Deformed in Body, His Cheerful Spirit Makes Him the Entertainer of
Princes.
A SCORE of years ago, seated on a bench in Bryant Park, a hungry lad
wept copious tears over his failure to gain a supper or a night’s
lodging. A peddler’s outfit lay beside him. Not a sale had he made that
day. His curiously diminutive body was neatly clad, but his heart was
heavy. He was dreadfully hungry, as only a boy can be.
“Oh, see the funny little man!” exclaimed a quartet of little girls, as
they trooped past the shrinking figure. “Mamma! Come and buy something
from him!”
Down the steps of a brown stone mansion came a young matron, curiosity
shining out of her handsome eyes. The boy looked up and smiled. The
lady did not buy anything, but her mother’s heart was touched, and
before she hurried home with her little girls, she gave him five cents.
Last winter, two members of the Lamb’s Club were about to part on the
club steps. One was “The Prince of Entertainers and the Entertainer of
Princes,” Marshall P. Wilder. The other was a distinguished lawyer.
“Come and dine with me to-night, Mr. Wilder,” said the latter. “You
have never accepted my hospitality, but you have no engagements for
to-night, so come along.”
Ten minutes later, the great entertainer was presented to the wife of
his host and to four beautiful young women.
A curious thrill passed over the guest as he looked into those charming
faces. They seemed familiar. A flash of memory carried him back to that
scene in the park. He turned to the hostess:—
“Do you remember,”—his voice trembled,—“a little chap in the park years
ago, to whom you were kind,—‘a funny little man,’ the children called
him, and you gave him five cents?”
“Yes, yes, I do remember that,—and you—?”
“I am the funny little man.”
It was indeed true. The hungry boy had not forgotten it, though wealth
and fame had come to him in the meanwhile. In a little private diary
that no one sees but himself, he has five new birth dates marked, those
of the mother and her four daughters. “Just to remember those who have
been kind to me,” is the only explanation on the cover of the book.
What a brightly interesting story is Wilder’s, anyway! Who else in
all this great, broad land has made such a record,—from a peddler’s
pack to a fortune of one hundred thousand dollars,—and all because
he is merry and bright and gay in spite of his physical drawbacks.
His nurse dropped him when he was an infant, but for years the injury
did not manifest itself. At three he was a bright baby, the pride of
the dear old father, Doctor Wilder, who still survives to enjoy his
son’s popularity in the world of amusement-makers. It was no fault of
the doctor that Marshall was obliged to go hungry in New York. Doctor
Wilder lived and practiced in Hartford, where his son ought to have
stayed, but he didn’t. At five he was handsome and well formed, but
at twelve he stopped growing. The boys began to tease him about his
diminutive stature.
“I don’t think I’ve grown very much since,—except in experience,” he
said the other day in the course of a morning chat in his handsome
bachelor apartments. “I thought, by leaving home, I might at least grow
up with the country.”
“But you didn’t grow, after all?”
“No, I haven’t found the country yet that can make me grow up with it.
I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with being a plain expansionist.”
[Mr. Wilder is nearly as broad as he is long.]
“How did you happen to choose the amusement profession?” I asked.