1 If they should fail, they would certainly be lost; if they held out, they might have enough coal for the winter.
2 Manifestly not, since some work is easy and some hard, and we should have millions of rural mail carriers, and no coal miners.
3 He was about a year old, and a sturdy little fellow, with soft fat legs, and a round ball of a stomach, and eyes as black as coals.
4 Deducting from this the rent, interest, and installments on the furniture, they had left sixty dollars, and deducting the coal, they had fifty.
5 There was the rent to pay, and still some on the furniture; there was the insurance just due, and every month there was sack after sack of coal.
6 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.
7 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.
8 Now that the winter was by, and there was no more danger of snow, and no more coal to buy, and another room warm enough to put the children into when they cried, and enough money to get along from week to week with, Jurgis was less terrible than he had been.