Witch Winnie Part 16

THE GUESTS OF THE ELDER BROTHER.

"And man may work with the great G.o.d; yea, ours This privilege; all others, how beyond!

Effectually the planet to subdue, And break old savagehood in claw and tusk; To draw our fellows up as with a cord Of love unto their high-appointed place, Till from our state barbaric and abhorred We do arise unto a royal race, To be the blest companions of the Lord."

--HENRY G. SUTTON.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Drawing of girl writing.}]

A few days before school closed saw the Home filled for the summer.

The gathering in was achieved princ.i.p.ally by Jim, Mrs. Hetterman, and Vincenzo Amati.

Vincenzo was an Italian of the better sort. He had lived in America long enough to acquire some of our ways of life. He earned a fairly good salary as cook, and he had kept his little family in comparative comfort in the best apartment which Rickett's Court had to offer, until the death of his pretty wife Giovanina. Since then the three little girls had done their best, but there was a woeful change. They became slatternly in appearance, and the two rooms grew dirty and cheerless.

Worse than this, the girls affiliated with a lower cla.s.s of their own nationality, the children of the rag-pickers in the bas.e.m.e.nt, already referred to, who lived upon the chances of garbage barrels and beggary, and who spent much of their time in picking over and a.s.sorting the old bones, rags, paper, and other refuse dumped each night upon the floor of their sleeping and living room, as the result of their father's daily toil. These children were sickly and miserable, tainted morally as well as physically; and their parents, who were contented with their disgusting lives, were laying up money, in fact, for a return to Italy.

But Vincenzo was not contented that his children should live in such fashion or have contaminating a.s.sociates. He was one of the first applicants to place his children in the Home, paying cheerfully the highest sum asked for board, it having been early decided that the rates for each child should be proportioned to the wages of the parent.

Then several children previously "farmed out" to Mrs. Grogan, whose mothers were servants in good families, were received on similar terms.

A German woman, a Mrs. Rumple, brought her two children, saying that she was going West, but, as she knew not what fortune awaited her there, wished to place her children in the Home until she could send for them.

She paid their board in advance for the summer, taking the money in coin from her petticoat pocket.

"Why do you leave New York?" asked Emma Jane Anton.

"It ish not de guntry. De guntry ish a very goot guntry. It ish de beeples," said Mrs. Rumple.

"What is the matter with the people?" asked Emma Jane.

"I comes de seas over a pride, mit my man Heinrich Rumple; dat is ten years aco alreaty. Heinrich is one very goot man; he trinks only one mug of lager every days; he comes every Sat.u.r.day home mit his moneys, and oh, mine fraulein, how he luf me! Pretty soon py und py de peer ish not coot, and he takes one leetle gla.s.s of schnapps instead. Den de leetle babies come, one, tree, four, six, and it cost all de time more to live, and he pring all de time less moneys mit de Sat.u.r.days. But he trinks all de time more schnapps--one, two, tree, four gla.s.s de every days, and I know not how much de Sundays, and I tink he not luf me now so much as sometimes. Den de sickness comes, de shills and de fevers, and we all de time shake, shake, and first one little children die, and den anudder, all but Carl and de little Gracie; and mine man not haf any moneys to py medicines, put he haf blenty to py schnapps, and he all de time trink more as is goot for him, and one night he comes home and he knows not vat he does, and he sthrikes de leetle Gracie, and she is long time very sick. Mine soul! I tinks she vill die, and Heinrich Rumple--dot ish my man--he puts his name mit de bledge, and says he vill not any times trink any more, und de Gracie gets vell, und ve are all wery happy, but he all de same trinks again shust so pad as ever. Py und py pretty soon I says, 'Heinrich Rumple, I cannot sthand dis nonsense any more ain't it. I cannot haf dose childer all their bones broke any more; I put dem in one 'sylum avay from you, and I goes in dot Western land seek my fortune.'"

"And so you left your husband?" asked Miss Anton.

"Ya. I left mine man," replied the woman.

"And don't you suppose he will ever reform, and send you money to come back to him?"

"No, I s'pose so. He said to me dat day: 'Barbara, it is de beeples. I haf too many friends, and I trinks mit dem all de time, too often; I tinks if I am in de West, where I know n.o.bodys, I would be a petter husband to you alretty.' And so he goed away mit me."

"Do you mean to say that you and your husband are leaving New York for the West together?"

"Ya. I left him, and he say, 'Barbara, you has right; I leaf myself, too.' But I cannot trust him alretty mit de chillern. I leaf dem one six month, to try what come of it all."

"I hope your husband has indeed left his worst self behind him," said Emma Jane; and on suitable security being provided, the Rumple children were admitted.

In almost all cases it was not the desperately and hopelessly pauperized and vicious--who were provided for by reformatories and the city charities--whom they helped, but the cla.s.s just above them, who were slipping over the brink, and would surely have fallen and contributed to swell the dangerous cla.s.ses, if not reached by this timely a.s.sistance.

"Prevention is better than cure," and it was the hope of the "King's Daughters" to rescue the innocent children of decent and struggling parents before they should need reformation.

Rosaria Ricos, the Cuban heiress, endowed a bed to be used for some child whose parents could do nothing whatever toward its support. She wished to have more free beds, but Miss Prillwitz showed her how much better it was for the parents to do something, however little it might be, for their children, and not be pauperized by having every feeling of independence and ability to care for their own taken from them.

Exceptional circ.u.mstances might arise, when a mother out of employment, could wisely be helped over a great exigency, but she advised that Miss Ricos's "Emergency Bed" be given for short periods only. It was first occupied by Lovell Trimble, familiarly, but most inappropriately, nicknamed by the other children, Lovey Dimple. He was a homely, unprepossessing boy, with a pug nose and a disproportionately large head. His father was the unsuccessful inventor of Rickett's Court, with whom we are already acquainted. He spent all his former earnings in securing patents for various great inventions which were to make all their fortunes. His mother had been a shop-girl in a large dry-goods store, and had supported the family until long-continued standing had sent her to the hospital. Lovey had tried to take her place in supporting his father by wheeling "the machine" of a hot-flap-jack seller, while the flap-jack man devoted his attention to frying the cakes, flipping them on to a plate, and serving them up with a dab of b.u.t.ter and a lake of mola.s.ses. They did their best business winter nights after the theatres were out--sheltered from the snow by an awning or a convenient door-way, and they knew which places of amus.e.m.e.nt were out first, and would race at ambulance speed from Harrigan and Hart's to the Bowery, to secure the custom of each. Lovey liked the business, for, besides the pay, after the day's trade was over the flap-jack man let him eat whatever was left, for the batter would not keep, and he had always a few cakes to carry home to his father of the full brain and empty stomach.

But one night a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, who had had his eye on the flap-jack man as employing too young a child for labor involving so much privation, descended upon the cart with a policeman; and the flap-jack man having discreetly absconded, they arrested Lovey in default of his employer. Miss Prillwitz appeared in court at Jim's request, for in some way Jim had heard of his friend's apprehension, and having ascertained that Mr.

Trimble had gone upon a spree, she rashly, but not unnaturally, decided that nothing was to be expected from such a father, and next paid a visit to Mrs. Trimble, at the hospital. Learning there that there was a prospect of her cure, she offered Lovey the hospitality of the Emergency Bed until his mother should be able to work once more. This case established relations between the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the new Home; and a little girl--who had been forced to sell lead-pencils on the street at night by a drunken mother, though her father was a brakeman, who could well afford to support her--was committed to the Home through the agency of the Society; and the father, on being notified, approved the action, and paid her board regularly.

One desirable result of the Home was its effect on Emma Jane's character. From being, as she had truly said of herself, an unlovely and unloving girl who disliked children, her nature sweetened by contact with them; and taking them one by one into her heart, it broadened and softened, till an expression which was almost madonna-like trembled in a face which had been grim and repellent. Lovey Dimple was the first to scale the fortress of Emma Jane's affections. He inherited his father's apt.i.tude for mechanics. Among the old books and papers contributed to the Home were, strangely enough, some bound volumes of the _Scientific American_ and a few stray Patent Office reports, and over these he pored until his head seemed full of revolving cog-wheels and pulleys, and pistons, and his heart beat like a stationary engine. He was certain that he would be an inventor some day, like Ericsson or Edison; indeed, he was an inventor already, for had he not constructed unnumbered mill-wheels and windmills, weatherc.o.c.ks and whirligigs, besides taking to pieces the clock (which he could not get together again), and adapting his mother's sewing-machine to fret-saw purposes? He had studied every machine which he had seen in the stores, from the corn-sh.e.l.ler to the great patent mower, and believed that he understood the action of each. "Patent" was a word that stirred his soul, though he had but a dim conception of its meaning. It was something, his father had said, that the Government would give him if he invented a really useful, labor-saving machine, one which would "supply a felt want."

Lovey knew what a felt hat was, but it was several days before he really knew what his father meant by a felt want. As soon as he had grasped the idea he began in earnest. "Mother Halsey," he asked, "what part of your work bothers you most?"

Mrs. Halsey looked hot and fl.u.s.tered. Half an hour before this she had put her room and the nursery in order, had dressed the twenty-five children; from combing their hair and scrubbing the little ones, and introducing them into each separate garment, to merely tying ap.r.o.n-strings and b.u.t.toning the "behind b.u.t.tons" of the older ones, and giving them a final dress review before starting them to the public school.

In view of this state of affairs, it is not to be wondered at that Mrs.

Halsey said that dressing the children gave her more bother than anything else. Lovey, with a pencil and paper, sat down to invent a machine which should do this for her. He reflected that such a machine would be hailed with delight in nearly every family, and if he could manage to sell them at a dollar apiece his fortune was a.s.sured. He took as his models the washing-machine, a cross-cut saw, and a corn-sh.e.l.ler, and in a few moments had made his drawing of a combination of the three machines. The motive power, he decided, should be furnished by the father of the family, who could turn the crank; and on days when this was not convenient the smoke from the cooking-stove could be utilized, the stove pipe being turned so that the smoke should strike the paddles of the main wheel, and the continuous stream pa.s.sing across the edge of the wheel and up the chimney, he felt certain, would turn it. Just back of the machine, and above it, there was to be a great hopper into which the naked children could climb by means of a ladder, and where the clothing could be tossed promiscuously, the machine sorting it and robing each child properly. The cross-cut saw near the mouth would shingle each child's hair, and save the trouble of curling, while the children, completely dressed, would be poured through this spout into their mother's arms.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Hand drawing of the invention.}]

Lovey exhibited this drawing to Mrs. Halsey and to Miss Anton, and begged them to show it to President Harrison and obtain a patent for him as soon as possible; but, somehow, though the invention was received with applause and approbation by the entire family, nothing was ever done about it.

The droll conceit attracted Emma Jane to the boy. "Perhaps some day he may become an inventor of something more practical," she said, and ever after watched him with increasing interest.

Lovey had had great trouble with his arithmetic, and he had decided that a grand labor-saving machine would be one which would save a boy the trouble of studying. He thought that it would be a good idea to bore a hole in a boy's head when he was asleep, introduce the end of a funnel into the opening, and then with a coffee-mill grind up the usual text-books and stuff his brains. He made a drawing of this machine also, and Merry Twinkle and he came very near trying it practically, but they never could quite agree as to who should be the operator and who should be operated upon. Lovey had another brilliant inspiration. He noticed that his rubber ball, which had a hole in it, had a remarkable power of suction, and that if he held the orifice to his cheek and squeezed the ball, when he let go it would pucker his cheek in a way to remind one distantly of a kiss. He imagined that if the ball were drawn out into a tube, and that tube continued indefinitely the action would still be the same. Here was a discovery. How many separated friends and lovers would be glad to patronize a kissaphone, an instrument by which kisses could be sent and actually felt. He imagined the establishment of offices on both sides of the Atlantic, and the laying of a submarine tube.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Hand drawing of the book-grinding machine.}]

A young physician, a friend of Mrs. Roseveldt's, was visiting the Home just as Lovey completed this triumph. "Another invention of Lovey Dimple's," Emma Jane explained, as the child handed her the drawing. Dr.

Curtiss came oftener than the sanitary condition of the Home really demanded, and he was well acquainted with Lovey's genius in this direction.

"Yes, sir," promptly replied Lovey, "and I have met a felt want now, sure," and then he explained the kissaphone.

"Try it on me, Lovey, and let me see how it feels," asked the doctor.

Lovey did so, and Dr. Curtiss made a wry face. "It strikes me that is a very poor subst.i.tute for the genuine article," he said, "but perhaps I am not qualified to judge.

"Now if you could have a nice looking lady operator, and could attach your tubing to the back of her head, and have her transmit the kiss as the mouthpiece of the machine, I should think your invention might be very popular."

Lovey received this suggestion with entire good faith. "Miss Anton," he said, beseechingly, "won't you act as mouthpiece and let me send a kiss to Dr. Curtiss?" And he could never quite decide why Emma Jane, who was usually so kind, declined in great confusion to render him this trifling service.

There was another little boy in the Home who made remarkable drawings--the one already referred to as Merry Twinkle. All of his family, even the female portion, were sea-faring people; his grandfather had been a sailor, and was now an inmate of the Sailors' Snug Harbor.

His mother sometimes took Merry to visit him when she was back from a voyage, for she was stewardess on an ocean steamer. His father had been engineer on the same boat, but had been killed by a boiler explosion, and Merry had been _boarded_ hitherto with Mrs. Grogan.

One evening, after a visit to his grandfather, Merry handed Emma Jane a series of wonderful marines.

"Grandfather sang me a very old song to-day," he said. "It went this way:

Two gallant ships from England sailed; Blow high, blow low, so sailed we: One was the _Princess Charlotte_, the other _Prince of Wales_, Cruising down on the coast of Barbaree.