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It was Bud Adams, the mine-guard, and his hard fists were clenched, and his whole body gathered for a blow. Mike saw him, and was as if suddenly struck with paralysis; his toil-bent shoulders sunk together, and his hands fell to his sides his fingers opening, and his precious strips of paper fluttering to the ground. Mike stared at Bud like a fascinated rabbit, making no move to protect himself.
The sight of these symbols of foreign oppression recalled the haggard faces and toil-bent frames I had seen on my journey to Milan. I thought of the rich harvests which the sun of Lombardy ripens only that the Austrian may reap them, and the fertile vines which the Lombard plants only that the Croat may gather them.
"Must take hold!" her mind cried incessantly to her shrinking heart. "Somehow anyhow take hold! must must must!" Those tenement houses! Those tenement streets! Everywhere wandering through the crowds the lonely old women holding up to the girls the mirror of time and saying: "Look at my misery! Look at my disease-blasted body. Look at my toil-bent form and toil-wrecked hands.
Whatever be our theory, the tenet that motion relieves pain, as a tenet, is as old as the "back- straightening" process used in some shires by the British turnip-hoers who on coming to the end of their rows lie down and let the rest of the women in the field walk over their toil-bent spine and cramped dorsal muscles, while as a fact it is as old as pain itself.
Make a great fountain in it beautiful marble to bubble and gurgle, and trickle and foam, for ever and ever, and wash away the sins of the Lavingtons, that the little rosy children may play round it, and the poor toil-bent woman may wash and wash and drink Water! water! I am dying of thirst!
What was he thinking, that toil-bent peasant, as the train flashed by? What tragedy or comedy was he playing on his rural stage?
"I don't know, mother, what I want for myself; that doesn't matter; but for thee I would have rest from all these cruel worries thee has borne so long." She buried her face in her mother's lap and put her strong young arms about the frail, toil-bent form. "There, there, dear. Try to rule thy spirit, Dorothy. Thee's too much worked up about this. They are not worries to me.
Dawn came, and Hal stood at the window of his cell, and heard the whistle blow and saw the workers going to their tasks, the toil-bent, pallid faced creatures of the underworld, like a file of baboons in the half-light.
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