00:00Gates of Imagination presents A Baby Tramp by Ambrose Bierce, read by Billy Dixon.
00:11If you had seen little Joe standing at the street corner in the rain, you would hardly
00:16have admired him. It was apparently an ordinary autumn rainstorm, but the water which fell
00:23upon Joe, who was hardly old enough to be either just or unjust, and so perhaps did
00:29not come under the law of impartial distribution, appeared to have some property peculiar to
00:35itself. One would have said it was dark and adhesive, sticky. But that could hardly be
00:42so, even in Blackburg, where things certainly did occur that were a good deal out of the
00:47common. For example, ten or twelve years before, a shower of small frogs had fallen, as is
00:54credibly attested by a contemporaneous chronicle, the record concluding with a somewhat obscure
00:59statement to the effect that the chronicler considered it good growing weather for Frenchmen.
01:05Some years later, Blackburg had a fall of crimson snow. It is cold in Blackburg when winter is
01:12on, and the snows are frequent and deep. There can be no doubt of it. The snow in this instance
01:19was of the color of blood and melted into water of the same hue, if water it was, not blood.
01:26The phenomenon had attracted wide attention, and science had as many explanations as there
01:32were scientists who knew nothing about it. But the men of Blackburg, men who for many years
01:39had lived right there where the red snow fell, and might be supposed to know a good deal about
01:44the matter, shook their heads and said something would come of it. And something did, for the next
01:51summer was made memorable by the prevalence of a mysterious disease, epidemic, endemic, or the
01:57Lord knows what, though the physicians didn't, which carried away a full half of the population.
02:04Most of the other half carried themselves away and were slow to return, but finally came back,
02:10and were now increasing and multiplying as before. But Blackburg had not since been altogether the
02:16same. Of quite another kind, though equally out of the common, was the incident of Hetty Parlow's
02:24ghost. Hetty Parlow's maiden name had been Brownen, and in Blackburg that meant more than one would
02:31think. The Brownens had from time immemorial, from the very earliest of the old colonial days,
02:37been the leading family of the town. It was the richest, and it was the best, and Blackburg would
02:45have shed the last drop of its plebeian blood in defense of the Brownen fair fame.
02:51As few of the family's members had ever been known to live permanently away from Blackburg,
02:56although most of them were educated elsewhere and nearly all had traveled, there was quite a number
03:01of them. The men held most of the public offices, and the women were foremost in all
03:07good works. Of these latter, Hetty was most beloved by reason of the sweetness of her disposition,
03:15the purity of her character, and her singular personal beauty. She married in Boston a young
03:21scapegrace named Parlow, and like a good Brownen brought him to Blackburg forthwith, and made a man
03:27and a town councilman of him. They had a child which they named Joseph, and dearly loved, as was then
03:34the fashion among parents in all that region. Then they died of the mysterious disorder already
03:40mentioned, and at the age of one whole year, Joseph set up as an orphan.
03:47Unfortunately for Joseph, the disease which had cut off his parents did not stop at that.
03:53It went on and extirpated nearly the whole Brownen contingent and its allies by marriage,
03:58and those who fled did not return. The tradition was broken. The Brownen estates passed into alien
04:07hands, and the only Brownens remaining in that place were underground in Oak Hill Cemetery,
04:13where indeed was a colony of them powerful enough to resist the encroachment of surrounding tribes and
04:19hold the best part of the grounds. But about the ghost.
04:22One night, about three years after the death of Hetty Parlow, a number of the young people
04:30of Blackburg were passing Oak Hill Cemetery in a wagon. If you have been there, you will remember
04:36that the road to Greenton runs alongside it on the south. They had been attending a May Day
04:41festival at Greenton, and that serves to fix the date. Altogether, there may have been a dozen,
04:47and a jolly party they were, considering the legacy of gloom left by the town's recent somber
04:53experiences. As they passed the cemetery, the man driving suddenly reigned in his team with an
05:00exclamation of surprise. It was sufficiently surprising, no doubt, for just ahead, and almost
05:06at the roadside, though inside the cemetery, stood the ghost of Hetty Parlow. There could be no doubt of
05:13it, for she had been personally known to every youth and maiden in the party. That established
05:19the thing's identity. Its character as ghost was signified by all the customary signs. The shroud,
05:26the long, undone hair, the faraway look, everything. This disquieting apparition was stretching out its
05:35arms toward the west, as if in supplication for the evening star, which certainly was an alluring object,
05:41though obviously out of reach. As they all sat silent, so the story goes, every member of that
05:48party of merrymakers, they had merry-made on coffee and lemonade only, distinctly heard that ghost call
05:55the name, Joey, Joey. A moment later, nothing was there. Of course, one does not have to believe all
06:04that. Now, at that moment, as was afterward ascertained, Joey was wandering about in the sagebrush on the
06:12opposite side of the continent, near Winnemucca, in the state of Nevada. He had been taken to that
06:18town by some good persons distantly related to his dead father, and by them adopted and tenderly cared
06:25for. But on that evening the poor child had strayed from home and was lost in the desert.
06:32His after-history is involved in obscurity, and has gaps which conjecture alone can fill.
06:40It is known that he was found by a family of Paiute Indians, who kept the little wretch with them for a
06:47time and then sold him, actually sold him for money, to a woman on one of the east-bound trains,
06:53at a station a long way from Winnemucca. The woman professed to have made all manner of inquiries,
07:00but all in vain. So, being childless and a widow, she adopted him herself.
07:07At this point of his career, Joey seemed to be getting a long way from the condition of orphanage.
07:13The interposition of a multitude of parents between himself and that woeful state promised him a long
07:19immunity from its disadvantages. Mrs. Darnell, his newest mother, lived in Cleveland, Ohio.
07:26But her adopted son did not long remain with her. He was seen one afternoon by a policeman,
07:32new to that beat, deliberately toddling away from her house and, being questioned,
07:37answered that he was a doing-home. He must have traveled by rail somehow, for three days later he was in
07:44the town of Whiteville, which, as you know, is a long way from Blackburg. His clothing was in pretty
07:50fair condition, but he was sinfully dirty. Unable to give any account of himself, he was arrested as
07:57a vagrant and sentenced to imprisonment in the infant's sheltering home, where he was washed.
08:04Joe ran away from the infant's sheltering home at Whiteville,
08:07just took to the woods one day, and the home knew him no more forever.
08:14We find him next, or rather get back to him, standing forlorn in the cold autumn rain at a
08:20suburban street corner in Blackburg. And it seems right to explain now that the raindrops falling
08:26upon him there were really not dark and gummy, they only failed to make his face and hands less so.
08:32Joe was indeed fearfully and wonderfully besmirched, as by the hand of an artist. And the forlorn little
08:39tramp had no shoes, his feet were bare, red and swollen, and when he walked he limped with both
08:46legs. As to clothing, ah, you would hardly have had the skill to name any single garment that he wore,
08:55or say by what magic he kept it upon him. That he was cold all over and all through did not admit,
09:02of a doubt. He knew it himself. Anyone would have been cold there that evening. But for that reason,
09:11no one else was there. How Joe came to be there himself, he could not for the flickering little
09:17life of him have told, even if gifted with a vocabulary exceeding a hundred words. From the way
09:24he stared about him, one could have seen that he had not the faintest notion of where, nor why, he was.
09:32Yet he was not altogether a fool in his day and generation. Being cold and hungry, and still able
09:39to walk a little by bending his knees very much indeed and putting his feet down toes first,
09:45he decided to enter one of the houses which flanked the street at long intervals and looked so bright
09:52and warm. But when he attempted to act upon that very sensible decision, a burly dog came
09:59bousing out and disputed his right. Inexpressibly frightened and believing, no doubt, with some
10:07reason too, that brutes without meant brutality within, he hobbled away from all the houses,
10:13and with gray wet fields to right of him, and gray wet fields to left of him, with the rain half
10:20blinding him and the night coming in mist and darkness, held his way along the road that leads
10:26to Greenton. That is to say, the road leads those to Greenton who succeed in passing the Oak Hill
10:32Cemetery. A considerable number every year do not. Joe did not. They found him there the next morning,
10:41very wet, very cold, but no longer hungry. He had apparently entered the cemetery gate,
10:48hoping perhaps that it led to a house where there was no dog, and gone blundering about in the darkness,
10:54falling over many a grave, no doubt, until he had tired of it all and given up. The little body lay
11:03upon one side, with one soiled cheek upon one soiled hand, the other hand tucked away among the
11:10rags to make it warm. The other cheek washed clean and white at last, as for a kiss from one of God's
11:17great angels. It was observed, though nothing was thought of it at the time, the body being as yet
11:24unidentified, that the little fellow was lying upon the grave of Hetty Parlo. The grave, however,
11:31had not opened to receive him. That is a circumstance which, without actual irreverence,
11:37one may wish had been ordered otherwise.
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