Part 9 (2/2)

We stood regarding each other in dumb horror Mackellar was deathly pale

”Let o to the station to turn out the men” He made a motion to climb down

Wells had snatched the book from me ”Jack! for your life don't raph in the directions:--

”Such a thing has happened when the fraht in some other way suddenly shi+fted”

Mac sat as if frozen to stone Ed and I sneaked out of the back door on tiptoe to make for downstairs, three steps at a time In less time than it takes to tell it ere back, each with an aronized coer if he would only sit still, still as a ain

The third trip gave us stones enough, and with infinite care we piled them, one after another, upon the rack as the Captain eased up, until at last he stood upon the floor, a freed and saved ht have turned off the gas in the first place, and so saved ourselves all our anguish and toil

I can say honestly that I tried the best I kne to get along with the politicians I served, but in the long run it sirudges But it is one thing to run an independent newspaper, quite another to edit an ”organ” And there is no deceiving the public Not that I tried

Indeed, if anything, the shoe was on the other foot We parted company eventually to our mutual relief, and quite unexpectedly I foundthe breadwinner of the fa had long alluredIsland that traded in Brooklyn stores and could be reached in that way In fact, it proved to be so I es and giving open-air exhibitions in which the ”ads” of Brooklyn ly interlarded with very beautiful colored views, of which I had a fine collection When the season was too far advanced to allow of this, I established myself in aat Myrtle Avenue and Fulton Street and appealed to the city croith ap of several months, while our people on the other side crossed theot that impression from their letters

They were not to blas A chief reason why I liked this country fro was that itas it was so sche I would not have sold the people ave it to theood for them; for my pictures were real work of art, not the cheap trash you see nowadays on street screens

The city croere always appreciative In the country the hoodlureat deal about city toughs

In nine cases out of ten they are lads of normal impulses whose resources have all been smothered by the slum; of whom the street and its lawlessness, and the tenement that is without a hoht have been heroes The country hoodluh he, too, is not rarely driven into mischief by the utter poverty--aesthetically I mean--of his environment Hence he shows off in his isolation so uhs, whereas the other is one in spite of his country home That is to say, if the latter is really a ho

There ought to be so to echo that sentins I knehen I hung my curtain between two trees in the little public park down by the fountain with the goldfish, that there was going to be trouble My patience had been pretty orn down, and Ifor a fight, and put good hickory clubs into their hands, bidding them restrain their natural desire to use thes were not vain Potatoes, turnips, and eggs flew, not only at the curtain, but at the lantern and , which was one of my most beautiful colored vieas rent in twain by a rock that went clear through the curtain Then I gave the word In a trice the apparatus was gathered up and thrown into a wagon that aiting, the horses headed for Jamaica We made one dash into the crowd, and a wail arose fro over the town like a nighte and a mob with rocks and clubs But we had the best teaeance? No! Of course there was the ruined curtain and those eggs to be settled for; but, on the whole, I think ere a kind of village ih we did not stay to wait for a vote of thanks I a in the summer of 1877 Wells and I hatched out a scheer scale, of which the lantern was to be the vehicle We were to publish a directory of the city of Elotten, but the upshot of that latest of et soon Our plan was to boohtly street display in the interest of our patrons We had barely got into tohen the railroad strikes of that memorable summer reached Elmira There had been dreadful trouble, fire and bloodshed, in Pennsylvania, and the citizens took steps at once to preserve the peace A regiment of deputy sheriffs were sworn in, and the toas put under seuarded every train and car that went over the bridge between the business section of the town and the railroad shops across the Che comes upon you so unexpectedly as did that, I aood fortune, however disguised--would have it that the building we had chosen to hang our curtain on was right at the end of this bridge which seeer point From the other end the strikers looked across the river, hourly expected to make a movement of some kind, exactly what I don't know I know that the whole city was on pins and needles about it, while we, all unconscious that ere the object of sharp scrutiny, were vainly trying to string our sixteen-foot curtain There was a high wind that blew it out over the river despite all our efforts to catch and hold it Twice it escaped our grasp We could see a crowd of strikers watching us on the other side The deputies who held our end of the bridge saw theers; came from no one knehere They ue with the ene white flag afted toward the shops, a committee of citizens came up from the street and let us know in as feords as possible that any other place would be healthier for us just then than Elmira

In vain we protested that ere noncoed in peaceful industry The co and to the crowd at the farther end of the bridge They eyed our preparations for as askance, and politely but firmly insisted that the next train out of toas especially suited for our purpose

There was nothing to be done It was another case of circu of any kind we did the only thing we could; packed up and went It was not a tihter of a number of militiamen in a Pennsylvania round-house that was set on fire by the strikers was fresh in the public mind

But it was the only time I have been suspected of sympathy with violence in the settlement of labor disputes The trouble with that plan is that it does not settle anything, but rakes up fresh injuries to rankle indefinitely and widen the gap between the man who does the work and the man who hires it done so that he may have time to attend to his own Both workmen, they only need to understand each other and their co To do that they must know one another; but a blow and a kick are a poor introduction I areat; but better not It does not do any good, but a lot of harot to the point yet where we can settle our disputes peaceably by discussion, the fault is not all the employers by any manner of means

We jumped out of the ashes into the fire, as it turned out At Scranton our train was held up There were torpedoes on the track; rails torn up or so better to do, ent out to take a look at the town At the head of the ht by experience, we bored our way through it to where a line of uns, some in their shi+rt-sleeves, so advance to the coal co a narrow space clear in front of the line Within it a man--I learned afterward that he was the Mayor of the toas haranguing the people, counselling theo back to their homes quietly

Suddenly a brick was thrown from behind me and struck him on the head

I heard a word of brief co into as many extended hands, and a volley was fired into the crowd point blank, A man beside me weltered in his blood There was an instant's dead silence, then the rushi+ng of a thousand feet and wild cries of terror as the mob broke and fled We ran with it In all my life I never ran so fast I would never have believed that I could do it Ed teased ht have played marbles on my coat-tails, they flew out behind so But he was an easy winner in that race The riots were over, however, before they had begun, and perhaps a greater calamity was averted It was the only time I was ever under fire, except once when a crazy man came into Mulberry Street years after and pointed a revolver at the reporters I regret to say that I gave no better account of o to war I own it is a bad showing Perhaps it was as well I didn't go, even on that account Ihen it ca undeserved indignities on that trip, for e got as far as Stanhope, on the Morris and Essex road, our iven out I offered the station-master my watch as security for the price of two tickets to New York, but he bestowed only a conteoodoff ”snide”

gold watches on people Our lantern outfit found no more favor with hie in Schooley's Mountains where ht, and when at dae arrived, had the , who knew nothing about us He walked alongside of e up hill, eying h I had better not make a move to sneak aith the child Wells went on to the city to replenish our funds

And here I take leave of this loyal friend in the story of row rich in possessions, but his wealth was his undoing It is one of the sore spots in my life--and there are many more than I like to think of--that when he needed me most I was not able to be to him what I would and should have been We had drifted too far apart then, and the influence I had over him once I had myself surrendered It was so with Charles

It was so with Nicolai They come, sometimes when I am alone, and nod to me out of the dim past: ”You were not tempted You should have helped!” Yes, God help me! it is true I am more to blame than they I should have helped and did not What would I not give that I could unsay that noo of thedale I had been et a foothold on one of the metropolitan newspapers, but alithout success That fall I tried the _Tribune_, the city editor of which, Mr Shanks, was one of hbors, but was told, with reen” Very likely Mr

Shanks had been observing erouslibel suits I should have done the saed his mind and invited me to come on the paper and try my hand So I joined the staff of the _Tribune_ five years after its great editor had died, a beaten and crushed ures in American political history

They were not halcyon days, those winterfor the Tribune I was on trial, and it was hard work and very little pay, not enough to live on, so that ere compelled to take to our little pile to ht fire and a cheery welcoood winter despite the desperate stunts soeneral work do not sleep on flowery beds of ease I reht ord came of a dreadful disaster on the Coney Island shore Half of it had been washed away by the sea, the report ran, with houses and people I was sent out to get at the truth of the thing I started in the early twilight and got as far as Gravesend The rest of the way I had to foot it through snow and slush knee-deep in the face of a blinding storot to Sheepshead Bay dead beat, only to find that the ice and the tide had shut off all approach to the island

I did the next best thing; I gathered from the hotel-keepers of the Bay an account of the wreck on the beach that lacked nothing in vividness, thanks to their laudable desire not to see an enterprising reporter cheated out of his rightful ”space” Then I hired a sleigh and drove hoh--”I can hear the water yet running out of your boots,” sayswith pride at my feat