Chapter VIII: Part 8

He tore the letter open. It was from Tom Pixley; it contained a post-office order for fifty dollars; and it began:

"MY DEAR MAC,--Go and see Sam Sargent, 78 Broadway, and he will get
you a place on the surveyor's staff for the new line of the
Barataria Central. I'm writing to him by this mail, and--"

But for a minute McDowell Sutro could read no further. His eyes had filled with tears.

(1895.)

AN IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT

The summer sun had blazed down all day on the low wooden roof of the old shed lately used as an ice-cream saloon, and now hastily altered to accommodate a post of the Salvation Army. Placards at the wide doorway proclaimed that All were Welcome, and besought the stranger to Come in and be Saved. The tall tenements that lined the side-streets east and west had emptied their hundreds of inhabitants out into the avenue that evening, and the sidewalks were thronged with men and women languid from the heat of the day, and longing for the lazy breeze that sometimes creeps into the city with nightfall; but few of them cared to enter the stifling hall where the song-service was about to begin, and that night especially there were many counter-attractions out-doors. Already were the rockets beginning to burst far above the square where the fireworks were to be displayed; and now and again a boy (who had more than boyish self-control) produced a reserve pack of fire-crackers, and dropped them into a barrel, and capered away with delight as the owner of the barrel was called to his door by the rattle of their explosion.

A pale and thin young woman, in the uniform of the Salvation Army, stood wearily in the entrance, proffering the _War Cry_ to all those who came near. She looked as though she had been pretty when she was a girl. Now she was obviously worn and weak, like one recovering from a long illness. High up over her head appeared a shower of colored stars shot forth from a bomb; and then she remembered how she had seen the fireworks on the last Fourth of July, only a year before, lying on her bed which Jim had pulled to the window before he went down to conduct the meeting. She had lain there peacefully with her two-weeks-old baby in her arms, and it had seemed to her as though the glowing wheels that revolved in the air, and the curving lines of fire that rose and fell again, were but a prefiguration of a golden future where all would be splendor and glory. How that vision had faded into blackness in the months that followed!--when the baby sickened because they had not proper food for him, and when Jim broke down also; and she had had to get up, feeble as she was, and nurse them both until they died, one after another. When she let herself think of those days of despair, she had always to make a resolute effort if she did not wish to give way and go into a fit of sobbing that left her exhausted for the next twenty-four hours.

She mastered her rising emotion and turned for relief to the duty of the moment. For five minutes no one had bought a paper from her, and the time had come to go into the hall to take part in the service of song.

She pushed inside the swinging-door and found that perhaps a score of visitors had gathered, and that already half a dozen members of the Salvation Army had taken their seats at the edge of the low platform at the end of the shallow hall. Captain Quigley was standing there, with his shiny black hair carefully curled and his pointed beard carefully combed. He was waiting, ready to begin, with his accordion in his hands.

She wondered why it was that she was always sorry to have Captain Quigley lead the service. She would not deny that he led well, giving a swing to the tunes he played that carried all the people off their feet; he sang sweetly and he spoke feelingly. But she did not altogether like his manner, which was almost patronizing; and then he had a way of bringing her suddenly into his remarks and of calling her forward needlessly. Even after her two years' service she shrank from personalities and from self-exhibition. Yet there was no doubt that he meant to be kind to her, and she knew that he had allowed her special privileges more than once. With motherly kindness Adjutant Willetts had asked her only a week before if she really liked Captain Quigley, telling her that if she did not like him, she ought to be careful not to encourage him, and since that talk with the adjutant her distaste for the captain had been intensified.

It was as though Captain Quigley had been waiting for her to appear, for he began to speak as soon as he saw her. In a high nasal voice and with an occasional elided aspirate, he welcomed those present and told them he was glad that they had come. He asked them all to take part in singing the grand old hymn, "There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood." He set the tune with his accordion, and lined out the first stanza and led in the singing. Only three or four of the chance visitors joined in the song, the burden of which was borne by the members of the Salvation Army.

Then the captain told his hearers that there was a new _War Cry_ published that very morning full of interesting things, and containing the words of the songs they would all sing later, so he wanted everybody in the hall to buy one, that they could all follow the music.

The thin young woman with the saddened face began to move down the aisles offering her papers right and left.

"That's the way, Sister Miller," called out the captain, as though to encourage her; but she winced as she heard her name thus thrown to the public. "I want you all to buy Sister Miller's papers, so that she can come up here and join us in the singing. You don't know what a sweet voice Sister Miller has--but we know."

He continued to talk thus familiarly as she made the circuit of the seats. When she had taken her place on the platform by the side of Adjutant Willetts, who smiled at her with maternal affection in her eye, then suddenly the captain changed his tone. "Now we will ask the Lord to bless us--to bless us all, to bless this meeting. I don't know why any of you have come here to-night, but I do know this: if you have come here for God's blessing, you will get it. If you have come here for something else, I don't know whether you will get it; but if you have come here for that you will surely get it. God always gives His blessing to all who ask for it. Brother Higginson, will you lead us in prayer?"

The men and women on the platform fell on their knees, and the most of those scattered about the hall bowed their heads reverently, while Brother Higginson prayed that the blessing of God might descend upon them that night. Sister Miller had heard Brother Higginson lead in prayer many times and she knew almost to a word what he was likely to say, for the range of his appeal was limited; but she always thrilled a little at the simple fervor of the man. It annoyed her, as usual, to have the captain punctuate the appeal of Brother Higginson with an occasional "Amen! Amen!" or "Hallelujah!"

After the prayer there was another gospel song, and then the captain laid aside his accordion and took up a Bible. He read a passage from the Old Testament describing the advance of the Children of Israel into the desert, guided by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. He held the book in his hand while he expounded his text. The Children of Israel had their loins girded to fight the good fight, he said. That is what every people has to do; the Israelites had to do it, the English had to do it, the Americans had to do it. They all knew what the Fourth of July stood for and how well Americans fought then, more than a hundred years ago; and so saying he seized the flag which had been leaning against the wall behind him, by the side of the blood-red banner of the Salvation Army.

As he was waving the Stars and Stripes Sister Miller felt her dislike accentuated, for she knew that the captain was an Englishman who had been here but a few years, and it seemed to her mean of him to be taking sides against his native land. She wondered if he was really ignorant enough to think that one of the great battles of the Revolution had been fought on the Fourth of July.

Then her mind went back to her girlhood, and she recalled the last celebration of the Fourth that had taken place in the old school-house at home the summer before she graduated. She remembered how old Judge Standish read the Declaration of Independence with a magnificent air of proprietorship, as though he had just dashed it off. Other incidents of that day came floating back to her memory as she sat there in the thick air of the little hall, and she ceased to hear Captain Quigley calling urgently on all those present to be Soldiers of God. In her ears there echoed, instead, the pleading words of young Dexter Standish, telling her that he was going to the Naval Academy and that he wanted her to wait for him till he should come back. She had given her promise, and why had she not kept her word? Why had she been foolishly jealous when she heard that he was the best dancer in his class at Annapolis, and that all the Baltimore girls were wild to dance with him. She had long ago discovered that her reason for breaking off the engagement was wholly inadequate; and, in her folly, she had not foreseen that Dexter could not leave the Academy and come to her and explain. If only he had presented himself and told her he loved her she would have forgiven him, even if he had really deserved punishment. But he was a cadet, and he would not have a leave of absence for another year. Before that year was out, she had married James Miller, a theological student, who soon threw up all his studies in his religious zeal to join the Salvation Army, as though craving martyrdom. Jim had loved her, and he had thought she loved him. It was with a swift pang of reproach that she found herself asking whether it was not better for Jim that he had died before he found out that his wife did not love him as he loved her.

With the ingenuity that came of long experience, Captain Quigley had ended his address with a quotation from "Onward, Christian Soldiers," and Sister Miller was roused from her reverie to take part in the chorus. When they had sung three stanzas the captain stopped abruptly and turned to the gray-haired woman who sat beside Sister Miller, and called on Adjutant Willetts to say a few words of loving greeting to the souls waiting to be saved.

To Sister Miller it was a constant delight to be with the adjutant, to be comforted by her motherly smile and to be sustained by her cheerful faith. There was a Quaker simplicity about Sister Willetts, and a Quaker strength of character that the wan and worn Sister Miller had found she could always rely upon. And another characteristic of the elder woman's endeared her also to the younger: her religious fervor was as fresh as it was sincere, and she gave her testimony night after night with the same force and the same feeling that she had given it the first time. Too many of the others had reduced what they had to say to a mere formula, modified but little and delivered at last in almost mechanical fashion. But Sister Willetts stood forward on the platform and bore witness to her possession of the peace of God which passeth all understanding; and she did this most modestly, with neither shyness nor timidity, merely as though she were doing her duty gladly in declaring what God had done for her.

When the adjutant had made an end of speaking and had taken her seat by the side of the pale young woman, who smiled back at her again, Captain Quigley grasped his accordion once more.

"Now you shall have a solo," he said. "Sister Miller will sing that splendid old hymn, 'Rock of Ages.' Come, Sister Miller."

Her voice had no great power, but it sufficed for that little hall. She did not like to stand forward conspicuously, but the singing itself she always enjoyed. Sometimes she was almost able to forget herself as she poured out her soul in song.

On that Fourth of July evening she had not more than begun when she became conscious that somebody was staring at her with an intensity quite different from the ordinary gaze of curiosity to which she was accustomed. She obeyed the impulse, and looked down into the eyes of Dexter Standish fixed upon her as though he had come to claim possession of her at once.

So unexpected was this vision, and so enfeebled was her self-control, that her voice faltered, and she almost broke off in the middle of a line. But she stiffened herself, and though she felt the blood dyeing her face, she sang on sturdily. Her first thought was to run away--to run away at once and hide herself, somewhere, anywhere, so that she were only out of his sight. He had not seen her for six years and more, and in those weary years she had lost her youth and her looks. She knew that she was no longer the pretty girl he had loved, and she shrank from his scrutiny of her faded features and of her shrunken figure.

She could not run away and she could not hide; she had to stand there and let him gaze at her and discover how old she looked and how worn. She met his eyes again--he never took them from her--and it seemed to her that they were full of pity. She resented this. What right had he to compassionate her? She drew her thin frame up and sang the louder in mere bravado. Yet she was glad when she came to the end, and was able to sink back into the seat by the side of Sister Willetts.

The captain spoke up at once, and said that the time had come to take up a collection. Let every man give a little, in proportion to his means, no more and no less. Would Sister Willetts and Sister Miller go about among the people to collect the offerings?

As she picked up her tambourine she turned impulsively to the elder woman.

"Let me go to those near the platform, please," she begged. "Won't you take the outside rows?"

The adjutant looked down on her a little surprised, but agreed at once.

The younger woman went only a few steps down the aisles, keeping as far away from him as possible. Whenever she glanced towards him she found his eyes fixed upon her, following her everywhere; and now it was not pity she thought she saw in his look, but love--the same love she had seen in those eyes the last time they two had stood face to face.

When the tambourines had been extended towards everybody in the hall, the two women went back to the platform and the adjutant counted up the money--coppers and nickels, most of it, and not two dollars in all.

The captain kept on steadfastly. He gave out another hymn. When that had been sung, he turned to a portly man who had come in late and who was sitting on the platform behind Brother Higginson.

"Brother Jackman," he asked, with unction, "how is your soul to-night? Can't you tell us about it?"

While the portly man, standing uneasily with his hands on the chair before him, was briskly setting forth the circumstances of his assured salvation, Sister Miller was silent on the platform.

She could not help seeing Dexter Standish, who was straight in front of her. She noted how erect he was, and how resolutely his shoulders were squared. She saw that he was older, too; and she observed that his face had a masterful look, wanting there the last time she had seen him.

He had always been a fine-looking fellow, and the training at Annapolis had done him good. He was no mere youth now, but a man, bronzed and bearded, and bearing himself like one who knew what he wanted and meant to get it. She realized that the woman he chose to guard from the world would be well shielded. A weary woman might find rest under the shelter of his stalwart protection. Involuntarily she contrasted the man she had promised to marry with the man she had married--the manly strength of the one with the gentle weakness of the other. Then she blushed again, for this seemed to her disloyalty to the dead. Jim had been very good to her always; he was the father of her child; he never did any wrong. But the thought returned again--perhaps if he had had more force of character the child need not have died as it did.

Brother Jackman was rattling along glibly, but Sister Miller did not heed him. She did not hear him even. She did not hear anything distinctly during the rest of the service. She rose to her feet with the rest of them, and she sat down again automatically, and she knelt like one in a trance. When the meeting was over and the people began to disperse she saw that he did not move. He stood there silently, waiting for her to come to him, ready to bear her away. Without a word Sister Miller knew what it was her old lover wanted; he wanted to pick up their love-story where it had been broken off four years before.

When the hall was nearly empty he started towards her.

She turned to the gray-haired woman by her side.

"Tell me what to do," she cried. "He is coming to take me away with him."

Sister Willetts saw the young man advancing slowly, as those last to go made a path for him.

"Is he in love with you, too?" she asked.

"Yes," the younger woman answered.

"And do you love him?"

"Yes--at least, I think so. Oh yes!"

"And is he a good man?" was the last question.

"Yes, indeed," came the prompt reply, "the best man I ever knew!"

The sturdy figure was drawing nearer and the elder woman rose.

"If you love him better than you love your work with us, go to him, in God's name," she said. "We seek no unwilling workers here. If you cannot give yourself to the service joyfully, putting all else behind you, go in peace--and may the blessing of God be with you!"

She bent forward and kissed the younger woman and left her, as Dexter Standish came and stood before her.

"Margaret," he said, firmly, "I have come for you."

Without a word she stepped down from the platform and went with him.

When they came to the door a hansom happened to pass and he called it.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked, glad to be under the shelter of his devotion and ready to relinquish all right to decide upon her future for herself.

"To my mother," he answered, as he lifted her into the vehicle. "She's at a hotel here. She'll be glad to see you."

"Will she?" the girl asked, doubtfully.

"Yes," was the authoritative answer, "she knows that I have always loved you."

(1897.)

THE SOLO ORCHESTRA

The air was thick and heavy, as it sometimes is in the great city towards nightfall after a hot spell has lasted for ten days. There were sponges tied to the foreheads of the horses that wearily tugged at the overladen cross-town cars. The shop-girls going home fanned themselves limply. The men released from work walked languidly, often with their coats over their arms. The setting sun burned fiery red as it sank behind the hills on the other side of the Hudson. But the night seemed likely to be as hot as the day had been, for the leaves on the trees were motionless now, as they had been all the afternoon.

We had been kept in town all through July by the slow convalescence of our invalid, and with even the coming of August we could not hope to get away for another ten days yet. The excessive heat had retarded the recovery of our patient by making it almost impossible for her to sleep. That evening, as it happened, she had dropped off into an uneasy slumber a little after six o'clock, and we had left her room gently in the doubtful hope that her rest might be prolonged for at least an hour.

I had slipped down-stairs and was standing on the stoop, with the door open behind me, when I heard the shrill notes of the Pan-pipes, accompanied by the jingling of a set of bells and the dull thumping of a drum. I understood at once that some sort of wandering musician was about to perform, and I knew that with the first few bars the needful slumber of our invalid would be interrupted violently.

I closed the door behind me softly and sprang down the steps, and sped swiftly to the corner around which the sounds seemed to proceed. If the fellow is a foreigner, I thought, I must give him a quarter and so bribe him to go away, and then he will return every evening to be bought off again, and I shall become a subscriber by the week to the concerts I do not wish to hear. But if the itinerant musician is an American, of course I can appeal to him, as one gentleman to another, and we shall not be troubled with him again.

When I turned the corner I saw a strange figure only a few yards distant--a strange figure most strangely accoutred--a tall, thin, loose-jointed man, who had made himself appear taller still by wearing a high-peaked hat, the pinnacle of which was surmounted by a wire framework, in which half a dozen bells were suspended, ringing with every motion of the head. He had on a long linen duster, which flapped about his gaunt shanks encased in tight, black trousers. Between his legs he had a pair of cymbals, fastened one to each knee. Upon his back was strapped a small bass-drum, on which there was painted the announcement that the performer was "Prof. Theophilus Briggs, the Solo Orchestra." A drumstick was attached to each side of the drum and connected with a cord that ran down his legs to his feet, so that by beating time with his toes he could make the drum take part in his concert. The Pan-pipes that I had heard were fastened to his breast just at the height of his chin, so that he could easily blow into them by the slightest inclination of his head. In his left hand he held a fiddle, and in his right hand he had a fiddle-bow. Just as I came in sight, he tapped the fiddle with the bow, as though to call the attention of the orchestra. Then he raised the fiddle; not to his chin, for the Pan-pipes made this impossible, but to the other position, not infrequent among street musicians, just below the shoulder. Evidently I had just arrived in time.

He was not a foreigner, obviously enough. It needed only one glance at the elongated visage, with its good-natured eyes and its gentle mouth, to show that here was a native American whose parents and grandparents also had been born on this side of the Atlantic.

"I beg your pardon for interrupting you before you begin," I said, hastily, "but I shall be very much obliged indeed if you would kindly consent to give your performance a little farther down this street--a little farther away from this corner."

I saw at once that I had not chosen my words adroitly, for the kindly smile faded from his lips, and there was more than a hint of stiffness in his manner as he responded, slowly:

"I don't know as I quite catch your meaning," he began. "I ain't--"

"I'm sorry to have to ask you to go away," I interrupted, wishing to explain; "I'd like to hear your concert myself; but the fact is, there's a member of my family slowly recovering from a long sickness, and she's only just fallen asleep now for the first time since midnight."

"Why didn't you say so at first?" was Professor Briggs's immediate response, and the genial smile returned to his thin face. "Of course, I don't want to worry no one with my music. And I'd just as lief as not go over the other side of the city if it will be any more agreeable to a sick person. I know myself what it is to have sickness in the house; there ain't no one knows what that is better than I do--no one don't."

"It is very kind of you, I'm sure," I said, as he walked back with me to the corner.

"Oh, that's all right," he returned. "It don't make any differ to me. Now you just show me which house it is, so I can keep away from it."

I pointed out the door to him.

"The third one from the corner, is it?" he repeated. "Well, that's all right. And I am much obliged to you for telling me about it, for I should have hated to wake up a sick person; and these pipes and this drum ain't exactly soothing to the sick, are they?"

Then the smile ripened to a laugh, and after I had thanked him once more and shaken hands, he turned back and walked away, accompanied by the bevy of children who had encircled us expectantly ever since I had first spoken to him.

* * * * *

Before daybreak the next morning a storm broke over the city, and the heavy rain kept up all day, cooling the streets at last and washing the atmosphere. With the passing of the hot wave sleep became easier for us all. Men walked to their offices in the morning with a brisker step, and the shop-girls were no longer listless as they went to their work. Our invalid improved rapidly, and we could count the days before we should be able to take her out of the city.

The rain-storm had brought this relief on a Thursday, and the skies did not clear till Friday evening. The air kept its freshness over Saturday and Sunday.

On the latter day, towards nightfall, I had taken my seat on the stoop, as is the custom of New-Yorkers kept in town during the summer months. I had brought out a cushion or two, and I was smoking my second after-supper cigar. I felt at peace with the world, and for the moment I had even dispensed with the necessity of thinking. It satisfied me to watch the rings of tobacco-smoke as they curled softly above my head.

Although I was thus detached from earth, I became at last vaguely conscious that a man had passed before the house for two or three times, and that as he passed he had stared at me as though he expected recognition. With his next return my attention was aroused. I saw that he was a tall, thin man, of perhaps fifty years of age, with a lean face clean-shaven, plainly dressed in black, and in what was obviously a Sunday suit, so revealing itself by its odd wrinkles and creases. As he came abreast of me, he slackened his gait and looked up. When he caught my eye he smiled. And then I recognized him at once. It was Professor Theophilus Briggs, the Solo Orchestra.

When he discovered that I knew him again he stood still. I rose to my feet and greeted him.

"I thought this was the house," he began, "but I wa'n't sure for certain. You see, my memory ain't any longer than a toad's tail. Still, I allowed I hadn't ought to disremember anything as big as a house--now had I?" and he laughed pleasantly. "And I thought that was you, too, setting up there on the porch," he went on, cheerfully. "And I'm glad it is, because I wanted to see you again to ask after the lady's health. Did she have her sleep out that evening? And how is she getting on now?"

I thanked him again for his considerate action the first time we had met, as well as for his kindly inquiries now, and I was glad to give him good news of our patient. Then I recognized the duties of hospitality, and I asked my visitor if he would not "take something."

"No, thank you," he returned--"that is, if there ain't no offence. Fact is, I've quit. I don't look on the wine when it is red now, for it biteth like an adder and it stingeth like a serpent, and I don't want any more snakes in mine. I've had enough of them, I have. Croton extra dry is good enough for me now, I guess; and I ain't no use now for a happy family of blue mice and green rats and yellow monkeys. I've had whole menageries of them, too, in my time--regular Greatest Show on Earth, you know, and me with a season ticket. But it's like all these continuous performances, you get tired of it pretty soon--leastways, I did, and so I quit, and I don't touch a drop now."

"Sworn off?" I suggested, as I made room for him on the cushion by my side.

"Oh no," he said, simply, as he sat down; "I hadn't no need to swear off. I just quit; that's all there was to it."

"Some men do not find it so very easy to give up drinking," I remarked.

"That's so, too," he answered, "and I didn't either, for a fact. But I just had to do it, that's all. You see, I'd given drinking a fair show, and I'd found it didn't pay. Well, I don't like no trade where you're bound to lose in the long-run--seems a pretty poor way to do business, don't it? So I quit."

This seemed to call for a commonplace from me, and I was equal to the occasion. "It's easier to get into the way of taking a drop now and then than it is to get out of it."

"I got into it easy enough, I know that," he returned, smiling genially. "It was when I was in the army. After a man has been laying out in the swamp for a week or so, a little rum ain't such a bad thing to have in the house."

Then it was that for the first time I noticed the bronze button in his coat.

"So you were in the army?" I said, with the ever-rising envy felt by so many of my generation who lived through the long years of the Civil War mere boys, too young to take part in the struggle.

"I was a drummer-boy at Gettysburg," he answered; "and it warn't mighty easy for me, either."

"How so?" I asked.

"Well, it was this way," he explained. "Father, he was a Maine man, and he was a sea-captain. And when mother died, after a spell father he up and married again. Now that second wife of father's she didn't like me; and I didn't like her either, not overmuch. I guess there warn't no love lost between us. She liked to make a voyage with father now and then, and so did I. We was both with him on a voyage he made about the time the war broke out. We cleared for Cowes and a market, and along in the summer of '62 we was in the Mediterranean. It was towards the end of that summer we come into Genoa, and there we got a chance at the papers, all filled chock-full of battles. And it didn't seem as though things was going any too well over here, either, and so I felt I'd like to come home and lend a hand in putting down the rebellion. You see, I was past fourteen then, and I was tall for my age--'most as tall as I am now, I guess. I was doing a man's work on the ship, and I didn't see why I couldn't do a man's work in helping Uncle Sam, seeing he seemed to be having a hard time of it. And I don't mind telling you, too, that she had been making me have considerable of a hard time of it, too; and there warn't no way of contenting her, she was so all-fired pernicketty. There was another ship in the harbor near us, and the captain was a sort of a kind of a cousin of mother's, and so I shipped with him and we come straight home from Genoa to Portsmouth. And when I wanted to enlist they wouldn't have me, saying I was too young, which was all foolishness. So I went for a drummer-boy, and I was in the Army of the Potomac from Gettysburg to Appomattox."

"You were only a boy even when the war was over," I commented.

"Well, I was seventeen, and I felt old enough to be seventy," he returned, as a smile wrinkled his lean features. "At any rate, I was old enough to get married the year after Lee surrendered, and my daughter was born the year after that--she'd be nearly thirty now if she was living to-day."

"Did you stay in one of the bands of the regulars after the war?" I asked, wondering how the sailor-lad who had become a drummer-boy had finally developed into a solo orchestra.

"No," he answered. "Not but what I did think of it some. But after being at sea so long and in the army, camping here and there and always moving on, I was restless, and I didn't want to settle down nowhere for long. So I went into the show business. I'd always been fond of music, and I could play on 'most anything, from a fine-tooth comb to a church-organ with all the stops you please. So I went out with the side-show of a circus, playing on the tumbleronicon."

"The tumbleronicon?" I repeated, in doubt.

"It's a tray with a lot of wineglasses on it and goblets and tumblers, partly filled with water, you know, so as to give different notes. Why, I've had one tumbleronicon of seven octaves that I used to play the 'Anvil Chorus' on, and always got a double encore for it. I believe it's what they used to call the 'musical glasses'--but tumbleronicon is what it's called now in the profession."

I admitted that I had heard of the musical glasses.

"It was while I was playing the tumbleronicon in that side-show that I met the lady I married," he went on. "She was a Circassian girl then. Most Circassian girls are Irish, you know, but she wasn't. She was from the White Mountains. Well, I made up to her from the start, and when the circus went into winter-quarters we had a lot of money saved up and we got married. My wife hadn't a bad ear for music, so that winter we worked up a double act, and in the spring we went on the road as Swiss Bellringers. We dressed up just as I had seen the I-talians dress in Naples."

Again I asked for an explanation.

"Oh, you must have seen that act?" he urged, "though it has somehow gone out of style lately. It's to have a fine set of bells, three or four octaves, laying out on a table before you, and then you play tunes on them, just as you do on the tumbleronicon. There's some tunes go better on the bells than on anything else--'Yankee Doodle' and 'Pop Goes the Weasel.' It's quick tunes like them that folks like to have you pick out on the bells. Why, Mrs. Briggs and I used to do a patriotic medley, ending up with 'Rally Round the Flag,' that just made the soldiers' widows cry. If we could only have gone on, we'd have been sure of our everlasting fortunes. But Mrs. Briggs went and lost her health after our daughter was born the next summer. We kept thinking all the time she'd get better soon, and so I took an engagement here in New York, at Barnum's old museum in Broadway, to play the drum in the orchestra. You remember Barnum's old museum, don't you?"

I was able to say that I did remember Barnum's old museum in Broadway.

"I didn't really like it there; for the animals were smelly, you know, and the work was very confining, what with two and three performances a day. But I had to stay here in New York somehow, for my wife wa'n't able to get away. The long and short of it is, she was sick a-bed nigh on to thirty years--not suffering really all the time, of course, but puny and ailing, and getting no comfort from her food. There was times I thought she never would get well or anything. But two years ago she up and died suddenly, just when I'd most got used to her being sick. Women's dreadful uncertain, ain't they?"

I had to confess that the course of the female of our species was more or less incalculable.

"My daughter, she died the year before her mother; and she'd never been sick a day in her life--took after me, she did," Professor Briggs went on. "She and her husband used to do Yankee Girl and Irish Boy duets in the vaudevilles, as they call them now."

I remarked that variety show, the old name for entertainments of that type, seemed to me more appropriate.

"That's what I think myself," he returned, "and that's what I'm always telling them. But they say vaudeville is more up to date--and that's what they want now, everything up to date. Now I think there's lots of the old-fashioned things that's heaps better than some of these new-fangled things they're so proud of. Take a three-ringed circus, for instance--what good is a three-ringed circus to anybody, except the boss of it? The public has only two eyes apiece, that's all--and even a man who squints can't see more than two rings at once, can he? And three rings don't give a real artist a show; they discourage him by distracting folk's attention away from him. How is he to do his best if he can't never be certain sure that the public is looking at him?"

Here again I was able to express my full agreement with the professor.

"I'd never do in a three-ring show, no matter what they was to give me," he continued. "And I've got an act nearly ready now that there's lots of these shows will be wanting just as soon as they hear of it. I"--here he interrupted himself and looked up and down the street, as though to make sure that there were no concealed listeners lying in wait to overhear what he was about to say--"I don't mind telling you about it, if you'd like to know."

I declared that I was much interested, and that I desired above all things to learn all about this new act of his.

"Well," he began, "I think I told you awhile ago that my granddaughter's all the family I got left now? She's nearly eight years old, and as cunning a little thing as ever you see anywhere--and healthy, too, like her mother. She favors me, just as her mother did. And she takes to music naturally--can't keep her hands off my instruments when I put them down--plays 'Jerusalem the Golden' on the pipes now so it would draw tears from a graven image. And she sings too--just as if she couldn't help it. She's a voice like an angel--oh, she'll be a primy donny one of these days. And it was her singing gave me the idea of this new act of mine. It's _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ arranged just for her and me. I do Uncle Tom and play the fiddle, and she doubles Little Eva and Topsy with a lightning change. As Little Eva, of course, she'll sing a hymn--'Wait Till the Clouds Roll By,' or the 'Sweet By-and-By,' or something of that sort; and as Topsy she'll do a banjo solo first, and then for the encore she'll do a song and dance, while I play the fiddle for her. It's a great scheme, isn't it? It's bound to be a go!"

I expressed the opinion that it seemed to me a most attractive suggestion.

"But I've made up my mind," he went on, "not to bring her out at all until I can get the right opening. I don't care about terms first off, because when we make our hit we can get our own terms quick enough. But there's everything in opening right. So I shall wait till fall, or maybe even till New Year's, before I begin to worry about it. And in the meantime my own act in the street goes. The Solo Orchestra is safe for pretty good money all summer. You didn't hear me the other evening, and I'm sorry--but there's no doubt it's a go. I don't suppose it's as legitimate as the tumbleronicon, maybe, or as the Swiss bells--I don't know for sure. But it isn't bad, either; and in summer, wherever there's children around, it's a certain winner. Sometimes when I do the 'Turkish Patrol,' or things like that, there's a hundred or more all round me."

"From the way the little ones looked at me the other evening, when I asked you to move on," I said, "it was obvious enough that they were very anxious to hear you. And I regret that I was forced to deprive myself also of the pleasure."

He rose to his feet slowly, his loose-jointed frame seeming to unfold itself link by link.

"I tell you what I'll do," he responded, cordially; "isn't your lady getting better?"

I was able to say that our invalid was improving steadily.

"Well, then," he suggested, "what do you say to my coming round here some evening next week? I'll give a concert for her and you, and any of your friends you like to invite? And you can tell her there isn't any of the new songs or waltzes or marches or selections from operas she wants I can't do. She's only got to give it a name and the Solo Orchestra will play it."

Of course I accepted this proffered entertainment; and with that Professor Briggs took his leave, bidding me farewell with a slightly conscious air as though he were accustomed to have the eyes of a multitude centred upon him.

And one evening, in the middle of the week, the Solo Orchestra appeared on the sidewalk in front of our house and gave a concert for our special benefit.

Our invalid had so far regained her strength that she was able to sit at the window to watch the performance of Professor Briggs. But her attention was soon distracted from the Solo Orchestra itself to the swarm of children which encompassed him about, and which took the sharpest interest in his strange performance.

"Just look at that lovely little girl on the stoop opposite, sitting all alone by herself, as though she didn't know any of the others," cried our convalescent. "She's the most elfinlike little beauty I've ever seen. And she is as _blasee_ about this Solo Orchestra of yours as though it was _Tannhaeuser_ we were listening to, and she was the owner of a box at the Metropolitan."

When the concert came to an end at last, as the brief twilight was waning, when the Solo Orchestra had played the "Anvil Chorus" as a final encore after the "Turkish Patrol," when Professor Theophilus Briggs, after taking up the collection himself, had shaken hands with me when I went down to convey to him our thanks, when it was so plainly evident that the performance was over at last that even the children accepted the inevitable and began to scatter--then the self-possessed little girl on the opposite side of the way rose to her feet with dignity. When the tall musician, with the bells jingling in his peaked hat, crossed the street, she took his hand as though he belonged to her. As he walked away she trotted along by his side, smiling up at him.

"I see now," I said; "that must be his granddaughter, the future impersonator of the great dual character, Little Eva and Topsy."

(1896.)

THE REHEARSAL OF THE NEW PLAY

When Wilson Carpenter came to the junction of the two great thoroughfares he stood still for a moment and looked at his watch, not wishing to arrive at the rehearsal too early. He found that it was then almost eight o'clock, and he began at once to pick his way across the car-tracks that were here twisted in every direction. A cloud of steam swirled down as a train on the elevated railroad clattered along over his head; the Cyclops eye of a cable-car glared at him as it came rushing down-town; from the steeple of a church on the corner, around which the mellow harvest-moon peered down on the noisy streets, there came the melodious call to the evening service; over the entrance to a variety show a block above a gaudy cluster of electric lights illuminated the posters which proclaimed for that evening a Grand Sacred Concert, at which Queenie Dougherty, the Irish Empress, would sing her new song, "He's an Illigant Man in a Scrap, My Boys." As the young dramatist sped along he noted that people were still straggling by twos and threes into the house of worship and into the place of entertainment; and he could not but contrast swiftly this Sunday evening in a great city with the Sunday evenings of his boyhood in the little village of his birth.

He wondered what his quiet parents would think of him now were they alive, and did they know that he was then going to the final rehearsal of a play of which he was half author. It was not his first piece, for he had been lucky enough the winter before to win a prize offered by an enterprising newspaper for the best one-act comedy; but it was the first play of his to be produced at an important New York house. When he came to the closed but brilliantly lighted entrance of this theatre, he stood still again to read with keen pleasure the three-sheet posters on each side of the doorway. These parti-colored advertisements announced the first appearance at that theatre of the young American actress, Miss Daisy Fostelle, in a new American comedy, "Touch and Go," written expressly for her by Harry Brackett and Wilson Carpenter, and produced under the immediate direction of Z. Kilburn.

When the author of the new American comedy had read this poster twice, he took out his watch again and saw that it was just eight. He threw away his cigarette and walked swiftly around the corner. Entering a small door, he went down a long, ill-lighted passage. At the end of this was a small square hall, which might almost be called the landing-stage of a flight of stairs leading to the dressing-rooms above and to the property-room below. This hall was cut off from the stage by a large swinging-door.

As Carpenter entered the room this door swung open and a nervous young man rushed in. Catching sight of the dramatist, he checked his speed, held out his hand, and smiled wearily, saying, "That's you, is it? I'm so glad you've come!"

"The rehearsal hasn't begun, has it?" Carpenter asked, eagerly.

"Star isn't here yet," answered the actor, "and she's never in a hurry, you know. She takes her own time always, Daisy does. I know all her little tricks. I've told you already that I never would have accepted this engagement at all if I hadn't been out since January. I don't see myself in this part of yours. I'll do my best with it, of course, and it isn't such a bad part, maybe; but I don't see myself in it."

Carpenter tapped the other on the back heartily and cried: "Don't you be afraid, Dresser; you will be all right! Why, I shouldn't wonder if you made the hit of the whole piece!"

And with that he started to open the door that led to the stage.

But Dresser made a sudden appeal: "Don't go away just as I've found you. I've been wanting to see you all day. I've got to have your advice, and it's important."

"Well?" the dramatist responded.

"Well," repeated the young actor, "you know that bit of mine in the third act, where I have the scene with Jimmy Stark? He has to say to me, 'I think my wife's mind is breaking,' and I say, 'Are you afraid she is going to give you a piece of it?' Now, how would you read that?"

After the author had explained to the actor what seemed to him the obvious distribution of the emphasis in this speech, he was able to escape and at last to make his way upon the stage.

The scene of the first act of "Touch and Go" was set, and the stage itself was brilliantly lighted, while the auditorium was in absolute darkness. It was at least a minute before Carpenter was able to discern the circle of the balcony, shrouded in the linen draperies that protected its velvet and its gilding from the dust. Here and there in the orchestra chairs were little knots of three or four persons, perhaps twenty or thirty in all. The proscenium boxes yawned blackly. Although it was a warm evening in the early fall, the house struck Carpenter as chill and forbidding. He peered into the darkness to discover the face he was longing to see again.

Two men were talking earnestly, seated at a table in the centre of the stage near the footlights. One of these was a short man, with grizzled hair and a masterful manner. This was Sherrington, the stage-manager who had been engaged to produce the play. The other was Harry Brackett, Carpenter's collaborator in its authorship.

Just as the new-comer had made out in the dark house the group he was seeking and had bowed to the two ladies comprising it, Harry Brackett caught sight of him.

"Well, Will," he cried, "the Stellar Attraction is late, as usual--and we've got lots of work before us to-night, too. Sherrington isn't at all satisfied with the way they do either of the big scenes in the second act; and we've got to look out and keep them all up to their work if we want this to be anything more than a mere 'artistic success.'"

"'Artistic success!'" said Sherrington, emphatically; "why, there's money in this thing of yours--big money, too, if we can get all the laughs out of those two scenes of Daisy's in the second act. But it will take good work to get out all the laughs there ought to be, legitimately--and we've got to do it! Every laugh is worth a dollar and a half; that's what I say."

"The two scenes in the second act?" inquired Carpenter. "The one with Stark and the one with Miss Marvin, you mean?"

"The one with Marvin will be all right, I think," said the stage-manager.

"I'm not so sure of that," Harry Brackett interjected; "you insisted on her being engaged, Will, but she is very inexperienced, and I don't know how she'll get through that long scene."

"Miss Marvin is very clever," Carpenter declared, eager to defend the girl he was in love with; "and she will look the part to perfection!"

"Looking is all very well," Brackett responded, "but it is acting she will have to do in that scene in the second act."

"And she will do it too," asserted the stage-manager. "You see, she's got her mother here to-night, and there isn't a sharper old stager anywhere than Kate Shannon Loraine."

"That's so," Harry Brackett admitted; "I suppose Loraine can show her daughter how to get out of that scene all there is in it."