For a time I wrote literary screeds for the Golden Era. C. H. Webb had
established a very excellent literary weekly called the Californian, but
high merit was no guaranty of success; it languished, and he sold out to
three printers, and Bret Harte became editor at $20 a week, and I was
employed to contribute an article a week at $12. But the journal still
languished, and the printers sold out to Captain Ogden, a rich man and a
pleasant gentleman who chose to amuse himself with such an expensive
luxury without much caring about the cost of it. When he grew tired of
the novelty, he re-sold to the printers, the paper presently died a
peaceful death, and I was out of work again. I would not mention these
things but for the fact that they so aptly illustrate the ups and downs
that characterize life on the Pacific coast. A man could hardly stumble
into such a variety of queer vicissitudes in any other country.
For two months my sole occupation was avoiding acquaintances; for during
that time I did not earn a penny, or buy an article of any kind, or pay
my board. I became a very adept at "slinking." I slunk from back street
to back street, I slunk away from approaching faces that looked familiar,
I slunk to my meals, ate them humbly and with a mute apology for every
mouthful I robbed my generous landlady of, and at midnight, after
wanderings that were but slinkings away from cheerfulness and light, I
slunk to my bed. I felt meaner, and lowlier and more despicable than the
worms. During all this time I had but one piece of money--a silver ten
cent piece--and I held to it and would not spend it on any account, lest
the consciousness coming strong upon me that I was entirely penniless,
might suggest suicide. I had pawned every thing but the clothes I had
on; so I clung to my dime desperately, till it was smooth with handling.
However, I am forgetting. I did have one other occupation beside that of
"slinking." It was the entertaining of a collector (and being
entertained by him,) who had in his hands the Virginia banker's bill for
forty-six dollars which I had loaned my schoolmate, the "Prodigal." This
man used to call regularly once a week and dun me, and sometimes oftener.
He did it from sheer force of habit, for he knew he could get nothing.
He would get out his bill, calculate the interest for me, at five per
cent a month, and show me clearly that there was no attempt at fraud in
it and no mistakes; and then plead, and argue and dun with all his might
for any sum--any little trifle--even a dollar--even half a dollar, on
account. Then his duty was accomplished and his conscience free. He
immediately dropped the subject there always; got out a couple of cigars
and divided, put his feet in the window, and then we would have a long,
luxurious talk about everything and everybody, and he would furnish me a
world of curious dunning adventures out of the ample store in his memory.
By and by he would clap his hat on his head, shake hands and say briskly:
"Well, business is business--can't stay with you always!"--and was off in
a second.
The idea of pining for a dun! And yet I used to long for him to come,
and would get as uneasy as any mother if the day went by without his
visit, when I was expecting him. But he never collected that bill, at
last nor any part of it. I lived to pay it to the banker myself.
Misery loves company. Now and then at night, in out-of-the way, dimly
lighted places, I found myself happening on another child of misfortune.
He looked so seedy and forlorn, so homeless and friendless and forsaken,
that I yearned toward him as a brother. I wanted to claim kinship with
him and go about and enjoy our wretchedness together. The drawing toward
each other must have been mutual; at any rate we got to falling together
oftener, though still seemingly by accident; and although we did not
speak or evince any recognition, I think the dull anxiety passed out of
both of us when we saw each other, and then for several hours we would
idle along contentedly, wide apart, and glancing furtively in at home
lights and fireside gatherings, out of the night shadows, and very much
enjoying our dumb companionship.
Finally we spoke, and were inseparable after that. For our woes were
identical, almost. He had been a reporter too, and lost his berth, and
this was his experience, as nearly as I can recollect it. After losing
his berth he had gone down, down, down, with never a halt: from a
boarding house on Russian Hill to a boarding house in Kearney street;
from thence to Dupont; from thence to a low sailor den; and from thence
to lodgings in goods boxes and empty hogsheads near the wharves. Then;
for a while, he had gained a meagre living by sewing up bursted sacks of
grain on the piers; when that failed he had found food here and there as
chance threw it in his way. He had ceased to show his face in daylight,
now, for a reporter knows everybody, rich and poor, high and low, and
cannot well avoid familiar faces in the broad light of day.
This mendicant Blucher--I call him that for convenience--was a splendid
creature. He was full of hope, pluck and philosophy; he was well read
and a man of cultivated taste; he had a bright wit and was a master of
satire; his kindliness and his generous spirit made him royal in my eyes
and changed his curb-stone seat to a throne and his damaged hat to a
crown.
He had an adventure, once, which sticks fast in my memory as the most
pleasantly grotesque that ever touched my sympathies. He had been
without a penny for two months. He had shirked about obscure streets,
among friendly dim lights, till the thing had become second nature to
him. But at last he was driven abroad in daylight. The cause was
sufficient; he had not tasted food for forty-eight hours, and he could
not endure the misery of his hunger in idle hiding. He came along a back
street, glowering at the loaves in bake-shop windows, and feeling that he
could trade his life away for a morsel to eat. The sight of the bread
doubled his hunger; but it was good to look at it, any how, and imagine
what one might do if one only had it.
Presently, in the middle of the street he saw a shining spot--looked
again--did not, and could not, believe his eyes--turned away, to try
them, then looked again. It was a verity--no vain, hunger-inspired
delusion--it was a silver dime!
He snatched it--gloated over it; doubted it--bit it--found it genuine
--choked his heart down, and smothered a halleluiah. Then he looked
around--saw that nobody was looking at him--threw the dime down where it
was before--walked away a few steps, and approached again, pretending he
did not know it was there, so that he could re-enjoy the luxury of
finding it. He walked around it, viewing it from different points; then
sauntered about with his hands in his pockets, looking up at the signs
and now and then glancing at it and feeling the old thrill again.
Finally he took it up, and went away, fondling it in his pocket. He
idled through unfrequented streets, stopping in doorways and corners to
take it out and look at it. By and by he went home to his lodgings--an
empty queens-ware hogshead,--and employed himself till night trying to
make up his mind what to buy with it. But it was hard to do. To get the
most for it was the idea. He knew that at the Miner's Restaurant he
could get a plate of beans and a piece of bread for ten cents; or a
fish-ball and some few trifles, but they gave "no bread with one
fish-ball" there. At French Pete's he could get a veal cutlet, plain,
and some radishes and bread, for ten cents; or a cup of coffee--a pint at
least--and a slice of bread; but the slice was not thick enough by the
eighth of an inch, and sometimes they were still more criminal than that
in the cutting of it. At seven o'clock his hunger was wolfish; and still
his mind was not made up. He turned out and went up Merchant street,
still ciphering; and chewing a bit of stick, as is the way of starving
men.
He passed before the lights of Martin's restaurant, the most aristocratic
in the city, and stopped. It was a place where he had often dined, in
better days, and Martin knew him well. Standing aside, just out of the
range of the light, he worshiped the quails and steaks in the show
window, and imagined that may be the fairy times were not gone yet and
some prince in disguise would come along presently and tell him to go in
there and take whatever he wanted. He chewed his stick with a hungry
interest as he warmed to his subject. Just at this juncture he was
conscious of some one at his side, sure enough; and then a finger touched
his arm. He looked up, over his shoulder, and saw an apparition--a very
allegory of Hunger! It was a man six feet high, gaunt, unshaven, hung
with rags; with a haggard face and sunken cheeks, and eyes that pleaded
piteously. This phantom said:
"Come with me--please."
He locked his arm in Blucher's and walked up the street to where the
passengers were few and the light not strong, and then facing about, put
out his hands in a beseeching way, and said:
"Friend--stranger--look at me! Life is easy to you--you go about, placid
and content, as I did once, in my day--you have been in there, and eaten
your sumptuous supper, and picked your teeth, and hummed your tune, and
thought your pleasant thoughts, and said to yourself it is a good world
--but you've never suffered! You don't know what trouble is--you don't
know what misery is--nor hunger! Look at me! Stranger have pity on a
poor friendless, homeless dog! As God is my judge, I have not tasted
food for eight and forty hours!--look in my eyes and see if I lie! Give
me the least trifle in the world to keep me from starving--anything
--twenty-five cents! Do it, stranger--do it, please. It will be nothing
to you, but life to me. Do it, and I will go down on my knees and lick
the dust before you! I will kiss your footprints--I will worship the
very ground you walk on! Only twenty-five cents! I am famishing
--perishing--starving by inches! For God's sake don't desert me!"
Blucher was bewildered--and touched, too--stirred to the depths. He
reflected. Thought again. Then an idea struck him, and he said:
"Come with me."
He took the outcast's arm, walked him down to Martin's restaurant, seated
him at a marble table, placed the bill of fare before him, and said:
"Order what you want, friend. Charge it to me, Mr. Martin."
"All right, Mr. Blucher," said Martin.
Then Blucher stepped back and leaned against the counter and watched the
man stow away cargo after cargo of buckwheat cakes at seventy-five cents
a plate; cup after cup of coffee, and porter house steaks worth two
dollars apiece; and when six dollars and a half's worth of destruction
had been accomplished, and the stranger's hunger appeased, Blucher went
down to French Pete's, bought a veal cutlet plain, a slice of bread, and
three radishes, with his dime, and set to and feasted like a king!
Take the episode all around, it was as odd as any that can be culled from
the myriad curiosities of Californian life, perhaps.