A Little, Aloud

by Angela Macmillan

  Times were hard, now, and they grew worse. Edward moved his family into a garret, and walked the streets day and night, seeking work. He begged for it, but it was really not to be had. He was astonished to see how soon his face became unwelcome; he was astonished and hurt to see how quickly the ancient interest which people had had in him faded out and disappeared. Still, he MUST get work; so he swallowed his chagrin, and toiled on in search of it. At last he got a job of carrying bricks up a ladder in a hod, and was a grateful man in consequence; but after that NOBODY knew him or cared anything about him. He was not able to keep up his dues in the various moral organizations to which he belonged, and had to endure the sharp pain of seeing himself brought under the disgrace of suspension.

  But the faster Edward died out of public knowledge and interest, the faster George rose in them. He was found lying, ragged and drunk, in the gutter one morning. A member of the Ladies’ Temperance Refuge fished him out, took him in hand, got up a subscription for him, kept him sober a whole week, then got a situation for him. An account of it was published.

  General attention was thus drawn to the poor fellow, and a great many people came forward and helped him toward reform with their countenance and encouragement. He did not drink a drop for two months, and meantime was the pet of the good. Then he fell – in the gutter; and there was general sorrow and lamentation. But the noble sisterhood rescued him again. They cleaned him up, they fed him, they listened to the mournful music of his repentances, they got him his situation again. An account of this, also, was published, and the town was drowned in happy tears over the re-restoration of the poor beast and struggling victim of the fatal bowl. A grand temperance revival was got up, and after some rousing speeches had been made the chairman said, impressively: ‘We are not about to call for signers; and I think there is a spectacle in store for you which not many in this house will be able to view with dry eyes.’ There was an eloquent pause, and then George Benton, escorted by a red-sashed detachment of the Ladies of the Refuge, stepped forward upon the platform and signed the pledge. The air was rent with applause, and everybody cried for joy. Everybody wrung the hand of the new convert when the meeting was over; his salary was enlarged next day; he was the talk of the town, and its hero. An account of it was published.

  George Benton fell, regularly, every three months, but was faithfully rescued and wrought with, every time, and good situations were found for him. Finally, he was taken around the country lecturing, as a reformed drunkard, and he had great houses and did an immense amount of good.

  He was so popular at home, and so trusted – during his sober intervals – that he was enabled to use the name of a principal citizen, and get a large sum of money at the bank. A mighty pressure was brought to bear to save him from the consequences of his forgery, and it was partially successful – he was ‘sent up’ for only two years. When, at the end of a year, the tireless efforts of the benevolent were crowned with success, and he emerged from the penitentiary with a pardon in his pocket, the Prisoner’s Friend Society met him at the door with a situation and a comfortable salary, and all the other benevolent people came forward and gave him advice, encouragement and help. Edward Mills had once applied to the Prisoner’s Friend Society for a situation, when in dire need, but the question, ‘Have you been a prisoner?’ made brief work of his case.

  While all these things were going on, Edward Mills had been quietly making head against adversity. He was still poor, but was in receipt of a steady and sufficient salary, as the respected and trusted cashier of a bank. George Benton never came near him, and was never heard to inquire about him. George got to indulging in long absences from the town; there were ill reports about him, but nothing definite.

  One winter’s night some masked burglars forced their way into the bank, and found Edward Mills there alone. They commanded him to reveal the ‘combination,’ so that they could get into the safe. He refused. They threatened his life. He said his employers trusted him, and he could not be traitor to that trust. He could die, if he must, but while he lived he would be faithful; he would not yield up the ‘combination.’ The burglars killed him.

  The detectives hunted down the criminals; the chief one proved to be George Benton. A wide sympathy was felt for the widow and orphans of the dead man, and all the newspapers in the land begged that all the banks in the land would testify their appreciation of the fidelity and heroism of the murdered cashier by coming forward with a generous contribution of money in aid of his family, now bereft of support. The result was a mass of solid cash amounting to upward of five hundred dollars – an average of nearly three-eights of a cent for each bank in the Union. The cashier’s own bank testified its gratitude by endeavoring to show (but humiliatingly failed in it) that the peerless servant’s accounts were not square, and that he himself had knocked his brains out with a bludgeon to escape detection and punishment.

  George Benton was arraigned for trial. Then everybody seemed to forget the widow and orphans in their solicitude for poor George. Everything that money and influence could do was done to save him, but it all failed; he was sentenced to death. Straightway the Governor was besieged with petitions for commutation or pardon; they were brought by tearful young girls; by sorrowful old maids; by deputations of pathetic widows; by shoals of impressive orphans. But no, the Governor – for once – would not yield.

  Now George Benton experienced religion. The glad news flew all around. From that time forth his cell was always full of girls and women and fresh flowers; all the day long there was prayer, and hymn-singing, and thanksgiving, and homilies, and tears, with never an interruption, except an occasional five-minute intermission for refreshments.

  This sort of thing continued up to the very gallows, and George Benton went proudly home, in the black cap, before a wailing audience of the sweetest and best that the region could produce. His grave had fresh flowers on it every day, for a while, and the head-stone bore these words, under a hand pointing aloft: ‘He has fought the good fight.’

  The brave cashier’s head-stone has this inscription: ‘Be pure, honest, sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never—’ Nobody knows who gave the order to leave it that way, but it was so given.

  The cashier’s family are in stringent circumstances, now, it is said; but no matter; a lot of appreciative people, who were not willing that an act so brave and true as his should go unrewarded, have collected forty-two thousand dollars – and built a Memorial Church with it.

  THOU ART INDEED JUST, LORD, IF I CONTEND

  Gerard Manley Hopkins

  Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum:

  verumtamen justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum

  prosperatur? &c.

  Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend

  With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.

  Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must

  Disappointment all I endeavour end?

  Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,

  How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost

  Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust

  Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,

  Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes

  Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again

  With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes

  Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,

  Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.

  Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

  READING NOTES

  Puzzling over the meaning of the poem, two women in a women’s centre reading group found authenticity in the speaker’s voice. ‘That pain sounds real to me,’ said Jo. ‘I can’t understand a lot of it, but when he says, “send my roots rain”, that’s a real cry from the heart; I know what that state of mind feels like.’ Each member of the group looked for phrases they understood – some from experience. Then they each picked out a phrase they fo
und particularly difficult. Working on the difficulties together was like unpicking knots in string and gradually quite a few straight inches were gained. Two big questions prompted much debate, if no final answers: Why do sinners’ ways prosper? Why does God sometimes seem to treat humanity as if he were our enemy?

  The group decided that the story was meant to sound like a morality tale; the characters were not exactly real but the questions the story raised were real questions: Why are bad people sometimes rewarded? Why do bad things happen to very good people? Jo told the group that her aunt had been badly burgled and one of the things that most upset her was that when the case came to court, it seemed as if the criminal was better looked after than the victim.

  How much truth do you think there is in the Mark Twain story? Was it wrong of the Brants to teach the boys: ‘Be pure, honest, sober, industrious, and considerate of others, and success in life is assured’? Should life be fair? The questions could go on and on.

  Courage and Endeavour

  MY LEFT FOOT

  (THE LETTER ‘A’, CHAPTER 1)

  Christy Brown

  (approximate reading time 17 minutes)

  Irish author, poet and painter, Christy Brown was born in 1932 with cerebral palsy. My Left Foot is his autobiography.

  I was born in the Rotunda Hospital, on June 5th, 1932. There were nine children before me and twelve after me, so I myself belong to the middle group. Out of this total of twenty-two, seventeen lived, four died in infancy, leaving thirteen still to hold the family fort.

  Mine was a difficult birth, I am told. Both mother and son almost died. A whole army of relations queued up outside the hospital until the small hours of the morning, waiting for news and praying furiously that it would be good.

  After my birth mother was sent to recuperate for some weeks and I was kept in the hospital while she was away. I remained there for some time, without name, for I wasn’t baptised until my mother was well enough to bring me to church.

  It was mother who first saw that there was something wrong with me. I was about four months old at the time. She noticed that my head had a habit of falling backwards whenever she tried to feed me. She attempted to correct this by placing her hand on the back of my neck to keep it steady. But when she took it away back it would drop again. That was the first warning sign. Then she became aware of other defects as I got older. She saw that my hands were clenched nearly all of the time and were inclined to twine behind my back; my mouth couldn’t grasp the teat of the bottle because even at that early age my jaws would either lock together tightly, so that it was impossible for her to open them, or they would suddenly become limp and fall loose, dragging my whole mouth to one side. At six months I could not sit up without having a mountain of pillows around me; at twelve months it was the same.

  Very worried by this, mother told my father her fears, and they decided to seek medical advice without any further delay. I was a little over a year old when they began to take me to hospitals and clinics, convinced that there was something definitely wrong with me, something which they could not understand or name, but which was very real and disturbing.

  Almost every doctor who saw and examined me, labelled me a very interesting but also a hopeless case. Many told mother very gently that I was mentally defective and would remain so. That was a hard blow to a young mother who had already reared five healthy children. The doctors were so very sure of themselves that mother’s faith in me seemed almost an impertinence. They assured her that nothing could be done for me.

  She refused to accept this truth, the inevitable truth – as it then seemed – that I was beyond cure, beyond saving, even beyond hope. She could not and would not believe that I was an imbecile, as the doctors told her. She had nothing in the world to go by, not a scrap of evidence to support her conviction that, though my body was crippled, my mind was not. In spite of all the doctors and specialists told her, she would not agree. I don’t believe she knew why – she just knew without feeling the smallest shade of doubt.

  Finding that the doctors could not help in any way beyond telling her not to place her trust in me, or, in other words, to forget I was a human creature, rather to regard me as just something to be fed and washed and then put away again, mother decided there and then to take matters into her own hands. I was her child, and therefore part of the family. No matter how dull and incapable I might grow up to be, she was determined to treat me on the same plane as the others, and not as the ‘queer one’ in the back room who was never spoken of when there were visitors present.

  That was a momentous decision as far as my future life was concerned. It meant that I would always have my mother on my side to help me fight all the battles that were to come, and to inspire me with new strength when I was almost beaten. But it wasn’t easy for her because now the relatives and friends had decided otherwise. They contended that I should be taken kindly, sympathetically, but not seriously. That would be a mistake. ‘For your own sake,’ they told her, ‘don’t look to this boy as you would to the others; it would only break your heart in the end.’ Luckily for me, mother and father held out against the lot of them. But mother wasn’t content just to say that I was not an idiot, she set out to prove it, not because of any rigid sense of duty, but out of love. That is why she was so successful.

  At this time she had the five other children to look after besides the ‘difficult one’, though as yet it was not by any means a full house. There were my brothers, Jim, Tony and Paddy, and my two sisters, Lily and Mona, all of them very young, just a year or so between each of them, so that they were almost exactly like steps of stairs.

  Four years rolled by and I was now five, and still as helpless as a newly born baby. While my father was out at bricklaying earning our bread and butter for us, mother was slowly, patiently pulling down the wall, brick by brick, that seemed to thrust itself between me and the other children, slowly, patiently penetrating beyond the thick curtain that hung over my mind, separating it from theirs. It was hard, heart-breaking work, for often all she got from me in return was a vague smile and perhaps a faint gurgle. I could not speak or even mumble, nor could I sit up without support on my own, let alone take steps. But I wasn’t inert or motionless. I seemed indeed to be convulsed with movement, wild, stiff, snake-like movement that never left me, except in sleep. My fingers twisted and twitched continually, my arms twined backwards and would often shoot out suddenly this way and that, and my head lolled and sagged sideways. I was a queer, crooked little fellow.

  Mother tells me how one day she had been sitting with me for hours in an upstairs room, showing me pictures out of a great big storybook that I had got from Santa Claus last Christmas and telling me the names of the different animals and flowers that were in them, trying without success to get me to repeat them. This had gone on for hours while she talked and laughed with me. Then at the end of it she leaned over me and said gently into my ear:

  ‘Did you like it, Chris? Did you like the bears and the monkeys and all the lovely flowers? Nod your head for yes, like a good boy.’

  But I could make no sign that I had understood her. Her face was bent over mine, hopefully. Suddenly, involuntarily, my queer hand reached up and grasped one of the dark curls that fell in a thick cluster about her neck. Gently she loosened the clenched fingers, though some dark strands were still clutched between them.

  Then she turned away from my curious stare and left the room, crying. The door closed behind her. It all seemed hopeless. It looked as though there was some justification for my relatives’ contention that I was an idiot and beyond help.

  They now spoke of an institution.

  ‘Never!’ said my mother almost fiercely, when this was suggested to her. ‘I know my boy is not an idiot. It is his body that is shattered, not his mind. I’m sure of that.’

  Sure? Yet inwardly, she prayed God would give her some proof of her faith. She knew it was one thing to believe but quite another thing to prove.

  I was now five,
and still I showed no real sign of intelligence. I showed no apparent interest in things except with my toes – more especially those of my left foot. Although my natural habits were clean I could not aid myself, but in this respect my father took care of me. I used to lie on my back all the time in the kitchen or, on bright warm days, out in the garden, a little bundle of crooked muscles and twisted nerves, surrounded by a family that loved me and hoped for me and that made me part of their own warmth and humanity. I was lonely, imprisoned in a world of my own, unable to communicate with others, cut off, separated from them as though a glass wall stood between my existence and theirs, thrusting me beyond the sphere of their lives and activities. I longed to run about and play with the rest, but I was unable to break loose from my bondage.

  Then, suddenly, it happened! In a moment everything was changed, my future life moulded into a definite shape, my mother’s faith in me rewarded and her secret fear changed into open triumph.

  It happened so quickly, so simply after all the years of waiting and uncertainty that I can see and feel the whole scene as if it had happened last week. It was the afternoon of a cold, grey December day. The streets outside glistened with snow; the white sparkling flakes stuck and melted on the window-panes and hung on the boughs of the trees like molten silver. The wind howled dismally, whipping up little whirling columns of snow that rose and fell at every fresh gust. And over all, the dull, murky sky stretched like a dark canopy, a vast infinity of greyness.

  Inside, all the family were gathered round the big kitchen fire that lit up the little room with a warm glow and made giant shadows dance on the walls and ceiling.

  In a corner Mona and Paddy were sitting huddled together, a few torn school primers before them. They were writing down little sums on to an old chipped slate, using a bright piece of yellow chalk. I was close to them, propped up by a few pillows against the wall, watching.