| IX
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| THERE WAS A CURIOUS social situation in Black Hawk. All the young
men felt the attraction of the fine, well-set-up country girls
who had come to town to earn a living, and, in nearly every case,
to help the father struggle out of debt, or to make it possible
for the younger children of the family to go to school.
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| Those girls had grown up in the first bitter-hard times, and had got
little schooling themselves. But the younger brothers and sisters,
for whom they made such sacrifices and who have had `advantages,' never seem
to me, when I meet them now, half as interesting or as well educated.
The older girls, who helped to break up the wild sod, learned so much
from life, from poverty, from their mothers and grandmothers; they had all,
like Antonia, been early awakened and made observant by coming at a tender
age from an old country to a new.
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| I can remember a score of these country girls who were in service
in Black Hawk during the few years I lived there, and I can
remember something unusual and engaging about each of them.
Physically they were almost a race apart, and out-of-door
work had given them a vigour which, when they got over their
first shyness on coming to town, developed into a positive
carriage and freedom of movement, and made them conspicuous
among Black Hawk women.
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| That was before the day of high-school athletics.
Girls who had to walk more than half a mile to school were pitied.
There was not a tennis-court in the town; physical exercise was
thought rather inelegant for the daughters of well-to-do families.
Some of the high-school girls were jolly and pretty, but they stayed
indoors in winter because of the cold, and in summer because of the heat.
When one danced with them, their bodies never moved inside their clothes;
their muscles seemed to ask but one thing--not to be disturbed.
I remember those girls merely as faces in the schoolroom, gay and rosy,
or listless and dull, cut off below the shoulders, like cherubs,
by the ink-smeared tops of the high desks that were surely put
there to make us round-shouldered and hollow-chested.
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| The daughters of Black Hawk merchants had a confident, unenquiring
belief that they were `refined,' and that the country girls,
who `worked out,' were not. The American farmers in our county
were quite as hard-pressed as their neighbours from other countries.
All alike had come to Nebraska with little capital and no knowledge
of the soil they must subdue. All had borrowed money on their land.
But no matter in what straits the Pennsylvanian or Virginian
found himself, he would not let his daughters go out into service.
Unless his girls could teach a country school, they sat at
home in poverty.
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| The Bohemian and Scandinavian girls could not get positions as teachers,
because they had had no opportunity to learn the language.
Determined to help in the struggle to clear the homestead from debt,
they had no alternative but to go into service. Some of them,
after they came to town, remained as serious and as discreet in
behaviour as they had been when they ploughed and herded on their
father's farm. Others, like the three Bohemian Marys, tried to make
up for the years of youth they had lost. But every one of them did
what she had set out to do, and sent home those hard-earned dollars.
The girls I knew were always helping to pay for ploughs and reapers,
brood-sows, or steers to fatten.
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| One result of this family solidarity was that the foreign
farmers in our county were the first to become prosperous.
After the fathers were out of debt, the daughters married
the sons of neighbours--usually of like nationality--
and the girls who once worked in Black Hawk kitchens are
to-day managing big farms and fine families of their own;
their children are better off than the children of the town
women they used to serve.
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| I thought the attitude of the town people toward these girls very stupid.
If I told my schoolmates that Lena Lingard's grandfather was a clergyman,
and much respected in Norway, they looked at me blankly. What did it matter?
All foreigners were ignorant people who couldn't speak English.
There was not a man in Black Hawk who had the intelligence or cultivation,
much less the personal distinction, of Antonia's father. Yet people saw
no difference between her and the three Marys; they were all Bohemians,
all `hired girls.'
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| I always knew I should live long enough to see my country girls
come into their own, and I have. To-day the best that a harassed
Black Hawk merchant can hope for is to sell provisions and farm
machinery and automobiles to the rich farms where that first crop
of stalwart Bohemian and Scandinavian girls are now the mistresses.
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| The Black Hawk boys looked forward to marrying Black Hawk girls,
and living in a brand-new little house with best chairs that must
not be sat upon, and hand-painted china that must not be used.
But sometimes a young fellow would look up from his ledger,
or out through the grating of his father's bank, and let his eyes
follow Lena Lingard, as she passed the window with her slow,
undulating walk, or Tiny Soderball, tripping by in her short skirt
and striped stockings.
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| The country girls were considered a menace to the social order.
Their beauty shone out too boldly against a conventional background.
But anxious mothers need have felt no alarm. They mistook the mettle
of their sons. The respect for respectability was stronger than
any desire in Black Hawk youth.
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| Our young man of position was like the son of a royal house;
the boy who swept out his office or drove his delivery wagon
might frolic with the jolly country girls, but he himself
must sit all evening in a plush parlour where conversation
dragged so perceptibly that the father often came in
and made blundering efforts to warm up the atmosphere.
On his way home from his dull call, he would perhaps
meet Tony and Lena, coming along the sidewalk whispering
to each other, or the three Bohemian Marys in their long
plush coats and caps, comporting themselves with a dignity
that only made their eventful histories the more piquant.
If he went to the hotel to see a travelling man on business,
there was Tiny, arching her shoulders at him like a kitten.
If he went into the laundry to get his collars, there were
the four Danish girls, smiling up from their ironing-boards,
with their white throats and their pink cheeks.
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| The three Marys were the heroines of a cycle of scandalous stories,
which the old men were fond of relating as they sat about
the cigar-stand in the drugstore. Mary Dusak had been housekeeper
for a bachelor rancher from Boston, and after several years in his
service she was forced to retire from the world for a short time.
Later she came back to town to take the place of her friend,
Mary Svoboda, who was similarly embarrassed. The three Marys were
considered as dangerous as high explosives to have about the kitchen,
yet they were such good cooks and such admirable housekeepers
that they never had to look for a place.
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| The Vannis' tent brought the town boys and the country girls together
on neutral ground. Sylvester Lovett, who was cashier in his
father's bank, always found his way to the tent on Saturday night.
He took all the dances Lena Lingard would give him, and even grew
bold enough to walk home with her. If his sisters or their
friends happened to be among the onlookers on `popular nights,'
Sylvester stood back in the shadow under the cottonwood trees,
smoking and watching Lena with a harassed expression.
Several times I stumbled upon him there in the dark, and I
felt rather sorry for him. He reminded me of Ole Benson,
who used to sit on the drawside and watch Lena herd her cattle.
Later in the summer, when Lena went home for a week to visit
her mother, I heard from Antonia that young Lovett drove
all the way out there to see her, and took her buggy-riding.
In my ingenuousness I hoped that Sylvester would marry Lena,
and thus give all the country girls a better position in the town.
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| Sylvester dallied about Lena until he began to make mistakes in his work;
had to stay at the bank until after dark to make his books balance.
He was daft about her, and everyone knew it. To escape from his
predicament he ran away with a widow six years older than himself,
who owned a half-section. This remedy worked, apparently. He never looked
at Lena again, nor lifted his eyes as he ceremoniously tipped his hat
when he happened to meet her on the sidewalk.
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| So that was what they were like, I thought, these white-handed,
high-collared clerks and bookkeepers! I used to glare at young
Lovett from a distance and only wished I had some way of showing
my contempt for him.
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