Chapter X. “Peter One-Leg-and-a-Half”
and His
Optimistic Whistlers
BY the middle of the following winter, I had entered fully into all the privileges that were mine by virtue of my labor in the mill. The background of all my privileges was the spending money my aunt gave me. She apportioned me money on a basis which kept me constantly at work. I was given ten cents on every dollar that I brought home. This made me ambitious for advance. It made me keep at work even when I should have been at home on a sick bed. It drove “loafing days” out of my mind entirely, for spending money was the summum bonum of my existence. The kind of things I craved, the only things I found real pleasure in, cost money.
I attended the ten-cent shows in the theater on Saturday afternoons. I looked forward throughout the week to a glass of hot beef-tea at the soda fountain. I would smack my lips long in anticipation of two-for-five cream puffs or a five-cent pork pie. They meant fully as much to me, then, as did the Horse Show or a Paris gown to the aspiring daughter of one of the mill stockholders.
Intermittently, I used to go to the business section of the city alone, and stop at Cheap John’s, the tobacconist’s, for a treat of second-hand novels. There was a squat, gaudily decorated Punch standing in front of Cheap John’s, with a handful of chocolate cigars always extended to the passers-by. Punch’s jester’s cap, with the bells over his left ear, his hooked nose and upturned chin, always with a fixed grin on his shiny face, always seemed a human goblin, saying, “Come in, and have one on me!”
The interior of Cheap John’s was like a country fair Midway. There were weight machines, moving pictures, slot instruments, lung testers, name-plate makers, guessing machines, card-wheels, pool-tables, racing bulletins, sport scores, displays of sporting apparatus, of tobacco specialties, of colored sporting posters, hat-cleaning wheels, clothes-cleaning tables, shoe-blacking alcoves, and a long counter on which were heaped rows on rows of highly colored, second-hand Wild West, Sport, Adventure, and Detective romances: a bundle of them for ten cents! A bundle of these I would purchase, listen to the men’s voices that came from the dense clouds of smoke, and then I would race home, a distance of a mile, to examine more closely the prizes of the night.
The next day being Sunday, I had the privilege of staying in bed, of having my breakfast brought to me, much as if I had been a convalescent gentleman. My aunt would find me propped up in bed, with the novels spread over the bed; and in the midst of a detective romance, always read first, I would be interrupted by some such words as these: “Well, his royal highness! Will he have bacon and eggs and a hot cup of cocoa?” I would merely keep on reading, with a suppressed, growled “Yep!” and after breakfast, though it would be a pleasant day outside, I would sit there in bed and read until I became satiated with thrills, disguised scouts, burgled safes, triumphant, last-chapter endings of “Justice at last!” reunited lovers and pardoning fathers, when I would dress, have dinner, and go out into a slumberous Sabbath afternoon, to stand bored on a street corner until dark, when the gangs of the city moved and planned exciting escapades.
When my uncle saw me reading the novels, he interposed with, “That’s cheap stuff, Al, and will never make you any better. You want to read refining things, the great books. There’s many an exciting one that is exciting without being cheap. I wish you would let me plan for you.” I told him that I would—sometime, but I kept on reading Cheap John’s bargain-counter literature.
The ten and a half hours in the mill, with its humdrum rattle, its high-pitched hum, the regularity of its fixtures, the monotonousness of its routine, bullied my nerves into a tamed, cowed state. Day by day, day by day, day by day, at the appointed time, in the instructed way, with the same broom or the same-sized bunch of waste, to do the task! And there wanted to stir in me a schoolboy’s expression of vitality, a growing lad’s satisfaction in novelty! But all through the hours of light, from morning till evening, with the sun arising and departing, I had to listen to, and keep time with, the humming of wheels!
Consequently, when my feet felt the outside world at night or on Saturdays, at the first refreshing feel of the pure air which took that deep-lodged heat from my white cheeks, I always promised myself some exciting pleasure ere the day passed, to stimulate my cowed nerves and make me a boy again.
“PETER-ONE-LEG-AND-A-HALF” LED US AT NIGHT OVER HIGH BOARD FENCES
So I fell heart and soul into the scheme of a group of other boys who worked in the mill and lived near me. It was my first membership in a “gang.” It was presided over by a sturdy young Irishman, who, because he had lost a leg below the knee, was nicknamed, “Peter One-Leg-and-a-Half.” Peter worked in the mill, and examined cloth in the weave room. He thrilled our jaded nerves very successfully. We had ghost-play at night on the street, when he would spit fire, make phosphorescent writing on a tenement, lead a line of sheeted figures soberly in review through the night, and close the performance by hurling a battery of bad eggs at us, his admiring audience. Peter was King of the Night. He seemed to have the sight of a cat and the cunning of a fox. He led us at night over high board fences, on the other side of which, in the dark, we would almost choke ourselves against tight clotheslines. He taught us organized play, and, wise gang-leader which he unconsciously was, he changed our adventures and diversions so often that no complaints were made, and night time, with Peter in it, became the thrilling objective during my winter work.
For a short season, in the winter, the whole gang joined the club, which was kept for mill-boys and was supported by the corporation for which I worked. There were work-benches, checker-rooms, a poorly equipped gymnasium, seemingly always in the possession of the adults, and every now and then an entertainment occurred, when some imported entertainer with talent would be invited to come from his or her aristocratic home—with a group of “slummers,” usually and divert us. We thought most of them very tame, resented the manual training department because we thought ten hour’s work sufficient for one day, and got what pleasure we could from the entertainments. One man told us, among other things in a memorable address, to “whistle when you’re happy and whistle when you’re in danger of feeling mad. Whistling gives courage, like yells at a football game. Whistle, boys, whistle. It’s a sign that your courage is good!” That point impressed itself on Peter, too, for when we left the club that night at nine o’clock (to stay on the streets till ten), he lined us up like soldiers in review, and thus addressed us, “Company halt all ready, whistle!” We put our fingers in our mouths and produced a profusion of vibrant whistles, which indicated that we were the most courageous and happy lads in the world. Then Peter, stumping ahead, led us militantly up a street, stooping every now and then under a street lamp to call out, “All the happy ones whistle, you!”