The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, November 6, 1904, Page 9

THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. scheme dear to the heart. Theyll queer it either through stupidity or pure cussedness. The h ded approach set the small brains of B and me in a dizzy whirl. Our joint f ormation co: ess was somewhat fired us with the spirit of e rers0sss = SISTISSRSSTOSTO WH L R a2 chair near 4 2 merning e—and tried @csscroseisoss FABLES AT DREAMS “I can see at a glance that you bored to death and in search of div sion at correct,” said he. rom that unhappy until I caught sight You know that it was because this place that I came he Now you must de your best to dispel the gloocm that has de- scended upon me. “What shall I do?” she asked light- Iy. “Introduce you to some of - Mrs. Potter's proteges or get Mrs. Van- dent to give you the personal history of every aone here “I think,” said Streeter, “that Chopin in the music-room would be the best antidote.” of you you recommended ILLIAM HENRY was a youth of great industry and fidelity. He owed these qualities not only to his own inherent pre- disposi: in their direction, but also to the maxim impressed upon him in his earlier years that only by their ex- ercise could he hope to enter into that exceeding great reward which all young Americans are informed awaits them somewhere along the road. That is to eay, he beileved that if he stuck /to business and didn’t rob anybody dur- ing office hours he would some day have money enough to endow a couple of colleges and support 2 full-fledged case of dyspepeia all uis own. Those are high ideals ani but few can attain them, but they are always there never- theless. The' theory on which William Henry wa$ nurtured in his infancy was that the day was constructed with twenty- four hours in order that a man might be able to sieep eight hours and stili bave sixteen left for labor; meals were suppesed to be taken standing up. Fur- thermore, he was inoculated with the idea that the man who sticks to a thing the longest is the chap who will be in- side the money when the race is fin- of one car- ulation to learn that some children like our- emg Hard Lu could inspect the band amnd pick out some trouble. A New York mission society had engaged in the noble work of scraping mislaid waifs from abodes of squalor and misery and mixed ale of the metropolis and find- ing them a refuge in the hospitable homes of the Middle West. towns and villages in that s region threw open their tle strangers. Car after the mission send out, until thousands of firesides and reform schools reared refractory monuments to otten dead in distant burial grounds. But the supply far exceeded the demand. In time the tide of East- ern orphans flowed elsewhere, but not until Mudville had done its duty by to"a Moody concert in San- epertory and promptly adopting the entire batch. Pend the arrival of the private car and its distinguished contents, me and Bill talked in our sleep, mostly bout orphans, and dreamed night and day of what we should do when suc- cessfally embarked upon a similar ca- reer. The theatrical featyres of the ss alone appesled fo wus—the ous ride in the cars, the street parazde behind a band and the of admiring congregations. was stuck on doing a blackface e I held that a genteel song in pink velvet knee breeches cuffs was the only strictly jalty for star orphans om was still unsettied when d one sharp autumn me and Bill, quite purple growing exilement, set off to We wore our Sunday Is, and, busy with the ous future, ran all e church, except for a si d by Bill. Before carefully entombed both elbows in his trousers Thus we sprinted along side as brothers should, until we a crossboard sidewalk, which fiew up in sections and n the face. d on the end of a loose action of a second before at the other. His toes and forward he plunged along boards on his tender frontis- re slide peeled a wide, thick kin from his forehead, nose, and also ruffled the epi- wishbone. Had my ace to start with there have been any of it left being safely stowed in his kets during the mishap, escaped in- # If it promises “You are very modest in your de- mands have ou cry for mercy. Come only work eight hours a day; cthers knock off Sundays and holidayn and Fridays in Lent; only a few work right along through the year, rain or shine, without regard to race, color or pre- vious condition of inaptitude. It would appear that Willlam Henry's brand of maxims belonged to a union and were on strike at that. By way of breaking into “Who's Who Willlam Henry acquired an in- terest in the front seat of a grocery wagon at 37 per. It wasn't much, but most of us begin low down in the scale—most of us stay there, too. His duties alluded hitherto. was allowed to o'clock before it was time to sailly forth to the barn and clean and feed the horses, wash the wagon, and other simple bucolic stunts. was permitted to open the store, the floor, clean the windows out the apple barreis where they be seen without being appropriated. At intervals during the day he re- : y Charles Dryden tousled, blinky orphans stood in a sort of minstrel first part, singing their young lives out. There was no ap- plause and neither did L see any bou- quets passed over the footlights. It was a bum show from a spectacular view. The little band was in charge of g tall, narrow man, the pallor of whose face was heightened by the inky blackness of his beard. At the end of the first song he handed each child a vcice troche and gulped one himself. 1 attributed his bleach to the troches, but more likely basket lunches and blue mass pills had much to do with that drumhead complexion. For some reason the show fell with a D. 8. thud. It must have been on account of Bill, who certainly did not appear at his best. No matter which way he turned Bill seemed to be peep- ing roguishly out from behind a blood-red post much too small for And the pine splinters sticking to his tear-gummed cheeks did not en- hance the boyish beauty of my only brother. When the adepting exercises opened two or three women turned Bill down—sald no doubt his parents were murderers and that the police of New York had done the worst thing pessible shipping him out West. Finally a dear, dim-eyed old lady, who had known him all his life, wiped Bill's skinned nose and offered him a Christian home and burial of the same kind in case he needed one. At that he got mad and swore out loud in the Methodist church, thinking he had a right to do so because we were Presbyterians. I chided Bill with a left hook, and when the sexton got to us we were lockzd in a brotherly There’s a way you can do--to stay with it-- Success will attend you some day; good for the doing, Stay with it--it surely will pay. Have you heard of a weaK heart e’er winning? A tasK wants a man to complete; And to give up is unto a sinning, Stay with it, and through the last heat, And you’ll win the race--but why falter-- There’s chance on the stretch, if you try; ¥ E’en the best horse, when checked by the halter, Has lost and you Know reason why. 5 But the master Knows when he is gaining; Not lost, if he gets into place; But none e’er won out by refraining-- So stay with it, you’ll win the race. They made their way to the little to Streeter’s unutterable delight they was William Henry would have been content to settle down in such an easy berth and put in the rest of his life pleasing indulgent employers. Not so ‘William Heary. He had hardly be- come firmly established in his position on the froant seat of the wagon before he noticed that the men who paid him his seven per every Saturday night appeared to be Interested in almost anything except the business on which they were supposed to subsist. For in- stance, they were never too busy to sit down ou a cracker box and swap lies with some tiller of the soil about the campaign of 1876 or the high price of potatoes in Cleveland's first admin- istration. If there was a dog fight or a horse race or a political meeting, or metal into them. Easy money. It isn't elinch under the pew next to the pul- pit. The chill night air of the street killed the last theatrical germ in our systems and so far as I know Bill never made another attempt to go upon the stage. Neither did L One of the male orphans who lodged in our midst was a born financier, be- ing, quite likely, the unclaimed progeany of an Eastern captain of Industry. That he missed the Wall-street train- ing of his ancestors was plain, for the first dash into the realms of trade landed him in jail. Had the boy re- mained in New York and been brought ap in the way he should go, it’s dollars to breakfast food he would now be at the head of a trust. He had the merger principle and knew how to cor- ner everything in sight. This orphan was adopted by a Chris- tian family and he used the piety of those foster parents to cloak his vile conspiracy. A little Mudville man, who desired merely to live, opened a little restaurant. Every night or so the orphan descended on the home of the restaurant man and stole a chicken, which he sold, through an accomplice, to the caterer. With the proceeds of the sale the orphan feasted on fried chicken at the cafe next day, paying for the same with the coin the proprie- tor had coughed up for his own poul- try. Besides the chicken, the villain absorbed vast quantities of mashed potatces and gravy, bread, butter and liquids, for which the caterer had paid out money to people who did not dine there. And for every cash meal the or- phan got one on credit. There was but one result. The restau- rant blew up, leaving the proprietor nothing in the way of assets but a pile of parboiled feathers in the back yard. Qur gifted financier went in for thirty days, but that didn’t help the caterer. He was plucked. If this expose of the grasping erphan is of any assistance to Mr. Hearst, the noted Trust Buster, he is weicome to it. There are no trusts at Mudville. 5 I will gloss gently over the one re- gretful pericd of my life—the time sac- rificed in the academic halls of Mugdville. The only lasting bene- fit gained at that process was a2 pair of bowlegs, caused by carrying heavy Ilunches to schook Some of the boys in my class even falled to impair the shape of their legs, which makes me think I did pretty well after all. The temple of learning har- bored nothing of interest to me, except my dimner pail and the soft pine desk of that day. On the lid of many a desk I carved my name, after the manner of transient guests who registered at the water tank near the depot. But for this early amassing of useful knowledge and the anatomical curves I would not men- tion the schooling. When I was 14 the family agreed it was time to make good on the lunches by feeding my own features. The idea Was not original with our folks. It has been worked before. As understudy to a fat fronmoider I joined a get-rich- quick concern, that paid me 33 per week for ten hours’ toll per day right off the reel. All I bhad to do was to fashion molds in sand and pour hot out the lights and lighted two little he laughed. “Chopin you shall music-room far down the corridor, and red-shaded candles on the piano. “Just right now for the fifth noc- FOR THE FOOLISH With the cheerful end In view of gradually crowding his employers out into the ecold, cold world William Hen- ry set to work to learn all the ramifi- cations of the grocery business. He was sorry for the families of the old men, but they must take their chances. In these days of stremuosity in the but- ter and eggs business no man could af- ford to sit around and wait for fortune to leave her card af his door. If they preferred the grand stand when the ponies are going around, or the cracker box on the sidewalk when the liars’ club is in session, it was their lookout. not his. He had his plans laid to give them a pension and keep their wives and children from coming to actual want, but didn’t think that he could be expected to do any better than every country boy who picks up a snap. Some of us are exceptionally bright jn the mattem of avoiding the gilded goods. For three years I did blackface turns in a pile of black.sand, learning the trade. Not a few of the castiron stove- legs I built when a boy are still leaving footprints on humble kitchen floors—en- during tributes to my budding us In the gentld craft of molding. tever bad breaks I have since made in other lines cannot wipe out the fact that I was a fair-to middiing moider at the Those were happy @ays in the foun- dry because I had not learned to loathe the perverted genius who imvented work and had forgotten to take out a patent on it. Being an enthusiastic kid, I carried home bags of sand and molded things—mostly ]e;:t nickels—in clesed up my mint at the suggestion of the village icecream man, who had 2 pull with the constable. Ambition stirred me, too, for I hoped to become a foreman some day, and sit for hours on a nailkeg, thereby staggering common workmen with the belief that I knew so much about the trade it made me ache to carry it peared in the directories of several large citles linked in small type words, Iron Molder, and the numbers of fierce boarding houses. I am not utterly unkmown to after all, a feeling shared by the who has once seen his name in though the occasion for it be nothing more than the delinquent tax Hst If we are to have greatness thrust upon ols i us, nothing can stop it While the majority §f molders are steady men with large families and other minor troubles, a hobo mechanic mow and then fell off a passing freight train and asked for a job in our shod. This struck me as an ideal existence. skating around the worid with a uaion card, unham; by care or bagzage. in search of a h sand hesp. Like the tramp printer, the moider carries little more than his hands and trade; the shop supplies the rest. One white-haired ruin who lingered for a grubstake at Mudville had wres- tied with a touch of jimjams in most manufacturing towns of note on the map and had not yet wound up his ftinerary. To me he was a regular Chyistopher Columbusg of a molder— a man to emulate in all save the flow- ing bow! specialty. Drunk or sober, his only enemy was the shop foreman as a class, d. for the life of me, I couldn’t see why, because that hoary old hobo was such a nice man In course of time the foundry and the village became tgo tight for me. I felt like a No. 10 foot In a No. 8 shoe, and imagined I had corns on my intellect. They say it is the way all young fellows, In whatever walk of life, who are full of tabasco at the start and thipk they can bat .300 or better in the big league. So at soft 17 I slipped my cables and set forth to ebb and flow on the tide of events like a waterlogged corncob in a dead Next week finds me bumping the red plush to Omaba, where I fall in with a female bunko steerer and am ‘blighted some. Copyright, 1504, by Charles Dryden. ts of color in the gloom. The gir! ran her fingers over the keys and Streeter drew a chair near her and sat down. She began to piay the fifth nocturne very softly, and Streeter, leaning back comfortably, watched the pretty profile outlined faintly by the candielight. And as he listened to the rain beating against the windows he realized the good that a “seemingly wind had blown him. The nocturne died away as it had be- gun—very softly, and he drew his chair into the little circle of light. “The omnly trouble with that nocc- turne,” he said gravely, “is that. lke all things temporal, it comes to an end.” “Are vou fond of them?” she asked, “T'll play another.” / “Do you know,” he said quickly, “T have oftgn dreamed of some such sit- uation as this.” “A long, dreary evening at a storm- bound summer resort?” she laughed. “No,” he said seriously. “Of a piano and candles with little red shades, and of you playing nocturnes to me like She began another nocturne, even more softly, that it might not inter- rupt their conversation. “Dreams very seldom come true,™ she said, and whether or not her tone was mocking Streeter was at loss to decide. He silently listened to the mocturne and studied the girl's profile intently, but the profile was non-committal. He two or three trumps that their hands wouldn't holding when the game Still they kept on in time-killing and mild, ter dissipation. Perhaps that possession was not only of the law but also a winning the grocery business. At any didn’t appear to be sitting wondering how they could pension that Willlam Hi low them after it was It's all over now, and our unimpeachabie regard for the cause of truth compels us to the game didn't turn out in 35 .82 E it i P £s Y Es?gggigggi very softly. “It was a very prefty dream.” Be sald, “one of those intangible bits of happiness that makes ome loth to come to prosaic earth again, There was one thing about those dreams, however, quite different from this par- il tal realization.” “And what was that?” she asked. said slowly: “Perhaps It was presumptuous. You see, I wasn't asieep when I dreamed b | Aoy h"Youn not angry Streetar “N-no,” she ” he began and® halts& . “Tell me.” he sasd, “do dreams go by contrary?™ The girl had reached the door. She turned, and even in the dim light he could see the deep color in her cheeks, “Not—not day dreams,” she almost it - [