Metzerott, Shoemaker

“Papa!” said Louis, one autumn evening. The child, just five years old, was perched, as usual, upon his father’s knee, his golden head nestled against his father’s breast. They were an oddly contrasted pair; Metzerott, with his powerful, yet apparently clumsy frame, brown, rugged face, and hair just beginning—though he was not yet forty years old—to be touched with gray, while Louis had his mother’s face, refined and spiritualized into absolute loveliness. His grave blue eyes could be merry enough at times; but as he lifted them now to his father’s face, there was a solemn purity in their gaze, at sight of which Metzerott drew the boy closer to his breast, in a sudden, irrational terror of losing him.

“Well,” he said.

“Papa, why did my mamma die?” He spoke a baby patois, half English, half German, which we should vainly attempt to reproduce.

“Because we are poor, my son, and were even poorer then. If your mother could have been nursed and done for, like a rich lady with plenty of money and crowds of servants, she would have been alive now. Money, my boy, was the medicine she needed.”

“If I were President,” said Louis after a thoughtful pause, “I would make more money, so that every one might have enough.”

Metzerott smiled, even while he shook his head. “There’s money enough, or so people say, and making more would only lower the value of what there is. That was tried during the war, Louis. The trouble is that all the money is in too few hands. Some have more than enough, and others have nothing. As if I should eat all the dinner, you know, and leave none for you.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” said Louis confidently.

“Nor the millionnaires sha’n’t much longer,” said Metzerott. “When we get the Commune, Louis, every man who has more than he needs—yes, and we’ll cut his ‘needs’ down pretty close, too—will have to divide with his poor neighbors.”

“What is ‘’vide’?” asked Louis, who had often heard of the Commune.

Metzerott showed him practically, by means of a box of lead soldiers that had been given to the child that day, and which was cherished fondly in one chubby arm.

“Now,” said the shoemaker, arranging these in two files upon his mother’s old candle-stand, which stood at his elbow, “now, if you were to give half of these to George Rolf, and keep this row for yourself, that would be dividing with him.”

“I fink,” said Louis, “I don’t like ’viding.”

“No more will the millionnaires,” said Metzerott, laughing; “but if you were George, my boy, with no lead soldiers at all to play with, maybe you’d like it better. Why, Louis, there is money enough in the country to buy every poor man in it all that he needs; and there is food enough grown every year to fill every hungry mouth from Maine to Florida; yet people die by hundreds, like your poor mother, of want and toil, just because those who have won’t divide with those who have not.”

“I will,” said Louis, “I’ll ’vide my soldiers with George, right away.”

“George is abed long ago,” said Metzerott, surprised, amused, and a little touched, at this unexpected result of his lecture; “and high time you were there, too. Put off your ’viding until to-morrow.”

He was still more astonished, and almost remorseful, next morning, to see the child march off, with a very sober face, and his box of soldiers under his arm. Frau Anna’s rooms were still in the topmost story of the house next door; and Louis climbed the stairs patiently, and arrived panting, but resolute, at the familiar door.

“George,” he said, “I’ve come to ’vide my soldiers with you.”

“Du Engelchen!” cried Frau Anna, dropping her sewing to clasp her hands. “Who put that into your head, my lamb?”

“Papa,” said Louis. “It’s so every one will have enough to eat and to wear,” he added explanatorily.

“Du lieber Himmel!” said Frau Anna, “much good your ’viding will do, you poor baby. Folks as poor as us must keep all we get for ourselves.”

Louis was happily far too busy to hear this speech, with which, as we know, Frau Anna’s practice did not exactly correspond. The question of dividing offered sufficient practical difficulty to absorb his whole attention; but by following his father’s example and marshalling his army into two columns, he at last succeeded, to the mutual satisfaction of himself and his playmate.

Time passed very happily until noon, when Louis trotted home, to announce to his father that it was “nice to ’vide. When we bofe play togevver, it’s as good as if they was all mine,” he said.

For all reply, Metzerott produced a brown paper package of a charmingly mysterious shape, and watched with a lurking smile the eager little fingers struggle with the string.

“Oh! what is it?” cried little Louis.

It was of tin, painted in gay colors, and it spun upon the floor, upon being wound, with a loud humming noise.

“Now,” said Metzerott, when the first edge of delight had worn off, “how about George? you can’t divide a top with him.”

“No,” returned Louis with a mournful shake of his head, “you can’t ’vide one top.”

He leaned his chin upon his two plump hands, as he sat tailor fashion on the floor, and delivered himself up to contemplation of the top, which lay just where it had toppled over from its last spin, as if there were inspiration in its gaudy hues. Presently he looked up brightly.

“I know,” he said, “we can spin it togevver, and it can be bofe of ours. That’s the only way to ’vide a top!”

“You’re your mother’s own son,” said Metzerott. “Come, dinner is ready, let’s see how you ’vide that. There’s a splendid pot of soup, enough for a dozen; so never say your father can’t cook.”

But scarcely had they seated themselves at the table when a heavy fall in the room above was followed by two shrill, feeble, feminine shrieks. Metzerott ran hastily up the stairs, which he had not ascended since the death of his wife, followed more slowly by Louis, to whom they were more familiar, though the silent pre-occupation of the sisters had not tended to encourage his visits.

The Prices had recently taken a young niece to share their room, and earn her own bread if she could; and she it was who now lay upon the floor with her head upon Sally’s thin bosom, while Susan chafed the unconscious hand, and wept. She was evidently quite young, and the battle with want and toil, while it had wasted her form and paled her cheek, had not lasted long enough to destroy her youth and beauty.

“She ain’t used to it yet, Mr. Metzerott,” said Sally Price half apologetically. “I’m sorry to disturb you at your dinner, sir, specially if it’s as good as it smells. Them that has ought to enjoy,” she added without a trace of bitterness.

“I’m not caring for my dinner,” answered Metzerott roughly. “I’ll get her some whiskey; that’s what she wants.”

There was silence in the room until he returned, except that, when Louis, not seeing any other way of being useful, wiped the eyes of the weeping Susan with his blue-checked gingham apron, she asked Sally if it wasn’t beautiful to see how that child favored his mother, to which Sally replied that the Lord knew it was indeed.

The whiskey, which Metzerott procured at the nearest saloon, was vile stuff perhaps, but it brought back the color to Polly’s white lips.

“She’ll do now, Mr. Metzerott, and thank you kindly,” said Miss Price. “We’ve got a little bread here we can give her; and this is Saturday, bless the Lord, so we’ll be able to buy more.”

“More bread?” asked Metzerott, who, man-like, had never attained to a realizing sense of his lodgers’ domestic affairs, “is that all you’ve got to give her?”

“It’s all we ever have,” replied Sally calmly. “Bless you, sir, what can you expect, with shirts five cents a dozen? But Polly, she was raised in the country, till her father and mother both died in one week with the typhoid, and her brother got married; and she come to the city to better herself, the Lord help her! So, what with not being used to sewing so constant, and nothing to eat, so to speak, and the smell of your dinner, Mr. Metzerott,—though I’m the last to begrutch it to you, sir, as works as hard as any, and has had your own troubles,—why, her head turned giddy, and she fainted clean away. That’s all, sir.”

“And quite enough, too,” said Metzerott, watching how, as she spoke, Sally fed her niece with fragments of bread, dipped in the whiskey and water,—not a very palatable refreshment, one would suppose, yet Polly swallowed it eagerly.

“Now, that’s enough liquor for the present, Polly Price,” said her aunt; “you can eat the rest of your bread dry, and be thankful you’ve got it. She’s a good girl, Mr. Metzerott, and a pretty girl, though I say so; and there’s them that has eyes to see it, and would keep her like a queen if she would listen to their wicked words.”

Polly groaned, and hid her face upon her aunt’s thin shoulder.

“It’s young Crushem, the contractor’s son,” continued Sally. “And when he spoke to her as I tell you, sir, Polly she comes home, and she says, says she, ‘It’s hard to put the bread from your mouth when you’re starving,’ she says. And then Susan there, she says, ‘It’s only putting off the starving a bit, Polly,’ says she. ‘Money made that way don’t never last long, and you’ll come to the garret and the crust at last,’ says she. ‘But he’s promised to settle money on me, so as I could take care of you both,’ says Polly. ‘Bless you, Polly Price,’ says I, ‘we’re used to it,’ says I; ‘we can stand it if you can,’ says I. And Polly, she says, kinder cryin’, ‘I thought I couldn’t, Aunt Sally,’ she says. ‘I told him I’d think over it, and I’d about made up my mind to say yes; but when that child downstairs looked at me with his solemn blue eyes, I knew I’d better starve than be a wicked girl,’ says Polly.”

Metzerott had listened to this long story with a frown of sympathy contracting his rugged features. But at this point a hand pulled at his short working-jacket, and a sweet voice said, “Papa, don’t you think we’d better ’vide our dinner? There’s soup enough for a dozen, and don’t ever say my father can’t cook!”

Metzerott caught the boy in his arms. “Do you hear the emperor?” he cried. “Louis Napoleon must be obeyed. Come down to dinner, all of you!”

It was good to see the starving women eat, and Louis’ face bright with the joy of ’viding. Metzerott, as he watched them, knew not whether to be glad or sorrowful. That there should be no more starving under his roof he was quite determined, yet how to take upon himself the support of three full-grown women? At last a happy thought came to him.

“I have been thinking,” he said, when the meal was over, and his guests were regretfully wiping their mouths, “I have been thinking, Miss Sally, what a convenience it would be to me if one of you ladies would do my cooking, and housekeep for me regular. You might take it in turn, if you liked; a little exercise don’t hurt nobody, and I shouldn’t care. Then we could all eat together sociable, and you could do your sewing just the same, unless you could find other work.”

He said nothing of the rent, which indeed had not been demanded or paid since Dora’s death.

The sisters looked at each other in silence for a moment, while Polly burst at once into tears; then Susan’s head went down on the table, and Sally, with clasped hands and eyes uplifted, cried fervently, “Bless the Lord!”

“Don’t cry,” said Metzerott hastily; “it’ll be cheaper to me in the end, now that trade’s so brisk, than knocking off to go to market and cook every five minutes or so. I’ve been knowing for quite a while that I should have to hire somebody; but I didn’t want no strange women around, and I’m ashamed to say I never thought of you.”

“And you know,” said Louis, who had scrambled down from the table, and was hugging Polly Price, “you know we’ve got to ’vide some day, and I’m glad of it because it’s so awful jolly.”

“The boy is a good Communist,” said Metzerott, laughing; “and now, if you ladies feel able to wash the dishes, I’ll go back to my work.”

“There’s pretty near enough soup for to-morrow,” said Sally Price, peeping into the big iron pot. “My laws! wasteful ain’t the name for a man!”

“There’s just this about it,” said Sally Price, “Mr. Metzerott ain’t goin’ to be no loser by us, and that settles it.”

“He’ll get paid for his kindness in heaven, anyhow,” returned Susan tearfully.

“Heaven!” the scorn in Miss Price’s voice was for Susan, not the country she had named. “He’s goin’ to get paid right here on earth, and you can just take hold and help me, Susan Price, instead of settin’ there a-snivellin’. Some folks thinks a deal too much of heaven, anyway.”

“Why, Aunt Sally!”

“It’s as true as the Gospel, child. I don’t say but it’s a nice place, heaven, after you get there; and when you’re real tired and hungry and sick, and not a minute to take a long breath, it’s a solid satisfaction to think as there’s a time comin’ when you won’t need to eat nor breathe nor work no more; but I don’t believe in settin’ on your haunches, when a man’s feedin’ you out of his own pocket, and talk about his havin’ his reward in heaven. If folks that talk so much about heaven hereafter would quit right off, and set to work to make things a little more like heaven here, ’twould be lots better. We, includin’ Polly, wouldn’t ‘a’ been so near the other place, Susan Price, if things was run on that plan here below.”

“That’s so,” answered Susan meekly.

“I went once to see a preacher, and ask him to get us somethin’ to do,” said Sally. “It wasn’t long after we come to town, and before we’d begun sewin’ on Sunday, so I went Sunday afternoon. He was a real nice man, always shook hands with both hands, and had an awful affectionate manner, and I thought he’d be the very one to help us. Well, he said he was sorry we were so bad off, though he guessed there was others worse off than us; for that was before our good clo’es wore out, and I looked pretty nice. Then he told me how many people in his congregation were in want of somethin’ to do; and said we ought to be thankful for any kind of a job, no matter how little it paid.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Susan.

“I do,” cried Polly impetuously. “A job that takes all your time to earn enough to keep from starving is just robbery and slavery, that’s all.”

Aunt Sally assented gravely. “If you leave your work to look for another job, you are sure to starve before you find one,” she said, “and you might as well be chained to a oar, like those people in the ancient history. Fact is, we was worse off than galley-slaves, Sue; for ’twas the captain’s interest to keep them alive.”

“But it’s nobody’s interest to keep sewing women alive,” said Polly bitterly; “there’s plenty to take our places, if we drop. The labor market is overstocked, they say.”

“That’s what my preacher said,” replied Sally; “and all the comfort he had for me was that, if I did my duty, and came to church reg’lar, I’d git to heaven finally. I thanked him for his good advice, but I ain’t been to his church since.”

“Mr. Metzerott don’t believe in heaven,” said Polly, “maybe that’s why he’s so kind to us here on earth.”

“I believe in heaven,” said Susan slowly.

“You ain’t quite a born fool, Susan Price, that’s why. Of course the good Lord is goin’ to fix things so the poor will have a fair show somewhere. But we ain’t the good Lord, so far’s I know; and it’s our place to keep things fair and right on this earth, so far’s we can.”

“And that ain’t far,” said Susan.

“It’s as far as Mr. Metzerott, anyhow,” returned Sally rather sharply, “and we ain’t got no call to go no further, yit. And what I’m thinking about is his baker’s bill.”

The Prices were alive and awake again, no doubt about it; as for Polly, she had never been asleep. Her strong, vivid, ardent nature, craving happiness with every fibre, could never, I think, have sunk into that tired and hopeless acquiescence in things as they ought not to be, that inanition of mind, heart, and soul, which had long ago devoured the youth and vitality of the sisters. And yet the vitality, after all, had not utterly departed, and the feeble currents in their veins stirred in sympathy with the young life beating its wings against the bars of poverty, and tugging so vainly at the chain of starvation wages. Then came rescue and hope, and the awakening was complete.

Sally Price possessed, without being at all conscious of it, a rare organizing faculty. Perhaps no other sewing-woman in Micklegard could have accomplished as much with four hands and only one machine as she had done; but the very impossibility of doing much with such slight materials, the consciousness of wasted power, and sense of the injustice which for such grinding work gave such ground-down wages, had helped to crush out from her heart everything but hopeless patience. That she had not grown hard and bitter was a strange and beautiful thing; perhaps, even before the advent of Polly, there were three at work in that poor upper room, even as four walked in the Holy Children’s burning, fiery furnace.

But now, Sally had something to organize, and a purpose in the organization; she was quite resolved, as she said, that Mr. Metzerott “shouldn’t lose nothin’” by his kindness to her and hers. Whether his expenses were exactly the same as when he himself had constituted his whole domestic staff, with the exception of an old woman who came three times a week to do “chores” and washing, is doubtful; but they were certainly not materially increased; and, taking into account the shoemaker’s additional time for work, the arrangement might be considered one of great economy. First of all, there was the baker, who had swallowed all the Prices’ earnings in the past, in return for a very moderate portion of the staff of life, strongly flavored with alum. Miss Price made up her mind at once that the baker must go. At her suggestion, Karl bought a bag of flour, and Polly, who was said to be a “master hand” at the process, was appointed bread-maker in chief; while Sally and Susan took their turn of exercise at the wash-tub and ironing-board.

Sally managed it all. They did fully as much work for Grind and Crushem; for, after all, only a certain amount can be done with one machine, and there was always one of them with her foot on the treadle; while the little house was nearly scrubbed into holes, and everything about it cleaned until it shone again. The old woman vanished; chores became a thing of the past; and Polly’s delicate cooking gave Karl, as he declared, a new pleasure in eating.

Then began the old story of the loaves and fishes, inevitable multiplication. One day Louis brought home the tidings that Frau Anna had a bad headache, so bad that she could not lift her head from her pillow, and the children had no dinner but bread.

“I guess I’ll go in and see to ‘em,” said Sally thoughtfully. “Now I’ve got to eatin’ reg’lar meals again, it seems pretty bad to have nothin’ but bread for dinner.”

She went accordingly. There was in the cupboard a piece of cold, cooked beef about four inches square, an onion, and three raw Irish potatoes; for, as Frau Anna explained, she had not been able to go out to buy anything that day.

“Buy!” said Sally, “why should you? There’s dinner enough here for these children, with bread, and that you’ve got plenty of. But I know you don’t want no smell of cookin’ under your nose, so the children can come and play with Louis; and by and by I’ll send you over some tea and toast.”

The beef, potatoes, and onion, chopped up into an iron skillet, covered with water, and re-enforced by a spoonful of turnips and the remains of a can of tomatoes, which Sally had been keeping for some occasion when they would “come in handy,” produced, at the end of twenty minutes, a very savory stew, to which the children did ample justice. But the tea and toast which after a while Sally carried in to her neighbor became the occasion of such sighs over the days when Frau Anna had made her own bread, and her children had had wholesome food to eat, that it resulted, a day or two later, in an offer from Polly to bake for Frau Anna along with themselves.

“And I don’t see why I shouldn’t do your cooking, all of it,” said Polly. “Sally keeps such a strict account of all we spend that she could tell in a minute what you ought to pay.”

“The cost of the things in market, and maybe a little extra to Mr. Metzerott for the fire,” said Sally. “I used to be quick at figures, Mis’ Rolf; and if I ain’t forgot how, I’ll cipher it out, and let you know. You needn’t be afraid we’ll cheat you, or make anything out of you; we’ve been made too much out of ourselves.”

But when it was also arranged that they should do Frau Anna’s washing, Sally concluded that they might give up their work at Grind and Crushem’s.

“And how it feels to be free again, you won’t never know, Mr. Metzerott,” she said, when the deed had been done.

“Now I want to know,” said Karl, looking up from his work with a quizzical smile, “what’s the difference between the way you’re living now and domestic service. Wouldn’t it have been better to live out with some rich person, who would have paid good wages, than to work for Grind and Crushem?”

“Maybe it would,” said Sally thoughtfully. “Hired girls do get good wages, that’s so.”

“It’s your American independence,” said Metzerott. “You don’t find German girls willing to starve rather than live out.”

“There wasn’t much independence at our shop,” answered Sally dryly. “I don’t know why it is, Mr. Metzerott, but American girls won’t live out ef they can do anything else; or ef they do, they feel kinder degraded, and it makes ‘em so uppish and contrary there’s no livin’ in the house with ‘em. I’ve seen ‘em real sassy, just because they felt lowered in their own eyes.”

“They were fools!” said Metzerott briefly. “What is there in honest work to degrade any one?”

“’Tain’t the work,” said Sally; “they’d do that at home, and not feel a mite degraded; and ’tain’t the wages, for ’twouldn’t degrade ‘em to earn that behind a counter. Nor ’tain’t sass, though there’s many a lady as talks to her help like I wouldn’t to a dog. Only way I can explain it, Mr. Metzerott, it must be the Constitution of the United States. You see that makes every man as good as anybody else; but it ain’t lived up to, and the girls feel it, and that’s what riles ‘em. Worse than that, they feel they ain’t as good as the young ladies they wait on, not so pretty, nor so educated, nor so refined; but they might have been if they’d had the same advantages; they might have had just such little white hands and soft voices and pretty ways, that keep the young men a-bendin’ over their chairs all the evenin’. Don’t you s’pose many a girl sees the difference between her farmer beau and the young city doctor or lawyer that comes to the country for his holiday?” (Poor Sally! perhaps she spoke from some past bitter experience of her own!) “And so I think it’s that, Mr. Metzerott, that keeps girls from hirin’ out. They won’t take a menial position where they feel, if they had their rights, they’d be equals,—real equals, I mean, not constitutional or sassy ones. Now, your German girls ain’t taught about equality; they are used to counts and barons and dukes, and all of them people, from their cradles; they ain’t got freedom in the blood, like us Americans.”

“But we breathe it in,” said Metzerott, with gleaming eyes; “and then the remembrance of past wrongs, and the sight of present ones, makes us desperate. We shall teach you Americans, some day, to live up to your own principles.”

“But you won’t get us to fire a gun,” said Sally tersely. “till we can see the whites of their eyes.”

The very next day, Louis, by what his father and Dr. Richards would have agreed to call “blind chance,” found a silver quarter lying in the gutter before his own door. Yet it was certainly not blind chance, but sheer hard work, that had worn a hole in Frau Anna’s thimble.

Louis had been wishing very much that he could buy her another, for she had said that it was almost impossible to use the old one. Once the needle had slipped in through the hole, and run up under her nail, which had hurt her very much indeed; and the necessity of keeping it away from the worn place hindered her work. Louis and George had talked the matter over very seriously, with many wishes that they were as big as Franz and Bruno, the pastor’s sons, and could earn money by chopping wood and shovelling snow. And now here was a whole silver quarter, which would surely buy many things beside a thimble.

He started at once in search of George, whom he found sitting on a box outside the grocery, consuming an apple which had been given him by the grocer’s wife. Now, if the apple had been Louis’, a part of it would as surely have found its way to George as the early worm finds out the nest where the mother bird’s brood wait to welcome it; but this view of the case did not occur to any one but the good-natured grocery woman, who showed her appreciation of the situation by bestowing another apple on Louis.

But before the child would bite even once into its red and tempting cheeks, he related to George all the circumstances concerning the finding of the quarter, and the marvellous purchasing power thereto appertaining.

“Where does the thimble-man live?” asked George, when they had planned to buy everything in town,—from a live pony to a penny trumpet.

“I don’t know,” said Louis gravely; but the grocery woman, who had been standing in the doorway listening to the conversation, with her hands on her hips, probably to keep her fat sides steady, they shook so with laughter, interrupted them.

“Do you know where Martin, the jeweller, lives?”

“Yes,” said Louis brightly. “’Tisn’t far; he mended our clock.”

“Well,” said the grocery woman, “you go to him, and tell him you want a thimble. Mind you say who it’s for. Himmel! There was a day when he’d have given a thousand thimbles to call your mother Anna Martin.”

“That ain’t her name,” said George slowly, “her name is Anna Rolf.”

The fat sides shook again. “You do as I tell you,” she said; “and see here, Louis Metzerott, you eat that apple up, do you hear, and don’t give none of it to nobody. Apples is good for boys, they fall in their legs, and make ‘em grow. Verstanden?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Louis, obediently taking such a very large bite that he had some difficulty in disposing of it.

“And if I was you,” continued the grocery woman, “I’d buy the thimble first, and see how much you have left towards a pony. Fact is, ponies are expensive to feed, anyhow; and I wouldn’t advise you to invest in ‘em just yet. Won’t it do just as well if I buy you each a gingerbread horse, next time I go to market?”

“No, ma’am, not quite as well, because a pony is alive, and we could ride on it,” said Louis gravely. “But a gingerbread horse is very good to eat,” he added politely.

“Herr Martin,” said Louis, as the two children trotted, hand in hand, into the shop, “we want to buy a thimble.”

“Presently, my boy,” said the jeweller, setting upon the counter a tray full of small, dainty-looking pins. “Now, ma’am,” he said; but his customer’s attention had been drawn from his wares to the purer gold that curled under Louis’ woollen cap.

“What a dear little boy,” she said, “and so straight and strong!” Her red lip was caught for one moment between her teeth, a mist came over the brown eyes, she turned away, and busied herself in selecting a pin.

Her husband, who had been leaning idly against the window frame, looking into the street,—for jewelry did not particularly interest Dr. Richards,—now came and stood at her elbow. He said nothing, but his mere presence and the consciousness of his sympathy strengthened her nobler self, so that in a little while she turned to Louis again, with a smile that was sad but very sweet.

“Attend to the children, Mr. Martin,” she said; “they don’t like to wait. Are you buying a thimble for your mother, my little man?”

“My mother’s dead,” said Louis, “because we are poor, and the millionnaires wont ’vide. This thimble is for George’s mother.”

“You don’t remember the boy, Alice,” said Dr. Richards; “indeed I don’t know that you ever saw him; he is Dora Metzerott’s child.”

“He is very like her,” said Alice slowly. Her mind went back to the days when she and Dora had been “evened” to one another as equally headstrong in marrying for love and disregarding orthodoxy. She would be proud and happy to be “evened” to Dora now, in another respect.

Meanwhile Herr Martin had produced a case of thimbles, by whose silvery brightness the boys were so impressed that they began to doubt whether their quarter would buy so very many of them after all.

“But how much money have you got?” asked the jeweller.

“A real quarter,” answered Louis proudly. “I found it this morning.”

“Oh! found it, did you? Then how do you know but it belongs to me?”

“You’re in fun,” said the child gravely; “my papa said it might belong to me.”

“Oh! well, if your papa said so! But doesn’t any of it belong to George?”

“Yes,” said Louis, “me and George always ’vides everyfing.”

“That’s just about where it is,” said the jeweller, with a glance at his older customers, who were listening attentively, “me and George ’vides; George and me don’t always. But, I say, young uns, you don’t suppose I can sell you a thimble for twenty-five cents, do you?”

Louis’ lip quivered. “Can’t you?” he said. “It is for George’s mother; and Frau Tundt said there was a day when you’d give a thousand thimbles to call her Anna Martin.”

“Did Frau Tundt say that?” cried the jeweller, crossing his arms on the counter and laughing heartily. “Well, she’s right; so I would, so I would! Ah! she was a fine girl, and no mistake.”

Still laughing, he selected a very pretty thimble, rapidly enclosed it in a pink-cottoned box, wrapped that again in white paper, and gave it to Louis.

“There,” he said, “give that to Frau Anna with a Christmas greeting from her old sweetheart. No, I don’t want your quarter. Keep it to buy seed-cakes.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Louis. “‘A Christmas greeting from her old sweetheart!’ I won’t forget. But what is Christmas?” he added.

“Ach! that father of yours, with his free-thinking! Can you believe it, Mrs. Richards! a man who won’t let his boy have a Christmas,” cried Herr Martin indignantly.

Alice stooped and kissed the sweet face. “I knew your mother, my dear, and I will come to see you soon, and tell you about Christmas. It is a beautiful story.”

Dr. and Mrs. Richards drove home very silently. It was not often that they had the pleasure of an hour’s shopping together, and yet this expedition in preparation for Christmas had had its own bitterness. It had been seven years since Frederick Richards asked Alice Randolph to share a future which his pessimism forbade him to gild with hope; seven years since she had announced her choice of misery with rather than happiness without him. Which had she found? There had been love in her lot, plenty of it; and, though not wealth, yet no touch of “poortith cauld.” Yet the silence between them was a sad silence; and once Alice laid her hand on his arm, and said, half below her breath,—

“Fred, tell me, how do you bear your life, not believing, or trying to believe, that God knows best, and orders all for our good?”

“Do you believe that, Alice?” he asked.

“I try,” she said; “oh! indeed I try hard.”

“That’s right,” he said gently; “it is the best comfort you can find.”

“But it does seem unjust,” she said. “Look at that little Louis, so strong and active, and then think of”—

“Well, well,” he answered, “Freddy has his own pleasures. I don’t know a happier boy.”

“That is true,” she said, with a smile through her tears; “he is very happy!” and then she sank again into her own thoughts, and forgot to notice that her question remained unanswered.

In a few moments they stopped at their own door; and Alice, flying upstairs to what was still called the nursery, was greeted by a rapturous shout, and clasped by two little arms that seemed as if they would never unclose to let her go again. And Alice, sitting on the floor while she removed her bonnet, had no mist of tears to dim her brown eyes, which were so much like Freddy’s own; she was the bright, merry playfellow, full of life and fun, and brimming over with wonderful and delightful songs and stories of all descriptions. Dr. Richards, too, brought only sunshine into Freddy’s nursery; he took off his pessimism with his overcoat, or left it bottled in alcohol on a shelf in his office; so there was really little wonder that Freddy was happy.

Who can tell just how it happened? Was it mere blind chance, or the outcome of a taint in the blood, due to some unknown ancestral sin? Whatever the cause, Alice Richards had been, as the phrase goes, “unlucky with her children.” The eldest had died in babyhood: and the boy, with his great, pathetic brown eyes and laughing, rosy mouth, would never walk; his little spine was all bent and distorted, and his lower limbs quite useless. He had suffered much already in his short four years of life, would suffer far more as he grew older. Dr. Richards knew this,—knew it so keenly that that other knowledge, that by scarce a possibility could Freddy live to be a man, was almost a relief by contrast. And the child was his father’s idol. Well might Alice ask how he could bear his life.

Yet there was plenty of merriment at that little dinner-table. Freddy was carried down between his father and John, the doctor’s “man.” There were rings on the sides of Freddy’s chair through which poles could be passed, and there were screws to tighten them, so that the transit need cause no jar to the little frame. John went first, not backward, for fear of a misstep, but with the poles over his shoulders; and the doctor came behind, keeping his end of the poles level with John’s. Freddy wore a little scarlet wrapper, embroidered with gay flowers, and concealing the poor shrunken limbs, from which any eye but his mother’s would have instinctively turned away. He had a small pale face, with a broad forehead set in rings of brown hair, large brown eyes, and vividly red lips. Sometimes, too, there was a bright spot of color on either cheek, and then one would almost have called him a beautiful child; but that sort of beauty was not a welcome sight to Dr. Richards.

The child enjoyed going down to dinner as he enjoyed everything; and beat upon the arms of the chair with his little thin hands, as he called gleefully, “Look out, mamma, here comes the ‘Ark of the Covenant!’” which was a name he had taken from his picture Bible.

Freddy’s greatest pleasure was to hear his mother’s stories, and she had the gift of finding true ones as interesting as any fairy tale. One of his favorites soon became the story of the little boy who had no mamma, and had never heard of Christmas, such deprivations, in Freddy’s eyes, that the little boy’s health and activity could not be accepted as in the remotest degree a compensation.

“We must tell him about Christmas right away, mamma,” said Freddy, who was old and wise beyond his years. “If he only had a picture of the Christ-child, now.”

“That’s a good suggestion, Freddy. I’ll make a copy of yours. I think I can do it before Christmas.”

“And he can come to my tree, mamma?”

“Just as you like, my darling.”

Freddy’s picture of the Christ-child was one which had evidently been adapted from Ary Scheffer’s “Christus Liberator;” but the central figure was that of a smiling child, whose little arms were outstretched to those haggard and chained, appealing for deliverance. Around it was written the angels’ song, “Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace, good will towards men.” Dr. Richards had noted with inward bitter amusement the picture and the motto. “Good will towards men!” and all those hungry, burdened arms! and only a child to work their liberation! It was Christianity’s pictured confession of her own futility, he thought. Meanwhile, it satisfied his wife and child, who surely needed all the comfort they could get; and what had he, that was better, to give them? So he held his peace, or rather that simulation of peace which is found in silence. Real peace he had none, either to hold or let go. For, seeing no trace in all the universe of a sheltering, guiding, and protecting Father’s hand,—holding the world to be governed by blind, unconscious, irresistible force,—there were two questions ever present to his mind: one, “How would my boy endure one day of absolute poverty?” the other, “If my health should fail, as it may, who will protect him from this, or any evil?”

Blind chance? Even the old Romans knew better. Was not Fors Fortuna the goddess of the all-seeing, radiant dawn?

All the world was getting ready for Christmas; there was no doubt about that. As for South Micklegard, as the German quarter was usually called, it was absolutely upon its head with delight. For there is no season of the year that a German loves better than the winter solstice, the ancient yule feast of his far-away forbears, the birthday of the “Golden Child,” as the Veda hath it. Is it indeed the true birthday of the child Christ Jesus? Who knows!

Nay, oh my brothers! who, with your factions, and the smoke of your unbrotherly strife rising to heaven, have marred every scene, every step of that sinless life,—let us be thankful for that which remains unknown. Birthday and death-day, His cradle, Golgotha, and the sepulchre whence rose His living body, the Father keeps hidden in the holy silence of His own recollection. Therefore, since with Him is neither past nor future, but an eternal now, those days are ever present with us. Each morn, each evening, He is born again, dies again, for us, in us; and finds in our hearts His Bethlehem, His Calvary, His tomb.

It was Louis’ first Christmas, so far as his own consciousness was concerned. His mother had indeed set out his little socks for the Christ-child to fill, when he was but six months old, and had not yet put on shoes; but Louis certainly remembered nothing of that. And since Dora’s death Christmas had been a sad day to Karl Metzerott; a day which he spent as quietly as possible, avoiding merrymaking, and keeping Louis to himself, quite out of hearing of any mention of the feast or its occasion. But, however feasible this plan of operations might have hitherto proved, at five and a half, Louis was not to be so disposed of.

“Papa,” he said, fetching his little stool with an air that meant business, and seating himself so as to gaze into his father’s face, with large, serious eyes, “papa, what is Christmas?”

“Who told you anything about it?” asked the man, a little uneasily, seeing before him the dilemma of Christmas gayeties on the one hand, or disappointment to Louis on the other; both of which he felt equally unwilling to accept.

“It was Herr Martin,” said Louis. “He said you were a free-thinker, who would let your boy have no Christmas.”

“Your mother was buried on Christmas Day, Louis, and I do not care, therefore, to laugh and be merry on that day. But Jeweller Martin may mind his own business,” he added angrily.

“Then do people laugh and be merry on Christmas? What is Christmas, papa?”

“A bit of nonsense, Louis, that you and I are too wise for. Come, I’ll tell you all about it. It’s only an old fairy tale, anyway, and you like fairy tales.”

“Ja, wohl!” said the child, with brightening eyes. “I like them so much.”

“Well, they say that once upon a time the world was very wicked, and the Christ-child came to save it. He was born on Christmas, and, when he grew up, preached to the people, and told them to repent and be good; but, instead of that, the rich men of those days took him and killed him. That part of the story is true, Louis; but the foolish part is this. Herr Martin’s little boy, and George, and all the children about here, believe that the Christ-child is still alive in some place they call heaven; and that he comes every Christmas Eve, and fills their shoes with candy and toys, and such stuff.”

“Oh!” Louis gave a long sigh. “And he don’t, really?” he asked wistfully.

“Really? No. How could he? The fathers and mothers fill the shoes, and then lie about it to the children.” He paused for a moment, as the vision rose in his heart of those two little white socks, and his wife’s eyes, as she looked up at him, smiling, on her knees beside them, to complain that they were so small that nothing would go in. “I don’t say but it’s a pretty story,” he added hastily, “but I’ve never told you a lie yet, Louis.”

“I—I—wish,” said the boy, “I wish it wasn’t a lie, papa.”

“Ah! so do I, Louis. But, such as the Herr Christ, if he had come at all on that Christmas Eve, it would have been to cure your poor mother. He would never have let her die, if he had been what they say he is.”

Louis made no answer. This reasoning was entirely beyond him; but he sat very still on his little stool, with his hands folded, and a lonely, lost look on his sweet face, that went to Metzerott’s heart.

“Come,” he said, with rough tenderness, “I’ll tell you something far better than to have your shoes filled by anybody. Be a little Christ-kind yourself, and carry gifts to other people.”

He had struck the right chord. Louis’ face beamed at once.

“I’ve got a quarter,” he said eagerly.

They were soon deep in the discussion of ways and means; for there were many to receive, and little to give with; but as the main object was to give Louis pleasure, and as he knew little of intrinsic values, he would be satisfied to give, however small the gift.

“As for the Miss Prices,” said Metzerott, “I’ve got a Christmas gift planned out for them, Louis; and to-morrow afternoon” (which was Sunday), “you ask Miss Polly to dress you in your best, and we’ll go and see about it.”

It proved to be worth seeing about.

The janitor of the Männerchor Club House, who was a saving man, and had, besides, good work and excellent pay in a factory in Micklegard, had resolved to try his luck on a sheep ranch in Texas, the owner of which had lately died, leaving a widow, who was willing to sell out land, stock, and fixtures on easy terms. The janitor had enough money to pay the first instalment, and his and his family’s expenses to Texas; but the widow wanted him to come on at once and take charge, as was, indeed, highly necessary for the welfare of the sheep, and he was bound to the Männerchor until June, their bargain being for a year at a time.

Now, the janitor’s salary was a small affair in itself; but the perquisites included the use of the ground floor of the club-house as a dwelling. This ground floor had originally been a store, of tolerable proportions, and had been simply partitioned off, when the building was bought by the Männerchor, to suit the new use to which it was to be put. There was a kitchen in the rear, small but alterable, and Metzerott had visions of alterations before his mind’s eye.

It will be remembered that at the Kaffee Klatsch, already described, supper was furnished to the convives at the modest price of fifteen cents a head. It had been experimentally proven that this rather more than covered expenses, even though the viands were ordered ready prepared from a baker, who of course made his own profit upon them. At the numerous concerts and balls which took place in the Hall, the supper cost usually a quarter, this sum, it was to be inferred, also leaving a margin for profit.

Now the duties of the janitor might be divided into two classes; he had to take care of the club-house, and keep it in order, and also attend to the fires and lights whenever it was used by the society, or other parties to whom it, or any part of it, might be rented for an evening. The first of these functions was usually performed by the janitor’s wife, while the second, being better suited to a masculine capacity, the janitor reserved for himself. It seemed, therefore, to Karl Metzerott’s logical mind, that, as these duties were already divided, it was not an absolute necessity that they who performed them should be man and wife; and his plan was to establish the Prices in the janitor’s quarters with the care of the house, and also as caterers to the club, by which, in addition to the business they had already got together, he thought they could make a very comfortable living.

As for the janitor’s other duties, Karl had a candidate for them in the person of Franz Schaefer, the pastor’s eldest son, now nearly seventeen. Franz, it appeared, was a musical genius, and was working hard at his violin, under the care of the Herr Direktor of the Männerchor. The pastor, however, had no spare dollars wherewith to further his son’s musical education; and, though the Direktor’s lessons might be given for the pure love of art, and perhaps of humanity, at least of such human beings as could detect the difference between E sharp and F natural, dollars were required to convey him to the land of his dreams, the summit of his aspirations,—the Royal Conservatory at Stuttgart.

Meanwhile, the denied wish was bearing good fruits in the economy and self-denial which were becoming a part of his nature. He was a clerk in a small drug store at a smaller salary, and the additional income that Karl’s plan would secure would set him considerably forward on the way to his promised land. Yet the plan was certainly an innovation; and perhaps Karl would not have been so successful in introducing it, but that the managers had a difficulty of their own, which the proposed arrangement met and satisfied. For houses in Micklegard were rented by the year; and it was hard, on the spur of the moment, to find a man, with a family, ready to give up his own domicile, and take the janitor’s place. And, on the other hand, they were large-minded men, who, having carved out their own fortunes, were reluctant to stand in the light of any one who was trying to rise in the world; so that Karl’s insistence, combined with the janitor’s eagerness to be off, finally carried the day, and, on the Sunday afternoon already referred to, he and Louis returned with a promise from the managers to give the new plan a trial, at all events.

“Let them have it until the end of the year, that is, till ‘moving day,’” the secretary had said; “then we can see how it works.”

“Work!” said Sally Price, “of course it’ll work! It shall work.”

Fortunately, the furniture of their new abode belonged to the house, having been put in for the departing janitor, who had taken the position as a fresh and furnitureless arrival from Germany; so there was nothing requiring an immediate outlay of capital.

Dr. Richards came in while they were discussing ways and means, and, after signifying his hearty approval of the plan in its main features, asked, “But about the balls, Miss Sally? Of course we know the society itself is composed of men who are as steady as old Time,” with a roguish glance at Metzerott, “but at the public balls, you know! for they do have beer!”

“I know that, and I don’t say I like it,” replied Sally; “but firstly, I ain’t going to sell it, I can’t control it, and therefore I ain’t responsible for it; secondly, they’ll be in the top of the house and us at the bottom most of the time; thirdly, if they go beyond the bounds of reason, we can call on the police; fourthly, ’tain’t no worse for us than it was for the janitor’s wife, a nice, modest woman as ever I see; and fifthly, folks that have been through what we have can put up with ’most anything!”

“After that array of argument I have no more to say,” said the doctor, laughing. “Well, Miss Sally, I must say that I think you will fill a long-felt want. You know the new pottery is to open the first of January, and quite a number of women would and could get work there if it were not for their duties at home. Now, if you could give them home fare at home prices, you see you would benefit yourselves and them too.”

“How about their children?” asked Polly.

“The big ones would be at school most of the time, and if you had a crèche for the babies”—

“There’s a vacant house next door to the hall,” said Metzerott.

“Ah! now we have plans indeed,” laughed the doctor, “and I wish I had time to talk them over with you; but I must perform my own special errand. Mr. Metzerott, my wife wants to borrow your little boy for our Christmas tree.” Karl’s eyes beamed with pride, yet he hesitated; but Louis’ cheeks were flushed, his eyes large and bright.

“Oh!” he said, “what is a Christmas tree?”

“Now ain’t that a shame! beggin’ your pardon, Mr. Metzerott,” said Miss Sally. “To think of the true Christian his mother was, and there’s her boy don’t know nothin’ of Christmas or Christmas trees.”

“Only, unfortunately for your argument, Miss Sally, both Christmas and its Tree are pagan originally. The first was the feast of Yule, kept by our Teutonic ancestors; the second is the representative of the great ash-tree Ygdrasil, symbolizing the heaven and earth. The eagle that soared above it, watching with sleepless eye all that passed below,”—

“Well, so He does,” said Miss Sally.

“Pagan or not,” said Metzerott, “I don’t want my boy to be a Christian.”

“I think you are wrong,” said the doctor thoughtfully; “not that I believe in Christianity any more than you, begging pardon of our friends here.”

“Christianity!” said Sally; “well, I ain’t sure I believe in that myself; but I do believe in Christ.”

“I congratulate you,” said the doctor. “It’s an innocent superstition, Metzerott; and, in a world of misery like this, why not let a child believe it, if it add to his happiness?”

“Because it ain’t true,” said the shoemaker sturdily.

“My good friend,” said Dr. Richards, “what is truth? Things are true relatively, never absolutely. I defy you to mention a single absolute truth.”

“The sun shines,” said Metzerott, whose Teutonic mind caught fire at the barest hint of metaphysics.

“How do you know it does?”

“Because I see it.”

“Prove that to a man born blind.”

“A man born blind is like a lunatic, or an idiot, as far as the sunlight is concerned,” said Karl, after some thought; “it can’t be proved to him. He can feel it though,” he added.

“Ah! concurrent testimony! But that is only an aggregation of single testimony, that is of relative truths, and merely amounts to a high probability, not to an absolute truth.”

“Well,” said Metzerott, “until you bring me a man with all his senses complete, and stand him in the sunshine before me, and have him say it ain’t bright and ain’t warm, I think it’s as near to an absolute truth as you are likely to come.”

“As near, yes, I grant that. But come, suppose I tell you—having all my senses complete—that to me the sunshine is dark and cold; what would you say then?”

“I know what I’d like to do,” said Karl Metzerott.

Now, to let the reader into a secret, the doctor had been all along amusedly aware of the similarity between this argument and certain others he had, in his student days, carried on. The reference to personal experience was therefore intentionally made, and he was much elated to find the shoemaker take his stand upon doing, instead of quibbling as to the exact meaning of shining and heat, or the state of mind a man must be in to experience these.

“Well, what would you do?” he asked.

“I’d wait for the Fourth of July,” said the shoemaker grimly; “and then I’d stand you out there, before my door, till you dropped with a sunstroke.”

“Without my hat?” asked the doctor.

Karl nodded, and the two men broke into a roar of laughter, which effectually settled the question of Louis and the Christmas Tree; for Karl was too pleased with his victory to be unrelenting.

“Now there is a man,” said the doctor to himself as he drove home, “who believes with all his heart that the sun shines. He proved it, too. If I could meet a man who believed like that in the Bible! But there is nothing corresponding to that sunstroke test of his in theology; and Christians know it. I—yes, really—I almost wish there were. Pooh! what a fool I am! Get up!” Which energetic reminder, addressed to his horse, so quickened that quadruped’s movements as to land the doctor speedily at his own door.