The Boy was never a regular member of any fire-company, but almost as long as the old Volunteer Fire Department existed, he was what was known as a “Runner.” He was attached, in a sort of brevet way, to “Pearl Hose No. 28,” and, later, to “11 Hook and Ladder.” He knew all the fire districts into which the city was then divided; his ear was always alert, even in the St. John’s Park days, for the sound of the alarm-bell, and he ran to every fire at any hour of the day or night, up to ten o’clock P.M.
He did not do much when he got to the fire but stand around and “holler.” But once—a proud moment—he helped steer the hook-and-ladder truck to a false alarm in Macdougal Street—and once—a very proud moment, indeed—he went into a tenement-house, near Dr. Thompson’s church, in Grand Street, and carried two negro babies down-stairs in his arms. There was no earthly reason why the [p 37]
babies should not have been left in their beds; and the colored family did not like it, because the babies caught cold! But The Boy, for once in his life, tasted the delights of self-conscious heroism.
“MRS. ROBERTSON DESCENDED IN FORCE UPON THE DEVOTED BAND”
When The Boy, as a bigger boy, was not running to fires he was going to theatres, the greater part of his allowance being spent in the box-offices of Burton’s Chambers Street house, of Brougham’s Lyceum, corner of Broome Street and Broadway, of Niblo’s, and of Castle Garden. There were no afternoon performances in those days, except now and then when the Ravels were at Castle Garden; and the admission to pit and galleries was usually two shillings—otherwise, twenty-five cents. His first play, so far as he remembers, was “The Stranger,” a play dismal enough to destroy any taste for the drama, one would suppose, in any juvenile mind. He never cared very much to see “The Stranger” again, but nothing that was a play was too deep or too heavy for him. He never saw the end of any of the more elaborate productions, unless his father took him to the theatre (as once in a while he did), for it was a strict rule of the house, until The Boy was well up in his teens, that he must be in by ten o’clock. His father did not ask him where he was going, or where he had been; but the curfew in Hubert Street tolled at ten. The Boy calculated carefully and exactly how many minutes it took him to [p 38]
run to Hubert Street from Brougham’s or from Burton’s; and by the middle of the second act his watch—a small silver affair with a hunting-case, in which he could not keep an uncracked crystal—was always in his hand. He never disobeyed his father, and for years he never knew what became of Claude Melnotte after he went to the wars; or if Damon got back in time to save Pythias before the curtain fell. The Boy, naturally, had a most meagre notion as to what all these plays were about, but he enjoyed his fragments of them as he rarely enjoys plays now. Sometimes, in these days, when the air is bad, and plays are worse, and big hats are worse than either, he wishes that he were forced to leave the modern play-house at nine-forty-five, on pain of no supper that night, or twenty lines of “Virgil” the next day.
THE BOY AS VIRGINIUS
On very stormy afternoons the boys played theatre in the large garret of The Boy’s Hubert Street house; a convenient closet, with a door and a window, serving for the Castle of Elsinore in “Hamlet,” for the gunroom of the ship in “Black-eyed Susan,” or for the studio of Phidias in “The Marble Heart,” as the case might be. “The Brazilian Ape,” as requiring more action than words, was a favorite entertainment, only they all wanted to play Jocko the Ape; and they would have made no little success out of the “Lady of Lyons” if any of them had [p 39]
been willing to play Pauline. Their costumes and properties were slight and not always accurate, but they could “launch the curse of Rome,” and describe “two hearts beating as one,” in a manner rarely equalled on the regular stage. The only thing they really lacked was an audience, neither Lizzie Gustin nor Ann Hughes ever being able to sit through more than one act at a time. When The Boy, as Virginius, with his uncle Aleck’s sword-cane, stabbed all the feathers out of the pillow which represented the martyred Virginia; and when Joe Stuart, as Falstaff, broke the bottom out of Ann Hughes’s clothes-basket, the license was revoked, and the season came to an untimely end.