Down the steps of a brown stone mansion came a young matron, curiosity shining out of her handsome eyes. The boy looked up and smiled. The lady did not buy anything, but her mother’s heart was touched, and before she hurried home with her little girls, she gave him five cents.
Last winter, two members of the Lamb’s Club were about to part on the club steps. One was “The Prince of Entertainers and the Entertainer of Princes,” Marshall P. Wilder. The other was a distinguished lawyer.
“Come and dine with me to-night, Mr. Wilder,” said the latter. “You have never accepted my hospitality, but you have no engagements for to-night, so come along.”
Ten minutes later, the great entertainer was presented to the wife of his host and to four beautiful young women.
A curious thrill passed over the guest as he looked into those charming faces. They seemed familiar. A flash of memory carried him back to that scene in the park. He turned to the hostess:—
“Do you remember,”—his voice trembled,—“a little chap in the park years ago, to whom you were kind,—‘a funny little man,’ the children called him, and you gave him five cents?”
“Yes, yes, I do remember that,—and you—?”
“I am the funny little man.”
It was indeed true. The hungry boy had not forgotten it, though wealth and fame had come to him in the meanwhile. In a little private diary that no one sees but himself, he has five new birth dates marked, those of the mother and her four daughters. “Just to remember those who have been kind to me,” is the only explanation on the cover of the book.
What a brightly interesting story is Wilder’s, anyway! Who else in all this great, broad land has made such a record,—from a peddler’s pack to a fortune of one hundred thousand dollars,—and all because he is merry and bright and gay in spite of his physical drawbacks. His nurse dropped him when he was an infant, but for years the injury did not manifest itself. At three he was a bright baby, the pride of the dear old father, Doctor Wilder, who still survives to enjoy his son’s popularity in the world of amusement-makers. It was no fault of the doctor that Marshall was obliged to go hungry in New York. Doctor Wilder lived and practiced in Hartford, where his son ought to have stayed, but he didn’t. At five he was handsome and well formed, but at twelve he stopped growing. The boys began to tease him about his diminutive stature.