Chapter XV A Kindergarten of One
Keeping away from Callahan’s and from the sinister harvest which was often reaped there, had a depressing effect on my income. For a comparatively long time I lived on a few dollars, which came to me from outstanding loans, now determinedly collected. I learned then that if one keeps away from Callahan’s and places like it, one can subsist on a remarkably small income. As it had been with me, it was always a case of “getting it easy and spending it easy.”
My expenses became the object of much thinking and figuring. So much for room rent, so much for meals, including Bill’s fare, and so much for shaves and incidentals were estimated at the lowest minimum and so as to last the longest until something should turn up. This something did not fail to turn up.
When the funds became dangerously low, I bethought myself of some of my swell friends, who had often evinced a desire to have me “train” them or keep them in condition. These propositions had been so frequent as to make me think that to be rich included being rich in ailments.
Some wanted me to make them thin, others desired more flesh to cover their bones, and they all came to me, I being such an authority on anatomy and physiology!
I communicated with many of these ailing swells and ere long made a fairly good living by my physical culture lessons. There is a heavy cloud on my conscience that on my balance-sheet a score of offenses are recorded against me in connection with the furtherance of my physical culture system. A frank confession is good for the soul, and I might as well confess right here that, only too frequently, I prescribed the identically same course for fat and lean.
This calling of mine was not without humor. I remember a “patient” who was troubled with too much embonpoint. He did not believe in the prescriptions of his physician, but rather preferred the physical culture system of “Professor” Kildare. He was a man of much weight in public affairs and in flesh. About 250 pounds in the flesh, if I remember right.
He lived in the immediate neighborhood of Madison Square, and for a long succession of many mornings a select audience, including several news-boys, a few policemen and myself, had the edifying spectacle of seeing these 250 absolutely-refusing-to-melt pounds chase around the square like mad at 5 A.M.
I do not think it did him very much harm and it did the audience an awful lot of good, if you will take laughter as an indication of increasing health.
No fear of want or need threatening me, I gave myself completely up to peeping into the better life. I fairly revelled in my new experience, and dreams by day and night were my only territory.
A few weeks of this and then a crisis came.
We had reached her house from our customary walk from the school. I had taken leave and had already taken a few steps, when she called me back.
“Mr. Kildare, I forgot something.”
I was quickly back to the door waiting to hear what she had forgotten.
She took a small card from her bag and handed it to me.
“Mr. Kildare, you have been very kind and considerate and I would like to show you that I appreciate it. I am afraid you will find it rather tame, but I hope you will come.”
I twirled the card between my fingers and without looking at it asked: “What is it?”
“Why, just a little social entertainment of our church.”
“When and where does it take place?” I still kept on asking.
“I am not quite sure as to the date, but the card will tell you.”
As it was said, I could do no less than refer to the card. Whether I held the card upside down or what I did, I do not know, but my secret was out and nothing could hide it any longer.
There I stood, to all appearances a man, intelligent and able-bodied, and not able to cipher or decipher even my own name.
I felt all go away from me. My fairy palace of bliss crumbled to pieces. What else could I do but slink away, to hide myself, my ignorance, my shame forever?
Why prolong the agony of this torturing moment?
I turned quickly without a word, intending to return to the dark “whence” from which I had come.
But before I had taken a step a little hand grasped my arm, and then and there took up its faithful guidance of me, and every fibre of my big, ungainly frame thrilled at this waking of the better life.
The memory of the following months—yes, years—but for the tingeing sadness would be a bit of most laughable humor.
The work of my little schoolma’am became doubled. Besides her class at school she saddled herself with this unwieldy, husky kindergarten of one. I know many youngsters—God bless them!—who like their school and studies, but they were not in it with me in the drilling of my A, B, C’s. Never was the alphabet more quickly mastered. In a surprisingly short time “c-a-t, cat,” and “r-a-t, rat,” were spelled by me with the facility of a primary scholar.
Who would not have learned quickly with such a teacher?
My good old Bill did not fail to note this educational process and was sorely puzzled at it.
Our attic became a study; the washstand a student’s desk, with a big, ungainly head bent close to a smoking oil lamp.
How I pored over my private lessons!
The pen in cramped fingers would trace those tantalizing letters, while the lips gruffly murmured the spelling. Naturally, arithmetic was also included in my curriculum, and often Bill had flung at him the maddening puzzle: “Seven into thirty-five goes how many times—yes, how many times?”
Bill always sat beside me during my studies and blinked a hundred questions at me.
“Say, Kil, what are you up to now? I am afraid it is some new sort of tomfoolery. If not, why can’t I do it, too?”
I often answered and explained, but the situation was not fully grasped by my old pal until he met my teacher. And then? Why the rocks, the hillsides, trees and birds and flowers were all responsive to that little sprite, and Bill, in just one glance, saw that the fairy of our destinies had but begun her miracle of love.
But even dolls can be made to talk and parrots can imitate empty chatter. My teacher wanted me to have the means to lift myself out of my ditch. The little sculptor who was moulding this huge mass of the commonest clay into the semblance of a man wanted to waken that in me which would make me something apart from the thing I had been. Coming out of blackest darkness I was not led at once into the radius of the dazzling light, but, as with the tots in her class at school, she coached me, step by step, into the way of righteous intelligence.
Gradually I began to see—to see with the eyes of my soul—and I found a great world about me abounding in the evidences of an almighty and wise Creator. I began to understand and love this newer and better life, and began to hate the old life, which often tried to tempt me back to it.
Our lessons were carried on with much inconvenience and difficulty. The distance from school to home was little more than ten blocks, and during the time it took us to walk that length I had to report my lesson and to receive instructions for additional study. The inconvenience of this method was not at all conducive to learning, and one day I was asked by my teacher to come to her house to receive my lesson there.
I could hardly believe mine own ears. I was to see the very place in which she lived. It was beyond belief. Was it not a sacrifice on her part? Indeed it was, and I can never sufficiently emphasize the many sacrifices this sweet little girl underwent for me from the beginning to the very end.
Let us understand her position.
Marie Deering was the sole support of her mother and a young invalid brother. Besides these two she had only one other relative, an elder brother in a far western city. The father, a retired captain of engineers in the British army, had come to America to dispose of several inventions. Whatever the value of these inventions, the captain knew little of the ways of business and commerce, and soon found himself minus his inventions and balance of his savings. Disappointment and failing health combined to shorten his days, and the little family found themselves fatherless.
The burden to provide fell then on the shoulders of the daughter, and that, as all her other burdens, was borne with a fortitude worthy of a saint in heaven.
It goes without saying that the Deerings were refined people, and you can imagine what it meant to them to have a big, uncouth fellow intrude into their home circle. I shall never forget the horror-stricken countenance of Mrs. Deering when I appeared for my first lesson. It needed no interpreter to read the question in her eyes: “For goodness’ sake, where did this come from, and what is it?”
But I immediately found a dear little ally in my teacher’s invalid brother, who quickly discovered me a willing horse for many a wild and hazardous canter from kitchen to parlor.
This first glance into real home life fairly upset me. Since then I have seen many more luxurious places, but none where my heart felt so much at home. I noticed everything—the neatness, the taste of the modest decorations—and I set my teeth and said: “I, too, will have a home, a real home, and, perhaps, not only for myself, but——”
Ah, it was too early to dream that far.
To dream of things will never bring them. People who had known me had always given me credit for stubborn determination in wicked pursuits. I resolved to test the strength of my determination by applying it to a better end.
As soon as my mentor ascertained that my income came from practising my uniform system of physical culture, of which the only beneficiary was the inventor and professor, she counselled against it and told me to cease it.
This brought me face to face with my most novel experience. I looked for work—good, honest, hard work.
My luck surprised me.
Only a few months had passed since the beginning of my transformation, but it had been noticed by men whom I had thought indifferent to my fate.
I can say, with all the conviction possible, that, if a man determines without compromise to do right, he will find friends, all willing to help along, among those he had expected to be nothing more than mere acquaintances. And another thing. I also claim—and it has never disproven itself to me—that the man who really wants to work can always find it, friends or no friends. The rub is that “suitable” work cannot always be found so easily. It is this lack of “suitable” work which sends men to Bowery lodging-houses, there to keep themselves in high collars and cuffs by begging instead of soiling their tender hands by the first work offered to them.
I started out to do my hustling turn and had no trouble in finding work. Happily it was of the—to me—“suitable” kind.
I went to work at one of the steamboat piers as a baggageman—sometimes lovingly referred to as a “baggage-smasher.” The wages were eight dollars a week, and that was a smaller amount than I had often “earned” in one night while employed in the dives.
On my first pay day, those eight dollars were recounted by me innumerable times, not because I was dissatisfied with the smallness of the amount, but because I felt good, really good, at having at length earned a week’s wages by honest toil. Every one of those bills had its own meaning for me.
My teacher knew of my new employment, and, with my first pay I bought a little gift for her. It also gave me a pretext for explaining to her my future plans.
Much of her time had been taken up with me, and I owed all of my new life to her endeavor. Persistently she claimed that all her efforts were only a small return for the favor done for her by me, and that, besides, it was her duty to help me to gain a foothold on my new road of life. This argument failed to convince me, as my favor amounted to nothing, and I understood without difficulty that all the benefit I received from her unceasing toil with me was inspired by nothing else than the sweet, Christian spirit which ruled every one of her actions. I insisted that it would have been an imposition for me to be a trouble and bother to her any longer, especially when I had steady employment, which afforded me the time and means to attend evening schools and to study at home in spare hours. I wanted to thank her, and not be quite so conspicuous where, because of social differences, I felt I did not belong.
I mentioned something about coming from the gutter. As always, she had an answer, and a flattering one, ready. As to coming from the gutter, she expostulated, why, many a coin is dropped there and remains until some one picks it up and, by a little polishing, makes it as good as it ever was.
It was just like her. She always claimed to have found in me something good, something I could never have discovered. On the other hand, as soon as we resumed the lessons, she found that quite often her pupil could be severely trying.
It was the harrowing science of arithmetic which caused the most trouble, and even to this day—but that is a different story. I had a confirmed habit of becoming hopelessly muddled in my multiplication table. When floundering in the numerical labyrinth I would hear just the faintest little sigh, and, looking up, would see a dear little forehead showing the most cunning wrinkles of resignation. It was then that horrid wickedness would take possession of me, and I would intentionally make more mistakes just to see those eyes reproach me for my stupidity. I would also make errors in my spelling and reading to have the pleasure of being chided in her modulated voice.
My course of education had now run on for months and the beginning of winter gave us the chance to elaborate it. The free lectures of the Board of Education were a boon quickly taken advantage of by us. Almost every night we went to Cooper Union or some public school where an interesting lecture was announced. To be sure I was not at first a howling success as an attendant. I could stand the illustrated lectures, but astronomy and political economy without pictures always produced the lullaby effect on me, and I was often on the verge of snoring. All this disappointed my professor, but did not discourage her.
Summer came and my knowledge of botany was destined to be enriched. Strange are the paradoxes of fate. No class loves flowers as much as the poor, and no class has less of them than they. Ah, it is pitiful, I tell you, to wander through the streets inhabited by my people, and to see never a patch of green, a fragrant oasis, in this stretch of barren, joyless materialism. There is no time there for flowers, where even the cabbages in front of the dingy grocery stores look withered and seared, and where there is no other watchword than, “Work, work, or we will be homeless and starving.” That one thought rules the brains of my fellows with an iron grasp. With the close of their daily toil their day’s worry is not over. Listen to the talks on the stoops and in the doorways of the tenements and you will be the witness of much fretting. Often all this mind’s botheration is not necessary. There is no actual want, no threatening danger of it. Yet, the poor find a gruesome pleasure in dwelling in the midst of their horrors, and the roll of their organ of misery churns along on an endless chain.
And I believe that this is so because the child life of the East Side is dwarfed and deprived of all that is dear to a child’s natural desires. Every year brings improvements. Men and women with hearts of gold are working like Trojans among the children of the poor, and the harder they work the more are they appreciated by their charges. I cannot rid myself of the opinion that in the aiding of the children lies the only solution of our social troubles. Teach them to be natural—a difficult feat, to swing themselves above their level in intellect and not by imitating the modes and fashions of the idle rich in the shoddy fabrics offered to them by unscrupulous dealers, and we will have advanced miles nearer to the goal which is desired by all who love their fellow men, not with mushy sentiment, but with intelligence.
Still, in spite of all that is done, the yearning look in the eyes of the children is still there, and I would not care to have the heart of the man who can see the unspoken wish in the childish gaze when beholding a flower, no matter how scraggy, and then laugh at it as at a freak of humor.
My acquaintance with the denizens of the kingdom of flowers was exceedingly limited. My teacher had noticed this and forthwith set to work to remedy this other defect in my education.
As early as May did we begin our out-of-door course. We did it by means of excursions. I did not care to have this arrangement all one-sided and we agreed to change off in the management of our personally conducted tours. We both had to work during the week and could only indulge in our excursions on Sundays. So, on one outing she would be the supreme director and dictator; I, on the next.
Candor compels me to confess that my outings always led us dangerously near to Coney Island, if not quite to it, yet, people can enjoy themselves even there, for it is the same old ocean, and the same sea air there as elsewhere, and it only lies with the visitor how to spend the holiday.
On her Sundays I was always kept in the dark as to our destination until we reached it. It invariably proved to be some quiet country place, with nooks and brooks and all the charming props which set the stage of nature with tranquil loveliness. After depositing the luncheon in some shady spot, the professor would trip from flower to flower, from tree to tree, and deliver little sermons on birds, flowers and minerals. There is no schoolroom like God’s own nature, and in a way which I cannot describe to you, I learned that there was a life abounding in purity, in the understanding of things, and based in the wisdom of a wise Father. Step by step my faithful teacher led me on, until there was no doubt travailing me, until I could stand in street, or field, or forest, and feel my soul, my own undying soul.
There never were other days like these and, surely, there never will be again.
We had then known one another for a long time. I had become capable of reasoning, and had grave cause for doing so. Was it all for the best? Will it surprise you to know that constant companionship with my mentor had awakened in me thoughts very foreign to grammar and arithmetic?
I loved her. I knew it, but I also felt that that love was doomed to be buried unsatisfied. A cat may look at a queen, but that is about all a cat may presume to do.
That is what my reason told me, but in my heart there echoed a stirring hymn of fondest hope. It would not let me rest, and I became a pestering nuisance to my teacher. Many times daily would I ask her the questions, “Why, why do you undergo this ceaseless labor—why do you set yourself this gigantic task of making of me a man?”
As in all other matters, I was rough and uncouth in my annoying questioning, and an answer to it was long refused. But my bulldog tenacity came to my aid and I would not let go. Determination will overcome a good many things, and surely a little school teacher. I need not tell you how it happened—you either know, or will know it yourself—but one day we understood the question and the answer.
Then life for us became a blessed thing indeed. For the first time in my life I was supremely happy. I cannot tell you how my little girl felt, but can give a very strong guess at it, for my sweetheart never wavered, never failed me, and was my very own until the very last.
My Mamie Rose, my bride, my dearest friend, my all.
It took me a long time to fully grasp that she had really said “Yes,” to the ever-important question, but, as soon as I was quite sure of it, I assumed the grand airs of proprietorship new swains usually assume.
First of all I exerted my prerogative of calling her by her first name.
Although long under her tutelage and exposed to her refining influence, I was by no means, very polished, and still harbored many prejudices against customs and usages not common to the social shift from which I had sprung. The nomenclature of my people is very limited. Only a very small choice of male and female baptismal names is resorted to by tenement house folk. John, James, Michael, Patrick, Henry, George, Charles are the most used male names; Maggie, Sadie, Susie, Lizzie, Nellie and Mamie are the favorite female names, or, at least, the favorite abbreviations of the names.
The name, Marie R. Deering, sounded a trifle too fashionable, too “toney,” to me, and I proceeded to acclimatize it.
“Mamie” is the abbreviation or substitute for “Marie,” so my little girl was immediately dubbed “Mamie.”
The “R.”—the initial of her middle name, stood for Rosetta, and it was decidedly against the code of ethics of the Fourth Ward for any one to be burdened by such an enormity. Again I officiated at the imaginary baptismal font, and “Rosetta” became a plain “Rose,” sweet to me as no other.
Let no one think for a moment that my changing of names was accomplished without opposition. Besides other things, little people also possess the virtue of stubbornness, and many were the arguments pro and con. I was told with most charming emphasis that I could shout “Mamie Rose” to the winds, but that she, Marie R. Deering, would never—no, never—answer to that name. But, you know the old saying about many little drops of water penetrating the surface of the hardest stone, and the same was true in this case. Also, it should not be forgotten that she, my Mamie Rose, was of English descent, I was of Irish stock, and it is in Ireland where the Blarney stone is, which same instils a wonderful magic in the love-making of every descendant of good Erin’s folk.
We had barely sealed the compact of our love when I received a fearful shock. My Mamie Rose wanted me to inform her mother concerning what had happened.
Mrs. Deering and myself had become very good friends. On several occasions she had even been my fellow-conspirator, by helping me to solve some weird puzzles in multiplication, imposed on me by her daughter. I had often sat at her table and had spent many hours, made pleasant by her, in the cosy home. However, all this did not seem sufficient to screw my courage up to the required pitch. Many particularly ticklish situations in my past life had been met by me without flinching, but I actually trembled when I was obliged to face this sweet lady with my portentous information and request.
If I had trembled with fear before telling her, I trembled with joy after it.
I could hardly believe my senses when I did not hear one word of regret or reproach from her lips. And when she said quietly, and, therefore, most impressively: “I have no fear for Marie’s future,” I became her bonded slave right on the spot, and hold myself in bondage to her to this very day.
Richard, my brave, crippled Dick—my “other” pal—was most effusive in his congratulations, but, he admitted to me his was a selfish reason, for now I was his big brother in “dead earnest.”
Naturally, all this gave me an increased impetus to earn more money, and I put so much zeal into my work that my wages were several times increased. Nevertheless, I was still nothing more or less than a “baggage smasher.” However, all of it, courtship and the rest, was so entirely out of the ordinary that a little thing like this did not cause us any worry. And if one happens to be a “baggage-smasher,” it does not follow that one must always remain one. Besides, the queen did not mind it, and as to the cat, well—there is no use in talking to you if you cannot imagine what the cat thought about it.