One Way Out Part 8

Breakfast: oatmeal, griddle-cakes with mola.s.ses, cream of tartar biscuits, milk.

Luncheon: for Billy: cold biscuits, two hard-boiled eggs, bowl of rice, cold coffee; for d.i.c.k and me: cold biscuits, milk, rice.

Dinner: baked potatoes, griddle-cakes, milk.

Tuesday.

Breakfast: baked potatoes, graham m.u.f.fins, oatmeal, milk.

Luncheon: for Billy: cold m.u.f.fins, two hard-boiled eggs, rice, milk; for d.i.c.k and me: cold m.u.f.fins, rice and milk.

Dinner: boiled potatoes, pork sc.r.a.ps, hot biscuits, milk.

Wednesday.

Breakfast: oatmeal, fried potatoes, warmed over biscuits.

Luncheon: for Billy: cold biscuits, two hard-boiled eggs, bread pudding; for d.i.c.k and me: baked potatoes, cold biscuits, bread pudding.

Dinner: beef stew with dumplings, hot biscuits, milk.

Thursday.

Breakfast: fried sausages, baked potatoes, graham m.u.f.fins, milk.

Luncheon: for Billy: cold m.u.f.fins, cold sausage and rice; for d.i.c.k and me: the same.

Dinner: warmed over stew, lettuce, hot biscuits, milk.

Friday.

Breakfast: oatmeal, fried rock cod, baked potatoes, rye bread, milk.

Luncheon: for Billy: rye bread, potato salad, rice; for d.i.c.k and me: the same.

Dinner: soup made from stock of beef, left over fish, boiled potatoes, rice, milk.

Sat.u.r.day.

Breakfast: oatmeal, fried corn mush with mola.s.ses, milk.

Luncheon: for Billy: cold biscuits, two hard-boiled eggs, cheese, rice; for d.i.c.k and me: German toast.

Dinner: baked beans, hot biscuits.

Sunday.

Breakfast: baked beans, graham m.u.f.fins.

Dinner: boiled potatoes, pork sc.r.a.ps, canned corn, corn cake, bread pudding.

A word about that bread pudding. Ruth tells me she puts in an extra quart of milk and then bakes it all day when she bakes her beans, stirring it every now and then. I never knew before how the trick was done but it comes out a rich brown and tastes like plum pudding without the raisins. She says that if you put in raisins it tastes exactly like a plum pudding.

So at the end of the first week I found myself with eighty dollars left over from the old home, one dollar saved in the new, all my bills paid, and Ruth, d.i.c.k and myself all fit as a fiddle.

CHAPTER VIII

SUNDAY

That first dollar saved was the germ of a new idea.

It is a further confession of a middle-cla.s.s mind that in coming down here I had not looked forward beyond the immediate present. With the horror of that last week still on me I had considered only the opportunity I had for earning a livelihood. To be sure I had seen no reason why an intelligent man should not in time be advanced to foreman, and why he should not then be able to save enough to ward off the poorhouse before old age came on. But now--with that first dollar tucked away in the ginger jar--I felt within me the stirring of a new ambition, an ambition born of this quick young country into which I had plunged. Why, in time, should I not become the employer? Why should I not take the initiative in some of these progressive enterprises? Why should I not learn this business of contracting and building and some day contract and build for myself? With that first dollar saved I was already at heart a capitalist.

I said nothing of this to Ruth. For six months I let the idea grow. If it did nothing else it added zest to my new work. I shoveled as though I were digging for diamonds. It made me a young man again. It made me a young American again. It brought me out of bed every morning with visions; it sent me to sleep at night with dreams.

But I'm running ahead of my story.

I thought I had appreciated Sunday when it meant a release for one day from the office of the United Woollen, but as with all the other things I felt as though it had been but the shadow and that only now had I found the substance. In the first place I had not been able completely to shake the office in the last few years. I brought it home with me and on Sundays it furnished half the subject of conversation. Every little incident, every bit of conversation, every expression on Morse's face was a.n.a.lyzed in the attempt to see what it counted, for or against, the possible future raise. Even when out walking with the boy the latter was a constant reminder. It was as though he were merely a ward of the United Woollen Company.

But when I put away my shovel at five o'clock on Sat.u.r.day that was the end of my ditch digging. I came home after that and I was at home until I reported for work on Monday morning. There was neither work nor worry left hanging over. It meant complete relaxation--complete rest. And the body, I found, rests better than the mind.

Later in my work I didn't experience this so perfectly as I now did because then I accepted new responsibilities, but for the first few months I lived in lazy content on this one day. For the most part those who lived around me did all the time. On fair summer days half the population of the little square basked in the sun with eyes half closed from morning until night. Those who didn't, went to the neighboring beaches many of which they could reach for a nickel or visited such public buildings as were open. But wherever they went or whatever they did, they loafed about it. And a man can't truly loaf until he's done a hard week's work which ends with the week.

As for us we had our choice of any number of pleasant occupations. I insisted that Ruth should make the meals as simple as possible on that day and both the boy and myself helped her about them. We always washed the dishes and swept the floor. First of all there was the roof. I early saw the possibility of this much neglected spot. It was flat and had a fence around it for it was meant to be used for the hanging out of clothes. Being a new building it had been built a story higher than its older neighbors so that we overlooked the other roofs.

There was a generous s.p.a.ce through which we saw the harbor. I picked up a strip of old canvas for a trifle in one of the sh.o.r.e-front junk-shops which deal in second-hand s.h.i.+p supplies and arranged it over one corner like a canopy. Then I brought home with me some bits of board that were left over from the wood construction at the ditch and nailed these together to make a rude sort of window box. It was harder to get dirt than it was wood but little by little I brought home enough finally to fill the boxes. In these we planted radishes and lettuce and a few flower seeds. We had almost as good a garden as we used to have in our back yard. At any rate it was just as much fun to watch the things grow, and though the lettuce never amounted to much we actually raised some very good radishes. The flowers did well, too.

We brought up an old blanket and spread it out beneath the canopy and that, with a chair or two, made our roof garden. A local branch of the Public Library was not far distant so that we had all the reading matter we wanted and here we used to sit all day Sunday when we didn't feel like doing anything else. Here, too, we used to sit evenings. On several hot nights Ruth, the boy and I brought up our blankets and slept out. The boy liked it so well that finally he came to sleep up here most of the summer. It was fine for him. The harbor breeze swept the air clean of smoke so that it was as good for him as being at the sea-sh.o.r.e.

To us the sights from this roof were marvelous. They appealed strongly because they were unlike anything we had ever seen or for that matter unlike anything our friends had ever seen. I think that a man's friends often take away the freshness from sights that otherwise might move him. I've never been to Europe but what with magazine pictures and snap shots and Mrs. Grover, who never forgot that before she married Grover she had travelled for a whole year, I haven't any special desire to visit London or Paris. I suppose it would be different if I ever went but even then I don't think there would be the novelty to it we found from our roof. And it was just that novelty and the ability to appreciate it that made our whole emigrant life possible. It was for us the Great Adventure again. I suppose there are men who will growl that it's all bosh to say there is any real romance in living in four rooms in a tenement district, eating what we ate, digging in a ditch and mooning over a view from a roof top. I want to say right here that for such men there wouldn't be any romance or beauty in such a life. They'd be miserable. There are plenty of men living down there now and they never miss a chance to air their opinions. Some of them have big bodies but I wouldn't give them fifty cents a day to work for me. Luckily however, there are not many of them in proportion to the others, even though they make more noise.

But when you stop to think about it what else is it but romance that leads men to spend their lives fis.h.i.+ng off the Banks when they could remain safely ash.o.r.e and get better pay driving a team? Or what drives them into the army or to work on railroads when they neither expect nor hope to be advanced? The men themselves can't tell you. They take up the work unthinkingly but there is something in the very hards.h.i.+ps they suffer which lends a sting to the life and holds them. The only thing I know of that will do this and turn the grind into an inspiration is romance. It's what the new-comers have and it's what our ancestors had and it's what a lot of us who have stayed over here too long out of the current have lost.

On the lazy summer mornings we could hear the church bells and now and then a set of chimes. Because we were above the street and next to the sky they sounded as drowsily musical as in a country village. They made me a bit conscience-stricken to think that for the boy's sake I didn't make an effort and go to some church. But for a while it was church enough to devote the seventh day to what the Bible says it was made for. Ruth used to read out loud to us and we planned to make our book suit the day after a fas.h.i.+on. Sometimes it was Emerson, sometimes Tennyson--I was very fond of the Idylls--and sometimes a book of sermons. Later on we had a call from a young minister who had a little mission chapel not far from our flat and who looked in upon us at the suggestion of the secretary of the settlement house. We went to a service at his chapel one Sunday and before we ourselves realized it we were attending regularly with a zest and interest which we had never felt in our suburban church-going. Later still we each of us found a share in the work ourselves and came to have a great satisfaction and contentment in it. But I am running ahead of my story.

We'd have dinner this first summer at about half past one and then perhaps we'd go for a walk. There wasn't a street in the city that didn't interest us but as a rule we'd plan to visit one of the parks.

I didn't know there were so many of them or that they were so different. We had our choice of the ocean or a river or the woods. If we had wished to spend say thirty cents in car fare we could have had a further choice of the beach, the mountains, or a taste of the country which in places had not changed in the last hundred years.

This would have given us a two hours' ride. Occasionally we did this but at present there was too much to see within walking distance.