The Life Stories

of X-AUfo^r

Undistinguished Americans

As Told by Themselves

Edited by Hamilton Holt

With an Introduction by Edwin E. Slosson

NEW YORK JAMES POTT & COMPANY

1906

REESE

- SE

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION .

CHAPTER I, >'.,; THE LIFE STORY OF A LITHUANIAN

CHAPTER II THE LIFE STORY OF A POLISH SWEATSHOP GIRL . . 34

CHAPTER III THE LIFE STORY OF AN ITALIAN BOOTBLACK . . 47

CHAPTER IV THE LIFE STORY OF A GREEK PEDDLER . 63

CHAPTER V THE LIFE STORY OF A SWEDISH FARMER

CHAPTER VI THE LIFE STORY OF A FRENCH DRESSMAKER . . 99

CHAPTER VII THE LIFE STORY OF A GERMAN NURSE GIRL . . 125

CHAPTER VIII THE LIFE STORY OF AN IRISH COOK . . . 143

CHAPTER IX THE LIFE STORY OF A FARMER'S WIFE .... 150

CHAPTER X

TWTT T.TTTTT ST^«V OF AN ITINERANT MINISTER . . 167

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CHAPTER XI THE LIFE STORY OF A NEGRO PEON .... 183

CHAPTER XII THE LIFE STORY OF AN INDIAN . . . . 200

CHAPTER XIII THE LIFE STORY OF AN IQORROTE CHIEF . . . 225

CHAPTER XIV THE LIFE STORY OF A SYRIAN ...... 238

CHAPTER XV THE LIFE STORY OF A JAPANESE SERVANT . . . 257

CHAPTER XVI THE LIFE STORY OF A CHINAMAN . .281

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NOTE

The INDEPENDENT has published during the last four years about seventy-five autobiogra phies of undistinguished American men and women. The aim of each autobiography was to typify the life of the average worker in some particular vocation, and to make each story the genuine experience of a real person. From this list have been selected the following sixteen lives as most representative of the hum bler classes in the nation, and of individuals whose training and work have been the most diverse. Thus we have the story of the butcher, the sweat-shop worker, the boot black, the push-cart peddler, the lumber man, the dressmaker, the nurse girl, the cook, the cotton-picker, the head-hunter, the trained nurse, the editor, the minister, the butler and the laundryman. They also represent the five great races of mankind, the white, yel low, red, brown and black, and include immi grants from Lithuania, Poland, Sweden, Ire land, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Syria, China and Japan. I am aware that some of these autobiographies, or "lifelets," are crude from a literary point of view, but they all have a deep human interest and perhaps some socio logical importance.

HAMILTON HOLT. [vii]

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INTRODUCTION

THE late Jules Verne about a year before his death created something of a sensa tion by saying that the novel had reached its height and would soon be displaced from its present position of influence and popularity by new forms of literature. Whether the fact that his later romances had not sold as well as his earlier had anything to do with this pessimistic view of the outlook for his trade, there is much to indicate that he was right. It is true that there are more novels written and read than ever before, and there is no decline in quality, whether we consider the average or the exceptional. But the habitual readers of fiction, notwithstanding their con- spicuousness and vocality, form only a small and continually smaller proportion of the total number of readers. Most men and many women prefer to come into closer touch with reality and seek it, often in vain, in the newspapers. Consequently fiction is under-

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going a process of fission ; the cleft between the realistic and romantic novels is widening. The former are becoming more nearly a tran script of life, and the latter, no longer tethered to earth, are soaring into the ether of the imaginary and impossible. In the same way the old-fashioned melodrama is differenti ating into the drawing-room comedy and the burlesque opera.

When you propose to tell a story to children they interrupt at the first sentence with the question, " Is it a true story? " As we evade or ignore this natural and pertinent inquiry they finally cease to ask it, and we blur for them the edges of reality until it fades off into the mists. The hardest part of the training of the scientist is to get back the clear sight of his childhood. But nowadays our educators do not do quite so much as formerly to en courage the mythopeic faculty of children. It has been found that their imagination can be exercised by other objects than the imag inary. Consequently the number of readers who are impatient of any detectable deviation from truth is increasing.

Besides this, most people — perhaps all- are more impressed by the concrete than the abstract. The generalized types of humanity as expressed by the artist in painting and sculpture, romances and poems do not interest them so much as do individuals. A composite photograph of a score of girls is very beauti-

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INTRODUCTION

ful, but one is not apt to fall in love with it, notwithstanding the stories for which this has served as the theme. The scientist has a very clear and definite conception of kinetic energy when it is expressed by the formula mv2, but he is more forcibly struck by it when he is hit on the head with a club. Formerly botanists used to talk a great deal about species and types ; later they turned their attention to vari eties, and now the men who are making the most progress are experimenting with one plant and a single flower of that one. The candidate for a Ph.D. watches a single amoeba under a microscope and writes his thesis on one day's doings of its somewhat monotonous life. The man who can describe the antics of a squirrel in a tree has all the publishers after him, while the zoologist has to pay for the publication of his monograph on the Sciuri- dce. The type of the naturalist, the ideal statue of the sculptor, the algebraic formula of the physicist and the hero and heroine of the romancer have a symmetry, universality and beauty above that of any individual and in a sense they are truer, but their chief value is not in themselves but in their use as guides to the better understanding of the individual, from which they originate and to which they return.

To these two forces tending to develop new forms of literature, the love of truth and the interest in the concrete, we must add one [3]

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other, the spirit of democracy, the discovery of the importance of the average man. This, after all, is the most profitable branch of nature study, the study of Homo sapiens, and of his wife, who, in this country at least, usually also belongs to the species sapiens. Wild adven tures, erratic characters, strange scenes and impossible emotions are no longer required even in fiction. The ordinary man under ordinary circumstances interests us most be cause he is most akin to us. In politics he has gained his rights and in history and literature he is coming to be recognized. We realize now that a very good history of France could be written, better than most of the old-fash ioned kind, without mentioning the name of Louis XIV or Napoleon.

The resultant of these three forces gives us the general direction of the literature of the future. It will be more realistic, more per sonal and less exceptional. The combination of these qualities is found in the autobiog raphy, which, as Longfellow said years ago, "is what all biography ought to be." It has al ways been a favorite form in fiction, from "Apuleius," "Arabian Nights" and "Rob inson Crusoe " to the present. Now when we publish a " Life and Letters " we lay the em phasis on the latter part. A great deal of fun has been made of those who preferred to read the love letters of the Brownings rather than the " Sonnets from the Portuguese " and

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INTRODUCTION

" One Word More," but who will say that the verdict of the future will not vindicate these readers rather than their critics?

One other characteristic of the modern reader must be taken into consideration, his love of brevity. The short story is more pop ular than the novel, the vaudeville sketch than the drama. We have, then, a demand for the brief autobiography, the life story in a few pages. Since this form of literature seems likely to become a distinct type we might ven ture to give it the provisional name of the " lifelet." Its relation to other literary forms is shown most succinctly by this equation :

lifelet : autobiography : : short story : novel

The short story is older than the art of writing, but it is only recently that it has at tained a perfection and definiteness of form which has caused it to be recognized and stud ied by rhetoricians. The lifelets now being written are like the average short stories of fifty years ago in crudity and indefiniteness of aim, but already we can see something of the laws and limitations of this new literary type. In its construction the same general rules apply as to the short story, and conden sation, elimination, subordination and selec tion are necessary in order to make it readable and truthful. It really demands as much lit erary skill as any form of fiction, but when

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it is strictly autobiographical this is likely to be lacking. However, the number of per sons who can write fairly well when they have the material is great and increasing with the spread of education. It has been said that every one's life contains the material for one good novel. It would evidently be more plausible to say this of the lifelet.

Short autobiographies of undistinguished people occasionally appear in most of our magazines, but The Independent has pub lished more than any other, for its Managing Editor, Mr. Hamilton Holt, has for several years devoted himself to procuring such nar ratives with the object of ultimately presenting in this way a complete picture of American life in all its strata. These life stories found favor with the readers of The Independent, so a few of them have been selected for publi cation in this volume. In the selection the aim has been to include a representative of each of the races which go to make up our composite nationality, and of as many differ ent industries as possible. The book has, therefore, a unity of theme and purpose that may compensate for its diversity of topic and style. It is a mosaic picture composed of living tesserae.

In procuring these stories two methods were used; first and preferably, to have the life written upon his own initiative by the person who lived it; second, in the case of one too

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INTRODUCTION

ignorant or too impatient to write, to have the story written from interviews, and then read to and approved by the person telling it. Since the author's name is often omitted or is unknown to the reader, he will have to be content with the Editor's assurance that great pains have been taken in all cases to see that the account is truthful, both as to facts and mode of thought, and that it is a represen tative, and not exceptional experience of its class. These sketches, therefore, are very dif ferent in character from those of professional writers of the wealthy or wrell-to-do class, who temporarily become tramps, factory girls, or nursery governesses, or who join the crowd of the unemployed for the purpose of later securing employment as professors or editors. This book is, then, intended not merely to satisfy our common curiosity as to "how the other half lives," but to have both a present and a future value as a study in sociology. If Plutarch had given us the life stories of a slave and a hoplite, a peasant and a potter, wre would willingly have dispensed with an equivalent number of kings and philosophers. Carlyle gave to his volume of biographies the title " Heroes and Hero Worship." Emer son gave to his the title " Representative Men." Both were right. We can understand the significance of the great man only when we view him both as a product of his times and as an innovator. So, also, to understand a social

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class, we must study it both statistically and individually. Biography and demography are equally useful, the former more vivid, the latter more comprehensive. One who studies Charles Booth's nine large volumes on the " Life and Labor of the Poor in London " will know as exactly as possible how many men in that city are hungry and cold, but he will be more likely to gain a definite realiza tion of their condition and a stronger impulse to remedy it, by reading Jack London's "The People of the Abyss."

Lincoln said that "God must love the com mon people because he made so many of them." In all countries the question of na tional destiny is always ultimately settled by the will of majority, whether the people vote or not. It is the undistinguished people who move the world, or who prevent it from mov ing. And the wise statesman is he who can best read the minds of the non-vocal part of the population, the silent partners who have the controlling vote in the governmental firm.

EDWIN E. SLOSSON.

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CHAPTER I

THE LIFE STORY OF A LITHUANIAN

The Lithuanian, who told the following story of his life to Mr. Ernest Poole, is a workman in the Chicago Stockyards and gave his name as Antanas Kaztauskis.

THIS is not my real name, because if this story is printed it may be read back in Lithuania, and I do not want to get my father and the ugly shoemaker into trouble with the Russian Government.

It was the shoemaker who made me want to come to America. He was a traveling shoe maker, for on our farms we tan our own cowhides, and the shoemaker came to make them into boots for us. By traveling he learned all the news and he smuggled in news papers across the frontier from Germany. We were always glad to hear him talk.

I can never forget that evening four years ago. It was a cold December. We were in a big room in our log house in Lithuania. My good, kind, thin old mother sat near the wide fireplace, working her brown spinning wheel, with which she made cloth for our shirts and coats and pants. I sat on the floor in front of her with my knee-boots off and my

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feet stretched out to the fire. My feet were cold, for I had been out with my young brother in the freezing sheds milking the cows and feeding the sheep and geese. I leaned my head on her dress and kept yawning and think ing about my big goose-feather bed. My father sat and smoked his pipe across the fire place. Between was a kerosene lamp on a table, and under it sat the ugly shoemaker on a stool finishing a big yellow boot. His sleeves were rolled up ; his arms were thin and bony, but you could see how strong the fingers and wrist were, for when he grabbed the needle he jerked it through and the whole arm's length up. This arm kept going up and down. Every time it went up he jerked back his long mixed-up red hair and grunted. And you could just see his face — bony and shut to gether tight, and his narrow sharp eyes look ing down. Then his head would go down again, and his hair would get all mixed up. I kept watching him. My fat, older brother, who sat behind with his fat wife, grinned and said : " Look out or your eyes will make holes in the leather." My brother's eyes were al ways dull and sleepy. Men like him stay in Lithuania.

At last the boot was finished. The little shoemaker held it up and looked at it. My father stopped smoking and looked at it. " That's a good boot," said my father. The shoemaker grunted. ' That's a damn poor [10]

STORY OF A LITHUANIAN

boot," he replied (instead of " damn " he said " skatina ") , " a rough boot like all your boots, and so when you grow old you are lame. You have only poor things, for rich Russians get your good things, and yet you will not kick up against them. Bah!"

" I don't like your talk," said my father, and he spit into the fire, as he always did when he began to think. " I am honest. I work hard. We get along. That's all. So what good will such talk do me? "

4 You!" cried the shoemaker, and he now threw the boot on the floor so that our big dog lifted up his head and looked around. " It's not you at all. It's the boy — that boy there!" and he pointed to me. "That boy must go to America! "

Now I quickly stopped yawning and I looked at him all the time after this. My mother looked frightened and she put her hand on my head. "No, no; he is only a boy," she said. " Bah! " cried the shoemaker, pushing back his hair, and then I felt he was looking right through me. "He is eighteen and a man. You know where he must go in three years more." We all knew he meant my five years in the army. ' Where is your oldest son? Dead. Oh, I know the Russians —the man- wolves ! I served my term, I know how it is. Your son served in Turkey in the mountains. Why not here? Because they want foreign soldiers here to beat us. He

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had four roubles ($2.08) pay for three months, and with that he had to pay men like me to make his shoes and clothes. Oh, the wolves! They let him soak in rain; standing guard all night in the snow and ice he froze, the food was God's food, the vodka was cheap and rot ten! Then he died. The wolves — the man wolves! Look at this book." He jerked a Roman Catholic prayer book from his bag on the floor. ' Where would I go if they found this on me? Where is Wilhelm Birbell? "

At this my father spit hard again into the fire and puffed his pipe fast.

' Where is Wilhelm Birbell? " cried the shoemaker, and we all kept quiet. We all knew. Birbell was a rich farmer who smug gled in prayer books from Germany so that we all could pray as we liked, instead of the Russian Church way. He was caught one night and they kept him two years in the St. Petersburg jail, in a cell so narrow and short that he could not stretch out his legs, for they were very long. This made him lame for life. Then they sent him to Irkutsk, down in Siberia. There he sawed logs to get food. He escaped and now he is here in Chicago. But at that time he was in jail.

"Where is Wilhelm Birbell?" cried the shoemaker. " Oh, the wolves ! And what is this? " He pulled out an old American news paper, printed in the Lithuanian language, and I remember he tore it he was so angry.

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" The world's good news is all kept away. We can only read what Russian officials print in their papers. Read? No, you can't read or write your own language, because there is no Lithuanian school — only the Russian school —you can only read and write Russian. Can you? No, you can't! Because even those Russian schools make you pay to learn, and you have no money to pay. Will you never be ashamed — all you? Listen to me."

Now I looked at my mother and her face looked frightened, but the shoemaker cried still louder. " Why can't you have your own Lithuanian school? Because you are like dogs — you have nothing to say — you have no town meetings or province meetings, no elec tions. You are slaves! And why can't you even pay to go to their Russian school? Be cause they get all your money. Only twelve acres you own, but you pay eighty roubles ($40) taxes. You must work twelve days on your Russian roads. Your kind old wife must plow behind the oxen, for I saw her last summer, and she looked tired. You must all slave, but still your rye and wheat brings little money, because they cheat you bad. Oh, the wolves — how fat they are! And so your boy must never read or write, or think like a man should think."

But now my mother cried out, and her voice was shaking. ' Leave us alone — you leave us ! We need no money — we trade our things [13]

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for the things we need at the store — we have all we need — leave us alone! "

Then my fat brother grinned and said to the shoemaker, " You always stir up young men to go to America. Why don't you go yourself? "

I remember that the little shoemaker had pulled a big crooked pipe out of his bag. Now he took a splinter from the basket of splinters which hung on the wall and he lit his pipe and puffed it. His face showed me that he felt bad. " I am too old," he said, " to learn a new trade. These boots are no good in America. America is no place for us old ras cals. My son is in Chicago in the stockyards, and he writes to me. They have hard knocks. If you are sick or old there and have no money you must die. That Chicago place has trouble, too. Do you see that light? That is kerosene. Do you remember the price went up last year? That is Rockefeller. My son writes me about him. He is another man- wolf. A few men like him are grabbing all the good things — the oil and coal and meat and everything. But against these men you can strike if you are young. You can read free papers and prayer books. In Chicago there are prayer books for every man and woman. You can have free meetings and talk out what you think. And so if you are young you can change all these troubles. But I am old. I can feel it now, this winter. So I [14]

STORY OF A LITHUANIAN

only tell young men to go." He looked hard at me and I looked at him. He kept talking. " I tell them to go where they can choose their own kind of God — where they can learn to read and write, and talk, and think like men— and have good things! "

He kept looking at me, but he opened the newspaper and held it up. " Some day," he said, " I will be caught and sent to jail, but I don't care. I got this from my son, who reads all he can find at night. It had to be smug gled in. I lend it many times to many young men. My son got it from the night school and he put it in Lithuanian for me to see." Then he bent over the paper a long time and his lips moved. At last he looked into the fire and fixed his hair, and then his voice was shak ing and very low:

" 'We know these are true things — that all men are born free and equal — that God gives them rights which no man can take away — that among these rights are life, liberty and the getting of happiness.' '

He stopped, I remember, and looked at me, and I was not breathing. He said it again.

' Life, liberty and the getting of happiness.' Oh, that is what you want."

My mother began to cry. " He cannot go if his father commands him to stay," she kept saying. I knew this was true, for in Lith uania a father can command his son till he dies.

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" No, he must not go," said the shoemaker, " if his father commands him to stay." He turned and looked hard at my father. My father was looking into the fire. " If he goes," said my father, " those Russians will never let him come back." My mother cried harder. We all waited for him to say some thing else. In about five minutes the shoe maker got up and asked, " Well, what do you say, — the army or America? " But my father shook his head and would not say anything. Soon my brother began yawning and took his fat wife and went to bed. The little shoe maker gathered his tools into his big bag and threw it over his shoulder. His shoulder was crooked. Then he came close to me and looked at me hard.

' I am old," he said, " I wish I was young. And you must be old soon and that will be too late. The army — the man wolves! Bah! it is terrible."

After he was gone my father and I kept looking at the fire. My mother stopped cry ing and went out. Our house was in two parts of two rooms each. Between the parts was an open shed and in this shed was a big oven, where she was baking bread that night. I could hear her pull it out to look at it and then push it back. Then she came in and sat down beside me and began spinning again. I leaned against her dress and watched the fire and thought about America. Sometimes I [16]

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looked at my father, and she kept looking at him, too, but he would not say anything. At last my old mother stopped spinning and put her hand on my forehead.

" Alexandria is a fine girl," she whispered. This gave me a quick, bad feeling. Alexandria was the girl I wanted to marry. She lived about ten miles away. Her father liked my father and they seemed to be glad that I loved her. I had often been thinking at night how in a few years I would go with my uncle to her house and ask her father and mother to give her to me. I could see the wedding all ahead —how we would go to her house on Saturday night and they would have music there and many people and we would have a sociable time. Then in the morning we would go to the church and be married and come back to my father's house and live with him. I saw it all ahead, and I was sure we would be very happy. Now I began thinking of this. I could see her fine soft eyes and I hated to go away. My old mother kept her hands mov ing on my forehead. ' Yes, she is a nice girl ; a kind, beautiful girl," she kept whispering. We sat there till the lamp went out. Then the fire got low and the room was cold and we went to bed. But I could not sleep and kept thinking.

The next day my father told me that I could not go until the time came for the army, three years ahead. " Stay until then and then [17]

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we will see," he said. My mother was very glad and so was I, because of Alexandria. But in the coldest part of that winter my dear old mother got sick and died. The neighbors all came in and sang holy songs for two days and nights. The priest was there and my father bought fine candles. Two of the neighbors made a coffin. At last it was all over. For a long time our log house was al ways quiet.

That summer the shoemaker came again and talked with me. This time I was very eager to go to America, and my father told me I could go.

One morning I walked over to say good-by to Alexandria. It was ten miles and the road was dusty, so I carried my boots over my shoulder, as we always did, and I put them on when I came near her house. When I saw her I felt very bad, and so did she. I had the strongest wish I ever had to take hold of her and keep her all my life. We stayed together till it was dark and night fogs came up out of the field grass, and we could hardly see the house. Then she said good-by. For many nights I kept remembering the way she looked up at me.

The next night after supper I started. It is against the law to sell tickets to America, but my father saw the secret agent in the village and he got a ticket from Germany and found us a guide. I had bread and cheese and honey [18]

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and vodka and clothes in my bag. Some of the neighbors walked a few miles and said good-by and then went back. My father and my younger brother walked on all night with the guide and me. At daylight we came to the house of a man the guide knew. We slept there and that night I left my father and young brother. My father gave me $50 besides my ticket. The next morning before light we were going through the woods and we came to the frontier.' Three roads run along the frontier. On the first road there is a soldier every mile, who stands there all night. On the second road is a soldier every half mile, and on the third road is a soldier every quarter of a mile. The guide went ahead through the woods. I hid with my big bag behind a bush and whenever he raised his hand I sneaked along. I felt cold all over and sometimes hot. He told me that sometimes he took twenty immigrants together, all with out passports, and then he could not pass the soldiers and so he paid a soldier he knew one dollar a head to let them by. He said the soldier was very strict and counted them to see that he was not being cheated.

So I was in Germany. Two days after that we reached Tilsit and the guide took me to the railroad man. This man had a crowd of immigrants in a room, and we started that night on the railroad — fourth class. It was bad riding sometimes. I used to think of [19]

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Alexandria. We were all green and slow. The railroad man used to say to me, " You will have to be quicker than this in Chicago," and he was right. We were very slow in the stations where we changed trains, and he used to shout at us then, and one old German man who spoke Lithuanian told me what the man was calling us. When he told me this I hur ried, and so did the others, and we began to learn to be quicker. It took three days to get to Hamburg. There we were put in a big house called a barracks, and we waited a week. The old German man told me that the bar racks men were cheating us. He had been once to Cincinnati in America to visit his son, who kept a saloon. His old, long pipe was stolen there. He kept saying, " Dem grafters, dem grafters," in a low voice when ever they brought food to sell, for our bags were now empty. They kept us there till our money was half spent on food. I asked the old man what kind of American men were grafters, and he said, " All kinds in Cincin nati, but more in Chicago!" I knew I was going to Chicago, and I began to think quicker. I thought quicker yet on the boat. I saw men playing cards. I played and lost $1.86 in my new money, till the old man came behind me and said, " Dem grafters." When I heard this I got scared and threw down my cards. That old man used to point up at the rich people looking down at us and say, [20]

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" Dem grafters." They were the richest peo ple I had ever seen — the boat was the biggest boat I had ever seen — the machine that made it go was very big, and so was the horn that blew in a fog. I felt everything get bigger and go quicker every day.

It was the most when we came to New York. We were driven in a thick crowd to the railroad station. The old man kept point ing and saying, " Grafters, grafters," till the guide punched him and said, " Be quick, damn you, be quick." . . . "I will be quick pretty soon," said the old man to me, " and den I will get back dot pipe in Cincinnati. And when I will be quicker still, alreddy, I will steal some odder man's pipe. Every quick American man is a grafter.** I began to be lieve that this was true, but I was mixed up and could not think long at one time. Every thing got quicker — worse and worse — till then at last I was in a boarding house by the stock yards in Chicago with three Lithuanians, who knew my father's sisters at home.

That first night we sat around in the house and they asked me, " Well, why did you come? " I told them about that first night and what the ugly shoemaker said about " life, liberty and the getting of happiness." They all leaned back and laughed. " What you need is money," they said. " It was all right at home. You wanted nothing. You ate your own meat and your own things on the [21]

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farm. You made your own clothes and had your own leather. The other things you got at the Jew man's store and paid him with sacks of rye. But here you want a hundred things. Whenever you walk out you see new things you want, and you must have money to buy everything."

Then one man asked me, " How much have you? " and I told him $30. " You must buy clothes to look rich, even if you are not rich," he said. ' With good clothes you will have friends."

The next morning three of these men took me to a store near the stockyards to buy a coat and pants. " Look out," said one of them. "Is he a grafter?" I asked. They all laughed. ' You stand still. That is all you have to do," they said. So the Jew man kept putting on coats and I moved my arms and back and sides when they told me. We stayed there till it was time for dinner. Then we bought a suit. I paid $5 and then I was to pay $1 a week for five weeks.

In the afternoon I went to a big store. There was a man named Elias. " He is not a grafter," said my friends. He was nice to me and gave me good advice how to get a job. I bought two shirts, a hat, a collar, a necktie, two pairs of socks and some shoes. We kept going upstairs and downstairs. I saw one Lithuanian man buying everything for his wife and three children, who would come here

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the next week from Lithuania. My things cost me $8. I put these on right away and then I began to feel better.

The next night they took me for a walk down town. We would not pay to ride, so we walked so long that I wanted to take my shoes off, but I did not tell them this. When we came there I forgot my feet. We stood by one theater and watched for half an hour. Then we walked all around a store that filled one whole block and had walls of glass. Then we had a drink of whiskey, and this is better than vodka. We felt happier and looked into cafes. We saw shiny carriages and automobiles. I saw men with dress suits, I saw women with such clothes that I could not think at all. Then my friends punched me and I turned around and saw one of these women, and with her was a gentleman in a fine dress suit. I began looking harder. It was the Jew man that sold me my suit. " He is a grafter," said my friends. " See what money can do." Then we walked home and I felt poor and my shoes got very bad.

That night I felt worse. We were tired out when we reached the stockyards, so we stopped on the bridge and looked into the river out there. It was so full of grease and dirt and sticks and boxes that it looked like a big, wide, dirty street, except in some places, where it boiled up. It made me sick to look at it. When I looked away I could see on one side [23]

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some big fields full of holes, and these were the city dumps. On the other side were the stock yards, with twenty tall slaughter house chim neys. The wind blew a big smell from them to us. Then we walked on between the yards and the dumps and all the houses looked bad and poor. In our house my room was in the basement. I lay down on the floor with three other men and the air was rotten. I did not go to sleep for a long time. I knew then that money was everything I needed. My money was almost gone and I thought that I would soon die unless I got a job, for this was not like home. Here money was everything and a man without money must die.

The next morning my friends woke me up at five o'clock and said, " Now, if you want life, liberty and happiness," they laughed, " you must push for yourself. You must get a job. Come with us." And we went to the yards. Men and women were walking in by thousands as far as we could see. We went to the doors of one big slaughter house. There was a crowd of about 200 men waiting there for a job. They looked hungry and kept watching the door. At last a special police man came out and began pointing to men, one by one. Each one jumped forward. Twenty- three were taken. Then they all went inside, and all the others turned their faces away and looked tired. I remember one boy sat down and cried, just next to me, on a pile of boards. [24]

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Some policemen waved their clubs and we all walked on. I found some Lithuanians to talk with, who told me they had come every morn ing for three weeks. Soon we met other crowds coming away from other slaughter houses, and we all walked around and felt bad and tired and hungry.

That night I told my friends that I would not do this many days, but would go some place else. ' Where? " they asked me, and I began to see then that I was in bad trouble, because I spoke no English. Then one man told me to give him $5 to give the special policeman. I did this and the next morning the policeman pointed me out, so I had a job. I have heard some big talk since then about my American freedom of contract, but I do not think I had much freedom in bargaining for this job with the Meat Trust. My job was in the cattle killing room. I pushed the blood along the gutter. Some people think these jobs make men bad. I do not think so. The men who do the killing are not as bad as the ladies with fine clothes who come every day to look at it, because they have to do it. The cattle do not suffer. They are knocked sense less with a big hammer and are dead before they wake up. This is done not to spare them pain, but because if they got hot and sweating with fear and pain the meat would not be so good. I soon saw that every job in the room was done like this — so as to save [25]

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everything and make money. One Lithu anian who worked with me, said, " They get all the blood out of those cattle and all the work out of us men." This was true, for we worked that first day from six in the morning till seven at night. The next day we worked from six in the morning till eight at night. The next day we had no work. So we had no good, regular hours. It was hot in the room that summer, and the hot blood made it worse.

I held this job six weeks and then I was turned off. I think some other man had paid for my job, or perhaps I was too slow. The foreman in that room wanted quick men to make the work rush, because he was paid more if the work was done cheaper and quicker. I saw now that every man was helping himself, always trying to get all the money he could. At that time I believed that all men in Chicago were grafters when they had to be. They only wanted to push themselves. Now, when I was idle I began to look about, and every where I saw sharp men beating out slow men like me. Even if we worked hard it did us no good. I had saved $13 — $5 a week for six weeks makes $30, and take off $15 for six weeks' board and lodging and $2 for other things. I showed this to a Lithuanian, who had been here two years, and he laughed. " It will be taken from you," he said. He had saved a hundred dollars once and had begun to [26]

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buy a house on the installment plan, but some thing had happened that he did not know about and his landlord put him out and kept the hundred dollars. I found that many Lithuanians had been beaten this way. At home we never made a man sign contract papers. We only had him make the sign of a cross and promise he would do what he said. But this was no good in Chicago. So these sharp men were beating us.

I saw this, too, in the newspaper. I was be ginning to learn English, and at night in the boarding house the men who did not play cards used to read the paper to us. The biggest word was " Graft " in red letters on the front page. Another word was ' Trust." This paper kept putting these two words together. Then I began to see how every American man was trying to get money for himself. I won dered if the old German man in Cincinnati had found his pipe yet. I felt very bad and sorrowful in that month. I kept walking around with many other Lithuanians who had no job. Our money was going and we could find nothing to do. At night we got home sick for our fine green mountains. We read all the news about home in our Lithuanian Chicago newspaper, The Katalikas. It is a good paper and gives all the news. In the same office we bought this song, which was written in Brooklyn by P. Brandukas. He, too, was homesick. It is sung all over Chi li 27 ]

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cago and you can hear it in the summer even ings through the open windows. In English it is something like this:

"Oh, Lithuania, so dear to me, Good-by to you, my Fatherland. Sorrowful in my heart I leave you. I know not who will stay to guard you.

Is it enough for me to live and enjoy between my

neighbors,

In the woods with the flowers and birds? Is it enough for me to live peaceful between my

friends ? No, I must go away from my old father and mother.

The sun shines bright, The flowers smell sweet, The birds are singing, They make the country glad : But I cannot sing because I must leave you."

Those were bad days and nights. At last I had a chance to help myself. Summer was over and Election Day was coming. The Re publican boss in our district, Jonidas, was a saloon keeper. A friend took me there. Jon idas shook hands and treated me fine. He taught me to sign my name, and the next week I went with him to an office and signed some paper, and then I could vote. I voted as I was told, and then they got me back into the yards to work, because one big politician owns stock in one of those houses. Then I felt that I was getting in beside the game. I was in a [28]

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combine like other sharp men. Even when work was slack I was all right, because they got me a job in the street cleaning department. I felt proud, and I went to the back room in Jonidas's saloon and got him to write a letter to Alexandria to tell her she must come soon and be my wife.

But this was just the trouble. All of us were telling our friends to come soon. Soon they came — even thousands. The employers in the yard liked this, because those sharp fore men are inventing new machines and the work is easier to learn, and so these slow Lithuanians and even green girls can learn to do it, and then the Americans and Germans and Irish are put out and the employer saves money, be cause the Lithuanians work cheaper. This was why the American labor unions began to organize us all just the same as they had or ganized the Bohemians and Poles before us.

Well, we were glad to be organized. We had learned that in Chicago every man must push himself always, and Jonidas had taught us how much better we could push ourselves by getting into a combine. Now, we saw that this union was the best combine for us, because it was the only combine that could say, " It is our business to raise your wages."

But that Jonidas — he spoilt our first union.

He was sharp. First he got us to hire the

room over his saloon. He used to come in at

our meetings and sit in the back seat and grin.

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There was an Irishman there from the union headquarters, and he was trying to teach us to run ourselves. He talked to a Lithuanian, and the Lithuanian said it to us, but we were slow to do things, and we were jealous and were always jumping up to shout and fight. So the Irishman used to wipe his hot, red face and call us bad names. He told the Lithuanian not to say these names to us, but Jonidas heard them, and in his saloon, where we all went down after the meeting when the Irishman was gone, Jonidas gave us free drinks and then told us the names. I will not write them here.

One night that Irishman did not come and Jonidas saw his chance and took the chair. He talked very fine and we elected him Pres ident. We made him Treasurer, too. Down in the saloon he gave us free drinks and told us we must break away from the Irish graft ers. The next week he made us strike, all by himself. We met twice a day in his saloon and spent all of our money on drinks, and then the strike was over. I got out of this union after that. I had been working hard in the cattle killing room and I had a better job. I was called a cattle butcher now and I joined the Cattle Butchers' Union. This union is honest and it has done me a great deal of good.

It has raised my wages. The man who worked at my job before the union came was getting through the year an average of $9 a [80]

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week. I am getting $11. In my first job I got $5 a week. The man who works there now gets $5.75.

It has given me more time to learn to read and speak and enjoy life like an American. I never work now from 6 A. M to 9 p. M. and then be idle the next day. I work now from 7 A. M to 5.30 p. M., and there are not so many idle days. The work is evened up.

With more time and more money I live much better and I am very happy. So is Alex andria. She came a year ago and has learned to speak English already. Some of the women go to the big store the day they get here, when they have not enough sense to pick out the clothes that look right, but Alexandria waited three weeks till she knew, and so now she looks the finest of any woman in the dis trict. We have four nice rooms, which she keeps very clean, and she has flowers growing in boxes in the two front windows. We do not go much to church, because the church seems to be too slow. But we belong to a Lithuanian society that gives two picnics in summer and two big balls in winter, where we have a fine time. I go one night a week to the Lithu anian Concertina Club. On Sundays we go on the trolley out into the country.

But we like to stay at home more now be cause we have a baby. When he grows up I will not send him to the Lithuanian Catholic school. They have only two bad rooms and [31]

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two priests who teach only in Lithuanian from prayer books. I will send him to the American school, which is very big and good. The teachers there are Americans and they belong to the Teachers' Labor Union, which has three thousand teachers and belongs to our Chicago Federation of Labor. I am sure that such teachers will give him a good chance.

Qur union sent a committee to Springfield last year and they passed a law which prevents boys and girls below sixteen from working in the stockyards.

We are trying to make the employers pay on Saturday night in cash. Now they pay in checks and the men have to get money the same night to buy things for Sunday, and the saloons cash checks by thousands. You have to take one drink to have the check cashed. It is hard to take one drink.

The union is doing another good thing. It is combining all the nationalities. The night I joined the Cattle Butchers' Union I was led into the room by a negro member. With me were Bohemians, Germans and Poles, and Mike Donnelly, the President, is an Irishman. He spoke to us in English and then three in terpreters told us what he said. We swore to be loyal to our union above everything else except the country, the city and the State — to be faithful to each other — to protect the women- workers — to do our best to understand the history of the labor movement, and to do [32]

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all we could to help it on. Since then I have gone there every two weeks and I help the movement by being an interpreter for the other Lithuanians who come in. That is why I have learned to speak and write good Eng lish. The others do not need me long. They soon learn English, too, and when they have done that they are quickly becoming Amer icans.

But the best thing the union does is to make me feel more independent. I do not have to pay to get a job and I cannot be discharged unless I am no good. For almost the whole 30,000 men and women are organized now in some one of our unions and they all are directed by our central council. No man knows what it means to be sure of his job un less he has been fired like I was once without any reason being given.

So this is why I joined the labor union. There are many better stories than mine, for my story is very common. There are thou sands of immigrants like me. Over 300,000 immigrants have been organized in the last three years by the American Federation of Labor. The immigrants are glad to be or ganized if the leaders are as honest as Mike Donnelly is. You must get money to live well, and to get money you must combine. I cannot bargain alone with the Meat Trust. I tried it and it does not work.

[33]

CHAPTER II

THE LIFE STORY OF A POLISH SWEATSHOP GIRL

Sadie Frowne is the real name of the sixteen-year-old girl whose story follows. It was dictated by her to Mr. Sydney Reid, who has also procured many of the other life stories for this vol ume, and was afterward read over to herself and relatives and pronounced accurate in all respects. Brownsville is the Jewish sweatshop district of Brooklyn, N. Y.

MY mother was a tall, handsome, dark com- plexioned woman with red cheeks, large brown eyes and a great quantity of jet black, wavy hair. She was well educated, being able to talk in Russian, German, Polish and French, and even to read English print, though of course she did not know what it meant. She kept a little grocer's shop in the little village where we lived at first. That was in Poland, somewhere on the frontier, and mother had charge of a gate between the countries, so that everybody who came through the gate had to show her a pass. She was much looked up to by the people, who used to come and ask her for advice. Her word was like law among them.

She had a wagon in which she used to drive about the country, selling her groceries, and [34]

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sometimes she worked in the fields with my father.

The grocer's shop was only one story high, and had one window, with very small panes of glass. We had two rooms behind it, and were happy while my father lived, although we had to work very hard. By the time I was six years of age I was able to wash dishes and scrub floors, and by the time I was eight I attended to the shop while my mother was away driving her wagon or working in the fields with my father. She was strong and could work like a man.

When I was a little more than ten years of age my father died. He was a good man and a steady worker, and we never knew what it was to be hungry while he lived. After he died troubles began, for the rent of our shop was about $6 a month and then there \vere food and clothes to provide. We needed little, it is true, but even soup, black bread and onions we could not always get.

We struggled along till I was nearly thir teen years of age and quite handy at house work and shop-keeping, so far as I could learn them there. But we fell behind in the rent and mother kept thinking more and more that we should have to leave Poland and go across the sea to America where we heard it was much easier to make money. Mother wrote to Aunt Fanny, who lived in New York, and told her how hard it was to live in Poland, [85]

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and Aunt Fanny advised her to come and bring me. I was out at service at this time and mother thought she would leave me — as I had a good place — and come to this country alone, sending for me afterward. But Aunt Fanny would not hear of this. She said we should both come at once, and she went around among our relatives in New York and took up a subscription for our passage.

We came by steerage on a steamship in a very dark place that smelt dreadfully. There were hundreds of other people packed in with us, men, women and children, and almost all of them were sick. It took us twelve days to cross the sea, and we thought we should die, but at last the voyage was over, and we came up and saw the beautiful bay and the big woman with the spikes on her head and the lamp that is lighted at night in her hand ( God dess of Liberty) .

Aunt Fanny and her husband met us at the gate of this country and were very good to us, and soon I had a place to live out ( domestic servant), while my mother got work in a fac tory making white goods.

I was only a little over thirteen years of age and a greenhorn, so I received $9 a month and board and lodging, which I thought was doing well. Mother, who, as I have said, was very clever, made $9 a week on white goods, which means all sorts of underclothing, and is high class work.

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But mother had a very gay disposition. She liked to go around and see everything, and friends took her about New York at night and she caught a bad cold and coughed and coughed. She really had hasty consumption, but she didn't know it, and I didn't know it, and she tried to keep on working, but it was no use. She had not the strength. Two doctors attended her, but they could do nothing, and at last she died and I was left alone. I had saved money while out at service, but mother's sickness and funeral swept it all away and now I had to begin all over again.

Aunt Fanny had always been anxious for me to get an education, as I did not know how to read or write, and she thought that was wrong. Schools are different in Poland from what they are in this country, and I was always too busy to learn to read and write. So when mother died I thought I would try to learn a trade and then I could go to school at night and learn to speak the English language well.

So I went to work in Allen street (Man hattan) in what they call a sweatshop, making skirts by machine. I was new at the work and the foreman scolded me a great deal.

" Now, then," he would say, " this place is not for you to be looking around in. At tend to your work. That is what you have to do.

I did not know at first that you must not [37]

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look around and talk, and I made many mis takes with the sewing, so that I was often called a " stupid animal." But I made $4 a week by working six days in the week. For there are two Sabbaths here — our own Sab bath, that comes on a Saturday, and the Chris tian Sabbath that comes on Sunday. It is against our law to work on our own Sabbath, so we work on their Sabbath.

In Poland I and my father and mother used to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath, but here the women don't go to the synagogue much, though the men do. They are shut up working hard all the week long and when the Sabbath comes they like to sleep long in bed and afterward they must go out where they can breathe the air. The rabbis are strict here, but not so strict as in the old country.

I lived at this time with a girl named Ella, who worked in the same factory and made $5 a week. We had the room all to ourselves, paying $1.50 a week for it, and doing light housekeeping. It was in Allen street, and the window looked out of the back, which was good, because there was an elevated railroad in front, and in summer time a great deal of dust and dirt came in at the front windows. We were on the fourth story and could see all that was going on in the back rooms of the houses behind us, and early in the morning the sun used to come in our window.

We did our cooking on an oil stove, and [88]

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lived well, as this list of our expenses for one week will show:

ELLA AND SADIE FOR FOOD (ONE WEEK)

Tea $0.06

Cocoa 10

Bread and rolls 40

Canned vegetables 20

Potatoes 10

Milk 21

Fruit 20

Butter 15

Meat 60

Fish 15

Laundry 25

Total $2.42

Add rent . 1.50

Grand total $3.92

Of course, we could have lived cheaper, but we are both fond of good things and ^ felt that we could afford them. w- *t*~*f~*' •

We paid 18 cents for a half pound of tea so as to get it good, and it lasted us three weeks, because we had cocoa for breakfast. We paid 5 cents for six rolls and 5 cents a loaf for bread, which was the best quality. Oat meal cost us 10 cents for three and one-half pounds, and we often had it in the morning, or Indian meal porridge in the place of it, costing about the same. Half a dozen eggs cost about 13 cents on an average, and we [89]

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could get all the meat we wanted for a good hearty meal for 20 cents — two pounds of chops, or a steak, or a bit of veal, or a neck of lamb — something like that. Fish included butter fish, porgies, codfish and smelts, aver aging about 8 cents a pound.

Some people who buy at the last of the mar ket, when the men with the carts want to go home, can get things very cheap, but they are likely to be stale, and we did not often do that with fish, fresh vegetables, fruit, milk or meat. Things that kept well we did buy that way and got good bargains. I got thirty potatoes for 10 cents one time, though generally I could not get more than fifteen of them for that amount. Tomatoes, onions and cabbages, too, we bought that way and did well, and we found a factory where we could buy the finest broken crackers for 3 cents a pound, and another place where we got broken candy for 10 cents a pound. Our cooking was done on an oil stove, and the oil for the stove and the lamp cost us 10 cents a week.

It cost me $2 a week to live, and I had a dollar a week to spend on clothing and pleas ure, and saved the other dollar. I went to night school, but it was hard work learning at first as I did not know much English.

Two years ago I came to Brownsville,

where so many of my people are, and where I

have friends. I got work in a factory making

underskirts — all sorts of cheap underskirts,

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like cotton and calico for the summer and woolen for the winter, but never the silk, satin or velvet underskirts. I earned $4.50 a week and lived on $2 a week, the same as before.

I got a room in the house of some friends who lived near the factory. I pay $1 a week for the room and am allowed to do light house keeping — that is, cook my meals in it. I get my own breakfast in the morning, just a cup of coffee and a roll, and at noon time I come home to dinner and take a plate of soup and a slice of bread with the lady of the house. My food for a week costs a dollar, just as it did in Allen street, and I have the rest of my money to do as I like with. I am earning $5.50 a week now, and will probably get another increase soon.

It isn't piecework in our factory, but one is paid by the amount of work done just the same. So it is like piecework. All the hands get different amounts, some as low as $3.50 and some of the men as high as $16 a week. The factory is in the third story of a brick building. It is in a room twenty feet long and fourteen broad. There are fourteen machines in it. I and the daughter of the people with whom I live work two of these machines. The other operators are all men, some young and some old.

At first a few of the young men were rude. When they passed me they would touch my hair and talk about my eyes and my red [41]

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cheeks, and make jokes. I cried and said that if they did not stop I would leave the place. The boss said that that should not be, that no one must annoy me. Some of the other men stood up for me, too, especially Henry, who said two or three times that he wanted to fight. Now the men all treat me very nicely. It was just that some of them did not know better, not being educated.

Henry is tall and dark, and he has a small mustache. His eyes are brown and large. He is pale and much educated, having been to school. He knows a great many things and has some money saved. I think nearly $400. He is not going to be in a sweatshop all the time, but will soon be in the real estate busi ness, for a lawyer that knows him well has promised to open an office and pay him to manage it.

Henry has seen me home every night for a long time and makes love to me. He wants me to marry him, but I am not seventeen yet, and I think that is too young. He is only nineteen, so we can wait.

I have been to the fortune teller's three or four times, and she always tells me that though I have had such a lot of trouble I am to be very rich and happy. I believe her because she has told me so many things that have come true. So I will keep on working in the factory for a time. Of course it is hard, but I would have to work hard even if I was married. [421

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I get up at half-past five o'clock every morning and make myself a cup of coffee on the oil stove. I eat a bit of bread and perhaps some fruit and then go to work. Often I get there soon after six o'clock so as to be in good time, though the factory does not open till seven. I have heard that there is a sort of clock that calls you at the very time you want to get up, but I can't believe that because I don't see how the clock would know.

At seven o'clock we all sit down to our machines and the boss brings to each one the pile of work that he or she is to finish during the day, what they call in English their " stint." This pile is put down beside the machine and as soon as a skirt is done it is laid on the other side of the machine. Sometimes the work is not all finished by six o'clock and then the one who is behind must work overtime. Some times one is finished ahead of time and gets away at four or five o'clock, but generally we are not done till six o'clock.

The machines go like mad all day, because the faster you work the more money you get. Sometimes in my haste I get my finger caught and the needle goes right through it. It goes so quick, though, that it does not hurt much. I bind the finger up with a piece of cotton and go on working. We all have accidents like that. Where the needle goes through the nail it makes a sore finger, or where it splinters a bone it does much harm. Sometimes a finger [43]

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has to come off. Generally, though, one can be cured by a salve.

All the time we are working the boss walks about examining the finished garments and making us do them over again if they are not just right. So we have to be careful as well as swift. But I am getting so good at the work that within a year I will be making $7 a week, and then I can save at least $3.50 a week. I have over $200 saved now.

The machines are all run by foot-power, and at the end of the day one feels so weak that there is a great temptation to lie right down and sleep. But you must go out and get air, and have some pleasure. So instead of lying down I go out, generally with Henry. Sometimes we go to Coney Island, where there are good dancing places, and sometimes we go to Ulmer Park to picnics. I am very fond of dancing, and, in fact, all sorts of pleasure. I go to the theater quite often, and like those plays that make you cry a great deal. " The Two Orphans " is good. Last time I saw it I cried all night because of the hard times that the children had in the play. I am going to see it again when it comes here.

For the last two winters I have been going to night school. I have learned reading, writ ing and arithmetic. I can read quite well in English now and I look at the newspapers every day. I read English books, too, some- [44]

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times. The last one that I read was " A Mad Marriage," by Charlotte Braeme. She's a grand writer and makes things just like real to you. You feel as if you were the poor girl yourself going to get married to a rich duke.

I am going back to night school again this winter. Plenty of my friends go there. Some of the women in my class are more than forty years of age. Like me, they did not have a chance to learn anything in the old country. It is good to have an education; it makes you feel higher. Ignorant people are all low. People say now that I am clever and fine in conversation.

We recently finished a strike in our business. It spread all over and the United Brotherhood of Garment Workers was in it. That takes in the cloakmakers, coatmakers, and all the others. We struck for shorter hours, and after being out four weeks won the fight. We only have to work nine and a half hours a day and we get the same pay as before. So the union does good after all in spite of wThat some people say against it — that it just takes our money and does nothing.

I pay 25 cents a month to the union, but I do not begrudge that because it is for our ben efit. The next strike is going to be for a raise of wages, which we all ought to have. But though I belong to the Union I am not a So cialist or an Anarchist. I don't know exactly [45]

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what those things mean. There is a little ex pense for charity, too. If any worker is in jured or sick we all give money to help.

Some of the women blame me very much because I spend so much money on clothes. They say that instead of a dollar a week I ought not to spend more than twenty-five cents a week on clothes, and that I should save the rest. But a girl must have clothes if she is to go into good society at Ulmer Park or Coney Island or the theater. Those who blame me are the old country people who have old-fashioned notions, but the people who have been here a long time know better. A girl who does not dress well is stuck in a cor ner, even if she is pretty, and Aunt Fanny says that I do just right to put on plenty of style.

I have many friends and we often have jolly parties. Many of the young men like to talk to me, but I don't go out with any ex cept Henry.

Lately he has been urging me more and more to get married — but I think I'll wait.

[46]

CHAPTER III

THE LIFE STORY OF AN ITALIAN BOOTBLACK

Rocco Corresca is the official name of the young bootblack who is the hero of this chapter, although he is known to most of his friends and patrons as "Joe." He claims that he has always been called Rocco but that the name Corresca was given him when he went aboard the ship that brought him to America. It was thus entered on the steerage list and he has since kept it.

WHEN I was a very small boy I lived in Italy in a large house with many other small boys, who were all dressed alike and were taken care of by some nuns. It was a good place, situated on the side of the mountain, where grapes were growing and melons and oranges and plums.

They taught us our letters and how to pray and say the catechism, and we worked in the fields during the middle of the day. We always had enough to eat and good beds to sleep in at night, and sometimes there were feast days, when we marched about wearing flowers.

Those were good times and they lasted till I was nearly eight years of age. Then an old man came and said he was my grand father. He showed some papers and cried [47]

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over me and said that the money had come at last and now he could take me to his beautiful home. He seemed very glad to see me and after they looked at his papers he took me away and we went to the big city — Naples He kept talking about his beautiful house, but when we got there it was a dark cellar that he lived in and I did not like it at all. Very rich people were on the first floor. They had carriages and servants and music and plenty of good things to eat, but we were down below in the cellar and had nothing. There were four other boys in the cellar and the old man said they were all my brothers. All were larger than I and they beat me at first till one day Francesco said that they should not beat me any more, and then Paolo, who was the largest of all, fought him till Francesco drew a knife and gave him a cut. Then Paolo, too, got a knife and said that he would kill Francesco, but the old man knocked them both down with a stick and took their knives away and gave them beatings.

Each morning we boys all went out to beg and we begged all day near the churches and at night near the theaters, running to the car riages and opening the doors and then getting in the way of the people so that they had to give us money or walk over us. The old man often watched us and at night he took all the money, except when we could hide something.

We played tricks on the people, for when [48]

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we saw some coming that we thought were rich I began to cry and covered my face and stood on one foot, and the others gathered around me and said :

"Don't cry! Don't cry!"

Then the ladies would stop and ask: " What is he crying about? What is the matter, little boy? "

Francesco or Paolo would answer: "He is very sad because his mother is dead and they have laid her in the grave."

Then the ladies would give me money and the others would take most of it from me.

The old man told us to follow the Ameri cans and the English people, as they were all rich, and if we annoyed them enough they would give us plenty of money. He taught us that if a young man was walking with a young woman he would always give us silver because he would be ashamed to let the young woman see him give us less. There wras also a great church where sick people were cured by the saints, and when they came out they were so glad that they gave us money.

Begging was not bad in the summer time because we went all over the streets and there was plenty to see, and if we got much money we could spend some buying things to eat. The old man knew we did that. He used to feel us and smell us to see if we had eaten any thing, and he often beat us for eating when we had not eaten.

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Early in the morning we had breakfast of black bread rubbed over with garlic or with a herring to give it a flavor. The old man would eat the garlic or the herring himself, but he would rub our bread with it, which he said was as good. He told us that boys should not be greedy and that it was good to fast and that all the saints had fasted. He had a fig ure of a saint in one corner of the cellar and prayed night and morning that the saint would help him to get money. He made us pray, too, for he said that it was good luck to be religious.

We used to sleep on the floor, but often we could not sleep much because men came in very late at night and played cards with the old man. He sold them wine from a barrel that stood on one end of the table that was there, and if they drank much he won their money. One night he won so much that he was glad and promised the saint some candles for his altar in the church. But that was to get more money. Two nights after that the same men who had lost the money came back and said that they wanted to play again. They were very friendly and laughing, but they won all the money and the old man said they were cheating. So they beat him and went away. When he got up again he took a stick and knocked down the saint's figure and said that he would give no more candles.

I was with the old man for three years. I [50]

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don't believe that he was my grandfather, though he must have known something about me because he had those papers.

It was very hard in the winter time for we had no shoes and we shivered a great deal. The old man said that we were no good, that we were ruining him, that we did not bring in enough money. He told me that I was fat and that people would not give money to fat beggars. He beat me, too, because I didn't like to steal, as I had heard it was wrong.

" Ah! " said he, " that is what they taught you at that place, is it? To disobey your grandfather that fought with Garibaldi! That is a fine religion! "

The others all stole as well as begged, but I didn't like it and Francesco didn't like it either.

Then the old man said to me : " If you don't want to be a thief you can be a cripple. That is an easy life and they make a great deal of money."

I was frightened then, and that night I heard him talking to one of the men that came to see him. He asked how much he would charge to make me a good cripple like those that crawl about the church. They had a dis pute, but at last they agreed and the man said that I should be made so that people would shudder and give me plenty of money.

I was much frightened, but I did not make a sound and in the morning I went out to beg [51]

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with Francesco. I said to him: "I am going to run away. I don't believe 'Tony is my grandfather. I don't believe that he fought for Garibaldi, and I don't want to be a cripple, no matter how much money the people may give."

' Where will you go? " Francesco asked me.

"I don't know," I said; "somewhere."

He thought awhile and then he said: " I will go, too."

So we ran away out of the city and begged from the country people as we went along. We came to a village down by the sea and a long way from Naples and there we found some fishermen and they took us aboard their boat. We were with them five years, and though it was a very hard life we liked it well because there was always plenty to eat. Fish do not keep long and those that we did not sell we ate.

The chief fisherman, whose name was Cigu- ciano, had a daughter, Teresa, who was very beautiful, and though she was two years younger than I, she could cook and keep house quite well. She was a kind, good girl and he was a good man. When we told him about the old man who told us he was our grandfather, the fisherman said he was an old rascal who should be in prison for life. Teresa cried much when she heard that he was going to make me a cripple. Ciguciano said that all the old man had taught us was wrong— [52]

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that it was bad to beg, to steal and to tell lies. He called in the priest and the priest said the same thing and was very angry at the old man in Naples, and he taught us to read and write in the evenings. He also taught us our duties to the church and said that the saints were good and would only help men to do good things, and that it was a wonder that lightning from heaven had not struck the old man dead when he knocked down the saint's figure.

We grew large and strong with the fisher man and he told us that we were getting too big for him, that he could not afford to pay us the money that we were worth. He was a fine, honest man — one in a thousand.

Now and then I had heard things about America — that it was a far-off country where everybody was rich and that Italians went there and made plenty of money, so that they could return to Italy and live in pleasure ever after. One day I met a young man who pulled out a handful of gold and told me he had made that in America in a few days.

I said I should like to go there, and he told me that if I went he would take care of me. and see that I was safe. I told Francesco and he wanted to go, too. So we said good-bye to our good friends. Teresa cried and kissed us both and the priest came and shook our hands and told us to be good men, and that no matter where we went God and his saints were always near us and that if we lived well we should all [53]

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meet again in heaven. We cried, too, for it was our home, that place. Ciguciano gave us money and slapped us on the back and said that we should be great. But he felt bad, too, at seeing us go away after all that time.

The young man took us to a big ship and got us work away down where the fires are. We had to carry coal to the place where it could be thrown on the fires. Francesco and I were very sick from the great heat at first and lay on the coal for a long time, but they threw water on us and made us get up. We could not stand on our feet well, for every thing was going around and we had no strength. We said that we wished we had stayed in Italy no matter how much gold there was in America. We could not eat for three days and could not do much wrork. Then we got better and sometimes we went up above and looked about. There was no land any where and we were much surprised. How could the people tell where to go when there was no land to steer by?

We were so long on the water that we be gan to think we should never get to America or that, perhaps, there was not any such place, but at last we saw land and came up to New York.

We were glad to get over without giving

money, but I have heard since that we should

have been paid for our work among the coal

and that the young man who had sent us got

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money for it. We were all landed on an island and the bosses there said that Francesco and I must go back because we had not enough money, but a man named Bartolo came up and told them that we were brothers and he was our uncle and would take care of us. He brought two other men who swore that they knew us in Italy and that Bartolo was our uncle. I had never seen any of them before, but even then Bartolo might be my uncle, so I did not say anything. The bosses of the island let us go out with Bartolo after he had made the oath.

We came to Brooklyn, New York, to a wooden house in Adams street that was full of Italians from Naples. Bartolo had a room on the third floor and there were fifteen men in the room, all boarding with Bartolo. He did the cooking on a stove in the middle of the room and there were beds all around the sides, one bed above another. It was very hot in the room, but we were soon asleep, for we were very tired.

The next morning, early, Bartolo told us to go out and pick rags and get bottles. He gave us bags and hooks and showed us the ash barrels. On the streets where the fine houses are the people are very careless and put out good things, like mattresses and umbrellas, clothes, hats and boots. We brought all these to Bartolo and he made them new again and sold them on the sidewalk; but mostly we [55]

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brought rags and bones. The rags we had to wash in the back yard and then we hung them to dry on lines under the ceiling in our room. The bones we kept under the beds till Bartolo could find a man to buy them.

Most of the men in our room worked at dig ging the sewer. Bartolo got them the work and they paid him about one-quarter of their wages. Then he charged them for board and he bought the clothes for them, too. So they got little money after all.

Bartolo was always saying that the rent of the room was so high that he could not make anything, but he was really making plenty. He was what they call a padrone and is now a very rich man. The men that were living with him had just come to the country and could not speak English. They had all been sent by the young man we met in Italy. Bar tolo told us all that we must work for him and that if we did not the police would come and put us in prison.

He gave us very little money, and our clothes were some of those that were found on the street. Still we had enough to eat and we had meat quite often, which we never had in Italy. Bartolo got it from the butcher — the meat that he could not sell to the other people —but it was quite good meat. Bartolo cooked it in the pan while we all sat on our beds in the evening. Then he cut it into small bits and passed the pan around, saying : [56]

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"See what I do for you and yet you are not glad. I am too kind a man, that is why I am so poor."

We were with Bartolo nearly a year, but some of our countrymen who had been in the place a long time said that Bartolo had no right to us and we could get work for a dollar and a half a day, which, when you make it lire (reckoned in the Italian currency) is very much. So we went away one day to Newark and got work on the street. Bartolo came after us and make a great noise, but the boss said that if he did not go away soon the police would have him. Then he went, saying that there was no justice in this country.

We paid a man five dollars each for getting us the work and we were with that boss for six months. He was Irish, but a good man and he gave us our money every Saturday night. We lived much better than with Bartolo, and when the work was done we each had nearly $200 saved. Plenty of the men spoke Eng lish and they taught us, and we taught them to read and write. That was at night, for we had a lamp in our room, and there were only five other men who lived in that room with us.

We got up at half -past five o'clock every morning and made coffee on the stove and had a breakfast of bread and cheese, onions, garlic and red herrings. We went to work at seven o'clock and in the middle of the day we had soup and bread in a place where we got it for [57]

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two cents a plate. In the evenings we had a good dinner with meat of some kind and pota toes. We got from the butcher the meat that other people would not buy because they said it was old, but they don't know what is good. We paid four or five cents a pound for it and it was the best, though I have heard of people paying sixteen cents a pound.

When the Newark boss told us that there was no more work Francesco and I talked about what we would do and we went back to Brooklyn to a saloon near Hamilton Ferry where we got a job cleaning it out and slept in a little room upstairs. There was a boot black named Michael on the corner and when I had time I helped him and learned the busi ness. Francesco cooked the lunch in the saloon and he, too, worked for the bootblack and we were soon able to make the best polish.

Then we thought we would go into business and we got a basement on Hamilton avenue, near the Ferry, and put four chairs in it. We paid $75 for the chairs and all the other things. We had tables and looking glasses there and curtains. We took the papers that have the pictures in and made the place high toned, Outside we had a big sign that said:

THE BEST SHINE FOR TEN CENTS

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Men that did not want to pay ten cents could get a good shine for five cents, but it was not an oil shine. We had two boys helping us and paid each of them fifty cents a day. The rent of the place was $20 a month, so the ex penses were very great, but we made money from the beginning. We slept in the base ment, but got our meals in the saloon till we could put a stove in our place, and then Fran cesco cooked for us all. That would not do, though, because some of our customers said that they did not like to smell garlic and onions and red herrings. I thought that was strange, but we had to do what the customers said. So we got the woman who lived upstairs to give us our meals and paid her $1.50 a week each. She gave the boys soup in the middle of the day — five cents for two plates.

We remembered the priest, the friend of Ciguciano, and what he had said to us about religion, and as soon as we came to the country we began to go to the Italian church. The priest we found here was a good man, but he asked the people for money for the church. The Italians did not like to give because they said it looked like buying religion. The priest says it is different here from Italy because all the churches there are what they call endowed, while here all they have is what the people give. Of course I and Francisco understand that, but the Italians who cannot read and [59]

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write shake their heads and say that it is wrong for a priest to want money.

We had said that when we saved $1,000 each we would go back to Italy and buy a farm, but now that the time is coming we are so busy and making so much money that we think we will stay. We have opened another parlor near South Ferry, in New York. We have to pay $30 a month rent, but the business is very good. The boys in this place charge sixty cents a day because there is so much work.

At first we did not know much of this coun try, but by and by we learned. There are here plenty of Protestants who are heretics, but they have a religion, too. Many of the finest churches are Protestant, but they have no saints and no altars, which seems strange.

These people are without a king such as ours in Italy. It is what they call a Republic, as Garibaldi wanted, and every year in the fall the people vote. They wanted us to vote last fall, but we did not. A man came and said that he would get us made Americans for fifty cents and then we could get two dollars for our votes. I talked to some of our people and they told me that we should have to put a paper in a box telling who we wanted to gov ern us.

I went with five men to the court and when they asked me how long I had been in the country I told them two years. Afterward [60]

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my countrymen said I was a fool and would never learn politics.

' You should have said you were five years here and then we would swear to it," was what they told me.

I and Francesco are to be Americans in three years. The court gave us papers and said we must wait and we must be able to read some things and tell who the ruler of the coun try is.

There are plenty of rich Italians here, men who a few years ago had nothing and now have so much money that they could not count all their dollars in a week. The richest ones go away from the other Italians and live with the Americans.

We have joined a club and have much pleas ure in the evenings. The club has rooms down in Sackett street and we meet many people and are learning new things all the time. We were very ignorant when we came here, but now we have learned much.

On Sundays we get a horse and carriage from the grocer and go down to Coney Island. We go to the theaters often, and other even ings we go to the houses of our friends and play cards.

I am now nineteen years of age and have $700 saved. Francesco is twenty-one and has about $900. We shall open some more par lors soon. I know an Italian who was a boot black ten years ago and now bosses bootblacks [61]

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all over the city, who has so much money that if it was turned into gold it would weigh more than himself.

Francesco and I have a room to ourselves and some people call us " swells." Ciguciano said that we should be great men. Francesco bought a gold watch with a gold chain as thick as his thumb. He is a very handsome fellow and I think he likes a young lady that he met at a picnic out at Ridgewood.

I often think of Ciguciano and Teresa. He is a good man, one in a thousand, and she was very beautiful. Maybe I shall write to them about coming to this country.

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CHAPTER IV

THE LIFE STORY OF A GREEK PEDDLER

This chapter is contributed by a Spartan now living in a suburb near New York City.

I WAS born about forty years ago in a little hamlet among the mountains of Laconia in Greece. There were only about 200 people in this place, and they lived in stone huts or cottages, some of which were two stories high, but most of them only one story. The people were shepherds or small farmers, with the exception of the priest and schoolmaster.

Two of tha houses pretended to the char acter of village stores, but they kept only the simplest, cheapest things, and as a general rule, when we wanted to buy anything we had to go down to Sparta, the chief town of our State, which was two hours' walk away from our village. There was not even a blacksmith shop in our town.

But the people did very well without shops. They made almost everything for themselves. The inside of the cottage consisted of one large room with a board floor. Sometimes there were partitions inside the cottage, mak ing several rooms, but everything was very [63]

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simple. The fireplace at one end of the room was large and open; beds were made of boards covered with hay, and stools and tables com prised about all the remainder of the furniture. Cooking was done on an iron tripod with the fire underneath.

Cotton goods we bought in Sparta, but we seldom bought anything else. We made ail our own clothing, shearing the sheep, washing the wool, carding, spinning and weaving by hand as they did in the time of Homer. We made our own butter and our own wine, ground our own wheat and oats into flour and meal and did our own baking.

Our farms varied in size from ten to forty acres, and we raised on them such things as are raised here in America — all the grains and most of the fruits and vegetables. We plowed with oxen, thrashed with flails, winnowed by hand, and ground our grain in a mortar.

We had very little money, and so little use for money that the currency might almost as well have been the iron sort of our remote forefathers.

There was a little school in the town — there are schools all over Greece now — and most of the people could read and write, so they were not entirely ignorant; yet they had small knowledge of the world, and there were many, especially among the women, who knew almost nothing of what lay beyond the boundaries of their farms.

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True, by climbing Mount Taygetos, where the Spartans used to expose their children not physically perfect, one could get a wide view of the surrounding sea with its ships and the shore with its cities, but the top of Taygetos was a day's journey from our village, and few of us had time or inclination to make the trip.

All people who were able worked from sun rise to sunset, the men on their farms or with the sheep, the women in the houses, spinning, weaving, making clothes or baking. If they did not know much about the great world, they also cared less. Now and then some one went down to Sparta and came home filled with its wonders, for Sparta has 15,000 inhabitants and is quite a bright little modern city, with horse cars, street gas lamps and a mayor.

Narrow as our lives might be considered by Americans, there was plenty to interest us in the success or failure of our crops and our little plans, and, considering matters from the standpoint of our wants and our needs, we were certainly prosperous and happy. Most of us eat only one meal a day, but it was a hearty, healthy meal, and though we knew that some of the richer people ate two, the fashion did not commend itself to us. Like all Greeks, we were naturally inclined to tem perance. There was no gluttony and no drunkenness, although we had plenty of good strong wine.

Forty days of the year were saints' days, [65]

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and on those we feasted and did no work. We dressed in our best clothes and, gathering in one of the best houses, we danced to the music of the violin and guitar.

Sometimes there came an election, and then the men always carried rifles with them to the polling places, and around their waists were sashes stuck full of daggers and pistols, mak ing them look wild and dangerous. But really there was seldom any fighting. In the first place, there were soldiers around the polling places and the elections were honest; in the second place, the armed peasants stayed sober, and in the third place, there was no stump speaking such as here, and no newspaper at tacks, where the candidate of the opposite party is called a robber and accused of all manner of crimes. Feeling ran high at our elections and partisanship was bitter, but did not often lead to fights, because there was no speaking, no incitement.

The people are naturally very peaceful. They carry arms because it is their custom, coming down from the times when the Turks were in the country and the Greeks had to retire into the mountains and maintain con stant watch in order to save themselves and their families from Turkish outrage and brutality.

I don't know on what lines the parties were drawn, or what principles they advocated. I

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think that the difference was just that some were in power and some were out, and that those who were out wanted to get in.

All loved our king and the royal family. Next to God we revered the king, and his whole family shared our love for him. Greeks are very democratic, but the members of this royal family are fit to be the first citizens in a pure democracy — they have done so much for the country and for all the people.

As I said, the people, in spite of their arms, are very peaceful. There is no brigandage, and murder in our locality occurred not more than once in ten years. There used to be a great deal of what was called brigandage in Turkish times, but it has all passed away. When the Turks retired, two-thirds of the land which had belonged to Turks came into the hands of the nation, and since that time the class of people who were formerly robbed and harried and oppressed until they were driven into brigandage has been encouraged to take to agriculture. Now there is no more Government land. The people have bought it all up, and although they have little money they are tolerably happy and prosperous.

On Sundays in our little village we dressed in our best clothes, and went to the church, where we heard the old priest, whom we all respected. There was only one church there, the Greek Orthodox, and though religion was [67]

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free and a man could worship as he pleased, or not worship at all, there were no dissenters among us.

At the same time there was little supersti tion, to the best of my knowledge. Few be lieved in ghosts or fairies, or any sort of super natural appearances; nor did they believe in modern miracles, and our respect for the saints was for men who had laid down their lives for Christianity. We had no sacred relics that miraculously restored health, and knew of none.

The only encounter with the supernatural that I ever had occurred when I was about ten years of age.

My grandmother needed a pound of wool to finish some sort of blanket she was weaving, and she sent me to the house of a neighbor, who lived far away. I set out riding a jackass and followed by a dog. I had not gone far when I met a little girl carrying a cat.

At the sight of my dog, down jumped the cat and ran for her life ; the dog dashed after her, I dashed after dog, the little girl after me. The only one who maintained his dignity was the jackass. Cat, dog and myself all fell into a stream, and when I emerged and pre sented the cat to the little girl I was dripping. She invited me to her house to dry, and there her mother fitted me out with the clothes of her little son, who had died a short time before. She said I looked just like him, and tearfully [68]

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begged me to stay over night. I finally con sented as my grandmother would not expect me back the next day.

She put me in the little boy's bed, and went away, after bidding me good night. I went to sleep immediately, but woke up later and was horrified to see a large, round eye glaring at me. It was very large, about ten inches in diameter. I tried to scream, but I could not, and my fear was increased by the sound of footsteps coming toward me. I was sure it was the dead boy coming to avenge my taking his clothes and bed. Finally I was able to speak, and I said :

" Don't hurt me; I am going away, and I will not take the clothes with me."

But the footsteps continued to come directly toward me.

Then I jumped from my bed and desper ately grabbed at the approaching thing. I seized a hairy head and pair of horns, and was more frightened than ever, feeling sure that I had caught the devil. But when the woman and the little girl came in laughing, with a light, the devil turned into the pet goat, which used to play with the little boy. The round eye also turned into a mirror.

Of the past of our country we knew little. We only knew that once Greece had been great, the light of the world, and we hoped that the time was coming when she would again resume her leadership of men. There [69]

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were no ruins and no legends and traditions among us.

The school in my little village had only four grades, and when I had gone through those I was sent to Sparta to the High School. There I continued my education much as an Amer ican boy would do. Greece has a fine system of schools, established by the Government.

We had play in plenty. We played with marbles and tops and kites, and we practiced many of the classic sports, like running, and pitching flat stones at a mark, like quoits, or throwing the discus. We were great hands at wrestling, and in certain seasons of the year we hunted and shot partridges, rabbits and ducks.

When I had finished in the High School, I went to Athens, to an uncle who was in the drug business. I worked for him for a few years, and then had to enter the army, where I spent two years in which there was nothing of particular interest.

All these later years I had been hearing from America. An elder brother was there who had found it a fine country and was urg ing me to join him. Fortunes could easily be made, he said. I got a great desire to see it, and in one way and another I raised the money for fare — 250 francs — and set sail from the Piraeus, the old port of Athens, situ ated five miles from that city. The ship was a French liner of 6,000 tons, and I was a deck [70]

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passenger, carrying my own food and sleeping on the boards as long as we were in the Medi terranean Sea, which was four days.

As soon as we entered the ocean matters changed for the better. I got a berth and the ship supplied my food. Nothing extraordi nary occurred on the voyage and when I reached New York I got ashore without any trouble.

New York astonished me by its size and magnificence, the buildings shooting up like mountain peaks, the bridge hanging in the sky, the crowds of ships and the elevated rail ways. I think that the elevated railways as tonished me more than anything else.

I got work immediately as a push cart man. There was six of us in a company. We all lived together in two rooms down on Wash ington street and kept the push carts in the cellar. Five of us took out carts every day and one was buyer, whom we called boss. He had no authority over us; we were all free. At the end of our day's work we all divided up our money even, each man getting the same amount out of the common fund — the boss no more than any other.

That system prevails among all the push cart men in the City of New York — practical communism, all sharing alike. The buyer is chosen by vote.

The buyer goes to the markets and gets the stock for the next day, which is carried to the T711

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cellar in a wagon. Sometimes buying takes a long time, if the price of fruit is up, for the buyer has to get things as cheaply as possible. Sometimes when prices are down he buys enough for a week. He gets the fruit home before evening, and then it is ready for the next day.

I found the push cart work not unpleasant, so far as the work itself was concerned. I began at nine o'clock in the morning and quit about six o'clock at night. I could not speak English and did not know enough to pay the police, so I was hunted when I tried to get the good place like Nassau Street, or near the Bridge entrance. Once a policeman struck me on the leg with his club so hard that I could not work for two weeks. That is wrong to strike like that a man who could not speak English.

Push cart peddlers who pay the police, make $500 to $1,000 a year clear of board and all expenses, and actually save that amount in the bank; but those who don't pay the police make from $200 to $300 a year. All the men in the good places pay the police. Some pay $2 a day each and some $1 a day, and from that down to 25 cents. A policeman collects regularly, and we don't know what he does with the money, but, of course, we suspect. The captain passes by and he must know; the sergeant comes along and he must know.

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the good place; we can afford to pay. One day I made free and clear $10.25 on eighteen boxes of cherries. That was the most I ever made in a day. That was after I paid $1 a day for a good place.

There have been many attempts to organize us for political purposes, but all these have failed. We vote as we please, for the best man. No party owns us.

I soon went on to Chicago and got work there from a countryman who kept a fruit store. He gave me $12 a month and my board, but he wouldn't teach me English. I got so I could say such words as " Cent each," " Five cents for three," " Ten cents a quart," but if I asked the boss the names of things he would say never mind, it was not good for me to learn English.

I wrote home to my uncle in Athens to send me a Greek-English dictionary, and wrhen it came I studied it all the time and in three months I could speak English quite well. I did not spend a cent and soon found a better job, getting $17 a month and my board. In a little while I had $106 saved, and I opened a little fruit store of my own near the Academy of Music.

One night after ten o'clock my lamp went down very low and I wanted to fill it again. I had a five gallon can of kerosene and a five gallon can of gasolene standing together under the stall, and in the darkness I got out the can [73]

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of gasolene. I filled the lamp while it was still burning. It exploded over- me and I ran out of the place all in flames. The people were just coming out of the Academy of Music when I rushed among them shouting. Men threw their overcoats about me and put out the flames, but I nearly lost my life. I was taken to a hospital, where I lay for four months. All my hair was burned off, my eye brows and the skin of my neck and head, and I was in great pain.

Finally I was able to get out, and my land lord took charge of me and started me in busi ness again.

He was a German; I think his name was Hackenbush. At any rate he was very kind, I had not had sense enough to get my store insured, and so had no money when I walked out of the hospital. My landlord stocked it for me with fruits, cigars and candies, and did all he could to put me on my feet, but I had bad luck and gave up.

Then I left Chicago and went roaming, rid ing about on freight cars looking for work. I had twenty dollars in my pocket when I set out, but it was soon gone. I could get no work. I fell in with a gang of tramps, mostly Irish fellows; we rode generally in the ca booses of freight cars. They used to beg, but I said " No, I'll starve first."

I slept at nights in cemeteries for fear of being arrested as a hobo if I slept in the parks, [74]

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and for seven days I lived on eleven cents. On the eighth day I got a job carrying lumber on my shoulder. I worked two days at this and earned three dollars, but was so weak that I had to give it up.

So I went on, riding on top of a freight car. There were three of us on top of that car, two lying down and one sitting up reading a paper. We came to a tunnel, and when we had passed through the man who was reading the paper was gone. -When the train made its next stop I and my companion went back and found the missing man lying dead on the track. That ended my riding on top of freight cars. I never tried it again.

I got a job in a bicycle factory soon after this. It paid me nine dollars a week and I could save seven, so I soon had money again ; but when the war with Turkey broke out I thought I would go back and fight for Greece and I did, but the war was a disappointment. I was in several battles, such as they were, but no sooner were we soldiers ready to fight than we would all be ordered to go back.

When the war was over I returned to this good country and became a citizen. I got down to business, worked hard and am worth about $50,000 to-day. I have fruit stores and con fectionery stores.

There are about 10,000 Greeks in New York now, living in and about Roosevelt, Mad ison and Washington streets; about 200 of [75]

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them are women. They all think this is a fine country. Most of them are citizens. Only about ten per cent, go home again, and of these many return to America, finding that they like their new home better than their old one.

The Greeks here are almost all doing well, there are no beggars and no drunkards among them, and the worst vice they have is gam bling.

From Christmas till January 5 of each year there is great gambling in the Greek quarter, especially in the back rooms of the four res taurants. The police know all about it and it is allowed. Each of these restaurants takes in from $50 to $200 a night from gambling dur ing the Christmas celebration. I suppose the police . get their share. Poker is a favorite game, and other card games are played, thou sands of dollars changing hands among the players.

That is our big spree, taking place once a year. Aside from that, we are very quiet and law abiding.

The Greek push cart men are the Greek newcomers. They all save and they all get up. When they have a little money they open stores of their own, confectionery, flowers and fruit.

We think that the push cart business is good for the citjfT^The fruit is fresh every day, and people get what they want as they pass [76]

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along the street. When the push cart men finish selling dear to the people with plenty of money they go and sell cheap to the poor in the evenings. Plenty of fruit is a fine thing for health.

The fruit here, though, is not as good to eat as it is in Greece. The reason is that here it is picked before it is ripe and lies in an ice house for weeks. That takes all the flavor, and so, though the fruit looks so fine, it has no good taste. The icebox is a bad thing. There is no ice to the fruit in Greece.

We Greeks are doing well here, we are tak ing citizenship and we like this country; but the condition of the country we have left dis turbs us, and we would give all we possess, every cent, all our money and goods, to see Greece free.

Greece, the country as it is to-day, has only 2,500,000 inhabitants, but there are 18,000,000 Greeks living in Turkey under virtual slavery. In the city of Constantinople three out of four inhabitants are Greeks. We want to see them all free.

They are ready for freedom, they are edu cated. There are ten Greek schools, for every Turkish school in Turkey, and the people are intelligent. The American schools there have done great things, so it would be easy to set up free Greece again in all the country formerly ruled over from Constantinople before the coming of the Turks.

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That would have been done long ago were it not for the jealousy of European powers. Even as it is it must soon come — the Turk in Europe is dying fast.

In addition to the schools set up and main tained by the Greek Government and the Americans, there is another source of light in Greece. That is the returned emigrants. Everywhere in Greece now one meets men who have been in America and understand how happy a country may be. They have carried back American ways and ideas, and are Americanizing the whole country. In all the little towns and villages now English is spoken.

Greeks are perhaps better fitted than any others in South Europe to enjoy freedom. They take politics seriously, and believe in vot ing for the best man.

Free Greece must come soon, but in precisely what shape no one knows. There are so many things to be considered. Constantinople ought to be the capital, but Russia wants Con stantinople. Russia is jealous of Greece, as matters are now, because the patriarch head of her church is Greek and resides in Constanti nople. She would resist an extension of our power.

Germany and Austria, also, look upon those parts of old Greece which are under Turkish sway with covetous eyes. When [78]

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Turkey dies they will present themselves as the natural heirs.

And yet, in spite of all, we Greeks feel that our country will rise again, happy and pros perous, free and glorious, standing once more as leader of the nations.

How this will come we know not; but it will be so, and that within a generation.

[79]

CHAPTER V

THE LIFE STORY OF A SWEDISH FARMER

Axel Jarlson, the author of the following biography, is twenty- two years of age and a fine specimen of the large, strong, ener getic, blonde Norseman. He speaks good English and his story, written from an interview given on his way through New York to spend the Christmas holidays with his parents in the old coun try, is practically given in his own words. His family's experi ence resembles that of great numbers of his countrymen, who come here intending to return finally to the old country, but find themselves unconsciously Americanized.

I CAN remember perfectly well the day when my elder brother, Gustaf, started for America. It was in April, 1891, and there was snow on the ground about our cottage, while the forest that covered the hills near by was still deep with snow. The roads were very bad, but my uncle Olaf , who had been to America often on the ships, said that this was the time to start, because work on the farms there would just be beginning.

We were ten in the family, father and mother and eight children, and we had lived very happily in our cottage until the last year, when father and mother were both sick and we got into debt. Father had a little piece of land — about two acres — which he rented, and besides, he worked in the summer time for a [80]

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farmer. Two of my sisters and three of my brothers also worked in the fields, but the pay was so very small that it was hard for us to get enough to eat. A good farm hand in our part of Sweden, which is 200 miles north of Stockholm and near the Baltic Sea, can earn about 100 kroner a season, and a krone^ is 27 cents. But the winter is six months long, and most of that time the days are dark, except from ten o'clock in the morning to four o'clock in the afternoon. The only way our family could get money during the winter was by making something that could be sold in the market town, ten miles away. So my father and brothers did wood carving and cabinet making, and my mother and sisters knitted stockings, caps and mufflers and made home spun cloth, and also butter and cheese, for we owned two cows.

But the Swedish people who have money hold on to it very tight, and often we took things to market and then had to bring them home again, for no one would buy.

My uncle Olaf used to come to us between voyages, and he was all the time talking about America; what a fine place it was to make money in. He said that he would long ago have settled down on shore there, but that he had a mate's place on a ship and hoped some day to be captain. In America they gave you good land for nothing, and in two years you could be a rich man; and no one had to go in [81]

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the army unless he wanted to. That was what my uncle told us.

There was a school house to which I and two of my sisters went all the winter — for edu cation is compulsory in Sweden — and the schoolmaster told us one day about the great things that poor Swedes had done in America. They grew rich and powerful like noblemen and they even held Government offices. It was true, also, that no one had to go in the army unless he wanted to be a soldier. With us all the young men who are strong have to go in the army, because Sweden expects to have to fight Russia some day. The army takes the young men away from their work and makes hard times in the family.

A man who had been living in America once came to visit the little village that was near our cottage. He wore gold rings set with jewels and had a fine watch. He said that food was cheap in America and that a man could earn nearly ten times as much there as in Sweden. He treated all the men to brand- vin, or brandy wine, as some call it, and there seemed to be no end to his money.

It was after this that father and mother were both sick during all of one winter, and we had nothing to eat, except black bread and a sort of potato soup or gruel, with now and then a herring. We had to sell our cows and we missed the milk and cheese.

So at last it was decided that my brother

STORY OF A SWEDISH FARMER

was to go to America, and we spent the last day bidding him good-bye, as if we should never see him again. My mother and sisters cried a great deal, and begged him to write; my father told him not to forget us in that far off country, but to do right and all would be well, and my uncle said that he would become a leader of the people.

Next morning before daylight my brother and my uncle went away. They had twenty miles to walk to reach the railroad, which would take them to Gothenburg. My uncle had paid the money for the ticket which was to carry Gustaf to Minnesota. It cost a great deal — about $90, I believe.

In the following August we got our first letter from America. I can remember some parts of it, in which my brother said :

I have work with a farmer who pays me 64 kroner a month, and my board. I send you 20 kroner, and will try to send that every month. This is a good country. It is like Sweden in some ways. The win ter is long, and there are some cold days, but every thing grows that we can grow in our country, and there is plenty. All about me are Swedes, who have taken farms and are getting rich. They eat white bread and plenty of meat. The people here do not work such long hours as in Sweden, but they work much harder, and they have a great deal of machin ery, so that the crop one farmer gathers will fill two big barns. One farmer, a Swede, made more than 25,000 kroner on his crop last year. [83]

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After that we got a letter every month from my brother. He kept doing better and better, and at last he wrote that a farm had been given to him by the Government. It was sixty acres of land, good soil, with plenty of timber on it and a river running alongside. He had two fine horses and a wagon and sleigh, and he was busy clearing the land. He wanted his brother, Eric, to go to him, but we could not spare Eric, and so Knut, the third brother, was sent. He helped Gustaf for two years, and then he took a sixty-acre farm. Both sent money home to us, and soon they sent tickets for Hilda and Christine, two of my sisters.

People said that Hilda was very beautiful. She was eighteen years of age, and had long shining golden hair, red cheeks and blue eyes. She was merry and a fine dancer ; far the best among the girls in all the country round, and she could spin and knit grandly.

She and Christine got work in families of Minneapolis, and soon were earning almost as much as my brothers had earned at first, and sending money to us. Hilda married a man who belonged to the Government of Min neapolis before she had lived there six months. He is a Swede, but has been away from home a long time. Hilda now went to live in a fine house, and she said in her letter that the only trouble she had was with shoes. In the coun try parts of Sweden they wear no shoes in the [84]

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summer time, but in Minneapolis they wear them all the year round.

Father and mother kept writing to the children in America that now they had made their fortunes they should come home and live, but they put it off. Once Gustaf did return to see us, but he hurried back again, because the people thought so much of him that they had made him sheriff of a county. So it would not do to be long away.

I and my sister Helene came to this country together in 1899, Hilda having sent us the money, 600 kroner. We came over in the steerage from Gothenburg, on the west coast. The voyage wasn't so bad. They give people beds in the steerage now, and all their food, and it is very good food and well cooked. It took us twelve days to cross the sea, but we did not feel it long, as when people got over the sea sickness there was plenty of dancing, for most of those people in the steerage were Swedes and very pleasant and friendly. On fine days we could walk outside on the deck. Two men had concertinas and one had a violin.

When we got to Minneapolis we found Hilda living in a large brick house, and she had two servants and a carriage. She cried with joy when she saw us, and bought us new clothes, because we were in homespun and no one wears that in Minneapolis. But she laid the homespun away in a chest and said that she would always keep it to remind her. [85]

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I stayed with Hilda two weeks, and then went out to my brother Knut's farm, which is fifty miles northwest of Minneapolis. It was in August when I reached him, and I helped with the harvest and the threshing. He had built a log house, with six windows in it. It looked very much like the log house where my parents live in Sweden, only it was not painted red like theirs.

I worked for my brother from August 1899, to March, 1901, at $16 a month, making $304, of which I spent only $12 in that time, as I had clothes.

On the first day of March I went to a farm that I had bought for $150, paying $50 down. It was a bush farm, ten miles from my brother's place and seven miles from the near est cross roads store. A man had owned it and cleared two acres, and then fallen sick and the storekeeper got it for a debt and sold it to me. My brother heard of it and advised- me to buy it.

I went on this land in company with a French Canadian named Joachim. He was part Indian, and yet was laughing all the time, very gay, very full of fun, and yet the best axman I ever saw. He wore the red trimmed white blanket overcoat of the Hudson Bay Company, with white blanket trousers and fancy moccasins, and a red sash around his waist and a capote that went over his head.

We took two toboggans loaded with our [86]

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goods and provisions, and made the ten-mile journey from my brother's house in three hours. The snow was eighteen inches deep on the level, but there was a good hard crust that bore us perfectly most of the way. The cold was about 10 below zero, but we were steaming when we got to the end of our journey. I wore two pairs of thick woolen stockings, with shoe-packs outside them — the shoe-pack is a moccasin made of red sole leather, its top is of strong blanket; it is very warm and keeps out wet. I wore heavy underclothes, two woolen shirts, two vests, a pilot jacket and an over coat, a woolen cap and a fur cap. Each of us had about 300 pounds weight on his toboggan.

Before this I had looked over my farm and decided where to build my house, so now I went straight to that place. It was the side of a hill that sloped southward to a creek that emptied into a river a mile away.

We went into a pine grove about half way up the hill and picked out a fallen tree, with a trunk nearly five feet thick, to make one side of our first house. This tree lay from east to west. So we made a platform near the root on the south side by stamping the snow down hard. On top of this platform we laid spruce boughs a foot deep and covered the spruce boughs over with a rubber blanket. We cut poles, about twenty of them, and laid them sloping from the snow up to the top of the tree trunk. Over these we spread canvas, and over [87]

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that again large pieces of oilcloth. Then we banked up the snow on back and side, built a fire in front in the angle made by the tree root, and, as we each had two pairs of blankets, we were ready for anything from a flood to a hurricane. We made the fire place of flat stones that we got near the top of the hill and kindled the fire with loose birch bark. We had a box of matches, and good fuel was all about us. Soon we had a roaring, fire going and a big heap of fuel standing by. We slung our pot by means of a chain to a pole that rested one end on the fallen tree trunk and the other on the crotch of a small tree six feet away ; we put the pan on top of the fire and used the cof fee or tea pot the same way — we made tea and coffee in the same pot. We had brought to camp :

FIRST OUTFIT

Cornmeal, 25 pounds $0.47

Flour, 100 pounds 2.00

Lard, 10 pounds 1.00

Butter, 10 pounds 1.80

Codfish, 25 pounds 2.25

Ham, 12 pounds 1.20

Potatoes, 120 pounds 1.40

Rice, 25 pounds 2.15

Coffee, 10 pounds 2.75

Bacon, 30 pounds 1.50

Herrings, 200 1.75

Molasses, 2 gallons 60

Axes, 3 3.55

Toboggans, 2 3.25

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Pair blankets $5.00

Pot, coffee pot, frying pan 1.60

Knives, 2 75

Salt, pepper, mustard 15

Tea, 9 pounds 2.70

Matches 10

Pickax 1.25

Spades, 2 3.00

Hoes, 2 2.00

Sugar, 30 pounds 1.80

Snow shoes, 1 pair 1.75

Gun 9.00

Powder and shot 65

Total $55.42

" Jake," as we all called the Frenchman, was a fine cook. He made damper in the pan, and we ate it swimming with butter along with slices of bacon and some roast potatoes and tea. " Jake," like all the lumbermen, made tea very strong. So did I, but I didn't like the same kind of tea. The backwoodsmen have got used to a sort of tea that bites like acid; it is very bad, but they won't take any other. I liked a different sort. So as we couldn't have both, we mixed the two together.

The sun went down soon after four o'clock, but the moon rose, the stars were very big and bright and the air quite still and so dry that no one could tell it was cold. "Jake" had brought a fiddle with him and he sat in the doorway of our house and played and sang [89]

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silly French Canadian songs, and told stories in his own language. I could not understand a word he said, but he didn't care ; he was talk ing to the fire and the woods as much as to me. He got up and acted some of the stories and made me laugh, though I didn't understand. We went to bed soon after eight o'clock^ and slept finely. I never had a better bed than those spruce boughs.

Next morning, after a breakfast of corn- meal mush, herrings, coffee and bacon, we took our axes and went to work, and by work ing steadily for six hours we chopped an acre of ground and cut four cords of wood, which we stacked up ready for hauling. It was birch, beech, oak, maple, hickory, ironwood and elm, for we left the pine alone and set out to clear the land on the side of the creek first. The small stuff that was not good for cord wood we piled up for our own fire or for fence rails.

We found, the fire out when we returned to our camp, but it was easy to light it again, and we had damper and butter, boiled rice and molasses, tea with sugar and slices of ham for supper. A workingman living out of doors in that air can eat as much as three men who live in the city. A light snow fell, but it made no difference, as our fire was protected by the tree root, and we could draw a strip of can vas down over the doorway of our house.

So we lived till near the first of April when [90]

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the sun began to grow warm and the ice and snow to melt. In that time we chopped about nine acres and made forty-five cords of wood, which we dragged to the bank of the river and left there for the boats to take, the storekeeper giving me credit for it on his books at $1.25 a cord. We also cut two roads through the bush. In order to haul the wood and break the roads I had to buy an ox team and bob sleigh which I got with harness, a ton of hay and four bushels of turnips for $63. I made the oxen a shelter of poles and boughs and birch bark sloping up to the top of an old tree root.

By April 15th the ground which we had chopped over was ready for planting, for all the snow and ice was gone and the sun was warm. I bought a lot of seed of several kinds, and went to wTork with spade and hoe, among the stumps of the clearing, putting in potatoes, corn, wheat, turnips, carrots, and a few onions, melons and pumpkins. We used spade and hoe in planting.

The soil was black loam on top of fine red sand, and the corn seemed to spring up the day after it was planted.

We planted nearly twelve acres of the land in a scattering way, and then set to work to build a log house of pine logs. " Jake " was a master hand at this, and in two weeks we had the house up. It was made of logs about 12 by 8 inches on the sides. It was 18 feet long [91]

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and 12 feet deep, and had three small windows in the sides and back and a door. The ends of the logs were chopped so that those of the sides fitted into those of the front and back. The only nails were in the door. I had to buy the windows. The only furniture was two trunks, a table, a stool and a bench, all made with the axe. The roof was of birch bark.

About the first of June my sister Helene came with a preserving kettle, a lot of glass jars and a big scheme. We got a cook stove and a barrel of sugar, and put a sign on the river bank announcing that we would pay fifty cents cash for 12 quarts of strawberries, rasp berries or blackberries. All through June, July and August Indians kept bringing us the berries, and my sister kept preserving, can ning arid labeling them. Meanwhile we dug a roothouse into the side of the hill and sided it up and roofed it over with logs, and we built a log stable for cattle. A load of lumber that we got for $2 had some planed boards in it, of which we made doors. The rest we used for roofs, which we finally shingled before win ter came on again. The result of my first sea son's work was as follows :

EXPENSES

(From March 1st to December 31st, 1901)

Farm, paid on account $50.00

Axes, 4, with handles 5.00

Spades, 2 3.00

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Hoes, 2 $2.00

Oil lantern 1.25

Lamp with bracket 1.50

Oil, 4 gallons 40

Cow with calf 25.00

Yoke of oxen, with harness, sleigh,

etc 63.00

Seed 12.50

"Jake's" wages, 6 months 120.00

Helen e's wages, 7 months 112.00

Windows for house 6.50

Lumber 2.00

Kitchen utensils, dishes 5.40

Toboggans, 2 2.75

Blankets, 2 pairs 10.00

Pickaxe 1.25

Mutton, 35 pounds 2.10

Beef, 86 pounds 6.02

Corned beef, 70 pounds 3.50

Bacon, 82 pounds 4.10

Flour, 3 barrels 10.50

Cornmeal, 80 pounds 2.40

Codfish, 40 pounds 3.60

Sugar, 400 pounds 20.00

Oatmeal, 75 pounds 2.25

Molasses, 9 gallons 2.70

Tobacco, 10 pounds .90

Candles 10

Tea, 18 pounds 5.40

Coffee, 10 pounds 5.40

Plough 6.50

Rice, 25 pounds 2.15

Preserve jars, 400 7.50

Stump extracting 17.00

Stove 3.00

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Preserve jar labels, 500 $2.50

All other expenses 21.00

Total $552.17

INCOME AND CASH IN HAND

(March 1st to December 31st, 1901).

Cash in hand $292.00

Wood, 45 cords at $1.25 56.25

Preserves, 400 quarts 66.50

Wheat, 67 bushels 46.50

Corn, 350 bushels 163.30

Carrots, 185 bushels 90.45

Turnips, 80 bushels 32.00

Potatoes, 150 bushels 75.00

Total $822.00

Total expenses 552.17

Balance on hand $269.83

That comparison of income and expenses looks more unfavorable than it really was be cause we had five months' provisions on hand on December 31st. We raised almost all our own provisions after the first three months. In 1902 my income was above $1,200, and my expenses after paying $50 on the farm and $62 for road making and stump extracting and labor, less than $600.

I have no trouble selling my produce, as the storekeeper takes it all and sells it down the river. He also owns a threshing machine and stump extractor.

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The Frenchman went away in August, 1901. I don't know where he is. I have had other good workmen since but none like him.

I studied English coming out on the vessel, but I was here six months before I could speak it well. I like this country very much, and will become a citizen.

One thing I like about this country is that you do not have to be always taking off your hat to people. In Sweden you take off your hat to everybody you meet, and if you enter a store you take off your hat to the clerk. Another thing that makes me like this country is that I can share in the government. In Sweden my father never had a vote, and my brothers never could have voted because there is a property qualification that keeps out the poor people, and they had no chance to make money. Here any man of good character can have a vote after he has been a short time in the country, and people can elect him to any office. There are no aristocrats to push him down, and say that he is not worthy because his father was poor. Some Swedes have become Gov ernors of States, and many who landed here poor boys are now very rich.

I am going over to Sweden soon to keep Christmas there. Six hundred other Swedes will sail on our ship. Many are from Minne sota. They have done their fall planting, and the snow is on the ground up there, and they can easily get away for two months or more. [95]

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So we are all going to our old home, but will come back again, and may be bring other peo ple with us. Some Swedes go to the old coun try every Christmas.

We're going in the steerage and pay a low special rate because the ships need passengers at this time of the year. We'll have the steer age all to ourselves, and it ought to be very comfortable and jolly. We will dance and play cards all the way over.

Christmas is Sweden's great day; in fact, it is wrong to speak of it as a day because it keeps up for two weeks. The people have been preparing for it since November last. Near our place there are twelve farm houses and about ten people living in each house. In the last letter that I got from my mother two weeks ago she told me about the preparations for Christmas. I know who the maskers are, wrho will go around on Christmas Eve knock ing at the doors of the houses and giving the presents. That's supposed to be a secret, but mother has found out.

I expect to return to America in February, and will try to bring my elder brother, Eric, and my youngest sister, Minna, with me. Eric has never seen a city, neither has Minna, and they don't think that they would like America much because the ways of the people are so different and they work so much harder while they are working.

My father says that Sweden is the finest [96]

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country in the world, and he will never leave, but he is only sixty years of age, and so he could move very well. Mother is younger, and they are both strong, so I think they will come to us in Minnesota next year, and then our whole family will be in America, for Uncle Olaf is now in New York in a shipping office.

Gustaf is married and has three children, and Knut is to be married shortly, but either of them would be glad to have the father and mother. I think, though, that they will come to my house.

I am carrying with me two trunks, and one of them is full of Christmas presents from Knut and Gustaf, Hilda and Christine to father, mother, Eric and Minna. When I re turn to America my trunk will be filled with presents from those in the old home to those in the new.

Among these presents are books of pictures showing Minneapolis, Duluth and New York, and photographs of our houses. My father and the other old men will not believe that there are any great cities in America. They say that it is a wild country, and that it is quite impossible that New York can be as large as Stockholm. When they hear about the tall buildings they laugh, and say that travelers always tell such wild tales. Maybe they will believe the photographs.

Some of the pictures that I am carrying to Sweden are of women in America. They have [97]

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a better time than in Sweden. At least, they do not have to do such heavy work, and they dress much more expensively. Minna will be greatly surprised when she sees how Hilda dresses now, and I feel sure that she, too, will want to come here and try her fortune, where there are so many rich husbands to be had.

The Swedes who live in America like the old country girls, because they know how to save money.

[98]

CHAPTER VI

THE LIFE STORY OF A FRENCH DRESSMAKER

Amelia des Moulins is a French girl who, as her story shows, is making her fortune in America, but is going back to France to live.

I WAS born in a country district of France, on the edge of a great forest, about 150 miles southwest of Paris. When I first came to identify myself, I was a little red-cheeked, roly-poly, black-haired, black-eyed baby of four years or so, tumbling about under the trees trying to gather fagots.

My father had been one of the men in charge of the forest, and when he was killed by the caving in of an earthbank the great man who owned the estate on which we lived al lowed my mother to continue gathering fire wood as before, which was to us quite a valu able privilege, as fuel is scarce and dear in France.

Our cottage was of stone. It was about 200 years old and had tiled roof, though most of the cottages of the neighborhood were thatched. The walls were nearly two feet thick and all the front and sides were covered with ivy. There were only two rooms on the [99]

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ground floor, but overhead was a large loft, with the floor boards loose on the beams. My brothers Jean and Fra^ois slept in the loft, which they reached by a ladder, and sometimes the straw from their bed would come sifting down through the cracks above.

The large room on the ground floor was kitchen, dining room, sitting room and parlor. It had a great hearth, where a big iron pot hung on a thick chain, and both chain and pot were relics that had long been in my father's family. The only furniture here was a bench, four wooden stools and an old table, and the only picture on the plastered walls was a print of the Madonna. The other room was mother's bedroom, and I and my sister Mad eline had a cot in the corner.

In comparison with some of our neighbors we were looked upon as wealthy, seeing that mother owned the house and field of two acres, and that she had about $400 saved up and bur ied in an old iron pot in the earthern floor of the little cellar, which was under the middle of the big room and reached through a trap door.

Mother was a large, stout, full blooded woman of great strength. She could not read or write and yet she was well thought of. There are all sorts of educations, and though readirig and writing are very well in their way, they would not have done mother any good. She had the sort of education that was needed for her work. Nobody knew more about rais- [100]

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ing vegetables, ducks, chickens and pigeons than she did. There were some among the neighbors who could read and write and so thought themselves above mother, but when they went to market they found their mistake. Her peas, beans, cauliflower, cabbages, pump kins, melons, potatoes, beets and onions sold for the highest price of any, and that ought to show whose education was the best, because it is the highest education that produces the finest work.

Mother used to take me frequently to the market. We had a big dog and a little cart (mother and the dog pulled the cart) — one can see hundreds of them in any French market town to-day. The cart was filled high with fowls and vegetables, and when I was very small I sat on the top holding our lunch, which was wrapped in a napkin. It was al ways the same, a half loaf of black bread to be eaten with an onion. I was inclined to be par ticular, and sometimes I would not eat the black bread, which was hard and sour, but mother would just lay it aside and say that I would go to it before it would go to me, and I always did go to it, except one day when mother got impatient with me for being sulky and gave my bread to the dog, Hero, who ate it like the greedy thing that he was. I boxed his ears for that, but he only smiled at me. He was a big, black Newfoundland fellow, very good-natured.

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We used to reach the market place about half -past five o'clock in the morning, and when we got there mother would back the cart up against the sidewalk and begin to shout about the chickens, eggs and vegetables. All the women with the carts were shouting and all the dogs barking, and there was great business.

The market women were a big, rough, fat, jolly set, who did not know what sickness was, and it might have been well for me if I had stayed among them and grown to be like mother. They had so much hard, healthy work that it gave them no time to worry.

One time in the market place I saw a totally different set of women. It was about eight o'clock in the morning, when some people be gan to shout :

" Here come the rich Americans! Now we will sell things! "

We saw a large party of travelers coming through the crowd. They looked very queer. Their clothes seemed queer, as they were so different from ours. They wore leather boots instead of wooden shoes, and they all looked weak and pale. The women were tall and thin, like bean-poles, and their shoulders were stooped and narrow ; most of them wore glasses or spectacles, showing that their eyes were weak. The corners of their mouths were all pulled down and their faces were crossed and crisscrossed with lines and wrinkles, as though they were carrying all the care in the world. [102]

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Our women all began to laugh and dance and shout at the strangers. It was not very polite on our part, but the travelers certainly did look funny.

I was about six years old when that hap pened, and the sight of those people gave me my first idea of America. 1 heard that the women there never worked, laced themselves too tightly, and were always ill.

I would have grown up like mother and her friends but that I did not seem to be good at their work. 1 took to reading, writing, sew ing and embroidering, and I did not take to gardening and selling things, while I cried when they killed pigeons or chickens. So I was sent to Paris to live with my Aunt Celes- tina, a dressmaker, employed by one of the great establishments.

My aunt, though mother's sister, was not at all like her. She was small, thin and pale, with quick, black eyes and a snappy sort of way, though she was quite good hearted.

It was not very long before I found out just how the fashions are made. There are three great establishments in Paris that lead all others. These have very clever men work ing for them as designers of cloaks, hats and dresses. These designers not only know all the recent fashions, but also all the fashions that there were in the world hundreds of years ago. They have books full of pictures to help them, and what they try to do is to make the [103]

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women change their dresses just as often as possible. That's the reason they keep chang ing the fashions.

Each time they make a new fashion they make it just as unlike the one that went before as can be, so that things that are six months old look ridiculous, and the women all over the world who are trying to follow the fashions put the old dresses away, even though they have only been worn once or twice. One time the sleeves are big at the shoulders and narrow at the wrists and at another time narrow at the shoulders and big at the wrists. One time the dress is tight at the waist and another time loose, and there are all sorts of changes in the size, shape and hang of the skirt ; and in addi tion all the changes of fashion in colors and materials.

The keynote of fashion making is change, for the women all over the world are watching Paris, and they say, " You might as well be out of the world, as out of the fashion." The greater the changes the more dresses sold.

When these great milliners have decided on the new fashions they get some of the best known women in the city to lead off with them. These women are given magnificent costumes of the newest design to wear, and, in some cases, are even paid for wearing them. Of course these women are great beauties, and when they appear in the parks, or at the opera, [104]

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all the other women envy them, and all those who can, run away and get something of the same kind.

My aunt and I lived in a room on the fifth floor of an old brick house in one of the back streets. They were all poor people in the house, and I found the children very different from those in the country. They were not re ligious. The boys swore and smoked — even little ones of my own age — and the girls knew all sorts of bad things. There was no place to play but in the streets, and, for a time, I was very homesick. The other children laughed at me, but they were not altogether bad. They were good natured in their way. Most of them had never been in the country and they thought I was telling stories when I described the forest where you could walk for miles and see nothing but the trees.

Some of these children belonged to people who beat them, and a few had hardly any clothes. My aunt used to pity them so much, and in the evening she taught me dressmaking by making things for those children. She taught me measuring, cutting out, basting and stitching. In the day time I went to school. Mother sent aunt some money to help keep me, and as I had a natural love for dressmaking I got along. In the afternoons when school was over and before my aunt returned from her work I used to go and see all the beautiful things in the museums and art galleries. [105]

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I was with my aunt, learning all she could teach, till I was fourteen years of age, which was in 1895. I was quite a well grown girl then, and my aunt was going to get me em ployment in the place where she worked, when she died of a heavy cold, pneumonia, I suppose. After she caught the cold she went to work, and grew worse, but she wouldn't stop for two days. On the third day she was in a high fever and so dizzy that she could not stand when she rose from bed. I got her some med icine, but I did not know what to ask for and the druggist did not exactly know what to give. It did no good. So at last I called in a doctor, but she grew worse very fast and seemed choking. Some of the neighbors sat up with her in the early part of the night, but at three o'clock in the morning I was the only watcher. My aunt, who had been breathing very heavily and seemed unconscious, suddenly sat up in bed, with her eyes staring. She was frightened and began to cry.

"I'm dying," she said, " and I'm not fit to die; I have been so wicked."

I spoke to her and held her hands, but I could not comfort her.

' You are not dying, and you have not been wicked," I said.

" Oh! Oh! I have been so wicked! " she cried, again and again.

I declared that she had not done anything wrong, but she answered: [106]

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" Those clothes that I made for the poor children, I stole all the goods from our cus tomers, because I could not bear to see the lit tle ones in such a state. Oh, it was very bad. If I wanted to give the children something it should have been my own."

I was so frightened that I called up the people who lived in the next room and one of them went for the priest, and after he had talked with my aunt for a few minutes she seemed comforted, but she died the next morning.

I went back to my mother's house for two weeks, but I could not stay there, so I returned to Paris, where I went to work in the shop that had employed my aunt.

-Many of our best customers were Ameri cans. They were all very rich, and we heard that everybody in America was rich. They drove up to our shop in carriages and auto mobiles, and they wanted dresses like those of the queens and princesses. Some of them spent whole weeks in our shop.

Part of the time I had to help try on and heard a great deal of the conversation of these ladies. It was all about dress and money. They said that Paris was just like their idea of heaven, though the ones who said that had seen very little except our shop. They were mostly daughters of working people, common laborers, butchers and shopkeepers who had grown rich some way, yet they were more [107]

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haughty and proud than our own aristocrats. In fact, they were pretending to be aristo crats. I remember one of this sort who de clared that she hated America because it was a republic and contained so many common peo ple. She was sorry that France was a repub lic and hoped it would again soon have a king. Our forewoman always agreed with all the customers, and she agreed with this one till her back was turned. Then she said :

" What a fool that woman is! She is coarse enough for the fish market, yet she thinks she can make people believe she is an aristocrat. I wonder what she is proud of ? "

Most of the Americans I disliked, but there were a few of a different sort. One very beautiful, tall girl, whose father owned 10,000 miles of telegraph wires and something like $40,000,000, was as gentle, simple and pleas ant as if she had been poor. She smiled at me when I was helping her to try on a new dress, and said :

' What good taste you have. If one as clever as you came to America she could do very well."

I had been for a long time thinking that same thing. If the Americans whom I had seen could have so much money, why not I? I said that to Annette, my room mate, and she also wanted to go to America.

Of course, it was all on account of the money, as there is no country like France and [108]

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no city like Paris. We heard that some dress makers in America received as much as 100 francs for a week's work. That seemed to me a great fortune.

By working at night Annette and I saved 300 francs, but it was stolen from our room and we had to begin all over again.

That was the reason why we did not reach America till 1899. We saved and saved, and we pinched ourselves hard, but it takes a long time for two sewing girls in Paris to scrape together 500 francs, and we could not start with less, because we wanted to have some money in our pockets when we landed.

It was in September when we started. I had never seen the ocean before and the voy age was all strange. When we approached America a man came to us and asked how much money we had. We showed him 40 francs.

' That is not enough," he said; " you will be sent back. No one is allowed to land in Amer ica unless he has 100 francs."

We were dreadfully frightened, but the man said that if we gave him 20 francs he would lend each of us $50 till we passed through the immigrants' gate and got into the city of New York. We gave him 20 francs and he gave each of us a $50 bill.

" But will they not think it strange that I and Annette have each a $50 bill in American money? " I asked.

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"Not at all," said he. "American money is now good all over the world."

When we reached the immigrants' gate, however, the men there told us that the $50 bills were no good. They were what is called Confederate. The man who had given them to us had slipped away. We would have been sent back to France if some other immi grants had not taken pity on us and lent us some money.

Oh, how glad we were to get away from that place and into the city. We landed in a sort of park, and a good woman, who was one of those that helped us, treated us to peaches and popcorn. The peaches were the largest and ripest I ever ate. They fairly melted in our mouths.

A car took us to a place in South Fifth Ave nue where there are many French people. We were horrified when we found that we must pay $2 a week for a miserable room, but we could do no better. We had only 10 francs left, and all the first week after our landing we lived on potatoes — that we roasted over the gas flame — and stale bread. The woman who kept the house walked about in the passage smelling the air and saying that some one was cooking in one of the bedrooms, but she did not find us out.

That was a horrible place. Most of the peo ple in it seemed to be mad; they made such [110]

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awful noises in the night — singing, shouting, banging pianos, dancing and quarreling.

The partition that separated our room from the one next door to it was thin and there was a hole in it, through which a man once peeped. He talked at us, but we nailed a piece of tin over the hole; and as for his talk, we never answered it.

I don't think that that house had been dusted or swept in six months; the servants looked most untidy. Most of the women lodgers slept till noon each day and then walked about the passages wearing old wrap pers. Their hair was done up in curl papers and their faces were covered with a white paste to improve their complexions. They looked hideous till they washed themselves later in the day. These were all married women who had no children and nothing to do but gad about.

Each day after our arrival in New York we wandered about the streets looking for work, but we did not know where to look and had no luck. We could not speak English and that made it very hard. We might have starved but that Annette made $2 posing for an artist, whom she met quite by chance. He had been in Paris and he knew immediately that she was French. He saw by the way she looked at the shop signs that she was strange to the city and he spoke to her in French. Of course she answered, and they became acquainted. [Ill]

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" How did you know I was French? " she asked, and he answered:

" A French girl! Ah, how could I mistake you for one of another nation? "

That is the truth, too, though I say it my self. All the world knows that we French have the true artistic taste, and we show it most in our dress. The Germans or the English cannot make dresses or hats, and even when we make for them they cannot wear the clothes properly. There is something wrong some where, probably with the color scheme. Those other people do not understand, they cannot comprehend, it is impossible to convey to them the conception of true harmony. It is like trying to teach the blind about light. They lack the soul of the artist, and so their dresses are shocking, hideous discords of form and color. When I see them I simply want to scream.

Berlin has lately been trying to make fash ions of her own. Pah! Pooh! What pre sumption!

Annette is tall and fair, while I am dark and not more than medium height. The artist posed her as a Venetian flower girl with bare feet. I saw the picture lately hanging in a great gallery. It is very beautiful and ex actly like Annette — though she always says that I am the beauty. Of course that is not true.

After we had been for eight days looking

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for work without finding any we spoke to the woman who kept the house where we lived. She knew a little French.

" I think that I can get you situations," she said, " but they will cost you $10 for each."

I told her that we had no money.

"No matter," said she; "you can pay me after you are paid, and I will then pay the forewoman. But you must not say anything to her about paying, because the proprietor does not know about it." The next day we went with the woman to a Sixth Avenue dress maker, where we were engaged at $7 a week each, which seemed to us good pay. We had to give the woman of our house $5 a week each for two weeks, and as we paid $1 a week each for our room, we nearly starved trying to live on the remainder. At the end of two weeks we were discharged by the forewoman, though there was plenty of work. I learned afterward that the forewoman made a great deal of money that way, by receiving pay for hiring girls whom she afterward discharged.

We seemed to be in a worse state than ever and cried all the night after we were sent away from the Sixth Avenue place. But at six o'clock in the next morning we rose and said long prayers, and I wrote a sort of letter to be shown. It said like this :

"MADAME: Please to behold us as two girls who have of Paris the art dressmaker from the best models [113]

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taken to make the dress for the American, we will comprehend so well if you but try. If you please.

ANNETTE, AMELIA."

I wrote that because I could take time and use the correct language, as I had found when I spoke the English, Americans did not under stand.

We hurried into the street, having no break fast, but full of hope, for it was the season of dressmaking and we surely must get some thing.

We entered a fine place on Twenty-third Street and a man behind a counter sent us upstairs, where we found twenty women en gaged. The proprietress read my letter and asked us questions. She did not seem to un derstand well and called a German girl who spoke French.

I had all my life hated Germans, but I could not hate this girl as she spoke to us so kindly.

I told her where we had had experience, and what we could do, and she said to the proprie tress :

" We must have these, Miss G . They

come from the best place in Paris and look clever."

"Nonsense!" said the proprietress; "we don't want them. They are mere appren tices."

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I understood what she meant and said in French that we were not apprentices, but of long experience, and Annette, too, joined in.

But the proprietress was only pretending. She wanted us all the time. So at last she said:

" But how much money would you want? "

" Seven dollars a week," said I, because I thought that I might as well ask for plenty.

The proprietress almost screamed:

" Seven dollars a week, and you have just landed!"

" Oh, no," I said; " we have been here nearly a month."

At last we were engaged at $6 a week each and they put us at work immediately. Our hours were from eight o'clock in the morning till six o'clock in the evening. When we went home that night we were very happy and treated ourselves to a little feast in our room. On six dollars a week we knew that we could live finely and we felt sure that we could keep this place, as they had put us on good work at once and we knew that we had done well."

Our proprietress was full of tricks. In ap pearance she was a tall, thin, sharp faced woman with fair hair. She was very quick in speech and action, and a great driver among the girls. She did all the measuring and cut ting out and her perquisites included all the materials that were left over from the dresses, [115]

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A tall woman would need seventeen yards of silk or other narrow goods, while one who was shorter might get along very well with fourteen yards. Our proprietress would always exaggerate the amount of material needed and then, in cutting out, would be able to reserve some for herself. Often she got as much as two yards. These pieces she slipped into a private drawer, of which she had the key. It did not take her long, therefore, to get enough to make herself a new skirt or a waist, and odd pieces could be used as piping or as trimming for hats.

Accordingly she was always very well dressed, and though sometimes customers rec ognized parts of their own materials in her costume, they seldom said anything.

Once, though, I thought there was going to be a scene. A stout lady who was one of our best customers came in one day and saw our proprietress just going out to lunch. The stout lady immediately stood still and glared at the proprietress's new hat, which was on her head. It was a very stylish hat and the silk trimming was precisely the same as the piping of the lady's dress that had recently been made at our place.

' Why, you've got my piping! " she cried.

The proprietress flushed and smiled, but she was equal to the occasion.

" Yes, Mrs. Miller," she said, " it's the very same as yours. The truth is I admired the [116]

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material so much that I sent out and bought some. Don't you like my hat? "

" Oh, yes," said the stout lady. " Where did you get that material? "

This was a catch, because there was only one store in town where it could have been bought, but our proprietress was not to be trapped.

" One of my girls got it for me. I don't know where she got it," she said.

" Humph! " exclaimed the stout lady, and wandered away without another word.

She came back later on and gave us more custom. She knew that she was being robbed, but she knew, also, that it was the dressmakers' rule to help themselves from their customers' material.

On another occasion a lady who had given five yards of wide ribbon for trimming came back after she had received the dress.

" I don't understand how it is, Miss - — ," she said. " I gave you five yards of this rib bon. There's only four yards on the dress. I measured it with the tape measure."

The proprietress produced tape measure and gravely measured the trimming.

"Dear me! you're right," she exclaimed. " Now, what can have happened to that other yard? Where can it be? Girls, did you see it any place? "

The customer just sniffed.

We all buzzed about, but it was the propri etress herself who found the missing ribbon [117]

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under a pile of goods. She appeared to be greatly surprised, and the customer sniffed again.

Our proprietress, I think, never told the truth while she was at business. She would promise most solemnly to have a dress made up in three days when she knew quite well that it could not be done in two weeks.

Sometimes when the bell rang she would look out and say :

" Oh, girls! There's that Mrs. K- - come again. I promised for sure that her dress would be ready to try on this afternoon and I haven't put the scissors in it yet. Run down, Katie, and keep her in the parlor."

Then she would rush at the goods and the pattern, cut out with lightning speed and toss the various parts to different girls to baste. In half an hour there was the dress, basted, ready to try on, and the customer none the wiser as to how it was done.

Some of our customers suffered greatly in their efforts to be fashionable, for fashion takes no account of the natural shape of the human body. It did not matter so much to the thin women, because all they had to do was to stuff their figures, but some of the stout women were martyrs.

One very beautiful woman was fat and would not acknowledge it, as she had been quite slim.

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" My waist measure," she said, " is 24 inches."

She insisted on this and made two of us girls pull her corset strings till we secured the right girth.

My! that was a job! The squeezing must have hurt her awfully. She was gasping for breath and perspiring rivers, but she would not give up.

When we sent the dress home she brought

' It doesn't fit," she said.

' Where? " asked the proprietress.

" The waist is too small."

"The waist is 24 inches. You gave that yourself as your measurement. All you have to do is to have your corsets tightened as they were on the day when you were measured."

The poor lady looked at us and we all nod ded assent. We had heard her insist that 24 was her measurement. Soon she was again in the hands of the tighteners, gasping and per spiring.

When the corsets were well pulled in the dress fitted like a glove, but the poor lady's face was the color of blood and she could hardly speak.

"I m — m — must — have — been mistaken!" she gasped.

"Certainly!" said our proprietress. "I never saw a better fit."

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The poor lady staggered away trying to look comfortable. I don't believe she could wear that dress, though, as she was growing stouter.

The only thing to be done for stout people is to make everything plain, avoid bright colors and have all lines running up and down. That gives the appearance of greater height and less girth.

Lines running up and down make short women look taller. As to tall women, they don't want to look shorter now. It's the fash ion to be tall. The plump, cosy, little women is out of date.

The first thing that I and Annette did when we began to have a little money was to move away from the horrible place in South Fifth Avenue. We never could understand those people. Most of them were connected with theaters, .and they kept hours that seemed crazy. We got a room in West Twenty- fourth Street for $3 a week — a very good room, too — and made arrangement with a res taurant to give us breakfast and supper for $2.50 per week each.

So our starvation was at an end, and we had $2 a week to do with as we pleased. In a few weeks we had good clothing, and after that we were able to save a little.

Annette came to me one day with her eyes as big as saucers.

"What do you think!" she said. "That [120]

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girl Rosa gets $12 a week and she is not as clever as us."

We were both very angry at Rosa, though I suppose it was not her fault. Still she had no right to get more. It was ridiculous; we were the better workwomen.

" Wait," said I; "we are learning the En glish."

We waited six months and then asked the proprietress to give us $12 a week. She screamed at us with rage.

" What impudence! " she said.

But we only smiled; we knew enough of the English now and were not afraid.

She gave us $9 a week each and we stayed there six months more. Then, when the holi day season was coming on, we went to a great dressmaking place in Fifth Avenue and told the proprietress about our Paris experience and where we were now working. She asked how much we were getting and we said $18 a week.

That was true, too, because each of us got $9. We would not tell what was not true.

The proprietress said: "Well, if they give you $18 a week in Twenty-third Street we will give you $20 a week here."

When we told the proprietress of the Twenty- third Street shop she screamed again, and said that we could not go, that she would give us a bad character. We said it was no matter, we would not ask the character from her. Then she cried, and said that we had in- [121]

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gratitude and she would give us $12 a week each.

We cried, too. Because after all she was not such a bad one to work for. But we had to go, as it was too much money that we wanted for staying.

So we began in Fifth Avenue, and now it was quite new the sort of trade. We have been in that place ever since. We have been in the very finest houses of New York, talking with all the beauties and trying on their dresses for them.

The girls here are very beautiful, but I can not like them. They have not the heart of French women. All that is given to them they take as their due and they are not grateful. They love, but it is only themselves. They do not care for men, except to have them as slaves bringing them the money that they so much need. For fine dress they will do anything.

I have told of the tricks that dressmakers play on ladies, but they are no worse than those that ladies play on dressmakers and on other people. In the first place, many of them won't pay their bills. In the second place they get costumes made and delivered that they wear one night and then return, saying that they have changed their minds, or that the costume doesn't fit — they deny that they have worn it except to try on: — they get $50 or $100 cash and have it charged as a dress or hats in the bill, so as to deceive their husbands. They [122]

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are finicky and want things changed because their minds have changed. They expect us to remake them in spite of nature. All the fat women insist that we shall make them look thin.

Then if they quarrel with us they use slander.

One of our customers, a very sweet little lady, who is quite wealthy, said the other day to our proprietress :

" How have you offended Mrs. L— — ? "

" Have I offended her? " the proprietress asked.

" It seems so. I was walking with her on the street the other day when you passed. You bowed to me and I responded, when Mrs. L— - said: ' Oh, do you know that person? ' ' Why, yes,' said I, ' that's my dressmaker/ ' Indeed! ' said she; ' how can you stand her? She fits so badly.' ' I've always found her a true artist,' said I."

Our proprietress was very angry when she heard this story.

" Now I will tell the whole truth," she said.

* That woman owes me $850, and it would be

more than $1,000, but the last costume I sent

C. O. D. ' My husband is not home and I

have no money,' said she to the girl. The girl

in spite of her protests brought the costume

away. She came to me and said, * I have to

wear that costume this evening. I am going

to the ball ! ' * Then you must pay for it/ said

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I. ' But I have not the money and my hus band is away.' ' Get the money,' said I. She did get it and I gave her the costume, but she has slandered me ever since."

Ah! it is a good country to work in, no doubt. Annette is now getting $40 a week and I almost as much, and we have plenty saved; but I am not to live here.

To one born in England, Germany, Austria, Holland or Scandinavia this may appear fine, but not so to the French.

There is but one France and only one Paris in all the world, and soon, very soon, Annette and I will be aboard some great ship that will bear us back there.

CHAPTER VII

THE LIFE STORY OF A GERMAN NURSE GIRL

The first name of the pretty nurse girl who writes this chapter is Agnes, but it's not worth while giving her last name because, as the last paragraph implies, it is liable soon to be changed.

I WAS born just twenty years ago in the old, old city of Treves, in what was once France, but is now Germany. There were eight children in our family, five girls and three boys, and we were comfortably off until my father died, which happened when I was only three years old.

My father was a truckman, carrying goods from the railway stations to the shops; he had a number of wagons going and had built up a good business, though he was always ill from some disease that he contracted when a soldier in the war with France. It was con sumption, I believe, and it finally carried him off. We were living at the time in a fine new house that he had built near the Moselle, but we were soon obliged to move, because though my mother was a good business woman, every one robbed her, and even my uncle made the mortgage come down on our house without telling her — which she said was very mean. [125]

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By the time I was five years old my mother had lost everything except the money she got from the Government, which was enough to keep her, but the family had to hreak up, and I went away to a school kept by Sisters of Christian Liebe, in another city. The Govern ment paid for me there on account of my being a soldier's orphan — all of us children had allowances like that.

From the time I went away to that school till I was fifteen years of age I did not once see my mother, but stayed in school during all the holidays. But in spite of that I was not sad. It was the pleasantest time of my life, and I often wonder if I shall ever be as happy again.

The school was for Catholics, and I was glad I was a Catholic it was so good to be there ; and I heard that at the school to which the Lutheran children went the teachers were very severe. However that might be, our Sisters were among the kindest women that ever lived and they loved us all dearly.

Every one at the school made much of me because I was so little — a gay little thing with fuzzy, light hair and blue eyes, and plenty to say for myself and a good voice for singing. I learned quickly, too, and when play time came I played hard.

We got up at half -past six o'clock each morning, and had mass three times a week and morning prayer when there was no mass. At [126]

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eight o'clock school began and lasted to ten, when there was half an hour for play, then an hour more school, then more play and then lunch, after which we worked in the garden or sewed or sang or played till six o'clock, when we had dinner, and we all went to bed at eight. We did not always go to sleep though, but sometimes lit candles after the Sisters had gone away and had feasts of apples and cakes and candies.

There were about eighty boys in this school and fifty-five girls — none of them older than fifteen years. We had a very large play ground, and though the boys and girls were kept separate they yet found means of con versing, and when I was eleven years of age I fell in love with a tall, slim, thoughtful, dark- haired boy named Fritz, whose parents lived in Frankfort. We used to talk to each other through the bars of the fence which divided our playground. He was a year and a half older than I, and I thought him a man. The only time I was ever beaten at that school was on his account. We had been talking together on the playground; I did not heed the bell and was late getting in, and when the Sister asked what kept me I did not answer. She insisted on knowing, and Fritz and I looked at each other. The Sister caught us laughing.

Whipping on the hands with a rod was the punishment that they had there for very naughty children, and that is what I got. It [127]

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did not hurt much, and that night at half past nine o'clock, when all the house was still, there came a tapping at our dormitory window, and when it was opened we found Fritz there cry ing about the way I had been whipped. He had climbed up one of the veranda posts and had an orange for me. The other girls never told. They said it was so fine and romantic.

Fritz and I kept up our friendship till he had to leave the place, which was when I had grown to be nearly thirteen years of age. He climbed to our dormitory again to bid me good-bye, and tell me that when I was free from the school he would seek me out and marry me. We cried together as he told me his plans for being a great man, and all that night and the next night, too, I cried alone; but I never saw him again, and I'm afraid that his plans must have miscarried.

When I was fifteen years of age I left school and returned to my mother, who was then living in a flat with some of my brothers and sisters. Two of my brothers were in the army and one of my sisters was in America, while another sister was married in Germany.

I did not like it much at home. My mother was almost a stranger to me, and after the kindness of the Sisters and the pleasantness of their school she seemed very stern.

I went to work for a milliner. The hours were from eight o'clock in the morning till six [128]

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in the evening, but when there was much bus iness the milliner would keep us till nine o'clock at night. I got no money, and was to serve for two years for nothing as an appren tice.

But the milliner found that I was already so clever with the needle that she set me to work making hats and dresses after the first two weeks that I was working for her, and when I had been there six months I could see that I had nothing more to learn in her place and that staying there was just throwing away my time.

Needlework seemed to come naturally to me, while I disliked cooking and was not much good at it. My two elder sisters, on the other hand, were stupid at sewing and embroidery, but master hands at cooking. My eldest sis ter was such a good cook that her husband started a restaurant so that she might have a chance to use her talents ; and as for my second eldest sister, within two months after she landed in America — where she was sent by my eldest sister — she was earning $35 a month as a cook for one of the rich families.

My sister in America sent money for my eldest brother to go to her when his time in the army was done. We were all glad to see him go, because he had been a sergeant and was so used to commanding that he tried to command everybody he met. He even tried to command me!

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Such ways won't do outside of the army. Another thing that we disliked was that, hav ing been a sergeant, he was too proud to work, so we were glad to see him go to America. He lived for awhile by borrowing money from my sister till she got married to a mechanical engi neer, who would not have him about the house when he heard of his actions.

So he had to do something, and became a butler, and a very good one, too, making plenty of money but spending it all on himself. He is employed by a family on the east side of Central Park now, getting $60 a month. When I went to see him a year ago he pre tended that he did not know me. He has also forgotten my sister who helped him to come out here, and he has never sent a dollar to mother.

I heard about how easy it was to make money in America and became very anxious to go there, and very tired of making hats and dresses for nothing for a woman who was sell ing them at high prices. I was restless in my home also; mother seemed so stern and could not understand that I wanted amusement.

I was not giddy and not at all inclined to flirt, but I had been used to plenty of play at the school, and this all work and no play and no money to spend was hard.

If I had been inclined to flirt there was plenty to do in Treves, for the city was full of soldiers, young fellows who, when they wore [130]

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their uniforms, thought that a girl could not fail to be in love with them; but they made a mistake when they met me. They used to chirrup after me, just like birds, but I would turn and make faces to show what I thought of them — I was not quite sixteen then.

There were officers there, too, but they never noticed me. They belong to the high families, and go about the streets with their noses up in the air and their mustaches waxed up, trying to look like the Emperor. I thought they were horrid.

I grew more and more tired of all work and no play, and more and more anxious to go to America; and at last mother, too, grew anx ious to see me go. She met me one night walk ing in the street with a young man, and said to me afterward:

' It is better that you go."

There was nothing at all in my walking with that young man, but she thought there was and asked my eldest sister to lend me the money to go to America to my second eldest sister, and a month later I sailed from Ant werp, the fare costing $55.

My second eldest sister with her husband met me at Ellis Island and they were very glad to see me, and I went to live with them in their flat in West Thirty-fourth Street. A week later I was an apprentice in a Sixth Avenue millinery store earning four dollars a week. I only paid three dollars a week for board, [131]

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and was soon earning extra money by making dresses and hats at home for customers of my own, so that it was a great change from Ger many. But the hours in the millinery store were the same as in Germany, and there was overtime, too, occasionally; and though I was now paid for it I felt that I wanted something different — more time to myself and a differ ent way of living. I wanted more pleasure. Our house was dull, and though I went to Coney Island or to a Harlem picnic park with the other girls now and then, I thought I'd like a change.

So I went out to service, getting twenty- two dollars a month as a nursery governess in a family where there were three servants be sides the cook.

I had three children to attend to, one four, one six and one seven years of age. The one who was six years of age was a boy ; the other two were girls. I had to look after them, to play with them, to take them about and amuse them, and to teach them German — which was easy to me, because I knew so little English. They were the children of a German mother, who talked to them in their own language, so they already knew something of it. I got along with these children very well and stayed with them for two years, teaching them what I knew and going out to a picnic or a ball or something of that sort about once a week, for I am very fond of dancing. [182]

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We went to Newport and took a cottage there in the summer time, and our house was full of company. A certain gentleman there once told me that I was the prettiest girl in the place, with a great deal more of the same sort of talk. I was dressed in gray, with white in sertion, and was wearing roses at the time he said that. He caught me passing through the parlor when the others were away. Of course I paid no attention to him, but it was early in the day. It was generally late in the evening when gentlemen paid such compliments.

I enjoyed life with this family and they seemed to like me, for they kept me till the children were ready to go to school. After I left them I went into another family, where there were a very old man and his son and granddaughter who was married and had two children. They had a house up on Riverside Drive, and the old man was very rich. The house was splendid and they had five carriages and ten horses, and a pair of Shetland ponies for the children. There were twelve servants, and I dined with the housekeeper and butler, of course — because we had to draw the line. I got $25 a month here and two afternoons a week, and if I wanted to go any place in par ticular they let me off for it.

These people had a fine place down on Long

Island to which we all went in the summer,

and there I had to ramble around with the

children, boating, bathing, crabbing, fishing

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and playing all their games. It was good fun, and I grew healthy and strong.

The children were a boy of ten and girl of eight years. They were restless and full of life but good natured, and as they liked me I would have stayed there till they grew too old to need me any more, but that something awful happened during the second summer that we were spending on Long Island.

It was one night in June, when the moon was very large and some big stars were shin ing. I had been to the village with the house keeper to get the mail, and at the post office we met the butler and a young man who sailed the boats for us. Our way home lay across the fields and the young man with me kept stopping to admire things, so that the others got away ahead of us.

He admired the moon and the stars and the sky, and the shine of the water on the waves and the way that the trees cast their shadows, and he didn't seem to be thinking about me at all, just talking to me as he might to any friend. But when we walked into a shadowy place he said :

" Aren't you afraid of catching cold? " and touched my wrap.

" Oh, no," I said.

" You had better draw that together," said he, and put his arm about it to make it tight. He made it very tight, and the first thing I knew he kissed me.

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It was done so quickly that I had no idea — I never saw a man kiss any one so quickly.

I gave such a scream that one could hear it a mile and boxed his ears, and as soon as I could tear myself away I ran as fast as I could to the house, and he ran as fast as he could to the village.

I was very angry and crying. He had given me no warning at all, and besides I did not like him enough. Such impudence! But I prob ably would not have said anything about the matter at the house, but that the next day all the people in the village were talking about it. My mistress heard of it and called me in, and I told her the truth ; but she seemed to think that I could help being kissed, and I grew stubborn then and said I would not stay any more.

I am of a very yielding disposition when coaxed, and anything that I possess I will give away to any one who persists in asking me for it. That's one of my faults; my friends all tell me that I am too generous. But at the same time, when treated unjustly, I grow stubborn and won't give way.

And it was unjust to blame me for what that young man did. Who would have thought he would dare to do such a thing as kiss me? Why, he was only the young man who sailed the boat ! And as to my screaming so loudly I could not help it; any girl would have screamed as loudly if she had been kissed as suddenly.

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I went back to my sister's house in New York after I left this place, and stayed there a month resting. I had been nearly four years in the country, and in spite of sending $6 a month to mother during all that time and sending money to bring my second eldest brother here I had $485 in the savings bank.

A girl working as I was working does not need to spend much. I seldom had to buy a thing, there was so much that came to me just the least bit worn.

After I had rested and enjoyed a holiday I secured