- end_line
- 8466
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.985Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 8399
- text
-
‘I am William Ford; let me in.’
‘Oh, I cannot, I cannot! I am afraid of everyone.’
It _was_ Jimmy Rose!
‘Let me in, Rose; let me in, man. I am your friend.’
‘I will not. I can trust no man now.’
‘Let me in, Rose; trust at least one, in me.’
‘Quit the spot, or----’
With that I heard a rattling against the huge lock, not made by any key,
as if some small tube were being thrust into the keyhole. Horrified, I
fled fast as feet could carry me.
I was a young man then, and Jimmy was not more than forty. It was
five-and-twenty years ere I saw him again. And what a change. He whom I
expected to behold--if behold at all--dry, shrunken, meagre,
cadaverously fierce with misery and misanthropy--amazement! the old
Persian roses bloomed in his cheeks. And yet poor as any rat; poor in
the last dregs of poverty; a pauper beyond almshouse pauperism; a
promenading pauper in a thin, threadbare, careful coat; a pauper with
wealth of polished words; a courteous, smiling, shivering gentleman.
Ah, poor, poor Jimmy--God guard us all--poor Jimmy Rose!
Though at the first onset of his calamity, when creditors, once fast
friends, pursued him as carrion for jails; though then, to avoid their
hunt, as well as the human eye, he had gone and denned in the old
abandoned house; and there, in his loneliness, had been driven half mad,
yet time and tide had soothed him down to sanity. Perhaps at bottom
Jimmy was too thoroughly good and kind to be made from any cause a
man-hater. And doubtless it at last seemed irreligious to Jimmy even to
shun mankind.
Sometimes sweet sense of duty will entice one to bitter doom. For what
could be more bitter than now, in abject need, to be seen of those--nay,
crawl and visit them in an humble sort, and be tolerated as an old
eccentric, wandering in their parlours--who once had known him richest
of the rich, and gayest of the gay? Yet this Jimmy did. Without rudely
breaking him right down to it, fate slowly bent him more and more to the
lowest deep. From an unknown quarter he received an income of some
seventy dollars, more or less. The principal he would never touch, but,
by various modes of eking it out, managed to live on the interest. He
lived in an attic, where he supplied himself with food. He took but one
regular repast a day--meal and milk--and nothing more, unless procured
at others’ tables. Often about the tea hour he would drop in upon some
old acquaintance, clad in his neat, forlorn frock-coat, with worn velvet
sewed upon the edges of the cuffs, and a similar device upon the hems of
his pantaloons, to hide that dire look of having been grated off by
rats. On Sunday he made a point of always dining at some fine house or
other.
It is evident that no man could with impunity be allowed to lead this
life unless regarded as one who, free from vice, was by fortune brought
so low that the plummet of pity alone could reach him. Not much merit
redounded to his entertainers because they did not thrust the starving
gentleman forth when he came for his poor alms of tea and toast. Some
merit had been theirs had they clubbed together and provided him, at
small cost enough, with a sufficient income to make him, in point of
necessaries, independent of the daily dole of charity; charity not sent
to him either, but charity for which he had to trudge round to their
doors.
- title
- Chunk 1