It so happened that in the spring of my junior year my creditors became more than usually pressing, and at the same time a Jew by the name of Poco Abrahams began to threaten suit on a note of mine for two thousand dollars, which I had discounted with him for seven hundred and fifty. I made my usual demands upon my friends and offered to do them the favor of letting them go on some more of my paper, but without the usual result. I then discovered to my annoyance that a wealthy young fellow know as "Buck" de Vries, who had considered himself insulted by something that I had said or done, had been quietly spreading the rumor that I was a sort of hocus-pocus fellow and practically bankrupt, that my pretensions to fashion were ridiculous, and that I made a business of living off other people. Incidentally he had gone the rounds, and, owing to the rumors that he himself had spread, had succeeded in buying up most of my notes at a tremendous discount. These he lost no time in presenting for payment, and as they amounted to several thousand dollars my hope of reaching a settlement with him was small. In point of fact I was quite sure that he wanted no settlement and desired only revenge, and I realized what a fool I had been to make an enemy out of one who might have been an ally.
In this embarrassing situation I bethought me of old Mr. Toddleham, and accordingly paid him an unexpected visit at Barristers' Hall. It was a humid spring day, and I recall that the birds were twittering loudly in the maples back of the Probate Office. As befitted my station at the time of year, I was arrayed in a new beaver and a particularly fanciful pair of rather tight trousers.
"Come in," squeaked Mr. Toddleham, and I entered easily.
The old lawyer peered quizzically at me from behind his square- boned spectacles.
"Oh," said he, "it's you, Master Quibble."
"The same, and your most obedient," I replied, letting myself fall gracefully into a chair and crossing my legs.
"You want money, I suppose?" he continued, after a few minutes, during which he inspected by get-up with some interest.
"Well," I commenced lightly, "the fact is I am rather pressed. I thought if you could make me a small advance out of my grandfather's legacy"
"Legacy! What legacy?" he inquired.
"The legacy my grandfather left me."
"He left you no legacy," retorted the old gentleman. "Your grandfather, to whom you were once so considerate as to refer in my presence as a pig, left you no legacy. He directed that as long as you seemed to deserve it I should spend a certain sum on your maintenance and education."
"Gad!" I cried. "That puts me in a nice position!"
The old lawyer looked at me whimsically.
"My gay young man," he remarked finally, "the only position you occupy is one into which you have deliberately walked yourself. You come here in your fine clothes and your beaver hat andexcuse meyour whiskers, and you are surprised that there is no money forthcoming to pay your debts. Do not look astonished. I know and have known for a long time of your debts. I have followed your career with attention if not with edification. Even for the son of a Baptist minister you have done pretty well. However, life is life and everybody is not the same. I sha'n't judge you. I was a bit of a dog myself, although I don't look it now. But I can give you no more money for game-cocks and cigars. It is time for you to start in and earn your own livingif you can. At the end of the term I will give you fifty dollars and a ticket to New York, or one hundred dollars and no ticket to anywhere. You will have to kick out for yourself. So fine a fellow," he added, "ought not to find it hard to get along. No doubt you could find some rich girl to marry you and support you in idleness."
I flushed with anger and sprang to my feet.
"I did not come here to be insulted!" I cried furiously.
Old Mr. Toddleham chuckled apologetically.
"Tut, tut! No offence. You won't find earning your living such an easy matter. Have you thought anything about what you'll do?"
"No," I answered, still indignant.
"How much do you owe?"
"About forty-eight hundred dollars."
"Damme!" muttered Mr. Tuckerman Toddleham. "More than you could earn in the first five years at the law!"
"See here," I interrupted, "do you seriously mean that except for fifty dollars or so there is nothing coming to me out of my grandfather's estate? Why, he was worth over a million!"
"That is exactly what I mean," he returned. "He left you nothing except an allowance for your education during your good behavior. He made me the judge. I'm your trustee and I can't conscientiously let you have any more money to drink up and gamble with. It's over and done with." He rapped with an air of finality on his desk with the little bronze horse.
"Who gets all the money?" I asked ruefully.
"The Society for the Propagation of Free Thinking," he answered, eyeing me sharply.
"I should think anything like that ought to be contrary to law!"
I retorted. "It ought to be a crime to encourage atheism."
"It's a good devise under our statutes!" he answered dryly. "I suppose your own faith is beautiful enough, eh?"
I did not respond, but sat twisting my hat in my hands. Through the open window the soft damp odors of spring came in and mingled with the dusty smell of law books. So this was law! It suddenly struck me that I was taking the loss of over a million dollars very resignedly. How did I know whether the old boy was telling me the truth or not? He had drawn the will and got a good fee for it. Certainly he was not going to admit that there was anything invalid about it. Why not study lawI might as well do that as anything and find out for myself? It was a game worth playing. The stakes were a million dollars and the forfeit nothing. As I looked around the little office and at the weazened old barrister before me, something of the fascination of the law took hold of me.
"I rather think I should like to study law myself," I remarked.
He looked at me out of the corners of his bead-like little eyes.
"And break your gran'ther's will, mebbe?" he inquired slyly.
"If I can," I retorted defiantly.
"That would be better than fighting cocks and frittering your time away with play actors," said he.
"Mr. Toddleham," I returned, "if I will agree to turn over a new leaf and give up my present associates, will you continue my allowance and let me stay on in Cambridge and study law?"
"If you will agree to enter my office and study under my supervision yes."
Once more I glanced around the little room. Somehow the smell of decaying leather did not have the same fascination that it had exercised a few moments before. The setting sun sinking over the Probate Office entered the window and lingered on the stern old face of the Hon. Jeremiah Mason over the fireplace. The birds twittered gayly amid the branches by the window. Spring called me to the open air, to the world outside, to the future.
"Give me fifty dollars and my ticket to New York," said I.
It had so happened that at the time of my visit to Mr. Toddleham my credit, and consequently my ready funds, had become so reduced that I had only a dollar or two in my pocket. Therefore the check for fifty dollars that the old gentleman had carefully drawn for me with his quill pen and then had as carefully sanded over was by no means inopportune. I took the shore-car back over the Warren Avenue Bridge, depressed at the thought of leaving the scene of my first acquaintance with the world and at the same time somewhat relieved, in spite of myself, by the consoling thought that I should no longer be worried by the omnipresent anxiety of trying to escape from duns and Jews.
Resolved to terminate my collegiate career in a blaze of glory, I went the rounds of the college buildings and bade all my friends to a grand celebration at the Tavern, where, owing to the large amount of trade that I had been able to swing to it, my credit was still good. Even "Buck" de Vries was not forgotten, and without a suggestion of my contemplated departure I entertained my colleagues royally with a bowl of punch brewed after a celebrated Cambridge recipe, which in a decadent age spoke eloquently of the glories of the past. I was in the midst of a highly colored speechduring which I must confess de Vries had eyed me in a somewhat saturnine mannerwhen the proprietor tapped me on the shoulder and said that I was wanted outside. Excusing myself I stepped to the door only to be unexpectedly confronted by the local sheriff, who apologetically informed me that he held a warrant of attachment for my worldly goods and another for the arrest of my very worldly person. With admirable presence of mind I requested his patience until I should find my coat, and returning via the buttery made my escape from the premises by means of the rear exit. Sic gloria transit! That night I slept under the roof of the amiable Quirk in Methuen, and the day after reached New York, the city of my future career.
"Give me fifty dollars and my ticket to New York," said I.
It had so happened that at the time of my visit to Mr. Toddleham my credit, and consequently my ready funds, had become so reduced that I had only a dollar or two in my pocket. Therefore the check for fifty dollars that the old gentleman had carefully drawn for me with his quill pen and then had as carefully sanded over was by no means inopportune. I took the shore-car back over the Warren Avenue Bridge, depressed at the thought of leaving the scene of my first acquaintance with the world and at the same time somewhat relieved, in spite of myself, by the consoling thought that I should no longer be worried by the omnipresent anxiety of trying to escape from duns and Jews.
Resolved to terminate my collegiate career in a blaze of glory, I went the rounds of the college buildings and bade all my friends to a grand celebration at the Tavern, where, owing to the large amount of trade that I had been able to swing to it, my credit was still good. Even "Buck" de Vries was not forgotten, and without a suggestion of my contemplated departure I entertained my colleagues royally with a bowl of punch brewed after a celebrated Cambridge recipe, which in a decadent age spoke eloquently of the glories of the past. I was in the midst of a highly colored speechduring which I must confess de Vries had eyed me in a somewhat saturnine mannerwhen the proprietor tapped me on the shoulder and said that I was wanted outside. Excusing myself I stepped to the door only to be unexpectedly confronted by the local sheriff, who apologetically informed me that he held a warrant of attachment for my worldly goods and another for the arrest of my very worldly person. With admirable presence of mind I requested his patience until I should find my coat, and returning via the buttery made my escape from the premises by means of the rear exit. Sic gloria transit! That night I slept under the roof of the amiable Quirk in Methuen, and the day after reached New York, the city of my future career.
CHAPTER II
My arrival in the metropolis was unaccompanied by any newspaper comment or by any particular excitement on the part of the inhabitants. I simply landed, after a seven hours' journey from Boston, with a considerable quantity of fine raimentrather too fine, as I soon discovered, for the ordinary uses of a serious-minded, working youthsome fifty odd dollars, and a well-developed bump of self- confidence that was supported by a strong reserve resolution not to let anybody get ahead of me. I had all the assurance of a man double my years and an easy way of making acquaintances that was destined to stand me in good stead, but I do not wish to be understood as admitting that my manners were offensive or that I was in any degree supercilious. I was simply a good fellow who had always enjoyed the comradeship of other good fellows, and as a result felt reasonably sure that the rest of the world would treat him kindly. Moreover, I could dissemble without difficulty and, if occasion arose, could give the impression of being a diffident and modest young man, ready and anxious to order himself "lowly and humbly before his betters."
Yet I had seen enough of the world to know that unless a man puts a high appraisal upon his attainments and ability no one else is likely to do so, and that the public takes one, nine times out of ten, at his own valuation. Coming on the clay itself: I wore my hair rather long, with an appreciable modicum of bear's grease well rubbed in, side whiskers and white beaver, and carried a carpet bag on which was embroidered a stag's head in yellow on a background of green worsted. And the principal fact to be observed in this connection is that, instead of creating a smile as I passed out of the Grand Central Station, I was probably regarded as a rather smart and stylishly dressed young man.
I had a card to some young actors in the city, given me by my Thespian friends in Boston, and it proved but a short trip on the horse-cars down Fourth Avenue to the locality, near the Academy of Music, then as now frequented by the fraternity. I began my professional career, then, by taking lodgings in an actors' boarding- house, and I am free to confess that at the time I was undecided whether to follow the bar or the boards. I have since frequently observed that the same qualities make for success in both, and had it not been for the fact that I found my new friends somewhat down at the heels and their rate of emolument exceedingly low, as well as for a certain little incident to be recounted shortly, I might well have joined the group of future Booths and Forrests that loitered along the near-by Rialto, looking for jobs as Roman soldiers or footmen in some coming production.
But the change from my well-appointed lodgings in Cambridge and my luxurious surroundings at the Cock and Spur to a distinctly shabby theatrical boarding-house, where the guests plainly exhibited traces of the lack of proper ablutional facilities and the hallways smelt of cabbage and onions, was a distinct shock to my highly sensitive tastes. However, my new acquaintances proved warm-hearted and hospitable and did everything in their power to make me feel at my ease, with the result that in spite of the cabbage and the wooden slats that served as springs in my bedwhich nearly filled the rear hall bed-room I had hired for one week at four dollars and twenty-five centsI resolved to postpone entering upon an active career until I should know the city better and have made a few friends.
Those of my new comrades who were lucky enough to have employment did not rise in the morning until the neighborhood of twelve o'clock, and those who had no employment at all followed their example. I thus found myself adopting of necessity, as it were, the pleasant practice of sauntering out on Broadway after a one o'clock breakfast, and of spending most of the afternoon, evening, and following morning in or about the same locality. We usually went to some theatrical show on what was known as "paper," and I afterward joined my actor friends at a restaurant, where we sang songs and told stories until the gas-lamps were extinguished and gray dawn crept over the house-tops. Downtowninto the mysterious district of Wall StreetI did not, as yet, go, and I might still be haunting the stage entrances of the theatres had it not been for an adventure in which I was an involuntary participant.
It so happened that among my new acquaintances was a careless, rattle-brained youth known as Toby Robinson, who in spite of some histrionic ability was constantly losing his job and always in debt. He was a smooth-faced, rather stout, good-natured-looking person, of the sort who is never supposed to have done harm to anybody. Not long before he had enjoyed a salary of fourteen dollars per week, but having overslept several times running he had been discharged for absence from rehearsals. He had reached the limit of his resources about the time of my arrival in the city and had been in a most lugubrious frame of mind when I first had the honor of his acquaintance. Suddenly, however, he appeared one day with a large roll of bills and entered upon a period of lubrication and open-handed hospitality, in which we all participated. During this season of good cheer, as Toby and I were strolling down Broadway one afternoon, an ugly looking man who had been following us stepped forward and, touching my friend on the shoulder, said gruffly:
"The captain wants to see you."
The uttering of these cryptic syllables produced a most extraordinary effect upon my companion, for he turned deadly pale and the perspiration collected in beads upon his temples, while he commenced to wring his hands and bemoan his ill fortune.
"What is the trouble?" I inquired in great solicitude.