One of the greatest of books is the daily life around us. All that the
human mind can conceive; all that the human heart can feel, and the
lips tell are encompassed in the little world about us. He that
beholds with understanding eyes can see beneath the thin veil of the
commonplace, the romance, the tragedy and the broad comedy that is
being played upon the world's stage by the actors great and little who
tread the boards of the Theater of the Universe.
Life is neither tragedy nor comedy. It is a mingling of both. High
above us omnipotent hands pull the strings that choke our laughter
with sobs and cause strange sounds of mirth to break in upon our
deepest grief. We are marionettes that dance and cry, scarce at our
own wills; and at the end, the flaring lights are out, we are laid to
rest in our wooden boxes, and down comes the dark night to cover the
scene of our brief triumph.
We elbow heroes on the streets as grand as any the poets have sung; in
the faces of obscure women and prosy men a student of his kind can see
the imprints of all the passions, both good and bad, that have
illuminated the pages of song and story.
There is good in all, and we are none all good. The scholar in his
library, the woodcutter in the forest, my lady in her boudoir and the
painted, hard-eyed denizen of the byways--we are all from the same
clay.
And the hands of fate pull the strings, and we caper and pirouette;
and some go up and some go down and haphazard chance or else an
obscure divinity pulls us this way and that, and where are we left?
Blind and chattering on the brink of an eternal unknowableness. We
spring from a common root. The king and the bricklayer are equal
except as to environs; the queen and the milkmaid may sit side by side
with pail and crown on the ragged edge of destiny; the human heart is
the same the world over; and when the judge sits upon the doings of
his puppets, who will prevail?
The Post Man has an overcoat with a high collar. This is convenient in
more ways than one. He turns it up when passing beggars upon the
street corners, and thus shuts out their importunities and saves his
conscience; he pulls it around his ears with dignified stateliness
when meeting gentlemen who deal in goods which he hath bought anon;
and lastly, it is useful when the weather is cold.
Sometimes when the purple shades begin to fall on Saturday evening and
the cool mists creep up from the sluggish waters of the bayou the Post
Man dons his useful article of apparel and hieth him forth among the
hedges and the highways. He sees the seamy side through the gilding
that covers the elect of the earth, and he sees the pure gold that
glitters amid the mire where tread the lowly and meek of heart. He
catches the note of discord in the prayer of the Pharisee on the
street corner, and the jangle of the untuned bells that hang above
many houses of worship. He sees strange deeds of nobility and lofty
self-denial among people from whose touch respectability draws aside
its skirts, and the mark of the beast upon the brow of the high and
saintly.
A little here and there he jots down upon his pad; the greater part of
the panorama goes by unrecorded until something comes in the vast To
Be that will either explain--or end.
* * * * *
Robert Burns has drawn a perfect picture of the purest peace and
happiness in his "Cotter's Saturday Night." The laborer comes home
from his work and is met by his joyful family. The fire burns
brightly, the lamp is lit, and they draw the curtains and sit about
their humble board, shutting in their little happy world from the cold
and bleak night.
There are such homes now and always will be, but if one will traverse
the streets of a city on Saturday night he will witness many scenes of
a far different nature.
As the homeward bound columns file along the sidewalks there is much
to be seen that presages sorrow and scant comfort to the waiting ones
at their homes. There are staggering steps, loud speeches with rude
and thickened tongues, and plentiful signs of misspent wages and the
indulgence of debased appetites.
The saloons are reaping a rich harvest that should belong to wives and
children. Some fling away in an hour what has taken them days to earn,
and will carry home nothing but sullen looks and empty pockets. You
can see all along the streets pale, anxious-looking women slipping
through the crowd in the hope of meeting the providers and protectors
of their homes, and inducing them to come there instead of lingering
with their besotted comrades. What should be a season of rest and
repose beneath the home vine and fig tree is turned into Saturnalia,
and a loosing of bad passions.
Homeward flit the trim shop girls, the week's work over, intent on the
rest and pleasure of the morrow; threading their straightforward and
dextrous way through the throng. Homeward plods the weary housekeeper
with her basket of vegetables for Sunday's dinner. Homeward goes the
solid citizen laden with bundles and bags. Homeward slip weary working
women, hurrying to fill the hungry mouths awaiting them.
Respectability moves homeward, but as the everlasting stars creep out
above, queer and warped things steal forth like imps of the night to
hide, and sulk, and carouse, and prey upon whatever the darkness
bringeth to them.
Down on the bank of the bayou, beyond the car shops, the foundries,
the lumbermills and the great manufactories that go to make Houston
the wonderful business and trade center she is, stands--or rather,
leans--a little shanty. It is made of clapboards, old planks, pieces
of tin and odds and ends of lumber picked up here and there. It is
built close to the edge of the foul and sluggish bayou. Back of it
rises the bank full ten feet high; below it, only a few feet, ripples
the sullen tide.
In this squalid hut lives Crip. Crip is nine years old. He is
freckled-faced, thin and subdued. From his knee his left leg is gone
and in its place is a clumsy wooden stump, on which he limps around at
quite a wonderful pace. Crip's mother cleans up three or four offices
on Main Street and takes in washing at other times. Somehow, they
manage to live in this tottering habitation patched up by Crip's
father, who several years before had fallen into the bayou one night
while drunk, and what was left of him by the catfish was buried upon
the bank a hundred yards farther down. Of late, Crip had undertaken to
assist in the mutual support.
One morning he came stumping timidly into the office of the Post and
purchased a few papers. These he offered for sale upon the streets
with great diffidence. Crip had no difficulty in selling his papers.
People stopped and bought readily the wares of this shrinking,
weak-voiced youngster. His wooden leg caught the eye of hurrying
passersby and the nickels rained into his hand as long as he had any
papers left.
One morning Crip failed to call for his papers. The next day he did
not appear, nor the next, and one of the newsboys was duly questioned
as to his absence.
"Crip's got de pewmonia," he said.
The Post Man, albeit weighed down by numerous tribulations of others
and his own, when night comes puts on his overcoat and wends his way
down the bayou toward the home of Crip.
The air is chilly and full of mist, and great puddles left by the
recent rains glimmer and sparkle in the electric lights. No wonder
that pneumonia has laid its cold hand upon the frail and weakly Crip,
living as he does in the rain-soaked shanty down on the water's edge.
The Post Man goes to inquire if he has had a doctor and if he is
supplied with the necessities his condition must require. He walks
down the railroad tracks and comes close upon two figures marching
with uncertain stateliness in the same direction.
One of them speaks loudly, with oratorical flourish, but with an
exaggerated carefulness that proclaims he is in a certain stage of
intoxication. His voice is well known in the drawing-rooms and the
highest social circles of Houston. His name is--well, let us call him
Old Boy, for so do his admiring companions denominate him. There comes
hurrying past them the form of a somberly-clad woman.
Intuitively the Post Man thinks she is of the house of Crip and
accosts her with interrogatories. He gleans from her gasping brogue
that a doctor has seen Crip and that he is very sick, but with proper
medicines, nursing and food he will probably recover. She is now
hastening to the drug store to buy--with her last dollar, she
says--the medicine he must take at once.
"I will stay with him until you return," says the Post Man, and with a
fervent "Hiven bless you, sorr!" she melts away toward the lights of
the city.
The house where Crip lives is on a kind of shelf on the bayou side and
its approach from above must be made down a set of steep and roughly
hewn steps cut into the bank by the deceased architect of the house.
At the top of these stairs the two society lights stop.
"Old Boy," says one of them, "give it up. It might be catching. And
you are going to the dance tonight. This little rat of a newsboy--why
should you see him personally? Come, let's go back. You've had so
much--"
"Bobby," says the Old Boy, "have I labored all these years in vain,
trying to convince you that you are an ass? I know I'm a devil of a
buzzerfly, and glash of fashion, but I've gozzer see zat boy. Sold me
papers a week, 'n now zey tell me he's sick in this ratsh hole down
here. Come on, Bobby, or else go't devil. I'm going in."
Old Boy pushes his silk hat to the back of his head and starts with
dangerous rapidity down the steep stairs.
His friend, seeing that he is determined, takes his arm and they both
sway and stagger down to the little shelf of land below.
The Post Man follows them silently, and they are too much occupied
with their own unsteady progress to note his presence. He slips around
them, raises the latch of the rickety door, stoops and enters the
miserable hut.
Crip lies on a meager bed in the corner, with great, feverish eyes,
and little, bony, restless fingers moving nervously upon the covers.
The night wind blows in streamy draughts between the many crannies and
flares the weak flame of a candle stuck in its own grease upon the top
of a wooden box.
"Hello, mister," says Crip. "I knows yer. Yer works on de paper. I
been laid up wid a rattlin' pain in me chist. Who wins de fight?"
"Fitzsimmons won," says the Post Man, feeling his hot freckled hand.
"Are you in much pain?"
"How many rounds?"
"First round. Less than two minutes. Can I do anything to make you
easier?"
"Geeminetty! dat was quick. Yer might gimme a drink."
The door opens again and two magnificent beings enter. Crip gives a
little gasp as his quick eyes fall upon them. Old Boy acknowledges the
presence of the Post Man by a deep and exaggerated but well
intentioned bow, and then he goes and stands by Crip's bedside.
"Old man," he says, with solemnly raised eyebrows, "Whazzer mazzer?"
"Sick," says Crip. "I know yer. Yer gimme a quarter for a paper one
mornin'."
Old Boy's friend ranges himself in the background. He is a man in a
dress suit with a mackintosh and cane, and is not of an obtrusive
personality.
He shows an inclination to brace himself against something, but the
fragile furniture of the hut not promising much support, he stands
uneasily, with a perplexed frown upon his face, awaiting developments.
"You little devil," says Old Boy, smiling down with mock anger at the
little scrap of humanity under the covers, "Do you know why I've come
to see you?"
"N-n-n-no, sir," says Crip, the fever flush growing deeper on his
cheeks. He has never seen anything so wonderful as this grand, tall,
handsome man in his black evening suit, with the dark, half-smiling,
half-frowning eyes, and the great diamond flashing on his snowy bosom,
and the tall, shiny hat on the back of his head.
"Gen'lemen," says Old Boy, with a comprehensive wave of his hand, "I
don't know myself, why I have come here, but I couldn't help it. That
little devil's eyes have been in my head for a week. I've never sheen
him 'n my life till a week ago; but I've sheen his eyes somewhere,
long time ago. Sheems to me I knew this little rascal when I was a kid
myself 'way back before I left Alabama; but, then, gentlemen, thash
impossible. However, as Bobby will tell you, I made him walk all the
way down here with me to shee zis little sick fellow, 'n now we mus'
do all we can for 'm."
Old Boy runs his hands into his pockets and draws out the contents
thereof and lays all, with lordly indiscrimination, on the ragged
quilt that covers Crip.
"Little devil," he says solemnly, "you mus' buy medicine and get well
and come back and shell me papers again. Where in thunder have I seen
you before? Never mind. Come on, Bobby--good boy to wait for me--come
on now and le's get a zrink."
The two magnificent gentlemen sway around grandly for a moment, make
elaborate but silent adieus in the direction of Crip and the Post Man,
and finally dwindle out into the darkness, where they can be heard
urging each other forward to the tremendous feat of remounting the
steps that lead to the path above.
Presently Crip's mother returns with his medicine and proceeds to make
him comfortable. She gives a screech of surprise at what she sees
lying upon the bed, and proceeds to take an inventory. There are $42
in currency, $6.50 in silver, a lady's silver slipper buckle and an
elegant pearl-handled knife with four blades.
The Post Man sees Crip take his medicine and his fever go down, and
promising him to bring down a paper that tells all about the great
fight, he moves away. A thought strikes him, and he stops near the
door and says:
"Your husband, now where was he from?"
"Oh, plaze yer honor," says Crip's mother, "from Alabama he was, and a
gentleman born, as everyone could tell till the dhrink got away wid
him, and thin he married me."
As the Post Man departs he hears Crip say to his mother reverentially:
"Dat man what left de stuff, mammy, he couldn't have been God, for God
don't get full; but if it wasn't him, mammy, I bet a dollar he was Dan
Stuart."
As the Post Man trudges back along the dark road to the city, he says
to himself:
"We have seen tonight good springing up where we would never have
looked for it, and something of a mystery all the way from Alabama.
Heigho! this is a funny little world."
(_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, March 1, 1896.)