The lover of the moral picturesque may sometimes find what he, seeks in
a character which is nevertheless of too negative a description to be
seized upon and represented to the imaginative vision by word-painting.
As an instance, I remember an old man who carries on a little trade of
gingerbread and apples at the depot of one of our railroads. While
awaiting the departure of the cars, my observation, flitting to and fro
among the livelier characteristics of the scene, has often settled
insensibly upon this almost hueless object. Thus, unconsciously to
myself and unsuspected by him, I have studied the old apple-dealer
until he has become a naturalized citizen of my inner world. How little
would he imagine—poor, neglected, friendless, unappreciated, and with
little that demands appreciation—that the mental eye of an utter
stranger has so often reverted to his figure! Many a noble form, many a
beautiful face, has flitted before me and vanished like a shadow. It is
a strange witchcraft whereby this faded and featureless old
apple-dealer has gained a settlement in my memory.
He is a small man, with gray hair and gray stubble beard, and is
invariably clad in a shabby surtout of snuff-color, closely buttoned,
and half concealing a pair of gray pantaloons; the whole dress, though
clean and entire, being evidently flimsy with much wear. His face,
thin, withered, furrowed, and with features which even age has failed
to render impressive, has a frost-bitten aspect. It is a moral frost
which no physical warmth or comfortableness could counteract. The
summer sunshine may fling its white heat upon him or the good fire of
the depot room may slake him the focus of its blaze on a winter’s day;
but all in vain; for still the old roan looks as if he were in a frosty
atmosphere, with scarcely warmth enough to keep life in the region
about his heart. It is a patient, long-suffering, quiet, hopeless,
shivering aspect. He is not desperate,—that, though its etymology
implies no more, would be too positive an expression,—but merely devoid
of hope. As all his past life, probably, offers no spots of brightness
to his memory, so he takes his present poverty and discomfort as
entirely a matter of course! he thinks it the definition of existence,
so far as himself is concerned, to be poor, cold, and uncomfortable. It
may be added, that time has not thrown dignity as a mantle over the old
man’s figure: there is nothing venerable about him: you pity him
without a scruple.
He sits on a bench in the depot room; and before him, on the floor, are
deposited two baskets of a capacity to contain his whole stock in
trade. Across from one basket to the other extends a board, on which is
displayed a plate of cakes and gingerbread, some russet and red-cheeked
apples, and a box containing variegated sticks of candy, together with
that delectable condiment known by children as Gibraltar rock, neatly
done up in white paper. There is likewise a half-peck measure of
cracked walnuts and two or three tin half-pints or gills filled with
the nut-kernels, ready for purchasers.
Such are the small commodities with which our old friend comes daily
before the world, ministering to its petty needs and little freaks of
appetite, and seeking thence the solid subsistence—so far as he may
subsist of his life.
A slight observer would speak of the old man’s quietude; but, on closer
scrutiny, you discover that there is a continual unrest within him,
which somewhat resembles the fluttering action of the nerves in a
corpse from which life has recently departed. Though he never exhibits
any violent action, and, indeed, might appear to be sitting quite
still, yet you perceive, when his minuter peculiarities begin to be
detected, that he is always making some little movement or other. He
looks anxiously at his plate of cakes or pyramid of apples and slightly
alters their arrangement, with an evident idea that a great deal
depends on their being disposed exactly thus and so. Then for a moment
he gazes out of the window; then he shivers quietly and folds his arms
across his breast, as if to draw himself closer within himself, and
thus keep a flicker of warmth in his lonesome heart. Now he turns again
to his merchandise of cakes, apples, and candy, and discovers that this
cake or that apple, or yonder stick of red and white candy, has somehow
got out of its proper position. And is there not a walnut-kernel too
many or too few in one of those small tin measures? Again the whole
arrangement appears to be settled to his mind; but, in the course of a
minute or two, there will assuredly be something to set right. At
times, by an indescribable shadow upon his features, too quiet,
however, to be noticed until you are familiar with his ordinary aspect,
the expression of frostbitten, patient despondency becomes very
touching. It seems as if just at that instant the suspicion occurred to
him that, in his chill decline of life, earning scanty bread by selling
cakes, apples, and candy, he is a very miserable old fellow.
But, if he thinks so, it is a mistake. He can never suffer the extreme
of misery, because the tone of his whole being is too much subdued for
him to feel anything acutely.
Occasionally one of the passengers, to while away a tedious interval,
approaches the old man, inspects the articles upon his board, and even
peeps curiously into the two baskets. Another, striding to and fro
along the room, throws a look at the apples and gingerbread at every
turn. A third, it may be of a more sensitive and delicate texture of
being, glances shyly thitherward, cautious not to excite expectations
of a purchaser while yet undetermined whether to buy. But there appears
to be no need of such a scrupulous regard to our old friend’s feelings.
True, he is conscious of the remote possibility to sell a cake or an
apple; but innumerable disappointments have rendered him so far a
philosopher, that, even if the purchased article should be returned, he
will consider it altogether in the ordinary train of events. He speaks
to none, and makes no sign of offering his wares to the public: not
that he is deterred by pride, but by the certain conviction that such
demonstrations would not increase his custom. Besides, this activity in
business would require an energy that never could have been a
characteristic of his almost passive disposition even in youth.
Whenever an actual customer customer appears the old man looks up with
a patient eye: if the price and the article are approved, he is ready
to make change; otherwise his eyelids droop again sadly enough, but
with no heavier despondency than before. He shivers, perhaps folds his
lean arms around his lean body, and resumes the life-long, frozen
patience in which consists his strength.
Once in a while a school-boy comes hastily up, places cent or two upon
the board, and takes up a cake, or stick of candy, or a measure of
walnuts, or an apple as red-checked as himself. There are no words as
to price, that being as well known to the buyer as to the seller. The
old apple-dealer never speaks an unnecessary word not that he is sullen
and morose; but there is none of the cheeriness and briskness in him
that stirs up people to talk.
Not seldom he is greeted by some old neighbor, a man well to do in the
world, who makes a civil, patronizing observation about the weather;
and then, by way of performing a charitable deed, begins to chaffer for
an apple. Our friend presumes not on any past acquaintance; he makes
the briefest possible response to all general remarks, and shrinks
quietly into himself again. After every diminution of his stock he
takes care to produce from the basket another cake, another stick of
candy, another apple, or another measure of walnuts, to supply the
place of the article sold. Two or three attempts—or, perchance, half a
dozen—are requisite before the board can be rearranged to his
satisfaction. If he have received a silver coin, he waits till the
purchaser is out of sight, then examines it closely, and tries to bend
it with his finger and thumb: finally he puts it into his
waistcoat-pocket with seemingly a gentle sigh. This sigh, so faint as
to be hardly perceptible, and not expressive of any definite emotion,
is the accompaniment and conclusion of all his actions. It is the
symbol of the chillness and torpid melancholy of his old age, which
only make themselves felt sensibly when his repose is slightly
disturbed.
Our man of gingerbread and apples is not a specimen of the “needy man
who has seen better days.” Doubtless there have been better and
brighter days in the far-off time of his youth; but none with so much
sunshine of prosperity in them that the chill, the depression, the
narrowness of means, in his declining years, can have come upon him by
surprise. His life has all been of a piece. His subdued and nerveless
boyhood prefigured his abortive prime, which likewise contained within
itself the prophecy and image of his lean and torpid age. He was
perhaps a mechanic, who never came to be a master in his craft, or a
petty tradesman, rubbing onward between passably to do and poverty.
Possibly he may look back to some brilliant epoch of his career when
there were a hundred or two of dollars to his credit in the Savings
Bank. Such must have been the extent of his better fortune,—his little
measure of this world’s triumphs,—all that he has known of success. A
meek, downcast, humble, uncomplaining creature, he probably has never
felt himself entitled to more than so much of the gifts of Providence.
Is it not still something that he has never held out his hand for
charity, nor has yet been driven to that sad home and household of
Earth’s forlorn and broken-spirited children, the almshouse? He
cherishes no quarrel, therefore, with his destiny, nor with the Author
of it. All is as it should be.
If, indeed, he have been bereaved of a son, a bold, energetic, vigorous
young man, on whom the father’s feeble nature leaned as on a staff of
strength, in that case he may have felt a bitterness that could not
otherwise have been generated in his heart. But methinks the joy of
possessing such a son and the agony of losing him would have developed
the old man’s moral and intellectual nature to a much greater degree
than we now find it. Intense grief appears to be as much out of keeping
with his life as fervid happiness.
To confess the truth, it is not the easiest matter in the world to
define and individualize a character like this which we are now
handling. The portrait must be so generally negative that the most
delicate pencil is likely to spoil it by introducing some too positive
tint. Every touch must be kept down, or else you destroy the subdued
tone which is absolutely essential to the whole effect. Perhaps more
may be done by contrast than by direct description. For this purpose I
make use of another cake and candy merchant, who, likewise infests the
railroad depot. This latter worthy is a very smart and well-dressed boy
of ten years old or thereabouts, who skips briskly hither and thither,
addressing the passengers in a pert voice, yet with somewhat of good
breeding in his tone and pronunciation. Now he has caught my eye, and
skips across the room with a pretty pertness, which I should like to
correct with a box on the ear. “Any cake, sir? any candy?”
No, none for me, my lad. I did but glance at your brisk figure in order
to catch a reflected light and throw it upon your old rival yonder.
Again, in order to invest my conception of the old man with a more
decided sense of reality, I look at him in the very moment of intensest
bustle, on the arrival of the cars. The shriek of the engine as it
rushes into the car-house is the utterance of the steam fiend, whom man
has subdued by magic spells and compels to serve as a beast of burden.
He has skimmed rivers in his headlong rush, dashed through forests,
plunged into the hearts of mountains, and glanced from the city to the
desert-place, and again to a far-off city, with a meteoric progress,
seen and out of sight, while his reverberating roar still fills the
ear. The travellers swarm forth from the cars. All are full of the
momentum which they have caught from their mode of conveyance. It seems
as if the whole world, both morally and physically, were detached from
its old standfasts and set in rapid motion. And, in the midst of this
terrible activity, there sits the old man of gingerbread, so subdued,
so hopeless, so without a stake in life, and yet not positively
miserable,—there he sits, the forlorn old creature, one chill and
sombre day after another, gathering scanty coppers for his cakes,
apples, and candy,—there sits the old apple-dealer, in his threadbare
suit of snuff-color and gray and his grizzly stubble heard. See! he
folds his lean arms around his lean figure with that quiet sigh and
that scarcely perceptible shiver which are the tokens of his inward
state. I have him now. He and the steam fiend are each other’s
antipodes; the latter is the type of all that go ahead, and the old man
the representative of that melancholy class who by some sad witchcraft
are doomed never to share in the world’s exulting progress. Thus the
contrast between mankind and this desolate brother becomes picturesque,
and even sublime.
And now farewell, old friend! Little do you suspect that a student of
human life has made your character the theme of more than one solitary
and thoughtful hour. Many would say that you have hardly individuality
enough to be the object of your own self-love. How, then, can a
stranger’s eye detect anything in your mind and heart to study and to
wonder at? Yet, could I read but a tithe of what is written there, it
would be a volume of deeper and more comprehensive import than all that
the wisest mortals have given to the world; for the soundless depths of
the human soul and of eternity have an opening through your breast. God
be praised, were it only for your sake, that the present shapes of
human existence are not cast in iron nor hewn in everlasting adamant,
but moulded of the vapors that vanish away while the essence flits
upward to the infinite. There is a spiritual essence in this gray and
lean old shape that shall flit upward too. Yes; doubtless there is a
region where the life-long shiver will pass away from his being, and
that quiet sigh, which it has taken him so many years to breathe, will
be brought to a close for good and all.