The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The East

by Walter A. Wyckoff

When the door opened I knew instinctively that the gentleman who stood framed in it was the village pastor. I said that I was looking for work. He asked me inside. I thought this a curious change of subject, but willingly followed him into a dim sitting-room, fragrant of perfect cleanliness. I explained that I was on my way to West Point in search of work, but was without money, and so obliged to earn my living by the way, and that I would gladly do anything that offered in payment for bread and board. He questioned me closely, with an evident purpose of drawing me out further, and then he abruptly offered me work on his wood-pile, and appeared surprised at my instant agreement.

The wood was green, and the saw, with which it had first to be cut into proper lengths, was not sharp, and it was certainly not skilfully handled. The work was hard, but at noon there was ready for me in the shed, a dinner of beef, and potatoes, and slices of bread, which for lightness and color were like flakes of snow, held by a band of crisp brown crust.

In the afternoon the minister interrupted my work with the request that I would join him in the house, and he indicated where I could first wash in the wood-shed. I steeled myself for a lecture on the evils of vagrancy, with incidental references to drunkenness as its probable cause in my case. Instead, I found the family seated for an early "tea," and myself invited to a place at the table. I am bound to say that I was rattled. I had expected a meal in the kitchen, and a bed in common with the preacher's horse.

Not the least curious position in which I have so far been placed, was that which I occupied at the minister's board. His family, I shrewdly suspect, did not share his hospitable feelings toward me, and I could venture a guess that it was under protest from them that I took a seat next to the minister's daughter.

She was a pale, delicate girl, of seventeen, perhaps. Her short, brown hair curled close to her head, and her dark eyes looked dimly at you through huge spectacles. The light, crisp stuff in which she was dressed seemed to create about her an atmosphere some degrees cooler than that of the rest of the room.

By way of beginning, I offered some fatuous commonplace about the surrounding country. Instantly I realized that I was not to venture upon a conversation that implied terms of social equality. The child bristled with outraged dignity, and let fall in reply a sharp monosyllable. Further conversation with her would have been highly diverting, but not very considerate, and so I turned to my host, who maintained through the meal the air of one who is on the defensive, but who is sustained by the conviction of doing his duty.

My sympathies were all with the girl. Her feeling was very natural—so natural as to suggest the rather disturbing ideas with which Count Tolstoi is again confronting us. It was a very practical application of the teaching of brotherhood, that of asking a chance workman to a seat at one's family table. But if ministering to Him is really, in part, in such recognitions of the least of His brethren, the instinctive shrinking of the girl brought up in a Christian home in the country was a commentary on our drift from the simplicities of the Gospel.

In the evening I went with the minister to a prayer-meeting in his church. A handful of people sat at solemn intervals in the audience-room. I was plainly the only common laborer among them. The men appeared to be comfortable farmers, and there was a village shopkeeper or two, while the women were clearly their wives and daughters.

In one of the agitating silences which fell upon the company after the minister had declared the meeting open, I rose and took part; and at the door, when the benediction had dismissed us, several of the men spoke to me cordially. There was entire kindliness in their manner, and they, perhaps, were not conscious of showing surprise in welcoming a laborer to their meeting.

That night the minister insisted upon my taking a bed in his house. I pleaded an early start. He, too, was to be up early, and in the morning I found him in the kitchen before me. On the table were bread and milk; and as I ate I parried the somewhat searching questions of my host.