Providence is full of reminiscent men who tell of adventures that are wide and wonderful.
If you are disinclined to go to the theatre you can always go into a bar and in peace and comfort sit within earshot of some grog-nosed hero of the old school, and find subject matter to outrival the romance of fiction. You must take good care not to let the old fellow know you are listening, otherwise he leaves facts alone and, with ill-concealed pride, makes your blood congeal with vivid descriptions of old days, murder and despair, or your mouth water for a breath of the fortunes that knocked around ere you were born.
CHAPTER III
I travel and sell Bug Powder—Seeking my Wages—Pork and Beans—Reminiscences of Sarasate—I strive to outrival Paganini—Practising the Violin—I am presented with a Round Robin—My Blasted Ambitions
AS the hot months came round my money gave out. Work was plentiful in the numerous factories that throb and thunder with machinery in Providence, but such work was not congenial to my temperament, and would ruin my fingers for violin-playing, as the post-digging job did. Nevertheless I should have availed myself of the opportunity had no alternative appealed to me. But my friend the conductor was a crank who was always producing some new scheme or invention that would assist him financially and augment his moderate musician’s salary.
One night he came to my diggings beaming with enthusiasm over a plan to make us both rich. He had invented a new bug powder: our fortunes were made; all we had to do was to let the Providence public know the catastrophe that we had ready for these insects. Suburban houses in the States are generally made of wood that is specially suitable for the bug state. So the population of Rhode Island all have one secret; and on dark nights in hot weather candle gleams and shadowy figures can be seen dodging on the windows of the tenements, as restless folk in their nightshirts smash bugs on the wooden walls. I write from experience. They creep down the walls in regiments, and while you sleep eat your eyelids; if you wink they seek crevices, dart into your ears, and prepare for the next attack! Closing your toes together swiftly at night in bed, you can be sure that you have squashed three or four American bugs. I have carelessly glanced at skeletons which I thought were ancient dead bugs on the walls in the room of my new lodgings, and then at midnight I have lit the candle, and down the walls were marching battalions of old bug-skins! They had smelt me, and the regiments on the frontier of my bedstead were already full blown with my blood.
So it is obvious that a good insect powder would be a blessing in Providence.
Well, my Swedish friend and I threw our musical instruments aside, and started on the bug powder business, full of hope. I had several musical compositions that I was ambitious to publish on my own account. I felt that Providence bugs had presented the tide in my affairs which I should take at the flood.
With our pockets stuffed with a thousand bills, advertisements bearing testimonials from American presidents and English royalties who had stayed in America, my comrade and I tramped along with our hearts singing the excelsior song of happiness. We really lived in a paradise of ignorance and youth. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” is a true phrase, and happy, though selling bug powder, was equally true of us.