Our little house on Spring Street was not very well tended because for six months, besides being wife and housekeeper, I donned miner’s clothes to run the horse-pulled hoist in our mine. We each worked a crew on separate shafts. For several months we had rich ore, then the vein went “in cap.” We kept on sinking, but all to no avail. We still didn’t strike high-grade ore and the shaft caved from faulty timbering.
“I guess I better get a job in one of the big mines,” Harvey suggested.
Me, the wife of a common miner—working for a few dollars a day! The idea struck horror to my soul.
“Certainly not!” I replied. “I won’t have it.”
“Well, what else is there to do? We can’t go home. Father would be mad and Mother won’t have you in the house.”
“Your mother—with her airs. I’m just as good as she is any day!”
“I’ll thank you not to insult my mother.”
Words tumbled on words like blows. Harvey and I were in the midst of our first serious quarrel. The higher our tempers rose, the more bitter our choice of barbs to hurt each other. I hated the idea of having married a man who would give up. I thought I had married a clever man. Instead, I had married a weakling. I said all this and more.
“I’ve been brought up by self-respecting people who only spend what they’ve got,” Harvey replied heatedly. “We haven’t got the money to fulfill the agreement of timbering in a ‘good, substantial, workmanlike manner’—and besides, it’s too long a gamble. I don’t know enough about carpentry and mining. It’s better for me to learn what I’m about first by taking a steady job. Then, when I know more, and maybe have saved up some money of our own, we can try developing the mine.”
I thought this plan was cowardly and stupid. Maybe development would be a long gamble, but all mining was a gamble—even life was a gamble—and only those who had the courage to play could win.