purty aisy here," he said, "whin 'Jowler' Hainey's killin' his wife an' wreckin' th' house!"

In about two minutes he was alone. He put a coal in his pipe and smoked for a minute. Then he went over to the little coffin. He took his pipe out of his mouth, laid it on the mantel-shelf and returned. The little hands were folded. He unclasped them, took one of them in his rough calloused palm.

"Poore wee thing," he said in an undertone, "poore wee thing." He put the hands as he found them. Still looking at the little baby face he added:

"Heigho, heigho, it's bad, purty bad, but it's worse where there isn't even a dead wan!"

When Anna returned she lay down on her bed, dressed as she was, and Jamie and Withero kept the vigil—with the door barred. Next morning at the earliest respectable hour Withero carried the little coffin under his arm and Jamie walked beside him to the graveyard.

During the fifteen years that followed the burial of "the famine child" they buried three others and saved three—four living and four dead.

I was the ninth child. Anna gave me a Greek name which means "Helper of men."

Shortly after my arrival in Scott's entry, they moved to Pogue's entry. The stone cabin was thatch-covered and measured about twelve by sixteen feet. The space comprised three apartments. One, a bedroom; over the bedroom and beneath the thatch a little loft that served as a bedroom to those of climbing age. The rest of it was workshop, dining-room, sitting-room, parlor and general community news center. The old folks slept in a bed, the rest of us slept on the floor and beneath the thatch. Between the bedroom door and the open fireplace was the chimney-corner. Near the door stood an old pine table and some dressers. They stood against the wall and were filled with crockery. We never owned a chair. There were several pine stools, a few creepies (small stools), and a long bench that ran along the bedroom wall, from the chimney corner to the bedroom door. The mud floor never had the luxury of a covering, nor did a picture ever adorn the bare walls. When the floor needed patching, Jamie went to somebody's garden, brought a shovelful of earth, mixed it and filled the holes. The stools and creepies were scrubbed once a week, the table once a day. I could draw an outline of that old table now and accurately mark every dent and crack in it. I do not know where it came from, but each of us had a hope that one day we should possess a pig. We built around the hope a sty and placed it against the end of the cabin. The pig never turned up, but the hope lived there throughout a generation!

We owned a goat once. In three months it reduced the smooth kindly feeling in Pogue's entry to the point of total eclipse. We sold it and spent a year in winning back old friends. We had a garden. It measured thirty-six by sixteen inches, and was just outside the front window. At one end was a small currant bush and in the rest of the space Anna grew an annual crop of nasturtiums.

Once we were prosperous. That was when two older brothers worked with my father at shoemaking. I remember them, on winter nights, sitting around the big candlestick—one of the three always singing folk-songs as he worked. As they worked near the window, Anna sat in her corner and by the light of a candle in her little sconce made waxed ends for the men. I browsed among the lasts, clipping, cutting and scratching old leather parings and dreaming of the wonderful days beyond when I too could make a boot and sing "Black-eyed Susan."

Then the news came—news of a revolution.

"They're making boots by machinery now," Anna said one day.

"It's dotin' ye are, Anna," Jamie replied. She read the account.

"How cud a machine make a boot, Anna?" he asked in bewilderment.

"I don't know, dear."

Barney McQuillan was the village authority on such things. When he told Jamie, he looked aghast and said, "How quare!"

Then makers became menders—shoemakers became cobblers. There was something of magic and romance in the news that a machine could turn out as much work as twenty-five men, but when my brothers moved away to other parts of the world to find work, the romance was rubbed off.

"Maybe we can get a machine?" Jamie said.

"Aye, but shure ye'd have to get a factory to put it in!"

"Is that so?"

"Aye, an' we find it hard enough t' pay fur what we're in now!"

Barney McQuillan was the master-shoe-maker in our town who was best able to readjust himself to changed conditions. He became a master-cobbler and doled out what he took in to men like Jamie. He kept a dozen men at work, making a little off each, just as the owner of the machine did in the factory. In each case the need of skill vanished and the power of capital advanced. Jamie dumbly took what was left—cobbling for Barney. To Anna the whole thing meant merely the death of a few more hopes. For over twenty years she had fought a good fight, a fight in which she played a losing part, though she was never wholly defeated.

Her first fight was against slang and slovenly speech. She started early in their married life to correct Jamie. He tried hard and often, but he found it difficult to speak one language to his wife and another to his customers. From the lips of Anna, it sounded all right, but the same pronunciation by Jamie seemed affected and his customers gaped at him.

Then she directed her efforts anew to the children. One after another she corrected their grammar and pronunciation, corrected them every day and every hour of the day that they were in her presence. Here again she was doomed to failure. The children lived on the street and spoke its language. It seemed a hopeless task. She never whined over it. She was too busy cleaning, cooking, sewing and at odd times helping Jamie, but night after night for nearly a generation she took stock of a life's effort and each milestone on the way spelt failure. She could see no light—not a glimmer. Not only had she failed to impress her language upon others, but she found herself gradually succumbing to her environment and actually lapsing into vulgar forms herself. There was a larger and more vital conflict than the one she had lost. It was the fight against dirt. In such small quarters, with so many children and such activity in work she fought against great odds. Bathing facilities were almost impossible: water had to be brought from the town well, except what fell on the roof, and that was saved for washing clothes. Whatever bathing there was, was done in the tub in which Jamie steeped his leather. We children were suspicious that when Jamie bathed Anna had a hand in it. They had a joke between them that could only be explained on that basis. She called it "grooming the elephant."

"Jist wait, m' boy," she would say in a spirit of kindly banter, "till the elephant has to be groomed, and I'll bring ye down a peg or two."

There was a difference of opinion among them as to the training of children.

"No chile iver thrived on saft words," he said; "a wet welt is betther."

"Aye, yer wet welt stings th' flesh, Jamie, but it niver gets at a chile's mind."

"Thrue for you, but who th' —— kin get at a chile's mind?"

One day I was chased into the house by a bigger boy. I had found a farthing. He said it was his. The money was handed over and the boy left with his tongue in his cheek. I was ordered to strip. When ready he laid me across his knee and applied the "wet