could get a plate of beans and a piece of bread for ten cents; or a fish-
ball and some few trifles, but they gave “no bread with one fish-ball”
there. At French Pete’s he could get a veal cutlet, plain, and some
radishes and bread, for ten cents; or a cup of coffee–a pint at least–
and a slice of bread; but the slice was not thick enough by the eighth of
an inch, and sometimes they were still more criminal than that in the
cutting of it. At seven o’clock his hunger was wolfish; and still his
mind was not made up. He turned out and went up Merchant street, still
ciphering; and chewing a bit of stick, as is the way of starving men.
He passed before the lights of Martin’s restaurant, the most aristocratic
in the city, and stopped. It was a place where he had often dined, in
better days, and Martin knew him well. Standing aside, just out of the
range of the light, he worshiped the quails and steaks in the show
window, and imagined that may be the fairy times were not gone yet and
some prince in disguise would come along presently and tell him to go in
there and take whatever he wanted. He chewed his stick with a hungry
interest as he warmed to his subject. Just at this juncture he was
conscious of some one at his side, sure enough; and then a finger touched
his arm. He looked up, over his shoulder, and saw an apparition–a very
allegory of Hunger! It was a man six feet high, gaunt, unshaven, hung
with rags; with a haggard face and sunken cheeks, and eyes that pleaded
piteously. This phantom said:
“Come with me–please.”
He locked his arm in Blucher’s and walked up the street to where the
passengers were few and the light not strong, and then facing about, put
out his hands in a beseeching way, and said:
“Friend–stranger–look at me! Life is easy to you–you go about, placid
and content, as I did once, in my day–you have been in there, and eaten
your sumptuous supper, and picked your teeth, and hummed your tune, and
thought your pleasant thoughts, and said to yourself it is a good world–
but you’ve never suffered! You don’t know what trouble is–you don’t
know what misery is–nor hunger! Look at me! Stranger have pity on a
poor friendless, homeless dog! As God is my judge, I have not tasted
food for eight and forty hours!–look in my eyes and see if I lie! Give
me the least trifle in the world to keep me from starving–anything–
twenty-five cents! Do it, stranger–do it, please. It will be nothing
to you, but life to me. Do it, and I will go down on my knees and lick
the dust before you! I will kiss your footprints–I will worship the
very ground you walk on! Only twenty-five cents! I am famishing–
perishing–starving by inches! For God’s sake don’t desert me!”
Blucher was bewildered–and touched, too–stirred to the depths. He
reflected. Thought again. Then an idea struck him, and he said:
“Come with me.”
He took the outcast’s arm, walked him down to Martin’s restaurant, seated
him at a marble table, placed the bill of fare before him, and said:
“Order what you want, friend. Charge it to me, Mr. Martin.”
“All right, Mr. Blucher,” said Martin.
Then Blucher stepped back and leaned against the counter and watched the
man stow away cargo after cargo of buckwheat cakes at seventy-five cents
a plate; cup after cup of coffee, and porter house steaks worth two
dollars apiece; and when six dollars and a half’s worth of destruction
had been accomplished, and the stranger’s hunger appeased, Blucher went
down to French Pete’s, bought a veal cutlet plain, a slice of bread, and
three radishes, with his dime, and set to and feasted like a king!
Take the episode all around, it was as odd as any that can be culled from
the myriad curiosities of Californian life, perhaps.
CHAPTER LX.
By and by, an old friend of mine, a miner, came down from one of the
decayed mining camps of Tuolumne, California, and I went back with him.