Plain People: the Miners

August 31, 1989

Looking back, I feel that we were real. We stated ourselves. We did not conceal the truth we thought, that we ought not to be lost in reticence or ambiguity. Something made the family tongue explode no matter how the expression might discommode gentility! Men who crawled up from night of mines were apt to want things plain and bright!

So, now it seems in character to turn away from equivocations and to spurn the arched brows and stares of reprimand from those who do not care, or understand the value that our fathers placed on sun at the end of tunnels when their work was done.