A Vocation and a Voice/I

“Is this Adams avenue?” asked a boy whose apparel and general appearance marked him as belonging to the lower ranks of society. He had just descended from a street car which had left the city an hour before, and was now depositing its remnant of passengers at the entrance of a beautiful and imposing suburban park.

“Adams avenue?” returned the conductor. “No this is Woodland Park. Can’t you see it ain’t any avenue? Adams is two miles northeast o’ here. Th’ Adams Avenue car turned north on Dennison, just ahead of us, a half hour ago. You must a’ taken the wrong car.” The boy was for a moment perplexed and undecided. He stood a while staring towards the northeast, then, thrusting his hands into his pockets, he turned and walked into the park.

He was rather tall, though he had spoken with the high, treble voice of a girl. His trousers were too short and so were the sleeves of his ill-fitting coat. His brown hair, under a shabby, felt cap, was longer than the prevailing fashion demanded, and his eyes were dark and quiet; they were not alert and seeking mischief, as the eyes of boys usually are.

The pockets into which he had thrust his hands were empty – quite empty; there was not so much as a penny in either of them. This was a fact which gave him cause for some reflection, but apparently no uneasiness. Mrs. Donnelly had given him the five cents; and her mother, to whom he had been sent to deliver a message of some domestic purport, was expected to pay his return fare. He realized that his own lack of attention had betrayed him into the strait in which he found himself, and that his own ingenuity would have to extricate him. The only device which presented itself to him as possible, was to walk back to “The Patch,” or out to Mrs. Donnelly’s mother’s.

It would be night before he could reach either place; he did not know the way anywhere; he was not accustomed to long and sustained walks. These considerations, which he accepted as final, gave him a comfortable sense of irresponsibility.

It was the late afternoon of an October day. The sun was warm and felt good to his shoulders through the old coat which he wore. There was a soft breeze blowing, seemingly from every quarter, playing fantastic tricks with the falling and fallen leaves that ran before him helter-skelter as he walked along the beaten, gravel path. He thought they looked like little alive things, birds with disabled wings making the best of it in a mad frolic. He could not catch up with them; they ran on before him. There was a fine sweep of common to one side which gave an impression of space and distance, and men and boys were playing ball there. He did not turn in that direction or even more than glance at the ball-players, but wandered aimlessly across the grass towards the water and sat down upon a bench.

With him was a conviction that it would make no difference to any one whether he got back to “The Patch” or not. The Donnelly household, of which he formed an alien member, was overcrowded for comfort. The few dimes which he earned did not materially swell its sources of income. The seat which he occupied in the parish school for an hour of two each day would not remain long vacant in his absence. There were a dozen boys or more of his neighborhood who would serve Mass as ably as he, and who could run Father Doran’s errands and do the priest’s chores as capably. These reflections embodied themselves in a vague sense of being unessential which always dwelt with him, and which permitted him, at that moment, to abandon himself completely to the novelty and charm of his surroundings.

He stayed there a very long time, seated on the bench, quite still, blinking his eyes at the rippling water which sparkled in the rays of the setting sun. Contentment was penetrating him at every pore. His eyes gathered all the light of the waning day and the russet splendor of the Autumn foliage. The soft wind caressed him with a thousand wanton touches, and the scent of the earth and the trees – damp, aromatic – came pleasantly to him mingled with the faint odor of distant burning leaves. The blue-gray smoke from a smoldering pile of leaves rolled in lazy billows among the birches on a far slope.

How good it was to be out in the open air. He would have liked to stay there always, far from the noise and grime of “The Patch.” He wondered if Heaven might not be something like this, and if Father Doran was not mislead in his conception of a celestial city paved with gold.

He sat blinking in the sun, almost purring with contentment. There were young people out in boats and others making merry on the grass near by. He looked at them, but felt no desire to join them in their sports. The young girls did not attract him more than the boys or the little children. He had lapsed into a blessed state of tranquility and contemplation which seemed native to him. The sordid and puerile impulses of an existence which was not living had retired into a semi-oblivion in which he seemed to have no share. He belonged under God’s sky in the free and open air.

When the sun had set and the frogs were beginning to croak in the waste places, the boy got up and stretched and relaxed his muscles which had grown cramped from sitting so long and so still. He felt that he would like to wander, even then further into the Park, which looked to his unaccustomed eye like a dense forest across the water of the artificial lake. He would like to penetrate beyond into the open country where there were fields and hills and long stretches of wood. As he turned to leave the place he determined within himself that he would speak to Father Doran and ask the priest to assist him in obtaining employment somewhere in the country, somewhere that he might breathe as freely and contentedly as he had been doing for the past hour here in Woodland Park.