Mr. Blake's Walking-Stick

Edward Eggleston

Mr. Blake's Walking-Stick / A Christmas Story for Boys and Girls

PREFACE

I have meant to furnish a book that would serve for a Christmas present to Sunday-scholars, either from the school or from their teachers. I hope it is a story, however, appropriate to all seasons, and that it will enforce one of the most beautiful and one of the most frequently forgotten precepts of the Lord Jesus.

EDWARD EGGLESTON.

CHAPTER I

THE WALKING-STICK WALKS

Some men carry canes. Some men make the canes carry them. I never could tell just what Mr. Blake carried his cane for. I am sure it did not often feel his weight. For he was neither old, nor rich, nor lazy.

He was a tall, straight man, who walked as if he loved to walk, with a cheerful tread that was good to see. I am sure he didn’t carry the cane for show. It was not one of those little sickly yellow things, that some men nurse as tenderly as Miss Snooks nurses her lap-dog. It was a great black stick of solid ebony, with a box-wood head, and I think Mr. Blake carried it for company. And it had a face, like that of an old man, carved on one side of the box-wood head. Mr. Blake kept it ringing in a hearty way upon the pavement as he walked, and the boys would look up from their marbles when they heard it, and say: “There comes Mr. Blake, the minister!” And I think that nearly every invalid and poor person in Thornton knew the cheerful voice of the minister’s stout ebony stick.

It was a clear, crisp, sunshiny morning in December. The leaves were all gone, and the long lines of white frame houses that were hid away in the thick trees during the summer, showed themselves standing in straight rows now that the trees were bare. And Purser, Pond & Co.’s great factory on the brook in the valley below was plainly to be seen, with its long rows of windows shining and shimmering in the brilliant sun, and its brick chimney reached up like the Tower of Babel, and poured out a steady stream of dense, black smoke.

It was just such a shining winter morning. Mr. Blake and his walking-stick were just starting out for a walk together. “It’s a fine morning,” thought the minister, as he shut the parsonage gate. And when he struck the cane sharply on the stones it answered him cheerily: “It’s a fine morning!” The cane always agreed with Mr. Blake. So they were able to walk together, according to Scripture, because they were agreed.

Just as he came round the corner the minister found a party of boys waiting for him. They had already heard the cane remarking that it was a fine morning before Mr. Blake came in sight.

“Good morning! Mr. Blake,” said the three boys.

“Good morning, my boys; I’m glad to see you,” said the minister, and he clapped “Old Ebony” down on the sidewalk, and it said “I am glad to see you.”

“Mr. Blake!” said Fred White, scratching his brown head and looking a little puzzled. “Mr. Blake, if it ain’t any harm – if you don’t mind, you know, telling a fellow, – a boy, I mean – ” Just here he stopped talking; for though he kept on scratching vigorously, no more words would come; and comical Sammy Bantam, who stood alongside, whispered, “Keep a-scratching, Fred; the old cow will give down after a while!”

Then Fred laughed, and the other boys, and the minister laughed, and the cane could do nothing but stamp its foot in amusement.

“Well, Fred,” said the minister, “What is it? speak out.” But Fred couldn’t speak now for laughing, and Sammy had to do the talking himself. He was a stumpy boy, who had stopped off short; and you couldn’t guess his age, because his face was so much older than his body.

“You see, Mr. Blake,” said Sammy, “we boys wanted to know, – if there wasn’t any harm in your telling, – why, we wanted to know what kind of a thing we are going to have on Christmas at our Sunday-school.”

“Well, boys, I don’t know any more about it yet than you do. The teachers will talk it over at their next meeting. They have already settled some things, but I have not heard what.”

“I hope it will be something good to eat,” said Tommy Puffer. Tommy’s body looked for all the world like a pudding-bag. It was an india-rubber pudding-bag, though. I shouldn’t like to say that Tommy was a glutton. Not at all. But I am sure that no boy of his age could put out of sight, in the same space of time, so many dough-nuts, ginger-snaps, tea-cakes, apple-dumplings, pumpkin-pies, jelly-tarts, puddings, ice-creams, raisins, nuts, and other things of the sort. Other people stared at him in wonder. He was never too full to take anything that was offered him, and at parties his weak and foolish mother was always getting all she could to stuff Tommy with. So when Tommy said he hoped it would be something nice to eat, and rolled his soft lips about, as though he had a cream tart in his mouth, all the boys laughed, and Mr. Blake smiled. I think even the cane would have smiled if it had thought it polite.

“I hope it’ll be something pleasant,” said Fred Welch.

“So do I,” said stumpy little Tommy Bantam.

“So do I, boys,” said Mr. Blake, as he turned away; and all the way down the block Old Ebony kept calling back, “So do I, boys! so do I!”

Mr. Blake and his friend the cane kept on down the street, until they stood in front of a building that was called “The Yellow Row.” It was a long, two-story frame building, that had once been inhabited by genteel people. Why they ever built it in that shape, or why they daubed it with yellow paint, is more than I can tell. But it had gone out of fashion, and now it was, as the boys expressed it, “seedy.” Old hats and old clothes filled many of the places once filled by glass. Into one room of this row Mr. Blake entered, saying: —

“How are you, Aunt Parm’ly?”

“Howd’y, Mr. Blake, howd’y! I know’d you was a-comin’, honey, fer I hyeard the sound of yer cane afore you come in. I’m mis’able these yer days, thank you. I’se got a headache, an’ a backache, and a toothache in de boot.”

I suppose the poor old colored woman meant to say that she had a toothache “to boot.”

“You see, Mr. Blake, Jane’s got a little sumpin to do now, and we can git bread enough, thank the Lord, but as fer coal, that’s the hardest of all. We has to buy it by the bucketful, and that’s mity high at fifteen cents a bucket. An’ pears like we couldn’t never git nothin’ a-head on account of my roomatiz. Where de coal’s to come from dis ere winter I don’t know, cep de good Lord sends it down out of the sky and I reckon stone-coal don’t never come dat dar road.”

After some more talk, Mr. Blake went in to see Peter Sitles, the blind broom-maker.

“I hyeard yer stick, preacher Blake,” said Sitles. “That air stick o’ yourn’s better’n a whole rigimint of doctors fer the blues. An’ I’ve been a havin’ on the blues powerful bad, Mr. Blake, these yer last few days. I remembered what you was a-saying the last time you was here, about trustin’ of the good Lord. But I’ve had a purty consid’able heartache under my jacket fer all that. Now, there’s that Ben of mine,” and here Sitles pointed to a restless little fellow of nine years old, whose pants had been patched and pieced until they had more colors than Joseph’s coat. He was barefoot, ragged, and looked hungry, as some poor children always do. Their minds seem hungrier than their bodies. He was rocking a baby in an old cradle. “There’s Ben,” continued the blind man, “he’s as peart a boy as you ever see, preacher Blake, ef I do say it as hadn’t orter say it. Bennie hain’t got no clothes. I can’t beg. But Ben orter be in school.” Here Peter Sitles choked a little.

“How’s broom-making, Peter?” said the minister.

“Well, you see, it’s the machines as is a-spoiling us. The machines make brooms cheap, and what can a blind feller like me do agin the machines with nothing but my fingers? ’Tain’t no sort o’ use to butt my head agin the machines, when I ain’t got no eyes nother. It’s like a goat trying its head on a locomotive. Ef I could only eddicate Peter and the other two, I’d be satisfied. You see, I never had no book-larnin’ myself, and I can’t talk proper no more’n a cow can climb a tree.”

“But, Mr. Sitles, how much would a broom-machine cost you?” asked the minister.

“More’n it’s any use to think on. It’ll cost seventy dollars, and if it cost seventy cents ’twould be jest exactly seventy cents more’n I could afford to pay. For the money my ole woman gits fer washin’ don’t go noways at all towards feedin’ the four children, let alone buying me a machine.”

The minister looked at his cane, but it did not answer him. Something must be done. The minister was sure of that. Perhaps the walking-stick was, too. But what?

That was the question.

The minister told Sitles good-bye, and started to make other visits. And on the way the cane kept crying out, “Something must be done, – something MUST be done, – something MUST be done,” making the must ring out sharper every time. When Mr. Blake and the walking-stick got to the market-house, just as they turned off from Milk Street into the busier Main Street, the cane changed its tune and begun to say, “But what, – but what, – but WHAT, – but WHAT,” until it said it so sharply that the minister’s head ached, and he put Old Ebony under his arm, so that it couldn’t talk any more. It was a way he had of hushing it up when he wanted to think.

CHAPTER II

LONG-HEADED WILLIE

“De biskits is cold, and de steaks is cold as – as – ice, and dinner’s spiled!” said Curlypate, a girl about three years old, as Mr. Blake came in from his forenoon of visiting. She tried to look very much vexed and “put out,” but there was always either a smile or a cry hidden away in her dimpled cheek.

“Pshaw! Curlypate,” said Mr. Blake, as he put down his cane, “you don’t scold worth a cent!” And he lifted her up and kissed her.

And then Mamma Blake smiled, and they all sat down to the table. While they ate, Mr. Blake told about his morning visits, and spoke of Parm’ly without coal, and Peter Sitles with no broom-machine, and described little Ben Sitles’s hungry face, and told how he had visited the widow Martin, who had no sewing-machine, and who had to receive help from the overseer of the poor. The overseer told her that she must bind out her daughter, twelve years old, and her boy of ten, if she expected to have any help; and the mother’s heart was just about broken at the thought of losing her children.

Now, while all this was taking place, Willie Blake, the minister’s son, a boy about thirteen years of age, sat by the big porcelain water-pitcher, listening to all that was said. His deep blue eyes looked over the pitcher at his father, then at his mother, taking in all their descriptions of poverty with a wondrous pitifulness. But he did not say much. What went on in his long head I do not know, for his was one of those heads that projected forward and backward, and the top of which overhung the base, for all the world like a load of hay. Now and then his mother looked at him, as if she would like to see through his skull and read his thoughts. But I think she didn’t see anything but the straight, silken, fine, flossy hair, silvery white, touched a little bit, – only a little, – as he turned it in looking from one to the other, with a tinge of what people call a golden, but what is really a sort of a pleasant straw color. He usually talked, and asked questions, and laughed like other boys; but now he seemed to be swallowing the words of his father and mother more rapidly even than he did his dinner; for, like most boys, he ate as if it were a great waste of time to eat. But when he was done he did not hurry off as eagerly as usual to reading or to play. He sat and listened.

“What makes you look so sober, Willie?” asked Helen, his sister.

“What you thinkin’, Willie?” said Curlypate, peering through the pitcher handle at him.

“Willie,” broke in his father, “mamma and I are going to a wedding out at Sugar Hill” —

“Sugar Hill; O my!” broke in Curlypate.

“Out at Sugar Hill,” continued Mr. Blake, stroking the Curlypate, “and as I have some calls to make, we shall not be back till bedtime. I am sorry to keep you from your play this Saturday afternoon, but we have no other housekeeper but you and Helen. See that the children get their suppers early, and be careful about fire.”

I believe to “be careful about fire” is the last command that every parent gives to children on leaving them alone.

Now I know that people who write stories are very careful nowadays not to make their boys too good. I suppose that I ought to represent Willie as “taking on” a good deal when he found that he couldn’t play all Saturday afternoon, as he had expected. But I shall not. For one thing, at least, in my story, is true; that is, Willie. If I tell you that he is good you may believe it. I have seen him.

He only said, “Yes, sir.”

Mrs. Blake did not keep a girl. The minister did not get a small fortune of a salary. So it happened that Willie knew pretty well how to keep house. He was a good brave boy, never ashamed to help his mother in a right manly way. He could wash dishes and milk the cow, and often, when mamma had a sick-headache, had he gotten a good breakfast, never forgetting tea and toast for the invalid.

So Sancho, the Canadian pony, was harnessed to the minister’s rusty buggy, and Mr. and Mrs. Blake got in and told the children good-bye. Then Sancho started off, and had gone about ten steps, when he was suddenly reined up with a “Whoa!”

“Willie!” said Mr. Blake.

“Sir.”

“Be careful about fire.”

“Yes, sir.”

And then old blackey-brown Sancho moved on in a gentle trot, and Willie and Helen and Richard went into the house, where Curlypate had already gone, and where they found her on tiptoe, with her short little fingers in the sugar-bowl, trying in vain to find a lump that would not go to pieces in the vigorous squeeze that she gave it in her desire to make sure of it.

So Willie washed the dishes, while Helen wiped them, and Richard put them away, and they had a merry time, though Willie had to soothe several rising disputes between Helen and Richard. Then a glorious lot of wood was gotten in, and Helen came near sweeping a hole in the carpet in her eager desire to “surprise mamma,” Curlypate went in the parlor and piled things up in a wonderful way, declaring that she, too, was going to “susprise mamma.” And doubtless mamma would have felt no little surprise if she could have seen the parlor after Curlypate “put it to rights.”

Later in the evening the cow was milked, and a plain supper of bread and milk eaten. Then Richard and Curlypate were put away for the night. And presently Helen, who was bravely determined to keep Willie company, found her head trying to drop off her shoulders, and so she had to give up to the “sand man,” and go to bed.

CHAPTER III

THE WALKING-STICK A TALKING STICK

Willie was now all by himself. He put on more wood, and drew the rocking-chair up by the fire, and lay back in it. It was very still; he could hear every mouse that moved. The stillness seemed to settle clear down to his heart. Presently a wagon went clattering by. Then, as the sound died away in the distance, it seemed stiller than ever. Willie tried to sleep; but he couldn’t. He kept listening; and after all he was listening to nothing; nothing but that awful clock, that would keep up such a tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick. The curtains were down, and Willie didn’t dare to raise them, or to peep out. He could feel how dark it was out doors.

But presently he forgot the stillness. He fell to thinking of what Mr. Blake had said at dinner. He thought of poor old rheumatic Parm’ly, and her single bucket of coal at a time. He thought of the blind broom-maker who needed a broom-machine, and of the poor widow whose children must be taken away because the mother had no sewing-machine. All of these thoughts made the night seem dark, and they made Willie’s heart heavy. But the thoughts kept him company.

Then he wished he was rich, and he thought if he were as rich as Captain Purser, who owned the mill, he would give away sewing-machines to all poor widows who needed them. But pshaw! what was the use of wishing? His threadbare pantaloons told him how far off he was from being rich.

But he would go to the Polytechnic; he would become a civil engineer. He would make a fortune some day when he became celebrated. Then he would give widow Martin a sewing-machine. This was the nice castle in the air that Willie built. But just as he put on the last stone a single thought knocked it down.

What would become of the widow and her children while he was learning to be an engineer and making a fortune afterward? And where would he get the money to go to the Polytechnic? This last question Willie had asked every day for a year or two past.

Unable to solve this problem, his head grew tired, and he lay down on the lounge, saying to himself, “Something must be done!”

“Something must be done!” Willie was sure somebody spoke. He looked around. There was nobody in the room.

“Something must be done!” This time he saw in the corner of the room, barely visible in the shadow, his father’s cane. The voice seemed to come from that corner.

“Something MUST be done!” Yes, it was the cane. He could see its yellow head, and the face on one side was toward him. How bright its eyes were! It did not occur to Willie just then that there was anything surprising in the fact that the walking-stick had all at once become a talking stick.

“Something MUST be done!” said the cane, lifting its one foot up and bringing it down with emphasis at the word must. Willie felt pleased that the little old man – I mean the walking-stick – should come to his help.

“I tell you what,” said Old Ebony, hopping out of his shady corner; “I tell you what,” it said, and then stopped as if to reflect; then finished by saying, “It’s a shame!”

Willie was about to ask the cane to what he referred, but he thought best to wait till Old Ebony got ready to tell of his own accord. But the walking-stick did not think best to answer immediately, but took entirely a new and surprising track. It actually went to quoting Scripture!

“My eyes are dim,” said the cane, “and I never had much learning; canes weren’t sent to school when I was young. Won’t you read the thirty-fifth verse of the twentieth chapter of Acts.”

Willie turned to the stand and saw the Bible open at that verse. He did not feel surprised. It seemed natural enough to him. He read the verse, not aloud, but to himself, for Old Ebony seemed to hear his thoughts. He read: —

“Ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

“Now,” said the walking-stick, stepping or hopping up toward the lounge and leaning thoughtfully over the head of it, “Now, I say that it is a shame that when the birthday of that Lord Jesus, who gave himself away, and who said it is more blessed to give than to receive, comes round, all of you Sunday-school scholars are thinking only of what you are going to get.”

Willie was about to say that they gave as well as received on Christmas, and that his class had already raised the money to buy a Bible Dictionary for their teacher. But Old Ebony seemed to guess his thought, and he only said, “And that’s another shame!”

Willie couldn’t see how this could be, and he thought the walking-stick was using very strong language indeed. I think myself the cane spoke too sharply, for I don’t think the harm lies in giving to and receiving from our friends, but in neglecting the poor. But you don’t care what I think, you want to know what the cane said.

“I’m pretty well acquainted with Scripture,” said Old Ebony, “having spent fourteen years in company with a minister. Now won’t you please read the twelfth and thirteenth verses of the fourteenth chapter of” —

But before the cane could finish the sentence, Willie heard some one opening the door. It was his father. He looked round in bewilderment. The oil in the lamp had burned out, and it was dark. The fire was low, and the room chilly.

“Heigh-ho, Willie, my son,” said Mr. Blake, “where’s your light, and where’s your fire. This is a cold reception. What have you been doing?”

“Listening to the cane talk,” he replied; and thinking what a foolish answer that was, he put on some more coal, while his mother, who was lighting the lamp, said he must have been dreaming. The walking-stick stood in its corner, face to the wall, as if it had never been a talking stick.

CHAPTER IV

MR. BLAKE AGREES WITH THE WALKING-STICK

Early on Sunday morning Willie awoke and began to think about Sitles, and to wish he had money to buy him a broom-machine. And then he thought of widow Martin. But all his thinking would do no good. Then he thought of what Old Ebony had said, and he wished he could know what that text was that the cane was just going to quote.

“It was,” said Willie, “the twelfth and thirteenth verses of the fourteenth chapter of something. I’ll see.”

So he began with the beginning of the Bible, and looked first at Genesis xiv. 12, 13. But it was about the time when Abraham had heard of the capture of Lot and mustered his army to recapture him. He thought a minute.

“That can’t be what it is,” said Willie, “I’ll look at Exodus.”

In Exodus it was about standing still at the Red Sea and waiting for God’s salvation. It might mean that God would deliver the poor. But that was not just what the cane was talking about. It was about giving gifts to friends. So he went on to Leviticus. But it was about the wave offering, and the sin offering, and the burnt offering. That was not it. And so he went from book to book until he had reached the twelfth and thirteenth verses of the fourteenth chapter of the book of Judges. He was just reading in that place about Samson’s riddle, when his mamma called him to breakfast.

He was afraid to say anything about it at the table for fear of being laughed at. But he was full of what the walking-stick said. And at family worship his father read the twentieth chapter of Acts. When he came to the part about its being more blessed to give than to receive, Willie said, “That’s what the cane said.”

“What did you say?” asked his father.

“I was only thinking out loud,” said Willie.

“Don’t think out loud while I am reading,” said Mr. Blake.

Willie did not find time to look any further for the other verses. He wished his father had happened on them instead of the first text which the cane quoted.

In church he kept thinking all the time about the cane. “Now what could it mean by the twelfth and thirteenth verses of the fourteenth chapter? There isn’t anything in the Bible against giving away presents to one’s friends. It was only a dream anyhow, and maybe there’s nothing in it.”

But he forgot the services, I am sorry to say, in his thoughts. At last Mr. Blake arose to read his text. Willie looked at him, but thought of what the cane said. But what was it that attracted his attention so quickly?

“The twelfth and thirteenth verses” —

“Twelfth and thirteenth!” said Willie to himself.

“Of the fourteenth chapter,” said the minister.

“Fourteenth chapter!” said Willie, almost aloud.

“Of Luke.”

Willie was all ears, while Mr. Blake read: “Then said he also to him that bade him, When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbors, lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind.”

“That’s it!” he said, half aloud, but his mother jogged him.

The minister added the next verse also, and read: “And thou shalt be blessed, for they cannot recompense thee; for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.”

Willie had never listened to a sermon as he did to that. He stopped two or three times to wonder whether the cane had been actually about to repeat his father’s text to him, or whether he had not heard his father repeat it at some time, and had dreamed about it.

I am not going to tell you much about Mr. Blake’s sermon. It was a sermon that he and the walking-stick had prepared while they were going round among the poor. I think Mr. Blake did not strike his cane down on the sidewalk for nothing. Most of that sermon must have been hammered out in that way, when he and the walking-stick were saying, “Something must be done!” For that was just what that sermon said. It told about the wrong of forgetting, on the birthday of Christ, to do anything for the poor. It made everybody think. But Mr. Blake did not know how much of that sermon went into Willie Blake’s long head, as he sat there with his white full forehead turned up to his father.