His Family by Ernest Poole (popular ebook readers txt) 📕

And this she had set out to do. Many nights in the autumn Roger went down to the school, to try to get some clear idea of this vision of hers for children, which in a vague way he could feel was so much larger than his own, for he had seen its driving force in the grip it had upon her life. At first he could make nothing of it at all; everywhere chaos met his eyes. But he found something formless, huge, that made to him a strong appeal.

The big building fairly hummed at night with numberless activities. Fathers, mothers and children came pouring in together and went skurrying off to their places. They learned to speak English, to read and write; grown men and women scowled and toiled over their arithmetic. They worked at trades in the various shops; they hammered and sawed and set up type; they cooked and sewed and gossiped. “The Young Galician Socialist Girls” debated on the question: “Resolved that woman suffrage has worked in Colorado.” “The Caruso Pleasure Club” gave a dance to “The Garibaldi Whirlwinds.” An orchestra rehearsed like mad. They searched their memories for the songs and all the folk tales they had heard in peasant huts in Italy, in hamlets along rocky coasts, in the dark old ghettos of crowded towns in Poland and in Russia. And some of these songs were sung in school, and some of these tales were dramatized here. Children and parents all took part. And speakers emerged from the neighborhood. It was at times appalling, the number of young Italians and Jews who had ideas to give forth to their friends on socialism, poverty, marriage and religion, and all the other questions that rose among these immigrants jammed into this tenement hive. But when there were too many of these self-appointed guides, the neighborhood shut down on them.

“We don’t want,” declared one indignant old woman, “that every young loafer should shout in our face!”

Roger was slowly attracted into this enormous family life, and yielding to an impulse he took charge of a boys’ club which met on Thursday evenings there. He knew well this job of fathering a small jovial group of lads; he had done it before, many years ago, in the mission school, to please his wife; he felt himself back on familiar ground. And from this point of vantage, with something definite he could do, he watched with an interest more clear the school form steadily closer ties with the tenements that hedged it ’round, gathering its big family. And this family by slow degrees began to make itself a part of the daily life of Roger’s house. Committees held their meetings here, teachers dropped in frequently, and Roger invited the boys in his club to come up and see him whenever they liked.

His most frequent visitor was Johnny Geer, the cripple. He was working in Roger’s office now and the two had soon become close friends. John kept himself so neat and clean, he displayed such a keen interest in all the details of office work, and he showed such a beaming appreciation of anything that was done for him.

“That boy is getting a hold on me lately almost like a boy of my own,” Roger said one evening when Allan Baird was at the house. “He’s the pluckiest young un I ever met. I’ve put him to work in my private office, where he can use the sofa to rest, and I’ve made him my own stenographer⁠—partly because he’s so quick at dictation and partly to try to make him slow down. He has the mind of a race horse. He runs at night to libraries until I should think he’d go insane. And his body can’t stand it, he’s breaking down⁠—though whenever I ask him how he feels, he always says, ‘Fine, thank you.’ ” Here Roger turned to Allan. “I wish you’d take the boy,” he said, “to the finest specialist in town, and see what can be done for his spine. I’ll pay any price.”

“There won’t be any price,” said Allan, “but I’ll see to it at once.”

He had John examined the same week.

“Well?” asked Roger when next they met.

“Well,” said Baird, “it isn’t good news.”

“You mean he’s hopeless?” Allan nodded:

“It’s Pott’s disease, and it’s gone too far. John is eighteen. He may live to be thirty.”

“But I tell you, Baird, I’ll do anything!”

“There’s almost nothing you can do. If he had been taken when he was a baby, he might have been cured and given a chance. But the same mother who dropped him then, when she was full of liquor, just went to the druggist on her block, and after listening to his advice she bought some patent medicine, a steel jacket and some crutches, and thought she’d done her duty.”

“But there must be something we can do!” retorted Roger angrily.

“Yes,” said Baird, “we can make him a little more comfortable. And meanwhile we can help Deborah here to get hold of other boys like John and give ’em a chance before it’s too late⁠—keep them from being crippled for life because their mothers were too blind and ignorant to act in time.” Baird’s voice had a ring of bitterness.

“Most of ’em love their children,” Roger said uneasily. Baird turned on him a steady look.

“Love isn’t enough,” he retorted. “The time is coming very soon when we’ll have the right to guard the child not only when it’s a baby but even before it has been born.”

Roger drew closer to John after this. Often behind the beaming smile he would feel the pain and loneliness, and the angry grit which was fighting it down. And so he would ask John home to supper on nights when nobody else was there. One day late in the afternoon they were walking home together along the west side of Madison Square. The big open space was studded with lights sparkling up at