Puck — March 26, 1879 — page 11: what you’re looking at

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

‘BLOOD AND THUNDER. (Richard Dowling in Belgravia.) N the twenty-first of February, 1857, Michael Grame, being then twenty-eight years of age, married, and an engine- driver by trade, met with an accident whereby he was permanently disabled. As he was tak- ing his engine out of the shed in the morning a pipe burst, a fragment of the pipe struck his left knee with such violence that when dis- charged from hospital he limped out with a stiff leg, and carried the assurance that his knee would be stiff all his life. The steam had so scalded the right side of his face, that cheek, forehead and chin were deeply scarred, and, worst of all the right eye was so injured that the orb had to be removed. After the ac- cident a flaw was discovered in the pipe which had burst. Several complaints had been made of the engine before; the locomotive superin- tendent was to blame, and through him the company. So, upon Michael Grame signing a document discharging the company of all fur- ther responsibility with regard to himself and this accident, they handed his solicitor a check for four hundred and fifty pounds as compen- gation for the injury sustained by him. f “Die accident was a very sad one, and awoke a good deal of pity for Michael Grame. He had been married just a year to the young daughter of a small shopkeeper in a little De- vonshire town, She was still short of twenty. They were both young, and by and by there would, the neighbors and friends said sympa- thetically, be still younger beings looking to them for bread, and here were his trade and his strength taken from him in one moment, and at such an important period of his life. If the accident had occurred before his marriage, or when his future family were grown up and in the way of doing for themselves, it would be so much easier to bear. Death would have been Preferable. That would have left his wife free, with four hundred and fifty pounds, if not more, in hand, and no dread of future responsibilities. What good was four hundred and fifty pounds to them as they were? Nei- ther had the least faculty for business, or know- ledge of it. Supposing no children came, the money might last them seven years; but in seven years he would be no more than in his prime, and she still young, and then what should they do? Much talk took place among the neighbors and friends, In the end, a further sum of seventy pounds reached them; fifty from a friendly society, and twenty the result of a subscription among the engine-drivers and stokers of the company. Michael Grame took advice of the sccretary of the Independent Metropolitan Engine- Drivers’ Association, and invested five hundred pounds in an annuity for his wife's life. ‘hus he was sure they would have forty pounds a‘ year during their joint lives, and she the same during her life, should he die first. He could get no more than thirty pounds a year on the two lives, and, as he put it, “ ‘Thirty pounds is neither here nor there for two people, but forty is something. It's queer if after a bit I can’t make a few shillings to keep myself and any little ones God may send us, and she'll have all the more for herself and them if I go first.” When 1877 came round it found Michael Grame’s worldly affairs much improved. He was now forty-cight years of age, still childless, and paid secretary of the Independent Metro- politan Engine-Drivers’ Association, Before the accident which made him blind of one eye and lame he had been clever and popular among his fellows. AS the years went on he had developed and improved mentally, and PUCK. had gathered to himself the admiration and confidence of the men around him. So that in 1873, the secretary dying, he got the secre- taryship with a weekly salary of three pounds, In 1877 there was no secretary of any branch of atrade’s union in London more trusted or respected than Michael Grame. He was low. sized, keen, energetic, pale, slight, light-bearded and bent. Over the cavity beneath the right eyebrow he wore a black glass to conceal the unpleasant void. Over the other eye he wore an ordinary convex clear glass, for already he was growing long-sighted in the remaining eye. The dark patch made by the one black glass lent his countenance a grotesque and whimsical appearance. Even those who ‘knew him best and were in the habit of meeting him daily could never fully divest their minds of the idea that the spectacles with the odd glasses were assumed for a joke, and that sooner or later Michael Grame would indicate the way in which the joke lay. When strangers met him they were always inclined to laugh, and gene- rally did smile, at the deliberate comicality of his face. But Michael Grame’s joke never came, his face never relaxed. In all London it would be hard to find one man whose views of life and things were so sincerely grave. In his youth he had been ardent and melancholic. His dreadful accident and years had tended to dis- cipline his enthusiasm, He was religious with- out using any special forms of religion, puri- tanical without a code, sincere out of his na- tural temperament, and grave out of an unform- ulated theory that men who are not grave must be rascals. For a man of his position and opportunities he was well informed. In speech and manner he was thoughtful and prudent. Now and then the fiery ardor of a reformer would break out in him, and for a few moments he would fill his listening fellows with wonder, and send them away mentally reeling under the weight of some startling novelty in thought. He would sit still and talk most cautiously for an hour, and then all at once, and just before departing, fling out some tremendous principle, or suggestion, or doubt, and then retire, leaving his astonished fellows gasping in the presence of some revolu- tionary principle which seemed to threaten all order that is, and to leave society once more in the chaos of barbarism, From the day of his appointment as secre- tary to the Independent Metropolitan Engine- Drivers’ Association the influence of thls man spread and grew. Incapacitattd himself from labor, and yet closely allied to his old compa- nions, his whole soul went into the work at his feet. ‘The duties of his office absorbed only a drop in the ocean of his activity. Hither and thither he wandered, among others of his kind, and those who, though not of his kind, were still alied to the branch of labor that he repre- sented, He was an apostle of progress and preached the nobility of the future. During the years intervening between 1857 and 1873 he had led a restless and unsettled life, now trying one thing, now another; suc- ceeding in picking up a few shillings a week, and giving all his spare time to reading in the line of his favorite study. All the sincerity of his nature had been wrapped up in the cir- cle of his reading. No natural outlet presented itself to the enthusiasm of his nature. Like an internal fire of earth, he was always wandering about in search of some vent for his pent-up activity, and never finding any more capacious crater than a fierce shout of approval at demo- cratic sentiments uttered in speeches by popu- lar leaders, or hisown furious and somewhat in- coherent attacks upon the system then govern- ing the regulation of labor. He did not side exactly with the republican element of the 43 country. He did not care in the least what the form of government, so long as the hard- working honest man got his rights. He was anti-employer and not anti-king; he had the most complete belief in his own theory, the most sincere conviction that he was right and all opposed to him not only wrong but wickedly and stubbornly wrong—wrong to the ruin of the individual, the country, and the vital prin- ciple of the Christian creed. Once invested with influence and power, as secretary to the Independent Metropolitan En- gine-Drivers’ Association, he found it necessary to curb the violence of his feelings for fear of causing mischief to others, and out of a belief that his words would largely and perhaps in- juriously affect the acts and fortunes of those around him, since to his words would be affixed a semi-official value, and he would seem to speak with the authority of the society. Early in the October of 1877 Michael Grame became gradually busier and busier day by day, until his home saw little or nothing of shim from early morning till late at night. He lived in one of the houses in that long road on the west side of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway, between Herne Hill and Coldharbor Lane. His absence from home at this time was par- ticularly trying to his wife, for, although still childless, there was at last, to the great joy of himself and his wife Helen, the prospect of a change in this state of things. Mrs. Grame was very far from strong, and those around her felt most anxious about her. Her married sister had promised to come a lit- tle later on, but up to the early part of October the household of the Grames consisted of Grame, his wife, and a young servant-girl not more than seventeen years of age, named Emily. It was very hard upon Mrs. Grame to sit up, often until after midnight, for him; nothing could persuade her to go to bed before he had shut up the house for the night. ‘To’sit up for him had been a habit of twenty years, and she could not put it away now, although it sorely taxed her strength, What added to the diffi- culties of her position, and gave her anxiety of mind to increase her distress of body, was that for the first time in all their:married life he had placed a limit to his confidences. When he came back late he made vague replies, When he went out early he made vague ex- cuses. Of nights he said merely he “could not get back earlier,” or ‘* business kept him.” Of mornings he “ wanted to be off early,” he “had a day full of work” before him. Once when he came home later than usual, she, being weak and full of disquietude on ac- count of him, reproached him with growing weary of an ailing wife. He went to her and sat down beside her and took her hand and stroked it softly. He pushed back the thin black hair from the faded weak face, and taking the face softly between his hands, kissed it, saying very gently but very firmly: “To-night I was at the London Gas Stokers’ Society, and they kept me very late, for the thing is of importance, and I am doing most of the work.” “What thing? what is of importance?” “Tt isasecret. I must not tell even you. I am arranging it all with them—with the com- mittees and secretaries. We are all bound to keep the matter private even from our wives.” “Then it must be a thing of no good—no good for the wives, anyway.” “Yes, it will be good for all working men and their'wives and families and fortunes, and,” he rose and drew himself up to the full height of his stunted figure, “‘ it was / first thought of it; Z, [tell you, I, Michael Grame, your hus- comicbooks.com