nd perhaps she would
have some of the children with her--and so a whole family would drift
into drinking, as the current of a river drifts downstream. As if to
complete the chain, the packers all paid their men in checks, refusing
all requests to pay in coin; and where in Packingtown could a man go to
have his check cashed but to a saloon, where he could pay for the favor
by spending a part of the money?

From all of these things Jurgis was saved because of Ona. He never would
take but the one drink at noontime; and so he got the reputation of
being a surly fellow, and was not quite welcome at the saloons, and had
to drift about from one to another. Then at night he would go straight
home, helping Ona and Stanislovas, or often putting the former on a car.
And when he got home perhaps he would have to trudge several blocks, and
come staggering back through the snowdrifts with a bag of coal upon
his shoulder. Home was not a very attractive place--at least not this
winter. They had only been able to buy one stove, and this was a small
one, and proved not big enough to warm even the kitchen in the bitterest
weather. This made it hard for Teta Elzbieta all day, and for the
children when they could not get to school. At night they would sit
huddled round this stove, while they ate their supper off their laps;
and then Jurgis and Jonas would smoke a pipe, after which they would all
crawl into their beds to get warm, after putting out the fire to save
the coal. Then they would have some frightful experiences with the cold.
They would sleep with all their clothes on, including their overcoats,
and put over them all the bedding and spare clothing they owned; the
children would sleep all crowded into one bed, and yet even so they
could not keep warm. The outside ones would be shivering and sobbing,
crawling over the others and trying to get down into the center, and
causing a fight. This old house with the leaky weatherboards was a
very different thing from their cabins at home, with great thick walls
plastered inside and outside with mud; and the cold which came upon them
was a living thing, a demon-presence in the room. They would waken in
the midnight hours, when everything was black; perhaps they would hear
it yelling outside, or perhaps there would be deathlike stillness--and
that would be worse yet. They could feel the cold as it crept in through
the cracks, reaching out for them with its icy, death-dealing fingers;
and they