Cole of Spyglass Mountain

by Arthur Preston Hankins

Here a mellow gong sounded, and Beaver Clegg’s eyes grew neutral in color once more. “That’s the dinner gong,” he said briskly. “I’ll call one of the monitors, who will show you how to fall in and march to the washroom, and afterward to the dining room. After dinner there will be fifteen minutes for play, and I want you to come back here for that period. I want to talk more with you.” He pressed a button, and a uniformed monitor came in. “This is Fifty-six thirty-five,” said Mr. Clegg. “Take care of him until he learns the rules. That’s all for the present, Fifty-six thirty-five.”

Joshua marched to the washroom, a large, spotlessly clean compartment where each boy used his individual basin, which hung under a tag bearing his number. When they left the washroom they marched across the court yard to the main building, where was the dining room. Here the inmates of the entire institution partook of their meals, boys from the North Wing, between the ages of eighteen and twenty, those from the South Wing, from fourteen to eighteen, and those of fourteen or under from Mr. Clegg’s Juvenile Department. The dining room monitor seated Joshua, and he ate sparingly of soup, coffee, bread without butter, boiled ham, and beans. The dining room was silent as a tomb, as no conversation was allowed. When the meal was finished they rose at a command from the monitor and were marched out into the playground. Here Joshua contrived to evade curious and semi-pugnacious boys who wanted to know all about him, entered the gray corridor of the Juvenile Department, and found his way again to the little office of Beaver Clegg.

Mr. Clegg wore large round spectacles now, for he had been reading. Over the rims of them he looked at Joshua speculatively for a time.

“You will be known here as Fifty-six thirty-five,” he said finally. “But when you and I are alone together I’m going to call you Joshua. It seems, almost, that a special Providence sent you to me, and I have hopes that your life here will be more profitable to you than if you had stayed at home. You are very young to have decided upon a career, and who knows but that you will change your mind entirely before you are a year older? I recall that when I was about your age I was determined to become a minister of the gospel. I had preached a little even then—if one might call it preaching—and was hailed as a boy evangelist. But now I am interested in other matters, and have been since I was twenty-one.

“Let us assume, however, that you are interested in astronomy and want to become a serious student. You are too young to understand, of course—but I may as well tell you now that it is a calling that demands the utmost sacrifice. There’s no money in it, Joshua, or I would not be here at the head of the Juvenile Department in a boys’ reformatory. For that is just what this institution has degenerated to—a reformatory—though your grandfather, Peter D. Florence, had no such thing in mind when he founded it. It was to be a home for parentless boys and other unfortunate youngsters. But your grandfather is dead, and the institution is in the hands of a board of directors and a superintendent who have failed to catch the spirit of your grandfather’s generosity.

“Be that as it may, you will be none the worse off if you are diligent and obey the rules. I say this because I know something of your father, the man whom your mother gave up everything to marry. Here you will learn the common school branches as well as you could outside, and on top of that I am going to give you your first lessons in astronomy.”

Clegg did not heed the boy’s parted lips nor the eager brilliancy in his grave young eyes, but continued:

“It seems to me to be a marvelous coincidence that you found your way to me. For the past twenty years, Joshua, I have studied the stars. I am what is known as a variable star observer, and I have a three-inch refractor which I use at night on the roof of this building. None of the other officials in the school are in sympathy with me, but they tolerate me. They are second-graders intellectually, all of them, or they would not be here. I am here to make a living while I follow my studies, for, as I told you, Science is an indifferent paymaster.

“If I may be pardoned for the statement, I am not altogether unknown to the scientific world. Joshua, have you any knowledge of the variable stars?”

“No, sir,” replied Joshua, a little awed that he was in intimate conversation with a real astronomer, one who owned a telescope. Would he be allowed to look through it, he wondered? Never in his life had he looked through any instrument larger than a pair of opera glasses.