Plain Tales From The Mills


From The Jaws

    The “spell” came upon me when I was head draughtsman for a large corporation way down East. I was on the verge of bachelordom at the time, and had never been in love. The chief trouble with lot of young men is that they have too much money in their pockets and too much time on their hands outside of business hours.

    Next to my room was the weaving department, with its clatter of a hundred looms. My duties as inventor and designer obliged me to visit the weaving room frequently, where naturally I made many business acquaintances. One morning – I could give you the year, the month, the day and the hour – I found a dainty bit of humanity among that motley throng of operatives which caused me to nearly stumble, and to make me uncertain of my errand. No words of mine can picture her. There are but few faces in the world that will set a man a-tremble at first sight. Mailie Ross had such a face. Fresh from the fragrance of some outlying district, where nature had lent her some of her own soft charms, she had come. And I, Manville Mason, the cold and cynical, quailed under the glow of her wonderful eyes.

    I was not long in making her acquaintance. In fact it pained me to find that I could make it so quickly. Then vanity stepped in and soothed my misgivings. Already in my swift imagination I had a snug little home in Highland Park with Mailie the sunshine of it all. She talked intelligently, and we attended the theatre regularly, and life was a merry song. We kept our affair as secretly as possible from the mill people so as to save annoyance at the hands of unfeeling ones.

    One morning a month later – here gain I could give you the exact day and hour – the foreman of the weaving room strolled up to my table for  moment’s chat. He was the queerest combination of good-hardheartedness and unadulterated cussedness it has been my lot to meet. But to the story. Our conversation drifted from the machines to the operators.

    “I’ve got to let one of them go Saturday night,” remarked the foreman.

    “Which one?” I asked mechanically.

    “The doll.”

    “The ‘doll’? That’s new to me,” I replied.

    “Why, don’t you know her? The pretty one? The girls call her the ‘doll’.”

    “What number?” I asked.

    “Eighty-four.”

    “Mailie Ross?”

    “That’s the one.”

    “What has she done?”

    “Nothing, that’s the trouble,” grinned the foreman. “She’s the laziest girl in the bunch. And swear! She curses like an old sailor. She’s no earthly use here. They’ve got hold of it in the office and she’s got to go. If I don’t run her out the girls swear they will. Pretty face, but a d– bad disposition.”

    “Haley,” said I, smothering my agitation as best I could, “are you sure about this?”

    “Sure? Why everybody knows it. Didn’t you hear about the spool rocket?”

    “No,” I replied, steeling myself for further agony.

    “Why yesterday she threw one of those big spools t number ‘eighty-one’ which if it had struck her squarely would have knocked her brains out. As it was she had to go home.”

    Inwardly I groaned. The foreman was called away, and the lines on my drawing paper became wriggly, like strings that vibrate. A pain pressed my head and I longed for air. Fortunately I had not become engaged to Mailie, but had intended to do so that very night. Such a woman for a wife? No. My soul shuddered at the thought. I staggered to the office, pleaded illness and secured my vacation two months in advance. And I had intended Mailie should go with me!

    The train appeared to crawl, so anxious was I to get home and throw my feverish being under the tender influence of a wise and saintly mother. When I returned the “spell” had disappeared.



July 20, 1900


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