From the Bottom Up Part 1

From the Bottom Up.

by Alexander Irvine.

CHAPTER I

BOYHOOD IN IRELAND

The world in which I first found myself was a world of hungry people.

My earliest sufferings were the sufferings of hunger--physical hunger.

It was not an unusual sight to see the children of our neighbourhood scratching the offal in the dunghills and the gutterways for sc.r.a.ps of meat, vegetables, and refuse. Many times I have done it myself.

My father was a shoemaker; but something had gone wrong with the making of shoes. Improvements in machinery are pushed out into the commercial world, and explanations follow. A new shoemaker had arrived--a machine--and my father had to content himself with the mending of the work that the machine produced. It took him about ten years to find out what had happened to him.

There were twelve children in our family, five of whom died in childhood. Those of us who were left were sent out to work as soon as we were able. I began at the age of nine. My first work was peddling newspapers. I remember my first night in the streets. Food was scarce in the home, and I begged to be allowed to do what other boys were doing. But I was not quite so well prepared. I began in the winter. I was shoeless, hatless, and in rags. My contribution to the family treasury amounted to about fifty cents a week; but it looked very large to me then. It was my first earning.

Our home was a two-room cottage. Over one room was a little loft, my bedroom for fourteen years. The cottage floor was hard, dried mud.

There was a wide, open fireplace. Several holes made in the wall by displacing of bricks here and there contained my father's old pipes. A few ornaments, yellow with the smoke of years, adorned the mantelpiece. At the front window sat my father, and around him his shoemaking tools. Beside the window hung a large cage, made by his own hands, and in which singing thrushes had succeeded one another for twenty years. The walls were whitewashed. There was a little part.i.tion that screened the work-bench from the door. It was made of newspapers, and plastered all over it were pictures from the ill.u.s.trated weeklies.

Two or three small dressers contained the crockery ware. A long bench set against the wall, a table, several stools, and two or three creepies const.i.tuted the furniture. There was not a chair in the place.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mr. Irvine's Birthplace.

There are four different houses in the picture. The third door from the left is that of the house in which he was born.]

There was a fascination about the winter evenings in that cottage.

Scarcely a night pa.s.sed that did not see some man or woman sitting in the corner waiting for shoes. A candlestick about three feet high, in which burned a large tallow candle, was set in front of my father. My mother was the only one in the house who could read, and she used to read aloud from a story paper called _The Weekly Budget_. We were never interested in the news. The outside world was shut off from us, and the news consisted of whatever was brought by word of mouth by the folks who had their shoes cobbled; _that_ was interesting. In those long winter evenings, I sat in the corner among the shoes and lasts.

On sc.r.a.ps of leather I used to imitate writing, and often I would quietly steal up to my mother and show her these scratchings, and ask her whether they meant anything or not. I thought somehow by accident I would surely get something. My mother merely shook her head and smiled. She taught me many letters of the alphabet, but it took me years to string them together.

My mother had acquired a taste, indeed, it was a craving, for strong drink; and, even from the very small earnings of my father, managed to satisfy it in a small measure, every day, except Sunday. On Sunday there was a change. The cobbler's bench was cleared away, and my mother's beautiful face was surrounded with a halo of spotless, frilled linen.

My father's Sunday mornings were spent in giving the thrush an outing and in cleaning his cage. Neither my father nor mother made any pretensions to religion; but they were strict Sabbatarians. My father never consciously swore, but, within even the limitations of his small vocabulary, he was unfortunate in his selection of phrases. I bounced into the alley one Sunday morning, whistling a Moody and Sankey hymn.

"Shut up yer mouth!" said my father.

"It's a hymn tune," I replied.

"I don't care a d.a.m.n," replied my father. "It's the Lord's day, and if I hear you whistlin' in it I'll whale the h.e.l.l out o' ye!"

That was his philosophy, and he lived it. Sat.u.r.day nights when the town clock struck the hour of midnight, he removed his leather ap.r.o.n, pushed his bench back in the corner, and the work of the week was over--and if any one was waiting for his shoes, so much the worse for him. He would wait until the midnight clock struck twelve the next night or take them as they were.

The first tragedy in my life was the death of a pet pigeon. I grieved for days over its disappearance; but one Sunday morning the secret slipped out. Around that neighbourhood there was a custom among the very poor of exchanging samples of their Sunday broth. Three or four samples came to our cottage every Sunday morning. We had meat once a week, and then it was either the hoofs or part of the head of a cow, or the same parts of a sheep or a calf. On this particular occasion, I knew that there was something in our broth that was unusual, and I did not rest until I learned the truth. They had grown tired of nettle broth, and made a change on the pigeon.

There was a pigsty at the end of our alley against the gable of our house; but we never were rich enough to own a pig. One of my earliest recollections is of extemporizing out of the pigsty one of the most familiar inst.i.tutions in our town--a p.a.w.n shop. If anything was missing in the house, they could usually find it in p.a.w.n.

At the age of ten, I entered the parochial school of the Episcopal Church; but the pedagogue of that period delegated his pedagogy to a monitor, and the monitor to one of the biggest boys, and the school ran itself. The only thing I remember about it is the daily rushes over the benches and seats, and the number of boys about my size I was pitted against in fistic battles. At the close of my first school day I came home with one of my eyes discoloured and one sleeve torn out of my jacket, as a result of an encounter not down on the programme. The ignominy of such a spectacle irritated my father, and I was thoroughly whipped for my inability to defend myself better. It was an _ex parte_ judgment which a look at the other fellow might have modified.

After a few weeks at school I begged my father to allow me to devote my mornings as well as my evenings to the selling of newspapers. The extra work added a little to my income and preserved my looks. If there was any misery in my life at this time I neither knew nor felt it. I was living the life of the average boy of my neighbourhood, and had nothing to complain of. Of course, I was in a chronic condition of hunger, but so was every other boy in the alley and on the street. It was quite an event for me occasionally to go bird-nesting with the son of the chief baker of the town. He usually brought a loaf along as toll. My knowledge of the woods was better than his, for necessity took me there for fuel for our hearth. Sometimes the baker's son brought a companion of his cla.s.s. These boys were well-fed and well-clothed, and it was when we spent whole days together that I noticed the disparity. They were "quality"--the baker was called "Mr.," wore a tall hat on Sundays, and led the psalm singing in the Presbyterian Church. In the summer time, when the church windows were open, the leader's voice could be heard a mile away. My childish misgivings about the distribution of the good things of life were quieted in the Sunday School by the dictum: "It is the will of G.o.d."

My first knowledge of G.o.d was that He was a big man in the skies who dealt out to the church people good things and to others experiences to make them good. The Bible was to me G.o.d's book, and a thing to be handled reverently. We had a copy, but it was coverless, loose and incomplete. Every morning I used to take it tenderly in my hands and pretend to read some of it, "just for luck!" My Sunday School teacher informed me that work was a curse that G.o.d had put upon the world and from what I saw around me I naturally concluded that life was more of a curse than a blessing--that was the theory. My father, however, never seemed to be able to get enough of the curse to appease our hunger.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Where Mr. Irvine Spent His Boyhood and the pig-sty that never had a pig]

The lack of cla.s.s-conscious envy did not prevent an occasional questioning of G.o.d's arrangement of the universe; occasionally, in the winter time, when my feet were bleeding, cut by the frozen pavements, I wondered why G.o.d somehow or other could not help me to a pair of shoes. Nevertheless, I reverently worshipped the G.o.d who had consigned me to such pitiless and poorly paid labour, and believed that, being the will of G.o.d, it was surely for my best good.

My first hero worship came to me while a newsboy. A former resident of the town had returned from America with a modic.u.m of fame. He had left a labourer, and returned a "Mr." He delivered a lecture in the town hall, and, out of curiosity, the town turned out to hear him. I was at the door with my papers. It was a very cold night, and I was shivering as I stood on one foot leaning against the door post, the sole of the other foot resting upon my bare leg. But n.o.body wanted papers at a lecture. The doorkeeper took pity upon me, and, to my astonishment, invited me inside. There on a bench, with my back to the wall and my feet dangling six inches from the floor, I listened to a lecture about a "rail-splitter." It took me many years to find out what a rail-splitter was; but the rail-splitter's name was Lincoln, and he became my first hero.

From the selling of papers on the streets of Antrim, I went to work on a farm, the owner of which was a Member of Parliament for our county, one James Chaine by name. My first work on the farm was the keeping of crows off the potato crop. Technically speaking, I was a scarecrow. It was in the autumn, and the potatoes were ripe. I was permitted to help myself to them, so three times a day I made a fire at the edge of the wood and roasted as many potatoes as I could eat, and for the first time in my life I enjoyed the pleasure of a full meal.

In the solitude of the potato field came my first vision. I was a firm believer in the "wee people," but my visions were not entirely peopled with fairies. The life of the woods was very fascinating to me. I enjoyed the birds and the wild flowers, and the sportive rabbits, of which the woods were full. The bell which closed the labourer's day was always an unwelcome sound to me.

After the ingathering of the potato crop, I was given work in the farmyard, attending to horses and cattle, as jack of all jobs. In the spring of the following year, I went again to work in the potato field, and later to care for the crop as before. It was during my second autumn as a scarecrow that I had an experience which changed the current of my life. It was on a Monday, and during the entire day I kept humming over and over two lines of a hymn I had heard in the Sunday School. Nothing ever happened to me that remains quite so vividly in my mind as that experience.

I was sitting on the fence at the close of the day, a very happy day.

I must have been moved by the colour of the sky, or by the emotion produced by the lines of the hymn. It may have been both. But, as I sat on the fence and watched the sun set over the trees, an emotion swept over me, and the tears began to flow. My body seemed to change as by the pouring into it of some strange, life-giving fluid. I wanted to shout, to scream aloud; but instead, I went rapidly over the hill into the woods, dropped on my knees, and began to pray.

It was getting dark, but the woods were filled with light. Perhaps it was the light of my vision or the light of my mind--I know not. But when I came back into the open, I felt as though I were walking on air. As I pa.s.sed through the farmyard, I came in contact with some of the men; and their questions led me to believe that some of the experience remained on my face; but I navely set aside their questions and pa.s.sed on down the country road to the town.

That night as I climbed to the little loft, I realized for the first time in my life that I had never slept in a bed, but on a pallet of straw. My bed covering was composed of old gunny sacks sewed together; and automatically, when I took my clothes off, I made a pillow of them. Many a night I had been kept awake by the gnawing pangs of hunger; but this night I was kept awake for a different reason. It was an indescribable ecstasy, a new-born joy. As I lay there with my head about a foot from the thatched roof, I hummed over and over again the two lines of the hymn, sometimes breaking the continuity in giving way to tears.

The second revelation came to me the following morning. I realized the condition of my body. I was in rags and dirty. I shook my mother out of her slumber and begged her to help me sew up the rents in my clothes. I had no shoes, but I carefully washed my feet, combed my tousled, unkempt hair, and took great pains in the washing of my face.

All of this was a mystery to my mother. She wanted to know what had happened to me, and a very unusual thing ended the preparations for the day. My mother said I looked "purty," and kissed me as I went out of the door.

As I walked up the street that morning, I shared my joy with the first living thing I met--the saloon-keeper's old dog, Rover. I shook his paw and said, "Morrow, Rover." Everything looked beautiful. The world was full of joy. I was perfectly sure that the birds were sharing it, for they sang that morning as I had never heard them sing before. I resolved to let at least one person into the secret. I was sure that my sister would understand me. She used to visit me every noon hour, on the pretence of bringing my dinner. We had a secret compact that, whether there was any dinner to bring or not, she should come with a bowl wrapped in a piece of cloth, as was the custom with other men's sisters and wives.

There was a straight stretch of road a mile long, and, as I sat on the roadside watching for her, I could tell a mile off whether she had any dinner or not. When there was anything in the bowl, she carried it steadily; when empty, she would swing it like a censer.

When I told my sister about these strange happenings of the heart, she looked very anxiously into my eyes, and said:

"'Deed, I just think ye're goin' mad."

Before leaving the farm, I experienced an incident which, although of a different character, equalled in its intensity and beauty my awakening to what, for lack of a better term, I called a religious life.

A young lady from the city was visiting at the home of the land steward, and, as I knew more about the woods and the inhabitants thereof than anybody else on the farm, I was often ordered to take visitors around. The land steward's daughter accompanied the young lady on her first visit to the roads; but afterward she came alone, and we traversed the ravine from one end to the other. We collected flowers and specimens, and watched the wild animals.

I had never seen such a beautiful human being. Her voice was soft and musical. She wore her hair loosely down her back, and was a perfect picture of health and beauty.

One day I lay at full length on my back, asleep by the edge of the wood. When I awoke, this city girl was standing at my side. I jumped to my feet and stood erect, and I remember distinctly the emotions that swept through me. I was startled at first, startled as I had been on a previous occasion when, at a sharp turn in the footpath in the ravine, I met a fawn. I remembered my first impulse then was for a word, a word of conciliation, for I was fascinated by the beauty of the graceful beast. Graceful as a nymph it stood there, nerves strained like a bow bent for the discharge of an arrow, its head poised in air, fire shooting from its eyes. It remained only for an instant, and then with a frightened plunge it cleared the clump of laurel bushes and disappeared.

When I stood before this beautiful city girl, I remembered the fawn, and expected the girl instantly to vanish out of my sight. There was something of the fawn in her graceful form, some of the fire in her blue eyes, and in her girlish laugh a suggestion of the freedom of the mountain and glen. I think it was in that moment of intensity that I crossed the bridge which separates the boy from the man. An impa.s.sable gulf was fixed between this girl's station in life and mine. She was the daughter of a florist, and I was the son of a cobbler.

She returned home shortly after this, and I was promoted from the potato field to be a groom's helper in the stables of "the master." We called his residence the "big house." It was like a castle on the Rhine. A very wonderful man was this Member of Parliament to the labourers around on his demesne. Not the least part of this wonder consisted in the tradition that he had a different suit of clothes for every day in the year. He was very fond of fine horses, and gloried in the fact that he owned a winner of the Derby. He kept a large stable of racing, hunting, and carriage horses.

This was the advent of a new life to me. I was taken in hand by the head groom and fitted out with two suits of clothes, and in this change the first great ambition of my life was satisfied. I became the possessor of a hard hat. For two years, I had instinctively longed for something on my head that I could politely remove to a lady. The first night I marched down that village street, shoes well polished, starched linen, and hard hat, I expected the whole town to be there to see me. I had made several attempts at this hat business before. They organized a flute band in the town and I joined it for the sake of the hat. But it was too nice a thing to be lying around when people were hungry, and, as it was in p.a.w.n most of the time, I finally redeemed it, returned it, and quit. But this time the hat had come to stay.

With my new vision still warm in my heart, I became very active in the parish Sunday School. My inability to read relegated me to the children's cla.s.s; but I had a retentive memory, and before I was able to read, I memorized about three hundred texts from the Bible.

The first outworking of my vision was on a drunken stone mason of our town. His family, relatives, and friends had all given him up. He had given himself up. I went after him every night for weeks; talked to him, pleaded with him, prayed for him, and was rewarded by seeing him make a new start. Together we organized a temperance society. I think it was the first temperance society in that town. I was much more at home in this kind of work than in the Sunday School; for, while I could be neither secretary, treasurer, nor president of the temperance society I had organized, my inability to read or write did not prevent me from hustling after such men as my first convert.

In the Sunday School, I felt keenly the fact that I was outcla.s.sed by boys half my age; but I persevered and went from one cla.s.s to another, until I had gone through the grades, and was then given the opportunity to organize a cla.s.s of my own. This I did with the material on the streets, children unconnected with any school or inst.i.tution. I taught them the Bible stories and helped them to memorize the texts that I had learned myself.