The Brown-Stone Boy

“ A-A-A-H ! he’s no consul-general! ” cried the brown-stone boy, in strong accents of disgust.

“ Oh yes, I think he is; I am sure he is,” I ventured to expostulate. “ I had occasion to visit him at his office, and I am sure this is the same man.”

“Well, what I mean is that he’s no kind of a consul-general. He’s a fossil. Oh, what a treasure he’d have been about ten thousand years ago ! ” said the brown-stone boy, with a gusto.

“ How so ? ” I inquired.

“He wouldn’t give me a ‘distressed seaman’s ’ certificate, so I could have sailed home on the steamer for nothing.”

It was the first I had heard of the brown-stone boy’s being a distressed seaman,—or a seaman at all, for that matter. He did not look it in the least. We had made a long voyage together from the tropics. My companion appeared on deck generally in pajamas. He claimed that this was the only proper costume for shipboard, in such a climate ; and at least, on a succession of days, when the wind was hot, and blew the yet hotter fumes of the smoke-funnels directly back into our faces, his claim was not without reason. Again lhe would appear in a ragged and greasy old tweed jacket, a bad hat, slouchy carpet slippers, and his neck quite innocent of shirt-collar. These seemed less satisfactorily accounted for. His comings on deck were of a certain mysterious, periodic sort. There were long intervals between, which we inclined to ascribe to his probable suffering from seasickness. He had two different manners, or ways, with him. At one time he would hang upon the skirts of a group, gazing and listening with an air of exaggerated reverence to every word that its members let fall. At others, he showed a hilarious and over-familiar flow of spirits. He bestirred himself to start the game of shuffle-board, would introduce to each other people who were already well acquainted, and engaged in loud and warm controversy with whoever would argue with him. His favorite reproach to opponents in these discussions was that of “ old-fogyism.” To be behind the age, in his view, was the fault over all others deserving of opprobrium.

He was, say, twenty-four years of age, of a certain plump, still boyish aspect; his general features good, but coarsened ; and his eyes heavy, as if with dissipation. He had a fixed way of smiling, at times, which seemed half maudlin, and turned out to be really so, when its cause was known.

The subject of our talk was a pompous little man, who was in the habit of Strutting up and down the deck, with his hands behind him, keeping much to himself.

“ Ah, you were a distressed seaman. Was it among the Islands themselves that you were wrecked?” I inquired. The revelation lent my slight, new acquaintance a picturesqueness and interest which he had not before possessed.

“ No, I never was wrecked. ’Most everything else has happened to me, but I never was wrecked,” he replied. “ I was n’t exactly a cast-away mariner. I was busted — in business, see?”

“ Ah, in business ? ”

“Yes; but a consul-general need n’t look so close, need he ? He’s got a right to draw off them certifieates and pass you home, if he wants to; what’s he good for, if he don’t do it? He knew all about me; I told him, myself. I told him where my family lived in New York, — the old lady, that is, for there ain’t many more of ’em. We ’re a boss family there; way up, high-toned. We ’ve got a four-story high-stoop house on West Blank Street, close to the avenue. I ain’t no slouch. I’m a brownstone boy, I am.”

He was a brown-stone boy ? It was under this description, derived from the brown or red sandstone — the favorite building material of the more prosperous and fashionable quarter of New York, — that I came chiefly to think of him.

“ He would n’t give it to me, though, — this old consul would n’t. He ought to have associated with Methuselah. So I had to play it fine, and stow away on the steamer on my own account.”

This was a new light upon his case; and though the brown - stone boy was avowedly far from an exemplary acquaintance, I heard a part of his story, at this time, not without entertainment. His talk was mingled with a peculiar slang, and his intonation was of a rowdyish, easy-going sort, not found in just the same form out of the city of New York or away from the influence of its reprobate classes. If he were of superior station, he had thoroughly adopted the manners of strata far lower down. This was reprehensible, no doubt; but, after long listening to a foreign tongue exclusively, it had a certain racy, American, almost patriotic flavor. The brownstone boy had, too, while recounting his misdeeds, a way of interlarding them with apology, as if he were one in whom these follies and errors of youth were now wholly at an end.

“Well, all that’s over, now; that’s done for,” he would say. “ I’m not going back to it, either, you can bet your dear life.”

“ I walked aboard as bold as brass,” he continued in his story, “ and said nothing to nobody. Of course I had to give it away to the purser when he came ’round after the tickets, but by that time we were far out to sea. Well, if you had seen that man dance and swear! I thought I had heard some swearing before, but — well, all right! He grabbed me and called some men, and I thought they were going to fire me overboard at once. Then he called the captain, and the captain he danced. They sent for a lot more, and they all danced. It was a holy circus, you better believe. I told ’em all the yarns I could think of, and talked ’em ’most deaf, dumb, and blind.”

“ What did you tell them ? ”

“ I said the consul-general had promised me a distressed seaman’s certificate, and forgot to give it to me. But what did they do but walk this here fellow right up to me. He was making the voyage, too, without my knowing it. That spoiled everything ; there was n’t much use trying, after that. I told ’em then I had lost my pocket-book, with my ticket in it. I told ’em that the parties in whose sugar warehouse I used to work said I could come aboard and have a passage any time, because they were interested in the line. I told ’em I was down sick of a ragin’ fever, and had to get away ; told ’em who my family was; told ’em I ‘d see they were paid as soon as I got back to the United States of America. But it was all no use.”

“ But they did not throw you overboard, it seems ? ”

“ No, nor they did n’t put me ashore, as they swore they were goin’ to. The captain would have me up every few days, and say, ‘ It won’t do, you know ; it won’t do. We’ve got to put you ashore at the first landin’.’ But they did n’t do it. I suppose they was satisfied, on the whole, that I belonged to one of the first families,” he said, complacently. “ I ve hung on by the eyelids most all the way, and they put me in a place down by the furnace-room, to sleep, — ’cause there was n’t room in the first cabin.” He laid a finger beside his nose, with a humorous leer. “ You would n’t wonder if I was a little backward sometimes in cornin’ up where you folks was, all so braced up and shipshape, would you ? I had to pawn all my clothes before cornin’ aboard.”

This was quite a different theory of his dressing in pajamas from that of a scrupulous adaptation to the circumstances which he had before advanced. It was but natural, after such a confidence, that he should go on to give me some account of his going to the Islands, and his doings there previous to the embarkation.

“ It was my family influence that first took me down there,” he said. “ My father died when I was a small kid, and I never saw much of him, any way ; but the old lady has always had lots of influence, all the same. So when I had to get out of New York, — I was wanting to get away from New York, for certain reasons ” (he favored me again with one of his fixed smiles, from which it was evident that the reasons were not of the most reputable sort), —“ the old lady spoke to some friends of hers, and they got me a place down in the Islands, in a sugar warehouse. There was n’t much to do, and 1 am kind of easy-going sometimes, and did n’t do even that. I used to draw my little hundred dollars a month, and write home to the old lady that I was saving it, and getting to he a regular Astor or Vanderbilt. I was n’t, though, all the same. One day the superintendent came along, unexpectedly, and found me going to sleep — as I used to ’most all the time when he was away — on a convenient pile of coffee-sacks.

“ ‘ Are you down here for your health ? ’ he says.

“ ‘ I don’t know as I am,’I says. ‘ What’s the matter with you ? ’ giving him back a lot of impudence.

“ Well, the shipping-book had n’t been attended to for a couple of weeks, and a memorandum of sugar hogsheads on hand that he wanted was about as far behind. What with that and my back talk and all together, he pretty soon fired me out entirely. I did n’t care, as long as my money lasted ; but the worst of it was that after that was gone the old skeesix was still so mad that he would n’t give me back the place, and I had to shift for myself. Jobs ain’t very plenty in the Islands, and I could n’t afford to let the old lady know what had happened to me, either. It was a kind of last chance, her send in’ me down there. I’d been into various matters and things before, you see. Nor yet I could n’t play off the invalid dodge on her any more; I’ve pretty much run through that, too.”

My brown-stone friend was so used to being accepted as an out-and-out scapegrace, it seemed, that he would not take the pains to give himself a respectable character, even when he had the most excellent opportunities. To me he might have assumed a virtue, though he had it not, with entire impunity.

It appeared that he had enlisted, in the Islands, as sub-agent of a man engaged in introducing American sewingmachines. He had been instructed in running and repairing them, and, having picked up by this time considerable of the Spanish “ lingo,” had “ traveled around among the good-looking senoras and senoritas ” for a while, with much entertainment to himself. He had, however, repaired many of the machines in such a way that “ a steam engine could never have started them again,” and been, in consequence, deprived of his office in disgrace. He had next acted as agent for the sale of some illustrated Bibles, sent out from Connecticut.

“They were cram full of pictures,” he said. “ The natives had never seen anything of the kind before, and it was a big scheme. The trouble with ’em was they cost too much. I had to sell ’em out for less than half price, to make my own expenses. When 1 got back from the trip, the boss agent was so mad that I saw finally my talents were not appreciated in the Islands, and the only thing for me to do was to get out.”

The complacent taking of me into a sort of partnership, in his peculiar iniquities, was not too complimentary on the part of the brown-stone boy, but be was quite impervious to reproof, receiving it at most in a puzzled way. We were coming into port at the time. We set foot on shore towards evening. Much more intimate acquaintanceships than this are broken, and I supposed I had seen the last of the brown-stone boy.

The next day, however, he walked into the dining-room at my hotel, at dinner time, and, dragging out a chair in an easy way, joined me at table. There had been a wonderful change in his appearance in the mean time. He was very well and neatly dressed, and in no respect the slovenly figure he had been on the voyage.

“ Yes, all ragged out new,” he said, following with one of his own my involuntary glance of discovery. “ Readymade ; but I ‘ll have something even more him turn than this, in a few days. The old lady’s come down with the stamps again, see?”

He reached in a comfortable way for the bill of fare, among the bottles of the caster, gave his order to the waiter in a facetious, superior way, and went on with his confidences. I found that these were not drawn out exclusively by me. He was of a natural expausiveness of disposition, and was amiably disposed to share them with whoever would listen.

“ I was up to the post-office, and there was the money order all ready and waiting for me,” he continued. “ I did n’t hardly expect it. Doubtful things are pretty uncertain, and you can’t sometimes ’most always tell ; but the scheme this time has worked like a charm. I did n’t ask her for anything to get away from the Islands, you see, but I told her 1 had fallen in with a party who wanted to take me into partnership with him in the beef-canning business. I told her it was the biggest thing that had ever happened to me, and that I had got the place all by myself, by my own unaided exertions, see? He wanted an active young partner, I said, and I was going to learn the business; and then we were to put up a factory, some place where cattle were plenty and cheap, to can ’em. I said I had saved money of my own, arid all I wanted was five hundred dollars more, to make the thing complete and secure the interest I wanted. I did n’t half suppose the old lady would catch on this time, but, as I tell you, it has worked like a charm.”

“ And there is no beef-canning project?”

“ You bet your dear life there’s a beef-canning project. That’s just what there is, — a beef-canning project. I ’m going to learn the business. There ’s factories here where they carry it on, and I ’m going around looking for a place. Yes, sir ; you ’ll see me with my little overalls on, chopping up sausage-meat, or boiling down soap-fat, or whatever they want. I won’t kick; it don’t make any difference what it is. I’m a worker, I am.”

“ And the partner ? ” I asked in surprise, half impressed by his emphasis.

He looked at me with a compassionate smile.

“ That was a blind for the old lady,” he said. “ I have to do it sometimes. But that’s all over now ; I’ve reformed. A fellow had n’t ought to be spouting his clothes, beating his board-bill, and all that, you know,” he added philosophically. “ I’ve always had a good mother; that’s what brings me around all right. A mother’s prayers is what you want every time, see ? ”

There was a dangerous levity in these remarks, and yet a certain air of sincerity, too. The method might have been only his ideal of the manly way of expressing himself.

“ I should n’t wonder if there was any quantity of will-power about me, somewheres, still,” he said. “I had a brother, with more will-power — Lord, what a will-power he did have ! ”

He continued his remarks on virtue at considerable length. His platitudes about goodness and the exemplary influence of a mother— whose heart, it was plainly to he seen, such a young reprobate must often have wrung — were a curious glib parody of sermons one has heard preached on the ill-fated course of the prodigal. He had not in the least the air of a repentant prodigal, yet he continually gave himself out, as has been said, for one who has at last seen the error of his ways, and chosen the better part.

“ Now I ’ll give you the whole business straight,” he said, treating further of his project. “ It’s the biggest scheme out. I’ve had it on the brain for some time ; I heard parties talk of it in the Islands. You snake your cattle right up to the factory, and run ’em through the canning machines before they know where they are. The profits come in in having ’em right on the ground where the factory is, instead of ’way off here, with big bills to pay, first for transportin’ the stock, and then for sendin’ away the stuff where it’s wanted. Why, the hides and horns alone ’ll more than pay all expenses. I anticipate four hundred per cent, profit the first year. Anybody ’ll put up money for me, as soon as I ’ve learned the business. I would n’t wonder if the old lady herself would, as soon as she knew I was actually on the ground. Say ! you’d make a first-rate, solid old partner. I don’t mind givin’ you a half interest,” he said, with frank bon cameraderie. “ It’s a big scheme, now, I tell you. Say you and I go into it.”

I was obliged to decline this attractive invitation. Previous engagements would prevent me from entering into any other business enterprises at present. It was now Friday, and the brown-stone boy promised to begin his labors on the following Monday morning.

“ I shan’t give it away to the people where I get the job, what I’m up to, either,” lie said. “ I ’ll go in just as a common hand. I ’ll stay a week, two weeks, or whatever time it takes to learn the whole racket, and you won’t hear a squeal out of me, — not a kick ; no, sir,” he concluded, in a large, magnanimous sort of way.

I said nothing to discourage this sanguine estimate of the obstacles in his new career. It so happened that I was detained for a considerable time at the port where we had landed, and so I saw much more of my brown-stone friend than was to have been expected. I met him on the Monday when he was to have gone to work. He was not working, but strolling about in a most leisurely way.

“ They gave me the cold bluff,” he said.

“ How was that ? ” “ I went to the best of the places I told you of, and applied for a job. They said they did n’t want me. Then I tried palaverin’ ; told ’em what was up, how I only wanted to learn the business, and was willing to work for nothing. They said I was too fresh, and wanted to know if I took ’em for flats and thought they was goin’ to give away the secrets of the trade, like that. So they fired me out, as you might say.”

Still he was not greatly depressed at this rebuff.

“ There’s two more places,” he said. “ I ’ll tackle one to-morrow, and the other the day after. They ain’t so big as the first one, but they ’ll do well enough. All T want is just to learn the business, see ? ”

The next day he did not go to either, being occupied in changing his hotel; choosing a cheaper one, to save his money, as he explained, an object which seemed highly commendable. This took a couple of days instead of one. Then there was a national holiday, and then he was occupied with his tailor. He appeared to feel under some sort of obligation at first to report progress every day, but this was soon abandoned. I heard no more of his attempts to procure employment at the places indicated, further than vague denunciations of their proprietors, and statements that the business was overdone, and was n’t “ what it was cracked up to be, any way.” I could not judge whether be had tried and failed, or arrived at these conclusions on independent grounds.

Once, sitting in the reading-room of the hotel, we saw a group of rough hobbledehoys teasing an old man, a foreign vender of small wares, in the street.

“ That was me ; that’s it, — that was my style ! I used to be a holy terror myself ! ” cried the brown-stone boy, slapping his thigh with animation and delight at the spectacle. The circumstance was the starting-point of a new train of reminiscences, which, in time, comprised the history of most of the adventures of his life.

“ I used to belong to the old West Blank Street and Tenth Avenue gang. You never belonged to that gang, did you ? ” he asked.

As well as I could recollect I had never belonged to that gang.

“ You’ve heard tell of it, though ?”

“ Yes, I have heard tell of it.”

I had heard tell of groups of young reprobates, who infested certain streets, made life a burden to the residents therein, and were the sworn enemies of the police. A graduate of one of them, at the age of nineteen, was lying in the Tombs under sentence of death for murder, perpetrated in connection with a heinous robbery. He had proclaimed himself with pride “a tough,” for this exploit, and seemed to look upon it as a sort of method of winning his spurs. They waylaid children, notably the well dressed, sent with money to pay bills and the like, dragged them into lumberyards and plundered them. But I had not thought that these were in any degree recruited from the sons of respectable and even wealthy families. I stated this belief to him.

“ Oh, family don’t count for nothing with them gangs,” he responded, in a cavalier way. “ What they want is the feller that can get up the liveliest racket ; it ain’t blue blood.”

“ And there were many like you, then ? ”

It promised to be interesting to hear of the doings and aspirations of such a lawless band from the inside point of view.

“ Well, Patsy Bogan’s father was a blacksmith, Jimmy Gunnison’s drove a truck, and ‘ Big Ed ’ White’s old man kept a saloon. Big Ed has fought a prize-fight since. Billy Bolton’s folks, though, was high-toned, the same as mine, — may he more so. Jever hear of Billy’s racket that got him nipped ? ”

“ No, I don’t recollect hearing of it.”

“ His father was a church deacon, — bang-up respectable. They lived on Thirty-Eighth Street, in one of the swellest houses there was. They got Billy a kind of confidential place in a broker’s office down town, after a while, ’cause he would n’t go to school. One afternoon the broker gave Billy a package of bills, about ten thousand dollars, to put away in the safe. Billy shoved the money in his pocket, right there under the broker’s nose, slammed together the safe, and walked off, and came down the next morning as bold as brass. He was collared for it, though. They proved it on him, and sent him up to the penitentiary for seven years. He is n’t out yet. He didn’t give ’em back the money, though, and I s’pose he ’ll have it to spend when he gets out.”

The narrator showed little of any other emotion at his story than amusement.

“Of course we did n’t go in as heavy as that, in my time. That was after he had left the gang. We used to he generally making it lively for small stores on our beat; snatching their fruit, tipping over their barrels, bothering their customers as they passed in and out, and so on. One day I was standing up beside old Zumpt’s show case, — Zumpt the shoemaker, you know, — full of boots and shoes, fancy styles and all that. The others bounced me into it, smashing the glass all to flinders. Out conies old Zumpt, a-boomin’.

“ ‘ Who done it ? who done it ? ’ he says, wild.

“ ‘ I don’t know,’ I says, playin’ the meek, innocent dodge; ‘ I don’t know who they are.’ He tore up the street after ’em, and I dodged ’round the nearest corner.”

“ Did the cruelty of destroying the property of a poor, hard-working man like that, and putting him to expense and trouble, ever occur to you? ”

“ Well, it was pretty rough. I can see it now, looking back. Besides, I got a cut across the thumb, that time, that lasted me a couple of months.”

“ There seems to have been no great sentiment against stealing. Would the boys refuse to associate with a companion who they knew had stolen money ? ” I threw out.

“ Well, no, no, they would n’t exactly refuse to associate with him,” he said, judicially. “The fact is, they had to get money some way. They weren’t provided very liberally. Their folks, you see, most generally didn’t approve of ’em. Why, I recollect, myself,” — he started off with a new gusto, — “ havin’ to sell all the hats and umbrellas on the hall-rack, once, to get funds to go and see Mazeppa, at the old Bowery theatre.”

No doubt I seemed duly impressed with the painful necessity of this measure, for further details were forthcoming.

“ There was an old party that went through the street every afternoon, that J used to call Yowlrigs. That was his way of pronouncing ‘ Any old rags ? ’ Sometimes he shouted, ‘ Eggs bottled ! ’ instead, — ‘ Rags, bottles ! ’ See ? I called Yowlrigs in, when the old lady was away, and made the trade. Some of the servants saw him going out, and peached on me ; but I’d hit out, myself, before that, you bet. I had it arranged, in them times, so I could sleep in an engine-house, every once in a while.”

“ But you had to go back at some time.”

“ Yes; but I could always scare the old lady by staying away long enough ; that’s where I had the inside track. She did n’t ask any questions then. The old lady was pretty fresh. Drinking was what riled her the most, though.”

“ Ah, drinking ? The gang went in for that, too ? ”

“ What the gang did n’t go in for was n’t worth doing. I got as drunk as a boiled owl when I was fourteen years old. A policeman brought me home on his back at two o’clock in the morning. It was whiskey that done it; I’d never took anything but beer before that. One of the kids had borrowed some money from his father’s till, that night, and nothing would do but we must all take whiskey, and get tight. Then there was a circus, and don’t you forget it. I got in the way of it, and have been kind of in the way of it ever since. I had to brace up a good deal on the steamer, for instance ; may be you took notice of it? But that’s all over now. It was for something of that kind, I believe, that the old lady finally fired me out. No, I don’t know as it was, either. I ’ve forgotten now just exactly what it was for,” slightly scratching his head, “ there was so many rackets.”

“ She sent you away, then ? She could not stand you any longer ? Well, I don’t wonder at it.”

He showed no offense at unfavorable opinions.

“ She had to do it. you know, she had to do it. I can’t blame her” he replied. “ She used to come up nights, or early in the morning, to my room, in her wrapper, and say prayers over me. She used to tell what big things my father had done, and how 1 ought, to be worthy of him, and all that; and sometimes i used to promise I’d catch on, but it never seemed to amount to anything. So there she was, one morning, — I wish I could think now exactly what it was for, — standing by me like a gray ghost,— waving hands, — handkerchief, — high tragedy, see ? I ’d finally got to go. She asked me how much money I wanted, to take me away where she’d never hear of me again till she could hear something that was n’t a disgrace and shame. I was kind of dazed on account of its being so early in the morning and the racket I’d had over night, and I named a certain sum, when I might just as well have had twice as much. When i woke up again, there it was on the table beside me. When I went down the steps the old lady was behind the blinds, and I guess she was crying.”

Alas and alas, for the poor old lady! “ I did n’t clear off just then, though,” the scapegrace continued. “ Not so fresh.

I waited till I’d spent all that money, and then went back after more. ‘If you really want to get rid of me,’ I said, ‘ give me five hundred dollars, and I ’ll go.’ She planked it down, and I went.”

The frankness of these confessions seemed incredible. Perhaps he saw that I marveled at it, for he explained at once : —

“ Oh, I don’t mind telling you some of this stuff, for if you was to go back to New York and inquire about me you’d hear a dozen times worse. There’s some advantages in having a bad character, after all ? Nobody can do me any hurt. But that’s all over now. I had a good mother, see ? There’s no discount on her. That’s what’s always brought me ’round all right.”

It was difficult to see in what the brown-stone boy was so much better than formerly, since he told of his misdeeds— many more, and more serious ones, too, than here set down — with the utter flippancy described ; but one could only hopefully take him at his word. He had a plausible, ingratiating way with him. He could flatter by an artful air of respect and deference to superior wisdom, and lie could amuse, as well, by drolleries. He had the social talents, an easy skill at cards and billiards, a knack at music, and the like, with the aid of which his brief successes were accomplished.

He was now very fashionably dressed, He had evidently not spared money, and the tailor to whom he had entrusted himself had made a very complete thing of it. He proposed to hire an expensive livery-team and take me for a drive in the park. I strenuously opposed this as contrary to his newly devised plan of economy and reform, and we compromised by partly walking and then taking an open horse-car. We passed the city hospital of dingy, yellow brick, on a cold, windy-looking hill. An ambulance was drawn up at the gate, and from it a pale and wasted invalid was being taken on a stretcher. My brownstone boy tipped me a wink, as if the joke were on the invalid. It seemed to him a situation no more to be thought of in his own case than if he belonged to a different order of beings.

The gatekeeper was superintending the transfer.

“ That man was one of the biggest actors there was,” he threw out confidentially to us, as we looked on. “ Drink has brought him to this.”

“ Plenty more lodgin’s to let in the old shebang?” the brown-stone boy inquired, facetiously.

“ We have a line shuit up where ye see them open wiudys,” returned the gate porter, “ or in the cotrage beyant,” indicating a low edilice in a corner of the court. “ Troth, ye ’re the sort that ‘ll be needin’ them, too.”

“ Put me in a private bath, ‘lectric bells, and the rest of the modern conveniences, and I ‘11 see you later,” said the brown-stone boy.

“That ain’t no cottage!” cried an irrepressible-looking gamin of ten, running out; “that’s the morgue. Don’t we be playin’ ’round it every day? And them windys is the room where the doctors grinds up the dead bodies to make medicine of.”

The porter made a good-natured pass at the gamin, which the latter evaded by ducking his head.

“ It’s fine here,” went on the garrulous urchin ; “this is the boss place, you bet. I ‘ve got a job clearin’ off the tables. We have fun stealin’ puddiu’, and everything. Give a feller a dime, will yer ? Aw, ye might.”

The circumstance was slight, but the place, the faces, and the occasion were

fixed in the minds of the participants, and all had their bearing further on.

“ Actor, was he ? I Ve been an actor myself,” said the brown-stone boy, as we moved off. “ Wonder if that had anything to do with breakin’ me up? I went away with a theatre company when I left home, the time I was tellin’ you of, and stayed with ’em most a year. It ain’t what it’s cracked up to he ; it’s hard lines and poor pay. I was just gettin’ ready to come out in leadin’ parts, though, when the company failed. I got the old lady to put up for me. I d been away from home so long that she was ready to, then, and she thought some occupation was better than none. I handed over the funds to the manager, and he was going to back me and see me through, and give me a salary of twenty-five dollars a week. I was going to be juvenile. ‘What is juvenile?’ Why, for instance, if you was to play Richard, I’d play Richmond ; or if you was Hamlet, I ’d be Laertes, see? — that’s juvenile.

“ But the company busted, and I did n’t get my actin’, nor my money back either, and I was stranded in a small Iowa town. First we tried a little variety-show business ; then I got reduced to bein’ a waiter in the hotel. I could n ‘t stand that hut a few days, though. I got a job next in canvassing for advertisements for the local paper; then I traveled with a lightning-rod man. That is what made me so handy with the sewing-machines and Bibles down in the Islands. After a while I raised money enough to get away to a city, and started a kind of paper of my own. It was to contain theatre programmes, and be full of profitable advertising around the margins — only it wasn’t. I fell in with a young lawyer, and we got up a Collection Agency for the Northwest, but we seemed to have to keep all we could collect, for expenses, and the clients was n’t satisfied. We had a Mining and Town-Site Company afterwards in Idaho; but the bottom dropped out of that, too.

“ I never used to let it cost me much for travelin’ and hotel expenses, in these times. You see railroads and landlords are fattening on the hard earnings of the people, any way, and I generally looked on what I could beat ’em out of as so much clear gain. But that s all over now. I s’pose I’d been away from home about three years before I finally turned up in New York again. I’d come to understand what the comfort of a good home was, by that time, you ’d better believe. I swore off drinking and smoking, cut the old gang dead, turned over an entirely new leaf, and was ready to tackle some regular business.”

“ And was your mother pleased to see you ? ”

“ Pleased is no name for it. She was ’most tickled to death,” he asserted, with a complacent air. “ The next thing to do was to consider my future. The old lady was ambitious, and wanted me to do big things. My father, he had been a kind of celebrity ; he was a lawyer, and may be you’ve heard of some of his writin’s, too ? She would like to have me follow in his footsteps. I thought a few minutes, and then I says, ‘I’ll go on the lecture platform.’

“ ‘ Oh, my dear,’ she says, ‘ I’m afraid you can’t.’

“ ‘ I ’ll show you whether I can or not,’ I says. ‘ Lecturin’ is different from writin’. You get your little lecture done, and go all over the country deliverin’ it, and rakin’ in the money ; but when you’ve written one thing, you ’ve got to go to work and write another. That is where my actin’ and travelin’ experience ’ll come in. You let me go ahead, and I ’ll be a bigger man than old Grant.’

“ So I pitches in. I knew thought was n’t my best hold, and I ‘d have to piece it out with delivery: ” he sawed the air in an explanatory way. “I knew I’d have to take some subject where I could use the Encyclopaedia pretty free ; and I did use it, and don’t you forget it. I called the thing The Perils of the Sea. When I got it done, I took it to a New Jersey town, where the population was mostly clam-diggers, I guess. I got the old lady to put up for me to hire a hall, and I delivered it. They went wild over it. They ’d never had any show of any kind in the place before, I guess, and they wanted me to stay there all the time. I paid the local correspondent to telegraph up a few lines of slush about it to the Herald. When I got back, I takes the notices down to Cooper’s Institute, and shows ’em to the lecturebureau man.

Here,’ I says, ‘ this is the kind of hairpin I am. Now put me in a page of advertisin’ in that journal of yours, and hustle along a stuck of engagements ! ’ ”

The brown-stone boy always represented himself as talking in this off-hand way, upon the most serious subjects and to the gravest of persons ; but it is probable that he gave only the sense rather than the actual words of what was said.

“The lecture-bureau man wanted twenty-five dollars for a page in his journal, and I got it from the old lady, and put it up. Engagements did n’t come very lively at first, but the lecturebureau man says, ‘ Lay low and wait. Y^ou ’ll be all right. You better pay me twenty-five dollars more for another page, though, and then you’ll be doubly sure.’ ”

He paused a little, to admire in retrospect the shrewdness of the lecturebureau man.

“ In about a month an order did come. It was from Cahokia, or Kalamazoo, or some such place out West. They wanted me for one night only, at thirty dollars a night. The railroad fare and expenses would foot up about a hundred dollars.”

The lecturer scratched his head and looked at me with an air of comic perplexity ; then he went on : —

“ I thought the rush had begun at last, and I was set up to the nines. I was goin’ to start out at once, but the bureau man says, ‘ You’d better wait for a few more orders, so ’s to lay out a rowte, and take ’em all in together.’ So I waited another month, and there was nothin’ more. In another month an order came from Arkansas. They wanted The Perils of the Sea out there for one night only. Then orders stopped cornin’ entirely. The lecture-bureau man says, ‘If you don’t feel like payin’ the expenses to fill these engagements, perhaps I’d better arrange to hand ’em over to somebody else ? ’

“ ‘ I guess you better had,’ I says, and with that I quits the lecture platform. The next thing 1 went into was real estate. I stayed in an office about three months, till I ‘d learned the business better than the parties themselves. Real estate ain’t no trick at all. The old lady came down handsome, and fitted me out an office of my own, — Pine Street, — black-walnut furniture, — gold lettering in the plate-glass window. I put a big advertisement in the Herald, — 4 City and country property for sale and to rent. Half a million dollars to loan on approved mortgages,’ — and sat back smoking my cigarettes, and waiting for customers. I had n’t a cent to loan, nor a shanty to rent. If anybody came in, though, I was going to shin around among the other agents and get some, and divide commissions. The first quarter nobody came in but a Bowery Dutchman, who wanted to borrow ten thousand dollars on an old rookery that was n’t worth two thousand ; you would n’t hardly take it for a gift. The second quarter was n’t any better. Every night, mostly, the old lady used to ask me how much business I’d done that day, and I had to tell her. Finally a third quarter’s rent came due, and the old lady began to kick. ‘I won’t put up another blessed cent,’ she says. ‘ You just sell the furniture, and skip out of it.’”

These, again, could not have been the precise words, but only the gist, of his mother’s directions.

“But the way the drug-business panned out was even worse. I wont into that, next, — wholesale drugs and dyestuffs. There was a young feller, that I’d known for some time, who traveled for a house in that line. He told me that the customers had all rather buy of him than his firm. ‘ If you and I could go in together, and take a store, and I had five hundred dollars for a year’s travelin’ expenses,’ he says, ‘ we could make things boom.’ I talked the old lady into this, too. We setup in Pearl Street this time; no flummery and fancy furniture now, but cobwebs, inky old desks, and big ledgers, — the heavy respectable dodge, see? We scattered around some empty carboys and some indigo and cutch; it looked as if we’d been established forty years and were doing a business of a million a year. I was to stay in the office and fill the orders, and he was to send ’em in. Well, in two months the year’s travelin’ expenses was used up. Most of the shipments we made was returned on our hands, ‘ N. G.’ — No Good. Some of the mistakes was mine, but most of ’em his. He ‘d been on a steady spree the whole time, — I did n’t know he was that kind of a feller, — and I got news at last that he’d been lying drunk somewhere in Vermont for two weeks; and then I closed up the place. ‘ One by one the roses fade; ’ it beats all how circumstances used to turn out against me every time.”

“ You do seem to have had rather bad luck.”

“ Luck is no name for it. The next thing I tried was bein’ a detective. I’d always had a fancy for that kind of business, and knowin’ the ropes about town, and havin’ seen as much as I had, I thought I’d make a good one. The old lady did n’t like it at all. But she ’d begun to get tired of putting up money for me, and this was something that did n’t take no capital. I got a place in a detective agency. They set me to work shadowing a house where some woman lived whose husband wanted to get a divorce ‘ without publicity,’ or something that way. My watch was nights,and most all night, too; and it was precious cold and lonesome, I can tell you, hanging round them corners in December. All of a sudden the police on the beat grabbed me one night, and run me in for a suspicious character. There had been burglaries in the neighborhood, and they thought, from the way I was manoeuvring, that I was the one that had done ’em. They locked me up, and would n’t let me go till I had to explain to ’em what I was up to. The woman, she got wind of it and went off, and the office bounced me for bein’ a double-dashed flat, A detective had n’t ought to give away his racket to any police or nobody else, no matter what happens to him, see ? Yes, sir, I was more broke up by that than most anything else I can think of. The newspaper reportin’ was n’t so bad, for I never really looked at that as so much in my line.”

What ! a reporter, too ? Would the line of his occupations stretch out to the crack of doom ?

“ I had a relation who owned a newspaper, and he gave me a job on it as a local reporter. That suited the old lady to a T. She was expectin’ me to be a kind of Horace Greeley, in no time. But if there ever was a dry time for news, that was it. I tore around, with my little note-book ready and my pencil out, but not a thing happened. There was n’t a fire, murder, collision, assault and battery, — not an accident of any kind. I boned the police and coroners, and I tackled the undertakers, hack-men, and omnibus-drivers. If I saw anybody anywheres lookin’ the least excited, I grabbed him, and asked him what was the matter. I went up to the gang again, but even they had quieted dowu just then, and could n’t give me anything. You might as well have been reporting in the New Jerusalem. I shoved one feller down an area-way, myself, to make an item; but of course it was too expensive to keep providin’ subjects that way. After I ’d been cornin’ in to the office, ’most every day for a month or so, with hardly a blessed thing to show for it, my relation, he says, kind o’ sarcastic like, —•

“ ‘ I guess you ’re spoilin’ yourself for some other profession, where you’d probably shine. Newspaper reportin’ don’t seem to be your strong point. You better take a walk; we ’ll try and spare you.’ ”

It need not be supposed that the record of chronic mishap and miscarriage ended even with this. But more than enough has no doubt been given to show the eccentricities, the irresponsible view and manner of life, of a type of character of which many another prosperous family produces its example. The poor “ old lady ” had stood by him through all, paid the score of his escapades, and paid it more dearly yet, no doubt, in her heart’s yearning, her disappointed affection, over this graceless son. She had had intervals of holding aloof, but even these were probably designed more in a salutary spirit to him than in real sternness. I gathered that he had just now left his country for his country’s good ; he had perhaps done something which would make it rather inconvenient for him to return to New York. But, again, he said that his mother wished him to return, and marry a pretty and virtuous girl whom she had picked out for him.

“ Bah ! I don’t want any molly-coddle. That ain’t my style. Besides, I’m not on the marryin’ lay,” was his comment on this proposition.

Recollecting, however, that this was hardly in keeping with his newly assumed character for steadiness, lie corrected himself: —

“ I don’t know but I will, though. May be I will. I ’ll see about it.”

Being questioned further as to his proposed learning of the meat-canning industry, he rather avoided the subject. Then, one day, he came in with a distrait air, and broke the silence with, “ Say ! I’ve got to send the old lady a certificate that I’ve gone to work in the business for which she sent me the money. You would n’t want to sign it, would you ? ”

“ Are you engaged in the business ?”

“ Well, no, but I will be next Monday morning, sure. It’s only dating it a little ahead, you see.”

I did not exactly seem to see this. “ Well, I only mentioned it,” said he. “ I thought perhaps she’d like to have your name to it, on account of your comin’ from New York. She’d have more confidence in it,” and he went off, for him, rather disconsolately.

Alas and alas, for the poor old lady ! There was undoubtedly amide store of trouble awaiting her yet.

From this time I saw less and less of the brown-stone boy, and his appearance on these meetings, such as they were, were hardly calculated to promote a sanguine view of his permanent reformation. He had made new acquaintances. He strolled with them on the principal thoroughfare, laughing loud, and he played much at billiards with them. They were of a flashy, impudent aspect. I saw him driving them out in a handsome vehicle, and, again, surrounded by them in a box at the theatre, where he was evidently their entertainer, as he was their central and ruling spirit.

He came once to borrow a sum of money, on the pretext of having left his pocket-book at home, and after that returned no more. I met him one evening in the streets, stupidly intoxicated, his fine apparel gone, and his aspect as shabby as when I had first seen him on shipboard. As I was leaving the place, and on the way to take the train, I met him again. He was even more dilapidated, but sober now, or at least coherent in his talk.

“ Hel-lo, pard ! You off ? ” he cried, in hilarious greeting. “ Well, be good to yourself! You wouldn’t mind droppin’ a feller a dollar, as you ’re goin’, would you ? I’ve been workiu’ in a theatre. — Say ! I’ve got the biggest scheme out. I wish you had more time to stop and talk. — Say! Well, so long ! ”

It was not my final leave-taking of him, however, as I had thought, I was obliged to return some two months later. I passed, one day, the hospital on the cold and windy-looking hill. The porter recognized me, hesitated, then, with a certain eagerness, —

“You was with him that day,” he said. “ It would be a kind o’ char’ty to step up and see him a minute ; he’s in a bad way.”

“ Who is in a bad way ? ” I asked.

“ The short, shmilin’ one, that was chaffin’ me that day, don’t ye mind ? ”

I mounted the stairs with him, and there, in a ward of the pauper sick, lay the brown-stone boy. He was emaciated to the last degree. His eyes were closed, as I first stood by his iron cot, and they were abnormally large, in their hollow sockets, as be feebly opened them.

“ Yes, it’s me, pard,” be said. “ I ’m laid up. I got a heavy cold on me, see ? I ’ve got to stop these rackets ; they don’t agree with me any more. I’m goin’ to swear off for good.” His voice was husky to the last degree, and he placed a hand on his chest, full of strange rattlings and wheezing, from which it faintly proceeded.

“ There don’t seem to be nobody here to take much notice of me,” he continued, gazing around in a wandering way. “ I Ve got ’em to telegraph to the old lady, a good while ago ; I must ha’ been here some time. It’s a seven or eight days’ journey, but once she’d ha’ come if it was a hundred. I’ve played it on her too often ; she don’t believe me any more. I don’t blame her, pard, do you ? ”

He turned Ids face towards the wall.

A sudden flurry of movement made itself felt, a rustle of feminine skirts. There by his bedside stood a spare, comely old lady, who had been piloted thither by the garrulous urchin frisking about the yard. She was a lady, refined in every lineament; she had white hair, was dressed in dark silken attire, and her features were crossed with an expression of woful pain. The sight would have moved a heart of stone. “ The old lady ” had come to her Benjamin, her youngest-born, who had been a lovable child in her arms, before all this nightmare of his evil years,—for whom she had had ambitions, had prayed, suffered, sacrificed herself, — and she found him thus. He looked up, with a gasp, as if her presence were something incredible.

She threw herself upon him passionately, and embraced and kissed him as if he were again a little child.

“ I did n’t have the will-power,” he murmured, feebly.

“Mother! mother!” he cried again, presently, “if I was to live? Oh, if I was to live ” —

And with the greatness of this aspiration, that it should yet be possible for him to show her the measure of his gratitude for all her love and forbearance, the spirit of the brown-stone boy, so strangely emasculated, so deprived of the grain of fortitude and elevation of soul that might have stiffened it into self-control and ascendency over fortune, — this poorly regulated spirit took its flight.

The brown-stone boy had added another to his many experiences, — the great experience of sounding eternity.

William Henry Bishop.