Through the mill: The life of a mill-boy

by Frederic Kenyon Brown

“Oh, sir,” I went on, desperate at the chance that was slipping from us, “you are a member of the church and believe in forgiving as Christ did. Won’t you give us a chance to straighten out? It might take time, but it means so much to aunt and uncle and—and me!”

“I shall have to refuse,” said the superintendent finally. “I have to think of the welfare of more families than one. Go back to your work now, and talk things over with your uncle. I will see him again.”

I went back to my uncle and found him doing his work in a dreamy, discouraged way. The miserable hours of the morning wore on, and by noon there was no change in the unfortunate and gloomy situation in which we found ourselves.

When we had had dinner at the boarding-house, uncle went to his room and informed Aunt Millie of what had transpired. Then he upbraided her, scolded her, and called her all manner of brutal names, because he was crazed with shame. My aunt did not cry out, but merely hurried from the room and did not return while we were there.

In the afternoon the superintendent came and had a conference with uncle, the upshot of which was that uncle persuaded him to allow us to retain our work if we could find a house to rent that was not owned by the corporation. The overseer, consulted, said that there was a tenement of three rooms on the outskirts of the village which we might get, and with this prospect, uncle and I found the tragedy of our situation decreasing.

“We’ll go right after supper and look up that place,” agreed Uncle Stanwood. “We might be lucky enough to get it, Al.”

We did not find Aunt Millie at the boarding-house when we arrived, so we ate our meal together, wondering where she could be and fretting about her. But after supper we took an electric car that went past the tenement we were thinking of examining. The car was crowded with mill-workers going to the city for the evening. Uncle and I had to stand on the rear platform.

The village had been left, and the car was humming along a level stretch of state highway bordered with cheerful fields, when our ears were startled by screams, and when uncle and I looked, as did the other passengers, we beheld a woman wildly fleeing through the field toward the river. She was screaming and waving her hands wildly in the air.

“My God!” shouted uncle, “it’s Millie!” He shouted to the conductor, “Stop, quick, I’ll look after her!” and when the car slowed down we both leaped to earth and ran, a race of death, after the crazed woman.

We caught her almost near the brink of the river, and found it difficult to keep her from running forward to hurl herself in it. She was bent on suicide. But finally we calmed her, and found that she had been drinking whisky, which always so affected her, that the prospect of having to return to the city, the thought of having shamed us, had made her determine on suicide.