Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1883 — MAKING UP MEALS. [ARTICLE]

MAKING UP MEALS.

Bow a Tramp Keeps Coast of All the Dinners He Has Missed. He was a ragged and unkempt looking person, and very profuse in his thanks for the coin wmch the New York Tribune reporter had just given him. “Thank you, sir, very sincerely—this will buy me last— Tuee day—week’s dinner, I think.” Then, after a pause, “Yes, I had Tuesday week’s breakfast yesterday afternoon, and this will bring me up to Tuesday night. You see, I’m near on to a fortnight behind now, but that ain’t much.” “What is not much? I don’t quite catch your meaning.” “Why, being a fortnight behind ain’t much. I’ve run as much as four weeks in the rear before now, but that’s bad, and I was pretty well done up, I can tell you.” • Seeing, however, that the reporter still looked rather puzzled, he set to work to explain himself. “Well, it’s along this way. I allows myself two meals a day. Two meals a day is what a man really needs to keep in any kind of trim, and if he can get ’em reg’lar so much the pleasanter, but if he can’t, why it’s his duty to make ’em up when he can. If I only get one meal on Monday the other stands over to Tuesday, and if I am one short on Tuesday again, that leaves four for Wednesday. And do I really keep a score and work off arrears when I can? “Why, of course I do, but its hard work sometimes,” he continued, meditatively, “with the scoring, and the eating off arrears is hard. You see one’s very apt to get mixed carrying the count in one’s memory from day to day—and I don’t, rightly know whether I ever had Sathrday fortnight’s breakfast now, but I had a meal late at night on last Thursday which I think was Saturday fortnight’s breakfast, but I never felt sure it wasn’t only Friday fortnight’s dinner. But I don’t like getting mixed; it makes one awfully hungry and uncertain like about one’s stomach, not knowing whether one has had a meal or not. But what’s worse is getting into new a month. I don’t feel so bad eating last week’s victuals, or the week’s before—but when it comes to last month’s it’s hungry work. That’s why it is,” he explained, “I’m always kind o’ low for the first few days of a month.” Here he grew sad, as if pondering on some harrowing memories; then slowly—“I only once turned the year in arrears, and that was in ’79. As a general rule I manage to pick up a bit about Christmas and work off all old scores before the Ist of January. But somehow or another that year money didn’t seem very plenty, and I had to begin the new year with a fortnignt’s meals on my mind, but not in my stomach. It’s a terrible thing, sir,” he said, bitterly, “to have the new year opening when you ought to be full of hope for a fresh start, and to be dragged back by being twenty-eight dinners and breakfasts in arrears! May you never know what it means sir, and thank you again;” and he turned gloomily away to buy last Tuesday week’s dinner.