The Minister's Charge; Or, The Apprenticeship of Lemuel Barker — John Shaqi
The Minister's Charge; Or, The Apprenticeship of Lemuel BarkerHowells, William Dean
General
The Minister's Charge; Or, The Apprenticeship of Lemuel Barker
Howells, William Dean
Boston (Mass.) -- Fiction; Clergy -- Fiction; Poets -- Fiction
He could not tell where he was at first; but presently he remembered,
and looked for his bag. It was gone; and the money was gone out of both
his pockets. He dropped back upon the seat, and leaning his head against
the back, he began to cry for utter despair. He had hardly ever cried
since he was a baby; and he would not have done it now, but there was no
one there to see him.
When he had his cry out he felt a little better, and he got up and went
to the pond in the hollow, and washed his hands and face, and wiped
them on the handkerchief his mother had ironed for him to use at the
minister's; it was still in the folds she had given it. As he shook it
out, rising up, he saw that people were asleep on all the benches round
the pond; he looked hopelessly at them to see if any of them were those
fellows, but he could not find them. He seemed to be the only person
awake on the Common, and wandered out of it and down through the empty
streets, filled at times with the moony light of the waning electrics,
and at times merely with the grey dawn. A man came along putting out
the gas, and some milk-carts rattled over the pavement. By and by a
market-wagon, with the leaves and roots of cabbages sticking out from
the edges of the canvas that covered it, came by, and Lemuel followed
it; he did not know what else to do, and it went so slow that he could
keep up, though the famine that gnawed within him was so sharp sometimes
that he felt as if he must fall down. He was going to drop into a
doorway and rest, but when he came to it he found on an upper step a
man folded forward like a limp bundle, snoring in a fetid, sodden sleep,
and, shocked into new strength, he hurried on. At last the wagon came to
a place that he saw was a market. There were no buyers yet, but men
were flitting round under the long arcades of the market-houses, with
lanterns under their arms, among boxes and barrels of melons, apples,
potatoes, onions, beans, carrots, and other vegetables, which the
country carts as they arrived continually unloaded. The smell of peaches
and cantaloupes filled the air, and made Lemuel giddy as he stood and
looked at the abundance. The men were not saying much; now and then one
of them priced something, the owner pretended to figure on it, and then
they fell into a playful scuffle, but all silently. A black cat lay
luxuriously asleep on the canvas top of a barrel of melons, and the man
who priced the melons asked if the owner would throw the cat in. There
was a butcher's cart laden with carcasses of sheep, and one of the men
asked the butcher if he called that stuff mutton. “No; imitation,” said
the butcher. They all seemed to be very good-natured. Lemuel thought he
would ask for an apple; but he could not.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account