A busy surgeon was passing near the lieutenant.
“Good-morning,” he said, with a friendly
smile. Then he caught sight of the lieutenant’s
arm and his face at once changed. “Well,
let’s have a look at it.” He seemed
possessed suddenly of a great contempt for the lieutenant.
This wound evidently placed the latter on a very low
social plane. The doctor cried out impatiently,
“What mutton-head had tied it up that way anyhow?”
The lieutenant answered, “Oh, a man.”
When the wound was disclosed the doctor fingered it
disdainfully. “Humph,” he said.
“You come along with me and I’ll ’tend
to you.” His voice contained the same scorn
as if he were saying, “You will have to go to
jail.”
The lieutenant had been very meek, but now his face
flushed, and he looked into the doctor’s eyes.
“I guess I won’t have it amputated,”
he said.
“Nonsense, man! Nonsense! Nonsense!”
cried the doctor. “Come along, now.
I won’t amputate it. Come along. Don’t
be a baby.”
“Let go of me,” said the lieutenant, holding
back wrathfully, his glance fixed upon the door of
the old school-house, as sinister to him as the portals
of death.
And this is the story of how the lieutenant lost his
arm. When he reached home, his sisters, his mother,
his wife sobbed for a long time at the sight of the
flat sleeve. “Oh, well,” he said,
standing shamefaced amid these tears, “I don’t
suppose it matters so much as all that.”
It was late at night, and a fine rain was swirling
softly down, causing the pavements to glisten with
hue of steel and blue and yellow in the rays of the
innumerable lights. A youth was trudging slowly,
without enthusiasm, with his hands buried deep in
his trousers’ pockets, toward the downtown places
where beds can be hired for coppers. He was clothed
in an aged and tattered suit, and his derby was a marvel
of dust-covered crown and torn rim. He was going
forth to eat as the wanderer may eat, and sleep as
the homeless sleep. By the time he had reached
City Hall Park he was so completely plastered with
yells of “bum” and “hobo,”
and with various unholy epithets that small boys had
applied to him at intervals, that he was in a state
of the most profound dejection. The sifting rain
saturated the old velvet collar of his overcoat, and
as the wet cloth pressed against his neck, he felt
that there no longer could be pleasure in life.
He looked about him searching for an outcast of highest
degree that they too might share miseries, but the
lights threw a quivering glare over rows and circles
of deserted benches that glistened damply, showing
patches of wet sod behind them. It seemed that
their usual freights had fled on this night to better
things. There were only squads of well-dressed
Brooklyn people who swarmed towards the bridge.
