So I fell heart and soul into the scheme of a group of other boys who worked in the mill and lived near me. It was my first membership in a “gang.” It was presided over by a sturdy young Irishman, who, because he had lost a leg below the knee, was nicknamed, “Peter One-Leg-and-a-Half.” Peter worked in the mill, and examined cloth in the weave room. He thrilled our jaded nerves very successfully. We had ghost-play at night on the street, when he would spit fire, make phosphorescent writing on a tenement, lead a line of sheeted figures soberly in review through the night, and close the performance by hurling a battery of bad eggs at us, his admiring audience. Peter was King of the Night. He seemed to have the sight of a cat and the cunning of a fox. He led us at night over high board fences, on the other side of which, in the dark, we would almost choke ourselves against tight clotheslines. He taught us organized play, and, wise gang-leader which he unconsciously was, he changed our adventures and diversions so often that no complaints were made, and night time, with Peter in it, became the thrilling objective during my winter work.
For a short season, in the winter, the whole gang joined the club, which was kept for mill-boys and was supported by the corporation for which I worked. There were work-benches, checker-rooms, a poorly equipped gymnasium, seemingly always in the possession of the adults, and every now and then an entertainment occurred, when some imported entertainer with talent would be invited to come from his or her aristocratic home—with a group of “slummers,” usually and divert us. We thought most of them very tame, resented the manual training department because we thought ten hour’s work sufficient for one day, and got what pleasure we could from the entertainments. One man told us, among other things in a memorable address, to “whistle when you’re happy and whistle when you’re in danger of feeling mad. Whistling gives courage, like yells at a football game. Whistle, boys, whistle. It’s a sign that your courage is good!” That point impressed itself on Peter, too, for when we left the club that night at nine o’clock (to stay on the streets till ten), he lined us up like soldiers in review, and thus addressed us, “Company halt all ready, whistle!” We put our fingers in our mouths and produced a profusion of vibrant whistles, which indicated that we were the most courageous and happy lads in the world. Then Peter, stumping ahead, led us militantly up a street, stooping every now and then under a street lamp to call out, “All the happy ones whistle, you!”
Chapter XI. Esthetic Adventures
made possible by a
Fifteen-Dollar Piano
Chapter XI. Esthetic Adventures
made possible by a
Fifteen-Dollar Piano
IT was late in that winter that the trading instinct cropped out in my uncle and aunt. They decided to open a candy-store in the tenement where we lived. For this purpose the landlord was persuaded to allow them to use the bow window for display purposes. The parlor was fitted with a small counter, a large store lamp, and a various assortment of sodas, confectionery and pastry.
That was a prohibition year in city politics, and the tenement thirst was pronounced to be “something awful!” Desperate men were compelled to go away on holidays and Saturdays to get what refreshment they could. The police were on keen watch for illegal selling. They were making daily raids in different parts of the city. Liquors had been found in cellars, hidden under the floors, in flasks buried in the bodies of huge codfish, water-pipes had been cut off from the main pipes and tapped to barrels of whisky and beer; every trick possible to the imagination seemed to have been uncovered, yet my aunt undertook to let some chosen throats in the neighborhood know that she planned to keep a supply of intoxicants on hand.
I was asked, at night, to take a pint of whiskey here and there to some shut-in woman like Old Burnt Jane, a cripple from a fire, who always let tears fall in the food she was cooking as she said: “Wait, wait, little boy, dearie. I’ll get my mon-ey when I’ve got this taste of cheese off; wait like a good little boy!”
Our customers, who came for a drink at any time, had a secret sign whereby they could ask for intoxicants without mentioning them by name. On Sundays, our kitchen would be filled with men and women having their thirsts quenched. My Aunt Millie rubbed her hands with satisfaction over the prosperous business she did.
But one Sunday afternoon there came three plain-clothes men to the shop. The alarm had been given, and Aunt Millie waited for the raid with no outward traces of fear. There were some people at the rear of the house, and they were engaged in a very busy, “manufactured” conversation about “Charley’s throat trouble” when the officers came in the back to investigate. If they sniffed the air for traces of whisky, they only got a superabundance of “mint” and “musk,” “lozengers” half thrown into the customers’ mouths by Aunt Millie. A “complete” investigation was made, covering the back-yard, the cellar, the kitchen, the counter, and the bedrooms, but no illegal wares were found, and the officers left the shop in chagrin. As they left, my Aunt Millie bent her fond gaze towards a row of black bottles that stood in a row in the display window, marked, “Ginger,” “Spruce,” and “Birch.”
“You dear creatures,” she cried, “what a salvation you are!” Whereat, she took one to the back room, uncorked it, and poured out a noggin of whiskey apiece for each of her customers, and the “throat trouble” gave way to a discussion of, “What tasty stuff it is, this whiskey!”