Harper's Round Table, July 30, 1895 Part 2

"TAIL-PIECE." This t.i.tle Hogarth, the celebrated English painter, gave to his last work. It is said that the idea for it was first started when, in the company of his friends, they sat around the table at his home. His guests had consumed all of the eatables and _et caetera_, and nothing remained but the empty plates and gla.s.ses. Hogarth, glancing over the table, sadly remarked, "My next undertaking shall be the _end of all things_." "If that is the case," replied one of his friends, "your business will be finished, for there will be an end of the painter." "There will be," answered Hogarth, sighing heavily.

The next day he started the picture, and he pushed ahead rapidly, seemingly in fear of being unable to complete it. Grouped in an ingenious manner, he painted the following list to represent the end of all things: a broken bottle; the but-end of an old musket; an old broom worn to the stump; a bow unstrung; a crown tumbled to pieces; towers in ruins; a cracked bell; the sign-post of an inn, called the "World's End," falling down; the moon in her wane; a gibbet falling, the body gone, and the chains which held it dropping down; the map of the globe burning; Phoebus and his horses lying dead in the clouds; a vessel wrecked; Time with his hour-gla.s.s and scythe broken; a tobacco-pipe with the last whiff of smoke going out; a play-book opened, with the _exeunt omnes_ stamped in the corner; a statute of bankruptcy taken out against nature; and an empty purse.

Hogarth reviewed this work with a sad and troubled countenance. Alas!

something lacks. Nothing is wanted but this, and taking up his palette, he broke it and the brushes, and then with his pencil sketched the remains. "Finis, 'tis done!" he cried. It is said that he never took up the palette again, and a month later died.

PRISCILLA.

Miles Standish was a fellow Who understood quite well, oh, In fighting with the redskins how to plan, plan, plan.

But I think him very silly When he wished to woo Priscilla To send another man, man, man.

For she said unto this other, Whom she loved more than a brother, "Why don't you speak, John Alden, for yourself, self, self?"

So of course John Alden tarried, And the fair Priscilla married, And they laid poor Captain Standish on the shelf, shelf, shelf.

CORPORAL FRED.

A Story of the Riots.

BY CAPTAIN CHARLES KING, U.S.A.

CHAPTER II.

When morning came, old Wallace's face had grown a year older. Up to midnight he had hoped that better counsels might prevail, and that the meetings called by the leaders of kindred a.s.sociations, such as the Trainmen's Union, would result in refusal to sustain the striking switchmen; but when midnight came, and no Jim, things looked ominous. A st.u.r.dy, honest, hard-working fellow was Jim, devoted to his mother and sisters, and proud of the little home built and paid for by their united efforts. Content, happy, and hopeful, too, he seemed to be for several years; but of late he had spent much time attending the meetings at Harmonie Hall and listening to the addresses of certain semi-citizens, whose names and accent alike declared their foreign descent, and whose mission was the preaching of a gospel of discord. Their grievance was not that their hearers were hungry or in rags, down-trodden or oppressed, but that the higher officials of the road owned handsome homes and equipages, and lived in a style and luxury beyond the means of the honest toilers in the lower ranks. Jim used to come home with a smile of content as he looked upon the happy healthful faces of his mother and sisters, but for months past his talk had been of the way the Williams people lived, how they rode in their parlor car and went to the sea-sh.o.r.e every summer and to the theatre or opera every night, drove to the Park in carriages, and hobn.o.bbed with the swells in town. "Why, I knew Joe Williams when he was yard-master and no bigger a man on the road than I am to-day," said Jim, "and now look at him." His mother laughingly bade him take comfort, then, from the contemplation of Williams's success. If he could rise to such affluence, why shouldn't Jim? Besides, Mr. Williams had married a wealthy woman. "Yes, the daughter of another bloated bondholder," said Jim. A year or two before they regarded it, one and all of them, as no bad thing that there were men eager to buy the bonds and meet the expense of extending the road; but since the advent of Messrs. Steinman and Frenzel, the orators of the Socialist propaganda, Jim had begun to develop a feeling of antipathy towards all persons vaguely grouped in the "capitalistic cla.s.s."

He had long since joined the Brotherhood of Trainmen, having confidence in its benevolent and protective features. There was no actual coercion, yet all seemed to find it to their best interest to belong to the union, even though they merely paid the small dues and rarely attended its meetings. These latter were usually conducted by a cla.s.s of men prevalent in all circles of society, fellows of some gift for speech-making or debate. The quiet, thoughtful, and conservative rarely spoke, and more frequently differed than agreed with the speakers, but all through the year the meetings had become more turbulent and excited, and little by little men who had been content and willing wage-workers became infected with the theories so glibly expounded by the speakers.

They were the bone and sinew of the great corporation; why should not they be rolling in wealth they won rather than seeing it lavished on the favored few, their employers? The only way for workingmen to get their fair percentage of the profits, said these leaders, was to strike and stick together, for the men of one union to "back" those of another, and then success was sure. Called from his home to a meeting of the trainmen, Jim Wallace was one of the five hundred of his brethren to decide whether or no they too should strike in support of their fellows, the switchmen, demanding not only the restoration of the discharged freight-handlers, but now also that of Stoltz. Old Wallace had firmly told him No; they had no case. But by midnight the trainmen had said Yes.

An hour after midnight, anxious and unable to sleep, the father had stolen quietly up into the boys' room. Jim's bed was unoccupied; but over on the other side lay Corporal Fred, his duties early completed, sleeping placidly and well. With two exceptions, all the companies of his regiment were made up of men who lived in the heart of the city. The two junior companies, "L" and "M," had been raised in the western suburb, and as many as a dozen young fellows living almost as far west as the great freight-yards were members of these. According to the system adopted in some of the Eastern States, each company was divided into squads, so that in the event of sudden need for their services the summons could be quickly made. Every man's residence and place of work or business were duly recorded. Each Lieutenant had two sergeants to aid him, each sergeant, two corporals; and immediately on receipt of notification, it was the business of each corporal to bustle around and convey the order to the seven men comprising his squad. By ten o'clock on the previous evening Fred Wallace had seen and notified every one of his party, and then, returning home, had gone straightway to bed. "There won't be much sleep after we're called out," said he, "so now is my time."

It would have been well for all his comrades had they followed his example, but one or two of the weak-headed among them could not resist the temptation of going to the freight-yards to see how matters were progressing, and there, boy like, telling their acquaintances among the silent, gloomy knots of striking railway men, that they too, "the Guards," were ordered out. It was not strictly true, but young men and many old ones rejoice in making a statement as sensational as possible.

It would not surprise or excite a striker to say "we've received orders to be in readiness." It did excite them not a little when Billy Foster told them in so many words, "Say, we've got our orders, and you fellows'll have to look out."

"There need be no resort to violence," said the leaders. "We can win at a walk. The managers have simply got to come down as soon as they see we're in earnest." And at ten o'clock at night the striking switchmen, many of them ill at ease, had been waiting to see the prophesied "come down" which was to be the immediate result of the tie-up. What the leaders failed to mention to their followers as worthy of consideration was that superintendents, yard-masters, conductors, engineers, brakemen, and firemen, one and all had risen from the bottom, and could throw switches just as well as those employed for no other purpose. It was inconvenient, of course. It meant slow work at the start, but so far from being paralyzed, as the leaders predicted, the officials went to work with a vim. Silk-hatted managers, kid-gloved superintendents, and "dude-collated" clerks were down in the train-shed swinging lanterns and handling switches, and so it had resulted that all the night express trains of the five companies using the Great Western tracks, one after another, slowly, cautiously, but surely had threaded the maze of green and red lights, and safely steamed over the four miles of s.h.i.+ning steel rails between the Union depot in the heart of the city and these outlying freight-yards, and, only an hour or so behind time, had haunted their long rows of brilliantly lighted plate-gla.s.s windows in the sullen faces of the striking operatives, and then gone whistling merrily away to their several destinations over the dim, starlit prairies. The managers were only spurred, not paralyzed.

"We'll win yet," said Stoltz, in a furious harangue to a thousand hearers, one-tenth of them, only railway employes, the others being recruited from the tramps, the ne'er-do-wells, the unemployed and the criminal cla.s.ses, ever lurking about a great city. "The managers cannot play switchmen more than one night, and no men they hire dare attempt to work in your places--if you're the men I take you to be. Now I'm going to the trainmen's meeting to demand their aid." And go he did, with the result already indicated.

Half an hour after midnight, despite the protests of the old and experienced men, the resolution to strike went through with a yell, and when the dawn came, faint and pallid in the eastern sky, and the myriad switch-lights in the dark, silent yards began to grow blear and dim, there stood the long rows of freight cars doubly fettered now, for not only were there no switchmen to make up the trains, there were no crews to man them and take them to their destination. Jim Wallace had struck with the rest.

It was two o'clock when at last the father heard the heavy footfalls of his first-born on the wooden walk without. There he seemed to pause for some few words in low tone with a companion who had walked home with him from the yards. Old Wallace, going to the door to meet his son, heard these words as the other turned away. "And you tell Fred what I say. I'm a friend of yours, and always have been, but the boys won't stand any nonsense. It'll be the worst for him if he don't quit that militia business at once, and if he don't, he won't be the only one to suffer."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "WHO THREATENS MY SON AND MY PEOPLE?" DEMANDED OLD WALLACE.]

"Who is that?" demanded old Wallace, stepping promptly out from his front door. "Who threatens my son or my people?"

The stranger had stepped away into the shade of an ailantus-tree before he answered. Jim Wallace stood in moody silence, confused by his father's sudden appearance, and ashamed that such menace as this against him and his should have been spoken without instant rebuke. "What I said was meant in all friends.h.i.+p to you and yours, Mr. Wallace. You don't know me, but I know you," said the stranger; with marked foreign accent, but in civil tone. "I want to avert trouble from your roof if I can, and therefore told Jim to get Fred out of that tin-soldier connection. No son of yours ought to be used in the intimidation of honest workingmen who only seek their rights, and if he is wise he'll quit it now and at once."

"No son of mine shall be intimidated from doing a sworn duty by any such threats as yours," said Wallace, with rising wrath; "and if that's the game you play I'm ashamed to think that son of mine has had anything to do with you. Who are you, anyway? What do you mean by coming round 'intimidating honest workingmen,' as you say, at this hour of the night?

You're no trainman. Man and boy I've known the hands on this road nearly forty years, and I never thought to see the day when rank outsiders could come in and turn them against one another as you have. Who are you, I say?"

"Never mind who I am, Mr. Wallace. I speak what I know, and my voice is that of ten thousand working--or more than working--_thinking_ men. If you're wise you'll see to it that this is the last time your boy carries orders to his fellows to turn out against us, for that's what he has done. If you _don't_, somebody may have to do it for you."

"That isn't all!" shouted the old Scotchman, as the other turned away, "and you hear this here and now. My voice is that of ten million law-abiding people, high and low, rich and poor, and it says my boys shall stand by their duty, the one to his employers, the other to his regiment, you and your threats to the contrary notwithstanding. You haven't struck, have you, Jim?" he asked, turning in deep anxiety to his silent, crestfallen son.

And for all answer Jim simply shrugged his broad shoulders and made a deprecatory gesture with his brown, hairy hand, then turned slowly into the little hallway, and went heavily to his room. At breakfast-time he was gone.

Fred came bounding in at half past six, alert and eager, yet with grave concern on his keen young face. "I've been the length of the yards," he said, "and I'm hungry as a wolf, mother. They say they're going to block the incoming trains, and prevent others going out. Big crowds are gathering already, and I shouldn't be surprised if we were ordered on duty this very day. Where's Jim?"

"He got up and dressed after you went out, Fred," was the reply. "He said he wanted no breakfast. Father has gone early to the shops. He thought he might meet you."

"Well, I'll stop there to see him on my way to the office. I've got to see Mr. Manners first thing about getting off if the call comes."

"I hope he'll say no," said Jessie Wallace, promptly. She was the younger, prettier sister, and the more impulsive.

"You thought the regiment beautiful on Memorial day, Jess, and were glad enough to go and see the parade," said Fred, with a mouth nearly full of porridge.

"That's different. I like the band, and the plumes and uniforms, and parading and drilling, but I don't want you to be shot or stoned or abused the way the other regiment was at the mines last spring."

"Well, there's where you and Manners don't agree. He objects to my belonging because of the parades and drills and summer camp, says it's all vanity, foolishness, and that only popinjays want to wear uniforms.

I guess he'd be glad enough to have us in line if a mob should make a break for the works, but I own I'm worried about what he'll say to-day."

And Fred might well be worried. Dense throngs of excited men were gathered along the yards as he wended his way to the works after a few words with his father at the gloomy shop. An engine with some flat cars had come out with newly employed men to man the switches. Engineer, firemen, and the newly employed had to flee for their lives, and the a.s.sistant-superintendent was being carried to the emergency hospital in a police patrol wagon. n.o.body was being carried to the police station.

"There'll be worse for the next load that comes," shouted Stoltz from the sidewalk, and a storm of jeers and yells was the applauding answer.

These sounds were still ringing in young Wallace's ears when he came before the manager. Mr. Manners turned round in his chair when Fred told him of his orders of the night before.

"Wallace," said he, "I told you last month that no man could serve two masters. We can't afford to employ young men who at any time may be called out to go parading with a lot of tin soldiers."

"This isn't parade, sir; It's business. It's protecting life and property."

"Fudge!" said Manners; "let the police attend to that--or the regulars.

It's their business. If you leave your desk on any such ridiculous orders you leave it for good."

And at four o'clock that afternoon, towards the close of a day filled with wild rumors of riot, bloodshed, and destruction, a young man in the neat service dress of a sergeant of infantry--blue blouse and trousers, and tan-colored felt hat and leggings--walked in to Corporal Fred's office with a written slip in his hand, and Corporal Fred walked out.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]