Twelve Men
Page 7
“Do you know how he manages to live?”
“No, I don’t, exactly. He believes in trusting to Providence for what he needs. He works though, too, at one job and another. He’s a carpenter for one thing. Got an idea the Lord will send ‘im whatever he needs.”
“Well, and does He?”
“Well, he lives.” A little later he added:
“Oh, yes. There’s nothing lazy about Charlie. He’s a good worker. When he was in the fishing line here there wasn’t a man worked harder than he did. They can’t anybody lay anything like that against him.”
“Is he very difficult to talk to?” I asked, meditating on seeking him out. I had so little to do at the time, the very idlest of summers, and the reports of this man’s deeds were haunting me. I wanted to discover for myself whether he was real or not—whether the reports were true. The Samaritan in people is so easily exaggerated at times.
“Oh, no. He’s one of the finest men that way I ever knew. You could see him, well enough, if you went up to Norwich, providing he’s up there. He usually is, though, I think. He lives there with his wife and mother, you know.”
I caught an afternoon boat for New London and Norwich at one-thirty, and arrived in Norwich at five. The narrow streets of the thriving little mill city were alive with people. I had no address, could not obtain one, but through the open door of a news-stall near the boat landing I called to the proprietor:
“Do you know any one in Norwich by the name of Charlie Potter?”
“The man who works around among the poor people here?”
“That’s the man.”
“Yes, I know him. He lives out on Summer Street, Number Twelve, I think. You’ll find it in the city directory.”
The ready reply was rather astonishing. Norwich has something like thirty thousand people.
I walked out in search of Summer Street and finally found a beautiful lane of that name climbing upward over gentle slopes, arched completely with elms. Some of the pretty porches of the cottages extended nearly to the sidewalk. Hammocks, rocking-chairs on verandas, benches under the trees—all attested the love of idleness and shade in summer. Only the glimpse of mills and factories in the valley below evidenced the grimmer life which gave rise mayhap to the need of a man to work among the poor.
“Is this Summer Street?” I inquired of an old darky who was strolling cityward in the cool of the evening. An umbrella was under his arm and an evening paper under his spectacled nose.
“Bress de Lord!” he said, looking vaguely around. “Ah couldn’t say. Ah knows dat street—been on it fifty times—but Ah never did know de name. Ha, ha, ha!”
The hills about echoed his hearty laugh.
“You don’t happen to know Charlie Potter?”
“Oh, yas, sah. Ah knows Charlie Potter. Dat’s his house right ovah dar.”
The house in which Charlie Potter lived was a two-story frame, overhanging a sharp slope, which descended directly to the waters of the pretty river below. For a mile or more, the valley of the river could be seen, its slopes dotted with houses, the valley itself lined with mills. Two little girls were upon the sloping lawn to the right of the house. A stout, comfortable-looking man was sitting by a window on the left side of the house, gazing out over the valley.
“Is this where Charlie Potter lives?” I inquired of one of the children.
“Yes, sir.”
“Did he live in Noank?”
“Yes, sir.”
Just then a pleasant-faced woman of forty-five or fifty issued from a vine-covered door.
“Mr. Potter?” she replied to my inquiry. “He’ll be right out.”
She went about some little work at the side of the house, and in a moment Charlie Potter appeared. He was short, thick-set, and weighed no less than two hundred pounds. His face and hands were sunburned and brown like those of every fisherman of Noank. An old wrinkled coat and a baggy pair of gray trousers clothed his form loosely. Two inches of a spotted, soft-brimmed hat were pulled carelessly over his eyes. His face was round and full, but slightly seamed. His hands were large, his walk uneven, and rather inclined to a side swing, or the sailor’s roll. He seemed an odd, pudgy person for so large a fame.
“Is this Mr. Potter?”
“I’m the man.”
“I live on a little hummock at the east of Mystic Island, off Noank.”
“You do?”
“I came up to have a talk with you.”
“Will you come inside, or shall we sit out here?”
“Let’s sit on the step.”
“All right, let’s sit on the step.”
He waddled out of the gate and sank comfortably on the little low doorstep, with his feet on the cool bricks below. I dropped into the space beside him, and was greeted by as sweet and kind a look as I have ever seen in a man’s eyes. It was one of perfect courtesy and good nature—void of all suspicion.
“We were sitting down in the sailboat maker’s place at Noank the other day, and I asked a half dozen of the old fellows whether they had ever known a contented man. They all thought a while, and then they said they had. Old Mr. Main and the rest of them agreed that Charlie Potter was a contented man. What I want to know is, are you?”
I looked quizzically into his eyes to see what effect this would have, and if there was no evidence of a mist of pleasure and affection being vigorously restrained I was very much mistaken. Something seemed to hold the man in helpless silence as he gazed vacantly at nothing. He breathed heavily, then drew himself together and lifted one of his big hands, as if to touch me, but refrained.
“Yes, brother,” he said after a time, “I am.”
“Well, that’s good,” I replied, taking a slight mental exception to the use of the word brother. “What makes you contented?”
“I don’t know, unless it is that I’ve found out what I ought to do. You see, I need so very little for myself that I couldn’t be very unhappy.”
“What ought you to do?”
“I ought to love my fellowmen.”
“And do you?”
“Say, brother, but I do,” he insisted quite simply and with no evidence of chicane or make-believe—a simple, natural enthusiasm. “I love everybody. There isn’t anybody so low or so mean but I love him. I love you, yes, I do. I love you.”
He reached out and touched me with his hand, and while I was inclined to take exception to this very moral enthusiasm, I thrilled just the same as I have not over the touch of any man in years. There was something effective and electric about him, so very warm and foolishly human. The glance which accompanied it spoke, it seemed, as truthfully as his words. He probably did love me—or thought he did. What difference?
We lapsed into silence. The scene below was so charming that I could easily gaze at it in silence. This little house was very simple, not poor, by no means prosperous, but well-ordered—such a home as such a man might have. After a while I said:
“It is very evident that you think the condition of some of your fellowmen isn’t what it ought to be. Tell me what you are trying to do. What method have you for improving their condition?”
“The way I reason is this-a-way,” he began. “All that some people have is their feelings, nothing else. Take a tramp, for instance, as I often have. When you begin to sum up to see where to begin, you find that all he has in the world, besides his pipe and a little tobacco, is his feelings. It’s all most people have, rich or poor, though a good many think they have more than that. I try not to injure anybody’s feelings.”
He looked at me as though he had expressed the solution of the difficulties of the world, and the wonderful, kindly eyes beamed in rich romance upon the scene.
“Very good,” I said, “but what do you do? How do you go about it to aid your fellowmen?”
“Well,” he answered, unconsciously overlooking his own personal actions in the matter, “I try to bring them the salvation which the Bible teaches. You know I stand on the Bible, from cover to cover.”
“Yes, I know you stand on the Bible, but what do you do? You don’t merely preach the Bible to them. What do you do?”
“No, sir, I don’t preach the Bible at all. I stand on it myself. I try as near as I can to do what it says. I go wherever I can be useful. If anybody is sick or in trouble, I’m ready to go. I’ll be a nurse. I’ll work and earn them food. I’ll give them anything I can—that’s what I do.”
“How can you give when you haven’t anything? They told me in Noank that you never worked for money.”
“Not for myself alone. I never take any money for myself alone. That would be self-seeking. Anything I earn or take is for the Lord, not me. I never keep it. The Lord doesn’t allow a man to be self-seeking.”
“Well, then, when you get money what do you do with it? You can’t do and live without money.”
He had been looking away across the river and the bridge to the city below, but now he brought his eyes back and fixed them on me.
“I’ve been working now for twenty years or more, and, although I’ve never had more money than would last me a few days at a time, I’ve never wanted for anything and I’ve been able to help others. I’ve run pretty close sometimes. Time and time again I’ve been compelled to say, ‘Lord, I’m all out of coal,’ or ‘Lord, I’m going to have to ask you to get me my fare to New Haven tomorrow,’ but in the moment of my need He has never forgotten me. Why, I’ve gone down to the depot time and time again, when it was necessary for me to go, without five cents in my pocket, and He’s been there to meet me. Why, He wouldn’t keep you waiting when you’re about His work. He wouldn’t forget you—not for a minute.”
I looked at the man in open-eyed amazement.
“Do you mean to say that you would go down to a depot without money and wait for money to come to you?”
“Oh, brother,” he said, with the softest light in his eyes, “if you only knew what it is to have faith!”
He laid his hand softly on mine.
“What is car-fare to New Haven or to anywhere, to Him?”
“But,” I replied materially, “you haven’t any car-fare when you go there—how do you actually get it? Who gives it to you? Give me one instance.”
“Why, it was only last week, brother, that a woman wrote me from Maiden, Massachusetts, wanting me to come and see her. She’s very sick with consumption, and she thought she was going to die. I used to know her in Noank, and she thought if she could get to see me she would feel better.
“I didn’t have any money at the time, but that didn’t make any difference.
“‘Lord,’ I said, ‘here’s a woman sick in Maiden, and she wants me to come to her. I haven’t got any money, but I’ll go right down to the depot, in time to catch a certain train,’ and I went. And while I was standing there a man came up to me and said, ‘Brother, I’m told to give you this,’ and he handed me ten dollars.”
“Did you know the man?” I exclaimed.
“Never saw him before in my life,” he replied, smiling genially.
“And didn’t he say anything more than that?”
“No.”
I stared at him, and he added, as if to take the edge off my astonishment:
“Why, bless your heart, I knew he was from the Lord, just the moment I saw him coming.”
“You mean to say you were standing there without a cent, expecting the Lord to help you, and He did?”
“‘He shall call upon me, and I shall answer him,’” he answered simply, quoting the Ninety-first Psalm.
This incident was still the subject of my inquiry when a little colored girl came out of the yard and paused a moment before us.
“May I go down across the bridge, papa?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered, and then as she tripped away, said:
“She’s one of my adopted children.” He gazed between his knees at the sidewalk.
“Have you many others?”
“Three.”
“Raising them, are you?”
“Yes.”
“They seem to think, down in Noank, that living as you do and giving everything away is satisfactory to you but rather hard on your wife and children.”
“Well, it is true that she did feel a little uncertain in the beginning, but she’s never wanted for anything. She’ll tell you herself that she’s never been without a thing that she really needed, and she’s been happy.”
He paused to meditate, I presume, over the opinion of his former fellow townsmen, and then added:
“It’s true, there have been times when we have been right where we had to have certain things pretty badly, before they came, but they never failed to come.”
While he was still talking, Mrs. Potter came around the corner of the house and out upon the sidewalk. She was going to the Saturday evening market in the city below.
“Here she is,” he said. “Now you can ask her.”
“What is it?” she inquired, turning a serene and smiling face to me.
“They still think, down in Noank, that you’re not very happy with me,” he said. “They’re afraid you want for something once in a while.”
She took this piece of neighborly interference in better fashion than most would, I fancy.
“I have never wanted for anything since I have been married to my husband,” she said. “I am thoroughly contented.”
She looked at him and he at her, and there passed between them an affectionate glance.
“Yes,” he said, when she had passed after a pleasing little conversation, “my wife has been a great help to me. She has never complained.”
“People are inclined to talk a little,” I said.
“Well, you see, she never complained, but she did feel a little bit worried in the beginning.”
“Have you a mission or a church here in Norwich?”
“No, I don’t believe in churches.”
“Not in churches?”
“No. The sight of a minister preaching the word of God for so much a year is all a mockery to me.”
“What do you believe in?”
“Personal service. Churches and charitable institutions and societies are all valueless. You can’t reach your fellowman that way. They build up buildings and pay salaries—but there’s a better way.” (I was thinking of St. Francis and his original dream, before they threw him out and established monasteries and a costume or uniform—the thing he so much objected to.) “This giving of a few old clothes that the moths will get anyhow, that won’t do. You’ve got to give something of yourself, and that’s affection. Love is the only thing you can really give in all this world. When you give love, you give everything. Everything comes with it in some way or other.”
“How do you say?” I queried. “Money certainly comes handy sometimes.”
“Yes, when you give it with your own hand and heart—in no other way. It comes to nothing just contributed to some thing. Ah!” he added, with sudden animation, “the tangles men can get themselves into, the snarls, the wretchedness! Troubles with women, with men whom they owe, with evil things they say and think, until they can’t walk down the street any more without peeping about to see if they are followed. They can’t look you in die face; can’t walk a straight course, but have got to sneak around corners. Poor, miserable, unhappy—they’re worrying and crying and dodging one another!”
He paused, lost in contemplation of the picture he had conjured up.
“Yes,” I went on catechistically, determined, if I could, to rout out this matter of giving, this actual example of the modus operandi of Christian charity. “What do you do? How do you get along without giving them money?”
“I don’t get along without giving them some money. There are cases, lots of them, where a little money is necessary. But, brother, it is so little necessary at times. It isn’t always money they want. You can’t reach them with old clothes and charity societies,” he insisted. “You’ve got to love them, brother. You’ve got to go to them and love them, just as they are, sc
arred and miserable and bad-hearted.”
“Yes,” I replied doubtfully, deciding to follow this up later. “But just what is it you do in a needy case? One instance?”
“Why, one night I was passing a little house in this town,” he went on, “and I heard a woman crying. I went right to the door and opened it, and when I got inside she just stopped and looked at me.
“‘Madam,’ I said, ‘I have come to help you, if I can. Now you tell me what you’re crying for.’
“Well, sir, you know she sat there and told me how her husband drank and how she didn’t have anything in the house to eat, and so I just gave her all I had and told her I would see her husband for her, and the next day I went and hunted him up and said to him, ‘Oh, brother, I wish you would open your eyes and see what you are doing. I wish you wouldn’t do that any more. It’s only misery you are creating.’ And, you know, I got to telling about how badly his wife felt about it, and how I intended to work and try and help her, and bless me if he didn’t up and promise me before I got through that he wouldn’t do that any more. And he didn’t. He’s working today, and it’s been two years since I went to him, nearly.”
His eyes were alight with his appreciation of personal service.
“Yes, that’s one instance,” I said.
“Oh, there are plenty of them,” he replied. “It’s the only way. Down here in New London a couple of winters ago we had a terrible time of it. That was the winter of the panic, you know. Cold—my, but that was a cold winter, and thousands of people out of work—just thousands. It was awful. I tried to do what I could here and there all along, but finally things got so bad there that I went to the mayor. I saw they were raising some kind of a fund to help the poor, so I told him that if he’d give me a little of the money they were talking of spending that I’d feed the hungry for a cent-and-a-half a meal.”
“A cent-and-a-half a meal!”
“Yes, sir. They all thought it was rather curious, not possible at first, but they gave me the money and I fed ‘em.”
“Good meals?”
“Yes, as good as I ever eat myself,” he replied.
“How did you do it?” I asked.