_ OBSERVATIONS OF A RETIRED VETERAN III
I have often heard people lament ill-health because, they say, sickness loses to a man friends. On the contrary, I hold that it brings him many new and unexpected ones. Let me see--December 15,--July; seven months; that was long enough to make the experiment, wasn't it? Well, let me look over some of the new friends I have made lying all this time in bed. The first new friend that I made, and one who had evidently seen better days, was a Tomato Can, that ever present denizen of the back-yard. On his head he jauntily flew a cocked hat bearing a damaged new picture of himself evidently taken in youth, and across his red waistcoat, in blue letters, was the word "Trophy." There he stood, day after day, leaning jauntily against the doubtful company of a whiskey barrel hoop, telling me the time of day, as if that was his only business in life. If the sun's light lay across his red stomach it was 9 o'clock, if it glistened on his cocked hat it was noon, and if it soberly lighted up the cherry red tomato on his side, it was 6 o'clock. "Sir," he seemed to say, "I have not been always as you see me. I have seen the day when I roosted on the highest shelf in the family grocery, and when I was dusted daily by well dressed clerks--if the employer was around. I was for many years the tenant of a French plate glass window and I have been carried by the soft hand of Beauty, sir, and laid gently in the market-basket. I do not boast, but Beauty itself has carried me through the streets in its arm. I have seen great larks, sir. I have travelled that Main Street at the rate of a mile a minute at the tail of valuable dogs, and at the midnight hour I have bounced into the midst of cat caucuses with great sport. I have been the friend of Man, sir, but what has Man done for me. He has left me here in this miserable back-yard, company of barrel-hoops and brick-bats and bottles. He has--" But here the next door neighbor's servant threw a bucket of slop-water on my friend and cut off his complaint. His red vest peeled down a little further, his cocked hat depressed further over his face, and a potato skin stopped his mouth. How true it is that no person can be in such disreputable circumstances that he has not the remembrance of better days to soothe him, and like the Tomato Can, ever find true comfort in the top-shelf on which he long ago may have roosted.
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But as a new friend, the Street must always take the first place with a sick man. How new everything in the Street becomes to the man who views it from a sick bed! You would think he had never seen it before. Nor has he. No man in health lies and sees the Street wake up in the morning. Nor does the man in health, walking about the Street, see how prettily it goes to sleep. The lengthening shadows make it drowsy for a little while, but as evening comes it makes a great stir. It sends hundreds of hustling people along its walks hurrying home. It lights up hundreds of windows and shop fronts and looks as much as to say, "I think I will make a night of it. I've sent all the children to bed and now I'll have a time of it." But the steady old Street on which I live gives up its dissipated idea early, turns off light after light, and soon the lonely sidewalks are without a passenger. The Street does one thing for the sick man you wouldn't expect; it arouses a spirit of rebellion that is astonishing. Resignation is a beautiful virtue, but it chiefly exists on side streets and out of town. The man who is sick on a main street and professes to be resigned is a hypocrite. My friend, the Street, presents to me Thompson. What do I say? "Ah, Thompson, take the blessing of a sick man?" Not a bit of it. I say, what right has Thompson to be walking along attending to business and possibly taking surreptitious cooling drinks, while I am doomed to staring out of the window and drinking beef tea? But Thompson don't drink? Oh, well, what do I care if he don't! I threw that in about drinks to make it as hard on him as possible. It makes a good point on a man just to suggest it. There; there goes Robinson going to church with a new suit on, and a wife hanging on his arm! What has he done to deserve that sort of luck? Why, isn't he up here flat of his back--and there they all go. Resigned? Ah, no, the sick are not resigned. It is only the dead who are resigned.
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A perfectly new friend is the Sky. How often does one in health look at the Sky save to see about the weather? But once a year. But in sickness it is an ever present friend. You watch for day breaks in it, and for the fading stars, and find an exciting interest in which of two stars will go out first, something like you were betting on a race. And then the figures in the blue field all day long; for it is not at evening and night alone that they appear. What have I not seen march across my window in the procession--a castle, a fan, a swan, a kerosene can, the king of spades, a cream jug, troops of angels, in short, anything that an idle imagination wants to conjure up. And when it dresses for the evening, in what glorious costumes does it appear. But all that is garish compared with the Sky upon which the night has settled down. That is the sort of Sky to bring calmness and content. The quiet lighting up of the stars, with no step ladders and no hurried match scratching of the police; the ease with which the moon climbs up her route, no puffing, no machinery clanking; the deepening of the blue to better show the celestial sparks that glow on it--and the knowledge that all this will go on without failure and without your having to turn over in bed to work some lever to help it move, makes the coming of night a comfort to the sick. Who thinks of the stars in health? No one. We think of supper, of the theatre, of the band concert, of the church, of the lecture--but who thinks of the stars they are walking under. It is given to the sick to remember them, and in return they remember the sick. Whoever else fails us the Stars are there. Steady, faithful, unchanging, always waiting. Shall I remember them after this? Ah, I can't tell, I am like the rest and will soon forget them in the busy street. But to-night while all is still, I look with reverence and curiosity on our future homes, my newest friends, the Stars.
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Another new friend is the News Gatherer. I give you my word that one sick man gets more news--political, gossip, scandal--than any twenty well ones. You see he is always there and easy to find. Human nature can't keep news long and it always hunts up the man that is easy to find and unloads on him. There is a sense of security in talking to a man flat of his back--he can't get out to repeat it. Many things combine to make the News Gatherer the sick man's friend. He is helpless, weak and can't talk back. That secures a good listener. He is sick and wants to be entertained. That makes him an eager listener. And finally being confined and unable to get out he is presumably an empty vessel waiting to be filled. And with this inviting prospect the News Gatherer moves his machine up to the side of the bed and monotonously pumps, pumps, pumps. It is well for that kindly hearted man that the patient is not only stretched out on his bed, but also unarmed. Ah! how many men earn sudden death and yet in the mystery of Providence escape it! I have often wondered at the persistency with which habit has fixed on women the exclusive reputation of gossipers. For I say unto you, brethren, that Woman, who with empty head and silly tongue toys with her neighbor's character unto its destruction, is not more full of gossip than her brother Man, who knows better and yet cannot stand the temptation of a sick man and a safe chance to chatter about matters with which he has no business. I am afraid like the idea of original sin we all have just a little spice of it.
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A relief to this friend, and a friend I never saw before, was my Moth. I think he came into the world about February, having been deceived by the hot room into the belief that Spring had come. Many days after, when snow could be seen on the ground, I have seen him feebly climbing up the window pane and looking out with the air of one whose whole life had been a dreadful mistake. The first time I saw him was one night sitting in the light and heat of the lamp, his grey wing shining like silver and his brown little body giving a soft, velvety light, his face grave with owl-like stupidity, and two big black eyes. After the snow passed away he seemed to get settled, and at night would sit on a match box staring for hours at the lamp, as one who should say, "Well, I understand the medicine vials, and the blisters, and the inkstand, and all that, but this great bright thing is quite beyond me." He never once thought of flying into it to see how it was done, and I thought of writing to the Bug Professor at the Smithsonian that here was a species of moth that light did not attract. But what will not bad company do? After the warm weather came and the windows were open, what should come in but other moths, of little character I think, who commenced pranks of humming and buzzing and butting the lamp. My Moth watched it with deep interest for two nights, but on the second night, I saw from his rubbing his nose with his paws that he was getting excited. Sure enough on the third night he remarked, "Well, I guess I'll try a little of that myself," and hopping back to the mucilage bottle for a start he took a header at the lamp. Except that his silver wings trembled, and his velvet legs drew up, he never moved again. I had lost a good friend whose innocent ramblings I had watched for hours and whose antics, when he tasted the ink or got a sniff of the ammonia, had much amused me. I don't know that he died too early. He had learned a bad habit, and for a man or a Bug who has learned a bad habit, I am not certain that death can come too soon. He died thinking he knew everything worth knowing, for I have no doubt that through the panes of my window and across my narrow street he thought he had seen the World. Just as we larger, but not wiser animals think that after gazing through our little theological panes, we have seen clear through Eternity, and into the mind of the Father. After all, my Moth was not worse off than the rest of us. We have all our little streets which we call the World, and our little pane of glass through which we think we see all that is worth seeing, and we need but a soupcon of bad example to make us blindly dash into the worst of follies. Let us never forget that, more than for this Moth, there is for us an unseen Hand that after these follies picks us up and starts us on our course again, with a pitying touch, and that, more than this, when the last twilight of evening shall gather around us, and the hands of those we love can be no longer seen, there shall appear to us through the gray mist of Death, that bright and gentle Hand, and with it the face of a Father and a Friend. _