He Plucked the Venerable Beard of a Somnolent Hebrew
Our objective in this series of adventures had been the Union for Good Works, a benevolent institution, with splendid rooms, to which we went for our shower-bath; cost, five cents!
After we had taken our baths, and while we were busy with nine-pins, Jakey stood at an opposite end of the room, and plastered the frescoed walls of the Union for Good Works with the pasty contents of a silver package of cream cheese, to which he had helped himself at the stall of a large public market. That same night, when we arrived at the South End and were disbanding, Jakey set on view before our astonished eyes a five-pound pail of lard, a cap, and several plugs of tobacco, which he carried home and presented to his mother, saying that he had been to an auction!
Such are only a few of the adventures in which we indulged after a depressing day of it in the mill. One Fourth of July night we roamed over the city, through the aristocratic section, and in a wild, fanatical, mob-spirit, entirely without a thought as to the criminal lengths of our action, leaped over low fences, went through gates and ran on lawns, tramping down flower-beds, crushing down shrubs, and snatching out of their sockets the small American flags with which the houses were decorated.
The only religious declaration the gang made came in the winter, when, on dull Sunday afternoons, merely for the walk it offered and the entertainments to which it gave us the entrée, we joined the classes in the Mission. I enjoyed sitting near the aristocratic, finely dressed young woman who instructed me as to the mighty strength of Samson, the musical and shepherding abilities of David, the martial significance of Joshua, and the sterling qualities of St. Paul. Most truly was my interest centered in the jeweled rings my teacher wore, or in the dainty scent that was wafted from her lace handkerchief when she gave one of those cute little feminine coughs! How far away, after all, was she from a knowledge of our lives and the conditions under which we lived! She aimed well, but whatever she intended, in her secret heart, went very, very wide of the mark. She had no moral thrills to treat us to, nor did she ever couch her appeal in so definite a way as to disturb our sins one bit. Perhaps she did not think we needed such strong medicine. Maybe she classed us as “Poor, suffering mill-boys!” and let that suffice. We needed someone to shake us by the shoulders, and tell us that we were cowards, afraid to make men of ourselves. We needed a strong, manly fellow, just then, to tell us, in plain speech, about the sins we were following. We needed, more truly than all else, a man’s Man, a high, convincing Character, a Spiritual Ideal, The Christ, pointed out to us. But this was not done, and we left the Mission with derision in our hearts for things we ought to have respected. Some of the fellows lighted their cigarettes with the Sunday-school papers they had been presented with.
Many of the Monday evenings in winter were gala nights, when we marched to the Armory and watched the militia drill. On our return home, we walked through the streets with soldierly precision, wheeling, halting, presenting arms, and making skilful formations when “Yellow Belly” ordered.
In September, the rules were posted in the mill that all minors who could not read and write must attend public evening school, unless prevented by physical incapacity. Four of us, “Yellow Belly,” Jakey, Dutchy Hermann, and myself, had a consultation, and decided that we would take advantage of the evening school and improve our minds. But the remainder of the gang, with no other intention than to break up the school, went also, and though there was a special officer on guard, and a masculine principal walking on rubber soles through the halls and opening classroom doors unexpectedly, they had their fling.
An evening school in a mill city is a splendid commentary on ambition. There one finds ambition at its best. After a day’s work of ten and a half hours, tired, tired, tired with the long day of heat and burden-bearing, lungs choking for inhalations of fresh, cool air, faces flushed with the dry heat of the room, ears still dulled by the roar and clank of machines, brains numbed by hours and hours of routine—yet there they are, men grown, some of them with moustaches, growing lads of fifteen, and sixteen, girls and women, all of many nationalities, spending a couple of the precious hours of their freedom scratching on papers, counting, musing over dry stuff, all because they want to atone for past intellectual neglect. I was there because I wanted to push past fractions and elementary history, and go on towards the higher things. I was entirely willing to forego priceless hours for two nights a week to get more of a knowledge of the rudiments from which I had been taken by the mill.
I had a seat quite back in the room, because I had intimations that some of the gang were going to “cut up,” and that a back seat would put me out of the danger zone of shooting peas, clay bullets, and other inventions. The man directly in front of me, with a first reader in his hand, was a tall Portuguese, the father of a family of children.
As soon as the starting gong had clanged through the halls, the gang began its operations. Dutchy, in spite of his avowed intention of seriously entering the school, pretended that he could not recite the alphabet. “Bunny,” a young Englishman, tried to pass himself off as a Swede and ignorant of English entirely. While the teachers were busy with the details of organization, the air was filled with riot, the special policeman was called in, and I along with the gang was threatened with arrest. Notwithstanding that such careful watch was maintained, the two weeks of night-school that I attended were filled with such disturbances that I grew discouraged and abandoned the project.