"I wish I'd found it twenty years ago," I said regretfully. "Then you'd have a lawyer for a husband instead of a—."
"Hush," she answered putting her hand over my mouth. "I've a man for a husband and that's all I care about."
The way she said it made me feel that after all being a man was what counted and that if I could live up to that day by day, no matter what happened, then I could be well satisfied. I guess the city directory was right when before now it couldn't define me any more definitely than, "clerk." And there is about as much man in a clerk as in a valet. They are both shadows.
The boy fell in with my plans eagerly, for the gymnasium work made him forget the study part of the programme. The next day I took him up there and saw him introduced to the various department heads. I paid his membership fee and they gave him a card which made him feel like a real club man. I tell you it took a weight off my mind.
On the Monday following our arrival in our new quarters, I rose at five-thirty, put on my overalls and had breakfast. I ate a large bowl of oatmeal, a generous supply of flapjacks, made of some milk that had soured, sprinkled with molasses, and a cup of hot black coffee—the last of a can we had brought down with us among the left-over kitchen supplies.
For lunch Ruth had packed my box with cold cream-of-tartar biscuit, well buttered, a bit of cheese, a little bowl of rice pudding, two hard-boiled eggs and a pint bottle of cold coffee. I kissed her goodby and started out on foot for the street where I was to take up my work. The foreman demanded my name, registered me, told me where to find a shovel and assigned me to a gang under another foreman. At seven o'clock I took my place with a dozen Italians and began to shovel. My muscles were decidedly flabby, and by noon I began to find it hard work. I was glad to stop and eat my lunch. I couldn't remember a meal in five years that tasted as good as that did. My companions watched me curiously—perhaps a bit suspiciously—but they chattered in a foreign tongue among themselves and rather shied away from me. On that first day I made up my mind to one thing—I would learn Italian before the year was done, and know something more about these people and their ways. They were the key to the contractor's problem and it would pay a man to know how to handle them. As I watched the boss over us that day it did not seem to me that he understood very well.
From one to five the work became an increasing strain. Even with my athletic training I wasn't used to such a prolonged test of one set of muscles. My legs became heavy, my back ached, and my shoulders finally refused to obey me except under the sheer command of my will. I knew, however, that time would remedy this. I might be sore and lame for a day or two, but I had twice the natural strength of these short, close-knit foreigners. The excitement and novelty of the employment helped me through those first few days. I felt the joy of the pioneer—felt the sweet sense of delving in the mother earth. It touched in me some responsive chord that harked back to my ancestors who broke the rocky soil of New England. Of the life of my fellows bustling by on the earth-crust overhead—those fellows of whom so lately I had been one—I was not at all conscious. I might have been at work on some new planet for all they touched my new life. I could see them peering over the wooden rail around our excavation as they stopped to stare down at us, but I did not connect them with myself. And yet I felt closer to this old city than ever before. I thrilled with the joy of the constructor, the builder, even in this humble capacity. I felt superior to those for whom I was building. In a coarse way I suppose it was a reflection of some artistic sense—something akin to the creative impulse. I can say truthfully that at the end of that first day I came home—begrimed and sore as I was—with a sense of fuller life than so far I had ever experienced.
I found Ruth waiting for me with some anxiety. She came into my soil-stained arms as eagerly as a bride. It was good. It took all the soreness out of me. Before supper I took the boy and we went down to the public baths on the waterfront and there I dived and splashed and swam like a young whale. The sting of the cold salt water was all the further balm I needed. I came out tingling and fit right then for another nine-hour day. But when I came back I threatened our first week's savings at the supper-table. Ruth had made more hot griddle-cakes and I kept her at the stove until I was ashamed to do it longer. The boy, too, after his plunge, showed a better appetite than for weeks.