or even in books. Household-work awaited her daily after the factory-work, and a dark, strange religion oppressed and did not sustain her, Sundays. So we scarcely wondered when she died. It seemed, indeed, as if she had died long ago,–as if the life had silently passed away from her, leaving behind a working body that was glad at last to find a rest it had never known before.
My other sister was far different. Very much younger, not even a shadow of the death that had gone before weighed heavily upon her. Everybody loved her, and her warm, flashing spirit that came out in her sunny smile. She died in a season of joy, in the first flush of summer. She died, as the June flowers died, after their happy summer-day of life.
At last I was left alone, to plod the same way, every night and morning,–out with the sunrise from the skirts of the town, over the bridge across the stream that fell into our great river which has worked for us so long, to the tall, grim factory-building where my work awaited me, and home again at night. I lived on in the house we all of us had lived in. At first it was alone in the wood. But the town crept out to meet it, and soon but little woodland was left around it. "Gloomy Robert" they called me, as I walked back and forth upon the same track, seldom lifting my head to greet friend or stranger. Though I walked over well-known ground, my thoughts were wandering in strange romances. My evening-readings furnished the land I lived in,–seldom this Western home, but the East, from Homer's time to the days of Haroun Alraschid. I was so faithful at my work that my responsibilities were each year increased; and though my brain lived in dreams, I had sufficient use of it for my little needs each day. I never forgot to answer the wants of the greedy machines while I was within sound of them; but away from them I forgot all external sight and sound. I can remember in my boyhood once I was waked from my reveries. I was walking beneath a high stone-wall, with my eyes and head bent down as usual, when I was roused by a shower of rose-buds that fell over my shoulders and folded arms. I heard laughter, and looked up to see a childish face with sunny, golden curls tumbling over it; and a surprised voice cried out, "Gloomy Robert is looking up!" The picture of the face hung in my memory long after, with the sound of the happy voice, as though it came out of another world. But it remained only a picture, and I never asked myself whether that sunny face ever made any home happy, nor did I ever listen for that voice again from behind the high stone-wall.
Many years of my life passed away. There were changes in the factories. The machines grew more like human beings, and we men could act more like machines. There were fewer of us needed; but I still held my place, and my steadiness gave me a position.
One day, in the end of May, I was walking early in the morning towards the factories, as usual, when suddenly there fell across my path a glowing beam of sunshine that lighted up the grass before me. I stopped to see how the green blades danced in its light, how the sunshine fell down the sloping, bank across the stream below. Whirring insects seemed to be suddenly born in its beam. The stream flowed more gayly, the flowers on its brim were richer in color. A voice startled me. It was only that of one of my fellow-workmen, as he shouted, "Look at Gloomy Robert!–there's a sunbeam in his way, and he stumbles over it!" It was really so. I had stumbled over a beam of sunlight. I had never observed the sunshine before. Now, what life it gave, as it gleamed under the trees! I kept on my way, but the thought of it followed me all up the weary stairs into the high room where the great machines were standing silently. Suddenly, after my work began, through a high narrow window poured a strip of sunshine. It fell across the colored threads which were weaving diligently their work. This day the work was of an unusually artistic nature. We have our own artists in the mills, artists who must work under severe limitations. Within a certain space their fancy revels, and then its lines are suddenly cut short. Nature scatters her flowers as she pleases over the field, does not measure her groups to see that they stand symmetrically, nor count her several daisies that they may be sure to repeat themselves in regular order. But our artist must fit his stems to certain angles so that their lines may be continuous, constantly repeating themselves, the same group recurring, yet in a hidden monotony.
My pattern of to-day had always pleased me, for we had woven many yards of it before,–the machines and I. There were rich green leaves and flowers, gay flowers that shone in light and hid themselves in shade, and I had always admired their grace and coloring. To-day they had seemed to me cold and dusky. All my ideas that I had gained from conventional carpet-flowers, which, woven almost beneath my hand, had seemed to rival Nature's, all these ideas had been suddenly swept away. My eyes had opened upon real flowers waving in real sunshine; and my head grew heavy at the sound of the clanking machine weaving out yards of unsunned flowers. If only that sunshine, I thought, would light up these green leaves, put a glow on these brilliant flowers, instead of this poor coloring which tries to look like sunshine, we might rival Nature. But the moment I was so thinking, the rays of sunlight I have spoken of fell on the gay threads. They seemed, before my eyes, to seize upon the poor yellow fibres which were trying to imitate their own glow, and, winding themselves round them, I saw the shuttle gather these rays of sunlight into the meshes of its work. I was to stand there till noon. So, long before I left, the gleam of sunshine had left the narrow window and was hidden from the rest of the long room by the gray stone-walls of another building which rose up outside. But as long as they lingered over the machine that I was watching, I saw, as though human fingers were placing them there, rays of sunlight woven in among the green leaves and brilliant flowers.
After that gleam had gone, my work grew dark and dreary, and, for the first time, my walls seemed to me like prison-walls. I longed for the end of my day's work, and rejoiced that the sun had not yet set when I was free again. I was free to go out across the meadows, up the hills, to catch the last rays of sunset. Then coming home, I stooped to pick the flowers which grew by the wayside in the waning light.
All that June which followed, I passed my leisure hours and leisure days in the open air, in the woods. I chased the sunshine from the fields in under the deep trees, where it only flickered through the leaves. I hunted for flowers, too, beginning with the gay ones which shone with color. I wondered how it was they could drink in so much of the sun's glow. Then I fell to studying all the science of color and all the theories which are woven about it. I plunged into books of chemistry, to try to find out how it was that certain flowers should choose certain colors out from the full beam of light. After the long days, I sat late into the night, studying all that books could tell me. I collected prisms, and tried, in scattering the rays, to learn the properties of each several pencil of light. I grew very wise and learned, but never came nearer the secret I was searching for,–why it was that the Violet, lying so near the Dandelion, should choose and find such a different dress to wear. It was not the rarer flowers that I brought home, at first. My hands were filled with Dandelions and Buttercups. The Saint-John's-Wort delighted me, and even the gaudy Sunflower. I trained the vines which had been drooping round our old house,–the gray time-worn house; the "natural-colored house," the neighbors called it. I thought of the blind boy who fancied the sound of the trumpet must be scarlet, as I trained up the brilliant scarlet trumpet-flower which my sister had planted long ago.
So the summer passed away. My companions and neighbors did not wonder much, that, after studying so many books, I should begin to study flowers and botany. And November came. My occupation was not yet taken away, for Golden-Rod and the Asters gleamed along the dusty roadside, and still underneath the Maples there lay a sunny glow from the yellow leaves not yet withered beneath them.
One day I received a summons from our overseer, Mr. Clarkson, to visit him in the evening. I went, a little disturbed, lest he might have some complaint to make of the engrossing nature of my present occupations. This I was almost led to believe, from the way in which he began to speak to me. His perorations, to be sure, were apt to be far wide of his subject; and this time, as usual, I could allow him two or three minutes' talk before it became necessary for me to give him my attention.
At last it came out. I was wanted to go up to Boston about a marvellous piece of carpet which had appeared from our mills. It had lain in the warehouse some time, had at last been taken to Boston, and a large portion of it had been sold, the pattern being a favorite one. But suddenly there had been a change. In opening one of the rolls and spreading it broadly in the show-room
