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Th eKodelKaker
WlLLI/\N] O.JjOPPAftP

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WAY N E SFfiTE U NIV ERS(TY U BRARY
3 9343 00691629 9
THE-E4JOISE.-RAMSEY-COLLECTION

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Philip's street adventure.

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CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER
A STORY OF NEIV YORK-
■WILLIAM O. STODDARD
CROWDED OUT o’ CROFIELD, LITTLE SMOKE, ON THE OLD FRONTIER,
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY B. WEST CLINEDINST
NEW YORK
APPLETON AND COMPANY
1894

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T<l]iA5L'j
^V'V

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CONTENTS.
I. The Old Steeet and the Workshop, ... 1
II. The Inside op the House 16
III. One Summer Evening 20
IV. Cniiis and His Friends, 45
V. Ocit New Piano 59
VI. Kings and Palaces, 79
VII. New Arrivals 95
VIII. . Philips Adventure, 118
IX. Phil and His Prize 141
X. Lucille’s New Sciiool 150
XI. Philip Locked Up 167
XII. Training for War, .192
XIII. The Fencing Lesson 209
XIV. Chris is a Hero 222
XV. PmLip in tiie Garret 240
XVI. How CnRis Came I-Iome 253

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r
L

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Philip’s Street Adventure .... Frontispiece
Lucille’s Private Rehearsal 70
Mr. Stimson makes some New Acquaintances . . . 120
A Case for Quick Action 137
An Innocent Prisoner 180
The First Fencing Lesson 211

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CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
CHAPTER I.
THE OLD STREET AND THE WORKSHOP.
|HM|T was a very old street, in tlie city of New
fH P# York. As a matter of course, it was
somewhat narrow. In tlie earlier days of
tlie city, when tliey laid out tlie streets tliat after
ward grew to be so old, there were probably fewer
two-horse wagons and there were no furniture vans
as big as houses, and the drives were made accord
ingly, although there was more land to spare than
' there is now.
If Laurens Street itself was old, so were the
houses. The greater number of them had been
built in the times when two stories were high
enough for even the city—or three stories, at most.
More than half of them were built of wood and
that meant something, for it had been against the
law to put up any kind of wooden buildings, in all

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2 CIIKIS, THE MODEL MAKER,
that part of the city, ever since tlie great fire. No
matter which great fire it was, for there were
several of them, but it came a great many years ago
and burned up enough property to make people
more careful. Anyliow, some of the little, steep-
roofed, dormer-windowed, two-stoiy aiid a half brick
houses, looked old enough to be the grandfathers of
most of the wooden houses. They were all low
between joints, and so the rooms in them would be
snugger and easier to warm than rooms can be in
the high-ceilinged houses people insist upon having
nowadays.
Here and there, away up the street, were a few
tall, half new looking brick buildings, of five and
even six stories, but they were manifestly out of
place. Nothing of that kind could really feel at
home in old Laurens Street. Large or small, how
ever, and of whatever material any house was made,
its front was mostly covered with faded or rusty
old signs, instead of paint. There were, indeed, a
few new signs, but they had a look as if they felt it
aud knew they ought to be all the while making
apologies for it to the old settlers, the ancient and
honorable signs of Laurens Street.
The street itself, regarded as a thoroughfare, had

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TIIE OLD STREET AND THE WOKKSHOP. 3
a worn-out look. The flagstones of the narrow side-
Avalks tilted every which way, and the pavement
was full of ruts and hollows where the wheels of
heavy wagons jolted in and got stuck.
Nevertheless, almost every house, on both sides,
and all the space between them, had an exceedingly
busy and thickly inhabited appearance and air.
There were children to be seen, for instance; chil
dren of all sorts and sizes, whichever way one
turned. They did not look old, for children never
do; they somehow seemed to belong there, to fit
that street, and so. did most of the grown-up people
who found their way in and out among them.
One figure that was doing so, that warm summer
morning, would have been worth a second look in
that or any other street.
If judged by his height only, he might have been
a boy of fourteen, but it did not need the crutch
under his left arm to show that one of his legs was
shorter than the other. Still, the very way in
which he handled his crutch called attention to the
length of his arms and the breadth of his shoulders.
These were not so very wide, but they could not
rightly have belonged -to so short and young a boy
as he seemed to be. His face was round, smooth,

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4
CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
and. rosy, and it wove a bright, cheerful expression,
well set off by his curling, dark hair and by a
spruce and well made workman’s paper cap. Under
his right arm was closely hugged something or
other made of wood, and in that hand he carried a
steel square and a file. He tripped along, vigorously,
half-way to the next street that crossed Laurens.
It was the first cross-street above the great main
thoroughfare of Canal Street, where the old and
narrow street began, as if it had a root there and
grew out northward. Eight there, in the middle of
the block, he seemed to suddenly disappear.
He had not actually vanished, however, for he
had only slipped his crutch from under his arm and
swung himself quickly down some steps, into a very
dingy and very remarkable workshop.
Above those steps and against the wall, between
two windows of the first story of the house, there
was a faded gilt sign that read :
GERICHTEN.
Model Makek.
Locks Repaired. Keys Mtted.
The letters of the sign were very dim, but a rusty

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THE OLD STREET AND THE WOKKSHOP.
5
iron crane stuck out over it and from that swung a
huge wooden key, which had once been gilded.
There were defects in its teeth ; there was a split in
its handle; half of its head was gone ; and it was a
dejected looking key.
Even more mournful was the key of a burst of
brass music which at that moment began to make
itself heard; louder and louder, from away out of
sight down the street. It was at once replied to by
a chorus of juvenile voices, as if the children of
Laurens Street understood it and knew what to do.
One voice was louder than the rest and the owner of
it dashed to the head of the basement steps of the
next house but one above Gericliten’s, and excitedly
shouted down them:
“ Hey ! Mrs. Huyler! Hurry up ! There’s a
brass band on Canal Street! ”
All the other small feet had moved with one
accord in the direction of the music and there were
a great many heads poked out of windows, but they
belonged to older people, who could not leave their
work and come.
Up to that moment there had been a continuous
flow of sounds coming out of that basement. It
consisted, in part, of the noise that is made by the

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6 CHRIS, TIIB MODEL MAKEK.
vigorous rubbing of sudsy linen upon sonorous
washboards. More of it, however, was from the
effort made by a full but not at all trained voice to
sing something, -or rather several things. All of it
now instantly ceased, and, as if in desperate dread of
being too late, up those i'ickety steps there sprang a
short and heavy woman. Iiow such a woman could
really spring might be a question of mere empty
curiosity, but she did do it. She came up with a
long roll of dripping cloth in her fat hands and
these were wringing away energetically, as she hur
ried down toward Canal Street. Her abundant
gray hair also looked as if she must have wrung it
tightly, before forcing it into the queer cone-shaped
knot which it formed upon the top of her head.
Toward that tip-top elevation, moreover, it seemed
to be drawing all of her forehead that it could
influence, including her projecting gray eyebrows.
Anybody who had gone down into the basement
left behind her by that woman would have seen
nothing but the usual fixtures of 'a place when it is
washing day all the year round. There was a stair
case in a corner, going up into the unknown part of
the house and shut off by a door at the head of it.
That door was closed, but another, into a back room,

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THE OLD STREET AND THE "WORKSHOP.
7
was open, and the steaming draft of hot air coming
through it proved that the rest of the laundry was
in that direction. It included two women-assistants
of Mrs. Huyler and looked like a first rate-laundry.
If anybody also had followed the lame boy—if he
was a boy—down into the other basement, perhaps
the first wish on getting into the workshop would
have been for more light to see by. The next wish
would have been for more air or for some of a dif
ferent kind.
A tall, brown-haired youngster, with his shirt
sleeves rolled to the shoulder and wearing a
leather apron made for the largest kind of man, had
evidently been busy with a charcoal furnace, from
which he was now stepping backward with one
hand over his mouth and nose. It was evident, too,
that he had managed to drop into it a lump of rosin,
and clouds of pungent smoke were springing up to
spread in choking eddies around the room.
There was a wonderful lot of things in that room,
and there were several persons, but nearest to the
boy stood a thin, eagle-nosed, piercing-eyed old man
of more than ordinary height. . He. was .speaking
about clumsiness as sharply as the smoke would'let
him, but he was doing it with an air of dignity and

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CUPaS, THE MODEL-MAKER.
even of polished manner, wliicli was strangely out
of keeping with his well-worn blouse, coarse linen
trousers, and the cut-down shoes that he wore as
slippers. His speech was all the more dignified
because his deep, guttural voice came out through
dense mustaches as white as the driven snow, but it
was a clear case of scolding under disadvantages.
Philip, as he called the boy, may have taken the
first puffs of the rosin, for he was not saying any
thing at all in reply and there were smoky tears in
his eyes.
Around the room, against the walls, were work
benches, with miscellaneous collections of tools and
appliances, and on the benches were curious things
in process of manufacture, in wood or metal; they
seemed to be machines or parts of machines. A
large part of the floor was occupied bj r larger shapes
of a similar nature, including a young steam engine,
an infant printing press, some steamships in their
early childhood, and a general museum of stuff that
had a look of being telegraphic, or at least electric.
No gunpowder was to be seen, but there were guns
and Lilliputian cannons.
Just at this moment the scolding was cut off and
Philip was relieved, but not merely by the entrance

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THE OLD STREET AND THE WORKSHOP.
9
of the lame fellow. The attention of the whole
shop—for there were other workmen, across the
room—was demanded by a kind of storm of strong-
lunged coughing, punctuated with expostulatory
remarks. It all came from a large, elegantly
dressed, gold-spectacled gentleman, standing near
the bottom of the steps. He was mopping his
polished bald head with a red silk handkerchief,
while he held out toward the rosy-faced cripple a
rolled up sheet of drawing paper.
“ Augh—augh ! ” he said. “ Boy—augh—if you
will call Mr. Gerichten, or, augh—Mr. Huyler, I
will explain it to him. I—augh—want a model
made.”
Philip was not putting any more rosin into the
furnace, but he was not weeping for what he had
done, for his whole face was red with the effort he
was making to keep from laughing. He seemed,
too, to be listening for the reply to the elegant,
-portly stranger.
“ My name is Huyler, sir,” said the little cripple
promptly. “Mr. Gerichten doesn’t attend to this
part of the business. Want a model? "What’s it
for ? This is one of the worst drawings I ever saw.”
Clear, boyish, almost silvery-toned, was the voice

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10 CHRIS, TIIE MODEL JIAKEK.
lie spoke with, as he unrolled and examined the
paper, but it was full of intelligent decision and so,
somehow, was the very winning smile with which
he gave his opinion.
“Augh—augh—well, but,—augb, my boy, you
are not the Huyler I’m looking for,” responded the
obviously important visitor. “You may tell him it
is for an improvement in machinery for the applica
tion of electricity as a motor. I have several inven
tions. I can’t trust my designs to a boy, my little
fellow.”
“ Take me for a boy, do you ? ” was laughed back
at him. “ Why, I’m Christopher Huyler.”
“ That is so, sir. I am Mr. Gerichten,” came from
the white-mustaclied boss of the shop. “Explain
it to Chris, if you please. He can understand it, if
anybody can.”
The boss spoke with a bow which had in it a
curiously polite assertion, of superiority, and there
was a slowly, carefully controlled or suppressed
foreign accent in his utterance.
“ My name is Selden Stimson,” somewhat formally
responded the inventor, and then he added, almost
jocosely, as he turned a fat thumb toward Chris.:
“But how.old is he ? Not much over twelve, eh ? ”

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THE OLD STREET AND THE 'WORKSHOP. 11
Perliaps the dim, rosin-smoked light of that work
shop helped somewhat to make Chris look so very
young. So did his voice, however, and his smooth
smiling face, as he merrily replied:
- “All right, Mr. Stimson. Made the drawings
yourself? I thought so. How old am I? Well,
sir; I’ve served a seven-years’ apprenticeship. Began
at fifteen. Now, what is this supposed to be ? ”
His hand that held the sheet of drawing paper
was well-shaped, but it looked large for a “ boy ” of
his size, and his curly head put on a kind of busi
ness turn and expression, while his dark, lustrous
eyes searched the design before him. It was evident
that they were hunting for its meaning with an
altogether unusual keenness.
“I’ll explain—I’ll explain,” said Mr. Stimson,
but he was adjusting his glasses to stare yet more
humorously down at Chris, while Mr. Gerichten
looked at them both, from one to the other, in a
manner that hinted at a desire on his part to hand
over a lot of age and dignity to his queer assistant.
Philip was putting more charcoal into the furnace,
but he too was glancing every other moment at
Chris, and he muttered to himself:
“ Guess that old chap can’t beat him! ”

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12
ClllilS, TIIE JTODEL MAKER.
The glasses were in position, and Mr. Stimson’s
face was still a little red from Ins Lard coughing
when he went on, with a patronizing chuckle:
“ Why, Stub, they told me you were the best
model maker in New York. Can you draw? Slake
designs ? ”
“ If I couldn’t do better than this, I’d give it up,”
sharply responded the dwarf, and a shadow shot
quickly across his pleasant face.
It may have been a shadow called out by the
word “Stub,” or by the half-mocking manner of
Mr. Stimsou, but at that moment a sort of angry
whisper, close to the great man’s elbow, said
indignantly:
“He’s a cripple! You’ve no right! Can’t you
see ? It hurts him ! ”
“ Ah ! why ? ” exclaimed Mr. Stimson, and his
face Hushed hotly.
He turned his head suddenly, too, but there was
nothing for him to say, for there was nobody tliere
to hear him. The fiercely whispered rebuke and
caution had been given by a mere girl of not yet
fifteen, apparently. She was slight in person, plainly
dressed, but she had fine features, and clear, gray
eyes, that were well adapted for the expression of

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THE OLD STREET AND THE WORKSHOP.
13
her resentful, half-scornful indignation. She had
spoken her mind, and then she had passed quickly
away, before Mr. Stimson, even if he had been
ready, could have added another word. He barely
turned in time to see her go, he knew not where,
and he had to give it up. It may have been a
relief to him that the champion of Chris was out
of the shop, and when he turned back again, the
dwarf mechanic was nimbly swinging himself up to
a perch upon a stool high enough to give him the
uses of his workbench and of a drawing-board that
lay upon it. There was a half-finished drawing
already on the board, but he removed it, brass-tacked
down a clean sheet, and said to Mr. Stimson
cheerfully:
“ Now, sir, if you will tell me what this thing
is. Is it something new ? ”
The inventor of whatever that thing might
intend to be may have actually weighed not more
than a hundred and eighty pounds. He may have
been not. more than six feet high, with somewhat
more than corresponding width. When he now
cleared his throat and wiped his eyes, however,
preparing to answer the question of the smiling
dwarf upon the stool, he seemed to increase in all

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14 CHIUS, TIIE MODEL MAKER,
directions. He made tlie portentous look that
naturally belonged to his full, clean-shaven features,
all the more imposing, by an attempt to look down
at Chris Huyler over the tops of his glasses. It was
the visible struggle of a man who knew himself to
be a very great man, to tell something tremendous
to a being who was unexpectedly small.
“This,” he said, “is one of the most importaut
inventions of the age. I doubt if you can be made
to comprehend it. I will tell you something of
what has already been done in this direction.
Chapman ”
“Oh!” interrupted Iluyler, “I know all about
those machines. I made Chapman’s models.”
“What?” exclaimed Mr. Stimson. “You made
his models ? His drawings ? ”
“All of them, sir,” said Cliris, spreading out the
inventor’s own design. “Now, if you will tell me
what that is ”
Mr. Stimson began, and he had the explanation
nil to himself, for Chris did nothing but look and
listen with an occasional pucker of his expressive
mouth.
Mr. Geriehten had now turned back to Philip,
but the rosin smoke was gone and there was

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TIIE OLD STREET AND TIIE WORKSHOP. 15
nothing to scold about. They seemed to be puz
zling themselves around a mysterious crank of the
young steam-engine, and they were paying do atten
tion to anything else. Not that Mr. Gerichten
actually took hold of the engine anywhere, but that
he gave orders to Philip, and while the latter
obeyed, here and there, a very curious idea began
to suggest itself. It was that either Philip had
extraordinary muscles for his age and size, although
he was by no means small, or else the iron they
made things out of in that shop could not weigh
half as much per pound as anybody else’s iron,
lie was lithe and graceful, too, and there was not
an atom of clumsiness about him, unless it showed
itself in a disposition to take hold of the wrong
crank or bring the wrong tool. But then, almost
every boy there is can explain how that sort of
thing can be done.

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CHAPTER II.
THE INSIDE OF THE HOUSE.
0 sounds came down through the floor
into the workshop from the room imme
diately over it, but anybody in that room
itself could shortly have heard something musical
which came floating down a back stairway from
some place that was yet higher.
Since basements and attics do not count, that
house had but two stories and each of these con
tained only two rooms, the longer in front and the
smaller in the rear, with a narrow stairway going
up between them, for there was no “ hall ” running
through; The first floor above the basement had a
back room, which seemed to be mostly devoted to
a prairie-like table which might have been brought
there from the auction sale of a shipwrecked hotel.
It also held a stove, of course, and a big one, but
this stove was worth looking at, for it was not ex
actly like any other. It was as if it had undertaken
to illustrate all the cooking inventions that Mr.

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THE INSIDE OF THE HOUSE.
17
Gerichten liad ever made models for. It had on
its outside a regiment of small doors, knobs, slides,
and thumb-pieces, and there were all sorts of struct
ures in tin, copper, and iron, upon it or on a bench
near it, which seemed designed for fitting on at the
griddle holes in case they were wanted. Some of
the larger doors were open, and it could be seen
that the fire was out but that a great many other
things were in. There were flues, of course, and
dampers, but really nobody could more than guess
what caves and ovens and other mysteries there
might be in that stove.
The front room of that floor had the look of a
small parlor trying to be also a library. There
were indeed many books, on tlie shelves of the
cases and upon the table in the middle, but there
did not seem to be any in the English language.
Of some of them, even the letters were very dif
ferent from ours and may have been such as are
used by ancient people, or far Eastern nations, or
perhaps the Russians.
The noise that came downstairs was very faint.
Anyone following it up for an explanation of it
would have found himself at the top of the stairs,
upon a little landing between two rooms. The front

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18 CHKIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
room was not exactly wonderful, but then it was
peculiar. It i was a bedroom, but there was
too much old furniture in it and it seemed
crowded. There were several old swords arranged
over the mirror on the bureau. Some parchment
matters, in frames, hung on the walls instead of
pictures. The printing and writing on the parch
ments were all foreign, and they canied large, clumsy
looking seals to prove that they were official. In
the middle of the swords over the mirror there was
a faded brass and leather helmet, with a black
horse-tail for a plume. All the windows and doors
were open, to let the summer air drift through,
and you could see into the back room. It was a
very trim and neatly kept sleeping room, but it
was not large, and there were too many pots and
boxes of plants crowding each other for places at
the windows. There were half a dozen engravings
hung in pretty frames on the walls. A set of
hanging shelves carried all the books it had room
for. Over the plants at one window swung a cage
and in it was a canary, and just now the little
yellow fellow was singing with all his might, in an
obvious attempt to show that he was angry with the
other music and believed he could beat it. He

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THE INSIDE OF THE HOUSE.
19
knew lie could. This, however, came from a violin,
and it is always a puzzle what part of a violin
most of the noise it makes comes from; the
strings do a little, apparently, but all the rest is
a kind of conundrum.
“ I do believe I can! ” exclaimed the player, as
she drew the bow again.
She did so with an almost nervously delicate
touch and an intently listening ear, for a moment
trying again and again.
“ How I wish I could! ” she said. “ But it’s
no use! There, I know I can! I almost did—
that’s it! Oh, how I wish I had somebody to
teach me! ”
Every line and shadow of her eager, spirited
young face was at that moment expressing for her
a sense of how dreadful a thing it is for a girl to
feel how ignorant she is and to want to know,—to
know,—to know, and yet to have no teacher.
Along with the rest came another shadow, ever so
subtle, but a little resentful and a little rebellious,
which may have belonged to a consciousness that
she was not only ignorant but poor, the daughter of
an old model maker, living over a dingy old shop,
away down Laurens Street.

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20 CIIRIS, TIXE MODEL MAKER.
Not upon that street exactly, but away down at
the end of it, and along Canal Street, there were
increasing crowds of people. They were all listen
ing to the brass-band music which had brought
Mrs. Huyler away from her wash-tub, leaving all
the beautiful, foamy, creamy suds to go down and
die.
Canal Street is a broad and busy thoroughfare,
but it was more than usually alive with sights and
sounds, for up from the west came, steadily advanc-
ing, the most stately of all human processions. A
number of paces ahead of it marched a rank of
policemen, to clear the way for all that was to fol
low. Next came several mounted men, in civilian’s
dress but wearing sashes. They had also flowing
crape on each left arm. Only one of them was
attracting any especial attention to himself, and he
was only too well aware that he was on horseback.
He held his horse in almost desperately, all the
while, and kept his legs stiff in the stirrups. Those
riders may all have been mourners, but his was the
most solemn face among them. Next followed a
solitary horseman in uniform. lie too wore crape
and looked solemn, but he did not seem at all dis
turbed by the curvetting efforts of the good steed

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THE INSIDE OF THE HOUSE.
21
under him to get away and charge the crowds along
the sidewalks. Behind him strode a very full mili
tary band, and the music it was making seemed to
utter voices of human grief, such as cannot be put
into words. Next, there marched on a military
funeral escort, with arms reversed and measured
tread, and behind them a brace of old soldiers led a
very old looking but well fed horse that carried no
rider unless he bore, with the sword that hung at
the saddle bow, a memory of some rider who had
reined or spurred him through other scenes than
this. Then followed six black horses, drawing
the chariot of earth’s last solemnity, with its nod
ding plumes, and many more ranks of soldiers
came, marching with aims reversed. After them
there was a long line of slow-going, well-filled
carriages.
It was all exceedingly dignified and imposing,
and all the crowds of boys and others who were
looking on evidently regarded it as a show of the
first class. One man on the sidewalk, near where
Mrs. Huyler had found a place to look, replied to
somebody’s enquiry:
“Did .ye say who was it? It’s the owld gineral
himself. His pinsion’s run out.”

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22 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
Tlie music burst out again grander than ever,
and Mrs. Huyler stood at the curbstone listening
excitedly, her full cheeks as red as they had been
over her waslitub, and her fat bands still occasion
ally wringing hard the cloth which had ceased to
drip. Her mouth opened and shut several times
before she uttered anything aloud, but she may
have been all the while talking to herself, for at
last sbe said:
“ Isn’t the music beautiful! Dear, dear, and
that’s the Ninth Eegiment! Oh, dear, and Mr.
Huyler used to belong to it, and how well they do
march. Poor Chris! He can’t ever be a soldier.
He couldn’t belong to a.regiment. Philip could,
though. He could be as good a soldier as any of
’em. Chris can’t do anything. Not anything much.
Poor Chris! Why couldn’t he have been as strong
as Philip?”
Were they brothers, then, Chris and Philip, and
had all the chances for success in life, and for
making something out of himself, gone to the share
of the straight and vigorous younger brother ? .
At that very moment, down in the Gerichten
workshop, Christopher Huyler, the dwarf cripple,
who could not be expected to do anything, looked

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THE INSIDE OF TIIE HOUSE.
up at Mr. Stimson, the portly, well-dressed inventor,
and remarked very confidently:
“Yes, sir, I see what your idea is, but it won’t do.
You can’t make it work. Come in again in a day
or two. I’ll make some drawings right away. I
guess I can show you how it can be done.”
“Well, yes, certainly,” responded Mr. Stimson
superbly, and yet with an air of some hesitation,
and with a face that glowered a little over his gold
rims. “I will leave you my own drawing to—to
give you my idea. I will come again to-morrow
and give you any further explanation that you may
require.”
“Oh, no,” chirruped Chris. “I don’t need your
drawing. Keep it ”
“ I will do so, then,” graciously replied Mr. Stim
son. “ Particularly as it contains the further secret
of my invention. It is the—ah—the great applica
tion of it.”
“Perfectly safe, sir,” Chris assured him. “They
couldn’t find it out from that. I couldn’t. Guess
nobody could.”
Whether or not that reply contained any com
pliment to Mr. Stimson’s ability as a draughtsman,
who could make a design which would hide com.
3

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24 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER,
pletely what it was meant for, he rolled up his
precious sheet of paper, secret and all, and turned
away toward the steep steps leading to the street
and left the shop, while Chris turned again to his
work-bench, and old Mr. Gerichten across the shop
sent an exceedingly polite bow after his departing
customer.
Philip had been near enough to hear Chris, and
he was grinning, not bowing.
Away upstairs, two stories above them, a busy
violin bow had paused for a moment, and a low,
thoughtful voice remarked:
“ What a pompous old thing ! I wish poor Chris
never had to be put in mind of his size. It hurts
him so. I know it does. It’s too bad. He is too
proud to let anybody see that it hurts him, though.
He’s just the kindest, best fellow that ever was, but
some people haven’t any feelings.”
The canary bird had stopped making his kind of
music the moment she held lier violin bow still, and
now he stood and looked at her, with his head
cocked on one side, as much as to say:
“There, I’ve beaten that fiddle. I can outsing
any fiddle.”
He had certainly performed well, quite as well as

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THE INSIDE OF THE HOUSE. 25
if that violin liad only been playing an intentional
accompaniment to his vocal music, but it did not
begin again right away, for Lucille Gerichten was
thinking, and she looked as if she were thinking
very hard indeed.

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CHAPTER III.
ONE SUMMER EVENING.
T was after tlie usual supper time, and
all tlie work of tlie day was supposed to
be done.' Everybody wliose day of toil
ended at six or earlier miglit be taking a rest, and if
auyone could have listened to all of them, young and
old, particularly to the boys and girls, all over the
city, so as to know what they were saying or think
ing, it would have been a wonderful jumble, for 110
two of them would liave been alike.
One of them, for instance, was saying in a half
disappointed, half-angry tone:
“ I’m like a sieve. It’s of no use to pour any
thing into me. It won’t stay.”
He did not look at all like a sieve, however he
might feel. He seemed to be all alone, too, and yet
lie was not apparently talking to himself. It was
more as if he spoke to somebody who was not there,
excepting in what might be called his mind’s eye.
People do more of that kind of talking than they

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. ONE SUMMER EVENING. 27
are aware of, and the comfort of it is that there is
no talking back and they can say what they please.
There was no answer, therefore, but he wore an
exceedingly dejected look as he sat and stared at
the window. It was as if he felt like giving up
something or other, and yet he was the very vigor
ous young fellow who had been scolded by Mr.
Gerichten so dignifiedly for putting rosin in the
furnace.
The room he was in was a sort of coop, for it was
the corner front room of the second-story of Mrs.
Huyler’s house, over the door. It contained, with
some difficulty, a narrow bed, the chair he sat in,
and a table which was nearly covered up by a large
book which lay open before him. It was a some
what tattered book, but, whether bought or bor
rowed, it was an anatomical work of the heaviest
kind, rich with illustrative plates. For a while, up
to the moment when he spoke aloud, he had seemed
to be intensely interested in that book, but it may
have been too much for him.
Next thing, he leaned back and gazed at the
ceiling, looking more discouraged than ever. His
face was not exactly handsome at any time,
although there were signs of fun in it, and of cour-

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28 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
age, but some people would lia.ve said'that his thick,
short-cut brown hair was too stiff, his forehead too
low and broad, and that he looked more like a boy
who could train for an athlete, some day, than for
any kind of college. Just now, all the lines around
his mouth and eyes were at work as if something
pained him and he was angry about it.
“I’m kind of made of iron,” he said. “Nothing
makes any impression on me, inside or outside. I
don’t believe you could file anything into me. Not
anything I wanted to remember. Nor punch it in.
What’s the matter ? And what’s the use of study
ing, for such a fellow as I am ? ”
Nobody told him, and after a moment of silence
he explained to whom he was talking.
“ No, Chris,” he said, “ you’re all wrong about it.
It isn’t in me. I’ve studied an hour every morning,
just as you told me, and more ’n you know of, every
evening. It all gets away. Now, if I had your
head and my body, I could do almost anything. I
wish I knew just how you are made up, though.
There’s something in you that’s going wrong. I
know enough to know that. Your machinery isn’t
like any other man’s, anyhow.—I’m going to quit
this and take a walk.”

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ONE SUMMER EVENING.
He arose and lie picked up, to get it out of Lis
way, tlie heavy, old-fasliioned cliair lie liad been
sitting in. It was a massive tiling, but it came up
and went out, almost at arm’s lengtli, was moved
and put down again, very much as if it had been
without any weight to Speak of. If a man were
made of iron, or of steel, as Philip said he was,
that is the way in which he would handle heavy
furniture.
The next thing he did was to look himself all
over, with some help from a hand-glass that he took
down from the wall. Of course he did not now
wear any leather apron, but it was really noticeable
how completely he had washed away, brushed away,
and changed away every trace of the grimy model
shop. He did not look at all like a workman,
except that his hands had a hardened, sinewy
appearance, and his perfectly laundered white collar
arose above a bright blue necktie. How could it be
that a boy of fifteen, working for a living and learn
ing a trade, could get up in that kind of style, for
an evening walk? To be sure, he wore only a
summer suit of common blue flannel, but then it
fitted him and somehow or other he was himself so
well made that clothes looked well on him. His

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30 CHKIS, THE MODEL MAKEE.
tough young frame lifted itself and moved about
without any effort, and that is the great secret of
grace in motion. So, if Philip was not handsome,
he looked very well, for his cheap straw hat was -
fresh and his brown-leather shoes had a base-ball-
nine suggestion. Any captain of a nine would have
picked him. out at once for a good fielder.
It was a summer evening, but it was not yet time
by an hour or so for dusk to settle down among the
streets and homes of the great city. It was a good
time, however, for almost everybody to be out
of doors, especially if they lived in such streets as
Laurens, where most of the houses were good places
to get out of in hot weather. So the stoops were
generally, full, and the narrow sidewalks; but along
the curbstones there were now long lines of empty
carts, of all sorts, whose tired horses had left them
there and gone to their stables for rest and hay.
Almost everybody seemed disposed to be polite
enough to everybody else, and Philip, as he walked
out and up the street nodded in all directions to
people he knew, even to a boy of his own size who
shouted:
“Hullo, dude, where ’re ye goin? ”
Phil’s answer was only a laugh, as he hurried

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ONE SUMMER EVENING.
31
along a little, but if that boy critic had been nearer,
he might have seen an embarrassed flush shoot up
from the young model maker’s cheeks to his fore
head and his hair. It takes a tremendously strong
boy to stand ridicule, especially such small, sharp-
pointed ridicule as pricks him concerning his per
sonal appearance. Some fellows can be hit harder
on a new necktie than they could on their noses,
any day.
Whether or not Philip was over-sensitive, as well as
very muscular, he was now walking pretty briskly
and looking right ahead of him, at something, or
it might be somebody, away up the street.
“ "Why, that’s Lucille! ” he said, and for a moment
he walked onward yet more rapidly.
He was correct, of course, for the room in the
Gerichten upper story was now left to the canary
and the flowers, and Lucille had followed the
general tendency to get out of doors. She was still
very plainly dressed, but there was about her a cer
tain something which did not seem to belong to the
crowded front stoops of Laurens Street. It seemed
entirely natural that, when out of doors, she should
be seen on her way up town, getting away from a
place which did not fit her.

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32 emus, THE MODEL MAKER.
There is a curious problem, right there: Why
is it that some young people, boys or girls, expect
to go up, and others expect it of them ? Why isn’t
every fellow expected to rise in the world ? Per
haps the two expectations trot together, like horses
in a team, and if a fellow doesn’t intend to climb
and doesn’t show that he means to, other people will,
expect to see him stay where lie is or go down
hill.
Philip was not now considering any kind of prob
lem. Neither was he apparently trying to catch
up with Lucille, although he was only a very short
distance behind lier. He seemed contented to beep
at about such a distance, while she went on past
several squares.
If she, for her part, had no problem to carry, she
had a sort of portfolio under one arm, and she went
ahead as if some errand led her. She had not once
looked behind her, and she paid very little atten
tion to either the people or the houses slie was pass
ing. Some of them, both people and houses, were
worth looking away from, for there was a great
deal of poverty, here and there, and altogether too
much of the kinds of evil that make ppverty. That
is, for instance, tliere was a liquor-sliop at almost

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ONE SUHMEK EVENING.
33
eveiy corner, and there is no law compelling the
keepers to put up “ Poison,” with a death’s-head and
bones, over the doors. The druggists are compelled
to paste such labels on the poisons they sell, and
everybody ought to be treated alike.
“There!” exclaimed Philip. “Those hood-
.lums!”
Whatever he meant by that, he suddenly went
ahead, at a moment when Lucille slackened her
pace and her face had put on a timid, almost
frightened look.'
Down the street and on the same side of it, walk
ing arm in arm and swinging along in loaferisli
insolence, came a couple of young fellows who were
probably not much older than Philip and certainly
were not much larger. They were not very badly
dressed and tliey had succeeded in putting on a
jaunty, “ tigerish ” air, as if they were out for some
sort of adventure ; ready to do anything that called
for courage, daring, and all that sort of thing, like
scalping a tribe of Indians, fighting pirates, or kill
ing the kind of buffaloes that are slaughtered in
such droves by the ten-cent novel writers.
They were indeed daring fellows, for there were
no grown-up men very near, and the jolly exploit of

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34
CHRIS,-THE MODEL MAKER.
sweeping the sidewalk could be performed to per
fection. That is, it could have been, so far as two
or three old women and a lot of children, a cat and
an organ-grinder, were concerned. It could have
been, even for Lucille Gerichten, and she was evi
dently thinking of going out into the street to let
the brave fellows go by, when somebody in a blue
flannel suit stepped swiftly past her.
“ Why, it’s Philip! ” she exclaimed, with a sigh
of relief.
“Get out, Dude!” shouted one of the rushing,
swinging adventurers, as they gallantly pushed
along the narrow walk.
He was only one boy, not too large, and he looked,
just then, decidedly trim and neat. Not at all' wild,
ruffianly, desperate, or piratical. Still he did not
get out of their way, and in a moment more it '
seemed to them as if they had run against some
thing. Against something hard and firm, like a
post, or a snag, or it might be a machine of some
kind. Not that he struck either of them or seemed
inclined to fight; he did not even speak, but the
rush and sweep changed hands. Instead of their
doing it, he did it. Instead of sweeping, they were
swept. One after the other, in quick succession,

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ONE SUMMER EVENING.
35
tliey were swung from the sidewalk and over into
the gutter. Moreover, each in turn uttered a sharp
yell, as if the hands which took hold of him hurt
him, and if surprise is ever painful, their faces
expressed a painful amount of surprise.
“ That’s Philip ! ” exclaimed Lucille. “ Oh, dear !
Aren’t they dreadful! Isn’t he strong, though!
Father says he is made of iron.”
That idea, or one like it, may have occurred to
the two rushers. They did, indeed, look threaten
ing for a moment. They even said threatening
things, in a curious, mixed language of slang and
profanity, but they did not come any nearer. At
the same moment there' arose a little chorus of
derisive laughing and hand-clapping from a crowded
stoop near by. It was only too plain that their
" evening’s adventures had gone wrong, just then, and
they were quite willing to vanish around the next
corner, leaving the remainder of Laurens Street
unswept. And yet it sadly needed sweeping!
They had escaped, so to speak, and the street was
safe; but Philip had by no means escaped, and he
was aware of a strong wish that he could do so.
He did not feel safe at all, and when he turned
toward Lucille and lifted his hat he was blushing

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36 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER,
furiously, and the bow he made, hat in .hand, might
have put her. in mind of her own father, except that
Phil had not quite caught the knack of it.
“I’m so glad you were here ! ” she said. “ I was
half scared, for a moment.”
She said it in an entirely natural and unconcerned
manner. It had been, to her, in fact, very muck as
if she had seen him take up something heavy in the
shop and put it out of the way, as she had seen him
do a hundred times. She had not been at all sur
prised at his being able to do it, for it was expected
of him.
He, on the other hand, hardly knew what to
expect, and it was just as well that the circum
stances helped him. The street itself was one of
the circumstances, for it ran parallel, at only a short
distance, with the great business thoroughfare of
New York, and he thought at once of the wider
sidewalks over there.
“ Broadway is pleasanter,” he said. “ Why don’t
you get out of this into Broadway ? ”
“I guess I will,” she said. “Weren’t they dread
ful ! But I was going up to sketch a big tree in
Washington Square. Then I was going to Fifth
Avenue.”

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ONE SUMMER EVENING.
37
“You’d better go around by Broadway,” persisted
Philip. “Perhaps you might find something to
sketch there.”
“Yes, let us,” she said. “It will be pleasanter
walking. It won’t be much further.”
Perhaps Phil was finding it pleasanter, and per
haps not; but he was walking along at her side
very much as if he could not get away or did not
know how.
The explanation Lucille gave of her intended
route was very plain, for Laurens Street went
straight on to the broad, open space, full of great
trees, known as Washington Square, and directly
across that square was the beginning of Fifth
Avenue, which was lined with the most costly and
beautiful residences in the city. Phil and Lucille
turned to the right at a corner, however, and in a
few minutes more they were on Broadway, the
longest business street in all the world, and one of
the best built also. It was quiet now, for all its
stores were closed, and their green-painted, steel-
roller shutters gave them a prisonish look. There
were foot-passengers coming and going; the omni
buses were not quite all gone; a carnage or two
could be seen and great express wagons; but it

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38 CIIKIS, TIIE MODEL MAKEli.
had a deserted, dreary look, after all; aud all the
more so because there was so much daylight. It
was as if something had happened and business had
been cut off too early.
“ I don’t like it,” said Lucille. “ Let’s hurry on.
I hate Broadway, anyhow.”
“Well,” replied Phil doubtfully, “it’s where most
of the money is made.”
“ I don’t care if it is! ” exclaimed Lucille. “ I
wouldn’t be a working girl in one of those great
concerns for anything. There are thousands of
them. The way they have to work is awful.
They are paid almost nothing, too. I’d rather die
than earn my living that way! I wish I was a boy.
Boys have a better chance.”
“It’s pretty hard for boys, too,” said Phil, but
then he was silent.
So was Lucille, for she was thinking, and she had
been almost surprised into letting out one of the
troubles which were haunting her. It was very
natural that such thoughts about the future should
come to the daughter of a model maker living over a
shop on Laurens Street. The great, five-story build
ings she was passing might well look down, upon her
with their hundreds of window-eyes and seem to say:

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ONE SUMMER EVENING.
“ Here we are; we are waiting for yon. Poor
girls must work for what they can get. There is no
other chance. It’s worse for them than it is for
boys.”
Whether or not Lucille heard them speaking to
her, that was really what she was listening to in
her own mind as she and Phil walked on side by
side, and it made her silent. He was glad of it,
and yet he wished she would say something or
other, for he could not. He was very glad, there
fore, that they had not so very far to go before
they could once more turn to the left and make for
the green grass and the shade, and the veiy great
respectability of Washington Square.
Phil’s thoughts had troubled him all the way, and
there had been a terrible lot of them. One of them
that was dreadful repeatedly told him that he had
never before walked a whole square with a young
lady. Another asked him on which side of her he
ought to walk ? He thought of how he was dressed,
too, and was glad she was not dressed any better than
she was, but he was compelled to say that she even
had a stylish look, very different from that of most
other Laurens Street girls.
“I know how that is,” he said to himself, “Chris

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40 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER,
told me. Old Gerichten is descended from tlie Ger
man and Austrian nobility. Lucille’s ancestors were
counts and barons. Maybe they were dukes and
princes. Her father won’t let her be a shop girl.
Chris says he won’t let her be anything. He won’t
let her do anything. He’ll hardly let her learn how
to cook. Oh, but isn’t lie a queer old duck ! ”
Whether or not Lucille Gericliten was to be con
sidered as a kind of stranded aristocrat, she was at
this moment thinking of something very common
place. She had seated herself upon a bench under
one of the trees of the square, and her portfolio was
open iu her lap. At no great distance beyond her
was one of the ugliest, that is most picturesque, of
all the trees, for it was an aged maple, whose giant
arms were withering and more than half of them
were leafless in midsummer. On the other half—
the dead and living branches seemed to mingle
strangely—there was luxuriant foliage, just as in all
the city around there were riches and culture and
much good side by side with poverty, ignorance, and
vice. If anybody wanted another illustration, Lau
rens Street ran into the square from the south, such
as it was, and ran out on the northern side as Fifth
Avenue. It was a curious old tree, but Phil could

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ONE SUMMER EVENING.
41
not find upon it anywhere what seemed to him a good
excuse for running away and leaving Lucille to
finish her sketching all by herself. He might per
haps have found one on some other tree, but that
an idea was growing within him that he was some
how in charge of Miss Gericliten and responsible
for her safe return home. It was an awful responsi
bility indeed for a boy of fifteen to have thrust
upon him, but it made him feel at least an inch taller.
Besides that, it made him think of his muscles and
of how easily he had “pitched away those two
loafers.”
It was only a sketch, and Lucille shut up her
portfolio with a dissatisfied air, but something
more than the tangled outlines of that tree had
interfered with her good temper, for she said to
herself:
“Dear me, I wish Phil would go home, but he
won’t—he doesn’t know enough. I don’t want any
boy tagging after me.”
It was true that she was really a trifle younger in
mere months than he, but she was conscious of an
idea that she, a girl, was twice as old as he, a boy,
could think of being. She did not know how
strong was another idea, that he was only a work-

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42 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
boy in lier father's shop and that she was something
more than a work-girl.
So she was, blit, in a moment more, she and Phil
were walking out of the square and into the broad,
well-paved, well-lighted Fifth Avenue, where the old
aristocracy lived, if the city really had any, and the
merchant princes, and the bankers, and a great many
other men who had piles of money. Both of them
knew what a princely place they were in, and it was
really very pleasant for a summer evening stroll. It
was so much so, and there was so much to see
and think of, that they had hardly anything to
say, square after square. Perhaps it was Phil’s
fault that Lucille had the inner half of the sidewalk
so nearly to herself, but at last 1 she stood still and
he came closer. It was on a cross-street corner; and
over on the other side, fronting the avenue, was a
residence which was fairly to be called a palace.
It was a large, splendid building, built of a stone
which had once been white, and it stood detached, so
that no other touched it. Its windows were all
ablaze with light, and the curbstones around it were
lined with carriages. A carpet came down from
the entrance and crept across the sidewalk, so that
the elegantly dressed people who were getting out

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ONE SUMMER EVENING. ' 43
of the carriages were almost as if they stepped at
once into the house.
“ Why!” exclaimed Lucille, “I thought all the
rich' people were ■ away in summer. They go into
the country or to Europe. There’s to be a party.
But how beautiful the house is! I wish I could
sketch it and put in the light and the shadows.
I can’t now, though; it’s getting too dark.”
“ I know what it is,” said Phil, “ I heard that
cop say so—it’s pictures; he’s to show them a lot
that have just come from Europe. One of ’em cost
sixty thousand dollars! Such a Avaste of money!
But then he has heaps of it.”
“ Pictures ? ” said Lucille. “ How I wish I could
see them! He’s one of the richest men in the
world. He can buy anything. Hear the music,
Phil! They’re going to dance, too. Isn’t it wonder
ful to be so rich! ”
“I don’t care ! ” exclaimed Phil. “Pd like to see
the inside of that house. I’d like to go all over it
and see how they live in it, every room from top to
bottom.”
“ It’s all beautiful,” began Lucille, and then she
was silent.
Neither of them knew how exactly they were

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44
CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
like all the other boys and girls in all the world.
Every one of them, no matter how poor, is sure to
see some house 'that sets agoing the idea that it
would be fine to live in a palace, or at least to look
in and look around and know what a palace is.

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CHAPTER IV.
CIIRIS AND HIS FRIENDS.
Ira*^!HERE is nothing greater than a great city,
Hgg Bjul unless it is the great country. Of course,
P**particularly in summer time, anybody
compelled to stay in a city would very mucli prefer
to be out among fields and trees and where things
are growing. Not many people can do just as they
please, however, and all the rest must do the best
they can.
That very evening and at that very hour, a large
theatre building, in another part of the city, was
doing duty as a concert hall. It was just the place
for such an entertainment, and it was thronged with
lovers of music.
It was a strong attraction indeed, and well adver
tised, and it had proved equal to the brass band on
Canal Street, for it had drawn Mrs. Huyler all the
way from Laurens Street. This time, the laundiy
she left behind her was altogether deserted, and the
tubs and washboards and wringers were not in

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46 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
use. In fact, not one of them hacl uttered a
sound since six o’clock, and there were no more
suds.
Here was Mrs. Huyler, and she had obtained an
orchestra chair, toward the front, so that she should
not miss a note of the music that was to come. It
was to be good, she was sure of it; and some of it
began to touch up at just about the time when
Phil and Lucille heard the other music begin to
pour out of the windows of the palace on Fifth
Avenue.
Mrs. Huyler’s hair, at present, instead of being
twisted in a beehive knot on the top of her head, as
in the morning, was braided, looped, and folded, and
it came down from under her hat around her ears,
so as to leave them free to listen. She was other
wise arrayed in appropriate concert style, but less
could be said about her dress—that is, about her
dress itself—because she had so thrown herself away
upon lace. She wore it everywhere and of many
kinds, and eveiy piece of lace had seemed to require
the aid and support of ribbons.
It could not have been denied that the art effect
was wonderful. In fact, Mrs. Huyler presented a
picture calculated to increase the happiness of who-

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CHRIS AND HIS FRIENDS.
47
ever might look at her. Her full, round face was
absolutely sunny with delight, as she listened to the
excellent harmonies which the orchestra began to
manufacture as soon as the fiddles were tuned.
There were people, on either side of her, who
looked at her and then looked at each other, and
smiled and nodded, for only a heart of stone could
have criticised such a figure of simple content and
real enjoyment. But now, suddenly, she was trans
formed into a figure of expectation, for the orchestral
music broke down under a storm of applause, the
musicians all sat still, and the prima donna lierself,
the celebrated singer whose name was on all the
.show-bills, swept gracefully out to sing. , Her
appearance was truly stunning, for she was
weightier and she was yet more superbly dressed
than was even Mrs. Huyler.
She sang, and she sang well; and as the perfect
tones of her perfectly trained voice went out and
took possession of the theatre and of the thronging
listeners, another spirit seemed to come and take
possession of Mrs. Huyler.
She heard, with all her might; she appreciated
and she admired; but the happiness and part of the
color flitted out of her face. For a few moments, it

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48 CHRIS, TIIE MODEL MAKER,
became almost as dissatisfied as her son Philip’s had
been when he pushed away his chair and shut up
his book, before going out for his walk. At last,
her lips moved slowly, and they had put on a half
angry expression, but even the nearest woman in
that row of chairs could not hear her murmur:
“ I could do it! I know I could ! If I had ever
learned how, when I was young, and if I had her
voice.”
There it was, a kind of carking regret that
hovered around her pleasant face and saddened it,
all the while the prima donna sang. She was just
like other people. No doubt she had begun life
with a wish and hope to become something more
than a Laurens Street washer-woman. Still, her
trouble seemed to vanish as the trills of the song
died away and as the uproarious applause began.
A quartette followed, and Mrs. Huyler evidently
experienced only happiness. She may have felt an
inner consciousness that no amount of early training,
nor any kind of favorable circumstances, could ever
have made a quartette of her. Something like that
idea must have followed her, to judge by her fa:ce,
during all the remainder of the concert.
There was certainly a wonderful contrast, if one

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CHRIS AND IIIS FRIENDS.
paused to think of it, between a basement laundry,
with the sound of its dull, monotonous washboards,
and the thronged, brilliant theatre turned into a
kind of palace of music. No doubt it was good
for Mrs. Huyler to forget her tubs altogether for
a while, and to live in that palace with, all its
lavish light and harmony.
Away back in old Laurens Street, at that time,
there seemed to be just about light enough given
by the street lamps to make it look more dingy and
narrow and cramped by night than it did by day.
There were lights, too, in house -windows, and one
peered dimly up from the Gerichten shop base
ment.
Only one burner had been lighted, and it was
over Chris Huyler’s workbench, for he was there,
lie was perched upon his high stool, with a draw
ing before him, and something in it seemed to be
making him happy, as if it were a kind of work
which affected him as music did his mother. It
made him whistle frequently, and he was a very
good whistler.
“ There ! ” he exclaimed. “ That’s about it. I
know it ’11 work, but I’m not quite ready to make a
model. There’s just one difficulty—right there—I

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50 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
never saw a new machine yet' that didn’t have a
difficulty somewhere. I’ve got' to get around it
somehow.”
He said more than that; enough to make it plain
that Chris was inventing something of his own, and
had great hopes of it. On the whole, that seemed
to be just the kind of room to invent in, with all
those young and old inventions swarming around
in it.
Chris worked on while, in a room over his head,
old Mr. Gerichten sat for a long time poring over
a volume that lay open upon his table. It was not
an English book, but he could read it. At last
he seemed to weary of it, and went and sat by a
window. He did not look out, but sat still and
stared as if at something far away. Then his white
mustaches parted, and he said aloud:
“ Ah, well! It was the tyrant’s day, not ours.
We had them beaten, but we were not enough for
victory.. The battle was won—and it was lost
They were too many. That was all. Of what avail
are courage and genius and patriotism without men ?
So we were crushed.”
He said other things in another tongue, whatever
old battles he was thinking of, and he had evidently

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CHRIS AND HIS FRIENDS.
51
been a soldier in them. There were many changes
upon his withered but expressive features, but
finally a kind of war-and-vengeance look faded
away into one of utter despondency*. The battles
he had fought and lost could not be fought again
and won. So he gave it up, and went and took
down and opened another book.
There was nothing but cheerfulness down in the
basement, for Chris did not feel that he was losing
any battles. He had put away his drawing, indeed,
with its inventions and its difficulty, but he seemed
to feel happier than ever. His mother, at the con
cert, had received much of her evening’s enjoyment
from many violins working together, while he was
getting quite as much from only one. He was not
playing upon it, however. It was only another evi
dence that the Gerichteu shop was ready to under
take the construction or repair of almost anything.
It was, after all, a pretty healthy fiddle, only requir
ing some small tinkering by skilful fingers, and he
finished the cure of its ailments, and tuned it, and
then held it up to look at it with a face that was
beaming with delight.
“ Lucille's getting along splendidly,” he said.
“ I'm glad it's a first-class instrument. She'd

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52 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
amount to something, if she only had a chance—
I’m afraid she never will, though.”
Then he and the violin went upstairs together,
and he came down again all alone.
He left the shop and started cheerily home
ward along a street that seemed all the narrower
because there were so many people in it, sit
ting around among the shadows and trying to
feel cool and comfortable, that warm midsummer
night.
There was no light in any window of his own
house, but enough was thrown upon it to show that
it consisted of the laundry basement, and, above
that, of two stories and another. If three stories
could be mentioned, it was because above the
second story arose a huge, preposterous helmet of a
“ gambrel roof.”
Chris did not loot up at that. He only opened
the door and went in, and he must have climbed
stairs nimbly, for it seemed only a minute before he
was lighting a gas-jet in his own room.
It was a strange kind of room, indeed, for him or
anyone else to enter. No laths or plaster had been
added to the time stained woodwork at the sides or
overhead. It looked more like a great cave than

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CHRIS AND HIS FRIENDS.
53
anything else, for there were no partitions to
diminish the size of the room.
Nearly in the middle stood a large table, and by
it lay a frayed and faded Turkish rug which had
once been something brilliant. There were various
tables and other furniture. All of it was old, and
some pieces were positively antique. The real
furnishing of the rooms, however, that gave it its
peculiar character, consisted of the evidence it con
tained that it was, after all, a kind of upstairs
workshop, and that all kinds of people, some of
them very strange kinds, brought remarkable
things to Chris for repairs, and then failed to come
and take them away. Or else he had a tremendous
number of queer jobs yet to do.
A well put together skeleton sat in one of the old,
high-backed armchairs, in an attitude of listening to
such conversation as might pour through the closed
visor of a suit of theatrically perfect old armor that
sat in another chair, near by, and leaned toward him,
grasping its own chair-arm with a steel-gauntleted
hand as naturally as life. Between them was yet
another chair, a huge old thing of carved oak, and
they may have been disputing about'its ownership,
but it was empty.

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54
CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKEE.
Cliris bad paused for a moment, as if to look around
liirn after something, but “clang” rang out aloud
gong upon one of tlie tables, although there was
no visible hand to strike it.
“ Hullo ! ” lie exclaimed. “ Mother’s come Lome,
I wonder where she went to, this time.”
He went at once, however, and pulled a finger-
piece on a leg of that table, as if he were sending
an answer.
That was it, for clang went another gong in the
room directly under him. It was Mrs. Iluyler’s
parlor drying-room and she was there, with all her
evening’s harvest of music in her. All around her,
between the several pieces of pretty good furniture
and ou the table, were baskets containing the
white fruit of her laundry. The things that
peeped out from one or two of them plainly
suggested that, even as a laundry artist, she made a
specialty of laces. She was now carefully remov
ing her own, one treasure after another, with
the ribbons, but at the sound of the gong, she
said :
“That’s Chris. He’s all light, he can tinker it
and tune it, I know he can. He could make it all
over again.”

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CHRIS AND HIS FRIENDS.
55
She seemed to be questioning the room itself as
to something that was on her mind. A kind of
enthusiasm in her face was increasing fast; arid now
she pointed, with a handful of lace, at a corner op
posite the windows and remarked:
“ It can stand there! I don’t care what people
say! I just did want a piano, and it’ll be here
first thing to-morrow. It didn’t cost hardly any
thing. I’ve heard tell that it does a piano good
to be played on. Now ! I’ll have Lucille Gerich-
ten play on my piano all the while.”
Excepting for her musical devotion, Mrs. Iiuyler
was no longer so attractive a woman as she had
been, for her laces were gone from her and she was
plainly dressed, comparatively, in a bright green
silk with flounces. She stood there in thoughtful
silence, as if not yet determined what to do next,
but in the cave-room over her head there were
other sounds pretty soon after the gong told Chris
that she had returned.
Chris had gone to the large table and had busied
himself with some papers and drawings scattered
over it, until one of them seemed to make him
whistle. At that moment, and very much as if he
had called for it, the door of a cuckoo clock, high

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56 CHKIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
up among tlie timbers, flew open and let out its
wooden bird to utter its meaningless ciy and disap
pear, and tliat was followed by the tinkle of low,
sweet chimes from another clock. Before these
ceased Chris remarked:
“ Eleven ? I’ll read a while, I. guess. Oh, how I
wish I could lie down like other people ! Lie down
and sleep! ”
He seemed, indeed, to prepare himself for bed
and for sleep, but his bed was not altogether like
those of other people. There was a broad, cum
brous, old-fashioned bedstead not far from the table.
It had a high and heavily carved head-board. Over
the gaudy coverlet of silken patchwork was scat
tered a collection of pillows and cushions which
could be arranged in any way one pleased. So
small and, but for the breadth of his shoulders, so
slight a form as that of Chris could be upheld by
pillows in a large variety of selected positions. He
now fixed and packed and arranged, and then
settled himself with a book in his hand, after swing
ing over the couch the long arm of an ornamental
gas-jet holder that threw a shaded light upon the
printed pages. It all made a very peculiar picture
after he had done so.

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CHRIS AND HIS FRIENDS.
57
He began to read and lie seemed to go on stead
ily, cheerfully, almost as if lie were enjoying him
self, but with frequent changes and rearrangements
of his pillow supports. Just before each of those
changes was made, however, something white shot
sharply across the boyish rosiness of his pleasant
face.
“I don’t mind it so much in the daytime,” he
muttered, “or when I’m at work. Sometimes I
kind o’ think it’s left me for a minute or so, but
it never really does. It is pretty hard to-night.
There ! That was longer than usual! 0—oo—
m—m! Ah—h!”
He read again and the clocks ticked on, until one
of them, for there were several, struck loudly, sono
rously ; the cuckoo came out and cried once more;
the chimes jangled sweetly, and then all at once the
garret cave was full of music.
“I’m glad he never came after it,” said Chris.
“It’s a year and more now.”
Beautiful music of a high order of taste in its
selection, was made by one of the costliest of “ music-
boxes,” set to a clock-work attachment which com
pelled it to begin its soulless but exquisite melody
precisely at twelve o’clock midnight.

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58 CIIRIS, TFIE MODEL MAKER.
The skeleton and the man in armor nodded their
approval, turned a little in their chairs and leaned
forward to listen, while Chris half arose among his
pillows and nodded back at them, but all he said
was: “Yes, it’s midnight.”

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CHAPTER V.
OUR NEW PIANO.
115 * r^ijT was not yet time for work to begin in
lH ^ ie slops of tlie city. About the most
brilliant and beautiful part of any
summer day goes by before that. Perhaps a great
many people get the good of it, but not as they
can in the country, where the very barnyard fowl
begiu to cackle at daybreak.
There was no cackling in old Laurens Street, and
it wore a singularly deserted look; not to add that
it seemed dingier than ever and more as if it were
pretty nearly worn out, so that a new street was
needed in that place.
If any old street was really worn out, utterly,
would it break down and let people and things fall
through? There area great many cities that have
entirely disappeared, anyhow, and nobody seems to
know where they went to.
If there was no stir to speak of outside of the
houses, there was a very general waking up within

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60 CIIEIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
tliem, for working people in the city liave to be
astir early,. even though they have no fowls or
cattle to attend to.
The upper back room of the Gerichten house
was full of morning light. The windows were open,
and the plants and flowers seemed to be having a
good time. There was something among them to
wonder at, too, for it was a bee ; and how he had
ever found his way across town to pop in at one of
those windows was a question without an answer.
That is unless he had been at work the day before
among the sugar ships at the East River wharves,
and had lost his way trying to get back again. The
canary was in his bath tub, and was fluttering and
flirting out the water at a great rate, but Lucille
was not just then paying any attention to bird or
bloom or insect.
“ There’s my violin,” she said, “ just where it was
when I came in last night. Chris has mended it.
What a real good fellow he is! ”
The violin stood near the door } leaning against a
chair and looking up at her, very much as if it were
trying to say:
“ Good-morning, Miss Gerichten. Here I am ; I
was up and dressed first.”

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OUK NEW PIANO.
61
She was indeed tip and dressed, and her next
remark sounded somewhat as if she were replying
to an invitation from the mended fiddle.
“ No, I mustn’t try to play now,” she said. “ Not
until they are busy down in the shop. I’d like to
know why I can’t learn to play just like others.
Oh, dear! I wonder why father objects so to
everything I want to learn! ”
The fiddle stood still, and may have been consid
ering that matter, but there ~was no audible expla
nation given by anybody in that room. In the front
room on that same. floor, however, a grim, white-
mustached old man, sitting by a Avindow, was
evidently pondering some subject that he found
deeply interesting.
“Her mother was so very beautiful,” he said.
“ She was so good, too.”
He drew a long, thoughtful breath, and was silent
for a moment before he added :
“ I would not dare to die and leave that girl
alone. No, I must go right on and save up until
there is property enough to support her. There
isn’t enough yet, but it is rising in value. But she
must not, shall not, ever work. No lady of her race
ever worked. I am afraid she is going to be like

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62 CHRIS, TI1E MODEL MAKER,
her mother. I can see more and more resemblance
every day. She will be beautiful. She must not be
permitted to know it. She must not dress too well,
or she will find it out. Education ? Yes, some.
She may read in the library. No harm cau come
from that. It takes her away from Laurens Street.
No! No music! That is, not any to speak of.
She has too much of it in her. Art ? Well, she
may go to the Institute. That won’t hurt her.
■ "Will she—will she ever be as beautiful as her
mother was ? I’m afraid so. What if she should ?
It would break her mother’s heart to know all that
has happened 'to us. “ Oh, how glad I am she is
in heaven and does not know how we are living.”
If Mr. Gerichten’s remarks were at all inconsistent
he did not seem to kuow it, but if Lucille had any
perverse opposition from him to complain of, he
thought he had a reason for it. He arose now, and
descended to the story over the shop.
There was a spotless cloth upon the needlessly
broad table in the back room. There was a fire in
the wonderful stove—somewhere or other, among
its mysterious caves. A neat looking old woman,
who evidently did not live in the house except in
the daytime, was arranging dishes on the table, but

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OUR NEW PIANO.
every now and then site turned from any other
occupation to hurry to the stove and turn a button
or pall a slide of its marvellous cooking machinery.
Just as if she, or anybody else, could understand
what she did it for.
She greeted Mr. Gerichten pleasantly as he came
in, but she bowed very low while doing so, and her
• words were in the same strange tongue in which he
had addressed her. He called her Sara Vladovna,
and seemed pleased to find breakfast so nearly
ready.
Outside of the house there were many indications
that common people were accustomed, many of
them, to get their breakfasts even earlier. They
•hurried out of house doors or came up from base
ments as if they had no time to spare ; and not only
that street, but others near at hand that were some-
■what like it, began to put on a busy and waked-up
appearance. Here and there shops were already
opened, and over on Broadway and down upon Canal
Street some of the green-roll shutters •were slipping
lip from before the plate-glass windows, for the
business of the great city was getting its eyes
open.
The first man to make his appearance in the

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64 CnRIS, THE MODEL MAKEK.
Gerichtens’ stop was Philip Huyler, and lie let
liimself in with a key hardly thicker than a slip of
cardboard, but as full of notches as a handsaw.
He did uot say a word, and he did not at once go
about any work. He did not even try to arrange
anything nor did he sweep‘the floor, although it
sadly needed brooming. All the tools were where
they had been left the evening before, and all the
machines and models, younger or older, great and
small, sat still in their places and waited patiently.
Philip, too, seemed to have a work-bench that
belonged especially to him, and he went and stood
by it, but only to turn his back to it and take a
long look around him and another out of the open
door. If he had seemed to have fun in him yester
day, it was all gone now. If he had been a bright
and polite young fellow while walking with Lucille
and talking about rich men and palaces and works
of art, in his trim blue suit and with his best straw
hat on, he was very different now. He wore a
shabby old suit, shoes that were nearly worn out,
while his grimy leather apron seemed to match,
somehow, with the rebellious and discontented
expression on his face.
Something or other was going wrong with Phil,

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OUR NEW PIANO.
65
and there was no sort of improvement in liis
countenance wlien Chris came down the steps from
the street, and whistled his cheerful way to his
Lencli and drawing-board.
“ Lame,” said Phil, to himself. “ Crippled. So
am I, somehow. No chance for either of us to be
anything. I’m stupid and he’s ”
“Phil,” suddenly exclaimed Chris, “has Mr.
Gerichten been down ? ”
“ USTot that I know,” grumbled Phil. “ ’Tisn’t time
for him, hardly. I say, Chris, I went up Fifth
Avenue, last evening ” then he paused and
Chris asked him:
“ See anything ? ”
“ Houses,” said Phil. “ Palaces. Tell you what,
Chris, it isn’t any use. There isn’t room in New
York for more than a few men to succeed. Just
one, here and there. All the rest have got to be
poor.”
The merry look vanished from even the face of
Chris and he whistled a short, sharp note before he
responded:
“ It’s so and it isn’t so. None of our business,
anyhow. All we’ve got to do is to do the best we
can. Don’t know that I want to be rich.”

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66 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
“I do, then,” muttered Phil, as he turned around
to his bench. “Anyhow, I’m going to find some
way to see the inside of one of those houses. I
want to know what’s in them.”
That was it, and perhaps Chris understood him,
but he did not say any more. The great business
houses on Broadway and the splendid dwellings on
Fifth Avenue had been talking to Phil. They had
told him, as he walked along with Lucille, that he
could never hope to own one of them. He was
only a poor boy, learning a trade, with a dwarf-
cripple for a brother and a washer-woman for a
mother, and with a dull head of his own, so that
there was no chance for him. Some other boys
might rise in the world, a few of them, but he could
not. It was not in him, and so he might as well
give it up.
One reason for not talking any more just then
was that Mr. Gerichten’s feet could be heard com
ing down the stairs, and in a moment more he was
in the shop. He was dressed as he had been the
day before, and he really looked something like a
workman. His first duty seemed to be a kind of
general inspection, going around among the curios
ities as if to make sure they were there, or as if in

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OUR NEW PIANO.
67
some doubt as to wliicli of them he should take in
hand to begin with. Not that he actually picked
up either a machine or a tool, but at his direction
Philip picked up several, one after the other, to
turn them around and over for examination, or to
put them down in other places. It was worth
noting, really, how a piece of iron-work or brass-
work, that seemed as if it were fairly entitled to
some weight and consequence, came right up with
out making any resistance the moment Philip graj)-
pled it.
Mi'. Gericliten saw no occasion for taking liold .
with his own hands, aud when at last Philip was
ordered back to his bencli and made to pick up a
file, which he at once began to use with vigor and
with pretty good skill, it speedily became apparent
that an especial business of the boss of the shop
was to stand by and see how he did it. Not that
he was watching, or spying, or anything of that
sort, bnt that he was running that file with Philip’s
fingers. He had no idea how plainly he made
Phil understand it in that way, or how the sulky
look darkened as Phil said to himself:
“Rich men don’t work. They use the hands of
poor men. He isn’t rich, but he’s a boss. I’ll

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08 CHIUS, THE MODEL MAKER.
never be a boss. I can’t even make a good
mechanic.”
Discontent ? Perhaps that is another name for a
waking up of what is called ambition.
There is a time in the experience of almost every
boy and girl when discontent comes if they are ever
to accomplish anything. It is apt to be pretty
blind and unreasonable at first, and sometimes there
is genuine mischief in it. So there is in any other
force that stirs things up and makes the world
lively. There is any amount of mischief in steam
and electricity, and if anj’- boy has either of them in
him, and feels his heart begin to beat and his head
begin to burn, it’s a time for him to think pretty
carefully. Some boys have done it, and have began
right there to go ahead.
Mr. Gerichten’s other great duty was plainly to
“receive.” That is, to step dignifiedly forward and
bow to, and speak to, whoever might come in.
Nobody could have done it better than lie did,
and there was no doubt that he gave a kind of
character to the shop. He did, indeed, also pause
now and then as he came and went, and lean for a
moment curiously over the shoulder of Chris Huyler,
but there was no real necessity for superintending

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OUE NEW PIANO.
him or inspecting the artistic work upon his draw
ing-board.
The rosy face of the dwarf-mechanic was just
now almost radiant with the interest he was taking,
not in his drawing, but in a crotchety piece of brass
upon which he was twisting a glittering bit of blue
steel spring. There is a tremendous fascination for
some people in doing something, no matter how
small, that was never done before. That was what
Chris was doing, and it made him chuckle aloud to
see what tricks the spring performed with the ups
and downs of that brass-work. He was small and
he was deformed, but lie was full, to over-flowing,
with the strong instinct of the inventor and with
the pride of work which makes good workmen.
Away up in Lucille’s room there was another
radiant face. The door at the head of the lower
stairs was shut tightly, and so was the door at the
foot of the stairs leading up to that story, so that it
was pretty well cut off, and any sounds made there
could not go down and disturb anybody in the shop.
Some of the overcrowded flower-pots near a win
dow had somehow stepped aside, so that she could
stand in among them, and there she was with her
mended violin tucked under her chin.

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70 OIIRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
“There!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “I’m
doing ever so much better ! ”
She listened intently, as she again tried the bow,
and her eyes danced with pleasure over another
manifest success. Her next pressure was firmer and
swifter and did pretty well, but then a slow, steady
and at first productive pull ended in unmusical
disaster.
“ How I wish I had a teacher ! ” she said. “ I
never had a teacher in anything—unless it’s Chris.
I’ve had to learn whatever I could, by myself.”
The bow had paused, as if to take breath, and
now it suddenly began to quiver back and forth
again. Lucille fairly trembled, for the melody that
sprang out testified, unexpectedly, that her untaught
fingers possessed that undefinable faculty, that
natural “touch,” which no amount of teaching can
create. Probably the fact that she had it was one
reason why she 'wished to learn how to use it, but
the canary had been listening all the while, and
now he could endure it no longer.
The violin solo suddenly changed into a bird-and-
fiddle duet and the canary part of it was decidedly
the shriller and the louder, for the yellow piper
seemed to be half frantic and he too had learned

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Lucille's

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OUR NEW PIANO. 71
-without a teacher. It was not on his account, how
ever, that Lucille’s face was clouded so. The fact
was that she was in too great a hurry. The violin
was by no means yet her perfect servant, that would
require time and practice, and it now began to
express its strong disapproval of something or other
by an angry discord. Just at that moment a little
bell near the door tinkled twice. It was no wonder
that a bell-hanger’s house, with Chris Huyler in it,
should be well provided with signals, but Lucille
glanced at the bell as if she were both surprised and
rebellious.
“What can they want me for?” she said. “I’m
not going to the library this morning. No, it can’t
be that. I’m afraid it’s the violin. They couldn’t
have heard—would father be angry ? I hope he
won’t. Stay there, then, till I come back ! ”
She was disturbed about it, but she put away the
violin carefully nevertheless, and,in a moment more
she was ready to obey the summons.
She was looking very well. There was a red
rose at her throat, plucked from one of the little
trees in her window garden. It was of small conse
quence that all the rest of her dress was so plain
and simple, for part of what her father had said

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72 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
could, be easily understood, and she was probably
beginning to resemble her mother very much.
Perhaps, if Lucille had known why the bell had
been pulled for her, she would have put away her
music with less regret. There had been a sudden
commotion in the shop, but before that there had
been a sort of conundrum at the Huyler house and
a complete stoppage of work in the laundry. Two
vigorous looking girls of forty, or near it, who were
helping Mrs. Huyler, had been rapidly joined by a
mob of other women and a swarm of the neighbor
hood children, in watching four men solve the prob
lem of how to get a piano up stairs that were so
narrow and so crooked as were those at the head of
which Mrs. Huyler herself excitedly pointed hither
and thither -with a half-bar of soap.
They did, at last, get the piano iuto the parlor
dlying-room; they put on its legs and rolled it
into a corner; and there it stood, not exactly pant
ing, but recovering its strength after the severe
exertion of getting upstairs. That also was what
the four men were doing, and it was a pretty warm
morning.
“ It’s a foin pinnny.”
“ Can yes play, Mrs. Huyler ? ”

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OUE NEW PIANO.
73
“ Was it in chune ? ”
“ There it is, ma’am, and I’m plazed we didn’t let
it fall.”
“ I’m going after Chris and Lucille ! ” suddenly
exclaimed Mrs. Huyler. “ Biddy, you and Norah
go back to your work.”
Her movement down the stairs was not a gliding
one, but it was as a flash and she was in the Gerich-
ten shop.
“ Chris,” she said, “ it’s come ! It’s here ! But I
haven’t touched it. Bring Lucille, but don’t tell
her till she sees it—quick, Chris! come.”
Chris laughed and whistled in a way to show that
he thoroughly sympathized with her, but he at once
pulled the knob that sounded the bell in Lucille’s
room. As for Mr. Gericliten, he did not actually
smile, but he bowed sincerely to Mrs. Huyler as she
waved the soap at him and hurried out of the shop.
He at once turned silently to oversee Philip, who
was screwing something together. Whatever the
reason was, he had got the wrong pieces matched
and the consequence was something like mechanical
confusion. Perhaps Phil had been thinking of the
new arrival at his own house, but at all events lie
gave'the boss so good a chance to scold and explain

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74
CHRIS, THE MODEL HAKEE.
that Lucille was liardly noticed when she walked
hurriedly past them to ask:
“What is it, Chris? You mended my fiddle
beautifully.”
“ Glad you like it,” said he. “ Mother wants you.
Guess you’d better go and see her right away.”
An expression of displeasure, very like a frown,
that had been on her face when she parted from her
violin, had entirely disappeared when she worked
her way through the small crowd on the sidewalk
in front of the laundry, but she went into the
house and upstairs without speaking to any of
them. Not even to a small boy and a smaller girl
who had crept upstairs behind Mrs. Huyler and
were now peeping in.
There sat the music-loving laundress, on the
piano-stool, and she had opened the alligator jaws of
the great instrument very much as if she was afraid
the keys might be teeth.
“ I won’t try it right away,” she said, resting the
soap in her lap. “ I’ll wait till I get kind o’ used to
it.”
“ Mrs. Iiuyler! ” exclaimed the voice of Lucille,
just getting into the room. “A piano?”
“Yes, it is,” said the absorbed owner of it, with-

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OUK NEW PIANO.'
75
out turning around. “It’s a real good piano. I
bouglit it for almost nothing, at the auction, and all
it needs is tuning and mending some of the strings.
Chris can put it to rights. Do sit down and see
how it sounds.”
“ Oh, no,” said Lucille, as if not quite sure the
piano was a fact. “I don’t know how. I’ll wait
till Chris comes.”
Nevertheless, as Mrs. Huyler at once left the
stool, Lucille did sit down on it. She did so in a
half scared way, for not only was she altogether
surprised but she was thinking rapidly.
“How I wish I could!” she said.
“ Of course you can,” exclaimed Mrs. Huyler.
“ It’s what I’ve always w r anted, and I’ve never had
one. You can come and practice on it all day. I
can’t leave my work, day-times, and we can take
turns. I wish it was mended up.”
Lucille’s fingers came down from a flight of
wandering along the keys, and she successfully
struck a chord.
“ Guess it’s in pretty good tune,” chirped a pleas
ant voice behind them. “ I didn’t have much to do
to it.”
“ What ? ” exclaimed his mother. “ Why, Chris!

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76 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
Well, if it isn’t just like you ! Went and fixed it
before it came ! ”
Lucille liad instantly left the piano-stool, and
there was a nervous flush upon her face until Chris
handed her his crutch and swung himself gayly into
the seat, she had vacated.
“ I must see if it’s all right,” he said, cocking his
paper cap a little on one side and running his pliant
fingers over the keys.
“ They tuned it pretty well,” he remarked again.
“It was really a fine instrument, once. Old-
fashioned case. Been banged about, some, in a
boarding-house, but it’s just the thing for you and
Lucille, mother.”
“ Why, Chris,” Lucille exclaimed, “ who knew that
you could play the piano ? What don’t you know ! ”
“ Oh, yes,” he said cheerily. “ The man I served
my time with had a piano. I began before that,
though, when I was a little fellow. I used to play
all night, sometimes, when the family were away.”
Wherever that had been or in what family, his voice
and manner grew almost dreamy before he ceased
speaking and the rosy color left his face, but his
fingers were now at work and they went on, on,
on, bringing out of the piano a very sweet but

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OUR NEW PIANO.
77
unfamiliar melody, while Mrs. Huyler went and
sat down and began to wipe lier eyes with lier
apron.
Just then the head of Philip was thrust into the
room and he called out:
“ Chris, you’re wanted ! Come along! I’ve got
to go out with Mr. Gerichten, and that there bald-
headed, gold-spectacled, what’s-his-name, is waiting
for you.”
“ All right! I’m coming,” responded Chris, very
much as if he had been waked out of sleep and told
to get up.
“ O Chris,” said Lucille, “ I’m so sorry you must
stop! ”
“Never mind, dear,” said Mrs. Huyler. “He
helped me buy it and pay for it, and I know he did
it as much for you as for me.”
Lucille handed Chris his crutch as he turned on
the stool, and in another moment he was gone.
“ I must go back to work,” remarked Mrs. Huyler
regretfully, almost mournfully. “Such loads of
laces! And I’ve promised to have them done. I
can’t stay to play now. Just you stay, child. Do !
And practice as long as you want to.”
That was evidently Lucille’s “want,” and she

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78 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
again seated lierself aDd began to draw sounds out
of the piano.
“I won’t stay too long,” she said. “Father may
not let me go on with the violin, but I do hope he
won’t make any objection to this.”
b
1

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CHAPTER VI.
KINGS AND PALACES.
SSgKjSHEN Pliilip delivered his message to Chris
11 mMI he was evidently in a hurry. Perhaps it
would be more nearly correct to say that
he was in two hurries. One of them had been to
get there and see what was going on in his own
house. lie had not been warned of the possible
coming of that piano, and when he now saw it
standing so comfortably in the corner it seemed
very decidedly like an impossibility. No pianos,
so far as he knew the world, had ever been known
to drop down into the drying-room parlors of
Laurens Street laundries. Instruments of that size
and rank belonged only in the drawing rooms of the
rich and on the platforms of concert halls. There it
was, however, and Chris was drawing out of it
remarkably good music, and so he took a long,
earnest, puzzled look, as he uttered his summons.
Then he went down stairs rapidly, for his second
hurry was upon him.

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80 CIIUIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
It was of an unexpected kind, and it touched him
upon a spot that was almost sore that morning.
Mr. Gerichten did not advertise himself as a
“plumber.” He did not undertake putting that
kind of machinery into new houses, but his slioji
had somehow earned a reputation for skilful repairs
of any plumbing already put in by other hands. It
was a common thing for Mr. Gerichten to be sent
for when a pipe had burst or a faucet was doing
too much work or too little, but he had heretofore
been accompanied by one or more of his grown-up
workmen. It was, therefore, a new experience to
Phil when he was informed that the gas-pipes or
water-pipes, or something else, in a great house 011
Fifth Avenue called for instant attention, and that
he must this time accompany his boss. He would
not have missed it for anything, and he was almost
in a panic lest one of the other workmen now out
upon jobs should happen to come in and cut him
out.
He had not lost a moment in either going or
coming, and now he was busy with the prepara
tions required by Mr. Gerichten. That very dignified
head of an exceedingly miscellaneous shop had never,
to Phil’s knowledge, been seen in the street with a

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KINGS AND PALACES.
tool or any other burden in his liands. He did not
propose to open a new account now, but he evidently
meant to be prepared for whatever might be the
demands of the plumbing he was to inspect and
rectify. Tool after tool was put into the basket
-which served as a “kit,” and each of them weighed
something. Taken as a whole, or as a collection, they
weighed quite respectably, and any ordinary boy of
Phil’s inches might have been compelled to rebel,
or to say he would take half now and come back
after the remainder.
Not so did Philip. He was only too glad to get
out of that shop, and to lug his basket of imple
ments up the street, with Mr. Gerichten stalking a
few paces in advance of him.
“ It’s the very house Lucille and I were looking
at the other evening,” he said to himself. “ It cost
more than any other house in the city. It’s a palace,
and I’m going to see the inside of it. Never was in
one of them before in all my life.”
The sun poured hotly down. Mr. Gerichten
walked steadily, almost rapidly. The basket of
tools and materials grew heavier as they went, but
Philip never flinched. He even did some thinking
as they went, and took note of the fact that his

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82 CHRIS, TIIE MODEL MAKER.
employer had “slicked up a little” before setting
out upon tliat errand. Not that lie was well dressed,
excepting as to liis slioes and a fairly good felt liat,
but that all shop dust had been brushed away. lie
always wore pretty clean linen, and was particular
about his hands and whiskers.
“ Anybody’d know he was a boss,” remarked Phil,
and he really felt glad of it, considering what kind
of house they were going to. It almost helped him
carry the basket to see how much dignity Mr.
Gerichten was carrying.
Still it was a long, hot walk, and while they
were on their way things had not been standing
still in all the down-town world behind them.
When Chris had reached the shop, he had found
it empty of everybody but Mr. Selden Stimson and
of a strong suggestion, belonging to that gentleman
habitually, that he was quite enough to occupy one
shop. He stood before the work-beneh at which he
had found the dwarf-mechanic on his first visit, and
his ample face had hardly room in it for a complete
expression of the sense of the humorous which was
now compelling him to smile as he did.
“Funny little monkey,” he remarked to himself.
“I’ve laughed, every time I’ve thought of him.

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KINGS AND PALACES. 83
He’s all brains and no body, Maybe so, but how
does lie get along without one ? If he made Chap
man’s model, though, he may be able to make one
forme. Ha—lm—ha! He—he—he! The monkey!”
“ Here ? Are you, Mr. Stiinson ? ” came cheerily
down the steps and into the basement, followed or
rather accompanied by Chris himself, and it was
answered by:
“ This isn’t your drawing; is it, Stub ? You can’t
draw like this, can you ? Is it something you are
making ? ”
“ No, sir, I’m not making it yet,” replied Chris, in
a positive, businesslike tone and manner. “ Let me
get up there. No, don’t help me, please, I can help
myself. Now, then, I’ll tell you what it is.”
He had shrunk away from Mr. Stimson’s offered
lift as if he feared a touch might hurt him, but in a
twinkling he was on his perch before the drawing-
board, spread with the work which had made the
great man curious.
“It’s a good drawing, certainly,” said the latter,
with a critical stare at the work. “ But I came to
talk about my own invention. Have you done as
you thought you could, or ”
“ "Why, Mr. Stimson,” interrupted Chris, “ this is

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84 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER,
your invention, as far as it goes. Don’t you see ?
That’s the way you had it, but I’ve carried it out a
little. You’ve some idea, haven’t you, of what you
mean to do with it ? Special work of some sort ?
It looks so.”
“What? My drawing? Is it?” exclaimed Mr.
Stimson, with sudden interest, while all the humor
vanished from his face. “I—I didn’t tell you what
it’s for.”
“ I could work it out better, if I knew,” said Chris.
“You can do as you please about that, though.
Your plan won’t work, anyhow—that is, the one
you brought here—but I thought of this ” a few
words more, as he pointed here and there among
the lines upon his bristol-board, and then Mr. Stim
son was fairly glaring at him, scowlingly, over the
top rims of his glasses. He was very red in the
face as he remarked:
“Are you—ah—one of his imps? How did you
ever come to think of that? Why, it’s my own
idea. I’ll tell you what it’s for, but it must be kept
a profound secret till everything is ready.”
“ We never tell anything in this shop,” said Chris.
“ ’Twasn’t in your drawing but I’m glad you can
see how it’s going to work.”

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KINGS AND PALACES. 85
“Work? Of course it will! ” said Mr. Stimson.
“ Stub, do you know anything about New York
City ? ”
“ Guess I do,” said Chris.
“ Do you know where Governor’s Island is, and
the other islands in the harbor ? ”
“ All of them,” said Chris, “ and Long Island,
Staten Island, New Jersey, Great Britain, and the
West Indies.”
“ They must all be annexed to Manhattan Island,
Stub,” replied Mr. Stimson. “They must all be
attached, joined, hitched on to New York City.”
“ Good thing to do,” said Chris, with, tlie calmness
of a man, a model maker, who was used to having
great ideas set forth by great inventors. “ But how
are you going to do it ? Is that what this thing is
intended for ? ”
“ Exactly,” responded Mr. Stimson, drawing him
self up an inch or so in self-respecting height.
“That is what it is for.- Governor’s Island is no
longer needed for United States forts. It must be
used for warehouses, piers, factories. The streets of
the city must be continued—they must be length
ened, till the mainland and the island are one.”
“ Oh, yes,” exclaimed Chris. “ That’s it. But you

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86 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
can’t run them across the water, and so you mean to
burrow under. It’s to run tunnels.”
“ Of co.urse,” said Mr. Stimson, “ but we won’t
run tliem in a narrow-minded way. We sliall not'
have merely one tunnel, but many, from one main
land to an island. All the streets needed will dive
under at the water’s edge and come up on the other
side. But that is only part of it. The same system
will run everywhere under all the streets their full
length. We shall have a second New York under
the old town we live in.”
“Kind of mol e-town,” said Chris, “but how about
this machine ? ”
“ This is nothing but the tool to do it with, and
that is everything,” said Mr. Stimson. “ As you see,
I have nearly solved the problem. When I can see
a working model of my Phantom Borer—that is if
you can make one—I shall know that all rivers and
arms of the sea, if not the British Channel and the
North Sea, and the Atlantic itself, have ceased to
be serious impediments in the way of travel and
of commerce.”
“ Or of navigation,” suggested Chris, with a faint
touch of malice in his face, but Mr. Stimson con
tinued :

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KINGS AND PALACES.
87
“ And the motor or motive-power I depend
upon with which to run the Phantom Borer,, is
electricity.”
“ And plenty of it,” said Chris. “ But I’ve an idea
of my own about that. Anyhow, there isn’t room
enough on Manhattan Island as things are now.
We are building railways away up in the air, and we
are building houses a dozen stories high. "We might
as well tack on the islands.. That’s so—and there’s
a lot of room underground. The machine I was
thinking of isn’t ready yet.”
“ Is it a borer ? ” asked Mr. Stimson, looking
straight through his glasses and with an air of
sudden anxiety.
“ No, sir,” said Chris, “it isn’t a mole of any kind,
but when it’s done it’ll be a machine you can run
any other machine with, if you can hitch on.”
“ That idea is really the centre and the pivot of
my own invention,” said Mr. Stimson solemnly.
“Well, I am glad we have had no one here to
listen, to take notes of this conversation. You will
keep the secret, Stub ? ”
“Yes, sir ” began Chris, but at that moment
a slight form flitted past them and a face of fierce
indignation was for one moment turned upon Mi'.

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88 cnms, tiie model maker .
Stimson. tucille may not liave meant Mm to hear
what she said as she vanished up the stairs, but he
was almost sure that he did, and that it sounded
like:
“ Pompous old brute! ”
“Ah ! ” he said, with a slight wince, but he was
a very self-possessed man and he did not turn his
head. He did but address Chris again, remarking
with more than a little suavity. “ I must go, now,
Mr. Huyler. Work away! I will come again in a
few days, but I am going to Washington, to present
my idea of annexing Governor's Island to New
York to some of my political friends—men of high
standing and influence. I have already interested
several eminent capitalists. The great underground
plan of street extension will have plenty of money
and other support. But it can never be realized
without the Phantom Borer.”
The next minute, for Chris said hardly anything in
reply, the great inventor and projector was walking
down Laurens Street toward Canal Street.
“The Phantom Borer!” he said to himself.
“The greatest invention of tlie age. It will be
more important than the ocean telegraphic cable. I
have the idea, but can Stub make the machine for

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KINGS AND PALACES.
me ? He seems to Lave a great deal of invention in
him; we sliall see.”
"What lie did not seem to see, at least not very
distinctly, was that he was now proposing to have
Chris turn himself into another man and invent Mr.
Selden Stimson’s great invention for him—if he
could.
At about that time, two persons came to a halt at
one of the basement entrances of a great marble
dwelling-house, away up Fifth Avenue. They
would have been there sooner if they had ridden,
but Mr. Gerichten had preferred that the journey
should not cost him anything. So it had been a
tough one, even for the uncommonly tough muscles
of Philip Iluyler.
The fact was that Phil felt queer about actually
going into that house. Not exactly because he so
very much wished to go in, but that he was just
finding out something. He was not at all different
from all other boys, and he was going to take a look
into another world, so to speak.
The things a boy or a girl grows up with and
gets accustomed to are the world to that boy or
girl. Some never get out of the world they were
born into, and get no clear ideas of anything beyond

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90 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
it. So they never understand tlie other people all
around them who are living in other sets of circum
stances.
The door opened and Mr. Gerichten stalked for
ward, followed by Phil with his weighty basket.
He seemed to have almost foigotten how much it
weighed. So had his boss, for he went right down
into the cellar before he gave Phil a chance to rest
his load.
The servant who had opened the door was a
German, and Mr. Gerichten had spoken to him in
his own tongue. So he did to the Irishman who
showed them downstairs.
Down, down they went, with only a passing
chance for glances into any room of the high ceil-
inged, perfectly finished basement story of that
house.
There was something halfway miraculous in the
contrast between that and the basement in which
Mrs. Huyler did her laundry work.
The first plumbing to be looked at, of course, was
away down where all the pipes came in from the
street, but Phil knew all about them—the sewers
and the gas-mains, and the Croton water-pipes that
underlie the streets and avenues, just as arteries and

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KINGS AND PALACES.
91
veins in the body of a man lie hidden under his
flesh and skin until something cuts into them.
Walls and pillars and arches; strong, solid
masonry; to uphold all the architecture above them,
all of the best and costliest workmanship. Phil
looked at them while Mr. Gerichten was studying
the pipes and faucets, but neither he nor his boss
saw anything there to keep them any longer. It
was the coolest place, however, that Phil had been
in all that summer. It was still and dimly lighted,
too, and it made him think of caves that he had
read of.
The difficulty they had come to attend to was
said to be in one or more of the bath-rooms upstairs,
and now Mr. Gerichten bade Philip follow him
again. Up they went one story, and a chance came
which Phil had been hoping for. A fat man, very
well dressed, to whom Mr. Gerichten spoke in
French, had so much to say, standing in the broad,
splendid hall, leading toward the main entrance,
that there was plenty of time for a look into the
drawing rooms on the first floor. Phil had put down
his basket, but his very heart fluttered and his
breath came more quickly as he daringly stepped
forward into such a room as he never before had

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92 CIIRIS, THE MODEL MAKER,
seen. He liad hardly dreamed that anything could
be so beautiful. The carpets and the 'window cur
tains and the furniture, and the very walls, were
wonderful.
He looked around him rapidly and he saw a num
ber of oil paintings, here and there, but he knew he
would only have a minute or so, and he used it
almost feverishly.
What? Mr. G-erichten himself looking around?
It could not be anything new to him.
Perhaps, not, but he was now marching forward,
following the fat Frenchman, and Phil followed
them both until he found himself in what he at
once knew was the picture gallery. The best artists
of Europe and America had been liberally paid to
make that gallery what it was. Phil knew vexy
little about pictures, but the boss and the French
man seemed to.
“ How I wish Lucille had come along,” said
Phil to himself. “It is just what she was wishing
for. She can draw, but she' could never paint
one of those things. I wish I owned that soldier-
picture.”
The gallery was a great place, and Mr. Gerichten
walked slowly all the way around it, as if he were

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KINGS AND PALACES.
studying or criticising, and his face did not look as
Philip had ever seen it look anywhere else.
“ Come, now,” he said to Phil, at last, and they
followed the Frenchman out to a stairway.
After that, Philip only had a few brief glances
into chambers that seemed altogether too magnificent
to be ever slept in, for Mr. Gerichten was occupied
with his inspection.
“ It is nothing at all,” he said, when he had satis
fied himself, and then Philip actually had a bit of
plumbing work to do, with the boss leaning over
him. There had not been anything the matter to
speak of, but neither the German, the Frenchman,
the Irishman, nor anybody else in all that palace,
had any knowledge of plumbing. For all they
knew, something or other was in danger of bursting
and letting all the water from the Croton pipes run
in over the carpets and down through the mould
ings and gildings of the richly frescoed ceilings.
That would have been dreadful, and they seemed
really rejoiced when Mr. Gerichten told Phil to put
his tools into the basket again.
Only two or three of them had been used at all,
but they had all been taken out and spread over the
floor of the bath-room where the boss had cornered

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94 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER,
the difficulty; Philip had really crawled in among
some pipes, and had done so more easily than if he
had been a full-grown man. Still, he had been
awed a little, at the idea of tinkering anything in a
palace—for the first time.
It was another curious thing, too, the feeling he
had of being glad to get out of the house.
Hardly had they done so, however, before Mr.
Gerichten stood still, turned around, and looked
steadily at the great white building he had been
mending.
“It is like a king’s palace,” he said slowly. “I
have been in the palaces of kings. I have seen
them in peace and in war. We have no need of
kings. Is it well that au American citizen should
have a palace like a king? I think it is. I am
proud we can have them without the kings.”
“Tell you what, though,” almost burst from
Philip, “ I wish everybody could look in. I’m glad
I came.”
“Everybody look in?” suddenly exclaimed Mr.
Gerichten. “My boy, you thought of that? I
thought of it. American palaces must not be like
kings’ palaces. "We are all kings in this country.
It is something for me to think of.”

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CHAPTER VII.
NEW ARRIVALS.
MU'dLLE GrEEICHTEN went Lome tLat
to get there. She seemed to hardly see
anybody on the way and sLe certainly did not
speak to anybody. Not even wLen sLe so sLarply
expressed her opinion, as sLe flitted through tLe
shop. Mr. Stimson’s address to CLris Lad occasioned
a kind of small explosion, tLat was all. Something
like sliooting a bird on tLe wing; or rather as
if a bird on tLe wing sLould turn and sLoot back,
but she Lad not waited to see wLetLer or not sLe
Lad Lit anything. -
Up tLe stairs sLe went, and wLen sLe reached her
room she made a motion at her head as if she were
throwing off her hat. She had not worn any, just
to run into Mrs. Huyler’s, and her state of mind
betrayed itself in the fact that she did not know it.
Then she stood stock-still, with an expression on her

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96 CHRIS, TITE MODEL MAKER.
face that looked like an indignant protest against
something or other.
“Well!” she exclaimed. “I’m glad I had
another chance to give it to that old fellow!
‘ Stub ! ’ I wonder if he thinks that because he’s so
big he’s any better than other people. Chris is
worth ten of him! But it hurts him, just the same.”
She looked at the violin that was leaning, a little
sidewise, against the wall in the comer. It might
be that a violin had no feelings, but it seemed
almost to look back at her, as if it were saying:
’“Here I am. Wliat’s the matter? I’m a good
fellow. I didn’t do it. ’Tisn’t my fault that your
father won’t let you do anything. I won’t say any
thing about the piano, but you ought to get better
acquainted with me. I think you’re having a pretty
good time, anyway.”
Lucille’s face was brightening, for her thoughts
had gone back to the parlor drying-room, and she
replied, still looking at her friend in the corner:
“ Wasn’t it funny of Mrs. Huyler to go and get a
piano! She’ll be getting a violin, next”—then
she stopped and laughed till the tears came before
she went on : “ Anyhow, she’s a dear, good woman.
I don’t know what I should do without her.”

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NEW ARRIVALS.
97
The violin remained leaning against tlie wall, for
Lucille did not come to pick him tip. She was
gaining courage, however, for she said, aloud and
hopefully:
“ If Chris could learn, as he has, I can. lie can
teacli me, too. I don’t believe father will object.
It’s at Mrs. Huyler’s. ‘ Stub ! ’ Poor Chris ! How
angry it makes me! That great big—humph ! I
just hate him ! Do you know, I don’t believe Chris
is out of pain a moment ? Phil is real thoughtful
and good, too, for a boy of his age. I do hope he
won’t let Chris ever lift anything! He played
splendidly.”
After that she could busy herself with dl sorts of
matters in ker own room and elsewhere, but it was
evident that Mr. Selden Stimson’s good looks and
grand manners had failed to make a good impression
upon the model maker’s daughter.
As for the dwarf mechanic himself concerning
whom she had expressed so mucli anxiety, he was
now probing the mysteries of another job and
seemed to have forgotten everything else. It was
something in the lungs and stomach of the young
steam-engine, and Chris at last drew back from it,
remarking:

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98 CIIRIS, THE MODEL 1IAKER.
“It’s got to be turned over before I can get at
that. I must wait for Phil.”
He stood for a moment looking at it, leaning on
his crutch, with his right hand pressed against his
side and his breath coming and going somewhat
rapidly. lie seemed to be a living picture of bodily
Aveakness dealing with the strongest kinds of things:
with machines made of iron and steel and brass,
and with strong men, and rich men, and with all the
circumstances in life which are the hardest to over
come. Mr. Stimson had said, and so had Philip, in
another way, that Chris was brains without bodj^,
but they had said too much, for, in another minute,
he was on his stool again and his skilful fingers
were, busy with his pencil, tracing rapidly out upon
a sheet of paper the outlines of some thought or
other which had come into his mind. He had body
enough to do very important work with, after all,
and he was using all he had to remarkably good
advantage.
The time weut swiftly by and more than one
workman, not to speak of several customers, walked
in and walked out, but Chris turned quickly back
from every interruption to draw more lines upon
that paper. His face grew radiant as he did so, and

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NEW ARRIVALS.
99
there was a note of exultation in some of his whis
tling. He had just blown a sharp “ whew ” and
added:
“ Guess that’s it! I’ll tiy it, anyhow.”
“Chris,” said a voice behind him, “I’ve been to
that house. Saw it all over, from top to bottom.
I’m going to have a house of my own, some day.
I don’t care for so fine a one as that is, though.
Is there anything you want me to do?”
“ Yes, there is,” said Chris, turning to slip down
from liis perch. “ "Where’s Mr. Gericliteu ? ”
“He didn’t come back with me,” said Phil. “He
went somewhere else. Oh, but weren’t those tools
heavy, before 1 got there ! ”
“ "Why didn’t lie take the whole shop?” chuckled
Chris, with a comical glance at the basket. “ Xow,
you come over here and set up this thing for me.”
“You didn't try to do it yourself, did you?”
exclaimed Phil, with evident anxiety. “ Xow, Chris,
you know you never ought to.”
“ I didn't " said Christ “ Take hold—now ! ”
He did not give any further verbal directions, but
it was needful for that thing to lie put over on its
back and then stood upon its head. While it was
doing so, although only Phil was actually touching

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100 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
it, it seemed to move in obedience to tlie motions
made by Chris and without any hesitation whatever.
“ So ? ” asked Phil at last, but Chris took a long
look into the model and replied :
“ Around this way.”
Almost as if it had been a toy, around spun the
really ponderous machine, and then Phil turned
away to his own workbench. It had all been as
a matter of course to both of them, but there had
been one witness upon wliom it had made a some
what peculiar impression. Old Mr. Gerichten had
been in the doorway at the foot of the outer steps,
and he had remarked, first in French and then in
English:
“ That boy ! What a soldier lie would make !
Every boy should know how. He may have to be
a soldier, some day.”
It was a curious suggestion to come in among the
peaceful tools and the dust and the iron filings of a
shop like that, but then it came in by way of Mr.
Gerichten, and there was something about him that
did not look altogether peaceful. Phil did not at
once take up any of his tools, but stood by his
bench and looked back at Chris, as if studying
him.

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NEW ARRIVALS.
101
“ He must never lift anything,” he said.
Mr. Gerichten was at that moment explaining to
a pair of new-comers, one of whom seemed to be an.
Italian and the other a Pole, the reasons why the jobs
they inquired about had not been attended to. He
spoke to them in their own tongues and with the
utmost politeness, assuring them that Mr. Iiuyler’s
time, and his own, had been much more than occu
pied. He was just in the middle of his final and
most courteous explanation, when the distant sound
of a steam whistle, quickly followed by several
others like it, came hurrying into Laurens Street
and down into that basement.
Mr. Gerichten’s visitors turned suddenly toward
the door. Phil’s hand drew back from a hammer
he had almost touched. Even Chris liimself put his
crutch under his arm and whirled away from his
steam-machine problem. The sound of rubbing
ceased in the laundry, two .doors up the street, and
in the parlor drying-room over it Mrs. Hinder her
self stopped playing upon her new piano. A liod-
earrier, nearly at the third story of a new building
on Canal Street, brought his box of bricks all the
way down the ladder with him. The wonder was
that he did not drop them, for all mechanical or day

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102 CIIRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
labor work ceases -when the whistle blows twelve
o’clock.
That forenoon had gone, and there had really-
been a great deal in it, but, in half a minute after
it was gone, Chris was alone in the shop, for he had
not hurried out of it so quickly as the rest. Even
Mr. Gerichten himself had gone upstairs veiy
piromptly, and a “jour.,” who had brought a tin
luncheon pail with him, had taken it out upon the
basement steps, as if he could probably eat with a
better appetite anywhere else than down among all
those models.
There stood Chris by his work-bencli. He -was
leaning upon his crutch, and there was a smile upon
his face, but he was saying, half aloud to himself:
“There! Yes, it hurts pretty hard to-day. It
always seems to come as soon as they stop work.
I must keep busy then. I wish I knew what it is.
I don’t know that it could be mended though. I
kind o’ guess some of my inside pieces were left out
when I was put together."
His right hand was pressed against his side and
his breathing seemed to hurt him. Some people
say that deformed fellows are always fretting and
complaining about something or other. T\ T hy can’t

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NEW ARRIVALS.
103
they take the world just as it is? "Well, there
ought not to be any deformed people. Nobody is
to blame for it. They have the same chances that
we all have, don’t they ?
When Philip left the shop he had all the noon
hour before him and he need not have hurried, but
he did. He went home and straight upstairs to his
own room, and in a twinkling the great book of
anatomical plates was opened wide upon his table,
and he was poring over it.
“ I wish I understood this thing better,” he said, as
he earnestly studied a plate of a man’s body. “ That’s
the way he ought to be. G-uess I must be made
that way. Guess he isn’t. Anyhow he mustn’t lift.
Don’t I wish I knew as much as he does! I wish I
knew what to do with him and mother. I shall be
a man one of these days, but it’s a long time yet.”
Very long, to look forward to, no doubt, for a
boy of fifteen who was only a boy helper in a model
shop, with a mother who took in washing and
with a crippled dwarf for a brother, whom he would
probably have to support some day. Phil felt very
strong for a moment, when he thought of that, and
then he felt very young and helpless. The next
thing he seemed to think of was the costly palace he

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104 CHRIS,■ THE MODEL MAKER.
Lad looked into that morning, but it was time for
Mm to go down and get his dinner, and all lie said
was:
“ Sometimes an inventor makes money enough to
live in a "big house, but there are more of ’em that
don’t make a cent. Chris could invent almost any
thing. I know he could. But you can’t do any
thing with the best kind of invention unless you
have plenty of money.”
He had learned something concerning those mat
ters, therefore, from the inventors and inventions he
had seen in Gerichten’s shop, and a boy can see a
great deal if he keeps his eyes open.
Dinner was on the table in the Huyler drying-
room when Chris hopped in, but he did not at once
look at it. There was a light in his face that
seemed to go across the room and shine on the
piano.
“ Did Lucille play ? ” he asked.
“ Ever so long,” answered his mother. “ So did I.
It’s a splendid piano. She can practice all the time.
I can learn how, I know I can. It ’11 do me good
to see it there, anyway. I’ll get you to show me.
Now, Chris, just you eat your dinner. You don’t
begin to eat as much as you ought to.”

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NEW ARRIVALS. . 105
Slie made no such criticism upon her younger son,'
and he did not need any, for he was exceedingly
healthy in body, even if he was a little disturbed in
mind.
All the people of the great city were at that
hour busied very much in the same way. Every
where, therefore, there were little gatherings of
human beings, in unlimited variety. One of these
noontide coteries, with a luncheon to deal with, con
sisted of several gentlemen whose talk proved that
they belonged to the medical profession. They
were men who did mending and repairing of other
kinds than such as were attended to in the Gerichten
shop. In fact, they were also something more, for
they were the faculty in charge of an educational
institution, a college for young doctors, and they
were discussing one of its important matters while
they ate and drank.
They said to one another:
“ It is an exceedingly delicate mechanism.”
“ Such a pity it fell down.”
“ Its repairs can be entrusted only to the hands
of skill and genius.”
“We have enquired for both with great care,
gentlemen.”

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106 . CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
“ We Lave, indeed,” remarked, at last, one of
them to whom all the rest paid a great deal of
deference. “I am confident that we have found
what we want, and that Mr. Christopher Huyler is
the man.”
Nobody disputed him, but one of the others
thoughtfully enquired:'
“Can he do it here, or must it be taken some
where else? Has he a shop?”
“It cannot be done here,” replied the guiding
mind of the institution, “but Mr. Huyler has a
separate room to put it in. It will not be mended
in any ordinary shop. For that matter, we will
have it insured. I have seen Huyler. He is, iim-
self, one of the most interesting anatomical studies I
have ever met with.”
There were six scientific guardians and instructors
of that institution, and five of them were large men,
but the body of the sixth, which contained the
guiding mind, was comparatively small.
It was worth noticing how, in spite of that obvi
ous fact, all the large men were so respectfully
attentive to whatever he had to say about the mind
and body of the skilled workman, Chris the genius,
to whom they were about to entrust their delicate

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NEW ARRIVALS.
107
treasure of rare mechanism, which had somehow
tumbled down and was calling for repairs, No
doubt they all knew a great deal, but what they all
seemed to regret was their inability to turn Chris
inside out and examine him as he, with Philip’s
help, had that very morning examined the inside
gearing of the young steam-engine. There was
something evidently coming to him, however,
whether he knew it or not.
That was not all that was going on at luncheon
time, for the hour of noon-day rest brought to
Lucille a kind of trial. Sara Vladovna had prepared
the table for Mr. Gerichten, with a jealous refusal
of any help from his daughter, but when it was
ready she did not sit down by it. Only Lucille,
■therefore, and the dignified boss of the shop, were
seated at the table.
It was curious, the manner in which Sara waited
upon them as if they were a kind of superior
beings—the old model maker and his plainly dressed
girl. Lucille, too, seemed to expect to be waited on,
somewhat as her father did, but at the same time it
was plain that she had an awe of him even greater
than that which was shown by Sara, and there may
have been more than ordinary reason for it.

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108 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
As for him, he was as courteous as if he were
bowing to a customer; but his face wore a stern,
hard, unyielding expression. Whatever he was
thinking of, Lucille’s mind, in fact, was busy with
Mrs. Huyler’s piano, even more than with the violin
or any other of her difficulties.
“It is so near,” she said to herself, “he -nail
know about it. He will know that I am practising.
I suppose he knows now that it’s there. I never
tried to hide anything. I can’t! I must! ”
She was very nearly ready to tell him something
when he suddenly arose from the table. Sara had
placed food before him and he had eaten, but he
had eaten very rapidly. Something was on his
mind, and yet nothing extraordinary had happened
in the shop. He could not have been disturbed, as
Phil had been, by the visit to the palace. Anyhow,
he at once went upstairs, and Sara looked after him
and bowed as he went.
“ I’ve got to tell him ! ” exclaimed Lucille. “ He
must know right away! ”
Sara said something in a strange tongue, and
Lucille replied as if it were her own; but she left
her luncheon half finished and followed her father.
There had been time for him to reach his own

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NEW ARRIVALS.
109
room and tliere he stood now, with his arms folded
and his eyes upon the trophy of old swords above
the bureau between the windows. He did not look
at all as he usually did in the shop. There were
sharply cut furrows at the corners of his eyes that
were hardly hidden by his shaggy brows, and the
lines in his forehead seemed to have been ploughed
deeper. They were very deep. His white mus
taches seemed to have no curve in them, such as
they had when he smiled, but they stood straight-
lined, flattened out, while he said, in a hoarse, husky
voice:
“This is the anniversary. This is the very hour.
I had them all shot at noon. It was blood for
blood. I am glad we took some justice. They
butchered our heroes. I would do it again! ”
His eyes had grown bloodshot while he spoke,
and his head bent forward as if he were almost
tigerishly gazing at something no one else could see.
It was at that moment that Lucille timidly entered
the room, and her voice faltered a little as she said :
“ Father.”
“ "Well ? ” he responded, and she at once told him,
rapidly, anxiously, all there was to tell about the
Huylers’ piano.

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110 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
“ Piano ? ” lie exclaimed at last, and turning
toward her enquiringly, as if lie liad only half
gathered lier meaning. “Mrs. Hitler? Chris?
Is it in tune ? ”
“ Why, yes, father. Chris mended it and had it
tuned, and it’s just lovely.”
“Very well,” said her father in his stateliest
manner. “Practice,! Practice in the forenoons.
Afternoons, library! ”
“ And the Art Institute ? ” said Lucille, as if one
of her treasures was in danger of being stolen from
her.
“ Drawing ? ” said Mr. Gerichten. “ That sort of
thing? I remember. I have no objection to that.
Keep out of Laurens Street all you can. It’s not
the j>lace for you.”
“ Oh, thank you, father! ” but Lucille instantly
felt as if she had been driven upstairs to her own
room, for she had now really looked him in the face
and it had startled her.
Perhaps it would not have been too much to have
said that Lucille and her father were not just then
on tlie same side of the Atlantic Ocean. They were
not in the same country. She was a young Ameri
can girl living in Laurens Street aud struggling

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MW ARRIVALS.
Ill
desperately to get some knowledge of art and music
and books, and terribly depressed by the fear that
she might never get away from the kind of life she
was in. Every daughter and every son of every
immigrant from the Old World to the New since
the day when the Pilgrims landed, has been in
nearly the same position with Lucille. Only the
older people could bring over Europe with them.
Mr. Gerichten was not in America, just then, but
away back somewhere in the lands beyond the sea;
not in any shop, but in some place where he had per
formed a very different kind of “ bossing.”
Lucille went away hastily and he did not seem to
take any note of her going. His face darkened
again, and all its wrinkles grew deeper. It was just
as the steam ’ivliistles began to sound again for one
o’clock and work that he muttered :
“ The last man of them ! So much for Kaiser,
and Tsar, and Ban! I only wish it could have been
man for man, but we did not have enough of
them! ”
At some time or other, evidently, even human ven
geance had fallen short for lack of materials to work
on. It always fails in some way or other. Just
now the last of the one o’clock whistles had blown

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112 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
itself out and Mr. Gerichten went down into the
shop. His first duty after getting there was to bow
with more than his accustomed formal deference
to a keen-eyed little gentleman who asked to see
Mr. Huyler.
“He will return at one, Dr. Talcott,” said the
boss. “You do entirely right.to entrust that work
to him. He is the only man who can do it. He
can do anything.”
“ I hear so,” said the chief authority of the sur
gical institution. “I only wish that he had more
knowledge of anatomy. You may tell him it will
be here either to-day or to-morrow.”
“ Will you say to-morrow morning, sir ? ” enquired
a boyish voice behind him. “ We shall be all ready
then.”
“ I cannot be here in the morning,” said Dr. Tal
cott, turning around to look in the face of Chris.
“I have other engagements—patients; but I can
give you pretty full instructions now. It is an
exceedingly delicate mechanism.”
“Yes, sir,” said Chris. “I wouldn’t miss it for
anything. I can do it. Send it in the morning and
come in the afternoon yourself if you can. We’ll
be ready.”

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NEW ARRIVALS.
113
“That will do,” said Dr. Talcott. “Please
remember that it is very heavy.”
“AVe are used to heavy work, doctor,” interposed
Mr. G-erichten. “I can give you security if you
wish.”
“We do not require any. It is fully insured,”
replied the man of science, but he was also a man of
business, and after a few more words to Chris, rather
than to Mr. Gerichten, he hurried away.
There was one other fellow in that shop who had
seemed to be deeply interested, but he had not been
called upon to say anything. In fact, Philip had
been standing marvellously still, and he had not
missed a word of the conversation. There had been
a hammer in his hand, and it had been about to fall
upon a piece of metal at the click of time, when his
quick ears caught the word “anatomy.” It was
only a word, but it had been as a clog-bar thrust
into a cog-wheel, for it stopped everything instantly.
The hammer did not fall, it only lay down. Philip
did not move. He hardly seemed to breathe while
he was getting the idea of what it was that re
quired such careful handling and mending. Then,
just as the doctor hurried out of the shop, the
hammer was suddenly picked up and down it

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114 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
came with a clang, while Phil laughed aloud and
called out:
“Chris, I’ll carry that thing up to your room.
Don’t you trust anybody else with it. It’s just
what I want to see.”
“ I guess so,” replied Chris. “ I went there • and
examined it. Tell you what, though, there’s a heap
of work to be done on it.”
“ I am almost sorry,” said Mr. Gerichten. “ And
yet it is so important. What shall we do with the
other jobs ? ”
“Do the best we can,” said Chris. “I’ll do a
great deal of that in the evenings. They don’t
need it back as soon as they say they do, but
they’re nervous about it. There are less than a
dozen like it in all the world.”
“I’ve read about it,” said Phil. “They say it’s a
kind of miracle.”
Not even Chris seemed to notice that there was
anything the matter with Phil, but there was. Ho
had not been exactly like his ordinaiy self since
he came back that morning from his first look at
the inside of a palace; of a house costly enough for
a king to live in, and really costing much more than
the houses of the smaller run of kings. Now there

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NEW ARRIVALS.
115
had been another change in him. It was a warm
day, to be sure, but he was not exerting himself in
any way to make him get so red in the face and
to perspire in that manner. Besides, he was half
way singing to himself as he hammered at his job,
and he had never before been known to do so. One
would think that the last place in the world for
a boy to get excited in would be a dusty old shop
where they did mending, filed keys, and made
patent office models. Whatever might be the cause
of any unusual fermentation in a mere boy who
was learning to be a brass filer, it could not have
spread so as to disturb anybody else. Never
theless, something had also been the matter witli
Lucille. She had slipped through the shop with
out a word to anybody, just after luncheon, and
it was only about an hour later that she sud
denly re-entered her own room and banged the
door behind her.
“ I’m so glad ! ” she exclaimed. “ The library’s
closed till the middle of September. The Art Insti
tute won’t begin again till then either. I can prac
tise anything. I’ve nothing else to do all summer.
I can get a music book and begin at the beginning.
That and my drawing.”

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116 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
She was all but dancing, and then she seemed to
be all at once taken with an idea that the plants
needed watering liberally, and even the floor came
in for a share, she was so happy. Some of them
touched each other knowingly as she worked among
them, but they made no remark. The only audible
reply came from the canary. He seemed, at first, to
be in a kind of triumph over her return, being, per
haps, under an impression that he had whistled her
back again to keep him company, but all his noisy
exultation turned into wrath and scolding the
moment she drew the bow across the responsive
bosom of the fiddle. He really knew too much
about music to be pleased with the first outcry that
came from that instrument. She only shook her
bow at him, however, and went on with her music.
Lucille was to obey her father’s commands concern
ing piano practice in the afternoons, it was evident,
and there was to be neither library nor art school
during several weeks, but the violin could have all
the mornings. That was not all that was on her
mind, for she finally put down the violin and re
marked :
“I must do some reading, too. I can learn a
great deal from the books in father’s room—from

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NEW ARRIVALS. 117
some of them. I can read the French and German
boots. Sara Vladovna says I’m forgetting how
to talk Polish. But I can speak German better
than she can. I’ll have all the education I can get,
anyhow.”

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CHAPTER VIII.
PHILIP S ADVENTUPvE.
kg' ir^llriEIlE are clays wliich seem to have in
|||g RaSI them more than their proper share of the
liMfrJaSlj things which are bound to come. They
may be short winter days like Christmas, or they
may be long summer days like the Fourth of July,
or like this upon which Mrs. Huyler’s piano climbed
into her parlor drying-room. It is not the mere
length in hours which tells in any case, and in this
it could not have been altogether the work of the
piano. Philip, for instance, took but little interest
in that instrument, for he had no idea whatever of
learning to play upon it. So far from being excited
by its arrival, he seemed to grow sober and thought
ful as the long, warm hours went by, and as one
piece of tinkering followed another in the dull and
humdrum basement where he was at work. He did
his work as usual, to be sure, but he could not help
looking around him now and then, and when he did

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PHILIP’S ADVENTURE. 119
so, something inside of liim insisted on working in
spite of him. Perhaps it was his imagination stirring
up his ambition, and perhaps some of the models
'helped it, for the men who had made the inventions
expected to get rich out of them. "Whatever it was,
he again and again caught himself looking right
through the walls of the dingy shop, and on up
Laurens Street, and up Fifth Avenne, and into the
grand drawing-room of the palace where he had
mended the pipe and faucet in the bathroom. lie
could see it all, room after room, from the deep,
cool subcellar, with its stone arches, to the luxurious
chambers in the upper stories. There was such an
awful difference between poor people’s way of
living and the palace life he had looked into !
Only once did a curious. question pop into his
mind that made him ask:
“ Well, if there were no big houses to make or
mend, what would all the workmen have to do ?
I don’t know. The city can’t be all big houses. I
don’t care to have such a house as that, anyhow, but
I wish I knew what’s going to become of me.”
He felt that he hated -filing brass for a living any
how, or hammering iron, or tinkering tin, but here
he was and he could not see any way out of it. It

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120 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
was entirely natural, liowever, that lie sliould say,
toward tlie close. of the day :
“ I won’t do any reading to-night. I forget it as
fast as I read it. Well, yes; I do like it, but it
isn’t of any kind of use. I shan’t ever do anything
with it.”
When evening came at last, and the shop was
closed, it was really vacated, for even Chris put
away all his tools and papers and vanished.
During all the afternoon old Mr. Gerichten had
grown more solemn and more stately. He was as
polite as ever, or more so, but whenever he had direc
tions to give, they were given gruffly, with a manner
like that of an officer giving orders to his soldiers.
When he went upstairs at six o’clock, supper was
ready and he ate it, but he hardly uttered a word
all the while, and both Sara Yladorna and Lucille
seemed willing to be as silent as he was;
When at last he arose from the table lie went to
his room for a few minutes. Only a few, but he
came down again in an entirely different dress. On
his feet were a pair of boots which looked a little
old, but they must have beeu expensive when new,
for they came up above his knees, outside of a
tightly fitting pair of black trousers. It could be

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PHILIP’S ADVENTURE. 121
seen that bis shirt collar was spotless, but below
that was a long black waistcoat buttoning up to his
throat with a queer sort of ornamental buttons. He
wore no coat excepting a long, loose, brown linen
duster, and he was now buttoning up that, so that
little of the rest of his rig could be seen.
No doubt both Sara and Lucille knew all about it,
for they were not at all surprised, but his left breast
under the duster was spangled with a brilliant col
lection of stars, crosses, and medals, hanging by short
ribbons, and around his waist was a sash and a
broad, black belt. Nobody would have known it,
seeing only the loose linen outer garment and the
boots, but he had put on all but the jacket, spurs,
and sword of a famous regiment of Polish lancers.
Lucille’s face put on a sad, wistful look as she
glanced at the glittering decorations, and Sara stood,
bowing respectfully, with her fat arms crossed upon
her apron. I-Ie was something more than a Laurens
Street workman to them, and at some time or other
he had worn a sabre also and had commanded
battalions of horsemen.
“Lucille,” he said, “Sara Yladovna will remain.
I shall be late. This is the anniversary.”
“Yes, father,” she said, “I know.”

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122 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
“ There will be few of us there,” he said, and with
that he stalked out of the house, taking with him
the shadow of some old, dark memory; but no such
shadow was falling upon the great mass of his
fellow citizens that summer evening, and certainly
not any of it remained long upon his daughter.
“ Poor father ! ” she said as he went out, but that
was all, and in a moment more she exclaimed, “Now !
The violin first and then the books. I wish I had
some other kinds of books.”
She hurried out of the room and up the stairs, and
in a moment more Sara Vladovna stood at the foot of
them, listening with uplifted hands in silent astonish
ment to the mingled torrent of fiddle and canary
music which came pouring down from the upper
floor.
Chris had left the Gericliten shop only to go to
another, and he was now in the great garret cave,
under his mother’s roof.
If he did not seem at all excited, he was, at least,
ci'utching himself hither and thither with a great
deal of vivacity. He looked bright and contented,
moreover, as if he were doing the very thing he
liked best. It was still broad daylight, but he was
employing that light upon his first work in a some-

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rillLir’s ADVENTUKE.
123
what remarkable way. He seemed to be preparing
to use a large number of artificial lights; aucl either
their number, or something he proposed to do with
them, struck him as pretty good fun. There were
indeed many of them, some on long arms of metal
tubing, working on hinges or knuckle-joints, while
others were at the ends of india-rubber pipes, to go
anywhere. It was a wonder what any fellow in his
senses could find to do with all that gas-fixturing.
If that was out of the common order of human
affairs, so were a number of grotesque and hideous
shapes, in gilded or painted wood or metal and
leather which he began to jiull about the floor,
examining into their general health and conditions
and now and then pausing to tinker them. There
arc a great many tilings which are mysterious until
the explanation is given, and Chris left the mystery
of his garret cave just where it was, monsters and
all. At last he remarked :
“If that thing of Dr. Talcott's is coming to-mor
row. I'm glad all these are so nearly ready to send
away. I’d like to see that spectacle play, though,
when it's acted. I'll have to go to the rehearsal,
anyhow, and see if they get the effects in all right."
Something like a sane idea began to creep in.

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124 cniiis, THE MODEL MAKER,
therefore, with a suggestion of practical mechanism
which might be paid for by somebody. Still, there
were many things for which he did not oiler any
explanation at all. He played with the lights in a
way that was even small-boyish, apparently, turning
them up and down frequently. They were supplied
from a central tube, so that he could malce them
work all together. He studied his light effects with
something of the air of an artist studying a picture,
and seemed especially interested in the conduct of
his skeleton and man in armor. He put them in
various positions, but they were sitting comfortably
in their chairs when the gong on his table struck
thrice and he exclaimed:
“ Somebody to see me ? ”
He must have sent some reply that was under
stood downstairs, for in a moment more his mother
lifted the hatch door at the head of them and said :
“ It’s Mr. Selden Stimson.”
“Show him right up,” said Chris. “I’m just
about ready for him.”
In an instant, the cave grew almost dark, but
Chris went to the hatch and again lifted it.
“"Walk right up, Mr. Stimsou,” he said, “ I’m glad
you’ve come.”

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PIIILIP’S ADVENTURE.
Slbwly, enquiringly, dignifiedly, Mr. Stimson came
up the stairs, saying:
“ I wanted another talk with you, Stub. I didn’t
know you had another shop, though, but I’m glad of
it. "We can be more private. It’s a great deal better
that I did not go to Washington before seeing you.
I think I shall go to-morrow.”
“I’m ever so glad you came,” repeated Chris.
“I’ll light up. Take a seat, Mr. Stimson. All
right. That chair.”
Down sat the great inventor, mopping his bald
head and remarking:
“Yes, light up. It’s pretty dark in this den.
Queerisli kind of place. What do you do here,
Stub ? All! Why ? ”
Chris, at that moment, was standing near the table,
and he was pulling at something with all his small
might, just as every gas jet in the garret sprang at
once into full blaze., Well might his bright eyes
dance as they did and his face grow radiant with
fun!
At Mr. Stimson’s right, a grinning, nodding skele
ton arose, full height, and held out a bony hand.
At his left, in like manner, a tall, steel-clad crusader
extended a gauntletecl greeting. The light dimin-

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126 CHKIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
ished again, leaving those weird companions still
visible, while across the floor slid toward him half n
dozen goblin shapes of monster owls, fiery toads,
gas-lit crocodiles, elephant-heads, and nondescripts,
and the music box rang out its loudest waltz and the
room seemed full of bells.
The light blazed out again, went down to a
flicker, and then seemed to put on a bluish tinge;
but Chris was not yet perfectly acquainted with Mr.
Selden Stimson. That gentleman had not been
startled out of his good manners. He arose as
politely as did the skeleton, put out his own hand
in response, and calmly remarked to him:
“ How d’ye do ? Glad to meet you. Unexpected
pleasure, my dear sir. ’Pon my soul, I thought you
were dead.”
He dropped the bony fingers, only to turn and say
to the suit of armor:
“I didn’t really expect to meet you here, this
evening. Glad you’ve brought your family and .
friends. Huyler, my boy, this is extraordinary. I
always wondered who got up these theatrical things.
Knew they did it somewhere, of course. Now shut
’em all off, and let you and me have a talk about
the Phantom Borer.”

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PHILIP’S ADVENTURE. 127
He was a man of nerve as well as of humor, for
lie at once sat down again in tlie throne-like cliair
from wliicli lie had risen. As he did so, down sat
his mute neighbors on the right and left. Chris
ceased his pulling at the knob on the table leg, and
came over and sat down upon a kind of divan which
he pulled in front of his visitor. As the latter now
glanced curiously around him for a moment he
might well have imagined that some kind of Phan
tom, if not exactly a Borer, had been at work and
had given him admission to some weird chamber of
the under-world. All the pompous merriment in
Mr. Stimson’s face, however, was more than
responded to by the laugh in that of the dwarf
mechanic. He was indeed the genius of the place,
and his presence gave it a singular air of com
pleteness.
The bit of fun and exhibition was over, neverthe
less, for the great man was seriously preoccupied by
his own ambitions and inventive creations, and had
little more to say about the curiosities of the cavern
he was in. Not but what he had notions of his
own about theatrical machinery, for he said so to
Chris in a kindly and instructive condescension.
Even speaking of them, and of how wonderfully

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128
CHRIS, TIIE MODEL MAKER.
scenery could be produced, however, led him on
into several verbal pictures of how things would
probably look in his proposed underground city
among the streets to be provided for by the
Phantom Borer.
To these he added next a descriptive view of
Governor’s Island, redeemed from forts and war to
storehouses and commerce. In a more general way
he spoke of other islands; of the new relations to
be established between them and the several con
tinents ; and he talked of long tannels, holes to be
bored under even the oceans, as if some of them
might shortly be ready for him to take an afternoon
drive through one of them.
Chris was a good listener, and he was all the
while paying close attention, but his bright face
gradually assumed, almost comically, the expression
of a man of business, and he may have been think
ing of something else besides the Borer and the long
holes under the seas when he remarked :
“It’ll cost a heap of money. It takes capital.
Every invention needs money to begin with.
That’s what’s the matter -with almost all the invent
ors I’ve known. Known lots of ’em, too.”
“ Capital ? ” exclaimed Mr. Stimson. “ Bless my

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PHILIP’S ADVENTURE. 129
soul! I know all about that. Why, Stub, finance
is my especial field. I shall have no difiiculty
about capital. The idea takes with financiers. I
am already obtaining advances of cash from some of
our longest headed men. Our great bankers and
projectors are ready to put money into almost any
thing. Just think of what things they have put
their own and other people’s money into! That
isn’t the difficulty ”
“ What is it \ ” quickly asked Chris.
“ What is it % ” echoed Mr. Stimson. “ Why, my
dear boy, it’s politics. You can’t guess what objec
tions there would be, for instance, to having a New
York street run out under the Atlantic.”
Chris thought he could, but he did not say so,
and he seemed disposed to give it up and begin to
talk about the invention itself. He spoke very
encouragingly about the progress he was making
with the plans and drawings. He had them there
on the table to show to Mr. Stimson and to point
out the differences between them and the remark
able drawing the inventor had at first brought with
him.
Mr. Stimson studied, and now and then his face
reddened a little, for he was the inventor, and Chris

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130 CIIRIS, TIIE MODEL MAKER,
was only a model maker, whatever might be the
value of any of his ideas. He was small and young,
too, and he was a dwarf and a cripple.
“ I can’t say that I exactly get your idea, Stub,”
he said at last. “There may be something in it,
though. Anyhow, I must go now. "Work it out as
fast as you can. It’s the greatest invention of the
age.”
In a minute more he was gone, working his digni
fied way down the flights of stairs to the street, but
Chris did not at once go to bed. He went to a
drawer of his table, took out a lot of drawings and
began to ponder them. Then he lay down among
his cushions and took them with him, seeming to be
so utterly absorbed that he did not notice how the
skeleton and the man in armor slowly rose and
leaned forward as if they desired to peer into what
he was doing. It was evident that he had neglected
detaching them from the clockwork which made
them arise at midnight.
If that had been a thinking evening for Chris, so
had it been for Philip, but in a somewhat different
way. Phil went to his own room after dinner, but
he kept his word about not reading. He sat down
for a while, and the great book of anatomical plates

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PHILIP’S ADVENTURE.
131
lay open before liim on fhe table. It did not seem
to interest liim, nor did lie pay any attention to a
sound of piano-thumping which came spasmodically
up from tlie drying-room, altliougli he smiled and
remarked, “Mother’s happy.” It was not exactly
music, but there was a great deal of it, for there was
strength in the fat fingers with which Mrs. Iluyler
was experimenting upon the keys. She tried the
white keys, all of them, and she did not at all
neglect the black keys, and she seemed really to
have some idea of what was to be done with them.
All the trouble was that she had never learned how
to do it.
“My hands don’t stretch well,” she said. “Lu
cille’s fingers will spread all the way out. Chris
has the limberest hands I ever saw. He can play
first rate.”
There was not any music at all in Phil. He did
not seem positively dejected, but he had something
on his mind, and he made no attempt at dressing up
before he went out of the house. He even went
out with an old straw hat on and without a coat.
To be sure it was a warm evening, and not one man
or boy in four of all who were sitting on the stoops
and steps of Laurens Street was wearing a coat.

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132 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
Phil was following the fashion of that neighbor
hood, and his blue-checked shirt was also about the
correct thing. His leather apron had been left in
the shop, of course, but his entire rig was that of a
model maker’s assistant. It was altogether different
from the neat outfit with which he had accompanied
Lucille the evening before. The worst of it all was,
for the state of mind he was in, that he seemed per
fectly at home in it. He was the kind of boy that
is born to dress in that way and to keep it on all his
life. That was what his angry, ambitious thoughts
were telling him, and so he strolled away down to
Canal Street without taking any other boy into his
confidence. There were plenty of boys to be seen,
too, and he must have known a great many of them,
for they hailed him in all sorts of ways. He seemed
to be even a popular fellow among them, for a good-
natured youngster with uncommonly tough muscles
is sure to stand well with his boy acquaintances.
There was a pretty important point, right there,
not only for him but for all of them, and it had
something to do with the way Phil was feeling.
He was a Laurens Street boy, and there was no
baseball ground, for instance, in all that region.
There did not seem to be anything for him or for

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PHILIP’S ADVENTURE. 133
them to do, after working hours were over. That
is one of the differences between city life and country
life, always, but then there are large parts of the
city where opportunities can be had for sport of
some kind. Then there are other large parts,
swarming with boys, where the state of things is
even worse for them than it was on Laurens Street.
Phil felt almost as if he were in a kind of bottle
and corked up, with a wire on the cork to keep
it in.
Then he felt as if he were himself a kind of
bottle ; a boy with a great deal in him that was fer
menting and that gave him a ready-to-burst feeling.
That being the case, he was disposed to walk slowly.
Who ever heard of a bottle being in a hurry?
He did not care where he was going, and he went
along Canal Street till it reached Broadway. He
did not care for that fact either, but stood still, for
some minutes, looking for a while down the street.
“ Away down there,” he thought, “ is Wall Street;
and the banks are there, and oceans of money. How
on earth did all those old fellows get hold of so
much ? Business ? Business ? How is a fellow to
get into business ? Guess I must find out.”
Then he turned and looked up Broadway. There

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134 CIIRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
were not many people to see. Nothing but long
rows of stores and innumerable signs of business
concerns which employed poor people to work for
them.
“ Buying and selling,” he thought. “ All those
men were boys once. They began, somehow. I
don’t know anything about business. I wish I
did, though.”
Phil was a little overcome, and there was so much
to think of his courage had been almost knocked
out of him. The very place he had tinkered lead
pipe in had been too much for him. He could not
argue the matter, for he was only a boy just begin
ning to feel ambitious—that is, like trying to do
something and be somebody. As there was nothing
particular to be done, just now, lie turned and
walked straight across Broadway, as if he did not care
to see any more of the business places, that evening.
Just as he did so, a tall man in a linen duster
and top boots, a man with very white mustaches,
strode slowly past him without speaking.
“Old Gerichten,” muttered Philip. “Isn’t he
straight up and down, though ! He’s a real good-
looking old fellow, when he’s fixed up.”
So he was, and there Avas nobody else in sight that

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PHILIP’S ADVENTTJEE.
135
was walking with one half so stately, so measured a
tread, or that wore so very strong an appearance of
self-respect.
Philip walked on in the same direction, without
any purpose of following Mr. Gerichten, but because
they were both going the same way. It was a way
that led them quickly into a very unhandsome
neighborhood. Much of it looked older than even
Laurens Street and Phil knew all about it, for he
said to himself:
“ Worst kind of places. Guess any man with
money about him had better keep away from this.
After dark he had, anj'how. Right down yonder is
the Five Points, and all sorts of mischief. More
roughs and more thieves ! Hullo ! What’s that ?
A fight! The cops are coming ! Look at ’em ! ”
If it would have been better and more prudent for
Phil not to have looked on and not to have gone any
nearer, he was an unwise boy and did not do what
was better and more prudent. In fact, there was a
strange kind of fascination in the angry hurly-burly
that was suddenly taking place on the corner,
within thirty yards of him. lie saw at least one
Chinaman, several more that looked like sailors, and
a number of others, all foreigners apparently, and

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136 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
all shouting furiously in tongues wliicli Phil could
not understand.
“ Clubs ! ” exclaimed Phil. “ Knives ! That’s
awful! Some of ’em are down ! Pistols! There
come the cops, but they aint enough for ’em! ”
Yes, they were. Four stalwart policemen, charg
ing resolutely into that fray, plying their clubs
vigorously as they went, were quite enough, and
for a very good reason.
It was not altogether because they were so strong,
or could handle their locust clubs so well, or even
because they had the law on their side and were
enforcing it bravely. Quite as important was the
fact that the fight had already been so sharp, and
that some of the more desperate fighters were already
used up. One, in particular, lay flat upon his back
and had been left behind, as the police charged over
him and the crowd scattered before them.
It seemed to Phil as if he could not help it, and
he darted forward to see what was the matter with
that man.
There he lay, as Phil knelt beside him, and he
seemed insensible. There was a mark on his fore
head as if he liad been hit with a club.
“That isn’t the worst of it,” exclaimed Phil

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PHILIP’S ADVENTURE. ' 137
“ Where’s all this blood coming from ? I see ! It’s
his right arm.”
The man was dressed in what seemed a sort of
man-o’-war uniform, as if he were a sailor from some
European cruiser then in the liarbor. His arm lay
stretched out upon the flag stones, and it was bleed
ing rapidly.
“ I know,” shouted Phil, almost breathless with
excitement. “It’s got to be done right away!
Quick ! ”
Out came his pocket knife, and he ripped up
the sleeve of the sailor’s blue flannel shirt.
“ Get out o’ the way, boy,” growled a gruff voice
behind. “ I want to bandage that cut.”
“No, you don’t,” shouted Phil. “’Tisn’t a cut.
It’s a bullet did that. There’s an artery touched.
See it spurt! I must tie it above the hole.”
Pie was moving with wonderful quickness, for
already he had his handkerchief around that hairy,
muscular arm, two inches above the wound, and was
tying it with all his might.
It was well that he was so strong.
“ Get out o’ the way,” said the voice again. : “ Let
me come. I’ll put on a bandage. We must stop
the bleeding.”

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138 CHIUS, TIIE MODEL MAKER.
“ Get out o’ the way yourself,” broke in another
voice. “The boy is right. Keep your hands off.
Tiglit, Phil! draw it tight.”
“ Wish I had a stick,” said Phil; but he had
indeed drawn tightly, and now, as the wounded
arm lay out upon the stone, he was pressing down
hard with his thumb on a line with the bullet
hole.
“You’re as good as a tourniquet,” began Mr.
Gericliten, but at that moment a policeman arrived,
bent forward a moment, and then said, in a tone of
authority :
“"We must take him to the hospital. Get up,
boy! ”
“ No, he mustn’t get up,” said Mr. Gericliten. “ I’ve
seen wounds enough. If he takes his thumb away
the man will bleed to death. Glad lie’s so strong.
Dr. Talcott? Good! You’re just in time. Tell’em
Phil mustn’t stir ! ”
“Indeed he must not. Officer, send for an ambu
lance ! ” responded the sharp, imperative tones of
the doctor. “ I’ve just been to another surgical case.
Glad I got here. Hold hard, boy! I’ll rig a
tourniquet.”
So he did, with Phil’s handkerchief, a pebble, and

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PHILIP’S ADVENTURE. 139
a stick to twist with, and tlie bleeding was stopped,
but tlie doctor said :
“ Mr. Gericliten, if your boy had not set at work
at once, I’d probably have been too late. It’s well
enough now, for the bone wasn’t touched.”
“Go along, Philip,” said Mr. Gerichten. “You
are fit to be a soldier ! Brave boy! ”
Philip could not understand that he had shown
any courage in doing what seemed to him so very
simple and matter of course a thing, but he replied
to Mr. Gerichten:
“ I’m glad I knew how. Soon’s I saw it bleed,
I knew ’twasn’t a vein, ’twas an artery.”
Mr. Gerichten nodded, for he was an old soldier
and had probably learned on battlefields the differ
ence that there is between the two kinds of hurts.
Dr. Talcott had hardly looked at either of them, his
eyes not turning away from his patient, but they
heard him grumble:
“Wonder he knew so much! Extraordinary!
There’s more ignorance! Wish there was some way
of teaching people ! ”
Mr. Gerichten stalked away, for he had some place
to go to. Philip had not any in particular, but
he too was willing to get out of the dense and jab-

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140 CHIUS, TIIE MODEL MAKER,
bering throng which had gathered. More policemen
had arrived in hot haste, and they had made a num
ber of arrests, but it required at least three of them
to keep Dr. Talcott and the wounded sailor from
being actually trampled on. Philip heard one of
them say:
“ It’s the worst fight there’s been ’round here for
more’n a month. "Wonder none of ’em were killed.”
“ Some of ’em are pretty well clubbed,” replied
another policeman, “and half a dozen of ’em are
knife-sliced.”
It all made Philip think a little, as he walked
away. For some reason or other his blues were all
gone and he stepped off cheerfully. It could not y
have been just because he had seen for the first time
in his life a desperate fight. The fact that these
fellows had been hurt had not given him better
spirits. He did not at all understand the matter,
but part of it could have been explained for him.
He had really taken a long step upward. He was
an older boy, and there was more of him. He had
been improved not only by finding out that he
knew something, but, as old Mr. Gerichten had said,
by being “ brave ” enough to step right forward and
do the best he knew how.

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CHAPTER IX,
PHIL AND HIS PRIZE.
fpf’PrljHE next summer morning was a very fine
gjSj one and it readied tlie city early. Wlien
PrjjSil it looked into the garret cave it found
Chris sound asleep among his cushions, with his
drawings scattered around him. It was only an
hour later, however, that he was awakened by an
uproar of musical sounds in the room below and
knew that his enthusiastic mother was already at
her piano. She was there and she was happy, but
the first movement made by Chris was to put his
right hand to his side and remark:
“ There it is. It’s about as usual. "Well, I must
get up and go to work. I declare it’s pretty hard
this morning! It pulls.”
No doubt something was hurting him, but then
he was used to it and did not intend to let it inter
fere with him too much. He even got so far the
mastery of it that he began to whistle while he was

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142 CIIEXS, THE MODEL MAKER,
winding up Lis great music box with a crank.
Bright as a lark was the morning, and it seemed to
brighten everybody, more or less. Old Mr. Gerichten
had not waked up to another battle anniversary, and
he was exceedingly polite to Sara Vladovna when she
bowed and said “ Good-morning,” with her arms
crossed before her. Lucille’s face was radiant while
she watered her plants and exchanged merry scold
ings with her canary, and the violin, leaning in a
corner, looked as if all it needed was legs to step
out in her direction.
As for Philip, there was evidently something the
matter with him. He was in the shop before Mr.
Gerichten came down, and went about his work as
usual. lie did not say anything to the “ boys ” con
cerning the fight, but he knew there was an account
of it in all the newspapers and that some of them, at
least, had spoken of him as “a young medical
student.” Phil was silent, but if ever a boy’s face
could speak without speaking his face told for him
that he was expecting something. Chris was not in
the shop and Philip probably knew the reason why;
but it was not a great while before a boy leaned
down at the edge of the sidewalk and shouted at
his loudest:

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PHIL AND HIS PRIZE.
143
“ Phi-i'l! Hu]lo ! Mr. Huyler says to tell you
it’s come and lie wants you.”
Philip almost jumped. He dropped the mahogany
hull of a newly invented iron steamship into the
jaws of a half finished washing machine and went
right out, with his leather apron on. Even Mr.
Gerichten exhibited more than ordinary interest in
the announced arrival, and at once walked slowly
out; but he did not bow to anybody on the side
walk. The boy was gone.
There was a dray in front of Mrs. Huyler’s place,
and on it lay a wooden case that might almost have
been declared to be a coffin. There were the usual
handles on the sides for lifting, but there were also
similar handles at the ends, and so it was some
thing else.
“Now I’ll get some min to h’ist it in,” said the
drayman.
“ No, you needn’t,” said Phil, as he eagerly in
spected the treasure on the dray. “ Our stairs are
too narrow for more’n two to work. You take one
end of it and I’ll take the other.”
“That won’t do. It’s impossible. You might let
it fall. Why, it weighs ”
“Dr. Talcott,” interrupted Chris himself, confi-

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144
CHRIS, TIIE MODEL MAKEli.
dently, for tlie doctor was evidently anxious, “ don’t
you mind what it weighs. He can do it.”
“Mere boy,” muttered the doctor, but even Mr.
Gerichten assured him:
“ Wait and see. I think he can.”
The rest of them knew that Dr. Talcott was there,
but Philip had hardly looked at him. He had
noticed, however, that the drayman was large and
muscular and seemed properly made to be a good
lifter. He was now steadily pulling the case along
and one end of it rested on the sidewalk.
“I declare!’’.exclaimed Dr. Talcott in a moment
more. “"What wouldn’t I give for strength like
that! I could set a leg ”
He paused there, for he was taking close note of
the manner in which Philip and the drayman were
handling the case. If the latter had all the bones and
muscles called for by his end of the lift, his face and
his breathing witnessed, nevertheless, to the fact
that he was exerting himself a little. If Philip, at
the other end, were also putting out his strength, he
gave no sign of it. Up came the case, or whatever
it might be, and he led the way with it into the
house as if it really made him feel first-rate to cany
it. Perhaps among the things he had not yet learned

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PIIIL AND IIIS PRIZE.
145
like other people, or had forgotten after learning it,
had been the ordiuary rules of the attraction of
gravitation.
Mrs. Iluyler was in her drying-room finishing some
laces, and she came to the head of the stairs, flat-iron
in hand, to watch from above, as Chris and the
doctor and Sir. Gericliten were watching from below.
Up came the two bearers, a stair at a time, steadily,
until that floor was readied, and then Chris and tlie
doctor went ahead and up into the garret to stand
over tlie open hatch, while Mr. Gericliten continued
to follow below, as if he meant to be ready to catch
the whole concern in case Philip aud the drayman
should suddenly give out or let go.
They did not do either, aud tlie njiper stairs were
successfully climbed; but the moment his job was
done the drayman straightened himself and mopped
his face, exclaiming:
“It's the warrum day, intirely. The bye’s a fine
lvyo. Ye'll be a sthrong man, me b’ye, but ye
mustn’t overlift youi-self till ye get your size. It's
not many byes could do it.”
“ Humph ! ’’ grumbled tlie doctor. 1 was sure he
couldn't, but lie did. I remember him. now. I'll
see him again;" aud then he said to Chris: “I must

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146 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER,
go to see a patient right away, or I’d stay and see
you open it. I’ll come back as soon as I can.< Of
course you will exercise the greatest care.” That
was all, and lie was oil, for his gig was waiting in
the street.
“We will,” said Chris, and Phil was already at
work with a screwdriver. The doctor had hardly
reached his gig before the lid of that case was off.
Then a lot of packing stuff was removed as ten
derly as if it had been the bandages over a bad
burn.
Under them lay something at which Philip
stared down for a moment with unmistakable
delight. lie then stooped and put his arms care
fully around it and lifted with all his might.
“ Up it comes ! ” he said. “ There! It can sit
up in the box ”
“ I thocht it! ” exclaimed the drayman from the
head of the stairs, where he had lingered until he
could see the end of Phil’s lift. “That’s what it is.
It’s wan o’ tliim monkeykins that pales off in slices.
It’s all the insides of a mon to tache docthors wid,
and it’s little they know afther all.”
That was it precisely, but a great deal of the
weight which had troubled them had belonged to

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rniL and iiis riiizE. 147
the strongly made box and tlie packing. There
was enough left to test the muscles of Philip, but
in a minute or so more one of tlio most perfect
manikins in all the world occupied the throne chair
which Mr. Stimson had occupied the previous even
ing between the crusader and the skeleton.
Mr. Geriehten had been watching or overseeing,
but he had not actually put in any labor. ITe now
drew a long breath of relief and remarked:
“ I'm glad it's safe. I must go back to the shop
now, but I’m afraid that is going to be a pretty
long job. It must be done as quickly as possible,
lie was gone, and Chris and Phil were left alone
with the garret cave and its very remarkable con
tents. Neither of them seemed to be in any hurry
about the last job arrived, but rather disposed to
study it. or at least all they could see of it. Even
the outside showed exceedingly delicate workman
ship. and Phil looked it all over.
“Is he much damaged ?" he asked, as if the mani
kin were a human being.
“Dr. Taleott says these outside bruise? are
nothing.” said Chris, “lie is injured internally.
Some of him won't take to pieces, and some of the

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148 CIIIUS, THE MODEL MAKER.
pieces can’t be made to fit into their places. They
are all there, but they are out of shape.”
The expression upon Phil’s face was one of strong
sympathy, as if he felt for tlie hurts and sufferings
of that marvellous manikin.
Just then the piano began to sound in the room
below, and Chris remarked:
“ That isn’t mother, it’s Lucille. How well she
is doing! She is going to be thorough, too. Now,
Phil, we must find out all we can. Let’s open
him.”
Carefully, tenderly, leaning on his cratch, and
studying his work intensely as he went on, Chris
began to take off one of the sections of the artificial
humanity lie was expected to repair.
“’Tisn’t in his head,” he said hopefully. “They
think his brains are all right. But there’s some
thing gone wrong in his body. We’ll hunt in him
till we find out what it is. I can set him up !”
The bony neighbor at the patient’s right hand
had been disturbed by some of the movements of
those two manikin surgeons, and he now leaned over
as if his interest in the matter were increasing. So
did tlie man in armor, his lielmeted liead turning
slowly on its pivot. Philip was also leaning for-

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PHIL AND niS PRIZE,
149
ward, with an intensity in his eyes that made him
look like another fellow.
The face of the manikin himself did not express
anything in particular, unless it may have been that
it indicated proper patience and a readiness to "bear
whatever they might do.
Muscles, bones, brains, veins, arteries, nerves, how
wonderfully they had been discovered, located,
imitated, by the scientific artists who had con
structed that body!
“ Tongue, ears, eyes,” said Philip. “ I guess they’re
right about his head. He can think as well as he
ever could.”
“ Guess he can,” replied Chris. “ I know some
men that can’t do a great deal better than he can.
All they think isn’t worth a row of beans.”
That investigation was a slow, cautious, absorbing
process, but the two workmen who were making it
were evidently something more than mere mechanics.
That is, if any man can really be a good mechanic
without at the same time being something more.
An hour went by and part of another. Piece after
piece was removed, and deeper and deeper they
went into the strange mystery of how a man is
made.

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150
CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
“ We’ve got so far,” remarked Chris, “ and I
guess the worst of his difficulties is further in him.”
They had been too much engrossed in their work
to have their ears open wide. Even a cessation of
the piano music had escaped their notice, and so had
almost noiseless footsteps on the stairs. All phy
sicians step carefully when they are entering a sick
room, but now the voice of Dr. Talcott, behind them,
suddenly exclaimed:
“ Why, Huyler, your young friend has given the
right name to almost every piece he has touched!
There wasn’t a graduate in our last three classes—”
Then he paused and Chris replied:
“ Dr. Talcott, Philip’s been studying for ever and
ever so long.”
“And I never could remember any of it,” said
Phil regretfully. “ There ! I was thinking about
that. His heart got knocked out of place,” and he
added two or three long book-words as he pointed
at some of tie consequences of the manikin’s un
lucky downfall.
“Hurrah!” exclaimed Dr. Talcott; “I didn’t sup
pose there were two such mechanics in the country.
All my anxiety about him is gone.”
“He’ll get well, doctor,” said Chris confidently,

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PHIL AND HIS PRIZE.
151
“but it’ll take time to mend him. That central
pinion is broken short off. If he had been one of
our kind of men, he’d have died.”
“Yes, it would have killed him instantly,” laughed
the doctor, but he turned and said to Philip:
“You have been studying anatomy? How did
that happen?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Phil. “Seems to me
I never eared for anything else. Well, no, that isn’t
so. I always wanted to find out what ‘was inside
of anything, no matter what it was. The worst of
it is that I never could remember what I learned.”
“ Of course you couldn’t,” said the doctor. “ I
never could, myself.”
“ Why, yes,” said Phil, “ you have to know it all,
and teach it, too.”
“ That’s it,” replied the doctor. “ I don’t know
anything about surgery except when I’m using it.
When I’m teaching, or when I have a practical case,
like this. You never will Look here, you’re
the boy that put on that tourniquet! ’Pon my
soul, I thought I’d seen you somewhere! You
remember it, then ? ”
“Well,” said Phil, “he was hurt and I had to.
He’d have died if I hadn’t.”

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152
CHRIS; THE MODEL MAKER.
“ Of course lie would,” said the doctor. “ I’d have
a talk with you, but I must go now. I didn’t
expect to get here to-day anyhow. Work away,
Huyler.”
“ He’s a brother of mine,” said Chris, with more
than a little pride in the way he said it, but the
doctor was off.
He was all the way down the stairs before either
of them knew that he had not come up alone, or
rather, that anyone had followed him. They were
standing and looking at each other and then at the
manikin, when Lucille exclaimed :
“0 Philip, I’m so glad! You did remember,
didn’t you? I was just wondering when I heard
you! ”
She spoke enthusiastically and Philip looked very
red and very * grateful, but he did not make any
reply. Chris had to say something for him, while he
himself turned again to the manikin as if it mag
netized him. Lucille watched him for a moment,
and her next remark was made with a kind of
shudder.
“ I don’t care,” she said, “ it’s awful! If that’s
the way we are made, I don’t want to know any
more about it.”

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PHIL AND IIIS PRIZE. 153
Slie whirled away, and hurried down to her
piano as if it were a place of refuge. A few
minutes later one of Mrs. Huyler’s helpers said to
the other:
“ Luk up there! All thim childher is cornin’
hack. The sthrate ’11 be full of thim, as long as
the pianny’s goin’.”
“We’ll get used till it,” said her friend at the
further washtub. “Hand me over the soap. That’s
it, and it wouldn’t do wan of thim any harm,
ayther.”
That might be so, but the Laurens Street children
were justified in gathering before the open windows
of the Iiuyler laundiy. The music which came out
was decidedly better than that of any hand organ
they were accustomed to, for Lucille was proving
that she was something more than a mere beginner.
Still, she was a little surprised at it herself.
“ I guess I’m like Phil,” she said. “ I remember
more than I thought I could. I do believe I could
learn to play anything. But isn’t it wonderful that
Phil should remember all those things after he had
forgotten them ? ”
However that might be, her piano practice for
bade her thinking any more about it. As for Chris

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154 OilRIS, THE MODEL MAKER,
and Phil, they went on witli their dissecting work
uutil, when the noon whistles blew, the faculty of
the surgical college, if they had been there, might
well have felt some anxiety as to whether a man or
a manikin, so completely pulled apart and scattered,
could ever again become collected and be tlie man
he was before.
“He’s pretty sick,” said Chris, and just then the
skeleton seemed to nod, as if he agreed, but had
nothing more to say.
“I wouldn’t have missed it for anything,” said
Philip, as they prepared to go downstairs. “ ’Tisn’t
like reading, nor like pictures. I don’t seem to
forget it. But then, I don’t see how it’s ever going
to do me any good. I’m going to know all there is
in that thing, anyhow ! ”
Chris did not make an}’ direct reply. All he said
“ Tell you what, Phil, there’s more in any fellow
than people outside of him know of. All you’ve
got to do is to hunt for it and find it,”
“"What’s the good of it if you do?” thought
Philip, but he did not speak it out, and they went
down, fastening the hatch carefully behind them, lest
any careless person should get into the garret and

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PHIL AND HIS PRIZE.
155
disturb tlieir patient while he was so very much out
of order.
Lucille had gone home, but Mrs. Huyler was in
very high spirits about her.
“Oh,” she exclaimed, “you ought to have heard
her play ! It’s a splendid piano ! ”
So it was, if it could give anybody so very much
happiness, and that may have been the reason why
Chris patted it affectionately as he went by it to
the dinner table.

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CHAPTER X.
LUCILLES NEW SCHOOL.
|e™~®|ORK in the Gerichten shop appeared to
Mm begin again as usual at one o’clock, but
lb&3ai there was a difference. It was the same
place, to be sure, and everything in it looked very
nearly the same, but then the great world itself is
never the same from one hour to another. Neither
are the people in it, whatever they may thinli, and
what is true of everybody in this respect is
especially true of young people, who are just begin
ning to find out what is in the world and what is in
Chris was not there at all, but Philip was. At
least he seemed to be there with the other workmen
and all the models and Mr. Gerichten, but it' would
have been almost correct to have said that a great
deal of him was up in the garret cave, with his
crippled brother and the sick manikin.
The old model maker had a great deal on his mind
that day, but it was not long before he was compelled

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LUCILLE’S NEW SCHOOL. 157
to look in a puzzled way at Philip. He had almost
an impression at first that he had employed a new
boy, and he at last declared to himself :
“Something’s the matter with him. He never
before looked or acted just as he is doing this after
noon. Why ! He has answered four or five cus
tomers without calling me or waiting until I came !
It was my business, not his, to tell them that Mr.
Huyler was out and they would have to call again.”
In each case, nevertheless, it was Mr, Gerichten
who had done all the bowing required, and he had
not failed to hear each man say, in turn:
“All light, Mr. Huyler’s the man I want to see.
You can tell him I called. I will come again.”
Clink, clink, clink, rat-tat-tap-rap, went Phil’s
hammer the rest of the time upon some finer riveting
work than was usually entrusted to him. It was a
testimony that he was becoming more skilful in the
use of tools. He knew that it belonged to a machine
which was to deal with electiicity in some way, he
did not know exactly how. He did not care, for he
felt that his hammer was not the only thing at work.
It was all the while think, think, think, and every
now and then it was hope, hope, hope, very vaguely,
and wake, wake, wake up, look up, and part of the

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158 CIIRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
thought which he did not speak took shape again
and again and told him :
“ I can take that manikin apart and I can put it
together again, with Chris to do the mending. Those
plates in the book and what I read about them did
teach me, after all. I’m not so stupid as I thought I
was. I can remember, it all comes back when it’s
Avanted. It’s a kind of miracle.”
Sara Vladovna finished her work and went away
to her own home, leaving Lucille all alone in a set
of rooms of which she had more than once said to
herself that they were a kind of jail. She was not
only all alone but she was lonely. She wished, and
she even said so, that she had a sister or a girl friend
for company. She hardly knew how it was that she
had so few girl acquaintances, but her father could
have told her. He had.himself been in part respon
sible for a feeling she had about most of the girls in
that neighborhood. The remainder was due to the
fact that they did not seem to care for the same
things that she did. Most of them did not care
enough about anything, and it was really strange
to Lucille that they should be so contented, as if
they never hoped or wished to get out of Laurens
Street, or into any other kind of life.

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LUCILLE’S NEW SCHOOL. 159
Of course she thought of the manikin, and she
laughed over Dr. Talcott’s surprise at Philip’s dic
tionary words.
“ How strange it is,” she said to herself, “ that Philip
should like such studies! I wouldn’t be a doctor
for the world, but I’d like to play everything. I
mean to try the organ, if I can get a chance. Piano
music isn’t anything—I’m glad she got it, though.”
She had hardly touched the violin that day. The
best part of her time had been given persistently to
Mrs. Iluyler’s piano.
Now that she was at home again, however, and
all alone, still another idea had come. She did not
go to her own room except to take a look at the
plants and to have a little visit with the canary.
Then she came down to the parlor floor and sat by
the table, putting down upon it something that
she had brought from her father’s room. She had
rummaged there among a pile of his books, and she
had found one which was not like most of the rest.
It was not by any means a small book and, when
she opened it and began to turn the leaves, it could
be seen that it contained many pictures and that it
was printed in the German type.
“ He Avould never let me read novels,” she said,

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160 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
“but lie told me I might read anything in his
room. This is a kind of novel, I know it is. I’m
so glad I can read German. I do so wish I could
have an education. Oh, dear! We shall always be
too poor for that, I suppose. I’m glad I went to
the grammar school.”
It was a great deal to have gone through one of
the public schools of the city. It was more than
she seemed to think; but she was right concerning
the queer old volume she had found. It was
indeed what is called a novel, and there are a
great many kinds of novels. This was “ a tale of
olden story, of love and grief and glory.” It was a
tale of a brave young hero and a heroic girl, and of
noble men and women. It told of kings and queens
and warriors ; of castles and camps and battlefields;
of the old borderland of eastern Europe and the
wars between the Christians and the Turks. There
were pictures of all sorts, for some of them were
portraits, and Lucille knew that she had a right to
think and to wonder if some of the mailed horse
men who were contending with the turbaned hosts,
whose dark faces and sharp scimitars swarmed
around them, had been her father's ancestors or her
mother’s.

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LUCILLE’S NEW SCHOOL. 161
“ He says all the men of our race were soldiers,”
she murmured, “and he was one once, but he can’t
ever be again.”
Page after page was turned over, and then she
went back to the beginning. “I’ll read about it
anyhow,” she said. “Father has seen kings and
queens. I’d like to see them. He has been all
over Europe, but it seems to me I’ve never been
out of Laurens Street. Well, yes, I’ve seen a great
deal of New York, but it hasn’t any castles, nor
mountain passes, nor woods. I’ll go and see our
regiments, though, next time they are marching. I
never cared to look at them, but I do now.”
Then she said no more, for her eyes and her mind
began to be busy with the story and she forgot
everything else for—well, she could not tell how
long it was until the book was shut up suddenly and
she sprang to her feet, exclaiming:
“ Weren’t they splendid! Oh, it was terrible!
And the man that led the charge was named Von
Grerichten! ” It seemed as if she had read all that
she could at one reading; but she need not have
been too proud about the name of the hero. There
is hardly any boy or girl anywhere, if he or she
could read away back and know what was done a

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102 CIIRIS, THE MODEL MAKER,
long time before this day we are living in, who
would not find some ancestor coming out as a brave
soldier in some way or other.
All that part of it was of small enough conse
quence, but the old novel had been doing for
Lucille, in another way, some such good as Phil’s
adventure with the wounded sailor in the evening,
and then his next adventure with the wounded man
ikin in the morning, had done for him.
One boy and one girl had been almost lifted out
of Laurens Street, although Philip was back in the
shop, hammering his rivets, and Lucille was up in
her room again, fiddling vigorously while the canary
sang at her.
If having more work on hand and offering than
he could do, or could get anybody to do for him,
meant business prosperity, Mr. Gerichten was a pros
perous man that afternoon. Perhaps he would have
felt better over it if Chris had been in the shop to aid
him in making explanations. As it was, he seemed
to become a little annoyed, after a while, and he even
bowed sharply, quickly, to one persistent inventor
who would not go away without delivering a kind
of oration upon the merits of his invention and the
losses the world would suffer if his model should be

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LUCILLE’S NEW SCHOOL. 163
any longer delayed in tlae making. Mr. Gericliten
seemed to Lave no sympathy ■whatever for the suffer
ing world, nor for its intended benefactor, but bowed
him severely out of tLe sLop. Of course, so dignified
a man Lad not permitted Limself to lose his temper,
but his white mustaches covered his mouth more
tightly than usual when he turned and strode back
through the shop and went upstairs. In spite of
the size of the table in the middle, there was room
enough on one side of it for him to walk up and
down with his hands behind him. It looked as if
he had escaped from the shop in order to do that
walking, for it was all the work he took up, unless
he was also thinking about something. It would
have been just the same, however, if he had been
trying not to think, for that is often pretty hard
work to do.
Suddenly he paused in his promenade, for some
thing on the table had caught his eye and halted
him.
Lucille Lad neglected putting away Ler book and
tLere it lay, open wide at one of tLe battlefield illus
trations. It was not altogetLer a field of battle,
either, for it was a picture of an old-time fortress, iu
the wall of which a wide breach had been made,

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104 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
and in the breach stood a tall man in complete
armor, fighting to the last against a rush of Saracen
swordsmen. So far as could be seen, he seemed to
be doing very well, for the ground was covered with
badly damaged foes and his two-handed sword was
up for another swing at the turbaned warrior in
front of him.
“Yon G-erichten ! ” exclaimed the old man. “ He
was there! I am here. I too have been a soldier!
How is this thing here ? Humph ! Lucille ? She
has been reading. Now that is well! I am glad of
it. She may read. She is like her mother. Hullo ?
What is that ? Is it possible ? ”
In every word he uttered, however correctly, there
lingered the peculiar accent which told that English
was not his native tongue, just as all his manner
told of other associations than those of his tinkering
and model-making shop. Just now he was listening
intently to the sounds that were coming down from
the upper story. They were somewhat mixed, but
it was not at all difficult to tell which was fiddle and
which was canary.
“ That is wonderful! ” he exclaimed. “ I did not
know she had a violin. I must not allow her to do
that! No ? Why not % She plays well. She has

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LUCILLE’S NEW SCHOOL. 165
genius. I will say nothing at all! Let her go on !
But she shall never work. It shall not be. I can
work a long time yet. Yes, Lucille may read and
she may play the violin and the piano, but I cannot
give her an education.”
It seemed to hurt him, but there was a strong
expression of pride in his face as he listened, minute
after minute, to his daughter’s performance. Of
course it was decidedly defective, but he seemed to
find in it enough to keep him standing still, with
one hand on the open book and the other extended
a little, as if to prevent anybody from speaking or
interrupting him while the concert was going on.
He was a brave looking old man at any time, but
it might have done him good if he could have seen,
just then, the courageous expression upon the flushed
face of Lucille.
“ There ! ” she exclaimed, as she ceased to ply the
bow. “ I did get it! I can learn ! I will learn !
I’m going to learn everything I can. I’ll give a
concert of my own, some day, just like that young
lady that I read of in the papers. She was only
three years older than I am. I’ll be able to earn
my own living now, you see if I don’t! ”
That was the very thing her father had deter-

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166 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
mined she should never do, but then his ideas and
hers had not been learned in the same country.
Of what use was it for him to have such a hatred
for kings and despotisms and aristocracies, and
not to understand the first principles of freedom ?
Lucille had begun, at least, to learn them, for all
that we call-our great republic, our America, our
free country, is built and must stand on this one
foundation, that labor is honorable, that eveiy man
and woman should learn to work and should not be
ashamed of it. Then it follows that all should be
free to work.
When Lucille paused so did the canary, and old
Mr. Gerichten quietly turned away and went down
stairs with a smile on his face, but he left the book
lying open upon the table. He must have been
feeling pretty well, for he almost bowed to Philip
on entering the shop when he ordered him to go
back and get another pail of charcoal. Philip went
for the coal and he did it in an exceedingly cheerful
way, as if it were the very thing he liked best or
had been just about going to do.

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CHAPTER XI.
PHILIP LOCKED UP.
UPPER was just over at Mrs. Iluyler’s that
evening, when Philip asked:
“I say, Chris, don’t you want me up
stairs? I’ll come.”
“ No,” chirruped Chris, in evidently good spirits.
“Haven’t anything for you to do yet. You’d better
get out of doors.”
“Why, Phil,” said his mother,, “you’ve been in
the shop all day. Chris can’t go out, but you ought
to. It won’t do for a boy like you to be shut up all
the while.”
Phil agreed to that, and it was altogether the cus
tomary thing for Chris to prefer to be alone with his
plans and drawings, or with any of his more difficult
work. He never wanted even Philip in the garret un
less there might be lifting or moving to be done. He
was a pretty positive little fellow, too, and there was
no disputing him, although Philip would have been
glad to have had at least one more chance at the
12 107

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168 CHRIS, TIIE MODEL MAKER.
manikin. As it was, he had to content himself with
fixing up just a little, under the direction of his
mother, and going out into the open air. It was a
kind of getting out of jail, but when he stood on
the stoop and looked this way and that, it seemed to
him as if all he could, see were part of the shop.
He was not really out so long as he was anywhere in
Laurens Street.
The idea may have been floating in the air, for
Mr. Gerichten himself caught it before Sara Vladov-
11 a had finished her work with the dishes. He was
in his own room and Lucille was away back among
her plants when she distinctly heard him say:
“ She is shut up too much ! She can hardly get
out of doors. She is like a girl in prison. What
shall I do with my Lucille ? I am not a jailer! ”
She had never before heard him say as much as
that. She had even had an idea that he did not
think much about her, except to tell her what
things he would never let her do. What he was
now saying, however, made her cheeks tingle and
her heart flutter, for she had just been thinking:
“ I’m in a kind of cage. IIow shall I ever get
out ? I wish I could fly! ”
She had no wings and she did not believe her

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PHILIP LOCKED UP.
father could give lier any. He was too poor to buy
wings of any kind. Slie knew that, but it was an
exceedingly pleasant thing to know that the same
thought was in his mind and her own. All the more •
contentedly could she turn to her book—for she
had brought it with her—and forget everything else
in reading the story of such places and such men
and women as she had never seen or known. There
was one woman among them, a countess with a very
long Polish name, who had been a German girl
before she was married, and Lucille found herself
somehow associating that woman—she was so very
lovely and noble and splendid—with all the idea she
had ever had of her own mother, whom she could
hardly remember at all.
She did not know how strongly she was wishing,
and had always wished for women friends, girl
friends; for all sorts of women older than herself
and as many as might be of her own age but with
notions like her own. She did not say how com
pletely she had failed to find what she wanted
among her neighbors. They might be very good,
and some of them were very intelligent, and some
families were making a great deal of money, but
Lucille had almost a grudge against them because

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170 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
she could not find among them the kind of friend
she was longing for.
That was not at all the trouble with Phil Huyler.
Every boy gets along well enough with the fellows
he is used to. He had friends enough, old and
young, but there did not seem to be anything that
he could do with them. Probably most of his boy
acquaintances were as badly off as he was, for there
were knots of them on every street corner, and Phil
knew that many of them had not had anything par
ticular to do all day long.
“Loafing must be awful hard work,” he said.
“ They don’t earn anything either. Don’t learn any
trade. That’s rough. They won’t know what to
do with themselves.”
He didn’t just then, and so, for the time being, he
was a kind of summer evening loafer. He did not
exactly look like one, although he was in his every
day working clothes, brushed up, but then every
thing about him plainly told what kind of boy he
was and that he probably belonged in that part
of the city. No such young fellow had wandered
down there from the streets where the house fronts
are made of brownstone or marble, with plate-glass
windows, and where immense four story and base-

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PHILIP LOCKED UP.
171
ment buildings are given up to be occupied by less
than half a dozen very happy people and the other
half dozen or so that are hired to serve them. That
is, if the sizes of the houses people live in have
really anything to do -with their happiness.
Far away from Philip and his evening stroll, but
not by any means disconnected from things in the
Grerichten shop, was a man concerning whom Philip
had been thinking more than once that day, for he
knew that Chris was at work upon the Phantom
Borer, and that his ingenious brother had also
thoughts and ideas of his own concerning what
could be done with the lightning when put into
harness.
In a pleasant parlor of a house on a pleasant
street in the city of Washington, the capital of the
Republic, sat Mr. Selden Stimson, with an air of
being entirely at home in such a place as that. He
did not even feel compelled to be condescending to
a man with whom he was talking. This man was
shorter and thinner, but he was every ounce as dig
nified as was Mr. Stimson himself. He, too, seemed
to have a faculty for seeing the humorous side of
things, and it showed itself now and then while he
listened, with apparent interest, to the good things

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172 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER,
that were to be said on behalf of the Phantom
Borer. He appeared to be particularly taken with
the idea of annexing Governor’s Island, Cuba, and
Ireland to the city of New York.
“ I think, Mr. Senator,” said the inventor at last,
“ that I shall soon be able to show you a working
model. It is now in process of construction by the
most remarkable mechanical genius in New York.”
“ I’d really like to see it,” said the Senator gravely
and thoughtfully. “ I thought nothing could beat
the bores we already have in Washington. I like
the idea. Putting mole holes everywhere, for us
human moles to run about in. Such a convenience,
they would be. Why, I know loads of people who
ought never to show their noses above ground.”
Mr. Stimson felt that it was his duty to join
heartily in the Senator’s bit of laughter, but he
colored a little, as he went on to say something
about the legislation to be obtained from Congress,
before any holes could be bored under New York
harbor.
“ I’m with you! ” exclaimed the Senator. “Fetch
on your big auger. But you’ll never get the Army
men to give up their hold on Governor’s Island.
They’ve had it too long. Ever since it was cleared

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PHILIP LOCKED UP.
173
of Indians. They and their forts couldn’t liold it an
hour, though, if a British iron-clad got within shoot
ing distance of it. It would be twice as well
defended by a lot of warehouses, owned by British
merchants, as the big new buildings are all over the
lower part of the city. They’ll never be cannonaded,
unless they should be first sold to Yankees.”
Mr. Stimson succeeded in looking more humorous
than ever, but he said he believed he could convince
the Army people. Then they talked other kinds
of politics for a while, and Mr. Stimson walked out
of the house at the end of his visit remarking to
himself:
“ I’m getting along finely. That makes half a
dozen Senators I’ve gained over, besides Congress
men. Now I must see what I can do with the
President and Cabinet. Stub will have to hurry up
his model. I wonder if he is beginning to see his
way through that difficulty. I can’t say that I do,
but lie is a veiy ingenious fellow.”
Chris was not, at that moment, trying to make Mr.
Stimson’s great invention for him. He was not
thinking of boring holes that were to change the
face of the ivorld by burrowing out another world
under it. He was leaning on his crutch and study*

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174
CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
ing a curious piece of red and white art work that
lie liad uncovered, away inside of the manikin. It
interested him deeply and lie seemed to be making
a kind of comparison.
“It belongs right there,” he said, j>ressing hig
hand upon his own side. “ And that belongs right
there, near it. No—no—other people can find their
hearts by the beating, but I can’t. Where is my
heart? I must have one.”
He must, indeed, for Lucille, in her own room,
had closed her book for a moment and was look
ing at her violin at the place where he had
mended it.
“Chris is the kindest hearted!” she said. “He
never thinks of himself. He is all the while doing
something for others. If it hadn’t been for him I’d
never have had a violin. How can anybody hurt
his feelings! ”
Even Dr. Talcott seemed to be replying to a
question put to him by one of liis professional
friends in a room of the surgical institution when
he said :
“Heart? Yes, I quite agree with you. I must
speak to his friends about it. The effects you men
tion are sometimes apt to develop.rapidly. But I

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PHILIP LOCKED UP. 175
'believe a great deal can be done for him. Only
think of how much he has done for himself and so
little to do it with.”
“ Nothing but brains,” said his friend.
“Well, I don’t know,” said Dr. Talcott. “I
think you will have to add courage, patience—more
real grit and manhood than most of the boys I
know are showing. He is a most extraordinary
case of success under difficulties.”
Such a man as the doctor, then, considered that
Chris had won a great success in making of himself
so good a mechanic without even being able to find
out whereabout inside of him his own heart might
be stowed away.
There are many kinds of success, and Philip was
not making any of them that evening. He had not
even succeeded in finding anything to amuse him
self with, and so he. had drifted around until he
found that he was getting tired and that all his
good spirits had beeu walked out of him. If any
body had asked him what street he was now on; he
would probably have had to look at the sign on the
next corner street lamp, for he was looking at the
sidewalk more than anything else. If he did not
know where he was, however, somebody else did,

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176 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
and lie suddenly felt a strong Land griping his
shoulder and heard:
“Well, if I haven’t got him! You’re the very
chap I was after. We’ve been hunting you all
day.”
Phil could not have turned anything but his
head, so firm was the grasp that held him; but his
neck was free, and he could get his eyes around far
enough to see that he had been seized by a brawny
policeman.
He knew him, too, for he had admired that “ cop ”
the evening before. He had seen how bravely and
skilfully he could ply a locust club while he was
charging a mob of riotous, half drunken men.
Now, however, he was only too sure that it was no
use to try to get away from such a guardian of the
peace, and all he could think of was:
“Hullo ! What do you want of me ? ”
“You’re wanted for a witness,” replied the police
man, not at all roughly. “ You saw the fight. You
did first-rate, too, but you ought not to have run
away. Now we’ll see that you’re on hand.”
“ I did not see much of it,” began Phil, and then
he was forced to add : “Well, yes; I did see some
, of it. But I can be found whenever they want me.”

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PHILIP LOCKED UP.
177
He was going on to give liis name and residence,
in tlie full belief tliat no more could be asked of
him, but lie knew little of tlie stem requirements of
the New York courts of law, for his captor led him
right along, while he was talking, gruffly informing
him:
“ It’s for the' captain to say, my boy. And then
his Honor, Judge Grady. I’ve nothing to do but
to take you to the station.”
“ This is rough,” muttered Phil. “ Well, I shall
be late getting home, but there won’t be any great
harm in that.”
They had not far to go, for Phil had wandered
into the very police precinct where the fight had
occurred. He thought he knew, now, one reason
why Mr. Gerichten had so sharply advised him to
hurry away, and had at once done so himself. It
seemed to him, too, that there must have been
plenty of other witnesses, and he was not aware that
one was very much needed who had not had any
thing to do with the disturbance except as a
looker-on.
They reached the station house, the head-quar-
ters of the police force in charge of all that region;
Phil had seen it in the daytime, when it appeared

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178 CIIRIS, THE MODEL MAKER,
to be a pretty quiet sort of place, but it was not so
now. He was marched at once into a large room
in the middle of it, and there, behind a long desk,
sat the captain of the precinct, in full uniform and
looking very warm indeed, if not a little excited.
“ "Waller,” he shouted to the officer in charge of
Phil, “ what have you got ? ”
“ It’s that there boy,” said "Waller. “ The witness
we wanted in those knife and jiistol cases.”
“ Lock him uj) ” began the captain.
“ lie says he lives in Laurens Street ”
“ Lock him up ! ” sliouted the captain. “ No time
for anything now. Almost a riot in Baxter Street.
The sergeant and almost every man out! I’m tele
graphed to come to see the commissioners at once.”
“Just look at those fellows!” exclaimed Phil.
“ Guess there has been a muss ! ”
There might easily have been a dozen musses to
have half filled that room with such a battered, dis
reputable assembly of older and younger ruffians.
The police were having their hands more than full
that night, and they had no time for politeness to
anybody.
“Telegraph his own precinct to find out about
him,” commanded the captain. “ Lock him up, now,

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PHILIP LOCKED UP.
179
we can’t let go of him. Prime boy, too ! I won’t
hurt him.”
“ Can’t you send word to my mother ? ” earnestly
inquired Philip.
“ They’ll do that from your own precinct station,”
said Waller, not at all unkindly. “This’ere’s the
roughest night we’ve had in a long time. Some
things can’t be helped.”
Phil thought they were not even trying to help
him, but there was no use in protesting, although
he did so, vigorously. All he could do was to obey
orders, at a moment when so many other fellows
were breaking them, and trying, too, to break each
other’s bones. He was not even allowed to stay and
see what was done with the battered crowd, but he
knew that they were being locked up pretty rapidly.
Their cases, like his, could not be looked into very
carefully until the next morning. It was less than
three minutes after he entered the station house,
that Philip found himself in a narrow, close, brick-
walled cell, and heard the key turn in the inner
door of it. He was a prisoner!
Oh, how his heart did swell with angiy mortifica
tion and with a bitter sense of the injustice of it all!
His thoughts ran fast, as he looked around him.

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180 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
There was a narrow window, with steel crossbars,
but not much liglit would have come in by that way.
A great deal more came from the hall into which
the cell door opened, for there was a wide grating in
the door, so that any officer in the hall could look
in at any time and see how a prisoner might be get
ting along. It helped, too, to ventilate the cell, and
that was a good thing on so warm a night. There
was a narrow, iron-framed pallet-bed and a chair by
it, but there was not an inch of comfort to be seen
anywhere. Phil saw the bed and chair, but at first
he did not either sit down or lie down. He stood
for a full minute, staring out through the grating in
'the door, unable to speak, for a swelling in his
throat, and because he could not find words to say
how indignant he was. Besides, the whole affair
was such a terribly sudden surprise. He was an
American boy, living in a free country. He had not
done anything to be punished for, and yet here he
was, in jail, by order of a man in a blue uniform.
“ That isn’t the worst of it! ” burst from Phil, at
last. “ It’s really all because I took care of that man
that was shot. !No ! I aint sorry I helped him. I’d
do it again. But if this isn’t the meanest kind of
thing! What will mother say, when I don’t get

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An innocent prisoner.

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PHILIP LOCKED UP.
181
Lome ? I do hope they’ll send her word, and tell
her I haven’t done anything!”
, It was a pretty bitter experience, and Phil turned
away from the door, to look out through the barred
window. He could see the sky and the stars, for
the next building was not a very high- one and his
cell was in the second stoiy of the station house.
Somehow or other, it only made him feel worse to
look at the sky and the stars.
He could hardly make it seem real. Then he
found another thought creeping in among the rest
and it belonged to a lot of other ideas which had
troubled him.
“ If I’d been rich,” he asked himself, “ and if I
lived in one of those Fifth Avenue houses, would
the police have locked me up? You bet they
wouldn’t! Anyhow I don’t belong to such a crowd
as they had out there. Why, there wasn’t an Amer
ican among them! ”
He meant the light thing, for in his mind such
men as Mr. Gerichten and all the industrious, orderly
Germans, Irish, and other foreign-born people that
he knew, were “Americans.” So they were, and so
were not the mob of law-breakers who were giving
the busy police so much trouble that night.

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182 CHRIS, TIIE MODEL MAKEIt.
He tired of tlie window and sat down, first on tlie
chair and then on the bed, but he felt that he could
not go to sleep. He did not even feel tired.
It was getting late. Chris, in his own room, was
still plying his pencil upon a drawing upon his
. table and all the clockwork in the garret cave was
steadily wheeling its business, in its usual noiseless
way, toward the right point for its noise to begin.
“ I guess that ’11 do,” said Chris. “ It belongs to me,
though, and not to Mr. Stimson. I’ll fix him out, so
• that he can bore all the holes they’ll bring him.
They’d better bring most of ’em ready bored,
though.”
Clang, went the little brass cymbals that belonged
to the music box, by way of a beginning. Out rang
a loud clock alarm. But louder and sharper rang
the gong on the table, for its wire had been strongly
pulled from below.
“ Mother! ” exclaimed Chris, “ What can be the
matter with her ? ”
He hurried to the hatch and opened it, after
sending down a gong-reply.
“ Chris ! ” she called out, from the foot of the stairs.
“ Here it is twelve o’clock, and Phil isn’t home!
Something must have happened.”

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PHILIP LOCKED UP.
183
“ Is that so ? ” said Chris thoughtfully. “ There
wasn’t anything I know of to keep him out.”
“ He never was out so late before in all his life ! ”
exclaimed Mrs. Iluyler; “I don’t know what to
make of it.”
No more did Chris, and he slowly made his way
downstairs. Of course he took a look into Phil’s
room, but everything there was just as usual.
“ He’ll come back,” he said. “ If anything bad
had happened he’d have sent word home.”
That was what Philip had tried to do. No doubt
it was what the captain and policeman Waller had
intended doing, but no sooner had their young
prisoner been locked up than they had found their
hands and minds more than full. The station was
crowded. Perspiring officers came and went in
haste, and some of them had evidently received
knocks as well as given them. In fact, it was one
of those hot summer nights when people whose
homes are not homes, but only close and uncom
fortable barracks, do not seem to care to go indoors,
so a vast number of tenement-house lodgers had been
out in the streets all the evening and the con
sequences had been bad. The streets they lived in
were not ^ by means so good as even old Laurens

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184 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
Street, and not many of the people wlio belonged
there were likely to get out and climb higher.
“ 0 Philip ! ” groaned Mrs. Huyler. “ What can
have become of him ? ”
“Of course he isn’t hurt,” said Chris. “If any
one can take take of himself, Phil can.”
He was trying his best to comfort her, but lie was
compelled to admit to himself that she had good
reason for feeling anxious.
“Tell you what I’ll do,” he said; “I’ll go to our
station house and have the police ask about him.”
“ Do, Chris ! Do ! ” she said. “ If you can’t go,
I will.”
“ You stay and wait for him at the house,” said
Chris; “ he might come back while I’m gone.”
That sounded right, and so he took his crutch
and set out on his errand.
Poor Mrs. Huyler!
There stood the piano wide open just as she had
left it after an amount of evening practise which
had tired her hands more than a day’s ironing. A
small basket of fine laces sat upon one corner of it
and a pile of cuffs and collars adorned the other. It
was evidently a washerwoman's piano, but it could
not express any sympathy concerning Philip. ‘ She

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PHILIP LOCKED UP.
185
even went and sat down on tlie stool, but slie turned
lier back to tlie piano itself and stared at tlie door
through which Cliris had departed. Then she arose
and wheeled around and shut down the top reso
lutely. It was 110 time for music or for any musical
instrument to look as if it expected to be played
upon. The window was the only place for her.
As for Chris, he was well known to the officers of
his precinct and they treated him very well. They
could not give him any information however. All
they could do was to send out a telegraphic enquiry
to every station house in the city, asking if any
thing had been heard concerning a boy named
Philip Iiuyler.
Every answer came back “ No,” and it would not
have been so if Philip had not been so hurriedly
locked up, and if he had not been blunderingly put
down upon the books of that precinct as Hiram
Philips.
“ Guess nothing’s gone wrong with him,” they
said to Chris. “ He’ll turn up all right in the morn
ing. Soon as we hear anything we’ll let you know.”
It required time to send questions and get answers,
even by telegraph, and it was after one o’clock when
■Mrs. Huyler heard the sound of her crippled son’s

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186 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
crutcli upon the stairs. She had been first at one
window and then at the other. She had looked at
the clock again and again. She had straightened the
chairs as if company were coming. She had picked
up some of her laces and put them down again, for
not one of them could tell her anything about
Philip. She seemed to be listening, too, with all
her might. She had been getting more excited all
the while, and when Chris came in, with as cheerful
a face as he could put on, and said :
“ No word yet, mother. He’s all right. The
police haven’t heard anything ”
She burst out ciying and exclaimed :
“ I wish they had, then. I want to know about
him. Oh, what will Mr. Gerichten say ? He could
do something, I know he could. But what can we
tell him? ”
“I’m going in to see him about it, anyhow,” said
Chris, “ but I’ll wait till daylight. I don’t believe
it’s any fault of Phil’s.”
“ I won’t go to bed again,” exclaimed Mrs. Iluy-
ler. “ O Phil, Phil! AVliat have you been doing?
I’m afraid some dreadful accident has happened.
He hasn’t done anything wrong, I know lie hasn’t."
“Of course not,” said Chris. “He’s all right.

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1*1111.11' I.OCKKI) UP. 187
Don’l feel so, mother. Do go and lie down a while.
1 le’ll ooiii.■ back first thing in tlie morning. You
s..,* if Ik* doesn't."
He added some possible explanations, but she
could not help seeing (hat not one of them was good
"No. indeed," she said. “1 can't bear to lie
down."
Chris himself M*etnrd to feel like silting up, for lie
found dial she was determined to do so. He went
and sal by a window, with his hand against his side,
and waited, waited, for the dawn of the coming
day. while Huyleractually dropped to sleep in
her rocking chair.
Philip was al-o waiting for sunlight to come, but
he was angry with himself when he nodded and
fi ll that he was in danger of going to fd.-cp.
"No. I won't." he -aid. a« if he were addre-ing
thr Hi,-., who had impri-oin'd him; "I won'l p.
to l«-d or >lrfp in thi- hole. ii"h"W you can
tiv ii."
More than Ik had aim. .,; «that 1)<- had
in*s known *••* mti'-li. but h- ;.- .k that lo-k. f«>r th-n
he could hnv-leli-d th* w-m-M mm.
‘■Tiny •]:■!si': l-.-\ up I>r. T.i'.' ": - ." !e- r>

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188 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKEK.
“ but then lie’s a doctor. He’s a grown up man, too,
and I’m only a boy. Tliey tliink they can do as
they please with boys.”
He felt rebellious all over, and he had no idea
how much he was learning, or how well this veiy
peculiar lesson was fitting in with the other lessons
he had been getting. It was making an older boy
of him, and stirring him up tremendously. There
was really an awful—an awful difference between
the cell he was in and the magnificent chambers of
the Fifth Avenue palace where he had mended
pipe. He thought of that again and again, and it
made him remember stories he had read and heard
of kings and princes, and other great and rich men,
who had gone out of palaces into prisons.
“ Prisons worse than this, too,” he said to himself.
“Away down deep and no light in ’em. I guess a
fellow could dig through a brick wall like this, too,
but he couldn’t so well if ’twas thick stone.”
It was curious after that thought came how a
kind of romance seemed to follow it, and how Philip
felt less and less like a mere boy, and more and
more like a fellow who was beginning to see some
thing of the world lie lived in. Perhaps the time
went by faster after he found how much there

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PHILIP LOCKED UP. 189
might be to think of in a cell, but at last he sud
denly stopped thinking, and said, turning toward
the window:
“ Hullo! What’s that ? Hurrah! It must be
the sun is rising!”
That meant a very early hour, indeed, at mid
summer, but at that very moment Chris was pulling
at the door-bell of the Gerichten house.
He had to wait only a few seconds before a gray
head came out at an upper window, and a hoarse
question was asked in a language Chris could not
understand. He had startled the boss a little, and
Mr. Gerichten had asked in the first tongue that
came handy before he repeated it in English:
“ Who’s there ? What do you want ? ”
A quick explanation followed, and then he talked
German and something else to himself before he
replied to Chris:
“ Philip is not absent for nothing. I am his boss.
I am responsible for him. I will dress myself and
come down."
He had spoken pretty loudly, and by the time he
was ready Lucille herself was down in the room
below, eager to lean out of the window and ask
questions of Chria. So, it seemed, were some of the

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190 CIIKIS, TJIE MODEL MAKER,
neighbor, for there were Leads iu other windows,
and in a minute move Mrs. Huyler was standing on
the sidewalk, helping Claris to answer and tell all
that neither he nor she knew as to what had become
of Philip.
The fact is that almost everybody is really glad
to have something happen, so long as nobody is
known to be hurt, and you are only waiting to
know what it is. There is a kind of excitement in
expecting something, but Lucille went down and let
Mrs. Huyler and Chris into the house, and then the
heads at the other windows could only talk at each
other a little and be pulled in again. At all events
that part of Laurens Street had been waked up
good and early, and the day before it would be so
much the longer. It was Saturday, however, and
that is always cut off at the afternoon end of it.
Mrs. Huyler was a great deal calmer, now she
had somebody besides Chris to tell how badly she
felt about Phil. It is true that her hands gathered
up her apron and that she rung it, dry as it was,
very much as if she had just taken it out of a tub ;
but she was really a sensible woman, and agreed
with the rest that she had better remain there until
breakfast time. Sara Vladovna would soon be in

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PHILIP LOCKED UP.
191
to get breakfast for them all, and in the meantime
Mr. Gerichten could go out and see the police again.
It could not be that a boy like Philip had merely
lost himself in his own city, and it was time that he
should be found by somebody and brought home
again dead or alive. As for the boss, he said little
enough, but put on his hat and stalked away.

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CHAPTER XII.
TRAINING FOR WAR.
EirittHUJP laad been aware that the corridor in
H fr 011 * his ce ^ been patrolled again
tfLfiSl and again during the night, and that pris
oners more or less noisy had been put into the other
cells in that row and the row opposite, but he had
paid very little attention. He had been too busy
with his own feelings and his own prospects. What
these latter might be he had only a very dim idea
at first, but it began to brighten a little as the sun
rose higher and more daylight poured in.
“ I’ve heard of the House of Detention,” he said,
“ where they keep witnesses to make sure of them,
but there isn’t any need for their sending me there.
I don’t want to get away. I’d as lief as not tell
everything I know about the shooting.”
So he felt and so he hoped, but the minutes that
passed seemed to be growing dreadfully longer, when
he was aware of a face at the grating in the door
and was hailed with :

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TRAINING FOR WAR.
193
“ Hullo, chappie, are you up ? ”
Phil saw not only the face but the front of
a policeman’s felt helmet, and, he stepped right
forward with a great jump at his heart as he ex
claimed :
“ Did they send any word to mother ? Did they
tell her I’m here and what for ? ”
“ I don’t know what you’re here for,” half laughed
the officer. “ Guess your mother knows you’re out.
What have you been up to 1 ”
“ They only took me for a witness,” gulped Philip
resentfully. “They ought to have let her know.
They said they would.”
“Hullo! You don’t say ! I’ll go and see about
that,” responded the officer turning quickly away,
while Philip shouted after him his name and street
and the number of his house.
What took place nest Philip did not know, for he
was not out there to hear and see. The captain was
not there when Phil’s new' friend walked into the
main office to report his case, but the sergeant behind
the desk was reading a telegram while the officer
was speaking.
“Philip Huyler, Laurens Street,” he quickly
responded. “Why, here’s the Eighth Precinct tele-

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194 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER,
graphing to find out where he is. Three other
telegrams before this. Who’s been blundering ? ”
“I don’t know,” said the officer. “Who is it
wants him ? Is it his mother ? ”
“Name’s Gerstaver, or something,” said the ser
geant. “ I’ll wire ’em back to send Mr. Gerster after
him. He may be a responsible man. That’s all we
want, but we won’t lose hold of him.”
A telegram went and an answer came which was
reported by the overworked and sleepy opei'ator as:
“ Mr. Garston will come right away.”
Not many minutes later Mr. Gericliten shouted in
through the open window of his own house:
“Philip is lock up in the Sixth Precinct police
station ! I go for him. I bring him back with me.
You wait.”
After that, all that remained to be done was
attended to rapidly. When the boss reached the
Sixth Precinct station, and it was not far to go, he
found his young friend waiting in the main room.
Philip tried hard to appear entirely composed, and
he said : “ Good-morning, Mr. Gericliten,” very well.
He was not quite ready to ask questions about the
Laurens Street people, however.
All his employer said back to him was a grim,

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TRAINING FOR WAR. 195
white-mustaclied smile and a nod, for tlie old model
maker was angry. He told tlie sergeant so, and lie
told him why plainly enough, while he was making
his statements concerning Philip.
“ All right, Mr. Gerichten,” said the sergeant, not
seeming to be at all disturbed. “We know you.
We know all about the boy now. Fine young
fellow. Didn’t we have a rough night, though !
Bad lot! Just the time for mistakes like this to
happen. You take our job on your hands and see
how you’ll come out with it.”
“I suppose that is so,” replied Mr. Gerichten,
looking at the officer with more good will in his
face. “I suppose I could not mend those men.”
“Not without killing them first,” laughed the
sergeant. “ I guess one night in quod won’t hurt
the youngster. Teach him not to want to get there
again. He’ll be a good witness, though.”
“He will tell the truth,” said Mr. Gerichten con
fidently, and then he and Philip walked out
together.
It was curious how strong was Philip’s feeling
that he had something to be proud of. Of course it
was all very new and strange and had been very
disagreeable, but the bad part of it was over and he

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196 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER,
would reach home again in time for breakfast. That
was a thing he could not help thinking of, for his
appetite was really fine. He thought how glad his
mother would be, for Mr. Gerichten told him that
she and Chris had been up all night, but his next
thought set him up a little, for it came to him that
he was about the only boy in Laurens Street who
had precisely such a yam to tell to any other boy.
Not one that he knew had been locked up as a wit
ness in a knife and pistol case, a real bloody fight.
“ You didn’t like it, eh ? ” remarked Mr. Gerichten,
as they marched along. “Well, no, more did I like
it. I was lock up a long time in one of those old
dungeons. I eat only black bread and water and
now and then some beans, and some hard salt beef.
They was to shoot me. I knew that. Then I
heard cannon, long time, but they was to shoot me
one day, and in the night the hole was knock
through their lines and our Hungarian boys came in
over their dead bodies. I was free! ”
“And some of them were shot instead of you!”
burst admiringly from Philip.
“We will not speak of that,” growled Mr. Gerich
ten. “ Some condemned men like me were led out
and murdered just before the breach was made and

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TRAINING FOR 'WAR. 197
tlie fort was ready to be storm. We did not keep
account exactly that time, but they was all pay for.
Now you know a little about prison. I was in a
king’s prison. Those police did not mean any harm.
They do duty.”
Philip was almost willing to speak approvingly
of the police, but Mr. Gerichten was in an unusual
state of mind and lie said several other things.
Philip did not know a great deal about Europe or
about history, but he could understand that some
where about the year 1848, and afterward, there had
been a great deal of revolution in the old world and
that Mr. Gerichten had been in it. lie seemed to
have been in one army after another, indifferent as
to its nationality, so only it was fighting against a
kingly government, and when he said so, Mr. Gericli-
ten responded:
“ Oh, yes! What did I care ? I was in Italy
once, with Garibaldi.”
On the whole, Philip’s prison adventure was wind-
ing up very well, but he could not have guessed
how he was waited for, after the news came through
the window that he was in the hands of the police.
Ilis mother’s first exclamation was:
“0 Philip! Philip! What did you do it for ? ”

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198 C1IKIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
“Why, Mrs. Huyler,” said Lucille, in apparent
astonishment. “ He didn’t do a thing! What could
he have done ? ”
“ Guess he didn’t,” said Chris, as hopefully as usual.
“He’s all right. We won’t have to wait long.”
“ What could he be arrested for! ” sobbed Mrs.
Huyler, rubbing her apron as if it had been a wash
board. “ Oh, dear! The police thought he was some
body else. Poor Philip! How he must have felt!
They may have clubbed him, too. They use their
clubs awfully.”
“ Not on boys like Phil,” said Chris, but even on
his face there was a shadow of anxiety.
As for Sara Yladovna, she was making an extra
ordinary rattle in the kitchen, as if she were getting
breakfast under difficulties. Whatever that wonder
ful stove had been doing or refusing to do, it had to
take a pretty steady stream of what sounded like
Polish scolding, and some of it was very energetic.
“ There they come ! ” exclaimed Lucille at last,
from the window where she was -watching, and
Mrs. Huyler instantly stopped ciying and put down
tlie cuffs and collars she had been so desperately
counting.
“ Philip ! ” she almost shouted. “ Oh ! n

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TRAINING FOR WAR.
199
Slie did not succeed in saying another word until
he came upstairs and she held him in her arms
while Mr. Geriehten calmly explained the matter.
“ Oh, I know he didn’t do it! ” said Mrs. Huyler
then, and Lucille added:
“ Why, we all know he didn’t; but, Philip, wasn’t
it awful! ”
“ ’Twasn’t so very bad,” replied Philip, but even
while Sara was hurrying in the coffee and things, she
had to stop and listen to his account of liis long
night behind iron bars.
Everything had to be finished in time for shop-
work, however, and Philip was really glad of it.
His head was very full, indeed, and he was aware of
a queer idea that he was becoming another boy,
different from the boy he had been, with all this
palace and prison business pouring in upon him.
lie felt very grateful to Mr. Geriehten for his share
in the matter, but he could not have imagined what
a change there had been in the relations between
himself and his boss. So far as these were con
cerned, it might be said that the youngest person in
the Geriehten shop had suddenly become almost old
enough to be bowed to, when ordered to bring in
another pail of charcoal.

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200 CIIRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
“Lucille,” said Mrs. Huyler, just as she was
going out after breakfast, “ do come and practise
this forenoon. I feel so much better when I can
hear you. It is all so strange, too, about Philip.
Oh, I’m so glad your father got him out! ”
Chris did not go back to his cave at once, for there
were things in the shop that called for his imme
diate attention. It may be, too, that he preferred
being there, in case there should be any more blue-
coated enquirers after his brother.
None came, and Phil could have said that he
never before did so much work in one Saturday.
He did’ it all well, too, without any noticeable
blunders, and that was itself a curiosity, for he
almost felt as if he were not in the shop at all.
There were a great many keys and locks in it, new
and old, and a great wooden key, badly weather
worn, hung out over its entrance. It had always
been so, but never before had Philip taken so deep
an interest in that sort of tiling as he did during
the long morning of the day after he had heard
a key turn and a lock click beliind him, in the iron
door of a prison cell.
The Saturday forenoon was a little more than
half over when something seemed to startle Mrs.

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TRAINING FOR WAR.
Huyler at lier tub. She turned and listened for a
moment, and then remarked with a sigh :
“ She’s gone ! I suppose she’s tired. She’s prac
tised long enough for so warm a day, but it was
real good to hear her.”
She had indeed worked at her laces as if some
thing were helping, or at least stimulating her.
Even her two assistants had done better than
usual, excepting for an occasional pause to make
remarks about police and station houses and Philip’s
remarkable escape from being “ sent up.”
Lucille had wearied of the piano, but she had not
gone through the shop on her way to her own room.
Contrary to her usual custom, she had entered
through the front door and she explained it, per
haps to the plants and the canary, by remarking:
“I don’t feel like seeing anyone. What a queer
world ! Philip was shut up for nothing at all. The
street’s going to pieces and we’ve got to go, too. I
wish I knew where, but father never tells me any
thing. I’m big enough now to know some things.
How dreadful it must feel to be in prison ! I’m
going to make Philip tell me all about it. His
mother didn’t sleep a wink all night. Neither did
Chris. I’m glad father got Philip out, but I do

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203 OHBIS, THE MODEL MAKES,
believe he thinks more of him for having been in
prison. I’d go a mile out of my way before I’d
see a street fight! ”
Violin practise seemed to do her good after
that, with an occasional rest, but it was noticeable
that not one of the people who had sat ap for
Philip, or had risen early on his account, showed
any signs of fatigue. Even Chris was as bright as
usual and his mother was really brighter.
Noon came and went in a sort of routine that
nobody cared to disturb. The afternoon was really
dull, and Philip may have been beginning to look
forward for the coming of the five o’clock whistle,
but another matter arrived an hour earlier and
almost upset him. It was precisely four when Mr.
Uerichten leaned over him and said impressively:
“Soon as work is done you come upstairs. Go
not home. I have to say a good deal to you.”
That was all, but it was extraordinary. There
was even a kind of mystery in it, as if Philip were
just on the eve of having one more of his new
experiences, and there was already a string of them.
He only said, “ Yes, sir,” without presuming to ask
any questions; but Chris, too, bad heard, and his
pencil paused for a moment, while his face showed

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TRAINING TOR WAR.
that lie might "be wondering what was the matter
with Mr. Gerichten. lie might better have been
considering what was just then the matter with his
ingenious friend and patron, Mr. Selden Stimson,
for whom he was inventing the “ poser ” part of the
Phantom Borer.
Everybody has seen pictures of the "White House
at Washington, the residence of the President of the
United States. There are very pretty and well kept
grounds, ornamented with shrubbery and flowers,
south of the house toward the Potomac river. They
looked very pretty indeed that Saturday afternoon.
The red-uniformed band of the Marine Corps was
making capital music on a stand in the middle, with
an awning to help the shade of the surrounding
trees. The winding walks in every direction were
dotted with groups of people, men and women and
children, who had come to stroll around the grounds
and hear the music. Up near the house, however,
and it was looking very white in the brilliant sun
shine, there was a group of gentlemen who may
have kept away off there so that the music might
not interfere with their conversation. Two, an
older and a younger man, were in army uniform.
The former wore no straps on his shoulders and

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204 CIIRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
Iris blue coat was a little ■worn, if not almost
shabby, but the latter was decidely spruce and wore
tlie double-barred sti'aps of a captain of artillery.
The third man was the inventor, and he never
looked anything but spruce. Just now he was
doing the talking, and he said, “General,” three
times as often as he said “ Captain,” although he
was exceedingly polite to the artillery officer.
The general was a short, broad-shouldered man,
with an iron firm face that was in need of ’a razor,
and he stood and listened with his hands in his
pockets. He did not look at all like a man who
could joke, especially upon so serious a subject as
that which Mr. Stimson was explaining, and so he
must have been in sober earnest when he twisted his
short mustache by a quick pucker of his mouth and
replied:
“I agree with you, Mr. Stimson. It’s the most
original thing I’ve heard of in a long time. Good
idea. Even if the army keeps Governor’s Island it’s
a good idea. If all those holes wider water were
bored, and if the British should come, the garrisons
of the forts could get away without surrendering.
Go off like so many rats. "We needn’t lose a man !
Go right ahead, I’m with you. Put in all your

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TRAINING FOE WAR.
auger liole streets. Then, if the city should be at
any time bombarded, the population could get down
there, in your cellar city, and be safe. They could
leave all the Englishmen in the city upstairs to be
shelled at. The sooner it’s done the better. I’ve
often thought of what would be the quickest way to
get an American army out of New York if a decent
European fleet should sail in anywhere near it.”
He did not look like a man who was in the habit
of running away, and he did not smile. On the
contrary, he looked glum and serious, while the
artillery captain and the inventor deemed it their
duty to laugh heartily.
“All tight, General,” said Mr. Stimson merrily.
“ I am veiy much obliged to you. "VYe shall be glad
to have your good word, when the time comes.”
“You shall have it, sir; you shall have it,” said
the general with emphasis. “I’d favor anything
that proposed to do away with the Atlantic Ocean
without the cost and trouble of filling it in.”
He was moving away, when he said that, and Mr.
Stimson did not go with him. He only smiled and
shook hands with the captain, and bowed repeat
edly. Then he put on his hat, after mopping his
bald head, and turned to listen to the Marine Band

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206 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER,
for a moment. At least lie seemed to be listening
to them, but it may be he was still hearing part of
what the general had said to him, for he walked
away remarking:
“They all see that there’s a great deal in it. I
don’t care how much fun they make now. Of
course, nobody can see how great a thing it is until
I can show a working model. A great deal depends
on Stub. He’s a wonderful little fellow. Ha, ha,
ha! ” for the recollection he had of Chris always
seemed to stir up the humorous side of his nature
and he could not help laughing at “ Stub.”
There is only one hour between four o’clock and
five, and it got away at last. Everybody was ready,
but perhaps Philip was even more than usually
ready to pull off his leather apron, wash his hands,
and feel sure that he had reached the short end of
his Saturday. By the time he had done so, Mr.
Gerichten was already upstairs. He was in the
room over the shop and he had opened an extra
large packing trunk which lay in one of the corners.
All things were going on quietly upon the floor
above that, for not even the canary was practising.
He had finished his Saturday afternoon bath with
much fluttering and spattering, and stood upon his

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TRAINING FOR WAli.
207
swing perch, rocking back and forth gently, while
he watched Lucille, as if he wondered what could
make her sit there, so absolutely motionless. He
knew nothing whatever about books, and he could
not have guessed how deeply interesting a place she
had reached in the long and tangled plot of that
old eastern border novel. If he could have known
how it was—with the beautiful heroine in such
danger, and the hero defending a narrow mountain
pass almost alone, while she rode away to a place of
safety! Lucille was already well acquainted with
them and with their friends and enemies, and knew
a great deal more than she had known when she
picked up that book. It had been serving her as a
kind of window, through which she could see peo
ple whom she had never seen before. Or else it
was a picture gallery, with pictures that followed
one another like days in a life, a life that was full of
chivalry and daring, of devotion and' self-sacrifice.
Lucille read on, half breathlessly, and she was
almost anywhere but in Laurens Street, so far as her
thoughts were concerned, when she began to hear
something that sounded as if it might have come
right out of the book. It was a clashing sound,
like steel ringing and grinding against steel; like the

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208 CIIUIS, THE MODEL MAKER,
clash of swords, it might be ; and she sprang up and
went to the head of the stairs. She heard it louder
there, and she hurried halfway down, to where alie
could peer into the lower room. The table and
chairs had been shoved into a corner, leaving more
space empty than might have been expected, and
her first excited exclamation was an explanation of
what was going on.
“ Oh,” she exclaimed, “ is that it ? How could
he have thought of it? Father is teaching Philip
how to fence! How strong Phil is! Father’s a
splendid swordsman! ”

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CHAPTER XIII.
THE FENCING LESSON.
i(d"lSII HE ^ings which Mr. G-ericliten had taken
KgS pwl out of the old packing trunk looked as if
they had been there a long time, but they
wei’e in good condition. The two springy looking
fencing foils were not rusty, and the wire masks
and the pads and the gloves were all right.
“He will be a good fencer,” muttered the old
man. “He is worth the trouble. Some boy is not
fit to carry a sword.”
He had evidently formed a different idea of his
tough sinewed shop-boy, for Phil was hardly in the
room before he was astonished by hearing:
“ Look at them, Philip! I must teach you how
to use the sword.” '
If it had suddenly begun to rain in that room,
Philip could hardly have been more completely
taken by surprise, but his fingers tingled and the
tingle went up his arm to the elbow when he
picked up one of the foils by the hilt.
209

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210 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER.
“Fence ?” lie said. “ Oh, Mr. Gericliten ! ”
“Every American boy should know to be a
soldier,” said Mr. Gericliten sternly, as he bent the
other foil back and forth and looked into Philip’s
eyes. “The man who is not a soldier is not a
“ I can’t ever be a soldier,” said Philip. “ Why,
Mr. Gerichten, there isn’t any army and there isn’t
any war. I just would like to fence, but then they
all use guns.”
“So!” said Mr. Gerichten. “The rifle is the
weapon. I know that. You will learn the rifle
some day. Very well, I tell you one thing. I teach
you to fence with this. Then I teach you the
sabre. The man who knows the sword knows a
great deal, even if he never use it. He is more a
man. Come! ”
Tingle—tingle—tingle ! how Phil’s whole body
felt it, and how his cheeks did glow, as he put on
the rest of his fencing rig and listened to the first
instructions of his teacher! He noticed, too, a
remarkable change in old Mr. Gerichten. He
always walked erectly, but it may have cost him an
effort to do so, and he often went about the shop a
good deal bent over and his movements were slow

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The first fencing lesson.

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THE FENCING LESSON.
211
and rusty. No doubt Iris age was telling on him,
and his old campaigns, but now he seemed to be
years and years younger, and he stepped around
lightly and limberly, except that his left leg was
not so good as the right. It moved as if it were
lifted, and as if the other leg had to take care of it.
“ No w, stand there ! ” he commanded, as he began
to explain the fencing lessons. “ Oh, you will be a
fencer! You have the nerve and the eye and the
muscle! ”
Philip had never before felt so good in all his
life, and he could not know how well he was look
ing as he crossed foils with the white mustached
old soldier.
Rasp—rasp—ring—clink ! oh, what music the
foils made!
“You will make a soldier!” exclaimed Mr. Ge-
. richten with enthusiasm. “ I can see it in your eye.
It is worth while to teach you. So! Sah ! There !
Your parade is good! You hold it well! So!”
They paused a moment, and they were not aware
of Lucille watching them from the stairway.
“ Mr. Gericliten,” said Philip, “ when you was a
soldier wasn’t you wounded once, in your left leg ? ”
“How do you know that?” laughed Mr. Gerich-

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212 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKER,
ten, with a queer kind of fierce-sounding merriment.
“ I never tell anybody. It is a good leg. It was tlie
best leg they could malce, and Chris improved it.
He could have a patent for that improvement if it
was worth while. See ? How easy it move ? ”
“You don’t mean it’s an artificial leg?” almost
shouted Philip.
“So!” said Mr. Gerichten. “I lose the old leg I
began with, when I led the cavalry charge at—”
Phil could not catch the long, rough name of that
battle—“near Buda-Pesth, in Hungary. We went
right through them. They were the Croats that
we charge. They were under the Ban Jellachich.
How we hated that man ! How we broke them ! ”
His eyes were flashing fire as he talked of that
old battle and of how he and his cavalry dashed
through the serried lines of the Emperor of Austria’s
army. Phil thought he was handsome, splendid,
and so did Lucille, as she sat on the stairs and lis
tened and felt her cheeks burn hotly and her heart
beat as even the novel had not made it beat.
It was all new to Philip, for he had been only a
Laurens Street boy, and this story and the swords
and the idea of soldiership seemed to belong almost
to another world.

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THE FENCING LESSON.
213
“ There won’t be any such fighting in America,”
he said doubtfully.
“So!” said Mr. Gerichten. “There has been a
great deal of fighting in America. I hope for no
more. But there may be. I tell you if the Ameri
can boys be cowards, and feel not like soldiers, and
stand not for their rights, then there will be danger
of war in America. But if they know the sword
and the rifle, and are ready all the time, then no war
can come. Now ! One more lesson! ”
Perhaps the lesson would have been longer but
for the noise made by Sara Yladovna in coming in
to see about supper. She made more noise than
usual, because she was bringing somebody with her
and was answering questions.
Down came the foils, off came the fencing gloves
and the other things, and Phil was hurriedly putting
on his coat when Sara walked into the room, followed
closely by Dr. Talcott.
“I was teaching Philip to fence,” said Mr. Gerich
ten with his politest bow. “ He must learn ”
“I don’t care how much he learns,” exclaimed the
doctor, “ but he mustn’t be put in jail again. I went
to see about those cases—got to be a witness—and I
heard how they served him.”

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214 CHRIS, THE MODEL MAK
It had made him very indignant, and he
blown up the police roundly, but it had also given
him yet another reason for taking an interest in
Philip.
“He was my assistant surgeon,” said the doctor
humorously, “and it is against the law to lock him
up. Where is Chris ? Has he gone home ? ”
“ Guess you’ll find him there,” said Phil. “ I
can’t say how your job’s getting on.”
“ I’ll go then,” said the doctor, “ but this fencing is
a queer idea.”
“ He will be a good swordsman,” said Mr. Gerich-
ten. “ The sabre is next.”
“ Teach him! Teach him ! ” exclaimed the doctor,
with unexpected decisiveness. “ He is worth teach
ing. Fencing is the best kind of exercise.”
“ He will not then be clumsy,” said Mr. Gerich-
ten. “No swordsman is clumsy.”
“ And he must keep out of jail,” replied the
doctor. Philip was keeping him company as hq
walked to the door, and in a moment more they
were in the street.
“ Stop right here,” said the doctor, “ and tell me
all about your brother. That’s what I came
for. I don’t want to see him just now; ” and then
mmm
he had

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THE FENCING LESSON.. 215
followed a long string of questions, such as only
a surgeon could ask. The doctor himself said that
nobody could have answered them to suit him
without first learning what Philip had learned
about the wonderful mechanism that every man
carries inside of him.
“ Can you cure him, doctor ? ” said Philip at last,
with painful earnestness.
“ I won’t say what I can do,” replied the doctor.
“ Don’t tell him that I spoke to you about it. I
may come in again, by and by. It’s one of the
most interesting cases I ever had.”
Oif he went, and Philip walked slowly home, but
all the while they were talking about him, and long
before that, Chris had been away up in his cave
workshop, whistling in a thoughtful way while he
studied some pieces of the manikin that he had
taken out and was placing and replacing. They
belonged to the part that had been injured in the
tumble down, and they would not fix together
exactly. It was to be his business to repair them
and make them fit, as a kind of manikin surgeon,
just as Dr. Talcott was in the habit of doing for
flesh and blood people. Chris may have been think
ing of that^vhen he said to the manikin :

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210
CHRIS, THE MODEL MAKEK.
“ I guess I couldn't sit quite as still as you do if
any fellow was unscrewing me in this way. I’d
Lave to squirm.”
Supper was ready by six o’clock, a little earlier
tlian usual, but the three people wlio sat down to it
did not seem to have anything in particular to say.
Probably it was because they each had so many
things to think of. As for Philip, lie was sure he
was there and that was about all he could have said
for himself. It seemed an awfully long week to
look back on, so much had been crowded into it,
including the station house and the fencing lesson,
and now, right at the Saturday end of it, was another
tremendous thought, for a terrible question came
with it, brought by Dr. Talcott:
“ What, if anything, is going to happen to Chris ?
Are the doctors really going to try anything? Will
they hurt him ? ”
Just at that point, and while he was trying not
to look so hard at his brother, Chris seemed to think
lie had been silent long enough and enquired, in
very much his usual cliirnipy way:
“Mother, you know what they’re going to do
with Laurens Street; did you know they were
going to begin next Monday?”