Three People | Page 3

what is now Rensselaer Street to find it, either. There were tenement houses, which from attic to basement swarmed with filthy, ragged, repulsive human life.
In one of the lowest and meanest of these many cellars, on the very day, and at the identical hour, in which Master Pliny Hastings held high carnival at his father's table, and Baby Benny Phillips nestled and dreamed among the soft pillows of his mother's easy chair, a little brother of theirs, clad in dirt and rags, crawled over the reeking floor, and occupied himself in devouring eagerly every bit of potato skin or apple paring that came in his way. Was there ever a more forlorn looking specimen of a baby! It was its birthday, too--there are more babies in the world than we think for whose birthdays might be celebrated on the same day. But this one knew nothing about it--dear me! neither did his mother. I doubt if it had once occurred to her that this poor bit of scrawny, dirty, terrible baby had been through one whole year of life. And yet, perhaps, she loved her boy a little--her face looked sullen rather than wicked. On the whole, I think she did, for as she was about to ascend the stairs, with the sullen look deepening or changing into a sort of gloomy apprehension, she hesitated, glanced behind her, and finally, with a muttered "Plague take the young one," turned back, and, catching him by the arm of his tattered dress, landed him on the topmost step, in a mud-puddle! but she did it because she remembered that he would be very likely to climb into the tub of soapsuds that stood at the foot of the bed, and so get drowned.
Mrs. Ryan came up her cellar stairs at the same time, and looked over at her neighbor, then from her to her forlorn child, who, however, enjoyed the mud-puddle, and finally commenced a conversation.
"How old is that young one of yours?"
"Pretty near a year--why, let me see--what day is it?--why, I'll be bound if he ain't just a year old this very day."
"Birthday, eh? You ought to celebrate."
"Humph," said the mother, with a darkening face, "we shall likely; we do most generally. His loving father will get drunk, and if he don't pitch Tode head over heels out here on the stones, in honor of his birthday, I'll be thankful. Tode Mall, you stop crawling out to that gutter, or I'll shake you within an inch of your life!"
This last, in a louder and most threatening tone, to the ambitious baby. But poor Tode didn't understand, or forgot, or something, for while his mother talked with her companion, out he traveled toward the inviting gutter again, and tumbled into it, from whence he was carried, dripping and screaming, by his angry mother, who bestowed the promised shake, and added a vigorous slapping, whereat Tode kicked and yelled in a manner that proved him to be without doubt a near relative of Master Pliny Hastings himself. Three brothers they were, Messrs. Pliny, Bennie and Tode, opening their wondrous eyes on the world on precisely the same day of time, though under such different circumstances, and amid such different surroundings, that I doubt if it looked equally round to them all. Besides, they hadn't the least idea each of the existence of the other; but no matter for that, they were brothers, linked together in many a way.
Perhaps you wouldn't have had an idea that their fathers were each occupied in the same business; but such was the case. Pliny L. Hastings, the millionaire, owned and kept in motion two of the hotels in a western city where the bar-rooms were supplied with marble counters, and the customers were served from cut-glass goblets, resting on silver salvers. Besides he was a wholesale liquor dealer, and kept great warehouses constantly supplied with the precious stuff. Bennie Phillips' good-natured father was a grocer, on a modest and unpretending scale; but he had a back room in his store where he kept a few barrels of liquor for medicinal purposes, and a clerk in attendance. Tode Mall's father kept an unmitigated grog-shop, or rum hole, or whatever name you are pleased to call it, without any cut glass or medicinal purposes about it, and sold vile whisky at so much a drink to whoever had sunk low enough to buy it. So now you know all about how these three baby brothers commenced their lives.
CHAPTER II.
JOHN BIRGE'S OPPORTUNITY.
One day it rained--oh, terribly. Albany is not a pleasant city when it rains, and Rensselaer Street is not a pleasant street. That was what John Birge thought as he held his umbrella low to avoid the slanting drops, and hurried himself down the muddy road, hurried until