The Emigrant Boy

On the Rhine, in the old town of Rüdesheim, there stands one of those ruined castles that give such a picturesque charm to the German landscape. Among the crumbling walls, Karl Schelling, a poor, hard-working peasant, had made his home. With him lived his good wife, Liesbet, and their two blue-eyed children, Fritz and Gretchen. A few cooking pots and wooden stools were all the furniture they owned, and a single brown-and-white goat was their only reminder of herds and flocks. Yet these poor children led a happier life than those small imitations of humanity who are brought up in city palaces and drilled to walk through existence with languid drawing-room steps. From the moss-covered arches of the old ruins, they could watch boats and ships glide over the sparkling Rhine, and see broad meadows gilded with sunshine. On the castle terrace, the wind had sown many flowers.

It was richly carpeted with various kinds of moss, tufts of grass, bluebells, and little pinks. Here Karl often led his goat to feed, and left the children to tend it. There had been a stork's nest on the roof since time immemorial, and the little ones were early taught to revere the birds as omens of good fortune. Their simple young souls were quite unaware of poverty. The splendid Rhine with all its islands, the broad pasturelands where herds grazed peacefully, the houses nestled among woody hills—all seemed to belong to them; and in truth they possessed them more fully than many a rich man who,

"One moment gazes on his flowers, The next they are forgot; And eateth of his rarest fruits, As though he ate them not."

On their little heaps of straw, brother and sister slept soundly in each other's arms; and if the hooting of an owl chanced to wake them, a bright star would look in through the chinks in the walls with a friendly eye, as if to say, "Go to sleep, little ones, for all children are dear to the good God."

Thus with scanty food and coarse clothes, but plenty of pure air and blue sky, Fritz and his little sister walked hand in hand along their rugged yet flower-strewn path of life until he was nearly seven. Then came Uncle Heinrich, his mother's brother, who said the boy could be useful at the mill where he worked. If the parents were willing to bind him to his service, he would provide food and clothing, and give him an outfit when he came of age. Tears filled Liesbet's eyes, for she thought how lonely it would be without Fritz mocking the birds or singing aloud to the sky. But they were very poor, and the child must earn his bread. So, sorrowing at parting from father, mother, Gretchen, the goat, and the stork, yet with some excitement at new scenes, Fritz left the old nest that had been his home.

Mounted behind Uncle Heinrich on the miller's donkey, he ambled along rocky paths, past deep ravines and castle-crowned hills, with glimpses here and there of the noble river flowing bright and strong, reflecting spires, cottages, and vine-covered slopes.

When he arrived at his new home, the good grandmother gave him a warm welcome and promised to knit him a striped blue cap. Uncle Heinrich was kind in his rough way, but he believed boys should eat little and work hard.

Fritz, remembering the flower-carpet of the old castle, was always delighted to spy a clump of flowers. His uncle told him they looked well enough, but wondered why anyone would plant them since they were neither useful to eat nor wear. When he grew older, his uncle said, he would think more of pence than posies. So the child began to feel ashamed, as if it were wrong, when he was caught digging up a flower. But his industrious and frugal relative taught him many orderly habits that later influenced his success; and fortunately, his love for beauty could not be pressed out of him. Kind, all-embracing Nature took him in her arms and whispered many things to keep him from becoming a mere animal. All day he worked hard, but the blossoming tree was his friend, and the bright little mill-stream chatted cozily and smiled when the good grandmother gave it his clothes to wash.

The miller's donkey, ambling through sunlit paths over the hills, was a picture to him. From his tiny garret window he could see the mill-wheel scattering bright drops in the moonlight, and he fell asleep to the gentle lullaby of ever-flowing water. This was the only education he had.

"His only teachers had been woods and rills; The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills."

An aged neighbor, a contemporary of the grandmother, took a great liking to Fritz. On Sundays, when no work was done, he was often allowed to have dinner or supper there. The old man had traveled nearly all of Germany as a peddler and had come to die in the old homestead near the mill where he had worked as a boy. He knew by heart all the wild fairy legends of the country and had a talent for telling them in a way that amused and excited children. In his travels he had collected many things that seemed remarkable to Fritz's inexperienced eyes: curious smoking pipes, drinking cups, and images in the various costumes of Germany. But what most attracted Fritz was an ancient clock, brought from Copenhagen when the peddler's father was young. When the clock was in working order, it could play twelve tunes, about as simple as "Molly put the kettle on." But years of friction had worn the cogs, so it was frightfully out of tune.

This didn't bother Fritz's strong nerves; he was hugely amused by the sputtering, seething, jumping, jabbering sounds it made when set in motion. To each crazy tune he gave a droll name. "There goes the Spitting Cat," he would say, "now let's hear the Old Hen."

Father Rudolph called his rickety machine his Blacking Box because he had bought it with the proceeds from a special blacking of his own making. He was always praising it, and one day he said, "I've never told anyone the secret of making it, but if you're a good boy, Fritz, I'll show you how it's done." The child couldn't help but respect what had procured such a wonderful clock, and that night he fell asleep with vague visions of one day buying such a comical machine for himself. This seemed an insignificant incident, but it was the beginning of a thread that would reappear in the web of his life.

Fritz spent four years at the old mill, full of health, happiness, and hard work. For three of those years, Father Rudolph was an unfailing source of entertainment, mixing comic old songs, wild legends, and practical knowledge about glossy jet blacking. At last the old man passed away, and the boy heard that pleasant voice no more except in the echoing caves of memory. The good grandmother survived her old friend by only a few months. At her spinning wheel she used to croon ancient ballads that had caught the monotonous flow of the water, and Fritz missed those quaint melodies as he went about his chores, just as he would miss the rustling leaves or the chirping crickets. He missed her kind, motherly ways and the small comforts she had provided. Except for his rough but good-hearted uncle, he was now alone in the world.

He had visited Rüdesheim only once, and had amused Gretchen with his imitations of the crazy clock. But his parents had since moved to a remote district, and he didn't know when he would see dear Gretchen again. Since none of them could read or write, no word came to cheer the long years of separation. How his heart yearned for his mother and his joyful little sister!

When Uncle Heinrich announced his plan to move to America, the prospect of adventure and the natural optimism of youth outweighed the sadness of leaving his fatherland. On his last night in the old mill, the moonlight seemed to hold a farewell sadness, and the little stream murmured more plaintively than usual. Fritz fancied they knew he was leaving. They seemed to whisper, "We shall see thee no more, bright, strong child! We remain, but thou art passing away!"

When the emigrants reached the seaport, everything was new and exciting to young Fritz. The ships in the harbor looked like great white birds sailing through the air. How pleasant it must be to glide over the wide waters! But between a ship in the distance and the ship you're on there's the usual difference between the ideal and the actual. There was little romance in the crowded cabin, with hundreds of poor emigrants eating, drinking, and smoking amid the smell of bilge-water and the dreadful nausea of the sea. Poor Fritz longed for the pure air and the fresh brook at the mill. Yet there was always America in prospect, painted in his imagination like the Islands of the Blest. Uncle Heinrich said he would grow rich there, and a fairy whispered that he might one day own a Copenhagen clock, bright and new, that played tunes properly. "No, no," Fritz told the fairy, "I'd rather have Father Rudolph's clock; it was such a funny old thing."

"Very well," replied the fairy, "be diligent and saving, and maybe I'll one day bring Father Rudolph's clock to crow and sputter for you in the New World."

But these golden dreams faced a sudden check. One day came the cry of "Man overboard!" It caused extra terror because a shark had been following the ship for days. Boats were lowered immediately, but a crimson tinge on the water showed their efforts were useless. It was only minutes after the confusion had died down that Fritz realized Uncle Heinrich was missing. That crimson stain was terrible enough, but when he knew it was the lifeblood of his last friend, he felt faint and dizzy, as if it were his own blood flowing.

Uncle Heinrich's savings were in the belt he wore, and all he left behind were a bundle of coarse clothes and a few tools. The captain took pity on the orphaned boy and charged nothing for his passage or food. When the ship reached port, the passengers, though poor themselves, collected a small sum for him. But who can describe the utter loneliness of the emigrant boy when he parted from his shipmates and wandered the crowded streets of New York without seeing a single familiar face? Lights shone in cheerful basements where families supped together, but his good mother and his dear little blue-eyed Gretchen—where were they? Oh, it was so sad to be entirely alone in such a wide, wide world. Sometimes a boy would turn to stare at his odd little cap and foreign clothes, and he would hear, "There goes what they call a Flying Dutchman," but he couldn't understand the words. Day after day he looked for work, but found none.

His money was almost gone, and his heart was heavy.

One day, as he leaned against a post, a goat walked slowly toward him from a nearby yard. How his heart leaped to see her! With her came memories of the castle on the Rhine, the blooming terrace, his kind father, his blessed mother, and his darling sister. He patted the goat's head, kissed her, and looked deep into her eyes, just as he had done with his childhood companion. A stranger came to lead the goat away, and when she was gone, poor Fritz sobbed as if his heart would break. "I don't even have a goat for a friend now," he thought. "I wish I could go back to the old mill. I'm afraid I'll starve in this foreign land, with no one to bury me."

As he was brooding, there came an alarm of fire, and the watchmen rattled their rattles. Instantly a ray of hope shot through him. The sound reminded him of Father Rudolph's Blacking Box, for one of its crazy tunes began with a flourish exactly like it. "I'll save every cent I can and buy materials to make blacking," he decided. "I'll sleep under the wharf planks and live on two pence a day. I can speak a few words of English. I'll learn more from some of my countrymen who have been here longer. Maybe I can sell enough blacking to buy bread and clothes."

And that's what he did. At first it was very hard. Some days he earned nothing, and a week of waiting brought only one shilling. But his broad face was so clean and honest, his manner so respectful, and his blacking so unusually good that his customers grew. One day a gentleman who traded with him gave him a shilling instead of a ten-cent piece by mistake. Fritz didn't notice at the time, but the next day he followed the man to his countinghouse and touched his arm. The merchant asked what he wanted. Fritz showed the coin and said, "Dat not mine." "Neither is it mine," said the merchant. "Why are you showing it to me?" The boy replied, "Dat too mooch." A friend with the merchant spoke to him in German, and the poor emigrant's face lit up as if a lamp had been placed inside. Heaving a sigh and blushing, he explained in his own tongue that he had accidentally been given too much the day before.

The men looked at him with warm friendliness and asked about his story.

He told them his name and his parents, how Uncle Heinrich had been devoured by a shark on the voyage. He said he had no friends in this foreign land, but he meant to be honest and industrious, and hoped to do well. They assured him they would remember him as Fritz Shilling and would speak of him to their friends. He didn't understand the joke about his name, but he did understand that they bought all his blacking, and after that, his customers increased.

It would be tedious to trace every step of the emigrant's rising fortune. As soon as he could spare anything from food and clothing, he went to evening school and learned to read, write, and cipher. He became a shop-boy, then a clerk, and finally opened his own grocery store. Throughout all this, he continued to sell his blacking, which earned poetic advertisements in the newspapers as "Schelling's Best Boot Polisher."

But this prosperity wasn't the only result of his friendship with Father Rudolph. The dropped stitches of our lives are sometimes picked up in strange ways. One day, when Fritz was about sixteen, he stopped in the street, listening intently, for he heard in the distance a German ballad that his grandmother and the peddler used to sing. Through the city's din he could distinguish the mournful minor melody that had often brought tears to his eyes as a boy. He followed the sound and soon saw an old man and a woman singing, with a girl, a little younger than himself, playing a tambourine.

When he spoke to her in German, her face brightened, just as his had when he first heard his native tongue in this strange land. "They call me Röschen," she said. "These are my parents. We arrived from the ship last night, and we're singing for bread until we can find work." Her soul showed simply and kindly through her blue eyes, and she reminded him of Gretchen. Her wooden shoes, short blue skirt, and little crimson jacket might seem vulgar to some or picturesque to others, but to him they were just the familiar dress of his homeland. It warmed his heart with childhood memories, and when they sang again the old sad melody, he seemed to hear the brook flowing plaintively by and see the farewell moonlight on the mill. So began his friendship with the girl who later became his wife and the mother of his little Gretchen.

For years he asked every group of emigrants about his parents and sister, but no one knew anything. Finally, a priest in Germany wrote that Gretchen had died in childhood, and that his parents had also recently passed away. It was a crushing disappointment for the affectionate Fritz, for he'd always hoped to return to them or bring them to share his comfortable home in the New World. But when the sad news came, he had Röschen to love, her parents to care for, and a little child who twined herself around his heart with fresh garlands every day.

At thirty-five, he was a happy and prosperous man, prosperous enough to afford a nice city home and a snug cottage in the country. "We can drive out every Saturday and come back on Monday," he said to Röschen. "We'll have fresh cream and our own sweet butter. It will do the children good to roll in the grass, and they shall have a goat to play with."

"And perhaps, by and by, we can live there all the time," said Röschen. "The country is so quiet and pleasant. What's the use of having more money than enough?"

The cottage site overlooked a broad, bright river, where high rocky palisades looked almost like the ruins of an old castle. Fritz said he would make a flower-carpet on the rocks for the goat to browse on, and if a stork would only build a nest on his thatched roof, he could almost imagine he was back in Germany. Sometimes he thought of importing a stork, but his good sense told him it wouldn't work. How could those ancient birds, with their love of the old and the unchanging, ever feel at home in America? One might as well try to import loyal subjects or an ancient nobility.

When the house and barn were finished, the first task was to find honest, hardworking German tenants to farm the land. Fritz heard of a group of emigrants who wanted to sell themselves for a time as indentured servants to pay their passage, and he went to inspect them. A robust man of about sixty, with a wife five or six years younger, caught his eye by their exceptional cleanliness and good-natured faces. He soon arranged to take them on, and to prepare the papers, he asked their names.

"Karl Schelling and Liesbet Schelling," the old man said.

Fritz started, his face flushing, and asked, "Did you ever live in the old castle at Rüdesheim?"

"Indeed we did for several summers," Karl replied.

"Ah, can you tell us anything about our son Fritz?" cried Liesbet, staring at him. "May God bless him wherever he is! We've come to America to find him."

"Mother! Mother! Don't you know me?" he said, and threw himself into her open arms, kissing the honest, weather-beaten face.

"I see life has treated you well, my son. Thanks be to God, and blessed be His holy name," said Karl, reverently taking off his cap.

"And where is Gretchen?" Fritz asked eagerly.

"The All-Father took her to Himself soon after you came to see us at Rüdesheim," Liesbet said, her voice trembling. "She was always mourning for her brother, poor little one. It troubled us to leave without saying good-bye to you, and I feared no blessing would follow. But we were so poor, and we thought we'd come to you in two or three years."

"Don't speak of that," Fritz said, his voice thick with emotion. "You were always good parents, and you did the best you could. Blessings have followed me.

To meet you like this is the crowning blessing of all. Come, let's hurry home. I want to show you my good Röschen, and our Gretchen, and all the children. Our little farm overlooks a river as broad and beautiful as the Rhine. The rocky bluffs look like castles, and I've bought a goat for the children to play with. The roof is thatched, and if a stork would only come and build her nest there, then you could almost believe we were back in Rüdesheim, with plenty to eat and drink. If only Father Rudolph's Blacking Box were here," he added, laughing, "all my boyish dreams would come true. Ah, if only dear Gretchen were here!"

The fairy who had whispered to Fritz on the Atlantic had promised that if he were diligent and saving, she might bring him the old clock; and she kept her word. It happened that Father Rudolph's heir had immigrated to America and brought the clock with him. Fritz's offer was too good to refuse, and now the clock stands in his thatched cottage. Its dark wooden case, inlaid with fantastic figures of birds and beasts in pearl, is more wonderful to the children than any picture book. When any of the children are sick or cross, their father sets the crazy old tunes spinning, and soon they're all laughing and imitating the sounds—"Cluck, cluck, cluck! Whirr, whirr, whirr! Rik a rik a ree!"

So the emigrant boy, once so alone in the world, found his happiness among those he loved, and the old clock, battered but beloved, sang its crooked melodies in the cottage by the river, just as it had in the mill by the brook, reminding him of all the strange and wonderful ways his dreams had come true.