The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1908-01-05

| into yet deeper wells" or the gloomy
unknown inferno of the stump"
From the abandoned workings away
| to the right, of which the boldest
fought shy, there came faint, faded
odors-rather whiffs than downright
smells. Near to these, even on or
binary days the lamp flame sometimes
forsook the center wick and seemed to
| cling strangely to the gauzy wire of
the Davy frame.
Few of the men in that great No.
pit remembered. as they worked, that
the yellow sunlight of the autumnal
day dreamed and slept in alternate
sunlight and shadow above hem-that
above was the golden grain, and the
long shadows of the corn stocks TIL ese
were things with which they had Moth
ing to do They did not enter into
their life or experience. Even on Sun
days they hardly lifted their eyes
to the fields, bnt preferred to sit ION
their hunkers" (Which is to say squat
ting'D, their backs to the nearest con-
venient tarred fence-the pious among
them with their Testaments on their
knees, and the rest with a few packs
of cards. so dirty that. at first sight,
they seemd to be composed exclusively
of aces of spades.
AT most a boy or two, holding the
cord of a door or guiding pony, felt
a twinge of heartache for the green
meadows and purple blackberries, the
clustering nuts in the CORN WOOD
where, sometimes you had to run from
the keepers, and for the rabbits that
dotted and hoped about the holms of
the Glebe End But they were soon
reminded that with these, in their
present life at least they, no more
than their fathers. had any concern
For, at sixteen hundred feet below
the blackberry bushes and the feddeh-
ing haws, the pit hummed about them
like a hive. That was their lifes
work There was little enough time
for thought-none for regret IN the
turmoil of No 2.
The doorboys II card the whistle of
the men running the coal trucks
through the dark passages, and, at the
signal, they threw open their doors
Then, with yell, furry of sparks as
the brakes girded harshly on the rails,
and fierce gust of wind, the long
line of laden cars clocked and 1ingled
through the open doorway.
Sometimes but not very often, one of
the men, lying prone upon the ore,
would wave a kindly hand to the lone
some boy, left there all day by him
self in the darkness
And the light from their lamps in
tn cir hats, striking on the dusty roof
above, appeared to MS eyes TO stream
backward, like the red "skarrow-
light" of an engines smoke -pennon,
at nights ON the railway. when the
fireman opens his furnace door.
Suddenly that August day, as the
boys were bringing their first loads
of ore to the well of the Dock, the
"bottomer," John Roy, looking up
wards saw thick volumes of smoke
rolling down the main passage of the
incline.
The pits afirei' was also his cry
instructive, quick, and terrible, as tha
which ran sixteen hundred feet above.
He FASTENED to lay his hand on the
little return cage" which had just
come in. For, as Kahn went up,
swiftly hoisted into safety, the empty
cage, descending, had passed him on its
little loop, midway, where two men
were working at the last coal strike.
They were about to drift, in order to
catch the seam which had "pinched
out higher up"
John Ray laid his hand on the door
of the cage. 1t also had passed
through the fire, but, as the flames
had not yet taken a firm hold on that
side of the shaft, owing to the ven
tilating air blowing the other way, it
was no more than bearably hot.