I don’t know how it is, but I have a mania for looking into cases of this sort. It is not philanthropy with me; it is a disease.
At the editorial desk, I sit opposite a young man of a high order of mind.
He makes it a point to compass the problems of nations. I dodge them. He has settled, to his own agreement, every European problem of the past decade. Those problems have settled me. He soars—I plod. Once in a while, when he yearns for a listener, he reaches down for my scalp, and lifts me up to his altitude, where I shiver and blink, until his talented fingers relax, and I drop home. It delights him to adjust his powerful mind to the contemplation of contending armies,—I swash around with the swarm that hangs about me.
His hero is Bismarck, that phlegmatic miracle that has yoked impulse to an ox, and having made a chess-board of Europe, plays a quiet game with the Pope. My hero is a blear-eyed sot, that having for four years waged a gigantic battle with drink, and alternated between watery Reform and positive Tremens, is now playing a vague and losing game with Spontaneous Combustion. My friend discusses Bismarck’s projects with a vastness of mind that actually makes his discourse dim, and I slip off to try my hero’s temper, and see whether I shall have him wind his intoxicated arms about my neck and envelop me in an atmosphere of whisky and reform, or fall recumbent in the gutter, his weak but honest face upturned to the sky, and his moist, white hand working vaguely upward from his placid breast, in token of abject surrender.
Bismarck is a bigger man than Bob.
But I can’t help thinking that Bob is engaged in the most thrilling and desperate conflict. Anyhow, I had rather see his watery eyes grow clear and his paroxysmal arms grow steadfast, than to see Bismarck wipe out every potentate in Europe. It’s a grave thing to watch the conflicts of kings, and see nations embattled rushing against each other. But there are greater and deeper conflicts waged in our midst every day, when the legions of Despair swarm against stout hearts, and Hunger and Suffering storm the citadel of human lives!
But I started to tell you of my new heroine.
Her name is Jane.
She presented herself one morning about three months ago. A trim, slender figure, the growth of nine years. It was such a small area of poverty that I felt capable of attending to it myself. But I remembered that small beggars usually represent productive but prostrated parents and a brood of children. The smaller the beggar the larger the family. I therefore summoned the good little woman who guides my household affairs.
She claims to be an expert in beggars. She has certain tests that she applies to all comers. Her fundamental rule is that all applicants are entitled to cold bread on first call. After this she either grades them up to cake and preserves, or holds them to scraps. I remember that she kept Col. Nash on dry biscuit for thirteen months, while other applicants have gone up to pie in three visits. I never felt any hesitation in taking her judgment after that, for of all wheedling mendicants Col. Nash, the alleged scissors-grinder, takes the lead.