""Are you--that is, do you play rapidly, and at sight?" asked madam.
"He replied only by a gesture, a sort of pitiful contempt for the ignorance of any person who should ask _him_ such a question....
"Half past seven came, and we went on the stage. I do not know what the fellow"s prelude was; I was otherwise engaged; but his accompaniments were made up, and after he had heard the note sung to which he should have accompanied,--O, it was a horrid jargon, a consecutive blast of discords, a tempest of incomprehensibleness.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ENTHUSIASM.]
"Madam caught her breath at the first pausing-place, and signalled him to stop. He took a side glance at her, misinterpreted her, and played on the louder. It became ludicrous in the extreme. He played the minor strains, or what should have been minor, in the major key. He only stopped when he saw us leave the stage. The audience cheered. He took it all as a compliment to himself as a pianist, stopped, and made his most profound obeisance to the house. They laughed and cheered the harder. He mistook it for an _encore_, bowed again, and returned to the piano. Then the house came down. They stamped, they laughed, they shouted. The boys in the gallery cat-called; the building fairly shook. I ran back to see what it was all about, and there was the pianist (?) beating furiously at the keys, the perspiration pouring in streams from his face. But his playing could only be _seen_ to be appreciated; it could not be heard for the stamping of the audience. He finally desisted, and with repeated halts and smiles, he bowed himself off the stage.
"His grand _debut_ and retirement upon the stage occurred the same night.
Madam would not permit him to go on again, and we sang the duets from ---- without accompaniment. I think the fellow knew nothing of music; he had "cheeked" it right through.
"Perhaps it was two years afterwards--I was staying at the B. Hotel, Maine--when I heard a deal of talk about a great doctor then in town.
After dinner the first day, I noticed a man sauntering leisurely from the dining-hall in embroidered slippers, white silk stockings, black pants, gaudy dressing-gown, with long hair falling down over his shoulders. I thought I recognized that face. I approached him after a while, and called him by name.
""What? Why, I think you are mistaken. I do not know you, sir," he stammered; and then I knew he had recognized me.
""O, yes; I am Dayton. You remember you were our pianist once in a strait, in S."
""O, ah! Come up to my room," he said, leading the way.
"I followed, when he told me he was doing a good thing at the practice of medicine about the princ.i.p.al towns of the state, and begged I would say nothing about his former occupation. He stated to me that he had been to Europe, and had been studying medicine meantime, which I have since ascertained was entirely untrue."
And this was the fellow over whom the town was running wild.
The idea of some men trying to become good physicians is as ridiculously absurd as Horace Greeley"s farming, or trying to ascertain if "cundurango is explosive." The requisite qualities are not in them. They may keep along a few years, or possibly, in communities where there is no compet.i.tion, succeed in making the people believe they are as good as the common run, and thus succeed on bra.s.s instead of brains.
Some of these brainless travelling impostors employ a female or two to precede them from place to place, and make diligent inquiry when the great doctor who performed such marvellous cures in some adjoining town mentioned was coming there. Thus putting it in the shape of an inquiry, it was less likely to excite suspicion.
Two females--one an elderly, lady-like looking woman, the other younger, and anything but lady-like--travelled for a doctor, on a salary, during the summer and autumn of 1868. A lady whose occupation took her from town to town, seeing the two females at various hotels where the doctor was advertised, inveigled the younger one into the confession, in her bad temper, and thus I got my evidence. Another travels on his hair; another on his face; and a fourth on his free advice and treatment; while a fifth succeeds by absurdity of dress.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
XIV.
SCENES FROM EVERY-DAY PRACTICE.
"History, so warm on meaner themes, Is cold on this."--COWPER"S TASK.
"Let no one say that his task is o"er, That bonds of earth are for him no more, Until by some kind or holy deed His name from forgetfulness is freed; Until by words from his lips or pen, Dying, he"s "missed" from the ranks of men."
ALICE LEE.
THE BEGGAR BOY AND THE GOLDEN-HAIRED HEIRESS.--MY MIDNIGHT CALL.--THE CONSCIENCE-STRICKEN MOTHER.--"OLD SEROSITY."--THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD.--DEATH OF THE BEAUTIFUL.--WHO IS THE HEIR?--A TOUCHING SCENE.--FATE OF THE "BEGGAR BOY."--THE TERRIBLE CALLER.--AN IRISH SCENE, FROM DR. DIXON"S BOOK.--BIDDY ON A RAMPAGE.--TERRY ON HIS DEATH BED.--THE STOMACH PUMP.--BIDDY WON"T, AND SHE WILL.--THE BETRAYED AND HER BETRAYER.--"IS THERE A G.o.d IN ISRAEL?"--THE HUSBANDLESS MOTHER.--THE CRISIS AND COURT.--ANSWER.--THERE IS A "G.o.d IN ISRAEL."
Ill-clad poverty, benumbed with cold, was abroad alone, exposed to that winter"s night, as the white snow fleeced the frost-hardened ground. But never mind earth"s cold bosom. The rich man"s heart warms _him_, making him merry, however blows the wind or rages the storm. Shiver, shiver on, beggar poor! Starvation and sense-dulling cold alone belong to you.
Through the crunching snow-drifts trudged a weary boy, with alms-basket on his shivering arm. From his figure, he seemed not over ten years old; but his face was so wan and melancholy, that it was difficult to tell how many year-blights the beggar child had experienced. Summer clothes were still clinging to him; a tattered comforter was the only winter article he wore.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARITY THROWN AWAY.]
A gay carriage rolled noiselessly by, with a beautiful girl within, well wrapped in fur and cloak, whilst the snow was dashed from the rapid wheels like white dust. She saw, through the dim light, the weary, thin-clad boy, as he stopped, with face bent aside to the flake-burdened blast, to gaze at the smoking horses, as they plunged through the fast-deepening sheet.
She dropped the sash, and threw the boy a coin. It sank from her warm hand deep into the drifted snow. It might have brought him bread and a cheering f.a.got, but the smitten child never found it. The snow closed over the coveted prize, while the blast grew keener.
On, on toiled the beggar boy, through drift and darkness, more weary as night gathered on. Thus is it ever with the humble poor; their load grows heavier as life lessens. No light or warming hearth is there--things that make house a home--to welcome the wandering boy.
The clock had just struck two as I was summoned to the house of Mrs. T.
The same carriage that, in the evening, had borne the beautiful young girl, awaited at my door, with its impatient horses snorting against the frosted air. A few minutes later I entered the house. Mrs. T. met me in the hall, with her face deadly pale, and manner much excited. Her singular nervousness had before struck me on my visits, whenever her daughter ailed. She informed me that her "darling Emily" was very ill with a high fever.
We entered the chamber. The young girl lay with her head turned aside upon the pillow, her golden-brown hair scattered in wild profusion upon its white cover, while the nurse was gently moistening the fevered palm of her outstretched hand. The pulse was beating wildly at the wrist and temples, and fever heat glowed from her l.u.s.trous eyes. Whilst the nurse held the light to her face, the traces of dried tears were revealed upon her suffused cheeks.
"Heartache surely is here," I said to myself.
There was something in the whole appearance of my patient that excited my curiosity and surprise. Only eight or ten hours had pa.s.sed since she, from her carriage, had thrown the snow-claimed alms to the beggar boy, and _now_ a high fever was running hot through every artery of her body.
Silently seated by the bedside, after administering a cooling draught I awaited and watched for the changes that might ensue. Her mother sat near the fire, its blaze lighting up every feature of her once beautiful face, which still remained very pale. In all my intercourse with Mrs. T., I never before had so prolonged an opportunity of examining in detail the expression of her countenance. The longer I gazed on her, the more satisfied I became that she had not pa.s.sed through life without a fearful history.
It was this sensation which struck me when I first became acquainted with her. A few vague rumors had floated about relative to her history; that a strange desertion of her husband had taken place, and that he afterwards was found drowned in the river, near his residence, and that by his death Mrs. T. had become possessed of an immense estate. These stories had, however, soon subsided; and as her means were ample, and her charities liberal, the gossips of the town quietly dropped the past, and speculated upon the future, as should all respectable gossips.
The voice of the patient diverted my thoughts; a few words were murmured, and then the lips pressed tremblingly together, and the tear-drops again started to her cheeks. Suddenly springing up in bed, and threading her long, curling hair through her slender fingers, she exclaimed, in a thrilling, delirious tone,--
"It cannot be true! O, mother--tell me, mother!"
Mrs. T. fairly leaped to the bedside, and placing her hand over the daughter"s mouth, with affrighted gestures, she exclaimed,--
"What is it? What does she mean? My G.o.d, doctor, she raves!"
The girl fell back on her pillow; the mother stood, pale and trembling, by the bedside, with a nameless terror depicted on every feature. Turning to me, in a quick, restless voice, she bade me hasten to give her child a quieting draught.
"O, anything that will keep her from raving!"
The room was not over warm for such a bitter night, yet the perspiration stood upon the brow of the excited mother like the fallen dew.
"Conscience must lie here," I thought to myself.
In the course of an hour the sufferer slumbered heavily; her breathing was hurried and oppressed, the fever had increased, and her moanings were constant.
Day was breaking, as I left my young patient to return home through the falling snow. As I looked out of the carriage window, I saw a little boy sitting on the cold walk. It was the poor beggar boy of yesterday, as thinly clad, with his pale cheek as white as the snowdrifts through which he had toiled. I ordered the coachman to stop.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BEGGAR BOY.]
"What brought you out, and where are you going, on this cold winter morning, my poor boy?" I exclaimed.
He raised his beautiful dark eyes to my face, and my heart grieved at their look of utter hopelessness, as he faintly answered, "To beg for me and old grandma."
"Are you not very cold, in those thin clothes?" I asked.