physiology, that if a man worked five hours with his hands, he could
study better in the next five. It is all nonsense. Exhaustion is
exhaustion; and if you exhaust a vessel by one stopcock, nothing is
gained or saved by closing that and opening another. The old up-country
theory is the true one. Study ten weeks and chop wood fifteen; study
ten more and harvest fifteen. But the "Manual-Labor School" offered
itself for really no pay, only John Myers and I carried over, I
remember, a dozen barrels of potatoes when I went there with my books.
The school was kept at Roscius, and if I would work in the carpenter's
shop and on the school farm five hours, why they would feed me and
teach me all they knew in what I had of the day beside.
"Felix," said John, as he left me, "I do not suppose this is the best
school in the world, unless you make it so. But I do suppose you can
make it so. If you and I went whining about, looking for the best
school in the world, and for somebody to pay your way through it, I
should die, and you would lose your voice with whining, and we should
not find one after all. This is what the public happens to provide for
you and me. We won't look a gift-horse in the mouth. Get on his back,
Felix; groom him well as you can when you stop, feed him when you can,
and at all events water him well and take care of him well. My last
advice to you, Felix, is to take what is offered you, and never
complain because nobody offers more."
Those words are to be cut on my seal-ring, if I ever have one, and if
Dr. Anthon or Professor Webster will put them into short enough Latin
for me. That is the motto of the "Children of the Public."
John Myers died before that term was out. And my more than mother,
Betsy, went back to her friends in Maine. After the funeral I never saw
them more. How I lived from that moment to what Fausta and I call the
Crisis is nobody's concern. I worked in the shop at the school, or on
the farm. Afterwards I taught school in neighboring districts. I never
bought a ticket in a lottery or a raffle. But whenever there was a
chance to do an honest stroke of work, I did it. I have walked fifteen
miles at night to carry an election return to the "Tribune's" agent at
Gouverneur. I have turned out in the snow to break open the road when
the supervisor could not find another man in the township.
When Sartain started his magazine, I wrote an essay in competition for
his premiums, and the essay earned its hundred dollars. When the
managers of the "Orphan Home," in Baltimore, offered their prizes for
papers on bad boys, I wrote for one of them, and that helped me on four
hard months. There was no luck in those things. I needed the money, and
I put my hook into the pork-barrel,--that is, I trusted the Public. I
never had but one stroke of luck in my life. I wanted a new pair of
boots badly. I was going to walk to Albany, to work in the State
library on the history of the Six Nations, which had an interest for
me. I did not have a dollar. Just then there passed Congress the bill
dividing the surplus revenue. The State of New York received two or
three millions, and divided it among the counties. The county of St.
Lawrence divided it among the townships, and the township of Roscius
divided it among the voters. Two dollars and sixty cents of Uncle Sam's
money came to me, and with that money on my feet I walked to Albany.
That I call luck! How many fools had to assent in an absurdity before I
could study the history of the Six Nations!
But one instance told in detail is better than a thousand told in
general, for the illustration of a principle. So I will detain you no
longer from the history of what Fausta and I call The Crisis.
II.
THE CRISIS.
I was at work as a veneerer in a piano-forte factory at Attica, when
some tariff or other was passed or repealed; there came a great
financial explosion, and our boss, among the rest, failed. He owed us
all six months' wages, and we were all very poor and very blue.
Jonathan Whittemore--a real good fellow, who used to cover the hammers
with leather--came to me the day the shop was closed, and told me he
was going to take the chance to go to Europe. He was going to the
Musical Conservatory at Leipsic, if he could. He would work his passage
out as a stoker. He would wash himself for three or four days at
Bremen, and then get work, if he could, with Voightlander or Von Hammer
till he could enter the Conservatory. By way of preparation for this he
wanted me to sell him my Adler's German Dictionary.
"I've nothing to give you for it, Felix, but this foolish thing,--it is
one of Burrham's tickets,--which I bought in a frolic the night of our
sleigh-ride. I'll transfer it to you."
I told Jonathan he might have the dictionary and welcome. He was doing
a sensible thing, and he would use it twenty times as much as I should.
As for the ticket, he had better keep it. I did not want it. But I saw
he would feel better if I took it,--so he indorsed it to me.
Now the reader must know that this Burrham was a man who had got hold
of one corner of the idea of what the Public could do for its children.
He had found out that there were a thousand people who would be glad to
make the tour of the mountains and the lakes every summer if they could
do it for half price. He found out that the railroad companies were
glad enough to put the price down if they could be sure of the thousand
people. He mediated between the two, and so "cheap excursions" came
into being. They are one of the gifts the Public gives its children.
Rising from step to step, Burrham had, just before the great financial
crisis, conceived the idea of a great cheap combination, in which
everybody was to receive a magazine for a year and a cyclopædia, both
at half price; and not only so, but the money that was gained in the
combination was to be given by lot to two ticket-holders, one a man and
one a woman, for their dowry in marriage. I dare say the reader
remembers the prospectus. It savors too much of the modern "Gift
Enterprise" to be reprinted in full; but it had this honest element,
that everybody got more than he could get for his money in retail. I
have my magazine, the old "Boston Miscellany," to this day, and I just
now looked out Levasseur's name in my cyclopædia; and, as you will see,
I have reason to know that all the other subscribers got theirs.
One of the tickets for these books, for which Whittemore had given five
good dollars, was what he gave to me for my dictionary. And so we
parted. I loitered at Attica, hoping for a place where I could put in
my oar. But my hand was out at teaching, and in a time when all the
world's veneers of different kinds were ripping off, nobody wanted me
to put on more of my kind,--so that my cash ran low. I would not go in
debt,--that is a thing I never did. More honest, I say, to go to the
poorhouse, and make the Public care for its child there, than to borrow
what you cannot pay. But I did not come quite to that, as you shall
see.
I was counting up my money one night,--and it was easily done,--when I
observed that the date on this Burrham order was the 15th of October,
and it occurred to me that it was not quite a fortnight before those
books were to be delivered. They were to be delivered at Castle Garden,
at New York; and the thought struck me that I might go to New York, try
my chance there for work, and at least see the city, which I had never
seen, and get my cyclopædia and magazine. It was the least offer the
Public ever made to me; but just then the Public was in a collapse, and
the least was better than nothing. The plan of so long a journey was
Quixotic enough, and I hesitated about it a good deal. Finally I came
to this resolve: I would start in the morning to walk to the
lock-station at Brockport on the canal. If a boat passed that night
where they would give me my fare for any work I could do for them, I
would go to Albany. If not, I would walk back to Lockport the next day,
and try my fortune there. This gave me, for my first day's enterprise,
a foot journey of about twenty-five miles. It was out of the question,
with my finances, for me to think of compassing the train.
Every point of life is a pivot on which turns the whole action of our
after-lives; and so, indeed, of the after-lives of the whole world. But
we are so purblind that we only see this of certain special enterprises
and endeavors, which we therefore call critical. I am sure I see it of
that twenty-five miles of fresh autumnal walking. I was in tip-top
spirits. I found the air all oxygen, and everything "all right." I did
not loiter, and I did not hurry. I swung along with the feeling that
every nerve and muscle drew, as in the trades a sailor feels of every
rope and sail. And so I was not tired, not thirsty, till the brook
appeared where I was to drink; nor hungry till twelve o'clock came,
when I was to dine. I called myself, as I walked, "The Child of Good
Fortune," because the sun was on my right quarter, as the sun should be
when you walk, because the rain of yesterday had laid the dust for me,
and the frost of yesterday had painted the hills for me, and the
northwest wind cooled the air for me. I came to Wilkie's Cross-Roads
just in time to meet the Claremont baker and buy my dinner loaf of him.
And when my walk was nearly done, I came out on the low bridge at
Sewell's, which is a drawbridge, just before they raised it for a
passing boat, instead of the moment after. Because I was all right I
felt myself and called myself "The Child of Good Fortune." Dear reader,
in a world made by a loving Father, we are all of us children of good
fortune, if we only have wit enough to find it out, as we stroll along.
The last stroke of good fortune which that day had for me was the
solution of my question whether or no I would go to Babylon. I was to
go if any good-natured boatman would take me. This is a question, Mr.
Millionnaire, more doubtful to those who have not drawn their dividends
than to those who have. As I came down the village street at Brockport,
I could see the horses of a boat bound eastward, led along from level
to level at the last lock; and, in spite of my determination not to
hurry, I put myself on the long, loping trot which the St. Regis
Indians taught me, that I might overhaul this boat before she got under
way at her new speed. I came out on the upper gate of the last lock
just as she passed out from the lower gate. The horses were just put
on, and a reckless boy gave them their first blow after two hours of
rest and corn. As the heavy boat started off under the new motion, I
saw, and her skipper saw at the same instant, that a long new tow-rope
of his, which had lain coiled on deck, was suddenly flying out to its
full length. The outer end of it had been carried upon the lock-side by
some chance or blunder, and there some idle loafer had thrown the
looped bight of it over a hawser-post. The loafers on the lock saw, as
I did, that the rope was running out, and at the call of the skipper
one of them condescended to throw the loop overboard, but he did it so
carelessly that the lazy rope rolled over into the lock, and the loop
caught on one of the valve-irons of the upper gate. The whole was the
business of an instant, of course. But the poor skipper saw, what we
did not, that the coil of the rope on deck was foul, and so entangled
round his long tiller, that ten seconds would do one of three
things,--they would snap his new rope in two, which was a trifle, or
they would wrench his tiller-head off the rudder, which would cost him
an hour to mend, or they would upset those two horses, at this instant
on a trot, and put into the canal the rowdy youngster who had started
them. It was this complex certainty which gave fire to the double cries
which he addressed aft to us on the lock, and forward to the magnet
boy, whose indifferent intelligence at that moment drew him along.
I was stepping upon the gate-head to walk across it. It took but an
instant, not nearly all the ten seconds, to swing down by my arms into
the lock, keeping myself hanging by my hands, to catch with my right
foot the bight of the rope and lift it off the treacherous iron, to
kick the whole into the water, and then to scramble up the wet
lock-side again. I got a little wet, but that was nothing. I ran down
the tow-path, beckoned to the skipper, who sheered his boat up to the
shore, and I jumped on board.
At that moment, reader, Fausta was sitting in a yellow chair on the
deck of that musty old boat, crocheting from a pattern in "Godey's
Lady's Book. I remember it as I remember my breakfast of this morning.
Not that I fell in love with her, nor did I fall in love with my
breakfast; but I knew she was there. And that was the first time I ever
saw her. It is many years since, and I have seen her every day from
that evening to this evening. But I had then no business with her. My
affair was with him whom I have called the skipper, by way of adapting
this fresh-water narrative to ears accustomed to Marryat and Tom
Cringle. I told him that I had to go to New York; that I had not time
to walk, and had not money to pay; that I should like to work my
passage to Troy, if there were any way in which I could; and to ask him
this I had come on board.
"Waal," said the skipper, "'tain't much that is to be done, and Zekiel
and I calc'late to do most of that; and there's that blamed boy
beside--"
This adjective "blamed" is the virtuous oath by which simple people,
who are improving their habits, cure themselves of a stronger epithet,
as men take to flag-root who are abandoning tobacco.
"He ain't good for nothin', as you see," continued the skipper
meditatively, "and you air, anybody can see that," he added. "Ef you've
mind to come to Albany, you can have your vittles, poor enough they are
too; and ef you are willing to ride sometimes, you can ride. I guess
where there's room for three in the bunks there's room for four.
'Tain't everybody would have cast off that blamed hawser-rope as neat
as you did."
From which last remark I inferred, what I learned as a certainty as we
travelled farther, that but for the timely assistance I had rendered
him I should have plead for my passage in vain.
This was my introduction to Fausta. That is to say, she heard the whole
of the conversation. The formal introduction, which is omitted in no
circle of American life to which I have ever been admitted, took place
at tea half an hour after, when Mrs. Grills, who always voyaged with
her husband, brought in the flapjacks from the kitchen. "Miss Jones,"
said Grills, as I came into the meal, leaving Zekiel at the
tiller,--"Miss Jones, this is a young man who is going to Albany. I
don't rightly know how to call your name, sir." I said my name was
Carter. Then he said, "Mr. Carter, this is Miss Jones. Mrs. Grills, Mr.
Carter. Mr. Carter, Mrs. Grills. She is my wife." And so our _partie
carrée_ was established for the voyage.
In these days there are few people who know that a journey on a canal
is the pleasantest journey in the world. A canal has to go through fine
scenery. It cannot exist unless it follow through the valley of a
stream. The movement is so easy that, with your eyes shut, you do not
know you move. The route is so direct, that when you are once shielded
from the sun, you are safe for hours. You draw, you read, you write, or
you sew, crochet, or knit. You play on your flute or your guitar,
without one hint of inconvenience. At a "low bridge" you duck your head
lest you lose your hat,--and that reminder teaches you that you are
human. You are glad to know this, and you laugh at the memento. For the
rest of the time you journey, if you are "all right" within, in
Elysium.
I rode one of those horses perhaps two or three hours a day. At locks I
made myself generally useful. At night I walked the deck till one
o'clock, with my pipe or without it, to keep guard against the
lock-thieves. The skipper asked me sometimes, after he found I could
"cipher," to disentangle some of the knots in his bills of lading for
him. But all this made but a little inroad in those lovely autumn days,
and for the eight days that we glided along,--there is one blessed
level which is seventy miles long,--I spent most of my time with
Fausta. We walked together on the tow-path to get our appetites for
dinner and for supper. At sunrise I always made a cruise inland, and
collected the gentians and black alder-berries and colored leaves, with
which she dressed Mrs. Grill's table. She took an interest in my
wretched sketch-book; and though she did not and does not draw well,
she did show me how to spread an even tint, which I never knew before.
I was working up my French. She knew about as much and as little as I
did, and we read Mad Reybaud's Clementine together, guessing at the
hard words, because we had no dictionary.
Dear old Grill offered to talk French at table, and we tried it for a
few days. But it proved he picked up his pronunciation at St.
Catherine's, among the boatmen there, and he would say _shwo_ for
"horses," where the book said _chevaux_. Our talk, on the other hand,
was not Parisian,--but it was not Catherinian,--and we subsided into
English again.
So sped along these blessed eight days. I told Fausta thus much of my
story, that I was going to seek my fortune in New York. She, of course,
knew nothing of me but what she saw, and she told me nothing of her
story.
But I was very sorry when we came into the basin at Troy, for I knew
then that in all reason I must take the steamboat down. And I was very
glad--I have seldom in my life been so glad--when I found that she also
was going to New York immediately. She accepted, very pleasantly, my
offer to carry her trunk to the Isaac Newton for her, and to act as her
escort to the city. For me, my trunk,
"in danger tried,"
Swung in my hand,--"nor left my side."
My earthly possessions were few anywhere. I had left at Attica most of
what they were. Through the voyage I had been man enough to keep on a
working-gear fit for a workman's duty. And old Grills had not yet grace
enough to keep his boat still on Sunday. How one remembers little
things! I can remember each touch of the toilet, as, in that corner of
a dark cuddy where I had shared "Zekiel's" bunk with him, I dressed
myself with one of my two white shirts, and with the change of raiment
which had been tight squeezed in my portmanteau. The old overcoat was
the best part of it, as in a finite world it often is. I sold my felt
hat to Zekiel, and appeared with a light travelling-cap. I do not know
how Fausta liked my metamorphosis. I only know that, like butterflies,
for a day or two after they go through theirs, I felt decidedly cold.
As Carter, the canal man, I had carried Fausta's trunk on board. As Mr.
Carter, I gave her my arm, led her to the gangway of the Newton, took
her passage and mine, and afterwards walked and sat through the
splendid moonlight of the first four hours down the river.
Miss Jones determined that evening to breakfast on the boat. Be it
observed that I did not then know her by any other name. She was to go
to an aunt's house, and she knew that if she left the boat on its early
arrival in New York, she would disturb that lady by a premature ringing
at her bell. I had no reason for haste, as the reader knows. The
distribution of the cyclopædias was not to take place till the next
day, and that absurd trifle was the only distinct excuse I had to
myself for being in New York at all. I asked Miss Jones, therefore, if
I might not be her escort still to her aunt's house. I had said it
would be hard to break off our pleasant journey before I had seen where
she lived, and I thought she seemed relieved to know that she should
not be wholly a stranger on her arrival. It was clear enough that her
aunt would send no one to meet her.
These preliminaries adjusted, we parted to our respective cabins. And
when, the next morning, at that unearthly hour demanded by Philadelphia
trains and other exigencies, the Newton made her dock, I rejoiced that
breakfast was not till seven o'clock, that I had two hours more of the
berth, which was luxury compared to Zekiel's bunk,--I turned upon my
other side and slept on.
Sorry enough for that morning nap was I for the next thirty-six hours.
For when I went on deck, and sent in the stewardess to tell Miss Jones
that I was waiting for her, and then took from her the check for her
trunk, I woke to the misery of finding that, in that treacherous two
hours, some pirate from the pier had stepped on board, had seized the
waiting trunk, left almost alone, while the baggage-master's back was
turned, and that, to a certainty, it was lost. I did not return to
Fausta with this story till the breakfast-bell had long passed and the
breakfast was very cold. I did not then tell it to her till I had seen
her eat her breakfast with an appetite much better than mine. I had
already offered up stairs the largest reward to anybody who would bring
it back which my scanty purse would pay. I had spoken to the clerk, who
had sent for a policeman. I could do nothing more, and I did not choose
to ruin her chop and coffee by ill-timed news. The officer came before
breakfast was over, and called me from table.
On the whole, his business-like way encouraged me. He had some clews
which I had not thought possible. It was not unlikely that they should
pounce on the trunk before it was broken open. I gave him a written
description of its marks; and when he civilly asked if "my lady" would
give some description of any books or other articles within, I readily
promised that I would call with such a description at the police
station. Somewhat encouraged, I returned to Miss Jones, and, when I led
her from the breakfast-table, told her of her misfortune. I took all
shame to myself for my own carelessness, to which I attributed the
loss. But I told her all that the officer had said to me, and that I
hoped to bring her the trunk at her aunt's before the day was over.
Fausta took my news, however, with a start which frightened me. All her
money, but a shilling or two, was in the trunk. To place money in
trunks is a weakness of the female mind which I have nowhere seen
accounted for. Worse than this, though,--as appeared after a moment's
examination of her travelling-_sac_,--her portfolio in the trunk
contained the letter of the aunt whom she came to visit, giving her her
address in the city. To this address she had no other clew but that her
aunt was Mrs. Mary Mason, had married a few years before a merchant
named Mason, whom Miss Jones had never seen, and of whose name and
business this was all she knew. They lived in a numbered street, but
whether it was Fourth Street, or Fifty-fourth, or One Hundred and
Twenty-fourth, or whether it was something between, the poor child had
no idea. She had put up the letter carefully, but had never thought of
the importance of the address. Besides this aunt, she knew no human
being in New York.
"Child of the Public," I said to myself, "what do you do now?" I had
appealed to my great patron in sending for the officer, and on the
whole I felt that my sovereign had been gracious to me, if not yet
hopeful. But now I must rub my lamp again, and ask the genie where the
unknown Mason lived. The genie of course suggested the Directory, and I
ran for it to the clerk's office. But as we were toiling down the pages
of "Masons," and had written off thirteen or fourteen who lived in
numbered streets, Fausta started, looked back at the preface and its
date, flung down her pencil in the only abandonment of dismay in which
I ever saw her, and cried "First of May! They were abroad until May.
They have been abroad since the day they were married!" So that genie
had to put his glories into his pocket, and carry his Directory back to
the office again.
The natural thing to propose was, that I should find for Miss Jones a
respectable boarding-house, and that she should remain there until her
trunk was found, or till she could write to friends who had this fatal
address, and receive an answer. But here she hesitated. She hardly
liked to explain why,--did not explain wholly. But she did not say that
she had no friends who knew this address. She had but few relations in
the world, and her aunt had communicated with her alone since she came
from Europe. As for the boarding-house, "I had rather look for work,"
she said bravely. "I have never promised to pay money when I did not
know how to obtain it; and that"--and here she took out fifty or sixty
cents from her purse--"and that is all now. In respectable
boarding-houses, when people come without luggage, they are apt to ask
for an advance. Or, at least," she added, with some pride, "I am apt to
offer it."