I was soon near out of money and at my wit's end, but my will was
unconquered. In this plight I ran upon Fogarty, the policeman who had
been the good angel of my one hopeful day in journalism. His manner
invited my confidence.
'What luck?' said he.
'Bad luck' I answered. 'Only ten dollars in my pocket and nothing to
do.'
He swung his stick thoughtfully.
'If I was you,' said he, 'I'd take anything honest. Upon me wurred, I'd
ruther pound rocks than lay idle.'
'So would I.'
'Wud ye?' said he with animation, as he took my measure from head to
foot.
'I'll do anything that's honest.'
'Ah ha!' said he, rubbing his sandy chin whiskers. 'Don't seem like ye'd
been used to hard wurruk.'
'But I can do it,' I said.
He looked at me sternly and beckoned with his head.
'Come along,' said he.
He took me to a gang of Irishmen working in the street near by.
'Boss McCormick!' he shouted.
A hearty voice answered, 'Aye, aye, Counsellor,' and McCormick came out
of the crowd, using his shovel for a staff.
'A happy day to ye!' said Fogarty.
'Same to youse an' manny o' thim,' said McCormick.
'Ye'll gi'me one if ye do me a favour,' said Fogarty.
'An' what?' said the other.
'A job for this lad. Wull ye do it?'
'I wall,' said McCormick, and he did.
I went to work early the next morning, with nothing on but my
underclothing and trousers, save a pair of gloves, that excited the
ridicule of my fellows. With this livery and the righteous determination
of earning two dollars a day, I began the inelegant task of 'pounding
rocks no merry occupation, I assure you, for a hot summer's day on
Manhattan Island.
We were paving Park Place and we had to break stone and lay them and
shovel dirt and dig with a pick and crowbar.
My face and neck were burned crimson when we quit work at five, and I
went home with a feeling of having been run over by the cars. I had
a strong sense of soul and body, the latter dominated by a mighty
appetite. McClingan viewed me at first with suspicion in which there
was a faint flavour of envy. He invited me at once to his room, and was
amazed at seeing it was no lark. I told him frankly what I was doing and
why and where.
'I would not mind the loaning of a few dollars,' he said, 'as a matter
o' personal obligement I would be most happy to do it--most happy,
Brower, indeed I would.'
I thanked him cordially, but declined the favour, for at home they had
always taught me the danger of borrowing, and I was bound to have it out
with ill luck on my own resources.
'Greeley is back,' said he, 'and I shall see him tomorrow. I will put
him in mind o'you.'
I went away sore in the morning, but with no drooping spirit. In the
middle of the afternoon I straightened up a moment to ease my back and
look about me.
There at the edge of the gang stood the great Horace Greeley and Waxy
McClingan. The latter beckoned me as he caught my eye. I went aside to
greet them. Mr Greeley gave me his hand.
'Do you mean to tell me that you'd rather work than beg or borrow?' said
he.
'That's about it,' I answered.
'And ain't ashamed of it?
'Ashamed! Why?' said I, not quite sure of his meaning. It had never
occurred to me that one had any cause to be ashamed of working.
He turned to McClingan and laughed.
'I guess you'll do for the Tribune,' he said. 'Come and see me at twelve
tomorrow.
And then they went away.
If I had been a knight of the garter I could not have been treated with
more distinguished courtesy by those hard-handed men the rest of the
day. I bade them goodbye at night and got my order for four dollars. One
Pat Devlin, a great-hearted Irishman, who had shared my confidence and
some of my doughnuts on the curb at luncheon time, I remember best of
all.
'Ye'll niver fergit the toime we wurruked together under Boss
McCormick,' said he.
And to this day, whenever I meet the good man, now bent and grey, he
says always, 'Good-day to ye, Mr Brower. D'ye mind the toime we pounded
the rock under Boss McCormick?
Mr Greeley gave me a place at once on the local staff and invited me
to dine with him at his home that evening. Meanwhile he sent me to the
headquarters of the Republican Central Campaign Committee, on Broadway,
opposite the New York Hotel. Lincoln had been nominated in May, and the
great political fight of 1860 was shaking the city with its thunders.
I turned in my copy at the city desk in good season, and, although the
great editor had not yet left his room, I took a car at once to keep my
appointment. A servant showed me to a seat in the big back parlour of
Mr Greeley's home, where I spent a lonely hour before I heard his heavy
footsteps in the hail. He immediately rushed upstairs, two steps at a
time, and, in a moment, I heard his high voice greeting the babies. He
came down shortly with one of them clinging to his hand.
'Thunder!' said he, 'I had forgotten all about you. Let's go right in to
dinner.
He sat at the head of the table and I next to him. I remember how,
wearied by the day's burden, he sat, lounging heavily, in careless
attitudes. He stirred his dinner into a hash of eggs, potatoes, squash
and parsnips, and ate it leisurely with a spoon, his head braced often
with his left forearm, its elbow resting on the table. It was a sort of
letting go, after the immense activity of the day, and a casual observer
would have thought he affected the uncouth, which was not true of him.
He asked me to tell him all about my father and his farm. At length I
saw an absent look in his eye, and stopped talking, because I thought he
had ceased to listen.
'Very well! very well!' said he.
I looked up at him, not knowing what he meant.
'Go on! Tell me all about it,' he added.
'I like the country best,' said he, when I had finished, 'because there
I see more truth in things. Here the lie has many forms--unique, varied,
ingenious. The rouge and powder on the lady's cheek--they are lies, both
of them; the baronial and ducal crests are lies and the fools who use
them are liars; the people who soak themselves in rum have nothing but
lies in their heads; the multitude who live by their wits and the lack
of them in others--they are all liars; the many who imagine a vain thing
and pretend to be what they are not liars everyone of them. It is bound
to be so in the great cities, and it is a mark of decay. The skirts of
Elegabalus, the wigs and rouge pots of Madame Pompadour, the crucifix of
Machiavelli and the innocent smile of Fernando Wood stand for something
horribly and vastly false in the people about them. For truth you ve got
to get back into the woods. You can find men there a good deal as God
made them, genuine, strong and simple. When those men cease to come here
you'll see grass growing in Broadway.
I made no answer and the great commoner stirred his coffee a moment in
silence.
'Vanity is the curse of cities,' he continued, 'and Flattery is its
handmaiden. Vanity, flattery and Deceit are the three disgraces. I like
a man to be what he is--out and out. If he's ashamed of himself it won't
be long before his friends'll be ashamed of him. There's the trouble
with this town. Many a fellow is pretending to be what he isn't. A man
cannot be strong unless he is genuine.
One of his children--a little girl--came and stood close to him as he
spoke. He put his big arm around her and that gentle, permanent smile of
his broadened as he kissed her and patted her red cheek.
'Anything new in the South?' Mrs Greeley enquired.
'Worse and worse every day,' he said. 'Serious trouble coming! The
Charleston dinner yesterday was a feast of treason and a flow of
criminal rhetoric. The Union was the chief dish. Everybody slashed it
with his knife and jabbed it with his fork. It was slaughtered, roasted,
made into mincemeat and devoured. One orator spoke of “rolling back the
tide of fanaticism that finds its root in the conscience of the people.”
Their metaphors are as bad as their morals.
He laughed heartily at this example of fervid eloquence, and then we
rose from the table. He had to go to the office that evening, and I came
away soon after dinner. I had nothing to do and went home reflecting
upon all the great man had said.
I began shortly to see the truth of what he had told me--men licking
the hand of riches with the tongue of flattery, men so stricken with the
itch of vanity that they grovelled for the touch of praise; men even who
would do perjury for applause. I do not say that most of the men I saw
were of that ilk, but enough to show the tendency of life in a great
town.
I was filled with wonder at first by meeting so many who had been
everywhere and seen everything, who had mastered all sciences and all
philosophies and endured many perils on land and sea. I had met liars
before--it was no Eden there in the north country--and some of them had
attained a good degree of efficiency, but they lacked the candour and
finish of the metropolitan school. I confess they were all too much
for me at first. They borrowed my cash, they shared my confidence, they
taxed my credulity, and I saw the truth at last.
'Tom's breaking down,' said a co-labourer on the staff one day. 'How is
that?' I enquired.
'Served me a mean trick.'
'Indeed!'
'Deceived me,' said he sorrowfully.
'Lied, I suppose?'
'No. He told the truth, as God's my witness.'
Tom had been absolutely reliable up to that time.