PIECES OF MEN.
The convalescent patients at the hospital are not only permitted, but
encouraged, to take full advantage of the two greatest remedies in
nature’s pharmacœpea, fresh air and exercise. On the west side of the
main building, a long, substantially built stairway leads from the
various wards to the recreation grounds below. Here are planted trees,
grass in abundance, and benches here and there for the double purpose
of rest and shade. A little north of the center building and the fever
hospital is the convalescent-room, a large, airy building, furnished
inside with lounges, tables, chairs and the appurtenances for such
simple games as draughts and dominoes. The upper story is devoted to
the use of female patients. On fine days, however, the majority of the
inmates prefer a pipe outside. Although many of them are destitute of
funds, few appear to suffer from want of the magic weed. There is a sort
of freemasonry among smokers, and the stingiest of men has scarcely
the heart to refuse an occasional handful of tobacco to his more needy
fellow-sufferer. And how some of the poor battered wrecks enjoy the
luxury, even though the pipe be a short and rank dhudeen, and its
contents the dryest and most bitter of five-cent plug!
That man in the blue coat, reaching nearly to his knees, is a notable
example. He is
THIN AND HAGGARD,
and his ghost-like aspect is heightened by the sleeves pinned up at the
shoulders of his dilapidated garment. If you ask him, he will tell you
he has not six inches of arms to his whole body. He was knocked down by
an engine some months ago while he was intoxicated. He fell length-wise,
with an arm extended over each rail. To him the pleasure of an occasional
pipe is perhaps enhanced by the difficulty which attends the obtaining of
it. It is quite a little study to watch how the poor devil goes about the
process. Some kindly patient, acceding to his request for a match, places
one between his lips. The maimed man hops joyfully off to a second,
whom he has noticed to be the possessor of a fine T. &. B. plug, almost
intact. Somebody fishes the suppliant’s pipe out of his pocket, fills it
with the crumbled ’baccy, and, less fastidious than most readers would
care to be, places the dirty stem in his own mouth, and with a few sturdy
puffs, sets the contents glowing bravely. And now the armless man, his
cutty fairly inserted in his lips, stalks off to an adjacent seat, secure
of happiness for at least one sunny half-hour. Perhaps, mutilated as he
is, and past sharing in what most men deem the active enjoyments of life,
his mind is more at ease now than it has been for many a day. His eye has
lost the old
FURTIVE LOOK OF THE TRAMP,
who never dared to strengthen his supplications by a straightforward
gaze; he is no longer a wanderer and homeless vagrant on the face of an
earth whose spring-time blossoms had no message for him or his kind.
He has forgotten already the cold nights passed in the streets or in
the parks; the questionable benefit of a troubled sleep in some frowsy
ten-cent lodging-house; the pitiful struggle, reversed day after day, to
obtain enough food to keep soul and body together. For the rest of his
life he doubtless counts on being beyond the reach of actual want. He
will be cared for by some of our benevolent societies and received into
some charitable institution where the balance of his chequered life will
be quietly spent, undisturbed by thoughts of a past which had nothing in
it worthy of regret.
That man on the veranda is an old soldier. Like most of his class, he
delights in nothing so much as to gather around him a little crowd of
patient and interested listeners. He still cherishes a fine
CONTEMPT FOR CIVILIANS,
slightly modified by the present exigencies of his condition, which
involves certain obligations to the despised class, in the way of tobacco
and such like minor accommodations. He has been in India, Afghanistan,
Abyssinia, Zululand, and last, but not least, the Curragh of Kildare.
Curiously enough, it is of this last that his reminiscences are most
lively, and its recollections are evidently cherished more lovingly than
those of foreign lands. If he tells you anything about these last, you
need not hope to hear much of unfamiliar customs, of strange sights, of
hair-breadth ’scapes; your old soldier is seldom a great observer or
a graphic reciter of stirring events. Barrack-room pranks, guard-room
escapades, and long dialogues with officers, in which the narrator
invariably comes out ahead, are the staple of his talk. His wooden leg
does not seem to cause him a moment’s trouble, and he tilts it up on an
adjacent chair as jauntily as if it were a souvenir of Isandhula, instead
of a legacy from a drunken brawl in front of a Lombard street shanty. It
is to be feared that this ancient warrior is a bit of a fraud; but he is
such a light-hearted, garrulous, transparently mendacious old party that
one is not inclined to be too hard on his shortcomings.
This old man whom you saw move into a chair a minute ago is suffering
from no specific disease. Behind the tightly drawn skin can be plainly
discerned the lineaments of the fleshless skull. As he sits his eyes
are the only features that save the face from being a perfect likeness
of that of a corpse. When he moved to this seat his movements reminded
you of a very jerky automaton, so stiff were his limbs and so wooden his
body. I do not know one fact about the history of this old fellow in his
shabby garments, but certain I am that if it were skilfully treated there
would be
MORE LESSONS TO BE DERIVED
from it than from any one of the numerous “lives” of great men which
flood the book stores. “Failure” is written in every wrinkle of his
clumsy clothing and in the sad lines of his face. It seems to me that the
life history of such a failure would be as interesting as the details of
a career of one whose whole life might be summed up in the word success.
But the particulars of the existence of such men are buried with their
bodies in the odd corner of a churchyard, and we can only guess at the
foolishness, the blunders and the sins which have withered this man’s
life. As I said before, this specimen of hospital flotsam and jetsam is
suffering from no particular or specific disease, and there are a dozen
around these grounds of which the same could be said. They bear about a
blighted vitality which the romance-writers call a broken heart.
But we are looking merely at the sad side of the convalescent. There are
many happy little scenes to be seen about. Men who have long lain on
beds of pain, who for the first time in months have wandered out under
the summer sky and sniffed the strong odor of the budding trees and
blooming flowers. One almost envies these fellows the superior beauties
they perceive in nature’s show. Others are being visited by friends and
talking hopefully of going out soon and resuming their places amongst the
toiling sons of men.