The Project Gutenberg eBook of My Monks of Vagabondia, by Andress Floyd.

“And this is liberty—that one grow after the law of his own life, hindering not another.”

My Monks of Vagabondia comprises Fact-stories selected from the old files of the Self Master Magazine. I wish to present the defeated man, as he really is, to the reader who cannot fail to appreciate the humor and tragedy that makes up his wayward life. The bond of sympathy should be awakened between us and the so-called prodigal.

A wider publicity should be given to the unique but practical uplift work that I have founded and carried on for the past five years among these weaker brothers.

The stories explain in part the methods and plans of the Family of Self Masters.

It is—we believe—the only book in which a writer has received his facts for his stories direct from a life-experience with outcast men.

Not alone that, but the volume is printed, bound and illustrated by the unexpected guests—the Itinerant Monks of whom the tales are told, and who make their home in our so-called Monastery.

The day approaches when broken men shall have beautiful, though simple, homes of their own making, modeled after the group idea of The Self Master Colony. They will be established outside of the different cities of the world, and opened hospitably to all men who come in their hour of need or weakness, seeking Self Mastery and the peace that accompanies it.

The proceeds from the sale of these stories go toward the purchase and installation of much needed equipment for the Printshop and Bindery. With this equipment the men can work out their own independence, industrially and socially.

When a man has lived months and years enslaved by some vicious habit—self-destructive and careless of consequences—his sub-conscious mind is a sensitive matrix on which the sordid history is deeply engraved. The certain change can come only as the man learns values and respects them by a right life.

The sub-conscious self takes on a complete reformation slowly. An evil habit does not gain mastery over the man upon the instant nor once in control is its grip broken by any feeble affirmation or miraculous phenomenon.

The hope comes when one turns one’s thought from the destructive to the constructive, and lives in the sight of the new born faith until wisdom lifts the darkened veil and freedom follows as its rightful legacy.

The Self Master Colony offers an open door to the disheartened man during the period of his awakening to his real strength and helps him with its constant care and sympathy back to his true self.

CONTENTS
Introductory	13
A Journey to our Monastery	17
Mary and the Baby	25
My Problem with Slippery Jim.	37
Our Friend, The Anarchist	55
A Bashful Beggar	69
Fritz and His Sun Dial	75
The Waiter Who Did Not Wait.	87
Compounding a Felony	95
The Passing of Sullivan	105
When Sister Called	115
Edison’s Evening Star	125
In the World of Wanderlust	133
The Two Jeans	137

The man had walked the entire distance from New York to the Self Master Family. In truth, he had walked more than the entire distance, for once or twice he had lost his way—as many a man has done in other walks of Life. Painfully he had retraced his steps to the right road. The mistakes had told heavily upon his failing strength. They had made him just that much more weary with it all. No doubt mistakes are wonderfully educational; they make men wiser, and therefore better, for in the final analysis wisdom and goodness are synonymous.

He complained bitterly at the hardness of his lot and found little comfort in the thought that he might reach the Colony too late for the evening meal.

His friend who had met him walking aimlessly up and down Broadway assured him that there was always a coffee pot boiling on the old-fashioned[20] cook stove in the boys’ kitchen—that the Colony House never locked its doors.

To a man who feels that every door in the world is locked against him there is comfort in the thought that there is really one place where he may find a welcome. His friend had said that there would be no questions asked him on his arrival—no investigation.

“No investigation,” he muttered aloud, “thank God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a ‘down-and-out’ man to convince Professional Charity that he is really hungry. I think they would have given me a ‘hand-out’ when they investigated me the last time if I could have told them what town my mother was born in.”

He smiled with weak cynicism at the folly of his thoughts, and then became suddenly serious, for on the side hill in front of a large colonial house, worked out in white stone, were the words “The Self Masters.” He stopped and studied the quiet, home-like scene from the road. All these weary miles he had come to ask food and shelter, and now his courage seemed to fail him. He sat[21] down by the road side and leisurely took his pipe from his pocket. Then he prepared tobacco with the utmost care, filled the pipe and lighted it.

he spelled out the letters on the sign; “What the h—ll is that?—Self Master—Self Mastery—Self Control. Old Man, if you had ever had any of that Self Control in your make-up you would not be a Knight of the Dusty Road!... You had better go back to the East Side where you know the land; where no man cares whether you live decently or not—if you can buy.”

Then the sound of a piano and male voices came to him and awakened him to a new train of thought. “It is a Monastery—a Monastery of Vagabondia,” he said, "and why not? why shouldn’t a man, even a homeless man, have his Monastery, if you please, where he can forget his past and live cleanly? If he only lives cleanly for a day and falls.... It’s something to remember—a day he doesn’t have to be ashamed of. Who knows but that in the one day of unselfish living a man is more truly his real self than he is in all the other days of his vicious years.

“Throughout his long life Moses was the leader of his people, but it was in that day that he talked with God—face to face—that his countenance did shine like the sun. It was not when he slew the Egyptian, and, frightened, buried him in the sand; it was when he stood in the presence of Divinity—that Moses was Moses. When the drunkard is in his sober mind, when the liar is speaking the truth, when the thief is giving honest measure, when the murderer is kind to his fellow, then, and only then, is the true Self finding expression.”

He drew heavily at his pipe and then smilingly said, “My pipe has gone out!” He knocked out the ashes into his hand and scattered them to the wind, gravely, as if it were some religious ceremony. Then he dusted his shoes and clothes, and straightening himself up to his full height, he marched bravely up to the front door of the house....

... A black crow, belated in his home-going, left his corn-thieving, and, rising, flew across the sky to his eyrie in the pines.

Resolved, that old fashioned cow’s milk is better for Our Baby, than any prepared food."

The debate on the above subject will start at seven o’clock next Thursday evening. The Conservatives of our Colony will speak in favor of cow’s milk as a baby’s food. The Progressives will speak in favor of prepared food.

The parliamentary rules governing the debate will be the same as govern a “catch-as-catch-can” wrestling match.

No slugging will be permitted until forensic effort has proven ineffective. When further argument has become useless, the three-ounce boxing gloves, recently donated to us, may be used to force a decision. In fact, several of the boys who talk but little, are practising with the gloves, so that they may become factors in the final settlement of the problem.

On the other hand, the literary coterie is in deep study. One boy is reading up reference books on[28] the subject whenever he can find the time. Still another blindfolds himself and opens the Bible at random, looking for spiritual guidance on the subject of infant diet. Of course the Court of Final Appeal will be Her Ladyship—The Baby Herself.

She already knows a great deal about crackers and breakfast foods, and she is far too clever not to have her own opinion on the dietary properties of milk and its substitutes.

And now it may be in point to tell how we came to have a ten-months-old baby at our Colony.

We are ostensibly a young men’s colony—men and boys trying to get to their feet and become independent and self-supporting. But if anyone comes to us hungry, we like to give them something more edible than a card to a professional charity.

Had Hunger delayed her coming another week, Our Baby and her mother might have been driven to ask food and shelter on Christmas Eve. As it was, they came to us on December 19th, at ten o’clock in the evening. They had no place in which to sleep except the local police station, and[29] that is not the place for a little baby—even strong men weaken in the chill of its hospitality.

So, on their arrival, the boys who were retiring for the night, held a conference. Our supply of beds and bedding did not even equal the demand made upon it by the boys themselves. But that did not cause them to hesitate, and all agreed that they must not turn the newcomers away. One boy immediately gave up his blanket, the second his comforter, the third his bed. In that way the mother and baby were made comfortable for the night, little realizing that they were taking anything away from those who had nothing to spare. But homeless men are quickly sympathetic, for what they know of hunger and cold is not altogether hearsay.

On the next day we undertook to make more permanent provision for the Baby and Mary, her mother. We began to look around for beds. We asked two of the kind-hearted clergymen if they could obtain a bed for our new arrivals. One of them phoned me later in the day to ask me what town the poor people were from, and when I informed him, he said "The woman should have[30] applied to the charity association of the city from which they came. If the case was worthy, aid would be given."

Worthy or unworthy, we didn’t feel like sending the Baby away. She was teething and fretful, and a teething, fretful baby may not be as worthy as one who grins and bears it.

The other minister said, “The wonderful work the Church was doing, had not so much to do with the poor in this life, as in the hereafter.” Now in truth, while the mother was discouraged and didn’t care anything about life as far as she herself was concerned, she had ambition for her child, so she could not qualify and ask assistance under these conditions.

The boys themselves made two wooden beds, and fitted up a room for the Baby, while the mother in turn helped the young men in the kitchen.

The Baby has grown strong and well. She likes her big brothers with all their noise and horseplay, and they like their Baby. To see rough homeless men sing lullabies to an infant-in-arms, congratulating themselves when she falls asleep soothed by the monotonous humming of some[31] cradle song that they themselves thought they had forgotten long ago, might renew one’s faith in the kindly humanity that lives in every heart.

Has not Christ said, “And whosoever shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me.”

Now, this Baby has a father. He has lived in Russia and came to America to earn money. One of his older brothers was already located in New York State, and from his letters sent over the sea, it was plain that the opportunities for wealth in the States were most promising.

The older brother had grown rich—very rich—working on the railroad. He never earned less than nine dollars a week, and now that he spoke English, he earned twelve.

Such stories of easily acquired wealth lured John, as we call him, to leave his Fatherland with his wife and child. But unfortunately for John and his family, they reached America during the recent panic. Thousands of workmen were idle. In New York, John could find no work. Even the rich brother only worked part of the time, and[32] having wife and children of his own, had nothing to divide with John and his family. So John drifted away seeking employment.

The few dollars that he brought with him became exhausted, and although he studied English evenings, he spoke it brokenly. One of the boys at the Colony said he talked in “kindlewood.”

While he was seeking employment, no word came to the wife and child. Some said John would never come back. But Mary believed in him. She said that he had always loved the baby and he knew that she herself could work. But at times even she doubted when weeks followed weeks and no word came.

Once when one of the boys was going to New York, she called him aside quietly, and said, “You will see John in New York, I think.... Big man, light hair ... tell him come home, see Baby.... I want him.”

It was not until a few days ago that he returned. He had traveled through New York State and on to Massachusetts. No work—everywhere no work! Sometimes he had walked. Sometimes he[33] had jumped a freight. All to no purpose. He had wanted to write good news to Mary, and he had no good news to write. Always bad news. He was a failure. He had wished he might end it all, but the thought of the Baby had made him continue the search for employment.

Finally, one day, a rich man in Montclair needed a gardener. This man was rich—not rich like his brother—but had houses and acres of splendid farm. He would pay two dollars a day wages to a man willing to work. It seemed too good to believe. He would hurry back to his Baby and Mary. They must know the good news.

So he came and told Mary he had a job, and a little home for her and the Baby. They would be rich like his brother.

That was yesterday—Monday—so there will be no argument Thursday on “Whether or not old-fashioned cow’s milk is better for babies than prepared foods.”

One of the boys asked the Chairman—another[34] boy—if they would have the Debate, now that the Baby was gone?

The above is a true story, and to The Self Master Colony, all a part of the day’s work.

“My razor went yesterday for a beef stew,” the young dare-devil told me. “Not that I am one of those collar-and-necktie-rounders,” he continued, "who seek to give out the impression that they are gentlemen in distress, telling you of their Southern family and a squandered fortune when, in fact, they have never been further South than Coney Island.... But when a fellow decides to sell his razor he is about to commit an act that severs the jugular vein of his respectability.

"He may have, only the moment before, shaven and groomed himself with the utmost care, still he is nearly ready to join the ranks of the down-and-outs. A man may sell his other belongings—his clothes included—and yet preserve a suggestion at least of his sang-froid. But when the razor goes—"

“That only helps for a day or two,” he went on. “Better throw up your hands at once and have it over. What man half ill with worry cares to listen to some ambitious pupil say, ‘Teacher, shall I shave the right side of his face up, or shave it down?’—and, ‘Teacher, how do you shave the upper lip without cutting it?’ and, ‘Teacher, if I do cut it, shall I disinfect it with carbolic or peroxide before I put on the new skin?’—No Barbers’ School for me. It is better to turn philosopher on the instant—the old philosophers and prophets grew long beards.... Talk about getting next to Nature in about three days after a man has sold his razor, Nature will get next to him, and if he is not as beardless as an American Indian, he will be convinced when he sees himself in a mirror, of the truth of the Darwinian theory.”

“In Russia,” I said, “the beard is the patriarch’s badge of sanctity.”

“So it is in Jersey and several other States,” he replied. "Many a so-called hobo with two[41] weeks’ growth of beard on his face may be at heart only a conscientious respecter of the law—for it is a misdemeanor in New Jersey to carry a razor. It is legally declared to be a concealed weapon. Many a poor rascal against whom a charge of vagrancy could not be maintained has found it so much the worse for him, and has been forced to go to prison for carrying concealed weapons in the form of a razor. So you see in Jersey, as well as in Russia, a beard may be only proof of honor.... The cleanly shaven man who knocks at your side door and wins the unsuspecting wife’s confidence with that time-worn platitude of Vagabondia, ‘Lady, all I want is work,’ may have a weapon concealed upon his person, while the unshaven wanderer, the sight of whom makes the women folks bolt doors, may be a homeless fellow who really wants work, and would rather be unkempt in appearance than chance a prison-term for carrying a razor."

“Not because I am trying to compete with your Russian patriarch in sanctity. I sold it because I’m desperate.”

He replied with a laugh that I did not like, and I felt quickly to see if my watch was still in my possession.

“I don’t want your watch,” he said, “but it isn’t the fear of doing time that holds me back. I know what my friend wrote about me. I have made up my mind to play square. You may not believe it. You have heard too many mission testimonies to believe much in them. But if I live right—it isn’t because my heart is softened, my heart is cold and hard as a paving block.”

"Don’t believe him. In Elmira they have a scheme of percentage, and if a man gets above a certain percent he can win his freedom. In the four years I was there I was safely within the required percentage—all I had to do was to continue my good behavior. I was within a few days of freedom. Did you ever sense hatred—pure hatred? Shylock felt it when he refused to accept money to cancel Antonio’s bond; when he would[43] not listen to threats or entreaties, but only muttered, ‘I’ll have my pound of carrion flesh.’ I know what he felt. In the night, after weeks and weeks of patient study and labor—after months of good conduct, when I played their game and won the chance of freedom. In the night, without reason, I jumped from my bed and battered at the bars and yelled and cursed at them all, until they put me in the dungeon and took from me my high percent. I lost a year that time."

“You act like a mad man when you talk of the past. Some men can never throw off the thought of their imprisonment. It rules their life. They think only of prison and the crimes that follow such thinking. There is no hope for them. Can’t you see it is your ideals that enslave or make you free? Can’t you see you are free?”

“It’s mighty hard,” he said, "but I want to forget. My friend sent me to you. He said you knew the path to freedom, and would help me. Days and days I have waited for you to come to[44] me. My father would not have me at home, my friends left me, my money grew less and less—my clothes went, my razor—everything. And still you did not come. Sometimes I’d meet a boy that told me of your work. Sometimes I would doubt all I had heard, and then I would become indifferent—mutter a prayer or plan a crime. At last the letter came. I knew I was being put to the test, and I sought to be firm. Oh, God, such a test! What is it holds a man? I was hungry, yet I knew how to steal; I needed money, and I knew where I could rob with reasonable safety. What is it holds a man like me? At times I have thought it was my belief in you."

“No, not that; I fear you cannot leave your prison thoughts behind you when you enter the Colony.”

“Then you may go to the entrance gate with me, and there I will decide if I can take you in.”

We talked on the way to the farm about many things—for he had read and traveled much. We made no mention of the Family or its work, but as we came near the Colony House I stopped.

“I think you mistake me for some other man,” he replied, quietly. “I know nothing about prison life.”

“What do you mean, not only your friend told me that you had served a term, but you told me yourself?” I said, severely.

"I could not have told you, for had I told you such a foolish falsehood I would have remem[46]bered it. Let us talk of something else."

“Come, let us hurry, so we may be served at the first table, for you are hungry.”

The holy Vedas teach us that as we pass from life to life, Time places gentle fingers over the eyes of memory, lest we become disheartened by past errors and falter enslaved by the fears of what we have been. Like the child who, having worked out a problem on his slate, erases it all, keeping only the answer, so we have within our soul-life the result of our past experiences; all the rest is erased.

Who cares about the detailed account of all the happenings along the path we have traveled? We know intuitively that much of the past must[47] be condemned, but that which concerns us vitally is the life we aim to live to-day.

Night closes on the sorrows of yesterday. Dawn is radiant with the promise of a better day.

Our friend, “Slippery Jim,” tried to believe all this, and to look with hope towards the future, but he kept much to himself. He would take long walks into the woods.

“I never see you reading with the other men in the evening,” I told him. “Men who love solitude are either very good or very bad.”

“I will try to do better,” he answered, “but for so many years I have been used to being by myself.”

“Still one has to live in the world—and our world here is rather small,” I said. “Cheerfulness is a duty one owes to his own soul.”

"I am inclined to view lightly my duty to others. I owed a debt—a great debt once—to others, and I have paid it. They measured it out of my life, the payment they demanded. I have paid[48] it—paid it in tears and wretchedness—paid it out of my heart and soul. Now I prefer to live apart.... The Indians, so the poet says, when on the march, leave their old and sick alone to die. I am a sick savage, and as such, I ask my rights."

“Do you believe in the Great Spirit and the Happy Hunting Grounds?” I asked gently, for I knew he had no Indian blood in his veins.

“Then go into the forest and pray to your Great Spirit,” I said. “Only don’t discredit him by being inconsiderate of others who would be kind to you.”

“You are expected to do your work, but I am not speaking to you on that subject. I want to know what you are thinking about while you are at work.”

“If you please, it is my affair also. You came out here to have me help you. I want to help you.”

“You have helped me; you took me into this Colony when my father had closed the door on me; you have given me food—such as it is—and out of the clothes sent in you have given me this second-hand suit.”

“And you have worked like the other men and paid by your labor for what you received?”

“Wait a moment”—he stopped me. “I did not intend to be unkind to you. You have treated me much better than I have deserved.”

“It is something to have even simple food when one is hungry,” I said, severely. “You have also more courage than when you came. In your work you know courage is quite important. You will soon be able to go back to your old life.”

“No, not that,” his voice becoming less hardened. "In these days I have lived with you and observed the happiness you get out of your work—in spite of its sacrefice—and compared it[50] with my own way of living, I can not understand how I could have ignored the good there’s in me. But, really, you should not expect us all to be as cheerful as you are. You may see clearly the Truth that we see only through a glass darkly."

That evening I saw him walking up and down the kitchen floor with our Baby in his arms—for that Winter we had a homeless mother and Baby at the Colony. The Baby was kicking and laughing as he carried her with measured stride around the room.

A few moments later I heard him as he walked, singing music of his own improvising to the words of Wilde’s prison poem:

The Winter was nearly over when “Slippery Jim” came to me and expressed a wish to return to the World again. If his father would only accept him once more!

My observation of a father’s attitude towards his prodigal son is that the moment the son desires to live as he ought, not only do closed doors open, but the father stands ready with outstretched[52] arms to receive him. This supposedly harsh father, when he was convinced that his Jim had worked faithfully at the Colony for several months, was anxious that his son return home. Even the boy’s old employer expressed sympathy and offered a position to him.

When this good news came I did not have to tell the boy anything about its being one’s duty to be cheerful. He wanted to dance a clog on the table in the men’s reading room.

Early the next morning he left us, not waiting to thank us, which was quite unnecessary; nor hardly stopping to say good-bye to us. But a few days afterward he wrote to me, saying that after four years he was back with his father and mother, brother and sisters, in his own room, sleeping in his own bed. The family had arranged it just the same as it had been before he left them for those sad years in prison. His father had purchased him a new suit for Easter. The next day he was to start to work.

Nearly a year later he visited me. His work had taken him out of town. "When I first met[53] you," he said. “I didn’t have a home. Now it is a question which one to visit first, but I thought I would come out to see you, and then go this evening and see my other father.”

He said that he came from Germany, but he didn’t look it, for Germany is a beautiful country, and he was far removed from even a suggestion of beauty. Had he said he had just arrived from “No Man’s Land,” it would have been easily accredited. For a German, even his accent and grammatical construction were unsatisfactory. He did not begin his sentences in the middle and talk both ways at once, after the well established custom of Americanized Teutons. In the stress of his excitement he expressed himself concisely and clearly.

He was seated in the Charity House awaiting the investigation of the social workers. He held his head in his hands, while his body convulsed frequently, and tears were in his eyes.

To see a man with unkempt whiskers indulging in a crying spell like a delicate woman, is almost as humorous as it is pathetic, unless one knows what the man is crying about. Then, too,[58] the Germans, unlike the Irish, take their trouble seriously, so that their despair often creates for them the hell they fear.

Surely it wasn’t a German who in the old Bible days sent hired mourners to go about the street; it was undoubtedly an Irishman whose genius conceived the idea of paying other men to do his weeping for him.

He surveyed me suspiciously from head to foot, then replied politely enough: “I am of German parentage and have lived the greater part of my life in Heidelberg, where my father and grandfather were instructors in the University.”

“A few days ago,” he answered. "I came from Paris, where I met with heavy—heavy for me—financial reverses. I attempted to conduct a business similar to your brokers, who loan money on personal property, but being unfamiliar with French law, I found I could not legally enforce payments of the loans I made to the Frenchmen. My entire life savings—small, it is true—were[59] lost. In disgust I came to America, and my condition now is worse than ever. I am desperate."

He did not raise his voice, speaking quietly, but his hands were nervous, and his eyes reminded me of Svengali—fascinating, but dangerous. My impression was that I had seen safer men locked in darkened cells and allowed only wooden spoons with which to eat.

“I fear not,” he replied. “They wish me to tell them my father’s address in Germany, as they inform me that they always make thorough investigations. Several times they asked me my home address, but I turned them from the point, as I have no intention of adding my burdens to the burdens my father and mother already have.... Does it seem quite generous of your social workers to be so insistent?... But, pardon me, have you not a saying that ‘Beggars must not be choosers?’”

I did not reply to his question, as I was thinking what my Reception Committee—made up of the boys of the Colony—would say to me if I[60] invited this much-bewhiskered individual to join our Family. For the instant I forgot the German’s troubles in the thought of the troubles which I was about to take upon myself. I smiled at my approaching embarrassment. “It is all very well,” the boys had cautioned me, “to hold us responsible for the newly-arrived members, to make certain that no criminal nor fraud obtains admission to the Family, but you might be a little more discriminating in your selections, could you not?”

The German was quick to avail himself of my offer to join the Colony; he would go to Hoboken and get his luggage and join me as soon as possible. His luggage—he met me an hour later—consisted of a wooden box too small to be called a trunk, too large to be called a valise.

As we approached the Colony House we passed several of the boys who had evidently seen us at a distance, for they appeared deeply interested in the setting sun, their faces turned from us. Finally one fellow who, like a good Pullman porter, can laugh at you without changing his facial[61] expression, only if you watch closely you may note that the muscles at the back of the neck dance in uncontrolled merriment—came forward and said to us: “A beautiful sunset.”

He should have been reprimanded for his impudence, but I simply asked, “Where?”

“In the west,” he explained. Then the boys turned and laughed without restraint.

“An ordinary sunset and a most ordinary joke,” I said, rather icily. But they continued to laugh, first looking at my companion and then at me.

“Not so ordinary,” said another boy. “If you could see it from where we are you could understand.”

Then the two boys who were on the Reception Committee came over to us and took my German friend in hand. There were no more remarks until we reached the house and the man himself was quite out of hearing.

“Why did you bring out a man like that?” the cook questioned me soon after I reached the house, and every one looked up from the even[62]ing paper he was reading anxious to have his little laugh.

But years have taught me somewhat of the ways of men. Did not Moses, when the children of Israel attempted to entangle him in argument, make his contention invulnerable by stating, “God spake unto Moses, saying,——”

After that there wasn’t much chance for argument. The best thing they could do at such a time was to quietly line up in the ranks. And there is an answer that will always check the hilarity of homeless men and make them as sympathetic as children.

Each boy frowned at the cook and turned back to his reading. And the cook made no answer, except he served the new-comer with double portions.

That night the German slept with his bed between the two beds of the Reception Committee, and I heard nothing from him until they came to report to me in the morning.

“Father,” said one of the committee, “I don’t like that old party you brought out with you yesterday. All night long in his sleep he was muttering: ‘Down with the millionaire; curse the capitalist’—that man is an anarchist.”

“Mr. Floyd, you know that wooden box that ‘Whiskers’ brought with him?” he asked, nervously; “I put my ear down to it and listened. I could hear something inside going tick, tick, tick, as plain as day.”

I asked him about the University of Heidelberg, the influence of the student in German politics and of the world-wide socialistic movement—had he ever read the works of Karl Marx, the great Socialist?

Or, in his travels, had he ever seen that little pamphlet entitled, “Dynamite as a Revolutionary Agency?”

But despite the denial, it was plain to see that my old German was the anarchist that my committee had decided him to be. So I sent out word that the boys should redouble their kindness to their half-crazed friend. It was an opportunity to try our simple methods upon a man who felt that the sad old world and its many peoples were as utterly lost as a man may become who believes that there is no good within himself. Men who feel themselves to be evil, they work evil.

Hardly had a fortnight passed before our good anarchist caught the spirit of the place and began to feel that kindly sympathy that dwells even in the hearts of stranded men. The young men grew really fond of him.

At night he was the last man to knock at my door to see that everything had been given attention; in the morning he was the first to ask what I wished done.

It was a cheery “good night” and a cheery “good morning.” After several months our anarchist succeeded in finding his brother’s address in Philadelphia. The brother offered him a home and a chance to work, so it was arranged for our friend to go to him.

As he was bidding me “adieu” he said: "When we first met, you asked me if I had read any anarchistic writings, and I answered you untruthfully. I have read the authors you mentioned, and in my desperation I do not know to what extreme I might not have gone, for I had lost faith in all men.

"But to see these young men at the Colony, forgetful of their own troubles, trying to help me to a renewal of courage, gave me a clearer viewpoint of life—the blood I see now in my dreams is not that of the capitalist done to death by a communistic mob—it is the blood of the gentle Christ, who said:

“It is his diffidence,” the good lady told me, “that has caused the young man to fail dismally in this strenuous age of materialism. His is a gentle spirit!”

At their first meeting, she told me, when he called at her home and asked for something to eat, he appeared so shy and embarrassed that she was immediately interested in him. He blushed and stammered in a most pitiable way, and after he had eaten heartily of the roast beef and potatoes placed before him he wanted to hurry away, hardly having the courage to remain and thank his benefactor.

The good lady told me all this in such a serious manner that I felt I must accept it seriously, and when she suggested that I drive over to a neighboring village to meet the boy at the train, because, being unaccustomed to travel, he could never find his way alone to the Colony, I arranged to meet him.

There are simple-minded men—mental defectives—who are oftentimes helpless as children,[72] and I was inclined to put this boy in that class.

But the lad whom I found waiting for me at the station came out to meet me in a manner so self-possessed that for the instant I was startled. The report of him seemed to be much in error.

“I ought not to have put you to all this trouble,” he said, in ready apology.

“The letter,” I replied, “stated that you might not be able to find your way.”

He gave me a sly, shrewd glance, and then, confident that he was understood, he said simply, “Indeed?”

“Naturally you did not confide in the lady who sent you, that you had freighted it through most States as far as the railroads go?”

“No, I did not approach her as a penitent at confessional,” he answered, “but rather as a panhandler at the side door. Confession may help to advance a man spiritually, but to a man living on the material plane, would you advise it?”

“Is it true,” I asked, “that you stammered and blushed when our friend offered you roast beef and potatoes?”

We had driven some distance while this conversation was in progress, and coming to cross-roads, I was uncertain of the direction.

“Go in to that farmhouse, please,” I said to my companion, pointing to a cheerful looking home a short distance from the road, “and inquire the way?”

He alighted quickly and went around to the side door out of my sight. I waited, every moment expecting him to return with the desired information, and was growing impatient when he came out to me, his face beaming with the enthusiasm that follows a successful interview.

“This is your share,” he said, holding out a generous portion of hot apple pie to me. “The lady who lives here is a motherly soul—very proud of her cooking, and the pie did smell most tempting—I could not resist.”

“Did you use your usual ‘blush and stammer’ method to solicit this pastry?” I questioned him.

“No, she was as hungry for my compliments as I was for her apple pie, so we simply made a fair exchange.”

“The direction?” and he felt extremely stupid. “I felt all the time that—in my sub-conscious mind—there was a thought trying to assert itself.”

“But the strength of a bad habit,” I remarked, “held back the thought: habit is a strong force for good or evil, for it perpetuates itself by a form, as it were, of auto-suggestion. You know all suggestions are powerful.”

Years ago, I saw a near-sighted cook peeling onions—a most pathetic scene if one judges entirely from appearances. The incident impressed me deeply at the time, although it had long since passed from my mind, when good old Fritz came to me, with tears running down the dusty furrows of his be-wrinkled and weather-beaten face.

Some strange analogy revived the old memory. There is—say what one will—something tremendously ludicrous about honesty when clothed too deeply in rusticity. We smile at it while we give it our love and respect.

It can toy with our heart-strings, playing both grave and gay. We laugh at it so that we may not cry and become laughable ourselves.

In broken English, he tried to explain that which was self-evident and needed no explanation—his own distress and desperation. His simple earnestness—his frank, honest manner—won every one’s immediate sympathy. The boys began to[78] plan to relieve his distress, even while they laughed with scant courtesy in the old man’s face.

His clothes were many sizes too large, which was not entirely offset by his cap that was several sizes too small. Through his broken shoes, ten toes spoke in most eloquent English—the need of protection and shelter.

“What could ever cause a man to get into such a condition?” asked a fellow, who, three weeks before, had arrived quite as dishevelled, but had already forgotten the fact, which is just as well.

“Beer! You are the first man I ever saw who got to such a finish on beer,” returned the questioner.

“I am thinking Mr. Floyd will try to clean you up in a hurry—or not at all—if you tell him that beer put you down and out.”

“Some mighty arguments have been put out that it is the distilled liquors that do all the mischief; that light wine and malt liquors are no more harmful than tea. And here you are in our camp to disprove this contention. If you say you have been on a beer debauch, you may not be believed.”

“Maybe someone put a little apple-jack into my glass when I wasn’t looking,” replied the German, quickly, as he went into the boys’ kitchen to get a little coffee.

So it came about that Fritz became a Colony member, and his good nature made him a general favorite almost immediately. His strength returned to him rapidly.

The final cure was effected when, among the books that came in, one of the men found a German volume. He took it to Fritz with some misgiving, as it was a work on astronomy, and Fritz did not resemble a Heidelberg professor; but when our friend glanced at the book and saw the German text, and then, on closer scrutiny, observed that it was a work on astronomy, he became excitedly enthusiastic.

It was a week later, an hour or two after midnight, I saw Fritz in the moonlight, walking around outside the house.

At that moment the clouds began to move—not because Fritz wished it, but his patience had outstayed the clouds.

“There it is. That’s it,” he exclaimed, as he ran into the stable, leaving me standing alone star-gazing to no purpose. But Fritz rejoined me as abruptly as he had left me. He had brought out with him a square board with an iron rod running through it.

“It is my sun-dial; it is my own invention. I have never seen a sun-dial, but I am sure that mine will be as correct as any of them.”

Then he fastened the dial firmly on a stump, pointing the wire straight at the North Star.

For several weeks Fritz worked about the place timing his labor by his ingenious invention. Sometimes he would work after the shadows had passed the quitting hour.

“The dial tells us,” I said to him one day, “that it is time to stop work.”

“No,” he said, “sun-dials are never exact; sometimes they vary fifteen minutes, at least. For the Earth goes around the Sun not in a circle but in an ellipse. I will work a little longer.”

One Sunday I overheard Fritz talking excitedly out near the spot where the dial was stationed. I thought he had for the moment forgotten he was a Self Master—as all men are likely at times to forget. But when I went out to check the[82] noise, I found that Fritz had ten or fifteen of the men standing in front of him and he was saying:

“It is easy to do—to measure the distance to the Sun, or the distance from one planet to another. There are a hundred methods, many of them as simple as it is to measure the length of a building.”

“Yes, for many years, I have studied the German books on astronomy. It is my pleasure.”

From that day our respect for Fritz was established. There is an aristocracy of learning; we doff our hats to even the beggar who knows.

The visitors were all interested in Fritz’s queer looking sun-dial, made out of a square board and piece of telegraph wire. Automobiles halted by the roadside to look at it. The children insisted on setting their Ingersolls by its falling shadow. A well known physician stood examining the dial one day. He took out his watch to make comparison.

“Very clever,” he said, “very clever; now let me see Fritz.” And Fritz came out.

“He isn’t much to look at,” the Doctor whispered to me, as the old German approached us.

“It must,” said Fritz, quietly; “it must, for the wire points to the North Star.”

The Doctor smiled, as he spoke: “A man intelligent enough to make that dial can, at least, care for my stable and horses.... Fritz, would you like to work for me? I have some splendid horses and I pay well for their care.”

“I don’t know about the collar and tie,” said the old man; “I have not worn one for many months.”

Three or four of the boys helped him to button on the collar and arrange the ascot effectively. Then the Doctor came with his best span of pet horses.

The old German, smiling, climbed in and then turned, took his hat off to me and the boys.

Fritz buttoned his coat tightly around him, straightened up his old bent back and taking the reins he proudly drove away.

Had the schedule been followed faithfully, it was the time for the auto party to have finished their tea and toast and be awaiting the chauffeur to come up with their machine, but there seemed to be a delay somewhere. Investigation revealed a peculiar condition of affairs. The visitors were moving about rather impatiently while the lunch, instead of being served, was rapidly getting chilled on the side-board in an adjoining room.

“Where is Delmonico Bill, the attentive waiter,” we asked, not a little surprised at his disappearance. He was nowhere to be found, although we hunted high and low for him.

But to manage men successfully who admit their irresponsibility needs an overseer who is not only patient in disappointment, but who can offer the pat excuse impromptu, and cheerfully reassure friends that everything is all right, when[90]—unless viewed from the standpoint of a year from to-day—it is all wrong.

On this special day there seemed to be no apparent explanation except that the waiter did not wait. But everything is a success that ends happily, and the delayed lunch made the visitors more than ever in sympathy with the Work. Whoever loves us for our mistakes, shall become more endeared to us as they know us better. The diners—who had not dined—saw humor in our embarrassment, and assured us of their best wishes as they drove merrily away, leaving us stupidly asking ourselves why the waiter had left his guests unserved.

It was nearly an hour later when Delmonico Bill came down out of the hay loft, brushing the dust and hay-seed from his clothes.

We awaited his further explanation. It was the first time we had heard that he ever had such a teacher.

"It isn’t that I am in the least ashamed to serve[91] as a waiter. Menial work that must be done is not humiliating to me. But when I looked in at the visitors as I was arranging their lunch on the tray—I recognized in one of the ladies my old Sunday school teacher—and when I thought to what an extent I had disregarded her instructions I hadn’t the courage to face her.... My, but it was hot up in that haymow!...

“The last time I saw this good lady was the evening in the church vestry when the class members gave her a group picture of themselves. We all went to the local photographers together. There were three rows of us—the tall, taller and tallest—all raw-boned rascals trying to assume the spiritual pose of Sir Galahad. I never cared much for the photograph, but the frame—the gold frame—much befiligreed was mighty impressive. I remember it because there was seventy-five cents of my money in it. I worked hard for that money. It took me the best part of three nights to get it from Cy Watson—playing penny-ante in his father’s carriage house. But I was happy to turn it to such good use.”

"There wasn’t any such thing as tainted money in those days. Money was money and no one had any of it.

"I made the presentation speech that night in the vestry. It was a masterpiece. The teacher and the women folks all cried. I have forgotten the speech now; thirty years of knocking around the world crowds out the memory of many things that happened when we were boys in Sunday school. But for years, I could repeat that piece. I rehearsed for that evening over two months—I could say it forwards or backwards, I could start it in the middle and say it both ways—in fact when I think of it, I rather believe that was the way I did say it that evening, because the applause that followed my humble effort was too tempestuous, yet the scholars all had their money in the gold frame, and the teacher was to leave us next morning for the East, where she was to marry some man of prominence. My mother said I spoke splendidly, but I doubt if she really heard me. She was thinking how charming I looked in the new trousers she had made for me. The truth was,[93] she had worked all the night before to get them ready. She had had some difficulty to make the seams come down the side. As it was they were not quite finished, but no one knew it but my mother and me.

“In the years that are to come,” I said in my speech, “not only will your kindly instructions in our Bible studies help us to meet and overcome all temptation, but the inspiration which we have received from your friendship and devotion to our spiritual welfare will influence us throughout our lives.”

For the moment Delmonico Bill was silent—whatever his thoughts may have been, he did not share them with us. But presently, he observed the tray with the tea and toast upon it, just as he had left it.

“It is too bad,” he said, “maybe she would not have known me at all.... I am sorry ... but you can understand.”

Then he began to clear away the lunch. “The tea is still warm,” he said smilingly, “I believe I will pour a cup for myself ... my nerves are jumping, it may quiet them.”

He filled the cup and raising it he said: “Here is to my Sunday school teacher who believed in me in those days when I believed in myself. God bless her.”

There was a knock at the door, but no one thought of answering it until it was repeated—more faintly, a second time—then one of the young men opened it, saying to the newcomer, “It is never locked, my boy.”

In stepped a lad some seventeen years of age, and inquired in a voice hardly audible if he could stay all night.

The young men sent the new arrival to me for an answer to his request. It was readily to be seen that the boy was in a state of great excitement. He acted so strangely that, contrary to custom, I asked him why he had come.

“The police are after me,” he stammered, as he turned and looked nervously at the door.

"I stole a bicycle and the owner just saw me walking along the street and started to chase me, calling after me, ‘Stop, thief!’ A crowd began to gather and I had all I could do to get away.[98] I ran around a building and joined the crowd in the search; then, after a little, I dropped out of sight again and decided that I would go out to you for advice."

“My lad,” I told him, “this is no hiding place for boys who steal, and for whom the police are searching.”

The boy did not reply; he turned aside and brushed away the tears with his cap. Then he started slowly towards the door.

“They’ll get me,” he said, hopelessly, “and when they do it means a long term in prison for me.”

“Yes, another boy and myself took some fancy postal cards from a stationery stand. They were funny pictures that we wanted for our collection. We were sent to Jamesburg that time. Then since I came from that institution I was arrested again for something else I did and I am now out on probation. Next time the judge said he would give me a long sentence in the Rahway Reformatory.”

“You should have thought of all this sooner,” I said, with a sternness that I did not feel, for I knew how easily one can drift from an evil thought into an evil act.

“I heard you helped boys when they needed it,” ventured the young rascal. “I surely need it now.”

“I may help them when I can,” I replied, “but I never intentionally make myself a partner in their wrong doing.”

“The judge ought not to give me more than three years,” said the boy thoughtfully, "even that is a long time.... The bicycle wasn’t[100] worth more than five dollars any way. The owner said he would sell it to me for that amount."

“Your conscience is quite wakeful, my boy. That was one of the men closing the windows for the night.”

The boy came over close to me so he could look into my face, and there was a depth of seriousness in his voice when he said, “So you think I ought to give myself up and take the consequences?”

“Three years in prison?” I asked, looking straight at the boy. “Three years in prison!”

The words of Jacob Riis flashed through my mind—“When a boy goes to prison, a citizen dies.”

“If you were in my place you would give yourself up?” he asked me pointedly.

I passed my hand across my eyes. Unlike the boy I had no cap with which to brush away the tears.

“My boy,” I said, “I will be honest with you—I would not give myself up.”

“First, I would make up my mind not to steal any more, then I would earn money and pay the man for the bicycle.”

“I did not used to be a thief,” he said, “but they made me mad. Ever since I came from Jamesburg every one watches me. My old boy friends, my father and mother, the police; someone’s eye is always on me. Their suspicions madden me. Sometimes it seems to me as if they dared me to take another risk. One day on the ferryboat from New York I met a detective who had once arrested me. Wherever I went he followed me. I was afraid, so I left the other boys who were with me and went to the stern of the boat. I didn’t tell anyone, but when I was all alone I put my hands down into my own pockets so he would know that I didn’t have them in anyone else’s.... I’m not very old, but I know that that isn’t the way to make a bad boy into a good one.”

After a moment I said to him: “if I can arrange with the owner of the bicycle so that you can pay for it in small weekly payments, will you join the Colony and out of the little money you earn settle with the man you have wronged?”

“If you will help me,” returned the lad hopefully, “I will make good to the man and to you.”

The next morning I talked the boy’s case over with an elderly attorney who lives with us, and who knows of his own knowledge the ruin one can bring upon himself if he does not follow proper methods. The old man gladly undertook to settle with the owner of the stolen bicycle, and save the boy from the consequences of his wrongdoing.

The boy worked industriously about the place and in a few weeks had earned sufficient money to settle satisfactorily for the bicycle. He is now working on a neighbor’s farm and says that he is determined to make something worth while out of his life.

“Do you know,” said the old attorney to me recently, "if anyone ever charges us with having compounded a felony in the case of this boy[103] and his bicycle we can defend ourselves on the technical ground that the bicycle was of such slight value that the stealing of it was only a petty crime."

“In this case—the saving of a boy from prison”—I answered him, “if a technicality saves us from a criminal charge which might be brought against us, I for one am perfectly satisfied with such a defense.”

If you thought it was imperative to change your name and you had access to all the Literature—Ancient and Modern—to be found in a Carnegie Library, would you select for yourself the name “Sullivan?”

Evidently our Irish Lad agreed with Cohan—that “it is a d—n fine name”—for when I recognized in him one of my Family of Homeless Men as he walked aimlessly along the city streets, and asked him rather abruptly, what his name might be, his reply—too long considered to be truthful—was, “Frank Sullivan.”

“Pardon me,” I said, immediately realizing that I had no right to ask of him the question and that my thoughtlessness had caused the boy to answer falsely. The outcast, distrustful of his fellow, frequently seeks safety in falsehood until friendship disarms suspicion and Love calls forth the Truth for which it has not asked.

So upon my invitation he came gladly into our little Family to share the happy freedom of a peaceful home, where others like himself give honest work and receive—not in the spirit of organized charity, but in the true warmth of fraternal love—the hospitality of a welcome guest.

His Irish heart soon caught the meaning of the work, and responded readily in thoughtful service.... If our Self Master Colony attracted the attention of some broad-minded man well known in humanitarian work so that encouraged, it carried me and my dreams of uplift higher and higher until the stars were our near neighbors—[109]Sullivan, silent and attentive, followed me in my dreams.

If my work was misunderstood and my best efforts discredited, Sullivan was at my side silently consoling me with his loyalty and friendship.

“Richelieu,” I would often say, “had his Friar Philip to aid him in his ambitions and I have my good friend Sullivan.”

Then as the months passed, once again, the grass spread its delicate carpet beneath our feet, the trees blossomed sending a perfumed message to us, the bluebird and the thrush called through the open windows until we, busy with our work, were forced to remark that Spring time had come—the beginning of another year.... Then the Brothers observed the progress we had made in the twelvemonth.... It seemed so much to them, so little to the outside world.

“It looks more prosperous now,” said Sullivan proudly as he observed the automobiles stopping at the door, “you make Prince as well as Pauper do you homage.”

“No, Sullivan, not I; it’s the Truth that all are hungry for—Pauper and Prince alike—and while the few may reach it by meditation and the more by prayer, the most of common clay like you and I must reach it by service.”

“I never quite understand you when you speak,” he said, “I never could read those dry old books however much I tried.... But by the way, I wonder if we have blankets for the new arrival who just came in.”

For the Stranded Sons of the City come often to join our Family and share our simple hospitality.

“Sullivan,” I said one day, “this work is going to grow and grow.... When we have won I want you to share the credit with me—you will remain, will you not?”

Then receiving no reply, I turned to look and he had gone—gone to offer his blanket to the new guest.

“Yes,” I heard him say, “I have some extra covers on my bed you may have.”

"Another falsehood. Sullivan, you should al[111]ways speak the truth." For the nights were cold and the blankets none too many. And yet since many prayers are lies, why may not some lies be prayers? “Maybe in your dark purgatory, my Irish lad, these little falsehoods of yours will be counted as prayers.”

One afternoon a letter came for my friend—in a young girl’s rather labored writing—he had received many such, and as I gave it to him I smiled a little. To him I had always been an indulgent Father—for a boy and girl will love, even though he or she may be our favorite child.

That night when the day’s labor was over, Sullivan came to me, asking if he could talk to me. It was a strange request, for he never seemed to wish to talk, and I knew that something had moved him deeply.

"Yes, I have been married over two years and[112] have a little girl a year old. The letters that I have received have been from my wife Josephine. She and I ran away and were married, but on our return her father wouldn’t accept me. He said I was not worthy of his daughter—and no doubt he is right. He is wealthy and I could not support her in the way to which she is accustomed. So I was forced to leave her. But Josephine and I couldn’t forget.

“All these months she has been working to interest her father in me, and now the baby is a year old, he has decided to help me.... We—Josephine and I—knew he would soften in time; you see he, too, loves Josephine and the Baby. So I want to go to them.”

“Yes,” I said simply, for a sense of approaching loss had robbed me of my pretty speeches.

“I have flattered myself I have been some help to you in starting your work. Tell me have I made good to you?”

“Josephine wanted me to ask you for two or three rugs that the boys weave. We want them for our new home.”

As he turned away he said half regretfully, “It is the Passing of Sullivan.”

“I wonder if Richelieu, after all, lost his Friar Philip?” I asked myself as I waved my hand in farewell to him.

He came—did Jim—highly recommended by two fellows who live by their wits—one, Lakewood Joe and the other, Corduroy Tom. They are my friends, for they have told me they were. One of them always comes to me in the Winter anxious to get work on a farm; the other with a few broken umbrellas and a railroad spike for a hammer, starts out with the Springtime on the quest of “anything to mend.”

Umbrella mending was once a reputable calling, but it has fallen into disrepute since the introduction of the cheap umbrella. But that pathetic part of the story should be left for Lakewood Joe to tell, for it gets him—a humble mechanic—many a hot cup of coffee, many a dime.

The recommendation by my two friends was sufficiently strong to nearly cause me to refuse admission to young Jim. But his manner pleased me and our reception committee—made up of members of the Family—assured me that we[118] had no need to fear poor Jim. Anyway he who has nothing can safely make friends with whomever he chooses.

Jim told us that years ago he had been a “cookie”—please note the “ie”—in a lumber camp in an Eastern State. So when a vacancy occurred in the culinary department of our home Jim was selected for the place.

He proved an excellent assistant and worked for the house—as the phrase goes—he made the coffee so weak, he made the potato soup go so far, that I, economical from habit and from necessity, would blush whenever one of the boys said that he enjoyed the good dinner.

I need have had no fear for it was Jim’s smile that made us all content with the simple fare.

Jim had roughed it for several years and knew a little of the ways of the road. He had worked when a boy in his father’s factory and as some of the workmen felt they were not being paid properly—the son joined in with the workmen and went out on a strike against his father.

In the excitement of the strike the father had spoken to the son about his joining in with the strikers. It seemed to the father like disloyalty—ingratitude. But as for the son, he couldn’t analyze his own psychological state of mind sufficiently to explain why his sympathy had been with the strikers, but feeling himself no longer welcome at the old home, he started to roam.

Seven years had passed since he had written to the old folks. Once or twice he had heard indirectly of his father’s search for him, but he could not even bring himself to write, much less to return.

He had been with us nearly a month when finally, one evening, as he saw the other boys writing letters to their homes he decided he himself would write a letter to his married sister in Pennsylvania. When it was written and mailed, he half regretted what he had done.

Wasn’t he a wanderer—a young hobo if you like—and why should he think of home after all these years, even if the kindly sympathy to be found at the Colony did recall to him those better days?

But the letter was already on its way.... He wondered what his sister might think, how she might act.... She had always cared for him.

The bean soup which he was preparing for supper burned while he was deep in thought, and he blamed himself for his absent-mindedness.

“The boys will have to eat burnt soup just because I got to feeling sentimental,” he said to himself.

Then a word came that a nicely gowned young lady was coming up the driveway. There are many visitors at the Tea Room of the Colony House so it need have caused no excitement. But some one whispered “Look at Jim!”

He had glanced out at the approaching stranger, and he was pale and trembling. He said to me in a faint voice, “It’s my sister. Tell her I left this morning.... Tell her I got a position.”

The homeless outcast lad faced his aristocratic sweet-faced sister! As the boys saw them they did not know which one to pity the more, although the sympathy seemed to be pretty largely with Jim.

“Is every one well?” the brother asked, trying to relieve the strain of the situation.

“Yes,” she answered, "but why have you never written all these years? I got your letter this morning and left in an hour to get to you for fear I might lose you again. Father has hunted for you everywhere. He thinks he was harsh with you when you struck that day with the men—for you were only a child.

“I thought I might get you to come home with me,” she continued, “my husband and I have a splendid home. You are always welcome.... Or why don’t you go back to your old job with Father. He needs you. He is getting older.”

“You, a cook?” she smiled. "Why, you[122] wouldn’t wash a dish at home for me when we were children. You can’t be very much of a cook.... But never mind. I have found you."

“Confound it! I have let those beans burn again.” And he excused himself for a moment.

When he returned he said, “I will write you if I can decide to go back home. It comes a little suddenly you know. I have been a prodigal too long to turn into a father’s white-haired boy on the instant.”

Then after a moment he asked: “Do you know what Mother used to put into the beans when she burned them to take out the smoky taste?”

As the sister was going out to step into the carriage she said, “Promise me you will not leave here without writing me. I don’t want to lose you again.”

“I like them that way,” replied one of the boys. “It makes them taste different.”

That night after supper no one wrote any letters, which was unusual, and one of the boys jokingly asked another near him, “Why don’t you write a letter home to your sister?”

“I am afraid,” replied the lad, “she might answer it in person like Jim’s sister did.”

Jim has taken a job on a farm and is saving his money. He has nearly enough to return to his old home; he refuses to accept any aid from his father or sister.

To be dull of wit is sadly unfortunate, but to be dull of wit and be compelled to live in a Colony made up of more or less reckless young men is doubly unfortunate.

In the group eccentricities are quickly discouraged. The grouch, the crank, the bully, if he would remain and live in harmony must learn his lesson in democracy—the individualist is given short shift.

Of course the dull of wit should be given immunity at all times, and in theory he is, but in real practice even the most gentle hearted man[128] will have his little joke at the expense of the man less alert mentally. The members of the Colony are no exception to this rule.

“Tell us more,” the boys asked of the Moon-Struck-One, one evening after the day’s work was done, “about the inhabitants of Mars, which you see in your trances.”

And then he—the Moon-Struck-One—would explain in detail the strange people he had seen in his dreams.

“These planets,” he told them, “are all being made ready for the coming race of Man.... After Cycles and Cycles, we move on to newer and better worlds.... Each of the mystic Seven Planets are at the service of the human race. Time and time again a new world has borne the burden of the evolving man’s hope and his despair.... The cosmic scheme is worthy of the Wondrous God, who holds not only the Seven Planets in control, but rules the Seven Universes with their Seven Suns—you laugh, most men laugh, the churchmen laugh, they do not know, they have not seen—but I know and have seen.”

“How interesting,” said one boy, winking slyly to his fellows. “I know something of astronomy myself; my brother was a Princeton graduate.”

It was a summer’s evening when this conversation took place and the boys were sitting out on the lawn enjoying the night air, for the day had been hot and oppressive.

“Very little, but tell us,” said one of the boys, “for I believe in your visions. I dreamed one night myself about a big fire—a bad sign as you very well know—and the next day I got ‘pinched.’”

“Yes, you are deeply learned in the Stars,” he said with smiling skepticism, “that is, I suppose you can tell the difference between a star and a lantern.”

“No, seriously,” said the Witless One, "when I said ‘lantern’ I had reference to the light that Edison hangs out each night when the weather is clear—you have no doubt read of it. He plans to construct a light that will illuminate this[130] country at night almost as brightly as the sun lights it by day.... Do you see that light just above the trees in the East. You can tell it as it is larger than any stars around it. It has the appearance of a star only much brighter. Do you see it?"

“Yes,” said the boys who were all attention, although one or two were skeptical until one of the group remembered that he had read about Edison’s powerful light in the Sunday magazine supplement of a New York paper.

At last all were convinced and the Moon-Struck-One, satisfied, arose rather abruptly, and went into the house.

A few days later he left the Colony to go to his relatives in a distant city, and so the boys had no one to play tricks upon, no one who was not their equal in wit.

It was some weeks afterwards that one of the young men said to me as we were talking out of doors in the evening:

“That bright light over there that looks like a big star. The Witless One told us about it. In some ways he was really wiser than we gave him credit for.”

“Doesn’t the Bible say, ‘Answer a fool according to his folly?’” asked a boy.

“Yes, and it also says, ‘Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.’”

The Spirit of the Wanderlust seizes all the World in the early days of Spring—the so-called hobo takes to the open road, the millionaire to his country home, each rejoices that the long imprisonment of winter is passed, for all men are akin in their love of freedom. It is a search for the ideal. With De Soto we would say, “Somewhere, if ye seek untiringly, ye shall discover and drinke of ye Fountaine of Youth and Happiness.”

“Men have said they do not understand my restless wanderings,” remarked Lakewood Tom. "Can it be they have never watched the coming of the first robin, and do not know that he ushers in the new regime of promise and prosperity?

"Other men may linger in the failing twilight of the tired day. I go to greet the rising sun. Even the very birds—little hoboes of the air, break[136] camp cheerfully in early May. Like them I, too, take to the open road and walk by faith.

"But you, my lords, with your worldly goods, are vagabonds no less than I. Out of the inexhaustible larder of the Divine, God gives you—as it were—a crust of bread, and men call you mighty in riches. Take a vagabond’s advice, and put your mark upon the house where you found favor, lest after many years, disheartened, you pass that way again and need another ‘handout’—maybe not a crust of bread, but, a more lasting gift—an ideal perchance, that may not fail so soon. Sometimes methinks it sad, there is given to man only the thing for which he asks.

“Adieu,” said Lakewood Tom, taking up his staff, “when the snow falls next year I may visit your Monastery again with your permission, if by happy chance I am on this earth. If not, I’ll meet you some Christmas day on the planet Mars, for I never forget a friend. Good cheer! Adieu.”

“Much privation has crazed the old man,” said a comrade who, with me, watched the old vagabond walking slowly down the drive.

“It is always hard times on the Bowery,” my diminutive informant told me. He was a new comer to our Colony. He, in company with another young man, had made his appearance an hour or two before, but I had not been able to talk with him, except to assure him that he and his friend might remain with us one night, at least. “Yes, sir,” he continued, “without money a man is a dead one; even in this strange haunt of stranger men money is a daily need. Of course, some men who know the hidden ways can get along on as little as twenty cents a day, or less, but for myself I could not exist on less than thirty-five cents.”

The figures he mentioned seemed modest enough to me. “Couldn’t you earn that much?” I asked him.

“I am so small no one would hire me,” he replied. "I could get errands to do now and then. Of course, while my mother lived she kept a[140] home for me, but after she died I did not know what to do. I only sat in the house day after day and looked out of the window. I could not make any plans for myself. You see when I was a baby I fell and injured my back. I didn’t grow much more after that accident. The doctors called it a curvature."

“I rather think I’m that boy. One time I chanced to find that poem and read it to my mother. She took the book from me in the gentle way she had, and then putting her arms around me, told me to be a good boy and everything would come out all right. But they never did come all right. Maybe I was not good enough; but this can’t interest you. You hear enough hard luck stories without mine.”

“Well, it’s only this,” he continued. "Left to[141] myself, I wasn’t smart enough to make a living. I can’t get my room rent and my lunch money all at the same time. If I have my lunches I have no room, and if I have a room I have nothing to eat."

He grew very serious. He could laugh at his misshapen back, make a jest at his deformity, but hunger—even at the thought of hunger—the smile left his face, the color fled from his lips.

“No, I am a coward,” he said, “just a plain coward. You see, I am beaten and I know it.”

“You will be all right in a few days,” I said, “and be able to criticise the food as cheerfully as any other member of my Family.” I laughed gayly enough, but he did not laugh with me. “Have you and this boy been friends a long time? Where did you meet him?” I inquired.

“In the park, some weeks ago. He has no home either. He was sleeping out and so was I. He gave me part of a newspaper to put under me, as the ground was damp. So I tried to talk to him.... He is good looking, isn’t he?”

“He just landed from Russia three months ago, and he knows very little about the English language. He doesn’t have the slightest idea what I have been talking to you about all this time. Night after night, not having any bed to sleep in, he has ‘flopped’ in the park or ‘carried the banner’ until morning.”

“Yes; I didn’t know whether you would take us in or not. I thought I would take him along on the theory that the ground in Jersey is no harder to sleep on than it is in New York State. If you have to turn us away we will not be any worse off than we have been.”

So Jean—Little Jean, the boys called him—went through a pantomime for the enlightenment of the Russian youth whose name was also Jean. Finally the larger boy understood that I had given them permission to remain, for he turned to me and said simply: “Nice,” and then he[143] bowed gracefully. Little Jean was right—Big Jean was good looking.

... The weeks pass quickly when one has his work to do, and the two Jeans grew to know the Colony. Big Jean spent his spare hours studying English and talking with the other boys. Little Jean made friends with the chickens, the pigs, the cow and the horse, while Boozer—the Colony dog—and he were inseparable chums.

“Boozer,” Little Jean told me, “knows the heart of outcast boys and men. He meets the new arrivals at the gate and escorts them to the house. He may challenge the lawless approach of the rich man in his auto, and warn the household of possible danger impending, but the most unkempt ‘knight of the road’ will find Boozer quick to make friends with him.”

Big Jean—with his pleasing bow—looked after the guests who visited the Tea Room, for he learned to speak English rapidly. The report of his courteous service came to the ears of a wide[144] awake Jap who needed him to help him in his hotel. So one day he sent for the Russian lad.

At the start the pay was to be twenty dollars a month, with room, board and extra tips.

“You need me in your Tea Room, Mr. Floyd,” he said, “I am willing to stay.”

“No, Jean, you must take the position and prove to me and to yourself that you can make good.”

That night he wrote to his aged mother in Russia that there were wonderful opportunities for young men in America.

When he had gone I hunted to find Little Jean. I found him out on the lawn with his chum, Boozer. He did not see me as I approached, but as I looked at him the thought came to me that he had suddenly grown old, and there was the anxious look upon his face—the same that I had seen when he had talked to me the first time.

“Boozer,” I heard him say, “it’s all right; I am a coward, I’m beaten and I know it, but I’m glad Big Jean got the job—honestly, Boozer, I am—you see it isn’t all my fault—he’s so damned good looking.”

Boozer put his face close to that of Little Jean and held out his paw to the discouraged boy. You see when you live your life at the Self Masters you sense the inner thought of broken men. Boozer—who knows no other life—understands the heart of the discouraged. I did not interrupt the two friends, but turned back to the house.

“What can you ever do to help poor Little Jean?” a visitor asked me. “There seems to be no position in the world for him. What can you do for him?”

“I don’t see much chance,” I replied, distrusting for the moment that Divine Guidance that never fails.

It was only two days after Big Jean had left us that a kindly old lady called at the Colony. She wanted a boy who would take good care of her horses, and drive her and her husband back and forth from her home to the railway station. “I want a boy who loves animals,” she said.

So Little Jean has his place in the world—like you and I if we can only find it....

... Xmas Day Big Jean brought four big pies[146] which he had cooked especially for the Self Masters’ dinner.

And Little Jean brought his Xmas present—all neatly tied up in a box bedecked with pink ribbons—a pound of meat for Boozer.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of My Monks of Vagabondia

My Monks of Vagabondia.

Introductory

A JOURNEY TO OUR MONASTERY

MARY AND THE BABY

MY PROBLEM WITH SLIPPERY JIM

OUR FRIEND, THE ANARCHIST.

A BASHFUL BEGGAR

FRITZ AND HIS SUN DIAL

THE WAITER WHO DID NOT WAIT

COMPOUNDING A FELONY

THE PASSING OF SULLIVAN

WHEN SISTER CALLED

EDISON’S EVENING STAR

IN THE WORLD OF WANDERLUST

THE TWO JEANS

Transcriber’s Notes:

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE