two o'clock and tell the superintendent that Mother Jones extends a cordial invitation to him to come.
Then I sent two boys across a little gully to a log cabin to get a cup of tea for me. The miner came out and beckoned to me to come over. I went and as I entered the door, my eyes rested on a straw mattress on which rested a beautiful young girl. She looked at me with the most gentle eyes I ever saw in a human being. The wind came in through the cracks of the floor and would raise the bed clothes a little.
I said to the father, "What is wrong with your girl?"
"Consumption," said he. "I couldn't earn enough in the mines and she went to work in a boarding house. They worked her so hard she took sick—consumption."
Around a fireplace sat a group of dirty children, ragged and neglected-looking. He gave us tea and bread.
A great crowd came up the mountain side that afternoon. The superintendent sent one of his lackeys, a colored fellow. When the miners told me who he was and that he was sent there as a spy, I said to him, "See here, young man, don't you know that the immortal Lincoln, a white man, gave you freedom from slavery. Why do you now betray your white brothers who are fighting for industrial freedom?"
