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
The neighbouring restaurants began to send forth the smell of breakfast,
and he dragged up and down till he could bear it no longer, and then
went into one of them, meaning to ask for some job by which he could pay
for a meal. But his shame again would not let him. He looked at the
fat, white-aproned boy drawing coffee hot from a huge urn, and serving a
countryman with a beefsteak. It was close and sultry in there; the open
sugar-bowl was black with flies, and a scent of decaying meat came from
the next cellar. “Like some nice fresh dough-nuts?” said the boy to
Lemuel. He did not answer; he looked around as if he had come in search
of some one. Then he went out, and straying away from the market, he
found himself after a while in a street that opened upon the Common.
He was glad to sit down, and he said to himself that now he would stay
there, and keep a good lookout for the chaps that had robbed him. But
again he fell asleep, and he did not wake now till the sun was high, and
the paths of the Common were filled with hurrying people. He sat where
he had slept, for he did not know what else to do or where to go.
Sometimes he thought he would go to Mr. Sewell, and ask him for money
enough to get home; but he could not do it; he could more easily starve.
After an hour or two he went to get a drink at a fountain he saw a
little way off, and when he came back some people had got his seat. He
started to look for another, and on his way he found a cent in the path,
and he bought an apple with it--a small one that the dealer especially
picked out for cheapness. It seemed pretty queer to Lemuel that a person
should want anything for one apple. The apple when he ate it made
him sick. His head began to ache, and it ached all day. Late in the
afternoon he caught sight of one of those fellows at a distance; but
there was no policeman near. Lemuel called out, “Stop there, you!” but
the fellow began to run when he recognised Lemuel, and the boy was too
weak and faint to run after him.
The day wore away and the evening came again, and he had been
twenty-four hours houseless and without food. He must do something; he
could not stand it any longer; there was no sense in it. He had read in
the newspapers how they gave soup at the police-stations in Boston
in the winter; perhaps they gave something in summer. He mustered up
courage to ask a gentleman who passed where the nearest station was,
and then started in search of it. If the city gave it, then there was no
disgrace in it, and Lemuel had as much right to anything that was going
as other people; that was the way he silenced his pride.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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