Monroe was walking sorrowfully homeward, when he met Easelmann near the
corner of Summer Street. He was in no humor for conversation, but he
could not civilly avoid the painter, who evidently was waiting to speak
to him.
"Glad to see one man that isn't a capitalist. You and I, Monroe, are
independent of banks and brokers."
Monroe faintly smiled.
"This is a deadly time here in Boston,--a horrible stagnation. Every
man avoids his neighbor as though he had the plague; and we have no
Boccaccio to tell us stories while the dead-carts go by."
"The dead-cart went through our street to-day."
"You don't tell me! Who is the lucky corpse that is out of his misery?"
"Mr. Lindsay. Our house is shut up, and I am a vagrant."
"A pair of us! For the last month I have performed the Wandering Jew all
by myself. Now I have company. What shall we do to be jolly?"
"_Jolly!_"--with a tone of melancholy surprise.
"When should a man be jolly, if he can't when he's nothing to do? I
am the slave of gold, you understand. If any rich magician rubs his
double-eagles before me, woe is me, if I don't paint! When the magicians
send their eagles on other errands, I am free from their drudgery.
Meanwhile, I live on air, flattened out and packed away, like a Mexican
horned-frog, or a dreaming toad, in a fissure of a preadamite rock."
"I am sorry I haven't your art of making misfortune comfortable."
"Misfortune? My philosophical friend, there isn't any such thing. The
true man is superior to circumstances or accidents. (Some old fellow, I
believe, has said that; somebody always says my good things before me;
but no matter.) Nothing can happen amiss to the wise and good."
"Then I am neither wise nor good, for I have lost my all, and it comes
confoundedly amiss to me."
"Your all? That's what the shoemaker said; but he bought a new one for
six-pence. But, how happened it?"
"By my folly."
"I knew that, of course; but I wanted to know what folly in particular."
"I trusted it to a man whom I thought not only honest, but my friend,
and he has proved a scoundrel."
"You shouldn't have led him into temptation. You are _particeps
criminis_, and the partaker is as bad as the thief. Don't trust without
taking security, my friend; it's offering a premium to crime. Consider
your guilt now! Think of the family into whose innocent bosom you have
brought sin and remorse! Who is the luckless person?"
"Sandford!"
"I knew it. I expected it. He was too good by half. I didn't blame him
for his widow-and-orphan business; somebody must do it; but I made up my
mind some time ago that he would come to grief."
"Prophets are always plenty after the event."
"True, my friend. But just think! He passed by my pictures in the
Exhibition, and bought the canvas of my friend Greenleaf,--a man of
genius, doubtless, but young, you understand, young. Can you conceive
of the wickedness? I felt sure from that moment, that, if he were not
totally depraved, he at least had a moral inability, as the preachers
call it, that would be his ruin."
"Well, he is ruined effectually; but the worst of it is, that he has
dragged innocent people down with him."
"'Innocent,'--yes, you have the word. A man that cares for money at all,
and trusts all he has without security to any fair-spoken financier, is
an innocent, truly."
"Well, there is no use in lamenting, and just as little in the
consolation of thinking how the loss might have been avoided."
"I don't know. I don't admit that. I am not to be deprived of the rights
of a freeborn American. The 'I told-you-so' is a fine balm for all sorts
of wounds,--rather more soothing to physician than patient, perhaps.
Combined with the 'You-might-have-known-it,' it gets up a wholesome
blister in the least possible time, especially where 'a raw' has been
established previously."
"I don't think I was prudent."
"Of course not; if you had been, you wouldn't have lost. There are
no such things as mistakes in the world.--But to look at affairs.
_Imprimis_.--Lindsay smashed, house closed, salary stopped."
"I suppose so."
"_Item_,--private funds gone; owner taken in by the patent-safe game.
"_Item_,--dwelling-house standing; so much gain,--but
"_Item_,--the dweller is not alone, having other mouths to feed.
"But don't be discouraged. I don't doubt you will find something to do
in good time."
"But when is the good time coming? I must earn something at once."
"The danger of being made to work isn't pressing. Ships will have time
to get well rested. Truckmen are actually growing civil with a little
starvation. The beggars don't hold out their hands for coppers; they
make more money by hauling out their old stockings and lending at five
per cent. a month."
"You will laugh me out of my misery in spite of myself."
"I hope so; but I am not sure that a man can be laughed out of a thing
he wasn't laughed into. Now, Monroe, I am going to surprise you. I am
going to bore you, annoy you; for I am to see you every day for the
next week. Can you bear it? I shall be worse than the balm of
'I-told-you-so.'"
Monroe pressed his friend's hand.
"Come, by all means. And now we are near my house; go in and take tea
with us."
"No, not to-day. It is _dies nefastus_. Good-bye!"
Twirling his grizzly moustaches and humming to himself, Easelmann turned
back. He did not go to his room, however, but went down a quiet street,
apparently guided by instinct, and rang the bell at a well-known door.
"Is Mr. Holworthy at home?"
The servant-girl nodded and smiled, and Easelmann entered. Mr. Holworthy
was emphatically at home, for he was on all-fours, his three children
riding cock-horse, with merry shouts, varied by harmless tumbles and
laborious clamberings up. Mr. Holworthy rose with a flushed and happy
face, and the children rushed at once to clasp the knees of their
familiar old friend.
"We all have to come down at times, I believe," said Mr. Holworthy,
smoothing the few thin hairs on his handsomely arched crown.
"Certainly; a man that can't be a boy with his children deserves to have
none. Now the reason I am a bachelor is that I feared I could never
unbend, being somewhat remarkable for my perpendic"--
The word was cut off by a sudden movement; the children in their playful
struggles had, in fact, thrown him down. In a moment more they were on
his back and he trotting round the room with the grace of an elephant.
"Come, children," said the father, "that was a rough joke. Get off, now,
and go for your bread and milk."
Rather reluctantly they obeyed, casting wishful glances backward to the
grown-up boy with whom they had hoped to have a frolic.
"Glad to see you," said Mr. Holworthy. "You have been unsocial, lately."
"Yes; all the effect of the panic. I am such a butterfly that I seem out
of place in a work-a-day community. I am constantly advised, like the
volatile person in the fable, to learn wisdom from my aunt; but I can't,
for the soul of me."
"You ought to visit the more, to cheer the wretched and downcast."
"Oh, but it's a fearful waste of magnetism. Five minutes' talk with a
man who has notes to pay draws all the virtue out of me. It lowers my
vital tone like standing in an ice-house. You feel such a man from afar
like a coming iceberg. _You_ don't have notes to pay? I thought not. I
should go at once."
"No, my little shop pays its way. I buy for cash. I pay my hands when
they bring in their work, and I have customers enough who ask me for no
credit."
"Happy man! most fortunate of tailors!--I have been thinking,
Holworthy, among your many benevolent projects, why you never devised
some means of relieving people who are supposed to be in good
circumstances,--a society for ameliorating the condition of the rich."
"Bless me! the poor are quite numerous enough, and are in unusual
straits just now."
"I know, and for that reason they are better off than usual. People say,
'How the poor must suffer in these pinching times!' So they double their
charities."
"Poverty is an ocean without bottom, my friend. All that is given is
like emptying stones into the sea; the waves swallow them and sweep over
as before."
"True, you can't satisfy the beggars till you drown 'em. Wouldn't
a gentle asphyxia by water, now, be the best thing for some of the
Broad-Street cellarers?"
"Very likely; but they would probably object to the remedy."
"But to return to my project. I see some forms of distress that seem to
me far more painful than utter poverty. I won't expatiate, but state a
case. I know a man of good sense and culture, able and willing to do
his part in the world. His employer has failed, so that his salary will
stop. He is unmarried, but has a mother, an invalid, who never stirs out
of doors; and besides has some poor relation or other to support. He has
a house, it is true; so they needn't sleep in the street; but how are
the mouths to be fed, the backs to be clothed?"
"Let him sell his house and wait till better times for employment."
"It is easy to say _sell_; but who will buy? A house won't fetch half
its value, and there isn't any money to be had. Besides,--and this is
the hardship,--the pride and the feelings of association cling round a
house that has been consecrated by years of affection and by the memory
of the dead.--I believe I am making an oration; but I despair of
expressing myself."
"I understand you perfectly; it is sad, indeed."
"Excuse me, you don't understand me. Some men put off old houses and put
on new ones, like their clothes, without a thought. Others grow into
their habitations and become a part of them. You might as well say to
a lobster, 'Get out of your shell,' when you know that the poor
wretch will die when his naked, quivering members are exposed to the
sharp-edged stones. A delicate nature, proud, but gentle, too sensitive
to accept charity, and doubtful of a friendly service even, suffers more
anguish in one hour, under such circumstances, than your brazen beggar
feels from his dirty cradle to his nameless grave."
Mr. Holworthy mused.
"He has nothing to do, then?"
"Nothing, but to suck his thumbs."
"Is he willing to work, even if the task should appear irksome?"
"I haven't a doubt. He has no _false_ pride. Anything honorable would be
welcome."
"Perhaps I can find something for him to do; it will be temporary, but
its continuance will depend upon himself."
"And what is it?"
"In visiting the district which has been allotted to me, I have found an
unusual number of ignorant, vicious boys, cared for by no one, growing
up for the prison or the gallows. I have thought of making some effort
to gather them together and start a ragged school. Some friends have
agreed to provide the means. But the pay would necessarily be small, and
the labor and difficulty great."
"A teacher of tatterdemalions! It _isn't_ an inviting field of labor."
"No, to a refined man it must be repulsive. Nothing but the idea of
doing good would make it a pleasure or even endurable."
"I confess myself utterly without any such motive. I hate poor people,
and ragged children, and sick women, the forlorn wives of drunken
brutes. I shut my eyes to all such odious sights. They say, in a hotel
you must never go into the kitchen, if you would keep your appetite; and
I am sure one must avoid these wretches in the cellar, if he would have
a cheerful view of life in his attic."
"You are not so hard-hearted as you would have me believe. Somebody must
relieve their distresses."
"Somebody, too, must cut off legs, and sew up spouting arteries, and
extirpate cancers. Ugh! but I shan't. I leave such jobs to the doctors,
whose ears are familiar with shrieks, and whose appetites are not
disturbed by the sight of blood."
"So the Levite left the wounded man by the wayside, in disgust at his
bruises: but still the good Samaritan who helped him hadn't a doctor's
degree."
"Oh, I know. You have me, I acknowledge. But I can't change my temper,
and I shrink from suffering as from death. I would rather bear it than
see it. Society always provides its good Samaritans; and you are one
of them. Don't look modest. I went once through some of those damnable
alleys near Half-Moon Court, the agreeable place where you spend so much
of your leisure. I was looking for a subject to paint. For curiosity, I
asked an urchin if he knew you. He flung his ragged cap twenty feet into
the air, turned a somerset, and came up smiling as well as he could
through the dirt,--'Don't I, though? He brung us meal an' 'taters when
dad broke his leg, and he fetched oranges in his pocket when marm had
the fevers. He's one of 'em, he is.'--Don't interrupt me.--An old
woman, whom I asked, said, 'Do I know Mister 'Olworthy? A blissed saint
in the flesh; my poor ol' bones would 'ave hached many a cold night but
for the blankets he brought me. God in 'eaven reward 'im for that same!'
I spare you the rest of the answers. Oh, you are a saint, without robe
or wings."
"Hadn't we better come back to the subject," said Mr. Holworthy, in a
mild voice. "We shan't aid your friend in this way."
"Right, my considerate Mentor. But talk is tempting. I believe I should
forget my errand and let a friend hang, if I got into an argument with
the Governor while he was filling out the pardon."
"I hope the gentleman you speak of is not so much afraid of contact with
what is disagreeable as you are?"
"Perhaps not; he has an artistic temperament, and therefore loves what
is comely; but he would go through fire to what he thought his duty."
"And wouldn't you?"
"What a question! Go through fire? No, I should bawl for the engine."
"It's plain, then, that he will answer better than you for the place."
"No doubt. I shouldn't answer at all. I tell you I never talk with these
creatures. I can't. If an old woman stops me, with her dried-apple face
and whining voice, I give her a sixpence and tell her to hush up and
go about her business. I fling coppers to the boys with slit breeches
before they ask me, for I know they will tell me of mothers sick with
consumption. Their devilish tears are contagious; and I can't cry; it
chokes me. So I buy apples and oranges from the imploring-looking
girls; it's the easiest way of getting rid of them. The little change
don't amount to much in a day, and I save my nerves and my digestion at
a cheap rate."
Mr. Holworthy smiled at Easelmann's notion of his own hard-heartedness,
and said, hesitatingly,--
"I am afraid that some professedly charitable persons don't do so much."
"Of course they don't. I don't mean that I do anything. It's pure
selfishness on my part, as I told you. But you may feel pretty sure,
that, if a man's name is always in the papers, as 'our estimable
fellow-citizen, President This, Director That, and Treasurer T'other,'
he 'does not give indiscriminate alms':--I believe that is the phrase.
Perhaps he won't rob, like my friend Sandford; but his 'disinterested
labors' are an economical substitute for substantial charity, and his
desire for a place in the public eye is the mainspring of all his
actions."
"Most of the distress in the community is relieved by organized effort;
individual charities, however well meant, would be entirely inadequate.
Besides, you should not be severe upon all because one prominent person
has proved unworthy."
"Sandford is a type of the class. If there is anybody I hate worse than
a sick beggar, it is a man who makes a trade of philanthropy."
"And yet you are consenting to your friend's earning a living by
teaching a ragged school."
"True, one may stop at any place in a storm, just for shelter."
"And you can console yourself further with the assurance that your
friend won't make enough in this place to induce him to take up the
'trade,' as you call it."
"I hope not. Starve him judiciously. If he should come out, after a
year or so, with a white neckcloth, spectacles, and a sanctified face,
soliciting aid for his school, in Pecksniffian tones, I should regret
that I hadn't furnished him with a cord and a bag of stones to drop
himself into the dock with."
"I don't know why a teacher or a street-missionary may not be a
gentleman."
"Sure enough, why not? Whatever Walter Monroe is, he will always be a
gentleman."
"Suppose you bring him to see me to-morrow or next day; we will talk
about this."
"I will. Now, good-bye! My regrets to the children that we couldn't
finish our romp."
"Good-bye," said Holworthy. "Come again; the children will be glad to
see you."