PAY ENVELOPES 
 
OTHER BOOKS BY JAMES OPPENHEIM 
 
 WILD OATS (A novel} 
 
 DR. RAST (Short stories) 
 
 MONDAY MORNING AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 THE PIONEERS (A poetic drama) 
 
" He was thinking of death. Face to face with it, he was going 
 through a Hamlet-soliloquy in terms of an American workman " 
 
.PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 TALES OF THE MILL, THE MINE 
 AND THE CITY STREET 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES OPPENHEIM 
 
 // y\ A 
 
 - 
 
 Illustrated by 
 HARRY TOWNSEND 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 B. W. HUEBSCH 
 
 191 1 
 
Copyright, IQII 
 BY B W. HUEBSCH 
 
 PRINTED IN U. S. A. 
 
TO 
 FRANK A. MANNY 
 
TROUBLES OF THE WORKSHOP 
 
TROUBLES OF THE WORKSHOP 
 
 (A skippable preface) 
 
 A manufacturer of steel does not wake up every 
 morning to wrestle with the question : " What is 
 Steel? " He knows that by putting iron through 
 a process of fire he gets a tough product usable as 
 rails, as armor or as girders. If a rail is more 
 malleable than armor he does not ask himself : " Is 
 the rail steel or is the armor steel?" For him, 
 they are both steel. 
 
 But the poor toiler in the workshop of Litera 
 ture or Painting or Music must daily ask himself: 
 " What is Art?" And his critics will constantly 
 tell him that, for instance, his job of last week was 
 Art but his new bit of work isn t Art at all. Or 
 he will be told (and he himself will be suspicious 
 of the truth) that he never has, never will, never 
 can create a work of Art. 
 
 Well, what is Art? When Wagner first re 
 leased on humanity a riot of strange sound, he was 
 hissed and howled at. This, said the critics, is 
 not music. But Wagner and his disciples kept 
 telling the world that it was music and it is a fact 
 in psychology that a statement repeated over and 
 over comes to be believed a truth on which mod- 
 
THE WORKSHOP 
 
 ern advertising has arisen. As a result we go to 
 Wagner expecting music and of course we find 
 music. That is to say, we are stirred pleasurably 
 by the same sounds that grated on the ears of our 
 ancestors. Art then is a matter of taste; a per 
 sonal matter; each man for himself. Get enough 
 people to agree in their taste and a certain Art- 
 form will become dominant in any age. 
 
 Now there are certain root-elements in human 
 nature which have not greatly changed in the last 
 few thousand years. As a result, though art- 
 forms may vary greatly from age to age there 
 are, at least two things demanded of every artist. 
 First, that he be a skilled worker, and second, that 
 he be sincere. Before we will accept his new form 
 he must show mastery in handling his materials and 
 must pour into the form real thinking or real emo 
 tion or both. Even then his product may not hit 
 the taste of more than two people : himself and his 
 wife or his mother. In which case the rest of us 
 will cheerfully tell him that he is no Artist. One 
 critic will say: his English is bad; a second, his 
 characters are not human beings ; a third, he is sor 
 did; a fourth, he is preaching a sermon. 
 
 In a larger way there is this same confusion of 
 criticism. Take this matter of the problem play, 
 the problem novel or story as, for instance, a 
 story dealing with Prison-Reform or Socialism. 
 There is still a host of critics both professional 
 and lay who tell us sharply that Art must steer 
 
TROUBLES OF THE WORKSHOP n 
 
 clear of " problems " must merely " reflect 
 life." And if we ask how, they say, " As Shake 
 speare did," or, " As Sir Walter Scott did." 
 
 The bewildered writer in his workshop goes to 
 Shakespeare and here are some of his findings. 
 Shakespeare, like most artists, expressed the domi 
 nant interest of his age. In what were the Lon 
 doners chiefly interested? In the life of the court 
 and the life of war. Hence, in " Hamlet " we 
 have a Prince struggling between his desire for 
 personal revenge and his duty to the State; in 
 " Macbeth," the struggle of an Earl ambitious to 
 be King and tyrant; in "Othello," the downfall 
 of a war leader through jealousy; in "As You 
 Like It," a comedy of court intrigues. 
 
 Our interests have widened. In a democracy 
 the court supposedly is any tenement on 
 Rivington Street, and war is not merely wholesale 
 murder between flag-led hosts, but also the infi 
 nitely more complex struggles of Peace the mur 
 der of men through twelve-hour days, child labor 
 and unprotected machinery; the struggle between 
 labor and capital; the fights for sanitation. Our 
 newspapers are the readiest expressions of the in 
 terests of the age. Are they not full of every type 
 of human struggle? Divorce, the tariff, mur 
 der, immigration, embezzlement, anti-vivisection, 
 woman s beauty, the search for the North Pole, 
 the death of a child, the discovery of a scientist 
 all these varied interests are .served side by side. 
 
12 TROUBLES OF THE WORKSHOP 
 
 So, following in Shakespeare s path, the American 
 writer finds spread before him in this age a stag 
 gering material: no less than the lives of ninety 
 million mixed people, a dozen nations in process 
 of being socialized on American soil. 
 
 But how did Shakespeare use his material? 
 Did he pick his Prince and then carefully strip him 
 of all but his personal life, or did he find it neces 
 sary to deal with the sum of problems that entan 
 gle a Prince questions of statecraft, war cam 
 paigns, court functions, public speeches, reform of 
 social chaos, etc. ? Assuredly the latter. How 
 then shall the Shakespeare-follower deal with the 
 life of a laborer in the steel mill? Shall he con 
 fine himself to his man s habits of eating and drink 
 ing, his love affairs and his knowledge of litera 
 ture, or, true to the Shakespearian model, give the 
 whole life of the man his entanglement in labor 
 unions, politics, speeded machine work, steel proc 
 esses, twelve-hour day? Assuredly the latter. 
 In a word, most of the artists of the past, including 
 Shakespeare, gave us problem-art critics to the 
 contrary. It is merely a question as to whether 
 we are as interested in a workman s problems as in 
 a prince s problems. Well, some of us are. 
 
 But Shakespeare brings up another question. 
 How shall this workman s life be rendered in Art? 
 Shall the writer merely report the facts with pho 
 tographic accuracy and go no further? Shake 
 speare, of course, went much further. He gave 
 
TROUBLES OF THE WORKSHOP 13 
 
 not alone the facts of Hamlet s life, but he inter 
 preted these facts for his audience; he penetrated 
 the puzzling surfaces of life with the illumination 
 of his own thought, his own beliefs. He rendered 
 not merely a repetition in dramatic form of the 
 manners, the actions of his Prince ; he made articu 
 late the splendid inner life. In showing upon the 
 stage a man struggling with jealousy he did not 
 content himself with merely rendering what one 
 might find in actual life say, a fierce expression 
 on the face and an explosion of profanity he 
 actually conveyed through words the tornado of 
 passion and thought within the man and gave us 
 the spectacle of a tiny creature under the stars 
 shaking with a passion that revealed an inner im 
 mensity that almost belittled the outer immensity. 
 Othello at moments makes the stars small. And 
 surely anyone who has passed through a great cri 
 sis knows that this is typical of human nature 
 that we all feel, in some measure, what Shake 
 speare has made articulate for us, that we ex 
 perience what only a Shakespeare is able to ex 
 press. Surely such Art is social does a work 
 for us all increasing our power of thought, in 
 tensifying our sense of life, releasing through ex 
 pression the emotions that threaten to rend us, 
 proving us great and reanimating our faith in hu 
 man existence. 
 
 So, too, must the writer take the steel worker 
 if he can (would there were a Shakespeare to do 
 
14 TROUBLES OF THE WORKSHOP 
 
 it !) and somehow get across that inner life. It 
 is hard enough to show the inner human splendor 
 of a Prince; but it is infinitely harder to take the 
 lives of the obscure, the vulgar and the neglected 
 and show the same truth. Yet how shall our Art, 
 too, be social, unless we attempt this interpreta 
 tion ? How shall we ever have a democracy unless 
 Art shows that the run of the race has as it does 
 have greatness and splendor? In America, we 
 must interpret one race to another; one class to 
 another; one type to another, before we will 
 ever feel that all have the same essential human- 
 ness. 
 
 And following Shakespeare if he is the one 
 we care to follow the writer cannot evade the 
 task of throwing into his work all his best faith, 
 his vision of the world, his hopes for the future, 
 his philosophy and science. But there is, pos 
 sibly, a point of departure. Shakespeare evidently 
 wrote for but a small part of his audience 
 namely, the court class he depicted. Fortunately 
 his medium was one of action so that the mere 
 pantomime, stabbed here and there by sharp dia 
 logue, was sufficient to hold those " groundlings " 
 he despised. The author of to-day, however, 
 using a medium such as print, has a new problem. 
 His audience must really understand him, and as, 
 in our democracy, that audience is rapidly growing, 
 unless he deliberately appeals to but a fractional 
 class, he must labor for simplicity of structure and 
 
TROUBLES OF THE WORKSHOP 15 
 
 utterance. This makes it all the harder to give a 
 great interpretation, a high illumination. 
 
 A tall order this ! And as these words are used 
 as a preface to some short stories of mine, callous 
 critics will think that I dream that I have filled the 
 bill. Far from it. A high attempt is worth many 
 experiments that fail, and these stories are, I fear, 
 more experimental than successful. But they are 
 sincere efforts in the direction I have outlined, and 
 in view of the confusion of criticism, in view of the 
 fact that the poor artist is daily troubled by that 
 vexing riddle, " What is Art? " he can only send 
 his work out into the joyous scramble of the world 
 and let it meet its fate, glad if a human being turns 
 aside here and there to eye his toil and wish him 
 Godspeed. The stories perhaps are nothing, but 
 possibly the tendencies they reveal may have 
 meaning. 
 
 J. O. 
 
 New York City, 
 March, 1911. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE GREAT FEAR ....... 21 
 
 Hard times in a great Industrial city; a tale 
 of the unemployed. 
 
 MEG 49 
 
 The factory-woman who sent her husband to 
 jail and what happened when he returned. 
 
 SATURDAY NIGHT . , 69 
 
 Obscure lives in the heart of the city; the call 
 of the electric-lit avenues. 
 
 THE COG . , 91 
 
 The skilled steel-worker in the Pittsburgh 
 mill; the twelve-hour day; the wage-slavery. 
 
 SLAG in 
 
 The Hunky laborer in the fires of Pittsburgh; 
 the brutal passions of the overworked. 
 
 A WOMAN . . . . , 131 
 
 The lonely struggle of an alien woman near 
 Pittsburgh; her daring fight for her child. 
 
 JOAN OF THE MILLS 151 
 
 The great strike near Pittsburgh where fifteen 
 nationalities were harnessed together. 
 
 17 
 
1 8 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE EMPTY LIFE 181 
 
 A common drama of New York the strange 
 life of the ex-shop-girl who marries a clerk. 
 
 THE YOUNG MAN 203 
 
 The saving power of responsibility; the bitter 
 struggle of a young East Side doctor. 
 
 THE BROKEN WOMAN 221 
 
 The tale of a Bohemian girl; her love-esca 
 pade; the man she supports and the man she 
 loves. 
 
 STINY BOLINSKY 243 
 
 The little boy in the coal mine; how the vision 
 of the future penetrates obscure and secret 
 places. 
 
 The stories collected in this volume first appeared in 
 the following magazines: The American, Everybody s, 
 Forum, Metropolitan, Pearson s, Success. 
 
THE GREAT FEAR 
 
PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 THE GREAT FEAR 
 
 A DOZEN pieces of old furniture piled one on 
 top of the other at the edge of the sidewalk, 
 could mean but one thing. An ill-clad young man 
 stopped to look. He stood shadowy and bowed 
 on the wet, gleaming pavement. The air was 
 chill and a luminous fog rolled up and down Sec 
 ond Avenue, circling the elevated road pillars and 
 blurring the blue gold of the lights. A bit of the 
 dull light lit the young man s face; one could see 
 that his lips were blue, his mouth moving, and his 
 eyes staring. 
 
 The man" so he thought half-aloud 
 " lost his job; the wife had to get out and work; 
 the kids took sick; the man took sick; the bunch 
 starved and froze; and then " he smiled bitterly 
 " they got the dispossess ! Not for mine ! " 
 
 He gazed silently at a broken bed, a straw mat 
 tress and a nicked kitchen chair. His jaw squared 
 and he jammed his hands into his trouser pockets. 
 A fear the Fear which had dogged him for 
 six months now seemed to grapple with him, 
 
 21 
 
22 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 " Not for mine! " he repeated fiercely. 
 
 He looked down the row of brilliant shop- 
 windows through the dim air, and his eyes rested 
 on the iron-grated glass of a pawnshop. The 
 window was choked up with jewelry, revolvers 
 and tools symbols of the Fear. Unsteadily 
 the young man walked across the pavement, 
 pushed open a flap-door and slouched against a 
 shining glass-topped counter in a dusky jewel-lit 
 tered room. The pawnbroker came down behind 
 the counter, rubbing his sleek hands. 
 
 The young man spoke huskily: 
 
 " I want a revolver cheap" 
 
 "Five dollars?" 
 
 Cheap I said." 
 
 " Three?" 
 
 "What s the cheapest?" 
 
 The pawnbroker looked him over and shrugged 
 his shoulders. Then he opened a drawer and 
 lifted out an ugly short-barreled pistol a man 
 could hide in his fist 
 
 "How s dis?" 
 
 The young man fingered it, narrowing his eyes 
 and thinking sharply. His heart bounded in his 
 breast. 
 
 "How much?" 
 
 " Von dollar." 
 
 The young man brought out a little yellow pay- 
 envelope, tore off one side and pulled out a thin 
 folding of money. There were just twelve dol- 
 
THE GREAT FEAR 23 
 
 lars. He slapped one down on the counter, and 
 pocketed the pistol and the cartridges. 
 
 The pawnbroker whistled softly as he watched 
 the young man go shuffling out into the misty even 
 ing. 
 
 He walked up to Eightieth Street and turned 
 East through one of the shabby streets of New 
 York cavernous, empty and dark in the mist. 
 The high windowed walls looked blank; the gut 
 ter was muddy. Here poverty was squalid and 
 bleak lit by far-spaced meager gaslights, 
 fronted and backed by dull brick lifeless, 
 supine. 
 
 The young man shivered slightly and glanced 
 about him like a hunted dog. Suddenly he 
 stopped still, under a flaring blur of gaslight, and 
 turned in at a green crumbling hall. It smelt 
 damp, and it was dark and deep. He walked 
 past the narrow stairway far to the rear of the 
 ground floor. Again, in the darkness, he hesi 
 tated, his hand searching the wall. He found a 
 door-knob he shivered slightly he pushed 
 into his home. 
 
 What struck him first, like a hot iron run into 
 his breast so that he felt like sobbing, was a low, 
 sweet music the cooing tones of a mournful, 
 lovely voice. The bare dim kitchen-dining-room, 
 with its rough table and old in-walled stove and 
 naked gas-jet, was small and warm. Under the 
 tiny flame a young woman sat on a rocker, sway- 
 
24 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 ing back and forth with a little baby at her breast. 
 The child uttered little stifled cries; the mother s 
 bending face was very near it. The young man 
 stood, gazing. And in that moment, he loved as 
 if he were starved for love loved her brown 
 light hair blown in wisps over her low forehead; 
 loved her pale, hollow cheeks and her large mourn 
 ful blue eyes; loved her thin, callous hands; loved 
 even the familiar faded calico. 
 
 The young wife, hearing him, said: "Ssh!" 
 without looking up, and warned him with a finger. 
 
 He stood, miserably swallowing at something in 
 his throat, and then beyond his help a groan burst 
 from his lips. His wife s face lifted under the 
 light startled, white, frightened. She rose with 
 the child. 
 
 " Pete ! " she cried, " you ain t sick? " 
 
 His lips parted; he took two steps and flung his 
 arms about her and the child, and half-sobbed : 
 
 " Annie ! Annie ! Annie ! " 
 
 And suddenly he drew away from her. She 
 clutched her child close as if he had threatened to 
 steal it from her. 
 
 " Pete ! " she whispered tensely, " you ve lost 
 your job! " 
 
 He buried his face in his hands and groaned 
 again. So it had come at last the frightful 
 long-expected moment. It was as if the floor be 
 neath them cracked open and they were plunging a 
 thousand miles into Blackness. When 
 
THE GREAT FEAR 25 
 
 they next glanced at each other s face, they saw 
 plainly written there the Fear the Great White 
 Fear. This is a Fear, not of the yellow or black 
 races, but of the factory-drilled whites alone the 
 fear of unemployment, of dispossession, of money- 
 lessness. It gives a hunted look to a face ; a man 
 becomes a little white animal cowering in a corner. 
 
 The young wife felt the hurry to her heart of 
 the mother-passion. What would happen to this 
 little baby her baby her son? This little 
 thing that cried so at her breast? 
 
 " Wait ! wait ! " she whispered sharply. " He s 
 got to go to sleep ! Don t make a sound ! " 
 
 She glided into the small dark bedroom, and as 
 the young man sank on a kitchen chair, his head 
 against the little table, he heard her sweet mourn 
 ful voice singing the child to sleep. Why was he 
 unwittingly forced to make his young wife suf 
 fer ? What had she done ? What had he done ? 
 They were honest. Good God, they were honest! 
 They earned bread by the sweat of their brow; 
 they had tasted Poverty; yes, got all the taste out 
 of it, up against the palate, the hot gall, the 
 venom. Theirs had been a life squeezed dry of 
 luxuries; theirs had been a hard fight on hard food 
 and hard hours. Yet all was well enough, all 
 was splendid splendid save the Fear, the 
 Fear that they went to bed with at night, the Fear 
 they read in newspapers at breakfast, the Fear that 
 sung in the factory machines all day. For these 
 
26 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 had been hard times, times of the Fear. And 
 now 
 
 Breaking into his bitter thoughts, came the light 
 footsteps he knew so well. A hand was laid 
 thrillingly on his shoulder; and her shrill voice 
 roused him : 
 
 " Pete ! don t you care ! Ain t we goin to 
 fight? It s all right, it s all right! Pete! Ain t 
 we fighters? Now you tell me about it! " 
 
 The brave words sat him up straight. His 
 fighting blood stirred; the saving power of anger, 
 anger hot and strong, swept through him. And 
 the wife calmly took a bit of sewing and sat on the 
 rocker. He glanced a second at her parted lips, 
 her flashing eyes. He raised a clenched fist and 
 smote the table softly: 
 
 "Damn it! he " she knew he meant the 
 boss " he laid off the last of us to-night. Said 
 he was sorry it s hard times. Was that my 
 fault ? We re slaves slaves; this country better 
 look out " 
 
 A wild light came into his eyes, the light of the 
 terrorist. His wife, looking quickly, spoke sharp- 
 ly: 
 
 " Don t you go to talking that way, Pete ! 
 Things is bad enough ! " 
 
 " Yes," he cried hotly, " who made em so ? I ? 
 Was I honest? Was I skillful? Was I hard 
 working? Them " she knew he meant the rich 
 " got their automobiles and yachts and palaces 
 
THE GREAT FEAR 27 
 
 and servants hard times or no hard times. We re 
 the slaves. Don t you cross me, kid I say, 
 slaves. Free ? Free, how ? Free to starve, beg, 
 die, that s how ! They got the pay-envelopes, 
 ain t they? Well, we got to feed out of their 
 hands, and if they ain t a mind to feed us, what 
 then? Eh?" 
 
 She spoke more sharply : 
 
 " That sort o talk ain t goin to pay the rent. 
 You quit it and you hustle for a job." 
 
 He looked at her terribly and smote the table 
 again : 
 
 " Annie, there ain t a job in my trade in the 
 city! " 
 
 She shivered in spite of herself. He spoke the 
 truth. ? She swallowed hard: 
 
 " You ve got to do something ! " 
 "What? Come, now, what ve I got to do?" 
 " Anything any job." 
 " Ain t there thousands looking? " 
 " But, Pete, you re strong and young " 
 " Not so strong, not so young as you think." 
 In the silence they heard the East River tugs 
 wailing against the fog. In a tenement opposite 
 a child was crying loudly. A gray chill seemed to 
 settle about their hearts. They were alone in the 
 Desert of the City. Millions of souls wove their 
 warm lives about them in the flat above, in the 
 street outside, up and down Manhattan and over 
 the bridges. Shops were full of food and clothes; 
 
28 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 there were houses enough for a million more souls ; 
 trains and ships swept in with floods of riches ; fac 
 tories poured out produce. A great city of civili 
 zation, well-lit, sanitary, secure, towering its wealth 
 into the very skies, held them in its mighty heart. 
 Yet they were on a Robinson Crusoe Island. 
 They were exiles in their own city. The huge 
 machine in whirling had thrown them out into 
 the gutter. The race said to them: "Not 
 wanted." They were in a prison without a 
 jailor to bring them food and keep them warm, 
 < the prison of the Great White Fear. For a 
 moment they avoided each other s eyes. They 
 were panic-stricken, an unreasoning terror rush 
 ing the blood to their heads. They knew they 
 could not even help themselves, though in the 
 midst of plenty. Something had gone wrong 
 with the world. But who was to blame? The 
 Boss, squeezed by Hard Times? The honest 
 worker ? Who ? 
 
 Silently they sat in the dim room, gazing upon 
 the floor, and then at last the young wife spoke 
 tremblingly : 
 
 " How much have you got? " 
 
 There was a moment s silence : 
 
 "Here!" 
 
 He pulled out the yellow envelope and handed 
 it to her. She grasped it with feverish hands, and 
 suddenly looked at him. 
 
 "It s/or*, Pete!" 
 
THE GREAT FEAR 29 
 
 He looked at the table, and mumbled, 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Something like a pang bit her heart. She pulled 
 out the bills. 
 
 " Pete, there s only eleven there ought to be 
 twelve! " 
 
 He half-closed his eyes: 
 
 " I spent one." 
 
 " For what?" Her tone was frightened: it 
 shook him. 
 
 He could stand the strain no longer. He sud 
 denly rose, and for the first time since the child 
 came, rough-mouthed her. 
 
 " It s none of yer business ! Shut up ! " 
 
 Out into the black bedroom he swung. Some 
 how he stumbled against the crib. Soft light from 
 the kitchen fell on the sleeping child. He leaned 
 close. Hard times indeed had come; he had 
 wronged his wife ; she too was suffering. He swal 
 lowed again and softly felt in his pocket for the 
 lump of cold steel. 
 
 Then he fell to brooding on the baby s face. 
 Sleep is an elemental thing, full of awe. The 
 breathing of the child came very tenderly ; the blue 
 transparent lids were softly shut; the dark little 
 head was bent back; the little hands stuck up in the 
 air with helpless waxen fingers. It was his child, 
 his own son, fast asleep. Mystery of Sleep ! mys 
 tery of Fatherhood! He gazed and his mood 
 strangely softened. The tears choked his throat. 
 
30 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 He turned away; he staggered slowly into the 
 kitchen ; he sank on the chair at the table ; he low 
 ered his head on his hands, and he cried softly like 
 a little child. 
 
 " I wish the kid had never been born ! " he 
 sobbed. 
 
 The woman s arms were about him, soft and 
 comforting, and her voice murmured a hundred 
 meaningless things in his ear. 
 
 But he sobbed: " It s no world for a poor little 
 kid!" 
 
 Yet he drew her close, he lifted his face to hers, 
 and looking in each other s eyes, they smiled ten 
 derly, luminously. Their hearts filled with love. 
 They were marvelously soothed and calmed. 
 
 " Pete," smiled the young wife, " we re goin to 
 fight, ain t we ? We re fighters, Pete ! Ain t we 
 goin to fight?" 
 
 " Sure, Annie ! " he laughed, " like the devil ! " 
 
 The Hunt began early next morning the 
 Hunt for the Job. The hunter, however, is really 
 the hunted. Now and then he bares his skin to the 
 unthinking blows of the world, and runs off to hide 
 himself in the crowd. You may see him bobbing 
 along the turbulent man-currents of Broadway, a 
 tide-tossed derelict in the thousand-foot shadows of 
 the skyscrapers. The mob about him is lusty with 
 purpose, each unit making his appointed place, the 
 morning rush to work bearing the stenographer to 
 
THE GREAT FEAR 31 
 
 her machine, the broker to his ticker, the iron 
 worker to his sky-dangling beam. In the mighty 
 machine of the city each has his place, each is pro 
 vided for, each gets the glow of sharing in the 
 world s work. The morning rush, splashed at 
 street crossings with the gold of the Eastern sun, is 
 rippled with fresh eyes and busy lips. They are 
 all in the machine. But our young man crouching 
 in a corner of the crowded car is not of these ; slink 
 ing down Broadway he is aware that the machine 
 has thrown him out and he cannot get in. He is 
 an exile in the midst of his own people. The sense 
 of loneliness and inferiority eats the heart out of 
 the breast; the good of life is gone; the blackness 
 soaks across the city and into his home, his love, his 
 soul. 
 
 Some go bitter and are for throwing bombs; 
 some despair and are for wiping themselves away; 
 some the rank and file are for fighting to the 
 last ditch. Peter pendulated between all three of 
 these moods. In ordinary times he would have 
 been all fight; in these hard times, drenched with 
 the broadcast hopelessness of men, he knew he was 
 foredoomed to defeat. Only a miracle could save 
 him. 
 
 Trudging up Seventy-ninth Street to Third Ave 
 nue, fresh with Annie s kiss and the baby s pranks, 
 he had the last bit of daring dashed out of him by 
 a strange throng of men. Before a small He 
 brew synagogue, packed in the deep area were 
 
32 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 forty unemployed workers, jammed crowd-thick 
 against the windows and gate. It was fresh 
 weather, not cold, yet the men shivered. Their 
 bodies had for long been unwarmed by sufficient 
 food or clothing ; there was a grayness about them 
 as of famished wolves; their lips and fingers were 
 blue; they were unshaved and frowzy with some 
 vile sleeping place. Hard times had blotched the 
 city with a myriad of such groups. And as Peter 
 stopped and imagined himself driven at last among 
 them, he saw a burly fellow emerge from the 
 house and begin handing out charity bowls of hot 
 coffee and charity bread. Peter, independent 
 American workman, was stung at the sight; the 
 souls of these workers were somehow being out 
 raged: they were eating out of the hands of the 
 comfortable, like so many gutter dogs. 
 
 The rest of the morning Peter dared now and 
 then to present himself at an office to ask work. 
 At some places he tried boldness, at others meek 
 ness, and at last he begged, " For God s sake, I 
 have a wife and baby " He met with various 
 receptions at the hands of clerks, office boys and 
 bosses. A few were sorry, some turned their 
 backs, the rest hurried him out. Each refusal, 
 each " not wanted in the scheme of things," shot 
 him out into the streets, stripped of another bit of 
 self-reliance. In spite of himself, he began to feel 
 his poor appearance, his drooping lip, his broken 
 purpose. He was a failure and the world could 
 
THE GREAT FEAR 33 
 
 not use him. He hardly dared to look a man in 
 the eyes, to lift his voice above a whisper, to make 
 a demand, to dare a refusal. He slunk home at 
 last like a cowed and beaten animal. 
 
 It was two in the afternoon. Wearily he 
 pushed in the door, and stood in the dancing sun 
 light on the kitchen floor. At the window, in the 
 dazzling light, Annie was tucking the baby in the 
 little shiny go-cart. She looked up anxiously and 
 saw his stricken sick face and the limp body with 
 the life gone out of it. 
 
 She glided over to him; she hushed his complain 
 ing lips with a kiss; she crowded him in a chair and 
 brought him food; she let the full measure of her 
 love go warming through him. Like the true 
 mother-wife she prattled on about the baby, archly 
 drawing smiles to his taut lips, and at last she in 
 duced him to walk out with her in the sunny after 
 noon. Up the streets to the West he wheeled the 
 go-cart, and Annie walked at his side talking 
 quickly. They trudged through a strange slash of 
 the city s life, squalid poverty to Third Avenue, 
 mediocre fringes of middle class to Lexington, 
 middle class respectability to Madison, luxurious 
 wealth to Fifth Avenue, and then one of the loveli 
 est stretches of landscape Park beyond. As they 
 walked block by block west, the street grew quieter, 
 finer, less crowded, more and more palatial, and 
 last they stepped from the avenue-divided social 
 classes of Man into the sweet democracy of Nature. 
 
34 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 The hills were yet green and pure; pines glittered 
 green among bare boughs in the wash of sun; the 
 walks were clean ; the air fresh and tingling. Here 
 mingled the well-to-do and the poor, bench by 
 bench, and they sat down, and to Peter came a 
 moment of deep peace, fraught with thoughts alien 
 to his daily life. The escape from Man, from the 
 world that did not want him, brought him face to 
 face with quiet Nature, the world that had 
 arms to gather in all that came. Here he had a 
 place at last ; he felt a new kinship with the still life 
 of the earth ; he had come back to the mother of all. 
 Sitting on the hard bench, and pushing the go-cart 
 out and in, a strange sense of a God in things 
 swept his brain and a mood eternal with life and 
 death and mystery possessed him. He had never 
 been religious; but now his heart opened out to the 
 undercurrent of all the hurling worlds, and he was 
 softened, subdued to Nature, and, for the time be 
 ing, calm and ready. 
 
 So went the days until the money dwindled 
 away, the mornings of humiliation, the after 
 noons of peace. Annie was roused to her full 
 strength; they ate their money penny by penny; 
 they resolutely forgot the little daily pleasures. 
 And yet within two weeks, there was nothing left. 
 Peter was up before dawn each morning to an 
 swer advertisements; but each time he was one of 
 a hundred men storming one job. Several times 
 
THE GREAT FEAR 35 
 
 the employer had to call the police to disperse the 
 mob of the unemployed. There was work no 
 where; men hung feverishly to their jobs; ordinary 
 men did extraordinary work; only those were laid 
 off whose positions were squeezed out by the busi 
 ness slump. And so Peter was buffeted about in 
 the whirlpool, cuffed by the whirlwind a useless 
 bit of humanity. His misery became more numb 
 and callous ; the pain of it grew less and less ; but so 
 did the man. He was acquiring the tramp-soul, 
 the vagrant-heart He grew careless of how he 
 looked or where he drifted. He was sinking 
 down from social stratum to social stratum ; he was 
 slowly being engulfed by the Undertow, the Un 
 derworld of Crime and Vagrancy that is the quick 
 sand-foundation of the modern city, over which 
 the strong world towers like a house of cards. 
 
 When he came home, numb, white, sullen, An 
 nie s silent fear grew day by day. All that was 
 left in the home now was love, and that was en 
 dangered. Peter was morose and harsh and un 
 responsive. The Park, which at first was the 
 saving touch, now made him impatient. Tramp- 
 restlessness had seized him. He could not sit still 
 on a bench and be quiet with the hills. 
 
 It was a night of wild storm. All afternoon he 
 had been meditating on two things. One was 
 flight from his wife and child, flight from the 
 hyena city, flight from the burden. The other was 
 the lump of steel in his pocket that could be hid- 
 
36 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 den in a man s fist. This last meant flight from 
 everything, including himself. 
 
 The low, back kitchen was dim with a flicker 
 ing gaslight; the wild storm beat with gusts of 
 washing rain down the sealed windows; the gale 
 roared through the backyards, slamming shutters 
 and whistling over clotheslines, and in the dimness 
 at the small center table Annie and Peter ate a 
 meager supper of bread and foul coffee. Each 
 time they moved the floor creaked weirdly. Now 
 and then a burst of noise swept down the airshaft 
 as if to smother them. 
 
 They were drunk with despair the young 
 wife thin, hollow-cheeked, unkempt, biting slowly 
 at a crust of bread; the lean white- faced man sit 
 ting, head on hand, sullen and absorbed in his 
 mood. He was thinking of death. Face to face 
 with it, he was going through a Hamlet-soliloquy 
 in terms of an American workman. What was he 
 facing, so common, so universal, so inevitable, so 
 inscrutable? The vast mystery of his own life 
 wrapped him like a rising ocean. He that was 
 sitting there, alive in every nerve, brain thinking, 
 hands moving, heart beating, what would happen 
 to him if he lifted the lump of steel and emptied 
 one of its chambers into his skull? There was but 
 a film, after all, between this world and the next. 
 Did it matter if he faced the Thing, had it out 
 with the Thing, now, or a few years later? 
 Didn t it all come to the same in the end? The 
 
THE GREAT FEAR 37 
 
 world did not want him. Why should he want 
 the world? They must be rid of each other. 
 
 Into this soliloquy broke his wife s voice, and 
 yet as if from far away : 
 
 " Peter." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Peter r 
 
 "What you want?" Sullen, defiant. 
 
 " PETER ! " She suddenly bowed her head, 
 and the weeks of terror had their pay. She 
 sobbed wildly. 
 
 He looked at her stupidly. Why cry, when it 
 was all the same in the end? 
 
 She lifted her face wild with sobs. 
 
 " Peter you ve got to speak to me this 
 this has got to stop ! It will drive me crazy! " 
 
 In the moment s silence, her strange sobs chimed 
 in with the swashing blows of the rain and the 
 noise of the airshaft. They were in the deepest 
 pit in a world of desolation. 
 
 Peter shifted uneasily and mumbled in a numb 
 voice : 
 
 "Well well " 
 
 He had never seen his wife in this frantic state. 
 She lifted her head again, and her words came 
 sharp, hot, and flew wild: 
 
 " I can t stand it I can t I can t ! You ve 
 changed you don t love me, Peter you don t 
 love the baby any more what is it? Are you 
 going to kill yourself? Are you going to leave 
 
3 8 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 us ? What did we do to you ? Haven t I tried to 
 help you a little bit at least? I m a poor fool 
 I m a poor fool of a woman oh! " 
 
 He bit his lips and automatically put his hand 
 in his pocket and clutched the cold lump of steel, 
 His wife put her two hands to her face hers 
 was exquisite misery at that moment. She spoke 
 in a low wail: 
 
 " Oh, what have we done that we must suffer 
 this way? And the baby " she lowered her 
 voice and spoke in an intense whisper. " He s 
 going to be sick he s going to die! And you," 
 she cried wildly, "you re his father you re my 
 husband! Good God! why don t you act like a 
 man ! " 
 
 Anger touched him: 
 
 " Have I hunted a job or not? Get one your 
 self, if it s easy as talking." 
 
 She looked at him, startled, white, a new 
 light dawning across her storm-tossed brain. She 
 paused a moment; she caught his eyes; she spoke 
 straight into him, making him quiver. 
 
 " / will, Peter! " 
 
 Something shocked hot and cold through him. 
 
 You ll you ll What ll you do ? " 
 
 " I ll get a job there s lots of jobs as servants. 
 I ll get a job!" 
 
 His jaw fell. 
 
 " You! " 
 
 She rose to her feet unsteadily. 
 
THE GREAT FEAR 39 
 
 " I m tired; I m going to bed." 
 
 And she crawled to her place beside her child. 
 For long hours Peter sat, head in his hand, a vague 
 new trouble stirring his heart into life, a new and 
 vaster sense of tragedy and ruin, a feeling of the 
 moral order of the world upset, of something 
 sacred gone from life. And the storm blew about 
 the tenement, sounding the dirge of the flight of 
 human souls. 
 
 At five the next morning the sleeping man was 
 roused by his wife. He sat up, and in the gray 
 glimmering light saw Annie standing at the bed 
 side with the baby in her arms. She spoke 
 sharply : 
 
 "Peter! quick! I want to show you! Wake 
 up!" 
 
 She laid the baby on the bed, and again and 
 again showed him how to change the clothes. She 
 did not notice his sullen listlessness, but spoke on 
 and on, giving endless directions about the bottle 
 of milk and the baby s outing and sleep. The 
 baby lay at the foot of the bed cooing and fondling 
 its feet Suddenly Annie turned from it, seized 
 Peter by both hands, leaned near and looked in 
 his eyes. 
 
 " Peter, I m trusting you with the best of my 
 life with all I ve got my flesh and blood 
 and " she stopped. " Promise me " her 
 voice rose almost hysterically "promise me, 
 
40 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 you ll do nothing rash, that you ll act like a 
 man, Peter, that I can trust you ! " 
 
 He was silent, his eyes on the baby. 
 
 "Peter," she cried, "promise me!" 
 
 " Oh, I ll promise," he mumbled. 
 
 She bent suddenly, kissing him on the lips; a 
 tear splashed his hand. A moment later she was 
 hugging and hugging her baby. And then she was 
 gone and the door shut softly. 
 
 Peter was much perturbed; he had a desire to 
 sob; something tough and hard and callous, 
 knotted like a cancer about his heart, began to 
 dissolve away. But he crawled out of bed, laid 
 the baby in its crib, and slipped into his clothes. 
 Then a busy time began for him. He felt curi 
 ously weak and empty, like a mere tottering shell 
 of a man. It was hunger and cold and sickness 
 and the Great White Fear. And it was some 
 thing new, the sense of the sacred gone out of life. 
 
 He began his work, however, with a grim touch 
 of humor. He was a poor sort of a mother at 
 best, and of late he had been a poor sort of a 
 father. He tussled long with the child s cries, 
 rocking him, walking him, mumbling foolish words 
 over the little head. Finally he got the milk, and 
 stilled the child by over-feeding it. 
 
 And then the long day began. It was a gray 
 cold day, but rainy fresh with the night s storm, 
 and at ten that morning there was seen, cutting 
 through squalor and wealth to the fading Park, 
 
THE GREAT FEAR 41 
 
 a thin, sick, pale young man wheeling a go-cart. 
 He walked alone, shuffling his feet, and leaning 
 heavily over the handle. There had been no 
 breakfast but a crust of bread and he was sick, 
 sick through and through, nauseous, fever-shaken. 
 
 In the Park he doubled up weakly on a bench 
 and pushed the go-cart out and in. And then the 
 unbidden terrible thoughts began to tramp, tramp, 
 tramp across his brain. He knew now that he was 
 no "master of his fate;" the vast forces of the 
 world, the interplay of human souls, the sweep of 
 events, the cyclone of life, were all bearing him 
 against his will to strange issues. Somehow he 
 had been caught in a cataract and swept away. 
 Even now, at the great moment of decision, his 
 hands were tied. The only freedom he had was 
 the freedom to die; this was the moment; this was 
 the only act he could do to regain his mastery. 
 And he had rashly promised this away. To what 
 end? 
 
 And then bitterly the tramping thoughts flashed 
 across his brain scene after scene, mood after 
 mood, of his earlier life. He was back in the 
 moonlit streets of summer, when he and Annie 
 used to sit on the steps of the stoop, and this world 
 was the pure magic; the nights that were the true 
 days of life, the nights of sweet, frail first love. 
 And he was back to his pride in his independence, 
 the pride that prompted him to ask her to be his 
 wife, to be the mother of his children. They had 
 
42 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 not expected an easy life; they were not used to 
 that. But they had expected and entered into a 
 warm little kingdom, a snug fairyland of Home, 
 only two rooms, but Annie in them. And his 
 greatest pride had been that he was the man, that 
 he was the breadwinner, that Annie was free to 
 be a wife and a mother. The coming of the child 
 had eaten up his savings, but there was left his 
 strength, his skilled hands, his ambition, and his 
 deep love for Annie. 
 
 At this thought the poor young man doubled 
 over deeper, and had to stifle his sobs. 
 
 And now? Events in which he had no part 
 had suddenly broken his life to pieces. No one 
 was to blame. So the world moved, and in mov 
 ing, crushed. And it had mercilessly crushed him, 
 not only physically, but he sat up suddenly 
 his mind aghast. He was face to face with his 
 mutilated heart. 
 
 And now Annie had gone out to be the Man, 
 and he had stayed home to be the Woman. This 
 then was the sacred something that had been lost. 
 He felt dimly, though there was no clear thinking, 
 that the most sacred part of their marriage was 
 that he was the Man and she the Woman, that 
 the world-struggle fell to him, the home-struggle 
 to her a relationship touched sacred by a million 
 human years up from the very cave of the first man, 
 something so ingrained in human bone and flesh 
 that it was nearly as sacred as the more ancient 
 
THE GREAT FEAR 4 3 
 
 love. Would it not have been better to kill him 
 self, than to let the marriage be killed? 
 
 It was supper time. The poor sick man had 
 cradled his baby in his arms, until the little one 
 slept. Then tenderly, very tenderly, with eyes 
 gone blind, he had laid the few pounds of human 
 flesh in the crib. He was strangely changed. He 
 wandered weakly up and down the dim kitchen. 
 He forgot how hungry he was, how empty and 
 fever-stricken. 
 
 His heart, his mind, his soul, were yearning for 
 Annie. He hungered for her; the sight of her 
 mournful blue eyes, the pathetic, old-known hol- 
 lowness of her cheeks, the touch of her hands. 
 The world had crippled him and driven her from 
 her home; they were both greatly wronged; he 
 was becoming a mere woman, and she a man. 
 But who could help it? There was that little 
 baby in the crib ! One had to care for him, one 
 had to give all up utterly, as Annie had done, that 
 one young soul might live and grow and be sunned 
 into a man. One had to sacrifice even a bit of 
 manhood. 
 
 He walked up and down, hungering for his 
 wife. He stopped to listen to each sound. He 
 did not wonder any more why life is, or death is, 
 or pain is. He knew that love is. 
 
 And then, at last, startling him in spite of his 
 expectancy, the door burst open and Annie rushed 
 
44 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 in. Twilight had come and the room was ghostly 
 and gray. Just for a moment, glimmeringly at 
 the shining stove he stood, irresolute, drinking in 
 each feature of her face, loving fiercely the light 
 brown hair blown in wisps over the low forehead; 
 the large blue eyes, now flashing so strangely; the 
 deep cheeks, now so darkly colored, the whole 
 woman dim and soft in the twilight. And then 
 it came over him that she was sparkling with ex 
 citement. And he noticed that she carried two 
 bulging paper bags. 
 
 " Peter ! " she cried, " the baby how is he ? " 
 
 He could hardly speak; he blurted. 
 
 " He s all right and you did you get 
 it?" 
 
 She put down the bags. 
 
 " Supper, Pete ! " she cried in an exhilarating 
 voice, that swept electricity through him. " Sup 
 per!" 
 
 She rushed and flung her arms about him. 
 
 " Pete, Pete ! I got it ! I got a job ! It s a 
 dollar a day very special. A grand house over 
 near Fifth Avenue. Peter! Ain t it glorious, 
 Pete?" 
 
 He humbly drew her close, and then the ex 
 periences of the day overmastered him. The 
 growing mood of the long weeks broke its ice and 
 went pell-mell down the valleys of April. He 
 heaved terribly, his shoulders wrenched 
 
THE GREAT FEAR 45 
 
 wrenched his head went down on her shoulder 
 he knew not what he was doing, but the long 
 unnatural man-sobs shook through the darkening 
 room. 
 
 " Pete ! " she cried, taking him closer and closer. 
 " It s all right! Everything s all right! Don t 
 you feel that way about it! I love the work, 
 honest, I do, and we can live, Pete I We can wait. 
 Better times are coming! " 
 
 He laughed through his sobs weirdly. 
 
 " You re the man of the two of us. You re the 
 fighter!" 
 
 " Don t you believe it, Pete ! " she cried. 
 " But get busy; light up big and blazing; set the 
 table. I got what you love best guess 
 guess " 
 
 " What! " he mumbled, " cornbeef " 
 
 " And cabbage " she cried. 
 
 He kissed and kissed her like a man possessed, 
 the big tears on his twitching cheeks. He stroked 
 and stroked her cheek softly; he held her face 
 away to look into it with lustrous eyes, its shades 
 of love and fondness. And then, softly, he 
 whispered : 
 
 ;< Wait a minute, wait a minute ! " 
 
 Swiftly he slouched through the darkness to the 
 square of window stained with the few lights back 
 of the yards. He raised it, his figure black 
 against it, he drew secretly from his pocket a 
 
46 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 lump of steel hidden in his fist, he reached out his 
 hand and opened it and listened. Something 
 hard hit the pavement of the backyard. 
 
 And Annie, bustling about with the supper, 
 though the tears streamed, pretended that she did 
 not hear. 
 
 But he stood gazing on the first star in the far- 
 flushed skies, the evening star, and he knew and 
 Annie knew by some strange vast tide of light 
 through their hearts, that the Great White Fear 
 had been flung out of the window, and was gone 
 forever. There would be Hard Times and Good 
 Times, there would be new Exilings and New 
 Hunts, but they had learned how to Fight, to 
 Fight in team with all the strength of man and 
 woman married. They had won their roof and 
 their crust. 
 
MEG 
 
 \ 
 
MEG 
 
 CHARPLY at six the factory whistle loosed a 
 long blast through the rainstorm. In the twi 
 light before the gray walls glowed a naked arc- 
 light on a tall pole. Under it at once poured a 
 swarm of workwomen and workmen, stringing out 
 suddenly into a snake of people that glided down 
 the broad path of the flatlands. 
 
 The wild day was closing over them. The rain 
 drenched them to the skin. They huddled up, 
 hurried, collars high, hands in pockets, until they 
 climbed the embankment of the road and disap 
 peared beneath the street lamps. Here and there 
 under a lamp a child waited its father or mother 
 with an umbrella. 
 
 One woman, however, did not follow the crowd. 
 She turned, alone, down a narrow path to the left, 
 and strode rapidly until she seemed a moving, 
 lonesome figure, huge-black on the flat country. 
 This woman was well built. She swung rhythmic 
 ally, her whole body walking. Her bare head 
 took the rain upright. Strands of gold-bronze 
 hair fluttered out. She rocked her arms. Her 
 face, lost in the shadows of dying day, and 
 splattered with raindrops, was strangely wild 
 
 49 
 
50 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 gray eyes set in dark lashes, firm chin and mouth, 
 high cheekbones, low forehead something of 
 the gipsy, something tameless and homeless. 
 
 But this woman s hands were hard and big with 
 labor and her clothes were patches. Her shoes 
 sloughed water, as she was continually stepping 
 through rain puddles. Her clothes and hands 
 belied her face. 
 
 She gained a little strip of pines, passed 
 through, sniffing eagerly at the fresh, pungent air, 
 and then swung over a meadow, along a path al 
 most lost in earth s autumn. Her skirts became 
 soaked by the high flowers through which she 
 brushed. There were goldenrod and lavender 
 asters, a wildness of them. Her eyes were wet 
 with tears as she beheld them. 
 
 Then suddenly she came to the rear of a two- 
 family house, rising gray from the meadow to the 
 nearby street. A window on the rear porch was 
 lit. She stepped up, knocked on the door and 
 pushed it open. A thin, middle-aged woman was 
 busy at the stove. 
 
 She looked up and nodded. 
 
 " Sleepin as usual. My, but you re wet, 
 Meg!" 
 
 Meg did not answer. She shook herself like a 
 dog, and stepped across the room. Against the 
 wall was an improvised cot two chairs, backs 
 outward, cushioned with a long pillow and quilts. 
 On the top slept a tiny baby. 
 
MEG 51 
 
 Meg leaned over the child a moment, then 
 deftly raised it and drew it close. 
 
 " Get my envelope to-morrer," she murmured. 
 " Owe you $2.50 for keepin her, don t I? " 
 
 The woman nodded. Meg hurried to the door. 
 Suddenly she turned. There was a wild light in 
 her eyes. 
 
 " Mrs. Heney ! " 
 
 "Yep?" 
 
 " Say he s out to-day." 
 
 The woman seemed startled, a little excited. 
 She stepped over to Meg. 
 
 " Out to-day ! Coming home ? " 
 
 "Don t know! " 
 
 Mrs. Heney leaned near and whispered: 
 
 "Said he d kill you, didn t he? Better stay 
 here, Meg." 
 
 Meg straightened up. 
 
 " No I m going home. It s got to come 
 
 some time." 
 
 She turned, opened the door, and slipped into 
 the blackness. Gropingly, but swiftly, she 
 rounded the house to the street, gained the wet 
 shiny-spotted pavement and hurried on. The 
 child did not awake. Rain splashed its little head; 
 its little fingers, touching Meg s neck, were wet. 
 The wildness of autumn the earth s cry over 
 her new-dead and her new-born wrapped 
 mother and child in strange spaces of sound and 
 night. Suddenly Meg went slower. 
 
52 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 Her heart began to beat high. If Tom were 
 home he might leap out at her from the darkness, 
 strike her down. 
 
 " But it ain t that," she muttered, " it s the baby 
 like as not he d strike her the brute ! " 
 
 Brute ! Yes, a big man. She shivered, a glor 
 ious apprehension going through her. 
 
 A little dirt road ran off the street into the black 
 night. Meg slowly followed it for several hun 
 dred feet. Blackness swallowed her. She drew 
 the child closer and closer, glad of its silent com 
 panionship. It was living, and it was good to 
 have life near one in such a night. 
 
 Finally she stopped, and felt out, groping here 
 and there. Her hand struck the wet boards of a 
 fence. She felt along it to an open space, set a 
 hesitant foot within, and slid foot after foot down 
 a broken path. Feeling out at her left, her hand 
 touched the side of a house. She had a sudden 
 fear of the night. Tom might be crouched in the 
 black kitchen but the night seemed more ter 
 rible. 
 
 Her hand suddenly shot out into space. She 
 turned, took a step up, onto a little platform, and 
 then stopped against a door. She was breathless, 
 though smiling. The baby did not stir; there was 
 no sound save the wild rattle of the rain. 
 
 " All right, Tom," she said aloud, " all right! " 
 
 She turned the knob, and pushed in backward, 
 shielding the child. Then suddenly she slammed 
 
MEG 53 
 
 the door on the night, and stood trembling, listen 
 ing, straining her eyes. The hush of the house, 
 the warm home-hush, smote her ears like a great 
 noise. 
 
 "Tom!" she called. 
 
 There was no answer. 
 
 " If you strike me," she said slowly, " all right 
 but wait till I put Annie down ! Wait an 
 if you re a man ! " 
 
 No one answered. 
 
 She suppressed a cry, and started over the bare, 
 creaking floor, edging from left to right as if she 
 expected a blow. She came against a chair, the 
 sudden noise shocking her. She bumped against 
 a table. Then, listening a moment, she heard the 
 alarm-clock throbbing thickly. 
 
 Again she smiled, started forward, found a 
 doorway, went through, put the child down into 
 a little crib, and fled back to the kitchen with an 
 unreasoning fear. She was wild to get a match. 
 Her hand slapped over the wall. She found the 
 box. She kept looking back from right to left 
 as she struck a match on the stove. It spurted 
 blue; the sulphur fume made her gasp; and then 
 the flame burst golden. 
 
 Holding the tiny flame out, she looked about 
 quickly. No one was there in the jumping shad 
 ows. She went to the table, lifted the chimney 
 from a lamp, lit the wick, and replaced the chim 
 ney. The glow grew and grew. 
 
54 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 Then swiftly she pulled down the shades of the 
 two windows, picked up the lamp and carried it 
 into the bedroom. There, too, she pulled down 
 the shades. There was no one in the house save 
 herself and the baby. For a space she brooded 
 over the crib. How soundly the little one slept! 
 A glory stole into Meg s face. She laughed 
 softly. 
 
 " Your mother s no good, Annie," she mur 
 mured. " As if I could be scared with you 
 around! " 
 
 She turned and softly carried the lamp back 
 to the kitchen, setting it on the bare center-table 
 and turning up the wick. The rich golden glow 
 sphered out, fading toward the shadowy walls, 
 and in the glow Meg seemed beautiful, even grace 
 ful, with hair burned to gold, gray eyes sparkling, 
 face strong in relief. 
 
 This little kitchen was a bare place. A cup 
 board and ice-box stood against one wall, windows 
 and door filled another, the stove a third, and a 
 broken table leaned against the fourth. The 
 plastering of the walls and ceiling was broken in 
 many places, patches fallen out showing the ribs 
 of the house. There were a few rough chairs 
 and an old arm-rocker with a faded pink pillow 
 deep-sunk in it. 
 
 Meg, wet as she was, sat down in this rocker, 
 folded her hands in her lap, and let her head rest 
 back. 
 
MEG 55 
 
 She sighed deeply. It was sweet after the 
 roaring day in the mill, the ker-rack-ity-clang of 
 the braid machines, the dance of the flashing bob 
 bins, the patient threading of needles, the dust and 
 bad steamy air, and, worse yet, the plunge with 
 her child through the blackness it was sweet, 
 overpoweringly sweet, to have this moment of 
 relaxing. 
 
 The windows rattled; the door shook; the floor 
 creaked. The wild storm whirled about the little 
 house like a sea tossing a raft. But in the sealed 
 heart of the autumn storm burned a lamp and 
 beside it sat a silent woman and near her slept her 
 child. It was a moment of drowsy glory. 
 
 But suddenly she heard the door shake. If it 
 was Tom! She sat forward, tense with expect 
 ancy. No one entered. 
 
 Tom! She gripped the arms of the chair; she 
 sat head low. She began to think sharply, clearly. 
 What should she do? How should she act? 
 Was she to be the weak woman, the every-day 
 woman, the woman for whom she had a bitter 
 contempt? What right had the brute in her 
 home? 
 
 The brute! Yes, a big, big man! He used 
 to be machinist at the factory, a good job, twenty 
 a week. He was a sight in blue greasy overalls, 
 bending over broken machinery, working with big 
 tools. His head was tousled and brown, his face 
 many-grooved, his eyes black. He had a big 
 
56 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 black mustache. He was rough and tender 
 well loved among men, shy of women. 
 
 Meg met him in the factory. The gipsy in her 
 had sent her from England to New York. There 
 she had been a servant, until the springtide called 
 her. From that time on she had wandered from 
 town to town a woman alone, but fearless, self- 
 reliant, daring. She had rolled stogies in Pitts 
 burgh, she had worked in the hat factories of 
 Yonkers, in the silk mills of Paterson. Finally 
 she came to the braid factory in this New Jersey 
 village. 
 
 Tom once repaired her machine. The woman 
 and man looked each other over curiously. 
 After that he kept near when he could, prolong 
 ing all the jobs in her neighborhood. Once at 
 closing time he joined her under the arc-light. 
 
 " I guess I ll walk with you a stretch," he mut 
 tered huskily. 
 
 They walked in silence. After that he accom 
 panied her morning and night, until one evening 
 yes, autumn, wild wind blowing just such a 
 night as this, only no rain he paused in the 
 bunch of pines. The treetops were singing above 
 them, the needles flying in showers. 
 
 "Meg!" 
 
 She stopped, her heart nearly breaking. He 
 suddenly gripped her two arms and drew her 
 fiercely near. 
 
 "Will you?" 
 
MEG 57 
 
 " I will, Tom," she breathed. 
 
 He almost crushed her in his arms. The wild 
 glory of that moment the woman and man new 
 born in marriage in the rough theater of the dying 
 world, the run-wild earth, had filled them with 
 the inexpressible. They were alive at last; laugh 
 ing, talking, touching each other; they had their 
 brief glimpse of the Romance that hurls the suns; 
 they seemed on the threshold o f a starry existence, 
 remote from bread-sweat and the dust of the hu 
 man road. 
 
 This lasted a little way into their marriage. 
 Lasted until the strike threw Tom out of work. 
 There was a brief period that winter when the 
 workers literally starved. Tom s big body could 
 not stand it. He began to make trouble. He 
 quarreled with Meg. She fought bravely, until 
 he cursed her. Then she ordered him out of the 
 house. 
 
 From that time on he began to be a heavy 
 drinker, and when the strike was over, and there 
 were wages again, he blew in the most of his 
 money on Saturday night carouses. One Sunday 
 morning he came home at three, dragged Meg out 
 of bed and beat her. 
 
 Against this outrage, this breaking in on the 
 sacredness of her womanhood, Meg rebelled with 
 fury. She defended herself with a rolling pin. 
 
 After that the marriage was shattered. They 
 were merely two persons living under one roof, 
 
58 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 the woman quiet, active, cold, the man silent and 
 sullen. Once in a while he would sit looking at 
 her, his face struggling as if he were about to 
 speak to release his remorse, to throw himself 
 on her mercy but he was not a man of w r ords. 
 Nor did Meg help him. 
 
 He became thoroughly a brute. He lost his 
 job; he loafed about the saloon; he begged for 
 drink-money. When he came home he threatened 
 to beat u his woman." But she merely said 
 sharply : 
 
 " Remember, there s a child comin . If you 
 strike me, so help me God, I ll have you in jail." 
 
 And then one terrible night he beat her again, 
 and the child was born. Meg had fled to Mrs. 
 Heney s house. Her first act was to send for the 
 police. They found Tom in his kitchen, doubled 
 up in a chair, eyes glazed, hair wild, clothes dis 
 heveled. He seemed dazed. They dragged him 
 off to the lock-up, and waited for the wife to ap 
 pear against him. 
 
 She never forgot the scene in the blue-walled 
 courtroom, the magistrate with his green-shaded 
 eyes under the gas-light, the crowd of policemen, 
 women and hangers-on, the special officer who 
 handed Tom up to the Judge. She trembled and 
 did not look at her husband, but he whispered in 
 her ears : 
 
 "Don t doit, Meg!" 
 
 This is the moment when most women fail. 
 
MEG 59 
 
 They give in for their child s sake, or their man s 
 sake, or love s sake. But Meg was a free woman. 
 She spoke against him. 
 
 " Three months," said the Judge. 
 
 Meg, being very weak, sobbed a little. Tom 
 cursed. 
 
 " Wait till I get out, you ," he whispered, 
 " I ll fix yer ! " He leaned very near. " / // kill 
 you!" 
 
 The wife-beater was dragged away. 
 
 And then life began anew for Meg. She took 
 her old job again in the factory, and she farmed 
 the baby out to Mrs. Heney during the day. 
 
 It was a strange three months. She began to 
 understand other women. The lovely tenderness 
 of motherhood filled her heart. Her evenings and 
 early mornings were wonderful. She had not 
 dreamed that a tiny baby, a little helpless waif 
 tossed up out of the night, could so enslave the 
 body and soul. So many things that had mattered 
 before now mattered not at all. She felt no call 
 of far cities and strange roads; she did not care 
 whether she was masterful or not. Her function 
 was to give herself to another, to serve, to sacrifice, 
 and her pay was in miracles, miracles of cooing 
 baby-cries, faint, scarce-felt brushing of baby- 
 fingers, wonderful opening of eyes sweeter than 
 dawn, feel of a helpless clinging body in one s 
 arms, drawn so close, hugged so tight, caressed 
 and mumbled over, soothed and kissed. It is 
 
60 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 months after the baby is born before the woman 
 becomes a real mother, it is a day-to-day unfolding, 
 an opening of doors deeper and deeper into the 
 mysteries and miracles of life. Meg had been go 
 ing through these doorways. To-night she was a 
 mother in the larger sense. What are men but 
 children? What was Tom but a child? Yes, she 
 understood other women now. 
 
 There was that night when Tom had gazed 
 at her, when he seemed about to release his re 
 morse if she had only been a little motherly 
 then! . . . 
 
 Suddenly she arose from the rocker. She was 
 chilly now, her wet clothes clinging to her. She 
 listened intently, though without looking, her eyes 
 musing dreamily. Wild rain was beating against 
 the windows; the crazy little house was musical 
 with the storm; the lamplight fell dimly over the 
 shadowy walls. Suddenly through Meg s heart 
 went the awful passion of autumn, the glory of 
 treetops like flying hair in the wind, the wild light 
 in the woods, the meadows shaking with wild- 
 flowers, the earth s heaven-rolling psalm of death 
 death, widespread, driving men into houses, 
 driving men home. On such a night man in his 
 house feels like the first human who dug out a cave 
 and built a fire, and found a sweet nook in the 
 storm, a warm hush in the wilderness, a shelter of 
 love. 
 
 It was just such a night, though rainless, that 
 
MEG 61 
 
 Tom had drawn her close under the pines and 
 said, " Meg will you? " The wild glory of 
 that moment swept over her with every wail of the 
 wind. 
 
 " And Annie," she muttered, clenching her fists, 
 " Annie s his n as well as mine. He s Annie s fa 
 ther ain t he? " 
 
 She looked about the room. She heard the 
 storm. She realized how lonely she was not a 
 soul to talk to no one even to look at! She 
 was swallowed in the night, and far, far from all 
 living men and women. She looked at the door 
 time and again. At any moment he might open it. 
 
 What was she to do then? Be like other 
 women ? 
 
 And then the great fact of the night, bringing 
 back that other autumn night, and the great fact 
 of her motherhood, and the great fact of Tom s 
 return, began to work in her heart. She suddenly 
 felt all woman again. Here was the home and 
 yet no home she wanted a man, she wanted 
 love. Passionately she longed for love on this 
 home-night, passionately she longed for a mascu 
 line presence near, warmth of cheek and hand, 
 rough realness of a man s voice, someone moving 
 about the room, someone s tread in the other 
 room And how she would serve him ! She 
 would give him supper, make him eat, her man 
 should not go hungry ! 
 
 A brute ? Yes but she wanted a brute ! 
 
62 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 She wanted a man! Someone to share the wild 
 night with, someone to stand between her and the 
 storm, someone to give her her child for all day 
 long, someone to serve, to love, to mother. 
 
 ;< Why, Tom s a child," she murmured, her 
 eyes filling. " Why didn t I know that before? 
 He could be handled as easy as that! " 
 
 " Yes," she went on, tremendous pride rising in 
 her voice, " but he s a man, too ! How he crushed 
 me under the pines ! Strong arms big heart ! " 
 
 She began excusing everything, forgiving, for 
 getting all. Women must have men, children 
 must have fathers as well as mothers. 
 
 And now if he really were coming back to try 
 to kill her She smiled bravely. Then she sat 
 down suddenly, a strange stir about her eyes, a 
 breaking down about her heart, a mist, and wild, 
 uncontrollable sobs. She was sobbing for the 
 glory gone, the glory that began that night under 
 the pines. Oh, the pity of it! Yes, she was all 
 woman after all motherhood had melted her 
 down to the common mass, she was just a woman 
 in a world of women. 
 
 And then again she smiled bravely. She arose, 
 brushing off the tears. 
 
 " I ll get him supper anyway! " she muttered. 
 
 She was very busy at once. She opened the 
 little ice-box and drew out some sliced bacon and 
 some boiled potatoes. These she set on the table. 
 Then quickly she built a fire in the stove, a paper 
 
MEG 63 
 
 and wood fire that sent a sweet, autumny smell of 
 burning through the room. The potatoes were 
 sliced up, put in a pan with the bacon, and she 
 fried them together. 
 
 " He can do as he likes," she murmured, " only 
 he s got to speak first." 
 
 She remembered how he loved to hear her sing 
 " Coming Through the Rye." It was hard to 
 start, to lift her voice in the silence, but at last it 
 came, quaintly, brokenly, sweetly : 
 
 " When a body meets a body 
 
 Coming through the rye " 
 
 She looked glorious at the moment. She was 
 bending over the stove, turning the bacon with a 
 fork, her body graceful, her head strongly poised, 
 her face sweet with singing, sweet with shining 
 gray eyes. And the little house was shaken in the 
 teeth of the storm, the rain beat on the streaming 
 panes, the floor creaked, the alarm-clock throbbed, 
 and the woman sang. 
 
 She stopped suddenly. She turned, and went 
 white. Her fork was uplifted. It began to 
 tremble in her hand. Her face looked scared, 
 eyes big, lips slightly parted. But the lamplight 
 flooding her, softened her countenance with a 
 golden glory. 
 
 Slowly the door opened. The woman was 
 alone, unprotected, the night was loud. She felt 
 
64 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 fear, terrible fear for a moment. A large man 
 came in. A soft slouch hat was well down over 
 his eyes, his rough clothes were dripping water. 
 He closed the door hard behind him. He looked 
 about the room, hardly noticing Meg. Then 
 slowly he took off his hat, shook off its water on 
 the floor and hung it over a chair. The floor 
 creaked loudly under his weight. Without a word 
 he stepped to the table and sat down on a chair. 
 
 Meg gazed at him. She was blinded a moment 
 with tears. Then she went softly to the cup 
 board, took down a plate, filled it with bacon and 
 potatoes, and set it gently before the man. She 
 went back to the stove and pretended to be busy. 
 
 The man picked up knife and fork. But he did 
 not eat. He was staring at Meg. Several times 
 he opened his mouth to speak. But he said noth 
 ing. 
 
 The storm grew louder than ever, lashing the 
 house with rain. The two were alone in the 
 whole world shut deep in with a lamp in a tiny 
 house. 
 
 The man opened his mouth again. His voice 
 suddenly rose, false, strange, unnatural. 
 
 " Meg, how s the kid?" 
 
 She turned, and spoke in a rich, low voice : 
 
 " Want to see her?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 She came over all in a tremble, picked up the 
 lamp and led the way. The man arose clumsily 
 
Meg, wet as she was, sat down in this rocker, folded her hands 
 in her lap, and let her head rest back" 
 
MEG 65 
 
 and followed her, trying not to make a noise. He 
 edged close to Meg at the crib and looked down. 
 Neither spoke. But Meg heard the man breath 
 ing huskily. The lamp shook in her fingers and 
 she had to grip it with both hands. 
 
 Then she turned and went back and set the lamp 
 down again. She felt weak, and leaned heavily 
 on the table. The man came close to her. 
 
 " Meg! " 
 
 "Tom!" But she did not stir. 
 
 " Meg! Will you? Just once more? " 
 
 " Yes, Tom!" 
 
 There was a deep silence. The alarm-clock 
 throbbed, the storm wrapped them. Suddenly 
 Meg turned. 
 
 " She s ours, Tom!" 
 
 He gripped both her hands; he pulled her 
 fiercely, fiercely close: 
 
 "God! God!" he cried, "but I want you! 
 You re my wife ! My own wife! " 
 
SATURDAY NIGHT 
 
SATURDAY NIGHT 
 
 a Saturday night the lights of Third Avenue 
 have under them thick black tides of humans. 
 The overhead elevated railroad soaks with the 
 glamour that shades in and out its iron pillars 
 now and then a glow of gold from the running 
 trolley car now and then the long harnessed 
 Milky Way of the trains above. Flames are on 
 pushcarts and fruitstands chestnut pans at the 
 corners curl a smoke of incense through ruddy fire 
 and the continuous plate glass of the stores 
 sheds a radiance down the street. And in the 
 lights of Third Avenue faces and forms stand out 
 bathed in gold and blue and orange. 
 
 There has been an exodus of washwomen and 
 factory girls from the Eastern tenements; a migra 
 tion of clerks wives and frugal housekeepers from 
 the Western flats ; the staring baby is here ; the cor 
 ner boys; the saloon-dwellers; the workers. And 
 this is Lover s Lane. 
 
 There is no such happiness as Saturday night 
 happiness. The week s work is done; the wages 
 are drawn; the race has returned to Eden, where 
 there are sights and sounds and things to buy. 
 There is no care for the morrow; one may feast 
 
yo PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 and spend and sleep. Hence, the breezy holiday 
 spirit along the avenue. Hence, an Enchanted 
 People beautiful despite their exteriors for 
 what is beautiful in human face save light of love 
 and warmth for our fellows and the smile of the 
 task accomplished? 
 
 A hundred feet East of Third Avenue, on 
 Eighty-third Street, there s a dusty tenement whose 
 front windows are forever shut. The ground- 
 floor window has a small sign backed by a squalid 
 lace curtain. An electric street light with blue un 
 certain rays picks out the letters of the sign two 
 words : 
 
 BREITMANN 
 
 Dressmaking 
 
 Behind that window is a small parlor smothered 
 with years of stale air and the smell of steamed 
 garments and two poor human bodies. A sew 
 ing machine stands in one corner; a dressmaker s 
 model in another. The furniture is old and 
 threadbare; the old carpet worn through; the big 
 crayons on the wall date back to Darkest America. 
 And the room is really a larger incarnation of the 
 souls that dwell in it. Their ordinary incarnation 
 their human flesh and clothes is the room on 
 a small scale. Old Mrs. Breitmann is so flabby, 
 dusty, threadbare that there are not even deep lines 
 in her sallow puffed face. She is a soft bundle of 
 
SATURDAY NIGHT 71 
 
 antiquity and speaks in a bygone whisper. And 
 her daughter of forty her maiden daughter 
 is a sad replica of the mother flabby, shabby, 
 dim. Her faded blue eyes are blurs on her pale 
 face her lips have lost their color ; her fat hands 
 seem made of dry dust. 
 
 Mother and daughter sit quietly together and 
 sew for a pittance, wringing just enough money 
 out of ill-made clothes to pay rent and the trades 
 people. They drink tea, and eat like manless 
 women a canary s diet. They speak in whis 
 pers to one another when it is necessary, and it is 
 not often necessary. 
 
 But on a crisp Saturday night in December, Lil- 
 ith Breitmann, the daughter, was in a state of un 
 rest she had not known for years. For years she 
 had sat sewing as if time were not yet time was, 
 and in the silence of the room time had stolen from 
 her much that was glory and dream and the salt of 
 life. It had filched her youth from her, and a 
 sweet girlish beauty, and ambition, and hopes. It 
 had left a garment on her stuck full of pins and 
 threaded needles. It had added a skill to her fin 
 gers and a set of diagrams to her brain. But life 
 rich, warm, struggling life where was it? 
 Third Avenue roared by with glowing crowds. 
 Life was there. Why had she been born to sit 
 aside and crumble to Nothingness, without par 
 taking of the radiance, the terror and the joy? 
 
 Something of the Third Avenue mood swept 
 
72 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 Lilith on this crisp December night. It was the 
 call of the wild. But for a full hour she sat on 
 her hard chair sewing at the first party dress of a 
 young girl on Lexington Avenue. Now and then 
 she timidly glanced at the dusty mother who bent 
 her near-sighted eyes close to a sleeve inside-out. 
 The mother took no notice, and Lilith returned her 
 fingers and eyes to the party dress. Bitterly she 
 thought of the young girl, the joy, the dance, the 
 lights, and revolt grew apace. 
 
 She had looked at her mother thirty times in the 
 hour. Now at last, with heart beating fast, she 
 let a few words venture forth. 
 
 " It s a nice night, / think" she whispered. 
 
 " Ya," said the mother. 
 
 There was a silence stitched together by the 
 mother s needle. 
 
 Again Lilith spoke : 
 
 "I I think it would be nice to go out to 
 night." 
 
 Her mother stopped sewing and looked at her : 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 Why? Lilith was struck dumb, and swallowed 
 hard. The mother went on sewing, much per 
 turbed. She sensed the coming of a revolt that 
 should break her life to bits. 
 
 Lilith s cheeks took an unusual color, her dim 
 eyes began to show life. She stumbled to her 
 feet, half-choking. 
 
 "I I m going out," she breathed. 
 
SATURDAY NIGHT 73 
 
 The mother looked at her, frozen with terror. 
 Her jaw hung. At last she mumbled: 
 
 " Are you crazy? " 
 
 Lilith had never crossed her, and now at forty 
 the girl was asserting herself! This was the be 
 ginning of the end. 
 
 But while the mother sat staring and mumbling, 
 Lilith unsteadily performed the sacred rites of 
 preparation for Romance. She pulled the pins 
 and needles from her woolen waist. She got the 
 little brush they used for customers, and turned it 
 on herself. She put on a tawdry antique straw 
 hat, shoddy with a bird s-wing and a bunch of rib 
 bon wrapped herself in a Red Ridinghood cape 
 and finally, the last terrible touch drew from 
 her dollar hoard twenty cents in nickels and pen 
 nies. 
 
 Through all this ritual there was no word be 
 tween mother and daughter. The silence of the 
 years had atrophied their power to converse. But 
 it was an awful silence a silence shrill with defi 
 ance on the daughter s part, with despair and ter 
 ror on the mother s part. 
 
 So when Lilith said in a voice that trembled 
 like a moving picture " I m going" the 
 mother could only mutter: "Unsinn! unsinn!" 
 (Nonsense!) 
 
 And could not believe her eyes when the daugh 
 ter opened the door, staggered through, and shut 
 herself away in the Unknown, the Mystery. 
 
74 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 Eighty-third Street, dark, deep, gloomy, was an 
 underground cavern with a secret fire-guarded 
 portal to the West the portal of Elysian fields. 
 For looking up the dark street, Lilith saw the 
 golden glow of Third Avenue. Thither she sped, 
 almost tripping along, the blood hot about her 
 ears and singing in her pulses. 
 
 In another moment she was in the City of the 
 Enchanted, she herself one of the Enchanted Peo 
 ple. The lights, the tides of men and women, 
 the sights, the lustrous leather of shoes in the bril 
 liant show window, the glamour of high-heaped 
 fruit on the stands, the keen air, the buoyancy and 
 sparkle of the Holiday all these flooded 
 through her, until she was transfigured. It was a 
 new birth into a new world. She had sloughed off 
 her skin and clothes, and was a happy young girl in 
 Lover s Lane. But where was he? 
 
 He! Tears gathered to her eyes, and the 
 breath of old romance blew back through the ruins 
 of her heart. Well enough she knew where he 
 was. Little had she cared this last year, after the 
 janitor s crippled daughter had told her. But to 
 night? 
 
 There s a yellow-brick Public School on Seventy- 
 ninth Street that is as old as Yorkville. The 
 sweet-faced daughter of the dressmaker went 
 there, books on her arm, lunch in her coat-pocket, 
 and shyness and blushes on her cheeks. Henry 
 Lutz went there, too. He was a handsome, black- 
 
SATURDAY NIGHT 75 
 
 haired, black-eyed boy with a native talent for 
 music. He could pull song from a Jew s harp, a 
 harmonica, a violin or a piano. He was a wild 
 fellow ; she, a timid negative girl. He carried her 
 books at times; he came around at twilight, when, 
 the boys weren t looking, and wrung love-lyrics 
 from his lute; that is, Lilith sat on the stoop, and 
 Henry sat a step above and played on the harmon 
 ica. They were undeniably happy head over 
 heels in love. They were shy and full of blushes. 
 They gave each other tokens. They took secret 
 vows. Henry next went to Harvard for 
 Henry dwelt West of Third Avenue. But he kept 
 on writing, and thrice there were secret, sa 
 cred meetings kisses, embraces, vows stolen 
 nights. And then silence. 
 
 The janitor s crippled daughter who was 
 nearly as old as Lilith had once shared her se 
 crets. Hence, the janitor s daughter remembered 
 the name of Henry Lutz when she heard it. And 
 with the name came a short but sufficient history. 
 The wild boy had been expelled from college; he 
 had squandered family money, till he was also ex 
 pelled from home; he had walked year by year 
 down the steps into the Underworld the stair 
 way of the Tenderloin. He had lost his friends; 
 his character had crumbled away; and last, he be 
 came a semi-vagrant, haunting Bowery dives. He 
 did anything for a living in ways uncertain and 
 unsavory. There had been a dramatic moment 
 
76 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 on an " el " train late at night when he sprawled 
 drunk on one side, and begged alms from some 
 men opposite. 
 
 " I m a Harvard man," he had hiccoughed. 
 " Take my oath I am. Listen/ he rolled out 
 grandly, " Arma virumque cano; Troia qm prim 
 us ab orls but I m on the road to ruin " he 
 waved his hand drunkenly, " on the road to ruin ! " 
 
 One of his old friends sat opposite. 
 
 The shock had driven him into a better way of 
 earning a living. And now he was playing 
 the piano at the Nickel Theatre on Eighty-fourth 
 Street. This was the sensational news the jani 
 tor s daughter had conveyed to Lilith. And Lil- 
 ith crumbling to dust under the label of u Breit- 
 mann, Dressmaking " had not cared. But to 
 night ? 
 
 She saw his black hair and his black eyes again; 
 a music stole from the dead harmonica; she 
 burned again with the kiss; a boy s arms were 
 about her and she, was she not a young girl 
 again in Lover s Lane? Suddenly she loved all 
 faces she loved this waddling fat woman who 
 carried a baby in her arms she loved this pale 
 clerk and his anemic wife. She was drenched with 
 the very spirit of life; she caught the zest of the 
 bargain in the fish-market as she passed; she 
 paused at windows to feast her eyes on brilliant 
 things. She crossed Eighty-fourth Street, almost 
 dancing, tripping along with girlish resiliency. It 
 
SATURDAY NIGHT 77 
 
 seemed to her as if he were waiting for her; she 
 would meet him soon look into his dark eyes, 
 and listen to the music of his voice as he remem 
 bered his vows. And what else? Might there 
 be a kiss? 
 
 Her blood sang through her; she was breath 
 less with expectancy. Life again was romance 
 and mystery unfathomable, star-reaching, and 
 whirled with song. And then, suddenly, she 
 stopped still her hand at her heart. She was 
 thrilled so that she felt faint with dizzy happi 
 ness. 
 
 Two milky globes suspended on wires flooded 
 the sidewalk with a copper-colored intense light 
 a light like compressed sunlight blinding, 
 terrific. Each person standing in it was a living 
 statue, deeply shaded, clearly chiseled. Beneath 
 it in a broad recess the width of the building was 
 a little glass " window " where a woman sat with 
 a roll of tickets. On either side were doors. 
 The ground was paved with tiny tiles with the in 
 wrought word " Nicoland," and in front were 
 gorgeous posters. 
 
 Lilith, thrilling through and through, read the 
 posters and looked at their pictures. One was 
 "The Actor s Wife a Tale of Love, Kidnap 
 ing and Unfaithfulness"; another was, " Lost in 
 the Desert." But Lilith did not understand these. 
 She was thinking of the pianist inside. Could she 
 dare to go in ? Could she dare to spend five cents 
 
78 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 for such a thing? What would her mother say? 
 Five cents for the theater ! And moving pictures ! 
 And he at the piano ! 
 
 She would sit in the dark and listen to him. 
 Truly this was the great night of her life the 
 Dream-Night. She was in the Dream-World; 
 she was a Dream- Person why should she not 
 dream her fill? What was five cents as against 
 Romance and Love? 
 
 She tinkled her nickel in at the window, the 
 sharp-faced woman snipped off a ticket, a uni 
 formed man immediately clutched it out of her 
 hand, and a second later she had pushed open a 
 door and entered the " theater." The first sensa 
 tion was weird, uncanny, unreal. The room was 
 in blackness and warm with dense humanity a 
 smell of people. She was jammed in with a 
 crowd waiting at the entrance for empty seats. 
 Above her from a little aperture in the street-wall, 
 a beam of white light penciled through the air, 
 widening out as it went, until it splashed the white 
 framed plaster of the rear. Far away she saw the 
 gray-white-black kaleidoscope-effect of the cine 
 matograph pictures. The floor seemed to heave; 
 the room to rock; she was dizzied and dazed. 
 
 But the music ! Softly it rose and fell sweet, 
 penetrating, weird and wild. This was no ordi 
 nary musician. This was one whose eyes fol 
 lowed the pictures, and whose hands wrought an 
 expressive sound, so that the music suited the 
 
SATURDAY NIGHT 79 
 
 action, and the action the music. The theme on 
 the piano flowed, changed abruptly became 
 " nervous " at the dramatic moment, mirthful at 
 the release. That music told the people exactly 
 what the characters in the pictures were feeling and 
 thinking. It gave them the last touch of life; 
 they became living human beings. 
 
 Lilith felt like clutching someone to hold on to 
 Earth. She was swimming in the space beyond 
 the stars. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She 
 had not known she could be so happy she had 
 not known that the dusty heart can leap up like 
 twenty chariots and whirl in the Arena. Mad 
 life! Mad souls! Mad destiny! 
 
 And then the music stopped. Electric lights 
 came sprouting out of the walls, and all was com 
 monplace enough. A hilarious crowd jammed 
 through the exit, and the waiting crowd gave like 
 ice in April and poured like a torrent down the 
 aisle and into the two hundred seats. It was just 
 a long room, zinc-plated, and low-ceiled, and these 
 people were just people. At least to the eyes 
 of others. But to themselves? This fat wash 
 woman with her baby what of her? Was this 
 not Saturday night? Was not her long day of 
 drab work with soapsuds and tub touched now 
 with the Dream? Did not a mere nickel swing 
 her into the Heroic and the Romantic? This was 
 truly the Theater of the People the Theater of 
 Democracy come of itself not born of states- 
 
8o PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 manship or university. Here it was, a part of the 
 daily lives of the unlearned and the unmoneyed. 
 This washwoman had neither time nor money 
 nor clothes for the real theater. But here tales 
 of love, scenes of far lands, romances of heroism 
 became a part of her heart and soul. She strug 
 gled laughed, cried, felt and thought with 
 these strange heroes and heroines! She forgot 
 her own life; she entered the common life of the 
 race she expanded her soul over earth and 
 through human hearts. This was the release, the 
 glorification of the day s work. 
 
 Down went the lights; the wall was splashed 
 again; and Lilith, just seated, with no time to 
 look at the pianist who sat in a pit beneath the 
 pictures, was suddenly absorbed by a vast melo 
 drama. She forgot all else ; so did these laborers, 
 these clerks, these shopgirls and tenement-women. 
 Truly Lilith was not herself. She was in the pic 
 tures there; she was that beautiful, unfaithful 
 wife; she ran away from her child and her actor- 
 husband; she kidnaped her child; there was fire 
 in the house; there was a wild drive to a deserted 
 barn; there was ultimate disgrace. What a won 
 derful way to live! Carriages, a rich mansion, 
 wine, fire, ruin ! And all so much more real than 
 reality! She did not know that it was the music 
 that made the illusion perfect that made her 
 feel and see so intensely. The audience was 
 breathless when the series stopped, and a new 
 
SATURDAY NIGHT 81 
 
 drama a drama of the Western desert, the trail- 
 lost man, wife and child, unfolded its grim 
 tragedy. The women Lilith, too sobbed as 
 if their hearts were broken. Whereupon a topsy 
 turvy picture followed, full of laughter and 
 then a plaintive song sung by a girl and illustrated 
 by brilliantly colored slides and then the 
 lights went up, the audience trooped out. 
 
 Lilith wholly transfigured now and to her 
 own inner eyes a very beauty of womanhood 
 kept her seat, leaned forward, and gazed at the 
 pianist. His back was to her, however, and she 
 saw nothing save a bowed form and heavy dark 
 hair. This then, was he! Should she get up and 
 go to him? Before these people? No. She 
 would wait. She would watch the pictures. 
 
 They whirled on and on. She saw them five 
 times each time vividly living the pictured life 
 a very cyclone of romance. And at every 
 pause she watched the back of the musician, and 
 her daring absorbed from the melodramatic 
 picture-women rose and rose. Her cheeks were 
 hot, her heart thumping heavily, her head 
 weighted with blood. Not once, however, did she 
 see his face. She did see his hand holding a queer 
 bottle which he drew from his back trousers pocket, 
 but it meant little to her. Nor did she notice, as 
 the hour grew late, how the music deteriorated 
 what bursts of rhapsody interlarded with Bowery 
 banging. 
 
82 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 Suddenly a slide flashed big letters on the 
 screen : 
 
 "ALL OUT: 
 
 SEE TO-MORROW S BILL 
 
 BEST IN YORKVILLE 
 
 GOOD-NIGHT." 
 
 The small crowd began to file out, but Lilith 
 lingered, alone on her row of seats. She could 
 hardly breathe, she could hardly rise the heat 
 of blood in her head was unbearable. Then, 
 quickly, she clutched the seat before her and pulled 
 herself up. The pianist, too, was rising. She 
 stepped she knew not how to his side. She 
 was actually leaning against the railing of the pit, 
 as if she had fainted. 
 
 " Henry Lutz," she murmured. 
 
 The musician turned violently. She saw his 
 face in one wild flash, and recoiled horrified it 
 was cynical, hard, blotched with pimples a stale 
 crusty face with little round sparkling eyes and 
 heavy sensual lips. And in that moment that face 
 became a mirror in which she saw herself as he 
 saw her for he saw the Lilith of Eighty-Third 
 Street, New York City the blur of faded eyes 
 on the sallow face the poor shriveled thing 
 not a Girl of Lover s Lane. 
 
 He, too, seized the railing, and she smelt his 
 breath rancid with cheap whiskey. 
 
SATURDAY NIGHT 83 
 
 " How d you know me?" he whispered hard, 
 like a criminal caught. 
 
 She gave a low cry: 
 
 I _ I _ I m _ I m Lilith! " 
 
 He deliberately pulled out his whiskey flask, 
 tilted his head far back and drained its last drops, 
 and while she waited clutching the rail as if 
 she were hanging on to the last vestige of the 
 Dream- World he laughed and flung the bottle 
 on the floor. Then he leaned near, and whis 
 pered drunkenly, fanning her with whiskey-fumes : 
 
 "Lilith? Bless me! Lilith! Sweet girl was 
 Lilith here s to her beauty, looking at you 1 
 Damn you hie I loved Lilith ever shall 
 only girl in the world she s immortal 
 too" 
 
 And as Lilith tried to keep back the cries that 
 shrilled through her brain and beat at her lips 
 he leaned still closer to tell her a secret: 
 
 " Lilith ? Immortal is Lilith ! I put her in 
 my music hie pretty cute, wasn t it? No 
 one would have guessed it but it makes em cry 
 and laugh, it does. Beats Wagner, Chopin, Men 
 delssohn, Busset, MacDowell to a standstill. 
 That s Lilith I m married to her no one 
 guesses it hie but it makes em laugh and 
 cry ! Good-night, dearie ! " 
 
 A uniformed man was shouting hoarsely: 
 
 " Cut it out there, Lutz cut it out ye re 
 drunk ! Madam, all out! " 
 
84 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 The world swam black before her; she stag 
 gered she knew not where; she felt sudden keen 
 icy air; she moved rapidly and then, like a mist 
 fallen away, the world was revealed to her. 
 Third Avenue was dark, vast, deserted though 
 now and then roused like a drunken man from his 
 sleep by the terrific thunder of the elevated trains. 
 The stores vacant-eyed slept emptily; gone 
 were fruit and chestnuts; gone was the Holiday 
 Spirit; gone was the crowd. No, this was not 
 Lover s Lane ; this was a sordid, a squalid market- 
 street of the city. 
 
 Her brain, her heart cleared. She moved down 
 the empty night avenue a poor bowed frail dress 
 maker a weak blur of womanhood hurrying 
 back to an incarnation of faded lace curtain, an 
 tique crayons, shoddy carpet back to the pins 
 and needles in her waist back to the stitches 
 and the silence back to the mother. 
 
 The mother! Strange thought! The poor 
 mother, who somehow, unconsciously and without 
 fame, was a living martyr, stitching clothes for the 
 human race in her lonesome cell, as far from New 
 York as the tale of Troy. What was in the 
 mother s life that was sweet or daring or touched 
 with dream? Barren life dusty, decaying 
 miserable sacrifice to a world of clothes. And 
 Lilith, brooding on this, felt a new compassion, 
 never known before, steal through her heart 
 a tender love, never dreamed of, stir through her 
 
SATURDAY NIGHT 85 
 
 body. Why not warm what was left of the 
 mother s life with the heat of love? Why not 
 bring into the dusty room one ray of the lights of 
 Third Avenue one throb of the Dream- World 
 one breath of the music 
 
 The music! 
 
 She hurried down Eighty-third Street, she un 
 locked her way through the two doors, she stood 
 again in the still years, the smothering air, the 
 smell of steamed garments. Her mother sat as 
 she had sat when Lilith left sewing quietly at 
 another sleeve turned inside-out. 
 
 She looked up poor piteous face too 
 flabby for wrinkles even! Something tore the 
 heart in Lilith s breast. In a moment she was 
 kneeling at her mother s side, she had seized 
 needle and sleeve, and fat old hands, and her hot 
 tears were splashing on the upturned palms. 
 Otherwise there was silence, while Lilith cried her 
 soul out. 
 
 Then dimly and far-away and weird and unreal 
 came the mother s voice: 
 
 "So? Ach! so!" 
 
 Just a trace of the mother-passion was there. 
 A trace the first streak of morning-light in the 
 still years. 
 
 Lilith broke out passionately : 
 
 "Mother! I ll never leave you! I ll not go 
 again! I ll make you happy! " 
 
 She looked up; her mother s face was a study 
 
86 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 in silent sorrow ineffable tragedy and pathos. 
 Slowly two tears trickled down the flabby cheeks 
 and the old lips began to move trying vainly 
 to burst through the silent years. 
 
 "So! so! ach, so!" 
 
 The two arose; they walked into the bedroom; 
 their faces shone with strange light. They un 
 dressed quietly; they went to bed; for long they 
 lay awake steeped in a new light, so soft, so ten 
 der, so thrilling they could not stir. 
 
 Then in the darkness on a sob came the 
 mother s voice: 
 
 " Lilith ! " 
 
 / Mutter!" 
 
 A big old hand searched the bed-clothes 
 searched and searched and found the fat hand 
 of Lilith. The two hands were clasped softly; 
 the mother burst into hysterical sobs, and Lilith 
 buried her face half in her pillow. The great 
 years were smashed the hearts opened. Light 
 had come, and love. 
 
 No word more was said in the night. And 
 softly then to Lilith came back, on wings of sleep, 
 the Dream-World, the lights of Saturday night, 
 and Lover s Lane and the music ! 
 
 The music! It was her soul married to his! 
 She had not lived in vain, after all! She was 
 moving people to tears and laughter; she was 
 wedded to Henry Lutz the Henry Lutz that 
 might have been. Life had not lost its glory and 
 
SATURDAY NIGHT 87 
 
 its romance. What if her body and the body of 
 Henry were as dead did not their souls live in 
 that music? 
 
 And she fell asleep in the Dream-World the 
 lights of Saturday night Lover s Lane and 
 the Music. 
 
THE COG 
 
THE COG 
 
 TV/TOLLY, with her hand on the door knob, 
 turned to the two children in the kitchen. 
 Her voice was tender and full of pain. 
 
 " Won t you be still, children? Children, won t 
 you?" 
 
 Then she softly opened the door and stepped 
 noiselessly into the twilight room. Her husband 
 lay asleep on the bed, stretched flat and fully 
 dressed. She leaned over the breathing, living bulk 
 of man, and brought her tender face close to his hot 
 fevered cheeks and his rough gray hair. In the 
 darkness he seemed so near, and so far so real 
 and so unsubstantial. It was at that moment of 
 dusk when people draw close to one another. 
 
 Molly hesitated. She wanted to pray, and had 
 forgotten how. She looked about the room as if 
 she expected to see some great power and couldn t 
 find it. She could only say awkwardly: 
 
 " Please please spare him and me. I 
 can t lose him. I can t I can t." 
 
 And then she murmured to herself, all bitterly 
 and brokenly: " I ve lost him already." 
 
 She felt swiftly over his soft, warm cotton shirt 
 for his hand; it was as if she were trying to take 
 
 91 
 
92 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 hold of him and keep him; and then a tear slid 
 down to her chin and fell and touched the hot, 
 fevered cheek. 
 
 The man stirred uncomfortably. " You, 
 Moll? " His voice was thick and husky. 
 
 "Richard! "she cried. 
 
 She suddenly pushed her arm behind the pillow 
 and drew his head up and kissed him passionately. 
 
 " Do you love me? " she whispered. 
 
 There was a deep silence. 
 
 "Richard!" 
 
 He did not answer. 
 
 " Richard! " 
 
 And then he suddenly pushed her off, struggled, 
 and sat up. She sank back on her knees, gasping, 
 sobbing, her mind a little wild. 
 
 " Love ! " he muttered. " You ve let me over 
 sleep." He leaned close, menacingly. " You ve 
 let me oversleep! " 
 
 He gripped her arm hard and looked into her 
 face. 
 
 "Answer me this! " 
 
 " Yes," she said, in a colorless voice. 
 
 " It s time to go to work, ain t it so? " 
 
 She said nothing. 
 
 " Damn you it s time to go to work, ain t it 
 so?" 
 
 " Yes, Dick," she murmured, " it s time to go 
 to work. But you re not fit " 
 
 He tumbled out of bed, stood up, and then, as 
 
THE COG 93 
 
 he was very sick and felt dizzy, he held on to the 
 bedpost. But he spoke in a blaze of anger : 
 
 " And you know we re piling up a tonnage rec 
 ord, and you know the blooming mill depends on 
 me, and you know I ll be fired if I don t mark 
 time " his voice put on a cutting edge " and 
 you come babying around do I love you 
 shucks ! Get me my supper and be quick about it! " 
 
 He added something under his breath as he went 
 reeling into the kitchen. The two children, Nellie 
 and Bob, playing in a corner, stopped when they 
 saw him and slid out the back door into the even 
 ing. 
 
 " You better get out," he muttered. 
 
 Then he sank all in a lump in a kitchen chair 
 and leaned his head on the oilcloth covered table. 
 His fingers ran through his rough gray hair; and 
 his lean face, with its burning blue eyes and knotty, 
 flushed cheeks, and big lips, was half shadowy, 
 half starting out in the gaslight above him. Be 
 hind him the shiny black stove was breathing up 
 heat about a sputtering coffeepot and a pan of 
 potatoes. There were chairs and a cupboard, two 
 windows and a door a neat, compact room. 
 
 Molly came in quietly, her face very pale. She 
 poured off a cup of coffee, lightened it with milk, 
 and set it before him. Then she hesitatingly 
 pushed some potato slices on a plate and set it 
 beside the coffee. He roughly pushed the plate 
 aside. 
 
94 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 " Take it away fool ! " 
 
 She took it away quickly. 
 
 " Get me the sugar! " 
 
 She suddenly wheeled around before him, and 
 spoke quietly: u Say please! " 
 
 He looked up at the white face a moment, and 
 laughed harshly. "Getting notions, eh? Well, 
 here goes ! " And he began sipping the coffee 
 slowly. 
 
 She stood silent, and then she drew up a chair 
 and sat at the table beside him. She made up 
 her mind then to keep him from the mill at any 
 cost. She spoke quietly: " You re sick; you re not 
 going to work to-night." 
 
 " Who s going to stop me? " 
 
 "//" 
 
 He gave her a quick glance. " You, eh? " 
 
 She leaned toward him, and lowered her voice. 
 " I ve been silent years now I m going to speak." 
 
 He clenched his fists, and loosed his quick tem 
 per again. " Shut up ! My God, you woman " 
 
 Then she broke in with a sharp cry : " See ! 
 See ! What an animal you re getting to be! " 
 
 He looked at her quickly then, and saw the fire 
 in her clear gray eyes. " Animal? " 
 
 " Yes," she whispered tensely, " you re not a 
 man any more." 
 
 He began sipping the coffee again. In the thick, 
 warm silence they heard the children laughing as 
 they ran after each other. 
 
THE COG 95 
 
 " Richard," said Molly softly, " you re not even 
 a decent father any more." 
 
 He sipped again at the coffee. 
 
 " And you think," she went on, " that a woman 
 can stand for anything. She can t she won t. 
 Go any farther " she paused and spaced the 
 words "go any farther - and I ll leave 
 you." 
 
 He went on sipping coffee, and then suddenly 
 he took a deep breath, expanding his chest, and 
 rested his head in his hand. 
 
 "Who does the work, eh?" 
 
 " I guess I do as much as you," said Molly. 
 
 " Well," he muttered sullenly, " who brings in 
 the money? " 
 
 " You do." 
 
 " How much a week? " 
 
 " Thirty-five dollars a week." 
 
 " Well," he muttered, " what more do you 
 want?" 
 
 She gave a strange, short laugh, and looked 
 down at the floor. " It might do for a man," she 
 breathed, " but not for a woman, and you know 
 it." 
 
 "Know what?" 
 
 "Oh nothing!" 
 
 He began sipping his coffee again. And then 
 her heart seemed to crack open, and the terrible 
 pang shot through her throat and to her lips and 
 
96 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 she cried: u Richard you don t love me! You 
 don t love me any more ! " 
 
 His mouth opened to speak, but he said nothing. 
 He looked at her with a tragic sullenness, a bitter 
 defiance. 
 
 " Richard," she cried again, " your work s come 
 between us. You a man of thirty-five your 
 hair s gray! " 
 
 He started to speak again, but said nothing. 
 She leaned closer, and spoke her heart out, the 
 words lashing him. 
 
 " The steel mill s killing you. It s the twelve- 
 hour day. Twelve hours a day for a whole week 
 and then twelve hours for seven nights. Seven 
 nights you don t sleep with me. I never see you 
 more than an hour at a time, and then you re dead 
 tired." She raised her voice to a quivering cry: 
 " It d been better if we d a been found dead in 
 each other s arms the night after we married, when 
 we knew there was a God in this world! Our 
 children were damned, not born ! " 
 
 The door opened softly then, and a little, thin 
 girl, with tossing brown curls, ran in to her mother. 
 " Mugger! Mugger! " 
 
 The mother drew the little one close and patted 
 a cheek, and spoke in a low, dry voice: " Yes, 
 Nellie." 
 
 " Mugger come out and see what we got! " 
 
 " I can t now please, Nellie, run along ! " 
 
 "But, Mugger" 
 
THE COG 97 
 
 " Run along! Please, please! " 
 
 The little girl went out slowly, stifling quick, 
 tiny sobs. 
 
 Molly turned a face infinitely sad upon her hus 
 band, and spoke in a voice tender with pain : " This 
 isn t a home for our children. It s no home where 
 the man only eats and sleeps, and the woman 
 drudges all day. Don t you understand, Dick? 
 We have no time for any pleasures and you re 
 too tired to even read any more and you haven t 
 time to have friends in the house, or call and see 
 people and you re not any father. And what 
 have the children got ? This mill town soot, 
 smoke, noise, not a patch of green, not a clear sky, 
 not a place to play and all the ragged children 
 here. Oh," she paused, clenched her fists, and half 
 closed her eyes, " when I think it s our children 
 going to waste like this and they so full of 
 things that might be turned to good and some 
 thing so sweet in them " 
 
 She stopped, staring into a terrible future. 
 
 " It s all the twelve-hour day," she muttered. 
 " It makes the men cogs in the mills no more. 
 That s what you are. You re not a man ; you re a 
 cog." 
 
 He cleared his throat; he shuffled his feet; he 
 drew a little nearer, and at last his voice rose, 
 trembling: " Anything else, eh? " 
 
 She looked suddenly straight in his eyes, and kept 
 his gaze. Then she spoke in a voice that had 
 
9 8 iPAY ENVELOPES 
 
 lightning in it that seemed to stab through him 
 like a long needle. 
 
 " Yes you and I have lived as if there weren t 
 any God, and you ve lost your soul, Richard, you ve 
 lost your soul. You can t love any more, and you 
 don t live. You re a cog." 
 
 His face struggled violently, he opened and 
 closed his mouth. Then he half closed his eyes 
 and snarled : " Now, you ve spoke and what 
 are we going to do, eh? " 
 
 She spoke intensely : " Strike! " 
 
 " Strike, eh ? " He smote the table with his 
 fist. " Didn t we strike here in Homestead in 92, 
 and wasn t our union busted up good and thor 
 ough ? And ain t they spies all through the mills, 
 and it s worth a man s job to open his mouth or 
 make a kick? And don t they own us on election 
 day and it s vote with the bosses or quit? Talk s 
 cheap ! " he snapped his fingers. " But let me 
 tell you, I hold down a thirty-five a week job, and I 
 couldn t earn half that elsewhere. I m stuck. 
 They ve got me they ve got me for life. We 
 have a few hundred in the bank, eh? But how 
 long would that last? Do you want me to get a 
 job at ten or twelve per, and live like a Hunk? A 
 cog, eh? Well, what should I do? " 
 
 He arose, one hand pressed on the table. And 
 then the clock slowly struck five. 
 
 He staggered across the room, picked his hat 
 and coat from a wall-hook, and put them on. 
 
THE COG 99 
 
 Molly leaped up with a low cry, rushed to the 
 door, and stood with an arm across it. Her face 
 was white with agony. 
 
 " You re not going," she murmured breathlessly. 
 
 "Not?" 
 
 He advanced toward her. 
 
 " Dick," she cried, " you re not going ! " 
 
 He seized her two arms and pushed her aside, 
 opened the door, and stepped out. She gave a: 
 wild cry, that called the children home, as he 
 slammed the door and reeled down the street. 
 
 The evening was chilly, making him shiver, and 
 in the smoky air street-lamps burned dimly about 
 him. He turned the corner and walked down the 
 hill. On one side, at the end of the street, stood 
 the black wall of the mill grounds, on the other 
 the smoke-blackened mill houses, each set in a cin 
 der-dead soil that never bloomed. 
 
 Richard felt sick, utterly sick. He reeled 
 through the smoky air, turned a corner and crossed 
 a bridge into the mill grounds. Many other men 
 were hurrying with him. As they went on, sud 
 denly their grim faces were splashed by far fires 
 and strange lights. They began stepping over 
 intricate tangles of railway tracks in the yards, and 
 all the time their faces shone brighter. Yet not 
 a man of them took any interest, though all about 
 them was one of the sublime scenes of America. 
 
 They did not seem to see the shining tracks, the 
 glistening red and green lanterns, the mills glow- 
 
ioo PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 ing through their windows like buildings eaten with 
 fire, the tongues of flames through the roofs, the 
 vast swirls of blaze and red-shuddering smoke 
 clouds, and the thousand chimney pipes looking 
 through the changing lights. Through all this, 
 among the buildings, over the rails, in the thick of 
 a roar of machinery, a thunder and thirr and crash 
 of tools, a confusion of yard-engines, shrieking up 
 and down with little flat-cars, a hurry of lanterns 
 through it all, the men moved silently, dully, lit 
 on every side, their black, greasy overalls glisten 
 ing as they moved. 
 
 Richard entered a large, square building where 
 the sloping, many-beamed roof was in huge shad 
 ows. Set in the solid masonry of the floor 
 were steel trapdoors. A man, grasping a lever, 
 stood in front of one of these, just as an overhead 
 crane, like a bridge running down the room came 
 whizzing along. From the crane hung suspended 
 a huge steel hand. It stopped above the man; he 
 at once pulled the lever, and the trapdoor at his 
 feet opened like a huge mouth, revealing the 
 " soaking pit." This was a well of fire white- 
 hot intolerable to the eye. Nor could the flesh 
 come near it. But the huge steel hand never fal 
 tered. It reached down into the very hell of fire, 
 and slowly drew out a dazzling, sizzling, white-hot 
 ten-ton ingot of steel. This it bore down the room 
 and shoved on to steel rollers that ran off into the 
 adjoining room. 
 
THE 
 
 Richard entered this next room. At his side the 
 rollers, one next to the other in a long path, were 
 turning, and the ingot slid over them, and made 
 straight for a huge " clothes wringer " that stood 
 in its path. Suddenly it hit this steel-wringer with 
 a loud " spla ! " there was a shower of sparks, 
 and it went through with a wild " klong-a-a-1 " 
 like the howl of a hungry lioness. The great 
 wringer pressed the steel out, but no sooner had it 
 emerged on the other side, longer and flatter, than 
 it was shot back, and so, back and forth, until it 
 was thinned into a long, wide ribbon of steel, and 
 was rolled away to the next room to be cooled and 
 sheared. 
 
 Laborers hovered about the immense and intri 
 cate wringer, and as the blazing ingot passed, their 
 faces and forms came and went sharp and 
 shadowy. Two men stood at opposite sides on a 
 little platform above the " wringer," each with his 
 hand on a lever. One controlled the direction of 
 the rolls, the other the force of the pressure. 
 Richard relieved the man at the pressure-lever, and 
 at once his work began. 
 
 It was one of the most terrible nights of his life. 
 He was sick; he could hardly hold his head 
 straight; and yet he had to have a clear eye, a 
 steady hand, and infinite patience. His gaze never 
 left the hurrying ingot, and he had to gauge its 
 thickness and what it would stand. Each time it 
 drew near, it shot over him a consuming heat that 
 
rbi . .P&Y ENVELOPES 
 
 burnt and smothered and made the flesh tingle in 
 tolerably. Ordinarily he would not have felt this, 
 but to-night he was sick. The glare, too, hurt his 
 eyes, and the steel lever got hot under his gloves. 
 
 There was no breathing spell. Ingot followed 
 ingot without pause. He pulled the lever, and 
 then, with the wild howl, a shower of sparks, a 
 smell of powder, the ingot was squeezed. The 
 speed was terrific and grew worse, for the little 
 foreman had given out the impression that his men 
 must pile up a record and beat the output of the 
 other mills. And the responsibility was what made 
 a man old for if anything went wrong, if an 
 ingot was spoiled or the mill stopped, the money 
 loss to the workers, as well as to the mill, was very 
 large, for the men were paid by the ton. 
 
 Hour followed hour, and Richard pressed the 
 lever down or pulled it up, his face twisted with 
 the torture of the toil, every nerve, every muscle 
 strained and alert and in action. His head now 
 and then went dizzy and his face paled. When 
 ever he winked he saw a red ingot sliding back and 
 forth. And worst of all, his heart was in wild and 
 new revolt. He heard the cry of his wife her 
 words kept beating through his brain. Sick and 
 desperate and struggling, he could not shun the 
 truth. He knew that everything she had said was 
 true. Yes, bitterly true ! Look at this machine 
 it did all the work he, the man, merely waited 
 
THE COG 103 
 
 on it, pulling a lever for it. That was his life. 
 He was nothing but a cog. It was this for twelve 
 hours, and then a bite, a sleep, and this again. 
 What was he but an animal? Yes, Molly had 
 told him. 
 
 And then, each time an ingot hit the wringer, 
 some phrase went through his head and made him 
 struggle inwardly. Bang went an ingot ! 
 and Molly was murmuring that he had no soul, 
 that he did not love her. Bang ! and she was 
 speaking of the children. Bang ! and she told 
 him how he had stopped his reading. Bang ! 
 and his friends. Bang ! And he didn t love 
 Molly; how could he? Bang! He was get 
 ting to be an animal ! 
 
 On and on it went, the noise, the glare, the heat, 
 the dizzying sickness. Hour followed hour 
 through the terrible night hour after hour and 
 no end near. His tongue and throat grew parched, 
 and he seemed to be toiling over a sun-stricken 
 desert of measureless, dazzling sand, toiling, lift 
 ing, sinking, burning. Now and then a shower of 
 sparks leaped as through his brain; now and then 
 the whole room turned red. Now he seemed to 
 be pushing the lever down over the floating face of 
 Molly, and her fearful cry rang through the mill. 
 Now by a mighty effort he saw clearly again the 
 hovering laborers all sharp and shadowy, the ad 
 vancing ingot, the gloomy, dark wringer, the men- 
 
io 4 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 acing heights above him. But Molly kept saying : 
 " Richard, you don t love me any more you 
 don t love me I " 
 
 So he gave the lever a good jam. There was a 
 weird, unusual crash, a splutter, and a dozen men 
 roared together. The rolls stopped, and in the 
 queer silence Richard saw clearly again. He had 
 jammed an ingot and broken a coupling sleeve. A 
 sickening horror went through him. It meant the 
 loss of an hour s time. He had tied up the whole 
 mill. And all the other workers would lose in 
 their wages, too. 
 
 All the men of the section came rushing toward 
 him, shouting angrily. And then suddenly the 
 little foreman came dancing up. 
 
 The little fellow swung a fist in Richard s face, 
 and shrieked : " Damn you damn you ! Just as 
 we re piling up a tonnage record ! I ll trim you 
 for this" 
 
 Then suddenly fifteen years of silent pressure 
 blew off. Demons raged in Richard s heart, his 
 brain went hot. With his powerful hands he 
 gripped the little foreman by the throat. 
 
 " You damned little pusher," he snapped, " go 
 to hell!" 
 
 The foreman choked and sputtered as he was 
 released, and the ring of workmen stifled their 
 smiles. Then the foreman backed away, mutter 
 ing: " I suppose you know what this means? " 
 
 " Yes," said Richard, " it means good-night! " 
 
THE COG 105 
 
 He turned and walked off quietly. He went out 
 into the yards. A brown dawn was searching its 
 way through the swirling smoke, and in the vague 
 light all the confusion and stir of the yards went 
 on. But it never stopped, neither day nor night, 
 through the years. The sick man, hot from the 
 flames, trembled in the chilly air of the morning. 
 His head, however, was acutely clear. He saw 
 all about him. It must have been the blood in 
 him, he reasoned. He came of old American stock 
 men and women who had given up the comfort 
 and ease of home and followed their God to wor 
 ship Him in the West there in sweat, poverty, 
 and hardship finding a freedom for the soul. He, 
 too, could make the sacrifice. He, too, could go 
 West. The West still called the freeman. The 
 mighty farmlands needed labor the Northwest 
 needed pioneers. There, too, was room for little 
 children and sun and wind and a green space for 
 the soul. 
 
 He was astonished to find how calmly he took 
 it all. He felt as if he had left himself in the mill, 
 and was a different man. A world slid off his 
 shoulders. He was free, his lips were loosed. 
 In one stroke he had regained his manhood. For 
 years the mills had muzzled him, worked him, 
 sweated him, flung him out for a sleep and a bite, 
 pulled him back into the machinery, taken from him 
 his home, his friends, his books, his church, his 
 leisure, his citizenship, his free speech and 
 
io6 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 wasted the man that might have been. Now he 
 had jerked himself free. 
 
 He reached the street. The wind was blowing 
 away, and the skies were clear above him. He 
 looked up. He beheld the fading stars. And 
 suddenly he stood still, and a wave of glory swept 
 over him. Something broke within him some 
 crust about his heart and like a revelation he 
 was charged with light. The glad tears came to 
 his eyes. He felt that he was beginning to live. 
 He wanted to open his lips that his open heart 
 might send its glory into words. He heard the 
 wind singing about him, he heard the night-world 
 laboring, the engines puffing, the mills roaring; he 
 saw the lights of the street and human beings be 
 neath them. His heart wen* out to the great 
 world. 
 
 And then, as he went on, with fresh tides of 
 life pouring through him, his soul went out to his 
 own. He thought of his own children, he thought 
 of his own wife. He marveled at the strange 
 years he had lived through he marveled at 
 the miserable father and husband he had been. 
 The father-passion, long numb, awoke and struck 
 his heart; his man s love for this woman made him 
 yearn with tenderness. And the glory bore him 
 along like a boy in love. 
 
 He turned up the dim street the house was 
 alight. He stepped around to the rear and pushed 
 open the kitchen door and entered very softly. 
 
THE COG 107 
 
 Molly was building a fire in the stove. She paused, 
 with a stick of kindling-wood in her hand, and 
 looked at him. 
 
 He spoke in a queer, suppressed voice : " I want 
 to see the children. " 
 
 Her eyes grew larger, her lips parted, but she 
 said nothing. 
 
 He pushed open his bedroom door and passed 
 through to the room beyond. He was gone 
 several minutes. When he came back his lips were 
 twitching, and tears were trickling down his face. 
 
 " Molly." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 He drew a step nearer. He tried to control 
 himself. He spoke softly. " I ve been 
 fired." 
 
 She stared at him. "Fired?" she cried. 
 
 " Fired! And we re poor as mice." 
 
 She took a step toward him. " Fired? 
 Dick!" 
 
 She gave a great cry and held out her arms, and 
 drew him close and closer passionately hug 
 ging him. 
 
 And as he felt her arms about him tight, 
 tight her lips pressed to his her living pres 
 ence closing with his soul suddenly, it was as if 
 there was a rip in his heart: love made him trem 
 ble, and he murmured : 
 
 " Molly, I love you I love you again ! " 
 
 And life was sweet again, and they were poor. 
 
SLAG 
 
SLAG 
 
 A HUGE man, naked to the waist, bent down 
 at the foot of the blast-furnace. The im 
 mense structure, like a gas-tank banded with coils 
 of pipe, loomed up through the twilight of the 
 shed and was lost in the spaces above. The hot 
 summer air, smothering, thick, consuming, was re 
 heated by the furnace, and the man felt like a 
 fireman standing too close to a burning building. 
 Fire is an elemental pain; it seems to reach and 
 twist and tear the inmost soul. But the man 
 stooped deliberately, and with a long rod knocked 
 in a clay plug that sealed the base of the furnace. 
 Then he leaped back. 
 
 Through the opening glowed a heat of white 
 fire, and at once a stream of molten iron ran out 
 and down a channel across the platform. A gray 
 scum formed on this stream and was drained off 
 into another channel. This scum was the slag. 
 The main stream ran on and went like a waterfall 
 over into an immense steel-ladle standing on a flat- 
 car below. The stream, like glowing golden 
 water, ran rippling, sputtering sparks, and when it 
 fell a shower of white flakes leaped in 
 the air. A white smoke rolled up in clouds, 
 
 in 
 
ii2 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 luminous, wonderful, and at once the glare of 
 fluid metal became so intolerable that the naked 
 eye was blinded. The immense blast-furnace was 
 splashed with light and shadow, and the half- 
 naked men standing about stood out like living 
 statues. A nose here, a mouth there, a brown 
 eye, a bristling mustache, hair on the breast, 
 sinewy muscle on doubled arm, came sharp and 
 distinct and intensely real. It was all a gigan 
 tic scene, tremendously modern machinery, fire 
 and souls in which the souls stood about like 
 the careless gods of Steel. They were handling 
 the elements with unfaltering might. 
 
 But the man who had set the scene a-gldw, stood 
 leaning on a long steel rod, his chin on his hands, 
 flame in his face, flame on his swarthy arms and 
 breathing hairy chest. He had a little mustache 
 on his big upper lip, his nose had a twist outward 
 at the tip, his hair was black and thick and flat over 
 his large forehead. And on his face, every line 
 advertised by the flames, there was a terrible hate, 
 and something else. The man looked dangerous 
 and murderous. 
 
 He was staring at another man. This other, 
 slim, graceful, small, was lounging against a pil 
 lar where the golden water fell down into the huge 
 ladle. The big man kept muttering to himself: 
 
 " If I give him a push, he falls in the ladle. 
 That ends him. But the ladle is not full yet! " 
 
 So he stood like a man of stone, remembering 
 
SLAG 113 
 
 how once a laborer had fallen into a ladle of molten 
 iron and had been instantly killed. The slow 
 minutes passed, the foreman walked back and 
 forth, watching his " baby " the furnace 
 and examining the fluid at his feet. Most of the 
 men leaned against some support, for they were 
 fainting with the killing heat. Then suddenly 
 above the sizzle and snap of the metal the little 
 man began humming an alien love song 
 
 " Her eyes are like the sunset star." 
 
 The big man tightened his grasp on the iron 
 rod as if to crush it, his muscles stiffened, his eyes 
 dilated, and he bit on his lip bit hard and hard. 
 " Ha ! sing, my pretty one ! Sing ! " 
 
 It had been a long terrible day of summer, and 
 every few hours through the smothering air the 
 blast-furnace had sent out its fires. Two men had 
 swooned at midday, and now the twelve hours of 
 toil were nearly over. But the big man was insane 
 with more than heat. The humming seemed like 
 powder blowing his brain up : 
 
 " And oh, the sunset-streaks that are 
 Her lips, and oh, the night thick-curled, 
 Her raven hair through all the air 
 She leads me out beyond this world ! " 
 
 He gave a low growl and started to advance 
 like a man-crushing gorilla. No one noticed him 
 
ii 4 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 his pale lips and rolling eyes the certain, 
 lumbering stride as he made for his man. The 
 young singer went on, heedlessly, while the fourth 
 ladle was filled nearly to the top, and the stream 
 from the furnace had begun to slacken. 
 
 The big man was now very near, and he paused. 
 Right below was that brimming ladle of swimming 
 death, sputtering sparks, and coated with gray 
 scum ; right before him stood the singer. It needed 
 but a motion of his arm. There was a cry on his 
 lips, a fire in his heart. And then the foreman 
 yelled: 
 
 "Jo!" 
 
 The big man did not turn. 
 
 " Jo," shrieked the foreman, " stop er off! " 
 
 Jo stood again like a stone image. Then he 
 half shut his eyes with cunning and muttered : 
 
 " I ll wait till I get them together I ll wait 
 till I get them together ! " 
 
 He turned then, " She leads me out beyond the 
 world! " in his ears, and strode softly back to the 
 furnace, yea up to the mouth of hell, up to the 
 scorch and knifing pain, bent, gathered up some 
 soft fire-clay on the end of his rod, jammed it 
 into the opening, and shut off the stream. The 
 last of it grew sluggish and began to cake at his 
 feet. Almost at once a fresh crew came in : it was 
 six o clock: and the relieved crew knocked off 
 work. 
 
SLAG 115 
 
 Jo pulled his shirt down from a hook, put his 
 head through it, and jerked it over his wet body. 
 Then he slipped on his coat. Looking into the 
 twilight beyond the shed his eyes blinked and saw 
 fire. But he kept staring until he saw the singer 
 pass out. He followed him, keeping a hundred 
 feet behind. An army of men were strolling 
 homeward over the railroad tracks. Yard-engines 
 came whistling shrilly as they bumped over the 
 switches : yardmen walked up and down with lan 
 terns that illumined their black, greasy overalls. 
 Suddenly in the West, up the main track, shone a 
 spark, which swelled into a giant locomotive, the 
 men scattered, and just before Jo a passenger train 
 shrieked by, a lightning bolt thundering as it went. 
 Its tail lights were swallowed toward the dark 
 East. Then Jo kept on his way, and followed the 
 singer through the mill-gate. 
 
 Right beyond the gate ran a street of low two- 
 story frame houses facing the mills dreary little 
 houses, smoke-blackened, flimsy, with broken 
 wooden porches above the muddy gutter. The 
 twilight was short, because of the smoke and soot 
 that filled the air, and already windows all along 
 the row were oblongs of hollow light. Shades 
 were up ; people were moving about within. 
 
 The singer turned up this street, and Jo stepped 
 faster, his fists clenched, his breathing ponderous. 
 He began to pant as he caught up with the little 
 
n6 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 man, and then, all at once, the singer turned and 
 entered a lighted house. Jo stepped on the porch, 
 crouched, and peered through the window. 
 
 A bed stood in the window-corner, an open 
 doorway was in the far wall, and the room was 
 painted a glaring blue. Beside the inner door 
 stood a brand-new black stove, and at this a young 
 woman was cooking supper. She wore a little 
 cook s cap on her black hair, which strayed from 
 under in little curls ; she had small black eyes, and 
 small lips, and a little tip of nose a graceful, 
 little woman. As the singer entered, she turned, 
 smiling. The boy for he was only a boy, with 
 brown-gold hair and the wistful eyes of a wolf 
 nodded, went close to her, and whispered some 
 thing. The woman laughed softly, and the boy 
 went in through the open doorway into the inner 
 room. 
 
 Jo stepped into the house. The woman turned 
 again, noticed his vivid face, and stared at him. 
 
 Jo sat down slowly on a chair. 
 
 " Pod sern " (come here) , he muttered. 
 
 The woman looked frightened; her face paled. 
 
 "Pod sern!" 
 
 She advanced slowly, her eyes on his face, her 
 breath coming in gasps. He seized her and drew 
 her close, his huge greasy hands banding her bare 
 arms, his eyes meeting hers. 
 
 " Are you feeling well?" 
 
 She spoke on an indrawn breath : 
 
SLAG 117 
 
 "What s the matter? Why do you ask me 
 that?" 
 
 " Are you well? Are you sure you are well? " 
 
 He drew her closer. 
 
 " Why do you do this? " she cried. 
 
 He pulled her downward. 
 
 " Ha you re a pretty woman it s good to 
 have a pretty wife ! You re feeling well, aren t 
 you ? You can smile ! Smile! " 
 
 She tried to pull herself away. 
 
 "Jo! Jo!" 
 
 He leaped to his feet with a terrible cry. 
 
 " Parom ta udrel parom ta udrel! " (God s 
 curses on you ! ) 
 
 And with his fist struck her twice on the shoul 
 der. She cried out, staggered, lurched to the bed 
 and leaned on it, and he swung out through the 
 doorway into the rear room. 
 
 He seemed to be in a trance. A long rough 
 table ran down this room, with a backless wooden 
 bench on either side. Jo sat down on one of the 
 benches, and leaned his head on the table. The 
 room was in darkness: there was a tramp of feet 
 above, and out in the rear before the outhouse a 
 group of men were washing themselves at a little 
 iron pump. There was a noise of splashed water, 
 of rough laughter and husky foreign words, foot 
 steps, and as an undercurrent the ceaseless over 
 whelming roaring of the mills. It was, indeed, a 
 hot summer s night. 
 
n8 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 Men began coming in out of the yard, and one 
 went into the kitchen and returned with a lighted 
 lamp which he carefully set in a tall wall-bracket. 
 In the high dingy light the men showed shadowy 
 and huge in their grease-black undershirts and 
 trousers. They wore large suspenders; their 
 knotty throats were bare; their faces were stolid 
 and strong. They sat down at the table, which 
 was laid with oilcloth, with heavy dishes and cheap 
 cutlery. 
 
 At once the woman came in with a long plat 
 ter which she set in the center of the table. It 
 contained big slices of beef swimming in a brown 
 gravy. The men leaned forward simultaneously, 
 almost standing, their faces eager and hungry, 
 forked each as much as he could jab, slashed the 
 beef on his plate, cut big hunks and slewed it up. 
 The oilcloth was blood-splashed and mouths 
 dripped. But Jo ate nothing, not even sipping at 
 the big jug-like cup of steaming coffee. In that 
 wordless noise of supper, he sat in his trance, one 
 fist on the table, his face pale, his lips set tight, his 
 eyes unseeing. The wolf-eyed boy sat nearly op 
 posite, and though, each time the woman entered, 
 the wistful eyes were lifted and followed her about 
 the room, Jo did not notice. 
 
 Once the woman stopped and murmured: 
 
 u You must eat some supper." 
 
 Jo did not stir, and she went on, shrugging her 
 shoulders. 
 
SLAG 119 
 
 After supper the men lit their pipes and went 
 out on the front porch. One of them rolled out a 
 small keg of beer, and another brought glasses. 
 A third sat down on the porch-bench, and began 
 clashing out wildly on an accordion, 
 
 "Her eyes are like the sunset star! 
 
 Fifteen men s voices rose hoarsely and blended 
 into the song. 
 
 At the sound Jo stirred sharply, rose, passed 
 through the kitchen without looking at the woman, 
 and went out and sat down at the darkest end of 
 the porch. Right opposite lay the railroad yards; 
 red and green signal-lamps glistened; locomotives 
 rumbled back and forth; and in back loomed the 
 mills with flaring windows and chimneys rising 
 through shining clouds of flame-lit smoke. Trains 
 passed; soot and smoke were in all the air, blot 
 ting the stars; sparkles and flames shone all about; 
 and the earth seemed to shake with the iron-thun 
 der, the crash and rolling roar, the clank and clat 
 ter. The music of the accordion seemed to clash 
 with the music of the mills, and the sound-strife 
 sent a wild excitement into the heart. The men 
 felt riotous. Penned in the fires all day, stupefied, 
 stifled, exhausted, overworked, their whole being 
 craved for wildness, for irresponsibility, for for- 
 getfulness. They began drinking heavily, and the 
 player played on. 
 
120 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 There was one man, however, who spent his 
 evenings in the little night-school for foreigners 
 up on the hill. This man David Wuk was 
 not drinking. He sat near Jo, and as a little 
 light fell on Jo s face, he happened to notice the 
 intense gaze and livid hate. He followed the 
 gaze to the little singer who sat on the bench be 
 side the accordion player and was singing his heart 
 out. 
 
 Dave understood in a flash. His heart tight 
 ened in his breast, and his breath caught. He fas 
 tened his eyes on Jo. 
 
 As the time went on Jo leaned a little more 
 forward, his eyes glaring at the black silhouette 
 of the boy. Suddenly the woman stood in the 
 doorway. 
 
 " Hello, Liddie," said the boy. 
 
 "Hello, Tony!" 
 
 The woman went back in the kitchen, but she 
 had left a strange change behind her. At that 
 moment Jo became totally an animal sheer in 
 sane jealousy, blood-lust and hate. 
 
 Yet he could feel in his own blind way that once 
 he had been different; that he had fallen upon evil 
 days; that vast events had changed him. Only 
 two years ago he had been a decent peasant out in 
 Austro-Hungary, there among the bare hills, but 
 out in the ever-varying weather and the world s 
 winds, and in the bronzing health of the sun, and 
 in the quiet of stars. He like the rest had 
 
SLAG 121 
 
 lived in the ancient dead village, and had his plot 
 of earth outside where he struggled with the tough 
 soil. A hard life; a starved life worth sixty 
 cents a day; no fresh meat; no coffee. And his 
 young wife in Autumn had to go three and four 
 miles to the forest to lug home on her back a linen 
 bag full of dead leaves to spread as winter beds 
 for the horses ; and she had to bear home immense 
 loads of branches, chop them small, tie them in 
 bundles, and stack them about the walls of the 
 house to break the winter winds. A hard life; a 
 starved life. But it was in the sun and the wind, 
 and he was decent and good. 
 
 In America he received a dollar and a half a 
 day; he had meat daily; he had coffee daily. A 
 luxurious life ! But then it cost much to live, and 
 one was homesick. One wanted to save a hundred 
 dollars and go home and buy a farm and live on 
 the 500 crowns for the rest of life. So one took 
 lodgers fifteen crowded into two rooms. And 
 strange things happened surely this was a land 
 of hate a land of swindlers. A Hunky had to 
 pay excessively for furniture and food; he had to 
 give a foreman five or ten dollars for a job; he 
 was arrested by the Squire just for the fee that was 
 in it. And worst of all the work was indoors; in 
 terrific heat; it exhausted a man; it left him at 
 night careless and wild. He wanted to go on a 
 spree; he wanted to riot and forget. So he got 
 drunk and did unmentionable things. Yes, he be- 
 
122 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 came an animal in his crowded lodging house. 
 And so had Jo become. Dimly he felt it now 
 how he had been tossed into the mills like the iron- 
 ore, and melted, and the pure iron drained from 
 his soul, and only the slag left. Truly he was 
 slag he was the human slag of the mills. He, 
 too, overworked, overdrank, and lived like a 
 beast. 
 
 And yet was it his fault ? Had he not come to 
 America like a young ignorant child to a new 
 Mother? And had America proved to be a 
 Mother? Had she tried to help him? Had she 
 tried to throw her beautiful light on his eager 
 face? Had she put out a great arm to shelter 
 him? Or, had she proved a cruel step-Mother 
 instead of a Mother hateful, spitting in his face, 
 calling him " Hunky " and robbing him? 
 
 But if he was slag, yet there was a spark of the 
 hot iron left. Beast as he was he would not stand 
 by and see his wife unfaithful. No rather kill 
 her rather rise like a demon than be so dead to 
 all good. And he would kill her! He would 
 strike her down at his feet! He would tear her 
 heart out! Wild she-devil! By heavens, he 
 would not bear this. False to him false 
 Liddie his Liddie ! 
 
 He leaned still further forward, edging along 
 the porch. Dave was breathless now. He knew 
 not whether to cry out, to wait, or to go. With a 
 fierce animal hate, Jo kept looking at the young 
 
SLAG 123 
 
 head against the window-light, while the music 
 clashed out and the mills roared in with it. 
 
 Suddenly the woman stood in the doorway again. 
 
 " Can we dance now? " cried a man. 
 
 " Yes," said the woman. 
 
 The men, all save Dave and Jo, crowded in the 
 kitchen, and the woman was turning to go, when 
 the boy spoke softly: 
 
 " Liddie ! " 
 
 The woman started. 
 
 " What you want, Tony? " 
 
 "Wait!" 
 
 She hesitated, and then Dave saw Jo slowly 
 draw a big jack-knife from his back pocket and 
 open out its large sharp blade. Dave slid away in 
 the darkness, hurried to the little school on the 
 hill, and told John Warner, the goldish-haired, 
 smooth-shaved, spectacled young headworker that 
 there would be murder on the Row if he didn t 
 hurry. 
 
 The night seemed to grow hotter; the roar of 
 the mills louder. It seemed as if the world were 
 near the breaking point as if the Earth were 
 rolling toward destruction. Jo leaned still nearer, 
 the jack-knife in his fist. 
 
 "Why should I wait?" murmured Liddie. 
 
 " Because," came the soft answer, " I love you." 
 
 " Shh ! " Liddie spoke in a frightened voice, " I 
 have told you not to speak of it. He ll kill you 
 yet, Tony." 
 
i2 4 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 ("Ha!" muttered Jo, "well said, little 
 devil!") 
 
 Tony leaped up with a cry: 
 
 "Liddie!" 
 
 He reached for her hands. And then it came. 
 Jo s brain seemed to explode. He was insane at 
 the moment: he was going to plunge the knife into 
 their hearts and roll them together at his feet : and 
 it was because he loved her. False to him ! 
 False! Liddie his Liddie! False to him! 
 He arose, howling, 
 
 " U wires, you re going to die ! " 
 
 Liddie shrieked; Tony backed against the 
 bench; and the big man bore down upon them. 
 The blade flashed over his head, swooped, ripped 
 along Liddie s shoulder and she fell. 
 
 There was a sudden hush. Frightened men 
 poured out of the house about the fallen woman. 
 Tony was sobbing, a terrified boy. Jo stood si 
 lent, dazed and trembling, the knife dropping 
 to the floor. His eyes were on a little twisting 
 trickle of fresh blood that ran over the boards. 
 
 And then John Warner stepped up on the 
 porch. He pushed the other men aside, knelt and 
 examined the wound. Then he arose, turned to 
 Dave who stood behind him, and spoke in fluent 
 Slovak : 
 
 " Get some woman of the neighborhood 
 wash this out with hot water and put her to 
 bed ! It s only a deep scratch ! " 
 
SLAG 125 
 
 Dave went off. 
 
 There was a deep silence, the ring of faces all 
 on the bloody floor. 
 
 Warner touched Jo. 
 
 " Why did you do it?" 
 
 The voice was searching, and touched with ten 
 derness. 
 
 Jo looked at the headworker, and spoke in a 
 colorless low tone: 
 
 " She made love to Tony." 
 
 Liddie cried out suddenly: 
 
 "No. No!" 
 
 " No ! " sobbed Tony. " / made love to her, 
 She wouldn t let me." 
 
 " That s true," said a bulky man. 
 
 " Yes," said a third. 
 
 Jo hung his head, trembled, and moaned softly. 
 The headworker came very near. 
 
 " Jo," he murmured, " come with me." 
 
 He stepped off the porch, and Jo followed him. 
 They walked in silence to the corner and then up 
 the hill to the frame schoolhouse. Its windows 
 were all glowing. Warner pushed open the door 
 and they entered a dim-lit wooden hall. There 
 was a noise of many voices men s voices in 
 the adjoining room; a warm friendly sound broken 
 up by hearty house-shaking laughter. Warner 
 stood still, Jo beside him. The headworker 
 turned quickly, and looked at the abashed face of 
 the laborer. Then he spoke quietly: 
 
126 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 " What do you think I am going to do with 
 you." 
 
 Jo looked down at the floor. 
 
 " Put me in the jail," he muttered sullenly. 
 
 Warner suddenly clapped him on the shoulder. 
 
 " Jo," he said sharply, " I m going to take you 
 out of jail. Follow me." 
 
 He turned, opened the door of the adjoining 
 room, and nodded to Jo to enter. They stepped 
 into a large well-lit many-windowed schoolroom. 
 Jo opened his big eyes wide. He saw many poor 
 laborers standing behind the desks, and all looked 
 so happy that it made one feel like crying. They 
 all had their jackets in their hands. So did the 
 young teacher a tall lean blue-eyed boy. 
 
 Then the teacher said: 
 
 " I put on my coat." 
 
 And at once, suiting the action to the words, the 
 class cried in an alien chorus : 
 
 " I put on my coat." 
 
 Jo found himself behind a desk. His eyes were 
 riveted on the blue-eyed teacher. This young 
 man suddenly began to unlace his shoe. At once 
 the pupils put their feet on the desks, and Jo did 
 likewise. Then the young man said: 
 
 " I unlace my shoe." 
 
 And somehow Jo understood that he must say 
 this too. So he joined the chorus. 
 
 " I unlace my shoe." 
 
 The words seemed queer in his mouth, and in- 
 
SLAG 127 
 
 stantly, like a blaze of light, he knew that he was 
 learning English. It made him feel queer about 
 the heart. Was it possible that in this terrible 
 country any one wanted to help him? It made 
 him feel like choking. He gave a low laugh. 
 Was he being shown a new America a place of 
 hope and of light yes, a place of love? Was 
 he something more than slag in the eyes of his new 
 country? It went through him like a hot rod of 
 steel burning his heart. Suddenly he was all alert, 
 and with a strange defiance grappled with un- 
 mouthed words. He shouted at the top of his 
 lungs he dressed and undressed he did not 
 miss an expression on the teacher s face. 
 
 And then, when the crowd trooped out, and the 
 teacher turned off the lights, Jo went in the hall 
 and hung around. Presently Mr. Warner came 
 out. 
 
 "Yes, Jo," he said, "what s the matter?" 
 
 Jo looked on the floor; he tried to speak; he 
 gasped and stammered; but it came at last, strange 
 beautiful, broken: 
 
 " I didn t know I didn t know it could be 
 like this in America." 
 
 He heaved then as if he were going to sob and 
 hurried out into the night. 
 
 The mills were still roaring; the smoke-rolling 
 heavens shuddered red; the engines panted and 
 twinkled; the night was dripping hot. Jo turned 
 down the desolate street. There was still a light 
 
128 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 in the front room. Softly he stepped up and 
 pushed open the door and entered. He entered 
 very humbly. The small room was hushed; a 
 strange woman sat doubled up near the bright 
 black stove; and in the bed lay Liddie. 
 
 Jo stood silent a while looking down on his 
 wife. She looked up at him. Neither spoke. 
 But suddenly he began to tremble visibly, he put 
 his hand to his mouth, he turned away, and all at 
 once cruel and terrible sobs burst from his chest 
 and his lips. He flung himself at the bedside. 
 
 " I ll be good, Liddie," he sobbed, " I ll be 
 good." 
 
 " Ah," murmured Liddie, " Tony s only a boy. 
 But you " she gave a wild cry that made the 
 woman at the stove sit up and rub her eyes. 
 "Jof* 
 
 She drew him close with her free arm. 
 
 Then, a moment later, he stood straight, sob 
 bing and laughing. 
 
 " Look, look," he cried in Slovak. 
 
 He began pulling off his coat, and as he did so 
 he shouted gloriously: 
 
 " I unlace my shoes." 
 
A WOMAN 
 
A WOMAN 
 
 A WOMAN stepped from the trolley car, pulled 
 off a heavy basket of wash, grasped it with 
 both hands, and jerked her way across the railroad 
 tracks. The car slid on into the night, and left 
 the struggling woman alone. Just behind her lay 
 acres of steel mills along the Monongahela River; 
 just before her, over the tracks, rose a high hill. 
 A meager but stinging snow was in the air. The 
 woman s eyes were alert up and down the railroad. 
 As she gained the far embankment the hillside 
 above flashed in a strange lightning, revealing bar 
 ren, stony slopes, smoke-dead shrubs, and lonely 
 shanties clinging to the heights. 
 
 This lightning went and came as she climbed, 
 grew to a glare one might have read by, faded 
 to a wan glimmer, vanished in blackness. The 
 woman puffed and panted, and finally set the bas 
 ket down. Then she turned for a moment. Be 
 low her lay the clustered mill buildings, and among 
 them stood the Bessemer converter shed, from 
 whose open mouth two terrific tongued flames shot 
 upward, swirling through the snow another snow 
 flakes of fire that curled, crumpled, and 
 splashed on the shed s roof. 
 
132 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 The woman, still panting, her basket at her feet, 
 seemed, in that flare, a wild animal alert and alone. 
 She was tall, her face was cut hard about the 
 bones, her narrow lips were open, her breath came 
 fast, her eyes were coal-black, her narrow nose 
 quivered at the nostrils. The fire glory played 
 over her face and bared each fold of her faded 
 black dress and each escaped wisp of black hair 
 under the head-shawl. About her eyes was the 
 red of a night s tears and a look of savage revolt 
 mixed with terror and love. 
 
 She suddenly turned, grasped the basket up 
 again and went stumbling, jerking, pulling, strain 
 ing. From level to level she climbed, ever more 
 fatigued, and in the sudden lightning that threw 
 her shadow before her on the hill she seemed like 
 a type of the world s struggle. As she paused 
 again, and turned, the sweat broke out over her 
 face and she panted heavily. Out of the South 
 came a long, hoarse whistle, a spark growing as it 
 flew, and a long train of cars went gloriously by. 
 The woman saw comfortable people flashing 
 faces. And then the train rushed on into the dark 
 ness. The woman turned and climbed on. 
 
 After what seemed an hour after fifteen 
 minutes she reached a little street of hardened 
 mud-ruts, a gash in the hillside. Along this she 
 hurried, and turned in at a green, ramshackle two- 
 story frame house that jutted out toward the mills. 
 The front door was open, the hall was dark. She 
 
A WOMAN 133 
 
 scraped against either wall as she went, and then 
 climbed up a stairway. She was panting loudly. 
 The warmth of the house enveloped her and there 
 was a sound as of far voices. 
 
 At the head of the stairs the woman set down 
 the basket, left it, felt for a door, and flung it 
 open. Her panting changed to a hoarse sobbing. 
 The room was long and narrow, with a window 
 toward the mills. A wooden bed stood next the 
 door, and next the window was a little stove glow 
 ing red through its grate. A slanting heap of 
 coal and wood lay in a corner; a small table stood 
 against the opposite wall. There were a few 
 old chairs, scraps of old carpets on the floor; a 
 torn wall paper, a gaudy picture of the Madonna 
 and Child over the bed, a little shelf on which 
 stood a plaster crucifix, a few nails overhung with 
 clothes. A door was opposite the bed opening 
 into the adjoining room. Deep in the heart of 
 this warm, airless room a little girl was playing 
 on the floor with a baby. The mill-lightning 
 through the shadeless window threw a wild flare 
 into the place the children were silhouetted, the 
 plaster crucifix stood in relief. 
 
 As the woman entered she gave a hoarse cry : 
 
 " Steve!" 
 
 Then she cried out in Slovak : 
 
 " Mary! They didn t take my baby?" 
 
 The little girl laughed, showing her teeth. 
 
 "Nie/ Pozrif (No! Look!)" 
 
134 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 She seized the tiny boy, in his heavily swaddled 
 cottons, and held him forth. The woman cried 
 out again, leaped forward, snatched up the bundle 
 of boy, sat on the bed, drew him close, looked at 
 his sooty, greasy face, and began smothering him 
 with kisses. Her sobs, at first choked and wild, 
 came easier, and she began talking rapidly in a 
 melodious alien voice. 
 
 " Stevey boy darling pod sem! (come 
 here!) Citis sa dobre? (Are you feeling 
 well?) Ah, God! Don t cry, little one! 
 They didn t take my boy ! They didn t take my 
 little baby! Is your mother a bad w r oman? 
 No! no! no! Oh, they shan t have you, Steve 
 Nief" She laughed and clutched him closer, 
 " Nie! Nie! " 
 
 There was a loud knock on the door opposite 
 the bed, and the mother drew the child so close 
 that he kicked and cried out. Her face became 
 livid with fright. Then the door opened and a 
 shabby, bowed man of fifty an Irishman 
 leaned half-way in. His eyes were dim, his face 
 shrunken and wrinkled, and he was nearly bald. 
 
 " Mary," he said to the young girl, shaking 
 his head toward the woman, " what ails your 
 mother? " 
 
 The woman s face relaxed and took on a sad 
 ness poignant and tragic. But Mary stood with 
 her thin arms crossed, an absurd little figure in a 
 heavy green dress much too big for her. 
 
A WOMAN 135 
 
 " Oh," said Mary, with all the public-school 
 English she had gained in a twice-a-week training, 
 " they says she s a bad woman and she goes with 
 fellars. They told the charity man on her and 
 he told the Squire and he says he ll take Stevey 
 away and me, too, later ! " 
 
 The man entered, a towel in one hand, with 
 which now and then he daubed his head and neck. 
 
 " Who said that, eh? " he demanded. 
 
 " Peoples." 
 
 " What people?" 
 
 Mary showed her teeth. 
 
 " Don t you know he was back? " 
 
 "Your pap? When?" 
 
 " Yesterday. Everybody knows that." 
 
 He came closer, whistling softly. 
 
 " So the man come back, eh? You see, I was 
 on the night shift. He come back, eh? Did he 
 hither?" 
 
 Mary spoke proudly. 
 
 "He kicked her \" 
 
 "What else?" 
 
 " He yelled on her he went out on the street 
 and hollered on her. He hollered so loud, every 
 body went out and heared him. He called her 
 bad names, and then everybody called her bad 
 names, and then they told the charity man and the 
 charity man told the Squire and they ll take her 
 baby away! " 
 
 The woman leaned forward, crying sharply. 
 
i 3 6 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 u No take my baby, no ! " Her voice rose to a 
 wild cry. "No! No!" 
 
 The man turned and stared at her. Then a 
 sweet smile showed on his wizened face. 
 
 " Tressa, don t you get a-scared. It s talk, 
 every bit of it ! Take the baby? Never! Don t 
 you get a-scared !" He clenched his fists. "The 
 dirty liars ! " he muttered. " But don t you get 
 a-scared ! " 
 
 The woman spoke in a low voice, slow, and in 
 pain: 
 
 " Me cry all night me no stop crying me 
 afraid they take my baby. Me cry all, all night." 
 
 The man looked at her pityingly, rubbing his 
 neck with the towel. 
 
 " Don t you cry any more, Tressa. It s all talk. 
 Don t you cry, Tressa, any more." 
 
 The mother patted the child s cheeks and smiled 
 sadly. 
 
 " Ah, Steve little baby I mustn t cry any 
 more no! no! see," she said, lifting up her 
 face, radiant and softened in the firelight, " see 
 what a man I got! " 
 
 The Irishman stooped and chucked the baby 
 under the chin. 
 
 " And a man he is, sure enough. I ve got that 
 will make him laugh ! " 
 
 He pulled from a pocket a banana, peeled it, 
 and the baby clutched it and ate at it hungrily. 
 The mother laughed softly. 
 
A WOMAN 137 
 
 "Ha!" cried the man, " now everything s all 
 right and we re all happy. So long! " 
 
 And he passed out to his room, closing the door 
 behind him. 
 
 The mother set the baby on the floor, went out 
 in the hall, brought back the wash, and then stood 
 before the stove warming her hands behind her. 
 She gazed at the little child, her eyes hungry with 
 mother-love, for she was shaken with that divine 
 animal-passion. But Mary stood at the window, 
 her nose flattened on the cold pane, and watched 
 the far fires, the telegraph wires that crossed them, 
 the shining rails, the black whirling drops of 
 snow. 
 
 Suddenly the woman darted to the hall-door, 
 closed it softly, and bolted it tight. Then she 
 went back to the stove and seemed to go into a 
 trance as she eyed her child. 
 
 She had been in America four years. Her hus 
 band had been a peddler in Austro-Hungary, but 
 here he worked in the mills and made a dollar and 
 a half a day. Their home was two rooms in this 
 ramshackle tenement. But the work made a brute 
 of the peddler after twelve hours a day, or a 
 night, toiling at fires, wrestling with weight, he 
 came out so exhausted and thirsty that he craved 
 for liquor. He became a drunkard and a wife- 
 beater, and then finally he left his job and deserted 
 his home. 
 
 It happened one glorious night of spring, when 
 
i 3 8 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 through the smoky air and over the barren hills 
 drifted a faint stirring of new life a beckoning 
 quiver that hinted to the heart of glories hidden, 
 a trembling in the soft air that gave glimpses of a 
 world other than the world of the mill, the starved 
 life, the hand-to-hand fight with tonnage. To 
 ward morning Tressa awoke and felt out, and the 
 place at her side was empty. Darting to the win 
 dow she saw a black figure emerge from the shad 
 ows of the hill. This figure moved onto the rail 
 road tracks and suddenly became a black silhouette 
 against the glow of the mill. A bag swung to 
 and fro. Tressa watched until the man vanished 
 toward the South. Then, in spite of the drunken 
 ness and the beatings, she cried her heart out. 
 For, even as in the earth, there was stirring in her 
 side a new life, and the father had left her. 
 
 Then came the harshness of the life of this 
 world. She had no money. There was the rent, 
 five dollars a month, there was food, three dollars 
 a week for potatoes and coffee and oatmeal, with 
 now and then a scrap of meat. Clothes she would 
 manage, sewing, patching, begging from neigh 
 bors. She moved with Mary into the one room 
 and rented the other to the Irishman for a dollar 
 a week, and took in washing from Braddock three 
 miles away. It was hard, bitter hard. But Mary 
 went on with her schooling and the mother did not 
 complain. 
 
 Five months later, one of the first cold nights 
 
A WOMAN 139 
 
 of autumn a night that drove the world indoors, 
 the first night for coal-fire the husband slouched 
 in. She took him in without a murmur and he 
 stayed a week. Then he beat her again and van 
 ished. It was three months this time. He came 
 back in December, around Christmas-time that 
 time when above all others the tramp longs for the 
 glow behind the window, the warmth of people 
 gathered about a table, the touch of hands, the 
 words of the home. He came in bedraggled, 
 torn, hairy. Again, without question, she took 
 him in, and Mary slept on a bundle of clothes on 
 the floor. But the night the child was born he 
 left her, his drunken oaths rolling through the 
 house. 
 
 She ceased to love him then. With all the 
 energy in her fierce nature she turned her passions 
 into mother-love, and fed her heart and soul upon 
 her baby. To have the little one feed at her 
 breast was her divine moment as she sat there un 
 der the gaudy Madonna and Child. She went in 
 rags that her children might be warm ; she was un 
 sparing with wood and coal that the room might 
 be a comfortable home. She tried to forget the 
 husband; she crowded her meditation with 
 thoughts of the baby s looks, his pranks, his 
 growth, his future. 
 
 And then, breaking in on her toil and her joy, 
 her husband had come in the day before. She 
 had driven the miserable creature out with terrible 
 
1 40 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 fury, tearing at him with her nails, beating on his 
 back, and he had gone forth howling and shouting 
 vile names at her. And the motley lodgers of the 
 house, rushing out of their starved lives to share 
 this excitement, had borne the tale to John War 
 ner, the head of the Industrial School, and he had 
 carried it to the local magistrate, the Squire. 
 John Warner, the quiet, spectacled, clean-shaven 
 young man, had stopped in the night before to see 
 the lay-out. In a quiet way he had warned the 
 woman of his intention of taking the baby at once 
 and of providing for Mary as soon as he could ar 
 range to get her in some institution. The baby 
 then was the immediate victim, and the threat 
 struck the mother to her soul. She broke under 
 the blow; she lay all night with the child in her 
 arms, sobbing piteously. She prayed to the Vir 
 gin, she implored the plaster Christ. It seemed to 
 her that her life had been lived, that it lay behind 
 her, and that she was gone to eternal torment. If 
 it really had been her life she would have died 
 gladly. But they asked her to live without that 
 which made life possible. They wanted to take 
 the baby away. They wanted to take it out to 
 the harsh, dark world, out among strange people, 
 out among enemies. She knew how he would 
 search about with his lips trying to find her breast, 
 how he would cry for her, how he would scream 
 with terror because she was not there. And what 
 good would it do him ? Who would know how to 
 
A WOMAN 141 
 
 love and protect him as she did? Was he not of 
 her flesh, had he not grown within her, had he not 
 dwelt close to her heart? 
 
 She became a very animal a tigress with 
 her cub. When she left for work that day, as 
 leave she had to, she was insane for a moment, 
 laughing and crying. It had been a day of frantic 
 terror. And now, standing at the red stove, with 
 the firelight flaring on the mills and on the baby s 
 head, it seemed to her as if she must go crazy. 
 They would come her lodger to the contrary 
 they would surely come they would take him 
 away. She knew these men what did they un 
 derstand concerning children? 
 
 And then as she stood, her chin out, her face 
 tightened about staring eyes, her lips moving, there 
 was a trample of many feet outside. Mary turned 
 in a flash, and the mother loosed a low wail, as if 
 the heart itself was crying through her lips. Then 
 she moved, dragging her feet, as if they were 
 loaded down, slowly, slowly, and stooped, and 
 took up the child in her arms and backed to a 
 rocker next the stove and sat down and let her 
 head sink low. 
 
 Mary whispered: 
 
 "Ano (yes), it s they." 
 
 In the great silence for the world was muf 
 fled now in the thickening snow there was a 
 sharp rap at the door. 
 
 "Should I open?" whispered Mary. 
 
142 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 The answer came as through set teeth. 
 
 " Parom ta udrel! (God s curses on you!) 
 No! Do not move! " 
 
 There was another sharp redoubling rap, and 
 silence again. 
 
 The mother leaned still further over, and the 
 child whimpered and tried to free itself. 
 
 " Be still," she murmured. 
 
 Then, at once, she was terror head to foot, for 
 the knob was seized and the door roughly shaken. 
 A husky voice cried through the stillness : 
 
 " Open ! Open the door quick ! " 
 
 " Oh," moaned the mother, " baby, be still! " 
 
 The voice rose again, the door rattling with the 
 words : 
 
 " Open the door, open, open ! Shall we break 
 it in?" 
 
 In the silence someone without laughed harshly 
 and the mother trembled. She felt as if she could 
 no longer hold the boy that her quivering 
 hands would drop him. The world was breaking 
 in, prying into her life, violating the sacred things. 
 The door was groaning against the bolt; there 
 was a slow cracking, a muffled sound of pressure, a 
 voice cursing. The mother felt as if the pressure 
 were on her ribs and they were breaking. She 
 could not bear it any longer. And then as the 
 door burst open and two men swung violently in, 
 she loosed a wild, keen shriek that went tingling 
 
A WOMAN 143 
 
 through the house. Then her head went down 
 again and the child whimpered. 
 
 The two men stood in silence a moment. 
 They looked sheepish. The Squire was a bluff 
 big man, red-faced and stout. He pulled out a 
 handkerchief and wiped his forehead. 
 
 " Gee ! " he murmured huskily to Warner, 
 " these Hunkies raise Cain with a man 1 " 
 
 Warner said nothing. He had a curious sense 
 of intruding. He wished he had not come. Be 
 hind him in the doorway crowded the neighbors, 
 women and men and children. The flare played 
 shadowy over their absorbed faces. Before him 
 stood Mary, animated, excited, and beside her 
 crouched the dim alien woman with the whimper 
 ing child. He could see through the window those 
 terrible fires, fires strong enough to burn iron into 
 steel, and he felt sharply that life too may burn 
 into souls. This taking a child from its mother 
 was a bad business. But it had to be done, and 
 the sooner the better. 
 
 He spoke softly: 
 
 " Mrs. Durish, I m more sorry than I can say. 
 But you know why we came." 
 
 There was a deep silence, save that the child was 
 whimpering. 
 
 Warner cleared his throat. 
 
 " Do you understand? " 
 
 Again there was silence. 
 
i 4 4 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 " Mrs. Durish, do you understand? " 
 
 The mother s head moved a little, and then 
 came words, broken, breathless, gasping: 
 
 "Me Slav no speak English." 
 
 Warner turned. 
 
 " Mary," he murmured, " please tell her." 
 
 Mary spoke fluently in Slovak: 
 
 " They want the baby, mother." 
 
 But the mother was silent. 
 
 The Squire shifted from foot to foot. 
 
 " Say, Warner," he muttered, " what s the use 
 of talking? I ll hold the woman you take the 
 kid." 
 
 Warner felt a quiver pass through him. He 
 turned to the Squire. 
 
 " Are we sure, though," he murmured, " that 
 she s guilty? You know we haven t much evi 
 dence." 
 
 " Aw, say," broke in the Squire, " don t these 
 women all go to the bad? Why, they re animals, 
 man. Leave it to me; a Hunk s a beast." 
 
 Warner cleared his throat again. 
 
 " But see how she cares for that child." 
 
 " Animal ! " said the Squire. " It s her young, 
 you know." 
 
 Warner did not answer. He turned to Mary. 
 
 " Tell her," he murmured gently, " that we 
 don t want to use force tell her to hand us the 
 child." 
 
^ S 
 
 &J, 
 
 11 
 
 JJ 
 
 ."S 
 
 u -C 
 
A WOMAN 145 
 
 Mary spoke quickly. 
 
 " They don t want to hit you ; you should give 
 Stevey to them." 
 
 But the mother did not stir. 
 
 " Say! " cried the Squire, " this is putting me in 
 a sweat! Come on! " 
 
 He took a step. 
 
 " See here, Mrs., give me the kid and no funny 
 business ! " 
 
 He put out his hand, he took another step. 
 And then he stopped frozen. 
 
 Tressa, with a low cry, leaped up. She stood 
 straight. She held the child at her breast. She 
 raised her head. Her black eyes lived, her nos 
 trils quivered and her lips moved. She was a 
 splendid tigress, defending her cub. And then the 
 very deeps of human nature, the deeps below the 
 deeps, swept up to her lips, and the words came 
 packed with strength: 
 
 "Me no German me no Russ me no 
 Slav me Catholic! " She raised one finger 
 high, pointing upward, her face lifted, " Church 
 mine God mine." 
 
 There was a breathless silence, and the room 
 seemed to palpitate with the mystery of life. The 
 listeners seemed to be witnesses of the human 
 struggle of this earth. They were swept with the 
 glory of her superb courage. And then she went 
 on: 
 
146 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 " Me have man of my country he no good 
 
 my man too much drink whiskey and so he 
 no good, me have no man no man!" 
 
 Warner, gazing on that upright figure, that 
 flushing face, that mother, felt his heart grow 
 small with pain. And then again she spoke, lift 
 ing her voice, a compelling music, a triumphant 
 roll of strength : 
 
 " Me have two man me no want more man 
 
 me have two man " She paused, and sol 
 emnly she pointed to one side of the room and 
 then the other " one man each side give me 
 love, kiss me, " and then she pointed to the 
 baby and to Mary " look two man! " 
 
 She stopped. There was a trembling silence. 
 And then the child began to whimper again. 
 
 Then the mother saw Warner turn slowly to 
 the Squire, and put a hand on the big man s arm, 
 and whisper something. The woman felt the ter 
 ror steal upon her again. She stared at the 
 Squire. He did not move for a little. Then he 
 took off his hat and scratched his head, and sud 
 denly he turned, and angrily drove the people 
 from the door and went out himself. 
 
 In the flaring place, in the silence, and facing 
 the woman whose hair seemed to burn in the far 
 fires, Warner advanced softly. She started, 
 clutching the child closer. She trembled violently. 
 And then she heard his voice, soft, a very whisper: 
 
 " Mrs. Durish, if you want to move out of this 
 
A WOMAN 147 
 
 house come to me to-morrow. And as for your 
 baby keep him, keep him, keep him! " 
 
 And then he was gone and the door was shut. 
 
 Under the Madonna and Child the living 
 woman sank down with her own child, and as she 
 sobbed pitifully she kissed and kissed the dirty 
 face, for the little one was very close and very liv 
 ing and he was safe and warm, and he was hers. 
 
JOAN OF THE MILLS 
 
H 
 
 JOAN OF THE MILLS 
 
 UNKEYTOWN was bathed in sunset. 
 Right and left of the broad dirt space 
 stood rows of gray, box-like houses; down the 
 center, between them, ran a line of outhouses and 
 pumps. But about the stoops men were playing 
 cards, sweating, laughing, talking; idlers watched 
 them; children romped in the dirt; women stood in 
 open doorways ; and the smokes of supper went up 
 from the chimneys. 
 
 In miniature, this was the human scene the 
 human comedy here were men drawn from 
 many nations, caught together in the crimson of 
 sundown, hungry for supper, ticking off the aver 
 age moments of life. Many were in undershirts 
 and trousers. They smoked corn-cob pipes. 
 They drew close to one another. Girls and boys 
 talked apart. Mothers called their children. All 
 were busy; all were absorbed in the intense minutias 
 of life. And yet in that scene, so rich, human, 
 common, heart-warming, under the bustle and the 
 laughter the great tears of things and the great 
 glory that beckons on man, were stirring at that 
 moment. 
 
152 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 There were six thousand men hereabouts. They 
 were out on strike. 
 
 Suddenly out of the sunset, out of the very 
 flames of the sun for the burning sphere was 
 scarcely man-high and its slanting light filled the 
 air with fire a girl came swinging up from the 
 end of the street. She was the black heart of the 
 blaze. At every group of men she stopped. 
 
 " Meeting to-night down at the school." 
 
 Her voice was singularly rich; she almost sang 
 the phrases. Someone in each group caught the 
 words, and flung them into an alien tongue. As 
 she hurried ahead, the sun was swallowed up 
 twilight and shadows fell men rose children 
 ran home women called for their families 
 and the great moment of supper came to them all. 
 
 But the girl went on. She could be distinctly 
 seen now middle-sized, swinging, in cheap blue 
 skirt and a little limp calico waist neck bare 
 deep down, arms naked to the elbow splendid 
 strong head and face. The thick, flat hair, parted 
 in the center, rose higher on one side than on the 
 other, fell around her temples, over the ears, to a 
 black bow in back. The big blue eyes, set deep, 
 were aflame with life; the strong, broad-based nose 
 quivered at nostrils; the mouth was a wide bow, 
 with rich lips. Altogether, here was defiance, 
 energy, leadership, and the direct drive. 
 
 She disappeared in the twilight, her rich voice 
 lingering in the still summer air: 
 
JOAN OF THE MILLS 153 
 
 " Meeting to-night down at the school. 1 
 It was Joan Marcy of the Ladies Auxiliary. 
 
 At nine that night a man sat at a rickety table 
 in a second-floor back room. A light blazed 
 above him ; through the open window came only a 
 shrilling of crickets and the liquid pipe of frogs. 
 The human tide, at flood an hour before, was now 
 at ebb. Hunkeytown was manless; there were 
 only sleeping children and soft-stepping women. 
 The man was in his undershirt and dripping sweat. 
 A little English text-book, open before him, was 
 gripped in his huge hairy hands, and with intense 
 determination he kept repeating in a rare bass 
 voice : 
 
 " Day cot is on day mot." 
 
 From a little gray and red picture he under 
 stood that it was a door-mat, and that a cat was 
 on it. 
 
 This man was hairy and huge matching his 
 hands. The bushy top of his head was black, his 
 big eyes brown; he had a good high forehead, he 
 had a heavy chin and a wide face. 
 
 He was not alone in that queer tumble-down 
 room, with its straw mattress on the floor, its dusty 
 stove, its two barrels of household furnishings 
 the dirt and litter of it all. Opposite him in a 
 broken arm-chair a dirty little boy of six lay 
 curled up fast asleep. Black ringlets fell over the 
 boy s sideway face; his lips were open; his face 
 
i 5 4 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 sunburnt. Two chubby fists lay in his lap. His 
 little torn trousers were pinned up to an old 
 woolen shirt. 
 
 The man wiped off a drift of sweat and spat 
 tered it off his hand. Then he dropped the book 
 and looked up. He gazed at the sleeping boy. 
 The boy s sleep bred an atmosphere of warmth, 
 home, sweet mystery. The man felt it, and 
 though he set his mouth hard and tight, the rough 
 tears wet his eyes. 
 
 " Domm America ! " he muttered. 
 
 Then he shook his head, and clenched a big fist. 
 
 " So goes it so goes it ! " 
 
 Gazing then at the boy, his eyes took on a far 
 away stare. He was seeing through the boy and 
 beyond him far beyond far over the great 
 waters far over the vanished months far to 
 the Fatherland. As he stared, his lips moved, his 
 hand fell to his side. He saw the broad meadows 
 where he had plowed as a boy he saw a 
 young girl who sometimes went singing through 
 those meadows he was leaning on his hoe, then 
 leaned for hours he couldn t work for love. 
 Then came that moonlit walk by the side of the 
 pond; the waters were sliced by silver and they 
 sang; arms went soft round his neck, a cheek was 
 fresh, cool, dream-stirring, and lips 
 
 The man sat up with a jerk, clenching his fist 
 again. He looked at the boy. 
 
 " Domm America ! " he muttered. 
 
JOAN OF THE MILLS 155 
 
 His hand fell again. It was five years after the 
 wedding. A little steamship agent, dapper, with 
 twirling mustaches, in a check suit, showed him 
 circulars. The dream of all the world, of all peo 
 ples the dream of America at that moment 
 fell upon him. The West called; the land of 
 freedom called; the land of the future, the land 
 of his children ! And there so ran the circu 
 lars gold was lying in the gutter ; there were 
 more jobs than men, wages were a princely in 
 come. 
 
 In the silent evenings, at the lamp-lit table 
 the baby asleep he and the young wife 
 talked and talked, read and reread the circulars, 
 dreamed and schemed. Then, at last, in the 
 thousand-reeking steerage they floated out on the 
 great waters. Day followed day. Herded with 
 five nations they felt a rising joy a bubbling 
 expectation a dominant dream. And then, at 
 last, at last, at dawn gray gray waters, gray 
 skies how the blood left a thousand cheeks as 
 women and children in shawls and men in tawdry 
 coats, crowded aft, and there there it was 
 America ! A sacred moment they seemed to 
 stand in a temple of sky and sea till, last, they 
 saw the tiny Statue of Liberty, and back of that, 
 a greater Statue of Liberty a statue builded by 
 millions of hands the vision of a shining city 
 floating on the waters in the gold of the morning 
 sun. Yes, yes 
 
156 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 Again with a jerk the man sat up, and glared 
 at the boy. 
 
 " Domm domm America ! " 
 
 Then his stare went through and beyond the 
 boy again. They were at Ellis Island but they 
 never saw the shining city. They had tags pinned 
 to their clothing; a man in uniform led them. 
 First there was a boat, then a train, then the smokes 
 and flame of Pittsburgh. Then another train. 
 Then the mill the mill! What a place! 
 Mighty acres of low buildings, with a rumble and 
 roar all day long, and a miserable Hunkeytown 
 defacing the landscape. And he found out he was 
 a Hunkey and that his strength, grown out of 
 the soil and under the sun, was worth just ten dol 
 lars a week. And he found that hands that could 
 run a clean furrow down a field were only fit to 
 shovel coal into a lofty furnace whose blinding 
 glare and shriveling heat consumed him. All day 
 long naked to the waist like a son of Anak 
 his writhing muscles played golden at the fires, 
 the sweat slapped down, the flesh smelt burnt. 
 Twelve hours a day; six days; then a Sunday of 
 twenty- four hours 1 toil; then a week on the night- 
 shift, twelve hours from sunset to sunrise. A ter 
 rible toiler was this man, and grim, and uncom 
 plaining. The work threw him back to his home 
 every twenty-four hours a shattered lump of clay 
 that went to bed, or stayed up for liquor. This 
 was no home this was no life but they were 
 
JOAN OF THE MILLS 157 
 
 caught, they had to go on. And all was going 
 well enough, in a way, when typhoid struck the 
 young wife and swept her out. It might have 
 been the little company house, unsanitary, damp, 
 near an open cesspool. But she was stricken 
 down, and the overshadowing twilight went out 
 in blackness. 
 
 He groaned at the table a groan as if his 
 heart were being torn, torn downward. 
 
 Then his thoughts hurried on in a tumult. Boy 
 and father divided the housework between them. 
 The father dressed and undressed the child, and 
 roughly mothered him. That was a black enough 
 time. And then came the cut in wages. No one 
 explained it. One Saturday night the six thou 
 sand millmen found the money in their pay-envel 
 opes reduced by half or even two-thirds. The boy 
 and his father had to move into this little .room. 
 The mills were filled with mutterings one or 
 two men complained and were discharged com 
 pany spies tracked every attempt at mass-meetings. 
 Was the toil not terrible enough without this star 
 vation cut in wages ? 
 
 He smote the table softly. 
 
 " Domm domm ! " he cried. 
 
 So this was the land of the future, the land 
 of his children this was the dream of all the peo 
 ples the dream of America riches, freedom, 
 home this this " slaughter-house " so his 
 companions called it ! this, this hell where he 
 
158 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 sweated, burnt, far from the sweet earth and the 
 genial sun and the voice of a woman. He had 
 come to this! 
 
 And what was the end? Oh, beautiful! Yes 
 terday a big American walked to the whistle-rope 
 at ten in the morning and pulled and pulled it 
 with a glad defiance. The mill stopped down as 
 if it had heart-failure, and in the hush was the 
 tramp of a host. Fires were banked, coal-shovels 
 dropped, riveting hammers flung aside, and out 
 marched six thousand men somewhat puzzled, 
 somewhat timid and uncertain, but risen to a man. 
 The crater had blown off the volcano. Hunkey- 
 town had struck. 
 
 He, too, had to strike. They told him so. He 
 had argued that he couldn t afford to lose his 
 job. They told him to clear out or get his head 
 broken with a crowbar. 
 
 He went out raging. Then little Boris came 
 home from school, bursting with joy. The 
 school-children had struck, too. But what was a 
 strike? Well, he would study English and find 
 lout! 
 
 America had taken his freedom, his home, his 
 iWife, his job all, all, all ! 
 
 Again he jerked up, and clenching his fist, he 
 spoke through set teeth: 
 
 " Domm this hell, America! " 
 
 He swabbed off the drip of sweat again, and 
 gazed at his boy. Yes, his own boy. How tired 
 
JOAN OF THE MILLS 159 
 
 he must have been, to fall asleep this way ! He 
 ought to be in bed ! 
 
 The man rose, swung easily over, shoved a hairy 
 hand under his legs and another under the little 
 neck, and lifted the child. Suddenly he drew his 
 boy crushingly close. 
 
 " Och ! och ! " he grunted, leaned, and kissed 
 the dirty face three times. 
 
 Then he stretched the boy on the mattress, 
 knelt, and pulled off the trousers. The boy 
 opened his eyes. 
 
 " Fader," came a clear sweet treble, " you come 
 too. Come to bed." 
 
 The father grinned, his eyes shone; he bent, 
 kissed the boy again then rose, turned out the 
 light, and, lying down, took the little fellow in his 
 arms. 
 
 At that moment there was a sharp rat-tat-tap 
 on the door. Grumbling, cursing under his 
 breath, the man rose, struck a match, relit the gas 
 and opened the door. The golden light fell on 
 the eager face of Joan Marcy. 
 
 " I thought there was a light here saw it 
 from the street! You must come to the meet- 
 ing!" 
 
 The words flew rapid, sharp, charged with vi 
 tality. 
 
 The big man looked down on Joan, and his 
 forehead darkened. 
 
 " Ah guess not," he grumbled. 
 
160 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 She advanced in the room, he stepping back 
 ward. She came close. 
 
 "Are you a scab?" 
 
 And on his shrugging his shoulders : 
 
 " Jiminy Christmas, why don t you learn Eng 
 lish?" 
 
 He grinned then, and pointed at the text-book. 
 
 " I learn; it works hard." 
 
 Then she really looked at him the huge and 
 hairy man, the good forehead, the strong jaw, the 
 mighty arms. Her eyes blazed admiration. 
 
 "We need you " she cried. "We ve all 
 struck; you re one of us, or you re against us. 
 Come on along with me ! " 
 
 He returned her unflinching gaze. 
 
 " No," he said. 
 
 She made as if to speak, and then stopped. 
 
 " What for strike? " he went on. " I got no 
 money Boris," he nodded his head toward the 
 sleeping boy " go not to school. He get domm 
 stupid. First pay get cut, then no pay. What 
 for?" 
 
 "What for?" She paused, still looking at 
 him. Then suddenly her face slid into a radiant, 
 glorious smile, so womanly-sweet that he, too, 
 smiled and his eyes became dimmed. " What s 
 your name? " she asked. 
 
 " Ignatz Plavier." 
 
 " Ignatz Plavier," she repeated. " Hunga 
 rian?" 
 
JOAN OF THE MILLS 161 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Mine s Joan Marcy they call me Joan of 
 the Mills, because once somebody called Joan 
 made men fight. Don t you see ? " Her eyes 
 shone again, her face was eager. " It s a strike; 
 all the men are getting together; they ll stand by 
 each other they ll fight fight fight until 
 they win. Then you ll get more money than ever, 
 and won t work so hard, and it will be better 
 better for you, and all of us, and the boy " 
 Her voice ended in a break, and the tears sprang 
 glistening to her long-lashed eyelids. 
 
 "So?" he muttered darkly. He understood 
 nothing but the tears. But how good they were; 
 how human. Suddenly a warmth stole into his 
 heart, and in those darkened recesses, black with 
 " dommed America," the heat beat into flame a 
 passion. He leaned toward her. 
 
 " You a good girl," he said thickly. 
 
 The passion escaping through his voice made 
 her look at him sharply. Then, at once, she felt a 
 comradeship for this man, a home-feeling, a glad, 
 hearty warmth. She drew closer, and spoke 
 richly. 
 
 " Come with me, Mr. Plavier. It s good to 
 strike." 
 
 She touched his arm, and at the touch an old 
 miracle was re-done. For suddenly, after months 
 of loneliness, heart-break, death, sweat, this man 
 found that he was again in the scheme of 
 
1 62 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 things ; someone thought of him ; someone included 
 him. 
 
 His throat was thick with tears. 
 
 " Yes I go I go but Boris ? I stay al 
 ways by him. He wakes up and cries * fader. 
 
 "Where s his mother ?" 
 
 He looked at her with strange eyes ; his lips sud 
 denly twitched. 
 
 " Dead," he muttered. 
 
 She swung round and leaned over the sleeping 
 boy the little dirty fellow, curled up, black ring 
 lets a-toss. She looked and looked, and her heart 
 struggled. Among the women she had been 
 leader. She was born to be in the thick of things. 
 Even at this moment she yearned to fly to the 
 meeting and mingle her voice with many voices. 
 But this man s need was great. He, too, was 
 needed. He surely must go. This was the man- 
 stuff that was wanted. And yet, how could she 
 miss that meeting? 
 
 She looked round. He was beside her; his 
 eyes dreaming from her to his boy. Something 
 thrilled her with pain. She spoke softly. 
 
 " I ll stay with him. You go." 
 
 " You stay? " he cried low. 
 
 " Yes now hurry! " she turned, alert, com 
 manding, " at the schoolhouse down the end of 
 the street. Quick, now I ll wait ! " 
 
 He gazed at her amazed. 
 
 "So bad I should go?" 
 
JOAN OF THE MILLS 163 
 
 " So bad! " she laughed softly. " Go! go ! " 
 
 He said nothing further, but a light came into 
 his eyes. He put on a coat and a hat and stepped 
 to the door. Then he turned. " Sure? " 
 
 " Sure ! " she cried. 
 
 And he went. 
 
 He was gone two hours a long two hours. 
 The impatient girl leaned out the window, listened, 
 paced up and down. Then she took stock of the 
 room. It betrayed so pitifully the man-touch 
 that she smiled tearfully, and set to work getting 
 things to rights. Surely this man in his helpless 
 ness, his loneliness, his darkness, needed needed 
 utterly. The girl felt her strength she d give 
 him a " lift." But as she stacked plates in piles, 
 wiped dust with her skirt from the stove, picked 
 up rubbish from the floor, she paused, dreaming, 
 now and then, and listened. Then, in her dreami 
 ness she dropped a knife. In the creaking silence 
 it smote loud. The boy stirred. 
 
 "Fader!" he piped. "Fader I" 
 
 A strange passion shook her. No one was 
 looking she was alone. She hurried to the 
 mattress, sat down, whispered: 
 
 " Boris, dear, all right all right! " 
 
 And softly patted him. He snuggled up, closed 
 his eyes and slept again. And then Joan dis 
 covered that a mother was hidden in her it went 
 through her like a wave of love, pity, tenderness, 
 all jumbled together. She went on patting him, 
 
1 64 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 she sang in a low voice, her eyes were misty. 
 Peace came to her. The meeting seemed far; the 
 strike seemed far; but this little living boy seemed 
 very near. It is given to woman to feel how 
 greater it is to touch a child with one s hand than 
 to lift a voice among voices. 
 
 And so she sat there, singing, patting, her heart 
 full. Then there was a step in the hall, and she 
 rose guiltily. The door opened; Ignatz stepped 
 in. As she stood facing him, she saw again what 
 a mightiness of man he was and he was the 
 father truly he was the father ! 
 
 She smiled. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 His eyes shone, but he shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " They talk I no understand! " 
 
 She smiled radiantly. 
 
 " Listen," she said, " to-morrow there s a meet 
 ing at Indian Mound. Come with me, bring 
 Boris!" 
 
 " More meeting? " his eyebrows went up. 
 
 " Yes you ll understand, too. I ll be down 
 stairs in the morning. You and Boris go with 
 
 me." 
 
 " With you? " he paused then his voice rang 
 with genuine passion : " Sure ! sure! " 
 
 She stepped to the door, then turned, touched 
 his arm. Her voice had a new music in it. 
 
 " You ve got the loveliest boy, Mr. Plavier! " 
 
JOAN OF THE MILLS 165 
 
 And she slipped away into the night. The big 
 man sat down, head on his hand, and dreamed a 
 while. For Joan was a woman to make men 
 dream. 
 
 Acres of mills, sheathed in corrugated iron 
 acres, that night and day, holiday and Sunday, 
 through the year unceasingly created immense steel 
 cars in the service of transportation a giant la 
 boring to help make the railroads a weaver of peo 
 ples, a blender and mixer of nations, that the 
 world grow small and be one acres wherein the 
 daring dreams of civilization came true and yet 
 the giant knew not. He labored sore, in twilight 
 or bronzed by fires, he struggled with steel plates, 
 he cunningly devised springs, he cast wheels, he 
 lifted weights but his dream was only of a pay- 
 envelope, a saloon, a woman, and sleep. Down in 
 the darkness he builded the future of earth but 
 heard not, neither did he see. 
 
 This giant was labor. Six thousand men were 
 his thews and bones, his heart and soul. But the 
 hand did not know the heart, nor the finger speak 
 with the finger for one finger came from Po 
 land, and another from Italy, a third from Russia. 
 The giant was a chaos of sixteen nations six 
 teen nations drawn over the Atlantic by the mod 
 ern world-dream, only to find themselves part of 
 a brute giant, the world-dream gone, the dream 
 
1 66 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 of wages, liquor, sex and sleep replacing it. They 
 found themselves in so fierce a struggle that it be 
 came good merely to live, eat, breed, sleep. 
 
 But being human and therefore unable to ut 
 terly shake off the vision, the brute giant through 
 all the chaos of him began to stir. He raged in 
 wardly in polyglot and Hunkey-English. He 
 seemed to dimly feel that man was not made 
 merely to labor and feed and breed and sleep. 
 He began to feel that a house should also be a 
 home, a mill also be touched with dreams, an 
 evening be haunted by a distant glory, a foreman 
 be brotherly but he felt it in concrete terms ; he 
 wanted more pay, he wanted a shorter workday, 
 he wanted the power of foremen curbed, he 
 wanted the right to organize yea, make the six 
 thousand as one in their own defense a giant 
 who heard, saw, dreamed, and acted with intellect 
 The pressure grew stronger; the power behind the 
 mill the unseen mystery turned screw after 
 screw there was a spy-system, there was a pro 
 hibition of meetings, there was a cut in wages. 
 Then the brute giant grew restive; a wild passion 
 seized him ; he seemed to be awakening, the finger 
 aware of the hand, the heart of the head and 
 suddenly he stepped out of the mill, like a soul 
 leaving the body. Steel-cars ceased to be made; 
 the daring dreams of civilization stopped dead. 
 
 But the giant what of him? The head was 
 a handful of Americans skilled workers, native- 
 
JOAN OF THE MILLS 167 
 
 born. Instinctively they felt their responsibility. 
 They formed a committee The Big Six with 
 a trained Russian revolutionist, an Italian versed in 
 the general strike, a French socialist, and Amer 
 ican labor-unionists. But how was the head to or 
 ganize that chaos of a body how sow enlighten 
 ment among the six thousand how blend the 
 sixteen nations into one? 
 
 Something had to be done. So they plastered 
 the billboards on the road to Hunkeytown with 
 posters in five languages, calling a meeting on In 
 dian Mound. Indian Mound was a hump of earth 
 at the south of the mills, vast, treeless, open. 
 
 At dawn that morning Joan arose. The family 
 her two brothers who worked in the mills, 
 her young sister and her mother were still 
 asleep. She slipped softly from the little cottage 
 that stood in a hilly field a bit beyond Hunkey 
 town. Hoe in hand, and barefoot, she stepped 
 into the garden-patch beside the house. There 
 were rows of potatoes, onions, carrots, beets, and 
 a little clump of corn. It was a little after dawn 
 and a brilliant light fell slanting like a fall of snow 
 upon the earth. Leaves glistened tremblingly. 
 The air was full of a breathless glory tasted 
 fresh and smelt of the wet earth. A mist knee- 
 deep clung to the fields like a heaving sea and 
 daisy-heads floated on the surface. 
 
 Joan tingled with the glory of morning; she 
 breathed deep ; her eyes were liquid with sleep and 
 
1 6.8 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 joy. Then she set to work heartily, hoeing around 
 the potatoes. The wet earth was under her bare 
 feet, the dew-dripping potato leaves slapped 
 against her skin. All the health of earth seemed 
 to go through her, rising out of the ground through 
 her body. At the very top of the lonely pear-tree 
 near by perched a bobolink. Suddenly he sang, 
 and the wild ascending lisp seemed to lift him, for 
 he soared with it into the pale blue skies. Joan 
 looked up, her eyes wide, her heart throbbing with 
 music. And then she knew she was in love with 
 a great big foreign man a Hunkey. 
 
 She stopped working; she leaned on her hoe. 
 She felt caught in a trap of glory. For had 
 she not been free? had she not been a girl different 
 girl unique ? Was she not Joan of the Mills 
 head of the Ladies Auxiliary free, strong, al 
 most masculine? And now, without warning, 
 and just as the strike needed her most, that power 
 and passion of the human race that brings forth 
 the generations and enslaves women and bids men 
 sweat for others that power of earth and sun 
 seized upon her, dipped her in a blinding fire, and 
 possessed her body and her soul for its own uses. 
 The strike faded far, the voices withdrew and 
 she merely remembered with the sharp vividness 
 of touch, little Boris curled up asleep, the still hot 
 room, the torn mattress, and her hand patting a 
 child while her lips and heart sang together. And 
 she saw that big dark man, and wanted him 
 
JOAN OF THE MILLS 169 
 
 wanted him with all her strength. The power 
 bid her mate with this man following him 
 through all the world. 
 
 In a sudden tigress fury she flung down the hoe. 
 
 " No ! " she muttered. " I won t ! I m Joan 1 
 Joan of the Mills!" 
 
 She swung into the house, banging doors, cry 
 ing: 
 
 "Harry! Eddy! Momsey! Get up! get up! " 
 
 She roused the family; she quarreled with them 
 all through breakfast She told them fiercely to 
 think of the strike, to be ready to march "a 
 lot of fools and pigeon-livers, afraid of fighting! 
 You think so much of yourselves, you ain t ever 
 going to be free ! Eddy, get your flute ! " 
 
 In a wild excitement she seized a long willow- 
 wand, to which a red flannel rag was sewed, flag- 
 like, and with her brother swung out to the head 
 of the street. 
 
 " Now, play," she cried, " play till you burst! " 
 
 They stood a moment before those wide rows of 
 sleeping houses. The sun flashed down on the 
 dust of the road. Not a soul was in sight. Eddy 
 was pale and trembling. He lifted the flute to 
 his lips and began playing " Yankee Doodle." 
 He stepped forward, Joan at his side, the flag 
 flapping over her shoulder. Her face was eager, 
 her eyes sparkling, her lips parted. Together they 
 swung down the street. 
 
 The shrill, brook-like music rose quivering 
 
170 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 through the air; the two marched together; and 
 then suddenly, from every door, men and women 
 and children hearts thrilling, faces flushed 
 or very pale came streaming out into the sun 
 light. They hesitated a moment; the girl and boy 
 passed them with their set young faces and the 
 whistling music and the stirring flag. Then in 
 silence they fell in behind, an army of families. 
 The street filled from end to end. 
 
 Ignatz, with white face, was standing in his 
 doorway, holding Boris by the hand. Joan saw 
 them. 
 
 She stepped aside angrily: 
 
 "Quick! come!" 
 
 Ignatz followed her with his boy. She could 
 feel that they were near; she set her lips, held her 
 flag higher. 
 
 The vast moving crowd swept on. No one 
 spoke. The flute and flag led them. All moved 
 deliberately. Eyes shone with a mighty expecta 
 tion. Men and women and children held one an 
 other s hands. It was the brute giant in motion 
 a tapestry in many colors strange foreign 
 faces the stolid Slavs, the fiery Italians, the 
 eagle-like Russians, the solid Germans. It was like 
 Ellis Island marching by. 
 
 Slowly on and on the flood poured the living 
 waters of Europe swept the dusty road and with 
 the tread of a host the giant marched out through 
 the bare country, past the mills, and up the Mound. 
 
JOAN OF THE MILLS 171 
 
 On that vast slope they stopped, those in the rear 
 spreading out in a thick and nearing semi-circle, 
 until from the top one could look down on a com 
 pact mass, a block of eight thousand human souls 
 men in shirts and suspenders, women in soft 
 waists, children in rags. Those in front sat on 
 the ground. The sea had come to a pause; it was 
 still, absolutely still; eyes lifted; souls waiting. 
 Far in back of the crowd, far below, lay the mighty 
 acres of silent mills. Up in front stood the soul 
 of the mill, the hands of the mill, the visible giant, 
 silent, but throbbing with life. 
 
 A dozen men stood on a little platform before 
 them. The open sky above, reaching down far 
 behind the mills, and round about for miles, poured 
 down its heat. The dozen men looked at the eight 
 thousand questioning eyes. They read the ques 
 tion in the eyes of the giant: " You brought us 
 here now, what are you going to do ? What 
 does it all mean? We are ready; speak! " 
 
 Close below the stand stood Joan, restless, de 
 fiant, drums rolling in her heart. Was not this 
 the hour toward which all her life had moved 
 the hour of war, of battle, of leadership? She 
 waited the signal; she waited the word of fight. 
 That was to give her strength. That was to hurl 
 her against the foes of the working people. 
 
 And right back of her stood Ignatz big, black, 
 powerful with his quick eyes and large good 
 forehead. But his eyes were not on the platform 
 
172 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 they were on that restless girl before him. He 
 felt somehow that she was the America that he 
 had come to she was freedom and the future. 
 Within him all was like a furnace. He had been 
 lonely, misused, trampled his wife and home, 
 his dreams and the good of life all snatched away 
 
 his aching empty life needed needed this 
 girl. She seemed to fit in with his home; she 
 seemed to belong. The thought roused in him a 
 passion of hate. Why love a woman in this land? 
 In a year or two she, too, would be snatched away, 
 or if not, he would see her defaced by poverty and 
 toil. 
 
 His thoughts stopped, for someone was speak 
 ing one of The Big Six a mighty-mouthed 
 fellow. He spoke in a good workman s English 
 
 terse, sharp, tense. Ignatz could not under 
 stand; neither could eight thousand others. 
 Words like " unite organize union keep 
 order " were sown on barren ground. Ignatz 
 knew there was nothing in all this. And then, 
 suddenly, he paused; his lips parted; he looked 
 up ; he listened heart and soul. 
 
 It was another speaker, also English. But this 
 time there was a telepathic impact; the brain com 
 prehended not, but the heart knew. The man let 
 loose a fire of passion, which, strangely, was a 
 jumble of English; but his words had the effect of 
 tremendous music. The passion, the rhythm, the 
 rise and fall of verbal melody, the man s gestures, 
 
JOAN OF THE MILLS 173 
 
 his shining face, went out like a prairie fire, licking 
 up the dry grass of human nature. It was like a 
 revelation to that mighty mass. Here was pur 
 pose; here was help; here was vision; here was a 
 call, a great call. 
 
 There is a moment when a crowd becomes a 
 mob either a dangerous or a sublime moment 
 when thousands of separate individualities are 
 blended in a mystic union when the thousands 
 become as one man, with one mind, one heart, one 
 dream, one action. Ignatz, standing in the crowd 
 Joan standing before him felt the moment 
 come. They could not resist. It was like an elec 
 tric shock; but suddenly Ignatz knew in his heart 
 that he was no longer a separate soul, no longer 
 lonely and apart; but that the great soul of man 
 had absorbed him ; he entered into the larger man 
 hood; he felt himself a part of a throng of human 
 ity; a sense of brotherhood, divine and lovely, stole 
 into him; he could have shaken hands with every 
 man in the crowd; cried with them, laughed with 
 them, died with them. And a wonder went like 
 light through Joan the miracle was worked 
 and she knew that the word was not of battle, but 
 of love that the fight was to draw others near. 
 A glory beckoned her and that way lay love. 
 She turned impulsively. Her eyes were blinded 
 with tears. 
 
 c Take my hand," she whispered. 
 
 He took it, a passion inexpressible sweeping him. 
 
i 7 4 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 The hairy and huge hand closed over hers with a 
 might she had never gauged before. And thus, 
 hand in hand, they heard the speaker finish, while 
 electricity tingled between the shoulders and the 
 blood left the cheek 
 
 Perhaps the speaker felt that the crowd was 
 "with him; " that many men had become Man, 
 and that he was merely the tongue expressing this 
 thousand-beating heart; for he spoke a moment 
 (few, of course, understanding) of the new Amer 
 ican. He said: 
 
 " You you are the new, the true American 
 
 for as I look before me I see native-born Amer 
 icans, I see Germans, I see Hungarians, I see Ru- 
 thenians, Slavonians, Croatians; I see Polanders 
 and Turks and Lithuanians; I see Russians, Greeks, 
 Italians, Armenians; I see Roumanians; I see Bul 
 garians; I see Swiss gathered from all quarters 
 of the civilized world gathered here together 
 
 merged into one, working together, dreaming 
 together, living together you " his hands 
 went out to them with his heart, he almost sobbed, 
 " you Americans " and he laughed like a man 
 in delirium, " and they call you ignorant foreigners 
 - they call you Hunkeys ! Show em! Show 
 >emf" 
 
 And as the crowd roared eight-thousand 
 mouthed, truly the miracle was worked. The 
 world-dream, the vision, touched the giant with 
 soul. He awoke ; he knew his purpose ; he saw the 
 
JOAN OF THE MILLS 175 
 
 vistas ahead; he was no longer a chaos, but heart 
 and hand, finger and finger, spirit and mind, they 
 were all one one mighty organism, one mighty 
 brotherhood of toil. The glory, the sense of 
 power, of freedom, the lift and urge, the might 
 of numbers, smote all like lightning. Joan was 
 sobbing, her heart was broken open. How blind 
 she had been not to see that the strike was for 
 love I 
 
 It was not till noon that the thousands went 
 home. Still in a dream, her flag dragging, Joan 
 walked with Ignatz and Boris. And as they 
 walked, a strange new shame came upon her. She 
 dropped his hand, and kept looking away. Also 
 there was a new pain she yearned with all her 
 heart to mother this big man. Did he not need? 
 Had she not the might, the mother-passion to 
 shelter him under the wings of home, and love and 
 light? He must understand what the strike 
 meant! He must come out of his dark isolation 
 and share this new glory a glory that made her 
 breathless. And yet, mixed with that yearning, 
 there was a strange shyness in her heart, a womanly 
 timidity. The power and passion of the genera 
 tions had seized, subdued her, softened her girl 
 hood into a tender bloom a bloom, of what? 
 Was it womanhood opening within her, spreading 
 in the sun, changing her earth and her sky? She 
 breathed hard, tears in her eyes, and a new loveli 
 ness stole into her face its eagerness, its wild 
 
176 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 beauty were filmed with a softness and grace un- 
 apparent before. 
 
 Suddenly she stopped, her heart hammering. 
 They were before his door, and he was speaking : 
 
 " Come up eat with Boris and me ! " 
 
 She glanced up timidly, quickly. She was 
 amazed. His face had become more alive; the 
 eyes burned with purpose; there was a new 
 strength, a new light. 
 
 She murmured something and stepped in with 
 them. They climbed the steps and entered the 
 little room. Joan stood in the doorway, dream 
 ing. Then she noticed that the big man was 
 clumsily lighting a kerosene stove. She stepped 
 forward. She spoke softly. 
 
 u Let me it s not work for a man." 
 
 He turned on her the face of a man surprised by 
 an angel. Her words were so amazing, but her 
 voice was so much more so. 
 
 Then they sat down, Boris between them. They 
 started to eat. But Ignatz could not contain him 
 self. His heart was overflowing. 
 
 " Listen I know " he spoke brokenly, awk 
 wardly, " now I know why we came to 
 America. It s so all people all people work 
 together. The paper in Hungary said: America 
 gold. It is. The streets full of gold. Only " 
 he spoke with rising passion " you can t put it 
 in your pocket. You put it here ! " And he struck 
 his breast with his big fist. 
 
JOAN OF THE MILLS 177 
 
 She leaned forward, a low cry of utter joy leap 
 ing from her lips : 
 
 " You know that?" 
 
 " I know!" 
 
 " Then," she cried low, " you re an American, 
 too we botfi are we can work together in this 
 strike " 
 
 She stopped suddenly, and blushed red a new 
 thing for Joan of the Mills. His eyes burned 
 with a new fire ; he was the man of the two of them. 
 He arose softly, he stepped to her side, and she 
 looked down on the table. 
 
 " Och ! " he whispered, leaning over her. 
 " You you are America that is why I 
 come!" 
 
 She put her head down on the table and sobbed. 
 
 " Go away I m a fool nothing but a 
 woman I ll never be Joan of the Mills any 
 
 more." 
 
 And little Boris cried too. 
 
THE EMPTY LIFE 
 
THE EMPTY LIFE 
 
 A T six A. M. all three were asleep ; young Paul 
 Lynch and his wife in the small bedroom; 
 little Tessie in the large combination kitchen, with 
 its dining table, stove, parlor furniture and col 
 lapsible cot. Out in the courtyard of the Model 
 Tenement (the two rooms formed an L in the 
 courtyard corner) a dreary rain splashed. Milk 
 man and baker left their bottles and loaves on the 
 dumbwaiter; the janitor worked up the steam; 
 the mechanics and factory foreman arose and had 
 breakfast. Faces looked down into the courtyard 
 inquiringly then up at the small square of blot 
 ted sky. 
 
 At that moment in several hundred thousand 
 homes in the crowded city the busy scene was be 
 ing enacted but mostly in homes darker, dustier 
 and drearier than the brand-new Model Tene 
 ment on Seventy-ninth Street near the East River. 
 Everywhere human beings; everywhere awaken 
 ing for a brief new glimpse of life, a new ex 
 perience, another step toward death perhaps 
 death itself. 
 
 Of the three at Lynch s, Tessie awoke first, 
 scrambled sleepily out of bed, dressed and washed 
 
 181 
 
1 82 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 herself, tied her hair with a faded ribbon, fixed 
 her bed and collapsed it with all her strength and 
 pushed it in a corner. Then, somewhat tired, she 
 put a pot of coffee on the gas-stove and greased a 
 pan ready for bacon and eggs. Tessie was eight 
 years old a thin, bloodless school girl, unlovely 
 and angular. Her large, gray eyes were wistful 
 and her hair was abundantly curly and black. 
 But in the cheap and worn cotton dress she seemed 
 all elbows and knees. 
 
 Tessie next proceeded to set the table, spread 
 ing a dirty cloth and laying the plated ware and 
 the dishes. Then she pulled up the dumbwaiter 
 and drew off milk and bread and two morning 
 papers. Having done this, she opened her reader, 
 muttering aloud and feeling unaccountably de 
 pressed and lonely. 
 
 Now and then she glanced at a small alarm- 
 clock on the little bookcase. At seven she went 
 timidly to the door of her sister s room and 
 knocked. 
 
 " It s seven, Paul," she called. 
 
 " Aw, hell," came a rough voice. 
 
 Fifteen minutes later she knocked again. 
 
 " It s a quarter past, Paul." 
 
 " Oh, darn it I can t wake up ! " 
 
 Five minutes later: 
 
 " It s twenty past seven, Paul." 
 
 " Twenty past seven ! " his voice was incredu- 
 
THE EMPTY LIFE 183 
 
 lous. " Why do you let a feller sleep? Get 
 those eggs ready." 
 
 The little girl bustled about with sharp speed, 
 breaking the eggs neatly into the hot pan and 
 dropping in the bacon. 
 
 When her brother-in-law appeared, his break 
 fast was standing ready. He sat down, spread 
 his newspaper and read and ate. He was a neat- 
 looking young man, with hairless face, quick, blue 
 eyes and light hair. He seemed dressed unac 
 countably well, pin in scarf, bright blue socks, 
 pumps and unspotted sack suit. Tessie after 
 taking her sister one of the newspapers gulped 
 her breakfast opposite, now and then glancing at 
 Paul timidly. 
 
 The door-bell rang sharply. Paul looked up. 
 
 " At this hour? Those darn collectors! Say 
 we re out. Tell him to call again." 
 
 Tessie rose, went to the door, set it on a narrow 
 crack. 
 
 Yes, sir," she said, in a childish, frightened 
 voice. 
 
 " I want to see Mr. Lynch." 
 
 " He s out." 
 
 " Out? Guess again. I ve been here since 
 
 six." 
 
 " He s out" She tried to close the door, but 
 the man set his foot against it. 
 
 " Just a minute, kid," he said, and pushed his 
 
1 84 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 way in. Tessie gave a cry of fright; Paul rose 
 hastily from his coffee. 
 
 " What do you want? " he cried. 
 
 The collector, who was dripping wet and looked 
 cheap and miserable, held out a slip. 
 
 " See here, Mr. Lynch, that instalment on the 
 furniture s three weeks overdue. You owe $/ .5O. 
 If you don t pay now why, we ll send up a 
 wagon for it this morning." 
 
 Paul laughed. 
 
 " What do you take me for? Rockefeller? 
 Seven-fifty on Thursday morning? Not on your 
 life!" 
 
 The instalment man spoke sharply: 
 
 "Is that final?" 
 
 " Aw, say, be reasonable. Take two. The 
 rest Monday." 
 
 The instalment man took the two and left. 
 
 Then Paul strode sharply back to the bedroom. 
 Louise lay comfortably propped up in the bed, 
 reading the department store advertisements in 
 the newspaper. She was quite a large young 
 woman, with rosy cheeks and large blue eyes and 
 large red lips. Her hair later to be bunched 
 high in a pompadour, filled out with " rats " 
 came over the covers in a neat braid. 
 
 Paul spoke sharply: 
 
 " Loo, don t you send any more stuff home. 
 We re broke." 
 
 She looked up at him. 
 
THE EMPTY LIFE 185 
 
 " Oh," she said languidly, " we ll get it c on 
 time. " 
 
 " We won t get it at all." 
 
 "We won t?" she flashed. "Well, we ll 
 see!" 
 
 He burst out angrily: 
 
 " Send another thing and I ll send it back 
 flying." 
 
 " Who you talking to? " she snapped. 
 
 " Hum ! " he murmured, " I wouldn t like to 
 tell you to your face ! " 
 
 "Then clear out, you little piker! Why, 
 even Mary McClellan s husband gives her more 
 than you give me, and no scrapping." 
 
 Something of emotion distress, possibly 
 came into his voice. 
 
 " You re a fine wife, Louise." 
 
 She laughed shrilly. 
 
 " And you ? Look at the man I tied myself to. 
 I wish I was back at Macy s selling gloves. But 
 I guess I ll make the best of this, and get my fling 
 out of it! " 
 
 He gritted his teeth together. 
 
 " Some day, Loo, I ll clear out. Can t you 
 think of anything but spending and fun? " 
 
 "Can t you?" she mocked. 
 
 "I?" 
 
 " Oh," she laughed, "ten-cent cigars; bowling; 
 club-dues ; poker ; theater look at your clothes. 
 I guess you re as bad as I, Paul Lynch." 
 
1 86 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 He squirmed under the attack. 
 
 " Well, you get that new rocker and I ll send it 
 back. I m broke." 
 
 "Oh," she sighed, "you re always broke. 
 And I could have had Jimmy Allen and two thou 
 sand a year! " 
 
 He looked at her then with an expression of real 
 feeling on his young face a flash of despair. 
 
 "Loo!" 
 
 He sat down on a chair. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " I thought we married because we " he 
 stopped short. 
 
 She read aloud from the paper: 
 
 i Chanticler hats bargain sale only 
 eight-twenty. Gee ! I must get down there ! " 
 
 He reached for her hand and she pulled it away. 
 
 " Loo! " he cried, " what sort of a home is this? 
 Why, we ain t even got a kid " 
 
 She put down her paper and narrowed her eyes 
 and spoke very slowly: 
 
 " Don t you talk of that, Paul don t you 
 dare ! Have you a thousand extra a year you, 
 who make less than a thousand? Gee! I under 
 stand ! You want to bind me down make a 
 drudge of me. No, I want my own life; I ll only 
 live once." She lowered her voice. " I ve 
 enough with that kid outside mopy, pale, horrid 
 little thing." 
 
 Paul looked at her; he wanted to speak to her 
 
THE EMPTY LIFE 187 
 
 tell her of the vague longing in his heart. But 
 he rose, and merely said coldly : 
 
 " Tess is a good kid and a help; good as a 
 servant. And we had to take her in when your 
 mother died." 
 
 "Tut! " she said, shrugged her shoulders and 
 read. 
 
 He hesitated. 
 
 "Good-by, Loo!" 
 
 She looked up surprised. 
 
 "Oh, good-by!" 
 
 He glanced at her again, turned sharply and 
 went out. 
 
 Soon he had trudged through the rain and 
 swung downtown in a packed, elevated train, hang 
 ing to a strap and reading his paper. He was a 
 cog in the well-ordered machine of Business. All 
 night the parts had been scattered, the million- 
 pieced machine dispersed through the hundred 
 thousand acres of city, and the mighty block of 
 skyscrapers at the city s end had been mere dead 
 shell. Now, as by magic, the parts flew together, 
 the machine reassembled itself and a tremendous 
 city sucked and dispersed the traffic of a continent. 
 Paul made his way down the canyon of lower 
 Broadway. It was so dark and gloomy in the 
 rain that the shops were lighted and the vast tide 
 of people braiding down the sidewalk loomed 
 strange in the unusual glow. 
 
 Paul, with a thousand others, entered the lighted 
 
1 88 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 office-building of a great express company, climbed 
 two flights of stairs and took his place, standing, 
 at a high desk in a room crowded with clerks. It 
 was the Tariff Department. A few of the clerks 
 gossiped together a group of bloodless, unback- 
 boned, manless men talked of their last night s 
 adventures with whiskey and women and gambling. 
 Then, at the stroke of eight-thirty they hurried to 
 their desks. Paul s work was to correct old rate- 
 sheets with the latest figures writing in the new 
 rate in red ink over the old. This was his job 
 scarcely work to use a man s faculty or to give him 
 growth and experience. He worked patiently, 
 steadily and at last, mechanically. His fingers 
 began to work for him. He had a long day for 
 such thoughts as chose to go like phantoms across 
 his mind. 
 
 At noon he took lunch at a quick-lunch counter, 
 a walk in the drizzle, and a smoke. 
 
 Then he went back to work. At five-thirty 
 after interminable watching of the clock the 
 thousand men were released and went pell-mell to 
 the street. There hurried thousands of others; 
 the cars were crowded; joy and relief and festivity 
 were in the air. And the storm was over; the 
 skies had cleared. 
 
 After such a day was it any wonder that Paul, 
 with the other clerks, felt the terrible lust for life; 
 that he wanted to plunge into excesses and excite 
 ment; that he craved strong drink? Was this 
 
THE EMPTY LIFE 189 
 
 not, in a way, an excuse for gambling, the theater 
 and the rest? And what sort of a home was he 
 going to? 
 
 Tessie, after Paul had gone, looked in a mo 
 ment at her sister. 
 
 "Well, Tessie?" 
 
 " I m going." 
 
 " Listen! " She sat up in bed. " I won t be 
 home till late. You ll find the things in the ice 
 box. Fix the supper." 
 
 "Yes. Good-by!" 
 
 " Good-by! " She sank back again. 
 
 Tessie still lingered. 
 
 "Well?" sharply. 
 
 "Nothing!" The little girl left with her 
 school books. 
 
 At nine Louise arose and went to work over her 
 massive pompadour; then she carefully donned 
 a striking blue suit a suit a little too showy, and 
 yet striking in its clean cut. Next, she cooked her 
 own breakfast, ate it, washed the dishes, and sat 
 down and read with absorbed interest of the latest 
 murder trial and all accounts of seduction, crime, 
 marriage, divorce and suicide she could find. 
 
 Tiring of this, she put on her red-feathered, 
 black, overhanging hat and went downtown to the 
 shopping district. In a busy crowd of women 
 she tramped the corridors of a brilliantly-lighted 
 world of bargains, pausing here and there to covet 
 
1 90 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 some bit of jewelry, some scrap of finery. She 
 had the true shopping fever, a city disease. Like 
 a hunter she trailed the prey of a bargain; like a 
 child she coveted until she possessed and then 
 threw the toy away, and craved something else. 
 Flauntingly she walked by the shop-girls, though 
 she chewed gum even as they, and kept in her 
 brain and body indelible traces of the old life be 
 hind the counter. That life had been kaleido 
 scopic, varied, exciting, rich with the drip of 
 crowded humanity. It was hardly to be expected 
 that she could settle down in a quiet tenement and 
 drudge. All her youth, all her plastic period had 
 shaped her into a woman of the flashing centers. 
 And she had no counter-attraction. So all the 
 morning she shopped. At noon she lunched in a 
 cheap restaurant. In the afternoon she rooted out 
 an old friend and went to a candy store for sweets 
 and soda and then to a nickel-theater, where for a 
 couple of hours she watched a life even more 
 changeful and dramatic than that of the stores. 
 Romance filled her heart; she saw the dramas of 
 earth s end flashed on a screen; she participated 
 personally in a very riot of exciting deeds, mur 
 ders, love escapades, battle and crime. Her whole 
 day fitted her merely for another day more ex 
 citing. And consciously, poor Louise, with her 
 empty life, was but imitating the society columns 
 in the evening paper, the society photographs in 
 the Sunday editions; she was, as far as she could, 
 
THE EMPTY LIFE 191 
 
 living the life of the idle American woman. She 
 was restricted, not in appetite or possibilities, but 
 merely in means. She had not the cash. 
 
 Little Tess, however, had the most eventful day 
 of all. A little before nine she assembled before 
 the public school with a large crowd of dripping 
 youngsters, and then for five dreary hours, broken 
 by an hour for lunch, spent in the dark playground 
 room, she droned over her lessons. The teacher 
 had to handle sixty children; there was no per 
 sonal touch possible; the teaching was hard work. 
 Small wonder was it that Tessie, tired and thin- 
 blooded, made little of her lessons. She seemed 
 to grow stupider as the day crawled on, and when 
 finally the lonely girl crept home through the driz 
 zle and opened the door of the little flat and 
 passed into the gloomy rooms, she was utterly 
 tired. She remembered that there was meat to 
 boil, and that it had better be put right on. So 
 she turned on the gas and put on the meat. 
 
 But she had been unusually stupid. She had 
 not lighted the gas. Then, feeling faint and tired, 
 she curled up in an armchair and fell asleep. The 
 window was closed against the rain; the door to 
 the bedroom was shut. Slowly the gas filled the 
 room, stronger and stronger. 
 
 At 6:15 Paul swung down the street. The rain 
 had stopped; the pavements shone wet, and the 
 houses, touched with yellow light from the West, 
 
192 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 stood out so sharply that every brick came dis 
 tinct. Human faces, too, seemed sharper than 
 life. It was the never-failing miracle of the storm 
 clearing, and the air was so piercingly sweet, that 
 sparrows, in the late light, chirped in the cornices, 
 and from wide-flung windows came the laughter 
 of little children and the richer voices of men and 
 women. The yellow light, the sweet clean rain- 
 washed air, the beauty of the wet streets, blended 
 in one magic of spring. Everything was quiver 
 ing with new life, new joy. Paul paused at the 
 tenement entrance and looked at the river. A 
 Sound steamer swept by, flags flying; he heard the 
 orchestra playing. The great boat was sweeping 
 out toward the clean, green country, the vast 
 spaces, the open . . . the open ... A 
 pang of yearning seized the young man ; the pang 
 of the spring; the desire for woman ... he 
 remembered, in a brief glimpse, the old days with 
 Louise . . . when they sat on the stoop to 
 gether . . . when they came home from 
 Coney Island on the excursion boat. Two Italians 
 were playing the fiddle . . . dance-music, a 
 soft sound of slapping seawater, lights in the mys 
 terious night, stars, copious stars sown overhead, 
 the swaying sea-tinged night-air, lovers and fami 
 lies seated all about ... a soft arm round 
 his neck, a cool cheek against his cheek, and sweet 
 words. 
 
 The memory softened him. Sadly he ascended 
 
THE EMPTY LIFE 193 
 
 to his flat and opened the door. At once a strong 
 odor of gas blew in his face and strangled him. 
 He gasped; it was like blackness descending on 
 him. He gazed, horrified, and saw, in the 
 strange, yellow light, Tessie curled up in the 
 armchair. He moaned softly, rushed in, trying 
 not to breathe, flung wide the window, the door, 
 the window of the bedroom, stuck his head out, 
 took deep breaths, muttered crazily, u Something s 
 happened! Something terrible s happened!" 
 
 Then he turned back bravely, and bent over the 
 little form. 
 
 "Tess!" he cried, "Tess! Wake up! It s 
 Paul! Tess! Tess! Tess!" 
 
 He shook her; he put a hand under her and 
 seized her up to his breast, cuddled her, looked 
 in her face while his own worked with suppressed 
 sobs. 
 
 "Tess! Sis! Tess!" 
 
 He bore her to his bed, and put her softly on 
 the pillow. He dashed water in her face; he 
 worked her arms up and down ; he put a hand on 
 her heart. His terror grew, a feeling of helpless 
 ness, of awe and mystery. Why, only this morn 
 ing she had cooked his breakfast! 
 
 Then, in wild fright he rushed from the place, 
 down the street to the doctor. The doctor could 
 do nothing. 
 
 " She s dead . . . been dead a couple of 
 hours." 
 
i 9 4 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 Paul, with white face, heard the words. He 
 was too stunned to think, to realize. 
 
 The doctor spoke sharply: 
 
 " That gas is still escaping." 
 
 They searched around, and traced it to the stove 
 and stopped it. 
 
 " How did that happen? " asked the doctor. 
 
 " How? " Paul searched his brain, " Oh I 
 suppose she was cooking the supper." 
 
 "That tot? She, cook supper?" asked the 
 doctor, amazed and indignant. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "How old is she?" 
 
 "Eight!" 
 
 The doctor looked at Paul sharply. 
 
 " Young man," he said, " that child should 
 never have done such work. . . . Stay here. 
 I ll send for the coroner. No . . . there s 
 nothing to do. Accidental death ! " 
 
 He went out. Paul, still stunned, went in and 
 sat by the bedside. There was a sweet inrush of 
 air through the open window, clearing the gas out, 
 and on the sill a little sparrow was pluming him 
 self, sipping at rainwater, and chirping liquidly. 
 Yellow was the light outside and musical with hu 
 man voices. But on the bed lay the thin dead 
 child; the cheeks pale, the eyes closed, the small 
 head nested in curly tresses. 
 
 For a time Paul had merely a sense of paralysis 
 . . . a feeling of having been hit a stunning 
 
THE EMPTY LIFE 195 
 
 blow on the head. He stared long at the silent 
 face. Then slowly there passed through him that 
 baffled feeling of being a stranger in presence of a 
 stranger. This was not Tess. Something had 
 been sucked from the skull before him, but the life 
 and spirit gone were replaced by something serene 
 and solemn and high. This was not Tess; this 
 was a quiet and wonderful child. How precious 
 Tess was, now she was gone ! 
 
 His feeling grew sharper very suddenly . 
 as if someone within him were vivisecting his 
 heart, little sharp needle-thrusts, rips of a resistless 
 knife ... he shuddered. And then, in a 
 burst of clear vision, he realized. Tess was dead ! 
 His wife s sister! The little child that had 
 haunted his married life, a pale shadow, a jarring 
 note, a burden, one who ate up his food, used up 
 his room. He was rid of her now. 
 
 Rid of her? Again he shuddered . . . 
 Tess had paid her way in work. She had cooked 
 for him, waited on him, helped him . . . 
 and borne harsh words . . . yes, and neglect. 
 And now he had lost her. How lost her? How 
 had it happened? 
 
 He knew. The irrepressible fact bit into his 
 heart, its teeth giving little nips of torture. Tess 
 had died doing Louise s work. Whose fault was 
 it? Louise was to blame! 
 
 This fact went on repeating itself, bite after 
 bite as it were. It was Louise ! It was Louise ! 
 
196 PAY ENVELOP 
 
 Perhaps the coroner would implicate, entangle 
 them. . . . Was such a thing murder? 
 
 Sordid and dirty and narrow grew the world. 
 He was messed up in something rotten. He had 
 stumbled out of his life of routine and easy play 
 into a chamber of horrors. What was the use of 
 living? What was there to live for? Louise? 
 Tut! Louise was a shallow creature! All this 
 was her fault. A decent woman could have made 
 things different . . . made a home, made 
 something worth living for . . . changed 
 him, too. 
 
 And then he looked again at the dead. Quiet 
 and wonderful was the child ... no shadow 
 of change on the now changeless face. Sorrow 
 and neglect and stupidity were gone. The rai 
 ment of the last consecration was upon it ... 
 quiet and wonderful. For a moment the young 
 man felt a sweet pang of something akin to 
 love . . . something like pity. Poor Tess! 
 What had she had out of it? In the words of 
 the song he had often lightly hummed, " Nobody 
 loved her." 
 
 For a moment a sentimental mood brought 
 tears to his eyes ... he leaned over . . . 
 he touched the forehead with his lips ... it 
 was cold. Then came frightful fear. 
 
 He leaped up. He could stay there no longer. 
 His heart was thumping hard, his face pale. . . . 
 He rushed from the room, stood leaning on the 
 
THE EMPTY LIFE 197 
 
 dining-room table, looked here and there . . . 
 meditated seeking the street . . . Tess dead? 
 No ! She had not lived till this hour. Up to now 
 she had been a shadowy phantom in the place. 
 Now the real Tess, released by death, would 
 haunt and haunt him. The cold sweat stood out 
 on his face. He looked back at the dim doorway 
 the room was fading into deep twilight 
 . . . the yellow light was dulled by gray shad 
 ows . . . mysterious shapes groped in the 
 corners. 
 
 And then, sharply, a key turned in the lock. 
 Paul gave a low cry. The door opened. Shad 
 owy she came, and silent, with subdued rustling 
 of her skirts. 
 
 " Louise ! " he cried low. 
 
 She said nothing, but went by him. He saw 
 that her face was white. He followed her. She 
 stood looking down on Tess like a woman of stone. 
 He stood in silence at her side. 
 
 Slow moments passed . . . slow, terrible, 
 searching. In the silence something more pro 
 found than words was shared between them. 
 
 Then softly Louise turned and went in the 
 kitchen and stood at the courtyard window, nerv 
 ously playing with her fingers. Paul stole to her 
 side. 
 
 Again silence. In an upper window a light 
 burst, and shadows came and went on the walls, a 
 grotesque, enlarged woman . . . Over the 
 
198 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 lighted window the night fell, till all save that 
 golden square was lost and buried. Then, in the 
 penetrating hush, Louise whispered in a voice 
 strange and unearthly: 
 
 "Paul ..." 
 
 " Yes . . . "he murmured. 
 
 " I know how it happened." 
 
 Neither spoke for a space : then Louise whis 
 pered : 
 
 " It s my fault ..." 
 
 The words stunned him. He had not believed 
 her capable of taking on any responsibility. And 
 then he heard her explain in the same strange 
 voice : 
 
 " I ain t afraid of the truth anyhow. I never 
 was. I ve always spoke my mind." 
 
 They were silent some time. Then Louise 
 gave an impatient jerk: 
 
 "Say!" 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Say, anyway " 
 
 He waited. 
 
 " Oh, rats," she cried explosively, " there s noth 
 ing to it ! " 
 
 He gasped: "To what?" 
 
 " The whole business." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Oh, you and I ... and all this . . . 
 Darn it, I ain t been happy since I married. 
 
THE EMPTY LIFE 199 
 
 He spoke hoarsely: 
 
 " It s your own fault, Loo all you wanted 
 was a good time. Now you ve had it." 
 
 " Quit it! " she cried, with flaming anger, " I 
 won t take it from you ! I know what I ve been. 
 Didn t I say it was my fault? " 
 
 He was silenced. Her voice became strange 
 and unreal again. 
 
 "Hum! Now I ll have to work again 
 >> 
 
 "Work?" 
 
 " Yes . . . " she laughed softly, but with 
 out emotion, " Tess isn t here to do it! " 
 
 Again he was surprised . . . full of 
 strange surmises . . . Had Louise any depth 
 after all? 
 
 "Loo!" 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 His voice was hoarse : " Loo ! " 
 
 He waited, a passion for her re-awakening in 
 his heart. Then she spoke quietly, intimately, 
 dropping all mannerisms, with a simplicity new 
 to her. 
 
 " Paul . . . it s no go. I can t go on 
 with this empty sort of life. I ain t trained 
 to it ... And can I drudge at home, 
 either? . . . Shopgirls, maybe, have no right 
 to marry . . . You see what comes of 
 it ... " 
 
 He waited. She went on simply. 
 
200 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 " Paul ... me for Macy s again! I m 
 going back to the old job . . . It s better 
 than this . . . I ll pay my own way after 
 this . . . " 
 
 " You," he gasped, " going back to work? " 
 
 " Yes," she whispered. 
 
 Save for the splash of light from the upper win 
 dow, they were swallowed in total blackness. 
 Deep was the silence, and it seemed ever to grow 
 deeper. Then suddenly in the hush and darkness 
 Louise sent out a cry: 
 
 "Paul! Paul!" 
 
 "Louise!" 
 
 They flung their arms round each other. And 
 a strange feeling came into the young man s heart 
 that perhaps there was another Louise buried 
 deep in this one, and perhaps the future the 
 long future held a promise. 
 
THE YOUNG MAN 
 
THE YOUNG MAN 
 
 AYOUNG man was digging in a huge medical 
 book in the tiny kitchen. He was in his un 
 dershirt, which clung to him, dripping wet, and 
 showed a frail, narrow-chested and sunken body. 
 In the blaze of the gas-jet his thin face looked 
 fearfully white under rough and mussed brown 
 hair. About his burning eyes were rings of sleep 
 lessness and exhaustion. 
 
 He was hardly studying in that narrow inside 
 room. A helpless rage made him tremble, and 
 now and then, in a burst of despair, he put his 
 hand to his mouth and bit deep at the fleshy part 
 between thumb and first finger. For it seemed to 
 him as if the millions of the city had risen in a 
 roaring storm about him; a crazy whirlwind of 
 cries and shrieks and calls and laughter; a fury 
 that increased with the heat of the midsummer 
 evening. The tenement, up and down, was a bed 
 lam of disorder; and in the small adjoining room 
 there were four of his relatives making shrill noise. 
 
 The toothless and skinny grandmother sat at 
 the edge of one of the iron beds; the young man s 
 father, stocky, hard-headed, sat at a window; Eva, 
 the cross-eyed fat good-natured little girl of twelve 
 
 203 
 
204 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 stood leaning at the table; and striding up and 
 down went a gaudy, painted woman the dis 
 grace of the family. 
 
 There were two beds in that back room, one 
 for the grandmother and Eva; the other for the 
 painted woman, who was the father s sister. The 
 father and his son slept on the floor of the kitchen. 
 
 Up and down went the painted woman very 
 pitiable, for she was wasted by disease; carefully 
 hidden in cheap finery and rouge. Her wide nose, 
 her bold black eyes, her thick lips, and the heavy 
 coils of her false hair, gave her face a coarse 
 stamp. Eva watched her carelessly; her Aunt 
 Jennie was a familiar part of her life. 
 
 Jennie paused before the father and spoke in 
 a voice plainly heard by the young man : 
 
 " Sam, you re a fool ! Why don t you set Na- 
 han to work ? A fine mess here ! Not enough to 
 eat!" 
 
 Sam shrugged his heavy shoulders, and puffed 
 on an ugly short pipe. 
 
 " You set him to work, if you can. Anybody 
 can talk." 
 
 The grandmother began to whine. 
 
 " Oi ! oi ! oi ! " She rocked back and forth 
 " So sick! so sick! so sick! " 
 
 Jennie turned to her. 
 
 " Well," she cried fiercely, " must I go out and 
 earn some more money for you? " 
 
 The grandmother went on rocking herself. 
 
THE YOUNG MAN 205 
 
 " I don t want to die. If I die, what happens 
 to the children? So sick! so sick! " 
 
 Sam growled : 
 
 " She s got stomach-cramps. She wants some 
 of the red medicine. That s what she wants." 
 
 Eva spoke pleasantly: 
 
 " I could fix a hot bag for you, grandma, and 
 massage your legs." 
 
 Jennie spoke in anger: 
 
 " It s all Nahan s fault a big boy like that! 
 Why ain t he earning money? Studying to be a 
 doctor huh ! He ought to be spanked and put 
 in his place! " 
 
 Nahan rose from his book. He was trem 
 bling, and his head pained him. He felt that the 
 end of all had come. He had no control over 
 himself, but seemed to be a toy in the hands of 
 something greater a fury that used his muscles 
 and spoke through his lips. White-faced, eyes 
 blazing, frail body erect, he appeared in the door 
 way. 
 
 " You damn fools ! " he burst out. 
 
 They all turned, suddenly interested, absorbed, 
 their souls keyed tense. Things had come to a 
 head. 
 
 Nahan rushed on: 
 
 "You you blockheads!" He spoke to his 
 father. " Not enough food, eh? Five of us live 
 like animals in two rooms, eh? And you want 
 to set me to work? You want to spoil my career 
 
206 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 after all these years of getting ready? After all 
 my struggles? Now, now, when I m just ready 
 to begin?" 
 
 He shook his fist at Sam. 
 
 "Well, you won t do it! Get to work your 
 self, you big husky fellow! Don t you think I 
 know? You loaf around, you bum around, you 
 gossip, you don t try to get any work. You could 
 support a family of six. It s you, you loafer! " 
 
 He paused a moment. Eva s eyes were bulg 
 ing; the grandmother shook her head; Jennie 
 was frozen with amazement, and Sam grunted and 
 snouted his nose. Then at last Jennie found her 
 tongue : 
 
 " Do you know you re talking to your father? " 
 
 " Father! " cried Nahan tragically. " Father! 
 It s not my fault he s my father. I don t thank 
 him for letting me into this rotten world. Father ! 
 It takes more than blood to make a father ! " 
 
 Sam grunted: 
 
 " He s crazy." 
 
 Nahan turned sharply to the grandmother. 
 
 "And you sick are you? I ve told you a 
 hundred times what s the matter with you. You 
 need food. You don t get enough to eat." 
 
 " Shut up ! " cried Jennie. 
 
 He turned to her, and lifted a hand: 
 
 " Don t talk to me, you " He paused, and 
 whispered, u You know what you are ! And you 
 
THE YOUNG MAN 207 
 
 come in here where there s an innocent young 
 girl ; 
 
 Jennie cut him off; she stood straight, and some 
 thing magnificent went into her voice and her ges 
 ture: 
 
 "Nahan! Nahan! who pays the rent here? 
 Who brings the food? " 
 
 Nahan stared at her, horror on his white, drip 
 ping face. 
 
 " I know," he whispered, " but" 
 
 She came nearer : 
 
 " Now listen to me, my grand young man. It s 
 / that have seen you through college. It s what / 
 earn." There was a sob in her voice. " I ve 
 given my body, my health, my good looks, my 
 life " she paused " my life, for the bunch of 
 you. And soon," her voice sank, " I ll be good 
 for nothing but the river. What more could I do 
 for you ? Does it matter what names you call me ? " 
 
 Nahan drew nearer. He spoke under his 
 breath : 
 
 " I won t live on you. No, nor on any of you. 
 You ve spoilt my life. I " he laughed harshly, 
 " I m going to kill myself! " 
 
 He turned back into the kitchen. The rear 
 room was strangely still, as he put on his shirt, 
 drew on his jacket, and got down his old straw 
 hat. He passed out into the hall just as Sam ap 
 peared in the kitchen, crying, 
 
208 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 " Nahan ! Nahan ! " 
 
 He trudged down the stairs. Sam called from 
 the top: 
 
 " Nahan!" 
 
 But he went on, pushing beside youngsters 
 sprawling on the dim steps. He went out into the 
 street, and began jostling, wedging his way through 
 the innumerable throng. It was as if the human 
 race had been scooped up by mighty hands and 
 dumped in this spot from the sky down, the fire- 
 escapes and open windows hung with people, and 
 the huge swarm crawled all over the pavements, 
 the gutters, the cross-streets like a bit of rot 
 ting fruit overrun with vermin, was Nahan s 
 vague thought. A sweaty people, a ragged 
 people, a push and jerk of long white beards, of 
 perspiring faces, of odorous bodies; a getting be 
 tween the legs of numberless running and shriek 
 ing children. The shops jutting onto the pave ed 
 died with life; the popcorn stand with its torch and 
 shaker, the ice-cream cart, the little soda-counters 
 open to the night, were circled black with buyers. 
 Daubing the faces and forms were shop-lights and 
 street-lamps gold, milky-white, blue and the 
 heavens, though a reddish-yellow moon hung in 
 haze, were forgotten. 
 
 All that Nahan knew was that he wanted to die. 
 Just how or where he did not know. But die 
 get out of this leave this racked body and tor 
 tured mind this world of verminous people 
 
THE YOUNG MAN 209 
 
 escape, that was the word. There are suicides 
 every day among the four million herded people, 
 and many of them are just such overwrought Na- 
 hans. It seemed to him that from the moment 
 of his birth he had been going to pieces and that 
 now the final dissolution had inevitably come. At 
 birth he had started equal with other babies; was 
 it his fault that he had been underfed, and so be 
 came a weak and white little child, with spells of 
 sickness and stupidity all his school-days? And 
 yet his brain had remained feverishly active. For 
 that he had sacrificed his body; throwing all his 
 strength into mental work; neglecting exercise and 
 fresh air and rest and recreation. And so he had 
 triumphed and gone to the city college and then to 
 the medical school. He had pulled through and 
 graduated. He was ready for hospital-work. 
 
 But what had availed the forced march on suc 
 cess? His outraged body, after the manner of 
 Nature, had turned against him. He was all 
 "nerves"; he was so weak that an hour s study 
 upset his stomach; and besides he had become mor 
 bid. There were nights when he lay awake in the 
 fear of death; watching his own breathing, the 
 beat of his own heart and pulse, the vivid reality 
 of his brain, and dreading horribly the annihila 
 tion to come. There were days when he was so 
 sensitive to color that the advertisements in a street 
 car made him nauseous, days when he was so sen 
 sitive to sound that he could not put his mind on 
 
210 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 his work. Worst of all, he was sensitive about his 
 appearance, his clothes, and his race. Up at the 
 college they looked down on the young Jew who 
 was pushing his way from the Ghetto to the places 
 of power. He belonged to a despised race. 
 
 And then the miserable poverty! The two 
 rooms at home, the indecent crowding, the roaches 
 and bed bugs, the whining grandmother, the 
 shame of his aunt, the noise, the days without 
 food, the publicity of the place, so that he had no 
 where to study, nowhere to go off and consult his 
 own heart, " invite his soul." And that deepest 
 need of a young man an older man who under 
 stood was not met for him. He was fighting 
 his way alone, despised, poor, frail, sick, misunder 
 stood. What wonder that he came to look on life 
 as a lie, on people as animal-enemies, on death as 
 betrayal only less terrible than the betrayal of 
 birth? 
 
 But now he would escape. He would leap in 
 the river, or buy a revolver, or lock himself in and 
 turn on the gas. He feared death no longer. 
 Life was too terrible. Could he go on living on 
 the earnings of a prostitute? Used as he was to 
 the shame of his aunt, familiar with it from his 
 unquestioning child-days, to-night he realized how 
 terrible his lot was. And why go on? Would a 
 neurotic, sick, morbid man make a good doctor? 
 Was he fit to be a healer? Could he bring others 
 health, he, who had none himself? And the sul- 
 
THE YOUNG MAN 211 
 
 try night which was setting a whole city on edge, 
 seemed the final argument in his self-arraignment. 
 
 Die he would die ! He would end the sor 
 did tale ! Jennie should cease to earn money for 
 him; he would get out of the way; there would be 
 one mouth less to feed, one body less to house and 
 clothe. 
 
 Driven by these wild thoughts, he shot out of 
 the side-street and into tiny Seward Park, that 
 breathing-space in the crowded Ghetto, that 
 square open to the sky and the air. But the lines 
 of benches and the walks were thick with people 
 mothers, babies, children, men so packed to 
 gether under the white lights and between the high 
 iron-fences that they were as badly off as in the 
 streets. Endless crowded city ! Where was there 
 in all the hundred thousand acres a nook of quiet 
 and peace and cool seclusion? 
 
 Nahan went on wildly, a strange sight his hat 
 tilted back on the overflowing hair, his face more 
 haggard than he could know, his shirt collarless 
 and open at the neck, his whole face and bearing 
 distorted and abnormal. 
 
 Suddenly his mind was made up : 
 
 " I ll fling myself in the river! " 
 
 He abruptly left the park and walked east 
 along the narrow crowded side-street. This was 
 his last walk. To-morrow they would fish up his 
 body, and then they would know what ruin they 
 had wrought. He hurried feverishly, and was a 
 
212 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 little angry when he found his way impeded by a 
 compact crowd on the pavement that seemed to 
 encircle some object of unusual interest. He tried 
 to force his way through ; when, startlingly, a deep 
 bass voice boomed through the air above the noise 
 and chatter: 
 
 " Is there a doctor in this crowd? " 
 
 He stopped. By a swift flash he realized that 
 he was a doctor, and that here was a dire need of 
 his service. Almost involuntarily he cried out 
 shrilly : 
 
 " I m a doctor. Let me see." 
 
 At once the crowd parted for him, though many 
 turning about and seeing that strange disheveled 
 young man, were rather dubious. A woman, in 
 ragged clothes, was lying against the stoop, and 
 over her stood a large heavy-set man. This man 
 looked at Nahan suspiciously. 
 
 "You* doctor?" 
 
 The doubt in the man s voice touched some hid 
 den spring of pride. Nahan straightened up. 
 
 "I m Dr. Mahler," he said sharply. "Let 
 me see the woman." He wheeled on the crowd 
 and raised his voice. "Get back, will you? 
 Give her some air. Get back! " 
 
 There was authority in the voice. All these 
 years Nahan had been training for just this. He 
 knelt swiftly beside the moaning, ragged woman. 
 
 "Shall I ring for an ambulance?" asked the 
 big man. 
 
THE YOUNG MAN 213 
 
 " No hospital," shrieked the woman, " No hos 
 pital!" 
 
 Nahan was not an experienced doctor. He 
 leaned close. 
 
 " Hush! It s all right! " He looked up and 
 spoke hard. " There s a child coming. We 
 need a room a bed ! " Then he stood up, des 
 perate. 
 
 " Any place here we can take this woman? " 
 
 A fat slovenly woman answered him : 
 
 " Ya take her in my place right in dis 
 house, Doktor right on the right, ground floor 
 right in dere ! " 
 
 " Catch hold of her, you ! " 
 
 The big man, and another, seized the woman, 
 and Nahan caught her under one arm, and they 
 carried her into that vile dark house, and into a 
 cramped smothering bedroom and laid her on the 
 bed. The fat woman lit the gas, revealing the 
 squalor and confusion of the crowded room. The 
 woman on the bed whined pitifully. 
 
 Nahan turned fiercely on the men : 
 
 " Hurry out!" 
 
 And then to the fat woman : " Hot water 
 quick! And keep people out! " 
 
 He flung off his coat and hat; he rolled up his 
 sleeves. 
 
 For four mortal hours that battle lasted four 
 mysterious hours while the woman shrieked, and 
 Nahan, forgetful. of self, absorbed in his work, 
 
2i 4 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 concentrating all his forces on the life of mother 
 and child, toiled terribly over a woman he had 
 never seen before a woman picked up in the 
 streets. And the fat woman, mother of five chil 
 dren, was there at his side, silent, watchful, help 
 ful, with quick practical suggestions, with deft as 
 sistance. Nahan, who for four years had been 
 facing theories, now faced a reality. He sud 
 denly found a huge responsibility resting on his 
 shoulders; it was he who was in charge, he who 
 had to win, he who had to bring the mother and 
 child through alive. At one moment he was pan 
 ic-stricken. What if, after all, his theories didn t 
 work? But work they had to, he told himself 
 fiercely. He could not lose. He had to swing 
 through to success. And then he was so busy that 
 he had no time to think. He had to act, act; do: 
 grapple with Nature: bend every energy to his 
 task. 
 
 And so he fought until that strange final mo 
 ment when it seems as if the Earth were going up 
 in the smoke of a miracle; when the unbelievable 
 comes true; when forth from one human body 
 emerges another weird, real, miraculous and 
 a new cry is lifted in the world. 
 
 Silent now were the streets outside; hushed was 
 the wide city with its spread of life; and in the lit 
 tle room a young man stood, bowed over the back 
 of a chair, wilted, white, and stunned. He looked 
 down on the bed, where lay a quiet woman and a 
 
THE YOUNG MAN 215 
 
 quiet baby, side by side. The victory had been 
 won. The child, the mother lived. 
 
 And the young man, gazing on that sight, had 
 his first great experience of life felt the mystery, 
 the wonder, the power brooding over all, the great 
 creativeness of the world, the reality of which he 
 was a part. 
 
 " Ya," he heard the fat woman sob, " a little 
 girl! a little girl! " 
 
 He put on his coat and hat; he stumbled into 
 the front room. Children, two men, and a young 
 woman crowded about him. They were laughing 
 and crying. And the fat woman spoke in his 
 ear: 
 
 " You are a good doktor ! a very fine doktor ! 
 Where do you live ? " 
 
 He turned dazedly : 
 
 " I ll be in to-morrow! " 
 
 He looked round at those human faces. And 
 suddenly a sweet and sharp pang visited his heart. 
 What, were these people vermin? These people 
 who gave up their bed for a woman picked up in 
 the street? These people who wept over the 
 stranger and the new child? Were these "ver 
 min"? 
 
 He went out on the empty sidewalk: he passed 
 beneath the lonely lamps. The sinking moon 
 hung reddish-yellow down the street. His foot 
 steps echoed among the silent walls, and gazing up 
 he saw dark sleeping forms on the fire-escapes. 
 
216 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 And then he knew. He knew that he was not 
 alone in trouble; not alone in poverty and tragedy. 
 He knew that he was one of a mighty people. He 
 had a new sense of the miracle of life : the mystery 
 and joy and depth of human nature. And more, 
 he knew now that he had been a failure; he had 
 fled from life; until that moment when responsi 
 bility had been thrust upon him. He rose to the 
 occasion: he forged realities out of theories: he 
 was graduating in the school of hard facts. And 
 he found that he was thrilling with the joy of it 
 thrilling with the fight of life. This it was to be a 
 man to swing into the fight, to overcome, to 
 achieve, to pull victory out of defeat. 
 
 And he looked back on his thought of suicide 
 as the thought of a demented boy. Suicide? 
 While life held so much? such possibilities? such 
 battles? such heroism? such love and miracles? 
 Though he trembled now with sheer physical ex 
 haustion, he knew that those four hours of for 
 getting self, of self-expression, of hard fight had 
 made him over. 
 
 And then, as he tramped down the dark familiar 
 street, he thought of his father, his grandmother, 
 and Eva and Jennie. Something choked his 
 throat. He saw their narrow lives, their strug 
 gles, their efforts to help him through school. 
 Did they squabble and make noise? Yes, but at 
 the same time, quietly and effectively, they cleared 
 his way for him. And suddenly it seemed to him 
 
THE YOUNG MAN 217 
 
 that Jennie had something of grandeur in her 
 make-up. She was vulgar, lost, a woman of the 
 streets; but he knew something of her story, of 
 how she had been betrayed and kept down by pov 
 erty; and in the light of this, her efforts to help the 
 family and to help him seemed to reveal a secret 
 beauty, something unlost, unspoiled, in her very hu 
 man nature. 
 
 Full of these thoughts he hurried up the steps. 
 To-morrow he would speak to them. Then, in 
 amazement, he stopped. The door was open, 
 the lights still burning. He rushed in. The 
 four were still up, haggard, visibly frightened, the 
 father walking up and down. They leaped up as 
 he entered. 
 
 " Nahan! " cried the father, " Nahan! " 
 
 "Father!" he cried. 
 
 The grandmother sobbed: 
 
 " I knew Nahan come back ! " 
 
 Lrttle Eva clung to him, weeping. 
 
 And Jenny whispered in his ear: 
 
 " I know, Nahan, I hadn t ought to be here, on 
 account of Eva. I ll live somewhere else. And 
 Sam Sam ll work." 
 
 Nahan spoke with breaking voice : 
 
 " Give me a few years more, and I ll help you 
 all!" 
 
 And through his voice leaked a great fact. He 
 was a boy no longer. He was a man. 
 
THE BROKEN WOMAN 
 
THE BROKEN WOMAN 
 
 A T one o clock that warm spring morning Lizzie 
 went out the inside door of the cheap and dim 
 saloon and climbed with her can of beer up three 
 black flights of stairs in the same tenement. She 
 was perfectly sober, but she cursed aloud. This 
 was the eighth time the last five hours that she had 
 " rushed the growler." She felt like a mass of 
 aches and began to be dizzy with tiredness. 
 
 About her the tenement roared fitfully from the 
 saloon to the roof and the air reeked with the 
 stale smell of whiskey, beer, tobacco, and that 
 sweaty odor of overcrowded men and women. 
 Lizzie stood panting a moment outside the door 
 of the fourth floor rear. The clatter of chips, the 
 flash of profane words, the shouts of laughter 
 came through and set her cursing again. Then 
 she pushed in the door. 
 
 The little square room was a fog of smoke 
 through which beamed dazzlingly the large naked 
 gas-flame in the center. Under the light stood a 
 dilapidated six-legged round table, and at the ta 
 ble were five men playing cards. These men, in 
 trousers and woolen undershirts, were of a hardy 
 stock, with muscular arms and strong labor-faces. 
 
 221 
 
222 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 It was good to see the sweat on them, for they 
 were men of the sun and earth, men of the Bo 
 hemian peasantry, new-landed, alien, fresh. 
 
 One of these men, a very short little fellow, 
 with big mustache jutting straight out to a point 
 either side of his big mouth, his eyes shifty, his 
 forehead worry-wrinkled, his complexion unusually 
 pallid, looked up as Lizzie entered, and motioned 
 her to set the beer at his side. 
 
 She did so, moving through the room with diffi 
 culty, for it was crowded with stove, cupboard, 
 and a big bed in the window-corner. Then Liz 
 zie sat down at the edge of the bed and darned the 
 little fellow s socks. She sat half-doubled, back 
 curved, her rough calico garments wet with per 
 spiration. Her face was strikingly ugly, and at 
 tractive. The thin, large nose broke sharply at 
 the bridge, the cheeks were thin, the cheek-bones 
 high, and the dark hair was clumped in a meager, 
 straggly knot. But about her, too, clung traces 
 of the elemental sun, wind, soil left their spirit 
 in her eyes, and it was not hard to think of her as 
 a peasant girl toiling with the men in the open 
 fields. 
 
 For an hour with now and then her head sag 
 ging as she dozed off she darned socks while 
 the men roared with mirth or sang together while 
 the cards were dealt, and the smoke thickened 
 upon her. The little fellow was drunk. Sud 
 denly he turned toward her. 
 
THE BROKEN WOMAN 223 
 
 You " he shouted, " beer ! beer ! " 
 
 Lizzie started out of her doze, and six months 
 of struggle were touched off like powder. She 
 went crazy, blood flooding her head. She stiff 
 ened up, stepped to his side, and laid a hand on 
 his shoulder. 
 
 "Max!" 
 
 He looked up at her drunkenly. 
 
 "Beer! beer!" 
 
 Her words came as if through the fog of her 
 excitement suppressed, but a little wild. 
 
 " You go straight to bed, Max. It s two 
 o clock!" 
 
 He laid down his cards, hard. 
 
 "Say that again!" His voice was menacing. 
 
 She now spoke more wildly: 
 
 " You re going to bed, Max now! " 
 
 He struck the table with his fist. 
 
 "You dirty hag," he growled, "take that!" 
 And he raised his glass and shot the dregs of beer 
 in her face. 
 
 The four other men laughed harshly ; they were 
 not unused to such scenes. 
 
 Lizzie s hands went to her smarting face, and 
 then suddenly, as if she were a mere machine in 
 the grip of some higher power, her fists began to 
 beat down upon him, madly, blindly, incoherently. 
 Under the blows he tried to rise to his feet, but 
 sank down again, impotently drunk, howling foul 
 language. 
 
224 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 The others staggered up, laughing, jesting, 
 good-natured, and pulled off the woman. They 
 got her into a chair at the open window, and she 
 leaned her head on the sill and sobbed convulsively. 
 Max loosed an interminable stream of verbal filth, 
 which gradually died low, until at last, with 
 arms and head stretched over the table, he fell 
 asleep. 
 
 The four men lurched into the adjoining room 
 a black inner hole and went to bed. That 
 room, small as it was, held four double beds, and 
 already five men were in it asleep. The nine 
 slept three in one of the beds, two in the others. 
 
 A long hour passed, the house still shaking at 
 times with its uproar, Max snoring, Lizzie crying 
 on the sill. A wind sprang up in the back 
 yards and came through the open window, blow 
 ing the gas-flame back and forth in the still air. 
 Lizzie felt the sweet freshness of spring, and be 
 gan to settle into a hard and wide-awake calm. 
 Her brain was crowded with quick, unbidden 
 thoughts. All of the bitter past went through 
 her. 
 
 It was a curious enough story common 
 enough, too. Five years before she had landed 
 at Ellis Island, a woman good to look upon. The 
 doctors did not have to examine her. She lustily, 
 eagerly, dragged with one hand, backed by a steel- 
 muscled arm, an enormous strapped bundle of 
 clothes and household articles. Health and out- 
 
THE BROKEN WOMAN 225 
 
 door power fairly radiated from her face, and the 
 supple lines of her body under the rough clothes 
 showed as she walked with something of a wild 
 animal s grace. She was eighteen, and looked and 
 acted twenty-five. 
 
 At the Battery, New York, an employment 
 agent, one of her countrymen, snapped her up with 
 promise of a good job. For two weeks he charged 
 her board in his crowded flat. During those two 
 weeks she learned of the Bohemian centers of the 
 city the tenements, dance-halls, cafes. She 
 also learned the ease with which the immigrant 
 girl may drift into vice but she was too healthy- 
 hearted, and she was lucky. At the end of a fort 
 night a middle-class woman of East Sixty-fifth 
 Street, who had been making a three-months 
 search for a girl willing to " work," spotted Liz 
 zie and engaged her at twenty dollars a month. 
 That seemed big wages at the time. 
 
 The house was four stories, the family seven, 
 and Lizzie was the only " girl." She had the 
 rear top floor hall bedroom to sleep in; she had 
 a night a week off; and her boss speeded her up 
 like any factory-foreman. But she thrived. She 
 loved hard work; she was a demon of the broom, 
 the tub, the mop; she gloried as she shoveled the 
 snow from the pavement in winter; she sang folk 
 songs as she washed at five on Monday mornings; 
 but she was too vigorous a cook, producing the 
 ironware articles that laborers love, but that mid- 
 
226 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 die-class stomachs are wrecked upon. Yet gradu 
 ally here too she pushed her level up. 
 
 Out of her twenty a month she saved fourteen, 
 sending ten back to Europe, and secretly hoarding 
 up four. At the end of two years she had $96.00. 
 
 It was her night-a-week out that decided her 
 life. In one of the Avenue A dance-halls she 
 met Michael Hudak, a worker in the Staten Island 
 steel mills. Hudak was a mighty growth of man, 
 his big hands hard and black with his toil, his 
 strong, smooth round face open and honest. 
 The dark eyes were small, the nose broad, the 
 lips big and human, the flesh tough. Michael 
 and Lizzie fell in love with each other. They 
 were well mated, a son and daughter of toil, thor 
 oughly rooted in the earth. But he was slow of 
 speech, crudely passionate, and clumsy. He 
 sometimes avoided Lizzie because he was choked 
 up with love, and so in time she had her fits of 
 jealousy. 
 
 One mad Thursday night she danced and 
 danced with Max Koval, the little baker, while 
 Michael went about tragically with another 
 woman. Lizzie had one of her frenzies. Late 
 in the night she suggested to the sandy little baker 
 that they run off together. She would get even 
 with Michael. Koval, who had been married 
 once before, had use for a woman. Lizzie would 
 do; but he said he had no money. In a wild 
 whirl of passion jealousy, anger, love she 
 
THE BROKEN WOMAN 227 
 
 hurried home, threw her things together in a bun 
 dle, shoved her $96.00 in her stocking, and 
 slipped away at five A. M. She left a note saying 
 she had gone to get married. 
 
 Max and Lizzie feared Michael. So they 
 went out to a Bohemian farm colony in Ohio. 
 Then suddenly Lizzie took up the troubles of a 
 woman s life. Bakers were not needed on the 
 farms, and the little man was no farmer and 
 didn t care to be one. He began at once that 
 shift of position practised so widely among certain 
 of the poor. He played the "lady;" she the 
 man. He said to her: " Last time I had a woman 
 I didn t have to work. Why should I now?" 
 At that time, too, he began to beat her. The 
 money dwindled away to nothing; they were 
 stranded. 
 
 Then, in despair, Lizzie sat down and wrote a 
 wild letter of remorse and appeal to her former 
 boss, and because this latter was still without a 
 girl, she sent Lizzie a money-order to pay the 
 passage, and told her to return and repay the loan 
 in labor. So back they came, and the husband 
 was allowed to share the hall-bedroom and the 
 single bed with his wife, on condition that he se 
 cured a job. He went back to baking. 
 
 A curious time followed. The little fellow 
 came home between three and four in the morning, 
 white with flour, tramped through the house, 
 dragged Lizzie out of her sleep and out of the 
 
228 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 bed, tumbled in himself, and drank beer and 
 smoked a corncob pipe that filled the house 
 with its reek. Then he slept all day, while she 
 labored. 
 
 Lizzie was a different woman. Her straight 
 back began to curve; her face was pale; her eyes 
 began to gather lines. She did not sing any more. 
 She did not glory in her toil. She had to keep 
 pulling herself together to get through the day s 
 work. And the fear and love of Michael were 
 upon her. A mad impulse had destroyed her bet 
 ter life. The undertow now had her. 
 
 Then, after three months, she and Max took the 
 two rear rooms on lower Avenue A above the sa 
 loon. They ran a lodging house for men. The 
 rear room was used for kitchen, dining-room, and 
 also as the bedroom of the baker and herself. The 
 inner room, with its four double beds, housed 
 five bakers by day, nine laborers by night. Each 
 shift found that the other had left the beds warm. 
 
 It was a queer, but not unusual, household. 
 The Tenement House Department had done noth 
 ing to disturb it. The fourteen men paid seven 
 ty-five cents a week for lodging, bringing in ten- 
 fifty together. The cost of the food was divided 
 equally between all, and was as much as a dollar 
 and a half a week for each. Lizzie had to run 
 the place without help market, cook, clean, and 
 wash the men s clothes. It was hard work, but it 
 paid, and all would have gone well she would 
 
THE BROKEN WOMAN 229 
 
 have saved a large sum in two years had it not 
 been for the baker. 
 
 To him life showered out her golden plenty. 
 He felt that he was a retired man. Fortune had 
 provided him with a money-making woman and 
 fourteen comrades of his own country. Why 
 work? He lay abed smoking his pipe and sip 
 ping beer; he haunted the saloon below; he gath 
 ered his comrades together and gambled the nights 
 away; and he most plenteously beat " his woman." 
 He used her for his animal desires, his tool, his 
 lackey, his money-maker. Like the rest of her 
 kind, she gradually accepted the situation and 
 ground out her heart and soul and strength in the 
 daily mill. 
 
 But life began to darken over her in a more sin 
 ister way. Twice a little child was coming, and 
 where was there room for a child, and how could 
 a slaving woman pause long enough for its birth 
 and up-bringing? So she got rid of the new life 
 that was striving to emerge into the world. And 
 thus she became a broken woman broken phys 
 ically and morally. She now was badly bent, and 
 looked old. She had a searching back-ache while 
 she worked. She was often dizzy and nauseous. 
 But what was that to the collapse of her spirit 
 the sense of sin, the thwarted motherhood? Her 
 " man " hated children; she loved them. Her 
 heart was as hungry for little lips and little fin 
 gers and feet as that of any normal woman. And 
 
230 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 she knew that Michael Hudak loved children as 
 she did. 
 
 Six months before this night of spring she had 
 received a note from Michael. It was short and 
 written in a painful abortive scrawl: 
 
 " I m coming and get you yet. 
 
 MICHAEL." 
 
 Those words started a rebellion in her heart 
 that might still have made something of a woman 
 of her. Three days before she wrote her first 
 note to Michael. 
 
 " Come and see me Friday morning. He is going 
 to a chowder. 
 
 LIZZIE." 
 
 The three days seemed interminable. She had 
 a new sense of freedom. She felt as if already 
 she had cut loose from Max. His orders, his 
 slovenliness, his foul-mouthedness, therefore, came 
 as if from a stranger and were not to be borne. 
 And so she had broken out at last and beat with 
 her fists that hated head, that loathed body. The 
 miserable little drunkard; the dog of a wife-beater; 
 the woman-protected animal! 
 
 And now it was early Friday morning and free 
 dom was near. She looked up. The dawn glim 
 mered on the roofs all things were softening 
 into gray the house was hushed. She took a 
 
THE BROKEN WOMAN 231 
 
 deep breath of the blowing air; she remembered 
 suddenly the prayers she had ceased saying three 
 years ago. God was alive again; he had long 
 been dead. 
 
 And then in the unusual throbbing of the cool 
 air the little man awoke, cramped and cold. 
 Stretching himself, he turned. Then he sat bolt 
 upright. 
 
 " Lizzie," he rumbled, " what you doing? " 
 
 She looked at him and spoke very quietly. 
 
 " I m going to leave you, Max." 
 
 He looked at her stupidly. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " I m going to leave you, Max." 
 
 He stared hard at her. Slowly the words meant 
 something to him. 
 
 "So!" 
 
 He managed to get to his feet and stagger over 
 to her. She rose in self-defense. 
 
 He laughed an ugly laugh, and she shrank from 
 him, but his hands closed over her arms. 
 
 " Say that again ! " 
 
 He breathed on her. 
 
 * You let me alone," she cried sharply. 
 
 "Whose woman are you?" he growled; 
 " whose woman? " 
 
 He suddenly withdrew his fist to strike her in 
 the face, but to his astonishment she struggled with 
 him and heavily flung him off, so that he went reel 
 ing. Growling, amazed, stupid, he began to 
 
232 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 lurch up and down the room, and Lizzie watched 
 him, leaning against the wall, her fists clenched, 
 her eyes flashing hate and defiance. She was dar 
 ing him to do his worst. 
 
 He stopped at the cupboard, turned, smote the 
 extension of it with his knuckles r and muttered: 
 
 " It s Michael now it s Michael, and I know 
 it!" 
 
 Lizzie spoke breathlessly: 
 
 " He ll kill you yet!" 
 
 The little baker opened the cupboard and drew 
 out a carving-knife. He gripped it, and, with hor 
 rible curses, came to her. 
 
 " Kill me, eh? Kill me, you !" 
 
 She saw the long blade flashing, and a sick ter 
 ror went blinding through her. Then she raised 
 her voice to a shriek that went through the quiet 
 tenements that night-shriek so well known 
 among the miserable women and wildly, in a 
 screaming panic, fled tortuously through the 
 crowded room. He pressed her close. Chairs 
 went over; the kettle slammed off the stove; and 
 the shrieking went on. 
 
 And then suddenly it was all over. He had 
 cornered her. 
 
 " Kill me, eh? Take that, you ! " 
 
 The men came tumbling in in their night-clothes, 
 white, frightened, in panic. Their faces crowded 
 close; they bore down on Max; they took the 
 knife away; they hurried him downstairs lest the 
 
THE BROKEN WOMAN 233 
 
 police come in and find him. And Lizzie was 
 left alone, crouching in a corner, panting, sharp 
 smothering sobs breaking from her at intervals. 
 She felt as if she were burning in an intolerable 
 furnace. 
 
 She waited, trembling, for Max to come back. 
 He did not come, but instead, the men returned, 
 and without glancing at her trooped into their 
 room to dress. The day-shift, flushed with the 
 exciting news, soon appeared and joined them, 
 and Lizzie could hear them whispering together. 
 Their words roused her, and she began to move 
 about in a quiet trance preparing breakfast. The 
 coffee steamed up ; the herring crackled in the fry 
 ing fat. One by one^ and in silence, the men came 
 to the table. 
 
 And then, when at last they were gone and the 
 five of the day-shift were in bed in the inner room, 
 quietly and with unnecessary exactness she straight 
 ened up the room, washed the dishes, mopped the 
 floor. Her heart beat heavily, though now it 
 seemed numb and incapable of passion. She felt 
 as if something had gone dead within her. 
 
 She was making a wide arc with her rag on the 
 floor, swinging her body rhythmically with it, 
 when, suddenly, with a dry little sob, she flung the 
 rag in the corner, arose, and went to the window. 
 She looked out at the empty washlines that crossed 
 and recrossed each other; she saw the many open 
 windows opposite; the fire-escapes; the little ba- 
 
234 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 bies crawling about; the fat women moving from 
 window to window inside; the few red geraniums; 
 the little glass aquarium of the cripple boy the 
 street s busy, near, yet far-off life. The smells of 
 many breakfasts filled the sweet spring air. And 
 then, without bitterness, she wondered if this, after 
 all, is what life really is, or could it possibly be 
 something other something as in her early 
 youth when she sang folk-songs and took the wind 
 and the sun and the good smell of earth into her 
 soul? She was a woman, and because of her sex 
 she now found herself a broken instrument in a 
 man s hands. She had heard of enough cases of 
 men getting after their women with knives the 
 newspapers were full of it and there were mur 
 ders enough by jealous lovers. Jealous lovers ! 
 She half-closed her eyes! Max, a lover! He 
 had never loved her, nor she him. Why 
 shouldn t she leave him? Why not? What 
 claim had he upon her ? Who had done the work ? 
 Who had earned the money? Gradually her 
 blood stirred again. She hated the thought of 
 him : she hated his face, his little body, his breath, 
 his way of speaking, his gestures. She filled with 
 a hate that crazed her again. 
 
 The passion of hate woke the passion of love 
 in her heart. Just as much as she hated Max, she 
 loved Michael. She contrasted their bodies: the 
 one frail, weak; the other mighty with its mascu 
 linity; she compared their faces, their manners, 
 
THE BROKEN WOMAN 235 
 
 their way of speaking. As if Michael were be 
 fore her, she whispered hoarsely : " You are a man 
 
 a man! " She knew he was coming. He 
 could not fail her. He would come and carry her 
 off; she would go with him. She had suffered 
 enough; she had been punished hard enough for 
 her sin against love; fiercely she swore to herself 
 that she had a right to some human happiness now 
 
 some life, some love. Michael was coming; 
 he would make everything straight again. 
 
 She turned, a bit wild in her new glory. 
 
 " Michael, you re a man," she whispered again. 
 And then swiftly she opened the lower part of the 
 cupboard, and from a large bundle of old clothes 
 drew out an old skirt, a flimsy cotton shawl, a pair 
 of torn shoes, some underwear, and bound them 
 together in a newspaper. 
 
 Even then there was the double rap on the door 
 she knew of old. The blood went and came to 
 her cheeks, her heart pounded as if it would leap 
 into her throat, and slowly, hand on the ledge of 
 the cupboard, she pulled herself up, and with legs 
 almost failing her crept to the door and flung it 
 open. She stood back in silence and he walked 
 slowly in, glancing about him carefully and sus 
 piciously, and listening a moment at the open door 
 of the inner room. Then satisfied, he turned; she 
 closed the door softly, and they confronted each 
 other. How little he had changed ! Yes, yes, he 
 was the same mighty growth of man just as big, 
 
2 3 6 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 black, muscular as ever, the big human lips firm 
 and shut as ever. This was Michael her Mi 
 chael. She waited his glad, hoarse cry, but in 
 stead, he gazed at her in strange silence; he kept 
 swallowing something in his throat; and then 
 slowly his hands at his sides turned in on them 
 selves, the fingers rubbing the palms. She knew 
 that sign so well : he was fully aroused. 
 
 Her cheeks flushed painfully ; and she gave a low 
 cry, hand on her heart: 
 
 " Michael !" 
 
 But he said nothing. She came a little near 
 er. 
 
 " Michael ! " 
 
 And then the words came, slow and choked: 
 
 " So that s what you done to yourself ! " 
 
 She stood a moment unable to move. Then she 
 whispered: 
 
 " Have you come for me? " 
 
 He took a step and his mighty hand seized 
 her wrist and held and hurt her. He leaned 
 close : he spoke with rude elemental passion his 
 whole man-nature speaking through him: 
 
 " Lizzie you were my woman" He came 
 still nearer. " You were my woman. I had to 
 have you. Why did you go?" 
 
 He could have had her then. She drooped to 
 ward him, all the sweet and womanly love buried 
 in her, now sweeping her like fire. She half- 
 sobbed. Something broke open in her heart. 
 
THE BROKEN WOMAN 237 
 
 This, after the long months, was so sweet, so hu 
 man, so man-and-womanly ! 
 
 " Oh, Michael ! " she whispered hoarsely; " Mi 
 chael, I didn t mean it I was jealous I was a 
 fool, I was a fool! " 
 
 His face was close to hers. 
 
 " And you married Max." 
 
 She spoke passionately : 
 
 " I didn t marry him. I ran off with him ! " 
 
 He drew back sharply, loosing her hand. 
 
 "So that s it!" 
 
 He started slowly for the door. She turned 
 and seized his sleeve, in a last wild despair. 
 
 " Michael I wouldn t marry anyone but 
 you ! " 
 
 He looked at her harshly. 
 
 " You re not the same girl you was three years 
 ago," he said. " I made a mistake." 
 
 What could she say to that? Her face became 
 haggard and hard, and involuntarily she remem 
 bered the unborn children and her broken body 
 and ugliness. She withdrew her hand and nod 
 ded slowly. He went out and closed the door. 
 
 She stood now, perfectly still, very calm again, 
 her brain working in quick flashes. She could 
 kill herself; she could leave the city; she could 
 borrow some money and go back to Europe. 
 Anything but not stay in her home. Yes 
 she knew what she would do; she would go back 
 to Sixty-fifth Street. She waited until she knew 
 
2 3 8 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 Michael was out of sight. Then she took her 
 newspaper-bundle, and went silently down the 
 stairs. At the door she darted out quickly, run 
 ning half down the block. But no one followed 
 her. 
 
 She walked East mechanically until she came 
 to the river and began to pace uptown alongside 
 saloons, factories, warehouses and the great red 
 gas-tanks. Without giving herself any reason, 
 she dropped the Sixty-fifth Street plan. Once or 
 twice she crossed the muddy street to the end of 
 a wharf and looked absently at the water. Then, 
 at last, she came to a ferry, and a block beyond 
 it a recreation pier. She entered this and sat 
 down. There were a few mothers there with 
 their babies. Lizzie watched them a while, put 
 her bundle under her head and went to sleep. All 
 day long, in a far corner, the tired, worn, shattered 
 woman slept, and not until twilight did she awake, 
 her heart now fresh with new grief, new misery, 
 new hopelessness. Now at last she could feel 
 what the early morning had done to her. The 
 tears rolled down her cheeks. Life was cruel, and 
 it didn t pay to be a woman. 
 
 A perfect spring night came on, the heavens 
 were starry, the air cool and sweet, the salt of the 
 river blew with slight gusts of wind, and Lizzie 
 went down in the street. She was hungry; she 
 had nowhere to lay her head; she was out in the 
 strange and desert world ; all things were lost. 
 
THE BROKEN WOMAN 239 
 
 And then came the inevitable change of heart. 
 It is one of the commonest experiences of the wives 
 of the poor. There is no logic in it; there is no 
 reason. Max was a lazy brute, a wife-beater and 
 a drunkard. Yet he was, after all, a man, a male 
 human. With him she had lived, for him she had 
 become a broken woman. She knew his ways 
 pretty well and there were times too when they had 
 gotten along in a happy-go-lucky way. And now 
 the very pangs began to call her back. The old 
 familiarity, the scene so well known, the faces so 
 long harbored (she knew every expression on 
 them!), the routine of the day s work, the very 
 flavor of the night its smoke, chip-clatter, noise, 
 the street, the people she saw daily, the blazing 
 rollicking saloon all were so many lovers call 
 ing her back to her life of pain. They called her 
 to come back and suffer. And then she thought of 
 the unborn. Unliving, unreal as they were, yet 
 they were a blood-tie. 
 
 Truly she was a broken woman, but being such 
 her independence, her womanliness sapped dry 
 she crept back in the night, she slunk into the 
 reeking hallway, the roaring tenement, she climbed 
 the three flights, she softly pushed into the rear 
 room. 
 
 Five sat again at the table. The gas-flame 
 beamed dazzlingly through the fog of smoke. 
 Chips clattered, there were roars of laughter, there 
 was the flash of profane words. Her heart 
 
240 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 warmed strangely as she entered. All looked up. 
 Max smiled on his nearest neighbor. 
 
 She came in guiltily subdued, thoroughly bro 
 ken in for life. She murmured: 
 
 "I m here, Max!" 
 
 He motioned her over to his side. She came. 
 He nodded toward the empty can. 
 
 " Go and fetch a pint of beer," said the little 
 baker. 
 
STINY BOLINSKY 
 
STINY BOLINSKY 
 
 gTINY BOLINSKY S mother woke him up 
 ^ just as dawn crept through the window. 
 
 " Your father is eating breakfast," the mother 
 muttered in his ear. 
 
 " The whistle," cried Stiny, half awake, " did it 
 blow?" 
 
 " It will blow soon enough," sighed the mother. 
 
 Stiny sat up, and looked stupidly about the little 
 room. A baby was sleeping in a crib in the cor 
 ner, and two men, lodgers, were getting out of the 
 double bed. Stiny slept on a cot. 
 
 The men were grumbling sleepily. As they 
 slipped into trousers and shirts their bare flesh 
 showed oily and black. Their faces too were 
 dusty with coal. Their shocks of hair looked as 
 if they had been dipped into a coal-bin, but their 
 eyes, though sleepy, were rather sharp and pierc 
 ing. 
 
 Stiny put on heavy lumbering shoes, a coarse 
 dirty undershirt, greasy overalls that strapped over 
 his shoulders. Then slowly he opened a door into 
 the hall, crept downstairs, left the back of the 
 house, and hurried over the bare rough ground. 
 He passed half a dozen gray houses, and came to 
 
 243 
 
244 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 a little pump. A dozen men, clad as he was clad, 
 were fighting to get at the water. This pump was 
 used by forty families, and it was first come, first 
 served. Stiny hung about a little while, and finally 
 decided to go unwashed. 
 
 As he walked back to the house he looked about 
 him. There were two rows of houses gray 
 boxes, two stories high and all alike a muddy 
 gutter between them. There were no gardens, no 
 trees, save a few stunted leafless ones. Back of 
 the houses was a hill, with piles of dirt and siftings 
 of fine coal, and along this hill ran a railroad track 
 and back of it rose abruptly a mountain, bare and 
 desolate. Its lower part was all blasted away, and 
 before it stood gray shacks with high iron chim 
 neys. 
 
 The mountainside and valley lay in a deep 
 gloonij but softly in the upper air a tremulous light 
 was broadening over the world, and with the light 
 came a sweet wind. Suddenly Stiny had a restless 
 feeling, a touch of fever, a desire to go wandering 
 away, a desire for things he could not imagine 
 clearly, but things beautiful, inaccessible. He 
 wished it was Sunday, that he might go to the lit 
 tle church at the end of the street and watch his 
 teacher s face, and see the mystery of a woman un 
 like other women. That woman was Miss Danby, 
 the Sunday-school teacher. She was stout, forty, 
 bustling, cheerful. She said, " my boys," and said 
 it proudly. " My boys " were men anywhere 
 
STINY BOLINSKY 245 
 
 from fifteen to fifty. They rarely understood 
 what Miss Danby was driving at, and possibly 
 Miss Danby didn t understand either, but it was 
 nice to come in contact with such robust cheerful 
 ness. 
 
 Stiny suddenly felt over his shirt, looked a lit 
 tle startled, and ran into the house. He hurried 
 back to his room, felt under his pillow and 
 brought out two little badges, which he pinned 
 carefully to his dirty shirt. One of these was the 
 picture of a man, and under the picture were the 
 words, "John Mitchell, Labor s Friend." The 
 other was a cross, on the face of which was 
 stamped, u Thy Kingdom Come." 
 
 Then Stiny went into the adjoining room. A 
 stove steamed against a wall, and next to it was a 
 table covered with oilcloth. At this table sat the 
 two lodgers, Stiny s father and Stiny s big brother. 
 The mother went to and fro serving the men. 
 Stiny sat down. No one spoke, but there was the 
 loud noise of slapping tongues and smacking lips. 
 One could hear every swallow of the coffee as it 
 went down the husky throats. On a tin plate were 
 heaped huge chunks of bread. On another were 
 some fried herrings. The men plunged their 
 forks into these plates and took as much as they 
 could. Stiny was hungry and ate as ravenously as 
 the rest, making just as much noise. 
 
 The light grew and grew in the room, glimmer 
 ing through the two dirty windows; the men ate; 
 
246 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 the woman moved about swiftly. Then, without 
 warning, there arose in the air the long insistent 
 shrilling of the whistle an endless piercing blast 
 shrieking through the valley. 
 
 Everybody cried, " The whistle ! " 
 
 One last bite, one last swallow of coffee to wash 
 it down, and they got their caps with the little tin 
 torches, and rushed pell-mell into the hall, down 
 the stairs and into the street. From one end to 
 the other the street was filled with hurrying men 
 and boys. The men carried dinner-pails. All 
 seemed in a terrific hurry. At the end of the 
 street they turned up a well-beaten path over the 
 railroad tracks, and past the shacks. Stiny hur 
 ried to a big hole that was like a wide-open mouth 
 in the side of the mountain. About this mouth 
 were heaps of fine coal siftings. The ground was 
 black. Little narrow tracks ran into this mouth 
 and disappeared in the darkness. On the track 
 stood a little flat car, with a trolley pole resting 
 up against a low wire that also ran into the black 
 mouth. 
 
 Stiny and half a dozen others, after lighting the 
 torches on their caps, piled upon this flat-car, but 
 even at that moment the restlessness seized him 
 again. The sun was rising over the mountain ; a 
 wild radiance swept over the valley; a delicious 
 breeze burst upon the world. Stiny had a strong, 
 almost irresistible desire not to go into the black 
 mouth. He wanted to wander in search of things 
 
STINY BOLINSKY 247 
 
 inaccessible things beautiful. There was some 
 thing in the air that tempted him forth; it was a 
 voice hinting of glories on the other side of the 
 mountain. Stiny did not know what troubled him. 
 He did not know that this was the first day of 
 spring that buds ached to be blossoms; that 
 grass yearned for the sun ; that birds were dream 
 ing of nests and nestlings ; that human beings were 
 beginning to hunt for one another; that in men 
 and women leaped the impulse of love. 
 
 The motorman turned the little handle and the 
 car shot straight into the mouth. The car was not 
 afraid of that blackness; it rushed through it, 
 deeper and deeper and deeper, now plunging 
 around a curve, now running up an incline, now 
 dashing down a slant. All the men on the cars 
 crouched low, for there were dangerous places 
 a head lifted might strike the live trolley 
 wire above. Several men had been killed that 
 way. 
 
 The Monster, the mine, through its mouth had 
 devoured these human beings, and now the car 
 shot through the mighty belly of the brute. It 
 passed the dark corner where a month before there 
 had been an explosion foreman and three others 
 blown to pieces, cause unknown. The men on the 
 flat-car did not even remember the incident. 
 
 Finally the car stopped and Stiny got off. 
 There was a big canvas padded door here. Stiny 
 opened it. The car rushed on. Then Stiny shut 
 
248 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 the door again, and sat down on a broken wooden 
 box. He was alone. There was absolute silence. 
 The day s work had begun. 
 
 The tunnel is divided into locks, compartments 
 with a door at each end, to keep the gases of one 
 compartment from permeating all, should there be 
 an accident. It was Stiny s job to sit at one of 
 these doors all day. Whenever he saw the blind 
 ing flash of the car coming his way he opened the 
 door. 
 
 He sat down listlessly. The little smoking, 
 flaming torch in his hat cast strange large shadows 
 about the corner, showing the black jutting rocks, 
 the bits of coal, the tracks shining for a little dis 
 tance and then swallowed in blackness, and, lastly, 
 the boy s face. Stiny s face was unlit the fea 
 tures large and smooth, the eyes small and sleepy, 
 the lips big. He had some sandy hair on top of 
 his head, but its color was blurred by the coal dust. 
 He was a dust-dipped boy, head to foot; sooty, 
 black, disreputable. 
 
 This had been Stiny s job for three years. He 
 began when he was twelve. He had a dim recol 
 lection of the days when he played around the 
 mouth of the mine with other boys, when he was 
 free to roam up the mountainside. His chief de 
 sire in those days was to be a man and work in 
 the mine like his father. What else could a boy 
 desire? There was nothing in his world but a 
 bare and desolate and smoke-darkened valley, a 
 
STINY BOLINSKY 249 
 
 few stupid companions, a home to be avoided be 
 cause of the troubles there. 
 
 The mother was a hard-working woman with 
 small time for her children. There was a saloon 
 down the street, not very far from the church, but 
 the boys were too young for that. There was a 
 school, also, to which now and then the boys were 
 driven, but the teacher, a woman who stayed on 
 because she was alone and had to earn a living, 
 detested and looked down upon the miners chil 
 dren. There was also the church but until this 
 year there had been no Miss Danby. 
 
 And the mine ! In that narrow world of child 
 hood this was the only outlet. It was deep, mys 
 terious, terrible. Its perils made it fascinating. 
 How they crowded about when a dead man was 
 brought up ! What fun on days of big cave-ins, 
 when the frantic village mobbed the entrances, 
 women wailing, men sweating and laboring like 
 very demons to save their brothers! And there 
 was a charm deeper than the perils, the coal-damp, 
 the cave-in, the explosion the great Monster 
 fed its victims. Their very existence depended 
 upon it. Bread, shelter, life these were the 
 gifts of the mine and in this little world, only 
 the mine had these gifts to give. To be a man 
 was to enter the Monster, share the dangers, do 
 the day s work and get the pay envelope on Satur 
 day. 
 
 Stiny started when he was twelve. He had a 
 
250 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 dim, a very dim remembrance of former days. 
 Life did not begin until he was given his post at 
 the door. Then life began, and a strange life ! 
 Most of the days he was pulled out of his sleep 
 for a bite, a rush through the dark valley, a long 
 day in darkness, a release into the night when the 
 day s work was done, and then sleep again. But 
 on Saturdays it was different. Then he trooped 
 with the crowd down to the saloon, became very- 
 drunk, managed to get home somehow, and slept 
 away the better part of the Sunday. It was only 
 lately that he got up early enough to listen to Miss 
 Danby. 
 
 So far as Stiny knew, such is life. To sleep, 
 to eat, to work in darkness, and then to sleep 
 again. He never wondered why the mine was 
 there, or what became of the coal that was vomited 
 forth daily and carried from the valley in the 
 long coal-cars. He knew that the mine was there, 
 that the coal had to be gotten out, that men were 
 paid to get it out that was all. He took the 
 fact of the mine as he took the fact of the seasons 
 he never dreamed of the powers that ruled. 
 Once in a while an inspector or a visitor came 
 through. If he was an ordinary person the miners 
 roughly jested as he bumped his head against the 
 low ceilings; " bumped it into a running sore," as 
 they said. As for Stiny, these were people 
 dropped from another world. They came and 
 
STINY BOLINSKY 251 
 
 vanished, mere comets. They did not belong to 
 life. 
 
 Men are born; they labor; they marry; they die. 
 That was all there was to it. Stiny had stupidly 
 accepted his lot in life; he, too, would make the 
 rounds with the others. When the time came he 
 would marry; later he would die. 
 
 But with Miss Danby s coming, a dim struggle 
 began in the boy s breast. He did not know what 
 she was driving at with her stories about a certain 
 Moses, and David and Goliath (which latter, 
 however, he liked, because there was a fight), but 
 he began to get the first dull glimmerings of a far 
 world a world different from his own where 
 a woman s voice was kind; where there was a 
 smile, a touch now and then. In his own world 
 were much coarseness, obscurity, loneliness; there 
 were harsh words, fights, hatred, and a bitter at 
 mosphere an atmosphere that a few years be 
 fore had burst forth in the big strike. The older 
 men knew all about that big strike; Stiny only 
 knew that a great man by the name of John 
 Mitchell had come along and told the men to get 
 together. So the men got together, and after that 
 things were a little better. Miss Danby once in 
 a while talked by the hour about John Mitchell, but 
 she never made things clear. In fact, she was 
 nearly as ignorant as Stiny. 
 
 Stiny was as uncouth and as thick-crusted as any 
 
252 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 of the others. Long hours in bad air and dark 
 ness, broken sleep, coarse food, drunken Saturday 
 nights, blows and impatient words are not condu 
 cive to fineness of spirit or heart. But now was 
 the new fact of Miss Danby a human being who 
 went against the whole world, who turned things 
 upside down, who, in a bustling manner, was gen 
 tle, roughly sweet, smiling, sympathetic. Every 
 Sunday he marveled at her, and through the long 
 days he brooded upon her. She had pinned the 
 badges upon him with her own hands. That made 
 them sacred. He considered them above all the 
 things of life. And with his brooding, something 
 strange occurred. Something in him began to 1 
 break down ; about the region of his heart strange 
 passions awoke and fought with him; a radiance 
 beat against his thick crust, and here and there 
 made a loophole, so that at times he felt as if he 
 were going to cry as his mother cried when he 
 came home drunk. At other times he felt a black 
 revolt boiling within him revolt against harsh 
 ness, darkness, dreariness rebellion against his 
 narrow world. There must be something better 
 somewhere; there must be joy, there must be love, 
 there must be comfort. 
 
 Stiny was becoming a dangerous boy. No one 
 knew it, leastwise himself. What Miss Danby 
 gave him was a lot of vague new impulses pas 
 sions that craved an outlet, but though the heart 
 felt, the poor brain could not see. The boy was 
 
STINY BOLINSKY 253 
 
 groping about in blackness; his heart cried for a 
 revolution, but his mind did not know what revolu 
 tion, or how, or when. He wanted something; he 
 wanted it badly; but he did not know what he 
 wanted. It began to be impossible to sit around 
 all day with such passions in his breast. He could 
 only clutch his two badges and swear that things 
 must change. And thus he became like an active 
 volcano whose crater is about to blow off. Im 
 pulse might have led to anything a quarrel and 
 a killing in the saloon, a hasty marriage, or a sud 
 den slipping away to wander over to the other 
 side of the mountain. 
 
 To-day his troubles were at their height, for it 
 was the first day of spring, and into the mouth of 
 the Monster the boy had carried the yearning of 
 the whole world. He sat at the door in a turmoil 
 of unrest, rising every now and then to open and 
 shut it and let the car rush by. To ease his heart 
 he picked up a piece of coal and began drawing 
 rude pictures on the canvas of the door pictures 
 indecent, gross, primal. He was seeking the art- 
 man s outlet merely to give his passion vent in 
 some tangible form. 
 
 It was at eleven o clock that morning that the 
 Man came. He came into Stiny s life very sud 
 denly and was soon gone. He was never forgot 
 ten. This Man had been sent down into mines 
 with a camera by a committee in a far city a 
 committee that was trying to find out about child- 
 
254 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 labor. But all that Stiny knew was that on one 
 trip, the car, instead of flashing by, stopped short. 
 
 "There s Stiny he s one on em," said the 
 motorman. 
 
 "All right I ll get off! " said the Man. 
 
 Stiny stared at him stupidly. The man was 
 small, thin, with a homely face and big eye-glasses, 
 but his voice sounded good. In one hand he held 
 a big newspaper camera, in the other a heavy look 
 ing black valise. 
 
 The car went on, the door was shut, and Stiny 
 confronted the Man. 
 
 " Want to have your picture taken? " 
 
 Stiny shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Well," said the Man, " just stand up against 
 that door as if you were going to open it." 
 
 Stiny obeyed. The Man s voice reminded him 
 of Miss Danby and made his heart pound. He 
 felt his face flushing. The Man went through a 
 deal of preparation. He knelt, opened his valise 
 and took out a shiny metal T, and on this T he 
 fixed a long cartridge. Then he rose and focused 
 his camera very carefully. Finally he held the 
 camera with one hand and the T over his head 
 with the other. Suddenly there was a white 
 blinding flash, an explosion, a burst of smoke. 
 Stiny gave a leap and a loud cry. But the Man 
 was laughing. 
 
 " That s all," he said, " won t hurt you ! " 
 
 Then Stiny laughed loud, thick, long. He 
 
STINY BOLINSKY 255 
 
 came up and watched the Man putting away his 
 things, snapping shut the valise, and closing the 
 camera. The Man faced him a moment and 
 looked at him carefully. Again Stiny felt his 
 heart pounding. He liked this Man s laugh, his 
 voice, his kind eyes. 
 
 He suddenly reached out a hand, almost touch 
 ing the Man. Then he drew it back very much 
 ashamed. The Man looked at him more care 
 fully, and took out a little notebook and a pencil. 
 
 "What s your name?" 
 
 " Stiny Bolinsky." 
 
 "Spell it!" 
 
 But Stiny could not spell it. 
 
 He could, however, give his age, his wages, his 
 address. The Man took it all down, and then 
 looked at his watch. 
 
 " Will the car be back soon? " he asked. 
 
 " Soon," said Stiny. 
 
 They sat together on the little box, Stiny very 
 carefully placing himself on the edge to give the 
 Man plenty of room. 
 
 " Do you like your work? " inquired the Man. 
 
 Stiny gave a low queer laugh. 
 
 "Pretty hard, isn t it?" 
 
 " Yes no," said Stiny. 
 
 There was a little silence. Stiny began wetting 
 his lips, stirring uneasily, playing with his hands. 
 Here was someone like Miss Danby; someone who 
 understood. If Stiny could only open his mouth; 
 
256 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 if he could only tell the Man what he felt, perhaps 
 the Man could explain. The poor boy yearned 
 with all his soul to question the Man, to pour out 
 his heart to him, to ask about that Other World. 
 
 But he said nothing. He could not. He did 
 not know how. 
 
 The Man, too, was perplexed. He did not like 
 being alone with another human being, and no 
 word said, no communication. But what had they 
 in common, these two? The Man looked at the 
 boy again. His eye was caught by the two badges. 
 He smiled, and pointed at them. 
 
 " Who gave you these? " 
 
 " Teacher in Sunday-school Miss Dan- 
 by! " The boy flushed hot; he had to struggle to 
 get rid of the words; and when he did, a glow of 
 tremendous pleasure went through him. 
 
 " Who is that?" asked the Man, pointing at 
 " Labor s friend." 
 
 " That," burst out Stiny, " that is Mitch ! " 
 
 " You know Mitch? " asked the man. 
 
 " You bet we all know Mitch! " 
 
 Then Stiny laughed softly. 
 
 " And do you know what that cross means," the 
 Man questioned in a low voice. 
 
 " No," said Stiny. 
 
 " You don t know the words on it? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Would you like to know? " 
 
STINY BOLINSKY 257 
 
 All the hunger of the boy s heart leaped in his 
 voice: " I want to know," he muttered. 
 
 " It says," the Man spoke slowly, " it says : Thy 
 Kingdom Come." 
 
 Stiny looked disappointed. He shrugged his 
 shoulders. 
 
 " You don t know what that means," said the 
 Man. 
 
 " No." 
 
 The Man paused a moment and looked at the 
 boy. Then the Man s eyes became dim. He 
 spoke very tenderly, very quietly, very slowly. He 
 wanted the boy to understand. 
 
 " Stiny," he said, " it means the time when 
 things are better, much better than they are. It 
 means the time when little boys and little girls, 
 and boys like you, don t have to work any more, 
 but can go to a good school, and can play baseball 
 in the afternoon, and romp about in the fields 
 it means " 
 
 He paused, for slowly a change came over 
 Stiny s face. His eyes grew large, his jaw hung, 
 a flush spread up his temples, he clasped his hands 
 together. He gazed at the Man as if he had 
 found his new world. 
 
 The Man went on more tenderly : 
 
 " It means the time when a boy needn t work 
 down in a dark mine; it means the time when his 
 mother won t have to work so hard, and doesn t 
 
258 PAY ENVELOPES 
 
 labor until she is tired and cross; when she can 
 have a pretty home a little house with curtains 
 on the windows, and lots of good food, and nice 
 rooms; when she can stay as beautiful as she was 
 when she was a girl. It means the time when 
 your father can come home early and read and 
 play games with his neighbors, and see his children 
 before they go to bed; he will be different then; he 
 won t be so hard, so angry, so bitter. It means 
 the time when the sisters can have pretty clothes 
 and look their prettiest; when there will be a piano 
 in the house, and good music, sweet music when 
 you are tired. It means the time when you can 
 read books, and go out and see the world the 
 big world the world over the mountain, Stiny. 
 It means the time when, in the evening, men will 
 gather together in clean places, and talk and play 
 with one another instead of getting drunk." 
 
 Again the Man paused because Stiny s face was 
 so wonderful. His eyes burned with a strange 
 light; his mouth was open as if he were being fed 
 on the words; he hardly seemed to breathe; not 
 once did he take his eyes from the Man s face. 
 This made the Man look away a moment to brush 
 something from his eyes. Then he looked back, 
 and went on with a break in his voice. To Stiny 
 it was the most glorious voice ever heard a mu 
 sic that went lovingly into his heart and sang to 
 him there. 
 
 " But, Stiny, it means something more some- 
 
STINY BOLINSKY 259 
 
 thing more. Thy Kingdom Come means the time 
 when people are kind to one another very kind, 
 and understand each other and help each other. 
 It means the time when there is more love in the 
 world more love," the Man went on, and his 
 voice broke again, " more love." 
 
 He stopped. Stiny clenched his two fists; he 
 half rose out of his seat; his mouth seemed to open 
 even wider, he seemed at the point of bursting. 
 Then suddenly it came with a great noise: 
 
 " Well " his voice rose, deep-lunged, splen 
 did, a great roar " That s chust what I want! " 
 
 The Man rose, too, something thrilling and 
 thrilling him from head to foot. In that moment 
 he re-dedicated himself to the task of bringing on 
 the Kingdom. And even then there was a bell 
 ringing. Stiny opened the door; the car came; 
 the Man got on. As it was swallowed in black 
 ness, the Man, looking back, saw in the dim corner 
 the boy, the torch on his hat flaming smokily, wav 
 ing his hand good-by waving frantically, his 
 body dancing with his hand. 
 
 The Man had come; the Man had gone. But 
 the great Dream of the Ages had penetrated the 
 belly of the Monster, for good or evil, but forever. 
 A vision had come to a passionate boy, and we hu 
 man beings are led alone by our Visions. 
 
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