Those who had plenty of money found it difficult to get a sufficient quantity of good food, Bingville being rather cut off from other centers of life by distance and a poor railroad. Some drove sixty miles to Hazelmead to do marketing for themselves and their neighbors.
Mr. and Mrs. J. Patterson Bing, however, in their luxurious apartment at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, knew little of these conditions until Mr. Bing came up late in March for a talk with the mill superintendent. Many of the sick and poor suffered extreme privation. Father O'Neil and the Reverend Otis Singleton of the Congregational Church went among the people, ministering to the sick, of whom there were very many, and giving counsel to men and women who were unaccustomed to prosperity and ill-qualified wisely to enjoy it. One day, Father O'Neil saw the Widow Moran coming into town with a great bundle of fagots on her back.
"This looks a little like the old country," he remarked.
She stopped and swung her fagots to the ground and announced: "It do that an' may God help us! It's hard times, Father. In spite o' all the money, it's hard times. It looks like there wasn't enough to go 'round—the ships be takin' so many things to the old country."
"How is my beloved Shepherd?" the good Father asked.
"Mother o' God! The house is that cold, he's been layin' abed for a week an' Judge Crooker has been away on the circuit."
"Too bad!" said the priest. "I've been so busy with the sick and the dying and the dead I have hardly had time to think of you."
Against her protest, he picked up the fagots and carried them on his own back to her kitchen.
He found the Shepherd in a sweater sitting up in bed and knitting socks.