The red glow from the kitchen stove discovered a jam of children, young
girls mostly, perched on the table, the chairs, in one another's laps, or
squatting on the floor; in the midst of them, a little old woman with
heavily veiled face, and wan, wrinkled hands folded in her lap. The
singing ceased as we stepped across the threshold.
"Be welcome," piped a harsh voice with a singular note of cheerfulness in
it. "Whose step is that with you, pastor? I don't know it. He is welcome
in Jennie's house, whoever he be. Girls, make him to home." The girls
moved up to make room.
"Jennie has not seen since she was a child," said the clergyman, gently;
"but she knows a friend without it. Some day she shall see the great
Friend in his glory, and then she shall be Blind Jennie no more."
The little woman raised the veil from a face shockingly disfigured, and
touched the eyeless sockets. "Some day," she repeated, "Jennie shall see.
Not long now--not long!" Her pastor patted her hand. The silence of the
dark room was broken by Blind Jennie's voice, rising cracked and
quavering: "Alas! and did my Saviour bleed?" The shrill chorus burst in:
It was there by faith I received my sight,
And now I am happy all the day.
The light that falls from the windows of the Neighborhood Guild, in
Delancey street, makes a white path across the asphalt pavement. Within
there is mirth and laughter. The Tenth Ward Social Reform Club is having
its Christmas festival. Its members, poor mothers, scrubwomen,--the
president is the janitress of a tenement near by,--have brought their
little ones, a few their husbands, to share in the fun. One little girl
has to be dragged up to the grab-bag. She cries at the sight of Santa
Claus. The baby has drawn a woolly horse. He kisses the toy with a look of
ecstatic bliss, and toddles away. At the far end of the hall a game of
blindman's-buff is starting up. The aged grandmother, who has watched it
with growing excitement, bids one of the settlement workers hold her
grandchild, that she may join in; and she does join in, with all the
pent-up hunger of fifty joyless years. The worker, looking on, smiles; one
has been reached. Thus is the battle against the slum waged and won with
the child's play.
Tramp! tramp! comes the to-morrow upon the stage. Two hundred and fifty
pairs of little feet, keeping step, are marching to dinner in the
Newsboys' Lodging-house. Five hundred pairs more are restlessly awaiting
their turn up-stairs. In prison, hospital, and almshouse to-night the city
is host, and gives of her plenty. Here an unknown friend has spread a
generous repast for the waifs who all the rest of the days shift for
themselves as best they can. Turkey, coffee, and pie, with "vegetubles" to
fill in. As the file of eagle-eyed youngsters passes down the long tables,
there are swift movements of grimy hands, and shirt-waists bulge, ragged
coats sag at the pockets. Hardly is the file seated when the plaint rises:
"I ain't got no pie! It got swiped on me." Seven despoiled ones hold up
their hands.
The superintendent laughs--it is Christmas eve. He taps one tentatively on
the bulging shirt. "What have you here, my lad?"
"Me pie," responds he, with an innocent look; "I wuz scart it would get
stole."
A little fellow who has been eying one of the visitors attentively takes
his knife out of his mouth, and points it at him with conviction.
"I know you," he pipes. "You're a p'lice commissioner. I seen yer picter
in the papers. You're Teddy Roosevelt!"
The clatter of knives and forks ceases suddenly. Seven pies creep
stealthily over the edge of the table, and are replaced on as many plates.
The visitors laugh. It was a case of mistaken identity.
Farthest down-town, where the island narrows toward the Battery, and
warehouses crowd the few remaining tenements, the somber-hued colony of
Syrians is astir with preparation for the holiday. How comes it that in
the only settlement of the real Christmas people in New York the corner
saloon appropriates to itself all the outward signs of it? Even the floral
cross that is nailed over the door of the Orthodox church is long withered
and dead: it has been there since Easter, and it is yet twelve days to
Christmas by the belated reckoning of the Greek Church. But if the houses
show no sign of the holiday, within there is nothing lacking. The whole
colony is gone a-visiting. There are enough of the unorthodox to set the
fashion, and the rest follow the custom of the country. The men go from
house to house, laugh, shake hands, and kiss one another on both cheeks,
with the salutation, "Kol am va antom Salimoon." "Every year and you are
safe," the Syrian guide renders it into English; and a non-professional
interpreter amends it: "May you grow happier year by year." Arrack made
from grapes and flavored with aniseed, and candy baked in little white
balls like marbles, are served with the indispensable cigarette; for long
callers, the pipe.
In a top-floor room of one of the darkest of the dilapidated tenements,
the dusty window-panes of which the last glow in the winter sky is tinging
faintly with red, a dance is in progress. The guests, most of them fresh
from the hillsides of Mount Lebanon, squat about the room. A reed-pipe and
a tambourine furnish the music. One has the center of the floor. With a
beer-jug filled to the brim on his head, he skips and sways, bending,
twisting, kneeling, gesturing, and keeping time, while the men clap their
hands. He lies down and turns over, but not a drop is spilled. Another
succeeds him, stepping proudly, gracefully, furling and unfurling a
handkerchief like a banner. As he sits down, and the beer goes around, one
in the corner, who looks like a shepherd fresh from his pasture, strikes
up a song--a far-off, lonesome, plaintive lay. "'Far as the hills,'" says
the guide; "a song of the old days and the old people, now seldom heard."
All together croon the refrain. The host delivers himself of an epic about
his love across the seas, with the most agonizing expression, and in a
shockingly bad voice. He is the worst singer I ever heard; but his
companions greet his effort with approving shouts of "Yi! yi!" They look
so fierce, and yet are so childishly happy, that at the thought of their
exile and of the dark tenement the question arises, "Why all this joy?"
The guide answers it with a look of surprise. "They sing," he says,
"because they are glad they are free. Did you not know?"
The bells in old Trinity chime the midnight hour. From dark hallways men
and women pour forth and hasten to the Maronite church. In the loft of the
dingy old warehouse wax candles burn before an altar of brass. The priest,
in a white robe with a huge gold cross worked on the back, chants the
ritual. The people respond. The women kneel in the aisles, shrouding their
heads in their shawls; the surpliced acolyte swings his censer; the heavy
perfume of burning incense fills the hall.
The band at the anarchists' ball is tuning up for the last dance. Young
and old float to the happy strains, forgetting injustice, oppression,
hatred. Children slide upon the waxed floor, weaving fearlessly in and out
between the couples--between fierce, bearded men and short-haired women
with crimson-bordered kerchiefs. A Punch-and-Judy show in the corner
evokes shouts of laughter.
Outside the snow is falling. It sifts silently into each nook and corner,
softens all the hard and ugly lines, and throws the spotless mantle of
charity over the blemishes, the shortcomings. Christmas morning will dawn
pure and white.
'TWAS LIZA'S DOINGS
Joe drove his old gray mare along the stony road in deep thought. They had
been across the ferry to Newtown with a load of Christmas truck. It had
been a hard pull uphill for them both, for Joe had found it necessary not
a few times to get down and give old 'Liza a lift to help her over the
roughest spots; and now, going home, with the twilight coming on and no
other job a-waiting, he let her have her own way. It was slow, but steady,
and it suited Joe; for his head was full of busy thoughts, and there were
few enough of them that were pleasant.
Business had been bad at the big stores, never worse, and what trucking
there was there were too many about. Storekeepers who never used to look
at a dollar, so long as they knew they could trust the man who did their
hauling, were counting the nickels these days. As for chance jobs like
this one, that was all over now with the holidays, and there had been
little enough of it, too.
There would be less, a good deal, with the hard winter at the door, and
with 'Liza to keep and the many mouths to fill. Still, he wouldn't have
minded it so much but for mother fretting and worrying herself sick at
home, and all along o' Jim, the eldest boy, who had gone away mad and
never come back. Many were the dollars he had paid the doctor and the
druggist to fix her up, but it was no use. She was worrying herself into a
decline, it was clear to be seen.
Joe heaved a heavy sigh as he thought of the strapping lad who had brought
such sorrow to his mother. So strong and so handy on the wagon. Old 'Liza
loved him like a brother and minded him even better than she did himself.
If he only had him now, they could face the winter and the bad times, and
pull through. But things never had gone right since he left. He didn't
know, Joe thought humbly as he jogged along over the rough road, but he
had been a little hard on the lad. Boys wanted a chance once in a while.
All work and no play was not for them. Likely he had forgotten he was a
boy once himself. But Jim was such a big lad, 'most like a man. He took
after his mother more than the rest. She had been proud, too, when she was
a girl. He wished he hadn't been hasty that time they had words about
those boxes at the store. Anyway, it turned out that it wasn't Jim's
fault. But he was gone that night, and try as they might to find him, they
never had word of him since. And Joe sighed again more heavily than
before.
Old 'Liza shied at something in the road, and Joe took a firmer hold on
the reins. It turned his thoughts to the horse. She was getting old, too,
and not as handy as she was. He noticed that she was getting winded with a
heavy load. It was well on to ten years she had been their capital and the
breadwinner of the house. Sometimes he thought that she missed Jim. If she
was to leave them now, he wouldn't know what to do, for he couldn't raise
the money to buy another horse nohow, as things were. Poor old 'Liza! He
stroked her gray coat musingly with the point of his whip as he thought of
their old friendship. The horse pointed one ear back toward her master and
neighed gently, as if to assure him that she was all right.
Suddenly she stumbled. Joe pulled her up in time, and throwing the reins
over her back, got down to see what it was. An old horseshoe, and in the
dust beside it a new silver quarter. He picked both up and put the shoe in
the wagon.
"They say it is luck," he mused, "finding horse-iron and money. Maybe it's
my Christmas. Get up, 'Liza!" And he drove off to the ferry.
* * * * *
The glare of a thousand gas-lamps had chased the sunset out of the western
sky, when Joe drove home through the city's streets. Between their
straight mile-long rows surged the busy life of the coming holiday. In
front of every grocery-store was a grove of fragrant Christmas trees
waiting to be fitted into little green stands with fairy fences. Within,
customers were bargaining, chatting, and bantering the busy clerks.
Peddlers offering tinsel and colored candles waylaid them on the
door-step. The rack under the butcher's awning fairly groaned with its
weight of plucked geese, of turkeys, stout and skinny, of poultry of every
kind. The saloon-keeper even had wreathed his door-posts in ground-ivy and
hemlock, and hung a sprig of holly in the window, as if with a spurious
promise of peace on earth and good-will toward men who entered there. It
tempted not Joe. He drove past it to the corner, where he turned up a
street darker and lonelier than the rest, toward a stretch of rocky,
vacant lots fenced in by an old stone wall. 'Liza turned in at the rude
gate without being told, and pulled up at the house.
A plain little one-story frame with a lean-to for a kitchen, and an
adjoining stable-shed, over-shadowed all by two great chestnuts of the
days when there were country lanes where now are paved streets, and on
Manhattan Island there was farm by farm. A light gleamed in the window
looking toward the street. As 'Liza's hoofs were heard on the drive, a
young girl with a shawl over her head ran out from some shelter where she
had been watching, and took the reins from Joe.
"You're late," she said, stroking the mare's steaming flank. 'Liza reached
around and rubbed her head against the girl's shoulder, nibbling playfully
at the fringe of her shawl.
"Yes; we've come far, and it's been a hard pull. 'Liza is tired. Give her
a good feed, and I'll bed her down. How's mother?"
"Sprier than she was," replied the girl, bending over the shaft to
unbuckle the horse; "seems as if she'd kinder cheered up for Christmas."
And she led 'Liza to the stable while her father backed the wagon into the
shed.
It was warm and very comfortable in the little kitchen, where he joined
the family after "washing up." The fire burned brightly in the range, on
which a good-sized roast sizzled cheerily in its pot, sending up clouds of
savory steam. The sand on the white pine floor was swept in tongues,
old-country fashion. Joe and his wife were both born across the sea, and
liked to keep Christmas eve as they had kept it when they were children.
Two little boys and a younger girl than the one who had met him at the
gate received him with shouts of glee, and pulled him straight from the
door to look at a hemlock branch stuck in the tub of sand in the corner.
It was their Christmas tree, and they were to light it with candles, red
and yellow and green, which mama got them at the grocer's where the big
Santa Claus stood on the shelf. They pranced about like so many little
colts, and clung to Joe by turns, shouting all at once, each one anxious
to tell the great news first and loudest.
Joe took them on his knee, all three, and when they had shouted until they
had to stop for breath, he pulled from under his coat a paper bundle, at
which the children's eyes bulged. He undid the wrapping slowly.
"Who do you think has come home with me?" he said, and he held up before
them the veritable Santa Claus himself, done in plaster and all
snow-covered. He had bought it at the corner toy-store with his lucky
quarter. "I met him on the road over on Long Island, where 'Liza and I was
to-day, and I gave him a ride to town. They say it's luck falling in with
Santa Claus, partickler when there's a horseshoe along. I put hisn up in
the barn, in 'Liza's stall. Maybe our luck will turn yet, eh! old woman?"
And he put his arm around his wife, who was setting out the dinner with
Jennie, and gave her a good hug, while the children danced off with their
Santa Claus.
She was a comely little woman, and she tried hard to be cheerful. She gave
him a brave look and a smile, but there were tears in her eyes, and Joe
saw them, though he let on that he didn't. He patted her tenderly on the
back and smoothed his Jennie's yellow braids, while he swallowed the lump
in his throat and got it down and out of the way. He needed no doctor to
tell him that Santa Claus would not come again and find her cooking their
Christmas dinner, unless she mended soon and swiftly.
They ate their dinner together, and sat and talked until it was time to go
to bed. Joe went out to make all snug about 'Liza for the night and to
give her an extra feed. He stopped in the door, coming back, to shake the
snow out of his clothes. It was coming on with bad weather and a northerly
storm, he reported. The snow was falling thick already and drifting badly.
He saw to the kitchen fire and put the children to bed. Long before the
clock in the neighboring church-tower struck twelve, and its doors were
opened for the throngs come to worship at the midnight mass, the lights in
the cottage were out, and all within it fast asleep.
* * * * *
The murmur of the homeward-hurrying crowds had died out, and the last
echoing shout of "Merry Christmas!" had been whirled away on the storm,
now grown fierce with bitter cold, when a lonely wanderer came down the
street. It was a boy, big and strong-limbed, and, judging from the manner
in which he pushed his way through the gathering drifts, not unused to
battle with the world, but evidently in hard luck. His jacket, white with
the falling snow, was scant and worn nearly to rags, and there was that in
his face which spoke of hunger and suffering silently endured. He stopped
at the gate in the stone fence, and looked long and steadily at the
cottage in the chestnuts. No life stirred within, and he walked through
the gap with slow and hesitating step. Under the kitchen window he stood
awhile, sheltered from the storm, as if undecided, then stepped to the
horse-shed and rapped gently on the door.
"'Liza!" he called, "'Liza, old girl! It's me--Jim!"
A low, delighted whinnying from the stall told the shivering boy that he
was not forgotten there. The faithful beast was straining at her halter in
a vain effort to get at her friend. Jim raised a bar that held the door
closed by the aid of a lever within, of which he knew the trick, and went
in. The horse made room for him in her stall, and laid her shaggy head
against his cheek.
"Poor old 'Liza!" he said, patting her neck and smoothing her gray coat,
"poor old girl! Jim has one friend that hasn't gone back on him. I've
come to keep Christmas with you, 'Liza! Had your supper, eh? You're in
luck. I haven't; I wasn't bid, 'Liza; but never mind. You shall feed for
both of us. Here goes!" He dug into the oats-bin with the measure, and
poured it full into 'Liza's crib.
"Fill up, old girl! and good night to you." With a departing pat he crept
up the ladder to the loft above, and, scooping out a berth in the loose
hay, snuggled down in it to sleep. Soon his regular breathing up there
kept step with the steady munching of the horse in her stall. The two
reunited friends were dreaming happy Christmas dreams.
The night wore into the small hours of Christmas morning. The fury of the
storm was unabated. The old cottage shook under the fierce blasts, and the
chestnuts waved their hoary branches wildly, beseechingly, above it, as if
they wanted to warn those within of some threatened danger. But they slept
and heard them not. From the kitchen chimney, after a blast more violent
than any that had gone before, a red spark issued, was whirled upward and
beaten against the shingle roof of the barn, swept clean of snow. Another
followed it, and another. Still they slept in the cottage; the chestnuts
moaned and brandished their arms in vain. The storm fanned one of the
sparks into a flame. It flickered for a moment and then went out. So, at
least, it seemed. But presently it reappeared, and with it a faint glow
was reflected in the attic window over the door. Down in her stall 'Liza
moved uneasily. Nobody responding, she plunged and reared, neighing loudly
for help. The storm drowned her calls; her master slept, unheeding.
But one heard it, and in the nick of time. The door of the shed was thrown
violently open, and out plunged Jim, his hair on fire and his clothes
singed and smoking. He brushed the sparks off himself as if they were
flakes of snow. Quick as thought, he tore 'Liza's halter from its
fastening, pulling out staple and all, threw his smoking coat over her
eyes, and backed her out of the shed. He reached in, and pulling the
harness off the hook, threw it as far into the snow as he could, yelling
"Fire!" at the top of his voice. Then he jumped on the back of the horse,
and beating her with heels and hands into a mad gallop, was off up the
street before the bewildered inmates of the cottage had rubbed the sleep
out of their eyes and come out to see the barn on fire and burning up.
Down street and avenue fire-engines raced with clanging bells, leaving
tracks of glowing coals in the snow-drifts, to the cottage in the chestnut
lots. They got there just in time to see the roof crash into the barn,
burying, as Joe and his crying wife and children thought, 'Liza and their
last hope in the fiery wreck. The door had blown shut, and the harness Jim
threw out was snowed under. No one dreamed that the mare was not there.
The flames burst through the wreck and lit up the cottage and swaying
chestnuts. Joe and his family stood in the shelter of it, looking sadly
on. For the second time that Christmas night tears came into the honest
truckman's eyes. He wiped them away with his cap.
"Poor 'Liza!" he said.
A hand was laid with gentle touch upon his arm. He looked up. It was his
wife. Her face beamed with a great happiness.
"Joe," she said, "you remember what you read: 'tidings of great joy.' Oh,
Joe, Jim has come home!"
She stepped aside, and there was Jim, sister Jennie hanging on his neck,
and 'Liza alive and neighing her pleasure. The lad looked at his father
and hung his head.
"Jim saved her, father," said Jennie, patting the gray mare; "it was him
fetched the engine."
Joe took a step toward his son and held out his hand to him.
"Jim," he said, "you're a better man nor yer father. From now on, you'n I
run the truck on shares. But mind this, Jim: never leave mother no more."
And in the clasp of the two hands all the past was forgotten and forgiven.
Father and son had found each other again.
"'Liza," said the truckman, with sudden vehemence, turning to the old mare
and putting his arm around her neck, "'Liza! It was your doin's. I knew it
was luck when I found them things. Merry Christmas!" And he kissed her
smack on her hairy mouth, one, two, three times.
THE DUBOURQUES, FATHER AND SON
It must be nearly a quarter of a century since I first met the Dubourques.
There are plenty of old New-Yorkers yet who will recall them as I saw
them, plodding along Chatham street, swarthy, silent, meanly dressed,
undersized, with their great tin signs covering front and back, like
ill-favored gnomes turned sandwich-men to vent their spite against a gay
world. Sunshine or rain, they went their way, Indian file, never apart,
bearing their everlasting, unavailing protest.
"I demand," read the painted signs, "the will and testament of my brother,
who died in California, leaving a large property inheritance to Virgile
Dubourque, which has never reached him."
That was all any one was ever able to make out. At that point the story
became rambling and unintelligible. Denunciation, hot and wrathful, of the
thieves, whoever they were, of the government, of bishops, priests, and
lawyers, alternated with protestations of innocence of heaven knows what
crimes. If any one stopped them to ask what it was all about, they stared,
shook their heads, and passed on. If money was offered, they took it
without thanking the giver; indeed, without noticing him. They were never
seen apart, yet never together in the sense of being apparently anything
to each other. I doubt if they ever spoke, unless they were obliged to.
Grim and lonely, they traveled the streets, parading their grievance
before an unheeding day.
What that grievance was, and what was their story, a whole generation had
tried vainly to find out. Every young reporter tried his hand at it at
least once, some many times, I among them. None of us ever found out
anything tangible about them. Now and then we ran down a rumor in the
region of Bleecker street, then the "French quarter,"--I should have said
that they were French and spoke but a few words of broken English when
they spoke at all,--only to have it come to nothing. One which I recall
was to the effect that, at some time in the far past, the elder of the two
had been a schoolmaster in Lorraine, and had come across the sea in quest
of a fabulous fortune left by his brother, one of the gold-diggers of '49,
who died in his boots; that there had been some disagreement between
father and son, which resulted in the latter running away with their
saved-up capital, leaving the old man stranded in a strange city, among
people of strange speech, without the means of asserting his claim, and
that, when he realized this, he lost his reason. Thus his son, Erneste,
found him, returning after years penniless and repentant.