In the smoking-room that night a new and peculiar variety of passenger
made his appearance, and his first one--to me--although we were then
within two days of Sandy Hook. This individual wore a check suit of
the latest London cut, big broad-soled Piccadilly shoes, and smoked a
brierwood pipe which he constantly filled from a rubber pouch carried
in his waistcoat pocket. When I first noticed him, he was sitting at a
table with two Englishmen drinking brandy-and-sodas,--plural, not
singular.
The Doctor, Todd, and I were at an adjoining table: the Doctor
immersed in a scientific pamphlet, Todd sipping his creme de menthe,
and I my coffee. Over in one corner were a group of drummers playing
poker. They had not left the spot since we started, except at
meal-time and at midnight, when Fritz, the smoking-room steward, had
turned them out to air the room. Scattered about were other
passengers--some reading, some playing checkers or backgammon, others
asleep, among them the pink-cheeked von Hoffbein, who lay sprawled out
on one of the leather-covered sofas, his thin legs spread apart like
the letter A, as he emitted long-drawn organ tones, with only the nose
stop pulled out.
The party of Englishmen, by reason of the unlimited number of
brandy-and-sodas which their comrade in the check suit had ordered for
them, were more or less noisy, laughing a good deal. They had
attracted the attention of the whole room, many of the old-timers
wondering how long it would be before the third officer would tap the
check suit on the shoulder, and send it and him to bed under charge of
a steward. The constant admonitions of his companions seemed to have
had no effect upon the gentleman in question, for he suddenly launched
out upon such topics as Colonial Policies and Governments and Taxation
and Modern Fleets; addressing his remarks, not to his two friends, but
to the room at large.
According to my own experience, the traveling Englishman is a quiet,
well-bred, reticent man, brandy-and-soda proof (I have seen him drink
a dozen of an evening without a droop of an eyelid); and if he has any
positive convictions of the superiority of that section of the
Anglo-Saxon race to which he belongs,--and he invariably has,--he
keeps them to himself, certainly in the public smoking-room of a
steamer filled with men of a dozen different nations. The outbreak, as
well as the effect of the incentive, was therefore as unexpected as it
was unusual.
The check-suit man, however, was not constructed along these lines.
The spirit of old Hennessy was in his veins, the stored energy of many
sodas pressed against his tongue, and an explosion was inevitable. No
portion of these excitants, strange to say, had leaked into his legs,
for outwardly he was as steady as an undertaker. He began again, his
voice pitched in a high key:--
"Talk of coercing England! Why, we've got a hundred and forty-one
ships of the line, within ten days' sail of New York, that could blow
the bloody stuffin' out of every man Jack of 'em. And we don't care a
brass farthing what Uncle Sam says about it, either."
His two friends tried to keep him quiet, but he broke out again on
Colonization and American Treachery and Conquest of Cuba; and so,
being desirous to read in peace, I nodded to the Doctor and Todd,
picked up my book, and drew up a steamer chair on the deck outside,
under one of the electric lights.
I had hardly settled myself in my seat when a great shout went up from
the smoking-room that sent every one running down the deck, and jammed
the portholes and doors of the room with curious faces. Then I heard a
voice rise clear above the noise inside: "Not another word, sir; you
don't know what you are talking about. We Americans don't rob people
we give our lives to free."
I forced my way past the door, and stepped inside. The Englishman was
being held down in his chair by his two friends. In his effort to
break loose he had wormed himself out of his coat. Beside their table,
close enough to put his hand on any one of them, stood the Doctor, a
curious set expression on his face. Todd was outside the circle,
standing on a sofa to get a better view.
Towering above the Englishman, his eyes burning, his shaggy hair about
his face, his whole figure tense with indignation, was the man with
the empty sleeve! Close behind him, cool, polite, straight as a
gendarme, and with the look in his eye of a cat about to spring, stood
the young baron. As I reached the centre of the melee, wondering what
had been the provocation and who had struck the first blow, I saw the
baron lean forward, and heard him say in a low voice to one of the
Englishmen, "He is so old as to be his fadder; take me," and he tapped
his chest meaningly with his fingers. Evidently he had not fenced at
Heidelberg for nothing, if he did have pink cheeks and pipestem legs.
The old man turned and laid his hand on the baron's shoulder. "I thank
you, sir, but I'll attend to this young man." His voice had lost all
its rasping quality now. It was low and concentrated, like that of one
accustomed to command. "Take your hands off him, gentlemen, if you
please. I don't think he has so far lost his senses as to strike a man
twice his age and with one arm. Now, sir, you will apologize to me,
and to the room, and to your own friends, who must be heartily ashamed
of your conduct."
At the bottom of almost every Anglo-Saxon is a bed rock of common
sense that you reach through the shifting sands of prejudice with the
probe of fair play. The young man in the check suit, who was now on
his feet, looked the speaker straight in the eye, and, half drunk as
he was, held out his hand. "I'm sorry, sir, I offended you. I was
speaking to my friends here, and I did not know any Americans were
present."
"Bravo!" yelled the Doctor. "What did I tell you Todd? That's the kind
of stuff! Now, gentlemen, all together--three cheers for the man with
the empty sleeve!"
Everybody broke out with another shout--all but Todd, who had not made
the slightest response to the Doctor's invitation to loosen his legs
and his lungs. He did not show the slightest emotion over the fracas,
and, moreover, seemed to have become suddenly disgusted with the
baron.
Then the Doctor grasped the young German by the hand, and said how
glad he was to know him, and how delighted he would be if he would
join them and "take something,"--all of which the young man accepted
with a frank, pleased look on his face.
When the room had resumed its normal conditions, all three Englishmen
having disappeared, the Doctor, whose enthusiasm over the incident had
somehow paved the way for closer acquaintance, introduced me in the
same informal way both to the baron and to the hero of the occasion,
as "a brother American," and we all sat down beside the old man, his
face lighting up with a smile as he made room for us. Then laying his
hand on my knee, with the manner of an older man, he said: "I ought
not to have given way, perhaps; but the truth is, I'm not accustomed
to hear such things at home. I did not know until I got close to him
that he had been drinking, or I might have let it pass. I suppose this
kind of talk may always go on in the smoking-room of these steamers. I
don't know, for it's my first trip abroad, and on the way out I was
too ill to leave my berth. To-night is the first time I've been in
here. It was bad for me, I suppose. I've been ill all"----
He stopped suddenly, caught his breath quickly, and his hand fell from
my knee. For a moment he sat leaning forward, breathing heavily.
I sprang up, thinking he was about to faint. The baron started for a
glass of water. The old man raised his hand.
"No, don't be alarmed, gentlemen; it is nothing. I am subject to these
attacks; it will pass off in a moment," and he glanced around the room
as if to assure himself that no one but ourselves had noticed it.
"The excitement was too much for you," the Doctor said gravely, in an
undertone. His trained eye had caught the peculiar pallor of the face.
"You must not excite yourself so."
"Yes, I know,--the heart," he said after a pause, speaking with short,
indrawn breaths, and straightening himself slowly and painfully until
he had regained his old erect position. After a little while he put
his hand again on my knee, with an added graciousness in his manner,
as if in apology for the shock he had given me. "It's passing
off,--yes, I'm better now." Then, in a more cheerful tone, as if to
change the subject, he added: "My steward tells me that we made four
hundred and fifty-two miles yesterday. This makes my little girl
happy. She's had an anxious summer, and I'm glad this part of it is
over. Yes, she's _very_ happy to-day."
"You mean on account of your health?" I asked sympathetically;
although I remembered afterward that I had not caught his meaning.
"Well, not so much that, for that can never be any better, but on
account of our being so near home,--only two days more. I couldn't
bear to leave her alone on ship-board, but it's all right now. You
see, there are only two of us since her mother died." His voice fell,
and for the first time I saw a shade of sadness cross his face. The
Doctor saw it too, for there was a slight quaver in his voice when he
said, as he rose, that his stateroom was No. 13, and he would be happy
to be called upon at any time, day or night, whenever he could be of
service; then he resumed his former seat under the light, and
apparently his pamphlet, although I could see his eyes were constantly
fixed on the pallid face.
The baron and I kept our seats, and I ordered three of something from
Fritz, as further excuse for tarrying beside the invalid. I wanted to
know something more of a man who was willing to fight the universe
with one arm in defense of his country's good name, though I was still
in the dark as to what had been the provocation. All I could gather
from the young baron, in his broken English, was that the Englishman
had maligned the motives of our government in helping the Cubans, and
that the old man had flamed out, astounding the room with the power of
his invective and thorough mastery of the subject, and compelling
their admiration by the genuineness of his outburst.
"I see you have lost your arm," I began, hoping to get some further
facts regarding himself.
"Yes, some years ago," he answered simply, but with a tone that
implied he did not care to discuss either the cause or the incidents
connected with its loss.
"An accident?" I asked. The empty sleeve seemed suddenly to have a
peculiar fascination for me.
"Yes, partly," and, smiling gravely, he rose from his seat, saying
that he must rejoin his daughter, who might be worrying. He bade the
occupants of the room good-night, many of whom, including the baron
and the Doctor, rose to their feet,--the baron saluting, and following
the old man out, as if he had been his superior officer.
With the closing of the smoking-room door, P. Wooverman Shaw Todd,
Esquire, roused himself from his chair, walked toward the Doctor, and
sat down beside him.
"Well! I must say that I'm glad that man's gone!" he burst out. "I
have never seen anything more outrageous than this whole performance.
This fire eater ought to travel about with a guardian. Suppose, now,
my dear Doctor, that everybody went about with these absurd
ideas,--what a place the world would be to live in! This is the worst
American I have met yet. And see what an example; even the young baron
lost his head, I am sorry to say. I heard the young Englishman's
remark. It was, I admit, indiscreet, but no part of it was addressed
to this very peculiar person; and it is just like that kind of an
American, full of bombast and bluster, to feel offended. Besides,
every word the young man said was true. There is a great deal of
politics in this Cuban business,--you know it, and I know it. We have
no men trained for colonial life, and we never shall have, so long as
our better class keep aloof from politics. The island will be made a
camping-ground for vulgar politicians--no question about it. Think,
now, of sending that firebrand among those people. You can see by his
very appearance that he has never done anything better than astonish
the loungers about a country stove. As for all this fuss about his
empty sleeve, no doubt some other fire eater put a bullet through it
in defense of what such kind of people call their honor. It is too
farcical for words, my dear Doctor,--too farcical for words," and P.
Wooverman Shaw Todd, Esquire, pulled his steamer cap over his eyes,
jumped to his feet, and stalked out of the room.
The Doctor looked after Todd until he had disappeared. Then he turned
to his pamphlet again. There was evidently no composite, explosive
epithet deadly enough within reach at the moment, or there is not the
slightest doubt in my mind that he would have demolished Todd with it.
Todd's departure made another vacancy at our table, and a tall man,
who had applauded the loudest at the apology of the Englishman,
dropped into Todd's empty chair, addressing the Doctor as representing
our party.
"I suppose you know who the old man is, don't you?"
"No."
"That's John Stedman, manager of the Union Iron Works of Parkinton, a
manufacturing town in my State. He's one of the best iron men in the
country. Fine old fellow, isn't he? He's been ill ever since his wife
died, and I don't think he'll ever get over it. She had been sick for
years, and he nursed her day and night. He wouldn't go to Congress,
preferring to stay by her, and it almost broke his heart when she
died. Poor old man,--don't look as if he was long for this world. I
expected him to mop up the floor with that Englishman, sick as he is;
and he would, if he hadn't apologized. I heard, too, what your friend
who has just gone out said about Stedman not being the kind of a man
to send to Cuba. I tell you, they might look the country over, and
they couldn't find a better. That's been his strong hold,
straightening out troubles of one kind or another. Everybody believes
in him, and anybody takes his word. He's done a power of good in our
State."
"In what way?" asked the Doctor.
"Oh, in settling strikes, for one thing. You see, he started from the
scrap pile, and he knows the laboring man down to a dot, for he
carried a dinner pail himself for ten years of his life. When the men
are imposed upon he stands by 'em, and compels the manufacturers to
deal square; and if they don't, he joins the men and fights it out
with the bosses. If the men are wrong, and want what the furnaces
can't give 'em,--and there's been a good deal of that lately,--he
sails into the gangs, and, if nothing else will do, he gets a gun and
joins the sheriffs. He was all through that last strike we had, three
years ago, and it would be going on now but for John Stedman."
"But he seems to be a man of fine education," interrupted the Doctor,
who was listening attentively.
"Yes, so he is,--learned it all at night schools. When he was a boy he
used to fire the kilns, and they say you could always find him with a
spelling-book in one hand and a chunk of wood in the other, reading
nights by the light of the kiln fires."
"You say he went to Congress?" The Doctor's eyes were now fixed on the
speaker.
"No, I said he _would_n't go. His wife was taken sick about that
time, and when he found she wasn't going to get well,--she had lung
trouble,--he told the committee that he wouldn't accept the
nomination; and of course nomination meant election for him. He told
'em his wife had stuck by him all her life, had washed his flannel
shirts for him and cooked his dinner, and that he was going to stick
by her now she was down. But I tell you what he did do: he stumped
the district for his opponent, because he said he was a better man
than his own party put up,--and elected him, too. That was just like
John Stedman. The heelers were pretty savage, but that made no
difference to him.
"He's never recovered from his wife's death. That daughter with him is
the only child he's got. She's been so afraid he'd die on board and
have to be buried at sea that he's kept his berth just to please her.
The doctor at home told him Carlsbad was his only chance, and the
daughter begged so he made the trip. He was so sick when he went out
that he took a coffin with him,--it's in the hold now. I heard him
tell his daughter this morning that it was all right now, and he
thought he'd get up. You see, there are only two days more, and the
captain promised the daughter not to bury her father at sea when we
were that close to land. Stedman smiled when he told me, but that's
just like him; he's always been cool as a cucumber."
"How did he lose his arm?" I inquired. I had been strangely absorbed
in what he had told me. "In the war?"
"No. He served two years, but that's not how he lost his arm. He lost
it saving the lives of some of his men. I happened to be up at
Parkinton at the time, buying some coke, and I saw him carried out. It
was about ten years ago. He had invented a new furnace; 'most all the
new wrinkles they've got at the Union Company Stedman made for 'em.
When they got ready to draw the charge,--that's when the red-hot iron
is about to flow out of the furnace, you know, the outlet got clogged.
That's a bad thing to happen to a furnace; for if a chill should set
in, the whole plant would be ruined. Then, again, it might explode and
tear everything to pieces. Some of the men jumped into the pit with
their crowbars, and began to jab away at the opening in the wrong
place, and the metal started with a rush. Stedman hollered to 'em to
stop; but they either didn't hear him or wouldn't mind. Then he jumped
in among them, threw them out of the way, grabbed a crowbar, and
fought the flow until they all got out safe. But the hot metal had
about cooked his arm clear to the elbow before he let go."
The Doctor, with hands deep in his pockets, began pacing the floor.
Then he stopped, and, looking down at me, said slowly, pointing off
his fingers one after the other to keep count as he talked:--
"Tender and loyal to his wife--thoughtful of his child--facing death
like a hero--a soldier and patriot. What is there in the make-up of a
gentleman that this man hasn't got?
"Come! Let's go out and find that high-collared, silk-stockinged,
sweet-scented Anglomaniac from Salem! By the Eternal, Todd's got to
apologize!"
"TINCTER OV IRON"
It was in an old town in Connecticut. Marbles kept the shop. "Joseph
Marbles, Shipwright and Blacksmith," the sign read.
I knew Joe. He had repaired one of the lighters used in carrying
materials for the foundation of the lighthouse I was building. The
town lay in the barren end of the State, where they raised rocks
enough to make four stone fences to the acre. Joe always looked to me
as if he had lived off the crop. The diet never affected his temper
nor hardened his heart, so far as I could see. It was his body, his
long, lean, lank body, that suggested the stone diet.
In his early days Joe had married a helpmate. She had lasted until the
beginning of the third year, and then she had been carried to the
cemetery on the hill, and another stone, and a new one, added to the
general assortment. This matrimonial episode was his last.
This wife was a constant topic with Marbles. He would never speak of
her as a part of his life, one who had shared his bed and board, and
therefore entitled to his love and reverent remembrance. It was rather
as an appendage to his household, a curiosity, a natural freak, as one
would discuss the habits of a chimpanzee, and with a certain pity,
too, for the poor creature whom he had housed, fed, poked at, humored,
and then buried.
And yet with it all I could always see that nothing else in his life
had made so profound an impression upon him as the companionship of
this "poor creeter," and that underneath his sparsely covered ribs
there still glowed a spot for the woman who had given him her youth.
He would say, "It wuz one ov them days when she wouldn't eat, or it
was kind o' cur'us to watch her go on when she had one ov them
tantrums." Sometimes he would recount some joke he had played upon
her, rubbing his ribs in glee--holding his sides would have been a
superfluous act and the statement here erroneous.
"That wuz when she fust come, yer know," he said to me one day,
leaning against an old boat, his adze in his hand. "Her folks belonged
over to Westerly. I never had seen much ov wimmen, and didn't know
their ways. But I tell yer she wuz a queer 'un, allers imaginin' she
wuz ailin', er had heart disease when she got out er breath runnin'
upstairs, er as'mer, er lumbago, er somethin' else dreadful. She wuz
the cur'usest critter too to take medicin' ye ever see. She never
ailed none really 'cept when she broke her coller bone a-fallin'
downstairs, and in the last sickness, the one that killed her, but she
believed all the time she wuz, which was wuss. Every time the druggist
would git out a new red card and stick it in his winder, with a cure
fer cold, or chilblains, er croup, er e'sipelas, she'd go and buy it,
an' out 'd cum ther cork, and she a-tastin' ov it 'fore she got hum.
She used ter rub herself with St. Jiminy's intment, and soak her feet
in sea-salt, and cover herself with plasters till yer couldn't rest.
Why, ther cum a feller once who painted a yaller sign on ther whole
side ov Buckley's barn--cure fer spiral meningeetius,--and she wuz
nigh crazy till she had found out where ther pain ought ter be, and
had clapped er plaster on her back and front, persuadin' herself she
had it. That's how she bruk her coller bone, a-runnin' fer hot water
to soak 'em off, they burnt so, and stumblin' over a kit ov tools I
had brung hum to do a job around the house. After this she begun ter
run down so, and git so thin and peaked, I begun to think she really
wuz goin' ter be sick, after all, jest fer a change.
"When ther doctor come he sed it warn't nothin' but druggist's truck
that ailed her, and he throwed what there wuz out er ther winder, and
give her a tonic--Tincter ov Iron he called it. Well, yer never see a
woman hug a thing as she did that bottle. It was a spoonful three
times a day, and then she'd reach out fer it in ther night, vowin' it
was doin' her a heap er good, and I a-gettin' ther bottle filled at
Sarcy's ther druggist's, and payin' fifty cents every time he put er
new cork in it. I tried ter reason with her, but it warn't no use; she
would have it, and if she could have got outer bed and looked round at
the spring crop of advertisements on ther fences, she would hev struck
somethin' worse. So I let her run on until she tuk about seven
dollars' wuth of Tincter, and then I dropped in ter Sarcy's. 'Sarcy,'
sez I, 'can't ye wholesale this, er sell it by the quart? If the ole
woman's coller bone don't get ter runnin' easy purty soon I'll be
broke.'
"'Well,' he said, 'if I bought a dozen it might come cheaper, but it
wuz a mighty pertic'ler medicine, and had ter be fixed jest so.'
"''Taint pizen, is it?' I sez, 'thet's got ter be fixed so all-fired
kerful?' He 'lowed it warn't, and thet ye might take er barrel of it
and it wouldn't kill yer, but all ther same it has ter be made mighty
pertic'ler.
"'Well, iron's cheap enough,' I sez, 'and strengthenin' too. If it's
ther Tincter thet costs so, don't put so much in.' Well, he laffed,
and said ther warn't no real iron in it, only Tincter, kinder iron
soakage like, same es er drawin' ov tea.
"Goin' home thet night I got ter thinkin'. I'd been round iron all my
life and knowed its ways, but I hadn't struck no Tincter as I knowed
ov. When she fell asleep I poured out a leetle in another bottle and
slid it in my trousers pocket, an' next day, down ter ther shop, I
tasted ov it and held it up ter ther light. It was kind er persimmony
and dark-lookin', ez if it had rusty nails in it; and so thet night
when I goes hum I sez ter her, 'Down ter ther other druggist's I kin
git twice as much Tincter fer fifty cents as I kin at Sarcy's, and if
yer don't mind I'll git it filled there.' Well, she never kicked a
stroke, 'cept to say I'd better hurry, fer she hadn't had a spoonful
sence daylight, and she wuz beginnin' ter feel faint. When the whistle
blew I cum hum ter dinner, and sot the new bottle, about twice as big
as the other one, beside her bed.
"'How's that?' I sez. 'It's a leetle grain darker and more muddy like,
but the new druggist sez thet's the Tincter, and thet's what's doin'
ov yer good.' Well, she never suspicioned; jest kept on, night and
day, wrappin' herself round it every two er three hours, I gettin' it
filled regerlar and she a-empt'in' ov it.
"'Bout four weeks arter that she begun to git around, and then she'd
walk out ez fur ez ther shipyard fence, and then, begosh, she begun to
flesh up so as you wouldn't know her. Now an' then she'd meet the
doctor, and she'd say how she'd never a-lived but fer ther Tincter,
and he'd laff and drive on. When she got real peart I brought her down
to the shop one day, and I shows her an old paint keg thet I kep'
rusty bolts in, and half full ov water.
"'Smell that,' I sez, and she smells it and cocks her eye.
"'Taste it,' I sez, and she tasted it, and give me a look. Then I dips
a spoonful out in a glass, and I sez: 'It's most time to take yer
medicine. I kin beat Gus Sarcy all holler makin' Tincter; every drop
yer drunk fer a month come out er thet keg.'"
"FIVE MEALS FOR A DOLLAR"
The Literary Society of West Norrington, Vt., had invited me to
lecture on a certain Tuesday night in February.
The Tuesday night had arrived. So had the train. So had the
knock-kneed, bandy-legged hack--two front wheels bowed in, two hind
wheels bowed out--and so had the lecturer.
West Norrington is built on a hill. At the foot are the station, a
saw-mill, and a glue factory. On the top is a flat plateau holding the
principal residences, printing-office, opera-house, confectionery
store, druggist's, and hotel. Up the incline is a scattering of
cigar-stores, butcher shops, real-estate agencies, and one lone
restaurant. You know it is a restaurant by the pile of extra-dry
oyster-shells in the window--oysterless for months--and the four
oranges bunched together in a wire basket like a nest of pool balls.
You know it also from the sign--
"Five meals for a dollar."
I saw this sign on my way up the hill, but it made no impression on my
mind. I was bound for the hotel--the West Norrington Arms, the
conductor called it; and as I had eaten nothing since seven o'clock,
and it was then four, I was absorbed mentally in arranging a bill of
fare. Broiled chicken, of course, I said to myself--always get
delicious broiled chicken in the country--and a salad, and
perhaps--you can't always tell, of course, what the cellars of these
old New England taverns may contain--yes, perhaps a pint of any really
good Burgundy, Pommard, or Beaune.
"West Norrington Arms" sounded well. There was a distinct flavor of
exclusiveness and comfort about it, suggesting old side-boards,
hand-polished tables, small bar with cut-glass decanters, Franklin
stoves in the bedrooms, and the like. I could already see the luncheon
served in my room, the bright wood fire lighting up the dimity
curtains draping the high-post bedstead. Yes, I would order Pommard.
Here the front knees came together with a jerk. Then the driver pulled
his legs out of a buffalo-robe, opened the door with a twist, and
called out,--
"Nor'n't'n Arms."