THE HISTORY OF A BARREL OF SUGAR.
There was a time when I was happy, said the ghost of a barrel of sugar, now rattling among the empty staves which it had once so snugly occupied. There was a time when I was full of life and activity. I was born under a tropical sun and nursed on the warm soil of Cuba by a multitude of cheap Chinese laborers. I flowed freely through the veins of gigantic sugar canes and little dreamed of the future that lay before me. One day the overseer said that I was now full grown, and that I must go traveling. The Senor's son had gone to the United States to be educated, and I felt rather glad that I was going also. So they cu 6.2 canes down and squeezed me out by the hardest of and grind ing until I felt as though a new he would lie to take the place of the old one, and so it was ; for now I flowed in darker and thicker mass, and although I missed the waving leaves and the morning light of my childhood's fields, I flattered myself that my mission was begun and that I was now more substantial to say the least.
I was packed into a hogshead and made awfully sea sick by the voyage. I foamed over the vents of the cask, and felt as though I should certainly burst my insides out before we reached port. At last we got to Philadelphia, and the cask which I occupied was swung ashore in front of one of the greatest public buildings I ever saw.
In Cuba the houses were never more than two stories high, and here was a groat brick building ten stories high. I thought it was one of the famous colleges, and wondered whether Pedro bad gone there. Over the top stood the initials " H. H. & Co.," which I found to mean Harrison, Havemeyer & Co. I also found very promptly that while it was not a college it was a very refining school, for they sent me up to the tenth story on a steam elevator, and before I could protest they poured me into a tank and I went boiling and steaming and whirling through sieves and cauldrons, around great whirling pans, and down from one story to another until at last I lost all my vitality and came out crystallized through fright and half bleached with terror. Nor was this enough, to finish me completely they packed me into a pointed mould, and put a poultice over my head made out of clay and forced hot syrup through me. Every vestige of color and of my old life now left me, and when they took me out I was as hard as Pha raoh's heart and as white as a tombstone. They then put me under a crusher and ground me up, and almost lifeless I was packed into a barrel, where they put a sheet of blue paper over me and shut me in.
I thought I had seen misery enough, but, alas, more was yet to come. I was trundled in jolting drays all over the city ; was handled first by a great wholesale grocery house, and then sold to a smaller one. After that a retailer bought me, taking out the head of the barrel and tearing off the blue paper, cried angrily: " Confound it ! A ' sugar, ten and half and fine at that. Here, boys, to-morrow's Saturday. Pack this sugar in one and two pound bags. Come now, jump around lively. Do you think there's a thousand dollars profit in one barrel of sugar that you can waste time on it. John, cut that string close, it all counts,
and the PHILADELPHIA GROCER is right in saying that it is a loss any way you work it. Don't waste a grain of that sugar, weigh it close, every grain tells in the cost." And so he scolded and drove the clerks until about an hour afterwards he asked ; "How much do you make ? " " Two hundred and eighty-seven " There it is again, he cried, turning over the head, " Net weight 290 pounds, and three pounds gone already. That's over one per cent. to begin on." And he flung my barrel so angrily down the cellar that he stove it in. "There goes ten cents off that said the errand boy. " It's all loss," muttered the grocer, " though I ought not to have got mad ; but it is enough to make a saint swear to sell sugar these times, and have to advance one week and drop the next, and advance the next, and make no money but get lots of abuse. Just here a thin woman stepped in with a shawl thrown over her head, and the grocer flung his sour looks behind the pile of sugar bags, and put on a smile. " Well, Mrs. Jones, what can we do for you ? " How much's your sugar ?" she asked, glibly. " Sure loss," he said, to himself. ." Eleven cents, Mrs. Jones, two pounds for twenty-one." " Mercy on us ! " she cried, " ten cents yesterday and eleven to day ? " "No ma'am, tea and a half cents if you take two " Yes, that's it. Take a barrel and get it at cost, I suppose," she replied with a toss of her head. Now I knew that the grocer paid ten and a half for me at the wholesalers. " Indeed, madam,'' said the grocer, "it cost me that," " Well if I must I must—give me two pounds. I can't pay eleven cents for sugar." So he gave it to her, and when she said she would pay for it the next Saturday, he looked as blue as the paper he tore off the top of the barrel. " Anything else to-day ? " "I guess not," she answered, testily," your prices have gone up too much since yesterday," and she flounced out of the store. " I doubt if I will ever get my old bill out of that woman," murmured the grocer, and turned to wait on the next customer.
One after another they quarreled, and said sharp things about me, and I got more curses and complaints than a few while I was being distributed in one and two pound papers around the city. I concluded that I was one of the greatest evils of the day, and certainly the most unprofitable creature under the sun. When night came the grocer said that his sales during the day had been sixty dollars, and that after counting off the sugar only thirty dollars worth of profitable goods remained, and he gave the bar rel another kick as he shut the store, and completed its ruin. And now I wander about the cellar a ghost of a barrel of sugar. I think I was once capable of doing well by that grocer, but he degraded me into a " leading article," and threw me out as a bait to his customers and only got their ill will in return, and made me a miserable drag on his business, and at last a ghost, which will haunt his store until justice is done to my kindred in his counter sales.