To be sure I went now and then to my lessons. Anne had been brisk to seek forth a school; for she refused to grow up in ignorance, and even cherished a plan to one day teach classes from a book herself. Being established, she drew me after her, using both persuasion and force to that end, and to keep me in a way of enlightenment, invented a system of rewards and punishments, mainly the former, by which according to my merit I was to suffer or gain.
This temple of learning to which Anne lured me was nothing vast, being no bigger than one room. In lieu of a blackboard there was a box of clean white sand wherewith to teach dullards of my age and sort their alphabet. That feat of education the pedagogue in charge – a somber personage, he, and full of bitter muscularities – accomplished by tracing the letter in the sand. This he did with the point of a hickory ruler, which weapon was never out of his hand, and served in moments of thickness as a wand of inspiration, being laid across the dull one’s back by way of brightening his wits. More than once I was made wiser in this fashion; and I found such stimulus to go much against the grain and to grievously rub wrong-wise the fur of my fancy.
These hickory drubbings to make me quicker, falling as thickly as October’s leaves, went short of their purpose. On the heels of one of them I would run from my lessons for a week on end. To be brief with these matters of schools and books and alphabets and hickory beatings, I went to my classes for a day, only to hide from them for a week; as might be guessed, the system collected but a scanty erudition.
It is a pity, too: that question of education cannot too much invite an emphasis. It is only when one is young that one may be book-taught, just as the time of spring is the time for seed. There goes a byword of an old dog and a new trick, and I should say it meant a man when he is thirty or forty with a book; for, though driven by all the power of shame, I in vain strove with.
What was utmost in me to repair in middle years the loss of those schooldays wasted away. I could come by no advance; the currents of habitual ignorance were too strong and I made no head against them. You think I pause a deal over my want of letters? I tell you it is the thing I have most mourned in all my life.
When a fugitive from lessons, I would stay away from my home. This was because I must manage an escape from Anne; should she find me I was lost, and nothing for it save to be dragged again to school. The look of grief in her brown eyes meant ever defeat for me. My only safety was to turn myself out of doors and play the exile.
This vagabondage was pleasant enough, since it served to feed my native vagrancy of temper. And I fared well, too; for I grew into a kind of cateran, and was out of my sleeping lair with the sun to follow the milkman and baker on their rounds. Coming betimes to the doors of customers who still snored between their sheets, these merchants left their wares in areas. That was all my worst need asked; by what time they doubled the nearest corner I had made my swoop and was fed for the whole of a day.
Moreover, I knew a way to pick up coppers. On a nearby corner in the Bowery a great auction of horses was going. Being light and little, and having besides a lively inclination for horses, I was thrown upon the backs of ones put up for sale to show their paces. For each of these mounts I came the better off by five cents, and on lucky days have made as much as the half of a dollar at that trade. As for a bed, if it were summer time, what should be finer than the docks? Or if winter, then the fire-rooms of the tugs, with the engineers and stokers whereof I made it my care to be friendly? I was always ready to throw off a line, or polish a lantern, or, when a tug was at the wharf, run to the nearest tap-room and fetch a pail of beer; for which good deeds the East River went thickly dotted of my allies before ever I touched the age of ten.
These meager etchings give some picture of what was my earlier life, the major share of which I ran wild about the streets. Neither my father nor my mother lived in any command of me, and the parish priest failed as dismally as did they when he sought to confine my conduct to a rule. That hickory-wielding dominie, with his sandbox and alphabet, was a priest; and he gave me such a distaste of the clergy that I rolled away from their touch like quicksilver. Anne’s tears and the soft voice of her were what I feared, and so I kept as much as possible beyond their spell.
Coming now to a day when I began first to consider existence as a problem serious, I must tell you how my lone sole claim to eminence abode in the fact that, lung and limb, I was as strong and tireless as any bison or any bear. It was my capital, my one virtue, the mark that set me above my fellows. This story of vast strength sounds the more strange, since I was under rather than above the common height, and never, until when in later life I took on a thickness of fat, scaled heavier than one hundred and forty pounds. Thus it stood, however, that my muscle strength, even as a youth, went so far beyond what might be called legitimate that it became as a proverb in the mouths of people. The gift was a kind of genius; I tell of it particularly because it turned to be the ladder whereby I climbed into the first of my fortunes. Without it, sure, I never would have lifted myself above the gutter levels of my mates, nor fingered a splinter of those millions that now lie banked and waiting to my name and hand.
CHAPTER II – THE BOSS MEETS WITH POLITICS
IT was when I was in my fifteenth year that face to face I first met politics. Or to fit the phrase more nearly with the fact, I should say it was then when politics met me. Nor was that meeting in its incident one soon to slip from memory. It carried for a darkling element the locking of me in a graceless cell, and that is an adventure sure to leave its impress. The more if one be young, since the trail of events is ever deepest where the ground is soft. It is no wonder the business lies in my mind like a black cameo. It was my first captivity, and there will come on one no greater horror than seizes him when for the earliest time he hears bars and bolts grate home behind him.
On that day, had one found and measured me he would not have called me a child of thoughts or books or alcoves. My nature was as unkempt as the streets. Still, in a turbid way and to broadest banks, the currents of my sentiment were running for honesty and truth. Also, while I wasted no space over the question, I took it as I took the skies above me that law was for folk guilty of wrong, while justice even against odds of power would never fail the weak and right. My eyes were to be opened; I was to be shown the lesson of Tammany, and how law would bend and judges bow before the mighty breath of the machine.
It was in the long shadows of an August afternoon when the Southhampton boat was docked – a clipper of the Black Ball line. I stood looking on; my leisure was spent about the river front, for I was as fond of the water as a petrel. The passengers came thronging down the gang-plank; once ashore, many of the poorer steerage sort stood about in misty bewilderment, not knowing the way to turn or where to go.
In that far day a special trade had grown up among the piers; the men to follow it were called hotel runners. These birds of prey met the ships to swoop on newcomers with lie and cheat, and carry them away to hostelries whose mean interests they served. These latter were the poorest in town, besides being often dens of wickedness.
As I moved boy-like in and out among the waiting groups of immigrants, a girl called to me. This girl was English, with yellow hair, and cheeks red as apples. I remember I thought her beautiful, and was the more to notice it since she seemed no older than myself. She was stark alone and a trifle frightened.
“Boy,” said Apple Cheek, “boy, where can I go for to-night? I have money, though not much, so it must not be a dear place.”
Before I could set my tongue to a reply, a runner known as Sheeny Joe had Apple Cheek by the arm and was for leading her away.
“Come with me,” said Sheeny Joe to Apple Cheek; “I will show you to a house, as neat as pins, and quiet as a church; kept it is by a Christian lady as wears out her eyes with searching of the scriptures. You can stay there as long as ever you likes for two shillin’ a day.”
This was reeled off by Sheeny Joe with a suave softness like the flow of treacle. He was cunning enough to give the charge in shillings so as to match the British ear and education of poor Apple