November found us at the end of a long, dull season. No business had come into the little law-office—the centre of all our hopes. We had made no friends among our neighbors, to whom, of course, we had made no advances. The silence was broken, however, one evening by a visit from a well-groomed, handsome young fellow, who, with many apologies, requested an interview with General Pryor.
"So the reporters have found us out," said my general, but he was mistaken. His visitor had "ventured to call for advice—not legal advice exactly"—but he wished to know the General's opinion upon a matter of infinite importance to himself and to his wife. "Doubtless we had heard his wife singing,"—we had—"she was a fine musician, but one could not live on music."
To this my husband readily assented. He had a deeply rooted aversion to the piano, which he believed to have been an invention of the Evil One in a moment of unusual malignity.
"The question I wish to ask, General," said the young fellow, "is this, Would you advise me to go into politics, law, or the coffee business?"
"The coffee business, most decidedly," said my husband; "I have tried the other two and have a poor opinion of both of them." The interviewer left, perfectly satisfied to enter the coffee business. Through the open window we could hear the words of a song from the "fine musician"—presenting, as it were, a solution of the problem:—
"It is time for the mower to whet his scythe
For 'tis five o'clock in the morning."
We never learned to what extent politics and the profession of the law had suffered, nor how much the coffee business had gained. One thing was certain: the suggestion of the fair singer, so freely given to the breeze, was not needed by me; for my scythe was always in active operation before five o'clock in the morning. When "the sun came peeping in at morn," he always found me up and dressed and ready for his greeting.
Then—as for many times before and after—our case seemed too desperate for rest. Often after our slender breakfast not an atom of food was left in the larder. A mouse would in vain have sought our hospitality. The corner grocer had once trusted us for provisions as far as twenty-five dollars' worth, but had taken his seat in the front hall and there remained until he was paid! The bitter experience was never repeated. But as surely as the ravens were sent to feed Elijah did the Power that esteems us of more worth than many sparrows—many ravens—send us something every day; some small fee for a legal service or for an article written for the News. My general would bring this treasure home, Anne would be sent on a flying errand for "a bit of a shteak"—and Mr. Micawber never gathered around his suddenly acquired chops a more hopeful brood than our own.
Once Mr. John R. Thompson, editor of the Literary Messenger and later of the New York Evening Post, fresh from England, where he had hobnobbed with Carlyle, Tennyson, and Dickens, came to dinner. I had little to offer him except a biscuit and a glass of ale. He did not mind. He had known Edgar Allan Poe, and many another poverty-stricken genius who had enriched the pages of the Literary Messenger for sums too pitiful to mention. The straits of scholarly men were familiar to him and detracted nothing from his interest in the men themselves. To be sure they were more interesting if they walked the midnight streets in default of other shelter than the stars (and there might be worse) like Johnson or Savage or Goldsmith or others of the Grub-street fraternity;—still, the victims of a revolution were quite miserable enough to satisfy the imagination. Misery is, after all, more picturesque than happiness and ease.