It was Saturday afternoon, and the two or three other cars, though not
overcrowded, were well filled with people from the neighboring mining
towns who were going home after having spent the morning shopping in the
city. Almost all our fellow passengers carried packages, many had
infants with them, and we were struck with the fact that the complexions
of these people suggested a diet of pie--fried pie, if there be such a
thing--that a peculiarly high percentage of them suffered from diseases
of the eye, and that the pervading smell of the car in which we sat was
of oranges, bananas, babies, and overheated adults.
A young mother in the seat in front of us had with her three small
children, the youngest an infant in arms. She was feeding a banana to
the second child, who looked about two years old. Behind us a clean,
capable-looking woman talked in a broad Scottish dialect with another
housewife whose jargon was that of the mountaineers.
The region through which the train presently began to wind its way was
green and hilly, and there were many stops at villages, all of them
mining camps apparently, made up of shabby little cabins scattered
helter-skelter upon the hillsides. In many of the cabin doorways mothers
lingered with their broods watching the train, and on all the station
platforms stood crowds of idlers--men, women, and children, negro and
white--many of the men stamped, by their coal-begrimed faces, their
stained overalls, and the lamps above the visors of their caps, as mine
workers.
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