QfortteU Uniuetaitg ffiihrarg BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1891 Cornell University Library PS 2864.08 1899 The other fellow by F. Hopklnson Smith. 3 1924 022 180 081 S. ^ Cornell University wB Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022180081 FICTION AND TRA VEL $p iF. I^apittneon ^m% CALEB WEST, MASTER DIVER. Illustrated. i2mo, I1.50. TOM GROGAN. Illustrated. i2mo, gilt top, ^1.50. THE OTHER FELLOW. Illustrated. i2mo, ^1.50. A GENTLEMAN VAGABOND, AND SOME OTHERS. i6n]0, $1.25. COLONEL CARTER OF CARTERSVILLE. With 20 illustrations by the author and E. W. Kemble. i6ino, $1.25. A DAY AT LAGUERRE'S AND OTHER DAYS. l6mo, >I.2S. A WHITE UMBRELLA IN MEXICO. Illustrated by the author. i6mo, gilt top, $1.50. GONDOLA DAYS. Illustrated. i2mo, $1.50. WELL-WORN ROADS OF SPAIN, HOLLAND, AND ITALY, traveled by a Painter in search of the Pictur. esque. With 16 full-page phototype reproductions of water-color drawings, and text by F. Hopkinson Smith, profusely illustrated with pen-and ink sketches. A Holi. day volume. Folio, gilt top, $15.00. THE SAME. Popular Edition. Including some of the illustrations of the above. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. Boston and New York. The Other Fellow By F. HOPKINSON SMITH BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 1900 f\^lo'. COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY F. HOPKINSON SMITH ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CONTENTS Dick Sands, Convict . I A Kentucky Cinderella . 35 A Waterlogged Town . . 6s The Boy in the Cloth Cap 71 Between Showers in Dort . . 82 One of Bob's Tramps "3 According to the Law . 124 " Never had no Sleep "... 162 The Man with the Empty Sleeve . 169 " Tincter ov Iron " . 200 " Five Meals for a Dollar " . . 206 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE " Miss Nannie gib Marse Tom Boling her han' " (page 63) . Frontispiece Aunt Chloe ..... 36 " Her head crammed full of hifalutin' notions" 66 Through streets embowered in trees . 82 The gossips lean in the doorways . 88 Drenched leaves quivering ... 94 An ancient Groote Kerk . . . 108 " Forty-two cents " . . . .216 DICK SANDS, CONVICT. I I HE stage stopped at a disheart- ened-looking tavern with a sagging porch and sprawling wooden steps. A fat man with a good-natured face, tagged with a gray chin whisker, bareheaded, and without a coat — there was snow on the ground, too — and who said he was the landlord, lifted my yellow bag from one of the long chintz- covered stage cushions, and preceded me through a sanded hall into a low-ceiled room warmed by a red-hot stove, and lighted by windows filled with geraniums in full bloom. The effect of this color was so surprising, and the contrast to the desolate surroundings out- side so grateful, that, without stopping to register my name, I drew up a chair and joined the circle of baking loungers. My oversight was promptly noted by the clerk — a sallow-faced young man with an uncomfort- ably high collar, red necktie, and stooping shoulders — and as promptly corrected by his dipping a pen in a wooden inkstand and hold- ing the book on his knee until I could add my own superscription to those on its bespat- tered page. He had been considerate enough not to ask me to rise. Dick The landlord studied the signature, his Sands, spectacles on his nose, and remarked in a kindly tone : — " Oh, you 're the man what 's going to lec- ture to the college." " Yes ; how far is it from here ? " "'Bout two miles out, Bingville way. You '11 want a team, won't you .' If I 'd knowed it was you when yer got out I 'd told the driver to come back for you. But it 's all right — he 's got to stop here again in half an hour — soon 's he leaves the mail." I thanked him and asked him to see that the stage called for me at half-past seven, as I was to speak at eight o'clock. He nodded in assent, dropped into a rocking chair, and guided a spittoon into range with his foot. Then he backed away a little and began to scrutinize my face. Something about me evidently puzzled him. A leaning mirror that hung over a washstand reflected his head and shoulders, and gave me every expression that flitted across his good-natured counte- nance. His summing up was evidently favorable, for his scrutinizing look gave place to a be- nign smile which widened into curves around his mouth and lost itself in faint ripples under his eyes. Hitching his chair closer, he spread his fat knees, and settled his broad Dick shoulders, lazily stroking his chin whisker all Q^^l-f the while with his puffy fingers. " Guess you ain't been at the business long," he said kindly. " Last one we had a year ago looked kinder peaked." The secret of his peculiar interest was now out. " Must be awful tough on yer throat, havin' to holler so. I was n't up to the show, but the fellers said they heard him 'fore they got to the erossin'. 'T was spring weather and the winders was up. He did n't have no baggage — only a paper box and a strap. I got sup- per for him when he come back, and he did eat hearty — did me good to watch him." Then, looking at the clock and recalling his duties as a host, he leaned over, and shield- ing his mouth with his hand, so as not to be overheard by the loungers, said in a confiden- tial tone, " Supper '11 be on in half an hour, if you want to clean up. I '11 see you get what you want. Your room 's first on the right — you can't miss it." I expressed my appreciation of his timely suggestion, and picking up the yellow bag myself — hall-boys are scarce in these locali- ties — mounted the steps to my bedroom. Within the hour — fully equipped in the regulation costume, swallow-tail, white tie, 3 Dick and white waistcoat ■— I was again hugging Convict ^^ stove, for my bedroom had been as cold as a barn. My appearance created something of a sen- sation. A tall man in a butternut suit, with a sinister face, craned his head as I passed, and the sallow-faced clerk leaned over the desk in an absorbed way, his eyes glued to my shirt front. The others looked stolidly at the red bulb of the stove. No remarks were made — none aloud, the splendor of my appearance and the immaculate nature of my appointments seeming to have para- lyzed general conversation for the moment. This silence continued. I confess I did not know how to break it. Tavern stoves are often trying ordeals to the wayfarer ; the si- lent listeners with the impassive leather faces and foxlike eyes disconcert him ; he knows just what they will say about him when they go out. The awkward stillness was finally broken by a girl in blue gingham opening a door and announcing supper. It was one of those frying-pan feasts of eggs, bacon, and doughnuts, with canned corn in birds' bathtubs, plenty of green pickles, and dabs of home-made preserves in pressed glass saucers. It occupied a few moments 4 only. When it was over, I resumed my Dick chair by the stove. g^^. The night had evidently grown colder. The landlord had felt it, for he had put on his coat ; so had a man with a dyed mustache and heavy red face, whom I had left tipped back against the wall, and who was now raking out the ashes with a poker. So had the butter- nut man, who had moved two diameters nearer the centre of comfort. All doubts, however, were dispelled by the arrival of a thickset man with ruddy cheeks, who slammed the door behind him and moved quickly toward the stove, shedding the snow from his high boots as he walked. He nodded to the land- lord and spread his stiff fingers to the red glow. A faint wreath of white steam arose from his coonskin overcoat, filling the room with the odor of wet horse blankets and burned leather. The landlord left the desk, where he had been figuring with the clerk, approached my chair, and pointing to the new arrival, said : — " This is the driver I been expectin' over from Hell's Diggings. He '11 take you. This man " — he now pointed to me — " wants to go to the college at 7.30." The new arrival shifted his whip to the other hand, looked me all over, his keen and penetrating eye resting for an instant on my 5 Dick white shirt and waistcoat, and answered ^Convict slowly, still looking at me, but addressing the landlord : — " He '11 have to get somebody else. I got to take Dick Sands over to Millwood Station ; his mother 's took bad again." " What, Dick Sands 1 " came a voice from the other side of the stove. It was the man in the butternut suit. " Why, Dick Sands," replied the driver in a positive tone. " Not Dick Sands ? " The voice expressed not only surprise but incredulity. " Yes, DICK SANDS," shouted the driver in a tone that carried with it his instant in- tention of breaking anybody's head who doubted the statement. " Gosh ! that so .? When did he git out ? " cried the butternut man. " Oh, a month back. He 's been up in Hell's Diggin's ever since." Then finding that no one impugned his veracity, he added in a milder tone : " His old mother 's awful sick up to her sister's back of Millwood. He got word a while ago." " Well, this gentleman 's got to speak at the college, and our team won't be back in time." The landlord pronounced the word " gentleman " with emphasis. The white 6 waistcoat had evidently gotten in its fine Dick work. ^^''*"^'?, Convict " Let Dick walk," broke in the clerk. " He 's used to it, and used to runnin', too " — this last with a dry laugh in spite of an angry glance from his employer. "Well, Dick won't walk," snapped the driver, his voice rising. " He '11 ride like a white man, he will, and that 's all there is to it. His leg 's bad ag'in." These remarks were not aimed at me nor at the room. They were fired pointblank at the clerk. I kept silent ; so did the clerk. " What time was you goin' to take Dick ? " inquired the landlord in a conciliatory tone. " 'Bout 7.20 — time to catch the 8.10." " Well, now, why can't you take this man along ? You can go to the Diggings for Dick, and then " — pointing again at me — " you can drop him at the college and keep on to the station. 'T ain't much out of the way." The driver scanned me closely and an- swered coldly : — " Guess his kind don't want to mix in with Dick " — and started for the door. "I have no objection," I answered meekly, "provided I can reach the lecture hall in time." The driver halted, hit the spittoon squarely 7 Convict Dick in the middle, and said with deep earnestness Sands, ^^^ ^^ ^ slight trace of deference : — "Guess you don't know it all, stranger. Dick 's served time. Been up twice." " Convict ? " — my voice evidently betrayed my surprise. " You 've struck it fust time — last trip was for five years." He stood whip in hand, his fur cap pulled over his ears, his eyes fixed on mine, noting the effect of the shot. Every other eye in the room was similarly occupied. I had no desire to walk to Bingville in the cold. I felt, too, the necessity of proving myself up to the customary village standard in courage and complacency. "That don't worry me a bit, my friend. There are a good many of us out of jail that ought to be in, and a good many in that ought to be out." I said this calmly, like a man of wide experience and knowledge of the world, one who had traveled extensively, and whose knowledge of convicts and other shady characters was consequently large and varied. The prehistoric age of this epigram was apparently unnoticed by the driver, for he started forward, grasped my hand, and blurted out in a whole-souled, hearty way, strangely in contrast with his former manner : — 8 " You ain't so gol-darned stuck up, be ye ? Dick Yes, I '11 take ye, and glad to." Then he g^^;^ stooped over and laid his hand on my shoulder and said in a softened voice : " When ye git 'longside o' Dick you tell him that; it'll please him," and he stalked out and shut the door behind him. Another dead silence fell upon the group. Then a citizen on the other side of the stove, by the aid of his elbows, lifted himself per- pendicularly, unhooked a coat from a peg, and remarked to himself in a tone that expressed supreme disgust : — " Please him ! In a pig's eye it will," and disappeared into the night. Only two loungers were now left — the butternut man with the sinister expression, and the red-faced man with the dyed mus- tache. The landlord for the second time dropped into a chair beside me. " I knowed Dick was out, but I did n't say nothing, so many of these fellers 'round here is down on him. The night his time was up Dick come in here on his way home and asked after his mother. He hadn't heard from her for a month, and was nigh worried to death about her. I told him she was all right, and had him in to dinner. He'd 9 Dick fleshed up a bit and nobody didn't catch ^Cotwict °" ^^° ^^ ^^^' — ^^*'^' ^^^y "'^^ ^^^ years, — and so I passed him o£E for a drum- mer." At this the red-faced man who had been tilted back, his feet on the iron rod encircling the stove, brought them down with a bang, stretched his arms above his head, and said with a yawn, addressing the pots of geraniums on the window sill, " Them as likes jail-birds can have jail-birds," and lounged out of the room, followed by the citizen in butternut. It was apparent that the supper hour of the group had arrived. It was equally evident that the hospitality of the fireside did not ex- tend to the table. " You heard that fellow, did n't you .' " said the landlord, turning to me after a moment's pause. " You 'd think to hear him talk there warn't nobody honest 'round here but him. That 's Chris Rankin — he keeps a rum mill up to the Forks and sells tanglefoot and gro- ceries to the miners. By Sunday mornin' he 's got 'bout every cent they 've earned. There ain't a woman in the settlement would n't be glad if somebody would break his head. I'd rather be Dick Sands than him. Dick never drank a drop in his life, and won't let nobody else if he can help it. That 's what that slouch hates him for, and I^ick that 's what he hates me for." Sands, Lonvtct The landlord spoke with some feeling — so much so that I squared my chair and faced him to listen the better. His last remark, too, explained a sign tacked over the desk reading, " No liquors sold here," and which had struck me as unusual when I entered. " What was this man's crime .■' " I asked. " There seems to be some difference of opin- ion about him." " His crime, neighbor, was because there was a lot of fellers that did n't have no com- mon sense — that 's what his crime was. I 've known Dick since he was knee-high to a bar- rel o' taters, and there warn't no better " — " But he was sent up the second time," I interrupted, glancing at my watch. " So the driver said." I had not the slightest interest in Mr. Richard Sands, his crimes or misfor- tunes. " Yes, and they 'd sent him up the third time if Judge Polk had lived. The first time it was a pocket-book and three dollars, and the second time it was a bam. Polk did that. Polk 's dead now. God help him if he 'd been alive when Dick got out the last time. First question he asked me after I told him his mother was all right was whether 'twas true Dick Polk was dead. When I told him he was he ^Coi^ict ^''^ "'* ®^y nothin' at first — just looked down on the floor and then he said slow-like : — " ' If Polk had had any common sense. Un- cle Jimmy,' — he always calls me ' Uncle Jimmy,' — ' he 'd saved himself a heap o' worry and me a good deal o' sufferin'. I 'm glad he 's dead.' " II SHE driver arrived on the min- ute, backed up to the sprawling wooden steps, and kicked open the door of the waiting-room with his foot. "All right, boss, I got two passengers 'stead o' one, but you won't kick, I know. You git in ; I '11 go for the mail." The pro- motion and the confidential tone were in- tended as a compliment. I slipped into my fur overcoat ; slid my manuscript into the outside pocket, and fol- lowed the driver out into the cold night. The only light visible came from a smoky kerosene lamp boxed in at the far end of the stage and protected by a pane of glass labeled in red paint, " Fare, ten cents." Close to its rays sat a man, and close to the man — so close that I mistook her for an Dick overcoat thrown over his arm — cuddled a c'^^i^f little girl, the light of the lamp falling directly on her face. She was about ten years of age, and wore a cheap woolen hood tied close to her face, and a red shawl crossed over her chest and knotted behind her back. Her hair was yellow and weather-burned, as if she had played out of doors all her life ; her eyes were pale blue, and her face freckled. Neither she nor the man made any answer to my salutation. The child looked up into the man's face and shrugged her shoulders with a slight shiver. The man drew her closer to him, as if to warm her the better, and felt her chapped red hands. In the movement his face came into view. He was, perhaps, thirty years of age — wiry and well built, with an oval face ending in a pointed Vandyke beard ; pier- cing brown eyes, iinely chiseled nose, and a well-modeled mouth over which drooped a blond mustache. He was dressed in a dark blue flannel shirt, with loose sailor collar tied with a red 'kerchief, and a black, stiif- brimmed army-shaped hat a little drawn down over his eyes. Buttoned over his chest was a heavy waistcoat made of a white and gray deerskin, with the hair on the outside. His 13 Dick trousers, which fitted snugly his slender, ^^kt shapely legs, were tucked into his boots. He wore no coat, despite the cold. A typical young westerner, I said to my- self — one of the bone and sinew of the land — accustomed to live anywhere in these mountains — cold proof, of course, or he 'd wear a coat on a night like this. Taking his little sister home, I suppose. The country will never go to the dogs as long as we have these young fellows to fall back upon. Then my eyes rested with pleasure on the pointed beard, the peculiar curve of the hat-brim, the slender waist corrugating the soft fur of the deerskin waistcoat, and the peculiar set of his trousers and boots — like those of an Austrian on parade. And how picturesque, I thought. What an admirable costume for the ideal cowboy or the romantic mountain ranger who comes in at the nick of time to save the young maiden ; and what a hit the favorite of the footlights would make if he could train his physique down to such wire- drawn, alert, panther-like outlines and — A heavy object struck the boot of the stage and interrupted my meditations. It was the mail-bag. The next instant the driver's head was thrust in the door. " Dick, this is the man I told you was goin' 14 'long far as Bingville. He 's got a show up Dick to the college." ^c^nvict I started, hardly believing my ears. Shades of D'Artagnan, Davy Crockett, and Daniel Boone ! Could this lithe, well-knit, brown- eyed young Robin Hood be a convict .? "Are you Dick Sands } " I faltered out. " Yes, that 's what they call me when I 'm out of jail. When I 'm in I 'm known as One Hundred and Two." He spoke calmly, quite as if I had asked him his age — the voice clear and low, with a certain cadence that surprised me all the more. His answer, too, convinced me that the driver had told him of my time-honored views on solitary confinement, and that it had disposed him to be more or less frank toward me. If he expected, however, any further out- burst of sympathy from me he was disap- pointed. The surprise had been so great, and the impression he had made upon me so favorable, that it would have been impos- sible for me to remind him even in the re- motest way of his former misfortunes. The child looked at me with her pale eyes, and crept still closer, holding on to the man's arm, steadying herself as the stage bumped over the crossings. For some minutes I kept still, my topics IS Dick of conversation especially adapted to convicts Convict '^^^'^S limited. Despite my implied boasting to the driver, I had never, to my knowledge, met one before. Then, again, I had not yet adjusted my mind to the fact that the man before me had ever worn stripes. So I said, aimlessly : — "Is that your little sister.'" " No, I have n't got any little sister," still in the same calm voice. "This is Ben Mul- ford's girl ; she lives next to me, and I am taking her down for the ride. She 's coming back." The child's hand stole along the man's knee, found his fingers and held on. I kept silence for a while, wondering what I would say next. I felt that to a certain extent I was this man's guest, and therefore under obligation to preserve the amenities. I began again : — " The driver tells me your mother 's sick .' " "Yes, she is. She went over to her sis- ter's last week and got cold. She is n't what she was — I being away from her so much lately. I got two terms; last time for five years. Every little thing now knocks her out." He raised his head and looked at me calmly — all over — examining each detail, — i6 my derby hat, white tie, fur overcoat, along Dick my arms to my gloves, and slowly down to ^q^^-^^ my shoes. " I s'pose you never done no time ? " He had no suspicion that I had ; he only meant to be amiable. " No," I said, with equal simplicity, meet- ing him on his own ground — quite as if an attack of measles at some earlier age was under discussion, to which he had fallen a victim while I had escaped. As he spoke his fingers tightened over the child's hand. Then he turned and straightened her hood, tucking the loose strands of hair under its edge with his fingers. " You seem rather fond of that little girl ; is she any relation .■" " I asked, forgetting that I had asked almost that same question before. "No, she isn't any relation — just Ben Mulford's girl." He raised his other hand and pressed the child's head down upon the deerskin waistcoat, close into the fur, with infinite tenderness. The child reached up her small, chapped hand and laid it on his cheek, cuddling closer, a shy, satisfied smile overspreading her face. My topics were exhausted, and we rode on in silence, he sitting in front of me, his eyes 17 Dick now so completely hidden in the shadow of ^Con^it ^'^^ broad-brimmed hat that I only knew they were fixed on me when some sudden tilt of the stage threw the light full on his face. I tried offering him a cigar, but he would not smoke — " had gotten out of the habit of it," he said, " being shut up so long. It did n't taste good to him, so he had given it up." When the stage reached the crossing near the college gate and stopped, he asked qui- etly:— " You get out here .■' " and lifted the child as he spoke so that her soiled shoes would not scrape my coat. In the action I saw that his leg pained him, for he bent it suddenly and put his hand on the kneecap. " I hope your mother will be better," I said. " Good-night ; good-night, little girl." " Thank you ; good-night," he answered quickly, with a strain of sadness that I had not caught before. The child raised her eyes to mine, but did not speak. I mounted the hill to the big college build- ing, and stopped under a light to look back, following with my eyes the stage on its way to the station. The child was on her knees, looking at me out of the window and waving her hand, but the man sat by the lamp, his head on his chest. i8 Dick All through my discourse the picture of ^c^%t that keen-eyed, handsome young fellow, with his pointed beard and picturesque deerskin waistcoat, the little child cuddled down upon his breast, kept coming before me. When I had finished, and was putting on my coat in the president's room, — the land- lord had sent his team to bring me back, — I asked one of the professors, a dry, crackling, sandy-haired professor, with bulging eyes and watch-crystal spectacles, if he knew of a man by the name of Sands who had lived in Hell's Diggings with his mother, and who had served two terms in state's prison, and I re- lated my experience in the stage, telling him of the impression his face and bearing had made upon me, and of his tenderness to the child beside him. " No, my dear sir, I never heard of him. Hell's Diggings is a most unsafe and unsa- vory locality. I would advise you to be very careful in returning. The rogue will prob- ably be lying in wait to rob you of your fee ; " and he laughed a little harsh laugh that sounded as if some one had suddenly torn a coarse rag. "But the child with him," I said; "he seemed to love her." 19 Convict Dick " That 's no argument, my dear sir. If he ^rUfoivf ^^^ been twice in state's prison he probably belongs to that class of degenerates in whom all moral sense is lacking. I have begun making some exhaustive investigations of the data obtainable on this subject, which I have embodied in a report, and which I propose sending to the State Committee on the treat- ment of criminals, and which " — " Do you know any criminals personally ? " I asked blandly, cutting short, as I could see, an extract from the report. His manner, too, strange to say, rather nettled me. "Thank God, no, sir ; not one ! Do you .' " " I am not quite sure," I answered. " I thought I had, but I may have been mis- taken." Ill ^HEN I again mounted the sprawl- ing steps of the disheartened- looking tavern, the landlord was sitting by the stove half asleep and alone. He had prepared a little supper, he said, as he led the way, with a benign smile, into the dining-room, where a lonely bracket lamp, backed by a tin reflector, re- vealed a table holding a pitcher of milk, a saucer of preserves, and some pieces of 20 leather beef about the size used in repairing Dick shoes. Sands, _, Convict " Come, and sit down by me," I said. " I want to talk to you about this young fellow Sands. Tell me everything you know." " Well, you saw him ; clean and pert-look- in', ain't he .' Don't look much like a habit- ual criminal, as Polk called him, does he .' " " No, he certainly does not ; but give me the whole story." I was in a mood either to reserve decision or listen to a recommendation of mercy. "Want me to tell you about the pocket- book or that ham scrape ? " " Everything from the beginning," and I reached for the scraps of beef and poured out a glass of milk. " Well, you saw Chris Rankin, did n't you, — that fellow that talked about jail-birds > Well, one night about six or seven years ago," — the landlord had now drawn out a chair from the other side of the table and was sit- ting opposite me, leaning forward, his arms on the cloth, — " maybe six years ago, a jay of a farmer stopped at Rankin's and got him- self plumb full o' tanglefoot. When he come to pay he hauled out a wallet and chucked it over to Chris and told him to take it out. The wallet struck the edge of the counter 21 Convict Dick and fell on the floor, and out come a wad o' Sands, ^jjj jj^g ^^^ other man besides him and Chris in the bar-room was Dick. It was Sat- urday night, and Dick had come in to git his paper, which was always left to Rankin's. Dick seen he was drunk, and he picked the wallet up and handed it back to the farmer. About an hour after that the farmer come a-runnin' in to Rankin's sober as a deacon, a-hoUerin' that he 'd been robbed, and wanted to know where Dick was. He said that he had had two rolls o' bills ; one was in an en- velope with three dollars in it that he 'd got from the bank, and the other was the roll he paid Chris with. Dick, he claimed, was the last man who had handled the wallet, and he vowed he 'd stole the envelope with the three dollars when he handed it back to him. " When the trial come off everything went dead ag'in Dick. The cashier of the bank swore he had given the farmer the money and envelope, and in three new one-dollar bills of the bank, mind you, for the farmer had sold some ducks for his wife and wanted clean money for her. Chris swore he seen Dick pick it up and fix the money all straight again for the farmer ; the farmer's wife swore she had took the money out of her husband's pocket, and that when she opened the wallet the envelope was gone, and the farmer, who Dick was so dumb he could n't write his name, ^^^i^t swore that he had n't stopped no place be- tween Chris Rankin's and home, 'cept just a minute to fix his traces t'other side of Big Pond Woods. " Dick's mother, of course, was nigh crazy, and she come to me and I went and got Law- yer White. It come up 'fore Judge Polk. After we had all swore to Dick's good char- acter and, mind you, there warn't one of 'em could say a word ag'in him 'cept that he lived in Hell's Diggin's, Lawyer White began his speech, clamin' that Dick had always been square as a brick, and that the money must be found on Dick or somewheres nigh him 'fore they could prove he took it. " Well, the jury was the kind we always git 'round here, and they done what Polk told 'em to in his charge, — just as they always do, — and Dick was found guilty before them fellers left their seats. The mother give a shriek and fell in a heap on the floor, but Dick never changed a muscle nor said a word. When Polk asked him if he had anything to say, he stood up and turned his back on Polk, and faced the court-room, which was jam full, for eveiybody knowed him and everybody liked him — you could n't help it. 23 Dick " ' You people have knowed me here,' Dick Convict ^^Y^> ' since I was a boy, and you 've knowed my mother. I ain't never in times back done nothin' I was ashamed of, and I ain't now, and you know it. I tell you, men, I did n't take that money.' Then he faced the jury. ' I don't know,' he said, ' as I blame you. Most of you don't know no better and those o' you who do are afraid to say it ; but you, Judge Polk,' and he squared himself and pointed his finger straight at him, ' you claim to be a man of eddication, and so there ain't no excuse for you. You 've seen me grow up here, and if you had any common sense you 'd know that a man like me could n't steal that man's money, and you 'd know, too, that he was too drunk to know what had become of it.' Then he stopped and said in a low voice, and with his teeth set, looking right into Polk's eyes : ' Now I 'm ready to take what- ever you choose to give me, but remember one thing, I '11 settle with you if I ever come back for puttin' this misery on to my mother, and don't you forget it.' " Polk got a little white about the gills, but he give Dick a year, and they took him away to Stoneburg. "After that the mother ran down and got poorer and poorer, and folks avoided her, and 24 she got behind and had to sell her stuff, and Dick a month before his time was out she got sick l^J^J/^f and pretty near died. Dick went straight home and never left her day nor night, and just stuck to her and nursed her like any girl would a-done, and got her well again. Of course folks was divided, and it got red-hot 'round here. Some believed him innercent, and some believed him guilty. Lawyer White and fellers like him stuck to him, but Ran- kin's gang was down on him ; and when he come into Chris's place for his paper same as before, all the bums that hang 'round there got up and left, and Chris told Dick he did n't want him there no more. That kinder broke the boy's heart, though he did n't say no- thing, and after that he would go off up in the woods by himself, or he 'd go huntin' ches'- nuts or picking flowers, all the children after him. Every child in the settlement loved him, and could n't stay away from him. Queer, ain't it, how folks would trust their chil'ren. All the folks in Hell's Diggin's did, anyhow." " Yes," I interrupted, " there was one with him to-night in the stage." "That 's right. He always has one or two boys and girls 'long with him ; says nothin' ain't honest, no more, 'cept chil'ren and dogs. 2S Dick " Well, when his mother got 'round ag'in 'omikt ^^^ ^'&^*' ^^^^ started in to get something to do. He could n't get nothin' here, so he went acrost the mountains to Castleton and got work in a wagon fact'ry. When it come pay day and they asked him his name he said out loud, Dick Sands, of Hell's Diggin's. This give him away, and the men would n't work with him, and he had to go. I see him the mornin' he got back. He come in and asked for me, and I went out, and he said, ' Uncle Jimmy, they mean I sha'n't work 'round here. They won't give me no work, and when I git it they won't let me stay. Now, by God ! ' — and he slammed his fist down on the desk — ' they '11 support me and my mother without workin',' and he went out. " Next thing I heard Dick had come into Rankin's and picked up a ham and walked off with it. Chris, he alius 'lowed, hurt him worse than any one else around here, and so maybe he determined to begin on him. Chris was standin' at the bar when he picked up the ham, and he grabbed a gun and started for him. Dick waited a-standin' in the road, and just as Chris was a-puUin' the trigger, he jumped at him, plantin' his fist in 'tween Chris's eyes. Then he took his gun and went off with the ham. Chris did n't come 26 to for an hour. Then Dick barricaded him- Dick self in his house, put his mother in the cellar, ^^^™^^^ strung a row of cartridges 'round his waist, and told 'em to come on. Well, his mother plead with him not to do murder, and after a day he give himself up and come out. "At the trial the worst scared man was Polk. Dick had dropped in on him once or twice after he got out, tellin' him how he could n't git no work and askin' him to speak up and set him straight with the folks. They do say that Polk never went out o' night when Dick was home, 'fraid he 'd waylay him — though I knew Polk was givin' himself a good deal of worry for nothin', for Dick warn't the kind to hit a man on the sly. When Polk see who it was a-comin' into court he called the constable and asked if Dick had been searched, and when he found he had he told Ike Mar- tin, the constable, to stand near the bench in case the prisoner got ugly. " But Dick never said a word, 'cept to say he took the ham and he never intended to pay for it, and he 'd take it again whenever his mother was hungry. " So Polk give him five years, sayin' it was his second offense, and that he was a ' habit- ual criminal.' It was all over in half an hour, and Ike Martin and the sheriff had Dick in a 27 Dick buggy and on the way to Stoneburg. They Sands, j-g^ched the jail about nine o'clock at night, Lonvict ' . Ti . and drove up to the gate. Well, sir, Ike got out on one side and the sheriff he got out on t'other, so they could get close to him when he got down, and, by gosh ! 'fore they knowed where they was at, Dick give a spring clear over the dashboard and that 's the last they see of him for two months. One day, after they 'd hunted him high and low and lay 'round his mother's cabin, and jumped in on her half a dozen times in the middle of the night, hopin' to get him, — for Polk had of- fered a reward of five hundred dollars, dead or alive, — Ike come in to my place all het up and his eyes a-hangin' out, and he say, ' Gimme your long gun, quick, we got Dick Sands.' I says, ' How do you know .' ' and he says, ' Some boys seen smoke comin' out of a min- eral hole half a mile up the mountain above Hell's Diggin's, and Dick 's in there with a bed and blanket, and we 're goin' to lay for him to-night and plug him when he comes out if he don't surrender.' And I says, ' You can't have no gun o' mine to shoot Dick, and if I knowed where he was I 'd go tell him.' The room was full when he asked for my gun, and some o' the boys from Hell's Diggin's heard him and slid off through the woods, and 28 when the sheriff and his men got there they Dick see the smoke still comin' up, and lay in the ^^'^'^', bushes all night watchin'. 'Bout an hour after daylight they crep' up. The fire was out and so was Dick, and all they found was a chicken half cooked and a quilt off his mother's bed. " 'Bout a week after that, one Saturday night, a feller come runnin' up the street from the market, sayin' Dick had walked into his place just as he was closin' up, — he had a stall in the public market under the city hall, where the court is, — and asked him polite as you please for a cup of coffee and a piece of bread, and before he could holler Dick was off again with the bread under his arm. Well, of course, nobody didn't believe him, for they knowed Dick warn't darn fool enough to be loafin' 'round a place within twenty foot of the room where Polk sentenced him. Some said the feller was crazy, and some said it was a put-up job to throw Ike and the others off the scent. But the next night Dick, with his gun handy in the hollow of his arm, and his hat cocked over his eye, stepped up to the cook shop in the corner of the market and helped him- self to a pie and a chunk o' cheese right under their very eyes, and 'fore they could 29 Dick say • scat,' he was off ag'in and did n't leave Sands, ^^ ^^^^ tracks than a cat. Convict , ., , T, 1, " By this time the place was wild. Fellers was gettin' their guns, and Ike Martin was runnin' here and there organizing posses, and most every other man you 'd meet had a gun and was swore in as a deputy to git Dick and some of the five hundred dollars' reward. They hung 'round the market, and they pa- trolled the streets, and they had signs and countersigns, and more tomfoolery than would run a circus. Dick lay low and never let on, and nobody did n't see him for another week, when a farmer comin' in with milk 'bout day- light had the life pretty nigh scared out o' him by Dick stopping him, sayin' he was thirsty, and then liftin' the lid off the tin with- out so much as ' by your leave,' and takin' his fill of the can. 'Bout a week after that the rope got tangled up in the belfry over the court-house so they could n't ring for fires, and the janitor went up to fix it, and when he came down his legs was shakin' so he could n't stand. What do you think he 'd found } " And the landlord leaned over and broke out in a laugh, striking the table with the flat of his hand until every plate and tumbler rat- tled. I made no answer. 30 " By gosh, there was Dick sound asleep ! ^'''^K He had a bed and blankets and lots o' pro- Convict visions, and was just as comfortable as a bug in a rug. He 'd been there ever since he got out of the mineral hole ! Tell you I got to laugh whenever I think of it. Dick laughed 'bout it himself t'other day when he told me what fun he had listenin' to Ike and the deputies plannin' to catch him. There ain't another man around here who 'd been smart enough to pick out the belfry. He was right over the room in the court-house where they was, ye see, and he could look down 'tween the cracks and hear every word they said. Rainy nights he 'd sneak out, and his mother would come down to the market, and he 'd see her outside. They never tracked her, of course, when she come there. He told me she wanted him to go clean away somewheres, but he would n't leave her. " When the janitor got his breath he busted in on Ike and the others sittin' 'round swap- pin' lies how they 'd catch Dick, and Ike reached for his gun and crep' up the ladder with two deputies behind him, and Ike was so scared and so 'fraid he 'd lose the money that he fired 'fore Dick got on his feet. The ball broke his leg, and they all jumped in and clubbed him over the head and carried 31 Dick him downstairs for dead in his blankets, and ^Coiwict ^'^^'^ ^™ °" ^ butcher's table in the market, and all the folks in the market crowded 'round to look at him, lyin' there with his head hangin' down over the table like a stuck calf's, and his clothes all bloody. Then Ike handcuifed him and started for Stoneburg in a wagon 'fore Dick come to." " That 's why he could n't walk to-night," I asked, " and why the driver took him over in the stage.'" " Yes, that was it. He '11 never get over it. Sometimes he 's all right, and then ag'in it hurts him terrible, 'specially when the weather 's bad. "All the time he was up to Stoneburg them last four years — he got a year off for good behavior — he kept makin' little things and sellin' 'em to the visitors. Everybody went to his cell — it was the first place the warders took 'em, and they all bought things from Dick. He had a nice word for every- body, kind and comforting-like. He was the handiest feller you ever see. When he got out he had twenty-nine dollars. He give every cent to his mother. Warden told him when he left he had n't had no better man in the prison since he had been 'p'inted. And there ain't no better feller now. It 's a darned 32 mean shame how Chris Rankin and them fel- Dick lers is down on him, knowin', too, how it all (^"J^-t turned out." I leaned back in my chair and looked at the landlord. I was conscious of a slight choking in my throat which could hardly be traced to the dryness of the beef. I was conscious, too, of a peculiar affection of the eyes. Two or three lamps seemed to be swimming around the room, and one or more blurred landlords were talking to me with el- bows on tables. "What do you think yourself about that money of the farmer's ? " I asked automati- cally, though I do not think even now that I had the slightest suspicion of his guilt. " Do you believe he stole the three dollars when he handed the wallet back .' " " Stole 'em ? Not by a d sight ! Did n't I tell you .' Thought I had. That galoot of a farmer dropped it in the woods 'longside the road when he got out to fix his traces, and he was too full of Chris Rankin's rum to remember it, and after Dick had been sent up for the second time, the second time now, mind ye, and had been in two years for walk- ing off with Rankin's ham, a lot of school children huntin' for ches'nuts come upon that same envelope in the ditch with them three 33 Dick new dollars in it, covered up under tHfe leaves Convict ^"^ ^^ weeds a-growin' over it. Ben Mul- ford's girl found it." "What, the child he had with him to- night ? " " Yes, little freckle-faced girl with white eyes. Oh, I tell you Dick 's awful fond of that kid." 34 A KENTUCKY CINDERELLA WAS bending over my easel, hard at work upon a full-length portrait of a young girl in a cos- tume of fifty years ago, when the door of my studio opened softly and Aunt Chloe came in. " Good-mawnin', suh ! I did n' think you 'd come to-day, bein' a Sunday," she said, with a slight bend of her knees. " I '11 jes' sweep up a lil mite ; doan' ye move, I won't 'sturb ye." Aunt Chloe had first opened my door a year before with a note from Marny, a brother brush, which began with " Here is an old Southern mammy who has seen better days ; paint her if you can," and ended with, " Any way, give her a job." The bearer of the note was indeed the ideal mammy, even to the bandanna handkerchief bound about her head, and the capacious waist and ample bosom — th'e lullaby resting- place for many a child, white and black. I had never seen a real one in the flesh before. I had heard about them in my earlier days. Daddy Billy, my father's body servant and my father's slave, who lived to be ninety-four, had told me of his own Aunt Mirey, who had 3S A Ken- died in the old days, but too far back for me ^der/lla" ^° remember. And I had listened, when a boy, to the traditions connected with the plantations of my ancestors, — of the Keziahs and Mammy Crouches and Mammy Janes, — but I had never looked into the eyes of one of the old school until I saw Aunt Chloe, nor had I ever fully realized how quaintly cour- teous and gentle one of them could be until, with an old-time manner, born of a training seldom found outside of the old Southern homes, she bent forward, spread her apron with both hands, and with a little backward dip had said as she left me that first day : " Thank ye, suh ! 1 11 come eve'y Sunday mawnin'. I '11 do my best to please ye, an' I specs I kin." I do not often work on Sunday, but my picture had been too long delayed waiting for a faded wedding dress worn once by the original when she was a bride, and which had only been found when two of her de- scendants had ransacked their respective garrets. " Mus' be mighty driv, suh," she said, " a- workin' on de Sabbath day. Golly, but dat 's a purty lady ! " and she put down her pail. "I see it las' Sunday when I come in, but she did n't had dem ruffles 'round her neck 36 den dat you done gib her. 'Clar' to goodness, A Ken- dat chile look like she was jes' a-gwine to %ffil^*" speak." Aunt Chloe was leaning on her broom, her eyes scrutinizing the portrait. " Well, if dat doan' beat de Ian'. I ain't never seen none o' dem frocks since de ole times. An' dem lil low shoes wid de rib- bons crossed on de ankles ! She 's de livin* pussonecation — she is so, for a fac'. Uhm ! Uhm ! " (It is difficult to convey this pecul- iar sound of complete approval in so many letters.) " Did you ever know anybody like her ? " I asked. The old woman straightened her back, and for a moment her eyes looked into mine. I had often tried to draw from her something of her earlier life, but she had always evaded my questions. Marny had told me that his attempts had at first been equally disappoint- ing. " Body as ole 's me, suh, seen a plenty o' people." Then her eyes sought the canvas again. After a moment's pause she said, as if to herself : " You 's de real quality, chile, dat you is ; eve'y spec an' spinch o' ye." I tried again. 37 A Ken- " Does it look like anybody you ever saw, ^^/^""AuntChloe?" " It do an' it don't," she answered criti- cally. " De feet is like hern, but de eyes ain't." "Who?" "Oh, Miss Nannie." And she leaned again on her broom and looked down on the floor. I heaped up a little pile of pigments on one corner of my palette and flattened them for a high light on a fold in the satin gown. " Who was Miss Nannie ? " I asked care- lessly. I was afraid the thread would break if I pulled too hard. " One o' my chillen, honey." A peculiar softness came into her voice. " Tell me about her. It will help me get her eyes right, so you can remember her bet- ter. They don't look human enough to me anyhow" (this last to myself). "Where did she live .' " " Where dey all live — down in de big house. She warn't Marse Henry's real chile, but she come o' de blood. She did n't hab dem kind o' shoes on her footses when I fust see her, but she wore 'em when she lef me. Dat she did." Her voice rose suddenly and her eyes brightened. " An' dem ain't nothin' 38 to de way dey shined. I ain't never seen no A Ken- satin slippers shine like dem slippers ; dey ^^^^nJ^^ was jes' ablaze ! " I worked on in silence. Marny had cau- tioned me not to be too curious. Some day she might open her heart and tell me won- derful stories of her earlier life, but I must not appear too anxious. She had become rather suspicious of strangers since she had moved North and lost track of her own peo- ple, Marny had said. Aunt Chloe picked up her pail and began moving some easels into a far corner of my studio and piling the chairs in a heap. This done, she stopped again and stood behind me, looking intently at the canvas over my shoulder. " My ! My ! ain't dat de ve'y image of dat frock? I kin see it now jes' as Miss Nannie come down de stairs. But you got to put dat gold chain on it 'fore it gits to be de ve'y 'spress image. I had it roun' my own neck once; I know jes' how it looked." I laid down my palette, and picking up a piece of chalk asked her to describe it so that I could make an outline. " It was long an' heavy, an' it woun' roun' de neck twice an' hung down to de wais'. An' dat watch on de end of it ! Well, I ain't 39 A Ken- seen none like dat one sence. I 'clar' to ye *der^U^*^' ^* ^^^ J^^' '^ teeny as one o' dem lil biscuits I used to make for 'er when she come in de kitchen — an' she was dere most of de time. Dey did n't care nufiSn for her much. Let 'er go roun' barefoot half de time, an' her hair a-flyin'. Only one good frock to her name, an' dat warn't nufifin but calico. I used to wash dat many a time for her long 'fore she was outen her bed. Alius makes my blood bile to dis day whenever I think of de way ,dey treated dat chUe. But it did n't make no diff 'ence what she had on — shoes or no shoes — her footses was dat lil. An' purty ! Wid her big eyes an' her cheeks jes' 's fresh as dem rosewater roses dat I used to snip off for ole Sam to put on de table. Oh ! I tell ye, if ye could picter her like dat dey would n't be nobody clear from here to glory could come nigh her." Aunt Chloe's eyes were kindling with every word. I remembered Marny's warning and kept still. I had abandoned the sketch of the chain as an unnecessary incentive, and had begun again with my palette knife, pot- tering away, nodding appreciatingly, and now and then putting a question to clear up some tangled situation as to dates and localities which her rambling talk had left unsettled. 40 " Yes, suh, down in the blue grass coun- ^ Ken- try, near Lexin'ton, Kentucky, whar my ole jerdla" master, Marse Henry Gordon, lived," she an- swered to my inquiry as to where this all happened. " I used to go eve'y year to see him after de war was over, an' kep' it up till he died. Dere warn't nobody like him den, an' dere ain't none now. He warn't never spiteful to chillen, white or black. Eve'ybody knowed dat. I was a pickaninny myse'f, an' I b'longed to him. An' he ain't never laid a lick on me, an' he would n't let nobody else do 't nuther, 'cept my mammy. I 'members one time when Aunt Dinah made cake dat ole Sam — he war a heap younger den — could n't put it on de table 'ca'se dere was a piece broke out'n it. Sam he riz, an' Dinah she riz, an' after dey 'd called each other all de names dey could lay dere tongues to, Miss Ann, my own fust mist'ess, come in an' she say dem chillen tuk dat cake, an' 't ain't nary one o' ye dat 's 'sponsible.' 'What's dis,' says Marse Henry — ' chillen stealin' cake ? Send 'em here to me ! ' When we all come in — dere was six or eight of us — he says, ' Eve'y one o' ye look me in de eye ; now which one tuk it ? ' I kep' lookin' away, — fust on de flo' an' den out de windy. ' Look at me,' he says agin. ' You ain't lookin', Clo- 41 A Ken- rindy.' Den I cotched him watchin' me. ^d^reUa"" ' Now you all go out/ he says, • and de one dat 's guilty kin come back agin.' Den we all went out in de yard. ' You tell him,' says one. ' No, you tell him ; ' an' dat 's de way it went on. I knowed I was de wustest, for I opened de door o' de sideboard an' gin it to de others. Den I thought, if I don't tell him mebbe he '11 lick de whole passel on us, an' dat ain't right ; but if I go tell him an' beg his 'umble pardon he might lemma go. So I crep' 'round where he was a-settin' wid his book on his knee," — Aunt Chloe was now moving stealthily behind me, her eyes fixed on her imaginary master, head down, one finger in her mouth, — " an' I say, ' Marse Henry ! ' An' he look up an' say, ' Who 's dat > ' An' I say, ' Dat 's Clorindy.' An' he say, ' What you want .? ' ' Marse Henry, I come to tell ye I was hungry, an' I see de door open an' I shove it back an' tuk de piece o' cake, an' maybe I thought if I done tole ye you 'd forgib me.' " ' Den you is de ringleader,' he says, ' an' you tempted de other chillen ? ' ' Yes,' I says, ' I spec so.' ' Well,' he says, lookin' down on de carpet, 'now dat you has perfessed an' beg pardon, you is good an' ready to pay 'ten- tion to what I 'm gwine to say.' De other 42 chillen had sneaked up an' was listenin' ; dey ^ Ken- 'spected to see me git it, though dere ain't ^aerella^ nary one of 'em ever knowed him to strike 'em a lick. Den he says : ' Dis here is a lil thing, — dis stealin a cake ; an' it 's a big thing at de same time. Miss Ann has been right smart put out 'bout it, an' I 'm gwine to see dat it don't happen agin. If you see a pin on de fl'or you would n't steal it, — you 'd pick it up if you wanted it, an' it would n't be nuffin, 'cause somebody th'owed it away an' it was free to eve' body ; but if you see a piece o' money on de fl'or, you knowed no- body did n't th'ow dat away, an' if you pick it up an' don't tell, dat 's somethin' else — dat's stealin', 'cause you tuk somethin' dat somebody else has paid somethin' for an' dat belongs to him. Now dis cake ain't o' much 'count, but it warn't yourn, an' you ought n't to ha' tuk it. If you 'd asked yo'r mist'ess for it she 'd gin you a piece. There ain't nuffin here you chillen doan' git when ye ask for it.' I didn't say nufifin more. I jes' waited for him to do anythin' he wanted to me. Den he looks at de carpet for a long time an' he says : — " ' I reckon you won't take no mo' cake 'thout askin' for it, Clorindy, an' you chillen kin go out an' play agin.' " 43 A Keti- The tears were now standing in her tuckyCin- derdla eyeS- " Dat 's what my ole master was, suh ; I ain't never forgot it. If he had beat me to death he could n't 'a' done no mo' for me. He jes' splained to me an' I ain't never for- got since." " Did your own mother find it out ? " I asked. The tears were gone now; her face was radiant again at my question. " Dat she did, suh. One o' de chillen done tole on me. Mammy jes' made one grab as I run pas' de kitchen door, an' reached for a barrel stave, an' she fairly sot — me — afire ! " Aunt Chloe was now holding her sides with laughter, fresh tears streaming down her cheeks. " But Marse Henry never knowed it. Lawd, suh, dere ain't nobody round here like him, nor never was. I kin 'member him now same as it was yisterday, wid his white hair, an' he a-settin' in his big chair. It was de las' time I ever see him. De big house was gone, an' de colored people was gone, an' he was dat po' he didn't know where de nex' mouf'ful was a-comin' from. I come out be- hind him so," — Aunt Chloe made me her 44 old master and my stool his rocking-chair, — A Ken- " an' I pat him on the shoulder dis way, an' he ^^ff/f '^ say, ' Chloe, is dat you ? How is it yo' looks so comf'ble like ? ' An' I say, ' It 's you, Marse Henry ; you done it all ; yo' teachin' made me what I is, an' if you study about it you '11 know it 's so. An' de others ain't no wus'. Of all de colored people you owned, dere ain't nary one been hung, or been in de penitentiary, nor ain't knowed as liars. Dat 's de way you fotch us up.' " An' I love him yet, an' if he was a-livin' to-day I 'd work for him an' take care of him if I went hungry myse'f. De only fool thing Marster Henry ever done was a-marryin' dat widow woman for his second wife. Miss Nannie, dat looks a lil bit like dat chile you got dere before ye" — and she pointed to the canvas — " would n't a been sot on an' 'bused like she was but for her. Dat woman warn't nuffin but a harf-strainer noway, if I do say it. Eve'body knowed dat. How Marse Henry Gordon come to marry her nobody don't know till dis day. She warn't none o' our people. Dey do say dat he met her up to Frankfort when he was in de Legislater, but I don't know if dat 's so. But she warn't nufiSn, nohow." " Was Miss Nannie her child ? " I asked, 45 A Ken- stepping back from my easel to get the bet- SJ"'" te'" eff^'^t of my canvas. " No suh, dat she warn't ! " with emphasis. " She was Marse Henry's own sister's chile, she was. Her people — Miss Nannie's — lived up in Indiany, an' dey was jes's po' as watermelon rinds, and when her mother died Marse Henry sent for her to come live wid him, 'cause he said Miss Rachel — dat was dat woman's own chile by her fust husband — was lonesome. Dey was bofe about de one age, — f o'teen or fifteen years old, — but Lawd-a-massy ! Miss Rachel warn't lonesome 'cept for v/hat she could n't git, an' she most broke her heart 'bout dat, much 's she could break it 'bout anything. " I remember de ve'y day Miss Nannie come. I see her comin' down de road totin' a big ban'box, an' a carpet bag mos 's big 's herse'f. Den she turned in de gate. ' 'Fo' God,' I says to ole Sam, who was settin' de table for dinner, ' who 's dis yere comin' in ? ' Den I see her stop an' set de bundles down an' catch her bref, and den she come on agin. " ' Dat 's Marse Henry's niece,' he says. ' I beared de mist'ess say she was a-comin' one day dis week by de coach.' " I see right away dat dat woman was up to one of her tricks ; she did n't 'tend to let 46 dat chile come no other way 'cept like a ser- A Ken- vant ; she was dat dirt mean. ^derMa*^ " Oh, you need n't look, suh ! I ain't meanin' no onrespect, but I knowed dat woman when Marse Henry fust married her, an' she ain't never fooled me once. ■ Fust time she come into de house she walked plumb in de kitchen, where me an' old Sam an' ole Dinah was a-eaten our dinner, we setten at de table like we useter did, and she flung her head up in de air and she says : * After dis when I come in I want you nig- gers to git up on yo' feet' Think o' dat, will ye ? Marse Henry never called nary one of us nigger since we was pickaninnies. I knowed den she warn't 'customed to nuthin'. But I tell ye she never put on dem kind o' airs when Marse Henry was about. No, suh. She was always mighty sugar-like to him when he was home, but dere ain't no conniption she warn't up to when he could n't hear of it. She had purty nigh riz de roof when he done tell her dat Miss Nannie was a-comin' to live wid 'em, but she could n't stand agin him, for warn't her only daughter, Miss Rachel, livin' on him, an' not only Miss Rachel, but lots mo' of her people where she come from .' " Well, suh, as soon as ole Sam said what chile it was dat was a-comin' down de road I 47 A Ken- dropped my dishcloth an' I run out to meet tuckyCin- < derella ^^- . . , ^ ^ . " ' Is you Miss Nannie ? I says. ' Gimme dat bag,' I says, ' an' dat box.' " ' Yes,' she says, ' dat 's me, an' ain't you Aunt Chloe what I beared so much about ? ' " Honey, you ain't never gwine to git de kind o' look on dat picter you 's workin' on dere, suh, as sweet as dat chile's face when she said dat to me. I loved her from dat fust minute I see her, an' I loved her ever since, jes' as I loved her mother befo' her. "When she got to de house, me a-totin' de things on behind, de mist'ess come out on de po'ch, " ' Oh, dat 's you, is it, Nannie .' ' she says. * Well, Chloe '11 tell ye where to go,' an' she went straight in de house agin. Never kissed her, nor touched her, nor nuflfin ! " Ole Sam was bilin'. He heard her say it, an' if he was alive he 'd tell ye same as me. " ' Where 's she gwine to sleep .' ' I says, callin' after her ; ' upstairs long wid Miss Rachel ? ' I was gittin' hot myse'f, though I did n't say nufifin. " ' No,' she says, flingin' up her head like a goat ; ' my daughter needs all de room she 's got. You kin take her downstairs an' fix up 48 a place for her 'longside o' you an' Dinah.' A Ken- She was de old cook. tuckyCin aerella " ' Come long, I says, ' Miss Nannie, an' I dropped a curtsey same 's if she was a prin- cess. An' so she was, an' Marse Henry's own eyes in her head, an' 'nough like him to be his own chile. ' I '11 hab ev'ything ready for ye,' I says. ' You wait here an' take de air,' an' I got a chair an' sot her down on de po'ch, an' ole Sam brung her some cake, an' I went to git de room ready — de room offn de kitchen pantry, where dey puts de over- seer's chillen when dey come to see him. " Purty soon Miss Rachel come down an' went up an' kissed her — dat is, Sam said so, though I ain't never seen her kiss her dat time nor no other time. Miss Rachel an' de mist'ess was bofe split out o' de same piece o' kindlin', an' what one was agin t' other was agin — a blind man could see dat. Miss Rachel never liked Miss Nannie from de fust, she was dat cross-grained and pernicketty. No matter what Miss Nannie done to please her it warn't good 'nough for her. Why, do you know, when de other chillen come over from de nex' plantation Miss Rachel would n't send for Miss Nannie to come in de parlor. No, suh, dat she would n't ! An' dey 'd run off an' leave her, too, when dey was gwine 49 A Ken- picknickin', an' treat dat chile owdacious, ^d^ella^' sayin' she was po' white trash, an' charity chile, an' things like dat, till I would go an' tell Marse Henry 'bout it. Den dere would be a 'ruction, an' Marse Henry 'd blaze out, an' jes 's soon 's he was off agin to Frank- fort — an' he was dere mos' of de time, for he was one o' dese yere ole-timers dat dey couldn't git 'long widout at de Legislater — dey 'd treat her wus 'n ever. Soon 's Dinah an' me see dat, we kep' Miss Nannie 'long wid us much as we could. She 'd eat wid 'em when dere warn't no company 'round, but dat was 'bout all." " Did they send her to school .' " I asked, fearing she would again lose the thread. My picture had a new meaning for me now that it looked like her heroine. " No, suh, dat dey did n't, 'cept to de schoolhouse at de cross-roads whar eve'y- body's chillen went. But dey sent Miss Rachel to a real highty-tighty school, dat dey did, down to Louisville. Two winters she was dere, an' eve'y time when she come home for holiday times she had mo' airs dan when she went away. Marse Henry wanted bofe chillen to go, but dat woman outdid him, an' she faced him up an' down dat dere warn't money 'nough for two, an' dat her daughter 5° was de fittenest, an' all dat, an' he give in. A Ken- I did n't hear it, but ole Sam did, an' his han' S/?"" shook so he mos' spilt de soup. But law, honey, dat did n't make no diff'ence to Miss Nannie. She 'd go off by herse'f wid her books an' sit all day under de trees, an' sing to herse'f jes' like a bird, an' dey 'd sing to her, an' all dat time her face was a-beamin' an' her hair shinin' like gold, an' she a-growin' taller, an' her eyes gittin' bigger an' bigger, an' brighter, an' her little footses white an' cunnin' as a rabbit's. " De only place whar she did go outside de big house was over to Mis' Morgan's, who lived on de nex' plantation. Miss Morgan did n't hab no chillen of her own, an' she 'd send for Miss Nannie to come an' keep her company, she was dat dead lonesome, an' dey was glad 'nough to let dat chile go so dey could git her out o' de house. Ole Sam allers said dat, for he beared 'em talk at table an' knowed what was gwine on. " Purty soon long come de time when Miss Rachel done finish her eddication, an' she come back to de big house an' sot herse'f up to 'ceive company. She warn't bad lookin' in dem days, I mus' say, an' if dat woman's sperit had n't 'a' been in her she might 'a' pulled through. But dere warn't no fotch- Si A Ken- ing up could stand agin dat blood. Miss Ra- tkrella^ chel 'd git dat ornery dat you could n't do nuffin wid her, jes' like her maw. De fust real out-an'-out beau she had was Dr. Tom Boling. He lived 'bout fo'teen miles out o' Lexin'ton on de big plantation, an' was de richest young man in our parts. His paw bad died 'bout two years befo' an' lef him mo' money dan he could th'ow away, an' he 'd jes' come back from Philadelphy, whar he 'd been a-learnin' to be a doctor. He met Miss Rachel at a party in Louisville, an' de fust Sunday she come home he driv over to see her. If ye could 'a' seen de mist' ess when she see him comin' in de gate ! All in his ridin' boots an' his yaller breeches an' bottle-green coat, an' his servant a-ridin' behind to hold de horses. " Ole Sam an' me was a-watchin' de mis- t'ess peekin' th'ough de blind at him, her eyes a-blazin', an' Sam laughed so he had to stuff a napkin in his mouf to keep 'er from hearin' him. Well, sub, dat went on all de summer. Eve'y time he come de mist'ess 'd be dat sweet mos' make a body sick to see her, an' when he 'd stay away she was dat pesky dere warn't no livin' wid her. Of co'se dere was plenty mo' gemmen co'rting Miss Rachel, too, but none o' dem didn't count wid de 52 mist'ess 'cept de doctor, 'cause he was rich, A Ken- dat 's all dere was to 't, 'cause he was rich. I ^aerMa*^ tell ye ole Sam had to tell many a lie to the other gemmen, sayin' Miss Rachel was sick or somethin' else when she was a-waitin' for de doctor to come, and was feared he might meet some of 'em an' git skeered away. " Miss Nannie, she 'd watch him, too, from behind de kitchen door, or scrunched down lookin' over de pantry winder sill, an' den she 'd tell Dinah an' me what he did, an' how he got off his horse an' han' de reins to de boy, an' slap his boots wid his ridin' whip, like he was a-dustin' off a fly. An' she 'd act it all out for me an' Dinah, an' slap her own frock, an' den she 'd laugh fit to kill herse'f an' dance all 'round de kitchen. Would yo' believe it ? No ! dere ain't nobody 'd believe it. Dey never asked her to come in once while he was in de parlor, an' dey never once tole him dat Miss Nannie was a-livin' on de top side o' de yearth ! " 'Co'se people 'gin to talk, an' ev'ybody said dat Dr. Boling was gittin' nighest de coon, an' dat fust thing dey 'd know dere would be a weddin' in de Gordon fambly. An' den agin dere was plenty mo' people said he was only passin' de time wid Miss S3 A Ken- Rachel, an' dat he come to see Marse Henry SJ"^- to talk pol'tics. " Well, one day, suh, I was a-standin' in de door an' I see him come in a-foot, widout his horse an' servant, an' step up on de po'ch quick an' rap at de do', like he say to himse'f, ' Lemme in ; I 'm in a hurry ; I got some- thin' on my mind.' Ole Sam was jes' a-gwine to open de do' for him when Miss Nannie come a-runnin' in de kitchen from de yard, her cheeks like de roses, her hair a-flyin', an' her big hat hangin' to a string down her back. I gin Sam one look an' he stopped, an' I says to Miss Nannie, ' Run, honey,' I says, ' an' open de do' for ole Sam ; I spec',' I says, ' it 's one o' dem peddlers.' " If you could 'a' seen dat chile's face when she come back ! " Aunt Chloe's hands were now waving above her head, her mouth wide open in her merri- ment, every tooth shining. " She was white one minute an' red as a beet de nex'. ' Oh, Aunt Chloe, what did you let me go for .' ' she says. * Oh ! I would n't 'a' let him see me like dis for any- thin' in de wo'ld. Oh, I 'm dat put out' "'What did he say to ye, honey.'' I says. '"He did n't say nuffin ; he jes' look at me an' say he beg my pardon, an' was Miss 54 Rachel in, an' den I said I 'd run an' tell A Ken- her, an' when I come downstairs agin he was *^erella"* a-standin' in de hall wid his eyes up de stair- case, an' he never stopped lookin' at me till I come down.' " ' Well, dat won't do you no harm, chile,' I says ; ' a cat kin look at a king.' " Ole Sam was a-watchin' her, too, an' when she 'd gone in her leetle room an' shet de do' Sam says, ' I '11 lay if Marse Tom Boling had anythin' on his mind when he come here to- day it 's mighty onsettled by dis time.' " Nex' time Dr. Tom Boling come he say to de mist'ess, ' Who 's dat young lady,' he says, ' dat opened de door for me las' time I was here .' I hoped to see her agin. Is she in.?' " Den dey bofe cooked up some lie 'bout her bein' over to Mis' Morgan's or somethin', an' as soon 's he was gone dey come down an' riz Sam for not 'tendin' de door an' lettin' dat ragged fly-away gal open it. Den dey went for Miss Nannie till dey made her cry, an' she come to me, an' I took her in my lap an' com- fo'ted her like I allers did. " De nex' time he come he says, ' I hear dat yo'r niece. Miss Nannie Barnes, is livin' wid you, an' dat she is ve'y 'sclusive. I hope dat you '11 'suade her to come in de parlor,' he 55 A Ken- says. Dem was his ve'y words. Sam was *derella^' a-standin' close to him as I am to you an' he heared him. " ' She ain't yet in s'ciety,' de mist'ess says, ' an' she 's dat wild dat we can't p'esent her.' " ' Oh ! is dat so ? ' he says. ' Is she in now ? ' " ' No/ she says, ' she 's over to Mis' Morgan's.' " Dat was a fac' dis time ; she 'd gone dat very mawnin'. Den Miss Rachel come down, an' co'se Sam did n't hear no mo' 'cause he had to go out. Purty soon out de Doctor come. Dese visits, min' ye. was gittin' shorter an' shorter, though he do come as often, an' over he goes to Mis' Morgan's hisse'f. " Now I doan' know what he said to Miss Nannie, or what passed 'twixt 'em, 'cause she did n't tell me. Only dat she said he had come to see Mis' Morgan 'bout some land matters, an' dat Mis' Morgan interjuced 'em, but nuffin mo'. Lord bless dat chile ! An', suh, dat was de fust time she ever kep' any- thin' from her ole mammy. Dat made me mo' glad 'n ever. I knowed den dey was bof e hit. " But my Ian', de fur begin to fly when de mist'ess an' Miss Rachel heared 'bout dat visit ! S6 " ' What you mean by makin' eyes at Dr. A Ken- Boling? Don't you know he's good as ^^^^-^^f " 'gaged to my daughter ? ' de mist'ess said. Dat was a lie, for he never said a word to Miss Rachel ; ole Sam could tole you dat. ' Git out o' my house, you good-for-nothin' pauper, an' take yo' rags wid ye.' " I see right away de fat was in de fire. Marse Henry warn't spected home till de nex' Sunday, an' so I tuk her over to Mis' Morgan, an' den I ups an' tells her eve'ything dat woman had done to dat chile since de day- she come. An' when I 'd done she tuk Miss Nannie by de han' an' she says : — • " ' You won't never want a home, chile, so long as I live. Go back, Chloe, an' git her clo'es.' But I did n't git 'em. I knowed Marse Henry 'd raise de roof when he come, an' he did, bless yo' heart. Went over his- se'f an' got her, an' brought her home, an' dat night when Dr. Boling come he made her sit down in de parlor, an' 'fo' he went home dat night de Doctor he say to Marse Henry, 'I want yo' permission, Mister Gor- don, to pay my addresses to Miss Nannie, yo' niece.' Sam was a-standing close as he could git to de door, an' he heard ev'y word. Now he ain't never said dat, mind ye, to Marse Henry 'bout Miss Rachel ! An' dat 's SI A Ken- why I know dat he wam't hit unto death wid tuckyCin- , derella "^'^• " Well, do you know, suh, dat dat woman was dat owdacious she would n't let 'em see each other after dat 'cept on de front po'ch. Would n't let 'em come in de house ; make 'em do all dere co'rtin' on de steps an' out at de paster gate. De doctor would rare an' pitch an' git white in de face at de scand'lous way dat Miss Barnes was bein' treated, until Miss Nannie put bofe her leetle han's on his'n, soothin' like, an' den he 'd grab 'em an' kiss 'em like he 'd eat 'em up. Sam cotched him at it, an' done tole me ; an' den dey 'd sa'nter off down de po'ch, sayin' it was too hot or too cool, or dat dey was lookin' for birds' nests in de po'ch vines, till dey 'd git to de far end, where de mist' ess nor Sam nor nobody else could n't hear what dey was a- sayin' an' a-whisperin', an' dere dey 'd sit fer hours. " But I tell ye de doctor had a hard time a-gittin' her even when Marse Henry gin his consent. An' he never would 'a' got her if Miss Rachel, jes' for spite, I spec', had n't 'a' took up wid Colonel Todhunter's son dat was a-co'rtin' on her too, an' run off an' married him. Den Miss Nannie knowed she was free to follow her own heart. S8 " I tell you it 'd 'a' made ye cry yo' eyes -^ Ketir out, suh, to see dat chile try an' fix herse'f %ffil^'^ up to meet him de days an' nights she knowed he was comin', an' she wid jes' one white frock to her name. An' we all felt jes' as bad as her. Dinah would wash it an' I 'd smooth her hair, an' ole Sam 'd git her a fresh rose to put in her neck. " Purty soon de weddin' day was 'pinted, an' me an' Dinah an' ole Sam gin to wonder how dat chile was a-gwine to git clo'es to be married in. Sam beared ole marster ask dat same question at de table, an' he see him gib de mist'ess de money to buy 'em for her, an' de mist'ess said dat she reckoned ' Miss Nan- nie's people would want de priv'lege o' dressin' her now dat she was a-gwine to marry dat w^'thless young doctor, Tom Boling, dat no- body would n't hab in de house, but dat if dey did n't she 'd gin her some of Miss Ra- chel's clo'es, an' if dem warn't 'nough den she 'd spen' de money to de best advantage.' Dem was her ve'y words. Sam beared her say 'em. I knowed dat meant dat de chile would go naked, for she would n't a-worn none o' Miss Rachel's rubbish, an' not a cent would she git o' de money. So I got dat ole white frock out, an' Dinah found a white ribbon in a ole trunk in de garret, an' washed an' ironed 59 derella A Ken- it to tie 'round her waist, an' Miss Nannie *^^£^"' come an' look at it, an' when she see it de tears riz up in her eyes. " ' Doan' you cry, chile,' I says. ' He ain't lovin' ye for yo' clo'es, an' never did. Fust time he see ye yo' was purty nigh barefoot. It 's you he wants, not yo' frocks, honey ; ' an' den de sun come out in her face an' her eyes dried up, an' she gin to smile an' sing like a robin after de rain. " Purty soon 'long come Chris'mas time, an' me an' ole Sam an' Dinah was a-watchin' out to see what Marse Tom Boling was gwine to gin his bride, fur she was purty nigh dat, as dey was to be married de week after Chris'- mas. Well, suh, de mawnin' 'fore Chris'mas come, an' den de arternoon come, an' den de night come, an' mos' ev'y hour somebody sent somethin' for Miss Rachel, an' yet not one scrap of nuffin big as a chink-a-pin come for Miss Nannie. Dinah an' me was dat onres'- less dat we could n't sleep. Miss Nannie did n't say nuffin when she went to bed, but I see a little shadder creep over her face an' I knowed right away what hurted her. " Well, de nex' mawnin' — Chris'mas mawn- in' dat was — ole Sam come a-bustin' in de kitchen do', a-hoUerin' loud as he could hol- ler " — Aunt Chloe was now rocking herself 60 back and forth, clapping her hands as she A Ken- talked — " dat dere was a trunk on de front ^aereUa"^ po'ch for Miss Nannie dat was dat heavy it tuk fo' niggers to lif it. I run, an' Dinah run, an' when we got to de trunk mos' all de niggers was thick 'round it as flies, an' Miss Nannie was standin' over it readin' a card wid her name on it an' a 'scription sayin' dat it was ' a Chris'mas gif', wid de compliments of a friend.' But who dat friend was, whether it was Marse Henry, who sent it dat way so dat woman would n't tear his hair out ; or whether Mis' Morgan sent it, dat had n't mo'n 'nough money to live on ; or whether some of her own kin in Indiany, dat was dirt po', stole de money an' sent it ; or whether de young Dr. Tom Boling, who had mo' money dan all de banks in Lexin'ton, done did it, don't nobody know till dis day, 'cept me an' ole Sam, an' we ain't tellin'. " But, my soul alive, de insides of dat trunk took de bref clean out o' de mist' ess an' Miss Rachel. Sam opened it, an' I tuk out de things. Honey ! dere was a weddin' dress all white satin dat would stand alone, — jes' de ve'y mate of de one you got in dat picter 'fore ye, — an' a change'ble silk, dat heavy ! an' a plaid one, an' eve'ything a young lady could git on her back from her skin out, an' a thou- 6i A Ken- sand-dollar watch an' chain. I wore dat ^d^relll"^ watch myse'f ; Miss Nannie was standin' by me, a-clappin' her han's an' laughin', an' when dat watch an' chain came out she jes' th'owed de chain over my neck an' stuck de leetle watch in my bosom, an' says, ' Dere, you dear ole mammy, go look at you'se'f in de glass an' see how fine you is.' " De nex' week come de weddin', I '11 never forgit dat weddin' to my dyin' day. Marse Tom Boling driv in wid a coach an' four an' two outriders, an' de horses wore white ribbons on dere ears ; an' de coachman had flowers in his coat mos' big as his head, an' dey whirled up in front of de po'ch, an' out he stepped in his blue coat an' brass but- tons an' a yaller wais'coat, — yaller as a gourd, — an' his bell-crown hat in his ban'. She was a-waitin' for him wid dat white satin dress on, an' de chain 'round her neck, an' her lil footses tied up wid silk ribbons de ve'y match o' dem you got pictered, an' her face shinin' like a angel. An' all de niggers was a-standin' 'roun' de po'ch, dere eyes out'n dere heads, an' Marse Henry was dere in his new clo'es lookin' so, grand, an' Sam in his white gloves, an' me in a new head han'chief. " Eve'ybody was happy 'cept one. Dat one was de mist'ess, standin' in de door. She 62 would n't come out to de coach where de A Ken- horses was a-champin' de bits an' de froth *^reUa*^ a-droppin' on de groun', an' she would n't speak to Marse Tom. She kep' back in de do' way. " Miss Rachel was dat mean she would n't come downstairs. " Miss Nannie gib Marse Tom Boling her han' an' look up in his face like a queen, an' den she kissed Marse Henry, an' whispered somethin' in his ear dat nobody did n't hear, only de tears gin to jump out an' roll down his cheeks, an' den she looked de mist'ess full in de face, an' 'thout a word dropped her a low curtsey. " I come de las'. She looked at me for a minute wid her eyes a-swimmin', an' den she th'owed her arms roun' my neck an' hugged an' kissed me, an' den I see an arm slip 'roun' her wais' an' lif her in de coach. Den de horses gin a plunge an' dey was off. "An' arter dat dey had five years — de happiest years dem two ever seen. I know, 'cause Marse Henry gin me to her, an' I lived wid 'em day in an' day out till dat baby come, an' den " — Aunt Chloe stopped and reached out her hand as if to steady herself. The tears were streaming down her cheeks. 63 A Ken- Then she advanced a step, fixed her eyes ^dereila"' ^'^ *^^ portrait, and in a voice broken with emotion, said : — " Honey, chile, — honey, chile, — is you tired a-waitin' for yo' ole mammy? Keep a-watchin', honey — keep a-watchin' — It won't be long now 'fore I come. Keep a- watchin'." 64 WATERLOGGED TOWN JE was backed up against the Column of the Lion, holding at bay a horde of gondoliers who were shrieking, "Gondola! Gondola ! " as only Venetian gondoliers can. He had a half -defiant look, like a cornered stag, as he stood there pro- tecting a small wizen-faced woman of an un- certain age, dressed in a long gray silk duster and pigeon-winged hat — one of those hats that looked as if the pigeon had alighted on it and exploded. " No, durn ye, I don't want no gon-do-la. ; I got one somewhere round here if I can iind it." If his tall gaunt frame, black chin whisker, and clearly defined features had not located him instantly in my mind, his dialect would have done so. " You '11 probably find your gondola at the next landing," I said, pointing to the steps. He looked at me kindly, took the woman by the arm, as if she had been under arrest, and marched her to the spot indicated. In another moment I felt a touch on my shoulder. " Neighbor, ain't you from the U. S. A. .? " I nodded my head. 6S A Water- " Shake ! It 's God's own land ! " and he ^€» disappeared in the throng. The next morning I was taking my cofEee in the cafd at the Britannia, when I caught a pair of black eyes peering over a cup, at a table opposite. Then six feet and an inch or two of raw untilled American rose in the air, picked up his plates, cup, and saucer, and, crossing the room, hooked out a chair with his left foot from my table, and sat down. " You 're the painter feller that helped me out of a hole yesterday ? Yes, I knowed it ; I see you come in to dinner last night. Eliz- a-beth said it was you, but you was so almighty rigged up in that swallow-tailed coat of yourn I did n't catch on for a minute, but Eliza-beth said she was dead sure." " The lady with you — your wife ? " " Not to any alarming extent, young man. Never had one — she 's my sister — only one I got ; and this summer she took it into her head — you don't mind my setting here, do you ? I 'm so durned lonesome among these jabbering Greeks I 'm nearly froze stiff. Thank ye ! — took it into her head she'd come over here, and of course I had to bring her. You ain't never traveled around, perhaps, with a young girl of fifty-five, with her head crammed full of hif alutin' notions, — convents 'HER HEAD CRAMMED FULL OF HIFALUTIN' NOTIONS" and early masters and Mont Blancs and Bon A Water Marches, — with just enough French to make ^^^ a muddle of everything she wants to get. Well, that 's Eliza-beth. First it was a circu- lating library, at Unionville, back of Troy, where I live ; then come a course of lectures twice a week on old Edinburgh and the Alps and German cities ; and then, to cap all, there come a cuss with magic-lantern slides of 'most every old ruin in Europe, and half our women were crazy to get away from home, and Eliza- beth worse than any of 'em ; and so I got a couple of Cook's tickets out and back, and here we are ; and I don't mind saying," and a wicked, vindictive look filled his eyes, " that of all the cussed holes I ever got into in my life, this here Venice takes — the — cake. Here, John Henry, bring me another cup of coffee; this 's stone-cold. P. D. Q., now I Don't let me have to build a fiire under you." This to a waiter speaking every language but English. " Do not the palaces interest you .' " I asked inquiringly, in my effort to broaden his views. " Palaces be dumed ! Excuse my French. Palaces ! A lot of caved-in old rookeries ; with everybody living on the second floor be- cause the first one 's so damp ye 'd get your 67 A Water- die-and-never-get-over-it if you lived in the Town basement, and the top floors so leaky that you go to bed under an umbrella ; and they all braced up with iron clamps to keep 'em from falling into the canal, and not a square inch on any one of 'em clean enough to dry a shirt on ! What kind of holes are they for decent — Now see here," laying his hand confidingly on my shoulder, "just answer me one question — you seeni like a level-headed young man, and ought to give it to me straight. Been here all summer, ain't you ? " "Yes." " Been coming years, ain't you ? " I nodded my head. "Well, now, I want it straight," — and he lowered his voice, — " what does a sensible man find in an old waterlogged town like this .? " I gave him the customary answer : the glo- ries of her past ; the picturesque life of the lagoons ; the beauty of her palaces, churches, and gardens ; the luxurious gondolas, etc., etc. " Don't see it," he broke out before I had half finished, " As for the gon-do-las, you 're dead right, and no mistake. First time I settled on one of them cushions I felt just as if I 'd settled in a basket of kittens ; but as 68 for palaces ! Why, the State House at A Water Al-ba-ny knocks 'em cold ; and as for gardens ! ^^„ Lord ! when I think of mine at home all chock-full of hollyhocks and sunflowers and morning-glories, and then think what a first- class cast-iron idiot I am wandering around here " — He gazed abstractedly at the ceiling for a moment as if the thought overpowered him, and then went on, "I 've got a stock-farm six miles from Unionville, where I 've got some three-year-olds can trot in 2.23 — Gardens ! " — suddenly remembering his first train of thought, — "they simply ain't in it. And as for ler-goons ! We 've got a river sailing along in front of Troy that may n't be so wide, but it 's a durned sight safer and longer, and there ain't a gallon of water in it that ain't as sweet as a daisy ; and that 's what you can't say of these streaks of mud around here, that smell like a dumping-ground." Here he rose from his chair, his voice filling the room, the words dropping slowly: "I — ain't — got — no — use — for — a — place — where — there — ain't — a — horse — in — the — town, — and every — cellar — is — half — full — of — wa- ter." A few mornings after, I was stepping into my gondola when I caught sight of the man from Troy sitting in a gondola surrounded by 69 A Water- his trunks. His face expressed supreme con- 7^« tent, illumined by a sort of grim humor, as if some master effort of his life had been re- warded with more than usual success. Eliz- a-beth was tucked away on "the basket of kittens," half hidden by the linen curtains. " Off ? " I said inquiringly. "You bet!" "Which way?" " Paris, and then a bee-line for New York." " But you are an hour too early for your train." He held his finger to his lips and knitted his eyebrows. " What 's that .' " came a shrill plaintive voice from the curtains. " An hour more ? George, please ask the gentleman to tell the gondolier to take us to Salviate's ; we 've got time for that glass mirror, and I can't bear to leave Venice without " — " Eliza-beth, you sit where you air, if it takes a week. No Salviate's in mine, and no glass mirror. We are stuffed now so jammed full of wooden goats, glass bottles, copper buck- ets, and old church rags that I had to jump on my trunk to lock it." Then waving his hand to me, he called out as I floated off, "This craft is pointed for home, and don't you forget it." 70 THE BOY IN THE CLOTH CAP HAD seen the little fellow but a moment before, standing on the car platform and peering wistfully into the night, as if seeking some face in the hur- rying crowd at the station. I remembered distinctly the cloth cap pulled down over his ears, his chubby, rosy cheeks, and the small baby hand clutching the iron rail of the car, as I pushed by and sprang into a hack. " Lively, now, cabby ; I have n't a minute," and I handed my driver a trunk check. Outside the snow whirled and eddied, the drifts glistening white in the glare of the electric light. I drew my fur coat closer around my throat, and beat an impatient tattoo with my feet. The storm had delayed the train, and I had less than an hour in which to dine, dress, and reach my audience. Two minutes later something struck the cab with a force that rattled every spoke in the wheels. It was my trunk, and cabby's head, white with snow, was thrust through the window. " Morgan House, did you say, boss ? " " Yes, and on the double-quick." 71 The Boy Another voice now sifted in — a small, ^^ thin, pleading voice, too low and indistinct Cap for me to catch the words from where I sat. " Want to go where ? " cried cabby. The conversation was like one over the telephone, in which only one side is heard. " To the orphan asylum } Why, that 's three miles from here. . . . Walk ">.... See, here, sonny, you would n't get halfway. . . . No, I can't take yer — got a load." My own head had filled the window now. " Here, cabby, don't stand there all night ! What 's the matter, anyway } " " It 's a boy, boss, about a foot high, wants to walk to the orphan 'sylum." " Pass him in." He did, literally, through the window, with- out opening the door, his little wet shoes first, then his sturdy legs in wool stockings, round body encased in a pea-jacket, and last, his head, covered by the same cloth cap I had seen on the platform. I caught him, feet first, and helped land him on the front seat, where he sat looking at me with staring eyes that shone all the brighter in the glare of the arc light. Next a collar-box and a small pa- per bundle were handed in. These the little fellow clutched eagerly, one in each hand, his eyes still looking into mine. . 72 " Are you an orphan ? " I asked — a wholly The Boy thoughtless question, of course. *chth " Yes, sir." Cap " Got no father nor mother ? " Another, equally idiotic ; but my interest in the boy had been inspired by the idea of the saving of valuable minutes. As long as he stood outside in the snow, he was an ob- struction. Once aboard, I could take my time in solving his difficulties. " Got a father, sir, but my mother 's dead." We were now whirling up the street, the cab lighting up and growing pitch dark by turns, depending on the location of the street lamps. " Where 's your father ? " "Went away, sir." He spoke the words without the slightest change in his voice, neither abashed nor too bold, but with a sim- ple straightforwardness which convinced me of their truth. " Do you want to go to the asylum ? " "Yes, sir." "Why.?" "Because I can learn everything there is to learn, and there is n't any other place for me to go." This was said with equal simplicity. No whining ; no " me mother 's dead, sir, an' I 73 The Boy ain't had nothin' to eat all day," etc. Not %oth *^^* ^^^ ^^"^^ ^^"^ ^* ^^^" ^' ^^^ merely the Cap statement of a fact which he felt sure I knew all about. " What 's your name ? " "Ned." " Ned what ? " " Ned Rankin, sir." " How old are you .' " " I 'm eight " — then, thoughtfully — " no, I 'm nine years old." " Where do you live ? " I was firing these questions one after the other without the slightest interest in either the boy or his welfare. My mind was on my lecture, and the impatient look on the faces of the audience, and the consulted watch of the chairman of the committee, followed by the inevitable : " You are not very prompt, sir," etc. " Our people have been in their seats," etc. If the boy had previously re- plied to my question as to where he lived, I had forgotten the name of the town. " I live " — Then he stopped. " I live in — Do you mean now ? " he added simply. "Yes." There was another pause. " I don't know, sir ; maybe they won't let me stay." Another foolish question. Of course, if he 74 had left home for good, and was now on his The Boy way to the asylum for the first time, his pre- ^/^/ sent home was this hack. Cap But he had won my interest now. His words had come in tones of such directness, and were so calm, and gave so full a state- ment of the exact facts, that I leaned over quickly, and began studying him a little closer. I saw that this scrap of a boy wore a gray woolen suit, and I noticed that the cap was made of the same cloth as the jacket, and that both were the work of some inexperi- enced hand, with uneven, unpressed seams — the seams of a flat-iron, not a tailor's goose. Instinctively my mind went back to what his earlier life had been. " Have you got any brothers and sisters, my boy ? " "Yes, sir." "Where are they?" " I don't know, sir ; I was too little to remember." The pathos of this answer stirred me all the more. " Who 's been taking care of you ever since your father left you ? " I had lowered my voice now to a more confidential tone, "A German man." 7S The Boy " What did you leave him for ? " C/ M^ " ^^ ^^^ "° work, and he took me to the Cap priest." "When?" " Last week, sir." "What did the priest do >. " "He gave me these clothes. Don't you think they 're nice ? The priest's sister made them for me — all but the stockings ; she bought those." As he said this he lifted his arms so I could look under them, and thrust out toward me his two plump legs. I said the clothes were very nice, and that I thought they fitted him very well, and I felt his chubby knees and calves as I spoke, and ended by getting hold of his soft wee hand, which I held on to. His fingers closed tightly over mine, and a slight smile lighted up his face. It seemed good to him to have something to hold on to. I began again : — " Did the priest send you here .' " " Yes, sir. Do you want to see the letter ? " The little hand — the free one — fumbled under the jacket, loosened the two lower but- tons, and disclosed a white envelope pinned to his shirt. " I 'm to give it to 'em at the asylum. But I can't unpin it. He told me not to." 76 " That 's right, my boy. Leave it where it The Boy • ). in the 'S- Cloth "You poor little rat," I said to myself. Cap "This is pretty rough on you. You ought to be tucked up in some warm bed, not out here alone in this storm." The boy felt for the pin in the letter, reas- sured himself that it was safe, and carefully rebuttoned his jacket. I looked out of the window, and caught glimpses of houses flying by, with lights in their windows, and now and then the cheery blaze of a iire. Then I looked into his eyes again. I still had hold of his hand. "Surely," I said to myself, "this boy must have some one soul who cares for him." I determined to go a little deeper. " How did you get here, my boy 1 " I had leaned nearer to him. "The priest put me on the train, and a lady told me where to get off." " Oh, a lady ! " Now I was getting at it ! Then he was not so desolate ; a lady had looked after him. "What's her name.'" This with increased eagerness. " She did n't tell me, sir." I sank back on my seat. No ! I was all wrong. It was a positive, undeniable, pite- ous fact. Seventy millions of people about 77 The Boy him, and not one living soul to look to. Not C/(f^ a tie that connected him with anything. A Cap leaf blown across a field ; a bottle adrift in the sea, sailing from no port and bound for no haven. I got hold of his other hand, and looked down into his eyes, and an almost irresistible desire seized me to pick him up in my arms and hug him ; he was too big to kiss, and too little to shake hands with ; hug- ging was all there was left. But I did n't. There was something in his face that re- pelled any such familiarity, — a quiet dig- nity, pluck, and patience that inspired more respect than tenderness, that would make one want rather to touch his hat to him. Here the cab stopped with so sudden a jerk that I had to catch him by the arms to steady him. Cabby opened the door. " Morgan House, boss. Goin 's awful, or I 'd got ye here sooner." The boy looked up into my face ; not with any show of uneasiness, only a calm patience. If he was to walk now, he was ready. " Cabby, how far is it to the asylum .■• " I asked. "'Bout a mile and a half." " Throw that trunk off and drive on. This boy can't walk." "I '11 take him, boss." 78 " No ; I '11 take him myself. Lively, now." The Boy I looked at my watch. Twenty minutes c/^^^ of the hour had gone. I would still have time Cap to jump into a dress suit, but the dinner must be brief. There came a seesaw rocking, then a rebound, and a heavy thud told where the trunk had fallen. The cab sped on round a sharp corner, through a narrow street, and across a wide square. Suddenly a thought rushed over me that culminated in a creeping chill. Where was his trunk .■' In my anxiety over my own, I had forgotten the boy's. I turned quickly to the window, and shouted : — " Cabby ! Cabby, you did n't leave the boy's trunk, too, did you .-' " The little fellow slid down from the seat, and began fumbling around in the dark. " No, sir ; I 've got 'em here ; " and he held up the collar box and brown paper bundle ! " Is that all 1 " I gasped. " Oh, no, sir ! I got ten cents the lady give me. Do you want to see it .'' " and he began cramming his chubby hand into his side pocket. " No, my son, I don't want to see it." I did n't want to see anything in particular. His word was good enough. I couldn't, 79 The Boy really. My eyelashes somehow had got tan- ^Cloth ^^^ ^P ^" ^^*^^ other, and my pupils would n't Cap work. It's queer how a man's eyes act sometimes. We were now reaching the open country. The houses were few and farther apart. The street lamps gave out ; so did the telegraph wires festooned with snow loops. Soon a big building, square, gray, sombre-looking, like a jail, loomed up on a hill. Then we entered a gate between flickering lamps, and tugged up a steep road, and stopped. Cabby sprang down and rang a bell, which sounded in the white stillness like a fire-gong. A door opened, and a flood of light streamed out, showing the kindly face and figure of an old priest in silhouette, the yellow glow forming a golden background. ^ " Come, sonny," said cabby, throwing open the cab door. The little fellow slid down again from the seat, caught up the box and bundle, and, look- ing me full in the face, said : — " It was too far to walk." There were no thanks, no outburst. He was merely a chip in the current. If he had just escaped some sunken rock, it was the way with chips like himself. All boys went to asylums, and had no visible fathers nor in- 80 visible mothers nor friends. This talk about The Boy boys going swimming, and catching bull-frogs, c/,?// and robbing birds' nests, and playing ball. Cap and "hooky," and marbles, was all moon- shine. Boys never did such things, except in story-books. He was a boy himself, and knew. There could n't anything better hap- pen to a boy than being sent to an orphan asylum. Everybody knew that. There was nothing strange about it. That 's what boys were made for. All this was in his eyes. When I reached the platform and faced my audience, I was dinnerless, half an hour late, and still in my traveling dress. I began as follows : — "Ladies and gentlemen, I ask your for- giveness. I am very sorry to have kept you waiting, but I could not help it. I was occu- pied in escorting to his suburban home one of your most distinguished citizens." And I described the boy in the cloth cap, with his box and bundle, and his patient, steady eyes, and plump little legs in the yam stockings. I was forgiven. 8i BETWEEN SHOWERS IN DORT JHERE be inns in Holland — not hotels, not pensions, nor stopping- places — just inns. The Bellevue at Dort is one, and the Holland Arms is an- other, and the — no, there are no others. Dort only boasts these two, and Dort to me is Holland. The rivalry between these two inns has been going on for years, and it still con- tinues. The Bellevue, fighting for place, elbowed its way years ago to the water-line, and took its stand on the river-front, where the windows and porticos could overlook the Maas dotted with boats. The Arms, dis- couraged, shrank back into its corner, and made up in low windows, smoking-rooms, and private bathroom — one for the whole house — what was lacking in porticos and sea view. Then followed a slight skirmish in paint, — red for the Arms and yellow-white for the Bellevue ; and a flank movement of shades and curtains, — linen for the Arms and lace for the Bellevue. Scouting parties were next ordered out of porters in caps, banded with silk ribbons, bearing the names of their respective hostelries. Yacob of the Arms 82 o w o 03 a h W m H B o o ai X H was to attack weary travelers on alighting Between from the train, and acquaint them with the ^^ 2)or/ delights of the downstairs bath, and the dark-room for the kodakers, all free of charge. And Johan of the Bellevue was to give minute descriptions of the boats landing in front of the dining-room windows and of the superb view of the river. It is always summer when I arrive in Dordrecht. I don't know what happens in winter, and I don't care. The groundhog knows enough to go into his hole when the snow begins to fly, and to stay there until the sun thaws him out again. Some tourists could profit by following his example. It is summer then, and the train has rolled into the station at Dordrecht, or beside it, and the traps have been thrown out, and Peter, my boatman — he of the " Red Tub," a craft with an outline like a Dutch vrou, quite as much beam as length (we go a- sketching in this boat) — Peter, I say, who has come to the train to meet me, has swung my belongings over his shoulder, and Johan, the porter of the Bellevue, with a trium- phant glance at Yacob of the Arms, has stowed the trunk on the rear platform of the street tram, — no cabs or trucks, if you 83 Between please, in this town, — and the one-horse car inDort ^^^ jerked its way around short curves and up through streets embowered in trees and paved with cobblestones scrubbed as clean as china plates, and over quaint bridges with glimpses of sluggish canals and queer houses, and so on to my lodgings. And mine host, Heer Boudier, waiting on the steps, takes me by the hand and says the same room is ready and has been for a week. Inside these two inns, the only inns in Dort, the same rivalry exists. But my paral- lels must cease. Mine own inn is the Belle- vue, and my old friend of fifteen years, Heer Boudier, is host, and so loyalty compels me to omit mention of any luxuries but those to which I am accustomed in his hostelry. Its interior has peculiar charms for me. Scrupulously clean, simple in its appoirit- ments and equipment, it is comfort itself. Tyne is responsible for its cleanliness — or rather, that particular portion of Tyne which she bares above her elbows. Nobody ever saw such a pair of sledge-hammer arms as Tyne's on any girl outside of Holland. She is eighteen ; short, square-built, solid as a Dutch cheese, fresh and rosy as an Eng- lish milkmaid ; moon-faced, mild-eyed as an Alderney heifer, and as strong as a three- 84 year-old. Her back and sides are as straight Between as a plank ; the front side is straight too. ^^ °^ort The main joint in her body is at the hips. This is so flexible that, wash-cloth in hand, she can lean over the floor without bending her knees and scrub every board in it till it shines like a Sunday dresser. She wears a snow-white cap as dainty as the finest lady's in the land ; an apron that never seems to lose the crease of the iron, and a blue print dress bunched up behind to keep it from the slop. Her sturdy little legs are covered by gray yarn stockings which she knits herself, the feet thrust into wooden sabots. These clatter over the cobbles as she scurries about with a crab-like movement, sousing, dousing, and scrubbing as she goes ; for Tyne attacks the sidewalk outside with as much gusto as she does the hall and floors. Johan the porter moves the chairs out of Tyne's way when she begins work, and, lately, I have caught him lifting her bucket up the front steps — a wholly unnecessary proceeding when Tyne's muscular develop- ments are considered. Johan and I had a confidential talk one night, when he brought the mail to my room, — the room on the sec- ond floor overlooking the Maas, — in which certain personal statements were made. 8S Between When I spoke to Tyne about them the Showers ^^y^ (j^y, she looked at me with her big "^ blue eyes, and then broke into a laugh, open- ing her mouth so wide that every tooth in her head flashed white (they always reminded me somehow of peeled almonds). With a little bridling twist of her head she answered that — but, of course, this was a strictly con- fidential communication, and of so entirely private a nature that no gentleman under the circumstances would permit a single word of it to — Johan is taller than Tyne, but not so thick through. When he meets you at the station, with his cap and band in his hand, his red hair trimmed behind as square as the end of a whisk-broom, his thin, parenthesis legs and Vienna guardsman waist, — each detail the very opposite, you will note, from Tyne's, — you recall immediately one of George Boughton's typical Dutchmen. The only thing lacking is his pipe ; he is too busy for that. When he dons his dress suit for dinner, and bending over your shoulder asks, in his best English: "Mynheer, don't it now de feesh you haf?" you lose sight of Boughton's Dutchman and see only the cosmopolitan. The transformation is due entirely to con- 86 tinental influences — Dort being one of the Between main highways between London and Paris ^^ ^Jor/ — influences so strong that even in this water-logged town on the Maas, bonnets are beginning to replace caps, and French shoes sabots. The guests that Johan serves at this inn of my good friend Boudier are as odd looking as its interior. They line both sides and the two ends of the long table. Stout Germans in horrible clothes, with stouter wives in worse ; Dutchmen from up-country in brown coats and green waistcoats ; clerks off on a vacation with kodaks and Cook's tickets ; bicyclists in knickerbockers ; painters, with large kits and small handbags, who talk all the time and to everybody ; gray-whiskered, red-faced Englishmen, with absolutely no conversation at all, who prove to be dis- tinguished persons attended by their own valets, and on their way to Aix or the Enga- dine, now that the salmon-fishing in Norway is over ; school teachers from America, just arrived from Antwerp or Rotterdam, or from across the channel by way of Harwich, their first stopping-place really since they left home — one traveling-dress and a black silk in the bag ; all the kinds and conditions and sorts of people who seek out precious little S7 Between places like Dort, either because they are Showers ^^^ ^^ comfortable, or because they are zn iJOTt ^ known to be picturesque. I sought out Dort years ago because it was untouched by the hurry that makes life mis- erable, and the shams that make it vulgar, and I go back to it now every year of my life, in spite of other foreign influences. And there is no real change in fifteen years. Its old trees still nod over the sleepy canals in the same sleepy way they have done, no doubt, for a century. The rooks — the same rooks, they never die — still swoop in and out of the weather-stained arches high up in the great tower of the Groote Kerk, the old twelfth-century church, the tallest in all Holland ; the big-waisted Dutch luggers with rudders painted arsenic green — what would painters do without this green ? — doze un- der the trees, their mooring lines tied to the trunks ; the girls and boys, with arms locked, a dozen together, clatter over the cobbles, singing as they walk; the steamboats land and hurry on — "Fop Smit's boats" the signs read — it is pretty close, but I am not part owner in the line ; the gossips lean in the doorways or under the windows banked with geraniums and nasturtiums; the cum- bersome state carriages with the big ungainly 88 THE GOSSIPS LEAN IN THE DOORWAYS horses with untrimmed manes and tails — Between there are only five of these carriages in all ^^ °Dort Dordrecht — wait in front of the great houses eighty feet wide and four stories high, some dating as far back as 1512, and still occupied by descendants of the same families ; the old women in ivory black, with dabs of Chinese white for sabots and caps, push the same carts loaded with Hooker's green vegetables from door to door ; the town crier rings his bell ; the watchman calls the hour. Over all bends the ever-changing sky, one hour close-drawn, gray-lined with slanting slashes of blinding rain, the next piled high with great domes of silver-white clouds inlaid with turquoise blue or hemmed in by low- lying ranges of purple peaks capped with gold. I confess that an acute sense of disap- pointment came over me when I first saw these gray canals, rain-varnished streets, and rows of green trees. I recognized at a glance that it was not my Holland ; not the Holland of my dreams ; not the Holland of Mesdag nor Poggenbeck nor Kever. It was a fresher, sweeter, more wholesome land, and with a more breathable air. These Dutch painters had taught me to look for dull, dirty skies, 89 Between soggy wharves, and dismal perspectives of 1,n''Dort endless dikes. They had shown me count- less windmills, scattered along stretches of wind-swept moors backed by lowering skies, cold gray streets, quaint, leanover houses, and smudgy, grimy interiors. They had en- veloped all this in the stifling, murky atmo- sphere of a western city slowly strangling in clouds of coal smoke. These Dutch artists were, perhaps, not alone in this falsification. It is one of the peculiarities of modern art that many of its masters cater to the taste of a public who want something that is not in preference to something that is. TX&xa, for instance, had, up to the time of my enlightenment, taught me to love an equally untrue and impossible Venice — a Venice all red and yellow and deep ultra-marine blue — a Venice of un- buildable palaces and blazing red walls. I do not care to say so aloud, where I can be heard over the way, but if you will please come inside my quarters, and shut the door and putty up the keyhole, and draw down the blinds, I will whisper in your ear that my own private opinion is that even Turner himself would have been an infinitely greater artist had he built his pictures on Venice instead of building them on Turner. I will 90 also be courageous enough to assert that Between the beauty and dignity of Venetian architec- ^ °^ort ture — an architecture which has delighted many appreciative souls for centuries — finds no place in his canvases, either in detail or in mass. The details may be unimportant, for the soft vapor of the lagoons ofttimes conceals them, but the correct outline of the mass — that is, for instance, the true propor- tion of the dome of the Salute, that incom- parable, incandescent pearl, or the vertical line of the Campanile compared to the roofs of the connecting palaces — should never be ignored, for they are as much a part of Venice, the part that makes for beauty, as the shimmering light of the morning or the glory of its sunsets. So it is that when most of us for the first time reach the water-gates of Venice, the most beautiful of all cities by the sea, we feel a certain shock and must begin to fall in love with a new sweetheart. So with many piainters of the Holland school — not the old Dutch school of land- scape painters, but the more modern group of men who paint their native skies with zinc-white toned with London fog, or mummy dust and bitumen. It is all very artistic and full of "tone," but it is not Holland. There is Clays, for instance. Of all mod- 91 Between ern painters Clays has charmed and wooed Showers ^g -^^^^ ^jj.jj certain phases of Holland life, tn Uort 111 1 1 • particularly the burly brown boats lying at anchor, their red and white sails reflected in the water. I love these boats of Clays. They are superbly drawn, strong in color, and admirably painted ; the water treatment, too, is beyond criticism. But where are they in Holland } I know Holland from the Zuy- der Zee to Rotterdam, but I have never yet seen one of Clays's boats in the original wood. Thus by reason of such smeary, up and down fairy tales in paint have we gradually become convinced that vague trees, and black houses with staring patches of whitewash, and Vandyke brown roofs are thoroughly characteristic of Holland, and that the blessed sun never shines in this land of sabots. But does n't it rain } Yes, about half the time, perhaps three quarters of the time. Well, now that I think of it, about all the time. But not continuously ; only in inter- mittent downpours, floods, gushes of water — not once a day but every half hour. Then comes the quick drawing of a gray curtain from a wide expanse of blue, fram- ing ranges of snow-capped cumuli; streets 92 swimming in great pools ; drenched leaves Between quivering in dazzling sunlight, and millions i^^^glt of raindrops flashing like diamonds. II ^UT Peter, my boatman, cap in hand, is waiting on the cobbles outside the inn door. He has served me these many years. He is a wiry, thin, pinch-faced Dutchman, of perhaps sixty, who spent his early life at sea as man-o'-war's-man, common sailor, and then mate, and his later years at home in Dort, picking up odd jobs of ferriage or stevedoring, or making early gardens. While on duty he wears an old white trav- eling-cap pulled over his eyes, and a flan- nel shirt without collar or tie, and sail- maker's trousers. These trousers are caught at his hips by a leather strap supporting a sheath which holds his knife. He cuts everything with this knife, from apples and navy plug to ship's cables and telegraph wire. His clothes are waterproof; they must be, for no matter how hard it rains, Peter is always dry. The water may pour in rivulets from off his cap, and run down his forehead and from the end of his gargoyle of 93 Between a nose, but no drop ever seems to wet his ^nDo7t ^^^- ^^^" ^'^ ""^^"^ *^^ fiercest, I, of course, retreat under the poke-bonnet awning made of cotton duck stretched over barrel hoops that protects the stern of my boat, but Peter never moves. This Dutch rain does not in any way affect him. It is like the Jersey mosquito — it always spares the natives. Peter speaks two languages, both Dutch. He says that one is English, but he cannot prove it — nobody can. When he opens his mouth you know all about his ridiculous pre- tensions. He says — " Mynheer, dot manus ist er blowdy rock." He has learned this ex- pression from the English sailors unloading coal at the big docks opposite Pappendrecht, and he has incorporated this much of their slang into his own nut-cracking dialect. He means of course "that man is a bloody rogue." He has a dozen other phrases equally obscure. Peter's mission this first morning after my arrival is to report that the good ship Red Tub is now lying in the harbor fully equipped for active service. That her aft awning has been hauled taut over its hoops; that her lockers of empty cigar boxes (receptacles for brushes) have been clewed up; the cocoa- matting rolled out the whole length of }ier 94 g S w > B en W > < ►J a w s o «; a keel, and finally that the water bucket and Between wooden chair (I use a chair instead of an i^°^gyf easel) have been properly stowed. Before the next raincloud spills over its edges, we must loosen the painter from the iron ring rusted tight in the square stone in the wharf, man the oars, and creep under the little bridge that binds Boudier's landing to the sidewalk over the way, and so set our course for the open Maas. For I am in search of Dutch boats to-day, as near like Clays's as I can find. I round the point above the old India warehouses, I catch sight of the topmasts of two old luggers anchored in midstream, their long red pennants flat- tened against the gray sky. The wind is fresh from the east, filling the sails of the big windmills blown tight against their whirl- ing arms. The fishing-smacks lean over like dipping gulls ; the yellow water of the Maas is flecked with wavy lines of beer foam. The good ship Red Tub is not adapted to outdoor sketching under these conditions. The poke-bonnet awning acts as a wind-drag that no amount of hard pulling can overcome. So I at once convene the Board of Strategy, Lieutenant-Commander Peter Jansen, Red Tub Navy, in the chair. That distinguished naval expert rises from his water-soaked seat 9i Between on the cocoa-matting outside the poke bon. in "nort "^*' sweeps his eye around the horizon, and remarks sententiously : — "It no tarn goot day. Blow all dime; we go ba'd-hoose," and he turns the boat toward a low-lying building anchored out from the main shore by huge chains secured to float- ing buoys. In some harbors sea-faring men are warned not to "anchor over the water-pipes." In others particular directions are given to avoid "submarine cables planted here." In Dort, where none of these modern con- veniences exist, you are notified as follows : " No boats must land at this Bath." If Peter knew of this rule he said not one word to me as I sat back out of the wet, hived under the poke bonnet, squeezing color- tubes and assorting my brushes. He rowed our craft toward the bath-house with the skill of a man -o' -war's -man, twisted the painter around a short post, and unloaded my paraphernalia on a narrow ledge or plank walk some three feet wide, and which ran around the edge of the floating bath-house. It never takes me long to get to work, once my subject is selected. I sprang from the boat while Peter handed me the chair, stool, and portfolio containing my stock of 96 gray papers of different tones ; opened my Between sketch frame, caught a sheet of paper tight ^'^^^7 between its cleats ; spread palettes and brushes on the floor at my side ; placed the water bucket within reach of my hand, and in five minutes I was absorbed in my sketch. Immediately the customary thing hap- pened. The big bank of gray cloud that hung over the river split into feathery masses of white framed in blue, and out blazed the glorious sun. Meantime, Peter had squatted close beside me, sheltered under the lee of the side wall of the bath-house, protected equally from the slant of the driving rain and the glare of the blinding sun. Safe too from the watchful eye of the High Pan-Jam who managed the bath, and who at the moment was entirely oblivious of the fact that only two inches of pine board separated him from an enthusias- tic painter working like mad, and an equally alert marine assistant who supplied him with fresh water and charcoal points, both at the moment defying the law of the land, one in ignorance and the other in a spirit of sheer bravado. For Peter must have known the code and the penalty. The world is an easy place for a painter to 07 Between live and breathe in when he is sitting far Showers from the madding crowd — of boys — pro- tected from the wmd and sun, watching a sky piled up in mountains of snow, and in- haling ozone that is a tonic to his lungs. When the outline of his sketch is complete and the colors flow and blend, and the heart is on fire; when the bare paper begins to lose itself in purple distances and long stretches of tumbling water, and the pic- tured boats take definite shape, and the lines of the rigging begin to tell ; when little by little, with a pat here and a dab there, there comes from out this flat space a something that thrilled him when he first determined to paint the thing that caught his eye, — not the thing itself, but the spirit, the soul, the feel- ing, and meaning of the color-poem unrolled before him, — when a painter feels a thrill like this, all the fleets of Spain might bom- bard him, and his eye would never waver nor his touch hesitate. I felt it to-day. Peter didn't. If he had he would have kept still and passed me fresh water and rags and new tubes and whatever I wanted — and I wanted something every minute — instead of disporting himself in an entirely idiotic and disastrous way. Disastrous, be- 98 cause you might have seen the sketch which Between I began reproduced in these pages had the ^^"^g^t Lieutenant-Commander, R. T. N., only car- ried out the orders of the Lord High Admiral commanding the fleet. A sunbeam began it. It peeped over the edge of the side wall — the wall really was but little higher than Peter's head when he stood erect — and started in to creep down my half-finished sketch. Peter rose in his wrath, reached for my white umbrella, and at once opened it and screwed together the jointed handle. Then he began searching for some convenient supporting hook on which to hang his shield of defence. Next a brilliant, intellectual dynamite-bomb of a thought split his cranium. He would hoist the umbrella above the top of the thin wall of the bath-house, resting one half upon its upper edge, drive the iron spike into the plank under our feet, and secure the handle by placing his back against it. No sunbeam should pass him ! The effect can be imagined on the High- Pan-Jam inside the bath-house — an amphib- ious guardian, oblivious naturally to sun and rain — when his eye fell upon this flag of defiance thrust up above his ramparts. You can imagine, too, the consternation of 99 Between the peaceful inmates of the open pools, whose ^^«rj laughter had now and then risen above the sough of the wind and splash of the water. Almost immediately I heard the sound of hurrying footsteps from a point where no sound had come before, and there followed the scraping of a pair of toes on the planking behind me, as if some one was drawing him- self up. I looked around and up and saw eight fin- gers clutching the top of the planking, and a moment later the round face of an astonished Dutchman. I have n't the faintest idea what he said. I did n't know then and I don't know now. I only remember that his dia- lect sounded like the traditional crackling of thorns under a pot, including the spluttering, and suggesting the equally heated tempera- ture. When his fingers gave out he would drop out of sight, only to rise again and con- tinue the attack. Here Peter, I must say, did credit to his Dutch ancestors. He did not temporize. He did not argue. He ignored diplomacy at the start, and blazed out that we were out of everybody's way and on the lee side of the structure ; that there was no sign up on that side; that I was a most distinguished per- sonage of blameless life and character, and 100 that, rules or no rules, he was going to stay Between where he was and so was I. ^n'oort " You tam blowdy rock. It 's s'welve o'clock now — no rule aft' s'welve o'clock, — nopcdy ba'd now ; " — This in Dutch, but it meant that, then turning to me, "You stay — you no go — I brek tam head him." — None of this interested me. I had heard Peter explode before, I was trying to match the tone of an opalescent cloud inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the shadow side all purplish gray. Its warm high-lights came all right, but I was half out of my head trying to get its shadow-tones true with Payne's gray and cobalt. The cloud itself had already cast its moorings and was fast drifting over the Eng- lish Channel. It would be out of sight in five minutes. " Peter — Peter/ " I cried. " Don't talk so much. Here, give him half a gulden and tell him to dry up. Hand me that sky brush — quick now ! " The High Pan-Jam dropped with a thud to his feet. His swinging footsteps could be heard growing fainter, but no stiver of my silver had lined his pocket. I worked on. The tea-rose cloud had dis- appeared entirely ; only its poor counterfeit remained. The boats were nearly finished ; Between another wash over their sails would bring ^^'7 *^^™ ^ "S^*" '^^^^ *^^ ^rzxa^ as of armed men came from the in-shore side of the bath- house. Peter stood up and craned his neck around the edge of the planking, and said in an undertone : — "Tam b'lice, he come now; nev" mind, you stay 'ere — no go. Tam blowdy rock no mak' you go." Behind me stood the High Pan-Jam who had scraped his toes on the fence. With him was an officer of police ! Peter was now stamping his feet, swearing in Dutch, English, and polyglot, and threat- ening to sponge the Dutch government from the face of the universe. My experience has told me that it is never safe to monkey with a gendarme. He is generally a perfectly cool, self-poised, unim- pressionable individual, with no animosity whatever toward you or anybody else, but who intends to be obeyed, not because it pleases him, but because the power behind him compels it. I instantly rose from my stool, touched my hat in respectful military salute, and opened my cigarette-case. The gendarme selected a cigarette with perfect coolness and good humor, and began politely to unfold to me his duties in connection with 102 the municipal laws of Dordrecht. The man- Between ager of the bath, he said, had invoked his ^^^^^7 services. I might not be aware that it was against the law to land on this side of the bath-house, etc. But the blood of the Jansens was up. Some old Koop or De Witt or Von Some- body was stirring Peter. "No ba'd aft' s'welve o'clook" — this to me, both fists in the air, one perilously near the officer's face. The original invective was in his native tongue, hurled at Pan-Jam and the officer alike. "What difference does it make, your Ex- cellency," I asked, "whether I sit in my boat and paint or sit here where there is less motion?" "None, honored sir," and he took a fresh cigarette (Peter was now interpreting), — "except for the fact that you have taken up your position on the women's side of the bath-house. They bathe from twelve o'clock till four. When the ladies saw the umbrella they were greatly disturbed. They are now waiting for you to go away ! " 103 Between HI i^Dort "^"^^^^ ^'^^^ ^* ^^^^ Boudier's com- mands a full view of the Maas, with all its varied shipping. Its in- terior fittings are so scrupulously clean that one feels almost uncomfortable lest some of the dainty appointments might be soiled in the using. The bed is the most re- markable of all its comforts. It is more of a box than a bed, and so high at head and foot, and so solid at its sides, that it only needs a lid to make the comparison complete. There is always at its foot an inflated eider-down quilt puffed up like a French souffle potato ; and there are always at its head two little oval pillows solid as bags of ballast, sur- mounting a bolster that slopes off to an edge. I have never yet found out what this bolster is stuffed with. The bed itself would be bottomless but for the slats. When you first fall overboard into this slough you begin to sink through its layers of feath- ers, and instinctively throw out your hands, catching at the side boards as a .drowning man would clutch at the gunwales of a sud- denly capsized boat. The second night after ray arrival, I, in accordance with my annual custom, depos- ited the contents of this bed in a huge pile 104 < outside my door, making a bottom layer of Between the feathers, then the bolster, and last the ^^^'^7 souffle with the hard-boiled eggs on top. Then I rang for Tyne. She had forgotten all about the way I liked my sleeping arrangements until she saw the pile of bedding. Then she held her sides with laughter, while the tears streamed down her red cheeks. Of course, the Heer should have a mattress and big English pillows, and no bouncy-bounce, speaking the words not with her lips, but with a gesture of her hand. Then she called Johan to help. I never can see why Tyne always calls Johan to help when there is anything to be done about my room out of the usual order of things, — the sweeping, dusting, etc., — but she does. I know full well that if she so pleased she could tuck the whole pile of bedding under her chin, pick up the bureau in one hand and the bed in the other, and walk downstairs without even mussing her cap- strings. When Johan returned with a hair mattress and English pillows, — you can get anything you want at Boudier's, — he asked me if I had heard the news about Peter. Johan, by the way, speaks very good English — for Johan. The Burgomaster, he said, had that los Between day served Peter with a writ. If I had looked Showers ^^j. ^j ^j^g window an hour ago, I could have in Uort r 1 Ti J seen the Lieutenant-Commander of the K.ed Tub, under charge of an officer of the law, on his way to the Town Hall. Peter, he added, had just returned and was at the present mo- ment engaged in scrubbing out the R. T. for active service in the morning. I at once sent for Peter. He came up, hat in hand. But there was no sign of weakening. The blood of the Jansens was still in his eye. " What did they arrest you for, Peter > " "For make jaw wid de tam bolice. He say I mos' pay two gulden or one tay in jail. Oh, it is netting ; I no pay. Dot bolice lie ven he say vimmen ba'd. Nopoty ba'd in de hoose aft' s'welve 'clook." Later, Heer Boudier tells me that because of Peter's action in resisting the officer in the discharge of his duty, he is under arrest, and that he has but_/?z;i? days in which to make up his mind as to whether he will live on bread and water for a day and night in the town jail, or whether he will deplete his slender savings in favor of the state to the extent of two gulden. " But don't they lock him up, meanwhile .' " I asked. 1 06 Boudier laughed. "Where would he run Between to, and for what ? To save two gulden ? " |if^^7 My heart was touched. I could not possi- bly allow Peter to spend five minutes in jail on my account. I should not have slept one wink that night even in my luxurious bed- box with English pillows, knowing that the Lieutenant-Commander was stretched out on a cold floor with a cobblestone under his cheek. I knew, too, how slender was his store, and what a godsend my annual visit had been to his butcher and baker. The Commander of the Red Tub might be im- petuous, even aggressive, but by no possible stretch of the imagination could he be con- sidered criminal. That night I added these two gulden (about eighty cents) to Peter's wages. He thanked me with a pleased twinkle in his eye, and a wrinkling of the leathery skin around his nose and mouth. Then he put on his cap and disappeared up the street. But the inns, quaint canals, and rain- washed streets are not Dort's only distinc- tions. There is an ancient Groote Kerk, overlaid with colors that are rarely found outside of Holland. It is built of brick, with a huge square tower that rises above 107 Between the great elms pressing close about it, and in°Dort ^^^"^^ ^^ visible for miles. The moist climate not only encrusts its twelfth-century porch with brown-and-green patches of lichen over the red tones, but dims the great stained- glass windows with films of mould, and covers with streaks of Hooker's green the shadow sides of the long sloping roofs. Even the brick pavements about it are carpeted with strips of green, as fresh in color as if no pass- ing foot had touched them. And few feet ever do touch them, for it is but a small group of worshipers that gather weekly within the old kirk's whitewashed walls. These faithful few do not find the rich in- terior of the olden time, for many changes have come over it since its cathedral days, the days of its pomp and circumstance. All its old-time color is gone when you enter its portals, and only staring white walls and rigid, naked columns remain ; only dull gray stone floors and hard, stiff-backed benches. I have often sat upon these same benches in the gloom of a fast-fading twilight and looked about me, bemoaning the bareness, and won- dering what its ensemble must have been in the days of its magnificence. There is no- thing left of its glories now but its architect- ural lines. The walls have been stripped of 1 08 w W w O O « O H W u ^; your friend who has just gone out said about Stedman not being the kind of a man to send to Cuba. I tell you, they might look the country over, and they could n't find a better. That 's been his strong hold, straightening out troubles of one kind or another. Everybody believes in him, and anybody takes his word. He 's done a power of good in our State." " In what way .? " asked the Doctor. " Oh, in settling strikes, for one thing. You see, he started from the scrap pile, and he knows the laboring man down to a dot, for he carried a dinner pail himself for ten years of his life. When the men are imposed upon he stands by 'em, and compels the manufacturers to deal square ; and if they don't, he joins the men and fights it out with the bosses. If the men are wrong, and want what the furnaces can't give 'em, — and there 's been a good deal of that lately, — he sails into the gangs, and, if nothing else will do, he gets a gun and joins the sheriffs. He 19s The Man was all through that last strike we had, three Ismpty" years ago, and it would be going on now but Sleeve for John Stedman." " But he seems to be a man of fine educa- tion," interrupted the Doctor, who was listen- ing attentively. "Yes, so he is, — learned it all at night schools. When he was a boy he used to fire the kilns, and they say you could always find him with a spelling-book in one hand and a chunk of wood in the other, reading nights by the light of the kiln fires." " You say he went to Congress ? " The Doctor's eyes were now fixed on the speaker. "No, I said he wouldn't, go. His wife was taken sick about that time, and when he found she was n't going to get well, — she had lung trouble, — he told the committee that he would n't accept the nomination ; and of course nomination meant election for him. He told 'em his wife had stuck by him all her life, had washed his flannel shirts for him and cooked his dinner, and that he was going to stick by her now she was down. But I tell you what he did do : he stumped the district for his opponent, because he said he was a better man than his own party put up, — and elected him, too. That was just like 196 John Stedman. The heelers were pretty The Man savage, but that made no difference to '^*^p\y" him. Sleeve "He's never recovered from his wife's death. That daughter with him is the only child he 's got. She 's been so afraid he 'd die on board and have to be buried at sea that he 's kept his berth just to please her. The doctor at home told him Carlsbad was his only chance, and the daughter begged so he made the trip. He was so sick when he went out that he took a coffin with him, — it 's in the hold now. I heard him tell his daughter this morning that it was all right now, and he thought he 'd get up. You see, there are only two days more, and the cap- tain promised the daughter not to bury her father at sea when we were that close to land. Stedman smiled when he told me, but that 's just like him ; he 's always been cool as a cucumber." " How did he lose his arm } " I inquired. I had been strangely absorbed in what he had told me. " In the war ? " " No. He served two years, but that 's not how he lost his arm. He lost it saving the lives of some of his men. I happened to be up at Parkinton at the time, buying some coke, and I saw him carried out. It was 197 The Man about ten years ago. He had invented a "Empty" "^^ furnace; 'most all the new wrinkles Sleeve they 've got at the Union Company Stedman made for 'em. When they got ready to draw the charge, — that's when the red-hot iron is about to flow out of the furnace, you know, the outlet got clogged. That 's a bad thing to happen to a furnace ; for if a chill should set in, the whole plant would be ruined. Then, again, it might explode and tear every- thing to pieces. Some of the men jumped into the pit with their crowbars, and began to jab away at the opening in the wrong place, and the metal started with a rush. Stedman hollered to 'em to stop ; but they either did n't hear him or would n't mind. Then he jumped in among them, threw them out of the way, grabbed a crowbar, and fought the flow until they all got out safe. But the hot metal had about cooked his arm clear to the elbow before he let go." The Doctor, with hands deep in his pockets, began pacing the floor. Then he stopped, and, looking down at me, said slowly, point- ing off his fingers one after the other to keep count as he talked : — " Tender and loyal to his wife — thought- ful of his child — facing death like a hero — a soldier and patriot. What is there in the 198 make-up of a gentleman that this man has n't The Man ,. J with the got • Empty " Come ! Let 's go out and find that high- Sleeve collared, silk-stockinged, sweet-scented An- glomaniac from Salem ! By the Eternal, Todd 's got to apologize ! " 199 "TINCTER OV IRON" rT was in an old town in Con- necticut. Marbles kept the shop. "Joseph Marbles, Ship- wright and Blacksmith," the sign read. I knew Joe. He had repaired one of the lighters used in carrying materials for the foundation of the lighthouse I was building. The town lay in the barren end of the State,' where they raised rocks enough to make four stone fences to the acre. Joe always looked to me as if he had lived off the crop. The diet never affected his temper nor hard- ened his heart, so far as I could see. It was his body, his long, lean, lank body, that sug- gested the stone diet. In his early days Joe had married a help- mate. She had lasted until the beginning of the third year, and then she had been carried to the cemetery on the hill, and another stone, and a new one, added to the general assortment. This matrimonial epi- sode was his last. This wife was a constant topic with Mar- bles. He would never speak of her as a part of his life, one who had shared his bed and board, and therefore entitled to his love and reverent remembrance. It was rather as an " TincUr appendage to his household, a curiosity, 2.°'"^^''^" natural freak, as one would discuss the habits of a chimpanzee, and with a certain pity, too, for the poor creature whom he had housed, fed, poked at, humored, and then buried. And yet with it all I could always see that nothing else in his life had made so profound an impression upon him as the companion- ship of this "poor creeter," and that under- neath his sparsely covered ribs there still glowed a spot for the woman who had given him her youth. He would say, " It wuz one ov them days when she would n't eat, or it was kind o' cur'us to watch her go on when she had one ov them tantrums." Sometimes he would recount some joke he had played upon her, rubbing his ribs in glee — holding his sides would have been a superfluous act and the statement here erroneous. " That wuz when she fust come, yer know," he said to me one day, leaning against an old boat, his adze in his hand. " Her folks be- longed over to Westerly. I never had seen much ov wimmen, and didn't know their ways. But I tell yer she wuz a queer 'un, allers imaginin' she wuz ailin', er had heart disease when she got out er breath runnin' 201 " Tincter upstairs, er as'mer, er lumbago, er some- ovlron'' thin" else dreadful. She wuz the cur'usest critter too to take medicin' ye ever see. She never ailed none really 'cept when she broke her coller bone a-fallin' downstairs, and in the last sickness, the one that killed her, but she believed all the time she wuz, which was wuss. Every time the druggist would git out a new red card and stick it in his winder, with a cure fer cold, or chil- blains, er croup, er e'sipelas, she 'd go and buy it, an' out 'd cura ther cork, and she a-tastin' ov it 'fore she got hum. She used ter rub herself with St. Jiminy's intment, and soak her feet in sea-salt, and cover herself with plasters till yer could n't rest. Why, ther cum a feller once who painted a yaller sign on ther whole side ov Buck- ley's barn — cure fer spiral meningeetius, — and she wuz nigh crazy till she had found out where ther pain ought ter be, and had clapped er plaster on her back and front, persuadin' herself she had it. That 's how she bruk her coller bone, a-runnin' fer hot water to soak 'em off, they burnt so, and stumblin' over a kit ov tools I had brung hum to do a job around the house. After this she begun ter run down so, and git so thin and peaked, I begun to think 20^ she really wuz goin' ter be sick, after all, " Ttncier jest fer a change. -^^-Zr^.^" " When ther doctor come he sed it warn't nothin' but druggist's truck that ailed her, and he throwed what there wuz out er ther winder, and give her a tonic — Tincter ov Iron he called it. Well, yer never see a woman hug a thing as she did that bottle. It was a spoonful three times a day, and then she 'd reach out fer it in ther night, vowin' it was doin' her a heap er good, and I a-gettin' ther bottle filled at Sarcy's ther druggist's, and payin' fifty cents every time he put er new cork in it. I tried ter rea- son with her, but it warn't no use ; she would have it, and if she could have got outer bed and looked round at the spring crop of advertisements on ther fences, she would hev struck somethin' worse. So I let her run on until she tuk about seven dollars' wuth of Tincter, and then I dropped in ter Sarcy's. 'Sarcy,' sez I, 'can't ye wholesale this, er sell it by the quart? If the ole woman's coller bone don't get ter runnin' easy purty soon I '11 be broke.' " ' Well,' he said, ' if I bought a dozen it might come cheaper, but it wuz a mighty per- tic'ler medicine, and had ter be fixed jest so.' " ' 'Taint pizen, is it .? ' I sez, ' that 's got ter 203 ''Tinder^ be fixed SO all-fired kerful?' He 'lowed it ov Iron " ^a.rn't, and thet ye might take er barrel of it and it would n't kill yer, but all ther same it has ter be made mighty pertic'ler. " 'Well, iron 's cheap enough,' I sez, 'and strengthenin', too. If it 's ther Tincter thet costs so, don't put so much in.' Well, he laffed, and said ther wam't no real iron in it, only Tincter, kinder iron soakage like, same es er drawin' ov tea. " Goin' home thet night I got ter thinkin'. I 'd been round iron all my life and knowed its ways, but I had n't struck no Tincter as I knowed ov. When she fell asleep I poured out a leetle in another bottle and slid it in my trousers pocket, an' next day, down ter ther shop, I tasted ov it and held it up ter ther light. It was kind er persim- mony and dark-lookin', ez if it had rusty nails in it ; and so thet night when I goes hum I sez ter her, ' Down ter ther other druggist's I kin git twice as much Tincter fer fifty cents as I kin at Sarcy's, and if yer don't mind I '11 git it filled there.' Well, she never kicked a stroke, 'cept to say I 'd better hurry, fer she had n't had a spoonful sence daylight, and she wuz be- ginnin' ter feel faint. When the whistle blew I cum hum ter dinner, and sot the 204 new bottle, about twice as big as the other " Tincter one, beside her bed. "'" ^'''"' " "'How's that?' I sez. 'It's a leetle grain darker and more muddy like, but the new druggist sez thet 's the Tincter, and thet 's what 's doin' ov yer good.' Well, she never suspicioned ; jest kept on, night and day, wrappin' herself round it every two er three hours, I gettin' it filled reger- lar and she a-empt'in' ov it. " 'Bout four weeks arter that she begun to git around, and then she'd walk out ez fur ez ther shipyard fence, and then, be- gosh, she begun to flesh up so as you would n't know her. Now an' then she 'd meet the doctor, and she 'd say how she 'd never a-lived but fer ther Tincter, and he 'd laff and drive on. When she got real peart I brought her down to the shop one day, and I shows her an old paint keg thet I kep' rusty bolts in, and half full ov water. "'Smell that,' I sez, and she smells it and cocks her eye. " ' Taste it,' I sez, and she tasted it, and give me a look. Then I dips a spoonful out in a glass, and I sez : ' It 's most time to take yer medicine. I kin beat Gus Sarcy all holler makin' Tincter ; every drop yer drunk fer a month come out er thet keg.' " 205 "FIVE MEALS FOR A DOLLAR" j^HE Literary Society of West Norrington, Vt., had invited me to lecture on a certain Tues- day night in February. The Tuesday night had ar- rived. So had the train. So had the knock- kneed, bandy-legged hack — two front wheels bowed in, two hind wheels bowed out — and so had the lecturer. West Norrington is built on a hill. At the foot are the station, a saw-mill, and a glue factory. On the top is a flat plateau hold- ing the principal residences, printing-office, opera-house, confectionery store, druggist's, and hotel. Up the incline is a scattering of cigar-stores, butcher shops, real-estate agen- cies, and one lone restaurant. You know it is a restaurant by the pile of extra-dry oyster- shells in the window — oysterless for months — and the four oranges bunched together in a wire basket like a nest of pool balls. You know it also from the sign — " Five meals for a dollar." I saw this sign on my way up the hill, but it made no impression on my mind. I was bound for the hotel — the West Norrington Arms, the conductor called it ; and as I had 206 eaten nothing since seven o'clock, and it was ^'■Five then four, I was absorbed mentally in arran- ^"^^ ging a bill of fare. Broiled chicken, of course, Dollar I said to myself — always get delicious broiled chicken in the country — and a salad, and perhaps — you can't always tell, of course, what the cellars of these old New England taverns may contain — yes, perhaps a pint of any really good Burgundy, Pommard, or Beaune. " West Norrington Arms " sounded well. There was a distinct flavor of exclusiveness and comfort about it, suggesting old side- boards, hand-polished tables, small bar with cut-glass decanters, Franklin stoves in the bedrooms, and the like. I could already see the luncheon served in my room, the bright wood fire lighting up the dimity curtains draping the high-post bedstead. Yes, I would order Pommard. Here the front knees came together with a jerk. Then the driver pulled his legs out of a buffalo-robe, opened the door with a twist, and called out, — " Nor'n't'n Arms." I got out. The first glance was not reassuring. It was perhaps more Greek than Colonial or Early English or Late Dutch. Four high 207 ^'Five wooden boxes, painted brown, were set up on fg^a ^'^'^ — Doric columns these — supporting a Dollar" pediment of like material and color. Half- way up these supports hung a balcony, where the Fourth of July orator always stands when he addresses his fellow citizens. Old, of course, I said to myself — early part of this century. Not exactly moss-covered and inn- like, as I expected to find, but inside it 's all right. " Please take in that bag and fur overcoat." This to the driver, in a cheery tone. The clerk was leaning over the counter, chewing a toothpick. Evidently he took me for a drummer, for he stowed the bag behind the desk, and hung the overcoat up on a nail in a side room opening out of the office, and within reach of his eye. When I registered my name it made no perceptible change in his manner. He said, "Want supper.'" with a tone in his voice that convinced me he had not heard a word of the Event which brought me to West Nor- rington — I being the Event. " No, not now. I would like you to send to my room in half an hour a broiled chicken, some celery, and any vegetable which you can get ready — and be good enough to put a pint of Burgundy " — 208 I didn't get any further. Something in ^^Five his manner attracted me. I had not looked H^'^^^ at him with any degree of interest before. Dollar''' He had been merely a medium for trunk check, room key, and ice water — nothing more. Now I did. I saw a young man — a mean-looking young man — with a narrow, squeezed face, two flat glass eyes sewed in with red cotton, and a disastrous complexion. His hair was brushed like a barber's, with a scooping curl over the forehead ; his neck was long and thin — so long that his apple looked over his collar's edge. This collar ran down to a white shirt decorated with a gold pin, the whole terminating in a low-cut velvet vest. " Supper at seven," he said. This, too, came with a jerk. " Yes, I know, but I have n't eaten any- thing since breakfast, and don't want to wait until " — " Ain't nuthin' cooked 'tween meals. Sup- per at seven." " Can't I get " — " Yer can't get nuthin' until supper-time, and yer won't get no Burgundy then. Yer couldn't get a bottle in Norrington with a club. This town's prohibition. Want a 209 "Five Meals for a Dollar" room ? " This last word was almost shouted in my ear. " Yes — one with a wood fire." I kept my temper. "Front ! " — this to a boy half asleep on a bench. " Take this bag to No. 37, and turn on the steam. Your turn next " — and he handed the pen to a fresh arrival, who had walked up from the train. No. 37 contained a full set of Michigan fur- niture, including a patent wash-stand that folded up to look like a bookcase, smelt slightly of varnish, and was as hot as a Pull- man sleeper. I threw up all the windows ; came down and tackled the clerk again. " Is there a restaurant near by ?" " Next block above. Nichols." He never looked up — just kept on chew- ing the toothpick. " Is there another hotel here ? " Even a worm will turn. " No." That settled it. I did n't know any inhabit- ant — not even a committeeman. It was the West Norrington Arms or the street. So I started for Nichols. By that time I could have eaten the shingles off the church. Nichols proved to be a one-and-a-half-story "Five house with a glass door, a calico curtain, and ^^^''^ a jingle bell. Inside was a cake shop, pre- Dollar' sided over by a thin woman in a gingham dress and black lace cap and wig. In the rear stood a marble-top table with iron legs. This made it a restaurant. "Can you get me something to eat? Steak, ham and eggs — anything .' " I had fallen in my desires. She looked me all over. "Well, I 'm 'maz- in' sorry, but I guess you '11 have to excuse us ; we 're just bakin', and this is our busy day. S'mother time we should like to, but to-day " — I closed the door and was in the street again. I had no time for lengthy discussions that didn't lead to something tangible and eatable. "Alone in London," I said to myself. " Lost in New York. Adrift in West Nor- rington. Plenty of money to buy, and no- body to sell. Everybody going about their business with full stomachs, happy, contented, — all with homes, and firesides, and ice chests, and things hanging to cellar rafters, hams and such like, and I a wanderer and hungry, an outcast, a tramp." Then I thought some citizen might take '^ Five me in. She was a rather amiable-looking for a ^^ ^'^'^y> with a kind, motherly face. Dollar" "Madam ! " This time I took off my hat. Ah, the common law of hunger brings you down and humbles your pride. " Do you live here, madam ? " "Why, yes, sir," edging to the sidewalk. " Madam, I am a stranger here, and very hungry. It 's baking-day at Nichols. Do you know where I can get anything to eat?" " Well, no, I can't rightly say," still eyeing me suspiciously. "Hungry, be ye? Well, that 's too bad, and Nichols baking." I corroborated all these statements, stand- ing bare-headed, a wild idea running through my head that her heart would soften and she would take me home and set me down in a big chintz-covered rocking chair, near the geraniums in the windows, and have her daughter — a nice, fresh, rosy-cheeked girl in an apron — go out into the buttery and bring in white cheese, and big slices of bread, and some milk, and preserves, and a — But the picture was never completed. "Well," she said slowly, "if Nichols is baking, I guess ye '11 hev to wait till supper- time." Then like a sail to a drowning man there rose before me the sign down the hill near "Five the station, " Five meals for a dollar." ^jf^ I had the money. I had the appetite. I Dollar " would eat them all at once, and now. In five minutes I was abreast of the extra- dry oyster-shells and the pool balls. Then I pushed open the door. Inside there was a long room, bare of every- thing but a wooden counter, upon which stood a glass case filled with cigars ; behind this was a row of shelves with jars of candy, and level with the lower shelf my eye caught a slouch hat. The hat covered the head of the proprietor. He was sitting on a stool; sort- ing out chewing-gum. " Can I get something to eat ? " The hat rose until it stood six feet in the air, surmounting a round, good-natured face, ending in a chin whisker. " Cert. What '11 yer hev ? " Here at last was peace and comfort and food and things! I could hardly restrain myself. " Anything. Steak, fried potatoes — what have you got .' " "Waal, I dunno. 'Tain't time yit for supper, but we kin fix ye somehow. Lem- me see." Then he pushed back a curtain that 213 '^Five screened one half of the room, disclosing ^fti/j three square tables with white cloths and Dollar" casters, and disappeared through a rear door. "We got a steak," he said, dividing the curtains again, " but the potatoes is out." " Any celery ? " "No. Guess can git ye some 'cross to ther grocery. Won't take a minit." " All right. Could you " — and I lowered my voice — " could you get me a bottle of beer .? " " Yes — if you got a doctor's prescription." " Could you write one .' " I asked ner- vously. " I '11 try." And he laughed. In two minutes he was back, carrying four bunches of celery and a paper box marked "Parafifine candles." " What preserves have you ? " "Waal, any kind." " Raspberry jam, or apricots .' " I inquired, my spirits rising. " We ain't got no rusberry, but we got peaches." " Anything else .' " " Waal, no ; come ter look 'em over, just peaches." So he added a can to the celery and can- dles, and carried the whole to the rear. ?i4 While he was gone I leaned over the cigar- ''Firve case and examined the stock. One box la- ^'f^ JOT a baled "Bouquet" attracted my eye; each Z>o/&r' cigar had a little paper band around its mid- dle. I remembered the name, and deter- mined to smoke one after dinner if it took my last cent. Then a third person took a hand in the feast. This was the hired girl, who came in with a tray. She wore an alpaca dress and a disgusted expression. It was evident that she resented my hunger as a personal affront — stopping everything to get supper two hours ahead of time ! She did n't say this aloud, but I knew it all the same. Then more tray, with a covered dish the size of a soap-cup, a few sprigs of celery out of the four bunches, and a preserve-dish, about the size of a butter pat, containing four pieces of peach swimming in their own juice. In the soap-dish lay the steak. It was four inches in diameter and a quarter of an inch thick. I opened the paraffine candles, poured out half a glass, and demolished the celery and peaches. I did n't want to muss up the steak. I was afraid I might bend it, and spoil it for some one else. Then an idea struck me : " Could she poach me some eggs ? " 2IS "Five She supposed she could, if she could find Meals jjjg gggg . jjjogj everything was locked up Dollar " this time of day. I waited, and spread the mustard on the dry bread, and had more peaches and par- affine. When the eggs came they excited my sympathies. They were such innocent-look- ing things — pinched and shriveled up, as if they had fainted at sight of the hot water and died in great agony. The toast, too, on which they were coffined, had a cremated look. Even the hired girl saw this. She said it was a "leetle mite too much browned ; she'd forgot it watchin' the eggs." Here the street door opened, and a young woman entered and asked for two papers of chewing-gum. She got them, but not until the proprietor had shot together the curtains screening off the candy store from the restaurant. The dignity and exclusiveness of the establish- ment required this. When she was gone I poured out the rest of the paraffine, and called out through the closed curtains for a cigar. " One of them bo-kets ? " came the pro- prietor's voice in response. "Yes, one of them." He brought it himself, in his hand, just as 216 it was, holding the mouth end between the " Five thumb and forefinger. Meals " And now how much ? " Dollar " He made a rapid accounting, overlooking the table, his eyes lighting on the several fragments : " Beer, ten cents ; steak, ten ; peaches, five ; celery, three ; eggs on toast, ten ; one bo-ket, four." Then he paused a moment, as if he wanted to be entirely fair and square, and said, " Forty-two cents." When I reached the hotel, a man who said he was the proprietor came to my room. He was a sad man with tears in his voice. " You 're comin' to supper, ain't ye .'' It '11 be the last time. It 's a kind o' mournful occasion, but I like to have ye." It was now my turn. " No, I 'm not coming to supper. You drove me out of here half starving into the street two hours ago. I could n't get any- thing to eat at Nichols, and so I had to go down the hill to a place near the saw-mill, where I got the most infernal " — He stopped me with a look of real anxiety. " Not the five-meals-for-a-dollar place .' " "Yes." "And you swallowed it .' " " Certainly — poached eggs, peaches, and a lot of things." 217 " Five Meals for a Dollar" " No," he said reflectively, looking at me curiously. " You don't want no supper — prob'bility is you won't want no breakfast, either. You 'd better eaten the saw-mill — it would 'er set lighter. If I 'd known who you were I 'd tried " — " But I told the clerk," I broke in. " What clerk ? " he interrupted in an aston- ished tone. " Why, the clerk at the desk, where I re- gistered — that long-necked crane with red eyes." " He ain't no clerk ; we ain't had one for a week. Don't you know what 's goin' on ? Ain't you read the bills ? Step out into the hall — there 's one posted up right in front of you. ' Sheriff's sale ; all the stock and fixtures of the Norrington Arms to be sold on Wednesday morning ' — that 's to-morrow — ' by order of the Court' You can read the rest yourself ; print 's too fine for me. That fellow you call a crane is a deputy sheriff. He 's takin' charge, while we eat up what 's in the house." 218 ELHCTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO. CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S. A. ■FORTY-TWO CENTS' AUNT CHLOE