59. CHAPTER LIX.
FOR a time I wrote literary screeds for
the Golden Era. C. H. Webb
had established a very excellent literary weekly
called the Californian, but
high merit was no guaranty of success; it languished, and he
sold out to three printers, and Bret Harte became editor at $20 a
week, and I was employed to contribute an article a week at $12.
But the journal still languished, and the printers sold out to
Captain Ogden, a rich man and a pleasant gentleman who chose to
amuse himself with such an expensive luxury without much caring
about the cost of it. When he grew tired of the novelty, he re-sold
to the printers, the paper presently died a peaceful death, and I was
out of work again. I would not mention these things but for the
fact that they so aptly illustrate the ups and downs that characterize
life on the Pacific coast. A man could hardly stumble into such a
variety of queer vicissitudes in any other country.
For two months my sole occupation was avoiding
acquaintances; for during that time I did not earn a penny, or buy
an article of any kind, or pay my board. I became a very adept at
"slinking." I slunk from back street to back street, I slunk away
from approaching faces that looked familiar, I slunk to my meals,
ate them humbly and with a mute apology for every mouthful I
robbed my generous landlady of, and at midnight, after wanderings
that were but slinkings away from cheerfulness and light, I slunk to
my bed. I felt meaner, and lowlier and more despicable than the
worms. During all this time I
had but one piece of money—a silver ten cent piece—and I held to it
and would not spend it on any account, lest the consciousness
coming strong upon me that I was
entirely penniless, might
suggest suicide. I had pawned every thing but
the clothes I had on; so I clung to my dime desperately, till it was
smooth with handling.
However, I am forgetting. I did have one other occupation
beside that of "slinking." It was the entertaining of a collector (and
being entertained by him,) who had in his hands the Virginia
banker's bill for forty-six dollars which I had loaned my
schoolmate, the "Prodigal." This man used to call regularly once a
week and dun me, and sometimes oftener. He did it from sheer
force of habit, for he knew he could get nothing. He would get out
his bill, calculate the interest for me, at five per cent a month, and
show me clearly that there was no attempt at fraud in it and no
mistakes; and then plead, and argue and dun with all his might for
any sum—any little trifle—even a dollar—even half a dollar, on
account. Then his duty was accomplished and his conscience free.
He immediately dropped the subject there always; got out a couple
of cigars and divided, put his feet in the window, and then we
would have a long, luxurious talk about everything and everybody,
and he would furnish me a world of curious dunning adventures
out of the ample store in his memory. By and by he would clap his
hat on his head, shake hands and say briskly:
"Well, business is business—can't stay with you always!"—and
was off in a second.
The idea of pining for a dun! And yet I used to long for
him to come, and would get as uneasy as any mother if the day
went by without his visit, when I was expecting him. But he never
collected that bill, at last nor any part of it. I lived to pay it to the
banker myself.
Misery loves company. Now and then at night, in out-of-the
way, dimly lighted places, I found myself happening on another
child of misfortune. He looked so seedy and forlorn, so homeless
and friendless and forsaken, that I yearned toward him as a
brother. I wanted to claim kinship with him and go about and
enjoy our wretchedness together. The drawing toward each other
must have been mutual; at any rate we got to falling together
oftener, though still seeminly by accident; and although we did not
speak or evince any recognition, I think the dull anxiety passed out
of both of us when we saw each other, and then for several hours
we would idle along contentedly, wide apart, and glancing
furtively in at home lights and fireside gatherings, out of the night
shadows, and very much enjoying our dumb companionship.
Finally we spoke, and were inseparable after that. For our
woes were identical, almost. He had been a reporter too, and lost
his berth, and this was his experience, as nearly as I can recollect
it. After losing his berth he had gone down, down, down, with
never a halt: from a boarding house on Russian Hill to a boarding
house in Kearney street; from thence to Dupont; from thence to a
low sailor den; and from thence to lodgings in goods boxes and
empty hogsheads near the wharves. Then; for a while, he had
gained a meagre living by sewing up bursted sacks of grain on the
piers; when that failed he had found food here and there as chance
threw it in his way. He had ceased to show his face in daylight,
now, for a reporter knows everybody, rich and poor, high and low,
and cannot well avoid familiar faces in the broad light of day.
This mendicant Blucher—I call him that for convenience—was
a splendid creature. He was full of hope, pluck and philosophy; he
was well read and a man of cultivated taste; he had a bright wit
and was a master of satire; his kindliness and his generous spirit
made him royal in my eyes and changed his curb-stone seat to a
throne and his damaged hat to a crown.
He had an adventure, once, which sticks fast in my memory as
the most pleasantly grotesque that ever touched my sympathies.
He had been without a penny for two months. He had shirked
about obscure streets, among friendly dim lights, till the thing had
become second nature to him. But at last he was driven abroad in
daylight. The cause was sufficient;
he had not tasted food
for forty-eight hours, and he could not
endure the misery of his hunger in idle hiding.
He came along a back street, glowering at the loaves in bake-shop
windows, and feeling that he could trade his life away for a morsel
to eat. The sight of the bread doubled his hunger; but it was good
to look at it, any how, and imagine what one might do if one only
had it.
Presently, in the middle of the street he saw a shining spot—looked
again—did not, and could not, believe his eyes—turned away, to try
them, then looked again. It was a verity—no vain, hunger-inspired
delusion—it was a silver dime! He snatched it—gloated over it;
doubted it—bit it—found it genuine—choked his heart down, and
smothered a halleluiah. Then he looked around—saw that nobody
was looking at him—threw the dime down where it was
before—walked away a few steps, and approached again,
pretending he did not know it was there, so that he could re-enjoy
the luxury of finding it. He walked around it, viewing it from
different points; then sauntered about with his hands in his
pockets, looking up at the signs and now and then glancing at it
and feeling the old thrill again. Finally he took it up, and went
away, fondling it in his pocket. He idled through unfrequented
streets, stopping in doorways and corners to take it out and look at
it. By and by he went home to his
lodgings—an empty queensware hogshead,—and employed himself
till night trying to make up his mind what to buy with it. But it
was hard to do. To get the most for it was the idea. He knew that
at the Miner's Restaurant he could get a plate of beans and a piece
of bread for ten cents; or a fish-ball and some few trifles, but they
gave "no bread with onefish-ball" there. At French Pete's he could
get a veal cutlet, plain, and some radishes and bread, for ten cents;
or a cup of coffee—a pint at least—and a slice of bread; but the slice
was not thick enough by the eighth of an inch, and sometimes they
were still more criminal than that in the cutting of it. At seven
o'clock his hunger was wolfish; and still his mind was not made
up. He turned out and went up Merchant street, still ciphering; and
chewing a bit of stick, as is the way of starving men.
He passed before the lights of Martin's restaurant, the most
aristocratic in the city, and stopped. It was a place where he had
often dined, in better days, and Martin knew him well. Standing
aside, just out of the range of the light, he worshiped the quails and
steaks in the show window, and imagined that may be the fairy
times were not gone yet and some prince in disguise would come
along presently and tell him to go in there and take whatever he
wanted. He chewed his stick with a hungry interest as he warmed
to his subject. Just at this juncture he was conscious of some one
at his side, sure enough; and then a finger touched his arm. He
looked up, over his shoulder, and saw an apparition—a very
allegory of Hunger! It was a man six feet high, gaunt, unshaven,
hung with rags; with a haggard face and sunken cheeks, and eyes
that pleaded piteously. This phantom said:
"Come with me—please."
He locked his arm in Blucher's and walked up the street to
where the passengers were few and the light not strong, and then
facing about, put out his hands in a beseeching way, and said:
"Friend—stranger—look at me! Life is easy to you—you go
about, placid and content, as I did once, in my day—you have been
in there, and eaten your sumptuous supper, and picked your teeth,
and hummed your tune, and thought your pleasant
thoughts, and said to yourself it is a good world—but you've never
suffered! You don't know
what trouble is—you don't know what misery
is—nor hunger! Look at me! Stranger have pity on a poor
friendless, homeless dog! As God is my judge,
I have not tasted food for eight and forty hours!—look in my eyes
and see if I lie! Give me the least trifle in the world to keep me
from starving—anything—twenty-five cents! Do it, stranger—do it,
please. It will
be nothing to you, but life to me. Do it, and I will go
down on my knees and lick the dust before you! I will kiss your
footprints—I will worship the very ground you walk on! Only
twenty-five cents! I am famishing—perishing—starving by inches!
For God's sake don't desert me!"
Blucher was bewildered—and touched, too—stirred to the
depths. He reflected. Thought again. Then an idea struck him,
and he said:
"Come with me."
He took the outcast's arm, walked him down to Martin's
restaurant, seated him at a marble table, placed the bill of fare
before him, and said:
"Order what you want, friend. Charge it to me, Mr.
Martin."
"All right, Mr. Blucher," said Martin.
Then Blucher stepped back and leaned against the counter and
watched the man stow away cargo after cargo of buckwheat cakes
at seventy-five cents a plate; cup after cup of coffee, and porter
house steaks worth two dollars apiece; and when six dollars and a
half's worth of destruction had been accomplished, and the
stranger's hunger appeased, Blucher went down to French Pete's,
bought a veal cutlet plain, a slice of bread, and three radishes, with
his dime, and set to and feasted like a king!
Take the episode all around, it was as odd as any that can be
culled from the myriad curiosities of Californian life, perhaps.