From the Bottom Up Part 14

Mrs. Fleming and her husband helped me organize a Congregational Church which, when organized, was a means of support.

The church was in a growing section of the city but I could not be persuaded to live there. I lived where I thought my life was most serviceable--on "the bottoms."

One night after a few days' involuntary fast I found in the hut two cents. To the city I went and bought two bananas--one I ate on the way back and the other I put in my hip pocket.

There were no streets, no lights, no sidewalks in that region. As I came to a railroad arch on the edge of the squatter community I saw a figure emerge from the deep shadows. I knew instantly I was to be held up, but as life was rather cheap down there I was not sure what would accompany the a.s.sault. A second figure emerged and when I came to within a few yards of them, I whipped the banana from my pocket and pointing it as one would a revolver I said--"Move a muscle, either of you, and I'll blow your brains out!"

"Gee!" one of them muttered; "it's Mr. Irvine."

They belonged to a gang of young toughs who lived in a dug-out on the banks of the river. Some of them had brothers in my school. There were about a dozen of them. They had hinted several times that they would clean me out when they had time, but they had delayed their plan. I took these fellows to my hut and we talked for hours.

When I produced the banana they laughed vociferously and invited me to their "hole." Next evening they gave a reception and, I suppose, fed me on stolen property. They had a stove--a few old mattresses and some dry-goods boxes.

I held their attention that night for four hours while I told the story of Jean Valjean. Next day we were all photographed together on a pile of stones near the "hole."

After that these fellows protected the chapel and made themselves useful in their way. In less than a year afterward half of them had gone to honest work; the rest went the way of the transgressor, to the penetentiary and the reform school.

This period was one of total rejection by any means--powerful influences were at work to render my labour void--but they were offset for a time by the finer influences of life. I gave a series of addresses in Tabor College, Iowa, and they were the beginning of an awakening among the students. After the last word of the last address the student about whom the president and faculty were most concerned walked up the aisle and expressed a desire to lead a new life.

"Do it now," I suggested.

"Right here?"

"Yes, right where you stand."

The president and faculty gathered around him, making a circle; he stood in the midst, alone, and in that way with prayer and dedication from the lips of the young man and his friends began one of the most useful lives in the American ministry. This young man became an ascetic. I gave him to read the life of Francis of a.s.sisi, and he went to the extreme in emulation. He divested himself of collars and ties and on graduating read his thesis for his Bachelor's degree collarless and tieless.

I was in New Haven when he came there to take his Divinity degree in Yale. He came without either collar or tie, but after days of prayer and fasting he was "led" to enter the University as others entered it.

He is now pastor of the First Congregational Church in Rockford, Illinois; his name is Frank M. Sheldon. Nine men have gone by a similar route into the ministry, but Mr. Sheldon is the only one of them who has kept touch with the modern demands on religious leadership.

Birthdays have meant nothing whatever to me, but I made my thirty-second an occasion for a party on "the bottoms."

I could only accommodate seven guests. Two were favourite boys and the others were selected because of their great need. The hut was the centre of a mud puddle that January morning. I got a long plank and laid it from my doorstep to the edge of the clay bank. I took precaution not to announce the affair, even to the guests, but a grocer's boy who had been sent by a friend with some oranges lost his way and his inquiry after me created such a sensation that when he found me he was accompanied by about fifty children.

Old Mrs. Belgarde, my nearest neighbour, had whispered across the fence to her neighbour that something was sure to happen, for she had noticed me making unusual preparations that day. I think the origin of the party idea came with my first birthday gift--I mean the first I had ever received--it was a copy of Thomas a Kempis, given me by my friend the Reverend Gregory J. Powell. [I gave it later to a man who was to die by judicial process in the county jail.]

When the hour arrived a crowd of two hundred youngsters stood in the mud outside. On the top of the clay bank stood parents, crossing themselves and praying quietly that their offspring would be lucky enough to get in.

I had taught these children some simple rules of order, and when I opened the door I rang a little bell. There was absolute silence. They had been actually tearing each other's clothing to rags for a position near the door. I told them that I was so poor that I had scarcely enough food for myself. That the little I had I was going to share with seven of my special friends; of course they all considered themselves included in that characterization.

"Dear little friends," I said, "I never had a birthday party before; and now you are going to spoil this one."

Up to this time the crowd didn't know who the guests were. I proceeded to call the names. As those called made a move there was a violent fight for the door. Some of them I had to drag out of the clutches of the unsuccessful. Only six of the seven were there. There was a howl from a hundred throats to take the place of the absent one.

"No," I said sternly; "he'll come, all right." A roar of discontent went up and chaos reigned. I couldn't make myself heard; I rang the bell and again calmed them. I was at a loss to know what to say.

"Dear little folks," I said, "I thought you loved me!"

"Do too!" whined a dozen voices.

"Then if you do, go away and some day I will have a party for every child on 'the bottoms.'"

That quieted the youthful mob and they departed--that is, the majority departed. Some stayed and bombarded the doors and windows with stones.

There were few stones to be found, and as it didn't occur to them to use the same stones twice they used mud and plastered the front of the hut with it.

This form of expression, however, did not disturb us much. I sent three of my guests into the back yard to wash and arrange their hair.

They returned for inspection but didn't pa.s.s, the hair refusing to comply on such short notice. I put the finishing touches on each of their toilets and we sat down to supper. The oldest boy, "Fritz," was half past twelve and the youngest, "Ano," had just struck ten. Ano was a cripple and both legs were twisted out of shape--he hobbled about on crutches. "Jake" was eleven--two of his eleven years he had spent in a reformatory where he had learned to chew tobacco and to swear.

"Eddy" was also eleven, but the oldest of all in point of wits. I had a claim on Eddy: one day he was amusing himself by jerking a cat at the end of a string, in and out of Frau Belgarde's well. She was stealthily approaching him with a piece of fence rail when I arrived and possibly prevented some broken bones. "Kaiser" was nearly twelve; he too had been in a reform school--he liked it and would have been glad to stay as long as they wanted him--for he had three meals a day and he had never had such "luck" outside. "Whitey" was a little Swedish boy whose mother worked in a cigar factory. "Kaiser" and "Whitey" had a "dug-out" and they spent more nights together in it than they spent in their huts.

"Fritz," the oldest boy, began his career in the open by stealing his father's revolver; and, jumping on the first grocery wagon he found handy, he left town. Of course he was brought back and "sent up" for a year. "Franz," the absent one, was Ano's brother, and the toughest boy in the community.

These brief outlines describe the guests of my birthday party.

"When ye make a feast call the poor" was stretched a little to cover this aggregation--stretched as to the character of those invited. A blessing was asked, of course--by the host and repeated by the guests. Of things to eat there was enough and to spare. After dinner each one was to contribute something to the entertainment.

"Beginning here on my left with 'Whitey,'" I said, "I want each boy to tell us what he would like to be when he becomes a man." Whitey without hesitation said:

"A organ-man wid a monkey."

"Why?"

"'Cause."

Eddy said he would like to be a butcher, and as a reason gave: "Plenty ov beef to eat."

"Kaiser" preferred to be a "Reformatory boss."

"Ano," the cripple, said he would like to be a minister. When pressed for a reason he said, "That's what m' father says--dey ain't got notin' to do!"

In the midst of this social quiz a loud noise was heard outside.

"Bang! Bang!! Bang!!!" The timbers of the hut shivered, the guests made a rush to the back door. I was there first and found Franz, the missing guest, his arms smeared with blood, his ragged jacket covered with hair of some sort and in his hand a b.l.o.o.d.y stiletto.

He rushed past me into the hut, got to the table and exclaimed: "Gee whiz! der ain't a ---- sc.r.a.p left!"

"Look here, Franz," I said, "I want to know what you've been up to?"

"Ye do, hey? Ye look skeered, too, don't yer--hey?"

"Never mind how I look; tell me at once what you've been up to!"

"Ha, ha, ha!" he laughed, "d'ye tink I kilt some ol' sucker for 'is money--hey? Ha, ha! Well, I hain't, see? I've bin skinnin' a dead hoss an brot ye d' skin for a birfday present, see?"

The skin was lying in a b.l.o.o.d.y heap outside the back door. I arranged "Franz" for dinner and the party was complete.

I told some stories; then we played games and at ten o'clock they went home. The moment the front door was opened, about forty children--each with a lighted candle in hand--sang a verse of my favourite hymn: "Lead, Kindly Light." They knew but one verse, but that they sang twice. It was a weird performance and moved me almost to tears.

After they sang they came down the clay bank and shook hands, wishing me all sorts of things. Two nights afterward I had a different kind of a party. A bullet came crashing through the boards of my hut about midnight. Rushing to the door, I saw the fire flashes of other shots in a neighbour's garden. I went to the high board fence and saw one of my neighbours--a German--emptying a revolver at his wife who was dodging behind a tree.