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VAGABOND ADVENTURES.
BY
RALPH KEELER.
[Illustration: colophon]
BOSTON:
FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.
1870.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870,
BY RALPH KEELER,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & CO.,
CAMBRIDGE.
TO
My old Friend
EDWARD P. BASSETT, ESQ.,
This book is affectionately inscribed, with the wish, which is hardly a
hope, that the public may take my Life half as easily and good-naturedly
as he takes his own.
R. K.
CONTENTS.
BOOK I.
AMONG WHARVES AND CABINS.
ÆT. 11.
CHAPTER I.
PREFATORY 11
CHAPTER II.
FAMILY MATTERS 14
CHAPTER III.
A FUGITIVE 23
CHAPTER IV.
A STORMY TIME 34
CHAPTER V.
A BOY’S PARADISE 47
CHAPTER VI.
THE CONTUMELY OF CAPTAINS 54
CHAPTER VII.
ALMOST A TRAGEDY 62
CHAPTER VIII.
TAKEN PRISONER 71
CHAPTER IX.
SQUALOR 80
CHAPTER X.
A FINAL TRIUMPH 90
BOOK II.
THREE YEARS AS A NEGRO-MINSTREL.
ÆT. 12-15.
CHAPTER I.
MY FIRST COMPANY 101
CHAPTER II.
I BECOME A BENEFICIARY 108
CHAPTER III.
THE FATE OF THE SERENADERS 116
CHAPTER IV.
THE TRIALS AND TRIUMPHS OF THE “BOOKER TROUPE” 129
CHAPTER V.
THE LAST OF THE “BOOKER TROUPE” 145
CHAPTER VI.
“THE MITCHELLS” 156
CHAPTER VII.
ON THE FLOATING PALACE 173
CHAPTER VIII.
WILD LIFE 187
CHAPTER IX.
THE PERFORMER SOCIALLY 205
CHAPTER X.
ADIEU TO THE STAGE 214
BOOK III.
THE TOUR OF EUROPE FOR $181 IN
CURRENCY.
ÆT. 20-22.
CHAPTER I.
STARTING ON A CATTLE-TRAIN 223
CHAPTER II.
TAKING TO EUROPEAN WAYS 230
CHAPTER III.
STUDENT LIFE AND WANDERINGS 242
CHAPTER IV.
A FIGHT WITH FAMINE 254
CHAPTER V.
THE CONCLUSION 266
BOOK I.
AMONG WHARVES AND CABINS.
ÆT. 11.
CHAPTER I.
PREFATORY.
It is an odd sort of fortune to have lived an out-of-the-way or
adventurous life. There is always a temptation to tell of it, and not
always a reasonable surety that others share the interest in it of the
_conteur_ himself. It would, indeed, be a nice problem in the
descriptive geometry of narrative to determine the exact point where the
lines of the two interests meet,--that of the narrator and that of the
people who have to endure the narration. I cannot say that I ever hope
to solve this problem; and in the present instance, especially, I would
with due respect submit its solution to the acuter intellects of others.
This little book is intended to contain a plain sketch of my personal
history up to the close of my twenty-second year. The autobiographical
form is used, not because of any supposed interest of the public in the
writer himself, but because there does not seem to be any other way in
which a connected account of the adventures can well be given.
No one, I think, can be more sensible than I am that my story is nothing
if not true. Hume has wisely said, “A man cannot speak long of himself
without vanity.” I should like to be allowed to add that I have never
known or conceived of a person--except probably the reader and writer of
these pages--who could talk five minutes about himself without--lying.
That is, to be sure, reducing the thing to mathematical exactness. An
overestimating smile, or an underestimating shrug of the shoulders, or a
tone of the voice even, will always--though sometimes inadvertently--
“leave it still unsaid in part,
Or say it in too great excess.”
While this is not so applicable to written history, still in the face of
hyperbolic and bathetic possibilities I owe it to myself to premise that
I am going to be more than ordinarily truthful in this autobiography.
And there is certainly some merit in telling the truth, for it is hard
work when one is his own hero, and not what is sometimes termed a moral
hero at that. I can too, I may add, claim this single merit from the
start, with a meekness almost bordering on honesty; since it happens
that I am forced to be veracious by the fact that there are scores of
people yet in the prime of life who are cognizant of the main events of
the ensuing narrative.
CHAPTER II.
FAMILY MATTERS.
It may be laid down as a general principle, to start with, that a boy
had better not run away from home. Good and pious reasons are not
wanting, and might be here adduced, in substantiation of this general
principle. Some trite moralizing might be done just now, in a grave
statement that an urchin needs not run away into the world after its
troubles, since they will come running to him soon enough, and that a
home is the last fortress weary men build (and oftentimes place in their
wives’ names) against the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune.
Why, therefore, it may be asked, with overwhelming conviction to the
adult,--who, by the way, is not supposed to be one of the congregation
of the present preaching,--why, therefore, should the juvenile fugitive
hasten unduly to leave what all the effort of his after life will be to
regain?
Thus having done my duty by any boy of a restless disposition who may
chance to read these memoirs and be influenced by my vagrant example, I
proceed to state that I ran away from home at the mature age of eleven,
and have not been back, to stay over night, from that remote period to
this present writing.
It is due, however, to both of us,--the home and myself,--to observe
that it was not a very attractive hearth that I ran from. My father and
mother were dead, and no brothers or sisters of mine were
there,--nothing at all, indeed, like affection, but something very much
like its opposite. On the whole, I think, under exactly the same
circumstances, I would run away again.
But I hope this remark will not lead the thoughtless reader to assume
that I am not of a respectable family; no well-regulated memoir could be
written without one. A “respectable family” has long since become the
acknowledged starting-point, and not unfrequently the scapegoat, of your
conventional autobiography. _A posteriori_, therefore, our
respectability is established from the very fact that there is an
autobiographer in the family.
When, however, a great truth has once been discovered, it is always easy
to find many paths of proof converging toward it. When Kepler, for
instance, by some strange guess or inspiration, hit upon the colossal
fact that the planets move in elliptical orbits, it was comparatively an
easy thing,--or should have been, to make this scientific parallel
correct,--to come at half a dozen proofs of it in the simple properties
of the conic sections. Thus, too, fortunately for us, the respectability
of our family can be proved in many ways, and even, like Kepler’s Laws,
by mathematics itself. Nay, our proofs can be, and indeed are,
established by common arithmetical notation and numeration; because the
members of our family are generally rich.
This is manifestly an unusual advantage for an autobiographer, since, as
is well known, he almost invariably comes of “poor but honest parents.”
And there is no little pride mixed with the candor with which I boast,
that I am to this day, pecuniarily, the poorest of my race.
The devious course of my wanderings, as a youthful negro-minstrel and as
the European tourist of one hundred and eighty-one paper dollars, left
me in the early part of my life no time or inclination to look into such
commonplaces as the matters of my inheritance. It was but a week ago
that I rode over the broad Ohio prairie where I was born, and passed by
the pleasant farms which, with the broad prairie, were the patrimony
left to me,--or, I should say, to the kind gentlemen who administered
them for me. That property has never been any care to me. It was so
thoroughly administered during my minority that I have never since had
the trouble even of collecting rents.
Now there may be people, of a recklessly imaginative type, who suppose
it would excite a pleasurable thrill to ride thus over a great prairie
which bears one’s own name, but no more tangible emolument for the
quondam heir; and there may be people of so aspiring mental
constitutions as to think it a grateful, rollicking piece of vanity to
pass unrecognized through a town which was once sold by one’s own
administrator for fifty-two dollars: but I am free to confess that I
have endured these honors within the past week, and have carried nothing
away with me, in the matter of gratification or sentiment, but a dash of
the sadness which has settled about the wreck and ruin of the old
homestead.
Nothing seems to thrive there but the cold-spring at the foot of the
sand-ridge, and the poplar and weeping-willow which grow above it. These
trees had and have for me a plaintive undertone to the rhythm of their
rustling leaves which I do not hope to make others hear. The willow was
the whip with which a friend rode twenty miles from the county-seat to
visit my father, in the early times, and it was stuck in the ground
there, on the margin of the spring, by my little sister; the poplar was
planted beside it by my mother. They are both tall trees now, and a
sprig from one of them has been growing a long time over the graves of
father, mother, and sister.
* * * * *
At an early stage of my existence and of my orphanage I was introduced
to a species of _in transitu_ life, being passed from one natural
guardian to another very much as wood is loaded upon Mississippi
steamboats. It was, indeed, rather a rough passage of short
stages,--each, however, more remote from my Ohio birthplace; and I have
always thought there would not have been so many figurative slivers left
behind in the hands through which I passed, if the passage had not been
so rough and headlong. Finally, at the age of eight or nine years, I was
shipped away to Buffalo, N. Y., to be placed at school.
I was sent thither down Lake Erie from Toledo, on board the old steamer
Indiana, Captain Appleby commanding. Many are yet living, I suppose, who
will remember this craft,--the first of the kind upon which I ever
embarked. For my part, at least, I think I shall forget everything else
before I forget the noble sheet-iron Indian who stood astride of her
solitary smoke-stack, and bent his bow and pointed his arrow at the lake
breezes. A meagre brass-band, too, as was the generous custom of those
days, was attached to the steamer, and discoursed thin, gratuitous music
during the voyage. To a more sophisticated gaze the attenuated, besmoked
brave of my juvenile rapture would, alas! have looked more like an
indifferent silhouette plastered belligerently against the sky; but it
was the first piece of statuary I ever saw, as that execrable brass band
made the first concert I ever heard, and the Apollo Belvedere, at Rome,
or Strauss’s own orchestra, led by himself, at Vienna, has never since
excited in me such honest thrills of admiration. It was many and many a
month before that swarthy sheet-iron Indian ceased occasionally to sail
at night through a mingled cloud of coal-smoke and brass music, in my
boyish dreams.
The lake was remarkably calm, and the entire passage to Buffalo was for
years one of my pleasantest memories. On that first voyage, undoubtedly,
was engendered the early love of steamboats, the fruit of which ripened
soon afterward into the adventures I am about to relate. Nothing, I am
convinced, but this boundless affection for the species of craft in
question enables me to remember, as shall be seen directly, the names of
all the old lake steamers I had to do with in my boyhood.
And this, by the way, is no small internal evidence of the truth of what
follows. But I should not have called your attention to the fact, and I
should not have been forced to parade my conscientiousness here again,
if I had not come already to the most embarrassing period in all my
history.
Without seeming to manifest a feeling which I am sure I do not now
entertain, I cannot write about the two or three miserable years I
passed in Buffalo; and, if I omit to write about them, a great share of
the dramatic flavor of my story is lost. I cannot, therefore, convey to
you even the regret with which I am compelled to pass over this period
of my life, because you cannot know, as I think I do, that exactly such
a childish experience of unlovely restraint has never yet got into
literature.
* * * * *
Every time I pass the old Public School-house No. 7, in Buffalo, I stop
and gaze at it with a queer sort of interest. Yet I cannot confess to
any sentimental regard for it; since it was, after a manner, the
innocent cause of my enduring, at least, the last six months of my
unpleasant life in its neighborhood. If I had not been so interested by
day in the Principal and duties of that school, I am sure I should have
fled much sooner than I did from the roof which sheltered me of nights.
Finally, however, one domestic misunderstanding, greater than many
others, brought me to a conclusion which was certainly as comprehensive
in its wrath as it may have been lacking in a premise or two of its
logic. At this temperate remove from that exciting period I am led, at
least, to doubt--in the interest of certain kin of mine, who could
hardly have been responsible for facts they knew not of--whether I was
not guilty of that poetic fallacy, placed in its first utterance, I
believe, in the mouth of an illustrious Trojan, and worn very threadbare
ever since in the mouth and practice of almost every one,--whether I did
not, that is, learn a great deal too much from one to judge very
unjustly of all.
At any rate, in the domestic crisis just alluded to, I rebelled against
authority whose insignia were fasces of disagreeable beech-whips, and,
at the mature age of eleven years, took a solemn vow that I would have
nothing more to do with the people of my home circle in Buffalo, or with
any whatsoever of my relatives, some of whom had placed me there;--and I
ran away.
CHAPTER III.
A FUGITIVE.
Escaping from the house at night, I did not have time or presence of
mind to take anything with me but what I carried on my back.
One of my school-fellows, who had been forewarned of my design, met me
by appointment on the neighboring corner, and smuggled me into his
father’s stable. Here, it had been agreed, I was to lodge on the hay.
My friend was a doughty, reassuring sort of hero, who was a great
comfort to me at that nervous moment when I entered the darkness of the
hay-mow. I would not for the world have betrayed any fraction of the
fear which his swaggering manner may have failed to dispel. He would
assuredly have laughed at me; and I believe now, moreover, he would have
taken that, or any shadow of an excuse, for joining me in my flight.
So strong, indeed, was the romantic instinct upon that young gentleman
that he lingered long about the spot where I had crawled into the hay
and covered up my head, before he could prevail upon himself to go back
to the house and to his regular bed. He had assured me before we came
into the stable, out of the pleasant moonlight of that late spring
evening, that he envied me very much, as I was going to have lots of
fun; he only wished he had a good reason to run away from home too; but
then, he added thoughtfully, as he looked up at the lights in the window
of the family sitting-room, his mother was so “_derned_ kind,” and his
father so “_blamed_ good,” that he didn’t see how he could leave them
just now.
The next morning my friend found me sleeping very comfortably, with my
head and one arm protruding limply out of the hay. Awaking me, he
proceeded to draw from his trousers pocket several pieces of
bread-and-butter for my breakfast; which was none the less toothsome
from its somewhat dishevelled state, consequent upon the manner of its
previous stowage.
While munching that surreptitious meal, my thoughts very naturally
wandered to the breakfast-table, where I should that morning probably
be missed for the first time by the people from whom I had fled; and I
amused myself, as well as my romantic caterer, with what we both of us,
no doubt, considered a highly humorous account of the grievous commotion
which would ensue at that ordinarily so solemn victualling.
Emboldened by the lively appreciation of my school-fellow, and by the
reviving influence of the bread-and-butter, I grew imaginative and
grotesque in my daring pleasantry. I went so far as to describe the
scene at that breakfast-table when Bridget came to the dining-room door
with wild eyes, and the announcement that my room had not been occupied
on the night before; how the _pater-familias_, at that dramatic moment,
had dropped a surprised spoon into the splattering gravy of the stewed
meat; and how his wife opposite, then in the act of pouring chiccory,
had--whether in dismay at the overwhelming news or at the sudden soiling
of her tablecloth--upset the coffee-pot.
These and many more very brilliant and mirth-provoking feats of boyish
humor--very brilliant and mirth-provoking, of course, I mean, to my
friend and myself--did I perform that morning in the hay-mow; all
bearing upon the assumed utter discomfiture of the bereaved people about
that breakfast-table. But, alas! even a precocious autobiographer, with
his mouth full of bread-and-butter, may make the mistake, so common to
the adult of his species, of over-estimating his own importance. I have
since learned that there was no sensation of any consequence at the
breakfast-table in question, and that my subsequent permanent loss was
taken with remarkable equanimity and resignation.
It was an expressive, nay, eloquent, look of envy and admiration that my
friend gave me, when it came time for him to leave me to my own devices
for the forenoon, while he went reluctantly to school. Even to this
moment I cannot say that I covet the amount of knowledge he carried away
from his books that day, or, indeed, the succeeding three days.
I sallied stealthily forth to amuse myself in the by-streets till he
came back at noon to bring my dinner; which consisted of a repetition of
the breakfast, with the added dessert of an apple. This latter he
carried carefully in his hand, but the bread-and-butter he invariably
bore stowed away in his trousers pocket; I say invariably, for I lived
two or three days thus on his secret bounty.
About dusk of the second evening he came to me with--in addition to the
bread-and-butter for my supper--the startling news, that he was going to
take me to the theatre. I do not remember how we got in,--it was not,
certainly, by paying our way. I incline to the opinion that my friend
had some secret understanding with the door-tender. I know merely that,
by some means, we achieved our entrance to the pit of the old Eagle
Street Theatre.
I have heard good citizens of Buffalo complain that, since Lola Montez
burned down that seat of the histrionic Muse, the drama has languished
in their city. Of course I am not competent to decide in such matters;
but, that being the first playhouse of any kind I ever entered, I am
glad to be able to say that I have never since seen anything in the
theatrical line so absorbingly thrilling, or so gorgeously magnificent,
as the old Eagle Street Theatre was to me that night. The name and plot
of the play I have forgotten; but the dark frown of that smooth villain
in the third act--where his villany first began to show itself to my
unpractised comprehension--will never fade from my remembrance.
I do not know how it was, but up to that time I recollect I was under
the juvenile impression that virtue and correct grammar always went
together. I can therefore convey no idea of the shock with which I
learned so late in the play, that the splendidly dressed man who could
talk such eloquent, persuasive language, and withal in such scrupulous
conformity to that most difficult of rules which keeps the verb under
the regimental discipline of its subject-nominative,--that the man whose
plaintive periods sometimes rose to the iambic majesty of blank verse,
and who never got a case or tense wrong, howsoever wild, ecstatic, or
dithyrambic his utterances of devotion to that innocent, long-suffering
angel, the walking-lady,--that this man, I say, should nevertheless turn
out to be a monster, whom, to borrow a little from his style of
phraseology, it were mild flattery to call the greatest and vilest of
rogues.
My memory of the whole evening is swallowed up in the overwhelming shock
of that sad surprise. The grammatical Arcadia of my boyish belief was
laid waste as with an earthquake.
* * * * *
The next morning, after I had eaten my usual bread-and-butter with more
than usual appetite, I received a few choice friends at my lodgings in
the hay-mow, and we had a consultation.
It was suggested that I was too near my former haunts to be safe.
Indeed, rumors of an actual search for me had reached the ears of one
boy, of whom, oddly enough, I can recall nothing more now than that
those ears of his were remarkably large ones, and stood out prominently
from each side of his head; that the best and most picturesque view of
those ears was, in my opinion, to be had from my desk just behind him at
school; and that I was especially attracted and edified by my
observations upon them immediately after he had had his hair clipped
short.
Those are grotesque pranks, by the way, which the memory sometimes plays
us when we attempt to grope back too far. Another one of those daring
spirits, for instance, who was loudest, and therefore, I fear, most
influential, with his counsels that morning in the hay-mow has faded,
as to body, name, and station, wholly from my mind, and exists to me now
literally as a cherub with a mammoth straw hat for wings. From anything
that I can positively remember, I would not be prepared to take my oath
that he ever had any arms, legs, or trunk at all. I can recall only his
big, round, staring eyes, which stood out at the tops of his puffy
cheeks like a couple of glass knobs, and his red hair, whose decisive,
precipitate ending all around his head left a queer impression that
rats, or some larger and more ferocious animal, had been his barber. I
forget now whether it was in sport or earnest that I used to say to
myself, that boy’s hair had been “chawed off.”
It must have been that his facial aspect, heightened, of course, by his
winged straw hat, aided him materially in the expression of his fears
with regard to my safety; for this cherubic Agamemnon carried every
point in that council of war; and it was unanimously resolved that I
should change my quarters.
Accordingly, the next night, I was entertained in the stable of another
of my school-fellows, residing at the remotest corner of the district.
Now I do not want to be considered fastidious or luxurious in my tastes;
but I must own to a very loud complaint, entered the morning afterward,
against the comparative discomforts of this new lodging. There was very
little hay in the stable to which I had been transferred; and the
boards, moreover, were very hard indeed. It may have been an improper
spirit in which I made the remark; but I went back again to the first
school-fellow who has figured in this narrative, and told him if a boy
hadn’t a respectable barn to invite a friend to, he needn’t think _I_
was going to be his guest,--that’s all!
After watching, for a moment, the impression of my words upon my friend,
I said furthermore, that I was going to strike out for myself, as I was
growing tired of the monotony of hay-mows and bread-and-butter, anyways.
I wanted a change.
Then came one of the most impressive moments that I shall have to
chronicle in these memoirs; for, as soon as I had finished speaking, my
friend slapped me vigorously on the back, making at the same time, with
excited shrillness, this observation, “Hey!”--which, being a common
juvenile exclamation, had, of course, no jocose allusion to the
principal subject of my discourse.
“Hey! bully for you!” continued my enthusiastic friend and
school-fellow, as soon as he could get his breath, which the suddenness
of his lucky thought had evidently taken away. “Hey! that’s just what
_I_’d do. I’d go out into the world, and seek my fortune, like the boys
in the story-books; and,” said he, suddenly changing his tone and manner
to those of the most excessive gravity and deliberation,--“and, that you
needn’t be without means to help you along, take these!”
Whereupon he drew forth from his capacious trousers pocket, and placed
in my hand, five large copper cents, which at first had the appearance
of so many oysters fried in batter, so girt about and covered were they
with fragments of bread-and-butter, deposited, I suppose, in the course
of my friend’s entire catering.
It was, indeed, as he assured me, his whole cash capital; but he would
not hear to my scruples at taking it. More earnest or impressive about
it, or, under the circumstances, more self-denying and truly generous,
he could not have been if he had been giving the world away.
* * * * *
So, that morning, we parted,--he wending his way, by no means _con
amore_, to school; and I, with a queer, uncertain feeling in the region
of my small waistcoat, going forth, my five coppers in my pocket, to
seek my fortune.
CHAPTER IV.
A STORMY TIME.
Deserting entirely the haunts of my play-fellows, I stole down to the
wharves. Here the sight of the crowded shipping brought back, more
strongly than ever, the memory of that exhilarating trip on the old
Indiana, with her sublime brass-band and warlike sheet-iron Indian; and
I tried to “hire out” on a steamboat.
The people to whom I made application eyed me suspiciously, for I was
very small of my age. They also asked me a great many disagreeable
questions, and generally ended by advising me to go home to my friends,
if I had any. My size was manifestly against me. Vainly I assured them I
was eleven years old, and my own master. They shook their heads, and
told me brusquely to “go ashore.”
At last I went on board of a steamer called the Diamond, and, after a
little inquiry, found the steward,--a man with a face like the old
steamer itself, with just seams enough in it, from long battling with
the lake breezes, to give hints of sturdy timbers, or, I should say, of
hidden strength. His determined mouth ran across his face like one of
the bolted arches across the hurricane-deck,--large, strong, firm. His
hair may be thin and gray now, and his back bent with the years,--if
they have not beached him as they have the old steamer, and carried him
away altogether; but so great was the impression this man made on me
then, that I think I should still recognize him whenever or wherever we
might chance to meet.
Having, I remember, gone through the usual colloquy with him as a
steward, I assured him as a man, that I did not know where to go if I
did go ashore, that I had no home and no friends, and, in a word, so
played upon his good nature that he told me to go into the pantry and go
to work. I obeyed; that is, I went into the pantry, and went to
work--upon the heartiest meal that I had ever partaken of up to that
date.
The steward meant that I should help a greasy-looking fellow, whom I
found washing dishes there when I entered. Overcome, however, by the
savory smell of meats and other remains of dinner, which had not yet
gone down again to the kitchen, the first words I said to the succulent
pantryman were framed into a demand for something to eat.
As soon as he recovered his equanimity and his dish-cloth, which latter
he had dropped in sheer surprise at what he evidently considered my
stupendous impudence, the pantryman wanted to know, bluntly, what I was
doing there; the while he gave his foot such a preliminary flourish as
plainly indicated his intention to accelerate my motion thence. I
informed him, in considerable haste, that I came by the steward’s order.
This straightway altered the case in the opinion of the obsequious
menial. He now pointed at a row of chafing-dishes, and said, “There it
is; pitch in!”
A few moments afterward the steward found me so absorbed in my “work”
that I did not notice his entrance into the pantry. Bread-and-butter in
small quantities, and at irregular intervals, had been, it must be
owned, rather poor satisfaction to the appetite of a growing boy. The
steward must have watched me some time in silence; for my eyes,
happening to float away at random in an ecstasy of pleased and vigorous
mastication, encountered him, standing not far from my side gazing at me
earnestly. I dropped my knife and fork in fear, as he had talked to me
like a rough, surly fellow. His voice was wholly changed now, when he
spoke; and I noticed it. “Why,” he asked, “didn’t you tell me you was
hungry?”
My only answer was to let my eyes fall from his face to the roast beef
and potatoes yet undevoured before me.
“There, eat as much as you want,” said the steward, in a softer voice
still. “Come to think,” he added, “you needn’t wash dishes: I’ll use you
in the cabin.”
For some reason, I had gained a friend in that gruff fellow. Three days
later he knocked that same greasy pantryman down for abusing me. Indeed,
he fought for me many times afterward as I would gladly fight for him
now if I knew where to find him, and if I were sure of the success which
always attended him as my champion.
On this craft I must have been working for general results, or for the
amateur delight of forming one of a steamboat’s crew. I do not remember
that anything was ever said about wages, either by myself or the
steward. If, in fact, I were called upon to-morrow to make out such a
bill for my services as should claim conscientiously just what I earned,
I think I should be very much embarrassed; and it would, too, I fancy be
a fine piece of mental balancing to decide whether the amateur delight
alluded to above was at all equal to the utter sea-sick misery I was
called upon to endure.
My duties in the cabin were bounded only by my capacity. I had to help
set the table, wait on it, and clear it away; sweep, dust, and make
myself generally useful. I did well enough, I suppose, so long as we
were in port; but out on the lake, if the waves were at all turbulent, I
was much worse than useless. It took me longer to get my sea-legs on
than almost any one I have ever known. Some allowance was made for me
the first trip; I was permitted, that is, to be as miserable as I could
be, and take to my berth as often as I liked.
In the course of time--and it seemed a very long time--we arrived at
Cleveland, where part of our freight and passengers were landed. No
sooner had the steamer touched the wharf than I sprang ashore, as the
best means of curing my nausea. By the time I had reached what I take
now to have been Superior Street, I was congratulating myself on my
sudden restoration to a better understanding with my rebellious stomach;
and for the next hour I was at liberty, in the language of an admired
poet of our day, to “lean and loaf at my ease,” flattening my nose
against shop-windows.
In connection with my sanitary stroll through the pretty city of
Cleveland, I may mention a phenomenon--both physical and
metaphysical--which occurred to me, with some of the surprise, if not
the delight, of a discovery. And I look upon it still as a striking
instance of the power, not only of association, but of the mind over the
body. Happening, in a short, narrow street, on my return toward the
wharves, to pass a sort of junk-shop and second-hand clothing-store
combined, my nose became cognizant of a stale, tarry, water-logged
smell, at the same moment that my eyes lighted upon a sailor hat,
shirt, and pantaloons dangling from a hoop at the door; and--be it
believed or not--I am telling the truth, when I say that I became
instantly as sea-sick as ever!
Whether the relapse came from the kelpy scent of the shop and
neighborhood, or from the sight of the suit of clothes relict of the
mariner, or from the mental and stomachic association of both with
scenes I had just passed through on the lake, I cannot of course, at
this distance of time, presume to determine. I recollect, however, I had
a droll, boyish impression, for a long while afterward, in connection
with those second-hand, sail-cloth trousers. There was, indeed, as I
recall them even now, something strangely suggestive of hopeless
infirmity about them. As they flapped and bulged wearily in the
tar-laden zephyrs, the knees would become full and, in some inexplicable
way, would give ghostly hints of the knock-kneed idiosyncrasies of the
late wearer. Then the whole garment would become mysteriously distended,
as if some poor mariner were being hanged by the neck, and the choking
and plethora had reached even to the very ends of his pantaloons;
reminding me quite vividly, the while, of a pair of piratical
legs--which a sailor in the forecastle of our steamer, the Diamond, had
shown me in the frontispiece of a very greasy book--dangling pictorially
from the gibbet of the lamented Captain Kidd.
Well, what I set out to say is, that for a long time afterward I held
the juvenile opinion that those same second-hand sailor trousers, big at
the bottom, and little at the top, like the churn in the venerable
riddle, were alone what made me then so suddenly and so mysteriously
sea-sick. I did not, however, think much about it at the time, or of
anything else, but getting back with all possible expedition to the
steamer and to bed.
* * * * *
Sea-sickness, you may have observed, is very much like first love. While
it lasts, you rarely get any sympathy from those not affected like
yourself; and when it is over, you are the first to laugh at it. And
there is always likely to be something ludicrous about it--in the
memory; but, _durante bello_, it is serious enough, in all conscience.
Now the second voyage of our steamer Diamond was a remarkably calm one;
and I, true to the instincts of your convalescent, whether of nausea or
erotomania, ridiculed my previous troubles. But on the third voyage the
lake was rougher than ever. I fought my weakness valiantly; yet it
seemed a battle against all visible Nature,--the water, the sky, and the
crazy old steamboat, to say nothing of my own recalcitrant little body.
I was forced to yield.
I had, however, been a sailor too long for any faint show of sympathy.
The steward, too, was short of help; and there was no escape for me. I
was accordingly called out to do duty at the dinner-table, where I
staggered about under plates and platters to the terror of all immediate
beholders. I had little or no control of my legs and hands; and my head,
if I remember correctly now, was engaged in framing and passing silent
resolutions of want of confidence in my stomach.
Having emptied a dish of stewed chicken into the lap of an uncomplaining
lady-passenger, who was nearly as sick as I was, but who was ashamed to
own it, I planted my back violently against the side of the cabin, in
the inane endeavor to steady the rolling ship or my rolling head,--I did
not know or care exactly which. While thus employed, I heard the grating
voice of the captain, who was, if possible, always as ill-natured as he
looked.
“Here, boy!” he called.
I went to him, staggering and trembling, and apprehending all manner of
vengeance.
“What are you staring at, you lubber? Why don’t you turn me a glass of
water?”
From which comparatively amiable speech of my commander, I was left in
doubt whether he was aware of my late exploit with the stewed chicken. I
seized an unwieldy water-pitcher; and, just as I had it well elevated,
the boat gave a perverse lunge, and I proceeded, dizzier than ever, to
pour the entire contents of the jug into the captain’s ear, and down his
neck. Everything for a yard or so around, excepting only his goblet,
received some share of the water.
I did not tarry long to observe the rage of the captain; but what I did
see, and more especially hear of it, was certainly as intense and loud
and blasphemous as anything of the kind that has since come within the
range of my perception. The pitcher broke on the floor where I dropped
it; and I fled back to my berth, and covered up my head.
My commander did not pursue me; but about an hour afterward the steward
came to me with a very long face, as I observed with the one eye which I
uncovered long enough to ask him if the captain had seen me deposit the
stewed chicken in the lap of that lady. No: I was told the captain had
not heard of that, but was sufficiently wroth about the wetting he had
received at my hands; and the steward ended by saying that I would have
to go ashore at the next landing. He was very sorry, he assured me; but
the captain was inexorable.
I hastened to inform my friend and protector that I would be glad to set
my foot on any dry land whatsoever, and that I never wanted to go on a
steamboat any more; for the vessel, now in the trough of the sea, was
rolling and creaking more violently every minute, and my nausea had
increased in proportion.
The next landing, the steward gave me to understand, was Conneaut, Ohio,
which was his own home. He comforted me, furthermore, with the assurance
that his wife would be down at the wharf to get the linen, which she
washed for the steamer; and that she should take me home with her.
The pier of Conneaut, where we finally arrived, was now invested with
absorbing interest to me. I wondered which of the tanned faces that
looked up from the dock belonged to my future mistress; and I wondered,
too, which of the weather-beaten fishermen’s huts along the shore--about
the only habitations in sight--was to be my future home. I hoped it was
the one with the little boats before it on the beach, and the long
fish-nets spread out to dry; where the white gulls seemed to make their
head-quarters, wheeling about the little roof, or sliding up against the
sky, or swooping the surf, and skimming along the billows of the lake.
I was thus musing, in grateful convalescence, on the upper-deck, when
the steward approached, and pointed me out to his wife. She was, as I
remember her, a chubby, black-eyed little person, with a pleasant voice.
At her woman’s question as to whether I had my things all packed and
ready, I became embarrassed; but the steward helped me out by answering
for me, “Yes, he has ’em on his back.”
The knowledge of my forlorn condition, and a sudden choking sensation in
the throat, came upon the good little woman at one and the same time,
as I was made aware by an attempt to speak, which she abandoned,
substituting--very much to the lowering of my boyish pride--a fearless
and vigorous hugging, together with a hearty, loud-sounding kiss, right
before the passengers, the greasy pantryman, and others of the crew.
Then the steward’s wife, without another word, hurried me ashore into a
one-horse wagon, with the soiled linen, and drove away up to the
village, which was a mile or two from the lake.
CHAPTER V.
A BOY’S PARADISE.
Near the end of a quiet street we alighted at a little frame-house, all
embowered in peach and plum trees. This was the steward’s home, and soon
was as much mine as if I held the title-deed. They had no children, and
the steward’s wife was not long in growing wonderfully fond of me,--so
fond, indeed, that she humored me in everything.
When tired of the house and little yard, I amused myself in strolling
alone to the lake and taking amateur voyages in the fishermen’s boats,
without their permission; and in swimming and fishing and hunting clams
in Conneaut Creek, or River, whichever it is called. My favorite
bathing-place was beneath the high bridge which the curious reader can
cross any day on the Lake Shore Railroad.
When the steamer arrived, the steward’s wife and I went down to the
pier, in the one-horse wagon, with the clean clothes of the last
washing, and brought away the money for it, together with a new load of
soiled linen.
This one-horse equipage, by the way, must have belonged to some
neighbor, for I do not remember that we ever brought it into
requisition, except for laundry purposes. Nor do I remember that I ever
imperilled my neck, or the horse’s, with it alone, as would surely have
been the case if it had been our property.
Our practice was, invariably, to spend the money for the last washing
before the next one was begun; and this was the routine to which we
scrupulously adhered:
The steward’s wife, namely, would use the first day after the steamer
had gone in baking all manner of bread, pies, and cakes; enough, in
fact, to last us until the good ship Diamond should come round again.
Then, on the second day, we would go to the village livery-stable, and
get a horse and buggy, with which we would ride five miles out in the
country, and “visit” at the farm-house of her father and mother. Having
thus exhausted all her earnings, we would return home on the third day,
and the steward’s wife would go very contentedly about her washing.
This may not have been the best sort of economy for a poor washerwoman,
but it was certainly a most delightful way for a thoughtless boy to pass
his time. Counting out an occasional tendency to biliousness consequent
upon overdoses of the good things of her regular first-day’s baking, I
must say, the weeks I spent with that good, simple-hearted creature were
very happy ones indeed.
Her kindness extended even to the tattered places of my scanty wardrobe.
Everything was made whole and clean. She bought me, I remember, a shirt
for fifty cents, and made over a pair of her husband’s summer pantaloons
to fit me; so that I was not, as formerly, confined to the house while
my solitary piece of linen was in laundry.
There was only one grievous alloy, thereafter, in my complete happiness,
and that was in the shape of some much larger boys than myself, who
diverted their minds by whipping me whenever and wherever they could lay
hands on me. I fought them at first, but I always came off beaten; and
so I gave it up, and it is due to the nimbleness of my legs, or to the
exceeding elasticity inherent in terror, to add that they rarely or
never caught me after that. Still the grievance was all the same.
On one occasion, however, the steward stopped over at home a trip, and,
being informed of the persecutions to which I had been subjected, he
gave a sound drubbing to every one of my enemies, and threatened them
with the repetition of the same as often as I should complain. I had the
satisfaction of witnessing this castigation, which, though somewhat
informal,--being administered when each of my foes was “down,” as I may
say, across my champion’s knee, in a species of “chancery” not yet
introduced, I believe, into the prize ring,--had, nevertheless, the
desired effect. The peace was preserved, and I was happy.
But perfect happiness is short-lived, after all. It was not many weeks
later when we were startled in our little home by a call in the interest
of my relatives, conveying the intelligence that my whereabout was
known, and that I should be sent for soon.
Now it happened that the steamer Diamond was due at the pier the
afternoon succeeding the one on which we had heard this appalling piece
of news. I said nothing to my benefactress of my design, formed almost
instantaneously; for I knew she would not consent to its carrying out.
But, when the steamer had left, I was not to be found in any of the
fishermen’s boats on the lake, or throwing stones at the gulls along the
shore, or afterward beneath the high bridge, or in any of my usual
haunts in the village.
I had, in fact, stowed myself away in the old Diamond’s forecastle,
where I was not discovered till Conneaut was well out of sight.
Unfortunately, my new shirt and pantaloons were both in the wash at the
time; and I have never seen them since. Thus I came away with the same
well-worn clothes and solitary piece of linen in which I had first fled
from Buffalo. The five coppers I still had in my pocket, kept, I know
not by what queer inspiration, against future needs.
* * * * *
I never heard from her lips how much the steward’s wife grieved at my
sudden disappearance, for I never saw the good soul afterward; but, from
what I have since learned, I scarcely hope ever again, by anything that
I may do, or that may happen to me, to produce such a void in the heart
of any living being. I had taken the place, I suppose, in her childless
bosom, of that strongest and purest of all affections,--the mother’s for
her offspring.
Several years afterward she “nearly killed with kindness” a friend of
mine--to use the language of the friend herself--who gave her news from
me. I should hardly mention this now, were it not for the sequel, which
further illustrates, I think, though in a sad way, the real goodness and
constancy of the poor creature’s heart, while going to show at the same
time what a warm place was won in it by a graceless vagabond.
Later in her life some great sorrow--the exact nature of which I never
learned--unhinged her intellect; and her insanity took the mild form of
always expecting me back, the same homeless urchin, unchanged by the
years. It was, as I have intimated, in the afternoon when I left her;
and, until she was moved from that part of the country to an asylum
where she was cared for in comfort till she died, she used to go
regularly every afternoon to the friend above mentioned and ask about
her “lost boy,” as she called me.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CONTUMELY OF CAPTAINS.
The captain of the steamer Diamond, never in the habit of looking
pleased at anything, did not depart from his habit, but rather carried
it to an unwonted degree of frowning and darkling excess, when he saw me
at work again about the table, at the next meal after leaving Conneaut.
He said nothing to me, however, but, calling up the steward, had a long,
stormy talk with him.
The steward in self-defence was, of course, obliged to tell how I had
stowed myself away in the forecastle, which, I need not say, did not
enhance the commander’s opinion of me. What that irate gentleman would
have done with me--whether he would not have thrown me bodily into the
lake if it had not been for the earnest deprecation of the steward--is
even yet, in quiet, reflective moments, an interesting problem to my
mind.
At last the captain’s unwilling consent was obtained to take me back to
Buffalo, where, as my intercessor said, I had friends. It happened that
the steamer was bound up the lake to Toledo, where, also, I had
relatives,--a fact which I did not make known to the steward. I was now
compassed about, it will be seen, by prospects of capture on every hand.
I had my reasons, nevertheless, for wishing to be left at Buffalo
instead of Toledo. The latter city was so small that my relatives would
easily lay hold of me there; and the former, being not only a larger
city, but so much farther away, I should stand a much better chance of
concealment, and, what was of almost equal importance, I should be sure
of an additional week’s board before the steamer reached there.
At Toledo, therefore, I scarcely went ashore at all. During the return
trip to Buffalo my mind was exceeding busy with daring and mighty
schemes of escape from the steward, whom circumstances had now
metamorphosed into a walking terror to me. That honest fellow had
confided to me that he considered it his duty, and for my interests, to
have an interview with the people from whom I had fled, and to do I
know not what other appalling things toward providing me with a
suitable, permanent home.
I did not, however, think it prudent to express my demurrer at his
prospective proceedings, choosing secretly to trust the hope of
sustaining it rather to my legs than to my eloquence. Accordingly, when
we had arrived at Buffalo, I watched my opportunities, and, seizing the
right moment, fled precipitately up the docks, unobserved by my
well-meaning, self-imposed guardian.
* * * * *
Two hours subsequently, deeming myself safe, I walked boldly on board of
the old steamer Baltic. Here, by a wonderful freak of fortune, it was
not ten minutes till I had “shipped” as cabin-boy, at the marvellous
salary of ten dollars a month. Surely, I have never felt so rich or
independent since. I went to work with a will, inspired to undertake
anything, in any weather, by a calm sense of security, and by the
princely guerdon which loomed high in my imagination at the end of the
month. In the course of time, too, I am happy to say here incidentally,
I overcame completely my remarkable tendency to sea-sickness.
The Baltic, then having seen her best days, did not belong to any
regular line, but went rolling and creaking about on roaming commissions
for freight and passengers all over the lakes. Up to the time of the
inglorious _dénouement_ in which my life as one of her crew ended, I can
remember nothing of moment which happened, except that the sense of my
own importance and of my accumulating wealth grew daily in strict
proportion; and that her captain was a perpetual mountain to me, bearing
down very hard on my expansive spirit, but never quite crushing it.
With a few exceptions, indeed, my experiences with captains were
strikingly disagreeable, but not, I think, peculiar. From actual
brutality, or a mistaken sense of duty,--applying especially to boys and
common sailors,--your ordinary captain, on lake or ocean, has often
seemed to me, in some respects, less human than the ship over which he
tyrannizes. With regard to this cold autocrat of the venerable steamer
Baltic I recollect a queer, boyish fancy I entertained, I forget whether
in earnest or in sportive retribution; namely, that the Nor’westers had
not only piled up the breakers which threatened continually in the hard,
wrinkled folds and lines of his face, but had also blown the warmth,
and, in a word, all the heart out of his voice and manner.
As the month drew near its close, however, and the ten dollars earned by
my own hands were soon to be mine, the contumely of my commander had
little weight against the buoyancy and growing independence of my
spirit. I had been in the Baltic just three weeks and four days on the
eventful morning when she was to leave Toledo. It had been my habit,
once a week, to wash my only shirt in the pantry and to wait about the
kitchen till it dried, with my coat buttoned up to my chin. Now, on this
same morning, I had just issued from the latter place with my clean
shirt in my hand, when the captain told me to do something,--I forget
what. I assured him I would as soon as I could put on my shirt. He told
me to do it right away, at the same time coupling me and my garment
blasphemously together, and consigning us, figuratively, to a port
where, for aught I know, there may be many collectors but no
custom-houses.
I gave the captain to understand, still more bluntly, that I would do
nothing till I had made my toilet; and, inspired by a memory of former
wrongs, as well as a consciousness of prospective opulence, I used to my
superior officer other language of a saucy and independent kind.
Whereupon the captain, in sailor phrase, “tacked” for me, and I “tacked”
for the shore. Here, then, I demanded my pay; but the enraged commander
solemnly averred that he would see me first in that tropical port just
alluded to, and _then_ I should never have a cent.
Shortly after, the boat pushed off into the stream. A sympathizing
friend threw me a paper of crackers from the pantry on the upper deck;
and, as the Baltic got under way, there I stood on the wharf, with my
paper of crackers in one hand, and my only shirt in the other, clamoring
for my wages.
* * * * *
I stood leaning against the splintered pile, which had been one of her
hitching-posts, and watched the Baltic as she faded slowly out of sight.
My courage seemed to fade with her. It was not the loss of my place and
probably of my dinner that crushed me, but--after so many wealthy
dreams--this utter financial ruin! What were my five coppers, still
jingling loosely in my pocket, to the dollars I had lost, or to the
combined capital of my relatives in that very city? The contest was
plainly hopeless. For as much as a half-hour I considered myself
delivered bound into the hands of my pursuers. Indeed, the dock on which
I was making this mental soliloquy happened to be but a short distance
from the warehouse of an uncle of mine, then a commission-merchant and
ship-owner in Toledo.
At last, I betook myself despondently to a neighboring shed and donned
my shirt, and then, as under some desperate spell, walked straight
toward my uncle’s office. I crossed the threshold and saw him in
conversation with some gentlemen. While waiting till he should notice
me, I beheld, through the office window, the little steamer Arrow,
almost ready to start for Detroit. I knew that the Baltic was also going
to Detroit, and thought that I might possibly get my money if I followed
her thither. Only those unfortunate persons who have been suddenly
prevented from committing suicide when in the very act will thoroughly
understand, I think, the feeling with which I hailed this thought.
Instantly my comprehensive vow to have nothing more to do with relatives
flashed across my mind.
Seeing that my uncle had not yet observed me, I turned quickly on my
heel, and made hastily for the dock of the steamer Arrow. I concealed
myself on board of her till she was under way, when, making my case
known to the steward, I was allowed to work my passage in the cabin to
Detroit.
It was that season when, as many dwellers by the Western lakes will
remember, the Arrow was the fastest boat on those waters. We passed the
other steamer somewhere off Monroe lighthouse; and on the same
afternoon, therefore, as the old Baltic came up to the wharf at Detroit,
there I stood before the astonished eyes of her captain, again clamoring
for my wages,--with this difference only, that my shirt was now on my
back, and my crackers carefully stowed away in my pocket with my five
coppers.
CHAPTER VII.
ALMOST A TRAGEDY.
As soon as the Baltic was made fast, and the captain had sufficiently
recovered from his astonishment, he stalked toward me, denouncing
vengeance. I took to my heels as soon as he reached the wharf. Finding
that he could not catch me, he stopped, shook his fist, and swore he
would arrest me if he saw or heard anything more of me. I, of course,
knew nothing of the law but its terrors, and, though I really had the
better side in the case, gave the matter up.
It may have been that the joy to be in a strange city, out of the way of
capture, helped me materially, but it seems a little remarkable now how
soon this mighty disappointment and defeat vanished wholly from my
thoughts. I cannot remember that the circumstance ever crossed my mind
again till I was called upon, months subsequently, to recount my
adventures to admiring school-fellows.
It could not, I am sure, have been twenty minutes after my Parthian
contest with the irate captain--for, if the truth must be told, I shot
him a scathing epithet or so in my flight--when I was amusing myself
after the manner of the “light and heavy balancer,” rolling myself about
upon the tops of some white-fish barrels, at a neighboring dock, as
contented and happy as a thoughtless boy only can be.
Tied to this dock was a little sloop-rigged scow, used in bringing sand
from Hog Island in the Detroit River. There was a small boat, with a
solitary oar and scull-hole belonging to this sand-scow, tugging lazily
at the rope by which it was attached, as it floated dreamily astern in
the current. A youngish fellow, with a good-natured face, was engaged in
unloading the larger craft when I espied the smaller one.
Now, if there was any one thing in which much practice and a boundless
love had lent me any degree of skill, it was risking my life in amateur
navigation. I need scarcely tell you, therefore, how I ceased my
acrobatics with the white-fish barrels, and came and gazed wistfully at
that little boat; how I varied this employment by staring inquiringly
into the mild face of that enviable young man who had control of its
destinies; how, when he paused in his work to regard me in turn, I
thrust my hands unconcernedly into my pockets, and looked studiously
away from him and the little boat, at the far windings of the broad
river; how, when he had resumed his work, my eyes also resumed their
longing pilgrimage from the little boat to his face; and how, having
repeated this process several times, my mind tugging fitfully and
dreamily at its purpose, as the little boat at its rope, I finally
turned and asked, in an abrupt voice, for the loan of the one-oared
craft.
The young man was startled into a smile, perhaps of sheer good-nature,
and perhaps of pleased surprise at so brief a petition overtoppled by so
lengthy an enacted preamble. Certainly, he said, I might take his little
boat, and I embarked.
Pushing boldly into the stream, which runs there three or four miles an
hour, I sculled vigorously for the Canadian shore. Even at this early
period, I may remark, I had an overpowering desire to visit foreign
lands; and I resolved to take that opportune occasion to go abroad.
Those most familiar with the swift, deep river will best understand
that the probability of my reaching the British shore was only less than
the possibility of my ever getting back again; and that the project,
under the circumstances, was utterly mad and perilous.
I sculled out well toward the middle of the stream, exulting, boy-like,
in the wild freedom of the voyage; heading diagonally against the
current, but, otherwise, taking very little heed whither the prow of my
boat was pointing. Suddenly I noticed a commotion on the shore I had
left, and looked curiously among the people there for the cause. Every
one seemed now pointing and hallooing at me. It must be, I concluded,
they were applauding my skill and daring; and, thus encouraged, I
sculled more lustily than ever, with my back still toward the bow of my
boat.
Not many moments afterward I heard, rising above the other noises of the
busy life around and on the river, a queer, rumbling sound in the water
ahead of me. I turned to find a large steamboat making directly toward
me, under full speed, and not more than two or three rods away. I
dropped my oar and stood paralyzed with the sudden danger and the utter
hopelessness of escape.
The people on the steamer seemed nearly as terrified as myself, for they
shouted and waved their hands and arms in the wildest manner. The bow of
the large vessel just grazed that of my little one when the great
paddle-wheels were stopped. The swell caused by the motion of the
steamer struck the small craft and threw it clear of the wheel; and the
Niagara, for that was her name, passed by on her voyage.
If the wheel had been stopped twenty seconds later, my boat and myself
would most certainly have been drawn into it, and circumstances over
which I could have had no control would, in all probability, have
prevented me from writing out this faithful account of my adventures.
I now put my boat about and sculled for shore, abandoning my scheme of
foreign travel and exploration. The long and difficult struggle with the
current which ensued should have been enough, without the terrible
fright I had experienced, to bring me, I think, to a realizing sense of
the wildness and madness of my undertaking. Finally reaching the dock
and making the yawl fast to the sand-scow, I exchanged a very sheepish
sort of smile for the good-humored or sympathetic one of the young man,
her captain, and strolled off leisurely over the wharf, out of the way
of the curious people who had been the witnesses of my exploit.
* * * * *
In a remarkably short time thereafter I was engaged again in rolling
myself about on the top of the white-fish barrels; thinking no more of
my hairbreadth escape, or of what was to become of me in the immediate
future. Twenty minutes, as nearly as I can recollect, were about as long
as any direst misfortune, at that period, could cloud the brightness of
my young hope. This utter recklessness I can scarcely understand now. It
requires, I suppose, more years and experience than I had then to learn
the knack of despairing.
At least, I know I was in the full delight of my first freedom, and, in
all these boyish wanderings, the fact that I was in need of a meal or a
night’s lodging would occur to me, almost always, as a sudden
inspiration, and only at the usual hour for the meal or for going to
bed. The joy of my solitary, Robinson-Crusoe life, on the wharves and
among the white-fish barrels, was so strong upon me that I suffered much
less than would at first be imagined from the hunger which sometimes
filled the long intervals between one meal and the next.
I have just used the words “solitary life,” and I have used them
advisedly; for I can remember only one juvenile friend whom I ever
picked up as a companion in my vagrancy, and that was an urchin of Irish
descent. We met on the wharf, at Detroit, if my memory does not fail me,
some days after the events just chronicled. He was the first and last
whom I took into my boyish confidence, for the companionship was not
harmonious, and ended in the disaster of a bloody nose, which he
inflicted on me at parting. This, with the black eye which I bestowed in
turn upon him, was, I believe, the only ceremony observed on the
occasion of our mutual leave-taking.
* * * * *
Toward evening of the day of my narrow escape in the yawl of the
sand-scow, I drew from my pocket the crackers thrown to me that morning,
at Toledo, from the pantry of the Baltic, and seated myself on the wharf
overlooking the clear river to eat them, feeding the minnows with the
crumbs. When it began to be dark, it suddenly occurred to me that I had
no place to sleep. I am sure that up to that moment the subject of my
prospective lodgings had not crossed my mind. I arose, and, brushing the
last fragments of my crackers down to my fellow-vagabonds, the minnows,
I walked toward the place where the sand-scow was moored.
I remembered now the good-natured face of the young fellow who had so
willingly loaned me his small boat and never scolded me for the peril to
which I had exposed it, as well as myself. Arrived in the little cabin
of the scow, I found him already retired. I had conscientious scruples
about begging, and imagined I was doing nothing of the kind when I made
the simple affirmative statement of my case. Indeed, I would not have
had time to append any request to my first sentence, for the young man,
in his prompt kindness, told me, as soon as he had heard I had no
lodging of my own, that I was welcome to share his, making for me, while
he spoke, a place on the loose hay which formed his bed.
A solitary pillow-case of coarse sheeting, stuffed with hay, was the
only thing like bedding discoverable. Here I threw myself without
undressing and tried to sleep; but there were more lodgers with us,
bred, I suppose, by the sand, than even the good-hearted fellow would
have willingly accommodated,--that is, if he felt them as I did. Before
morning, however, youth and fatigue got the better of them, and I slept
soundly.
CHAPTER VIII.
TAKEN PRISONER.
Arising refreshed, I sallied forth early on the wharf to amuse myself.
In the course of an hour it occurred to me suddenly--out of no more
previous thought or care about the matter than I had had the night
before on the subject of a lodging--that I had had no breakfast, and
could not say exactly where I was going to get any.
The good-natured face of my late bedfellow again suggested itself to my
mind, and I returned to the sand-scow. There he was in the little coop
of a cabin, just partaking of his morning meal, which consisted of a
small baker’s loaf and a teacup of molasses. Still humoring my scruples
as to direct begging, I gave him to understand, affirmatively, that I
did not know where to get my breakfast.
Without uttering a word, the good fellow broke his loaf in two and gave
me half. In fact, I cannot recollect that he ever asked me any
questions; if he did, they were of such a kindly nature as not in any
way to suggest the ignominious close of my free career by capture, and
that is why, I suppose, I have forgotten them. We dipped our bread by
turns into the teacup of molasses very amicably, and took alternate
draughts of the pure river water from the same tin dipper.
Even now as I write I can see again the strange light in his honest
eyes, just behind the surprise with which they regarded me, when, our
simple meal over, I drew slowly from my pocket my five copper cents, and
placed them in his hand. Of course, he would not take them. It was, no
doubt, because they were my entire wealth that I straightway received
the impression that he thought them too much for his somewhat meagre
hotel accommodations, and so I recalled to his memory that he had also
loaned me his small boat the afternoon before.
“Never mind, never mind,” he said; “put your money away. You can take
the small boat again if you want to.”
These were his exact words; and there was more true feeling in the way
he said them than would go to make up many a longer speech I have since
heard, in the pathos of melodrama, where the hero has magnanimously
refused vast estates and lacs of rupees. (If the reader will excuse the
parenthesis, I should like to be allowed to say, right here, God bless
that young fellow--or middle-aged fellow now--wherever he is!)
Whether a sudden apprehension of future and direr exigencies, or a gleam
of my usual delight in small boats, or both together, flashed across my
mind at that moment, I am not now prepared to state; but I remember I
did put my money away, and, climbing down again into the little yawl,
amused myself by imperilling my life once more in the swift current.
This time, however, I ventured merely on short coasting voyages around
the docks. At least, I had not yet come to a decision about the
feasibility of taking in something foreign in my way, being in the very
act of casting a pair of longing eyes at the Canadian shore, when I was
hailed by my friend of the sand-scow, and requested to bring the boat to
land.
A favorable breeze had sprung up, and the scow, now discharged of her
sand, took her departure for a new load. I stood on the wharf and waved
her adieu; and that was the last I ever saw of her, or of the noble
fellow who united in his own person her captain, mates, and crew.
* * * * *
I may have felt a little more alone in the world now, for I remember I
did not go back to my jolly play-fellows, the white-fish barrels, but
boarded divers steamboats instead, in quest of work. I received the same
prompt answer from all. They did not want me. As will be supposed, my
one suit of clothes was by this time beginning to show marks of the
service it had done among the greasy platters of pantries and cabins.
This fact, probably, was the greatest barrier to my success, and the
cause, too, of most of the rough language I received in answer to my
applications.
Toward night I became desperately hungry, for, it will be remembered, my
last warm meal was the dinner of the day before eaten upon the little
steamer Arrow, on the way from Toledo. Weary with repeated refusals from
steward after steward, I went boldly at last on board of the steamer
Pacific and inquired for the captain.
It was straightway demanded of me what such a beggar as I wanted of the
captain. I resented the term “beggar” immediately: I purposed to work
for what I got; I had money, if it came to that, in proof of which I
jingled defiantly the five pennies in my pocket. No; I was no beggar,
but I must see the captain.
Carrying my point, finally, I was led to the room of the commander, whom
I found to be a short, red-faced man with a voice like a nor’wester. He
was leaning back on a camp-chair, with his feet in a berth, and smoking
his after-supper cigar. To his gruff “What do you want with _me_?” I
replied meekly that I desired to wash dishes or do anything for
something to eat, that I had had nothing but a few crackers and some
bread and molasses in thirty-six hours, that I had applied to his
steward that afternoon and had been refused, and that I was forced
finally to come to him hungry and wanting work.
“What’s your name?” demanded the captain; “and who are you, and where do
you come from?”
I answered the first part of his question, but he noticed I hesitated
after that. He gave me laconically to understand that I must tell him
who I was, or starve for all of him. I was forced to comply; that is,
saying nothing about Buffalo, I mentioned my uncle, the ship-owner in
Toledo.
This was a fatal mistake, as I learned very soon to my sorrow. The
captain’s eye became suddenly and maliciously bright, and his face
redder than ever. For as many as ten awful seconds he mangled his cigar
fiercely and silently between his teeth. Then there proceeded from his
mouth, in addition to the smoke he had swallowed in his wrath, a
terrible volley of oaths and curses, of which my uncle’s heart and eyes
were the objects.
This captain, as came to my knowledge afterward, had been discharged
from the employ of my uncle for some shortcoming or other; and he now
proposed, it seems, to take his revenge. He sent hastily for one of the
cabin-waiters, and ordered him, in my hearing, to take me to a
state-room, give me a light supper, and then lock me in.
“I’m goin’,” said the captain,--and how well I remember his words,--“I’m
goin’ to take him to the House of Vagrancy in the mornin’; and then
write to that old villain, his uncle, to come and take him out.” The
captain furthermore told the waiter to “bear a hand” and keep me safe,
till he should call for me the next morning. He always thought, and now
he was sure, he would get even with that uncle of mine, whose pride he
was going to take down; and I was borne away through another deluge of
the captain’s oaths.
* * * * *
Of course the thought was very wrong, comprehending as it did many
innocent and well-meaning people, but it seemed to me then, in that
brief moment of despair, that all my troubles sprang from the fact that
I was so unfortunate as to have wealthy relatives. They were the first
and last cause of all my grief. The earth, I felt sure, was not broad
enough to escape them in. Among the peach and plum trees of Conneaut, or
in the jungle of the crowded shipping at Detroit, the far-reaching fate
was upon me. Though my small body was disguised in rags, still my own
hunger wrought and spoke in the interests of those from whom it appeared
hopeless to flee. And, more on their account than mine, I was now on my
way to that place of unknown terror, the House of Vagrancy.
* * * * *
The captain’s room was on the main deck, and the state-room to which I
was to be conducted was on the deck above. I was so terrified, or so
small, that my jailer, the waiter, thought it safe, as well as more
convenient, to release his hold of my collar, and allow me to precede
him up the stairs.
Now there was another companion-way on the opposite side of the steamer,
corresponding to that up which we were to go; and as soon as we had
attained the middle of the upper cabin I sprang out of the reach of my
conductor and down the opposite stairs at about three jumps. I fled to
the shore and up the docks with all the speed that my deathly terror
lent me.
I could hear my pursuer after me, but it was already dark, and I could
hardly have seen him if I had dared to look around. I succeeded in
reaching one of the vast piles of coal which the good people of Detroit
will remember as standing formerly on the wharf of the Michigan Central
steamers. Here I concealed myself.
It was probably a half-hour before my jailer gave up the search, but it
seemed four hours at least to me then. Twice he passed very near my
hiding-place, and, I recollect, I was afraid lest he should hear the
noise of my heart-beats; they sounded so terribly loud in my frightened
ears. I heard him, at last, returning to the steamer, as I had reason to
think, for lights and people to aid him.
Then I stole away noiselessly up toward the town, keeping a large
coal-pile studiously between me and the place where my pursuer had
disappeared; until, turning a corner I took a side-street which led me,
as I supposed, into the heart of the city. What, therefore, was my
horror when, after walking for about ten minutes, in this and other
crooked thoroughfares, I again found myself suddenly on the lower end of
the wharf where lay the steamer Pacific and her dreadful captain!
Once more I took to my heels, and this time succeeded in finding a
street which led me, without further mishap, into one of the Avenues.
CHAPTER IX.
SQUALOR.
Wandering about for what seemed a long while, turning from one
thoroughfare into another, so as to make pursuit uncertain, it finally
crossed my mind that it was past my bedtime. Fear had driven away my
hunger so completely that I thought no more of it till the next day.
Brushing and rubbing as much of the coal-dust from my clothes as I
could, I now walked boldly up to the counter of the Commercial Hotel,
and said that I wanted to see the head-porter.
The clerk eyed me curiously as he asked me what I desired of the
head-porter. I wanted, I said, to black boots for a night’s lodging. The
clerk called the chief-porter, and they both looked at me as a natural
curiosity, I suppose, while they plied me with a few questions. They
seemed pleased with my answers, or touched by my forlorn condition or
my extreme youth, and decided that I might have a night’s lodging
without blacking boots for it.
Accordingly one of my questioners conducted me up into the highest story
of the building, and, pointing to a bed in a large dormitory, left me in
the society of some dozen or more snoring waiters and cooks. I knew in
an instant the nature of the occupation of my room-mates, for I
recognized on entering the apartment that post-culinary smell of
dish-water with which custom had rendered me familiar, and which the
philosophic nostril will, I think, almost always detect about those
whose constant business it is to prepare or serve the prandial dish.
When I think of that dark dormitory now, and the sounds that rose from
it, I am reminded of a midsummer night’s frog-pond; but I regarded it
far more seriously then. I know not by what chain of reasoning I
established the connection between their stertorous idiosyncrasies and
their waking employments, yet I remember very distinctly that I occupied
myself, until I fell asleep, in assigning the proper rank and position
to each of the snorers. The barytone, that came to me through the
darkness from the far corner, I concluded, after some deliberation, was
that of the chief-cook himself.
Then there was a deep bass,--the real Mephistophelian hero of that opera
of sleepers,--whose exact whereabout in the room I could never quite
discover, for his note sounded each time in the place farthest from the
one where I had heard it last, or expected to hear it next; this _basso
cantante_, I had not the slightest doubt,--and I crouched lower on my
pillow at the thought,--was that most inscrutable and relentless of
tyrants, in all dining-halls and cabins, the head-waiter.
The several tenors, distributed all round me a little too lavishly
perhaps for the nicer harmonies of strict musical taste, being--as I
suppose, now, in the light of a larger experience--ambitious and fitful,
as is the proverbial wont of tenors, and running jealously ever and anon
into a dishonest _falsetto_, as if with a professional wish to attract
attention,--these several tenor-snorers were, I felt sure, what the
world might very well suffer a great many ambitious, fitful, and
dishonest tenors always to be, namely, among the common rank and file
of cooks and waiters.
And I had firmly made up my mind, long before I was lulled to sleep by
the steady _crescendo_ of the chorus, that the tapering treble which
piped darkling, like some night bird, high over all, proceeded from some
pale-faced, meek-eyed scullion of the outer kitchen, who, awake and in
the presence of his chief, would not dare say his soul was his own.
* * * * *
I slept soundly enough till about five o’clock the next morning, when I
arose hurriedly. Whether my half-roused operatic company of the night
before thought me a ghost, or how they explained my mysterious coming
and going among them, I did not wait to learn. Leaving them to stare at
one another in drowsy amazement, I stole noiselessly and breakfastless
away from the hotel.
The fright of the evening preceding had shaken my confidence in human
nature generally. I cannot tell how, but I became impressed with the
ludicrous idea that the hotel clerk or porter would take my five coppers
away from me, in payment for my lodging,--to say nothing of my
breakfast, if I should stay for it. So I went down to the docks of the
lower part of the city, as far from the Pacific and her captain as
possible.
Here I had the good fortune to strike a bargain with the cook of a
lumber schooner to wash his dishes for him, provided he should first
give me all I could eat; and thus I broke my fast of twenty-four hours
with the first full meal I had taken in forty-eight hours.
While finishing up the work I had agreed to do I saw the steamer Pacific
passing down the stream, on her voyage away from Detroit, and I breathed
freely once more.
* * * * *
I spent some days now, doing odd jobs for cooks and pantrymen for my
board and lodging, while their vessels were in port; but my clothes were
so worn and soiled by this and previous service that I could get no
chance to work for wages as cabin-boy. Because of my clothes, also, no
steamer would allow me to go out of port with her; for I was told that
there was a law, then existing in most of the lake cities, by which a
boat was made responsible for the support of all vagrants she carried
into a town.
I do not know whether this was the case; I know merely that I was
invariably sent ashore on the departure of any craft for which I had
been washing dishes or scouring knives. It was indeed a precarious
existence that I led in this way, but one to which I could see no
immediate end. I think it was twice I went with but two meals in
forty-eight hours, getting nothing from breakfast to breakfast.
And, I may say here, I have always attributed great advantage to the
fact that--after the short and disastrous companionship with my young
friend of Irish descent, mentioned some pages back--I was my own _fidus
Achates_ in all these worst distresses.
Two boys will, certainly, do more mischief together than half a dozen
will do separately; three boys together will do more than eighteen
separately,--and so on. In short, I fancy it may be laid down as a
general principle, that, under the conditions just enunciated, there is
an increasing geometrical ratio between the number of boys and the
amount of evil they will do.
I have alluded before to an account of these experiences which I gave
to my school-fellows months afterward. The degree of fertile suggestion
which even the narrative stirred up in my auditory should have made me
thankful then, as I am certainly now, that I did thus lead my vagabond
life alone. These ardent youngsters would interpolate, in the very
thickest and thrillingest movements of my story, advice as to what I
should have done, or hints as to what they would have done, under the
circumstances.
During this narration to my school-fellows--and now I am coming to the
purpose of the present digression--a boy with a very sinister-looking
face, who has since happily died of the small-pox, asked me why I didn’t
_steal_, averring, with great frankness, that was what he would have
done.
Now that was the very first time the idea of stealing ever crossed my
mind, in connection with my boyish calamities and deprivations. I am
sure of this, for I remember the startling impression made upon me at
the moment of the boy’s suggestion. I dare not say that I would not have
stolen, after some of my long fasts,--if I had ever once thought of it.
And I am only too glad that this anomaly should have occurred in my
case, for, of a truth, it strikes me as much greater as a metaphysical
phenomenon than as a juvenile virtue.[A]
[A] “Multum interest, utrum peccare aliquis nolit, aut nesciat.” This
bit of Seneca seems so appropriate, that I hope the reader will excuse
me for quoting it here, even if I did get it at second-hand from
Montaigne.
* * * * *
In the very midst of my direst misfortunes, when it seemed that nothing
worse could possibly happen to me, the Pacific came steaming back to
Detroit. She arrived in the afternoon, and, although I had had nothing
to eat that day, I was in too great apprehension of her captain to think
of anything but concealment, or escape from the city.
After nightfall I stole on board the Michigan Central steamer May
Flower, and found the fourth porter. I had been among menials so long
that I knew all about the ramifications of their grades, and what
particular line of duties belonged to individuals of each grade. The
fourth porter, I was well aware, had charge of the forecastle, where the
deck-hands and firemen ate and slept.
Now the fourth porter of the May Flower was a lazy, good-natured little
pock-marked Irishman, whom I had no great difficulty in persuading to
smuggle me to Buffalo, on condition that I should do the greater part of
his work in the forecastle. I was glad, it will be seen, to make any
port in the storm which at that time swept across my terrified
imagination; Buffalo was not, of course, the best one for me, but
anything seemed better, just then, than the prospect of that Cimmerian
House of Vagrancy.
My friend, the fourth porter, was so well pleased with the skill and
taste I displayed in the cleansing of his greasy dishes that he lent a
degree of zeal to the carrying out of his part of the contract which
wellnigh proved fatal to me. For, the next day, when we were out on the
lake, and the fares were collecting, he hid me away between two
mattresses, as black as the coal handled by the sturdy firemen who
usually slept on them. I was already half smothered when the clerk and
his satellites descended into the forecastle; but the fourth porter, to
crush out, I suppose, the merest crease of suspicion, sat down on the
mattress which covered me, and carelessly picked his teeth till the
danger was past.
It was well that the forecastle was so uninviting a place as to detain
the clerk but a short time, since I should have screamed or perished in
a half-minute more. When drawn out, at last, by the party of the first
part to our contract, I was very black in the face, not only from the
smothering I had endured, but from the coal-dust I had taken from the
mattresses.
CHAPTER X.
A FINAL TRIUMPH.
Arrived safely at Buffalo, I did not look much like the urchin who had
left there several months before. Although I had conscientiously washed
my solitary piece of linen every week, and tried to keep myself as
neatly as I could, my clothes were greasy and ragged and my boots nearly
off my feet.
I wandered about the wharves without any purpose that I can now
remember, and might have been very disconsolate if it were not for the
joy I felt at escaping from the danger which I considered so imminent at
Detroit. This latter city, indeed, I came to look upon as a peculiarly
unlucky place for me,--an opinion which I continued to entertain up to
the time of a signal triumph I had there afterward as the juvenile
prodigy of jig-dancing and negro-minstrelsy.
I was just on the point of turning away from the docks for a stroll up
some of the neighboring squalid by-streets of Buffalo when I suddenly
heard myself called by name. It would be hard to say when I was worse
terrified. I was really afraid of my own name. No good could come to me,
I felt sure, from any one’s knowing it. Gazing around toward the wharf,
in the direction from which the sound had seemed to come, I saw nobody
but some laborers unloading a sailing vessel, close at hand, and they
took no notice of me.
Again I heard my name, which sounded this time as if it came
mysteriously from somewhere up in the air. Sweeping the dingy heights of
the masts and smoke-stacks and office-windows with my astonished eyes, I
beheld, at last, a boy coming briskly toward me down a flight of steps
that led from a commission-house.
It was my school-fellow, who had harbored me in the stable the first
night of my run-away; and it was from the window of his father’s office,
he told me, that he had first seen and called me. “How you look! but I
am glad to see you!” and many other frank, kind things the generous
little fellow said.
He prefaced his eager questions as to where I had been and how I came
to spoil my clothes so, with the remark that he guessed it wasn’t so
funny, after all, to go out in the world seeking a fellow’s fortune. My
own plight at the time was better calculated, I think, than any moral
observations I may have made, to fortify him in this opinion. If I did
indulge in a few gravely eloquent words of warning, I have so far
forgotten them that I cannot repeat them here for the benefit of
thoughtless, adventure-loving boys of to-day.
As soon as I had briefly satisfied my friend’s curiosity as to the
dangers myself and clothes had passed, he insisted on my going right
along home with him. I refused, of course, being ashamed of my toilet,
and still afraid of capture by the people from whom I had fled.
Whereupon my old school-mate assured me that his mother had scolded him
for not before bringing me into the house instead of the stable. He gave
me furthermore to understand that she had heard all about my domestic
quarrel, and upheld me in what I had done.
This information had its effect, and I turned with him toward his home.
The well-dressed boy did not seem at all abashed to walk through the
most crowded streets with me, although the striking contrast of our
attire and social positions must have been highly suggestive to any
passing philosopher. Boys of the short-jacket age may, by the way, have
many imperfect and even cruel traits, but we must confess, as men, that
caste begins on our side of long-tailed coats.
* * * * *
At my friend’s home I received a kindly greeting from his mother, who
immediately insisted--as good women in their hospitable souls often do,
for almost any ill that can befall a person--on producing something to
eat. Now it happened, for a wonder, that I was not hungry, having
scarcely an hour before taken a very hearty meal, on general principles
of prevention (though in the middle of the forenoon), just previous to
my parting with the fourth porter of the steamer May Flower.
But that did not satisfy the sympathy of my friend’s mother. The
hospitable longing just hinted at, which not unfrequently seeks to
administer consolation through the stomach for wounds and sprains of the
limbs as well as for wounds and sprains of the heart and head,--the
spirit which underlies, I suppose, the custom of funeral
baked-meats,--was aroused in the kind-hearted lady. She saw, no doubt,
in my stained and tattered garments an illuminated chronicle of present
distress, and all manner of past misfortunes. And I had to eat again.
Then she sent me up stairs, and had me bathed and thrust into a suit of
her son’s clothes and a pair of his boots; all of which fitted me
admirably. Having changed my five pennies from the pocket of the old to
that of the new pantaloons, I descended to meet her criticism. She
seemed well pleased with the result, and, telling me I must take good
care of the clothes and boots, for they were now mine, she made me sit
down and give her an account of my wanderings. This ended, she dismissed
me to play with her own boy, first making me promise I would come back
to her house to eat and sleep.
My young friend, who had been an interested witness of my metamorphosis
in all its stages, delighted, I need hardly add, as much as I did in his
mother’s benevolence, or as much as she did in our mutual joy. Indeed,
the expression of the kind lady’s face, calmly pleased at her own act,
but brightly exultant in the reflection of our rejoicing, was then
something beautiful to see, and has been grateful to think upon since.
It was Saturday, and, there being no school, we two boys made a merry
day of it, keeping, however, well out of the neighborhood of my former
home.
I could not make my friend understand, any more than I can now myself,
why I had not long before spent the five coppers he had given me. When I
had plenty to eat they were, I remember, a kind of sword and shield to
me, adding greatly to my independence, which almost always, at such
moments of bodily fulness, was of the happy and triumphant sort. It was
only in the seasons of my direst need that I had a vague expectancy of
worse times; and against these worse times, I suppose, I held my
coppers.
And the reader may explain, if he can, what is really the fact, that
this apprehension of greater misfortunes than ever came--and which my
pennies were sometimes powerless to dispel--and my fear of the heartless
captain of the steamer Pacific were the only sources of unhappiness
during my worst privations. If I could have been free of these, I am
convinced, I might have been very hungry, but never very unhappy.
* * * * *
Over the supper-table that Saturday evening, my case and person having
been made known to my friend’s father, a consultation was had about my
future. I was strongly in favor of going on a first-class steamboat, and
rather forward, peradventure, in advocating my views. My friend’s
father, thinking of no better place for me to work for myself, or
entertaining secret doubts as to my staying in any better place, if put
there, promised his wife to see what he could do for me in the direction
taken by my own inclinations.
Accordingly, on the next Monday, by his influence, and by the kindness
of the late Captain Pheatt, a position was secured for me on the steamer
Northern Indiana.
I received ten dollars a month for acting as what was called key-boy,
whose light duties were to take care of the state-room keys and attend
the steward’s office. I had also the exclusive privilege of selling
books and papers to the passengers. By favor I received a share of my
wages in advance, and, adding my five coppers to the sum, I made my
first investment in yellow-covered literature.
The steamer, which was a veritable floating palace, carried hundreds of
passengers every trip, and I prospered. It was the custom of many
people, in compliment to my diminutive size, or in disgust at their
contents, to make me presents of their books, when they had read them,
or tried to read them. Thus I had the good fortune to sell the same book
two, three, and even four times over. I made ten and sometimes fifteen
dollars a week in this way and in the legitimate merchandise of my books
and papers.
Scarce seven moons from the time of my first flight from Buffalo, and my
five coppers had increased to I know not how many dollars. When the
steamer was laid up in the late autumn, I had money enough to keep me
handsomely and send me to school all the next winter,--if, as shall be
seen, fate, in the guise of disappointed affection, and a banjo, had not
ordered otherwise.
* * * * *
It is just both to my natural and legal guardians to say here, that,
when they saw me not only determined but able to support myself, they
left me ever afterward quietly to my own devices. My necessities,
therefore, and the prosperous result of my first adventures with five
coppers, led me to adopt--a little too romantically, perhaps, in the
latter and more thoughtful period of my youth--a principle to which I
long had a kindly leaning, notwithstanding the hard knocks it dealt me.
Indeed, it is still doubtful in my mind whether it is not better to
devote half of one’s energies in learning to live on a very small income
than to devote all of one’s energies in struggling and waiting miserably
for a very large income.
That, at least, was my principle; and, if it trammelled the head with
false doctrine, it left the soul remarkably free. Thus, it will be seen,
my entire subsequent wanderings, my course at an American college, and
at a German university--the former on nothing to speak of, and the
latter on eighty dollars--all sprang more or less directly from the
extraordinary qualities of expansion, both spiritual and financial,
which, at the early age of eleven, I discovered in those five copper
cents.
BOOK II.
THREE YEARS AS A NEGRO-MINSTREL.
ÆT. 12-15.
CHAPTER I.
MY FIRST COMPANY.
Negro-minstrels were, I think, more highly esteemed at the time of which
I am about to write than they are now; at least, I thought more of them
then, both as individuals and as ministers to public amusement, than I
ever have since.
The first troupe of the kind I saw was the old “Kunkels,” and I can
convey no idea of the pleasurable thrill I felt at the banjo-solo and
the plantation-jig. I resolved on the spot to be a negro-minstrel. Mr.
Ford, in whose theatre President Lincoln was assassinated, was, I
believe, the agent of this company. I made known my ambition to that
gentleman and to Mr. Kunkel himself, and they promised, no doubt, as the
best means of getting rid of me, to take me with them the next year.
Meantime I bought a banjo, and had pennies screwed on the heels of my
boots, and practised “Jordan” on the former and the “Juba” dance with
the latter, till my boarding-house keeper gave me warning. I think there
is scarcely a serious friend of mine acquainted with me at that period
who does not remember me with sorrow and vexation. The racket that I
made at all hours and in all places can be accounted for only by the
youthful zeal with which I “practised,” and which I despair of
describing in anything so cold as words.
I was then in my twelfth year, and my own master. It was, indeed, in
that prosperous winter after the squalid summer of my six months’
wandering. I was going to school at Toledo, Ohio, and leading a very
independent life on the money I had made out of the common investment of
my five coppers and of my wages, as key-boy of the steamer Northern
Indiana, commanded by the late Captain Pheatt.
I mention this kindly old gentleman again in the present connection
because he suffered a great deal from my early _penchant_ to perform the
clog-dance on the thin deck above his state-room. It is unnecessary to
repeat here the eager and emphatic remonstrances which the good captain
would make when I had inadvertently seized the occasion of his “watch
below” to shuffle him out of a profound sleep. But, I may remark in
passing, I have never known any one who regarded everything about
negro-minstrelsy with so little reverence or admiration.
It could not have been long after my interview with Messrs. Ford and
Kunkel when my landlady gave me warning to take myself and banjo and
obstreperous feet out of her house. With some difficulty, however, I
found another place to board, where the plastering of the apartment
below mine was proof against the coppers on my heels and the complicated
shuffles of “Juba.” For a month or two more I continued to go to school,
devoting only my spare hours to minstrelsy. I should, no doubt, have
abandoned my studies much sooner than I did, had it not been for a
love-affair which for a while divided my attentions with my banjo.
My Dulcinea was a red-cheeked little creature in a check apron. I had a
rival, in the same school with us, whom I vanquished by an unfair and
lavish expenditure of my superior wealth. I used to get up foot-races
for pennies in which I contrived that her little brother should always
beat and carry off the rewards. This was for a time effectual. My rival
was completely ousted, and my two absorbing affections joined hands, as
I may say figuratively, when the young lady and I met after school, in
her father’s wood-shed, and I played “Jordan” for her on the banjo.
She may have tired of my music, since that one tune executed
mechanically was the alpha and omega of my repertory; or she may have
tired of me,--I cannot speak definitely. If I had ever essayed to
accompany the instrument with my voice, it would have been different.
Then I never should have forgiven myself, and I could have forgiven her,
after the _dénouement_ which closed her heart and her father’s wood-shed
to me forever. For, in the course of a few brief weeks, a taller and
much handsomer boy than either my former rival or myself took the little
miss away from us both.
* * * * *
In my disgust, I left school and devoted all the energies of my blighted
spirit to minstrelsy. I organized a band of boys into a troupe, styling
them the “Young Metropolitans,” and appointing myself musical director,
though I knew no more of music than of chemistry. I spent my money for
instruments for the company, and for furniture to deck the room in which
we met for rehearsal. The musical instruments, however, were the least
of the expense, since these consisted, if I well recollect, of the banjo
before mentioned, three sets of bones, a tambourine, a triangle, and an
accordion.
With these, nevertheless, we succeeded in making it very unpleasant for
some quiet-loving Teutons who were accustomed to dream over their beer
at a _Wirthschaft_ in the same wooden building, and indeed just under
the apartment in which we rehearsed every evening. On certain occasions,
when I executed my “Juba” dance, or, in company with others, performed
the Virginia walk-around, these honest Germans would leave their beer,
and sometimes their hats and pipes, behind them in terror, and rush
precipitately into the middle of the street. There they would stand and
gaze in silent amazement up at the windows, or utter their surprise and
wrath at the proceedings in the expressive, but unintelligible speech of
the Fatherland.
The host, a portly gentleman with a red nose, remonstrated with us about
four times a week, to little purpose. The owner of the building also
remonstrated; but we had rented the apartment, and would not leave till
our time was out. We were constrained, however, to forego our jig and
walk-around. Still our music and singing, to which we were now confined,
came near breaking up the poor retail Gambrinus of the saloon beneath.
His “stem-guests” fell off one by one, and sought a quieter neighborhood
for their evening potations. It was only the bravest of them that could
be prevailed upon to return for anything more than their hats and pipes,
after having been driven into the street on any of our siege-nights.
The best praise I can give to the young gentleman who played the
accordion is, that he was worthy to be under such a musical director as
myself. He could play only one tune from beginning to end, and that was
the “Gum-Tree Canoe.” Now it happened none of us could sing the song,
which, as is well known, is of the slow, melancholy, sentimental order;
so this single tune would have been of very little benefit to us, had
we not, luckily, pressed it into the incongruous double service of
opening overture and closing quickstep.
The songs that we sang, or attempted to sing, were executed to the
accompaniment of the three sets of bones, the tambourine, triangle, and
banjo, with an uncertain ghostly second on the accordion, which, being
the same for all tunes and following no lead whatever, was of a
sufficiently lugubrious and dismal nature, when it was not wholly
drowned by the clangor of the other instruments.
My company, it must be confessed, had zeal, but little talent. I spent
what was left of my summer’s earnings before I could get them up to a
point that would, in my judgment, warrant a hope of success, should we
give the public exhibition for which my minstrels were clamorously
ambitious.
After many long months of fruitless trial, the rent of our room becoming
due, our furniture and instruments were seized; the landlord turned us
out of doors; the German beer-seller crossed himself thankfully; and I
was as completely ruined as many a manager before me.