That night Ruth and I had a talk about the boy. We both came back from our walk, with him more on our minds than anything else. He had been interested in everything and had asked about a thousand questions and gone to bed eager to be out on the street again the next day. We knew we couldn't keep him cooped up in the flat all the time and of course both Ruth and I were going to be too busy to go out with him every time he went. As for letting him run loose around these streets with nothing to do, that would be sheer foolhardiness. It was too late in the season to enroll him in the public schools and even that would have left him idle during the long summer months.
We talked some at first of sending him off into the country to a farm. There were two or three families back where Ruth had lived who might be willing to take him for three orfour dollars a week and we had the money left over from the sale of our household goods to cover that. But this would mean the sacrifice of our emergency fund which we wished to preserve more for the boy's sake than our own and it would mean leaving Ruth very much alone.
"I'll do it, Billy," she said bravely, "but can't we wait a day or two before deciding? And I think I canmaketime to get out with him. I'll get up earlier in the morning and I'll leave my work at night until after he's gone to bed."
So she would. She'd have worked all night to keep him at home and then gone out with him all day if it had been possible. I saw it would be dragging the heart out of her to send the boy away and made up my mind right then and there that some other solution must be found for the problem. Good Lord, after I'd led her down here the least I could do was to let her keep the one. And to tell the truth I found my own heart sink at the suggestion.
"What do the boys round here do in the summer?" she asked.
I didn't know and I made up my mind to find out. The next day I went down to a settlement house which I remembered passing atsome time or other. I didn't know what it was but it sounded like some sort of philanthropic enterprise for the neighborhood and if so they ought to be able to answer my questions there. The outside of the building was not particularly attractive but upon entering I was pleasantly surprised at the air of cleanliness and comfort which prevailed. There were a number of small boys around and in one room I saw them reading and playing checkers. I sought out the secretary and found him a pleasant young fellow though with something of the professional pleasantness which men in this work seem to acquire. He smiled too much and held my hand a bit too long to suit me. He took me into his office and offered me a chair. I told him briefly that I had just moved down here and had a boy of ten whom I wished to keep off the streets and keep occupied. I asked him what the boys around here did during the summer.
"Most of them work," he answered.
I hadn't thought of this.
"What do they do?"
"A good many sell papers, some of them serve as errand boys and others help their parents."
Dick was certainly too inexperienced for the first two jobs and there was nothing in my work he could do to help. Then the man began to ask me questions. He was evidently struck by the fact that I didn't seem to be in place here. I answered briefly that I had been a clerk all my life, had lost my position and was now a common day laborer. The boy, I explained, was not yet used to his life down here and I wanted to keep him occupied until he got his strength.
"You're right," he answered. "Why don't you bring him in here?"
"What would he do here?"
"It's a good loafing place for him and we have some evening classes."
"I want him at home nights," I answered.
"The Y.M.C.A. has summer classes which begin a little later on. Why don't you put him into some of those?"
I had always heard of the Y.M.C.A., but I had never got into touch with it, for I thought it was purely a religious organization. But that proposition sounded good. I'd passed the building a thousand times but had never been inside. I thanked him and started to leave.
"I hope this won't be your last visit," he said cordially. "Come down and see what we're doing. You'll find a lot of boys here at night."
"Thanks," I answered.
I went direct to the Y.M.C.A. building. Here again I was surprised to find a most attractive interior. It looked like the inside of a prosperous club house. I don't know what I expected but I wouldn't have been startled if I'd found a hall filled with wooden settees and a prayer meeting going on. I had a lot of such preconceived notions knocked out of my head in the next few years.
In response to my questions I received replies that made me feel I'd strayed by mistake into some university. For that matter itwasa university. There was nothing from the primary class in English to a professional education in the law that a man couldn't acquire here for a sum that was astonishingly small. The most of the classes cost nothing after payment of the membership fee of ten dollars. The instructors were, many of them, the same men who gave similar courses at a neighboring college. Not only that, but the hours were so arranged as to accommodate workers of all classes. If you couldn't attend in thedaytime, you could at night. I was astonished to think that this opportunity had always been at my hand and I had never suspected it. In the ten years before I was married I could have qualified as a lawyer or almost anything else.
This was not all; a young man took me over the building and showed me the library, the reading-room, rooms where the young men gathered for games, and then down stairs to the well equipped gymnasium with its shower baths. Here a boy could take a regular course in gymnasium work under a skilled instructor or if he showed any skill devote himself to such sports as basketball, running, baseball or swimming. In addition to these advantages amusements were provided through the year in the form of lectures, amateur shows and music. In the summer, special opportunities were offered for out-door sports. Moreover the Association managed summer camps where for a nominal fee the boys could enjoy the life of the woods. A boy must be poor indeed who could not afford most of these opportunities. And if he was out of work the employment bureau conducted here would help him to a position. I came back to the mainoffice wondering still more how in the world I'd ever missed such chances all these years. It was a question I asked myself many times during the next few months. And the answer seemed to lie in the dead level of that other life. We never lifted our eyes; we never looked around us. If we were hard pressed either we accepted our lot resignedly or cursed our luck, and let it go at that. These opportunities were for a class which had no lot and didn't know the meaning of luck. The others could have had them, too—can have them—for the taking, but neither by education nor temperament are they qualified to do so. There's a good field for missionary work there for someone.
Before I came out of the building I had enrolled Dick as a member and picked out for him a summer course in English in which he was a bit backward. I also determined to start him in some regular gymnasium work. He needed hardening up.
I came home and announced my success to Ruth and she was delighted. I suspected by the look in her eyes that she had been worrying all day for fear there would be no alternative but to send the boy off.
"I knew you would find a way," she said excitedly.
"I wish I'd found it twenty years ago," I said regretfully. "Then you'd have a lawyer for a husband instead of a—."
"Hush," she answered putting her hand over my mouth. "I've a man for a husband and that's all I care about."
The way she said it made me feel that after all being a man was what counted and that if I could live up to that day by day, no matter what happened, then I could be well satisfied. I guess the city directory was right when before now it couldn't define me any more definitely than, "clerk." And there is about as much man in a clerk as in a valet. They are both shadows.
The boy fell in with my plans eagerly, for the gymnasium work made him forget the study part of the programme. The next day I took him up there and saw him introduced to the various department heads. I paid his membership fee and they gave him a card which made him feel like a real club man. I tell you it took a weight off my mind.
On the Monday following our arrival in our new quarters, I rose at five-thirty, put on myoveralls and had breakfast. I ate a large bowl of oatmeal, a generous supply of flapjacks, made of some milk that had soured, sprinkled with molasses, and a cup of hot black coffee—the last of a can we had brought down with us among the left-over kitchen supplies.
For lunch Ruth had packed my box with cold cream-of-tartar biscuit, well buttered, a bit of cheese, a little bowl of rice pudding, two hard-boiled eggs and a pint bottle of cold coffee. I kissed her goodby and started out on foot for the street where I was to take up my work. The foreman demanded my name, registered me, told me where to find a shovel and assigned me to a gang under another foreman. At seven o'clock I took my place with a dozen Italians and began to shovel. My muscles were decidedly flabby, and by noon I began to find it hard work. I was glad to stop and eat my lunch. I couldn't remember a meal in five years that tasted as good as that did. My companions watched me curiously—perhaps a bit suspiciously—but they chattered in a foreign tongue among themselves and rather shied away from me. On that first day I made up my mind to one thing—I would learn Italian before the year wasdone, and know something more about these people and their ways. They were the key to the contractor's problem and it would pay a man to know how to handle them. As I watched the boss over us that day it did not seem to me that he understood very well.
From one to five the work became an increasing strain. Even with my athletic training I wasn't used to such a prolonged test of one set of muscles. My legs became heavy, my back ached, and my shoulders finally refused to obey me except under the sheer command of my will. I knew, however, that time would remedy this. I might be sore and lame for a day or two, but I had twice the natural strength of these short, close-knit foreigners. The excitement and novelty of the employment helped me through those first few days. I felt the joy of the pioneer—felt the sweet sense of delving in the mother earth. It touched in me some responsive chord that harked back to my ancestors who broke the rocky soil of New England. Of the life of my fellows bustling by on the earth-crust overhead—those fellows of whom so lately I had been one—I was not at all conscious. I might have been at work on some new planet for all they touched mynew life. I could see them peering over the wooden rail around our excavation as they stopped to stare down at us, but I did not connect them with myself. And yet I felt closer to this old city than ever before. I thrilled with the joy of the constructor, the builder, even in this humble capacity. I felt superior to those for whom I was building. In a coarse way I suppose it was a reflection of some artistic sense—something akin to the creative impulse. I can say truthfully that at the end of that first day I came home—begrimed and sore as I was—with a sense of fuller life than so far I had ever experienced.
I found Ruth waiting for me with some anxiety. She came into my soil-stained arms as eagerly as a bride. It was good. It took all the soreness out of me. Before supper I took the boy and we went down to the public baths on the waterfront and there I dived and splashed and swam like a young whale. The sting of the cold salt water was all the further balm I needed. I came out tingling and fit right then for another nine-hour day. But when I came back I threatened our first week's savings at the supper-table. Ruth had mademore hot griddle-cakes and I kept her at the stove until I was ashamed to do it longer. The boy, too, after his plunge, showed a better appetite than for weeks.
The second day, I woke up lame and stiff but I gave myself a good brisk rub down and kneaded my arm and leg muscles until they were pretty well limbered up. The thing that pleased me was the way I felt towards my new work that second morning. I'd been a bit afraid of a reaction—of waking up with all the romance gone. That, I knew, would be deadly. Once let me dwell on the naked material facts of my condition and I'd be lost. That's true of course in any occupation. The man who works without an inspiration of some sort is not only discontented but a poor workman. I remember distinctly that when I opened my eyes and realized my surroundings and traced back the incidents of yesterday to the ditch, I was concerned principally with the problem of a stone in our path upon which we had been working. I wanted to get back to it. We had worked upon it foran hour without fully uncovering it and I was as eager as the foreman to learn whether it was a ledge rock or just a fragment. This interest was not associated with the elevated road for whom the work was being done, nor the contractor who had undertaken the job, nor the foreman who was supervising it. It was a question which concerned only me and Mother Earth who seemed to be doing her best to balk us at every turn. I forgot the sticky, wet clay in which I had floundered for nine hours, forgot the noisome stench which at times we were forced to breathe, forgot my lame hands and back. I recalled only the problem itself and the skill with which the man they called Anton' handled his crow bar. He was a master of it. In removing the smaller slabs which lay around the big one he astonished me with his knowledge of how to place the bar. He'd come to my side where I was prying with all my strength and with a wave of his hand for me to stand back, would adjust two or three smaller rocks as a fulcrum and then, with the gentlest of movements, work the half-ton weight inch by inch to where he wanted it. He could swing the rock to the right or left, raise or lower it, at will,and always he made the weight of the rock, against which I had striven so vainly, do the work. That was something worth learning. I wanted to get back and study him. I wanted to get back and finish uncovering that rock. I wanted to get back and bring the job as a whole to a finish so as to have a new one to tackle. Even at the end of that first day I felt I had learned enough to make myself a man of greater power than I was the day before. And always in the background was the unknown goal to which this toil was to lead. I hadn't yet stopped to figure out what the goal was but that it was worth while I had no doubt for I was no longer stationary. I was a constructor. I was in touch with a big enterprise of development.
I don't know that I've made myself clear. I wasn't very clear in my own mind then but I know that I had a very conscious impression of the sort which I've tried to put into words. And I know that it filled me with a great big joy. I never woke up with any such feeling when with the United Woollen. My only thought in the morning then was how much time I must give myself to catch thesix-thirty. When I reached the office I hung up my hat and coat and sat down to the impersonal figures like an automaton. There was nothing of me in the work; there couldn't be. How petty it seemed now! I suppose the company, as an industrial enterprise, was in the line of development, but that idea never penetrated as far as the clerical department. We didn't feel it any more than the adding machines do.
Ruth had a good breakfast for me and when I came into the kitchen she was trying to brush the dried clay off my overalls.
"Good Heavens!" I said, "don't waste your strength doing that."
She looked up from her task with a smile.
"I'm not going to let you get slack down here" she said.
"But those things will look just as bad again five minutes after I've gone down the ladder."
"But I don't intend they shall look like this on your way to the ladder," she answered.
"All right," I said "then let me have them. I'll do it myself."
"Have you shaved?" she asked.
I rubbed my hand over my chin. It wasn't very bad and I'd made up my mind I wouldn't shave every day now.
"No," I said. "But twice or three times a week—"
"Billy!" she broke in, "that will never do. You're going down to your new business looking just as ship-shape as you went to the old. You don't belong to that contractor; you belong to me."
In the meanwhile the boy came in with my heavy boots which he had brushed clean and oiled. There was nothing left for me to do but to shave and I'll admit I felt better for it.
"Do you want me to put on a high collar?" I asked.
"Didn't you find the things I laid out for you?"
I hadn't looked about. I'd put on the things I took off. She led me back into the bed room, and over a chair I saw a clean change of underclothing and a new grey flannel shirt.
"Where did you get this?" I asked.
"I bought it for a dollar," she answered. "It's too much to pay. I can make one for fifty cents as soon as I get time to sew."
That's the way Ruth was. Every day after this she made me change, after I came back from my swim, into the business suit I wore when I came down here, and which now by contrast looked almost new. She even made me wear a tie with my flannel shirt. Every morning I started out clean shaven and with my work clothes as fresh as though I were a contractor myself. I objected at first because it seemed too much for her to do to wash the things every day, but she said it was a good deal easier than washing them once a week. Incidentally that was one of her own little schemes for saving trouble and it seemed to me a good one; instead of collecting her soiled clothes for seven days and then tearing herself all to pieces with a whole hard forenoon's work, she washed a little every day. By this plan it took her only about an hour each morning to keep all the linen in the house clean and sweet. We had the roof to dry it on and she never ironed anything except perhaps the tablecloths and handkerchiefs. We had no company to cater to and as long as we knew things were clean that's all we cared.
We got around the rock all right. It proved not to be a ledge after all. I myself,however, didn't accomplish as much as I did the first day, for I was slower in my movements. On the other hand, I think I improved a little in my handling of the crowbar. At the noon hour I tried to start a conversation with Anton', but he understood little English and I knew no Italian, so we didn't get far. As he sat in a group of his fellow countrymen laughing and jabbering he made me feel distinctly like an outsider. There were one or two English-speaking workmen besides myself, but somehow they didn't interest me as much as these Italians. It may have been my imagination but they seemed to me a decidedly inferior lot. As a rule they were men who took the job only to keep themselves from starving and quit at the end of a week or two only to come back when they needed more money.
I must make an exception of an Irishman I will call Dan Rafferty. He was a big blue-eyed fellow, full of fun and fight, with a good natured contempt of the Dagoes, and was a born leader. I noticed, the first day, that he came nearer being the boss of the gang than the foreman, and I suspect the latter himself noticed it, for he seemed to have it in for Dan. There never was anespecially dirty job to be done but what Dan was sent. He always obeyed but he used to slouch off with his big red fist doubled up, muttering curses that brought out his brogue at its best. Later on he confided in me what he was going to do to that boss. If he had carried out his threats he would long since have been electrocuted and I would have lost a good friend. Several times I thought the two men were coming to blows but though Dan would have dearly loved a fight and could have handled a dozen men like the foreman, he always managed to control himself in time to avoid it.
"I don't wanter be after losin' me job for the dirthy spalpeen," he growled to me.
But he came near it in a way he wasn't looking for later in the week. It was Friday and half a dozen of us had been sent down to work on the second level. It was damp and suffocating down there, fifty feet below the street. I felt as though I had gone into the mines. I didn't like it but I knew that there was just as much to learn here as above and that it must all be learned eventually. The sides were braced with heavy timbers like a mine shaft to prevent the dirt from falling inand there was the constant danger that in spite of this it might cave in. We went down by rough ladders made by nailing strips of board across two pieces of joist and the work down there was back-breaking and monotonous. We heaved the dirt into a big iron bucket lowered by the hoisting engine above. It was heavy, wet soil that weighed like lead.
From the beginning the men complained of headaches and one by one they crawled up the ladder again for fresh air. Others were sent down but at the end of an hour they too retreated. Dan and I stuck it out for a while. Then I began to get dizzy myself. I didn't know what the trouble was but when I began to wobble a bit Dan placed his hand on my shoulder.
"Betther climb out o' here," he said. "I'm thinkin' it's gas."
At that time I didn't know what sewer gas was. I couldn't smell anything and thought he must be mistaken.
"You'd better come too," I answered, making for the ladder.
He wasn't coming but I couldn't get up very well without him so he followed along behind. At the top we found the foremanfighting mad and trying to spur on another gang to go down. They wouldn't move. When he saw us come up he turned upon Dan.
"Who ordered you out of there?" he growled.
"The gas," answered Dan.
"Gas be damned," shouted the foreman. "You're a bunch of white livered cowards—all of you."
I saw Dan double up his fists and start towards the man. The latter checked him with a command.
"Go back down there or you're fired," he said to him.
Dan turned red. Then I saw his jaws come together.
"Begod!" he answered. "Youshan't fire me, anyhow."
Without another word he started down the ladder again. I saw the Italians crowd together and watch him. By that time my head was clearer but my legs were weak. I sat down a moment uncertain what to do. Then I heard someone shout:
"By God, he's right! He's lying there at the bottom."
I started towards the ladder but some oneshoved me back. Then I thought of the bucket. It was above ground and I staggered towards it gaining strength at each step. I jumped in and shouted to the engineer to lower me. He obeyed from instinct. I went down, down, down to what seemed like the center of the earth. When the bucket struck the ground I was dizzy again but I managed to get out, heave the unconscious Dan in and pile on top of him myself. When I came to, I was in an ambulance on my way to the hospital but by the time I had reached the emergency room I had taken a grip on myself. I knew that if ever Ruth heard of this she would never again be comfortable. When they took us out I was able to walk a little. The doctors wanted to put me to bed but I refused to go. I sat there for about an hour while they worked over Dan. When I found that he would be all right by morning I insisted upon going out. I had a bad headache, but I knew the fresh air would drive this away and so it did, though it left me weak.
One of the hardest day's work I ever did in my life was killing time from then until five o'clock. Of course the papers got hold of it and that gave me another scare butluckily the nearest they came to my name was Darlinton, so no harm was done. And they didn't come within a mile of getting the real story. When in a later edition one of them published my photograph I felt absolutely safe for they had me in a full beard and thinner than I've ever been in my life.
When I came home at my usual time looking a bit white perhaps but otherwise normal enough, the first question Ruth asked me was:
"What have you done with your dinner pail, Billy?"
Isn't a man always sure to do some such fool thing as that, when he's trying to keep something quiet from the wife? I had to explain that I had forgotten it and that was enough to excite suspicion at any time. She kept me uneasy for ten minutes and the best I could do was to admit finally that I wasn't feeling very well. Whereupon she made me go to bed and fussed over me all the evening and worried all the next day.
I reported for work as usual in the morning and found we had a new foreman. It was a relief because I guess if Dan hadn't knocked down the other one, someone elsewould have done it sooner or later. At that the man had taught me something about sewer gas and that is when you begin to feel dizzy fifty feet below the street, it's time to go up the ladder about as fast as your wobbly legs will let you, even if you don't smell anything.
Rafferty didn't turn up for two or three days. When he did appear it was with a simple:
"Mawnin, mon."
It wasn't until several days later I learned that the late foreman had left town nursing a black eye and a cut on one cheek such as might have been made by a set of red knuckles backed by an arm the size of a small ham.
On Saturday night of that first week I came home with nine dollars in my pocket. I'll never be prouder again than I was when I handed them over to Ruth. And Ruth will never again be prouder than she was when, after she had laid aside three of them for the rent and five for current expenses, she picked out a one-dollar bill and, crossing the room, placed it in the ginger jar. This was a little blue affair in which we had always dropped what pennies and nickels we could spare.
"There's our nest-egg," she announced.
"You don't mean to tell me you're that much ahead of the game the first week?"
"Look here, Billy," she answered.
She brought out an itemized list of everything she had bought from last Monday, including Sunday's dinner. I've kept that list. Many of the things she had bought were not yet used up but she had computed the cost of the amount actually used. Here it is as I copied it off:
Flour, .25Lard, .15Cream of tartar and soda, .05Oat meal, .04Molasses, .05Sugar, .12Potatoes, .20Rice, .06Milk, 1.12Eggs, .24Rye bread, .10Sausages, .22Lettuce, .03Beans, .12Salt pork, .15Corn meal, .06Graham meal, .05Butter, .45Cheese, .06Shin of beef, .39Fish, .22Oil, .28Soap, .09Vinegar, salt and pepper, about .05Can of corn, .07Onions, .06Total $4.68
Flour, .25Lard, .15Cream of tartar and soda, .05Oat meal, .04Molasses, .05Sugar, .12Potatoes, .20Rice, .06Milk, 1.12Eggs, .24Rye bread, .10Sausages, .22Lettuce, .03Beans, .12Salt pork, .15Corn meal, .06Graham meal, .05Butter, .45Cheese, .06Shin of beef, .39Fish, .22Oil, .28Soap, .09Vinegar, salt and pepper, about .05Can of corn, .07Onions, .06Total $4.68
In this account, too, Ruth was liberal in her margins. She did better than this later on. A fairer estimate could have been made at the end of the month and a still fairer even than that, at the end of the year. It sounded almost too good to be true but it was a fact. We had lived, and lived well on this amount and as yet Ruth was inexperienced. She hadn't learned all she learned later. For the benefit of those who may think we went hungry I have asked Ruth to write out the bill of fare for this week as nearly as she can remember it. One thing you must keep in mind is that of everything we had, wehad enough. Neither Ruth, the boy, nor myself ever left the table or dinner pail unsatisfied. Here's what we had and it was better even than it sounds for whatever Ruth made, she made well. I copy it as she wrote it out.
Monday.Breakfast: oatmeal, griddle-cakes with molasses, cream of tartar biscuits, milk.Luncheon: for Billy: cold biscuits, two hard-boiled eggs, bowl of rice, cold coffee; for Dick and me: cold biscuits, milk, rice.Dinner: baked potatoes, griddle-cakes, milk.Tuesday.Breakfast: baked potatoes, graham muffins, oatmeal, milk.Luncheon: for Billy: cold muffins, two hard-boiled eggs, rice, milk; for Dick and me: cold muffins, rice and milk.Dinner: boiled potatoes, pork scraps, hot biscuits, milk.Wednesday.Breakfast: oatmeal, fried potatoes, warmed over biscuits.Luncheon: for Billy: cold biscuits, twohard-boiled eggs, bread pudding; for Dick and me: baked potatoes, cold biscuits, bread pudding.Dinner: beef stew with dumplings, hot biscuits, milk.Thursday.Breakfast: fried sausages, baked potatoes, graham muffins, milk.Luncheon: for Billy: cold muffins, cold sausage and rice; for Dick and me: the same.Dinner: warmed over stew, lettuce, hot biscuits, milk.Friday.Breakfast: oatmeal, fried rock cod, baked potatoes, rye bread, milk.Luncheon: for Billy: rye bread, potato salad, rice; for Dick and me: the same.Dinner: soup made from stock of beef, left over fish, boiled potatoes, rice, milk.Saturday.Breakfast: oatmeal, fried corn mush with molasses, milk.Luncheon: for Billy: cold biscuits, two hard-boiled eggs, cheese, rice; for Dick and me: German toast.Dinner: baked beans, hot biscuits.Sunday.Breakfast: baked beans, graham muffins.Dinner: boiled potatoes, pork scraps, canned corn, corn cake, bread pudding.
Monday.
Breakfast: oatmeal, griddle-cakes with molasses, cream of tartar biscuits, milk.
Luncheon: for Billy: cold biscuits, two hard-boiled eggs, bowl of rice, cold coffee; for Dick and me: cold biscuits, milk, rice.
Dinner: baked potatoes, griddle-cakes, milk.
Tuesday.
Breakfast: baked potatoes, graham muffins, oatmeal, milk.
Luncheon: for Billy: cold muffins, two hard-boiled eggs, rice, milk; for Dick and me: cold muffins, rice and milk.
Dinner: boiled potatoes, pork scraps, hot biscuits, milk.
Wednesday.
Breakfast: oatmeal, fried potatoes, warmed over biscuits.
Luncheon: for Billy: cold biscuits, twohard-boiled eggs, bread pudding; for Dick and me: baked potatoes, cold biscuits, bread pudding.
Dinner: beef stew with dumplings, hot biscuits, milk.
Thursday.
Breakfast: fried sausages, baked potatoes, graham muffins, milk.
Luncheon: for Billy: cold muffins, cold sausage and rice; for Dick and me: the same.
Dinner: warmed over stew, lettuce, hot biscuits, milk.
Friday.
Breakfast: oatmeal, fried rock cod, baked potatoes, rye bread, milk.
Luncheon: for Billy: rye bread, potato salad, rice; for Dick and me: the same.
Dinner: soup made from stock of beef, left over fish, boiled potatoes, rice, milk.
Saturday.
Breakfast: oatmeal, fried corn mush with molasses, milk.
Luncheon: for Billy: cold biscuits, two hard-boiled eggs, cheese, rice; for Dick and me: German toast.
Dinner: baked beans, hot biscuits.
Sunday.
Breakfast: baked beans, graham muffins.
Dinner: boiled potatoes, pork scraps, canned corn, corn cake, bread pudding.
A word about that bread pudding. Ruth tells me she puts in an extra quart of milk and then bakes it all day when she bakes her beans, stirring it every now and then. I never knew before how the trick was done but it comes out a rich brown and tastes like plum pudding without the raisins. She says that if you put in raisins it tastes exactly like a plum pudding.
So at the end of the first week I found myself with eighty dollars left over from the old home, one dollar saved in the new, all my bills paid, and Ruth, Dick and myself all fit as a fiddle.
That first dollar saved was the germ of a new idea.
It is a further confession of a middle-class mind that in coming down here I had not looked forward beyond the immediate present. With the horror of that last week still on me I had considered only the opportunity I had for earning a livelihood. To be sure I had seen no reason why an intelligent man should not in time be advanced to foreman, and why he should not then be able to save enough to ward off the poorhouse before old age came on. But now—with that first dollar tucked away in the ginger jar—I felt within me the stirring of a new ambition, an ambition born of this quick young country into which I had plunged. Why, in time, should I not become the employer? Why should I not take the initiative in some of these progressive enterprises? Why should I not learn this businessof contracting and building and some day contract and build for myself? With that first dollar saved I was already at heart a capitalist.
I said nothing of this to Ruth. For six months I let the idea grow. If it did nothing else it added zest to my new work. I shoveled as though I were digging for diamonds. It made me a young man again. It made me a young American again. It brought me out of bed every morning with visions; it sent me to sleep at night with dreams.
But I'm running ahead of my story.
I thought I had appreciated Sunday when it meant a release for one day from the office of the United Woollen, but as with all the other things I felt as though it had been but the shadow and that only now had I found the substance. In the first place I had not been able completely to shake the office in the last few years. I brought it home with me and on Sundays it furnished half the subject of conversation. Every little incident, every bit of conversation, every expression on Morse's face was analyzed in the attempt to see what it counted, for or against, the possible future raise. Even when out walking with the boythe latter was a constant reminder. It was as though he were merely a ward of the United Woollen Company.
But when I put away my shovel at five o'clock on Saturday that was the end of my ditch digging. I came home after that and I was at home until I reported for work on Monday morning. There was neither work nor worry left hanging over. It meant complete relaxation—complete rest. And the body, I found, rests better than the mind.
Later in my work I didn't experience this so perfectly as I now did because then I accepted new responsibilities, but for the first few months I lived in lazy content on this one day. For the most part those who lived around me did all the time. On fair summer days half the population of the little square basked in the sun with eyes half closed from morning until night. Those who didn't, went to the neighboring beaches many of which they could reach for a nickel or visited such public buildings as were open. But wherever they went or whatever they did, they loafed about it. And a man can't truly loaf until he's done a hard week's work which ends with the week.
As for us we had our choice of anynumber of pleasant occupations. I insisted that Ruth should make the meals as simple as possible on that day and both the boy and myself helped her about them. We always washed the dishes and swept the floor. First of all there was the roof. I early saw the possibility of this much neglected spot. It was flat and had a fence around it for it was meant to be used for the hanging out of clothes. Being a new building it had been built a story higher than its older neighbors so that we overlooked the other roofs. There was a generous space through which we saw the harbor. I picked up a strip of old canvas for a trifle in one of the shore-front junk-shops which deal in second-hand ship supplies and arranged it over one corner like a canopy. Then I brought home with me some bits of board that were left over from the wood construction at the ditch and nailed these together to make a rude sort of window box. It was harder to get dirt than it was wood but little by little I brought home enough finally to fill the boxes. In these we planted radishes and lettuce and a few flower seeds. We had almost as good a garden as we used to have in our back yard. At any rate itwas just as much fun to watch the things grow, and though the lettuce never amounted to much we actually raised some very good radishes. The flowers did well, too.
We brought up an old blanket and spread it out beneath the canopy and that, with a chair or two, made our roof garden. A local branch of the Public Library was not far distant so that we had all the reading matter we wanted and here we used to sit all day Sunday when we didn't feel like doing anything else. Here, too, we used to sit evenings. On several hot nights Ruth, the boy and I brought up our blankets and slept out. The boy liked it so well that finally he came to sleep up here most of the summer. It was fine for him. The harbor breeze swept the air clean of smoke so that it was as good for him as being at the sea-shore.
To us the sights from this roof were marvelous. They appealed strongly because they were unlike anything we had ever seen or for that matter unlike anything our friends had ever seen. I think that a man's friends often take away the freshness from sights that otherwise might move him. I've never been to Europe but what with magazine pictures andsnap shots and Mrs. Grover, who never forgot that before she married Grover she had travelled for a whole year, I haven't any special desire to visit London or Paris. I suppose it would be different if I ever went but even then I don't think there would be the novelty to it we found from our roof. And it was just that novelty and the ability to appreciate it that made our whole emigrant life possible. It was for us the Great Adventure again. I suppose there are men who will growl that it's all bosh to say there is any real romance in living in four rooms in a tenement district, eating what we ate, digging in a ditch and mooning over a view from a roof top. I want to say right here that for such men there wouldn't be any romance or beauty in such a life. They'd be miserable. There are plenty of men living down there now and they never miss a chance to air their opinions. Some of them have big bodies but I wouldn't give them fifty cents a day to work for me. Luckily however, there are not many of them in proportion to the others, even though they make more noise.
But when you stop to think about it what else is it but romance that leads men to spend theirlives fishing off the Banks when they could remain safely ashore and get better pay driving a team? Or what drives them into the army or to work on railroads when they neither expect nor hope to be advanced? The men themselves can't tell you. They take up the work unthinkingly but there is something in the very hardships they suffer which lends a sting to the life and holds them. The only thing I know of that will do this and turn the grind into an inspiration is romance. It's what the new-comers have and it's what our ancestors had and it's what a lot of us who have stayed over here too long out of the current have lost.
On the lazy summer mornings we could hear the church bells and now and then a set of chimes. Because we were above the street and next to the sky they sounded as drowsily musical as in a country village. They made me a bit conscience-stricken to think that for the boy's sake I didn't make an effort and go to some church. But for a while it was church enough to devote the seventh day to what the Bible says it was made for. Ruth used to read out loud to us and we planned tomake our book suit the day after a fashion. Sometimes it was Emerson, sometimes Tennyson—I was very fond of the Idylls—and sometimes a book of sermons. Later on we had a call from a young minister who had a little mission chapel not far from our flat and who looked in upon us at the suggestion of the secretary of the settlement house. We went to a service at his chapel one Sunday and before we ourselves realized it we were attending regularly with a zest and interest which we had never felt in our suburban church-going. Later still we each of us found a share in the work ourselves and came to have a great satisfaction and contentment in it. But I am running ahead of my story.
We'd have dinner this first summer at about half past one and then perhaps we'd go for a walk. There wasn't a street in the city that didn't interest us but as a rule we'd plan to visit one of the parks. I didn't know there were so many of them or that they were so different. We had our choice of the ocean or a river or the woods. If we had wished to spend say thirty cents in car fare we could have had a further choice of thebeach, the mountains, or a taste of the country which in places had not changed in the last hundred years. This would have given us a two hours' ride. Occasionally we did this but at present there was too much to see within walking distance.
For one thing it suddenly occurred to me that though I had lived in this city over thirty years I had not yet seen such places of interest as always attracted visitors from out of town. My attention was brought to this first by the need of limiting ourselves to amusements that didn't cost anything, but chiefly by learning where the better element down here spent their Sundays. You have only to follow this crowd to find out where the objects of national pride are located. An old battle flag will attract twenty foreigners to one American. And incidentally I wish to confess it was they who made me ashamed of my ignorance of the country's history. Beyond a memory of the Revolution, the Civil War and a few names of men and battles connected therewith, I'd forgotten all I ever learned at school on this subject. But here the many patriotic celebrations arranged by the local schools in the endeavor to instill patriotism andthe frequent visits of the boys to the museums, kept the subject fresh. Not only Dick but Ruth and myself soon turned to it as a vital part of our education. Inspired by the old trophies that ought to stand for so much to us of to-day we took from the library the first volume of Fiske's fine series and in the course of time read them all. As we traced the fortunes of those early adventurers who dreamed and sailed towards an unknown continent, pictured to ourselves the lives of the tribes who wandered about in the big tangle of forest growth between the Atlantic and the Pacific, as we landed on the bleak New England shores with the early Pilgrims, then fought with Washington, then studied the perilous internal struggle culminating with Lincoln and the Civil War, then the dangerous period of reconstruction with the breathless progress following—why it left us all better Americans than we had ever been in our lives. It gave new meaning to my present surroundings and helped me better to understand the new-comers. Somehow all those things of the past didn't seem to concern Grover and the rest of them in the trim little houses. They had no history and they were a part of no history.Perhaps that's because they were making no history themselves. As for myself, I know that I was just beginning to get acquainted with my ancestors—that for the first time in my life, I was really conscious of being a citizen of the United States of America.
But I soon discovered that not only the historic but the beautiful attracted these people. They introduced me to the Art Museum. In the winter following our first summer here, when the out of door attractions were considerably narrowed down, Ruth and I used to go there about every other Sunday with the boy. We came to feel as familiar with our favorite pictures as though they hung in our own house. The Museum ceased to be a public building; it was our own. We went in with a nod to the old doorkeeper who came to know us and felt as unconstrained there as at home. We had our favorite nooks, our favorite seats and we lounged about in the soft lights of the rooms for hours at a time. The more we looked at the beautiful paintings, the old tapestries, the treasures of stone and china, the more we enjoyed them. We were sure to meet some of our neighbors there and a young artist who lived on thesecond floor of our house and whom later I came to know very well, pointed out to us new beauties in the old masters. He was selling plaster casts at that time and studying art in the night school.
In the old life, an art museum had meant nothing to me more than that it seemed a necessary institution in every city. It was a mark of good breeding in a town, like the library in a good many homes. But it had never occurred to me to visit it and I know it hadn't to any of my former associates. The women occasionally went to a special exhibition that was likely to be discussed at the little dinners, but a week later they couldn't have told you what they had seen. Perhaps our neighborhood was the exception and a bit more ignorant than the average about such things, but I'll venture to say there isn't a middle-class community in this country where the paintings play the part in the lives of the people that they do among the foreign-born. A class better than they does the work; a class lower enjoys it. Where the middle-class comes in, I don't know.
After being gone all the afternoon we'd be glad to get home again and maybe we'd have a lunch of cold beans and biscuits or some ofthe pudding that was left over. Then during the summer months we'd go back to the roof for a restful evening. At night the view was as different from the day as you could imagine. Behind us the city proper was in a bluish haze made by the electric lights. Then we could see the yellow lights of the upper windows in all the neighboring houses and beyond these, over the roof tops which seemed now to huddle closer together, we saw the passing red and green lights of moving vessels. Overhead were the same clean stars which were at the same time shining down upon the woods and the mountain tops. There was something about it that made me feel a man and a free man. There was twenty years of slavery back of me to make me appreciate this.
And Ruth reading my thoughts in my eyes used to nestle closer to me and the boy with his chin in his hands would stare out at sea and dream his own dreams.