From the Bottom Up Part 8

Among the most interesting characters that I came in contact with in those days was Dave Ranney; he is now himself a missionary to the Bowery lodging houses. I was going across Chatham Square one night, when this man tapped me on the shoulder--"touched me"--he would call it. He was "a puddler from Pittsburg," so he said.

"Show me your hands," I replied. Instead, he stuck them deep into his trouser pockets, and I told him to try again. He said he was hungry, so I took him to a restaurant, but he couldn't eat. He wanted a drink, but I wouldn't give that to him. He walked the streets that night, but he came to me later and I helped him; and every time he came, he got a little nearer the truth in telling his story. Finally I got it all. He squared himself and began the fight of his life.

Another convert of the bunk-house was Edward Dowling. "Der's an old gazabo here," said the bouncer to me one day, "and he's got de angel goods on him O.K." He was a quiet, reticent old man of sixty, an Irishman who had served in the British Army in India with Havelock and Colin Campbell. He had bought a ranch in the West, but an accident to one of his eyes forced him to spend all his money to save the other one. He drifted in to New York, penniless and without a friend. Seeing a tinker mending umbrellas one day on the street, he sat down beside him and watched the process. In that way he learned something of the trade.

One Sunday afternoon when I was rallying a congregation in the bunk-house, I found him on his cot, reading the life of Buffalo Bill.

I invited him down to the meeting, but he politely refused, saying that he was an Episcopalian. The following Sunday he did come, and his was the most striking spiritual crisis that I had ever seen. His conversion was clean-cut, definite and clear; it was of a kind with the conversion of Paul on the way to Damascus. He was an exceedingly intelligent man, and could repeat more cla.s.sic poetry by heart than any man I have ever known. He came out from that brown ma.s.s of human flotsam and jetsam on the Sunday afternoon following his conversion, and told them what had happened to him.

The lodgers were very much impressed. It was in the winter-time. The old man earned very little money at his new trade, but what he had he shared with his fellow-lodgers. The bouncer told me that the old tinker would buy a stale loaf for a few cents, then in the dormitory he would make coffee in tomato cans and gather half a dozen of the hungriest around him, and share his meal with them--plain bread soaked in unsweetened coffee. Sometimes he would read a few verses of the Bible to them, and sometimes merely say in his clear Irish voice: "There, now, G.o.d bliss ye!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dowling, Tinker and Colporter.

A Veteran who Served in India under Havelock and Colin Campbell]

At this time he was living on a dollar a week, but every morning he had his little tea-party around the old stove, his word of greeting, and his final word of benediction to the men he had selected to share in his bounty as they slunk out of the bunk-house to begin the day.

Later, he had a large-type New Testament out of which he read a verse or two every morning at the meal. Very soon the three hundred lodgers began to look upon him with a kind of awe. This was not because he had undergone a radical change, for he had always been quiet, gentle and civil; but because he had found his voice, and that voice was bringing to them something they could not get elsewhere--sympathy, cheer and courage.

In the tenement region, particularly in the little back alleys around Mulberry Street, he mended pots, kettles, pans and umbrellas--not always for money, but as often for the privilege of reading to these people messages of comfort out of his large-type New Testament.

Going down Mulberry Street one morning in the depth of winter, I happened to glance up one of those narrow alleys in "the Bend," and I noticed my friend standing at a window, his face close to a broken pane of gla.s.s and his large New Testament held in front of him a few inches from his face. His tinker's budget was by his feet. The door was closed. In a few minutes he closed the book, put it into his kit, and as he moved away from the window, I saw a large bundle of rags pushed into the hole.

"What have you been doing?" I inquired.

He laughed. "There, now, G.o.d bliss her," he said. "I put a rib in an umbrella for her, but she said the house was too dirty to read the Bible in, so she let me read it through the broken window."

All that winter he tinkered and taught. All winter the little ragged audiences gathered around him in the morning; and often at eventime when he retreated into a quiet corner to be silent and rest, he found himself the centre of an inquiring group of his fellow-lodgers.

Instead of uniting himself to the mission, as such men usually do after their conversion, I advised him to join one of the prominent churches of the city, in the downtown district. I thought it would be good for the church. But we both discovered our mistake later. He was utterly out of keeping with his surroundings. The church he joined was an inst.i.tution for the favoured few--and Dowling was a tinker.

His diary of that period is before me as I write, and I am astonished at the great humility of this simple-minded man.

He had been asked by the minister of his church to call on him; but his modesty prevented him until hunger forced him to change his mind.

After starving for three days, he made up his mind to accept that invitation, and reveal his condition to the well-to-do minister of this well-to-do church. He was poorly clad. It was a very cold winter day. The streets were covered with slush and snow. On his way he met an old woman with a shawl around her, a bedraggled dress and wet feet.

"My good woman," said Dowling, "you must be very cold, indeed, in this condition."

"Sir," she answered, "I am cold; but I am also starving of hunger.

Could you afford me one cent to get some bread?"

"G.o.d bliss ye, dear friend," he said, "I have not been able to taste food for three days myself; but I am now on the way to the house of a good friend, a good servant of the Lord; and if I get any help, I will share it with you. I am a poor tinker, but work has been very slack this last week. I have not earned enough to pay for my lodging."

The diary gives all the details, the corner of the street where he met her, the hour of the day.

A servant ushered him into the parlour of his "good friend, the servant of the Lord." Presently the reverend doctor came down, somewhat irritated, and, without shaking hands, said:

"Dowling, I know I have asked you several times to call, but I am a very busy man and you should have let me know. I simply cannot see you this morning. I have an address to prepare for the opening of a mission and I haven't the time."

"No handshake--no Christian greeting," records the tinker's diary; and the account closes with these words: "Dear Lord, do not let the demon of uncharitableness enter into my poor heart."

He became a colporteur for a tract society, and was given as territory the towns on the east side of the Hudson River. Tract selling in this generation is probably the most thankless, profitless work that any human being could undertake. The poor old man was burdened with a heavy bundle of the worst literary trash of a religious kind ever put out of a publishing house. He was to get twenty-five per cent. on the sales; so he shouldered his kit, with his heart full of enthusiasm, and began the summer journey on foot. He carried his diary with him, and although the entries are very brief, they are to the point.

"August 29. Sold nothing. No money for bread or lodging. _G.o.d is good._ Night came and I was _so_ tired and hungry. I went into a grove and with a prayer of confidence on my lips, I went to sleep. A clock not far away struck two. Then, rain fell in torrents and a fierce wind blew. The elements drove me from the grove. A constable held me up. 'I am a servant of G.o.d, dear friend,' I said. 'Why doesn't he give you a place to sleep, then?' he answered. 'G.o.d forgive me,' thinks I to myself, 'but that is the same unworthy thought that was in my own mind.' I went into a building in course of erection and lay down on some planks; but I was too wet to sleep."

Next day hunger drove him to work early. He was turned from one door after another, by saints and sinners alike, until finally he was so weak with hunger that he could scarcely walk. Then he became desperate to a degree, and his diary records a call on another reverend doctor.

This eminent divine had no need for religious literature, nor had he time to be bothered with beggars. Dowling records in his diary that he told the minister that he was dropping off his feet with hunger and would be thankful for a little bread and a gla.s.s of water. It seems almost incredible that in a Christian community such things could happen; but the diary records the indictment that those tender lips in life were never allowed to utter--it records how he was driven from the door.

He had letters of introduction from this rich tract society, and again he presented them to a minister.

"A very nice lady came," says the record. "I gave my credentials, explained my condition and implored help.

"_We are retired from the active ministry_," the woman said, "and cannot help you. We have no further use for religious books."

A third minister atoned for the others, and made a purchase. This was at Tarrytown. On another occasion, when his vitality had ebbed low through hunger and exposure, he was sitting on the roadside when a labourer said, "There is a n.i.g.g.e.r down the road here who keeps a saloon. He hasn't got no religion, but he wants some. Ye'd better look him up." And he did. The Negro saloon-keeper informed him that being a saloon-keeper shut him and his family from the church.

"Now," he said, "I am going to get Jim, my barkeeper, to look after the joint while I take you home to talk to me and my family about G.o.d." So they entertained the tinker-preacher, and the diary is full of praise to G.o.d for his new-found friends. The Negro bought a dollar's worth of tracts, and persuaded the colporteur to spend the night with them.

With this dollar he returned to New York, got his tinker's budget, and went back to his missionary field. If people did not want their souls cured he knew they must have lots of tinware that needed mending; so he combined the work of curing souls with the mending of umbrellas and kitchen utensils, and his period of starvation was past. His business was to preach the new vision and tinker for a living as he went along.

"September 12," reads the diary, "I found myself by the brook which runs east of the mountain. I had a loaf of bread and some cheese, and with a tin cup I helped myself to the water of the brook. The fragments that remained I put in a bundle and tied to the branch of a tree by the roadside. On the wrapper I pencilled these words: 'Friend--if you come across this food and you need it, do not hesitate to eat it; but if you don't need it, leave it for I will return at the close of the day. G.o.d bless you.'"

At eventime he returned and was surprised at the altered shape of the bundle. He found that two beef sandwiches and two big apples had been added, with this note: "Friend: accept these by way of variety. Peace to thee!" This gives occasion for another address of prayer and grat.i.tude to G.o.d for His bountiful care. By the brookside he took supper, and then began the ascent of the hill. After a few hours fruitless search for the road, he "got stuck," in the words of the diary. Finding himself in a helpless predicament, he gathered gra.s.s and dry leaves around him and prepared himself for the night.

"Psalms IV. 8 came to my mind," he said, "and I took great comfort in the words--'I said, I will both lay me down in peace and sleep, for Thou, Lord, makest me dwell in safety!'"

He woke next morning and found the earth covered with h.o.a.r frost, which suggested to him: "Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean.

Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."

One of my duties while engaged as a missionary on the Bowery was to render reports of the work done for the missionary society. The society had a monthly magazine and it was through that medium that they got the greater part of their support.

In one of my reports I told the story of a London waif. The story made such an impression upon the superintendent that he thought I was romancing, and said so. My best answer to that was to produce the boy, and I produced him. The boy told his own story. Then it was published in a magazine and produced a strong impression. I think an extra edition had to be printed to supply the demand.

CHAPTER IX

THE WAIF'S STORY

"I know nothing about my father," said the boy to me. "My mother worked in the brick-yard not far from our cottage, where we lived together. I went to school for two years and learned to read and write, a little.

"Every evening I used to go to the bend in the road and meet my mother as she came home. She was always very tired--so tired! She carried clay on her head all day and it was heavy. I used to make the fire and boil the supper and run all the errands to the grocery.

"One evening at the bend of the road I waited for my mother until it was dark, but she did not come. Then I went home crying. I found my mother lying on the bed with her clothes on. She would not wake up. I shook her by the arm, I rolled her from one side to the other, but she would not speak; then, I got on my knees and I kissed her--and her face was very cold. I was scared. I went for the old woman who lived next door. She shook her; then she cried and told me that my mother was dead.

"My mother used to play with me at night and sometimes in the morning, too. When they told me she was dead, I wondered what I would do without her; but all the neighbours were so kind to me that I forgot a good deal about my mother until they put her in a box and carried her away. Then one of the neighbour women took me and said I must live with her; so I did. I sold papers, ran errands, dried the dishes, swept the floor for her; but after a long time she began to speak very crossly to me, and I often trembled with fear.