MOTHER SELLS HER HAIR.

Northern Advocate, 5 June 1912, Page 2

MOTHER SELLS HER HAIR.

It was simply the opening of a wine shop, and the sudden expulsion into the street of a woman in a shawl, followed by a man holding a handkerchief to his face, that revealed the tragedy of a home. The happening was in a street in Paris, and the man, Charles Henri Dauvin, was a taxi-cab driver on strike. In a moment there was a crowd, and in another moment two policemen arrived on the scene, one of. them with a restraining hand on the arm of the woman in the shawl, the other with a notebook and pencil. "But what has happened, name of a name?" said the note-taking sergeant lof the town, as everybody talked to I him at once. "She has thrown vitriol on the comrade there," sail somebody. The great policeman looked at the man, who had taken the handkerchief from his.face, down which drops of red liquid rolled. He laughed, reached out a fat forefinger, and touched the chauffeur's face. The man shrank back, and someone in the crowd said, "Ah, ; poor devil!" The policeman put his finger to his lips. "I, should like to be drowned in vitriol like that," he said. "It is not vitriol, but wine." The crowd laughed, the "victim" scowled, and the woman tried to hide her face on the arm of the man inuniform beside her. The two policemen glanced at one another. "You had better both come and see Mr Commissioner," said the man of experience who had tasted the "vitriol." "\ ACHING WITH HUNGER. , I The couple, who turned out to be I man and wife, were then taken to the I dingy offices of the Commissioner, j V'here the woman told the terrible ! sufferings she and her little ones had , suffered. The taxi-cab strike in Paris ' had lasted four months. The strike fund,had dwindled, and there was very 1 little money for the wives and familI ies of the chauffeurs on strike. There i had been no money for Julie Dauvin for some days, and she and the children were hungry. She did not protest against this. When her man came home after a long day of meetings, demonstrations, and' speeches, and chasing the blacklegs, she contrived to get something to eat for him. She had sold up everything she could turn into money. She was aching with hunger, and weariness now, and the children were starving. Still she did not quarrel ■with her husband, and she asked him no questions. Strikes were men's business. She had always heard that the employers were pigs, that they lived by exploiting their men, and she accepted without question the- periodical necessity for learning to starve. "I knew," she said simply, "that when a man's on strike the women and children have to go hungry." But to-day the children were more than hungry—they were starving, and money must be raised somehow. Julie' Dauvin wondered, where food was to come from as she scrubbed the red tiles of the Uoor of the one room where she' lived: Then her hair fell down, and she kneeled tip"arid thought. A woman had told her that hair could be sold. She remembered that a girl in the house who had typhoid fever had got quite a large sum for her hair. She looked at her own, which was long, fair, and silken. And she put a shawl over her head and went out. She stood for some minutes outside the hairdresser's. She felt nervous and frightened. TO SAVE HER LITTLE CNES. Then she thought of the little Charles Henri, whom she had seen gnawing, a piece of firewood; that; morning, and she jerked open the hairdresser's door with the bell oh it and walked into the shop. She found voice to say what she wanted. The hairdresser had shrugged his shoulders, but as she shook down her hair his eyes had glinted greedily.

"I will give you 165," he said. As she sat in the chair and the scissors snip-snipped and felt cold on her neck, she thought of all that the 16s would buy, and although the tears rolled down her white face and were salt in her mouth she was happy. They could live for a week on 16s if the tradesmen were kind, and as the scissors clipped Julie Dauvin saw Jiers'elf smiling through the tears which fogged the glass in front of her. But when she got up she hai screamed. She did not recognise herself without her hair. She had julled the shawl close round her head, and shut her poor claw of ,a hand tightly on the gold coin which the hairdresser gave her, and she rushed towards home. As she passed the wine-shop she heard her husband's voice. She had pus Led her way in through the smoke and got up to her man. She was trying to tell him what she had done when her shawl fell back. He had stared, he had sworn, he had laughed*. Laughed at her—at the. mother of his children. The comrades bad all laughed. They had called her a figure of fun, and made other rude jests. She did not care. Then she opened her hand and showed Dauvin the 20-franc piece. He "took it with an oath, flung it down on the stone-covered table, and said, "Now, boys, this drink with me." Then she "saw red" and "M. le Com--mdssaire knew the rest," 1 "Dismissed," said the little police magistrate. The man slouched out of the station without looking at his wife. "Wait a minute, you," said the fat |ittle magistrate, huskily. He slipped a coin into Julie Dauyin's hand.