All that long afternoon he hung in feverish excitement around the door
of the museum. There was scarce a travelling show in Kentucky in those
days. It was not strange if to this idler of the streets, in whom
imagination was all-powerful, and in whose heart quivered ungovernable
yearnings for the heroic, the poetic, and the beautiful, this day of
the first exhibition of wax figures was the most memorable of his life.
It was so easy for everybody to go in who wished; so impossible for
him. Groups of gay ladies slipped their silver half-dollars through
the variegated meshes of their silken purses. The men came in jolly
twos and threes, and would sometimes draw out great rolls of bills.
Now a kind-faced farmer passed in, dropping into the hands of the
door-keeper a half-dollar for himself, and three quarters for three
sleek negroes that followed at his heels; and now a manufacturer with
a couple of apprentices--lads of David's age and friends of his. Poor
little fellow! at many a shop of the town he had begged to be taken as
an apprentice himself, but no one would have him because he was lame.
And now the people were beginning to pour out, and he hovered about
them, hoping in this way to get some idea of what was going on inside.
Once, with the courage of despair, he seized the arm of a lad as he
came out.
"Oh, Bobby, _tell_ me all about it!"
But Bobby shook him off, and skipped away to tell somebody else who
didn't want to hear.
After a while two sweet-faced ladies dressed in mourning appeared. As
they passed down the street he was standing on the sidewalk, and there
must have been something in his face to attract the attention of one of
them, for she paused, and in the gentlest manner said:
"My little man, how did you like the wax figures and the picture?"
"Oh, madam," he replied, his eyes filling, "I have not seen them!"
"But you will see them, I hope," she said, moving away, but bestowing
on him the lingering smile of bereft motherhood.
The twilight fell, and still he lingered, until, with a sudden
remorseful thought of his mother, he turned away and passed up the dark
street. His tongue was parched, there was a lump in his throat, and a
numb pain about his heart. Far up the street he paused and looked back.
A lantern had been swung out over the entrance of the museum, and the
people were still passing in.