The Argosy, Vol. XXV, No. 1 — page 123: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AN AMATEUR IN DYNAMITE. A summer experience which fills a big space in the memory of a certain young machinist— The expedient to which his fiancée resorted to counteract the mischievous influence of a professional agitator. 5 Cae long hot day was done, and the seething ocean of human life on the Kast side seemed to have boiled up out of the fetid apartments of the tenement houses, through the scuttleholes, and spread over the roois. Weary men sprawled at full length, smoking their pipes; women gossiped and nursed their babies ; lovers perched on the cope stones of partition walls ; children played games and ran races, in apparent unconsciousness of the abyss bordering their field ; ‘‘ growler’’ parties sang popular ballads. The air vibrated with a myriad of voices in speech, laughter, song, and quarrel, all swelling together in one great human chord, as pervasive and diffuse as the faintly golden haze doming the city, the sky’s reflection of its million lights. _ Gottlieb Hebick a stalwart young machinist, and Ottilie Bcletiet, a pretty, flaxen haired, and blue eyed feather worker, sat toyether upon the partition wall of the two huge buildings that constituted the gruesome flats. He, bestriding the cope stone, was in his shirt sleeves, but that was no in- fraction of etiquette, for his coat lay upon his knees. She, sitting sidewise upon the wall, facing him, seemed occupied with ce ees plaits in the hem of her apron. ‘“You’re right, of course,’’ said the young man gloomily. ‘‘ There would be some risk init. But, it’s hard, within a week of our wedding, to have it knocked in the head. I had set my heart upon it and saved up enough for a nice little home and a fair start. I was going to get the furni- ture next week. We might chance it.’’ ‘No, Gottlieb; I am as sorry as you are; but, just think. Suppose we have our home and you can get no work, and out little savings are all gone and nothing coming in. ‘Then the home will have to go, and I have to come back to my father, and you must go away somewhere and look for work ; and maybe we shall never see each other again. You know how it was with the poor Meissners, and Gretchen Detweiler and her man, and more we have seen, all good, honest, hard working people. Maybe your shop will soon start up again, and then I will not say ‘No,’ any more, but ‘ Yes,’ as soon as you like.’’ ‘‘ But suppose the strike lasts for months ; as strikes sometimes do?”’ “Then it would be a great deal worse for us married, that as we are. But now you call it a strike, and a little bit ago you spoke of it as a lockout. Which is it?’’ CoTmmiclaoolK< (S@)