A PRISON MEMENTO.
The political pot began to seethe. Many yet will remember how its smoke
went up. The summer--summer of 1860--grew fervent. Its breath became hot
and dry. All observation--all thought--turned upon the fierce campaign.
Discussion dropped as to whether Heenan would ever get that champion's
belt, which even the little rector believed he had fairly won in the
international prize-ring. The news brought by each succeeding European
steamer of Garibaldi's splendid triumphs in the cause of a new Italy,
the fierce rattle of partisan warfare in Mexico, that seemed almost
within hearing, so nearly was New Orleans concerned in some of its
movements,--all things became secondary and trivial beside the
developments of a political canvass in which the long-foreseen,
long-dreaded issues between two parts of the nation were at length to be
made final. The conventions had met, the nominations were complete, and
the clans of four parties and fractions of parties were "meeting," and
"rallying," and "uprising," and "outpouring."
All life was strung to one high pitch. This contest was
everything,--nay, everybody,--men, women, and children. They were all
for the Constitution; they were all for the Union; and each, even
Richling, for the enforcement of--his own ideas. On every bosom, "no
matteh the sex," and no matter the age, hung one of those little round,
ribbanded medals, with a presidential candidate on one side and his
vice-presidential man Friday on the other. Needless to say that
Ristofalo's Kate, instructed by her husband, imported the earliest and
many a later invoice of them, and distributing her peddlers at choice
thronging-places, "everlastin'ly," as she laughingly and confidentially
informed Dr. Sevier, "raked in the sponjewlicks." They were exposed for
sale on little stalls on populous sidewalks and places of much entry and
exit.
The post-office in those days was still on Royal street, in the old
Merchants' Exchange. The small hand-holes of the box-delivery were in
the wide tessellated passage that still runs through the building from
Royal street to Exchange alley. A keeper of one of these little stalls
established himself against a pillar just where men turned into and out
of Royal street, out of or into this passage. One day, in this place,
just as Richling turned from a delivery window to tear the envelope of a
letter bearing the Milwaukee stamp, his attention was arrested by a man
running by him toward Exchange alley, pale as death, and followed by a
crowd that suddenly broke into a cry, a howl, a roar: "Hang him! Hang
him!"
"Come!" said a small, strong man, seizing Richling's arm and turning him
in the common direction. If the word was lost on Richling's defective
hearing, not so the touch; for the speaker was Ristofalo. The two
friends ran with all their speed through the passage and out into the
alley. A few rods away the chased wretch had been overtaken, and was
made to face his pursuers. When Richling and Ristofalo reached him there
was already a rope about his neck.
The Italian's leap, as he closed in upon the group around the victim,
was like a tiger's. The men he touched did not fall; they were rather
hurled, driving backward those whom they were hurled against. A man
levelled a revolver at him; Richling struck it a blow that sent it over
twenty men's heads. A long knife flashed in Ristofalo's right hand. He
stood holding the rope in his left, stooping slightly forward, and
darting his eyes about as if selecting a victim for his weapon. A
stranger touched Richling from behind, spoke a hurried word in Italian,
and handed him a huge dirk. But in that same moment the affair was over.
There stood Ristofalo, gentle, self-contained, with just a perceptible
smile turned upon the crowd, no knife in his hand, and beside him the
slender, sinewy, form, and keen gray eye of Smith Izard.
The detective was addressing the crowd. While he was speaking, half a
score of police came from as many directions. When he had finished, he
waved his slender hand at the mass of heads.
"Stand back. Go about your business." And they began to go. He laid a
hand upon the rescued stranger and addressed the police.
"Take this rope off. Take this man to the station and keep him until
it's safe to let him go."
The explanation by which he had so quickly pacified the mob was a simple
one. The rescued man was a seller of campaign medals. That morning, in
opening a fresh supply of his little stock, he had failed to perceive
that, among a lot of "Breckenridge and Lane" medals, there had crept
in one of Lincoln. That was the sum of his offence. The mistake had
occurred in the Northern factory. Of course, if he did not intend to
sell Lincoln medals, there was no crime.
"Don't I tell you?" said the Italian to Richling, as they were walking
away together. "Bound to have war; is already begin-n."
"It began with me the day I got married," said Richling.
Ristofalo waited some time, and then asked:--
"How?"
"I shouldn't have said so," replied Richling; "I can't explain."
"Thass all right," said the other. And, a little later: "Smith Izard
call' you by name. How he know yo' name?"
"I can't imagine!"
The Italian waved his hand.
"Thass all right, too; nothin' to me." Then, after another pause: "Think
you saved my life to-day."
"The honors are easy," said Richling.
He went to bed again for two or three days. He liked it little when Dr.
Sevier attributed the illness to a few moments' violent exertion and
excitement.
"It was bravely done, at any rate, Richling," said the Doctor.
"_That_ it was!" said Kate Ristofalo, who had happened to call to see
the sick man at the same hour. "Doctor, ye'r mighty right! Ha!"
Mrs. Reisen expressed a like opinion, and the two kind women met the two
men's obvious wish by leaving the room.
"Doctor," said Richling at once, "the last time you said it was
love-sickness; this time you say it's excitement; at the bottom it isn't
either. Will you please tell me what it really is? What is this thing
that puts me here on my back this way?"
"Richling," replied the Doctor, slowly, "if I tell you the honest truth,
it began in that prison."
The patient knit his hands under his head and lay motionless and
silent.
"Yes," he said, after a time. And by and by again: "Yes; I feared as
much. And can it be that my _physical_ manhood is going to fail me at
such a time as this?" He drew a long breath and turned restively in the
bed.
"We'll try to keep it from doing that," replied the physician. "I've
told you this, Richling, old fellow to impress upon you the necessity of
keeping out of all this hubbub,--this night-marching and mass-meeting
and exciting nonsense."
"And am I always--always to be blown back--blown back this way?" said
Richling, half to himself, half to his friend.
"There, now," responded the Doctor, "just stop talking entirely. No, no;
not always blown back. A sick man always thinks the present moment is
the whole boundless future. Get well. And to that end possess your soul
in patience. No newspapers. Read your Bible. It will calm you. I've been
trying it myself." His tone was full of cheer, but it was also so
motherly and the touch so gentle with which he put back the sick man's
locks--as if they had been a lad's--that Richling turned away his face
with chagrin.
"Come!" said the Doctor, more sturdily, laying his hand on the patient's
shoulder. "You'll not lie here more than a day or two. Before you know
it summer will be gone, and you'll be sending for Mary."
Richling turned again, put out a parting hand, and smiled with new
courage.