Chapter 2 CARL TELLS A STORY

It was April. Already spring was in the air. The grass in the parks was turning green, forsythia bloomed golden, and boys were playing marbles on the streets and sidewalks. Even Mulberry Court, shut in as it was, felt the impulse of the awakening season. The landlord came, looked over the premises, and after viewing the general shabbiness became reckless enough to order a broken windowpane to be reset, some of the tumble-down ceilings to be repaired, and the fire escapes and window frames to be repainted.

Painting at Mulberry Court was a terrible ordeal. As there was not an inch of the place that was not crowded to the limit of its capacity, painting meant that milk bottles, improvised ice chests, and woodpiles must be put somewhere else; and where that somewhere could be was an enigma. Furthermore, to add to this difficulty there were the children-dozens of them tumbling over one another and surging in and out the doors, a fact that rendered painting a precarious undertaking. Youthful investigators examined the moist pigment; chubby fingers drew hieroglyphics in it; while the less curious forgot it altogether and carried away on their garments imprints of vermilion and black that transformed their otherwise dingy garments into robes of oriental splendor.

Carl McGregor was no exception to the rule for wherever calamity lurked he was sure to be in its vicinity.

"I'd know you'd never rest until you got a patch of red paint on yourself," announced his mother, surveying him as he started toward the door. "As, if buying you sweaters ain't enough without your leaning plumb up against the fire escape and stamping a whole decalcomania of red stripes on your back like as if you were a convict."

"Is there paint on me, Ma?"

"Is there? I suppose you had no notion of it."

"I hadn't-honest Injun."

"Well, aside from the fact that you're barred up and down neat as if the lines were ruled there's nothing the matter with you," returned his mother with a faint smile.

"Oh, I'm awfully sorry, Ma. Truly I am."

"Sorry? I'll be bound you are. You are always a bundle of regrets when it is too late to help anything. However, you need weep no tears for that sweater needed washing anyway. You're that rough on your clothes that none of 'em keep clean more than a minute. I'll get some gasoline and soak it out in the shed and it will be like new. Peel it off and give it to me."

"I'm sorry, Ma," the boy repeated.

"It's no great matter, sonny. Children must be children. I'm past expecting them to be grown-ups," his mother said kindly. "If you hadn't been getting into the paint you most likely would have been getting into something else. You have a genius for such mishaps. I'm glad it was no worse."

Reassured, Carl grinned.

"I do seem to have a good many-" he hesitated, then added, "misfortunes."

"Misfortunes, do you call 'em? Sure that's a pretty polite word to apply to the things that manage to happen to you," sniffed Mrs. McGregor. "I suppose it was a misfortune when you tumbled underneath the watering cart; and a misfortune when you sat down in the wet tar! A misfortune when you sent the snowball through the schoolroom window; to say nothing of the creamcake you treated Jakie Sullivan to that well-nigh killed him."

"I didn't know the creamcake was going to make him sick."

"No; 'twas just your misfortune. You seem to attract adventures like that. Why, if I was to let you go into the cotton mills as you are always begging to do you'd have every machine there out of order in less than a week and yourself hashed up into little pieces into the bargain."

She had touched upon an unlucky subject for instantly, with flaming face, the lad confronted her.

"No, I wouldn't. I wish you would let me go into the mills, Ma. You might let me try it. Ever so many boys no older than I are working there and earning oodles of money. If we had more money we could--"

"We could be having an automobile, no doubt, and going to Palm Beach winters," was the grim response. "Well, Palm Beach or not, you're not going into any mill so long as we can keep body and soul together without your doing it. You are going to get an education-you and Mary too-if it costs me my life. I'm not going to have you grow up knowing nothing and being nothing. Some day you'll see I was right and thank me for it."

"I thank you now, Ma," declared Carl soberly. "But that doesn't make me relish Latin and history any better."

"No matter if it doesn't. What you like is of no consequence," Mrs. McGregor announced, with a majestic sweep of her hand. "The chief thing is that you exercise your mind and learn how to use it. The Latin itself amounts to nothing. It is like boxing gloves or a punching bag, a thing that serves its turn to limber up your brain. It is learning to think that counts."

Carl's face brightened.

"The teacher was saying something like that just the other day," asserted he eagerly. "He was telling us about some of the people who had done great things in the world and explaining how long and how hard they had to work at them. The inventors, for instance, had to think and think about the things they invented. It didn't just come to them all in a minute as I used to believe it did."

Although his mother did not look up from her sewing she nodded encouragingly.

"There was Eli Whitney," continued Carl, coming nearer. "I remembered about him because of the mills here. He invented the cotton gin, you know. Mr. Kimball told us that Whitney went through Yale and then started down South to be a tutor in somebody's family without any idea of ever being an inventor. But when he got to where he was going the people who had hired him had changed their minds and found somebody else and poor Eli Whitney was out of a job."

"A shabby trick!"

"Yes. Still, it was lucky for him, just the same," responded Carl, "because on the way down he had met the widow of General Greene and she was sorry for him and asked him to her house. He'd just been vaccinated because there was lots of smallpox in the South and he was feeling rotten. You know how sore your arm gets and how sick you are sometimes. Remember Martin? Well, anyhow, Mrs. Greene either knew what it meant to be vaccinated or else she was kind of ashamed of the way her part of the country had treated Eli Whitney. Or maybe she was just kind-hearted like you. Anyhow she invited Mr. Whitney to come to Savannah when she saw how mean he felt and the fit he threw at finding himself so far from home without money or a job."

"Carl!"

"Well, wouldn't you have thrown a fit? I think Mrs. Greene was a peach," went on Carl, passing serenely over the reproof. "She was mighty kind to take a stranger into her house when he had no friends."

"Certainly."

"By this time Mr. Whitney had decided to be a lawyer and while he was making his home at Mrs. Greene's he began to read all the law books he could lay hands on. Then one day Mrs. Greene busted her embroidery frame--"

"Did what?"

"Oh, you know, Ma," fretted Carl, at being interrupted. "She smashed the thing and--"

"What had that to do with it?"

"Everything; because, you see, Eli Whitney mended it so nicely that Mrs. Greene was pleased into the ground and thought he was the smartest person ever. His father had had a shop at home where as a boy he had learned to use tools. But of course Mrs. Greene didn't know that. All she knew was that he made a corking job of her embroidery frame and so one day when some Georgia gentlemen were there at dinner and were telling how hard it was to get the seeds out of cotton she up and said, 'You should ask Mr. Whitney how to do it; he can do anything,' and to prove it she toted out her embroidery frame to show them."

"Did what?"

"Oh, say, Ma, don't keep bothering me when I'm trying to tell you a story," Carl complained peevishly. "You know what I mean well enough."

"Much as ever," was the grim reply.

The lad grinned.

"Well, anyhow, the Georgia cotton men talked to Eli Whitney, explaining how the cotton stuck to the seeds and got all broken to bits when you tried to get them out; and how it took nearly a whole day to separate a pound of cotton fiber from the seeds. And then the cotton planters went on to tell how there was lots and lots of land in the South where you couldn't raise rice but could raise cotton if it wasn't such a chore-" (a warning glance from his mother caused Carl hastily to amend the phrase) "such a piece of work to get the seeds out. Eli Whitney listened to their talk and after the men had gone he thought he'd try to make some sort of a machine that would clear cotton of the seeds."

"And did he?"

"You betcha! I mean, yes, he did. Whitney was no boob." (This time Mrs. McGregor failed to protest; perhaps she decided it was useless.) "He had, as I told you, made wheels and canes and knives and nails in his father's workshop at home. He had even made a violin. So he wasn't at all fussed about trying to make a cotton gin. I guess he had a hunch he could do it."

"A what?" gasped Mrs. McGregor involuntarily.

"A hunch means he knew he could turn the trick."

The mother shook her head ruefully.

"And me almost killing myself to give you an education!" she ejaculated beneath her breath.

"Well, anyway, Ma, slang or no slang, I'd be telling you nothing at all about Eli Whitney if I hadn't gone to school, so cheer up," asserted Carl impishly.

He heard his mother laugh. Mrs. McGregor had the good old Scotch sense of humor and when her flashing smile came it was always a delight to the beholder.

"You're a good boy, Carl, if you do speak the language of an orang-outang," she answered. "Where you pick up such a dialect I cannot imagine."

"Oh, it's easy enough to pick it up, Ma. The stunt is not to. Why, what I've been saying just now is nothing to what I could say if I let myself go. I've been holding in because of you. I could have had you so locoed you couldn't have understood a thing I meant if I hadn't been-been considerate. But I know you don't like slang so I try to cut it out. You may not believe it but I do try-honest, I do."

"I believe you, laddie," returned his mother kindly. "It's hard, I know, with all the other boys talking like barbarians. Now go on about Mr. Whitney. Did he contrive to make the machine the Georgia gentlemen wanted?"

"Yes, siree!" continued Carl with enthusiasm. "Mrs. Greene gave him a room to work in down in the basement of her house and he set right about the job. Unluckily he had never seen any cotton growing because he had always lived in the North, you know. In fact, he had never laid eyes on cotton at all until it was made into cloth, so of course he hadn't much of an idea what he was up against, and the first thing he had to do was to scurry round and get specimens of cotton with the seeds in it. It wasn't so easy to do just then, either, because it was not the season for cotton-gathering and he had to hunt and hunt to get some of the last season's crop. I believe he finally got what he needed from a warehouse in New Orleans. Anyhow, he got the cotton pods somewhere and found out better where he stood. And that reminds me, Ma, that the teacher told us there were ever so many different kinds of cotton; and that the Upland cotton, growing in the South, had green seeds that stuck like-like anything to the white part. You could hardly separate the two without ruining the cotton fibers and you can see that as they were to be spun they must not be broken."

"Mr. Whitney did have a puzzle to work out."

"You've said it, Ma! He sure had," beamed Carl. "Well, he kept fussing round, and fussing round, and by and by he managed to get together a simple sort of contrivance that would do what he wanted it to. It was no great shakes of a machine. Any blacksmith or wheelwright could have made it if he had happened to think of it first. In fact, lots of other people did make gins like it. That is why Whitney never got rich, the teacher said."

"But didn't he get his invention patented?" inquired Mrs. McGregor, laying aside the tulle she was beading.

"Not until it was too late. You see, Mrs. Greene was so set up to think Mr. Whitney had done the deed she had predicted he would that she had to go blabbing all over town how clever he was. And the minute people heard that a cotton gin was really made that would take out the seeds they came begging to see the wonderful machine and find out how it worked; and of course Mr. Whitney had to show it off. He hadn't a notion people would be so low-down as to snitch his idea and go to making cotton gins of their own. But that's exactly what they did do and as soon as Mr. Whitney and Mr. Miller who was helping him got wise to the fact, they locked the new cotton gin up. But do you s'pose that did any good? Not on your life! The cotton raisers were crazy to get the machine because everybody needed it so badly. On the plantations there wasn't enough work to keep the negro slaves busy and it cost a lot to feed them. The planters figured that if something profitable could be found for them to do they would earn their keep. They certainly could not do this picking the seeds out of cotton because it took them such an age to pick enough to make a pound. The darkies could gather the crop all right. It had to be gathered by hand. What was needed was something that would take the seeds out and make it possible to raise and sell big quantities of cotton. So Whitney's gin exactly filled the bill. It was just what the whole South had been waiting for and if such a thing existed people were bound to have it. Naturally when Whitney wouldn't show it to them and locked it up, they thought he was almighty stingy and some of the meanest of the bunch broke into the place where he kept it and carried it off."

"Oh!"

"Rotten, wasn't it? They ought to have been hung; but they weren't. Instead, the model of the cotton gin got abroad and all the South started to making cotton gins until they were all over the place."

"I'm afraid Mr. Whitney wasn't a very business-like man," ventured Mrs. McGregor.

"He wasn't. Most generally inventors aren't, I guess. Still, how was he to know they were going to swipe his idea? Of course he and Mr. Miller went straight to work and tried to pick up the pieces. Mr. Whitney went home to New Haven and set about making cotton gins on a larger scale than he could make them at Mrs. Greene's; but even then he could not make them fast enough. And on top of all his factory burned down and for a while he couldn't make any gins at all. It seemed as if hard luck pursued him whichever way he turned."

"It certainly did seem so!"

"He and Mr. Miller, who had now gone in as his partner, spent no end of money in lawsuits, and Mr. Miller got so worn out and discouraged fighting the infringers that finally he died, leaving Eli Whitney to carry on the battle alone. And it was a battle, too, to get any satisfaction out of the people who were making use of his idea. I believe that North Carolina and Tennessee did pay him something, and after a while South Carolina and Georgia did. In all he received about ninety thousand dollars; but the lawsuits he had been compelled to go through to get it ate up a good slice of the receipts. Besides, some more had to go for the factory that got burned and other expenses. So he didn't get much out of the deal, I guess. But the South did. The Whitney gin whooped up their cotton trade in great style. Every year the planters grew more and more cotton because now that they could get the seeds out it paid to raise it, and by and by they were exporting millions of bales. Cotton is now one of our biggest exports, the teacher said. We grow billions of pounds of it and for the most part it is the green seed, Upland cotton, cleaned by a gin founded on Whitney's idea. That's why I say it does you no good to go to school," concluded Carl. "Whitney went through Yale college and invented his cotton gin before he had been out of the university a year, and what good did it do him, I'd like to know?"

"He did a lot to help the world along, sonny."

"Oh, I suppose he did," admitted the boy. "But for all that he didn't get the spondulics. That is why I want to go into the factory. So I can get some cash to help out here at home. S'pos'n we didn't have Uncle Frederick Dillingham or your sewing money? And anyhow, I don't want you to be always sewing. I want you to have pretty clothes, ride round in an automobile, and be a lady!"

"Oh, Carlie! Can't one work for a living and still be a lady, my dear?"

Carl flushed.

"Of course she can, Ma. You're a lady right now. Still, I do wish you didn't have to make those silly dresses all the time. Well, no matter. You just wait until I get through school. You shall be wearing dresses like those and somebody else shall be sewing the beads on."

A suspicious moisture gathered in Mrs. McGregor's eyes.

"You're a good boy, Carl," answered she gently, "even if you do slaughter your mother tongue. Now be off with you. All this palaver about Mr. Whitney has almost made you late for school, and left me hardly knowing whether I am sewing frontwards or backwards. Still, it isn't a bad thing to have a son that knows something."

It was evident from Mrs. McGregor's tone that she might have said more but for the stern belief that she must not flatter her children. Therefore to cut short the danger of such a crime she brusquely hurried Carl out of the kitchen, merely calling after him:

"Don't forget to bring home a yeast cake to-night or you'll get no bread to-morrow. Put your mind on it, now. If you remembered the errands I ask you to do half as well as you remember about cotton gins and the like you'd save layers of shoe leather."

It was a characteristic farewell. Mrs. McGregor would not have been Mrs. McGregor had she not uttered it. All this Carl understood and, undaunted by the words, he bent to kiss his mother on the cheek.

"I suppose you wouldn't have time to stop into the Harlings on your way," suggested she, with a twinkle in her eye.

"I was planning to stop there a minute as I went along."

"I'll be bound you were. One might as well try to keep a fly out of the molasses as to keep you away from the Harlings. Well, since you are going that way anyhow, you can carry over a bowl of broth. I made it yesterday a-purpose. Tell Mrs. Harling it will only need to be heated up for herself and Grandfather Harling."