Doug Allyn - Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 32, No. 13, Mid-December, 1987

Enter Fate.

In addition to his nightly duties at Gottlieb’s, Bob put in a full day’s work as newsboy, Western Union messenger, bootblack, rags, bottles, and scrap iron scavenger, and — there was no holding Bob back — as a squeaky-voiced singer of melancholy Irish ballads on a busy street corner during evening rush hour. “I’ll take you home again, Kathleen...”

It was tough going, but one blizzardly night in early February Bob, staggering home from his full day’s work, was blown into the Hoboken Free Public Library and his life was never the same. He discovered Horatio Alger’s Whetstone Phil, Or, Sharp and Sure, a tattered copy someone had left on a table.

Enthralled, lost in time, young Bob was finally brought back to earth through the persistent efforts of Miss Minnie Watson, the spinster librarian, who kept tapping him on his tousled head — it was after closing time — first with her overshoe and then with a lead pipe that her old mother had given her long ago as a weapon against nocturnal footpads and saloon corner ruffians.

By the time a reluctant spring came back to Hoboken around April tenth, Bob Swillet had devoured every Horatio Alger novel in sight, and he gradually came to the joyous realization that he, Bob Swillet, was one lucky boy. For he possessed all the wonderful disadvantages of the basic Alger hero. He became inspired, jubilant, wild with excitement. He now knew that God was at the helm, in charge, looking out for orphans.

So it was, that late spring of 1926, before falling into bed around midnight every night, Bob Swillet said a prayer of thanks to St. Jerome Aemillian whom Miss Watson the librarian — she had grown to admire the thin waif — had looked up in the book of saints. She had suggested that since St. Jerome Aemillian was the patron saint of orphans it wouldn’t hurt to have the old boy on Bob’s side.

It worked. Prayers always do. St. Jerome, coming to Bob in a dream one night, had the following suggestion:

“Get the hell out of Hoboken. It just isn’t good orphan territory. Try McKeesport, Pennsylvania; Pittsburgh; Buffalo; or the Big Town. Go where tycoons and magnates and their nincompoopish daughters abound. Get off your lazy ****** (deleted) and get moving.”

It was only a five cent ferry ride to the Big Town, so Bob figured he’d give it a try before going to McKeesport, which must be, he thought, somewhere in Indian Territory. Two weeks after St. Jerome had answered his prayer young Bob, thirteen years old, was hired at seven dollars a week as office boy (“plus other duties”) at the up and coming Wall Street law firm of Higgins, Halliburton, Whitehurst and Sweetcove in answer to their ad for “an ambitious young fellow, not afraid of hard work.” He was on his way. Look out there at the top of the ladder, here comes Swillet. He clicked his heels in sheer bliss. How lucky I am, he gloated.

Seething, churning, afire with joy and wonderment, he quickly found comfortable quarters — for eighty-five cents a week and some janitorial duties — above a waterfront mission for derelicts within eight blocks of his work. He rushed back to Hoboken. Gathered up his meager belongings. Ran into the butcher shop to say goodbye to his benefactor, Gottlieb, tell him the great news. Gottlieb, understandably disturbed at losing his ball-of-fire woefully underpaid employee, reacted as might be expected. He pummelled poor bewildered Bob Swillet over the head with a good-sized chunk of pork loin.

Out in the street, holding his poor throbbing head, Bob could only go “tish-tish, my oh my, I’ll be darned,” thinking, I’ll never understand human nature. One minute it’s all kindness and good fellowship and the next it’s thwacking behind the playground statue or a pork loin thumping; dear me.

That’s all right, Bob. These things are all part of growing up. Like people always say, someday you’ll look back on those little pummels and laugh heartily; ho, ho, ho. Anyway, up and at ’em! Full speed ahead! Here comes Swillet!

“That lad will go far,” many a prominent banker, stockbroker, attorney was heard to remark that summer and fall of 1926 as Bob came barrelling around a comer in the financial district, hellbent on some vital mission, toppling an occasional little old lady (word had gotten around and most little old ladies managed to scrounge up against the side of a building as Bob sped by). Every time he knocked a little old lady head over heels he paused momentarily to tip his cap and then sped onward, smoke pouring from his flying heels.

In August of 1927 Bob Swillet became fourteen years old, a bit long in the tooth for the average Horatio Alger hero. He was still stuck on the bottom rung of the ladder, still putting in a busy twelve hour day at the law firm and then another three or four hours of sweeping, scrubbing, and disinfecting at the derelicts’ mission. Busy as he was, the poor lad had little time to eat properly, and while he continued to grow taller he remained a skinny, spindle-shanked, skin and bones creature with large brown eyes, unruly black hair, a jumpy, jerky twitchiness that gave him a kind of Jack-in-the-box appearance. The poor boy was worried.

He was justified in worrying. For, having read and reread Horatio Alger, he was aware that things weren’t working out. Where were happenstance, Lady Luck, the big break? Where was the large manila envelope in the gutter? Where was the footpad attempting to brutally wrench the valuable necklace from the swanlike neck of the Horseshoe heiress? Where was the howling kid — scion of old money — about to be trampled under the flying hooves? And that old standby, the runaway carriage, the shrieking Thimble and Notions heiress? Where indeed. Things looked mighty uncertain for Bob Swillet that August of 1927.

But suddenly it all seemed to straighten out. Mr. Higgins called him upstairs to say that they all had their eye on him. Keep up the good work, Swillet. Oh, by the way, we are raising your wages. From now on you’ll be earning eight dollars and fifty cents a week. Poor dear Bob, weak from hunger anyway, nearly fainted from gratitude. More good news awaited him when he approached his miserable little room above the mission that night. He didn’t reach his room, for the mission had burned down. Two or three derelicts were lost, as were all of Bob’s possessions — two shoeboxes which contained his burlesque queen photos — but he was now free to seek new lodgings with no strings attached. He was finished with trying to handle two jobs. Besides, he needed time for his law studies: his dollar fifty raise would enable him to apply for admission to the WorldWide International Law and Jurisprudence Correspondence College of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And he yearned for free time over the weekends to spend in Central Park where so many of Alger’s heroes — Blackie the Chimneysweep, Will Wiggins, Tinker Boy, Hobnail Harry, a whole slew of lucky urchins — had hit the jackpot by:

(1) Rushing out into the bridle path and stopping the runaway steed (two eight-year-old guttersnipes from Hell’s Kitchen had thrown a large firecracker from the boscage into the terrified steed’s path). Blackie, Will, Hobnail — thirty or forty other lucky chaps — had all been handsomely rewarded for having saved the rich maiden’s life, with Hobnail getting the best deal, an immediate partnership in the Acme Deluxe Parlor Organ Company ($27.45 F. O. B. Elkhart, Indiana) plus the right to spark the shy maiden.

(2) Leaping from a park bench and grabbing the careening perambulator as it approached the Conservatory Pond and the end of the line for the howling tot (Oswald Wellington Clamfellow IV, Clothespin heir). Stovepipe Steve, Bogboy Bill, The Erie Train Boy (a newspapers, magazine, candy salesboy on the Jersey Central), numerous others, sprang to the perambulator rescue and each was also handsomely rewarded.