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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59724 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Cover art]
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: ...stood with arms interlocked and heads touching as
+their voices soared in the grand finale.]
+
+
+
+
+  _The Baritone's Parish_
+
+  _or_
+
+  "_All Things to all Men_"
+
+
+
+  _By_
+
+  _James M. Ludlow_
+
+
+
+  _Fleming H. Revell Company_
+  _New York  Chicago  Toronto_
+  _MDCCCXCVI_
+
+
+
+
+  Copyright, 1896, by
+  FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY.
+
+
+
+
+  BOOKS BY
+  JAMES M. LUDLOW,
+  D.D., Litt.D.
+
+
+THE CAPTAIN OF THE JANIZARIES.
+
+A Story of the Times of Scanderbey, and the Fall of Constantinople.
+
+
+A KING OF TYRE.
+
+Contrasted Scenes of Jewish and Phoenician Life, 400 B.C., woven into
+romance.
+
+
+THAT ANGELIC WOMAN.
+
+A Story from High Life To-day.
+
+
+A MAN FOR 'A THAT; OR, "MY SAINT JOHN."
+
+A Story of City Life among the Lowly.
+
+
+THE AGE OF THE CRUSADES.
+
+Life in the XI. and XII. Centuries.  _In preparation_.
+
+
+
+
+  THE BARITONE'S PARISH; OR,
+  "ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN"
+
+
+
+The pulpit and the choir gallery are closely related in our city
+churches.  It is, however, a sad fact that the "sons of the prophets"
+and the "sons of Korah" usually know but little of one another; and
+this is to the loss of both.  To the musicians the minister often seems
+a recluse, and the clergyman comes to look upon his choir as a band of
+itinerant minstrels.
+
+It is therefore very refreshing to note that between the pastor of St.
+Philemon's, the Rev. Dr. Wesley Knox, and Mr. Philip Vox, there sprang
+up an intimacy almost from the day when the new baritone sang his first
+solo.  It was Shelley's "Resurrection," which had been rendered as an
+offertory after one of the doctor's finest efforts at an Easter sermon.
+
+Deacon Brisk, the chairman of the music committee, met the preacher at
+the chancel-rail within fifteen seconds after the benediction had been
+pronounced; before the sexton could deliver a message that a
+parishioner was in momentary expectation of death, and required the
+pastor's immediate attendance; before Lawyer Codey had adjusted his
+silk hat like a falcon on his wrist preparatory to his stately march
+down the middle aisle; and even before the soprano had adjusted her
+handsome face and bonnet over the front of the choir gallery to inspect
+the passers-out.
+
+Deacon Brisk was like most music committee-men in that he knew little
+about the musical art; but he was a hustler in getting the worth of his
+money in whatever job he undertook.  Rubbing his hands in
+self-congratulation upon the new baritone's engagement, he delivered
+himself of a panegyric which he had spent the time of the closing
+prayer in composing:
+
+"I tell you, doctor, Vox was a catch.  Why, he sang
+
+  "'In slumber lay the brooding world
+    Upon that glorious night,'
+
+so sweetly that you could almost hear the stars twinkle through the
+music; and when he struck
+
+  "'Let heaven's vaulted arches ring,'
+
+it seemed as if the sky were tumbling down through the church roof.
+That's great singing; eh, doctor?  Cost only three hundred extra; worth
+a thousand on the church market!"
+
+"Yes," said the doctor, "I was pleased with the man's voice.  I am
+impressed with the idea that there is more than larynx and training in
+him.  There must be bigness and sweetness of soul behind those tones.
+Men can't sing that way to order.  Come, Brisk, introduce us when those
+young women get through talking to him.  I know I shall like him.  But
+I didn't know that you were so well up in musical judgment."
+
+"Why, doctor," rejoined Brisk, "it doesn't require that a man shall be
+an electrical engineer in order to invest successfully in a trolley."
+
+The dominie was a bachelor.  That was a pity; for a wife and family of
+ten could have homed themselves in his heart without detracting from
+the love he had for everybody else.  But having no wife to console him
+after the efforts of a hard Sunday, he was accustomed to ask one or
+another of the young men to come to the study and "curry him down," as
+he said, after evening service.
+
+Soon Vox came to occupy permanently this place of clerical groom.  The
+saintly folk who thought that the light burning until Sunday midnight
+in the sanctum was a sign of the protracted devotions of their pastor
+would, on one occasion at least, have been astounded to see the
+reality.  On the lounge was stretched the tired preacher, his feet on a
+pile of "skimmed" newspapers, reserved for the more thorough perusal
+they would never get.  In his lap lay the head of a big collie, whose
+eyes were fixed on the handsome face of his master.  Do dogs have
+religious instinct?  If so, this was a canine hour of worship, and the
+dog was a genuine mystic.  In some famous pictures of the adoration of
+the Magi less reverence and love are depicted on the faces than gleamed
+from beneath the shaggy eyebrows of the brute.
+
+By the study-table sat Vox, his big bushy head and square Schiller-cut
+face (except for the very unpoetic mustache) bending over a
+chafing-dish that sent up the incense of Welsh rarebit, the ingredients
+of which were the offering of the landlady's piety.
+
+"Doctor," said Vox, suddenly poising the spoon as if it were a baton,
+and dripping the melted cheese on to the manuscript of the night's
+sermon before the preacher had decided whether to put it into his
+"barrel" or his waste-basket--"doctor, do you know that I feel like a
+hypocrite, singing in a Christian church?"
+
+"You a hypocrite, Vox?  You couldn't act a false part any more than you
+could sing a false note without having the shivers go all through you."
+
+"Well," replied the singer, "that is just what is the matter with me.
+The shivers do go through me.  I am shocked at the moral discord I am
+making.  I am striking false notes all the time.  My life doesn't
+follow the score of my conscience.  I don't mean that I have committed
+murder or picked pockets, but it seems to me that I am breaking the
+commandment by bearing false witness about myself, making people think
+I am a saint, or want to be one, when the fact is that I put no more
+heart into my singing than the organ-pipe does."
+
+So saying Vox strode across the floor, holding a plate of rarebit as if
+it were a sheet of music, and jerked the toasted cheese off it as he
+seemed to jerk the notes off the paper when he sang.
+
+The doctor slipped from the lounge just in time to escape a savory
+splash which was aiming itself straight for the space between his vest
+and shirt-bosom.  The dog growled at the apparent attack upon his
+master, but was diverted from further warlike demonstrations by the bit
+of toast that fell under his nose.
+
+"Your dog is as good as a special policeman for you, doctor."
+
+"Yes, he defends me in more ways than one.  Do you know why I call him
+Caleb?  Caleb is Hebrew for 'God's dog.'  One day, when he was a pup, I
+forgot myself and dropped into a regular pessimist over some
+materialistic trash I was reading.  The pup seemed to notice my sour
+face, and put his paws upon my knees, lolled out his tongue, and
+searched me through and through with those bright eyes of his.  It was
+as much as to say, 'Master, you're a fool.  Look at me.  Didn't it take
+a God to make such a marvelous creature as I am?'  So I have called him
+Caleb ever since.  He tackles many a doubt for me, as he would any
+other robber."
+
+"I wish I had your faith, doctor," said Vox, putting his arm around
+Caleb's neck, and dropping another piece of toast into the waiting jaws.
+
+"Faith?  You have got it, Phil; only you don't know it."
+
+"Nonsense, doctor!  I suppose I believe the Creed; at least I don't
+disbelieve it.  But I don't feel these things.  That's what makes me
+say that I am a hypocrite to sing in a Christian church.  To-night I
+saw a woman crying during my solo.  I felt like stopping.  I never feel
+like crying, except when the notes cry themselves; then I confess to a
+moistening that goes all through me.  Now what right have I to make
+another feel what I don't feel myself?  I tell you, doctor, I am
+nothing but a bellowing hypocrite.  I'm going into opera, where it is
+all make-believe.  You know that I've had offers that would tempt a
+singing devil; and I believe I would be one if it were not for you."
+
+The doctor eyed his guest quizzically for a moment, then deliberately
+stretched himself again on the lounge.
+
+"Phil, that cheese has gone to your head.  I didn't think it was so
+strong.  Yet I can understand your mistake, for I used to talk that way
+to myself when I was as green and unsophisticated as you are.  I would
+scratch out the best sentences from my sermons, because I didn't feel
+all they meant, and would accuse myself of duplicity and cant because
+my experience was not up to my doctrine.  But what if it wasn't?  My
+brain isn't as big as the Bible.  My conscience isn't as true and vivid
+as Moses' was when he wrote down the Ten Commandments.  My heart isn't
+as tender as Christ's.  If a preacher says only what he is able to feel
+at the moment, there will be poor fodder for the parish.  So it is all
+through life.  People talk in society on a higher level than they
+habitually think.  They ought to.  That is what society is for--to tune
+up to key the sagging strings of common, humdrum life.  All politeness
+will cease when everybody acts on your theory.  We must not say
+'Good-morning' to a neighbor because at the moment we do not really
+care whether his day is going to be pleasant or not.  You must not take
+off your hat to a lady on the street, unless at the instant you are
+possessed of a profound respect for the sex.  Who was that composer
+that said that he never knew what a piece he had written until he heard
+Joseffy play it?  They asked Parepa to sing 'Coming through the Rye.'
+She said, 'Pshaw!  I've sung it threadbare.  I grind it out now as the
+hand-organ does.'  But she sang it, and brought down the house.  Why
+shouldn't she?  Feel!  Do you suppose that old violin feels anything of
+the joy that thrills through its fibers?  Shall I smash it for a
+hypocritical contrivance of wood and catgut?  Did I kick Dr. Cutt out
+of the study the other day because he didn't realize the good he had
+done me in reducing the swelling of my sprained ankle?  Yet you want me
+to let you kick yourself out of the church because you are not one of
+the 'angels of Jesus,' or haven't had all the joy of life crushed out
+of you by affliction, so that you are 'weary of earth,' as you sing!"
+
+The doctor warmed with his theme, until, standing up, he put his big
+hands on Vox's shoulders, and fairly shouted at him:
+
+"Sing, Phil!  Sing the brightest, happiest things that God ever
+inspired men to write.  But don't go croaking like an owl because you
+don't feel like a nightingale."
+
+"Well," said Vox, drawing a long breath, and letting it out in a
+whistle, "that cheese or something else has inspired you, doctor.  I
+never heard you so eloquent in the pulpit.  Why don't you preach at us
+that way?  Take us, as it were, one by one, and go through us, instead
+of preaching at humanity in the lump.  I confess that you have
+persuaded me about my Sunday work.  I am not going to leave it off.
+But now for the other six days in the week.  I can convince you that
+they are full of husks that do nobody any good.  Here's my diary.
+Isn't it contemptible for a man with even a singer's conscience?
+Monday, sung at Checkley's musicale for fifty dollars and a score of
+feminine compliments; Tuesday, in oratorio for one hundred dollars and
+some newspaper puffs, which were all wrong from a critical standpoint;
+Wednesday, moped all day because I couldn't sing--raw throat; Thursday,
+made believe teach a lot of tone-deaf fellows who can never sing any
+more than crows, and took their money for the imposition; Friday,
+ditto; Saturday, rehearsal.  Now who am I helping by peddling my
+chin-wares?"
+
+Vox stopped for lack of breath, as well as from the fact that his week
+had run out.
+
+"Go on," said the doctor, nonchalantly.  "You can certainly slander
+yourself worse than that.  What! no more?  Why, Vox, I know there are
+worse things about you than what you have told me."
+
+Vox colored.
+
+"You needn't blush so over it, Phil," and the doctor burst out laughing
+at him.  "I am not going to twit you on any disagreeable facts.  I
+didn't say I knew what those worse things were; but I do know that you
+are not such a sweet saint as to have only the faults mentioned.  If
+they were all, I would have a glass case made for you at once, put your
+bones up in leather, and place a basin of holy water at your door for
+passers-by to dip their fingers in.  But soberly, Phil, I think I can
+size you up, or down."
+
+"All right; try it.  You may find me so big a fool that it will take
+some time to get my full measurement."
+
+With that he stretched himself to his full height, and posed with his
+fingers in his vest-holes.  The attitude interested Caleb, who
+stretched himself out to almost corresponding dimensions horizontally
+along the floor, recovering his legs slowly to the accompaniment of a
+long and dismal whine.
+
+"He does that," said the doctor, "only when there is going to be a
+death in the neighborhood, or when I begin to read my sermons aloud in
+the study.  He knows I am going to lecture you.  Charge, Caleb!
+
+"Dearly beloved Vox! you have two first-class deficiencies.  First, a
+purposeless life.  You happen to be doing good with that wonderful
+voice of yours; but that is nothing to your credit.  You can't help
+cheering people when you wag your jaws any more than Caleb can help
+being a comfort to me when he wags his tail.  You didn't study music
+for the sake of helping anybody, but only because music gave you a
+pleasurable means of getting a livelihood.  So you have no
+soul-satisfaction in your profession, for all you are succeeding so
+grandly in it.  You are like that piece of music which you said was a
+failure, because, though there were some fine harmonies in it, it had
+no theme, no prevailing idea, no musical purpose."
+
+"That's me," said Vox, _sotto voce_, holding his head in his hands.  "I
+know that I am a mere medley, part sacred, part profane, and both parts
+played by the devil!  Go on."
+
+"Stop your pessimism," rejoined the doctor.  "That poetic head of yours
+reminds me that Schiller in the 'Bell' gives utterance to the same idea
+I am trying to beat into you."
+
+"The Bell?  That's me, too; all brass and clapper!" grumbled Vox,
+twisting Caleb's ears until the brute whined.
+
+The doctor, not heeding either the singer's soliloquy or the brute's,
+quoted in oratorical style:
+
+  "'So let us duly ponder all
+    The works our feeble strength achieves;
+  For mean, in truth, the man we call
+    Who ne'er what he completes conceives.
+
+  And well it stamps our human race,
+    And hence the gift to understand,
+  That man within the heart should trace
+    Whate'er he fashions with the hand.'"
+
+
+Vox groaned.  "That's rather heavy poetry for creatures of our caliber,
+isn't it, Caleb?  But I guess that I catch on.--It means the same as
+the line of the hymn you gave out to-night, doctor;" and Vox sang:
+
+  "'Take my voice, and let me sing
+  Always, only, for my King.'
+
+"That is, if I'm a bell, I should be one on purpose, whether a
+church-bell, or a door-bell, or only 'God's dog,' to growl"--patting
+Caleb.  "But what is that second thing I lack?  Since you've taken the
+contract to make me over, I want you to be thorough with the job."
+
+"The second thing you need," said the doctor, "is in some way to be
+made to see that you are doing good.  From your perch in the gallery
+you don't get a glimpse into the people's hearts.  I couldn't preach if
+I didn't go among the people during the week, and get the encouragement
+of knowing that I had helped somebody."
+
+"Yes," said Vox, "I've heard Joe Jefferson say that he couldn't act
+worth a cent if the people didn't applaud.  I beg your pardon, doctor,
+for comparing the pulpit with the stage.  But go on with your lecture."
+
+"Oh, you've knocked the lecture out of my head with your nonsense,
+Phil."
+
+"But you knocked it pretty well into mine.  I'd like to see somebody
+I've helped.  Show him up."
+
+"Humph!" grunted the doctor, and, after a moment's silence, said
+abruptly, "Phil, will you go with me to-morrow night?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Leave that to me."
+
+"That's a blind sort of an invitation, doctor.  But, of course, I will
+go anywhere you want me to.  But what is it?  Some holy Sorosis?  That
+reformed theater you talk about?  Any charge for admittance, or
+collection?  Of course, going with a distinguished clergyman I shall
+have to appear in swallow-tails and arctic shirt-front."
+
+"Not a bit of it, Phil; your oldest clothes, so that you will look just
+as mean as you say you feel; then, for once, you can't accuse yourself
+of being a hypocrite."
+
+
+There was a motley crowd in the front room of a Bowery twenty-cent
+lodging-house.  The room was the parlor, but the occupants called it
+the "deck," in distinction from the rest of the house, which was filled
+with bunks.  There were hard old soakers in a periodical state of
+repentance; or, to speak more scientifically, in that state of
+gland-moistening that comes after a certain amount of poor beer has
+permeated the system.  There were young prodigals, in there for the
+night because they had no money for a night's carousal elsewhere.
+There was a sprinkling of honest men, thankful for even this refuge
+from the sleety streets.  There were some two hundred pieces of the
+great human wreck made by the hard times, which were beached in Brady's
+Harbor, as the place was called.
+
+The usual hubbub had calmed while a story-teller, who sat on the edge
+of a table, and whose slouch-hat and high ulster collar did not
+altogether conceal the genial face of Dr. Knox, entertained the crowd
+with old army yarns, which, as usual with such literature, were taken
+largely from the apocryphal portion of our national annals.
+
+"Bully for you!  Give us another!" was the encore, emphasized with the
+rattle of backgammon-boards and boot-heels.
+
+"Haven't any more; but I have a friend here who will bring up the
+reserves in the way of a song."
+
+"Song, song!  Rosin your larynx, old boy!" greeted the suggestion,
+while the crowd gathered closer about Vox, and several who had "turned
+in" for the night turned out of their bunks again, minus coats and
+boots.  A friendly slap on the back by something less than a ten-pound
+hand helped the singer to clear his throat.
+
+Vox gave them "O'Grady's Goat" and one or two other classics of the
+Tenderloin district, with the rapt appreciation of his audience.  Tom
+Moore's "Minstrel Boy," to the genuine old Irish melody, struck the
+heroic chord in the breasts of men most of whom were deserters from the
+real battle-fields of life.  Then Vox dropped into a lullaby.  The
+tender mother words given in his masculine tones seemed a burlesque as
+he began; but the deep bass took on the softness and sweetness of a
+contralto, and made one think, if not of a mother cooing to her baby,
+at least of some rough, great-hearted man who had found a lost child
+and was rocking it to sleep in his strong arms.  More than one greasy
+sleeve got into its owner's eyes before Vox ended.
+
+"An' 'aven't ye a Scotch sang, me laddie?" asked an old fellow,
+knocking the ashes from his pipe against the window-sill.
+
+"My Ain Countrie" followed.  As the music floated, the thick smoke of
+the room seemed to drift away.  The land of birds and beauty lay before
+eyes that for months and years had looked only upon the crowded misery
+of slumdom.  When the voice ceased the illusion continued for a while
+in spite of the picking sleet at the window-panes.
+
+At length the silence was broken by a voice that came from a distant
+corner of the room.  It repeated the last verse in tones as pure as
+those of Vox himself, though a high tenor in quality.  Some of the
+notes were broken by hiccups.
+
+Vox looked in amazement at the singer--a half-drunken youngish man
+curled nearly double in a chair which was tipped back against the wall.
+His battered derby and unscraped chin did not effectually disguise the
+handsome fellow beneath them.  He was like the Apollo Belvedere when
+first exhumed from the mud of Antium.
+
+"Who are you, my friend?" asked Vox, in as kindly a tone as his
+surprise allowed.
+
+"Friend? (hic) haven't got any friend," replied the man; and he struck
+up the verse that had just been rendered.  His voice was husky at
+first, but after a few notes it clarified itself, as brooks do in
+running.  His tones became marvelously sweet, touching the highest note
+without the slightest suggestion of falsetto.  It was a transcendent
+voice, one that might have once belonged to some spirit, and gone
+astray among men.  The singer went through the verse this time without
+hiccup or slur; but the instant he stopped the drunk resumed its sway.
+Down came the chair with a bump on to its front legs, which sent the
+man headlong into the arms of Vox, with whom he wanted to fight.
+
+"I won't fight you," said Vox, helping him back to his seat; "but I'll
+dare you to sing with me."
+
+"Sin' wi' you!  'Cept your challenge.  I can whip you with my--my
+tongue (hic) as bad as my wife she (hic) whipped me with her (hic)
+tongue."
+
+"What shall we sing, old boy?" inquired Vox, with that easy familiarity
+which showed that he had seen such customers before.
+
+  "Sin' a song o' sispence,
+  Pocket full o' rye,"
+
+sang the man.  "Say, what's the use o' havin' your pocket full o' rye
+(hic)?  'D rather have a belly full o' rye; wouldn't you (hic)?"
+
+"You've enough rye in you for to-night," said Vox.  "Come, pull the
+cork out of your throat, and let's have a song."
+
+Vox got a chair, and tipped it back by the side of the maudlin fellow,
+then struck up Mazzini's two-part song, "The Muleteers."  The stranger
+joined in.  Such singing was never heard before nor since in Brady's
+Harbor, nor, for that matter, in Carnegie Hall.  After a bar or two the
+men rose to their feet and stood with arms interlocked and heads
+touching as their voices soared in the grand finale.
+
+The noise brought in Brady, who said it was "galoreous," but for all
+that they'd have to "bolt up their chins," as it was past twelve
+o'clock, and the "perlice wasn't so easy on lodgin'-houses as they was
+on the swill-shops."
+
+"See here, Vox," said the doctor, "I am going home alone to-night.
+Find out your pal.  Chum him a bit.  A man with that voice has had
+culture.  Scrape the rust off him, and you will find something polished
+beneath, or I am no judge of human nature.  Take him for your parish,
+Phil."
+
+"A heathenish sort of a mission that," replied Vox, looking at the
+fellow, who was trying, as he said, to find his night-key to get his
+boots off with.  After a moment's hesitation, Vox added: "All right,
+doctor; you've had as hard a field with me, if it wasn't so dirty a
+one.  I'll take him for a sobering walk in the drizzle, and then get
+him into better quarters than he has here."
+
+Vox had his hands full with his job, and at times his arms full too.
+His companion insisted that the Bowery sidewalk, covered with sleet,
+was a toboggan-slide, and that he was tumbling off the sled.  What
+could Vox do with his protégé?  He couldn't walk him or slide him all
+night.  A policeman proposed to relieve him of his anxiety by taking
+them both to the station-house, but was persuaded not to perform this
+heroic exploit by the man's assurance that his pal's legs hadn't any
+snakes in them, and by Vox's demonstration that he could stand alone.
+Then Vox thought of the story of the good Samaritan, with rising
+respect for the priest that passed by on the other side.  Next, having
+got into the charity business, he envied the Samaritan at least his
+ass, "instead," as Vox soliloquized, "of making an ass of myself."  He
+thought of taking the fellow to some hotel, paying for his lodging, and
+hiring the clerk to see that he was properly sobered off in the
+morning; but concluded that, whatever might have been the case on the
+road to Jericho, there was no innkeeper on the Bowery whom he could
+trust with such a commission, or who would trust him to call in the
+morning and pay the bill.  He could take him back to Brady's Harbor, he
+thought; but when they turned about the man declared that he wouldn't
+walk up a toboggan-slide, and sat down on the sidewalk for another ride.
+
+The flash of a passing cab let a little light in upon his problem.
+Hailing the driver, with whose help he got his load into the vehicle,
+he told him to drive to No. -- Madison Avenue, where he had his own day
+quarters--elegant rooms, fitted up for his instruction of the
+fashionable "daughters of music" at six dollars an hour.  Sweezy, the
+janitor, was roused up, and with his assistance Vox was able to
+congratulate himself that he had gone "one better" on the good
+Samaritan, in that he had lodged his man in finer chambers.  He could
+not help laughing at the incongruousness of the snoring mass and the
+elegant divan on which it lay.  He thought of Bottom the weaver, with
+the ass's head, in the lap of Titania, and, as he piled the cushions so
+that the fellow would not tumble off, addressed him in the words of the
+fairy:
+
+  "Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed,
+    While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,
+  And stick musk roses in thy sleek smooth head,
+    And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy."
+
+But tears are near to laughter, and as Vox contemplated his completed
+work he had to sit down a moment and cry.
+
+"It's a hard sight, sir," said Sweezy, "but bless you, Mr. Vox, the
+best of us has just sich among our closest friends.  I wish, sir, as
+how it was my own boy, Tommy, you had found the night."  And Sweezy
+cried too.
+
+Sweezy promised to take an early look at the man in the morning when he
+turned on the steam heat.  Vox went away to his boarding-house around
+the corner, vexed at the doctor for getting him into such a scrape, yet
+feeling down in the depths of his heart a satisfaction that more than
+half compensated him for his rough experience.  He fell asleep thinking
+of the good Samaritan, Bottom with the ass's head, Salvation Army
+lasses, and the Prohibition party; and, in the midst of a horrid dream,
+woke up imagining himself drunk and about to fall off a precipice.
+
+Before breakfast next morning he went around to the rooms to look after
+his charge.  The fellow had vamosed.  Sweezy was taking account of the
+furniture, and, though nothing was missing, and only a lamp-shade
+broken, declared that Vox had been victimized by a sharper:
+
+"A regular sharper, sir.  I thought so when you brought him in.  You
+ought to have knowed, sir, at a glance of him, what he was.  You've
+nussed, sir, a wiper in your bosom, and it's a mercy, sir, a mercy if
+he hasn't stung you no worse.  Is your pocket-book with you?  You ought
+at least to have took off his boots.  That spot on the cover will never
+come out without piecing."
+
+Vox contemplated the scene of his first charity exploit much as
+Bonaparte did the battle-field of Waterloo.  He had but one remark to
+make, which was:
+
+"Sweezy, don't you open your head about this business."
+
+Vox was not in an amiable mood when he met the doctor the next Sunday
+night.  He debated with him the inadvisability of decent people
+attempting to do slumming in the name of either religion or charity.
+He took the ground that the men who had themselves been rescued from
+the dens of the city were the only ones to do this work, as they train
+chetahs to hunt their own kind, and reformed thieves to become
+detectives.
+
+The doctor was half inclined to agree with him, not so much from
+conviction as from seeing the disgust the business had wrought in the
+mind of his friend.  Yet he excused himself for having led Vox into
+this experience on the ground that it is Christian duty to try to
+rescue the fallen, even though one does not accomplish anything.
+
+"I don't believe in your theory," said Vox, warmly.  "Let buzzards
+clean up the offal, but decent birds had better follow their sweeter
+instincts and keep away.  One thing is certain: I am not going to light
+on such moral carrion again."
+
+It was more than a month later when a respectable-looking stranger
+called upon Vox at his rooms.  The singer was engaged at the time
+arranging with a lady of the Four Hundred for the vocal culture of her
+daughters.  The visitor quietly awaited his leisure.  He was very
+genteel in appearance.  If one had been critical he might have thought
+that for such a stinging cold day an ulster would have been more
+suitable than the light fall overcoat he wore; and some might have
+observed that it was not the fashion that season to wear one's outer
+garment so short that the tails of the under-coat protruded.  But Vox
+was occupied with the stranger's face, which was exceedingly
+prepossessing.
+
+"Mr. Vox, I believe?"
+
+"My name, sir.  What can we do for each other?"
+
+"If I am not mistaken in the person, you once did me a great service."
+
+"You must be mistaken in the person," said Vox, "or else I have done it
+unconsciously, for I have no recollection of our having met."
+
+The man seemed puzzled.  "Possibly!" he said, slowly, as he scanned the
+singer's features.
+
+"Undoubtedly it is so," said Vox, and, seeing the man's perplexity,
+quickly added, in the most genial manner, "I am sorry it is so, for I
+should be glad to remember that I had served you.  Possibly I may do so
+in the future."
+
+The man hesitatingly began to withdraw.  Near the door he stopped, and,
+glancing about the room, half to himself and half as an apology to Vox,
+said, "Perhaps I have dreamed it.  But will you allow me to ask you a
+question?  Do you ever sing Mazzini's 'Muleteers'?"
+
+"Often," replied Vox.  "This, you mean," and he struck up the first
+line.  His visitor instantly joined him.  Vox stopped as quickly.
+
+"Good heavens!" he exclaimed.  "There are not two voices in the world
+like that."  Putting his hand on the man's shoulder, he peered into his
+face.  He could not recall the features, for the dim light in Brady's
+Harbor and the general slouch of the fellow that night had not really
+allowed him to see his face fully.  He imagined how this man might look
+with a week's beard on his chin, an untrimmed mustache covering his
+fine lips, and a dirty derby concealing his forehead.
+
+"Are you that man?"
+
+"I am; or, rather, I was that man.  But I hope--thanks to God and
+you--I am a very different man to-day.  I came to tell you my gratitude
+for a kindness which I had come to doubt one man ever rendered to
+another, and to apologize for my bestial treatment of you.  I was not a
+man then, Mr. Vox, only a beast; and, if you will believe me, I was not
+accountable, for I knew no better.  I have the vaguest remembrance of
+that night, as of many another night.  When I awoke at daylight in
+these rooms I had just sense enough to know that somebody had
+befriended me or played a trick on me, and to be ashamed to meet him,
+whoever he was.  So I sneaked away.  When I was sobered I couldn't
+recall the place.  But the 'Muleteers' rang in my ears, and your voice,
+every note, the tone and quality.  I had heard you sing elsewhere, and
+knew that but one voice, that of Vox, could have sung in that way.  And
+now it has taken a month for me to get up manliness enough to come and
+do the decent thing."
+
+"Don't talk in that way," said Vox, coloring as if he were receiving
+abuse instead of praise.  "I did nothing that any man would not do for
+another.  A man would be inhuman, a mere brute, not to--"
+
+Then he thought of what he had lately said to the doctor about buzzards
+and benevolent slummers, and he felt like a hypocrite again.
+
+"But don't talk about the past.  Let it go.  Isn't there something I
+can do for you now?" glancing at the man's threadbare coat.
+
+"Yes, there is one favor I would like very much to have you do me.  I
+have had a hard struggle with myself these few weeks.  I resolved that
+I would not drink again.  I have kept my purpose, but it has been like
+being tied to a wild beast in a cage.  More than once I have started
+out for a drink, but have come back without it.  It is hard to feel
+that you are all alone in the fight, that nobody knows of it.  It's
+like making that cane stand by itself."
+
+"But you have friends," said Vox, kindly.
+
+"Friends that have ceased to be friends are worse than strangers,"
+replied the man, in an abstracted sort of way.  "My friends don't
+believe in me; I've got to make new friends, who don't know how weak I
+am.  Perhaps they will believe in me for a while at least, and that
+will give a man some strength.  But to be all alone in a fearful
+struggle!  Oh, it's the loneliness that takes all the heart out of one.
+You know how one voice steadies another in singing.  Drunk as I was
+when I sang with you, I believe I sang every note correctly; but alone
+I couldn't have rendered three notes true.  I want you to let me rest
+for a while on your confidence, your good wishes, Mr. Vox; and to let
+me drop in once in a while, just to tell you that I am all right yet."
+
+"My good fellow, you can come, and you can stay with me just as much as
+you want to," said Vox; and for all that he knew that this was a very
+rash thing to say to a stranger, he would have resented any one's
+telling him so.
+
+"No," replied the man, "I shall not intrude upon you; but may I ask you
+to keep this pledge I have written?  The paper is crumpled; that's
+because I have taken it out so often when the temptation was pretty
+strong.  It was something like a friend; and I could say to it, 'You
+see I have kept faith with you, bit of paper, and I will.'  So I would
+start out on another campaign.  But if you will keep it for me I will
+feel better.  I can think then that somebody knows what I am doing."
+
+Vox took the paper.  It was written in fine penmanship, and signed
+"Charles Downs."
+
+"Downs?  Charles Downs?  Not Downs who used to be in the Mendelssohn?
+The tenor at St. Martha's?  And you are speaking of being grateful to
+me for a common act of humanity!  Why, man, I owe more to you than I
+can ever repay.  It was hearing you sing once that gave me my first
+ambition to be a singer.  I began to save my money that night that I
+might take lessons.  I even tried to find you; but you had gone, nobody
+knew where."
+
+"I was on the road to hell then," said Downs.  "Thank Heaven you didn't
+find me; I might have injured you by my example.  But no, I think not.
+You were not inclined my way."
+
+The two men sat in silence for a few moments.  Thought was becoming
+oppressive.  Vox was of that mercurial disposition that cannot keep
+solemn long at a time.  His vent-valves worked easily.
+
+"Come," said he, "let's try the old song."
+
+If he had deliberated he would not have chosen a reminder of the past.
+But there was something irresistible about Vox, and Downs joined with
+him as they rollicked through the "Muleteers."
+
+Sweezy stood in the doorway listening.
+
+"That," said Vox, "is the greatest compliment a man can have.  Sweezy
+there has no more music in him than a horse; but see! we have woven the
+spell about him.  I believe we do sing well together.  What couldn't we
+do if we would practise together?  Now I will keep this pledge for you,
+Downs, if you will promise to come every day at twelve and sing with
+me.  We will lunch together, and I will see that you don't get a drop
+to drink."
+
+"I can't."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I have engaged to go to work."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Enlisted."
+
+"What!  Enlisted?  To throw yourself away again?"  Vox gripped the arms
+of Downs as if he were a prisoner.  "Where have you enlisted?"
+
+"In the street-sweeping brigade."
+
+"Great guns!" said Vox.
+
+"No, great brooms!" replied his friend.  "I need outdoor work; there I
+will get it.  I need to keep away from other men; and on the street I
+will be left to my own company as nicely as if I were a hermit.
+Besides, there will be a poetic fitness in one who has lived so dirty a
+life as I have giving himself up to the work of cleaning things.  Then,
+too, I can see life; and that will be interesting.  Nothing is so
+fascinating to one who has had my experience as the sight of a crowd,
+if only one can himself keep out of it."  With that Downs sang:
+
+  "'Hurry along, sorrow and song;
+    All is vanity under the sun.
+  Velvet and rags: so the world wags,
+    Until the river no more shall run.'"
+
+
+Vox readily upset the street-sweeping project by showing Downs how he
+could be helpful to him in certain musical matters he had on foot, and
+even guaranteed to turn over to him several of his pupils who were
+trying to develop tenor voices.
+
+The next Sunday night after service the doctor took the singer's arm at
+the church door with his usual chirpy invitation, "Come, Phil, don't
+let Mrs. Cupp's pepper and mustard get cold, or the cheese get away
+from us."
+
+"Walk around the block with me first, doctor; I've got something to
+tell you which I'd rather you would hear when you can't see my face."
+
+"Why, what have you been doing now that you are ashamed of, Phil?  Oh,
+I know.  You have proposed to the soprano, or been perpetrating some
+other trick on your bachelor friends.  I'll forgive you at the start,
+however, because"--lowering his voice until there was a frog in
+it--"because I know something about--but it's none of your business,
+Phil, so I won't tell you anything about it.  No disappointment, my
+boy?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then count on me to marry you for nothing, and throw in the
+benediction besides."
+
+"It's no love-affair," said Vox.  "Cupid might as well break his arrows
+on a rhinoceros as shoot at me.  It's that drunken fellow.  I've been
+awfully taken in."
+
+"What! has he turned up?  Fleeced you again?"
+
+"Well, not exactly fleeced me, but scorched me; he has heaped coals of
+fire on my head.  I want to take back all I have said against him, and
+everything I said against slumming."
+
+He then related what the reader knows.  Having worked off the steam of
+his extra emotion, he accompanied the doctor to the study.  Here Vox
+gave a description of his new friend: "a well-educated man, a splendid
+all-round musician, a fine business man; has a wife who won't live with
+him, nor even let him see her--he has treated her so outrageously; but
+he loves her tenderly.  He was once employed by Silver & Co., who
+thought so much of him that they were making proposals for his entering
+the firm when they began to suspect his rum habit.  His name is Downs."
+
+"Downs?  With Silver & Co.?"  The names set the doctor thinking.  At
+length, coming out of his reverie, he picked up from the study-table a
+piece of marble, a bit of a fluted column he had found amid the ruins
+of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus.  He traced on it with the pen the
+word D-o-w-n-s.  Then he rubbed the word out with his finger; but a
+black spot was left that he could not get off the marble.
+
+"There! that's the way I would spoil the job if I should try to restore
+the ruins of Downs.  Phil, stick to that man.  I'll leave him to you.
+He's your parish.  With your voice and his love of music, you ought to
+make him follow you as the rocks followed Orpheus.  That's the meaning
+of the old legend--you can sing the hardest wretch into heaven.  Try
+it, Phil."
+
+The doctor spent a half-hour next day in Silver & Co.'s office.  Just
+what he and Silver talked about we cannot say; but Silver was overheard
+to remark, as the doctor was leaving, "My wife thinks the world of the
+little woman, and when those two women are satisfied with his
+reformation, all right."
+
+
+There never was a finer program for a musicale than that which, some
+six months later, packed the upper Carnegie Hall with the elite of the
+music-lovers of New York.  Vox was the drawing card, for he had become,
+if not the celebrity, at least the fad, of the season.  "Oh, Vox! he's
+just splendid!" was as familiarly heard as the clicking of afternoon
+tea-cups everywhere between Flushing and Orange Mountain.  On the
+occasion referred to he had achieved a sevenfold encore for one
+performance.  To the surprise of everybody, however, when he appeared
+to acknowledge the ovation, he led another man with him to the
+footlights; one who might have been his twin brother, for there was
+just that sort of difference between them that ought to exist between a
+tenor and a baritone--the former a little slighter in form and
+features.  Curiosity was not allowed to get to the whispering-point
+when they rendered the Graben-Hoffman duet, "I feel thy angel spirit."
+
+The applause was furious.  Nothing like it had been heard for six
+months outside of Brady's Harbor.  Vox gracefully stepped a little to
+the rear.  The audience caught his meaning, and the room rang with the
+cry of "Tenor! tenor!"
+
+Vox slipped to the piano, and played the chords of "Salva di Mora" from
+Gounod's "Faust."  And how grandly Downs sang it!  If Deacon Brisk had
+been there, even he, with his "star-twinkling" and "roof-splitting"
+metaphors, could not have described it.
+
+"If Faust sang like that," said an elderly gentleman in the audience to
+his wife, "no wonder he won the heart of Marguerite."  And he pressed
+his wife's hand, which somehow had got into his.
+
+"Hush, John," replied the woman.  Then she put a handkerchief to her
+eyes instead of her lorgnette.
+
+"He's all right again," said the man, and he squeezed his wife's arm,
+and nudged her nervously.
+
+"John, don't!"  And the woman glanced at the woman next to her, as if
+that individual might care what cooing these old doves indulged in.
+
+This other woman wore a half-veil, one of those vizors with which women
+hide their beauty or their freckles from the gaze of the curious.  Not
+seeing her face, one cannot say what was transpiring behind the veil;
+but the veil shook as if some convulsive emotion might be working
+itself out, or struggling to keep itself in.
+
+When Downs left the stage Vox hugged him as a bear would her cub.
+"Come," said he, "let's go out in the room and talk to the Silvers."
+
+"The Silvers here!" exclaimed Downs, in consternation.
+
+"They were here, but I believe they have left.  Yes, their seats are
+empty.  Now that's too bad."
+
+"No wonder they left when they saw me on the stage.  Vox, you know that
+they know all about me.  They would kick me off their doorstep if I
+were a beggar.  You've disgraced yourself by bringing me here, as I
+told you you would.  The Silvers, of all the people in the world!  I
+wouldn't have sung if I had suspected their being here."
+
+"Well, you did sing.  Thank God for it, too," replied his friend.
+
+The next Sunday night at the hobnob Vox tried to make a report to the
+doctor of the progress of his protégé.
+
+"Oh, he sang magnificently!  I tell you, that man is reinstated in this
+community.  Do you know, doctor, the Silvers were both there?"
+
+"Indeed!" ejaculated his friend, pulling Caleb's tail, and laughing at
+the dog's surprise.  Then he pulled it again, and laughed at the dog's
+jump as if he had never seen such antics before.
+
+"See here, doctor, you don't seem to care about Downs.  That dog is
+more to you than a human being.  But you've got to listen to me."
+
+Vox got rapturous in his account of Downs's success, and ended with, "I
+couldn't help wishing that his wife had been there to see
+him--handsome, healthy, true man in every feature and tone of voice.
+She would have had to fall in love again, or I'll forswear all faith in
+the sex."
+
+The doctor rolled himself on the sofa in such glee that the dog
+accepted his master's antics as a challenge to more of his own, and
+pounced upon him.
+
+"What's the matter with you now?" asked the singer, in amazement.
+
+"Why, his wife was there," roared the doctor.
+
+"The thunder she was!"  Vox jumped up as if he had been sitting in an
+electric chair.
+
+Caleb growled to hear such language in the presence of his patron saint.
+
+"I beg your pardon, doctor, but how do you know she was there?"
+
+"Why, I suppose she was, because Mrs. Silver promised to go and take
+her to hear _you_ sing."  And the doctor laughed so loud and
+hilariously that the collie crept under the lounge, as if in fear of
+some more serious explosion.
+
+"And you have been playing the hypocrite with me all the time?" Vox was
+nettled.  "If I had known that I wouldn't have sung a note, nor would I
+have let Downs do it, either."
+
+"Yet you just said you wish she had been there.  Don't you see that had
+you known you would have spoiled your own job?" said the doctor,
+working out of his hysteria.  "But, Phil, I'm hungry with preaching and
+laughing at you.  Light up the chafing-dish, put in plenty of red
+pepper, and when your cockles are warmed you may read this," tossing
+him a note.
+
+Vox read:
+
+
+"DEAR DOCTOR: When I heard Downs sing the other night, I felt sure that
+your judgment of him was correct, and that he is a new man.  Mrs. Downs
+has been with him for several days.  God bless that little woman!  She
+has borne up bravely during her trial; never lost heart; and now she
+has her reward.  Of course Downs has his old place with us.  I want to
+know that Mr. Vox.  Bring him around to dine with us Wednesday night.
+If my wife can persuade them, we will have Mr. and Mrs. Downs too.
+
+  "Yours faithfully,
+        "JOHN SILVER."
+
+
+While Vox was reading the note Caleb came out from under the lounge,
+and putting his head in the singer's lap, gazed as worshipfully into
+his face as he had ever gazed into that of his master.
+
+
+
+* * * * * * * *
+
+
+
+  THE
+  Looking Upward Booklets
+
+12mo, decorated boards, each 30 cents
+
+1. DID THE PARDON COME TOO LATE?  By Mrs. Ballington Booth.
+
+2. COMFORT PEASE, AND HER GOLD RING.  By Mary E. Wilkins.
+
+3. MY LITTLE BOY BLUE.  By Rosa Nouchette Cary.  Illustrated.
+
+4. A WASTREL REDEEMED.  By David Lyall.  Illustrated.
+
+5. A DAY'S TIME-TABLE.  By E. S. Elliott, author of "Expectation
+Corner," etc., etc.  Illustrated.
+
+6. BROTHER LAWRENCE.  The Practice of the Presence of God the Best Rule
+of Holy Life.  Illustrated.
+
+7. THE SWISS GUIDE.  An Allegory.  By Rev. C. H. Parkhurst.
+
+8. WHERE KITTY FOUND HER SOUL.  By Mrs. J. H. Walworth.
+
+9. ONE OF THE SWEET OLD CHAPTERS.  By Rose Porter.  Illustrated.
+
+10. THE BARITONE'S PARISH.  By Rev. J. M. Ludlow, D.D.
+
+11. CHILD CULTURE; or, the Science of Motherhood.  By Hannah Whitall
+Smith.
+
+12. RISEN WITH CHRIST.  By Rev. A. J. Gordon, D.D.
+
+13. RELIQUES OF THE CHRIST.  A Poem.  By Rev. Denis Wortman, D.D.
+
+14. ERIC'S GOOD NEWS.  By the author of "Probable Sons."  Illustrated.
+
+15. YE NEXTE THYNGE.  By Eleanor Amerman Sutphen.  Illustrated.
+
+16. SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHING.  Two Addresses.  By R. C. Ogden and J. R.
+Miller, D.D.
+
+17. SAMUEL CHAPMAN ARMSTRONG.  By Robert C. Ogden.  With Portrait.
+
+18. BUSINESS.  A Plain Talk with Men and Women Who Work.  By Amos R.
+Wells.
+
+
+
+Fleming H. Revell Company
+
+  NEW YORK: 112 Fifth Avenue
+  CHICAGO: 63 Washington Street
+  TORONTO: 154 Yonge Street
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Baritone's Parish, by James M. Ludlow
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59724 ***