John Marvel, Assistant

by Thomas Nelson Page

I asked one of the men which house was the one I was seeking. He told me, while half a dozen hooted something about the "scab."

When I came to the door pointed out I had no difficulty in recognizing it. The panels and sides were "daubed" up with mud, which still stuck in many places, showing the persecution which had been carried on. Inside, I never saw a more deplorable sight. The poor woman who came to the door, her face drawn with pain and white with terror, and her eyes red with weeping, would not apparently have been more astonished to have found a ghost on the steps. She gave a hasty, frightened glance up the street in both directions, and moaned her distress.

"Won't you step inside?" she asked, more to get the door closed between her and the terror of the street than out of any other feeling; and when I was inside, she asked me over again what I wanted. She could not take in that I had called out of charity; she appeared to think that it was some sort of official visit. When she found out, however, that such was my object, the effect was instantaneous. At first she could not speak at all; but after a little she was calm enough and poured out all her woes. She went over anew how her husband had come over from Scotland several years before and they had been quite comfortably fixed. How he had gotten work, and had belonged to the union, and they had done well. He had, however, been obliged by the union to strike, and they had spent all the money they had, and in addition to that had gotten into debt. So, when the strike was over, although he obtained work again, he was in debt, and the harassment of it made him ill. Then how he had come North to find work, and had had a similar experience. All this I knew. It was just then that her last baby was born and that her little child died, and the daughter of the employer of her husband was so kind to her, that when her husband got well again, there was talk of a strike to help others who were out, and she made him resign from the union. Here she broke down. Presently, however, she recovered her composure. They had come to her then, she said, and told her they would ruin him.

"But I did not think they would kill him, sir," she sobbed. "He tried to get back, but Wringman kept him out. That man murdered him, sir."

There was not a lump of coal in the house; but her little girl had gone for some cinders, while she minded the baby. She had to go where she was not known—a long way, she said—as the children would not let her pick any where she used to get them.

When I came out I found that it had turned many degrees colder during the short time I was in the house, and the blast cut like a knife. The loafers on the street had thinned out under the piercing wind; but those who yet remained jeered as I passed on. I had not gotten very far when I came on a child, a little girl, creeping along. She was bending almost double under the weight of a bag of cinders, and before I reached her my sympathy was excited by the sight of her poor little bare hands and wrists, which were almost blue with cold. Her head, gray with the sifted ashes, was tucked down to keep her face from the cutting wind, and when I came nearer I heard her crying—not loud; but rather wailing to herself.

"What is the matter, little girl?" I asked.

"My hands are so cold—Oh! Oh! Oh!" she sobbed.

"Here, let me warm them." I took the bag and set it down, and took her little ashy hands in mine to try and warm them, and then for the first time I discovered that it was my little girl, Janet. She was so changed that I scarcely knew her. Her little pinched face, like her hair, was covered with ashes. Her hands were ice. When I had gotten some warmth into them I took off my gloves and put them on her, and I picked up her bag and carried it back for her. My hands nearly froze, but somehow I did not mind it. I had such a warm feeling about my heart. I wonder men don't often take off their gloves for little poor children.

I marched with her through the street near her house, expecting to be hooted at, and I should not have minded it; for I was keyed up and could have fought an army. But no one hooted. If they looked rather curiously at me, they said nothing.