CHAPTER II.
THE START.
On the 10th of September, the four friends had a final meeting at a sumptuous little dinner, given at the Fourteenth Street Delmonico's, by Smythe. At three o'clock in the afternoon the party broke up, with one last toast to the success of our friend's undertaking.
As the hands of the City Hall clock pointed the hour of six that evening, Smythe, Hough, and Wasson, with a number of friends who had been informed of the wager, shook hands with Ben on the steps of the City Hall and bade himbon voyage. A minute after, when the hives of the great metropolis were turning loose their human bees, and the streets were swarming with released humanity, homeward bound, Benjamin Cleveland walked down Courtlandt Street, with his hands in his empty pockets—feeling as he never felt before in all his life—A TRAMP!
Reader were you ever "broke"? Do you remember ever to have found yourself without money and without the possibility of getting it? If so, you will not surely have to tax your memory to recall the circumstance. The feeling of utter helplessness you then experienced will be indelibly stamped on your mind—fresh and green for a life time. You were in the world, yet not of it. You were a part and parcel of humanity, yet held nothing in common with it. Your mind wandered from subject to subject, and from proposition to proposition, in a dazed, uncontrolled manner that left your physical nature without a guide. How empty every thing seemed. All you met appeared to look right into your pockets and discover the horrible truth. The commonest mortal with a home and an occupation became a prince of peace and plenty in your eyes. And then the ever occurring, never answered, eternally harassing question that was constantly forcing itself upon you in a thousand shapes, "What shall I do?" You truly felt how small, petty and insignificant a thing man is without money. A nonentity; a cipher; a NOTHING! A shadow of existence—an effigy of immortality. Then the desperate thoughts that came ploughing along, tumbling over one another, and frantically appealing to you, for the action you did not possess. Was it not horrible! The dark deeds that pictured themselves to you. The wild promptings to some desperate act. How youhatedyour fellow man.He was not your fellow man!He was a being belonging to altogether a different sphere than yours. There was no fellowship about it. You were an Ishmaelite, and there was a savage satisfaction in feeling that all the world had its hand raised against you, and yours against all the world. Indeed, to tell the truth, you were not far from desperate deeds. The step from poverty to crime is a short one,—if poverty,itself, be not a crime. A man without money feels an ownership in every one else's property. An ownership where Might becomes the agent of Possession. You felt it. And perhaps it was more a lack of opportunity than inclination that kept you from becoming a criminal. Then do you remember the vows you made, "if you could only once get out of this fix!" The vices you intended to shun; the economy you would practice; the practical and substantial sympathy you would have for all forlorn mortals in your present predicament? The virtues of industry, perseverance and prudence you would religiously follow?
Bah!
"When the devil was sick, the devil a saint would be.When the devil got well, the devil a saint was he."
"When the devil was sick, the devil a saint would be.When the devil got well, the devil a saint was he."
"When the devil was sick, the devil a saint would be.When the devil got well, the devil a saint was he."
"When the devil was sick, the devil a saint would be.
When the devil got well, the devil a saint was he."
But perchance you have been "broke" more than once. Several times it may be. Vices, carelessness and a peculiar faculty for getting rid of money have reduced you to the predicament frequently. It has become normal. Do you dread it? No. It has lost its horrors. You have discovered that a man who starves in this country commits suicide. You have also learned how to let your self-respect have a half-holiday. Rags have become familiar to you and wear easily. You have learned to ask that you may receive. To knock at the door that the purse of the party within may be opened unto you. And, withal, there is a sort of freedom in the situation that is agreeable. The conventionalities of society have no claim upon you. You are beholden to no one, and no one to you. As free as the winds to come and go, work or play, sing or howl—in fact,to do as you please! Stocks up or stocks down—it is all the same. Banks may go into liquidation, and insurance companies only insure a loss. What do you care? The president may go to Canada and the cashier to Europe, and all available funds go along with them. Bah! Let the galled jade wince, your withers are unwrung. They have none ofyourmoney. The woes of others are yourdiversion. The Silver Bill a football in the Senate; Congressman Western Windy's anti-tariff resolution; the monthly statement of the National debt; the four per cent. loan;—you pass them by with supreme contempt. If the country were placed on its financial head to-morrow, kicking its heels amid the clouds of bankruptcy, it would be a matter of the most delightful indifference to you. The pinnacle of your hopes, aspirations and desires may be realized in that ecstatic moment, when, filled to the chin at the hospitable hands of some charitable housewife, you recline at ease on the sunny side of a plank and contemplate life through the hazy, somnolent contentment of a full stomach, without a care to oppress you!
Fortunately, or unfortunately, (as the case may be considered by the reader) Benjamin Cleveland illustrated neither of these phases of impecuniosity as he walked down Courtlandt Street.
True, he was moneyless,—and for the first time in his life. But his was a voluntary exile into poverty, and he had the stimulus of an object. There was something to be attained; something to strive for;—an object in life.
And a life without an object is death in masquerade.
One magical name was constantly in his mind. The name of the goal:—New Orleans.
What his sensations were as he walked toward the Jersey City Ferry would be hard to analyze. He felt somewhat sheepish and shame-faced. Every one passing seemed to take a personal interest in him, and say, "Ah, we know you. We know what you are doing. We know you have no money.You are a tramp!" He could have sworn that such were their thoughts. To be sure it was all imagination. They were all doing exactly as he was—thinking of themselves. The world rarely pays any attention to you unless you tread on its toes. Plunge your finger into the ocean—withdraw it—look for the hole! The ocean is the world—the hole yourself. Ben feltqueer. The central figure of his thoughts was New Orleans. But the steps between New York and New Orleans were many, and he was but taking the initial one.
While dreaming of the future he suddenly came plump up against the present in the shape of the Jersey City Ferry toll house. Forgetting for the moment the empty character of his exchequer, he entered the gate and thrust his hand in his pocket for the requisite toll.
The pocket was empty!
Blushing at his forgetfulness, and stammering out something to the toll collector about having left all his change at home, Ben retreated from the gate and into the street again.
It was his first check. The first gate on his road. And to tell the truth he felt lost. Here was only two cents standing between himself and $20,000! Ridiculous! Nevertheless a very substantial fact.
For half an hour he loafed up and down the piers of the North River, wondering what he should do. Once it suggested itself to him to go back to his friends and acknowledge the attempt a failure. But he thrust the thought aside as cowardly. Go he would, though he had to swim to the opposite shore, or go up to Albany and walk around the river!