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

AFTER we had been established in a parish for some time, I suggested to my wife that probably the best Christmas present I could give my Uncle Stanwood and Aunt Millie would be to make them a personal visit after all my years of absence and recite to them all the facts of my education, my marriage, and describe to them the two interesting members of my family.

So I arrived at Uncle Stanwood’s house the week before Christmas with the intention of spending a week with him. I had been asked to preach the Christmas sermon by Mr. Woodward, the minister, who had started me off to the seminary.

My uncle was still living in a mill tenement. “So you’ve got an education after all!” he commented, putting a loving hand on my shoulder. “Education has made a difference in you altogether. You are much different. Sit down and tell me all about it.”

As for my Aunt Millie, she said, “What did you marry an American for? Can she cook?”

Just then the door opened and in slouched the tallest man I ever saw; slouched past us without a word and threw himself moodily into a chair at the end of the supper table. His face had been carved—roughly carved—out of mahogany; it was gaunt, sun-beaten and lined with fret marks. He laid big, scarred hands on his plate. His shoulders drooped and yet were massive in strength. His eyes were like distant lights well back under the shadow of his bulging brows. A look of disgust seemed to have lingered on his thin, curled lips since his birth.

He was my cousin Martin who had arrived from England two years before.

When he rose up to reach out one of his great hands to me, there was a curious, unaccountable antagonism in his tone when he said, “Oh, this’s him, eh? He’s the lucky dog, is he?”

During the recital of my educational experiences which followed, I noticed that my most interested listener was Martin. When I came to those parts which had to do with self-support, he was alert in every muscle. His eyes blazed at me, devouring every word that I said.

When aunt and uncle left us alone, Martin said: “Priddy, do you think the world’s treated me—oh, right, just right?”

“What do you mean, Martin?” I asked. “You’ve got fight in your tone. What’s wrong?”

“Did you never ask that, too?” he retorted, hotly. “Did you ever kick against the goad? I think you did, once. Don’t forget it, Priddy, ever! You’re not the only chap that ever wanted to get ahead, don’t lose sight of that. If it comes to matching ambition, I’ve got enough and to spare. Here you are, not much over twenty, I take it, yet you’ve got polished by seven years of schooling. Seven years of it! Have you any more right to it than me? Here I am nearly thirty and what am I? Blest if I’m anything but a hod carrier! What have I ever been, Priddy? Did I ever have a chance? I went into the mill at eight and have been there till this winter set in. God knows it’s little I know in the way of schooling! I can write my name and read some; but I got it myself. You know what the mill can be to an ambitious chap. You never felt it pressing down and stifling you more than I did. I tell you that.” He actually spit on his hands and rubbed them, as if on the verge of striking me.

“The beginning of this winter I said I wouldn’t stand it no longer, and I won’t! No mill will get me again; not if I have to starve. I nearly have starved, this winter, trying to keep out. I’ve peddled shoes, run a baker’s cart, been janitor of a club-room and now I’m carrying bricks! Maybe you don’t think it’s hard! I wish you had it to go through. Perhaps you have, only your hands arn’t spoiled like mine with the frost. Even my feet are lame, this very minute, through frost. I’m earning a dollar seventy-five a day: good pay, but I shouldn’t last more than a few years at it and then——. Besides, I want to get married. She’s waiting. I’ve just got fifty dollars in the bank. Do you wonder I feel so?”

On Christmas Sunday a blackboard in front of the church announced that the “Rev. Albert Priddy, formerly of this church, will preach in the morning and evening. Everybody Welcome!”

My uncle took me aside, in the morning, and said:

“I’m coming out to hear you, Al. Do your best, lad. I’ll be with you. God knows I don’t deserve all this!”

It was a very simply arranged church; plain, white-washed walls, and a cheaply carpeted platform. While the first hymn was being sung, my Uncle Stanwood crept into a rear pew and kept his eyes down.

But while I preached, a half smile of pride stole into his face and to my excited imagination his head seemed to be nodding approval to all I said. The look in his eyes seemed to be saying, “Show them, Al!”

I whispered to the minister, “Let me pronounce the benediction and while we are singing the last hymn, get down the aisle and meet my uncle. He may get out before you. He’s timid.”

But Uncle Stanwood crept out before the benediction and I did not see him again until my arrival home for dinner.

On arriving home, I was startled by what Aunt Millie did. She came up to me, patted me lovingly on the head and said, “I’m glad you did so well, Al. Your uncle’s been telling me all about it. I’ll go and hear you tonight, too.”

Martin evidently was interested, for in that belligerent tone of his, though softened by a light laugh, he said:

“I suppose I’ll have to go, too, seeing I’m his relation!”

I left the house that evening somewhat early, because I had to meet some friends. Martin was blacking his shoes; Aunt Millie was troubling herself unduly over what she should wear: a superfluous question, as she had but one Sunday dress and hat.

On my way to church that night, I could not help feeling that I must have misunderstood my aunt. I chided myself for not having read her aright. I began to realize that there was a deep under-current to her nature—perhaps one of love?

It was a thought like that that proved my best girding for the evening sermon. I sat in the pulpit while the church filled; for this evening service was always well attended. The choir of mill boys and girls, led by a patriarchal man whose face and hands were white as fuller’s earth, sang stirring anthems in which we saw the Palestinian shepherds in mute adoration of the stable miracle. The congregation sang, with great unction, another Christmas theme. Martin’s head towered at the rear; but I could find no trace of Aunt Millie.

After the service, and the greetings of old-time friends, I looked about for Martin and Aunt Millie. I saw neither. It was somewhat late when I arrived home. Aunt Millie was waiting for me with a troubled face.

“You managed to hide yourself pretty well!” I laughed.

She cried as she confessed:

“I didn’t go, Al. I didn’t hear you at all. That’s the plain truth!”

“Why, I thought I saw you getting ready when I left,” I said.

“Yes, I was; but I didn’t hear you preach. I couldn’t!”

“Oh,” I laughed, “you couldn’t? What was the matter?”

“I started out; but on the way I lost heart. I was afraid that I might cry out in church, with you preaching, lad. Besides, I’m not a dissenter. I was passing the Episcopal church and went in there, instead. I felt more at home. You can understand, can’t you, lad?”

Then she asked me to sit on the sofa and tell her everything I had spoken of in my sermon; not to miss a point, but to give it all. She gave my points commendation, remarking every now and then while her eyes brimmed with tears, “It must have done them good, that!”

Uncle sat at the lower end of the room, saying not a word; but listening, carefully. In the midst of my report the front door opened, and Martin, taking long, determined strides, hurried through the room without looking at any of us, closed the kitchen door with a bang, and left us looking into each other’s faces in bewilderment.

“Maybe he’s mad at something you said, Al. You didn’t chance to look his way and talk of ‘coming to God,’ did you?”

I solemnly averred that I had not been so evangelical as that. My aunt hurried into the kitchen where she lingered for a few moments. On her return she said:

“It’s all right, Al. There’s nothing wrong. He’s just impressed by hearing you preach, that’s all. He said to me, ‘If education can do that, for a fellow, I want some of it!’”

The next morning a heavy snow was falling. Martin would have no work. After breakfast he asked me if I would go into the parlor and have a talk, he wanted to ask me something. I readily agreed.

The former antagonism had gone from his voice as he began to speak. His words came quietly, curiously, like a child’s.

“Priddy, what can a chap learn to be in college?”

“What do you mean? What does a college fit men for?” I asked.

Martin nodded soberly, his eyes fixed on mine.

I laughed, “Oh, college will train you for almost any profession; that is, the professional schools will. You can study to be a doctor, a lawyer, a forester, a teacher—oh, anything you think of!”

“What do you think’s the best kind of a thing for a chap to be?”

“Why,” I replied, in embarrassment, “that depends upon the fellow, you know.”

“Well,” said Martin, “what kind of a profession would you advise a chap like me to take, for instance?”

I smiled, knowing what all this fencing meant. “Forestry is a good profession, just now,” I advised. “It’s a new branch to the government and brings in good money. I am sure you would like to be a forester.”

“What’s his work, especially?” came the question.

I explained, as best I knew, the different functions of a trained forester, emphasizing, “Mind you, Martin, he’s paid for what he knows and not what he does with his hands. He doesn’t have to chop down trees and all that sort of stuff; but he knows all about saving the forests, improving them, doctoring them.”

“How long does it take a man to learn that trade?” was the next question.

“About seven years, including college and professional school.”

“It would take a fellow like me that long?”

“Oh,” I admitted, reluctantly, for I felt that this would put a stop to any ambition that he had, “of course you are not ready for college. That would mean at least three years more!”

Martin mused,

“Seven and three—ten. I’m twenty-eight years old. That would bring it up to thirty-eight.”

“Yes,” I assented, “but you must remember that there are a good many working years left, after that!”

“I’m not thinking about myself; it’s Nora. We planned to get married by spring. Of course I should put it off. I wonder if you’d help me?”

“Help you—how—what?”

“Help me to explain to Nora; so she’ll wait—wait probably that long!”

“You can count on me to help you in anything, Martin.”

“When she knows it’s for her betterment, maybe she’ll be willing,” interjected Martin, as if in argument with himself.

I nodded, vigorously.

“Anyway,” he said with that belligerent tone of his, “she’ll have to be!”

Under the inspiration of this conversation, I pulled Martin out of the house and took him to the public library, where we asked for a bundle of preparatory school and college catalogues. These we whispered over and patiently studied until noon. We found that, by unusual labor, it would be possible for Martin to get his preparation, his college degree, and his professional training within nine years! As a further proof of our optimism, we decided that Martin should enter Yale when he was fitted!

We found from the catalogue of the preparatory school that Martin had decided upon, that the term opened within two days. When I advised Martin to write a letter to the principal and await a reply, he stormed at me:

“And probably it would be a week before I heard from him. That would put me behind the classes—and you would be gone, too. If they aren’t overcrowded, why, I’ll not wait to write; but just take my fifty dollars and go. They can only say no.”

His decision made, Martin began to show me what a decided nature he possessed. He drew the fifty dollars out of the bank. He bought some necessary clothes out of the money. The next day he gave notice to the contractor that he would carry bricks no more. Then he outlined his scheme to uncle and aunt.

My Aunt Millie stormed.

“This education business is getting on my nerves. First it’s one and then another of you.” Turning on me she said, “Nice way of treating us: coming to take a good paying boarder from us—and we need the money so, too!”

But Martin interjected, “Look here, I did it all myself. Blame me for it!”

But my aunt would not be consoled. “And I’d been planning so for the wedding, too!” she exclaimed.

As I chanced to be going on a trip to the Seminary at the time, I told Martin that I could be his companion as far as he had to go.

“But you’ve got to go to the North End with me and help me explain matters to Nora. You’ve got a smoother tongue than I have and she’ll listen to you.”

So Martin and I started out on our dismal mission. Nora lived on the top floor in one of the tenements. She was a stout, fair-faced woman of twenty-seven with a way of casting her head sidewise when she spoke to me, as if she had trouble with her sight. She stood gazing at us, at that unexpected hour, from behind the ironing-board. The odor of burning cloth reached my nostrils, as she stood wondering. She had burnt the shirtwaist and no amount of frantic rubbing with soap could take the scar out.

She dismissed us to the parlor while she put on a more presentable dress. Martin said not a word to me; but he pointed dumbly to his photograph in a place of honor on the mantel.

Nora came into the room exclaiming:

“Why, Martin, didn’t you let me know? What’s the matter?”

Martin started to speak; but could not. He nodded to me.

Carefully, painfully, hesitantly, I outlined Martin’s ambition to Nora. More than that I explained the reasonableness of it, the prime importance of it to their later fortunes. I tried to paint in glowing terms the high station to which Nora, through Martin, might be exalted. I leaped from point to point with enthusiastic eloquence, when the theme had mastered me. But when I had concluded, and was looking eagerly into the young woman’s face for a favorable sign, she gasped, then in a cold voice she said:

“Oh, yes, it’s all right for him; but don’t I know that if he goes to college he’ll meet other girls, better looking, better dressed, better educated than I am, or can ever hope to be. Suppose I don’t break off this engagement now, how am I to know that he’ll not forget me, throw me over. Have you thought of that in all your plans?”

“Martin’s a man of his word, I suppose,” I protested.

“You’d find me true, Nora,” declared Martin.

“How long do you want me to wait?” demanded the girl.

“Only about seven or eight years or so!” haltingly explained Martin.

Nora leaped to her feet and stamped the floor, angrily, imperatively.

“You’d keep me waiting seven or eight years; waiting that long for you, with all the risk! Not me! Not for a thousand Martins!”

That was her answer. We left her without more words. We left her watching us, crying. Martin commented, when we were outside:

“Now, if she’d only had more faith in me and made me feel certain of victory, maybe I’d given the whole thing up; but now—we’ll go tomorrow, sure!”

The following evening we sat in the North Station in Boston, awaiting the train that would carry us on an all-night journey. Every nerve Martin possessed quivered with pessimism. He scolded, chided, lodged complaints at everything and everybody. He tried to give me the impression that I had made a prisoner of him; that he no longer had any initiative of his own. As we sat in the waiting room he held humorous monologues the purport of each one being, “What a fool I am, at my age, to be running out among a lot of kids to get ready for college. What a fool!” During that hour’s wait, he had resolved four times to expend that fifty dollars in a ticket to the orange groves of California. Finally, when he had been brooding in silence for some moments, with a quick action he pulled out his pocket book, handed it to me and said, savagely, “Here, take this and keep it safe. No matter how I beg or what I say, don’t let me have it. To make things sure, you’d better run and get me my ticket to the school; then I’ll be sure and not turn back!”

As our train started from the station it plunged into a heavy, blinding snow-storm that had been raging throughout the entire day. Once in our seats, Martin recommenced his tirades against this “foolishness.” But there were propitious signs near at hand, for his encouragement. A man was coming down the aisle looking for a seat in whom I recognized a Seminary comrade of mine. He was a stubby fellow of middle age, with an ill-kept, drooping moustache.

“Say, Harlan, old fellow,” I greeted, “stop right here and meet my cousin.” When he was seated, I talked with him, and, for Martin’s benefit, to whom I slyly winked as I talked, brought out the fact that Harlan had been much older than my cousin when he had started out for an education. Nay, he had been handicapped with a wife and a child! Now he enjoyed the dignity of the ministerial profession. The moral was evident to Martin. He braced up and became very agreeable, especially to my old friend Harlan.

We talked in low tones until three o’clock in the morning, at which time the brakeman called out the station where I should leave Martin to his fortunes. The poor fellow seemed on the verge of tears as he gripped his suit-case and followed me to the door as the train slacked up its speed. I looked off from the platform. The storm had not abated. I could see only a great snowdrift where the station platform should have been. A street light flickered weakly out on the street.

As Martin dropped up to his knees in the snowdrift and reached for his suit-case I whispered:

“Find a hotel, and let me hear from you, old fellow. Keep up your courage. If there’s anything I can do, call on me!” Harlan waved his hand and called, “Never too late to mend!” an aphorism which might have been pertinent to the occasion, and then the brakeman’s lantern swung. As the train lumbered through the drifts, I saw Martin bend his head to the storm, lift his suit-case above the drifts, and go plodding towards the street light. The station was deserted, and I hoped that my cousin would find some one to direct him before the storm discouraged him.

A few months later, I stopped off at the town where I had left my cousin. He met me at the train, the same serious man I had left, though with a trace of a smile on his face and more of content in his speech than before. He guided me past a grocery store and said:

“I get up at four in the morning, do my studying, then before classes I go out and take orders for that firm.”

He led me down a placid street, through the shovelled paths of snow, and after opening the front door led me into a well-warmed and very nicely furnished chamber.

“I do their chores and earn the rent for this room,” he announced, with a grim smile. “Furnace to look after, paths to shovel, and baby to keep happy, if it wakens when they want to go to an entertainment.”

At supper time he led me into the heart of the town into an eating-house. He had a meal ticket punched by the waitress.

“This ticket costs three dollars,” he said, “enough to last a week at three meals a day. I make it last three weeks by scrimping and having a bottle of milk a day in my room.”

“How do you like the school?” I asked, pleased with these evidences of his thrift.

“Well,” he mused, “they are a lot of kids, to be sure, and I’m quite a freak among them. ‘Grandad’ Martin they call me. I suppose they’ve never had so old a man in their classes before. Anyhow, that’s the way you would argue from their looks and talk. But it doesn’t bother me—much. I guess we’ll all get used to it, by and by.”

“How is Nora getting along?” I ventured to enquire.

“Married!” he snarled, and talked no more about that.

“What do you think about this opportunity, Martin?”

“Wouldn’t have missed it for fifty weddings!” he declared.

Throughout the year I received word from him, couched in various tempers of letters. Sometimes he was about to throw the whole ambition over, because as he wrote, his mind was not as fresh as it might be. Then he would write that the boys wanted him to become a member of the basket-ball team, but he had refused, because, he argued, so old a man, and so tall a one, would not do in playing against sixteen and eighteen-year-olds! In spring, he had trouble with his French. Then a complication of physical troubles cropped out, as if to test his patience. Finally, after being confined to his bed by illness, and having had to forego the final examinations, he decided that he was too old to keep at it, and that he had too many handicaps. He went to the West, thus keeping to his old intention, and after he had secured the position as “boss” of a large gang of men, on construction work, a “shirt-sleeved, and white collar job” as he termed it, he wrote to me the following letter.

The End