Or again, Dick told them of those other mills, which were the chief
foundation of St. Etienne's wealth, piles of gray stone, for ever
dust-laden and dingy, into which poured a never-ending stream of grain,
and out of which poured an equally unceasing stream of bags and barrels
laden with flour. Around the wide interiors wandered a few men, gray
too, who peeped now and then into caverns where hidden machinery did all
the work. Outside, locomotives whistled and puffed and snorted, as they
switched the miles of cars to and from the mills. Great vans rolled up
with their burdens of fresh empty barrels to be filled and rolled away
again.
It was the commonplace of daily toil, but Dick made it vivid, because it
was in him to see all things as the work of men, and whenever you catch
them doing real work, men are interesting.
Sometimes Dick had other stories to tell. In his collegiate days, he had
grown familiar with the typical slum and its problems. The class in
sociology had visited such. So he went to the slums of St. Etienne, and
behold, they were not slums at all, for the slum can not be grown, like
a mushroom, in a night. It must have a thousand nauseous influences
stagnating for a long time undisturbed. But here were meager little
wooden huts, flanked by rusting piles of scrap-iron, or flats along the
river-bottom where the high waters of spring were sure to send the
dwellers in these shabby apologies for homes scrambling to the roofs,
or drive them to the shelter of the neighboring brewery. Here as the
waters swept under the stony arches of the bridges, old women tucked up
their petticoats and fished for the richness with which a city befouls
its river. Here they made themselves neat woodpiles of the drift of the
sawmills, and turned an honest penny by exhibiting on their roofs gaudy
advertisements of plug-tobacco, that those who passed on the bridge
above might look down and read and resolve to avoid the brand thus
obnoxiously glorified.
Sometimes Dick had to relate a picturesque interview with a policeman
who unfolded to him unknown phases of life, for though he believed in
himself, Percival also believed in the other man, and therefore made him
a friend. Every one likes a jolly friendly prince, and that was Dick's
type.
Or he would dip into a police court where all the stages of wretchedness
were pitchforked into one another's evil-smelling company, so that it
ranged from the highest circle of purgatory to the lowest depths of
hell.
"Why do you go to such places, Dick? It's nauseating," Madeline
exclaimed.
"Why?" he demanded. "I suppose that sometime, when I've made over my
information into the neat systematic package that you prefer, I shall
start a soul-uplifting row. I look forward to that as my career. You
ought to get a career, Madeline."