Sez Martin agin, “I am sick to death of these everlasting complaints.”
His tone wuz cold—cold as a frog, and I see from his voice that he wuz mad—mad as a wet hen.
The man that answered him I could see from where I sot wuz evidently jest a plain workin’-man, jest like ’em that you meet in droves at 7 o’clock in the mornin’ and six at night.
But I liked his looks—he looked rugged and honest, and his voice had a uncultured ring of common sense and honesty, and at times a deep sorrer and sense of wrong touched it to a rude eloquence.
Martin sez, and his tone wuz cold and smooth as a icesuckle in a January mornin’—
“What is it that you want me to do, anyway—tell me as briefly as you can, for my time is valuable.”
Sez the man agin, “We are workingmen and poor, and we do not expect to have many things that rich people have, but we do want our children to be educated. They must go out alone to their schools while their mothers are at home working to make a decent home for them, and they cannot follow them only with their thoughts and prayers.
“These cars going with the swiftness of lightning through these thronged streets, with no safeguard to protect them, are the means of making fathers’ and mothers’ hearts ache with fear and dread.
“One of my own children, a bright little lad, my only son, dear to me as my own life, was crushed down by them on his way to school.” The man’s voice broke here, for a rush of feeling swep’ up agin his voice, and stopped it.
“Another of these men lost a child, another saw an old mother crushed down before his eyes as she tried to cross the street, another—”