| 271A CASE OF LOVE.
It was not duty that made him do it. It was not even the necessity of caring his daily bread. It was love. No one could think it anything else. No one in the tenement knew anything about his past history. He had only just come from Germany, and he had brought his birds with him. There were eighty of them, all singers. When the sun first got at the cages in the morning there was such a clangor of sweet sounds as aroused every other inmate of the tenement, and so far from soothing their savage breasts, converted them into veritable savages.
But no one doubted that it was a case of love. For Henry Strange cared for nothing but his birds. The neighbors seeing him at the window noticed that he never had even the companionship of a pipe. He never had a book or paper in his hand. He made no friends. He was content. His one passion fed him. Day and night he was satisfied to live there among his birds. to which he devoted his whole life/ That it was not duty that made him care for them was evident from the fact as the birds. while he cleaned their cages, and put the water and seed in the little sroughs. And a person does not sing when he is merely doing his duty. And though the birds represented bread and butter, he parted from them with reluctance, and appeared not to court custom in any way.
He was a wonderful looking little old man. It was difficult to see how so many wrinkles could be got on one human face. The skin bore a resemblance to those engravings which it used to be the delight of artists to turn out, covered with delicate, yet indellible cross lines.
Above his crisp, white curls set a skull cap of faded maroon velvet, which looked as if it had seen constant wear since first those locks lost the brown luster of their earlier days. His eyes were so bright and brown and beadlike that it was difficult to believe he had not taken them from the heads of some of his pets. His voice was a faisetto, broken a little in quality, but shrilly sweet like the tones of his canaries.
This one bare room in which he lived was his only apartment. It was on the ground floor of the tenement, and had originally been built for a little cigar and news stand for the occommodation of the ladies and gentlemen above stairs. But a difference of opinion between Mrs. O'Flarity, who lived in the third story back, and the young man who had kept the cigars, caused the police to interfere. The unfeeling creditors of the young plan had then stepped in. and the consequences were that the store was empty just when Henry Strange landed with his eighty canaries. A tiny stove, an iron cut, with some gray blankets upon it, a cupboard which held his bird feed and the little boxes of gravel for them, and some chairs composed the furnishings. There were no curtains at the windows, but this does not matter. For the birds were not embaressed at being looked at while they made their toilets, and Henry Strange seemed to confine his toilet to taking off his skull cap when he went to bed, and putting it on in the morning.
His birds had the peculiarity of being all of a bright and extraordinary yellow. One day Madam Schillenhoffer, who kept the bread shop near and to whom the old man went for his rolls, ventured to ask him how it was that these birds were so much more beautiful than caged canaries ordinarily were. And it was then that the recluse for the first time broke out loquacity.
He was just going out with his rolls in little paper bag when she asked the question, but he stopped immediately and turned his sharp, little eyes on her: He came back into the counter.
"Mme. Schillenhoffer has noticed that?" he said in his own tongue. "Not many notice. Or they think it is merely because I keep the birds clean. They are mistaken. For fifty years have I raised canaries. All these I have are from the first two birds that my mother gave to me when I left her home. She also was fond of canaries. Ah! those birds sang! Every bird my mother looked at became a good singer. So I used to tell her. But I noticed that they were not beautiful as to plumage. And I see there is a reason. Because nature originally made them very bright on the breast and about the wings. So I set me to thinking of the reason of it. And it came to me how among men and women none cared to be beautiful unless two things were possessed by them. The first of these things is liberty. The second is love. I noticed how the maids and how the young men attired themselves before marriage, and during the honeymoon. And I said this is a law of nature. It is impossible to improve on nature. I said each spring I will let my birds together. They shall take their choice of innies. They shall have love. Madam will see the drift of my philosophy. It is very simple. Every bird and beast and man wants the right of selection. Each individual living thing knows better than anyone else what is necessary to him for his own happiness. This is a very great country because it recognizes that every man has alright to the pursuit of happiness. Once I read that ever in Germany. Then I said I will go thither. I like a country where it is accorded to each man to follow his own happiness to my birds. It is necessary to say to you what hapened. Never did birds sing so marevelously. Madam can imagine for herself. There were conteats of song. It was the males who sang. It was the females who made the selection - contrary to the custom among humans. It is very pretty - the way the birds have. And the females, who love color. take those which have the brightest glow on the breast and the tenderest tint on the back. And I noticed that those who had no white feathers at all on the back and no brown ones on the breast were the most admired. So I plucked the foreign colored feathers from the birds so colored that they might not let favor in the sight of their little lovers, or have those tints there at hatching time. And thus it came that my bords have grown to be all of the yellow, bright as a flower newly washed in rain. Only the females on the wing have bits of brown-not dull of tint, but very bright. In all the world, madam, there are no birds as bright as these, except those back among the scabreezes on the islands whore the birds birds build their own neats, and know nothing about bars. Madame has great intelligence to perceive so much concerning my birds. If it should please madam to visit my room I will show her and her husband my birds.
He walked down the street, Madam Schillenhoffer noticed, with a quicker stop than ever before. He was happy. Some one had appreciated his birds. It was the next Sunday that she accepted the invitation, and went. Until 10 madam said in the shop to give hot bread to the languid neighbors, who, tired out with a week of work in the terrible city, were late in their rising. Then in her new white gown, which swelled her sniple figure to astonishing proportions, she took Karl with her and made her way to the apartments of Henry Strange. Now Karl, alrhough ho was the husband of madam, was several years younger and a number of inches shorter. He had a washed-out appearance such as bakers who cook by steam are apt to have, and whom he appeared without his apron, he wore a lost and baffled expression. Once when he and madam went to Germany to ace their people it had been necessary for him to take soe spricous with him, aud at night when he had retired to his room he but there on for a while, just to provide against homesickness.
Karl was very happy at going out with madam. He noticed how much larger she was then the women they passed as they went along the sreet nd wondered if envy was gnawing at their vitals. And he did not in the least mind when once the wind flirted madam's starched draperies over him, and tangled him up in this voluminous then.
Madam was graciousness itself when they reached Henry Strange's . The old man had evidently made one of his rare toilets, for he had on a clean shirt. and his maroon velvet: cap had been brushed. When he opened the door a canary was sitting exactly on the top of his cap something as the naglet sits on the brow of the American republic when she is carved in stone and stands upon a pedastal. The birds were having their Sunday morning hymn. It was deafening. Madam has to screech her salutation. Karl was speechless. He was used to talking in a whisper. But the keeper of the canories stopped that din. He turned to them and abjured them in passionate and not particularly polite German to stop their infernal chatter. But the birds took no offense at all, and, after a few protesting pipes kept as still as it were night.
"They know very well," said Henry Strange, shaking hands with his visitors, "that they will be punished if they do not mind." He shook his little-old head toward the cages. But this appeared to have no effect at all upon the canaries, who were busy in their household affairs. The doors of the cages were all open, yet not very many of them were about the room.
"They know their homes." Henry said looking at them affectionately. "They never make a mistake and get the key in the wrong rock."
Madam was delighted with everything. She perked at the birds with her fingers. She asked Henry who it was that scrubbed his floor for him. She was interested to know that he cleaned the cage every morning, and that he boiled them on the stove once a week.
"Ay birds die only from old age." said Henry. "I myself die only from old age disease we know not. It is books that make disease. It is with using the brain that men get sick. Not to think-that is to be well. I and my birds have no brains to speak of. We would rather sing than think. It is more natural. One is not unhappy when one does not think."
Henry treated his visitors to a sour wine and then they asked to hear the birds sing again before they departed. 'Twas then that madame and the bleached Karl saw a sight they never forgot. The old man leaned forward over the little deal table till his length was fairly stretched upon it. Before him hung the caes in two neat rows, suspended from hooks in the ceiling. His birdlike eyes seemed to narrow and almost close till they sent out only one sharp ray. Then he began to sing in an inarticulate faisetto. The song was capricous. Now a high note and now a low one, without rythm; now a modulated fall of melody, and now a sharp entranglement of. minor sounds. Suddenly in every cage there was ectasy. A fiery excitement seemed to pervade these tiny breasts. The wings fluttered tremelonsly, as if with an excess of emotion, and from every throat there burst a song of rapturous spontaneity.
Madam stood with her hands on her great hips, pauting with delight, and when she turned to at Karl, the tears were running down his milk-colored face.
It was two days after this that a man came to old Henry Strange and gave him a paper. It was in English. Henry was noy interested. It was the morning on which he boiled his cages. The birds were all over the room, and they flew upon the burly form of the stranger and picked at him with their sharp bills. The man did not like the sensation. He shook them off roughly and said something to Henry in an iritated voice. Henry did not pay any attention. He petted the birds that had been ill treated and tore up the paper.
That was how it came about that a few days later, when a policeman came to the door and ordered Henry to come with him, that the old man was entirely unprepared for any of the events which followed. In the country where Henry had come from the police were so much more frequent visitors that he felt no surprise at his visit. He got in the patrol wagon without hesitation in his mind was some dim idea that he was being summonded to give an account of his citizenship. He thought perhaps he ought to have procured passports before he left his country.He tried to think what documents he had that would established his klentity. But above all he hoped that he would not be kept so long that the cages would get empty. It was a horribly hot day. The air was full of moisture, and the dead, sickening heat weighed upon Henry till he felt himself fainting. There was a pain in the top of his head, so dull and heavy that several times he put up his hand to make sure there was no weight there beyond the hat which he wore, He did not know when the journey ended. He was only conscious through dull hours of a terrible pain in the head, and some one placing ice there now and then.
When the hour came for calling the old man into the court room to explain why he had not ceased to make a nulsance of himself after the notice and gave him that news, it was found that he was not able to speak. So he was given into the care of a physician and kept in his cell with ice at his head.
Meanwhile a day came and went back in the tenement, and the binis few in and out of their cages discontentedly. They drank up all the water in their little troughs. The day was so hot they drank much more than usual. Then they are the seeds and in time took to the hulis they had disdainfully thrown away at first. They got out of their cages and looked everywhere foer their missing protector. Some of themhunted under the table. They looked in the cupboard, they ran their little bills everywhere about the room, and investigated the smallest crevice. They gave our the cry, which they used as a note of distress and which never before had been disregarded. Someway, after a time, they found it impossible to sing, and spoke to each other about it. They looked again and again in their empty water troughs id wonderment. They agreed together that such a thing was never heard of. The old maroon cap hung on a hall and they perched on this and pecked at it. But they all knew it was empty. So when morning came again they sang but little - just a few feeble pupes, not enough to disturb any one. The pronter upstairs, who had just got lu from his work by daylight, and whose rest had so often been broken by their clamor, turned contentedly and remarked to himself that at last that old fool with the birds had been madew to move out. And none too soon. It was two weeks since he had been reported as a nulsance to the tenement.
The women in the tenement noticed that the old man was absent when they went nut to do their morning marketing. And they recollected then that they had not seen him the night before. They could see the birds drooping in their cages. No one could help noticing their silence. Then the mother of the printer who had made the complaint said that he had been taken away the night before and that she was glad of it, and that, for her part, she didn't care to go in and set those birds to screeching till her son John got up, for he was almost worn to a shadow already from having his sleep broken. And the other women wondered if they had a right to break in the door. And some of them had sick babies and were not concered about birds. and others had too many sorrows of their own to care about the troubles of a pack of canaries and so it chanced that another day went and the birds, sick and panting, lay at the bottom of their cages, with their little blue lids drawn over their fast dimming eyes.
Now, by the time the second morning had arrived Madam Schilenhoffer began to wonder if Henry Strange had taken his custom to some other bake shop. After thinking the matter over she concluded that this could not be the case and that he was ill. So she put Karl in charge while she made her way to the rooms. There, through the hot fly-specked windows, she saw the gasping canaries, their languid wlittle wings hanging inert, their bills open-the saddest little company of unfortunates imaginable, and the place which had been such a carnival of song as allent as death itself.
Madam Schillenhoffer was not the woman to care anything about law. Over in Germany, when she was younger, she had been - but never mind that. Here in America it is not necessary to any what one has been in other days. She got a stone and broke in the window, and put her hand in and raised the sash, and put her hand in and raised the sash, and she would have done the same if there had been a hundred police there. Hah! Police! Madam could kill them. a Why, once Unterden Linden, when 10,000 men and women-but again, why mention these things? Madam had never forgotten why she so bastily come to America. But she kept still about it.
One inside, she threw up every windowl It didn't make much difference. The air without was almost as sitting as that within. But she got at the water faucet and filled those troughs, and lifted bird after bird up to drink, and put water on their pretty tufted heads, and so after a time of acceasing labor got them up on their legs, thought they were still a company of very dull and silent birds.
The fate of her old friend she could not guess, so she trudged back and forth
| 271A CASE OF LOVE.
It was not duty that made him do it. It was not even the necessity of caring his daily bread. It was love. No one could think it anything else. No one in the tenement knew anything about his past history. He had only just come from Germany, and he had brought his birds with him. There were eighty of them, all singers. When the sun first got at the cages in the morning there was such a clangor of sweet sounds as aroused every other inmate of the tenement, and so far from soothing their savage breasts, converted them into veritable savages.
But no one doubted that it was a case of love. For Henry Strange cared for nothing but his birds. The neighbors seeing him at the window noticed that he never had even the companionship of a pipe. He never had a book or paper in his hand. He made no friends. He was content. His one passion fed him. Day and night he was satisfied to live there among his birds. to which he devoted his whole life/ That it was not duty that made him care for them was evident from the fact as the birds. while he cleaned their cages, and put the water and seed in the little sroughs. And a person does not sing when he is merely doing his duty. And though the birds represented bread and butter, he parted from them with reluctance, and appeared not to court custom in any way.
He was a wonderful looking little old man. It was difficult to see how so many wrinkles could be got on one human face. The skin bore a resemblance to those engravings which it used to be the delight of artists to turn out, covered with delicate, yet indellible cross lines.
Above his crisp, white curls set a skull cap of faded maroon velvet, which looked as if it had seen constant wear since first those locks lost the brown luster of their earlier days. His eyes were so bright and brown and beadlike that it was difficult to believe he had not taken them from the heads of some of his pets. His voice was a faisetto, broken a little in quality, but shrilly sweet like the tones of his canaries.
This one bare room in which he lived was his only apartment. It was on the ground floor of the tenement, and had originally been built for a little cigar and news stand for the occommodation of the ladies and gentlemen above stairs. But a difference of opinion between Mrs. O'Flarity, who lived in the third story back, and the young man who had kept the cigars, caused the police to interfere. The unfeeling creditors of the young plan had then stepped in. and the consequences were that the store was empty just when Henry Strange landed with his eighty canaries. A tiny stove, an iron cut, with some gray blankets upon it, a cupboard which held his bird feed and the little boxes of gravel for them, and some chairs composed the furnishings. There were no curtains at the windows, but this does not matter. For the birds were not embaressed at being looked at while they made their toilets, and Henry Strange seemed to confine his toilet to taking off his skull cap when he went to bed, and putting it on in the morning.
His birds had the peculiarity of being all of a bright and extraordinary yellow. One day Madam Schillenhoffer, who kept the bread shop near and to whom the old man went for his rolls, ventured to ask him how it was that these birds were so much more beautiful than caged canaries ordinarily were. And it was then that the recluse for the first time broke out loquacity.
He was just going out with his rolls in little paper bag when she asked the question, but he stopped immediately and turned his sharp, little eyes on her: He came back into the counter.
"Mme. Schillenhoffer has noticed that?" he said in his own tongue. "Not many notice. Or they think it is merely because I keep the birds clean. They are mistaken. For fifty years have I raised canaries. All these I have are from the first two birds that my mother gave to me when I left her home. She also was fond of canaries. Ah! those birds sang! Every bird my mother looked at became a good singer. So I used to tell her. But I noticed that they were not beautiful as to plumage. And I see there is a reason. Because nature originally made them very bright on the breast and about the wings. So I set me to thinking of the reason of it. And it came to me how among men and women none cared to be beautiful unless two things were possessed by them. The first of these things is liberty. The second is love. I noticed how the maids and how the young men attired themselves before marriage, and during the honeymoon. And I said this is a law of nature. It is impossible to improve on nature. I said each spring I will let my birds together. They shall take their choice of innies. They shall have love. Madam will see the drift of my philosophy. It is very simple. Every bird and beast and man wants the right of selection. Each individual living thing knows better than anyone else what is necessary to him for his own happiness. This is a very great country because it recognizes that every man has alright to the pursuit of happiness. Once I read that ever in Germany. Then I said I will go thither. I like a country where it is accorded to each man to follow his own happiness to my birds. It is necessary to say to you what hapened. Never did birds sing so marevelously. Madam can imagine for herself. There were conteats of song. It was the males who sang. It was the females who made the selection - contrary to the custom among humans. It is very pretty - the way the birds have. And the females, who love color. take those which have the brightest glow on the breast and the tenderest tint on the back. And I noticed that those who had no white feathers at all on the back and no brown ones on the breast were the most admired. So I plucked the foreign colored feathers from the birds so colored that they might not let favor in the sight of their little lovers, or have those tints there at hatching time. And thus it came that my bords have grown to be all of the yellow, bright as a flower newly washed in rain. Only the females on the wing have bits of brown-not dull of tint, but very bright. In all the world, madam, there are no birds as bright as these, except those back among the scabreezes on the islands whore the birds birds build their own neats, and know nothing about bars. Madame has great intelligence to perceive so much concerning my birds. If it should please madam to visit my room I will show her and her husband my birds.
He walked down the street, Madam Schillenhoffer noticed, with a quicker stop than ever before. He was happy. Some one had appreciated his birds. It was the next Sunday that she accepted the invitation, and went. Until 10 madam said in the shop to give hot bread to the languid neighbors, who, tired out with a week of work in the terrible city, were late in their rising. Then in her new white gown, which swelled her sniple figure to astonishing proportions, she took Karl with her and made her way to the apartments of Henry Strange. Now Karl, alrhough ho was the husband of madam, was several years younger and a number of inches shorter. He had a washed-out appearance such as bakers who cook by steam are apt to have, and whom he appeared without his apron, he wore a lost and baffled expression. Once when he and madam went to Germany to ace their people it had been necessary for him to take soe spricous with him, aud at night when he had retired to his room he but there on for a while, just to provide against homesickness.
Karl was very happy at going out with madam. He noticed how much larger she was then the women they passed as they went along the sreet nd wondered if envy was gnawing at their vitals. And he did not in the least mind when once the wind flirted madam's starched draperies over him, and tangled him up in this voluminous then.
Madam was graciousness itself when they reached Henry Strange's . The old man had evidently made one of his rare toilets, for he had on a clean shirt. and his maroon velvet: cap had been brushed. When he opened the door a canary was sitting exactly on the top of his cap something as the naglet sits on the brow of the American republic when she is carved in stone and stands upon a pedastal. The birds were having their Sunday morning hymn. It was deafening. Madam has to screech her salutation. Karl was speechless. He was used to talking in a whisper. But the keeper of the canories stopped that din. He turned to them and abjured them in passionate and not particularly polite German to stop their infernal chatter. But the birds took no offense at all, and, after a few protesting pipes kept as still as it were night.
"They know very well," said Henry Strange
|
