I admit that I did do wrong, but I didn't mean it, and my only desire was to help my dear sister. You won't catch me helping her again very soon.
[THE LONG STRIKE.]
BY JULIA K. HILDRETH.
All along the banks of the Connecticut River are little towns consisting almost wholly of great cotton factories run by water power or steam, and the cottages of those who labor in them. Windham is one of these towns, and though perhaps you might not find it on the map, for it is a very small place, it turns out thousands of yards of muslin and cotton every year. All around the tall factory buildings are grouped the little red and white dwellings of the weavers, like chickens around their mother hen.
Usually these small houses are empty during working hours. All day long the hum and clatter of machinery shake the walls, and dense volumes of smoke pour from the tall chimneys.
But one morning everything was changed. The doors of the factories were closed; no smoke came from the chimneys, and no sound of machinery from the buildings. Around the cottages men stood in groups, with angry faces, scowling and talking in low tones. Presently the sound of a drum was heard. At this the men separated, and forming themselves into a line, marched off.
About a quarter of a mile from the village was an open field, where a tent had been erected for the accommodation of travelling lecturers, who were in the habit of stopping at Windham in the summer-time.
To this tent the men were going when Nelly Austin first saw them. Nelly lived all alone with her mother in a small house near the tent. She knew very little of factories or factory life, for she seldom went to the village, and had no companions living there. So when this crowd of men, with a boy beating a drum before them, came marching along the road, Nelly was astonished, and ran in the house to tell her mother.
Mrs. Austin was sitting by the window sewing, and grew very white when Nelly spoke.