Chapter 8 VIIIToC

SUNDAY

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

It is a further confession of a middle-class 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 analyzed 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 Saturday 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 space through which we saw the harbor. I picked up a strip of old canvas for a trifle in one of the shore-front junk-shops which deal in second-hand ship 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-shore.

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 fishing off the Banks when they could remain safely ashore 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 hardships 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 fashion. 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.

For one thing it suddenly occurred to me that though I had lived in this city over thirty years I had not yet seen such places of interest as always attracted visitors from out of town. My attention was brought to this first by the need of limiting ourselves to amusements that didn't cost anything, but chiefly by learning where the better element down here spent their Sundays. You have only to follow this crowd to find out where the objects of national pride are located. An old battle flag will attract twenty foreigners to one American. And incidentally I wish to confess it was they who made me ashamed of my ignorance of the country's history. Beyond a memory of the Revolution, the Civil War and a few names of men and battles connected therewith, I'd forgotten all I ever learned at school on this subject. But here the many patriotic celebrations arranged by the local schools in the endeavor to instill patriotism and the frequent visits of the boys to the museums, kept the subject fresh. Not only Dick but Ruth and myself soon turned to it as a vital part of our education. Inspired by the old trophies that ought to stand for so much to us of to-day we took from the library the first volume of Fiske's fine series and in the course of time read them all. As we traced the fortunes of those early adventurers who dreamed and sailed towards an unknown continent, pictured to ourselves the lives of the tribes who wandered about in the big tangle of forest growth between the Atlantic and the Pacific, as we landed on the bleak New England shores with the early Pilgrims, then fought with Washington, then studied the perilous internal struggle culminating with Lincoln and the Civil War, then the dangerous period of reconstruction with the breathless progress following-why it left us all better Americans than we had ever been in our lives. It gave new meaning to my present surroundings and helped me better to understand the new-comers. Somehow all those things of the past didn't seem to concern Grover and the rest of them in the trim little houses. They had no history and they were a part of no history. Perhaps that's because they were making no history themselves. As for myself, I know that I was just beginning to get acquainted with my ancestors-that for the first time in my life, I was really conscious of being a citizen of the United States of America.

But I soon discovered that not only the historic but the beautiful attracted these people. They introduced me to the Art Museum. In the winter following our first summer here, when the out of door attractions were considerably narrowed down, Ruth and I used to go there about every other Sunday with the boy. We came to feel as familiar with our favorite pictures as though they hung in our own house. The Museum ceased to be a public building; it was our own. We went in with a nod to the old doorkeeper who came to know us and felt as unconstrained there as at home. We had our favorite nooks, our favorite seats and we lounged about in the soft lights of the rooms for hours at a time. The more we looked at the beautiful paintings, the old tapestries, the treasures of stone and china, the more we enjoyed them. We were sure to meet some of our neighbors there and a young artist who lived on the second floor of our house and whom later I came to know very well, pointed out to us new beauties in the old masters. He was selling plaster casts at that time and studying art in the night school.

In the old life, an art museum had meant nothing to me more than that it seemed a necessary institution in every city. It was a mark of good breeding in a town, like the library in a good many homes. But it had never occurred to me to visit it and I know it hadn't to any of my former associates. The women occasionally went to a special exhibition that was likely to be discussed at the little dinners, but a week later they couldn't have told you what they had seen. Perhaps our neighborhood was the exception and a bit more ignorant than the average about such things, but I'll venture to say there isn't a middle-class community in this country where the paintings play the part in the lives of the people that they do among the foreign-born. A class better than they does the work; a class lower enjoys it. Where the middle-class comes in, I don't know.

After being gone all the afternoon we'd be glad to get home again and maybe we'd have a lunch of cold beans and biscuits or some of the pudding that was left over. Then during the summer months we'd go back to the roof for a restful evening. At night the view was as different from the day as you could imagine. Behind us the city proper was in a bluish haze made by the electric lights. Then we could see the yellow lights of the upper windows in all the neighboring houses and beyond these, over the roof tops which seemed now to huddle closer together, we saw the passing red and green lights of moving vessels. Overhead were the same clean stars which were at the same time shining down upon the woods and the mountain tops. There was something about it that made me feel a man and a free man. There was twenty years of slavery back of me to make me appreciate this.

And Ruth reading my thoughts in my eyes used to nestle closer to me and the boy with his chin in his hands would stare out at sea and dream his own dreams.

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