The 42nd Parallel Read Online Free PDF Page B

man might be a detective following up the affair of the handbills. Voices rose and fell, the stranger’s voice in short rattling tirades, O’Hara’s voice in long expostulating clauses, now and then Fainy caught the word foreclose, until suddenly the door flew open and the stranger shot out, his face purpler than ever. On the iron stoop he turned and pulling a new stogy from his pocket, lit it from the old one; growling the words through the stogy and the blue puff of smoke, he said, “Mr. O’Hara, you have twenty-four hours to think it over . . . A word from you and proceedings stop immediately.” Then he went off down the street leaving behind him a long trail of rancid smoke.
    A minute later, Uncle Tim came out of the office, his face white as paper. “Fenian, old sport,” he said, “you go get yourself a job. I’m going out of business . . . Keep a weather eye open. I’m going to have a drink.” And he was drunk for six days. By the end of that time a number of meeklooking men appeared with summonses, and Uncle Tim had to sober up enough to go down to the court and put in a plea of bankruptcy.
    Mrs. O’Hara scolded and stormed, “Didn’t I tell you, Tim O’Hara, no good’ll ever come with your fiddlin’ round with these godless labor unions and social-democrats and knights of labor, all of ’em drunk and loafin’bums like yourself, Tim O’Hara. Of course the master printers ud have to get together and buy up your outstandin’ paper and squash you, and serve you right too, Tim O’Hara, you and your godless socialistic boosin’ ways only they might have thought of your poor wife and her helpless wee babes, and now we’ll starve all of us together, us and the dependents and hangers on you’ve brought into the house.”
    “Well, I declare,” cried Fainy’s sister Milly. “If I haven’t slaved and worked my fingers to the bone for every piece of bread I’ve eaten in this house,” and she got up from the breakfast table and flounced out of the room. Fainy sat there while the storm raged above his head; then he got up, slipping a corn muffin into his pocket as he went. In the hall he found the “help wanted” section of the Chicago
Tribune
, took his cap and went out into a raw Sunday morning full of churchbells jangling in his ears. He boarded a streetcar and went out to Lincoln Park. There he sat on a bench for a long time munching the muffin and looking down the columns of advertisements: Boy Wanted. But they none of them looked very inviting. One thing he was bound, he wouldn’t get another job in a printing shop until the strike was over. Then his eye struck
     
Bright boy wanted with amb. and lit. taste, knowledge of print. and pub. business. Conf. sales and distrib. proposition $15 a week apply by letter P.O. Box 1256b
     
    Fainy’s head suddenly got very light. Bright boy, that’s me, ambition and literary taste . . . Gee, I must finish
Looking Backward
. . . and jez, I like reading fine, an’ I could run a linotype or set up print if anybody’d let me. Fifteen bucks a week . . . pretty soft, ten dollars’ raise. And he began to write a letter in his head, applying for the job.
     
D EAR S IR (M Y D EAR S IR )
         or maybe G ENTLEMEN ,
In applying for the position you offer in today’s Sunday
Tribune
I want to apply, (allow me to state) that I’m seventeen years old, no, nineteen, with several years’ experience in the printing and publishing trades, ambitious and with excellent knowledge and taste in the printing and publishing trades,
     
    no, I can’t say that twice . . . And I’m very anxious for the job . . . As he went along it got more and more muddled in his head.
    He found he was standing beside a peanut wagon. It was cold as blazes, a razor wind was shrieking across the broken ice and the black patches of water of the lake. He tore out the ad and let the rest of the paper go with the wind. Then he bought himself a warm package of