Tramping on Life | Page 2

He
had all sorts of adventures, roaming about.
As for me, I was left alone with my grandmother, his mother,--in the
big house which stood back under the trees, aloof from the wide, dusty
road that led to the mills.
With us lived my young, unmarried aunt, Millie....
My grandmother had no education. She could barely read and write.
And she believed in everybody.
She was stout ... sparse-haired ... wore a switch ... had kindly, confiding,
blue eyes.
Beggars, tramps, pack-peddlers, book-agents, fortune-tellers,--she lent
a credulous ear to all,--helped others when we ourselves needed help,
signed up for preposterous articles on "easy" monthly payments,--gave
away food, starving her appetite and ours.
When, child though I was, even I protested, she would say, "well,
Johnnie, you might be a tramp some day, and how would I feel if I
thought some one was turning you away hungry?"
* * * * *
My Grandfather Gregory was a little, alert, erect, suave man,--he was a
man whose nature was such that he would rather gain a dollar by some
cheeky, brazen, off-colour practice than earn a hundred by honest
methods.
He had keen grey eyes that looked you in the face in utter, disarming
frankness. He was always immaculately dressed. He talked continually
about money, and about how people abused his confidence and his trust
in men. But there was a sharpness like pointed needles in the pupils of
his eyes that betrayed his true nature.
Coming to Mornington as one of the city's pioneers, at first he had kept
neck to neck in social prestige with the Babsons, Guelders, and the rest,
and had built the big house that my grandmother, my aunt, and myself
now lived in, on Mansion avenue....
When the Civil War broke out, that streak of adventure and daring in
my grandfather which in peace times turned him to shady financial
transactions, now caused him to enlist. And before the end of the war
he had gone far up in the ranks.
After the war he came into still more money by a manufacturing
business which he set up. But the secret process of the special kind of

material which he manufactured he inveigled out of a comrade in arms.
The latter never derived a cent from it. My grandfather stole the patent,
taking it out in his own name. The other man had trusted him,
remembering the times they had fought shoulder to shoulder, and had
bivouacked together....
My grandfather, though so small as to be almost diminutive, was spry
and brave as an aroused wasp when anyone insulted him. Several times
he faced down burly-bodied men who had threatened to kill him for his
getting the better of them in some doubtful business transaction.
For a long time his meanness and sharp dealings were reserved for
outsiders and he was generous with his family. And my sweet, simple,
old grandmother belonged to all the societies, charitable and otherwise,
in town ... but she was not, never could be "smart." She was always
saying and doing naïve things from the heart. And soon she began to
disapprove of my grandfather's slick business ways.
I don't know just what tricks he put over ... but he became persona non
grata in local business circles ... and he took to running about the
country, putting through various projects here and there ... this little,
dressy, hard-faced man ... like a cross between a weasel and a bird!
He dropped into Mornington, and out again, each time with a wild,
restless story of fortunes to be made or in the making!
Once he came home and stayed for a longer time than usual. During
this stay he received many letters. My grandmother noticed a
furtiveness in his manner when he received them. My grandmother
noticed that her husband always repaired immediately to the outhouse
when he received a letter.
She followed after him one day, and found fragments of a torn letter
cast below ... she performed the disagreeable task of retrieving the
fragments, of laboriously piecing them together and spelling them out.
She procured a divorce as quietly as possible. Then my grandfather
made his final disappearance. I did not see him again till I was quite
grown up.
All support of his numerous family ceased. His sons and daughters had
to go to work while still children, or marry.
My Aunt Alice married a country doctor whom I came to know as
"Uncle Beck." My Uncle Joe, who inherited my grandfather's
business-sense, with none of his crookedness, started out as a newsboy,

worked his way up to half-proprietorship in a Mornington paper ... the
last I heard of him he had money invested in nearly every enterprise in
town, and had become a substantial citizen.
My father still