Through the school: The experiences of a mill boy in securing an education

IT was a morning in early December. An unsealed letter lay on my table, a Christmas greeting to a mill friend. I had written it the previous night. When the morning dawned, I realized that I had not enough money with which to purchase a stamp for it. A feeling of utter miserableness took hold of me. There I stood, working my way through school successfully, from week to week without any difficulty, and yet when it came to forwarding a message of greeting to the outside world I was a pauper! That strong term mastered me. I knew that for the mere asking Thropper had a stamp waiting for me, but I resented the thought of charity, the humiliation of asking for the gift of a postage stamp. After chapel I went into the President’s office and on being shown in, made the following announcement.

“Please, Doctor, I think I had better leave the University. It is no use!”

“What is the matter now, young man?” he enquired, gently.

“I’ve got to earn some cash, sir. You know that I shall never have any by working for the University; it all goes on my account. I need some clothes, and just at present I need a stamp. I haven’t handled any money since my three dollars was spent; it is almost three months since then.”

“But you don’t have to run away from your education, do you?” asked the President, bending on me his searching eyes. “I thought you would stick to it!”

“But what can I do, sir?” I demanded, “I am busy waiting on the table, and cannot leave the campus to earn money. I give all my spare time to the University. If I could work a week or two at outside tasks I might get some money on hand.”

“There need be no trouble about that,” agreed the President. “Get some one to take your place in the dining-hall on Saturdays, and I will see if there are any jobs you can do.”

The following morning, in chapel, the Dean read off my name as one of the students that the President wished to see, in his office.

“There is a load of bricks on a siding of the brick-mill—you know where that is, of course,” he said. “Brock has taken the contract for loading a car at something or other a thousand—which means about twenty cents an hour, I believe. He is quite willing to take you with him on Saturday, if you care for the work.”

Inwardly I thought of my frail muscles hurling rows of brick through the air on a winter’s day—and felt doubtful about the adventure, but the President was waiting for his answer, so I said hastily,

“Anything at all, sir, that will bring me in a real, substantial piece of money. It will look big enough when I do see it, sir!”

Thropper was eager to take a day off from the glass factory and so was able to take my place at the tables. I had a conference with Brock, relative to the proposed loading of the car of bricks.

“Can you manage it?” he asked dubiously, scanning his eyes doubtfully over my frail physique.

I was in a desperate mood just then, and with an accent in my voice that scorned even the suggestion of any mental, physical, or moral incapacity, I declared,

“Can I?”

Then scanning Brock’s ungeared physique, I asked in turn,

“How about yourself? Seems to me you are a near rival to a centre-pole yourself, Brock!”

He grinned, guiltily.

“I used to exercise with dumb-bells—once upon a time. It is long since. I am afraid that the daily exercise of pressing the button of the call bell hasn’t done well by my muscles.”

“I’ve watched the Portuguese load schooners with bricks many a time,” I affirmed.

“Your experience might help—some,” he declared, “the man who engaged me told me how to place them in the car and all about the number of rows and the count. I’ll be able to manage that part of it. I hope that you and I, Priddy, will be able to succeed with the brick end of it.”

“The way the brick loaders do,” I explained, “is to pass them from hand to hand four or five bricks at a time—just like passing ball, you know!”

“Um, um!” nodded Brock. “But what about the sharp ends of the bricks? They cut gashes in soft hands, of course.”

“Oh, we’ll wear thick gloves,” I explained, “something to protect the hands.”

“We should have to wear gloves under any circumstances,” said Brock, “the weather we’re getting is very far from a summer day!”

“Oh, we’ll manage all right,” I affirmed, for the mere thought of a possible dollar and a half in cash set my brain in a whirl of incaution and illogical optimism. In that mood, if the President had offered me his place for a week—for a cash wage—it is doubtful if I should have refused him.

By half-past seven the following Saturday morning, Brock and I, bundled in the oldest garments we had been able to borrow or beg, with quadruple thicknesses of old socks covering our hands, for mittens, and with lunches put up in pasteboard boxes, left the village center, walked down a frozen turnpike, until we came to the lonesome, neglected brickyard with its Egyptian tombs of piled brick, yet unsold. A covered freight car had been left on the rusty siding; the car stood off from the nearest brick-pile separated by a gap of two yards. It was a dreary and very cold prospect, for the north wind surged down over the frozen pastures, and hummed and wailed through the black latticework of an abandoned oil-well on the opposite side of the track.

“Your face is blue to begin with,” mumbled my companion from behind the folds of his cap.

“And your nose would make an excellent danger signal on the rear end of a train,” I retorted. “When my hands get cold, which they are rapidly doing, I’ll warm them over your nose!”

“Better get to work,” suggested Brock, “before we freeze to death in this miserable place. Worth twenty cents an hour for this work, eh?”

“Worth a dollar an hour, I think,” I replied.

We fixed some stout planks into a run-way between the top of a brick-pile and the freight car, after the door had been unbarred. We found a shallow and creaky barrow under a shed. After helping me fill it with the first load, Brock tried to wheel into the car what we had put in. He gained the edge of the plank, and the ill-balanced load dumped over on the ground.

“We put in too many, to begin with,” suggested Brock. “Next time we’ll reduce the load by half. I forgot they were so heavy. I was too ambitious.”

The next load went across the planks successfully, and after they had been dumped on the floor of the car, Brock said,

“I’ll pack these in the car the way the man told me, and then when the load is properly started, we can take turns with the barrow.”

At first it was exciting and warm work, but after the first warm glow had died down in the blood, my body began to stiffen with the exposure. Then my muscles, ill-treated by excessive and continuous lifting of the loads, began to tighten and shoot with pain. But at first, I did not care to let Brock know, Brock, who was snugly shielded from the wind, with the easier and less straining task. But he must have noticed me gasp in with a load for he suddenly leaped to his feet and said,

“Your turn here, now, Priddy. Give me the barrow!”

I flung myself to the dusty floor of the car when he relieved me of the barrow and never lifted a hand until I heard him coming with his first load. Then I picked up a brick and fitted it in one of the rows, and tried to say cheerfully, when he entered,

“Is that placed right, Brock?”

“All right, Priddy,” he replied, and then went out whistling with the barrow.

With the change in the task, I recuperated somewhat, and worked on with the thought warming me, that every hour added twenty cents in cash to my credit. When the first twenty cents had been earned, I took heart and said to myself,

“Well, I shall be able to buy that stamp for the letter!”

Brock ceased whistling after his fourth load. I took a look at his face. It was pale and strained.

“Hadn’t you better take a breathing spell, Brock?” I suggested. “It comes hard when one isn’t used to it. That barrow wheels hard, too. We ought to have brought some wheel grease.”

“I guess I will sit down a few seconds,” agreed Brock. “It’s quite a lift—at first, but I think we’ll manage the job, don’t you?”

“We’ll try!” I commented, grimly.

So we passed the barrow from hand to hand, the loads growing smaller and smaller as the noon hour approached, and the need of rest and change becoming more and more imperative. When half-past eleven arrived I proposed that we eat our lunches; not so much for the mere satisfaction of hunger, but for the opportunity of absolute rest for an hour. Brock assented to the proposition the instant it had left my lips. In fact, he dropped his barrow in the middle of the plank; an act on which I commented by that fragment of an old song:

We closed the doors of the car, sat in a far corner and munched our bread and cold meat as if it had been a luxury from a king’s banquet table. Then after our meal, in spite of the chilliness of the car, we stretched ourselves on our backs and gave our strained, worn muscles the opportunity of relaxation.

“How do you feel?” Brock demanded after an interminable silence.

“Cold, tired, weary and sick!” I replied, throwing the mask off. “Let us either wheel that old barrow again or go back to the University.”

“Well,” muttered Brock, dispiritedly, “our backs can’t really get much worse, Priddy. We might as well finish a day’s work. If we leave now we’ll be unfit for work for another week anyway. We might as well get all we can out of it while we are about it.”

“Oh, that barrow! If it were a thing of flesh I’d stab it for my worst enemy!” I cried.

“We worked too steadily,” suggested Brock. “We were too ambitious. We’ll loaf along this afternoon and take more frequent rests. You pack the bricks for awhile. I’ll wheel!”

“Lucky you proposed to wheel first,” I muttered, “for I’d have gone on strike if I’d been the first.”

Brock looked knowingly at me, showed me the blisters on his hands and said,

“I know just how you feel!”

Numb, dispirited, weary and backsore, we worked until four o’clock in the afternoon. At that time, Brock was just coming across the bridge with a reduced load, staggering under it. I called out to him,

“I’ll not handle another brick!”

“Neither will I!” he replied, losing his grip and the handles of the barrow so that it fell to the frozen ground with a resounding thud. “I’m done!”

When we reported at the office of the brickyard owner, and Brock had given the computations of the work we had done, my heart throbbed warmly for the first time since early morning when we were each handed a dollar and ten cents in real cash!

“This is the first money I have handled for three months!” I could not help exclaiming in the office.

“Do you mean it?” asked the contractor, interestedly.

“I do, sir!”

“Then any time between now and the end of the month that you want to earn a dollar or two come to this office and I’ll have some more bricks for you to load.”

I looked with a smile towards Brock. Brock returned my gaze with a hearty laugh. Then he said, holding out his swollen hands, for the man to view,

“No, thanks!”

And I, I said,

“Cash is good and I need it, but I think I’ll leave the handling of bricks to the Portuguese.”