Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1875 — "Gil.” [ARTICLE]

"Gil.”

A ragged, sad eyed boy, aged nine or ten, stopped me on the street the other day and said: “ I haven’t had anything to eat this whole day! Won’t you please give me ten cents?” I gave it to him. I’d have given him the money if it had been necessakytopawn my hat. “ Do you let impostors swindle you in that manner ?” inquired an acquaintance. A journalist who has knocked abound for a daily paper a dozen years has seen every phase of human life. Men, women and children have swindled him, or sought to; people have lied to him; his money has been given to whining, lying vagrants who told direful tales of distress, and he ought to be able to correctly read human nature. “ I’ll bet that boy is a professional beggar,” continued my friend, chuckling at the idea of my being swindled. None of us care for the loss of a shinplastef on the street, while every one feels vexed and annoyed a£ the idea of bein& swindled out of a single penny. I could not say that the, boy was not a sw’imiler, and yet Fwould have divided my last shilling with him. “Why?” ” ». I told my friend why, and I will tell you. One day last year when the wild wind blew the snow over the house-roofs and around the corners in blinding clouds, and when the frosty air cut one’s face like a knife, a boy often came up to me as I waited for the car. He was thinlydad, %<•

his face betrayed hunger and suffering, and in a mournful voice he pleaded: , “ I’m hungry and cold!” “ Why don’t you go home?” I asked. “ I haven’t any!” “Haven’t you any relatives?” “Notone!” ‘ ‘ How long have you been here ?” “Three weeks.” The boy spoke in that drawl which professional beggars assume. I believed, too, that I had seen his face on the streets time and again. I hardened my heart and said: “ Boy! I know you, and if I catch you asking anyone for money again I’ll have you arrested!” He moved aw r ay quickly. I argued that this proved his guilt, forgetting that a homeless, friendless waif might evince fear when entirely innocent. Five hours later, when night had come and the wind had grown to a fierce gale, the boy halted me again as I plunged through the snow-drifts. I did not see him until he called out: “ Mister! I’m almost starved, and I’ll freeze to death if I can’t get some place to sleep!” •The same thin, ragged clothes, hardly comfortable.enough for June weather—the same whine to his voice. I felt like giving him money, but the fear that he had been sent out by his parents to beg restrained.and angered me. Catching him ,by the arm, I yelled out: “ See here, boy! if you don’t own up that you are lying to me, I’ll take you to the station!”

Through the blinding storm I saw his white face grow paler, and he cried back: “Don’t take me—don’t! Yes, I was lying!” I released him and he hurried away, while I walked on, flattering myself that I had played a sharp game and done the generous public a good turn. An hour later, when the night had grown still wilder and colder, some one knocked at my door. It was a timid knock, and I wondered who could have sent a child abroad on such a night. When I opened the door that same boy was on the step, his face blue with cold, his whole form shivering, and a look of desperation in his eyes. “Please, mister !” he began, but stopped when recognizing me. I was puzzled to know why he should have followed me home—why he had selected me for a victim and trailed me so persistently. I might have argued that the storm had driven people off the streets and that the freezing, starving boy had, in his desperation, called at the house, but I didn’t. Had it been any other boy, or any other person, asking charity I would have given promptly and freely. But I was angry at his trailing me—angered that he thought he could swindle me—and I grabbed at him and inquired: “ Boy, what is your name?” He leaped back, and, standing where the furious storm almost buried him from sight, he answered: “Gil!” “I know you, sir!” I shouted, and he moved away without another word. \ May the Lord forgive me for that night’s work! But you might have acted the same. When morning came, after a night so bitter that policemen were ’ frozen on their beats, I opened the front door to find that boy dead on the steps, frozen to death! I knew, as the dead, white face looked up at me through the snow, that I had wronged him with my suspicions, but it was too late then—the angels had opened to him a gate leading to a place where the human heart and its unworthy thoughts can never enter. Poor Gil! A warm meal or a shilling would have saved his life, and I drove him out to his death. This is why I give when I am asked now. I know that I sometimes give to the unworthy, but it would be better to give all I possessed to an impostor than to have another homeless waif creep back to die on the spot where I had unjustly accused him.—“ M. Quad,” in N. Y. Graphic.