THE START.
On the 10th of September, the four friends had a final meeting at a
sumptuous little dinner, given at the Fourteenth Street Delmonico's, by
Smythe. At three o'clock in the afternoon the party broke up, with one
last toast to the success of our friend's undertaking.
As the hands of the City Hall clock pointed the hour of six that
evening, Smythe, Hough, and Wasson, with a number of friends who had
been informed of the wager, shook hands with Ben on the steps of the
City Hall and bade him _bon voyage_. A minute after, when the hives
of the great metropolis were turning loose their human bees, and the
streets were swarming with released humanity, homeward bound, Benjamin
Cleveland walked down Courtlandt Street, with his hands in his empty
pockets--feeling as he never felt before in all his life--A TRAMP!
Reader were you ever "broke"? Do you remember ever to have found
yourself without money and without the possibility of getting it?
If so, you will not surely have to tax your memory to recall the
circumstance. The feeling of utter helplessness you then experienced
will be indelibly stamped on your mind--fresh and green for a life
time. You were in the world, yet not of it. You were a part and parcel
of humanity, yet held nothing in common with it. Your mind wandered
from subject to subject, and from proposition to proposition, in a
dazed, uncontrolled manner that left your physical nature without a
guide. How empty every thing seemed. All you met appeared to look right
into your pockets and discover the horrible truth. The commonest mortal
with a home and an occupation became a prince of peace and plenty in
your eyes. And then the ever occurring, never answered, eternally
harassing question that was constantly forcing itself upon you in a
thousand shapes, "What shall I do?" You truly felt how small, petty
and insignificant a thing man is without money. A nonentity; a cipher;
a NOTHING! A shadow of existence--an effigy of immortality. Then
the desperate thoughts that came ploughing along, tumbling over one
another, and frantically appealing to you, for the action you did not
possess. Was it not horrible! The dark deeds that pictured themselves
to you. The wild promptings to some desperate act. How you _hated_ your
fellow man. _He was not your fellow man!_ He was a being belonging
to altogether a different sphere than yours. There was no fellowship
about it. You were an Ishmaelite, and there was a savage satisfaction
in feeling that all the world had its hand raised against you, and
yours against all the world. Indeed, to tell the truth, you were not
far from desperate deeds. The step from poverty to crime is a short
one,--if poverty, _itself_, be not a crime. A man without money feels
an ownership in every one else's property. An ownership where Might
becomes the agent of Possession. You felt it. And perhaps it was more
a lack of opportunity than inclination that kept you from becoming a
criminal. Then do you remember the vows you made, "if you could only
once get out of this fix!" The vices you intended to shun; the economy
you would practice; the practical and substantial sympathy you would
have for all forlorn mortals in your present predicament? The virtues
of industry, perseverance and prudence you would religiously follow?
Bah!
"When the devil was sick, the devil a saint would be.
When the devil got well, the devil a saint was he."
But perchance you have been "broke" more than once. Several times
it may be. Vices, carelessness and a peculiar faculty for getting
rid of money have reduced you to the predicament frequently. It has
become normal. Do you dread it? No. It has lost its horrors. You have
discovered that a man who starves in this country commits suicide. You
have also learned how to let your self-respect have a half-holiday.
Rags have become familiar to you and wear easily. You have learned to
ask that you may receive. To knock at the door that the purse of the
party within may be opened unto you. And, withal, there is a sort of
freedom in the situation that is agreeable. The conventionalities of
society have no claim upon you. You are beholden to no one, and no one
to you. As free as the winds to come and go, work or play, sing or
howl--in fact, _to do as you please_! Stocks up or stocks down--it is
all the same. Banks may go into liquidation, and insurance companies
only insure a loss. What do you care? The president may go to Canada
and the cashier to Europe, and all available funds go along with them.
Bah! Let the galled jade wince, your withers are unwrung. They have
none of _your_ money. The woes of others are your _diversion_. The
Silver Bill a football in the Senate; Congressman Western Windy's
anti-tariff resolution; the monthly statement of the National debt;
the four per cent. loan;--you pass them by with supreme contempt. If
the country were placed on its financial head to-morrow, kicking its
heels amid the clouds of bankruptcy, it would be a matter of the most
delightful indifference to you. The pinnacle of your hopes, aspirations
and desires may be realized in that ecstatic moment, when, filled to
the chin at the hospitable hands of some charitable housewife, you
recline at ease on the sunny side of a plank and contemplate life
through the hazy, somnolent contentment of a full stomach, without a
care to oppress you!
Fortunately, or unfortunately, (as the case may be considered by the
reader) Benjamin Cleveland illustrated neither of these phases of
impecuniosity as he walked down Courtlandt Street.
True, he was moneyless,--and for the first time in his life. But
his was a voluntary exile into poverty, and he had the stimulus of
an object. There was something to be attained; something to strive
for;--an object in life.
And a life without an object is death in masquerade.
One magical name was constantly in his mind. The name of the goal:--New
Orleans.
What his sensations were as he walked toward the Jersey City Ferry
would be hard to analyze. He felt somewhat sheepish and shame-faced.
Every one passing seemed to take a personal interest in him, and say,
"Ah, we know you. We know what you are doing. We know you have no
money. _You are a tramp!_" He could have sworn that such were their
thoughts. To be sure it was all imagination. They were all doing
exactly as he was--thinking of themselves. The world rarely pays any
attention to you unless you tread on its toes. Plunge your finger into
the ocean--withdraw it--look for the hole! The ocean is the world--the
hole yourself. Ben felt _queer_. The central figure of his thoughts was
New Orleans. But the steps between New York and New Orleans were many,
and he was but taking the initial one.
While dreaming of the future he suddenly came plump up against the
present in the shape of the Jersey City Ferry toll house. Forgetting
for the moment the empty character of his exchequer, he entered the
gate and thrust his hand in his pocket for the requisite toll.
The pocket was empty!
Blushing at his forgetfulness, and stammering out something to the toll
collector about having left all his change at home, Ben retreated from
the gate and into the street again.
It was his first check. The first gate on his road. And to tell the
truth he felt lost. Here was only two cents standing between himself
and $20,000! Ridiculous! Nevertheless a very substantial fact.
For half an hour he loafed up and down the piers of the North River,
wondering what he should do. Once it suggested itself to him to go back
to his friends and acknowledge the attempt a failure. But he thrust the
thought aside as cowardly. Go he would, though he had to swim to the
opposite shore, or go up to Albany and walk around the river!