Chapter XI: The Guests of the Elder Brother

"And man may work with the great God; 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.

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

The gathering in was achieved principally 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 class of their own nationality, the children of the rag-pickers in the basement, already referred to, who lived upon the chances of garbage barrels and beggary, and who spent much of their time in picking over and assorting 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 associates. 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 Saturday 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 glass 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 Saturdays. But he trinks all de time more schnapps--one, two, tree, four glass 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 nobodys, 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 class just above them, who were slipping over the brink, and would surely have fallen and contributed to swell the dangerous classes, if not reached by this timely assistance.

"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 circumstances 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 butter and a lake of molasses. 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 amusement 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 aptitude 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, weathercocks 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-sheller 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 flustered. 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 apron-strings and buttoning the "behind buttons" 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 assured. He took as his models the washing-machine, a cross-cut saw, and a corn-sheller, 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 passing 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.

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.

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 substitute 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.

"This is a picture of the _Princess Charlotte_," handing Emma Jane his drawing.

"It is night, and the captain is pacing the lonely deck; he has set his lantern on a small stand, and has put his hands in his pockets to keep them warm. The second verse goes this way:

'Up aloft! up aloft!' our gallant captain cried;
Blow high, blow low, so sailed we.
'Look ahead, look astern, look aweather, look alee,'
Cruising down on the coast of Barbaree.

'Oh, I've seen on ahead, and I've seen on astern,'
Blow high, blow low, so sailed we;
'And I see a ragged wind and a lofty ship at sea,'
Cruising down on the coast of Barbaree.

'Ahoy! ship ahoy!' our gallant captain cried,
Blow high, blow low, so sailed we;
'Are you a man-of-war, or a privateer?' says he;
Cruising down on the coast of Barbaree.

'Oh! I am no man-of-war or privateer,' says he,
Blow high, blow low, so sailed we;
'But I am a jolly pirate seeking for my fee,'
Cruising down on the coast of Barbaree.

"This is the picture of the pirate ship and the fight. Captain Kidd has cut off the head of one of the men who boarded his ship. One of his men is firing a cannon, the rest of his crew may be seen between-decks.

'Twas broadside to broadside, so quickly then came we;
Blow high, blow low, so sailed we;
Until the _Princess Charlotte_ shot her masts into the sea,
Cruising down on the coast of Barbaree.

Then 'Quarter! oh, quarter!' the pirate captain cried;
Blow high, blow low, so sailed we;
But the quarters that we gave them were down beneath the sea,
Cruising down on the coast of Barbaree.

"Grandfather called it the story of Captain Kidd, because he thought he must have been the pirate whose ship the _Princess Charlotte_ sunk. Captain Kidd was taken to London and hanged in chains, and I've made a picture of that too."

Emma Jane hardly approved of the sanguinary spirit displayed by these drawings, but she could not expect that the boy's antecedents and surroundings would produce an angel. She endeavored to draw his attention to gentler subjects for his pencil, recited tender and loving ballads, and changed the current of the boy's thought and aspiration, realizing that here was material which, in the fostering atmosphere of Rickett's Court, might easily develop into an anarchist--a menace to the state.

The Sandy girls were the last to be received from the court. The father had been a truckman, but a heavy box had fallen upon him, and he had lived in pain and misery for a year and had then died. Mrs. Sandy, by making men's clothing, managed to keep the wolf from the door--no, only snarling _at_ the door with fierce, hungry eyes. All of her six children helped her. The oldest girl did the ironing and finishing; the next child, a boy, carried the great bundles back and forth in the intervals of his profession as a bootblack; the second girl did all of their poor housework; the twins sewed on buttons and pulled out basting threads, and the youngest boy sold newspapers, while Mrs. Sandy herself ran the sewing-machine ten or twelve hours in the day.

When Mrs. Hetterman asked her why she did not give up this desperate battle with the point of the needle, and leave her vile surroundings to take service in some good family, she replied that she had often thought of this, but she must keep a home, however poor, for the children. "The two boys could live at the Newsboys' Lodging-House, for they earn enough to support themselves, but what would I do with my four girls?"

When Mrs. Hetterman assured her that there was a Home where they could all be cared for in cleanliness, health, and comfort, and have time for study and schooling and industrial education, which would fit them to earn their own living in future, and all for a sum quite within the means of any domestic, she brought her cramped hand down with a heavy blow upon the sewing-machine.

"I don't mind if I break every bone in yer body, ye Satan's grindstone!" she said to the machine; "it's the last time that Mary Sandy'll grind soul and body thin at ye, praise be to a delivering Providence!"

Mrs. Hastings, one of the managers of the Home, had had great trouble with incompetent and ungrateful servants, and she gladly took the faithful Scotch woman into her family.

These, then, were the guests of the Elder Brother, for that first summer, from Rickett's Court:

1 Jim Halsey, American.
3 Hettermans, English.
3 Amatis, Italian.
4 Babies from Mrs. Grogan's, Irish.
2 Carl and Gracie Rumple, German.
1 Lovey Dimple, American.
1 Merry Twinkle, American.
4 Sandy Girls, Scotch.

In all, nineteen children transplanted from the filth and vice, hunger and ignorance, of the court, and six more from other localities as bad, to sweet, wholesome surroundings. It was thought best that those children of school age should attend a public school to avoid "institutionizing" them; and for this end they wore no uniform, and mingled freely with other well-behaved children in the park under Mrs. Halsey's motherly supervision. Their birthdays were celebrated with a little party, with cake and candles, and everything was done to cultivate a home-like feeling. They drew their books like other children from the children's new free circulating library, and were taught to guard them carefully. They had a sewing society--in reality a sewing-class--where boys and girls were alike taught to mend and darn, to sew on buttons, and to make button-holes--all but the Sandy children, who, it was judged, had served a long enough apprenticeship in this department, and were sent to Mrs. Hetterman to learn how to cook.

Miss Prillwitz was anxious that the boys should have industrial training, and brought the matter before the board of managers, who entirely agreed with her, and voted that a subscription sent them by Mr. Armstrong be used to secure a suitable teacher.

It was just at this time that a letter was received from Adelaide announcing that she had fitted up the cottage which her father had placed at her disposal, and would like to have Mrs. Halsey occupy it with the youngest children for the heated term. Miss Prillwitz was delighted. Jim was already at the Pier with the Roseveldts, and it would be pleasant for his mother to be near him, and a fine thing for the little girls and the babies. This would leave the nursery vacant, and it could be fitted up as a workshop for the boys. She had a chat with Mrs. Halsey the day before she left, and asked her if she knew of anyone who could teach the boys carpentry.

"Mr. Trimble, Lovey's father, is a perfect jack-of-all-trades," replied Mrs. Halsey.

Miss Prillwitz was doubtful. "Mr. Trimble is a drunkard," she said.

"Not irreclaimable, I am sure," said Mrs. Halsey. "He was a sober man when I knew him. Despair alone could have driven him to drink. I wish you would send and ask him to call and see you."

So a letter was sent, and none too soon, for affairs were now at their worst with Stephen Trimble.