A Terrible Experience [pp. 16-26]

A Terrible Experience.
A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE: A TALE OF THE ARIZONA MOUNTAINS.
THE following story was related to me by
the leading actor in the adventure himself. I
have written it in the way he told me, using
his language as nearly as possible, only substituting fictitious for the real names of the
parties concerned.
I was in love with my employer's daughter
Alice-the old story-and was too poor to
pay my addresses to her, although I felt sure
in my heart she loved me. Her father, a
large importer of fine cloth, was a proud old
man, subject to frequent attacks of rheumatism; so it fell to my lot to perform my business duties in the handsome, spacious library
of his Fifth Avenue mansion, instead of in the
dingy down-town office in street. I am
a short-hand expert, so Mr. Baxter would dictate to me his voluminous correspondence,
and I would take it down in short-hand, and
afterward, in my own room, in script. This
room of mine, away down in the lower part
of town, was poor and bare enough, I assure
you, with not a superfluous article in the way
of furniture or ornamentation-indeed, hardly
the necessities of life, I thought then. All
that can be said in favor of it is, that it was
neat and clean. It was on the "basin and
pitcher floor" of a once fine house, now
fast falling into disrepair, in a quiet street,
where I could see from my short, square attic
window the tall, misty masts of the great ships
lying at the city docks.
Somehow the constant sight of these masts
made me restless, suggesting as they did faraway countries, and seas, and foreign soil;
and not without reason altogether, for at the
time I speak of I had been guilty of a great
imprudence, of the enormity of which, at
that moment, I was fortunately in ignorance.
I imagined I was making the great strike of
my life. But I must be more explicit:
There was a reason for my economy and
poverty. Although I received, comparatively
speaking, a large salary, for fourteen long
months I had prepared my breakfast and
supper on a miniature oil stove, brewing my
tea and boiling my couple of eggs, with a roll
or two from the neighboring baker's. My
one square meal had been in the middle of
the day, at a place I had patronized for a
long time an odd, poor little Italian restaurant in an obscure portion of the city, where
I could get a hearty dinner with soup for
twenty-five cents. This resort was patronized by men as poor and Bohemian as myself apparently, and as reserved, for they came
in quietly, and although seated table d'h6te
rarely exchanged words or even commonplace remarks. Many frequenting the restaurant daily for months, never made acquaintances; and almostinvariably they came
alone, and not in companies of twos and
threes. I had discovered this queer little
place in my Bohemian days, when I was a
reporter on one of the big daily papers and
my work took me into all and any of the
mysterious nooks in the wonderful city of
New York. I kept going there even after
my engagement with "Baxter & Bros.," and
had managed to put by quite a considerable
sum, when I came into contact with the influence which changed my whole life.
I had known Miss Baxter then for several
months- a beautiful, brown-eyed, brownhaired girl of twenty or thereabouts, with the
most winning smile ever seen on a woman's
face. Her father could not bear her out of
his sight, so she would bring her work to the
library and there sit beside him, as he dictated to me his correspondence. Mr. Baxter
always treated me like a gentleman. The
idea of his amanuensis falling in love with
his daughter never seemed to enter his mind,
and as I aimed to be a man of honor, I never
by word or sign violated his confidence; for
although I could not sit day after day in the
society of his charming daughter without falling in love with her, I never told her of it,
and the opportunities were many. I was
proud and poor; for paltry enough was the
16
[July,