Part 46 (1/2)
”'Are you--that is, do you play rapidly, and at sight?' asked madam.
”He replied only by a gesture, a sort of pitiful contempt for the ignorance of any person who should ask _him_ such a question....
”Half past seven came, and we went on the stage. I do not know what the fellow's prelude was; I was otherwise engaged; but his accompaniments were made up, and after he had heard the note sung to which he should have accompanied,--O, it was a horrid jargon, a consecutive blast of discords, a tempest of incomprehensibleness.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ENTHUSIASM.]
”Madam caught her breath at the first pausing-place, and signalled him to stop. He took a side glance at her, misinterpreted her, and played on the louder. It became ludicrous in the extreme. He played the minor strains, or what should have been minor, in the major key. He only stopped when he saw us leave the stage. The audience cheered. He took it all as a compliment to himself as a pianist, stopped, and made his most profound obeisance to the house. They laughed and cheered the harder. He mistook it for an _encore_, bowed again, and returned to the piano. Then the house came down. They stamped, they laughed, they shouted. The boys in the gallery cat-called; the building fairly shook. I ran back to see what it was all about, and there was the pianist (?) beating furiously at the keys, the perspiration pouring in streams from his face. But his playing could only be _seen_ to be appreciated; it could not be heard for the stamping of the audience. He finally desisted, and with repeated halts and smiles, he bowed himself off the stage.
”His grand _debut_ and retirement upon the stage occurred the same night.
Madam would not permit him to go on again, and we sang the duets from ---- without accompaniment. I think the fellow knew nothing of music; he had 'cheeked' it right through.
”Perhaps it was two years afterwards--I was staying at the B. Hotel, Maine--when I heard a deal of talk about a great doctor then in town.
After dinner the first day, I noticed a man sauntering leisurely from the dining-hall in embroidered slippers, white silk stockings, black pants, gaudy dressing-gown, with long hair falling down over his shoulders. I thought I recognized that face. I approached him after a while, and called him by name.
”'What? Why, I think you are mistaken. I do not know you, sir,' he stammered; and then I knew he had recognized me.
”'O, yes; I am Dayton. You remember you were our pianist once in a strait, in S.'
”'O, ah! Come up to my room,' he said, leading the way.
”I followed, when he told me he was doing a good thing at the practice of medicine about the princ.i.p.al towns of the state, and begged I would say nothing about his former occupation. He stated to me that he had been to Europe, and had been studying medicine meantime, which I have since ascertained was entirely untrue.”
And this was the fellow over whom the town was running wild.
The idea of some men trying to become good physicians is as ridiculously absurd as Horace Greeley's farming, or trying to ascertain if ”cundurango is explosive.” The requisite qualities are not in them. They may keep along a few years, or possibly, in communities where there is no compet.i.tion, succeed in making the people believe they are as good as the common run, and thus succeed on bra.s.s instead of brains.
Some of these brainless travelling impostors employ a female or two to precede them from place to place, and make diligent inquiry when the great doctor who performed such marvellous cures in some adjoining town mentioned was coming there. Thus putting it in the shape of an inquiry, it was less likely to excite suspicion.
Two females--one an elderly, lady-like looking woman, the other younger, and anything but lady-like--travelled for a doctor, on a salary, during the summer and autumn of 1868. A lady whose occupation took her from town to town, seeing the two females at various hotels where the doctor was advertised, inveigled the younger one into the confession, in her bad temper, and thus I got my evidence. Another travels on his hair; another on his face; and a fourth on his free advice and treatment; while a fifth succeeds by absurdity of dress.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
XIV.
SCENES FROM EVERY-DAY PRACTICE.
”History, so warm on meaner themes, Is cold on this.”--COWPER'S TASK.
”Let no one say that his task is o'er, That bonds of earth are for him no more, Until by some kind or holy deed His name from forgetfulness is freed; Until by words from his lips or pen, Dying, he's 'missed' from the ranks of men.”
ALICE LEE.
THE BEGGAR BOY AND THE GOLDEN-HAIRED HEIRESS.--MY MIDNIGHT CALL.--THE CONSCIENCE-STRICKEN MOTHER.--”OLD SEROSITY.”--THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD.--DEATH OF THE BEAUTIFUL.--WHO IS THE HEIR?--A TOUCHING SCENE.--FATE OF THE ”BEGGAR BOY.”--THE TERRIBLE CALLER.--AN IRISH SCENE, FROM DR. DIXON'S BOOK.--BIDDY ON A RAMPAGE.--TERRY ON HIS DEATH BED.--THE STOMACH PUMP.--BIDDY WON'T, AND SHE WILL.--THE BETRAYED AND HER BETRAYER.--”IS THERE A G.o.d IN ISRAEL?”--THE HUSBANDLESS MOTHER.--THE CRISIS AND COURT.--ANSWER.--THERE IS A ”G.o.d IN ISRAEL.”
Ill-clad poverty, benumbed with cold, was abroad alone, exposed to that winter's night, as the white snow fleeced the frost-hardened ground. But never mind earth's cold bosom. The rich man's heart warms _him_, making him merry, however blows the wind or rages the storm. s.h.i.+ver, s.h.i.+ver on, beggar poor! Starvation and sense-dulling cold alone belong to you.
Through the crunching snow-drifts trudged a weary boy, with alms-basket on his s.h.i.+vering arm. From his figure, he seemed not over ten years old; but his face was so wan and melancholy, that it was difficult to tell how many year-blights the beggar child had experienced. Summer clothes were still clinging to him; a tattered comforter was the only winter article he wore.