The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The East

by Walter A. Wyckoff

I helped to unhitch the horses, and then asked whether there was more that I could do. There were apples to be picked up from under the trees in the orchard, and I worked at this task until dark, when there came the call to supper.

After that meal the children were put to bed, and the rest of us gathered in the kitchen, where a large open fire burned, and an oil-lamp lent its light. An "apple-butter making" was to be the feature of the next day's work, and we spent the evening in getting ready for it.

We sat in a semicircle in front of the fire, first the farmer's wife, and then the patriarchal grandfather, who was almost deaf, and was known to all the household by the not euphonious name of "Gross-pap," and next to him the grandmother, and last the guest. The farmer himself sat at a table near us, briskly working an apple-peeler, while the rest of us removed the cores, and cut the apples into small sections.

It was a very comfortable place which I seemed to have found in the household. I was taken in with natural hospitality, and the family life moved on unhampered by my presence, while I, a welcome guest, could sit and watch it at my ease.

The old man had every excuse for silence, and he and his wife spoke rarely, and always in their native tongue, but they evidently understood English perfectly. The farmer and his wife spoke English to each other, and spoke it as though born to its use, but they used that quaint German dialect in talking with the old people and the children.

The wife was a plain woman, inclined to fretfulness, I thought, and she had a certain air with her husband, which is not uncommon to plain women whose husbands are distinctly handsome. She had little to say, but she listened attentively to the farmer's talk.

He was entertainment for us all. Good-looking, high-spirited, manly fellow—in perfect unconsciousness of self, he talked on with the genial freedom of a true man of the world.

His trip to Williamsport was a fruitful theme, and no least event of the journey was without its interest. He told us of the neighbors whom he met on the road, and all of his conjectures regarding their probable errands. He had taken a load of vegetables to town, and now recounted every sale and purchase, for he had been charged with many commissions. One was the purchase of braid for his wife's new dress. He was full of good-humor at each fresh departure in his tale; but, for some reason, the story of this last commission pleased him most. With high regard for circumstantial detail, he told it to us at least five times, and ended every narrative with a beaming smile, and the unvarying remark that "I'd have got it wider if I'd only known," to which his wife replied each time with unfaltering insistence upon the last word: "But you might have known."

In the morning he was as cheerful as on the night before, and he put me in high spirits as, with many good wishes for my success, he told me again how sure he was that I could find work in the woods.

At Salladasburg I stopped for further directions about the way to English Centre; and the tavern-keeper, at whose door I inquired, confirmed me strongly in my expectation of ready employment.