not let me call out to him; and I stood shaking my fist at the wagon as it went on past us, and feeling for the first time that I should like to kill John Rucker.  Finally he stopped and made us follow on until we overtook him, my mother crying and Rucker sneering at both of us.  This must have been when I was nine or ten years old.  The books say that the Oneida Community was established there in 1847, when I was nine.

Long before this I had been put out by John Rucker to work in a factory in Tempe.  It was a cotton mill run, I think, by the water-power I have mentioned.  We lived in a log house on a side-hill across the road and above the cotton mill.  We had no laws in those days against child labor or long hours.  In the winter I worked by candle-light for two hours before breakfast.  We went to work at five—­I did this when I was six years old—­and worked until seven, when we had half an hour for breakfast.  As I lived farther from the mill than most of the children who were enslaved there, my breakfast-time was very short.  At half past seven we began again and worked until noon, when we had an hour for dinner.  At one o’clock we took up work once more and quit at half past five for supper.  At six we began our last trick and worked until eight—­thirteen hours of actual labor.

I began this so young and did so much of it that I feel sure my growth was stunted by it—­I never grew above five feet seven, though my mother was a good-sized woman, and she told me that my father was six feet tall—­and my children are all tall.  Maybe I should never have been tall anyhow, as the Dutch are usually broad rather than long.  Of course this life was hard.  I was very little when I began watching machines and tending spindles, and used to cry sometimes because I was so tired.  I almost forgot what it was to play; and when I got home at night I staggered with sleepiness.

My mother used to undress me and put me to bed, when she was not pressed with her own work; and even then she used to come and kiss me and see that I had not kicked the quilt off before she lay down for her short sleep.  I remember once or twice waking up and feeling her tears on my face, while she whispered “My poor baby!” or other loving and motherly words over me.  When John Rucker went off on his peddling trips she would take me out of the factory for a few days and send me to school.  The teachers understood the case, and did all they could to help me in spite of my irregular attendance; so that I learned to read after a fashion, and as for arithmetic, I seemed to understand that naturally.  I was a poor writer, though; and until I was grown I never could actually write much more than my name.  I could always make a stagger at a letter when I had to by printing with a pen or pencil, and when I did not see my mother all day on account of her work and mine, I used to print out a letter sometimes and leave it in a hollow apple-tree which stood before the house.  We called this our post-office.  I am not complaining, though, of my lack of education.  I have had a right good chance in life, and have no reason to complain—­except that I wish I could have had a little more time to play and to be with my mother.  It was she, though, that had the hard time.