Through the mill: The life of a mill-boy

by Frederic Kenyon Brown

So at seventeen years of age I went with my aunt and uncle to the village, a strange, quiet place after the rumble and confusion of the city. It was well into spring when we arrived, and we found the village beautiful with restful green grass and the fruit-tree blossoms.

As soon as we arrived my uncle took us to the corporation boarding-house, a dismal brick structure, like a mill, with a yellow verandah on its face. “We’ll have to put up here till the furniture comes,” announced uncle.

The next morning I took my overalls with me and began work in the mule-room. It was a pleasant place when contrasted with the places I had worked in in the city. The overseer did not urge us on so strenuously. There was not that terrible line of unemployed in the alley every morning, waiting to take our places.

I was given a place with my uncle, and, when I had my work in hand, that first day, he would call me into the mule alley and chat with me about our new prospects.

“We’ll begin all over, Al, and see if we can’t do better by you. Maybe we’ll be able to send you to school, if we can get some money laid by. This is our chance. We’re away from drink. The corporation owns the village and won’t allow a saloon in it. Now I can straighten up and be a man at last, something I’ve shamefully missed being the last few years, lad!”

Those first few days of our life in the village, uncle’s face seemed to lose some of its former sad tenseness.

“Wait till the furniture gets here, lad,” he said, repeatedly. “Then we’ll settle down to be somebody, as we used to be.”

Then the day that a postal came from the freight office saying that the furniture had arrived, the superintendent of the mill called my uncle away from his mules for a long consultation. Then he came back in company, with my uncle, and mentioned to me that he would like to see and speak with me in the elevator room. I had only time to note that uncle’s face was that of a man who has just seen a tragedy. It was bloodless, and aged, as if he had lost hope.

What could all this mean? A mill superintendent did not usually consult with his hands except on very grave matters.

I found the superintendent waiting for me, with a very sober face. We had strict privacy. When he had shut the door, he said: “Al Priddy, I want to ask you what will seem, at first, a very impertinent and delicate question. You must give me a frank answer, even though it is very hard.”