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CHARLEY ANDERSON




 

369

 

 

-1-

 

NEWSREEL I It was that emancipated race
That was chargin up the hill
Up to where them insurrectos
Was afightin fit to kill

 


CAPITAL CITY'S CENTURY CLOSED

 

General Miles with his gaudy uniform and spirited
charger was the center for all eyes especially as his steed was
extremely restless. Just as the band passed the Commanding
General his horse stood upon his hind legs and was almost
erect. General Miles instantly reined in the frightened animal
and dug in his spurs in an endeavor to control the horse which
to the horror of the spectators, fell over backwards and landed
squarely on the Commanding General. Much to the gratifi-
cation of the people General Miles was not injured but con-
siderable skin was scraped off the flank of the horse. Almost
every inch of General Miles's overcoat was covered with the
dust of the street and between the shoulders a hole about an
inch in diameter was punctured. Without waiting for anyone
to brush the dust from his garments General Miles remounted
his horse and reviewed the parade as if it were an everyday
occurrence.

 

The incident naturally attracted the attention of the
crowd, and this brought to notice the fact that the Command-
ing General never permits a flag to be carried past him with-
out uncovering and remaining so until the colors have past

 

And the Captain bold of Company B
Was a fightin in the lead
Just like a trueborn soldier he
Of them bullets took no heed

 


OFFICIALS KNOW NOTHING OF VICE

 

Sanitary trustees turn water of Chicago River into drain-
age canal LAKE MICHIGAN SHAKES HANDS WITH
THE FATHER OF THE WATERS German zuchter-

 

-3-

 

verein singing contest for canary-birds opens the fight for
bimetallism at the ratio of 16 to 1 has not been lost says Bryan

 

BRITISH BEATEN AT MAFEKING
For there's many a man been murdered in Luzon CLAIMS ISLANDS FOR ALL TIME

 

Hamilton Club Listens to Oratory by Ex-Congressman
Posey of Indiana

 

NOISE GREETS NEW CENTURY
LABOR GREETS NEW CENTURY
CHURCHES GREET NEW CENTURY

 

Mr. McKinley is hard at work in his office when the new
year begins.

 


NATION GREETS CENTURY'S DAWN

 

Responding to a toast, Hail Columbia! at the Columbia
Club banquet in Indianapolis, Ind., ex-PresidentBenjamin
Harrison said in part: I have no argument to make here or
anywhere against territorial expansion; but I do not, as some
do, look upon territorial expansion as the safest and most attrac-
tive avenue of national development. By the advantages of
abundant and cheap coal and iron, of an enormous over-
production of food products and of invention and economy in
production, we are now leading by the nose the original and
the greatest of the colonizing nations.

 

Society Girls Shocked: Danced with Detectives

 

For there's many a man been murdered in Luzon
and Mindanao

 


GAIETY GIRLS MOBBED IN NEW JERSEY

 

One of the lithographs of the leading lady represented her
in less than Atlantic City bathing costume, sitting on a red-hot
stove; in one hand she held a brimming glass of wine, in the
other ribbons drawn over a pair of rampant lobsters.

 

-4-

 

For there's many a man been murdered in Luzon
and Mindanao
and in Samar

 

In responding to the toast, "The Twentieth Century",
Senator Albert J. Beveridge said in part: The twentieth cen-
tury will be American. American thought will dominate it.
American progress will give it color and direction. American
deeds will make it illustrious.

 

Civilization will never lose its hold on Shanghai. Civiliza-
tion will never depart from Hongkong. The gates of Peking
will never again be closed to the methods of modern man.
The regeneration of the world, physical as well as moral, has
begun, and revolutions never move backwards.

 

There's been many a good man murdered in the Philippines
Lies sleeping in some lonesome grave.

 


THE CAMERA EYE (I)

 

when you walk along the street you have to step
carefully always on the cobbles so as not to step on the
bright anxious grassblades easier if you hold Mother's
hand and hang on it that way you can kick up your toes
but walking fast you have to tread on too many grass-
blades the poor hurt green tongues shrink under your
feet maybe thats why those people are so angry and
follow us shaking their fists they're throwing stones
grownup people throwing stones She's walking fast and
we)re running her pointed toes sticking out sharp among
the poor trodden grassblades under the shaking folds of

 

-5-

 

the brown cloth dress Englander a pebble tinkles
along the cobbles

 

Quick darling quick in the postcard shop its quiet the
angry people are outside and cant come in non nein
nicht englander amerikanisch americain Hoch Amerika
Vive l'Amerique She laughs My dear they had me right
frightened

 

war on the veldt Kruger Bloemfontein Ladysmith
and Queen Victoria an old lady in a pointed lace cap sent
chocolate to the soldiers at Christmas

 

under the counter it's dark and the lady the nice
Dutch lady who loves Americans and has relations in
Trenton shows you postcards that shine in the dark
pretty hotels and palaces O que c'est beau schon
prittie prittie and the moonlight ripple ripple under a
bridge and the little reverbères are alight in the dark
under the counter and the little windows of hotels around
the harbor O que c'est beau la lune
and the big moon

 


MAC When the wind set from the silver factories across the
river the air of the gray fourfamily frame house where
Fainy McCreary was born was choking all day with the
smell of whaleoil soap. Other days it smelt of cabbage
and babies and Mrs. McCreary's washboilers. Fainy could

 

-6-

 

never play at home because Pop, a lame cavechested man
with a whispy blondegray mustache, was nightwatchman
at the Chadwick Mills and slept all day. It was only round
five o'clock that a curling whiff of tobacco smoke would
seep through from the front room into the kitchen. That
was a sign that Pop was up and in good spirits, and would
soon be wanting his supper.

 

Then Fainy would be sent running out to one of two
corners of the short muddy street of identical frame
houses where they lived.

 

To the right it was half a block to Finley's where he
would have to wait at the bar in a forest of mudsplattered
trouserlegs until all the rank brawling mouths of grown-
ups had been stopped with beers and whiskeys. Then he
would walk home, making each step very carefully, with
the handle of the pail of suds cutting into his hand.

 

To the left it was half a block to Maginnis's Fancy
Groceries, Home and Imported Products. Fainy liked the
cardboard Cream of Wheat darkey in the window, the
glass case with different kinds of salami in it, the barrels
of potatoes and cabbages, the brown smell of sugar, saw-
dust, ginger, kippered herring, ham, vinegar, bread, pep-
per, lard.

 

"A loaf of bread, please, mister, a half pound of butter
and a box of ginger snaps."

 

Some evenings, when Mom felt poorly, Fainy had to
go further; round the corner past Maginnis's, down Riv-
erside Avenue where the trolley ran, and across the red
bridge over the little river that flowed black between icy
undercut snowbanks in winter, yellow and spuming in the
spring thaws, brown and oily in summer. Across the river
all the way to the corner of Riverside and Main, where
the drugstore was, lived Bohunks and Polaks. Their kids
were always fighting with the kids"of the Murphys and
O'Haras and O'Flanagans who lived on Orchard Street.

 

Fainy would walk along with his knees quaking, the

 

-7-

 

medicine bottle in its white paper tight in one mittened
hand. At the corner of Quince was a group of boys he'd
have to pass. Passing wasn't so bad; it was when he was
about twenty yards from them that the first snowball
would hum by his ear. There was no comeback. If he
broke into a run, they'd chase him. If he dropped the
medicine bottle he'd be beaten up when he got home. A
soft one would plunk on the back of his head and the snow
began to trickle down his neck. When he was a half a
block from the bridge he'd take a chance and run for it.

 

"Scared cat . . . Shanty Irish . . . Bowlegged Mur-
phy . . . Running home to tell the cop" . . . would
yell the Polak and Bohunk kids between snowballs. They
made their snowballs hard by pouring water on them and
leaving them to freeze overnight; if one of those hit him
it drew blood.

 

The backyard was the only place you could really feel
safe to play in. There were brokendown fences, dented
garbage cans, old pots and pans too nearly sieves to mend,
a vacant chickencoop that still had feathers and droppings
on the floor, hogweed in summer, mud in winter; but the
glory of the McCrearys' backyard was Tony Harriman's
rabbit hutch, where he kept Belgian hares. Tony Harri-
man was a consumptive and lived with his mother on the
ground floor left. He wanted to raise all sorts of other
small animals too, raccoons, otter, even silver fox, he'd get
rich that way. The day he died nobody could find the key
to the big padlock on the door of the rabbit hutch. Fainy
fed the hares for several days by pushing in cabbage and
lettuce leaves through the double thickness of chickenwire.
Then came a week of sleet and rain when he didn't go out
in the yard. The first fine day, when he went to look, one
of the hares was dead. Fainy turned white; he tried to tell
himself the hare was asleep, but it lay gawkily stiff, not
asleep. The other hares were huddled in a corner looking

 

-8-

 

about with twitching noses, their big ears flopping helpless
over their backs. Poor hares; Fainy wanted to cry. He ran
upstairs to his mother's kitchen, ducked under the ironing
board and got the hammer out of the drawer in the
kitchen table. The first time he tried he mashed his finger,
but the second time he managed to jump the padlock. In-
side the cage there was a funny, sour smell. Fainy picked
the dead hare up by its ears. Its soft white belly was be-
ginning to puff up, one dead eye was scaringly open.
Something suddenly got hold of Fainy and made him
drop the hare in the nearest garbage can and run upstairs.
Still cold and trembling, he tiptoed out onto the back
porch and looked down. Breathlessly he watched the other
hares. By cautious hops they were getting near the door
of the hutch into the yard. One of them was out. It sat
up on its hind legs, limp ears suddenly stiff. Mom called
him to bring her a flatiron from the stove. When he got
back to the porch the hares were all gone.

 

That winter there was a strike in the Chadwick Mills
and Pop lost his job. He would sit all day in the front
room smoking and cursing:

 

"Ablebodied man by Jesus, if I couldn't lick any one
of those damn Polaks with my crutch tied behind my
back . . . I says so to Mr. Barry; I ain't goin' to join no
strike. Mr. Barry, a sensible quiet man, a bit of an invalid,
with a wife an' kiddies to think for. Eight years I've been
watchman, an' now you give me the sack to take on a bunch
of thugs from a detective agency. The dirty pugnosed
son of a bitch."

 

"If those damn lousy furreners hadn't a walked out,"
somebody would answer soothingly.

 

The strike was not popular on Orchard Street. It meant
that Mom had to work harder and harder, doing bigger
and bigger boilersful of wash, and that Fainy and his
older sister Milly had to help when they came home
from school. And then one day Mom got sick and had to

 

-9-

 

go back to bed instead of starting in on the ironing, and
lay with her round white creased face whiter than the pil-
low and her watercreased hands in a knot under her chin.
The doctor came and the district nurse, and all three
rooms of the flat smelt of doctors and nurses and drugs,
and the only place Fainy and Milly could find to sit was
on the stairs. There they sat and cried quietly together.
Then Mom's face on the pillow shrank into a little creased
white thing like a rumpled up handkerchief and they said
that she was dead and took her away.

 

The funeral was from the undertaking parlors on River-
side Avenue on the next block. Fainy felt very proud and
important because everybody kissed him and patted his
head and said he was behaving like a little man. He had
a new black suit on, too, like a grownup suit with pockets
and everything, except that it had short pants. There were
all sorts of people at the undertaking parlors he had never
been close to before, Mr. Russell, the butcher and Father
O'Donnell and Uncle Tim O'Hara who'd come on from
Chicago, and it smelt of whisky and beer like at Finley's.
Uncle Tim was a skinny man with a knobbed red face and
blurry blue eyes. He wore a loose black silk tie that wor-
ried Fainy, and kept leaning down suddenly, bending
from the waist as if he was going to close up like a jack-
knife, and whispering in a thick voice in Fainy's ear.

 

"Don't you mind 'em, old sport, they're a bunch o'
bums and hypocrytes, stewed to the ears most of 'em
already. Look at Father O'Donnell the fat swine already
figurin' up the burial fees. But don't you mind 'em, re-
member you're an O'Hara on your mother's side. I don't
mind em, old sport, and she was my own sister by birth
and blood."

 

When they got home he was terribly sleepy and his feet
were cold and wet. Nobody paid any attention to him. He
sat whimpering on the edge of the bed in the dark. In
the front room there were voices and a sound of knives

 

-10-

 

and forks, but he didn't dare go in there. He curled up
against the wall and went to sleep. Light in his eyes woke
him up. Uncle Tim and Pop were standing over him talk-
ing loud. They looked funny and didn't seem to be stand-
ing very steady. Uncle Tim held the lamp.

 

Well, Fainy, old sport, said Uncle Tim giving the
lamp a perilous wave over Fainy's head. Fenian O'Hara
McCreary, sit up and take notice and tell us what you
think of our proposed removal to the great and growing
city of Chicago. Middletown's a terrible bitch of a dump
if you ask me . . . Meanin' no offense, John . . . But
Chicago . . . Jesus God, man, when you get there you'll
think you've been dead and nailed up in a coffin all these
years."

 

Fainy was scared. He drew his knees up to his chin and
looked tremblingly at the two big swaying figures of men
lit by the swaying lamp. He tried to speak but the words
dried up on his lips.

 

The kid's asleep, Tim, for all your speechifyin' . . .
Take your clothes off, Fainy, and get into bed and get a
good night's sleep. We're leavin' in the mornin'."

 

And late on a rainy morning, without any breakfast,
with a big old swelltop trunk tied up with rope joggling
perilously on the roof of the cab that Fainy had been sent
to order from Hodgeson's Livery Stable, they set out.
Milly was crying. Pop didn't say a word but sucked on
an unlit pipe. Uncle Tim handled everything, making
little jokes all the time that nobody laughed at, pulling
a roll of bills out of his pocket at every juncture, or taking
great gurgling sips out of the flask he had in his pocket.
Milly cried and cried. Fainy looked out with big dry eyes
at the familiar streets, all suddenly odd and lopsided, that
rolled past the cab; the red bridge, the scabshingled
houses where the Polaks lived, Smith's and Smith's cor-
ner drugstore . . . there was Billy Hogan just coming

 

-11-

 

out with a package of chewing gum in his hand. Playing
hockey again. Fainy had an impulse to yell at him, but
something froze it . . . Main with its elms and street
cars, blocks of stores round the corner of Church, and
then the fire department. Fainy looked for the last time
into the dark cave where shone entrancingly the brass and
copper curves of the engine, then past the cardboard fronts
of the First Congregational Church, The Carmel Baptist
Church, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church built of brick and
set catercornered on its lot instead of straight with a stern
face to the street like the other churches, then the three
castiron stags on the lawn in front of the Commercial
House, and the residences, each with its lawn, each with
its scrollsaw porch, each with it hydrangea bush. Then
the houses got smaller, and the lawns disappeared; the
cab trundled round past Simpson's Grain and Feed Ware-
house, along a row of barbershops, saloons and lunch-
rooms, and they were all getting out at the station.

 

At the station lunchcounter Uncle Tim set everybody
up to breakfast. He dried Milly's tears and blew Fainy's
nose in a big new pockethandkerchief that still had the tag
on the corner and set them to work on bacon and eggs and
coffee. Fainy hadn't had coffee before, so. the idea of sit-
ting up like a man and drinking coffee made him feel
pretty good. Milly didn't like hers, said it was bitter.
They were left all alone in the lunchroom for sometime
with the empty plates and empty coffee cups under the
beady eyes of a woman with the long neck and pointed
face of a hen who looked at them disapprovingly from
behind the counter. Then with an enormous, shattering
rumble, sludgepuff sludge . . . puff, the train came into
the station. They were scooped up and dragged across
the platform and through a pipesmoky car and before
they knew it the train was moving and the wintry russet
Connecticut landscape was clattering by.

 

-12-

 


THE CAMERA EYE (2)

 

we hurry wallowing like in a boat in the musty
stablysmelling herdic cab He kept saying What would
you do Lucy if I were to invite one of them to my table?
They're very lovely people Lucy the colored people and
He had cloves in a little silver box and a rye whisky smell
on his breath hurrying to catch the cars to New York

 

and She was saying Oh dolly I hope we wont be
late and Scott was waiting with the tickets and we had to
run up the platform of the Seventh Street Depot and all
the little cannons kept falling out of the Olympia and
everybody stooped to pick them up and the conductor
Allaboard lady quick lady

 

they were little brass cannons and were bright in the
sun on the platform of the Seventh Street Depot and Scott
hoisted us all up and the train was moving and the engine
bell was ringing and Scott put in your hand a little handful
of brass tiny cannons just big enough to hold the smallest
size red firecracker at the battle of Manila Bay and said
Here's the artillery Jack

 

and He was holding forth in the parlor car Why
Lucy if it were necessary for the cause of humanity I
would walk out and be shot any day you would Jack
wouldn't you? wouldn't you porter? who was bringing
appolinaris and He had a flask in the brown grip where

 

-13-

 

the silk initialed handkerchiefs always smelt of bay rum

 

and when we got to Havre de Grace He said Re-
member Lucy we used to have to ferry across the Susque-
hanna before the bridge was built
and across Gunpowder Creek too

 


MAC Russet hills, patches of woods, farmhouses, cows, a red
colt kicking up its heels in a pasture, rail fences, streaks
of marsh.

 

Well, Tim, I feel like a whipped cur . . . So long as
I've lived, Tim, I've tried to do the right thing, Pop
kept repeating in a rattling voice. And now what can they
be asayin' about me?

 

"Jesus God, man, there was nothin' else you could do,
was there? What the devil can you do if you haven't any
money and haven't any job and a lot o' doctors and under-
takers and landlords come round with their bills and you
with two children to support?"

 

"But I've been a quiet and respectable man, steady and
misfortunate ever since I married and settled down. And
now what'll they be thinkin' of me sneakin' out like a
whipped cur?"

 

" John, take it from me that I'd be the last one to want
to bring disrespect on the dead that was my own sister by
birth and blood . . . But it ain't your fault and it ain't
my fault . . . it's the fault of poverty, and poverty's the
fault of the system . . . Fenian, you listen to Tim
O'Hara for a minute and Milly you listen too, cause a
girl ought to know these things just as well as a man and

 

-14-

 

for once in his life Tim O'Hara's tellin' the truth . . .
It's the fault of the system that don't give a man the fruit
of his labor . . . The only man that gets anything out of
capitalism is a crook, an' he gets to be a millionaire in
short order . . . But an honest workin' man like John or
muself we can work a hundred years and not leave enough
to bury us decent with."

 

Smoke rolled white in front of the window shaking out
of its folds trees and telegraph poles and little square
shingleroofed houses and towns and trolleycars, and long
rows of buggies with steaming horses standing in line.

 

"And who gets the fruit of our labor, the goddam busi-
ness men, agents, middlemen who never did a productive
piece of work in their life."

 

Fainy's eyes are following the telegraph wires that sag
and soar.

 

Now, Chicago ain't no paradise, I can promise you
that, John, but it's a better market for a workin' man's
muscle and brains at present than the East is . . . And
why, did you ask me why . . . ? Supply and demand,
they need workers in Chicago.

 

Tim, I tellyer I feel like a whipped cur.

 

It's the system, John, it's the goddam lousy system.

 

A great bustle in the car woke Fainy up. It was dark.
Milly was crying again. He didn't know where he was.

 

Well, gentlemen, Uncle Tim was saying, we're
about to arrive in little old New York.

 

In the station it was light; that surprised Fainy, who
thought it was already night. He and Milly were left a
long time sitting on a suitcase in the waitingroom. The
waitingroom was huge, full of unfamiliarlooking people,
scary like people in picturebooks. Milly kept crying.

 

Hey, Milly, I'll biff you one if you don't stop crying.

 

Why? whined Milly, crying all the more.

 

Fainy stood as far away from her as possible so that
people wouldn't think they were together. When he was

 

-15-

 

about ready to cry himself Pop and Uncle Tim came and
took them and the suitcase into the restaurant. A strong
smell of fresh whisky came from their breaths, and they
seemed very bright around the eyes. They all sat at a table
with a white cloth and a sympathetic colored man in a
white coat handed them a large card full of printing.

 

Let's eat a good supper, said Uncle Tim, if it's the
last thing we do on this earth.

 

Damn the expense, said Pop, it's the system that's
to blame.

 

To hell with the pope, said Uncle Tim. We'll make
a social-democrat out of you yet.

 

They gave Fainy fried oysters and chicken and ice-
cream and cake, and when they all had to run for the train
he had a terrible stitch in his side. They got into a day-
coach that smelt of coalgas and armpits. When are we
going to bed? Milly began to whine. We're not going
to bed, said Uncle Tim airily. We're going to sleep
right here like little mice . . . like little mice in a
cheese. I doan like mice, yelled Milly with a new
flood of tears as the train started.

 

Fainy's eyes smarted; in his ears was the continuous
roar, the clatter clatter over crossings, the sudden snarl
under bridges. It was a tunnel, all the way to Chicago it
was a tunnel. Opposite him Pop's and Uncle Tim's faces
looked red and snarling, he didn't like the way they
looked, and the light was smoky and jiggly and outside
it was all a tunnel and his eyes hurt and wheels and rails
roared in his ears and he fell asleep.

 

When he woke up it was a town and the train was run-
ning right through the main street. It was a sunny morn-
ing. He could see people going about their business, stores,
buggies and spring-wagons standing at the curb, newsboys
selling newspapers, wooden Indians outside of cigarstores.
At first he thought he was dreaming, but then he remem-
bered and decided it must be Chicago. Pop and Uncle Tim

 

-16-

 

were asleep on the seat opposite. Their mouths were open,
their faces were splotched and he didn't like the way they
looked. Milly was curled up with a wooly shawl all over
her. The train was slowing down, it was a station. If it was
Chicago they ought to get off. At that moment the con-
ductor passed, an old man who looked a little like Father
O'Donnell.

 

Please, mister, is this Chicago? Chicago's a long way
off yet, son, said the conductor without smiling. This is
Syracuse.

 

And they all woke up, and for hours and hours the
telephone poles went by, and towns, frame houses, brick
factories with ranks and ranks of glittering windows,
dumping grounds, trainyards, plowed land, pasture, and
cows, and Milly got trainsick and Fainy's legs felt like
they would drop off from sitting in the seat so long; some
places it was snowing and some places it was sunny, and
Milly kept getting sick and smelt dismally of vomit, and
it got dark and they all slept; and light again, and then
the towns and the framehouses and the factories all started
drawing together, humping into warehouses and elevators,
and the trainyards spread out as far as you could see and
it was Chicago.

 

But it was so cold and the wind blew the dust so hard
in his face and his eyes were so stuck together by dust and
tiredness that he couldn't look at anything. After they had
waited round a long while, Milly and Fainy huddled to-
gether in the cold, they got on a streetcar and rode and
rode. They were so sleepy they never knew exactly where
the train ended and the streetcar began. Uncle Tim's voice
went on talking proudly excitedly, Chicago, Chicago, Chi-
cago. Pop sat with his chin on his crutch. "Tim, I feel like
a whipped cur."

 

Fainy lived ten years in Chicago.

 

At first he went to school and played baseball on back
lots on Saturday afternoons, but then came his last com-

 

-17-

 

mencement, and all the children sang My Country, 'Tis
Of Thee, and school was over and he had to go to work.
Uncle Tim at that time had his own jobprinting shop on
a dusty side street off North Clark in the ground floor of
a cranky old brick building. It only occupied a small sec-
tion of the building that was mostly used as a ware-
house and was famous for its rats. It had a single wide
plateglass window made resplendent by gold Old English
lettering: TIMOTHY O'HARA, JOB PRINTER.

 

Now, Fainy, old sport, said Uncle Tim, you'll have
a chance to learn the profession from the ground up. So
he ran errands, delivered packages of circulars, throw-
aways, posters, was always dodging trolleycars, ducking
from under the foamy bits of big truckhorses, bumming
rides on deliverywagons. When there were no errands to
run he swept out under the presses, cleaned type, emptied
the office wastepaper basket, or, during rush times, ran
round the corner for coffee and sandwiches for the type-
setter, or for a small flask of bourbon for Uncle Tim.

 

Pop puttered round on his crutch for several years,
always looking for a job. Evenings he smoked his pipe
and cursed his luck on the back stoop of Uncle Tim's
house and occasionally threatened to go back to Middle-
town. Then one day he got pneumonia and died quietly
at the Sacred Heart Hospital. It was about the same time
that Uncle Tim bought a linotype machine.

 

Uncle Tim was so excited he didn't take a drink for
three days. The floorboards were so rotten they had to
build a brick base for the linotype all the way up from
the cellar. Well, when we get another one we'll concrete
the whole place, Uncle Tim told everybody. For a whole
day there was no work done. Everybody stood around
looking at the tall black intricate machine that stood there
like an organ in a church. When the machine was work-
ing and the printshop filled with the hot smell of molten
metal, everybody's eyes followed the quivering inquisitive

 

-18-

 

arm that darted and flexed above the keyboard. When
they handed round the warm shiny slugs of type the old
German typesetter who for some reason they called Mike
pushed back his glasses on his forehead and cried. Fifty-
five years a printer, and now when I'm old I'll have to
carry hods to make a living.

 

The first print Uncle Tim set up on the new machine
was the phrase: Workers of the world unite; you have
nothing to lose but your chains.

 

When Fainy was seventeen and just beginning to worry
about skirts and ankles and girls' underwear when he
walked home from work in the evening and saw the lights
of the city bright against the bright heady western sky,
there was a strike in the Chicago printing trades. Tim
O'Hara had always run a union shop and did all the union
printing at cost. He even got up a handbill signed, A Citi-
zen, entitled An Ernest Protest, which Fainy was allowed
to set up on the linotype one evening after the operator
had gone home. One phrase stuck in Fainy's mind, and
he repeated it to himself after he had gone to bed that
night: It is time for all honest men to band together to
resist the ravages of greedy privilege.

 

The next day was Sunday, and Fainy went along
Michigan Avenue with a package of the handbills to dis-
tributd. It was a day of premature spring. Across the rot-
ting yellow ice on the lake came little breezes that smelt
unexpectedly of flowers. The girls looked terribly pretty
and their skirts blew in the wind and Fainy felt the spring
blood pumping hot in him, he wanted to kiss and to roll
on the ground and to run out across the icecakes and to
make speeches from the tops of telegraph poles and to
vault over trolleycars; but instead he distributed hand-
bills and worried about his pants being frayed and wished
he had a swell looking suit and a swell looking girl to
walk with.

 

Hey, young feller, where's your permit to distribute

 

-19-

 

them handbills? It was a cop's voice growling in his ear.
Fainy gave the cop one took over his shoulder, dropped
the handbills and ran. He ducked through between the
shiny black cabs and carriages, ran down a side street and
walked and walked and didn't look back until he managed
to get across a bridge just before the draw opened. The
cop wasn't following him anyway.

 

He stood on the curb a long time with the whistle of
a peanutstand shrilling derisively in his ear.

 

That night at supper his uncle asked him about the
handbills.

 

Sure I gave 'em out all along the lakeshore . . . A
cop tried to stop me but I told him right where to get
off. Fainy turned burning red when a hoot went up from
everybody at the table. He filled up his mouth with
mashed potato and wouldn't say any more. His aunt and
his uncle and their three daughters all laughed and
laughed. Well, it's a good thing you ran faster than the
cop, said Uncle Tim, else I should have had to bail you
out and that would have cost money.

 

The next morning early Fainy was sweeping out the
office, when a man with a face like a raw steak walked up
the steps; he was smoking a thin black stogy of a sort
Fainy had never seen before. He knocked on the ground
glass door.

 

I want to speak to Mr. O'Hara, Timothy O'Hara.

 

He's not here yet, be here any minute now, sir. Will
you wait?

 

You bet I'll wait. The man sat on the edge of a
chair and spat, first taking the chewed end of the stogy
out of his mouth and looking at it meditatively for a long
time. When Tim O'Hara came the office door closed with
a bang. Fainy hovered nervously around, a little bit afraid
the man might be a detective following up the affair of
the handbills. Voices rose and fell, the stranger's voice in
short rattling tirades, O'Hara's voice in long expostulating

 

-20-

 

clauses, now and then Fainy caught the word foreclose,
until suddenly the door flew open and the stranger shot
out, his face purpler than ever. On the iron stoop he
turned and pulling a new stogy from his pocket, lit it from
the old onei growling the words through the stogy and
the blue puff of smoke, he said, Mr. O'Hara, you have
twenty-four hours to think it over . . . A word from you
and proceedings stop immediately." Then he went off
down the street leaving behind him a long trail of rancid
smoke.

 

A minute later, Uncle Tim came out of the office, his
face white as paper. Fenian, old sport, he said, you
go get yourself a job. I'm going out of business . . .
Keep a weather eye open. I'm going to have a drink.
And he was drunk for six days. By the end of that time
a number of meeklooking men appeared with summonses,
and Uncle Tim had to sober up enough to go down to the
court and put in a plea of bankruptcy.

 

Mrs. O'Hara scolded and stormed, Didn't I tell you,
Tim O'Hara, no good'll ever come with your fiddlin'
round with these godless labor unions and social-democrats
and knights of labor, all of 'em drunk and loafin' bums
like yourself, Tim O'Hara. Of course the master printers
ud have to get together and buy up your outstandin'
paper and squash you, and serve you right too, Tim
O'Hara, you and your godless socialistic boosin' ways only
they might have thought of your poor wife and her help-
less wee babes, and now we'll starve all of us together, us
and the dependents and hangers on you've brought into
the house.

 

Well, I declare, cried Fainy's sister Milly. If I
haven't slaved and worked my fingers to the bone for
every piece of bread I've eaten in this house, and she
got up from the breakfast table and flounced out of the
room. Fainy sat there while the storm raged above his
head; then he got up, slipping a corn muffin into his

 

-21-

 

pocket as he went. In the hall he found the "help wanted"
section of the Chicago Tribune, took his cap and went out
into a raw Sunday morning full of churchbells jangling
in his ears. He boarded a streetcar and went out to Lin-
coln Park. There he sat on a bench for a long time munch-
ing the muffin and looking down the columns of adver-
tisements: Boy Wanted. But they none of them looked
very inviting. One thing he was bound, he wouldn't get
another job in a printing shop until the strike was over.
Then his eye struck

 

Bright boy wanted with amb. and lit. taste, knowledge
of print. and pub. business. Conf. sales and distrib. propo-
sition $15 a week apply by letter P.O. Box 1256b

 

Fainy's head suddenly got very light. Bright boy, that's
me, ambition and literary taste . . . Gee, I must finish
Looking Backward . . . and jez, I like reading fine,
an' I could run a linotype or set up print if anybody'd let
me. Fifteen bucks a week . . . pretty soft, ten dollars'
raise. And he began to write a letter in his head, apply-
ing for the job.

 

DEAR SIR (MY DEAR SIR)
or maybe GENTLEMEN,

 

In applying for the position you offer in today's
Sunday Tribune I want to apply, (allow me to state) that
I'm seventeen years old, no, nineteen, with several years'
experience in the printing and publishing trades, ambitious
and with excellent knowledge and taste in the printing and
publishing trades,

 

no, I can't say that twice . . . And I'm very anxious
for the job . . . As he went along it got more and more
muddled in his head.

 

He found he was stanaing beside a peanut wagon. It
was cold as blazes, a razor wind was shrieking across the
broken ice and the black patches of water of the lake. He

 

-22-

 

tore out the ad and let the rest of the paper go with the
wind. Then he bought himself a warm package of peanuts.

 


NEWSREEL II

 

Come on and hear
Come on and hear
Come on and hear

 

In his address to the Michigan state Legislature the retir-
ing governor, Hazen S. Pingree, said in part: I make the pre-
diction that unless those in charge and in whose hands legisla-
tion is reposed do not change the present system of inequality,
there will be a bloody revolution in less than a quarter of a
century in this great country of ours.

 


CARNEGIE TALKS OF HIS EPITAPH

 

Alexander's Ragtime Band
It is the best
It is the best

 

the luncheon which was served in the physical laboratory
was replete with novel features. A* miniature blastfurnace four
feet high was on the banquet table and a narrow gauge rail-
road forty feet long ran round the edge of the table. Instead
of molten metal the blastfurnace poured hot punch into small
cars on the railroad. Icecream was served in the shape of rail-
road tics and bread took the shape of locomotives.

 

Mr. Carnegie, while extolling the advantages of higher
education in every branch of learning, came at last to this con-
clusion: Manual labor has been found to be the best foundation
for the greatest work of the brain.

 


VICE PRESIDENT EMPTIES A BANK

 

Come on and hear
Alexander's Ragtime Band

 

-23-

 

It is the best
It is the best

 

brother of Jesse James declares play picturing him as
bandit trainrobber and outlaw is demoralizing district battle
ends with polygamy, according to an investigation by Salt Lake
ministers, still practiced by Mormons clubwomen gasp

 

It is the best band in the land

 

say circus animals only cat Chicago horsemeat Taxsale of
Indiana lots marks finale of World's Fair boom uses flag as
ragbag killed on cannibal isle keeper falls into water and sea-
lions attack him.

 

The launch then came alongside the half deflated balloon
of the aerostat which threatened at any moment to smother
Santos Dumont. The latter was half pulled and half clam-
bered over the gunwale into the boat.

 

The prince of Monaco urged him to allow himself to be
taken on board the yacht to dry himself and change his clothes.
Santos Dumont would not leave the launch until everything
that could be saved had been taken ashore, then, wet but
smiling and unconcerned, he landed amid the frenzied cheers
of the crowd.

 


THE CAMERA EYE (3)

 

0 qu'il a des beaux yeux said the lady in the seat
opposite but She said that was no way to talk to children
and the little boy felt all hot and sticky but it was dusk
and the lamp shaped like half a melon was coming on
dim red and the train rumbled and suddenly I've been
asleep and it's black dark and the blue tassel bobs on the
edge of the dark shade shaped like a melon and every-

 

-24-

 

where there are pointed curved shadows (the first time
He came He brought a melon and the sun was coming in
through the tall lace windowcurtains and when we cut it
the smell of melons filled the whole room) No don't eat
the seeds deary they give you appendicitis

 

but you're peeking out of the window into the black
rumbling dark suddenly ranked with squat chimneys and
you're scared of the black smoke and the puffs of flame
that flare and fade out of the squat chimneys Potteries
dearie. they work there all night Who works there all
night? Workingmen and people like that laborers travail-
leurs greasers

 

you were scared

 

but now the dark was all black again the lamp in the
train and the sky and everything had a blueblack shade
on it and She was telling a story about

 

Longago Beforetheworldsfair Beforeyouwereborn and
they went to Mexico on a private car on the new interna-
tional line and the men shot antelope off the back of the
train and big rabbits jackasses they called them and once
one night Longago Beforetheworldsfair Beforeyouwereborn
one night Mother was so frightened on account of all the
rifleshots but it was allright turned out to be nothing but
a little shooting they'd been only shooting a greaser that
was all

 

that was in the early days

 

-25-

 


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