There had been dreadful trouble, fire and
bloodshed, in Pennsylvania, and the citizens took steps at once
to preserve the peace. A regiment of deputy sheriffs were sworn
in, and the town was put under semi-martial law. Indeed, soldiers
with fixed bayonets guarded every train and car that went over the
bridge between the business section of the town and the railroad
shops across the Chemung River.
Our ill luck--or good; when a thing comes upon you so unexpectedly
as did that, I am rather disposed to consider it a stroke of good
fortune, however disguised--would have it that the building we had
chosen to hang our curtain on was right at the end of this bridge
which seemed to be the danger point. From the other end the strikers
looked across the river, hourly expected to make a movement of some
kind, exactly what I don't know. I know that the whole city was on
pins and needles about it, while we, all unconscious that we were
the object of sharp scrutiny, were vainly trying to string our
sixteen-foot curtain. There was a high wind that blew it out over
the river despite all our efforts to catch and hold it.
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