Copyright 1912
by
Franklin S. Farquhar
Published May, 1912
Type set by Rush G. Faler & Co.,
Linotypers
Printed by
Commercial Bindery & Printing Co.,
Tacoma, Wash.
Fog and smoke and grime hung over the city of Pittsburgh: a thickeningblanket, soggy in its cumbrous pall. The rain came down like gimlets;the air was savage, miserably embracing; the streets were sodden, muddy,filthy, with dirty streams babbling along the gutters; the lightsgleamed ghastly, ghostly, hideously, in radiating through the gloom;water dripped from eave, awning, wire, sign, lamppost—from everything,spattering, trickling, everlastingly dripping, till the whole worldseemed to be in an advanced stage of the diabetes. It was a gray, grim,medieval night—a cold, raw, nerve-racking night in November.
The gleaming forges, the ponderous hammers, the monstrous rolls of themills boomed in the distance, sullenly, ceaselessly, like unto thegrumblings of a maddened Tubal Cain irritated beyond endurance. Mill andfactory and boat and shop whistles tooted and screeched and howleddemoniacally, with little agreement as to rhythm. Trains rumbled, carsrattled, and all manner of conveyances bumped along, over crossings andgrades and Y's, through tunnels, under sheds, through yards, beneathbuildings, over streets, across bridges; some rapidly, some slowly, somecautiously, some recklessly—all going, coming, hither and yon, with aremorseless energy, and for an inexorable purpose. A medley of bellssmote the air with a harshness, a sweetness, a madness, that wasstartling enough to drive the nervous into a wild panic. The rumble ofcart, the thud of horse, the crack of whip, the tread of feet, thesound of voice, was a confused mass of noises added to the greaterroaring of the turbulent city of iron and steel.
Tired, wan women, coarsely dressed; proud, haughty women, fashionablyattired; strips of boys and girls, shivering and chattering, bedraggledand humped up; horny-handed men, roughly clothed; kid-gloved men,faultlessly groomed: some with bundles, baskets, dinner-buckets, ornothing—all hurrying through the elemental dreariness, bending theirway from office, from store, from shop, from mill, from factory to home,to hotel, to palace, to mansion, to hovel, to downy beds, to strawpallets, to bunk, to bench, or doorstep; or to place of nightly service,or to pleasure; to rest and refresh themselves, and await the coming ofanother day of toil, or leisure.
John Winthrope was a strapping young man but a few months from thecountry—aged twenty-two. He had quit his pen and ink and account sheetsat his high desk in the office of Jarney & Lowman as the clock in thecourt house tower pealed out six deliberately solemn strokes. He put onhis coat and hat, took up a bundle of reading matter selected for itsquality from that which daily cumbered the desks and waste-baskets,procured an umbrella from the many that had been left in a rack in onecorner, and went out the door, down the elevator, and into the street.As rain was falling, he turned up his pantaloons, turned up his coatcollar, raised the umbrella, and joined the throng of hurryingpedestrians, homeward bound.
Home! John had no home in the city. He had left his home behind—themodest, cheaply builded, scantily furnished and illy appointed home ofhis parents in the mountains—to come to the city to make his fortune.
His home now was a "room"—merely a room among a multiplicity of similar