The road was lonely. Once they passed a farmhouse, asleep save for a yellow light in a chamber. Somewhere a cock crowed. A dog barked in the faint distance.
Where the road ascended the mountain—a narrow cut between dark, pointed firs and swaying white-limbed birches—the way was slushy with melting snow. The littler girl, half dozing along the accustomed way, slipped and slid into puddles.
At the top of the mountain the two children shrank back into their mufflers, before the sweep of the wet, chill wind; but the mill was in sight—beyond the slope of bleak pastures outlined with stone walls—sunk deep in the valley beside a rapid mountain stream, a dim bulk already glimmering with points of light. Toward this the two little workwomen slopped along on squashy feet.
They were spinners. One was fifteen. She had worked three years. The other was fourteen. She had worked two years. The terse record of the National Child Labor Committee lies before me, unsentimental, bare of comment:
"They both get up at four fifteen A.M. and after breakfast start for the mill, arriving there in time not to be late, at six. Their home is two and one-half miles from the mill. Each earns three dollars a week—So they cannot afford to ride. The road is rough, and it is over the mountains."
(6)
(Providence Journal)
HOW TO SING THE NATIONAL SONGS
To Interpret the Text Successfully the Singer Must Memorize, Visualize, Rhythmize, and Emphasize
BY JOHN G. ARCHER