‘Ten thousand dollars.’
Adding, after a considerable pause–
‘Ten thousand. It is a heap of money.’
Presently the poet inquired–
‘Are you going to send it to him right away?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is a queer question.’
No reply. After a little, Rogers asked, hesitatingly:
‘ALL of it?–That is–I mean—-‘
‘Certainly, all of it.’
I was going to say more, but stopped–was stopped by a
train of thought which started up in me. Thompson spoke,
but my mind was absent, and I did not catch what he said.
But I heard Rogers answer–
‘Yes, it seems so to me. It ought to be quite sufficient;
for I don’t see that he has done anything.’
Presently the poet said–
‘When you come to look at it, it is more than sufficient. Just look at it–
five thousand dollars! Why, he couldn’t spend it in a lifetime!
And it would injure him, too; perhaps ruin him–you want to look at that.
In a little while he would throw his last away, shut up his shop, maybe take
to drinking, maltreat his motherless children, drift into other evil courses,
go steadily from bad to worse—-‘
‘Yes, that’s it,’ interrupted Rogers, fervently, ‘I’ve seen it
a hundred times–yes, more than a hundred. You put money into
the hands of a man like that, if you want to destroy him, that’s all;
just put money into his hands, it’s all you’ve got to do;
and if it don’t pull him down, and take all the usefulness out of him,
and all the self-respect and everything, then I don’t know human nature–
ain’t that so, Thompson? And even if we were to give him a THIRD
of it; why, in less than six months–‘
‘Less than six WEEKS, you’d better say!’ said I, warming up and breaking in.
‘Unless he had that three thousand dollars in safe hands where he couldn’t
touch it, he would no more last you six weeks than—- ‘
‘Of COURSE he wouldn’t,’ said Thompson; ‘I’ve edited books for that
kind of people; and the moment they get their hands on the royalty–
maybe it’s three thousand, maybe it’s two thousand—-‘
‘What business has that shoemaker with two thousand dollars,
I should like to know?’ broke in Rogers, earnestly. ‘A man perhaps
perfectly contented now, there in Mannheim, surrounded by his own class,
eating his bread with the appetite which laborious industry alone
can give, enjoying his humble life, honest, upright, pure in heart;
and BLEST!–yes, I say blest! blest above all the myriads that go
in silk attire and walk the empty artificial round of social folly–
but just you put that temptation before him once! just you lay fifteen
hundred dollars before a man like that, and say—-‘
‘Fifteen hundred devils!’ cried I, ‘FIVE hundred would rot his principles,
paralyze his industry, drag him to the rumshop, thence to the gutter,
thence to the almshouse, thence to—-‘
‘WHY put upon ourselves this crime, gentlemen?’ interrupted the poet
earnestly and appealingly. ‘He is happy where he is, and AS he is.
Every sentiment of honor, every sentiment of charity, every sentiment
of high and sacred benevolence warns us, beseeches us, commands us to leave
him undisturbed. That is real friendship, that is true friendship.
We could follow other courses that would be more showy; but none that would
be so truly kind and wise, depend upon it.’
After some further talk, it became evident that each of us, down in his heart,
felt some misgivings over this settlement of the matter. It was manifest
that we all felt that we ought to send the poor shoemaker SOMETHING.
There was long and thoughtful discussion of this point; and we finally decided
to send him a chromo.
Well, now that everything seemed to be arranged satisfactorily
to everybody concerned, a new trouble broke out: it transpired that
these two men were expecting to share equally in the money with me.
That was not my idea. I said that if they got half of it between them
they might consider themselves lucky. Rogers said–
‘Who would have had ANY if it hadn’t been for me? I flung out the first hint–
but for that it would all have gone to the shoemaker.’