John Austin's Christmas

The advertisement read as follows I WANTËD- A ehippmg clerk, to recsive i rreight and load veste's ; references rcquired Apply between 10 and 12 at - ■- . The man who cut this from a nowspaper on the morning of the 'lith oí December was an idiot at the age of 50 tohave said i "TJkere are no Brothers Oheerybles nowadays. The very Jast of those good aouls died what 1 was a boy. As to the CheeryVie fortune, what was left of ifc- very little, in fact, for the brothers were not thrif ty - wout to distarit relatives wno are repotted to me to have been of a singularly miaerly and uncharitable disposition. Wanted a shipping clerk." Here John Austin pat the sorap of paper into a í&nk watíet, and tried qnite decidedly to prevent it from blooming and flowering there. Somehow or ocher every advertisement he had put in his pocket- and they had been innumerable - regularly passed through some horticultural forcing process before they sïmveled rtp and went into impalpable fragmenta-, "Likeair plaats,' the man addeï, " drawingtheir nourishment from nothing in particular, and blossoming quite in vacuo." Though John had a deoided tendency toward gushings eren aliowing that it was simply internal, itneverthqless was to be deprecated. A good deal of misery and trouble had hardened the man externally. Like water in the i-ock, his fancies trickled feebly inside of him, in a decidedly useless kind of way, but were fortunately so ünobtrttsive as scarcely to be ever Visible. Ver y possibly had some utüitarian hydraulic moralist bored into John Austin, aid laid on the pipes and mains, with the most laudable desire of beneflting a parched and thirsty public, it would all have resulted in a moet miserable failore. " A shipping clerk I" the man said as he took from off the shelf a fragment of bread. ' ' A windy berth on the whar ves 1 and what nnder the heavens do I know about it ? What I do know, is that my crust here is old, hard, and stale, on'd not in large quantity, and that I hn,ve precisely 25 cents left, or three 8-cent loaves of bread, just snfficient to carry me over until Monday nest; three whoie days, when, if I do not eam a dollar, this room of mine will have to be vacated. If snow would only fall, I might piek Tip some trifle that way by shoveling it off the sidewalks. In fact, I may be at this moment just skirmishingwith that terrible woh, starvatior. His lone howl may be supposed to bs reverberating i my ears, and I ought not to be eating this bit of bread with singular zest and appetito, but should shed tears over it, oaly that at 50 thi lachrymal ducts, if not dried up, are supposed to be frozen over. A shipping clerk ! Probability of chances against me, 59,000 to one. Nothing in the least preposseSSing about me- neither mirth, sprightliness, nor good looks. But yet," here John Austin picked a crumb from off his sleeve, ' ' there was once a young man, it was in Venice, who unloaded a ship coming from Crete or Candia, and out of a coarse package of cast-off clothing there tumbled a round, white pearl.wliich flashed a dainty sphere of lustrous opalescence in the gutter. It was within an ace of falling plump into the canal. That evening, when tho galleon was unloaded, the young man carried the pearl to his master, who, of course, embraced his shipping- clerk for joy. That old bale of goods, it seemed, by some strange luck contained treasures which had belonged j to the commander of the Dardanelles, Moldovangi Bassa by name, who, of course, under the circumstances, was an accredited foe of the repnblic, and his Í goods and chattels wore, therefore, confiscable as lawful prizes. I do not think the Council of Ten or the Doge were par-ticularly informed about it. When the package was opened, riches untold wero discovered, untarnished gems blazing amid a mass of filthy rags. " Onehalf is yours," said the master. "I will have Bono of them save this pearl, " replied the clerk; "and oh! my master, I would give it to the most beautiful, the chastest girl in Venice, thy daughter. " " Take tliem both," cricd the merchant. "And I have seen," added John Austin, with au astounding amount of convicöon, p.a he fleiahed his crust, "at the Metropoliten Museum of. Art, on free days, when it is open, and when I go there to keep warm, the very pi6ce of old majolica that shipping-clerk had made to present to kis mistress as a dedicatsry Bering expressive of his lovo. Yes, the absolute plate in which he put tho big pearl." The man's breakfast wáa over, and butfconing on his tbreadbare overcoat he hurried down the dirty stairs of his tenement-house, stopping just a moment to caress a little .girl who loitered on the landing. "See," said the Obild, showing a bit of faded silk, and holding up a needie in her eraall, blue üngers, f or it was bitterly eold and gusty in the passage, " mother bas given me a piece of an old dress ehe was turaing. If I only had some beads to trim it with ] I am going to mak o myself a doll's dress for Christmas. íf only I had a dolí to dress 1" " No doll I That is hard, little sister. And is to-morrow positively Christmas?" inquired John Austin, as if with some vague idea, for the ohild's sake, at least, that there was some possibility of making Christmas a movable holiday. "Mother had saved some moneyto buy me a doll, but father is worse, and the money had to be spent for ootigh mixture." "Yon do not say so!" The man's and was in his pocket. Had his twentyflve cents by any chance been divided up then, there might have been twenty cents between him and nothing. Now John Anstin was in tho atreets, and the stupid fellow was wöndering over a story he ïiad picked up somewhere, all about a great Russian Prince, in the time of Peter the Great, who happened to have been bom just about that time. How a peasant of me Ukraine, who never bsiore in his life had dono anything else but chop down fir trees with hishatchet, as if by inspiration, in anticipation of the happy event, under imperial command, Of course, had made n eoinplete set of automati? soldiers, an army in fact, with music and Generáis in front, and cavalry and artillery, and how it all worked, the soldiers presenting arms, the cavalry charging, the artillery anionading,and the trompet blöwing. John Austin saw i!i Ml, and had become even for the moment godfather to some possible Czar, when into one corner of his picture there was protruded a little wan face that ha' ntit even a doll, and the fancy faas gone. Mechanically walking along, John Austin now found himself quite suddenly amid an assemblsge of men and boys, all wanting to be ahipping clerks, in tbe act oí besieging a business h)use. "There are people enough here," thought John, "to furnish two men per package for every lot of goods to be shipped out of the port of New York for the next month. I wonder whether, in the present dearth of workf fin adVertisement headed, 'Kahds wanted,' might not bring out Briareus in person ?" Presently John had his innings. The fabitest appreciation of the postulant's presence on the part of a stripling in office, who cast a rapid side-glance on John Austin, assured the supplicsnt that at least his ohanoes of nlling the position were in the highest degree problemática!. " Perhaps that olerk," thought John Austin, "has been bred up in the house for this particular line of -duty, seleoting shipping clerks, and exercises his calling with some iine shadings of discrimination, which I can neither understand nor appreciate." "You are too oíd," said the "lerk. "How toooldf" "Wewtat ayöungman. Can't you understand ?" "Here is my name with good references. May I cali again?" ' ' Perfectly useless, " replied the young man. But John had pushed in to the clerk his rather dingy letter of recomrnendation, which told how the bearer had really. been confidential clerk for twenty years in a respectable house, and how by their failure, John Austin at the age of 50 had been turned adrift. "Isay - no use at all for this," cried the clerk, as he pieked up John's thumbmarked paper, and tried to shove it back through the pigeon-hole. But John Ausfin had gone. His rudo reception as the possible ineumbent of theposition advertised for had not disturbed him a partiële. His eSperience for the last year had been pretty much of the same character. John Austin went up Broadway with a brisk step. He t ould go to the Cooper Instituto or the Astor Library, and would pass some three hours there. The temperature there was always pleasant- he might read a book. Then there was a baker on Fourth avenue who sold a very superior loaf of bread for 8 C6nts. John Anstin knew that, for he was critical ia regard to the staff of life. He passed a stand by the City Hall, and remembered when cab-drivers always said to him, " Hack, sir ?" " That I inquiry," thought John Austin, "dependa solely upon how a man is dressed. Once they used to apostrophize me." John now pondered about clothes, and gazed at a large poster pasted against the front of a store, which annonnced "that for only thirty daysand ' no more,' the entire stock of ciothing would be dispose d of at retail." John Austin loitered for a moment, when two men came out of the door, evidently Hebrew priests, intent on a ciothing sacrifice. "It'sno use, Keuben, nobody is coming in as long as the hand-bills are not distributed," said one of the men. " Bring out a stack of them small bilis and get some man to distribute them. It eught to have been done two hours ago." " I should be only too glad to take the job, sir. I even think I have capabilities for that kind of thing," said John, stepping to the front. " Well you as anybody else," replied the clerk; "here, take hold," and John had some reams of papers stuck into his arms. "It'slö cents an hour until 4 o'clock. Now, work your passage and deal "em out lively. When all your bilis are out eome in for more." Fif teen cents an hour! Sixty cents; that was bread for another week. John Austin went to work cheerfully, though perhaps scarcely discrimina tingly, for he insisted on giving the shabbiest and most poorly-clad of the passers by his hand-bills. "If," thought John, "I only had the faith of the Buddhists who distribute pictures of prancing horses to weary travelers, or gayly-painted boats to those foundering at sea, every one of these poor flimsy bits of paper, with probably specious announcements of shoddy coats printed on them, would bestow in an actual way on shivering humanity the heaviest kinds of ulsters and the warmest of pea jackets. " What harvest John Austin sowed outside to be garnered inside will never be known. At 4 o'clock 60 cents was handed him, and he was discharged. Sixty cents would buy him a hot meal, and the man had not had one for a week. He knew where 15 cente would get a conree but tatisfactory dinner. It was thriftless on his part, but he dived down a narrow streec leiding to the North river quest of food. Just a block froni Broadway a vender pusbed a doil into his face. It was a coarse, vulgar, rubiouncï doll, of primitivo type, decidedly aroliaio in character. It had gorgon eyei, with fiat plastered hair, with no possible regard to proportion, sawdust perhaps reiusing to mold itself into anything symmetrical. Had he bargained an instant for the doll or exarained it critically, he would have perceived that the doll was minus a leg. "But 10 cents was very cheap," John Austin tUought, " for even an ugly doll with a squeak in it." He had quite a decided idea tixet somabody wanted a doll, and vaguely now that somebody else wanted a dinner. He bougiit the doll with the same airy grace that would have shown a young millionaire disdaining to chaffer with a jeweler as to the price of a solitaire diamond which wss to deck the hand of his betrothed on Christmas day. It was a foolish thing for a man with 85 cents in ttw worldi He pushed tho doll, üow done up in a piecè of coarse paper, int his pocket. " Don't," said the vender ; "don't ram her in your pocket that way, or you will bust her, and then your little 'nn would be disappointed." " Oh, thank you," said Austin, as he extricated the doll and, carried it in his hand. It -was üalf-past 4 when Jobn Austin. still hungry, remembered that hc had better go to that office where a shippingclerk was wanted, and get baok his papers. He knew that he had not even the ghost of a chahöe. The oliice was empty now. "Back again! Well, now, I closed up that annoying advertisement business som e three hours ago," said the clerk. " Didn't I teil you yon wouldn't suit í We are just shutting up. Don't bother. The place is fllled." " Would you kindly return me my letter of recommendation i" "Your papers! Oh, you are the party that shoved papers on me ! Indeed ! Just as if my life wasn't worn out by everybody in the world shoving papers on me. Do you suppose I am going to hunt them up now ? Just as likely thoy are in the waste-basket. See here, you are a regular nuisance hanging around. All you fellows answering advertisements are just the same. Papers ! Stuff ! Get somebody else to write you up a brand-new lot of papers." " But," gasped out John. The slide before the pigeon-hole was pushed to with a snap, and a yoice cried out from behind the partition, " Olear out. I didn't teil you to leave your papers, did I?" John was dismayed. His pbor, useless old letter he feit was the barest shred of a seeming respectability which was left him. He had been treated most discourteously. There was a table near. John dropped his package on the table, and rapped vigorously with both hands on the gláss pai-tition. "If you are goinsr to make a row," said the voice, " if I can't put you out the porter must." John Austin was on his inettle now, and feit prepared for any ëmergency, when a gentleman of about Jolru's age entered. " What is this most unseemly disturbance ? What is the matter? What do you want ? This is my office, sir." Saying this the gentleman, who had several bundies under his arm, placed them on the table. "Simply this, sir," said John Austin; "I answeied in person an advertisement for ashipping clerk - referencerequired. I left a letter of recommendation with your clerk. He refuses to return it to me, and has been, if not uncommonly rude, at least singularly abusive. These papers are all I have in the world." " But, sir," said the clerk, addressing his principal, "I told this party not to leave his papers, and the party forced them on rre. I might find thein, of course. If tho party will cali to-morrow - no; that is Christmas - on Monday next"-= "You will be good enough to find them for this person at once, if he requires them. It is optional with Mm whether Monday next will áo," and saying this in an imperativo way the gentleman picked up his pareéis and left. There was some grumbling behind the sereen. " I want them now," said John Austin, " if you and I have io stay here all night." In about fifteen minutes afterward, when the young gentleman had blacked his boots in the most careful marnier and wnshed his hands, in sign of a capitulatiou a broom-handle was protruded over the partition, on the end of whieh broom-stick there was a letter, and both were pitohed over on to the floor. Indifl'erent as to the further insult, John picked up his letter, took his doll package from the table, and went horoeward. In a moment he had regained his equanimity. " You will come into my room for a moment, little sister," said John as he met the chiid, "always providing your dress is dono. But how shall I ever teil whother it -will fit? ' "You have not a real, true doll for me V' cried out the 'child, bounding up the stairs after him. ' ' I have such grave doubts whether your dress will become her," said John, exhibiting the package. " It wouldn't matter," exclaimed tLe child. "Well, then." John untied the string, glauced at the contents, but amazeïnent ! It was not his doll. What he held concealed, for he had run now into a corner of the room, was the personification of beauty, a French doll - one of those only tho most elegant children deign to i!aywith. A doll of Paris make, in all the supple grace of a kid epidermis and with a coiffure of elabórate character. A doll such as flnds its way to South America, which, dressed in silk and decked with gema, Indiana and negroes worship at their festas. John even dared to exert a gentle pressure on the bosom and back of the doll, but no rough sound came. It struck him that such superlativo dolls must be necessarily soulless images, mere tu'ips, in fact, wanting perfume. They were made daintily pretty, but dumb and voiceless. There was no room in them f er anything more. All had to be sacrificed to outward appearances. Fortunately the child knew nothing of what was passing in the man's mind. " My little girl," said he, "you know now, a't least, that I have something for you. You must be satisfied with an outside look now. Go finish your dress, and, if indeed to-morrow is Christmas, I think you may cemnt on some kind of a doll." "All righfc. I am so glad. Pleaso fciss me. May I teil mother !" "Yes - now olear out.', John Austin passed his bands through his short gray hair, and was tlazed for a moment, then looked at the paper whioh enveloped the doll. It bore an addreFS,somewhere up one of the avenues. " It's a longish walk for a man who has only ed - but think oí the disappointment in store for thajt gentleman's daughter;" and with this John hurried out, Dent on the interchahge. Öf oourse it was a fine honse ín the vestibule of which John Austin stöod in about an honr and a half afterward. "All right," said the man-servant. " Leáve your bundie." " Bu{ it aiu't all right. Your master took mj package and lef t his in its place. I do not want to trouble him, bnt only ask him to give me back my own. He will understand all ábout it." John Austin, máy not have been said to have been forced to cool his heels very long in the vestibule, for, tired out with his kmg walk, he sauk into a hall chair, and the surroundmgs were so warm and comfortable that he awoke" from a doze when a voice said: "Quite curious, indeed. My fault entirely. See here, my good man, I must positively have made away with your package, but exactly how or under what circumstances I am completely in the dark about. Would you kindly inform me ? Yes, I think this is my dolL I am quite decided on this point, and this ought to be yours. My wife laughed in quite an astounding way when I display ed what, if I may be allo wed to desígnate it, not being familiar with the subject, is rather a substantial and sohd piece of work in the doll way - quite lasting, in fact. But, notwithstanding its comparativo excellence, I am rather inclined to think my little girl might not have cherished your doll as it deserved." Here the master of the house put on a pair of eye-glasses and looked at both dolls critically, and then at John Austin. "I am eiceedingly obliged to you for your kindness and the trouble you must have taken about this trifle, for we were in the very act of sending out foranother doll - more dol)3, in fact. But, as I was saying, might I request söme clue as to how this quite ludicrous, may ï say ridiculons, interchange was accomplished ? My curiosity is quite aroused." John Austin was on the point of telling him the prettiest of Perrault's stories, and would have einbroidered into the theme the "ArabianNights," for he feit ho might have an audience; but he checked himself and only said, " I was a disappointed shipping-clerk today; I was one of the unlucky, not wanted. You must have put your doll on the table, and, as you left flrst, you iook mine.' "Bless me ! It must be exactly as you state it. You will excuso the absurd blunder on my part. I have not the faintest recollection of ever having seen you before. Ah! indeed! we wanted a shipping clerk, did we ? " "I suppose so," said John bluntly. "You lcok tired, will you not take a glass of wine ? Would you allow me to offer you some slight pecuniary re - " John covered his face with his hands - perhaps an empty stomach had made him weak - for there was a tear there. He had never been so poör and wretohed before ; but yet he never could rective a penny he had not bravely earned. " I am sorry, my good man. I meant no offense. Was this doll for your öwn child ? "No, sir ; I havo no children." "You do not seem very well off in the way this world goes. Was the situation you sought for a necessity ? " John Austin, had he a grain of sense, would have stated that for him it was a place at once or starvation. But he did no such thing ; he simply took the proffered glasa of wine, bowed to the master of the house, and kept his peace. He was about going when the gentleman said, "Yon are sure you have the right dol-" ' ' Oertain of it. My doll is done up in coarse straw paper - yours in best Manila," replied John, rather gruffly. "Pray, write your address, then, on sornething- here on the paper of my doll. Thanks," and the servant showed John Austin the door. En route homeward the hungry man bought his bread and ate it with thankfulness. It was after 9 o'clock when the girl got her doll. "I give it to you now," said John Austin ; " hold it fast to your bosom all night, or it might be changed before morning." Though there aro no posfcmen of, a Christmas dayin New York, John Aus tin received a note, ho wever, on that day, requesting his presence on Monday morning, the 28th of December, at a cortain office where a shipping clerk was wnted. " It seems that you are the lucky man, after all," said the young clerk in the office, looking still quite deflactly at John Austin. "Godblessmel you don't say so !" esclaimed John. " Yes ; the head of the house, who never does interfere, has taken ou liimself to mix things up dreadfully. Overslaughed everybody. Now, I beg yon to think that I have had no hand in it. I even faucy you do not imagine that you are indebted to me for the position." " What a rude little jackanapes you must be," replied John Austin. " Still, thongh you annoyed me on tho 24tb, I can't bear you much of a grudge to-day, after Christmaa, for, if you had not been impertinent, why your chief wonld never have interfered, and so made way with my doll." "DoJl! See here, my old party, if you ain't quite crazy, you are likely soon to become a lunatic. ' A precious shipping-clerk you wili mako, and the lots of papers tliat will be stuck at me when I have to hunt for your lost goods. Here, don't bother me. Report to the manager - that man thero, biting his neus." And the slide was snapped to with a spiteful jerk. John Austin was regularly installed as shipping-clerk. When he had held the position for a day he chanced to meet the head of the house. The shipping-clerk, as he saluted his chief politely, might have then been inclined to gush the least possible bit, but the master gazed at him in a vacant kind of way, for John Austin had entirely passed out of his mind. Perhaps the duties imposed on Austin are the only ones the man can fill now. The aggressive clerk's prophecy about packages going astray may in time become trae. When spring sets in it is quite likely that John Austin, reclining against a wharf timber, his eyes half closed, may be freighting his fancies like argosies with all kinds of useless and perishable goods, and will be forwarding impossible packages to those drifting clouds wbich float in the summer skies. Btrange to say, like many meii's feeble romances, which acoidentally center aronnd themselves, the causes of which ure ignored, John Austin will always think he owed his place, and relief from misery and starvation, to his famous letter of recommendation. As to bis Christmas doll, he ontirely ignored it. "We can breed horses, but not men," says au English paper.