The Daughter of the Storage. Howells William Dean

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      Shut the door behind him, and never come back again through it."

      While we were silent, not liking to prompt the pilot with questions,

      "Well," he said, at last, "it was no use to argue. We tried it,

      In the half-hearted way that people do that don't mean it.

      Every one was his friend here on the Kanawha, and we knew

      It was the first time he ever had lost his bearings, but he knew,

      In such a thing as that, that the first and the last are the same time.

      When we had got through trying our worst to persuade him, he only

      Shook his head and says, 'I am done for, boys, and you know it,'

      Left the boat at Wheeling, and left his life on the river —

      Left his life on the earth, you may say, for I don't call it living,

      Setting there homesick at home for the wheel he can never go back to.

      Reads the river-news regular; knows just the stage of the water

      Up and down the whole way from Cincinnati to Pittsburg;

      Follows every boat from the time she starts out in the spring-time

      Till she lays up in the summer, and then again in the winter;

      Wants to talk all about her and who is her captain and pilot;

      Then wants to slide away to that everlastingly puzzling

      Thing that happened to him that morning on the Kanawha

      When he lost his bearings and North and South had changed places —

      No, I don't call that living, whatever the rest of you call it."

      We were silent again till that woman spoke up, "And what was it,

      Captain, that kept him from going back and being a pilot?"

      "Well, ma'am," after a moment the pilot patiently answered,

      "I don't hardly believe that I could explain it exactly."

      IV

      THE RETURN TO FAVOR

      He never, by any chance, quite kept his word, though there was a moment in every case when he seemed to imagine doing what he said, and he took with mute patience the rakings which the ladies gave him when he disappointed them.

      Disappointed is not just the word, for the ladies did not really expect him to do what he said. They pretended to believe him when he promised, but at the bottom of their hearts they never did or could. He was gentle-mannered and soft-spoken, and when he set his head on one side, and said that a coat would be ready on Wednesday, or a dress on Saturday, and repeated his promise upon the same lady's expressed doubt, she would catch her breath and say that now she absolutely must have it on the day named, for otherwise she would not have a thing to put on. Then he would become very grave, and his soft tenor would deepen to a bass of unimpeachable veracity, and he would say, "Sure, lady, you have it."

      The lady would depart still doubting and slightly sighing, and he would turn to the customer who was waiting to have a button sewed on, or something like that, and ask him softly what it was he could do for him. If the customer offered him his appreciation of the case in hand, he would let his head droop lower, and in a yet deeper bass deplore the doubt of the ladies as an idiosyncrasy of their sex. He would make the customer feel that he was a favorite customer whose rights to a perfect fidelity of word and deed must by no means be tampered with, and he would have the button sewed on or the rip sewed up at once, and refuse to charge anything, while the customer waited in his shirt-sleeves in the small, stuffy shop opening directly from the street. When he tolerantly discussed the peculiarities of ladies as a sex, he would endure to be laughed at, "for sufferance was the badge of all his tribe," and possibly he rather liked it.

      The favorite customer enjoyed being there when some lady came back on the appointed Wednesday or Saturday, and the tailor came soothingly forward and showed her into the curtained alcove where she was to try on the garments, and then called into the inner shop for them. The shirt-sleeved journeyman, with his unbuttoned waistcoat-front all pins and threaded needles, would appear in his slippers with the things barely basted together, and the tailor would take them, with an airy courage, as if they were perfectly finished, and go in behind the curtain where the lady was waiting in a dishabille which the favorite customer, out of reverence for the sex, forbore to picture to himself. Then sounds of volcanic fury would issue from the alcove. "Now, Mr. Morrison, you have lied to me again, deliberately lied. Didn't I tell you I must have the things perfectly ready to-day? You see yourself that it will be another week before I can have my things."

      "A week? Oh, madam! But I assure you – "

      "Don't talk to me any more! It's the last time I shall ever come to you, but I suppose I can't take the work away from you as it is. When shall I have it?"

      "To-morrow. Yes, to-morrow noon. Sure!"

      "Now you know you are always out at noon. I should think you would be ashamed."

      "If it hadn't been for sickness in the family I would have finished your dress with my own hands. Sure I would. If you come here to-morrow noon you find your dress all ready for you."