The day pa.s.sed in fruitless inquiry. Now and then he seemed on the point of succeeding, but only disappointment resulted. There were at that season of the year few situations offering where a salary sufficient for maintenance was paid, and for these skilled laborers were required. Dennis possessed no training for any one calling save perhaps that of teacher. He had merely the fragment of a good general education, tending toward one of the learned professions. He had fine abilities, and undoubtedly would in time have stood high as a lawyer.
But now that he was suddenly called upon to provide bread for himself and those he loved, there was not a single thing of which he could say, "I understand this, sir, and can give you satisfaction."
He knew that if he could get a chance at almost anything, he could soon learn enough to make himself more useful than the majority employed, for few had his will and motive to work. But the point was to find some one who would pay sufficient for his own and his mother"s support while he learned.
It is under just such circ.u.mstances that so many men, and especially women, make shipwreck. Thrown suddenly upon their own resources, they bring to the great labor-market of the world general intelligence, and also general ignorance. With a smattering of almost everything, they do not know practically how to do _one thing well_. Skilled hands, though backed by neither heart nor brains, push them aside. Take the young men or the young women of any well-to-do town or village, and make them suddenly dependent upon their own efforts, and how many could compete in any one thing with those already engaged in supplying the market? And yet just such helpless young creatures are every day compelled to shift for themselves. If to these unfortunates the paths of honest industry seem hedged and th.o.r.n.y, not so those of sin. They are easy enough at first, if any little difficulty with conscience can be overcome; and the devil, and fallen humanity doing his work, stand ready to push the wavering into them.
At the close of the next day, spent in weary search, Dennis met a temptation to which many would have yielded. As a last resort he had been going around among the hotels, willing to take even the situation of porter, if nothing better offered. The day was fast closing, when, worn out and dejected, he entered a first-cla.s.s house, and made his usual inquiry. The proprietor looked at him for a moment, slapped him on the back, and said: "Yes, you are the man I want, I reckon. Do you drink? No! might have known that from your face. Don"t want a man that drinks for this place. Come along with me, then. Will give you two and a half a day if you suit, and pay you every night. I pay my help promptly; they ain"t near so apt to steal from you then."
And the man hurried away, followed by Dennis with beating heart and flushed, wondering face. Descending a flight of stairs, they entered a brilliantly lighted bas.e.m.e.nt, which was nothing less than a large, elegantly arranged bar-*room, with card and lunch-tables, and easy-chairs for the guests to smoke and tipple in at their leisure.
All along one side of this room, resplendent with cut gla.s.s and polished silver, ran the bar. The light fell warm and mellow on the various kinds of liquor, that were so arranged as to be most tempting to the thirsty souls frequenting the place.
Stepping up to the bulky man behind the bar the landlord said: "There, Mr. Swig, is a young man who will fill capitally the place of the chap we dismissed to-day for getting tight. You may bet your life from his face that he don"t drink. You can break him in in a few days, and you won"t want a better a.s.sistant."
For a moment a desperate wish pa.s.sed through Dennis"s mind, "Oh, that wrong were right!" Then, indignant with himself, he spoke up, firmly--"I think I have a word to say in this matter."
"Well, say on, then; what"s the trouble?"
"I cannot do this kind of work."
"You will find plenty harder."
"None harder for one believing as I do. I will starve before I will do this work."
The man stared at him for a moment, and then coolly replied, "Starve then!" and turned on his heel and walked away.
Dennis also rushed from the place, followed by the coa.r.s.e, jeering laugh of those who witnessed the scene. In his morbid, suffering state their voices seemed those of mocking demons.
The night had now fallen. He was too tired and discouraged to look any further. Wearily he plodded up the street, facing the bitter blast filled with snow that had begun to fall.
This then was the verdict of the world--"Starve!" This was the only prospect it offered--that same brave world which had so smilingly beckoned him on to great achievements and unbounded success but a few days since--"Starve!" Every blast that swept around the corners howled in his ears, "Starve!" Every warmly clad person hurrying unheedingly by seemed to say by his indifference, "Starve! who cares? there is no place for you, nothing for you to do."
The hard, stern resolution of the past few days, not to yield an inch, to persist in hewing his way through every difficulty, began to flag.
His very soul seemed crushed within him. Even upon the threshold of his life, in his strong, joyous youth, the world had become to him what it literally was that night, a cold, wintry, stormy place, with a black, lowering sky and hard, frozen earth.
His father"s old temptation recurred to him with sudden and great power. "Perhaps father was right," he mused. "G.o.d was against him, and is also against me, his son. Does He not visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation? Not but that He will save us at last, if we ask Him, but there seems some great wrong that must be severely punished here. Or else if G.o.d does not care much about our present life, thinking only of the hereafter, there must be some blind fate or luck that crushes some and lifts up others."
Thus Dennis, too sad and morbid to take a just view of anything, plodded on till he reached his boarding-place, and stealing in as if he had no business to be there, or anywhere else, sat down in a dusky corner behind the stove, and was soon lost to surrounding life in his own miserable thoughts.
CHAPTER VII
A GOOD SAMARITAN
Dennis was too good a Christian, and had received too deep a lesson in his father"s case, to become bitter, angry, and defiant, even if he had believed that G.o.d was against him. He would have felt that it was simply his duty to submit--to endure patiently. Somehow Until to-day his heart had refused to believe that G.o.d could be against any of His creatures. In fact, it was his general impression that G.o.d had everything to do with his being a good Christian, but very little with his getting a good place. The defect in his religion, and that of his mother, too, was that both separated the spiritual life of the soul too widely from the present life with its material, yet essential, cares and needs. At this point they, like mult.i.tudes of others, fell short of their full privilege, and enjoyment of G.o.d"s goodness. His mother had cheered and sustained her hard lot by hopes and visions of the better life beyond--by antic.i.p.ating joys to come. She had never fully learned how G.o.d"s love, like the sunlight, could shine upon and brighten the th.o.r.n.y, rocky way, and cause the thorns to blossom, and delicate fragrant flowers to grow in the crevices and bloom in shaded nooks among the sharp stones. She must wait for her consolation. She must look out of her darkness to the light that shone through the portals of the tomb, forgetting that G.o.d caused His servants to sing at midnight, in the inner prison, the deepest dungeon, though scourged and bleeding.
Unconsciously her son had imbibed the same ideas.
Most devoutly he asked every day to be kept from sin, that he might grow in the Christian life; but he did not ask or expect, save in a vague, general way, that help which a wise, good, earthly father would give to a young, inexperienced child, struggling with the hard, practical difficulties of this world. As the days grew darker and more full of disappointment, he had asked with increasing earnestness that he might be kept from sin--from falling before the many and peculiar temptations that a.s.sailed him; and we have seen how G.o.d answered his prayer, and kept him where so many would have fallen. But G.o.d meant to show him that His goodness extended further than he thought, and that He cared for His children"s well-being now as truly as in the hereafter, when He gathered them home into His immediate presence. But Dennis could not see this now. As far as he thought at all on the subject, he had the vague feeling that G.o.d was either trying his faith or meting out some righteous judgment, and he must do the best he could, and only see to it that he did not sin and give way morally.
Yet, in the thick night of his earthly prospects, Dennis still loved and trusted G.o.d. He reasoned justly, that if at last brought to such a place as heaven, no matter what he suffered here, he had only cause for unbounded grat.i.tude. And he felt sure that all would be right in the end, but now feared that his life would be like his father"s, a tissue of disappointments, and that he, an unsuccessful voyager, storm-tossed and shipwrecked, would be thrown upon the heavenly sh.o.r.e by some dark-crested billow of misfortune.
Thus Dennis sat lost in gloomy musings, but too wearied in mind and body to follow any line of thought long. A few stern facts kept looming up before him, like rocks on which a ship is drifting. He had less than a dollar in his pocket. It was Friday night. If he did not get anything to do on Sat.u.r.day, how was he going to live through Sunday and the days that followed? Then his dependent mother and sisters rose up before him. They seemed to his morbid fancy hungry and cold, and their famine-pinched faces full of reproach. His head bowed lower, and he became the very picture of dejection.
He was startled by a big, hearty voice at his side, exclaiming: "What makes yer so down in the mouth? Come, take a drink, and cheer up!"
Raising his eyes, he saw a round, red face, like a harvest moon, shining full upon him. It was somewhat kindly in its expression, in keeping with the words. Rough as was the courtesy, it went straight to the lonely, discouraged heart of the young man, and with moistened eyes he said, "I thank you for speaking to me in a tone that has a little human touch in it, for the last man that spoke to me left an echo in my ear that I would gladly get out of it."
"Bad luck to him, then! Give us yer hand; there!" with a grip like a vise. "Bill Cronk never went back on a man he took to. I tell yer what, stranger," said he, becoming confidential, "when I saw yer glowering and blinking here in the corner as if yer was listening to yer own funeral sermon, I be ---- if I could take a comfortable drink. Come, now, take a good swig of old rye, and see how things will mellow up."
Our good Samaritan in this case was a very profane and disreputable one, as many are in this medley world. He had a great, kindly nature, that was crawling and grovelling in all sorts of low, unseemly places, instead of growing straight up toward heaven.
"I hope you will think me none the less friendly if I decline," said Dennis. "I would drink with you as quick as with any man living, but it is a thing I never do."
"Oh, you"re temperance, are yer? Well, I don"t think none the wuss of yer for standing by yer colors. Between us, it would be better for me if I was a little more so. Hang it all! I take a drop too much now and then. But what is a fellow to do, roughing it up and down the world like me? I should often get lonely and mope in the corner as you did, if I didn"t get up steam. When I am down in the mouth I take a drink to "liven me up, and when I feel good I take a drink to make me feel better. When I wouldn"t take a drink on my own hook, I meet somebody that I"d ought to drink with. It is astonishing how many occasions there are to drink, "specially when a man"s travelling, like me."
"No fear but what the devil will make occasions enough," said Dennis.
"What has the devil got to do with it?" asked the man, gruffly.
Just then the miserable wretch entered who, appearing opportunely in Gavin"s Hotel, had cured Dennis of his desire to drink, when weary and despondent, for the sake of the effects. For a moment they looked at the blear-eyed, trembling wreck of a man, and then Dennis asked, "Had G.o.d any hand in making that man what he is?"
"I should say not," said Bill Cronk, emphatically.
"Well, I should say the devil had," said Dennis; "and there behind the bar are the means used--the best tool he has, it seems to me; for with it he gets hold of men with some heart and soul in them, like you."
The man winced under the words that both conscience and experience told him were true; at the same time he was propitiated by Dennis"s good opinion of him. He gave a big, good-natured laugh, slapped Dennis on the shoulder, and said: "Wal, stranger, p"raps you"re right. "Tain"t every temperance lecturer though that has an awful example come in just at the right time so slick. But you"ve stood by yer colors, and we won"t quarrel. Tell us, now, if it ain"t private, what you"re so chopfallen about."
Dennis told his story, as grateful for this rough sympathy as a thirsty traveller would be in finding a spring though surrounded by thorns and rocks.
The round, jolly face actually grew long and serious through interest in the young man"s tribulations.
After scratching a s.h.a.ggy but practical head for a few moments, Bill spoke as follows:
"Seems to me the case is just this: here you are, a young blooded colt, not broken to either saddle or thills--here you are whinnying around a market where they want nothing but dray-hosses. People look shy at you--usually do at a strange hoss. Few know good p"ints when they see "em. When they find you ain"t broke in to nothin", they want you to work for nothin". I see how you can"t do this. And yet fodder is runnin"
short, and you must do somethin"."
Bill, having dealt in live-stock all his life, naturally clothed his thoughts in language drawn from familiar objects, and Dennis, miserable as he was, half smiled at the close parallel run between him and a young, useless colt; but he only said, "I don"t think there is a cart-horse in all Chicago that feels more broken down and dispirited than I do to-night."
"That may all be, too," said Bill; "but you"d feel a little oats mighty quick, and a cart-hoss wouldn"t. But I know the p"ints, whether it"s a man or a hoss; you"d take kindly to work of the right sort, and it would pay any one to take you at yer own terms, but you can"t make "em see it. If I was in a situation to take you, I"d do it in a minute.
Hang it all! I can"t do much for you, either. I took a drop too much in Cleveland t"other night, and some of the folks in the house looked over my pocket-book and left me just enough to get home with."
Dennis shook his head reproachfully and was about to speak.
"I know what you"re going to say," said Bill, heading off another temperance lecture. "I"ll take a drink by and by, and think over what you"ve said, for I can"t think much until I get a little steam up. But now we must try and see some way out of the fog for you;" and again in absence of the wonted steam he scratched the s.h.a.ggy head vigorously.