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Life in the Iron-Mills-Part2_Rebecca Harding Davis(1831-1910)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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Wolfe, while Deborah watched him as a spaniel its master, bent

over the furnace with his iron pole, unconscious of her



scrutiny, only stopping to receive orders. Physically, Nature

had promised the man but little. He had already lost the



strength and instinct vigor of a man, his muscles were thin, his

nerves weak, his face ( a meek, woman's face) haggard, yellow



with consumption. In the mill he was known as one of the girl-

men: "Molly Wolfe" was his sobriquet. He was never seen in the



cockpit, did not own a terrier, drank but seldom; when he did,

desperately. He fought sometimes, but was always thrashed,



pommelled to a jelly. The man was game enough, when his blood

was up: but he was no favorite in the mill; he had the taint of



school-learning on him,--not to a dangerous extent, only a

quarter or so in the free-school in fact, but enough to ruin him



as a good hand in a fight.

For other reasons, too, he was not popular. Not one of



themselves, they felt that, though outwardly as filthy and ash-

covered; silent, with foreign thoughts and longings breaking out



through his quietness in innumerable curious ways: this one,

for instance. In the neighboringfurnace-buildings lay great



heaps of the refuse from the ore after the pig-metal is run.

Korl we call it here: a light, porous substance, of a delicate,



waxen, flesh-colored tinge. Out of the blocks of this korl,

Wolfe, in his off-hours from the furnace, had a habit of



chipping and moulding figures,--hideous, fantastic enough, but

sometimes strangely beautiful: even the mill-men saw that,



while they jeered at him. It was a curious fancy in the man,

almost a passion. The few hours for rest he spent hewing and



hacking with his blunt knife, never speaking, until his watch

came again,--working at one figure for months, and, when it was



finished, breaking it to pieces perhaps, in a fit of

disappointment. A morbid, gloomy man, untaught, unled, left to



feed his soul in grossness and crime, and hard, grinding labor.

I want you to come down and look at this Wolfe, standing there



among the lowest of his kind, and see him just as he is, that

you may judge him justly when you hear the story of this night.



I want you to look back, as he does every day, at his birth in

vice, his starved infancy; to remember the heavy years he has



groped through as boy and man,--the slow, heavy years of

constant, hot work. So long ago he began, that he thinks



sometimes he has worked there for ages. There is no hope that

it will ever end. Think that God put into this man's soul a



fiercethirst for beauty,--to know it, to create it; to

be--something, he knows not what,--other than he is. There are



moments when a passing cloud, the sun glinting on the purple

thistles, a kindly smile, a child's face, will rouse him to a



passion of pain,--when his nature starts up with a mad cry of

rage against God, man, whoever it is that has forced this vile,



slimy life upon him. With all this groping, this mad desire, a

great blind intellect stumbling through wrong, a loving poet's



heart, the man was by habit only a coarse, vulgar laborer,

familiar with sights and words you would blush to name. Be



just: when I tell you about this night, see him as he is. Be

just,--not like man's law, which seizes on one isolated fact,



but like God's judging angel, whose clear, sad eye saw all the

countless cankering days of this man's life, all the countless



nights, when, sick with starving, his soul fainted in him,

before it judged him for this night, the saddest of all.



I called this night the crisis of his life. If it was, it stole

on him unawares. These great turning-days of life cast no



shadow before, slip by unconsciously. Only a trifle, a little

turn of the rudder, and the ship goes to heaven or hell.



Wolfe, while Deborah watched him, dug into the furnace of

melting iron with his pole, dully thinking only how many rails



the lump would yield. It was late,--nearly Sunday morning;

another hour, and the heavy work would be done, only the



furnaces to replenish and cover for the next day. The workmen




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