Life — December 3, 1898 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

- LIFE = OUR JAMES. By Rosert Aston STEVENSON. (This Story won the First Prize in Lure’s Short Story Competition.) NTIL I managed to persuade Kitty to investigate my so- cial plane, she had never displayed any interest in anything solvent that lived west of Third Ave- nue. When ‘she graduated from col- lege she went in for scientificslumming, and developed the- ories about the masses, Her resi- dence in one of the settlements on the east side resulted in a thesis on the ‘Social Value of Bathtubs in Tenements,” which they say is a valuable contribution to science, in that it proves conclusively that bathing facilities in tenements will not be effective until the masses are educated to the point where they will not welcome the tubs merely as convenient receptacles for coal, I haven't read the thesis, but I went to see Kitty get her Ph.D, at the University. She was stunning in her mortar-board and black gown, but she has since told me that the gown she wore a few months later, when old Dr. Brown and I gave her a Mrs., was much more becoming. and worthy of preservation. After the wedding, Kitty gave up fourteen of her downtown socials and clubs, She devoted, however, a great deal of energy to my instruction regard- ing the practical benefits of applied Slumology, but my first real lesson— one in intelligent philanthropy—was given one afternoon in Sixth Avenue, I had given a nickel to one of my bachelor-day clients, an old blind man with blue spectacles and a trayful of pencils, on which rested a placard ad- verlising the awful results to the bearer of a too close intimacy with dynamite. “Don’t you know better than to give money to beggars?” sighed Kitty, with a pained expression. “Why not?” Tasked. ‘That old boy isn’t a beggar. He's blind. He's trying to make an honest living, I didn’t take the pencils; they’re always crumbly,but that makes no difference, He's one of your deserving poor,” “Deserving fiddlesticks!” lectured Kitty. ‘*That man has two good eyes and a bank account. I believe he owns a flat in Harlem besides. We investi- gated him when I was in the settlement, He used to follow a woolly dog on lower yearly to the society that makes a busi- ness of running down men who make a profession of avoiding work. I have since learned to be very suspicious of appealing hard luck. I avoid the totally blind, and men with shoestrings and no extremities worth mentioning. At dinner one evening Kitty an- nounced that she had found a deserving tramp. ~ Kitty bad found the tramp at the area-gate.” Broadway, but it didn't pay after we notified the police. Then the old rascal took out a license to sell lead pencils, and came uptown with civilization and stupids like yourself, who don’t know the deserving poor when you see them. Iv’s too bad they didn’t have chairs in Sociology when you went to college.” Of course I felt like a fool, and ac- cepted Kitty’s advice to contribute “Where is he?” I asked. “Down in the basement eating his supper,” she answered, with an I’m all- right inflection. ** He's a jewel.” “You'd better tie a string to him and exhibit him at one of your parlor con- ferences,” I suggested. ‘‘ By the way, have you investigated him?” I wanted to show Kitty that I had learned some- thing. comicbooks.com