Chapter I.

Otago Witness, Issue 2078, 21 December 1893, Page 1

Chapter I.

Daddy's Boy. E old man had occupied the stand at the corner of street so long, that people forgot the time when they did not '^member bis hot saveloy and baked potato stall.

He was young 1 when first he came, from nobody knew

where, and at the time of his

first appearance, Melbourne was a small city compared with what it is to-cky. il tad grcrwn rapidly, taken on form and shape and beauty, but the progress was not relatively more rapid than that of the saveloy man, from discord and undisciplined impulse to meatiing, grandeur, and dignity.

lie was the funniest-looking man when first he came, and people said he was a little mad. People always do say lhat other people are a little mad when they do not understand them. You wear rose-coloured spectacles and I wear blue, and if you tee a rosy world, and tell me the sunrise is rosy, the noon is rosy, and the sunset rosy, and I see it blue — blue from morning till cve — well, I think you, as you think me, honest-, but a littla insane. So the world thought " Daddy Longlegs." I mean bis world — the world that knew him, •which consisted chiefly of " larrikins " — larrikins proper, and larrikins improper. The proper ones invested with him when they came out of the theatre and wanted to finish up the evening with a treat, and the Improper ones patronised him when they were hungry, and could pay — or could not pay, as it might happen — for the supper they desired.

The reason why he was supposed to be a " bit off " when he first appeared with his Btall was because he did not seem to fit his circumstances. He was too big for them. In that small stall he looked more out of place than the proverbial bull in a china shop. His head towered so high that it seemed only in its proper place when there was nothing but the sky above him, and he seemed to require open fields to walk abroad Id, and long, long roads leading to somewhere, with rough bits to traverse and stiles to get over and fences to leap. As it was, considering he had but a few feet to move about in, he adapted himself to his environment very well. He broke some cups, but he made good coffee. He burnt his fingers, bat the potatoes were not overdone, and the saveloys were done as much justice to as is possible, after they leave the butcher. Another reason that added to his reputation of being somewhat mad was, that in bis first years of business he was invariably

rude to "swells." Should one appear at his stall in fashionable attire, seeming quite willing to pay double and treble for his amusement, the ungainly, gaunt, and lanky proprietor not only refused the "tip," but refused to serve him, and told him to move on; but no woman came in vain — with money or without it, no matter how degraded she was — " For you never know what brought her to it," he declared.

Later on he developed another phase of his character which was a surprise to everbody. He became mean. He wouldn't help anybody or give anybody anything, unless it happened to be a boy— a little boy with blue eyes — any little boy with blue eyes, I should have said.

This was all that was known of him publicly, and 'fewer eccentricities, you will own, have called forth doubts as to the sanity of others.

The neighbours knew more about him — neighbours always do — than anybody else. He lived in a very humble by-way, in a simple house of several rooms, but severally and collectively each one of these rooms was a marvel of confusion. Not one of them had any individuality, any character of its own, to show its use. The bsdroom had a bed in it, but then so had the sitting room ; and there were dirty dishes wherever it was poEsible for dirty dishes to be. Lazy spiders, contented in their security, made webs and reared families in the corners ; mice were so much at home that they knew where to find everything ; and the Jdust took on form and bulk until it assumed the appearance of some grey moss peculiar to the surroundings. Here " Daddy Longlegs" lived long before he was known aa " Daddy Longlegs," and people called him Mr Smith, or Jim Smith, the saveloy man. If you live long enough in the same place, and do the same thing exactly year after year, people lose their interest in you, and come to regard you as they do the familiar chimney pots, however ungainly, and I daresay if Jim had continued to live alone in dirt by day and to mind his stall by night, nobody would, after the first two years, have thought of him at all — except when they happened to see him. But at the end of two years a change came in Jim's life, and such a strange, queer, inexplicable change that all the neighbours were set talking. One Sunday evening a man passed by Jim's house and saw through the window — the blind had been drawn down too carelessly — Jim nursing a baby. Not sulkily and moodily, but tossing it into the air with hia sallow, long face lit up with a delight that was reflected in the fair, soft, rounded face above tug own.

When the man could believe his own eyes, he went like the woman who lost the pie co of silver, and called neighbours and friends together, and they collected outside the halEcurtainfid window, and looked in curiouely. One girl giggled, a young man whistled — for Jim, transformed from the lank, sallow, disagreeable man with straight dark hair about a gloomy brow, looked the personification of happy fatherhood, as though the universal love of childhood was shining out of his eyes. When at last the little one wearied of the mad, giddy game, Jim folded his long arms, clad in faded, grey woollen, about the soft little body, and resting his cheek upon the fluffy, golden hair, softly lulled the little one to sleep.

11 Lord love him 1 " said the oldest woman of the wonder-stricken group as they turned silently away. " Lord love him I "

Many were the conjectures as to where the baby came from, many were the questions asked of Jim, but he replied, with a quiet dignity that silenced his questioners, that did he wish them to know he should tell them without the asking. Other and later sensations made the appearance of Jim's baby seem of less importance. The wife of the publican at the corner hanged herself one morning ; a newly-weddecl bride died suddenly ; the grocer came into a fortune, and Jim and the cMld were almost forgotten. No one is of sufficient importance in the world to be always kept in miad, unless they are continually acting in a manner calculated to keep themselves prominently before the public. A change takes place in our circumsfcancep, and " life is never the same again," but we seem the same to outward eyes. An introduction to a friend, the choice of a day for a railway journey, the turning at a street corner, and all things are changed.

Jim's life was never the same again. The baby altered everything, To begin with, Jim discovered that crawling about the dirty floors, the child got so discoloured that all his sweet beauty was as nothing. He might have been an American Indian for all a stranger could have told — face, hands, hair, clothes were all unrecognisable. It was not the least use washing

him —in half an hour he was as black as ever. So the process of purification began. At first Jim tidied up the centre of the room and spread a blanket, but with a chuckle and a crow the baby was soon off his allotted space — under the bed, smothered in fluff; into the hearth eating the cinders, everywhere where a baby should not be the baby was. Then Jim, grown desperate with repeated efforts to restrain the child, turned the room inside out, and Buch a scrubbing and polishing ensued that never before had been known in that residence, while the baby sat on the bed and sneezed with the dust, and grabbed at Jim's hair whenever Jim, upon his knees, up to the elbows in suds, brought his head within reach. The result was very satisfactory — so satisfactory that in the evening Jim sat regarding the transformation scene so long, with half-closed eyes, that he was late at his stand.

During the hours of his forced absence Jim hired an old woman to take charge of the child. At all other times the boy was with him. He fed him from his own plate, and at night the fluffy, golden head rested upon Jim's flat chest ; and Jim would lie awake sometimes for hours with those awkward arms of his folded about the little boy, and kiss the fingers that in sleep sought for his face.

This was when Jim first began to grow mean. But at home the work of purification extended, and spread from room to room until not a house in all the neighbourhood was kept like Jim Smith's. It was as though the child had descended like an angel thought, and by its pureness made all unwashed things look so foul that chamber after chamber was purified until the whole habitation was a fit setting. He was the divine .element — the regenerator amid dirt, confusion, and dismay. This altered state of living grew so much a part of Jim's life that he wondered often how he ever had existed in the old way. To have one to think of every hour, to plan for, to care for, to work and dream for seemed to fill so completely his whole life with aim, and every crevice of his being with pleasure, that he drew back appalled at the recollection of the loneliness that had been. He saw the meaning of life, the motive of the world's great machinery. Everything was taking on dignity ; the protective instinct of the man was gratified ; life had supplied the some one to strive for, and work was no longer the animal scramble for food. He was the necessity of another life, and he was happy.

To see him in his Sunday clothes leading little Arthur by the hand was a refreshing sight. It was, however, not an artistic sight, judged by the rules of the artist, for Jim's clothes were of a cut between the well-to-do farmer and the larrikin — one compromised with the other, co to speak. If the coat was too fustian and clumsy for a summer's day, the necktie was bright as a blossom. If Jim's face was long and lean and sallow his wideawake hat, set jauntily on the side of his dark lank hair, denied the charge of melancholy. Little Arthur was always resplendent. In material and colour both he was gorgeous, but the astonished gmile3 of passers-by invariably changed to looks of unfeigned admiration when they were close enough to see the picture-like face framed with the golden hair ; and Jim, looking with gratified pride after the admirer, then down at its object, would ask, " Who are you 1 " And the little mite would answer, " Daddy's boy."

Daddy's boy was happy with the supreme happiness of innocence. He did not know daddy was the oidest - looking figure they met in their walk. He was equally unconscious that the colours of his own costume were so far from blending, that they set people's teeth on edge. " Daddy " was daddy, and he was daddy's boy. The boys in the alley who heard the young tyrant calling for his slave up and down the stairs and about the footpath, commenced to call him daddy too, and from daddy it became " Daddy Longlegs," which name seemed to suit him so well that at length " Jim Smith " was scarcely known.