“Baby Cried and Jack Cried.”
It has been going on for a year past. Jack is a carrier for one of the dailies, and his circuit takes in a house on Scott Street. One day last spring a baby crowded to him from an open door on that street, and Jack tossed an apple into the hall. The next day the baby was watching for him, and after three or four days the boy made bold to slip up the steps and pat the little chap on the head, and leave the stick of candy he had purchased two miles away. As time went on Jack came to know that the baby was fatherless, and that its mother was pale-faced and hardly able to drag about. It was weeks before she spoke to him, but the baby took to Jack right away, and was always ready for his coming. After the first week it was always clean-faced, but it was a good while before Jack roused up courage to give him a kiss, and to ask for one in return. After that it was plain sailing, and the neighbors became interested. It was queer enough that a boy like Jack, having his own way to make and roughing it until he had become suspicious and hard-hearted, should catch on to a little whitehead, and be more than a big brother to him, but that was what happened. And something more. One day he brought up a quarter of a pound of tea and left it where the mother would find it, and this was followed by other parcels and articles. One day he missed the baby, and crept into the hall to find that he had cried himself to sleep, and that the mother was ill and helpless. Jack roused up the neighbors, and whatever was eaten in that house for the next two weeks was purchased with Jack’s money. The mother could only thank him and weep. She could not speak ten words of English. A fortnight ago Jack missed the baby again, and again he found the mother ill. Friends were with her this time, and she did not suffer for care. A week ago there was crape on the door as the carrier went his round, and the baby had been carried off by a neighbor. When Jack came round next day, the mother had been buried, and people were watching to tell him that the house was to be vacated and baby was to go to a distant city. He had been brought back to bid the carrier good-by, and the poor and lowly people drew off with tears in their eyes, and Jack sat on the door-steps and took baby in his lap and kissed his red cheeks. Baby clung around his neck and seemed to realize that he was to lose a friend, and, as one who stood by expressed it:— “The baby cried and Jack cried, and the women put their aprons up and sobbed like children. When they finally took the child away, Jack’s heart was big enough to break, and throwing his arms around the little chap for the last time, he turned and ran away, and never looked back!”—Detroit Free Press.