GEORGE LEE BURTON

George Lee Burton, magazinest, was born at Danville, Kentucky, April 17, 1868. He was fitted at the Louisville Rugby School for the University of Virginia, from which he was graduated, after which he returned to Louisville, and studied law in the University of Louisville. Upon his graduation from that institution he was admitted to the bar, and he has since practiced his profession at Louisville with success. Mr. Burton began to write some years ago, contributing short-stories and sketches to the eastern periodicals. The Century published his clever story, As Seen By His Bride; and Ainslee's Magazine printed his The Training of the Groom, The Deferred Proposal, Cupid's Impromptu, and several other stories. His work for The Saturday Evening Post, however, has been his most noteworthy performance. For that great weekly he has written: Getting a Start at Sixty (published anonymously); The Making of a Small Capitalist, A Fresh Grip, A Rebuilt Life, and Tackling Matrimony, the last of which titles appeared in two parts in The Post for November 23 and November 30, 1912, was exceedingly well done. He has recently re-written Tackling Matrimony, greatly developing the story-part, and more than doubling its length, for the Harper's, who will issue it in book form early in the spring of 1913. Mr. Burton is a bachelor who has won wide reputation as a writer upon various phases of matrimonial mixups. He also has a certain sympathy with those who waste their youth in riotous living, but who win their true positions in the world after all seems lost.

Bibliography. Letters from Mr. Burton to the Author; Outing (May, 1900).

AFTER PRISON—HOME[55]

[From A Rebuilt Life (Saturday Evening Post, March 23, 1912)]

"Well, sir, when I got out I was shipped back to my own town, or rather the town from which I had been sent up. I was born five hundred miles from there; but my people had died when I was young and I had drifted in there when I was only sixteen years old—I guess that makes it my town after all. Now, at thirty-five I was back there from the pen and I stayed there.

"Maybe that was a mistake. I guess it was harder for me; but I had that much fight left in me. I wanted to show people that there was still some man in me, even if I had spent ten years in the pen that I deserved to spend there. Besides, I wouldn't like to start off fresh in a new place and build up a little, and just as I got to going have somebody from my home town come along and tell everybody that respected me that I was a murderer and an ex-convict and a lowdown sort of nobody.

"I believe after all I'd rather start in as I did, back where they thought that about me to begin with, and build up fresh from that. I wanted to live down the killing and those ten years—and I believe I've sorter done it. It may sound foolish, but—though I don't excuse all that, remember—I have got to sorter respect myself again, and I tell you it feels good!

"They didn't have prison reform in that state then, with an employment officer and a job all ready to help a poor devil start out again when he got back to freedom. They gave me a suit of clothes and five dollars and shipped me back to the town I came from, then turned me loose as an ex-convict to hump for myself like the other "exes," branded by those years of living in there.

"It certainly seemed strange to see the place again. There had been many changes in those years. I put up at one of these twenty-five-cents-a-night men's hotels, and took fifteen-cent meals—skipping one every day to make my five dollars last longer; and I commenced looking for a job.

"There didn't seem any need of more help anywhere. I tried many of my old acquaintances to see if I could get a place—I did not seem to have any friends left! I found ten years in the pen seemed to wipe out the claim of being even an acquaintance with most of them. They all looked at me curiously, as if I was a different brand of man—a cannibal, or Eskimo, or something.

"I'd rather they wouldn't have showed so plain they thought me dangerous or worse; yet I'd have swallowed that if they had only given me work. They didn't though; some of them weren't as cold with me as others, but none of them had anything for me.

"Of course I tackled all sorts of strangers, too, for work; but usually they didn't have any—and when they had they wanted references. I couldn't blame them; I guess I had a sort of pasty face and hangdog look.

"They had such a habit of asking: 'Where did you work last?'

"'I've been away a long time—have not worked here for several years,' I would say.

"'Where did you work while you were away?' came next.

"'I worked at broom-making part of the time,' I got to answering.

"Then, like as not, the boss would look at me suspiciously and say: 'No, I don't believe I need you just now; if I do I will let you know. Where do you live?"

"When I gave the number of the bum lodging house he would look as if that settled it; he had known all along I wasn't any good. And I felt so shamed and low down all the time I looked like he was right.

"Five dollars don't last very long, even with two meals a day. I got work one day on a wrecker's force, tearing down an old building; but the foreman drove his men hard and I wasn't used to real work anyway. I couldn't stand up to it, and—I'm ashamed to tell it even now—I fainted about four o'clock that afternoon.

"Another day I got a place with the gang working repairs on the street-railroad tracks; but the man in charge said I was too slow and not strong enough—had better get some different kind of work. As if I hadn't tried everything I could! He didn't pay me for a full day either—said I wasn't worth it; and the worst was that I knew he was right. I was about at the end of my rope when my money gave out, and I was looking so weak and shamefaced that I didn't stand any sort of a chance. I got to feeling desperate.

"I remember that about this time I went in to answer an ad—'Man wanted as porter in well-established wholesale drug house.' The head of the place was a mild-mannered old man, who sat in the back office, but who always looked over the new men before they were employed. He began as usual:

"'Where did you work last?'

"'With the street-railroad gang,' I answered.

"'U-um! How long?'

"'One day,' I told him.

"'Ah!' he said, as if he had discovered something—'and before that?'

"'With a house-wrecking gang on Flint Street.'

"'Yes—how long there?'

"'Part of a day,' I said. 'I couldn't stand up to the work.'

"I thought he looked a little sympathetic then, but was not sure until he sniffed and asked the next question in a hard, thin voice:

"'And where before that?'

"I hesitated a moment; he looked at me more closely and said in that same tone:

"'Where?'

"I had been looked at and questioned so much that way and had got so raw about it that now I almost shouted: 'In the penitentiary!'

"'Why, bless my soul!' the mild little man gasped. 'No, I don't need you. Good day! Good day!'

"He looked so shocked and I felt so desperate that I could not help adding, while I looked at him hard:

"'I was put in for manslaughter too—voluntary manslaughter!'

"There wasn't any clerk in the room at the time.

"Oh, oh, indeed!' he gulped out, rising and backing away, big-eyed and trembly. He almost got to the back window before I turned and left.

"Maybe I didn't feel bitter and like 'what's the use—what's the use of anything!' I don't know what would have happened—I guess I'd have starved to death or worse—if it hadn't been for the hoboes' hotel—Welcome Hall—'Headquarters for the Unemployed,' as it's advertised.

"You don't know about the place? Well, sir, it's a dandy!—at least, that's the way I think about it—and a good many others do too. The worst of the hoboes won't go there if they can help it—they'd rather bum a dime and get a bed for the night in one of those ten-cent places.

"This Welcome Hall is a sort of industrial kindling-splitting joint. You blow in there and saw and split kindling for a bed and meals—you give them six hours' work.

"You see, in that way you can live off six hours' work a day and have some time left to look for a job. It's a good thing, and it's been a moneymaker too; it's the only charity I know of that's not a charity but a moneymaking concern. Of course people had to give it a place and start it; but it more than pays expenses, and at the same time helps to build up a man instead of making him a pauper or a deadbeat bum.

"I certainly was glad to find some place where I could at least earn my lodging and meals. I rested up some there and was glad I could just stay somewhere. Though I looked about for work a little, nearly every day, I lived along there for three weeks on my six hours a day of work—still out of a job. At last I guess my fighting blood got up again, I determined I would get a job of some kind, even if it was cleaning vaults. I decided no honest work was beneath me when it all seemed so far above me as to be out of reach.

"'If I keep my eyes open and am not too choosy I must find something to do,' I said to myself, and set out to look for it in earnest. It was Saturday morning, I remember, for I thought of the next day being Sunday, when I could not even hunt for work. I had walked a good way and asked for work at a lot of places without getting anything to do, when I saw an old negro man sweeping leaves off the sidewalk and washing off the front steps of a plain two-story house with a bucket of water and a cloth.

"'I may not be much account but I sure can do that,' I thought, and asked him how much he got for it.

"'For dese here, boss, I gits ten cents; but when I wuks all de way roun' to de back do' I gits some dinner th'owed in,' he said with a grin.

"That wasn't so bad; and 'boss'!—how good that sounded! I went on down the street feeling almost like a man again and not a down-and-out ex-convict.

"About a square away I began to ask at every house if they didn't want the leaves swept off and the front steps washed. Maybe I looked too much like a tramp or too much above one with that 'boss' still ringing in my ears—the first time I had been spoken to that way for more than ten years! Anyway I got turned down at first.

"At the tenth place, however, a two-story-and-attic red brick, they gave me a job. The woman asked me in a sharp voice, as if she were defending herself from being overcharged:

"'How much?'

"'Ten cents,' I answered, as meekly as I could.

"She seemed to think that was reasonable; and after waiting a minute, as if she wanted the work done and couldn't find any excuse for not letting me do it, she handed me a bucket and mop and broom and set me at it.

"I finished the job in about an hour; and I tell you I enjoyed that work! Beneath me? Why, it couldn't get beneath me—I was that low down in mind and living and even hope. I was just about all in, you understand; and I wasn't a plumb out-and-out fool.

"I have got that dime yet; see here," he said, holding out a brightly polished dime surrounded by a narrow gold band, which he wore as a charm on his watch-chain; "whenever I begin to feel ashamed of my work I look at that and get thankful, and remember how proud and happy I felt when that sharp-looking woman handed it to me. I had done a little extra work in cleaning up the yard, and she said as she gave it to me:

"'That looks a whole lot better! You certainly earned that dime.'

"I wouldn't have spent that money if I had had to go without food for two days! It seemed to put springs in my feet and I went down the street hustling for another job of the same kind. I found it before dinner; it was another ten cent job with twenty cents' worth of work; but I sure was glad to get it.

"I felt that, so long as Welcome Hall was making money, I was earning my way by those six hours of work a day, and I stayed on there for some time longer."