The Romance of a Plain Man Read online

  CHAPTER IX

  I LEARN A LITTLE LATIN AND A GREAT DEAL OF LIFE

  My opportunity came at last when Bob Brackett, the manager of the leafdepartment, discovered me one afternoon tucked away with the half ofJohnson's Dictionary in a corner of the stemming room, where the negroeswere singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."

  "I say, Ben, why ain't you out on the floor?" he asked.

  I laid the book face downwards on the window-sill, and came out,embarrassed and secretive, to where he stood. "I just dropped down therea minute ago to rest," I replied.

  "You weren't resting, you were reading. Show me the book."

  Without a word I handed him the great dictionary, and he fingered thedog-eared pages with a critical and reflective air.

  "Holy Moses! it ain't a blessed thing except words!" he exclaimed, aftera minute. "Do you mean to tell me you can sit down and read a dictionaryfor the pure pleasure of reading?"

  "I wasn't reading, I was learning," I answered.

  "Learning how?"

  "Learning by heart. I've already got as far as the _d_'s."

  "You mean you can say every last word of them _a_'s, _b_'s, and _c_'sstraight off?"

  I nodded gravely, my hands behind my back, my eyes on the beams in theceiling. "As far as the _d_'s."

  "And you're doing all this learning just to get an education, ain'tyou?"

  My eyes dropped from the beams and I shook my head, "I don't believeit's there, sir."

  "What? Where?"

  "I don't believe an education is in them. I did once."

  For a moment he stood turning over the discoloured leaves withoutreplying. "I reckon you can tell me the meaning of 'most any word, eh,Ben?" he demanded.

  "Not unless it begins with _a_, _b_, or _c_, sir."

  "Well, any word beginning with an _a_, then, that's something. There'rea precious lot of 'em. How about allelujah, how's that for a mouthful?"

  Instinctively my eyes closed, and I began my reply in a tone that seemedto chime in with the negro's melody.

  'Falsely written for Hallelujah, a word of spiritual exultation, used inhymns; signifies, _Praise God. He will set his tongue, to those piousdivine strains; which may be a proper praeludium to those allelujahs, hehopes eternally to sing._

  "'_Government of the Tongue._'"

  "Hooray! That's a whopper!" he exclaimed, with enthusiasm. "What's aprae-lu-di-um?"

  "I told you I hadn't got to _p_'s yet," I returned, not withoutresentment.

  The hymn changed suddenly; the negro in the red shirt, with the scar onhis neck, turned his great oxlike eyes upon me, and the next instant hissuperb voice rolled, rich and deep, as the sound of an organ, from hisbared black chest.

  "A-settin' in de kingdom, Y-e-s, m-y-L-a-w-d!"

  "Well, you've got gumption," said Bob, the manager. "That's what Ialways lacked--just plain gumption, and when you ain't got it, there'snothing to take its place. I was talking to General Bolingbroke aboutyou yesterday, Ben, and that's what I said. 'There's but one word forthat boy, General, and it's gumption.'"

  I accepted the tribute with a swelling heart. "What good will it do meif I can't get an education?" I demanded.

  "It's that will give it to you, Ben. Why, don't you know every blessedword in the English language that begins with an _a_? That's more than Iknow--that's more, I reckon," he burst out, "than the General himselfknows!"

  In this there was comfort, if a feeble one. "But there're so many otherthings besides the _a_'s that you've got to learn," I responded.

  "Yes, but if you learn the _a_'s, you'll learn the other things,--nowain't that logic? The trouble with me, you see, is that I learned theother things without knowing a blamed sight of an _a_. I tell you whatI'll do, Ben, my boy, I'll speak to the General about it the Very nexttime he comes to the factory."

  He gave me back the dictionary, and I applied myself to its pages with aterrible earnestness while I awaited the great man's attention.

  It was a week before it came, for the General, having gone North onaffairs of the railroad, did not condescend to concern himself with mydestiny until the more important business was arranged and despatched.Being in a bland mood, however, upon his return, it appeared that he hadlistened and expressed himself to some purpose at last.

  "Tell him to go to Theophilus Pry and let me have his report," was whathe had said.

  "But who is Theophilus Pry?" I enquired, when this was repeated to me byBob Brackett.

  "Dr. Theophilus Pry, an old friend of the General's, who takes hisnephew to coach in the evenings. The doctor's very poor, I believe,because they say of him that he never refuses a patient and never sendsa bill. He swears there isn't enough knowledge in his profession to makeit worth anybody's money."

  "And where does he live?"

  "In that little old house with the office in the yard on FranklinStreet. The General says you're to go to him this evening at eighto'clock."

  The sound of my beating heart was so loud in my ears that I hurriedlybuttoned my jacket across it. Then as if I were to be examined onJohnson's Dictionary, my lips began to move silently while I spelledover the biggest words. If I could only confine my future conversationsto the use of the _a_'s and _b_'s, I felt that I might safely passthrough life without desperate disaster in the matter of speech.

  It was a mild October evening, with a smoky blue haze, through which asingle star shone over the clipped box in Dr. Theophilus Pry's garden,when I opened the iron gate and went softly along the pebbled walk tothe square little office standing detached from the house. A blackservant, carrying a plate of waffles from the outside kitchen, informedme in a querulous voice that the doctor was still at supper, but I mightgo in and wait; and accepting the suggestion with more amiability thanaccompanied it, I entered the small, cheerful room, where a lamp, with alowered wick, burned under a green shade. Around the walls there weremany ancient volumes in bindings of stout English calf, and on themantelpiece, above which hung one of the original engravings of Latane's"Burial," two enormous glass jars, marked "Calomel" and "Quinine,"presided over the apartment with an air of medicinal solemnity. Theywere the only visible and positive evidence of the doctor's calling inlife, and when I knew him better in after years, I discovered that theywere the only drugs he admitted to a place in the profession of healing.To the day of his death, he administered these alternatives with a highfinality and an imposing presence. It was told of him that he consideredbut one symptom, and this he discovered with his hand on the patient'spulse and his eyes on a big loud-ticking watch in a hunting case. If thepulse was quick, he prescribed quinine, if sluggish, he ordered calomel.To dally with minor ailments was as much beneath him as to temporisewith modern medicine. In his last years he was still suspicious ofvaccination, and entertained a profound contempt for the knife. Beyondhis faith in calomel and quinine, there were but two articles in hiscreed; he believed first in cleanliness, secondly in God. "Madam," he isreported to have remarked irreverently to a mother whom he found prayingfor her child's recovery in the midst of a dirty house, "when Goddoesn't respond to prayer, He sometimes answers a broom and a bucket ofsoapsuds." Honest, affable, adored, he presented the singular spectacleof a physician who scorned medicine, and yet who, it was said, had fewerdeaths and more recoveries to his credit than any other practitioner ofhis generation. This belief arose probably in the legendary glamourwhich resulted from his boundless, though mysterious, charities; fordespite the fact that he had until his death a large and devotedfollowing, he lived all his life in a condition of genteel poverty. Hissingle weakness was, I believe, an utter inability to appreciate theexchange value of dollars and cents; and this failing grew upon him sorapidly in his declining years that Mrs. Clay, his widowed sister, whokept his house, was at last obliged to "put up pickles" for the marketin order to keep a roof over her brother's distinguished head.

  I was sitting in one of the worn leather chairs under the green lamp,when the door opened and shut quickly, and Dr. Theophilus Pry came inand
held out his hand.

  "So you're the lad George was telling me about," he began at once, witha charming, straightforward courtesy. "I hope I haven't kept youwaiting many minutes, sir."

  He was spare and tall, with stooping shoulders, a hooked nose, bearing afew red veins, and a smile that lit up his face like the flash of alantern. Everything about his clothes that could be coloured was of abright, strong red; his cravat, his big silk handkerchief, and the polkadots in his black stockings. "Yes, I like any colour as long as it'sred," he was fond of saying with his genial chuckle.

  Bending over the green baize cloth on the table, he pushed away a pileof examination papers, and raised the wick of the lamp.

  "So you've started out to learn Dr. Johnson's Dictionary by heart," heobserved. "Now by a fair calculation how long do you suppose it willtake you?"

  I replied with diffidence that it appeared to me now as if it would verylikely take me till the Day of Judgment.

  "Well, 'tis as good an occupation as most, and a long ways better thansome," commented the doctor. "You've come to me, haven't you, becauseyou think you'd like to learn a little Latin?"

  "I'd like to learn anything, sir, that will help me to get on."

  "What's the business?"

  "Tobacco."

  "I don't know that Latin will help you much there, unless it aids you toname a blend."

  "It--it isn't only that, sir, I--I want an education--not just a commonone."

  A smile broke suddenly like a beam of light on his face, and Iunderstood all at once why his calomel and his quinine so often cured.At that moment I should have swallowed tar water on faith if he hadprescribed it.

  "I don't know much about you, my lad," he remarked with a grave,old-fashioned courtesy, which lifted me several feet above the spot ofcarpet on which I stood, "but a gentleman who starts out to learn oldSamuel Johnson's Dictionary by heart, is a gentleman I'll give my handto."

  With my pulses throbbing hard, I watched him take down a dog-eared LatinGrammar, and begin turning the pages; and when, after a minute, he put afew simple questions to me, I answered as well as I could for the lumpin my throat. "It's the fashion now to neglect the classics," he saidsadly, "and a man had the impertinence to tell me yesterday that theonly use for a dead language was to write prescriptions for sick peoplein it. But I maintain, and I will repeat it, that you never find agentleman of cultured and elevated tastes who has not at least a bowingacquaintance with the Latin language. The common man may deride--"

  I looked up quickly. "If you please, sir, I'd like to learn it," I brokein with determination.

  He glanced at me kindly, secretly flattered, I suspect, by myspontaneous tribute to his eloquence, and the leaves of the LatinGrammar had fluttered open, when the door swung wide with a cheerfulbang, and a boy of about my own age, though considerably under my heightand size, entered the room.

  "I didn't get in from the ball game till an hour ago, doctor," heexclaimed. "Uncle George says please don't slam me if I am late."

  Some surface resemblance to my hero of the railroad made me aware, evenbefore Dr. Pry introduced us, that the newcomer was the "young George"of whom I had heard. He was a fresh, high-coloured boy, whose featuresshowed even now a slight forecast of General Bolingbroke's awfulredness. Before I looked: at him I got a vague impression that he washandsome; after I looked at him I began to wonder curiously why he wasnot? His hair was of a bright chestnut colour, very curly, and clippedunusually close, in order to hide the natural wave of which, Idiscovered later, he was ashamed. He had pleasant brown eyes, and amerry smile, which lent a singular charm to his face when it hoveredabout his mouth.

  "I say, doctor, I wish you'd let me off to-night. I'll do doubleto-morrow," he begged, and then turned to me with his pleasant, intimatemanner: "Don't you hate Latin? I do. Before Dr. Theophilus begancoaching me I went to a woman, and that was worse--she made it so silly.I hate women, don't you?"

  "Young George," observed Dr. Theophilus, with sternness, "for everydisrespectful allusion to the ladies, I shall give you an extra page ofgrammar."

  "I'm no worse than uncle, doctor. Uncle says--"

  "I forbid you to repeat any flippant remarks of General Bolingbroke's,George, and you may tell him so, with my compliments, at breakfast."

  Opening his book, he glanced at me gravely over its pages, and the nextinstant my education in the ancient languages and the finer graces ofsociety commenced.

  On that first evening I won a place in the doctor's affections, which, Ilike to think, I never really lost in the many changes the futurebrought me. My obsequious respect for dead tongues redeemed, to a greatmeasure, the appalling ignorance I immediately displayed of the merestrudiments of geography and history; and when the time came, I believe iteven reconciled him to my bodily stature, which always appeared to himto be too large to conform to the smaller requirements of society. In myfourteenth year I began to grow rapidly, and his chief complaint of meafter this was that I never learned to manage my hands and feet as ifthey really belonged to me--a failing that I am perfectly aware I wasnever able entirely to overcome. It would doubtless take the breeding ofall the Bolingbrokes, he once informed me, with a sigh, to enable a manto carry a stature such as mine with the careless dignity which mightpossibly have been attained by a moderate birth and a smaller body.

  "Nature has intended you for a prize-fighter, but God has made of you agentleman," he added, with his fine, characteristic philosophy, whichescaped me at the moment; "it is a blessing, I suppose, to be endowedwith a healthy body, but if I were you, I should endeavour to keep mymembers constantly in my mind. It is the next best thing to behaving asif they did not exist."

  This was said so regretfully that I hadn't the heart to inform him thatmy mind, being of limited dimensions, found difficulty in accommodatingat one and the same time my bodily members and the Latin language. Evenmy "Caesar" caused me less misery at this period than did the problem ofthe proper disposal of my hands and feet. Do what I would they werehopelessly (by some singular freak of nature) in my way. The breeding ofall the Bolingbrokes would have been taxed to its utmost, I believe, tobehave for a single instant as if they did not exist.

  Except for the embarrassment of my increasing stature, the years thatfollowed my introduction to Dr. Theophilus, as he was called, stand outin my memory as ones of almost unruffled happiness. The two great jarsof calomel and quinine on the mantelpiece became like faces of familiar,beneficent friends; and the dusty bookcases, with their shining rows ofold English bindings, formed an appropriate background for the flight ofmy wildest dreams. To this day those adolescent fancies have neverdetached themselves from the little office, the scattered bricks ofwhich are now lying in the ruined garden between the blighted yew treeand the uprooted box. I can see them still circling like vague facesaround the green lamp, under which Dr. Theophilus sits, with his brownand white pointer, Robin, asleep at his feet. Sometimes there was asaucer of fresh raspberry jam brought in by Mrs. Clay, the widowedsister; sometimes a basket of winesap apples; and once a year, on thenight before Christmas, a large slice of fruit cake and a very smalltumbler of egg-nog. Always there were the cheery smile, the pleasanttalk, racy with anecdotes, and the wagging tail of Robin, the pointer.

  "A good dog, Ben, this little mongrel of yours," the doctor would say,as he stooped to pat Samuel's head; "but then, all dogs are good dogs.You remember your Plutarch? Now, here's this Robin of mine. I wouldn'ttake five hundred dollars in my hand for him to-night." At this Robin,the pointer, would lift his big brown eyes, and slip his soft nose intohis master's hand. "I wouldn't take five hundred dollars down for him,"Dr. Theophilus would repeat with emphasis.

  On the nights when our teacher was called out to a patient, as he oftenwas, George Bolingbroke and I would push back the chairs for a game ofcheckers, or step outside into the garden for a wrestling match, inwhich I was always the victor. The physical proportions which the doctorlamented, were, I believe, the strongest hold I had upon the admirationof young
George. Latin he treated with the same half-playful,half-contemptuous courtesy that I had observed in General Bolingbroke'smanner to "the ladies," and even the doctor he regarded as a mixture ofa scholar and a mollycoddle. It was perfectly characteristic that onething, and one thing only, should command his unqualified respect, andthis was the possession of the potential power to knock him down.