He was short and thick-set: round-bodied--a bulbous round, like an
onion--with alternate layers of waistcoats, two generally, the under one
of cotton duck showing a selvage of white, and the outer one of velvet
or cloth showing a pattern of dots, stripes, or checks, depending on the
prevailing style at the wholesale clothier's where he traded, the whole
topped by a sprouting green necktie. Outside this waistcoat drooped a
heavy gold chain connecting with a biscuit-shaped watch, the under
convex of its lid emblazoned with his monogram in high relief, and the
upper concave decorated with a photograph of his best girl.
The face of this inviting and correctly attired young gentleman was
likewise round; the ends of the mouth curving upward, not
downward--upward, with a continuous smile in each corner, even when the
mouth was shut, as if the laugh inside of him were still tickling his
funny-bone and the corners of the mouth were recording the vibrations.
These uncontrollable movements connected with other hilarious wriggles
puckering with merriment under the pupils of his two keen, searching
eyes, bright as the lens of a camera and as sensitive and absorbing.
Nothing escaped these eyes--nothing that was worth wasting a plate on.
Men and their uses, women and their needs, fellow-travellers with
desirable information who were cutting into the bulbous-shaped man's
territory, were all focussed by these eyes and deluded by this mouth
into giving up their best cash discounts and any other information
needed. Some hayseeds might get left, but not Sam Makin.
"Well, I guess not! No flies on Samuel! Up and dressed every minute and
'next' every time!" Such was the universal tribute.
This knowledge did not end with humans. Sam knew the best train out and
in, and the best seat in it; the best hotel in town and the best table
in the dining-room, as well as the best dish on the bill of fare--not
of one town, but of hundreds all over his territory. That is what he
paid for, and that was what he intended to have.
When Sam was on the road, in addition to his grip--which held a change
of waistcoats (Sam did his finest work with a waistcoat), some collars
and a couple of shirts, one to wash and the other to wear, a tooth-brush
and a comb--he held the brass checks of four huge trunks made of rawhide
and strapped and cornered with iron. These went by weight and were paid
for at schedule prices. When a baggage-master overweighed these trunks
an ounce and charged accordingly there came an uncomfortable moment and
an interchange of opinions, followed by an apology and a deduction, Sam
standing by. Only on occasions like these did the smiles disappear from
the corners of Sam's mouth.
Whenever these ironclads, however, were elevated to the upper floor of a
hotel, and Sam began to make himself at home, the wriggles playing
around the corners of his mouth extended quite up his smiling cheeks
with the movement of little lizards darting over a warm stone.
And his own welcome from everybody in the house was quite as cordial and
hilarious.
"Hello, Sam, old man! Number 31's all ready--mail's on your bureau."
This from the clerk.
"Oh! is it you ag'in, Mister Sam? Oh--go 'long wid ye! Now stop that!"
This from the chambermaid.
"It's good to git a look at ye! And them box-cars o' yourn ain't no
bird-cages! Yes, sir--thank ye, sir." This from the porter.
But it was when the trunks were opened and their contents spread out on
the portable and double-up-able pine tables, and Bullock & Sons' (of
Spring Falls, Mass.) latest and best assortment of domestic cutlery was
exposed to view, and the room became crowded with Sam's customers, that
the smile on his face became a veritable coruscation of wriggles and
darts; scurrying around his lips, racing in circles from his nose to his
ears, tumbling over each other around the corners of his pupils and
beneath the lids; Sam talking all the time, the keen eyes boring, or
taking impressions, the sales increasing every moment.
[Illustration: The room became crowded with Sam's customers.]
When the last man was bowed out and the hatches of the ironclads were
again shut, anyone could see that Sam had skimmed the cream of the town.
The hayseeds might have what was left. Then he would go downstairs,
square himself before a long, sloping desk, open a non-stealable
inkstand, turn on an electric light, sift out half a dozen sheets of
hotel paper, and tell Bullock & Sons all about it.
On this trip Sam's ironclads were not wide open on a hotel table, but
tight-locked aboard a Fall River steamer. Sam had a customer in Fall
River, good for fifty dozen of B. & S.'s No. 18 scissors, $9--10 per
cent. off and 5 more for cash. The ironclads had been delivered on the
boat by the transfer company. Sam had taken a street-car. There was a
block, half an hour's delay, and Sam arrived on the string-piece as the
gangplank was being hauled aboard.
"Look out, young feller!" said the wharf man; "you're left."
"Look again, you Su-markee!" (nobody knows what Sam means by this
epithet), and the drummer threw his leg over the rail of the slowly
moving steamer and dropped on her deck as noiselessly as a cat. This
done, he lifted a cigar from a bunch stuffed in the outside pocket of
the prevailing waistcoat, bit off the end, swept a match along the seam
of his "pants" (Sam's own), lit the end of the domestic, blew a ring
toward the fast-disappearing wharfman, and turned to get his ticket and
state-room, neither of which had he secured.
Just here Mr. Samuel Makin, of Bullock & Sons, manufacturers, etc.,
etc., received a slight shock.
There was a ticket-office and a clerk, and a rack of state-room keys,
just as Sam had expected, but there was also a cue of passengers--a
long, winding snake of a cue beginning at the window framing the clerk's
face and ending on the upper deck. This crawling line of expectants was
of an almost uniform color, so far as hats were concerned--most of them
dark blue and all of them banded about with a gold cord and acorns. The
shoulders varied a little, showing a shoulder-strap here and there, and
once in a while the top of a medal pinned to a breast pressed tight
against some comrade's back. Lower down, whenever the snake parted for
an instant, could be seen an armless sleeve and a pair of crutches. As
the head of this cue reached the window a key was passed out and the
fortunate owner broke away, the coveted prize in his hand, and another
expectant took his place.
Sam watched the line for a moment and then turned to a by-stander:
"What's going on here?--a camp-meeting?"
"No. Grand Army of the Republic--going to Boston for two days. Ain't
been a berth aboard here for a week. Sofas are going at two dollars, and
pillows at seventy-five cents."
Sam's mind reverted for a moment to the look on the wharfman's face, and
the corners of his mouth began to play. He edged nearer to the window
and caught the clerk's eye.
"No hurry, Billy," and Sam winked, and all the lizards darted out and
began racing around the corners of his mouth. "'Tend to these gents
first--I'll call later. Number 15, ain't it?"
The clerk moved the upper lid of his left eye a hair's breadth, took a
key from the rack and slipped it under a pile of papers on his desk.
Sam caught the vibration of the lid, tilted his domestic at a higher
angle, and went out to view the harbor and the Statue of Liberty and the
bridge--any old thing that pleased him. Then this expression slipped
from between his lips:
"That was one on the hayseeds! Cold day when you're left, Samuel!"
When supper-time arrived the crowd was so great that checks were issued
for two tables, an hour apart. When the captain of the boat and the
ranking officer of the G. A. R. filed in, followed by a hungry mob, a
lone man was discovered seated at a table nearest the galley where the
dishes were hottest and best served. It was Sam. He had come in through
the pantry, and the head steward--Sam had known him for years, nearly as
long as he had known the clerk--had attended to the other details, one
of which was a dish of soft-shell crabs, only enough for half a dozen
passengers, and which toothsome viands the head steward scratched off
the bill of fare the moment they had been swallowed.
That night Sam sat up on deck until the moon rose over Middle Ground
Light, talking shop to another drummer, and then he started for
state-room Number 15 with an upper and lower berth (both Sam's),
including a set of curtains for each berth--a chair, a washbowl,
life-preserver, and swinging light. On his way to this Oriental boudoir
he passed through the saloon. It was occupied by a miscellaneous
assortment of human beings--men, women and children in all positions of
discomfort--some sprawled out on the stationary sofas, some flat on the
carpet, their backs to the panelling; others nodding on the staircase,
determined to sit it out until daylight. On the deck below, close
against the woodwork, rolled up in their coats, was here and there a
veteran. They had slept that way many a time in the old days with the
dull sound of a distant battery lulling them to sleep--they rather liked
it.
The next morning, when the crowd swarmed out to board the train at Fall
River, Sam tarried a moment at the now deserted ticket-office, smiled
blandly at Billy, and laid a greenback on the sill.
"What's the matter, old man, with my holding on to Number 15 till I come
back? This boat goes back to New York day after to-morrow, doesn't she?"
Billy nodded, picked up a lead-pencil and put a cross against Number 15;
then he handed Sam back his change and the key.
All that day in Fall River Sam sold cutlery, the ironclads doing
service. The next day he went to Boston on a later train than the crowd,
and had almost a whole car to himself. The third day he returned to Fall
River an hour ahead of the special train carrying the Grand Army, and
again with half the car to himself. When the special rolled into the
depot and was shunted on to the steamboat dock, it looked, in
perspective from where Sam stood, like a tenement-house on a hot
Sunday--every window and door stuffed with heads, arms, and legs.
Sam studied the mob for a few minutes, felt in his "pants" pocket for
his key, gave it one or two loving pats with his fingers, and took a
turn up the dock where it was cooler and where the human avalanche
wouldn't run over him.
When the tenement-house was at last unloaded, it was discovered that it
had contained twice as many people as had filled it two days before.
They had gone to Boston by different lines, and being now tired out and
penniless were returning home by the cheapest and most comfortable
route. They wanted the salt zephyrs of the sea to fan them to sleep, and
the fish and clams and other marine delicacies so lavishly served on the
Fall River Line as a tonic for their depleted systems.
Not the eager, expectant crowd that with band playing and flags flying
had swept out of the depot the day of the advance on Boston! Not that
kind of a crowd at all, but a bedraggled, forlorn, utterly exhausted and
worn-out crowd; children crying, and pulled along by one arm or hugged
to perspiring breasts; uniforms yellow with dust; men struggling to keep
the surging mass from wives who had hardly strength left for another
step; flags furled; bass drum with a hole in it; band silent.
Sam looked on and again patted his key. The hayseeds had aired their
collars and had "got it in the neck." No G. A. R. for Samuel; no
excursions, no celebrations, no picnics for him. He had all his teeth,
and an extra wisdom molar for Sundays.
The contents of the tenement now began to press through the closed shed
on their way to the gangplank, and Sam, realizing the size of the mob,
and fearing that half of them, including himself, would be left on the
dock, slipped into the current and was swept over the temporary bridge,
across the deck and up the main staircase leading to the saloon--up to
the top step.
Here the current stopped.
Ahead of him was a solid mass, and behind him a pressure that increased
every moment and that threatened to push him off his feet. He could get
neither forward nor back.
A number of other people were in the same predicament. One was a young
woman who, in sheer exhaustion, had seated herself upon the top step
level with the floor of the saloon. Her hair was dishevelled, her bonnet
awry, her pretty silk cape covered with dust. On her lap lay a boy of
five years of age. Close to her--so close that Sam's shoulder pressed
against his--stood a man in an army hat with the cord and acorn
encircling the crown. On his breast was pinned a medal. Sam was so close
he could read the inscription: "Fair Oaks," it said, and then followed
the date and the name and number of the regiment. Sam knew what it
meant: he had had an uncle who went to the war, and who wore a medal.
His sword hung over the mantel in his mother's sitting-room at home. The
man before him had, no doubt, been equally brave: he had saved the
colors the day of the fight, perhaps, or had carried a wounded comrade
out of range of a rifle pit, or had thrown an unexploded shell clear of
a tent--some little thing like that.
Sam had never seen a medal that close before, and his keen lens absorbed
every detail--the ribbon, the way it was fastened to the cloth, the
broad, strong chest behind it. Then he looked into the man's firm,
determined, kindly face with its piercing black eyes and closely
trimmed mustache, and then over his back and legs. He was wondering now
where the ball had struck him, and what particular part of his person
had been sacrificed in earning so distinguishing a mark of his country's
gratitude.
Then he turned to the woman, and a slight frown gathered on his face
when he realized that she alone had blocked his way to the open air and
the deck beyond. He could step over any number of men whenever the mass
of human beings crushing his ribs and shoulder-blades began once more to
move, but a woman--a tired woman--with a boy--out on a jamboree like
this, with----
Here Sam stopped, and instinctively felt around among his loose change
for his key. Number 15 was all right, any way.
At the touch of the key Sam's face once more resumed its contented look,
the lizards darting out to play, as usual.
The boy gave a sharp cry.
The woman put her hand on the child's head, smoothed it softly, and
looked up in the face of the man with the medal.
"And you can get no state-room, George?" she asked in a plaintive tone.
"State-room, Kitty! Why, we couldn't get a pillow. I tried to get a
shake-down some'ers, but half these people won't get six feet of space
to lie down in, let alone a bed."
"Well, I don't know what we're going to do. Freddie's got a raging
fever; I can't hold him here in my arms all night."
Sam shifted his weight to the other foot and concentrated his camera.
The man with the medal and the woman with the boy were evidently man and
wife. Sam had no little Freddie of his own--no Kitty, in fact--not
yet--no home really that he could call his own--never more than a month
at a time. A Pullman lower or a third story front in a
three-dollar-a-day hotel was often his bed, and a marble-top table with
iron legs screwed to the floor of a railroad restaurant and within sound
of a big-voiced gateman bawling out the trains, generally his board.
Freddie looked like a nice boy, and she looked like a nice woman. Man
was O. K., anyhow--didn't give medals of honor to any other kind. Both
of them fools, though, or they wouldn't have brought that kid out----
Again the child turned its head and uttered a faint cry, this time as if
in pain.
Sam freed his arm from the hip bone of the passenger on his left, and
said in a sympathetic voice--unusual for Sam:
"Is this your boy?" The drummer was not a born conversationalist outside
of trade matters, but he had to begin somewhere.
"Yes, sir." The woman looked up and a flickering smile broke over her
lips. "Our only one, sir."
"Sick, ain't he?"
"Yes, sir; got a high fever."
The man with the medal now wrenched his shoulder loose and turned half
round toward Sam. Sam never looked so jolly nor so trustworthy: the
lizards were in full play all over his cheeks.
"Freddie's all tired out, comrade. I didn't want to bring him, but Kitty
begged so. It was crossing the Common, in that heat--your company must
have felt it when you come along. The sun beat down terrible on
Freddie--that's what used him up."
Sam felt a glow start somewhere near his heels, struggle up through his
spinal column and end in his fingers. Being called "comrade" by a man
with a medal on his chest was, somehow, better than being mistaken for a
millionaire.
"Can't you get a state-room?" Sam asked. Of course the man couldn't--he
had heard him say so. The drummer was merely sparring for time--trying
to adjust himself to a new situation--one rare with him. Meanwhile the
key of Number 15 was turning in his pocket as uneasily as a grain of
corn on a hot shovel.
The man shook his head in a hopeless way. The woman replied in his
stead--she, too, had fallen a victim to Sam's smile.
"No, sir, that's the worst of it," she said in a choking voice. "If we
only had a pillow we could put Freddie's head on it and I could find
some place where he might be comfortable. I don't much mind for myself,
but it's dreadful about Freddie--" and she bent her head over the child.
Sam thought of the upper berth in Number 15 with two pillows and the
lower berth with two more. By this time the key of Number 15 had reached
a white heat.
"Well, I guess I can help out," Sam blurted. "I've got a state-room--got
two berths in it. Just suit you, come to think of it. Here"--and he
dragged out the key--"Number 15--main deck--you can't miss it. Put the
kid there and bunk in yourselves--" and he dropped the key in the
woman's lap, his voice quivering, a lump in his throat the size of a
hen's egg.
"Oh, sir, we couldn't!" cried the woman.
"No, comrade," interrupted the man, "we can't do that; we----"
Sam heard, but he did not tarry. With one of his nimble springs he
lunged through the crowd, his big fat shoulders breasting the mob,
wormed himself out into the air; slipped down a ladder to the deck
below, interviewed the steward, borrowed a blanket and a pillow and
proceeded to hunt up the ironclads. If the worst came to the worst he
would string them in a row, spread his blanket on top and roll up for
the night. Their height would keep him off the deck, and the roof above
them would protect him from the weather should a squall come up.
This done, he drew out a domestic from the upper pocket, bit off the
end, slid a match along the well-worn seam and blew a ring out to sea.
"Couldn't let that kid sit up all night, you know," he muttered to
himself. "Not your Uncle Joseph: no sir-ee--" and he wedged his way back
to the deck again.
An hour later, with his blanket over his shoulder and his pillow under
his arm, Sam again sought his ironclads. Steward, chief cook,
clerk--everything had failed. The trunks with the pillow and blanket
were all that was left.
It was after nine o'clock now, and the summer twilight had faded and
only the steamer's lanterns shone on the heads of the people. As he
passed the companion-way he ran into a man in an army hat. Backing away
in apology he caught the glint of a medal. Then came a familiar voice:
"Comrade, where you been keeping yourself? I've been hunting you all
over the boat. You're the man gave me the key, ain't you?"
"_Sure!_ How's the kid? Is he all right? Didn't I tell you you'd find
that up-to-date? It's a cracker-jack, that room is; I've had it before.
Tell me, how's the kid and the wife--kind o' comfy, ain't they?"
"Both are all right. Freddie's in the lower berth and Kitty sitting by
him. He's asleep, and the fever's going down; ain't near so hot as he
was. You're white, comrade, all the way through." The man's big hand
closed over Sam's in a warm embrace. "I thank you for it. You did us a
good turn and we ain't going to forget you."
Sam kept edging away; what hurt him most was being thanked.
"But that ain't what I've been hunting you for, comrade," the man
continued. "You didn't get a state-room, did you?"
"No," said Sam, shaking his head and still backing away. "But I'm all
right--got a pillow and a blanket--see!" and he held them up. "You
needn't worry, old man. This ain't nothing to the way I sleep
sometimes. I'm one of those fellows can bunk in anywhere." Sam was now
in sight of his trunks.
"Yes," answered the man, still keeping close to Sam, "that's just what
we thought would happen; that's what _does_ worry us, and worry us bad.
You ain't going to bunk in anywhere--not by a blamed sight! Kitty and I
have been talking it over, and what Kitty says goes! There's two bunks
in that state-room; Kitty's in one 'longside of the boy, and you got to
sleep in the other."
"Me!--well--but--why, man!" Sam's astonishment took his breath away.
"You got to!" The man meant it.
"But I won't!" said Sam in a determined voice.
"Well, then, out goes Kitty and the boy! You think I'm going to sleep in
your bunk, and have you stretched out here on a plank some'ers! No, sir!
You _got_ to, I tell you!"
"Why, see here!" Sam was floundering about now as helplessly as if he
had been thrown overboard with his hands tied.
"There ain't no seeing about it, comrade." The man was close to him
now, his eyes boring into Sam's with a look in them as if he was taking
aim.
"You say I've got to get into the upper berth?" asked Sam in a baffled
tone.
"Yes."