Helping The Other Fellow
by
[Originally published in Munsey’s Magazine, December, 1908.]
“But can thim that helps others help thimselves!”
–Mulvaney.
This is the story that William Trotter told me on the beach at Aguas Frescas while I waited for the gig of the captain of the fruit steamer Andador which was to take me abroad. Reluctantly I was leaving the Land of Always Afternoon. William was remaining, and he favored me with a condensed oral autobiography as we sat on the sands in the shade cast by the Bodega Nacional.
As usual, I became aware that the Man from Bombay had already written the story; but as he had compressed it to an eight-word sentence, I have become an expansionist, and have quoted his phrase above, with apologies to him and best regards to Terence.
II
“Don’t you ever have a desire to go back to the land of derby hats and starched collars?” I asked him. “You seem to be a handy man and a man of action,” I continued, “and I am sure I could find you a comfortable job somewhere in the States.”
Ragged, shiftless, barefooted, a confirmed eater of the lotos, William Trotter had pleased me much, and I hated to see him gobbled up by the tropics.
“I’ve no doubt you could,” he said, idly splitting the bark from a section of sugar-cane. “I’ve no doubt you could do much for me. If every man could do as much for himself as he can for others, every country in the world would be holding millenniums instead of centennials.”
There seemed to be pabulum in W. T.’s words. And then another idea came to me.
I had a brother in Chicopee Falls who owned manufactories–cotton, or sugar, or A.A. sheetings, or something in the commercial line. lie was vulgarly rich, and therefore reverenced art. The artistic temperament of the family was monopolized at my birth. I knew that Brother James would honor my slightest wish. I would demand from him a position in cotton, sugar, or sheetings for William Trotter–something, say, at two hundred a month or thereabouts. I confided my beliefs and made my large propositions to William. He had pleased me much, and he was ragged.
While we were talking, there was a sound of firing guns–four or five, rattlingly, as if by a squad. The cheerful noise came from the direction of the cuartel, which is a kind of makeshift barracks for the soldiers of the republic.
“Hear that?” said William Trotter. “Let me tell you about it.
“A year ago I landed on this coast with one solitary dollar. I have the same sum in my pocket to-day. I was second cook on a tramp fruiter; and they marooned me here early one morning, without benefit of clergy, just because I poulticed the face of the first mate with cheese omelette at dinner. The fellow had kicked because I’d put horseradish in it instead of cheese.
“When they threw me out of the yawl into three feet of surf, I waded ashore and sat down under a palm-tree. By and by a fine-looking white man with a red face and white clothes, genteel as possible, but somewhat under the influence, came and sat down beside me.
“I had noticed there was a kind of a village back of the beach, and enough scenery to outfit a dozen moving-picture shows. But I thought, of course, it was a cannibal suburb, and I was wondering whether I was to be served with carrots or mushrooms. And, as I say, this dressed-up man sits beside me, and we become friends in the space of a minute or two. For an hour we talked, and he told me all about it.
“It seems that he was a man of parts, conscientiousness, and plausibility, besides being educated and a wreck to his appetites. He told me all about it. Colleges had turned him out, and distilleries had taken him in. Did I tell you his name? It was Clifford Wainwright. I didn’t exactly catch the cause of his being cast away on that particular stretch of South America; but I reckon it was his own business. I asked him if he’d ever been second cook on a tramp fruiter, and he said no; so that concluded my line of surmises. But he talked like the encyclopedia from ‘A–Berlin’ to ‘Trilo–Zyria.’ And he carried a watch–a silver arrangement with works, and up to date within twenty-four hours, anyhow.