was " precarious and not at all permanent." He was provided with a pole, with which he pushed the bucket down through a hole cut in the upper end of the " case," whence it was drawn out by the chaps on deck full of spermaceti. It was a weary, imsatisfactory process, wasting a great deal of the substance being baled out; but no other way was apparently possible. The grease blew about, drenching most of us engaged in an altogether unpleasant fashion, while, to mend matters, the old barky began to roll and tumble about in an aimless, drunken sort of way, the result of a new cross swell rolling up from the southwestward. As the stuff was gained, it was poured into large tanks in the blubber-room, the quantity being too great to be held by the try-pots at once. Twenty-five barrels of this clear, wax-like substance were baled from that case; and when at last it was lowered a little, and cut away from its supports, it was impyossible to help thinking that much was stiU remaining within which we, with such rude means, were imable to save. Then came the task of cut- ting up the junk. Layer after layer, eight to ten inches thick, was sliced oS, cut into suitable pieces, and passed into the tanks. So full was the matter of ^ermaceti that one could take a piece as large as one's head in the hands, and squeeze it like a ^)onge, expressing the spermaceti in showers, imtil nothing remained but a tiny ball of fiber. All this soft, pulpy mass was held together by walls of ex- ceedingly tough, gristly integument ("white horse"), which was as difficult to cut as gutta-percha, and, but for the peculiar texture, not at all unlike it. 304 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK When we had finished separating the junk, there was nearly a foot of oil on deck in the waist, and uproarious was the laughter when some hapless individual, losing his balance, slid across the deck and sat down with a loud splash in the deepest part of the accumulation. The lower jaw of this whale measured exactly nineteen feet in length from the opening of the mouth, or, say the last of the teeth, to the point, and carried twenty-eight teeth on each side. For the time, it was hauled aft out of the way, and secured to the lash-rail. The subsequent proceedings were just the same as before described, only more so. For a whole week our labors continued, and when they were over we had stowed below a hundred and forty-six barrels of mingled oil and spermaceti, or fourteen and a half tuns. It was really a pleasant sight to see Abner receiving, as if being invested with an order of merit, the twenty pounds of tobacco to which he was entitled. Poor fellow! he felt as if at last he were going to be thought a little of, and treated a little better. He brought his bounty forrard, and shared it out as far as it would go with the great- est delight and good nature possible. Whatever he might have been thought of aft, certainly, for the time, he was a very important per- sonage forrard; even the Portuguese, who were inclined to be jealous of what they considered an infringement of their rights, were molli- fied by the generosity shown. After every sign of the operations had been cleared away, the jaw was brought out, and the teeth extracted with a small tackle. They were set sohdly into a hard white gum, which had to be cut away all around them before they would come out. When cleaned of the gum, they were headed up in a small barrel of brine. The great jaw-pans were sawn off, and placed at the disposal of anybody who wanted pieces of bone for " scrimshaw," or carved work. This is a very favorite pastime on board whalers, though, in ships such as ours, the crew have little opportunity for doing anything, hardly any leisure during daylight being allowed. But our carpenter was a famous workman at " scrimshaw," and he started half a dozen walk- ing-sticks forthwith. A favorite design is to carve the bone into the similitude of a rope, with " worming " of smaller line along its lays. A handle is caved out of a whale's tooth, and insets of baleen, silver, cocoa-tree, or ebony, give variety and finish. The tools used are of the roughest. Some old files, softened in the fire, and filed into ABNER'S \^^^ALE 305 grooves something like saw-teeth, are most used; but old knives, sail-needles, and chisels are pressed into service. The work turned out would, in many cases, take a very high place in an exhibition of turnery, though never a lathe was near it. Of course, a long time is taken over it, e^ecially the poUshing, which is done with oil and whiting, if it can be got — powdered piunice if it cannot. I once had an elaborate pastry-cutter carved out of six whale's teeth, which I purchased for a poimd of tobacco from a seaman of the Coral whaler, and afterwards sold in Dunedin, New Zealand, for £2 10s., the pur- chaser bdng decidedly of opinion that he had a bargain. 20 THE SALMON By Rex Beach " I DARE say Kalvik is rather lively during the summer season," Emerson remarked to Cherry. " Yes; the ships arrive in May, and the fish begin to run in July. After that nobody sleeps." " It must be rather interesting," he observed. "It is more than that; it is inspiring. Why, the story of the salmon is an epic in itself. You know they live in a cycle of four years, no more, always returning to the waters of their nativity to die; and I have heard it said that during one of those four years they disap- pear, no one knows where, reappearing out of the mysterious depths of the sea as if at a signal. They come by the legion, in countless scores of thousands; and when once they have tasted the waters of their birth they never touch food again, never cease their onward rush until they become bruised and battered wrecks, drifting down from the spawning-beds. When the call of nature is answered and the spawn is laid, they die. They never seek the salt sea again, but carpet the river with their bones. When they feel the homing impulse they come from the remotest depths, heading unerringly for the par- ticular parent stream whence they originated. If sand-bars should block their course in dry seasons or obstacles intercept them, they will hurl themselves out of the water in an endeavor to get across. They may disregard a thousand rivers, one by one; but when they finally taste the sweet currents which flow from their birthplaces their whole nature changes, and even their physical features alter: they grow thin, and the head takes on the sinister curve of the prey- ing bird." " I had no idea they acted that way," said Boyd. " You paint a vivid picture." " That's because they interest me. As a matter of fact, these fisheries are more fascinating than any place I've ever seen. Why, you just ought to witness the ' run.' These empty waters become sud- denly crowded, and the fish come in a great silver horde, which races up, up, up toward death and obliteration. They come with the vio- 306 THE S-\LMOX 307 lence of a summer storm; like a prodigious gleaming army they swarm and bend forward, eager, undeviating, one-purposed. It's quite im- possible to describe it — this great silver horde. They are entirely defenceless, of course, and almost every Uving thing preys upon them. The birds congregate in millions, the foiu^-footed beasts come down from the hills, the Apaches of the sea harry them in dense droves, and even man appears from distant coasts to take his toll; but still they pass bravely on. The clank of machinery makes the hiUs nmible, the hiss of steam and the sighs of the soldering-fumaces are like the complaint of some giant overgorging himself. The river swarms with the fleets of fish-boats, which skim outward with the dawn to flit homeward again at twilight and settle like a vast brood of white-winged gulls. Men let the hours go by imheeded, and for- get to sleep." " WTiat sort of men do they hire? " " Chinese, Japs, and Italians, mainly. It's like a foreign country here, only there are no women. The bunk-rooms are filled with opium fumes and noisy with clacking tongues. On one side of the %-illage streets the Orientals bum incense to their Joss, across the way the Latins worship the Virgin. They work side by side all day until they are ready to drop." " How long does it all last? " " Only about six weeks; then the furnace fires die out, the ships are loaded, the men go to sleep, and the breezes waft them out into the August haze, after which Kalvik sags back into its ten months' coma, becoming, as you see it now, a dead, deserted village, shunned by man." " Jove! you have a graphic tongue," said Emerson appreciatively. " But I don't see how those huge plants can pay for thar upkeep with such a short run." " Well, they do; and, what's more, they pyay tremendously; some- times a hxmdred per cent, a year or more." "Impossible!" Emerson was now thoroughly aroused, and Qierry continued: " Two years ago a ship sailed into port in early May loaded with an army of men, with machinery, limiber, coal, and so forth. They landed, built the plant, and had it ready to operate by the time the run started. They made their catch, and sailed away again in August with enough salmon in the hold to pay twice over for the whole thing. 308 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK Willis Marsli did even better than that the year before, but of course the price of fish was high then. Next season will be another big year." " How is that? " " Every fourth season the run is large; nobody knows why. Every time there is a Presidential election the fish are shy and very scarce; that lifts prices. Every year in which a President of the United States is inaugurated they are plentiful." Boyd laughed. " The Alaska salmon takes more interest in politics than I do. I wonder if he is a Republican or Democrat? " " Inasmuch as he is a red salmon, I dare say you'd call him a Socialist," laughed Cherry. Emerson rose, and began to pace back and forth. " And you mean to say the history of the other canneries is the same? " " Certainly." " I had no idea there were such profits in the fisheries up here." " Nobody knows it outside of those interested. The Kalvik River is the most wonderful salmon river in the world, for it has never failed once; that's why the Companies guard it so jealously; that's why they denied you shelter. You see, it is set away off here in one corner of Behring Sea without means of communication or access, and they intend to keep it so." The main body of salmon struck the Kalvik River on the first day of July. For a week past the run had been slowly growing, while the canneries tested themselves; but on the opening day of the new month the horde issued boldly forth from the depths of the sea, and the battle began in earnest. They came during the hush of the dawn, a mad, crowding throng from No Man's Land, to wake the tide-rips and people the shimmering reaches of the bay, lashing them to sudden life and fury. Outside, the languorous ocean heaved as smiling and serene as ever, but within the harbor a wondrous change occurred. As if in answer to some deep-sea signal, the tides were quickened by a coursing multitude, steadfast and unafraid, yet foredoomed to die by the hand of man, or else more surely by the serving of their destiny. Qad in their argent mail of blue and green, they worked the bay to madness; they overwhelmed the waters, surging forward in great droves and columns, hesitating only long enough to frolic THE SALMON 309 with the shifting currents, as if rejoicing in their strength and beauty. At times they swam with cleaving fins exposed; again they churned the placid waters until swift combers raced across the shal- low bars like tidal waves, while the deeper channels were shot through with the shadowy forms or pierced by the lightning glint of silvered bellies. They streamed in with the flood tide to retreat again with the ebb, but there was neither haste nor caution in their progress; they had come in answer to the breeding call of the sea, and its exultation was upon them, driving them relentlessly onward. They had no voice against its overmastering ^ell. Mustering in the early light like a swarm of giant white-winged moths, the fishing-boats raced forth with the flowing tide, xirged by sweep and sail and lusty sinews. Pa5Tng out their himdred-fathom nets, they drifted over the banks like flocks of resting sea-gulls, only to come ploughing back again deep laden with their spoils. Grimy tugboats lay beside the traps, shriUing the air with creaking winches as they " brailed " the struggling fish, a half-ton at a time, from the " pounds," now chiuned to mflky foam by the ever-growing throng of prisoners; and all the time the big plants gulped the sea harvest, faster and faster, clanking and gnashing their metal jaws, while the mounds of salmon lay hip>-deep to the crews that fed the butch- ering machines. The Iron Chink, or mechanical cleaner, is perhaps the most in- genious of the many labor-saving devices used in the salmon fisheries. It is an awkward-looking, yet very effective contrivance of revolving knives and conveyors which seizes the fish whole and delivers it cleaned, clipped, cut, and ready to be washed. With superhimian dexterity it does the work of twenty lightning-like butchers. The time had come for man to take his toll. Now dawned a period of feverish activity wherein no one might rest short of actual exhaustion. Haste became the cry, and com- fort fled. Big George, when he had fully gra^)ed the situation, became the boss fisherman on the instant; before the others had reached the cook-house he was busied in laying out his crews and distributing his gear. That night the floors of the fish-dock groaned beneath a weight of silver-sided sahnon piled waist-high to a tall man. All through the cool, dim-lit hours the ranks of Chinese butchers hacked and slit and slashed with swift, sure, tireless strokes, while the great build- 310 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK ing echoed hollowly to the clank of machines and the hissing sighs of the soldering-furnaces. There before him were thousands of salmon. They were strewn in a great mass upon the dock and inside the shed, while from the scow beneath they came in showers as the handlers tossed them upward from their pues. Through the wide doors he saw the backs of the butchers busily at work over their tables, and heard the uproar of the cannery running full for the first time. " Where did those fish come from? " Emerson asked. " From the trap." George smiled as he had not smiled in many weeks. " They've struck in like I knew they would, and they're running now by the thousands. I've fished these waters for years, but I never seen the likes of it. They'll tear that trap to pieces. They're smothering in the pot, tons and tons of 'em, with millions more milling below the leads because they can't get in. It's a sight you'll not see once in a lifetime." " That means that we can run the plant — that we'll get all we can use? " "Yes! We've got fish enough to run two canneries. They've struck their gait I tell you, and they'll never stop now night or day till they're through. We don't need no gill-netters; what we need is butchers and slimers and handlers. There never was a trap site in the North till this one.',' He flung out a long, hairy arm, bared half to the shoulder, and waved it exultantly. " We built this plant to cook forty thousand salmon a day, but I'll bring you three thou- sand every hour, and you've got to cook 'em. Do you hear? We've won, my boyl We've won! " RECLAIMING THE DESERT By Harold Bell Weight In the making of the Desert the canyon carving, delta-building river did not count the centuries of its labor; the rock-hewing, beach- forming waves did not number the ages of their toil; the burning, constant sun and the drying, drifting winds were not careful for the years. Somewhere in the eternity that lies back of all the yesterdays, the great river found the salt waves of the ocean fathoms deep in what is now the Eling's Basin and extending a hundred and seventy miles north of the shore that takes their wash to-day. Slowly, through the centimes of that age of all beginnings, the river, cutting canyons and valleys in the north and carrying southward its load of silt, built from the east across the gulf to Lone Mountain a mighty delta dam. South of this new land the ocean still received the river; to the north the gulf became an inland sea. The upper edge of this new- bom sea beat helpless against a line of low, barren hills beyond which lay many miles of a rainless land. Eastward lay yet more miles of desolate waste. And between this sea and the parent ocean on the west, extending southward past the delta dam, the moimtains of the Coast Range shut out every moisture-laden cloud and turned back every life-bearing stream. Thus trapped and helpless, the bright waters, with all their life, fell under the constant, fierce, beat- ing rays of the semi-tropical sun and shrank from the wearing sweep of the dry, tireless winds. Uncounted still, the centuries of that age also passed and the bottom of that sea lay bare, dry and lifeless under the burning sky, still beaten by the pitiless sun, still swept by the scorching winds. The place that had held the glad waters with their teeming life came to be an empty basin of blinding sand, of quivering heat, of dreadfid death. Unheeding the ruin it had wrought, the river swept on its way. And so — ^hemmed in by mountain wall, barren hills and rainless plains; forgotten by the ocean; deserted by the river, 311 312 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK that thirsty land lay, the loneliest, most desolate bit of this great Western Continent. But the river could not work this ruin without contributing to the desert the rich strength it had gathered from its tributary lands. Mingled with the sand of the ancient sea-bed was the silt from far- away mountain and hill and plain. That basin of Death was more than a dusty tomb of a life that had been; it was a sepulchre that held the vast treasure of a life that would be — would be when the ages should have made also the master men, who would dare say to the river: " Make restitution! " — men who could, with power, com- mand the rich life within the tomb to come forth. But master men are not the product of years — scarcely, indeed, of centuries. The master passions, the governing instincts, the lead- ing desires and the driving fears that hew and carve and form and fashion the race are as reckless of the years as are wave and river and sun and wind. Therefore, the forgotten land held its wealth until Time should make the giants that could take it. In the centuries of those forgotten ages that went into the making of The King's Basin Desert, the families of men grew slowly into tribes, the tribes grew slowly into nations and the nations grew slowly into worlds. New worlds became old; and other new worlds were discovered, explored, developed and made old; war and famine and pestilence and prosperity hewed and formed, carved and built and. fashioned, even as wave and river and sun and wind. The kingdoms of earth, air and water yielded up their wealth as men grew strong to take it; the elements bowed their necks to his yoke, to fetch and carry for him as he grew wise to order; the wilder- ness fled, the mountains lay bare their hearts, the waste places paid tribute as he grew brave to command. Across the wide continent the tracks of its wild life were trodden out by the broad cattle trails, the paths of the herds were marked by the wheels of immigrant wagons and the roads of the slow-moving teams became swift highways of steel. In the East the great cities that received the hordes from every land were growing ever greater. On the far west coast the crowded multitude was building even as it was building in the East. In the Southwest savage race suc- ceeded savage race, until at last the slow-footed padres overtook the swift-footed Indian and the rude civilization made possible by the priests in turn ran down the priest. RECLAIMING THE DESERT 313 About the land of my story, forgotten under the dry sky, this ever-restless, ever-swelling tide of life swirled and eddied — swirled and eddied, but touched it not. On the west it swept even to the foot of the grim mountain wall. On the east one far-flimg ripple reached even to the river — ^when Rubio City was bom. But the Desert waited, silent and hot and fierce in its desolation, holding its treasures under the seal of death against the coming of the strong ones; waited imtil the man-making forces that wrought through those long ages should have done also their work; waited for this age — for your age and mine — for the age of the Seer and his com- panions — for the days of my story, the days of Barbara and her friends. The Seer's expedition, returning from the south, made camp on the bank of the Rio Colorado twenty miles below Rubio City. It was the last night out. Supper was over, and the men, with their pipffis and cigarettes, settled themselves in various careless attitudes of repwse after the long day. Their sunbiuned faces, toughened fig- ures and worn, desert-stained clothing testified to their weeks of toQ in the open air under the dry sky of an almost rainless land. Some were old-timers — veterans of man}' a similar campaign. Two were new recruits on their first trip. AU were strong, clean-cut, vigorous ^cimens of intelligent, healthy manhood, for in all professions, not excepting the army and navy, there can be found no finer body of men than our civil engineers. Day after day they rode from sunrise until dark ; studying the land, estimating distances and grades, observing the courses of the chan- nels cut by the overflow and the marks of high water, noting the character of the soil and vegetation; sometimes together, sometimes separated; with Jose to select their camping places and to help them with his Indian knowledge of the country. And always at night, after the long hard day, when supper — cooked by their own hands — was over, with pipe and cigarettes they reviewed their observations and compared notes, summing up the results before rolling in their blankets to sleep imder the stars. Some day, perhaps, when the world is much older and very much wiser. Civilization will erect a proper monument to the memory of such men as these. But just now Civilization is too greedily quar- 314 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK reling over its newly acquired wealth to acknowledge its debt of honor to those who made this wealth possible. But the Seer and his companion concerned themselves with no such thoughts as these. They thought only of the possibility of con- verting the thousands of acres of The King's Basin Desert into pro- ductive farms. For this they conceived to be their work. They had worked across the Basin to Lone Mountain and back to the river to a point pearly opposite the clump of cottonwoods where they had left the expedition. To-morrow night they would be in Rubio City. " Abe," said the Seer, " our intake would go in right here. We could follow the old channel of Dry River, with our canal about twenty miles out, put in a heading and lead off our mains and laterals." The party that was to make the first sxurvey in the Desert was being formed and equipped under the direction of Abe Lee. Horses, mules, wagons, camp outfits and supplies, with Indian and Mexican laborers, teamsters of several nationalities and here and there a Chinese cook, were assembled. Toward the last from every part of the great Western country came the surveyors and engineers — sunburned, khaki-clad men most of them, toughened by their out-of- door life, overflowing with health and good spirits. They hailed one another joyously and greeted Abe with extravagant delight, over- whelming him with questions. For the word had gone out that the Seer, beloved by all the tribe, and his lieutenant, almost equally be- loved, were making " big medicine " in The King's Basin Desert. Not a man of them would have exchanged his chance to go for a crown and sceptre. Slowly, day by day, the surveying party under the Seer pushed deeper and deeper into the awful desolation of The King's Baan Desert. They were the advance force of a mighty army ordered ahead by Good Business — the master passion of the race. Their duty was to learn the strength of the enemy, to measure its resources, to spy out its weaknesses and to gather data upon which a campaign would be planned. Under the Seer the expedition was divided into several smaller parties, each of which was assigned to certain defined districts. RECLAIMING THE DESERT 315 Here and there, at seemingly careless intervals in the wide expanse, the white tents of the diviaon camps shone through the many col- ored veils of the desert. Tall, thin colmuns of dust lifted into the sky from the water wagons that crawled ceaselessly from water hole to camp and from camp to water hole — ^hung in long clouds above the supply train laboring heavily across the dim plain to and from Rubio City — or rose in quick pufis and twisting spirals from the feet of some saddle horse bearing a messenger from the Chief to some distant lieutenant. Every morning, from each of the camps, squads of khaki-clad men bearing transit and level, stake and pole and flag — ^the weapons of their warfare — put out in different directions into the vast silence that seemed to engulf them. Every evening the squads returned, desert-stained and wezxy, to their rest imder the lonesome stars. Every morning the sun broke fiercely up from the long level of the eastward plain to pour its hot strength down up»on these pigmy crea- tures, who dared to invade the territory over which he had, for so many ages, held undiluted dominion. Every evening the sim plunged fiercely down behind the purple wall of mountains that shut in the Basin on the west, as if to gather strength in some nether world for to-morrow's fight. Always there was the same flood of white light from the deep, dry sky that was xmcrossed by shred of cloud; always the same wide, tawny waste, harshly glaring near at hand — filled with awful mys- teries imder the many colored mists of the distance; untfl the eyes ached and the sold cried out in wonder at it all. Always there were the same deep nights, with the lonely stars so far away in the velvet purple darkness; the soft breathing of the desert; the pungent smell of greasewood and salt-bush ; the weird, quavering call of the ground owl; or the wild coyote chorus, as if the long lost spirits of long ago savage races cried out a dreadful warning to these invaders. And in aU of this the land made itself felt against these men in the silent menace, the still waiting, the subtle caU, the promise, the threat and the challenge of La Palma de la Mano de Dios. These lines of stakes that every day stretched farther and farther into and across the waste seemed, in the wideness of the land, piti- fully foolish. Looking back over the lines, the men who set them could scarcely distinguish the way they had come. But they knew 316 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK that the stakes were there. They knew that some day that other, mightier company, the main army, would move along the way they had marked to meet the strength of the barren waste with the strength of the great river and take for the race the wealth of the land. The sound of human voices was flat and ineffectual in that age-old solitude, but the speakers knew that following their feeble voices would come the shouting, ringing, thundering chorus of the life that was to follow them into that silent land of death. Somewhere in those forgotten ages that went into the making of The King's Basin Desert, a company of free-born citizens of the land, moved by that master passion — Good Business — found their way to the banks of the Colorado. In time Good Business led them to build their pueblos and to cultivate their fields by irrigation with water from the river and erect their rude altars to their now long-forgotten gods. Driven by the same passion that drove the Indians, the emigrant wagons moved toward the new gold country, and some financial genius saw Good Business at the river-crossing near the site of the ancient city. At first it was no more than a ferry, but soon others with eyes for profit established a trading point where the overland voyagers could replenish their stock of supplies, sure to be low after the hundreds of miles across the wide plains. Then also, in obedience to Good Business, pleasures heard the call, saloons, gambling houses and dance halls appeared, and for profit the joys of civilization arrived in the savage land. Good Business sent the prospectors who foimd the mines, the capital that developed them and the laborers who dug the ore. Good Business sent the cattle barons and their cowboys, sent the speculators and the pioneer merchants. Good Business sent also, in the fullnesa of time, Jefferson Worth. Of old New England Puritan stock. Worth had come through the hard life of a poor farm boy with two dominant elements in his character: an almost superhuman instinct for Good Business, in- herited no doubt, and an instinct, also inherited, for religion. The instinct for trade, from much cultivation, had waxed strong and stronger with the years. The rehgion that he had from his fore- fathers was become little more than a superstition. It was his genius for business that led him, in his young manhood, to leave the farm, and it was inevitable that from making money he should come to RECLAIMING THE DESERT 317 making money make more money. It was the other dominant ele- ment in his character that kept him scrupulously honest, scrupu- lously moral. Besides this, honesty and morality were also " good business." Seeking always larger opportunities for the employment of his small, steadily-increasing financial strength, ilr. Worth established the Koneer Bank. Later, as he had foreseen, the same master pas- sion brought the great railroad with still larger opportimities for his money to make more money. And now the same master passion that had driven the Indian, the emigrant, the miner, the cowman, the banker and the railroad was driving the eastern capitalists to ^end their moneyed strength in the reclamation of The King's Basin Desert. It was Good Business that called to Jefferson Worth now as he saw the immense possibilities of the land. As truly as the ages had made the barren desert with its hard, thirsty life, the ages had produced Jefferson Worth, a carefully per- fected, money-making machine, as sUent, hard and lonely as the desert itself. With apparently no vices, no passions, no mistakes, no failures, his only relation to his feUow-men was a business relation. With his almost supernatural ability to foresee, to measure, to weigh and judge, with his cold, mask-like face and his manner of considering carefully every word and of placing a value upon every trivial inci- dent, he was respected, feared, trusted, even admired^and that was all. No; not all. By those who were forced, through circumstances — business circumstances — ^to contribute to his prosperity and financial success, he was hated. Such is the unreasonableness of human kind. Business, to this man as to many of his kind, was not the mean, sordid grasping and hoarding of money. It was his profession, but it was even more than a profession ; it was the expression of his genius. StiU more it was, through him, the expression of the age in which he lived, the expression of the master passion that in all ages had wrought in the making of the race. He looked upon a successful deal £is a good surgeon looks upon a successful oi>eration, as an architect upon the completion of a building or an artist upon his finished picture. But to a greater degree than to artist or surgeon, the success of his work was measured by the accimiulation of dollars. Apart from his work he valued the money received from his opera- tions no more than the surgeon his fee, the artist his price. The work 318 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK itself was his passion. Because dollars were the tools of his craft he was careful of them. The more he succeeded, the more power he gained for greater success. The work of the expedition was nearly finished. The banker knew now from the results of the survey and from his own careful observations and estimates that the Seer's dream was not only pos- sible from an engineering point of view, but from the careful capital- ist's standpoint would justify a large investment. Lying within the lines of the ancient beach and thus below the level of the great river, were hundreds of thousands of acres equal in richness of soil to the famous delta lands of the Nile. The bringing of the water from the river and its distribution through a system of canals and ditches, while a work of great magnitude requiring the expenditure of large sums of money, was, as an engineering problem, comparatively simple. As Jefferson Worth gazed at the wonderful scene, a vision of the changes that were to come to that land passed before him. He saw first, following the nearly completed work of the engineers, an army of men beginning at the river and pushing out into the desert with their canals, bringing with them the life-giving water. Soon, with the coming of the water, would begin the coming of the settlers. Hummocks would be levelled, washes and arroyos filled, ditches would be made to the company canals, and in place of the thin growth of gray-green desert vegetation with the ragged patches of dun earth would come great fields of luxuriant alfalfa, bUlowing acres of grain, with miles upon miles of orchards, vineyards and groves. The fierce desert life would give way to the herds and flocks and the home life of the farmer. The railroad would stretch its steel strength into this new world; towns and cities would come to be where now was only solitude and desolation; and out from this world-old treasure house vast wealth would pour to enrich the peoples of the earth. The wealth of an empire lay in that land under the banker's eye, and Capital held the key. But while the work of the engineers was simple, it would be a great work; and it was the magnitude of the enterprise and the con- sequent requirement of large sums of money that gave Capital its opportunity. Without water the desert was worthless. With water the productive possibilities of that great territory were enormous. Without Capital the water could not be had. Therefore, Capital RECLAIMING THE DESERT 319 was master of the atuation and, by controlling the water, could exact royal tribute from the wealth of the land. With the coming of the water also, the stream of human life that flowed into the Basin was swollen by hundreds of settlers driven by the master passion — Good Business — to toil and traffic, to build the city, to subdue and cultivate the land and thus to realize the Seer's dream, while the fengineer himself was banished from the work to which he had given his life. Every sunrise saw new tent-houses qjringing up on the claims of the settlers around the Company town and new buildings beginning in the center of it all — Kingston. Every sunset saw miles of new ditches ready to receive the water from the canal and acres of new land cleared and graded for irrigation. As the trying months of the semi-tropical simimer approached, the great Desert, so awful in its fierce desolation, so pregnant with the life it was stiU so reluctant to yield, gathered all its dreadful forces to withstand the inflowing streams of human energy. In the fierce winds that rushed through the moimtain passes and swept across the hot plains like a torrid furnace blast; in the blinding, stinging, choking, smothering dust that moved in golden clouds from rim to rim of the Basin; in the hot sky, without shred or raveling of cloud; in the creeping, silent, poison life of insect and reptUe; in the maddening dryness of the thirsty vegetation ; in the weird, beauti- ful falseness of the ever-changing mirage, the spirit of the Desert issued its silent challenge: the silent, sinister, menacing threat of a desolation that had conquered by cruel waiting and that lay in wait still to conquer. With grim determination, nervous energy, enduring strength and a dogged tenacity of purpose, the invading flood of humanity, irre- sistibly driven by that master passion, Good Business, matched its strength against that of the Desert in the season of its greatest power. Steadily mile by mile, acre by acre, and at times almost foot by foot, the pioneers wrested their future farms and homes from the dreadful forces that had held them for ages. Steadily, with the in- flowing stream of Ufe from the world beyond the Basin's rim, the area of improved lands about Kingston extended and the work in the Company's town went on. By midsummer many acres of alfalfa, with Egyptian com and other grains, showed broad fields of living green cut into the dull, dun plain of the Desert and laced with silver threads of water shining in the sun. 320 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK In obedience to its master passion — Good Business — the race now began pouring its life into the barren wastes of The King's Basin Desert. At Deep Well (which is no well at all) on the rim of the Basin, trainloads of supplies, implements, machinery, lumber and construc- tion material, horses, mules and men were daily side-tracked and unloaded on the desert sands. Overland travelers gazed in startled wonder at the scene of stirring activity that biu-st so suddenly upon them in the midst of the barren land through which they had ridden for hours without sight of a human habitation or sign of man. The great mountain of goods, piled on the dun plain; the bands of horses and mules; the camp-fires; the blankets spread on the bare ground; the men moving here and there in seemingly hopeless confusion — all looked so ridiculously out of place and so pitifully helpless. Every hour companies of men with teams and vehicles set out from the camp to be swallowed up in the silent distance. Night and day the huge mountain of goods was attacked by the freighters who, with their big wagons drawn by six, eight, twelve, or more, mules, appeared mysteriously out of the weird landscape as if they were spirits ma- terialized by some mighty unknown genii of the desert. Their heavy wagons loaded, their water barrels filled, they turned again to the unseen realm from which they had been summoned. The sound of the loud voices of the drivers, the creaking of the wagons, the jingle of harness, the shot-like reports of long whips died quickly away; while, to the vision, the outfits passed slowly — fading, dissolving in their great clouds of dust, in to the land of mystery. A year from the beginning of the work at the intake of the river, water was turned into the canals. With the coming of the water, Kingston changed, almost between suns, from a rude supply camp to an established town with post-office, stores, hotel, blacksmith shop, livery stables, all in buildings more or less substantial. Town site companies quickly laid out new towns, while in the town already established new business blocks and dwellings sprang up as if some Aladdin had rubbed his lamp. Real estate values advanced to undreamed figures and the property was sold, resold and sold again. And Kingston, Texas Joe said, " went plumb locoed." The name of Jefferson Worth was on every tongue. Was not he the wizard who commanded prosperity and wealth to wait upon The King's Basin? Was he not the Aladdin who rubbed the lamp? APPROACH TO DULUTH, THE LAND OF WORK AND BEAUTY The lines of the winding watenrays, esuih leading to a furnace, a mill, an elevator, are simply beautibil'aiid^£e dolor absolutely lovely. This is the modem landscape — a landscape that Claude would have loved. AH ms composition is in it — only the mills have leplaced the palaces, the trestle liie acqueduct; instead of the stone pine there stands the water tower; instead of the cypress, tiie automatic signal; instead ox the cross the trolley pole. Soon, however, all this will go — ^the mystery of the smoke will vani^ in the cl^mess of electricity, and the mystery of tiie trestle in the plainness of the con- crete bridge. But it is here now. and the thing is to delist in it. Artists don't see it — and the railrcrad men who have made it don't know any more than the Greels what a marvellous l^ing they have made. r ij 'V^/.'C /'. ,->'-' APPROACH TO DLXVTH. BY JfJ^^EPH PEN'NELL RECLAIMING THE DESERT 321 The methods of capital are impersonal, inhuman — the methods of a force governed by laws as fixed as the laws of nature, neither cruel nor kind; inconsiderate of man's misery or happiness, his life or death; using man for its own ends — ^profit, as men use water and soil and sun and air. The methods of Jefferson Worth were the methods of a man laboring with his brother men, sharing their hard- ships, sharing their retiums; a man using money as a workman uses his tools to fashion and build and develop, adding thus to the welfare of human kind. 21 THE CHILD-MAN By Arnold Bennett The man Darius was first taken to work by his mother. It was the winter of 1835, January. They passed through the market-place of the town of Turnhill, where they lived. Turnhill lies a couple of miles north of Bursley. One side of the market-place was barricaded with stacks of coal, and the other with loaves of a species of rye and straw bread. This coal and these loaves were being served out by meticulous and haughty officials, all invisibly braided with red- tape, to a crowd of shivering, moaning, and weeping wretches, men, women and children — the basis of the population of Turnhill. Al- though they were all endeavoring to make a noise, they made scarcely any noise, from mere lack of strength. Nothing could be heard, under the implacable bright sky, but faint ghosts of sound, as though people were sighing and crying from within the vacuum of a huge glass bell. The next morning, at half-past five, Darius began his career in earnest. He was " mold-runner " to a " muffin-maker," a muffin being not a comestible but a small plate, fashioned by its maker on a mold. The business of Darius was to run as hard as he could with the mold, and a newly-created plate adhering thereto, into the drying- stove. This " stove " was a room lined with shelves, and having a red-hot stove and stove-pipe in the middle. As no man of seven could reach the upper shelves, a pair of steps was provided for Darius, and up these he had to scamper. Each mold with its plate had to be leaned carefully against the wall, and if the soft clay of a new-born plate was damaged, Darius was knocked down. The atmosphere outside the stove was chill, but owing to the heat of the stove, Darius was obliged to work half naked. His sweat ran down his cheeks, and down his chest, and down his back, making white chan- nels, and lastly it soaked his hair. When there were no moldfe to be sprinted into the drying-stove, From Clayhanger, by Arnold Bennett. Copyright, 1910, by George H. Doran, Publisher. 322 THE CHILD-MAN 323 and no molds to be carried less rapidly out, Darius was engaged in day-wedging. That is to say, he took a piece of raw day weighing more than himself, cut it in two with a wire, raised one half above Ms head and crashed it down with all his force upon the other half; and he repeated the process xmtU the clay was thoroughly soft and even in texture. At a later period it was discovered that hydraulic machinery could perform this operation more easily and more effectu- ally than the brawny arms of a man of seven. At eight o'clock in the evening Darius was told that he had done enough for that day, and that he must arrive at five sharp the next morning to light the fire, before his master the muffin-maker began to work. WTien he inquired how he was to light the fire his master kicked him jovially on the thigh and suggested that he should ask another mold-runner. His master was not a bad man, at heart, it was said, but on Tuesdays, after Simday and Saint Monday, masters were apt to be capridous. Darius reached home at a quarter to nine, having eaten nothing but bread all day. Somehow he had lapsed into the child again. His mother took him on her knee, and wrapped her sacking apron roxmd his ragged clothes, and cried over him and cried over Ms supper of porridge, and undressed Mm and put Mm to bed. But he could not sleep easily because he was afraid of being late the next morning. n And the next morning, wandering about the yards of the manufac- tory, in a storm of icy sleet a little before five o'clock, he learned from a more experienced companion that nobody would provide him with kindling for Ms fire, that on the contrary everybody who hap- pened to be on the place at that hour would unite to prevent Mm from getting kindling, and that he must steal it or expect to be thrashed before six o'clock. Near them a vast kUn of ware in process of firing showed a wMte flaming glow at each of its mouths in the black winter darkness. Darius's mentor crept up to the arch- way of the great hovel wMch protected the kiln, and pointed hke a con^irator to the figure of the guardian fireman dozing near Ms monster. The boy had the handle-less remains of an old spade, and with it he crept into the hovel, dangerously abstracted fire from one of the scorching mouths, and fled therewith; and the fireman never stirred. Then Darius, to whom the mentor kindly lent Ms spade, 324 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK attempted to do the same, but being inexpert woke the fireman, who held him spellbound by his roaring voice and then flung him like a sack of potatoes bodily into the slush of the yard, and the spade after him. Happily the mentor, whose stove was now alight, lent fire to Darius, so that Darius's stove, too, was cheerfully burning when his master came. And Darius was too excited to feel fatigue. By six o'clock on Saturday night Darius had earned a shilling for his week's work. But he could only possess himself of the shilling by going to a magnificent public-house with his master the muffin-maker. This was the first time that he had ever been inside of a public-house. The place was crowded with men, women and children eating the most lovely hot rolls and drinking beer, in an atmosphere exquisitely warm. And behind a high counter a stout jolly man was counting piles and piles and piles of silver. Darius's master, in company with other boys' masters, gave this stout man four sovereigns to change, and it was an hour before he changed them. Meanwhile Darius was instructed that he must eat a roll lilke the rest, together with cheese. Never had he tasted anything so luscious. He had a match with his mentor, as to which of them could spin out his roll the longer, honestly chewing all the time; and he won. Someone gave him half a glass of beer. At half-past seven he received his shilling, which consisted of a sixpenny piece and four pennies; and, leaving the gay public-house, pushed his way through a crowd of tearful women with babies in their arms at the doors, and went home. And such was the attraction of the Sunday School that he was there the next morning, with scented hair, two minutes before the opening. in In about a year Darius's increasing knowledge of the world enabled him to rise in it. He became a handle-maker, in another manufactory, and also he went about with the pride of one who could form the letters of the alphabet with a pen. In his new work he had to put a bit of clay between two molds and then force the top mold on to the bottom one by means of his stomach, which it was necessary to press downwards and at the same time to wriggle with a peculiar movement. The workman to whom he was assigned, his new " mas- ter," attached these handles, with strange rapid skill, to beer-mugs. For Darius the labor was much lighter than that of mold-running THE CHn.D-M.\X 32S and clay-wedging, and the pay was somewhat higher. But there were minor disadvantages. He descended by twenty steps to his toil, and worked in a long cellar which never received any air except by way of the steps and a passage, and never any daylight at all. Its sole illumination was a stove used for drying. The "' throwers' " and the " turners' " rooms were also subterranean dungeons. When in full activity all these stinking cellars were full of men, boys, and young women, working close together in a hot twili^t. Certain boys were trained contrabandists of beer, and beer came as steadily into the dungeons as though it had been laid on by a main pipe. But perhaps the worst drawback of Darius's new position was the long and irregular hours, due partly to the influences of Saint Monday, and partly to the fact that the employees were on piece- work and entirely imhan^ered by grandmotherly legislation. The result was that six days' work was generally done in four. And as the younger the workman the earlier he had to start in the morning, Darius saw scarcely enough of his bed. It was not, of course, to be expected that a self-supporting man of the world should rigorously confine himself to an eight-hour day or even a twelve-hour day, but Darius's day would sometimes stretch to eighteen and nineteen hours: which on hygienic groimds could not be unreservedly defended. IV One Tuesday evening his master, after three days of debauch, ordered him to be at work at three o'clock the next morning. He quickly and even eagerly agreed, for he was already intimate with his master's rope-lash. He reached home at ten o'clock on an autumn night, and went to bed and to sleep. He woke up with a start, in the dark. There was no watch nor clock in the house, from which nearly all the furniture had gradually vanished, but he knew it must be already after three o'clock; and he sprang up and rushed out. Of course, he had not undressed; his life was too strenuous for mere formalities. The stars shone above him as he ran along, wondering whether after all, though late, he could by unprecedented effort make the ordained number of handles before his master tumbled into the cellar at five o'clock. When he had run a mile he met some sewage men on their rounds, who in reply to his question told him that the hour was half after 326 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK midnight. He dared not risk a return to home and bed, for within two and a half hours he must be at work. He wandered aimlessly over the surface of the earth until he came to a tile-works, more or less unenclosed, whose primitive ovens showed a glare. He ventured within, and in spite of himself sat down on the ground near one of those heavenly ovens. And then he wanted to get up again, for he could feel the strong breath of his enemy, sleep. But he could not get up. In a state of terror he yielded himself to his enemy. Shame- ful cowardice on the part of a man now aged nine! God, however, is merciful, and sent to him an angel in the guise of a night-watchman, who kicked him into wakefulness and off the plkce. He ran on limping, beneath the stellar systems, and reached his work at half- past four o'clock. Although he had never felt so exhausted in his long life, he set to work with fury. Useless! When his master arrived he had scarcely got through the preliminaries. He dully faced his master in the narrow stifling cellar, lit by candles impaled on nails and already peopled by the dim figures of boys, girls, and a few men. His master was of taciturn habit and merely told him to luieel down. He knelt. Two bigger boys turned hastily from their work to snatch a glimpse of the affair. The master moved to the back of the cellar and took from a box a piece of rope an inch thick and clogged with clay. At the same moment a companion offered him, in silence, a tin can with a slim neck, out of which he drank deep; it contained a pint of porter owing on loan from the previous day. When the master came in due course with the rope to do justice upon the sluggard he found the lad fallen forward and breathing heavily and regularly. Darius had gone to sleep. He was awakened with some violence, but the public opinion of the dungeon saved him from a torn shirt and a bloody back. This was Darius's last day on a pot-bank. The next morning he and his went in procession to the Bastile, as the place was called. His father, having been too prominent and too independent in a strike, had been black-listed by every manufacturer in the district; and Darius, though nine, could not keep the family. THE '' RED-INK SQUAD " By Harvey Jeeeold OTIiggins When the new chief took charge of the uniformed force of the fire department, he swept its veterans into retirement with a broom. The " probationers " crowded in to fill the vacancies, and in three months Captain Meaghan found himself, as he said, sourly, " teachin' kindergarten " in the truck-house of Hook and Ladder Company Xo. 0. He ruled a shabby red-brick building of three stories that stood between the knees of two downtown wholesale houses in a warehouse district where " packing-case fires " gave the men the worst of " punishment " and the best of training. It followed that the captain's roll had more probationers and new men on it than any other; and because the names of the probationers were entered in red ink, these raw recruits were nicknamed, in. contempt, the " red-ink squad." They were teased and bullied by the older men. They quarreled among themselves, disturbing the club quiet of the truck-house leisure; and they were despised by their captain, who demanded of his new assistant, " Where'Il I be if I run into a big blaze with a gang like that? " He spoke as if he held Lieutenant GaUegher personally responsible for the condition of the crew. Gallegher tried to flatter him with an assurance that the chief sent the green men to him as a good master. " There's Brodrick has the same sort of district," he said, " and he doesn't get them." Captain Meaghan replied, curtly: " He breaks their backs." Gallegher rubbed his chin. " They're not so bad, taking them singly," he considered, " but there's too many of them. And those two Guinnys were a double dose too much." (He referred to two Italians — one of whom was called " Dan Jordan " by the men, be- cause his name was " Giovanni Giordano " and he was good-natured; and the other was maliciously miscalled " Spaghetti," because his From The Smoke-Eaters, by Harvey J. O'Higgins. Copyright, 1905, by The Century Co., Publishers. 327 328 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK name was unpronounceable, and he turned black when he got this substitute.) " They'll be sendin' me Chinese next," Captain Meaghan growled, unmollified. " They will," the lieutenant said, " as soon as the Chinks begin to vote." Captain Meaghan chose to resent that shot at the powers that ruled the department. " Well," he blustered, " I wish yuh'd get into a ' worker,' so's if yuh're the stuff that makes firemen I'd know it; an' if y' aint, the chief'd know it — an' cut it out." And he had his wish. The alarm of the Torrance fire was rung in just before daybreak on a warm midsummer morning, while the men still lay sleeping in their bunk-room under the glowworm glimmer of a lowered gas-jet. They leaped from their cots with the simultaneous suddenness of the start in an obstacle race at the crack of the pistol, tugged on their " turnouts " of rubber boots and trousers with a muttering of growls and imprecations, vaulted beds while still hooking their waistband catches, threw themselves at the brass sliding-poles in the comers, and shot down into the glare and noise and seeming disorder of the ground floor, where the horses were already tossing their great heads in their harness, and the driver was already bending forward in his seat, and the doors stood open on the darkness of the night. Captain Meaghan sprang into the light rig in which the absent battalion chief rode to fires, and swung out into the street with a sudden clatter of hoofs on the stone sidewalk and the burst and echo of a jangling gong in the dead quiet out-of-doors. The truck fol- lowed — fifteen seconds after the " jigger " had started the alarm — with little " Spaghetti " climbing in over the tail of the bed-ladders behind " Long Tom " Donnelly, who had the " tiller " of the hind wheels. That was a good start. But it was only the start. The driver was a new man, who was not new to driving, but who was new to driving a hook-and-ladder truck. He had been a coachman, and he knew all about horses; but for the seat of a five- ton truck a man needs the nerve of a chauffeur and the shoulders of a Roman chariot-racer; and he does not need to know a bridle from a belly-band. And before they had rounded their second corner, Donnelly, on the tiller, THE " RED-IXK SQUAD " 329 was braced and ready for the turn at a gallop that might be a run on the rocks for him. It came within sight of the fire. The horses were already beyond control when the piping wail of a " steamer " sounded in their ears from a side street; the driver tugged and shouted; three white horses with a shining engine leaped out of the darkness ahead of them, and Donnelly, with a great oath, wrenched the wheel of his tiller aroimd to send the rear of the hook-and-ladder truck swinging for a lamp- post on the curb. The crash broke the rear running-gear, and brought down the truck on the cobblestones, hamstrung. The engine flashed past them, dropping fire. The collision had been averted, but little " Spaghetti " had been thrown out on the stone pavement, and lay ciu-led up on a sidewalk grating with a broken body. DonneUy crawled out from the ladders, his right arm hanging limp. The other men were unhurt. They had braced themselves against the shock by clinging to the side ladders; and, moreover, they had not received the terrific momentum of the full swing. They were on their feet about the fallen " nigh " horse when Lieutenant Gallegher called out to them to foUow him on foot with such scaling-ladders, hooks, and axes as they could carry; and they stormed the truck for tools. Donnelly and " Dan Jordan " lifted " Spaghetti " between them and carried him to a bed of life-lines covered with a coat. The crew disappeared around the comer, run- ning heavily in their rubber boots. " Be off now," Donnelly ordered the Italian, and " Dan Jordan " followed the others reluctantly, look- ing back at his unconscious coimtryman as he turned into the side street. Now, the first truck company to arrive at a fire makes an entrance at doors and windows, and incidentally saves whatever lives are in danger; the second forces its way through an adjoining building to open smoke- vents in the roof; the third is scattered wherever its assistance is most needed, to help the engine crews in " stretching in " new lines of hose, to tear down burning woodwork, to carry ladders and wield forcible-entrance tools in the secondary movements which are made against a fire after its position has been developed. The accident which wrecked Gallegher's truck brought up Company No. 0, the third crew to arrive where it should have been the first. 330 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK And that was how the probationers came to be separated from their elders, to face their trial in a body and alone. Captain Meaghan was already raging at the disgrace which their delay brought to him, and the danger which it brought to the first unsupported engine companies that had gone in against the fire. When he saw his men straggling in afoot, disordered, winded, and trailing their few tools, he threw his helmet at his feet and kicked it, cursing, into the gutter. The new men gathered behind Gallagher and the front line of the company's old guard, and waited like school- boys for a disciplining, with muttered asides to one another which they spoke with their eyes on their feet. Pipemen shouldered through them, dragging hose. A water-tower almost ran them down. Shout answered shout around them. And when they looked up for their orders, Captain Meaghan stood bareheaded and raving before them, shaking an impotent fist at Gallegher and roaring unreportable abuse. Gallegher picked up his helmet for him from the gutter. The captain took it roughly and shambled off with it in his hand to report to the chief. The lieutenant was known as the mildest-mannered man that ever " rolled " to a fire. " Much more like this," he said, " and the old man'll blow up and bust." Sergeant Pim, who was biting a cud of tobacco from a com- panion's plug, rolled the morsel, bulging, in his lean cheek. He had no consolation to offer, so he gave the remainder of Parr's tobacco; and Gallegher accepted it with a mute nod of thanks. The occasion was plainly past words. The Torrance Building before them was nine stories in height, a structure of granite pillars and red brick, used as a wholesale house by a chemical company on the ground floor, and as an office build- ing in the upper stories. The fire was in the lower part of it. Al- ready the " deadlights " in the sidewalk had been broken in with axes and mauls, and a cellar pipe was spouting its stream through the opening into the basement. Long lines of hose stretched from doors and hung from windows where the smoke puffed from gaping sashes, and men in helmets and rubber coats appeared for a moment to shout reports into the disorder below them and vanish again in the darkness. The roof of the seven-story building adjoining was alive with men who were raising ladders to the burning structure. It did not seem to Gallegher and his company that there would be THE " RED-INK SQUAD " 331 much for No. to do. They waited — the inglorious reserve in a battle which they should have led — in the smoking turmoil of pulsing engines, the cry of orders, and the hiuriy of men. They were roused from their inaction by Captain Meaghan, who charged down on them like a dog on chickens, and sent them sciu-ry- ing in all directions — chased Lieutenant Gallegher, Sergeant Km, and two probationers, Morphy and Fuchs, to the ladders with a shout to open smoke- vents throughout the upper stories; ordered three of the old men into the basement, with a whack of his helmet on their shoulders and a yell at their heels, to aid the pipemen who were flooding the cellar ; thrust aside two others who carried axes, shouting at them, "You come after me"; sent Parr, "Dan Jordan," and a probationer named Doyle up the ladders after Gallegher's squad; and then crushed his mudded helmet down on his head and raced with the axemen for the ground floor, where a line of hose trailed from the black smoke of the doorway. That disposition of his men put the veterans of the company where they were most needed — in the cellar and on the first floor — to fight the fire at the fierce root of it, and it sent all the probationers aloft, in charge of Lieutenant Gallegher, to the less important and less dangerous duty of opening smoke-vents. It is with these " red- inkers " only that we are concerned. How the men in the cellar were driven back by the poisonous fume of burning chemicals, fight- ing in a water that was knee-deep, and in a smoke that stuck like sulphur in the lungs; how the flames got behind Captain Meaghan and the two men with him, and cut off their retreat from the burn- ing ground floor; how they were rescued by their comrades and taken unconscious to the hospital in the waiting ambulances — all this may not be told here. These were merely the trials of a valor that had been proved many times in fires not less difficult and dangerous. With the probationers it was a different story. While the battle below them was being fought and lost, they carried out their captain's orders to aid and relieve the engine com- panies manning the streams in the upper stories. They worked their way from the front to the rear of the building, and threw open the steel shutters of the back windows to let in the air and to let out the smoke. They found the pipemen fighting the vanguard of the fire that was coming up the elevator shaft. The blaze here was not dan- gerously large; the heat was not excessive. The only menace was 332 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK the smoke; and Gallagher, with good judgment, cried on his little squad against it. Being without scaling-ladders, they used the stairs, and worked with axe and hook-butt from the third story to the sixth, crashing down doors and beating out window-sashes until they had a clean chimney-flue for the smoke that had been stifling the pipemen on the floors below. They were on the sixth story, ignorant of what had been happen- ing on the ground floor, when an explosion of " back-draft " below alarmed them. Gallegher had supposed that the fire was well under control by this time; he had not known of the poisonous fume in the smoke. And the magnitude of the explosion indicated a greater accumulation of gas, and therefore a fiercer flame and a greater area of heat, than he had imagined. He ran to a window and hung out of it to see men sliding down the ladders from the second story. A huge flame spat out from the ground floor; and he knew from the retreat and counter-rush, the scurry and confusion of the crews in the street, that the fire was carrying all below him, and that his escape would be cut off. He bawled down to warn them of his danger, and then ordered his squad to follow him by the stairs. They groped their way back through the dark passages, only to come on the deadly smoke which was pouring up stairs and elevator shaft in advance of an unchecked fire. A puff of it struck them like a hand at the throat, and they dropped to the floor to catch the low draft of cleaner air which is always to be found there. It was impossible to go forward. Gallegher led them back at a blundering run to the window. One look below convinced him that they were trapped. It was not possible for the men in the street to put up ladders to them. They themselves, because of the accident to their truck, were without scaling-ladders or other means of escape. " We're up a tree," Gallegher said, soberly. The new men, panting from exertion and excitement, and cough- ing from the irritation of the smoke in their throats, grew suddenly quiet, staring blankly at the lieutenant and at one another. They looked out at the street, five stories below them, obscured in a belch of smoke. They heard the flames behind them singing in a fierce undertone in the elevator shaft. And when the Italian, " Dan Jor- dan," began to jabber an appeal to all the saints to save him — which THE " RED-IXK SQUAD " 333 the men mistook for a " Dago " profanity — they relieved their feel- ings in oaths of bewilderment and disgust. Sergeant Pim had been too busy to remember the quid in his cheek. Now he chewed thoughtfully. " If we could crawl back an' go higher," he suggested, " there ought to be a crew on the roof." " There's something in that smoke," Gallagher said. " Cellar and first floor's full of drugs — chemical company. They're trying to get out the men down there. They're too blame busy to do any- thing for us." Fuchs, the probationer, who had been a bridge-worker, got out on the window-ledge and craned his neck. " Too far to jiunp," Lieutenant Gallegher warned him. " Sure," he said, " but here's a three-inch ledge that ought to run to the next building." A few feet below the window-sill there was a projecting strip of ornamental stone facing that crossed the Torrance Building with a stripe of gray on the red-brick front. Pim looked down at it. " Think we're giddy sparrows? " he complained. " Dan Jordan " peeped out, and fell back from the window, wav- iog an imintelligible protest. Fuchs drew off his rubber boots. " If youll put a hand 'tween my shoulders," he said to Gallegher, " I'll see how far it goes." The lieutenant answered: "Yes. Wait a second. ELnock that sash in, Parr." Parr made a sashless gap of the window-frame with two blows of his axe. Fuchs swung over the siU, with GaUegher's hand in his collar, and found the stone ledge with his toes. " All right," he said. " Brace yourself to hold me to the wall — and let me get as far as you can." Gallegher straddled the still — ^with Parr sitting on the leg that anchored him to the room — and gave Fuchs an arm's length, with a great palm spread between the probationer's shoulders. Fuchs edged forward, his ear scraping the bricks, until he could be certain that the ledge led to the windows of the next building. " All right," he said evenly; " it's a long stretch, but I guess we can do it," and came back inch by inch. " This ledge joins a sort of cornice." Gallegher turned to the others. " You do by each other what I do with Fuchs," he said. " Morphyll follow me, and then Jordan, and then Doyle and Pim. Parr, youll have to anchor us here till 334 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK Fuchs reaches the other window. Get your boots off, men. You'll have to get a grip with your toes." " I got holes in my stockings," Pirn said, coyly. The men laughed — all but " Dan Jordan." The accident to his chum " Spaghetti " had first broken his nerve; the blind groping in the darkness and the smoke, through an endless succession of bewildering passageways and offices, with a fire that seemed to him to be stalk- ing them into the dangerous upper regions of the burning building, had added a child's fear to this weakness; the attempt to escape through the choking smoke, and the sudden realization of all his worst fears when that attempt had failed, had put him in a panic terror; and now, when he saw Gallegher's preparations to climb out on a ledge that no man could cling to, he lost his last control of himself, ran to the other window of the room, and screamed wildly out of it, " Hel-1-lp-ah! Hel-1-lp-ah! " His voice cut through the uproar in the street with the shrill sharpness of a steam whistle. He began to yell a frightened gibber- ish in a voice of crazy fear. Parr's hand closed suddenly on his throat, choked him from behind, and threw him back from the window, to fall in a hysteric grovel on the floor. " There's a blamed fine mess," Parr said to Gallegher. The lieutenant was thinking of the effect of it on the new men. He prodded Jordan with his toe. " Get up," he said, sternly. The Italian covered his head with his hands, and wailed in his jargon. Gallegher kicked him in the side. " Get up," he ordered. " Get up out of that." Jordan rolled away from him in a paroxysm of terror. The lieu- tenant bent down, caught his hand in the probationer's collar, and, raising him to his knees, shook and strangled him till he gasped for breath. " Get up," he said, easing his hold on him. The Italian sprang to his feet, broke from the lieutenant, and ran toward the window, screaming. Parr grappled with him. He fought like a madman, with wild blows that fell on Parr's face and blinded him so that he loosed his hold to defend himself; and the Italian, slipping through his arms, jumped to the sill of the window. He crouched there a moment, huddled up with fear, and then — ^whether it was that he lost his balance, or that he had been really driven out of his mind by this " fire fright " — just as Parr caught at his THE " RED-INK SQUAD " 335 legs, he uttered a last frantic cry, and dived headlong into the street. They saw him fall, spread like a bat. Gallegher, with a roar of " Get back there! " drove the probationers from the windows before they saw the rest. He faced them. Morphy's lips were trembling. Doyle was laughing weakly. Parr wiped his forehead with a grimy hand. The lieutenant said, in a low voice: " That's what happens when a man loses his head." The noises from the street grew in their silence until Fuchs, on the ledge outside the window, said, refiectivelj-: " That's like Mullen did on the old cantilever." And Gallegher knew from his manner that he could depend on one of the probationers at least.- He tried to encoiu-age the others. " And there was no need for it," he said. " There's no danger about getting out of here — ^not a bit. The same thing's been done before. There was Rush did it — for the matter of that — at the Manhattan bank fire. . . . Get your wind, now. There's no hurry." " No; what's the use of hurryin'? " Pirn said, grimly. " Jordan's beat us down already." Morphy shuddered. He felt sick and weak; he flushed hot and went cold in waves; and his knees melted into tremblings. He leaned against the wall. Doyle laughed brokenly at Pirn. "Pull yourselves together, now," Gallegher said; and the pro- bationer's laugh choked in a catch of breath that was somewhere between a gulp and a sob. The lieutenant summed them up in a glance. " Just do what I tell you," he instructed them, " and don't be thinking of what might happen. Keep you eyes off that. See? " A puff of smoke warned him of approaching danger. He turned to the window and climbed out on the sill. " We've got our hands full," he said to Fuchs. ".\nd if either of those men goes dizzy, well all go down." He lowered himself to a place on the narrow ledge. Fuchs, then, with Gallegher's arm to support him, edged out against the wall. The lieutenant made room on the ledge for the next comer. " Morphy," he said. Morphy came trembling over the sill, with his teeth shut on his nervousness. " Put your hand between my shoulders," Gallegher 336 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK ordered, ignoring the man's condition, " and let me and Fuchs go forward as far as you can." Morphy said, " Yes, sir," gratefully. The two leaders edged forward. " Pirn's next," Gallegher said. With Pirn in position, the chain stretched itself inch by inch across the wall. The noises from the street beat up at them Uke the sound of surf at the foot of a cliff to which they were clinging. " A few feet more'U do it," Fuchs reported. Gallegher knew that he could not depend on Doyle. Morphy was frightened, but his pride tried to conceal it, whereas Doyle had laughed at his own weakness; and Gallegher knew enough of the psychology of fear to rate this last hysteria near the breakdown. " Parr next," he ordered. " Parr next," Morphy repeated, huskily. " You're next," Pim said, in the cheerful voice of a barber to his customer. " Billy, if you loves me, hold me close." Parr spat on his hands, and lowered himself to the ledge. The men moved forward — Doyle in the window, holding Parr; Parr sup- porting Pim; Pim holding Morphy to the wall with an arm of iron; Morphy crushing Gallegher's broad shoulders with a pressure that spoke of overtense nerves; Gallegher, steadying Fuchs, and waiting quietly for the first signs of collapse in the man behind him. The smoke stung in their nostrils. The bricks scratched their perspiring faces. Their heels stood on nothing; and the cords of their insteps ached with the strain of their weight. " My knees are gettin' weak," Morphy said, hoarsely. No one answered him. Fuchs was still going forward, and Gal- legher's hand slid heavily across the little bridge-worker's back as they stretched their link of the chain to the breaking-point. The lieutenant felt his fingers pass from the hollow of the probationer's shoulders to the ridge of his shoulder-blade — felt that drawn slowly under his palm — felt the ball of his thumb slipping over the shoulder. There was a crash of broken glass. " Got my hold," Fuchs reported. He passed beyond Gallegher's reach, and they could hear him beating in the glass of the window with his hatchet. He came back to put a hand behind Gallegher. The lieutenant changed the strain to his other arm. THE " RED-INK SQUAD " 337 " All right, now," he said to Morphy. " Fuchs's got me. You bold up Pirn. Tell Doyle to get out on the ledge." " I can't do it," Doyle said to Parr. " Stay there an' bum then," Parr replied, moving away. " Hold on," he pleaded. He clambered out, white and weak. " Oh, if I ever get out o' this," he said, " it's the last the fire de- partmenfU ever see of me." Fortunately, he was on the end of the line, and Parr held him up. The men worked their way along with a painful cautiousness. " I feel like a blamed planked shad," Pirn said. He was answered only by the hoarse breathing of Morphy. Fuchs was already over the window-sill. Now Gallegher fol- lowed him. Morphy caught the sill and clung to it. " I can't," he panted. " I can't Hft my leg. It's par-rar-alyzed." Gallegher said, cheerily: " Come along, then, far enough — so's we can get Pim." Morphy's teeth were chattering. Pim came grinning to the sash. They dragged the probationer into the window, and he collapsed on the floor. " I can't stand up," he confessed, shamefacedly. " I got wabbles in the legs." They lifted Doyle in, and stood in a ring around Morphy and him, drawing deep breaths. " How are you, Doyle? " Galle- gher asked. " Oh, I'm out o' this game," Doyle said. " There's easier ways of eamin' a livin' than this." They did not answer him. Pim and Parr put an arm each about Morphy, and raised him to his feet. " I s'pose we'll have to carry you down," Pim said. He added, at thought of his unpro- tected feet; " It'll just be my luck if this place's a tack factory." Morphy staggered away from their support. " I'm all right," he said. " It was just in my legs — an' that scared me — I thought I'd bring you all down if I went. . . . Lord! How Jordan yelled." They straggled along in silence to the stairs, and were met there by a squad of men who had been sent to the roof to lower ropes to them, and had looked down to see them, through the drift of the smoke, clinging miraculously to the flat wall at the sixth story. A triumphal procession escorted them to the street. And that was the end of the Torrance fire, so far as the " red-ink squad " was concerned. Of the five probationers who had answered 22 338 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK the alarm, only Fuchs and Morphy stood with Company No. when the basement squad lined up with Gallegher's shoeless following at the neighboring bar to drink the health of the crew. " Spaghetti " was in the hospital. Doyle had taken himself off to his home with- out handing in any formal resignation. " Dan Jordan " — a ring of whispering men gathered around Lieutenant Gallegher, with their glasses in their hands, and heard of the end of him. The saloon- keeper came to listen to them across the bar. Gallegher saw him. " To the ' red-ink squad '! " he called. They put their glasses to white teeth that flashed like negroes' in the blackness of their smoke-begrimed faces. " And to the fire that made them black! " Pim added — which, as the sequel showed, was at once a pun and a prophecy. By permission Metropolitan Museurr: THE THINKER. BY AUGUSTE RODIN THE THINKER By Berton Bealey Back of the beating hammer By which the steel is wrought, Back of the workshop's clamor The seeker may find the Thought Of iron and steam and steel, That rises above disaster And tramples it under heel! The drudge may fret and tinker Or labor with dusty blows, But back of him stands the Thinker, The clear-eyed man who Knows; For into each plow or saber. Each piece and part and whole, Must go the Brains of Labor, Which gives the work a soul! Back of the motors humming, Back of the belts that sing. Back of the hammers drumming. Back of the cranes that swing. There is the eye which scans them Watching through stress and strain, There is the Mind which plans them — Back of the brawn, the Brain! Might of the roaring boiler. Force of the engine's thrust, Strength of the sweating toiler, Greatly in these we trust. But back of them stands the Schemer, The Thinker who drives things through; Back of the job — the Dreamer Who's making the dream come true! From Songs of a Workaday World, by Berton Braley. Copyright, 1915, George H. Doran Company, Publishers. 339 BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, Samuel Hopkins : The Clarion. Adams and Foster: Heroines of Modern Progress. Aldrich, Thomas Bailey : The Stillwater Tragedy. Allen, James Lane : The Reign of Law. Anonymous : The Long Day. Bacheller, Irving : Keeping Up With Lizzie. Bacon, Mary Applewhite: Who Was Her Keeper? The Problem of the Southern Cotton-Mill (Atlantic, 99:224). Bailey, L. H. : Outlook to Nature ; The Realm of the Commonplace. Baldwin, Charles S. : Salad (In Essays Out of Hours). Bangs, John Kendrick: The Booming of Acre Hill; The Enchanted Typewriter. Barr, Amelia E. : Joan ; Master of His Fate. Barrie, James : When a Man's Single. Barton, Bruce: More Power to You; The Price of a Good Job; A Better Job. Beach, Rex : The Silver Horde ; The Iron Trail. Bell, J. J. : The Whalers. Bennett, Arnold: Your United States; Clayhanger; Self and Self -Man- agement. Bennett, Arnold, and Knoblauch, Edward : Milestones. Beymer, William Gilmore: Apathy and Steel (Harper's, March, 1909—). Blackmore, Richard: Lorna Doone. Blythe, Samuel G. : The Making of a Newspaper Man. Bond, Russell : On the Battlef ronts of Engineering. Braley, Berton: Songs of a Workaday World. Bronte, Charlotte : Shirley. Browning, Robert : Fust and His Friends. Browning, Elizabeth : The Bitter Cry of the Children. BuLLEN, Frank Thomas : The Cruise of the Cachalot. Burnett, Frances H. : That Lass o' Lowrie's. Burroughs, John : Essays on Bees. Chalmers, Hugh : The Science of Selling Goods (In Collier's, April 16, 1910). Churchill, Winston: The Dwelling Place of Light; Mrs. Crewe's Career. Cobb, Irwin : The Thunders of Silence. Collins, Francis A. : The Wireless Man. 340 BIBLIOGRAPHY 341 Connolly, James B. : The Deep Sea's Toll. Craik, Dinah M. : John Halifax. Crawford, Marion : Marietta. Cummins, Maria Susanna : The Lamplighter. Davis, Richard Harding: Gallegher. Davis, Rebecca H. : Life in the Iron Mills. Day, Holman : King Spruce. Dana, Richard Henry: Two Years Before the Mast. Deland, Margaret: The Iron Woman. Deland, Lorin F. : Imagination in Business. Dickens, Charles : Hard Times ; Bamaby Rudge. Disraeli, Benjamin: Sybil. Dodge, Henry Irving: Skinner's Dress Suit; Skinner's Big Idea, Donnell, Annie Hamilton : One Hundred and Oneth. DupuY, William A. : Uncle Sam's Modern Miracles ; Uncle Sam, Wonder Worker. Eaton, Walter Prichard : The Idyl of Twin Fires ; Green Trails and Upland Pastures. Edgeworth, Maria: Castle Rackrent; The Absentee. Eliot, George: Felix Holt, Radical; Adam Bede; Stradivarius. Ferber, Edna : Fanny Herself ; Personality Plus. Fletcher, A. C. B. : From Job to Job Around the World. Freeman, Mary E. W. : The Revolt of Mother ; The Portion of Labor. Galsworthy, John : The Inn of Tranquillity ; The Freelands. Garland, Hamlin : They of the High Trails ; Boy Life on the Prairie ; A Son of the Middle Border. Gaskell, Elizabeth C. : Mary Barton. Gibson, Wilfrid : Livelihood ; Daily Bread ; Fires. Gill, Arthur: Some Novelists and the Business Man {Atlanic, vol. cxii). Grey, Zane : The Young Forester ; The Desert of Wheat. Griggs, Edward H. . Self-Culture Through the Vocation. GuNN, Mrs. ^Eneas : We of the Never-Never Land. Hale, Edward Everett : Ups and Downs ; Stories of Inventions. Hall, Eliza Calvert: Aunt Jane of Kentucky; Hand Woven Coverlets. Hallock, Mary Foote : The Chosen Valley. Hannay, James O. : Gossamer. Hardy, Thomas : Far From the Madding Crowd. Harris, Garrard : Joe, the Book Farmer. Harrison, Henry S. : V. V.'s Eyes. Harte, Francis Bret: Story of a Mine. Hauptman, Gerhardt: The Weavers. Harrington, H. F. : Typical Newspaper Stories. Hay, John : The Breadwinners. 342 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK Hearn, Lafacadio : Two Years in the French West Indies. HowELLS, William Dean : The Rise of Silas Lapham. HuARD, Frances : My Home in the Field of Mercy. Hudson, William H. : Far Away and Long Ago. HuNGERFORD, Edward : The Modern Railroad. Husband, Joseph : A Year in a Coal Mine. Jackson, Helen H. : Nelly's Silver Mine ; Ramona. Jeans, W. T. : Creators of the Age of Steel. Jeffries, Richard : The Toilers of the Field. Jokai, Maurus : Black Diamonds. Jordan, Elizabeth : Mary Iverson's Career. Kingsley, Charles : Yeast ; Alton Lock. Kipling, Rudyard: A Walking Delegate; Day's Work; Captains Coura- geous; The Liner She's a Lady; The Press. Knoblauch, Edward: My Lady's Dress. Lagerlof, Selma: Lilecrona's Home. Larcom, Lucy: A New England Girlhood. Laselle, Mary A. : The Young Woman Worker. Laughlin, Clara E. : The Work-a-Day Girl. Lee, Gerald Stanley : Crowds ; The Voices of the Machines. Lincoln, Joseph : Cape Cod Ballads. London, Jack : The Call of the Wild ; The Sea Wolf. Longfellow, Henry W. : Keramos. Lummis, Charles F. : Some Strange Corners. Lynde, Francis : Scientific Sprague. Lynn, Margaret: A Step-Daughter of the Prairie. Mabie, Hamilton W. : Essays on Work and Culture. Maeterlinck, Maurice : The Life of the Bee. Marshall, Archibald : The Old Order Changeth. McClure, S. S. : Autobiography. McFarland, J. Horace : My Growing Garden. McGregor, T. B. : The Book of Thrift. Masefield, John : The Story of a Round House and Other Poems ; Jim Davis. Meacham, Allen : Belle Jones. Meade, A. H. : When I Was a Little Girl. Merwin, S., and Webster, H. K. : Calumet " K." Merwin, Samuel: The Road Builders. Monroe, Kirk: Gerrick Sterling; Prince Dusty. Monroe, A. S. : Making a Business Woman. Morgan, William de : John Vance. Morley, Christopher: The Haunted Book Shop; Parnassus on Wheels. Morris, William: News from Nowhere; The Lesser Arts of Life. BIBLIOGRAPHY 343 MoBKis, Charles : Heroes of Progress in America. Mi'iR, John : The Story of My Boyhood and Youth. MuNROE, John : Heroes of the Telegraph. Murray^ Davhi : Old Blazer's Hero ; A Capful of Nails. NoRRis, Frank : The Octopus ; The Pit. Korris, Kathleen : Mother. NoYES, Alfred: The Biography of William Morris. O'HiGGiNS, Harvey Jerrold: The Smoke Eaters. Onions, Oliver: Good Boy Seldom. OxLEY, J. M. . The Romance of Commerce. Packard, Frank L. : The Xight Operator. Pen NELL, Elizabeth : The Delights of Delicate Eating. Pennell, Joseph : Pictures of the Wonder of Work. Phillpotts, Eden : The Banks of Colne ; Green Alleys ; Brunei's Tower ; Old Delabole. Pooi-E, Ernest: The Harbor. Porter, William S. : The Trimmed Lamp. Porter, Gene Stratton : The Harvester ; The Girl of the Limberlost Pyle, Joseph Gilpin : The Life of James J. Hill. Reade, Charles : The Cloister and the Hearth ; Put Yourself in His Place, Reppllee, Agnes : Essays in Miniatiu-e. Richards, Laura E. : Life of Florence Nightingale. Richardson, Anna S. : Adventures in Thrift Roosevelt, Theodore: The Backwoodsman. Rupert, Elinore : Letters of a Woman Homesteader. Ruskin, John: Fors Qavigera. Scherer, James A. B. : Cotton as a World Power. Schrziner, Olive: Woman and Labor. Scully, William C. : The Odyssey of the Sockeye Salmon {Atlantic, August, 1916). Service, Robert W. : Songs of a Sourdough ; Spell of the Yukon. Sharp, Dallas : Hills of Hingham. Shaw, Anna H. : Story of a Pioneer. Sinclair, Upton: King Coal. Slater, Mary White : Jenkins {Harper's, A-pvW, 1918). Smith, Hopkinson : Caleb West; The Wood Fire in Ko. 3; Tom Grogan; Tides of Bamegat Spearman, Frank : The Nerve of Foley and Others ; Held for Orders. Spencer, Ellen Lane : The Efficient Secretary. Stern, E. G. : My Mother and I. Stevenson, Robert L. : Silverado Squatters. Stockton, Frank R.: The Casting Away of Mrs. Leeks and Mrs. Ale- shine. 344 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK Strunsky, Simeon: The Psychology of Shopping {Harper's, vol. cxxxiv). Swift, Eliza Morgan : The Village Central. Tarbeu., Ida M. : The Business of Being a Woman. Tarkington, Booth : The Turmoil. TuLLY, Eleanor Gates : The Diary of a Prairie Girl. Verrill, a. Hyatt : Uncle Abner's Legacy. Ward, Euzabeth S. P. : A Madonna of the Tubs. Warmen, Cy: The Story of a Railroad; The Last Spike. Warner, Charles Dudley : Being a Boy. Wells, Herbert George: Kipps, Tono-Bungay. White, Stewart Edward : The Riverman ; The Forest ; The Westerners ; Arizona Nights; Silent Places; Gold; Blazed Trail Stories. Widdemer, Margaret : Factories, with Other Lyrics. Wiggin, Kate Douglas : Half a Dozen Housekeepers. Wilcox, Walter: Camping in the Canadian Rockies. Williams, Archibald: The Romance of Modern Engineering; The Romance of Mining. Williams, Jesse Lynch : The Stolen Story. Williamson, Mrs. C. N. : The Newspaper Girl. Wiltsie, Honor6: Still Jim. WiSTER, Owen : The Virginian. WooDBRiDGE, ELIZABETH : More Jonathan Papers. WooLEY, Edward Mott: The Blue Stdre (McClure, vol. xxxix) ; The Silent Voice (Scribner, vol. Ixi, p. 673). Wright, Harold Bell : The Winning of Barbara Worth. WHO'S WHO Rex Ellingwood Beach, novelist, was born at Atwood, Midiigan, in 1877. Some of his novels are The Spoilers, The Barrier, The Silver Horde, The Iron Trail. His address is Lake Hopatcong, Xew Jersey. ExocH Arxou) Bexnett, author and journalist, was bom in North Staffordshire in 1867. Since 1900 he has devoted himself exclusively to writing as a profession. Some of his well-known works are Old Wives' Tales, Claylianger, Hilda Less-ways, War Scenes on the Western Front, How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day, Your United States. He col- laborated with Edward Knoblauch in writing the play Milestones. His address is Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken, England. Berton Beai£y, writer of verse, was bom at Madison, Wisconsin, in 1882. He has contributed about 5000 poems and 300 short stories and many articles to newspapers and magazines. Perhaps his best known volume of verse is Songs of a Workaday^ World. His address is 121 East 17th St., Xew York. Fhank Thomas Bcllex was an English audior and lecturer. He was bom in Paddington in 1857 and died in ipiS- He went to sea in 1869, serving in all parts of the world. From 1863 to 1899 he was clerk in the Meteorological Office; then he began to write sea stories, the best of them being The Cruise of the Cachalot. Other works of his are The CM of the Deep, Lay of a Sea Waif, and Recollections. Richard Eugene Burton, college professor, was born at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1861. He has been head of the English department in the University of Minnesota since 1906. He is the author of several volumes of verse and literary criticism. His home is at 116 Oak Grove St, Minne- apolis, Minnesota. Archie Austin Coates, poet and short-story writer, was bom at Dayton, Ohio, in 1891. He is a graduate of Columbia University. He has been associate editor of the Literary Digest, Life, and the New York Tribune Graphic. He is a contributor to Harper's, the Saturday Evening Post, McClure's, Everybody's, and Poetry. He is the auhor of Odes and Episodes, and City Tides. His address in winter is Columbia University Qub, New York; in simimer, " Fartherside," Mohegan Lake, New York. Margaretta Wade Deland was born at Allegheny, Pa, February, 1857. Some of her works are Old Chester Tales, Dr. Lavender's People, The Awakening of Helena Richie, The Iron Woman. Her address is 35 Newbury St, Boston. Henry van Dyke was bom at Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1852. He is a Presbyterian minister and professor of English literature at Prince- 345 346 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK ton. In 1913, President Wilson appointed him minister to the Netherlands and Luxemburg. Some of his works are Poetry of Tennyson, Little Rivers, The Other Wise Man, Fisherman's Luck, and Poems. His home is at Avalon, Princeton, New Jersey. Edna Ferber was born at Kalamazoo, Michigan, August 15, 1887. She was a reporter on the Appleton Daily Crescent at the age of seventeen, and was later employed on the Milwaukee Journal and Chicago Tribune. She is now engaged in short-story writing for magazines. Some of her works are Dawn O'Hara, Buttered Side Down, Roast Beef Medium, Personality Plus, Emma McChesney and Co., Fanny Herself. Her address is Hotel Majestic, New York. Hamlin Garland, novelist and dramatist, was born at West Salem, Wisconsin, in i860. He worked on the farm, taught school, took up a claim in McPherson County, Dakota, but soon after he adopted writing as a profession. He is the author of Main-Traveled Roads, Rose of Dutchers Coolly, Prairie Songs, Her Mountain Lover, Boy Life on the Prairie, A Son of the Middle Border. His address is " The Cliff Dwellers," Chicago. Herschel S. Hall is a writer of short fiction, particularly of steel-mill stories. His address is Ashland, Ohio. Henry Sydnor Harrison was born at Sewanee, Tennessee, in 1880. Columbia University conferred a Master's degree on him in 1913. He is a democrat and an Episcopalian. He is the author of Queed and V. V.'s Eyes. His home is at Charleston, West Virginia. Walter Sanders Hiatt, " newspaper man," was born in Jasper, Marion County, Tennessee, in 1878. He was chief yeoman, U. S. N., in the Spanish- American War. He began newspaper work with the Morning Herald, Lexington, Kentucky, in 1899. He was associated with the editorial depart- ment of the New York Times from 1901 to 1904. He has been an extensive contributor to magazines on transportation subjects. In the recent war he represented the Associated Press with the Italian Army. His address is 33 West 42d St., New York, care of Authors' League of America. Carl Holliday, college professor, was born at Hanging Rock, Ohio, in 1879. Since 1917 he has been head of the English department in the Uni- versity of Toledo, Ohio. He is a writer on literary, educational, and social themes, and the author of The Cotton Picker and Other Poems, The Literature of Colonial Virginia, and The Wit and Humor of Colonial Days. Peter Bernard Kyne, writer by profession, was born on a small farm in California in 1880, where he lived until he was seventeen. Then he went to the Spanish-American War. He tried the lumber business and newspaper work, and then finally settled into writing. His best-known works are Cappy Ricks, The Long Chance, Three Godfathers, and Valley of the Giants. He has published many short stories and articles in Sunset Magazine and Collier's. He lives in California. Edwin Lefevre, author, was born in Colon, Colombia, in 1871. He WHO'S WHO 347 studied mining engineering, but has been a journalist since 1890. He is the author of IVall Street Stories, The Golden Flood, Sampson Rock of Wall Street. His home is at Dorset, Vermont; his address is 7 West 43d St, Xew York. Joseph Crosby Lincoln, poet and short-story wrfter, was born at Brewster, Mass., in 1870. He is the author of Cape Cod Ballads, Cap'n Eri, Keziah CoMn. He lives in Hackensack, New Jersey. Chakies Fletcheb Lummis, author and explorer, was born at Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1859. He was graduated from Harvard. In 1884 he walked from Cincinnati to Los Angeles, California, by a roundabout route, solely for pleasure, 3507 miles in 143 days. He lived five years in the Indian pueblo of Isleta, New Mexico, learning Indian languages and cus- toms. He has explored the continent from Canada to Chile; he was knighed by the King of Spain in 1915 for researches in Spanish-American history. He wrote A Tramp Across the Conthient, and Some Strange Cor- ners of Our Country. His address is 200 East Ave. 43, Los Angeles, California. Margaret Lynn is a member of the English department of the State University of Kansas at Lawrence. She is best known for her sympathetic delineation of prairie life. Much of her work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. She is the author of A Step-Daughter of the Prairie and A Collection of Eighteenth Century Verse. Maurice Maeterlinck, born in 1862, is a native of Belgium. Some of his works are Pelleas and Melisande, Interieur, The Death of Tintagiles, The Blue Bird, Sceur Beatrice, Ariane et Barbebleue. He says that his recrea- tions are bee-keeping, canoeing, skating, bicycling, motoring. His address is Villa des Abeilles, Ave. des Baumettes, Nice, (A. !M.) France. Peter McArthur, bom in 1866, lives on a farm in the Province of Ontario, not far from London, Ontario. He has published many short stories and articles in The Canadian Magazine and a few in The Forum. His best-known works are In Pastures Green, and The Red Cow and Her Friends. An article in The Canadian Magazine, December 1913, says : Mr. McArthur is precisely what he pretends to be — a farmer. But he is not one of these college-bred, scientific agriculturists, for he introduces into farm life a seasoning of philosophy and a fine vein of humor. He wields a prolific pen in a number of influential journals and has made himself famous through the length and breadth of Canada by telling people in a humorous-serious strain of the simple charms of rural life. This is the theme of his volume The Red Cow, which, with its appropriate and attractive decorative illustrations, will appeal to all lovers of farm and cotmtry life. Constaxtin Meunier was bom near Brussels, Belgium, in 1831, and died at Brussels in 1905. He was a sculptor and painter. He preferred to model subjects from the working classes — miners, founders, and the like — 348 THE WORKER AND HIS WORK and produced a series of powerful statues, the Puddlcur, the Marteleur, and Le Travail, showing a central figure, Le Semeur, surrounded by four others, La Mine, La Moisson, Le Post, and L'Industrie. Angela Morgan, poet and humanist, was born of New England parents, who removed to the Middle West when she was a child. Early in her life she entered upon a career of journalism and sought the fundamental facts of human experience, visiting police courts, jails, and the slums of large cities. She has produced four volumes of verse and much fiction. Miss Morgan has traveled extensively and given readings from her own poems and lectures on the poets of the day, and has been successful at Chautauqua as a reader and interpreter of poetry. Her books are The Hour Has Struck, Utterance and Other Poems, The Imprisoned Splendor, and Forward March! Her address is 587 Riverside Drive, New York. Christofheb Darlington Morley is an editorial writer on the Phila- delphia Public Ledger. He is the author of Parnassus on IV heels. Songs for a Little House, Shandygaff, The Haunted Bookshop. His address is Wyncote, Pennsylvania. Benjamin Franklin Norris was born in Chicago in 1870 and died in San Francisco in 1902. He was educated at the University of California and Harvard University. He studied art in Paris, was war correspondent in South Africa, and also in the Spanish-American War for McClure's Magazine. He wrote McTague, The Octopus, The Pit, A Deal in Wheat. In The Pit, says Frank Taber Cooper, Norris portrays a gigantic attempt to corner the entire world's supply of wheat, to force it up, up, up, and hold the price through April, May, and June — and then finally the new crop comes pouring in and the daring speculator is overwhelmed by the rising tide, ■■ a human insect, impotently striving to hold back with his puny hand the output of the whole world's granaries." Eliza Calvert Hall Obenchain was born at Bowling Green, Ken- tucky, in i8s6. She has been identified with the cause of woman suffrage since 1889. She is the author of Aunt Jane of Kentucky, and A Book of Handwoven Coverlets. Her address is Bowling Green, Kentucky. Harvey J. O'Higgins was born in London, Ontario, in 1876. He is the author of The Smoke Eaters, Old Clinkers, The Beast and the Jungle (with Judge Ben B. Lindsey), and Under the Prophet in Utah (with Frank J. Cannon). His address is Martinsville, New Jersey. Elizabeth West Parker was born at Woburn, Massachusetts. She is a student of literature, and writes, she says, occasionally. She writes: " Perhaps you will be interested to know that the poem Nora was written in memory of my dear sister who passed on several years ago. She was a radiant spirit, one of whom we speak smiling through our tears. She accepted drudgery, helped to accomplish its end in us and moved on to higher things." Her address is 694 Main St., Woburn, Massachusetts. WHO'S WHO 349 Joseph Pennell, artist, illustrator, author, was bom in Phliadelphia in i860. He has been the recipient of medals and honors in America and Europe. Among his most notable works of recent years are Pictures of the Wonder of Work and Pictures of War Work in America. The intro- ductions of these two books should be read by everyone, for few jjeople have interpreted the spirit of the present age of skyscrapers and machinery so accurately and so profoundly as Mr. Pennell. He says : " From the very beginning I have cared for the Wonder of Work; from the time I built cities of blocks and sailed models of ships of them across the floor in my father's oflSce, till I went to the Panama Canal, I have cared for the Wonder of Work." Mr. Pennell makes one quit regretting the past and deploring the present, for the present, under his influence, assumes a new significance. His address is the Century Qub, New York. Elizabeth Robins Penxell (Mrs. Joseph Pennell) was born at Philadelphia in 1855. She has spent a good many years in Europe. She is the author of Our House, London Out of Our Windows, Our Philadelphia. Address : Care of Joseph Pennell, Century Oub, New York. Eden Phillpotts, novelist, was bom at Mount Aboo, India, in 1862. His father was captain of the Fifteenth Native Infantry. Phillpotts studied for the stage, but abandoned the art on finding that his ability did not justify perseverance. He wrote The Human Boy, The Human Boy and the War, and Portreeve. Recently he has produced four novels in which he has utilized great industries as backgrounds : Brunei's Tower, Old Delabole, Green Alleys, and The Banks of the Colne. His address is Eltham, Torquay, England. William Sidney Porter (O. Henry) was born at Greensborougfa, North Carolina, in 1867. He spent three years on a Texas ranch, was a reporter in Houston, Texas, and later edited his own paper at Austin, Texas. Then he went to Central America, and said he "knocked around with the refugees and consuls." In 1902, he went to New York, and the remainder of his life was given to the profession of short-story writing. Texas gives the setting of the short stories in The Heart of the West; Central America is the background of Cabbages and Kings; and New York ftuTu^ed the background for The Four Million, The Voices of the City, and The Trimmed Lamp. His death occurred in 1910. Liseite Woodworth Reese, author, was born in Baltimore County, Maryland, in 1856. She is a teacher of English in the Western High School, Baltimore. She is the airthor of several volumes of verse: A Branch of May, A Handful of Lavender, A Quiet Road, Wayside Lute. Her address is 2926 Harford Ave., Baltimore, Maryland. AuGUSTE Rodin, sculptor, was born in Paris in 1840. He was educated in several schools of drawing, among them Borye's. He served in the Franco-Prussian War. Among his important works are The Broken Nose, The Thinker, Adam, Eve, Orpheus and Eurydice, La Prance. Many of 3 so THE WORKER AND HIS WORK these are in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. His death occurred November 27, 1917. James Augustin Brown Scherer, college president, was born at Salis- bury, North Carolina, in 1870. He has spent several years in Japan. He is now president of Throop College of Technology. He is the author of several works on Japan and economic questions. In 1916, he published Cotton as a World Power, a study in the economic interpretation of history. His address is Pasadena, California. Bertrand William Sinclair was born in 1878. He is Scotch by birth and descent, being a native of Edinburgh. His parents came to this country when he was eight and settled in the Canadian Northwest. As a boy he was associated with cow-punchers, miners, and trappers. He received almost no formal schooling. His best-known works are Big Timber and North of Fifty-Three. Ida Minerva Tarbell was born in Erie County, Pennsylvania, in 1857. She was a student in Paris at the Sorbonne and College de France. From 1894 to 1906, she was an associate editor of McClure's and The American Magazine. Some of her writings are Short Story of Napoleon, Life of Madame Roland, Life of Abraham Lincoln, The History of the Standard Oil Company, The Business of Being a Woman. Her home is at 132 East 19th St., and her office at 381 Fourth Ave., New York. Herbert George Wells was born at Bromley, September 21, 1866. He is an English writer of romances dealing chiefly with imaginary future scientific results. Among the best known of his works are The War of the Worlds, Kipps, In the Days of the Comet, New Worlds for Old, Tono- Bungay, and Mr. Britling Sees It Through. His address is Easton Glebe, Dunmow, Essex. His London address is 52 St. James Court, S. W. Stewart Edward White, born at Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1873, is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Columbia Law School.' He is a writer of stories and novels of forestry, lumbering, and western life. Some of his works are The Blazed Trail Stories, The Westerners, The Silent Places, The Riverman. His address is Santa Barbara, California. Elizabeth Woodbkidge (Mrs. Charles Gould Morris), author, was born at Brooklyn in 1870. She is a graduate of Vassar and the author of several works of literary criticism. She has contributed essays to the Atlantic Monthly, the Outlook, and other maagzines. She wrote The Drama — Its Law and Its Technique, The Jonathan Papers, and More Jonathan Papers. Her home is at 230 Prospect St., New Haven, Connecticut. Harold Bell Wright was born in Oneida County, New York, in 1873. He has followed many professions, having been painter and decorator, landscape painter, minister and author. He wrote That Printer of Udell's, The Shepherd of the Hills, The Winning of Barbara Worth. His address is Holtville, California. '/-, " S'V ■ '■vw?Hp«eS 1 q» '-'•/• • ■!-■■ .^^_'j