The herald., 1895-02-24
AFTER ALL
-
JAMES II. GRIFFES.


of grayness. The little knot of idler!
lounging about on the Cliff House bal
cony spoke in low tones and moved softly
as though unwilling to mar the gentle re
pose of an October evening in San Fran
cisco.
From their rocky perches the seals
barked anon, but their hoarse tones were
subdued. Night was coming on--dreamy,
silent night, when even the duh roar OF
the breakers would seem a part of the
stiffness of nature.
ATT one of the small tables, somewhat
apart from the others, sat an old man, his
face toward the dying day. On the table
beside him a filed glass that remained
untasted. He peered into the gray mists
steadfastly, thoughtfully.
In few moments the moon would come
up over the city's hills and lend her pale
light to the dreamy scene. What an eter-
nifty of retrospection is compassed in even
a single moment. The struggles of years.
the pages of a life laid bare in the brain as
by flash of lightning. What a demon of
undeserved vengeance this thing called
memory! The old man smiled as these
reflections crossed his mind. He smiled
sadly, still as one no longer fearing the
past, because sure of the present, and as
one hopeful of the future.
Slowly the grayness was changing into
black Where the horizon had been de-
fined there was now nothing discernible
to the human eye. The uneasy sea
breathed deeply, but the surface of the
water was calm and the heavings of the
Il
Still the old man looked intently sea-
ward, as though trying to pierce the out
ward garb of things, as though to his
eyes were unhidden still the carnival of
sunset colors that had enthralled the be-
holders, but was now only memory to
the vision of canny mortals. Far off
into the west the old man gazed, yet his
eyes were turned inward. He was think
ing, thinking-you could see that-and
his thoughts were going backward over
the past. A vicarious vengeance was de-
manding from one the full price that the
race bargained to pay for the faculty of
memory.
Well, he had gone over it before. Why
not again? Indeed, it seemed rather in
keeping with the eternal fitness of things
that on this, OF all nights, the old life
should come up for review again. There
were still lessons to be learned from it,
and he could see them now palmer than
ever before. There had been a deal of
selhshness in the old life.
He drew an unopened letter from an
inner pocket. No, it was too dark now to
read and he should not go inside till the
moon had risen. Then the first score OF
years since the great turning point in
John Darrell's life would be rounded al
most to the hour. A score of years ago
he stood down there on the tallest of the
boulders that stretch into the sea little
distance south of Point Lobos. In the
darkness you could scarcely distinguish
the particular rock, but in the moonligh
it would be plainly visible from the bal
cony. He had Stunned the spot all these
years. Now he had morbid curiosity
TO view the place again.
Then it was an ebb tide as it is now, and
he had calculated that his body would be
washed over the bar and well out toward
the Farrallones before the waters turned
again and ran back into the bay. There
would be no 'f1oater'' found for the de-
lectation of the marine reporter, with
eyes protruding from their sockets and
pockets turned inside ut''-queer how
one should think OF these things at such
moment No inquest. No Potter's field.
Only the wide ocean for graveyard and
an eternity of forgetfulness of self.
Twenty years ago that was. Then he
had reviewed his forty years of life, as he
was now reviewing his sixty years. A
life OF drudgery and poverty the forty
wears had been.a life of meaningless toll
without the recompense that comes to the
worker who creates.
Back in the kensington fabric mills of
Philadelphia that life had begun when
John Darrell was only boy. He learned
to wind bobbins before he reached the
monosyllables in the primary speler.
And he learned to hate the prison-like
mill none the less because fate was kinder
to him than to many of his youthful COM
panionswho had not the advantages of
winter at night school. His earliest
memories were of the 8 o'clock factory
whistles that awakened the neigh borhood
from its troubled slumbers to another day
of machine-like toll In years he saved
enough to dare to ask mill girl to be his
bride
Then came strikes and lockouts-"m
symptoms of the social disease" vet as
meaningless to John Darrell and his fel-
lows as they were pregnant with want
and misery. Oh, those struggles with the
wolf! Those days of idleness, when the
tired palms itch for more work, though
outraged nature calls for rest, rest rest;
those days when idleness comes at the
cost OF peace and hope; when the lack of
work does not mean leisure; when the
wolf OF hunger and want casts the shadow
OF his gaunt form over cold tireside!
such days came to John Darrell at the
time when infant voices cried loudest for
something more than the crust of bread
he had TO give them. The children died
not from dire hunger. One from the
effects OF sleeping in a damp room Oar
reil was back in the rent and the landlord
declined to repair the roof till another
payment had been made); one from diph-
theria (the plumbing was defective, but
they could not move to more sanitary
quarters till the mill started UP again);
one from series of bad colds (perhaps it
was only fancy of Darrellfs that he
might have saved its life could he have
furnished the proper wooden garments ear
ly IN the wlnter) one from-but no matter,
they all died. And why not? They
were pinched and scrawny from birth,
for they were the babes OF a mill girl.
There were times when the mother
was too i'll to keep on at her
shuttles and frame in the factory, and
these were usually times when work was
brisk. One day her tired bones were laid
away with those of her babes. Then John
Darrell left his home and birthplace, but
not the drudgery of mill life. In other
cities he found the conflict for bread not
less bitter. 4 hard days toll for bare
living, and the constant fear OF having no
at ALL seemed to be his lot in
life. Strive as he might there seemed no