Two of a Kind.

Free Lance, Volume II, Issue 53, 6 July 1901, Page 19

Two of a Kind.

THEY didn't look at all like two of a kind. He was plain, and ragged, and dirty, and altogether ill kept. She was fair, and both richly and daintily dressed, with every appearance of refined surroundings about her. He slouched along the streets in a oareless shame-faced fashion, and dropped his eyes before her with some sense of uncleanness and unfitness breaking through even his dull understanding. She glanced at him a moment through the filmy bit of silk that half concealed her face, and unconsciously drew herself back a little further into the shaded recess of the fine carriage in which she sat. And there flashed through her mind, familiar with many passages of the best in literature, the memory of this and that ill favoured character in fiction which seemed to be personified in this man. She had no other interest in him than she might have had in some picture or statue, except that he was more realistic, and so impressed her more disagreeably. But it never occurred to her, and it would not easily have occurred to any passer-by that there was any likeness between the heiress in the carriage and the tramp on the street. Yet they were both paupers, although she was supposed to be worth a million or more in her own right. The tramp knew that he was a pauper. She would have been hotly indignant at the merest intimation that such was her estate. The tramp begged his meals from door to door. She had the best that the market could provide, served in the latest style, and with the most elaborate and expensive furnishings in the luxurious apartments where she dined. The tramp was glad to get a half-way decent cast-off coat, or any other halfworn article of raiment which he could use a little while, or barter for a drink. The heiress had too many costumes to enumerate, and was the envy of many women who spent more money on their clothes in a week than the tramp spent m a whole year. The tramp went on foot, except on those occasions when he beat his way on the perilous break-beam, or in some nasty, noisome box-car. The heiress rode in the drawing-room of the palace car, a»4 sometimes in the private car of some rriend a little richer than herself. But the tramp and the heiress were both non-producers, both dependents, both enemies of honest labour and pubhe good. The tramp did nothing for a living, and as he lived it is perfectly plain that he lived at the expense of those who did produce. The expense was not much, but such as it was other hands than his had to meet the demand. He got little, and gave nothing back. As he was strong and able-bodied, the reckoning against him must needs include the measure of service which he might have rendered to the world. And in this view of it he was more than a pauper as we commonly employ that word. He was a drone, storing no honey for himself or for others to consume, but living on the honey which others produced. The heiress did less than the tramp, if that were possible. She gave something, but she produced nothing. And she spent vastly more upon herself. She also was a drone, doing nothing for others, but exacting much for herself. But whereas the tramp had a half-way consciousness of the unworthiness. she prided herself on her estate. She looked with pity not untouched with contempt on the man who cared for her horses, the men who kept her property in repair, or the woman who washed and ironed the dainty fabrics which my lady wore. They were not of her feet, and she never thought to give them social recognition. Her heart warmed with a sense of virtuous thoughtfulness if she spoke a pleasant word to them, or gave them some of the remnants from her table, or, in case of the woman, some of her cast-off clothes. As for the great mass of the workingmen and workingwomen of the city, she hardly thought of them at all, or if she gave them a thought it was touched with disgust with tho unlovelinesb of their lives. Yet, these same people gave her all she had. Hundreds of poor men and women every day dropped their doles into her hand. But neither they nor she understood that this was so. Their contributions were so indirect that neither knew they gave them, and she did not suspect that she received them. _ If she perchance gave one of them a dime the favour was acknowledged with the humblest couttesies. But she took her thousands from them, and took them with <i naughty pride which would not allow her to question whence they came. There was those ready to tell her, but such were in her eyes only cranks and fanatics, disturbers of the public order, and visionaries of a really dangerous sort. Her pastor was not ono of them. Neither did her favourite papers disturb her in the self complacency of her wealth.

And she bowed her head in church, and prayed in the name of Jesus with not a thought but that she owed her good fortune to his special grace. Her fortune had quite another origin. Her father had bought liberally of the real estate of the adjacent city, when that city was only an expectation and a dream. He was dead, but the title was conferred by his dead hands upon her. The people had come by the thousand and the hundred thousand. Men of wealth found that they could serve the interests of multitudes through the use of her land. For such sendee they could and did exact heavy tariff. And so there was strong rivalry between them for the use of the land which was in this woman's name, and they offered her large sums of money for it every year. Her rents were more than ten thousand a month. This money the merchants paid her for the privilege of using for the common interests a part of God's footstool. And they added the rent of her land to the sugar which sweetened the poor man's tea, to the steak which came to his table, to the clothes with which he covered himself and children, to everything which they did for all the multitude whom they served. Because the thousands were there, her land had value, but the value was taken out of their pockets who made it, and put into her purse who did nothing but spend it. And because they worked so hard to raise her revenues, they were socially despised. But she was admired and petted, and praised in all the great assemblies because she wore fine clothes, and lived in a fine house, and ate fine food, and travelled in the best style, at their expense. And, whin she gave a great feast, and scattered her thousands, men excused the vast extravagance of it by the plea that she gave employment to the poor. And so she did. And so did the tramp. But the tramp was stupid, for he only took a little of the produce of the poor so that the men called him a pauper, and despised him for his idle lif e. But my lady took much, and the more she was able to take the more men admired her and regarded her as especially favoured of the Lord. But Justice, peering feebly from behind the bandage which men had laid upon her eyes, and seeing the tramp on the side- walk and the lady in the carnage could not discern between them, since both were spoilers of other men's goods, and therefore Justice wrote them down in spite of all their superficial differences as idlers and spendthrifts alike— two of the same kind. — Robert Whitaker.