They had not had a holiday since Christmas, and on the last anniversary of that day they had worked until ten o'clock, making up for lost time. Their pay was twenty-five cents a day—except Shiloh, who received fifteen.
“But I'll soon be worth mo', pap,” she would say as she crawled up into the old man's lap—her usual place when she had eaten her supper and wanted to rest. “An you know what I'm gwine do with my other nickel every day? I'm gwine give it to the po' people of Indy an' China you preaches about.”
And thus she would prattle—too young to know that, through the cupidity of white men, in this—the land of freedom and progress—she—this blue-eyed, white-skinned child of the Saxon race, was making the same wages as the Indian sepoy and the Chinese coolie.
It was Saturday night and after the old man had put Shiloh to bed, he mounted his horse and rode across the mountain to Westmoreland.
“Oh,” said the old lady—“he's gwine over to Miss Alice's to git his Sunday School less'n. An' I'd like to know what good Sunday school less'ns 'll do any body. If folks'd git in the habit of wuckin' mo' an' prayin' less, the worl'ud be better off, an' they'd really have somethin' to be thankful fur when Sunday comes, 'stid of livin' frum han' to mouth an' trustin' in some unknown God to cram feed in you' crops.”
Hardened by poverty, work, and misfortune, she was the soul of pessimism.