The Man. A Story of To-day

THREE OPEN LETTERS

To Martha Heath,

Friend: – You said that someone would surely print it, and I write you this to say that after four publishers had most politely rejected the manuscript, the fifth has written me saying the story does not amount to much; in fact, that I have no literary style, but as the book is so out of the general run they concluded to accept it. They sent me a check for $300.00 which they say is a bonus, and after the first 5,000 copies are sold they propose to pay me a royalty. So you see even if I have lost my place at Hustler’s, I am not destitute, so I will not accept your offer of a loan. You and Grimes (dear old Grimes) are the only persons in all this great city who have stood by me in my trouble. If you had presented me with a box of candy I would thank you, but for all the kindness I have received, prompted by your outspoken and generous nature, I offer not a single word. Words, in times like these, to such as you, are of small avail, my heart speaks. You say you dislike awfully to see those last five chapters in print, and so will I, my dear. Little did we think when I began this book that the story would have such an ending; but, Martha, I am not writing a pretty novel, but simple truth just as the facts occurred. I offer no excuse nor apology, but will simply give you this from Charles Kingsley’s “Alton Locke:”

Scene: A street corner in London, on one hand a gin palace, opposite a pawn shop – those two monsters who feed on the vitals of the poor – all about is abject wretchedness.

Locke stops, sighs and says, “Oh, this is so very unpoetic.” Sandy Mackaye replies, “What, man, no poetry here! Why, what is poetry but chapters lifted from the drama of life, and what is the drama if not the battle between man and circumstance, and shall not man eventually conquer? I will show you too in many a garret where no eye but that of the good God enters, the patience, the fortitude, the self-sacrifice and the love stronger than death, all flourishing while oppression and stupid ignorance are clawing at the door!”

But right will conquer, dearest, and the goodness that has never been weighed in the balances, nor tried in the fire, how do you know it is goodness at all? It may only be namby-pamby – wishy-washy – goody-goody, who knows? We are all in God’s hand, sister, and the bad is the stuff sent, on which to try our steel.

To Pygmalion Woodbur, Esq., Attorney-at-Law.

Sir: – I have received your letter warning me that if I use your name in a certain book of local history (said book entitled The Man) that you will cause my arrest for malicious libel, and also sue me for damages. To this I can only say that the book is now in the hands of the electrotypers, and I am not inclined to change a line in it, on your suggestion, even if I could. Please believe me, when I say, that I bear you no ill-will and have no desire to injure you or place you in a wrong light before the public, what I have written being but truth penned without exaggeration or coloring. I make no apology or excuse. What I have written I have written.

To John Bilkson, of Hustler & Co.,

Sir: – Your registered letter of June 30th, received, wherein you state that you have no further use for my services, and that whereas you generally give an employee a letter of recommendation when you discharge them, yet in my case you cannot do so.

Although I have made no request for such recommendation, I regret your conscience will not allow you to supply it.

You remember the scene of five years ago in your office? No one knows a word of this, and never will, unless you tell it (which I hardly think you care to do). You swore then you would get even with me – is your vengeance now satisfied?

I have no malice toward you – I cannot afford to have against anyone – although I must say that your action in deducting from my wages the price of one set of false teeth purchased from Dr. Poole is not exactly right. You know, Mr. Bilkson, you lost those teeth purely through accident and no one regretted the occurrence more than I. With best wishes for the continued prosperity of Hustler & Co., I remain,

CHAPTER I.

MYSELF

What I have to write is of such great value, the circumstances so peculiar, the record so strange, and the truths so startling, that it is but proper I should explain who and what I am, in order that any person, so disposed, may fully verify for himself the things I am about to relate.

Just at that most quiet hour of all the twenty-four, in the city, on a summer’s morning, when the darkness is stubbornly giving way to daylight, there came a violent ring at Mr. Hobbs’ door-bell, followed up with what seemed to be quite an unnecessary knocking.

Mr. Hobbs was interested in an elevator, and when he heard that ring he was sure the elevator had burned – in fact, he had a presentiment that such would be the case; besides this, Mr. Hobbs always carried a goodly assortment of fears ready to use at any moment.

“There, didn’t I tell you!” he excitedly exclaimed to his wife, as he rushed down the stairs – he hadn’t told his wife anything, just bottled up his fears in his own bosom and let them ferment, but that made no difference – “Didn’t I tell you!” and he hastily unlocked and opened the door. No one there!

He looked up the street and down the street. Nothing but a clothes-basket, covered over with a threadbare shawl, which evidently a long time ago had been a costly one. Mr. Hobbs expected a messenger with bad news and Mr. Hobbs was disappointed, in fact was mad; and he snatched that shawl from the basket, staggered against the door, and a voice, like unto that of a young and lusty bull, went up the stairway where Mrs. Hobbs stood peering over the banisters:

“Maria, for God’s sake come quick! There’s something awful happened! Quick, will you!”

Mrs. Hobbs was not very brave, but curiosity often reinforces courage; so the good lady came down the stairs two steps at a time, and stood by the side of her liege, who had got his breath by this time and stood peering over the basket.

And there they stood together, all in white, with bare feet, on the front porch, and nearly broad daylight.

In the basket, all wrapped up in dainty flannel, smiling, cooing and kicking up its heels, lay a baby – well, perhaps two months old, and on a card written with pencil were these words:

“God knows.”

Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs had no children, and they each looked upon this as a gift from providence – basket and all. They cared for the waif as their own child, and if their reward does not come in this life, I am sure it will in another.

“Her name shall be Aspasia Hobbs, for I always said my first girl (Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs had been married five years, and had no children, but the babies were already named; which, I am told, is the usual custom) should be named Aspasia, after your mother, dear,” said Mrs. Hobbs.

And Aspasia Hobbs it was, and is yet: and I am Aspasia Hobbs: and Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs are the only parents I have ever known.

I am now an old maid, aged thirty-seven (I must tell the truth). I am homely and angular, and can pass along the street without a man turning to look at me. From five years’ constant pounding on a caligraph my hands have grown large and my knuckles and the ends of my fingers are like knobs. I can walk twenty miles a day, or ride a wheel fifty.

The bishop of Western New York, in a sermon preached recently, said riding bicycles is “unladylike” (and so is good health for that matter) – but if the good bishop would lay aside prejudice and robe and mount a safety, he could still show men the right way as well as now – possibly better, who knows?

But, in the language of Spartacus, “I was not always thus.” Thank Heaven, I am strong and well! They used to say, “She is such a delicate, sensitive child, we can not keep her without we take very, v-e-r-y good care of her.” Some fool has said that hundreds of people die every year because they have such “very good care.”

My father was a member of the firm of Hobbs, Nobbs & Porcine, was a Board of Trade man, and, therefore, had no time to give to his children; but he was a good provider, as the old ladies say, and used to remind us of it quite often. “Don’t I get you everything you need?” he once roared at my mother, when she hinted that an evening home once in a while would not be out of place. “Here you have an up-stairs girl, a cook, a laundress, a coachman, a gardener, a tutor for Aspasia, and don’t I pay Doctor Bolus just five hundred dollars a year to call here every week and examine you all so as to keep you healthy? Great Scott, the ingratitude of woman! they are getting worse and worse every day!”

My father was a good man – that is he was not bad, so he must have been good. He never used tobacco, and I never heard him swear but once, and that was when Professor Connors brought in a bill reading:

“Debtor, to calisthenics for wife and daughter, $50.”

“I’ll pay it,” said my father grimly, “but I will deduct it from Bolus’ check, for you say it’s for the health and therefore it belongs to Bolus’ department and he should have furnished the goods.”

We lived on Delaware avenue, in one of the finest houses, which my father bought and had furnished throughout before my mother or any one of us were allowed to enter. He was a good man, and wanted to astonish – that is to say, surprise us. So one Saturday night, at dinner, he said,

“On Monday, my dears, we will leave this old Michigan street for a house on the ‘Avenue.’ I have given up our pew in Grace Church, and to-morrow, and hereafter, Rev. Fred. C. Inglehart and Delaware avenue are plenty good enough for us.”

Our family have the finest monument in Forest Lawn, and father assured us that if Methusalah was now a boy this monument would be new when his great grandchildren died of old age. He waxed enthusiastic, and added, as he lapsed into reverie,

“It’s a regular James Dandy, and knocks out Rodgers and Jowette in one round.”

I am a graduate of Dr. Chesterfield’s academy, and also of the high-school. I have studied music with Mr. McNerney and Senor Nuno, elocution with Steele Mackaye; and father once offered to wager Mr. Porcine that “Aspasia could do up any girl on the avenue or Franklin street at the piano.”

I was a rich (alleged) man’s daughter, and as I had a managing mamma and went in society I had the usual love (how that word is abused!) experiences. I am not writing an autobiography, but merely telling what is absolutely necessary for you to know of me; otherwise, I would relate some insipid mush about flirtations with several gilded youths, who waltzed delightfully and made love abominably – just as if a man could make love! But suffice it to say, I never, in those old days, met a man I could not part with and feel relieved when he had taken his “darby” and slender cane and hied him down the steps. Mamma said I was heartless and didn’t know a good chance when I saw it.

One little affair of the pocket-book – that is, I mean of the heart – might be mentioned. A certain attorney, Pygmalion Woodbur by name – old Buffalonians know him well – paid his respects to me in an uneasy and stilted fashion. He was ten years my senior, had a monster yellow moustache generally colored black, which he combed down over the cavern in his face. He dressed in the latest, and was looked upon as a great catch. How these old bachelor men-about-town are lionized by a certain set of women!

He called several times, invited himself to dinner, took mamma riding and threw out side glances – grimaces – in my direction. One fine evening I sat reading in the parlor, alone, and in walked Mr. Woodbur and began about thusly:

“Aspasia – I may call you by your first name, now can’t I? – and you must call me Pyggie, for short. I have just spoken to your father and he says it’s all right,” etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

He slid off from the sofa on his knees, and seized my left hand and kissed it violently.

Fair lady, have you ever been kissed with a rush, by a man with a large yellow moustache colored black? Well it’s just like being jabbed with a paint brush!

Now, after his poorly memorized speech had been delivered, and I had jerked my hand away, there was a pause. I tried to laugh and I tried to cry; then I tried to faint, and was too mad to do either; so I just inwardly raged and then came the explosion —

“No! no! no! a thousand times no! Stick to you, Woodbur! Never! I hate you – get out of my sight, quick!”

Just then in came papa and mamma, who it seems were taking a turn about at the keyhole.

“Why! why what’s the matter with my little girl,” and I fell sobbing in my mother’s arms.

“You must excuse her, Mr. Woodbur,” said the good lady. “Since her sunstroke, she has these spells quite often. You will excuse her, I know.”

“Why, when was the gal struck! You never told me nothing about it,” broke in my father.

“Now Hobbs, don’t be a fool,” said my mother under her breath.

Father started to answer. Woodbur saw his opportunity, and escaped under cover of the smoke, and forgot to come back for his umbrella, which I now have tied up with a white ribbon and put away with mint and lavender in memory of days gone by – and the best that I can say of the days that have gone by is that they have gone by.

As time wore, life seemed to grow dull and heavy, my cheeks grew pale, and in summer I sat on the piazza, often from breakfast until dinner-time, with a white crepe shawl thrown about my shoulders, listlessly watching the passers-by. Mother said, “Poor girl, I wish she would get mad just once as she used to. She is so good and submissive.” Doctor Bolus said I needed cod liver oil with strong doses of quinine, and once a week Glauber salts taken in molasses and sulphur; but still in spite of all medicine could do for me, I grew weaker and weaker. I fed on Mrs. Hemans and Tupper, and finally they carried me daily out to the big carriage, and the coachman was instructed to drive very slowly, and we went out through the Park, out to Forest Lawn and looked at our family monument, which gleamed in the beautiful sunshine.

Mother generally rode with me, and one morning she left me waiting in the carriage while she went over near our “lot,” so she could more closely inspect the monument. While waiting the coachman turned to me and said:

“Missis, yer father have bust, yer mother don’t know it; but you are no fool, missis, and I thought you should know it, to kinder prepare like. They have been around inventizering the horses and carriages and are going to sell them next week – see? And my wife said you are the only one who has sense, and I should break the news to you easy like – see?”

I heard him rattling on, but did not seem to understand what he said; but I felt my heart beating fast and the blood coming to my cheeks. The old dead submissiveness was gone, and I said:

“John, shut up, and repeat to me what you said first.”

“Nothin’,” said John, “only that your father have bust and run off to Canada, and C. J. Hummer and the rest is goin’ to bounce you out next week.”

I saw his grieved tone, or felt it rather, and said:

“John, I did not mean to speak cross to you.”

“Never mind, missis, I have no favors to ax, and you couldn’t grant eny even if I did – for your father have bust, dwye see?”

Mother was coming from the monument, and greatly vexed, I saw.

“Why, Smythe has not put any foundation under it at all scarcely,” she said, as she stepped into the carriage. “The weight on top is gradually crushing the bottom, and I believe it is full six inches toppled over to the west.”

“It is probably going west to grow up with the country,” I said.

Think of such a remark from a dying invalid!

My mother turned in astonishment to see if it was really her daughter.

“John,” said I, “drive home – go fast – let them out, will you – go home quick. Mrs. Hobbs is not well.”

I felt an awful propensity to joke, and a wild exultation and pleasure came over me that I had not known since we used to climb the hills at our summer-house at Strykersville. John cracked the whip and saluted all the other coachmen as we passed. He whistled, and so did I. For the first time in five years I felt free; and John had lost the fear that he would not be impressive, and he too was free. My mother sat bolt upright in a rage.

“You are both drunk,” she said. “John, sit straight on that box. Don’t carry the whip over your shoulder, and don’t cross your legs or I will discharge you Saturday night!”

John turned round – smiled – looked at me and winked.

CHAPTER II.

OURSELVES

As the carriage stopped in the portière the big gardener came down, and placing one arm under and the other about me, was just going to lift the invalid out as usual.

“Go away,” I fairly screamed. “Let me walk, will you! Carry mother in quick,” for sure enough, she was the one who had to be carried. Her rigid dignity had disappeared, and she had dropped back listless and disheveled, moaning:

“Oh, John is drunk and Aspasia crazy! Look at her! she is so sick she can’t walk, and yet see her run up those steps! What shall I do, what shall I do! And the monument that they warranted in writing to last for ever or no pay is tumbling down. I must have it fixed, even if it costs ten thousand dollars; for the name of Hobbs must not grow dim.” “Dear he” (she always spoke of her husband as simply “he” or “him”) “has so often said, ‘You married Hobbs for better or worse’ – says he to me – ‘and your name will be carved on the finest monument in Forest Lawn.’“

Reader bold – lacking in knowledge and therefore in faith, limiting possibility to your own tiny experience, quick to deny – you doubt that I went away an invalid and returned in an hour cured. Let me whisper in your ear that it was all in accordance with natural law, and not at all strange or miraculous, excepting in the sense that all nature is miraculous (let us not quarrel over definitions). That which cured me was a good dose of Animating Purpose.

Men retire from business and die in a year from lack of animating purpose. Women are protected, hedged about and propped up, cared for, and die for the lack of this essential.

“Faith Cure,” “Christian Science” and any other strong desire filled with hope and a determination to be and to do, supply animating purpose of a good kind, although sometimes, possibly, alloyed with error: but any good idea which makes us forget self and sends the blood coursing through our veins, is healing in its nature.

When the stays that held me were cut, and I knew I must live and work and be useful, the old sickly self was thrust far behind by Animating Purpose; not the finest quality of animating purpose, I will admit, but a fairly good serviceable article, and certainly a thousand times better than none.

You must not think that my mother was naturally weak – not so. Of a fine delicate organization, she married when nineteen and had given herself unreservedly to her husband in mind and body (for have not husbands “rights?”) never doubting but what it was her wifely duty to do so. She even gave up her own church and joined his – adopted his opinions – quoted his sayings and repeated his jokes. “Well, he says so and that is an end to it.” In the house of Hobbs, Hobbs was the court of last appeal.

In some marriages women say “I will” audibly, with mental reservation of “when circumstances permit.” Such women have been instructed in diplomacy. They have been told to meet their husbands at the door with a smile and clean collar, to make home pleasant, to smooth down the rough places – in short, to manage the man and never let him discover it, which is the finest of the finest arts. They can examine his pockets at such convenient times when he will not know it, count his money, take what they need – which is better than harassing a man and whining for a dollar – read his note-book, and thus in a thousand little ways keep such close track of him that with proper skill there would be positively no excuse for rubbing him the wrong way of the fur.

But not so with my mother. She said to Mr. Hobbs on their wedding night,

“I am yours – wholly yours. In your presence I will think aloud, there shall be no concealment. To you I give my soul and body!”

Mr. Hobbs took the latter, and in a hoarse whisper said:

“I have an income of six thousand dollars a year, and you shall never regret you married Hobbs, of Hobbs, Nobbs & Porcine. I will shield you from every unpleasant thing; you shall never know care or trouble; never a day’s work shall you do; nothing but just be happy and look pretty the livelong day; and anything you want at Barnes & Bancroft’s, Peter Paul’s, Dickinson’s or Fulton Market, why get it and have it charged to Hobbs, for I am rated in ‘Dun’ ‘E. 2,’ and next year it will be ‘2 plus.’”

Such total unselfishness touched the virgin heart of this nineteen-year’s-old woman – that is to say, child. She lived in a Hobbs’ atmosphere. The two lives did not grow into one, she became Mrs. Hobbs not only in name but in fact. Now any thinking person will admit that this was better than for her to have endeavored to retain her individuality, for if she had done this and still was honest and frank, there would have been strife. She would always have thought of her girlhood as the ante bellum times, for Mr. Hobbs had ideas, or believed he had, and nothing gave him such delicious joy as to rub these ideas into one, especially if they squirmed and protested.

I have seen precocious children that astonished or made jealous as the case might be. How they did sing, play the banjo, or speak! One such boy I remember – we were all sure he would grow to be an orator who would shake the nation. I watched him, and saw him to-day presiding at the second chair in Chadduck’s tonsorial palace, and noted the Ciceronian wave of his hand as he shouted the legend, “Next gentleman – shave.”

Walking across a prairie in Iowa with a friend, we suddenly found ourselves going through a miniature grove, where the highest trees did not reach my shoulders. I examined the leaves and found the trees to be black-oak of the most perfect type.

“What beautiful young trees! How they will grow and grow and put out their roots in every direction, and search the very bowels of the earth for the food and sustenance they need! How they will toss their branches in defiance to the storm, and be a refuge and defence for the wearied traveler! How – ”

“Stop that gush, will you please!” said my companion. “These are only scrub-oaks and will not be any larger if they live a hundred years.”

Possibly this grove explains why the average man of sixty is no wiser and no better than the average man of forty – it is Arrested Development.

My good mother is only a fine type of Arrested Development.

CHAPTER III.

A LITTLE LOCAL HISTORY

With my woman’s intuition I knew all just from the hint John gave. My father a week before had gone to Montreal, saying he would be back Wednesday. It was now Friday and he had not returned. I remember the two men who had come to “take an inventory for the ‘Tax Office,’” one said, and he winked at the other. How they walked through the house with their hats on and joked each other as they tried the piano! I saw it all! My father had lost money and had given a chattel mortgage on the furniture, having first raised all the money he could on the real estate.

I asked my mother if she remembered giving the mortgage, and she looked at me, grieved and surprised, saying:

“Why, of course not, dear. I always signed the papers he brought me. Do you think it a woman’s place to ask questions about business?”

Well, if I were writing my own history, I would tell you how the two men from the “Tax Office” came back with Robert McCann the auctioneer; how they hung a big red flag over the sidewalk and took up the carpets so that when they walked across the bare floor of the big parlors the echo of the footsteps rang through the whole house; how greasy men with hook noses came and examined the furniture; of how one such insisted on seeing my mother on very private business, when he asked, “If dot bainting was a real Millais or only a schnide; and if it was a schnide, to gif a zerdificate dat it vas a Millais and I will bid it off at a hundred, so hellup me gracious!”; of how kind neighbors came and bought in all the dishes and silverware and gave them back to us; of how a certain widowed gentleman offered to bid in the piano if I would accept a position as governess for his daughter and live at his house.