Page:Autobiography of Mother Jones (1925).djvu/199

190 a bit more than a crust, a bit more than bondage! 'Tis an ocean of outrage!"

"Mother, did you hear of poor, old Colner? He was going to the postoffice and was arrested by the militia. They marched him down the hill, making him carry a shovel and a pick on his back. They told him he was to die and he must dig his own grave. He stumbled and fell on the road. They kicked him and he staggered up. He begged to be allowed to go home and kiss his wife and children goodbye.

"We'll do the kissing," laughed the soldiers.

At the place they picked out for his grave, they measured him, and then they ordered him to dig—two feet deeper, they told him. Old Colner began digging while the soldiers stood around laughing and cursing and playing craps for his tin watch. Then Colner fell fainting into the grave. The soldiers left him there till he recovered by himself. There he was alone—and he staggered back to camp, Mother, and he isn't quite right in the head!"

I sat through long nights with sobbing widows, watching the candles about the corpse of the husband burn down to their sockets.

"Get out and fight," I told those women. "Fight like hell till you go to Heaven!" That was the only way I knew to comfort them.

I nursed men back to sanity who were driven to despair. I solicited clothes for the ragged children, for the desperate mothers. I laid out