One Way Out: A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America. William Carleton

that woke me up most of all from the first day I met her was the interest she took in everyone and everything. A fellow couldn't bore Ruth if he tried. She would have the time of her life sitting on a bench in the park or walking down the street or just staring out the window of her aunt's front room. And that street looked like Sunday afternoon all the week long.

      I began to do some figuring when I was alone but there wasn't much satisfaction in it. I had the clothes in my room, a good collection of pipes, and ten dollars of my last week's salary. A man couldn't get married on that even to a girl like Ruth who wouldn't want much. I cut down here and there but I naturally wanted to appear well before Ruth and so the savings went into new ties and shoes. In this way I fretted along for a few months until I screwed my courage up to ask for another raise. Those were prosperous days for the United Woollen and everyone from the president to the office boy was in good humor. I went to Morse, head of the department, and told him frankly that I wished to get married and needed more money. That wasn't a business reason for an increase but those of us who had worked there some years had come to feel like one of the family and it wasn't unusual for the company to raise a man at such a time. He said he'd see what he could do about it and when I opened my pay envelope the next week I found an extra five in it.

      I went direct from the office to Ruth and asked her to marry me. She didn't hang her head nor stammer but she looked me straight in the eyes a moment longer than usual and answered:

      "All right, Billy."

      "Then let's go out this afternoon and see about getting a house," I said.

      I don't think a Carleton ever boarded when first married. To me it wouldn't have seemed like getting married. I knew a suburb where some of the men I had met at the country club lived and we went out there. It was a beautiful June day and everything looked clean and fresh. We found a little house of eight rooms that we knew we wanted as soon as we saw it. It was one of a group of ten or fifteen that were all very much alike. There was a piazza on the front and a little bit of lawn that looked as though it had been squeezed in afterwards. In the rear there was another strip of land where we thought we might raise some garden stuff if we put it in boxes. The house itself had a front hall out of which stairs led to the next floor. To the right there was a large room separated by folding doors with another good-sized room next to it which would naturally be used as a dining room. In the rear of this was the kitchen and besides the door there was a slide through which to pass the food. Upstairs there were four big rooms stretching the whole width of the house. Above these there was a servant's room. The whole house was prettily finished and in the two rooms down stairs there were fireplaces which took my eye, although they weren't bigger than coal hods. It was heated by a furnace and lighted by electricity and there were stained glass panels either side of the front door.

      The rent was forty dollars a month and I signed a three years' lease before I left. The next week was a busy one for us both. We bought almost a thousand dollars' worth of furniture on the installment plan and even then we didn't seem to get more than the bare necessities. I hadn't any idea that house furnishings cost so much. But if the bill had come to five times that I wouldn't have cared. The installments didn't amount to very much a week and I already saw Morse promoted and myself filling his position at twenty-five hundred. I hadn't yet got over the feeling I had at eighteen that life was a big adventure and that a man with strong legs and a good back couldn't lose. With Ruth at my side I bought like a king. Though I never liked the idea of running into debt this didn't seem like a debt. I had only to look into her dear blue eyes to feel myself safe in buying the store itself. Ruth herself sometimes hesitated but, as I told her, we might as well start right and once for all as to go at it half heartedly.

      The following Saturday we were married. My vacation wasn't due for another month so we decided not to wait. The old folks came down from the farm and we just called in a clergyman and were married in the front parlor of the aunt's house. It was both very simple and very solemn. For us both the ceremony meant the taking of a sacred oath of so serious a nature as to forbid much lightheartedness. And yet I did wish that the father and mother and aunt had not dressed in black and cried during it all. Ruth wore a white dress and looked very beautiful and didn't seem afraid. As for me, my knees trembled and I was chalk white. I think it was the old people and the room, for when it was over and we came out into the sunshine again I felt all right except a bit light-headed. I remember that the street and the houses and the cars seemed like very small matters.

CHAPTER IIToC

       Table of Contents

      THIRTY DOLLARS A WEEK

      When, with Ruth on my arm, I walked up the steps of the house and unlocked the front door, I entered upon a new life. It was my first taste of home since my mother died and added to that was this new love which was finer than anything I had ever dreamed about. It seemed hard to have to leave every morning at half past six and not get back until after five at night, but to offset this we used to get up as early as four o'clock during the long summer days. Many the time even in June Ruth and I ate our breakfast by lamp-light. It gave us an extra hour and she was bred in the country where getting up in the morning is no great hardship.

      We couldn't afford a servant and we didn't want one. Ruth was a fine cook and I certainly did justice to her dishes after ten years of restaurants and boarding-houses. On rainy days when we couldn't get out, she used to do her cooking early so that I might watch her. It seemed a lot more like her cooking when I saw her pat out the dough and put it in the oven instead of coming home and finding it all done. I used to fill up my pipe and sit by the kitchen stove until I had just time to catch the train by sprinting.

      But when the morning was fine we'd either take a long walk through the big park reservation which was near the house or we'd fuss over the garden. We had twenty-two inches of radishes, thirty-eight inches of lettuce, four tomato plants, two hills of corn, three hills of beans and about four yards of early peas. In addition to this Ruth had squeezed a geranium into one corner and a fern into another and planted sweet alyssum around the whole business. Everyone out here planned to raise his own vegetables. It was supposed to cut down expenses but I noticed the market man always did a good business.

      I had met two or three of the men at the country club and they introduced me to the others. We were all earning about the same salaries and living in about the same type of house. Still there were differences and you could tell more by the wives than the husbands those whose salaries went over two thousand. Two or three of the men were in banks, one was in a leather firm, one was an agent for an insurance company, another was with the telegraph company, another was with the Standard Oil, and two or three others were with firms like mine. Most of them had been settled out here three or four years and had children. In a general way they looked comfortable and happy enough but you heard a good deal of talk among them about the high cost of living and you couldn't help noticing that those who dressed the best had the fewest children. One or two of them owned horses but even they felt obliged to explain that they saved the cost of them in car fares.

      They all called and left their cards but that first year we didn't see much of them. There wasn't room in my life for anyone but Ruth at that time. I didn't see even the old office gang except during business hours and at lunch.

      The rent scaled my salary down to one thousand and eighty dollars at one swoop. Then we had to save out at least five dollars a week to pay on the furniture. This left eight hundred and twenty, or fifteen dollars and seventy-five cents a week, to cover running expenses. We paid cash for everything and though we never had much left over at the end of the week and never anything at the end of the month, we had about everything we wanted. For one thing our tastes were not extravagant and we did no entertaining. Our grocery and meat bill amounted to from five to seven dollars a week. Of course I had my lunches in town but I got out of those for twenty cents. My daily car fare was twenty cents more which brought my total weekly expenses up to about three dollars. This left a comfortable margin of from five to seven dollars for light, coal, clothes and amusements. In the summer the first three items didn't amount to much so some