NUMBER 5635
THEY rode in a street car to the furthermost outskirts of the city.
At the end of the line they left the car and walked three blocks
toward a high brick fence with iron spikes on top, above which loomed
large brick buildings in the center of a vast inclosure. They were
met at the entrance by a gate-keeper, who directed John Cole to the
superintendent’s office. While his father attended to the business in
hand Joshua, wide-eyed and wondering, remained in an anteroom. Now and
then, in a large, painfully clean room off this anteroom, he saw boys
of about his own age and older moving about quietly, dressed in gray
suits with brass buttons and red stripes down the trousers legs, little
black cloth skull caps, and heavy brogans.
Very soon he was called into the office proper and stood before the
superintendent, a tall, grave man with unhealthy white skin and veiny
hands. With a brief “Good-by, Joshua,” John Cole left his son; and then
the superintendent sat looking the boy over in a disinterested though
not antagonistic manner.
“Cole,” he mused finally, looking at the papers before him on his desk.
“John Cole is your father’s name? It is strangely familiar. Do you know
your mother’s maiden name”--he glanced at the paper again--“Joshua?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Joshua. “It was Florence.”
“Florence! Are you positive?”
“Yes, sir--I know that was her name.”
“Impossible! What is her first name?”
“Blanche,” said the boy.
“Blanche Cole. I suspected it the moment I saw your face, but it
didn’t occur to me while your father was here. You have the face of a
Florence. So your mother was a Florence. One of _the_ Florences, of
course.”
“Yes, sir. There’s lots of Florences in this state. They come over with
Lord Calvert to Maryland.”
“Of course--of course. The irony of fate! Do you know, Joshua, that
your mother’s father--your grandfather, Peter D. Florence--was the
founder of this institution?”
“No, sir--I never heard o’ that.”
The superintendent stared at Joshua until he was vastly uncomfortable,
but the fact is that the man did not see the boy before him at all.
Presently he roused himself, assumed a businesslike attitude, and
began a string of platitudes to the effect that Joshua would profit by
obeying all of the rules and regulations. This in a droning, parrotlike
voice, and when he had finished he pressed a bell button and a boy much
older than Joshua, dressed in uniform, came into the room. He stood
waiting while the superintendent scribbled a note and folded it.
“This is Number Fifty-six thirty-five,” said the superintendent.
“Take him in hand and outfit him. Then turn him over to the Juvenile
Department, and give this note to Mr. Clegg.”
“Yes, sir,” said the monitor, and looked toward Joshua to indicate that
he was to follow him.
In a stuffy room in the main building, where there were great piles of
uniforms on curtain-protected shelves, the monkey-capped boy and two
assistants outfitted the newcomer, causing him to strip, whereupon they
made caustic remarks about his bared anatomy. They rifled his pockets,
found a pocket knife, and quarreled over it among themselves. The new
ownership finally settled upon, they deposited Joshua’s old clothes
in a locker, and while he was donning the new the largest of the boys
smacked him smartly on the bare body with the flat of his hand and
enjoined him to make greater speed. Joshua turned, the battle fire of
his fighting ancestors in his gray-blue eyes. His fists doubled, and
he assumed an attitude of defense, while the three monitors grinned
at him tantalizingly. Then Joshua remembered the words of Detective
Dickinson: “Don’t fight back. Stand for anything they hand you, and
you’ll win out in the end.” So, while the three old-timers laughed and
winked, he backed up against the wall and continued his dressing. It
was alum-bitter medicine, but already he was planning how to run away
and continue his interrupted journey westward. He dared not fight back
and perhaps jeopardize his chances of escape.
When he was ready he was taken through long corridors and out at a side
door, thence across a wide space of ground to another brick building.
Here, before long, Joshua found himself in the presence of Mr. Beaver
Clegg, head of the Juvenile Department.
Mr. Beaver Clegg, Joshua thought, was the owner of the ugliest face
he had ever seen on a human being. He was thin, but not exceptionally
tall. He wore a baggy gray suit, and his linen, in its soiled state,
did not set a good example for his wards. Joshua looked at him
curiously as he read the note from the superintendent. He noticed the
nose, twisted to one side, and bumpy at the end; the curious eyes,
neutral in color but inclining toward slate-blue, and cocked out of all
proportion, one of them appearing much smaller than the other and set
lower in the face; the thick lips, corrugated and crooked, contrasting
strangely with the bony face; the square, hairless jaw; the swarthy,
mottled skin.
But when this ugliest of men looked up at Joshua and smiled a great
transformation took place. The colorless eyes seemed to glow with
warmth. The twisted lips somehow seemed to straighten miraculously,
and there was nothing hideous about the big, yellow uneven teeth
that showed between them. Joshua was reminded of the face of Abraham
Lincoln, that tall, gaunt man whose very homeliness endears him to the
heart of the nation that he served. Joshua did not know it until later,
but he had been placed in the care of Beaver Clegg simply because his
mother had been a Florence. He rightly belonged in a department for
older wards, but the superintendent knew his subordinates, and had
conferred this boon upon the son of the daughter of the founder of the
institution.
“Well, Joshua,” said Mr. Clegg, in a voice that went with his face when
the smile was upon it, “what have you been up to? Sit down there and
tell me all about it. Don’t be backward; don’t be afraid. Just begin
at the beginning and tell me the truth. And with me, Joshua, the truth
always pays. But more of that later. Now tell me your story. You’ll be
talking to your friend.”
It was a long story, and at first the boy talked haltingly. But as
he saw the deep, kindly interest in Clegg’s eyes, as he leaned his
elbows on the desk and cupped his battle-ship chin in his bony hands,
his confidence grew and he talked more freely. When he began speaking
of the adventure with the slug Mr. Clegg suddenly scraped forward his
chair and leaned closer. His eyes seemed to grow darker and darker
until their indifferent blue had changed to a deep, velvety purple, as
a cat’s eyes change with its varying moods.
“Just a moment,” he interrupted finally. “You say that a stream of
mucilaginous substance--something like that--came from the slug, and
that it let itself down to the ground by means of it?”
“Yes, sir,” said Joshua. “It’s just the color o’ tapioca puddin’.”
“Well, well, well! I never knew that before. Go on! Go on! Tell me
about the experiment with the razor.”
Joshua began it, but was once more interrupted. Clegg’s tones were
eager as he spoke, and Joshua marveled not a little at his interest.
“The entire under side of a slug or a snail, Joshua,” he said,
“comprises a walking surface. One might term his whole belly a foot.
This walking surface clings to one side of the razor blade, as the slug
extends its fore part and bends down over the other side. He is not
crawling upon the sharp part at all, you see, but it appears as if he
is doing so. Where did you learn about all this?”
“Aw, I’m always monkeyin’ ’round with somethin’ like that,” said
Joshua. “I kinda like it. I’m gonta be a scientist some day. But
they wouldn’t let me do anythin’ at school. I got a dandy collection
o’ birds’ eggs, and a lot o’ bugs and pressed leaves, and snakes in
alcohol.”
“A scientist, eh? And what branch do you prefer?”
“I ain’t just sure yet. I like all of it that I’ve read about. But I
guess I like astronomy more’n anythin’.”
Clegg’s eyes grew darker. “Astronomy--yes, yes! And what do you know
about astronomy, Joshua?”
“Not much. But I’ve read some books. And I c’n pick out a lotta stars
and planets easy, and I know what their names are an’ everything like
that.”
Here a mellow gong sounded, and Beaver Clegg’s eyes grew neutral in
color once more. “That’s the dinner gong,” he said briskly. “I’ll call
one of the monitors, who will show you how to fall in and march to the
washroom, and afterward to the dining room. After dinner there will be
fifteen minutes for play, and I want you to come back here for that
period. I want to talk more with you.” He pressed a button, and a
uniformed monitor came in. “This is Fifty-six thirty-five,” said Mr.
Clegg. “Take care of him until he learns the rules. That’s all for the
present, Fifty-six thirty-five.”
Joshua marched to the washroom, a large, spotlessly clean compartment
where each boy used his individual basin, which hung under a tag
bearing his number. When they left the washroom they marched across
the court yard to the main building, where was the dining room. Here
the inmates of the entire institution partook of their meals, boys
from the North Wing, between the ages of eighteen and twenty, those
from the South Wing, from fourteen to eighteen, and those of fourteen
or under from Mr. Clegg’s Juvenile Department. The dining room monitor
seated Joshua, and he ate sparingly of soup, coffee, bread without
butter, boiled ham, and beans. The dining room was silent as a tomb, as
no conversation was allowed. When the meal was finished they rose at
a command from the monitor and were marched out into the playground.
Here Joshua contrived to evade curious and semi-pugnacious boys who
wanted to know all about him, entered the gray corridor of the Juvenile
Department, and found his way again to the little office of Beaver
Clegg.
Mr. Clegg wore large round spectacles now, for he had been reading.
Over the rims of them he looked at Joshua speculatively for a time.
“You will be known here as Fifty-six thirty-five,” he said finally.
“But when you and I are alone together I’m going to call you Joshua.
It seems, almost, that a special Providence sent you to me, and I have
hopes that your life here will be more profitable to you than if you
had stayed at home. You are very young to have decided upon a career,
and who knows but that you will change your mind entirely before you
are a year older? I recall that when I was about your age I was
determined to become a minister of the gospel. I had preached a little
even then--if one might call it preaching--and was hailed as a boy
evangelist. But now I am interested in other matters, and have been
since I was twenty-one.
“Let us assume, however, that you are interested in astronomy and
want to become a serious student. You are too young to understand,
of course--but I may as well tell you now that it is a calling that
demands the utmost sacrifice. There’s no money in it, Joshua, or I
would not be here at the head of the Juvenile Department in a boys’
reformatory. For that is just what this institution has degenerated
to--a reformatory--though your grandfather, Peter D. Florence, had
no such thing in mind when he founded it. It was to be a home for
parentless boys and other unfortunate youngsters. But your grandfather
is dead, and the institution is in the hands of a board of directors
and a superintendent who have failed to catch the spirit of your
grandfather’s generosity.
“Be that as it may, you will be none the worse off if you are diligent
and obey the rules. I say this because I know something of your father,
the man whom your mother gave up everything to marry. Here you will
learn the common school branches as well as you could outside, and on
top of that I am going to give you your first lessons in astronomy.”
Clegg did not heed the boy’s parted lips nor the eager brilliancy in
his grave young eyes, but continued:
“It seems to me to be a marvelous coincidence that you found your way
to me. For the past twenty years, Joshua, I have studied the stars. I
am what is known as a variable star observer, and I have a three-inch
refractor which I use at night on the roof of this building. None of
the other officials in the school are in sympathy with me, but they
tolerate me. They are second-graders intellectually, all of them, or
they would not be here. I am here to make a living while I follow my
studies, for, as I told you, Science is an indifferent paymaster.
“If I may be pardoned for the statement, I am not altogether unknown to
the scientific world. Joshua, have you any knowledge of the variable
stars?”
“No, sir,” replied Joshua, a little awed that he was in intimate
conversation with a real astronomer, one who owned a telescope. Would
he be allowed to look through it, he wondered? Never in his life had he
looked through any instrument larger than a pair of opera glasses.
“There are hundreds of stars,” Mr. Clegg went on, “that are known to
vary in brightness. In a few cases the causes of this variability are
known. There are, for instance, the Algol Variables. In their case, the
variability is readily accounted for by the theory of a dark, eclipsing
body, smaller than the primary, and traveling round it in an orbit
lying nearly edgewise to us. The two bodies revolve round their common
center of gravity. In the case of other types of variables we are still
uncertain, or quite in the dark, regarding what is really happening to
cause the change in brightness.”
Clegg did not see his listener now. His near-blue eyes were darkening
to velvet-purple again, and his vision took in worlds far off in space.
Joshua listened in a sort of breathless rapture, though he had small
idea of what it was all about.
“Observations of these perplexing bodies, continuing over a long period
of time,” Clegg went on dreamily, forgetting that his audience was
only a fourteen-year-old boy, “will eventually afford a sufficiently
large collection of facts on which to base a satisfactory theory of
what causes the observed variation. Out of the hundreds studied by
the nearly two hundred members--mostly amateurs like myself--of the
International Society of Variable Star Observers, of which I am one,
who have contributed a startling number of observations during the past
few years, certain stars may be discovered whose peculiar behavior will
lead to a true understanding of these interesting bodies. I myself, if
you will pardon me once more, have added my share of discoveries to
this great work.
“So that is really my business in life, Joshua. It is a work of love,
as the society pays nothing in money to any of its members. And, as I
told you, I occupy my position here to gain a livelihood while pursuing
my hobby, as my critics term my work. My fellow-instructors are out of
tune with me, and even go so far as to ridicule me at times. But as the
superintendent considers me harmless, and as I try to perform my school
duties faithfully, he does not interfere with my astronomical work,
which I never allow to conflict with the regular routine. But mine is
a lonesome existence. I have longed for some one close to me who is
moved by the inspiring grandeur of the heavenly bodies. I have been
told that I am a born teacher, but I prefer to teach the things that
interest me. You wanted to study science and they refused you. So you
see, Joshua, that you and I have a great deal in common. And it will be
my delight to make an effort to ground you in the science of astronomy,
if you are willing to learn and will help me by observing the rules and
regulations of the school, and attempting to master what the directors
have prescribed as a course for the institution. I am not altogether
unselfish in this offer. I want to teach somebody what I have learned,
for I love it and find boundless pleasure in telling others what I
know. But there has been no one to tell. And how it will refresh my own
fund of knowledge! How does my offer appeal to you, Joshua?”
“It’d be mighty nice,” replied Fifty-six thirty-five, almost unable
to believe that here was an opportunity that he had not expected to
present itself until he had become a man and master of his destiny.
“I’ll do anything you say, Mr. Clegg,” he promised. “I’m sure much
obliged.”
Clegg’s whimsical smile rested upon him in a fatherly way. “You’ll
never have occasion to regret it,” he said.
Then the great gong sounded, and the hour of play was at an end.