was setting toward Santa Claus's headquarters, in the big Broadway
store, he turned off into a quieter street, leading west. It took him
to a narrow thoroughfare, with five-story tenements frowning on either
side, where the people he met were not so well dressed as those he had
left behind, and did not seem to be in such a hurry of joyful
anticipation of the holiday. Into one of the tenements he went, and,
groping his way through a pitch-dark hall, came to a door way back,
the last one to the left, at which he knocked. An expectant voice
said, "Come in," and the professor pushed open the door.
The room was very small, very stuffy, and very dark, so dark that a
smoking kerosene lamp that burned on a table next the stove hardly
lighted it at all, though it was broad day. A big, unshaven man, who
sat on the bed, rose when he saw the visitor, and stood uncomfortably
shifting his feet and avoiding the professor's eye. The latter's
glance was serious, though not unkind, as he asked the woman with the
baby if he had found no work yet.
"No," she said, anxiously coming to the rescue, "not yet; he was
waitin' for a recommend." But Johnnie had earned two dollars running
errands, and, now there was a big fall of snow, his father might get a
job of shovelling. The woman's face was worried, yet there was a
cheerful note in her voice that somehow made the place seem less
discouraging than it was. The baby she nursed was not much larger than
a middle-sized doll. Its little face looked thin and wan. It had been
very sick, she explained, but the doctor said it was mending now. That
was good, said the professor, and patted one of the bigger children on
the head.
There were six of them, of all sizes, from Johnnie, who could run
errands, down. They were busy fixing up a Christmas tree that half
filled the room, though it was of the very smallest. Yet, it was a
real Christmas tree, left over from the Sunday-school stock, and it
was dressed up at that. Pictures from the colored supplement of a
Sunday newspaper hung and stood on every branch, and three pieces of
colored glass, suspended on threads that shone in the smoky lamplight,
lent color and real beauty to the show. The children were greatly
tickled.
"John put it up," said the mother, by way of explanation, as the
professor eyed it approvingly. "There ain't nothing to eat on it. If
there was, it wouldn't be there a minute. The childer be always
a-searchin' in it."
"But there must be, or else it isn't a real Christmas tree," said the
professor, and brought out the little dollar. "This is a dollar which
a friend gave me for the children's Christmas, and she sends her love
with it. Now, you buy them some things and a few candles, Mrs.
Ferguson, and then a good supper for the rest of the family. Good
night, and a Merry Christmas to you. I think myself the baby is
getting better." It had just opened its eyes and laughed at the tree.
The professor was not very far on his way toward keeping his appointment
with Santa Claus before Mrs. Ferguson was at the grocery laying in her
dinner. A dollar goes a long way when it is the only one in the house;
and when she had everything, including two cents' worth of flitter-gold,
four apples, and five candles for the tree, the grocer footed up her
bill on the bag that held her potatoes--ninety-eight cents. Mrs.
Ferguson gave him the little dollar.
"What's this?" said the grocer, his fat smile turning cold as he laid
a restraining hand on the full basket. "That ain't no good."
"It's a dollar, ain't it?" said the woman, in alarm. "It's all right.
I know the man that give it to me."
"It ain't all right in this store," said the grocer, sternly. "Put
them things back. I want none o' that."
The woman's eyes filled with tears as she slowly took the lid off the
basket and lifted out the precious bag of potatoes. They were waiting
for that dinner at home. The children were even then camping on the
door-step to take her in to the tree in triumph. And now--
For the second time a restraining hand was laid upon her basket; but
this time it was not the grocer's. A gentleman who had come in to
order a Christmas turkey had overheard the conversation, and had seen
the strange bill.
"It is all right," he said to the grocer. "Give it to me. Here is a
dollar bill for it of the kind you know. If all your groceries were as
honest as this bill, Mr. Schmidt, it would be a pleasure to trade with
you. Don't be afraid to trust Uncle Sam where you see his promise to
pay."
The gentleman held the door open for Mrs. Ferguson, and heard the
shout of the delegation awaiting her on the stoop as he went down the
street.
"I wonder where that came from, now," he mused. "Coupons in Bedford
Street! I suppose somebody sent it to the woman for a Christmas gift.
Hello! Here are old Thomas and Snowflake. Now, wouldn't it surprise
her old stomach if I gave her a Christmas gift of oats? If only the
shock doesn't kill her! Thomas! Oh, Thomas!"
The old man thus hailed stopped and awaited the gentleman's coming. He
was a cartman who did odd jobs through the ward, so picking up a
living for himself and the white horse, which the boys had dubbed
Snowflake in a spirit of fun. They were a well-matched old pair,
Thomas and his horse. One was not more decrepit than the other.
There was a tradition along the docks, where Thomas found a job now
and then, and Snowflake an occasional straw to lunch on, that they
were of an age, but this was denied by Thomas.
"See here," said the gentleman, as he caught up with them; "I want
Snowflake to keep Christmas, Thomas. Take this and buy him a bag of
oats. And give it to him carefully, do you hear?--not all at once,
Thomas. He isn't used to it."
"Gee whizz!" said the old man, rubbing his eyes with his cap, as his
friend passed out of sight, "oats fer Christmas! G'lang, Snowflake;
yer in luck."
The feed-man put on his spectacles and looked Thomas over at the
strange order. Then he scanned the little dollar, first on one side,
then on the other.
"Never seed one like him," he said. "'Pears to me he is mighty short.
Wait till I send round to the hockshop. He'll know, if anybody."
The man at the pawnshop did not need a second look. "Why, of course,"
he said, and handed a dollar bill over the counter. "Old Thomas, did
you say? Well, I am blamed if the old man ain't got a stocking after
all. They're a sly pair, he and Snowflake."
Business was brisk that day at the pawnshop. The door-bell tinkled
early and late, and the stock on the shelves grew. Bundle was added to
bundle. It had been a hard winter so far. Among the callers in the
early afternoon was a young girl in a gingham dress and without other
covering, who stood timidly at the counter and asked for three dollars
on a watch, a keepsake evidently, which she was loath to part with.
Perhaps it was the last glimpse of brighter days. The pawnbroker was
doubtful; it was not worth so much. She pleaded hard, while he
compared the number of the movement with a list sent in from Police
Headquarters.
"Two," he said decisively at last, snapping the case shut--"two or
nothing." The girl handed over the watch with a troubled sigh. He made
out a ticket and gave it to her with a handful of silver change.
Was it the sigh and her evident distress, or was it the little dollar?
As she turned to go, he called her back.
"Here, it is Christmas!" he said. "I'll run the risk." And he added
the coupon to the little heap.
The girl looked at it and at him questioningly.
"It is all right," he said; "you can take it; I'm running short of
change. Bring it back if they won't take it. I'm good for it." Uncle
Sam had achieved a backer.
In Grand Street the holiday crowds jammed every store in their eager
hunt for bargains. In one of them, at the knit-goods counter, stood
the girl from the pawnshop, picking out a thick, warm shawl. She
hesitated between a gray and a maroon-colored one, and held them up to
the light.
"For you?" asked the salesgirl, thinking to aid her. She glanced at
her thin dress and shivering form as she said it.
"No," said the girl; "for mother; she is poorly and needs it." She
chose the gray, and gave the salesgirl her handful of money.
The girl gave back the coupon.
"They don't go," she said; "give me another, please."
"But I haven't got another," said the girl, looking apprehensively at
the shawl. "The--Mr. Feeney said it was all right. Take it to the
desk, please, and ask."
The salesgirl took the bill and the shawl, and went to the desk. She
came back, almost immediately, with the storekeeper, who looked
sharply at the customer and noted the number of the coupon.
"It is all right," he said, satisfied apparently by the inspection; "a
little unusual, only. We don't see many of them. Can I help you,
miss?" And he attended her to the door.
In the street there was even more of a Christmas show going on than in
the stores. Pedlers of toys, of mottoes, of candles, and of
knickknacks of every description stood in rows along the curb, and
were driving a lively trade. Their push-carts were decorated with fir
branches--even whole Christmas trees. One held a whole cargo of Santa
Clauses in a bower of green, each one with a cedar-bush in his folded
arms, as a soldier carries his gun. The lights were blazing out in the
stores, and the hucksters' torches were flaring at the corners. There
was Christmas in the very air and Christmas in the storekeeper's till.
It had been a very busy day. He thought of it with a satisfied nod as
he stood a moment breathing the brisk air of the winter day, absently
fingering the coupon the girl had paid for the shawl. A thin voice at
his elbow said: "Merry Christmas, Mr. Stein! Here's yer paper."
It was the newsboy who left the evening papers at the door every
night. The storekeeper knew him, and something about the struggle they
had at home to keep the roof over their heads. Mike was a kind of
protégé of his. He had helped to get him his route.
"Wait a bit, Mike," he said. "You'll be wanting your Christmas from
me. Here's a dollar. It's just like yourself: it is small, but it is
all right. You take it home and have a good time."
Was it the message with which it had been sent forth from far away in
the country, or what was it? Whatever it was, it was just impossible
for the little dollar to lie still in the pocket while there was want
to be relieved, mouths to be filled, or Christmas lights to be lit. It
just couldn't, and it didn't.
Mike stopped around the corner of Allen Street, and gave three whoops
expressive of his approval of Mr. Stein; having done which, he sidled
up to the first lighted window out of range to examine his gift. His
enthusiasm changed to open-mouthed astonishment as he saw the little
dollar. His jaw fell. Mike was not much of a scholar, and could not
make out the inscription on the coupon; but he had heard of
shinplasters as something they "had in the war," and he took this to
be some sort of a ten-cent piece. The policeman on the block might
tell. Just now he and Mike were hunk. They had made up a little
difference they'd had, and if any one would know, the cop surely
would. And off he went in search of him.
Mr. McCarthy pulled off his gloves, put his club under his arm, and
studied the little dollar with contracted brow. He shook his head as
he handed it back, and rendered the opinion that it was "some dom
swindle that's ag'in' the law." He advised Mike to take it back to Mr.
Stein, and added, as he prodded him in an entirely friendly manner in
the ribs with his locust, that if it had been the week before he might
have "run him in" for having the thing in his possession. As it
happened, Mr. Stein was busy and not to be seen, and Mike went home
between hope and fear, with his doubtful prize.
There was a crowd at the door of the tenement, and Mike saw, before he
had reached it, running, that it clustered about an ambulance that
was backed up to the sidewalk. Just as he pushed his way through the
throng it drove off, its clanging gong scattering the people right and
left. A little girl sat weeping on the top step of the stoop. To her
Mike turned for information.
"Susie, what's up?" he asked, confronting her with his armful of
papers. "Who's got hurted?"
"It's papa," sobbed the girl. "He ain't hurted. He's sick, and he was
took that bad he had to go, an' to-morrer is Christmas, an'--oh,
Mike!"
It is not the fashion of Essex Street to slop over. Mike didn't. He
just set his mouth to a whistle and took a turn down the hall to
think. Susie was his chum. There were seven in her flat; in his only
four, including two that made wages. He came back from his trip with
his mind made up.
"Suse," he said, "come on in. You take this, Suse, see! an' let the
kids have their Christmas. Mr. Stein give it to me. It's a little one,
but if it ain't all right I'll take it back and get one that is good.
Go on, now, Suse, you hear?" And he was gone.
There was a Christmas tree that night in Susie's flat, with candles
and apples and shining gold, but the little dollar did not pay for it.
That rested securely in the purse of the charity visitor who had come
that afternoon, just at the right time, as it proved. She had heard
the story of Mike and his sacrifice, and had herself given the
children a one-dollar bill for the coupon. They had their Christmas,
and a joyful one, too, for the lady went up to the hospital and
brought back word that Susie's father would be all right with rest and
care, which he was now getting. Mike came in and helped them "sack"
the tree when the lady was gone. He gave three more whoops for Mr.
Stein, three for the lady, and three for the hospital doctor to even
things up. Essex Street was all right that night.
"Do you know, professor," said that learned man's wife, when, after
supper, he had settled down in his easy-chair to admire the Noah's ark
and the duckses' babies and the rest, all of which had arrived safely
by express ahead of him and were waiting to be detailed to their
appropriate stockings while the children slept--"do you know, I heard
such a story of a little newsboy to-day. It was at the meeting of our
district charity committee this evening. Miss Linder, our visitor,
came right from the house." And she told the story of Mike and Susie.
"And I just got the little dollar bill to keep. Here it is." She took
the coupon out of her purse and passed it to her husband.
"Eh! what?" said the professor, adjusting his spectacles and reading
the number. "If here isn't my little dollar come back to me! Why,
where have you been, little one? I left you in Bedford Street this
morning, and here you come by way of Essex. Well, I declare!" And he
told his wife how he had received it in a letter in the morning.
"John," she said, with a sudden impulse,--she didn't know, and neither
did he, that it was the charm of the little dollar that was working
again,--"John, I guess it is a sin to stop it. Jones's children won't
have any Christmas tree, because they can't afford it. He told me so
this morning when he fixed the furnace. And the baby is sick. Let us
give them the little dollar. He is here in the kitchen now."
And they did; and the Joneses, and I don't know how many others, had
a Merry Christmas because of the blessed little dollar that carried
Christmas cheer and good luck wherever it went. For all I know, it may
be going yet. Certainly it is a sin to stop it, and if any one has
locked it up without knowing that he locked up the Christmas dollar,
let him start it right out again. He can tell it easily enough. If he
just looks at the number, that's the one.
THE KID
He was an every-day tough, bull-necked, square-jawed, red of face, and
with his hair cropped short in the fashion that rules at Sing Sing and
is admired of Battle Row. Any one could have told it at a glance. The
bruised and wrathful face of the policeman who brought him to Mulberry
Street, to be "stood up" before the detectives in the hope that there
might be something against him to aggravate the offence of beating an
officer with his own club, bore witness to it. It told a familiar
story. The prisoner's gang had started a fight in the street, probably
with a scheme of ultimate robbery in view, and the police had come
upon it unexpectedly. The rest had got away with an assortment of
promiscuous bruises. The "Kid" stood his ground, and went down with
two "cops" on top of him after a valiant battle, in which he had
performed the feat that entitled him to honorable mention henceforth
in the felonious annals of the gang. There was no surrender in his
sullen look as he stood before the desk, his hard face disfigured
further by a streak of half-dried blood, reminiscent of the night's
encounter. The fight had gone against him--that was all right. There
was a time for getting square. Till then he was man enough to take his
medicine, let them do their worst.
It was there, plain as could be, in his set jaws and dogged bearing as
he came out, numbered now and indexed in the rogues' gallery, and
started for the police court between two officers. It chanced that I
was going the same way, and joined company. Besides, I have certain
theories concerning toughs which my friend the sergeant says are rot,
and I was not averse to testing them on the Kid.
But the Kid was a bad subject. He replied to my friendly advances with
a muttered curse, or not at all, and upset all my notions in the most
reckless way. Conversation had ceased before we were halfway across to
Broadway. He "wanted no guff," and I left him to his meditations
respecting his defenceless state. At Broadway there was a jam of
trucks, and we stopped at the corner to wait for an opening.
It all happened so quickly that only a confused picture of it is in my
mind till this day. A sudden start, a leap, and a warning cry, and the
Kid had wrenched himself loose. He was free. I was dimly conscious of
a rush of blue and brass; and then I saw--the whole street saw--a
child, a toddling baby, in the middle of the railroad track, right in
front of the coming car. It reached out its tiny hand toward the madly
clanging bell and crowed. A scream rose wild and piercing above the
tumult; men struggled with a frantic woman on the curb, and turned
their heads away--
And then there stood the Kid, with the child in his arms, unhurt. I
see him now, as he set it down, gently as any woman, trying with
lingering touch to unclasp the grip of the baby hand upon his rough
finger. I see the hard look coming back into his face as the
policeman, red and out of breath, twisted the nipper on his wrist,
with a half-uncertain aside to me, "Them toughs there ain't no
depending on, nohow." Sullen, defiant, planning vengeance, I see him
led away to jail. Ruffian and thief! The police blotter said so.
But, even so, the Kid had proved that my theories about toughs were
not rot. Who knows but that, like sergeants, the blotter may be
sometimes mistaken?
WHEN THE LETTER CAME
"To-morrow it will come," Godfrey Krueger had said that night to his
landlord. "To-morrow it will surely come, and then I shall have money.
Soon I shall be rich, richer than you can think."
And the landlord of the Forsyth Street tenement, who in his heart
liked the gray-haired inventor, but who had rooms to let, grumbled
something about a to-morrow that never came.
"Oh, but it will come," said Krueger, turning on the stairs and
shading the lamp with his hand, the better to see his landlord's
good-natured face; "you know the application has been advanced. It is
bound to be granted, and to-night I shall finish my ship."
Now, as he sat alone in his room at his work, fitting, shaping, and
whittling with restless hands, he had to admit to himself that it was
time it came. Two whole days he had lived on a crust, and he was
starving. He had worked and waited thirteen hard years for the success
that had more than once been almost within his grasp, only to elude it
again. It had never seemed nearer and surer than now, and there was
need of it. He had come to the jumping-off place. All his money was
gone, to the last cent, and his application for a pension hung fire in
Washington unaccountably. It had been advanced to the last stage, and
word that it had been granted might be received any day. But the days
slipped by and no word came. For two days he had lived on faith and a
crust, but they were giving out together. If only--
Well, when it did come, what with his back pay for all those years, he
would have the means to build his ship, and hunger and want would be
forgotten. He should have enough. And the world would know that
Godfrey Krueger was not an idle crank.
"In six months I shall cross the ocean to Europe in twenty hours in my
air-ship," he had said in showing the landlord his models, "with as
many as want to go. Then I shall become a millionnaire and shall make
you one, too." And the landlord had heaved a sigh at the thought of
his twenty-seven dollars, and doubtingly wished it might be so.
Weak and famished, Krueger bent to his all but finished task. Before
morning he should know that it would work as he had planned. There
remained only to fit the last parts together. The idea of building an
air-ship had come to him while he lay dying with scurvy, as they
thought, in a Confederate prison, and he had never abandoned it. He
had been a teacher and a student, and was a trained mathematician.
There could be no flaw in his calculations. He had worked them out
again and again. The energy developed by his plan was great enough to
float a ship capable of carrying almost any burden, and of directing
it against the strongest head winds. Now, upon the threshold of
success, he was awaiting merely the long-delayed pension to carry his
dream into life. To-morrow would bring it, and with it an end to all
his waiting and suffering.
One after another the lights went out in the tenement. Only the one in
the inventor's room burned steadily through the night. The policeman
on the beat noticed the lighted window, and made a mental note of the
fact that some one was sick. Once during the early hours he stopped
short to listen. Upon the morning breeze was borne a muffled sound, as
of a distant explosion. But all was quiet again, and he went on,
thinking that his senses had deceived him. The dawn came in the
eastern sky, and with it the stir that attends the awakening of
another day. The lamp burned steadily yet behind the dim window pane.
The milkmen came, and the push-cart criers. The policeman was
relieved, and another took his place. Lastly came the mail-carrier
with a large official envelope marked, "Pension Bureau, Washington."
He shouted up the stairway:--
"Krueger! Letter!"
The landlord came to the door and was glad. So it had come, had it?
"Run, Emma," he said to his little daughter, "run and tell Mr. Godfrey
his letter has come."
The child skipped up the steps gleefully. She knocked at the
inventor's door, but no answer came. It was not locked, and she pushed
it open. The little lamp smoked yet on the table. The room was strewn
with broken models and torn papers that littered the floor. Something
there frightened the child. She held to the banisters and called
faintly:--
"Papa! Oh, papa!"
They went in together on tiptoe without knowing why, the postman with
the big official letter in his hand. The morrow had kept its promise.
Of hunger and want there was an end. On the bed, stretched at full
length, with his Grand Army hat flung beside him, lay the inventor,
dead. A little round hole in the temple, from which a few drops of
blood had flowed, told what remained of his story. In the night
disillusion had come, with failure.
THE CAT TOOK THE KOSHER MEAT
The tenement No. 76 Madison Street had been for some time scandalized
by the hoidenish ways of Rose Baruch, the little cloak maker on the
top floor. Rose was seventeen, and boarded with her mother in the
Pincus family. But for her harum-scarum ways she might, in the opinion
of the tenement, be a nice girl and some day a good wife; but these
were unbearable.
For the tenement is a great working hive in which nothing has value
unless exchangeable for gold. Rose's animal spirits, which long hours
and low wages had no power to curb, were exchangeable only for wrath
in the tenement. Her noisy feet on the stairs when she came home woke
up all the tenants, and made them swear at the loss of the precious
moments of sleep which were their reserve capital. Rose was so
Americanized, they said impatiently among themselves, that nothing
could be done with her.