p. 44 | HARD TIMES

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 20, 1887

HARD TIMES.

"I've got a job, mother!"

"True, Bob?"

"Yes, a whole cord of wood to saw. Got in ahead of everyone else. Followed a load on the street till it got to the place where they'd bought it, and got the promise of it."

Bob straightened up his thin, awkward, overgrown figure with great pride, and then began poking the fire.

"Take care, Bob," cautioned his mother, "the wood's most gone."

"But there'll be an extra dollar to-morrow, don't you see? Fifteen cents I'm to pay Jim Johnson for the loan of his saw and buck. I'm going to buy fifteen cents' worth of wood, and going to get a pane of glass for the window; and then, Kitty," bending over a little girl who lay on a miserable bed, "something'll be left for you. I'm going to get you some of those nice white rolls you saw at the baker's one day—yes I am, Kitty! and something else, I shan't tell you till you see. Just wait till I come home to-morrow! The first job I've had for all my trying! I wish the hard times were over."

Bob mused a few moments on all the weary miles he had walked in search of work through cold, storm, and snow, since the day when, a few weeks ago, the daily newspaper had lengthened its routes and discharged some of its carrier boys, him among the number.

"Who's hard times, anyway, that they all talk about?" said Kitty, pressing a cold little hand to her feverish cheek, as she turned her restless eyes towards him.

"Why, it ain't anybody, Kitty; it's only that it's hard to get work, and hard to get money, and hard for poor folks to live."

"Yes,"—mother shook her head with an expression of woful realization on her face. "The glass works are closed, so there are boys and men out there; and they're sending the girls out of the shops; and people that gave out their sewing before do it themselves now—that's how it is I get so little—and mills and factories shut up."

"I should think," said Bob, looking gravely into the fire he had stirred into a feeble blaze, "that rich folks would try all the more to give poor folks work, such times."

"They say they can't, somehow," said his mother.

"P'r'aps," said Kitty, "they wouldn't have enough money themselves to last till hard times was gone, if they did."

"P'r'aps so," said Bob. "Never mind," he added briskly, "the lady I'm to saw for gets lots of wood, and may be she'll hire me again, and may be you'll get more sewing, mother, and then we'll get the mattress from the pawn-shop, and buy some stuff to make Kitty well; and then it won't be hard times any longer, will it?"

"I'll take an hour to thaw it out," said Bob, as in the dim light of the following morn he broke into pieces with a hatchet the corn-bread, frozen to the solidity of a stone.

"There'll be warm water soon, and then I can soak it, Bobby."

"I guess I'd better not wait, though," he said, crunching between his teeth some of the flinty morsels. "You see, it's most a day's work, and I want to show 'em that I'm equal to it, so I'll be the surer of gettin' more. Now, I'll move your machine by the stove, mother—it's queer how the poor thing seems to be like folks, and wants to be warmed up before it'll go. Too bad, Kitty, to have to take my coat off you, but the stove's gettin' nicely warmed up now, and I've got an iron on it for mother to put to your feet." He took the coat which had been over her, but stopped to carefully tuck about her the bit of bedding before putting it on. Then, with a caressing pat and a cheery good-by, he went out into the bitter, bitter, stinging cold.

It seemed to enfold his thinly-clad frame in a clasp which might well seem worse than the grasp of death to any but a boy still bearing, through hardship and privation, the blessed spirit of youthful hope, braced by loving solicitude for still feebler ones. The heavy sticks of wood appeared almost to greet him with a friendly look as he went at his work with hearty good-will.

But as the hours wore away the boy began to realize that something besides mere energy and will-purpose is necessary to carry one through a day of hard work in the atmosphere of a Northern winter. All his resolution could not keep off the frequent recurring dizziness and faintness which seemed at times almost to overwhelm him with an impulse to fling himself down upon the pitiless snow beside him. He tried to laugh it off and fight it out, yielding to it once or twice only far enough to sit down for a moment on his sawbuck and rest his head on his trembling hand, springing up suddenly with a fear that someone might see him and think him unfit for hard work.

Finished at last it was, and piled with extra care and neatness to the last stick, each one of which had grown heavier and heavier. Then Bob stood in the comfortable kitchen and waited for the mistress to come and pay him.

"Eighty cents?" she said, offering him some change.

"I—thought—ma'am, a dollar was the regular price."

"Yes, but you're a boy. You don't expect man's wages, do you?"

"It's a full cord, ma'am, isn't it?" said Bob, meekly, driven to say more than he otherwise would have ventured by the strength of his desire to fulfill his promise to poor little Kitty.

"Yes, I know. But it's very hard times, and people can't expect what they used to get. There's plenty ready to do all I want for that."

Bob knew it. More than one sawyer had come into the yard that day, looking with hungry eyes at his job and speculating on the chances of any more work to be had there. As the lady turned away he walked slowly out.

"It must be the warmth of the kitchen," he said to himself as he was forced by the sick feeling in his head and the weakness in his knees to sit down on the step outside.

Mrs. Brainard had no thought of being unkind or unjust. Months before, when her husband had informed her of the pressure which was tightening upon his business affairs, she had dutifully and practically accepted his suggestion of retrenchment in expenses. She had cut down on her charities, worn her last year's cloak, made over for the children dresses and flannels which she had been in the habit of giving away, and industriously labored through the plain sewing she had heretofore given out. Naturally inclined to be generous, and full of sympathy for suffering which really came under her notice, she had made up her mind that liberal giving must be deferred to a more convenient season, and had closed her ears to the cry of the destitute which arose on every side.

She had been dressing to go out, and, having returned to her room, was leisurely brushing her cloak, when she saw the boy she had just paid coming out of her back yard. He essayed to cross the street, and her attention was drawn to his singular manner. She watched for a moment his stumbling, apparently careless steps, and then with an expression of dismay, hastily threw on her wraps, ran down-stairs and out into the street. It had not been at all crowded; but she had seen the boy, when directly in its middle, look first one way and then the other with a dazed, confused expression, putting his hand to his head. Whether he had then fallen or been thrown down by passing horses, she had not been able to perceive, but she saw him quickly raised, placed upon a sleigh, and driven around a corner. Hurrying after, she could see men carrying him into a tenement house at the distance of about two blocks. She followed, and opening the door quietly, entered and stood inside, unnoticed by those who were anxiously occupied with him.

"He ain't hurt, is he?" asked a woman's appealing voice.

"No, I think not," said a gentleman with a professional air, pushing back a ragged gingham shirt from a bony arm, in search of a pulse. "What has he eaten to-day?"

"Well, about nothing, I guess. His breakfast was all frozen up, and he wouldn't wait, for fear of not getting more work."

"Any lunch?"

"Likely not. It's thawed now, Bobby," she said wistfully, offering it as he opened his eyes. "You'll eat some now, won't you?"

Bob raised himself and took a staggering step or two toward the child.

"I ain't got it for you, Kitty," he said with a half sob. "'Twas only eighty cents, and it was a glass of red jelly I was goin' to bring you—and the white rolls—"

"Never mind talking now, my boy," said the doctor, kindly, holding to his lips something he had poured into a cup. "Clear case of starvation," he said, whispering to Mrs. Brainard as he came to offer her a chair. "Plenty of such cases this winter, you know. God only knows how these poor bear so much in the way of hunger and cold. And when the hard work is added, nature is strained to her last point of endurance—sometimes beyond it."

"And what then?" asked Mrs. Brainard, with her face turning a little pale.

"Death." He laid a coin on the sewing-machine, and hurried away, after saying to the mother,—

"Give him something nourishing—in small quantities at first."

"Stop!" said Mrs. Brainard, laying her hand on the woman's arm, as she again pressed upon Bob the uninviting looking corn-bread. "Oh! is it you, Mrs. Finley?"—recognizing with a further sinking at the heart the face of the woman whom she had told some time before that she could give out no more sewing until better times came. The hollow eyes and sunken cheeks—poverty-marks worn deep during dreadful months lived through since then—had prevented her knowing her at first.

"Wait a few moments," she went on. "Let me bring him something."

She hurried home with but one pressing thought, and gave quick orders to her girl, while she herself gathered from pantry and store-room such things as could be most readily utilized. And the two were at Bob's side with hot coffee and tempting food, by the time he had succeeded in making Kitty understand that eighty cents would only buy the wood, and mend the window, and pay the rent of the saw, and not one cent over.

"If that boy had died I should have been his murderer," said Mrs. Brainard, her eyes now opened to the extent of dealing fairly and mercilessly with her own short-comings. "Ah me! how I have missed the blessings promised to those who consider the poor!"

She was returning from a second visit to Bob's home, undertaken for the purpose of carrying there some of the made-over flannels. She felt as she looked upon them as though a voice whispered to her: "The spoil of the poor is in your houses." And it was with a fully awakened heart that she that night read: "If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother; but thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need."

Mrs. Brainard will hereafter practice her economics upon herself instead of upon the poor, whom the Master has left to be always with us. She will cut off luxuries with an unsparing hand, but will aim to give more work, rather than less, during hard seasons, and will have an eye quickened by the spirit of loving care for others; for she can never forget that a starving boy worked all day in the bitter cold, within the sound of her voice and the sight of her eye and the reach of her comforts, and she had not made it her business to know or care.—Church and Home.