Old Abel Dunklee was delighted, and
so was old Abel’s wife, when little Abel came.
For this coming they had waited many years.
God had prospered them elsewise; this one supreme
blessing only had been withheld. Yet Abel had
never despaired. “I shall some time have
a son,” said he. “I shall call him
Abel. He shall be rich; he shall succeed to
my business; my house, my factory, my lands, my fortune,-all
shall be his!” Abel Dunklee felt this to be
a certainty, and with this prospect constantly in
mind he slaved and pinched and bargained. So
when at last the little one did come it was as heir
to a considerable property.
The joy in the house of Dunklee was
not shared by the community at large. Abel Dunklee
was by no means a popular man. Folk had the
well-defined opinion that he was selfish, miserly,
and hard. If he had not been actually bad, he
had never been what the world calls a good man.
His methods had been of the grinding, sordid order.
He had always been scrupulously honest in the payment
of his debts, and in keeping his word; but his sense
of duty seemed to stop there: Abel’s idea
of goodness was to owe no man any money. He never
gave a penny to charities, and he never spent any
time sympathizing with the misfortunes or distresses
of other people. He was narrow, close, selfish,
and hard, so his neighbors and the community at large
said, and I shall not deny that the verdict was a
just one.
When a little one comes into this
world of ours, it is the impulse of the people here
to bid it welcome, and to make its lot pleasant.
When little Abel was born no such enthusiasm obtained
outside the austere Dunklee household. Popular
sentiment found vent in an expression of the hope
that the son and heir would grow up to scatter the
dollars which old man Dunklee had accumulated by years
of relentless avarice and unflagging toil. But
Dr. Hardy-he who had officiated in an all-important
capacity upon that momentous occasion in the Dunklee
household-Dr. Hardy shook his head wisely,
and perhaps sadly, as if he were saying to himself:
“No, the child will never do either what the
old folk or what the other folk would have him do;
he is not long for here.”
Had you questioned him closely, Dr.
Hardy would have told you that little Abel was as
frail a babe as ever did battle for life. Dr.
Hardy would surely never have dared say that to old
Dunklee; for in his rapture in the coming of that
little boy old Dunklee would have smote the offender
who presumed even to intimate that the babe was not
the most vigorous as well as the most beautiful creature
upon earth. The old man was simply assotted
upon the child,-in a selfish way, undoubtedly,
but even this selfish love of that puny little child
showed that the old man was capable of somewhat better
than his past life had been. To hear him talk
you might have fancied that Mrs. Dunklee had no part
or parcel or interest in their offspring. It
was always “my little boy,”-yes,
old Abel Dunklee’s money had a rival in the
old man’s heart at last, and that rival was a
helpless, shrunken, sickly little babe.
Among his business associates Abel
Dunklee was familiarly known as Old Growly, for the
reason that his voice was harsh and discordant, and
sounded for all the world like the hoarse growling
of an ill-natured bear. Abel was not a particularly
irritable person, but his slavish devotion to money-getting,
his indifference to the amenities of life, his entire
neglect of the tender practices of humanity, his rough,
unkempt personality, and his deep, hoarse voice,-these
things combined to make that sobriquet of “Old
Growly” an exceedingly appropriate one.
And presumably Abel never thought of resenting the
slur implied therein and thereby; he was too shrewd
not to see that, however disrespectful and evil-intentioned
the phrase might be, it served him to good purpose;
for it conduced to that very general awe, not to say
terror, which kept people from bothering him with
their charitable and sentimental schemes.
Yes, I think we can accept it as a
fact that Abel liked that sobriquet; it meant more
money in his pocket, and fewer demands upon his time
and patience.
But Old Growly abroad and Old Growly
at home were two very different people. Only
the voice was the same. The homely, furrowed,
wizened face lighted up, and the keen, restless eyes
lost their expression of shrewdness, and the thin,
bony hands that elsewhere clutched and clutched and
pinched and pinched for possession unlimbered themselves
in the presence of little Abel, and reached out their
long fingers yearningly and caressingly toward the
little child. Then the hoarse voice would growl
a salutation that was full of tenderness, for it came
straight from the old man’s heart; only, had
you not known how much he loved the child, you might
have thought otherwise, for the old man’s voice
was always hoarse and discordant, and that was why
they called him Old Growly. But what proved
his love for that puny babe was the fact that every
afternoon, when he came home from the factory, Old
Growly brought his little boy a dime; and once, when
the little fellow had a fever on him from teething,
Old Growly brought him a dollar! Next day the
tooth came through and the fever left him, but you
could not make the old man believe but what it was
the dollar that did it all. That was natural,
perhaps; for his life had been spent in grubbing for
money, and he had not the soul to see that the best
and sweetest things in human life are not to be had
by riches alone.
As the doctor had in one way and another
intimated would be the case, the child did not wax
fat and vigorous. Although Old Growly did not
seem to see the truth, little Abel grew older only
to become what the doctor had foretold,-a
cripple. A weakness of the spine was developed,
a malady that dwarfed the child’s physical growth,
giving to his wee face a pinched, starved look, warping
his emaciated body, and enfeebling his puny limbs,
while at the same time it quickened the intellectual
faculties to the degree of precocity. And so
two and three and four years went by, little Abel
clinging to life with pathetic heroism, and Old Growly
loving that little cripple with all the violence of
his selfish nature. Never once did it occur to
the father that his child might die, that death’s
seal was already set upon the misshapen little body;
on the contrary, Old Growly’s thoughts were
constantly of little Abel’s famous future, of
the great fortune he was to fall heir to, of the prosperous
business career he was to pursue, of the influence
he was to wield in the world,-of dollars,
dollars, dollars, millions of them which little Abel
was some time to possess; these were Old Growly’s
dreams, and he loved to dream them!
Meanwhile the world did well by the
old man; despising him, undoubtedly, for his avarice
and selfishness, but constantly pouring wealth, and
more wealth, and even more wealth into his coffers.
As for the old man, he cared not for what the world
thought or said, so long as it paid tribute to him;
he wrought on as of old, industriously, shrewdly,
hardly, but with this new purpose: to make his
little boy happy and great with riches.
Toys and picture-books were vanities
in which Old Growly never indulged; to have expended
a farthing for chattels of that character would have
seemed to Old Growly like sinful extravagance.
The few playthings which little Abel had were such
as his mother surreptitiously bought; the old man
believed that a child should be imbued with a proper
regard for the value of money from the very start,
so his presents were always cash in hand, and he bought
a large tin bank for little Abel, and taught the child
how to put the copper and silver pieces into it, and
he labored diligently to impress upon the child of
how great benefit that same money would be to him by
and by. Just picture to yourself, if you can,
that fond, foolish old man seeking to teach this lesson
to that wan-eyed, pinched-face little cripple!
But little Abel took it all very seriously, and was
so apt a pupil that Old Growly made great joy and
was wont to rub his bony hands gleefully and say to
himself, “He has great genius,-this
boy of mine,-great genius for finance!”
But on a day, coming from his factory,
Old Growly was stricken with horror to find that during
his absence from home a great change had come upon
his child. The doctor said it was simply the
progress of the disease; that it was a marvel that
little Abel had already held out so long; that from
the moment of his birth the seal of death had been
set upon him in that cruel malady which had drawn
his face and warped his body and limbs. Then
all at once Old Growly’s eyes seemed to be opened
to the truth, and like a lightning flash it came to
him that perhaps his pleasant dreams which he had
dreamed of his child’s future could never be
realized. It was a bitter awakening, yet amid
it all the old man was full of hope, determination,
and battle. He had little faith in drugs and
nursing and professional skill; he remembered that
upon previous occasions cures had been wrought by
means of money; teeth had been brought through, the
pangs of colic beguiled, and numerous other ailments
to which infancy is heir had by the same specific been
baffled. So now Old Growly set about wooing his
little boy from the embrace of death,-sought
to coax him back to health with money, and the dimes
became dollars, and the tin bank was like to burst
of fulness. But little Abel drooped and drooped,
and he lost all interest in other things, and he was
content to lie, drooping-eyed and listless, in his
mother’s arms all day. At last the little
flame went out with hardly so much as a flutter, and
the hope of the house of Dunklee was dissipated forever.
But even in those last moments of the little cripple’s
suffering the father struggled to call back the old
look into the fading eyes, and the old smile into
the dear, white face. He brought treasure from
his vaults and held it up before those fading eyes,
and promised it all, all, all-everything
he possessed, gold, houses, lands-all he
had he would give to that little child if that little
child would only live. But the fading eyes saw
other things, and the ears that were deaf to the old
man’s lamentations heard voices that soothed
the anguish of that last solemn hour. And so
little Abel knew the Mystery.
Then the old man crept away from that
vestige of his love, and stood alone in the night,
and lifted up his face, and beat his bosom, and moaned
at the stars, asking over and over again why he had
been so bereaved. And while he agonized in this
wise and cried there came to him a voice,-a
voice so small that none else could hear, a voice
seemingly from God; for from infinite space beyond
those stars it sped its instantaneous way to the old
man’s soul and lodged there.
“Abel, I have touched thy heart!”
And so, having come into the darkness
of night, old Dunklee went back into the light of
day and found life beautiful; for the touch was in
his heart.
After that, Old Growly’s way
of dealing with the world changed. He had always
been an honest man, honest as the world goes.
But now he was somewhat better than honest; he was
kind, considerate, merciful. People saw and felt
the change, and they knew why it was so. But
the pathetic part of it all was that Old Growly would
never admit-no, not even to himself-that
he was the least changed from his old grinding, hard
self. The good deeds he did were not his own;
they were his little boy’s,-at least
so he said. And it was his whim when doing some
kind and tender thing to lay it to little Abel, of
whom he always spoke as if he were still living.
His workmen, his neighbors, his townsmen,-all
alike felt the graciousness of the wondrous change,
and many, ah! many a lowly sufferer blessed that broken
old man for succor in little Abel’s name.
And the old man was indeed much broken: not
that he had parted with his shrewdness and acumen,
for, as of old, his every venture prospered; but in
this particular his mind seemed weakened; that, as
I have said, he fancied his child lived, that he was
given to low muttering and incoherent mumblings, of
which the burden seemed to be that child of his, and
that his greatest pleasure appeared now to be watching
other little ones at their play. In fact, so
changed was he from the Old Growly of former years,
that, whereas he had then been wholly indifferent
to the presence of those little ones upon earth, he
now sought their company, and delighted to view their
innocent and mirthful play. And so, presently,
the children, from regarding him at first with distrust,
came to confide in and love him, and in due time the
old man was known far and wide as Old Grampa Growly,
and he was pleased thereat. It was his wont to
go every fair day, of an afternoon, into a park hard
by his dwelling, and mingle with the crowd of little
folk there; and when they were weary of their sports
they used to gather about him,-some even
clambering upon his knees,-and hear him
tell his story, for he had only one story to tell,
and that was the story that lay next his heart,-the
story ever and forever beginning with, “Once
ther’ wuz a littl’ boy.” A
very tender little story it was, too, told very much
more sweetly than I could ever tell it; for it was
of Old Grampa Growly’s own little boy, and it
came from that heart in which the touch-the
touch of God Himself-lay like a priceless
pearl.
So you must know that the last years
of the old man’s life made full atonement for
those that had gone before. People forgot that
the old man had ever been other than he was now, and
of course the children never knew otherwise.
But as for himself, Old Grampa Growly grew tenderer
and tenderer, and his goodness became a household
word, and he was beloved of all. And to the
very last he loved the little ones, and shared their
pleasures, and sympathized with them in their griefs,
but always repeating that same old story, beginning
with “Once ther’ wuz a littl’ boy.”
The curious part of it was this:
that while he implied by his confidences to the children
that his own little boy was dead, he never made that
admission to others. On the contrary, it was
his wont, as I have said, to speak of little Abel
as if that child still lived, and, humoring him in
this conceit, it was the custom of the older ones to
speak always of that child as if he lived and were
known and beloved of all. In this custom the
old man had great content and solace. For it
was his wish that all he gave to and did for charity’s
sake should be known to come, not from him, but from
Abel, his son, and this was his express stipulation
at all such times. I know whereof I speak, for
I was one of those to whom the old man came upon a
time and said: “My little boy-Abel,
you know-will give me no peace till I do
what he requires. He has this sum of money which
he has saved in his bank, count it yourselves, it
is $50,000, and he bids me give it to the townsfolk
for a hospital, one for little lame boys and girls.
And I have promised him-my little boy,
Abel, you know-that I will give $50,000
more. You shall have it when that hospital is
built.” Surely enough, in eighteen months’
time the old man handed us the rest of the money,
and when we told him that the place was to be called
the Abel Dunklee hospital he was sorely distressed,
and shook his head, and said: “No, no,-not
my name! Call it the Little Abel
hospital, for little Abel-my boy, you know-has
done it all.”
The old man lived many years,-lived
to hear tender voices bless him, and to see pale faces
brighten at the sound of his footfall. Yes, for
many years the quaint, shuffling figure moved about
our streets, and his hoarse but kindly voice-oh,
very kindly now!-was heard repeating to
the children that pathetic old story of “Once
ther’ wuz a littl’ boy.” And
where the dear old feet trod the grass grew greenest,
and the sunbeams nestled. But at last there
came a summons for the old man,-a summons
from away off yonder,-and the old man heard
it and went thither.
The doctor-himself hoary
and stooping now-told me that toward the
last Old Grampa Growly sunk into a sort of sleep, or
stupor, from which they could not rouse him.
For many hours he lay like one dead, but his thin,
creased face was very peaceful, and there was no pain.
Children tiptoed in with flowers, and some cried
bitterly, while others-those who were younger-whispered
to one another: “Hush, let us make no noise;
Old Grampa Growly is sleeping.”
At last the old man roused up.
He had lain like one dead for many hours, but now
at last he seemed to wake of a sudden, and, seeing
children about him, perhaps he fancied himself in that
pleasant park, under the trees, where so very often
he had told his one pathetic story to those little
ones. Leastwise he made a feeble motion as if
he would have them gather nearer, and, seeming to
know his wish, the children came closer to him.
Those who were nearest heard him say with the ineffable
tenderness of old, “Once ther’ wuz a littl’
boy-”
And with those last sweet words upon
his lips, and with the touch in his heart, the old
man went down into the Valley.