I awakened about six o’clock, wonderfully relieved and refreshed and found that my hostess had sent her son to watch for Dan at the cross roads and guide him to the house.
At dinner we were introduced to Mr. Patton and John, who were greatly interested in the story of our adventures. I told them of the old Confederate soldier, of Sadie grieving for her Tony in the jail, and they were horrified to learn that such misery existed so close at hand.
“Of course, I’ve been aware that there were all kinds of suffering and wretchedness in the slums of large cities,” Mr. Patton sighed, “but I thought there was no real poverty in the country districts.”
Dan shot me a covert glance.
“You’ll get the poor man out of jail, so he can see his little baby, won’t you, father dear?” Hazel inquired eagerly.
“Well, well. I’ll see what can be done. It’s a shame that such conditions should exist in a country as rich as this.”
When we had repaired to the living room, Mrs. Patton suggested music, and upon my delighted acquiescence, John set the Victrola to playing. Then for the first time I recognised one cause of my persistent heart-hunger. My soul was starving for music. Thrills of ecstasy agitated me almost to tears as the passionate strains of Tschaikowsky’s “Melodie” flooded the room with pulsating harmonies. Raff’s “Cavatina” seemed the divine expression of universal longing for home and love—heimweh incarnate.
Once, when we had first moved into Chicago’s slums, I took my guitar and sang. Simple songs came to my lips, lullabies, songs of the South, the old, old songs that caress the heart strings. A noise at the door startled me. I swung it open and started back in surprise. Porch, stairway and area below were packed with children all absorbed in my poor performance. Many times thereafter I sat at the narrow entrance and sang while children and adults crowded about, always asking for more. But at last the increasing pinch of hunger goaded me into carrying the precious guitar, relic of girlhood days, to the pawnbroker, there to bid it good-bye forever.
Millions of acres of land lying barren in the hands of speculators, hordes of idle men roaming the country in search of employment, tons of delicious fruit rotting on the ground in California, hungry women, billionaires, destitute children, great masses of wealth producers starving mentally and physically while the fruits of their labor are denied them.
Would to God that the people of this nation could learn to think!