“I—I—ah—write,” was the confused answer.
Perkins, fortunately, did not notice the confusion. “Oh, ho!” he said: “do you go in for newspaper work?”
“No, not for newspapers.”
“Oh, you’re an author, a regular out-and-outer. Well, don’t you know, I thought you were somehow different from most fellows I’ve met. I never could see how you authors could stay away in small towns, where you hardly ever see anyone, and write about people as you do; but I suppose you get your people from books.”
“No, not entirely,” replied Brent, letting the mistake go. “There are plenty of interesting characters in a small town. Its life is just what the life of a larger city is, only the scale is smaller.”
“Well, if you’re on a search for characters, you’ll see some tonight that’ll be worth putting in your notebook. We’ll stop here first.”
The place before which they had stopped was surrounded by a high vine-covered lattice fence: over the entrance flamed forth in letters set with gaslights the words “Meyer’s Beer-Garden and Variety Hall. Welcome.” He could hear the sound of music within—a miserable orchestra, and a woman singing in a high strident voice. People were passing in and out of the place. He hesitated, and then, shaking himself, as if to shake off his scruples, turned towards the entrance. As he reached the door, a man who was standing beside it thrust a paper into his hand. He saw others refuse to take it as they passed. It was only the announcement of a temperance meeting at a neighbouring hall. He raised his eyes to find the gaze of the man riveted upon him.
“Don’t you go in there, young man,” he said. “You don’t look like you was used to this life. Come away. Remember, it’s the first step—”
“Chuck him,” said Perkins’s voice at his elbow. But something in the man’s face held him. A happy thought struck him. He turned to his companion and said, in a low voice, “I think I’ve found a character here already. Will you excuse me for a while?”
“Certainly. Business before pleasure. Pump him all you can, and then come in. You’ll find me at one of the tables on the farther side.” Perkins passed on.
“You won’t go in, my young friend?” said the temperance man.
“What is it to you whether I go in or stay out?” asked Brent, in a tone of assumed carelessness.
“I want to keep every man I kin from walkin’ the path that I walked and sufferin’ as I suffer.” He was seized with a fit of coughing. His face was old and very thin, and his hands, even in that hot air, were blue as with cold. “I wisht you’d go to our meetin’ tonight. We’ve got a powerful speaker there, that’ll show you the evils of drink better ’n I kin.”
“Where is this great meeting?” Brent tried to put a sneer into his voice, but an unaccountable tremor ruined its effect.
He was duly directed to the hall. “I may come around,” he said, carelessly, and sauntered off, leaving the man coughing beside the door of the beer-garden. “Given all of his life to the devil,” he mused, “drunk himself to death, and now seeking to steal into heaven by giving away a few tracts in his last worthless moments.” He had forgotten all about Perkins.
He strolled about for a while, and then, actuated by curiosity, sought out the hall where the meeting was being held. It was a rude place, in a poor neighbourhood. The meeting-room was up two flights of dingy, rickety stairs. Hither Brent found his way. His acquaintance of the street was there before him and sitting far to the front among those whom, by their position, the young man took to be the speakers of the evening. The room was half full of the motleyest crew that it had ever been his ill fortune to set eyes on. The flaring light of two lard-oil torches brought out the peculiarities of the queer crowd in fantastic prominence. There was everywhere an odour of work, but it did not hang chiefly about the men. The women were mostly little weazen-faced creatures, whom labour and ill treatment had rendered inexpressibly hideous. The men were chiefly of the reformed. The bleared eyes and bloated faces of some showed that their reformation must have been of very recent occurrence, while a certain unsteadiness in the conduct of others showed that with them the process had not taken place at all.
It was late, and a stuffy little man with a wheezy voice and a very red nose was holding forth on the evils of intemperance, very much to his own satisfaction evidently, and unmistakably to the weariness of his audience. Brent was glad when he sat down. Then there followed experiences from women whose husbands had been drunkards and from husbands whose wives had been similarly afflicted. It was all thoroughly uninteresting and commonplace.
The young man had closed his eyes, and, suppressing a yawn, had just determined to go home, when he was roused by a new stir in the meeting, and the voice of the wheezy man saying “And now, brothers, we are to have a great treat: we are to hear the story of the California Pilgrim, told by himself. Bless the Lord for his testimony! Go on, my brother.” Brent opened his eyes and took in the scene. Beside the chairman stood the emaciated form of his chance acquaintance. It was the man’s face, now seen in the clearer light, that struck him. It was thin, very thin, and of a deathly pallor. The long grey hair fell in a tumbled mass above the large hollow eyes. The cheekbones stood up prominently, and seemed almost bursting through the skin. His whole countenance was full of the terrible, hopeless tragedy of a ruined life. He began to speak.
“I’ ll have to be very brief, brothers and sisters, as I
