Читать книгу The Sunny Side of the Street - Marshall P. Wilder - Страница 11

Table of Contents

Some Aspects of Philadelphia.—Fun in a Hospital.—“The Cripple’s Palace.”—An Invalid’s Success in Making Other Invalids Laugh.—Fights for the Fun of Fighting.—My Rival Friends.—Boys Will Be Boys.—Cast Out of Church.—A Startling Recognition.—Some Pleasures of Attending Funerals.—How I Claimed the Protection of the American Flag.

A hospital is not a place that any one would visit if he were in search of jollity, yet some of the merriest hours of my life were spent, some years ago, in the National Surgical Institute of Philadelphia. I was one of about three hundred people, of all ages, sizes and dispositions, who were under treatment for physical defects. Most of us were practically crippled, a condition which is not generally regarded to be conductive of hilarity, yet many of us had lots of fun, and all of it was made by ourselves. I was one of the luckiest of the lot, for Mother Nature had endowed me with a faculty for finding sunshine everywhere.

Yet part of my treatment was to lie in bed, locked in braces, for hours every day, and each of these hours seemed to be several thousand minutes long. So many other boys were under similar treatment that an attendant, named Joe, was kept busy in merely taking off our appliances. These were locked, for between pain and the restiveness peculiar to boys, we would have removed them for ourselves or for one another. Joe was not a beauty, yet I distinctly remember recalling his appearance was that of an angel of light, for I best remember him in the act of loosening my braces. Whenever the surgeon in charge was absent, we would beg Joe to unlock us for “Just five minutes—just a minute”—and sometimes he would yield, after making us promise solemnly not to tell the doctor. The result recalls the story of the old darky who was seen to hammer his thumb at intervals. When asked why he did it, he replied,

“Kase it feels so good when I stop!”

To keep from thinking of my pain and helplessness, I kept looking about me for something to laugh at, and it was a rare day on which I failed to find it. When there came such a day, I had only to close my eyes and look backward a few months or years; I was sure to recall something funny. Then I would laugh. Some other sufferer would ask what was amusing me, and when I told him he would also laugh, some one would hear him and the story would have to be repeated. Soon the word got about the building that there was a little fellow in one of the rooms who was always laughing to himself, or making others laugh, so all the boys insisted on being “let in on the ground floor”—which in my case was the fourth floor. I made no objection; was there ever a man so modest that he didn’t like listeners when he had anything to say? So it soon became the custom of all the boys who were not absolutely bound to their beds to congregate in my room, which would have comfortably held, not more than a dozen. Yet daily I had fifty or more around me; the earlier comers filled the chairs, later arrivals sprawled or curled on my bed, still later ones sat on the headboard and footboard, the floor accommodated others until it was packed, and the belated ones stowed themselves in the hall, within hearing distance.

’Twas a hard trip for some of them, poor fellows for there were not enough attendants to carry them all, and three flights of stairs are a hard climb for cripples. So, to prevent unnecessary pain while I was outdoors taking the air, I hung a small American flag over the stair rail opposite my door, whenever I was in; this could be seen from any of the lower halls. I learned afterward that it was the custom of royalty and other exalted personages to display a flag when they were “at home,” but this did not frighten me; in memory of those hospital days, I always display a flag at my window when I am able to see my friends.

Boys are as fond as Irishmen of fighting for the mere fun of it, so we got a lot of laughing out of fist fights between some of the patients. The most popular contestants were Gott Dewey from Elmira, N. Y., and a son of Sheriff Wright of Philadelphia. Both were seriously afflicted, though they seemed not to know it. Wright was a cross-eyed paralytic, while Dewey had St. Vitus’s dance and was so badly paralyzed that he had no control over his natural means of locomotion. He could not even talk intelligibly, yet he had an intellect that impressed me deeply, even at that early day. He could cope with the hardest mathematical problem that any could offer; he read much and his taste in literature and everything else was distinct and refined.

Yet, being still a boy, he enjoyed a fight, and as he and Wright were naturally antipathetic by temperament, they were always ready for a set-to. These affairs were entirely harmless, for neither could hit straighter than a girl can throw a stone. The result of their efforts was “the humor of the unexpected,” and it amused us so greatly that we never noticed the pathetic side of it.

These two boys did me the honor to become very fond of me; why they did it, I don’t know, unless because I never did anything in particular for Wright, yet he was always teasing Dewey, who was quite proud and self-reliant, and insisted upon doing everything for himself. That he might serve himself at table, a little elevator was made for his convenience, and I was mischievous enough to disarrange the machinery so that food intended for his mouth should reach his ear. Yet he loved me dearly and dashed at me affectionately though erratically whenever we met. I was unable to get about without crutches, so I frequently fell; if Dewey were in sight, he would hurry to my assistance, with disastrous results to both of us; often Wright would offer assistance at the same time and the two would fall over each other and me and attempt to “fight it out,” while I would become helpless with laughter and the three of us would lie in a heap, until some attendant would separate the warriors and set me on my feet and crutches.

One rule of the Institute was that no patients were to leave the building on Sunday—the day on which the physicians and attendants got most liberty. To enforce this rule there was a doorkeeper named Smith. He was a dwarf, hardly four feet high, who, on Sunday would curl up in a box under his desk and wish he could have a mouthful or more of whiskey, although a little of it would put him sound asleep and leave the door unguarded against any one who cared to go out. How whiskey got into the Institute to be used upon Smith, I don’t know.

I recall a Sunday when we three, Dewey, Wright and I, conceived the idea of going to church. There was a church directly across the street, so we started for it a few moments after throwing a sop of whiskey to our Cerberus. We had several mishaps on the way, due to my friend’s well-meant but misdirected efforts to assist me, but passers-by kindly put us on our feet again. We got into church quite early, and passed up the aisle and entered the front pew, under the very droppings of the sanctuary. Soon after the service began a young lady at our left compelled our attention by eyeing us intently; apparently she thought us the newest thing in “The Three Graces” line. Something moved me to nudge Dewey and tell him to stop flirting with that girl. Apparently he thought I was trying to be funny, for he began laughing in his peculiar laugh, which was a sputter, with which no one familiar with it could help being amused, so Wright laughed too, after which it was impossible for me to keep quiet. We really were reverent little chaps, so we tried hard to suppress ourselves, but—boys will be boys. Suddenly we three exploded as one; we could hear tittering around us, the minister stopped in the middle of an eloquent period, raised his glasses, and I shall never forget his pained expression of astonishment as he caught sight of us for the first time. Suddenly there appeared a platoon of deacons, two of whom attached themselves to each of us, and we were conducted down the aisle, facing an array of hymn-books, behind which the congregation were trying to hide their own laughter. The next day the church sent the Institute a polite but earnest request that no more cripples be allowed to attend service in that church.

“There appeared a Platoon of Deacons.”

After leaving the Institute I lost sight of Dewey, though I never forgot his hearty way of greeting me whenever he met me, a heartiness which caused him to tumble all over me and compel me to put out my arm to save him from falling. Five years ago on reaching a Philadelphia church whose members I had been engaged to “entertain,” the committee of arrangements met me and said they wished to prepare me for the unusual appearance of their chairman. He had endowed the church, they told me, and was almost idolized by the people for his many noble qualities of head and heart, yet he was a paralytic and his visage was shocking at first sight. Suddenly the chairman himself entered the room and I saw my old friend Gott Dewey. At the same instant he recognized me; he dashed at me in his old way; my arm instinctively caught him as it had done hundreds of times before; the committee supposing I was frightened, endeavored to separate us, but we weren’t easy to handle, so there was a close mix up, while, in which, the dear old boy with tears streaming down his cheeks, endeavored to explain that we were fast friends. Then he told me he had read my book “People I’ve Smiled With,” and been so greatly amused by it that he had suggested my engagement to entertain his church people, yet he had never imagined I was the Wilder boy of “The Cripple’s Palace.”

It took him fifteen minutes to say all this and conquer his emotion; then he wanted to go on the platform and tell his people about me and what old friends we were. I realized that if he were to do it, I would never reach the platform myself, so I persuaded him to let me tell them the story. He consented, but insisted on accompanying me, and tearfully confirming every thing I said, so with him beside me, for “local color,” I got along so well that there was not a dry eye in the house. It was an inexpressible relief to me to set everybody laughing afterward, for I never needed a “bracing up” more than on that night.

Dewey had always longed to be a lawyer and I learned that he had succeeded in gratifying this ambition, in spite of his heavy physical handicap: he became so able as a counselor that he gained a large practice and was specially skilful at preparing briefs for his partner to take into court. He was held in high honor for his charitable work and for many years led a successful, useful and happy life; but not long after our unexpected meeting he was complained of as a public nuisance and was actually arrested on this charge. His appearance and manner were really terrifying to people that did not know him, for in trying to avoid collision with passers-by his lack of control often caused him to act as if about to strike. The magistrate, before whom he was arraigned expressed extreme sympathy, but insisted that he keep out of the streets except when in a carriage or when properly attended, and poor Dewey took the affair so deeply to heart, that afterward he kept himself almost secluded from the world.

Mention of Philadelphia almost always suggests graveyards to me, not that the city prides itself on being “well laid-out,” but because I have visited all its cemeteries many times. When I left the Surgical Institute I boarded with a woman whose husband kept a large livery stable. I made friends of the drivers, and, as I was still under treatment and could not get about much, they would kindly give me an airing, whenever they were engaged for funerals, which was almost daily. This often meant an all day trip; my motherly landlady would put up a substantial lunch for me and the drivers granted me special privileges; that is, I was generally taken on the seat of the driver of the carriage which followed the hearse. The one that “carried the criers,” to use the stable parlance. It would not seem a cheerful way of spending a day, but I was always very much alive, and the drivers were as cheerful as if going to a wedding, and, while the ceremony at the grave was in progress, I ate my lunch with the hunger sauce that a long drive always supplies, and in summer I could generally find some flowers in the path to take home to my landlady. Besides, some of the cemeteries were so well kept that they were as sightly as gardens, which reminds me of a story that I once inflicted on the Clover Club of Philadelphia, as follows:

“While dining at my hotel yesterday, I noticed that the water looked muddy, so I complained to the waiter. He admitted that it looked bad, but said it was really very good water.

“He Said it was Very Good Water.”

“‘But,’ I continued, ‘they tell me that the water here passes through a graveyard (Laurel Hill Cemetery) before reaching the people.’

“‘That’s right, sir,’ the waiter replied. ‘But it’s a first-class graveyard; only the best people are buried there.’”

I have traveled much in foreign countries, but Philadelphia is the only place in which I was compelled to beg the protection of the American flag. I had been engaged by Mr. John Wanamaker to “say something” to his great Sunday-school on two consecutive evenings. Being a New Yorker, I did not care to spend the intervening hours in Philadelphia, so after leaving the platform the first evening, I took the ten o’clock train for home. As haste was necessary, I merely changed my evening coat and vest for street clothes. In New York next day, I changed my black trousers for gray, attended to so much business that I had to take a late afternoon train, and did not realize until it was almost time to go on the platform, in a “swallow-tail” coat that I had no black trousers. Worse still my figure was such that I could not be fitted from any clothing store in the city. For a moment my invention was at a standstill, but the people were not, and the hall was filling rapidly. I consulted the committee hastily, and though they were greatly amused by my suggestion, they acted upon it promptly: they moved a table to the centre of the platform, draped it with the stars and stripes, and all the people on the platform arranged themselves, so that I could be unseen as I passed behind them to the table, where only my coat and vest could be seen, the objectionable trousers being hidden by my country’s flag.

Small wonder that I have a merry remembrance of Philadelphia.