Morris tribune. [volume] (Morris, Minn.) 1880-2000, 1901-06-22
A SEA CHANGE.
1t Was Ocoasioned by a
Small Boy.
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He sat on the lower deck, his black
ened hands clasped about his drawn up
knees and his head dropping upon his
barred and grimy breast. Beneath bis
lowering brows he looked out toward
the sea at the purple, white trimmed
rollers. at the innocent blue sky, at the
far horizon forever uureachable, for
ever fair, yet changing in beauty by
day from a clear lavender line to a
gray and misty shore, from mountains
Of gold and red to the alaDaster walls
of sea girt palaces.
He frowned at the sea and sky, for
the glare of the furnaces was still be-
fore his eyes. Though the spicy sea
wind blew upon his breast, yet the
smell. of the blue figure was in his nos
trils, and the blasts of hot air still en-
veloped him. Now he turned his head
! impatiently and glanced at the upper
deck. where the few passengers the
steamship carried were sitting, talking
and reading at their ease. 1t was so in
life. Some were always floating easily
on at the expense of others. He felt
dull rage to think that he should be be-
low looking up at them. 1t was his
own fault. Once he might have made
his life a different thing, but now his
place was fixed. He could never grow
away from it.
He lounged to the rail and looked
down at the waves climbing coura
geously upward, only to fall again, as
if to mock life's vain endeavors. How
cool and soothing the water would
seem to his oVerheated brain and bodyl
There was sneer upon his hard lined
face as he looked again toward the up
per deck. What did any life amount
to, theirs as well as his? Yet how they
would lament if they thought it all
would soon come to an end!
Then his eye was caught by the fig
ure of small boy with upturned face
and hands in his pockets standing be-
side man. And suddenly the ship
anu SGd BdOcu lIOuJ ulS eyes, anu AS
saw another boy in a big, Tapping
straw hat and brown oyeraIls, with
bare feet, coming down still, dusty
road that wound in dull complacency
between blackberry and strawberry
vines, apple trees. and wild cherry
bushes. The boy climbed to the bound /.
airy, half fence half stone wall, of the
orchard and felt a sudden twinge in his
toe as he pushed his bare feet through
the long bush grass and stumbled ON a
red striped apple. He sat again en- the
fiat stone step without the kitchen
door, and his mother came up bek4lG
him with blue and white crackedGAP
full of sweet milk and dropped a WEam
doughnut into his upturned EsNA
''Look out; it's hotr' he could hear her
say, and it aroused him with a start.
He looked down at the old trousers and
filthy shirt. They seemed to contain
more than physical, a moral, contami-
nation. That country boy had come to
this. From the peaceful sameness of
that quiet life to the ugly monotony Of
this, earning mean living by the
meanest Of labor and spending those
earnings for not merely mean, for de-
basing, objects.
The last time he had been in America 1
he had gone to a sailors bethel and
had thought that after this voyage he
would go away into some faraWay
country. place and do better, where
fields were green and a living might be
wrested from earth, not fire. But at
Liverpool good resolves went with the
earnings. Evidently this was what he
was born for, ten days of misery-he
could not get used to the furnaces-a
week of what some men called pleas
ure and then the furnaces again. And
SO it would go on until He turned |
again and looked down on the waves
How easy it would be! There would |
be one stokeE the less. and it would
give him distinction for the first--no
the second--time in his life. The first !
time had been when he left his country |
home to make his fortune. He had !
made it we'll He Sneered again, that |
bittereSt of sneers, at oneself Then be
walked around the wheelhouse at the
stern and leaned against the rail at the
back and looked down at the water
swirling in widening, roughened
path from the beating Of the screw. 1t
was pale blue, with ilmy rufles OF
white and here and there fold Of deli
cate green. Then as he gazed the wake
seemed a live thing, rather many |
things, and their little lips of foam met
and whispered, Come" and laughed !,
at. him as fool because he hesitated,
with his hand on the rail. Not that he
was afraid. Oh, moi
''SayT' The man started. He chung |
Do the rail as if to steady himself.
''Say --hellOI Anything the matterY'