Fortunately for Frederick Dane, for the nine years
before he joined Peary, he had lived in the city of
Bagdad. He had there served as the English interpreter
for the Caliph of that city. The Caliph did most of
his business at night, and was in the habit of taking
Mr. Dane with him on his evening excursions. In this
way Mr. Dane had made the somewhat intimate
acquaintance of Mr. Jaffrey, the private secretary of
the Caliph; and he had indeed in his own employment for
some time, a wide-awake black man, of the name of
Mezrour, who, for his "other place," was engaged as a
servant in the Caliph's household. Dane was thus not
unfamiliar with the methods of unexpected evening
visits; and it was fortunate for him that he was so.
The little children whom he had picked up, explained to
him, by pantomime which would have made the fortune of
a ballet-girl, that they were much more comfortable in
their new home than they had been in any other, and
that they had no wish to leave it. But by various
temptations addressed to them, in the form of barley
horses and dogs, and sticks of barber's candy, Dane,
who was of a romantic and enterprising disposition,
persuaded them to take him to some of their former
haunts.
These were mostly at the North End of Boston,
and he soon found that he needed all his
recollections of Bagdad for the purpose of conducting any
conversation with any of the people they knew best. In
a way, however, with a little broken Arabic, a little
broken Hebrew, a great deal of broken China, and many
gesticulations, he made acquaintance with two of their
compatriots, who had, as it seemed, crossed the ocean
with them in the same steerage. That is to say, they
either had or had not; but for many months Mr. Dane was
unable to discover which. Such as they were, however,
they had been sleeping on the outside of the upper attic
of the house in Salutation Alley where these children had
lodged, or not lodged, as the case might be, during the
last few days. When Mr. Dane saw what were called their
lodgings, he did not wonder that they had accepted pot-luck with him.
It is necessary to explain all this, that the reader
may understand why, on the first night after the arrival
of these two children, the population of the polling-booth was enlarged by the presence of these two Hebrew
compatriots. And, without further mystery, it may be as
well to state that all four were from a village about
nine hundred and twenty-three miles north of Odessa, in
the southern part of Russia. They had emigrated in a
compulsory manner from that province, first on account of
the utter failure of anything to eat there; second, on
account of a prejudice which the natives of that country
had contracted against the Hebrew race.
The two North End friends of little Ezra and Sarah
readily accepted the invitation of the two children to
join in the College Settlement at the corner of the two
avenues. The rules of the institution proved attractive,
and before a second week was well advanced ten light
excelsior mattresses were regularly rolled up every
morning as the different inmates went to their duties;
while, as evening closed in, eight cheerful companions
told stories around the hospitable board.
