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The Iron Puddler - My life in the rolling mills and what came of it by James J. (James John) Davis
page 31 of 187 (16%)
eight; we were the oldest. The baby, one year old, and the next,
a toddler of three, mother had carried in her arms. But two boys,
Walter and David, four and six years old, had got lost in the
traffic. Mother took the rest of us to a hotel and locked us in a
room while she went out to search for the missing ones. For two
days she tramped the streets visiting police stations and making
inquiry everywhere. At night she would return to us and report
that she had found no trace of little Walter and David. To try to
picture the misery of those scenes is beyond me. I can only say
that the experience instilled in me a lasting terror. The fear of
being parted from my parents and from my brothers and sisters,
then implanted in my soul, has borne its fruit in after-life.

Finally mother found the boys in a rescue home for lost
children. Brother David, curly-haired and red-cheeked, had so
appealed to the policeman who found them that he had made
application to adopt the boy and was about to take him to his own
home.

After finding the children, mother stood on Broadway and,
gazing at the fine buildings and the good clothes that all
classes wore in America, she felt her heart swell with hope. And
she said aloud: "This is the place for my boys."

Every one had treated her with kindness. A fellow countryman
had lent her money to pay the hotel bill, telling her she could
pay it back after she had joined her husband. And so we had
passed through the gateway of the New World as thousands of other
poor families had done. And our temporary hardships had been no
greater than most immigrants encountered in those days.
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