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cept ourselves; that if we are worthy no influence can defeat us. Like other races, the negro will often meet obstacles, often be sorely tried and tempted, but we must keep in mind that freedom, in the broadest and highest sense, has been a conquest.

One of Bob's Tramps

BY F. HOPKINSON SMITH.

*

HAD passed him coming up the dingy corridor that led to Bob's law office, and knew at once that he was one of Bob's tramps.

When he squeezed himself through the partly open door and had closed it gently he proved to be a man of about fifty years of age, fat and short, with a round head, partly bald, and hair quite gray. His face had not known a razor for days. He was dressed in dark clothes, once good, showing a white shirt, and he wore a collar with a cravat. Down his cheeks were uneven furrows, beginning at his spilling, watery eyes, and losing themselves in the stubble-covered cheeks-like old rain courses dried upwhile on his flat nose were perched a pair of silverrimmed spectacles, over which he looked at us in a dazed, half-bewildered, half-frightened way. In one hand he held his shapeless slouch hat; the other grasped an old violin wrapped in a grimy red silk handkerchief.

For an instant he stood before the door, bent low with unspoken apologies; then, placing his hat on the floor, he fumbled nervously in the breast pocket of his coat, from which he drew a letter, penned in an unknown hand and signed with an unknown name. Bob read it, and passed it to me.

"Please buy this violin," the note ran. "It is a good instrument and the man needs the money. The price is sixty dollars."

* From "The Other Fellow," by F. Hopkinson Smith. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Copyright, 1899, F. Hopkinson Smith. Printed by special permission of the author.

"Who gave you this note?" Bob asked.

He never

turns a beggar from his door if he can help it. This reputation makes him the target for half the tramps in town.

"Te leader of te orchestra at te theater. He say he not know you, but dat you lofe good violin. I come von time before, but vas nobody here. Blease you buy him?" "Is it yours?" I asked, anxious to get rid of him. The note trick had been played that winter by half the tramps in town.

"Yes. Mine vor veefteen year."

"Why do you want to sell it?" said Bob, his interest increasing, as he caught the pleading look in the man's

eyes.

"I don't vant to sell it-I vant to keep it; but I haf nothing. Ve vas in Philadelphy, and ten Scranton, and ten we get here to Putsbug, and all te scenery is by the shereef, and te manager haf nothing. Vor vourteen days I valk te streets, virst it is te ofercoat and vatch, and yesterday te ledder case vor veefty cents. If you don't buy him I must keep valking till I come by New York." "I've got a good violin," said Bob, softening.

"Ten you don't buy him? Vell, I go vay, ten," he said, with a sigh that seemed to empty his heart.

We both looked on in silence as he slowly wrapped the silk rag around it, winding the ends automatically about the bridge and strings, as he had no doubt done a dozen times before that day in his hunt for a customer. Suddenly as he reached the neck he stopped, turned the violin in his hand, and unwound the handkerchief again. "Tid you examine te neck? See how it lays in te hand! Tid you ever see a neck like dat? No, you don't see it, never."

Bob took the violin in his hand. It was evidently an old one and of peculiar shape. The neck, to which the man pointed, was smooth and remarkably graceful, like the stem of an old meerschaum pipe, and as richly colored.

Bob handled it critically, scrutinizing every inch of its surface-he adores a Cremona as some souls do a Madonna-then he walked with it to the window.

"Why, this has been mended!" he exclaimed, with a trace of anger in his voice. "This is a new neck put on!"

"Ah, you vind dat oud, do you? Tat is a new neck, sure, ant a good von; put on by Simon Corundennot Augusti!-Simon! It is better as efer."

Drawing the old red handkerchief from his pocket in a tired, hopeless way, he began twisting it about the violin again.

"Play something on it," said Bob.

"No, I don't blay. I got no heart inside of me to blay." (With a weary movement of his hand he was tucking the frayed ends of the handkerchief under the strings.)

"Can you play?" cried Bob, growing suddenly suspicious, now that the man dare not prove his story.

"Can I blay?" he answered, with a quick lifting of his eyes, and the semblance of a smile lighting up his furrowed face. "I blay mit Strakosch te Mendelssohn Concerts in te olt Academy in Vourteenth Street; ant ven Alboni sing, no von in te virst violins haf te solo but me, and dere is not a pin drop in te house, and Madam Alboni send me all te flowers tey gif ter. Can I BLAY!" The tone of the man's voice was masterly. Bob's tender heart got the better of him.

"I cannot afford to pay sixty dollars for another violin," he said.

"I cannot sell him vor less," replied the man in a quick, decided way. "Ven I get to New York," he continued, with almost a sob, "I must haf some money more as my railroad ticket to get anudder sheap violin. Te peoples vill say it is Grossman come home vidout he's violin-he is broke. No, I no can sell him vor less. T'is cost one hundred and sefenty-vive dollars ven I buy him." "Would you take thirty dollars and my old violin?" The man looked at Bob eagerly.

"Vere is your violin?"

"At my house."

"Is it a good von? Stop a minute." For the third time he removed the old red silk handkerchief. "Draw te bow across vonce. I know about your violin ven I hears you blay."

Bob tucked the instrument under his chin and drew a full, clear, resonant tone.

The watery eyes glistened.

"Yes, I take your violin ant te money. You know 'em, ant I tink you lofe 'em, too."

Bob reached for a pad, with an order, sealed it, and laid three ten-dollar bills on the table.

The man balanced the letter on his hand, reading the inscription in a listless sort of way, picked up the instrument, looked it all over carefully, flecked off some specks of dust from the fingerboard, laid the violin on the office table, thrust the soiled rag into his pocket, caught up the money, and without a word of thanks closed the door behind him.

"Bob," I said, "why in the name of common sense did you throw your money away on a sharp like that? Didn't you see through the whole game? That note was written by himself. Corunden never saw that fiddle in his life. You can buy a dozen of them for five dollars apiece in any piano shop in town."

Bob looked at me with that peculiar softening of the eyelids which we knew so well. Then he said thoughtfully: "Do you know what it is to be stranded in a strange city with not a cent in your pocket, afraid to look a policeman in the face lest he run you in? hungry, unwashed, not a clean shirt for weeks? I don't care if he is a fraud. He shan't go hungry if I can help it."

"Then why didn't he play for you?" I asked, still indignant.

"Yes, I wondered at that," he replied, but without a shadow of suspicion in his voice.

"You don't think he's such a fool as to go to your house for your violin? I'll bet you he's made a bee line for a rum mill; then he'll doctor up another old scraper and try the same game somewhere else. Let me go after him and bring him back."

Bob did not answer. The violin lay on the green-baize table where the man had put it, the law books pushed aside to give it room. Then he put on his coat and went over to court. In an hour he was back again—he and I sitting in the small inner office overlooking the dingy courtyard.

We had talked but a few minutes when a familiar shuffling step was heard in the corridor. I looked through the crack of the door, touched Bob's arm, and put my finger to my lips.

He had

The outer office door was being slowly opened in the same noiseless way, and the same man was creeping in. He gave an anxious look about the room. Bob's own violin in his hand; I knew it by the case. "Tey all oud," he muttered in an undertone. For an instant he wavered, looked hungrily toward his old violin, laid Bob's on a chair near the door, stepped on tip-toe to the green-baize table, picked up the Cremona, looked it all over, smoothing the back with his hands, then, nestling it under his chin, drew the bow gently across the strings, shut his eyes, and began the Concerto the one he had played with Alboni-not with its full volume of sound or emphasis, but with echoes, pulsations, tremulous murmurings, faint breathings of its marvelous beauty. The instrument seemed part of himself, the neck welded to his fingers, the bow but a piece of his arm, with a heart-throb down its whole length.

When it was ended he rubbed his cheek softly against his old comrade, smoothed it once or twice with his hand, laid it fenderly back in its place on the table among the books, picked up Bob's violin from the chair and gently closed the door behind him.

I looked at Bob. He was leaning against his desk, his eyes on the floor, his whole soul filled with the pathos of the melody. Suddenly he roused himself, sprang past me into the other room, and, calling to the man, ran out into the corridor.

"I could not catch him," he said in a dejected tone, coming back all out of breath.

"What did you want to catch him for?" I asked; "he never robbed you?"

"Robbed me!" cried Bob, the tears starting to his eyes. "Robbed me! Good God, man! Couldn't you hear? I robbed him!"

We searched for him all that day-Bob with the violin under his arm, I with an apology.

But he was gone.

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