CHAPTER V.
WILLIAM'S NEW HOME.
Great was the change our poor boy experienced between living in the country and in the city. Instead of the brightly flashing river, with its sail-boats and schooners, the pleasant village environed by verdant meadows and flower-filled gardens, there was nothing but long rows of tall, stately houses, looking coldly grand, or narrow streets and dark lanes, where mud and filth mixed together were suggestive of cheerlessness and poverty. His heart sunk within him as he walked along the busy streets, where many people were passing to and fro, bent on their various errands of duty or pleasure, and felt that in that hurrying crowd there was not one to care for him, and among that wilderness of houses he had no home.
The shoemaker to whom he was apprenticed had once been a different man from what he was at present. During Raymond's life, and while on terms of intimacy with him, he had borne the reputation of a pious, and certainly was an industrious and thrifty man; but failure and the loss of an excellent wife had wrought a sad change in his character and temper; and having married a second wife, who turned out a virago and a shrew, there was little hope of his improving. He was still industrious, and owing to his former reputation for honesty and doing good work, he still retained many of his old customers. He had a small shop in a public part of the city, where he took the measures for shoes or sold those on hand; but he lived in a low-roofed, comfortless-looking house, far down the city, where he had also a shop, in which he kept a journeyman or two to do the mending, which was all sent there.
There were no children to gladden this sullen household by their mirth, and there was no piety to send its gleams of sunlight to lessen the gloom that dwelt within its precincts; there was no one there who loved God and honoured his laws, neither did the words of prayer or praise ever ascend from the family altar. They were contented to live for this world alone, caring nothing for that heavenly inheritance promised to those who love God and keep his commandments. Poor William! this was a dreadful place for him to be, with every inducement, from bad example, to stray from the true path in which he had until now been trained to walk; how great was the danger that he would now follow the leading of those to whose guardianship he had been thus mistakenly committed. A letter which he wrote to his friend, George Herman, will, perhaps, explain something of his condition and feelings:—
Dear George,
I should have written to you long ago, as I promised; but I am kept all the time so busy, and now I am afraid Mr. Walters will scold me for wasting time. I call him Mr. Walters (the others call him master), and not uncle, for he is not my uncle, although his first wife was my aunt. I do not like this big city of New York, everything is so different from my own home when my dear mother was alive. You never saw anything so grand as the houses here; but I would rather be back, living in the smallest house there, than have to stay in this great city, where there are so many rich people, and, yes, George, a great many more poor folks than I thought were in the whole world. I have cried so much since I have been here; Mr. Walters is almost always in a bad humour, and I cannot bear to mend shoes; I would almost rather do without wearing them. There is always a great pile of torn boots and shoes lying in the corner, and I have to help to mend them. Oh, how much pleasanter it was to work for the farmers round M—— all the week, and then go to church on Sunday! They have the grandest churches here, and I have heard beautiful music from the organ when I passed or stood at the door; but I have never been inside of a church since I left M——, for none of our people ever go, nor do we have any family prayer.
There is one thing, however, in New York that I do like; you ought to see the beautiful picture-shops in Broadway. I cannot help drawing a little, although I resolve every time shall be the last. I did a very wrong thing two days ago, which I must tell you of. I do not love Mrs. Walters, for she is always scolding me, and she has a very sharp nose and chin. I had a piece of chalk in my pocket, and I drew her likeness on the end of the work-bench. Jem Taylor, our journeyman, laughed so, that Mr. Walters would know what amused him so. When he saw it, he beat me with a last, and hurt me greatly. I cried, not for the beating, but because I felt I had done wrong. I remembered what my dear mother said about caricaturing, and I was so sorry I had done it. I begged Mrs. Walters' pardon, and told her I never would do it again; and, indeed, I never will. I am afraid I shall become a bad boy here. Jem Taylor swears dreadfully, and tells so many falsehoods. He is the only one here who is kind to me; but when I hear his oaths, and know that he is saying what is not true, I cannot like him. My mother always warned me so against saying the least thing that was not true. Ah, if she had known what kind of people these were, she would never have placed me with them. But I will try to please them, and try to be content; and I do pray every day that I may not be tempted to lie and swear like those with whom I am obliged to live. There is a good old man, a tailor, who lives next door to us. He is going to M——, and will give you this letter; so good-bye, dear George, and do not forget your friend,
William Raymond.
He sealed the letter and sent it by the tailor, and he felt somewhat happier, for he had some faint hope that his kind friend, the baker, would interfere in his behalf. He had not, however, magnified the misery of his condition; for not only did he feel keenly the want of such comforts as he had enjoyed in his humble home, but his life was rendered miserable by the injustice and severity with which he was treated. His master was a man of violent temper, who, finding he possessed little aptitude for shoemaking, tried to make him love it, first by flogging, and afterwards by half-starvation; following in the last-named measure the advice of his miserly help-mate, who believed it the best way of developing genius. In vain did William try by gentleness and zeal to soften their harshness; he had no one to interfere in his behalf, and he was made boy of all work, and scolded and blamed from morning till night. None loved him, and while he pined for the loss of the affection he once enjoyed, he found no one to love. No one treated him kindly, and gladness became a stranger to his heart.
In the midst of Sabbath privileges, he was in danger of becoming a heathen. He could not go to church or Sabbath school, because he was wanted to assist in the regular Sunday cooking; he heard no word of prayer or psalm of praise, and he might well have exclaimed with the Psalmist, "I looked on my right hand, but there was no man that would know me; refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul."
Still, he could not at once forget the teachings of his early childhood. He prayed that he might be kept from the power of the wicked, and the great and mighty Hearer of prayer was indeed his guard. His eye fell kindly on the desolate boy, and was only preparing him by present trials for future good. Still our young hero was not without faults. There was a little spice of pride in his composition, and, as we have learned from his letter, he hated the humble trade to which he was apprenticed. This was wrong: there is no occupation, however lowly, which cannot be made respectable by the proper discharge of the duties belonging to it; and if our young readers will remember that all their needs and changes are known unto Him who bountifully supplieth all, they will also recognise how possible it is to honour Him, whose servants they are, by an upright walk and conscientious advance in the allotted path.
But there were some pleasures for the poor boy even here, although deprived of home comforts. How kindly has God appointed that the elastic spirit of childhood cannot be crushed! and to one of the fanciful and enthusiastic temperament of our hero it was indeed a great blessing. The objects met with in a great and populous city are always striking; and our little shoemaker, as he walked through the streets, felt himself elevated, not lowered, by the grandeur around him. It showed him what man was enabled to do by energy and industry, and he determined that, although obliged to cobble at old boots and shoes for the present, it should not be so for ever. As he was made errand boy, he was obliged to be often in the streets; and then the pleasure he enjoyed in standing before the windows of the picture-shops, made him forget the tears which he so often shed under his master's caning, his mistress's continual fault-finding, and his meagre fare. Sometimes, while gazing on the works of art, so entrancing to a child with the soul of a painter, he also forgot how the time passed, and, having far exceeded that demanded by his errand, was on his return accused of playing the idler, and received an idler's reward.
Even this could not cure him of his love of pictures. Like one who had found a treasure in a desert, he was not to be deterred by the difficulties in the way to its enjoyment. He did not persist in the course which would have provoked Mr. Walters' anger, but started off on a full run from the time he left the house, not stopping until he had delivered his freight of boots and shoes; and feeling that the remainder of the time was conscientiously his own, he spent it, without compunction, in the contemplation of the art he so much loved.