Chapter III: Part 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“June would do,” I said.

“June _won’t_ do,” she corrected, “the birthday has got to come in winter, near Christmas; no other time of the year is suitable. Now what part of November would you like it? We’ll give you that much choice.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Good for you, Al!” she exclaimed, “We’ll make short work of having you in the mill now.”

As I attempt to visualize myself to myself at the time of my “graduation” from the common school, I see a lad, twelve years of age and growing rapidly in stature, with unsettled, brown hair which would neither part nor be smoothed, a front tooth missing, having been knocked out by a stone inadvertently thrown while he was in swimming, a lean, lank, uncouth, awkward lad at the awkward age, with a mental furnishing which permitted him to tell with authority when America was discovered, able to draw a half of an apple on drawing-paper, just in common fractions, able to distinguish between nouns and verbs, and a very good reader of most fearsome dime novels. The law said that I was “fitted” now to leave school and take my place among the world’s workers!

But now that I was ready to enter the mill, with my school-certificate in my possession, Uncle Stanwood raised his scruples again, saying regretfully enough, “Oh, Al mustn’t leave the school. He might never get back again, Millie.” My aunt laughed cynically, and handed two letters to her husband.

“Read them, and see what you think!” she said. Uncle read the two letters, and turned very pale, for they were lawyer’s letters, threatening to strip our house of the furniture and to sue us at law, if we did not bring up the back payments we owed on our clothing and our furniture! “You see, canter,” scoffed aunt, “he’s got to go in. There’s no other help, is there!” Uncle, crushed, said, “No, there isn’t. Would to God there was!” And so the matter was decided.

“In the morning you must take Al to the school-committee and get his mill-papers,” said my aunt, before we went to bed.

“I’ll ask off from work, then,” replied my uncle.

I always enjoyed being in the company of Uncle Stanwood. He was always trying to make me happy when it was in his power to do so. I knew his heart--that despite the weakness of his character, burned with great love for me. He was not, like Aunt Millie, buffeting me about, as if I were a pawn in the way. He had the kind word for me, and the desirable plan. On our walk to the school-committee’s office, in the heart of the city, we grew very confidential when we found ourselves beyond the keen, jealous hearing of Aunt Millie.

“That woman,” he said, “stops me from being a better man, Al. You don’t know, lad, how often I try to tone up, and she always does something to prevent my carrying it out. I suppose it’s partly because she drinks, too, and likes it better than I do. Drink makes quite a difference in people, God knows! It’s the stuff that kept me from being a man. Now that you’re going into the mill, Al, I hope you’ll not be led off to touch it. Whatever you’re tempted to do, don’t drink!” Then he added, “I’m a nice one to be telling you that. You see it every day, and probably will see it every day while your aunt’s with me. I could leave it alone if she weren’t in the house. But now we’ve got to be planning what we are going to do in the office that we’re going to, I suppose. There’s a lie in it for both of us, Al, now that we have our foot in so far. You’ll have to swear with me that you’re the right, legal age, though it’s a deliberate lie. My God, who would ever have thought that I’d come to it. It’s jail if we’re caught, lad, but we won’t be caught. Don’t do anything but answer questions as they’re put. That will keep you from saying too much. Stand on your tip-toes, and talk deep, so that you’ll seem big and old.”

Finally we approached the office of the school-committee, in a dingy, wooden building, on the ground floor. A chipped tin sign was tacked underneath the glass panels of the door, and, sure of the place, we entered. We were in a narrow, carpeted hall, long and darkened, which passed before a high, bank desk, behind which sat a young man mumbling questions to a dark woman, who stood with her right hand held aloft, while a boy stood at her side trying to button his coat as fast as he could, in nervousness. There were several other boys and a few girls, seated with their parents on the settee near the wall. We found a place among them, and watched the solemn proceedings that were taking place before us, as boys and girls were questioned by the young man, vouched for by their parents, and sent off with their mill-certificates.

One by one they left us: tall Portuguese lads, with baggy, pepper-and-salt trousers over their shoe tops, and a shine on their dark cheeks, little girls in gaudy dresses and the babyishness not yet worn off their faces; Irish lads, who, in washing up for this solemn time, had forgotten patches of dirt in their ears and on their necks; an American boy, healthy, strong, and self-confident, going to join the ranks of labor.

Then it was my turn. Uncle stood up before that perfunctory young man and began to answer questions, pinching me every now and then in warning to remember what he had said. I braced up, as well as I could, muttering to myself, “Thirteen on the twentieth of November, going on fourteen, sir!” lest, when the time came, I should make a guilty slip. My school-certificate was produced, the books were consulted, and that part of the matter ended. The clerk then looked me over for an instant, asked me a few questions which I cannot now recall, and then turned to uncle. Slowly, with hand raised to God, my uncle swore that I was “thirteen last November.” In about five minutes the examination was completed. In that time there had been a hurried scratching of a pen, a flourish or two, the pressure of a blotter and a reaching out of uncle Stanwood’s hand. The last barrier between me and the mill was down! The law had sanctioned my fitness for a life of labor. Henceforth neither physician could debar me, nor clergyman nor teacher nor parent! No one seemed to have doubted my uncle’s word, nor to have set a moral plumb-line against me. It had been a mere matter of question and answer, writing and signing. The law had perfunctorily passed me, and that was enough!

So we passed out of that office, my uncle grimly clutching the piece of paper for which he had perjured himself--the paper which was my warrant, consigning me to years of battling beyond my strength, to years of depression, morbidity, and over-tired strain, years to be passed in the center of depravity and de-socializing doctrine. But that was a memorable and glad moment for me, for to-morrow, maybe, I should carry my own dinner pail, and wear overalls, and work for wages!

_Chapter VIII. The Keepers of the Mill Gate, Snuff Rubbing, and the Play of a Brute_

_Chapter VIII. The Keepers of the Mill Gate, Snuff Rubbing, and the Play of a Brute_

“The first question that we have to settle,” commented my aunt, when we returned home with the mill-certificate, “is, what is Al going to work at in the mill?”

“It might be well to let him go into the weave-shed and learn to weave,” said my uncle; “after he’s learned, he might be able to run some looms and earn more than he could in any other part of the mill.”

“Meanwhile, he don’t draw any money while he’s learning, and it takes some months, don’t it?”

“Yes.”

Then I interrupted, “I’d like the weave room, Aunt Millie. I want to draw as big a wage as I can.”

“You shut your yap!” she retorted, angrily. “You haven’t any finger in this, mind. I say that he must get to work at something right away, that will bring in immediate wages.”

“But think of the pay he’d get after he’d learned weaving, Millie,” retorted my uncle; “It would make up for the time he’d spent in learning. He’d get treble what he can by taking up sweeping, in the long run!”

“Into the mill he goes,” concluded my aunt, firmly, “and he goes to work at something that will pay money right off, I don’t care a snap what it is!”

“That’s no reason!”

“Reason,” she snapped, “you speaking of reason, and here we are head over ears in debt. It’s time this fellow was earning his keep.”

Next neighbor to us was a family named Thomas. My aunt exchanged library books with Sarah Ann Thomas. Uncle went to the Workingmen’s Club with “Matty” Thomas, and I was the boon companion of “Zippy” Thomas. When Zippy learned from me that I had secured my mill-certificate, his joy was unbounded. He gave me a broad wink, and whispered, “You had to fake it, didn’t you, Al?” I nodded.

“They did mine, too! I won’t tell, you know. I wish you’d come and work in the same room with me. I’m sweepin’, and get three plunks a week.” Then he winked again, and said, “There’s some nice girls sweepin’ with me, too. Won’t it be bully if you can strike it with me. They need another sweeper. One got fired this morning for boring a hole in the belt-box to get electricity on a copper wire to kill cockroaches. You could get his job if you wanted and tried.” I told him to wait for me till I ran and told my uncle about it.

Uncle came out with me, and met Zippy.

“Where does the second hand live, lad?” he asked.

“He’s Canadian, his name’s Jim Coultier,” announced Zippy. “He lives at the other end of the tenements.”

We found Jim at home. No sooner was the object of our visit made known than he nodded his head, and said, “Tol’ him to coom wid Sippy’ morrer mornin’,” whereat my uncle was so pleased that he invited the Frenchman to go out with him to Riley’s saloon, to celebrate my entrance into the mill.

“So you’re going to be a wage-earner, like your uncle, are you?” laughed my aunt, when I returned with the news of my success. “Run right down to the Jew’s and get a pair of overalls, the blue ones, and two two-for-a-quarter towels, the rough, Turkish ones. Then come right home, and get to bed, for you’ll have to get up in good season to-morrow morning, so’s to be on hand when Zippy calls for you.”

The next morning I was awakened at half-past five, though it took very little to awaken me. My aunt was busy with the breakfast when I went out into the kitchen to wash my face. She turned to me with a kindness that was unusual, and said, “How many eggs shall I fry, Al? Have as many as you want this morning, you know.” I said that three would do.

I came into a place of respect and honor in the family that morning. My aunt actually waited upon me, and watched me eat with great solicitude. There was toast for me, and I did not have to wait until uncle was through before I got my share of it. With no compunction whatever, I asked for a second piece of cake!

Then, while the six o’clock mill bell was giving its half-hour warning, Zippy knocked on the door, while he whistled the chorus of, “Take back your gold, for gold will never buy me!” Five minutes more were spent in listening to moral counsels from my aunt and uncle and to many hints on how to get along with the bosses, and Zippy and I went out on the street, where we joined that sober procession of mill people, which, six mornings out of seven, the whole year round, goes on its weary way towards the multitude of mills in that city.

Zippy did all he could to make my advent in the mill easy. Before we had reached the mill gates he had poured forth a volume of sage advice. Among other counsels, he said, “Now Al, if any guy tells you to go and grease the nails in the floor, just you point to your eye like this,” and he nearly jabbed his forefinger into his left eye, “and you say, ‘See any green there?’ Don’t ever go for a left-handed monkey-wrench, and don’t go to the overseer after a carpet-sweeper; them’s all guys, and you don’t want to catch yourself made a fool of so easy. If the boss puts you to sweepin’ wid me, why, I’ll put you on to most of the dodges they catches a new guy wid, see!”

When we arrived at the mill gates, Zippy looked at the big tower clock, and announced, “Al, we’ve got twenty minutes yet before the mill starts, let’s sit out here. You’ll be right in the swim!” and he pointed to a line of men and boys sitting on the dirt with their backs braced against the mill fence. Either side of the gate was thus lined. Zippy and I found our places near the end of the line, and I took note of what went on. The air thereabouts was thick with odors from cigarettes and clay pipes. The boys near me aimed streams of colored expectoration over their hunched knees until the cinder walk was wet. Everybody seemed to be borrowing a neighbor’s plug of tobacco, matches, cigarette papers, or tobacco pouch. Meanwhile, the other employees trudged by. Some of the men near us would recognize, in the shawled, bent women, with the tired faces, their wives, struggling on to a day’s work, and would call, jocosely, “’Ello, Sal, has’t got ’ere? I thowt tha’d forgot to come. Hurry on, girl, tha’s oilin’ t’ do!” Or the younger boys would note a pretty girl tripping by, and one would call out, “Ah, there, peachy!” The “peachy” would turn her coiffured head and make her pink lips say, “You old mutt, put your rotten tongue in your mouth, and chase yourself around the block three times!” A woman, who was no better than her reputation came into view, a woman with paint daubed on her cheeks, and that was the signal for a full venting of nasty speech which the woman met by a bold glance and a muttered, filthy curse. Girls, who were admirable in character, came by, many of them, and had to run the gauntlet, but they had been running it so long, day in and day out, that their ears perhaps did not catch the significant and suggestive things that were loudly whispered as they passed.

When at last the whistles and the bells announced five minutes before starting time, the keepers of the gate jumped up, threw away cigarette stubs, emptied pipes, grumbled foully, took consolation from tobacco plugs, and went into the mill.

Zippy led me at a run up three flights of iron-plated stairs, through a tin-covered door, and into a spinning-room. When we arrived, not a wheel was stirring. I almost slipped on the greasy floor. Up and down the length of the room the ring-spinning frames were standing like orderly companies of soldiers forever on dress parade. Above, the ceiling was a tangled mass of belts, electric wires, pipes, beams, and shafting. The room was oppressively heated, and was flavored with a sort of canker breath.

As I stood there, interested in my new surroundings, the wheels began to move, almost silently, save for a slight, raspy creaking in some of the pulleys. The belts began to tremble and lap, the room was filled with a low, bee-like hum. A minute later, the wheels were whirling with such speed that the belts clacked as they turned. The hum was climbing up the scale slowly, insistently, and one could not avoid feeling sure that it would reach the topmost note soon. Then the girl spinners jumped up from the floor where they had been sitting, and went to their frames. Some pulled the levers, and tried their machines. Everybody seemed to be shouting and having a last word of gossip. The second hand stood near the overseer’s desk with his fingers stuck in his mouth. He whistled, and that was the signal for all the girls to start their frames. At last the pulleys had attained that top note in their humming, like a top, and with it were mixed screams, whistles, loud commands, the rattle of doffer’s trucks, poundings, the clanking of steel on steel, and the regular day’s work was begun.

Zippy had gone into the elevator room and changed his clothes. He stood near me, and I saw his lips move.

“What?” I shouted at the top of my lungs.

He laughed, and then warned, “Don’t thunder so. I can hear you if you speak lower. You’ll get used to hearing soon. Come with me. The boss says for me to show you where to dress.”

“To dress!” At last I was to put on overalls and go barefooted! Zippy led me to the elevator room, a large, quiet place, when the thick door was shut and there were cheerful windows open, where the cool air came in. I stripped off my clothes and put on the overalls. I was ready for work. “The boss wants to see your certificate,” announced Zippy.

The overseer was a Canadian, like the second hand. He had his feet on the desk, and was engrossed in the _Morning Mercury_ when I reached him. He turned around with a terrific speed on his swivel chair, when we came up to him, and enquired, somewhat kindly, “Well?”

“Please, sir,” I began, “I come to work--to sweep. Jim Coultier told me to come last night!”

“Take him to Jim. Don’t bother me,” grumbled the overseer. “Jim will settle it.”

Jim did settle it. He took my certificate and gave it to the overseer, and then told me to follow him to the other end of the mill. In a cupboard was a great supply of new brooms, waste, and oil cups. He took out a broom, spread it wide, and gave it to me.

“Two a week,” he said, “no more.” Then he turned to Zippy, and said, “Show him whar for to do!”

Zippy, no doubt bursting with importance with all this supervision, led me to an open space in the middle of the long room, where, sitting near some waste boxes, were two girls, barefooted, about my own age. Zippy led me right up to them, and with a wave of the hand announced, “Girls, this here’s Al Priddy. This is Mary, and t’other’s Jane. Come on, girls, it’s time to go around the mill before the boss sees us.”

But just then the second hand caught us grouped there, and stormed, angrily, “Get to work!”

Mary was a very strong girl of thirteen, with a cheery, fat face. She had been in the mill a half year, and was learning to spin during her spare time. I noticed that her teeth were yellow, and with a bluntness that I did not realize I said to her, when she had taken me to show me how to sweep, “What makes your teeth so yellow, Mary?”

She laughed, and then said, confidentially, “I chew snuff. I’m learning from the older girls.”

“Chew snuff?”

She nodded, “I’m rubbing, you see,” and we sat down while she showed me what she meant. She took a strip of old handkerchief from her apron, and a round box of snuff. She powdered the handkerchief with the snuff, and then rubbed it vigorously on her teeth.

“I like it,” she announced. “It’s like you boys when you chew tobacco, only this is the girl’s way.”

My work required little skill and was soon mastered. I had to sweep the loose cotton from the floor and put it in a can. Then there were open parts of stationary machinery to clean and a little oiling of non-dangerous parts. This work did not take more than two-thirds of the ten and a half hours in the work day. The remainder of the time, Zippy, the girls, and I spent in the elevator room, where the doffers also came for a rest.

I had occasion to get very well acquainted with two of the doffers that first day. Their names were “Mallet” and “Curley,” two French Canadians. Mallet was a lithe, sallow-faced, black-haired depreciator of morals, who fed on doughnuts, and spent most of his wages in helping out his good looks with the aid of the tailor, the boot-maker, and the barber. He came to the mill dressed in the extreme of fashion, and always with his upper lip curled, as if he despised every person he passed--save the good-looking girls. Curley was Mallet’s antithesis in everything but moral ignorance. He was a towering brute, with a child’s, yes, less than a child’s, brain. He ran to muscle. He could outlift the strongest man in the mill without increasing his heartbeat. His chief diversions were lifting weights, boasting of his deeds with weights in contests of the past, and the recital of filthy yarns in which he had been the chief actor.

That afternoon of my first day in the mill, Mallet and Curley shut themselves in the elevator room with Zippy and me.

“Ah,” drawled Mallet, noticing me, as if for the first time, “who tol’ you for to come here, eh?”

“Because I want to,” I retorted.

“Curley,” he called to the brute, who was grinning at me, “gif heem a chew, eh?”

The brute nodded in glee, and pulled out a black plug of tobacco and handed it me.

“You take a big, big chew!” he commanded. I threw the plug on the floor and stoutly declared, “I won’t.” Both of the companions laughed, and came over to where I sat. Curley pinned me helplessly to the floor, while Mallet stuffed the piece of tobacco in my mouth that he had hastily cut off from the plug. Then Curley took an excruciating grip on one of my fingers so that by a simple pressure it seemed as if the finger would snap.

“You chew, or I brak it,” he glared down on me. I refused, and had to suffer intolerable agony for a minute. Then the brute bent his face close to mine, with his foul mouth over my eyes.

“I spit in your eye if you do not chew,” he announced, as he looked off for a second, and then with his mouth fixed he bent over me, and I had to chew.

In a short time I was deathly sick. This accomplished, the giant gave me up until he got to his feet, then he took me in his arms, as he would have taken a child, and carried me out into the spinning-room for the girls to laugh at.

“Dis man try for to chew plug,” announced Mallet. “Now heem seek. Oh! oh!” Then I was carried to the third hand, a friend of the doffers, and Mallet announced, “You’d best fire dis kid. Heem chew and get seek, boss.” The third hand scowled at me, and said, “Cut it out, kid, if you stay here.”

When I went home at the end of the day, aunt asked me what sort of a day I’d had. “Oh,” I said, “when I know the ropes it will be pretty fair.” I was thinking of the three dollars I should get the second week. I said nothing about the tobacco incident. When I sat down to supper, I could not eat. My aunt remarked, “Don’t let it take your appetite away, Al, lad. It takes strength to work in the mill.”

“I’m not hungry,” I said, and I was not; for, before my imagination, there rose up the persecuting figures of Mallet and Curley, and I could still taste the stinging flavor of the plug.

_Chapter IX. A Factory Fashion-plate, the Magic Shirt Bosom, and Wise Counsel on How to Grow Straight_

_Chapter IX. A Factory Fashion-plate, the Magic Shirt Bosom, and Wise Counsel on How to Grow Straight_

The ring-spinning room is generally the center of fashion in a cotton-mill. The reason may be that the ring-spinners, at least in New England, are generally vivacious French-Canadian girls. There were some in the mill where I began work, who possessed an inordinate thirst for ornament and dress. The ring-spinners had clean surroundings and much easier work than their sisters in the weave-shed. Their labor was more genteel than that of their sisters in the carding-room.

Marie Poisson, who ran frames which I cleaned and oiled, was the leader of fashion in the room, and well she was fitted for it. She resembled a sunflower on a dandelion stalk; she was statuesque even in a working-dress, and when you saw her hands you wondered how she ever got through the day without gloves. She lived on doughnuts, frosted cake, cold meats, and pickles, in order that her board bill might remain small and allow her a good percentage of her wages for dress. She had huge coiffures in all the latest styles, and when the little artistic dabs of powder were absent, her face had a lean and hungry look. Marie was a splendid specimen of compressed humanity: she must have suffered the tortures of the inquisition, for what tiny high-heeled shoes she took off and hid in the waste can, near the coat hooks! How many times a day did I see her pressing her hands to her waist as if to unbind herself and get a good gulp of air! How stiff her neck from its daily imprisonment in a high, starched collar! At that time, a certain dainty, mincing, doubled-up walk was affected by the fashionable society women of the country, a gait which was characterized as “The Kangaroo Walk!” The young ladies had to go in training for this fashion, had to adjust the body and the general carriage to a letter S mould, before the mincing daintiness could be shown. Marie was the first in the spinning-room to attain this goal. Her success inspired even such humble imitators as Mary and Jane to mould themselves, by daily posturings and prancings, in a wild effort to attain the same end.

The inevitable result of so much pride and fashion in the girls was to make the young men and boys pay strict attention to themselves; for so the mixing of the sexes tends everywhere, even in a mill. Probably Mallet, with his excessive vanities, had been produced through such contact. In any case, such fashion plates as I saw were merely contrasts which brought out my own insufficiencies. The first sign of this influence came in my purchase of a ten-cent celluloid rose which had a perfumed sponge in its heart, which could be filled over and over again when the scent had evaporated. I had a ten-cent bottle, large size, of Jockey Club for this purpose, which I also spilled over my handkerchiefs and clothes, and went to the mill leaving a perfumed trail behind me. As I could not swagger in such glaring and costly shirts as Mallet wore, several changes in a week, I bought from a fakir, one Saturday night, a wonderful shirt bosom, for ten cents! It permitted the wearer _instantly_ to change the pattern of his shirt bosom twelve times, ranging all the way from a sober ministerial white, going through the innocent and inoffensive tints and checks, and at last reaching the vivid, startling gambler’s stripes and dots! These marvelous effects were very simply brought about. The Magic Bosom, as it was called, was a circular piece of stiff pasteboard on either side of which were pasted six segments of enameled paper, shaped like letter V’s, just large enough to fit behind the lapels of the vest. There were six turns of the circle for six patterns on one side, and then, by merely turning the whole thing around, the other six effects were possible. The only trouble was, I did not wear a vest in the mill, and so could only use it to and from the mill, to the theater, where I changed it during every act, and took care that others should notice the magic transformation. I wore it to a Sunday-school that I attended intermittently, and astonished my classmates by six transformations during the hour’s session!

Then I began to contrast my own hair with Mallet’s black and orderly curls. His hair always shone, and the barber kept it from growing down below the ear! That disturbed me, for neither comb nor brush could part mine or make it stay down. I was so disturbed over the matter that I confided in my aunt. She laughed, and said that she had a recipe that would satisfy me. She sent me down to a butcher shop for a large-sized marrow bone. Then she had me produce my large-sized bottle of Jockey Club. After boiling the marrow bone in water for two hours, she made me extract the marrow. Then I had to put in a certain amount of perfume and give the whole a good stirring. Aunt next produced a cold-cream jar, and put the decoction in and let it cool over night.

In the morning she said, “Now, Al, that’s a jar of the best hair grease you could buy for money anywhere. It’s an old recipe and will not only make the hair stay in place but is, at the same time, good for it. It makes the hair grow, and keeps it in good condition.” True enough it had a good odor to it, and _was_ smooth like the stuff the barber put on my head when he cut my hair. I rubbed some on my head that morning, and not only did I have the satisfaction of seeing my hair shine, like Mallet’s, but it also stayed parted in the middle! I went to the mill that morning, with my cap balanced on the back of my head, so that everybody could see the shine and the parting. But I had not been in the mill long before the pomade evaporated, my hair sprang loose, and I was as badly off as before. By bringing the jar into the mill I managed to remedy that, and got along very well until one of the doffers rubbed his palm over my head, discovered the grease, sniffed it, and told all over the room that I was daubing bear’s grease on my hair to keep it down.

These items of self-consciousness, so momentous to me at the time, were some of the signs of adolescence. I was growing very rapidly, and my whole self was in a whirl of change. Every bone seemed to have sprung loose, every muscle seemed to be expanding at once, all my strength seemed to have left my body! My bones were sore and every muscle ached. An infinite weariness and dizziness took possession of me, day and night. Sitting or standing I could find no rest. When I bent down, I suffered undue pain; when I reached for anything, I had to drop my arms before I had attained the object. I suffered as if jackscrews had been laid at all angles in my body, and were being turned and turned day and night without any stop. I could not bend and reach under the frames to clean them without excruciating pain sweeping over me, and a cold sweat. If I took hold of a broom, and tried to sweep, I had to drag the broom wearily after the first few moments. I went home after the day’s work as tired as if I had been holding up the world all day. And though I went to bed soon after supper, and slept soundly till the morning, I awoke as tired as if I had been toiling at a slave’s task every minute of the night.

I tried, in no complaining spirit, to describe my feelings to my aunt. “Why, they’re nothing but growing pains, Al,” she said. “You ought to feel proud that you’re going to be a tall man. It’ll pass. You must get all the rest you can by going to bed right after supper. That’ll help!”

But she never said, as I wanted her to say, “Get off from work while you’re suffering so, and don’t try to work while you’re in that condition.”

During this period, I grew to be supersensitive and self-conscious. I had a high, shrill voice, of which I was not aware till a doffer mimicked it one day. It was a small matter to him, but to me it was tragical. It wore on my imagination all through that day, it haunted me that night, it intruded itself on my solitude until I inwardly cried and grew depressed.

“What’s ailing you, lad?” commented my uncle the next morning. “You look as if you’d lost your best friend?” But I would not unburden myself of the load of guilty feeling that was on my shoulders--guilt, because my voice was high, shrill, and childish! I was afraid to meet people whom I knew on the street, and when I saw one I knew coming towards me, I would dash to the opposite side, or, if escape like that were impossible, I would turn towards a shop-window or pretend to be interested in a bit of dirt on a curbstone.

Mark Waterhouse, an old crippled Englishman, who ran the elevator and with whom I talked often while in the elevator room, seemed to understand me thoroughly when I told him how I felt.

“Aye, lad,” he said, “it’s growing tha’ art. Growing swift, too: tall like a bullrush. It’s bad for thee to be in this ’ot room an’ working. Tha’ needs fresh hair; lots on’t. Lots o’ fresh hair to get in th’ blood an’ bone, like.”

“But aunt won’t let me stay at home,” I said.

“Aye,” grumbled the old man with a slow nod of his head, “they all say it. Th’ll do that. It’s the way o’ th’ mill, lad, an’ we’re born to ’t. You con put a plank ower a rose bush while the shoots’r young an’ growing, and the shoots’ll turn aside, go crook’d, get twisted, but the bush will grow, lad, spite o’ the plank. This work and bad air’s the plank on top o’ ye, but yeu’ll grow, spite on’t. Yeu’ll grow, for God started ye growing an’ ye can’t stop God. But yeu’ll grow bent at’ shoulders, legs’ll twist, feet’ll turn, knees’ll bend in! Sure’s ye live, they will. See me, lad,” he said, “the plank was on top o’ me, too. I went int’ mill at nine, an’ worked ’ard for a babby, I did! Con I walk straight? See me,” and he went at a pathetic hobble across the room, one knee turned in, the other foot twisted out of joint. “That’s t’ way it took me, lad, when I was in your shoes. I’m not t’ only one, either. Th’ mills full on ’em! Do I freighten ye, lad? Never mind. Do your best, spite on’t. I tell ye what! Stretch your arms mony times through t’ day. Oxercise! _Oxercise!_ Stretch thy muscles, thy legs, an’ get all the chance tha con so tha’ll grow spite on’t. Spite o’ work, bad air an’ all! Strengthen thasel’, lad. Don’t let twists, knots, an’ bends coom!”

This old man’s counsel made a deep impression on me. In terror of the things he described, and which he himself was, I made up my mind that I would not let my body get bent, crooked, or distorted, so I did as he said. I stretched myself to my full height many times a day. I exercised with weights and broom handles, even though I found it very painful. I gulped in the fresh air when out of the mill, and walked with my chest thrust out, a stiff, self-conscious, growing lad, fighting ever against the impending tragedy of a deformed body.

_Chapter X. “Peter One-Leg-and-a-Half” and His Optimistic Whistlers_

_Chapter X. “Peter One-Leg-and-a-Half” and His Optimistic Whistlers_

By the middle of the following winter, I had entered fully into all the privileges that were mine by virtue of my labor in the mill. The background of all my privileges was the spending money my aunt gave me. She apportioned me money on a basis which kept me constantly at work. I was given ten cents on every dollar that I brought home. This made me ambitious for advance. It made me keep at work even when I should have been at home on a sick bed. It drove “loafing days” out of my mind entirely, for spending money was the _summum bonum_ of my existence. The kind of things I craved, the only things I found real pleasure in, cost money.

I attended the ten-cent shows in the theater on Saturday afternoons. I looked forward throughout the week to a glass of hot beef-tea at the soda fountain. I would smack my lips long in anticipation of two-for-five cream puffs or a five-cent pork pie. They meant fully as much to me, then, as did the Horse Show or a Paris gown to the aspiring daughter of one of the mill stockholders.

Intermittently, I used to go to the business section of the city alone, and stop at Cheap John’s, the tobacconist’s, for a treat of second-hand novels. There was a squat, gaudily decorated Punch standing in front of Cheap John’s, with a handful of chocolate cigars always extended to the passers-by. Punch’s jester’s cap, with the bells over his left ear, his hooked nose and upturned chin, always with a fixed grin on his shiny face, always seemed a human goblin, saying, “Come in, and have one on me!”

The interior of Cheap John’s was like a country fair Midway. There were weight machines, moving pictures, slot instruments, lung testers, name-plate makers, guessing machines, card-wheels, pool-tables, racing bulletins, sport scores, displays of sporting apparatus, of tobacco specialties, of colored sporting posters, hat-cleaning wheels, clothes-cleaning tables, shoe-blacking alcoves, and a long counter on which were heaped rows on rows of highly colored, second-hand Wild West, Sport, Adventure, and Detective romances: a bundle of them for ten cents! A bundle of these I would purchase, listen to the men’s voices that came from the dense clouds of smoke, and then I would race home, a distance of a mile, to examine more closely the prizes of the night.

The next day being Sunday, I had the privilege of staying in bed, of having my breakfast brought to me, much as if I had been a convalescent gentleman. My aunt would find me propped up in bed, with the novels spread over the bed; and in the midst of a detective romance, always read first, I would be interrupted by some such words as these: “Well, his royal highness! Will he have bacon and eggs and a hot cup of cocoa?” I would merely keep on reading, with a suppressed, growled “Yep!” and after breakfast, though it would be a pleasant day outside, I would sit there in bed and read until I became satiated with thrills, disguised scouts, burgled safes, triumphant, last-chapter endings of “Justice at last!” reunited lovers and pardoning fathers, when I would dress, have dinner, and go out into a slumberous Sabbath afternoon, to stand bored on a street corner until dark, when the gangs of the city moved and planned exciting escapades.

When my uncle saw me reading the novels, he interposed with, “That’s cheap stuff, Al, and will never make you any better. You want to read refining things, the great books. There’s many an exciting one that is exciting without being cheap. I wish you would let me plan for you.” I told him that I would--sometime, but I kept on reading Cheap John’s bargain-counter literature.