106 



THE IRRIGATION A GE. 



ISHMAEL. 

 BY L. R. WING. 



"His hand will be against every man and ev- 

 ery man's hand against him." 



That was not his real name of course, 

 but someone with an eye to the eternal 

 fitness of things had called him Ishmael, 

 and as Ishmael he was known "on the 

 road." 



How vividly I recall my first meeting 

 with him! I was working at my desk one 

 day when a shadow fell across my paper, 

 and looking up I saw in the doorway 

 Ishmael. I recognized him instantly from 

 descriptions given of him by acquain- 

 tances. He was a large, powerfully built 

 man with the massive head that betokens 

 intellect, keen grey eyes and a determined 

 mouth. He was clad in a suit of grey, 

 which from exposure to the elements had 

 shrunken, giving him the appearance of a 

 schoolboy who has outgrown his garments. 

 This was probably due to one of Ishamel's 

 many peculiarities that of not being able 

 to see after dusk, so that wherever night 

 overtook him on his wanderings he was 

 obliged to camp right there until morning. 

 Numerous all night soakings had so abbre- 

 viated his trousers that they were not on 

 meeting terms with his shoe-tops; his vest 

 was destitute of buttons, and his suspend- 

 ers were an illustration of the old adage, 

 "Necessity is the mother of invention," 

 for where they had broken he had fastened 

 the ends together with staples such as are 

 used in binding pamphlets. His coat was 

 was evidently of an aspiring character for 

 it had the appearance of ever striving for 

 something higher, and had succeeded so 

 well in its efforts that the buttons which 

 should have adorned it at the waist line 

 were now halfway between the waist and 

 shoulders. The fact that this garment 

 served as a bookcase also, containing as it 

 did Ishmael's entire library, Shakespere, 

 a dictionary and a grammar, did not im- 

 prove its appearance. In fact, from the 

 crown of his shaggy, unkempt head covered 

 by a dilapidated feh hat, to the soles of 



his well-worn shoes, through which his 

 toes were plainly peeping, Ishmael bore 

 the unmistakable signs of being, not only a 

 tramp, but a tramp in very hard luck in- 

 deed. 



Of course he was tired and hungry, and 

 out of money and when he asked the usual 

 question. "Got any work boss?" the pro- 

 prietor could not find it in his heart to re- 

 fuse him; and so Ishmael became a mem- 

 ber of the very small force that got out 

 the weekly paper. And a very useful 

 member he proved himself to be; not only 

 could he write an acceptable article or good 

 story on short notice, but he could also 

 ''rattle up the type" with the best of them. 

 When I add that he was by trade an en- 

 graver, it will be seen that he was a man 

 of varied talents, who had no need to be 

 tramping about looking for work. 



We soon learned why his companions 

 had called him "Ishmael," for like the 

 man of scriptural fame, his hand was 

 against every man and he believed every 

 man was against him. He was decidedly 

 the "man with a grievance;" always on 

 the lookout for a slight or snub. Every 

 chance word or UB though ted joke was mag- 

 nified by him into a premeditated insult. 

 He treated us all with a haugty disdain, 

 as became one so greatly our intellectual 

 superior, and this attitude, as may be im- 

 agined, did not tend to make him univers- 

 ally popular. 



There is no one so thoroughly demo- 

 cratic as the tramp printer, no one so en- 

 tirely independent as he, and no one who 

 has such a lack of reverence for the "pow- 

 ers that be." Ishmael was a striking ex- 

 ample of this. With all the seriousness in 

 the world he criticised the grammatical 

 construction of a sentence written by the 

 high school professor, and was entirely in- 

 nocent of having given any ground for of- 

 fense when he remarked to that worthy 

 that "there wasn't one school teacher in 

 ten who knew the first thing about gram- 

 mar." 



And who so keen as Ishmael to dis- 

 cover the flaws of the contemporary news- 



