Jack and the Check Book

by John Kendrick Bangs

"Good old Mike!" said Jack, wringing the other by the hand warmly. "When my ship comes in you shall have a good slice of the cargo for that."

"Sure an' she ain't la'nched yet, is she?" asked the janitor, with a grin, and then, as Jack seemed to have sunk into a dejected reverie, he gathered up his tools and left the room.

An hour passed before the miserable lad even so much as raised his head.

"Jove! it's cold!" He shivered, as he gazed around him, the room bathed in the gathering shadows of twilight. "And to think that it was only last summer that I was complaining because this place was so infernally hot!"

His teeth chattered as he spoke, and he suddenly bethought himself of his fur-lined overcoat hanging in the closet, his very last possession, and one he had worn persistently of late, not so much because the temperature of the town required it as to maintain publicly an appearance of prosperity.

"I'll take one last wear out of you," he said, as he put it on, "and to-morrow I'll put you in cold storage at the house of mine Uncle. He already has my watch, my scarf-pin, and everything else that I have that is negotiable—he might as well top his collection off with you."

The thought that the useful old garment was still good enough to act as a satisfactory bit of security for a temporary accommodation at the neighboring pawnshop cheered him up somewhat, and he went out, seeking a comfortable spot where with his last half-dollar he could assuage the growing pangs of hunger. As he left the house he noticed that the snow was beginning to fall, so he decided not to go very far afield for his meal. A cheap restaurant half-way down the block, on the avenue, attracted his eye, and he went in and ordered his dinner—twenty-five cents' worth of roast beef and a cup of coffee for himself, and the balance to tip the waiter. He ate slowly, though this was not his habit, merely because the place was warm and bright, and as he lingered over his coffee he wrote a sonnet on life on the back of the bill of fare. Then, his account paid, he started back to his apartment. As he left the café the wheezing notes of a minute hand-organ playing "The Good Old Summer-time" fell upon his ear. It sounded very much like a talking-machine in the last stages of bronchitis, and then, suddenly, in the midst of a "B-flat" that sounded more like a sneeze than a note, a heartrending picture of misery and desolation smote upon his vision. On the corner, exposed to all the icy winds that blew up the avenue, and over the cross-streets from the river, huddled up into a seeming mass of rags, over which the falling snow was drifting, was the form of an aged woman, turning the crank of a battered and broken organ with fitful twists of her poor blue hands.

"Holy smoke!" cried Jack, as his eye fell upon the old woman's bent figure. "And I have been sympathizing with myself for the last four hours!"

In an instant he had whipped off his overcoat—the fur-lined coat that had been his only hope for immediate financial relief—and had thrown it across the poor old shoulders.

"Excuse me, madam," he said, as the old woman stopped grinding the organ to look gratefully up into his face. "If I had any money I'd give it to you, but I'm dead broke myself, and I can't help you that way. But, by thunder! I can't stand seeing you freeze!"