We Cant Have Everything | Page 5

three Thropps came now to New York for the first
time in their three lives. They were almost as ignorant as the other
peasant immigrants that steam in from the sea.
Adna Thropp, the father, was a local claim-agent on a small railroad.
He spent his life pitting his wits against the petty greed of honest
farmers and God-fearing, railroad-hating citizens. If a granger let his
fence fall down and a rickety cow disputed the right of way with a
locomotive's cow-catcher, the granger naturally put in a claim for the
destruction of a prize-winning animal with a record as an amazing
milker; also he added something for damage to the feelings of the
family in the loss of a household pet. It was Adna's business to beat the
shyster lawyers to the granger and beat the granger to the last penny.
One of his best baits was a roll of cash tantalizingly waved in front of
his victim while he breathed proverbs about the delayful courts.
This being Adna's livelihood, it was not surprising that his habit of
mind gave pennies a grave importance. Of course, he carried his mind
home with him from the office, and every demand of his wife or
children for money was again a test of ability in claim-agency tactics.
He fought so earnestly for every cent he gave down that his dependents
felt that it was generally better to go without things than to enter into a

life-and-death struggle for them with Pa.
For that reason Ma Thropp did the cooking, baked the "light bread,"
and made the clothes and washed them and mended them till they
vanished. She cut the boys' hair; she schooled the girls to help her in
the kitchen and at the sewing-machine and with the preserve-jars. Her
day's work ended when she could no longer see her darning-needle. It
began as soon as she could see daylight to light the fire by. In winter
the day began in her dark, cold kitchen long before the sun started his
fire on the eastern hills.
She upheld a standard of morals as high as Mount Everest and as bleak.
She made home a region of everlasting chores, rebukes, sayings wiser
than tender, complaints and bitter criticisms of husband, children,
merchants, neighbors, weather, prices, fabrics--of everything on earth
but of nothing in heaven.
Strange to say, the children did not appreciate the advantages of their
life. The boys had begun to earn their own money early by the splitting
of wood and the shoveling of snow, by the vending of soap, and the
conduct of delivery-wagons. They spent their evenings at pool-tables or
on corners. The elder girls had accepted positions in the various
emporia of the village as soon as they could. They counted the long
hours of the shop life as an escape from worse. Their free evenings
were not devoted to self-improvement. They did not turn out to be
really very good girls. They were up to all sorts of village mischief and
shabby frivolity. Their poor mother could not account for it. She could
scold them well, but she could not scold them good.
The daughter on the train, the youngest--named Kedzie after an aunt
who was the least poor of the relatives--was just growing up into a
similar career. Her highest prayer was that her path might lead her to a
clerkship in a candy-shop. Then this miracle! Her father announced that
he was going to New York.
Adna was always traveling on the railroad, but he had never traveled
far. To undertake New York was hardly less remarkable than to run
over to the moon for a few days.

When he brought the news home he could hardly get up the front steps
with it. When he announced it at the table, and tried to be careless, his
hand trembled till the saucerful of coffee at his quivering lips splashed
over on the clean red-plaid table-cloth.
The occasion of Thropp's call to New York was this: he had joined a
"benevolent order" of the Knights of Something-or-other in his early
years and had risen high in the chapter in his home town. When one of
the members died, the others attended his funeral in full regalia,
consisting of each individual's Sunday clothes, enhanced with a fringed
sash and lappets. Also there was a sword to carry. The advantage of
belonging to the order was that the member got the funeral for nothing
and his wife got the further consolation of a sum of money.
Mrs. Thropp bore her neighbors no more ill-will than they deserved,
but she did enjoy their funerals. They gave her husband an excuse for
his venerable silk hat and his gilded glave. Sometimes as she took her
hands out of the dough and