To which the silent messenger Before me had also come, And if I had been a titled prince, I would not have been honored more Night falls again in the cottage; Of her wonderful infantile beauty And into her father's grizzled beard And night around the baby is falling, Oh, frivolous men and women! Do you know that round you, and nigh— Alike from the humble and haughty Goeth up evermore the cry: "My child, my precious, my darling, How can I let you die!" Oh! hear ye the white lips whisper"Be-better-in-mornin'-bye." THE FALL OF THE PEMBERTON MILL. ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. The following is a vivid description of the terrible disaster which took place at Lawrence, Mass., January 10, 1860. It is taken from "The Tenth of January," a story of love, jealousy, and heroism, ending in the awful sacrifice here por trayed. The entire story can be found in a work by the same author, entitled "MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS," published by James R. Osgood & Co. [The writer describes Lawrence as "unique in its way," and says,-"Of the twenty-five thousand souls who inhabit that city, ten thousand are operatives in the factories. Of these ten thousand two-thirds are girls. Asenath Martyn was slightly built and undersized. The children used to cry out, "Humpback! Humpback!" and people in passing would say, "Look at that girl!" Her face was gravely lined, but womanly and pleasant. The author says, "She puzzled one at the first glance, and at the second. An artist, meeting her musing on a canal-bridge one day, went home and painted a May-flower budding in February." The world had, indeed, dealt harshly with her. Her deformity had been caused by a blow at the hands of a drunken mother. Sene remembered that, and her unhappy childhood,-and when the wretched mother had met a violent death,-she also remembered having heard some one say at the funeral, "How glad Sene must be!" Since that, life had meant three things,-her father, the mills, and Richard Cross. The latter had,by chance, become a resident of the same home with Sene and her old father. A tender sympathy, combined with a oneness of interests, soon ripened into love and resulted in an engagement. After a time, Sene discovered that Dick's affections were being drawn away from herself and centered upon Del Ivory, a pretty, fascinating, giddy creature, whose beauty she sometimes envied, but whose frivolity she despised. Dick, not knowing his secret was discovered, was too honorable to think of breaking his engagement, and consequently attempted to resist and suppress his new love by avoiding Del and redoubling his attentions to Sene. The latter had long been trying to release him but could not find the courage to do so; and he, seeing that she suffered, wearied himself with plans to make her eyes shine; and did she try to speak her wretched secret, he suffocated her with kindness, and struck her dumb with tender words. It was the morning after the last of these ineffectual attempts on Sene's part that this reading opens.] The silent city steeped and bathed itself in rose-tints; the river ran red, and the snow crimsoned on the distant New Hampshire hills; Pemberton, mute and cold, frowned across the disk of the climbing sun, and dripped, as she had seen it drip before, with blood. The day broke softly, the snow melted, the wind blew warm from the river. The factory-bell chimed cheerily, and a few sleepers, in safe, luxurious beds, were wakened by hearing the girls sing on their way to work. Sene was a little dizzy that morning,—the constant palpitation of the floors always made her dizzy after a wakeful night, and so her colored cotton threads danced out of place, and troubled her. Del Ivory, working beside her, said, "How the mill shakes! What's going on?" BRRR "It's the new machinery they're h'isting in," observed the overseer, carelessly. "Great improvement, but heavy, very heavy; they calc'late on getting it all into place to-day; you'd better be tending to your frame, Miss Ivory." Years before, an unknown workman in South Boston, casting an iron pillar upon its core, had suffered it to "float" a little, a very little more, till the thin, unequal side cooled to the measure of an eighth of an inch. That man had provided Asenath's way of escape. She went out at noon with her luncheon, and found a place upon the stairs, away from the rest, and sat there awhile, with her eyes upon the river, thinking. She could not help wondering a little, after all, why God need to have made her so unlike the rest of his fair handiwork. Del came bounding by, and nodded at her carelessly. Two young Irish girls, sisters, the beauties of the mill,-magnificently colored creatures, were singing a little love-song together, while they tied on their hats to go home. "There are such pretty things in the world!" thought poor Sene. Did anybody speak to her after the girls were gone? Into her heart these words fell suddenly, "He hath no form nor comeliness. His visage was so marred more than any man." They clung to her fancy all the afternoon. She liked the sound of them. She wove them in with her black and dun colored threads. The wind began at last to blow chilly up the staircases, and in at the cracks; the melted drifts out under the walls to harden; the sun dipped above the dam; the mill dimmed slowly; shadows crept down between the frames. "It's time for lights," said Meg Match, and swore a little at her spools. Sene, in the pauses of her thinking, heard snatches of the girls' talk. 66 'Going to ask out to-morrow, Meg?" "Guess so, yes; me and Bob Smith we thought we'd go to Boston, and come up in the theatre train." "Del Ivory, I want the pattern of your zouave." "Did I go to church? No, you don't catch me! If I slave all the week, I'll do what I please on Sunday." "Hush-sh! There's the boss looking over here!" "Kathleen Donnavon, be still with your ghost-stories. There's one thing in the world I never will hear about, and that's dead people." "Del," said Sene, "I think to-morrow-" She stopped. Something strange had happened to her frame; it jarred, buzzed, snapped; the threads untwisted and flew out of place. "Curious!" she said, and looked up. Looked up to see her overseer turn wildly, clap his bands to his head, and fall; to hear a shriek from Del that froze her blood; to see the solid ceiling gape above her; to see the walls and windows stagger; to see iron pillars reel, and vast machinery throw up its helpless, giant arms, and a tangle of human faces blanch and writhe! She sprang as the floor sunk. As pillar after pillar gave way, she bounded up an inclined plane, with the gulf yawning after her. It gained upon her, leaped at her, caught her; beyond were the stairs and an open door; she threw out her arms, and struggled on with hands and knees, tripped in the gearing, and saw, as she fell, a square, oaken beam above her yield and crash; it was of a fresh red color; she dimly wondered why, as she felt her hands slip, her knees slide, support, time, place, and reason, go utterly out. "At ten minutes before five, on Tuesday, the tenth of January, the Pemberton Mill, all hands being at the time on duty, fell to the ground." So the record flashed over the telegraph wires, sprang into large type in the newspapers, passed from lip to lip, a nine days' wonder, gave place to the successful candidate, and the muttering South, and was forgotten. Who shall say what it was to the seven hundred and fifty souls who were buried in the ruins? What to the eightyeight who died that death of exquisite agony? What to the wrecks of men and women who endure unto this day a life that is worse than death? What to that architect and engineer who, when the fatal pillars were first delivered to them for inspection, had found one broken under their eyes, yet accepted the contract, and built with them a mill whose thin walls and wide, unsupported stretches might have tottered over massive columns and on flawless ore? Sene's father, working at Meg Match's shoes,-she was never to wear those shoes, poor Meg!-heard, at ten minutes before five, what he thought to be the rumble of an earthquake under his very feet, and stood with bated breath, waiting for the crash. As nothing further appeared to hap、 pen, he took his stick and limped out into the street. A vast crowd surged through it from end to end. Women with white lips were counting the mills,-Pacific, Atlantic, Washington,-Pemberton! Where was Pemberton? Where Pemberton had winked its many eyes last night, and hummed with its iron lips this noon, a cloud of dust, black, silent, horrible, puffed a hundred feet into the air. Asenath opened her eyes after a time. Beautiful green and purple lights had been dancing about her, but she had had no thoughts. It occurred to her now that she must have been struck upon the head. The church-clocks were striking eight. A bonfire which had been built at a distance, to light the citizens in the work of rescue, cast a little gleam in through the debris across her two hands, which lay clasped together at her side. One of her fingers, she saw, was gone; it was the finger which held Dick's little engagement ring. The red beam lay across her forehead, and drops dripped from it upon her eyes. Her feet, still tangled in the gearing which had tripped her, were buried beneath a pile of bricks. A broad piece of flooring, that had fallen slantwise, roofed her in, and saved her from the mass of ironwork overhead, which would have crushed the breath out of Hercules. Fragments of looms, shafts, and pillars were in heaps about. Some one whom she could not see was dying just behind her. A little girl who worked in her room-a mere child—was cry. ing, between her groans, for her mother. Del Ivory sat in a little open space, cushioned about with reels of cotton; she had a shallow gash upon her cheek; she was wringing her hands. They were at work from the outside, sawing entrances through the labyrinth of planks. A dead woman lay close by, and Sene saw them draw her out. It was Meg Match. One of the pretty Irish girls was crushed quite out of sight; only one hand was free; she moved it feebly. They |