d the mine, and on a switch near the end of the track stood
another train of empty cars. The air thus far on our dark journey had
been cool and good, for the main tunnel was ventilated by means of
air-shafts that pierced the hillside to the daylight above; but now our
guide opened the door of what seemed a subterranean dungeon, closed it
behind us when we had passed through, lifted a heavy curtain that hung
before us, and ushered us into a branch-tunnel where the air was hot and
stifling and heavy with the fumes of powder. At the farther end we saw
tiny specks of light moving about. As we neared them we found that they
were lamps fastened in the hat-bands of the miners at work in this
distant tunnel--literally, "the bowels of the earth." Some were using
picks and shovels, others were drilling holes in the solid coal and
putting in blasts of gunpowder. When these blasts were fired a
subterranean thunder shook the place: it seemed as if the hill were
falling in upon us. Little cars stood upon the track partly filled with
coal, and mules were hitched to them. The forms of these animals loomed
large and dark in the dim light: they seemed like some monsters of a
previous geologic age. The men themselves, blackened with coal and grimy
with powder-smoke, might have seemed like gnomes or trolls had we not
seen their homes in the plain, familiar sunlight above, and known that
they were working for daily bread for themselves and families. They are
paid according to the amount of coal they dig. Some have earned as high
as one hundred and thirty dollars a month, but half that sum would be
nearer the average.

As we left this shaft and came back into the main tunnel we saw a miner
sitting by the track with his small tin bucket open. It was noon and he
was eating his dinner. It might just as well have been midnight, so
dense was the darkness. We seemed to have been an uncomputable time in
the depths, yet, glancing at the bunch of wild flowers in my belt, I saw
that they were only beginning to wilt. Did poor Proserpine have the same
feeling when she was ravished from the sunshine and the green and
flowery earth and carried into the dark underground kingdom of Pluto?
Remembering her fate, I whispered to my companion, "We will not eat
anything while here--no, not so much as one pomegranate-seed."

There are many smaller coal-mines in this vicinity--hardly a hillside
but has a dark doorway leading into it--but they are not all worked
re