"'Part of a day,' I said. 'I couldn't stand up to the work.'
"I thought he looked a little sympathetic then, but was not sure until he sniffed and asked the next question in a hard, thin voice:
"'And where before that?'
"I hesitated a moment; he looked at me more closely and said in that same tone:
"'Where?'
"I had been looked at and questioned so much that way and had got so raw about it that now I almost shouted: 'In the penitentiary!'
"'Why, bless my soul!' the mild little man gasped. 'No, I don't need you. Good day! Good day!'
"He looked so shocked and I felt so desperate that I could not help adding, while I looked at him hard:
"'I was put in for manslaughter too--voluntary manslaughter!'
"There wasn't any clerk in the room at the time.
"Oh, oh, indeed!' he gulped out, rising and backing away, big-eyed and trembly. He almost got to the back window before I turned and left.
"Maybe I didn't feel bitter and like 'what's the use--what's the use of anything!' I don't know what would have happened--I guess I'd have starved to death or worse--if it hadn't been for the hoboes'
hotel--Welcome Hall--'Headquarters for the Unemployed,' as it's advertised.
"You don't know about the place? Well, sir, it's a dandy!--at least, that's the way I think about it--and a good many others do too. The worst of the hoboes won't go there if they can help it--they'd rather bum a dime and get a bed for the night in one of those ten-cent places.
"This Welcome Hall is a sort of industrial kindling-splitting joint.
You blow in there and saw and split kindling for a bed and meals--you give them six hours' work.
"You see, in that way you can live off six hours' work a day and have some time left to look for a job. It's a good thing, and it's been a moneymaker too; it's the only charity I know of that's not a charity but a moneymaking concern. Of course people had to give it a place and start it; but it more than pays expenses, and at the same time helps to build up a man instead of making him a pauper or a deadbeat bum.
"I certainly was glad to find some place where I could at least earn my lodging and meals. I rested up some there and was glad I could just stay somewhere. Though I looked about for work a little, nearly every day, I lived along there for three weeks on my six hours a day of work--still out of a job. At last I guess my fighting blood got up again, I determined I would get a job of some kind, even if it was cleaning vaults. I decided no honest work was beneath me when it all seemed so far above me as to be out of reach.
"'If I keep my eyes open and am not too choosy I must find something to do,' I said to myself, and set out to look for it in earnest. It was Saturday morning, I remember, for I thought of the next day being Sunday, when I could not even hunt for work. I had walked a good way and asked for work at a lot of places without getting anything to do, when I saw an old negro man sweeping leaves off the sidewalk and washing off the front steps of a plain two-story house with a bucket of water and a cloth.
"'I may not be much account but I sure can do that,' I thought, and asked him how much he got for it.
"'For dese here, boss, I gits ten cents; but when I wuks all de way roun' to de back do' I gits some dinner th'owed in,' he said with a grin.
"That wasn't so bad; and 'boss'!--how good that sounded! I went on down the street feeling almost like a man again and not a down-and-out ex-convict.
"About a square away I began to ask at every house if they didn't want the leaves swept off and the front steps washed. Maybe I looked too much like a tramp or too much above one with that 'boss' still ringing in my ears--the first time I had been spoken to that way for more than ten years! Anyway I got turned down at first.
"At the tenth place, however, a two-story-and-attic red brick, they gave me a job. The woman asked me in a sharp voice, as if she were defending herself from being overcharged:
"'How much?'
"'Ten cents,' I answered, as meekly as I could.
"She seemed to think that was reasonable; and after waiting a minute, as if she wanted the work done and couldn't find any excuse for not letting me do it, she handed me a bucket and mop and broom and set me at it.
"I finished the job in about an hour; and I tell you I enjoyed that work! Beneath me? Why, it couldn't get beneath me--I was that low down in mind and living and even hope. I was just about all in, you understand; and I wasn't a plumb out-and-out fool.
"I have got that dime yet; see here," he said, holding out a brightly polished dime surrounded by a narrow gold band, which he wore as a charm on his watch-chain; "whenever I begin to feel ashamed of my work I look at that and get thankful, and remember how proud and happy I felt when that sharp-looking woman handed it to me. I had done a little extra work in cleaning up the yard, and she said as she gave it to me:
"'That looks a whole lot better! You certainly earned that dime.'
"I wouldn't have spent that money if I had had to go without food for two days! It seemed to put springs in my feet and I went down the street hustling for another job of the same kind. I found it before dinner; it was another ten cent job with twenty cents' worth of work; but I sure was glad to get it.
"I felt that, so long as Welcome Hall was making money, I was earning my way by those six hours of work a day, and I stayed on there for some time longer."
FOOTNOTE:
[55] Copyright, 1912, by the Curtis Publishing Company.
JAMES TANDY ELLIS
James Tandy Ellis, "Shawn's" father, was born at Ghent, Kentucky, June 9, 1868. He spent his boyhood days in one of the most romantically beautiful sections of Kentucky, on the Ohio river between Cincinnati and Louisville. He was educated at Ghent College and the State College of Kentucky at Lexington. Mr. Ellis has always been a great lover of Nature and his leisure-hours are usually spent with dog and gun or in angling.
He engaged in newspaper work in Louisville and his character sketches soon made him well-known throughout the State. His first book, _Poems by Ellis_ (Louisville, Kentucky, 1898), contained some very clever verse.
_Sprigs o' Mint_ (New York, 1906), was an attractive little volume of pastels in prose and verse. Mr. Ellis next issued three pamphlets: _Peebles_ (Carrollton, Kentucky, 1908); _Awhile in the Mountains_ (Lexington, Kentucky, 1909); and _Kentucky Stories_ (Lexington, 1909).
His latest book, entitled _Shawn of Skarrow_ (Boston, 1911), is a novelette of river life in northern Kentucky, and the simple, direct manner of the little tale was found "refreshing" by the "jaded"
reviewers. Colonel Ellis is now assistant Adjutant-General of Kentucky, and he resides at Frankfort, the capitol of the Commonwealth.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Letters from Mr. Ellis to the Author; _Lexington Leader_ (December 24, 1911).
YOUTHFUL LOVERS[56]
[From _Shawn of Skarrow_ (Boston, 1911)]
The winter had passed away. Shawn had been working hard in school, and under the encouragement of Mrs. Alden, was making fair progress, but Sunday afternoons found him in his rowboat, wandering about the stream and generally pulling his boat out on the beach at Old Meadows, for Lallite was there to greet him, and already they had told each other of their love. What a dream of happiness, to wander together along the pebbled beach, or through the upland woods, tell each other the little incidents of their daily life, and to pledge eternal fidelity. Oh, dearest days, when the rose of love first blooms in youthful hearts, when lips breathe the tenderest promises, fraught with such transports of delight; when each lingering word grows sweeter under the spell of love-lit eyes. Oh, blissful elysium of love's young dream!
They stood together in the deepening twilight, when the sun's last bars of gold were reflected in the stream.
"Oh, Shawn, it was a glad day when you first came with Doctor Hissong to hunt."
"Yes," said Shawn, as he took her hand, "and it was a hunt where I came upon unexpected game, but how could you ever feel any love for a poor river-rat?"
"I don't know," said Lallite, "but maybe, it is that kind that some girls want to fall in love with, especially if they have beautiful teeth, and black eyes and hair, and can be unselfish enough to kill a bag of game for two old men, and let them think they did the shooting."
"Lally, when they have love plays on the show-boats, they have all sorts of quarrels and they lie and cuss and tear up things generally."
"Well, Shawn, there's all sorts of love, I suppose, but mine is not the show-boat kind."