The Man Who Tramps: A Story of To-Day
CHAPTER I. (5-16)
THE RUNAWAY.
Scene, a farm house a few miles from the town
of Ayre, in Indiana. Time, the evening of July 18,
1876.
"I tell you, Jane, you are too hard on the boy.
He has been at work in the field all day, and it is too
hard to badger him in this way as soon as he sets his
foot in the house. Let the poor fellow have a little
rest."
"John Shannon, you're a fool. You're always
taking the part of that impudent, lazy rascal. I told
you when you brought him here, ten years ago, that
he would worry the life out of me, and now you see
how it is. And since my young gentleman has
grown too big to be whipped he grows worse. It's
nothing but mope and sulk the whole time he is
about the house, unless he gets hold of a book or a
newspaper, and then you might as well try to move
a stump. For my part, I wish there wasn't a news-
paper ever printed. All they're fit for is to make
young ones lazy, and old fools like you neglect their
work to dabble in their nasty politics. But you have
no idle paupers about me, I tell you ! " And Mrs.
Shannon threw herself sulkily into a chair and fanned
herself with her apron.
"Jane, you're wrong. Harry is not lazy. He is
only sixteen, and yet he does as much work in the
fields as a man. And at school, his teacher tells me,
he is industrious and obedient, and advances rapidly
in his studies."
"At school!" exclaimed Mrs. Shannon with a
sneer. "Where's the use of sending such pauper
brats to school ? What good will it do him ? Three
months of his work lost every winter to stuff his head
with all this book nonsense, that only makes him
proud, and lazy, and saucy."
John Shannon sat wearily down on the bench be-
side the door; perhaps he thought that Harry Law-
son was not the only one who suffered from Mrs.
Shannon's petulant temper.
"I entered into an agreement to send the boy to
school when I took him from the men who had him
in charge," he said. "Besides, it would have been
my duty, even if there had been no contract, and a
boy works none the worse because he is intelligent.
And as to his being saucy, I have seen nothing like
that about him. He appears to me to be gentleness
itself."
"That's the way, John Shannon," replied his wife
with a snap. "You're always ready enough to take
sides against your poor over-worked wife. I tell you
he is saucy and impudent. Only yesterday, when
he came in from the field at noon, he threw himself
down on the bench on the porch like a lazy lout, and
took up the paper to read. I says, 'Come, young
man, I'll have no lazy bones about me. That churn-
in's to be done, and the sooner you get at it the bet-
ter' Well, what do you think he said? He said,
'Mother Shannon, do let me rest a bit. I'm tired!'
The impudent young cub! I just told him in so
many words that I'd have no lazy paupers round me,
when he rose to his feet with his face as red as fire,
and says he, 'Mother Shannon, no one is a pauper
who works for his bread. I work for all I get in this
house, and I work hard, too.' That's what he said.
There's impudence for you! I could hardly keep
my hands off of him. But I snatched that paper
away from him pretty quick, I tell you, and I kept
my young gentleman busy at that churnin' till it was
time to go to the field."
"But, Jane," replied the farmer, "it is too hard
on the boy to do a man's work in the field and a
woman's work at the house, too."
"And so, John Shannon," replied the woman,
"I'm to slave my life out of me that your fine pau-
per brat may sit and read his newspaper! That's
just like you, though. You think of everybody be-
fore you do of your poor wife."
"Jane, you are unreasonable," replied her hus-
band. "You know well enough that I have fre-
quently offered to hire a girl to help you in your
work, and you have always refused. Why will you
not let me do so now?"
"Hire a girl, indeed!" cried the irate woman.
"John Shannon, do you want us to go to the poor
house in our old days? No, I'll not have it. You
shall not throw money away just to favor that lazy
rascal. I can't understand why you think so much
of him as all that; you must have some reason that
you will not tell me. It would be just like you,
John Shannon."
"Don't be silly, Jane," answered the farmer with
a sigh. "You know the poor boy was brought from
New York, with a great many others, by a charitable
society. They were given out to persons who agreed
to pay their railroad fare, to furnish them homes, and
to educate them. But here comes the boy; don't
wound his feelings any more. See how sorrowful
the poor fellow looks." And the kindly eye of the
farmer dwelt with genuine pity on the poor orphan
boy.
"His feelings!" cried the woman. "Yes, every-
body has feelings but your wife. Little you think of
her feelings. I tell you I will say what I please, and
if your young gentleman doesn't like it he may lump
it; that's all."
John Shannon made no reply, and there entered
upon the scene the boy who had been the innocent
cause of all this contention and bickering. He was
a pale, delicate youth, with dark hair, regular and
handsome features, which some would have pro-
nounced too effeminate. His eyes were large, black
and bright, and with a rather dreamy expression, yet
to a close observer they contained a light which only
waited the opportunity to kindle into the fire of hero-
ism. His hands were small and well-formed, but
browned by labor in the sun. He set the two pails
of water that he had just brought from the spring
upon the bench beside the kitchen door, and turned
toward Mrs. Shannon a look which said, "What
next?"
"Now go and split the stove wood for to-morrow's
baking," said the woman.
The boy turned to obey.
"Hold on, Harry," said John Shannon, rising, "I'll
split the wood, boy. Sit down and rest."
Mrs. Shannon bit her lips and frowned, but said
nothing. The boy went to the porch in front of the
house and sat down on the bench, but not to read.
He gazed dreamily out across the fields that lay be-
fore him. The woods beyond were growing indis-
tinct in the twilight gloom that moved slowly on
from the east, and into the soul of the boy crept the
shadows of the past — a past, brief, it is true, but full
of sorrows that had darkened his young life, as the
evening shades darkened the landscape.
Dim as the outline of the distant wood rose a half-
remembered scene before his mental vision. A cot-
tage in the suburbs of a great city. A fair-haired,
blue-eyed woman, at whose feet he sat, or about
whose knees he clung with childish affection, or who
bent tenderly above him at night to press fond kisses
upon his sleepy lids until he sank into sweet forget-
fulness. Then there came memories of a dark-haired,
dark whiskered man whom he used to follow with tot-
tering steps to the gate in the morning and meet at
the same place in the evening with glad shouts of
"papa, papa," and who used to snatch him up in his
stalwart arms and press him fondly to his heart, then
set him astride his shoulder and prance like a boy
up the gravel walk to meet the blue-eyed woman,
whom he clasped with the child tenderly in his arms.
The vision faded out, and was replaced by another,
in which that stalwart man lay stretched, pallid and
helpless, upon the bed, and there were light steps and
whispered words by strange people, who came steal-
ing in and out, until at last there were tears and sobs,
and the blue-eyed woman clasped him convulsively
to her bosom and called him her poor fatherless boy.
Then the little cottage and its surroundings faded
away, and another scene arose somewhat more dis-
tinctly. This was of a little room at the top of a high
house, amid the noise and bustle of the great city,
and of his pale, sad-eyed mamma toiling wearily with
her needle for bread. There were days and days of
this monotonous scene, but at last came again the
pallid form on the bed — the fair-haired woman this
time — but there was no gentle stealing about the
room by kind neighbors, no low whispered words of
sympathy, but once in a great while a little, dark,
quick-stepping man came and looked at his mamma
and left something in a little bottle which she had
hardly strength to reach from the chair at the bed-
side, and went away without a word. And the poor
woman would draw the child's head against her bo-
som and say, 'Father in heaven, befriend my poor
orphan boy."
At last came the memory of a time when he grew
hungry, oh so hungry, and he called to his mamma,
but she did not answer him, and he thought she was
asleep. He took her thin, pale hand that had fallen
over the edge of the bed, and tried to wake her, but
she lay so still, and her hand was so cold, that he was
chilled with a fear he could not understand, and stole
away into the corner of the room and sobbed himself
asleep. When he awoke his mamma was gone, and
a great rough man came and carried him away, very
tenderly though, and so kindly that he was not afraid,
but lay in his arms and cried for his mamma.
The next scene that arose through the fast deep-
ening shadows was of a large house on a place sur-
rounded by water. This house was filled with chil-
dren of all ages, who used to sleep in little cots set
in a row along the wall, and eat at a long, bare table
in a great hall. How long he remained here he
could not remember, but the next change came
when he and hundreds of other children journeyed
westward on the cars, stopping at various towns,
where people came to examine them as they might
inspect sheep offered at the market, and to select
and purchase such as suited their fancy. Then he
remembered that they came to the town of Ayre, in
Indiana, as he afterward learned, where he was
chosen by John Shannon, his present master, and
taken home, six miles into the country, in a great.
jolting wagon. He recalled the first night in the
little close room, which was assigned to him in the
farmer's house, and which he had occupied through
all the long ten years that he had been sheltered by
the farmer, and scolded and beaten by the farmer's
wife. Tears stole down the cheeks of the boy as
his mind flitted to that dimly-remembered past, but
he brushed them away, shut out the sweet but sor-
rowful recollection, and sat pondering upon his pres-
ent situation. He loved and honored the farmer, for
he had been a kind master to him; but he hated the
farmer's wife with all his boyish ardor, for she had
made his life a torment. There could be no reason
for the woman's conduct, except a naturally petulant
and tyrannical disposition, which exercised itself
upon the defenseless boy as being the object most
available for the purpose. John Shannon had en-
deavored to do his duty by the poor orphan lad who
had fallen to his care. He fed him well, clothed
him as well as his wife would permit, and sent him
to school three months every winter. His school-
days were days of comparative happiness to the boy.
Naturally intelligent and ambitious, he won the favor
of the various teachers under whom he studied from
time to time, and who encouraged him in the acqui-
sition of knowledge, and he soon made himself mas-
ter of all the branches taught in the country school
which he attended. And he even progressed beyond
this by the aid of books borrowed from the masters,
and under such instruction as they willingly gave him
before and after school hours. The study of these
books at home was one source of complaint for Mrs
Shannon. Almost entirely uneducated herself, she
could not appreciate the yearning desire of the boy
for knowledge, nor understand that ambition to rise
to better things which burned in his soul and gave
shape to all his actions. Like the goose in the fable,
she had a young eagle for a nestling, and wondered
that he should long to exercise his growing pinions
in flight. His boyish spirit rebelled against her petty
tyranny. He had no antipathy to labor. For John
Shannon he would do anything that a boy of his age
could do. He worked from morning till night, side
by side with the farmer in the field, besides doing in-
numerable "chores" about the house, both morning
and evening. It was liot the work. It was the per-
petual fault-finding, the cruel taunts of poverty and
dependence, that stung his soul, until at last his
heart grew sick of such a life, and, as he sat there in
the twilight, his whole being thrilled with the sad
memories of his early childhood, he resolved to end
his bondage — to run away.
With Harry Lawson, to resolve was to act. He
stopped not to consider where he should go, nor
what he should do to earn his living. Anywhere to
escape the persecutions of his mistress; anything to
eat without torment the bread of honest labor.
Yet he thought of the kind-hearted farmer with
regret. He, at least, would miss him, and perhaps
think him ungrateful. He would like to bid him
good-bye, and thank him for his kindness, but to do
so would only defeat his object. No, he would
write and leave the letter in his room. They would
find it in the morning, but he would then be beyond
pursuit. While he sat planning thus the night stole
on unheeded, and the first intimation he had of the
lateness of the hour was the sharp voice of Mrs.
Shannon —
"Harry Lawson, are you going to stay up all
night? Get off to bed with you; I want to shut up
the house. And see that you don't lay snoozing in
bed in the morning, when you ought to be out milk-
ing the cows. To-morrow's baking day, and I want
none of your laziness, I tell you."
Harry arose without a word, and retired to his lit-
tle room in the loft, but not to sleep. He sat down
on the side of the bed till all was still in the house,
then, from a nook under the rafters, he took a little
piece of candle that he had hidden to enable him to
study at night when he wished to do so, and lighting
it, sat down on the floor beside the box in which he
kept his clothes, to write his letter. And this is
what John Shannon found on the bed next morning,
when, after calling the boy several times and getting
no answer, he ascended to his room:
Mr. Shannon: — My second father, for as such I will always
think of you, I am going to do what you will think very wrong.
I am going to run away. I can not stand this life any longer.
You have always been kind to me, and I thank you. I hope that
my labor has paid you for the expense you have been to on my ac-
count. I do not know where I shall go nor what I shall do, but do not be uneasy on my account, for I will get along some way. I
will take my clothes, and I hope you think I have paid for
them. Good-bye, and don't think hard of me. Good-bye, Mother
Shannon; you might have made the poor motherless boy love you,
but you have chosen to hate him. I know you will be glad to get
rid of me. Harry Lawson.
He made a little bundle of the clothes he was wont
to wear to church on Sunday, and stole silently out
into the darkness.
John Shannon read Harry's letter to his wife, and
with a great sobbing sigh walked out to the barn
with his head bowed upon his breast. Mrs. Shan-
non stood for a moment like one dazed with sudden
terror, and then sat down and cried as though her
heart would break. If Harry could have seen her
then he would scarcely have believed the evidence of
his senses.
Such paradoxes are there in human nature.
