The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The East

by Walter A. Wyckoff

The situation was discouraging. I had tramped some twenty miles through dust and heat over a hilly country, and since the early morning I had had nothing but a few apples to eat. Besides, it was fast growing dark, and so too late to look for work on the farms back in the country.

The immediate neighborhood is largely taken up with country-seats, and I made repeated efforts to get work at the hands of a gardener. I soon discovered that I was in a community where special provision is made against my class. At the carriage gates I not infrequently found a notice which warned me of the presence of dogs, and although the dogs gave me no trouble, a lodge-keeper, or footman, or gardener, upon learning my errand, was invariably seized with fervent anxiety for getting me unnoticed out of the grounds.

At nightfall I walked back to the tavern, and asked the proprietor if I might sleep in his stables. To my surprise, he was exceedingly friendly. He readily agreed to that, and, of his own accord, he invited me to remain at the tavern over Sunday, and to take my meals in the kitchen; and he added that, on Monday morning, he would give me some work to do as compensation.

Already I had made a friend of the cook, and she now received me warmly. Perhaps it was her habitual good-nature, for she had the same kindly manner toward the other men, Sam and the three Irish section hands from the railway, who took their meals with her. More than ever I was attracted to her. She cordially greeted the workmen as they entered her hot, reeking, ill-lit kitchen, addressing them by affectionate diminutives of their first names, as Johnnie and Jimmie and the like. They clearly had a warm regard for her, and they respectfully lowered their voices and said "ma'am" in addressing her. To be sure they swore viciously in her presence; but then she swore, too, not ill-naturedly, but simply as an habitual means of emphasizing her usual language.

I watched her for some sign of ill-temper. In stifling quarters and under exasperating inconveniences she toiled on at work far beyond her strength, not patiently merely, but with the cheerfulness which is always thoughtful of the comfort of others.

In spite of fatigue, that night in the stable was not a restful one. The air lay heavy and hot in the unventilated loft, and through the night the horses, tortured by flies, stamped ceaselessly in their stalls. About midnight two men came into the barn. I soon knew them for bedless wanderers like myself, and I awaited them in the hay with an interest that was lively. They did not climb to the loft, but lay down in a wagon; and for an hour or more I heard their gruff voices in antiphonal sentences replete with strange oaths. They were speaking in low tones and not excitedly, but their speech seemed little else than profanity.

The heat and darkness intensified the quiet of the night. The breathless stillness was broken only by the hoarse blasphemies below, and the nervous stamping of the pestered brutes. I tried to shut out the sounds, and at last fell asleep.

In the early morning I awoke to a beautiful mid-summer Sunday, the first of my vagrant life. Sam was whistling at his work in the stables and the tramps were gone. I found a path behind the barn leading to a point on the river-bank where I could bathe.

The military cadets were out on Sunday parade, and the music of their band was the summer morning itself, vocal in notes other than the songs of birds, and the soft murmur of the river. The tents of the camp shone spotlessly white on the bluffs above the water. Some of the buildings were visible among the trees. The sheer approach to the Post and its dark background of well-wooded highlands threw into strong relief its commanding position. Among the hills to the north the river appears. The immediate section of it might be a lake, girt with steep hills, that are dense with infinite shades of green. About the Post the river sweeps in a magnificent curve, and disappears among the hills to the south.

The few books that my pack contained made generous amends, on this day of rest, for the weight which they had added to my load. After breakfast I took one of them to a shaded corner of the church-yard, and read there until the service hour, and then I slipped into a seat half hidden by the baptismal font.