So I slowed up on my wheelbarrow loads, sat on the handles, and spat and talked, till I found I was going too slow. There was a work-rhythm that was neither a dawdle nor a drive; if you expected any comfort in your gang life of twelve hours daily, you had best discover and obey its laws. It might be, from several points of view, an incorrect rhythm, but, at all events, it was a part of the gang mores. And some of its inward reasonableness often appeared before the day was out, or the month, or the year.
Everybody wore good clothes to work, and changed in the shanty to their furnace outfit. I usually came in a brown suit, which had been out in the rain a good many times and was fairly shapeless. One day I entered the mill in a gray suit, which fitted and was moderately pressed.
At the dinner-bucket hour in the shanty, I was asked by John the Italian: "How much you pay for suit, Charlie?"
I was embarrassed, fearing vaguely explanations that might have to follow a declaration of price. I suddenly recalled the fact that the suit had been given me by my brother, so that I didn't know the price, and said so.
"My brother give me suit, I don't know how much he pay," I said. That dumped me into another quandary.
"What job your brother have?" I was immediately asked.
I thought a moment and answered truthfully again.
"My brother, priest," I said.
That arrested immediate attention, and I was looked at with respect and curiosity.