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 bestunderstand 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 thesudden 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 yawlfast 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, onthe 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 clearriver 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, stuffedwith 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.
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 brokehis 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 thescow, 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 withme?” 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 melaconically 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 tothe 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 wasnow 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.
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 seemedpleased 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 eachof 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; thisbasso 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 dishonestfalsetto, 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 tenorsalways 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 steadycrescendoof 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 paymentfor 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 ownfidus Achatesin 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 theseexperiences 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’tsteal, 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 onlytoo 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.
[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.
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 fromthe 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 Ihad 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-dressedboy 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 andsprains 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 thekind 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 beenfree 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 thesum, 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 leftme 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.
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 penniesscrewed 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 earlypenchantto perform the clog-dance on the thin deck above his state-room. It is unnecessary to repeat here the eager andemphatic 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 whichI 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 thedénouementwhich 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 appointingmyself 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 aWirthschaftin 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, hadwe 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.
IT may as well be owned that I had no natural aptness for the banjo, and was always an indifferent player; but for dancing I had, I am confident, such a remarkable gift as few have ever had. Up to this day, I do not think I ever have seen a step done by man or woman that I could not do as soon as I saw it,—not saying, of course, how gracefully. I am not, however, so vain or proud of this gift as I used to be, and should hardly have written the foregoing sentence at all, had it not seemed necessary to a proper understanding of subsequent passages in this narrative.
I was still so small of stature, and yet capable of producing so much noise with the coppers on my heels, that, by the wholesale clerks and young bloods about town, I was considered in the light of a prodigy, and made to shuffle my feet at almostall hours and in almost all localities. It was by this means, at some place of convivial resort, that I attracted the notice and admiration of a conductor on the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroad. He determined to have so much talent with him all the time, and prevailed upon me to be his train-boy.
Here, as on the lake, I had the exclusive privilege of selling books and papers to the passengers. The great railways were not then farmed by a single person or firm as now. I was my own agent and the regulator of my own prices and profits. Both of these latter I found it convenient to make large, and was again the possessor of more money than I cared to spend.
It was my business to carry water through the cars at stated intervals. On a day train I could afford to perform my duty with promptness, when I had sufficiently worried the passengers with my merchandise. But on a night train—which came to my lot just as often as a day train—I took a more lucrative and, I fear, less reputable means of quenching the thirst of travellers. There were no sleeping-cars in those times, and, I believe, no water-tanks in the passenger-cars.My memory may fail me in this matter of the water-tanks, but I am certain that I never filled them, if there were any on our road. I don’t know whether more people travelled then than now, but I remember the trains were exceeding long ones in those hot summer nights, and the people became terribly thirsty. And this is the way I comforted them:—
Taking a barrel of water, a pailful of brown sugar, and a proper amount of a well-known acid, I concocted lemonade which I sold through the train for five cents a glass. When thirsty lips asked piteously for water, I would tell the sufferer, with perfect truth, that there was not a drop of pure water left on the train. I blush to write that I sometimes sold fifteen dollars’ worth of this vile compound in a night.
I was taught how to prepare it by a man who travelled with a circus, and who assured me that all his ice-cold lemonade was concocted in the same way; and that, far from having killed anybody, it gave perfect satisfaction to the gentlemen and ladies from the country, who were his principal customers.
The only excuse I have to offer for myself nowis, that I was not conscious then how great a villain I really was.
Toward the middle of the summer the cholera became so prevalent in the Western cities that I thought it prudent to retire from the active life of a train-boy, and live quietly on my earnings. I settled myself, therefore, at a fashionable boarding-house in Toledo.
Here the landlady, fearful of the dust and anxious for the integrity of her carpet, made a remarkable compromise with me to the glory of æsthetics. Whenever there was a pressing request from the boarders for me to exercise my feet, she would bustle in with a large roll of oil-cloth, and spread it uncomplainingly on the parlor floor near the piano to the music of which I danced. This was, I think, the first introduction of clogs as a drawing-room entertainment. I soon came to be invited out as a sort of cub-lion; and thus it happened that the rumor and dust of my accomplishments spread gradually throughout the city.
One evening I strolled into what was then the St. Nicholas, and, stepping to the bar, which camejust up to my juvenile shoulders, I demanded authoritatively of the bar-tender if he had any good pale brandy. He said that he had. I told him in the same imperative tone to give me a ten-cent drink, “and none of his instant-death kind either.”
This made somewhat of a sensation among the frequenters of that fashionable resort. They evidently mistook this brandy-bibbing as a swaggering habit of mine; whereas I was honestly prescribing for myself what had been recommended to me as the best preventive of cholera. Having swallowed and paid for the brandy, I was preparing to withdraw, when I heard this dialogue going on behind me:—
“Who for pity’s sake is that?”
“That? why, that’s just the boy you want. But can’t he dance though!”
Turning, I saw a couple of well-dressed men seated together at the end of the room. I had barely time to observe that one was a stranger to me, when the other called me to him, and introduced me to Johnny Booker.
Now I had heard the songs, then popular, “Meet Johnny Booker in the Bowling Green,” and“Johnny Booker help dis nigger”; and when I was aware that I was standing before the person to whose glory these lyrics had been written, I was very much abashed. I looked upon a great negro-minstrel as unquestionably the greatest man on earth, and it was some time before I could answer his questions intelligibly.
In the course of a few minutes, however, I was conducted into a private room, where I was made to dance “Juba” to the time which the comedian himself gave me by means of his two hands and one foot, and which is technically called “patting.” My performance, it seems, was satisfactory, for I was engaged on the spot.
Mr. Booker was then waiting for the rest of his company to join him; and when they arrived, I was instituted jig-dancer to the troupe, with a weekly salary of five dollars and all my travelling expenses.
The other performers came I know not from what dismembered bands, to the relief or grief of I know not what distant hotels or boarding-houses. But, I will venture to say, no landlord, to whom the more reckless of them may have been in arrears, could have regarded their movements with a more lively interest than I did, after theirarrival at Toledo. As they came straggling in, one after the other, with their bass-viols and guitars and banjos in mysterious bags of green-baize or glazed oil-cloth, I looked upon them as I might have looked upon people who had come from another world.
If some of them appeared a little seedy, in the long interval between this and their previous engagement, and if others wore their coats strangely buttoned over their shirt-bosoms, I put it down of course to the peculiarity and privilege of genius. When I walked through the streets to and from rehearsal with these strange beings, it was a triumphal procession to me. I seemed crowned for the time with the glory with which my young imagination had invested everything belonging to them.
It is impossible to convey an idea of the gratified ambition with which I prepared for my first appearance on the stage. The great Napoleon in the coronation robes, which can be seen any day in the Tuileries, was not prouder or happier than I when I made my initial bow before the foot-lights, in my small Canton flannel knee-pants, cheap lace, gold tinsel, corked face, and woolly wig.
I do not remember any embarrassment, for I was only doing in public what I had already done for the majority of the audience in private. If I had acquitted myself much worse than I really did, mydébutwould still, I am convinced, have been considered a success.
So great, indeed, was the local pride of the good Toledans in their infant phenomenon, that after the company had exhibited a week, my name—or rather thenom de guerrewhich I had assumed—was put up for a benefit. On that day I had the satisfaction of seeing hung across the street, on a large canvas, a water-color representation of myself, with one arm and one leg elevated, in the act of performing “Juba” over the heads and carts and carriages of the passers-by.
At night the house was crowded, and I was called out three times; but what afterwards struck me as unaccountably odd was, that I received not one cent from the proceeds of this benefit. When my salary was paid me, at the end of the next week, I was assured that “this benefit business” was a mere trick of the trade, and I was forced to content myself with the fact that I had learned something in my new profession.
WE now started on our travels, staying from one night to a week in a city, according to its size, stopping always at the best hotels, and leading the merriest of lives generally. I had the additional glory of being stared at as the youthful prodigy by day, and of having more than my share of applause, accompanied sometimes with quarter-dollars, bestowed on me at night.
There are probably many who will yet remember to have seen their cities thoroughly posted and plastered with the glaring announcement, in gigantic red letters, that “The Metropolitan Serenaders” were “coming.” That was our company, and in that golden age of minstrelsy our coming was an event of some importance. It certainly seemed so to the management; for on our arrival it was furthermore announced in large sky-blue letters, on all the prominent vacant buildings, andon all the low-tariff or free-trading board fences, that “The Metropolitan Serenaders” had “come.”
Nor was this all. As soon as our property-boxes were unpacked, our portraits in most gorgeous colored daguerreotypes were suspended about the entrance to the hall where we were to perform, and about the reading-rooms of the principal hotels. Bad as these unquestionably were, they were the very perfection of that style of art in those days; and thus it happened that those even who came upon our pictures to scoff, remained to admire.
In addition, there was a collective and general—I may say, very general—representation of ourselves on canvas, suspended across the principal street; we being attired, for that pictorial occasion only, in green dress-coats and in pantaloons of the same shade as our lips, which were of a very brilliant and unnatural pink.
I was sometimes astonished at the stupidity of the common public, who would frequently, as I stood among them, in graceful incognito, point out on this superb water-color the picture of the guitar-player, and decide in my hearing that he must be meant for the “Juvenile Phenomenon.” Now this guitar-player was in reality the longest, lankest, and by all odds the homeliest man in the company; and how the public should ever mistake him for me, the only original “Juvenile Phenomenon,” was more than I could understand.
Looking back dimly through my memory at this picture, and aided as I am in my criticism by a recent interview with the venerable artist himself, I am led to conclude now, that he had idealized and etherealized the form of that tallest and ugliest of guitar-players. As represented on the canvas, “touching his light guitar,” with his eyes turned upward in a Sapphic ecstasy, there was something so gigantically heroic in the spirit of his action, or in the blunder of the painter, that his body seemed in comparison to weigh but a scant ninety pounds, and all that was earthly in his appearance was, it must be owned, strikingly diminutive and phenomenal.
Notwithstanding the annoyance caused me by the mistake of the common public in the matter of identity, I do not wish to be unjust to our artist. He is still living, at Cincinnati, a gray-haired man, supporting a large family by the honorable exercise of his brush; though of late years he has confined himself mostly, he assures me, to the more materialistic and lucrative branch of his profession,—house and sign painting, namely.
With regard to the picture in question, he said, the last time I saw him, that in it he had made an attempt, if he remembered correctly, to throw an ideal halo of high art about some of the portraits; that the tall guitar-player was a special instance wherein this treatment seemed necessary; and that, in all his artistic experience, he had never since come across a man that would stand so much foreshortening.
The latter part of the old painter’s speech about the guitar-player was in a different tone of voice altogether, and in words which, from their queer pathos, I think I am reporting verbatim.
“Poor ——!” he said, calling my old comrade by name; “he has long since gone to his account. I suppose we must all go sooner or later.” Then, after a meditative pause, the old fellow continued: “No man is homely, I guess, in heaven, or too long and bony for good proportion. They say, too, that there’s progression up there. He died more than ten years ago. Maybe he’s now improving his talent by playing on a golden harp.He wasn’t much of a guitar-player down here, but no matter.”
There was in our troupe a remarkable character by the name of Frank Lynch, who played the tambourine and banjo. He and the celebrated Diamond had been in their youth among the first and greatest of dancers. Too portly now to endure sustained effort with his feet, he was yet an excellent instructor; and I was constantly under his training.
He taught me, in addition to the legitimate sleights of our calling, to aid him in a droll way he had of amusing himself at the expense of the general public. He initiated me into the mysteries of beating the rolls and drags on the snare-drum; and then it was our custom of a summer afternoon to steal away to the top of the hotel, or more generally to the roof of the hall where we were to exhibit. Placing ourselves so that we could observe the passers-by on the street, without being observed by them, Lynch would strike up a tune on the fife and I would accompany him on the drum; and, straightway, the whole thoroughfare for a block or so in each direction would keep time to our music.
It was our delight to set our people all a going faster or slower, at our will. Curious persons would sometimes look about them, puzzled, to see where the music came from; but, failing in that, they almost invariably marched on to some brisk or melancholy measure, as it chanced to be our mood at the moment. Any one who may doubt this statement has but to observe the foot-passengers the next time he or she hears a band of music playing on the street.
It would sometimes happen, however, that our notice would be attracted by the peculiar walk of an individual who had so little music in his soul that we could not bring him into step. In that case we would perform Mohammed’s miracle of the mountain, by accommodating our fife and drum to his particular gait, and bring the rest of the street into the same pace.
If we saw an elderly gentleman or lady, Lynch would immediately launch forth into the well-known “limping tune” of the old man in the pantomime, and, as sure as fate, our venerable actor or actress below would keep time. The conventional air which heralds in Columbine on the Christmas boards was also brought intorequisition, with most remarkable effect, when we caught sight of a young lady or bevy of young ladies, promenading beneath us in spruce toilet.
On a hot day I am afraid we were sometimes a trifle cruel in the way we hurried up fleshy people. From our point of view on the roof, and generally behind a shady chimney, the effect was, in truth, not unlike that of a diorama. But especially was this the case when some stout old gentleman, whom we had precipitated along a whole block at a very lively, perspiring rate through a hot sun, would, as if melted or absorbed in the white light, disappear suddenly from our gaze, as a brisk and fiery execution of “The girl I left behind me” would carry him steaming around a corner.
In short, our martial music was an endless amusement to us when time hung heavy on the hands of the more dignified members of our company. By some accident, I forget what, we lost our small drum, and were afterward confined to a fife and a bass-drum. This, I think, only made the effect of our music more ludicrous in developing the peculiarities of individual pedestrians.Lynch seemed, I remember, more than ever satisfied in this exigency, for he stoutly maintained that any two faces are more alike than any two “gaits,” and that, for his part, he always wanted the top of a house, a fife, and at least a bass-drum to read character.
Lynch and I were together in another troupe afterward. I never knew him, in all the time of our association, to talk ten minutes without telling some story, and that always about something which had happened to him personally in the show business. In the long nights, when we had to wait for cars or steamboats, he would sit down, and, taking up one theme, would string all his stories on that, and that alone, for hours. His manner would make the merest commonplace amusing.
We had been together a year or more, I think, when Barnum’s Autobiography came out. I shall never forget my comrade’s indignation when he read that passage of the book which runs something in this way: “Here I picked up one Francis Lynch, an orphan vagabond,” &c., &c. It was really dangerous after that for a man to own, in his presence, to having read the life of the greatshowman. Henceforth, Lynch omitted all his stories about the time when he and P. T. Barnum used to black their faces together.
Lynch professed to live in Boston, though he had not been there in fifteen years. During all this time he had been earnestly trying to get back to his home. He would often spend money enough in a night to take him to Boston from almost any place in the broad Union, and back again, and then lament his folly for the next week.
Once he left our company at Cleveland, Ohio, for the express purpose of going back to Boston. Unfortunately a night intervened, and in the middle of it the whole Weddell House was aroused from its slumbers by poor Lynch, in the last stage of intoxication, vociferating at the top of his lungs that he had been robbed of the money with which he was going back to Boston.
By some means he had got hold of a lighted candle without a candlestick, and with this he purposed to search the house. The clerks and porters were called out of bed, and, led by Lynch with his flickering taper, came in melancholy procession up the long stairs to the rooms occupiedby our troupe. Lynch insisted that we should all be searched,—a whim in which, under the circumstances, we thought it best to humor him. This having been done without finding his lost treasure, he bolted the doors and proceeded to examine the surprised clerks and porters. Meeting with the same ill success, he finally threw himself in despair upon his bed, and wailed himself to sleep.
The next morning he found all the money which he had not spent in the side pocket of his overcoat, where he had carelessly thrust it himself. And his joy was so great at this, and his sorrow so lively when told that he had searched us all, that he insisted on spending what money was left to celebrate his good luck and the triumph of our honesty.
Lynch never got back to Boston. He died several years ago somewhere out in the far West. Since then it has transpired that Barnum was wrong in calling him an orphan, at least; for his father sought him a long time before hearing of his death, to bestow upon the poor fellow a considerable fortune that had been left him by some relative.