WHAT I HEARD ON THE STREET.
BY CLARA F. GUERNSEY.
NOT long ago, while I was waiting for the cars at a street corner, I heard two men talking together. The one was a young fellow of nineteen or so, a big, tall youth, whose appearance would have been pleasing had he not worn, in addition to a general air of discouragement, that look of being on the down-hill road, which, once seen, is unmistakable.
His clothes were sufficiently good in quality, but they seemed never to have known the clothes-brush, his coat lacked four or five buttons, for which three pins were a very inadequate substitute, and he had an aspect generally of having forgotten the use of soap and water.
Perhaps all this might not have been his fault. It is possible he had no womankind belonging to him, though I don’t hold that an excuse for missing buttons, and his work might have been such as bred fluffiness and griminess, but no man’s work obliges him to slouch when off duty, to keep his hands in his pockets, or tilt his hat on one side.
The other man was a brisk, middle-aged person, whom I take to have been a worker in iron in one way or another. He had on his working-dress, and his hands were black, but the blackness in his case was a mere outside necessity, and went no farther than the surface. He looked bright and sensible, and it was in a pleasant voice that he asked the younger man:
“Well, Jim, got a place?”
Jim gave a weary, discouraged sigh, and shifted from one foot to the other.
“Yes, I’m in Blank’s, but I might as well not be.”
“Why?”
“Oh,” returned Jim, in a forlorn manner, “what’s the use? I work all the week, and when Saturday night comes, there’s just five dollars. What’s that? Why, it’s just nothing.”
“No, it ain’t,” replied the senior, laying a kindly hand on the other’s shoulder. “It’s just five dollars better than nothing. Put it that way, Jim.”
“Well, now, that’s so,” said Jim, brightening up wonderfully after a minute’s thought. “It does make it seem different, don’t it?” And he walked off, apparently much comforted.
If you think of it, Reader, you will see that the difference between five dollars and nothing is infinitely greater than that between five and five thousand.