The Kimball graphic. (Kimball, Brule County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1905, 1886-10-22
LITTLE Tim.

but many gifts we're thrust upon him
sneers, snares, neglect and severance
from the luckier born-and these seemed
fatal. 1t may be through a law and love
insoluble to us it proved not so; that to
the Great Fathers heart the stains, and
wrongs, and sorrows thrust upon the
boy, as to an earthly parents, made
him but the dearer; but measured in
the cold, hard, human way, his fate was
sorrowful, indeed.
The region where he first took up
the burden was a low one, a sunken,
noisome quarter, the foul and squalid
accretion OF many sad conditions
Here day of fiat, low skies, and Sob
bing quarrelsome winds, that ended by
wet fog driving in upon the great
city and settling upon the filthy quarter
like death-cloth, had filled the neigh
borhood with unusual gloom. Tho
spirit of insanity, the promptings to
crime and abandon. always exhaled by
such diseased, unhappy surroundings,
seemed to increase and multiply with
the oppressive darkness. In at the
doorways of the low, haf-lit saloons
the steaming, pitiable populace jostled
and crowded; from the thick, throat
clogging medium that filled the reek-
ing. slippery streets, to the tongue
scalding, brain-maddening potions of
the bar; from distempered elements
without aud within to mental ruin and
forgetfulness.
In one of these haunts of evil place
of shame, of villianous music and dan
cling, were negroes, Poles, Italians, and
men and women, drunk and ruined,
from Heaven knows what other quarter
of the compass. What animalism!
What faces! What swallowing of fire!
BY midnight the back room was
numbing whirlpool of delirious feeling;
heat. sweat, rags, liquor, profanity, the
beat and shuttle of feet, cries, and maud
lin laughter. Look at the roads along
which these lives had come! threads
running from under this lecherous roof
to every quarter of the globe! to cradles
over the sea, to mother bosoms north
and south, east apd west!
Did God, seeing It all, grieve that life
had been made thing so capable of
i'll? or was the fault, somehow, So
ciety's?
At three o'clock in the morning they
began to fight. In many the chords Of
sensation seemed eaten too raw for
further pleasure. Then some one was
struck down, and the reeling, half-blind
concourse seemed suddenly full of til
gers. Men sprang upon each other;
two were killed, and woman dividing
the polluted atm mosphere with shrieks,
was thrown. jumped upon, kicked, and
dragged into q dark side-room for dead.
Then, when too late, the Law stepped
in, the place was cleared, and the un-
discovered woman, drunk and battered
with the coming of the dawn, yielded
little Tim to the world, and her own de-
bauched spirit to the mystery of death.
OF such stuff are some realities! Out
of such elements was fashioned little
Tim!
1t seems well-nigh pity, into what
shadow soever the mother had gone,
that he had not followed her. But he
lived; drunken negress saved him
from death to lose him to sadder fate.
Into nest of evil even more hateful
than that wherein he saw his first glim-
mering. doubtful dawn, she carried
him, and all his earlier years were pass
ed in gathering rags and bones in
stealing. and being kicked, and cuffed,
and beaten. Somehow his spine was
weakened; know not if from that first
dreadful hour, or by blows given after
ward by those who used him much as
one might the boot toe to drive into and
loosen garbage with. One could not
easily have told how old he was, if the
number of his years were eight OF
twelve, so cowed and deformed a spirit
looked out of his blighted face. The
yellow and green of putrid pools and
cutters seemed settled in his skin, leav.
ing it pallid olive, and his blue eyes
had cring,ng, frightened, furtive
look.
Away at one side of the roaring city
and in a leprous hovel at the rivers
edge, was where the first year wen
over him, merciless, crushing, slow
moving in their passage. Often he
turned sick when digging in the sim
mering slime, and all his base sur
roundings swan before him; by times hi
tainted in his loathing and weakness. arc
was carried home and burned back tt
life again with fiery liquor. The negres
held his poor life as in wise, and he
home was place of cursing, of theft
of fighting, and drunkenness. Th'
child, like weak worm under foot
used to fight for his life, only to be tn
harder cursed. Oh!it was pitiful! Ye
here were thousands more no better oi
than he; some worse; and there be
;. yond in the beautiful city were othe
) thousands, clothed silkenly, fed richly
and bearing no heavier burden thai
r time and, perhaps, too much of hapri
ness! Down into which region wer
/ the mournful eyes of the plying Chris
: turned most often, think you?
e But little Tim could not go on ur
changed; mutation, which makes an
J. unmakes, but yet is natures savior
opened at last little fissure in his life
t. gave him one fatal glimpse of swee
and grateful light, then shut him OF
in the darkness.
{, He was ten years old then, yet frol
! la.a.na.n a.d hin fenAa.. .,nnALnxtn ns