In looking over this chapter I see that I have drawn a very inadequate picture of Fitz-Adams. A hard swearer he certainly is, but Black Bob was right in assuring me that there is more ignorance than malice in his habitual maledictions.
First of all, Fitz-Adams is an admirable workman. To any department of the work of lumbermen he can lend a hand of highest efficiency. And his, in a marked degree, are the manual skill and resourceful ingenuity which are characteristic of the men. Only Fitz-Adams is exceptional in these particulars, like Old Man Toler. With them this manual skill, for instance, is like the sure touch of a master handicraftsman.
One morning, while at work with Old Man Toler, I openly admired his handling of an axe. Toler was standing on a log which obstructed our way, and which he was about to cut in two. He drew the axe-blade up the side of the log between his feet. "Do you see that scratch?" he said, and then he swung the axe above his head, and brought it down with a sweeping stroke. The blade entered the bark exactly where the scratch had been. Five times running, Toler performed this feat, never missing his mark by the fraction of an inch, and then he turned to me. "I've used an axe so long, Buddy," he said, "that I can split hairs with a good one now."
But even more than a thorough woodsman, Fitz-Adams is a superb overseer. Under his shrewd foresight and direction, the whole work of the crew is urged forward with resistless energy. He knows exactly what each man is doing, and whether or not the work is well done.
His planning of the work and his effective organizing and directing toward its accomplishment are, no doubt, his strongest points; but dramatically considered, although he is perfectly unconscious of the effect, he shows to greatest advantage when he is personally leading the crew in an attack upon a difficult situation. All his powers are well in evidence then, and not least of all his power of speech. You have actual sight at such times of one of Carlyle's heroes, a "captain of industry," to whom there are no insurmountable difficulties, no "impossibilities," but who brings order out of chaos, by the sheer force of indomitable energy.
With this high efficiency his ignorance is in striking contrast. He can write his name, and there his educational equipment ends. His helplessness in the presence of figures is as pathetic and quite as serious as is Sam the Book-keeper's. But Fitz-Adams is a young man, barely thirty, I should say. Almost his earliest memory is that of being a mule-driver in one of the mines near Wilkesbarre. From this he went to picking slate in a breaker. Now he is a jobber, employing a large crew, and undertaking contracts which involve considerable sums of money. There has been offered to him, and it is still open, the position of overseer in a far larger enterprise than his own, where, personally, he would run none of the business risk; but he has confided to me that he does not dare to accept the place owing to his lack of even elementary education. In this connection he once asked me whether I thought that he might yet go to school. I did think so with emphasis, and I gave him so many reasons for this opinion, and cited so many examples of men as old as he and older who were at school, that he really warmed to it as a practicable plan.
* * * * * * * *
The rain stopped hours ago, and it is turning very cold, and snow has begun to fall. Fitz-Adams got back from English Centre long before dinner, and there is evidence that he has not been drinking. I have consulted him on the matter of leaving, and he has urged me to stay, and has offered me permanent employment; but he says that, if I must be off, and am bent on going westward, I would better get as far as Hoytville as soon as possible, else I may run the risk of encountering roads blocked with snow. Then, for the first time, he introduced the subject of wages, and asked me what I thought was "right." I said that before coming to the camp, I had worked for a farmer, and had been given seventy-five cents a day and my keep; and I added that, if this rate of wage seemed fair to him, it would suit me perfectly. He agreed at once, and now I am a capitalist. Soon I shall set out for Hoytville, which is, I judge, a matter of two or three hours' walk from here. Fitz-Adams has given me careful directions about the road, and has shown the deepest interest in my plan of getting West, and has urged me to write to him.
The crew are all gone to work, and I shall not see them. They were off as soon as the storm slackened. All were keen to go, and so be spared the misery of a day of enforced idleness, all except "Old Pete," and he is past being keen. He is over sixty, and has a strongly marked Celtic face, deeply furrowed with the lines of age and pain. He works with the crew, but in camp he sits alone on the bench opposite the stove, with the overalls and shirts hanging over him. When not at work he sits there hour after hour, his large, muscular frame bent forward, and his elbows resting on his knees, and there he endures, in the dumb agony of animal pain, the torment of rheumatism in his legs. He seldom speaks, and never of his sufferings—only sometimes in comically sententious response to something that has interested him. And the men let him alone, knowing by a true intuition that he prefers it so.
After the rain let up I happened to pass through the lobby as the men were starting for their work. Old Pete was the last to move. I watched him rising slowly to his feet. In spite of him, his face drew the picture of the hideous pain he bore, but through it shone the clear courage of a man, and his eyes reflected the grim humor of a thought that touched his native sense, and he smiled as he said: