The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on FootDay, Holman
General
The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot
Day, Holman
Political corruption -- Fiction; Water-supply -- Fiction
“Naw, he ain't no candidate, nuther,” he informed his associates when
they were out of hearing. “He ain't canvassing for no votes. My old man
says he ain't. He ain't a four-flusher. He's the guy that stood for the
poor folks up at City Hall and doped out the spring-water stuff.”
At the side of a street where traffic raged to and from the city's Union
Station Farr came upon two shriveled old ladies who were teetering on
the curbstones, waiting tremulously for an opportunity to cross. They
put down into the roaring street first one apprehensive foot and then
another, like children trying chilly water. The big fellow offered an
arm to each and led them safely across.
“You're a real knight-errant, sir,” squeaked one of the two, looking up
into the kindly face.
He laughed, doffed the broad-brimmed hat with a low bow, and strolled on
his way.
“Knight-errant,” he muttered, still smiling. “Guess not. They don't have
'em these days. The stories about 'em read well. Wonder what kind of a
feeling it was that started those boys off on the hike! Perhaps there
wasn't enough doing in politics. It must have been a fine game, though,
rescuing distressed damsels. And all for love and not for pay!”
A poster in the window of an empty store caught his eye just then. It
advertised a woman's-suffrage rally.
“The girls would paint rally signs on a knight's tin suit these days and
send him off on an advertising trip,” was his whimsical reflection.
At that moment, with this thought of knight in armor in his mind, he was
attracted by a flare of red fire in a blacksmith shop located just off
the street. The one worker in the place was revealed by the forge fire.
The glow lighted the features of the man. There was no mistaking him--it
was Friend Jared Chick. And Farr turned off the street and went into the
shop and greeted his one-time traveling companion.
“How does thee do?” replied Jared Chick, quietly, his Quaker calm
undisturbed. He drew forth a white-hot iron and deftly hammered it into
a circle around the snout of the anvil.
“So you have given up knight-errantry and have gone back to the old job,
have you, Friend Chick?”
“No. This is a part of my service. The man who owns this shop is a good
man who works hard here all day. And after he has gone home he allows me
to work here in the evening.”
He pounded away industriously and Farr walked up to the anvil to inspect
the nature of the work, for the iron rod was assuming queer shapes.
“A new kind of armor, Friend Chick?”
If there was a bit of sarcasm in Farr's tone the Quaker paid no apparent
heed.
“No,” he said, quietly and meekly, “this is a brace for the leg of a
little lame boy. I have found many children in this city who cannot
walk. Their parents are too poor to buy braces. So I come here nights,
when the good man is away from the forge, and I make braces and carry
them with my blessing. I have some knack with the hammer. I hope to find
other ways of doing my bit of good.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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