The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1874-07-24
"oUR BOY.

Now perhaps some people of philo
progenitive proclivities may be led t,
imagine that tender gush of paternity
is to follow just here. Not bit of it
Three years ago, when first clappeG
eyes on tour boy" suppose he wal
fully II years old. Who might have
been Clarence's father have not the
least idea about. suppose some one
cared for the boy, because occasionally
7 had noticed pale young woman, in g
dingy black gown, come furtively to
the front of the Office and pass in to
"our boy ," package done up in bit
| of old newspaper, and from the fact
that the parcel was greasy, l was sure
| it contained food for our boy. But
who the woman was, was no busine SIS
| of mine, nor of the Office. Clarence
| got 50 a week, and was the errand boy.
When he was not running about the
streets, he sat in the darkest part of the
dingy Office, before ram-shackle table,
on which stood a copying press, for
making copies of our correspondence
was one of his functions.
wish / could make the boy an OBJ
iect of sympathy, but if 1 tried my
very best could not. When it was
bitter cold, some three winters ago, and
our boy had on a miserably thin jacket,
a size too small for him, and when the
snow was knee-deep, and his shoes were
out at heel and toe, / never committed
a greater piece of stupidity in the world
than when lent him my over coat and
arctics. Such rank ingratitude on the
part of the boy Would any one have
believed it? In the side-pocket found
bit of cheese, and of course a grease
spot came from it, and my shoes were
run down at the heel.
OF course I rarely exchanged any
words with our boy. Between the
fourth clerk in our Office and an errand
boy, the gulf of demarkation in the So
cial scale could not be too strongly ac-
centuated. Of course | was forced, from
time to time, to point out to Clarence
his line of duty. and had to explain to
him that tendency to whistle surrep-
titiously in the Office, or even on the
landing, or to wet the leaves of his
copying g-book too much, or to blur the
correspondence, or to put three-cent
stamp on a foreign letter, would newt
ablv end by his becoming forger or a
murderer.
If Clarence had even been good-look-
ing might have expatiated on that. I
am not, L suppose, much of a Judge of
beauty, and suppose that some lads
have curly hair and blue eyes but
Clarence was not so favored. His ewes
were dull and heavy, and in chronic
state of redness, and the hair on his
head always looked to me llh0 miIuew-
ed hay. One thing that was commenda-
BILE was his punctuality as to luncheon.
Exactly at u o'clock, when not running
about, he commenced his repast. His
food was invariably, dry bread and
lump of putty-like cheese. What the
boy ate or did not eat made, of course.
no difference TO me, though the monoto- |
ny of Clarence's midday meal irritated
me. From the zest with which he ate |
it, I was led to suppose that it was
breakfast and dinner. OF course, to a |
growing boy, with plenty of exercise, it |
made little difference how, when, or |
what he ate. am no Spartan myself, |
and a sandwich and piece of pie suffi- |
ces me any day in the year, but must |
to be singular as to pies. |
and vary that portion of my luncheon |
with the season. Ten cents, for fourth |
clerk with an economical turn of mind. |
who despises waste, is sum of |
money not to be carelessly thrown |
away. I knew it wss a weakness of |
mine, when I once gave our bov
the above mentioned amount, and L |
ordered him in the most positive |
terms to lay ont the whole amount in
cakes. Separated as we were from one
another by sheet of ground glass, as I |
used to be busy over my books could |
not help watching the boy, as the shadow |
Of his head often came in my Way, OBJ |
scuring the dim light. 7 sat at exactly
the same table some fifteen years ago. |
and, / suppose, was an annoyance to the !
clerk who used to occupy my present
desk, just as Clarence was to me. Over |
the errand boys table there hangs to-
day, Just as there had, suppose, for
the last fifty years, a colored print of a !
brig, with all sails set. skimming over |
the seas, bound for Funchal, in the |
Madeiras, that port being visible in the |
distance. You can't see the picture very
distinctly now, owing to a storm of dust. !
dirt, and cobwebs which have'obscuredit II |
as long as l can remember. I sometimes |
wondered whether Clarence ever was in |
imagination on the deck of that brio es |
have been a hundred times. when r !
was a boy, careening over the BRIGHT |
seas, and whether the whole thing ever
became to him, as it was to me, a kind
of pictorial flying Dutchman. When 7 |
wanted Clarence / had hardly ever to |
rap on the glass for him. The bow
seemed to anticipate my wishes. and |
would jump up when even moved nv
finger. This alacrity on his part was a |
sign of servility which I despised 7 |
should have liked to have seen myseIf |
when was in that boys place irving to |
be quick aud obiieing. OF course slTs T sd;J ii
my duty thoroughly when ! was orr
boy. IF I was treated then with con-
tempt, perhaps it was best for me and |
as l always had plenty of spirit I re- |
turned exactly what I received. 7 do |
not think have altered much as to tenn
per since was a boy-nor as a clerk do |
1 see the necessity for any CHANGE.
dollars a month, and 7 am |
thirty-fve, with an old mother to keen
after twenty years service in the house |
is not a sum calculated to engender |
much kindly feeling, though I suppose |
it is about as much as am worth
/ had noticed that Clarrnce, generally |
a silent boy, had disposition toward |
with me which was dis |
gusting. I think it was a Mavdav.
some two years since, when looking
through the window Oh Gold street our
boy happened to see some lad or other.
with a baseball bat under his arm
walking gaily along. I think the re.
mark Clarence made was "Wouldn't |
he like to be that boy? It looked 40 |
jolly, and did Mr.. Culpepper Cthat ia
my uame) ever play baseball % 7 of |
course, utterly squslched the bow al
once and for all time, as he fulIv da~
served. Still Clarence would not ra-
main put down. remember once |
when it was raining he offered To yo |
aud bring me my luncheon, rcmarking
GAS it was raining hard, and had no
umbrella, and that | seemed to bo1a =