Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1913-11-01

him, leaned too far over as he picked
the slate; he lost his balance and fell
into the trough where the Jumps of
coal ran down. He plunged madly
along with the rushing flood into the
iron teeth of the remorseless breaker
Johnny shouted but no one heard him
in the din. Then he ran up tho ladder
and gave the signal to stop the great
engine below. but, of course, it was
too late 1T took a long while to stop
the mighty machine and then 1t
was almost an hour before the boy
could be put together into one pile.
Several weeks thereafter a man in a
little town in Massachusetts, thought
he saw blood on some Jumps of coal
that he was pouring into the top of
his nickel-plated stove-but still there
Is blood on all our coal-and, for that
matter, on almost everything we use,
but q man is a fool il he looks for
other peoples blood!
It will not do to imagine that
Johnny had no fun. He learned to
chew plug tobacco and often went to
the saloon at night. OF course, he
was pretty young for this--still boy
who is old enough to go to aabreaker
Is old enough to go to saloon. When
one is old enough to do manly work,
hesis old enough to have manly sport.
He used to go home at night so black
that his closest friends could not have
told his name. Then he washed him
self in tub of water in the parlor,
changed his clothes, got his supper
and went out with the rest OF the
boys to play. There were the ordi-
nary games for boys; there were cats
to stone; there, was a great cave
where house had gone down into an
old worked-out mine, and where the
boys gathered at night and built a.
fire from old rubbish, and where one
boy. who had gone as far as the
fourth grade, read to the rest wonder
full stories from the nickel novels that
they managed somehow to get. Then
there was the night school, kept up
for miners boys and girls-but, of
course, they could not be expected to
study much after the days work at
tho mill, Sometimes Johnny went to
the night school. but he fell asleep
when he tried to study; he never got
past the third reader, after all.
So Johnny went on until his four
teenth year. There was really moth
ing to tell after that time and very
little before. In fact, it is rather alb
surd to write a story about a breaker
boy--nothing happens to q breaker
boy. There must be some dramatic
situation to make story and there is
nothing dramatic in life of endless
toll. Strange as 1t may seem, Johnny
never had an unknown, rich uncle
who died and left him fortune. Mr..
Fox never looked down at his swiftly
moving fingers and took a fancy to
him and invited him to his home and
married him to his daughter. In fact,
III. d..
dust and gloom
Almost all his life must be skipped
because it is so dull. In writing BIZ
ography you cannot dwell long on the
parts that are very dull, and you
must entirely omit the parts that are
very interesting-and so biography is
not biography after all. Anyhow,
Johnny left the breaker when he was
fourteen and was promoted to the
place of doorkeeper in the mine.
Somehow, forgot to state that all
of this was forty years ago.
Forty years makes a great change
in anyone who lives upon the earth,
but 1t makes a greater change in the
miner than in most other men. Fifty
four is not so very old, so at least
most of us think who cling tenacious
Nv to the fifties, and still more those
who watch anxiously while the sixties
are checked off; but, at f1fty-four, the
man who has money and can have
leisure still feels that he Ii young.
He can eat and drink: can laugh, and
dance and play; he can marry and
travel and write; in fact, can still
chase all the phantasies and bubbles
that make us forget the waiting, open
grave.
Forty years entirely transformed
| ~ xya nh n NJ yol.
| he was now john generally Uncle
John. He had been a door boy, a
| driver. a helper, miner, and he had
| now come up out of the earth to
spend his last few years above the
ground. His face was SCARED and
one ear was missing. This came not
from war, but from powder all the
| same. A belated fuse exploded when
no thought it had gone out. But still
he counted this as luck, for his life
/ was saved. One arm was crippled
| from a falling rock and his right hip
was never free from pain, but this
was only the rheumatism that he
caught while working in the ground.
Except for the asthma, he could still
| have stayed a number or years IN
side the earth before the last time
Fiat he should be lowered down to
/ come nm no more But his old valves
/ were growing more and more rusty
every year. He wheezed instead of
hreafhed. and he could walk but q
verv little way, and could stand upon
his feet only few minutes at time,
His strength was almost gone. Some
doctors would have advised rest and
travel and higher altitude. but MS
did not. In fact, he had no doctor.
| E,vervone in the mine knew all about
asthma-the black shadow that hangs
always above miners life.
John did not live in the same house
where his father first placed him when
he came from Ireland SO long ago,
but he lived very near the spot, still
/ in a company" house. The miners,
and the mules, and machinery, had
changed from time TO time. but the
| breaker. the black "culm" pile and
1 -. 80, NJ, laa1ills ETH rernainad