THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 W 
 
 ^
 
 THE WORKERS
 
 j j i+css*^<e 
 
 THE WORKERS 
 
 AN 
 
 EXPERIMENT IN REALITY 
 
 WT 
 
 WALTEE A. WYCKOFF, 
 
 AS5TSTAK1 PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IK 
 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 
 
 THE EAST 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 1910
 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY 
 
 CHAKLES SCRIBNER'S SOJJS
 
 33; 
 
 CHANNING P. MEEK, Esq. 
 
 xii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The preface to a narrative like this must it- 
 self be of the nature of a story which will ac- 
 count for the expedition here described, and 
 make clear the point of view from which the 
 experiment was tried. 
 
 Enough of the actual setting of the tale is 
 implied in a passing reference to a charming 
 country-seat on Long Island Sound, and the 
 presence there of a fellow-guest, Mr. Channing 
 F. Meek a chance acquaintance to me then. 
 His wide knowledge of the West, his intimate 
 familiarity with practical affairs, and his catho- 
 lic sympathy with human nature, made him a 
 man wholly new and interesting to me. And in 
 our talk, which drifted early into channels of 
 social questions, I could but feel increasingly 
 the difference between my slender, book-learned 
 lore and his vital knowledge of men and the 
 
 principles by which they live and work, 
 rii
 
 Vlll PREFACE 
 
 One radiant Sunday morning in midsummer 
 there came to me from his talk so strong a sug- 
 gestion of the means of acquiring the practical 
 knowledge that I lacked, and in a way that gave 
 promise of an experiment so interesting, and of 
 such high possibility of successful treatment, 
 that in that hour I knew that I was pledged to 
 its undertaking. 
 
 No further disclosure of my animus is needed 
 than has already been hinted at in the fact of 
 a new, unoccupied, inviting field and the fair 
 prospect which its development offered to a 
 student eager for a place among original investi- 
 gators. I cannot, however, sufficiently acknowl- 
 edge my indebtedness to the friends whose gen- 
 erous sympathy has followed me throughout the 
 enterprise especially that friend already men- 
 tioned. To him I owe the first idea of the plan 
 and a large measure of what success has at- 
 tended its execution. 
 
 The narrative form into which I have cast 
 the results of my investigation depends for its 
 value solely upon careful adherence to the truth 
 of actual experience. This account is strictly 
 accurate even to details ; apart from confessed 
 changes in the names of the persons introduced,
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 no element of fiction has intentionally been al- 
 lowed to intrude. 
 
 It only remains to say with reference to my 
 attitude in the experiment itself, that I entered 
 upon it with no theories to establish and no 
 conscious preconceptions to maintain. As sin- 
 cerely as I could, I wished my mind to be tabula 
 rasa to new facts, and sensitive to the impres- 
 sions of actual experience. 
 
 Princeton University, October 27, 1897.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I pAM 
 
 The Adjustment, ' 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 A Day-laborer at West Point, . . 83 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 A Hotel Porter, W 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 A Hired Man at an Asylum, . . . .108 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 A Farm Hand, **4 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 In a Logging Camp, * 79 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 In a Logging Camp (Concluded), . . .225
 
 THE WORKERS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE ADJUSTMENT 
 
 Highland Falls, N. Y., 
 Monday, July 27, 1891. 
 
 The boss at the work on the old Academic 
 building in West Point gave me a job this morn- 
 ing, and ordered me to come to work to-morrow 
 at seven o'clock. A gang of laborers is fast re- 
 moving the old building, which is to give place 
 to a new one. From one of the workmen I 
 learned that the men live in Highland Falls, a 
 mile down the river, and so I came here in search 
 of a boarding-house. There was some difficulty 
 in finding quarters, for the place is crowded with 
 workingmen attracted here by the new build- 
 ings at the Post and work on the railway. 
 
 Mrs. Flaherty has taken me in as a boarder. 
 That is not her name, but it sufficiently indi- 
 cates her. She came to the door with the odor 
 of soap-suds and boiling cabbage strong upon 
 1
 
 2 THE WORKERS 
 
 her, and told me at first that she guessed that 
 she couldn't take me. She relented when I ex- 
 plained that I had work at the Post ; and, hav- 
 ing admitted me as a member of her household, 
 she gave play to her natural hospitality. When 
 I was shown to a little carpetless room under 
 the roof, with two double beds in it, I spoke of 
 needing water, and she showed me where I could 
 get a plentiful supply. I said that I should like 
 to write, and she at once invited me from the 
 torrid heat of the attic to a place at her dining- 
 room table. 
 
 Here then, in the temporary security of a 
 boarding-house, and as an assigned member of 
 the industrial army, I can review the first week 
 of enlisted service. 
 
 I am vastly ignorant of the labor problem, 
 and am trying to learn by experience ; but I 
 am so far familiar with Socialistic writings as 
 to know that, from their point of view, I have 
 not gone from one economic class into another. 
 I belong to the proletariat, and from being one 
 of the intellectual proletarians, I am simply be- 
 come a manual proletaire. In other words, I 
 no longer stand in the market ready to sell what 
 mental ability I have, I now bring to the mar- 
 ket instead my physical capacity for work ; and 
 I sell that at its market price. Expressed in
 
 THE ADJUSTMENT 3 
 
 every-day language, the change is simply this : 
 from earning a living as a teacher, I have begun 
 to earn it as an unskilled laborer. 
 
 But, nevertheless, the change has in it ele- 
 ments of real contrast. One week ago I shared 
 the frictionless life of a country-seat. Friction- 
 less, I mean, in the movement of an elaborate 
 system which ministers luxuriously to the phys- 
 ical needs of life. Frictionless, perhaps, only to 
 those to whom it ministers. Now I am out of 
 all that, and am sharing instead the life of the 
 humblest form of labor upon which that super- 
 structure rests. 
 
 This is not a frictionless life in its adjustment 
 to daily needs very much the reverse. And 
 whatever may be its compensations, they are 
 not of the nature of easy physical existence. 
 
 The actual step from the one manner of life 
 to the other was sure of its own interest. It 
 was painful to say good-by on the last evening, 
 and there was enough of uncertainty in the 
 prospect to account for a shrinking from the 
 first encounter with a strange life ; but there 
 was promise of adventure, and almost a certain- 
 ty of solid gain in experience. 
 
 At sunrise on the next morning I was ready 
 to set out. I descended quietly to the hall. 
 The butler stood there, politely urging some
 
 4 THE WORKERS 
 
 pretended necessity as excuse for so early an 
 appearance, and he invited me to breakfast. 
 
 Often had he seen me off for a day's fishing 
 or shooting in the old suit which I wore, but 
 I could feel his eye fixed upon me now with 
 perplexed interest. He had heard my expedi- 
 tion discussed at the table, and in some vague 
 way he took in that I meant to earn my living 
 as a workman. With his wonted dignity, he 
 helped me adjust my pack and strap it; and 
 then he stood under the porte cochere, and 
 watched me hurry across the lawn in the direc- 
 tion of the highway. 
 
 Two hours' walk carried me beyond the point 
 of my acquaintance with the country roads ; but 
 this presented no real difficulty, for I had but to 
 keep a steadily westward course. Other details 
 of my expedition were not so simple, and I be- 
 gan to have an uncomfortable sense of unsus- 
 pected difficulty. I look back from the vantage- 
 point of a week's experience, with a feeling of 
 amused tolerance, upon my naive preconcep- 
 tions. It is like a retrospect of years. My no- 
 tion of earning a living by manual labor was the 
 securing of an odd job whenever I should need 
 a meal or a night's lodging. Much advice had 
 come my way before I set out. As a means of 
 access to people, I was told to take with me a
 
 THE ADJUSTMENT O 
 
 book or magazine, and to invite subscriptions. I 
 adopted this plan ; and a copy of a magazine 
 was under my arm as I walked on through the 
 dust and heat of the country road, wondering 
 how long it would take me to reach the Hud- 
 son, and how I should earn my first meal. 
 
 There was nothing at all adventurous or ex- 
 citing in a dusty walk. My pack was taking on 
 increments of weight with each mile of the jour- 
 ney. I was beginning to feel conscious of 
 change in unexpected ways. There was no 
 money in my pocket, and a most subtle and un- 
 manning insecurity laid hold of me as a result 
 of that. The world had curiously changed in 
 its attitude, or rather I saw it at a new angle, 
 and I felt the change most keenly in the bear- 
 ing of people. My good-morning was not in- 
 frequently met by a vacant stare, and if I stopped 
 to ask the way, the conviction was forced upon 
 me that, as a pack-pedler, I was a suspicious 
 character, with no claim upon common consid- 
 eration. 
 
 In the shade of his porch sat the keeper of a 
 country store, at a fork of the road. His chair 
 was tilted against the outer wall, and his feet 
 rested upon the balustrade. My question as to 
 the course of the two roads before me was re- 
 sponded to by the merchant, first with a look,
 
 6 THE WORKERS 
 
 and then a spurt of tobacco-juice, which stirred 
 the dust between my feet, and, finally, a caustic 
 sentence to the effect that he 'did not much 
 know, and did not care a damn,' while his blue 
 eyes swept the horizon, and rested finally on the 
 Sound, gleaming golden in the morning sun, and 
 the purple line of the Long Island shore. 
 
 The new-born self-consciousness which I found 
 asserting itself was like a wound on the hand, 
 exposed to constant injury. I had walked sev- 
 eral miles before I summoned courage to speak 
 to anyone else. Finally, very hot and thirsty, 
 I knocked at the door of an unpainted cottage 
 which stood on the road. The door opened to 
 the touch of an old woman, who bent toward me 
 in the emaciated angularity of a decrepit figure 
 which must once have been strikingly tall and 
 vigorous. 
 
 I asked leave to show her the magazine, and 
 she invited me into the cool of her home. The 
 middle floor was covered with a yellow oil-cloth, 
 on which there stood a table. A large cooking- 
 stove occupied one side of the room. A few 
 wooden-bottom chairs were ranged around the 
 walls. An old kitchen clock rested on the man- 
 tel-shelf ; and on either side of it hung a faded 
 photograph, each in an oval wooden frame. 
 
 The old woman asked me to draw up a chair
 
 THE ADJUSTMENT 7 
 
 to the table, and she sat beside me, looking with 
 the excited interest of a child at the pictures 
 which I showed her, but paying little heed, I 
 thought, to what I was saying. Presently, with- 
 out warning, she veered mentally with the facility 
 of childhood, and now she was looking at me in- 
 tently between the eyes, while one long skeleton 
 hand lay on the open page before her. 
 
 " Be you a pedler ? " she asked, and her eyes 
 dilated to the measure of the protruding sockets 
 over which the yellow skin was tightly drawn. 
 
 " I am tryiDg to get subscribers for this mag- 
 azine," I told her. 
 
 " Was you raised in these parts ? " 
 
 My negative gave her the opening for which she 
 was unconsciously feeling. She was born and 
 " raised " on that spot, and had lived there for 
 nearly eighty years, and she hastened to tell me 
 so. There was nothing voluble in the recital of 
 her history, only a directness and simplicity of 
 speech and a certain quiet reserve which ren- 
 dered the narrative absorbing to us both. Some 
 bond of sympathy began to make itself felt, for 
 she was dwelling on the losses of her life, and, 
 quite unconsciously, she wept as she told me of 
 the death of one and another, until not one of all 
 her family or kindred was left to her, except her 
 grandson, with whom she now lived. She said
 
 8 THE WORKERS 
 
 no word of complaint ; and, in the presence of 
 her human sorrows, she had no memory of pov- 
 erty, and of the bitter struggle against want 
 which life had plainly been for her. She was 
 sobbing softly, with her head bent upon the ta- 
 ble, when she ceased speaking, and no comfort 
 that I could offer her was comparable to the 
 relief that she felt in telling her story. When 
 I arose to go, she was breathing deeply, like a 
 comforted child. 
 
 For a stretch of several miles of country road 
 I spurred myself to knock at every door to 
 which I came. My reception was curiously uni- 
 form. I never got beyond the request for leave 
 to show the magazine. The reply was invari- 
 ably a negative ; sometimes polite, but always 
 emphatic. Once I did not get so far as that. 
 A portly negress saw me approaching her cot- 
 tage from the road, and, standing strident on 
 guard before her door, she shouted to me across 
 the meadow that nothing was wanted there, and 
 that I might save myself the walk. 
 
 It was nearing noon, and I was very hungry. 
 The question of earning a meal was no longer an 
 interesting speculation, but a pressing necessity. 
 I turned all my attention to that. A large iron 
 gateway leading into a cemetery attracted me. 
 Several ragged, tow-headed children were playing
 
 THE ADJUSTMENT 9 
 
 about the lodge. One of them told me that his 
 father was inside, and he indicated the general 
 direction of the tomb-stones. I found the dig- 
 ger sweating freely in a half -finished grave, 
 and instantly offered my help as a means of 
 earning a dinner. The grave-digger was an 
 Irishman. He leaned at ease upon his spade, 
 and soberly looked me over, and then declined 
 my offer. He was polite, but not at all com- 
 municative, and he met my advances with the 
 one remark that his " old woman " was not at 
 home. 
 
 A little farther on, I saw three women in pur- 
 suit of a hen. I eagerly volunteered my help, 
 and asked for a dinner in payment. They quit 
 the chase, and stood confronting me with serious 
 faces, while I eloquently pleaded my readiness 
 to help them. Nothing in the situation seemed 
 to strike them as strange or irregular, but they 
 touched upon it with short, grave speech, until 
 I had the feeling of something momentous, and 
 I accepted their refusal with a sense of relief. 
 
 At last, in the outskirts of the village of "West- 
 port, I found a man mowing his lawn, and he 
 was willing to give me a dinner for completing 
 the work. My final success in getting an odd 
 job was a splendid stimulus. I urged the mower 
 over the lawn with a vigor that surprised me,
 
 10 THE WORKERS 
 
 and the dinner which I ate in the dim corner of 
 an immaculate kitchen was a liberal return for 
 the labor. 
 
 All that long summer afternoon I went from 
 house to house, asking subscriptions for the 
 magazine. The rack would have been easier 
 upon my feelings, but I was eager to discover 
 some ready way of approaching people. Not 
 even the loafers at the station were in the least 
 inclined to share their company with me. At 
 nightfall I earned, by sawing wood for an hour, 
 a supper and the right to sleep in an unused 
 barn. 
 
 When I awoke, in the early morning, I looked 
 with bewilderment at the dull gray light that 
 shone between the parted boards and through 
 the rifts among the shingles. I came to myself 
 with homesickness in full possession of me, and 
 my back aching from the pressure of that intol- 
 erable pack. At the pump in the barn-yard I 
 washed myself, and sat down to eat a slice of 
 cold meat and some pieces of bread which I had 
 saved from supper. An unfriendly collie watched 
 me, and growled threateningly until I won him 
 over with a share of the breakfast. 
 
 The village was muffled in a heavy, clinging 
 fog. The buoyancy of the previous morning 
 was gone. It was with some difficulty that I
 
 THE ADJUSTMENT 11 
 
 found the road which had been pointed out to 
 me as the shortest cut across country to the 
 Hudson. I could not shake off the feeling of 
 homelessness and isolation ; and, under its in- 
 fluence, the lot of the farmers' boys, whom I met 
 driving their carts to early market, appeared in- 
 finitely to be desired. A life of any honest 
 work which accounts for one, and includes some 
 human fellowship, and a reasonable certainty of 
 food and shelter, began to take on undreamed-of 
 attractiveness, in contrast with vagrancy. I felt 
 outside of the true order of things, and as hav- 
 ing no contact with any vital current of the 
 world. Perhaps it was in some measure the 
 Philistine in me asserting himself, in the absence 
 of his customary bath and hot coffee ; for, as the 
 fog lifted and the sun appeared, I came upon a 
 brook which I had only to follow a hundred 
 yards or more to a well-shaded pool, where the 
 bath was soon achieved, and I emerged feeling 
 that a vagrant life, with some purpose in it, was, 
 after all, rather desirable. 
 
 The morning was only fairly begun when I 
 reached the village of "Wilton, eight miles from 
 "Westport. Already I was tired, and certain 
 muscles of the shoulders and back were in violent 
 revolt. I left my pack at the post-office. Pass- 
 ing up a street, which runs at right angles to
 
 12 THE WORKERS 
 
 the one by which I entered the village, I pres- 
 ently knocked at the last of a row of comfortable 
 cottages. 
 
 When the door opened I knew instinctively 
 that the gentleman who stood framed in it was 
 the village pastor. I said that I was looking for 
 work. He asked me inside. I thought this a 
 curious change of subject, but willingly followed 
 him into a dim sitting-room, fragrant of perfect 
 cleanliness. I explained that I was on my way 
 to West Point in search of work, but was with- 
 out money, and so obliged to earn my living by 
 the way, and that I would gladly do anything 
 that offered in payment for bread and board. He 
 questioned me closely, with an evident purpose 
 of drawing me out further, and then he abruptly 
 offered me work on his wood-pile, and appeared 
 surprised at my instant agreement. 
 
 The wood was green, and the saw, with which 
 it had first to be cut into proper lengths, was 
 not sharp, and it was certainly not skilfully 
 handled. The work was hard, but at noon there 
 was ready for me in the shed, a dinner of beef, 
 and potatoes, and slices of bread, which for 
 lightness and color were like flakes of snow, 
 held by a band of crisp brown crust. 
 
 In the afternoon the minister interrupted my 
 work with the request that I would join him in
 
 THE ADJUSTMENT 13 
 
 the house, and he indicated where I could first 
 wash in the wood-shed. I steeled myself for a 
 lecture on the evils of vagrancy, with incidental 
 references to drunkenness as its probable cause 
 in my case. Instead, I found the family seated 
 for an early " tea," and myself invited to a place 
 at the table. I am bound to say that I was 
 rattled. I had expected a meal in the kitchen, 
 and a bed in common with the preacher's horse. 
 
 Not the least curious position in which I have 
 so far been placed, was that which I occupied at 
 the minister's board. His family, I shrewdly 
 suspect, did not share his hospitable feelings 
 toward me, and I could venture a guess that it 
 was under protest from them that I took a seat 
 next to the minister's daughter. 
 
 She was a pale, delicate girl, of seventeen, 
 perhaps. Her short, brown hair curled close to 
 her head, and her dark eyes looked dimly at you 
 through huge spectacles. The light, crisp stuff 
 in which she was dressed seemed to create about 
 her an atmosphere some degrees cooler than 
 that of the rest of the room. 
 
 By way of beginning, I offered some fatuous 
 commonplace about the surrounding country. 
 Instantly I realized that I was not to venture 
 upon a conversation that implied terms of social 
 equality. The child bristled with outraged dig-
 
 14 THE WORKERS 
 
 nity, and let fall in reply a sharp monosyllable. 
 Further conversation with her would have been 
 highly diverting, but not very considerate, 
 and so I turned to my host, who maintained 
 through the meal the air of one who is on the 
 defensive, but who is sustained by the convic- 
 tion of doing his duty. 
 
 My sympathies were all with the girl. Her 
 feeling was very natural so natural as to sug- 
 gest the rather disturbing ideas with which 
 Count Tolstoi is again confronting us. It was a 
 very practical application of the teaching of 
 brotherhood, that of asking a chance workman 
 to a seat at one's family table. But if minister- 
 ing to Him is really, in part, in such recogni- 
 tions of the least of His brethren, the instinctive 
 shrinking of the girl brought up in a Christian 
 home in the country was a commentary on our 
 drift from the simplicities of the Gospel. 
 
 In the evening I went with the minister to a 
 prayer-meeting in his church. A handful of 
 people sat at solemn intervals in the audience- 
 room. I was plainly the only common laborer 
 among them. The men appeared to be com- 
 fortable farmers, and there was a village shop- 
 keeper or two, while the women were clearly 
 their wives and daughters. 
 
 In one of the agitating silences which fell
 
 THE ADJUSTMENT 15 
 
 upon the company after the minister had de- 
 clared the meeting open, I rose and took part ; 
 and at the door, when the benediction had dis- 
 missed us, several of the men spoke to me cor- 
 dially. There was entire kindliness in their 
 manner, and they, perhaps, were not conscious 
 of showing surprise in welcoming a laborer to 
 their meeting. 
 
 That night the minister insisted upon my tak- 
 ing a bed in his house. I pleaded an early start. 
 He, too, was to be up early, and in the morning 
 I found him in the kitchen before me. On the 
 table were bread and milk ; and as I ate I par- 
 ried the somewhat searching questions of my 
 host. 
 
 My course from Wilton lay through Ridge- 
 field and Salem and Golden's Bridge, and then, 
 crossing the line between Connecticut and New 
 York, it made directly for the Hudson River. 
 
 This was no great distance ; but in the early 
 stages of the march I was much delayed by 
 rains. Driven to shelter, I found it usually in a 
 barn, or a shed under which were housed the 
 farming implements. Here is an example: 
 From a sudden downpour of rain I ran to an 
 open barn. A farmer, whom I found there un- 
 hitching his horses, eyed me suspiciously, and 
 gave a halting assent to my request for shelter.
 
 16 THE WORKERS 
 
 He soon left me alone. I tried to read, and 
 could not. The dull day was deeply depressing. 
 Like the burden of a haunting sorrow the trial 
 of separation weighed upon me. It was not 
 homesickness alone, but added to that a feeling 
 of isolation. Poverty, I had thought, would at 
 once bring me into vital contact with the very 
 poor. Instead, it had made me an object of un- 
 failing distrust. The very poor I found in an 
 occasional cottage of a farm laborer, or some 
 grotesquely dilapidated hovel, swarming with 
 negro life. But they were no more hospitable 
 to my approach than were the well-to-do farm- 
 ers, and I met not a single vagrant like myself 
 in the course of my walk to the Hudson. I was 
 lonely with the loneliness of a castaway, and I 
 climbed into the hay-loft and fell asleep. Here, 
 at least, was comfort ; the deep, dreamless sleep, 
 to which I had long been a stranger, was mak- 
 ing gracious advances. When I awoke, the rain 
 was past for the time, and I resumed my jour- 
 ney, with a leaden sky overhead, and soft, cling- 
 ing mud under foot ; but I was strangely re- 
 freshed, and walked on quite enheartened. 
 
 The intermittent rains interfered with my 
 progress, and increased the difficulty of finding 
 chance work. Eepeatedly I was offered a meal, 
 but denied the privilege of working for it. For
 
 THE ADJUSTMENT 17 
 
 twenty-four hours I went hungry, and spent 
 much of that time asleep in a hole which I bur- 
 rowed into a hay-stack. 
 
 But under a brightening sky on Friday, I was 
 given some wood to chop, and the promise of a 
 dinner in payment. 
 
 The work was soon done, and to the dinner 
 there was given an added pleasure in the com- 
 pany of one of the two old women for whom I 
 chopped the wood. She sat at the table and 
 talked to me. Perhaps she was solicitous for 
 her spoons. Certainly she was very entertaining. 
 Her dark calico dress fitted closely her thin fig- 
 ure ; and she sat very straight in her chair, with 
 her hands folded in her lap, and her eyes bright 
 with gentle benignity. 
 
 In all the farming region through which I 
 have passed on my way to the Hudson, I have 
 been much impressed by an unlooked-for qual- 
 ity in the intelligence of the people. The books, 
 of which I now and then caught glimpses in 
 their homes, were often of a surprising range. 
 On the sitting-room table of one farm-house I 
 noticed a Milton, and several volumes of Emer- 
 son, and a copy of Stevenson's Essays, besides 
 much current literature. Not infrequently the 
 conversation of these people had in it a curious 
 suggestion of cultivation, curious only because 
 2
 
 18 THE WORKERS 
 
 a dainty choice of words, and the graceful turn 
 of a phrase were accompanied by habitual inac- 
 curacies of speech. They have, for example, 
 their own forms of the verb " to be. " " I be " 
 and " You be " are invariable in their common 
 usage. I wondered whether the conventional 
 forms which they find in their reading did not 
 strike them as oddly foreign. 
 
 The prim little lady who sat near me through 
 my dinner proved charming. She showed no 
 curiosity about my history, nor the least anxiety 
 to tell me hers. With an air of quiet self-pos- 
 session she followed the conversation into its 
 natural channels, and sometimes followed it far ; 
 for at one time she was describing for me, with 
 admirable vividness, the methods of irrigation 
 in use in Colorado. But she consistently made 
 done do duty for did, and she used, in some of 
 her sentences, negatives enough to satisfy the 
 needs of negation in the purest of Attic speech. 
 
 One more incident of the tramp to the Hud- 
 son : Late on Friday afternoon I was nearing 
 Golden's Bridge, a village on the Harlem divis- 
 ion of the New York Central Kailroad. My 
 road lay over the hills of a rolling farm-region. 
 The fields of corn were radiant with sunlight re- 
 flected from great drops of rain which rested on 
 the nodding blades. In the meadows was the
 
 THE ADJUSTMENT 19 
 
 rich sheen of the after-growth. Golden-rod and 
 sumach grew thick on the roadside, and half 
 concealed the rails of the zigzag fences. From 
 the forest there came a breath of fragrant cool- 
 ness. 
 
 After sundown the twilight soon faded into 
 dark. My efforts to secure further work had 
 been unsuccessful. Once I was nearing the ruin 
 of a little wooden cottage, on the porch of which 
 sat a woman enjoying the cool of the evening. 
 Upon seeing me enter the gate she fled within, 
 and slammed the door; and I heard the key- 
 turn in the lock. I was growing tired. The 
 actual journey had not carried me far, but the 
 long fast of the previous day and the toilsome 
 walking over soft roads had resulted in exhaus- 
 tion. Scarcely physical strength remained with 
 which to move farther, and I was ready to throw 
 myself down, with infinite relief, under any 
 chance shelter, when I caught sight of the vil- 
 lage lights not a quarter of a mile beyond. 
 
 I knocked at the first door on the street. A 
 farmer's wife appeared, and kindly offered to 
 consult her husband on the subject of work. 
 She soon returned with a favorable reply, and 
 invited me to follow her into the kitchen. Car- 
 petless as it was, and stained as to walls and 
 ceiling, and low, and dimly lighted, the shelter
 
 20 THE WORKERS 
 
 of that room was like softest luxury. A pitcher 
 of milk and some slices of bread were placed on 
 the table, and I ate ravenously. 
 
 At one end of the table sat the farmer in his 
 shirt-sleeves, with a newspaper spread before 
 him. He was in the midst of his haying, he 
 said, and had plenty of work, and was willing 
 enough that I should join the other men in the 
 hay-field. The shed for the hands was full, so 
 I offered to go to the bam, and was soon fast 
 asleep on the loose hay in a stall. 
 
 As the farmer and I walked to the barn, I had 
 taken occasion to fortify myself in the agree- 
 ment regarding work. He was an old man, very 
 hale and hearty and genial, and he walked with 
 a curiously stiff movement of the legs, and with 
 his feet nearly at right angles to the line of prog- 
 ress. He set my mind at rest with the assur- 
 ance that there would be plenty of work for me, 
 if the morning proved good. 
 
 The morning was all that could be desired. I 
 got up early, and went to the kitchen, where an 
 Irish maid-of-all-work gave me a bit of soap and 
 some water in a tin basin, with which to finish 
 my preparation for breakfast. She was a beau- 
 tiful girl, large and awkward and ill-groomed ; 
 but her features were strikingly handsome, and 
 her clear, rich complexion would of itself have
 
 THE ADJUSTMENT 21 
 
 constituted a claim to beauty, while sprays of 
 golden hair fell in effective curls about her fore- 
 head, and heightened the charm of her deep-set 
 Celtic blue eyes. I was drying my face and 
 hands on a coarse towel which hung on a roller 
 near the kitchen-door, and which was used in 
 common by all of the hired men. She watched 
 me curiously. Presently she ventured an in- 
 quiry as to whether " the boss " had given me 
 " a job." I said that he had. " Her eyes were 
 homes " of deep concern, and in her voice was 
 that note of pity so effective in the Celtic ac- 
 cent. She was saying that my hands did not 
 look as though I was used to work. I was 
 blushingly conscious that my hands were against 
 me, but she tactfully tried to relieve the situ- 
 ation by supposing that I was a " tradesman." 
 Then had to come the damaging confession that 
 I was not. But the other hired men now began 
 to enter, and we sat down to breakfast. 
 
 A breakfast on a farm is not always the appe- 
 tizing reality that the inexperienced imagination 
 paints. The cloth, in this case, was ragged, and 
 showed signs of long use since its last washing, 
 and there were no napkins. The service was 
 repulsive in its hideous tastelessness. Flies 
 swarmed in the room, and crowded one another 
 into our food. The men were in their working
 
 22 THE WORKERS 
 
 clothes, coatless, sleeves rolled up, and their be- 
 grimed shirts open at the neck. When our 
 coffee was poured out and handed to us, each 
 used his own spoon in dipping sugar from a 
 bowl which was passed from hand to hand. 
 The butter, in a half -melting condition, and 
 dark with imprisoned flies, was within reach of us 
 all, and each helped himself with his knife, and 
 then used it in conveying food to his mouth. 
 This last feat I did not try. There was in it a 
 suggestion of necromancy, and I had doubts of 
 my success. We ate in silence, as though the 
 gravity of the occasion was beyond speech. The 
 farmer did not appear until we had finished 
 breakfast, and I waited at the kitchen-door for 
 orders from him. 
 
 He came at last, kind and cordial as ever, but 
 quite changed in purpose regarding my going 
 to work. He urged my confessed inexperience, 
 and the danger of exposure to the sun. I pro- 
 tested my willingness to assume the risks, and 
 begged to be allowed at least to work for what 
 had been given me. But he would not listen, 
 and appeared to think that he set matters right 
 by assuring me repeatedly that to what I had 
 received I was " perfectly welcome." His wife 
 gave me, at parting, some tracts, and a religious 
 newspaper, and in these I found presented, in
 
 THE ADJUSTMENT 23 
 
 somewhat lurid light, the evil consequences of 
 insobriety. 
 
 Knowing that I was within walking distance 
 of Garrisons-on-Hudson, I resolved to reach 
 that point before night. My letters had been 
 forwarded there, and my eagerness to get them 
 was of a kind unexperienced before. It was Sat- 
 urday, and, late in the afternoon, I reached Gar- 
 risons after a hard day's march. The heat was 
 intense, and although I walked but a little more 
 than twenty miles, the effort of carrying my 
 pack was thoroughly exhausting. The woman 
 in charge at the post-office was in evident doubt 
 about the safety of giving me so large a packet 
 of letters, but yielded at sight of others which I 
 showed her, and readily agreed to look after my 
 pack until I should call for it. 
 
 Between the station and the river was a tav- 
 ern, and there I meant to apply for work. As I 
 neared the station platform, a train from New 
 York drew in. Something familiar in one of the 
 passengers who alighted put me on my guard. 
 In a moment I recognized a fellow-guest at a 
 dinner-party of a few evenings before, and I re- 
 membered, with an odd sense of another exist- 
 ence, that, over our coffee, on a broad veranda, 
 overlooking a harbor, bright with the night-lights 
 of a squadron of yachts, he had given me the
 
 24 THE WORKERS 
 
 benefit of an amazing familiarity with the de- 
 tails of the recent baccarat scandal. My anxiety 
 was needless, for I easily passed unnoticed in 
 the crowd. 
 
 I walked on to the tavern. Its keeper was 
 busy behind the bar when I asked him for a job. 
 He surprised me immensely with a ready prom- 
 ise of work, and he asked me to wait until he 
 could arrange matters. I went into an adjoin- 
 ing room, and took out my letters. 
 
 It was the pool-room, and the walls were hung 
 with colored prints of prize-fighters, with arms 
 folded on their bare chests in a way that put 
 their biceps much in evidence. And there were 
 pictures of race-horses which had won distinc- 
 tion. An old, much-battered pool-table occu- 
 pied the middle of the room. Around the walls 
 ran a rough wooden bench. Dirt was every- 
 where conspicuous. The ceiling and walls were 
 filthy. The floor was bare and unswept, and 
 there were accumulations of dust about the 
 table-legs and in the corners under the benches, 
 which could be accounted for only by a liberal 
 allowance of time. The two small windows, 
 through which one could see the dismal tavern 
 yard, apparently had never been washed. 
 
 I sat on a bench, and opened the letters. The 
 dim past of my " respectable " life began to
 
 THE ADJUSTMENT 25 
 
 brightsn with increasing vividness. Quite lost 
 to present surroundings, I was suddenly re- 
 called to them by the appearance of the boss, 
 who came with a cloth in hand, with which he 
 aimlessly dusted the table while he questioned 
 me. I was so absorbed in letters that, for a 
 moment, I could not place myself, nor in the 
 least account for the situation. The keeper was 
 asking me what I could do. This was a natural 
 question under the circumstances; but it took 
 me by surprise, and it staggered me. I covered 
 my confusion with a profession of willingness to 
 be useful, and of a desire to work. The boss, a 
 coarse, blear-eyed, sensuous-looking man, eyed 
 me doubtfully, and suddenly concluded that he 
 had no work for me. 
 
 But I was wide awake now. I knew that the 
 nearest farms were some miles back in the coun- 
 try, and that, except at the tavern, I had slender 
 chance of food or shelter. I said that if there 
 was work to be done, I was eager to do it, and 
 that if, after a trial, he found me incapable, he 
 could dismiss me at any moment. 
 
 I fancied that I had gained my point, for he 
 told me to follow him, as he led the way into 
 the kitchen. There we found the cook bend- 
 ing over a range, in which the fire refused to 
 burn.
 
 26 THE WORKERS 
 
 " Mrs. Murphy," said the boss, " here's a man 
 I've hired to help Sam," and then he turned 
 sharply upon me with a " Damn you now, work ! 
 if you know how to work ! " 
 
 My opportunity lay in the smouldering fire, 
 so I hastened to the wood-pile, and presently 
 returned with an armful of fine wood which 
 insured a fire for dinner. 
 
 Mrs. Murphy was a little, old, emaciated Irish 
 woman, with her thin white hair parted in the 
 middle, smoothed back, and twisted into a care- 
 less knot on her crown. Her face was wrinkled 
 almost to grotesqueness, and she had the passive 
 air of one to whom can come no surprises of joy 
 or sorrow, as though the capacity for sensation 
 were gone, and life had reduced itself to mere ex- 
 istence. I watched for opportunities of helping 
 her, and she accepted the services as though she 
 had been accustomed to them always. 
 
 She began to interest me deeply. I learned 
 from her that Sam, whom I was hired to help, 
 was a scullion and stable boy. When she had 
 nothing further for me to do in the kitchen, I 
 returned to the wood-pile, and chopped indus- 
 triously, hoping to give evidence of my fitness 
 for the place. In an hour or more the propri- 
 etor called me, intending, I supposed, to give 
 me a change of work ; but, instead, he gave me
 
 THE ADJUSTMENT 27 
 
 a quarter, and told me, not unkindly, but firmly, 
 that he did not want me. 
 
 The situation was discouraging. I had tramped 
 some twenty miles through dust and heat over 
 a hilly country, and since the early morning I 
 had had nothing but a few apples to eat. Be- 
 sides, it was fast growing dark, and so too late 
 to look for work on the farms back in the coun- 
 try. 
 
 The immediate neighborhood is largely taken 
 up with country-seats, and I made repeated ef- 
 forts to get work at the hands of a gardener. I 
 soon discovered that I was in a community 
 where special provision is made against my 
 class. At the carriage gates I not infrequently 
 found a notice which warned me of the presence of 
 dogs, and although the dogs gave me no trouble, 
 a lodge-keeper, or footman, or gardener, upon 
 learning my errand, was invariably seized with 
 fervent anxiety for getting me unnoticed out of 
 the grounds. 
 
 At nightfall I walked back to the tavern, and 
 asked the proprietor if I might sleep in his 
 stables. To my surprise, he was exceedingly 
 friendly. He readily agreed to that, and, of his 
 own accord, he invited me to remain at the tav- 
 ern over Sunday, and to take my meals in the 
 kitchen ; and he added that, on Monday morn-
 
 28 THE WORKERS 
 
 ing, he would give me some work to do as com- 
 pensation. 
 
 Already I had made a friend of the cook, and 
 she now received me warmly. Perhaps it was 
 her habitual good-nature, for she had the same 
 kindly manner toward the other men, Sam and 
 the three Irish section hands from the railway, 
 who took their meals with her. More than ever 
 I was attracted to her. She cordially greeted 
 the workmen as they entered her hot, reeking, 
 ill-lit kitchen, addressing them by affectionate 
 diminutives of their first names, as Johnnie and 
 Jimmie and the like. They clearly had a warm 
 regard for her, and they respectfully lowered 
 their voices and said " ma'am " in addressing 
 her. To be sure they swore viciously in her pres- 
 ence ; but then she swore, too, not ill-naturedly, 
 but simply as an habitual means of emphasizing 
 her usual language. 
 
 I watched her for some sign of ill-temper. In 
 stifling quarters and under exasperating incon- 
 veniences she toiled on at work far beyond her 
 strength, not patiently merely, but with the 
 cheerfulness which is always thoughtful of the 
 comfort of others. 
 
 In spite of fatigue, that night in the stable was 
 not a restful one. The air lay heavy and hot in 
 the unventilated loft, and through the night the
 
 THE ADJUSTMENT 29 
 
 horses, tortured by flies, stamped ceaselessly in 
 their stalls. About midnight two men came 
 into the barn. I soon knew them for bedless 
 wanderers like myself, and I awaited them in 
 the hay with an interest that was lively. They 
 did not climb to the loft, but lay down in a 
 wagon ; and for an hour or more I heard their 
 gruff voices in antiphonal sentences replete with 
 strange oaths. They were speaking in low tones 
 and not excitedly, but their speech seemed little 
 else than profanity. 
 
 The heat and darkness intensified the quiet of 
 the night. The breathless stillness was broken 
 only by the hoarse blasphemies below, and the 
 nervous stamping of the pestered brutes. I 
 tried to shut out the sounds, and at last fell 
 asleep. 
 
 In the early morning I awoke to a beautiful 
 mid-summer Sunday, the first of my vagrant 
 life. Sam was whistling at his work in the 
 stables and the tramps were gone. I found a 
 path behind the barn leading to a point on the 
 river-bank where I could bathe. 
 
 The military cadets were out on Sunday pa- 
 rade, and the music of their band was the sum- 
 mer morning itself, vocal in notes other than the 
 songs of birds, and the soft murmur of the river. 
 The tents of the camp shone spotlessly white on
 
 30 THE WORKERS 
 
 the bluffs above the water. Some of the build- 
 ings were visible among the trees. The sheer 
 approach to the Post and its dark background 
 of well- wooded highlands threw into strong re- 
 lief its commanding position. Among the hills 
 to the north the river appears. The immediate 
 section of it might be a lake, girt with steep hills, 
 that are dense with infinite shades of green. 
 About the Post the river sweeps in a magnifi- 
 cent curve, and disappears among the hills to 
 the south. 
 
 The few books that my pack contained made 
 generous amends, on this day of rest, for the 
 weight which they had added to my load. After 
 breakfast I took one of them to a shaded corner 
 of the church-yard, and read there until the 
 service hour, and then I slipped into a seat half 
 hidden by the baptismal font. 
 
 In his sermon the rector contrasted the emas- 
 culated ideas of the present with reference to 
 God's judgment of sin, with the virile thinking 
 of the Middle Ages, expressed in such works of 
 art as Dante's Inferno, and Angelo's Last Judg- 
 ment in the Sistine Chapel. Earnestly and elo- 
 quently he pleaded the reality of spiritual things 
 to the minds of men in those ages of belief, and 
 then he solemnly urged a return to the plain 
 truths of inspiration, and to the teaching of the
 
 THE ADJUSTMENT 31 
 
 Church, that "God cannot look upon sin with 
 the least degree of allowance," and that the pun- 
 ishment of unrepented evil is " eternal death." 
 
 The church was well filled, and I looked it 
 over with a quickened interest. The sexton 
 and I, so far as I could see, were the only repre- 
 sentatives of the poor. Outside were a number 
 of coachmen and grooms and nurse-maids ; but 
 these, it is likely, were of another persuasion. 
 Certainly they would have looked curiously out 
 of place to our Protestant eyes among that well- 
 dressed, prosperous company. I knew this body 
 of worshippers at a glance ; some of them I 
 knew personally. It was easy to follow them all 
 in imagination to country houses where the after- 
 noon would be spent in what escape there offered 
 from the heat. On the next day would be be- 
 gun again the round of wholesome recreation 
 and of social intercourse, relieved from the for- 
 mality of town life, which makes up the summer 
 rest, and which implies the leisure which is ren- 
 dered possible only by the continuous work of a 
 multitude of the poor, who constitute the parts 
 of intricate social and domestic machinery. I 
 seem to be dwelling upon a costly immunity 
 from physical labor. It was not this that ap- 
 pealed to me. These worshippers had leisure, 
 but they were far from being idle. My personal
 
 32 THE WORKERS 
 
 acquaintance went far enough to recognize among 
 them persons whose lives are full of strenuous 
 activity in channels of splendid usefulness. It 
 was the social cleavage which yawned to my 
 vision from the new point of view. The rich 
 were there in the house of God, but not the 
 poor; and the very atmosphere of the place 
 seemed to preclude the presence of the poor. 
 
 I had asked Sam to go to church with me. 
 Sam had been watering the horses, and now had 
 an empty bucket in each hand and some tobacco 
 in his mouth. He stood still for a moment, re- 
 garding me intently, and shifting the tobacco 
 from one cheek to the other. Then he asked me 
 with much directness if I took him for a "dude." 
 I said that I should then go alone. " That 
 way ? " asked Sam, with an eye to my gear. " It 
 is the best that I can do," I explained. " Then 
 go, and be fired for a bum," he replied, as he 
 moved on toward the pump.
 
 CHAPTEB II 
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 
 
 Highland Falls, N. Y., 
 Monday, August 3, 1891. 
 
 At three o'clock on Saturday afternoon I de- 
 cided to quit work on the old Academic build- 
 ing. I went up to the boss and told him of my 
 intention, as I had seen other men do, and was 
 ordered into the office ; there, without a mo- 
 ment's delay, the timekeeper's books were con- 
 sulted, and No. 6 was paid the five dollars and 
 eighty-five cents which were due him. Five dol- 
 lars are gone to Mrs. Flaherty for board ; seven- 
 ty-five cents more will be owing to her to-morrow 
 morning for another day, and then I shall set 
 out on the road with ten cents in my pocket. 
 
 I had calculated upon a balance far in excess 
 of that ; for when I went to work on Tuesday, 
 five full working-days were before me, and, at a 
 wage of one dollar and sixty cents, they were to 
 yield an income of eight dollars. My reckon- 
 ing left out the chance of rain. For three days 
 passing showers drove us to cover, and the 
 8 88
 
 34 THE WORKERS 
 
 " called time " was as closely noted by the boss 
 as it is by the referee in a foot-ball game ; only 
 we were given no chance to make it up. 
 
 Mrs. Flaherty's home has a real hold upon 
 my affections. It is one in my mind with the 
 blessed interludes of rest which were brief tran- 
 sitions from one aeon of work to another. My 
 acquaintance with the household covers a period 
 of incalculable time. Mrs. Flaherty wears tow- 
 ard me now a motherly air of possession ; and 
 she wrinkles her brows in perplexed protest 
 when I tell her that I am going away in the 
 morning, with no knowledge of where I shall 
 find another place ; and she wipes her mouth 
 with the corner of her apron, and tells me, with 
 increasing emphasis, that I'd better stay by my 
 job, and let her care for me decently, and not go 
 wandering about the country, and, as likely as 
 not, come to harm. 
 
 Her husband is a painter, a little round man 
 with red hair and high spirits, who is a well- 
 preserved veteran of the Civil War, and very 
 fond of telling you of his life as a " recruitie." 
 
 Minnie is their daughter. She inherits her 
 father's hair, and gives promise of his rotundity. 
 But just now Minnie is fifteen, and the world is 
 a very interesting and exciting place. She took 
 her first communion last Easter, and still wears
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 35 
 
 her confirmation dress on Sundays, and is really 
 pretty in a blushing effort to look unconscious 
 when Charlie McCarthy calls. 
 
 Charles appears regularly on Sunday after- 
 noons, I gather. He is a driver for an ice- 
 dealer, is not much older than Minnie, and is 
 very proud of a light gray suit and a pair of 
 highly polished brown boots. 
 
 Tom is Minnie's only brother. He is a stoker 
 on a river-boat, and can spend only his Sundays 
 at home. Tom is a little past his majority, and 
 takes himself very seriously as a man. He tells 
 you frankly that he is earning "big money," 
 and is anxious that you shall not escape the 
 knowledge that he is a libertine. 
 
 The child that he is came comically to the 
 surface last night, with no least regard for the 
 newly found dignity of manhood. Tom shares 
 one of the beds in my room, and in the middle 
 of the night he came bounding to the floor in 
 a nightmare, and running to the door began 
 pounding it with both hands, and screaming, 
 " Papa ! Papa ! " like a child in a paroxysm of 
 fear. He soon woke himself, and then he slunk 
 into bed and was surly with us as we crowded 
 about him, eager to know the cause of this vio- 
 lent awaking. 
 
 Jerry and Pete and Jim and Tom Wilson and
 
 86 THE WOKKEKS 
 
 I axe the boarders. Wilson's is the only sur- 
 name that I know. Surnames are little in use 
 on this level of society; they smack of a cer- 
 tain formality like that which attaches to Sun- 
 day clothes. We were all sitting on the porch 
 after supper on my first evening, and I knew 
 that the men were taking my measure. Jerry 
 broke the silence with an abrupt inquiry after 
 my name. I responded with my surname. 
 Jerry took his pipe from his mouth, and turned 
 to me with some warmth : " That's not what I 
 want to know. What's your first name? What's 
 a man to call you ? " " Oh, call me John," I 
 said, with sudden inspiration, and I have passed 
 as " John " accordingly. 
 
 Wilson and I worked together at unskilled 
 labor, and we have a bed in common ; and it 
 was during a night of fearful heat, when neither 
 of us could sleep, that Wilson, in a burst of 
 confidence, told me his full name. 
 
 I had noticed him as a new-comer on the 
 works on Wednesday morning. He accepted 
 the job with alacrity, and, in spite of evident 
 physical weakness, he went to work with fever- 
 ish energy. At noon hour we shared a dinner, 
 and he told me that he had slept in the open 
 for three nights running, and had had nothing 
 to eat since the previous noon. I referred him
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 37 
 
 to Mrs. Flaherty, and at supper I found him at 
 a place at her table. 
 
 It was that night that he gave me his confi- 
 dence. Two years ago he came to America 
 from the north of Ireland. From the first he 
 had found it hard to get work, and he had never 
 kept a job long. This was chiefly due, he said, 
 to his having been brought up to the work in 
 the linen-mills, and to the difficulty that he 
 found in adapting himself to any other. And 
 now his narrative suddenly glowed with active 
 personal interest, for, with each succeeding sen- 
 tence about his apprenticeship in Lurgan, there 
 rose into clearer memory visions of a charming 
 fortnight once spent at the home of the owners 
 of the mill. 
 
 I have set for myself to-day the task of de- 
 scribing the past week of actual service in the 
 ranks of the industrial army. My pen runs 
 wide of the subject, and I have to force it to the 
 retrospect. There were five working-days of 
 nine hours and a quarter each, less the " called 
 time " eaten out by the rain. Never was there 
 clearer proof of the pure relativity of time meas- 
 ured by an artificial standard. Hours had no 
 meaning; there were simply ages of physical 
 torture, and short intervals when the physical 
 reaction was an ecstasy.
 
 38 THE WORKERS 
 
 We were called at six on Tuesday morning ; 
 and at twenty minutes to seven we had break- 
 fasted, and were ready to start for the works, 
 each with his dinner folded in a piece of news- 
 paper. Passing from our side street to the road 
 which leads to the Post, we were at once merged 
 in a throng of workingmen moving in our di- 
 rection. 
 
 I was suddenly aware of a novel impression 
 of individuality. Gangs of workingmen, as I 
 recalled them, were uniform effects in earth- 
 stained jeans and rugged countenances, rough 
 with a varying growth of stubborn beard. To 
 have distinguished among them would have 
 seemed like distinguishing among a crowd of 
 Chinese. Now individuality began to appear in 
 its vital separateness, and to awaken the sense 
 of infinite individual sensation, from which we 
 instinctively shrink as we do from the thought 
 of unbroken continuity of consciousness. 
 
 But my eyes were growing sensitive to other 
 differences, certainly to the broad distinction be- 
 tween skilled and unskilled workmen. Many 
 orders of labor were represented masons and 
 carpenters and bricklayers and plasterers, be- 
 sides unskilled laborers. An evident superior- 
 ity in intelligence, accompanied by a certain in- 
 definable superiority in dress, was the general
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 39 
 
 mark of skilled labor. And then the class of 
 unskilled workers was noticeably heterogeneous 
 in composition, while many of the other class 
 were plainly of American birth. 
 
 It is a mile from Highland Falls to West 
 Point, and we moved briskly. There was little 
 conversation among the men. Most of them 
 had taken off their coats, and with these over 
 their arms and their dinner - pails in hand, 
 they walked in silence, with their eyes on the 
 road. The morning was sultry and overhung 
 with heavy clouds, full of the promise of rain. 
 A forest lines much of the road, and from the 
 overhanging boughs fell great drops of dew, 
 dotting the surface of soft dust The wayside 
 weeds and bushes were gray with a coating of 
 dust, and seemed to cry out in the still, hot air 
 for the suspended rain. 
 
 The old Academic building stood near to the 
 Mess Hall at the southern end of the Post. In 
 process of removal one wing had been blown 
 up by dynamite, I was told, and now its site lay 
 deep in heaps of debris. It was here that one 
 gang of laborers was employed, and it was with 
 them that the boss had instantly given me a job 
 upon my application on the previous morning. 
 
 There were about sixty men in the company. 
 Most of them stood grouped among the ruins,
 
 40 THE WORKERS 
 
 ready to begin work on the hour. I had but to 
 follow their example. I hung my coat, with my 
 dinner in one pocket, on a neighboring fence, 
 and brought a shovel from the tool-house, and 
 joined the other men. We stood silent, like a 
 company at attention. The teamsters drove up 
 with their carts, and the bosses counted them. 
 In another moment the head boss, who had been 
 keeping his eye on his watch, shut the case with 
 a sharp metallic click, and shouted " Turn out ! " 
 in stentorian tones. 
 
 The effect was magical. The scene changed 
 on the instant from one of quiet to one of noisy 
 activity. Men were loosening the ruined mass 
 with their picks, and urging their crow-bars be- 
 tween the blocks of stone, and shovelling the 
 finer refuse into the carts, and loading the 
 coarser fragments with their hands. The gang- 
 boss, mounted upon a section of wall, began to 
 direct the work before him. A cart had been 
 driven among the ruins, and he called three of 
 us to load it with the jagged masonry that lay 
 heaped about it. It was too coarse to be han- 
 dled with shovels, and we went at it with our 
 hands. They were soon bleeding from contact 
 with the sharp edges of rock ; but the dust 
 acted as a styptic and helped vastly in the hard- 
 ening process. When the cart was loaded, an-
 
 A DAY -LABORER AT WEST POINT 41 
 
 other took its place, and then a third and a 
 fourth. 
 
 In a harsh, resonant voice the boss was 
 shouting his orders over our heads, to the far- 
 thermost portion of the works. His short, 
 thickset, muscular figure seemed rooted to the 
 masonry on which he stood. The mingled 
 shrewdness and brute strength of his hard face 
 marked him as a product of natural selection 
 for the place that he filled. His restless gray- 
 eyes were everywhere at once, and his whole 
 personality was tense with a compelling physi- 
 cal energy. If the work slackened in any por- 
 tion of the ruins, his voice took on a vibrant 
 quality as he raised it to the shout of " Now, 
 boys, at it there ! " and then a lash of stinging 
 oaths. You could feel a quickening of muscular 
 force among the men, like the show of eager in- 
 dustry in a section of a school-room that has 
 fallen suddenly under the master's questioning 
 eye. 
 
 In the dust which rose from the debris I 
 picked up a mass of heavy plaster, and, before 
 detecting my mistake, I tossed it into the cart. 
 But the boss had seen the action, and instantly 
 noticed the error, and now all his attention was 
 directed upon me. In short, incisive sentences, 
 ringing with malediction, he cursed me for an
 
 42 THE WORKERS 
 
 ignoramus and threatened me with discharge. 
 I could feel the amused side-glances of the men, 
 and could hear their muffled laughter. 
 
 At last all the carts were loaded and driven 
 away, and until their return, some of us were 
 set at assorting the debris throwing the splin- 
 tered laths and bricks and fragments of stone 
 and plaster into separate heaps. The work 
 compelled a stooping posture, and the pain of 
 lacerated fingers was as nothing compared with 
 the agony of muscles cramped and forced to un- 
 accustomed use. 
 
 A business-like young fellow, with the air of a 
 clerk, now began to move among the men, and 
 they showed the keenest interest in his approach. 
 I heard them speak of him as the " timekeeper," 
 but I had no knowledge of such a functionary, 
 and I wondered whether he had any business 
 with me. He hailed me with a brisk " What is 
 your number ? " I looked at him in surprise. 
 " He's a new hand," shouted the boss from his 
 elevation. "What's your name?" asked the 
 timekeeper, as he turned a page in his book. I 
 told him, and when he had written it he drew 
 from his pocket a brass disk, upon which was 
 stamped the number six, and this he told me to 
 wear, suspended by its string, and to show it to 
 him as often as he made his rounds.
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 43 
 
 The cartmen had reappeared and received 
 their loads, and had again driven off, in long 
 procession, in the direction of Highland Falls. 
 "We went back to the varied torture of assorting. 
 But the pain was not purely physical. The 
 work was too mechanical to require close atten- 
 tion, and yet too exhausting to admit of mental 
 effort. I did not know how to prevent my mind 
 from preying upon itself. 
 
 At last I hit upon a plan which appealed to 
 me. I simply went back in imagination to the 
 familiar country-seat, and followed the morn- 
 ing through a likely course. We met at break- 
 fast, and complained of the discomfort of the 
 sultry day as we discussed our plans, and 
 then we walked over the lawn to the pier. 
 Two cruising sloops, that had waited in the 
 hope of a freshening breeze, now weighed 
 anchor, and under main-sail and top-sail and 
 jib drifted slowly out of the harbor. We 
 watched them in idle curiosity, wondering at 
 the distinctness with which the conversation of 
 the yachtsmen came back to us across the oily 
 placidity of still water, until they seemed almost 
 half way to the spindle, and then we agreed 
 upon a morning ride. We telephoned to the 
 stables, and before we were ready the horses 
 stood restless under the porte-cochkre. Step by
 
 44 THE WORKERS 
 
 step I followed our progress along the road that 
 skirts the inlet, and across the crumbling bridge 
 on the turnpike, and under the great, drooping 
 elms which line the village-street in Fairfield, 
 and up the long ascent of the Greenfield Hill to 
 the old church, and then home by the " back 
 road." The dogs came running at us from the 
 stables with short, sharp barks of welcome as we 
 cantered past, and we called to them by name. 
 As we turned by the reservoir, we could see a 
 groom running down the path in order to reach 
 the house before us. Hot from the ride, we 
 passed through the dim mystery of the hall and 
 billiard-room and den, and out upon the ver- 
 anda, where a breath of air was stirring, and the 
 fountain played softly in its bed of vines and 
 flowers. Louis had returned from market. Our 
 letters lay in order on the settle, and near them, 
 neatly folded, were the morning papers. And 
 now Louis's approach was heralded by the tink- 
 ling of ice against the glass of bumpers of cool- 
 ing drinks, and his bow was accompanied with 
 a polite reminder that luncheon would be served 
 in half an hour. 
 
 I had been working with all my strength. 
 Now I looked up at the boss in some hope of a 
 sign of the noon hour. There was none. Pain- 
 fully I went back to the work. Again I tried to
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 45 
 
 find diversion in this new device. Slowly, with 
 double the needed time for each event, I fol- 
 lowed the morning through another imaginary 
 series. Now I was sure that the boss had made 
 a mistake and had lost track of the time, and 
 was working us far into the afternoon. The 
 clouds had thickened, and the growing darkness 
 I was certain was the coming night. Great 
 drops of rain began to fall, but the men paid 
 them no heed. Soon the drops quickened to a 
 shower, and still the men worked on. The mois- 
 ture from within and without had made us wring- 
 ing wet when the boss ordered us to quit. We 
 bolted for our coats and dinner-pails, and then 
 huddled in the shelter of the still-standing walls 
 of the ruin. Through one of the great door- 
 ways I caught sight of the tower of a neighbor- 
 ing building with a clock in it. It was twenty 
 minutes to nine J In all that eternity since we 
 began to load the first cart, we had been work- 
 ing one hour and forty minutes, and had each 
 earned about twenty-nine cents. 
 
 The rain cost us an hour of working-time, and 
 then we went back, and found some relief from 
 the earlier discomfort in the saturation which 
 had thoroughly settled the dust. 
 
 In another hour, with no freshening of the 
 air, the clouds faded out of the sky. The sun
 
 46 THE WORKERS 
 
 shone full upon us, and there arose from the 
 heaps of ruin a mist heavy with the smell of 
 damp plaster. But I had my " second wind " at 
 last, and I worked now with the feeling of some 
 reserve of physical strength. It was with sur- 
 prise that I heard the loud voice of the head 
 boss in a shout of "Time's up ! " and almost be- 
 fore I knew what had happened the men were 
 seated on the ground, in the shadows of the 
 walls, eating their dinners. 
 
 I opened mine with much curiosity. There 
 were two huge sandwiches, with slices of corned 
 beef between the bread, and a bit of cheese and 
 a piece of apple-pie, very damp and oozing. 
 Among the other men, with my aching back 
 pressed against the wall, I sat and ate my din- 
 ner, lingering over the last crumbs like a child 
 with some rare dainty. 
 
 At the end of the forty-five minutes allowed to 
 us at noon, there came again, from the head boss, 
 the order to " Turn out." In a moment the 
 scene of the morning was renewed. There was 
 the same alternation between loading the carts 
 and assorting the debris. 
 
 We had been but a few minutes at work when 
 the cadets went marching past, on their way to 
 mess. Familiar as most of the men were with 
 the sight, they seized eagerly upon the diversion
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 47 
 
 that it offered. The boss relaxed his vigilance. 
 The work visibly slackened, as we lent our- 
 selves to the fascination of individual motion 
 merged into perfect harmony of collective move- 
 ment. Conspicuous in the rear was the awk- 
 ward squad, very hot in its effort to walk erect, 
 and keep its shoulders back and its little fingers 
 on the seams of its trousers. The men laughed 
 merrily at the comical contrast between such 
 grotesquely strenuous efforts at conformity and 
 the ease and strength and grace of the unison 
 which preceded it. 
 
 No rain came to give us breathing-space in 
 the afternoon. Hour by hour the relentless 
 work went on. The sun had soon absorbed the 
 last drop of the morning rain, and now the ruins 
 lay burning hot under our feet. The air quiv- 
 ered in the heat reflected from the stone and 
 plaster about us ; the fine lime-dust choked our 
 breathing as we shovelled the refuse into the 
 carts. You could hear the muttered oaths of the 
 men, as they swore softly in many tongues at the 
 boss, and cursed him for a brute. But cease- 
 lessly the work went on. We worked as though 
 possessed by a curious numbness that kept us 
 half-unconscious of the straining effort, which 
 had become mechanical, until we were brought 
 to by some spasm of strained muscles.
 
 48 THE WORKERS 
 
 But five o'clock came at last, and with it, on 
 the second, the loud " Time's up ! " of the head 
 boss. You could see men fairly check a tool in 
 its downward stroke, in their eagerness not to 
 exceed the time by an instant. In two minutes 
 the tools were housed and the works deserted, 
 and the men were running like school-boys, with 
 a'clatter of dinner-pails, in a competitive scram- 
 ble for seats in the dump-carts, which were 
 moving toward Highland Falls. 
 
 The hindmost were left to walk the mile to 
 their lodgings. I fell in with two old Irishmen, 
 who noticed me with a friendly look, and then 
 went on with their conversation, paying me no 
 further heed. But I felt strangely at home with 
 these old men. Their short, faltering steps ex- 
 actly suited my own, and I comfortably bent my 
 back to the angle of their stoop, not in an effort 
 to simulate their figures, but because to stand 
 erect cost me exquisite agony. 
 
 The men in the carts were soon out of our 
 sight, but the remnant was large and was thor- 
 oughly representative. "We formed a weird pro- 
 cession, this fragment of a company in the ranks 
 of labor. There were few native-born Ameri- 
 cans, one or two perhaps, besides myself; but 
 there were Irish and Scandinavians and Hun- 
 garians and Italians and negroes.
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 49 
 
 As a physical exertion, walking was not hard 
 after our day's labor. It was a change and a 
 rest, and we must all have felt the soothing re- 
 freshment in the breath of cool air which was 
 moving down the river, and in the soft light of 
 the early evening, which brought out in new 
 loveliness the curves of the opposite hills and 
 deepened the shades of blue and green. My own 
 appreciation of all this and more would have 
 been livelier but for two overpowering appe- 
 tites, which were asserting themselves with un- 
 suspected strength. I was hungry, not with the 
 hunger which comes from a day's shooting, and 
 which whets your appetite to the point of nice 
 discriminations in an epicure's dinner, but with 
 a ravenous hunger which fits you to fight like a 
 beast for your food, and to eat it raw in brutal 
 haste for gratification. But more than hungry, 
 I was thirsty. Cold water had been in abundant 
 supply at the works, and we drank as often and 
 as freely as we chose. But water had long since 
 ceased to satisfy. My mouth and throat were 
 burning with the action of the lime-dust, and the 
 physical craving for something to quench that 
 strange thirst was an almost overmastering pas- 
 sion. I knew of no drink quite strong enough. 
 I have never tasted gin, but I remembered in one 
 of Froude's essays a reference to it as much in 
 4
 
 50 THE WOEKERS 
 
 use among working-men, and as being seasoned 
 to their taste by a dash of vitriol, and eagerly I 
 longed for that. 
 
 Half-way down the road we met some young 
 women in smart dog-carts driving to the sunset 
 parade at the post. In the delicate fabric and 
 color of summer dress they seemed to us the 
 embodiment of the cool of the evening. Sud- 
 denly I looked with a keener interest. With her 
 fingers outstretched she was shading her eyes 
 from the horizontal rays of the setting sun, and 
 she did not see us, rather saw through us, as 
 through something transparent, the familiar ob- 
 jects on the roadside. I had seen her last in 
 town at a wedding at St. Thomas's, and fate un- 
 kindly sent her up the aisle on the arm of another 
 usher. I laughed aloud, a short, harsh laugh, that 
 escaped me before I was aware, and that had 
 in it so odd a quality that it gave me an uncom- 
 fortable feeling of unacquaintance with myself. 
 The two old Irishmen turned inquiring glances at 
 me, and appeared disturbed at my serious look. 
 
 My room, when I reached it, was, in spite of 
 wide-opened windows, like Nero's bath at Baise. 
 The ceiling and walls glowed with stored-up 
 heat. Jim was there making ready for supper, 
 and I could hear Jerry and Pete in their room 
 in similar preparation.
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 51 
 
 When I put my hands into the cold water, I 
 could scarcely feel them ; but the pain of cleans- 
 ing grew sharp, and yet, when I had thorough- 
 ly washed them, although the fingers felt double 
 their normal size, they were really less swollen, 
 and were far on the way to comfort. 
 
 The reaction had set in now, and I could feel 
 it in great, cooling waves of physical well-being. 
 The table was heaped with supper, huge slices 
 of juicy sirloin, and dishes of boiled potatoes 
 and cabbage and beans, from which the steam 
 rose in fragrant clouds. By each plate was a 
 large cup of tea, so strong and hot that it bit 
 like lye, and it soon washed away the burning 
 lime-dust. 
 
 We sat down with our coats and waistcoats 
 off. The men were in the best of good-humor, 
 and the conversation ran into friendly talk. 
 They asked me how I liked my job. I thought 
 much better of it by this time, and I tried to 
 wear the air of critical content. They may have 
 had their own notions about my previous expe- 
 rience of manual labor, but certainly they did 
 not obtrude these with any show of suspicion. 
 They accepted me as a working-man on perfect- 
 ly natural terms. Until Wilson came I was the 
 only unskilled laborer among them, but my dif- 
 ferent grade was no barrier to our intercourse,
 
 52 THE WOEKERS 
 
 and we met and talked with the freedom of men 
 whose experience is innocent of conventional re- 
 straints. 
 
 Long after supper we sat on the porch, smok- 
 ing in the twilight. A deep physical comfort- 
 ableness possessed us. Each mouthful of meat 
 and drink had wrought miraculous healing, and 
 had restored wasted energy in measures that 
 could be felt. My muscles were sore, but the 
 very pain turned to pleasure in the ease of re- 
 laxation. 
 
 The men were town artisans, skilled laborers, 
 attracted here by the abundance of work. Jerry 
 was a plasterer, and Pete a bricklayer, and Jim 
 a stone - mason. A short, slender figure, a 
 smooth-shaven face with small, sharp, regular 
 features, black hair, and gray eyes, is a sufficient 
 outline of Jerry's personality. His air was that 
 of a cynic, and there was a cynical flavor in his 
 speech, but the sting of it was gone at the sight 
 of his soft gray eyes, full of generous reserve of 
 human kindness. 
 
 Pete was a well-set-up young fellow, of twen- 
 ty-five, perhaps, plainly of German parentage. 
 Like Jerry, he was smooth -shaven, and there 
 was a striking contrast between his dark hair 
 and his singularly fair skin and blue eyes. He 
 was a bricklayer, and ambitious of promotion.
 
 A DAY -LABORER AT WEST POINT 53 
 
 He spoke hopefully of an appointment in the 
 Navy Yard as a result of a recent examination. 
 
 Jim was the only married man among us. 
 His wife and three children were in Brooklyn, 
 and Jim went home every Saturday night, and 
 spent Sunday with them. He was a handsome 
 young Scotsman, with curling brown hair, and 
 brown eyes, and a well-formed mustache, and a 
 round face with full features. In the casual 
 flow of our talk, Jim spoke of Burns, and quoted 
 him with a ready familiarity. It was easy to 
 catch the drift of his liking. Its set was stead- 
 ily toward passages which sing the wrongs and 
 oppression of the poor. Jim had none of the 
 tricks of a declaimer ; but with jerks of unstud- 
 ied emphasis he repeated familiar lines until 
 you were conscious of new meaning and strength. 
 He was sitting with his chair tilted against the 
 wall, and his heels resting on a round, and his 
 hands clasped about his knees. His eyes were 
 fixed upon the evening gloom as he recited : 
 
 Man's inhumanity to man 
 
 Makes countless thousands mourn. 
 
 The verses seemed exactly to fit his mood, for 
 he repeated them again and again, with linger- 
 ing liking for their sense and alliteration. 
 
 Jerry broke in abruptly here with sudden,
 
 54 THE WORKERS 
 
 unmeasured condemnation of the dulness of 
 evenings in a country town in the absence of 
 the theatre, pronounced theatre. The drama 
 had fired his imagination for the moment, for 
 he broke through his wonted reserve and waxed 
 fluent as he expressed his views : 
 
 " When I go to the theatre, I go to laugh. I 
 want to see pretty girls and lots of them, and I 
 want to see them dance. I want songs as I can 
 understand the words of, and lots of jokes, and 
 horse-play. You don't get me to the theatre to 
 see no show got up by Shakespeare, nor any of 
 them fellows as lived two thousand years ago. 
 What did they know about us fellows as is liv- 
 ing now ? Pete, you mind that Tim Healy in 
 the union, him that's full of wind in the meet- 
 ings ? Onct he give me a book to read, and ho 
 says it's a theatre piece wrote by Shakespeare, 
 and the best there was. I read more'n an hour 
 on that piece, and I'm damned if there was a 
 joke into it, nor any sense neither." 
 
 We were presently yawning under the stars, 
 and I was more than glad when the men spoke 
 of bed. Almost in the next moment, to my con- 
 sciousness, Mrs. Flaherty was knocking on the 
 door, bidding us wake and not to go to sleep 
 again, for it was six o'clock. 
 
 Of the five, this second day was the hardest.
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 55 
 
 My body was sore in every part when I began 
 to work, and the help of hardening muscles I 
 did not gain until the third day. Mrs. Flaherty 
 had skilfully bound up the slight wounds on my 
 fingers. The merciful rain came twice to our 
 relief, once in the morning and again in the af- 
 ternoon. But this was not an unmixed bless- 
 ing, for in the minutes of delay we could but 
 calculate the growing loss in wages, and watch 
 the sure vanishing of any surplus above actual 
 living expenses. I remember making an esti- 
 mate on my way to my lodgings that evening, 
 and it was with much sinking of heart that I 
 discovered that my earnings made a total rather 
 less than the cost of the day's living. 
 
 There has been difficulty in the way of inter- 
 course with the men. I speak no Italian, nor 
 any of the Scandinavian tongues, so that my ac- 
 quaintance has been confined to my own coun- 
 trymen, who are few in number in the gang, and 
 to the Irishmen and negroes, and an occasional 
 Hungarian who understands my stammering 
 German. And within the English-speaking cir- 
 cle, in the absence of this, there have been other 
 barriers. There is wanting that social freedom 
 that is most natural in Mrs. Flaherty's home. 
 There is much of it among the foreigners. 
 They hang together at their work, and sit in
 
 56 THE WORKERS 
 
 separate groups through the noon hour, and one 
 commonly hears, especially among the Italians, 
 that picturesque volubility which sets you won- 
 dering as to the subject of such fluent debate. 
 Among the English-speaking men, the Irish and 
 negroes are as Jews and Samaritans ; but aside 
 from this, the general attitude is one of sullen 
 suspiciousness. Few appear to know the others, 
 and not even their wretchedness draws them 
 to the relief of companionship. Sometimes we 
 hear warm greetings among acquaintances, or 
 see some show of friendliness, but this is mark- 
 edly out of keeping with the general tone of 
 things. The usual intercourse is an exchange 
 of experiences, an account of the circumstances 
 which brought them to their present lot, among 
 men who happen to be working side by side or 
 sitting in company at the noon hour. Quite as 
 commonly one hears only muttered curses 
 against the boss. 
 
 You would gather from their own accounts 
 that many of the men are unused to unskilled 
 labor. There is a singular uniformity in their 
 histories. Nearly all have seen better days, and 
 are now but tiding over a dull season in their 
 trades, or are earning enough to take them to 
 some other part of the country, where there is a 
 quickening in the demand for their labor.
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 57 
 
 I found myself growing doubtful of these un- 
 varying tales. The mechanism became too ap- 
 parent. " I am really an efficient and energetic 
 workman," each seemed to say ; " you see me 
 now in a strait of circumstances. You should 
 see me at my trade, in which I am an adept. I 
 am out of that employment now because of de- 
 pression in the business, but when business re- 
 vives, or when I can reach Chicago or St. Louis 
 or Minneapolis, my labor will be in strong de- 
 mand." Irresistibly one is led to the belief 
 that most of these men probably have no trade, 
 or, at the best, are inefficient workmen, who, un- 
 able to keep a job long, habitually pick up a liv- 
 ing at work like this, in the careless makeshift 
 of a shiftless life. 
 
 It is refreshing to meet others who are frankly 
 laborers. All their lives they have been bred to 
 unskilled labor, and they make no pretence of 
 anything different. They are hard men who 
 look out upon a world that is hard to them at 
 every point of contact ; but they are true men, 
 by virtue of their honesty and directness, and 
 one likes them accordingly. Some of them are 
 old, and it is pitiful to see them tottering under 
 the burden of years, and staying off actual want 
 by forcing their rheumatic limbs through the 
 drudgery of this rude toil.
 
 58 THE WORKERS 
 
 I had noticed the absence of one of this coterie 
 for a day or two when, in the middle of a morn- 
 ing's work, he appeared among the ruins. He 
 was an old Irishman. His face was swollen 
 from toothache, and was bound up in a cotton 
 bandanna. His hands were clasped on his 
 stooping back, and he moved with the painful 
 motion that suggests acute rheumatism. For a 
 time he stood watching us at our work and ex- 
 changing words with some of the men about his 
 complaints, when suddenly he burst into tears. 
 The men jeered him, and angrily told him to be 
 gone. I had a sickening feeling of cruelty as I 
 saw him go sobbing down the road ; but when I 
 spoke of him at the noon hour the men explained 
 that it was a disgrace to have him crying there, 
 but that they would see that his wants were pro- 
 vided for. 
 
 There was a revelation in the discovery of the 
 degree to which profanity is ingrained in the 
 vernacular of these men, as representatives of 
 the laboring poor. They swear with the readi- 
 ness of instinct, not merely in anger, when their 
 language mounts to a torrent of abuse unspeak- 
 ably awful in its horrid blasphemies, but in 
 commonest intercourse, when their oaths are as 
 meaningless as casual interjections. And almost 
 never is the rude hardness of their speech soft-
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 59 
 
 ened by the amenities which seem so natural a 
 part of language. The imperative, more than 
 any other mood, is rudely thrust into common 
 use. They are even punctilious in its employ- 
 ment. 
 
 A single instance will serve to point the nat- 
 ure of this graceless speech. Two boys of ten 
 or twelve are employed in carrying water to the 
 men at their work. One carries his bucket 
 through the building to those engaged in the 
 upper stories; and the other, a flaxen-haired, 
 delicate child whose thin legs bend under his 
 burden, serves those of us who are at work on 
 the heaps below. Through all the day, and es- 
 pecially in its greatest heat, the boys run busily 
 from the works to a neighboring pump, and re- 
 turn with bucketfuls of water, which are at once 
 surrounded by thirsty workmen and emptied in 
 a few minutes. Regardless of the prevailing 
 custom, I always thanked the little fellow for 
 my drink. Soon I noticed that even this instinc- 
 tive acknowledgment seemed to embarrass him. 
 In an interval of rest he came up to me, after 
 receiving my thanks. "You shouldn't thank 
 me," he said. " And why not ? " I begged to 
 know. " Because, you see, I'm paid to do this," 
 was his conscientious answer. A mere child, 
 naturally gentle, and yet so bred to rougher
 
 60 THE WORKERS 
 
 usage that a simple " Thank you " jarred upon 
 his sense of right ! A few minutes later I saw 
 the two boys in a rough-and-ready fight, and 
 their language lacked none of the horror of 
 that of their elders. 
 
 I shall be on the road again to-morrow morn- 
 ing, and I shall go as penniless as I came, but 
 somewhat richer in experience. I have been 
 through nearly a week of labor, and have sur- 
 vived it, and have honestly earned my living as 
 a working-man. In the future I shall have the 
 added confidence which comes of knowing that, 
 if work offers, I shall probably be able to per- 
 form it. But this is not the only cause of my 
 increased light-heartedness. I am frankly glad 
 to get away from the job on the old Academic 
 building. This is a selfish feeling, and is not 
 without the cowardice of all selfishness. I hope 
 for a job of another kind, for a time at least, be- 
 cause I wish to see some hopefuller side of the 
 lot of common labor. When we draw too near 
 to the hand of Fate, and begin to feel as though 
 there were a wrong in the nature of things, it is 
 best, perhaps, to change our point of view if 
 we can. This may account for some of the drift- 
 ing restlessness among working-men of my 
 class. 
 
 The salient features of our condition are plain
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 61 
 
 enougn. We are unskilled laborers. We are 
 grown men, and are without a trade. In the 
 labor market we stand ready to sell to the high- 
 est bidder our mere muscular strength for so 
 many hours each day. We are thus in the low- 
 est grade of labor. We are here, and not higher 
 in the scale, by reason of a variety of causes. 
 Some of us were thrown upon our own resources 
 in childhood, and have earned our living ever 
 since, and by the line of least resistance we have 
 simply grown to be unskilled workmen. Oppor- 
 tunities came to some of us of learning useful 
 trades, and we neglected them, and now we have 
 no developed skill to aid us in earning a living, 
 and we must take the work that offers. 
 
 Some of us were bred to farm labor, and almost 
 from our earliest recollection we worked in the 
 fields, until, tiring of country life, we determined 
 to try some other ; and we have turned to this 
 work as being within our powers, and as afford- 
 ing us a change. Still others among us, like 
 Wilson, really learned a trade ; but the market 
 offers no further demand for the peculiar skill 
 we possess, and so we are forced back upon skil- 
 less labor. And selling our muscular strength 
 in the open market for what it will bring, we sell 
 it under peculiar conditions. It is all the capi- 
 tal that we have. We have no reserve means of
 
 62 THE WORKERS 
 
 subsistence, and cannot, therefore, stand off for 
 a "reserve price." We sell under the necessity 
 of satisfying imminent hunger. Broadly speak- 
 ing, we must sell our labor or starve ; and as 
 hunger is a matter of a few hours, and we have 
 no other way of meeting this need, we must sell 
 at once for what the market offers for our labor. 
 And for some of us there is other pressure, un- 
 speakable, immeasurable pressure, in the needs 
 of wife and children. 
 
 The contractor buys our labor as he buys 
 other commodities, like brick and iron and stone, 
 which enter into the construction of the new 
 building. But he buys of us under certain re- 
 strictions to us both. The law of supply and 
 demand does not apply to our labor with the 
 same freedom as to other merchandize. We are 
 human beings, and some of us have social ties, 
 which bricks and iron have not, and we do not, 
 therefore, move to favorable markets with the 
 same ease and certainty as these. Besides, we 
 are ignorant men, and behind what we have to 
 sell is no trained intelligence, nor a knowledge of 
 prices and of the best means of reaching the 
 best markets. And then we are poor men, who 
 must sell when we find a purchaser, for no " re- 
 serve price " is possible to us. 
 
 The law of supply and demand meets with
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 63 
 
 these restrictions and others. If it applied with 
 perfect freedom to our commodity, we should 
 infallibly be where is the greatest demand for 
 our labor ; and with perfect acquaintance with 
 the markets we should always sell in the dear- 
 est. But the benefits of perfect freedom of sup- 
 ply and demand would not be ours alone. If 
 we sold in the dearest markets, the employer 
 would as certainly buy in the cheapest. He has 
 capital in the form of the means of subsist- 
 ence, and can stand off for a " reserve price," 
 and could force us to sell at last in the pinch 
 of hunger, and in competition with starving 
 men. 
 
 As matters are, our wages might rise, in an in- 
 creased demand for labor, far above their pres- 
 ent point ; but even under pressure of decreas- 
 ing demand, and with scores of needy men eager 
 to take our places, our wages, if we had employ- 
 ment at all, would not fall far below their present 
 level. So much has civilization done for us. It 
 does not insure to us a chance to earn a living, 
 but it does measurably insure to us that what 
 we earn by day's labor, such as this, will at 
 least be a living. 
 
 As unskilled laborers we are unorganized 
 men. We are members of no union. We must 
 deal individually with our employer, under all
 
 64 THE WORKERS 
 
 the disadvantages which encumber our position 
 in the market as compared with his. 
 
 But his position is not an enviable one, He 
 is a competitor in a freer market than ours. He 
 has secured his contract as the lowest bidder, 
 under a keener competition than we know, and 
 in every dime that he must add to wages in or- 
 der to attract labor, and in every dollar paid to 
 an inefficient workman, and in every unforeseen 
 difficulty or delay in the work, he sees a scaling 
 from the margin of profit, which is already, per- 
 haps, the narrowest that will attract capital into 
 the field of production. The results of our labor 
 are worth nothing to him as finished product 
 until given sections of the work are completed. 
 In the meantime he must advance to us our 
 wages out of capital which is a product of past 
 labor, his own and ours as working-men, and of 
 other capital. And this he must continue to do, 
 even if his margin of profit should wholly dis- 
 appear, and even if ultimate loss should be the 
 net result of the expenditure of his labor and 
 capital. In every case, before any other com- 
 modity has been paid for, we have insured to us 
 the price for which we have sold our labor. 
 
 Our employer is buying labor in a dear market. 
 One dollar and sixty cents for a day of nine 
 hours and a quarter is a high rate for unskilled
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 65 
 
 workmen. And the demand continues, for I 
 notice that the boss accepts every man who ap- 
 plies for a job. The contractor is paying high 
 for labor, and he will certainly get from us as 
 much work as he can at the price. The gang- 
 boss is secured for this purpose, and thoroughly 
 does he know his business. He has sole com- 
 mand of us. He never saw us before, and he 
 will discharge us all when the debris is cleared 
 away and the site made ready for the construct- 
 ive labors of the skilled workmen. In the mean- 
 time he must get from us, if he can, the utmost 
 of physical labor which we, individually and col- 
 lectively, are capable of. If he should drive 
 some of us to exhaustion, and we should not be 
 able to continue at work, he would not be the 
 loser, for the market would soon supply him 
 with others to take our places. 
 
 We are ignorant men, and we have a slender 
 hold of economic principles, but so much we 
 clearly see : that we have sold our labor where 
 we could sell it dearest, and our employer has 
 bought it where he could buy it cheapest. He 
 has paid high for it, but not from philanthropic 
 motives, and he will get at the price, he must 
 get, all the labor that he can ; and, by a strong 
 instinct which possesses us, we shall part with 
 as little as we can. And there you have, in its 
 5
 
 66 THE WORKERS 
 
 rudimentary form, the bear and the bull sides of 
 the market. 
 
 You tell us" that our interests are identical 
 with those of our employer. That may be true 
 on some ground unknown to us, but we live 
 from hand to mouth, and we think from day to 
 day, and we have no power to " reach a hand 
 through time, to catch the far-off interest of 
 tears." From work like ours there seems to us 
 to have been eliminated every element which 
 constitutes the nobility of labor. We feel no 
 personal pride in its progress, and no commun- 
 ity of interest with our employer. He plainly 
 shares this lack of unity of interest ; for he takes 
 for granted that we are dishonest men, and that 
 we will cheat him if we can ; and so he watches 
 us through every moment, and forces us to real- 
 ize that not for an hour would he intrust his in- 
 terests to our hands. There is for us in our 
 work none of the joy of responsibility, none of 
 the sense of achievement, only the dull monot- 
 ony of grinding toil, with the longing for the 
 signal to quit work, and for our wages at the end 
 of the week. 
 
 We expect the ready retort that we get what 
 we deserve, that no field of labor was closed to 
 us, and that we are where we are because we are 
 fit, or have fitted ourselves, for nothing better.
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 67 
 
 Unskilled labor must be done, and, in the nat- 
 ural play of productive activity, it must inevit- 
 ably be done by those who are excluded from 
 the higher forms of labor by incapacity, or in- 
 efficiency, or misfortune, or lack of ambition. 
 And being what we are, the dregs of the labor 
 market, and having no certainty of permanent 
 employment, and no organization among our- 
 selves, by means of which we can deal with our 
 employer and he with us by some other than an 
 individual hold upon each other, we must ex- 
 pect to work under the watchful eye of a gang- 
 boss, and not only be directed in our labor, but 
 be driven, like the wage-slaves that we are, 
 through our tasks. 
 
 All this is to tell us, in effect, that our lives 
 are the hard, barren, hopeless lives that they are 
 because of our own fault, and that our degrada- 
 tion as men is the measure of our bondage as 
 workmen. 
 
 This seems to state an ultimate fact, and then, 
 with the habit of much of such thinking, to 
 settle itself peacefully, with an easy conscience, 
 behind the inevitable. 
 
 But for us there is no such peace or comfort 
 in the inevitable. And yet, even in this state- 
 ment of our case, we are not without hope. We 
 are men, and are capable of becoming better
 
 68 THE WORKERS 
 
 men. We may be capable of no other than un- 
 skilled labor, but why should we be doomed to 
 perform it under the conditions which now de- 
 grade us at our work ? 
 
 Imagine each of us an ideal workman. Through 
 all the hours of the working-day we labor con- 
 scientiously, with no need of oversight beyond 
 intelligent direction; for each of us feels the 
 keenest interest in the progress of the work, be- 
 cause we are honest men, and, with far-sighted 
 knowledge, we know that by our best labor in 
 any form of useful production we are contribut- 
 ing our best to the general prosperity, as well as 
 our own, and that it is by our energy and per- 
 sonal efficiency that we may open for ourselves 
 a way to promotion. Here clearly is a solution 
 on ideal grounds. Is there no remedy that can 
 reach us as we are ? 
 
 Our ambition must be fired, our sense of re- 
 sponsibility awakened and enlisted in our labor, 
 our intelligences quickened to the vision of our 
 own interests in the best performance of our 
 duty. Life will not be rendered frictionless 
 thereby. Work will still be hard, but to it will 
 be restored its dignity, its power to call into 
 play the better part of a man, and so build up 
 his character. 
 
 We have already seen how such an end is 

 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 69 
 
 realized in the initial betterment of character 
 itself. Let us see whether something might not 
 be done by an initial improvement in the con- 
 ditions of employment. 
 
 Let us suppose now that we are not ideal 
 characters, but ordinary men, whose lot in life is 
 to perform unskilled labor ; but let us suppose 
 that we are an organized body of workmen. The 
 contractor made terms with us as an organized 
 gang for the removal of the old building. Our 
 organization, from long experience of such work, 
 was able to enter into an eminently fair agree- 
 ment. The contract rests upon a basis of time. 
 For the completed work we are to receive a fixed 
 sum, provided that it is finished by a given date. 
 If we finish the work, according to the terms of 
 the contract, one week earlier, we are to receive 
 a bonus in addition to the fixed amount ; if two 
 weeks earlier, there will be an increase in the 
 bonus. In the meantime advances are to be 
 made to us, week by week, in the form of days' 
 wages, but so regulated as to protect the con- 
 tractor against loss if the gang should fail to 
 complete the work. 
 
 Every member of the gang is perfectly familiar 
 with the terms of the contract, and knows thor- 
 oughly the advantages of an early completion of 
 the job. We agree among ourselves upon the
 
 70 THE WORKERS 
 
 number of hours which shall constitute a day's 
 work, and from our own number we elect a boss, 
 who will give direction to our labor, and under 
 whose orders we bind ourselves to serve. It is 
 no part of his duty now to stand guard over us 
 in the office of a slave-driver to prevent our 
 shirking, for we effectually perform that service 
 for ourselves, seeing to it, with utmost regard for 
 our interests, that no man among us fails to do 
 his share in the common task. The boss is now 
 the best and most intelligent worker among us, 
 and not only does he direct our efforts, but, with 
 his own hands, he sets the example of energetic 
 work for the securing of the best terms that the 
 contract offers for our common good. 
 
 In a true sense now we have got a job. It is 
 ours. The work is hard, but we have an object 
 in working hard. Every stroke of labor is not 
 a listless, time-serving economy of effort, but an 
 eager and willing furthering of the work toward 
 its completion and our own advantage. We are 
 glad in the progress of our job, even if we are 
 glad from no higher motive than our personal 
 profit. We have a sense of responsibility and 
 the keen interest which comes of that, even if 
 they rise in no better source than our greed for 
 gain. 
 
 It is true that the root of the matter lies deeper
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 71 
 
 than this. "We may work under hopefuller con- 
 ditions and be, intrinsically, no better men. Our 
 selfishness may take on the refinement of the 
 altruism that merely seeks our own in the wel- 
 fare of others ; our ignorance may become illu- 
 mined by an enlightened self-interest ; our vices 
 may assume respectability ; and yet our old hard- 
 ness of heart remain in full possession of us. 
 But the truly pertinent question is this : Near- 
 er to which of these ways of living lies the liv- 
 ing way? In which have we the better chance 
 to become better men? Life in its present 
 course is to most of us a miserable bondage. We 
 work daily to physical exhaustion ; and, with no 
 power left for mental effort, our minds yield 
 themselves to the play of any chance diversion 
 until they lose the power of serious attention. 
 In what constitutes for us the work of life there 
 is no pleasure, no education, no evoking of our 
 better natures. 
 
 All truly productive labor performed under 
 right conditions is itself a blessing. It partakes 
 of the highest good that life offers. It is a 
 bringing of order out of chaos, a victory over 
 forces which can be reduced from evil mastery 
 to useful service. It thus becomes the type of 
 that labor which is the work of life, the mastery 
 of self in the building of character. In this
 
 72 THE WORKERS 
 
 sense it was that the monks of the Middle Ages 
 framed their motto, Laborare est Orare labor 
 is prayer. But robbed of its true conditions 
 and reduced to the dishonor of time-service un- 
 der the eye of a slave-driving boss, who impels 
 us with insults infinitely more degrading than 
 the lash, labor is no longer prayer, but a blas- 
 phemy, which finds expression in the words 
 which rise readiest to our lips. 
 
 I have been writing from the position of an 
 unskilled workman, with no apparent allowance 
 for my newness to the life. The physical stress 
 and strain, for example, how different my ex- 
 perience of these as compared with that of the 
 other men inured to them by long habit! A 
 year or two of such labor, and how great the 
 physical change! My hands would be hard, 
 and the friction of this work, so far from wound- 
 ing them, would render them the more imper- 
 vious to harm. My muscles would be like iron, 
 and would lend themselves with far greater ease 
 to the stress of manual labor. Ten years would 
 find me a seasoned workman. 
 
 But under conditions of labor such as these, 
 what changes other than physical would there 
 be ? My body might be hardened in fibre to 
 the point of high efficiency in manual labor, but 
 the hardening of mind and character is it likely
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 73 
 
 that this would be of the nature of the strength 
 of more abundant life, or of the hardness of 
 petrifaction ? 
 
 I have received the strangest kindness from 
 the men, the most tactful treatment of me as a 
 novice. They laughed at my strenuous efforts 
 to do what was so much easier to them, and 
 they laughed when the boss singled me out for 
 abuse, but never ill-naturedly, I thought. And 
 those who made up to me, and with whom I 
 picked up acquaintance, showed the kindest con- 
 sideration. They never pressed me with em- 
 barrassing questions, but fell gracefully into the 
 easy assumption that I was a factory hand or a 
 " tradesman " out of a job. It was natural to 
 adopt the general strain and speak of plans 
 which involved my going West. 
 
 In spite of their roughness and hardness of 
 manner and speech, one never felt the smallest 
 fear of these men, and you had a growing feel- 
 ing that their better natures were never far to 
 seek. And yet in reality here they were, a curs- 
 ing, blaspheming crew ; men upon whose lives 
 hopelessness seems to have settled ; whose idea 
 of work is a slavish drudgery done from the 
 instinct of self-preservation and to be shirked 
 whenever possible ; whose idea of pleasure is 
 abandonment to their unmastered passions.
 
 74 THE WORKERS 
 
 I had a purpose in quitting work in the middle 
 of Saturday afternoon. I went to my lodgings 
 and asked Mrs. Flaherty for an early supper of 
 anything that she could give me without trouble. 
 Then I brushed my clothes and washed myself, 
 and made myself as presentable as my slender 
 pack permitted. My beard was now of nearly 
 two weeks' growth, and my face was well burned 
 by the sun, and my clothes, in spite of the pro- 
 tection of overalls, were much labor-stained. 
 
 I felt some security in my disguise, and after 
 an early supper I walked over to see the sunset 
 parade. On the road I met the men returning 
 from the works, and had to run a gauntlet of 
 questions as to whether I had left the job for 
 good, and what I meant to do. 
 
 There was bustle in the camp ; a running to 
 and fro of cadets, who appeared to be subject to 
 many calls ; a nervous appearing and vanishing 
 at the tent-doors of figures which were in proc- 
 ess of achieving parade-dress ; a hasty personal 
 inspection of arms and uniform ; and then sud- 
 denly, out of apparently inextricable confusion, 
 there emerged, without a trace of disorder, the 
 two companies, in double lines of perfect sym- 
 metry, before the inspecting officer. 
 
 Then followed the sunset parade. Seated on 
 the benches under the trees, and grouped on the
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 75 
 
 turf behind, was an eager crowd watching in- 
 tently, in perfect stillness, every evolution of the 
 cadets. The fascination was in the sense it gave 
 you of abounding life, of youth and strength and 
 vigor, brought to perfect unity in willing sub- 
 ordination to authority. Here was the type of 
 highest organization, the voluntary submission 
 of those who are " fit to follow to those who are 
 fittest to lead." So much has civilization achieved 
 for the purpose of self-defence. The mission of 
 many of these young officers will be to take such 
 men as those with whom I have been working, 
 and teach them the manly lesson of obedience, 
 and awaken in them the feelings of courage and 
 loyalty and esprit de corps. Civilization is yet 
 a long way from such organization for industrial 
 ends, if ever such corporate action will be pos- 
 sible or good ; but certainly it will not be long 
 before civilization gives birth in increasing num- 
 bers to " captains of industry," who will feel 
 with their men other ties than the " nexus of 
 cash payment," and who will attack the problems 
 of production with other aims than selfish accu- 
 mulation. Under the direction of such leaders, 
 workingmen will be led to far greater conquests 
 over the resources of nature than any in the past, 
 and, sharing consciously in these victories as 
 the fruits of their own labors, there will open to
 
 76 THE WORKERS 
 
 them a new life of liberty and hope in willing 
 allegiance to true control. 
 
 The intense satisfaction I felt in the rest of 
 yesterday (Sunday) was heightened by a feeling 
 of hopefulness as I thought of the future of 
 workingmen in a country like ours. Here are 
 almost boundless natural resources, capable of 
 supporting many times our present population. 
 Under the stimulus of private acclamation, what 
 marvellous genius and skill and enterprise have 
 directed labor to the development of our na- 
 tional wealth ! When, with the growth of better 
 knowledge, there is added to this stimulus 
 among the great leaders of industry a sincere 
 desire for the common good and a purpose to 
 make the conditions of employment the means 
 of achieving this good, how far greater must be 
 the industrial results, and how far better the 
 lives of the workers ! 
 
 I felt aglow with this idea as I walked, in the 
 afternoon, down the road below Highland Falls. 
 It was a warm mid-summer day, and in keeping 
 with its restful quiet the air moved gently among 
 the leaves in the tree-tops. I was disturbed by 
 the sound of music from the deck of an excur- 
 sion steamer, and, seized with sudden desire for 
 a glimpse of the river, I vaulted a low stone 
 wall, and quickly made my way over the mossy
 
 A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT 77 
 
 carpeting of a wood which covers the bluff above 
 the water. 
 
 I did not see, at first, the abrupt ending of 
 the wood and the sweep of an open lawn, and 
 when I caught sight of that I was only a few 
 yards from a rustic bench. There two persons 
 sat, with their backs toward me, but I recognized 
 the girl at once as an acquaintance, and I knew 
 that I was a trespassing vagrant. The man I 
 knew well, for he was a college classmate and a 
 charming fellow, and I longed to ask his views 
 on the question of the improvement of the lot of 
 unskilled laborers by means of organization. 
 
 But I grew painfully conscious of my work- 
 stained clothes, and my faded flannel shirt, and 
 the holes in my old felt hat, and of how all these 
 marked me as belonging now to another world. 
 And so I quietly stole away and returned to 
 " mine own people,"
 
 CHAPTER m 
 
 A HOTEL PORTER 
 
 The Highlands, Orange County, N. Y., 
 Tuesday, 25 August, 1891. 
 
 I am now a hotel porter. More strictly, I 
 have just resigned my position, and with the net 
 proceeds of three weeks' wages, which amount 
 to four dollars and two cents, I am ready to 
 make a fresh start in the early morning. The 
 leisure of this last evening at the hotel I shall 
 give to the task of summing up the fragmentary 
 notes which I have made in such chance hours 
 of rest as were to be had in a service which has 
 kept me on duty from five o'clock in the morn- 
 ing until eleven at night. 
 
 "Why I have lingered here so long I scarcely 
 know. The time has flown with amazing swift- 
 ness. I soon found my new job easily within 
 my powers, as compared with the last one, and 
 I have felt a certain restful security which has 
 held me here for longer than I meant to stay. 
 But I am ready enough to set out now, and I feel 
 again a " yearning for the large excitement " that 
 78
 
 A HOTEL PORTER 79 
 
 comes of life upon the open highway, and the 
 chances of a living earned by the work of my 
 hands. 
 
 I am not twenty miles beyond my last sta- 
 tion at Highland Falls. It was raining when I 
 left Mrs. Flaherty's home, and she pleaded with 
 me to stay ; but I had nothing with which to 
 pay for further entertainment, and I certainly 
 had not the courage to return to the job on the 
 old Academic building. And so we parted, Mrs. 
 Flaherty standing with arms akimbo in the open 
 door of her cottage, a final protest against so 
 rash a venture as her last word, while I lifted 
 my hat to her and to Minnie, who peered at 
 me from the shadow of the passage behind her 
 mother. 
 
 It must be owned that the prospect was not 
 encouraging to my new departure. At intervals 
 of less than a mile, sometimes, I was driven to 
 seek refuge from the rain. The mountain-road 
 was soft with mud, and a secure footing was a 
 fruitless search. In the hot air the heavy damp- 
 ness added to the discomfort of walking. Only 
 in a general way I knew that the road would 
 lead me eventually over the Highlands to Mid- 
 dletown, which lies in my westward course. The 
 beauty of the country was lost upon me, for the 
 mountain was cloaked in a heavy fog, and all
 
 80 THE WORKERS 
 
 that rose visible were short, succeeding sections 
 of muddy road, bordered with forests of oak and 
 hickory-nut and chestnut, with matted weeds 
 growing thick to the wagon-tracks, and clumps 
 of blackberry bushes standing here and there 
 along the lines of tottering stone walls and 
 wooden fences. 
 
 In the middle of the noon hour I reached 
 Forest-of-Dean Mines. A general supply store 
 stands on the roadside. It was thronged with 
 Italian laborers. I waited in its shelter until 
 the one-o'clock whistle recalled the men to their 
 work, and then I made terms with an Italian boy, 
 who was left in charge, for a five-cent dinner. 
 The child spoke English with perfect readiness. 
 Almost concealed behind the counter, he looked 
 wonderfully important and business-like as he 
 reached up to apply the weights and fixed his 
 great black eyes shrewdly upon the oscillations 
 of the balance. For five cents he agreed to give 
 me two ounces of cheese and six soda-crackers. 
 
 This proved a hopelessly inadequate dinner, 
 and by the middle of the afternoon I was pain- 
 fully hungry. It must have been between the 
 hours of three and four when, on a stretch of 
 level road, I met a tall, over-grown negro youth 
 with a bucket of sour milk in each hand, which 
 was plainly destined for a pig-pen that I had
 
 HOTEL PORTER 81 
 
 passed but a few yards back. Looming dimly 
 in the fog behind him, I could see the outlines 
 of a large frame structure with lightly built ve- 
 randas engirding it. I asked the youth what it 
 
 was, and learned that it was a hotel, the " 
 
 House." 
 
 'Did he think that I could get a job there?' 
 He was doubtful of that, but advised my seeing 
 the " boss," whom I should find in the office. 
 The office was deserted when I entered it. 
 Some men were playing billiards in the larger 
 room beyond, which, with the office, forms the 
 ground floor of a building detached from the 
 main hotel, but joined by a veranda on the 
 upper story. 
 
 I sat down, and began to dry my feet at a slow 
 fire which burned in an iron stove. Presently 
 there came in a tall man, straight of figure, with 
 black eyes and hair and mustache and an un- 
 commonly dark complexion. I rose with an 
 inquiry for the proprietor, and he sat down with 
 the assurance that he was the man. There were 
 two definite requests in my mind. I meant to 
 apply first for a job ; but, expecting nothing of 
 a permanent character, I resolved to ask work 
 for the remaining afternoon for the sake of food 
 and a night's shelter from the rain. To my sur- 
 prise, instead of the negative I expected to my 
 6
 
 82 THE WORKERS 
 
 first request, I found some encouragement in the 
 proprietor's manner. He owned to the need of 
 a porter until the arrival, in a few days, of tne 
 man who had been engaged for that position. I 
 declared my willingness to serve and to begin 
 work on the moment. He pointed out that he 
 did not know me, and that he was not in the 
 habit of engaging servants whom he did not 
 know. ' Besides, there was not much for the 
 porter to do, and for his services he was paid at 
 the rate of eight dollars a month and his board.' 
 I was ready with a plea for a trial, if only for 
 a single day, and presently the proprietor con- 
 sented. 
 
 He rose, and at once began to instruct me in 
 my duty. Standing on the threshold between 
 the office and billiard-room, he pointed to the 
 bare floors, and explained that they must be 
 scrubbed every morning. He then indicated the 
 score or more of oil-lamps with which the rooms 
 were lighted, and said that these must be kept 
 clean and filled. Next he opened a door from 
 the office into a small room in which was a cot. 
 That was to be my sleeping - place, and he 
 showed me, in one corner, buckets and a mop 
 and a broom, which were intended for the porter's 
 use. Quite abruptly he asked to see my hat, 
 and, wondering at the request, I showed him
 
 A HOTEL PORTER 83 
 
 the stained black felt with ragged holes in the 
 crown. " That won't do," he said, and with the 
 word he took down from a peg a porter's cloth 
 cap with a patent-leather visor, and bade me 
 wear it at my work. It was much too small, but 
 by dint of holding my head with care I could 
 keep it on ; thus balancing the cap as best I 
 could, and with the broom in hand, I followed 
 my employer for further instructions. He led 
 the way to the verandas, and explained that they 
 must be swept each morning before the guests 
 are up, and again in the afternoon, at the hour 
 when they are least in use. They were nearly 
 deserted now, and the proprietor told me to 
 begin my work by sweeping them, and then he 
 left me. 
 
 I could have danced with sheer delight. Not 
 if I had deliberately planned it could I have ef- 
 fected a better arrangement. It fitted my needs 
 exactly. A change to lighter work for a time 
 was almost a necessity ; for my hands were much 
 blistered and torn, and they refused to heal 
 under the friction of my last employment. And 
 then and my spirits rose buoyantly to this 
 idea here was a chance to see something of 
 domestic service, and such another, under con- 
 ditions so favorable, might not offer in all my 
 journey across the continent.
 
 84 THE WORKERS 
 
 " This morning," I thought to myself, " I was 
 a roving laborer in search of work and with but 
 ten cents in my pocket ; now I am a hotel por- 
 ter, with bed and board assured and an open 
 field for observation, and some certainty of a 
 surplus, regardless of the weather, when I quit 
 the job, although, at its present rate, my daily 
 wage is a fraction less than twenty-seven cents." 
 
 As I swept the verandas my plans began to 
 form themselves with exciting interest. " Here 
 is clearly a splendid opportunity. I have been 
 frankly told that a porter is already engaged, 
 and is on his way, and that my occupancy of 
 oflice is simply for the interregnum. Plainly, if 
 I can give evidence, in the meantime, of useful- 
 ness such that, when the regular porter comes, 
 I shall be continued in some employment about 
 the hotel, that will be a distinct achievement ; 
 and it will not be without a bearing upon the 
 practical question as to what a penniless man 
 may do for himself in the way of winning per- 
 manent employment that offers chances of pro- 
 motion." I resolved to bend all my energies to 
 that. 
 
 When the verandas were swept, I returned to 
 the office and billiard-room, and began to study 
 the field. The floors were sadly in need of 
 scrubbing; many of the lamp chimneys were
 
 A HOTEL PORTER 86 
 
 * 
 
 smoked, and all were far from clean ; the win- 
 dows of both rooms were much weather-stained ; 
 and the paint on the woodwork could be im- 
 proved by a thorough washing. I then went 
 over the grounds, and found the walks in dis- 
 order, and the lawns matted and strewn with 
 litter. 
 
 I lit the lamps at nightfall, and awaited a 
 summons to supper. While in the region of the 
 kitchen I noticed that an extra hand might 
 often prove of service there. Back in my own 
 domain for the evening, I found my offices in 
 demand in attendance upon the billiard and 
 pool tables. 
 
 By eleven o'clock the house was still, and I 
 was at liberty to go to bed. Among the furni- 
 ture in the office was an alarm-clock. This I 
 wound up, and set for a quarter to five. 
 
 The morning was splendidly bright. When 
 I stepped out upon the veranda the sun had al- 
 ready cleared the tops of the wooded Highlands, 
 and, with the radiance reflected from infinite 
 rain-drops in the forests, there rolled from their 
 " gorgeous gloom " the " sweet after showers, 
 ambrosial air." In no direction was the outlook 
 wide ; but the air gleamed in the sunlight with 
 the crystal clearness which gives its peculiar 
 quality to our autumn, and which so early as
 
 86 THE WORKERS 
 
 August can be had only at considerable alti- 
 tudes. 
 
 But the scrubbing awaited me, and was a task 
 of much uncertainty In the kitchen I filled my 
 buckets with water cold water, I am sorry to 
 say. I threw wide open the doors and windows, 
 and first sprinkled the floors, as I had seen shop- 
 keepers do, and then swept them thoroughly. 
 I tried to apply the water by means of a mop 
 with a long wooden handle; but failing com- 
 pletely in that, I detached the handle, and get- 
 ting down on my knees, I went carefully over 
 the surface with the mop in hand. Frequently 
 I changed the water, and when the scrubbing 
 was done I looked the damp floors over with 
 immense satisfaction. 
 
 Until I was called to breakfast I spent the 
 time in sweeping the verandas and clearing from 
 the walks the twigs and dead leaves with which 
 they were strewn after the rain. In no way 
 was I prepared for the alarming surprise which 
 was in store for me. When I returned to the 
 office I stood aghast at the sight of the newly 
 scrubbed floors. They were dry now, and were 
 covered with fantastic designs. Every final 
 movement of the mop was distinctly traceable 
 in streaks of unmistakable dirt. And there was 
 the proprietor at work at his desk, and he faintly
 
 A HOTEL PORTER 87 
 
 noticed me as I entered. I stood expecting my 
 discharge, with what fortitude I could summon, 
 but receiving no further attention from my em- 
 ployer, I hurried back to the work on the walks 
 and drives. During the dinner-hour I brought 
 a broom to bear upon the coiling traceries on 
 the floor, and succeeded in softening their 
 bolder outlines. 
 
 But scrubbing proved a peculiarly difficult 
 art. On the second morning I did all that I 
 had done before, and then got buckets of clean 
 hot water and a fresh mop ; and on hands and 
 knees I went over the floors, wiping them up 
 with scrupulous care. The result was no better, 
 once dry, and the designs in daubs of dirt were 
 as fantastic as ever. On the third morning I 
 tried still a new plan, but only with the result 
 of effecting a change in the designs. I was 
 learning to scrub by an empirical process, and 
 the fourth venture approached success. Hot 
 water and soap, and a scrub-brush vigorously 
 applied, and then a final swabbing, left the floors 
 comparatively clean, and free from the persistent 
 mop-stains. 
 
 Only one more of my duties I found difficult 
 of mastery. Like scrubbing the floors, washing 
 the windows was full of surprises. From one 
 of the house -maids I learned that clean, hot,
 
 88 THE W0RKER8 
 
 soapy water was the prime necessity. I was de- 
 lighted with the first result, for after the wash- 
 ing within and without, I had visions of the 
 glass in a high state of clean transparency. But 
 the sun had absorbed the water, and left stains 
 of tenacious soap, when I came to the polishing, 
 and after hours of labor I almost despaired of 
 ever bringing the panes to a reasonably untar- 
 nished condition. 
 
 The work has varied so little in detail that 
 the history of a single day is an epitome of the 
 three weeks' service : 
 
 I am up at a little before five in the morning. 
 The floors of the office and billiard-room are my 
 first concern; and by the time these are scrubbed 
 it is six o'clock. The chef early noticed my will- 
 ingness to lend a hand in the kitchen, and he 
 rewards me with a liberal supply of hot water 
 every morning, and a cup of coffee and a slice 
 of bread at six o'clock when he takes his own. 
 Fortified in this way, I sweep the verandas and 
 walks, and rake the drives and lawns until 
 breakfast. 
 
 There is a curious, horizontal, social cleavage 
 among the " help." I belong to the lower stra- 
 tum. I first noticed the distinction at our 
 meals. The negro head-waiter, and the pastry- 
 cook, and the head-gardener, and the company
 
 A HOTEL PORTER 89 
 
 of Irish maids, who do double duty as waitresses 
 and house-maids, take their meals in the dining- 
 room after the guests are served. The rem- 
 nants of these two servings are then heaped 
 upon a table in a long, low, dimly lighted room 
 which intervenes between the kitchen and din- 
 ing-room, and there we of the lowest class help 
 ourselves. Our coterie consists of an English 
 maid, a recent arrival from Liverpool, who 
 serves as a dishwasher, three negro laundresses, 
 two negro stable-boys and myself, with a vary- 
 ing element in two or three hired men, who 
 drop in irregularly from the region of the 
 barns. 
 
 Martha, the English maid, is chiefly in charge 
 here, and she bravely tries to serve, and to 
 bring some order out of the chaos ; but the task 
 is beyond her. We take places as we find them 
 vacant, and each helps himself from what re- 
 mains to be eaten of the fragments of the meal 
 just ended. There is always a towering sup- 
 ply, but an abundance of a sort that deadens 
 your appetite, like the blow of a sand-bag. 
 
 I reproached myself with fastidiousness at 
 first, and imagined that to the other servants, 
 who shared it, the fare was entirely palatable *, 
 and so I was surprised when, at a dinner early 
 in my stay, one of the negro laundresses seized
 
 00 THE WORKERS 
 
 a plate heaped with scraps of meat, from which 
 we had all been helping ourselves, and carried 
 it out with the indignant remark that it was fit 
 only for the dogs, adding, sententiously, as she 
 disappeared through the door : " We are not 
 dogs yet; we are supposed to be human." And 
 back to her afternoon's work she went, although 
 she had eaten only a morsel. 
 
 These meals were curiously solemn func- 
 tions ; scarcely a word was ever spoken. Mar- 
 tha was " cumbered about much serving," and 
 very heroically she tried to impart some decent 
 order to the meal, and a cheerfuller tone to the 
 company. I never knew the cause of the sullen 
 unsociability which possessed us, whether it was 
 ill-humor born of the physical weariness from 
 which all the servants seemed constantly to suf- 
 fer as a result of the high pressure of work at 
 the height of the season, or the revolting fare 
 which often sent us unrested and unfed from 
 our meals. 
 
 It is the vision of supper that will linger 
 clearest in my memory. The long, reeking 
 room seen faintly in the yellow light of one be- 
 grimed oil-lamp ; the ceiling so low that I can 
 easily reach it with my upstretched hand, and 
 dotted over with innumerable flies. The room 
 is a paradise for flies, which swarm most in our
 
 A HOTEL PORTER 91 
 
 food that lies in ill-assorted heaps down the 
 middle of a rough wooden table. Here we sit 
 in chance order, black and white faces often al- 
 ternating ; the white ones livid in their vivid 
 contrast with the background of the room's 
 deep shadows, and the others ghastly visible in 
 the general blackness from which gleam the 
 whites of eyes. Sometimes the two stable-boys 
 find seats together ; and then they bid defiance 
 to the general gloom, and are soon bubbling 
 over with musical laughter, that rolls responsive 
 to the least remark from either. It is interest- 
 ing at such times to watch Martha's face. The 
 nervous energy which is always struggling there 
 against a look of utter weariness shines victori- 
 ous now, in the light of a new hope that a bet- 
 ter cheer has come at last to her table. 
 
 From breakfast I hurry back to the work 
 of putting the grounds in order. The walks I 
 sweep every morning, and then rake the drives 
 and the lawns. 
 
 It was at this work that I early found con- 
 vincing proof of the completeness of my social 
 change. The lawns at certain hours are in the 
 possession of nurse-maids and infants. I have 
 never calculated the number of children in the 
 hotel, but their ages apparently mark every 
 stage of advance from a few weeks to as many
 
 92 THE WORKERS 
 
 years. My liking for children amounts to rev- 
 erent devotion, and it gave me a shock, from 
 which I have not recovered, to find that, un- 
 shaven and uncouth in workmen's clothes, I had 
 become for them a bogey with whom their 
 nurses frighten them into obedience, warning 
 them in excited tones with " Here comes the 
 man to take you away ! " 
 
 It was at this work, too, that I once incurred 
 the avowed displeasure of a guest. She was a 
 beautiful Philistine, with a keenly penetrating 
 twang and turns of speech that bespoke the re- 
 gions of Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth Street. 
 But she was remarkably handsome, tall and 
 graceful, and of high-bred bearing and of a thor- 
 oughly aristocratic type. It must be confessed 
 that whenever she was visible from my regions 
 the section of the grounds which commanded 
 a view of her, and was yet fairly beyond the 
 sound of her voice, received assiduous atten- 
 tion from me ; for she was highly remunerative 
 to look at. I was sweeping a section of the 
 walk immediately in front of the hotel. Unlike 
 the work at West Point, a porter's duties do not 
 preclude mental effort. Absorbed in thought 
 and quite unconscious of my surroundings, I 
 was suddenly recalled to them and to my sta- 
 tion in life by nasal accents raised in strong
 
 A HOTEL PORTER 93 
 
 reproof. I looked up in bewilderment, and saw 
 confronting me the beautiful Philistine, holding 
 a little child by each hand. Very straight she 
 stood and bright-eyed, with her head thrown 
 back, and an exquisite flush over her face, and 
 her beautiful lips curled in anger, as she scold- 
 ed me roundly for raising so much dust. I was 
 unfamiliar with the etiquette of the situation, so 
 I held my peace, and respectfully touched my 
 cap, inwardly calling her the beauty that she 
 was as she stood there, and ardently hoping 
 that she would scold me more. 
 
 From the lawns I go to the kitchen, and offer 
 my services to the chef. Usually he has ready 
 for me a basket of potatoes to peel. In a little 
 shed by the kitchen-door I sit and peel endless- 
 ly. The servants are flocking in and out through 
 the open door in the fetid air. The heat is of 
 the suffocating kind, in which the heavy air lies 
 dead. It is nearing the dinner-hour, and every- 
 one must work with almost a frenzy of effort. 
 The high tension communicates itself to us all, 
 and we feel the nervous strain upon our tem- 
 pers. The hundred and one petty annoyances 
 which cause the friction of household service 
 prove too much, and the tension bursts into a 
 furious quarrel between the Irish pastry-cook 
 and the negro head-waiter. No one has time to
 
 94 THE WORKERS 
 
 heed them, but his storming oaths and her 
 plaintive, whining key, maintained with provok- 
 ing tenacity, whatever relief they bring to them, 
 are far from soothing to the rest of us. 
 
 The maids are gathered from all parts of the 
 hotel. Most of them have been on duty since 
 six o'clock, and after the morning's work there 
 now awaits them the rush of serving dinner. 
 Want of sufficient sleep and utter physical 
 weariness have drawn deep lines in their faces. 
 Presently one of them, a slender young girl, 
 sinks exhausted into a seat, and we hear her no- 
 tion of the summum bonum : " Oh, I wish I was 
 rich, and could swing all day in a hammock ! " 
 I follow the direction of her eyes. Across a 
 wide stretch of lawn and in the shade of some 
 clustering maples I see the gleam of a white 
 dress rocking gently in a hammock, and I catch 
 the flutter of a fan and the light on an open page. 
 
 Sometimes I am in the region of the kitchen 
 during the dinner-hour itself. As an experi- 
 ence, I fancy that it is not unlike that of being 
 behind the scenes in the course of the play. 
 The kitchen and pantry are ill- ventilated, and 
 are hot to siiffocation. About a counter-like 
 partition which separates the two rooms crowd 
 the eager waitresses, rehearsing in shrill tones 
 their orders to the chef and his assistant. There
 
 A HOTEL PORTER 95 
 
 is a babel of voices striving to be heard, and a 
 ceaseless clatter of dishes, and a hurrying to 
 and fro. The chef is not a bad fellow, but his 
 temper is rarely proof against the harassing 
 annoyances incident upon serving a dinner, and 
 he loses it in a torrent of oaths. The volume 
 of noise increases until the height of dinner is 
 reached and passed, and then it subsides, quite 
 like a thunder-storm. 
 
 The afternoon's work keeps me, for the most 
 part, in my own regions. The lamps must first 
 be cleaned and filled, and then the billiard- 
 tables brushed for the evening play, and there 
 may remain unfinished work on the grounds, 
 which claims me until it is time to sweep the 
 verandas again. 
 
 When I am out of the office I must be careful 
 that the doors and the windows are open, and 
 my ears attentive to the bel'; for I am porter 
 and bell-boy in one. 
 
 A bell-boy is sometimes at a disadvantage. 
 He is not supposed to explain, and circum- 
 stances may wrong him. 
 
 The bell rings. I run to the indicator, and 
 then climb to the door that bears the correspond- 
 ing number. A lady asks for a pitcher of ice- 
 water. Unluckily the ice-chest is locked, and 
 the key, I learn, is in the keeping of the head-
 
 96 THE WORKERS 
 
 Waiter. After hasty search, I find that official 
 seated on a rock in the shade behind the barn, 
 conversing with some of the hands. He tells 
 me that there is no ice in the chest, and advises 
 my going to the ice-house. I do so with all 
 possible speed, and am fortunate enough to find 
 a piece of loose ice not far below the surface of 
 saw-dust. Back to the kitchen I run with it, 
 wash it, and chop it into fragments. But all 
 this has taken time ; it is very hot, and the lady, 
 no doubt, is very thirsty. As I hand her the 
 pitcher of water, her caustic acknowledgment 
 expresses anything but gratitude. 
 
 The verandas are no sooner swept for the 
 afternoon than the stage appears from the sta- 
 tion. I must be in attendance to relieve the 
 newly arrived guests of their lighter luggage 
 and, with the help of one of the stable-boys, to 
 carry their trunks to their rooms. 
 
 It was in such services as these that I met 
 with an insuperable difficulty. Before I launched 
 upon the enterprise of earning my living by man- 
 ual labor I settled it with myself that I would 
 shrink from no honest work, however menial, 
 that might fall within the range of my experi- 
 ment. I confess that, in my present avocation, 
 when it came to the necessity of cleaning the 
 cuspidors used by a tobacco-eating gentry, the
 
 A HOTEL PORTER 97 
 
 task was accomplished only after hard setting of 
 teeth, and much involuntary contraction of mus- 
 cles. But I hasten to let fall a veil already too 
 widely drawn from the hidden rites of a porter's 
 service. The difficulty in point was of another 
 kind, and had to do with tips. I was not un- 
 prepared for the emergency, for the proprietor 
 had hinted, in our first conversation, with every 
 mark of embarrassment, and with a tone of 
 apology for the eight dollars a month, that that 
 amount was sure to be supplemented by gratui- 
 ties. It might have been different under other 
 circumstances ; but when I had seen the guests 
 and noted the unmistakable marks of residence 
 in cheap flats and low-rent suburban cottages, 
 and realized the careful husbanding of funds 
 and the close calculation which make a summer 
 outing possible to them, their fees were some 
 degrees beyond the possible to me. 
 
 In the case of the luggage, it was easy to bow 
 acknowledgment and to decline in favor of Sam, 
 the stable-boy, who, beaming with delight, stood 
 ready to receive gifts to any amount, and who 
 loved me warmly. But when I was alone with 
 some guest in the act of a personal service, the 
 situation created by a proffered fee proved em- 
 barrassing to us both, and was not to be relieved 
 by bows and expressions of sincere appreciation. 
 7
 
 98 THE WORKERS 
 
 The evening's duties are usually the lighting 
 of the lamps at nightfall, and assorting the 
 mail that comes in after supper, and attending 
 the billiard and pool tables, and answering the 
 bell-calls. Saturday afternoons and evenings 
 are varied with industrious preparations for ex- 
 tra guests. This makes added demands upon us 
 all, and the servants dread Sunday as bringing 
 always the severest strain of the week. My own 
 share of extra work is confined to Saturday after- 
 noon and evening, when I put up cots, and carry 
 bed-linen and blankets about, under the orders 
 of the house-keeper, usually until midnight. And 
 when I go to sleep at last it is on the hay in the 
 barn, for my room is swept and garnished on 
 Saturday and given up to a guest. It is no hard- 
 ship to sleep on the hay, but, through knowledge 
 gained from the scale of prices posted in the 
 office, I can but understand what an admirable 
 business arrangement it is for the proprietor 
 to so utilize my room over Sunday. The added 
 revenue which is thus yielded during my stay 
 amounts to fifteen dollars, and as the total sum 
 of my wages for the three weeks is five dollars 
 and sixty-seven cents, the net returns to the pro- 
 prietor in service and profit speak well for his 
 management. 
 
 But there is other evidence of good manage-
 
 A HOTEL PORTER 99 
 
 ment, and in a quarter that appeals to me more. 
 His treatment of the "help" is so uniformly 
 fair. I do not like him ; but, so far as I know, 
 I am alone in my dislike among all the servants 
 of the house ; and I cannot fail to see that a feel- 
 ing of personal loyalty is behind much of the 
 patient, enduring service to which I have been 
 witness. Only once was there an approach to a 
 collision between us, and certainly I emerged 
 from.that in rather a ridiculous light. 
 
 It was but two or three evenings ago. Usu- 
 ally I have been able to eat at our table enough 
 at least to deaden appetite, but on that evening 
 I could eat nothing. As I passed through the 
 pastry-kitchen on my way back to the office I 
 saw a few pieces of corn-bread which were ap- 
 parently to be thrown away. I asked the cook 
 for some, and she readily told me to help my- 
 self. On a flagging near the kitchen-door I sat 
 down to eat the bread, and the proprietor must 
 have seen me there in the dim light. I had not 
 finished when the negro head- waiter came upon 
 me in much excitement. I belong to a lower 
 order of service than he, but he treats me civilly, 
 and there was nothing more than nervousness in 
 ys manner now. 
 
 " You mustn't get cheese from the pantry with- 
 cut leave," he was saying in high agitation.
 
 100 THE WORKERS 
 
 I thought that he had gone mad, but he pres- 
 ently made clear that the proprietor had come 
 to him with the complaint that I was eating 
 cheese, which is kept in the pantry, and is not 
 intended for the lower servants. The supper- 
 table had upset me, and the corn-bread which 
 caused the present trouble had been cold com- 
 fort. I was furiously angry now, hot and aglow 
 with a passion of rage which at that moment was 
 a splendid sensation. "With great civility I 
 thanked the head- waiter, and explained the mis- 
 take, and showed him a fragment of bread still 
 in my hand, and then asked where I should find 
 the proprietor. He had gone to the office, and 
 I followed him there, scarcely conscious of 
 touching the ground. It was close upon the 
 mail-hour, and the office was crowded with 
 guests. Near the stove stood the proprietor, 
 and he saw me as I approached him. I was look- 
 ing him full in the eyes when I told him, with- 
 out introductory remarks, that if he had any 
 further criticisms to offer upon my conduct he 
 was at liberty to bring them directly to me. If 
 I had had any sense of humor left I should have 
 laughed then at his appearance, and have fore- 
 stalled the ridiculous scene, in which, with a 
 look of distressed embarrassment, he edged tow- 
 ard the door, and I followed, with my eyes on
 
 A HOTEL PORTER 101 
 
 his, as I treated him to the most cynically pat- 
 ronizing sentences which I could frame, while 
 the guests looked on in silence. 
 
 Once in the quiet of the veranda, he explained 
 to me that, since he holds the head-waiter re- 
 sponsible in such matters, he had naturally com- 
 plained to him, and added that he was sorry if 
 any mistake had been made. I pointed out 
 the mistake, and felt the fool that I was, and 
 spent the evening in a long walk over the hills, 
 returning only in time to lock up and put out 
 the lights. 
 
 As a basis of comparison I have now the two 
 short terms of service at West Point and here. 
 I received employment at both places as almost 
 any laborer might have done, and I found in 
 them both the means of livelihood. But as a 
 servant, I have found more than that. The man 
 who had been engaged as porter appeared about 
 a week after my arrival. He proved to be Mar- 
 tha's brother, and a newly landed immigrant. 
 There was no mistaking the last fact. His 
 peaked countenance, with surviving traces of 
 ruddy color ; his queer pot-hat, that rested on 
 his ears ; his bright woollen tippet, defying the 
 heat ; his baggy suit, which had doubtless served 
 for day and night through all the voyage ; hia 
 heavy boots all proclaimed him the raw ma-
 
 102 THE WORKERS 
 
 terial of a new citizen. Nor could there be a 
 doubt of his kinship with Martha. She stood 
 with me awaiting the stage, directing eager 
 glances down the carriage-drive and excitedly 
 asking questions about its coming. She was 
 the first to see it, and to recognize her brother 
 on the seat with Sam, and she fluttered about in 
 the unconcealed delight of affection, perfectly 
 unconscious of everyone, until her arms were 
 about her brother's neck, and she "was leading 
 him away to the kitchen. 
 
 Nothing was said to me about leaving ; Mar- 
 tha's brother became her assistant as a dish- 
 washer, and learned to lend a generally useful 
 hand in the kitchen. 
 
 And so I had fairly won my place, and had 
 open before me a way of promotion. Experi- 
 ence alone could disclose the value of the open- 
 ing ; but the " House " is a winter as well 
 
 as a summer resort, and a porter's services are 
 therefore in demand through the year. If 
 efficient, intelligent labor could not eventually 
 win higher and more responsible position in 
 such an enterprise, and possibly gain, at last, 
 an interest in the business, the case is surely 
 exceptional. 
 
 It is the change in external conditions and its 
 bearing upon me as a human worker which have
 
 A HOTEL PORTER 103 
 
 most impressed me, in contrast with my first ex- 
 perience. 
 
 I worked for nine hours and a quarter at West 
 Point, and had, at the end of the day's labor, if 
 the weather had been good, eighty-five cents 
 above actual living expenses. Here I have usu- 
 ally worked from five o'clock in the morning 
 until eleven at night, at all manner of menial 
 drudgery, and have gone to bed in the comfort- 
 able assurance that, in addition to food and 
 shelter, I have earned twenty-six cents and a 
 fraction. And yet, as a matter of choice, purely 
 with reference to the conditions under which 
 the work is done, I should infinitely prefer a 
 week of my present duties to a single day at 
 such labor as that at West Point. 
 
 The work here is specific, and it is mine, to 
 be done as I best can. Responsibility and in- 
 itiative and personal pride enter here, and ren- 
 der the eighteen hours of this work incomparably 
 shorter than the nine hours of my last. It is 
 true that it partakes of the character of much 
 household service, in that it is ever doing and is 
 never done ; but there is a feeling of accomplish- 
 ment in the fact of getting my quarters clean 
 and the grounds in order, and in keeping them 
 so, although it be at the cost of labor always 
 repeated and never ended.
 
 104 THE WORKERS 
 
 Perhaps it is because I am still haunted by 
 the thought of the cruel bondage of unskilled 
 labor, under which men exhaust their powers of 
 body and mind and soul at work that, in the 
 very conditions of its doing, seems to harden 
 them into slaves, instead of strengthening them 
 into men, that I fail to feel keenly the want of 
 time that I can call my own. I have an inde- 
 pendence of vastly better sort in having work 
 which I can call my own, and which I can do 
 with some human pleasure and interest and 
 profit in its performance, however hard it 
 may be. 
 
 Slender as is my acquaintance with either, I 
 yet see, with perfect certainty, that the standard 
 of character is higher in this company of ser- 
 vants than among the gang of unskilled laborers. 
 Other causes may have a share in this result, 
 but the efficient cause is clear in the better moral 
 atmosphere in which the work is done. I do 
 not know how conscious is the feeling of unity 
 of interest with their employer, or of copartnery 
 with one another in labor, or of personal respon- 
 sibility ; but all these motives must play a part 
 in effecting the successful accomplishment of 
 the house-work, with its intricacies and inter- 
 dependencies which render constant personal 
 oversight impossible. Of course the proprietor
 
 A HOTEL PORTER 106 
 
 has much trouble with the "help," and there 
 are frequent changes among them; but the 
 body of the company remains the same, and 
 some of the servants have been here for several 
 seasons. 
 
 Certainly one is obliged to look elsewhere than 
 to wages for a cause of better work as showing 
 a finer moral fibre, if I may judge from my 
 twenty-six cents a day. I dare say that mine is 
 the minimum wage. The chef told me that he 
 gets sixty dollars a month, and I fancy that his 
 is the maximum sum. It is purely a guess, but 
 I venture it, that the average among us would not 
 exceed five dollars a week. Five dollars a week 
 above the necessaries of life will buy much among 
 the commonest proletariat. Under certain con- 
 ditions that, or even a less sum, might buy in- 
 dustrious and almost continuous effort for four- 
 teen or eighteen hours a day, but not, I fancy, 
 in the present economic condition of household 
 servants in this country. There must be other 
 causes to account for that. 
 
 The want of time which is at one's own com- 
 mand is the commonest objection urged against 
 domestic service as accounting for the ready 
 choice of harder work with far less of creature 
 comfort, but with definite limits and entire dis- 
 posing of the rest of one's day. Stronger than
 
 106 THE WORKERS 
 
 this, I fancy, as an objection, is a social disa- 
 bility which attaches to service, and under the 
 sway of which a house-maid has not the pros- 
 pect of so good a marriage, socially considered, 
 as a factory girl, who earns a scanty living, but 
 is subject to no one's command outside of the 
 factory gates. 
 
 The strength of social conventions is a force 
 to be reckoned with among the working classes. 
 It may seem that below the standing of folk 
 gentle by birth and breeding there are no social 
 standards or social barriers of serious strength. 
 I begin to suspect that distinctions are as clearly 
 made on one side of that line as the other. Very 
 certain I am that the upper servants here and 
 the nurses and house-maids are removed from 
 us of the clothes-washing and dish-washing and 
 floor-scrubbing fraternity by a very consider- 
 able social gulf. 
 
 A course of eighteen hours of continuous daily 
 duty soon gives one a surprising relish for the 
 pleasure of doing as you please. I know now 
 something of the delight of a " Sunday off." I 
 got my first leave of absence one afternoon when 
 I was allowed to go to the village of Central 
 Valley to have my boots mended. Not since I 
 was a small boy at boarding-school have I felt 
 the same vivid pleasure in going freely forth,
 
 A HOTEL PORTER 107 
 
 knowing that, for the time, I was my own mas- 
 ter ; and when I returned to the hotel, it was 
 very much with the school-boy's feeling of pass- 
 ing again under the yoke.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 A HIRED MAN AT AN ASYLUM 
 
 WlLKESBARRE, PENNSYLVANIA, 
 
 Saturday, September 19, 1891. 
 
 I have a wide sweep of country to cover from 
 
 the " House " in the Highlands above the 
 
 Hudson, where I served as a porter, and received 
 with my wages a reference to the effect that my 
 work was done " faithfully and well," to the coal 
 regions of Pennsylvania in the valley of the 
 Susquehanna. 
 
 My spirits rise at every recollection of the 
 journey. For days I walked through the crisp 
 autumn air, breathiug its tingling freshness, and 
 barely sensible of fatigue. 
 
 The way led me over the rich farm-lands of 
 Orange County, and across the Delaware, and 
 through the lonely wilderness of the Pennsylva- 
 nia border, until I emerged upon the hills above 
 the Susquehanna, and caught sight of the splen- 
 did valley, with its native beauty hideously 
 marred by the blackened trails of forest fires 
 108
 
 A HIRED MAN AT AN ASYLUM 109 
 
 and the monstrous heaps of culm that mark the 
 mouth of the coal-pits. 
 
 So far work has not failed me, unless I mark 
 as an exception the single case when I began a 
 search, and brought it abruptly to an end by 
 descending suddenly upon a camping party of 
 friends. 
 
 Quietly and mysteriously, I fancy, to the other 
 
 servants, I appeared among them at the " 
 
 House," and with as little notice I tried to steal 
 away. Instead of going to the kitchen at five 
 o'clock on that Wednesday morning for scrub- 
 bing-water, I took to the road with my pack, 
 
 and left behind me the " House " awaking 
 
 to life in the servants' quarters. 
 
 I had been a gang-laborer and a hotel porter, 
 and now I wondered what my next role was to 
 be. But the feeling was simply a genial curios- 
 ity, and was free from the timid shrinking with 
 which I set out from the minister's house in 
 Wilton, and my lodgings at Highland Falls. 
 Then it was under the spur of self-compulsion 
 that I launched afresh upon this fortuitous life. 
 With strong animal instinct I had clung to any 
 haven where shelter and food were secure. 
 Now I warmly welcomed a freer courage born 
 of experience. Not too sure of newly gained 
 powers, but like a boy learning to swim, I fan-
 
 110 THE WORKERS 
 
 cied that I felt the strength of some confidence 
 in the novel element. Light-hearted in spite of 
 my pack, which gained weight with every step, 
 I walked briskly along the country roads, 
 charmed with everything I saw, and feeling 
 sure that my wages would see me through to 
 another job. Was it a real acquisition, and had 
 I learned to catch the strange pleasure of this 
 fugitive life? or did the difference lie in the 
 bracing cool of the morning, and the beauty of 
 the open country, and the sense of freedom after 
 long restraint, and, most subtly of all, in that 
 little, hoarded balance in my purse ? 
 
 It was nightfall when I entered Middletown, 
 and too late to look for work. With my eye 
 upon the rows of cottages which line the street 
 by which I entered the town, I soon found a 
 boarding-house for workmen. A bed could be 
 had for twenty cents. At a bakery near by I 
 got a loaf of bread and a quart of milk for a 
 dime, and was thus supplied with a supper and 
 breakfast. Twelve hours of unbroken sleep fell 
 to me that night, and in the cool of a threatening 
 morning I set out to find work. The scaffolding 
 about a brick building in process of erection 
 drew my attention, and I applied for a job as a 
 hod-carrier, but found no demand there for fur- 
 ther unskilled labor. The boss in charge re-
 
 A HIRED MAN AT AN ASYLUM 111 
 
 fused me with some show of petulance, as though 
 annoyed by repeated appeals. He was not more 
 cheerful, but was politely communicative enough 
 when I asked after the likelihood of my finding 
 work in the town. " There is no business doing," 
 he said. "The bottom has fallen out of this 
 place. There's two men looking for every job 
 here, and my advice to you is to go somewhere 
 else." 
 
 At the head of the street I came upon the foun- 
 dation work of another building, which, I learned, 
 was to be an armory. Here the boss instantly 
 offered me a job, if I could lay brick or do the 
 work of a mason, but of unskilled labor he said 
 that he had an abundant supply. " But yonder," 
 he added, " is the Asylum, and much work is in 
 progress on the grounds, and there, surely, is 
 your best chance of employment." 
 
 The Asylum was a State Homoeopathic Insti- 
 tution for the Insane. I could see the large 
 brick buildings on the highest area of spacious 
 grounds, which spread away in easy undulations, 
 with their natural beauty heightened by the 
 tasteful work of a landscape gardener. 
 
 Near the entrance to the grounds I came upon 
 a large force of laborers digging a ditch for a 
 water-main. The boss refused me a place, but 
 not without evident regret at the necessity, and
 
 112 THE WORKERS 
 
 he was at pains to explain to me that, already 
 on that morning, he had been obliged to turn 
 away half a dozen men. 
 
 It was with no great expectation of success at 
 finding work there that I began walking some- 
 what aimlessly through the Asylum grounds. 
 The first person whom I met was an old Irish 
 gardener. He painfully stood erect as I ques- 
 tioned him as to whom I should apply for a 
 job, and supported himself with one hand on 
 my shoulder, while he told me of the medical 
 superintendent, and the overseer, and the fore- 
 man, who are in charge of various departments 
 of the work. Presently his face brightened with 
 excitement as he pointed to a large man who 
 was walking toward one of the buildings, and he 
 pushed me in his direction with an eager injunc- 
 tion to apply to him, for he was the overseer of 
 the grounds. 
 
 The overseer listened to my request and read 
 
 in silence my reference from the M House," 
 
 and looked me over for a moment, and then 
 abruptly ordered me to report at seven o'clock 
 on the next morning, adding, as he disappeared 
 within the building, that he was paying his men 
 a dollar and a half a day. 
 
 The old Irish gardener showed the heartiest 
 pleasure at my success, and directed me to a 

 
 A HIRED MAN AT AN ASYLUM 113 
 
 boarding-house near the Asylum grounds, where 
 I was soon settled, and where at noon I ate a 
 memorable dinner, the first square meal for 
 thirty-six hours, and the first one which had 
 about it the elements of decent comfort since I 
 left Mrs. Flaherty's table. 
 
 At seven o'clock on the next morning I was 
 one of a gang of twenty laborers who were dig- 
 ging a sewer-ditch. The ditch had passed the 
 farther edge of a meadow, and must cut its way 
 through the field to the Asylum buildings, two 
 hundred yards beyond. Its course was marked 
 by a straight cut through the sod which was to 
 furnish us a guide. Some of the men took their 
 former places in unfinished portions of the work, 
 and the rest of us fell apart, leaving intervals of 
 about three yards from man to man. With the 
 cut as a guide, and with the single instruction to 
 keep the ditch two feet wide, we began to wield 
 our picks and shovels. A thick, unmoving fog 
 lay damp upon the meadow, already saturated 
 with dew. The sun-rays, gathering penetrating 
 power as they pierced the fog, were soon pro- 
 ducing the effect of prickly heat. This atmos- 
 phere, surcharged with moisture and lifeless in 
 its sluggish weight, yet quick with stinging heat, 
 was a medium in which the actual work done 
 was out of proportion to its cost in potential en- 
 8
 
 114 THE WORKERS 
 
 ergy. In the forceful Irishism of one of the la- 
 borers : " It was a muggy morning, and a man 
 must do his work twice over to get it done." 
 
 By dint of strenuous industry and careful im- 
 itation of the methods of the other men, I man- 
 aged to keep pace with them. I saw from the 
 first that the work would be hard ; and in point 
 of severity it proved all that I expected, and 
 more. To ply a pick and urge a shovel for five 
 continuous hours calls for endurance. Down 
 sweeps your pick with a mighty stroke upon 
 what appears yielding, presentable earth, only to 
 come into contact with a rock concealed just be- 
 low the surface, a contact which sends a violent 
 jar through all your frame, causing vibrations 
 which end in the sensation of an electric shock 
 at your finger-tips. A few repetitions of this ex- 
 perience are distinctly disheartening in effect. 
 Besides, the sun has cleared the fog, and is 
 shining full upon us through the still air. The 
 trench is well below the surface, now, and we 
 work with the sun beating on our aching backs, 
 and our heads buried in the ditch, where we 
 breathed the hot air heavy with the smell of 
 fresh soil, and the sweat drips from our faces 
 upon the damp clay. 
 
 By nine o'clock what strength and courage 
 I have left seem oozing from every pore. The
 
 A HIRED MAN AT AN ASYLUM 115 
 
 demoralization is complete, and I know that only 
 " the shame of open shame " holds me to my 
 work. I dig mechanically on through another 
 sluggish hour of torment ; and then I come to, 
 and find myself breathing deeply, with long reg- 
 ular breaths, in the miracle of " second wind," 
 with fresh energy flowing like a stream of new 
 life through my body. 
 
 Through all the working hours of the day the 
 foreman sat upon a pile of tools silently watch- 
 ing us at the job. Now and then he politely 
 urged that the ditch be kept not less than two 
 feet wide, and nothing could have been further 
 from his manner and speech than any approach 
 to abusing the men. It was his evident pur- 
 pose to treat us well, but the act of his over- 
 sight, under the conditions of our employment, 
 involved a practical wasting of his day, and cast 
 upon us the suspicion of dishonesty. 
 
 On the next morning, which was Saturday, the 
 foreman sent me down the ditch, where the pipe 
 was already laid, and ordered me, with two other 
 men, to fill in the earth. Like a line of earth- 
 works lay the " stubborn glebe " above the 
 trench. The work of shovelling it back into 
 place seemed easy at first, and was easy, as com- 
 pared with the digging ; but the wet, cohesive 
 clay that lined the ditch's brink yielded only
 
 116 THE WORKERS 
 
 to the pressure of a compulsion very persist- 
 ently applied. We quit on that evening at five 
 o'clock, with a full day's pay for nine hours' 
 work. 
 
 The foreman met me on Monday morning 
 with an order for yet another change. At the 
 barn I should find " Hunt," he said, and I was 
 to report to him as his " help." Hunt proved 
 to be a good-looking, taciturn teamster, who had 
 just hitched his horses to his " truck," and he 
 told me to get aboard. The " truck " was a 
 heavy four-wheeled vehicle without a box, but 
 with, instead, a stout platform suspended from 
 the axle-trees, and resting but a few inches 
 from the ground. Standing upon this we drove 
 all day from point to point about the grounds, 
 attending to manifold needs. 
 
 We had first to cart the milk-cans from the 
 dairy to the kitchen. This errand took us to 
 the rear of the Asylum buildings, where the en- 
 tries open upon a series of quadrangular courts. 
 Then from entry to entry we drove, gathering 
 up great bags of soiled clothes, which lay in 
 heaps about the doors, and we carted these to 
 the laundry. Then back to the kitchen we 
 went, and took on a load of huge cans filled with 
 swill, and transferred them to a large pig-sty 
 at the edge of the wood, below the meadow, and
 
 A HIRED MAN AT AN ASYLUM 117 
 
 there emptied their contents into hogsheads, 
 from which, at stated hours, the swill is baled 
 out to the loud-squealing herd within. Again 
 we made the round of the entries, this time to 
 gather up the waste barrels which stood full of 
 ashes, and the results of the morning's sweep- 
 ing; and having emptied these, we replaced 
 them for a fresh supply. Then we drove to the 
 garden, and carted from that quarter to the 
 kitchen several loads of vegetables. 
 
 The afternoon was consumed in supplying the 
 demand for ice. Embedded in a mass of hay 
 in the ice-house, the ice must first be uncovered, 
 and the cakes, frozen together, must be pried 
 apart with a crowbar and then dragged over the 
 melting surface to the door, and finally loaded 
 upon the truck. 
 
 We first carted it to the barn-yarcf, where we 
 washed it by playing water over it with a hose, 
 and then to the kitchen wing, where we chopped 
 it into smaller pieces and threw these into open- 
 ings which communicated with the large refrig- 
 erators inside. Again and again was this proc- 
 ess repeated, until an adequate supply had been 
 furnished, and then there remained before six 
 o'clock time enough to cart to the pigs their 
 evening meal from the kitchen. 
 
 With slight changes in detail, this remained
 
 118 THE WORKERS 
 
 the order of our work through the few days of 
 my stay. I held the job long enough to find 
 myself ensconced at the Asylum, and then I told 
 the foreman that I wished to go. He looked at 
 me in some surprise, and began to argue the 
 point. "You'd better stay by your job," he 
 said. " It is not the best work, but we'll find 
 better for you before long." I thanked him 
 heartily, and told him I was interested to learn 
 that, but that I felt obliged to go. He shook 
 hands with me, and cordially wished me luck, 
 and told me to apply to him for work if I hap- 
 pened again in those parts, and added that I 
 could get my wages by calling at the office on 
 the next afternoon, which was the regular pay- 
 day. 
 
 A free day was highly useful now, for my 
 clothes and boots were seriously in need of re- 
 pair. The pack contained the means of much 
 mending, and by dinner-time my coat and trou- 
 sers were patched, and my stockings were stoutly 
 darned. But the boots were beyond me. Al- 
 ready they had cost me dear, for a dollar, the 
 earnings of four days as a porter, had gone for 
 a pair of new soles, and now another outlay, 
 enormous in its relation to my means, was an 
 imperative necessity. 
 
 I had made an appointment with a cobbler for 

 
 A HIRED MAN AT AN ASYLUM 119 
 
 an early hour in the afternoon, precisely as one 
 would with a dentist ; for while he was at work 
 on my only pair of boots, I had to sit by in my 
 stocking feet. Secretly I welcomed the neces- 
 sity, in spite of its calamitous cost. I could 
 take a book with me, and read with a clear con- 
 science. The cobbler was smoking his after- 
 dinner cigar when I entered his shop. He was 
 little inclined to talk ; and when he had finished 
 his smoke he picked up a boot, and bent over it 
 with an air of absorption. I was soon lost in 
 my book. 
 
 The work was nearly done when some move- 
 ment of his drew my attention to the cobbler. 
 I had been struck by his appearance, and now 
 my interest deepened. Away from his bench it 
 would not have occurred to one to assign him to 
 that calling. He was an old man, whose mus- 
 cular figure had acquired a stoop at the shoul- 
 ders like that of some seasoned scholar. His 
 features were clean-cut and strong. His blue 
 eyes had a look of much shrewdness and force. 
 There were deep lines about his mouth and in 
 his forehead, which spoke of masterful conflict 
 in life. Meeting him in the dress of a gentle- 
 man, you would have said that he was a public 
 man of some distinction, and with close acquaint- 
 ance with affairs. In reality, he had sat for fifty
 
 120 THE WORKERS 
 
 years upon that bench. He was growing com- 
 municative now ; and from his personal history 
 I tried to divert him to his views of life, think- 
 ing that I must have found a. philosopher in a 
 man whose opportunities for reflection had been 
 so great. But his talk was flowing freely, and 
 would take its own course, careless of my prompt- 
 ings. I settled myself to listen, and my inter- 
 ested attention seemed to fire him with new zest. 
 From personal narrative it was an easy step to 
 events of our national history, and he warmed 
 to these under the inspiration of the life of some 
 great man connected with each. General Scott 
 was his first hero ; and touching upon details of 
 his history, which were wholly unknown to me, 
 he pictured the inborn, warlike spirit of the man 
 with amazing appreciation, and finally quoted 
 the judgment of the Duke of Wellington, who, 
 he said, had declared of Scott that, " as a gen- 
 eral, he stood without a superior." Here he 
 paused for a moment to explain that the Duke 
 of Wellington was a personage of exceptional 
 military experience, whose judgments in such 
 matters were entitled to the highest respect. 
 
 The Civil War and Mr. Lincoln as the chief 
 figure of those troublous times next inspired 
 him. It was with no mean insight into the is- 
 sues involved that he glowed with the thought
 
 A HIRED MAN AT AN ASYLUM 121 
 
 of a constitutional question grown to sharp na- 
 tional conflict, and settled at infinite cost, and 
 transmitted as a most sacred trust, to be guard- 
 ed with eternal vigilance. But the climax was 
 reached when he turned back on his course, and 
 began afresh, with the Father of his Country as 
 his theme. The incident of the cherry-tree was 
 repeated with sublime faith, and with highly 
 dramatic effect. Encouraged by his success and 
 my absorbed attention, he next recounted the 
 events of that fateful June morning when the 
 allied American and British forces were nearing 
 Fort Duquesne. With keenest appreciation of 
 the fatal irony of it, he repeated again and again 
 his own version of the reply made to the warn- 
 ing of young Washington by General Braddock : 
 " You young buckskin ! you teach a British offi- 
 cer how to fight ? " 
 
 A chivalric spirit led him now to speak of 
 Lady Washington." This moved him most of 
 all, and when he declared that he would repeat 
 for me some lines composed by her, which he 
 had learned by heart as a boy, his emotions 
 were almost beyond control. His job was fin- 
 ished now, and he drew himself up, and made a 
 strong effort to modulate his voice, which was 
 trembling with feeling. The lines had an 
 evident magic for him, and he repeated them
 
 122 THE WORKERS 
 
 with great throbs of emotion, while his eyes 
 grew dim : 
 
 Saw ye my hero ? 
 Saw ye my hero ? 
 
 I saw not your hero ; 
 
 But I'm told he's in the van, 
 
 When the battle just began, 
 
 And he stays to take care of his men. 
 
 Oh ye gods ! I give you my charge 
 
 To protect my hero, George, 
 
 And return him safe home to my arms. 
 
 Then, bending toward me, he placed a trem- 
 bling hand on my knee ; and looking dimly into 
 my eyes, he said, in husky tones : " And they 
 did, didn't they ? " I assented earnestly, 
 charmed by his sincerity and enthusiasm, only 
 hopeful that there was some mistake in the un- 
 expected glimpse of Lady Washington in the 
 character of a poet, and like my friend strug- 
 gling with feeling that I found it hard to sup- 
 press, and which expressed, would have been 
 sadly out of harmony with the scriptural injunc- 
 tion to " weep with them that weep." 
 
 There was a charm in the old cobbler's har- 
 angue, which I felt for long. Even his views of 
 life seemed to appear in these crude enthusiasms 
 upon general themes. There was a note of op-
 
 A HIRED MAN AT AN ASYLUM 123 
 
 timism which one could not fail to catch, and to 
 respect in a man who, for fifty years, had hon- 
 estly earned his living on a cobbler's bench. 
 His sense of proprietorship in his country, and 
 of natural right to high personal pride in her 
 history, conveyed themselves to you as strong 
 convictions, and you understood something of 
 the power which dwells in a people who feel 
 thus toward their country, and who share in her 
 control. 
 
 An hour later I was at the Asylum on the er- 
 rand of getting my pay. I had anticipated the 
 appointed time by a few minutes, and was the 
 first of the workmen in the office. The clerk 
 was in his place, however ; and my appearance, 
 hat in hand, furnished him with the signal for 
 drawing from his desk the receipt-forms, upon 
 which the men acknowledge the payments by 
 their signatures. In the bustle of the business 
 just beginning, the clerk turned upon me and 
 asked, somewhat brusquely, if I could write my 
 name, or whether he should write it for me, and 
 I affix my mark. So unexpected was the ques- 
 tion, that I was conscious at first of some bewil- 
 derment, and then of a rising resentment against 
 the fact that such a question should be put to 
 an American workman. I said that I had ac- 
 quired the habit of signing my own name when
 
 124 THE WORKERS 
 
 necessary ; but I might have spared myself that 
 folly, for the clerk hastened to explain with the 
 kindest consideration that, of all the laborers 
 whom he habitually pays off, scarcely half can 
 write ; " although," he added, with an admirable 
 touch of fairness, " a very small proportion of 
 the illiterate are native-born Americans." I am 
 afraid that my resentment had its source in a 
 grotesquely foolish feeling. I have been mis- 
 taken for a drunkard, and a detective, and a dis- 
 reputable double of myself, and have been made 
 a bogey of to frighten children into obedience 
 withal, but not once, so far as I know, have I 
 been taken for a gentleman. And if the truth 
 must be told, I fear that the very success of my 
 disguise is somewhat chagrinning at times. 
 
 There was no wrench on the next morning in 
 parting with the family with whom I boarded, 
 unless my landlady shared my regret at leaving. 
 She was a meek little woman who slaved hero- 
 ically at household work to support her daugh- 
 ter, who studied stenography and typewriting, 
 and her idle husband, who led the life of a 
 professional invalid. He had tried upon me 
 highly colored tales of his career as a soldier, 
 and of what he would have done in life but for 
 his ill-health, tales which I soon learned to in- 
 terrupt with small services to his wife, and he
 
 A HIRED MAN AT AN ASYLUM 125 
 
 gave me up as hopelessly unsympathetic. A 
 baseball game on the Asylum grounds attracted 
 a large crowd one afternoon ; and as Hunt and 
 I drove past on an errand, I caught sight of the 
 ex-soldier, who, at his home, was too great a suf- 
 ferer to contribute even a helping hand at the 
 housework toward his own support, but who 
 here was dancing in vigor of delight over a two- 
 base hit. 
 
 It was clear that a rate of progress which had 
 carried me not even so far as the border line of 
 Pennsylvania, during nearly two months, would 
 require a considerable portion of a lifetime in 
 which to accomplish the three thousand miles 
 before me. I resolved upon more energetic 
 tramping as a wiser policy for, at least, the im- 
 mediate future. 
 
 A rough plan was soon formed. I had saved 
 nearly six dollars. It was Wednesday morning. 
 I would give three days to uninterrupted walk, 
 and by Friday evening I should reach Wilkes- 
 barre. The whole of Saturday, if so much time 
 were needed, could then be given to a search for 
 employment ; and the rest of Sunday would put 
 me in trim to begin on Monday morning the 
 work which would provide in a few days for 
 present needs, and furnish a balance with which 
 to begin the tramp once more.
 
 126 THE WORKERS 
 
 At an early hour I was upon the high-road 
 which leads to Port Jervis. The day was a per- 
 fect type of the best season of our northern cli- 
 mate, cloudless but for a fleecy embankment 
 behind the purple hills to the north, flooded 
 with a glorious light touched with grateful 
 warmth, and which revealed with articulate dis- 
 tinctness every visible object in the crystal-clear 
 air an air so pure and cool that it spurred you 
 to your quickest step, and sent bounding through 
 you a glad delight in breath and life. 
 
 In all the landscape was the richness of color 
 and the vividness of a transfigured world. An 
 early frost had touched the foliage ; the leaves 
 of the hickory - trees and elms were rustling 
 crisply at their tips, and the sumach deepened 
 into a crimson that matched the color of its 
 clustered seeds, while the oaks and maples 
 maintained the dark luxuriance of their summer 
 leafage, boastful of a hardihood which would 
 succumb only to the keener cold of the later 
 autumn. 
 
 Up hill and down dale my road led me, where 
 substantial farm-houses, and enormous barns, 
 and fields of standing corn, and herds of cattle 
 in the pasture-lands, all indicated the necessa- 
 ries and even the comforts of life in rich abun- 
 dance, and emphasized the wonder that from
 
 A HIRED MAN AT AN ASYLUM 127 
 
 such surroundings should come the recruits who 
 ceaselessly throng our crowded towns. 
 
 A few miles farther on the whole topography 
 of the country changed. I had passed through 
 the village of Otisville and was walking in the 
 direction of Huguenot when my way carried me 
 to a hillside from which I could see the long 
 stretch of a valley, reaching far to the westward, 
 and lined on both sides, with almost artificial 
 regularity, by ranges of hills, which rose sharply 
 from the plain below. Through a break at the 
 north the Delaware flows, and, crossing the 
 plain-like valley, disappears among the southern 
 hills, while the valley itself, in almost unbroken 
 symmetry, reaches on to the west. 
 
 At the foot of the northern range, and on the 
 eastern bank of the river, is the town of Port 
 Jervis. Its outer streets are the light, airy 
 thoroughfares of the usual American town, faced 
 by small wooden cottages, each with its plot of 
 ground devoted in front to a few square yards of 
 turf, and carefully economized behind the house 
 for the purpose of supporting fruit-trees and 
 providing a vegetable garden. 
 
 The great number of these individual homes, 
 as indicating the manner of life of multitudes of 
 the working classes in provincial towns, seemed 
 to me to mark a conspicuous absence of crowded
 
 128 THE WORKERS 
 
 tenement living ; and on its positive side to in- 
 dicate at least the possibility of wholesome fam- 
 ily life and of much home comfort. Certainly 
 my experience at Highland Falls and at Middle- 
 town confirms this impression. In each of those 
 cases the people with whom I stayed owned 
 their home and the plot of land about it, which 
 contributed thriftily toward the family support. 
 The houses were ephemeral wooden cottages, 
 done in the degrading ugliness inspired by the 
 Queen Anne revival, and furnished in a taste 
 even more florid, and they were not overclean. 
 And yet they were comfortable homes, in which 
 we fared handsomely, eating meat three times a 
 day, and varieties of vegetables and admirable 
 home-made bread, and knew no stint of sugar 
 or butter, and slept in good beds in not too 
 crowded rooms in an upper story. 
 
 All about me here, and reaching down the 
 long vistas of communicating streets, were the 
 same external conditions, until I entered the 
 closely built up " brick blocks " of the business 
 quarter of the town. I could but think how char- 
 acteristic of our smaller cities is this separate 
 individual home-life of the wage-earning classes, 
 and how increasingly are the improved means 
 of transportation rendering like surroundings 
 possible for the workmen of the larger towns.
 
 A HIRED MAN AT AN ASYLUM 129 
 
 Having crossed the Delaware River, about 
 four o'clock I began a walk through a region no 
 less beautiful than that through which I had 
 passed in the morning. My way lay in the val- 
 ley, directly under the steep hills that wall it in 
 on the north. Their densely wooded sides cast 
 deep shadows obliquely across the road, and in 
 this grateful shade I walked on, listening to the 
 songs of birds and the murmur of mountain- 
 streams, and the cooling sound of spray splash- 
 ing from ledge to ledge of moss-grown rocks. 
 
 At sunset I entered the village of Milford, 
 which nestles securely at the foot of the moun- 
 tains of Pike County, a beautiful village of wide, 
 well-shaded streets, where there was little to 
 mar the elegant simplicity of dignified country 
 homes, untouched by harrowing attempts at the 
 fantastic. 
 
 By eight o'clock I was fast asleep in a work- 
 men's boarding-house, and at sunrise on the 
 next morning I was on the road which turns 
 sharply up the mountain-side. A dense mist 
 lay upon the valley, but my way soon led me up 
 to the freer air, until, upon the summit of a 
 ridge, I reached the clear sunshine, and could 
 see the emerging ranges of hills to the east and 
 south and the white mist resting motionless on 
 the valley below. 
 9
 
 130 THE WORKERS 
 
 Up and up I climbed into higher altitudes. 
 Each elevation appeared, as I approached it, the 
 topmost crest of the mountain, and yet I gained 
 it only to find another rough steep beyond. 
 
 There could scarcely have been a sharper con- 
 trast with the journey of the previous day. The 
 graceful undulations of rich farm -lands and the 
 broad plain of the Huguenot flats, checkered 
 with field and forest and pasture, and traversed 
 by well-kept roads, and dotted over with the 
 buildings of prosperous farms and thriving vil- 
 lages, had given place, in the panorama of my 
 journey, to rugged mountains, steep and densely 
 wooded, except where, on some less hopeless site 
 at the very margin of cultivation, a settler had 
 cleared the land and begun a conflict with the 
 stony soil in an almost desperate struggle for a 
 living. Here were mountain-roads that went 
 from bad to worse, until, before I had crossed 
 the range, my way degenerated into a narrow, 
 rocky trail, overgrown with weeds, and along 
 which I walked for a stretch of six or eight 
 miles without passing a dwelling. 
 
 That was in the afternoon. At a little before 
 twelve o'clock I had come to Shohola Falls. 
 There, in a " hollow " on the bank of a mountain- 
 stream, stood a saw-mill, surrounded by piles of 
 bleaching boards and a few rough, unpainted
 
 A HIRED MAN AT AN ASYLUM 131 
 
 cottages. Through the open door of a shop I 
 caught sight of an old carpenter bending over 
 his bench. He entered very readily into direc- 
 tions about the way and told me that I had but 
 to follow a direct road to Kimble, and from 
 there there was no difficulty in the way to Taf- 
 ton, which, he said, was as far as I could get 
 that day. Then, with an eye on my pack, he 
 asked pointedly what I was peddling. The for- 
 gotten magazines recurred to me and I opened 
 my pack and handed him a copy. The frequent 
 change of subject and the variety of illustration 
 fixed for a time his excited attention. 
 
 Half a score of young children now crowded 
 about the door, and edged cautiously into the 
 shop, fixing upon me eyes wide open with the 
 hunger of curiosity. They were all barefooted 
 and ragged, and not one of them was clean, and 
 at a single glance you saw that, mountain-bred 
 and young as they were, there was no whole- 
 some color in their faces, and that the very 
 beauty of childhood was already fading before a 
 persistent diet from the frying-pan. 
 
 The old carpenter presently turned upon me 
 with the air of one who was master of the situ- 
 ation. 
 
 "Would you like to sell some of them books 
 around here? " he asked.
 
 132 THE WORKERS 
 
 I told him that I should. 
 
 ""Well, you're a stranger here, ain't you? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Then don't you try it. A young fellow done 
 this place out of more'n fifty dollars last spring, 
 and we're kind o' careful of strangers now." 
 
 I sat on the door-step to rest, and invited the 
 children to look at the pictures, which they did, 
 hesitatingly at first, with timid advances, in 
 which curiosity struggled with their fear of the 
 unfamiliar. But they grew bolder as I invented 
 stories to match the illustrations, and presently 
 they were all nestling about me in the ease of 
 absorbed attention. One little girl of four or 
 five, who had eyed me at first with an anx- 
 ious look of alarm, now stood leaning over my 
 shoulder with an arm about my neck, and her 
 soft brown hair, escaped from her sun -bon- 
 net, touching my face, while she looked down 
 upon the pictures, and I could feel her breath 
 quickening as the story neared its climax. 
 
 I pressed on presently, and the children ran 
 by my side, asking for yet one story more, and 
 finally calling their good-byes and waving their 
 hands to me as I disappeared around a curve in 
 the road. 
 
 A few miles farther on I came to a lonely farm- 
 house, where I knocked in quest of a dinner.
 
 A HIRED MAN AT AN ASYLUM 133 
 
 The open door revealed a woman's face, so sad 
 and worn, so full of care and of weary years of 
 slavish drudgery, that quite instinctively I be- 
 gan to apologize, and to conceal my real pur- 
 pose in aimless inquiry about the way. 
 
 "I do not know," she said; "but won't you 
 come in ? The boys will soon be at home for 
 dinner, and they can tell you." 
 
 Her voice was soft and sweet, and her man- 
 ner so reassuring that I gladly followed her 
 into the sitting-room, where she introduced me 
 to her daughter, a slender, dark young woman, 
 who sat sewing by an open window. 
 
 I hastened to make myself known as a work- 
 man on my way to Wilkesbarre, where I hoped 
 to get employment, and I told them of my en- 
 counter with the carpenter at the Falls. They 
 smiled as though the flavor of his humor was 
 not lost to them, and they spoke of other char- 
 acters at the settlement quite as odd as he. 
 
 Both women were dressed in the plainest 
 calico, and without a touch of ornament, and the 
 house was poor ; poor to the verge of poverty ; 
 but the walls were free from chromoes and 
 worsted mottoes, and showed, instead, a few 
 good engravings, and the rag-carpet on the floor 
 blent in accordant colors, and curtains hung 
 neatly at the windows.
 
 134 THE WORKERS 
 
 / Dinner was waiting, and presently the mother 
 said that we would delay it no longer for the 
 boys. We sat down at a table in a rough shed 
 which opened from the sitting-room. A spot- 
 less cloth covered the board, and the service was 
 simple and tasteful, and there was the uncom- 
 mon luxury of napkins. The dinner moved with 
 unembarrassed ease. We talked of the surround- 
 ing country, and its resemblance to other re- 
 gions, and of the political situation. The mother 
 led the talk, and tactfully guarded it from any 
 approach to silence or to topics too intimate. 
 Once, however, she touched lightly upon a 
 former home in a prosperous corner of another 
 State, and instantly I felt the hint of some 
 family tragedy. 
 
 And now her two sons came shuffling in, 
 rough and ruddy from their work, clean-cut, 
 well-bred young fellows, far too young I thought 
 to be "hauling logs," and I could read an agony 
 of anxiety in their mother's face as she watched 
 them wearily take their seat on the vacant bench 
 by the table. They had been left in the care of 
 the work in the absence of their father, who had 
 gone some miles to a neighboring settlement, 
 " on business," their mother added, blushing 
 deeply, while the boys looked hard at their 
 plates.
 
 A HIRED MAN AT AN ASYLUM 135 
 
 The afternoon's tramp lay through the wild- 
 est part of that wild region. From Shohola 
 Falls to Kimble the direct road is one which 
 leads straight across the mountain, and is almost 
 unbroken, and seldom used. In all its course I 
 passed but two or three farms ; and these re- 
 vealed a pitiful poverty, in the wretched hovels 
 which did service as farm-houses and barns, and, 
 more plainly, if possible, in the squalor of little 
 children who gaped at me from among high 
 weeds behind tottering fences. 
 
 On I went for miles, over a road so lonely 
 that it recalled the loneliness of the sea, and, 
 like the sea, the sweep of heaving mountains 
 seemed unbroken in a boundless monotony. 
 And then the landscape had in it the beauty and 
 the majesty of the sea, and the whispering of 
 the wind over vast fields of stunted pines and 
 scrub oaks answered to the wash of waves, and 
 bore a fragrance and freshness to match with 
 ocean breezes. 
 
 Late in the afternoon my way descended 
 abruptly by a more frequented road in the di- 
 rection of Kimble. Presently I could see a rail- 
 way and a canal, and I felt a little, I fancied, 
 as an explorer must upon emerging, once more, 
 into the region of the explored. 
 
 I wished to know the distance and the way to
 
 136 THE WORKERS 
 
 Tafton, and so I inquired of the first person 
 whom I met. She was a milkmaid, and so 
 picturesque a figure, that I felt a pleasurable ex- 
 citement in the chance of a word with her. Her 
 calico skirt was tucked up a little at one side. 
 Under one bare arm she carried a milking-stool, 
 and a bucket in the other hand. Her sun-bon- 
 net had fallen from her head, and hung like a 
 scholar's hood on her back. The sunlight was 
 playing in glory about her face and in her abun- 
 dant auburn hair. 
 
 My excitement suddenly took another form ; 
 for, as I lifted my hat in apologetic inquiry, 
 there fell about me a shower of oak-leaves, which 
 I had placed in the crown for the sake of added 
 coolness. 
 
 The milkmaid had met me with a clear, frank 
 look between the eyes ; but she shrank a little 
 now, and could not resist a startled glance, full 
 of questioning, as to what further my hat might 
 contain, and she answered me more with the 
 purpose, I fancy, of being quickly rid of a wan- 
 derer of such doubtful mind, than of adding to 
 his information. 
 
 The walk from Kimble to Tafton, I presently 
 found, could be shortened by taking a path 
 through the forest ; and I was soon panting up 
 the hillside, grateful for the long twilight which
 
 A HIRED MAN AT AN ASYLUM 137 
 
 promised to see me safe, before the darkness, to 
 my destination. 
 
 On the way I fell in with a young quarryman, 
 whose home was near Tafton, and who willingly 
 became my guide. He was only sixteen, but 
 already he had worked for four years at his 
 trade. His gaunt, angular body showed plainly 
 the marks of arrested development, when the 
 growth of the boy had hardened prematurely 
 into an almost deformed figure of a confirmed 
 laborer. 
 
 He lunged clumsily beside me, and was in- 
 clined to be taciturn at first; but he warmed 
 presently to readier speech, and talked frankly 
 of his work and manner of life. At twelve he 
 had been taken from school and sent to the 
 quarry to help his father support a growing 
 family. And then his days had settled into a 
 ceaseless round of hard work, from which there 
 was no escape for him until he should be twenty- 
 one, an age which appeared to his perception at 
 an almost infinite distance. 
 
 His attitude to his present circumstances was 
 not a resentful one. He seemed to think it 
 most natural that he should help in the family 
 support ; or, rather, no other possibility seemed 
 to occur to him. It was soon apparent, too, that 
 his chiefest hope and ambition, with reference
 
 138 THE WORKERS 
 
 to his ultimate freedom from that necessity, were 
 centred in a possible return to school advan- 
 tages. He spoke of his efforts to study after 
 work hours, and of the hardness of such a course, 
 and owned to the fear of insurmountable difficul- 
 ties in the future. His reticence was gone now, 
 and he was speaking with hearty freedom, and 
 with his eyes all alight with the dream of his 
 life. I told him something of the increased op- 
 portunities of education for men who must make 
 their own way, and of how many men I had 
 known who had supported themselves through 
 college. 
 
 We parted at the edge of the forest, where we 
 reached his home, a frail shell of a shanty, 
 standing upon stumps of felled trees, and he 
 was welcomed by the sight of his mother, chop- 
 ping wood at the roadside, and a troop of ragged 
 children playing about the open door. 
 
 At nightfall, on the next evening, I entered 
 Wilkesbarre, but I got so far only by virtue of 
 a long lift in a farmer's cart, which carried me, 
 by a stroke of great good fortune, over much the 
 longest part of the day's journey. 
 
 So far my plan had been carried out. It was 
 Friday evening, and I was safe in Wilkesbarre, 
 somewhat worn by the walk of rather over eighty 
 miles, and with an increased dislike for my bur-
 
 A HIRED MAN AT AN ASYLUM 139 
 
 densome pack, but with every prospect of being 
 fit for work so soon as I should find it. My 
 success in that direction had been so uniform, 
 that instead of sleeping in the open, as I had 
 done on the night before, I allowed myself the 
 luxury of a bed in a cheap boarding-house, and 
 a supper and a breakfast at its table, before be- 
 ginning my search. Further good fortune 
 awaited me, for Saturday morning lent itself 
 with cheerful brightness to the enterprise. At 
 an early hour I stepped out into a busy street of 
 the city, sore and stiff with walking, but high 
 of hope, and not without a certain elevation of 
 spirit, which might have warned me of a fall. 
 
 Work on the city sewers was being carried 
 through the public square. I found the con- 
 tractor, and applied for work as a digger. Very 
 courteously he took the pains to explain to me 
 that he was obliged to keep on hand, and pay 
 for full time, a force of men far larger than was 
 demanded, except by certain exigencies, and 
 that he could not increase their number. Not 
 far from the square another gang of workmen 
 were laying the curbstones and repairing the 
 street, but here I was again refused. I lifted 
 my eyes to the site of a stone building that was 
 nearing completion, and there, too, no added 
 hands were needed.
 
 140 THE WOKKERS 
 
 By this time I had neared the post-office, and 
 I found letters awaiting me there which claimed 
 the next half hour. But even more embarras- 
 sing, as a check to further search, was a free 
 reading-room, which now invited me to files of 
 New York newspapers, in which I knew that I 
 should find details of recent interesting political 
 developments at Rochester and Saratoga, not 
 to mention possible fresh complications in the 
 more exciting game of politics abroad. I went 
 in, and like Charles Kingsley's young monk, 
 Philemon, who, wandering one day farther than 
 ever before from the monastery in the desert, 
 chanced upon the ruins of an old Egyptian tem- 
 ple ; and mindful of a warning against such se- 
 duction, yet guiltily charmed by the rare beauty 
 of the frescoes, prayed aloud, " Lord, turn away 
 mine eyes, lest they behold vanity," but looked, 
 nevertheless I looked, too, and I read on until 
 mounting remorse robbed the reading of all 
 pleasure and drove me to my task again. 
 
 But I had fallen once ; and, by a sad fatality, 
 scarcely had I renewed the search, with weak- 
 ened power of resistance, when I stumbled upon 
 a fiercer temptation in the form of a library, 
 which announced in plain letters its freedom to 
 the public until the hour of nine in the evening. 
 
 Forgetful of my character as a workman;
 
 A HIRED MAN AT AN ASYLUM 141 
 
 miserably callous to the claim of duty to find 
 employment, if possible; and in any case, to 
 live honestly the life which I had assumed, I 
 entered the wide-open, hospitable doors, and 
 was soon lost to other thought, and even to 
 the sense of shame, in the absorbing interest 
 of favorite books. 
 
 In the lonely tramp across the mountains of 
 Pike County I walked sometimes for miles with 
 no opportunity of quenching a growing thirst, 
 when suddenly I came upon a mountain-spring 
 that trickled from the solid rock, and formed a 
 little pool in its shade, where I threw myself on 
 the ground, and, with a glorious sense of relief, 
 drank deeply of its cold water. The analogy is 
 a weak one, for the physical relief and the mo- 
 mentary pleasure but faintly suggest the pro- 
 longed intellectual delight, after two months of 
 unslackened thirst. 
 
 Here was an inexhaustible supply, and there 
 were polite librarians who responded cheerfully 
 to your slightest wish ; and, best of all, there 
 was an inner door which disclosed a reading- 
 room, where perfect quiet reigned, and comfort- 
 able chairs invited you to grateful ease, and 
 shelves on shelves of books were free to your 
 eager hand. 
 
 To pass from one writer to another, among
 
 142 THE WORKERS 
 
 the volumes that lay on the table, lingering 
 over long-loved passages, or dipping lightly here 
 and there, absorbing pleasure from the very 
 touch of the book and the sight of the well- 
 printed page, held by the charm of some char- 
 acteristic phrase, and finally to sink into the 
 folds of an easy-chair with a store of books with- 
 in ready reach what delight can equal such sat- 
 isfaction of a craving sense ? 
 
 There through the livelong day I sit, and 
 through the early evening, until I am roused by 
 the sound of slamming shutters which is the 
 janitor's signal for nine o'clock, the hour of clos- 
 ing for the night. 
 
 Taking my hat and stick I walk out into the 
 gas-lit street, and into our modern world, with 
 its artificialities and its social and labor prob- 
 lems ; and I remember that I am a proletaire out 
 of a job, and that with shameless neglect of 
 duty I have been idling through priceless hours. 
 Crestfallen, I hurry to my boarding-house, long- 
 ing, like any conscious-stricken inebriate, to lose 
 remorse in sleep. 
 
 As I walk to my lodgings a certain fellow-feel- 
 ing warms me with fresh sympathy for my kind. 
 I have met with my first reverse, not a serious 
 one, but still the search for work for the first 
 time in my experience has been fruitless through
 
 A HIRED MAN AT AN ASYLUM 143 
 
 most of a morning. Instead of persevering in- 
 dustriously, I yield weakly to the desire to for- 
 get my present lot, and the duty it entails, in 
 the intoxication that beckons to me from free 
 books. That happens to be my temptation, and 
 I fall. 
 
 Another workman of my class, in precisely my 
 position, encounters, not one chance temptation 
 which he might escape by taking another street, 
 but at every corner open doors which invite him 
 to the companionship of other men, who will 
 help him to forget his discouragements so long 
 as his savings last. And as we are both turned 
 into the street at night, in what do we differ as 
 regards our moral strength? He yielded to his 
 temptation, and I to mine.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 A FARM HAND 
 
 WlLLIAMSPORT, LYCOMING COUNTY, Pa., 
 
 Saturday, 3 October, 1891. 
 
 From Wilkesbarre it was an easy day's march 
 to the village of Pleasant Hill, which lies in the 
 way to Williamsport. The only notable incident 
 of the tramp was one which confirmed me in an 
 early formed policy. I have avoided railways, 
 and have walked in preference along the country 
 roads, as affording better opportunities of inter 
 course with people. But in going on that morn- 
 ing from Wilkesbarre to the ferry which crossed 
 the river to Plymouth, I took the advice of a 
 gate-keeper at a railway crossing and started 
 down the track on a long trestle as a short cut 
 to the ferry. All went well until I was half way 
 over, and then two coal trains passed simul- 
 taneously in opposite directions, and I hung by 
 my hands from the framework at one side, while 
 the engineer and fireman on the locomotive 
 nearest me laughed heartily at the figure that 
 I cut, with the side of each car grazing my 
 144
 
 A FARM HAND 145 
 
 i 
 pack, and my hold on the railing growing visibly 
 slacker. 
 
 It was a little after nightfall when I reached 
 the tavern at Pleasant Hill. Of my wages I had 
 fifty cents left. I questioned the proprietor as 
 to the demand for work in his community. He 
 was quite encouraging. Only that afternoon, he 
 said, one of the best farmers of the neighbor- 
 hood had been inquiring in the village for a pos- 
 sible man, and to the best of his knowledge 
 he had not found one. I said that I should 
 apply at his farm in the morning, and then 
 I broached the subject of entertainment. We 
 soon struck a bargain for a supper and break- 
 fast, and the privilege of a bed on the hay ; 
 but when, after supper, I asked to be directed 
 to the barn, the landlord silently led the way 
 to a little room upstairs, and there wished me 
 good-night. 
 
 In the early morning he pointed out to me the 
 road to his neighbor's farm, which I followed 
 with ready success. I was penniless now, and 
 had only an uncertain chance of work. And 
 then, if the farmer should ask me, I should be 
 obliged to own to inexperience, and the demand 
 for farm-hands I thought must be limited, at a 
 date so far into the autumn. But the morning 
 was exquisite, and the buoyancy that it bred waa 
 10
 
 146 THE WORKERS 
 
 an easy match for misgivings, so that it was with 
 a light heart that I turned from the road into 
 a lane which leads to the house of the farmer, 
 whom I shall call Mr. Hill. 
 
 All about me were the marks of thrift. The 
 fences stood straight and stout, with an air of 
 lasting security. On a rising ledge above the 
 lane was the farm-house, a small, unpainted 
 wooden cottage, bleached to the rich, deep brown 
 of a well-colored meerschaum pipe, and as snug 
 and tight as a pilot's schooner. Near it was a 
 summer-kitchen that seemed fairly to glow with 
 conscious pride in its cleanness, and the very 
 foot-path from the gate to the cottage-door was 
 swept like a threshing floor. 
 
 On the door-step sat a girl in a calico dress of 
 delicate pink, with a dark gingham apron con- 
 cealing all its front. She was shelling peas into 
 a milk-pan which rested on her lap, and the 
 morning sunlight was in her flaxen hair, and 
 showed you the delicate freshness of a pink-and- 
 white complexion. Sober hazel eyes were fixed 
 on me as I walked up the foot-path, and of us two 
 I was the embarrassed one. I have not got over 
 a certain timidity in asking for work, and each 
 request is a sturdy effort of the will, with the 
 rest of me in cowardly revolt, and a timid 
 shrinking much in evidence I fear.
 
 A FARM HAND 147 
 
 "Is this Mr. Hill's farm?" I ask, and I 
 know that I am blushing deeply. 
 
 "Yes," says the young woman, with grave 
 dignity and the most natural self-possession in 
 the world. 
 
 "Is he at home?" I am sweating freely 
 now, as I stand with my hat crushed between 
 my hands, and the pack feeling like a mountain 
 on my back. 
 
 " He is down at the pond on the edge of the 
 farm." And her serious eyes follow the line of 
 the long lane which sinks from the house with 
 the downward slope of the land. 
 
 With her permission I leave the pack behind, 
 and then follow the indicated way. The barn is 
 on my right, a large, unpainted structure, stained 
 by weather to as dark a hue as the house, but 
 there are no loose boards about it, nor any rifts 
 among the shingles, and the doors hang true on 
 their hinges, and meet in well-adjusted touch. 
 The cowyard and the pigsty flank the lane, and 
 the neatness of the yard and the tightness of the 
 troughs make clear that there is no waste of fod- 
 der there. Farther down and on my left is the 
 wagon-house, as good a building almost as the 
 cottage, and with much the same clean, strong 
 compactness. There are no ploughs nor other 
 farming tools lying exposed to the weather, no
 
 148 THE WORKERS 
 
 signs of idle capital wasting with the wear of 
 rust, but everywhere the active, thrifty strength 
 of wise economy. 
 
 Two men are at work at the pond, and I pick 
 my man at once. They are plainly brothers, but 
 the Mr. Hill of whom I am in search is the 
 stronger-looking man, and is clearly in command 
 of the job. I am reminded of a certain type 
 which one comes to know on " the street," a 
 clean-cut, vigorous man, who keeps his youth 
 till sixty, and who, for many years, has had a 
 masterful, compelling hand upon the conduct of 
 affairs, has put railways through the West, and 
 opened up mining regions, and knows the inner 
 workings of legislatures and of much else 
 besides. 
 
 I wait for a pause in the work, and try to 
 screw my courage to the sticking-point ; and 
 then I tell Mr. Hill that the landlord at the tav- 
 ern has sent me to him in the belief that he 
 needs a man, and I add that I shall be glad of a 
 job. Without preliminary questions Mr. Hill 
 engages me on the spot, and makes me an offer 
 of board and lodging, and seventy-five cents 
 a day, which, he says, is the usual rate on 
 the farms at that season. I close with the bar- 
 gain, and ask to be set to work immediately. A 
 minute later I am walking up the lane with a
 
 A FARM HAND 149 
 
 message for Mrs. Hill, to the effect that I am 
 the new "hired man," and that she will please 
 give me, to take to the pond, a certain " broad 
 hoe " from the wagon-house. 
 
 Mrs. Hill understands the situation at once ; 
 she makes no comment, but goes with me to the 
 wagon -house, where she points out the hoe 
 among other tools in a corner. She has said 
 nothing so far, and I feel a little uncomfortable, 
 but now she turns to me with a frank directness 
 of manner that is very reassuring. 
 
 " I ain't got no room for you in the house, but 
 I guess you'll be comfortable sleeping out here. 
 You can fetch your grip, and I'll show you your 
 bed." 
 
 Pack in hand, I follow her up the steps to the 
 loft of the wagon-house, and she points to a cot 
 near the farther window and a wooden chair be- 
 side it. " Some time to-day I'll make up your 
 bed, and if there's anything you want you can 
 tell me." This is her final word as she leaves 
 me to return to the house. I slip on my over- 
 alls and take note of my new quarters. Win- 
 dows at both ends of the loft provide ample 
 ventilation. The cot is covered with a corn- 
 husk mattress, as clean and fresh as a cock of 
 new hay. The very floor is free from dust. 
 The rafters hang thick with bunches of seed-
 
 150 THE WOEKEES 
 
 corn on the cob, with their outer husks removed 
 and the inner husks drawn back and neatly in- 
 terwoven, the whole effect suggesting stalactites 
 in a cave. The air is fragrant with the perfume 
 from slices of apples, that are closely threaded 
 and hung up to dry in graceful festoons from 
 rafter to rafter. 
 
 Five minutes later I am at work at the pond. 
 The pond is an artificial one, created by a 
 wooden dam. The water has been allowed to 
 flow out, and the old woodwork is to be re- 
 newed. 
 
 My immediate task is to dig a ditch along the 
 outer side of the rotting planks, so that they 
 can be removed and replaced by new ones. I 
 am soon alone on the job, for the farmers' work 
 calls them elsewhere. The experience in the 
 sewer-ditch at Middletown is all to my credit, 
 and my spirits rise with the discovery that I can 
 handle my pick and shovel more effectively, and 
 with less sense of exhaustion. And then the 
 stint is my own, and no boss stands guard over 
 me as a dishonest workman. At least I am con- 
 scious of none, and I am working on merrily, 
 when suddenly I become aware of my employer 
 bending over the ditch and watching me in- 
 tently. 
 
 It is a face very red with the heat and much
 
 A FARM SAND 151 
 
 bespattered with mud, into which my tools sink 
 gurglingly, that I turn up to him. 
 
 " How are you getting on ? " 
 
 " Pretty well, thank you." 
 
 " You mustn't work too hard. All that I ask 
 of a man is to work steady. Have an apple ? " 
 
 He is gone in a moment, and I stand in the 
 ditch eating the apple with immense relish, and 
 thinking what a good sort that farmer is, and 
 how thoroughly he understands the principle of 
 getting his best work out of a man ! He has ap- 
 pealed to my sense of honor by intrusting the 
 job to me, and now he has won me completely 
 to his interests by showing concern in mine. 
 
 The work is hard, and the morning hours 
 are very long, but the labor achieves its own sat- 
 isfaction as the task grows under one's self-di- 
 rected effort, and there is no torture of body and 
 soul in the surveillance of a slave-driving boss. 
 
 But I am thoroughly tired and very hungry 
 when Mr. Hill calls to me from across the pond 
 that it is time to go to dinner. I join him in 
 haste, and we walk up the lane together, while 
 he drives his team before him, and points out 
 with evident pride the young colts and other 
 stock in the pasture. 
 
 On a bench near the door of the summer- 
 kitchen are two tin basins full of water, and
 
 152 THE WORKERS 
 
 there we wash ourselves, drawing by means of a 
 gourd-dipper from a brimming bucket near by 
 any fresh supply of water that we want. A 
 coarse, clean towel hangs over a roller above 
 the bench, and at this we take our turns. 
 
 The dinner is a quiet meal, and tends to so- 
 lemnity. Mrs. Hill and her daughter sit oppo- 
 site the farmer and me. Little is said, but for 
 me there is absorbing interest in the meal itself. 
 It is worthy of the best traditions of country 
 life, clean in all its appointments to a degree 
 of spotlessness, really elegant in its quiet sim- 
 plicity, and appetizing? how was I ever to 
 stop eating those potatoes that spread under the 
 pressure of my fork into a mass of flaky deli- 
 ciousness, or the ears of sweet-corn fresh from 
 a late field, or the green peas that swim in a 
 sweet stew of their own brewing, or, best of all, 
 the little pond pickerel that are grilled to a crisp 
 brown turn? 
 
 In our more artificial forms of living we 
 habitually eat when we are not hungry, and 
 drink when we are not thirsty, and we know lit- 
 tle of the sheer physical delight in meat and 
 drink when our natures seize joyously upon the 
 means of life, and organs work in glad adapta- 
 tion to function, and the organism, in full revi- 
 val, responds to its environment !
 
 A FARM HAND 163 
 
 The work moves uninterruptedly in the after- 
 noon ; and at six o'clock, as I wearily drag my 
 feet along the lane by the farmer's side, I can 
 see his daughter driving the cattle through the 
 pasture to the cowyard, and I wonder how I 
 shall fare at the evening milking. But I am not 
 put to that test ; for the farmer declines my offer 
 of help, with the explanation that, under our ar- 
 rangement, my day's work is done at six o'clock, 
 and that he is not entitled to further help, nor 
 does he need it, he adds, for his wife and daugh- 
 ter always lend a hand at the chores. 
 
 Supper is almost a repetition of dinner, with 
 a pitcher of rich milk kindly pressed upon me 
 when I decline the tea, and with apple-sauce 
 and cake in the place of pumpkin-pie. Soon 
 after, I am lighting my way with a lantern 
 through the dark to my cot in the loft, and for 
 ten hours I sleep the sleep of a child, and 
 awake at six in the morning to the farmer's 
 call of "John, hey John!" from under the 
 window. 
 
 All of that day, which was "Wednesday, was 
 given to completing the work on the dam. The 
 necessary excavation was soon finished, and 
 then we laid the timbers, and nailed the new 
 planks into place, and filled in and packed the 
 earth behind them. Over the completed job the
 
 154 THE WORKERS 
 
 farmer expressed such a depth of satisfaction 
 that I felt a glow of pride in the work, and a 
 sense of proprietorship, which was splendidly 
 compensating for the effort which it had cost. 
 
 The remaining three days of the week we 
 spent in picking apples. Behind the wagon- 
 house was an orchard. Mr. Hill first selected a 
 tree, and then we placed under it the number of 
 empty barrels, which, in his judgment, corre- 
 sponded to its yield, a judgment which was al- 
 ways singularly accurate. Then, each supplied 
 with a half-bushel basket with a wooden hook 
 attached to the handle, we next climbed among 
 the branches, and suspending our baskets, we 
 carefully picked the apples with a quick upward 
 turn of the fruit, which detached them at the 
 point at which the stem was fast to the twig. 
 Both baskets were usually full at about the same 
 moment, and then we took turns in climbing 
 down and receiving the baskets from the tree, 
 and emptying the apples into the barrels with 
 great caution against possible bruising. 
 
 All this was Arcadian in its joyous simplicity. 
 All day we moved among the boughs, breathing 
 the fragrance of ripened fruit and the mellow 
 odor of apple-trees turning at the touch of frost ; 
 picking ceaselessly the full-juiced apples " sweet- 
 ened with the summer light," while above us
 
 A FARM HAND 155 
 
 white clouds fled briskly before the northwest 
 wind across the clear blue of the autumn sky ; 
 and below us lay the pasture, where the patient 
 cattle grazed, and beyond stretched open coun- 
 try of field and forest, which, in that crystal air, 
 met the horizon in a clean, sharp line. 
 
 Mr. Hill and I were growing very chummy. 
 A faint uncomfortable distrust of me, which I 
 suspected through the first two days, had wholly 
 disappeared. "We talked with perfect freedom 
 now and with a growing liking for each other, 
 which, for me, added vastly to the charm of 
 those six days on the farm. 
 
 I tried at first to lead the talk, and to draw 
 Mr. Hill into expressions of his views of life, 
 that I might learn his attitude toward modern 
 progress, and catch glimpses of the growth of 
 things from his point of view. But Mr. Hill was 
 proof against such promptings. He was a 
 shrewd, practical farmer, with a masterful hold 
 upon all the details of his enterprise, and with a 
 mind quickened by thrifty conduct of his own 
 affairs to a catholic taste for information. His 
 schooling had been limited, he said, but he must 
 have meant his actual school training ; for life it- 
 self had been his school, and admirably had he 
 improved its advantages. He was a trained ob- 
 server and a close student of actual events. In-
 
 156 THE WORKERS 
 
 stead of my getting him to talk, he made me 
 talk, but with so natural a force as to rob it of 
 all thought of compulsion. 
 
 The talk drifted early into politics, and I soon 
 found that my light - hearted generalizations 
 would not pass muster. Back and back he 
 would press me upon the data of each induction, 
 until I was forced to tell what I knew, or was 
 confronted with my ignorance. 
 
 And then he delighted in talk of other people 
 than our own, and his knowledge of a somewhat 
 general contemporaneous history was curiously 
 varied and accurate. Stories of succeeding 
 English ministries, and even of the short-lived 
 French cabinets, were ready to his use, and he 
 tactfully righted me in my errors. But he held 
 me closest to my memories of things among the 
 common people, the agricultural laborers in 
 England, and their relation to the farmers, and 
 theirs in turn to the landed proprietors, and the 
 promise which the land could give of continued 
 support to three classes, under the changed con- 
 ditions of modern life. All that I could remem- 
 ber of a typical laborer's home, and of its manner 
 of life, and of the general aspect of an English 
 farm, seemed only to whet his appetite, and to 
 strengthen his demand for what I knew of the 
 continental peasantry. His interest centred
 
 A FARM HAND 157 
 
 strongly in the French, and there was plainly a 
 peculiar charm for him in every detail which I 
 could give of the French farmers, with their 
 small holdings, and their inherited habits of 
 thrift, and of the close culture of their lands. 
 But he would even lead me on to speak of great 
 cities, and of the life in them of the rich and 
 poor, and of any signs, of which I knew, of grow- 
 ing social discontent. And with an interest that 
 never flagged, he questioned me on works of 
 art ; and followed patiently, and with a zest that 
 warmed one's own enthusiasm, through endless 
 churches, and long dim galleries, and by nar- 
 row, crooked streets of a modern city to the 
 ruins of its distant past. And there we restored 
 the crumbling piles, until there stood clear to 
 his imagination a vision of Imperial Home, and 
 his eyes kindled to some great general's triumph 
 moving through the Via Sacra, and the people 
 swarming to the very chimney-tops, their infants 
 in their arms, and on the air the deep, rich mov- 
 ing roar of high acclaim ! 
 
 Sunday was the last day of my stay on the 
 farm. "When, in the middle of the week, I 
 found that Mr. Hill was likely to keep me, I 
 was conscience-stricken, because I had not told 
 him that my stay would be short. He said 
 nothing at first in reply to my announcement,
 
 158 THE WORKERS 
 
 but presently remarked that it was very hard 
 to get men in that part of the country. 
 
 " But, surely," I said, " more men apply to 
 you for work than you can possibly employ." 
 
 He looked at me with some wonder, at my 
 ignorance. 
 
 " For a long time I have been looking for a 
 man to help me," he said. " I'm growing old, 
 and I can't do the work that I once did. If 
 I could find the right man, I'd keep him the 
 year round, and pay him good wages. But 
 the best young fellows go to the cities, and the 
 rest are mostly a worthless lot. There's hardly 
 a day in the year when I haven't a job for any 
 decent man who'll ask for it. I have to go look- 
 ing for men, and then I generally can't find one 
 that's any account." 
 
 This was much the longest speech that he 
 had made to me so far, and a very interesting 
 one I thought it, and I am only sorry that I can- 
 not reproduce the exact phraseology, with its 
 Anglo-Saxon words set, by an instinctive choice, 
 into rugged sentences which admirably ex- 
 pressed the man. I waited hopefully for fur- 
 ther speech from him, and at last it came, quite 
 of its own accord ; for I had given up trying to 
 draw him out. 
 
 We were sitting together on Sunday evening
 
 A FARM HAND 159 
 
 on the platform of the pump in front of the 
 farm-house. It had been a very restful Sunday. 
 In the morning I went to the village church, 
 where two services followed each other in quick 
 succession. The first was a prayer-meeting, at- 
 tended by a little company of farming people 
 and village folk, who conscientiously parted 
 company at the door on the basis of sex, and sat 
 on opposite sides of a central aisle. 
 
 The service was a simple one. The leader 
 read a passage from the Bible, and offered 
 prayer, and then gave out a hymn. When the 
 singing ceased, one after another, the older men, 
 with nervous pauses between, rose to " testify " or 
 sank to their knees, and prayed aloud. I chiefly 
 remember one as a typical figure an old man, 
 whose thick white hair mingled with a bushy 
 beard that covered his face. I noticed him first 
 in comfortable possession of a bench along 
 which he stretched his legs. On his feet were 
 loose carpet-slippers ; and with his shoulders 
 braced against the wall, and his head thrown 
 back, and his eyes closed, he looked the vision 
 of physical ease, which matched the expression 
 of deep contentment that he wore. There was 
 no suspicion of sleep about him. Most evident- 
 ly he followed with liveliest sympathy every 
 word that was said or sung. I looked up pres-
 
 160 THE WOBKEES 
 
 ently at the sound of a new voice, and found 
 the old man on his feet. He was adding his 
 " testimony " to what had gone before, and was 
 speaking rapidly in a deep, gruff voice with 
 blunt articulation. There was a strong remind- 
 er in the performance of a school-boy's " speak- 
 ing his piece ;" the monotonous, unnatural tone; 
 the rapid flow of conventional, committed 
 phrase; and the nervous tension, which com- 
 municated itself to his hearers in a fear that he 
 might forget. 
 
 But there came at length, without calamity, 
 the final " Pray for me that I may be kept 
 faithful," and then he knelt in prayer. Invo- 
 cations from the Prophets, and supplications 
 from the Psalms, and glowing exhortations 
 from the Epistles, were interwoven with strang- 
 est interpolations of his own, while his voice 
 rose and fell in regular cadences and he audibly 
 caught his breath between. But he was losing 
 himself in his devotion, and presently his voice 
 fell to a natural tone, and his words grew plain 
 and direct, as he held converse with the Al- 
 mighty about our common life of sin and its 
 awful guilt, of temptation and its fateful trial, of 
 suffering and its terrible reality, of sorrow and 
 its cruel mystery. Then, as though quickened 
 by the touch of truth, his faith rose on surer
 
 A FARM HAND 161 
 
 wings, and his prayer breathed the sense of sin 
 forgiven, and of life made strong by a power not 
 our own, and of hope exultant in the knowledge 
 " of that new life when sin shall be no more ! " 
 
 A solemn stillness held us when he rose, and 
 made us feel the presence in our common lot of 
 things divine and that deep sacredness of life 
 which awes us most. 
 
 A short preaching service followed. The 
 preacher drove up on the hour from another 
 parish, and started off, at the meeting's end, for 
 yet a third appointment. 
 
 This is a long digression from Mr. Hill's talk 
 of the evening, and I have said nothing yet of 
 the afternoon. We took chairs out on the grass 
 in front of the cottage, after dinner, and sat in 
 the shade. We soon had visitors. Mr. Hill's 
 brother and his wife walked up from the lower 
 farm, and a little later there came Mr. Hill's son 
 and his young bride. The son is a physician, 
 whose practice covers much of that country-side ; 
 and it was interesting to me to learn that his 
 professional training was got at the College of 
 Physicians and Surgeons in New York. 
 
 Fearful of disturbing the family gathering, I 
 
 drew off a little, and gave my attention to a 
 
 book. Late in the afternoon I was roused by 
 
 the coming of another guest. He was an old 
 
 11
 
 162 THE WORKERS 
 
 neighboring farmer out in search of a heifer 
 which had broken through the pasture-fence. 
 As he joined us he was speaking so swiftly and 
 incoherently about the heifer's escape that I felt 
 some doubt of his sanity, but he quieted down in 
 a moment, and threw himself on the grass with 
 the evident purpose of resting before resuming 
 the search. He was lying flat upon his back, 
 and his long bony fingers were clasped under 
 his head. He wore no hat, nor coat, nor waist- 
 coat, and a dark gingham shirt lay close to the 
 sharp outlines of his almost fleshless body. 
 Braces that were patched with strings passed 
 over his lean shoulders, and were made fast to 
 faded blue jeans, whose extremities were tucked 
 into an old pair of cowhide boots. A long 
 white beard rested on his breast, reaching al- 
 most to his waist. Only a thin fringe of hair 
 remained above his ears ; and over the skull the 
 bare skin was so tightly drawn that you could 
 almost trace the zigzagging junctures of the 
 frontal and the cranium bones. 
 
 But skeleton as he was, he was marvellously 
 alive. His eyes were aflame, and prone as he 
 lay and resting, he impressed you as a man 
 so vitalized, that with a single movement 
 he could be upon his feet and in intense ac- 
 tivity. He was talking on about the heifer,
 
 A FARM HAND 163 
 
 nervously repeating to us, again and again, the 
 details of where he had seen her last, and the 
 rift which he had found in the fence, and how he 
 had sent his hired man in one direction, and had 
 gone in another himself. 
 
 He was a rich farmer, Mr. Hill told me after- 
 ward, and he lived alone, except for an occasional 
 hired man whom he could induce to stay with 
 him for a season. But even in his old age he 
 worked on his farm with the strength and en- 
 durance of three men, laying aside, year by year, 
 his store of gain. Without a single human tie 
 he worked on as though spurred by every claim 
 of affection and the highest sense of responsi- 
 bility to provide for those whom he loved ; and 
 all the while a vast misanthropy grew upon him, 
 and he would see less and less of his fellow-men, 
 and an almost life-long scepticism hardened into 
 downright unbelief. 
 
 So far he had not noticed me; but now he 
 turned my way, lifting himself upon his elbow, 
 and fixing his sunken, burning eyes on mine, 
 while the white hairs of his beard mingled with 
 the blades of grass. 
 
 " You're hired out to Jim, ain't ye? w 
 
 Jim was his designation of Mr. HilL 
 
 "Yes," I said. 
 
 " What's he payin' you? "
 
 164 THE WORKERS 
 
 I told him. 
 
 Mr. Hill was squirming in nervous discom- 
 fort. 
 
 " What's your name? " 
 
 I gave it him. 
 
 " Where are you come from? " 
 
 " Connecticut." 
 
 "Connecticut? That's down South, ain't 
 it?" 
 
 " No, that's down East." 
 
 " Was you raised there ? " 
 
 I do not know into what particulars of my 
 history and of my antecedents this process might 
 have forced me had not the heifer come to my 
 relief. She was a beautiful creature, with a 
 clean sorrel coat, and wide, liquid, mischievous 
 eyes ; and as she ran daintily over the turf at 
 the side of the lane, saucily tossing her head, 
 you knew that she was closely calculating every 
 chance of dodging the gawky country boy who, 
 breathing hard, lunged after her. 
 
 Without a word of parting, and as abruptly 
 as he came, the old man was gone to head her 
 off in the right direction at the mouth of the 
 lane. And so he disappeared, as strange a hu- 
 man being as the world holds, living tremendous- 
 ly a life of strenuous endeavor, yet Godless and 
 hopeless and loveless in it all, except for the
 
 A FARM HAND 165 
 
 greedy love of gain, which holds him in miser* 
 able bondage, as he works his life away. 
 
 It was soon after supper that Mr. Hill and I 
 sat down together on the platform of the pump. 
 There was little movement in the air, and it 
 was very mild for the twenty-seventh of Sep- 
 tember. As the stars appeared, they shone 
 upon us through a mellow warmth, like that of 
 summer, in which they seem magically near, and 
 one feels their calm companionship in human 
 things. 
 
 " And you've made up your mind to go in the 
 morning ? " Mr. Hill began. 
 
 "Yes," I said, "I must be off. I am truly 
 sorry to go. But you surprise me by what you 
 tell me of the difficulty in the country of getting 
 men to work. One hears so much about 'the 
 unemployed,' that any demand for labor, which 
 remains unsupplied, seems to me an anomalous 
 condition." * 
 
 " That's a big question," he said, with a deep 
 sigh, as he leant back against the pump and 
 looked at me out of blue eyes that were gray 
 
 * I have presented here, together with ideas advanced by 
 Mr. Hill, others secured in fragmentary conversations with 
 various farmers by the way. These ideas seem to me to rep- 
 resent a body of accordant thinking. It is fair to say that 
 I also found among the farmers quite another school of 
 thought. This I shall try to present later with equal fulness.
 
 166 THE WOEKERS 
 
 and keen in the starlight. " It reminds me of 
 what we used to call a hard example in arith- 
 metic in the district school when I was a boy. 
 There's a good many things you've got to take 
 account of, if you work it out right, and there's 
 a good many chances of mistake, and a mistake 
 goes hard with your answer. I haven't worked 
 this sum and I haven't seen it worked, but I've 
 studied it a good while, and I think I know how 
 to do parts of it." 
 
 He paused for a moment and then went on : 
 " In the last hundred and fifty years there have 
 been great changes in the world in the ways of 
 producing things ' improved methods of pro- 
 duction' the books call it. Some say it ain't 
 really ' improved,' only faster and cheaper, but 
 I'm not arguing that point. The power of peo- 
 ple to produce the necessaries of life is a big 
 sight greater than it was a hundred and fifty 
 years ago that's my point. It's what the books 
 call 'increased power of production.' And 
 among civilized people there's been this in- 
 crease of producing power in about all the 
 forms of production. In some forms it's been 
 very great, and in others not so great ; but I 
 guess there ain't many kinds of business that 
 haven't been changed by it. 
 
 * Now, I think that the farming business has
 
 A FARM HAND 167 
 
 lagged behind the rest. Not that there ain't 
 been improvement, for there's been great im- 
 provement. There's the steam-ploughs, and the 
 reapers, and harvesters, and mowers, and the 
 threshing-machines; and then there's the sci- 
 ence of agricultural chemistry. But I'm judg- 
 ing of what I know of the farming business as 
 it's carried on. 
 
 " Now, here's my farm : it's part of a tract 
 that my great-grandfather settled on and cleared. 
 I've heard my grandfather tell many a time of 
 the Indians that were all about here when he 
 was a boy, and even my father often went hunt- 
 ing deer down on the lake this side of the 
 woods. 
 
 " "Well, I know this country pretty well, and 
 I find that a farmer now don't work any bigger 
 farm than my grandfather did, nor the work isn't 
 much lighter, nor he doesn't get much more for 
 it. There's been a good many changes, but as 
 the farming business goes, there ain't any in- 
 creased production that's kept up with other 
 kinds of business when you calculate how many 
 farmers there are and how much they do. 
 
 " I read in a book the other day that twenty- 
 five men, with modern machinery, can produce 
 as much cotton cloth as the whole population of 
 Lancashire could produce in the old way ; but
 
 168 THE WORKERS 
 
 there ain't any twenty-five men who could work 
 the farms of this township with all the modern 
 farming machinery. 
 
 " Take it day in and day out the whole year 
 round on the farms, and a man's work or a team's 
 work is pretty much what it was a hundred 
 years ago. 
 
 " And here's another thing that makes a great 
 difference between farming and other kinds of 
 business. When I go to the city I most gener- 
 ally visit some factory and go through it as 
 carefully as I can. The machinery is interest- 
 ing and wonderful, and if it's something useful 
 they're making, I like to compare the productive 
 power of the factory hands with what it would 
 be if they were all working separately by the old 
 methods. But besides this, there's the wonder- 
 ful economy that I see. The factory is built so 
 as to save all the carting that's possible, and 
 there's men always studying how they can make 
 it more convenient, and can improve the ma- 
 chinery and cut down the costs. And then I 
 don't find any leakage anywhere that can be 
 helped ; and it's most wonderful what they do 
 in some kinds of manufacturing with what you'd 
 think was the very refuse, working it up into 
 some by-product that makes the difference be- 
 tween profit and loss in the whole business. It's
 
 A FARM HAND 169 
 
 close culture of the closest kind applied to manu- 
 facture. 
 
 " Sometimes I've had a chance to talk to a 
 superintendent of a factory, and he's told me 
 about the business from the inside how care- 
 fully he must study the market and how closely 
 he must calculate a hundred things; and how 
 exactly his books must be kept, and how easy 
 it is for a little thing that's been miscalculated 
 or overlooked to ruin the business. 
 
 " I tell you that I've come to see pretty clearly 
 that the business that pays in these times of 
 competition is a powerful lucky one and power- 
 ful well managed. When the year's work is 
 done and the wages have been paid, and the rent 
 and the interest on the capital paid up, and the 
 salaries paid to the brains that run the thing, 
 it's a remarkable business that's got anything 
 over in the way of profit. 
 
 " Now, the farming business, as I look at it, 
 is a long way behind all that. We don't know 
 much about close culture in farming in Amer- 
 ica, and I don't believe there's one farmer in 
 five hundred that keeps books and can tell you 
 exactly where he stands ; and these things we've 
 got to learn. It's terrible easy to let things go 
 their own way pretty much until the fences 
 are falling down and your buildings are out of
 
 170 THE WORKERS 
 
 repair, and your tools are going to ruin with rust, 
 and your children are not having good advan- 
 tages. You may think that you're too poor to 
 afford anything different and that it's economy 
 to live so. But it ain't ; it's the worst kind of 
 waste. It takes a sight of hard work, brain- 
 work, and handwork, too, to get good, substan- 
 tial buildings and fences, and tools and stock, 
 and to keep them good and to raise your chil- 
 dren well. You've got to make a close calcula- 
 tion on every penny, but it's the only true econ- 
 omy. The difference between the economy of 
 shabbiness and the economy of thrift is the dif- 
 ference between waste and saving. 
 
 " My father could not give me much school 
 learning, but he learnt me to farm it thoroughly. 
 I've been at it a good many years now, and I 
 know by experience the truth of what he taught 
 me. If there's ever been anything more than 
 our living at the end of the year, it's only be- 
 cause we all worked hard, my wife and daughter 
 as hard in the house as me and my son on the 
 farm ; and because we studied to raise the best 
 of everything we could, and to get the best 
 prices we could, and we saved every penny that 
 could be saved. 
 
 " My son wanted to study to be a doctor when 
 he was growing up, and so I gave him the best
 
 A FARM HAND 171 
 
 schooling that he could get around here ; and 
 when he was old enough, and I saw his mind 
 was made up, I sent him to the best medical 
 college I could find. And I've given my daughter 
 all the schooling she's had the strength for. It's 
 the best economy to get the best, whether it's 
 buildings, or tools, or stock, or education ; and 
 there's a great deal more satisfaction in it be- 
 sides. I tell you this because it's my experience, 
 and I know it, but I owe it mainly to the raising 
 my father gave me. It's hard work, and it's 
 hard study, and it's awful careful economy in 
 little things as well as big, that makes a man 
 succeed in any business. 
 
 " You've heard the saying that ' the luxuries of 
 one generation are the necessities of the next.' 
 That's certainly true in the country. I've heard 
 my grandfather say that when he was a boy it 
 didn't take more than ten dollars a year to pay 
 for everything that the family bought. All that 
 they wore and ate and drank they raised on the 
 farm, and they built their own buildings, and 
 made their own tools, mostly, and worked out 
 most of their taxes. 
 
 "I'm not saying that farmers must go back 
 to that. It ain't possible. It's every way bet- 
 ter now to buy your cloth than to make it, and 
 so with your tools, and many other things ; but
 
 172 THE WORKERS 
 
 when I see a farmer's family spend in a year for 
 clothes and feathers and finery as much as ten 
 families did for all they bought in the old days, 
 and at the same time their fences are falling and 
 their stock suffering from neglect, I see that 
 these people don't know their business. And 
 when I see a farmer mortgage a piece of land 
 to give his daughter a fashionable wedding, and 
 then complain that there ain't a living to be 
 made any more in farming, I'm sorry for him. 
 
 " You see, in the old days the ways of farming 
 were primitive and simple, and the ways of liv- 
 ing were primitive and simple, too, and they 
 matched each other. Now both have changed. 
 Farming is different, and living in the country is 
 different. The style of living in the country is 
 copied from the towns, where there's been the 
 greatest increase of producing power ; and I 
 argue that the increase of producing power on 
 the farms hasn't by any means kept up to what 
 it is in the cities. 
 
 " Now, this difference ain't unnatural. Every- 
 body knows that the big fortunes of the last hun- 
 dred years have mostly been made in manufact- 
 ure in the cities, and in the increase of land val- 
 ues in the cities, and in the development of rail- 
 roads and mines. And where the big fortunes 
 have been made, there's been the best chances
 
 A FARM HAND 173 
 
 for brains and energy and enterprise. And 
 where brains and energy and enterprise are at 
 work, there all kinds dt labor will go, for it's 
 these that make employment for labor. 
 
 Now, it ain't saying anything against farmers 
 to say that the best brains that have been born 
 on the farms for the last hundred years haven't 
 stayed on the farms. The farming business 
 hasn't had the benefit of them, but they've gone 
 to the professions, and the business in the cities, 
 where the most money was to be made. 
 
 " So that through all this time of ' increasing 
 power of production ' there's been a constant 
 drain from the country of its best brains and 
 blood, and it ain't strange that the farming busi- 
 ness has lagged behind the others which these 
 have gone into. 
 
 " I believe there's going to be a change. I 
 believe the change is begun. Competition is so 
 keen now in about all kinds of business, that 
 the chances of making a fortune and making it 
 quick are very few. There's about so much in- 
 terest to be got for your capital, and if the 
 security is good, the interest is very low, and 
 there's about so much to be got for your brains, 
 unless you've got particular rare brains ; and as 
 the competition grows keener, brains begin to 
 see that there's about as much to be made out of
 
 174 THE WORKERS 
 
 farming as out of other kinds of business. In- 
 vention has done a lot already, and when the 
 same economy and thrift and thorough business 
 principles are used in farming as are used in other 
 kinds of production, the farming business will 
 soon catch up with the others. And where the 
 brains and enterprise and energy go, labor will 
 soon follow ; and for a time anyway, there won't 
 be as many unemployed in the cities, nor as many 
 farmers in the country looking for men to work. 
 But why are there unemployed in the cities, 
 while there is already a demand for men in the 
 country? Why, because many of the unem- 
 ployed ain't fit for us to take into our homes as 
 hired men, and many don't know that there's 
 such a chance for them, and many if they do 
 know, would sooner starve in the cities than 
 work and live on a farm. I've got an idea that 
 when the farming business is developed, there'll 
 be a big change in country life. Where there's 
 plenty of brains and push and enterprise, there's 
 likely to be excitement. 
 
 " But it's got to come naturally ; you can't 
 pump interest into country living by legislation. 
 I had to laugh the other day when I was read- 
 ing a speech that Mr. John Morley made in 
 Manchester, I think it was. Anyway, he was 
 arguing for parish councils, and he said that
 
 A FARM HAND 175 
 
 this 'gregarious instinct' that makes country 
 people flock into towns that are already over- 
 crowded, is something that we ought to counter- 
 act by making country life more interesting, and 
 he thought that parish councils would help to 
 do that. Lord Salisbury got into him pretty 
 well a short time after, when he said in a speech 
 that he never had thought it was the duty of 
 the government to provide amusement for the 
 people, but if he was making a suggestion in 
 that line, he would like to recommend the circus. 
 " There's another reason besides the keen com- 
 petition in other kinds of business that makes 
 me think that farming is going to be brought up 
 to the others, and that is, that so many of the 
 colleges are teaching scientific farming. You 
 ain't going to see any very great result from this 
 in a year, nor in ten years, for there's a pretty 
 big field to work on. But when smart young 
 fellows that are raised in the country, and other 
 smart young fellows that see a good chance to 
 make something: at farming when they all get a 
 thorough training in scientific farming, and when 
 they all get down to work, just as they would in 
 some other highly developed form of production, 
 you will see results. There won't be much in 
 shiftless farming when the scientific kind pretty 
 generally sets the pace.
 
 176 THE WORKERS 
 
 " I've read a good deal, of late years, about 
 'organized charities' in the cities, and it cer- 
 tainly does seem as if charity was a good deal 
 more sensible than it used to be. It's hard to 
 see how there can be any kind of serious desti- 
 tution in the cities that ain't got some society to 
 relieve it. And the rich in the cities do cer- 
 tainly spend a powerful lot of time and work 
 and money in keeping up these charities and 
 amusements for the poor ; but I don't see any 
 signs that the poor love the rich any more, nor 
 that there's any less danger but that some day 
 theyll rise up in war against society. 
 
 " It seems to me that a good deal of all this 
 time, and labor, and money, and a good deal 
 more besides, might be better spent in provid- 
 ing that no child among the poor grows up with- 
 out proper education, technical education in 
 useful trades; especially, I think, in scientific 
 farming. 
 
 " If the rich lived simpler and less showy, the 
 poor wouldn't envy them as much, nor feel as 
 bitter against society, and the money that was 
 saved could be pretty well invested in kinds of 
 education that would cure poverty and destitu- 
 tion by preventing them, and the people that 
 would be thrown out of work by the economies 
 of the rich might be a good deal better em-
 
 A FARM HAND 177 
 
 proved in more productive work. It seems a 
 pity, anyway, to keep people at practically use- 
 less labor, when the brains and the money that 
 keep them employed in that way might be used 
 in keeping them at productive labor, and it's all 
 the greater pity as long as there's bitter want in 
 the world for the necessaries of life." 
 
 This, in substance, is what he said. I apolo- 
 gize for the injustice of the account, its vague- 
 ness in contrast with his clearness, its circumlo- 
 cutions in contrast with his crisp sententiousness, 
 its weakened renderings of his vigorous forms of 
 native speech ; but I have tried to suggest it all, 
 and to give the sense of its manly, wholesome 
 spirit. 
 
 Under the stars we sat talking until nearly 
 midnight, and, quite inevitably, we launched 
 upon the subject of religion. Mr. Hill appeared 
 curiously apathetic, I thought, as I urged what 
 seemed to me vital. And when, at the end, he 
 narrowed it all to the single inquiry as to 
 whether I believed in a real recognition in some 
 future life among those who have loved one 
 another here, I found myself wondering, with 
 a feeling of disappointment, at so wide a drift 
 from essentials, on the part of a mind which had 
 impressed me as so natively clear and strong. 
 I looked up in my surprise. Even in the star- 
 12
 
 178 THE WORKERS 
 
 light I could see the tears, and from a single 
 halting sentence, I got the hint of a daughter 
 dead in early childhood, and of a sorrow too 
 deep for human speech, and of an eager ques- 
 tioning of the future that was the soul's one 
 great desire. 
 
 " For now we see through a glass, darkly ; but 
 then face to face ; now I know in part, but then 
 shall I know even as also I am known," was all 
 that I could say to him, and I went to bed pity- 
 ing myself for my shallow judgment, and my 
 ignorance of life.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 
 
 Fitz-Adams's Camp, English Centre, Lycoming 
 Countt, Pa., Tuesday, October 27, 1891. 
 
 In spite of the fast-falling rain, Fitz- Adams, 
 the boss, ordered us up at half-past four, as 
 usual, this morning; but when breakfast was 
 over, the rain was too heavy to admit of our 
 going to work. Some of the woodsmen are gone 
 back to bed, and some are mending their clothes 
 in the loft, and the rest of the gang are loafing 
 in the " lobby," smoking, and playing what they 
 call " High, low, Jack and the game," except 
 Mike, a superb young Irishman, who, seated on 
 a bench, with his back braced against the win- 
 dow-sill, is reading a worn paper copy of one of 
 the Duchess's novels, which is the only book 
 that I have so far seen in the camp. Jennie, 
 the head-cook and housekeeper, has given me 
 leave to write at one of the long tables where 
 the gang is fed. 
 
 It is a relief sometimes to get away from the 
 men. There may be ennui that is more soul- 
 179
 
 180 THE WORKERS 
 
 destroying, but I have never known any that 
 caused such evidently acute suffering as the 
 form which seizes upon workingmen of my 
 class in hours of enforced idleness. When the 
 day's work is done, they take their rest as a 
 matter of course, and enjoy it. But a day like 
 this, which lays them off from work, and shuts 
 them within doors, furnishes awful evidence of 
 the poverty of their lives. Most of the men 
 here can read, but not to one of them is reading 
 a resource. The men at play are in blasphemous 
 ill-temper over the cards, and are, apparently, 
 on the brink of blows, while Mike is laboriously 
 spelling his way through a page, and nervously 
 squirming in an effort to find a comfortable seat. 
 And I know, from the experience of Sundays, in 
 what humor the men will come down to dinner 
 from the loft, to face an afternoon of eternal 
 length to them, which, in some way, must be 
 lived through. 
 
 I note the contrast with their normal selves 
 the more, because, as a body of workmen, this 
 is much the most wholesomely happy company 
 which I have so far fallen in with. We are 
 about twenty in number, a curiously assorted 
 crew, all bred to the roughest life. Far up in 
 the mountains, miles from any settlement, we 
 live the healthful life of a lumber camp, working
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 181 
 
 from starlight to starlight ; breathing the moun- 
 tain-air, keen with the frosty vigor of autumn, 
 and fragrant of pine and hemlock ; eating raven- 
 ously the plain, well-cooked food which is served 
 to us, now in the camp and now on the mountain- 
 side, where we sit among the newly stripped 
 logs ; sleeping deeply at night in closely crowded 
 beds in the cabin-loft, where the wind sweeps 
 freely from end to end through the gaping chinks 
 between the logs, and where, on rising, we some- 
 times slip out of bed upon a carpeting of snow. 
 This is the life which these men know and which 
 half-unconsciously they love, breaking from it 
 at times, in a passion of discontent, and spend- 
 ing the earnings of months in a short, wild aban- 
 don of debauch, but always coming back again, 
 remorseful, ashamed to meet the faces of the 
 other men, yet reviving as by miracle under the 
 touch of their native life. They charm you with 
 their freedom of spirit, and their rude sturdi- 
 ness of character, until you find your heart 
 warming to them with a real affection, and feel- 
 ing for them the intimate pain of personal sor- 
 row at sight of their cruel limitations. Away 
 from their work, their one notion of the neces- 
 sary accompaniment to leisure is money ; and 
 possessed of time and treasure, their first in- 
 stinctive reach is after liquor and lust.
 
 182 THE WOEKEES 
 
 Even now as Fitz-Adams and his brother, in 
 yellow oil-cloth coats and wide tarpaulins, set 
 out through the pouring rain in an open rig for 
 English Centre, there is a chorus of voices from 
 the door and windows of the cabin, shouting 
 to them to bring back whiskey and plenty of it. 
 If they do, and the rain continues, only God 
 knows what the camp will be to-night. 
 
 It is sixty miles, I should judge, from Pleas- 
 ant Hill to Williamsport, and it proved a two 
 days' march. Although the distance covered 
 must have been about the same on both days, 
 the difference that they each presented in act- 
 ual experience of the journey was of the kind- 
 of contrast which a wayfarer must expect. 
 
 Monday was a faultless autumn day. The air 
 was quick, and the roads were in good condition, 
 and I was feeling fit, and was " passing rich " 
 with three dollars and seventy-five cents, the 
 wages of five days on the farm. 
 
 The region through which I walked was typi- 
 cal of the open country of the Middle States. 
 Over its rolling surface was the varied arrange- 
 ment of wood and field and pasture-land, with 
 the farmers' houses and barns attesting separate 
 possession. There were frequent brooks and 
 narrow winding country roads ; roads lined with
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 183 
 
 zigzag rail fences and loose stone walls, along 
 which dwarfed birches grew, and elderberry 
 bushes, and sumach, with wild grape-vines and 
 clematis creeping on the walls; while in the 
 coarse turf on the banks, there blossomed im- 
 mortelles, and purple aster, and golden-rod. 
 
 Mr. Hill had given me clear directions. At 
 the post-office of Irish Lane I turned sharply 
 toward Marshall's Hollow, and passed on the way 
 a camp-meeting ground, where deep in the shad- 
 ows of a grove stood numbers of rough wooden 
 huts ; grouped in chance community, and little 
 suggesting in the weird stillness of desertion, 
 the sounds of revival worship, with which they 
 are made to ring through a part of every sum- 
 mer. At Harvey ville I turned abruptly up the 
 hillside in the direction of Cambra. It was high 
 noon when I reached that village, and I was but 
 a few miles beyond it, on the way to Benton, 
 when I stopped to get something to eat. It 
 was the evident poverty of the house where I 
 stopped that interested me. I knew that there 
 was no hope of earning a meal at such a place, 
 but I could pay for what I ate, and I was sure 
 of being less of an annoyance there than at some 
 well-to-do farmer's house. 
 
 The cottage was an unpainted wooden shell, 
 and, like it, the corn-crib and pig-pen and little
 
 184 THE WORKERS 
 
 barn beyond seemed tottering to a fall. Faded 
 leaves of a woodbine, that climbed upon the cot- 
 tage, were thick about the door-way, and lay 
 strewn by the wind upon the bare floor within. 
 There was but one room on the ground floor, and 
 a stove and a sewing-machine and a small wood- 
 en chest were all its furniture. I knocked at the 
 open door. Through an opposite one, com- 
 municating with a lean-to, a woman appeared. 
 She was large and muscular, but in her face was 
 the sickly pallor of ill-nourishment, and her hair 
 was dishevelled, and the loose, ragged dress 
 which she wore was covered with dark, greasy 
 stains. 
 
 I asked for bread and milk; she explained 
 that the family had just finished dinner, but that 
 she could give me something, if I would wait, 
 and she invited me to a seat on the chest. 
 
 I drew from my pack an unfinished newspa- 
 per, and as I read I could feel innumerable eyes 
 upon me. Through the cracks in the door, and 
 the ragged breaks in the plaster, came the in- 
 quisitive gaze of children's eyes, and I could 
 hear their eager whispers as a swarm of chil- 
 dren crowded one another for possession of the 
 best peep-holes. 
 
 Their mother asked me in, and set before me, 
 on a table littered with remnants of dinner, a
 
 IN A LOGGING OA.MP 186 
 
 pitcher of fresh milk and some huge slices of 
 coarse bread, a large yellow bowl, and a pewter 
 tablespoon. The children stared at me as I ate, 
 and I tried to form an accurate estimate of their 
 number, but despaired when, after I thought 
 that I had distinguished eight, I found my esti- 
 mate upset by sudden apparitions of faces hith- 
 erto unrecognized. The oldest child seemed 
 not more than twelve, and the youngest lay 
 asleep in a cradle near the stove, where its 
 mother could rock it as she worked. They all 
 were as ragged and dirty as the children of the 
 slums, but they had nothing of the vivacity of 
 these, nor of the quick adjustment to changing 
 circumstances which gives to children, bred 
 upon the street, their first hold upon your in- 
 terest. 
 
 Stolid and wide-eyed they stood about the 
 room, intently watching me, moving here and 
 there for new points of view ; until their mother, 
 who had showed no wish to talk as she washed 
 the dishes, now broke the silence with a sounding 
 cuff upon the ear of a little boy, as, with a loud 
 command, she sent him sobbing into the back 
 yard to fetch her wood. 
 
 The children scattered instantly, except a little 
 girl with flaxen hair and grotesquely dirty face, 
 who clung to her mother's skirts, and seemed to
 
 186 THE WORKERS 
 
 hamper her immeasurably ; the more so as the 
 baby had wakened in the noise, and had begun 
 to cry. I grew sick with fear of what was com- 
 ing next, but the mother's mood had changed ; 
 for catching the crying baby in her arms, she 
 almost smothered it with kisses, and sitting 
 down she fondled it, and gently stroked the head 
 of the child beside her. 
 
 It was a veritable country slum, with nearly 
 all the barren squalor of a crowded tenement. 
 You thought of life in it as some hard necessity, 
 from which all choice and spontaneity are gone. 
 And so in great part it must have been, and the 
 wonder was the stronger at sight of the instinct 
 of mother love, springing like a living fountain 
 in an arid plain. 
 
 The village of Benton wore a preoccupied air 
 when I entered it. I soon found the cause in an 
 auction sale of horses in the stable-yard of the 
 tavern. The horses huddled close, as if for 
 common protection, in an angle formed by the 
 buildings. They were watched by a mounted 
 rider, whose duty it was to prevent any from 
 breaking loose. A small crowd of farmers and 
 village men, all of them coatless and in their 
 working clothes, formed a semicircle about the 
 animals. The surrounding doors and windows 
 were full of women's faces, alive with interest in
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 187 
 
 the progress of events; and children perched 
 upon the fences, or dodged in and out among 
 the groups of men. A fat and ruddy auctioneer 
 walked back and forth excitedly before the 
 crowd, loudly repeating a call for bids ; or hav- 
 ing caught one, running it rapidly through 
 changes of inflection and intonation, until a 
 fresh bid started him anew on his flight of vary- 
 ing tones, which ended at last in the dying 
 cadences of " Going ! going ! gone ! " 
 
 Presently I found a man who was so far un- 
 occupied by the sale as to have leisure to direct 
 me on my way. Taking his advice I started for 
 Union Church and Unity ville. In the outskirts 
 of Benton, as I left the village, an urchin sat 
 upon the door-step of a cottage, idly beating 
 about him with a stick, consoling himself ap- 
 parently as best he could for not having been 
 allowed to go to the sale. The sight of a tramp 
 with a pack upon his back diverted him ; and 
 far as the sound could carry there came follow- 
 ing me, as I climbed the hill beyond the village, 
 his shouts of " Git there, Eli ! " 
 
 The contrast with Monday's march appeared 
 at once on Tuesday morning. The clouds which 
 were threatening when I made an early start 
 grew more threatening while I walked on, and 
 they broke in torrents of rain as I entered
 
 188 THE WORKEES 
 
 Lairds ville, with Williamsport still twenty -four 
 miles away. 
 
 A tavern gave me shelter, but presently the 
 rain slackened and I made up my mind to push 
 on to Williamsport in spite of the storm, for my 
 letters were there ; and once on the road with 
 your mail definitely in view, you grow highly 
 impatient of delays. 
 
 An hour's rain had worked great changes in 
 the roads. Hard and dusty when I set out in 
 the early morning, they were quagmires now 
 and were running with muddy streams. The 
 rain pelted my face and dripped through my 
 ragged hat, and trickled down my back and 
 washed into my boots. I was a dangerous- 
 looking vagrant when I reached Hughesville at 
 noon. I walked rapidly through the village 
 street in some fear of arrest, but the storm had 
 passed, and I soon learned the road to Williams- 
 port by way of Hall's Landing. 
 
 Splashing wearily along the heavy roads with 
 that awful load chafing my back, I knew vaguely 
 that I was passing through an exceedingly rich 
 and beautiful farming region, but my interest 
 was all in the surest footing to be found, and it 
 was with glad relief that late in the afternoon I 
 stepped upon the solid pavements of the town. 
 
 I had been told, on the road, of a laborer's
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 189 
 
 cottage in Church Street where cheap board and 
 lodging could be had. From the post-office I 
 readily found my way to this cottage, and was 
 soon propped up in bed reading my letters, 
 while the laborer's wife hung up my clothes to 
 dry in the kitchen and put my boots under the 
 stove. 
 
 In the morning all the brilliance of the clear, 
 cold autumn had returned. It was such a day 
 as seems to emerge renewed with fresh and am- 
 ple vigor from the cleansing of a storm. 
 
 The streets presented a really singular pict- 
 ure. The town itself is the conventional Amer- 
 ican, provincial, manufacturing centre, with its 
 business portion built up in "brick blocks," 
 which are innocent of any attraction but utility. 
 From this quarter it shades gradually, in one 
 direction, into the workshops and cottages of 
 the region of the proletariat, and in another into 
 the wide, well-shaded avenues where are the 
 somewhat ostentatious homes and churches of 
 the well-to-do. 
 
 Long lines of booths now crowded the curves 
 about the central public square and reached far 
 down the communicating streets. In these 
 booths the farming people of the surrounding 
 country sold their fruits and garden vegetables, 
 and butter and eggs and poultry ; and white-
 
 190 THE WORKERS 
 
 aproned butchers spread their meats in tempt- 
 ing array. It was an Oriental bazaar in all but 
 color and the highly pitched jabber of Eastern 
 bargaining. But still more perfect as a repro- 
 duction of foreign scenes were the groups of 
 women who, with colored shawls tied round 
 their heads and falling about their shoulders, sat 
 on the steps of public buildings with baskets of 
 provisions about them and talked among them- 
 selves, and came to terms with customers in 
 their oddly mixed vernacular. 
 
 It recalled at once the Platz of a German city 
 thronged by peasant women on market days, 
 only here, too, was a lack of color. The women 
 were unmistakably Teutonic. All had the gen- 
 erous contour of countenance which approaches 
 to a family likeness in a whole race of peasantry, 
 but the red of the old country complexion had 
 faded to our prevailing pallor. 
 
 In spite of a large foreign element, or in virtue 
 of it, I do not know which, the town itself is ag- 
 gressively American. The fact that some hun- 
 dreds of million feet of lumber come each year 
 from its mills gives to it great importance as 
 a lumber centre. And the good fortune of this 
 form of industry the city certainly shows in its 
 freedom from the usual begriming effects of 
 manufacture on a large scale.
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 191 
 
 In one of the morning papers of the town I 
 found the spirit of the place expressed in a re- 
 ported speech of a local celebrity, an ex-member 
 of Congress. The chief burden of it was the 
 note of congratulation to the people of the 
 town on their progress and prosperity, as indi- 
 cated in their electric lights and rapid transit 
 system, and in their growing industries and in- 
 creasing numbers, which, he declared, " had 
 passed the stopping-point." 
 
 But I must hurry on. Early on Friday after- 
 noon, October 9th, I set out from Williamsport, 
 with Oil City as my next objective point. I 
 had no money, but this did not disturb me, for 
 I was entering the open country and felt sure of 
 finding work. The road lay along the fertile 
 river bottom and then began to climb the range 
 of hills which walls in the valley on the north. 
 The lasting impression here is of a region of 
 most uncommon natural wealth. Many square 
 miles of farms come into the range of vision ; 
 the soil lo^ks like a deep, rich loam. And a like 
 impression comes to you from the opposite bank 
 of the river, where the land lies flat to the foot 
 of the southern range of hills. 
 
 From such a vantage ground you see at a 
 glance how the river, shut in by these barriers, 
 could have risen to so great a height in the
 
 192 THE WORKERS 
 
 flood of 1889 and have worked such appalling 
 disaster. 
 
 There are constant references to " the flood " 
 among the inhabitants of the valley, and it 
 plainly holds for them the place of a chronolog- 
 ical mark not unlike that held farther East by 
 the " blizzard " of 1888, only it sounds not a lit- 
 tle odd at first to hear common reference to 
 antediluvian events. 
 
 Presently I came to a road which forked at 
 Linden to the right, and made in the direction 
 of a gap in the hills. Its general course seemed 
 westward, and so I followed it. An hour or two 
 later it had led me into a forest, where the 
 sunlight was fast fading. I was intent on the 
 question of finding work before nightfall, when 
 I heard the rumble of wheels behind me, and a 
 voice singing a German song. 
 
 I looked up as the wagon came alongside. 
 The horses were walking slowly up the hill, and 
 a young man lounged at leisure on the seat. 
 His legs were crossed, and the reins lay loosely 
 in one hand. A light, wide-brimmed felt hat 
 was pushed back on his crown, and from under 
 the rim the yellow hair rested on his forehead. 
 He was singing from sheer lightness of heart ; and 
 young and strong and handsome as he was, he 
 made you think of Alvary in his part of Siegfried.
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 193 
 
 " Have a ride ? " he called to me, and there 
 was no trace of foreign accent in his speech. 
 
 "Thank you," I said ; and in another moment 
 my pack was in the bottom of the wagon and I 
 on the seat beside the driver. 
 
 " "Where are you going ? " 
 
 " I'm looking for a job." 
 
 " You want work on a farm ? " 
 
 " Yes, that or any other kind of work that I 
 can get." 
 
 "Well, there ain't much doing on the farms 
 now. I don't know nobody that's looking for a 
 hired man. There's Abe Potter, I heard him 
 say as how he wanted to hire a man to work for 
 him all winter ; but Miss' Potter, she told my 
 wife last night that he'd got Jim Hale's boy, Al, 
 to live out to him. Say, did you ever work in 
 the woods?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Well, there's plenty of work in the woods. 
 It's a rough life, but it ain't so bad when you're 
 used to it. I worked in the woods before I was 
 married. I could go out to the woods now, and 
 earn two dollars a day and my keep ; but my 
 wife wouldn't let me. And it's a pretty rough 
 life, only I come to like it. But I've got my 
 farm now, and my wife and children ; and her 
 old folks lives with us, and I've got to stay to 
 18
 
 194 THE WORKERS 
 
 home, and take care of things. Say, where are 
 you going to-night ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I'll try to find some place to 
 stay where I can help with the work to pay for 
 my keep ; and then to-morrow I'll go to , the 
 woods, and try to get a job." 
 
 " I tell you, stranger, you stay at my house 
 to-night, and in the morning you can go to Eng- 
 lish Centre. I guess you'll get a job on one of 
 the camps." 
 
 My thanks could have expressed but little of 
 the gratitude I felt. I shared his light-hearted 
 mood at once, and was a very interested and at- 
 tentive listener to the narrative of his early life ; 
 his disagreements with his father, and how he 
 had inherited the farm from him burdened with 
 debt, but had almost paid the mortgages, and 
 had his eye now upon a neighbor's farm with a 
 view to purchasing that. 
 
 He was singing again as we drove up the lane 
 toward his home, and was plainly expectant. 
 The cause was clear when two children, a girl 
 and boy of about six and four, came running 
 toward the wagon, with excited cries of wei* 
 come. They drew up sharply at sight of a 
 stranger, and their father loudly greeted them 
 with a medley of affectionate diminutives in 
 English and German, until they lost their fear,
 
 nr A LOGGING CAMP M 
 
 and began to talk rapidly with him in the 
 quaintest German, which sounded as though it 
 might be one with the strange dialects which 
 yon see in Fliegeade Blatter. 
 
 I helped to unhitch the horses, and then 
 asked whether there was more that I could do. 
 There were apples to be picked up from under 
 the trees in the orchard, and I worked at this 
 task until dark, when there came the call to 
 supper. 
 
 After that meal the children were put to bed, 
 and the rest of us gathered in the kitchen, where 
 a large open fire burned, and an oil-lamp lent 
 its light An " apple-butter making " was to be 
 tiie feature of the next day's work, and we spent 
 tiie evening in getting ready for it, 
 
 We sat in a semicircle in front of the fire, 
 first the farmer's wife, and then the patriarchal 
 grandfather, who was almost deaf, and was 
 known to all the household by the not eupho- 
 nious name of "Gross-pap," and next to him the 
 grandmother, and last the guest. The farmer 
 himiwlf sat at a table near us, briskly working 
 an apple-peeler, while the rest of us removed 
 the cores, and cut the apples into small sec- 
 tions. 
 
 It was a very comfortable place which I 
 seemed to have found in the household. I was
 
 196 THE WORKERS 
 
 taken in with natural hospitality, and the family 
 life moved on unhampered by my presence, 
 while I, a welcome guest, could sit and watch it 
 at my ease. 
 
 The old man had every excuse for silence, 
 and he and his wife spoke rarely, and always in 
 their native tongue, but they evidently under- 
 stood English perfectly. The farmer and his 
 wife spoke English to each other, and spoke it 
 as though born to its use, but they used that 
 quaint German dialect in talking with the old 
 people and the children. 
 
 The wife was a plain woman, inclined to fret- 
 fulness, I thought, and she had a certain air with 
 her husband, which is not uncommon to plain 
 women whose husbands are distinctly handsome. 
 She had little to say, but she listened attentively 
 to the farmer's talk. 
 
 He was entertainment for us all. Good-look- 
 ing, high-spirited, manly fellow in perfect un- 
 consciousness of self, he talked on with the 
 genial freedom of a true man of the world. 
 
 His trip to Williamsport was a fruitful theme, 
 and no least event of the journey was without 
 its interest. He told us of the neighbors whom 
 he met on the road, and all of his conjectures 
 regarding their probable errands. He had taken 
 a load of vegetables to town, and now recounted
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 197 
 
 every sale and purchase, for he had been charged 
 with many commissions. One was the purchase 
 of braid for his wife's new dress. He was full 
 of good-humor at each fresh departure in his 
 tale ; but, for some reason, the story of this last 
 commission pleased him most. With high re- 
 gard for circumstantial detail, he told it to us at 
 least five times, and ended every narrative with 
 a beaming smile, and the unvarying remark that 
 " I'd have got it wider if I'd only known," to 
 which his wife replied each time with unfalter- 
 ing insistence upon the last word : " But you 
 might have known." 
 
 In the morning he was as cheerful as on the 
 night before, and he put me in high spirits 
 as, with many good wishes for my success, he 
 told me again how sure he was that I could find 
 work in the woods. 
 
 At Salladasburg I stopped for further direc- 
 tions about the way to English Centre ; and the 
 tavern-keeper, at whose door I inquired, con- 
 firmed me strongly in my expectation of ready 
 employment. 
 
 An old plank road lead me through a moun- 
 tain-pass, and along the course of a stream, far 
 into the interior. The earlier miles of the march 
 were among mountains that had long been 
 stripped of all valuable timber, and that now
 
 198 THE WORKERS 
 
 stood ragged and uncouth in their new growths, 
 and in the blackened remnants of forest fires. 
 
 Here there were a few scattered farms ; stony 
 and of thin soil, where, for fences, uptorn stumps 
 of trees had been placed side by side, with their 
 twisted roots so interwoven as to form an im- 
 penetrable barrier. 
 
 A caravan of gypsies met and passed me ; but 
 except for these, the road was almost deserted, 
 and seemed to be leading into yet lonelier regions. 
 
 Mountains now succeeded, on which the for- 
 ests were untouched, and which, in autumn col- 
 ors, were like huge mounds of foliage plant, so 
 richly did the gorgeous hues of the maple-trees 
 and chestnuts and beeches blend with the dark 
 greens of hemlock and pine. 
 
 At a little after noon I came quite suddenly 
 upon an iron bridge that crossed the wide bed of 
 a mountain-stream, which was little more than a 
 brook now, but gave evidence of rising, at times, 
 to the volume and strength of a torrent. A large 
 tavern stood near the bridge, and beyond it, 
 to the right, was a huge tannery which plainly 
 provided the chief industry of the place. The 
 village street was lined with rows of wooden cot- 
 tages, each an unpainted duplicate of its neigh- 
 bor, and all eloquent, I thought, of the monotony 
 of the life which they held.
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 199 
 
 I went at once to the post-office, and there 
 learned that my journey was by no means at an 
 end ; for the lumber camps were yet some miles 
 farther in the mountains. The camp of " Wolf 
 Bun " was mentioned as an important one, where 
 work was plenty, and I set out at once for that. 
 
 I was tired and not a little hungry ; for this 
 mountain-air acts always as a whet upon your 
 appetite, and I had eaten nothing since the 
 early morning, and had already walked some 
 fifteen miles. But the camp road, although 
 rough, was easy to follow, and I found much 
 satisfaction in dramatizing my approach to some 
 short-handed employer, who would take me on at 
 once. I dwelt longingly on supper and a restful 
 night and Sunday in the camp, and thought 
 hopefully of the work to be begun on Monday 
 morning. 
 
 And then there was a peculiar interest in 
 meeting lumbermen on the way. Some were 
 teamsters, who sat high in air on top of immense 
 loads of bark, which they were carting to the 
 tannery. Many of these wore wide sombreros, 
 and jackets made of blanket stuff in gay plaids. 
 Others were on foot, small companies of four 
 and five together, walking to the village, for it 
 was Saturday afternoon. 
 
 I was prepared for some degree of roughness
 
 200 THE WORKERS 
 
 in a lumber camp, and in the woodsmen them, 
 selves, but there was something in the appear- 
 ance of these men whom I met that hinted at 
 my not having guessed all the truth. I judged 
 of roughness by what I knew of the gang at 
 West Point, and in the sewer ditch at the Asy- 
 lum, but here was something of a widely different 
 kind from the hardness of broken-spirited, time- 
 serving laborers. Instinctively you knew these 
 men for men ; and I respectfully kept silence, 
 and looked to them for greeting, and got none. 
 
 When you, a total stranger, try to meet the 
 questioning gaze of five strong men at once, all 
 of them sturdy and lean, and deeply lined in 
 face and keen of eye, there is bred in you a vague 
 unease, not of fear, but an answering to that 
 wonder as to what you are and what you are do- 
 ing there. I was conscious then only of the dis- 
 turbing of my earlier confidence in entering the 
 woods. I could not analyze the look which 
 met me, but now I know it for meaning, reft of 
 
 its strongest words, " Who in are you ? 
 
 Gospel sharks we know, and camp cooks, and 
 honest Jew pedlers who get our wages from us 
 for their brass-gold watches and glass jewels, 
 
 but such a ! ! ! ! ! ! 
 
 as you, we never saw before." 
 
 It was about the middle of the afternoon when
 
 TN A LOGGING CAMP 201 
 
 a turn in the mountain-road brought to view a 
 cluster of log-cabins, which I knew to be the 
 camp of "Wolf Kun. The cabins were splendid 
 buildings of their kind. The logs were clean 
 and fresh and were securely fitted, while the 
 chinks were well plastered with mud, and the 
 roofs tightly shingled, and the gables closely 
 boarded-up. 
 
 No one was in sight from where I stood ; but 
 there issued, from one of the smaller cabins, the 
 ring of a blacksmith's hammer, and I found a 
 group of men about the cabin-door. 
 
 The camp stood in a little clearing on the 
 mountain ; and in contrast with the shadowy 
 gloom in the forest around it, the sunlight 
 flooded this open rift with concentrated light. 
 The chestnut-trees on the edge of the wood 
 shone like burnished gold, and the maple leaves, 
 still green, nearest to the trees, and but lightly 
 touched with red along the boughs, deepened 
 gradually, until, in the full sunlight, they blazed 
 in crimson splendor. It was still with the still- 
 ness of autumn, and the sound of the black- 
 smith's stroke and the answering ring of the 
 anvil were echoed far into the forest, where you 
 could hear, fretting down its stony bed, a moun- 
 tain-stream, which, in the speech of the lumber- 
 men, is called a " run."
 
 202 THE WORKERS 
 
 I had slipped the pack from my back, and 
 carrying it in my hand I went up to a group of 
 men. One of them stood leaning against the 
 door-post. He was very tall and straight, and 
 under his wide sombrero, the upper forehead 
 was white and smooth as a girl's. The brows 
 were arched above dark-brown eyes, and his 
 nose was straight and sharply chiselled; the 
 cheeks were lean and ruddy brown ; and under 
 a light mustache was a clean - cut, shapely 
 mouth that answered in strength to a well- 
 rounded, slightly protruding chin. His hands 
 were thrust into the side-pockets of a bright 
 blanket jacket, and his dark trousers were 
 tucked into a pair of top-boots, that were laced 
 over the insteps and up the outer sides of the 
 legs. 
 
 All the men were eying me with that disturb- 
 ing look ; even the blacksmith had quit his 
 work and joined them. In the questioning si- 
 lence I summoned what courage I had, and 
 walked up to young Achilles at the cabin-door, 
 and thus addressed him : 
 
 * Is this the camp of Wolf Eun ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Is Mr. Benton here ? " [Benton is my ver- 
 sion of the superintendent's name.] 
 
 "No, he's in English Centre."
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 203 
 
 " Is the camp boss here ? " [That was a rash 
 plunge on my part, but it was successful.] 
 
 " Yes, that's him,'' and Achilles' head nodded 
 slightly in the direction of the largest cabin. 
 From the door nearest us there stepped an 
 elderly man of massive frame, bent slightly for- 
 ward, and with arms so long that the hands 
 seemed to reach to his knees. He was dressed 
 in an old suit of dark material a long-tailed 
 coat that fitted very loosely, and baggy trousers 
 and a soiled linen shirt and collar, and a black 
 ribbon necktie. His face was very set and 
 stern, not with an expression of unkindness, 
 simply the face of a man to whom life is a seri- 
 ous matter, and who means business all the 
 time. 
 
 He was evidently absorbed, and, carrying an 
 iron bar, he was about to enter the forge with no 
 least notice of any of us, when I interrupted him. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, sir, I understand that 
 you are the boss." 
 
 He stood still, and looked down upon me out 
 ol keen black eyes from under shaggy brows 
 that bristled with coarse hairs ; and in the deep- 
 ening silence, I wondered what I should say 
 next. 
 
 " I'm looking for a job, and I heard in Eng- 
 lish Centre that men were wanted here."
 
 204 THE WORKERS 
 
 "Have you ever worked in the woods?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Then you'll not get work in the woods this 
 side of hell." 
 
 He moved on at once, and the blacksmith fol- 
 lowed him into the shop. I was left standing 
 in the midst of the other men, who had listened 
 intently, and were now soberly enjoying the 
 quality of that bon mot, and were eyeing me in 
 leisurely curiosity. 
 
 Again I appealed to Achilles: 
 
 " Is there another camp near here ? " 
 
 " There's Long's Camp, a quarter of a mile up 
 the run," and a slight inclination of his head in- 
 dicated the way. 
 
 Mr. Long did not want me, and knew of no 
 one who might, if I was not wanted at Wolf 
 Run, unless, on second thought, I could get a 
 job at Fitz- Adams's Camp. 
 
 " And where is that ? " I asked. 
 
 "You remember a road which forked to the 
 left about two mile back as you came up from 
 English Centre?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Well, you follow that road about two mile 
 and a half, and you'll come to Fitz-Adams's 
 Camp." 
 
 The road was the roughest that I had so far
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 205 
 
 travelled. It cut its way along the sheer side of 
 the mountain, following the course of the run. 
 Presently I came to a small log cabin, where, in 
 a little yard beside it, a cow was munching 
 straw, and in front, a fat sow wallowed in a 
 pool in the middle of the road. An old Irish- 
 man, who sat on the door-step, told me that I 
 was not half a mile from the camp. 
 
 There was a stout log dam on the run a little 
 farther up, but the gates were open and only a 
 slender stream flowed through the muddy bot- 
 tom, for the dam was undergoing repairs. Near 
 by was a cabin large enough for a score of 
 lumbermen. 
 
 The sun had sunk behind the mountain a 
 good half hour before; not even the trees on 
 the summits were lighted up with its setting 
 rays, and the still, clear air bit you with a sud- 
 den chill. All the confidence which I had felt 
 in the morning was gone ; it was a very tired 
 and hungry, a sobered and a chastened prole- 
 taire, that at length caught sight, in the gloom, 
 of Fitz- Adams's Camp. 
 
 It stood in a clearing like the camp of Wolfs 
 Bun. On the highest area was a long, stout log 
 cabin, to which there was given an added air of 
 security by an earth embankment, which sloped 
 from the ground to the lower logs all around the
 
 206 THE WORKERS 
 
 building, as a means of preventing the air from 
 sweeping under the floors. A door was in the 
 end of the cabin nearest me, and a window was 
 cut in the boarded gable above. A wooden 
 block served as a step to the door, and near this 
 a grindstone swung in its frame. On the outer 
 walls of the cabin were tacked some half dozen 
 advertisements on tin, bidding you, in black 
 
 letters on an orange background, " Chew Cut." 
 
 Over a rough bridge that crossed the run near 
 the cabin, I could faintly see one or two other 
 smaller buildings like it, which proved to be the 
 blacksmith's shop, and the stable for the team- 
 sters' horses. The mountain-road continued its 
 course past the main cabin, and disappeared 
 among the trees in the gorge. So narrow was 
 the ravine, that the mountain rose abruptly from 
 one side of the cabin, and in much the same 
 manner from the bank of the run on the oppo- 
 site side, leaving a valley scarcely thirty yards 
 in width. The larger timber had been cut away ? 
 but the mountain-sides, all about the clearing 
 and the road, were dense with poplar, and white- 
 barked birch and chestnut, and the younger 
 growths of evergreen. 
 
 There was perfect quiet in the camp ; not a 
 living thing was to be seen or heard. I went up 
 to the nearest door, and knocked. There was no
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 207 
 
 answer. I knocked again, and still there was no 
 answer. At the"ide, far to the rear, I found an- 
 other door, and knocked there. It opened in- 
 stantly, and in the twilight I could faintly see a 
 young woman in a dark print dress. 
 
 " Is this Fitz- Adams's Camp ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Is Mr. Fitz- Adams here? " 
 
 And then in louder voice over her shoulder 
 into the darkness behind her : 
 
 " Say, Jim, here's a man that wants you." 
 
 There was the sound of heavy footsteps upon 
 the wooden floor, and in another moment Fitz- 
 Adams stood framed in the door-way. 
 
 I was standing on the ground, quite two feet 
 below, and looking up at him in that uncer- 
 tain light, he seemed to me gigantic. A great 
 muscular frame fairly filled the door. He was 
 dressed in a suit of light-gray corduroy, a flannel 
 shirt, a dark felt hat, and top-boots, and I could 
 see that he was young and not unhandsome, 
 although of a very different type of good looks 
 from those of Achilles. His large, round head 
 rested close upon a trunk that was massive yet 
 quite splendidly shapely, and highly suggestive 
 of agility and strength. His face was round, 
 and the features full and of uncertain moulding, 
 but you did not miss the evidence of strength in
 
 208 THE WORKERS 
 
 his thick, firm lips and the clear, unfaltering eyes 
 with their expression of perfect unconscious- 
 ness of self. He was plainly Irish, but quite as 
 plainly of American birth, which was clear when 
 he spoke. 
 
 " I'm looking for a job," I began, " and I've 
 come to see whether I can get one here." 
 
 "Who sent you?" 
 
 " They told me in Long's Camp that I might 
 get a job here." 
 
 " They didn't want you, and so they sent you 
 tome, eh?" 
 
 " They said that they didn't need more men 
 there." 
 
 "Oh, they did, did they? And you've worked 
 in the woods before, I suppose ? " 
 
 " No, but I have worked at other kinds of 
 work, and if you'll give me a chance you can 
 see what I can do, and then you can discharge 
 me if you don't want me." 
 
 "Well, there's lots of work in this camp, 
 Buddy. I don't guess from the cut of you and 
 the way you talk, that you know much about it. 
 But you can stay, and I'll see what's in you on 
 Monday. Look lively now, and split some of 
 that wood, and build a fire in the lobby." 
 
 A pile of dry wood which had been sawed 
 into lengths of two feet, lay near the kitchen-
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 209 
 
 door. On top of the pile was an axe ; and as 
 quickly as I could, I split up an armful, and car- 
 ried it around to the front of the cabin and into 
 the lobby. Near the centre of this room, which 
 is the loafing-place for the men, was an iron 
 stove long enough to admit the sticks which I 
 had cut. It was the work of a minute to ar- 
 range some chips in the bottom of the stove, and 
 to pile the wood loosely on top of these. I was 
 about to touch a match to the finer stuff, when 
 Fitz- Adams appeared with a tin can in his hand. 
 He bent over the stove, and opening the door 
 wide, he tossed in the contents of the can, and 
 the room was instantly full of a strong odor of 
 kerosene. 
 
 In another moment the fire was blazing like 
 mad, and roaring up the stove-pipe, and fast 
 turning the old cracked stove red hot, but Fitz- 
 Adams stood by in perfect unconcern, and pres- 
 ently departed in the direction of the kitchen. 
 
 I began to look about me in the light that 
 shone through the gleaming cracks. Swift 
 shadows were chasing one another over the walls 
 and ceiling, and I soon grew familiar with a 
 room about twelve feet deep, and which ex- 
 tended the width of the cabin. The floor was 
 bare, and was very damp with the Saturday's 
 scrubbing, as were also the benches which 
 14
 
 210 THE WOEKERS 
 
 reached all round the walls. Besides the stove, the 
 only piece of furniture that the room contained 
 was a heavy table, about four feet square, which 
 stood close to the benches in one corner, and 
 directly under the single window of the room, 
 which was a small opening in the logs, fitted 
 with four panes of glass. A rough wooden stair- 
 case led from the near corner through an open- 
 ing in the ceiling to the loft ; and a door was cut 
 through the thin board partition which sep- 
 arates the lobby from the large room in the body 
 of the cabin, where the men are fed, and where 
 I am writing now. The logs that formed the 
 outer walls of the room had been rough-hewn to 
 a plane ; and along these walls, on two sides of 
 the room, was a line of nails, on which hung 
 coats and hats and flannel shirts and overalls. 
 On the partition-wall there was nailed a small 
 mirror with a little shelf below, on which lay a 
 comb. Near this were three wooden rollers, and 
 over them as many towels, large and coarse and 
 fresh from the wash. 
 
 I found a dry spot on the bench near the 
 stove, and shoving my pack under me, I sat 
 down, facing the outer door, and awaited de- 
 velopments. 
 
 It had grown quite dark without. The young 
 woman who met me at the kitchen-door now
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 211 
 
 came in with a small oil-lamp, which she placed 
 on the shelf near the mirror. I began to think 
 that the men must all have left the camp for Sun- 
 day, and my spirits rose at the thought of an 
 easy initiation into camp life. But I was soon 
 roused from this revery by the sound of many 
 footsteps approaching the cabin, and the deep, 
 gruff voices of men. 
 
 The wooden latch lifted, the heavy door swung 
 open, and there came trooping in a crew of fif- 
 teen lumbermen, all dripping water from their 
 hair and faces and hands, for they were fresh 
 from the evening wash in the run. They went 
 first to the towels, and then formed in line for 
 their turns at the mirror, where the comb was 
 passed from hand to hand. 
 
 Fifteen pairs of wet, blinking eyes were fixed 
 on me, and I was obliged to meet each searching 
 gaze in turn. But when this ordeal was passed, 
 I began to feel a little at my ease, for the men 
 ignored me completely. The air with which they 
 turned away from the inspection seemed to say : 
 "There is something exceedingly irregular in 
 there being in the camp so abnormal a specimen 
 as this, but the way in which to treat the case, 
 at least for the present, is to let it alone." It was 
 precisely the manner of well-bred men toward, let 
 us say, some inharmonious figure in their club,
 
 212 THE WORKERS 
 
 whose presence is for the moment unaccounted 
 for. 
 
 As they finished their preparation for supper, 
 the men crowded about the stove to warm their 
 hands, chilled by the cold ablution. Chiefly 
 they talked shop about the day's work, but in 
 terms that were often unintelligible to me, and 
 the sentences were surcharged with oaths. I 
 watched them with deep personal interest, and 
 pictured myself in line, and wondered whether 
 I should ever be so fortunate as to find a clean, 
 dry section on a towel, or come early to the 
 much-used comb. 
 
 The last man had barely completed his toilet 
 when the door in the partition opened, and a 
 woman's voice announced supper. Instantly 
 there was loud shuffling of heavy boots on the 
 bare floor, and a momentary press about the 
 door, and then we were soon seated at one of 
 the two long tables in the mess-room of the 
 cabin, and there arose a clatter of hungry men 
 feeding, and the hubbub of their talk. 
 
 The meal was excellent. Its chief dish was 
 corned beef and cabbage, and there were boiled 
 potatoes and boiled beans besides, with abun- 
 dance of home-made white bread, and strong hot 
 tea. 
 
 My seat was last in the row on one side of the
 
 EST A LOGGING CAMP 213 
 
 table. The end seat was unoccupied, and my 
 nearest neighbor ignored me ; I was free to 
 satisfy a well-developed appetite, and grow more 
 familiar with my surroundings. 
 
 First of all I ate a very hearty supper. The 
 food was admirably cooked, and was served with 
 a high degree of cleanness. The oil-cloth, of 
 marble design, which covered the table was spot- 
 less, and the rude, coarse service, befitting a 
 camp, had all been thoroughly washed. It is 
 true that the men were without their coats, most 
 of them with their waistcoats off, but these are 
 men whose work is of the cleanest, and there 
 was nothing in all the setting of the supper 
 to mar a healthy appetite ; there was much, I 
 thought, that really heightened the pleasure of 
 eating. 
 
 The conversation ran on as it had begun in the 
 lobby. There was much talk about the progress 
 of the work, and gossip about neighboring 
 camps, and proposals for the disposing of Sun- 
 day ; and it struck me with swift terror that 
 the presence of the three young women, who 
 waited on the table, was no least check to pro- 
 fanity. The talk never rose to the pitch of ex- 
 citement, it was the mere give and take of ordi- 
 nary conversation, and yet there mingled in 
 it the blackest oaths. With a curse of eternal
 
 214 THE WOEKERS 
 
 perdition upon his lips, a man would speak to 
 his neighbor of some casual incident of the day, 
 and would end his sentence with a volley of 
 nameless insults and hideous blasphemies. This 
 was their common language. With no realiza- 
 tion of what they did, they flung eternal curses 
 and foul insults at one another in lightest banter. 
 
 Half an hour later we had all returned to the 
 lobby. The teamsters lit their lanterns, and 
 went to care for the horses. Some of the men 
 went up into the loft. Four had soon started a 
 game of cards at the table, while most of the 
 others filled the bench near the stove, or drew 
 empty beer-kegs and old soap-boxes from their 
 hiding, and completed the circle around the fire. 
 Everyone was smoking, and all seemed highly 
 content. 
 
 I was crowded in between a lank young fellow 
 with dark hair and eyes, and a long, lean nose, 
 who was swearing comfortably at a gawky youth 
 across the stove, and an older man, of heavier 
 build, who had fine black eyes and a black 
 mustache, a very pale complexion, and long 
 black hair that lay in pasty ringlets about his 
 face and on his neck. 
 
 Soon I came to know these two as " Long- 
 nosed Harry " and " Fred the Barber." I should 
 explain at once that the camps have a curious
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 215 
 
 nomenclature of their own. As among other 
 workingmen whom I have known, so here, only 
 a man's Christian name is used, but it is nearly 
 always accompanied with an explanatory phrase. 
 A new-comer in the camp is called " Buddy " 
 until his name is learned, and some appropriate 
 epithet is found, or until a nickname springs 
 complete from the mysterious source of those 
 appellatives. 
 
 I knew that Fred the Barber was making 
 ready to speak to me, and I was on my guard, 
 when, while the talk was running high, I heard 
 a voice close to my ear : 
 
 " Say, Buddy, you ain't a pedler, are you ? " ' 
 
 "No." 
 
 " I thought you warn't." And Fred the Bar- 
 ber settled farther down upon his seat, and 
 folded his arms, and puffed in silence on his 
 pipe, with the air of a man who finds deep sat- 
 isfaction in his own sagacity. Soon he returned 
 to the cross-examination. 
 
 " Say, Buddy, are you going to work in the 
 woods ? " 
 
 " Yes, the boss took me on this evening." 
 
 "Ain't you never worked in the woods be- 
 fore ? " His pipe was out of his mouth now, 
 and his eyes shone with a livelier interest 
 
 " No."
 
 216 THE WORKERS 
 
 "How's that?" 
 
 " Why, I'm working my way out West, and 
 my money gave out in Williamsport ; and when 
 I went looking for a job, I was told that I could 
 get work in the woods. So I came up here." 
 
 " Well, you ain't struck a soft snap, Buddy. 
 Jim the Boss is a square man, but he can beat 
 the devil at work, and he don't go easy on a new 
 hand. This is my tenth season in the woods, 
 and I earn two dollars a day right along ; but 
 I'm going to quit, it's too rough." 
 
 There was a sudden commotion just then, for 
 the outer door had opened to the touch of a 
 young woodsman, who, standing sharply defined 
 against the black night, regarded the company 
 with a radiant smile. He was the finest speci- 
 men of them all ; not much over twenty, I should 
 say, and grown to a good six feet of height, and 
 as straight as the trees among which he worked. 
 Through the covering of rough clothes you felt 
 with delight the curves of his splendid figure, 
 and the sinewy muscles in symmetrical develop- 
 ment. And then the lines of his throat and 
 neck were so clean and strong, and his face 
 charmed you with its fresh beauty, and its ex- 
 pression of frank joyousness. No wonder that 
 he was a favorite in the camp. The men were 
 rising from their seats, and the air was full of
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 217 
 
 welcome, while he stood there for a moment, his 
 teeth gleaming as he smiled, and his eyes shin- 
 ing with delight. 
 
 There rose a tumult of loud voices : 
 
 " I'm eternally lost, if it ain't Dick the Kid ! " 
 " Dickie, me boy, you God-forsaken whelp, are 
 ye drunk ? " " You ain't spent it all in two 
 days, have you, Dick ? " " Shut that lost door, 
 and sit down by this condemned fire, you ill- 
 begotten cur, and eternal torment be your lot ! " 
 "Tell us what hellish thing brings you here, 
 you blessed boy, and why ripe for endless 
 misery as you are why ain't you in Williams- 
 port?" 
 
 The smile did not fade from Dick's face, as 
 with easy deliberation he took a seat on a beer- 
 keg and looked at the crew with answering af- 
 fection in his eyes. 
 
 I'm forever lost if I've been to Williams- 
 port," he began. " And I ain't drunk a drop, 
 you perjured hell-hounds of shameless beget- 
 ting. I've got all my reprobate stuff with me 
 except the two God-condemned dollars that it's 
 cost me to live at the Temperance House in 
 English Centre, where you can get for a quar- 
 ter the best meal that any of you unveracious 
 ones, you food for unquenchable fire, ever 
 ate."
 
 218 THE WORKERS 
 
 God help us ! it was like that, only a great 
 deal worse, until the blessed stillness of the 
 night fell upon the camp. 
 
 For an hour or more Dick the Kid sat talk- 
 ing to the other men. A stranger in English 
 Centre had fired his ambition for the lumber- 
 camps in the mountains somewhere in West 
 Virginia, and Dick was freely imparting his 
 plans how he meant to beat his way to Har- 
 risburg and then to Pittsburg, and so on to his 
 destination, hoarding, the while, his savings of 
 about sixty-five dollars, as capital to launch him 
 in a new enterprise, where he was sure that 
 more money could be made than here. 
 
 The men listened in rapt attention, knowing 
 perfectly that "Williamsport was the destined end 
 of Dick's journey, and that the dram-shops there 
 and brothels would get every dollar to the last ; 
 yet charmed by his fresh enthusiasm, which 
 touched a hidden memory, or gave momentary 
 flight to some new-fledged hope that fluttered 
 in their breasts. He was so young and strong 
 and handsome, so full of life, so rich in native 
 gifts that win and hold affection with no thought 
 of effort ! One knew it from the clear, keen joy- 
 ance of the man, and the power which he had to 
 hold the others, and to draw out their hardy 
 sympathy. I could endure the sight no longer ;
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 219 
 
 I went out to the mountain-road, and waited 
 where I thought that Dick would pass. 
 
 He was startled when I stopped him, and 
 instinctively he clenched his fists. For a mo- 
 ment I had a vivid sense of my physical insig- 
 nificance, as I realized how easily, with a single 
 blow, he could smash in my countenance and 
 make swift end of me. 
 
 " I'm a new man in the camp," I began. " The 
 boss took me on this evening. I was interested 
 in what you said about going to West Virginia, 
 and I wanted to ask you more about it. Have 
 you ever been there? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " You are sure that there's a good chance for 
 a man there ? " 
 
 " It's all straight, Buddy, if that's what you 
 mean." 
 
 I told him frankly what I meant, but he was 
 still on his guard, and presently he broke in 
 abruptly with 
 
 " Say, Buddy, you're a sky-pilot, ain't you ? " 
 
 We walked on together for a mile or more, 
 and Dick grew friendly, and I lost my heart to 
 him completely. Only once Dick warmed a lit- 
 tle at a question from me. Perhaps I had no 
 right to ask it upon so slight an acquaintance ; 
 but as there was little prospect of my ever see-
 
 220 THE WORKERS 
 
 ing him again, I asked him if he felt no sense 
 of wrong in using lightly the name of the Al- 
 mighty. 
 
 I can see him now as he stood against the 
 blackness of the forest under the clear, still 
 stars, and answered me, with protest in his eyes 
 and in his voice : 
 
 " By the Eternal, Buddy, I ain't swore for a 
 month! May the Infinite consign me to the 
 tortures of all fiends, if I've swore for a month ! 
 That ? Oh, that ain't nothing ; that's the way 
 that us fellows talks. If you live in the camp 
 long enough, Buddy, you'll hear a man swear." 
 
 His face was even more attractive in its ex- 
 pression of manly seriousness when we stood 
 on the roadside at parting, and he put a firm 
 hand on my shoulder, and fixed clear eyes on 
 mine, as he told me, in his frank, open way, that 
 he wanted to make a man of himself and not be 
 a drunken sot, and that, in this new venture 
 before him, he would honestly try, and would 
 ask for help. 
 
 The men were going to bed when I got back 
 to camp. I took ray pack and followed them 
 into the loft, where I found three long rows of 
 beds, reaching nearly the length of the cabin. 
 At my knock the boss came out of his room, 
 which is a lightly boarded-in corner of the loft,
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 221 
 
 and gave me a bed next to that occupied by 
 Old Man Toler." 
 
 I had noticed Old Man Toler in the lobby as 
 being markedly older than most of the others. 
 He was about fifty-five, I thought, of slender, 
 slightly stooping figure, and with gray hair. 
 What had impressed me was his exceedingly 
 intelligent and agreeable face, and I had won- 
 dered at sight of him as being apparently an or- 
 dinary hand in the crew. He gave me a friendly 
 greeting when the boss consigned me to his care, 
 and then resumed his conversation with a neigh- 
 bor, while I made ready for bed. 
 
 The beds are simple arrangements, admirably 
 suited to the ends which they serve. A mattress 
 and a bolster stuffed with straw lie upon a rough 
 wooden frame without springs, and on top of 
 these are four or five thicknesses of coarse blank- 
 ets and tow " comforters." The men creep under 
 as many strata of bed-clothing as their individ- 
 ual tastes prompt in a given temperature. And 
 the temperature varies in the loft in nearly exact 
 conformity with its variations out of doors, for 
 the boards in the gables have sprung apart, and 
 there are rifts even between the logs, and the 
 winds sweep with much freedom from end to 
 end of our large bedroom. 
 
 I soon became interested, too, in the varying
 
 222 THE WOEKEES 
 
 tastes of the men in the manner of their dress 
 for bed. Some go so far on warmer nights as 
 to take off their boots and trousers, and even 
 their coats and waistcoats. Others stop at their 
 boots and coats ; and on the coolest nights not 
 a few go top-coated and booted to bed, and 
 make a complete toilet in the morning by putting 
 on their hats. 
 
 There was more than one surprise for me that 
 night, in the considerate, well-bred manners of 
 the men ; and the whole experience of my stay 
 in camp has only served to deepen my appre- 
 ciation. Young Arthur met, at Bugby, the fate 
 which a merely casual acquaintance with Sun- 
 day-school literature would lead one to imagine 
 as being unfailingly in store for those who pre- 
 fer to maintain their private habits in the com- 
 pany of unsympathetic associates. It will be 
 remembered that Arthur became, while kneeling 
 at his bedside on the evening of his first day at 
 school, a target for boots and unkind remarks, 
 until Tom Brown interfered. Schools have im- 
 proved since those days, and it has been grati- 
 fying to observe that a like improvement has 
 spread among workingmen, even so far as to em- 
 brace the lumber-camps. The momentary ex- 
 pectation of a boot in violent contact with one's 
 head is not a devotion-fostering emotion, and it
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 
 
 was a distinct relief to find no least objection 
 offered to a course of conduct however out of 
 keeping with the customs of the place. 
 
 There was another surprise in the comfort and 
 the wholesome cleanliness of my bed, notwith- 
 standing its roughness. But in spite of physical 
 ease, I lay awake until after midnight, and when 
 I slept at last, troubled dreams pursued me ; I 
 awoke unrested, feeling sick at heart, and little 
 inclined to further acquaintance with a lumber 
 amp. 
 
 But the morning brought a glorious day, clear 
 and much warmer than Saturday; and after a 
 late breakfast (seven o'clock) I took a book into 
 the forest, found a comfortable seat, and read 
 until nightfall, with time enough for dinner taken 
 out. 
 
 The men scattered widely soon after breakfast. 
 Many visited neighboring camps, or went shoot- 
 ing ; some walked to English Centre ; but it was 
 a perfectly sober crew that reassembled at the 
 supper-table, and a much cleaner-looking set 
 than on the night before ; for after breakfast, for 
 two hours or more, Fred the Barber had thriftily 
 plied his trade. 
 
 We all went early to bed. The men hailed 
 the day's end as bringing welcome relief in re- 
 lease from intolerable restraint. When it grew
 
 224 THE WORKERS 
 
 too dark to read, and I had returned to the cabin, 
 I found in the lobby several of the men who had 
 loafed about the camp all day. They were in 
 vicious humor. They fretted like children long 
 shut in by the rain. They could not sit still in 
 comfort, and their restlessness grew upon them 
 as they waited for supper, and the movement of 
 time was slow torture ; and so they swore at one 
 another and at the other men who were return- 
 ing to the camp, and who seemed in but little 
 better humor than themselves.
 
 CHAPTEK VII 
 
 IN A LOQOINQ CAMP (Concluded) 
 
 I slept soundly that night, and was awakened 
 in the morning by the mad clatter of an alarm- 
 clock. It was about four o'clock. I could hear 
 Fitz-Adams getting up in the little chamber 
 which serves him as a sleeping-room and an of- 
 fice. He went below, and soon had the fires 
 roaring fiercely in the kitchen and lobby ; and 
 I could hear him call to the women to get up 
 and get breakfast. Next he appeared in the 
 loft, and aroused the teamsters. In an incredi- 
 bly short time they were dressed, and had lit 
 their lanterns, and were gone to the stable to 
 feed and tend their horses. 
 
 I got up with them, and was nearly dressed, 
 when the boss reappeared in the loft. He walked 
 down between the rows of beds, laying heavy 
 hands here and there upon sleeping figures, and 
 raising his voice to the call : " Come, roll out of 
 
 this, you damn ! " There was no 
 
 ill-temper in his manner or tone ; it was simply 
 his habitual way of rousing the crew. 
 IS 226
 
 226 THE WORKERS 
 
 I was first at the run, first at the towels and 
 comb, and was sitting in warm comfort behind 
 the stove when the other men came shambling 
 from the loft, their eyes blinking in the sudden 
 light of the lobby. 
 
 We had beefsteak and potatoes and bread and 
 coffee for breakfast. As soon as he had finished 
 his meal, I went up to the boss to remind him 
 of my existence, for he had in no way noticed 
 me since Saturday night. 
 
 " You'll help the teamsters load bark, Buddy. 
 Have you got any gloves ? " 
 
 "No," I said. 
 
 "Then come this way." We went together to 
 the office, and he spread before me a number of 
 new pairs of heavy skin gloves. 
 
 "I don't know which will be best suited to 
 the work that you want me to do," I said. 
 " Won't you select a pair for me ? " 
 
 " My advice to you, Buddy, is to wear them 
 mits," and he pointed to a pair of white pig- 
 skin mittens. "They'll cost you seventy-five 
 cents, which I'll charge to your wages." 
 
 There was a cot in the office, and a writing- 
 desk, and in one corner a small stock of woods- 
 men's furnishing goods: boots, hats, overalls, 
 and blanket-jackets, besides the gloves. 
 
 The boss locked the door behind us, and told
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 227 
 
 me to follow him. He carried a lantern, and 
 lit the way to the stables. 
 
 Outside it was white and still, almost like a 
 clear, quiet night in the snows of midwinter ; 
 for a heavy frost covered everything, and in the 
 thin, unmoving air you could almost hear the 
 crackling formation of frost-crystals. Into the 
 darkness of the forest the stars shone with 
 greater glory, and Orion was just sinking be- 
 yond the western mountain. 
 
 The four or five teamsters and Old Man 
 Toler and I had gathered in front of the stable, 
 where the bark-wagons stood in the open. 
 These were strong vehicles, each with four mas- 
 sive wheels, and they supported wide-spread- 
 ing frames within which three or more cords of 
 bark could be loaded. 
 
 We "greased" the wagons by lantern-light, 
 and then " hooked up " the horses. The wagon 
 in the van was driven by " Black Bob." Fitz- 
 Adams ordered Old Man Toler and me to go 
 with that teamster and help him get on a load 
 of bark. 
 
 Black 6ob, muffled to the eyes in a long 
 ulster which was bound about his waist with a 
 piece of rope, stood erect on the loose boards 
 that formed the floor of his wagon, and gathered 
 up the reins, and then started his horses with a
 
 228 THE WORKERS 
 
 ringing oath. Old Man Toler and I followed 
 after, on foot, up a rocky road that had been 
 newly cut to a point on the mountain where 
 strips of hemlock - bark lay piled like cord- 
 wood. 
 
 Black Bob swayed to the jolting of the wagon, 
 but kept his balance with the ease of long habit, 
 and swore a running accompaniment to the tug- 
 ging of his team. He was the tallest man in 
 the camp, almost a giant in height and in pro- 
 portional development, and he owed his name 
 to his blue-black hair and swarthy complexion. 
 He was a native-born American, and, although 
 he seemed never to discriminate among the other 
 men on grounds of nationality, I thought that 
 some of them did not like him because of a cer- 
 tain domineering manner he had. 
 
 He drew up now beside a pile of bark, and 
 Toler and I placed a large stone under each 
 hind wheel to relieve the pull on the horses. 
 
 It had been growing light as we climbed the 
 mountain, and now we could see the sunlight on 
 the topmost trees across the ravine. 
 
 Toler took up a position facing the bark-pile, 
 with his back to the wagon. He began to pass 
 swiftly the pieces of bark over his head and 
 into the rigging, where Black Bob stood ready 
 to load. I followed Toler's example, imitating
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 229 
 
 his movements as closely as I could, but was 
 painfully aware of my awkwardness. 
 
 We had been but a few minutes at work when 
 the boss came driving up behind us; as he 
 turned out in order to pass, he called to me 
 to come with him, and lend a hand at load- 
 ing. 
 
 I had an uncomfortable premonition of the 
 ordeal before me ; why, I do not know, for the 
 boss had treated me civilly so far ; but I greatly 
 wished to stay in the camp, and I much feared 
 discharge. 
 
 The boss drove on for some distance, then 
 branched off on a side-road, and having passed 
 a number of bark-piles, finally turned around 
 with great difficulty, and drew up, as Black Bob 
 had done, beside a cord of bark. 
 
 I hastened to place a stone under a hind 
 wheel, and then threw off my coat, and, getting 
 in between the wagon and the pile, I began to 
 pass the bark over my head, as I had learned 
 to do from Toler. 
 
 The boss stood on the bottom of the rig, ac- 
 cepting listlessly the bark as I passed it, and 
 tossing it carelessly into place. His whole man- 
 ner was meant to convey to me the idea of my 
 own inefficiency, as though he was ready to 
 work, even anxious to get warmed up in the
 
 230 THE WORKERS 
 
 frosty air, but my part was so slowly done that 
 his own was reduced to child's play. 
 
 The storm brewed for a time in grim silence, 
 but soon it broke into angry shouts of " Faster, 
 faster, damn you ! " and then the entire gamut 
 of insults and excommunications. 
 
 I had been cursed at West Point, though in 
 terms less hard to bear ; and in expectation of 
 the worst, I thought that I had schooled myself 
 to take it philosophically when it came. But I 
 had an awful moment now, for philosophy was 
 clean gone, and in its place was a swift, mad de- 
 sire to kill ; and as the hot blood rushed to my 
 brain, and tingled in my finger-tips, all that I 
 could see for the instant were the handy stones 
 under my feet, and the close range of Fitz- 
 Adams's head. 
 
 I do not know what it was that saved me, un- 
 less it was the sight of Fitz- Adams flushed with 
 the anger into which he lashed himself, and be- 
 coming the more ludicrously impotent in his 
 rage, as I restrained my temper, and showed no 
 sign of fear. "Why he did not discharge me on 
 the spot I do not know. With awful impreca 
 tions he kept urging me to faster and yet faster 
 work. I quickened my clumsy pace to the 
 swiftest that I could maintain with efficiency, 
 and held it there, careless of his curses; and,
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 231 
 
 exhausted as I was, I yet had the satisfaction at 
 the last of noting that our load was on as quickly 
 as was Black Bob's. 
 
 And Fitz-Adams, too, found a curious balm 
 for his troubled feelings. We were at the last 
 cord, and he was cursing hard, while I panted 
 and sweated in my straining efforts to pass the 
 bark aboard. The strips were large and heavy, 
 some of them, and they all lay rough side up ; 
 and as you lifted them over your head there 
 fell upon you from each a shower of dust and 
 dirt that had gathered in the crumbling outer 
 bark. This filled your ears and hair, and found 
 its way far down your back. I had blocked the 
 wheel, but we were on a sharp descent, and the 
 load was growing heavy. Evidently Fitz-Adams 
 feared our breaking loose, and so he stopped me 
 suddenly with an order to " make fast the lock- 
 break." Now " the lock-break " conveyed the 
 dimmest notion to my mind, and the boss would 
 give no hint as to what it really was nor how it 
 was to be " made fast ; " instead, he stood and 
 watched me, while, with awkward guesses as to 
 its purpose, I succeeded in unhooking one end 
 of a heavy chain that hung under the wagon, 
 and having passed it between two spokes of a 
 hind wheel, I clumsily made fast the hook in a 
 link of the chain drawn taut
 
 232 THE WORKERS 
 
 Fitz-Adams stood, meanwhile, m speechless 
 anger, enraged beyond relief from oaths ; and 
 then the tension broke, with comical effect, in a 
 sentence which seemed to come to him as a 
 happy inspiration : 
 
 "I'm damned, Buddy, if you ain't greener 
 than a green Irishman ; greener than a green 
 Irishman." He repeated the phrase as though 
 it exactly met the case, and brought him satis- 
 faction far beyond the power of profanity ; and 
 then he shouted through the forest : 
 
 "Hey, Bob!" 
 
 "Hello!" 
 
 " This Buddy, he's greener than a green Irish- 
 man ! " and he laughed aloud, and there came an 
 answering laugh from Bob ; and the boss started 
 down the mountain with his load, the locked 
 wheel bounding and crunching among the stones, 
 while he swore to steady the horses. 
 
 That was all of the loading for the morning, 
 so Toler and I joined company. Toler had in 
 charge the cutting of roads to the bark-piles, 
 and I was to serve with him. 
 
 The piles were, some of them, in most inac- 
 cessible places. The hemlock-trees on that side 
 of the mountain had first been felled, then the 
 bark was cut round on the trunks at intervals of 
 four feet. Next the bark was peeled off and
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 233 
 
 carefully heaped near by, while the trees them- 
 selves were trimmed and then sawed into logs 
 of desired lengths, and these were " skidded " 
 into piles. From the piles, in the spring, when 
 the streams are high, the logs are sent by " skid 
 ways " into the run, and, once in the water, the 
 lumbermen use their finest skill in floating them 
 to the market at Williamsport. 
 
 In the meanwhile the bark must be got out 
 and carted to the tannery, and Toler and I had 
 our work laid out in cutting ways for the wagons. 
 
 Supplied each with an axe, a cant-hook, and 
 a grubbing-hoe, we began the work of cutting 
 through the brushwood and clearing away the 
 stumps, and laying rough bridges over the small 
 streams. 
 
 I was delighted at my good fortune in being 
 set to work under Toler. My respect for him 
 grew steadily. An experience of nearly forty 
 years as a woodsman had developed his natural 
 gifts to the point of highest skill, and he had a 
 marvellous instinct for directing a course through 
 the maze of tangled undergrowth and logs and 
 stumps which marked the ruins of the forest. I 
 was soon lost, but he turned hither and thither, 
 with the ready familiarity of a gamin to whom 
 there are no intricacies in the East End. He 
 had the inspiring air of knowing what he was
 
 234 THE WORKERS 
 
 about, and the less common possession of actual 
 knowledge, and he did his work in a masterly 
 manner. " A workman that needeth not to be 
 ashamed " constantly recurred to me as a phrase 
 which aptly fitted him. And besides being a 
 clever woodsman, Toler was clean of speech, 
 that is, comparatively clean of speech he 
 swore, but his oaths were conventional and not 
 usually of the blood-congealing kind of some of 
 the other men. 
 
 That was a long morning's work, from earliest 
 dawn until noon, and the ultimate advent of the 
 dinner-hour was hugely welcome. Toler and I 
 knocked off work at the sound of the noon whis- 
 tle at the tannery four or five miles away. Only 
 a few of us gathered at the camp. Fitz-Adams, 
 with the other teamsters, and " Sam the Book- 
 keeper," who is also the camp carpenter, and 
 Toler and I made up the number. The rest of 
 the crew were too far in the mountains to return 
 at midday, and " Tim the Blacksmith " drove off 
 in the buckboard with a hot dinner for them. 
 
 The first work of the afternoon was to help 
 the teamsters get on a second load of bark. 
 Again the boss forced me to his aid, and cursed 
 me as he had done before, only I thought that 
 he had been drinking, and there was certainly 
 an added viciousness in his oaths, and in the
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 236 
 
 threats of sudden death. But I had the conso- 
 lation now of knowing that, as soon as the load 
 was on, I should work with Toler for the rest of 
 the day. Toler did not curse ine, although it was 
 impossible for him to wholly conceal the slender 
 regard in which he held a man who never before 
 had seen a grubbing-hoe, nor a cant-hook, and 
 who handled an axe about as effectively as a girl 
 throws a stone, and to whom the woods were a 
 hopeless labyrinth. But Toler had the instincts 
 of a gentleman ; for all his want of respect for 
 a man so ignorant as I, it was clear that there 
 was not a little patient compassion in the feeling 
 which he bore me, and he was at pains to teach 
 me, and he eagerly encouraged any sign of im- 
 provement on my part. 
 
 But this time I was not done with Fitz- Adams 
 when the afternoon's load was on. Toler and I 
 soon needed a crowbar, and he sent me to fetch 
 one from the blacksmith's shop. 
 
 Near the shop there is a depression in the 
 road, and there the soil is somewhat soft. Much 
 noise was coming from that quarter; and as I 
 neared it I could see that Black Bob's wheels 
 were fast in the mud, and that the boss's load was 
 drawn close up behind and blocked. 
 
 Black Bob was on the ground beside his team, 
 his reins in hand, and with frantic oaths he was
 
 236 THE WORKERS 
 
 urging his horses to their utmost strength. Fitz* 
 Adams stood by and watched ; but at sight of 
 the weakening brutes, he quickly unbolted his 
 own whiffle-trees, and driving his team ahead, 
 made fast to the tongue of Black Bob's wagon. 
 Then both together they started up their horses, 
 lashing them with the far-reaching leather thongs 
 that swung from the short stocks which they 
 carried, and joining in a chorus of furious curses. 
 Slowly the great wheels began to rise from the 
 deep grooves in which they had settled ; but in 
 another minute, as the strength of the horses 
 failed, the wheels sunk surely back again. Fitz- 
 Adams was beside himself with rage, and at that 
 moment he caught sight of me. 
 
 " What are you doing here? " he shouted with 
 an oath. 
 
 " Toler sent me for a crowbar." 
 
 " He did, did he ? Then I'll send you to hell ! " 
 and with that he seized an axe which lay near, 
 and swinging it above his head, he rushed at me. 
 It was a menacing figure that he made, with 
 the axe held aloft by his giant arms, his eyes 
 flashing, and his nostrils dilating with the child- 
 ish passion which mastered him ; but he was as 
 harmless as a child at any show of fearlessness, 
 and there was the oddest anticlimax in his mild 
 command to " get that damn crowbar and hurry
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 237 
 
 back to Toler," which I was glad enough to do ; 
 for my part was a mere pretence of courage ; in 
 reality I felt scared out of a year's growth, and 
 my legs were trembling violently. 
 
 Through the following days there was little 
 variation for Toler and me in the programme of 
 work. We loaded bark until the teamsters were 
 off, and then cut ways to the piles. 
 
 There is, however, an incident of Tuesday 
 morning which will linger in my memory. It 
 was the fulfilment of Dick the Kid's prophecy. 
 I heard a man swear. 
 
 The boss anticipated the usual time of the 
 morning cursing, and gave me an initial one 
 that day in the dark in front of the stables, while 
 the teamsters stood by with their lanterns in 
 hand, and listened critically with sober faces, as 
 though they were determining, with a nice sense 
 of the possible, whether Fitz- Adams was doing 
 himself justice. At the last he turned to them 
 
 " Will I kill him now, or let him live one day 
 more ? " 
 
 "Let the damn dog live," came from Black 
 Bob. 
 
 " Then you'll take him," said the boss, " and 
 dray out that bark." So Black Bob and I set off 
 in company. 
 
 I was not a little perplexed by the puerility
 
 238 THE WORKERS 
 
 of Fitz- Adams's rage. It seemed singularly out 
 of keeping with the sturdy manliness of the fel- 
 low. If he wished to get rid of me, why did 
 he not discharge me ? I began to suspect that 
 the cause lay in tenderness of heart, of which he 
 was secretly ashamed. To him I was avis rara 
 in a lumber-camp. No doubt he thought me 
 some hitherto unknown species of immigrant; 
 and being too tender-hearted to assume the re- 
 sponsibility of turning me adrift, he hoped to 
 frighten me away. Black Bob soon puzzled me 
 almost as much. He was driving the dray, which 
 is a rude, low sledge, used to draw out bark from 
 points that are inaccessible to the wagons. We 
 were walking together at the side of the road, 
 and neither of us spoke. Presently Bob stopped 
 his horses to give them breath, and then he 
 turned to me. His speech was halting, and there 
 was an uncomfortable, apologetic quality in his 
 voice, but the feeling was evidently sincere. To 
 my surprise he was bidding me, with utmost 
 kindness, not to mind Fitz- Adams's curses, and 
 he added that the boss meant nothing by them, 
 that he really knew no better. It seemed to me 
 an act of truest friendliness on Black Bob's part, 
 involving charity and moral courage of high or- 
 der, and I was far more grateful than my ac- 
 knowledgment implied. It produced a comfort-
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 239 
 
 able elation, which lasted while we got on a 
 towering load of bark in silence in the earliest 
 dawn, and started for the road. We had almost 
 reached it, and the horses were pulling hard, 
 when, with the suddenness of a pistol-shot, the 
 dray came sharply against the stump of a stub- 
 born sapling that rose unseen in the way, and in 
 an instant the horses were plunging forward in 
 broken harness, and half the load was sliding 
 gently to the ground. 
 
 Black Bob brought the horses to a stand, and 
 then stood still himself. I was filled with ad- 
 miration for his self-control, for I dreamt that 
 he was making a successful effort to restrain 
 himself. In reality he was summoning all his 
 powers ; and in another moment, with face up- 
 lifted to the pale stars, he broke forth in blas- 
 phemies so hellish, that for the next full minute 
 I might have been listening to the outcries of a 
 tormented fiend, held tight in the grip of re- 
 morseless agony. 
 
 Thursday morning brought the crisis in the 
 history of my stay in camp. In the course of 
 the midday cursing of the day before, Fitz- 
 Adams told me that he was giving me my last 
 chance. I tried hard to show my fitness for the 
 place, and our load was the first to start for the 
 tannery; but to all appearances Fitz- Adams
 
 240 THE WORKERS 
 
 was not placated. I thought that the last hour 
 of my stay in camp was surely come, and with a 
 heavy heart I began to plan the next move. 
 But for some reason nothing further was said 
 to me about leaving, and Thursday morning 
 found me again helping the boss. 
 
 His mood had strangely changed ; it was very 
 early, and the skies were overcast, and in the 
 clouded twilight we could scarcely see to do our 
 work. Fitz- Adams seemed to be in no hurry ; 
 he was silent, and moved nervously. I won- 
 dered what this might portend, and braced my- 
 self for finality. It was very hard. I was 
 learning to know the men ; they ignored me 
 still, but I was sure that I understood them 
 better, and my liking for them grew each day, 
 and earnestly I wished to stay, in the hope of 
 winning a footing in the camp, and some terms 
 of fellowship with the men . 
 
 Fitz-Adams had stopped working now, and he 
 stood leaning on the rigging as he spoke to me. 
 There was a mildness in his tone and a tentative 
 expectancy, as though an uncomfortable suspicion 
 had dawned upon him, and he feared to verify it. 
 
 " Say, Buddy, have you ever been to school ? " 
 
 "Yes," I said. 
 
 There was silence for a minute, and the tone 
 in which Fitz-Adams broke it was awestruck.
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 241 
 
 " Say, Buddy, have you got a education ? " 
 
 " I've had good advantages." 
 
 And then eagerly from him : 
 
 " Major, can you figure ? " 
 
 It was my inning noAv, and I liked it, and I 
 was guilty of saying that, within narrow limits, 
 I could. 
 
 " Will you do my accounts for me, Major ? " 
 
 " I will, with pleasure." 
 
 Fitz- Adams drew a deep breath, and his voice 
 fell to a lower tone. 
 
 "Well, that'll be a good thing for me. I 
 never had no schooling, and Sam the Book- 
 keeper, he don't seem to know much more'n me. 
 I guess I lost pretty nigh on to two thousand 
 dollars on my contracts last year, on account of 
 not knowing how to figure. Say, Major, this 
 is pretty hard work for you ; you suit yourself 
 about this work, and help me with the accounts. 
 Of course, I I I didn't know " 
 
 " Oh, drop it, Fitz- Adams ! " I said. " We 
 understand each other. I'll be glad to look 
 after the accounts as long as I stay ; but it's 
 growing light now, and let's get on this load." 
 
 And so I won a place in the camp, and got 
 
 myself on human terms with the boss. Fitz- 
 
 Adams never referred to the matter again, but 
 
 treated me in a perfectly manly, straightforward 
 16 i
 
 242 THE WORKERS 
 
 way, taking patiently my clumsy work as a 
 woodsman, and accepting, as a matter of course, 
 my help with the accounts, and even consulting 
 me, at times, in certain details of the work. It 
 was one of these consultations which brought a 
 rare opportunity. 
 
 I had won my way with the boss, not by virt- 
 ue of an education, but actually upon the basis 
 of an acquaintance with elementary arithmetic. 
 When I came to look at the accounts, it was not 
 a question of book-keeping that was involved, but 
 simple addition and multiplication and division, 
 in all of which branches both Fitz- Adams and 
 Sam the Book-keeper were lamentably weak, so 
 weak, in fact, that they felt no real confidence in 
 their results. 
 
 But my way with the men was yet to make. 
 They were not uncivil, but they would none of 
 me. To them I was still an outsider, " an in- 
 harmonious figure in their club," and, whatever 
 may have been the change in my relations with 
 the boss, the men were in no way bound to rec- 
 ognize me. 
 
 One morning Fitz- Adams and I stood together 
 in his rig, as he was driving up the " corduroy 
 road " to the place on the mountain where the 
 crew were at work. Presently he pointed out to 
 me, about forty yards up the steep ascent no
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 243 
 
 our left, some long, straggling piles of bark that 
 perched there, like peasants' huts over a prec- 
 ipice in the Alps. 
 
 " I don't know how to go at that bark," he 
 said with a frown. " You can't get a wagon 
 there, nor yet a dray ; and it's so brittle that if 
 you slide it down, you'll have nothing but chips 
 to cart to the tannery, and the man that tries 
 to carry it down well, it's a three or four days' 
 job, and he'll have his neck broke sure." 
 
 I said that I would look at it. I was " piling 
 bark " now on my own account, and Toler had 
 another " Buddy," a big, bouncing Irish Hercu- 
 les, who had lately come to camp, and who soon 
 won distinction by reason of the songs he sung. 
 They were wonderful songs ; long beyond belief, 
 and they told the loves and woes of truly won- 
 derful people. 
 
 Buddy had early made known his talent, and 
 on his first evening in camp he was peremptorily 
 told to sing. It was after supper. He was sit- 
 ting, much at home, on the bench behind the 
 stove, and was smoking. Instantly he took his 
 pipe from his mouth, and cleared his throat ; 
 then, laying his hands on his knees, he sang, 
 swaying meanwhile in time with the monot- 
 onous cadences of that strange verse, which 
 went on and on and on for quite half an hour,
 
 244 THE WORKERS 
 
 while the men listened open-eyed, and punctu' 
 ated the sentiment with profane approval. 
 
 When I examined the bark-piles I found that 
 transferring them to the " corduroy road " below 
 was a matter of carrying the bark in small loads 
 on one's back, and of having a secure footing 
 for the descent. 
 
 On the next morning I took a pick and spade, 
 and first cut a series of steps to the ledge where 
 the bark lay piled. After a little practice, I 
 learned to make up a load, by selecting a broad, 
 stout slab of bark and packing the smaller 
 pieces upon it. Then stooping under the load, 
 as it lay ready on the edge of a pile, I easily 
 shifted it to my back and head ; and holding it 
 with one hand, while the other was free to help 
 maintain my balance, I carefully picked a way 
 down the steep decline. 
 
 It probably appeared a far more difficult and 
 dangerous feat than it really was ; and with a 
 load of bark upon my back, I was more than 
 ever an outlandish figure to the men, more in 
 keeping with the Konigsstuhl and the valley of 
 the Neckar than with Fitz- Adams's Camp in the 
 Alleghanies. But the actual accomplishment of 
 the work seemed to interest them, and the team- 
 sters used to stop and watch me in silence, and 
 then drive off, swearing in low tones.
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 245 
 
 One evening the whole returning crew caught 
 me at the job. The men stood still, and having 
 watched a descent, they examined the bark 
 piled high at the roadside, and then walked on, 
 commenting among themselves. That night in 
 Camp several of them spoke to me, calling me 
 " Major " after Fitz- Adams's manner. 
 
 It was the beginning of more personal acquaint- 
 ance with the men. I can but like them. In 
 the fortnight and more of my stay I cannot lay 
 claim to having got on intimate terms with 
 them. But they seem to me a truthful, high- 
 spirited, hard-working, generous set of men. 
 They swear like fiends incarnate, and when 
 they can, they drink, and they all have " rogued 
 and ranged in their time." On grounds of high 
 morality there is no possible justification for 
 them. But these are men who were born and 
 bred to vicious living ; and the wonder is not 
 that they are bad, but that in all their blasting 
 departure from the good, there yet survives in 
 them the vital power of return. 
 
 There is Old Man Toler. He is certainly an 
 exception in point of birth and earliest breeding, 
 but he has been in the lumber business more or 
 less, he tells me, since he was a boy of fourteen. 
 There was one important period taken out, when, 
 as a young man, he enlisted, and served in the
 
 246 THE WOEKEES 
 
 Army of the Potomac, from the spring of 1862 
 until the end of the Civil War. He is native- 
 born, and has the intelligent patriotism of a true 
 American. In our walks together to and from 
 our work, I delighted in his talk about the war 
 period in his life. His perspective as a private 
 soldier was so true, so thoroughly free from 
 the towering obtrusion of his own experiences. 
 These were almost lost in his absorbing inter- 
 est in the working out of great events. He knew 
 the war thoroughly from the point of view of the 
 army. He knew the service, and had borne his 
 part in hardship and in action with a distinct 
 sense of personal responsibility to the subject 
 and aim of it all. This was luminous in what 
 he said, and never from his declaration of it, but 
 in the absence of such declaration, and in the 
 loss of self in the large action of which he felt 
 himself a part. 
 
 There was much in Toler that rang true, and 
 I regretted the more that he evidently pre- 
 ferred to talk little about himself, and almost 
 never of his personal views. My wonder at his 
 being a common hand in camp grew, until one 
 day, in talking with Black Bob, I learned a rea- 
 son. Black Bob, quite of his own accord, had in- 
 stituted a series of comparisons among the men. 
 
 " There's Fitz- Adams and his brother," he
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 247 
 
 was saying, " they're about as good a pair of 
 lumbermen as you'll find. But they ain't the 
 best in this camp. There's a man here that 
 knows more about this business than any three 
 other men, and that's Old Man Toler. His 
 father was a big lumberman before him, and 
 Toler was brought up thorough to the work, 
 and he's had many a camp of his own, and made 
 lots of money in his time. But he ain't ever 
 kept none, and he never will." And Black Bob 
 winked significantly, and ostentatiously wiped 
 his mouth. 
 
 There is an "old soldier" of quite another 
 type in camp. It is Sam the Book-keeper. "Work 
 on the accounts has brought me into close rela- 
 tions with Sam. He is a large, good-humored, 
 fair-haired and ruddy-faced American, who by 
 no means shows his more than fifty years. It is 
 pathetic to watch his struggles with the lines of 
 figures, as he tries to add them up ; and the situ- 
 ation is really serious, for almost never can he 
 get the same result twice. 
 
 He and I were working one evening in the of- 
 fice, and had straightened matters out to a cer- 
 tain point. Sam was in high spirits as a result. 
 He wished to talk. There was a handy expla- 
 nation of his ignorance of figures, and he wanted 
 me to know it. He chiefly played truant from
 
 248 THE WORKERS 
 
 school, lie said, when he was a boy at home on 
 his father's farm ; and at the age of eleven he 
 ran away for good, allured by the fascination of 
 life on a canal-boat ; and ever since that time 
 he had shifted for himself. 
 
 And now Sam was fairly started in his his- 
 tory ; but the narrative leaped suddenly to his 
 career as a soldier. His war experiences in- 
 cluded the battle of Bull Bun and the capture 
 of Savannah. Sam's knowledge of campaigns 
 was not exhaustive, and his most vivid memories 
 of historic events were all of a personal nature, 
 Which is certainly not unnatural. 
 
 From his own frank statement, he seems to 
 have been among the first to leave the field at 
 Bull Bun. With another member of his com- 
 pany he reached Washington, rather worn and 
 dusty, but really none the worse for a cross- 
 country sprint. 
 
 Once in the city, they were soon hailed by an 
 acquaintance, who took them in hand with the 
 remark that " he knew just the thing for them." 
 
 They were simply to follow him to Pennsyl- 
 vania Avenue, and obey his directions. His 
 first was that they should limp, and they limped ; 
 and he led them, limping, to certain rooms on the 
 avenue, where thoughtful preparation had been 
 made for tne care of the wounded. Here they
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 249 
 
 were received with marked attention, and after 
 having been asked as to whether they were 
 "just from the front," and to which regiment 
 they belonged, they were put in the care of cer- 
 tain volunteer nurses. These ladies, with their 
 own hands, bared the soldiers' feet, and washed 
 them, and then dressed them in clean socks and 
 comfortable slippers, which the men were to 
 wear until quite well again. At this refuge Sam 
 and his companion, and many another soldier 
 " from the front," were given bed and board as 
 long as they found it convenient to remain. 
 
 With cheerful appreciation of the humor of 
 it, Sam described the labored way in which his 
 partner and he would limp down the avenue 
 each morning, until they had turned a corner ; 
 and then, instantly restored to perfect sound- 
 ness, they would make for the nearest saloon. 
 They played this game until their cash was 
 gone ; then they felt compelled to rejoin their 
 regiment, which was encamped near Arlington. 
 
 That was the beginning of Sam's career as a 
 soldier. It ended at Savannah. After the capt- 
 ure of the city, and as General Sherman's army 
 was setting out on the march to Richmond, Sam 
 found himself one of a squad ordered to remain 
 behind, for the purpose of assisting the United 
 States Excise Officers.
 
 260 THE WORKEKS 
 
 The men had quarters in a large stone build- 
 ing, which was given over entirely to their use. 
 The work was much to their taste. Every day 
 they shrewdly searched the city for contraband 
 liquor, and not infrequently they unearthed a 
 den where kegs of whiskey were concealed. 
 Some of these they always smuggled to their 
 own quarters, and the rest they handed over to 
 the excise officers. Orgies that were fired with 
 unf ailing rum consumed the greater part of every 
 night, and formed an epoch in Sam's history 
 upon which he reflects with lasting satisfaction. 
 
 Most of the men in camp are younger than 
 Old Man Toler and Sam the Book-keeper, and of 
 the younger set I have made the acquaintance 
 of "Long-nosed Harry." Harry is barely thirty 
 and already a man of considerable experience. 
 When fairly started, he can tell capital tales of 
 how he has " beat his way " on long journeys 
 through the country, and of narrow escapes from 
 the "cops," and of other occasions when he has 
 not escaped. Wherever in this country the rail- 
 ways have penetrated, Harry seems to have gone, 
 and he has gathered on his wanderings a fund 
 of curious information, as though there were a 
 nether side of things, and he had grown familiar 
 with that in contrast with the surface that is ex- 
 posed to the eye of the ordinary traveller.
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 261 
 
 Harry's face confirms his account of a career 
 not unfamiliar with the police. A long thin face 
 it is, with small dark eyes set close together, a 
 narrow, thin-lipped mouth, a receding chin, and 
 an abnormally long nose, which has gained noth- 
 ing in point of beauty by having been broken in 
 a fight with a negro at Atlantic City. 
 
 He is of glib speech, and he has at command 
 a long repertory of songs of the vaudeville va- 
 riety, and this enhances his standing among the 
 men. Besides, Harry can read aloud, as I 
 learned one day when a stray newspaper found 
 its way into the camp. He read with a certain 
 swift readiness that held your interest, and you 
 soon grew excited in an effort to recognize old 
 acquaintances in the strangely accented longer 
 words, which were plainly unintelligible to Harry 
 and his hearers, while yet the general sense of 
 what was read was obviously clear. 
 
 Harry and I sat talking together one Sunday 
 evening. We had a corner of the lobby to 
 ourselves. Suddenly, without apparent con- 
 nection with what we had been saying, he gave 
 me one of those rare confidences which reveal, 
 as by a flash of supernatural light, the very heart 
 of a man's life, and then leave you awed and 
 speechless, in the presence of eternal verities. 
 
 It was a fragment of personal history, very
 
 252 THE WORKERS 
 
 short, and it was told with the directness and 
 simplicity of truth itself. He had been married 
 six years before. His wife was a delicate girl 
 who lived for only two years after Harry married 
 her. He was a brakeman on a freight-train then. 
 He used to look forward to his " off-day " with 
 a feeling, he said, that "made life worth living." 
 And they were convenient, too, those " off-days " ; 
 for in them he did the washing, and the scrub- 
 bing, and whatever else of accumulated house- 
 work he could spare his wife. But she died. 
 And there was nothing more in life for Harry ; 
 so he drifted back into the old way, the way of 
 all the men, a life of alternate work and de- 
 bauch. 
 
 " Karl the Swede " is the only Scandinavian in 
 the crew, which, like the other gangs of work- 
 men which I have known, is exceedingly hetero- 
 geneous in character. There is nothing remark- 
 able about Karl. He is a fair-haired, blue-eyed, 
 stocky youth of one-and-twenty, and as hard- 
 drinking, hard-working a woodsman as any of 
 them. But Karl happens to be the only man 
 who, during my stay in camp, has met with an 
 accident. It was yesterday morning. The men 
 were trimming logs, and " skidding " them at a 
 point on the mountain a mile or more from camp,
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 253 
 
 and I was piling bark not far from the " skid- 
 ways." At a little before noon I heard the buck- 
 board go jolting over the bowlders on the moun- 
 tain-road ; and a few minutes later there rang 
 through the forest Fitz- Adams's call to dinner. 
 
 I set out for the nearest skid-way, where the 
 men were gathering, when suddenly I came upon 
 Karl lying at length in a clump of myrtle, with 
 one foot extended upon a rock, and bare, except 
 for a woollen sock that was bound tightly around 
 the instep. What had happened was clear in an 
 instant. The sock was saturated with blood, 
 and a dark, clotted stream stained the foot, and 
 a pool of blood had formed on the surface of the 
 rock. I sat down beside him, and Karl first 
 showed me in his boot a clean cut three inches 
 long, where the axe-blade had entered. Then he 
 unrapped the sock, and lifting from the wound a 
 quid of pulpy tobacco, he exposed a gash where 
 the skin and shallow flesh lay open to the bone. 
 The flow of blood had nearly ceased, for the to- 
 bacco had acted as a styptic ; and Karl quickly 
 reapplied it, and again bound the wound tightly 
 with his sock. 
 
 All the while he acted in a perfectly imper- 
 sonal manner, as though he were in no way di- 
 rectly concerned in the accident, which was 
 simply a phenomenon of common interest to us
 
 254 THE WOEKEES 
 
 both. He betrayed no trace of suffering nor even 
 of annoyance at the discomfort of the mishap ; 
 and soon he began to speak of it, in his broken 
 English, with like impersonality. 
 
 "Fitz-Adams, you know, would take him to 
 camp in the buckboard after dinner, and would 
 see that he got safe to English Centre, where 
 the doctor would dress the wound. That would 
 do very well until he reached Williamsport ; but 
 he must go to Williamsport, and that was the 
 worst of it ; for it would be several weeks before 
 he could get back to camp, and then, between 
 drunks and the doctor's bills, his savings would 
 be all gone." 
 
 This taken-for-granted attitude toward riot- 
 ous living is strikingly characteristic. I have 
 noticed it repeatedly among the men. They 
 speak of past and prospective debauches with the 
 naivete of callow undergraduates, except that 
 among the lumbermen there is no sense of 
 credit or distinction attaching to vice; it is 
 simply inherent in the order of things. This is 
 by no means a professed creed. Profession, when 
 there is any, is all in the other direction, and is 
 of the nature of the " homage that vice pays to 
 virtue." It is simply in the natural and unpre- 
 meditated speech and action of the men that you 
 detect this attitude of mind.
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 255 
 
 The time spent at the camp is, in one aspect 
 of it, a course of training, a cumulative storage 
 of energy, financial and physical, against a future 
 expenditure in the sudden outburst of a grand 
 carouse. 
 
 It has been interesting to notice what have 
 appeared to be the instinctive precautions of the 
 men. There seems to be an established custom 
 of great strength that prohibits the keeping of 
 spirits in camp. And gambling is strangely in- 
 frequent. I have heard hints of memorable 
 epochs, when, like an epidemic, gambling has 
 swept the camp with fearful force, and there is 
 a wholesome fear of its return. I was struck 
 with this one night, when, without apparent 
 warning, the customary " High, Low, Jack and 
 the Game" gave place to poker, and an excited 
 crowd stood round the table and watched ; and 
 Fitz- Adams had to go up to the office to bring 
 down wages due to the players. But the out- 
 break spent itself without becoming epidemic 
 this time, and you could feel the relief among the 
 men when " Phil the Farmer " and " Irish Mike " 
 agreed to stand their loss of about ten dollars 
 each, and not continue the game. 
 
 " High, Low, Jack " is invariable after sup- 
 per, and lends itself with singular sociability to 
 the pleasure of the men. There is but one
 
 256 THE WORKERS 
 
 pack of cards, and only one table in the lobby. 
 A four-handed game is begun immediately after 
 supper, the opposite men playing partners. A 
 game is not long; and at its end the beaten 
 partners give place to a new pair, and this 
 course continues until all the members of the 
 crew have had a hand. 
 
 In looking over this chapter I see that I have 
 drawn a very inadequate picture of Fitz- Adams. 
 A hard swearer he certainly is, but Black Bob 
 was right in assuring me that there is more ig- 
 norance than malice in his habitual maledic- 
 tions. 
 
 First of all, Fitz- Adams is an admirable work- 
 man. To any department of the work of lum- 
 bermen he can lend a hand of highest efficiency. 
 And his, in a marked degree, are the manual 
 skill and resourceful ingenuity which are char- 
 acteristic of the men. Only Fitz- Adams is ex- 
 ceptional in these particulars, like Old Man Tol- 
 er. With them this manual skill, for instance, 
 is like the sure touch of a master handicrafts- 
 man. 
 
 One morning, while at work with Old Man 
 Toler, I openly admired his handling of an axe. 
 Toler was standing on a log which obstructed
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 267 
 
 our way, and which he was about to cut in two. 
 He drew the axe-blade up the side of the log 
 between his feet. " Do you see that scratch ? " 
 he said, and then he swung the axe above his 
 head, and brought it down with a sweeping 
 stroke. The blade entered the bark exactly 
 where the scratch had been. Five times run- 
 ning, Toler performed this feat, never missing 
 his mark by the fraction of an inch, and then he 
 turned to me. " I've used an axe so long, Bud- 
 dy," he said, " that I can split hairs with a good 
 one now." 
 
 But even more than a thorough woodsman, 
 Fitz-Adams is a superb overseer. Under his 
 shrewd foresight and direction, the whole work 
 of the crew is urged forward with resistless 
 energy. He knows exactly what each man is 
 doing, and whether or not the work is well 
 done. 
 
 His planning of the work and his effective or- 
 ganizing and directing toward its accomplish- 
 ment are, no doubt, his strongest points ; but 
 dramatically considered, although he is perfect- 
 ly unconscious of the effect, he shows to great- 
 est advantage when he is personally leading the 
 crew in an attack upon a difficult situation. All 
 his powers are well in evidence then, and not 
 least of all his power of speech. You have 
 17
 
 258 THE WORKERS 
 
 actual sight at such times of one of Carlyle's 
 heroes, a " captain of industry," to whom there 
 are no insurmountable difficulties, no "im- 
 possibilities," but who brings order out of 
 chaos, by the sheer force of indomitable en- 
 ergy. 
 
 With this high efficiency his ignorance is in 
 striking contrast. He can write his name, and 
 there his educational equipment ends. His help- 
 lessness in the presence of figures is as pathetic 
 and quite as serious as is Sam the Book-keeper's. 
 But Fitz- Adams is a young man, barely thirty, I 
 should say. Almost his earliest memory is that 
 of being a mule-driver in one of the mines near 
 "Wilkesbarre. From this he went to picking 
 slate in a breaker. Now he is a jobber, employ- 
 ing a large crew, and undertaking contracts 
 which involve considerable sums of money. 
 There has been offered to him, and it is still 
 open, the position of overseer in a far larger 
 enterprise than his own, where, personally, he 
 would run none of the business risk ; but he has 
 confided to me that he does not dare to accept 
 the place owing to his lack of even elementary 
 education. In this connection he once asked 
 me whether I thought that he might yet go to 
 school. I did think so with emphasis, and I 
 gave hi so many reasons for this opinion, and
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 259 
 
 cited so many examples of men as old as he and 
 older who were at school, that he really warmed 
 to it as a practicable plan. 
 
 The rain stopped hours ago, and it is turning 
 very cold, and snow has begun to fall. Fitz- 
 Adams got back from English Centre long be- 
 fore dinner, and there is evidence that he has 
 not been drinking. I have consulted him on 
 the matter of leaving, and he has urged me to 
 stay, and has offered me permanent employ- 
 ment ; but he says that, if I must be off, and 
 am bent on going westward, I would better get 
 as far as Hoytville as soon as possible, else I 
 may run the risk of encountering roads blocked 
 with snow. Then, for the first time, he intro- 
 duced the subject of wages, and asked me what 
 I thought was " right." I said that before com- 
 ing to the camp, I had worked for a farmer, and 
 had been given seventy-five cents a day and my 
 keep; and I added that, if this rate of wage 
 seemed fair to him, it would suit me perfectly. 
 He agreed at once, and now I am a capitalist. 
 Soon I shall set out for Hoytville, which is, I 
 judge, a matter of two or three hours' walk from 
 here. Fitz-Adams has given me careful direc- 
 tions about the road, and has shown the deep-
 
 260 THE WORKERS 
 
 est interest in my plan of getting West, and has 
 urged me to write to him. 
 
 The crew are all gone to work, and I shall not 
 see them. They were off as soon as the storm 
 slackened. All were keen to go, and so be 
 spared the misery of a day of enforced idleness, 
 all except " Old Pete," and he is past being keen. 
 He is over sixty, and has a strongly marked Cel- 
 tic face, deeply furrowed with the lines of age 
 and pain. He works with the crew, but in camp 
 he sits alone on the bench opposite the stove, 
 with the overalls and shirts hanging over him. 
 When not at work he sits there hour after hour, 
 his large, muscular frame bent forward, and his 
 elbows resting on his knees, and there he en- 
 dures, in the dumb agony of animal pain, the 
 torment of rheumatism in his legs. He seldom 
 speaks, and never of his sufferings only some- 
 times in comically sententious response to some- 
 thing that has interested him. And the men let 
 him alone, knowing by a true intuition that he 
 prefers it so. 
 
 After the rain let up I happened to pass 
 through the lobby as the men were starting for 
 their work. Old Pete was the last to move. I 
 watched him rising slowly to his feet. In spite 
 of him, his face drew the picture of the hideous 
 pain he bore, but through it shone the clear
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 261 
 
 courage of a man, and his eyes reflected the grim 
 humor of a thought that touched his native p wise, 
 and he smiled as he said : 
 
 " We don't have to work ; we can starve." 
 
 I have spent three Sundays in the woods. On 
 the first I fled cravenly into the forest, hugging 
 a book from out my pack, and the hours flew 
 swiftly along the pages. The second Sunday 
 was another glorious autumn day. By that time 
 I had won a modest place in camp, and could 
 hold up my head with due respect among the 
 men. I asked several of them whether there 
 was any church service at English Centre. They 
 thought that there was, but they would take no 
 stock at all in my plan of discovery. 
 
 Alone I set out for the village. There was 
 perfect quiet in the mountains, no sound of axe 
 or saw, nor crash of falling trees, nor rumble of 
 bark-wagons ; only the tuneful flow and splash 
 of the run, which caught the living sunlight, and 
 flashed it back in radiance through the flushing 
 air, that quivered in the ecstasy of buoyant life. 
 The fire of life flamed in the glowing hues of 
 autumn, and burned with white heat in the hoar- 
 frost which clung to the shaded crevices in the 
 rocks, and along the blades of seared grass, and 
 on the fringe of fallen leaves. And I was free,
 
 262 THE WORKERS 
 
 as free and careless as the mountain-stream, and 
 before me was a blessed day of rest ! 
 
 Every foot of the road was strangely familiar, 
 but the familiarity lay in an intimate association 
 with some distant past, as of earliest childhood. 
 There was the camp by the dam, and there the 
 Irishman's cabin, where the cow was still munch- 
 ing straw, and the sow wallowing in the mire. 
 Then I came to the fork in the road, where one 
 way led to Wolf' Run. It was a lifetime since 
 I had gone up that way, feeling as cocky as a 
 wedding-guest, and soon had come down again 
 " a sadder and a wiser man." I felt like another 
 Rip Van Winkle as I re-entered the village, but 
 the marvel lay in there being no change at all, 
 except in the Sunday calm which now possessed 
 the place. 
 
 The post-office is in a private house, and I 
 knocked in some uncertainty of being able to 
 get my letters ; but the postmistress gave them 
 to me with obliging readiness, and with them a 
 cordial invitation to attend the Sunday-school, 
 which, she said, was the only service of that 
 morning. Her invitation was more welcome 
 than she knew, for it was the first of its kind to 
 reach me as a proletaire. 
 
 I read my letters, and then went to the church, 
 which stands at the end of the village street.
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 263 
 
 The service was beginning. As superintendent 
 the postmistress was in charge. There were 
 no men present. About thirty women and girls, 
 and half a dozen boys, made up the school. The 
 conduct of the service I thought intensely in- 
 teresting. The superintendent was entirely at 
 home in her place, and she valued the oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 When the classes grouped themselves for the 
 study of the lesson, a teacher was lacking. I 
 was asked to take the place, and was startled at 
 finding myself in charge of a class of village 
 belles. What their feeling toward the arrange- 
 ment was, I could only guess ; but it was clear 
 that they were not accustomed to being taught 
 by an unshaven, unshorn woodsman, in rough 
 clothes, and boots covered with patches. But 
 the lesson was in my favor ; it was the incident 
 of the washing of the disciples' feet at the last 
 Passover. I soon forgot my embarrassment in 
 the interest of the text, and in an atmosphere of 
 serious study. 
 
 Last Sunday I went again to the Sunday- 
 school, and I had my former class to teach. 
 Some preparation had been possible during the 
 week, and the hour passed successfully. Among 
 the announcements was one of a prayer-meeting 
 to be held that night.
 
 264 THE WORKERS 
 
 i 
 
 I reached the church at the hour of the eve- 
 ning service. I opened the door, and there sat 
 a crowded congregation in waiting. The back 
 seats on both sides of the aisle were solid ranks 
 of men, lumbermen, and teamsters, and tannery 
 hands, many of them in their working-clothes. 
 There were women and children scattered 
 through the pews farther up, and some boys 
 had overflowed upon the pulpit steps, but most 
 of the company were men. 
 
 There was no one in the minister's seat, but 
 the postmistress was in place at the organ, and 
 as I entered, she nodded to me in evident ex- 
 pectation of my joining her. I walked for- 
 ward, and she stepped out into the aisle to meet 
 N me. 
 
 " It's time to begin," she said, quietly. 
 
 " Is your minister not come yet ? " I asked. 
 
 "Oh, you're going to speak to-night, you 
 know." 
 
 I did not know. For an instant I knew only 
 that there was a cold, hard grip upon my heart 
 which seemed to hold it still, and that in my 
 brain there had begun a mad dance of all that I 
 ever thought I knew. But from out the tur- 
 moil a sane thought emerged : " This is a com- 
 pany of working-people who are come to hear a 
 fellow-workman speak to them about our deep
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 266 
 
 est needs." In another moment I was cooler, 
 and a strange, unreasoning peace ensued. 
 
 I asked the postmistress to select some hymns. 
 She handed me a list, chosen with perfect knowl- 
 edge of those which the congregation most en- 
 joyed. The people were soon singing, thinly at 
 first ; but the familiar melody spread, and carried 
 with it a sense of solidarity, in which self was 
 merged and lost, and the swelling sound rolled 
 on, deepening with the voices of the men. Soon 
 it recalled college-chapel, with the students in a 
 mood to sing, and " Ein' Feste Burg" mounting 
 in the majesty of that deep-toned hymn, until 
 the vaulted ceilings rock, and the archangels 
 above the chancel seem to join in the splendid 
 volume of high praise ! 
 
 But more helpful to me than the singing was 
 the sight of familiar faces. Black Bob stood 
 towering like another Saul above the mass of 
 men ; and at his side was one of our teamsters 
 who lives in the village, and with whom I had 
 often loaded bark. Near the door I was not 
 quite sure at first, but there could be no mis- 
 take near the door was Fitz-Adams, and not 
 far from him Long-nosed Harry and Phil the 
 Farmer stood together. 
 
 I was trembling when I began to speak, trem- 
 bling with awful fear, a fear that was yet a sol-
 
 266 THE WORKERS 
 
 emn joy; for I had vision then of human hearts 
 hungering to be fed, and, as a sharer in their 
 need, I knew that it was given to me to point 
 them to the Bread of Life. 
 
 I could speak to them now, for with greater 
 clearness I could see these fellow-workers as 
 they were strong, brave men who win the mas- 
 tery which comes to those who clear the way for 
 progress, giving play, in their natural living, to 
 the forces which make men free, and growing 
 strong in heart and in the will to do, as they 
 grow strong of arm and catch the rough cunning 
 of their trade ; men of many races, yet meeting 
 on the common ground of men all free and un- 
 der equal chance to make their way ; knowing 
 no differences but those of personality, and win- 
 ning their places in the crew, each man accord- 
 ing to his kind, and his rewards according to his 
 skill. 
 
 Such were they in their outward lives, the 
 physical life within them growing in living ways, 
 and making them the true, efficient workmen 
 that they were. But of the inner life that makes 
 us men, that life wherein we act from choice, 
 and must " give account of the deeds done in 
 the body," that range of action which we call 
 moral, where conscience speaks to us in words 
 of command, there they knew no mastery at
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 267 
 
 all, and, least of all, the mastery of the moral- 
 ist. 
 
 To them God was a moral ruler, dwelling 
 afar from the daily life of men, and righteous- 
 ness was a slavish obedience to His laws, and 
 religion a mystic somewhat which was good for 
 women and children and weak men. 
 
 And yet deep in their own hearts was their 
 supremest need. Life as they knew it brought 
 to them no satisfaction for its craving want. It 
 was not so in other things; they knew their 
 work ; and in the overcoming of its difficulties, 
 they had felt the fierce joy of conquest. But 
 confronted with temptations, the difficulties of 
 their inner life, there they had no strength ; and 
 lust and passion mastered them, and left their 
 real desire unsatisfied. Here, in respect of 
 mastery, they were slaves, and as regards life, 
 they were dead, having only the need of life. 
 
 There, then, was their want ; it was for Life, 
 abundant, victorious Life. 
 
 And now I could speak to them of God ; of 
 Him " who is not far from every one of us, for 
 in Him we live, and move, and have our being ; " 
 the living God who reveals Himself in all life, 
 and who became incarnate in the Son of Man, 
 and who speaks to us in human words which go 
 straight to our seeking hearts : " I am the way,
 
 268 THE WORKERS 
 
 the truth, and the life." " I am come that ye 
 might have life, and that ye might have it more 
 abundantly." "The words that I speak unto 
 you, they are life." 
 
 "Strong Son of God!" whose living words 
 quicken us from the death of sin and set us free. 
 By whose grace we are " renewed in the whole man 
 after His image, and enabled, more and more, to 
 die unto sin and live unto righteousness." Who 
 was " made sin for us, who knew no sin ; that 
 we might be made the righteousness of God in 
 Him." " Who His own self bare our sins in His 
 own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sin, 
 should live unto righteousness." Whose death 
 was not a reconcilement of God to us, but was 
 " God in Christ reconciling the world unto Him- 
 self." Whose Gospel is the glad tidings of this 
 reconciliation, and we are become " ambassadors 
 for Christ, as though God did beseech you by 
 us ; we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye recon- 
 ciled to God." 
 
 And then we prayed, confessing our sinful 
 state, our bondage, our death in sin, and plead- 
 ing that we might be " transformed by the re- 
 newing of our minds, that we might prove what 
 is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will o2 
 God."
 
 IN A LOGGING CAMP 269 
 
 Now that I am on the eve of leaving Fitz- 
 Adams's Camp, I cannot hide from myself my 
 eagerness to go. I have real regrets ; for while 
 two weeks and as many days do not constitute a 
 long period, yet time is purely relative, and I 
 shall have a livelier memory of the camp and of 
 certain of the men, and a keener interest in 
 them, than I have for places and men with whom 
 my association has been much longer. 
 
 But of the feelings of which I am conscious 
 at leaving, I am surprised at the intensity of the 
 longing to know what has happened during the 
 three weeks, nearly, since I have seen a news- 
 paper from the great world. I thought little of it 
 as the days passed, but now I am all aglow with 
 desire for news about the progress of the cam- 
 paigns in New York and Massachusetts and Ohio. 
 And then the last word from abroad had piqued 
 one's curiosity to the utmost as to possible re- 
 sults. Mr. Smith, the leader of the House of 
 Commons, I know is dead ; and as I was leav- 
 ing Williamsport for the woods, I saw upon the 
 bulletin -boards the announcement of Mr. Par- 
 nell's sudden death ; but of the political effect of 
 these events no word has reached me. Has 
 Mr. Balfour or Mr. Goschen succeeded to the 
 leadership of the House ? And if Mr. Balfour 
 became the First Lord of the Treasury, does
 
 270 THE WORKERS 
 
 he retain the Chief Secretaryship for Ireland? 
 And has the death of Mr. Parnell brought about 
 a reunion between Parnellites and M'Carthyites, 
 or is the breach as hopeless as ever ? 
 
 It will be intensely interesting to find answers 
 to these questions and to many more ; but after 
 all I am sincerely sorry to leave the camp, and 
 as I go up now to say good-by to Fitz- Adams, 
 who is in his office, it is with the knowledge that 
 I am parting from a man whom it is an inspira- 
 tion to have known.
 
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