The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-06-16
 ] THE WOMAN AT HOME By George Randolph


DWELL, toil-grimed and deep in
 frowning thought. strode down the 4A barren street where countless tiny cottages. all exactly alike and cheap and bare and ugly stretched away in monot- onous perspective. The roadway was of yellow clay, the sidewalks of yellow planldng. The scant front yards," the pitiful vegetation, even the houses and the two inter1ninable strings of picket fence were all of the same dreary mono- tone. Inured to the cheerless prospect, Powell gave 1t scarcely passing glance, but automa tically turned in at his own gate, swinging, with his awkward stoop- shouldered stride, around to the kitchen, which fronted upon a view still more des- olate-a black expanse of railroad track and dingy tenements just beyond the baked and scared back lot which should have been a garden. It was at the kitch- en window, breeding with unseeing gaze over this gloomy outlook that Powell found his wife She nodded to him with a momentary lighting of her eyes as he came in, then turned silently to her sup per work as he cleansed his blackened face and hands from a tin wash basin out homecoming. He had taken his place at the kitchen table before either of them spoke.
 Young Tremont's going to build stockade around the whole plant" he observed.
 'Is he?" she indinerently replied. Are you going to like him as well as you did his father?"
 T don't know yet" he said. frowning again. T don't like this stockade idea. Nobody does. It will make 1t seem like jail"
 T guess it won't make so much differ ence as long as you get your pay every first and fifteenth" she commented and they relapsed again into silence
 After the meal was over and the table had been cleared off, the man took from the top of the cupboard big roll of com plicated pencil drawings, and selecting one which was scarcely half completed he / methodically trued it to the table with T-square and plunged into his work The woman finished her dishes and sat down with some mending It was perhaps half , an hour later when an eager exclamation from Powell aroused his wife from the breeding reveries into which she had fallen
 i've got it!' he exclaimed. Look here, Bess!"
 She came over and gazed down at the drawing with unwilling eyes.
 Its the point that has been bothering me for year" he exulted, and then be- gan glowing explanation of his device, following the course of material through the huge machine with his pencil and looking up in triumph when he had con- cluded. Her face was absolutely unre- sponsive but he quickly overcome his disappointment and laughed.
 ''Of course, l couldn't expect you to take that all in," he said apologetically but l just had to explain it to some- body. I'm going to work it 'out carefully now and by next week think I'll be able to start on the patent drawings
 ''Patent!' she vehemently exclaimed. awakening to the word as if a lash had stung her. "Don'tr'
 Why, Bess, what's the matter?" he asked. startled by the sudden passion of her tone
 'I cant stand it!" she cried Two years you've been working on this thing, Jim. and it has eaten up every cent we could scrape together-draw wing lessons, tools. paper and I don't know what all and now patents This will make the fourth, all on this one machine, and you haven't done anything with it yet I don't be- 1ieve you ever will. We need a new cook stove We need a rug for the front room. We never go anywhere. I haven't decent dress. I've made over that old had of mine until I'm ashamed to show myself anywhere. I've washed and ironed and cooked and baked and scrubbed all these years, and what have got? Every day l stay alone here with nothing to look at but the mud of the street Every night you bend over that table and leave me as much alone as if you had not come home at all I shall die if have to live this way much longer ] shall die, It's killing me now! They told me it would be like this;''
 >In u torrent this had poured from her lips. l Powell looked at her, shocked and white faced. It had come at last, the reproach that he had been dreading for so long. They told her it would be like thfs!' The whole sore question of caste. vital from hut to mansion. lay in that tortureforced charged She had been minor grade school teacher, struggling herself from obscurity, romantic and giv- en to the building of air castles, and she had idealized her love for the ambitious young machine hand until the dull ac- tuality of life must be, of necessity a keen disappointment to her
 .'Why, gffl!' he said, and put his arms about her and kissed her "I didn't know it was so bad as all that. But just be patient while longer, dear, and see if