One was missing,however;he went to his reward,whatever it was,two years ago.But I found out all about him.His case helped me to realize how lasting can be the effect of a very trifling occurrence.
When he was an apprentice-blacksmith in our village,and I a schoolboy,a couple of young Englishmen came to the town and sojourned a while;and one day they got themselves up in cheap royal finery and did the Richard III swordfight with maniac energy and prodigious powwow,in the presence of the village boys.This blacksmith cub was there,and the histrionic poison entered his bones.This vast,lumbering,ignorant,dull-witted lout was stage-struck,and irrecoverably.He disappeared,and presently turned up in St.Louis.I ran across him there,by and by.
He was standing musing on a street corner,with his left hand on his hip,the thumb of his right supporting his chin,face bowed and frowning,slouch hat pulled down over his forehead--imagining himself to be Othello or some such character,and imagining that the passing crowd marked his tragic bearing and were awestruck.
I joined him,and tried to get him down out of the clouds,but did not succeed.However,he casually informed me,presently,that he was a member of the Walnut Street theater company--and he tried to say it with indifference,but the indifference was thin,and a mighty exultation showed through it.
He said he was cast for a part in Julius Caesar,for that night,and if I should come I would see him.IF I should come!
I said I wouldn't miss it if I were dead.
I went away stupefied with astonishment,and saying to myself,'How strange it is!WE always thought this fellow a fool;yet the moment he comes to a great city,where intelligence and appreciation abound,the talent concealed in this shabby napkin is at once discovered,and promptly welcomed and honored.'
But I came away from the theater that night disappointed and offended;for I had had no glimpse of my hero,and his name was not in the bills.
I met him on the street the next morning,and before I could speak,he asked--'Did you see me?'
'No,you weren't there.'
He looked surprised and disappointed.He said--'Yes,I was.Indeed I was.I was a Roman soldier.'
'Which one?'
'Why didn't you see them Roman soldiers that stood back there in a rank,and sometimes marched in procession around the stage?'
'Do you mean the Roman army?--those six sandaled roustabouts in nightshirts,with tin shields and helmets,that marched around treading on each other's heels,in charge of a spider-legged consumptive dressed like themselves?'
'That's it!that's it!I was one of them Roman soldiers.
I was the next to the last one.A half a year ago I used to always be the last one;but I've been promoted.'
Well,they told me that that poor fellow remained a Roman soldier to the last--a matter of thirty-four years.Sometimes they cast him for a 'speaking part,'but not an elaborate one.He could be trusted to go and say,'My lord,the carriage waits,'but if they ventured to add a sentence or two to this,his memory felt the strain and he was likely to miss fire.Yet,poor devil,he had been patiently studying the part of Hamlet for more than thirty years,and he lived and died in the belief that some day he would be invited to play it!
And this is what came of that fleeting visit of those young Englishmen to our village such ages and ages ago!What noble horseshoes this man might have made,but for those Englishmen;and what an inadequate Roman soldier he DID make!
