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The Helping Hand
by
“When we went to the garden–Jerry, his partner ner and myself–we sat up front. We could look over the crowd. It was a place for men only. The dozen tables were nearly all full, most of the seats being occupied by men from the mines–some of them wearing blue flannel shirts. But the crowd was orderly. The music made them so. The oldest daughter was only seventeen, but she looked twenty-three. She showed that she’d had enough experience in her life, though, to be gray. There was a tortured soul behind her music. Even when she played a ragtime tune she would repeat the same notes slowly and get a chord out of them that went straight to the heart. The men all bought rounds of drinks freely between the numbers, but they let them remain untasted; they drank, rather, the music.
“We listened for two hours. The music suited my mood. I was a long way from home. Most of the men there felt as I did. Twelve o’clock came, yet no one had left the garden. More had come. Many stood. All were waiting for the final number, which was the same every night, ‘Home, Sweet Home.’
“There is something more enchanting about this air than any other in the world. Perhaps this is because it carries one back when he once has ‘passed its portals’ to his ‘Childhood’s Joyland–Little Girl and Boyland.’ It reminds him of his own happy young days or else recalls the little ones at home at play with their toys. I know I thought of my own dear little tots when I heard the strain. How that girl did play the splendid old melody! I closed my eyes. The garden became a mountain stream, the tones of the violin its beautiful ripples– ripples which flowed right on even when the sound had ceased.
“‘Home, Sweet Home!’ I thought of mine. I thought of the girl’s–a beer garden!
“‘Boys,’ said I to Jerry and his partner, ‘I am going up to shake hands with that girl; I owe her a whole lot. She’s a genius.’ I went. And I thanked her, too, and told her how well she had played and how happy she had made me.
“‘I’m glad somebody can be happy,’ she answered, drooping her big, blue eyes.
“‘But aren’t you happy in your music?’ I asked.
“‘Yes,’ she replied in such a sad way that it meant a million nos.
“When I went back to my friends they told me the girl’s father was not of much account or otherwise he would send her off to a good teacher.
“‘Now, that’s going to take only a few hundred dollars,’ said I. ‘You are here on the spot and there surely ought to be enough money in the town to educate this girl. I can’t stay here to do this thing, but you can put me down for fifty.’
“Well, sir, do you know the people in the town did help that girl along. When the women heard what a traveling man was willing to do, they no longer barred her out because, for bread, she played a violin in a beer garden, but they opened their doors to her and helped her along. The girl got a music class and with some assistance went to a conservatory of music in Boston where she is studying today.”
Traveling men are not angels; yet in their black wings are stuck more white feathers than they are given credit for–this is because some of the feathers grow on the under side of their wings. Much of evil, anyway, like good, is in the thinking. It is wrong to say a fruit is sour until you taste it; is it right to condemn the drummer before you know him?
Days–and nights, too–of hard work often come together in the life of the road man. Then comes one day when he rides many hours, perhaps twenty-four, on the train. He needs to forget his business; he does. Less frequently, I wager, than university students, yet sometimes the drummer will try his hand at a moderate limit in the great American game.