Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 February 1901 — "SEA BOY." [ARTICLE]

"SEA BOY."

By JOHN J. A’BECKET.

[Copyright, 1899, by th* Author.] Once upon a time (not half as long •go a* that phrase makes it sound) a small boy lived in an-elephant. Even an infant elephant is large enough to hold - a colony of small boys. The fact that this small boy lived in the elephant is proof enough that he had not been eaten up by him. This elephant was literally the biggest elephant on earth. He stood on the seashore for 15 years looking at the Atlantic ocean. He had never stirred a foot since he took his majestic pose on a flat sandy land. He was so near the shore that in very violent winter storms the" irritated sea came swooping through the air and flung itself in wet, salt spray right on his benign old face. But he was blinder than a bat. The reason of this? Why, the elephant was Of wood and had a skin of tin, painted mouse color. He was a summer hotel, this elephant was, and as he cost his owner nothing for his “feed” you would suppose he was an inexpensive animaL » Don’t think it. He cost over $50,000 , and Was a bad speculation. People could see him without paying anything, and when you were inside of him there was no knowing that he was an elephant at all. So they just stood outside and looked at .the great, still thing, and laughed ahd jingled their change in their pockets. It didn’t cost them a cent to do this. But naturally the owner of the elephant didn’t take in any money from this admiration of the monster, who was fully 75 feet high and 100 feet long. Asa result, he let the animal go for a nominal price for a seaside hotqht The lady Wko scrubbed the floors in the hotel and toiled in other humble ways to keep it sweet and clean took up residence in the poor deserted elephant. She had two young children, 8 and 5 years old respectively, Tommy and Eily. Tommy was the elder. Although she had these two children to bring up and no husband to help her do it, she adopted “Sea Boy,” and that brings in the small boy who lived in an elephant mentioned in the beginning of this story. . It seems strange that a scrubbing widow lady who had two small mouths to feed should want to feed a third one, when it meant so much more pain for her tired back. But she had a heart One winter night there was a terrible storm, and a small schooner was driven on to the long, sandy point which ran out into the sea for a great distance under the water. The sailors were all saved except one short, thickset man, who was washed ashore dead. An icy cold, bright faced boy about 10 years old was washed in alive, but blue enough to put in a wash boiler on Monday morning. The short man was the boy’s father, and he had no other Irin. So they were going to send him to the place where poor orphans go who have nobody to care for them (what the name of it was I don’t know, but. that doesn’t matter), when Mrs. Garrity’s heart spoke. She always listened to it respectfully. It said this time: “Take him in. The ocean rolled him to you. Let him have a mother’s love and a home even if the home is an elephant.” So Mrs. Garrity did what her heart told her to, and the ocean waif became as one of her own. He took to the elephant as a duck does to water. He was a keen witted lad and as industrious as

an ant. He blacked shoes, sold papers and picked up odd jobs.’ In a little while Mrs. Garrity found that in plape of the Sea Boy being a burden and an expense he helped to lighten the money strain on her/ He not only paid for his own keep, but he helped support the two small Garritys, and Mrs. Garrity's back was no more strained-than it-had been before. • '<-/' . ' Somebody started calling this adopted boy of hers the “Sea Boy,” to distinguish him from the others, and finally everybody called him ‘‘Sea Boy,” till it came to be his name. Sea Boy got to love the dear old elephant in whose right shoulder he slept with little Tommy Garrity. There was a big window in it. The elephant had windows on both of his sides and on his chest, as if he had broken-out with them as children do with a rash. In the summer the sea air blew in to cool them, and they could hear the water break with a soft booming on the shore and then rattle over the pebbles as it was sucked back again. At night the broad water would be covered with a violet pall, with lights afar off which looked like golden pins that held it in place. Or else there would be a lustrous sheen on it, and a great corduroy road of silver braid led off to the horizon and went into the sky there, so the children thought. And after the two youngsters were sound asleep the moon would sometimes peep in through the window and light up their small round faces lying upturned on the pillow and seem to say, “Bless ’em. ” They were a happy group, the elephant, who had lost his owner ; Mrs. Garrity, who had lost Mr. Garrity; Sea Boy, who had lost every thing,. and the two small Garritys, who had never lost anything that they knew of. But their turn came. Sea Boy hadn’t been with the Garritys more than a year and a half when Mrs. Garrity woke up one night with a pain in her heart, gave a deep groan and called, “Sea Boy!” He woke up at once and hurried into her small room. She was suffering so she couldn’t speak. She knew what it meant and was trying her best to tell Sea Boy to look after the children. But she couldn’t get the words out, and as Sea Boy helped her to sit up, that she might breathe easier, her heart gave a jump as if it was trying to leap out of her body and she sank back—dead. There was no need to teU Sea Boy to look after the children. He hau no #*jugt»uf anything else. When somebody said that they had better be sent to their uncle in Brooklyn, and, if he wouldn’t take them, why, to an orphan asylum, the way Sea Boy kicked against any such arrangement was beautiful. They all wanted to stay on in their home in the grim old elephant and have the sea air and the beach to play on and the beautiful ocean to wade in. “Mother’n me run the place, ’n I k’n take care ov ’em,” he said, with an air of surprise that this wasn’t as obvious to them all as it was to him. Everybody did think so when Sea Boy said it He was looked on with even more respect by the community after he became a family man. He made more money too. Shoe blacking “looked up, ” and it was a common thing for a man to give him a nickel when he bought a paper and say, “Keep the change, Sea Boy” When the children found their mother was to be put in a hole in the ground, they were visibly distressed. It did not seem anything like the comfortable home in the elephant. There were no windows in the earth cell and no air, and to put her in and then shovel three feet of dirt on her seemed an unsympathetic proceeding. They gazed with distrust at the men with the spades. Sea Boy didn’t know whether he should protest or not.. He looked at the priest, who looked at him and at the little boy and girl snuggling timidly < n P to his side, and when Sea Boy noticed what a sweet smile came on the priest’s face and that his eyes filled with water (they all loved the water, so that it was a bond of confidence between them, that brimming tear in the priest’s eye), why, the boy father of the motherless felt it was all right. “Children, ’’ said the priest gently, “your mother is asleep, and this earth isn’t going to trouble her. She will sleep there awhile, and then God will say, ‘Get up, my child,’ and she and all the people here said ‘Good night’ to God before they fell into this long sleep, - and will Come opt of their warm, quiet graves perfectly well and sound and will go to heaven. We will fall asleep like that some time, ahd we will all wake up together rested and be happy. For God is going to wake us all up at the same time.” “Won’t she have any pains in her back then ?” asked Sea Boy. The earth looked cold and damp. “No. She wilt never have any pain again,” said the priest warmly. “And, Sea Boy, you must come to catechism, and bring the children, so that they may learn what they have to do in order to say that ‘good night’ to God all right Then they will hear his ‘good morning* all right when the time comes for him to call us all. ” - Sea Boy said that he would, and, of course, having promised to, he did. Their teacher told them that the rising up of the dead was called the resurrection, and that the Son of God had died and risen again to show people that it was all right, and that since he could raise himself from- the dead of course he could raise the rest of dead mankind. This was a long time ago and away off across the ocean. But it was in a country on the seashore. This was a happy tpuch in deference to the love of the sea that Sea Boy and the youthful Garritys cherished, and helped to impress the fact more vividly on the children’s mind. The teacher told them that every year this day was celebrated, and that the day Was called Easter Sunday. So the young ones had another great