r ear to a
conch-shell; or it may be the surging sigh of the enormous primitive
ferns, sigillarias and lepidodendrons who lay down in these strata as
though for an eternal rest. In the counting-house of the years, vast
cycles have come and gone till, now in these impertinent days of
dynamite and electricity, uncouth, ungentle men have broken their rest
forever. The complaint of the trees is not without judgment. The
thing seems ill-done and almost, of myself, I can hear their tragical
murmurings.

The temperature in the coal-mine does not vary with the seasons, and
the men believe it healthier to work in this underworld than to be
subject to the changes of climate above. They have also told me that
there is no echo in a coal stratum. I do not know if this be true,
but, of a surety, one's voice does not carry far in the dead air, and
even the shots of dynamite seem to be muffled and indistinct.
Nevertheless, it is my opinion--an irrational one, no doubt--that men
who dig in mines should have music rather than men who eat in cafes.
We need to recast our ideas about these things.

It makes no difference how you have quarrelled with these miners in a
strike; it makes no difference that once you felt like murdering them
in bulk, it is impossible to follow them day after day through the
working of a coal-mine without seeing something heroic in their crude
bent figures. You may not be able to understand the language they
speak, for many of them are foreign born, but in time you come to talk
to them through the smile, the touch on the arm, or the clap of the
hands, which signals are, after all, the universal language of the
world. Most of these men are kindly disposed and, when left free from
the machinations of the lawyer, are capable of self-sacrifice for their
employer, and even of affection. In every gang of men, whether in
railway construction, lumber camp, or coal-mine, there is always an
unamiable workman of ferocious egoism who is known as the camp lawyer.
The legal fraternity will probably resent this misuse of their name,
and properly so, for this fellow is froward in manner and has the same
loving heart as a tiger. He it is who stirs up all the internal
strifes and keeps them at boiling point. It is an art in which he
greatly excels. In olden days, they called a man of his ilk a gallows
knave, and the epithet was selected with care. Foremen are, nowadays,
beginning to pay less attention to the communion