Thus we see that the boy began early the battle of life. When he felt hungry, he would enter a baker’s shop near by, and stretch
forth his puny hand; and sometimes he was given a morsel of bread, and sometimes he was not. But Bob was too spirited to lie down and starve. So, when the baker shook his head, saying, “You come here too often,” he watched a chance and stole peanuts from the stand on the corner. The Ten Commandments did not trouble him in the least; for he had never heard of them. Bob only knew that there was a day in the week when the baker looked more solemn than on other days, and when the streets were less crowded.
The one thing in the world Bob cherished was Pin. And the feeling was mutual; for not seldom, when the dog discovered a bone or crust of bread among the rubbish-heaps, he would let himself be deprived of the treasure without even a growl. Then, when Christmas came round, Bob and the poodle would stand by the shop-windows and admire the toys together; and the child would talk to his pet, and tell him that this was a doll and that a Noe’s ark. Once he managed to possess himself of a toy which a lady let drop on the side-walk. But he did not keep it long; for another urchin offered him a dime for it, which Bob accepted, then forthwith turned the money into gingerbread, which he shared with Pin.
Such was the orphan’s childhood. He was only one vagrant amid thousands of others. In the great beehive of humanity his faint buzz was unheard, and he was crowded out of sight by the swarm of other bees. Still, there he was, a member of the hive; moving about and struggling for existence; using his sting when he needed it, and getting what honey he could. When the boy was in his seventh year, a
misfortune befell him which really smote his heart—the poodle disappeared. And now, for the first time in his life, Bob shed tears. He inquired of everybody in the tenement-house if they had seen him; he put the same query to nearly every inhabitant of Mott Street. But all smiled as they answered: “In a big city like New York a lost dog is like a needle in a haystack.” Many a day did Bob pass seeking his friend. He wandered to alleys and squares where he had never been before, calling out, “Pin! Pin!” but no Pin came. Then, when night arrived and he lay down alone in his blanket, he felt lonely indeed. Poor child! It was hard to lose the only creature on earth that he loved—the only creature on earth, too, that loved him. “I’ll never forget you,” he sighed—“never forget you.” And sometimes, when another dog would wag his tail and try to make friends, Bob would shake his head and say: “No, no, you’re not my lost Pin.”
It took a twelvemonth to become reconciled to this misfortune. But Time has broad wings, and on them Time bore away Bob’s grief, as it bears away all our griefs; otherwise, one sorrow would not be able to make room for another sorrow, and we should sink down and die beneath our accumulated burdens.
We have styled Bob a vagrant. Here we take the name back, if aught of bad be implied in it. It was not his fault that he was born in a cellar; and if he stole peanuts and other things, ’twas only when hunger drove him to it. Doubtless, had he first seen the light in Fifth Avenue, he would have known ere this how to spell and say his prayers; might have
gone, perhaps, to many a children’s party, with kid gloves on his delicate hands and a perfumed handkerchief for his sensitive little nose. But Bob was not born in Fifth Avenue. He wore barely clothes enough to cover his nakedness. His feet, like his hands, had never known covering of any sort; they were used to the mud and the snow, and once a string of red drops along the icy pavement helped to track him to his den after he had been committing a theft. In this case, however, the blood which flowed from his poor foot proved a blessing in disguise, for Bob spent the coldest of the winter months in the lock-up: clean straw, a dry floor, regular meals—what a happy month!
As for not being able to read—why, if a boy in such ragged raiment as his were to show himself at a public school, other boys would jeer at him, and the pedagogue eye him askance.
But Bob proved the metal that was in him by taking, when he was just eight years of age, a place in a factory. “Yes,” he said to the man who brought him there, “I’d rather work than be idle.”