Through the mill: The life of a mill-boy

by Frederic Kenyon Brown

The graduation was held in one of the lecture halls of the Y. M. C. A. I sat in my place, watching with rapt eyes the speakers, the fluent speakers who had such an education! The principal was a college man. Him I watched with veritable worship. He had reached the goal I craved so eagerly, so vainly to reach. I wondered at the time if he felt bigger than other people because he had a college degree! When the program neared its end, a young man was announced to read an essay, the principal stating that the young man had been studying English but five months, and saying it so emphatically that I thought the reader must be a green Swede, so I marvelled greatly when the fluent diction sounded on my ears, for I did not hear a single sound with a Swedish accent to it!

One Monday morning there was a notice posted in the mill to the effect that an evening school of design would be opened in the Textile School. I inquired about it, and found that I could learn all sorts of artistic designing—wall-paper, book, and cloth, free of tuition. “Here’s my chance,” I thought. “I can learn a trade that will pay well, get me out of the mill, and not be too much of a tax on what little strength the mill has left me.” So I went joyously “up city,” and entered the splendid building used as a Textile College. I enrolled at the office and was assigned to a classroom.

I went to my task joyfully with dreams of future success, for I liked drawing. Had I not traced newspaper pictures ever since I was a small boy? Were not the white-painted walls of the mills I had worked in decorated with cow-boys, rustic pictures, and Indian’s heads, drawn by my pencil?

Three nights a week I walked back and forth to the Textile School, tired, but ambitious to make the most of my great opportunity. Week by week I went through various lessons until I began to design wall-papers with water-color and to make book-cover designs on which I prided myself, and on which my teacher complimented me.

Then my eyes began to weaken under the glare of the lights, and the long strain they had been under during the day, through staring at cotton threads and the fatigue of long hours under the mill lights. My conventionalized leaves and flowers, my water-lily book designs, my tracings for Scotch plaids—all grew hazy, jumpy, distorted, and my brush fell from a weary clutch. In dismal submission I had to give up that ambition. The mill was bound to have me. What was the use of fighting against it?

But now that the direction had been indicated by the Textile School, I thought that I might learn to draw in my spare time, and outside regular classrooms, for just then a Correspondence School agent came to me and offered me instruction in that line at a very reasonable rate. I enrolled myself, and thought that with the choice of my hours of study I could readily learn the art of designing. But a few evenings at elementary scribbling and a few dollars for advance lessons took away my courage. The whole thing seemed a blind leading. I cut off the lessons and gave up in utter despair.

Then, one night, as I was on my way from work, I was met near our house by a young lad who ran up to me, stopped abruptly, almost poked his finger in my eye as he called, derisively: “Aw, yer aunt’s been arrested fer being drunk! She was lugged off in a hurry-up! Aw, yer aunt’s got jugged! Shame on yer! shame on yer!”

I ran home at that, incredulous, but found the house deserted. Then I knew that it was true. I lay on the bed and cried my eyes sore in great misery, with the bottom gone out of the world.

My uncle had been called to investigate the matter. He came home and said that nothing could be done until morning, so we sat up to the table and made out as best we could with a supper.

The next morning I went to uncle’s overseer with a note to the effect that he would be unable to be at work that morning. The mill-boys, who had passed the news around, met me and in indelicate haste referred to my misfortune, saying, “Goin’ to the trial, Priddy,” and, “What did yer have to eat last night, Priddy—tripe on a skewer?” I worked apart that day, as if interdicted from decent society. My aunt’s shame was mine, perhaps in a greater measure.