"you are a very fortunate man. The law bids me send you to prison for
ten years, and but for a miraculous chance would have condemned you to
death. But the man you maimed for life pleads for you, and the jury
that convicted you begs that you go free. The Court remembers what you
have suffered and it knows the plight of your family, upon whom the
heaviest burden of your punishment would fall. Go, then, to your home.
And to you, gentlemen, a happy holiday such as you have given him and
his! This court stands adjourned."
The voice of the crier was lost in a storm of applause. The jury
rose to their feet and cheered judge, complainant, and defendant.
Portoghese, who had stood as one dazed, raised eyes that brimmed with
tears to the bench and to his old neighbor. He understood at last.
Ammella threw his arm around him and kissed him on both cheeks, his
disfigured face beaming with joy. One of the jurymen, a Jew, put his
hand impulsively in his pocket, emptied it into his hat, and passed the
hat to his neighbor. All the others followed his example. The court
officer dropped in half a dollar as he stuffed its contents into the
happy Italian's pocket. "For little Vito," he said, and shook his hand.
"Ah!" said the foreman of the jury, looking after the reunited friends
leaving the court-room arm in arm; "it is good to live in New York. A
merry Christmas to you, Judge!"
THE SNOW BABIES' CHRISTMAS
"All aboard for Coney Island!" The gates of the bridge train slammed,
the whistle shrieked, and the cars rolled out past rows of houses
that grew smaller and lower to Jim's wondering eyes, until they quite
disappeared beneath the track. He felt himself launching forth above
the world of men, and presently he saw, deep down below, the broad
stream with ships and ferry-boats and craft going different ways, just
like the tracks and traffic in a big, wide street; only so far away was
it all that the pennant on the topmast of a vessel passing directly
under the train seemed as if it did not belong to his world at all. Jim
followed the white foam in the wake of the sloop with fascinated stare,
until a puffing tug bustled across its track and wiped it out. Then
he settled back in his seat with a sigh that had been pent up within
him twenty long, wondering minutes since he limped down the Subway at
Twenty-third Street. It was his first journey abroad.
Jim had never been to the Brooklyn Bridge before. It is doubtful if he
had ever heard of it. If he had, it was as of something so distant,
so unreal, as to have been quite within the realm of fairyland, had
his life experience included fairies. It had not. Jim's frail craft
had been launched in Little Italy, half a dozen miles or more up-town,
and there it had been moored, its rovings being limited at the outset
by babyhood and the tenement, and later on by the wreck that had made
of him a castaway for life. A mysterious something had attacked one
of Jim's ankles, and, despite ointments and lotions prescribed by the
wise women of the tenement, had eaten into the bone and stayed there.
At nine the lad was a cripple with one leg shorter than the other by
two or three inches, with a stepmother, a squalling baby to mind for
his daily task, hard words and kicks for his wage; for Jim was an
unprofitable investment, promising no returns, but, rather, constant
worry and outlay. The outlook was not the most cheering in the world.
But, happily, Jim was little concerned about things to come. He lived
in the day that is, fighting his way as he could with a leg and a half
and a nickname,--"Gimpy" they called him for his limp,--and getting
out of it what a fellow so handicapped could. After all, there were
compensations. When the gang scattered before the cop, it did not occur
to him to lay any of the blame to Gimpy, though the little lad with
the pinched face and sharp eyes had, in fact, done scouting duty most
craftily. It was partly in acknowledgment of such services, partly as a
concession to his sharper wits, that Gimpy was tacitly allowed a seat
in the councils of the Cave Gang, though in the far "kid" corner. He
limped through their campaigns with them, learned to swim by "dropping
off the dock" at the end of the street into the swirling tide, and
once nearly lost his life when one of the bigger boys dared him to
run through an election bonfire like his able-bodied comrades. Gimpy
started to do it at once, but stumbled and fell, and was all but burned
to death before the other boys could pull him out. This act of bravado
earned him full membership in the gang, despite his tender years; and,
indeed, it is doubtful if in all that region there was a lad of his age
as tough and loveless as Gimpy. The one affection of his barren life
was the baby that made it slavery by day. But, somehow, there was that
in its chubby foot groping for him in its baby sleep, or in the little
round head pillowed on his shoulder, that more than made up for it all.
Ill luck was surely Gimpy's portion. It was not a month after he had
returned to the haunts of the gang, a battle-scarred veteran now since
his encounter with the bonfire, when "the Society's" officers held up
the huckster's wagon from which he was crying potatoes with his thin,
shrill voice, which somehow seemed to convey the note of pain that
was the prevailing strain of his life. They made Gimpy a prisoner,
limp, stick, and all. The inquiry that ensued as to his years and home
setting, the while Gimpy was undergoing the incredible experience of
being washed and fed regularly three times a day, set in motion the
train of events that was at present hurrying him toward Coney Island
in midwinter, with a snow-storm draping the land in white far and
near, as the train sped seaward. He gasped as he reviewed the hurrying
event of the week: the visit of the doctor from Sea Breeze, who had
scrutinized his ankle as if he expected to find some of the swag of the
last raid hidden somewhere about it. Gimpy never took his eyes off him
during the examination. No word or cry escaped him when it hurt most,
but his bright, furtive eyes never left the doctor or lost one of his
movements. "Just like a weasel caught in a trap," said the doctor,
speaking of his charge afterward.
But when it was over, he clapped Gimpy on the shoulder and said it was
all right. He was sure he could help.
"Have him at the Subway to-morrow at twelve," was his parting
direction; and Gimpy had gone to bed to dream that he was being dragged
down the stone stairs by three helmeted men, to be fed to a monster
breathing fire and smoke at the foot of the stairs.
Now his wondering journey was disturbed by a cheery voice beside him.
"Well, bub, ever see that before?" and the doctor pointed to the gray
ocean line dead ahead. Gimpy had not seen it, but he knew well enough
what it was.
"It's the river," he said, "that I cross when I go to Italy."
"Right!" and his companion held out a helping hand as the train pulled
up at the end of the journey. "Now let's see how we can navigate."
And, indeed, there was need of seeing about it. Right from the step
of the train the snow lay deep, a pathless waste burying street
and sidewalk out of sight, blocking the closed and barred gate
of Dreamland, of radiant summer memory, and stalling the myriad
hobby-horses of shows that slept their long winter sleep. Not a whinny
came on the sharp salt breeze. The strident voice of the carpenter's
saw and the rat-tat-tat of his hammer alone bore witness that there
was life somewhere in the white desert. The doctor looked in dismay at
Gimpy's brace and high shoe, and shook his head.
"He never can do it. Hello, there!" An express wagon had come into view
around the corner of the shed. "Here's a job for you." And before he
could have said Jack Robinson, Gimpy felt himself hoisted bodily into
the wagon and deposited there like any express package. From somewhere
a longish something that proved to be a Christmas-tree, very much
wrapped and swathed about, came to keep him company. The doctor climbed
up by the driver, and they were off. Gimpy recalled with a dull sense
of impending events in which for once he had no shaping hand, as he
rubbed his ears where the bitter blast pinched, that to-morrow was
Christmas.
A strange group was that which gathered about the supper-table at Sea
Breeze that night. It would have been sufficiently odd to any one
anywhere; but to Gimpy, washed, in clean, comfortable raiment, with
his bad foot set in a firm bandage, and for once no longer sore with
the pain that had racked his frame from babyhood, it seemed so unreal
that once or twice he pinched himself covertly to see if he were really
awake. They came weakly stumping with sticks and crutches and on club
feet, the lame and the halt, the children of sorrow and suffering from
the city slums, and stood leaning on crutch or chair for support while
they sang their simple grace; but neither in their clear childish
voices nor yet in the faces that were turned toward Gimpy in friendly
scrutiny as the last comer, was there trace of pain. Their cheeks were
ruddy and their eyes bright with the health of outdoors, and when
they sang about the "Frog in the Pond," in response to a spontaneous
demand, laughter bubbled over around the table. Gimpy, sizing his
fellow-boarders up according to the standards of the gang, with the
mental conclusion that he "could lick the bunch," felt a warm little
hand worming its way into his, and, looking into a pair of trustful
baby eyes, choked with a sudden reminiscent pang, but smiled back at
his friend and felt suddenly at home. Little Ellen, with the pervading
affections, had added him to her family of brothers. What honors were
in store for him in that relation Gimpy never guessed. Ellen left no
one out. When summer came again she enlarged the family further by
adopting the President of the United States as her papa, when he came
visiting to Sea Breeze; and by rights Gimpy should have achieved a pull
such as would have turned the boss of his ward green with envy.
It appeared speedily that something unusual was on foot. There was a
subdued excitement among the children which his experience diagnosed
at first flush as the symptoms of a raid. But the fact that in all
the waste of snow on the way over he had seen nothing rising to the
apparent dignity of candy-shop or grocery-store made him dismiss
the notion as untenable. Presently unfamiliar doings developed. The
children who could write scribbled notes on odd sheets of paper, which
the nurses burned in the fireplace with solemn incantations. Something
in the locked dining-room was an object of pointed interest. Things
were going on there, and expeditions to penetrate the mystery were
organized at brief intervals, and as often headed off by watchful
nurses.
When, finally, the children were gotten upstairs and undressed, from
the headposts of each of thirty-six beds there swung a little stocking,
limp and yawning with mute appeal. Gimpy had "caught on" by this time:
it was a wishing-bee, and old Santa Claus was supposed to fill the
stockings with what each had most desired. The consultation over, baby
George had let him into the game. Baby George did not know enough to do
his own wishing, and the thirty-five took it in hand while he was being
put to bed.
"Let's wish for some little dresses for him," said big Mariano, who was
the baby's champion and court of last resort; "that's what he needs."
And it was done. Gimpy smiled a little disdainfully at the credulity of
the "kids." The Santa Claus fake was out of date a long while in his
tenement. But he voted for baby George's dresses, all the same, and
even went to the length of recording his own wish for a good baseball
bat. Gimpy was coming on.
Going to bed in that queer place fairly "stumped" Gimpy. "Peelin'"
had been the simplest of processes in Little Italy. Here they pulled
a fellow's clothes off only to put on another lot, heavier every way,
with sweater and hood and flannel socks and mittens to boot, as if the
boy were bound for a tussle with the storm outside rather than for
his own warm bed. And so, in fact, he was. For no sooner had he been
tucked under the blankets, warm and snug, than the nurses threw open
all the windows, every one, and let the gale from without surge in and
through as it listed; and so they left them. Gimpy shivered as he felt
the frosty breath of the ocean nipping his nose, and crept under the
blanket for shelter. But presently he looked up and saw the other boys
snoozing happily like so many little Eskimos equipped for the North
Pole, and decided to keep them company. For a while he lay thinking of
the strange things that had happened that day, since his descent into
the Subway. If the gang could see him now. But it seemed far away, with
all his past life--farther than the river with the ships deep down
below. Out there upon the dark waters, in the storm, were they sailing
now, and all the lights of the city swallowed up in gloom? Presently he
heard through it all the train roaring far off in the Subway and many
hurrying feet on the stairs. The iron gates clanked--and he fell asleep
with the song of the sea for his lullaby. Mother Nature had gathered
her child to her bosom, and the slum had lost in the battle for a life.
The clock had not struck two when from the biggest boy's bed in the
corner there came in a clear, strong alto the strains of "Ring, ring,
happy bells!" and from every room childish voices chimed in. The nurses
hurried to stop the chorus with the message that it was yet five hours
to daylight. They were up, trimming the tree in the dining-room; at
the last moment the crushing announcement had been made that the candy
had been forgotten, and a midnight expedition had set out for the city
through the storm to procure it. A semblance of order was restored,
but cat naps ruled after that, till, at day-break, a gleeful shout
from Ellen's bed proclaimed that Santa Claus had been there, in very
truth, and had left a dolly in her stocking. It was the signal for
such an uproar as had not been heard on that beach since Port Arthur
fell for the last time upon its defenders three months before. From
thirty-six stockings came forth a veritable army of tops, balls, wooden
animals of unknown pedigree, oranges, music-boxes, and cunning little
pocket-books, each with a shining silver quarter in, love-tokens of one
in the great city whose heart must have been light with happy dreams
in that hour. Gimpy drew forth from his stocking a very able-bodied
baseball bat and considered it with a stunned look. Santa Claus was a
fake, but the bat--there was no denying that, and he _had_ wished for
one the very last thing before he fell asleep!
Daylight struggled still with a heavy snow-squall when the signal was
given for the carol "Christmas time has come again," and the march down
to breakfast. That march! On the third step the carol was forgotten
and the band broke into one long cheer that was kept up till the door
of the dining-room was reached. At the first glimpse within, baby
George's wail rose loud and grievous: "My chair! my chair!" But it died
in a shriek of joy as he saw what it was that had taken its place.
There stood the Christmas-tree, one mass of shining candles, and silver
and gold, and angels with wings, and wondrous things of colored paper
all over it from top to bottom. Gimpy's eyes sparkled at the sight,
skeptic though he was at nine; and in the depths of his soul he came
over, then and there, to Santa Claus, to abide forever--only he did not
know it yet.
To make the children eat any breakfast, with three gay sleds waiting to
take the girls out in the snow, was no easy matter; but it was done at
last, and they swarmed forth for a holiday in the open. All days are
spent in the open at Sea Breeze,--even the school is a tent,--and very
cold weather only shortens the brief school hour; but this day was to
be given over to play altogether. Winter it was "for fair," but never
was coasting enjoyed on New England hills as these sledding journeys on
the sands where the surf beat in with crash of thunder. The sea itself
had joined in making Christmas for its little friends. The day before,
a regiment of crabs had come ashore and surrendered to the cook at Sea
Breeze. Christmas morn found the children's "floor"--they called the
stretch of clean, hard sand between high-water mark and the surf-line
by that name--filled with gorgeous shells and pebbles, and strange
fishes left there by the tide overnight. The fair-weather friends who
turn their backs upon old ocean with the first rude blasts of autumn
little know what wonderful surprises it keeps for those who stand by it
in good and in evil report.
When the very biggest turkey that ever strutted in barnyard was
discovered steaming in the middle of the dinner-table and the report
went round in whispers that ice-cream had been seen carried in pails,
and when, in response to a pull at the bell, Matron Thomsen ushered in
a squad of smiling mamas and papas to help eat the dinner, even Gimpy
gave in to the general joy, and avowed that Christmas was "bully."
Perhaps his acceptance of the fact was made easier by a hasty survey of
the group of papas and mamas, which assured him that his own were not
among them. A fleeting glimpse of the baby, deserted and disconsolate,
brought the old pucker to his brow for a passing moment; but just then
big Fred set off a snapper at his very ear, and thrusting a pea-green
fool's-cap upon his head, pushed him into the roistering procession
that hobbled round and round the table, cheering fit to burst. And the
babies that had been brought down from their cribs, strapped, because
their backs were crooked, in the frames that look so cruel and are
so kind, lifted up their feeble voices as they watched the show with
shining eyes. Little baby Helen, who could only smile and wave "by-by"
with one fat hand, piped in with her tiny voice, "Here I is!" It was
all she knew, and she gave that with a right good will, which is as
much as one can ask of anybody, even of a snow baby.
If there were still lacking a last link to rivet Gimpy's loyalty to
his new home for good and all, he himself supplied it when the band
gathered under the leafless trees--for Sea Breeze has a grove in
summer, the only one on the island--and whiled away the afternoon
making a "park" in the snow, with sea-shells for curbing and boundary
stones. When it was all but completed, Gimpy, with an inspiration that
then and there installed him leader, gave it the finishing touch by
drawing a policeman on the corner with a club, and a sign, "Keep off
the grass." Together they gave it the air of reality and the true local
color that made them feel, one and all, that now indeed they were at
home.
Toward evening a snow-storm blew in from the sea, but instead of
scurrying for shelter, the little Eskimos joined the doctor in hauling
wood for a big bonfire on the beach. There, while the surf beat
upon the shore hardly a dozen steps away, and the storm whirled the
snow-clouds in weird drifts over sea and land, they drew near the fire,
and heard the doctor tell stories that seemed to come right out of the
darkness and grow real while they listened. Dr. Wallace is a southerner
and lived his childhood with Br'er Rabbit and Mr. Fox, and they saw
them plainly gamboling in the firelight as the story went on. For the
doctor knows boys and loves them, that is how.
No one would have guessed that they were cripples, every one of
that rugged band that sat down around the Christmas supper-table,
rosy-cheeked and jolly--cripples condemned, but for Sea Breeze, to
lives of misery and pain, most of them to an early death and suffering
to others. For their enemy was that foe of mankind, the White Plague,
that for thousands of years has taken tithe and toll of the ignorance
and greed and selfishness of man, which sometimes we call with one
name--the slum. Gimpy never would have dreamed that the tenement held
no worse threat for the baby he yearned for than himself, with his
crippled foot, when he was there. These things you could not have
told even the fathers and mothers; or if you had, no one there but
the doctor and the nurses would have believed you. They knew only too
well. But two things you could make out, with no trouble at all, by
the lamplight: one, that they were one and all on the homeward stretch
to health and vigor--Gimpy himself was a different lad from the one
who had crept shivering to bed the night before; and this other, that
they were the sleepiest crew of youngsters ever got together. Before
they had finished the first verse of "America" as their good night,
standing up like little men, half of them were down and asleep with
their heads pillowed upon their arms. And so Miss Brass, the head
nurse, gathered them in and off to bed.
"And now, boys," she said as they were being tucked in, "your prayers."
And of those who were awake each said his own: Willie his "Now I lay
me," Mariano his "Ave," but little Bent from the Eastside tenement
wailed that he didn't have any. Bent was a newcomer like Gimpy.
"Then," said six-year-old Morris, resolutely,--he also was a Jew,--"I
learn him mine vat my fader tol' me." And getting into Bent's crib,
he crept under the blanket with his little comrade. Gimpy saw them
reverently pull their worsted caps down over their heads, and presently
their tiny voices whispered together, in the jargon of the East Side,
their petition to the Father of all, who looked lovingly down through
the storm upon his children of many folds.
The last prayer was said, and all was still. Through the peaceful
breathing of the boys all about him, Gimpy, alone wakeful, heard the
deep bass of the troubled sea. The storm had blown over. Through the
open windows shone the eternal stars, as on that night in the Judean
hills when shepherds herded their flocks and
"The angels of the Lord came down."
He did not know. He was not thinking of angels; none had ever come to
his slum. But a great peace came over him and filled his child-soul. It
may be that the nurse saw it shining in his eyes and thought it fever.
It may be that she, too, was thinking in that holy hour. She bent over
him and laid a soothing hand upon his brow.
"You must sleep now," she said.
Something that was not of the tenement, something vital, with which his
old life had no concern, welled up in Gimpy at the touch. He caught her
hand and held it.
"I will if you will sit here," he said. He could not help it.
"Why, Jimmy?" She stroked back his shock of stubborn hair. Something
glistened on her eyelashes as she looked at the forlorn little face on
the pillow. How should Gimpy know that he was at that moment leading
another struggling soul by the hand toward the light that never dies?
"'Cause," he gulped hard, but finished manfully--"'cause I love you."
Gimpy had learned the lesson of Christmas,
"And glory shone around."
JACK'S SERMON
Jack sat on the front porch in a very bad humor indeed. That was in
itself something unusual enough to portend trouble; for ordinarily Jack
was a philosopher well persuaded that, upon the whole, this was a very
good world and Deacon Pratt's porch the centre of it on week-days.
On Sundays it was transferred to the village church, and on these
days Jack received there with the family. If the truth were told, it
would probably have been found that Jack conceived the services to be
some sort of function specially designed to do him honor at proper
intervals, for he always received an extra petting on these occasions.
He sat in the pew beside the deacon through the sermon as decorously
as befitted a dog come to years of discretion long since, and wagged
his tail in a friendly manner when the minister came down and patted
him on the head after the benediction. Outside he met the Sunday-school
children on their own ground, and on their own terms. Jack, if he
didn't have blood, had sense, which for working purposes is quite as
good, if not so common. The girls gave him candy and called him Jack
Sprat. His joyous bark could be heard long after church as he romped
with the boys by the creek on the way home. It was even suspected
that on certain Sabbaths they had enjoyed a furtive cross-country
run together; but by tacit consent the village overlooked it and put
it down to the dog. Jack was privileged and not to blame. There was
certainly something, from the children's point of view, also, in favor
of Jack's conception of Sunday.