Thrifty Stock, and Other Stories

by Ben Ames Williams

V

One of the charms of old Eph’s nightly performances at his chosen spot near the subway kiosk was that he never asked for money. The mercenary side of his activities was never prominent. It was his custom to remain, sitting cross-legged upon the paving, from beginning to end. He never rose to pass his hat or his palm solicitously among the listeners; and he never went so far as to set a tin cup or a similar receptacle invitingly beside him. If coins were tossed his way, he caught them with skinny fingers or inverted banjo; if none were tossed, no matter. Eph never complained.

But about the time Jim Forrest enlisted, it was remarked that old Eph began to grow greedy. At first he interspersed among his songs little half-caught remarks about the exceeding hard times; the high cost of living, even for a dry old darky; and the necessity of eating which possesses every man. A little later, he introduced the custom of passing his battered old hat out through the crowd. He never carried it from man to man himself; he simply tossed it to the nearest, and then broke into a gay and chuckling melody to hide his own confusion while it went from hand to hand and came back to him. Eventually, he fell into the habit of leaving his hat, bottom side up, upon the paving between his feet; and he referred now and then, in his songs, to the necessity for putting coins into it.

Some people who had known Eph for a good many years thought he was becoming miserly. They told stories, from man to man, about beggars of whom they had heard who owned half a dozen apartment houses out in Dorchester. And they quit coming to hear Eph sing. Others deplored the old man’s avarice, but gave. Still others decided that the high cost of living must have hit Eph hard, and offered to help him.

All in all, his earnings did increase. His old, unbusiness-like arrangement had in the past sufficed. There was always a little money; there was sometimes a considerable sum. He might go home with one dollar, or two, or even five; or he might trudge up the hill with only a few pennies to show for his night’s singing. On the whole, however, there had always been enough. He lived in some measure of comfort; and he laid up something for a rainy day. This hoard had been long years accumulating....

Eph told no one his troubles; no one had known of his little wealth; no one knew that it was gone. Eph was bankrupt; and not only that, but he had mortgaged his earnings. He had pledged his future. He had given hostages to fortune. He had promised to find and send to Jim Forrest’s mother the sum of ten dollars every week.

And in spite of the fact that in the past he had never averaged earning ten dollars a week, he proposed to keep his word.

He believed, in the beginning, that this would not be hard. He would have to demean himself, to ask for money, to invite gifts.... The thought irked him; yet he was ready to do it. And to help out, he himself prepared to make sacrifices. Down in his boarding house, he gave up his comfortable little two dollar room and took another, in the very top of the house, which cost him half a dollar less. Likewise he cut down on his food. He gave up altogether the sliced, roast ham that had always been his delight; the occasional eggs; the bananas. He ate meagerly, and scouted the scolding insistences of his old colored landlady when she tried to force food upon him.

“I ain’ no beggar, Mis’ Hopkins,” he told her, over and over. “When old Eph cain’ pay his way, he gwine git out o’ here to som’eres where he can.”

In the beginning, matters went well enough. The people who stopped to listen to his singing opened their purses at his unwilling hints to them. He was able to take the promised ten dollars to the lawyer every week, and to live on what remained. And when he heard Jim Forrest was in the army, the old darky sang in a fashion that he had not equalled for a dozen years, and the next day he boasted to his landlady of the matter.