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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Exeter Times, 1892-12-15, Page 4CHERRITEN'S CRICK. A. CHRISTMAS STORY. Cherriten and I were boys together in a big establishment where the wages were quite as large as our services de- served. On this sebject Cherriten dis- agreed with me, and he made up his /deficiencies by borrowing to. such an extent that he . found it necessary to disappear just after he received his pay one Saturday afternoon. As I was his creditor to the extent of eight cents, which was a large sum of money in those days, 1 declined to recognize him next we met, and our relations remained strained for two or three years afterwards, he having made sev- eral involuntary visits to the jail for reasons which police justices thought sufficient. Both of us enlisted when the civil war broke out, and although I escaped being in the same regiment with him, I chanced to'hear from time to time that he was bravely living up to his old reputation and making oe- easional business for courts martial. Our ways diverged after this, and for years I had forgotten Cherriten's ex- istence, but one day when I chanced to give my seat in a street car to a lady I was thanked in a voice which I rec- ognized as that of Cherriten. " You needn't he afraid to .speak to story you'd like to tell your wife, if I'm not greatly mistaken. 'Tisn't every duy that you meet men that's gone through whatl have—and got as much good out of it. Can't you come along with us and see how I live —how she: lives, too 1 Maybe you may run against some of the other boys that we used towork with -never know who you'll meet iiext in a big city like this and I'd like you to pass the word along that Cherriten isn't what he used to be and that lie couldn't go back if he tried. We get out the next street but one." Then he bent over the girl and said, "Chick, I'm trying to coax Jr. Bloggs to come in afew minutes. Can't you help me?" The young woman smiled and added her invitation to Cherriten's. As I had half an hour to spare before my WA dinner time I assented and with- in ten minutes was seated in as cosey a room as I had ever seen anywhere, and Cherriten and I were beginning to burn some very good cigars. " Well," said nay host, proceeding at once to business, "I needn't, go over old times very much. I was a pretty tougn lot when you knew me, and I got about ten times worse each year "noNn' Ter COT SENSE To nee, Mr. Bloggs," said he, as our recog- nition econnition became mutual. " I'zei not the sort of a fellow I used to be." Then he whispered, "That's my chick—she that you gave your seat to." I was not sure what " chick" might mean in the vocabulary of the claw to whieli Cherriten had belonged when I knew him, but I venturee to say, sy way of congratulation, that aay mai with so pretty a wife ought to think himself remarkably lucky. "Wife? No more my wife thee she. is yours. She's my chick—nay child. I'm her dad—the only one she ever knew, though there's no relation be- tween. us. Let me introduce you." Then, before I could suggest that a crowded horse car was scarcely the place to introduce any one to a young woman, he leaned forward and said:— " Chick, this is Mr. Bloggs, that used to work in the same plaeo with ine when I was a boy, and beginning to he a reguler tough, like I've told yea §p often," A face that was really charming turned toward me as I raised my hat, and a well modulated voice said :— " Papa never loses an opportunity to tell me that he used to be dreadfully bad when he was young. It really seems to gave him pleasure to give him- self a bad character." "I do it so as to heep her in mind pf the great lot of good she leas done -"''ane," Cherriten explained, as both of us resumed, erect positions, " She's been the making of me. She puts it the other way—she hasn't cost me any- thing but money, and goodness knows that's easy enough to get if a man is willing to work, but she has had to spend enough patience on me to set old Job up in business.. Honest,' now, Mr. Bloggs—I'm not fishing for cons- plianents, but from what you can see offhand don't I seem something of an improvement on what I used to be as you remember me 1" I was glad to answer in the affirm- ative. Cherriten never could have been a beauty ; he was born of s; ery bad stock, according to his early accounts of himself, avid he had large features under e small brow, but the old dom- inant expression of lawlessness had ere tirely departed and there was a, health- ful glow in his eyes and cheeks which told of good physical habits. He was as well dressed as any man in .the car, and he wore good clothing with the air of a man accustomed to that sort of thing ; he was neatly gloved even, and carried a stick without seeming embar- rassed by 'it. • . "She did it all," he said. He could see that I was looking him aver. " I wish you'd lot me come to see , you, whereveryour place of business'is, and tell you the whole story. I'n' sure ,,,you'd enjoy hearing it.; Besides, it's a whenever I tried to. drop her she woke knew of where they sold coffee and up and hung tighter, What .do you ' cakes and milk and that sort of a thing, suppose happened at last 1 Why, she' and I gave Chick a good feed before I got ro tiredthat she slept soundly, and: ate anything myself. The woman that her arms unloosed and I put her down! ran the place was a rough creature, on a seat, making a sort of pillow 'that could outswear a tramp if he made with the ragged coat I had, and then her mad—I'd heard her do it, but she --I felt lonesome ! Yes, sir ! I'd got' had a heart like other folks, and she so used to the feeling of that child's' told nee 'twos a shame I didn't take arms around my neck that I couldn't, better care of my child. My child 1 wait for her to wake up again. I•The mere mention of it made me feel couldn't understand it, so 1 swore about .-,well, as I'd never felt before. I told it, and when that didn't do any good Ther that the mother was dead and the went to thinking about it, I never;youngster• had run down some in rep - had any brothers or sisters, and as to,pearance, but if I could get it started my father and mother—well, I sup -:right I thought I could keep it so pose they didn't find me very interest- The upshot of it was that she told eie ing when I was a young one. Any -,.where I could get it some cheap new how I sat there awake in the ear all clothes with what money was left from night long, waiting for the child to:what I'd begged at the ferry, and she'd waken, and every once in a while I'degiye it a cleaning up for me in the feel of its arms to see what there was little kitchen behind the shops as soon about them that—oh, I was puzzled as 1 got back. She evas as good as her enough to be clean daft, {word. .After it was over Chick put "When it did awake, though, I was out her arms again for me to take her, woese off. .Flow it did howl l It hug-' but, do you know, I was ashamed to 1 ged me just the seine as before, but It seemed insulting and shameful for once in a while it would stop long me to touch a sweet, clean, innocent enough to lookup at ine as if I'd been. little thing like that, and I told the real unkind to it, At last a ratan,woman just how 1 felt. whose wife put him up to it,came over1 " `Good,' she said, you'll be a man to me and said 1yet, if you stick to that! Then she "'Don't you got sense to know dab, asked me how muck money I had and shild hungry 1' old me where 1 could buy a clean cot= "No, 1 hadn't, and when it cameto ton jumper for afew dimes that would me I wasn't muck better off, for I make hie look a good deal decenter, !hadn't anything to feed it with, and I and then she hinted that if I'd leave didn't know whether it, ever had been the child with her a while and take a fed except in the first way. And still swim on the sly off the docks some - the child kept on howling and I kept where I might be allowed in the free on being sorry for it. Queer, wasn't baths afterward and take a genuine it? I'd heard thousands of young ones' wash. I took her advice, but every - cry in my time -1'd teased dozens of thing seemed like a dream. I'd never them just to make them cry—yet this lead baths or clean clothes in my life I think that trick of snaking school ter look so unlike. It's positively one's voice tore my heart all to pieces, except the few times I'd been sent to child ren sit in class rooms dive hours a funny that we haven't a single feature and just as I was beginning to find the island. The woman at the coffee day and then study at home two or in common. I've been .noticing it a out that I had such a thing as a heart' and cake shop told me where I could three boors afterward is rank brutal- great deal since 1 began to study dra*- in me. Iget decent lodgings for Chick and me ity, but in the old times it was great ing.' " At last I stood up in the car, feel-: fortwenty-five cents a night,and where fun to ine to get her lessons with her "I thought a moment, and then -1 ing real desperate, and I shouted out z 1 could have Chick taken care of far and then recite to her, while she look don't think I would have done it if I --- !ten cents aday while I was off at ed as grave as a cage full of owls, and hadn't been sick and weekend babyish "'Say! Ain't there a mother to' work. gave nae reproofs, and corrections, and --I told. her the story of aur first meet- ing and what happened afterward. It broke her up ; it broke nee up too, but it brought her heart out a, hundred times more than it had been, though she al• ways bad been all that was loving. She looked at ine as T never had seen her look before at any one, except when she was saying her prayers. From that hour she was a woman --a woman before leer time, though all her life bad been leading up to it. She lead long times of sitting at my feet and crying- -not unhappily, for she said it comforted her a great deal to think bow good. Pd been to her. I was afraid she would grow nihrbid and IiNONV DOT nAur's uo\artY P" for . five or six years. I got taken in by the police three or foar tithes, and by righte ought to have spent most of thatpassed looked at us fungi. my tune emend. Cather and mother we y, a decent family that had no children. of their town, and where the woman was very motherly to Chick, but the little thing never took any of her heart away from ine, bless lier 1 " nines went on well with us for two or three years after that: I kept so straight and worked so hard that I got a steady job and put all my savings in the bank, Other men that knew ine and Clhick would say I ought to marry again --they dicln.'t know I was a bachelor—so as to have a mother for the child. I rather thought myself that the little thing ought to have a better chance and I talked with her about it, for she was about four years old, and seemed about four hundred whenever we talked seriously about anything. Beit she said, ' Don't want any mothers ; don't want nobody but papa: Now, just imagine --but pshaw 1 you can't --nobody can. "Meanwhile she picked up some very strange expressions, or made them up, I don't know which. I suppose you know how young ones get a notion here and another one there and then know there wasn't any relationship between us. I'd been careful not to tell other people anything about the way I came by her, for I was afraid there might be a law of some kind by which somebody might take her away from me. There was no reason why they should do so, but people are al- ways fearful about their treasures, you know. One day when I was sick at home, and lying in bed, and Chick sat on my bedside saying loving and funny things to cheer ine, and looking like the beautiful angelic hearted thing she is, she suddenly said :-- "I never knew a father and date glr- put them together in a way that a grown person never would think of., One day, when she was about six years. old, she paralyzed me by saying :--- "'Now, papa, I'm going to take you in hand. I think you need a mother's care.' She was as good as her word ; she's had ine in hand ever since, I thought Ira made a great improvement in myself in the first two or three years of our acquaintance, but'twas nothing to what she put me up to. She began to go to school, and nothing ,would do but that she and I should study the lessons together. Now that she's older, lend here somewhei e— one of the; ",Work l I wanted to laugh at her kind that can give a baby something when sl e said that, for I hadn't done to eat1"Jany work in years except loafing, " Nobody answered ; there weren} t'though that's the very hardest kind. many awake, but at last an emigrant:I thought about the luck Pd had in woman came over and looked at the,beg ing at the ferry house, but I child, and then brought a little cup of!eouldn't work that racket again unless marks, and report cards, and every- thing that the teachers at school gave her. "'Twee tough, though, when she got further along and put one into fractions and grammar. Did you ever study grammar ? Of all infernal --but that's milk and a spoon and fed it two are put both of ue back into our dirty neither here nor there. She bad to three mouthfuls and left me to finish rags again, and Pd rather have killed study it, and what leerlittle head could the job. I was pretty awkward, ns you I uiy self than done that. Strange,what take in I wasn't going to dunk at, so I may imagine, but Chick got there sudden changes come over a roan some- sweated my way through it, and I got every time I gave leer a fair show with times, isn'tit 1 I told the woman 1 fractions into my head so solidly that the spoon. hadn't any regular job, and she said I I've never been able to got them out "When we got to Toronto some of could get plenty of odd jobs right near again, though I wish I could, the emigrants explained to a kind her place by hanging around for them In the course of time 1 was troub- looking old man ---a city missionary, I and keeping honest and sober. Work led about Chick. Maybe'twasbecause believe—about chiek and me, and he —honest—sober—why, it sounded a' she was mine that I thought here great told me of a place where they'd take hundred times worse than 'Ten dollars deal better and smarter than any of it in, and I walked there, ford hadn't or ten days: the other children I saw, and that she the price of a ear fere. Lots of folks it did, though. 'Twas hard and ought to have better chances and better the pay -was small, but I had Chick to company. The man of the family we go back to every night, and she paid lived with died, enol his wife was pretty nae -until I felt richer than any man ire old and had no family, so I told her Wall street. She was allays good that if she'd kesp house for me we'd natured as a kitten and a puppy rolled move into a better neighborhood. I'd into one,aud when she fell asleep'twas hire e little flat instead of apartments always with her oxen around any neck. in a tenement house, and she and Chick In the course of time I found out that could live like ladies. Sho took to the the only ugly faces she ever made was notion, for she had good stuff in her because she didn' t like the smell of and her manners had always been a tobacco, so I stopped chewing. Did mile above most of the folks in the you ever try to stop chewing 1 No 1 house where we'd lived, though it's a Well it's harder than starving. I ought great mistake to suppose all the poor to know, for I've tried both. are rough and coarse. We came here "Well, everything went better and five or six years ago. I've worked up better, until one Christmas Eve I took to be foreman in a pretty big business, a drink and then another, and some ancl though I can't make much of a more after that, and when I went for show of myself 1 stand well with every - Chick and she saw me she wouldn't body that knows nee, and Chick has dome to me, and the woman who took any number of nice friends whom she's care of her by daylight called me a slowly picked up at school and church, brute. I started for the river to drown and she takes pains to make all of them myself, but that wouldn't do, for wbo understand that her papa is the great - would take care of Chick when I was est, smartest, dearest, funniest, best gone 1 I walked the streets till I was man in the world. Some of them have sober, and I was praying and swearing opinions of the same mind about their all the time; I didn't exactly know own fathers, but Chick makes no allow - where the praying left off and the ances for any one, althouele I've tried swearing began, but to this clay I think to teach her that children have a right they were part and parcel of the same thing, whichever it was. Christmas morning I went for Chick and she took to me again, and she and. event house hunting, for by that time I bad saved up a few dollars. We got board with both died.; nadn't any friends, which and a good many of them looked dis- was good for the friends. I was loafer, gusted. I suppose we weren t a pretty thief, wharf rat, fighter and everything !pair ; but the meaner anybody looked else that was bad ; I was so tough that the tighter I held Chick and the tighter other fellows of my own kind wouldn't she held me. She seemed to know, stand me, so at last I had to fleck by somehow, when I was being made to myself. My boarding house was a feel bad, bless her'.—she's been that lumber heap, and sometimes I was 1 way ever since. At last I got to the hounded out of even that by gangs of asylum and rang the bell, and then•I boys ---a dozen against one. thought to myself that in nminute or "At last I went ori the tramp-- I two I'd have seen the last of her. Well, thought I'd get to some place where 1 sir,what dict f do but take to my heels wasn't known so well. A good deal of and run as if the police were after me. the time I followed the railroad tracks, I suppose you don't know how that as most tramps do, and one day I reach- feels 1 No ? Well, it puts wings on ed a place where an emigrant train the feet of the laziest tramp in the city. had been wrecked half an hour before Away I went till I got out of sight and a lot of people killed. Maybe you of that building ; then I walked won't believe it, but I was so low down slowly,for I wash t• any too strong my - that I went prowling about the rocks, self, not having had anything to eat on the lower side of the road, to see for about twenty-four hours, besides if anything had been lost from the wreck that 1 could steal. Well, some- thing lead rolled down there and been overlooked by the people that were searching. Well, I found something nights. It -was waren weather, and —it was Chick. She was only about, the air from the water freshened me. a year old then, judging by the usual ! I tried to think, but I tumbled asleep, signs, and she was about as dirty and and when I woke up it was because shabby as the man that found her, and Chick was patting my face—the cun- she didn't look any better for a cut or Hing young one! I don't see how she two on her head and face. But she brought herself to do it. iry face. was somebody's young one, 1 raid to isn't much to speak of now, but then myself, and her folks would lie glad to —Well, never mind. I sat up and be- having been awake all night. " Without intending to I went down to the river, and on the shady side of the lumber heap where I used to sleep get her back. They couldn't be worth gan thinking, Chick sat he my lap and looked at meas hard as if she was won- dering what was on my mind. At last I said to myself, 'Old man, sometimes you've tried to keep a dog, but some - As near as anybody could telhtlm man body always stole it—somebody that much money, judging by the ci'ild's clothes,but they might stand the vice of a drink out of gratitude. "Well, I couldn't find the owners. and woman that she'd been with were could steal more grub for it than you among the killed. You know how could. Sttppose you keep this thing? things are at such times every -body's 'Tam't as good looking as a• dog—I rattled. Some folks told ine to do one was talking of how she looked then— thing with her and 'oane another. I tried to dive her away, but nobody'd take her, x..,te was another reason. why I couldr't get rill of her -she hacl both of he little arms around my neck; and I` eruldn't get them off. One of the iromr-n that had been in the accident a ri ie' as because the little thing was sr scared; said;sho looked as if she was toofrightened to breathe straight, which is likely enough, seeing where and how .['d found her. The railroad folks eouldn'tdo anything about the young one, except to say that if I'dgo back to the city with other emigrants —they thought l was one of the crowd that. they, guessed they'd find some way of disposing of it there. "All the way down to Toronto that young one kept throttling ane. She'd dropasleep once in a while and I'd try to lay her down; seemed to be so infer- nal foolish for a fellow like inc to have a young one in his 'arms.. But and it'll snake more trouble,soiio'body'll think of hooking it!' Then I said,. 'What do you think of the . notion, Chick 1' and she put up both arms to me. Great Lord! Wild horses couldn't have dragged her from me' after that. But what was I to do 1 I hadn't any home—and I didn't know how soon she might get htmgryagain. Besides, I was all gone inside myself. 1: re- membered seeing women with children, begging in the streets and at the .fer- ries; as for that, I'c1 clone begging on my own amount many and many a time, and got up lies big 'enough to squeeze out money to get drunk on. So I went to the nearest ferry and watched my chances, and stood on the elide of the orowd where the policeman: wasn't and held., oat my hat. It fetch- ed a good many of the women. I was astonished at what I took in from one single boatful and I didn't wait for any more, but put out for a shanty I looney, so I made lightaf all I'd done, and dtolcl her that I'd been repaid a thousand times, which was true. She ' was thoughtful for a few days, and then announced that she was going to be everything to me that I'd been to her ; she was going to take it a in hand again and give me everything I had given her. "i� ell, she's been at it ever since. She's twenty years old now, and being very smart naturally and having had every advantage of education that good advisers could sugge.tancl money could buy, she knows a great deal --and I'in being taught it all. I have to take music lessons, with her for teacher; she makes nee practice only an hour an. evening, as I have a long day in business. Pm obliged to practice drawing and study languages while riding to and from home, and practice on her while at home. I've got a good grip on German, having plenty of chance to use it as fast as I learn it;; but French well, I've my opinion of the people who got up such chatter. I won't show you any of my sketches,. but she will if you stay long enough. •We were on our way home from: the fall exhibition at the Academy when you met us, and I'd been obliged to weed out the pictures with my own to their own opinions in family matters eyes and tell her which were the dozen of that kind. best, and to leer great delight—and " Well, that ought to be the end of mine, too, as to that—I was right in the story, but it isn't. All the years most cases, according to the experts' Chick and I had been together it had reports that slie had clipped from the never occurred to me that she didn't newspapers. As I said, there's none of my sketches that I would think of sheaving you, but" there's one picture in • the house that I want you to see, for a certain reason. A few years ago I found myself for- getting what I had been and I didn't `want to—I wanted to keep my grati- tude very lively as long as I lived. So I asked my employer, whom I knew was'zvell up about pictures, who was'a good artist in lowlife characters this was before' Chick went into art. He gave me a name and I put in part of my summer vacation in having a pic- ture painted -a picture of a tramp holding a shabby child whose arms were around his neck. I'u as the model for the tramp. It took a long tinge to M _ find a child that would do, though, till the artist explained that tho child's face -would not showanyway. 1 brought. the picture home and hung it on the wall, and Chick would gaze at it by the hour. I never told her the story of it until the night -when she learned she was not my daughter ; oven then I told her only to quiet her, and show her, •by comparison, what she had done, for me. here's the picture" As Cherriten spoke he rose and drew a curtain which I hadnotiioecl on entering the room. The picture was. a threeluarter length,' by a very cicv- " TEBIts is No hex a FUNNY A?3011T: THAT. " 1Conttnued On page S.