Sunset hour at the meridian of Paradise Flats: but no sunset was visible. It was the worse end of a bad December day. Out doors, all was one color, and the rain froze as it fell.
Before the big tenement stood a Russian sleigh, with an impatient pair of clipped chestnuts. A Roman sentinel in furs sat on the box, and his liveried mate groped in the dark hall for the habitat of John Jones, who had been “recommended.” John Jones lived there, but there was no evidence of it on the first floor. This tenement was not provided with a hall directory and a battery of bells. Poverty makes residence uncertain from month to month. Many a good man has been returned “not found” or “a fake,” because he had to try elsewhere when the rent came due.
On the fifth floor, a room that looked back over a net of railroads held John Jones’s treasures. Three little girls were keeping the stove warm. There was some coal in it, but the way it acted was proof that warmth is not always provoked by poking. The fire had a hungry look like the children, and like them, moreover, evinced an anxious desire to go out, cheerless as it was beyond the ineffective screen of the walls. The footman’s knock created a flutter in the little group. Who would knock at that door?
“It’s a p’liceman,” suggested little four-year-old Kit. The coal in the stove and a grape basketful more had been picked up on the tracks.
Hand-in-hand they lined up at the door and eight-year-old Annie opened it. Kit and the two-year-old pulled hard on the line when the towering footman entered.
“Does John Jones live here?”
“Yes,” said the eldest girl.
“John Jones, who registered at the Work and Aid Bureau?”
“I think so,” said the girl, cautiously.
“Sure!” put in the four-year-old.
“Where is he?”
“He’s out looking for some work, sir.”
John was a mechanic until over-production or under-distribution or something else turned everything upside down. Now he was looking for work of any kind—and not finding it.
“Where’s your mother?”
“She’s sick in bed, sir,” said Annie.
“Say, mister! Do you know what we’ve got?” piped the four-year-old. “We’ve got a new baby, and it’s a boy!”
A grunt of disgust was the lackey’s only answer. Well, what then? If John Jones had work, or a little money in the bank, it would be no reproach to him that the miracle of life had been wrought once more over in the corner of that room, and that there was one more mouth to feed. But this wasn’t business.
“Can you write?” the footman said to the girl.
“Yes, sir, a little,” she said.
“Write your name here,” he said, producing a receipt book.
The girl made a scratch where he indicated, with some tremor. Then he handed her a large package which he had held in his gloved hand. “This is for your father,” he said; “don’t open it until he comes,” and the vision of furry magnificence faded from sight.
John Jones, coming up the narrow stair, was almost crowded down again by the swelling cape of the man who was looking for him, passing down. Of course neither knew the other. A moment later the father with a heavy countenance entered the back room and asked in an anxious whisper how mamma was. Before the elder girl could answer the younger cried out, “O Papa! there was a splendid man here for you and he brought you somefing nice.”
The square package was a problem to the man. So large and so light. When it was opened the puzzle was no less. It was a picture—a beautiful woman’s head, with a pensive, tender look that might have been the Sphynx’s own schoolmarm stare for all it meant to him. As he looked for an explanatory mark somewhere a card dropped to the floor. This is what he read on it:
John Jones, Esq.:
Dear Sir—At the last meeting of the Society for Ameliorating the Condition of the Poor the following resolution was unanimously adopted:
Whereas, The refining influence of art is almost wholly lost to the poorer classes by reason of their lack of means and time to enjoy the exhibitions open to others, and
Whereas, The degradation of poverty is to be cured not alone by teaching self-dependence by means of a labor test for applicants for relief but also by making the poorest conversant, so far as may be, with the works of the great masters of Literature, Music and Art; therefore be it
Resolved, That each member of this Society shall be one of a committee to loan works of art to the poor and pledges himself or herself to place each week in the house of some poor family a picture or sculpture to be studied by such family, to be loaned such family for one week, in the hope of arousing in its members a love of the beautiful.
Eleanor Gould Martin, Secretary.
All this but the address line was printed. Below a form was filled in as follows:
| Names, | John Jones. |
| Residence, | Paradise Flats. |
| Picture, | Psyche, by Smith. |
| Owner, | Jane Hodges McVickar. |
| Date of Loan, | December 16, 1895. |
| Picture to be called for, | December 23, 1895. |
“Papa,” said four-year-old Kit, as the card fell from the nerveless hand of John Jones, “I fought it was somefing good to eat.”
The Latest Revision tells after this fashion what followed the Trial in the Wilderness:
“And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights he was afterward an-hungered.... And behold, angels came and patronized him.”
William McIntosh.