Three People | Page 3

enjoy the grapes. "No," she said, gaily; "grapes are very
harmless omens to me. I'm not the least afraid that Baby Benny will
ever be a drunkard."
* * * * *
There used to be in Albany, not many years ago, a miniature "Five
Points," and one didn't have to go very far up what is now Rensselaer
Street to find it, either. There were tenement houses, which from attic
to basement swarmed with filthy, ragged, repulsive human life.
In one of the lowest and meanest of these many cellars, on the very day,
and at the identical hour, in which Master Pliny Hastings held high
carnival at his father's table, and Baby Benny Phillips nestled and
dreamed among the soft pillows of his mother's easy chair, a little
brother of theirs, clad in dirt and rags, crawled over the reeking floor,
and occupied himself in devouring eagerly every bit of potato skin or
apple paring that came in his way. Was there ever a more forlorn
looking specimen of a baby! It was its birthday, too--there are more
babies in the world than we think for whose birthdays might be
celebrated on the same day. But this one knew nothing about it--dear
me! neither did his mother. I doubt if it had once occurred to her that
this poor bit of scrawny, dirty, terrible baby had been through one
whole year of life. And yet, perhaps, she loved her boy a little--her face
looked sullen rather than wicked. On the whole, I think she did, for as
she was about to ascend the stairs, with the sullen look deepening or
changing into a sort of gloomy apprehension, she hesitated, glanced
behind her, and finally, with a muttered "Plague take the young one,"
turned back, and, catching him by the arm of his tattered dress, landed
him on the topmost step, in a mud-puddle! but she did it because she
remembered that he would be very likely to climb into the tub of
soapsuds that stood at the foot of the bed, and so get drowned.
Mrs. Ryan came up her cellar stairs at the same time, and looked over
at her neighbor, then from her to her forlorn child, who, however,
enjoyed the mud-puddle, and finally commenced a conversation.

"How old is that young one of yours?"
"Pretty near a year--why, let me see--what day is it?--why, I'll be bound
if he ain't just a year old this very day."
"Birthday, eh? You ought to celebrate."
"Humph," said the mother, with a darkening face, "we shall likely; we
do most generally. His loving father will get drunk, and if he don't pitch
Tode head over heels out here on the stones, in honor of his birthday,
I'll be thankful. Tode Mall, you stop crawling out to that gutter, or I'll
shake you within an inch of your life!"
This last, in a louder and most threatening tone, to the ambitious baby.
But poor Tode didn't understand, or forgot, or something, for while his
mother talked with her companion, out he traveled toward the inviting
gutter again, and tumbled into it, from whence he was carried, dripping
and screaming, by his angry mother, who bestowed the promised shake,
and added a vigorous slapping, whereat Tode kicked and yelled in a
manner that proved him to be without doubt a near relative of Master
Pliny Hastings himself. Three brothers they were, Messrs. Pliny,
Bennie and Tode, opening their wondrous eyes on the world on
precisely the same day of time, though under such different
circumstances, and amid such different surroundings, that I doubt if it
looked equally round to them all. Besides, they hadn't the least idea
each of the existence of the other; but no matter for that, they were
brothers, linked together in many a way.
Perhaps you wouldn't have had an idea that their fathers were each
occupied in the same business; but such was the case. Pliny L. Hastings,
the millionaire, owned and kept in motion two of the hotels in a
western city where the bar-rooms were supplied with marble counters,
and the customers were served from cut-glass goblets, resting on silver
salvers. Besides he was a wholesale liquor dealer, and kept great
warehouses constantly supplied with the precious stuff. Bennie Phillips'
good-natured father was a grocer, on a modest and unpretending scale;
but he had a back room in his store where he kept a few barrels of
liquor for medicinal purposes, and a clerk in attendance. Tode Mall's

father kept an unmitigated grog-shop, or rum hole, or whatever name
you are pleased to call it, without any cut glass or medicinal purposes
about it, and sold vile whisky at so much a drink to whoever had sunk
low enough to buy it. So now you