The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1872-06-13
THE LIFE OF THE ENGLISH
GOLFERS.

like? It has not a very imposing
appearance. It is simply round
black hole, about twice the size of
an ordinary table, and straddling
over it is sort Of gallows, a wire
rope as thick as ones wrist hanging
down over a wheel and lost in the
depths below. By and by the action
is reversed,a clinking and a wheeling
is heard in the adjoining engine-shed,
and up comes the tub IA square
box holding 1920 weight filled with
coal. 1t came up so while our little
party of six q being the only novice
present) was waiting to go down. |
viewed the course, strong tub with
appreciation, making sure that as
soon as it was emptied we should all
get into it but in this [ was disap-
pointed. Tt was not IN the tub, but
standing on the grating on which the
tub had stood, that we had to descend ;
on the naked grating with nothing to
"hold on" to but the cross-chain over
head. But the pit was only 600 feet
deep, and the coal smoke that arose
from the enormous mine furnace be-
low was not unbearable by the time
it had benumbed ones senses a bit.
Six hundred feet down, and half a
mile this way or that, under low
arched roofs, from which depended
frequent feeces of fungus, snowy
white and looking like lambs wool,
and making the black floor and the
black walls, lit by feeble tallow dips
stuck there in daps Of clay, blacker
than ever. We all carried tallow
dips stuck in balls Of clay, and in In
dian file followed the ',Buttoy'' and
his foreman through the turnings and
windings that led to the chambers
from which coal was being hewn.
Chambers are as wide as an ordinary
street, land as high as the three-storied
houses; and on every side, whenever
the dingy light of the red-nosed dip
was shifted was revealed human
creature naked to the waist and black
er than any sweep, with savage
cleaning eyes and savage glittering
teeth, and with a weapon in his hand
that in the uncertain light looked like
a tomahawk, grinning at you, or
making a dash with his weapon APP
parently in the direction of your Wis
age, but which alights harmlessly on
the face Of the coal wall.
Heayers, packers, tubbers, filters
these are all men, and hard as the
work is they earn good wages, and if
they dislike the labor they are at lib
erty to leave it. But they don't dis
like the labor, and they are jolly
enough-all except the boys. It
was these boys that SO perpetually
haunted my coal scuttle, when [ re-
turned from Stafordshire. It is vii
lalnously cruel to serve the poor little
chaps so. The matter stands this
way. The newer is the man whose
business it is to ''break I'M at the
foot Of coal wall. He lies on his
side or on his stomach, and he breaks
it with his peck right along for
length, say, Of twenty feet, gap
that is two feet or less in height. He
pecks his way into the rock till he
has burrowed sixteen or eighteen feet.
Naturally in the process of pecking
he makes deal Of slack" or small
and the boy in question is called the
''slack boy" Regarded as a boy,as
a human creature, he is slack indeed.
He is not much like boy. He is
more like a large-sized monkey. All
fours is his perpetual posture, and he
wears leather girdleabout his waist,
from which an iron chain depends,
the other end of it being attached to
an iron cart. The slack boy has an
iron shovel as well. and the business
of his wretched life is to crawl in at
the hole the newer makes, to fill his
cart with chips and dust, and then to
crawl out again with load, always
on his hands and knees, and with his
poor limbs hung about with few
rags of which nakedness might be
ashamed.-Londo,a Society.
A Compositor, now in the Newark
m. Y.\Ad2jertiseT. once asked Mr..