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 seemingly 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 queens-ware 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 one fish-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.
