# Scribner's Monthly/Volume 3/Number 1/Not a Pleasant Story

Extracted from Scribner's magazine, vol. 3 1871-72, pp. 98–105.
NOT A PLEASANT STORY:
BEING PASSAGES FROM THE PRIVATE HISTORY OF A PUBLIC NUISANCE.
By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
Since you've been so good, sir, thank you. It's not over often I get the chance. I like the Common too. It isn't so much the grass, nor it isn't the gravel, nor the water-spirts. It's the elbow-room. Why, when you come to see the world, as I did down to Virginny, then plump down in this town, leastways my parts of it, for a lifetime, sir, if there's any one thing more than any other thing a man's conscious of, it's elbows. Though maybe I might be taken a bit sensitive on that point, natural. It's the singular number that's the rough of life, to my thinking.
How did I lose the arm? One question to once, if you please, sir. I'm an aging man, and easy put awry in my mind in conversation. You'll remember that you settled for a morning's job,—very generous, sir,—and brought me here in the character of a Public Nuisance. Begging your pardon, maybe you didn't use them language exact: "How now?" says you; "shut up that instrument and come to the Common with me, and tell me, in Heaven's name, what you grind it for." That's all you says; but I see it in your eyes you'd take no grudge to see me shut up in it, and ground out of the way myself. No offense, sir. I'm used to't. Hear it off and on every day: "Public nuisance!" sometimes quite loud and meant for me to hear, and again soft-like and dainty, from gals in white fur wraps, and leaving little puffs of sweet smells along behind 'em. Sometimes from folks that pay me someat too, dropping in occasional a piece of currency, which isn't frequent, with their eyes looking straight ahead, as they didn't mean to see themselves caught in the act, with twitches about the mouth. Soldiers' friends, I take it. There's generally Andersonville or someat like that's to pay, there. Then there's 'tother kind that stops and says, "What's your tax-report?" says they, meaning,I make it, to mock me for a rich beggar, which Heaven knows isn't so agree'ble for an okkypation as to make it likely. I won't say but organ-grinders and easy cash (folks has said, wicked cash) have seen each other's faces, since that's the talk, and I'm not over-much acquainted in the trade myself personal. All is, fur's my experience goes, it's a g-r-i-n-d-i-n-g slow trade.
Blithe thinks so too. Blithe is smart to see pints of a thing. She'll talk betimes of setting me up in the candy line, but molasses is proper dear, and there is the sinking of the instrument, which we've got a mortgage on the cook-stove for, in which case, you see, you'd be under some difficulties in respect to boiling down of your stock in trade.
Blithe is my little gal.
Did you ever go out oyster-dredgin', sir? No? Well, you'd ought to. That's a line of business very well to take in a fancy way, say for an afternoon. I can't say as I'd recommend it from a perpetooal point of view. I owned an oyster-boat once.
That was nine—ten—that was eleven years ago. Now it seems to me every day of twenty-five. I wasn't a young man when I married; and if I was put to't to choose, sir, for aging, between merridge and rheumatism, I'd take my chance on rheumatiz any day. There's that pecoolarity about merridge to my mind.
Yes, sir, it was just eleven years ago this year I left the oyster-boat. This was the way of it.
There's times I think I'd like to go back. I declare I do. There's advantages about an oyster-boat, more especial when you come to live in it, as I did. I lived in my boat three years. She was nothing for craft, you know, a low-necked, clumsy creetur, with her cabin so small you had to go out to turn round in it; and a habit of taking fire in her middle whenever I broiled sarsingers. She did that reg'lar on sarsinger day, from the week I boarded till the week I cleared her. But I never laid it up agin her very much, for she was a water-tight, warm-ribbed, sensible kind of hulk, who understood her business, and held her anchor in a high tide anywheres down the flats you'd a mind to try her.
A lonesome way of life? Maybe. On the whole I don't know but it was. Seems so now. Seemed so then. But bless you! there's been times, a looking back on't, when it was a Paradise to think on. Sir, there was never a Paradise without its sword o' flames turning which way and what. If so be that the lay of it runs in a dredging-boat, turn your back on Paradise, and you've seen the last on't. You can't crawl in, nor you can't creep under, nor you can't hist over, nor you can't peek round. You've seen the end on't. Make your blunder and stick to't. Go your ways and bide by 'em. Hold your tongue, and heft up your heart, and work in the sweat of your brow, and keep your mind to yourself, sir, but never go sneaking back to beg into a garding as you've trod the flowers on, and shut the gate on, and shook the dust from your feet upon, of your own free will and pleasure.
Not to say that a dredging-boat is so much like a garding as may be, but a cosy place, more especial in a storm, a oyster-boat is. What with a pipe, and the fleck of fire in the cook-stove, and your dreadnought hanging on the wall, and the cat—I kept a cat. Her name was Venus die Medicine; oncommon name for a cat, I thought; I got her from a house-and-sign painter who drowned himself, with a wife and nine small children, owing, they thought, to a sunstroke of a July day. So what with the cat a cleaning of the spider for you with her clean pink tongue (I washed it arterwards when I wasn't too busy), and the shade and warmness along in the corners of the cabin, and the stoopid, sleepy swashin to the boat. Considerin, too, that you hadn't hasped the cabin door, and that the tide splashed in, dropping down, and that the cat would leave the sarsinger dish to run and lick the drops up. Considerin a lurch to the old hulk now and then, heels over head like a tipsy log, and viewin the wind from a cheerful point.
I think, sir, I must be of a curious turn of mind. It used to trouble me now a great deal, in that boat, about the oysters. Not the dredging, by no means, for what would be the sense in being a oyster, if you wasn't dredged? It must be a great satisfaction, it seems to me, being a oyster, to live under a dredging-boat. But what, now, is the sense of being a oyster? If the Almighty made one set of living creeturs for no purpose nor no reason under the canopy of Heaven but to slip easy down another set of living creeturs' throats—but there, I've lost it; I had it once as slick as a whistle. I most forget the way it went. But it was a curious turn of mind, and made either me or the Almighty a sight of trouble; I don't clearly remember which.
Well, it come one night of a December. It was an ugly night, too; you don't often see an uglier, in a dredging-boat. It sleeted thick, and blew. It was dark as a pocket. My pipe got out and my fire got down, and it got wet and spattery below; and lonesome—well, yes; oncommon so. I'd come upon deck, and stuck myself into the storm for company; I was setting half over the gun' ale, looking down.
I was setting on the gun'ale, looking down, I know; for the tide was at the turn, and I was wondering about the oysters and how they took it in their minds of a stormy night; and considering the look of the town against the sleet. Ever notice it? Off the oyster-beds there, it spattered about, you might say, like the broken pieces of a great gilt chiny cup. Of a clear night, it winked.
How did it happen? The dark, I suppose, or the blow and noise, or all together but I never saw nor heard it till it came thud! against the boat's shoulder, me setting over the gun'ale there, and the sleet in my face and ears.
I'd rather the thing would have gone to hell than to have touched it; I jumped and said so, screechin.
Yet there's my arms up to the shoulder-blades in water after it, next minute. Maybe you can explain that, sir. I can't.
It slipped from me like an eel, sir; it squirmed and screwed; it wriggled in under the slimy boat. I never had hands on a uglier thing.
"I hope to God it's a puppy!" says I.
Well, sir, it wasn't; not to say that I haven't wished it had been, since; more than once I've wished it had been a stark dead puppy before ever I went over the gun'ale after it.
"I hope it may be a puppy!" says I. And that living minute there squirms through my fingers a great swash of limpsy, long hair.
With that I has it up on deck before you could say Jack Robinson, head foremost. It lies as stiff as a bowsprit. The cat comes up, fore-paws on the hatchway, and she puts up her back and spits at it.
"Venus," says I, "we've got a dead woman aboard!"
And I went as cold as a frog, sir. Howsomever, I got the body below, best way I could, by the fire.
It lay very pretty for a dead woman. I really wish you could have seen it. Her hair was down her back, and her clothes—she wore a red calico dress—had frozen to her.
I did the best I could, sir, being as there were no women-folks but Venus aboard. I blowed up the fire, and I blowed out the light, and I got her out of her sloppy clothes and under a blanket, and the dreadnaught, and this and that, as if she'd been my mother; and I rubbed her feet, and Venus she licked her about the face and arms, and between us and a sip of brandy and camphire that I put aboard in cholera times, we did it.
Yes, we brought her round, sir, sure as life.
She set up very pretty for a live woman, too; she was all of a heap in my great-coat; and her hair began to dry; I can remember to this day thinking how exactly it was the color of a good middlin'-sized gold-fish, when I'd lighted up again, and see her setting there, in my dreadnaught, by the cabin fire.
Sir, she set up very pretty, very pretty. She was a youngish woman. It seemed a curious thing to me to see a woman in the cabin.
I can't say accurate which began it, nor how we got to it, but in fifteen minutes or thereabouts it was as good as done.
"Where did you come from?" said I; I remember saying that. She had just drunk the last of the cholera mixter, and put the bottle down behind the stove.
"From the devil," says she.
"What was you about in the water?" said I.
"Going to the devil," says she.
"You'd pretty nigh got there," said I, "when you hit this boat."
With that she sighs and lays her head agin her hand. "I've tried it three times," says she. "Twice it was police, and once it was a ferry-boat, and now it's you," says she. "I'm most discouraged," says she.
"And where be you going now?" said I.
"To the devil," says she, just the same, with her head upon her hand. "There's nowhere else to go," says she.
Now, being a lonesome man who hadn't had a woman in his oyster-boat for three years, that made me feel kind of bad. I don't know why, neither.
I remember getting up to walk the cabin, and stepping on the cat, to think how bad I felt.
As I tell you, fifteen minutes, and it was all done. I'd been a rough man, and a restless and a solitary, and I hadn't done a useful thing by my kind before, I couldn't remember when; and so it came over me: Why not? Here was this poor young creetur, and here was me; I could pay the parson, and she could broil the sarsingers; why not?
"Suppose," said I to the young woman, "that you married me, instead?"
"Instead of what?" says she, starting round.
"Instead of going where you was mentioning," said I. The young woman looked at me, I can tell you, pretty sharp. Pretty soon she runs her hands through her long hair, and then she takes a lock of it, and draws it once or twice across her eyes.
"It would be a chance," said she. "I never had much chance," said she. And I tell you, she set up very pretty, drawing her hair across her eyes.
"You'd ought to know," says she.
"No, I'd oughtn't," says I. "I don't want to know nothing about you. If so be that you're my true and honest wife, I don't want to know. You've asked me no questions, and I'll ask you no more. It ain't much I can say for myself," said I, "but I reckon I can do a peg better by you than the other gentleman you was speaking of," said I.
"Well, then," said the young woman.
"Well, then," said I.
And so, in fifteen minutes it was settled between us, and how it happened, or why, or which of us did it, or if it was both, or neither, I never could say. All is, it happened; and I turned up on deck to think it over, and the young woman she went to sleep by the cabin fire.
The storm was blowing off, a fold or two to once, like tissue paper, rolling down the harbor. I always like to watch a storm blow off. I kept the deck till dawn to see it, and not wishful to be a disturbance to the young woman, and for thinking of the young woman, and of what I'd done.
I told you, sir, I was of a curious turn of mind. Now I had some curious thoughts that night, after the blow set in, and the city lights cleared out before me, winking all along the shore.
It was the first useful thing I'd done, you see, sir, for so many years, that I took it strange and anxious; and I wondered what would come of it; and I had a strange and lonesome feeling very suddenly. It was about the oysters, sir. It seemed to me as if the young woman and me was very like the oysters, shut off there all alone. And there was that look about the city like some tremendous dredging-boat at anchor to drawr us in. And so I had it over to myself: What is the sense in being a oyster if you wasn't dredged? And what is the sense in being a oyster anyhow? And so it went, till morning.
The cat came up on deck, and was a deal of company. I felt bad when that cat died. She Died of Medicine, too, most appropriate, that very day week, the day I quit the dredging-boat, on account of a taste for the cholera mixter. If the bottle hadn't been broken, I don't suppose she'd have swallowed the glass.
Come morning, when the young woman had dried her red calikker dress, and pinned up her curious hair—it looked like a whole shoal of gold fish, a twisted up. She says:
"I'll be honest by you," says she, very soft and very pale—she was very pale; and looked so young! And stood up so pretty, sir!
Well, maybe she was; I never knew to the contrary, in the way she meant; I suppose she was honest by me; but look here! How was I to know anything about it? She said she took it for neuralgy. First three months after we were married she held off very well; next three, I found out as she'd always took it, since her mother fed her on it, a six-weeks baby, so she said; perhaps she did; I don't know, nor care.
Well, sir, you see I'd left the dredging-boat, seeing as I must have a decent house for a decent wife. I hoped to God she'd make me a decent wife, sir!
I'd left the boat and set up in the city; it's small choice you have in the city, sir, if you've not a trade. I never had a trade, and so I picked my way in the odd job line; hired to a head-porter one week; driv an express the next; had a fish-stall; made corn-balls; blacked boots; run a hack; took a contract on dough-nuts; and set up in fancy literatoor at the graveyard corner with a blind beggar who sang a song continual enough to wake the dead; besides a little puppy tied to his boot-leg.
To make a long story short, sir, she led me a Life. Yes she did. She led me a Life after the first three months was over.
Now that was what I couldn't explain to myself nor to another man. Why, when a man had undertook for the first time in his born days to do a useful thing, he should be led a Life for it. Not that I meant to put the young woman under obligations in my mind, but I had that feeling as if she'd see the sootability, as you might say, of making a man comfort'ble after it.
Fur's I could see, I done the best deed of my life, and they wasn't so many that I could have much choice, and it was an aw-ful blunder. That's what perplexes me.
I think you'll remember, sir, that I spoke about a swoird of Paradise? Fur's the young woman went, I'd a been back to my boat before the year was out, a dozen times.
But then, there come the little gal. She was the swoird of flames—God bless her!—that turned me and kept me, which way and what, from my old ways, and my lonesome ways, and my reckless.
I don't quite understand, sir, clear, how a man can ever be what he been before, after he's had a little gal.
Now I have that confidence in what you may call, meaning no onrespect, the sense of the Almighty, that I take it how He blessed that little gal of mine from the first on't. And that's more than I did myself.
"It must never be a gal," said I. "She'd be like her mother."
Sir? I don't quite understand ye. Why, yes; I suppose so; kind of a pity—her own mother—yes; but I'd got used to that, you know.
"She'd be like her mother," says I. "It must be a boy. Of course it will be a boy," said I.
You wouldn't believe it, sir, but the night that little gal was born, I took my hat and cleared. I never came nigh her for a week, and when I did, I wouldn't so much as touch her, nor look upon her little face.
"She'll be like her mother," says I. How soon I found it out, I can't say; it couldn't have been three months; long before ever the little creetur spoke a word, I found out as plain as day how she wasn't that. There was that in her eyes when she speared into my face, and that in her little fingers when they twisted into mine. I can't explain it, sir, onless to a man who'd had a little gal of his own that he'd feared would be like her mother.
If I was a younger man, maybe I should know how to make a long story short, but fact is, the more I think on't the longer it grows; I'm so easy put awry in my mind since war-times come and gone. And I come to set a sight by that little gal. And all that come and went seems to me to come and go for the little gal. And all was and wasn't; seemed to be and ben't, because of the little gal. And mostly all that I can remember—since war-times and since I took to aging—is the little gal. Somehow, it's a very long thing, sir, to love a little gal.
I used to rock her to sleep o' nights; she'd rather have me nor her mother; and I always brushed her little hair down for her mornin's, better nor her mother; and I used to slick up her little apron-strings, and ontie her little shoes; and I used to heft her softly in my arms, and lay her little arm agin my neck, and thank the Almighty for that she'd turned out onlike——; but I never told her that, sir; no.
"My baby," says I, soon's ever she could talk, "marm's sick."
"Marm's sick," says Blithe, first thing she ever said. That's all I said to my little gal about her mother. "Marm's sick," says Blithe over after me; always said it, sir, innocent and prompt.
My little gal is a gentle little gal, sir, with a pretty way.
I don't know how I ever come to leave her to 'list, I'm sure; but times was hard, and odd jobs slack, and—was I drafted? No, I wasn't drafted; and I don't think I was drunk, and I'm sure I wasn't pat-riotic; nigh as I can remember, I just went; come home one day to dinner, and I'd done it; to tell the truth, I don't remember much about it but a-standing in the doorway of a rainy day, to bid my little girl good-bye.
Well, I went in early and I come out late; not that I was much of a Hail Columby man; but it's a sight more easy to keep on doing a thing than it is to stop, in general; and I sent the pay home reglar, and marm got the house and sign painter's widow of nine small children to write occasional, as she took in fine folks' washing, for she couldn't write herself; and Blithe, she promised to write me a letter of her own when she'd schooled long enough; but it never come; and so I staid along.
I went in under Little Mac, and I come out under Sherman down to Atlanta, with this here arm,—by which I mean to say the one that ain't here,—in the trenches. Clipped off by a shell. You never see anything slicker in your life.
"What'll Blithe say," thinks I as I goes down, "when she sees it's the right un!"
Nigh as I can recollect, that's pretty much all I thinks till I get back to her.
So one day I come along home, weak for a bit, and faintish. And I sat down on a little step outside the dépôt, on account of being dizzy with the cars. It was sunshiny on the step, and sunshiny everywhere.
There come along a little gal, I remember, with the sun on her, and a two-armed father that lifted her over the mud.
The little gal had a stick of red candy half in her mouth, and she held it out to me; all wet, and it was much as ever I could see it, for the sun. But I eat a piece of it to pacify her (God bless her!) and a piece I kept for Blithe.
I sat for a little upon the step, with the noise of the city kind of whirring about me, and it was kind of queer now, how I sat a thinking it was all made by two-armed men. Maybe it was because the jam in my elbow ached; or maybe because I had to walk such a long piece to get home; or maybe because I wished it was longer.
To tell you the truth, sir, it had been a kind of an awful thing between Blithe and me—leaving her with marm. And it was an awful thing coming back and finding her with marm, and spekkylating, and wondering, and considering if it would be one of marm's days, and if Blithe would be much knocked up,—by which I mean it mental and moral, sir; take marm at her worst she never struck that child—and for wishing in partikkelar that Blithe and I could set down in the Common or somewheres alone, at the first.
It was such a sunshiny sort o' day, as I said; that sort of day when a man with a smashed elbow and a little gal feels as if he'd like a place to set in quiet.
So when I come along home, there come out a man with a little slate in his hand.
"How now?" says I.
"Any orders?" says he; and with that he hangs up his slate agin my door-post; he was a furrin-looking man, with a yeller face. "I have a Venus die Medicine," says he, "which I think would suit ye; likewise a Gen. Grant of a most delicate shade of pink; and a Sister Madonna in gray clay," says he.
"I didn't come after my sister," says I, "and as for Venus die Medicine, I buried her myself under a lumber pile of which the contract was lost, to the wharves. But I'll take my wife and little gal, if it's all the same to you."
"There's nobody's wife and gals here but my own," says the furrin chap, "nor has been this ten month. You're welcome to some o' them," says he; "I've got ten," says he; and with that he hangs up his little slate, and is off.
I set down right there on the side-walk to get my breath and my wits together, for I felt as if I'd been struck in the heart. If I'd been hit by a Minie-ball I couldn't have choked, for a minute, more suffocating.
It was walking so far, I suppose; and so weakly; and for the disappointment and distress.
Well; that was nigh ten o'clock of the morning; and it was seven of the night before I found her; it was owing to the furrin chap, after all; he turned out of a little alley along about seven o'clock, plump agin me. He had a board acrost his head of them little yaller statoos, and he nods as well as he could beneath it, and goes his ways. So I thinks to myself, why not turn down here? for I'd tracked them in so far as that a old woman three blocks back wouldn't take her oath to't, but she thought she'd heern tell once of a woman as took it for neuralgy very bad, answering to my name, go up and down along here somewheres. So I turned down the little alley, and I met a squint-eyed youngster which went along with me, and offered to show me the house for twelve cents to run after the furrin chap and a green plaster puppy who had a yellow tail.
I waited till the squint-eyed youngster was out of sight, hollering at the top of its wind around the corner, before I could make up my mind to go in.
And then I couldn't make up my mind and I felt a kind of sickness, suddenly, and a blur about the eyes.
It was a little house the squint-eyed young one had pointed out, a standing by itself, quite along by the water. I left my little gal in a decent place, and I thought, please God, I'd always have a decent place for her, and when I saw that house, as well as I could see it through the dark, for it was a growing dark, I couldn't tell you if I was to try, sir, how it come upon me.
Maybe you don't know, sir, what them living-places are like along the shore. Living-places? dying-places more like! Maybe you wouldn't feel acquainted with the smells and slime, and leavings of the tide? I never meant my little gal should be. She is such a gentle little gal, with such a pretty way.
It was a growing dark, I told you, sir, and my eyes was blurred, and altogether I could hardly see my way. First I knew I was ankle-deep in water.
"It's the tide," says I, "and I've lost my way. It was the tide indeed, sir; but I hadn't lost my way;" the house stood dead ahead.
"The child will drown," says I. Next thing I had the door smashed open, and another door, and another, and I come into a little back room, and I heard a little scream, and I stood stock still, knee-deep in the water, a staring like one dead.
There was my little gal, sir, a setting on the bed. She had a little candle on a table, and she set up close to it, and I see her plain. It was a little room, and the spots of mould stood out all over it. All around the bed's legs, and the table-legs, and the stove, and all the miser'ble little furnitoor, the dirty tide come swashin in.
In a minute I'd splashed acrost it, two foot deep, and I'd got upon the bed, and I'd got her in my arm, and she had her little hands about my eyes, as if she'd shut the sight of her away from me till I could make my mind up to't. For I shook, sir, and I felt cold, and I'm a heavy man, and I s'pose I scairt her.
"Father!" says she, with her hand across my eyes. "Father! father! father!"
And then says she again, "O father! father! O father! father! father!" till I thought my heart would break, she cried and sobbed so: "Father! father! father!"
"I never thought you'd come!" she says. "O father! father!" till I was sure my heart would break.
"But you'll drown!" said I, a pulling of her little hands down from about my eyes to look around.
"Oh no!" says she, "the tide comes into the house twice a day, you know. I get upon the bed. It's never soaked the bed but twice. I get upon the bed and stay." With this she dries her eyes and tries to laugh, a looking round. "I am very comf'tble on the bed, I'm sure," says she. "I can stay till it goes down. Now it's so much warmer I don't mind the fire going out. Don't you mind. Why, father, don't!"
For all I could do I just set shaking, and all I could do I couldn't speak, for to think of my little gal—my little—
Well, well, sir, I come round presently, and I says:
"How long have you lived in this hole?" says I.
"Six months," says Blithe. "Now father, don't mind!" says Blithe.
"Alone?" says I?
"Mostly alone," says she, "except for the woman up-stairs. She cooks for me sometimes. She's very good. You have to pay a dollar'n a quarter for up-stairs," says she. Now father don't!" says Blithe.
"And what was you doing up to the table?" says I.
"I curl," said Blithe, takin' up a lot of little feathers from the table. "I curl to the shop all day, and so I bring 'em home besides, when I ain't too tired. Now father, don't mind that! Why, how should I have had something twice a day to eat if it wasn't for that?" said she.
And, sir, when she turned her little face agin the light, I could well believe her. I never see such a little old, old face. I never see such a grave, grown-up, little thin old face. I never see such a planning, thinking, wise, and patient little face. I never see a face on a child's shoulders that would have went to the heart of a quarry o' stone, like the face of that there little gal of mine the night I found her curling of her little feather by her little candle on that bed.
It wasn't till the dirty tide began to fall that I could bring myself to dare to speak it, for there was that passion in me, and that tremble, and them curses, that I darsent try before the little gal.
At last I brings it slow.
"And where," says I, "is her?"
"Marm," said Blithe, "was sick."
"Where," says I, "is her?"
"She took it, father," said my little gal, in her patient little voice, "for neuralgy, father. We come from one house to another, and the more we come the more there was no money; and so we come to this one. And I curled the feathers; for I couldn't go to school. Marm," said Blithe, "was sick, you remember, father. O father, don't! I've always got along. She wasn't very bad. I don't mind it now. One night, you see—"
"Well!" said I, sharp, for I felt I didn't dare say what awful feeling, like the rising of an awful hope within my heart.
"One night," said Blithe, "she fell over."
"Over where? " says I, quick enough.
"Don't hurry me," said Blithe, and she put down her little feathers and drew up her little breath. "She fell—over—the bed, you see. The tide was in. I was to sleep, father, in the night, and come morning I set up, and the tide was out, and there she lay. The floor was all sloppy, and there she lay. I don't like to remember that," said Blithe.
Yes, sir, I went on my knees. Right down in the horrid wet on that horrid floor. I couldn't have helped it, not to save me. Down I went, and I hid my face, and I thanked the Almighty for His onexpected favors to myself and a little gal who wasn't like her mother. It was wuth the parting and the longness. It was wuth the arm and the misery. It was wuth a coming home to find her curling feathers for a livin' in a two-foot tide upon a island—by which I mean a bed—beside a little candle. It was wuth bein' led a Life, sir, a hundred times.
There was nobody in the world now but me and the little gal. I'd do it all through agin to have nobody in the world but the little gal and me. It was wuth the blunder and the punishment. It was wuth a being useful and a repenting of it. It was wuth so much, sir, that I declare I didn't feel as if I'd ought to take it onrequited, for a sense of obligation come upon me very sudden. I'd never felt obligated, not even to the Almighty, in my life before. It was a very curious feeling.
But bless you! no; I never told my little gal. "Marm was sick," said I, the same as ever. "Maybe it come too late," said I.
"What come?" asks Blithe.
"The chance," says I. For I remembered being on my knees upon the sloppy floor, how the young woman had drawed her hair across her eyes, and what she said about her chance. So "Marm was sick," said I; and I felt a kind of gentleness in my mind to-wards her, seeing now that she was dead, and from feeling obligated to Almighty God, I suppose, so onexpected.
"But you've lost your arm!" says Blithe.
"But what of that?" says I.
And what of that indeed, sir? Or of this or 'tother? Or of anything gone or to come, or that might be or that mightn't, to the little gal and me?
So I thought that night, sir; and so I've thought a many times. But yet it was curious, now, sir, how it come upon me when the tide was out, and Blithe got down upon the slimy floor to light the fire for tea, how like we was to them oysters that have troubled me so many times—stranded there alone among the weeds and mud.
And then and many times I've thought it over. There's things I'd like to be for the sake of the little gal. And there's things I'd like the little gal to be for the sake of me. And though a man has nothing to complain of, sir, who is obligated to the Almighty for a little gal, yet I wonder sometimes why it is they come so hard and slip so easy; and why it is that, do my best, I can get my little gal just her dinners and her suppers, and just her bonnets and her aprons; and why it is that if you was to want the kingdom of heaven come on earth for your little gal, you've just to raise your finger for her, and it'll come to time, express. I don't know if I make my meaning clear, and I'm meaning no offense. But that and the oysters have given me a great many curious turns of mind.
And there's the instremunt? Why, yes, and there's the instremunt. A one-armed man can't pick and choose; and what's the pension, come to think on't? A man is often lucky, sir, to get the chance to be a public nuisance in this ere world. Never thought o' that, now, did you? I bought out an I-talian just setting up in poetry 'tother end the city; your choice for five cents, and a large blue margin, sir, besides. There's one toon I like. Ever hear it? It goes:
"Bonny Jockey, Blithe and gay."
I play that toon a sight. I like to strike it up, as a kind of compliment to her when she crosses over at the crossing there to school. I don't play that toon so much for pay. Yes, she's going to school. When we get into a pinch, she takes her little feathers home o' nights; but I mean she shall go to school. She can cipher now, and write in capitals quite plain.
Did I ondertake to tell a tale about the instremunt? I most forgot. Perhaps I've wore your patience, sir, a talking of the child. It's pretty nigh one thing, you see, sir.
Did you ever hear me play "The girl I left behind me?" Yes? I thought so. I play that very often. That's beefsteak. I get her a little piece of steak with that. And Champagne Charley? That gets her little shoes. She wears out a sight of little shoes. When she wants a little Reader, or a little pencil, or a little slate to school, I gener'lly depend, sir, on Old Dog Tray. That's a fine toon, I think, don't you? Old Dog Tray? When you come along, and I'm to work on "The pretty girl dressed in blew," you'd know if you knew much that her little bunnet was most wore out. But when it comes to quarter-rent, there's nothing for't but John Brown's Body. How I should ever have got along over quarter-day if John Brown's Body didn't lay a mouldering in the grave, I don't see.
Sir?
I don't think you understood me, sir. I beg your pardon. Don't I never find her a burden to me, in my crippled state? Do you thing as Hagar found the Angel of the Lord a burden, when she set a chokin' in the wilderness? You don't know my little gal. She is growing up a very pretty little gal, with a pleasant way.
I'd ask you to call and see us if you wasn't quite a stranger. I'm particular about the acquaintances I make for Blithe. Meaning no rudeness, sir, I'm sure you'll see. It's quite a decent tenement, though I'd like it quit of the grog across the way, with a pink curtain to the window. You'd know it from the corner by the curtain. Blithe made tha' curtain, and hung it up herself. She made a little apron too, out of what was left.
It is high time I was at my stand, sir, for she'll be coming home from school. Perhaps we'd better walk a little faster. I shouldn't like to have her miss me onexpected. She'll come around the corner in a minute, in a kind of quiet way; you'd know her for that sort of quietness there is about her. Come night, I should get kinder bothered out, I own, on a hot day, or a chilly, if it wasn't for that sort of way she has. I'm not so strong as I was once.
What, sir? Bless you, sir! what's a man good for if he isn't worried more nor less? I reckon I can stand it. What would Adam have been wuth, now, if he'd staid to Eden, loafing round among his plants and greens? I've thought, this long while, I wouldn't have owned him for a grandfather.
There, sir! If you turn your head now—a little more. Do you see a little gal with a little book under her arm away around the corner? The one with the pink apun and the little brownish hat? The one that's looking round surprised to listen for her old father striking Bonny Jockey up? The one with such a kind of happiness about her little face? Are you sure you've got the one?
Not a bit like her mother, sir! Not a bit. That's my little gal.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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