An old gentleman from Lorain, Ohio, was going home to die, and to die in poverty, because the hard times struck at the roots of his business and he was too old to labour in the mills. Another went back to claim a fortune, and asked me for the loan of a dollar, which he would be sure to send back as soon as his fingers touched the waiting wealth.
The circle received constant additions, for our laughter and banter reached down to the dreary bunks, and many of their occupants came up to listen. Women brought their half-asleep children and I drew on my stock of sweets. Even the more reticent women talked to “the man,” and told him things glad and sad. A Polish woman was the spokesman of her group.
“We are going back to the Stary Kray (the Old Country). America ne dobre” (not good).
“Why is it not good?”
“The air ne dobre, the food ne dobre, the houses ne dobre.”
Nothing was good.
“We came to America with red cheeks, like the cheeks of summer apples, and now look at us. We are going back looking like cucumbers in the autumn.”
Yes, their cheeks were pale and pinched and their skin wrinkled. How could it be otherwise? They had lived for years by the coke ovens of Pennsylvania, breathing sulphur with every breath; their eyes had rarely seen the full daylight and their cheeks had not often felt the warm sunlight. America “ne dobre.”
And yet something must have seemed good to them; for they wore American clothes. Long, trailing skirts, shirt-waists with abbreviated sleeves and belts with showy buckles. All of them had children, many children of varying sizes, and among the children not one said: “America ne dobre.”
The boys had penetrated into the mysteries of baseball vernacular, and one of them was the short-stop on his team.