Short Stories
father looked like. He had but one impression of his father, and
that was that he had savage and pitiless feet.
His earlier memories lingered with him, but he had no late
memories. All days were alike. Yesterday or last year were the
same as a thousand years—or a minute. Nothing ever happened.
There were no events to mark the march of time. Time did not
march. It stood always still. It was only the whirling machines
that moved, and they moved nowhere—in spite of the fact that
they moved faster.
When he was fourteen, he went to work on the starcher. It
was a colossal event. Something had at last happened that could
be remembered beyond a night's sleep or a week's pay-day. It
marked an era. It was a machine Olympiad, a thing to date from.
"When I went to work on the starcher," or, "after," or "before I
went to work on the starcher," were sentences often on his lips.
He celebrated his sixteenth birthday by going into the loom
room and taking a loom. Here was an incentive again, for it was
piece-work. And he excelled, because the clay of him had been
moulded by the mills into the perfect machine. At the end of
three months he was running two looms, and, later, three and
four.
At the end of his second year at the looms he was turning out
more yards than any other weaver, and more than twice as much
as some of the less skilful ones. And at home things began to
prosper as he approached the full stature of his earning power.
Not, however, that his increased earnings were in excess of need.
The children were growing up. They ate more. And they were
going to school, and school-books cost money. And somehow,
the faster he worked, the faster climbed the prices of things.
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