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Page 56
The daughters of Black Hawk merchants had a confident, unenquiring belief
that they were `refined,' and that the country girls, who `worked out,'
were not. The American farmers in our county were quite as hard-pressed as
their neighbours from other countries. All alike had come to Nebraska with
little capital and no knowledge of the soil they must subdue. All had
borrowed money on their land. But no matter in what straits the
Pennsylvanian or Virginian found himself, he would not let his daughters go
out into service. Unless his girls could teach a country school, they sat
at home in poverty.
The Bohemian and Scandinavian girls could not get positions as teachers,
because they had had no opportunity to learn the language. Determined to
help in the struggle to clear the homestead from debt, they had no
alternative but to go into service. Some of them, after they came to town,
remained as serious and as discreet in behaviour as they had been when they
ploughed and herded on their father's farm. Others, like the three
Bohemian Marys, tried to make up for the years of youth they had lost. But
every one of them did what she had set out to do, and sent home those
hard-earned dollars. The girls I knew were always helping to pay for
ploughs and reapers, brood-sows, or steers to fatten.
One result of this family solidarity was that the foreign farmers in our
county were the first to become prosperous. After the fathers were out of
debt, the daughters married the sons of neighbours--usually of like
nationality-- and the girls who once worked in Black Hawk kitchens are
to-day managing big farms and fine families of their own; their children
are better off than the children of the town women they used to serve.
I thought the attitude of the town people toward these girls very stupid.
If I told my schoolmates that Lena Lingard's grandfather was a clergyman,
and much respected in Norway, they looked at me blankly. What did it
matter? All foreigners were ignorant people who couldn't speak English.
There was not a man in Black Hawk who had the intelligence or cultivation,
much less the personal distinction, of Antonia's father. Yet people saw no
difference between her and the three Marys; they were all Bohemians, all
`hired girls.'
I always knew I should live long enough to see my country girls come into
their own, and I have. To-day the best that a harassed Black Hawk merchant
can hope for is to sell provisions and farm machinery and automobiles to
the rich farms where that first crop of stalwart Bohemian and Scandinavian
girls are now the mistresses.
The Black Hawk boys looked forward to marrying Black Hawk girls, and living
in a brand-new little house with best chairs that must not be sat upon, and
hand-painted china that must not be used. But sometimes a young fellow
would look up from his ledger, or out through the grating of his father's
bank, and let his eyes follow Lena Lingard, as she passed the window with
her slow, undulating walk, or Tiny Soderball, tripping by in her short
skirt and striped stockings.
The country girls were considered a menace to the social order. Their
beauty shone out too boldly against a conventional background. But anxious
mothers need have felt no alarm. They mistook the mettle of their sons.
The respect for respectability was stronger than any desire in Black Hawk
youth.
Our young man of position was like the son of a royal house; the boy who
swept out his office or drove his delivery wagon might frolic with the
jolly country girls, but he himself must sit all evening in a plush parlour
where conversation dragged so perceptibly that the father often came in and
made blundering efforts to warm up the atmosphere. On his way home from
his dull call, he would perhaps meet Tony and Lena, coming along the
sidewalk whispering to each other, or the three Bohemian Marys in their
long plush coats and caps, comporting themselves with a dignity that only
made their eventful histories the more piquant. If he went to the hotel to
see a travelling man on business, there was Tiny, arching her shoulders at
him like a kitten. If he went into the laundry to get his collars, there
were the four Danish girls, smiling up from their ironing-boards, with
their white throats and their pink cheeks.
The three Marys were the heroines of a cycle of scandalous stories, which
the old men were fond of relating as they sat about the cigar-stand in the
drugstore. Mary Dusak had been housekeeper for a bachelor rancher from
Boston, and after several years in his service she was forced to retire
from the world for a short time. Later she came back to town to take the
place of her friend, Mary Svoboda, who was similarly embarrassed. The
three Marys were considered as dangerous as high explosives to have about
the kitchen, yet they were such good cooks and such admirable housekeepers
that they never had to look for a place.
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