Argosy, Vol. 1 (December 9, 1882) — page 83: what you’re looking at

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

76 THE ARGOSY. beggar was right. Half an hour later I was glad to live; and when he came to me I was quite ready to thank him for what he had done. We had a long talk about my future, and he urged me to go to England. “You can be an Englishman; indeed, you are one already. Your family must have rich and powerful friends there ; and there you can make a career.” But I would not give my assent. I had no plans, and was in the mood to make none. “TI will see,” I answered. ‘‘ I am a dead man; and the dead are more the concern of Providence than the living. I will drift for a while in the back waters,” and I shrugged my shoulders. . I made no plans. That night I left Berlin, and as the train whirled me southward [I tried with resolute hand to make the barrier that shut out the old life so bullet proof that not even the stinging thoughts of impotent remorse end regret could wound me. I was only human, however, and barely twenty three, and the sorrow of my loneliness was like a cankered wound. I felt like a shipwrecked derelict waif on the wide, callous sea of stranger humanity. And like a derelict I drifted for a while, and accident determined a course for me. At Frankfort, where I stayed a considerable time a chance meeting in a hotel gave me as a companion an actor, and in his room at the theater one night he asked me if I would care to join his company. All life was to be but a burlesque for me, and as the training might be useful, I consented. I threw myself into the mimic business with ardor, and stayed with the company four years. Under the guise of professional enthusiasm I became a past master in the art of making up, and altered my appearance completely. I changed my voice until it was two full tones lower than by nature, and I practised an expression and accent altogether unlike my own. Under the tuition of a clever old acrobat, who had deformed himself until he was past work, I changed entirely the character of my walk and carriage. 1 cultivated assiduously marked peculiarities of gesture and manner; and by constamt massage, even the contour of my features was altered, and lines and wrinkles were brought out with results that astonished me. After some three vears of this [ tested these results by a visit to the only man who knew me to be alive—Dr. Mein. I wished him to know what I was doing, but was not willing to trust the secret to paper. I went to him in my professional name, Heinrich Fischer, and consulted him for half an hour about an imaginary complaint, without his having an idea of my identity. Once or twice he looked at me with an expression of rather doubting inquiry; but he did not know me. He wrote me a prescrip- tion, and rising to go I laid a fee on his table. Then I lingered on, and he glanced at me in polite surprise. I smiled; and he fixed his little glittering eyes on mine steadily, as if I were a lunatic. ‘‘ Have you any more bacilli to spare, doctor? ” I whispered. A start, a quick frown, and the closing together of his eyebrows showed his surprise. Then he wheeled me round to the light. ‘“ Are you 2?” He stopped short, his face alight with doubt and inter- rogation. ECOMmicooolkKks CO