Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 102, June, 1876

Sometimes, too, we came home together, Wholesome and I, and then I found he liked to wander and zigzag, not going very far along a street, and showing fondness for lanes and byways. Often he would turn with me a moment into the gateway of the University Grammar School on Fourth street, south of Arch, and had, I thought, great pleasure in seeing the rough play of the lads. Or often, as we came home at noon, he liked to turn into Paradise alley, out of Market street, and did this, indeed, so often that I came to wonder at it, and the more because in an open space between this alley and Commerce street was the spot where almost every day the grammar-school boys settled their disputes in the way more common then than now. When first we chanced on one of these encounters I was surprised to see Mr. Wholesome look about him as if to be sure that no one else was near, and then begin to watch the combat with a strange interest. Indeed, on one occasion he utterly astonished me by taking by the hand a small boy who had been worsted and leading him with us, as if he knew the lad, which may well have been. But presently he said, "Reuben thee said was thy name?"—"Yes, sir," said the lad.—"Well," said Mr. Wholesome, after buying him a large and very brown horse gingerbread, two doughnuts and a small pie, "when you think it worth while to hit a fellow, never slap his face, because then he will strike you hard with his fist, which hurts, Reuben. Now, mind: next thee strikes first with thee fist, my lad, and hard, too." If I had seen our good Bishop White playing at taws, I could not have been more overcome, and I dare say my face may have shown it, for, glancing at me, he said demurely, "Thee has seen in thy lifetime how hard it is to get rid of what thee liked in thy days of boyhood." After which he added no more in the way of explanation, but walked along with swift strides and a dark and troubled face, silent and thoughtful.

Sometimes in the early morning I walked to my place of business with Mr. Schmidt, who was a man so altogether unlike those about him that I found in him a new and varied interest. He was a German, and spoke English with a certain quaintness and with the purity of speech of one who has learned the tongue from books rather than from men. I learned after a while that this guess of mine was a good one, and that, having been bred an artist, he had been put in prison for some political offence, and had in two years of loneliness learned English from our older authors. When at last he was set free he took his little property and came away with a bitter heart to our freer land, where, with what he had and with the lessons he gave in drawing, he was well able to live the life he liked in quiet ease and comfort. He was a kindly man in his ways, and in his talk gently cynical; so that, although you might be quite sure as to what he would do, you were never as safe as to what he would say; wherefore to know him a little was to dislike him, but to know him well was to love him. There was a liking between him and Wholesome, but each was more or less a source of wonderment to the other. Nor was it long before I saw that both these men in their way were patient lovers of the quiet and pretty Quaker dame who ruled over our little household, though to the elder man, Mr. Schmidt, she was a being at whose feet he laid a homage which he felt to be hopeless of result, while he was schooled by sorrowful fortunes to accept the position as one which he hardly even wished to change.

It was on a warm sunny morning very early, for we were up and away betimes, that Mr. Schmidt and I and Wholesome took our first walk together through the old market-sheds. We turned into Market street at Fourth street, whence the sheds ran downward to the Delaware. The pictures they gave me to store away in my mind are all of them vivid enough, but none more so than that which I saw with my two friends on the first morning when we wandered through them together.

On either side of the street the farmers' wagons stood backed up against the sidewalk, each making a cheap shop, by which stood the sturdy owners under the trees, laughing and chaffering with their customers. We ourselves turned aside and walked down the centre of the street under the sheds. On either side at the entry of the market odd business was being plied, the traders being mostly colored women with bright chintz dresses and richly-colored bandanna handkerchiefs coiled turban-like above their dark faces. There were rows of roses in red pots, and venders of marsh calamus, and "Hot corn, sah, smokin' hot," and "Pepperpot, bery nice," and sellers of horse-radish and snapping-turtles, and of doughnuts dear to grammar-school lads. Within the market was a crowd of gentlefolks, followed by their black servants with baskets—the elderly men in white or gray stockings, with knee-buckles, the younger in very tight nankeen breeches and pumps, frilled shirts and ample cravats and long blue swallow-tailed coats with brass buttons. Ladies whose grandchildren go no more to market were there in gowns with strangely short waists and broad gypsy-bonnets, with the flaps tied down by wide ribbons over the ears. It was a busy and good-humored throng.

"Ah," said Schmidt, "what color!" and he stood quite wrapped in the joy it gave him looking at the piles of fruit, where the level morning sunlight, broken by the moving crowd, fell on great heaps of dark-green watermelons and rough cantaloupes, and warmed the wealth of peaches piled on trays backed by red rows of what were then called love-apples, and are now known as tomatoes; while below the royal yellow of vast overgrown pumpkins seemed to have set the long summer sunshine in their golden tints.

"If these were mine," said Schmidt, "I could not for ever sell them. What pleasure to see them grow and steal to themselves such sweet colors out of the rainbow which is in the light!"

"Thee would make a poor gardener," said Wholesome, "sitting on thee fence in the sun and watching thee pumpkins—damn nasty things anyhow!"

I looked up amazed at the oath, but Schmidt did not seem to remark it, and went on with us, lingering here and there to please himself with the lovely contrasts of the autumn fruit.

"Curious man is Schmidt," remarked Wholesome as we passed along. "I could wish thee had seen him when we took him this way first. Old Betsey yonder sells magnolia flowers in June, and also pond-lilies, which thee may know as reasonably pleasant things to thee or me; but of a sudden I find our friend Schmidt kneeling on the pavement with his head over a tub of these flowers, and every one around much amazed."

"Was it not seemly?" said Schmidt, joining us. "There are who like music, but to me what music is there like the great attunement of color? and mayhap no race can in this rise over our black artists hereabout the market-ends."

"Thee is crazed of many colors," said Wholesome laughing—"a bull of but one."

Schmidt stopped short in the crowd, to Wholesome's disgust. "What," said he, quite forgetful of the crowd, "is more cordial than color? This he recalleth was a woman black as night, with a red turban and a lapful of magnolias, and to one side red crabs in a basket, and to one side a tubful of lilies. Moss all about, I remember."

"Come along," said Wholesome. "The man is cracked, and in sunny weather the crack widens."

And so we went away down street to our several tasks, chatting and amused.

Those were most happy days for me, and I found at evening one of my greatest pleasures when Schmidt called for me after our early tea and we would stroll together down to the Delaware, where the great India ships lay at wharves covered with casks of madeira and boxes of tea and spices. Then we would put out in his little rowboat and pull away toward Jersey, and, after a plunge in the river at Cooper's Point, would lazily row back again while the spire of Christ Church grew dim against the fading sunset, and the lights would begin to show here and there in the long line of sombre houses. By this time we had grown to be sure friends, and a little help from me at a moment when I chanced to guess that he wanted money had made the bond yet stronger. So it came that he talked to me, though I was but a lad, with a curious freedom, which very soon opened to me a full knowledge of those with whom I lived.

One evening, when we had been drifting silently with the tide, he suddenly said aloud, "A lion in the fleece of the sheep."

"What?" said I, laughing.

"I was thinking of Wholesome," he replied. "But you do not know him. Yet he has that in his countenance which would betray a more cunning creature."

"How so?" I urged, being eager to know more of the man who wore the garb and tongue of Penn, and could swear roundly when moved.

"If it will amuse," said the German, "I will tell you what it befell me to hear to-day, being come into the parlor when Mistress White and Wholesome were in the garden, of themselves lonely."

"Do you mean," said I, "that you listened when they did not know of your being there?"

"And why not?" he replied. "It did interest me, and to them only good might come."

"But," said I, "it was not—"

"Well?" he added as I paused. "—'Was not honor,' you were going to say to me. And why not? I obey my nature, which is more curious than stocked with honor. I did listen."

"And what did you hear?" said I.

"Ah, hear!" he answered. "What better is the receiver than is the thief? Well, then, if you will share my stolen goods, you shall know, and I will tell you as I heard, my memory being good."

"But—" said I.

"Too late you stop me," he added: "you must hear now."

The scene which he went on to sketch was to me strange and curious, nor could I have thought he could give so perfect a rendering of the language, and even the accent, of the two speakers. It was a curious revelation of the man himself, and he seemed to enjoy his power, and yet to suffer in the telling, without perhaps being fully conscious of it. The oars dropped from his hands and fell in against the thwarts of the boat, and he clasped his knees and looked up as he talked, not regarding at all his single silent listener.

"When this is to be put upon the stage there shall be a garden and two personages."

"Also," said I, "a jealous listener behind the scenes."

"If you please," he said promptly, and plunged at once into the dialogue he had overheard:

"'Richard, thee may never again say the words which thee has said to me to-night. There is, thee knows, that between us which is builded up like as a wall to keep us the one from the other.'

"'But men and women change, and a wall crumbles, or thee knows it may be made to. Years have gone away, and the man who stole from thee thy promise may be dead, for all thee knows.'

"'Hush! thee makes me to see him, and though the dead rise not here, I am some way assured he is not yet dead, and may come and say to me, "'Cilla"—that is what he called me—"thee remembers the night and thy promise, and the lightning all around us, and who took thee to shore from the wrecked packet on the Bulkhead Bar." The life he saved I promised.'

"Well, and thee knows—By Heaven! you well enough know who tortured the life he gave—who robbed you—who grew to be a mean sot, and went away and left you; and to such you hold, with such keep faith, and wear out the sweetness of life waiting for him!'

"'Richard!'

"'Have I also not waited, and given up for thee a life, a career—little to give. I hope thee knows I feel that. Has thee no limit, Priscilla? Thee knows—God help me! how well you know—I love you. The world, the old world of war and venture, pulls at me always. Will not you find it worth while to put out a hand of help? Would it not be God taking your hand and putting it in mine?'

"'Thee knows I love thee.'

"'And if the devil sent him back to curse you anew—'

"'Shame, Richard! I would say, God, who layeth out for each his way, has pointed mine.'

"'And I?'

"'Thee would continue in goodness, loving me as a sister hardly tried.'

"'By God! I should go away to sea.'

"'Richard!'

"Which is the last word of this scene," added Schmidt. "You mayhap have about you punk and flint and steel."

I struck alight in silence, feeling moved by the story of the hurt hearts of these good people, and wondering at the man and his tale. Then I said, "Was that all?"

"Could you, if not a boy, ask me to say more of it? Light thy pipe and hold thy peace. Happy those who think not of women. I, who have for a hearth-side only the fire of an honest pipe—'Way there, my lad! pull us in and forget what a loose tongue and a soft summer night have given thee to hear from a silly old German who is grown weak of head and sore at soul. How the lights twinkle!"

Had I felt any doubt at all of the truth of his narration I should have ceased to do so when for the next few days I watched Mr. Wholesome, and saw him, while off his guard, looking at Mistress White askance with a certain wistful sadness, as of a great honest dog somehow hurt and stricken.

When an India ship came in, the great casks of madeira, southside, grape juice, bual and what not were rolled away into the deep cellars of the India houses on the wharves, and left to purge their vinous consciences of such perilous stuff as was shaken up from their depths during the long homeward voyage. Then, when a couple of months had gone by, it was a custom for the merchant to summon a few old gentlemen to a solemn tasting of the wines old and new. Of this, Mr. Wholesome told me one day, and thought I had better remain to go through the cellars and drive out the bungs and drop in the testers, and the like. "I will also stay with thee," he added, "knowing perhaps better than thee the prices."

I learned afterward that Wholesome always stayed on these occasions, and I had reason to be glad that I too was asked to stay, for, as it chanced, it gave me a further insight into the character of my friend the junior partner.

I recall well the long cellar running far back under Water street, with its rows of great casks, of which Wholesome and I started the bungs while awaiting the new-comers. Presently came slowly down the cellar-steps our senior partner in nankeen shanks, silk stockings and pumps—a frosty-visaged old man, with a nose which had fully earned the right to be called bottle. Behind him limped our old porter in a blue check apron. He went round the cellar, and at every second cask, having lighted a candle, he held it upside down until the grease had fallen thick on the cask, and then turning the candle stuck it fast in its little pile of tallow, so that by and by the cellar was pretty well lighted. Presently, in groups or singly, came old and middle-aged gentlemen, and with the last our friend Schmidt, who wandered off to a corner and sat on a barrel-head watching the effects of the mingling of daylight and candlelight, and amused in his quiet way at the scene and the intense interest of the chief actors in it, which, like other things he did not comprehend, had for him the charm of odd ness. I went over and stood by him while the porter dropped the tester-glass into the cool depths of cask after cask, and solemn counsel was held and grave decisions reached. I was enchanted with one meagre, little old gentleman of frail and refined figure, who bent over his wine with closed eyes, as if to shut out all the sense-impressions he did not need, while the rest waited to hear what he had to say.

"Needs a milk fining," muttered the old gentleman, with eyes shut as if in prayer.

"Wants its back broke with a good lot of eggshell," said a short, stout man with a snuff-colored coat, the collar well up the back of his head.

"Ach!" murmured Schmidt. "The back to be hurt with eggshell! What hath he of meaning?"

"Pshaw!" said a third: "give it a little rest, and then the white of an egg to every five gallons. Is it bual?"

"Is it gruel?" said our senior sarcastically.

"Wants age. A good wine for one's grandchildren," murmured my old friend with shut eyes.

"What is it he calls gruel?" whispered Schmidt. "How nice is a picture he makes when he shuts his eyes and the light of the candle comes through the wine, all bright ruby, in the dark here! And ah, what is that?" for Wholesome, who had been taking his wine in a kindly way, and having his say with that sense of being always sure which an old taster affects, glancing out of one of the little barred cellar-windows which looked out over the wharf, said abruptly, "Ha! ha! that won't do!"