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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Chimney-Pot Papers, by Charles S. Brooks
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Chimney-Pot Papers
+
+Author: Charles S. Brooks
+
+Illustrator: Fritz Endell
+
+Release Date: July 4, 2008 [EBook #25969]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIMNEY-POT PAPERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Delphine Lettau, Joyce
+Wilson, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
+Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                          Chimney-Pot Papers
+
+
+
+                        by Charles S. Brooks.
+
+
+                      Illustrated with wood-cuts
+
+                           by Fritz Endell.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                 1920
+
+                  New Haven: Yale University Press.
+
+          London: Humphrey Milford: Oxford University Press
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Copyright, 1919, by
+                        Yale University Press.
+
+                        First published, 1919.
+                        Second printing, 1920.
+
+                          Publisher's Note:
+
+               The Yale University Press makes grateful
+                 acknowledgment to the Editors of the
+            _Unpopular Review_ and _The Century Magazine_
+                   for permission to include in the
+              present volume, essays of which they were
+                       the original publishers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+To Minerva, my Wife.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+
+   I. The Chimney-Pots                                  11
+
+  II. The Quest of the Lost Digamma                     19
+
+ III. On a Rainy Morning                                35
+
+  IV. "1917"                                            43
+
+   V. On Going Afoot                                    47
+
+  VI. On Livelihoods                                    68
+
+ VII. The Tread of the Friendly Giants                  79
+
+VIII. On Spending a Holiday                             89
+
+  IX. Runaway Studies                                  109
+
+   X. On Turning into Forty                            117
+
+  XI. On the Difference between Wit and Humor          128
+
+ XII. On Going to a Party                              136
+
+XIII. On a Pair of Leather Suspenders                  146
+
+ XIV. Boots for Runaways                               159
+
+  XV. On Hanging a Stocking at Christmas               169
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+The Chimney-Pots.
+
+
+My windows look across the roofs of the crowded city and my thoughts
+often take their suggestion from the life that is manifest at my
+neighbors' windows and on these roofs.
+
+Across the way, one story lower than our own, there dwells "with his
+subsidiary parents" a little lad who has been ill for several weeks.
+After his household is up and dressed I regularly discover him in bed,
+with his books and toys piled about him. Sometimes his knees are
+raised to form a snowy mountain, and he leads his paper soldiers up
+the slope. Sometimes his kitten romps across the coverlet and pounces
+on his wriggling toes; and again sleeps on the sunny window-sill. His
+book, by his rapt attention, must deal with far-off islands and with
+waving cocoanut trees. Lately I have observed that a yellow drink is
+brought to him in the afternoon--a delicious blend of eggs and
+milk--and by the zest with which he licks the remainder from his lips,
+it is a prime favorite of his. In these last few days, however, I have
+seen the lad's nose flat and eager on the window, and I know that he
+is convalescent.
+
+At another set of windows--now that the days are growing short and
+there is need of lights--I see in shadowgraph against the curtains an
+occasional domestic drama. Tonight, by the appearance of hurry and
+the shifting of garments, I surmise that there is preparation for a
+party. Presently, when the upstairs lights have disappeared, I shall
+see these folk below, issuing from their door in glossy raiment. My
+dear sir and madame, I wish you an agreeable dinner and--if your tooth
+resembles mine--ice-cream for dessert.
+
+The window of a kitchen, also, is opposite, and I often look on savory
+messes as they ripen on the fire--a stirring with a long iron spoon.
+This spoon is of such unusual length that even if one supped with the
+devil (surely the fearful adage cannot apply to our quiet street) he
+might lift his food in safety from the common pot.
+
+A good many stories lower there is a bit of roof that is set with
+wicker furniture and a row of gay plants along the gutter. Here every
+afternoon exactly at six--the roof being then in shadow--a man appears
+and reads his evening paper. Later his wife joins him and they eat
+their supper from a tray. They are sunk almost in a well of buildings
+which, like the hedge of a fairy garden, shuts them from all contact
+with the world. And here they sit when the tray has been removed. The
+twilight falls early at their level and, like cottagers in a valley,
+they watch the daylight that still gilds the peaks above them.
+
+There is another of these out-of-door rooms above me on a higher
+building. From my lower level I can see the bright canvas and the
+side of the trellis that supports it. Here, doubtless, in the cool
+breeze of these summer evenings, honest folk sip their coffee and
+watch the lights start across the city.
+
+Thus, all around, I have glimpses of my neighbors--a form against the
+curtains--a group, in the season, around the fire--the week's darning
+in a rocker--an early nose sniffing at the open window the morning
+airs.
+
+But it is these roofs themselves that are the general prospect.
+
+Close at hand are graveled surfaces with spouts and whirling vents and
+chimneys. Here are posts and lines for washing, and a scuttle from
+which once a week a laundress pops her head. Although her coming is
+timed to the very hour--almost to the minute--yet when the scuttle
+stirs it is with an appearance of mystery, as if one of the forty
+thieves were below, boosting at the rocks that guard his cave. But the
+laundress is of so unromantic and jouncing a figure that I abandon the
+fancy when no more than her shoulders are above the scuttle. She is,
+however, an amiable creature and, if the wind is right, I hear her
+singing at her task. When clothespins fill her mouth, she experiments
+with popular tunes. One of these wooden bipeds once slipped inside and
+nearly strangled her.
+
+In the distance, on the taller buildings, water tanks are lifted
+against the sky. They are perched aloft on three fingers, as it were,
+as if the buildings were just won to prohibition and held up their
+water cups in the first excitement of a novice to pledge the cause.
+Let hard liquor crouch and tremble in its rathskeller below the
+sidewalk! In the basement let musty kegs roll and gurgle with hopeless
+fear! _Der Tag!_ The roof, the triumphant roof, has gone dry.
+
+This range of buildings with water tanks and towers stops my gaze to
+the North. There is a crowded world beyond--rolling valleys of
+humanity--the heights of Harlem--but although my windows stand on
+tiptoe, they may not discover these distant scenes.
+
+On summer days these roofs burn in the sun and spirals of heat arise.
+Tar flows from the joints in the tin. Tar and the adder--is it not a
+bright day that brings them forth? Now washing hangs limp upon the
+line. There is no frisk in undergarments. These stockings that hang
+shriveled and anĉmic--can it be possible that they once trotted to a
+lively tune, or that a lifted skirt upon a crosswalk drew the eye? The
+very spouts and chimneys droop in the heavy sunlight. All the spinning
+vents are still. On these roofs, as on a steaming altar, August
+celebrates its hot midsummer rites.
+
+But in winter, when the wind is up, the roofs show another aspect. The
+storm, in frayed and cloudy garment, now plunges across the city. It
+snaps its boisterous fingers. It pipes a song to summon rowdy
+companions off the sea. The whirling vents hum shrilly to the tune.
+And the tempests are roused, and the windy creatures of the hills make
+answer. The towers--even the nearer buildings--are obscured. The sky
+is gray with rain. Smoke is torn from the chimneys. Down below let a
+fire be snug upon the hearth and let warm folk sit and toast their
+feet! Let shadows romp upon the walls! Let the andirons wink at the
+sleepy cat! Cream or lemon, two lumps or one. Here aloft is brisker
+business. There is storm upon the roof. The tempest holds a carnival.
+And the winds pounce upon the smoke as it issues from the chimney-pots
+and wring it by the neck as they bear it off.
+
+And sometimes it seems that these roofs represent youth, and its
+purpose, its ambition and adventure. For, from of old, have not poets
+lived in garrets? And are not all poets young even if their beards are
+white? Round and round the poet climbs, up these bare creaking flights
+to the very top. There is a stove to be lighted--unless the woodbox
+fails--a sloping ceiling and a window huddled to the floor. The poet's
+fingers may be numb. Although the inkpot be full, his stomach may be
+empty. And yet from this window, lately, a poem was cast upward to the
+moon. And youth and truth still rhyme in these upper rooms. Linda's
+voice is still the music of a sonnet. Still do the roses fade, and
+love is always like the constant stars. And once, this!--surely from a
+garret:
+
+    When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
+    Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
+    And think that I may never live to trace
+    Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance--
+
+Poor starved wretches are we who live softly in the lower stories,
+although we are fat of body.
+
+If a mighty pair of shears were to clip the city somewhere below these
+windy gutters would there not be a dearth of poems in the spring? Who
+then would be left to note the changing colors of the twilight and the
+peaceful transit of the stars? Would gray beech trees in the winter
+find a voice? Would there still be a song of water and of wind? Who
+would catch the rhythm of the waves and the wheat fields in the
+breeze? What lilts and melodies would vanish from the world! How stale
+and flat the city without its roofs!
+
+But it is at night that these roofs show best. Then, as below a
+philosopher in his tower, the city spreads its web of streets, and its
+lights gleam in answer to the lights above. Galileo in his
+tower--Teufelsdröckh at his far-seeing attic window--saw this
+glistening pageantry and had thoughts unutterable.
+
+In this darkness these roofs are the true suburb of the world--the
+outpost--the pleasant edge of our human earth turned up toward the
+barren moon. Chimneys stand as sentinels on the border of the sky.
+Pointed towers mark the passage of the stars. Great buildings are the
+cliffs on the shores of night. A skylight shows as a pleasant signal
+to guide the wandering skipper of the moon.
+
+
+
+
+The Quest of the Lost Digamma.
+
+
+Many years ago there was a club of college undergraduates which called
+itself the Lost Digamma. The digamma, I am informed, is a letter that
+was lost in prehistoric times from the Greek alphabet. A prudent
+alphabet would have offered a reward at once and would have beaten up
+the bushes all about, but evidently these remedies were neglected. As
+the years went on the other letters gradually assumed its duties. The
+philological chores, so to speak, night and morning, that had once
+fallen to the digamma, they took upon themselves, until the very name
+of the letter was all but lost.
+
+Those who are practiced in such matters--humped men who blink with
+learning--claim to discover evidence of the letter now and then in
+their reading. Perhaps the missing letter still gives a false quantity
+to a vowel or shifts an accent. It is remembered, as it were, by its
+vacant chair. Or rather, like a ghost it haunts a word, rattling a
+warning lest we disarrange a syllable. Its absence, however, in the
+flesh, despite the lapse of time--for it went off long ago when the
+mastodon still wandered on the pleasant upland--its continued absence
+vexes the learned. They scan ancient texts for an improper syllable
+and mark the time upon their brown old fingers, if possibly a jolting
+measure may offer them a clue. Although it must appear that the
+digamma--if it yet rambles alive somewhere beneath the moon--has by
+this time grown a beard and is lost beyond recognition, still old
+gentlemen meet weekly and read papers to one another on the progress
+of the search. Like the old woman of the story they still keep a light
+burning in their study windows against the wanderer's return.
+
+Now it happened once that a group of undergraduates, stirred to
+sympathy beyond the common usage of the classroom, formed themselves
+into a club to aid in the search. It is not recorded that they were
+the deepest students in the class, yet mark their zeal! On a rumor
+arising from the chairman that the presence of the lost digamma was
+suspected the group rushed together of an evening, for there was an
+instinct that the digamma, like the raccoon, was easiest trapped at
+night. To stay their stomachs against a protracted search, for their
+colloquies sat late, they ordered a plentiful dinner to be placed
+before them. Also, on the happy chance that success might crown the
+night, a row of stout Tobies was set upon the board. If the prodigal
+lurked without and his vagrant nose were seen at last upon the window,
+then musty liquor, from a Toby's three-cornered hat, would be a
+fitting pledge for his return.
+
+I do not know to a certainty the place of these meetings, but I choose
+to fancy that it was an upper room in a modest restaurant that went by
+the name of Mory's--not the modern Mory's that affects the manners of
+a club, but the original Temple Bar, remembered justly for its brown
+ale and golden bucks.
+
+There was, of course, a choice of places where the Lost Digamma might
+have pushed its search. Waiving Billy's and the meaner joints
+conferred on freshmen, there was, to be sure, the scholastic murk of
+Traeger's--one room especially at the rear with steins around the
+walls. There was Heublein's, also. Even the Tontine might rouse a
+student. But I choose to consider that Mory's was the place.
+
+Never elsewhere has cheese sputtered on toast with such hot delight.
+Never have such fair round eggs perched upon the top. The hen who laid
+the golden egg--for it could be none other than she who worked the
+miracle at Mory's--must have clucked like a braggart when the smoking
+dish came in. The dullest nose, even if it had drowsed like a Stoic
+through the day, perked and quivered when the breath came off the
+kitchen. Ears that before had never wiggled to the loudest noise came
+flapping forward when the door was opened. Or maybe in those days your
+wealth, huddled closely through the week, stretched on Saturday night
+to a mutton chop with bacon on the side. This chop, named of the
+southern downs, was so big that it curled like an anchovy to get upon
+the plate. The sheep that bore it across the grassy moors must have
+out-topped the horse. The hills must have shaken beneath his tread.
+With what eagerness you squared your lean elbows for the feast, with
+knife and fork turned upwards in your fists!
+
+But chops in these modern days are retrograde. Sheep have fallen to a
+decadent race. Cheese has lost its cunning. Someone, alas, as the
+story says, has killed the hen that laid the golden egg. Mory's is
+sunk and gone. Its faded prints of the Old Brick Row, its tables
+carved with students' names, its brown Tobies in their three-cornered
+hats, the brasses of the tiny bar, the rickety rooms themselves--these
+rise from the past like genial ghosts and beckon us toward pleasant
+memories.
+
+Such was the zeal in those older days which the members of the Lost
+Digamma spent upon their quest that belated pedestrians--if the legend
+of the district be believed--have stopped upon the curb and have
+inquired the meaning of the glad shouts that issued from the upper
+windows, and they have gone off marveling at the enthusiasm attendant
+on this high endeavor. It is rumored that once when the excitement of
+the chase had gone to an unusual height and the students were beating
+their Tobies on the table, one of them, a fellow of uncommon ardor,
+lunging forward from his chair, got salt upon the creature's tail. The
+exploit overturned the table and so rocked the house that Louis, who
+was the guardian of the place, put his nose above the stairs and
+cooled the meeting. Had it not been for his interference--he was a
+good-natured fellow but unacquainted with the frenzy that marks the
+scholar--the lost digamma might have been trapped, to the lasting
+glory of the college.
+
+As to the further progress of the club I am not informed. Doubtless it
+ran an honorable course and passed on from class to class the
+tradition of its high ambition, but never again was the lost digamma
+so nearly in its grasp. If it still meets upon its midnight labors, a
+toothless member boasts of that night of its topmost glory, and those
+who have gathered to his words rap their stale unprofitable mugs upon
+the table.
+
+It would be unjust to assume that you are so poor a student as myself.
+Doubtless you are a scholar and can discourse deeply of the older
+centuries. You know the ancient works of Tweedledum and can
+distinguish to a hair's breadth 'twixt him and Tweedledee. Learning is
+candy on your tooth. Perhaps you stroke your sagacious beard and give
+a nimble reason for the lightning. To you the hills have whispered how
+they came, and the streams their purpose and ambition. You have
+studied the first shrinkage of the earth when the plains wrinkled and
+broke into mountain peaks. The mystery of the stars is to you as
+familiar as your garter. If such depth is yours, I am content to sit
+before you like a bucket below a tap.
+
+At your banquet I sit as a poor relation. If the viands hold, I fork a
+cold morsel from your dish....
+
+But modesty must not gag me. I do myself somewhat lean towards
+knowledge. I run to a dictionary on a disputed word, and I point my
+inquiring nose upon the page like a careful schoolman. On a spurt I
+pry into an uncertain date, but I lack the perseverance and the
+wakefulness for sustained endeavor. To repair my infirmity, I
+frequently go among those of steadier application, if haply their
+devotion may prove contagious. It was but lately that I dined with a
+group of the Cognoscenti. There were light words at first, as when a
+juggler carelessly tosses up a ball or two just to try his hand before
+he displays his genius--a jest or two, into which I entered as an
+equal. In these shallow moments we waded through our soup. But we had
+hardly got beyond the fish when the company plunged into greater
+depth. I soon discovered that I was among persons skilled in those
+economic and social studies that now most stir us. My neighbor on the
+left offered to gossip with me on the latest evaluations and
+eventuations--for such were her pleasing words--in the department of
+knowledge dearest to her. While I was still fumbling for a response,
+my neighbor on the right, abandoning her meat, informed me of the
+progress of a survey of charitable organizations that was then under
+way. By mischance, however, while flipping up the salad on my fork, I
+dropped a morsel on the cloth, and I was so intent in manoeuvring
+my plates and spoons to cover up the speck, that I lost a good part of
+her improving discourse.
+
+I was still, however, making a tolerable pretense of attention, when a
+learned person across the table was sharp enough to see that I was a
+novice in the gathering. For my improvement, therefore, he fixed his
+great round glasses in my direction. In my confusion they seemed
+burning lenses hotly focused on me. Under such a glare, he thought, my
+tender sprouts of knowledge must spring up to full blossom.
+
+When he had my attention, he proceeded to lay out the dinner into
+calories, which I now discovered to be a kind of heat or nutritive
+unit. He cast his appraisal on the meat and vegetables, and turned an
+ear toward the pantry door if by chance he might catch a hint of the
+dessert for his estimate, but by this time, being overwrought, I gave
+up all pretense, and put my coarse attention on my plate.
+
+Sometimes I fall on better luck. It was but yesterday that I sat
+waiting for a book in the Public Library, when a young woman came and
+sat beside me on the common bench. Immediately she opened a monstrous
+note-book, and fell to studying it. I had myself been reading, but I
+had held my book at a stingy angle against the spying of my neighbors.
+As the young woman was of a more open nature, she laid hers out flat.
+It is my weakness to pry upon another's book. Especially if it is old
+and worn--a musty history or an essay from the past--I squirm and
+edge myself until I can follow the reader's thumb.
+
+At the top of each page she had written the title of a book, with a
+space below for comment, now well filled. There were a hundred of
+these titles, and all of them concerned John Paul Jones. She busied
+herself scratching and amending her notes. The whole was thrown into
+such a snarl of interlineation, was so disfigured with revision, and
+the writing so started up the margins to get breath at the top, that I
+wondered how she could possibly bring a straight narrative out of the
+confusion. Yet here was a book growing up beneath my very nose. If in
+a year's time--or perhaps in a six-month, if the manuscript is not
+hawked too long among publishers--if when again the nights are raw, a
+new biography of John Paul Jones appears, and you cut its leaves while
+your legs are stretched upon the hearth, I bid you to recognize as its
+author my companion on the bench. Although she did not have beauty to
+rouse a bachelor, yet she had an agreeable face and, if a soft white
+collar of pleasing fashion be evidence, she put more than a scholar's
+care upon her dress.
+
+I am not entirely a novice in a library. Once I gained admittance to
+the Reading Room of the British Museum--no light task even before the
+war. This was the manner of it. First, I went among the policemen who
+frequent the outer corridors, and inquired for a certain office which
+I had been told controlled its affairs. The third policeman had heard
+of it and sent me off with directions. Presently I went through an
+obscure doorway, traversed a mean hall with a dirty gas-jet at the
+turn and came before a wicket. A dark man with the blood of a Spanish
+inquisitor asked my business. I told him I was a poor student, without
+taint or heresy, who sought knowledge. He stroked his chin as though
+it were a monstrous improbability. He looked me up and down, but this
+might have been merely a secular inquiry on the chance that I carried
+explosives. He then dipped his pen in an ancient well (it was from
+such a dusty fount that the warrant for Saint Bartholomew went forth),
+then bidding me be careful in my answers, he cocked his head and shut
+his less suspicious eye lest it yield to mercy.
+
+He asked my name in full, middle name and all--as though villainy
+might lurk in an initial--my hotel, my length of stay in London, my
+residence in America, my occupation, the titles of the books I sought.
+When he had done, I offered him my age and my weakness for French
+pastry, in order that material for a monograph might be at hand if at
+last I came to fame, but he silenced me with his cold eye. He now
+thrust a pamphlet in my hands, and told me to sit alongside and read
+it. It contained the rules that govern the use of the Reading Room. It
+was eight pages long, and intolerably dry, and towards the end I
+nodded. Awaking with a start, I was about to hold up my hands for the
+adjustment of the thumb screws--for I had fallen on a nightmare--when
+he softened. The Imperial Government was now pleased to admit me to
+the Reading Room for such knowledge as might lie in my capacity.
+
+The Reading Room is used chiefly by authors, gray fellows mostly,
+dried and wrinkled scholars who come here to pilfer innocently from
+antiquity. Among these musty memorial shelves, if anywhere, it would
+seem that the dusty padding feet of the lost digamma might be heard.
+In this room, perhaps, Christian Mentzelius was at work when he heard
+the book-worm flap its wings.
+
+Here sit the scholars at great desks with ingenious shelves and racks,
+and they write all day and copy excerpts from the older authors. If
+one of them hesitates and seems to chew upon his pencil, it is but
+indecision whether Hume or Buckle will weigh heavier on his page. Or
+if one of them looks up from his desk in a blurred near-sighted
+manner, it is because his eyes have been so stretched upon the distant
+centuries, that they can hardly focus on a room. If a scholar chances
+to sneeze because of the infection, let it be his consolation that the
+dust arises from the most ancient and respected authors! Pages move
+silently about with tall dingy tomes in their arms. Other tomes, whose
+use is past, they bear off to the shades below.
+
+I am told that once in a long time a student of fresher complexion
+gets in--a novitiate with the first scholastic down upon his cheek--a
+tender stripling on his first high quest--a broth of a boy barely off
+his primer--but no sooner is he set than he feels unpleasantly
+conspicuous among his elders. Most of these youth bolt, offering to
+the doorman as a pretext some neglect--a forgotten mission at a
+book-stall--an errand with a tailor. Even those few who remain because
+of the greater passion for their studies, find it to their comfort to
+break their condition. Either they put on glasses or they affect a
+limp. I know one persistent youth who was so consumed with desire for
+history, yet so modest against exposure, that he bargained with a
+beggar for his crutch. It was, however, the rascal's only livelihood.
+This crutch and his piteous whimper had worked so profitably on the
+crowd that, in consequence, its price fell beyond the student's purse.
+My friend, therefore, practiced a palsy until, being perfect in the
+part, he could take his seat without notice or embarrassment. Alas,
+the need of these pretenses is short. Such is the contagion of the
+place--a breath from Egypt comes up from the lower stacks--that a
+youth's appearance, like a dyer's hand, is soon subdued to what it
+works in. In a month or so a general dust has settled on him. Too
+often learning is a Rip Van Winkle's flagon.
+
+On a rare occasion I have myself been a student, and have plied my
+book with diligence. Not long ago I spent a week of agreeable days
+reading the many versions of Shakespeare that were played from the
+Restoration through the eighteenth century. They are well known to
+scholars, but the general reader is perhaps unfamiliar how Shakespeare
+was perverted. From this material I thought that I might lay out an
+instructive paper; how, for example, the whirling passion of Lear was
+once wrought to soft and pleasant uses for a holiday. Cordelia is
+rescued from the villains by the hero Kent, who cries out in a
+transport, "Come to my arms, thou loveliest, best of women!" The scene
+is laid in the woods, but as night comes on, Cordelia's old nurse
+appears. A scandal is averted. Whereupon Kent marries Cordelia, and
+they reign happily ever afterward. As for Lear, he advances into a
+gentle convalescence. Before the week is out he will be sunning
+himself on the bench beneath his pear tree and babbling of his early
+days.
+
+There were extra witches in Macbeth. Romeo and Juliet lived and the
+quarreling families were united. Desdemona remained un-smothered to
+the end. There was one stout author--but here I trust to memory--who
+even attempted to rescue Hamlet and to substitute for the distant
+rolling of the drum of Fortinbras, the pipes and timbrels of his happy
+wedding. There is yet to be made a lively paper of these Shakespeare
+tinkers of the eighteenth century.
+
+And then John Timbs was to have been my text, who was an antiquary of
+the nineteenth century. I had come frequently on his books. They are
+seldom found in first-hand shops. More appropriately they are offered
+where the older books are sold--where there are racks before the door
+for the rakings of the place, and inside an ancient smell of leather.
+If there are barrels in the basement, stocked and overflowing, it is
+sure that a volume of Timbs is upon the premises.
+
+I visited the Public Library and asked a sharp-nosed person how I
+might best learn about John Timbs. I followed the direction of his
+wagging thumb. The accounts of the encyclopedias are meager, a date of
+birth and of death, a few facts of residence, the titles of his
+hundred and fifty books, and little more. Some neglect him entirely;
+skipping lightly from Timbrel to Timbuctoo. Indeed, Timbuctoo turned
+up so often that even against my intention I came to a knowledge of
+the place. It lies against the desert and exports ostrich feathers,
+gums, salts and kola-nuts. Nor are timbrels to be scorned. They were
+used--I quote precisely--"by David when he danced before the ark."
+Surely not Noah's ark! I must brush up on David.
+
+Timbs is matter for an engaging paper. His passion was London. He had
+a fling at other subjects--a dozen books or so--but his graver hours
+were given to the study of London. There is hardly a park or square or
+street, palace, theatre or tavern that did not yield its secret to
+him. Here and there an upstart building, too new for legend, may have
+had no gossip for him, but all others John Timbs knew, and the
+personages who lived in them. And he knew whether they were of sour
+temper, whether they were rich or poor, and if poor, what shifts and
+pretenses they practiced. He knew the windows of the town where the
+beaux commonly ogled the passing beauties. He knew the chatter of the
+theatres and of society. He traced the walls of the old city, and
+explored the lanes. Unless I am much mistaken, there is not a fellow
+of the _Dunciad_ to whom he has not assigned a house. Nor is any man
+of deeper knowledge of the clubs and coffee-houses and taverns. One
+would say that he had sat at Will's with Dryden, and that he had gone
+to Button's arm in arm with Addison. Did Goldsmith journey to his
+tailor for a plum-colored suit, you may be sure that Timbs tagged him
+at the elbow. If Sam Johnson sat at the Mitre or Marlowe caroused in
+Deptford, Timbs was of the company. There has scarcely been a play
+acted in London since the days of Burbage which Timbs did not
+chronicle.
+
+But presently I gave up the study of John Timbs. Although I had
+accumulated interesting facts about him, and had got so far as to lay
+out several amusing paragraphs, still I could not fit them together to
+an agreeable result. It was as though I could blow a melodious C upon
+a horn, and lower down, after preparation, a dulcet G, but failed to
+make a tune of them.
+
+But although my studies so far have been unsuccessful, doubtless I
+shall persist. Even now I have several topics in mind that may yet
+serve for pleasant papers. If I fail, it will be my comfort that
+others far better than myself achieve but a half success. Although the
+digamma escapes our salt, somewhere he lurks on the lonely mountains.
+And often when our lamps burn late, we fancy that we catch a waving of
+his tail and hear him padding across the night. But although we lash
+ourselves upon the chase and strain forward in the dark, the timid
+beast runs on swifter feet and scampers off.
+
+
+
+
+On a Rainy Morning.
+
+
+A northeaster blew up last night and this morning we are lashed by
+wind and rain. M---- foretold the change yesterday when we rode upon a
+'bus top at nightfall. It was then pleasant enough and to my eye all
+was right aloft. I am not, however, weather-wise. I must feel the
+first patter of the storm before I hazard a judgment. To learn even
+the quarter of a breeze--unless there is a trail of smoke to guide
+me--I must hold up a wet finger. In my ignorance clouds sail across
+the heavens on a whim. Like white sheep they wander here and there for
+forage, and my suspicion of bad weather comes only when the tempest
+has whipped them to a gallop. Even a band around the moon--which I am
+told is primary instruction on the coming of a storm--stirs me chiefly
+by its deeper mystery, as if astrology, come in from the distant
+stars, lifts here a warning finger. But M---- was brought up beside
+the sea, and she has a sailor's instinct for the weather. At the first
+preliminary shifting of the heavens, too slight for my coarser senses,
+she will tilt her nose and look around, then pronounce the coming of a
+storm. To her, therefore, I leave all questions of umbrellas and
+raincoats, and on her decision we go abroad.
+
+Last night when I awoke I knew that her prophecy was right again, for
+the rain was blowing in my face and slashing on the upper window. The
+wind, too, was whistling along the roofs, with a try at chimney-pots
+and spouts. It was the wolf in the fairy story who said he'd huff and
+he'd puff, and he'd blow in the house where the little pig lived; yet
+tonight his humor was less savage. Down below I heard ash-cans
+toppling over all along the street and rolling to the gutters. It
+lacks a few nights of Hallowe'en, but doubtless the wind's calendar is
+awry and he is out already with his mischief. When a window rattles at
+this season, it is the tick-tack of his roguish finger. If a chimney
+is overthrown, it is his jest. Tomorrow we shall find a broken shutter
+as his rowdy celebration of the night.
+
+This morning is by general agreement a nasty day. I am not sure that I
+assent. If I were the old woman at the corner who sells newspapers
+from a stand, I would not like the weather, for the pent roof drops
+water on her stock. Scarcely is the peppermint safe beyond the
+splatter. Nor is it, I fancy, a profitable day for a street-organ man,
+who requires a sunny morning with open windows for a rush of business.
+Nor is there any good reason why a house-painter should be delighted
+with this blustering sky, unless he is an idle fellow who seeks an
+excuse to lie in bed. But except in sympathy, why is our elevator boy
+so fiercely disposed against the weather? His cage is snug as long as
+the skylight holds. And why should the warm dry noses of the city,
+pressed against ten thousand windows up and down the streets, be flat
+and sour this morning with disapproval?
+
+It may savor of bravado to find pleasure in what is so commonly
+condemned. Here is a smart fellow, you may say, who sets up a
+paradox--a conceited braggart who professes a difference to mankind.
+Or worse, it may appear that I try my hand at writing in a "happy
+vein." God forbid that I should be such a villain! For I once knew a
+man who, by reading these happy books, fell into pessimism and a sharp
+decline. He had wasted to a peevish shadow and had taken to his bed
+before his physician discovered the seat of his anĉmia. It was only by
+cutting the evil dose, chapter by chapter, that he finally restored
+him to his friends. Yet neither supposition of my case is true. We who
+enjoy wet and windy days are of a considerable number, and if our
+voices are seldom heard in public dispute, it is because we are
+overcome by the growling majority. You may know us, however, by our
+stout boots, the kind of battered hats we wear, and our disregard of
+puddles. To our eyes alone, the rain swirls along the pavements like
+the mad rush of sixteenth notes upon a music staff. And to our ears
+alone, the wind sings the rattling tune recorded.
+
+Certainly there is more comedy on the streets on a wet and windy day
+than there is under a fair sky. Thin folk hold on at corners. Fat folk
+waddle before the wind, their racing elbows wing and wing. Hats are
+whisked off and sail down the gutters on excited purposes of their
+own. It was only this morning that I saw an artistocratic silk hat
+bobbing along the pavement in familiar company with a stranger
+bonnet--surely a misalliance, for the bonnet was a shabby one. But in
+the wind, despite the difference of social station, an instant
+affinity had been established and an elopement was under way.
+
+Persons with umbrellas clamp them down close upon their heads and
+proceed blindly like the larger and more reckless crabs that you see
+in aquariums. Nor can we know until now what spirit for adventure
+resides in an umbrella. Hitherto it has stood in a Chinese vase
+beneath the stairs and has seemed a listless creature. But when a
+November wind is up it is a cousin of the balloon, with an equal zest
+to explore the wider precincts of the earth and to alight upon the
+moon. Only persons of heavier ballast--such as have been fed on
+sweets--plump pancake persons--can hold now an umbrella to the ground.
+A long stowage of muffins and sugar is the only anchor.
+
+At this moment beneath my window there is a dear little girl who
+brings home a package from the grocer's. She is tugged and blown by
+her umbrella, and at every puff of wind she goes up on tiptoe. If I
+were writing a fairy tale I would make her the Princess of my plot,
+and I would transport her underneath her umbrella in this whisking
+wind to her far adventures, just as Davy sailed off to the land of
+Goblins inside his grandfather's clock. She would be carried over
+seas, until she could sniff the spice winds of the south. Then she
+would be set down in the orchard of the Golden Prince, who presently
+would spy her from his window--a mite of a pretty girl, all mussed and
+blown about. And then I would spin out the tale to its true and happy
+end, and they would live together ever after. How she labors at the
+turn, hugging her paper bag and holding her flying skirts against her
+knees! An umbrella, however, usually turns inside out before it gets
+you off the pavement, and then it looks like a wrecked Zeppelin. You
+put it in the first ash-can, and walk off in an attempt not to be
+conspicuous.
+
+Although the man who pursues his hat is, in some sort, conscious that
+he plays a comic part, and although there is a pleasing relish on the
+curb at his discomfort, yet it must not be assumed that all the humor
+on the street rises from misadventure. Rather, it arises from a
+general acceptance of the day and a feeling of common partnership in
+the storm. The policeman in his rubber coat exchanges banter with a
+cab-driver. If there is a tangle in the traffic, it comes nearer to a
+jest than on a fairer day. A teamster sitting dry inside his hood,
+whistles so cheerily that he can be heard at the farther sidewalk.
+Good-naturedly he sets his tune as a rival to the wind.
+
+It must be that only good-tempered persons are abroad--those whose
+humor endures and likes the storm--and that when the swift dark clouds
+drove across the world, all sullen folk scurried for a roof. And is it
+not wise, now and then, that folk be thus parceled with their kind?
+Must we wait for Gabriel's Trump for our division? I have been
+told--but the story seems incredible--that that seemingly cursed
+thing, the Customs' Wharf, was established not so much for our
+nation's profit as in acceptance of some such general theory--in a
+word, that all sour persons might be housed together for their
+employment and society be rid of them. It is by an extension of this
+obscure but beneficent division that only those of better nature go
+abroad on these blustering November days.
+
+There are many persons, of course, who like summer rains and boast of
+their liking. This is nothing. One might as well boast of his appetite
+for toasted cheese. Does one pin himself with badges if he plies an
+enthusiastic spoon in an ice-cream dish? Or was the love of sack ever
+a virtue, and has Falstaff become a saint? If he now sing in the Upper
+Choir, the bench must sag. But persons of this turn of argument make a
+point of their willingness to walk out in a June rain. They think it a
+merit to go tripping across the damp grass to inspect their gardens.
+Toasted cheese! Of course they like it. Who could help it? This is no
+proof of merit. Such folk, at best, are but sisters in the
+brotherhood.
+
+And yet a November rain is but an August rain that has grown a beard
+and taken on the stalwart manners of the world. And the November wind,
+which piped madrigals in June and lazy melodies all the summer, has
+done no more than learn brisker braver tunes to befit the coming
+winter. If the wind tugs at your coat-tails, it only seeks a companion
+for its games. It goes forth whistling for honest celebration, and who
+shall begrudge it here and there a chimney if it topple it in sport?
+
+Despite this, rainy weather has a bad name. So general is its evil
+reputation that from of old one of the lowest circles of Hell has been
+plagued with raw winds and covered thick with ooze--a testament to our
+northern March--and in this villains were set shivering to their
+chins. But the beginning of the distaste for rainy weather may be
+traced to Noah. Certain it is that toward the end of his cruise, when
+the passengers were already chafing with the animals--the kangaroos,
+in particular, it is said, played leap-frog in the hold and disturbed
+the skipper's sleep--certain it is while the heavens were still
+overcast that Noah each morning put his head anxiously up through the
+forward hatch for a change of sky. There was rejoicing from stem to
+stern--so runs the legend--when at last his old white beard, shifting
+from west to east, gave promise of a clearing wind. But from that day
+to this, as is natural, there has persisted a stout prejudice against
+wind and rain.
+
+But this is not just. If a rainy day lacks sunshine, it has vigor for
+a substitute. The wind whistles briskly among the chimney tops. There
+is so much life on wet and windy days. Yesterday Nature yawned, but
+today she is wide awake. Yesterday the earth seemed lolling idly in
+the heavens. It was a time of celestial vacation and all the suns and
+moons were vacant of their usual purpose. But today the earth whirls
+and spins through space. Her gray cloud cap is pulled down across her
+nose and she leans in her hurry against the storm. The heavens have
+piped the planets to their work.
+
+Yesterday the smoke of chimneys drifted up with tired content from
+lazy roofs, but today the smoke is stretched and torn like a
+triumphant banner of the storm.
+
+
+
+
+"1917."
+
+
+I dreamed last night a fearful dream and this morning even the
+familiar contact of the subway has been unable to shake it from me.
+
+I know of few things that are so momentarily tragical as awakening
+from a frightful dream. Even if you know with returning consciousness
+that it was a dream, it seems as if a part of it must have a basis in
+fact. The death that was recorded--is it true or not? And in your mind
+you grope among the familiar landmarks of your recollection to
+discover where the true and the fictitious join.
+
+But this dream of last night was so vivid that this morning I cannot
+shake it from me.
+
+I dreamed--ridiculously enough--that the whole world was at war, and
+that big and little nations were fighting.
+
+In my dream the round earth hung before me against the background of
+the night, and red flames shot from every part.
+
+I heard cries of anguish--men blinded by gases and crazed by
+suffering. I saw women dressed in black--a long procession stretching
+hideously from mist to mist--walking with erect heads, dry-eyed, for
+grief had starved them of tears. I saw ships sinking and a thousand
+arms raised for a moment above the waves. I saw children lying dead
+among their toys.
+
+And I saw boys throw down their books and tools and go off with glad
+cries, and men I saw, grown gray with despair, staggering under heavy
+weights.
+
+There were millions of dead upon the earth that hung before me, and I
+smelled the battlefield.
+
+And I beheld one man--one hundred men--secure in an outlawed country--who
+looked from far windows--men bitter with disappointment--men who blasphemed
+of God, while their victims rotted in Flanders.
+
+And in my dream it seemed that I did not have a sword, but that I,
+too, looked upon the battle from a place where there were no flames. I
+ran little errands for the war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is the familiar window--that dull outline across the room. Here
+is the accustomed door. The bed is set between. It was but a dream
+after all. And yet how it has shaken me!
+
+Of course the dream was absurd. No man--no nation certainly--could be
+so mad. The whole whirling earth could not burn with fire. Until the
+final trumpet, no such calamity is possible. Thank God, it was but a
+dream, and I can continue today my peaceful occupation.
+
+Calico, I'm told, is going up. I must protect our contracts.
+
+
+
+
+On Going Afoot.
+
+
+There is a tale that somewhere in the world there is a merry river
+that dances as often as it hears sweet music. The tale is not precise
+whether this river is neighbor to us or is a stream of the older
+world. "It dances at the noise of musick," so runs the legend, "for
+with musick it bubbles, dances and grows sandy." This tale may be the
+conceit of one of those older poets whose verses celebrate the morning
+and the freshness of the earth--Thomas Heywood could have written it
+or even the least of those poets who sat their evenings at the
+Mermaid--or the tale may arise more remotely from an old worship of
+the god Pan, who is said to have piped along the streams. I offer my
+credence to the earlier origin as the more pleasing. And therefore on
+a country walk I observe the streams if by chance any of them shall
+fit the tale. Not yet have I seen Pan puffing his cheeks with melody
+on a streamside bank--by ill luck I squint short-sightedly--but I
+often hear melodies of such woodsy composition that surely they must
+issue from his pipe. The stream leaps gaily across the shallows that
+glitter with sunlight, and I am tempted to the agreeable suspicion
+that I have hit upon the very stream of the legend and that the god
+Pan sits hard by in the thicket and beats his shaggy hoof in rhythm.
+It is his song that the wind sings in the trees. If a bird sings in
+the meadow its tune is pitched to Pan's reedy obligato.
+
+Whether or not this is true, I confess to a love of a stream. This may
+be merely an anĉmic love of beauty, such as is commonly bred in
+townsfolk on a holiday, or it may descend from braver ancestors who
+once were anglers and played truant with hook and line. You may recall
+that the milk-women of Kent told Piscator when he came at the end of
+his day's fishing to beg a cup of red cow's milk, that anglers were
+"honest, civil, quiet men." I have, also, a habit of contemplation,
+which I am told is proper to an angler. I can lean longer than most
+across the railing of a country bridge if the water runs noisily on
+the stones. If I chance to come off a dusty road--unless hunger stirs
+me to an inn--I can listen for an hour, for of all sounds it is the
+most musical. When earth and air and water play in concert, which are
+the master musicians this side of the moon, surely their harmony rises
+above the music of the stars.
+
+In a more familiar mood I throw stepping stones in the water to hear
+them splash, or I cram them in a dam to thwart the purpose of the
+stream, laying ever a higher stone when the water laps the top. I
+scoop out the sand and stones as if a mighty shipping begged for
+passage. Or I rest from this prodigious engineering upon my back and
+watch the white traffic of the clouds across the summer sky. The roots
+of an antique oak peep upon the flood as in the golden days of Arden.
+Apple blossoms fall upon the water like the snow of a more kindly
+winter. A gay leaf puts out upon the channel like a painted galleon
+for far adventure. A twig sails off freighted with my drowsy thoughts.
+A branch of a willow dips in the stream and writes an endless trail of
+words in the running water. In these evil days when the whole fair
+world is trenched and bruised with war, what wisdom does it send to
+the valleys where men reside--what love and peace and gentleness--what
+promise of better days to come--that it makes this eternal stream its
+messenger!
+
+And yet a stream is best if it is but an incident in travel--if it
+break the dusty afternoon and send one off refreshed. Rather than a
+place for fishing it invites one to bathe his feet. There are, indeed,
+persons so careful of their health as to assert that cold water
+endangers blisters. Theirs is a prudence to be neglected. Such persons
+had better leave their feet at home safely slippered on the fender. If
+one's feet go upon a holiday, is it fair that for fear of consequence
+they be kept housed in their shoes? Shall the toes sit inside their
+battered caravans while the legs and arms frisk outside? Is there such
+torture in a blister--even if the prevention be sure--to outweigh the
+pleasure of cold water running across the ankles?
+
+It was but lately that I followed a road that lay off the general
+travel through a pleasant country of hills and streams. As the road
+was not a thoroughfare and journeyed no farther than the near-by town
+where I was to get my supper, it went at a lazy winding pace. If a dog
+barked it was in sleepy fashion. He yelped merely to check his
+loneliness. There could be no venom on his drowsy tooth. The very cows
+that fed along its fences were of a slower breed and more
+contemplative whisk of tail than are found upon the thoroughfares.
+Sheep patched the fields with gray and followed their sleepy banquet
+across the hills.
+
+The country was laid out with farms--orchards and soft fields of grain
+that waved like a golden lake--but there were few farmhouses. In all
+the afternoon I passed but one person, a deaf man who asked for
+direction. When I cried out that I was a stranger, he held his hand to
+his ear, but his mouth fell open as if my words, denied by deafness
+from a proper portal, were offered here a service entrance. I spread
+my map before him and he put an ample thumb upon it. Then inquiring
+whether I had crossed a road with a red house upon it where his friend
+resided, he thanked me and walked off with such speed as his years had
+left him. Birds sang delightfully on the fences and in the field, yet
+I knew not their names. Shall one not enjoy a symphony without precise
+knowledge of the instrument that gives the tune? If an oboe sound a
+melody, must one bestow a special praise, with a knowledge of its
+function in the concert? Or if a trombone please, must one know the
+brassy creature by its name? Rather, whether I listen to horns or
+birds, in my ignorance I bestow loosely a general approbation; yet is
+the song sweet.
+
+All afternoon I walked with the sound of wind and water in my ears,
+and at night, when I had gained my journey's end and lay in bed, I
+heard beneath my window in the garden the music of a little runnel
+that was like a faint and pleasant echo of my hillside walk. I fell
+asleep to its soothing sound and its trickle made a pattern across my
+dreams.
+
+But perhaps you yourself, my dear sir, are addicted to these country
+walks, either for an afternoon or for a week's duration with a
+rucksack strapped across your back. If denied the longer outing, I
+hope that at least it is your custom to go forth upon a holiday to
+look upon the larger earth. Where the road most winds and dips and the
+distance is of the finer purple, let that direction be your choice!
+Seek out the region of the hills! Outposts and valleys here, with
+smoke of suppers rising. Trains are so small that a child might draw
+them with a string. Far-off hills are tumbled and in confusion, as if
+a giant were roused and had flung his rumpled cloak upon the plain.
+
+Or if a road and a stream seem close companions, tag along with them!
+Like three cronies you may work the countryside together! There are
+old mills with dams and mossy water wheels, and rumbling covered
+bridges.
+
+But chiefly I beg that you wander out at random without too precise
+knowledge of where you go or where you shall get your supper. If you
+are of a cautious nature, as springs from a delicate stomach or too
+sheltered life, you may stuff a bar of chocolate in your pocket. Or an
+apple--if you shift your other ballast--will not sag you beyond
+locomotion. I have known persons who prize a tomato as offering both
+food and drink, yet it is too likely to be damaged and squirt inside
+the pocket if you rub against a tree. Instead, the cucumber is to be
+commended for its coolness, and a pickle is a sour refreshment that
+should be nibbled in turn against the chocolate.
+
+Food oftentimes is to be got upon the way. There is a kind of cocoanut
+bar, flat and corrugated, that may be had at most crossroads. I no
+longer consider these a delicacy, but in my memory I see a boy
+bargaining for them at the counter. They are counted into his dirty
+palm. He stuffs a whole one in his mouth, from ear to ear. His bicycle
+leans against the trough outside. He mounts, wabbling from side to
+side to reach the pedals. Before him lie the mountains of the world.
+
+Nor shall I complain if you hold roughly in your mind, subject to a
+whim's reversal, an evening destination to check your hunger. But do
+not bend your circuit back to the noisy city! Let your march end at
+the inn of a country town! If it is but a station on your journey and
+you continue on the morrow, let there be an ample porch and a rail to
+rest your feet! Here you may sit in the comfortable twilight when
+crammed with food and observe the town's small traffic. Country folk
+come about, if you are of easy address, and engage you on their crops.
+The village prophet strokes his wise beard at your request and,
+squinting at the sky, foretells a storm. Or if the night is cold, a
+fire is laid inside and a wrinkled board for the conduct of the war
+debates upon the hearth. But so far as your infirmity permits, go
+forth at random with a spirit for adventure! If the prospect pleases
+you as the train slows down for the platform, cast a penny on your
+knee and abide its fall!
+
+Or if on principle you abhor a choice that is made wickedly on the
+falling of a coin, let an irrelevant circumstance direct your
+destination! I once walked outside of London, making my start at
+Dorking for no other reason except that Sam Weller's mother-in-law had
+once lived there. You will recall how the elder Mr. Weller in the hour
+of his affliction discoursed on widows in the taproom of the Marquis
+of Granby when the funeral was done, and how later, being pestered
+with the Reverend Mr. Stiggins, he immersed him in the horse-trough to
+ease his grief. All through the town I looked for red-nosed men who
+might be descended from the reverend shepherd, and once when I passed
+a horse-trough of uncommon size I asked the merchant at the corner if
+it might not be the very place. I was met, however, by such a vacant
+stare--for the fellow was unlettered--that to rouse him I bought a
+cucumber from an open crate against the time of lunch, and I followed
+my pursuit further in the town. The cucumber was of monstrous length
+and thin. All about the town its end stuck out of my pocket
+inquisitively, as though it were a fellow traveler down from London to
+see the sights. But although I inquired for the Weller family, it
+seems that they were dead and gone. Even the Marquis of Granby had
+disappeared, with its room behind the bar where Mr. Stiggins drank
+pineapple rum with water, _luke_, from the kettle on the hob.
+
+We left Dorking and walked all afternoon through a pleasant sunny
+country, up hill and down, to the town of Guildford. At four o'clock,
+to break the journey, we laid out our lunch of bread and cheese and
+cucumber, and rested for an hour. The place was a grassy bank along a
+road above a fertile valley where men were pitching hay. Their shouts
+were carried across the fields with an agreeable softness. Today,
+doubtless, women work in those fields.
+
+On another occasion we walked from Maidstone to Rochester on
+pilgrimage to the inn where Alfred Jingle borrowed Mr. Winkle's coat
+to attend the Assembly, when he made love to the buxom widow. War had
+just been declared between Britain and Germany, and soldiers guarded
+the roads above the town. At a tea-room in the outskirts army
+officers ate at a neighboring table. Later, it is likely, they were in
+the retreat from Mons: for the expeditionary force crossed the channel
+within a week. Yet so does farce march along with tragedy that our
+chief concern in Rochester was the old inn where the ball was held.
+
+A surly woman who sat behind the cashier's wicket fixed me with her
+eye. "Might we visit the ballroom?" I inquired. Evidently not, unless
+we were stopping at the house. "Madame," I said, "perhaps you are
+unaware that the immortal Mr. Pickwick once sojourned beneath your
+roof." There was no response. "The celebrated Mr. Pickwick, G. C. M.
+P. C.," I continued, "who was the discoverer of the sources of the
+Hampstead Ponds." At this--for my manner was impressive--she fumbled
+through the last few pages of her register and admitted that he might
+have been once a patron of the house, but that he had now paid his
+bill and gone.
+
+I was about to question her about the poet Augustus Snodgrass, who had
+been with Mr. Pickwick on his travels, when a waiter, a humorous
+fellow with a vision of a sixpence, offered to be our guide. We
+climbed the stairs and came upon the ballroom. It was a small room.
+Three quadrilles must have stuffed it to the edge--a dingy place with
+bare windows on a deserted innyard. At one end was a balcony that
+would hold not more than three musicians. The candles of its former
+brightness have long since burned to socket. Vanished are "Sir Thomas
+Clubber, Lady Clubber and the Miss Clubbers!" Gone is the Honorable
+Wilmot Snipe and all the notables that once crowded it! Vanished is
+the punchbowl where the amorous Tracy Tupman drank too many cups of
+negus on that memorable night. I gave the dirty waiter a sixpence and
+came away.
+
+I discourage the usual literary pilgrimage. Indeed, if there is a
+rumor that Milton died in a neighboring town, or a treaty of
+consequence was signed close by, choose another path! Let neither
+Oliver Cromwell nor the Magna Carta deflect your course! One of my
+finest walks was on no better advice than the avoidance of a
+celebrated shrine. I was led along the swift waters of a river,
+through several pretty towns, and witnessed the building of a lofty
+bridge. For lunch I had some memorable griddlecakes. Finally I rode on
+top of a rattling stage with a gossip for a driver, whose long finger
+pointed out the sights upon the road.
+
+But for the liveliest truancy, keep an eye out for red-haired and
+freckled lads, and make them your counselors! Lads so spotted and
+colored, I have found, are of unusual enterprise in knowing the best
+woodland paths and the loftiest views. A yellow-haired boy, being of
+paler wit, will suck his thumb upon a question. A touzled black
+exhibits a sulky absorption in his work. An indifferent brown, at
+best, runs for an answer to the kitchen. But red-haired and freckled
+lads are alive at once. Whether or not their roving spirit, which is
+the basis of their deeper and quicker knowledge, proceeds from the
+magic of the pigment, the fact yet remains that such boys are surer
+than a signpost to direct one to adventure. This truth is so general
+that I have read the lives of the voyagers--Robinson Crusoe, Captain
+Kidd and the worthies out of Hakluyt--if perhaps a hint might drop
+that they too in their younger days were freckled and red-haired. Sir
+Walter Raleigh--I choose at random--was doubtless called "Carrots" by
+his playmates. But on making inquiry of a red-haired lad, one must
+have a clear head in the tumult of his direction. I was once lost for
+several hours on the side of Anthony's Nose above the Hudson because I
+jumbled such advice. And although I made the acquaintance of a hermit
+who dwelt on the mountain with a dog and a scarecrow for his garden--a
+fellow so like him in garment and in feature that he seemed his
+younger and cleaner brother--still I did not find the top or see the
+clear sweep of the Hudson as was promised.
+
+If it is your habit to inquire of distance upon the road, do not
+quarrel with conflicting opinion! Judge the answer by the source!
+Persons of stalwart limb commonly underestimate a distance, whereas
+those of broken wind and stride stretch it greater than it is. But it
+is best to take all answers lightly. I have heard of a man who spent
+his rainy evenings on a walking trip in going among the soda clerks
+and small merchants of the village, not for information, but to
+contrast their ignorance. Aladdin's wicked uncle, when he inquired
+direction to the mountain of the genii's cave, could not have been so
+misdirected. Shoemakers, candy-men and peddlers of tinware--if such
+modest merchants existed also on the curb in those magic days--must
+have been of nicer knowledge or old Kazrac would never have found the
+lamp. In my friend's case, on inquiry, a certain hotel at which we
+aimed was both good and bad, open and shut, burned and unburned.
+
+There is a legend of the Catholic Church about a certain holy chapel
+that once leaped across the Alps. It seems gross superstition, yet
+although I belong to a protesting church, I assert its likelihood. For
+I solemnly affirm that on a hot afternoon I chased a whole village
+that skipped quite as miraculously before me across the country. It
+was a village of stout leg and wind and, as often as I inquired, it
+still kept seven miles ahead. Once only I gained, by trotting on a
+descent. Not until night when the village lay down to rest beside a
+quiet river did I finally overtake it. And the next morning I arose
+early in order to be off first upon my travels, and so keep the lively
+rascal in the rear.
+
+In my country walks I usually carry a book in the pocket opposite to
+my lunch. I seldom read it, but it is a comfort to have it handy. I am
+told that at one of the colleges, students of smaller application, in
+order that they may truthfully answer as to the length of time they
+have spent upon their books, do therefore literally sit upon a pile of
+them, as on a stool, while they engage in pleasanter and more secular
+reading. I do not examine this story closely, which rises, doubtless,
+from the jealousy of a rival college. Rather, I think that these
+students perch upon the books which presently they must read, on a
+wise instinct that this preliminary contact starts their knowledge.
+And therefore a favorite volume, even if unopened in the pocket, does
+nevertheless by its proximity color and enhance the enjoyment of the
+day. I have carried Howell, who wrote the "Familiar Letters," unread
+along the countryside. A small volume of Boswell has grown dingy in my
+pocket. I have gone about with a copy of Addison with long S's, but I
+read it chiefly at home when my feet are on the fender.
+
+I had by me once as I crossed the Devon moors a volume of "Richard
+Feverel." For fifteen miles I had struck across the upland where there
+is scarcely a house in sight--nothing but grazing sheep and wild
+ponies that ran at my approach. Sometimes a marshy stream flowed down
+a shallow valley, with a curl of smoke from a house that stood in the
+hollow. At the edge of this moorland, I came into a shady valley that
+proceeded to the ocean. My feet were pinched and tired when I heard
+the sound of water below the road. I pushed aside the bushes and saw a
+stream trickling on the rocks. I thrust my head into a pool until the
+water ran into my ears, and then sat with my bare feet upon the cool
+stones where the runnel lapped them, and read "Richard Feverel." To
+this day, at the mention of the title, I can hear the pleasant brawl
+of water and the stirring of the branches in the wind that wandered
+down the valley.
+
+Hazlitt tells us in a famous passage with what relish he once read
+"The New Eloise" on a walking trip. "It was on the 10th of April,
+1798," he writes, "that I sat down to a volume of the New Eloise, at
+the inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken." I
+am quite unfamiliar with the book, yet as often as I read the
+essay--which is the best of Hazlitt--I have been teased to buy it.
+Perhaps this springs in part from my own recollection of Llangollen,
+where I once stopped on a walking trip through Wales. The town lies on
+the river Dee at the foot of fertile hills patched with fences, on
+whose top there stand the ruins of Dinas Bran, a fortress of forgotten
+history, although it looks grimly towards the English marches as if
+its enemies came thence. Thrown across the river there is a peaked
+bridge of gray stone, many centuries old, on which the village folk
+gather at the end of day. I dined on ale and mutton of such excellence
+that, for myself, a cold volume of the census--if I had fallen so
+low--must have remained agreeably in memory. I recall that a
+street-organ stopped beneath the window and played a merry tune--or
+perhaps the wicked ale was mounting--and I paused in my onslaught
+against the mutton to toss the musician a coin.
+
+I applaud those who, on a walking trip, arise and begin their journey
+in the dawn, but although I am eager at night to make an early start,
+yet I blink and growl when the morning comes. I marvel at the poet who
+was abroad so early that he was able to write of the fresh twilight on
+the world--"Where the sandalled Dawn like a Greek god takes the
+hurdles of the hills"--but for my own part I would have slept and
+missed the sight. But an early hour is best, despite us lazybones, and
+to be on the road before the dew is gone and while yet a mist arises
+from the hollows is to know the journey's finest pleasure.
+
+Persons of early hours assert that they feel a fine exaltation. I am
+myself inclined to think, however, that this is not so much an
+exaltation that arises from the beauty of the hour, as from a feeling
+of superiority over their sleeping and inferior comrades. It is akin
+to the displeasing vanity of those persons who walk upon a boat with
+easy stomach while their companions lie below. I would discourage,
+therefore, persons that lean toward conceit from putting a foot out of
+bed until the second call. On the other hand, those who are of a
+self-depreciative nature should get up with the worm and bird. A man
+of my own acquaintance who was sunk in self-abasement for many years,
+was roused to a salutary conceit by no other tonic.
+
+And it is certain that to be off upon a journey with a rucksack
+strapped upon you at an hour when the butcher boy takes down his
+shutters is a high pleasure. Off you go through the village with
+swinging arms. Off you go across the country. A farmer is up before
+you and you hear his reaper across the field, and the neighing of his
+horses at the turn. Where the hill falls sharp against the sky, there
+he stands outlined, to wipe the sweat. And as your nature is, swift or
+sluggish thoughts go through your brain--plots and vagrant fancies,
+which later your pencil will not catch. It is in these earliest hours
+while the dew still glistens that little lyric sentences leap into
+your mind. Then, if at all, are windmills giants.
+
+There are cool retreats where you may rest at noon, but Stevenson has
+written of these. "You come," he writes, "to a milestone on a hill, or
+some place where deep ways meet under trees; and off goes the
+knapsack, and down you sit to smoke a pipe in the shade. You sink into
+yourself, and the birds come round and look at you; and your smoke
+dissipates upon the afternoon under the blue dome of heaven; and the
+sun lies warm upon your feet, and the cool air visits your neck and
+turns aside your open shirt. If you are not happy, you must have an
+evil conscience."
+
+And yet a good inn at night holds even a more tranquil joy. M---- and
+I, who frequently walk upon a holiday, traversed recently a mountain
+road to the north of West Point. During the afternoon we had scrambled
+up Storm King to a bare rock above the Hudson. It was just such an
+outlook as Rip found before he met the outlandish Dutchmen with their
+ninepins and flagon. We lay here above a green world that was rimmed
+with mountains, and watched the lagging sails and puffs of smoke upon
+the river. It was late afternoon when we descended to the mountain
+road that runs to West Point. During all the day there had been
+distant rumbling of thunder, as though a storm mustered in a far-off
+valley,--or perhaps the Dutchmen of the legend still lingered at their
+game,--but now as the twilight fell the storm came near. It was six
+o'clock when a sign-board informed us that we had seven miles to go,
+and already the thunder sounded with earnest purpose. Far below in the
+dusk we saw the lights of West Point. On a sudden, while I was still
+fumbling for my poncho which was rolled inside my rucksack, the storm
+burst upon us. We put up the umbrella and held the poncho against the
+wind and driving rain. But the wind so whisked it about and the rain
+was so eager to find the openings that presently we were drenched. In
+an hour we came to West Point. Luckily the cook was up, and she
+served us a hot dinner in our rooms with the washstand for a table.
+When we started there was a piece of soap in the dish, but I think we
+ate it in our hunger. I recall that there was one course that foamed
+up like custard and was not upon the bill. It was a plain room with
+meager furniture, yet we fell asleep with a satisfaction beyond the
+Cecils in their lordly beds. I stirred once when there was a clamor in
+the hall of guests returning from a hop at the Academy--a prattle of
+girls' voices--then slept until the sun was up.
+
+But my preference in lodgings is the low sagging half-timbered
+building that one finds in the country towns of England. It has leaned
+against the street and dispensed hospitality for three hundred years.
+It is as old a citizen as the castle on the hill. It is an inn where
+Tom Jones might have spent the night, or any of the rascals out of
+Smollett. Behind the wicket there sits a shrewish female with a cold
+eye towards your defects, and behind her there is a row of bells which
+jangle when water is wanted in the rooms. Having been assigned a room
+and asked the hour of dinner, you mount a staircase that rises with a
+squeak. There is a mustiness about the place, which although it is
+unpleasant in itself, is yet agreeable in its circumstance. A long
+hall runs off to the back of the house, with odd steps here and there
+to throw you. Your room looks out upon a coach-yard, and as you wash
+you overhear a love-passage down below.
+
+In the evening you go forth to see the town. If it lies on the ocean,
+you walk upon the mole and watch the fisher folk winding up their
+nets, or sitting with tranquil pipes before their doors. Maybe a booth
+has been set up on the parade that runs along the ocean, and a husky
+fellow bids you lay out a sixpence for the show, which is the very
+same, he bawls, as was played before the King and the Royal Family.
+This speech is followed by a fellow with a trombone, who blows himself
+very red in the face.
+
+But rather I choose to fancy that it is an inland town, and that there
+is a quieter traffic on the streets. Here for an hour after dinner,
+while darkness settles, you wander from shop to shop and put your nose
+upon the glass, or you engage the lamplighter as he goes his rounds,
+for any bit of news.
+
+Once in such a town when the night brought rain, for want of other
+employment, I debated divinity with a rigid parson, and until a late
+hour sat in the thick curtain of his attack. It was at an inn of one
+of the midland counties of England, a fine old weathered building,
+called "The King's Arms." In the tap--for I thrust my thirsty head
+inside--was an array of old pewter upon the walls, and two or three
+prints of prize fighters of former days. But it was in the parlor the
+parson engaged me. In the corner of the room there was a timid
+fire--of the kind usually met in English inns--imprisoned behind a
+grill that had been set up stoutly to confine a larger and rowdier
+fire. My antagonist was a tall lank man of pinched ascetic face and
+dark complexion, with clothes brushed to shininess, and he belonged to
+a brotherhood that lived in one of the poorer parts of London along
+the wharves. His sojourn at the inn was forced. For two weeks in the
+year, he explained, each member was cast out of the conventual
+buildings upon the world. This was done in penance, as the members of
+more rigid orders in the past were flagellants for a season. So here
+for a whole week had he been sitting, for the most part in rainy
+weather, busied with the books that the inn afforded--advertising
+booklets of the beauties of the Alps--diagrams of steamships--and
+peeking out of doors for a change of sky.
+
+It was a matter of course that he should engage me in conversation. He
+was as lonesome for a chance to bark as a country dog. Presently when
+I dissented from some point in his creed, he called me a heretic, and
+I with gentlest satire asked him if the word yet lived. But he was not
+angry, and he told me of his brotherhood. It had a branch in America,
+and he bade me, if ever I met any of its priests, to convey to them
+his warm regards. As for America, it was, he said, too coldly ethical,
+and needed most a spiritual understanding; to which judgment I
+assented. I wonder now whether the war will bring that understanding.
+Maybe, unless blind hatred smothers it.
+
+This priest was a mixture of stern and gentle qualities, and seemed to
+be descended from those earlier friars that came to England in cord
+and gown, and went barefoot through the cities to minister comfort and
+salvation to the poor and wretched. When the evening was at last
+spent, by common consent we took our candles on the landing, where,
+after he inculcated a final doctrine of his church with waving finger,
+he bade me good night, with a wish of luck for my journey on the
+morrow, and sought his room.
+
+My own room lay down a creaking hallway. When undressed, I opened my
+window and looked upon the street. All lights were out. At last the
+rain had ceased, and now above the housetops across the way, through a
+broken patch of cloud, a star appeared with a promise of a fair
+tomorrow.
+
+
+
+
+On Livelihoods.
+
+
+Somewhere in his letters, I think, Stevenson pronounces street paving
+to be his favorite occupation. I fancy, indeed,--and I have ransacked
+his life,--that he never applied himself to its practice for an actual
+livelihood. That was not necessary. Rather, he looked on at the curb
+in a careless whistling mood, hands deep in the pockets of his breeks,
+in a lazy interval between plot and essay. The sunny morning had
+dropped its golden invitation through his study windows, and he has
+wandered forth to see the world. Let my heroes--for thus I interpret
+him at his desk as the sunlight beckoned--let my heroes kick their
+heels in patience! Let villains fret inside the inkpot! Down, sirs,
+down, into the glossy magic pool, until I dip you up! Pirates--for
+surely such miscreants lurked among his papers--let pirates, he cries,
+save their red oaths until tomorrow! My hat! My stick!
+
+It was thus, then, as an amateur that Stevenson looked on street
+paving--the even rows of cobbles, the nice tapping to fit the stones
+against the curb, the neat joint around the drain. And yet,
+unpardonably, he neglects the tarpot; and this seems the very soul of
+the business, the finishing touch--almost culinary, as when a cook
+pours on a chocolate sauce.
+
+I remember pleasantly when our own street was paved. There had been
+laid a waterpipe, deep down where the earth was yellow--surely gold
+was near--and several of us young rascals climbed in and out in the
+twilight when work was stopped. By fits we were both mountaineers and
+miners. There was an agreeable gassy smell as if we neared the lower
+regions. Here was a playground better than the building of a barn,
+even with its dizzy ladders and the scaffolding around the chimney. Or
+we hid in the great iron pipes that lay along the gutters, and
+followed our leader through them home from school. But when the pipes
+were lowered into place and the surface was cobbled but not yet
+sanded, then the tarpot yielded gum for chewing. At any time after
+supper a half dozen of us--blacker daubs against the darkness--might
+have been seen squatting on the stones, scratching at the tar.
+Blackjack, bought at the corner, had not so full a flavor. But one had
+to chew forward in the mouth--lightly, lest the tar adhere forever to
+the teeth.
+
+And yet I am not entirely in accord with Stevenson in his preference.
+
+And how is it, really, that people fall into their livelihoods? What
+circumstance or necessity drives them? Does choice, after all, always
+yield to a contrary wind and run for any port? Is hunger always the
+helmsman? How many of us, after due appraisal of ourselves, really
+choose our own parts in the mighty drama?--first citizen or second,
+with our shrill voices for a moment above the crowd--first citizen or
+second--brief choristers, except for vanity, against a painted scene.
+How runs the rhyme?--rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief; doctor,
+lawyer, merchant, chief! And a robustious fellow with great voice, and
+lace and sword, strutting forward near the lights.
+
+Meditating thus, I frequently poke about the city in the end of
+afternoon "when the mind of your man of letters requires some
+relaxation." I peer into shop windows, not so much for the wares
+displayed as for glimpses of the men and women engaged in their
+disposal. I watch laborers trudging home with the tired clink of their
+implements and pails. I gaze into cellarways where tailor and cobbler
+sit bent upon their work--needle and peg, their world--and through
+fouled windows into workrooms, to learn which livelihoods yield the
+truest happiness. For it is, on the whole, a whistling rather than a
+grieving world, and like little shouts among the hills is laughter
+echoed in the heart.
+
+I can well understand how one can become a baker or even a small
+grocer with a pencil behind his ear. I could myself honestly recommend
+an apple--an astrachan for sauces--or, in the season, offer asparagus
+with something akin to enthusiasm. Cranberries, too, must be an
+agreeable consort of the autumn months when the air turns frosty. I
+would own a cat with a dusty nose to rub along the barrels and sleep
+beneath the stove. I would carry dried meats in stock were it only for
+the electric slicing machine. And whole cheeses! Or to a man of
+romantic mind an old brass shop may have its lure. To one of musty
+turn, who would sit apart, there is something to be said for the
+repair of violins and 'cellos. At the least he sweetens discord into
+melody.
+
+But I would not willingly keep a second-hand bookshop. It is too
+cluttered a business. There is too free a democracy between good and
+bad. It was Dean Swift who declared that collections of books made him
+melancholy, "where the best author is as much squeezed and as obscure
+as a porter at a coronation." Nor is it altogether reassuring for one
+who is himself by way of being an author to view the certain neglect
+that awaits him when attics are cleared at last. There is too leathery
+a smell upon the premises, a thick deposit of mortality. I draw a deep
+breath when I issue on the street, grateful for the sunlight and the
+wind. However, I frequently put my head in at Pratt's around the
+corner, sometimes by chance when the family are assembled for their
+supper in one of the book alcoves. They have swept back a litter of
+historians to make room for the tray of dishes. To cut them from the
+shop they have drawn a curtain in front of their nook, but I can hear
+the teapot bubbling on the counter. There is, also, a not unsavory
+smell which, if my old nose retains its cunning, is potato stew,
+fetched up from the kitchen. If you seek Gibbon now, Pratt's face will
+show like a withered moon between the curtains and will request you to
+call later when the dishes have been cleared.
+
+No one works in cleaner produce than carpenters. They are for the most
+part a fatherly whiskered tribe and they eat their lunches neatly from
+a pail, their backs against the wall, their broad toes upturned. I
+look suspiciously on painters, however, who present themselves for
+work like slopped and shoddy harlequins, and although I have myself
+passed a delightful afternoon painting a wooden fence at the foot of
+the garden--and been scraped afterwards--I would not wish to be of
+their craft.
+
+But perhaps one is of restless habit and a peripatetic occupation may
+be recommended. For a bachelor of small expense, at a hazard, a
+wandering fruit and candy cart offers the venture and chance of
+unfamiliar journeys. There is a breed of lollypop on a stick that
+shows a handsome profit when the children come from school. Also, at
+this minute, I hear below me on the street the flat bell of the
+scissors-grinder. I know not what skill is required, yet it needs a
+pretty eye and even foot. The ragman takes to an ancestral business
+and chants the ancient song of his fathers. When distance has somewhat
+muffled its nearer sharpness, the song bears a melody unparalleled
+among tradesmen's cries. Window glass, too, is hawked pleasantly from
+house to house and requires but a knife and putty. In the spring the
+vegetable vender, standing in his wagon, utters melodious sounds that
+bring the housewives to their windows. Once, also, by good luck, I
+fell into acquaintance with a fellow who peddled brooms and dustpans
+along the countryside. He was hung both front and back with cheap
+commodities--a necklace of scrubbing brushes--tins jangling against
+his knees. A very kitchen had become biped. A pantry had gone on
+pilgrimage. Except for dogs, which seemed maddened by his strange
+appearance, it was, he informed me, an engaging livelihood for a man
+who chafed indoors. Or for one of dreamy disposition the employment of
+a sandwich man, with billboards fore and aft, offers a profitable
+repose. Sometimes several of these philosophers journey together up
+the street in a crowded hour, one behind another with slow
+introspective step, as befits their high preoccupation.
+
+Or one has an ear, and the street-organ commends itself. Observe the
+musician at the corner, hat in hand and smiling! Let but a curtain
+stir and his eye will catch it. He hears a falling penny as 'twere any
+nightingale. His tunes are the herald of the gaudy spring. His are the
+dancing measures of the sunlight. And is anyone a surer judge of human
+nature? He allows dyspeptics to slink along the fence. Those of
+bilious aspect may go their ways unchallenged. Spare me those, he
+says, who have not music in their souls: they are fit for treasons,
+stratagems, and spoils. It was with a flute that the poet Goldsmith
+starved his way through France. Yet the flute is a cold un-stirring
+instrument. He would have dined the oftener had he pitched upon a
+street-organ.
+
+But in this Christmas season there is a man goes up and down among the
+shoppers blowing shrill tunes upon a pipe. A card upon his hat
+announces that it is music makes the home and that one of his
+marvelous implements may be bought for the trifling and altogether
+insignificant sum of ten cents. A reticule across his stomach bulges
+with his pipes. He seems to manipulate the stops with his fingers, but
+I fancy that he does no more than sing into the larger opening. Yet
+his gay tune sounds above the traffic.
+
+I have wondered where such seasonal professions recruit themselves.
+The eyeglass man still stands at his corner with his tray. He is,
+moreover, too sodden a creature to play upon a pipe. Nor is there any
+dwindling of shoe-lace peddlers. The merchants of popcorn have not
+fallen off in number, and peanuts hold up strong. Rather, these
+Christmas musicians are of the tribe which at other festivals sell us
+little flags and bid us show our colors. They come from country fairs
+and circuses. All summer long they bid us gather for the fat man, or
+they cry up the beauties of a Turkish harem. If some valiant fellow in
+a painted tent is about to swallow glass, they are his horn and drum
+to draw the crowd. I once knew a side-show man who bent iron bars
+between his teeth and who summoned stout men from his audience to
+swing upon the bar, but I cannot believe that he has discharged the
+bawling rascal at his door. I rather choose to think that the piper
+was one of those self-same artists who, on lesser days, squeeze comic
+rubber faces in their fingers, or make the monkey climb its
+predestined stick.
+
+Be this as it may, presently the piper hit on a persuasive tune and I
+abandoned all thought of the Noah's ark--my errand of the morning for
+my nephew--and joined the crowd that followed him. Hamelin Town was
+come again. But street violins I avoid. They suggest mortgages and
+unpaid rent.
+
+But with the world before him why should a man turn dentist? He must
+have been a cruel fellow from his rattle. When did his malicious
+ambition first sprout up towards molars and bicuspids? Or who would
+scheme to be a plumber? He is a cellarer--alas, how shrunk from former
+days! Or consider the tailor! Perhaps you recall Elia's estimate. "Do
+you ever see him," he asks, "go whistling along the foot-path like a
+carman, or brush through a crowd like a baker, or go smiling to
+himself like a lover?"
+
+Certainly I would not wish to be a bookkeeper and sit bent all day
+over another's wealth. I would not want to bring in on lifted fingers
+the meats which another eats. Nor would I choose to be a locksmith,
+which is a kind of squint-eyed business, up two dismal stairs and at
+the rear. A gas lamp flares at the turn. A dingy staircase mounts into
+a thicker gloom. The locksmith consorts with pawnbrokers, with cheap
+sign-makers and with disreputable doctors; yet he is not of them. For
+there adheres to him a sort of romance. He is a creature of another
+time, set in our midst by the merest chance. The domestic cat,
+descended from the jungle, is not more shrunk. Keys have fallen on
+evil days. Observe the mighty row of them hung discarded along his
+boxes! Each one is fit to unlock a castle. Warwick itself might yield
+to such a weight of metal--rusty now, disused, quite out of fashion,
+displaced by a race of dwarfs. In the old prints, see how the London
+'prentice runs with his great key in the dawn to take down his
+master's shutter! In a musty play, observe the jailor at the dungeon
+door! Without massive keys jingling at the belt the older drama must
+have been a weakling. Only lovers, then, dared to laugh at locksmiths.
+But now locksmiths sit brooding on the past, shriveled to mean uses,
+ready for paltry kitchen jobs.
+
+And the undertaker, what shall we say of him? That black coat with the
+flower! That mournful smile! That perfect grief! And yet, I am told,
+undertakers, after hours, go singing home to supper, and spend their
+evenings at the movies like us rougher folk. It was David Copperfield,
+you recall, who dined with an undertaker and his family--in the room,
+no doubt, next to the coffin storage--and he remarked at the time how
+cheerfully the joint went round. One of this sober cloth, moreover,
+has confided to me that they let themselves loose, above all
+professions, in their reunions and conventions. If an unusual riot
+issues from the door and a gay fellow goes walking on the table it is
+sure that either lawyers or undertakers sit inside.
+
+For myself, if I were to become a merchant, I would choose a shop at a
+four-corners in the country, and I would stock from shoe-laces to
+plows. There is no virtue in keeping store in the city. It is merely
+by favor that customers show themselves. Candidly, your competitor can
+better supply their wants. This is not so at the four-corners. Nor is
+anyone a more influential citizen than a country merchant. He sets the
+style in calicoes. He judges between check and stripe. His decision
+against a high heel flattens the housewives by an inch. But if I kept
+such a country store, I would provide an open fire and, when the
+shadows lengthened, an easy chair or two for gossips.
+
+I was meditating lately on these strange preferences in livelihoods
+and was gazing through the city windows for any clue when I was
+reminded of a tempting scheme that Wee Jessie--a delightful
+Scots-woman of my acquaintance--has planned for several of us.
+
+We are to be traveling merchants for a season, with a horse and wagon
+or a motor. My own preference is a motor, and already I see a vehicle
+painted in bright colors and opening up behind as spacious as a waffle
+cart. There will be windows all around for the display of goods. It is
+not quite fixed what we shall sell. Wee Jessie leans toward bonnets
+and little millinery odds and ends. I am for kitchen tins. M----
+inclines toward drygoods, serviceable fabrics. It is thought that we
+shall live on the roof while on tour, with a canvas to draw on wet
+nights. We shall possess a horn--on which Wee Jessie once practiced in
+her youth--to gather up the crowd when we enter a village.
+
+Fancy us, therefore, my dear sir, as taking the road late this coming
+spring in time to spread the summer's fashions. And if you hear our
+horn at twilight in your village--a tune of more wind than melody,
+unless Jessie shall cure her imperfections--know that on the morrow,
+by the pump, we shall display our wares.
+
+
+
+
+The Tread of the Friendly Giants.
+
+
+    When our Babe he goeth walking in his garden,
+    Around his tinkling feet the sunbeams play.
+
+It has been my fortune to pass a few days where there lives a dear
+little boy of less than three. My first knowledge of him every morning
+is the smothered scuffling through the partition as he reluctantly
+splashes in his bath. Here, unless he mend his caution, I fear he will
+never learn to play the porpoise at the Zoo. Then there is a wee
+tapping at my door. It is a fairy sound as though Mustard-seed were in
+the hall. Or it might be Pease-blossom rousing up Cobweb in the play,
+to repel the red-hipped humble-bee. It is so slight a tapping that if
+I sleep with even one ear inside the covers I will not hear it.
+
+The little lad stands in the dim passage to greet me, fully dressed,
+to reproach me with my tardiness. He is a mite of a fellow, but he is
+as wide awake and shiny as though he were a part of the morning and
+had been wrought delicately out of the dawn's first ray. Indeed, I
+choose to fancy that the sun, being off hurriedly on broader business,
+has made him his agent for the premises. Particularly he assists in
+this passage at my bedroom door where the sleepy Night, which has not
+yet caught the summons, still stretches and nods beyond the turn. It
+is so dark here on a winter's morning when the nursery door is shut
+that even an adventuring sunlight, if it chanced to clamber through
+the window, would blink and falter in the hazard of these turns. But
+the sun has sent a substitute better than himself: for is there not a
+shaft of light along the floor? It can hardly fall from the window or
+anywhere from the outside world.
+
+The little lad stands in the passage demanding that I get up. "Get up,
+lazybones!" he says. Pretty language to his elders! He speaks soberly,
+halting on each syllable of the long and difficult word. He is so
+solemn that the jest is doubled. And now he runs off, jouncing and
+stiff-legged to his nursery. I hear him dragging his animals from his
+ark, telling them all that they are lazybones, even his barking dog
+and roaring lion. Noah, when he saw on that first morning that his ark
+was grounded on Ararat, did not rouse his beasts so early to leave the
+ship.
+
+Later I meet the lad at breakfast, locked in his high chair. In these
+riper hours of day there is less of Cobweb in his composition. He is
+now every inch a boy. He raps his spoon upon his tray. He hurls food
+in the general direction of his mouth. If an ear escape the assault it
+is gunnery beyond the common. He is bibbed against misadventure. This
+morning he yearns loudly for muffins, which he calls "bums." He
+chooses those that are unusually brown with a smudge of the
+cooking-tin, and these he calls "dirty bums."
+
+Such is my nephew--a round-cheeked, blue-eyed rogue who takes my thumb
+in all his fingers when we go walking. His jumpers are slack behind
+and they wag from side to side in an inexpressibly funny manner, but
+this I am led to believe springs not from any special genius but is
+common to all children. It is only recently that he learned to walk,
+for although he was forward with his teeth and their early sprouting
+ran in gossip up the street, yet he lagged in locomotion. Previously
+he advanced most surely on his seat--his slider, as he called
+it--throwing out his legs and curling them in under so as to draw him
+after. By this means he attained a fine speed upon a slippery floor,
+but he chafed upon a carpet. His mother and I agreed that this was
+quite an unusual method and that it presaged some rare talent for his
+future, as the scorn of a rattle is said to predict a judge. It was
+during one of these advances across the kitchen floor where the boards
+are rough that an accident occurred. As he excitedly put it, with a
+fitting gesture to the rear, he got a sliver in his slider. But now he
+goes upon his feet with a waddle like a sailor, and he wags his slider
+from side to side.
+
+Sometimes we play at hide-and-seek and we pop out at one another from
+behind the sofa. He lacks ingenuity in this, for he always hides in
+the same place. I have tempted him for variety to stow himself in the
+woodbox. Or the pantry would hold him if he squeezed in among the
+brooms. Nor does my ingenuity surpass his, for regularly in a certain
+order I shake the curtains at the door and spy under the table. I stir
+the wastebasket and peer within the vases, although they would hardly
+hold his shoe. Then when he is red-hot to be found and is already
+peeking impatiently around the sofa, at last I cry out his discovery
+and we begin all over again.
+
+I play ball with him and bounce it off his head, a game of more mirth
+in the acting than in the telling. Or we squeeze his animals for the
+noises that they make. His lion in particular roars as though lungs
+were its only tenant. But chiefly I am fast in his friendship because
+I ride upon his bear. I take the door at a gallop. I rear at the turn.
+I fall off in my most comical fashion. Sometimes I manage to kick over
+his blocks; at which we call it a game, and begin again. He has named
+the bear in my honor.
+
+We start all of our games again just as soon as we have finished them.
+That is what a game is. And if it is worth playing at all, it is worth
+endless repetition. If I strike a rich deep tone upon the Burmese
+gong, I must continue to strike upon it until I can draw his attention
+to something else. Once, the cook, hearing the din, thought that I
+hinted for my dinner. Being an obliging creature, she fell into such a
+flurry and so stirred her pans to push the cooking forward, that
+presently she burned the meat.
+
+Or if I moo like a cow, I must moo until sunset. I rolled off the sofa
+once to distract him when the ugly world was too much with him.
+Immediately he brightened from his complaint and demanded that I do it
+once more. And lately, when a puppy bounced out of the house next door
+and, losing its footing, rolled heels over head to the bottom of the
+steps, at once he pleaded for an encore. To him all the world's a
+stage.
+
+My nephew observes me closely to see what kind of fellow I am. I study
+him, too. He watches me over the top of his mug at breakfast and I
+stare back at him over my coffee cup. If I wrinkle my nose, he
+wrinkles his. If I stick out my tongue, he sticks his out, too. He
+answers wink with wink. When I pet his woolly lamb, however, he seems
+to wonder at my absurdity. When I wind up his steam engine, certainly
+he suspects that I am a novice. He shows a disregard of my castles,
+and although I build them on the windy vantage of a chair, with dizzy
+battlements topping all the country, he brushes them into ruin.
+
+Sometimes I fancy that his glance is mixed with scorn, and that he
+considers my attempts to amuse him as rather a silly business. I
+wonder what he thinks about when he looks at me seriously. I cannot
+doubt his wisdom. He seems to resemble a philosopher who has traveled
+to us from a distant world. If he cast me a sentence from Plato, I
+would say, "Master, I listen." Is it Greek he speaks, or a dark
+language from a corner of the sky? He has a far-off look as though he
+saw quite through these superficial affairs of earth. His eyes have
+borrowed the color of his wanderings and they are as blue as the
+depths beyond the moon. And I think of another child, somewhat older
+than himself, whose tin soldiers these many years are rusted, a
+thoughtful silent child who was asked, once upon a time, what he did
+when he got to bed. "Gampaw," he replied, "I lies and lies, Gampaw,
+and links and links, 'til I know mos' everysin'." The snow of a few
+winters, the sun of summer, the revolving stars and seasons--until
+this lad now serves in France.
+
+My nephew, although he too roams these distant spaces of philosophic
+thought and brings back strange unexpected treasure, has not arrived
+at the age of mere terrestrial exploration. He is quite ignorant of
+his own house and has no curiosity about the back stairs--the back
+stairs that go winding darkly from the safety of the kitchen. Scarcely
+is the fizzing of dinner lost than a new strange world engulfs one.
+He is too young to know that a doorway in the dark is the portal of
+adventure. He does not know the mystery and the twistings of the
+cellar, or the shadows of the upper hallway and the dim hollows that
+grow and spread across the twilight.
+
+Dear lad, there is a sunny world beyond the garden gate, cities and
+rolling hills and far-off rivers with white sails going up and down.
+There are wide oceans, and ships with tossing lights, and islands set
+with palm trees. And there are stars above your roof for you to wonder
+at. But also, nearer home, there are gentle shadows on the stairs, a
+dim cellar for the friendly creatures of your fancy, and for your
+exalted mood there is a garret with dark corners. Here, on a braver
+morning, you may push behind the trunks and boxes and come to a land
+unutterable where the furthest Crusoe has scarcely ventured. Or in a
+more familiar hour you may sit alongside a window high above the town.
+Here you will see the milkman on his rounds with his pails and long
+tin dipper. And these misty kingdoms that open so broadly on the world
+are near at hand. They are yours if you dare to go adventuring for
+them.
+
+Soon your ambition will leap its nursery barriers. No longer will you
+be content to sit inside this quiet room and pile your blocks upon the
+floor. You will be off on discovery of the long trail that lies along
+the back hall and the pantry where the ways are dark. You will wander
+in search of the caverns that lie beneath the stairs when the night
+has come. You will trudge up steps and down for any lurking ocean on
+which to sail your pirate ships. Already I see you gazing with wistful
+eyes into the spaces beyond the door--into the days of your great
+adventure. In your thought is the patter and scurry of new creation.
+It is almost fairy time for you. The tread of the friendly giants,
+still far off, is sounding in the dark....
+
+Dear little lad, in this darkness may there be no fear! For these
+shadows of the twilight--which too long have been chased like common
+miscreants with lamp and candle--are really friendly beings and they
+wait to romp with you. Because thieves have walked in darkness, shall
+darkness be called a thief? Rather, let the dark hours take their
+repute from the countless gracious spirits that are abroad--the
+quieter fancies that flourish when the light has gone--the gentle
+creatures that leave their hiding when the sun has set. When a rug
+lies roughened at close of day, it is said truly that a fairy peeps
+from under to learn if at last the house is safe. And they hide in the
+hallway for the signal of your coming, yet so timid that if the fire
+is stirred they scamper beyond the turn. They huddle close beneath the
+stairs that they may listen to your voice. They come and go on tiptoe
+when the curtain sways, in the hope that you will follow. With their
+long thin shadowy fingers they beckon for you beneath the sofa.
+
+The time is coming when you can no longer resist their invitation,
+when you will leave your woolly lamb and your roaring lion on this
+dull safe hearth and will go on pilgrimage. The back stairs sit
+patient in the dark for your hand upon the door. The great dim garret
+that has sat nodding for so many years will smile at last at your
+coming. It has been lonely so long for the glad sound of running feet
+and laughter. It has been childless so many years.
+
+But once children's feet played there and romped through the short
+winter afternoons. A rope hung from post to post and furnished forth a
+circus. Here giant swings were hazarded. Here children hung from the
+knees until their marbles and other wealth dropped from their pockets.
+And for less ambitious moments there were toys--
+
+    The little toy dog is covered with dust,
+    But sturdy and stanch he stands;
+    And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
+    And his musket moulds in his hands.
+    Time was when the little toy dog was new,
+    And the soldier was passing fair;
+    And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
+    Kissed them and put them there.
+
+And now Little Boy Blue again climbs the long stairs. He stretches up
+on tiptoe to turn the door-knob at the top. He listens as a prudent
+explorer should. Cook rattles her tins below, but it is a far-off
+sound as from another world. Somewhere, doubtless, the friendly
+milkman's bell goes jingling up the street. There is a distant barking
+of familiar dogs. Will it not be better to return to the safe regions
+and watch the traffic from the window? But here, beckoning, is the
+great adventure.
+
+The brave die is cast. He advances with outstretched arms into the
+darkness. Suddenly, behind him, the door swings shut. The sound of
+cooking-tins is lost. Silence. Silence, except for branches scratching
+on the roof. But the garret hears the sound of feet, and it rouses
+itself and rubs its dusky eyes.
+
+But when darkness thickens and the sunlight has vanished from the
+floor, then comes the magic hour. The garret then tears from its eyes
+the blind bandage of the day. Strange creatures lift their heads. And
+now, as you wait expectant, there comes a mysterious sound from the
+darkest corner. Is it a mouse that stirs? Rather, it seems a far-off
+sound, as though a blind man, tapping with his stick, walked on the
+margin of the world. The noise comes near. It gains in volume. It is
+close at hand. Dear lad, you have come upon the magic hour. It is the
+tread of the friendly giants that is sounding in the dark....
+
+
+
+
+On Spending a Holiday.
+
+
+At a party lately a worn subject came under discussion.
+
+Our host lives in a triangular stone-paved courtyard tucked off from
+the thoroughfare but with the rattle of the elevated railway close at
+hand. The building is of decent brick, three stories in height, and it
+exhibits to the courtyard a row of identical doorsteps. The entrance
+to the courtyard is a swinging shutter between buildings facing on the
+street, and it might seem a mystery--like the apple in the
+dumpling--how the building inside squeezed through so narrow an
+entrance. Yet here it is, with a rubber plant in one corner and a
+trellis for imaginary vines in the other.
+
+In this courtyard, _Pomander Walk_ might be acted along the stoops.
+For a necessary stage property--you recall, of course, the lamplighter
+with his ladder in the second act!--there is a gas lamp of old design
+in the middle of the enclosure, up near the footlights, as it were.
+From the stoops the main comedy might proceed, with certain business
+at the upper windows--the profane Admiral with the timber leg popping
+his head out of one, the mysterious fat man--in some sort the villain
+of the piece--putting his head out of another to woo the buxom widow
+at a third. And then the muffin man! In the twilight when the lamp is
+lighted and the heroine at last is in the hero's arms, there would be
+a pleasant crunching of muffins at all the windows as the curtain
+falls.
+
+But I shall not drop even a hint as to the location of this courtyard.
+Many persons think that New York City is but a massive gridiron, and
+they are ignorant of the nooks and quirks and angles of the lower
+town. Enough that the Indian of a modest tobacconist guards the
+swinging shutter of the entrance to the courtyard.
+
+Here we sat in the very window I had designed for the profane Admiral,
+and talked in the quiet interval between trains.
+
+One of our company--a man whom I shall call Flint--was hardy enough to
+say that he never employed his leisure in going to the country--that a
+walk about the city streets was his best refreshment. Flint's
+livelihood is cotton. He is a dumpish sort of person who looks as if
+he needed exercise, but he has a sharp clear eye. At first his remark
+fell on us as a mere perversity, as of one who proclaims a humorous
+whim. And yet he adhered tenaciously to his opinion, urging smooth
+pavements against mud, the study of countless faces against the song
+of birds and great buildings against cliffs.
+
+Another of our company opposed him in this--Colum, who chafes as an
+accountant. Colum is a gentle dreamy fellow who likes birds. All
+winter he saves his tobacco tins which, in his two weeks' vacation in
+the country, he sets up in trees as birdhouses. He confesses that he
+took up with a certain brand of tobacco because its receptacle is
+popular with wrens. Also he cultivated a taste for waffles--which at
+first by a sad distortion of nature he lacked--for no other reason
+except that syrup may be bought in pretty log-cabin tins particularly
+suited for bluebirds. If you chance to breakfast with him, he urges
+the syrup on you with pleasant and insistent hospitality. With
+satisfaction he drains a can. By June he has a dozen of these empty
+cabins on the shelf alongside his country boots. Time was when he was
+lean of girth--as becomes an accountant, who is hinged dyspeptically
+all day across his desk--but by this agreeable stowage he has now
+grown to plumpness. When in the country Colum rises early in order to
+stretch the pleasures of the day, and he walks about before breakfast
+from tree to tree to view his feathered tenants. He has even acquired,
+after much practice, the knack of chirping--a hissing conjunction of
+the lips and teeth--which he is confident wins the friendly attention
+of the birds.
+
+Flint heard Colum impatiently, and interrupted before he was done.
+"Pooh!" he said. "There's mud in the country, and not much of any
+plumbing, and in the morning it's cold until you light a fire."
+
+"Of course," said Colum. "But I love it. Perhaps you remember, Flint,
+the old willow stump out near the road. I put a Barking Dog on top of
+it, and now there's a family of wrens inside."
+
+"Nonsense," said Flint. "There is too much climate in the
+country--much more than in town. It's either too hot or too cold. And
+it's lonely. As for you, Colum, you're sentimental about your
+birdhouses. And you dislike your job. You like the country merely
+because it is a symbol of a holiday. It is freedom from an irksome
+task. It means a closing of your desk. But if you had to live in the
+country, you would grumble in a month's time. Even a bullfrog--and he
+is brought up to it, poor wretch--croaks at night."
+
+Colum interrupted. "That's not true, Flint. I know I'd like it--to
+live on a farm and keep chickens. Sometimes in winter, or more often
+in spring, I can hardly wait for summer and my two weeks. I look out
+of the window and I see a mirage--trees and hills." Colum sighed.
+"It's quite wonderful, that view, but it unsettles me for my ledger."
+
+"That's it," broke in Flint. "Your sentimentality spoils your
+happiness. You let two weeks poison the other fifty. It's immoral."
+
+Colum was about to retort, when he was anticipated by a new speaker.
+It was Quill, the journalist, who has long thin fingers and
+indigestion. At meals he pecks suspiciously at his plate, and he eats
+food substitutes. Quill runs a financial supplement, or something of
+that kind, to a daily paper. He always knows whether Steel is strong
+and whether Copper is up or down. If you call on him at his office, he
+glances at you for a moment before he knows you. Yet in his slippers
+he grows human.
+
+"I like the country, too," he interposed, "and no one ever said that I
+am sentimental." He tapped his head. "I'm as hard as nails up here."
+Quill cracked his knuckles in a disagreeable habit he has, and
+continued: "I have a shack on the West Shore, and I go there
+week-ends. My work is so confining that if I didn't get to the country
+once in a while, I would play out in a jiffy. I'm a nervous frazzle--a
+nervous frazzle--by Saturday noon. But I lie on the grass all Sunday,
+and if nobody snaps at me and I am let alone, by Monday morning I am
+fit again."
+
+"You must be like Antĉus."
+
+This remark came from Wurm, our host. Wurm is a bookish fellow who
+wears great rimmed glasses. He spends much of his time in company
+thinking up apposite quotations and verifying them. He has worn out
+two Bartlett's. Wurm is also addicted to maps and dictionaries, and is
+a great reader of special articles. Consequently his mind is a pound
+for stray collarless facts; or rather, in its variety of contents, it
+more closely resembles a building contractor's back yard--odd
+salvage--rejected doors--a job of window-frames--a pile of bricks for
+chipping--discarded plumbing--broken junk gathered here and there.
+Mr. Aust himself, a building contractor who once lived on our
+street--a man of no broad fame--quite local--surely unknown to
+you--did not collect so wide a rubbish.
+
+However, despite these qualities, Wurm is rather a pleasant and
+harmless bit of cobweb. For a livelihood, he sits in a bank behind a
+grill. At noon he eats his lunch in his cage, and afterwards with a
+rubber band he snaps at the flies. In the hunting season he kills in a
+day as many as a dozen of these pests' and ranges them in his pen
+tray. On Saturday afternoon he rummages in Malkan's and the
+second-hand bookshops along Fourth Avenue. To see Wurm in his most
+characteristic pose, is to see him on a ladder, with one leg
+outstretched, far off his balance, fumbling for a title with his
+finger tips. Surely, in these dull alcoves, gravity nods on its job.
+Then he buys a sour red apple at the corner and pelts home to dinner.
+This is served him on a tin tray by his stout landlady who comes
+puffing up the stairs. It is a bit of pleasant comedy that whatever
+dish is served happens to be the very one of which he was thinking as
+he came out of the bank. By this innocent device he is popular with
+his landlady and she skims the milk for him.
+
+Wurm rapped his pipe bowl on the arm of his chair. "You must be like
+Antĉus," he replied.
+
+"Like what?" asked Flint.
+
+"Antĉus--the fellow who wrestled with Hercules. Each time that Antĉus
+was thrown against the earth his strength was doubled. He was finally
+in the way of overcoming Hercules, when Hercules by seizing him around
+the middle lifted him off the ground. By this strategy he deprived him
+of all contact with the earth, and presently Antĉus weakened and was
+vanquished."
+
+"That's me," said Quill, the journalist. "If I can't get back to my
+shack on Sunday, I feel that Hercules has me, too, around the middle."
+
+"Perhaps I can find the story," said Wurm, his eye running toward the
+bookshelves.
+
+"Don't bother," said Flint.
+
+There was now another speaker--Flannel Shirt, as we called him--who
+had once been sated with formal dinners and society, and is now
+inclined to cry them down. He leans a bit toward socialism and free
+verse. He was about to praise the country for its freedom from
+sordidness and artificiality, when Flint, who had heard him before,
+interrupted.
+
+"Rubbish!" he cried out. "All of you, but in different ways, are
+slaves to an old tradition kept up by Wordsworth, who would himself,
+doubtless, have moved to London except for the steepness of the rents.
+You all maintain that you like the country, yet on one excuse or
+another you live in the city and growl about it. There isn't a
+commuter among you. Honest folk, these commuters, with marrow in their
+bones--a steak in a paper bag--the sleet in their faces on the
+ferryboat. I am the only one who admits that he lives in the city
+because he prefers it. The country is good enough to read about--I
+like it in books--but I choose to sit meantime with my feet on a city
+fender."
+
+Here Wurm broke in again. "I see, Flint," he said, "that you have been
+reading Leslie Stephen."
+
+Flint denied it.
+
+"Well, anyway, you have quoted him. Let me read you a bit of his essay
+on 'Country Books.'"
+
+Flint made a grimace. "Wurm always has a favorite passage."
+
+Wurm went to a shelf and took down a volume. He blew off the dust and
+smoothed its sides. "Listen to this!" he said. "Picked up the volume
+at Schulte's, on the twenty-five cent table. 'A love of the country is
+taken,'" he read, "'I know not why, to indicate the presence of all
+the cardinal virtues.... We assert a taste for sweet and innocent
+pleasures and an indifference to the feverish excitements of
+artificial society. I, too, like the country,...' (you'll like this,
+Flint) 'but I confess--to be duly modest--that I love it best in
+books. In real life I have remarked that it is frequently damp and
+rheumatic, and most hated by those who know it best.... Though a
+cockney in grain, I love to lean upon the farmyard gate; to hear Mrs.
+Poyser give a bit of her mind to the squire; to be lulled into a
+placid doze by the humming of Dorlecote Mill; to sit down in Dandie
+Dinmont's parlour ... or to drop into the kitchen of a good old
+country inn, and to smoke a pipe with Tom Jones or listen to the
+simple-minded philosophy of Parson Adams.'"
+
+"You hit on a good one then," said Flint. "And now as I was saying--"
+
+Wurm interposed. "Just a moment, Flint! You think that that quotation
+supports your side of the discussion. Not at all. It shows merely that
+sometimes we get greater reality from books than we get from life.
+Leslie Stephen liked the real country, also. In his holidays he
+climbed the Swiss mountains--wrote a book about them--it's on that top
+shelf. Don't you remember how he loved to roll stones off a cliff? And
+as a pedestrian he was almost as famous as George Borrow--walked the
+shirt off his back before his college trustees and all that sort of
+thing. But he got an even sharper reality from books. He liked the
+city, too, but in many a mood, there's no doubt about it, he preferred
+to walk to Charing Cross with Doctor Johnson in a book, rather than to
+jostle on the actual pavement outside his door."
+
+"Speed up, Wurm!" This from Quill, the journalist. "Inch along, old
+caterpillar!"
+
+"As far as I am concerned," Wurm continued, "I would rather go with
+Charles and Mary Lamb to see _The Battle of Hexham_ in their gallery
+than to any show in Times Square. I love to think of that fine old
+pair climbing up the stairs, carefully at the turn, lest they tread on
+a neighbor's heels. Then the pleasant gallery, with its great lantern
+to light their expectant faces!"
+
+Wurm's eyes strayed again wistfully to his shelves. Flint stayed him.
+"And so you think that it is possible to see life completely in a
+mirror."
+
+"By no means," Wurm returned. "We must see it both ways. Nor am I, as
+you infer, in any sense like the Lady of Shalott. A great book cannot
+be compared to a mirror. There is no genius in a mirror. It merely
+reflects the actual, and slightly darkened. A great book shows life
+through the medium of an individuality. The actual has been lifted
+into truth. Divinity has passed into it through the unobstructed
+channel of genius."
+
+Here Flint broke in. "Divinity--genius--the Swiss Alps--_The Battle of
+Hexham_--what have they to do with Quill's shack out in Jersey or
+Colum's dirty birdhouses? You jump the track, Wurm. When everybody is
+heading for the main tent, you keep running to the side-shows."
+
+Quill, the journalist, joined the banter. "You remind me, Wurm--I hate
+to say it--of what a sea captain once said to me when I tried to loan
+him a book. 'Readin',' he said, 'readin' rots the mind.'"
+
+It was Colum's turn to ask a question. "What do _you_ do, Flint," he
+asked, "when you have a holiday?"
+
+"Me? Well, I don't run off to the country as if the city were afire
+and my coat-tails smoked. And I don't sentimentalize on the evils of
+society. And I don't sit and blink in the dark, and moon around on a
+shelf and wear out books. I go outdoors. I walk around and look at
+things--shop windows and all that, when the merchants leave their
+curtains up. I walk across the bridges and spit off. Then there's the
+Bronx and the Battery, with benches where one may make acquaintances.
+People are always more communicative when they look out on the water.
+The last time I sat there an old fellow told me about himself, his
+wife, his victrola and his saloon. I talk to a good many persons,
+first and last, or I stand around until they talk to me. So many
+persons wear blinders in the city. They don't know how wonderful it
+is. Once, on Christmas Eve, I pretended to shop on Fourteenth Street,
+just to listen to the crowd on its final round--mother's carpet
+sweeper, you understand, or a drum for the heir. A crowd on Christmas
+is different--it's gayer--reckless--it's an exalted Saturday night.
+Afterwards I heard Midnight Mass at the Russian Cathedral. Then there
+are always ferryboats--the band on the boat to Staten Island--God!
+What music! Tugs and lights. I would like to know a tug--intimately.
+If more people were like tugs we'd have less rotten politics. Wall
+Street on a holiday is fascinating. No one about. Desolate. But full
+of spirits."
+
+Flint took a fresh cigar. "Last Sunday morning I walked in Central
+Park. There were all manner of toy sailboats on the pond--big and
+little--thirty of them at the least--tipping and running in the
+breeze. Grown men sail them. They set them on a course, and then they
+trot around the pond and wait for them. Presently I was curious. A man
+upward of fifty had his boat out on the grass and was adjusting the
+rigging.
+
+"'That's quite a boat,' I began.
+
+"'It's not a bad tub,' he answered.
+
+"'Do you hire it from the park department?' I asked.
+
+"'No!' with some scorn.
+
+"'Where do you buy them?'
+
+"'We don't buy them.'
+
+"'Then how--?' I started.
+
+"'We make 'em--nights.'
+
+"He resumed his work. The boat was accurately and beautifully
+turned--hollow inside--with a deck of glossy wood. The rudder was
+controlled by finest tackle and hardware. Altogether, it was as
+delicately wrought as a violin.
+
+"'It's this way!'--its builder and skipper laid down his pipe--'There
+are about thirty of us boys who are dippy about boats. We can't afford
+real boats, so we make these little ones. Daytimes I am an interior
+decorator. This is a thirty-six. Next winter--if my wife will stand
+the muss (My God! How it litters up the dining-room!) I am going to
+build a forty-two. All of the boys bring out a new boat each spring!'
+The old fellow squinted at his mast and tightened a cord. Then he
+continued. 'If you are interested, come around any Sunday morning
+until the pond is frozen. And if you want to try your hand at a boat
+this winter, just ask any of us boys and we will help you. Your first
+boat or two will be sad--_Ju-das!_ But you will learn.'"
+
+Flint was interrupted by Quill. "Isn't that rather a silly occupation
+for grown men?"
+
+"It's not an occupation," said Flint. "It's an avocation, and it isn't
+silly. Any one of us would enjoy it, if he weren't so self-conscious.
+And it's more picturesque than golf and takes more skill. And what
+courtesy! These men form what is really a club--a club in its
+primitive and true sense. And I was invited to be one of them."
+
+Flannel Shirt broke in. "By George, that _was_ courtesy. If you had
+happened on a polo player at his club--a man not known to you--he
+wouldn't have invited you to come around and bring your pony for
+instruction."
+
+"It's not an exact comparison, is it, Old Flannel Shirt?"
+
+"No, maybe not."
+
+There was a pause. It was Flint who resumed. "I rather like to think
+of that interior decorator littering up his dining-room every
+night--clamps and glue-pots on the sideboard--hardly room for the
+sugar-bowl--lumber underneath--and then bringing out a new boat in
+the spring."
+
+Wurm looked up from the couch. "Stevenson," he said, "should have
+known that fellow. He would have found him a place among his Lantern
+Bearers."
+
+Flint continued. "From the pond I walked down Fifth Avenue."
+
+"It's Fifth Avenue," said Flannel Shirt, "everything up above
+Fifty-ninth Street--and what it stands for, that I want to get away
+from."
+
+"Easy, Flannel Shirt," said Flint. "Fifth Avenue doesn't interest me
+much either. It's too lonely. Everybody is always away. The big stone
+buildings aren't homes: they are points of departure, as somebody
+called them. And they were built for kings and persons of spacious
+lives, but they have been sublet to smaller folk. Or does no one live
+inside? You never see a curtain stir. There is never a face at a
+window. Everything is stone and dead. One might think that a Gorgon
+had gone riding on a 'bus top, and had thrown his cold eye upon the
+house fronts." Flint paused. "How can one live obscurely, as these
+folk do, in the twilight, in so beautiful a shell? Even a crustacean
+sometimes shows his nose at his door. And yet what a wonderful street
+it would be if persons really lived there, and looked out of their
+windows, and sometimes, on clear days, hung their tapestries and rugs
+across the outer walls. Actually," added Flint, "I prefer to walk on
+the East Side. It is gayer."
+
+"There is poverty, of course," he went on after a moment, "and
+suffering. But the streets are not depressing. They have fun on the
+East Side. There are so many children and there is no loneliness. If
+the street is blessed with a standpipe, it seems designed as a post
+for leaping. Any vacant wall--if the street is so lucky--serves for a
+game. There is baseball on the smooth pavement, or if one has a piece
+of chalk, he can lay out a kind of hopscotch--not stretched out, for
+there isn't room, but rolled up like a jelly cake. One must hop to the
+middle and out again. Or perhaps one is an artist and with a crayon he
+spends his grudge upon an enemy--these drawings can be no likeness of
+a friend. Or love guides the chalky fingers. And all the time
+slim-legged girls sit on curb and step and act as nursemaids to the
+younger fry."
+
+"But, my word, what smells!"
+
+"Yes, of course, and not very pleasant smells. Down on these streets
+we can learn what dogs think of us. But every Saturday night on Grand
+Street there is a market. I bought a tumbler of little nuts from an
+old woman. They aren't much good to eat--wee nuts, all shell--and they
+still sit in the kitchen getting dusty. It was raining when I bought
+them and the woman's hair was streaked in her face, but she didn't
+mind. There were pent roofs over all the carts. Everything on God's
+earth was for sale. On the cart next to my old woman's, there was
+hardware--sieves, cullenders--kitchen stuff. And on the next, wearing
+gear, with women's stockings hung on a rope at the back. A girl came
+along carrying a pair of champagne-colored shoes, looking for
+stockings to match. Quite a belle. Somebody's girl. Quill, go down
+there on a Saturday night. It will make a column for your paper. I
+wonder if that girl found her stockings. A black-eyed Italian.
+
+"But what I like best are the windows on the East Side. No one there
+ever says that his house is his castle. On the contrary it is his
+point of vantage--his outlook--his prospect. His house front never
+dozes. Windows are really windows, places to look out of--not openings
+for household exhibits--ornamental lamps or china things--at every
+window there is a head--somebody looking on the world. There is a
+pleasant gossip across the fire-escapes--a recipe for onions--a hint
+of fashion--a cure for rheumatism. The street bears the general life.
+The home is the street, not merely the crowded space within four
+walls. The street is the playground and the club--the common stage,
+and these are the galleries and boxes. We come again close to the
+beginning of the modern theatre--an innyard with windows round about.
+The play is shinny in the gutters. Venders come and go, selling fruit
+and red suspenders. An ice wagon clatters off, with a half-dozen
+children on its tailboard."
+
+Flint flecked his ashes on the floor. "I wonder," he said at length,
+"that those persons who try to tempt these people out of the congested
+city to farms, don't see how falsely they go about it. They should
+reproduce the city in miniature--a dozen farmhouses must be huddled
+together to make a snug little town, where all the children may play
+and where the women, as they work, may talk across the windows. They
+must build villages like the farming towns of France.
+
+"But where can one be so stirred as on the wharves? From here even the
+narrowest fancy reaches out to the four watery corners of the earth.
+No nose is so green and country-bred that it doesn't sniff the spices
+of India. Great ships lie in the channel camouflaged with war. If we
+could forget the terror of the submarine, would not these lines and
+stars and colors appear to us as symbols of the strange mystery of the
+far-off seas?
+
+"Or if it is a day of sailing, there are a thousand barrels, oil
+maybe, ranged upon the wharf, standing at fat attention to go aboard.
+Except for numbers it might appear--although I am rusty at the
+legend--that in these barrels Ali Baba has hid his forty thieves for
+roguery when the ship is out to sea. Doubtless if one knocked upon a
+top and put his ear close upon a barrel, he would hear a villain's
+guttural voice inside, asking if the time were come.
+
+"Then there are the theatres and parks, great caverns where a subway
+is being built. There are geraniums on window-sills, wash hanging on
+dizzy lines (cotton gymnasts practicing for a circus), a roar of
+traffic and shrill whistles, men and women eating--always eating.
+There has been nothing like this in all the ages. Babylon and Nineveh
+were only villages. Carthage was a crossroads. It is as though all the
+cities of antiquity had packed their bags and moved here to a common
+spot."
+
+"Please, Flint," this from Colum, "but you forget that the faces of
+those who live in the country are happier. That's all that counts."
+
+"Not happier--less alert, that's all--duller. For contentment, I'll
+wager against any farmhand the old woman who sells apples at the
+corner. She polishes them on her apron with--with spit. There is an
+Italian who peddles ice from a handcart on our street, and he never
+sees me without a grin. The folk who run our grocery, a man and his
+wife, seem happy all the day. No! we misjudge the city and we have
+done so since the days of Wordsworth. If we prized the city rightly,
+we would be at more pains to make it better--to lessen its suffering.
+We ought to go into the crowded parts with an eye not only for the
+poverty, but also with sympathy for its beauty--its love of
+sunshine--the tenderness with which the elder children guard the
+younger--its love of music--its dancing--its naturalness. If we had
+this sympathy we could help--_ourselves_, first--and after that,
+maybe, the East Side."
+
+Flint arose and leaned against the chimney. He shook an accusing
+finger at the company. "You, Colum, ruin fifty weeks for the sake of
+two. You, Quill, hypnotize yourself into a frazzle by Saturday noon
+with unnecessary fret. You peck over your food too much. A little
+clear unmuddled thinking would straighten you out, even if you didn't
+let the ants crawl over you on Sunday afternoon. Old Flannel Shirt is
+blinded by his spleen against society. As for Wurm, he doesn't count.
+He's only a harmless bit of mummy-wrapping."
+
+"And what are you, Flint?" asked Quill.
+
+"Me? A rational man, I hope."
+
+"You--you are an egotist. That's what you are."
+
+"Very well," said Flint. "It's just as you say."
+
+There was a red flash from the top of the Metropolitan Tower. Flint
+looked at his watch. "So?" he said, "I must be going."
+
+And now that our party is over and I am home at last, I put out the
+light and draw open the curtains. Tomorrow--it is to be a holiday--I
+had planned to climb in the Highlands, for I, too, am addicted to the
+country. But perhaps--perhaps I'll change my plan and stay in town.
+I'll take a hint from Flint. I'll go down to Delancey Street and watch
+the chaffering and buying. What he said was true. He overstated his
+position, of course. Most propagandists do, being swept off in the
+current of their swift conviction. One should like both the city and
+the country; and the liking for one should heighten the liking for the
+other. Any particular receptiveness must grow to be a general
+receptiveness. Yet, in the main, certainly, Flint was right. I'll try
+Delancey Street, I concluded, just this once.
+
+Thousands of roofs lie below me, for I live in a tower as of
+Teufelsdröckh. And many of them shield a bit of grief--darkened rooms
+where sick folk lie--rooms where hope is faint. And yet, as I believe,
+under these roofs there is more joy than grief--more contentment and
+happiness than despair, even in these grievous times of war. If Quill
+here frets himself into wakefulness and Colum chafes for the coming of
+the summer, also let us remember that in the murk and shadows of these
+rooms there are, at the least, thirty sailors from Central Park--one
+old fellow in particular who, although the hour is late, still putters
+with his boat in the litter of his dining-room. Glue-pots on the
+sideboard! Clamps among the china, and lumber on the hearth! And down
+on Grand Street, snug abed, dreaming of pleasant conquest, sleeps the
+dark-eyed Italian girl. On a chair beside her are her champagne boots,
+with stockings to match hung across the back.
+
+
+
+
+Runaway Studies.
+
+
+In my edition of "Elia," illustrated by Brock, whose sympathetic pen,
+surely, was nibbed in days contemporary with Lamb, there is a sketch
+of a youth reclining on a window-seat with a book fallen open on his
+knees. He is clad in a long plain garment folded to his heels which
+carries a hint of a cathedral choir but which, doubtless, is the
+prescribed costume of an English public school. This lad is gazing
+through the casement into a sunny garden--for the artist's vague
+stippling invites the suspicion of grass and trees. Or rather, does
+not the intensity of his regard attest that his nimble thoughts have
+jumped the outmost wall? Already he journeys to those peaks and lofty
+towers that fringe the world of youth--a dizzy range that casts a
+magic border on his first wide thoughts, to be overleaped if he seek
+to tread the stars.
+
+And yet it seems a sleepy afternoon. Flowers nod upon a shelf in the
+idle breeze from the open casement. On the warm sill a drowsy sunlight
+falls, as if the great round orb of day, having labored to the top of
+noon, now dawdled idly on the farther slope. A cat dozes with lazy
+comfort on the window-seat. Surely, this is the cat--if the old story
+be believed--the sleepiest of all her race, in whose dull ear the
+mouse dared to nest and breed.
+
+This lad, who is so lost in thought, is none other than Charles Lamb,
+a mere stripling, not yet grown to his black small-clothes and sober
+gaiters, a shrill squeak of a boy scarcely done with his battledore.
+And here he sits, his cheek upon his palm, and dreams of the future.
+
+But Lamb himself has written of this window-seat. Journeying northward
+out of London--in that wonderful middle age of his in which the Elia
+papers were composed--journeying northward he came once on the great
+country house where a part of his boyhood had been spent. It had been
+but lately given to the wreckers, "and the demolition of a few weeks,"
+he writes, "had reduced it to--an antiquity."
+
+"Had I seen those brick-and-mortar knaves at their process of
+destruction," he continues, "at the plucking of every pannel I should
+have felt the varlets at my heart. I should have cried out to them to
+spare a plank at least out of that cheerful storeroom, in whose hot
+window-seat I used to sit and read Cowley, with the grass-plat before,
+and the hum and flappings of that one solitary wasp that ever haunted
+it about me--it is in mine ears now, as oft as summer returns...."
+
+I confess to a particular enjoyment of this essay, with its memory of
+tapestried bedrooms setting forth upon their walls "the unappeasable
+prudery of Diana" under the peeping eye of Actĉon; its echoing
+galleries once so dreadful when the night wind caught the candle at
+the turn; its hall of family portraits. But chiefly it is this
+window-seat that holds me--the casement looking on the garden and its
+southern sun-baked wall--the lad dreaming on his volume of Cowley, and
+leaping the garden border for the stars. These are the things that I
+admit most warmly to my affection.
+
+It is not in the least that I am a lover of Cowley, who seems an
+unpleasantly antiquated author. I would choose, instead, that the
+youthful Elia were busy so early with one of his favorite
+Elizabethans. He has himself hinted that he read "The Vicar of
+Wakefield" in later days out of a tattered copy from a circulating
+library, yet I would willingly move the occasion forward, coincident
+to this. And I suspect that the artist Brock is also indifferent to
+Cowley: for has he not laid two other volumes handy on the shelf for
+the sure time when Cowley shall grow dull? Has he not even put Cowley
+flat down upon his face, as if, already neglected, he had slipped from
+the lad's negligent fingers--as if, indeed, Elia's far-striding
+meditation were to him of higher interest than the stiff measure of
+any poet?
+
+I recall a child, dimly through the years, that lay upon the rug
+before the fire to read his book, with his chin resting on both his
+hands. His favorite hour was the winter twilight before the family
+came together for their supper, for at that hour the lamplighter went
+his rounds and threw a golden string of dots upon the street. He drove
+an old thin horse and he stood on the seat of the cart with
+up-stretched taper. But when the world grew dark the flare of the fire
+was enough for the child to read, for he lay close against the hearth.
+And as the shadows gathered in the room, there was one story chiefly,
+of such intensity that the excitement of it swept through his body and
+out into his waving legs. Perhaps its last copy has now vanished off
+the earth. It dealt with a deserted house on a lonely road, where
+chains clanked at midnight. Lights, too, seemingly not of earth,
+glimmered at the windows, while groans--such was the dark fancy of the
+author--issued from a windy tower. But there was one supreme chapter
+in which the hero was locked in a haunted room and saw a candle at a
+chink of the wall. It belonged to the villain, who nightly played
+there a ghostly antic to frighten honest folk from a buried treasure.
+
+And in summer the child read on the casement of the dining-room with
+the window up. It was the height of a tall man from the ground, and
+this gave it a bit of dizziness that enhanced the pleasure. This sill
+could be dully reached from inside, but the approach from the outside
+was riskiest and best. For an adventuring mood this window was a kind
+of postern to the house for innocent deception, beyond the eye of both
+the sitting-room and cook. Sometimes it was the bridge of a lofty
+ship with a pilot going up and down, or it was a lighthouse to mark a
+channel. It was as versatile as the kitchen step-ladder which--on
+Thursday afternoons when the cook was out--unbent from its sober
+household duties and joined him as an equal. But chiefly on this sill
+the child read his books on summer days. His cousins sat inside on
+chairs, starched for company, and read safe and dimpled authors, but
+his were of a vagrant kind. There was one book, especially, in which a
+lad not much bigger than himself ran from home and joined a circus. A
+scolding aunt was his excuse. And the child on the sill chafed at his
+own happy circumstance which denied him these adventures.
+
+In a dark room in an upper story of the house there was a great box
+where old books and periodicals were stored. No place this side of
+Cimmeria had deeper shadows. Not even the underground stall of the
+neighbor's cow, which showed a gloomy window on the garden, gave quite
+the chill. It was only on the brightest days that the child dared to
+rummage in this box. The top of it was high and it was blind fumbling
+unless he stood upon a chair. Then he bent over, jack-knife fashion,
+until the upper part of him--all above the legs--disappeared. In the
+obscurity--his head being gone--it must have seemed that Solomon lived
+upon the premises and had carried out his ugly threat in that old
+affair of the disputed child. Then he lifted out the papers--in
+particular a set of _Leslie's Weekly_ with battle pictures of the
+Civil War. Once he discovered a tale of Jules Verne--a journey to the
+center of the earth--and he spread its chapters before the window in
+the dusty light.
+
+But the view was high across the houses of the city to a range of
+hills where tall trees grew as a hedge upon the world. And it was the
+hours when his book lay fallen that counted most, for then he built
+poems in his fancy of ships at sea and far-off countries.
+
+It is by a fine instinct that children thus neglect their books,
+whether it be Cowley or Circus Dick. When they seem most truant they
+are the closest rapt. A book at its best starts the thought and sends
+it off as a happy vagrant. It is the thought that runs away across the
+margin that brings back the richest treasure.
+
+But all reading in childhood is not happy. It chanced that lately in
+the long vacation I explored a country school for boys. It stood on
+the shaded street of a pretty New England village, so perched on a
+hilltop that it looked over a wide stretch of lower country. There
+were many marks of a healthful outdoor life--a football field and
+tennis courts, broad lawns and a prospect of distant woodland for a
+holiday excursion. It was on the steps of one of the buildings used
+for recitation that I found a tattered dog-eared remnant of _The
+Merchant of Venice_. So much of its front was gone that at the very
+first of it Shylock had advanced far into his unworthy schemes.
+Evidently the book, by its position at the corner of the steps, had
+been thrown out immediately at the close of the final class, as if
+already it had been endured too long.
+
+In the stillness of the abandoned school I sat for an hour and read
+about the choosing of the caskets. The margins were filled with
+drawings--one possibly a likeness of the teacher. Once there was a
+figure in a skirt--straight, single lines for legs--_Jack's
+girl_--scrawled in evident derision of a neighbor student's amatory
+weakness. There were records of baseball scores. Railroads were drawn
+obliquely across the pages, bending about in order not to touch the
+words, with a rare tunnel where some word stood out too long. Here and
+there were stealthy games of tit-tat-toe, practiced, doubtless, behind
+the teacher's back. Everything showed boredom with the play. What
+mattered it which casket was selected! Let Shylock take his pound of
+flesh! Only let him whet his knife and be quick about it! All's one.
+It's at best a sad and sleepy story suited only for a winter's day.
+But now spring is here--spring that is the king of all the seasons.
+
+A bee comes buzzing on the pane. It flies off in careless truantry.
+The clock ticks slowly like a lazy partner in the teacher's dull
+conspiracy. Outside stretches the green world with its trees and
+hills and moving clouds. There is a river yonder with swimming-holes.
+A dog barks on a distant road.
+
+Presently the lad's book slips from his negligent fingers. He places
+it face down upon the desk. It lies disregarded like that volume of
+old Cowley one hundred years ago. His eyes wander from the black-board
+where the _Merchant's_ dry lines are scanned and marked.
+
+          ´        ´       ´     ´     ´
+    _In sooth, I know not why I am so sad._
+
+And then ... his thoughts have clambered through the window. They have
+leaped across the schoolyard wall. Still in his ears he hears the
+jogging of the _Merchant_--but the sound grows dim. Like that other
+lad of long ago, his thoughts have jumped the hills. Already, with
+giddy stride, they are journeying to the profound region of the stars.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+On Turning Into Forty.
+
+
+The other day, without any bells or whistles, I slipped off from the
+thirties. I felt the same sleepiness that morning. There was no
+apparent shifting of the grade.
+
+I am conscious, maybe, that my agility is not what it was fifteen
+years ago. I do not leap across the fences. But I am not yet comic.
+Yonder stout man waddles as if he were a precious bombard. He strains
+at his forward buttons. Unless he mend his appetite, his shoes will be
+lost below his waistcoat. Already their tops and hulls, like battered
+caravels, disappear beneath his fat horizon. With him I bear no
+fellowship. But although nature has not stuffed me with her sweets to
+this thick rotundity; alas, despite of tubes and bottles, no shadowy
+garden flourishes on my top--waving capillary grasses and a prim path
+between the bush. Rather, I bear a general parade and smooth pleasance
+open to the glimpses of the moon.
+
+And so at last I have turned into the forties. I remember now how
+heedlessly I had remarked a small brisk clock ticking upon the shelf
+as it counted the seconds--paying out to me, as it were, for my
+pleasure and expense, the brief coinage of my life. I had heard, also,
+unmindful of the warning, a tall and solemn clock as I lay awake,
+marking regretfully the progress of the night. And I had been told
+that water runs always beneath the bridge, that the deepest roses
+fade, that Time's white beard keeps growing to his knee. These phrases
+of wisdom I had heard and others. But what mattered them to me when my
+long young life lay stretched before me? Nor did the revolving stars
+concern me--nor the moon, spring with its gaudy brush, nor gray-clad
+winter. Nor did I care how the wind blew the swift seasons across the
+earth. Let Time's horses gallop, I cried. Speed! The bewildering peaks
+of youth are forward. The inn for the night lies far across the
+mountains.
+
+But the seconds were entered on the ledger. At last the gray penman
+has made his footing. The great page turns. I have passed out of the
+thirties.
+
+I am not given to brooding on my age. It is only by checking the years
+on my fingers that I am able to reckon the time of my birth. In the
+election booth, under a hard eye, I fumble the years and invite
+suspicion. Eighteen hundred and seventy-eight, I think it was. But
+even this salient fact--this milepost on my eternity--I remember most
+quickly by the recollection of a jack-knife acquired on my tenth
+birthday. By way of celebration on that day, having selected the
+longest blade, I cut the date--1888--in the kitchen woodwork with
+rather a pretty flourish when the cook was out. The swift events that
+followed the discovery--the dear woman paddled me with a great spoon
+through the door--fastened the occurrence in my memory.
+
+It was about the year of the jack-knife that there lived in our
+neighborhood a bad boy whose name was Elmer. I would have quite
+forgotten him except that I met him on the pavement a few weeks ago.
+He was the bully of our street--a towering rogue with red hair and one
+suspender. I remember a chrome bandage which he shifted from toe to
+toe. This lad was of larger speech than the rest of us and he could
+spit between his teeth. He used to snatch the caps of the younger boys
+and went off with our baseball across the fences. He was wrapped, too,
+in mystery, and it was rumored--softly from ear to ear--that once he
+had been arrested and taken to the station-house.
+
+And yet here he was, after all these years, not a bearded brigand with
+a knife sticking from his boot, but a mild undersized man, hat in
+hand, smiling at me with pleasant cordiality. His red hair had faded
+to a harmless carrot. From an overtopping rascal he had dwindled to my
+shoulder. It was as strange and incomprehensible as if the broken
+middle-aged gentleman, my familiar neighbor across the street who nods
+all day upon his step, were pointed out to me as Captain Kidd retired.
+Can it be that all villains come at last to a slippered state? Does
+Dick Turpin of the King's highway now falter with crutch along a
+garden path? And Captain Singleton, now that his last victim has
+walked the plank--does he doze on a sunny bench beneath his pear tree?
+Is no blood or treasure left upon the earth? Do all rascals lose their
+teeth? "Good evening, Elmer," I said, "it has been a long time since
+we have met." And I left him agreeable and smiling.
+
+No, certainly I do not brood upon my age. Except for a gift I forget
+my birthday. It is only by an effort that I can think of myself as
+running toward middle age. If I meet a stranger, usually, by a
+pleasant deception, I think myself the younger, and because of an
+old-fashioned deference for age I bow and scrape in the doorway for
+his passage.
+
+Of course I admit a suckling to be my junior. A few days since I
+happened to dine at one of the Purple Pups of our Greenwich Village.
+At my table, which was slashed with yellow and blue in the fashion of
+these places, sat a youth of seventeen who engaged me in conversation.
+Plainly, even to my blindness, he was younger than myself. The milk
+was scarcely dry upon his mouth. He was, by his admission across the
+soup, a writer of plays and he had received already as many as three
+pleasant letters of rejection. He flared with youth. Strange gases and
+opinion burned in his speech. His breast pocket bulged with
+manuscript, for reading at a hint.
+
+I was poking at my dumpling when he asked me if I were a socialist.
+No, I replied. Then perhaps I was an anarchist or a Bolshevist, he
+persisted. N-no, I answered him, sadly and slowly, for I foresaw his
+scorn. He leaned forward across the table. Begging my pardon for an
+intrusion in my affairs, he asked me if I were not aware that the
+world was slipping away from me. God knows. Perhaps. I had come
+frisking to that restaurant. I left it broken and decrepit. The
+youngster had his manuscripts and his anarchy. He held the wriggling
+world by its futuristic tail. It was not my world, to be sure, but it
+was a gay world and daubed with color.
+
+And yet, despite this humiliating encounter, I feel quite young.
+Something has passed before me that may be Time. The summers have come
+and gone. There is snow on the pavement where I remember rain. I see,
+if I choose, the long vista of the years, with diminishing figures,
+and tin soldiers at the start. Yet I doubt if I am growing older. To
+myself I seem younger than in my twenties. In the twenties we are
+quite commonly old. We bear the whole weight of society. The world has
+been waiting so long for us and our remedies. In the twenties we scorn
+old authority. We let Titian and Keats go drown themselves. We are
+skeptical in religion, and before our unrelenting iron throne
+immortality and all things of faith plead in vain. Although I can show
+still only a shabby inventory, certainly I would not exchange myself
+for that other self in the twenties. I have acquired in these last few
+years a less narrow sympathy and a belief that some of my colder
+reasons may be wrong. Nor would I barter certain knacks of
+thoughts--serious and humorous--for the renewed ability to leap across
+a five-foot bar. I am less fearful of the world and its accidents. I
+have less embarrassment before people. I am less moody. I tack and
+veer less among my betters for some meaner profit. Surely I am growing
+younger.
+
+I seem to remember reading a story in which a scientist devised a
+means of reversing the direction of the earth. Perhaps an explosion of
+gases backfired against the east. Perhaps he built a monstrous lever
+and contrived the moon to be his fulcrum. Anyway, here at last was the
+earth spinning backward in its course--the spring preceding
+winter--the sun rising in the west--one o'clock going before
+twelve--soup trailing after nuts--the seed-time following upon the
+harvest. And so it began to appear--so ran the story--that human life,
+too, was reversed. Persons came into the world as withered grandames
+and as old gentlemen with gold-headed canes, and then receded like
+crabs backward into their maturity, then into their adolescence and
+babyhood. To return from a protracted voyage was to find your younger
+friends sunk into pinafores. But the story was really too ridiculous.
+
+But in these last few years no doubt I do grow younger. The great
+camera of the Master rolls its moving pictures backward. Perhaps I am
+only thirty-eight now that the direction is reversed.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I wonder what you thought, my dear X----, when we met recently at
+dinner. We had not seen one another very often in these last few
+years. Our paths have led apart and we have not been even at shouting
+distance across the fields. It is needless to remind you, I hope, that
+I once paid you marked attention. It began when we were boy and girl.
+Our friends talked, you will recall. You were then less than a year
+younger than myself, although no doubt you have since lost distance.
+What a long time I spent upon my tie and collar--a stiff high collar
+that almost touched my ears! Some other turn of fortune's
+wheel--circumstance--a shaft of moonlight (we were young, my dear)--a
+white frock--your acquiescence--who knows?
+
+I jilted you once or twice for other girls--nothing formal, of
+course--but only when you had jilted me three or four times. We once
+rowed upon a river at night. Did I take your hand, my dear? If I
+listen now I can hear the water dripping from the oar. There was
+darkness--and stars--and youth (yourself, white-armed, the symbol of
+its mystery). Yes, perhaps I am older now.
+
+Was it not Byron who wrote?
+
+    I am ashes where once I was fire,
+    And the soul in my bosom is dead;
+    What I loved I now merely admire,
+    And my heart is as gray as my head.
+
+I cannot pretend ever to have had so fierce a passion, but at least my
+fire still burns and with a cheery blaze. But you will not know this
+love of mine--unless, of course, you read this page--and even so, you
+can only suspect that I write of you, because, my dear, to be quite
+frank, I paid attention to several girls beside yourself.
+
+Yes, they say that I have come to the top of the hill and that
+henceforth the view is back across my shoulder. I am counseled that
+with a turn of the road I had best sit with my back to the horses, for
+the mountains are behind. A little while and the finer purple will be
+showing in the west. Yet a little while, they say, and the bewildering
+peaks of youth will be gray and cold.
+
+Perhaps some of the greener pleasures are mine no longer. Certainly,
+last night I went to the Winter Garden, but left bored after the first
+act; and I had left sooner except for climbing across my neighbors. I
+suppose there are young popinjays who seriously affirm that Ziegfeld's
+Beauty Chorus is equal to the galaxy of loveliness that once pranced
+at Weber and Field's when we came down from college on Saturday night.
+At old Coster and Bial's there was once a marvelous beauty who swung
+from a trapeze above the audience and scandalously undressed herself
+down to the fifth encore and her stockings. And, really, are there
+plays now as exciting as the _Prisoner of Zenda_, with its great fight
+upon the stairs--three men dead and the tables overturned--Red
+Rudolph, in the end, bearing off the Princess? Heroes no longer wear
+cloak and sword and rescue noble ladies from castle towers.
+
+And Welsh rabbit, that was once a passion and the high symbol of
+extravagance, in these days has lost its finest flavor. In vain do we
+shake the paprika can. Pop-beer and real beer, its manly cousin, have
+neither of them the old foaming tingle when you come off the water.
+Yes, already, I am told, I am on the long road that leads down to the
+quiet inn at the mountain foot. I am promised, to be sure, many wide
+prospects, pleasant sounds of wind and water, and friendly greetings
+by the way. There will be a stop here and there for refreshments, a
+pause at the turn where the world shows best, a tightening of the
+brake. Get up, Dobbin! Go 'long! And then, tired and nodding, at last,
+we shall leave the upland and enter the twilight where all roads end.
+
+A pleasant picture, is it not--a grandfather in a cap--yourself, my
+dear sir, hugging your cold shins in the chimney corner? Is it not a
+brave end to a stirring business? Life, you say, is a journey up and
+down a hill--aspirations unattained and a mild regret, castles at
+dawn, a brisk wind for the noontide, and at night, at best, the lights
+of a little village, the stir of water on the stones, and silence.
+
+Is this true? Or do we not reiterate a lie? I deny old age. It is a
+false belief, a bad philosophy dimming the eyes of generations. Men
+and women may wear caps, but not because of age. In each one's heart,
+if he permit, a child keeps house to the very end. If Welsh rabbit
+lose its flavor, is it a sign of decaying power? I have yet to know
+that a relish for Shakespeare declines, or the love of one's friends,
+or the love of truth and beauty. Youth does not view the loftiest
+peaks. It is at sunset that the tallest castles rise.
+
+My dear sir--you of seventy or beyond--if no rim of mountains
+stretches up before you, it is not your age that denies you but the
+quality of your thought. It has been said of old that as a man thinks
+so he is, but who of us has learned the lesson?
+
+The journey has neither a beginning nor an end. Now is eternity. Our
+birth is but a signpost on the road--our going hence, another post to
+mark transition and our progress. The oldest stars are brief lamps
+upon our way. We shall travel wisely if we see peaks and castles all
+the day, and hold our childhood in our hearts. Then, when at last the
+night has come, we shall plant our second post upon a windy height
+where it will be first to catch the dawn.
+
+
+
+
+On the Difference Between Wit and Humor.
+
+
+I am not sure that I can draw an exact line between wit and humor.
+Perhaps the distinction is so subtle that only those persons can
+decide who have long white beards. But even an ignorant man, so long
+as he is clear of Bedlam, may have an opinion.
+
+I am quite positive that of the two, humor is the more comfortable and
+more livable quality. Humorous persons, if their gift is genuine and
+not a mere shine upon the surface, are always agreeable companions
+and they sit through the evening best. They have pleasant mouths
+turned up at the corners. To these corners the great Master of
+marionettes has fixed the strings and he holds them in his nimblest
+fingers to twitch them at the slightest jest. But the mouth of a
+merely witty man is hard and sour until the moment of its discharge.
+Nor is the flash from a witty man always comforting, whereas a
+humorous man radiates a general pleasure and is like another candle in
+the room.
+
+I admire wit, but I have no real liking for it. It has been too often
+employed against me, whereas humor is always an ally. It never points
+an impertinent finger into my defects. Humorous persons do not sit
+like explosives on a fuse. They are safe and easy comrades. But a
+wit's tongue is as sharp as a donkey driver's stick. I may gallop the
+faster for its prodding, yet the touch behind is too persuasive for
+any comfort.
+
+Wit is a lean creature with sharp inquiring nose, whereas humor has a
+kindly eye and comfortable girth. Wit, if it be necessary, uses malice
+to score a point--like a cat it is quick to jump--but humor keeps the
+peace in an easy chair. Wit has a better voice in a solo, but humor
+comes into the chorus best. Wit is as sharp as a stroke of lightning,
+whereas humor is diffuse like sunlight. Wit keeps the season's
+fashions and is precise in the phrases and judgments of the day, but
+humor is concerned with homely eternal things. Wit wears silk, but
+humor in homespun endures the wind. Wit sets a snare, whereas humor
+goes off whistling without a victim in its mind. Wit is sharper
+company at table, but humor serves better in mischance and in the
+rain. When it tumbles wit is sour, but humor goes uncomplaining
+without its dinner. Humor laughs at another's jest and holds its
+sides, while wit sits wrapped in study for a lively answer. But it is
+a workaday world in which we live, where we get mud upon our boots and
+come weary to the twilight--it is a world that grieves and suffers
+from many wounds in these years of war: and therefore as I think of my
+acquaintance, it is those who are humorous in its best and truest
+meaning rather than those who are witty who give the more profitable
+companionship.
+
+And then, also, there is wit that is not wit. As someone has written:
+
+    Nor ever noise for wit on me could pass,
+    When thro' the braying I discern'd the ass.
+
+I sat lately at dinner with a notoriously witty person (a really witty
+man) whom our hostess had introduced to provide the entertainment. I
+had read many of his reviews of books and plays, and while I confess
+their wit and brilliancy, I had thought them to be hard and
+intellectual and lacking in all that broader base of humor which aims
+at truth. His writing--catching the bad habit of the time--is too
+ready to proclaim a paradox and to assert the unusual, to throw aside
+in contempt the valuable haystack in a fine search for a paltry
+needle. His reviews are seldom right--as most of us see the right--but
+they sparkle and hold one's interest for their perversity and
+unexpected turns.
+
+In conversation I found him much as I had found him in his
+writing--although, strictly speaking, it was not a conversation, which
+requires an interchange of word and idea and is turn about. A
+conversation should not be a market where one sells and another buys.
+Rather, it should be a bargaining back and forth, and each person
+should be both merchant and buyer. My rubber plant for your victrola,
+each offering what he has and seeking his deficiency. It was my friend
+B---- who fairly put the case when he said that he liked so much to
+talk that he was willing to pay for his audience by listening in his
+turn.
+
+But this was a speech and a lecture. He loosed on us from the cold
+spigot of his intellect a steady flow of literary allusion--a practice
+which he professes to hold in scorn--and wit and epigram. He seemed
+torn from the page of Meredith. He talked like ink. I had believed
+before that only people in books could talk as he did, and then only
+when their author had blotted and scratched their performance for a
+seventh time before he sent it to the printer. To me it was an
+entirely new experience, for my usual acquaintances are good common
+honest daytime woollen folk and they seldom average better than one
+bright thing in an evening.
+
+At first I feared that there might be a break in his flow of speech
+which I should be obliged to fill. Once, when there was a slight
+pause--a truffle was engaging him--I launched a frail remark; but it
+was swept off at once in the renewed torrent. And seriously it does
+not seem fair. If one speaker insists--to change the figure--on laying
+all the cobbles of a conversation, he should at least allow another to
+carry the tarpot and fill in the chinks. When the evening was over,
+although I recalled two or three clever stories, which I shall botch
+in the telling, I came away tired and dissatisfied, my tongue dry with
+disuse.
+
+Now I would not seek that kind of man as a companion with whom to be
+becalmed in a sailboat, and I would not wish to go to the country with
+him, least of all to the North Woods or any place outside of
+civilization. I am sure that he would sulk if he were deprived of an
+audience. He would be crotchety at breakfast across his bacon.
+Certainly for the woods a humorous man is better company, for his
+humor in mischance comforts both him and you. A humorous man--and here
+lies the heart of the matter--a humorous man has the high gift of
+regarding an annoyance in the very stroke of it as another man shall
+regard it when the annoyance is long past. If a humorous person falls
+out of a canoe he knows the exquisite jest while his head is still
+bobbing in the cold water. A witty man, on the contrary, is sour until
+he is changed and dry: but in a week's time when company is about, he
+will make a comic story of it.
+
+My friend A---- with whom I went once into the Canadian woods has
+genuine humor, and no one can be a more satisfactory comrade. I do not
+recall that he said many comic things, and at bottom he was serious as
+the best humorists are. But in him there was a kind of joy and
+exaltation that lasted throughout the day. If the duffle were piled
+too high and fell about his ears, if the dinner was burned or the tent
+blew down in a driving storm at night, he met these mishaps as though
+they were the very things he had come north to get, as though without
+them the trip would have lacked its spice. This is an easy philosophy
+in retrospect but hard when the wet canvas falls across you and the
+rain beats in. A---- laughed at the very moment of disaster as another
+man will laugh later in an easy chair. I see him now swinging his axe
+for firewood to dry ourselves when we were spilled in a rapids; and
+again, while pitching our tent on a sandy beach when another storm had
+drowned us. And there is a certain cry of his (dully, _Wow!_ on paper)
+expressive to the initiated of all things gay, which could never issue
+from the mouth of a merely witty man.
+
+Real humor is primarily human--or divine, to be exact--and after that
+the fun may follow naturally in its order. Not long ago I saw Louis
+Jouvet of the French Company play Sir Andrew Ague-Cheek. It was a most
+humorous performance of the part, and the reason is that the actor
+made no primary effort to be funny. It was the humanity of his
+playing, making his audience love him first of all, that provoked the
+comedy. His long thin legs were comical and so was his drawling talk,
+but the very heart and essence was this love he started in his
+audience. Poor fellow! How delightfully he smoothed the feathers in
+his hat! How he feared to fight the duel! It was easy to love such a
+dear silly human fellow. A merely witty player might have drawn as
+many laughs, but there would not have been the catching at the heart.
+
+As for books and the wit or humor of their pages, it appears that wit
+fades, whereas humor lasts. Humor uses permanent nutgalls. But is
+there anything more melancholy than the wit of another generation? In
+the first place, this wit is intertwined with forgotten circumstance.
+It hangs on a fashion--on the style of a coat. It arose from a
+forgotten bit of gossip. In the play of words the sources of the pun
+are lost. It is like a local jest in a narrow coterie, barren to an
+outsider. Sydney Smith was the most celebrated wit of his day, but he
+is dull reading now. Blackwood's at its first issue was a witty daring
+sheet, but for us the pages are stagnant. I suppose that no one now
+laughs at the witticisms of Thomas Hood. Where are the wits of
+yesteryear? Yet the humor of Falstaff and Lamb and Fielding remains
+and is a reminder to us that humor, to be real, must be founded on
+humanity and on truth.
+
+
+
+
+On Going to a Party.
+
+
+Although I usually enjoy a party when I have arrived, I seldom
+anticipate it with pleasure. I remain sour until I have hung my hat. I
+suspect that my disorder is general and that if any group of formal
+diners could be caught in preparation midway between their tub and
+over-shoes, they would be found a peevish company who might be
+expected to snap at one another. Yet look now at their smiling faces!
+With what zest they crunch their food! How cheerfully they clatter on
+their plates! Who would suspect that yonder smiling fellow who strokes
+his silky chin was sullen when he fixed his tie; or that this pleasant
+babble comes out of mouths that lately sulked before their mirrors?
+
+I am not sure from what cause my own crustiness proceeds. I am of no
+essential unsociability. Nor is it wholly the masquerade of
+unaccustomed clothes. I am deft with a bow-knot and patient with my
+collar. It may be partly a perversity of sex, inasmuch as we men are
+sometimes "taken" by our women folk. But chiefly it comes from an
+unwillingness to pledge the future, lest on the very night my own
+hearth appear the better choice. Here we are, with legs stretched for
+comfort toward the fire--easy and unbuttoned. Let the rain beat on the
+glass! Let chimneys topple! Let the wind whistle to its shrill
+companions of the North! But although I am led growling and reluctant
+to my host's door--with stiffened paws, as it were, against the
+sill--I usually enjoy myself when I am once inside. To see me across
+the salad smiling at my pretty neighbor, no one would know how
+churlish I had been on the coming of the invitation.
+
+I have attended my share of formal dinners. I have dined with the
+magnificent H----s and their Roman Senator has announced me at the
+door; although, when he asked my name in the hall, I thought at first
+in my ignorance that he gave me directions about my rubbers. No one
+has faced more forks and knives, or has apportioned his implements
+with nicer discrimination among the meats. Not once have I been forced
+to stir my after-dinner coffee with a soup spoon. And yet I look back
+on these grand occasions with contentment chiefly because they are
+past. I am in whole agreement with Cleopatra when she spoke
+slightingly of her salad days--surely a fashionable afternoon affair
+at a castle on the river Nile--when, as she confessed, she was young
+and green in judgment.
+
+It is usually a pleasure to meet distinguished persons who, as a rule,
+are friendly folk who sit in peace and comfort. But if they are lugged
+in and set up stiffly at a formal dinner they are too much an
+exhibition. In this circumstance they cannot be natural and at their
+best. And then I wonder how they endure our abject deference and
+flabby surrender to their opinions. Would it not destroy all interest
+in a game of bowling if the wretched pins fell down before the hit
+were made? It was lately at a dinner that our hostess held in
+captivity three of these celebrated lions. One of them was a famous
+traveler who had taken a tiger by its bristling beard. The second was
+a popular lecturer. The third was in distemper and crouched quietly at
+her plate. The first two are sharp and bright and they roared to
+expectation. But I do not complain when lions take possession of the
+cage, for it reduces the general liability of talk, and a common man,
+if he be industrious, may pluck his bird down to the bone in peace.
+
+A formal reception is even worse than a dinner. One stands around with
+stalled machinery. Good stout legs, that can go at a trot all day,
+become now weak and wabbly. One hurdles dispiritedly over trailing
+skirts. One tries in conversation to think of the name of a play he
+has just seen, but it escapes him. It is, however, so nearly in his
+grasp, that it prevents him from turning to another topic. Benson, the
+essayist, also disliked formal receptions and he quotes Prince Hal in
+their dispraise. "Prithee, Ned," says the Prince--and I fancy that he
+has just led a thirsty Duchess to the punchbowl, and was now in the
+very act of escaping while her face was buried in the cup--"Prithee,
+Ned," he says, "come out of this fat room, and lend me thy hand to
+laugh a little!" And we can imagine these two enfranchised rogues,
+easy at heart, making off later to their Eastcheap tavern, and the
+passing of a friendly cup. But now, alas, today, all of the rooms of
+the house are fat and thick with people. There is a confusion of
+tongues as when work on the tower of Babel was broken off. There is no
+escape. If it were one's good luck to be a waiter, one could at least
+console himself that it was his livelihood.
+
+The furniture has been removed from all the rooms in order that more
+persons may be more uncomfortable. Or perhaps the chairs and tables,
+like rats in a leaky ship, have scuttled off, as it were, now that
+fashion has wrecked the home. A friend of mine, J----, resents these
+entertainments. No sooner, recently, did he come into such a bare
+apartment where, in happier days his favorite chair had stood, than he
+hinted to the guests that the furniture had been sold to meet the
+expenses of the day. This sorry jest lasted him until, on whispering
+to a servant, he learned that the chairs had been stored in an upper
+hall. At this he proposed that the party reassemble above, where at
+least they might sit down and be comfortable. When I last saw J----
+that evening he was sitting at the turn of the stairs behind an exotic
+shrubbery, where he had found a vagrant chair that had straggled
+behind the upper emigration.
+
+The very envelope that contains a formal invitation bears a forbidding
+look. It is massive and costly to the eye. It is much larger than a
+letter, unless, perhaps, one carries on a correspondence with a giant
+from Brobdingnag. You turn it round and round with sad premonition.
+The very writing is coldly impersonal without the pinch of a more
+human hand. It practices a chill anonymity as if it contains a warrant
+for a hanging. At first you hope it may be merely an announcement from
+your tailor, inasmuch as commerce patterns its advertisements on these
+social forms. I am told that there was once a famous man--a
+distinguished novelist--who so disliked formal parties but was so
+timid at their rejection that he took refuge in the cellar whenever
+one of these forbidding documents arrived, until he could forge a
+plausible excuse; for he believed that these colder and more barren
+rooms quickened his invention. The story goes that once when he was in
+an unusually timid state he lacked the courage to break the seal and
+so spent an uneasy morning upon the tubs, to the inconvenience of the
+laundress who thought that he fretted upon the plot. At last, on
+tearing off the envelope, he found to his relief that it was only a
+notice for a display of haberdashery at a fashionable shop. In his
+gratitude at his escape he at once sought his desk and conferred a
+blushing heiress on his hero.
+
+But perhaps there are persons of an opposite mind who welcome an
+invitation. Even the preliminary rummage delights them when their
+clothes are sent for pressing and their choice wavers among their
+plumage. For such persons the superscription on the envelope now seems
+written in the spacious hand of hospitality.
+
+But of informal dinners and the meeting of friends we can all approve
+without reserve. I recall, once upon a time, four old gentlemen who
+met every week for whist. Three of them were of marked eccentricity.
+One of them, when the game was at its pitch, reached down to the rungs
+of his chair and hitched it first to one side and then to the other,
+mussing up the rugs. The second had the infirmity of nodding his head
+continuously. Even if he played a trivial three spot, he sat on the
+decision and wagged his beard up and down like a judge. The third
+sucked his teeth and thereby made hissing noises. Later in the evening
+there would be served buttermilk or cider, and the sober party would
+adjourn at the gate. But there were two young rascals who practiced
+these eccentricities and after they had gone to bed, for the
+exquisite humor of it, they nodded their heads, too, and sucked their
+teeth with loud hissing noises.
+
+No one entertains more pleasantly than the S---- family and no one is
+more informal. If you come on the minute for your dinner, it is likely
+that none of the family is about. After a search J---- is found in a
+flannel shirt in his garden with a watering-can. "Hello!" he says in
+surprise. "What time is it? Have you come already for dinner?"
+
+"For God's sake," you reply--for I assume you to be of familiar and
+profane manners--"get up and wash yourself! Don't you know that you
+are giving a party?"
+
+J---- affects to be indignant. "Who is giving this party, anyway?" he
+asks. "If it's yours, you run it!" And then he leads you to the house,
+where you abuse each other agreeably as he dresses.
+
+Once a year on Christmas Eve they give a general party. This has been
+a custom for a number of years and it is now an institution as fixed
+as the night itself. Invitations are not issued. At most a rumor goes
+abroad to the elect that nine o'clock is a proper time to come, when
+the children, who have peeked for Santa Claus up the chimney, have at
+last been put to bed. There is a great wood fire in the sitting-room
+and, by way of andirons, two soldiers of the Continental Army keep up
+their endless march across the hearth. The fireplace is encircled by a
+line of leather cushions that rest upon the floor, like a window-seat
+that has undergone amputation of all its legs.
+
+But the center of the entertainment is a prodigious egg-nog that rises
+from the dining table. I do not know the composition of the drink, yet
+my nose is much at fault if it includes aught but eggs and whiskey. At
+the end of the table J---- stands with his mighty ladle. It is his
+jest each year--for always there is a fresh stranger who has not heard
+it--it is his jest that the drink would be fair and agreeable to the
+taste if it were not for the superfluity of eggs which dull the
+mixture.
+
+No one, even of a sour prohibition, refuses his entreaty. My aunt, who
+speaks against the Demon, once appeared at the party. She came
+sniffing to the table. "Ought I to take it, John?" she asked.
+
+"Mildest thing you ever drank," said John, and he ladled her out a
+cup.
+
+My aunt smelled it suspiciously.
+
+"It's eggs," said John.
+
+"Eggs?" said my aunt, "What a funny smell they have!" She said this
+with a facial expression not unlike that of Little Red Ridinghood,
+when she first saw the old lady with the long nose and sharp eyes.
+
+"Nothing bad, I hope," said John.
+
+"N-no," said my aunt slowly, and she took a sip.
+
+"Of course the eggs spoil it a little," said John.
+
+"It's very good," said my aunt, as she took another sip.
+
+Then she put down her glass, but only when it was empty. "John," she
+said, "you are a rogue. You would like to get me tipsy." And at this
+she moved out of danger. Little Red Ridinghood escaped the wolf as
+narrowly. But did Little Red Ridinghood escape? Dear me, how one
+forgets!
+
+But in closing I must not fail to mention an old lady and gentleman,
+both beyond eighty, who have always attended these parties. They have
+met old age with such trust and cheerfulness, and they are so eager at
+a jest, that no one of all the gathering fits the occasion half so
+well. And to exchange a word with them is to feel a pleasant contact
+with all the gentleness and mirth that have lodged with them during
+the space of their eighty years. The old gentleman is an astronomer
+and until lately, when he moved to a newer quarter of the town, he had
+behind his house in a proper tower a telescope, through which he
+showed his friends the moon. But in these last few years his work has
+been entirely mathematical and his telescope has fallen into disorder.
+His work finds a quicker comment among scientists of foreign lands
+than on his own street.
+
+It is likely that tonight he has been busy with the computation of the
+orbit of a distant star up to the very minute when his wife brought in
+his tie and collar. And then arm and arm they have set out for the
+party, where they will sit until the last guest has gone.
+
+Alas, when the party comes this Christmas, only one of these old
+people will be present, for the other with a smile lately fell
+asleep.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+On a Pair of Leather Suspenders.
+
+
+Not long since I paid a visit to New Haven before daylight of a winter
+morning. I had hoped that my sleeper from Washington might be late and
+I was encouraged in this by the trainman who said that the dear old
+thing commonly went through New Haven at breakfast time. But it was
+barely three o'clock when the porter plucked at me in my upper berth.
+He intruded, happily, on a dream in which the train came rocking
+across the comforter.
+
+Three o'clock, if you approach it properly through the evening, is
+said to have its compensations. There are persons (with a hiccough)
+who pronounce it the shank of the evening, but as an hour of morning
+it has few apologists. It is the early bird that catches the worm; but
+this should merely set one thinking before he thrusts out a foot into
+the cold morning, whether he may justly consider himself a bird or a
+worm. If no glad twitter rises to his lips in these early hours, he
+had best stay unpecked inside his coverlet.
+
+It is hard to realize that other two-legged creatures like myself are
+habitually awake at this hour. In a wakeful night I may have heard the
+whistles and the clank of far-off wheels, and I may have known dimly
+that work goes on; yet for the most part I have fancied that the
+world, like a river steamboat in a fog, is tied at night to its shore:
+or if it must go plunging on through space to keep a schedule, that
+here and there a light merely is set upon a tower to warn the planets.
+
+A locomotive was straining at its buttons, and from the cab a smoky
+engineer looked down on me. A truck load of boxes rattled down the
+platform. Crates of affable familiar hens were off upon a journey,
+bragging of their families. Men with flaring tapers tapped at wheels.
+The waiting-room, too, kept, as it were, one eye open to the night.
+The coffee-urn steamed on the lunch counter, and sandwiches sat inside
+their glass domes and looked darkly on the world.
+
+It was the hour when "the tired burglar seeks his bed." I had thought
+of dozing in a hotel chair until breakfast, but presently a flood
+appeared in the persons of three scrub women. The fountains of the
+great deep were opened and the waters prevailed.
+
+It still lacked an hour or so of daylight. I remembered that there
+used to be a humble restaurant and kitchen on wheels--to the vulgar, a
+dog-wagon--up toward York Street. This wagon, once upon a time, had
+appeased our appetites when we had been late for chapel and Commons.
+As an institution it was so trite that once we made of it a fraternity
+play. I faintly remember a pledge to secrecy--sworn by the moon and
+the seven wandering stars--but nevertheless I shall divulge the plot.
+It was a burlesque tragedy in rhyme. Some eighteen years ago, it
+seems, Brabantio, the noble Venetian Senator, kept this same
+dog-wagon--he and his beautiful daughter Desdemona. Here came Othello,
+Iago and Cassio of the famous class of umpty-ump.
+
+The scene of the drama opens with Brabantio flopping his dainties on
+the iron, chanting to himself a lyric in praise of their tender
+juices. Presently Othello enters and when Brabantio's back is turned
+he makes love to Desdemona--a handsome fellow, this Othello, with the
+manner of a hero and curled moustachios. Exit Othello to a nine
+o'clock, Ladd on Confusions. Now the rascal Iago enters--myself! with
+flowing tie. He hates Othello. He glowers like a villain and
+soliloquizes:
+
+    In order that my vengeance I may plot
+    Give me a dog, and give it to me hot!
+
+That was the kind of play. Finally, Desdemona is nearly smothered but
+is returned at last to Othello's arms. Iago meets his deserts. He is
+condemned to join [Greek: Delta, Kappa, Epsilon], a rival fraternity.
+But the warm heart of Desdemona melts and she intercedes to save him
+from this horrid end. In mercy--behind the scenes--his head is chopped
+off. Then all of us, heroines and villains, sat to a late hour around
+the fire and told one another how the real stage thirsted for us. We
+drank lemonade mostly but we sang of beer--one song about
+
+    Beer, beer, glorious beer!
+    Fill yourself right up to here!
+
+accompanied with a gesture several inches above the head. As the
+verses progressed it was customary to stand on chairs and to reach up
+on tiptoe to show the increasing depth.
+
+But the dog-wagon has now become a gilded unfamiliar thing, twice its
+former size and with stools for a considerable company. I questioned
+the proprietor whether he might be descended from the noble Brabantio,
+but the dull fellow gave no response. The wagon has passed to meaner
+ownership.
+
+Across the street Vanderbilt Hall loomed indistinctly. To the ignorant
+it may be necessary to explain that its courtyard is open to Chapel
+Street, but that an iron grill stretches from wing to wing and keeps
+out the town. This grill is high enough for Hagenbeck, and it used to
+be a favorite game with us to play animal behind it for the street's
+amusement. At the hour when the crowd issued from the matinée at the
+Hyperion Theatre, our wittiest students paced on all fours up and down
+behind this grill and roared for raw beef. E---- was the wag of the
+building and he could climb up to a high place and scratch himself
+like a monkey--an entertainment of more humor than elegance. Elated
+with success, he and a companion later chartered a street-organ--a
+doleful one-legged affair--and as man and monkey they gathered pennies
+out Orange Street.
+
+I turned into the dark Campus by Osborn Hall. It is as ugly a building
+as one could meet on a week's journey, and yet by an infelicity all
+class pictures are taken on its steps. Freshman courses are given in
+the basement--a French class once in particular. Sometimes, when we
+were sunk dismally in the irregular verbs, bootblacks and old-clothes
+men stopped on the street and grinned down on us. And all the dreary
+hour, as we sweated with translation, above us on the pavement the
+feet and happy legs of the enfranchised went by the window.
+
+Yale is a bad jumble of architecture. It is amazing how such
+incongruous buildings can lodge together. Did not the Old Brick Row
+cry out when Durfee was built? Surely the Gothic library uttered a
+protest against its newer adjunct. And are the Bicentennial buildings
+so beautiful? At best we have exchanged the fraudulent wooden
+ramparts of Alumni Hall for the equally fraudulent inside columns of
+these newer buildings. It is a mercy that there is no style and
+changing fashion in elm trees. As Viola might have remarked about the
+Campus: it were excellently done, if God did all.
+
+Presently in the dark I came on the excavations for the Harkness
+quadrangle. So at last Commons was gone. In that old building we ate
+during our impoverished weeks. I do not know that we saved much, for
+we were driven to extras, but the reckoning was deferred. There was a
+certain tutti-frutti ice-cream, rich in ginger, that has now vanished
+from the earth. Or chocolate èclairs made the night stand out. I
+recall that one could seldom procure a second helping of griddlecakes
+except on those mornings when there were ants in the syrup. Also, I
+recall that sometimes there was a great crash of trays at the pantry
+doors, and almost at the instant two old Goodies, harnessed ready with
+mops and pails, ran out and sponged up the wreckage.
+
+And Pierson Hall is gone, that was once the center of Freshman life.
+Does anybody remember _The Voice_? It was a weekly paper issued in the
+interest of prohibition. I doubt if we would have quarreled with it
+for this, but it denounced Yale and held up in contrast the purity of
+Oberlin. Oberlin! And therefore we hated it, and once a week we burned
+its issue in the stone and plaster corridors of Pierson.
+
+There was once a residence at the corner of York and Library where
+Freshmen resided. The railing of the stairs wabbled. The bookcase door
+lacked a hinge. Three out of four chairs were rickety. The bath-tub,
+which had been the chemical laboratory for some former student, was
+stained an unhealthy color. If ever it shall appear that Harlequin
+lodged upon the street, here was the very tub where he washed his
+clothes. Without caution the window of the bedroom fell out into the
+back yard. But to atone for these defects, up through the scuttle in
+the hall there was an airy perch upon the roof. Here Freshmen might
+smoke their pipes in safety--a privilege denied them on the
+street--and debate upon their affairs. Who were hold-off men! Who
+would make [Greek: Boulê!] Or they invented outrageous names for the
+faculty. My dear Professor Blank, could you hear yourself described by
+these young cubs through their tobacco smoke, your learned ears, so
+alert for dactyl and spondee, would grow red.
+
+Do Scott's boys, I wonder, still gather clothes for pressing around
+the Campus? Do they still sell tickets--sixteen punches for a
+dollar--five punches to the suit? On Monday mornings do colored
+laundresses push worn baby-carts around to gather what we were pleased
+to call the "dirty filth"? And do these same laundresses push back
+these self-same carts later in the week with "clean filth" aboard? Are
+stockings mended in the same old way, so that the toes look through
+the open mesh? Have college sweeps learned yet to tuck in the sheets
+at the foot? Do old-clothes men--Fish-eye? Do you remember him?--do
+old-clothes men still whine at the corner, and look you up and down in
+cheap appraisal? Pop Smith is dead, who sold his photograph to
+Freshmen, but has he no successor? How about the old fellow who sold
+hot chestnuts at football games--"a nickel a bush"--a rare contraction
+meant to denote a bushel--in reality fifteen nuts and fifteen worms.
+Does George Felsburg still play the overture at Poli's, reading his
+newspaper the while, and do comic actors still jest with him across
+the footlights?
+
+Is it still ethical to kick Freshmen on the night of Omega Lambda Chi?
+Is "nigger baby" played on the Campus any more? The loser of this
+precious game, in the golden days, leaned forward against the wall
+with his coat-tails raised, while everybody took a try at him with a
+tennis ball. And, of course, no one now plays "piel." A youngster will
+hardly have heard of the game. It was once so popular that all the
+stone steps about the college showed its marks. And next year we heard
+that the game had spread to Harvard.
+
+Do students still make for themselves oriental corners with Bagdad stripes
+and Turkish lamps? Do the fair fingers of Farmington and Northampton still
+weave the words "'Neath the Elms" upon sofa pillows? Do Seniors still bow
+the President down the aisle of Chapel? Do students still get out their
+Greek with "trots"? It was the custom for three or four lazy students to
+gather together and summon up a newsy to read the trot, while they, lolling
+with pipes on their Morris chairs, fumbled with the text and interlined it
+against a loss of memory. Let the fair-haired goddess Juno speak! Ulysses,
+as he pleases, may walk on the shore of the loud-sounding sea. Thereafter
+in class one may repose safely on his interlineation and snap at flies with
+a rubber band. This method of getting a lesson was all very well except
+that the newsy halted at the proper name. A device was therefore hit on of
+calling all the gods and heroes by the name of Smith. Homeric combat then
+ran like this: _the heart of Smit was black with anger and he smote Smit
+upon the brazen helmet. And the world grew dark before his eyes, and he
+fell forward like a tower and bit the dust and his armor clanked about him.
+But at evening, from a far-off mountain top the white-armed goddess
+Smit-Smit_ (Pallas-Athena) _saw him, and she felt compash--compassion for
+him._
+
+And I suppose that students still sing upon the fence. There was a
+Freshman once, in those early nights of autumn when they were still a
+prey to Sophomores, who came down Library Street after his supper at
+Commons. He wondered whether the nights of hazing were done and was
+unresolved whether he ought to return to his room and sit close.
+Presently he heard the sound of singing. It came from the Campus, from
+the fence. He was greener than most Freshmen and he had never heard
+men sing in four-part harmony. With him music had always been a single
+tune, or at most a lost tenor fumbled uncertainly for the pitch. Any
+grunt had been a bass. And so the sound ravished him. In the open air
+and in the dark the harmony was unparalleled. He stole forward, still
+with one eye open for Sophomores, and crouched in the shadowy angle of
+North Middle. Now the song was in full chorus and the branches of the
+elms swayed to it, and again a bass voice sang alone and the others
+hummed a low accompaniment.
+
+Occasionally, across the Campus, someone in passing called up to a
+window, "Oh, Weary Walker, stick out your head!" And then, after a
+pause, satirically, when the head was out, "Stick it in again!" On the
+stones there were the sounds of feet--feet with lazy purpose--loud
+feet down wooden steps, bound for pleasure. At the windows there were
+lights, where dull thumbs moved down across a page. Let A equal B to
+find our Z. And let it be quick about it, before the student nod! And
+to the Freshman, crouching in the shadow, it seemed at last that he
+was a part of this life, with its music, its voices, its silent elms,
+the dim buildings with their lights, the laughter and the glad feet
+sounding in the dark.
+
+I came now, rambling on this black wintry morning, before the sinister
+walls of Skull and Bones.
+
+I sat on a fence and contemplated the building. It is as dingy as ever
+and, doubtless, to an undergraduate, as fearful as ever. What rites
+and ceremonies are held within these dim walls! What awful
+celebrations! The very stones are grim. The chain outside that swings
+from post to post is not as other chains, but was forged at midnight.
+The great door has a black spell upon it. It was on such a door,
+iron-bound and pitiless, that the tragic Ygraine beat in vain for
+mercy.
+
+It is a breach of etiquette for an undergraduate in passing even to
+turn and look at Bones. Its name may not be mentioned to a member of
+the society, and one must look furtively around before pronouncing it.
+Now as I write the word, I feel a last vibration of the fearful
+tremor.
+
+Seniors compose its membership--fifteen or so, and membership is
+ranked as the highest honor of the college. But in God's name, what is
+all this pother? Are there not already enough jealousies without this
+one added? Does not college society already fall into enough locked
+coteries without this one? No matter how keen is the pride of
+membership, it does not atone for the disappointments and the
+heart-burnings of failure. It is hinted obscurely for expiation that
+it and its fellow societies do somehow confer a benefit on the college
+by holding out a reward for hard endeavor. This is the highest goal.
+I distrust the wisdom of the judges. There is an honester repute to be
+gained in the general estimate of one's fellows. These societies cut
+an unnatural cleavage across the college. They are the source of
+dishonest envy and of mean lick-spittling. For three years, until the
+election is announced, there is much playing for position. A favored
+fellow, whose election is certain, is courted by others who stand on a
+slippery edge, because it is known that in Senior elections one is
+rated by his association. And is it not preposterous that fifteen
+youngsters should set themselves above the crowd, wear obscure jewelry
+and wrap themselves in an empty and pretentious mystery?
+
+But what has this rambling paper to do with a pair of leather
+suspenders? Nothing. Nothing much. Only, after a while, just before
+the dawn, I came in front of the windows of a cheap haberdasher. And I
+recalled how I had once bought at this very shop a pair of leather
+suspenders. They were the only ones left--it was hinted that Seniors
+bought them largely--and they were a bargain. The proprietor blew off
+the dust and slapped them and dwelt upon their merits. They would last
+me into middle age and were cheap. There was, I recall, a kind of
+tricky differential between the shoulders to take up the slack on
+either side. Being a Freshman I was prevailed upon, and I bought them
+and walked to Morris Cove while they creaked and fretted. And here was
+the very shop, arising in front of me as from times before the flood.
+With it there arose, too, a recollection of my greenness and timidity.
+And mingled with all the hours of happiness of those times there were
+hours, also, of emptiness and loneliness--hours when, newcome to my
+surroundings, for fear of rebuff I walked alone.
+
+The night still lingers. These dark lines of wall and tree and tower
+are etched by Time with memories to burn the pattern. The darkness
+stirs strangely, like waters in the solemn bowl when a witch reads off
+the future. But the past is in this darkness, and the December wind
+this night has roused up the summer winds of long ago. In that cleft
+is the old window. Here are the stairs, wood and echoing with an
+almost forgotten tread. A word, a phrase, a face, shows for an instant
+in the shadows. Here, too, in memory, is a pageantry of old custom
+with its songs and uproar, victory with its fires and dance.
+
+Forms, too, I see bent upon their books, eager or dull, with intent or
+sleepy finger on the page. And I hear friendly cries and the sound of
+many feet across the night.
+
+Dawn at last--a faint light through the elms. From the Chapel tower
+the bells sound the hour and strike their familiar melody. Dawn. And
+now the East in triumphal garment scatters my memories, born of night,
+before its flying wheel.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Boots for Runaways.
+
+
+Not long ago, having come through upon the uppers of my shoes, I
+wrapped the pair in a bit of newspaper and went around the corner into
+Sixth Avenue to find a cobbler. This is not difficult, for there are
+at least three cobblers to the block, all of them in basements four or
+five steps below the sidewalk. Cobblers and little tailors who press
+and repair clothing, small grocers and delicatessen venders--these are
+the chief commerce of the street. I passed my tailor's shop, which is
+next to the corner. He is a Russian Jew who came to this country
+before the great war. Every Thursday, when he takes away my off suit,
+I ask him about the progress of the Revolution. At first I found him
+hopeful, yet in these last few months his opinions are a little
+broken. His shop consists of a single room, with a stove to heat his
+irons and a rack for clothes. It is so open to the street that once
+when it was necessary for me to change trousers he stood between me
+and the window with one foot against the door by way of moratorium on
+his business. His taste in buttons is loud. Those on my dinner coat
+are his choice--great round jewels that glisten in the dark.
+
+Next to my tailor, except for a Chinese laundry with a damp celestial
+smell, is a delicatessen shop with a pleasant sound of French across
+the counter. Here are sausages, cut across the middle in order that no
+one may buy the pig, as it were, in its poke. Potato salad is set out
+each afternoon in a great bowl with a wooden spoon sticking from its
+top. Then there is a baked bean, all brown upon the crust, which is
+housed with its fellows in a cracked baking dish and is not to be
+despised. There is also a tray of pastry with whipped cream oozing
+agreeably from the joints, and a pickle vat as corrective to these
+sweets. But behind the shop is the bakery and I can watch a wholesome
+fellow, with his sleeves tucked up, rolling pasties thin on a great
+white table, folding in nuts and jellies and cutting them deftly for
+the oven.
+
+Across the street there resides a mender of musical instruments. He
+keeps dusty company with violins and basses that have come to broken
+health. When a trombone slips into disorder, it seeks his sanitarium.
+Occasionally, as I pass, I catch the sound of a twanging string, as
+if at last a violin were convalescent. Or I hear a reedy nasal upper
+note, and I know that an oboe has been mended of its complaint and
+that in these dark days of winter it yearns for a woodside stream and
+the return of spring. It seems rather a romantic business tinkering
+these broken instruments into harmony.
+
+Next door there is a small stationer--a bald-headed sort of business,
+as someone has called it. Ruled paper for slavish persons, plain
+sheets for bold Bolshevists.
+
+Then comes our grocer. There is no heat in the place except what comes
+from an oil stove on which sits a pan of steaming water. Behind the
+stove with his twitching ear close against it a cat lies at all hours
+of the day. There is an engaging smudge across his nose, as if he had
+been led off on high adventure to the dusty corners behind the apple
+barrel. I bend across the onion crate to pet him, and he stretches his
+paws in and out rhythmically in complete contentment. He walks along
+the counter with arched back and leans against our purchases.
+
+Next our grocer is our bootblack, who has set up a sturdy but shabby
+throne to catch the business off the "L." How majestically one sits
+aloft here with outstretched toe, for all the world like the Pope
+offering his saintly toe for a sinner's kiss. The robe pontifical, the
+triple crown! Or, rather, is this not a secular throne, seized once in
+a people's rising? Here is a use for whatever thrones are discarded
+by this present war. Where the crowd is thickest at quitting
+time--perhaps where the subway brawls below Fourteenth Street--there I
+would set the German Kaiser's seat for the least of us to clamber on.
+
+I took my shoes out of their wrapper. The cobbler is old and wrinkled
+and so bent that one might think that Nature aimed to contrive a hoop
+of him but had botched the full performance. He scratched my name upon
+the soles and tossed them into the pile. There were big and little
+shoes, some with low square heels and others with high thin heels as
+if their wearers stood tiptoe with curiosity. It is a quality, they
+say, that marks the sex. On the bench were bits of leather, hammers,
+paring-knives, awls, utensils of every sort.
+
+On arriving home I found an old friend awaiting me. B---- has been
+engaged in a profitable business for fifteen years or so and he has
+amassed a considerable fortune. Certainly he deserves it, for he has
+been at it night and day and has sacrificed many things to it. He has
+kept the straight road despite all truant beckoning. But his too close
+application has cramped his soul. His organization and his profits,
+his balance sheets and output have seemed to become the whole of him.
+
+But for once I found that B---- was in no hurry and we talked more
+intimately than in several years. I discovered soon that his hard
+busyness was no more than a veneer and that his freer self still
+lived, but in confinement. At least he felt the great lack in his
+life, which had been given too much to the piling up of things, to the
+sustaining of position--getting and spending. Yet he could see no end.
+He was caught in the rich man's treadmill, only less horrible than
+that of the poor man with its cold and hunger.
+
+Afterwards, when he had gone, I fell into a survey of certain other
+men of my acquaintance. Some few of them are rich also, and they heap
+up for themselves a pile of material things until they stifle in the
+midst. They run swiftly and bitterly from one appointment to another
+in order that they may add a motor to their stable. If they lie awake
+at night, they plan a new confusion for the morrow. They are getting
+and spending always. They have been told many times that some day they
+will die and leave their wealth, yet they labor ceaselessly to
+increase their pile. It is as if one should sweat and groan to load a
+cart, knowing that soon it goes off on another road. And yet not one
+of these persons will conceive that I mean him. He will say that
+necessity keeps him at it. Or he will cite his avocations to prove he
+is not included. But he plays golf fretfully with his eye always on
+the score. He drives his motor furiously to hold a schedule. Yet in
+his youth many of these prosperous fellows learned to play upon a
+fiddle, and they dreamed on college window-seats. They had time for
+friendliness before they became so busy holding this great world by
+its squirming tail.
+
+Or perhaps they are not so _very_ wealthy. If so, they work the
+harder. To support their wives and children? By no means. To support
+the pretense that they are really wealthy, to support a neighbor's
+competition. It is this competition of house and goods that keeps
+their noses on the stone. Expenditure always runs close upon their
+income, and their days are a race to keep ahead.
+
+I was thinking rather mournfully of the hard and unnecessary condition
+of these persons, when I fell asleep. And by chance, these unlucky
+persons, my boots and my cobbler, even the oboe mender, all of them
+somehow got mixed in my dream.
+
+It seems that there was a cobbler once, long ago, who kept a shop
+quite out of the common run and marvelous in its way. It stood in a
+shadowy city over whose dark streets the buildings toppled, until
+spiders spun their webs across from roof to roof. And to this cobbler
+the god Mercury himself journeyed to have wings sewed to his flying
+shoes. High patronage. And Atalanta, too, came and held out her swift
+foot for the fitting of a running sandal. But perhaps the cobbler's
+most famous customer was a well-known giant who ordered of him his
+seven-league boots. These boots, as you may well imagine, were of
+prodigious size, and the giant himself was so big that when he left
+his order he sat outside on the pavement and thrust his stockinged
+foot in through the window for the cobbler to get his measure.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I was laughing heartily at this when I observed that a strange
+procession was passing by the cobbler's door. First there was a man
+who was burdened with a great tinsel box hung with velvet, in which
+were six plush chairs. After him came another who was smothered with
+rugs and pictures. A third carried upon his back his wife, a great fat
+creature, who glittered with jewels. Behind him he dragged a dozen
+trunks, from which dangled brocades and laces. This was all so absurd
+that in my mirth I missed what followed, but it seemed to be a long
+line of weary persons, each of whom staggered under the burden of an
+unworthy vanity.
+
+As I laughed the night came on--a dull hot night of summer. And in the
+shop I saw the cobbler on his bench, an old and wrinkled man like a
+dwarf in a fairy tale. There was a sign now above his door. "Boots for
+Runaways," it read. About its margin were pictures of many kinds of
+boots--a shoe of a child who runs to seek adventure, Atalanta's
+sandals, and sturdy boots that a man might wear.
+
+And now I saw a man coming in the dark with tired and drooping head.
+In both hands he clutched silver pieces that he had gathered in the
+day. When he was opposite the cobbler's shop, the great sign caught
+his eye. He wagged his head as one who comes upon the place he seeks.
+"Have you boots for me?" he asked, with his head thrust in the door.
+
+"For everyone who needs them," was the cobbler's answer.
+
+"My body is tired," the man replied, "and my soul is tired."
+
+"For what journey do you prepare?" the cobbler asked.
+
+The man looked ruefully at his hands which were still tightly clenched
+with silver pieces.
+
+"Getting and spending," said the cobbler slowly.
+
+"It has been my life." As the man spoke he banged with his elbow on
+his pocket and it rattled dully with metal.
+
+"Do you want boots because you are a coward?" the cobbler asked. "If
+so, I have none to sell."
+
+"A coward?" the man answered, and he spoke deliberately as one in deep
+thought. "All my life I have been a coward, fearing that I might not
+keep even with my neighbors. Now, for the first time, I am brave."
+
+He kicked off his shoe and stretched out his foot. The cobbler took
+down from its nail his tape line and measured him. And the twilight
+deepened and the room grew dark.
+
+And the man went off cheerily. And with great strides he went into the
+windy North. But to the South in a slow procession, I saw those others
+who bore the weary burden of their wealth, staggering beneath their
+load of dull possessions--their opera boxes, their money-chests and
+stables, their glittering houses, their trunks of silks and laces, and
+on their backs their fat wives shining in the night with jewels.
+
+
+
+
+On Hanging a Stocking at Christmas.
+
+
+As Christmas is, above all, a holiday for children, it is proper in
+its season to consider with what regard they hold its celebration. But
+as no one may really know the secrets of childhood except as he
+retains the recollection of his own, it is therefore in the well of
+memory that I must dip my pen. The world has been running these many
+years with gathering speed like a great wheel upon a hill, and I must
+roll it backward to the heights to see how I fared on the night and
+day of Christmas.
+
+I can remember that for a month before the day I computed its
+distance, not only in hours and minutes but even in seconds, until the
+answer was scrawled across my slate. Now, when I multiply 24 x 60 x
+60, the resulting 86,400 has an agreeable familiarity as the amount I
+struck off each morning. At bedtime on Christmas Eve I had still
+36,000 impatient seconds yet to wait, for I considered that Christmas
+really started at six o'clock in the morning.
+
+There was, of course, a lesser celebration on Christmas Eve when we
+hung our stockings. There were six of them, from mother's long one to
+father's short one. Ours, although built on womanish lines, lacked the
+greater length and they were, consequently, inferior for the purpose
+of our greed; but father's were woefully short, as if fashioned to the
+measure of his small expectancy. Even a candy cane came peeping from
+the top, as if curiosity had stirred it to look around.
+
+Finally, when the stockings were hung on the knobs of the mantel, we
+went up the dark stairs to bed. At the landing we saw the last glimmer
+from the friendly sitting-room. The hall clock ticked solemnly in the
+shadow below with an air of firmness, as much as to say that it would
+not be hurried. Fret as we might, those 36,000 seconds were not to be
+jostled through the night.
+
+In the upper hall we looked from a window upon the snowy world.
+Perhaps we were too old to believe in Santa Claus, but even so, on
+this magic night might not a skeptic be at fault--might there not be a
+chance that the discarded world had returned to us? Once a year,
+surely, reason might nod and drowse. Perhaps if we put our noses on
+the cold glass and peered hard into the glittering darkness, we might
+see the old fellow himself, muffled to his chin in furs, going on his
+yearly errands. It was a jingling of sleigh bells on the street that
+started this agreeable suspicion, but, alas, when the horse appeared,
+manifestly by his broken jogging gait he was only an earthly creature
+and could not have been trusted on the roof. Or the moon, sailing
+across the sky, invited the thought that tonight beyond the accustomed
+hour and for a purpose it would throw its light across the roofs to
+mark the chimneys.
+
+Presently mother called up from the hall below. Had we gone to bed?
+Reluctantly now we began to thumb the buttons. Off came our clothes,
+both shirts together tonight for better speed in dressing. And all the
+night pants and drawers hung as close neighbors, one within the other,
+with stockings dangling at the ends, for quick resumption. We slipped
+shivering into the cold sheets. Down below the bed, by special
+permission, stood the cook's clock, wound up tight for its explosion
+at six o'clock.
+
+Then came silence and the night....
+
+Presently, all of a sudden, Brrr--! There arose a deafening racket in
+the room. Had the reindeer come afoul of the chimney? Had the loaded
+sleigh crashed upon the roof? Were pirates on the stairs? We awoke
+finally, and smothered the alarm in the pillows. A match! The gas! And
+now a thrill went through us. Although it was still as black as ink
+outside, at last the great day of all the year had come.
+
+It was, therefore, before the dawn that we stole downstairs in our
+stockings--dressed loosely and without too great precision in our
+hurry. Buttons that lay behind were neglected, nor did it fret us if a
+garment came on twisted. It was a rare tooth that felt the brush this
+morning, no matter how it was coddled through the year.
+
+We carried our shoes, but this was not entirely in consideration for
+the sleeping house. Rather, our care proceeded from an enjoyment of
+our stealth; for to rise before the dawn when the lamps were still
+lighted on the street and issue in our stockings, was to taste
+adventure. It had not exactly the zest of burglary, although it was of
+kin: nor was it quite like the search for buried treasure which we
+played on common days: yet to slink along the hallway on a pitch-black
+Christmas morning, with shoes dangling by the strings, was to realize
+a height of happiness unequaled.
+
+Quietly we tiptoed down the stairs on whose steep rail we had so often
+slid in the common light of day, now so strangely altered by the
+shadows. Below in the hall the great clock ticked, loudly and with
+satisfaction that its careful count was done and its seconds all
+despatched. There was a gurgle in its throat before it struck the
+hour, as some folk clear their throats before they sing.
+
+As yet there was not a blink of day. The house was as black as if it
+practiced to be a cave, yet an instinct instructed us that now at
+least darkness was safe. There were frosty patterns on the windows of
+the sitting-room, familiar before only on our bedroom windows. Here in
+the sitting-room arose dim shapes which probably were its accustomed
+furniture, but which to our excited fancy might be sleds and
+velocipedes.
+
+We groped for a match. There was a splutter that showed red in the
+hollow of my brother's hand.
+
+After the first glad shock, it was our habit to rummage in the general
+midden outside our stockings. If there was a drum upon the heap,
+should not first a tune be played--softly lest it rouse the house? Or
+if a velocipede stood beside the fender, surely the restless creature
+chafed for exercise and must be ridden a few times around the room. Or
+perhaps a sled leaned against the chair (it but rested against the
+rigors of the coming day) and one should feel its runners to learn
+whether they are whole and round, for if flat and fixed with screws it
+is no better than a sled for girls with feet tucked up in front. On
+such a sled, no one trained to the fashions of the slide would deign
+to take a belly-slammer, for the larger boys would cry out with scorn
+and point their sneering mittens.
+
+The stocking was explored last. It was like a grab-bag, but glorified
+and raised to a more generous level. On meaner days shriveled
+grab-bags could be got at the corner for a penny--if such mild fortune
+fell your way--mere starvelings by comparison--and to this shop you
+had often trotted after school when learning sat heaviest on your
+soul. If a nickel had accrued to you from the sale of tintags, it was
+better, of course, to lay it out in pop; but with nothing better than
+a penny, there was need of sharp denial. How you lingered before the
+horehound jar! Coltsfoot, too, was but a penny to the stick and
+pleased the palate. Or one could do worse than licorice. But finally
+you settled on a grab-bag. You roused an old woman from her knitting
+behind the stove and demanded that a choice of grab-bags be placed
+before you. Then, like the bearded phrenologist at the side-show of
+the circus, you put your fingers on them to read their humps. Perhaps
+an all-day sucker lodged inside--a glassy or an agate--marbles best
+for pugging--or a brass ring with a ruby.
+
+Through the year these bags sufficed, but the Christmas stocking was a
+deeper and finer mystery. In the upper leg were handkerchiefs from
+grand-mother--whose thoughts ran prudentially on noses--mittens and a
+cap--useful presents of duller purpose--things that were due you
+anyway and would have come in the course of time. But down in the
+darker meshes of the stocking, when you had turned the corner of the
+heel, there were the sweet extras of life--a mouth-organ, a baseball,
+a compass and a watch.
+
+Some folk have a Christmas tree instead of hanging their stockings,
+but this is the preference of older folk rather than the preference of
+children. Such persons wish to observe a child's enjoyment, and this
+is denied them if the stocking is opened in the dawn. Under a pretense
+of instruction they sit in an absurd posture under the tree; but they
+do no more than read the rules and are blind to the obscurer uses of
+the toys. As they find occasion, the children run off and play in a
+quieter room with some old and broken toy.
+
+Who can interpret the desires of children? They are a race apart from
+us. At times, for a moment, we bring them to attention; then there is
+a scurry of feet and they are gone. Although they seem to sit at table
+with us, they are beyond a frontier that we cannot pass. Their words
+are ours, but applied to foreign uses. If we try to follow their
+truant thoughts, like the lame man of the story we limp behind a
+shooting star. We bestow on them a blind condescension, not knowing
+how their imagination outclimbs our own. And we cramp them with our
+barren learning.
+
+I assert, therefore, that it is better to find one's presents in the
+dawn, when there is freedom. In all the city, wherever there are
+lights, children have taken a start upon the day. Then, although the
+toys are strange, there is adventure in prying at their uses. If one
+commits a toy to a purpose undreamed of by its maker, it but rouses
+the invention to further discovery. Once on a dark and frosty
+Christmas morning, I spent a puzzling hour upon a coffee-grinder--a
+present to my mother--in a delusion that it was a rare engine destined
+for myself. It might have been a bank had it possessed a slot for
+coins. A little eagle surmounted the top, yet this was not a
+sufficient clue. The handle offered the hope that it was a music-box,
+but although I turned it round and round, and noises issued from its
+body quite foreign to my other toys, yet I could not pronounce it
+music. With sails it might have been a windmill. I laid it on its side
+and stood it on its head without conclusion. It was painted red, and
+that gave it a wicked look, but no other villainy appeared. To this
+day as often as I pass a coffee-grinder in a grocer's shop I turn its
+handle in memory of my perplexing hour. And even if one remains
+unschooled to the uses of the toys, their discovery in the dawn while
+yet the world lies fast asleep, is far beyond their stale performance
+that rises with the sun.
+
+And yet I know of an occurrence, to me pathetic, that once attended
+such an early discovery. A distant cousin of mine--a man really not
+related except by the close bond of my regard--was brought up many
+years ago by an uncle of austere and miserly nature. Such goodness as
+this uncle had once possessed was cramped into a narrow and smothering
+piety. He would have dimmed the sun upon the Sabbath, could he have
+reached up tall enough. He had no love in his heart, nor mirth. My
+cousin has always loved a horse and even in his childhood this love
+was strong. And so, during the days that led up to Christmas when
+children speculate upon their desires and check them on their fingers,
+he kept asking his uncle for a pony. At first, as you might know, his
+uncle was stolid against the thought, but finally, with many winks
+and nods--pleasantries beyond his usual habit--he assented.
+
+Therefore in the early darkness of the day, the child came down to
+find his gift. First, probably, he went to the stable and climbing on
+the fence he looked through the windows for an unaccustomed form
+inside the stalls. Next he looked to see whether the pony might be
+hitched to the post in front of the house, in the manner of the family
+doctor. The search failing and being now somewhat disturbed with
+doubt, he entered his nursery on the slim chance that the pony might
+be there. The room was dark and he listened on the sill, if he might
+hear him whinny. Feeling his way along the hearth he came on nothing
+greater than his stocking which was tied to the andiron. It bulged and
+stirred his curiosity. He thrust in his hand and coming on something
+sticky, he put his fingers in his mouth. They were of a delightful
+sweetness. He now paused in his search for the pony and drawing out a
+huge lump of candy he applied himself. But the day was near and he had
+finished no more than half, when a ray of light permitted him to see
+what he ate. It was a candy horse--making good the promise of his
+uncle. This and a Testament had been stuffed inside his stocking. The
+Testament was wrapped in tissue, but the horse was bitten to the
+middle. It had been at best but a poor substitute for what he wanted,
+yet his love was so broad that it included even a sugar horse; and
+this, alas, he had consumed unknowing in the dark. And even now when
+the dear fellow tells the story after these many years have passed,
+and comes to the sober end with the child crying in the twilight of
+the morning, I realize as not before that there should be no Christmas
+kept unless it be with love and mirth.
+
+It was but habit that we hung our stockings at the chimney--the piano
+would have done as well--for I retain but the slightest memory of a
+belief in Santa Claus: perhaps at most, as I have hinted, a far-off
+haze of wonder while looking through the window upon the snowy sky--at
+night a fancied clatter on the roof, if I lay awake. And therefore in
+a chimney there was no greater mystery than was inherent in any hole
+that went off suspiciously in the dark. There was a fearful cave
+beneath the steps that mounted from the rear to the front garret. This
+was wrapped in Cimmerian darkness--which is the strongest pigment
+known--and it extended from its mouth beyond the furthest stretch of
+leg. To the disillusioned, indeed, this cave was harmless, for it
+merely offset the lower ceiling of the bathroom below; yet to us it
+was a cave unparalleled. Little by little we ventured in, until in
+time we could sit on the snug joists inside with the comfortable
+feeling of pirates. Presently we hit on the device of hanging a row of
+shining maple-syrup tins along the wall outside where they were caught
+by the dusty sunlight, which was thus reflected in on us. By the light
+of these dim moons the cave showed itself to be the size of a library
+table. And here, also, we crouched on dark and cloudy days when the
+tins were in eclipse, and found a dreadful joy when the wind scratched
+upon the roof.
+
+In the basement, also, there was a central hall that disappeared
+forever under an accumulation of porch chairs and lumber. Here was no
+light except what came around two turns from the laundry. Even Annie
+the cook, a bold venturesome person, had never quite penetrated to a
+full discovery of this hallway. A proper approach into the darkness
+was on hands and knees, and yet there were barrels and boxes to
+overcome. Therefore, as we were bred to these broader discoveries, a
+mere chimney in the sitting-room, which arose safely from the fenders,
+was but a mild and pleasant tunnel to the roof.
+
+And if a child believes in Santa Claus and chimneys, and that his
+presents are stored in a glittering kingdom across the wintry hills,
+he will miss the finer pleasure of knowing that they are hidden
+somewhere in his own house. For myself, I would not willingly forego
+certain dizzy ascents to the topmost shelves of the storeroom, where,
+with my head close under the ceiling and my foot braced against the
+wall, I have examined suspicious packages that came into the house by
+stealth. As likely as not, at the ringing of the door-bell, we had
+been whisked into a back room. Presently there was a foot sounding on
+the stairs and across the ceiling. Then we were released. But
+something had arrived.
+
+Thereafter we found excitement in rummaging in unlikely places--a wary
+lifting of summer garments laid away, for a peek beneath--a journey on
+one's stomach under the spare-room bed--a pilgrimage around the cellar
+with a flaring candle--furtive explorations of the storeroom. And when
+we came to a door that was locked--Aha! Here was a puzzle and a
+problem! We tried every key in the house, right side up and upside
+down. Bluebeard's wife, poor creature,--if I read the tale
+aright,--was merely seeking her Christmas presents around the house
+before the proper day.
+
+The children of a friend of mine, however, have been brought up to a
+belief in Santa Claus, and on Christmas Eve they have the pretty
+custom of filling their shoes with crackers and scraps of bread by way
+of fodder for the reindeer. When the shoes are found empty in the
+morning, but with crumbs about--as though the hungry reindeer spilled
+them in their haste--it fixes the deception.
+
+But if one must have a Christmas tree, I recommend the habit of some
+friends of mine. In front of their home, down near the fence, is a
+trim little cedar. T---- connects this with electric wires and hangs
+on it gayly colored lamps. Every night for a week, until the new year,
+these lights shine across the snow and are the delight of travelers on
+the road. The Christmas stars, it seems, for this hallowed season
+have come to earth.
+
+We gave the family dinner. On my mother fell the extra labor, but we
+took the general credit. All the morning the relatives arrived--thin
+and fat. But if one of them bore a package or if his pockets sagged,
+we showed him an excessive welcome. Sometimes there was a present
+boxed and wrapped to a mighty bulk. From this we threw off thirty
+papers and the bundle dwindled, still no gift appeared. In this lay
+the sweetness of the jest, for finally, when the contents were
+shriveled to a kernel, in the very heart of it there lay a bright
+penny or common marble.
+
+All this time certain savory whiffs have been blowing from the
+kitchen. Twice at least my mother has put her head in at the door to
+count the relatives. And now when the clock on the mantel strikes
+two--a bronze Lincoln deliberating forever whether he will sign the
+Emancipation Bill--the dining-room door is opened.
+
+The table was drawn out to prodigious length and was obliquely set
+across the room. As early as yesterday the extra leaves had been
+brought from the pantry, and we had all taken part in fitting them
+together. Not to disturb the larger preparation, our supper and
+breakfast had been served in the kitchen. And even now to eat in the
+kitchen, if the table is set before the window and there is a flurry
+of snow outside, is to feel pleasantly the proximity of a great
+occasion.
+
+The Christmas table was so long and there were so many of us, that a
+few of the chairs were caught in a jog of the wall and had no proper
+approach except by crawling on hands and knees beneath it. Each year
+it was customary to request my maiden aunt, a prim lady who bordered
+on seventy and had limbs instead of legs, to undertake the passage.
+Each year we listened for the jest and shouted with joy when the
+request was made. There were other jests, too, that were dear to us
+and grew better with the years. My aunt was reproved for boisterous
+conduct, and although she sat as silent as a mouse, she was always
+warned against the cider. Each year, also, as soon as the dessert
+appeared, there was a demand that a certain older cousin tell the
+Judge West story. But the jest lay in the demand instead of in the
+story, for although there was a clamor of applause, the story was
+never told and it teases me forever. Then another cousin, who
+journeyed sometimes to New York, usually instructed us in the latest
+manner of eating an orange in the metropolis. But we disregarded his
+fashionable instruction, and peeled ours round and round.
+
+The dinner itself was a prodigious feast. The cook-stove must have
+rested and panted for a week thereafter. Before long, Annie got so red
+bringing in turkeys and cranberry sauce--countless plates heaped and
+toppling with vegetables and meats--that one might think she herself
+was in process to become a pickled beet and would presently enter on a
+platter.
+
+In the afternoon we rested, but at night there was a dance, for which
+my maiden aunt played the piano. The dear good soul, whose old brown
+fingers were none too limber, had skill that scarcely mounted to the
+speed of a polka, but she was steady at a waltz. There was one
+tune--bink a bunk bunk, bink a bunk bunk--that went around and around
+with an agreeable monotony even when the player nodded. There was a
+legend in the family that once she fell asleep in the performance, and
+that the dancers turned down the lights and left the room; to her
+amazement when presently she awoke, for she thought she had outsat the
+party.
+
+My brother and I had not advanced to the trick of dancing and we built
+up our blocks in the corner of the room in order that the friskier
+dancers might kick them over as they passed. Chief in the performance
+was the Judge West cousin who, although whiskered almost into middle
+age, had a merry heart and knew how to play with children. Sometimes,
+by consent, we younger fry sat beneath the piano, which was of an old
+square pattern, and worked the pedals for my aunt, in order that her
+industry might be undivided on the keys. It is amazing what a variety
+we could cast upon the waltz, now giving it a muffled sound, and
+presently offering the dancers a prolonged roaring.
+
+Midway in the evening, when the atrocities of dinner were but mildly
+remembered, ice-cream was brought in. It was not hard as at dinner,
+but had settled to a delicious softness, and could be mushed upon a
+spoon. Then while the party again proceeded, and my aunt resumed her
+waltz, we were despatched upstairs.
+
+On the bed lay our stockings, still tied with string, that had been
+stuffed with presents in the dawn. But the morning had now sunk into
+immeasurable distance and seemed as remote as Job himself. And all
+through the evening, as we lay abed and listened to the droning piano
+below, we felt a spiritual hollowness because the great day had
+passed.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Chimney-Pot Papers, by Charles S. Brooks
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+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Chimney-pot Papers, by Charles S. Brooks
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Chimney-Pot Papers, by Charles S. Brooks
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Chimney-Pot Papers
+
+Author: Charles S. Brooks
+
+Illustrator: Fritz Endell
+
+Release Date: July 4, 2008 [EBook #25969]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIMNEY-POT PAPERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Delphine Lettau, Joyce
+Wilson, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
+Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+<h1>Chimney-Pot Papers</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>by Charles S. Brooks.</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>Illustrated with wood-cuts</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>by Fritz Endell.</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 150px;">
+<img src="images/image_003.jpg" width="150" height="133" alt="Woodcut"  />
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>1920</h3>
+
+<h3>New Haven: Yale University Press.</h3>
+
+<h4>London: Humphrey Milford: Oxford University Press</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4>Copyright, 1919, by<br />
+Yale University Press.</h4>
+
+<h5>First published, 1919.<br />
+Second printing, 1920.</h5>
+
+<h4>Publisher's Note:</h4>
+
+<h5>The Yale University Press makes grateful<br />
+acknowledgment to the Editors of the<br />
+<i>Unpopular Review</i> and <i>The Century Magazine</i><br />
+for permission to include in the<br />
+present volume, essays of which they were<br />
+the original publishers.</h5>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>To Minerva, my Wife.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>Contents.</h2>
+
+<table summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tocch">I.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#The_Chimney-Pots">The Chimney-Pots</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">II.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#The_Quest_of_the_Lost_Digamma">The Quest of the Lost Digamma</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">III.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#On_a_Rainy_Morning">On a Rainy Morning</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">IV.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#anch_6">"1917"</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">V.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#On_Going_Afoot">On Going Afoot</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">VI.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#On_Livelihoods">On Livelihoods</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_68">68</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">VII.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#The_Tread_of_the_Friendly_Giants">The Tread of the Friendly Giants</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">VIII.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#On_Spending_a_Holiday">On Spending a Holiday</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_89">89</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">IX.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#Runaway_Studies">Runaway Studies</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">X.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#On_Turning_Into_Forty">On Turning into Forty</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_117">117</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">XI.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#On_the_Difference_Between_Wit_and_Humor">On the Difference between Wit and Humor</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_128">128</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">XII.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#On_Going_to_a_Party">On Going to a Party</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">XIII.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#On_a_Pair_of_Leather_Suspenders">On a Pair of Leather Suspenders</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_146">146</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">XIV.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#Boots_for_Runaways">Boots for Runaways</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_159">159</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">XV.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#On_Hanging_a_Stocking_at_Christmas">On Hanging a Stocking at Christmas</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_169">169</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="The_Chimney-Pots" id="The_Chimney-Pots"></a>The Chimney-Pots.</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+<p>y windows look across the roofs of the crowded city and my thoughts
+often take their suggestion from the life that is manifest at my
+neighbors' windows and on these roofs.</p>
+
+<p>Across the way, one story lower than our own, there dwells "with his
+subsidiary parents" a little lad who has been ill for several weeks.
+After his household is up and dressed I regularly discover him in bed,
+with his books and toys piled about him. Sometimes his knees are
+raised to form a snowy mountain, and he leads his paper soldiers up
+the slope. Sometimes his kitten romps across the coverlet and pounces
+on his wriggling toes; and again sleeps on the sunny window-sill. His
+book, by his rapt attention, must deal with far-off islands and with
+waving cocoanut trees. Lately I have observed that a yellow drink is
+brought to him in the afternoon&mdash;a delicious blend of eggs and
+milk&mdash;and by the zest with which he licks the remainder from his lips,
+it is a prime favorite of his. In these last few days, however, I have
+seen the lad's nose flat and eager on the window, and I know that he
+is convalescent.</p>
+
+<p>At another set of windows&mdash;now that the days are growing short and
+there is need of lights&mdash;I see in shadowgraph against the curtains an
+occasional<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> domestic drama. Tonight, by the appearance of hurry and
+the shifting of garments, I surmise that there is preparation for a
+party. Presently, when the upstairs lights have disappeared, I shall
+see these folk below, issuing from their door in glossy raiment. My
+dear sir and madame, I wish you an agreeable dinner and&mdash;if your tooth
+resembles mine&mdash;ice-cream for dessert.</p>
+
+<p>The window of a kitchen, also, is opposite, and I often look on savory
+messes as they ripen on the fire&mdash;a stirring with a long iron spoon.
+This spoon is of such unusual length that even if one supped with the
+devil (surely the fearful adage cannot apply to our quiet street) he
+might lift his food in safety from the common pot.</p>
+
+<p>A good many stories lower there is a bit of roof that is set with
+wicker furniture and a row of gay plants along the gutter. Here every
+afternoon exactly at six&mdash;the roof being then in shadow&mdash;a man appears
+and reads his evening paper. Later his wife joins him and they eat
+their supper from a tray. They are sunk almost in a well of buildings
+which, like the hedge of a fairy garden, shuts them from all contact
+with the world. And here they sit when the tray has been removed. The
+twilight falls early at their level and, like cottagers in a valley,
+they watch the daylight that still gilds the peaks above them.</p>
+
+<p>There is another of these out-of-door rooms above me on a higher
+building. From my lower level I can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> see the bright canvas and the
+side of the trellis that supports it. Here, doubtless, in the cool
+breeze of these summer evenings, honest folk sip their coffee and
+watch the lights start across the city.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, all around, I have glimpses of my neighbors&mdash;a form against the
+curtains&mdash;a group, in the season, around the fire&mdash;the week's darning
+in a rocker&mdash;an early nose sniffing at the open window the morning
+airs.</p>
+
+<p>But it is these roofs themselves that are the general prospect.</p>
+
+<p>Close at hand are graveled surfaces with spouts and whirling vents and
+chimneys. Here are posts and lines for washing, and a scuttle from
+which once a week a laundress pops her head. Although her coming is
+timed to the very hour&mdash;almost to the minute&mdash;yet when the scuttle
+stirs it is with an appearance of mystery, as if one of the forty
+thieves were below, boosting at the rocks that guard his cave. But the
+laundress is of so unromantic and jouncing a figure that I abandon the
+fancy when no more than her shoulders are above the scuttle. She is,
+however, an amiable creature and, if the wind is right, I hear her
+singing at her task. When clothespins fill her mouth, she experiments
+with popular tunes. One of these wooden bipeds once slipped inside and
+nearly strangled her.</p>
+
+<p>In the distance, on the taller buildings, water tanks are lifted
+against the sky. They are perched aloft<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> on three fingers, as it were,
+as if the buildings were just won to prohibition and held up their
+water cups in the first excitement of a novice to pledge the cause.
+Let hard liquor crouch and tremble in its rathskeller below the
+sidewalk! In the basement let musty kegs roll and gurgle with hopeless
+fear! <i>Der Tag!</i> The roof, the triumphant roof, has gone dry.</p>
+
+<p>This range of buildings with water tanks and towers stops my gaze to
+the North. There is a crowded world beyond&mdash;rolling valleys of
+humanity&mdash;the heights of Harlem&mdash;but although my windows stand on
+tiptoe, they may not discover these distant scenes.</p>
+
+<p>On summer days these roofs burn in the sun and spirals of heat arise.
+Tar flows from the joints in the tin. Tar and the adder&mdash;is it not a
+bright day that brings them forth? Now washing hangs limp upon the
+line. There is no frisk in undergarments. These stockings that hang
+shriveled and an&aelig;mic&mdash;can it be possible that they once trotted to a
+lively tune, or that a lifted skirt upon a crosswalk drew the eye? The
+very spouts and chimneys droop in the heavy sunlight. All the spinning
+vents are still. On these roofs, as on a steaming altar, August
+celebrates its hot midsummer rites.</p>
+
+<p>But in winter, when the wind is up, the roofs show another aspect. The
+storm, in frayed and cloudy garment, now plunges across the city. It
+snaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> its boisterous fingers. It pipes a song to summon rowdy
+companions off the sea. The whirling vents hum shrilly to the tune.
+And the tempests are roused, and the windy creatures of the hills make
+answer. The towers&mdash;even the nearer buildings&mdash;are obscured. The sky
+is gray with rain. Smoke is torn from the chimneys. Down below let a
+fire be snug upon the hearth and let warm folk sit and toast their
+feet! Let shadows romp upon the walls! Let the andirons wink at the
+sleepy cat! Cream or lemon, two lumps or one. Here aloft is brisker
+business. There is storm upon the roof. The tempest holds a carnival.
+And the winds pounce upon the smoke as it issues from the chimney-pots
+and wring it by the neck as they bear it off.</p>
+
+<p>And sometimes it seems that these roofs represent youth, and its
+purpose, its ambition and adventure. For, from of old, have not poets
+lived in garrets? And are not all poets young even if their beards are
+white? Round and round the poet climbs, up these bare creaking flights
+to the very top. There is a stove to be lighted&mdash;unless the woodbox
+fails&mdash;a sloping ceiling and a window huddled to the floor. The poet's
+fingers may be numb. Although the inkpot be full, his stomach may be
+empty. And yet from this window, lately, a poem was cast upward to the
+moon. And youth and truth still rhyme in these upper rooms. Linda's
+voice is still the music of a sonnet. Still do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> the roses fade, and
+love is always like the constant stars. And once, this!&mdash;surely from a
+garret:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And think that I may never live to trace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Poor starved wretches are we who live softly in the lower stories,
+although we are fat of body.</p>
+
+<p>If a mighty pair of shears were to clip the city somewhere below these
+windy gutters would there not be a dearth of poems in the spring? Who
+then would be left to note the changing colors of the twilight and the
+peaceful transit of the stars? Would gray beech trees in the winter
+find a voice? Would there still be a song of water and of wind? Who
+would catch the rhythm of the waves and the wheat fields in the
+breeze? What lilts and melodies would vanish from the world! How stale
+and flat the city without its roofs!</p>
+
+<p>But it is at night that these roofs show best. Then, as below a
+philosopher in his tower, the city spreads its web of streets, and its
+lights gleam in answer to the lights above. Galileo in his
+tower&mdash;Teufelsdr&ouml;ckh at his far-seeing attic window&mdash;saw this
+glistening pageantry and had thoughts unutterable.</p>
+
+<p>In this darkness these roofs are the true suburb of the world&mdash;the
+outpost&mdash;the pleasant edge of our human earth turned up toward the
+barren moon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> Chimneys stand as sentinels on the border of the sky.
+Pointed towers mark the passage of the stars. Great buildings are the
+cliffs on the shores of night. A skylight shows as a pleasant signal
+to guide the wandering skipper of the moon.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/image_018.jpg" width="400" height="625" alt="Woodcut"  />
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="The_Quest_of_the_Lost_Digamma" id="The_Quest_of_the_Lost_Digamma"></a>The Quest of the Lost Digamma.</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+<p>any years ago there was a club of college undergraduates which called
+itself the Lost Digamma. The digamma, I am informed, is a letter that
+was lost in prehistoric times from the Greek alphabet. A prudent
+alphabet would have offered a reward at once and would have beaten up
+the bushes all about, but evidently these remedies were neglected. As
+the years went on the other letters gradually assumed its duties. The
+philological chores, so to speak, night and morning, that had once
+fallen to the digamma, they took upon themselves, until the very name
+of the letter was all but lost.</p>
+
+<p>Those who are practiced in such matters&mdash;humped men who blink with
+learning&mdash;claim to discover evidence of the letter now and then in
+their reading. Perhaps the missing letter still gives a false quantity
+to a vowel or shifts an accent. It is remembered, as it were, by its
+vacant chair. Or rather, like a ghost it haunts a word, rattling a
+warning lest we disarrange a syllable. Its absence, however, in the
+flesh, despite the lapse of time&mdash;for it went off long ago when the
+mastodon still wandered on the pleasant upland&mdash;its continued absence
+vexes the learned. They scan ancient texts for an improper syllable
+and mark the time upon their brown old fingers, if possibly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> a jolting
+measure may offer them a clue. Although it must appear that the
+digamma&mdash;if it yet rambles alive somewhere beneath the moon&mdash;has by
+this time grown a beard and is lost beyond recognition, still old
+gentlemen meet weekly and read papers to one another on the progress
+of the search. Like the old woman of the story they still keep a light
+burning in their study windows against the wanderer's return.</p>
+
+<p>Now it happened once that a group of undergraduates, stirred to
+sympathy beyond the common usage of the classroom, formed themselves
+into a club to aid in the search. It is not recorded that they were
+the deepest students in the class, yet mark their zeal! On a rumor
+arising from the chairman that the presence of the lost digamma was
+suspected the group rushed together of an evening, for there was an
+instinct that the digamma, like the raccoon, was easiest trapped at
+night. To stay their stomachs against a protracted search, for their
+colloquies sat late, they ordered a plentiful dinner to be placed
+before them. Also, on the happy chance that success might crown the
+night, a row of stout Tobies was set upon the board. If the prodigal
+lurked without and his vagrant nose were seen at last upon the window,
+then musty liquor, from a Toby's three-cornered hat, would be a
+fitting pledge for his return.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know to a certainty the place of these meetings, but I choose
+to fancy that it was an upper room in a modest restaurant that went by
+the name<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> of Mory's&mdash;not the modern Mory's that affects the manners of
+a club, but the original Temple Bar, remembered justly for its brown
+ale and golden bucks.</p>
+
+<p>There was, of course, a choice of places where the Lost Digamma might
+have pushed its search. Waiving Billy's and the meaner joints
+conferred on freshmen, there was, to be sure, the scholastic murk of
+Traeger's&mdash;one room especially at the rear with steins around the
+walls. There was Heublein's, also. Even the Tontine might rouse a
+student. But I choose to consider that Mory's was the place.</p>
+
+<p>Never elsewhere has cheese sputtered on toast with such hot delight.
+Never have such fair round eggs perched upon the top. The hen who laid
+the golden egg&mdash;for it could be none other than she who worked the
+miracle at Mory's&mdash;must have clucked like a braggart when the smoking
+dish came in. The dullest nose, even if it had drowsed like a Stoic
+through the day, perked and quivered when the breath came off the
+kitchen. Ears that before had never wiggled to the loudest noise came
+flapping forward when the door was opened. Or maybe in those days your
+wealth, huddled closely through the week, stretched on Saturday night
+to a mutton chop with bacon on the side. This chop, named of the
+southern downs, was so big that it curled like an anchovy to get upon
+the plate. The sheep that bore it across the grassy moors must have
+out-topped the horse. The hills<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> must have shaken beneath his tread.
+With what eagerness you squared your lean elbows for the feast, with
+knife and fork turned upwards in your fists!</p>
+
+<p>But chops in these modern days are retrograde. Sheep have fallen to a
+decadent race. Cheese has lost its cunning. Someone, alas, as the
+story says, has killed the hen that laid the golden egg. Mory's is
+sunk and gone. Its faded prints of the Old Brick Row, its tables
+carved with students' names, its brown Tobies in their three-cornered
+hats, the brasses of the tiny bar, the rickety rooms themselves&mdash;these
+rise from the past like genial ghosts and beckon us toward pleasant
+memories.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the zeal in those older days which the members of the Lost
+Digamma spent upon their quest that belated pedestrians&mdash;if the legend
+of the district be believed&mdash;have stopped upon the curb and have
+inquired the meaning of the glad shouts that issued from the upper
+windows, and they have gone off marveling at the enthusiasm attendant
+on this high endeavor. It is rumored that once when the excitement of
+the chase had gone to an unusual height and the students were beating
+their Tobies on the table, one of them, a fellow of uncommon ardor,
+lunging forward from his chair, got salt upon the creature's tail. The
+exploit overturned the table and so rocked the house that Louis, who
+was the guardian of the place, put his nose above the stairs and
+cooled the meeting. Had it not been for his interference&mdash;he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> was a
+good-natured fellow but unacquainted with the frenzy that marks the
+scholar&mdash;the lost digamma might have been trapped, to the lasting
+glory of the college.</p>
+
+<p>As to the further progress of the club I am not informed. Doubtless it
+ran an honorable course and passed on from class to class the
+tradition of its high ambition, but never again was the lost digamma
+so nearly in its grasp. If it still meets upon its midnight labors, a
+toothless member boasts of that night of its topmost glory, and those
+who have gathered to his words rap their stale unprofitable mugs upon
+the table.</p>
+
+<p>It would be unjust to assume that you are so poor a student as myself.
+Doubtless you are a scholar and can discourse deeply of the older
+centuries. You know the ancient works of Tweedledum and can
+distinguish to a hair's breadth 'twixt him and Tweedledee. Learning is
+candy on your tooth. Perhaps you stroke your sagacious beard and give
+a nimble reason for the lightning. To you the hills have whispered how
+they came, and the streams their purpose and ambition. You have
+studied the first shrinkage of the earth when the plains wrinkled and
+broke into mountain peaks. The mystery of the stars is to you as
+familiar as your garter. If such depth is yours, I am content to sit
+before you like a bucket below a tap.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At your banquet I sit as a poor relation. If the viands hold, I fork a
+cold morsel from your dish....</p>
+
+<p>But modesty must not gag me. I do myself somewhat lean towards
+knowledge. I run to a dictionary on a disputed word, and I point my
+inquiring nose upon the page like a careful schoolman. On a spurt I
+pry into an uncertain date, but I lack the perseverance and the
+wakefulness for sustained endeavor. To repair my infirmity, I
+frequently go among those of steadier application, if haply their
+devotion may prove contagious. It was but lately that I dined with a
+group of the Cognoscenti. There were light words at first, as when a
+juggler carelessly tosses up a ball or two just to try his hand before
+he displays his genius&mdash;a jest or two, into which I entered as an
+equal. In these shallow moments we waded through our soup. But we had
+hardly got beyond the fish when the company plunged into greater
+depth. I soon discovered that I was among persons skilled in those
+economic and social studies that now most stir us. My neighbor on the
+left offered to gossip with me on the latest evaluations and
+eventuations&mdash;for such were her pleasing words&mdash;in the department of
+knowledge dearest to her. While I was still fumbling for a response,
+my neighbor on the right, abandoning her meat, informed me of the
+progress of a survey of charitable organizations that was then under
+way. By mischance, however, while flipping up the salad on my fork, I
+dropped a morsel on the cloth, and I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> was so intent in man&#339;uvring
+my plates and spoons to cover up the speck, that I lost a good part of
+her improving discourse.</p>
+
+<p>I was still, however, making a tolerable pretense of attention, when a
+learned person across the table was sharp enough to see that I was a
+novice in the gathering. For my improvement, therefore, he fixed his
+great round glasses in my direction. In my confusion they seemed
+burning lenses hotly focused on me. Under such a glare, he thought, my
+tender sprouts of knowledge must spring up to full blossom.</p>
+
+<p>When he had my attention, he proceeded to lay out the dinner into
+calories, which I now discovered to be a kind of heat or nutritive
+unit. He cast his appraisal on the meat and vegetables, and turned an
+ear toward the pantry door if by chance he might catch a hint of the
+dessert for his estimate, but by this time, being overwrought, I gave
+up all pretense, and put my coarse attention on my plate.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes I fall on better luck. It was but yesterday that I sat
+waiting for a book in the Public Library, when a young woman came and
+sat beside me on the common bench. Immediately she opened a monstrous
+note-book, and fell to studying it. I had myself been reading, but I
+had held my book at a stingy angle against the spying of my neighbors.
+As the young woman was of a more open nature, she laid hers out flat.
+It is my weakness to pry upon another's book. Especially if it is old
+and worn&mdash;a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> musty history or an essay from the past&mdash;I squirm and
+edge myself until I can follow the reader's thumb.</p>
+
+<p>At the top of each page she had written the title of a book, with a
+space below for comment, now well filled. There were a hundred of
+these titles, and all of them concerned John Paul Jones. She busied
+herself scratching and amending her notes. The whole was thrown into
+such a snarl of interlineation, was so disfigured with revision, and
+the writing so started up the margins to get breath at the top, that I
+wondered how she could possibly bring a straight narrative out of the
+confusion. Yet here was a book growing up beneath my very nose. If in
+a year's time&mdash;or perhaps in a six-month, if the manuscript is not
+hawked too long among publishers&mdash;if when again the nights are raw, a
+new biography of John Paul Jones appears, and you cut its leaves while
+your legs are stretched upon the hearth, I bid you to recognize as its
+author my companion on the bench. Although she did not have beauty to
+rouse a bachelor, yet she had an agreeable face and, if a soft white
+collar of pleasing fashion be evidence, she put more than a scholar's
+care upon her dress.</p>
+
+<p>I am not entirely a novice in a library. Once I gained admittance to
+the Reading Room of the British Museum&mdash;no light task even before the
+war. This was the manner of it. First, I went among the policemen who
+frequent the outer corridors, and inquired for a certain office which
+I had been told controlled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> its affairs. The third policeman had heard
+of it and sent me off with directions. Presently I went through an
+obscure doorway, traversed a mean hall with a dirty gas-jet at the
+turn and came before a wicket. A dark man with the blood of a Spanish
+inquisitor asked my business. I told him I was a poor student, without
+taint or heresy, who sought knowledge. He stroked his chin as though
+it were a monstrous improbability. He looked me up and down, but this
+might have been merely a secular inquiry on the chance that I carried
+explosives. He then dipped his pen in an ancient well (it was from
+such a dusty fount that the warrant for Saint Bartholomew went forth),
+then bidding me be careful in my answers, he cocked his head and shut
+his less suspicious eye lest it yield to mercy.</p>
+
+<p>He asked my name in full, middle name and all&mdash;as though villainy
+might lurk in an initial&mdash;my hotel, my length of stay in London, my
+residence in America, my occupation, the titles of the books I sought.
+When he had done, I offered him my age and my weakness for French
+pastry, in order that material for a monograph might be at hand if at
+last I came to fame, but he silenced me with his cold eye. He now
+thrust a pamphlet in my hands, and told me to sit alongside and read
+it. It contained the rules that govern the use of the Reading Room. It
+was eight pages long, and intolerably dry, and towards the end I
+nodded. Awaking with a start, I was about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> to hold up my hands for the
+adjustment of the thumb screws&mdash;for I had fallen on a nightmare&mdash;when
+he softened. The Imperial Government was now pleased to admit me to
+the Reading Room for such knowledge as might lie in my capacity.</p>
+
+<p>The Reading Room is used chiefly by authors, gray fellows mostly,
+dried and wrinkled scholars who come here to pilfer innocently from
+antiquity. Among these musty memorial shelves, if anywhere, it would
+seem that the dusty padding feet of the lost digamma might be heard.
+In this room, perhaps, Christian Mentzelius was at work when he heard
+the book-worm flap its wings.</p>
+
+<p>Here sit the scholars at great desks with ingenious shelves and racks,
+and they write all day and copy excerpts from the older authors. If
+one of them hesitates and seems to chew upon his pencil, it is but
+indecision whether Hume or Buckle will weigh heavier on his page. Or
+if one of them looks up from his desk in a blurred near-sighted
+manner, it is because his eyes have been so stretched upon the distant
+centuries, that they can hardly focus on a room. If a scholar chances
+to sneeze because of the infection, let it be his consolation that the
+dust arises from the most ancient and respected authors! Pages move
+silently about with tall dingy tomes in their arms. Other tomes, whose
+use is past, they bear off to the shades below.</p>
+
+<p>I am told that once in a long time a student of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> fresher complexion
+gets in&mdash;a novitiate with the first scholastic down upon his cheek&mdash;a
+tender stripling on his first high quest&mdash;a broth of a boy barely off
+his primer&mdash;but no sooner is he set than he feels unpleasantly
+conspicuous among his elders. Most of these youth bolt, offering to
+the doorman as a pretext some neglect&mdash;a forgotten mission at a
+book-stall&mdash;an errand with a tailor. Even those few who remain because
+of the greater passion for their studies, find it to their comfort to
+break their condition. Either they put on glasses or they affect a
+limp. I know one persistent youth who was so consumed with desire for
+history, yet so modest against exposure, that he bargained with a
+beggar for his crutch. It was, however, the rascal's only livelihood.
+This crutch and his piteous whimper had worked so profitably on the
+crowd that, in consequence, its price fell beyond the student's purse.
+My friend, therefore, practiced a palsy until, being perfect in the
+part, he could take his seat without notice or embarrassment. Alas,
+the need of these pretenses is short. Such is the contagion of the
+place&mdash;a breath from Egypt comes up from the lower stacks&mdash;that a
+youth's appearance, like a dyer's hand, is soon subdued to what it
+works in. In a month or so a general dust has settled on him. Too
+often learning is a Rip Van Winkle's flagon.</p>
+
+<p>On a rare occasion I have myself been a student, and have plied my
+book with diligence. Not long ago I spent a week of agreeable days
+reading the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> many versions of Shakespeare that were played from the
+Restoration through the eighteenth century. They are well known to
+scholars, but the general reader is perhaps unfamiliar how Shakespeare
+was perverted. From this material I thought that I might lay out an
+instructive paper; how, for example, the whirling passion of Lear was
+once wrought to soft and pleasant uses for a holiday. Cordelia is
+rescued from the villains by the hero Kent, who cries out in a
+transport, "Come to my arms, thou loveliest, best of women!" The scene
+is laid in the woods, but as night comes on, Cordelia's old nurse
+appears. A scandal is averted. Whereupon Kent marries Cordelia, and
+they reign happily ever afterward. As for Lear, he advances into a
+gentle convalescence. Before the week is out he will be sunning
+himself on the bench beneath his pear tree and babbling of his early
+days.</p>
+
+<p>There were extra witches in Macbeth. Romeo and Juliet lived and the
+quarreling families were united. Desdemona remained un-smothered to
+the end. There was one stout author&mdash;but here I trust to memory&mdash;who
+even attempted to rescue Hamlet and to substitute for the distant
+rolling of the drum of Fortinbras, the pipes and timbrels of his happy
+wedding. There is yet to be made a lively paper of these Shakespeare
+tinkers of the eighteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>And then John Timbs was to have been my text, who was an antiquary of
+the nineteenth century. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> had come frequently on his books. They are
+seldom found in first-hand shops. More appropriately they are offered
+where the older books are sold&mdash;where there are racks before the door
+for the rakings of the place, and inside an ancient smell of leather.
+If there are barrels in the basement, stocked and overflowing, it is
+sure that a volume of Timbs is upon the premises.</p>
+
+<p>I visited the Public Library and asked a sharp-nosed person how I
+might best learn about John Timbs. I followed the direction of his
+wagging thumb. The accounts of the encyclopedias are meager, a date of
+birth and of death, a few facts of residence, the titles of his
+hundred and fifty books, and little more. Some neglect him entirely;
+skipping lightly from Timbrel to Timbuctoo. Indeed, Timbuctoo turned
+up so often that even against my intention I came to a knowledge of
+the place. It lies against the desert and exports ostrich feathers,
+gums, salts and kola-nuts. Nor are timbrels to be scorned. They were
+used&mdash;I quote precisely&mdash;"by David when he danced before the ark."
+Surely not Noah's ark! I must brush up on David.</p>
+
+<p>Timbs is matter for an engaging paper. His passion was London. He had
+a fling at other subjects&mdash;a dozen books or so&mdash;but his graver hours
+were given to the study of London. There is hardly a park or square or
+street, palace, theatre or tavern that did not yield its secret to
+him. Here and there an upstart building, too new for legend, may have
+had no gossip<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> for him, but all others John Timbs knew, and the
+personages who lived in them. And he knew whether they were of sour
+temper, whether they were rich or poor, and if poor, what shifts and
+pretenses they practiced. He knew the windows of the town where the
+beaux commonly ogled the passing beauties. He knew the chatter of the
+theatres and of society. He traced the walls of the old city, and
+explored the lanes. Unless I am much mistaken, there is not a fellow
+of the <i>Dunciad</i> to whom he has not assigned a house. Nor is any man
+of deeper knowledge of the clubs and coffee-houses and taverns. One
+would say that he had sat at Will's with Dryden, and that he had gone
+to Button's arm in arm with Addison. Did Goldsmith journey to his
+tailor for a plum-colored suit, you may be sure that Timbs tagged him
+at the elbow. If Sam Johnson sat at the Mitre or Marlowe caroused in
+Deptford, Timbs was of the company. There has scarcely been a play
+acted in London since the days of Burbage which Timbs did not
+chronicle.</p>
+
+<p>But presently I gave up the study of John Timbs. Although I had
+accumulated interesting facts about him, and had got so far as to lay
+out several amusing paragraphs, still I could not fit them together to
+an agreeable result. It was as though I could blow a melodious C upon
+a horn, and lower down, after preparation, a dulcet G, but failed to
+make a tune of them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But although my studies so far have been unsuccessful, doubtless I
+shall persist. Even now I have several topics in mind that may yet
+serve for pleasant papers. If I fail, it will be my comfort that
+others far better than myself achieve but a half success. Although the
+digamma escapes our salt, somewhere he lurks on the lonely mountains.
+And often when our lamps burn late, we fancy that we catch a waving of
+his tail and hear him padding across the night. But although we lash
+ourselves upon the chase and strain forward in the dark, the timid
+beast runs on swifter feet and scampers off.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/image_034.jpg" width="400" height="615" alt="Woodcut"  />
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="On_a_Rainy_Morning" id="On_a_Rainy_Morning"></a>On a Rainy Morning.</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;northeaster blew up last night and this morning we are lashed by
+wind and rain. M&mdash;&mdash; foretold the change yesterday when we rode upon a
+'bus top at nightfall. It was then pleasant enough and to my eye all
+was right aloft. I am not, however, weather-wise. I must feel the
+first patter of the storm before I hazard a judgment. To learn even
+the quarter of a breeze&mdash;unless there is a trail of smoke to guide
+me&mdash;I must hold up a wet finger. In my ignorance clouds sail across
+the heavens on a whim. Like white sheep they wander here and there for
+forage, and my suspicion of bad weather comes only when the tempest
+has whipped them to a gallop. Even a band around the moon&mdash;which I am
+told is primary instruction on the coming of a storm&mdash;stirs me chiefly
+by its deeper mystery, as if astrology, come in from the distant
+stars, lifts here a warning finger. But M&mdash;&mdash; was brought up beside
+the sea, and she has a sailor's instinct for the weather. At the first
+preliminary shifting of the heavens, too slight for my coarser senses,
+she will tilt her nose and look around, then pronounce the coming of a
+storm. To her, therefore, I leave all questions of umbrellas and
+raincoats, and on her decision we go abroad.</p>
+
+<p>Last night when I awoke I knew that her prophecy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> was right again, for
+the rain was blowing in my face and slashing on the upper window. The
+wind, too, was whistling along the roofs, with a try at chimney-pots
+and spouts. It was the wolf in the fairy story who said he'd huff and
+he'd puff, and he'd blow in the house where the little pig lived; yet
+tonight his humor was less savage. Down below I heard ash-cans
+toppling over all along the street and rolling to the gutters. It
+lacks a few nights of Hallowe'en, but doubtless the wind's calendar is
+awry and he is out already with his mischief. When a window rattles at
+this season, it is the tick-tack of his roguish finger. If a chimney
+is overthrown, it is his jest. Tomorrow we shall find a broken shutter
+as his rowdy celebration of the night.</p>
+
+<p>This morning is by general agreement a nasty day. I am not sure that I
+assent. If I were the old woman at the corner who sells newspapers
+from a stand, I would not like the weather, for the pent roof drops
+water on her stock. Scarcely is the peppermint safe beyond the
+splatter. Nor is it, I fancy, a profitable day for a street-organ man,
+who requires a sunny morning with open windows for a rush of business.
+Nor is there any good reason why a house-painter should be delighted
+with this blustering sky, unless he is an idle fellow who seeks an
+excuse to lie in bed. But except in sympathy, why is our elevator boy
+so fiercely disposed against the weather? His cage is snug as long as
+the skylight holds. And why should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> the warm dry noses of the city,
+pressed against ten thousand windows up and down the streets, be flat
+and sour this morning with disapproval?</p>
+
+<p>It may savor of bravado to find pleasure in what is so commonly
+condemned. Here is a smart fellow, you may say, who sets up a
+paradox&mdash;a conceited braggart who professes a difference to mankind.
+Or worse, it may appear that I try my hand at writing in a "happy
+vein." God forbid that I should be such a villain! For I once knew a
+man who, by reading these happy books, fell into pessimism and a sharp
+decline. He had wasted to a peevish shadow and had taken to his bed
+before his physician discovered the seat of his an&aelig;mia. It was only by
+cutting the evil dose, chapter by chapter, that he finally restored
+him to his friends. Yet neither supposition of my case is true. We who
+enjoy wet and windy days are of a considerable number, and if our
+voices are seldom heard in public dispute, it is because we are
+overcome by the growling majority. You may know us, however, by our
+stout boots, the kind of battered hats we wear, and our disregard of
+puddles. To our eyes alone, the rain swirls along the pavements like
+the mad rush of sixteenth notes upon a music staff. And to our ears
+alone, the wind sings the rattling tune recorded.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly there is more comedy on the streets on a wet and windy day
+than there is under a fair sky. Thin folk hold on at corners. Fat folk
+waddle before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> the wind, their racing elbows wing and wing. Hats are
+whisked off and sail down the gutters on excited purposes of their
+own. It was only this morning that I saw an artistocratic silk hat
+bobbing along the pavement in familiar company with a stranger
+bonnet&mdash;surely a misalliance, for the bonnet was a shabby one. But in
+the wind, despite the difference of social station, an instant
+affinity had been established and an elopement was under way.</p>
+
+<p>Persons with umbrellas clamp them down close upon their heads and
+proceed blindly like the larger and more reckless crabs that you see
+in aquariums. Nor can we know until now what spirit for adventure
+resides in an umbrella. Hitherto it has stood in a Chinese vase
+beneath the stairs and has seemed a listless creature. But when a
+November wind is up it is a cousin of the balloon, with an equal zest
+to explore the wider precincts of the earth and to alight upon the
+moon. Only persons of heavier ballast&mdash;such as have been fed on
+sweets&mdash;plump pancake persons&mdash;can hold now an umbrella to the ground.
+A long stowage of muffins and sugar is the only anchor.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment beneath my window there is a dear little girl who
+brings home a package from the grocer's. She is tugged and blown by
+her umbrella, and at every puff of wind she goes up on tiptoe. If I
+were writing a fairy tale I would make her the Princess of my plot,
+and I would transport her underneath her umbrella in this whisking
+wind to her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> far adventures, just as Davy sailed off to the land of
+Goblins inside his grandfather's clock. She would be carried over
+seas, until she could sniff the spice winds of the south. Then she
+would be set down in the orchard of the Golden Prince, who presently
+would spy her from his window&mdash;a mite of a pretty girl, all mussed and
+blown about. And then I would spin out the tale to its true and happy
+end, and they would live together ever after. How she labors at the
+turn, hugging her paper bag and holding her flying skirts against her
+knees! An umbrella, however, usually turns inside out before it gets
+you off the pavement, and then it looks like a wrecked Zeppelin. You
+put it in the first ash-can, and walk off in an attempt not to be
+conspicuous.</p>
+
+<p>Although the man who pursues his hat is, in some sort, conscious that
+he plays a comic part, and although there is a pleasing relish on the
+curb at his discomfort, yet it must not be assumed that all the humor
+on the street rises from misadventure. Rather, it arises from a
+general acceptance of the day and a feeling of common partnership in
+the storm. The policeman in his rubber coat exchanges banter with a
+cab-driver. If there is a tangle in the traffic, it comes nearer to a
+jest than on a fairer day. A teamster sitting dry inside his hood,
+whistles so cheerily that he can be heard at the farther sidewalk.
+Good-naturedly he sets his tune as a rival to the wind.</p>
+
+<p>It must be that only good-tempered persons are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> abroad&mdash;those whose
+humor endures and likes the storm&mdash;and that when the swift dark clouds
+drove across the world, all sullen folk scurried for a roof. And is it
+not wise, now and then, that folk be thus parceled with their kind?
+Must we wait for Gabriel's Trump for our division? I have been
+told&mdash;but the story seems incredible&mdash;that that seemingly cursed
+thing, the Customs' Wharf, was established not so much for our
+nation's profit as in acceptance of some such general theory&mdash;in a
+word, that all sour persons might be housed together for their
+employment and society be rid of them. It is by an extension of this
+obscure but beneficent division that only those of better nature go
+abroad on these blustering November days.</p>
+
+<p>There are many persons, of course, who like summer rains and boast of
+their liking. This is nothing. One might as well boast of his appetite
+for toasted cheese. Does one pin himself with badges if he plies an
+enthusiastic spoon in an ice-cream dish? Or was the love of sack ever
+a virtue, and has Falstaff become a saint? If he now sing in the Upper
+Choir, the bench must sag. But persons of this turn of argument make a
+point of their willingness to walk out in a June rain. They think it a
+merit to go tripping across the damp grass to inspect their gardens.
+Toasted cheese! Of course they like it. Who could help it? This is no
+proof of merit. Such folk, at best, are but sisters in the
+brotherhood.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And yet a November rain is but an August rain that has grown a beard
+and taken on the stalwart manners of the world. And the November wind,
+which piped madrigals in June and lazy melodies all the summer, has
+done no more than learn brisker braver tunes to befit the coming
+winter. If the wind tugs at your coat-tails, it only seeks a companion
+for its games. It goes forth whistling for honest celebration, and who
+shall begrudge it here and there a chimney if it topple it in sport?</p>
+
+<p>Despite this, rainy weather has a bad name. So general is its evil
+reputation that from of old one of the lowest circles of Hell has been
+plagued with raw winds and covered thick with ooze&mdash;a testament to our
+northern March&mdash;and in this villains were set shivering to their
+chins. But the beginning of the distaste for rainy weather may be
+traced to Noah. Certain it is that toward the end of his cruise, when
+the passengers were already chafing with the animals&mdash;the kangaroos,
+in particular, it is said, played leap-frog in the hold and disturbed
+the skipper's sleep&mdash;certain it is while the heavens were still
+overcast that Noah each morning put his head anxiously up through the
+forward hatch for a change of sky. There was rejoicing from stem to
+stern&mdash;so runs the legend&mdash;when at last his old white beard, shifting
+from west to east, gave promise of a clearing wind. But from that day
+to this, as is natural, there has persisted a stout prejudice against
+wind and rain.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But this is not just. If a rainy day lacks sunshine, it has vigor for
+a substitute. The wind whistles briskly among the chimney tops. There
+is so much life on wet and windy days. Yesterday Nature yawned, but
+today she is wide awake. Yesterday the earth seemed lolling idly in
+the heavens. It was a time of celestial vacation and all the suns and
+moons were vacant of their usual purpose. But today the earth whirls
+and spins through space. Her gray cloud cap is pulled down across her
+nose and she leans in her hurry against the storm. The heavens have
+piped the planets to their work.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday the smoke of chimneys drifted up with tired content from
+lazy roofs, but today the smoke is stretched and torn like a
+triumphant banner of the storm.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image_043.jpg" width="600" height="281" alt="Woodcut"  />
+</div>
+<h2><a name="anch_6" id="anch_6"></a>"1917."</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;dreamed last night a fearful dream and this morning even the
+familiar contact of the subway has been unable to shake it from me.</p>
+
+<p>I know of few things that are so momentarily tragical as awakening
+from a frightful dream. Even if you know with returning consciousness
+that it was a dream, it seems as if a part of it must have a basis in
+fact. The death that was recorded&mdash;is it true or not? And in your mind
+you grope among the familiar landmarks of your recollection to
+discover where the true and the fictitious join.</p>
+
+<p>But this dream of last night was so vivid that this morning I cannot
+shake it from me.</p>
+
+<p>I dreamed&mdash;ridiculously enough&mdash;that the whole world was at war, and
+that big and little nations were fighting.</p>
+
+<p>In my dream the round earth hung before me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> against the background of
+the night, and red flames shot from every part.</p>
+
+<p>I heard cries of anguish&mdash;men blinded by gases and crazed by
+suffering. I saw women dressed in black&mdash;a long procession stretching
+hideously from mist to mist&mdash;walking with erect heads, dry-eyed, for
+grief had starved them of tears. I saw ships sinking and a thousand
+arms raised for a moment above the waves. I saw children lying dead
+among their toys.</p>
+
+<p>And I saw boys throw down their books and tools and go off with glad
+cries, and men I saw, grown gray with despair, staggering under heavy
+weights.</p>
+
+<p>There were millions of dead upon the earth that hung before me, and I
+smelled the battlefield.</p>
+
+<p>And I beheld one man&mdash;one hundred men&mdash;secure in an outlawed country&mdash;who
+looked from far windows&mdash;men bitter with disappointment&mdash;men who blasphemed
+of God, while their victims rotted in Flanders.</p>
+
+<p>And in my dream it seemed that I did not have a sword, but that I,
+too, looked upon the battle from a place where there were no flames. I
+ran little errands for the war.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>There is the familiar window&mdash;that dull outline across the room. Here
+is the accustomed door. The bed is set between. It was but a dream
+after all. And yet how it has shaken me!</p>
+
+<p>Of course the dream was absurd. No man&mdash;no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> nation certainly&mdash;could be
+so mad. The whole whirling earth could not burn with fire. Until the
+final trumpet, no such calamity is possible. Thank God, it was but a
+dream, and I can continue today my peaceful occupation.</p>
+
+<p>Calico, I'm told, is going up. I must protect our contracts.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/image_046.jpg" width="400" height="633" alt="Woodcut"  />
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="On_Going_Afoot" id="On_Going_Afoot"></a>On Going Afoot.</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>here is a tale that somewhere in the world there is a merry river
+that dances as often as it hears sweet music. The tale is not precise
+whether this river is neighbor to us or is a stream of the older
+world. "It dances at the noise of musick," so runs the legend, "for
+with musick it bubbles, dances and grows sandy." This tale may be the
+conceit of one of those older poets whose verses celebrate the morning
+and the freshness of the earth&mdash;Thomas Heywood could have written it
+or even the least of those poets who sat their evenings at the
+Mermaid&mdash;or the tale may arise more remotely from an old worship of
+the god Pan, who is said to have piped along the streams. I offer my
+credence to the earlier origin as the more pleasing. And therefore on
+a country walk I observe the streams if by chance any of them shall
+fit the tale. Not yet have I seen Pan puffing his cheeks with melody
+on a streamside bank&mdash;by ill luck I squint short-sightedly&mdash;but I
+often hear melodies of such woodsy composition that surely they must
+issue from his pipe. The stream leaps gaily across the shallows that
+glitter with sunlight, and I am tempted to the agreeable suspicion
+that I have hit upon the very stream of the legend and that the god
+Pan sits hard by in the thicket and beats his shaggy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> hoof in rhythm.
+It is his song that the wind sings in the trees. If a bird sings in
+the meadow its tune is pitched to Pan's reedy obligato.</p>
+
+<p>Whether or not this is true, I confess to a love of a stream. This may
+be merely an an&aelig;mic love of beauty, such as is commonly bred in
+townsfolk on a holiday, or it may descend from braver ancestors who
+once were anglers and played truant with hook and line. You may recall
+that the milk-women of Kent told Piscator when he came at the end of
+his day's fishing to beg a cup of red cow's milk, that anglers were
+"honest, civil, quiet men." I have, also, a habit of contemplation,
+which I am told is proper to an angler. I can lean longer than most
+across the railing of a country bridge if the water runs noisily on
+the stones. If I chance to come off a dusty road&mdash;unless hunger stirs
+me to an inn&mdash;I can listen for an hour, for of all sounds it is the
+most musical. When earth and air and water play in concert, which are
+the master musicians this side of the moon, surely their harmony rises
+above the music of the stars.</p>
+
+<p>In a more familiar mood I throw stepping stones in the water to hear
+them splash, or I cram them in a dam to thwart the purpose of the
+stream, laying ever a higher stone when the water laps the top. I
+scoop out the sand and stones as if a mighty shipping begged for
+passage. Or I rest from this prodigious engineering upon my back and
+watch the white traffic of the clouds across the summer sky. The roots
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> an antique oak peep upon the flood as in the golden days of Arden.
+Apple blossoms fall upon the water like the snow of a more kindly
+winter. A gay leaf puts out upon the channel like a painted galleon
+for far adventure. A twig sails off freighted with my drowsy thoughts.
+A branch of a willow dips in the stream and writes an endless trail of
+words in the running water. In these evil days when the whole fair
+world is trenched and bruised with war, what wisdom does it send to
+the valleys where men reside&mdash;what love and peace and gentleness&mdash;what
+promise of better days to come&mdash;that it makes this eternal stream its
+messenger!</p>
+
+<p>And yet a stream is best if it is but an incident in travel&mdash;if it
+break the dusty afternoon and send one off refreshed. Rather than a
+place for fishing it invites one to bathe his feet. There are, indeed,
+persons so careful of their health as to assert that cold water
+endangers blisters. Theirs is a prudence to be neglected. Such persons
+had better leave their feet at home safely slippered on the fender. If
+one's feet go upon a holiday, is it fair that for fear of consequence
+they be kept housed in their shoes? Shall the toes sit inside their
+battered caravans while the legs and arms frisk outside? Is there such
+torture in a blister&mdash;even if the prevention be sure&mdash;to outweigh the
+pleasure of cold water running across the ankles?</p>
+
+<p>It was but lately that I followed a road that lay off the general
+travel through a pleasant country of hills<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> and streams. As the road
+was not a thoroughfare and journeyed no farther than the near-by town
+where I was to get my supper, it went at a lazy winding pace. If a dog
+barked it was in sleepy fashion. He yelped merely to check his
+loneliness. There could be no venom on his drowsy tooth. The very cows
+that fed along its fences were of a slower breed and more
+contemplative whisk of tail than are found upon the thoroughfares.
+Sheep patched the fields with gray and followed their sleepy banquet
+across the hills.</p>
+
+<p>The country was laid out with farms&mdash;orchards and soft fields of grain
+that waved like a golden lake&mdash;but there were few farmhouses. In all
+the afternoon I passed but one person, a deaf man who asked for
+direction. When I cried out that I was a stranger, he held his hand to
+his ear, but his mouth fell open as if my words, denied by deafness
+from a proper portal, were offered here a service entrance. I spread
+my map before him and he put an ample thumb upon it. Then inquiring
+whether I had crossed a road with a red house upon it where his friend
+resided, he thanked me and walked off with such speed as his years had
+left him. Birds sang delightfully on the fences and in the field, yet
+I knew not their names. Shall one not enjoy a symphony without precise
+knowledge of the instrument that gives the tune? If an oboe sound a
+melody, must one bestow a special praise, with a knowledge of its
+function<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> in the concert? Or if a trombone please, must one know the
+brassy creature by its name? Rather, whether I listen to horns or
+birds, in my ignorance I bestow loosely a general approbation; yet is
+the song sweet.</p>
+
+<p>All afternoon I walked with the sound of wind and water in my ears,
+and at night, when I had gained my journey's end and lay in bed, I
+heard beneath my window in the garden the music of a little runnel
+that was like a faint and pleasant echo of my hillside walk. I fell
+asleep to its soothing sound and its trickle made a pattern across my
+dreams.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps you yourself, my dear sir, are addicted to these country
+walks, either for an afternoon or for a week's duration with a
+rucksack strapped across your back. If denied the longer outing, I
+hope that at least it is your custom to go forth upon a holiday to
+look upon the larger earth. Where the road most winds and dips and the
+distance is of the finer purple, let that direction be your choice!
+Seek out the region of the hills! Outposts and valleys here, with
+smoke of suppers rising. Trains are so small that a child might draw
+them with a string. Far-off hills are tumbled and in confusion, as if
+a giant were roused and had flung his rumpled cloak upon the plain.</p>
+
+<p>Or if a road and a stream seem close companions, tag along with them!
+Like three cronies you may work the countryside together! There are
+old mills<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> with dams and mossy water wheels, and rumbling covered
+bridges.</p>
+
+<p>But chiefly I beg that you wander out at random without too precise
+knowledge of where you go or where you shall get your supper. If you
+are of a cautious nature, as springs from a delicate stomach or too
+sheltered life, you may stuff a bar of chocolate in your pocket. Or an
+apple&mdash;if you shift your other ballast&mdash;will not sag you beyond
+locomotion. I have known persons who prize a tomato as offering both
+food and drink, yet it is too likely to be damaged and squirt inside
+the pocket if you rub against a tree. Instead, the cucumber is to be
+commended for its coolness, and a pickle is a sour refreshment that
+should be nibbled in turn against the chocolate.</p>
+
+<p>Food oftentimes is to be got upon the way. There is a kind of cocoanut
+bar, flat and corrugated, that may be had at most crossroads. I no
+longer consider these a delicacy, but in my memory I see a boy
+bargaining for them at the counter. They are counted into his dirty
+palm. He stuffs a whole one in his mouth, from ear to ear. His bicycle
+leans against the trough outside. He mounts, wabbling from side to
+side to reach the pedals. Before him lie the mountains of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Nor shall I complain if you hold roughly in your mind, subject to a
+whim's reversal, an evening destination to check your hunger. But do
+not bend your circuit back to the noisy city! Let your march end<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> at
+the inn of a country town! If it is but a station on your journey and
+you continue on the morrow, let there be an ample porch and a rail to
+rest your feet! Here you may sit in the comfortable twilight when
+crammed with food and observe the town's small traffic. Country folk
+come about, if you are of easy address, and engage you on their crops.
+The village prophet strokes his wise beard at your request and,
+squinting at the sky, foretells a storm. Or if the night is cold, a
+fire is laid inside and a wrinkled board for the conduct of the war
+debates upon the hearth. But so far as your infirmity permits, go
+forth at random with a spirit for adventure! If the prospect pleases
+you as the train slows down for the platform, cast a penny on your
+knee and abide its fall!</p>
+
+<p>Or if on principle you abhor a choice that is made wickedly on the
+falling of a coin, let an irrelevant circumstance direct your
+destination! I once walked outside of London, making my start at
+Dorking for no other reason except that Sam Weller's mother-in-law had
+once lived there. You will recall how the elder Mr. Weller in the hour
+of his affliction discoursed on widows in the taproom of the Marquis
+of Granby when the funeral was done, and how later, being pestered
+with the Reverend Mr. Stiggins, he immersed him in the horse-trough to
+ease his grief. All through the town I looked for red-nosed men who
+might be descended from the reverend shepherd, and once when I passed
+a horse-trough of uncommon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> size I asked the merchant at the corner if
+it might not be the very place. I was met, however, by such a vacant
+stare&mdash;for the fellow was unlettered&mdash;that to rouse him I bought a
+cucumber from an open crate against the time of lunch, and I followed
+my pursuit further in the town. The cucumber was of monstrous length
+and thin. All about the town its end stuck out of my pocket
+inquisitively, as though it were a fellow traveler down from London to
+see the sights. But although I inquired for the Weller family, it
+seems that they were dead and gone. Even the Marquis of Granby had
+disappeared, with its room behind the bar where Mr. Stiggins drank
+pineapple rum with water, <i>luke</i>, from the kettle on the hob.</p>
+
+<p>We left Dorking and walked all afternoon through a pleasant sunny
+country, up hill and down, to the town of Guildford. At four o'clock,
+to break the journey, we laid out our lunch of bread and cheese and
+cucumber, and rested for an hour. The place was a grassy bank along a
+road above a fertile valley where men were pitching hay. Their shouts
+were carried across the fields with an agreeable softness. Today,
+doubtless, women work in those fields.</p>
+
+<p>On another occasion we walked from Maidstone to Rochester on
+pilgrimage to the inn where Alfred Jingle borrowed Mr. Winkle's coat
+to attend the Assembly, when he made love to the buxom widow. War had
+just been declared between Britain and Germany, and soldiers guarded
+the roads above the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> town. At a tea-room in the outskirts army
+officers ate at a neighboring table. Later, it is likely, they were in
+the retreat from Mons: for the expeditionary force crossed the channel
+within a week. Yet so does farce march along with tragedy that our
+chief concern in Rochester was the old inn where the ball was held.</p>
+
+<p>A surly woman who sat behind the cashier's wicket fixed me with her
+eye. "Might we visit the ballroom?" I inquired. Evidently not, unless
+we were stopping at the house. "Madame," I said, "perhaps you are
+unaware that the immortal Mr. Pickwick once sojourned beneath your
+roof." There was no response. "The celebrated Mr. Pickwick, G. C. M.
+P. C.," I continued, "who was the discoverer of the sources of the
+Hampstead Ponds." At this&mdash;for my manner was impressive&mdash;she fumbled
+through the last few pages of her register and admitted that he might
+have been once a patron of the house, but that he had now paid his
+bill and gone.</p>
+
+<p>I was about to question her about the poet Augustus Snodgrass, who had
+been with Mr. Pickwick on his travels, when a waiter, a humorous
+fellow with a vision of a sixpence, offered to be our guide. We
+climbed the stairs and came upon the ballroom. It was a small room.
+Three quadrilles must have stuffed it to the edge&mdash;a dingy place with
+bare windows on a deserted innyard. At one end was a balcony that
+would hold not more than three musicians.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> The candles of its former
+brightness have long since burned to socket. Vanished are "Sir Thomas
+Clubber, Lady Clubber and the Miss Clubbers!" Gone is the Honorable
+Wilmot Snipe and all the notables that once crowded it! Vanished is
+the punchbowl where the amorous Tracy Tupman drank too many cups of
+negus on that memorable night. I gave the dirty waiter a sixpence and
+came away.</p>
+
+<p>I discourage the usual literary pilgrimage. Indeed, if there is a
+rumor that Milton died in a neighboring town, or a treaty of
+consequence was signed close by, choose another path! Let neither
+Oliver Cromwell nor the Magna Carta deflect your course! One of my
+finest walks was on no better advice than the avoidance of a
+celebrated shrine. I was led along the swift waters of a river,
+through several pretty towns, and witnessed the building of a lofty
+bridge. For lunch I had some memorable griddlecakes. Finally I rode on
+top of a rattling stage with a gossip for a driver, whose long finger
+pointed out the sights upon the road.</p>
+
+<p>But for the liveliest truancy, keep an eye out for red-haired and
+freckled lads, and make them your counselors! Lads so spotted and
+colored, I have found, are of unusual enterprise in knowing the best
+woodland paths and the loftiest views. A yellow-haired boy, being of
+paler wit, will suck his thumb upon a question. A touzled black
+exhibits a sulky<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> absorption in his work. An indifferent brown, at
+best, runs for an answer to the kitchen. But red-haired and freckled
+lads are alive at once. Whether or not their roving spirit, which is
+the basis of their deeper and quicker knowledge, proceeds from the
+magic of the pigment, the fact yet remains that such boys are surer
+than a signpost to direct one to adventure. This truth is so general
+that I have read the lives of the voyagers&mdash;Robinson Crusoe, Captain
+Kidd and the worthies out of Hakluyt&mdash;if perhaps a hint might drop
+that they too in their younger days were freckled and red-haired. Sir
+Walter Raleigh&mdash;I choose at random&mdash;was doubtless called "Carrots" by
+his playmates. But on making inquiry of a red-haired lad, one must
+have a clear head in the tumult of his direction. I was once lost for
+several hours on the side of Anthony's Nose above the Hudson because I
+jumbled such advice. And although I made the acquaintance of a hermit
+who dwelt on the mountain with a dog and a scarecrow for his garden&mdash;a
+fellow so like him in garment and in feature that he seemed his
+younger and cleaner brother&mdash;still I did not find the top or see the
+clear sweep of the Hudson as was promised.</p>
+
+<p>If it is your habit to inquire of distance upon the road, do not
+quarrel with conflicting opinion! Judge the answer by the source!
+Persons of stalwart limb commonly underestimate a distance, whereas
+those of broken wind and stride stretch it greater than it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> is. But it
+is best to take all answers lightly. I have heard of a man who spent
+his rainy evenings on a walking trip in going among the soda clerks
+and small merchants of the village, not for information, but to
+contrast their ignorance. Aladdin's wicked uncle, when he inquired
+direction to the mountain of the genii's cave, could not have been so
+misdirected. Shoemakers, candy-men and peddlers of tinware&mdash;if such
+modest merchants existed also on the curb in those magic days&mdash;must
+have been of nicer knowledge or old Kazrac would never have found the
+lamp. In my friend's case, on inquiry, a certain hotel at which we
+aimed was both good and bad, open and shut, burned and unburned.</p>
+
+<p>There is a legend of the Catholic Church about a certain holy chapel
+that once leaped across the Alps. It seems gross superstition, yet
+although I belong to a protesting church, I assert its likelihood. For
+I solemnly affirm that on a hot afternoon I chased a whole village
+that skipped quite as miraculously before me across the country. It
+was a village of stout leg and wind and, as often as I inquired, it
+still kept seven miles ahead. Once only I gained, by trotting on a
+descent. Not until night when the village lay down to rest beside a
+quiet river did I finally overtake it. And the next morning I arose
+early in order to be off first upon my travels, and so keep the lively
+rascal in the rear.</p>
+
+<p>In my country walks I usually carry a book in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> pocket opposite to
+my lunch. I seldom read it, but it is a comfort to have it handy. I am
+told that at one of the colleges, students of smaller application, in
+order that they may truthfully answer as to the length of time they
+have spent upon their books, do therefore literally sit upon a pile of
+them, as on a stool, while they engage in pleasanter and more secular
+reading. I do not examine this story closely, which rises, doubtless,
+from the jealousy of a rival college. Rather, I think that these
+students perch upon the books which presently they must read, on a
+wise instinct that this preliminary contact starts their knowledge.
+And therefore a favorite volume, even if unopened in the pocket, does
+nevertheless by its proximity color and enhance the enjoyment of the
+day. I have carried Howell, who wrote the "Familiar Letters," unread
+along the countryside. A small volume of Boswell has grown dingy in my
+pocket. I have gone about with a copy of Addison with long S's, but I
+read it chiefly at home when my feet are on the fender.</p>
+
+<p>I had by me once as I crossed the Devon moors a volume of "Richard
+Feverel." For fifteen miles I had struck across the upland where there
+is scarcely a house in sight&mdash;nothing but grazing sheep and wild
+ponies that ran at my approach. Sometimes a marshy stream flowed down
+a shallow valley, with a curl of smoke from a house that stood in the
+hollow. At the edge of this moorland, I came into a shady valley<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> that
+proceeded to the ocean. My feet were pinched and tired when I heard
+the sound of water below the road. I pushed aside the bushes and saw a
+stream trickling on the rocks. I thrust my head into a pool until the
+water ran into my ears, and then sat with my bare feet upon the cool
+stones where the runnel lapped them, and read "Richard Feverel." To
+this day, at the mention of the title, I can hear the pleasant brawl
+of water and the stirring of the branches in the wind that wandered
+down the valley.</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt tells us in a famous passage with what relish he once read
+"The New Eloise" on a walking trip. "It was on the 10th of April,
+1798," he writes, "that I sat down to a volume of the New Eloise, at
+the inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken." I
+am quite unfamiliar with the book, yet as often as I read the
+essay&mdash;which is the best of Hazlitt&mdash;I have been teased to buy it.
+Perhaps this springs in part from my own recollection of Llangollen,
+where I once stopped on a walking trip through Wales. The town lies on
+the river Dee at the foot of fertile hills patched with fences, on
+whose top there stand the ruins of Dinas Bran, a fortress of forgotten
+history, although it looks grimly towards the English marches as if
+its enemies came thence. Thrown across the river there is a peaked
+bridge of gray stone, many centuries old, on which the village folk
+gather at the end of day. I dined on ale and mutton of such excellence
+that, for myself, a cold<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> volume of the census&mdash;if I had fallen so
+low&mdash;must have remained agreeably in memory. I recall that a
+street-organ stopped beneath the window and played a merry tune&mdash;or
+perhaps the wicked ale was mounting&mdash;and I paused in my onslaught
+against the mutton to toss the musician a coin.</p>
+
+<p>I applaud those who, on a walking trip, arise and begin their journey
+in the dawn, but although I am eager at night to make an early start,
+yet I blink and growl when the morning comes. I marvel at the poet who
+was abroad so early that he was able to write of the fresh twilight on
+the world&mdash;"Where the sandalled Dawn like a Greek god takes the
+hurdles of the hills"&mdash;but for my own part I would have slept and
+missed the sight. But an early hour is best, despite us lazybones, and
+to be on the road before the dew is gone and while yet a mist arises
+from the hollows is to know the journey's finest pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>Persons of early hours assert that they feel a fine exaltation. I am
+myself inclined to think, however, that this is not so much an
+exaltation that arises from the beauty of the hour, as from a feeling
+of superiority over their sleeping and inferior comrades. It is akin
+to the displeasing vanity of those persons who walk upon a boat with
+easy stomach while their companions lie below. I would discourage,
+therefore, persons that lean toward conceit from putting a foot out of
+bed until the second call. On the other hand, those who are of a
+self-depreciative nature should get<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> up with the worm and bird. A man
+of my own acquaintance who was sunk in self-abasement for many years,
+was roused to a salutary conceit by no other tonic.</p>
+
+<p>And it is certain that to be off upon a journey with a rucksack
+strapped upon you at an hour when the butcher boy takes down his
+shutters is a high pleasure. Off you go through the village with
+swinging arms. Off you go across the country. A farmer is up before
+you and you hear his reaper across the field, and the neighing of his
+horses at the turn. Where the hill falls sharp against the sky, there
+he stands outlined, to wipe the sweat. And as your nature is, swift or
+sluggish thoughts go through your brain&mdash;plots and vagrant fancies,
+which later your pencil will not catch. It is in these earliest hours
+while the dew still glistens that little lyric sentences leap into
+your mind. Then, if at all, are windmills giants.</p>
+
+<p>There are cool retreats where you may rest at noon, but Stevenson has
+written of these. "You come," he writes, "to a milestone on a hill, or
+some place where deep ways meet under trees; and off goes the
+knapsack, and down you sit to smoke a pipe in the shade. You sink into
+yourself, and the birds come round and look at you; and your smoke
+dissipates upon the afternoon under the blue dome of heaven; and the
+sun lies warm upon your feet, and the cool air visits your neck and
+turns aside your open<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> shirt. If you are not happy, you must have an
+evil conscience."</p>
+
+<p>And yet a good inn at night holds even a more tranquil joy. M&mdash;&mdash; and
+I, who frequently walk upon a holiday, traversed recently a mountain
+road to the north of West Point. During the afternoon we had scrambled
+up Storm King to a bare rock above the Hudson. It was just such an
+outlook as Rip found before he met the outlandish Dutchmen with their
+ninepins and flagon. We lay here above a green world that was rimmed
+with mountains, and watched the lagging sails and puffs of smoke upon
+the river. It was late afternoon when we descended to the mountain
+road that runs to West Point. During all the day there had been
+distant rumbling of thunder, as though a storm mustered in a far-off
+valley,&mdash;or perhaps the Dutchmen of the legend still lingered at their
+game,&mdash;but now as the twilight fell the storm came near. It was six
+o'clock when a sign-board informed us that we had seven miles to go,
+and already the thunder sounded with earnest purpose. Far below in the
+dusk we saw the lights of West Point. On a sudden, while I was still
+fumbling for my poncho which was rolled inside my rucksack, the storm
+burst upon us. We put up the umbrella and held the poncho against the
+wind and driving rain. But the wind so whisked it about and the rain
+was so eager to find the openings that presently we were drenched. In
+an hour we came to West Point.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> Luckily the cook was up, and she
+served us a hot dinner in our rooms with the washstand for a table.
+When we started there was a piece of soap in the dish, but I think we
+ate it in our hunger. I recall that there was one course that foamed
+up like custard and was not upon the bill. It was a plain room with
+meager furniture, yet we fell asleep with a satisfaction beyond the
+Cecils in their lordly beds. I stirred once when there was a clamor in
+the hall of guests returning from a hop at the Academy&mdash;a prattle of
+girls' voices&mdash;then slept until the sun was up.</p>
+
+<p>But my preference in lodgings is the low sagging half-timbered
+building that one finds in the country towns of England. It has leaned
+against the street and dispensed hospitality for three hundred years.
+It is as old a citizen as the castle on the hill. It is an inn where
+Tom Jones might have spent the night, or any of the rascals out of
+Smollett. Behind the wicket there sits a shrewish female with a cold
+eye towards your defects, and behind her there is a row of bells which
+jangle when water is wanted in the rooms. Having been assigned a room
+and asked the hour of dinner, you mount a staircase that rises with a
+squeak. There is a mustiness about the place, which although it is
+unpleasant in itself, is yet agreeable in its circumstance. A long
+hall runs off to the back of the house, with odd steps here and there
+to throw you. Your room looks out upon a coach-yard, and as you wash
+you overhear a love-passage down below.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the evening you go forth to see the town. If it lies on the ocean,
+you walk upon the mole and watch the fisher folk winding up their
+nets, or sitting with tranquil pipes before their doors. Maybe a booth
+has been set up on the parade that runs along the ocean, and a husky
+fellow bids you lay out a sixpence for the show, which is the very
+same, he bawls, as was played before the King and the Royal Family.
+This speech is followed by a fellow with a trombone, who blows himself
+very red in the face.</p>
+
+<p>But rather I choose to fancy that it is an inland town, and that there
+is a quieter traffic on the streets. Here for an hour after dinner,
+while darkness settles, you wander from shop to shop and put your nose
+upon the glass, or you engage the lamplighter as he goes his rounds,
+for any bit of news.</p>
+
+<p>Once in such a town when the night brought rain, for want of other
+employment, I debated divinity with a rigid parson, and until a late
+hour sat in the thick curtain of his attack. It was at an inn of one
+of the midland counties of England, a fine old weathered building,
+called "The King's Arms." In the tap&mdash;for I thrust my thirsty head
+inside&mdash;was an array of old pewter upon the walls, and two or three
+prints of prize fighters of former days. But it was in the parlor the
+parson engaged me. In the corner of the room there was a timid
+fire&mdash;of the kind usually met in English inns&mdash;imprisoned behind a
+grill that had been set up stoutly to confine a larger and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> rowdier
+fire. My antagonist was a tall lank man of pinched ascetic face and
+dark complexion, with clothes brushed to shininess, and he belonged to
+a brotherhood that lived in one of the poorer parts of London along
+the wharves. His sojourn at the inn was forced. For two weeks in the
+year, he explained, each member was cast out of the conventual
+buildings upon the world. This was done in penance, as the members of
+more rigid orders in the past were flagellants for a season. So here
+for a whole week had he been sitting, for the most part in rainy
+weather, busied with the books that the inn afforded&mdash;advertising
+booklets of the beauties of the Alps&mdash;diagrams of steamships&mdash;and
+peeking out of doors for a change of sky.</p>
+
+<p>It was a matter of course that he should engage me in conversation. He
+was as lonesome for a chance to bark as a country dog. Presently when
+I dissented from some point in his creed, he called me a heretic, and
+I with gentlest satire asked him if the word yet lived. But he was not
+angry, and he told me of his brotherhood. It had a branch in America,
+and he bade me, if ever I met any of its priests, to convey to them
+his warm regards. As for America, it was, he said, too coldly ethical,
+and needed most a spiritual understanding; to which judgment I
+assented. I wonder now whether the war will bring that understanding.
+Maybe, unless blind hatred smothers it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This priest was a mixture of stern and gentle qualities, and seemed to
+be descended from those earlier friars that came to England in cord
+and gown, and went barefoot through the cities to minister comfort and
+salvation to the poor and wretched. When the evening was at last
+spent, by common consent we took our candles on the landing, where,
+after he inculcated a final doctrine of his church with waving finger,
+he bade me good night, with a wish of luck for my journey on the
+morrow, and sought his room.</p>
+
+<p>My own room lay down a creaking hallway. When undressed, I opened my
+window and looked upon the street. All lights were out. At last the
+rain had ceased, and now above the housetops across the way, through a
+broken patch of cloud, a star appeared with a promise of a fair
+tomorrow.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="On_Livelihoods" id="On_Livelihoods"></a>On Livelihoods.</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+<p>omewhere in his letters, I think, Stevenson pronounces street paving
+to be his favorite occupation. I fancy, indeed,&mdash;and I have ransacked
+his life,&mdash;that he never applied himself to its practice for an actual
+livelihood. That was not necessary. Rather, he looked on at the curb
+in a careless whistling mood, hands deep in the pockets of his breeks,
+in a lazy interval between plot and essay. The sunny morning had
+dropped its golden invitation through his study windows, and he has
+wandered forth to see the world. Let my heroes&mdash;for thus I interpret
+him at his desk as the sunlight beckoned&mdash;let my heroes kick their
+heels in patience! Let villains fret inside the inkpot! Down, sirs,
+down, into the glossy magic pool, until I dip you up! Pirates&mdash;for
+surely such miscreants lurked among his papers&mdash;let pirates, he cries,
+save their red oaths until tomorrow! My hat! My stick!</p>
+
+<p>It was thus, then, as an amateur that Stevenson looked on street
+paving&mdash;the even rows of cobbles, the nice tapping to fit the stones
+against the curb, the neat joint around the drain. And yet,
+unpardonably, he neglects the tarpot; and this seems the very soul of
+the business, the finishing touch&mdash;almost culinary, as when a cook
+pours on a chocolate sauce.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I remember pleasantly when our own street was paved. There had been
+laid a waterpipe, deep down where the earth was yellow&mdash;surely gold
+was near&mdash;and several of us young rascals climbed in and out in the
+twilight when work was stopped. By fits we were both mountaineers and
+miners. There was an agreeable gassy smell as if we neared the lower
+regions. Here was a playground better than the building of a barn,
+even with its dizzy ladders and the scaffolding around the chimney. Or
+we hid in the great iron pipes that lay along the gutters, and
+followed our leader through them home from school. But when the pipes
+were lowered into place and the surface was cobbled but not yet
+sanded, then the tarpot yielded gum for chewing. At any time after
+supper a half dozen of us&mdash;blacker daubs against the darkness&mdash;might
+have been seen squatting on the stones, scratching at the tar.
+Blackjack, bought at the corner, had not so full a flavor. But one had
+to chew forward in the mouth&mdash;lightly, lest the tar adhere forever to
+the teeth.</p>
+
+<p>And yet I am not entirely in accord with Stevenson in his preference.</p>
+
+<p>And how is it, really, that people fall into their livelihoods? What
+circumstance or necessity drives them? Does choice, after all, always
+yield to a contrary wind and run for any port? Is hunger always the
+helmsman? How many of us, after due appraisal of ourselves, really
+choose our own parts in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> mighty drama?&mdash;first citizen or second,
+with our shrill voices for a moment above the crowd&mdash;first citizen or
+second&mdash;brief choristers, except for vanity, against a painted scene.
+How runs the rhyme?&mdash;rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief; doctor,
+lawyer, merchant, chief! And a robustious fellow with great voice, and
+lace and sword, strutting forward near the lights.</p>
+
+<p>Meditating thus, I frequently poke about the city in the end of
+afternoon "when the mind of your man of letters requires some
+relaxation." I peer into shop windows, not so much for the wares
+displayed as for glimpses of the men and women engaged in their
+disposal. I watch laborers trudging home with the tired clink of their
+implements and pails. I gaze into cellarways where tailor and cobbler
+sit bent upon their work&mdash;needle and peg, their world&mdash;and through
+fouled windows into workrooms, to learn which livelihoods yield the
+truest happiness. For it is, on the whole, a whistling rather than a
+grieving world, and like little shouts among the hills is laughter
+echoed in the heart.</p>
+
+<p>I can well understand how one can become a baker or even a small
+grocer with a pencil behind his ear. I could myself honestly recommend
+an apple&mdash;an astrachan for sauces&mdash;or, in the season, offer asparagus
+with something akin to enthusiasm. Cranberries, too, must be an
+agreeable consort of the autumn months when the air turns frosty. I
+would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> own a cat with a dusty nose to rub along the barrels and sleep
+beneath the stove. I would carry dried meats in stock were it only for
+the electric slicing machine. And whole cheeses! Or to a man of
+romantic mind an old brass shop may have its lure. To one of musty
+turn, who would sit apart, there is something to be said for the
+repair of violins and 'cellos. At the least he sweetens discord into
+melody.</p>
+
+<p>But I would not willingly keep a second-hand bookshop. It is too
+cluttered a business. There is too free a democracy between good and
+bad. It was Dean Swift who declared that collections of books made him
+melancholy, "where the best author is as much squeezed and as obscure
+as a porter at a coronation." Nor is it altogether reassuring for one
+who is himself by way of being an author to view the certain neglect
+that awaits him when attics are cleared at last. There is too leathery
+a smell upon the premises, a thick deposit of mortality. I draw a deep
+breath when I issue on the street, grateful for the sunlight and the
+wind. However, I frequently put my head in at Pratt's around the
+corner, sometimes by chance when the family are assembled for their
+supper in one of the book alcoves. They have swept back a litter of
+historians to make room for the tray of dishes. To cut them from the
+shop they have drawn a curtain in front of their nook, but I can hear
+the teapot bubbling on the counter. There is, also, a not unsavory
+smell which, if my old nose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> retains its cunning, is potato stew,
+fetched up from the kitchen. If you seek Gibbon now, Pratt's face will
+show like a withered moon between the curtains and will request you to
+call later when the dishes have been cleared.</p>
+
+<p>No one works in cleaner produce than carpenters. They are for the most
+part a fatherly whiskered tribe and they eat their lunches neatly from
+a pail, their backs against the wall, their broad toes upturned. I
+look suspiciously on painters, however, who present themselves for
+work like slopped and shoddy harlequins, and although I have myself
+passed a delightful afternoon painting a wooden fence at the foot of
+the garden&mdash;and been scraped afterwards&mdash;I would not wish to be of
+their craft.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps one is of restless habit and a peripatetic occupation may
+be recommended. For a bachelor of small expense, at a hazard, a
+wandering fruit and candy cart offers the venture and chance of
+unfamiliar journeys. There is a breed of lollypop on a stick that
+shows a handsome profit when the children come from school. Also, at
+this minute, I hear below me on the street the flat bell of the
+scissors-grinder. I know not what skill is required, yet it needs a
+pretty eye and even foot. The ragman takes to an ancestral business
+and chants the ancient song of his fathers. When distance has somewhat
+muffled its nearer sharpness, the song bears a melody unparalleled
+among tradesmen's cries. Window glass,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> too, is hawked pleasantly from
+house to house and requires but a knife and putty. In the spring the
+vegetable vender, standing in his wagon, utters melodious sounds that
+bring the housewives to their windows. Once, also, by good luck, I
+fell into acquaintance with a fellow who peddled brooms and dustpans
+along the countryside. He was hung both front and back with cheap
+commodities&mdash;a necklace of scrubbing brushes&mdash;tins jangling against
+his knees. A very kitchen had become biped. A pantry had gone on
+pilgrimage. Except for dogs, which seemed maddened by his strange
+appearance, it was, he informed me, an engaging livelihood for a man
+who chafed indoors. Or for one of dreamy disposition the employment of
+a sandwich man, with billboards fore and aft, offers a profitable
+repose. Sometimes several of these philosophers journey together up
+the street in a crowded hour, one behind another with slow
+introspective step, as befits their high preoccupation.</p>
+
+<p>Or one has an ear, and the street-organ commends itself. Observe the
+musician at the corner, hat in hand and smiling! Let but a curtain
+stir and his eye will catch it. He hears a falling penny as 'twere any
+nightingale. His tunes are the herald of the gaudy spring. His are the
+dancing measures of the sunlight. And is anyone a surer judge of human
+nature? He allows dyspeptics to slink along the fence. Those of
+bilious aspect may go their ways unchallenged.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> Spare me those, he
+says, who have not music in their souls: they are fit for treasons,
+stratagems, and spoils. It was with a flute that the poet Goldsmith
+starved his way through France. Yet the flute is a cold un-stirring
+instrument. He would have dined the oftener had he pitched upon a
+street-organ.</p>
+
+<p>But in this Christmas season there is a man goes up and down among the
+shoppers blowing shrill tunes upon a pipe. A card upon his hat
+announces that it is music makes the home and that one of his
+marvelous implements may be bought for the trifling and altogether
+insignificant sum of ten cents. A reticule across his stomach bulges
+with his pipes. He seems to manipulate the stops with his fingers, but
+I fancy that he does no more than sing into the larger opening. Yet
+his gay tune sounds above the traffic.</p>
+
+<p>I have wondered where such seasonal professions recruit themselves.
+The eyeglass man still stands at his corner with his tray. He is,
+moreover, too sodden a creature to play upon a pipe. Nor is there any
+dwindling of shoe-lace peddlers. The merchants of popcorn have not
+fallen off in number, and peanuts hold up strong. Rather, these
+Christmas musicians are of the tribe which at other festivals sell us
+little flags and bid us show our colors. They come from country fairs
+and circuses. All summer long they bid us gather for the fat man, or
+they cry up the beauties of a Turkish harem. If some valiant fellow in
+a painted tent is about to swallow glass, they are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> his horn and drum
+to draw the crowd. I once knew a side-show man who bent iron bars
+between his teeth and who summoned stout men from his audience to
+swing upon the bar, but I cannot believe that he has discharged the
+bawling rascal at his door. I rather choose to think that the piper
+was one of those self-same artists who, on lesser days, squeeze comic
+rubber faces in their fingers, or make the monkey climb its
+predestined stick.</p>
+
+<p>Be this as it may, presently the piper hit on a persuasive tune and I
+abandoned all thought of the Noah's ark&mdash;my errand of the morning for
+my nephew&mdash;and joined the crowd that followed him. Hamelin Town was
+come again. But street violins I avoid. They suggest mortgages and
+unpaid rent.</p>
+
+<p>But with the world before him why should a man turn dentist? He must
+have been a cruel fellow from his rattle. When did his malicious
+ambition first sprout up towards molars and bicuspids? Or who would
+scheme to be a plumber? He is a cellarer&mdash;alas, how shrunk from former
+days! Or consider the tailor! Perhaps you recall Elia's estimate. "Do
+you ever see him," he asks, "go whistling along the foot-path like a
+carman, or brush through a crowd like a baker, or go smiling to
+himself like a lover?"</p>
+
+<p>Certainly I would not wish to be a bookkeeper and sit bent all day
+over another's wealth. I would not want to bring in on lifted fingers
+the meats which another eats. Nor would I choose to be a locksmith,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+which is a kind of squint-eyed business, up two dismal stairs and at
+the rear. A gas lamp flares at the turn. A dingy staircase mounts into
+a thicker gloom. The locksmith consorts with pawnbrokers, with cheap
+sign-makers and with disreputable doctors; yet he is not of them. For
+there adheres to him a sort of romance. He is a creature of another
+time, set in our midst by the merest chance. The domestic cat,
+descended from the jungle, is not more shrunk. Keys have fallen on
+evil days. Observe the mighty row of them hung discarded along his
+boxes! Each one is fit to unlock a castle. Warwick itself might yield
+to such a weight of metal&mdash;rusty now, disused, quite out of fashion,
+displaced by a race of dwarfs. In the old prints, see how the London
+'prentice runs with his great key in the dawn to take down his
+master's shutter! In a musty play, observe the jailor at the dungeon
+door! Without massive keys jingling at the belt the older drama must
+have been a weakling. Only lovers, then, dared to laugh at locksmiths.
+But now locksmiths sit brooding on the past, shriveled to mean uses,
+ready for paltry kitchen jobs.</p>
+
+<p>And the undertaker, what shall we say of him? That black coat with the
+flower! That mournful smile! That perfect grief! And yet, I am told,
+undertakers, after hours, go singing home to supper, and spend their
+evenings at the movies like us rougher folk. It was David Copperfield,
+you recall, who dined with an undertaker and his family&mdash;in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> room,
+no doubt, next to the coffin storage&mdash;and he remarked at the time how
+cheerfully the joint went round. One of this sober cloth, moreover,
+has confided to me that they let themselves loose, above all
+professions, in their reunions and conventions. If an unusual riot
+issues from the door and a gay fellow goes walking on the table it is
+sure that either lawyers or undertakers sit inside.</p>
+
+<p>For myself, if I were to become a merchant, I would choose a shop at a
+four-corners in the country, and I would stock from shoe-laces to
+plows. There is no virtue in keeping store in the city. It is merely
+by favor that customers show themselves. Candidly, your competitor can
+better supply their wants. This is not so at the four-corners. Nor is
+anyone a more influential citizen than a country merchant. He sets the
+style in calicoes. He judges between check and stripe. His decision
+against a high heel flattens the housewives by an inch. But if I kept
+such a country store, I would provide an open fire and, when the
+shadows lengthened, an easy chair or two for gossips.</p>
+
+<p>I was meditating lately on these strange preferences in livelihoods
+and was gazing through the city windows for any clue when I was
+reminded of a tempting scheme that Wee Jessie&mdash;a delightful
+Scots-woman of my acquaintance&mdash;has planned for several of us.</p>
+
+<p>We are to be traveling merchants for a season, with a horse and wagon
+or a motor. My own preference<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> is a motor, and already I see a vehicle
+painted in bright colors and opening up behind as spacious as a waffle
+cart. There will be windows all around for the display of goods. It is
+not quite fixed what we shall sell. Wee Jessie leans toward bonnets
+and little millinery odds and ends. I am for kitchen tins. M&mdash;&mdash;
+inclines toward drygoods, serviceable fabrics. It is thought that we
+shall live on the roof while on tour, with a canvas to draw on wet
+nights. We shall possess a horn&mdash;on which Wee Jessie once practiced in
+her youth&mdash;to gather up the crowd when we enter a village.</p>
+
+<p>Fancy us, therefore, my dear sir, as taking the road late this coming
+spring in time to spread the summer's fashions. And if you hear our
+horn at twilight in your village&mdash;a tune of more wind than melody,
+unless Jessie shall cure her imperfections&mdash;know that on the morrow,
+by the pump, we shall display our wares.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image_079.jpg" width="600" height="285" alt="Woodcut"  />
+</div>
+<h2><a name="The_Tread_of_the_Friendly_Giants" id="The_Tread_of_the_Friendly_Giants"></a>The Tread of the Friendly Giants.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When our Babe he goeth walking in his garden,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Around his tinkling feet the sunbeams play.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+<p>t has been my fortune to pass a few days where there lives a dear
+little boy of less than three. My first knowledge of him every morning
+is the smothered scuffling through the partition as he reluctantly
+splashes in his bath. Here, unless he mend his caution, I fear he will
+never learn to play the porpoise at the Zoo. Then there is a wee
+tapping at my door. It is a fairy sound as though Mustard-seed were in
+the hall. Or it might be Pease-blossom rousing up Cobweb in the play,
+to repel the red-hipped humble-bee. It is so slight a tapping that if
+I sleep with even one ear inside the covers I will not hear it.</p>
+
+<p>The little lad stands in the dim passage to greet me, fully dressed,
+to reproach me with my tardiness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> He is a mite of a fellow, but he is
+as wide awake and shiny as though he were a part of the morning and
+had been wrought delicately out of the dawn's first ray. Indeed, I
+choose to fancy that the sun, being off hurriedly on broader business,
+has made him his agent for the premises. Particularly he assists in
+this passage at my bedroom door where the sleepy Night, which has not
+yet caught the summons, still stretches and nods beyond the turn. It
+is so dark here on a winter's morning when the nursery door is shut
+that even an adventuring sunlight, if it chanced to clamber through
+the window, would blink and falter in the hazard of these turns. But
+the sun has sent a substitute better than himself: for is there not a
+shaft of light along the floor? It can hardly fall from the window or
+anywhere from the outside world.</p>
+
+<p>The little lad stands in the passage demanding that I get up. "Get up,
+lazybones!" he says. Pretty language to his elders! He speaks soberly,
+halting on each syllable of the long and difficult word. He is so
+solemn that the jest is doubled. And now he runs off, jouncing and
+stiff-legged to his nursery. I hear him dragging his animals from his
+ark, telling them all that they are lazybones, even his barking dog
+and roaring lion. Noah, when he saw on that first morning that his ark
+was grounded on Ararat, did not rouse his beasts so early to leave the
+ship.</p>
+
+<p>Later I meet the lad at breakfast, locked in his high chair. In these
+riper hours of day there is less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> of Cobweb in his composition. He is
+now every inch a boy. He raps his spoon upon his tray. He hurls food
+in the general direction of his mouth. If an ear escape the assault it
+is gunnery beyond the common. He is bibbed against misadventure. This
+morning he yearns loudly for muffins, which he calls "bums." He
+chooses those that are unusually brown with a smudge of the
+cooking-tin, and these he calls "dirty bums."</p>
+
+<p>Such is my nephew&mdash;a round-cheeked, blue-eyed rogue who takes my thumb
+in all his fingers when we go walking. His jumpers are slack behind
+and they wag from side to side in an inexpressibly funny manner, but
+this I am led to believe springs not from any special genius but is
+common to all children. It is only recently that he learned to walk,
+for although he was forward with his teeth and their early sprouting
+ran in gossip up the street, yet he lagged in locomotion. Previously
+he advanced most surely on his seat&mdash;his slider, as he called
+it&mdash;throwing out his legs and curling them in under so as to draw him
+after. By this means he attained a fine speed upon a slippery floor,
+but he chafed upon a carpet. His mother and I agreed that this was
+quite an unusual method and that it presaged some rare talent for his
+future, as the scorn of a rattle is said to predict a judge. It was
+during one of these advances across the kitchen floor where the boards
+are rough that an accident occurred. As he excitedly put it, with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+fitting gesture to the rear, he got a sliver in his slider. But now he
+goes upon his feet with a waddle like a sailor, and he wags his slider
+from side to side.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes we play at hide-and-seek and we pop out at one another from
+behind the sofa. He lacks ingenuity in this, for he always hides in
+the same place. I have tempted him for variety to stow himself in the
+woodbox. Or the pantry would hold him if he squeezed in among the
+brooms. Nor does my ingenuity surpass his, for regularly in a certain
+order I shake the curtains at the door and spy under the table. I stir
+the wastebasket and peer within the vases, although they would hardly
+hold his shoe. Then when he is red-hot to be found and is already
+peeking impatiently around the sofa, at last I cry out his discovery
+and we begin all over again.</p>
+
+<p>I play ball with him and bounce it off his head, a game of more mirth
+in the acting than in the telling. Or we squeeze his animals for the
+noises that they make. His lion in particular roars as though lungs
+were its only tenant. But chiefly I am fast in his friendship because
+I ride upon his bear. I take the door at a gallop. I rear at the turn.
+I fall off in my most comical fashion. Sometimes I manage to kick over
+his blocks; at which we call it a game, and begin again. He has named
+the bear in my honor.</p>
+
+<p>We start all of our games again just as soon as we have finished them.
+That is what a game is. And if it is worth playing at all, it is worth
+endless repetition.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> If I strike a rich deep tone upon the Burmese
+gong, I must continue to strike upon it until I can draw his attention
+to something else. Once, the cook, hearing the din, thought that I
+hinted for my dinner. Being an obliging creature, she fell into such a
+flurry and so stirred her pans to push the cooking forward, that
+presently she burned the meat.</p>
+
+<p>Or if I moo like a cow, I must moo until sunset. I rolled off the sofa
+once to distract him when the ugly world was too much with him.
+Immediately he brightened from his complaint and demanded that I do it
+once more. And lately, when a puppy bounced out of the house next door
+and, losing its footing, rolled heels over head to the bottom of the
+steps, at once he pleaded for an encore. To him all the world's a
+stage.</p>
+
+<p>My nephew observes me closely to see what kind of fellow I am. I study
+him, too. He watches me over the top of his mug at breakfast and I
+stare back at him over my coffee cup. If I wrinkle my nose, he
+wrinkles his. If I stick out my tongue, he sticks his out, too. He
+answers wink with wink. When I pet his woolly lamb, however, he seems
+to wonder at my absurdity. When I wind up his steam engine, certainly
+he suspects that I am a novice. He shows a disregard of my castles,
+and although I build them on the windy vantage of a chair, with dizzy
+battlements topping all the country, he brushes them into ruin.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sometimes I fancy that his glance is mixed with scorn, and that he
+considers my attempts to amuse him as rather a silly business. I
+wonder what he thinks about when he looks at me seriously. I cannot
+doubt his wisdom. He seems to resemble a philosopher who has traveled
+to us from a distant world. If he cast me a sentence from Plato, I
+would say, "Master, I listen." Is it Greek he speaks, or a dark
+language from a corner of the sky? He has a far-off look as though he
+saw quite through these superficial affairs of earth. His eyes have
+borrowed the color of his wanderings and they are as blue as the
+depths beyond the moon. And I think of another child, somewhat older
+than himself, whose tin soldiers these many years are rusted, a
+thoughtful silent child who was asked, once upon a time, what he did
+when he got to bed. "Gampaw," he replied, "I lies and lies, Gampaw,
+and links and links, 'til I know mos' everysin'." The snow of a few
+winters, the sun of summer, the revolving stars and seasons&mdash;until
+this lad now serves in France.</p>
+
+<p>My nephew, although he too roams these distant spaces of philosophic
+thought and brings back strange unexpected treasure, has not arrived
+at the age of mere terrestrial exploration. He is quite ignorant of
+his own house and has no curiosity about the back stairs&mdash;the back
+stairs that go winding darkly from the safety of the kitchen. Scarcely
+is the fizzing of dinner lost than a new strange world engulfs one.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+He is too young to know that a doorway in the dark is the portal of
+adventure. He does not know the mystery and the twistings of the
+cellar, or the shadows of the upper hallway and the dim hollows that
+grow and spread across the twilight.</p>
+
+<p>Dear lad, there is a sunny world beyond the garden gate, cities and
+rolling hills and far-off rivers with white sails going up and down.
+There are wide oceans, and ships with tossing lights, and islands set
+with palm trees. And there are stars above your roof for you to wonder
+at. But also, nearer home, there are gentle shadows on the stairs, a
+dim cellar for the friendly creatures of your fancy, and for your
+exalted mood there is a garret with dark corners. Here, on a braver
+morning, you may push behind the trunks and boxes and come to a land
+unutterable where the furthest Crusoe has scarcely ventured. Or in a
+more familiar hour you may sit alongside a window high above the town.
+Here you will see the milkman on his rounds with his pails and long
+tin dipper. And these misty kingdoms that open so broadly on the world
+are near at hand. They are yours if you dare to go adventuring for
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Soon your ambition will leap its nursery barriers. No longer will you
+be content to sit inside this quiet room and pile your blocks upon the
+floor. You will be off on discovery of the long trail that lies along
+the back hall and the pantry where the ways are dark. You will wander
+in search of the caverns that lie<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> beneath the stairs when the night
+has come. You will trudge up steps and down for any lurking ocean on
+which to sail your pirate ships. Already I see you gazing with wistful
+eyes into the spaces beyond the door&mdash;into the days of your great
+adventure. In your thought is the patter and scurry of new creation.
+It is almost fairy time for you. The tread of the friendly giants,
+still far off, is sounding in the dark....</p>
+
+<p>Dear little lad, in this darkness may there be no fear! For these
+shadows of the twilight&mdash;which too long have been chased like common
+miscreants with lamp and candle&mdash;are really friendly beings and they
+wait to romp with you. Because thieves have walked in darkness, shall
+darkness be called a thief? Rather, let the dark hours take their
+repute from the countless gracious spirits that are abroad&mdash;the
+quieter fancies that flourish when the light has gone&mdash;the gentle
+creatures that leave their hiding when the sun has set. When a rug
+lies roughened at close of day, it is said truly that a fairy peeps
+from under to learn if at last the house is safe. And they hide in the
+hallway for the signal of your coming, yet so timid that if the fire
+is stirred they scamper beyond the turn. They huddle close beneath the
+stairs that they may listen to your voice. They come and go on tiptoe
+when the curtain sways, in the hope that you will follow. With their
+long thin shadowy fingers they beckon for you beneath the sofa.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The time is coming when you can no longer resist their invitation,
+when you will leave your woolly lamb and your roaring lion on this
+dull safe hearth and will go on pilgrimage. The back stairs sit
+patient in the dark for your hand upon the door. The great dim garret
+that has sat nodding for so many years will smile at last at your
+coming. It has been lonely so long for the glad sound of running feet
+and laughter. It has been childless so many years.</p>
+
+<p>But once children's feet played there and romped through the short
+winter afternoons. A rope hung from post to post and furnished forth a
+circus. Here giant swings were hazarded. Here children hung from the
+knees until their marbles and other wealth dropped from their pockets.
+And for less ambitious moments there were toys&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The little toy dog is covered with dust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But sturdy and stanch he stands;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the little toy soldier is red with rust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And his musket moulds in his hands.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Time was when the little toy dog was new,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the soldier was passing fair;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kissed them and put them there.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And now Little Boy Blue again climbs the long stairs. He stretches up
+on tiptoe to turn the door-knob at the top. He listens as a prudent
+explorer should. Cook rattles her tins below, but it is a far-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>off
+sound as from another world. Somewhere, doubtless, the friendly
+milkman's bell goes jingling up the street. There is a distant barking
+of familiar dogs. Will it not be better to return to the safe regions
+and watch the traffic from the window? But here, beckoning, is the
+great adventure.</p>
+
+<p>The brave die is cast. He advances with outstretched arms into the
+darkness. Suddenly, behind him, the door swings shut. The sound of
+cooking-tins is lost. Silence. Silence, except for branches scratching
+on the roof. But the garret hears the sound of feet, and it rouses
+itself and rubs its dusky eyes.</p>
+
+<p>But when darkness thickens and the sunlight has vanished from the
+floor, then comes the magic hour. The garret then tears from its eyes
+the blind bandage of the day. Strange creatures lift their heads. And
+now, as you wait expectant, there comes a mysterious sound from the
+darkest corner. Is it a mouse that stirs? Rather, it seems a far-off
+sound, as though a blind man, tapping with his stick, walked on the
+margin of the world. The noise comes near. It gains in volume. It is
+close at hand. Dear lad, you have come upon the magic hour. It is the
+tread of the friendly giants that is sounding in the dark....</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="On_Spending_a_Holiday" id="On_Spending_a_Holiday"></a>On Spending a Holiday.</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+<p>t a party lately a worn subject came under discussion.</p>
+
+<p>Our host lives in a triangular stone-paved courtyard tucked off from
+the thoroughfare but with the rattle of the elevated railway close at
+hand. The building is of decent brick, three stories in height, and it
+exhibits to the courtyard a row of identical doorsteps. The entrance
+to the courtyard is a swinging shutter between buildings facing on the
+street, and it might seem a mystery&mdash;like the apple in the
+dumpling&mdash;how the building inside squeezed through so narrow an
+entrance. Yet here it is, with a rubber plant in one corner and a
+trellis for imaginary vines in the other.</p>
+
+<p>In this courtyard, <i>Pomander Walk</i> might be acted along the stoops.
+For a necessary stage property&mdash;you recall, of course, the lamplighter
+with his ladder in the second act!&mdash;there is a gas lamp of old design
+in the middle of the enclosure, up near the footlights, as it were.
+From the stoops the main comedy might proceed, with certain business
+at the upper windows&mdash;the profane Admiral with the timber leg popping
+his head out of one, the mysterious fat man&mdash;in some sort the villain
+of the piece&mdash;putting his head out of another to woo the buxom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> widow
+at a third. And then the muffin man! In the twilight when the lamp is
+lighted and the heroine at last is in the hero's arms, there would be
+a pleasant crunching of muffins at all the windows as the curtain
+falls.</p>
+
+<p>But I shall not drop even a hint as to the location of this courtyard.
+Many persons think that New York City is but a massive gridiron, and
+they are ignorant of the nooks and quirks and angles of the lower
+town. Enough that the Indian of a modest tobacconist guards the
+swinging shutter of the entrance to the courtyard.</p>
+
+<p>Here we sat in the very window I had designed for the profane Admiral,
+and talked in the quiet interval between trains.</p>
+
+<p>One of our company&mdash;a man whom I shall call Flint&mdash;was hardy enough to
+say that he never employed his leisure in going to the country&mdash;that a
+walk about the city streets was his best refreshment. Flint's
+livelihood is cotton. He is a dumpish sort of person who looks as if
+he needed exercise, but he has a sharp clear eye. At first his remark
+fell on us as a mere perversity, as of one who proclaims a humorous
+whim. And yet he adhered tenaciously to his opinion, urging smooth
+pavements against mud, the study of countless faces against the song
+of birds and great buildings against cliffs.</p>
+
+<p>Another of our company opposed him in this&mdash;Colum, who chafes as an
+accountant. Colum is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> gentle dreamy fellow who likes birds. All
+winter he saves his tobacco tins which, in his two weeks' vacation in
+the country, he sets up in trees as birdhouses. He confesses that he
+took up with a certain brand of tobacco because its receptacle is
+popular with wrens. Also he cultivated a taste for waffles&mdash;which at
+first by a sad distortion of nature he lacked&mdash;for no other reason
+except that syrup may be bought in pretty log-cabin tins particularly
+suited for bluebirds. If you chance to breakfast with him, he urges
+the syrup on you with pleasant and insistent hospitality. With
+satisfaction he drains a can. By June he has a dozen of these empty
+cabins on the shelf alongside his country boots. Time was when he was
+lean of girth&mdash;as becomes an accountant, who is hinged dyspeptically
+all day across his desk&mdash;but by this agreeable stowage he has now
+grown to plumpness. When in the country Colum rises early in order to
+stretch the pleasures of the day, and he walks about before breakfast
+from tree to tree to view his feathered tenants. He has even acquired,
+after much practice, the knack of chirping&mdash;a hissing conjunction of
+the lips and teeth&mdash;which he is confident wins the friendly attention
+of the birds.</p>
+
+<p>Flint heard Colum impatiently, and interrupted before he was done.
+"Pooh!" he said. "There's mud in the country, and not much of any
+plumbing, and in the morning it's cold until you light a fire."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said Colum. "But I love it. Perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> you remember, Flint,
+the old willow stump out near the road. I put a Barking Dog on top of
+it, and now there's a family of wrens inside."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense," said Flint. "There is too much climate in the
+country&mdash;much more than in town. It's either too hot or too cold. And
+it's lonely. As for you, Colum, you're sentimental about your
+birdhouses. And you dislike your job. You like the country merely
+because it is a symbol of a holiday. It is freedom from an irksome
+task. It means a closing of your desk. But if you had to live in the
+country, you would grumble in a month's time. Even a bullfrog&mdash;and he
+is brought up to it, poor wretch&mdash;croaks at night."</p>
+
+<p>Colum interrupted. "That's not true, Flint. I know I'd like it&mdash;to
+live on a farm and keep chickens. Sometimes in winter, or more often
+in spring, I can hardly wait for summer and my two weeks. I look out
+of the window and I see a mirage&mdash;trees and hills." Colum sighed.
+"It's quite wonderful, that view, but it unsettles me for my ledger."</p>
+
+<p>"That's it," broke in Flint. "Your sentimentality spoils your
+happiness. You let two weeks poison the other fifty. It's immoral."</p>
+
+<p>Colum was about to retort, when he was anticipated by a new speaker.
+It was Quill, the journalist, who has long thin fingers and
+indigestion. At meals he pecks suspiciously at his plate, and he eats
+food substitutes. Quill runs a financial supplement, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> something of
+that kind, to a daily paper. He always knows whether Steel is strong
+and whether Copper is up or down. If you call on him at his office, he
+glances at you for a moment before he knows you. Yet in his slippers
+he grows human.</p>
+
+<p>"I like the country, too," he interposed, "and no one ever said that I
+am sentimental." He tapped his head. "I'm as hard as nails up here."
+Quill cracked his knuckles in a disagreeable habit he has, and
+continued: "I have a shack on the West Shore, and I go there
+week-ends. My work is so confining that if I didn't get to the country
+once in a while, I would play out in a jiffy. I'm a nervous frazzle&mdash;a
+nervous frazzle&mdash;by Saturday noon. But I lie on the grass all Sunday,
+and if nobody snaps at me and I am let alone, by Monday morning I am
+fit again."</p>
+
+<p>"You must be like Ant&aelig;us."</p>
+
+<p>This remark came from Wurm, our host. Wurm is a bookish fellow who
+wears great rimmed glasses. He spends much of his time in company
+thinking up apposite quotations and verifying them. He has worn out
+two Bartlett's. Wurm is also addicted to maps and dictionaries, and is
+a great reader of special articles. Consequently his mind is a pound
+for stray collarless facts; or rather, in its variety of contents, it
+more closely resembles a building contractor's back yard&mdash;odd
+salvage&mdash;rejected doors&mdash;a job of window-frames&mdash;a pile of bricks for
+chipping&mdash;discarded plumbing&mdash;broken junk gathered here and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> there.
+Mr. Aust himself, a building contractor who once lived on our
+street&mdash;a man of no broad fame&mdash;quite local&mdash;surely unknown to
+you&mdash;did not collect so wide a rubbish.</p>
+
+<p>However, despite these qualities, Wurm is rather a pleasant and
+harmless bit of cobweb. For a livelihood, he sits in a bank behind a
+grill. At noon he eats his lunch in his cage, and afterwards with a
+rubber band he snaps at the flies. In the hunting season he kills in a
+day as many as a dozen of these pests' and ranges them in his pen
+tray. On Saturday afternoon he rummages in Malkan's and the
+second-hand bookshops along Fourth Avenue. To see Wurm in his most
+characteristic pose, is to see him on a ladder, with one leg
+outstretched, far off his balance, fumbling for a title with his
+finger tips. Surely, in these dull alcoves, gravity nods on its job.
+Then he buys a sour red apple at the corner and pelts home to dinner.
+This is served him on a tin tray by his stout landlady who comes
+puffing up the stairs. It is a bit of pleasant comedy that whatever
+dish is served happens to be the very one of which he was thinking as
+he came out of the bank. By this innocent device he is popular with
+his landlady and she skims the milk for him.</p>
+
+<p>Wurm rapped his pipe bowl on the arm of his chair. "You must be like
+Ant&aelig;us," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Like what?" asked Flint.</p>
+
+<p>"Ant&aelig;us&mdash;the fellow who wrestled with Hercules.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> Each time that Ant&aelig;us
+was thrown against the earth his strength was doubled. He was finally
+in the way of overcoming Hercules, when Hercules by seizing him around
+the middle lifted him off the ground. By this strategy he deprived him
+of all contact with the earth, and presently Ant&aelig;us weakened and was
+vanquished."</p>
+
+<p>"That's me," said Quill, the journalist. "If I can't get back to my
+shack on Sunday, I feel that Hercules has me, too, around the middle."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I can find the story," said Wurm, his eye running toward the
+bookshelves.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't bother," said Flint.</p>
+
+<p>There was now another speaker&mdash;Flannel Shirt, as we called him&mdash;who
+had once been sated with formal dinners and society, and is now
+inclined to cry them down. He leans a bit toward socialism and free
+verse. He was about to praise the country for its freedom from
+sordidness and artificiality, when Flint, who had heard him before,
+interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"Rubbish!" he cried out. "All of you, but in different ways, are
+slaves to an old tradition kept up by Wordsworth, who would himself,
+doubtless, have moved to London except for the steepness of the rents.
+You all maintain that you like the country, yet on one excuse or
+another you live in the city and growl about it. There isn't a
+commuter among you. Honest folk, these commuters, with marrow in their
+bones&mdash;a steak in a paper bag&mdash;the sleet in their faces<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> on the
+ferryboat. I am the only one who admits that he lives in the city
+because he prefers it. The country is good enough to read about&mdash;I
+like it in books&mdash;but I choose to sit meantime with my feet on a city
+fender."</p>
+
+<p>Here Wurm broke in again. "I see, Flint," he said, "that you have been
+reading Leslie Stephen."</p>
+
+<p>Flint denied it.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, anyway, you have quoted him. Let me read you a bit of his essay
+on 'Country Books.'"</p>
+
+<p>Flint made a grimace. "Wurm always has a favorite passage."</p>
+
+<p>Wurm went to a shelf and took down a volume. He blew off the dust and
+smoothed its sides. "Listen to this!" he said. "Picked up the volume
+at Schulte's, on the twenty-five cent table. 'A love of the country is
+taken,'" he read, "'I know not why, to indicate the presence of all
+the cardinal virtues.... We assert a taste for sweet and innocent
+pleasures and an indifference to the feverish excitements of
+artificial society. I, too, like the country,...' (you'll like this,
+Flint) 'but I confess&mdash;to be duly modest&mdash;that I love it best in
+books. In real life I have remarked that it is frequently damp and
+rheumatic, and most hated by those who know it best.... Though a
+cockney in grain, I love to lean upon the farmyard gate; to hear Mrs.
+Poyser give a bit of her mind to the squire; to be lulled into a
+placid doze by the humming of Dorlecote Mill; to sit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> down in Dandie
+Dinmont's parlour ... or to drop into the kitchen of a good old
+country inn, and to smoke a pipe with Tom Jones or listen to the
+simple-minded philosophy of Parson Adams.'"</p>
+
+<p>"You hit on a good one then," said Flint. "And now as I was saying&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Wurm interposed. "Just a moment, Flint! You think that that quotation
+supports your side of the discussion. Not at all. It shows merely that
+sometimes we get greater reality from books than we get from life.
+Leslie Stephen liked the real country, also. In his holidays he
+climbed the Swiss mountains&mdash;wrote a book about them&mdash;it's on that top
+shelf. Don't you remember how he loved to roll stones off a cliff? And
+as a pedestrian he was almost as famous as George Borrow&mdash;walked the
+shirt off his back before his college trustees and all that sort of
+thing. But he got an even sharper reality from books. He liked the
+city, too, but in many a mood, there's no doubt about it, he preferred
+to walk to Charing Cross with Doctor Johnson in a book, rather than to
+jostle on the actual pavement outside his door."</p>
+
+<p>"Speed up, Wurm!" This from Quill, the journalist. "Inch along, old
+caterpillar!"</p>
+
+<p>"As far as I am concerned," Wurm continued, "I would rather go with
+Charles and Mary Lamb to see <i>The Battle of Hexham</i> in their gallery
+than to any show in Times Square. I love to think of that fine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> old
+pair climbing up the stairs, carefully at the turn, lest they tread on
+a neighbor's heels. Then the pleasant gallery, with its great lantern
+to light their expectant faces!"</p>
+
+<p>Wurm's eyes strayed again wistfully to his shelves. Flint stayed him.
+"And so you think that it is possible to see life completely in a
+mirror."</p>
+
+<p>"By no means," Wurm returned. "We must see it both ways. Nor am I, as
+you infer, in any sense like the Lady of Shalott. A great book cannot
+be compared to a mirror. There is no genius in a mirror. It merely
+reflects the actual, and slightly darkened. A great book shows life
+through the medium of an individuality. The actual has been lifted
+into truth. Divinity has passed into it through the unobstructed
+channel of genius."</p>
+
+<p>Here Flint broke in. "Divinity&mdash;genius&mdash;the Swiss Alps&mdash;<i>The Battle of
+Hexham</i>&mdash;what have they to do with Quill's shack out in Jersey or
+Colum's dirty birdhouses? You jump the track, Wurm. When everybody is
+heading for the main tent, you keep running to the side-shows."</p>
+
+<p>Quill, the journalist, joined the banter. "You remind me, Wurm&mdash;I hate
+to say it&mdash;of what a sea captain once said to me when I tried to loan
+him a book. 'Readin',' he said, 'readin' rots the mind.'"</p>
+
+<p>It was Colum's turn to ask a question. "What do <i>you</i> do, Flint," he
+asked, "when you have a holiday?"</p>
+
+<p>"Me? Well, I don't run off to the country as if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> the city were afire
+and my coat-tails smoked. And I don't sentimentalize on the evils of
+society. And I don't sit and blink in the dark, and moon around on a
+shelf and wear out books. I go outdoors. I walk around and look at
+things&mdash;shop windows and all that, when the merchants leave their
+curtains up. I walk across the bridges and spit off. Then there's the
+Bronx and the Battery, with benches where one may make acquaintances.
+People are always more communicative when they look out on the water.
+The last time I sat there an old fellow told me about himself, his
+wife, his victrola and his saloon. I talk to a good many persons,
+first and last, or I stand around until they talk to me. So many
+persons wear blinders in the city. They don't know how wonderful it
+is. Once, on Christmas Eve, I pretended to shop on Fourteenth Street,
+just to listen to the crowd on its final round&mdash;mother's carpet
+sweeper, you understand, or a drum for the heir. A crowd on Christmas
+is different&mdash;it's gayer&mdash;reckless&mdash;it's an exalted Saturday night.
+Afterwards I heard Midnight Mass at the Russian Cathedral. Then there
+are always ferryboats&mdash;the band on the boat to Staten Island&mdash;God!
+What music! Tugs and lights. I would like to know a tug&mdash;intimately.
+If more people were like tugs we'd have less rotten politics. Wall
+Street on a holiday is fascinating. No one about. Desolate. But full
+of spirits."</p>
+
+<p>Flint took a fresh cigar. "Last Sunday morning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> I walked in Central
+Park. There were all manner of toy sailboats on the pond&mdash;big and
+little&mdash;thirty of them at the least&mdash;tipping and running in the
+breeze. Grown men sail them. They set them on a course, and then they
+trot around the pond and wait for them. Presently I was curious. A man
+upward of fifty had his boat out on the grass and was adjusting the
+rigging.</p>
+
+<p>"'That's quite a boat,' I began.</p>
+
+<p>"'It's not a bad tub,' he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"'Do you hire it from the park department?' I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'No!' with some scorn.</p>
+
+<p>"'Where do you buy them?'</p>
+
+<p>"'We don't buy them.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Then how&mdash;?' I started.</p>
+
+<p>"'We make 'em&mdash;nights.'</p>
+
+<p>"He resumed his work. The boat was accurately and beautifully
+turned&mdash;hollow inside&mdash;with a deck of glossy wood. The rudder was
+controlled by finest tackle and hardware. Altogether, it was as
+delicately wrought as a violin.</p>
+
+<p>"'It's this way!'&mdash;its builder and skipper laid down his pipe&mdash;'There
+are about thirty of us boys who are dippy about boats. We can't afford
+real boats, so we make these little ones. Daytimes I am an interior
+decorator. This is a thirty-six. Next winter&mdash;if my wife will stand
+the muss (My God! How it litters up the dining-room!) I am going to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+build a forty-two. All of the boys bring out a new boat each spring!'
+The old fellow squinted at his mast and tightened a cord. Then he
+continued. 'If you are interested, come around any Sunday morning
+until the pond is frozen. And if you want to try your hand at a boat
+this winter, just ask any of us boys and we will help you. Your first
+boat or two will be sad&mdash;<i>Ju-das!</i> But you will learn.'"</p>
+
+<p>Flint was interrupted by Quill. "Isn't that rather a silly occupation
+for grown men?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's not an occupation," said Flint. "It's an avocation, and it isn't
+silly. Any one of us would enjoy it, if he weren't so self-conscious.
+And it's more picturesque than golf and takes more skill. And what
+courtesy! These men form what is really a club&mdash;a club in its
+primitive and true sense. And I was invited to be one of them."</p>
+
+<p>Flannel Shirt broke in. "By George, that <i>was</i> courtesy. If you had
+happened on a polo player at his club&mdash;a man not known to you&mdash;he
+wouldn't have invited you to come around and bring your pony for
+instruction."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not an exact comparison, is it, Old Flannel Shirt?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, maybe not."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. It was Flint who resumed. "I rather like to think
+of that interior decorator littering up his dining-room every
+night&mdash;clamps and glue-pots on the sideboard&mdash;hardly room for the
+sugar-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>bowl&mdash;lumber underneath&mdash;and then bringing out a new boat in
+the spring."</p>
+
+<p>Wurm looked up from the couch. "Stevenson," he said, "should have
+known that fellow. He would have found him a place among his Lantern
+Bearers."</p>
+
+<p>Flint continued. "From the pond I walked down Fifth Avenue."</p>
+
+<p>"It's Fifth Avenue," said Flannel Shirt, "everything up above
+Fifty-ninth Street&mdash;and what it stands for, that I want to get away
+from."</p>
+
+<p>"Easy, Flannel Shirt," said Flint. "Fifth Avenue doesn't interest me
+much either. It's too lonely. Everybody is always away. The big stone
+buildings aren't homes: they are points of departure, as somebody
+called them. And they were built for kings and persons of spacious
+lives, but they have been sublet to smaller folk. Or does no one live
+inside? You never see a curtain stir. There is never a face at a
+window. Everything is stone and dead. One might think that a Gorgon
+had gone riding on a 'bus top, and had thrown his cold eye upon the
+house fronts." Flint paused. "How can one live obscurely, as these
+folk do, in the twilight, in so beautiful a shell? Even a crustacean
+sometimes shows his nose at his door. And yet what a wonderful street
+it would be if persons really lived there, and looked out of their
+windows, and sometimes, on clear days, hung their tapestries and rugs
+across the outer walls. Actually,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> added Flint, "I prefer to walk on
+the East Side. It is gayer."</p>
+
+<p>"There is poverty, of course," he went on after a moment, "and
+suffering. But the streets are not depressing. They have fun on the
+East Side. There are so many children and there is no loneliness. If
+the street is blessed with a standpipe, it seems designed as a post
+for leaping. Any vacant wall&mdash;if the street is so lucky&mdash;serves for a
+game. There is baseball on the smooth pavement, or if one has a piece
+of chalk, he can lay out a kind of hopscotch&mdash;not stretched out, for
+there isn't room, but rolled up like a jelly cake. One must hop to the
+middle and out again. Or perhaps one is an artist and with a crayon he
+spends his grudge upon an enemy&mdash;these drawings can be no likeness of
+a friend. Or love guides the chalky fingers. And all the time
+slim-legged girls sit on curb and step and act as nursemaids to the
+younger fry."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my word, what smells!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course, and not very pleasant smells. Down on these streets
+we can learn what dogs think of us. But every Saturday night on Grand
+Street there is a market. I bought a tumbler of little nuts from an
+old woman. They aren't much good to eat&mdash;wee nuts, all shell&mdash;and they
+still sit in the kitchen getting dusty. It was raining when I bought
+them and the woman's hair was streaked in her face, but she didn't
+mind. There were pent roofs over all the carts.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> Everything on God's
+earth was for sale. On the cart next to my old woman's, there was
+hardware&mdash;sieves, cullenders&mdash;kitchen stuff. And on the next, wearing
+gear, with women's stockings hung on a rope at the back. A girl came
+along carrying a pair of champagne-colored shoes, looking for
+stockings to match. Quite a belle. Somebody's girl. Quill, go down
+there on a Saturday night. It will make a column for your paper. I
+wonder if that girl found her stockings. A black-eyed Italian.</p>
+
+<p>"But what I like best are the windows on the East Side. No one there
+ever says that his house is his castle. On the contrary it is his
+point of vantage&mdash;his outlook&mdash;his prospect. His house front never
+dozes. Windows are really windows, places to look out of&mdash;not openings
+for household exhibits&mdash;ornamental lamps or china things&mdash;at every
+window there is a head&mdash;somebody looking on the world. There is a
+pleasant gossip across the fire-escapes&mdash;a recipe for onions&mdash;a hint
+of fashion&mdash;a cure for rheumatism. The street bears the general life.
+The home is the street, not merely the crowded space within four
+walls. The street is the playground and the club&mdash;the common stage,
+and these are the galleries and boxes. We come again close to the
+beginning of the modern theatre&mdash;an innyard with windows round about.
+The play is shinny in the gutters. Venders come and go, selling fruit
+and red suspenders. An<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> ice wagon clatters off, with a half-dozen
+children on its tailboard."</p>
+
+<p>Flint flecked his ashes on the floor. "I wonder," he said at length,
+"that those persons who try to tempt these people out of the congested
+city to farms, don't see how falsely they go about it. They should
+reproduce the city in miniature&mdash;a dozen farmhouses must be huddled
+together to make a snug little town, where all the children may play
+and where the women, as they work, may talk across the windows. They
+must build villages like the farming towns of France.</p>
+
+<p>"But where can one be so stirred as on the wharves? From here even the
+narrowest fancy reaches out to the four watery corners of the earth.
+No nose is so green and country-bred that it doesn't sniff the spices
+of India. Great ships lie in the channel camouflaged with war. If we
+could forget the terror of the submarine, would not these lines and
+stars and colors appear to us as symbols of the strange mystery of the
+far-off seas?</p>
+
+<p>"Or if it is a day of sailing, there are a thousand barrels, oil
+maybe, ranged upon the wharf, standing at fat attention to go aboard.
+Except for numbers it might appear&mdash;although I am rusty at the
+legend&mdash;that in these barrels Ali Baba has hid his forty thieves for
+roguery when the ship is out to sea. Doubtless if one knocked upon a
+top and put his ear close upon a barrel, he would hear a villain's
+guttural voice inside, asking if the time were come.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Then there are the theatres and parks, great caverns where a subway
+is being built. There are geraniums on window-sills, wash hanging on
+dizzy lines (cotton gymnasts practicing for a circus), a roar of
+traffic and shrill whistles, men and women eating&mdash;always eating.
+There has been nothing like this in all the ages. Babylon and Nineveh
+were only villages. Carthage was a crossroads. It is as though all the
+cities of antiquity had packed their bags and moved here to a common
+spot."</p>
+
+<p>"Please, Flint," this from Colum, "but you forget that the faces of
+those who live in the country are happier. That's all that counts."</p>
+
+<p>"Not happier&mdash;less alert, that's all&mdash;duller. For contentment, I'll
+wager against any farmhand the old woman who sells apples at the
+corner. She polishes them on her apron with&mdash;with spit. There is an
+Italian who peddles ice from a handcart on our street, and he never
+sees me without a grin. The folk who run our grocery, a man and his
+wife, seem happy all the day. No! we misjudge the city and we have
+done so since the days of Wordsworth. If we prized the city rightly,
+we would be at more pains to make it better&mdash;to lessen its suffering.
+We ought to go into the crowded parts with an eye not only for the
+poverty, but also with sympathy for its beauty&mdash;its love of
+sunshine&mdash;the tenderness with which the elder children guard the
+younger&mdash;its love of music&mdash;its dancing&mdash;its naturalness. If we had
+this sympathy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> we could help&mdash;<i>ourselves</i>, first&mdash;and after that,
+maybe, the East Side."</p>
+
+<p>Flint arose and leaned against the chimney. He shook an accusing
+finger at the company. "You, Colum, ruin fifty weeks for the sake of
+two. You, Quill, hypnotize yourself into a frazzle by Saturday noon
+with unnecessary fret. You peck over your food too much. A little
+clear unmuddled thinking would straighten you out, even if you didn't
+let the ants crawl over you on Sunday afternoon. Old Flannel Shirt is
+blinded by his spleen against society. As for Wurm, he doesn't count.
+He's only a harmless bit of mummy-wrapping."</p>
+
+<p>"And what are you, Flint?" asked Quill.</p>
+
+<p>"Me? A rational man, I hope."</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;you are an egotist. That's what you are."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said Flint. "It's just as you say."</p>
+
+<p>There was a red flash from the top of the Metropolitan Tower. Flint
+looked at his watch. "So?" he said, "I must be going."</p>
+
+<p>And now that our party is over and I am home at last, I put out the
+light and draw open the curtains. Tomorrow&mdash;it is to be a holiday&mdash;I
+had planned to climb in the Highlands, for I, too, am addicted to the
+country. But perhaps&mdash;perhaps I'll change my plan and stay in town.
+I'll take a hint from Flint. I'll go down to Delancey Street and watch
+the chaffering and buying. What he said was true. He overstated his
+position, of course. Most propagandists do, being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> swept off in the
+current of their swift conviction. One should like both the city and
+the country; and the liking for one should heighten the liking for the
+other. Any particular receptiveness must grow to be a general
+receptiveness. Yet, in the main, certainly, Flint was right. I'll try
+Delancey Street, I concluded, just this once.</p>
+
+<p>Thousands of roofs lie below me, for I live in a tower as of
+Teufelsdr&ouml;ckh. And many of them shield a bit of grief&mdash;darkened rooms
+where sick folk lie&mdash;rooms where hope is faint. And yet, as I believe,
+under these roofs there is more joy than grief&mdash;more contentment and
+happiness than despair, even in these grievous times of war. If Quill
+here frets himself into wakefulness and Colum chafes for the coming of
+the summer, also let us remember that in the murk and shadows of these
+rooms there are, at the least, thirty sailors from Central Park&mdash;one
+old fellow in particular who, although the hour is late, still putters
+with his boat in the litter of his dining-room. Glue-pots on the
+sideboard! Clamps among the china, and lumber on the hearth! And down
+on Grand Street, snug abed, dreaming of pleasant conquest, sleeps the
+dark-eyed Italian girl. On a chair beside her are her champagne boots,
+with stockings to match hung across the back.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Runaway_Studies" id="Runaway_Studies"></a>Runaway Studies.</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+<p>n my edition of "Elia," illustrated by Brock, whose sympathetic pen,
+surely, was nibbed in days contemporary with Lamb, there is a sketch
+of a youth reclining on a window-seat with a book fallen open on his
+knees. He is clad in a long plain garment folded to his heels which
+carries a hint of a cathedral choir but which, doubtless, is the
+prescribed costume of an English public school. This lad is gazing
+through the casement into a sunny garden&mdash;for the artist's vague
+stippling invites the suspicion of grass and trees. Or rather, does
+not the intensity of his regard attest that his nimble thoughts have
+jumped the outmost wall? Already he journeys to those peaks and lofty
+towers that fringe the world of youth&mdash;a dizzy range that casts a
+magic border on his first wide thoughts, to be overleaped if he seek
+to tread the stars.</p>
+
+<p>And yet it seems a sleepy afternoon. Flowers nod upon a shelf in the
+idle breeze from the open casement. On the warm sill a drowsy sunlight
+falls, as if the great round orb of day, having labored to the top of
+noon, now dawdled idly on the farther slope. A cat dozes with lazy
+comfort on the window-seat. Surely, this is the cat&mdash;if the old story
+be believed&mdash;the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> sleepiest of all her race, in whose dull ear the
+mouse dared to nest and breed.</p>
+
+<p>This lad, who is so lost in thought, is none other than Charles Lamb,
+a mere stripling, not yet grown to his black small-clothes and sober
+gaiters, a shrill squeak of a boy scarcely done with his battledore.
+And here he sits, his cheek upon his palm, and dreams of the future.</p>
+
+<p>But Lamb himself has written of this window-seat. Journeying northward
+out of London&mdash;in that wonderful middle age of his in which the Elia
+papers were composed&mdash;journeying northward he came once on the great
+country house where a part of his boyhood had been spent. It had been
+but lately given to the wreckers, "and the demolition of a few weeks,"
+he writes, "had reduced it to&mdash;an antiquity."</p>
+
+<p>"Had I seen those brick-and-mortar knaves at their process of
+destruction," he continues, "at the plucking of every pannel I should
+have felt the varlets at my heart. I should have cried out to them to
+spare a plank at least out of that cheerful storeroom, in whose hot
+window-seat I used to sit and read Cowley, with the grass-plat before,
+and the hum and flappings of that one solitary wasp that ever haunted
+it about me&mdash;it is in mine ears now, as oft as summer returns...."</p>
+
+<p>I confess to a particular enjoyment of this essay, with its memory of
+tapestried bedrooms setting forth upon their walls "the unappeasable
+prudery of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> Diana" under the peeping eye of Act&aelig;on; its echoing
+galleries once so dreadful when the night wind caught the candle at
+the turn; its hall of family portraits. But chiefly it is this
+window-seat that holds me&mdash;the casement looking on the garden and its
+southern sun-baked wall&mdash;the lad dreaming on his volume of Cowley, and
+leaping the garden border for the stars. These are the things that I
+admit most warmly to my affection.</p>
+
+<p>It is not in the least that I am a lover of Cowley, who seems an
+unpleasantly antiquated author. I would choose, instead, that the
+youthful Elia were busy so early with one of his favorite
+Elizabethans. He has himself hinted that he read "The Vicar of
+Wakefield" in later days out of a tattered copy from a circulating
+library, yet I would willingly move the occasion forward, coincident
+to this. And I suspect that the artist Brock is also indifferent to
+Cowley: for has he not laid two other volumes handy on the shelf for
+the sure time when Cowley shall grow dull? Has he not even put Cowley
+flat down upon his face, as if, already neglected, he had slipped from
+the lad's negligent fingers&mdash;as if, indeed, Elia's far-striding
+meditation were to him of higher interest than the stiff measure of
+any poet?</p>
+
+<p>I recall a child, dimly through the years, that lay upon the rug
+before the fire to read his book, with his chin resting on both his
+hands. His favorite hour was the winter twilight before the family
+came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> together for their supper, for at that hour the lamplighter went
+his rounds and threw a golden string of dots upon the street. He drove
+an old thin horse and he stood on the seat of the cart with
+up-stretched taper. But when the world grew dark the flare of the fire
+was enough for the child to read, for he lay close against the hearth.
+And as the shadows gathered in the room, there was one story chiefly,
+of such intensity that the excitement of it swept through his body and
+out into his waving legs. Perhaps its last copy has now vanished off
+the earth. It dealt with a deserted house on a lonely road, where
+chains clanked at midnight. Lights, too, seemingly not of earth,
+glimmered at the windows, while groans&mdash;such was the dark fancy of the
+author&mdash;issued from a windy tower. But there was one supreme chapter
+in which the hero was locked in a haunted room and saw a candle at a
+chink of the wall. It belonged to the villain, who nightly played
+there a ghostly antic to frighten honest folk from a buried treasure.</p>
+
+<p>And in summer the child read on the casement of the dining-room with
+the window up. It was the height of a tall man from the ground, and
+this gave it a bit of dizziness that enhanced the pleasure. This sill
+could be dully reached from inside, but the approach from the outside
+was riskiest and best. For an adventuring mood this window was a kind
+of postern to the house for innocent deception, beyond the eye of both
+the sitting-room and cook. Sometimes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> it was the bridge of a lofty
+ship with a pilot going up and down, or it was a lighthouse to mark a
+channel. It was as versatile as the kitchen step-ladder which&mdash;on
+Thursday afternoons when the cook was out&mdash;unbent from its sober
+household duties and joined him as an equal. But chiefly on this sill
+the child read his books on summer days. His cousins sat inside on
+chairs, starched for company, and read safe and dimpled authors, but
+his were of a vagrant kind. There was one book, especially, in which a
+lad not much bigger than himself ran from home and joined a circus. A
+scolding aunt was his excuse. And the child on the sill chafed at his
+own happy circumstance which denied him these adventures.</p>
+
+<p>In a dark room in an upper story of the house there was a great box
+where old books and periodicals were stored. No place this side of
+Cimmeria had deeper shadows. Not even the underground stall of the
+neighbor's cow, which showed a gloomy window on the garden, gave quite
+the chill. It was only on the brightest days that the child dared to
+rummage in this box. The top of it was high and it was blind fumbling
+unless he stood upon a chair. Then he bent over, jack-knife fashion,
+until the upper part of him&mdash;all above the legs&mdash;disappeared. In the
+obscurity&mdash;his head being gone&mdash;it must have seemed that Solomon lived
+upon the premises and had carried out his ugly threat in that old
+affair of the disputed child. Then he lifted out the papers&mdash;in
+particular<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> a set of <i>Leslie's Weekly</i> with battle pictures of the
+Civil War. Once he discovered a tale of Jules Verne&mdash;a journey to the
+center of the earth&mdash;and he spread its chapters before the window in
+the dusty light.</p>
+
+<p>But the view was high across the houses of the city to a range of
+hills where tall trees grew as a hedge upon the world. And it was the
+hours when his book lay fallen that counted most, for then he built
+poems in his fancy of ships at sea and far-off countries.</p>
+
+<p>It is by a fine instinct that children thus neglect their books,
+whether it be Cowley or Circus Dick. When they seem most truant they
+are the closest rapt. A book at its best starts the thought and sends
+it off as a happy vagrant. It is the thought that runs away across the
+margin that brings back the richest treasure.</p>
+
+<p>But all reading in childhood is not happy. It chanced that lately in
+the long vacation I explored a country school for boys. It stood on
+the shaded street of a pretty New England village, so perched on a
+hilltop that it looked over a wide stretch of lower country. There
+were many marks of a healthful outdoor life&mdash;a football field and
+tennis courts, broad lawns and a prospect of distant woodland for a
+holiday excursion. It was on the steps of one of the buildings used
+for recitation that I found a tattered dog-eared remnant of <i>The
+Merchant of Venice</i>. So much of its front was gone that at the very
+first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> of it Shylock had advanced far into his unworthy schemes.
+Evidently the book, by its position at the corner of the steps, had
+been thrown out immediately at the close of the final class, as if
+already it had been endured too long.</p>
+
+<p>In the stillness of the abandoned school I sat for an hour and read
+about the choosing of the caskets. The margins were filled with
+drawings&mdash;one possibly a likeness of the teacher. Once there was a
+figure in a skirt&mdash;straight, single lines for legs&mdash;<i>Jack's
+girl</i>&mdash;scrawled in evident derision of a neighbor student's amatory
+weakness. There were records of baseball scores. Railroads were drawn
+obliquely across the pages, bending about in order not to touch the
+words, with a rare tunnel where some word stood out too long. Here and
+there were stealthy games of tit-tat-toe, practiced, doubtless, behind
+the teacher's back. Everything showed boredom with the play. What
+mattered it which casket was selected! Let Shylock take his pound of
+flesh! Only let him whet his knife and be quick about it! All's one.
+It's at best a sad and sleepy story suited only for a winter's day.
+But now spring is here&mdash;spring that is the king of all the seasons.</p>
+
+<p>A bee comes buzzing on the pane. It flies off in careless truantry.
+The clock ticks slowly like a lazy partner in the teacher's dull
+conspiracy. Outside stretches the green world with its trees and
+hills<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> and moving clouds. There is a river yonder with swimming-holes.
+A dog barks on a distant road.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the lad's book slips from his negligent fingers. He places
+it face down upon the desk. It lies disregarded like that volume of
+old Cowley one hundred years ago. His eyes wander from the black-board
+where the <i>Merchant's</i> dry lines are scanned and marked.</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&acute;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&acute;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&acute;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&acute;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&acute;<br />
+<i>In sooth, I know not why I am so sad.</i></div>
+
+
+<p>And then ... his thoughts have clambered through the window. They have
+leaped across the schoolyard wall. Still in his ears he hears the
+jogging of the <i>Merchant</i>&mdash;but the sound grows dim. Like that other
+lad of long ago, his thoughts have jumped the hills. Already, with
+giddy stride, they are journeying to the profound region of the stars.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image_116.jpg" width="600" height="351" alt="Woodcut"  />
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="On_Turning_Into_Forty" id="On_Turning_Into_Forty"></a>On Turning Into Forty.</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>he other day, without any bells or whistles, I slipped off from the
+thirties. I felt the same sleepiness that morning. There was no
+apparent shifting of the grade.</p>
+
+<p>I am conscious, maybe, that my agility is not what it was fifteen
+years ago. I do not leap across the fences. But I am not yet comic.
+Yonder stout man waddles as if he were a precious bombard. He strains
+at his forward buttons. Unless he mend his appetite, his shoes will be
+lost below his waistcoat. Already their tops and hulls, like battered
+caravels, disappear beneath his fat horizon. With him I bear no
+fellowship. But although nature has not stuffed me with her sweets to
+this thick rotundity; alas, despite of tubes and bottles, no shadowy
+garden flourishes on my top&mdash;waving capillary grasses and a prim path
+between the bush. Rather, I bear a general parade and smooth pleasance
+open to the glimpses of the moon.</p>
+
+<p>And so at last I have turned into the forties. I remember now how
+heedlessly I had remarked a small brisk clock ticking upon the shelf
+as it counted the seconds&mdash;paying out to me, as it were, for my
+pleasure and expense, the brief coinage of my life. I had heard, also,
+unmindful of the warning, a tall and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> solemn clock as I lay awake,
+marking regretfully the progress of the night. And I had been told
+that water runs always beneath the bridge, that the deepest roses
+fade, that Time's white beard keeps growing to his knee. These phrases
+of wisdom I had heard and others. But what mattered them to me when my
+long young life lay stretched before me? Nor did the revolving stars
+concern me&mdash;nor the moon, spring with its gaudy brush, nor gray-clad
+winter. Nor did I care how the wind blew the swift seasons across the
+earth. Let Time's horses gallop, I cried. Speed! The bewildering peaks
+of youth are forward. The inn for the night lies far across the
+mountains.</p>
+
+<p>But the seconds were entered on the ledger. At last the gray penman
+has made his footing. The great page turns. I have passed out of the
+thirties.</p>
+
+<p>I am not given to brooding on my age. It is only by checking the years
+on my fingers that I am able to reckon the time of my birth. In the
+election booth, under a hard eye, I fumble the years and invite
+suspicion. Eighteen hundred and seventy-eight, I think it was. But
+even this salient fact&mdash;this milepost on my eternity&mdash;I remember most
+quickly by the recollection of a jack-knife acquired on my tenth
+birthday. By way of celebration on that day, having selected the
+longest blade, I cut the date&mdash;1888&mdash;in the kitchen woodwork with
+rather a pretty flourish when the cook was out. The swift events that
+followed the discovery&mdash;the dear woman paddled me with a great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> spoon
+through the door&mdash;fastened the occurrence in my memory.</p>
+
+<p>It was about the year of the jack-knife that there lived in our
+neighborhood a bad boy whose name was Elmer. I would have quite
+forgotten him except that I met him on the pavement a few weeks ago.
+He was the bully of our street&mdash;a towering rogue with red hair and one
+suspender. I remember a chrome bandage which he shifted from toe to
+toe. This lad was of larger speech than the rest of us and he could
+spit between his teeth. He used to snatch the caps of the younger boys
+and went off with our baseball across the fences. He was wrapped, too,
+in mystery, and it was rumored&mdash;softly from ear to ear&mdash;that once he
+had been arrested and taken to the station-house.</p>
+
+<p>And yet here he was, after all these years, not a bearded brigand with
+a knife sticking from his boot, but a mild undersized man, hat in
+hand, smiling at me with pleasant cordiality. His red hair had faded
+to a harmless carrot. From an overtopping rascal he had dwindled to my
+shoulder. It was as strange and incomprehensible as if the broken
+middle-aged gentleman, my familiar neighbor across the street who nods
+all day upon his step, were pointed out to me as Captain Kidd retired.
+Can it be that all villains come at last to a slippered state? Does
+Dick Turpin of the King's highway now falter with crutch along a
+garden path? And Captain Singleton, now that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> his last victim has
+walked the plank&mdash;does he doze on a sunny bench beneath his pear tree?
+Is no blood or treasure left upon the earth? Do all rascals lose their
+teeth? "Good evening, Elmer," I said, "it has been a long time since
+we have met." And I left him agreeable and smiling.</p>
+
+<p>No, certainly I do not brood upon my age. Except for a gift I forget
+my birthday. It is only by an effort that I can think of myself as
+running toward middle age. If I meet a stranger, usually, by a
+pleasant deception, I think myself the younger, and because of an
+old-fashioned deference for age I bow and scrape in the doorway for
+his passage.</p>
+
+<p>Of course I admit a suckling to be my junior. A few days since I
+happened to dine at one of the Purple Pups of our Greenwich Village.
+At my table, which was slashed with yellow and blue in the fashion of
+these places, sat a youth of seventeen who engaged me in conversation.
+Plainly, even to my blindness, he was younger than myself. The milk
+was scarcely dry upon his mouth. He was, by his admission across the
+soup, a writer of plays and he had received already as many as three
+pleasant letters of rejection. He flared with youth. Strange gases and
+opinion burned in his speech. His breast pocket bulged with
+manuscript, for reading at a hint.</p>
+
+<p>I was poking at my dumpling when he asked me if I were a socialist.
+No, I replied. Then perhaps I was an anarchist or a Bolshevist, he
+persisted.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> N-no, I answered him, sadly and slowly, for I foresaw his
+scorn. He leaned forward across the table. Begging my pardon for an
+intrusion in my affairs, he asked me if I were not aware that the
+world was slipping away from me. God knows. Perhaps. I had come
+frisking to that restaurant. I left it broken and decrepit. The
+youngster had his manuscripts and his anarchy. He held the wriggling
+world by its futuristic tail. It was not my world, to be sure, but it
+was a gay world and daubed with color.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, despite this humiliating encounter, I feel quite young.
+Something has passed before me that may be Time. The summers have come
+and gone. There is snow on the pavement where I remember rain. I see,
+if I choose, the long vista of the years, with diminishing figures,
+and tin soldiers at the start. Yet I doubt if I am growing older. To
+myself I seem younger than in my twenties. In the twenties we are
+quite commonly old. We bear the whole weight of society. The world has
+been waiting so long for us and our remedies. In the twenties we scorn
+old authority. We let Titian and Keats go drown themselves. We are
+skeptical in religion, and before our unrelenting iron throne
+immortality and all things of faith plead in vain. Although I can show
+still only a shabby inventory, certainly I would not exchange myself
+for that other self in the twenties. I have acquired in these last few
+years a less narrow sympathy and a belief that some of my colder
+reasons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> may be wrong. Nor would I barter certain knacks of
+thoughts&mdash;serious and humorous&mdash;for the renewed ability to leap across
+a five-foot bar. I am less fearful of the world and its accidents. I
+have less embarrassment before people. I am less moody. I tack and
+veer less among my betters for some meaner profit. Surely I am growing
+younger.</p>
+
+<p>I seem to remember reading a story in which a scientist devised a
+means of reversing the direction of the earth. Perhaps an explosion of
+gases backfired against the east. Perhaps he built a monstrous lever
+and contrived the moon to be his fulcrum. Anyway, here at last was the
+earth spinning backward in its course&mdash;the spring preceding
+winter&mdash;the sun rising in the west&mdash;one o'clock going before
+twelve&mdash;soup trailing after nuts&mdash;the seed-time following upon the
+harvest. And so it began to appear&mdash;so ran the story&mdash;that human life,
+too, was reversed. Persons came into the world as withered grandames
+and as old gentlemen with gold-headed canes, and then receded like
+crabs backward into their maturity, then into their adolescence and
+babyhood. To return from a protracted voyage was to find your younger
+friends sunk into pinafores. But the story was really too ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>But in these last few years no doubt I do grow younger. The great
+camera of the Master rolls its moving pictures backward. Perhaps I am
+only thirty-eight now that the direction is reversed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image_123.jpg" width="500" height="554" alt="Woodcut"  />
+</div>
+
+<p>I wonder what you thought, my dear X&mdash;&mdash;, when we met recently at
+dinner. We had not seen one another very often in these last few
+years. Our paths have led apart and we have not been even at shouting
+distance across the fields. It is needless to remind you, I hope, that
+I once paid you marked attention. It began when we were boy and girl.
+Our friends<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> talked, you will recall. You were then less than a year
+younger than myself, although no doubt you have since lost distance.
+What a long time I spent upon my tie and collar&mdash;a stiff high collar
+that almost touched my ears! Some other turn of fortune's
+wheel&mdash;circumstance&mdash;a shaft of moonlight (we were young, my dear)&mdash;a
+white frock&mdash;your acquiescence&mdash;who knows?</p>
+
+<p>I jilted you once or twice for other girls&mdash;nothing formal, of
+course&mdash;but only when you had jilted me three or four times. We once
+rowed upon a river at night. Did I take your hand, my dear? If I
+listen now I can hear the water dripping from the oar. There was
+darkness&mdash;and stars&mdash;and youth (yourself, white-armed, the symbol of
+its mystery). Yes, perhaps I am older now.</p>
+
+<p>Was it not Byron who wrote?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am ashes where once I was fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the soul in my bosom is dead;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What I loved I now merely admire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my heart is as gray as my head.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I cannot pretend ever to have had so fierce a passion, but at least my
+fire still burns and with a cheery blaze. But you will not know this
+love of mine&mdash;unless, of course, you read this page&mdash;and even so, you
+can only suspect that I write of you, because, my dear, to be quite
+frank, I paid attention to several girls beside yourself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Yes, they say that I have come to the top of the hill and that
+henceforth the view is back across my shoulder. I am counseled that
+with a turn of the road I had best sit with my back to the horses, for
+the mountains are behind. A little while and the finer purple will be
+showing in the west. Yet a little while, they say, and the bewildering
+peaks of youth will be gray and cold.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps some of the greener pleasures are mine no longer. Certainly,
+last night I went to the Winter Garden, but left bored after the first
+act; and I had left sooner except for climbing across my neighbors. I
+suppose there are young popinjays who seriously affirm that Ziegfeld's
+Beauty Chorus is equal to the galaxy of loveliness that once pranced
+at Weber and Field's when we came down from college on Saturday night.
+At old Coster and Bial's there was once a marvelous beauty who swung
+from a trapeze above the audience and scandalously undressed herself
+down to the fifth encore and her stockings. And, really, are there
+plays now as exciting as the <i>Prisoner of Zenda</i>, with its great fight
+upon the stairs&mdash;three men dead and the tables overturned&mdash;Red
+Rudolph, in the end, bearing off the Princess? Heroes no longer wear
+cloak and sword and rescue noble ladies from castle towers.</p>
+
+<p>And Welsh rabbit, that was once a passion and the high symbol of
+extravagance, in these days has lost its finest flavor. In vain do we
+shake the paprika<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> can. Pop-beer and real beer, its manly cousin, have
+neither of them the old foaming tingle when you come off the water.
+Yes, already, I am told, I am on the long road that leads down to the
+quiet inn at the mountain foot. I am promised, to be sure, many wide
+prospects, pleasant sounds of wind and water, and friendly greetings
+by the way. There will be a stop here and there for refreshments, a
+pause at the turn where the world shows best, a tightening of the
+brake. Get up, Dobbin! Go 'long! And then, tired and nodding, at last,
+we shall leave the upland and enter the twilight where all roads end.</p>
+
+<p>A pleasant picture, is it not&mdash;a grandfather in a cap&mdash;yourself, my
+dear sir, hugging your cold shins in the chimney corner? Is it not a
+brave end to a stirring business? Life, you say, is a journey up and
+down a hill&mdash;aspirations unattained and a mild regret, castles at
+dawn, a brisk wind for the noontide, and at night, at best, the lights
+of a little village, the stir of water on the stones, and silence.</p>
+
+<p>Is this true? Or do we not reiterate a lie? I deny old age. It is a
+false belief, a bad philosophy dimming the eyes of generations. Men
+and women may wear caps, but not because of age. In each one's heart,
+if he permit, a child keeps house to the very end. If Welsh rabbit
+lose its flavor, is it a sign of decaying power? I have yet to know
+that a relish for Shakespeare declines, or the love of one's friends,
+or the love of truth and beauty. Youth does not view<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> the loftiest
+peaks. It is at sunset that the tallest castles rise.</p>
+
+<p>My dear sir&mdash;you of seventy or beyond&mdash;if no rim of mountains
+stretches up before you, it is not your age that denies you but the
+quality of your thought. It has been said of old that as a man thinks
+so he is, but who of us has learned the lesson?</p>
+
+<p>The journey has neither a beginning nor an end. Now is eternity. Our
+birth is but a signpost on the road&mdash;our going hence, another post to
+mark transition and our progress. The oldest stars are brief lamps
+upon our way. We shall travel wisely if we see peaks and castles all
+the day, and hold our childhood in our hearts. Then, when at last the
+night has come, we shall plant our second post upon a windy height
+where it will be first to catch the dawn.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image_128.jpg" width="600" height="486" alt="Woodcut"  />
+</div>
+<h2><a name="On_the_Difference_Between_Wit_and_Humor" id="On_the_Difference_Between_Wit_and_Humor"></a>On the Difference Between Wit and Humor.</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;am not sure that I can draw an exact line between wit and humor.
+Perhaps the distinction is so subtle that only those persons can
+decide who have long white beards. But even an ignorant man, so long
+as he is clear of Bedlam, may have an opinion.</p>
+
+<p>I am quite positive that of the two, humor is the more comfortable and
+more livable quality. Humorous persons, if their gift is genuine and
+not a mere shine upon the surface, are always agreeable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> companions
+and they sit through the evening best. They have pleasant mouths
+turned up at the corners. To these corners the great Master of
+marionettes has fixed the strings and he holds them in his nimblest
+fingers to twitch them at the slightest jest. But the mouth of a
+merely witty man is hard and sour until the moment of its discharge.
+Nor is the flash from a witty man always comforting, whereas a
+humorous man radiates a general pleasure and is like another candle in
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>I admire wit, but I have no real liking for it. It has been too often
+employed against me, whereas humor is always an ally. It never points
+an impertinent finger into my defects. Humorous persons do not sit
+like explosives on a fuse. They are safe and easy comrades. But a
+wit's tongue is as sharp as a donkey driver's stick. I may gallop the
+faster for its prodding, yet the touch behind is too persuasive for
+any comfort.</p>
+
+<p>Wit is a lean creature with sharp inquiring nose, whereas humor has a
+kindly eye and comfortable girth. Wit, if it be necessary, uses malice
+to score a point&mdash;like a cat it is quick to jump&mdash;but humor keeps the
+peace in an easy chair. Wit has a better voice in a solo, but humor
+comes into the chorus best. Wit is as sharp as a stroke of lightning,
+whereas humor is diffuse like sunlight. Wit keeps the season's
+fashions and is precise in the phrases and judgments of the day, but
+humor is concerned with homely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> eternal things. Wit wears silk, but
+humor in homespun endures the wind. Wit sets a snare, whereas humor
+goes off whistling without a victim in its mind. Wit is sharper
+company at table, but humor serves better in mischance and in the
+rain. When it tumbles wit is sour, but humor goes uncomplaining
+without its dinner. Humor laughs at another's jest and holds its
+sides, while wit sits wrapped in study for a lively answer. But it is
+a workaday world in which we live, where we get mud upon our boots and
+come weary to the twilight&mdash;it is a world that grieves and suffers
+from many wounds in these years of war: and therefore as I think of my
+acquaintance, it is those who are humorous in its best and truest
+meaning rather than those who are witty who give the more profitable
+companionship.</p>
+
+<p>And then, also, there is wit that is not wit. As someone has written:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nor ever noise for wit on me could pass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When thro' the braying I discern'd the ass.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I sat lately at dinner with a notoriously witty person (a really witty
+man) whom our hostess had introduced to provide the entertainment. I
+had read many of his reviews of books and plays, and while I confess
+their wit and brilliancy, I had thought them to be hard and
+intellectual and lacking in all that broader base of humor which aims
+at truth. His writing&mdash;catching the bad habit of the time&mdash;is too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+ready to proclaim a paradox and to assert the unusual, to throw aside
+in contempt the valuable haystack in a fine search for a paltry
+needle. His reviews are seldom right&mdash;as most of us see the right&mdash;but
+they sparkle and hold one's interest for their perversity and
+unexpected turns.</p>
+
+<p>In conversation I found him much as I had found him in his
+writing&mdash;although, strictly speaking, it was not a conversation, which
+requires an interchange of word and idea and is turn about. A
+conversation should not be a market where one sells and another buys.
+Rather, it should be a bargaining back and forth, and each person
+should be both merchant and buyer. My rubber plant for your victrola,
+each offering what he has and seeking his deficiency. It was my friend
+B&mdash;&mdash; who fairly put the case when he said that he liked so much to
+talk that he was willing to pay for his audience by listening in his
+turn.</p>
+
+<p>But this was a speech and a lecture. He loosed on us from the cold
+spigot of his intellect a steady flow of literary allusion&mdash;a practice
+which he professes to hold in scorn&mdash;and wit and epigram. He seemed
+torn from the page of Meredith. He talked like ink. I had believed
+before that only people in books could talk as he did, and then only
+when their author had blotted and scratched their performance for a
+seventh time before he sent it to the printer. To me it was an
+entirely new experience, for my usual acquaintances are good common
+honest daytime woollen folk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> and they seldom average better than one
+bright thing in an evening.</p>
+
+<p>At first I feared that there might be a break in his flow of speech
+which I should be obliged to fill. Once, when there was a slight
+pause&mdash;a truffle was engaging him&mdash;I launched a frail remark; but it
+was swept off at once in the renewed torrent. And seriously it does
+not seem fair. If one speaker insists&mdash;to change the figure&mdash;on laying
+all the cobbles of a conversation, he should at least allow another to
+carry the tarpot and fill in the chinks. When the evening was over,
+although I recalled two or three clever stories, which I shall botch
+in the telling, I came away tired and dissatisfied, my tongue dry with
+disuse.</p>
+
+<p>Now I would not seek that kind of man as a companion with whom to be
+becalmed in a sailboat, and I would not wish to go to the country with
+him, least of all to the North Woods or any place outside of
+civilization. I am sure that he would sulk if he were deprived of an
+audience. He would be crotchety at breakfast across his bacon.
+Certainly for the woods a humorous man is better company, for his
+humor in mischance comforts both him and you. A humorous man&mdash;and here
+lies the heart of the matter&mdash;a humorous man has the high gift of
+regarding an annoyance in the very stroke of it as another man shall
+regard it when the annoyance is long past. If a humorous person falls
+out of a canoe he knows the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> exquisite jest while his head is still
+bobbing in the cold water. A witty man, on the contrary, is sour until
+he is changed and dry: but in a week's time when company is about, he
+will make a comic story of it.</p>
+
+<p>My friend A&mdash;&mdash; with whom I went once into the Canadian woods has
+genuine humor, and no one can be a more satisfactory comrade. I do not
+recall that he said many comic things, and at bottom he was serious as
+the best humorists are. But in him there was a kind of joy and
+exaltation that lasted throughout the day. If the duffle were piled
+too high and fell about his ears, if the dinner was burned or the tent
+blew down in a driving storm at night, he met these mishaps as though
+they were the very things he had come north to get, as though without
+them the trip would have lacked its spice. This is an easy philosophy
+in retrospect but hard when the wet canvas falls across you and the
+rain beats in. A&mdash;&mdash; laughed at the very moment of disaster as another
+man will laugh later in an easy chair. I see him now swinging his axe
+for firewood to dry ourselves when we were spilled in a rapids; and
+again, while pitching our tent on a sandy beach when another storm had
+drowned us. And there is a certain cry of his (dully, <i>Wow!</i> on paper)
+expressive to the initiated of all things gay, which could never issue
+from the mouth of a merely witty man.</p>
+
+<p>Real humor is primarily human&mdash;or divine, to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> exact&mdash;and after that
+the fun may follow naturally in its order. Not long ago I saw Louis
+Jouvet of the French Company play Sir Andrew Ague-Cheek. It was a most
+humorous performance of the part, and the reason is that the actor
+made no primary effort to be funny. It was the humanity of his
+playing, making his audience love him first of all, that provoked the
+comedy. His long thin legs were comical and so was his drawling talk,
+but the very heart and essence was this love he started in his
+audience. Poor fellow! How delightfully he smoothed the feathers in
+his hat! How he feared to fight the duel! It was easy to love such a
+dear silly human fellow. A merely witty player might have drawn as
+many laughs, but there would not have been the catching at the heart.</p>
+
+<p>As for books and the wit or humor of their pages, it appears that wit
+fades, whereas humor lasts. Humor uses permanent nutgalls. But is
+there anything more melancholy than the wit of another generation? In
+the first place, this wit is intertwined with forgotten circumstance.
+It hangs on a fashion&mdash;on the style of a coat. It arose from a
+forgotten bit of gossip. In the play of words the sources of the pun
+are lost. It is like a local jest in a narrow coterie, barren to an
+outsider. Sydney Smith was the most celebrated wit of his day, but he
+is dull reading now. Blackwood's at its first issue was a witty daring
+sheet, but for us the pages are stagnant. I suppose that no one now
+laughs at the witticisms of Thomas Hood.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> Where are the wits of
+yesteryear? Yet the humor of Falstaff and Lamb and Fielding remains
+and is a reminder to us that humor, to be real, must be founded on
+humanity and on truth.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/image_136.jpg" width="400" height="476" alt="Woodcut"  />
+</div>
+<h2><a name="On_Going_to_a_Party" id="On_Going_to_a_Party"></a>On Going to a Party.</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+<p>lthough I usually enjoy a party when I have arrived, I seldom
+anticipate it with pleasure. I remain sour until I have hung my hat. I
+suspect that my disorder is general and that if any group of formal
+diners could be caught in preparation midway between their tub and
+over-shoes, they would be found a peevish company who might be
+expected to snap at one another. Yet look now at their smiling faces!
+With what zest they crunch their food! How cheerfully they clatter on
+their plates! Who would suspect that yonder smiling fellow who strokes
+his silky chin was sullen when he fixed his tie; or that this pleasant
+babble comes out of mouths that lately sulked before their mirrors?</p>
+
+<p>I am not sure from what cause my own crustiness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> proceeds. I am of no
+essential unsociability. Nor is it wholly the masquerade of
+unaccustomed clothes. I am deft with a bow-knot and patient with my
+collar. It may be partly a perversity of sex, inasmuch as we men are
+sometimes "taken" by our women folk. But chiefly it comes from an
+unwillingness to pledge the future, lest on the very night my own
+hearth appear the better choice. Here we are, with legs stretched for
+comfort toward the fire&mdash;easy and unbuttoned. Let the rain beat on the
+glass! Let chimneys topple! Let the wind whistle to its shrill
+companions of the North! But although I am led growling and reluctant
+to my host's door&mdash;with stiffened paws, as it were, against the
+sill&mdash;I usually enjoy myself when I am once inside. To see me across
+the salad smiling at my pretty neighbor, no one would know how
+churlish I had been on the coming of the invitation.</p>
+
+<p>I have attended my share of formal dinners. I have dined with the
+magnificent H&mdash;&mdash;s and their Roman Senator has announced me at the
+door; although, when he asked my name in the hall, I thought at first
+in my ignorance that he gave me directions about my rubbers. No one
+has faced more forks and knives, or has apportioned his implements
+with nicer discrimination among the meats. Not once have I been forced
+to stir my after-dinner coffee with a soup spoon. And yet I look back
+on these grand occasions with contentment chiefly because they are
+past. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> am in whole agreement with Cleopatra when she spoke
+slightingly of her salad days&mdash;surely a fashionable afternoon affair
+at a castle on the river Nile&mdash;when, as she confessed, she was young
+and green in judgment.</p>
+
+<p>It is usually a pleasure to meet distinguished persons who, as a rule,
+are friendly folk who sit in peace and comfort. But if they are lugged
+in and set up stiffly at a formal dinner they are too much an
+exhibition. In this circumstance they cannot be natural and at their
+best. And then I wonder how they endure our abject deference and
+flabby surrender to their opinions. Would it not destroy all interest
+in a game of bowling if the wretched pins fell down before the hit
+were made? It was lately at a dinner that our hostess held in
+captivity three of these celebrated lions. One of them was a famous
+traveler who had taken a tiger by its bristling beard. The second was
+a popular lecturer. The third was in distemper and crouched quietly at
+her plate. The first two are sharp and bright and they roared to
+expectation. But I do not complain when lions take possession of the
+cage, for it reduces the general liability of talk, and a common man,
+if he be industrious, may pluck his bird down to the bone in peace.</p>
+
+<p>A formal reception is even worse than a dinner. One stands around with
+stalled machinery. Good stout legs, that can go at a trot all day,
+become now weak and wabbly. One hurdles dispiritedly over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> trailing
+skirts. One tries in conversation to think of the name of a play he
+has just seen, but it escapes him. It is, however, so nearly in his
+grasp, that it prevents him from turning to another topic. Benson, the
+essayist, also disliked formal receptions and he quotes Prince Hal in
+their dispraise. "Prithee, Ned," says the Prince&mdash;and I fancy that he
+has just led a thirsty Duchess to the punchbowl, and was now in the
+very act of escaping while her face was buried in the cup&mdash;"Prithee,
+Ned," he says, "come out of this fat room, and lend me thy hand to
+laugh a little!" And we can imagine these two enfranchised rogues,
+easy at heart, making off later to their Eastcheap tavern, and the
+passing of a friendly cup. But now, alas, today, all of the rooms of
+the house are fat and thick with people. There is a confusion of
+tongues as when work on the tower of Babel was broken off. There is no
+escape. If it were one's good luck to be a waiter, one could at least
+console himself that it was his livelihood.</p>
+
+<p>The furniture has been removed from all the rooms in order that more
+persons may be more uncomfortable. Or perhaps the chairs and tables,
+like rats in a leaky ship, have scuttled off, as it were, now that
+fashion has wrecked the home. A friend of mine, J&mdash;&mdash;, resents these
+entertainments. No sooner, recently, did he come into such a bare
+apartment where, in happier days his favorite chair had stood, than he
+hinted to the guests that the furniture had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> been sold to meet the
+expenses of the day. This sorry jest lasted him until, on whispering
+to a servant, he learned that the chairs had been stored in an upper
+hall. At this he proposed that the party reassemble above, where at
+least they might sit down and be comfortable. When I last saw J&mdash;&mdash;
+that evening he was sitting at the turn of the stairs behind an exotic
+shrubbery, where he had found a vagrant chair that had straggled
+behind the upper emigration.</p>
+
+<p>The very envelope that contains a formal invitation bears a forbidding
+look. It is massive and costly to the eye. It is much larger than a
+letter, unless, perhaps, one carries on a correspondence with a giant
+from Brobdingnag. You turn it round and round with sad premonition.
+The very writing is coldly impersonal without the pinch of a more
+human hand. It practices a chill anonymity as if it contains a warrant
+for a hanging. At first you hope it may be merely an announcement from
+your tailor, inasmuch as commerce patterns its advertisements on these
+social forms. I am told that there was once a famous man&mdash;a
+distinguished novelist&mdash;who so disliked formal parties but was so
+timid at their rejection that he took refuge in the cellar whenever
+one of these forbidding documents arrived, until he could forge a
+plausible excuse; for he believed that these colder and more barren
+rooms quickened his invention. The story goes that once when he was in
+an unusually timid state he lacked the courage to break the seal and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+so spent an uneasy morning upon the tubs, to the inconvenience of the
+laundress who thought that he fretted upon the plot. At last, on
+tearing off the envelope, he found to his relief that it was only a
+notice for a display of haberdashery at a fashionable shop. In his
+gratitude at his escape he at once sought his desk and conferred a
+blushing heiress on his hero.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps there are persons of an opposite mind who welcome an
+invitation. Even the preliminary rummage delights them when their
+clothes are sent for pressing and their choice wavers among their
+plumage. For such persons the superscription on the envelope now seems
+written in the spacious hand of hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>But of informal dinners and the meeting of friends we can all approve
+without reserve. I recall, once upon a time, four old gentlemen who
+met every week for whist. Three of them were of marked eccentricity.
+One of them, when the game was at its pitch, reached down to the rungs
+of his chair and hitched it first to one side and then to the other,
+mussing up the rugs. The second had the infirmity of nodding his head
+continuously. Even if he played a trivial three spot, he sat on the
+decision and wagged his beard up and down like a judge. The third
+sucked his teeth and thereby made hissing noises. Later in the evening
+there would be served buttermilk or cider, and the sober party would
+adjourn at the gate. But there were two young rascals who practiced
+these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> eccentricities and after they had gone to bed, for the
+exquisite humor of it, they nodded their heads, too, and sucked their
+teeth with loud hissing noises.</p>
+
+<p>No one entertains more pleasantly than the S&mdash;&mdash; family and no one is
+more informal. If you come on the minute for your dinner, it is likely
+that none of the family is about. After a search J&mdash;&mdash; is found in a
+flannel shirt in his garden with a watering-can. "Hello!" he says in
+surprise. "What time is it? Have you come already for dinner?"</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake," you reply&mdash;for I assume you to be of familiar and
+profane manners&mdash;"get up and wash yourself! Don't you know that you
+are giving a party?"</p>
+
+<p>J&mdash;&mdash; affects to be indignant. "Who is giving this party, anyway?" he
+asks. "If it's yours, you run it!" And then he leads you to the house,
+where you abuse each other agreeably as he dresses.</p>
+
+<p>Once a year on Christmas Eve they give a general party. This has been
+a custom for a number of years and it is now an institution as fixed
+as the night itself. Invitations are not issued. At most a rumor goes
+abroad to the elect that nine o'clock is a proper time to come, when
+the children, who have peeked for Santa Claus up the chimney, have at
+last been put to bed. There is a great wood fire in the sitting-room
+and, by way of andirons, two soldiers of the Continental Army keep up
+their endless march across the hearth. The fireplace is encircled by a
+line of leather<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> cushions that rest upon the floor, like a window-seat
+that has undergone amputation of all its legs.</p>
+
+<p>But the center of the entertainment is a prodigious egg-nog that rises
+from the dining table. I do not know the composition of the drink, yet
+my nose is much at fault if it includes aught but eggs and whiskey. At
+the end of the table J&mdash;&mdash; stands with his mighty ladle. It is his
+jest each year&mdash;for always there is a fresh stranger who has not heard
+it&mdash;it is his jest that the drink would be fair and agreeable to the
+taste if it were not for the superfluity of eggs which dull the
+mixture.</p>
+
+<p>No one, even of a sour prohibition, refuses his entreaty. My aunt, who
+speaks against the Demon, once appeared at the party. She came
+sniffing to the table. "Ought I to take it, John?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Mildest thing you ever drank," said John, and he ladled her out a
+cup.</p>
+
+<p>My aunt smelled it suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>"It's eggs," said John.</p>
+
+<p>"Eggs?" said my aunt, "What a funny smell they have!" She said this
+with a facial expression not unlike that of Little Red Ridinghood,
+when she first saw the old lady with the long nose and sharp eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing bad, I hope," said John.</p>
+
+<p>"N-no," said my aunt slowly, and she took a sip.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course the eggs spoil it a little," said John.</p>
+
+<p>"It's very good," said my aunt, as she took another sip.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then she put down her glass, but only when it was empty. "John," she
+said, "you are a rogue. You would like to get me tipsy." And at this
+she moved out of danger. Little Red Ridinghood escaped the wolf as
+narrowly. But did Little Red Ridinghood escape? Dear me, how one
+forgets!</p>
+
+<p>But in closing I must not fail to mention an old lady and gentleman,
+both beyond eighty, who have always attended these parties. They have
+met old age with such trust and cheerfulness, and they are so eager at
+a jest, that no one of all the gathering fits the occasion half so
+well. And to exchange a word with them is to feel a pleasant contact
+with all the gentleness and mirth that have lodged with them during
+the space of their eighty years. The old gentleman is an astronomer
+and until lately, when he moved to a newer quarter of the town, he had
+behind his house in a proper tower a telescope, through which he
+showed his friends the moon. But in these last few years his work has
+been entirely mathematical and his telescope has fallen into disorder.
+His work finds a quicker comment among scientists of foreign lands
+than on his own street.</p>
+
+<p>It is likely that tonight he has been busy with the computation of the
+orbit of a distant star up to the very minute when his wife brought in
+his tie and collar. And then arm and arm they have set out for the
+party, where they will sit until the last guest has gone.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Alas, when the party comes this Christmas, only one of these old
+people will be present, for the other with a smile lately fell
+asleep.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image_146.jpg" width="600" height="330" alt="Woodcut"  />
+</div>
+<h2><a name="On_a_Pair_of_Leather_Suspenders" id="On_a_Pair_of_Leather_Suspenders"></a>On a Pair of Leather Suspenders.</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_n.jpg" alt="N" width="56" height="50" /></div>
+<p>ot long since I paid a visit to New Haven before daylight of a winter
+morning. I had hoped that my sleeper from Washington might be late and
+I was encouraged in this by the trainman who said that the dear old
+thing commonly went through New Haven at breakfast time. But it was
+barely three o'clock when the porter plucked at me in my upper berth.
+He intruded, happily, on a dream in which the train came rocking
+across the comforter.</p>
+
+<p>Three o'clock, if you approach it properly through the evening, is
+said to have its compensations. There are persons (with a hiccough)
+who pronounce it the shank of the evening, but as an hour of morning
+it has few apologists. It is the early bird that catches the worm; but
+this should merely set one thinking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> before he thrusts out a foot into
+the cold morning, whether he may justly consider himself a bird or a
+worm. If no glad twitter rises to his lips in these early hours, he
+had best stay unpecked inside his coverlet.</p>
+
+<p>It is hard to realize that other two-legged creatures like myself are
+habitually awake at this hour. In a wakeful night I may have heard the
+whistles and the clank of far-off wheels, and I may have known dimly
+that work goes on; yet for the most part I have fancied that the
+world, like a river steamboat in a fog, is tied at night to its shore:
+or if it must go plunging on through space to keep a schedule, that
+here and there a light merely is set upon a tower to warn the planets.</p>
+
+<p>A locomotive was straining at its buttons, and from the cab a smoky
+engineer looked down on me. A truck load of boxes rattled down the
+platform. Crates of affable familiar hens were off upon a journey,
+bragging of their families. Men with flaring tapers tapped at wheels.
+The waiting-room, too, kept, as it were, one eye open to the night.
+The coffee-urn steamed on the lunch counter, and sandwiches sat inside
+their glass domes and looked darkly on the world.</p>
+
+<p>It was the hour when "the tired burglar seeks his bed." I had thought
+of dozing in a hotel chair until breakfast, but presently a flood
+appeared in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> persons of three scrub women. The fountains of the
+great deep were opened and the waters prevailed.</p>
+
+<p>It still lacked an hour or so of daylight. I remembered that there
+used to be a humble restaurant and kitchen on wheels&mdash;to the vulgar, a
+dog-wagon&mdash;up toward York Street. This wagon, once upon a time, had
+appeased our appetites when we had been late for chapel and Commons.
+As an institution it was so trite that once we made of it a fraternity
+play. I faintly remember a pledge to secrecy&mdash;sworn by the moon and
+the seven wandering stars&mdash;but nevertheless I shall divulge the plot.
+It was a burlesque tragedy in rhyme. Some eighteen years ago, it
+seems, Brabantio, the noble Venetian Senator, kept this same
+dog-wagon&mdash;he and his beautiful daughter Desdemona. Here came Othello,
+Iago and Cassio of the famous class of umpty-ump.</p>
+
+<p>The scene of the drama opens with Brabantio flopping his dainties on
+the iron, chanting to himself a lyric in praise of their tender
+juices. Presently Othello enters and when Brabantio's back is turned
+he makes love to Desdemona&mdash;a handsome fellow, this Othello, with the
+manner of a hero and curled moustachios. Exit Othello to a nine
+o'clock, Ladd on Confusions. Now the rascal Iago enters&mdash;myself! with
+flowing tie. He hates Othello. He glowers like a villain and
+soliloquizes:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In order that my vengeance I may plot<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give me a dog, and give it to me hot!<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>That was the kind of play. Finally, Desdemona is nearly smothered but
+is returned at last to Othello's arms. Iago meets his deserts. He is
+condemned to join &#916; &#922; &#917;, a rival fraternity.
+But the warm heart of Desdemona melts and she intercedes to save him
+from this horrid end. In mercy&mdash;behind the scenes&mdash;his head is chopped
+off. Then all of us, heroines and villains, sat to a late hour around
+the fire and told one another how the real stage thirsted for us. We
+drank lemonade mostly but we sang of beer&mdash;one song about</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Beer, beer, glorious beer!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fill yourself right up to here!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>accompanied with a gesture several inches above the head. As the
+verses progressed it was customary to stand on chairs and to reach up
+on tiptoe to show the increasing depth.</p>
+
+<p>But the dog-wagon has now become a gilded unfamiliar thing, twice its
+former size and with stools for a considerable company. I questioned
+the proprietor whether he might be descended from the noble Brabantio,
+but the dull fellow gave no response. The wagon has passed to meaner
+ownership.</p>
+
+<p>Across the street Vanderbilt Hall loomed indistinctly. To the ignorant
+it may be necessary to explain that its courtyard is open to Chapel
+Street, but that an iron grill stretches from wing to wing and keeps
+out the town. This grill is high enough for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> Hagenbeck, and it used to
+be a favorite game with us to play animal behind it for the street's
+amusement. At the hour when the crowd issued from the matin&eacute;e at the
+Hyperion Theatre, our wittiest students paced on all fours up and down
+behind this grill and roared for raw beef. E&mdash;&mdash; was the wag of the
+building and he could climb up to a high place and scratch himself
+like a monkey&mdash;an entertainment of more humor than elegance. Elated
+with success, he and a companion later chartered a street-organ&mdash;a
+doleful one-legged affair&mdash;and as man and monkey they gathered pennies
+out Orange Street.</p>
+
+<p>I turned into the dark Campus by Osborn Hall. It is as ugly a building
+as one could meet on a week's journey, and yet by an infelicity all
+class pictures are taken on its steps. Freshman courses are given in
+the basement&mdash;a French class once in particular. Sometimes, when we
+were sunk dismally in the irregular verbs, bootblacks and old-clothes
+men stopped on the street and grinned down on us. And all the dreary
+hour, as we sweated with translation, above us on the pavement the
+feet and happy legs of the enfranchised went by the window.</p>
+
+<p>Yale is a bad jumble of architecture. It is amazing how such
+incongruous buildings can lodge together. Did not the Old Brick Row
+cry out when Durfee was built? Surely the Gothic library uttered a
+protest against its newer adjunct. And are the Bicentennial buildings
+so beautiful? At best we have exchanged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> the fraudulent wooden
+ramparts of Alumni Hall for the equally fraudulent inside columns of
+these newer buildings. It is a mercy that there is no style and
+changing fashion in elm trees. As Viola might have remarked about the
+Campus: it were excellently done, if God did all.</p>
+
+<p>Presently in the dark I came on the excavations for the Harkness
+quadrangle. So at last Commons was gone. In that old building we ate
+during our impoverished weeks. I do not know that we saved much, for
+we were driven to extras, but the reckoning was deferred. There was a
+certain tutti-frutti ice-cream, rich in ginger, that has now vanished
+from the earth. Or chocolate &egrave;clairs made the night stand out. I
+recall that one could seldom procure a second helping of griddlecakes
+except on those mornings when there were ants in the syrup. Also, I
+recall that sometimes there was a great crash of trays at the pantry
+doors, and almost at the instant two old Goodies, harnessed ready with
+mops and pails, ran out and sponged up the wreckage.</p>
+
+<p>And Pierson Hall is gone, that was once the center of Freshman life.
+Does anybody remember <i>The Voice</i>? It was a weekly paper issued in the
+interest of prohibition. I doubt if we would have quarreled with it
+for this, but it denounced Yale and held up in contrast the purity of
+Oberlin. Oberlin! And therefore we hated it, and once a week we burned
+its issue in the stone and plaster corridors of Pierson.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was once a residence at the corner of York and Library where
+Freshmen resided. The railing of the stairs wabbled. The bookcase door
+lacked a hinge. Three out of four chairs were rickety. The bath-tub,
+which had been the chemical laboratory for some former student, was
+stained an unhealthy color. If ever it shall appear that Harlequin
+lodged upon the street, here was the very tub where he washed his
+clothes. Without caution the window of the bedroom fell out into the
+back yard. But to atone for these defects, up through the scuttle in
+the hall there was an airy perch upon the roof. Here Freshmen might
+smoke their pipes in safety&mdash;a privilege denied them on the
+street&mdash;and debate upon their affairs. Who were hold-off men! Who
+would make &#914;&#959;&#965;&#955;&#951;! Or they invented outrageous names for the
+faculty. My dear Professor Blank, could you hear yourself described by
+these young cubs through their tobacco smoke, your learned ears, so
+alert for dactyl and spondee, would grow red.</p>
+
+<p>Do Scott's boys, I wonder, still gather clothes for pressing around
+the Campus? Do they still sell tickets&mdash;sixteen punches for a
+dollar&mdash;five punches to the suit? On Monday mornings do colored
+laundresses push worn baby-carts around to gather what we were pleased
+to call the "dirty filth"? And do these same laundresses push back
+these self-same carts later in the week with "clean filth" aboard? Are
+stockings mended in the same old way, so that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> toes look through
+the open mesh? Have college sweeps learned yet to tuck in the sheets
+at the foot? Do old-clothes men&mdash;Fish-eye? Do you remember him?&mdash;do
+old-clothes men still whine at the corner, and look you up and down in
+cheap appraisal? Pop Smith is dead, who sold his photograph to
+Freshmen, but has he no successor? How about the old fellow who sold
+hot chestnuts at football games&mdash;"a nickel a bush"&mdash;a rare contraction
+meant to denote a bushel&mdash;in reality fifteen nuts and fifteen worms.
+Does George Felsburg still play the overture at Poli's, reading his
+newspaper the while, and do comic actors still jest with him across
+the footlights?</p>
+
+<p>Is it still ethical to kick Freshmen on the night of Omega Lambda Chi?
+Is "nigger baby" played on the Campus any more? The loser of this
+precious game, in the golden days, leaned forward against the wall
+with his coat-tails raised, while everybody took a try at him with a
+tennis ball. And, of course, no one now plays "piel." A youngster will
+hardly have heard of the game. It was once so popular that all the
+stone steps about the college showed its marks. And next year we heard
+that the game had spread to Harvard.</p>
+
+<p>Do students still make for themselves oriental corners with Bagdad stripes
+and Turkish lamps? Do the fair fingers of Farmington and Northampton still
+weave the words "'Neath the Elms" upon sofa pillows? Do Seniors still bow
+the President down the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> aisle of Chapel? Do students still get out their
+Greek with "trots"? It was the custom for three or four lazy students to
+gather together and summon up a newsy to read the trot, while they, lolling
+with pipes on their Morris chairs, fumbled with the text and interlined it
+against a loss of memory. Let the fair-haired goddess Juno speak! Ulysses,
+as he pleases, may walk on the shore of the loud-sounding sea. Thereafter
+in class one may repose safely on his interlineation and snap at flies with
+a rubber band. This method of getting a lesson was all very well except
+that the newsy halted at the proper name. A device was therefore hit on of
+calling all the gods and heroes by the name of Smith. Homeric combat then
+ran like this: <i>the heart of Smit was black with anger and he smote Smit
+upon the brazen helmet. And the world grew dark before his eyes, and he
+fell forward like a tower and bit the dust and his armor clanked about him.
+But at evening, from a far-off mountain top the white-armed goddess
+Smit-Smit</i> (Pallas-Athena) <i>saw him, and she felt compash&mdash;compassion for
+him.</i></p>
+
+<p>And I suppose that students still sing upon the fence. There was a
+Freshman once, in those early nights of autumn when they were still a
+prey to Sophomores, who came down Library Street after his supper at
+Commons. He wondered whether the nights of hazing were done and was
+unresolved whether he ought to return to his room and sit close.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+Presently he heard the sound of singing. It came from the Campus, from
+the fence. He was greener than most Freshmen and he had never heard
+men sing in four-part harmony. With him music had always been a single
+tune, or at most a lost tenor fumbled uncertainly for the pitch. Any
+grunt had been a bass. And so the sound ravished him. In the open air
+and in the dark the harmony was unparalleled. He stole forward, still
+with one eye open for Sophomores, and crouched in the shadowy angle of
+North Middle. Now the song was in full chorus and the branches of the
+elms swayed to it, and again a bass voice sang alone and the others
+hummed a low accompaniment.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally, across the Campus, someone in passing called up to a
+window, "Oh, Weary Walker, stick out your head!" And then, after a
+pause, satirically, when the head was out, "Stick it in again!" On the
+stones there were the sounds of feet&mdash;feet with lazy purpose&mdash;loud
+feet down wooden steps, bound for pleasure. At the windows there were
+lights, where dull thumbs moved down across a page. Let A equal B to
+find our Z. And let it be quick about it, before the student nod! And
+to the Freshman, crouching in the shadow, it seemed at last that he
+was a part of this life, with its music, its voices, its silent elms,
+the dim buildings with their lights, the laughter and the glad feet
+sounding in the dark.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I came now, rambling on this black wintry morning, before the sinister
+walls of Skull and Bones.</p>
+
+<p>I sat on a fence and contemplated the building. It is as dingy as ever
+and, doubtless, to an undergraduate, as fearful as ever. What rites
+and ceremonies are held within these dim walls! What awful
+celebrations! The very stones are grim. The chain outside that swings
+from post to post is not as other chains, but was forged at midnight.
+The great door has a black spell upon it. It was on such a door,
+iron-bound and pitiless, that the tragic Ygraine beat in vain for
+mercy.</p>
+
+<p>It is a breach of etiquette for an undergraduate in passing even to
+turn and look at Bones. Its name may not be mentioned to a member of
+the society, and one must look furtively around before pronouncing it.
+Now as I write the word, I feel a last vibration of the fearful
+tremor.</p>
+
+<p>Seniors compose its membership&mdash;fifteen or so, and membership is
+ranked as the highest honor of the college. But in God's name, what is
+all this pother? Are there not already enough jealousies without this
+one added? Does not college society already fall into enough locked
+coteries without this one? No matter how keen is the pride of
+membership, it does not atone for the disappointments and the
+heart-burnings of failure. It is hinted obscurely for expiation that
+it and its fellow societies do somehow confer a benefit on the college
+by holding out a reward for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> hard endeavor. This is the highest goal.
+I distrust the wisdom of the judges. There is an honester repute to be
+gained in the general estimate of one's fellows. These societies cut
+an unnatural cleavage across the college. They are the source of
+dishonest envy and of mean lick-spittling. For three years, until the
+election is announced, there is much playing for position. A favored
+fellow, whose election is certain, is courted by others who stand on a
+slippery edge, because it is known that in Senior elections one is
+rated by his association. And is it not preposterous that fifteen
+youngsters should set themselves above the crowd, wear obscure jewelry
+and wrap themselves in an empty and pretentious mystery?</p>
+
+<p>But what has this rambling paper to do with a pair of leather
+suspenders? Nothing. Nothing much. Only, after a while, just before
+the dawn, I came in front of the windows of a cheap haberdasher. And I
+recalled how I had once bought at this very shop a pair of leather
+suspenders. They were the only ones left&mdash;it was hinted that Seniors
+bought them largely&mdash;and they were a bargain. The proprietor blew off
+the dust and slapped them and dwelt upon their merits. They would last
+me into middle age and were cheap. There was, I recall, a kind of
+tricky differential between the shoulders to take up the slack on
+either side. Being a Freshman I was prevailed upon, and I bought them
+and walked to Morris Cove while they creaked and fretted. And here was
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> very shop, arising in front of me as from times before the flood.
+With it there arose, too, a recollection of my greenness and timidity.
+And mingled with all the hours of happiness of those times there were
+hours, also, of emptiness and loneliness&mdash;hours when, newcome to my
+surroundings, for fear of rebuff I walked alone.</p>
+
+<p>The night still lingers. These dark lines of wall and tree and tower
+are etched by Time with memories to burn the pattern. The darkness
+stirs strangely, like waters in the solemn bowl when a witch reads off
+the future. But the past is in this darkness, and the December wind
+this night has roused up the summer winds of long ago. In that cleft
+is the old window. Here are the stairs, wood and echoing with an
+almost forgotten tread. A word, a phrase, a face, shows for an instant
+in the shadows. Here, too, in memory, is a pageantry of old custom
+with its songs and uproar, victory with its fires and dance.</p>
+
+<p>Forms, too, I see bent upon their books, eager or dull, with intent or
+sleepy finger on the page. And I hear friendly cries and the sound of
+many feet across the night.</p>
+
+<p>Dawn at last&mdash;a faint light through the elms. From the Chapel tower
+the bells sound the hour and strike their familiar melody. Dawn. And
+now the East in triumphal garment scatters my memories, born of night,
+before its flying wheel.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image_159.jpg" width="600" height="379" alt="Woodcut"  />
+</div>
+<h2><a name="Boots_for_Runaways" id="Boots_for_Runaways"></a>Boots for Runaways.</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_n.jpg" alt="N" width="56" height="50" /></div>
+<p>ot long ago, having come through upon the uppers of my shoes, I
+wrapped the pair in a bit of newspaper and went around the corner into
+Sixth Avenue to find a cobbler. This is not difficult, for there are
+at least three cobblers to the block, all of them in basements four or
+five steps below the sidewalk. Cobblers and little tailors who press
+and repair clothing, small grocers and delicatessen venders&mdash;these are
+the chief commerce of the street. I passed my tailor's shop, which is
+next to the corner. He is a Russian Jew who came to this country
+before the great war. Every Thursday, when he takes away my off suit,
+I ask him about the progress of the Revolution. At first I found him
+hopeful, yet in these last few months his opinions are a little
+broken. His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> shop consists of a single room, with a stove to heat his
+irons and a rack for clothes. It is so open to the street that once
+when it was necessary for me to change trousers he stood between me
+and the window with one foot against the door by way of moratorium on
+his business. His taste in buttons is loud. Those on my dinner coat
+are his choice&mdash;great round jewels that glisten in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>Next to my tailor, except for a Chinese laundry with a damp celestial
+smell, is a delicatessen shop with a pleasant sound of French across
+the counter. Here are sausages, cut across the middle in order that no
+one may buy the pig, as it were, in its poke. Potato salad is set out
+each afternoon in a great bowl with a wooden spoon sticking from its
+top. Then there is a baked bean, all brown upon the crust, which is
+housed with its fellows in a cracked baking dish and is not to be
+despised. There is also a tray of pastry with whipped cream oozing
+agreeably from the joints, and a pickle vat as corrective to these
+sweets. But behind the shop is the bakery and I can watch a wholesome
+fellow, with his sleeves tucked up, rolling pasties thin on a great
+white table, folding in nuts and jellies and cutting them deftly for
+the oven.</p>
+
+<p>Across the street there resides a mender of musical instruments. He
+keeps dusty company with violins and basses that have come to broken
+health. When a trombone slips into disorder, it seeks his sanitarium.
+Occasionally, as I pass, I catch the sound of a twanging<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> string, as
+if at last a violin were convalescent. Or I hear a reedy nasal upper
+note, and I know that an oboe has been mended of its complaint and
+that in these dark days of winter it yearns for a woodside stream and
+the return of spring. It seems rather a romantic business tinkering
+these broken instruments into harmony.</p>
+
+<p>Next door there is a small stationer&mdash;a bald-headed sort of business,
+as someone has called it. Ruled paper for slavish persons, plain
+sheets for bold Bolshevists.</p>
+
+<p>Then comes our grocer. There is no heat in the place except what comes
+from an oil stove on which sits a pan of steaming water. Behind the
+stove with his twitching ear close against it a cat lies at all hours
+of the day. There is an engaging smudge across his nose, as if he had
+been led off on high adventure to the dusty corners behind the apple
+barrel. I bend across the onion crate to pet him, and he stretches his
+paws in and out rhythmically in complete contentment. He walks along
+the counter with arched back and leans against our purchases.</p>
+
+<p>Next our grocer is our bootblack, who has set up a sturdy but shabby
+throne to catch the business off the "L." How majestically one sits
+aloft here with outstretched toe, for all the world like the Pope
+offering his saintly toe for a sinner's kiss. The robe pontifical, the
+triple crown! Or, rather, is this not a secular throne, seized once in
+a people's rising?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> Here is a use for whatever thrones are discarded
+by this present war. Where the crowd is thickest at quitting
+time&mdash;perhaps where the subway brawls below Fourteenth Street&mdash;there I
+would set the German Kaiser's seat for the least of us to clamber on.</p>
+
+<p>I took my shoes out of their wrapper. The cobbler is old and wrinkled
+and so bent that one might think that Nature aimed to contrive a hoop
+of him but had botched the full performance. He scratched my name upon
+the soles and tossed them into the pile. There were big and little
+shoes, some with low square heels and others with high thin heels as
+if their wearers stood tiptoe with curiosity. It is a quality, they
+say, that marks the sex. On the bench were bits of leather, hammers,
+paring-knives, awls, utensils of every sort.</p>
+
+<p>On arriving home I found an old friend awaiting me. B&mdash;&mdash; has been
+engaged in a profitable business for fifteen years or so and he has
+amassed a considerable fortune. Certainly he deserves it, for he has
+been at it night and day and has sacrificed many things to it. He has
+kept the straight road despite all truant beckoning. But his too close
+application has cramped his soul. His organization and his profits,
+his balance sheets and output have seemed to become the whole of him.</p>
+
+<p>But for once I found that B&mdash;&mdash; was in no hurry and we talked more
+intimately than in several years. I discovered soon that his hard
+busyness was no more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> than a veneer and that his freer self still
+lived, but in confinement. At least he felt the great lack in his
+life, which had been given too much to the piling up of things, to the
+sustaining of position&mdash;getting and spending. Yet he could see no end.
+He was caught in the rich man's treadmill, only less horrible than
+that of the poor man with its cold and hunger.</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards, when he had gone, I fell into a survey of certain other
+men of my acquaintance. Some few of them are rich also, and they heap
+up for themselves a pile of material things until they stifle in the
+midst. They run swiftly and bitterly from one appointment to another
+in order that they may add a motor to their stable. If they lie awake
+at night, they plan a new confusion for the morrow. They are getting
+and spending always. They have been told many times that some day they
+will die and leave their wealth, yet they labor ceaselessly to
+increase their pile. It is as if one should sweat and groan to load a
+cart, knowing that soon it goes off on another road. And yet not one
+of these persons will conceive that I mean him. He will say that
+necessity keeps him at it. Or he will cite his avocations to prove he
+is not included. But he plays golf fretfully with his eye always on
+the score. He drives his motor furiously to hold a schedule. Yet in
+his youth many of these prosperous fellows learned to play upon a
+fiddle, and they dreamed on college window-seats. They had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> time for
+friendliness before they became so busy holding this great world by
+its squirming tail.</p>
+
+<p>Or perhaps they are not so <i>very</i> wealthy. If so, they work the
+harder. To support their wives and children? By no means. To support
+the pretense that they are really wealthy, to support a neighbor's
+competition. It is this competition of house and goods that keeps
+their noses on the stone. Expenditure always runs close upon their
+income, and their days are a race to keep ahead.</p>
+
+<p>I was thinking rather mournfully of the hard and unnecessary condition
+of these persons, when I fell asleep. And by chance, these unlucky
+persons, my boots and my cobbler, even the oboe mender, all of them
+somehow got mixed in my dream.</p>
+
+<p>It seems that there was a cobbler once, long ago, who kept a shop
+quite out of the common run and marvelous in its way. It stood in a
+shadowy city over whose dark streets the buildings toppled, until
+spiders spun their webs across from roof to roof. And to this cobbler
+the god Mercury himself journeyed to have wings sewed to his flying
+shoes. High patronage. And Atalanta, too, came and held out her swift
+foot for the fitting of a running sandal. But perhaps the cobbler's
+most famous customer was a well-known giant who ordered of him his
+seven-league boots. These boots, as you may well imagine, were of
+prodigious size, and the giant himself was so big that when he left
+his order he sat outside on the pavementand thrust his stockinged
+foot in through the window for the cobbler to get his measure.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/image_165.jpg" width="400" height="640" alt="Woodcut"  />
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span></p>
+<p>I was laughing heartily at this when I observed that a strange
+procession was passing by the cobbler's door. First there was a man
+who was burdened with a great tinsel box hung with velvet, in which
+were six plush chairs. After him came another who was smothered with
+rugs and pictures. A third carried upon his back his wife, a great fat
+creature, who glittered with jewels. Behind him he dragged a dozen
+trunks, from which dangled brocades and laces. This was all so absurd
+that in my mirth I missed what followed, but it seemed to be a long
+line of weary persons, each of whom staggered under the burden of an
+unworthy vanity.</p>
+
+<p>As I laughed the night came on&mdash;a dull hot night of summer. And in the
+shop I saw the cobbler on his bench, an old and wrinkled man like a
+dwarf in a fairy tale. There was a sign now above his door. "Boots for
+Runaways," it read. About its margin were pictures of many kinds of
+boots&mdash;a shoe of a child who runs to seek adventure, Atalanta's
+sandals, and sturdy boots that a man might wear.</p>
+
+<p>And now I saw a man coming in the dark with tired and drooping head.
+In both hands he clutched silver pieces that he had gathered in the
+day. When he was opposite the cobbler's shop, the great sign caught
+his eye. He wagged his head as one who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> comes upon the place he seeks.
+"Have you boots for me?" he asked, with his head thrust in the door.</p>
+
+<p>"For everyone who needs them," was the cobbler's answer.</p>
+
+<p>"My body is tired," the man replied, "and my soul is tired."</p>
+
+<p>"For what journey do you prepare?" the cobbler asked.</p>
+
+<p>The man looked ruefully at his hands which were still tightly clenched
+with silver pieces.</p>
+
+<p>"Getting and spending," said the cobbler slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"It has been my life." As the man spoke he banged with his elbow on
+his pocket and it rattled dully with metal.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want boots because you are a coward?" the cobbler asked. "If
+so, I have none to sell."</p>
+
+<p>"A coward?" the man answered, and he spoke deliberately as one in deep
+thought. "All my life I have been a coward, fearing that I might not
+keep even with my neighbors. Now, for the first time, I am brave."</p>
+
+<p>He kicked off his shoe and stretched out his foot. The cobbler took
+down from its nail his tape line and measured him. And the twilight
+deepened and the room grew dark.</p>
+
+<p>And the man went off cheerily. And with great strides he went into the
+windy North. But to the South in a slow procession, I saw those others
+who bore the weary burden of their wealth, staggering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> beneath their
+load of dull possessions&mdash;their opera boxes, their money-chests and
+stables, their glittering houses, their trunks of silks and laces, and
+on their backs their fat wives shining in the night with jewels.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="On_Hanging_a_Stocking_at_Christmas" id="On_Hanging_a_Stocking_at_Christmas"></a>On Hanging a Stocking at Christmas.</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+<p>s Christmas is, above all, a holiday for children, it is proper in
+its season to consider with what regard they hold its celebration. But
+as no one may really know the secrets of childhood except as he
+retains the recollection of his own, it is therefore in the well of
+memory that I must dip my pen. The world has been running these many
+years with gathering speed like a great wheel upon a hill, and I must
+roll it backward to the heights to see how I fared on the night and
+day of Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>I can remember that for a month before the day I computed its
+distance, not only in hours and minutes but even in seconds, until the
+answer was scrawled across my slate. Now, when I multiply 24 &times; 60 &times;
+60, the resulting 86,400 has an agreeable familiarity as the amount I
+struck off each morning. At bedtime on Christmas Eve I had still
+36,000 impatient seconds yet to wait, for I considered that Christmas
+really started at six o'clock in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>There was, of course, a lesser celebration on Christmas Eve when we
+hung our stockings. There were six of them, from mother's long one to
+father's short one. Ours, although built on womanish lines, lacked the
+greater length and they were, consequently, inferior<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> for the purpose
+of our greed; but father's were woefully short, as if fashioned to the
+measure of his small expectancy. Even a candy cane came peeping from
+the top, as if curiosity had stirred it to look around.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, when the stockings were hung on the knobs of the mantel, we
+went up the dark stairs to bed. At the landing we saw the last glimmer
+from the friendly sitting-room. The hall clock ticked solemnly in the
+shadow below with an air of firmness, as much as to say that it would
+not be hurried. Fret as we might, those 36,000 seconds were not to be
+jostled through the night.</p>
+
+<p>In the upper hall we looked from a window upon the snowy world.
+Perhaps we were too old to believe in Santa Claus, but even so, on
+this magic night might not a skeptic be at fault&mdash;might there not be a
+chance that the discarded world had returned to us? Once a year,
+surely, reason might nod and drowse. Perhaps if we put our noses on
+the cold glass and peered hard into the glittering darkness, we might
+see the old fellow himself, muffled to his chin in furs, going on his
+yearly errands. It was a jingling of sleigh bells on the street that
+started this agreeable suspicion, but, alas, when the horse appeared,
+manifestly by his broken jogging gait he was only an earthly creature
+and could not have been trusted on the roof. Or the moon, sailing
+across the sky, invited the thought that tonight beyond the accustomed
+hour and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> for a purpose it would throw its light across the roofs to
+mark the chimneys.</p>
+
+<p>Presently mother called up from the hall below. Had we gone to bed?
+Reluctantly now we began to thumb the buttons. Off came our clothes,
+both shirts together tonight for better speed in dressing. And all the
+night pants and drawers hung as close neighbors, one within the other,
+with stockings dangling at the ends, for quick resumption. We slipped
+shivering into the cold sheets. Down below the bed, by special
+permission, stood the cook's clock, wound up tight for its explosion
+at six o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>Then came silence and the night....</p>
+
+<p>Presently, all of a sudden, Brrr&mdash;! There arose a deafening racket in
+the room. Had the reindeer come afoul of the chimney? Had the loaded
+sleigh crashed upon the roof? Were pirates on the stairs? We awoke
+finally, and smothered the alarm in the pillows. A match! The gas! And
+now a thrill went through us. Although it was still as black as ink
+outside, at last the great day of all the year had come.</p>
+
+<p>It was, therefore, before the dawn that we stole downstairs in our
+stockings&mdash;dressed loosely and without too great precision in our
+hurry. Buttons that lay behind were neglected, nor did it fret us if a
+garment came on twisted. It was a rare tooth that felt the brush this
+morning, no matter how it was coddled through the year.</p>
+
+<p>We carried our shoes, but this was not entirely in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> consideration for
+the sleeping house. Rather, our care proceeded from an enjoyment of
+our stealth; for to rise before the dawn when the lamps were still
+lighted on the street and issue in our stockings, was to taste
+adventure. It had not exactly the zest of burglary, although it was of
+kin: nor was it quite like the search for buried treasure which we
+played on common days: yet to slink along the hallway on a pitch-black
+Christmas morning, with shoes dangling by the strings, was to realize
+a height of happiness unequaled.</p>
+
+<p>Quietly we tiptoed down the stairs on whose steep rail we had so often
+slid in the common light of day, now so strangely altered by the
+shadows. Below in the hall the great clock ticked, loudly and with
+satisfaction that its careful count was done and its seconds all
+despatched. There was a gurgle in its throat before it struck the
+hour, as some folk clear their throats before they sing.</p>
+
+<p>As yet there was not a blink of day. The house was as black as if it
+practiced to be a cave, yet an instinct instructed us that now at
+least darkness was safe. There were frosty patterns on the windows of
+the sitting-room, familiar before only on our bedroom windows. Here in
+the sitting-room arose dim shapes which probably were its accustomed
+furniture, but which to our excited fancy might be sleds and
+velocipedes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We groped for a match. There was a splutter that showed red in the
+hollow of my brother's hand.</p>
+
+<p>After the first glad shock, it was our habit to rummage in the general
+midden outside our stockings. If there was a drum upon the heap,
+should not first a tune be played&mdash;softly lest it rouse the house? Or
+if a velocipede stood beside the fender, surely the restless creature
+chafed for exercise and must be ridden a few times around the room. Or
+perhaps a sled leaned against the chair (it but rested against the
+rigors of the coming day) and one should feel its runners to learn
+whether they are whole and round, for if flat and fixed with screws it
+is no better than a sled for girls with feet tucked up in front. On
+such a sled, no one trained to the fashions of the slide would deign
+to take a belly-slammer, for the larger boys would cry out with scorn
+and point their sneering mittens.</p>
+
+<p>The stocking was explored last. It was like a grab-bag, but glorified
+and raised to a more generous level. On meaner days shriveled
+grab-bags could be got at the corner for a penny&mdash;if such mild fortune
+fell your way&mdash;mere starvelings by comparison&mdash;and to this shop you
+had often trotted after school when learning sat heaviest on your
+soul. If a nickel had accrued to you from the sale of tintags, it was
+better, of course, to lay it out in pop; but with nothing better than
+a penny, there was need of sharp denial. How you lingered before the
+horehound jar! Coltsfoot, too,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> was but a penny to the stick and
+pleased the palate. Or one could do worse than licorice. But finally
+you settled on a grab-bag. You roused an old woman from her knitting
+behind the stove and demanded that a choice of grab-bags be placed
+before you. Then, like the bearded phrenologist at the side-show of
+the circus, you put your fingers on them to read their humps. Perhaps
+an all-day sucker lodged inside&mdash;a glassy or an agate&mdash;marbles best
+for pugging&mdash;or a brass ring with a ruby.</p>
+
+<p>Through the year these bags sufficed, but the Christmas stocking was a
+deeper and finer mystery. In the upper leg were handkerchiefs from
+grand-mother&mdash;whose thoughts ran prudentially on noses&mdash;mittens and a
+cap&mdash;useful presents of duller purpose&mdash;things that were due you
+anyway and would have come in the course of time. But down in the
+darker meshes of the stocking, when you had turned the corner of the
+heel, there were the sweet extras of life&mdash;a mouth-organ, a baseball,
+a compass and a watch.</p>
+
+<p>Some folk have a Christmas tree instead of hanging their stockings,
+but this is the preference of older folk rather than the preference of
+children. Such persons wish to observe a child's enjoyment, and this
+is denied them if the stocking is opened in the dawn. Under a pretense
+of instruction they sit in an absurd posture under the tree; but they
+do no more than read the rules and are blind to the obscurer uses of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+the toys. As they find occasion, the children run off and play in a
+quieter room with some old and broken toy.</p>
+
+<p>Who can interpret the desires of children? They are a race apart from
+us. At times, for a moment, we bring them to attention; then there is
+a scurry of feet and they are gone. Although they seem to sit at table
+with us, they are beyond a frontier that we cannot pass. Their words
+are ours, but applied to foreign uses. If we try to follow their
+truant thoughts, like the lame man of the story we limp behind a
+shooting star. We bestow on them a blind condescension, not knowing
+how their imagination outclimbs our own. And we cramp them with our
+barren learning.</p>
+
+<p>I assert, therefore, that it is better to find one's presents in the
+dawn, when there is freedom. In all the city, wherever there are
+lights, children have taken a start upon the day. Then, although the
+toys are strange, there is adventure in prying at their uses. If one
+commits a toy to a purpose undreamed of by its maker, it but rouses
+the invention to further discovery. Once on a dark and frosty
+Christmas morning, I spent a puzzling hour upon a coffee-grinder&mdash;a
+present to my mother&mdash;in a delusion that it was a rare engine destined
+for myself. It might have been a bank had it possessed a slot for
+coins. A little eagle surmounted the top, yet this was not a
+sufficient clue. The handle offered the hope that it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> was a music-box,
+but although I turned it round and round, and noises issued from its
+body quite foreign to my other toys, yet I could not pronounce it
+music. With sails it might have been a windmill. I laid it on its side
+and stood it on its head without conclusion. It was painted red, and
+that gave it a wicked look, but no other villainy appeared. To this
+day as often as I pass a coffee-grinder in a grocer's shop I turn its
+handle in memory of my perplexing hour. And even if one remains
+unschooled to the uses of the toys, their discovery in the dawn while
+yet the world lies fast asleep, is far beyond their stale performance
+that rises with the sun.</p>
+
+<p>And yet I know of an occurrence, to me pathetic, that once attended
+such an early discovery. A distant cousin of mine&mdash;a man really not
+related except by the close bond of my regard&mdash;was brought up many
+years ago by an uncle of austere and miserly nature. Such goodness as
+this uncle had once possessed was cramped into a narrow and smothering
+piety. He would have dimmed the sun upon the Sabbath, could he have
+reached up tall enough. He had no love in his heart, nor mirth. My
+cousin has always loved a horse and even in his childhood this love
+was strong. And so, during the days that led up to Christmas when
+children speculate upon their desires and check them on their fingers,
+he kept asking his uncle for a pony. At first, as you might know, his
+uncle was stolid against the thought, but finally,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> with many winks
+and nods&mdash;pleasantries beyond his usual habit&mdash;he assented.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore in the early darkness of the day, the child came down to
+find his gift. First, probably, he went to the stable and climbing on
+the fence he looked through the windows for an unaccustomed form
+inside the stalls. Next he looked to see whether the pony might be
+hitched to the post in front of the house, in the manner of the family
+doctor. The search failing and being now somewhat disturbed with
+doubt, he entered his nursery on the slim chance that the pony might
+be there. The room was dark and he listened on the sill, if he might
+hear him whinny. Feeling his way along the hearth he came on nothing
+greater than his stocking which was tied to the andiron. It bulged and
+stirred his curiosity. He thrust in his hand and coming on something
+sticky, he put his fingers in his mouth. They were of a delightful
+sweetness. He now paused in his search for the pony and drawing out a
+huge lump of candy he applied himself. But the day was near and he had
+finished no more than half, when a ray of light permitted him to see
+what he ate. It was a candy horse&mdash;making good the promise of his
+uncle. This and a Testament had been stuffed inside his stocking. The
+Testament was wrapped in tissue, but the horse was bitten to the
+middle. It had been at best but a poor substitute for what he wanted,
+yet his love was so broad that it included even a sugar horse; and
+this, alas, he had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> consumed unknowing in the dark. And even now when
+the dear fellow tells the story after these many years have passed,
+and comes to the sober end with the child crying in the twilight of
+the morning, I realize as not before that there should be no Christmas
+kept unless it be with love and mirth.</p>
+
+<p>It was but habit that we hung our stockings at the chimney&mdash;the piano
+would have done as well&mdash;for I retain but the slightest memory of a
+belief in Santa Claus: perhaps at most, as I have hinted, a far-off
+haze of wonder while looking through the window upon the snowy sky&mdash;at
+night a fancied clatter on the roof, if I lay awake. And therefore in
+a chimney there was no greater mystery than was inherent in any hole
+that went off suspiciously in the dark. There was a fearful cave
+beneath the steps that mounted from the rear to the front garret. This
+was wrapped in Cimmerian darkness&mdash;which is the strongest pigment
+known&mdash;and it extended from its mouth beyond the furthest stretch of
+leg. To the disillusioned, indeed, this cave was harmless, for it
+merely offset the lower ceiling of the bathroom below; yet to us it
+was a cave unparalleled. Little by little we ventured in, until in
+time we could sit on the snug joists inside with the comfortable
+feeling of pirates. Presently we hit on the device of hanging a row of
+shining maple-syrup tins along the wall outside where they were caught
+by the dusty sunlight, which was thus reflected in on us. By the light
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> these dim moons the cave showed itself to be the size of a library
+table. And here, also, we crouched on dark and cloudy days when the
+tins were in eclipse, and found a dreadful joy when the wind scratched
+upon the roof.</p>
+
+<p>In the basement, also, there was a central hall that disappeared
+forever under an accumulation of porch chairs and lumber. Here was no
+light except what came around two turns from the laundry. Even Annie
+the cook, a bold venturesome person, had never quite penetrated to a
+full discovery of this hallway. A proper approach into the darkness
+was on hands and knees, and yet there were barrels and boxes to
+overcome. Therefore, as we were bred to these broader discoveries, a
+mere chimney in the sitting-room, which arose safely from the fenders,
+was but a mild and pleasant tunnel to the roof.</p>
+
+<p>And if a child believes in Santa Claus and chimneys, and that his
+presents are stored in a glittering kingdom across the wintry hills,
+he will miss the finer pleasure of knowing that they are hidden
+somewhere in his own house. For myself, I would not willingly forego
+certain dizzy ascents to the topmost shelves of the storeroom, where,
+with my head close under the ceiling and my foot braced against the
+wall, I have examined suspicious packages that came into the house by
+stealth. As likely as not, at the ringing of the door-bell, we had
+been whisked into a back room. Presently there was a foot sounding on
+the stairs and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> across the ceiling. Then we were released. But
+something had arrived.</p>
+
+<p>Thereafter we found excitement in rummaging in unlikely places&mdash;a wary
+lifting of summer garments laid away, for a peek beneath&mdash;a journey on
+one's stomach under the spare-room bed&mdash;a pilgrimage around the cellar
+with a flaring candle&mdash;furtive explorations of the storeroom. And when
+we came to a door that was locked&mdash;Aha! Here was a puzzle and a
+problem! We tried every key in the house, right side up and upside
+down. Bluebeard's wife, poor creature,&mdash;if I read the tale
+aright,&mdash;was merely seeking her Christmas presents around the house
+before the proper day.</p>
+
+<p>The children of a friend of mine, however, have been brought up to a
+belief in Santa Claus, and on Christmas Eve they have the pretty
+custom of filling their shoes with crackers and scraps of bread by way
+of fodder for the reindeer. When the shoes are found empty in the
+morning, but with crumbs about&mdash;as though the hungry reindeer spilled
+them in their haste&mdash;it fixes the deception.</p>
+
+<p>But if one must have a Christmas tree, I recommend the habit of some
+friends of mine. In front of their home, down near the fence, is a
+trim little cedar. T&mdash;&mdash; connects this with electric wires and hangs
+on it gayly colored lamps. Every night for a week, until the new year,
+these lights shine across the snow and are the delight of travelers on
+the road. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> Christmas stars, it seems, for this hallowed season
+have come to earth.</p>
+
+<p>We gave the family dinner. On my mother fell the extra labor, but we
+took the general credit. All the morning the relatives arrived&mdash;thin
+and fat. But if one of them bore a package or if his pockets sagged,
+we showed him an excessive welcome. Sometimes there was a present
+boxed and wrapped to a mighty bulk. From this we threw off thirty
+papers and the bundle dwindled, still no gift appeared. In this lay
+the sweetness of the jest, for finally, when the contents were
+shriveled to a kernel, in the very heart of it there lay a bright
+penny or common marble.</p>
+
+<p>All this time certain savory whiffs have been blowing from the
+kitchen. Twice at least my mother has put her head in at the door to
+count the relatives. And now when the clock on the mantel strikes
+two&mdash;a bronze Lincoln deliberating forever whether he will sign the
+Emancipation Bill&mdash;the dining-room door is opened.</p>
+
+<p>The table was drawn out to prodigious length and was obliquely set
+across the room. As early as yesterday the extra leaves had been
+brought from the pantry, and we had all taken part in fitting them
+together. Not to disturb the larger preparation, our supper and
+breakfast had been served in the kitchen. And even now to eat in the
+kitchen, if the table is set before the window and there is a flurry
+of snow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> outside, is to feel pleasantly the proximity of a great
+occasion.</p>
+
+<p>The Christmas table was so long and there were so many of us, that a
+few of the chairs were caught in a jog of the wall and had no proper
+approach except by crawling on hands and knees beneath it. Each year
+it was customary to request my maiden aunt, a prim lady who bordered
+on seventy and had limbs instead of legs, to undertake the passage.
+Each year we listened for the jest and shouted with joy when the
+request was made. There were other jests, too, that were dear to us
+and grew better with the years. My aunt was reproved for boisterous
+conduct, and although she sat as silent as a mouse, she was always
+warned against the cider. Each year, also, as soon as the dessert
+appeared, there was a demand that a certain older cousin tell the
+Judge West story. But the jest lay in the demand instead of in the
+story, for although there was a clamor of applause, the story was
+never told and it teases me forever. Then another cousin, who
+journeyed sometimes to New York, usually instructed us in the latest
+manner of eating an orange in the metropolis. But we disregarded his
+fashionable instruction, and peeled ours round and round.</p>
+
+<p>The dinner itself was a prodigious feast. The cook-stove must have
+rested and panted for a week thereafter. Before long, Annie got so red
+bringing in turkeys and cranberry sauce&mdash;countless plates heaped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> and
+toppling with vegetables and meats&mdash;that one might think she herself
+was in process to become a pickled beet and would presently enter on a
+platter.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon we rested, but at night there was a dance, for which
+my maiden aunt played the piano. The dear good soul, whose old brown
+fingers were none too limber, had skill that scarcely mounted to the
+speed of a polka, but she was steady at a waltz. There was one
+tune&mdash;bink a bunk bunk, bink a bunk bunk&mdash;that went around and around
+with an agreeable monotony even when the player nodded. There was a
+legend in the family that once she fell asleep in the performance, and
+that the dancers turned down the lights and left the room; to her
+amazement when presently she awoke, for she thought she had outsat the
+party.</p>
+
+<p>My brother and I had not advanced to the trick of dancing and we built
+up our blocks in the corner of the room in order that the friskier
+dancers might kick them over as they passed. Chief in the performance
+was the Judge West cousin who, although whiskered almost into middle
+age, had a merry heart and knew how to play with children. Sometimes,
+by consent, we younger fry sat beneath the piano, which was of an old
+square pattern, and worked the pedals for my aunt, in order that her
+industry might be undivided on the keys. It is amazing what a variety
+we could cast upon the waltz, now giving it a muffled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> sound, and
+presently offering the dancers a prolonged roaring.</p>
+
+<p>Midway in the evening, when the atrocities of dinner were but mildly
+remembered, ice-cream was brought in. It was not hard as at dinner,
+but had settled to a delicious softness, and could be mushed upon a
+spoon. Then while the party again proceeded, and my aunt resumed her
+waltz, we were despatched upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>On the bed lay our stockings, still tied with string, that had been
+stuffed with presents in the dawn. But the morning had now sunk into
+immeasurable distance and seemed as remote as Job himself. And all
+through the evening, as we lay abed and listened to the droning piano
+below, we felt a spiritual hollowness because the great day had
+passed.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image_184.jpg" width="600" height="361" alt="Woodcut"  />
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Chimney-Pot Papers, by Charles S. Brooks
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@@ -0,0 +1,4461 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Chimney-Pot Papers, by Charles S. Brooks
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Chimney-Pot Papers
+
+Author: Charles S. Brooks
+
+Illustrator: Fritz Endell
+
+Release Date: July 4, 2008 [EBook #25969]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIMNEY-POT PAPERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Delphine Lettau, Joyce
+Wilson, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
+Libraries.)
+
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+
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+
+
+
+
+                          Chimney-Pot Papers
+
+
+
+                        by Charles S. Brooks.
+
+
+                      Illustrated with wood-cuts
+
+                           by Fritz Endell.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                 1920
+
+                  New Haven: Yale University Press.
+
+          London: Humphrey Milford: Oxford University Press
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Copyright, 1919, by
+                        Yale University Press.
+
+                        First published, 1919.
+                        Second printing, 1920.
+
+                          Publisher's Note:
+
+               The Yale University Press makes grateful
+                 acknowledgment to the Editors of the
+            _Unpopular Review_ and _The Century Magazine_
+                   for permission to include in the
+              present volume, essays of which they were
+                       the original publishers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+To Minerva, my Wife.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+
+   I. The Chimney-Pots                                  11
+
+  II. The Quest of the Lost Digamma                     19
+
+ III. On a Rainy Morning                                35
+
+  IV. "1917"                                            43
+
+   V. On Going Afoot                                    47
+
+  VI. On Livelihoods                                    68
+
+ VII. The Tread of the Friendly Giants                  79
+
+VIII. On Spending a Holiday                             89
+
+  IX. Runaway Studies                                  109
+
+   X. On Turning into Forty                            117
+
+  XI. On the Difference between Wit and Humor          128
+
+ XII. On Going to a Party                              136
+
+XIII. On a Pair of Leather Suspenders                  146
+
+ XIV. Boots for Runaways                               159
+
+  XV. On Hanging a Stocking at Christmas               169
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+The Chimney-Pots.
+
+
+My windows look across the roofs of the crowded city and my thoughts
+often take their suggestion from the life that is manifest at my
+neighbors' windows and on these roofs.
+
+Across the way, one story lower than our own, there dwells "with his
+subsidiary parents" a little lad who has been ill for several weeks.
+After his household is up and dressed I regularly discover him in bed,
+with his books and toys piled about him. Sometimes his knees are
+raised to form a snowy mountain, and he leads his paper soldiers up
+the slope. Sometimes his kitten romps across the coverlet and pounces
+on his wriggling toes; and again sleeps on the sunny window-sill. His
+book, by his rapt attention, must deal with far-off islands and with
+waving cocoanut trees. Lately I have observed that a yellow drink is
+brought to him in the afternoon--a delicious blend of eggs and
+milk--and by the zest with which he licks the remainder from his lips,
+it is a prime favorite of his. In these last few days, however, I have
+seen the lad's nose flat and eager on the window, and I know that he
+is convalescent.
+
+At another set of windows--now that the days are growing short and
+there is need of lights--I see in shadowgraph against the curtains an
+occasional domestic drama. Tonight, by the appearance of hurry and
+the shifting of garments, I surmise that there is preparation for a
+party. Presently, when the upstairs lights have disappeared, I shall
+see these folk below, issuing from their door in glossy raiment. My
+dear sir and madame, I wish you an agreeable dinner and--if your tooth
+resembles mine--ice-cream for dessert.
+
+The window of a kitchen, also, is opposite, and I often look on savory
+messes as they ripen on the fire--a stirring with a long iron spoon.
+This spoon is of such unusual length that even if one supped with the
+devil (surely the fearful adage cannot apply to our quiet street) he
+might lift his food in safety from the common pot.
+
+A good many stories lower there is a bit of roof that is set with
+wicker furniture and a row of gay plants along the gutter. Here every
+afternoon exactly at six--the roof being then in shadow--a man appears
+and reads his evening paper. Later his wife joins him and they eat
+their supper from a tray. They are sunk almost in a well of buildings
+which, like the hedge of a fairy garden, shuts them from all contact
+with the world. And here they sit when the tray has been removed. The
+twilight falls early at their level and, like cottagers in a valley,
+they watch the daylight that still gilds the peaks above them.
+
+There is another of these out-of-door rooms above me on a higher
+building. From my lower level I can see the bright canvas and the
+side of the trellis that supports it. Here, doubtless, in the cool
+breeze of these summer evenings, honest folk sip their coffee and
+watch the lights start across the city.
+
+Thus, all around, I have glimpses of my neighbors--a form against the
+curtains--a group, in the season, around the fire--the week's darning
+in a rocker--an early nose sniffing at the open window the morning
+airs.
+
+But it is these roofs themselves that are the general prospect.
+
+Close at hand are graveled surfaces with spouts and whirling vents and
+chimneys. Here are posts and lines for washing, and a scuttle from
+which once a week a laundress pops her head. Although her coming is
+timed to the very hour--almost to the minute--yet when the scuttle
+stirs it is with an appearance of mystery, as if one of the forty
+thieves were below, boosting at the rocks that guard his cave. But the
+laundress is of so unromantic and jouncing a figure that I abandon the
+fancy when no more than her shoulders are above the scuttle. She is,
+however, an amiable creature and, if the wind is right, I hear her
+singing at her task. When clothespins fill her mouth, she experiments
+with popular tunes. One of these wooden bipeds once slipped inside and
+nearly strangled her.
+
+In the distance, on the taller buildings, water tanks are lifted
+against the sky. They are perched aloft on three fingers, as it were,
+as if the buildings were just won to prohibition and held up their
+water cups in the first excitement of a novice to pledge the cause.
+Let hard liquor crouch and tremble in its rathskeller below the
+sidewalk! In the basement let musty kegs roll and gurgle with hopeless
+fear! _Der Tag!_ The roof, the triumphant roof, has gone dry.
+
+This range of buildings with water tanks and towers stops my gaze to
+the North. There is a crowded world beyond--rolling valleys of
+humanity--the heights of Harlem--but although my windows stand on
+tiptoe, they may not discover these distant scenes.
+
+On summer days these roofs burn in the sun and spirals of heat arise.
+Tar flows from the joints in the tin. Tar and the adder--is it not a
+bright day that brings them forth? Now washing hangs limp upon the
+line. There is no frisk in undergarments. These stockings that hang
+shriveled and anaemic--can it be possible that they once trotted to a
+lively tune, or that a lifted skirt upon a crosswalk drew the eye? The
+very spouts and chimneys droop in the heavy sunlight. All the spinning
+vents are still. On these roofs, as on a steaming altar, August
+celebrates its hot midsummer rites.
+
+But in winter, when the wind is up, the roofs show another aspect. The
+storm, in frayed and cloudy garment, now plunges across the city. It
+snaps its boisterous fingers. It pipes a song to summon rowdy
+companions off the sea. The whirling vents hum shrilly to the tune.
+And the tempests are roused, and the windy creatures of the hills make
+answer. The towers--even the nearer buildings--are obscured. The sky
+is gray with rain. Smoke is torn from the chimneys. Down below let a
+fire be snug upon the hearth and let warm folk sit and toast their
+feet! Let shadows romp upon the walls! Let the andirons wink at the
+sleepy cat! Cream or lemon, two lumps or one. Here aloft is brisker
+business. There is storm upon the roof. The tempest holds a carnival.
+And the winds pounce upon the smoke as it issues from the chimney-pots
+and wring it by the neck as they bear it off.
+
+And sometimes it seems that these roofs represent youth, and its
+purpose, its ambition and adventure. For, from of old, have not poets
+lived in garrets? And are not all poets young even if their beards are
+white? Round and round the poet climbs, up these bare creaking flights
+to the very top. There is a stove to be lighted--unless the woodbox
+fails--a sloping ceiling and a window huddled to the floor. The poet's
+fingers may be numb. Although the inkpot be full, his stomach may be
+empty. And yet from this window, lately, a poem was cast upward to the
+moon. And youth and truth still rhyme in these upper rooms. Linda's
+voice is still the music of a sonnet. Still do the roses fade, and
+love is always like the constant stars. And once, this!--surely from a
+garret:
+
+    When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
+    Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
+    And think that I may never live to trace
+    Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance--
+
+Poor starved wretches are we who live softly in the lower stories,
+although we are fat of body.
+
+If a mighty pair of shears were to clip the city somewhere below these
+windy gutters would there not be a dearth of poems in the spring? Who
+then would be left to note the changing colors of the twilight and the
+peaceful transit of the stars? Would gray beech trees in the winter
+find a voice? Would there still be a song of water and of wind? Who
+would catch the rhythm of the waves and the wheat fields in the
+breeze? What lilts and melodies would vanish from the world! How stale
+and flat the city without its roofs!
+
+But it is at night that these roofs show best. Then, as below a
+philosopher in his tower, the city spreads its web of streets, and its
+lights gleam in answer to the lights above. Galileo in his
+tower--Teufelsdroeckh at his far-seeing attic window--saw this
+glistening pageantry and had thoughts unutterable.
+
+In this darkness these roofs are the true suburb of the world--the
+outpost--the pleasant edge of our human earth turned up toward the
+barren moon. Chimneys stand as sentinels on the border of the sky.
+Pointed towers mark the passage of the stars. Great buildings are the
+cliffs on the shores of night. A skylight shows as a pleasant signal
+to guide the wandering skipper of the moon.
+
+
+
+
+The Quest of the Lost Digamma.
+
+
+Many years ago there was a club of college undergraduates which called
+itself the Lost Digamma. The digamma, I am informed, is a letter that
+was lost in prehistoric times from the Greek alphabet. A prudent
+alphabet would have offered a reward at once and would have beaten up
+the bushes all about, but evidently these remedies were neglected. As
+the years went on the other letters gradually assumed its duties. The
+philological chores, so to speak, night and morning, that had once
+fallen to the digamma, they took upon themselves, until the very name
+of the letter was all but lost.
+
+Those who are practiced in such matters--humped men who blink with
+learning--claim to discover evidence of the letter now and then in
+their reading. Perhaps the missing letter still gives a false quantity
+to a vowel or shifts an accent. It is remembered, as it were, by its
+vacant chair. Or rather, like a ghost it haunts a word, rattling a
+warning lest we disarrange a syllable. Its absence, however, in the
+flesh, despite the lapse of time--for it went off long ago when the
+mastodon still wandered on the pleasant upland--its continued absence
+vexes the learned. They scan ancient texts for an improper syllable
+and mark the time upon their brown old fingers, if possibly a jolting
+measure may offer them a clue. Although it must appear that the
+digamma--if it yet rambles alive somewhere beneath the moon--has by
+this time grown a beard and is lost beyond recognition, still old
+gentlemen meet weekly and read papers to one another on the progress
+of the search. Like the old woman of the story they still keep a light
+burning in their study windows against the wanderer's return.
+
+Now it happened once that a group of undergraduates, stirred to
+sympathy beyond the common usage of the classroom, formed themselves
+into a club to aid in the search. It is not recorded that they were
+the deepest students in the class, yet mark their zeal! On a rumor
+arising from the chairman that the presence of the lost digamma was
+suspected the group rushed together of an evening, for there was an
+instinct that the digamma, like the raccoon, was easiest trapped at
+night. To stay their stomachs against a protracted search, for their
+colloquies sat late, they ordered a plentiful dinner to be placed
+before them. Also, on the happy chance that success might crown the
+night, a row of stout Tobies was set upon the board. If the prodigal
+lurked without and his vagrant nose were seen at last upon the window,
+then musty liquor, from a Toby's three-cornered hat, would be a
+fitting pledge for his return.
+
+I do not know to a certainty the place of these meetings, but I choose
+to fancy that it was an upper room in a modest restaurant that went by
+the name of Mory's--not the modern Mory's that affects the manners of
+a club, but the original Temple Bar, remembered justly for its brown
+ale and golden bucks.
+
+There was, of course, a choice of places where the Lost Digamma might
+have pushed its search. Waiving Billy's and the meaner joints
+conferred on freshmen, there was, to be sure, the scholastic murk of
+Traeger's--one room especially at the rear with steins around the
+walls. There was Heublein's, also. Even the Tontine might rouse a
+student. But I choose to consider that Mory's was the place.
+
+Never elsewhere has cheese sputtered on toast with such hot delight.
+Never have such fair round eggs perched upon the top. The hen who laid
+the golden egg--for it could be none other than she who worked the
+miracle at Mory's--must have clucked like a braggart when the smoking
+dish came in. The dullest nose, even if it had drowsed like a Stoic
+through the day, perked and quivered when the breath came off the
+kitchen. Ears that before had never wiggled to the loudest noise came
+flapping forward when the door was opened. Or maybe in those days your
+wealth, huddled closely through the week, stretched on Saturday night
+to a mutton chop with bacon on the side. This chop, named of the
+southern downs, was so big that it curled like an anchovy to get upon
+the plate. The sheep that bore it across the grassy moors must have
+out-topped the horse. The hills must have shaken beneath his tread.
+With what eagerness you squared your lean elbows for the feast, with
+knife and fork turned upwards in your fists!
+
+But chops in these modern days are retrograde. Sheep have fallen to a
+decadent race. Cheese has lost its cunning. Someone, alas, as the
+story says, has killed the hen that laid the golden egg. Mory's is
+sunk and gone. Its faded prints of the Old Brick Row, its tables
+carved with students' names, its brown Tobies in their three-cornered
+hats, the brasses of the tiny bar, the rickety rooms themselves--these
+rise from the past like genial ghosts and beckon us toward pleasant
+memories.
+
+Such was the zeal in those older days which the members of the Lost
+Digamma spent upon their quest that belated pedestrians--if the legend
+of the district be believed--have stopped upon the curb and have
+inquired the meaning of the glad shouts that issued from the upper
+windows, and they have gone off marveling at the enthusiasm attendant
+on this high endeavor. It is rumored that once when the excitement of
+the chase had gone to an unusual height and the students were beating
+their Tobies on the table, one of them, a fellow of uncommon ardor,
+lunging forward from his chair, got salt upon the creature's tail. The
+exploit overturned the table and so rocked the house that Louis, who
+was the guardian of the place, put his nose above the stairs and
+cooled the meeting. Had it not been for his interference--he was a
+good-natured fellow but unacquainted with the frenzy that marks the
+scholar--the lost digamma might have been trapped, to the lasting
+glory of the college.
+
+As to the further progress of the club I am not informed. Doubtless it
+ran an honorable course and passed on from class to class the
+tradition of its high ambition, but never again was the lost digamma
+so nearly in its grasp. If it still meets upon its midnight labors, a
+toothless member boasts of that night of its topmost glory, and those
+who have gathered to his words rap their stale unprofitable mugs upon
+the table.
+
+It would be unjust to assume that you are so poor a student as myself.
+Doubtless you are a scholar and can discourse deeply of the older
+centuries. You know the ancient works of Tweedledum and can
+distinguish to a hair's breadth 'twixt him and Tweedledee. Learning is
+candy on your tooth. Perhaps you stroke your sagacious beard and give
+a nimble reason for the lightning. To you the hills have whispered how
+they came, and the streams their purpose and ambition. You have
+studied the first shrinkage of the earth when the plains wrinkled and
+broke into mountain peaks. The mystery of the stars is to you as
+familiar as your garter. If such depth is yours, I am content to sit
+before you like a bucket below a tap.
+
+At your banquet I sit as a poor relation. If the viands hold, I fork a
+cold morsel from your dish....
+
+But modesty must not gag me. I do myself somewhat lean towards
+knowledge. I run to a dictionary on a disputed word, and I point my
+inquiring nose upon the page like a careful schoolman. On a spurt I
+pry into an uncertain date, but I lack the perseverance and the
+wakefulness for sustained endeavor. To repair my infirmity, I
+frequently go among those of steadier application, if haply their
+devotion may prove contagious. It was but lately that I dined with a
+group of the Cognoscenti. There were light words at first, as when a
+juggler carelessly tosses up a ball or two just to try his hand before
+he displays his genius--a jest or two, into which I entered as an
+equal. In these shallow moments we waded through our soup. But we had
+hardly got beyond the fish when the company plunged into greater
+depth. I soon discovered that I was among persons skilled in those
+economic and social studies that now most stir us. My neighbor on the
+left offered to gossip with me on the latest evaluations and
+eventuations--for such were her pleasing words--in the department of
+knowledge dearest to her. While I was still fumbling for a response,
+my neighbor on the right, abandoning her meat, informed me of the
+progress of a survey of charitable organizations that was then under
+way. By mischance, however, while flipping up the salad on my fork, I
+dropped a morsel on the cloth, and I was so intent in manoeuvring
+my plates and spoons to cover up the speck, that I lost a good part of
+her improving discourse.
+
+I was still, however, making a tolerable pretense of attention, when a
+learned person across the table was sharp enough to see that I was a
+novice in the gathering. For my improvement, therefore, he fixed his
+great round glasses in my direction. In my confusion they seemed
+burning lenses hotly focused on me. Under such a glare, he thought, my
+tender sprouts of knowledge must spring up to full blossom.
+
+When he had my attention, he proceeded to lay out the dinner into
+calories, which I now discovered to be a kind of heat or nutritive
+unit. He cast his appraisal on the meat and vegetables, and turned an
+ear toward the pantry door if by chance he might catch a hint of the
+dessert for his estimate, but by this time, being overwrought, I gave
+up all pretense, and put my coarse attention on my plate.
+
+Sometimes I fall on better luck. It was but yesterday that I sat
+waiting for a book in the Public Library, when a young woman came and
+sat beside me on the common bench. Immediately she opened a monstrous
+note-book, and fell to studying it. I had myself been reading, but I
+had held my book at a stingy angle against the spying of my neighbors.
+As the young woman was of a more open nature, she laid hers out flat.
+It is my weakness to pry upon another's book. Especially if it is old
+and worn--a musty history or an essay from the past--I squirm and
+edge myself until I can follow the reader's thumb.
+
+At the top of each page she had written the title of a book, with a
+space below for comment, now well filled. There were a hundred of
+these titles, and all of them concerned John Paul Jones. She busied
+herself scratching and amending her notes. The whole was thrown into
+such a snarl of interlineation, was so disfigured with revision, and
+the writing so started up the margins to get breath at the top, that I
+wondered how she could possibly bring a straight narrative out of the
+confusion. Yet here was a book growing up beneath my very nose. If in
+a year's time--or perhaps in a six-month, if the manuscript is not
+hawked too long among publishers--if when again the nights are raw, a
+new biography of John Paul Jones appears, and you cut its leaves while
+your legs are stretched upon the hearth, I bid you to recognize as its
+author my companion on the bench. Although she did not have beauty to
+rouse a bachelor, yet she had an agreeable face and, if a soft white
+collar of pleasing fashion be evidence, she put more than a scholar's
+care upon her dress.
+
+I am not entirely a novice in a library. Once I gained admittance to
+the Reading Room of the British Museum--no light task even before the
+war. This was the manner of it. First, I went among the policemen who
+frequent the outer corridors, and inquired for a certain office which
+I had been told controlled its affairs. The third policeman had heard
+of it and sent me off with directions. Presently I went through an
+obscure doorway, traversed a mean hall with a dirty gas-jet at the
+turn and came before a wicket. A dark man with the blood of a Spanish
+inquisitor asked my business. I told him I was a poor student, without
+taint or heresy, who sought knowledge. He stroked his chin as though
+it were a monstrous improbability. He looked me up and down, but this
+might have been merely a secular inquiry on the chance that I carried
+explosives. He then dipped his pen in an ancient well (it was from
+such a dusty fount that the warrant for Saint Bartholomew went forth),
+then bidding me be careful in my answers, he cocked his head and shut
+his less suspicious eye lest it yield to mercy.
+
+He asked my name in full, middle name and all--as though villainy
+might lurk in an initial--my hotel, my length of stay in London, my
+residence in America, my occupation, the titles of the books I sought.
+When he had done, I offered him my age and my weakness for French
+pastry, in order that material for a monograph might be at hand if at
+last I came to fame, but he silenced me with his cold eye. He now
+thrust a pamphlet in my hands, and told me to sit alongside and read
+it. It contained the rules that govern the use of the Reading Room. It
+was eight pages long, and intolerably dry, and towards the end I
+nodded. Awaking with a start, I was about to hold up my hands for the
+adjustment of the thumb screws--for I had fallen on a nightmare--when
+he softened. The Imperial Government was now pleased to admit me to
+the Reading Room for such knowledge as might lie in my capacity.
+
+The Reading Room is used chiefly by authors, gray fellows mostly,
+dried and wrinkled scholars who come here to pilfer innocently from
+antiquity. Among these musty memorial shelves, if anywhere, it would
+seem that the dusty padding feet of the lost digamma might be heard.
+In this room, perhaps, Christian Mentzelius was at work when he heard
+the book-worm flap its wings.
+
+Here sit the scholars at great desks with ingenious shelves and racks,
+and they write all day and copy excerpts from the older authors. If
+one of them hesitates and seems to chew upon his pencil, it is but
+indecision whether Hume or Buckle will weigh heavier on his page. Or
+if one of them looks up from his desk in a blurred near-sighted
+manner, it is because his eyes have been so stretched upon the distant
+centuries, that they can hardly focus on a room. If a scholar chances
+to sneeze because of the infection, let it be his consolation that the
+dust arises from the most ancient and respected authors! Pages move
+silently about with tall dingy tomes in their arms. Other tomes, whose
+use is past, they bear off to the shades below.
+
+I am told that once in a long time a student of fresher complexion
+gets in--a novitiate with the first scholastic down upon his cheek--a
+tender stripling on his first high quest--a broth of a boy barely off
+his primer--but no sooner is he set than he feels unpleasantly
+conspicuous among his elders. Most of these youth bolt, offering to
+the doorman as a pretext some neglect--a forgotten mission at a
+book-stall--an errand with a tailor. Even those few who remain because
+of the greater passion for their studies, find it to their comfort to
+break their condition. Either they put on glasses or they affect a
+limp. I know one persistent youth who was so consumed with desire for
+history, yet so modest against exposure, that he bargained with a
+beggar for his crutch. It was, however, the rascal's only livelihood.
+This crutch and his piteous whimper had worked so profitably on the
+crowd that, in consequence, its price fell beyond the student's purse.
+My friend, therefore, practiced a palsy until, being perfect in the
+part, he could take his seat without notice or embarrassment. Alas,
+the need of these pretenses is short. Such is the contagion of the
+place--a breath from Egypt comes up from the lower stacks--that a
+youth's appearance, like a dyer's hand, is soon subdued to what it
+works in. In a month or so a general dust has settled on him. Too
+often learning is a Rip Van Winkle's flagon.
+
+On a rare occasion I have myself been a student, and have plied my
+book with diligence. Not long ago I spent a week of agreeable days
+reading the many versions of Shakespeare that were played from the
+Restoration through the eighteenth century. They are well known to
+scholars, but the general reader is perhaps unfamiliar how Shakespeare
+was perverted. From this material I thought that I might lay out an
+instructive paper; how, for example, the whirling passion of Lear was
+once wrought to soft and pleasant uses for a holiday. Cordelia is
+rescued from the villains by the hero Kent, who cries out in a
+transport, "Come to my arms, thou loveliest, best of women!" The scene
+is laid in the woods, but as night comes on, Cordelia's old nurse
+appears. A scandal is averted. Whereupon Kent marries Cordelia, and
+they reign happily ever afterward. As for Lear, he advances into a
+gentle convalescence. Before the week is out he will be sunning
+himself on the bench beneath his pear tree and babbling of his early
+days.
+
+There were extra witches in Macbeth. Romeo and Juliet lived and the
+quarreling families were united. Desdemona remained un-smothered to
+the end. There was one stout author--but here I trust to memory--who
+even attempted to rescue Hamlet and to substitute for the distant
+rolling of the drum of Fortinbras, the pipes and timbrels of his happy
+wedding. There is yet to be made a lively paper of these Shakespeare
+tinkers of the eighteenth century.
+
+And then John Timbs was to have been my text, who was an antiquary of
+the nineteenth century. I had come frequently on his books. They are
+seldom found in first-hand shops. More appropriately they are offered
+where the older books are sold--where there are racks before the door
+for the rakings of the place, and inside an ancient smell of leather.
+If there are barrels in the basement, stocked and overflowing, it is
+sure that a volume of Timbs is upon the premises.
+
+I visited the Public Library and asked a sharp-nosed person how I
+might best learn about John Timbs. I followed the direction of his
+wagging thumb. The accounts of the encyclopedias are meager, a date of
+birth and of death, a few facts of residence, the titles of his
+hundred and fifty books, and little more. Some neglect him entirely;
+skipping lightly from Timbrel to Timbuctoo. Indeed, Timbuctoo turned
+up so often that even against my intention I came to a knowledge of
+the place. It lies against the desert and exports ostrich feathers,
+gums, salts and kola-nuts. Nor are timbrels to be scorned. They were
+used--I quote precisely--"by David when he danced before the ark."
+Surely not Noah's ark! I must brush up on David.
+
+Timbs is matter for an engaging paper. His passion was London. He had
+a fling at other subjects--a dozen books or so--but his graver hours
+were given to the study of London. There is hardly a park or square or
+street, palace, theatre or tavern that did not yield its secret to
+him. Here and there an upstart building, too new for legend, may have
+had no gossip for him, but all others John Timbs knew, and the
+personages who lived in them. And he knew whether they were of sour
+temper, whether they were rich or poor, and if poor, what shifts and
+pretenses they practiced. He knew the windows of the town where the
+beaux commonly ogled the passing beauties. He knew the chatter of the
+theatres and of society. He traced the walls of the old city, and
+explored the lanes. Unless I am much mistaken, there is not a fellow
+of the _Dunciad_ to whom he has not assigned a house. Nor is any man
+of deeper knowledge of the clubs and coffee-houses and taverns. One
+would say that he had sat at Will's with Dryden, and that he had gone
+to Button's arm in arm with Addison. Did Goldsmith journey to his
+tailor for a plum-colored suit, you may be sure that Timbs tagged him
+at the elbow. If Sam Johnson sat at the Mitre or Marlowe caroused in
+Deptford, Timbs was of the company. There has scarcely been a play
+acted in London since the days of Burbage which Timbs did not
+chronicle.
+
+But presently I gave up the study of John Timbs. Although I had
+accumulated interesting facts about him, and had got so far as to lay
+out several amusing paragraphs, still I could not fit them together to
+an agreeable result. It was as though I could blow a melodious C upon
+a horn, and lower down, after preparation, a dulcet G, but failed to
+make a tune of them.
+
+But although my studies so far have been unsuccessful, doubtless I
+shall persist. Even now I have several topics in mind that may yet
+serve for pleasant papers. If I fail, it will be my comfort that
+others far better than myself achieve but a half success. Although the
+digamma escapes our salt, somewhere he lurks on the lonely mountains.
+And often when our lamps burn late, we fancy that we catch a waving of
+his tail and hear him padding across the night. But although we lash
+ourselves upon the chase and strain forward in the dark, the timid
+beast runs on swifter feet and scampers off.
+
+
+
+
+On a Rainy Morning.
+
+
+A northeaster blew up last night and this morning we are lashed by
+wind and rain. M---- foretold the change yesterday when we rode upon a
+'bus top at nightfall. It was then pleasant enough and to my eye all
+was right aloft. I am not, however, weather-wise. I must feel the
+first patter of the storm before I hazard a judgment. To learn even
+the quarter of a breeze--unless there is a trail of smoke to guide
+me--I must hold up a wet finger. In my ignorance clouds sail across
+the heavens on a whim. Like white sheep they wander here and there for
+forage, and my suspicion of bad weather comes only when the tempest
+has whipped them to a gallop. Even a band around the moon--which I am
+told is primary instruction on the coming of a storm--stirs me chiefly
+by its deeper mystery, as if astrology, come in from the distant
+stars, lifts here a warning finger. But M---- was brought up beside
+the sea, and she has a sailor's instinct for the weather. At the first
+preliminary shifting of the heavens, too slight for my coarser senses,
+she will tilt her nose and look around, then pronounce the coming of a
+storm. To her, therefore, I leave all questions of umbrellas and
+raincoats, and on her decision we go abroad.
+
+Last night when I awoke I knew that her prophecy was right again, for
+the rain was blowing in my face and slashing on the upper window. The
+wind, too, was whistling along the roofs, with a try at chimney-pots
+and spouts. It was the wolf in the fairy story who said he'd huff and
+he'd puff, and he'd blow in the house where the little pig lived; yet
+tonight his humor was less savage. Down below I heard ash-cans
+toppling over all along the street and rolling to the gutters. It
+lacks a few nights of Hallowe'en, but doubtless the wind's calendar is
+awry and he is out already with his mischief. When a window rattles at
+this season, it is the tick-tack of his roguish finger. If a chimney
+is overthrown, it is his jest. Tomorrow we shall find a broken shutter
+as his rowdy celebration of the night.
+
+This morning is by general agreement a nasty day. I am not sure that I
+assent. If I were the old woman at the corner who sells newspapers
+from a stand, I would not like the weather, for the pent roof drops
+water on her stock. Scarcely is the peppermint safe beyond the
+splatter. Nor is it, I fancy, a profitable day for a street-organ man,
+who requires a sunny morning with open windows for a rush of business.
+Nor is there any good reason why a house-painter should be delighted
+with this blustering sky, unless he is an idle fellow who seeks an
+excuse to lie in bed. But except in sympathy, why is our elevator boy
+so fiercely disposed against the weather? His cage is snug as long as
+the skylight holds. And why should the warm dry noses of the city,
+pressed against ten thousand windows up and down the streets, be flat
+and sour this morning with disapproval?
+
+It may savor of bravado to find pleasure in what is so commonly
+condemned. Here is a smart fellow, you may say, who sets up a
+paradox--a conceited braggart who professes a difference to mankind.
+Or worse, it may appear that I try my hand at writing in a "happy
+vein." God forbid that I should be such a villain! For I once knew a
+man who, by reading these happy books, fell into pessimism and a sharp
+decline. He had wasted to a peevish shadow and had taken to his bed
+before his physician discovered the seat of his anaemia. It was only by
+cutting the evil dose, chapter by chapter, that he finally restored
+him to his friends. Yet neither supposition of my case is true. We who
+enjoy wet and windy days are of a considerable number, and if our
+voices are seldom heard in public dispute, it is because we are
+overcome by the growling majority. You may know us, however, by our
+stout boots, the kind of battered hats we wear, and our disregard of
+puddles. To our eyes alone, the rain swirls along the pavements like
+the mad rush of sixteenth notes upon a music staff. And to our ears
+alone, the wind sings the rattling tune recorded.
+
+Certainly there is more comedy on the streets on a wet and windy day
+than there is under a fair sky. Thin folk hold on at corners. Fat folk
+waddle before the wind, their racing elbows wing and wing. Hats are
+whisked off and sail down the gutters on excited purposes of their
+own. It was only this morning that I saw an artistocratic silk hat
+bobbing along the pavement in familiar company with a stranger
+bonnet--surely a misalliance, for the bonnet was a shabby one. But in
+the wind, despite the difference of social station, an instant
+affinity had been established and an elopement was under way.
+
+Persons with umbrellas clamp them down close upon their heads and
+proceed blindly like the larger and more reckless crabs that you see
+in aquariums. Nor can we know until now what spirit for adventure
+resides in an umbrella. Hitherto it has stood in a Chinese vase
+beneath the stairs and has seemed a listless creature. But when a
+November wind is up it is a cousin of the balloon, with an equal zest
+to explore the wider precincts of the earth and to alight upon the
+moon. Only persons of heavier ballast--such as have been fed on
+sweets--plump pancake persons--can hold now an umbrella to the ground.
+A long stowage of muffins and sugar is the only anchor.
+
+At this moment beneath my window there is a dear little girl who
+brings home a package from the grocer's. She is tugged and blown by
+her umbrella, and at every puff of wind she goes up on tiptoe. If I
+were writing a fairy tale I would make her the Princess of my plot,
+and I would transport her underneath her umbrella in this whisking
+wind to her far adventures, just as Davy sailed off to the land of
+Goblins inside his grandfather's clock. She would be carried over
+seas, until she could sniff the spice winds of the south. Then she
+would be set down in the orchard of the Golden Prince, who presently
+would spy her from his window--a mite of a pretty girl, all mussed and
+blown about. And then I would spin out the tale to its true and happy
+end, and they would live together ever after. How she labors at the
+turn, hugging her paper bag and holding her flying skirts against her
+knees! An umbrella, however, usually turns inside out before it gets
+you off the pavement, and then it looks like a wrecked Zeppelin. You
+put it in the first ash-can, and walk off in an attempt not to be
+conspicuous.
+
+Although the man who pursues his hat is, in some sort, conscious that
+he plays a comic part, and although there is a pleasing relish on the
+curb at his discomfort, yet it must not be assumed that all the humor
+on the street rises from misadventure. Rather, it arises from a
+general acceptance of the day and a feeling of common partnership in
+the storm. The policeman in his rubber coat exchanges banter with a
+cab-driver. If there is a tangle in the traffic, it comes nearer to a
+jest than on a fairer day. A teamster sitting dry inside his hood,
+whistles so cheerily that he can be heard at the farther sidewalk.
+Good-naturedly he sets his tune as a rival to the wind.
+
+It must be that only good-tempered persons are abroad--those whose
+humor endures and likes the storm--and that when the swift dark clouds
+drove across the world, all sullen folk scurried for a roof. And is it
+not wise, now and then, that folk be thus parceled with their kind?
+Must we wait for Gabriel's Trump for our division? I have been
+told--but the story seems incredible--that that seemingly cursed
+thing, the Customs' Wharf, was established not so much for our
+nation's profit as in acceptance of some such general theory--in a
+word, that all sour persons might be housed together for their
+employment and society be rid of them. It is by an extension of this
+obscure but beneficent division that only those of better nature go
+abroad on these blustering November days.
+
+There are many persons, of course, who like summer rains and boast of
+their liking. This is nothing. One might as well boast of his appetite
+for toasted cheese. Does one pin himself with badges if he plies an
+enthusiastic spoon in an ice-cream dish? Or was the love of sack ever
+a virtue, and has Falstaff become a saint? If he now sing in the Upper
+Choir, the bench must sag. But persons of this turn of argument make a
+point of their willingness to walk out in a June rain. They think it a
+merit to go tripping across the damp grass to inspect their gardens.
+Toasted cheese! Of course they like it. Who could help it? This is no
+proof of merit. Such folk, at best, are but sisters in the
+brotherhood.
+
+And yet a November rain is but an August rain that has grown a beard
+and taken on the stalwart manners of the world. And the November wind,
+which piped madrigals in June and lazy melodies all the summer, has
+done no more than learn brisker braver tunes to befit the coming
+winter. If the wind tugs at your coat-tails, it only seeks a companion
+for its games. It goes forth whistling for honest celebration, and who
+shall begrudge it here and there a chimney if it topple it in sport?
+
+Despite this, rainy weather has a bad name. So general is its evil
+reputation that from of old one of the lowest circles of Hell has been
+plagued with raw winds and covered thick with ooze--a testament to our
+northern March--and in this villains were set shivering to their
+chins. But the beginning of the distaste for rainy weather may be
+traced to Noah. Certain it is that toward the end of his cruise, when
+the passengers were already chafing with the animals--the kangaroos,
+in particular, it is said, played leap-frog in the hold and disturbed
+the skipper's sleep--certain it is while the heavens were still
+overcast that Noah each morning put his head anxiously up through the
+forward hatch for a change of sky. There was rejoicing from stem to
+stern--so runs the legend--when at last his old white beard, shifting
+from west to east, gave promise of a clearing wind. But from that day
+to this, as is natural, there has persisted a stout prejudice against
+wind and rain.
+
+But this is not just. If a rainy day lacks sunshine, it has vigor for
+a substitute. The wind whistles briskly among the chimney tops. There
+is so much life on wet and windy days. Yesterday Nature yawned, but
+today she is wide awake. Yesterday the earth seemed lolling idly in
+the heavens. It was a time of celestial vacation and all the suns and
+moons were vacant of their usual purpose. But today the earth whirls
+and spins through space. Her gray cloud cap is pulled down across her
+nose and she leans in her hurry against the storm. The heavens have
+piped the planets to their work.
+
+Yesterday the smoke of chimneys drifted up with tired content from
+lazy roofs, but today the smoke is stretched and torn like a
+triumphant banner of the storm.
+
+
+
+
+"1917."
+
+
+I dreamed last night a fearful dream and this morning even the
+familiar contact of the subway has been unable to shake it from me.
+
+I know of few things that are so momentarily tragical as awakening
+from a frightful dream. Even if you know with returning consciousness
+that it was a dream, it seems as if a part of it must have a basis in
+fact. The death that was recorded--is it true or not? And in your mind
+you grope among the familiar landmarks of your recollection to
+discover where the true and the fictitious join.
+
+But this dream of last night was so vivid that this morning I cannot
+shake it from me.
+
+I dreamed--ridiculously enough--that the whole world was at war, and
+that big and little nations were fighting.
+
+In my dream the round earth hung before me against the background of
+the night, and red flames shot from every part.
+
+I heard cries of anguish--men blinded by gases and crazed by
+suffering. I saw women dressed in black--a long procession stretching
+hideously from mist to mist--walking with erect heads, dry-eyed, for
+grief had starved them of tears. I saw ships sinking and a thousand
+arms raised for a moment above the waves. I saw children lying dead
+among their toys.
+
+And I saw boys throw down their books and tools and go off with glad
+cries, and men I saw, grown gray with despair, staggering under heavy
+weights.
+
+There were millions of dead upon the earth that hung before me, and I
+smelled the battlefield.
+
+And I beheld one man--one hundred men--secure in an outlawed country--who
+looked from far windows--men bitter with disappointment--men who blasphemed
+of God, while their victims rotted in Flanders.
+
+And in my dream it seemed that I did not have a sword, but that I,
+too, looked upon the battle from a place where there were no flames. I
+ran little errands for the war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is the familiar window--that dull outline across the room. Here
+is the accustomed door. The bed is set between. It was but a dream
+after all. And yet how it has shaken me!
+
+Of course the dream was absurd. No man--no nation certainly--could be
+so mad. The whole whirling earth could not burn with fire. Until the
+final trumpet, no such calamity is possible. Thank God, it was but a
+dream, and I can continue today my peaceful occupation.
+
+Calico, I'm told, is going up. I must protect our contracts.
+
+
+
+
+On Going Afoot.
+
+
+There is a tale that somewhere in the world there is a merry river
+that dances as often as it hears sweet music. The tale is not precise
+whether this river is neighbor to us or is a stream of the older
+world. "It dances at the noise of musick," so runs the legend, "for
+with musick it bubbles, dances and grows sandy." This tale may be the
+conceit of one of those older poets whose verses celebrate the morning
+and the freshness of the earth--Thomas Heywood could have written it
+or even the least of those poets who sat their evenings at the
+Mermaid--or the tale may arise more remotely from an old worship of
+the god Pan, who is said to have piped along the streams. I offer my
+credence to the earlier origin as the more pleasing. And therefore on
+a country walk I observe the streams if by chance any of them shall
+fit the tale. Not yet have I seen Pan puffing his cheeks with melody
+on a streamside bank--by ill luck I squint short-sightedly--but I
+often hear melodies of such woodsy composition that surely they must
+issue from his pipe. The stream leaps gaily across the shallows that
+glitter with sunlight, and I am tempted to the agreeable suspicion
+that I have hit upon the very stream of the legend and that the god
+Pan sits hard by in the thicket and beats his shaggy hoof in rhythm.
+It is his song that the wind sings in the trees. If a bird sings in
+the meadow its tune is pitched to Pan's reedy obligato.
+
+Whether or not this is true, I confess to a love of a stream. This may
+be merely an anaemic love of beauty, such as is commonly bred in
+townsfolk on a holiday, or it may descend from braver ancestors who
+once were anglers and played truant with hook and line. You may recall
+that the milk-women of Kent told Piscator when he came at the end of
+his day's fishing to beg a cup of red cow's milk, that anglers were
+"honest, civil, quiet men." I have, also, a habit of contemplation,
+which I am told is proper to an angler. I can lean longer than most
+across the railing of a country bridge if the water runs noisily on
+the stones. If I chance to come off a dusty road--unless hunger stirs
+me to an inn--I can listen for an hour, for of all sounds it is the
+most musical. When earth and air and water play in concert, which are
+the master musicians this side of the moon, surely their harmony rises
+above the music of the stars.
+
+In a more familiar mood I throw stepping stones in the water to hear
+them splash, or I cram them in a dam to thwart the purpose of the
+stream, laying ever a higher stone when the water laps the top. I
+scoop out the sand and stones as if a mighty shipping begged for
+passage. Or I rest from this prodigious engineering upon my back and
+watch the white traffic of the clouds across the summer sky. The roots
+of an antique oak peep upon the flood as in the golden days of Arden.
+Apple blossoms fall upon the water like the snow of a more kindly
+winter. A gay leaf puts out upon the channel like a painted galleon
+for far adventure. A twig sails off freighted with my drowsy thoughts.
+A branch of a willow dips in the stream and writes an endless trail of
+words in the running water. In these evil days when the whole fair
+world is trenched and bruised with war, what wisdom does it send to
+the valleys where men reside--what love and peace and gentleness--what
+promise of better days to come--that it makes this eternal stream its
+messenger!
+
+And yet a stream is best if it is but an incident in travel--if it
+break the dusty afternoon and send one off refreshed. Rather than a
+place for fishing it invites one to bathe his feet. There are, indeed,
+persons so careful of their health as to assert that cold water
+endangers blisters. Theirs is a prudence to be neglected. Such persons
+had better leave their feet at home safely slippered on the fender. If
+one's feet go upon a holiday, is it fair that for fear of consequence
+they be kept housed in their shoes? Shall the toes sit inside their
+battered caravans while the legs and arms frisk outside? Is there such
+torture in a blister--even if the prevention be sure--to outweigh the
+pleasure of cold water running across the ankles?
+
+It was but lately that I followed a road that lay off the general
+travel through a pleasant country of hills and streams. As the road
+was not a thoroughfare and journeyed no farther than the near-by town
+where I was to get my supper, it went at a lazy winding pace. If a dog
+barked it was in sleepy fashion. He yelped merely to check his
+loneliness. There could be no venom on his drowsy tooth. The very cows
+that fed along its fences were of a slower breed and more
+contemplative whisk of tail than are found upon the thoroughfares.
+Sheep patched the fields with gray and followed their sleepy banquet
+across the hills.
+
+The country was laid out with farms--orchards and soft fields of grain
+that waved like a golden lake--but there were few farmhouses. In all
+the afternoon I passed but one person, a deaf man who asked for
+direction. When I cried out that I was a stranger, he held his hand to
+his ear, but his mouth fell open as if my words, denied by deafness
+from a proper portal, were offered here a service entrance. I spread
+my map before him and he put an ample thumb upon it. Then inquiring
+whether I had crossed a road with a red house upon it where his friend
+resided, he thanked me and walked off with such speed as his years had
+left him. Birds sang delightfully on the fences and in the field, yet
+I knew not their names. Shall one not enjoy a symphony without precise
+knowledge of the instrument that gives the tune? If an oboe sound a
+melody, must one bestow a special praise, with a knowledge of its
+function in the concert? Or if a trombone please, must one know the
+brassy creature by its name? Rather, whether I listen to horns or
+birds, in my ignorance I bestow loosely a general approbation; yet is
+the song sweet.
+
+All afternoon I walked with the sound of wind and water in my ears,
+and at night, when I had gained my journey's end and lay in bed, I
+heard beneath my window in the garden the music of a little runnel
+that was like a faint and pleasant echo of my hillside walk. I fell
+asleep to its soothing sound and its trickle made a pattern across my
+dreams.
+
+But perhaps you yourself, my dear sir, are addicted to these country
+walks, either for an afternoon or for a week's duration with a
+rucksack strapped across your back. If denied the longer outing, I
+hope that at least it is your custom to go forth upon a holiday to
+look upon the larger earth. Where the road most winds and dips and the
+distance is of the finer purple, let that direction be your choice!
+Seek out the region of the hills! Outposts and valleys here, with
+smoke of suppers rising. Trains are so small that a child might draw
+them with a string. Far-off hills are tumbled and in confusion, as if
+a giant were roused and had flung his rumpled cloak upon the plain.
+
+Or if a road and a stream seem close companions, tag along with them!
+Like three cronies you may work the countryside together! There are
+old mills with dams and mossy water wheels, and rumbling covered
+bridges.
+
+But chiefly I beg that you wander out at random without too precise
+knowledge of where you go or where you shall get your supper. If you
+are of a cautious nature, as springs from a delicate stomach or too
+sheltered life, you may stuff a bar of chocolate in your pocket. Or an
+apple--if you shift your other ballast--will not sag you beyond
+locomotion. I have known persons who prize a tomato as offering both
+food and drink, yet it is too likely to be damaged and squirt inside
+the pocket if you rub against a tree. Instead, the cucumber is to be
+commended for its coolness, and a pickle is a sour refreshment that
+should be nibbled in turn against the chocolate.
+
+Food oftentimes is to be got upon the way. There is a kind of cocoanut
+bar, flat and corrugated, that may be had at most crossroads. I no
+longer consider these a delicacy, but in my memory I see a boy
+bargaining for them at the counter. They are counted into his dirty
+palm. He stuffs a whole one in his mouth, from ear to ear. His bicycle
+leans against the trough outside. He mounts, wabbling from side to
+side to reach the pedals. Before him lie the mountains of the world.
+
+Nor shall I complain if you hold roughly in your mind, subject to a
+whim's reversal, an evening destination to check your hunger. But do
+not bend your circuit back to the noisy city! Let your march end at
+the inn of a country town! If it is but a station on your journey and
+you continue on the morrow, let there be an ample porch and a rail to
+rest your feet! Here you may sit in the comfortable twilight when
+crammed with food and observe the town's small traffic. Country folk
+come about, if you are of easy address, and engage you on their crops.
+The village prophet strokes his wise beard at your request and,
+squinting at the sky, foretells a storm. Or if the night is cold, a
+fire is laid inside and a wrinkled board for the conduct of the war
+debates upon the hearth. But so far as your infirmity permits, go
+forth at random with a spirit for adventure! If the prospect pleases
+you as the train slows down for the platform, cast a penny on your
+knee and abide its fall!
+
+Or if on principle you abhor a choice that is made wickedly on the
+falling of a coin, let an irrelevant circumstance direct your
+destination! I once walked outside of London, making my start at
+Dorking for no other reason except that Sam Weller's mother-in-law had
+once lived there. You will recall how the elder Mr. Weller in the hour
+of his affliction discoursed on widows in the taproom of the Marquis
+of Granby when the funeral was done, and how later, being pestered
+with the Reverend Mr. Stiggins, he immersed him in the horse-trough to
+ease his grief. All through the town I looked for red-nosed men who
+might be descended from the reverend shepherd, and once when I passed
+a horse-trough of uncommon size I asked the merchant at the corner if
+it might not be the very place. I was met, however, by such a vacant
+stare--for the fellow was unlettered--that to rouse him I bought a
+cucumber from an open crate against the time of lunch, and I followed
+my pursuit further in the town. The cucumber was of monstrous length
+and thin. All about the town its end stuck out of my pocket
+inquisitively, as though it were a fellow traveler down from London to
+see the sights. But although I inquired for the Weller family, it
+seems that they were dead and gone. Even the Marquis of Granby had
+disappeared, with its room behind the bar where Mr. Stiggins drank
+pineapple rum with water, _luke_, from the kettle on the hob.
+
+We left Dorking and walked all afternoon through a pleasant sunny
+country, up hill and down, to the town of Guildford. At four o'clock,
+to break the journey, we laid out our lunch of bread and cheese and
+cucumber, and rested for an hour. The place was a grassy bank along a
+road above a fertile valley where men were pitching hay. Their shouts
+were carried across the fields with an agreeable softness. Today,
+doubtless, women work in those fields.
+
+On another occasion we walked from Maidstone to Rochester on
+pilgrimage to the inn where Alfred Jingle borrowed Mr. Winkle's coat
+to attend the Assembly, when he made love to the buxom widow. War had
+just been declared between Britain and Germany, and soldiers guarded
+the roads above the town. At a tea-room in the outskirts army
+officers ate at a neighboring table. Later, it is likely, they were in
+the retreat from Mons: for the expeditionary force crossed the channel
+within a week. Yet so does farce march along with tragedy that our
+chief concern in Rochester was the old inn where the ball was held.
+
+A surly woman who sat behind the cashier's wicket fixed me with her
+eye. "Might we visit the ballroom?" I inquired. Evidently not, unless
+we were stopping at the house. "Madame," I said, "perhaps you are
+unaware that the immortal Mr. Pickwick once sojourned beneath your
+roof." There was no response. "The celebrated Mr. Pickwick, G. C. M.
+P. C.," I continued, "who was the discoverer of the sources of the
+Hampstead Ponds." At this--for my manner was impressive--she fumbled
+through the last few pages of her register and admitted that he might
+have been once a patron of the house, but that he had now paid his
+bill and gone.
+
+I was about to question her about the poet Augustus Snodgrass, who had
+been with Mr. Pickwick on his travels, when a waiter, a humorous
+fellow with a vision of a sixpence, offered to be our guide. We
+climbed the stairs and came upon the ballroom. It was a small room.
+Three quadrilles must have stuffed it to the edge--a dingy place with
+bare windows on a deserted innyard. At one end was a balcony that
+would hold not more than three musicians. The candles of its former
+brightness have long since burned to socket. Vanished are "Sir Thomas
+Clubber, Lady Clubber and the Miss Clubbers!" Gone is the Honorable
+Wilmot Snipe and all the notables that once crowded it! Vanished is
+the punchbowl where the amorous Tracy Tupman drank too many cups of
+negus on that memorable night. I gave the dirty waiter a sixpence and
+came away.
+
+I discourage the usual literary pilgrimage. Indeed, if there is a
+rumor that Milton died in a neighboring town, or a treaty of
+consequence was signed close by, choose another path! Let neither
+Oliver Cromwell nor the Magna Carta deflect your course! One of my
+finest walks was on no better advice than the avoidance of a
+celebrated shrine. I was led along the swift waters of a river,
+through several pretty towns, and witnessed the building of a lofty
+bridge. For lunch I had some memorable griddlecakes. Finally I rode on
+top of a rattling stage with a gossip for a driver, whose long finger
+pointed out the sights upon the road.
+
+But for the liveliest truancy, keep an eye out for red-haired and
+freckled lads, and make them your counselors! Lads so spotted and
+colored, I have found, are of unusual enterprise in knowing the best
+woodland paths and the loftiest views. A yellow-haired boy, being of
+paler wit, will suck his thumb upon a question. A touzled black
+exhibits a sulky absorption in his work. An indifferent brown, at
+best, runs for an answer to the kitchen. But red-haired and freckled
+lads are alive at once. Whether or not their roving spirit, which is
+the basis of their deeper and quicker knowledge, proceeds from the
+magic of the pigment, the fact yet remains that such boys are surer
+than a signpost to direct one to adventure. This truth is so general
+that I have read the lives of the voyagers--Robinson Crusoe, Captain
+Kidd and the worthies out of Hakluyt--if perhaps a hint might drop
+that they too in their younger days were freckled and red-haired. Sir
+Walter Raleigh--I choose at random--was doubtless called "Carrots" by
+his playmates. But on making inquiry of a red-haired lad, one must
+have a clear head in the tumult of his direction. I was once lost for
+several hours on the side of Anthony's Nose above the Hudson because I
+jumbled such advice. And although I made the acquaintance of a hermit
+who dwelt on the mountain with a dog and a scarecrow for his garden--a
+fellow so like him in garment and in feature that he seemed his
+younger and cleaner brother--still I did not find the top or see the
+clear sweep of the Hudson as was promised.
+
+If it is your habit to inquire of distance upon the road, do not
+quarrel with conflicting opinion! Judge the answer by the source!
+Persons of stalwart limb commonly underestimate a distance, whereas
+those of broken wind and stride stretch it greater than it is. But it
+is best to take all answers lightly. I have heard of a man who spent
+his rainy evenings on a walking trip in going among the soda clerks
+and small merchants of the village, not for information, but to
+contrast their ignorance. Aladdin's wicked uncle, when he inquired
+direction to the mountain of the genii's cave, could not have been so
+misdirected. Shoemakers, candy-men and peddlers of tinware--if such
+modest merchants existed also on the curb in those magic days--must
+have been of nicer knowledge or old Kazrac would never have found the
+lamp. In my friend's case, on inquiry, a certain hotel at which we
+aimed was both good and bad, open and shut, burned and unburned.
+
+There is a legend of the Catholic Church about a certain holy chapel
+that once leaped across the Alps. It seems gross superstition, yet
+although I belong to a protesting church, I assert its likelihood. For
+I solemnly affirm that on a hot afternoon I chased a whole village
+that skipped quite as miraculously before me across the country. It
+was a village of stout leg and wind and, as often as I inquired, it
+still kept seven miles ahead. Once only I gained, by trotting on a
+descent. Not until night when the village lay down to rest beside a
+quiet river did I finally overtake it. And the next morning I arose
+early in order to be off first upon my travels, and so keep the lively
+rascal in the rear.
+
+In my country walks I usually carry a book in the pocket opposite to
+my lunch. I seldom read it, but it is a comfort to have it handy. I am
+told that at one of the colleges, students of smaller application, in
+order that they may truthfully answer as to the length of time they
+have spent upon their books, do therefore literally sit upon a pile of
+them, as on a stool, while they engage in pleasanter and more secular
+reading. I do not examine this story closely, which rises, doubtless,
+from the jealousy of a rival college. Rather, I think that these
+students perch upon the books which presently they must read, on a
+wise instinct that this preliminary contact starts their knowledge.
+And therefore a favorite volume, even if unopened in the pocket, does
+nevertheless by its proximity color and enhance the enjoyment of the
+day. I have carried Howell, who wrote the "Familiar Letters," unread
+along the countryside. A small volume of Boswell has grown dingy in my
+pocket. I have gone about with a copy of Addison with long S's, but I
+read it chiefly at home when my feet are on the fender.
+
+I had by me once as I crossed the Devon moors a volume of "Richard
+Feverel." For fifteen miles I had struck across the upland where there
+is scarcely a house in sight--nothing but grazing sheep and wild
+ponies that ran at my approach. Sometimes a marshy stream flowed down
+a shallow valley, with a curl of smoke from a house that stood in the
+hollow. At the edge of this moorland, I came into a shady valley that
+proceeded to the ocean. My feet were pinched and tired when I heard
+the sound of water below the road. I pushed aside the bushes and saw a
+stream trickling on the rocks. I thrust my head into a pool until the
+water ran into my ears, and then sat with my bare feet upon the cool
+stones where the runnel lapped them, and read "Richard Feverel." To
+this day, at the mention of the title, I can hear the pleasant brawl
+of water and the stirring of the branches in the wind that wandered
+down the valley.
+
+Hazlitt tells us in a famous passage with what relish he once read
+"The New Eloise" on a walking trip. "It was on the 10th of April,
+1798," he writes, "that I sat down to a volume of the New Eloise, at
+the inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken." I
+am quite unfamiliar with the book, yet as often as I read the
+essay--which is the best of Hazlitt--I have been teased to buy it.
+Perhaps this springs in part from my own recollection of Llangollen,
+where I once stopped on a walking trip through Wales. The town lies on
+the river Dee at the foot of fertile hills patched with fences, on
+whose top there stand the ruins of Dinas Bran, a fortress of forgotten
+history, although it looks grimly towards the English marches as if
+its enemies came thence. Thrown across the river there is a peaked
+bridge of gray stone, many centuries old, on which the village folk
+gather at the end of day. I dined on ale and mutton of such excellence
+that, for myself, a cold volume of the census--if I had fallen so
+low--must have remained agreeably in memory. I recall that a
+street-organ stopped beneath the window and played a merry tune--or
+perhaps the wicked ale was mounting--and I paused in my onslaught
+against the mutton to toss the musician a coin.
+
+I applaud those who, on a walking trip, arise and begin their journey
+in the dawn, but although I am eager at night to make an early start,
+yet I blink and growl when the morning comes. I marvel at the poet who
+was abroad so early that he was able to write of the fresh twilight on
+the world--"Where the sandalled Dawn like a Greek god takes the
+hurdles of the hills"--but for my own part I would have slept and
+missed the sight. But an early hour is best, despite us lazybones, and
+to be on the road before the dew is gone and while yet a mist arises
+from the hollows is to know the journey's finest pleasure.
+
+Persons of early hours assert that they feel a fine exaltation. I am
+myself inclined to think, however, that this is not so much an
+exaltation that arises from the beauty of the hour, as from a feeling
+of superiority over their sleeping and inferior comrades. It is akin
+to the displeasing vanity of those persons who walk upon a boat with
+easy stomach while their companions lie below. I would discourage,
+therefore, persons that lean toward conceit from putting a foot out of
+bed until the second call. On the other hand, those who are of a
+self-depreciative nature should get up with the worm and bird. A man
+of my own acquaintance who was sunk in self-abasement for many years,
+was roused to a salutary conceit by no other tonic.
+
+And it is certain that to be off upon a journey with a rucksack
+strapped upon you at an hour when the butcher boy takes down his
+shutters is a high pleasure. Off you go through the village with
+swinging arms. Off you go across the country. A farmer is up before
+you and you hear his reaper across the field, and the neighing of his
+horses at the turn. Where the hill falls sharp against the sky, there
+he stands outlined, to wipe the sweat. And as your nature is, swift or
+sluggish thoughts go through your brain--plots and vagrant fancies,
+which later your pencil will not catch. It is in these earliest hours
+while the dew still glistens that little lyric sentences leap into
+your mind. Then, if at all, are windmills giants.
+
+There are cool retreats where you may rest at noon, but Stevenson has
+written of these. "You come," he writes, "to a milestone on a hill, or
+some place where deep ways meet under trees; and off goes the
+knapsack, and down you sit to smoke a pipe in the shade. You sink into
+yourself, and the birds come round and look at you; and your smoke
+dissipates upon the afternoon under the blue dome of heaven; and the
+sun lies warm upon your feet, and the cool air visits your neck and
+turns aside your open shirt. If you are not happy, you must have an
+evil conscience."
+
+And yet a good inn at night holds even a more tranquil joy. M---- and
+I, who frequently walk upon a holiday, traversed recently a mountain
+road to the north of West Point. During the afternoon we had scrambled
+up Storm King to a bare rock above the Hudson. It was just such an
+outlook as Rip found before he met the outlandish Dutchmen with their
+ninepins and flagon. We lay here above a green world that was rimmed
+with mountains, and watched the lagging sails and puffs of smoke upon
+the river. It was late afternoon when we descended to the mountain
+road that runs to West Point. During all the day there had been
+distant rumbling of thunder, as though a storm mustered in a far-off
+valley,--or perhaps the Dutchmen of the legend still lingered at their
+game,--but now as the twilight fell the storm came near. It was six
+o'clock when a sign-board informed us that we had seven miles to go,
+and already the thunder sounded with earnest purpose. Far below in the
+dusk we saw the lights of West Point. On a sudden, while I was still
+fumbling for my poncho which was rolled inside my rucksack, the storm
+burst upon us. We put up the umbrella and held the poncho against the
+wind and driving rain. But the wind so whisked it about and the rain
+was so eager to find the openings that presently we were drenched. In
+an hour we came to West Point. Luckily the cook was up, and she
+served us a hot dinner in our rooms with the washstand for a table.
+When we started there was a piece of soap in the dish, but I think we
+ate it in our hunger. I recall that there was one course that foamed
+up like custard and was not upon the bill. It was a plain room with
+meager furniture, yet we fell asleep with a satisfaction beyond the
+Cecils in their lordly beds. I stirred once when there was a clamor in
+the hall of guests returning from a hop at the Academy--a prattle of
+girls' voices--then slept until the sun was up.
+
+But my preference in lodgings is the low sagging half-timbered
+building that one finds in the country towns of England. It has leaned
+against the street and dispensed hospitality for three hundred years.
+It is as old a citizen as the castle on the hill. It is an inn where
+Tom Jones might have spent the night, or any of the rascals out of
+Smollett. Behind the wicket there sits a shrewish female with a cold
+eye towards your defects, and behind her there is a row of bells which
+jangle when water is wanted in the rooms. Having been assigned a room
+and asked the hour of dinner, you mount a staircase that rises with a
+squeak. There is a mustiness about the place, which although it is
+unpleasant in itself, is yet agreeable in its circumstance. A long
+hall runs off to the back of the house, with odd steps here and there
+to throw you. Your room looks out upon a coach-yard, and as you wash
+you overhear a love-passage down below.
+
+In the evening you go forth to see the town. If it lies on the ocean,
+you walk upon the mole and watch the fisher folk winding up their
+nets, or sitting with tranquil pipes before their doors. Maybe a booth
+has been set up on the parade that runs along the ocean, and a husky
+fellow bids you lay out a sixpence for the show, which is the very
+same, he bawls, as was played before the King and the Royal Family.
+This speech is followed by a fellow with a trombone, who blows himself
+very red in the face.
+
+But rather I choose to fancy that it is an inland town, and that there
+is a quieter traffic on the streets. Here for an hour after dinner,
+while darkness settles, you wander from shop to shop and put your nose
+upon the glass, or you engage the lamplighter as he goes his rounds,
+for any bit of news.
+
+Once in such a town when the night brought rain, for want of other
+employment, I debated divinity with a rigid parson, and until a late
+hour sat in the thick curtain of his attack. It was at an inn of one
+of the midland counties of England, a fine old weathered building,
+called "The King's Arms." In the tap--for I thrust my thirsty head
+inside--was an array of old pewter upon the walls, and two or three
+prints of prize fighters of former days. But it was in the parlor the
+parson engaged me. In the corner of the room there was a timid
+fire--of the kind usually met in English inns--imprisoned behind a
+grill that had been set up stoutly to confine a larger and rowdier
+fire. My antagonist was a tall lank man of pinched ascetic face and
+dark complexion, with clothes brushed to shininess, and he belonged to
+a brotherhood that lived in one of the poorer parts of London along
+the wharves. His sojourn at the inn was forced. For two weeks in the
+year, he explained, each member was cast out of the conventual
+buildings upon the world. This was done in penance, as the members of
+more rigid orders in the past were flagellants for a season. So here
+for a whole week had he been sitting, for the most part in rainy
+weather, busied with the books that the inn afforded--advertising
+booklets of the beauties of the Alps--diagrams of steamships--and
+peeking out of doors for a change of sky.
+
+It was a matter of course that he should engage me in conversation. He
+was as lonesome for a chance to bark as a country dog. Presently when
+I dissented from some point in his creed, he called me a heretic, and
+I with gentlest satire asked him if the word yet lived. But he was not
+angry, and he told me of his brotherhood. It had a branch in America,
+and he bade me, if ever I met any of its priests, to convey to them
+his warm regards. As for America, it was, he said, too coldly ethical,
+and needed most a spiritual understanding; to which judgment I
+assented. I wonder now whether the war will bring that understanding.
+Maybe, unless blind hatred smothers it.
+
+This priest was a mixture of stern and gentle qualities, and seemed to
+be descended from those earlier friars that came to England in cord
+and gown, and went barefoot through the cities to minister comfort and
+salvation to the poor and wretched. When the evening was at last
+spent, by common consent we took our candles on the landing, where,
+after he inculcated a final doctrine of his church with waving finger,
+he bade me good night, with a wish of luck for my journey on the
+morrow, and sought his room.
+
+My own room lay down a creaking hallway. When undressed, I opened my
+window and looked upon the street. All lights were out. At last the
+rain had ceased, and now above the housetops across the way, through a
+broken patch of cloud, a star appeared with a promise of a fair
+tomorrow.
+
+
+
+
+On Livelihoods.
+
+
+Somewhere in his letters, I think, Stevenson pronounces street paving
+to be his favorite occupation. I fancy, indeed,--and I have ransacked
+his life,--that he never applied himself to its practice for an actual
+livelihood. That was not necessary. Rather, he looked on at the curb
+in a careless whistling mood, hands deep in the pockets of his breeks,
+in a lazy interval between plot and essay. The sunny morning had
+dropped its golden invitation through his study windows, and he has
+wandered forth to see the world. Let my heroes--for thus I interpret
+him at his desk as the sunlight beckoned--let my heroes kick their
+heels in patience! Let villains fret inside the inkpot! Down, sirs,
+down, into the glossy magic pool, until I dip you up! Pirates--for
+surely such miscreants lurked among his papers--let pirates, he cries,
+save their red oaths until tomorrow! My hat! My stick!
+
+It was thus, then, as an amateur that Stevenson looked on street
+paving--the even rows of cobbles, the nice tapping to fit the stones
+against the curb, the neat joint around the drain. And yet,
+unpardonably, he neglects the tarpot; and this seems the very soul of
+the business, the finishing touch--almost culinary, as when a cook
+pours on a chocolate sauce.
+
+I remember pleasantly when our own street was paved. There had been
+laid a waterpipe, deep down where the earth was yellow--surely gold
+was near--and several of us young rascals climbed in and out in the
+twilight when work was stopped. By fits we were both mountaineers and
+miners. There was an agreeable gassy smell as if we neared the lower
+regions. Here was a playground better than the building of a barn,
+even with its dizzy ladders and the scaffolding around the chimney. Or
+we hid in the great iron pipes that lay along the gutters, and
+followed our leader through them home from school. But when the pipes
+were lowered into place and the surface was cobbled but not yet
+sanded, then the tarpot yielded gum for chewing. At any time after
+supper a half dozen of us--blacker daubs against the darkness--might
+have been seen squatting on the stones, scratching at the tar.
+Blackjack, bought at the corner, had not so full a flavor. But one had
+to chew forward in the mouth--lightly, lest the tar adhere forever to
+the teeth.
+
+And yet I am not entirely in accord with Stevenson in his preference.
+
+And how is it, really, that people fall into their livelihoods? What
+circumstance or necessity drives them? Does choice, after all, always
+yield to a contrary wind and run for any port? Is hunger always the
+helmsman? How many of us, after due appraisal of ourselves, really
+choose our own parts in the mighty drama?--first citizen or second,
+with our shrill voices for a moment above the crowd--first citizen or
+second--brief choristers, except for vanity, against a painted scene.
+How runs the rhyme?--rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief; doctor,
+lawyer, merchant, chief! And a robustious fellow with great voice, and
+lace and sword, strutting forward near the lights.
+
+Meditating thus, I frequently poke about the city in the end of
+afternoon "when the mind of your man of letters requires some
+relaxation." I peer into shop windows, not so much for the wares
+displayed as for glimpses of the men and women engaged in their
+disposal. I watch laborers trudging home with the tired clink of their
+implements and pails. I gaze into cellarways where tailor and cobbler
+sit bent upon their work--needle and peg, their world--and through
+fouled windows into workrooms, to learn which livelihoods yield the
+truest happiness. For it is, on the whole, a whistling rather than a
+grieving world, and like little shouts among the hills is laughter
+echoed in the heart.
+
+I can well understand how one can become a baker or even a small
+grocer with a pencil behind his ear. I could myself honestly recommend
+an apple--an astrachan for sauces--or, in the season, offer asparagus
+with something akin to enthusiasm. Cranberries, too, must be an
+agreeable consort of the autumn months when the air turns frosty. I
+would own a cat with a dusty nose to rub along the barrels and sleep
+beneath the stove. I would carry dried meats in stock were it only for
+the electric slicing machine. And whole cheeses! Or to a man of
+romantic mind an old brass shop may have its lure. To one of musty
+turn, who would sit apart, there is something to be said for the
+repair of violins and 'cellos. At the least he sweetens discord into
+melody.
+
+But I would not willingly keep a second-hand bookshop. It is too
+cluttered a business. There is too free a democracy between good and
+bad. It was Dean Swift who declared that collections of books made him
+melancholy, "where the best author is as much squeezed and as obscure
+as a porter at a coronation." Nor is it altogether reassuring for one
+who is himself by way of being an author to view the certain neglect
+that awaits him when attics are cleared at last. There is too leathery
+a smell upon the premises, a thick deposit of mortality. I draw a deep
+breath when I issue on the street, grateful for the sunlight and the
+wind. However, I frequently put my head in at Pratt's around the
+corner, sometimes by chance when the family are assembled for their
+supper in one of the book alcoves. They have swept back a litter of
+historians to make room for the tray of dishes. To cut them from the
+shop they have drawn a curtain in front of their nook, but I can hear
+the teapot bubbling on the counter. There is, also, a not unsavory
+smell which, if my old nose retains its cunning, is potato stew,
+fetched up from the kitchen. If you seek Gibbon now, Pratt's face will
+show like a withered moon between the curtains and will request you to
+call later when the dishes have been cleared.
+
+No one works in cleaner produce than carpenters. They are for the most
+part a fatherly whiskered tribe and they eat their lunches neatly from
+a pail, their backs against the wall, their broad toes upturned. I
+look suspiciously on painters, however, who present themselves for
+work like slopped and shoddy harlequins, and although I have myself
+passed a delightful afternoon painting a wooden fence at the foot of
+the garden--and been scraped afterwards--I would not wish to be of
+their craft.
+
+But perhaps one is of restless habit and a peripatetic occupation may
+be recommended. For a bachelor of small expense, at a hazard, a
+wandering fruit and candy cart offers the venture and chance of
+unfamiliar journeys. There is a breed of lollypop on a stick that
+shows a handsome profit when the children come from school. Also, at
+this minute, I hear below me on the street the flat bell of the
+scissors-grinder. I know not what skill is required, yet it needs a
+pretty eye and even foot. The ragman takes to an ancestral business
+and chants the ancient song of his fathers. When distance has somewhat
+muffled its nearer sharpness, the song bears a melody unparalleled
+among tradesmen's cries. Window glass, too, is hawked pleasantly from
+house to house and requires but a knife and putty. In the spring the
+vegetable vender, standing in his wagon, utters melodious sounds that
+bring the housewives to their windows. Once, also, by good luck, I
+fell into acquaintance with a fellow who peddled brooms and dustpans
+along the countryside. He was hung both front and back with cheap
+commodities--a necklace of scrubbing brushes--tins jangling against
+his knees. A very kitchen had become biped. A pantry had gone on
+pilgrimage. Except for dogs, which seemed maddened by his strange
+appearance, it was, he informed me, an engaging livelihood for a man
+who chafed indoors. Or for one of dreamy disposition the employment of
+a sandwich man, with billboards fore and aft, offers a profitable
+repose. Sometimes several of these philosophers journey together up
+the street in a crowded hour, one behind another with slow
+introspective step, as befits their high preoccupation.
+
+Or one has an ear, and the street-organ commends itself. Observe the
+musician at the corner, hat in hand and smiling! Let but a curtain
+stir and his eye will catch it. He hears a falling penny as 'twere any
+nightingale. His tunes are the herald of the gaudy spring. His are the
+dancing measures of the sunlight. And is anyone a surer judge of human
+nature? He allows dyspeptics to slink along the fence. Those of
+bilious aspect may go their ways unchallenged. Spare me those, he
+says, who have not music in their souls: they are fit for treasons,
+stratagems, and spoils. It was with a flute that the poet Goldsmith
+starved his way through France. Yet the flute is a cold un-stirring
+instrument. He would have dined the oftener had he pitched upon a
+street-organ.
+
+But in this Christmas season there is a man goes up and down among the
+shoppers blowing shrill tunes upon a pipe. A card upon his hat
+announces that it is music makes the home and that one of his
+marvelous implements may be bought for the trifling and altogether
+insignificant sum of ten cents. A reticule across his stomach bulges
+with his pipes. He seems to manipulate the stops with his fingers, but
+I fancy that he does no more than sing into the larger opening. Yet
+his gay tune sounds above the traffic.
+
+I have wondered where such seasonal professions recruit themselves.
+The eyeglass man still stands at his corner with his tray. He is,
+moreover, too sodden a creature to play upon a pipe. Nor is there any
+dwindling of shoe-lace peddlers. The merchants of popcorn have not
+fallen off in number, and peanuts hold up strong. Rather, these
+Christmas musicians are of the tribe which at other festivals sell us
+little flags and bid us show our colors. They come from country fairs
+and circuses. All summer long they bid us gather for the fat man, or
+they cry up the beauties of a Turkish harem. If some valiant fellow in
+a painted tent is about to swallow glass, they are his horn and drum
+to draw the crowd. I once knew a side-show man who bent iron bars
+between his teeth and who summoned stout men from his audience to
+swing upon the bar, but I cannot believe that he has discharged the
+bawling rascal at his door. I rather choose to think that the piper
+was one of those self-same artists who, on lesser days, squeeze comic
+rubber faces in their fingers, or make the monkey climb its
+predestined stick.
+
+Be this as it may, presently the piper hit on a persuasive tune and I
+abandoned all thought of the Noah's ark--my errand of the morning for
+my nephew--and joined the crowd that followed him. Hamelin Town was
+come again. But street violins I avoid. They suggest mortgages and
+unpaid rent.
+
+But with the world before him why should a man turn dentist? He must
+have been a cruel fellow from his rattle. When did his malicious
+ambition first sprout up towards molars and bicuspids? Or who would
+scheme to be a plumber? He is a cellarer--alas, how shrunk from former
+days! Or consider the tailor! Perhaps you recall Elia's estimate. "Do
+you ever see him," he asks, "go whistling along the foot-path like a
+carman, or brush through a crowd like a baker, or go smiling to
+himself like a lover?"
+
+Certainly I would not wish to be a bookkeeper and sit bent all day
+over another's wealth. I would not want to bring in on lifted fingers
+the meats which another eats. Nor would I choose to be a locksmith,
+which is a kind of squint-eyed business, up two dismal stairs and at
+the rear. A gas lamp flares at the turn. A dingy staircase mounts into
+a thicker gloom. The locksmith consorts with pawnbrokers, with cheap
+sign-makers and with disreputable doctors; yet he is not of them. For
+there adheres to him a sort of romance. He is a creature of another
+time, set in our midst by the merest chance. The domestic cat,
+descended from the jungle, is not more shrunk. Keys have fallen on
+evil days. Observe the mighty row of them hung discarded along his
+boxes! Each one is fit to unlock a castle. Warwick itself might yield
+to such a weight of metal--rusty now, disused, quite out of fashion,
+displaced by a race of dwarfs. In the old prints, see how the London
+'prentice runs with his great key in the dawn to take down his
+master's shutter! In a musty play, observe the jailor at the dungeon
+door! Without massive keys jingling at the belt the older drama must
+have been a weakling. Only lovers, then, dared to laugh at locksmiths.
+But now locksmiths sit brooding on the past, shriveled to mean uses,
+ready for paltry kitchen jobs.
+
+And the undertaker, what shall we say of him? That black coat with the
+flower! That mournful smile! That perfect grief! And yet, I am told,
+undertakers, after hours, go singing home to supper, and spend their
+evenings at the movies like us rougher folk. It was David Copperfield,
+you recall, who dined with an undertaker and his family--in the room,
+no doubt, next to the coffin storage--and he remarked at the time how
+cheerfully the joint went round. One of this sober cloth, moreover,
+has confided to me that they let themselves loose, above all
+professions, in their reunions and conventions. If an unusual riot
+issues from the door and a gay fellow goes walking on the table it is
+sure that either lawyers or undertakers sit inside.
+
+For myself, if I were to become a merchant, I would choose a shop at a
+four-corners in the country, and I would stock from shoe-laces to
+plows. There is no virtue in keeping store in the city. It is merely
+by favor that customers show themselves. Candidly, your competitor can
+better supply their wants. This is not so at the four-corners. Nor is
+anyone a more influential citizen than a country merchant. He sets the
+style in calicoes. He judges between check and stripe. His decision
+against a high heel flattens the housewives by an inch. But if I kept
+such a country store, I would provide an open fire and, when the
+shadows lengthened, an easy chair or two for gossips.
+
+I was meditating lately on these strange preferences in livelihoods
+and was gazing through the city windows for any clue when I was
+reminded of a tempting scheme that Wee Jessie--a delightful
+Scots-woman of my acquaintance--has planned for several of us.
+
+We are to be traveling merchants for a season, with a horse and wagon
+or a motor. My own preference is a motor, and already I see a vehicle
+painted in bright colors and opening up behind as spacious as a waffle
+cart. There will be windows all around for the display of goods. It is
+not quite fixed what we shall sell. Wee Jessie leans toward bonnets
+and little millinery odds and ends. I am for kitchen tins. M----
+inclines toward drygoods, serviceable fabrics. It is thought that we
+shall live on the roof while on tour, with a canvas to draw on wet
+nights. We shall possess a horn--on which Wee Jessie once practiced in
+her youth--to gather up the crowd when we enter a village.
+
+Fancy us, therefore, my dear sir, as taking the road late this coming
+spring in time to spread the summer's fashions. And if you hear our
+horn at twilight in your village--a tune of more wind than melody,
+unless Jessie shall cure her imperfections--know that on the morrow,
+by the pump, we shall display our wares.
+
+
+
+
+The Tread of the Friendly Giants.
+
+
+    When our Babe he goeth walking in his garden,
+    Around his tinkling feet the sunbeams play.
+
+It has been my fortune to pass a few days where there lives a dear
+little boy of less than three. My first knowledge of him every morning
+is the smothered scuffling through the partition as he reluctantly
+splashes in his bath. Here, unless he mend his caution, I fear he will
+never learn to play the porpoise at the Zoo. Then there is a wee
+tapping at my door. It is a fairy sound as though Mustard-seed were in
+the hall. Or it might be Pease-blossom rousing up Cobweb in the play,
+to repel the red-hipped humble-bee. It is so slight a tapping that if
+I sleep with even one ear inside the covers I will not hear it.
+
+The little lad stands in the dim passage to greet me, fully dressed,
+to reproach me with my tardiness. He is a mite of a fellow, but he is
+as wide awake and shiny as though he were a part of the morning and
+had been wrought delicately out of the dawn's first ray. Indeed, I
+choose to fancy that the sun, being off hurriedly on broader business,
+has made him his agent for the premises. Particularly he assists in
+this passage at my bedroom door where the sleepy Night, which has not
+yet caught the summons, still stretches and nods beyond the turn. It
+is so dark here on a winter's morning when the nursery door is shut
+that even an adventuring sunlight, if it chanced to clamber through
+the window, would blink and falter in the hazard of these turns. But
+the sun has sent a substitute better than himself: for is there not a
+shaft of light along the floor? It can hardly fall from the window or
+anywhere from the outside world.
+
+The little lad stands in the passage demanding that I get up. "Get up,
+lazybones!" he says. Pretty language to his elders! He speaks soberly,
+halting on each syllable of the long and difficult word. He is so
+solemn that the jest is doubled. And now he runs off, jouncing and
+stiff-legged to his nursery. I hear him dragging his animals from his
+ark, telling them all that they are lazybones, even his barking dog
+and roaring lion. Noah, when he saw on that first morning that his ark
+was grounded on Ararat, did not rouse his beasts so early to leave the
+ship.
+
+Later I meet the lad at breakfast, locked in his high chair. In these
+riper hours of day there is less of Cobweb in his composition. He is
+now every inch a boy. He raps his spoon upon his tray. He hurls food
+in the general direction of his mouth. If an ear escape the assault it
+is gunnery beyond the common. He is bibbed against misadventure. This
+morning he yearns loudly for muffins, which he calls "bums." He
+chooses those that are unusually brown with a smudge of the
+cooking-tin, and these he calls "dirty bums."
+
+Such is my nephew--a round-cheeked, blue-eyed rogue who takes my thumb
+in all his fingers when we go walking. His jumpers are slack behind
+and they wag from side to side in an inexpressibly funny manner, but
+this I am led to believe springs not from any special genius but is
+common to all children. It is only recently that he learned to walk,
+for although he was forward with his teeth and their early sprouting
+ran in gossip up the street, yet he lagged in locomotion. Previously
+he advanced most surely on his seat--his slider, as he called
+it--throwing out his legs and curling them in under so as to draw him
+after. By this means he attained a fine speed upon a slippery floor,
+but he chafed upon a carpet. His mother and I agreed that this was
+quite an unusual method and that it presaged some rare talent for his
+future, as the scorn of a rattle is said to predict a judge. It was
+during one of these advances across the kitchen floor where the boards
+are rough that an accident occurred. As he excitedly put it, with a
+fitting gesture to the rear, he got a sliver in his slider. But now he
+goes upon his feet with a waddle like a sailor, and he wags his slider
+from side to side.
+
+Sometimes we play at hide-and-seek and we pop out at one another from
+behind the sofa. He lacks ingenuity in this, for he always hides in
+the same place. I have tempted him for variety to stow himself in the
+woodbox. Or the pantry would hold him if he squeezed in among the
+brooms. Nor does my ingenuity surpass his, for regularly in a certain
+order I shake the curtains at the door and spy under the table. I stir
+the wastebasket and peer within the vases, although they would hardly
+hold his shoe. Then when he is red-hot to be found and is already
+peeking impatiently around the sofa, at last I cry out his discovery
+and we begin all over again.
+
+I play ball with him and bounce it off his head, a game of more mirth
+in the acting than in the telling. Or we squeeze his animals for the
+noises that they make. His lion in particular roars as though lungs
+were its only tenant. But chiefly I am fast in his friendship because
+I ride upon his bear. I take the door at a gallop. I rear at the turn.
+I fall off in my most comical fashion. Sometimes I manage to kick over
+his blocks; at which we call it a game, and begin again. He has named
+the bear in my honor.
+
+We start all of our games again just as soon as we have finished them.
+That is what a game is. And if it is worth playing at all, it is worth
+endless repetition. If I strike a rich deep tone upon the Burmese
+gong, I must continue to strike upon it until I can draw his attention
+to something else. Once, the cook, hearing the din, thought that I
+hinted for my dinner. Being an obliging creature, she fell into such a
+flurry and so stirred her pans to push the cooking forward, that
+presently she burned the meat.
+
+Or if I moo like a cow, I must moo until sunset. I rolled off the sofa
+once to distract him when the ugly world was too much with him.
+Immediately he brightened from his complaint and demanded that I do it
+once more. And lately, when a puppy bounced out of the house next door
+and, losing its footing, rolled heels over head to the bottom of the
+steps, at once he pleaded for an encore. To him all the world's a
+stage.
+
+My nephew observes me closely to see what kind of fellow I am. I study
+him, too. He watches me over the top of his mug at breakfast and I
+stare back at him over my coffee cup. If I wrinkle my nose, he
+wrinkles his. If I stick out my tongue, he sticks his out, too. He
+answers wink with wink. When I pet his woolly lamb, however, he seems
+to wonder at my absurdity. When I wind up his steam engine, certainly
+he suspects that I am a novice. He shows a disregard of my castles,
+and although I build them on the windy vantage of a chair, with dizzy
+battlements topping all the country, he brushes them into ruin.
+
+Sometimes I fancy that his glance is mixed with scorn, and that he
+considers my attempts to amuse him as rather a silly business. I
+wonder what he thinks about when he looks at me seriously. I cannot
+doubt his wisdom. He seems to resemble a philosopher who has traveled
+to us from a distant world. If he cast me a sentence from Plato, I
+would say, "Master, I listen." Is it Greek he speaks, or a dark
+language from a corner of the sky? He has a far-off look as though he
+saw quite through these superficial affairs of earth. His eyes have
+borrowed the color of his wanderings and they are as blue as the
+depths beyond the moon. And I think of another child, somewhat older
+than himself, whose tin soldiers these many years are rusted, a
+thoughtful silent child who was asked, once upon a time, what he did
+when he got to bed. "Gampaw," he replied, "I lies and lies, Gampaw,
+and links and links, 'til I know mos' everysin'." The snow of a few
+winters, the sun of summer, the revolving stars and seasons--until
+this lad now serves in France.
+
+My nephew, although he too roams these distant spaces of philosophic
+thought and brings back strange unexpected treasure, has not arrived
+at the age of mere terrestrial exploration. He is quite ignorant of
+his own house and has no curiosity about the back stairs--the back
+stairs that go winding darkly from the safety of the kitchen. Scarcely
+is the fizzing of dinner lost than a new strange world engulfs one.
+He is too young to know that a doorway in the dark is the portal of
+adventure. He does not know the mystery and the twistings of the
+cellar, or the shadows of the upper hallway and the dim hollows that
+grow and spread across the twilight.
+
+Dear lad, there is a sunny world beyond the garden gate, cities and
+rolling hills and far-off rivers with white sails going up and down.
+There are wide oceans, and ships with tossing lights, and islands set
+with palm trees. And there are stars above your roof for you to wonder
+at. But also, nearer home, there are gentle shadows on the stairs, a
+dim cellar for the friendly creatures of your fancy, and for your
+exalted mood there is a garret with dark corners. Here, on a braver
+morning, you may push behind the trunks and boxes and come to a land
+unutterable where the furthest Crusoe has scarcely ventured. Or in a
+more familiar hour you may sit alongside a window high above the town.
+Here you will see the milkman on his rounds with his pails and long
+tin dipper. And these misty kingdoms that open so broadly on the world
+are near at hand. They are yours if you dare to go adventuring for
+them.
+
+Soon your ambition will leap its nursery barriers. No longer will you
+be content to sit inside this quiet room and pile your blocks upon the
+floor. You will be off on discovery of the long trail that lies along
+the back hall and the pantry where the ways are dark. You will wander
+in search of the caverns that lie beneath the stairs when the night
+has come. You will trudge up steps and down for any lurking ocean on
+which to sail your pirate ships. Already I see you gazing with wistful
+eyes into the spaces beyond the door--into the days of your great
+adventure. In your thought is the patter and scurry of new creation.
+It is almost fairy time for you. The tread of the friendly giants,
+still far off, is sounding in the dark....
+
+Dear little lad, in this darkness may there be no fear! For these
+shadows of the twilight--which too long have been chased like common
+miscreants with lamp and candle--are really friendly beings and they
+wait to romp with you. Because thieves have walked in darkness, shall
+darkness be called a thief? Rather, let the dark hours take their
+repute from the countless gracious spirits that are abroad--the
+quieter fancies that flourish when the light has gone--the gentle
+creatures that leave their hiding when the sun has set. When a rug
+lies roughened at close of day, it is said truly that a fairy peeps
+from under to learn if at last the house is safe. And they hide in the
+hallway for the signal of your coming, yet so timid that if the fire
+is stirred they scamper beyond the turn. They huddle close beneath the
+stairs that they may listen to your voice. They come and go on tiptoe
+when the curtain sways, in the hope that you will follow. With their
+long thin shadowy fingers they beckon for you beneath the sofa.
+
+The time is coming when you can no longer resist their invitation,
+when you will leave your woolly lamb and your roaring lion on this
+dull safe hearth and will go on pilgrimage. The back stairs sit
+patient in the dark for your hand upon the door. The great dim garret
+that has sat nodding for so many years will smile at last at your
+coming. It has been lonely so long for the glad sound of running feet
+and laughter. It has been childless so many years.
+
+But once children's feet played there and romped through the short
+winter afternoons. A rope hung from post to post and furnished forth a
+circus. Here giant swings were hazarded. Here children hung from the
+knees until their marbles and other wealth dropped from their pockets.
+And for less ambitious moments there were toys--
+
+    The little toy dog is covered with dust,
+    But sturdy and stanch he stands;
+    And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
+    And his musket moulds in his hands.
+    Time was when the little toy dog was new,
+    And the soldier was passing fair;
+    And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
+    Kissed them and put them there.
+
+And now Little Boy Blue again climbs the long stairs. He stretches up
+on tiptoe to turn the door-knob at the top. He listens as a prudent
+explorer should. Cook rattles her tins below, but it is a far-off
+sound as from another world. Somewhere, doubtless, the friendly
+milkman's bell goes jingling up the street. There is a distant barking
+of familiar dogs. Will it not be better to return to the safe regions
+and watch the traffic from the window? But here, beckoning, is the
+great adventure.
+
+The brave die is cast. He advances with outstretched arms into the
+darkness. Suddenly, behind him, the door swings shut. The sound of
+cooking-tins is lost. Silence. Silence, except for branches scratching
+on the roof. But the garret hears the sound of feet, and it rouses
+itself and rubs its dusky eyes.
+
+But when darkness thickens and the sunlight has vanished from the
+floor, then comes the magic hour. The garret then tears from its eyes
+the blind bandage of the day. Strange creatures lift their heads. And
+now, as you wait expectant, there comes a mysterious sound from the
+darkest corner. Is it a mouse that stirs? Rather, it seems a far-off
+sound, as though a blind man, tapping with his stick, walked on the
+margin of the world. The noise comes near. It gains in volume. It is
+close at hand. Dear lad, you have come upon the magic hour. It is the
+tread of the friendly giants that is sounding in the dark....
+
+
+
+
+On Spending a Holiday.
+
+
+At a party lately a worn subject came under discussion.
+
+Our host lives in a triangular stone-paved courtyard tucked off from
+the thoroughfare but with the rattle of the elevated railway close at
+hand. The building is of decent brick, three stories in height, and it
+exhibits to the courtyard a row of identical doorsteps. The entrance
+to the courtyard is a swinging shutter between buildings facing on the
+street, and it might seem a mystery--like the apple in the
+dumpling--how the building inside squeezed through so narrow an
+entrance. Yet here it is, with a rubber plant in one corner and a
+trellis for imaginary vines in the other.
+
+In this courtyard, _Pomander Walk_ might be acted along the stoops.
+For a necessary stage property--you recall, of course, the lamplighter
+with his ladder in the second act!--there is a gas lamp of old design
+in the middle of the enclosure, up near the footlights, as it were.
+From the stoops the main comedy might proceed, with certain business
+at the upper windows--the profane Admiral with the timber leg popping
+his head out of one, the mysterious fat man--in some sort the villain
+of the piece--putting his head out of another to woo the buxom widow
+at a third. And then the muffin man! In the twilight when the lamp is
+lighted and the heroine at last is in the hero's arms, there would be
+a pleasant crunching of muffins at all the windows as the curtain
+falls.
+
+But I shall not drop even a hint as to the location of this courtyard.
+Many persons think that New York City is but a massive gridiron, and
+they are ignorant of the nooks and quirks and angles of the lower
+town. Enough that the Indian of a modest tobacconist guards the
+swinging shutter of the entrance to the courtyard.
+
+Here we sat in the very window I had designed for the profane Admiral,
+and talked in the quiet interval between trains.
+
+One of our company--a man whom I shall call Flint--was hardy enough to
+say that he never employed his leisure in going to the country--that a
+walk about the city streets was his best refreshment. Flint's
+livelihood is cotton. He is a dumpish sort of person who looks as if
+he needed exercise, but he has a sharp clear eye. At first his remark
+fell on us as a mere perversity, as of one who proclaims a humorous
+whim. And yet he adhered tenaciously to his opinion, urging smooth
+pavements against mud, the study of countless faces against the song
+of birds and great buildings against cliffs.
+
+Another of our company opposed him in this--Colum, who chafes as an
+accountant. Colum is a gentle dreamy fellow who likes birds. All
+winter he saves his tobacco tins which, in his two weeks' vacation in
+the country, he sets up in trees as birdhouses. He confesses that he
+took up with a certain brand of tobacco because its receptacle is
+popular with wrens. Also he cultivated a taste for waffles--which at
+first by a sad distortion of nature he lacked--for no other reason
+except that syrup may be bought in pretty log-cabin tins particularly
+suited for bluebirds. If you chance to breakfast with him, he urges
+the syrup on you with pleasant and insistent hospitality. With
+satisfaction he drains a can. By June he has a dozen of these empty
+cabins on the shelf alongside his country boots. Time was when he was
+lean of girth--as becomes an accountant, who is hinged dyspeptically
+all day across his desk--but by this agreeable stowage he has now
+grown to plumpness. When in the country Colum rises early in order to
+stretch the pleasures of the day, and he walks about before breakfast
+from tree to tree to view his feathered tenants. He has even acquired,
+after much practice, the knack of chirping--a hissing conjunction of
+the lips and teeth--which he is confident wins the friendly attention
+of the birds.
+
+Flint heard Colum impatiently, and interrupted before he was done.
+"Pooh!" he said. "There's mud in the country, and not much of any
+plumbing, and in the morning it's cold until you light a fire."
+
+"Of course," said Colum. "But I love it. Perhaps you remember, Flint,
+the old willow stump out near the road. I put a Barking Dog on top of
+it, and now there's a family of wrens inside."
+
+"Nonsense," said Flint. "There is too much climate in the
+country--much more than in town. It's either too hot or too cold. And
+it's lonely. As for you, Colum, you're sentimental about your
+birdhouses. And you dislike your job. You like the country merely
+because it is a symbol of a holiday. It is freedom from an irksome
+task. It means a closing of your desk. But if you had to live in the
+country, you would grumble in a month's time. Even a bullfrog--and he
+is brought up to it, poor wretch--croaks at night."
+
+Colum interrupted. "That's not true, Flint. I know I'd like it--to
+live on a farm and keep chickens. Sometimes in winter, or more often
+in spring, I can hardly wait for summer and my two weeks. I look out
+of the window and I see a mirage--trees and hills." Colum sighed.
+"It's quite wonderful, that view, but it unsettles me for my ledger."
+
+"That's it," broke in Flint. "Your sentimentality spoils your
+happiness. You let two weeks poison the other fifty. It's immoral."
+
+Colum was about to retort, when he was anticipated by a new speaker.
+It was Quill, the journalist, who has long thin fingers and
+indigestion. At meals he pecks suspiciously at his plate, and he eats
+food substitutes. Quill runs a financial supplement, or something of
+that kind, to a daily paper. He always knows whether Steel is strong
+and whether Copper is up or down. If you call on him at his office, he
+glances at you for a moment before he knows you. Yet in his slippers
+he grows human.
+
+"I like the country, too," he interposed, "and no one ever said that I
+am sentimental." He tapped his head. "I'm as hard as nails up here."
+Quill cracked his knuckles in a disagreeable habit he has, and
+continued: "I have a shack on the West Shore, and I go there
+week-ends. My work is so confining that if I didn't get to the country
+once in a while, I would play out in a jiffy. I'm a nervous frazzle--a
+nervous frazzle--by Saturday noon. But I lie on the grass all Sunday,
+and if nobody snaps at me and I am let alone, by Monday morning I am
+fit again."
+
+"You must be like Antaeus."
+
+This remark came from Wurm, our host. Wurm is a bookish fellow who
+wears great rimmed glasses. He spends much of his time in company
+thinking up apposite quotations and verifying them. He has worn out
+two Bartlett's. Wurm is also addicted to maps and dictionaries, and is
+a great reader of special articles. Consequently his mind is a pound
+for stray collarless facts; or rather, in its variety of contents, it
+more closely resembles a building contractor's back yard--odd
+salvage--rejected doors--a job of window-frames--a pile of bricks for
+chipping--discarded plumbing--broken junk gathered here and there.
+Mr. Aust himself, a building contractor who once lived on our
+street--a man of no broad fame--quite local--surely unknown to
+you--did not collect so wide a rubbish.
+
+However, despite these qualities, Wurm is rather a pleasant and
+harmless bit of cobweb. For a livelihood, he sits in a bank behind a
+grill. At noon he eats his lunch in his cage, and afterwards with a
+rubber band he snaps at the flies. In the hunting season he kills in a
+day as many as a dozen of these pests' and ranges them in his pen
+tray. On Saturday afternoon he rummages in Malkan's and the
+second-hand bookshops along Fourth Avenue. To see Wurm in his most
+characteristic pose, is to see him on a ladder, with one leg
+outstretched, far off his balance, fumbling for a title with his
+finger tips. Surely, in these dull alcoves, gravity nods on its job.
+Then he buys a sour red apple at the corner and pelts home to dinner.
+This is served him on a tin tray by his stout landlady who comes
+puffing up the stairs. It is a bit of pleasant comedy that whatever
+dish is served happens to be the very one of which he was thinking as
+he came out of the bank. By this innocent device he is popular with
+his landlady and she skims the milk for him.
+
+Wurm rapped his pipe bowl on the arm of his chair. "You must be like
+Antaeus," he replied.
+
+"Like what?" asked Flint.
+
+"Antaeus--the fellow who wrestled with Hercules. Each time that Antaeus
+was thrown against the earth his strength was doubled. He was finally
+in the way of overcoming Hercules, when Hercules by seizing him around
+the middle lifted him off the ground. By this strategy he deprived him
+of all contact with the earth, and presently Antaeus weakened and was
+vanquished."
+
+"That's me," said Quill, the journalist. "If I can't get back to my
+shack on Sunday, I feel that Hercules has me, too, around the middle."
+
+"Perhaps I can find the story," said Wurm, his eye running toward the
+bookshelves.
+
+"Don't bother," said Flint.
+
+There was now another speaker--Flannel Shirt, as we called him--who
+had once been sated with formal dinners and society, and is now
+inclined to cry them down. He leans a bit toward socialism and free
+verse. He was about to praise the country for its freedom from
+sordidness and artificiality, when Flint, who had heard him before,
+interrupted.
+
+"Rubbish!" he cried out. "All of you, but in different ways, are
+slaves to an old tradition kept up by Wordsworth, who would himself,
+doubtless, have moved to London except for the steepness of the rents.
+You all maintain that you like the country, yet on one excuse or
+another you live in the city and growl about it. There isn't a
+commuter among you. Honest folk, these commuters, with marrow in their
+bones--a steak in a paper bag--the sleet in their faces on the
+ferryboat. I am the only one who admits that he lives in the city
+because he prefers it. The country is good enough to read about--I
+like it in books--but I choose to sit meantime with my feet on a city
+fender."
+
+Here Wurm broke in again. "I see, Flint," he said, "that you have been
+reading Leslie Stephen."
+
+Flint denied it.
+
+"Well, anyway, you have quoted him. Let me read you a bit of his essay
+on 'Country Books.'"
+
+Flint made a grimace. "Wurm always has a favorite passage."
+
+Wurm went to a shelf and took down a volume. He blew off the dust and
+smoothed its sides. "Listen to this!" he said. "Picked up the volume
+at Schulte's, on the twenty-five cent table. 'A love of the country is
+taken,'" he read, "'I know not why, to indicate the presence of all
+the cardinal virtues.... We assert a taste for sweet and innocent
+pleasures and an indifference to the feverish excitements of
+artificial society. I, too, like the country,...' (you'll like this,
+Flint) 'but I confess--to be duly modest--that I love it best in
+books. In real life I have remarked that it is frequently damp and
+rheumatic, and most hated by those who know it best.... Though a
+cockney in grain, I love to lean upon the farmyard gate; to hear Mrs.
+Poyser give a bit of her mind to the squire; to be lulled into a
+placid doze by the humming of Dorlecote Mill; to sit down in Dandie
+Dinmont's parlour ... or to drop into the kitchen of a good old
+country inn, and to smoke a pipe with Tom Jones or listen to the
+simple-minded philosophy of Parson Adams.'"
+
+"You hit on a good one then," said Flint. "And now as I was saying--"
+
+Wurm interposed. "Just a moment, Flint! You think that that quotation
+supports your side of the discussion. Not at all. It shows merely that
+sometimes we get greater reality from books than we get from life.
+Leslie Stephen liked the real country, also. In his holidays he
+climbed the Swiss mountains--wrote a book about them--it's on that top
+shelf. Don't you remember how he loved to roll stones off a cliff? And
+as a pedestrian he was almost as famous as George Borrow--walked the
+shirt off his back before his college trustees and all that sort of
+thing. But he got an even sharper reality from books. He liked the
+city, too, but in many a mood, there's no doubt about it, he preferred
+to walk to Charing Cross with Doctor Johnson in a book, rather than to
+jostle on the actual pavement outside his door."
+
+"Speed up, Wurm!" This from Quill, the journalist. "Inch along, old
+caterpillar!"
+
+"As far as I am concerned," Wurm continued, "I would rather go with
+Charles and Mary Lamb to see _The Battle of Hexham_ in their gallery
+than to any show in Times Square. I love to think of that fine old
+pair climbing up the stairs, carefully at the turn, lest they tread on
+a neighbor's heels. Then the pleasant gallery, with its great lantern
+to light their expectant faces!"
+
+Wurm's eyes strayed again wistfully to his shelves. Flint stayed him.
+"And so you think that it is possible to see life completely in a
+mirror."
+
+"By no means," Wurm returned. "We must see it both ways. Nor am I, as
+you infer, in any sense like the Lady of Shalott. A great book cannot
+be compared to a mirror. There is no genius in a mirror. It merely
+reflects the actual, and slightly darkened. A great book shows life
+through the medium of an individuality. The actual has been lifted
+into truth. Divinity has passed into it through the unobstructed
+channel of genius."
+
+Here Flint broke in. "Divinity--genius--the Swiss Alps--_The Battle of
+Hexham_--what have they to do with Quill's shack out in Jersey or
+Colum's dirty birdhouses? You jump the track, Wurm. When everybody is
+heading for the main tent, you keep running to the side-shows."
+
+Quill, the journalist, joined the banter. "You remind me, Wurm--I hate
+to say it--of what a sea captain once said to me when I tried to loan
+him a book. 'Readin',' he said, 'readin' rots the mind.'"
+
+It was Colum's turn to ask a question. "What do _you_ do, Flint," he
+asked, "when you have a holiday?"
+
+"Me? Well, I don't run off to the country as if the city were afire
+and my coat-tails smoked. And I don't sentimentalize on the evils of
+society. And I don't sit and blink in the dark, and moon around on a
+shelf and wear out books. I go outdoors. I walk around and look at
+things--shop windows and all that, when the merchants leave their
+curtains up. I walk across the bridges and spit off. Then there's the
+Bronx and the Battery, with benches where one may make acquaintances.
+People are always more communicative when they look out on the water.
+The last time I sat there an old fellow told me about himself, his
+wife, his victrola and his saloon. I talk to a good many persons,
+first and last, or I stand around until they talk to me. So many
+persons wear blinders in the city. They don't know how wonderful it
+is. Once, on Christmas Eve, I pretended to shop on Fourteenth Street,
+just to listen to the crowd on its final round--mother's carpet
+sweeper, you understand, or a drum for the heir. A crowd on Christmas
+is different--it's gayer--reckless--it's an exalted Saturday night.
+Afterwards I heard Midnight Mass at the Russian Cathedral. Then there
+are always ferryboats--the band on the boat to Staten Island--God!
+What music! Tugs and lights. I would like to know a tug--intimately.
+If more people were like tugs we'd have less rotten politics. Wall
+Street on a holiday is fascinating. No one about. Desolate. But full
+of spirits."
+
+Flint took a fresh cigar. "Last Sunday morning I walked in Central
+Park. There were all manner of toy sailboats on the pond--big and
+little--thirty of them at the least--tipping and running in the
+breeze. Grown men sail them. They set them on a course, and then they
+trot around the pond and wait for them. Presently I was curious. A man
+upward of fifty had his boat out on the grass and was adjusting the
+rigging.
+
+"'That's quite a boat,' I began.
+
+"'It's not a bad tub,' he answered.
+
+"'Do you hire it from the park department?' I asked.
+
+"'No!' with some scorn.
+
+"'Where do you buy them?'
+
+"'We don't buy them.'
+
+"'Then how--?' I started.
+
+"'We make 'em--nights.'
+
+"He resumed his work. The boat was accurately and beautifully
+turned--hollow inside--with a deck of glossy wood. The rudder was
+controlled by finest tackle and hardware. Altogether, it was as
+delicately wrought as a violin.
+
+"'It's this way!'--its builder and skipper laid down his pipe--'There
+are about thirty of us boys who are dippy about boats. We can't afford
+real boats, so we make these little ones. Daytimes I am an interior
+decorator. This is a thirty-six. Next winter--if my wife will stand
+the muss (My God! How it litters up the dining-room!) I am going to
+build a forty-two. All of the boys bring out a new boat each spring!'
+The old fellow squinted at his mast and tightened a cord. Then he
+continued. 'If you are interested, come around any Sunday morning
+until the pond is frozen. And if you want to try your hand at a boat
+this winter, just ask any of us boys and we will help you. Your first
+boat or two will be sad--_Ju-das!_ But you will learn.'"
+
+Flint was interrupted by Quill. "Isn't that rather a silly occupation
+for grown men?"
+
+"It's not an occupation," said Flint. "It's an avocation, and it isn't
+silly. Any one of us would enjoy it, if he weren't so self-conscious.
+And it's more picturesque than golf and takes more skill. And what
+courtesy! These men form what is really a club--a club in its
+primitive and true sense. And I was invited to be one of them."
+
+Flannel Shirt broke in. "By George, that _was_ courtesy. If you had
+happened on a polo player at his club--a man not known to you--he
+wouldn't have invited you to come around and bring your pony for
+instruction."
+
+"It's not an exact comparison, is it, Old Flannel Shirt?"
+
+"No, maybe not."
+
+There was a pause. It was Flint who resumed. "I rather like to think
+of that interior decorator littering up his dining-room every
+night--clamps and glue-pots on the sideboard--hardly room for the
+sugar-bowl--lumber underneath--and then bringing out a new boat in
+the spring."
+
+Wurm looked up from the couch. "Stevenson," he said, "should have
+known that fellow. He would have found him a place among his Lantern
+Bearers."
+
+Flint continued. "From the pond I walked down Fifth Avenue."
+
+"It's Fifth Avenue," said Flannel Shirt, "everything up above
+Fifty-ninth Street--and what it stands for, that I want to get away
+from."
+
+"Easy, Flannel Shirt," said Flint. "Fifth Avenue doesn't interest me
+much either. It's too lonely. Everybody is always away. The big stone
+buildings aren't homes: they are points of departure, as somebody
+called them. And they were built for kings and persons of spacious
+lives, but they have been sublet to smaller folk. Or does no one live
+inside? You never see a curtain stir. There is never a face at a
+window. Everything is stone and dead. One might think that a Gorgon
+had gone riding on a 'bus top, and had thrown his cold eye upon the
+house fronts." Flint paused. "How can one live obscurely, as these
+folk do, in the twilight, in so beautiful a shell? Even a crustacean
+sometimes shows his nose at his door. And yet what a wonderful street
+it would be if persons really lived there, and looked out of their
+windows, and sometimes, on clear days, hung their tapestries and rugs
+across the outer walls. Actually," added Flint, "I prefer to walk on
+the East Side. It is gayer."
+
+"There is poverty, of course," he went on after a moment, "and
+suffering. But the streets are not depressing. They have fun on the
+East Side. There are so many children and there is no loneliness. If
+the street is blessed with a standpipe, it seems designed as a post
+for leaping. Any vacant wall--if the street is so lucky--serves for a
+game. There is baseball on the smooth pavement, or if one has a piece
+of chalk, he can lay out a kind of hopscotch--not stretched out, for
+there isn't room, but rolled up like a jelly cake. One must hop to the
+middle and out again. Or perhaps one is an artist and with a crayon he
+spends his grudge upon an enemy--these drawings can be no likeness of
+a friend. Or love guides the chalky fingers. And all the time
+slim-legged girls sit on curb and step and act as nursemaids to the
+younger fry."
+
+"But, my word, what smells!"
+
+"Yes, of course, and not very pleasant smells. Down on these streets
+we can learn what dogs think of us. But every Saturday night on Grand
+Street there is a market. I bought a tumbler of little nuts from an
+old woman. They aren't much good to eat--wee nuts, all shell--and they
+still sit in the kitchen getting dusty. It was raining when I bought
+them and the woman's hair was streaked in her face, but she didn't
+mind. There were pent roofs over all the carts. Everything on God's
+earth was for sale. On the cart next to my old woman's, there was
+hardware--sieves, cullenders--kitchen stuff. And on the next, wearing
+gear, with women's stockings hung on a rope at the back. A girl came
+along carrying a pair of champagne-colored shoes, looking for
+stockings to match. Quite a belle. Somebody's girl. Quill, go down
+there on a Saturday night. It will make a column for your paper. I
+wonder if that girl found her stockings. A black-eyed Italian.
+
+"But what I like best are the windows on the East Side. No one there
+ever says that his house is his castle. On the contrary it is his
+point of vantage--his outlook--his prospect. His house front never
+dozes. Windows are really windows, places to look out of--not openings
+for household exhibits--ornamental lamps or china things--at every
+window there is a head--somebody looking on the world. There is a
+pleasant gossip across the fire-escapes--a recipe for onions--a hint
+of fashion--a cure for rheumatism. The street bears the general life.
+The home is the street, not merely the crowded space within four
+walls. The street is the playground and the club--the common stage,
+and these are the galleries and boxes. We come again close to the
+beginning of the modern theatre--an innyard with windows round about.
+The play is shinny in the gutters. Venders come and go, selling fruit
+and red suspenders. An ice wagon clatters off, with a half-dozen
+children on its tailboard."
+
+Flint flecked his ashes on the floor. "I wonder," he said at length,
+"that those persons who try to tempt these people out of the congested
+city to farms, don't see how falsely they go about it. They should
+reproduce the city in miniature--a dozen farmhouses must be huddled
+together to make a snug little town, where all the children may play
+and where the women, as they work, may talk across the windows. They
+must build villages like the farming towns of France.
+
+"But where can one be so stirred as on the wharves? From here even the
+narrowest fancy reaches out to the four watery corners of the earth.
+No nose is so green and country-bred that it doesn't sniff the spices
+of India. Great ships lie in the channel camouflaged with war. If we
+could forget the terror of the submarine, would not these lines and
+stars and colors appear to us as symbols of the strange mystery of the
+far-off seas?
+
+"Or if it is a day of sailing, there are a thousand barrels, oil
+maybe, ranged upon the wharf, standing at fat attention to go aboard.
+Except for numbers it might appear--although I am rusty at the
+legend--that in these barrels Ali Baba has hid his forty thieves for
+roguery when the ship is out to sea. Doubtless if one knocked upon a
+top and put his ear close upon a barrel, he would hear a villain's
+guttural voice inside, asking if the time were come.
+
+"Then there are the theatres and parks, great caverns where a subway
+is being built. There are geraniums on window-sills, wash hanging on
+dizzy lines (cotton gymnasts practicing for a circus), a roar of
+traffic and shrill whistles, men and women eating--always eating.
+There has been nothing like this in all the ages. Babylon and Nineveh
+were only villages. Carthage was a crossroads. It is as though all the
+cities of antiquity had packed their bags and moved here to a common
+spot."
+
+"Please, Flint," this from Colum, "but you forget that the faces of
+those who live in the country are happier. That's all that counts."
+
+"Not happier--less alert, that's all--duller. For contentment, I'll
+wager against any farmhand the old woman who sells apples at the
+corner. She polishes them on her apron with--with spit. There is an
+Italian who peddles ice from a handcart on our street, and he never
+sees me without a grin. The folk who run our grocery, a man and his
+wife, seem happy all the day. No! we misjudge the city and we have
+done so since the days of Wordsworth. If we prized the city rightly,
+we would be at more pains to make it better--to lessen its suffering.
+We ought to go into the crowded parts with an eye not only for the
+poverty, but also with sympathy for its beauty--its love of
+sunshine--the tenderness with which the elder children guard the
+younger--its love of music--its dancing--its naturalness. If we had
+this sympathy we could help--_ourselves_, first--and after that,
+maybe, the East Side."
+
+Flint arose and leaned against the chimney. He shook an accusing
+finger at the company. "You, Colum, ruin fifty weeks for the sake of
+two. You, Quill, hypnotize yourself into a frazzle by Saturday noon
+with unnecessary fret. You peck over your food too much. A little
+clear unmuddled thinking would straighten you out, even if you didn't
+let the ants crawl over you on Sunday afternoon. Old Flannel Shirt is
+blinded by his spleen against society. As for Wurm, he doesn't count.
+He's only a harmless bit of mummy-wrapping."
+
+"And what are you, Flint?" asked Quill.
+
+"Me? A rational man, I hope."
+
+"You--you are an egotist. That's what you are."
+
+"Very well," said Flint. "It's just as you say."
+
+There was a red flash from the top of the Metropolitan Tower. Flint
+looked at his watch. "So?" he said, "I must be going."
+
+And now that our party is over and I am home at last, I put out the
+light and draw open the curtains. Tomorrow--it is to be a holiday--I
+had planned to climb in the Highlands, for I, too, am addicted to the
+country. But perhaps--perhaps I'll change my plan and stay in town.
+I'll take a hint from Flint. I'll go down to Delancey Street and watch
+the chaffering and buying. What he said was true. He overstated his
+position, of course. Most propagandists do, being swept off in the
+current of their swift conviction. One should like both the city and
+the country; and the liking for one should heighten the liking for the
+other. Any particular receptiveness must grow to be a general
+receptiveness. Yet, in the main, certainly, Flint was right. I'll try
+Delancey Street, I concluded, just this once.
+
+Thousands of roofs lie below me, for I live in a tower as of
+Teufelsdroeckh. And many of them shield a bit of grief--darkened rooms
+where sick folk lie--rooms where hope is faint. And yet, as I believe,
+under these roofs there is more joy than grief--more contentment and
+happiness than despair, even in these grievous times of war. If Quill
+here frets himself into wakefulness and Colum chafes for the coming of
+the summer, also let us remember that in the murk and shadows of these
+rooms there are, at the least, thirty sailors from Central Park--one
+old fellow in particular who, although the hour is late, still putters
+with his boat in the litter of his dining-room. Glue-pots on the
+sideboard! Clamps among the china, and lumber on the hearth! And down
+on Grand Street, snug abed, dreaming of pleasant conquest, sleeps the
+dark-eyed Italian girl. On a chair beside her are her champagne boots,
+with stockings to match hung across the back.
+
+
+
+
+Runaway Studies.
+
+
+In my edition of "Elia," illustrated by Brock, whose sympathetic pen,
+surely, was nibbed in days contemporary with Lamb, there is a sketch
+of a youth reclining on a window-seat with a book fallen open on his
+knees. He is clad in a long plain garment folded to his heels which
+carries a hint of a cathedral choir but which, doubtless, is the
+prescribed costume of an English public school. This lad is gazing
+through the casement into a sunny garden--for the artist's vague
+stippling invites the suspicion of grass and trees. Or rather, does
+not the intensity of his regard attest that his nimble thoughts have
+jumped the outmost wall? Already he journeys to those peaks and lofty
+towers that fringe the world of youth--a dizzy range that casts a
+magic border on his first wide thoughts, to be overleaped if he seek
+to tread the stars.
+
+And yet it seems a sleepy afternoon. Flowers nod upon a shelf in the
+idle breeze from the open casement. On the warm sill a drowsy sunlight
+falls, as if the great round orb of day, having labored to the top of
+noon, now dawdled idly on the farther slope. A cat dozes with lazy
+comfort on the window-seat. Surely, this is the cat--if the old story
+be believed--the sleepiest of all her race, in whose dull ear the
+mouse dared to nest and breed.
+
+This lad, who is so lost in thought, is none other than Charles Lamb,
+a mere stripling, not yet grown to his black small-clothes and sober
+gaiters, a shrill squeak of a boy scarcely done with his battledore.
+And here he sits, his cheek upon his palm, and dreams of the future.
+
+But Lamb himself has written of this window-seat. Journeying northward
+out of London--in that wonderful middle age of his in which the Elia
+papers were composed--journeying northward he came once on the great
+country house where a part of his boyhood had been spent. It had been
+but lately given to the wreckers, "and the demolition of a few weeks,"
+he writes, "had reduced it to--an antiquity."
+
+"Had I seen those brick-and-mortar knaves at their process of
+destruction," he continues, "at the plucking of every pannel I should
+have felt the varlets at my heart. I should have cried out to them to
+spare a plank at least out of that cheerful storeroom, in whose hot
+window-seat I used to sit and read Cowley, with the grass-plat before,
+and the hum and flappings of that one solitary wasp that ever haunted
+it about me--it is in mine ears now, as oft as summer returns...."
+
+I confess to a particular enjoyment of this essay, with its memory of
+tapestried bedrooms setting forth upon their walls "the unappeasable
+prudery of Diana" under the peeping eye of Actaeon; its echoing
+galleries once so dreadful when the night wind caught the candle at
+the turn; its hall of family portraits. But chiefly it is this
+window-seat that holds me--the casement looking on the garden and its
+southern sun-baked wall--the lad dreaming on his volume of Cowley, and
+leaping the garden border for the stars. These are the things that I
+admit most warmly to my affection.
+
+It is not in the least that I am a lover of Cowley, who seems an
+unpleasantly antiquated author. I would choose, instead, that the
+youthful Elia were busy so early with one of his favorite
+Elizabethans. He has himself hinted that he read "The Vicar of
+Wakefield" in later days out of a tattered copy from a circulating
+library, yet I would willingly move the occasion forward, coincident
+to this. And I suspect that the artist Brock is also indifferent to
+Cowley: for has he not laid two other volumes handy on the shelf for
+the sure time when Cowley shall grow dull? Has he not even put Cowley
+flat down upon his face, as if, already neglected, he had slipped from
+the lad's negligent fingers--as if, indeed, Elia's far-striding
+meditation were to him of higher interest than the stiff measure of
+any poet?
+
+I recall a child, dimly through the years, that lay upon the rug
+before the fire to read his book, with his chin resting on both his
+hands. His favorite hour was the winter twilight before the family
+came together for their supper, for at that hour the lamplighter went
+his rounds and threw a golden string of dots upon the street. He drove
+an old thin horse and he stood on the seat of the cart with
+up-stretched taper. But when the world grew dark the flare of the fire
+was enough for the child to read, for he lay close against the hearth.
+And as the shadows gathered in the room, there was one story chiefly,
+of such intensity that the excitement of it swept through his body and
+out into his waving legs. Perhaps its last copy has now vanished off
+the earth. It dealt with a deserted house on a lonely road, where
+chains clanked at midnight. Lights, too, seemingly not of earth,
+glimmered at the windows, while groans--such was the dark fancy of the
+author--issued from a windy tower. But there was one supreme chapter
+in which the hero was locked in a haunted room and saw a candle at a
+chink of the wall. It belonged to the villain, who nightly played
+there a ghostly antic to frighten honest folk from a buried treasure.
+
+And in summer the child read on the casement of the dining-room with
+the window up. It was the height of a tall man from the ground, and
+this gave it a bit of dizziness that enhanced the pleasure. This sill
+could be dully reached from inside, but the approach from the outside
+was riskiest and best. For an adventuring mood this window was a kind
+of postern to the house for innocent deception, beyond the eye of both
+the sitting-room and cook. Sometimes it was the bridge of a lofty
+ship with a pilot going up and down, or it was a lighthouse to mark a
+channel. It was as versatile as the kitchen step-ladder which--on
+Thursday afternoons when the cook was out--unbent from its sober
+household duties and joined him as an equal. But chiefly on this sill
+the child read his books on summer days. His cousins sat inside on
+chairs, starched for company, and read safe and dimpled authors, but
+his were of a vagrant kind. There was one book, especially, in which a
+lad not much bigger than himself ran from home and joined a circus. A
+scolding aunt was his excuse. And the child on the sill chafed at his
+own happy circumstance which denied him these adventures.
+
+In a dark room in an upper story of the house there was a great box
+where old books and periodicals were stored. No place this side of
+Cimmeria had deeper shadows. Not even the underground stall of the
+neighbor's cow, which showed a gloomy window on the garden, gave quite
+the chill. It was only on the brightest days that the child dared to
+rummage in this box. The top of it was high and it was blind fumbling
+unless he stood upon a chair. Then he bent over, jack-knife fashion,
+until the upper part of him--all above the legs--disappeared. In the
+obscurity--his head being gone--it must have seemed that Solomon lived
+upon the premises and had carried out his ugly threat in that old
+affair of the disputed child. Then he lifted out the papers--in
+particular a set of _Leslie's Weekly_ with battle pictures of the
+Civil War. Once he discovered a tale of Jules Verne--a journey to the
+center of the earth--and he spread its chapters before the window in
+the dusty light.
+
+But the view was high across the houses of the city to a range of
+hills where tall trees grew as a hedge upon the world. And it was the
+hours when his book lay fallen that counted most, for then he built
+poems in his fancy of ships at sea and far-off countries.
+
+It is by a fine instinct that children thus neglect their books,
+whether it be Cowley or Circus Dick. When they seem most truant they
+are the closest rapt. A book at its best starts the thought and sends
+it off as a happy vagrant. It is the thought that runs away across the
+margin that brings back the richest treasure.
+
+But all reading in childhood is not happy. It chanced that lately in
+the long vacation I explored a country school for boys. It stood on
+the shaded street of a pretty New England village, so perched on a
+hilltop that it looked over a wide stretch of lower country. There
+were many marks of a healthful outdoor life--a football field and
+tennis courts, broad lawns and a prospect of distant woodland for a
+holiday excursion. It was on the steps of one of the buildings used
+for recitation that I found a tattered dog-eared remnant of _The
+Merchant of Venice_. So much of its front was gone that at the very
+first of it Shylock had advanced far into his unworthy schemes.
+Evidently the book, by its position at the corner of the steps, had
+been thrown out immediately at the close of the final class, as if
+already it had been endured too long.
+
+In the stillness of the abandoned school I sat for an hour and read
+about the choosing of the caskets. The margins were filled with
+drawings--one possibly a likeness of the teacher. Once there was a
+figure in a skirt--straight, single lines for legs--_Jack's
+girl_--scrawled in evident derision of a neighbor student's amatory
+weakness. There were records of baseball scores. Railroads were drawn
+obliquely across the pages, bending about in order not to touch the
+words, with a rare tunnel where some word stood out too long. Here and
+there were stealthy games of tit-tat-toe, practiced, doubtless, behind
+the teacher's back. Everything showed boredom with the play. What
+mattered it which casket was selected! Let Shylock take his pound of
+flesh! Only let him whet his knife and be quick about it! All's one.
+It's at best a sad and sleepy story suited only for a winter's day.
+But now spring is here--spring that is the king of all the seasons.
+
+A bee comes buzzing on the pane. It flies off in careless truantry.
+The clock ticks slowly like a lazy partner in the teacher's dull
+conspiracy. Outside stretches the green world with its trees and
+hills and moving clouds. There is a river yonder with swimming-holes.
+A dog barks on a distant road.
+
+Presently the lad's book slips from his negligent fingers. He places
+it face down upon the desk. It lies disregarded like that volume of
+old Cowley one hundred years ago. His eyes wander from the black-board
+where the _Merchant's_ dry lines are scanned and marked.
+
+          '        '       '     '     '
+    _In sooth, I know not why I am so sad._
+
+And then ... his thoughts have clambered through the window. They have
+leaped across the schoolyard wall. Still in his ears he hears the
+jogging of the _Merchant_--but the sound grows dim. Like that other
+lad of long ago, his thoughts have jumped the hills. Already, with
+giddy stride, they are journeying to the profound region of the stars.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+On Turning Into Forty.
+
+
+The other day, without any bells or whistles, I slipped off from the
+thirties. I felt the same sleepiness that morning. There was no
+apparent shifting of the grade.
+
+I am conscious, maybe, that my agility is not what it was fifteen
+years ago. I do not leap across the fences. But I am not yet comic.
+Yonder stout man waddles as if he were a precious bombard. He strains
+at his forward buttons. Unless he mend his appetite, his shoes will be
+lost below his waistcoat. Already their tops and hulls, like battered
+caravels, disappear beneath his fat horizon. With him I bear no
+fellowship. But although nature has not stuffed me with her sweets to
+this thick rotundity; alas, despite of tubes and bottles, no shadowy
+garden flourishes on my top--waving capillary grasses and a prim path
+between the bush. Rather, I bear a general parade and smooth pleasance
+open to the glimpses of the moon.
+
+And so at last I have turned into the forties. I remember now how
+heedlessly I had remarked a small brisk clock ticking upon the shelf
+as it counted the seconds--paying out to me, as it were, for my
+pleasure and expense, the brief coinage of my life. I had heard, also,
+unmindful of the warning, a tall and solemn clock as I lay awake,
+marking regretfully the progress of the night. And I had been told
+that water runs always beneath the bridge, that the deepest roses
+fade, that Time's white beard keeps growing to his knee. These phrases
+of wisdom I had heard and others. But what mattered them to me when my
+long young life lay stretched before me? Nor did the revolving stars
+concern me--nor the moon, spring with its gaudy brush, nor gray-clad
+winter. Nor did I care how the wind blew the swift seasons across the
+earth. Let Time's horses gallop, I cried. Speed! The bewildering peaks
+of youth are forward. The inn for the night lies far across the
+mountains.
+
+But the seconds were entered on the ledger. At last the gray penman
+has made his footing. The great page turns. I have passed out of the
+thirties.
+
+I am not given to brooding on my age. It is only by checking the years
+on my fingers that I am able to reckon the time of my birth. In the
+election booth, under a hard eye, I fumble the years and invite
+suspicion. Eighteen hundred and seventy-eight, I think it was. But
+even this salient fact--this milepost on my eternity--I remember most
+quickly by the recollection of a jack-knife acquired on my tenth
+birthday. By way of celebration on that day, having selected the
+longest blade, I cut the date--1888--in the kitchen woodwork with
+rather a pretty flourish when the cook was out. The swift events that
+followed the discovery--the dear woman paddled me with a great spoon
+through the door--fastened the occurrence in my memory.
+
+It was about the year of the jack-knife that there lived in our
+neighborhood a bad boy whose name was Elmer. I would have quite
+forgotten him except that I met him on the pavement a few weeks ago.
+He was the bully of our street--a towering rogue with red hair and one
+suspender. I remember a chrome bandage which he shifted from toe to
+toe. This lad was of larger speech than the rest of us and he could
+spit between his teeth. He used to snatch the caps of the younger boys
+and went off with our baseball across the fences. He was wrapped, too,
+in mystery, and it was rumored--softly from ear to ear--that once he
+had been arrested and taken to the station-house.
+
+And yet here he was, after all these years, not a bearded brigand with
+a knife sticking from his boot, but a mild undersized man, hat in
+hand, smiling at me with pleasant cordiality. His red hair had faded
+to a harmless carrot. From an overtopping rascal he had dwindled to my
+shoulder. It was as strange and incomprehensible as if the broken
+middle-aged gentleman, my familiar neighbor across the street who nods
+all day upon his step, were pointed out to me as Captain Kidd retired.
+Can it be that all villains come at last to a slippered state? Does
+Dick Turpin of the King's highway now falter with crutch along a
+garden path? And Captain Singleton, now that his last victim has
+walked the plank--does he doze on a sunny bench beneath his pear tree?
+Is no blood or treasure left upon the earth? Do all rascals lose their
+teeth? "Good evening, Elmer," I said, "it has been a long time since
+we have met." And I left him agreeable and smiling.
+
+No, certainly I do not brood upon my age. Except for a gift I forget
+my birthday. It is only by an effort that I can think of myself as
+running toward middle age. If I meet a stranger, usually, by a
+pleasant deception, I think myself the younger, and because of an
+old-fashioned deference for age I bow and scrape in the doorway for
+his passage.
+
+Of course I admit a suckling to be my junior. A few days since I
+happened to dine at one of the Purple Pups of our Greenwich Village.
+At my table, which was slashed with yellow and blue in the fashion of
+these places, sat a youth of seventeen who engaged me in conversation.
+Plainly, even to my blindness, he was younger than myself. The milk
+was scarcely dry upon his mouth. He was, by his admission across the
+soup, a writer of plays and he had received already as many as three
+pleasant letters of rejection. He flared with youth. Strange gases and
+opinion burned in his speech. His breast pocket bulged with
+manuscript, for reading at a hint.
+
+I was poking at my dumpling when he asked me if I were a socialist.
+No, I replied. Then perhaps I was an anarchist or a Bolshevist, he
+persisted. N-no, I answered him, sadly and slowly, for I foresaw his
+scorn. He leaned forward across the table. Begging my pardon for an
+intrusion in my affairs, he asked me if I were not aware that the
+world was slipping away from me. God knows. Perhaps. I had come
+frisking to that restaurant. I left it broken and decrepit. The
+youngster had his manuscripts and his anarchy. He held the wriggling
+world by its futuristic tail. It was not my world, to be sure, but it
+was a gay world and daubed with color.
+
+And yet, despite this humiliating encounter, I feel quite young.
+Something has passed before me that may be Time. The summers have come
+and gone. There is snow on the pavement where I remember rain. I see,
+if I choose, the long vista of the years, with diminishing figures,
+and tin soldiers at the start. Yet I doubt if I am growing older. To
+myself I seem younger than in my twenties. In the twenties we are
+quite commonly old. We bear the whole weight of society. The world has
+been waiting so long for us and our remedies. In the twenties we scorn
+old authority. We let Titian and Keats go drown themselves. We are
+skeptical in religion, and before our unrelenting iron throne
+immortality and all things of faith plead in vain. Although I can show
+still only a shabby inventory, certainly I would not exchange myself
+for that other self in the twenties. I have acquired in these last few
+years a less narrow sympathy and a belief that some of my colder
+reasons may be wrong. Nor would I barter certain knacks of
+thoughts--serious and humorous--for the renewed ability to leap across
+a five-foot bar. I am less fearful of the world and its accidents. I
+have less embarrassment before people. I am less moody. I tack and
+veer less among my betters for some meaner profit. Surely I am growing
+younger.
+
+I seem to remember reading a story in which a scientist devised a
+means of reversing the direction of the earth. Perhaps an explosion of
+gases backfired against the east. Perhaps he built a monstrous lever
+and contrived the moon to be his fulcrum. Anyway, here at last was the
+earth spinning backward in its course--the spring preceding
+winter--the sun rising in the west--one o'clock going before
+twelve--soup trailing after nuts--the seed-time following upon the
+harvest. And so it began to appear--so ran the story--that human life,
+too, was reversed. Persons came into the world as withered grandames
+and as old gentlemen with gold-headed canes, and then receded like
+crabs backward into their maturity, then into their adolescence and
+babyhood. To return from a protracted voyage was to find your younger
+friends sunk into pinafores. But the story was really too ridiculous.
+
+But in these last few years no doubt I do grow younger. The great
+camera of the Master rolls its moving pictures backward. Perhaps I am
+only thirty-eight now that the direction is reversed.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I wonder what you thought, my dear X----, when we met recently at
+dinner. We had not seen one another very often in these last few
+years. Our paths have led apart and we have not been even at shouting
+distance across the fields. It is needless to remind you, I hope, that
+I once paid you marked attention. It began when we were boy and girl.
+Our friends talked, you will recall. You were then less than a year
+younger than myself, although no doubt you have since lost distance.
+What a long time I spent upon my tie and collar--a stiff high collar
+that almost touched my ears! Some other turn of fortune's
+wheel--circumstance--a shaft of moonlight (we were young, my dear)--a
+white frock--your acquiescence--who knows?
+
+I jilted you once or twice for other girls--nothing formal, of
+course--but only when you had jilted me three or four times. We once
+rowed upon a river at night. Did I take your hand, my dear? If I
+listen now I can hear the water dripping from the oar. There was
+darkness--and stars--and youth (yourself, white-armed, the symbol of
+its mystery). Yes, perhaps I am older now.
+
+Was it not Byron who wrote?
+
+    I am ashes where once I was fire,
+    And the soul in my bosom is dead;
+    What I loved I now merely admire,
+    And my heart is as gray as my head.
+
+I cannot pretend ever to have had so fierce a passion, but at least my
+fire still burns and with a cheery blaze. But you will not know this
+love of mine--unless, of course, you read this page--and even so, you
+can only suspect that I write of you, because, my dear, to be quite
+frank, I paid attention to several girls beside yourself.
+
+Yes, they say that I have come to the top of the hill and that
+henceforth the view is back across my shoulder. I am counseled that
+with a turn of the road I had best sit with my back to the horses, for
+the mountains are behind. A little while and the finer purple will be
+showing in the west. Yet a little while, they say, and the bewildering
+peaks of youth will be gray and cold.
+
+Perhaps some of the greener pleasures are mine no longer. Certainly,
+last night I went to the Winter Garden, but left bored after the first
+act; and I had left sooner except for climbing across my neighbors. I
+suppose there are young popinjays who seriously affirm that Ziegfeld's
+Beauty Chorus is equal to the galaxy of loveliness that once pranced
+at Weber and Field's when we came down from college on Saturday night.
+At old Coster and Bial's there was once a marvelous beauty who swung
+from a trapeze above the audience and scandalously undressed herself
+down to the fifth encore and her stockings. And, really, are there
+plays now as exciting as the _Prisoner of Zenda_, with its great fight
+upon the stairs--three men dead and the tables overturned--Red
+Rudolph, in the end, bearing off the Princess? Heroes no longer wear
+cloak and sword and rescue noble ladies from castle towers.
+
+And Welsh rabbit, that was once a passion and the high symbol of
+extravagance, in these days has lost its finest flavor. In vain do we
+shake the paprika can. Pop-beer and real beer, its manly cousin, have
+neither of them the old foaming tingle when you come off the water.
+Yes, already, I am told, I am on the long road that leads down to the
+quiet inn at the mountain foot. I am promised, to be sure, many wide
+prospects, pleasant sounds of wind and water, and friendly greetings
+by the way. There will be a stop here and there for refreshments, a
+pause at the turn where the world shows best, a tightening of the
+brake. Get up, Dobbin! Go 'long! And then, tired and nodding, at last,
+we shall leave the upland and enter the twilight where all roads end.
+
+A pleasant picture, is it not--a grandfather in a cap--yourself, my
+dear sir, hugging your cold shins in the chimney corner? Is it not a
+brave end to a stirring business? Life, you say, is a journey up and
+down a hill--aspirations unattained and a mild regret, castles at
+dawn, a brisk wind for the noontide, and at night, at best, the lights
+of a little village, the stir of water on the stones, and silence.
+
+Is this true? Or do we not reiterate a lie? I deny old age. It is a
+false belief, a bad philosophy dimming the eyes of generations. Men
+and women may wear caps, but not because of age. In each one's heart,
+if he permit, a child keeps house to the very end. If Welsh rabbit
+lose its flavor, is it a sign of decaying power? I have yet to know
+that a relish for Shakespeare declines, or the love of one's friends,
+or the love of truth and beauty. Youth does not view the loftiest
+peaks. It is at sunset that the tallest castles rise.
+
+My dear sir--you of seventy or beyond--if no rim of mountains
+stretches up before you, it is not your age that denies you but the
+quality of your thought. It has been said of old that as a man thinks
+so he is, but who of us has learned the lesson?
+
+The journey has neither a beginning nor an end. Now is eternity. Our
+birth is but a signpost on the road--our going hence, another post to
+mark transition and our progress. The oldest stars are brief lamps
+upon our way. We shall travel wisely if we see peaks and castles all
+the day, and hold our childhood in our hearts. Then, when at last the
+night has come, we shall plant our second post upon a windy height
+where it will be first to catch the dawn.
+
+
+
+
+On the Difference Between Wit and Humor.
+
+
+I am not sure that I can draw an exact line between wit and humor.
+Perhaps the distinction is so subtle that only those persons can
+decide who have long white beards. But even an ignorant man, so long
+as he is clear of Bedlam, may have an opinion.
+
+I am quite positive that of the two, humor is the more comfortable and
+more livable quality. Humorous persons, if their gift is genuine and
+not a mere shine upon the surface, are always agreeable companions
+and they sit through the evening best. They have pleasant mouths
+turned up at the corners. To these corners the great Master of
+marionettes has fixed the strings and he holds them in his nimblest
+fingers to twitch them at the slightest jest. But the mouth of a
+merely witty man is hard and sour until the moment of its discharge.
+Nor is the flash from a witty man always comforting, whereas a
+humorous man radiates a general pleasure and is like another candle in
+the room.
+
+I admire wit, but I have no real liking for it. It has been too often
+employed against me, whereas humor is always an ally. It never points
+an impertinent finger into my defects. Humorous persons do not sit
+like explosives on a fuse. They are safe and easy comrades. But a
+wit's tongue is as sharp as a donkey driver's stick. I may gallop the
+faster for its prodding, yet the touch behind is too persuasive for
+any comfort.
+
+Wit is a lean creature with sharp inquiring nose, whereas humor has a
+kindly eye and comfortable girth. Wit, if it be necessary, uses malice
+to score a point--like a cat it is quick to jump--but humor keeps the
+peace in an easy chair. Wit has a better voice in a solo, but humor
+comes into the chorus best. Wit is as sharp as a stroke of lightning,
+whereas humor is diffuse like sunlight. Wit keeps the season's
+fashions and is precise in the phrases and judgments of the day, but
+humor is concerned with homely eternal things. Wit wears silk, but
+humor in homespun endures the wind. Wit sets a snare, whereas humor
+goes off whistling without a victim in its mind. Wit is sharper
+company at table, but humor serves better in mischance and in the
+rain. When it tumbles wit is sour, but humor goes uncomplaining
+without its dinner. Humor laughs at another's jest and holds its
+sides, while wit sits wrapped in study for a lively answer. But it is
+a workaday world in which we live, where we get mud upon our boots and
+come weary to the twilight--it is a world that grieves and suffers
+from many wounds in these years of war: and therefore as I think of my
+acquaintance, it is those who are humorous in its best and truest
+meaning rather than those who are witty who give the more profitable
+companionship.
+
+And then, also, there is wit that is not wit. As someone has written:
+
+    Nor ever noise for wit on me could pass,
+    When thro' the braying I discern'd the ass.
+
+I sat lately at dinner with a notoriously witty person (a really witty
+man) whom our hostess had introduced to provide the entertainment. I
+had read many of his reviews of books and plays, and while I confess
+their wit and brilliancy, I had thought them to be hard and
+intellectual and lacking in all that broader base of humor which aims
+at truth. His writing--catching the bad habit of the time--is too
+ready to proclaim a paradox and to assert the unusual, to throw aside
+in contempt the valuable haystack in a fine search for a paltry
+needle. His reviews are seldom right--as most of us see the right--but
+they sparkle and hold one's interest for their perversity and
+unexpected turns.
+
+In conversation I found him much as I had found him in his
+writing--although, strictly speaking, it was not a conversation, which
+requires an interchange of word and idea and is turn about. A
+conversation should not be a market where one sells and another buys.
+Rather, it should be a bargaining back and forth, and each person
+should be both merchant and buyer. My rubber plant for your victrola,
+each offering what he has and seeking his deficiency. It was my friend
+B---- who fairly put the case when he said that he liked so much to
+talk that he was willing to pay for his audience by listening in his
+turn.
+
+But this was a speech and a lecture. He loosed on us from the cold
+spigot of his intellect a steady flow of literary allusion--a practice
+which he professes to hold in scorn--and wit and epigram. He seemed
+torn from the page of Meredith. He talked like ink. I had believed
+before that only people in books could talk as he did, and then only
+when their author had blotted and scratched their performance for a
+seventh time before he sent it to the printer. To me it was an
+entirely new experience, for my usual acquaintances are good common
+honest daytime woollen folk and they seldom average better than one
+bright thing in an evening.
+
+At first I feared that there might be a break in his flow of speech
+which I should be obliged to fill. Once, when there was a slight
+pause--a truffle was engaging him--I launched a frail remark; but it
+was swept off at once in the renewed torrent. And seriously it does
+not seem fair. If one speaker insists--to change the figure--on laying
+all the cobbles of a conversation, he should at least allow another to
+carry the tarpot and fill in the chinks. When the evening was over,
+although I recalled two or three clever stories, which I shall botch
+in the telling, I came away tired and dissatisfied, my tongue dry with
+disuse.
+
+Now I would not seek that kind of man as a companion with whom to be
+becalmed in a sailboat, and I would not wish to go to the country with
+him, least of all to the North Woods or any place outside of
+civilization. I am sure that he would sulk if he were deprived of an
+audience. He would be crotchety at breakfast across his bacon.
+Certainly for the woods a humorous man is better company, for his
+humor in mischance comforts both him and you. A humorous man--and here
+lies the heart of the matter--a humorous man has the high gift of
+regarding an annoyance in the very stroke of it as another man shall
+regard it when the annoyance is long past. If a humorous person falls
+out of a canoe he knows the exquisite jest while his head is still
+bobbing in the cold water. A witty man, on the contrary, is sour until
+he is changed and dry: but in a week's time when company is about, he
+will make a comic story of it.
+
+My friend A---- with whom I went once into the Canadian woods has
+genuine humor, and no one can be a more satisfactory comrade. I do not
+recall that he said many comic things, and at bottom he was serious as
+the best humorists are. But in him there was a kind of joy and
+exaltation that lasted throughout the day. If the duffle were piled
+too high and fell about his ears, if the dinner was burned or the tent
+blew down in a driving storm at night, he met these mishaps as though
+they were the very things he had come north to get, as though without
+them the trip would have lacked its spice. This is an easy philosophy
+in retrospect but hard when the wet canvas falls across you and the
+rain beats in. A---- laughed at the very moment of disaster as another
+man will laugh later in an easy chair. I see him now swinging his axe
+for firewood to dry ourselves when we were spilled in a rapids; and
+again, while pitching our tent on a sandy beach when another storm had
+drowned us. And there is a certain cry of his (dully, _Wow!_ on paper)
+expressive to the initiated of all things gay, which could never issue
+from the mouth of a merely witty man.
+
+Real humor is primarily human--or divine, to be exact--and after that
+the fun may follow naturally in its order. Not long ago I saw Louis
+Jouvet of the French Company play Sir Andrew Ague-Cheek. It was a most
+humorous performance of the part, and the reason is that the actor
+made no primary effort to be funny. It was the humanity of his
+playing, making his audience love him first of all, that provoked the
+comedy. His long thin legs were comical and so was his drawling talk,
+but the very heart and essence was this love he started in his
+audience. Poor fellow! How delightfully he smoothed the feathers in
+his hat! How he feared to fight the duel! It was easy to love such a
+dear silly human fellow. A merely witty player might have drawn as
+many laughs, but there would not have been the catching at the heart.
+
+As for books and the wit or humor of their pages, it appears that wit
+fades, whereas humor lasts. Humor uses permanent nutgalls. But is
+there anything more melancholy than the wit of another generation? In
+the first place, this wit is intertwined with forgotten circumstance.
+It hangs on a fashion--on the style of a coat. It arose from a
+forgotten bit of gossip. In the play of words the sources of the pun
+are lost. It is like a local jest in a narrow coterie, barren to an
+outsider. Sydney Smith was the most celebrated wit of his day, but he
+is dull reading now. Blackwood's at its first issue was a witty daring
+sheet, but for us the pages are stagnant. I suppose that no one now
+laughs at the witticisms of Thomas Hood. Where are the wits of
+yesteryear? Yet the humor of Falstaff and Lamb and Fielding remains
+and is a reminder to us that humor, to be real, must be founded on
+humanity and on truth.
+
+
+
+
+On Going to a Party.
+
+
+Although I usually enjoy a party when I have arrived, I seldom
+anticipate it with pleasure. I remain sour until I have hung my hat. I
+suspect that my disorder is general and that if any group of formal
+diners could be caught in preparation midway between their tub and
+over-shoes, they would be found a peevish company who might be
+expected to snap at one another. Yet look now at their smiling faces!
+With what zest they crunch their food! How cheerfully they clatter on
+their plates! Who would suspect that yonder smiling fellow who strokes
+his silky chin was sullen when he fixed his tie; or that this pleasant
+babble comes out of mouths that lately sulked before their mirrors?
+
+I am not sure from what cause my own crustiness proceeds. I am of no
+essential unsociability. Nor is it wholly the masquerade of
+unaccustomed clothes. I am deft with a bow-knot and patient with my
+collar. It may be partly a perversity of sex, inasmuch as we men are
+sometimes "taken" by our women folk. But chiefly it comes from an
+unwillingness to pledge the future, lest on the very night my own
+hearth appear the better choice. Here we are, with legs stretched for
+comfort toward the fire--easy and unbuttoned. Let the rain beat on the
+glass! Let chimneys topple! Let the wind whistle to its shrill
+companions of the North! But although I am led growling and reluctant
+to my host's door--with stiffened paws, as it were, against the
+sill--I usually enjoy myself when I am once inside. To see me across
+the salad smiling at my pretty neighbor, no one would know how
+churlish I had been on the coming of the invitation.
+
+I have attended my share of formal dinners. I have dined with the
+magnificent H----s and their Roman Senator has announced me at the
+door; although, when he asked my name in the hall, I thought at first
+in my ignorance that he gave me directions about my rubbers. No one
+has faced more forks and knives, or has apportioned his implements
+with nicer discrimination among the meats. Not once have I been forced
+to stir my after-dinner coffee with a soup spoon. And yet I look back
+on these grand occasions with contentment chiefly because they are
+past. I am in whole agreement with Cleopatra when she spoke
+slightingly of her salad days--surely a fashionable afternoon affair
+at a castle on the river Nile--when, as she confessed, she was young
+and green in judgment.
+
+It is usually a pleasure to meet distinguished persons who, as a rule,
+are friendly folk who sit in peace and comfort. But if they are lugged
+in and set up stiffly at a formal dinner they are too much an
+exhibition. In this circumstance they cannot be natural and at their
+best. And then I wonder how they endure our abject deference and
+flabby surrender to their opinions. Would it not destroy all interest
+in a game of bowling if the wretched pins fell down before the hit
+were made? It was lately at a dinner that our hostess held in
+captivity three of these celebrated lions. One of them was a famous
+traveler who had taken a tiger by its bristling beard. The second was
+a popular lecturer. The third was in distemper and crouched quietly at
+her plate. The first two are sharp and bright and they roared to
+expectation. But I do not complain when lions take possession of the
+cage, for it reduces the general liability of talk, and a common man,
+if he be industrious, may pluck his bird down to the bone in peace.
+
+A formal reception is even worse than a dinner. One stands around with
+stalled machinery. Good stout legs, that can go at a trot all day,
+become now weak and wabbly. One hurdles dispiritedly over trailing
+skirts. One tries in conversation to think of the name of a play he
+has just seen, but it escapes him. It is, however, so nearly in his
+grasp, that it prevents him from turning to another topic. Benson, the
+essayist, also disliked formal receptions and he quotes Prince Hal in
+their dispraise. "Prithee, Ned," says the Prince--and I fancy that he
+has just led a thirsty Duchess to the punchbowl, and was now in the
+very act of escaping while her face was buried in the cup--"Prithee,
+Ned," he says, "come out of this fat room, and lend me thy hand to
+laugh a little!" And we can imagine these two enfranchised rogues,
+easy at heart, making off later to their Eastcheap tavern, and the
+passing of a friendly cup. But now, alas, today, all of the rooms of
+the house are fat and thick with people. There is a confusion of
+tongues as when work on the tower of Babel was broken off. There is no
+escape. If it were one's good luck to be a waiter, one could at least
+console himself that it was his livelihood.
+
+The furniture has been removed from all the rooms in order that more
+persons may be more uncomfortable. Or perhaps the chairs and tables,
+like rats in a leaky ship, have scuttled off, as it were, now that
+fashion has wrecked the home. A friend of mine, J----, resents these
+entertainments. No sooner, recently, did he come into such a bare
+apartment where, in happier days his favorite chair had stood, than he
+hinted to the guests that the furniture had been sold to meet the
+expenses of the day. This sorry jest lasted him until, on whispering
+to a servant, he learned that the chairs had been stored in an upper
+hall. At this he proposed that the party reassemble above, where at
+least they might sit down and be comfortable. When I last saw J----
+that evening he was sitting at the turn of the stairs behind an exotic
+shrubbery, where he had found a vagrant chair that had straggled
+behind the upper emigration.
+
+The very envelope that contains a formal invitation bears a forbidding
+look. It is massive and costly to the eye. It is much larger than a
+letter, unless, perhaps, one carries on a correspondence with a giant
+from Brobdingnag. You turn it round and round with sad premonition.
+The very writing is coldly impersonal without the pinch of a more
+human hand. It practices a chill anonymity as if it contains a warrant
+for a hanging. At first you hope it may be merely an announcement from
+your tailor, inasmuch as commerce patterns its advertisements on these
+social forms. I am told that there was once a famous man--a
+distinguished novelist--who so disliked formal parties but was so
+timid at their rejection that he took refuge in the cellar whenever
+one of these forbidding documents arrived, until he could forge a
+plausible excuse; for he believed that these colder and more barren
+rooms quickened his invention. The story goes that once when he was in
+an unusually timid state he lacked the courage to break the seal and
+so spent an uneasy morning upon the tubs, to the inconvenience of the
+laundress who thought that he fretted upon the plot. At last, on
+tearing off the envelope, he found to his relief that it was only a
+notice for a display of haberdashery at a fashionable shop. In his
+gratitude at his escape he at once sought his desk and conferred a
+blushing heiress on his hero.
+
+But perhaps there are persons of an opposite mind who welcome an
+invitation. Even the preliminary rummage delights them when their
+clothes are sent for pressing and their choice wavers among their
+plumage. For such persons the superscription on the envelope now seems
+written in the spacious hand of hospitality.
+
+But of informal dinners and the meeting of friends we can all approve
+without reserve. I recall, once upon a time, four old gentlemen who
+met every week for whist. Three of them were of marked eccentricity.
+One of them, when the game was at its pitch, reached down to the rungs
+of his chair and hitched it first to one side and then to the other,
+mussing up the rugs. The second had the infirmity of nodding his head
+continuously. Even if he played a trivial three spot, he sat on the
+decision and wagged his beard up and down like a judge. The third
+sucked his teeth and thereby made hissing noises. Later in the evening
+there would be served buttermilk or cider, and the sober party would
+adjourn at the gate. But there were two young rascals who practiced
+these eccentricities and after they had gone to bed, for the
+exquisite humor of it, they nodded their heads, too, and sucked their
+teeth with loud hissing noises.
+
+No one entertains more pleasantly than the S---- family and no one is
+more informal. If you come on the minute for your dinner, it is likely
+that none of the family is about. After a search J---- is found in a
+flannel shirt in his garden with a watering-can. "Hello!" he says in
+surprise. "What time is it? Have you come already for dinner?"
+
+"For God's sake," you reply--for I assume you to be of familiar and
+profane manners--"get up and wash yourself! Don't you know that you
+are giving a party?"
+
+J---- affects to be indignant. "Who is giving this party, anyway?" he
+asks. "If it's yours, you run it!" And then he leads you to the house,
+where you abuse each other agreeably as he dresses.
+
+Once a year on Christmas Eve they give a general party. This has been
+a custom for a number of years and it is now an institution as fixed
+as the night itself. Invitations are not issued. At most a rumor goes
+abroad to the elect that nine o'clock is a proper time to come, when
+the children, who have peeked for Santa Claus up the chimney, have at
+last been put to bed. There is a great wood fire in the sitting-room
+and, by way of andirons, two soldiers of the Continental Army keep up
+their endless march across the hearth. The fireplace is encircled by a
+line of leather cushions that rest upon the floor, like a window-seat
+that has undergone amputation of all its legs.
+
+But the center of the entertainment is a prodigious egg-nog that rises
+from the dining table. I do not know the composition of the drink, yet
+my nose is much at fault if it includes aught but eggs and whiskey. At
+the end of the table J---- stands with his mighty ladle. It is his
+jest each year--for always there is a fresh stranger who has not heard
+it--it is his jest that the drink would be fair and agreeable to the
+taste if it were not for the superfluity of eggs which dull the
+mixture.
+
+No one, even of a sour prohibition, refuses his entreaty. My aunt, who
+speaks against the Demon, once appeared at the party. She came
+sniffing to the table. "Ought I to take it, John?" she asked.
+
+"Mildest thing you ever drank," said John, and he ladled her out a
+cup.
+
+My aunt smelled it suspiciously.
+
+"It's eggs," said John.
+
+"Eggs?" said my aunt, "What a funny smell they have!" She said this
+with a facial expression not unlike that of Little Red Ridinghood,
+when she first saw the old lady with the long nose and sharp eyes.
+
+"Nothing bad, I hope," said John.
+
+"N-no," said my aunt slowly, and she took a sip.
+
+"Of course the eggs spoil it a little," said John.
+
+"It's very good," said my aunt, as she took another sip.
+
+Then she put down her glass, but only when it was empty. "John," she
+said, "you are a rogue. You would like to get me tipsy." And at this
+she moved out of danger. Little Red Ridinghood escaped the wolf as
+narrowly. But did Little Red Ridinghood escape? Dear me, how one
+forgets!
+
+But in closing I must not fail to mention an old lady and gentleman,
+both beyond eighty, who have always attended these parties. They have
+met old age with such trust and cheerfulness, and they are so eager at
+a jest, that no one of all the gathering fits the occasion half so
+well. And to exchange a word with them is to feel a pleasant contact
+with all the gentleness and mirth that have lodged with them during
+the space of their eighty years. The old gentleman is an astronomer
+and until lately, when he moved to a newer quarter of the town, he had
+behind his house in a proper tower a telescope, through which he
+showed his friends the moon. But in these last few years his work has
+been entirely mathematical and his telescope has fallen into disorder.
+His work finds a quicker comment among scientists of foreign lands
+than on his own street.
+
+It is likely that tonight he has been busy with the computation of the
+orbit of a distant star up to the very minute when his wife brought in
+his tie and collar. And then arm and arm they have set out for the
+party, where they will sit until the last guest has gone.
+
+Alas, when the party comes this Christmas, only one of these old
+people will be present, for the other with a smile lately fell
+asleep.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+On a Pair of Leather Suspenders.
+
+
+Not long since I paid a visit to New Haven before daylight of a winter
+morning. I had hoped that my sleeper from Washington might be late and
+I was encouraged in this by the trainman who said that the dear old
+thing commonly went through New Haven at breakfast time. But it was
+barely three o'clock when the porter plucked at me in my upper berth.
+He intruded, happily, on a dream in which the train came rocking
+across the comforter.
+
+Three o'clock, if you approach it properly through the evening, is
+said to have its compensations. There are persons (with a hiccough)
+who pronounce it the shank of the evening, but as an hour of morning
+it has few apologists. It is the early bird that catches the worm; but
+this should merely set one thinking before he thrusts out a foot into
+the cold morning, whether he may justly consider himself a bird or a
+worm. If no glad twitter rises to his lips in these early hours, he
+had best stay unpecked inside his coverlet.
+
+It is hard to realize that other two-legged creatures like myself are
+habitually awake at this hour. In a wakeful night I may have heard the
+whistles and the clank of far-off wheels, and I may have known dimly
+that work goes on; yet for the most part I have fancied that the
+world, like a river steamboat in a fog, is tied at night to its shore:
+or if it must go plunging on through space to keep a schedule, that
+here and there a light merely is set upon a tower to warn the planets.
+
+A locomotive was straining at its buttons, and from the cab a smoky
+engineer looked down on me. A truck load of boxes rattled down the
+platform. Crates of affable familiar hens were off upon a journey,
+bragging of their families. Men with flaring tapers tapped at wheels.
+The waiting-room, too, kept, as it were, one eye open to the night.
+The coffee-urn steamed on the lunch counter, and sandwiches sat inside
+their glass domes and looked darkly on the world.
+
+It was the hour when "the tired burglar seeks his bed." I had thought
+of dozing in a hotel chair until breakfast, but presently a flood
+appeared in the persons of three scrub women. The fountains of the
+great deep were opened and the waters prevailed.
+
+It still lacked an hour or so of daylight. I remembered that there
+used to be a humble restaurant and kitchen on wheels--to the vulgar, a
+dog-wagon--up toward York Street. This wagon, once upon a time, had
+appeased our appetites when we had been late for chapel and Commons.
+As an institution it was so trite that once we made of it a fraternity
+play. I faintly remember a pledge to secrecy--sworn by the moon and
+the seven wandering stars--but nevertheless I shall divulge the plot.
+It was a burlesque tragedy in rhyme. Some eighteen years ago, it
+seems, Brabantio, the noble Venetian Senator, kept this same
+dog-wagon--he and his beautiful daughter Desdemona. Here came Othello,
+Iago and Cassio of the famous class of umpty-ump.
+
+The scene of the drama opens with Brabantio flopping his dainties on
+the iron, chanting to himself a lyric in praise of their tender
+juices. Presently Othello enters and when Brabantio's back is turned
+he makes love to Desdemona--a handsome fellow, this Othello, with the
+manner of a hero and curled moustachios. Exit Othello to a nine
+o'clock, Ladd on Confusions. Now the rascal Iago enters--myself! with
+flowing tie. He hates Othello. He glowers like a villain and
+soliloquizes:
+
+    In order that my vengeance I may plot
+    Give me a dog, and give it to me hot!
+
+That was the kind of play. Finally, Desdemona is nearly smothered but
+is returned at last to Othello's arms. Iago meets his deserts. He is
+condemned to join [Greek: Delta, Kappa, Epsilon], a rival fraternity.
+But the warm heart of Desdemona melts and she intercedes to save him
+from this horrid end. In mercy--behind the scenes--his head is chopped
+off. Then all of us, heroines and villains, sat to a late hour around
+the fire and told one another how the real stage thirsted for us. We
+drank lemonade mostly but we sang of beer--one song about
+
+    Beer, beer, glorious beer!
+    Fill yourself right up to here!
+
+accompanied with a gesture several inches above the head. As the
+verses progressed it was customary to stand on chairs and to reach up
+on tiptoe to show the increasing depth.
+
+But the dog-wagon has now become a gilded unfamiliar thing, twice its
+former size and with stools for a considerable company. I questioned
+the proprietor whether he might be descended from the noble Brabantio,
+but the dull fellow gave no response. The wagon has passed to meaner
+ownership.
+
+Across the street Vanderbilt Hall loomed indistinctly. To the ignorant
+it may be necessary to explain that its courtyard is open to Chapel
+Street, but that an iron grill stretches from wing to wing and keeps
+out the town. This grill is high enough for Hagenbeck, and it used to
+be a favorite game with us to play animal behind it for the street's
+amusement. At the hour when the crowd issued from the matinee at the
+Hyperion Theatre, our wittiest students paced on all fours up and down
+behind this grill and roared for raw beef. E---- was the wag of the
+building and he could climb up to a high place and scratch himself
+like a monkey--an entertainment of more humor than elegance. Elated
+with success, he and a companion later chartered a street-organ--a
+doleful one-legged affair--and as man and monkey they gathered pennies
+out Orange Street.
+
+I turned into the dark Campus by Osborn Hall. It is as ugly a building
+as one could meet on a week's journey, and yet by an infelicity all
+class pictures are taken on its steps. Freshman courses are given in
+the basement--a French class once in particular. Sometimes, when we
+were sunk dismally in the irregular verbs, bootblacks and old-clothes
+men stopped on the street and grinned down on us. And all the dreary
+hour, as we sweated with translation, above us on the pavement the
+feet and happy legs of the enfranchised went by the window.
+
+Yale is a bad jumble of architecture. It is amazing how such
+incongruous buildings can lodge together. Did not the Old Brick Row
+cry out when Durfee was built? Surely the Gothic library uttered a
+protest against its newer adjunct. And are the Bicentennial buildings
+so beautiful? At best we have exchanged the fraudulent wooden
+ramparts of Alumni Hall for the equally fraudulent inside columns of
+these newer buildings. It is a mercy that there is no style and
+changing fashion in elm trees. As Viola might have remarked about the
+Campus: it were excellently done, if God did all.
+
+Presently in the dark I came on the excavations for the Harkness
+quadrangle. So at last Commons was gone. In that old building we ate
+during our impoverished weeks. I do not know that we saved much, for
+we were driven to extras, but the reckoning was deferred. There was a
+certain tutti-frutti ice-cream, rich in ginger, that has now vanished
+from the earth. Or chocolate eclairs made the night stand out. I
+recall that one could seldom procure a second helping of griddlecakes
+except on those mornings when there were ants in the syrup. Also, I
+recall that sometimes there was a great crash of trays at the pantry
+doors, and almost at the instant two old Goodies, harnessed ready with
+mops and pails, ran out and sponged up the wreckage.
+
+And Pierson Hall is gone, that was once the center of Freshman life.
+Does anybody remember _The Voice_? It was a weekly paper issued in the
+interest of prohibition. I doubt if we would have quarreled with it
+for this, but it denounced Yale and held up in contrast the purity of
+Oberlin. Oberlin! And therefore we hated it, and once a week we burned
+its issue in the stone and plaster corridors of Pierson.
+
+There was once a residence at the corner of York and Library where
+Freshmen resided. The railing of the stairs wabbled. The bookcase door
+lacked a hinge. Three out of four chairs were rickety. The bath-tub,
+which had been the chemical laboratory for some former student, was
+stained an unhealthy color. If ever it shall appear that Harlequin
+lodged upon the street, here was the very tub where he washed his
+clothes. Without caution the window of the bedroom fell out into the
+back yard. But to atone for these defects, up through the scuttle in
+the hall there was an airy perch upon the roof. Here Freshmen might
+smoke their pipes in safety--a privilege denied them on the
+street--and debate upon their affairs. Who were hold-off men! Who
+would make [Greek: Boule!] Or they invented outrageous names for the
+faculty. My dear Professor Blank, could you hear yourself described by
+these young cubs through their tobacco smoke, your learned ears, so
+alert for dactyl and spondee, would grow red.
+
+Do Scott's boys, I wonder, still gather clothes for pressing around
+the Campus? Do they still sell tickets--sixteen punches for a
+dollar--five punches to the suit? On Monday mornings do colored
+laundresses push worn baby-carts around to gather what we were pleased
+to call the "dirty filth"? And do these same laundresses push back
+these self-same carts later in the week with "clean filth" aboard? Are
+stockings mended in the same old way, so that the toes look through
+the open mesh? Have college sweeps learned yet to tuck in the sheets
+at the foot? Do old-clothes men--Fish-eye? Do you remember him?--do
+old-clothes men still whine at the corner, and look you up and down in
+cheap appraisal? Pop Smith is dead, who sold his photograph to
+Freshmen, but has he no successor? How about the old fellow who sold
+hot chestnuts at football games--"a nickel a bush"--a rare contraction
+meant to denote a bushel--in reality fifteen nuts and fifteen worms.
+Does George Felsburg still play the overture at Poli's, reading his
+newspaper the while, and do comic actors still jest with him across
+the footlights?
+
+Is it still ethical to kick Freshmen on the night of Omega Lambda Chi?
+Is "nigger baby" played on the Campus any more? The loser of this
+precious game, in the golden days, leaned forward against the wall
+with his coat-tails raised, while everybody took a try at him with a
+tennis ball. And, of course, no one now plays "piel." A youngster will
+hardly have heard of the game. It was once so popular that all the
+stone steps about the college showed its marks. And next year we heard
+that the game had spread to Harvard.
+
+Do students still make for themselves oriental corners with Bagdad stripes
+and Turkish lamps? Do the fair fingers of Farmington and Northampton still
+weave the words "'Neath the Elms" upon sofa pillows? Do Seniors still bow
+the President down the aisle of Chapel? Do students still get out their
+Greek with "trots"? It was the custom for three or four lazy students to
+gather together and summon up a newsy to read the trot, while they, lolling
+with pipes on their Morris chairs, fumbled with the text and interlined it
+against a loss of memory. Let the fair-haired goddess Juno speak! Ulysses,
+as he pleases, may walk on the shore of the loud-sounding sea. Thereafter
+in class one may repose safely on his interlineation and snap at flies with
+a rubber band. This method of getting a lesson was all very well except
+that the newsy halted at the proper name. A device was therefore hit on of
+calling all the gods and heroes by the name of Smith. Homeric combat then
+ran like this: _the heart of Smit was black with anger and he smote Smit
+upon the brazen helmet. And the world grew dark before his eyes, and he
+fell forward like a tower and bit the dust and his armor clanked about him.
+But at evening, from a far-off mountain top the white-armed goddess
+Smit-Smit_ (Pallas-Athena) _saw him, and she felt compash--compassion for
+him._
+
+And I suppose that students still sing upon the fence. There was a
+Freshman once, in those early nights of autumn when they were still a
+prey to Sophomores, who came down Library Street after his supper at
+Commons. He wondered whether the nights of hazing were done and was
+unresolved whether he ought to return to his room and sit close.
+Presently he heard the sound of singing. It came from the Campus, from
+the fence. He was greener than most Freshmen and he had never heard
+men sing in four-part harmony. With him music had always been a single
+tune, or at most a lost tenor fumbled uncertainly for the pitch. Any
+grunt had been a bass. And so the sound ravished him. In the open air
+and in the dark the harmony was unparalleled. He stole forward, still
+with one eye open for Sophomores, and crouched in the shadowy angle of
+North Middle. Now the song was in full chorus and the branches of the
+elms swayed to it, and again a bass voice sang alone and the others
+hummed a low accompaniment.
+
+Occasionally, across the Campus, someone in passing called up to a
+window, "Oh, Weary Walker, stick out your head!" And then, after a
+pause, satirically, when the head was out, "Stick it in again!" On the
+stones there were the sounds of feet--feet with lazy purpose--loud
+feet down wooden steps, bound for pleasure. At the windows there were
+lights, where dull thumbs moved down across a page. Let A equal B to
+find our Z. And let it be quick about it, before the student nod! And
+to the Freshman, crouching in the shadow, it seemed at last that he
+was a part of this life, with its music, its voices, its silent elms,
+the dim buildings with their lights, the laughter and the glad feet
+sounding in the dark.
+
+I came now, rambling on this black wintry morning, before the sinister
+walls of Skull and Bones.
+
+I sat on a fence and contemplated the building. It is as dingy as ever
+and, doubtless, to an undergraduate, as fearful as ever. What rites
+and ceremonies are held within these dim walls! What awful
+celebrations! The very stones are grim. The chain outside that swings
+from post to post is not as other chains, but was forged at midnight.
+The great door has a black spell upon it. It was on such a door,
+iron-bound and pitiless, that the tragic Ygraine beat in vain for
+mercy.
+
+It is a breach of etiquette for an undergraduate in passing even to
+turn and look at Bones. Its name may not be mentioned to a member of
+the society, and one must look furtively around before pronouncing it.
+Now as I write the word, I feel a last vibration of the fearful
+tremor.
+
+Seniors compose its membership--fifteen or so, and membership is
+ranked as the highest honor of the college. But in God's name, what is
+all this pother? Are there not already enough jealousies without this
+one added? Does not college society already fall into enough locked
+coteries without this one? No matter how keen is the pride of
+membership, it does not atone for the disappointments and the
+heart-burnings of failure. It is hinted obscurely for expiation that
+it and its fellow societies do somehow confer a benefit on the college
+by holding out a reward for hard endeavor. This is the highest goal.
+I distrust the wisdom of the judges. There is an honester repute to be
+gained in the general estimate of one's fellows. These societies cut
+an unnatural cleavage across the college. They are the source of
+dishonest envy and of mean lick-spittling. For three years, until the
+election is announced, there is much playing for position. A favored
+fellow, whose election is certain, is courted by others who stand on a
+slippery edge, because it is known that in Senior elections one is
+rated by his association. And is it not preposterous that fifteen
+youngsters should set themselves above the crowd, wear obscure jewelry
+and wrap themselves in an empty and pretentious mystery?
+
+But what has this rambling paper to do with a pair of leather
+suspenders? Nothing. Nothing much. Only, after a while, just before
+the dawn, I came in front of the windows of a cheap haberdasher. And I
+recalled how I had once bought at this very shop a pair of leather
+suspenders. They were the only ones left--it was hinted that Seniors
+bought them largely--and they were a bargain. The proprietor blew off
+the dust and slapped them and dwelt upon their merits. They would last
+me into middle age and were cheap. There was, I recall, a kind of
+tricky differential between the shoulders to take up the slack on
+either side. Being a Freshman I was prevailed upon, and I bought them
+and walked to Morris Cove while they creaked and fretted. And here was
+the very shop, arising in front of me as from times before the flood.
+With it there arose, too, a recollection of my greenness and timidity.
+And mingled with all the hours of happiness of those times there were
+hours, also, of emptiness and loneliness--hours when, newcome to my
+surroundings, for fear of rebuff I walked alone.
+
+The night still lingers. These dark lines of wall and tree and tower
+are etched by Time with memories to burn the pattern. The darkness
+stirs strangely, like waters in the solemn bowl when a witch reads off
+the future. But the past is in this darkness, and the December wind
+this night has roused up the summer winds of long ago. In that cleft
+is the old window. Here are the stairs, wood and echoing with an
+almost forgotten tread. A word, a phrase, a face, shows for an instant
+in the shadows. Here, too, in memory, is a pageantry of old custom
+with its songs and uproar, victory with its fires and dance.
+
+Forms, too, I see bent upon their books, eager or dull, with intent or
+sleepy finger on the page. And I hear friendly cries and the sound of
+many feet across the night.
+
+Dawn at last--a faint light through the elms. From the Chapel tower
+the bells sound the hour and strike their familiar melody. Dawn. And
+now the East in triumphal garment scatters my memories, born of night,
+before its flying wheel.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Boots for Runaways.
+
+
+Not long ago, having come through upon the uppers of my shoes, I
+wrapped the pair in a bit of newspaper and went around the corner into
+Sixth Avenue to find a cobbler. This is not difficult, for there are
+at least three cobblers to the block, all of them in basements four or
+five steps below the sidewalk. Cobblers and little tailors who press
+and repair clothing, small grocers and delicatessen venders--these are
+the chief commerce of the street. I passed my tailor's shop, which is
+next to the corner. He is a Russian Jew who came to this country
+before the great war. Every Thursday, when he takes away my off suit,
+I ask him about the progress of the Revolution. At first I found him
+hopeful, yet in these last few months his opinions are a little
+broken. His shop consists of a single room, with a stove to heat his
+irons and a rack for clothes. It is so open to the street that once
+when it was necessary for me to change trousers he stood between me
+and the window with one foot against the door by way of moratorium on
+his business. His taste in buttons is loud. Those on my dinner coat
+are his choice--great round jewels that glisten in the dark.
+
+Next to my tailor, except for a Chinese laundry with a damp celestial
+smell, is a delicatessen shop with a pleasant sound of French across
+the counter. Here are sausages, cut across the middle in order that no
+one may buy the pig, as it were, in its poke. Potato salad is set out
+each afternoon in a great bowl with a wooden spoon sticking from its
+top. Then there is a baked bean, all brown upon the crust, which is
+housed with its fellows in a cracked baking dish and is not to be
+despised. There is also a tray of pastry with whipped cream oozing
+agreeably from the joints, and a pickle vat as corrective to these
+sweets. But behind the shop is the bakery and I can watch a wholesome
+fellow, with his sleeves tucked up, rolling pasties thin on a great
+white table, folding in nuts and jellies and cutting them deftly for
+the oven.
+
+Across the street there resides a mender of musical instruments. He
+keeps dusty company with violins and basses that have come to broken
+health. When a trombone slips into disorder, it seeks his sanitarium.
+Occasionally, as I pass, I catch the sound of a twanging string, as
+if at last a violin were convalescent. Or I hear a reedy nasal upper
+note, and I know that an oboe has been mended of its complaint and
+that in these dark days of winter it yearns for a woodside stream and
+the return of spring. It seems rather a romantic business tinkering
+these broken instruments into harmony.
+
+Next door there is a small stationer--a bald-headed sort of business,
+as someone has called it. Ruled paper for slavish persons, plain
+sheets for bold Bolshevists.
+
+Then comes our grocer. There is no heat in the place except what comes
+from an oil stove on which sits a pan of steaming water. Behind the
+stove with his twitching ear close against it a cat lies at all hours
+of the day. There is an engaging smudge across his nose, as if he had
+been led off on high adventure to the dusty corners behind the apple
+barrel. I bend across the onion crate to pet him, and he stretches his
+paws in and out rhythmically in complete contentment. He walks along
+the counter with arched back and leans against our purchases.
+
+Next our grocer is our bootblack, who has set up a sturdy but shabby
+throne to catch the business off the "L." How majestically one sits
+aloft here with outstretched toe, for all the world like the Pope
+offering his saintly toe for a sinner's kiss. The robe pontifical, the
+triple crown! Or, rather, is this not a secular throne, seized once in
+a people's rising? Here is a use for whatever thrones are discarded
+by this present war. Where the crowd is thickest at quitting
+time--perhaps where the subway brawls below Fourteenth Street--there I
+would set the German Kaiser's seat for the least of us to clamber on.
+
+I took my shoes out of their wrapper. The cobbler is old and wrinkled
+and so bent that one might think that Nature aimed to contrive a hoop
+of him but had botched the full performance. He scratched my name upon
+the soles and tossed them into the pile. There were big and little
+shoes, some with low square heels and others with high thin heels as
+if their wearers stood tiptoe with curiosity. It is a quality, they
+say, that marks the sex. On the bench were bits of leather, hammers,
+paring-knives, awls, utensils of every sort.
+
+On arriving home I found an old friend awaiting me. B---- has been
+engaged in a profitable business for fifteen years or so and he has
+amassed a considerable fortune. Certainly he deserves it, for he has
+been at it night and day and has sacrificed many things to it. He has
+kept the straight road despite all truant beckoning. But his too close
+application has cramped his soul. His organization and his profits,
+his balance sheets and output have seemed to become the whole of him.
+
+But for once I found that B---- was in no hurry and we talked more
+intimately than in several years. I discovered soon that his hard
+busyness was no more than a veneer and that his freer self still
+lived, but in confinement. At least he felt the great lack in his
+life, which had been given too much to the piling up of things, to the
+sustaining of position--getting and spending. Yet he could see no end.
+He was caught in the rich man's treadmill, only less horrible than
+that of the poor man with its cold and hunger.
+
+Afterwards, when he had gone, I fell into a survey of certain other
+men of my acquaintance. Some few of them are rich also, and they heap
+up for themselves a pile of material things until they stifle in the
+midst. They run swiftly and bitterly from one appointment to another
+in order that they may add a motor to their stable. If they lie awake
+at night, they plan a new confusion for the morrow. They are getting
+and spending always. They have been told many times that some day they
+will die and leave their wealth, yet they labor ceaselessly to
+increase their pile. It is as if one should sweat and groan to load a
+cart, knowing that soon it goes off on another road. And yet not one
+of these persons will conceive that I mean him. He will say that
+necessity keeps him at it. Or he will cite his avocations to prove he
+is not included. But he plays golf fretfully with his eye always on
+the score. He drives his motor furiously to hold a schedule. Yet in
+his youth many of these prosperous fellows learned to play upon a
+fiddle, and they dreamed on college window-seats. They had time for
+friendliness before they became so busy holding this great world by
+its squirming tail.
+
+Or perhaps they are not so _very_ wealthy. If so, they work the
+harder. To support their wives and children? By no means. To support
+the pretense that they are really wealthy, to support a neighbor's
+competition. It is this competition of house and goods that keeps
+their noses on the stone. Expenditure always runs close upon their
+income, and their days are a race to keep ahead.
+
+I was thinking rather mournfully of the hard and unnecessary condition
+of these persons, when I fell asleep. And by chance, these unlucky
+persons, my boots and my cobbler, even the oboe mender, all of them
+somehow got mixed in my dream.
+
+It seems that there was a cobbler once, long ago, who kept a shop
+quite out of the common run and marvelous in its way. It stood in a
+shadowy city over whose dark streets the buildings toppled, until
+spiders spun their webs across from roof to roof. And to this cobbler
+the god Mercury himself journeyed to have wings sewed to his flying
+shoes. High patronage. And Atalanta, too, came and held out her swift
+foot for the fitting of a running sandal. But perhaps the cobbler's
+most famous customer was a well-known giant who ordered of him his
+seven-league boots. These boots, as you may well imagine, were of
+prodigious size, and the giant himself was so big that when he left
+his order he sat outside on the pavement and thrust his stockinged
+foot in through the window for the cobbler to get his measure.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I was laughing heartily at this when I observed that a strange
+procession was passing by the cobbler's door. First there was a man
+who was burdened with a great tinsel box hung with velvet, in which
+were six plush chairs. After him came another who was smothered with
+rugs and pictures. A third carried upon his back his wife, a great fat
+creature, who glittered with jewels. Behind him he dragged a dozen
+trunks, from which dangled brocades and laces. This was all so absurd
+that in my mirth I missed what followed, but it seemed to be a long
+line of weary persons, each of whom staggered under the burden of an
+unworthy vanity.
+
+As I laughed the night came on--a dull hot night of summer. And in the
+shop I saw the cobbler on his bench, an old and wrinkled man like a
+dwarf in a fairy tale. There was a sign now above his door. "Boots for
+Runaways," it read. About its margin were pictures of many kinds of
+boots--a shoe of a child who runs to seek adventure, Atalanta's
+sandals, and sturdy boots that a man might wear.
+
+And now I saw a man coming in the dark with tired and drooping head.
+In both hands he clutched silver pieces that he had gathered in the
+day. When he was opposite the cobbler's shop, the great sign caught
+his eye. He wagged his head as one who comes upon the place he seeks.
+"Have you boots for me?" he asked, with his head thrust in the door.
+
+"For everyone who needs them," was the cobbler's answer.
+
+"My body is tired," the man replied, "and my soul is tired."
+
+"For what journey do you prepare?" the cobbler asked.
+
+The man looked ruefully at his hands which were still tightly clenched
+with silver pieces.
+
+"Getting and spending," said the cobbler slowly.
+
+"It has been my life." As the man spoke he banged with his elbow on
+his pocket and it rattled dully with metal.
+
+"Do you want boots because you are a coward?" the cobbler asked. "If
+so, I have none to sell."
+
+"A coward?" the man answered, and he spoke deliberately as one in deep
+thought. "All my life I have been a coward, fearing that I might not
+keep even with my neighbors. Now, for the first time, I am brave."
+
+He kicked off his shoe and stretched out his foot. The cobbler took
+down from its nail his tape line and measured him. And the twilight
+deepened and the room grew dark.
+
+And the man went off cheerily. And with great strides he went into the
+windy North. But to the South in a slow procession, I saw those others
+who bore the weary burden of their wealth, staggering beneath their
+load of dull possessions--their opera boxes, their money-chests and
+stables, their glittering houses, their trunks of silks and laces, and
+on their backs their fat wives shining in the night with jewels.
+
+
+
+
+On Hanging a Stocking at Christmas.
+
+
+As Christmas is, above all, a holiday for children, it is proper in
+its season to consider with what regard they hold its celebration. But
+as no one may really know the secrets of childhood except as he
+retains the recollection of his own, it is therefore in the well of
+memory that I must dip my pen. The world has been running these many
+years with gathering speed like a great wheel upon a hill, and I must
+roll it backward to the heights to see how I fared on the night and
+day of Christmas.
+
+I can remember that for a month before the day I computed its
+distance, not only in hours and minutes but even in seconds, until the
+answer was scrawled across my slate. Now, when I multiply 24 x 60 x
+60, the resulting 86,400 has an agreeable familiarity as the amount I
+struck off each morning. At bedtime on Christmas Eve I had still
+36,000 impatient seconds yet to wait, for I considered that Christmas
+really started at six o'clock in the morning.
+
+There was, of course, a lesser celebration on Christmas Eve when we
+hung our stockings. There were six of them, from mother's long one to
+father's short one. Ours, although built on womanish lines, lacked the
+greater length and they were, consequently, inferior for the purpose
+of our greed; but father's were woefully short, as if fashioned to the
+measure of his small expectancy. Even a candy cane came peeping from
+the top, as if curiosity had stirred it to look around.
+
+Finally, when the stockings were hung on the knobs of the mantel, we
+went up the dark stairs to bed. At the landing we saw the last glimmer
+from the friendly sitting-room. The hall clock ticked solemnly in the
+shadow below with an air of firmness, as much as to say that it would
+not be hurried. Fret as we might, those 36,000 seconds were not to be
+jostled through the night.
+
+In the upper hall we looked from a window upon the snowy world.
+Perhaps we were too old to believe in Santa Claus, but even so, on
+this magic night might not a skeptic be at fault--might there not be a
+chance that the discarded world had returned to us? Once a year,
+surely, reason might nod and drowse. Perhaps if we put our noses on
+the cold glass and peered hard into the glittering darkness, we might
+see the old fellow himself, muffled to his chin in furs, going on his
+yearly errands. It was a jingling of sleigh bells on the street that
+started this agreeable suspicion, but, alas, when the horse appeared,
+manifestly by his broken jogging gait he was only an earthly creature
+and could not have been trusted on the roof. Or the moon, sailing
+across the sky, invited the thought that tonight beyond the accustomed
+hour and for a purpose it would throw its light across the roofs to
+mark the chimneys.
+
+Presently mother called up from the hall below. Had we gone to bed?
+Reluctantly now we began to thumb the buttons. Off came our clothes,
+both shirts together tonight for better speed in dressing. And all the
+night pants and drawers hung as close neighbors, one within the other,
+with stockings dangling at the ends, for quick resumption. We slipped
+shivering into the cold sheets. Down below the bed, by special
+permission, stood the cook's clock, wound up tight for its explosion
+at six o'clock.
+
+Then came silence and the night....
+
+Presently, all of a sudden, Brrr--! There arose a deafening racket in
+the room. Had the reindeer come afoul of the chimney? Had the loaded
+sleigh crashed upon the roof? Were pirates on the stairs? We awoke
+finally, and smothered the alarm in the pillows. A match! The gas! And
+now a thrill went through us. Although it was still as black as ink
+outside, at last the great day of all the year had come.
+
+It was, therefore, before the dawn that we stole downstairs in our
+stockings--dressed loosely and without too great precision in our
+hurry. Buttons that lay behind were neglected, nor did it fret us if a
+garment came on twisted. It was a rare tooth that felt the brush this
+morning, no matter how it was coddled through the year.
+
+We carried our shoes, but this was not entirely in consideration for
+the sleeping house. Rather, our care proceeded from an enjoyment of
+our stealth; for to rise before the dawn when the lamps were still
+lighted on the street and issue in our stockings, was to taste
+adventure. It had not exactly the zest of burglary, although it was of
+kin: nor was it quite like the search for buried treasure which we
+played on common days: yet to slink along the hallway on a pitch-black
+Christmas morning, with shoes dangling by the strings, was to realize
+a height of happiness unequaled.
+
+Quietly we tiptoed down the stairs on whose steep rail we had so often
+slid in the common light of day, now so strangely altered by the
+shadows. Below in the hall the great clock ticked, loudly and with
+satisfaction that its careful count was done and its seconds all
+despatched. There was a gurgle in its throat before it struck the
+hour, as some folk clear their throats before they sing.
+
+As yet there was not a blink of day. The house was as black as if it
+practiced to be a cave, yet an instinct instructed us that now at
+least darkness was safe. There were frosty patterns on the windows of
+the sitting-room, familiar before only on our bedroom windows. Here in
+the sitting-room arose dim shapes which probably were its accustomed
+furniture, but which to our excited fancy might be sleds and
+velocipedes.
+
+We groped for a match. There was a splutter that showed red in the
+hollow of my brother's hand.
+
+After the first glad shock, it was our habit to rummage in the general
+midden outside our stockings. If there was a drum upon the heap,
+should not first a tune be played--softly lest it rouse the house? Or
+if a velocipede stood beside the fender, surely the restless creature
+chafed for exercise and must be ridden a few times around the room. Or
+perhaps a sled leaned against the chair (it but rested against the
+rigors of the coming day) and one should feel its runners to learn
+whether they are whole and round, for if flat and fixed with screws it
+is no better than a sled for girls with feet tucked up in front. On
+such a sled, no one trained to the fashions of the slide would deign
+to take a belly-slammer, for the larger boys would cry out with scorn
+and point their sneering mittens.
+
+The stocking was explored last. It was like a grab-bag, but glorified
+and raised to a more generous level. On meaner days shriveled
+grab-bags could be got at the corner for a penny--if such mild fortune
+fell your way--mere starvelings by comparison--and to this shop you
+had often trotted after school when learning sat heaviest on your
+soul. If a nickel had accrued to you from the sale of tintags, it was
+better, of course, to lay it out in pop; but with nothing better than
+a penny, there was need of sharp denial. How you lingered before the
+horehound jar! Coltsfoot, too, was but a penny to the stick and
+pleased the palate. Or one could do worse than licorice. But finally
+you settled on a grab-bag. You roused an old woman from her knitting
+behind the stove and demanded that a choice of grab-bags be placed
+before you. Then, like the bearded phrenologist at the side-show of
+the circus, you put your fingers on them to read their humps. Perhaps
+an all-day sucker lodged inside--a glassy or an agate--marbles best
+for pugging--or a brass ring with a ruby.
+
+Through the year these bags sufficed, but the Christmas stocking was a
+deeper and finer mystery. In the upper leg were handkerchiefs from
+grand-mother--whose thoughts ran prudentially on noses--mittens and a
+cap--useful presents of duller purpose--things that were due you
+anyway and would have come in the course of time. But down in the
+darker meshes of the stocking, when you had turned the corner of the
+heel, there were the sweet extras of life--a mouth-organ, a baseball,
+a compass and a watch.
+
+Some folk have a Christmas tree instead of hanging their stockings,
+but this is the preference of older folk rather than the preference of
+children. Such persons wish to observe a child's enjoyment, and this
+is denied them if the stocking is opened in the dawn. Under a pretense
+of instruction they sit in an absurd posture under the tree; but they
+do no more than read the rules and are blind to the obscurer uses of
+the toys. As they find occasion, the children run off and play in a
+quieter room with some old and broken toy.
+
+Who can interpret the desires of children? They are a race apart from
+us. At times, for a moment, we bring them to attention; then there is
+a scurry of feet and they are gone. Although they seem to sit at table
+with us, they are beyond a frontier that we cannot pass. Their words
+are ours, but applied to foreign uses. If we try to follow their
+truant thoughts, like the lame man of the story we limp behind a
+shooting star. We bestow on them a blind condescension, not knowing
+how their imagination outclimbs our own. And we cramp them with our
+barren learning.
+
+I assert, therefore, that it is better to find one's presents in the
+dawn, when there is freedom. In all the city, wherever there are
+lights, children have taken a start upon the day. Then, although the
+toys are strange, there is adventure in prying at their uses. If one
+commits a toy to a purpose undreamed of by its maker, it but rouses
+the invention to further discovery. Once on a dark and frosty
+Christmas morning, I spent a puzzling hour upon a coffee-grinder--a
+present to my mother--in a delusion that it was a rare engine destined
+for myself. It might have been a bank had it possessed a slot for
+coins. A little eagle surmounted the top, yet this was not a
+sufficient clue. The handle offered the hope that it was a music-box,
+but although I turned it round and round, and noises issued from its
+body quite foreign to my other toys, yet I could not pronounce it
+music. With sails it might have been a windmill. I laid it on its side
+and stood it on its head without conclusion. It was painted red, and
+that gave it a wicked look, but no other villainy appeared. To this
+day as often as I pass a coffee-grinder in a grocer's shop I turn its
+handle in memory of my perplexing hour. And even if one remains
+unschooled to the uses of the toys, their discovery in the dawn while
+yet the world lies fast asleep, is far beyond their stale performance
+that rises with the sun.
+
+And yet I know of an occurrence, to me pathetic, that once attended
+such an early discovery. A distant cousin of mine--a man really not
+related except by the close bond of my regard--was brought up many
+years ago by an uncle of austere and miserly nature. Such goodness as
+this uncle had once possessed was cramped into a narrow and smothering
+piety. He would have dimmed the sun upon the Sabbath, could he have
+reached up tall enough. He had no love in his heart, nor mirth. My
+cousin has always loved a horse and even in his childhood this love
+was strong. And so, during the days that led up to Christmas when
+children speculate upon their desires and check them on their fingers,
+he kept asking his uncle for a pony. At first, as you might know, his
+uncle was stolid against the thought, but finally, with many winks
+and nods--pleasantries beyond his usual habit--he assented.
+
+Therefore in the early darkness of the day, the child came down to
+find his gift. First, probably, he went to the stable and climbing on
+the fence he looked through the windows for an unaccustomed form
+inside the stalls. Next he looked to see whether the pony might be
+hitched to the post in front of the house, in the manner of the family
+doctor. The search failing and being now somewhat disturbed with
+doubt, he entered his nursery on the slim chance that the pony might
+be there. The room was dark and he listened on the sill, if he might
+hear him whinny. Feeling his way along the hearth he came on nothing
+greater than his stocking which was tied to the andiron. It bulged and
+stirred his curiosity. He thrust in his hand and coming on something
+sticky, he put his fingers in his mouth. They were of a delightful
+sweetness. He now paused in his search for the pony and drawing out a
+huge lump of candy he applied himself. But the day was near and he had
+finished no more than half, when a ray of light permitted him to see
+what he ate. It was a candy horse--making good the promise of his
+uncle. This and a Testament had been stuffed inside his stocking. The
+Testament was wrapped in tissue, but the horse was bitten to the
+middle. It had been at best but a poor substitute for what he wanted,
+yet his love was so broad that it included even a sugar horse; and
+this, alas, he had consumed unknowing in the dark. And even now when
+the dear fellow tells the story after these many years have passed,
+and comes to the sober end with the child crying in the twilight of
+the morning, I realize as not before that there should be no Christmas
+kept unless it be with love and mirth.
+
+It was but habit that we hung our stockings at the chimney--the piano
+would have done as well--for I retain but the slightest memory of a
+belief in Santa Claus: perhaps at most, as I have hinted, a far-off
+haze of wonder while looking through the window upon the snowy sky--at
+night a fancied clatter on the roof, if I lay awake. And therefore in
+a chimney there was no greater mystery than was inherent in any hole
+that went off suspiciously in the dark. There was a fearful cave
+beneath the steps that mounted from the rear to the front garret. This
+was wrapped in Cimmerian darkness--which is the strongest pigment
+known--and it extended from its mouth beyond the furthest stretch of
+leg. To the disillusioned, indeed, this cave was harmless, for it
+merely offset the lower ceiling of the bathroom below; yet to us it
+was a cave unparalleled. Little by little we ventured in, until in
+time we could sit on the snug joists inside with the comfortable
+feeling of pirates. Presently we hit on the device of hanging a row of
+shining maple-syrup tins along the wall outside where they were caught
+by the dusty sunlight, which was thus reflected in on us. By the light
+of these dim moons the cave showed itself to be the size of a library
+table. And here, also, we crouched on dark and cloudy days when the
+tins were in eclipse, and found a dreadful joy when the wind scratched
+upon the roof.
+
+In the basement, also, there was a central hall that disappeared
+forever under an accumulation of porch chairs and lumber. Here was no
+light except what came around two turns from the laundry. Even Annie
+the cook, a bold venturesome person, had never quite penetrated to a
+full discovery of this hallway. A proper approach into the darkness
+was on hands and knees, and yet there were barrels and boxes to
+overcome. Therefore, as we were bred to these broader discoveries, a
+mere chimney in the sitting-room, which arose safely from the fenders,
+was but a mild and pleasant tunnel to the roof.
+
+And if a child believes in Santa Claus and chimneys, and that his
+presents are stored in a glittering kingdom across the wintry hills,
+he will miss the finer pleasure of knowing that they are hidden
+somewhere in his own house. For myself, I would not willingly forego
+certain dizzy ascents to the topmost shelves of the storeroom, where,
+with my head close under the ceiling and my foot braced against the
+wall, I have examined suspicious packages that came into the house by
+stealth. As likely as not, at the ringing of the door-bell, we had
+been whisked into a back room. Presently there was a foot sounding on
+the stairs and across the ceiling. Then we were released. But
+something had arrived.
+
+Thereafter we found excitement in rummaging in unlikely places--a wary
+lifting of summer garments laid away, for a peek beneath--a journey on
+one's stomach under the spare-room bed--a pilgrimage around the cellar
+with a flaring candle--furtive explorations of the storeroom. And when
+we came to a door that was locked--Aha! Here was a puzzle and a
+problem! We tried every key in the house, right side up and upside
+down. Bluebeard's wife, poor creature,--if I read the tale
+aright,--was merely seeking her Christmas presents around the house
+before the proper day.
+
+The children of a friend of mine, however, have been brought up to a
+belief in Santa Claus, and on Christmas Eve they have the pretty
+custom of filling their shoes with crackers and scraps of bread by way
+of fodder for the reindeer. When the shoes are found empty in the
+morning, but with crumbs about--as though the hungry reindeer spilled
+them in their haste--it fixes the deception.
+
+But if one must have a Christmas tree, I recommend the habit of some
+friends of mine. In front of their home, down near the fence, is a
+trim little cedar. T---- connects this with electric wires and hangs
+on it gayly colored lamps. Every night for a week, until the new year,
+these lights shine across the snow and are the delight of travelers on
+the road. The Christmas stars, it seems, for this hallowed season
+have come to earth.
+
+We gave the family dinner. On my mother fell the extra labor, but we
+took the general credit. All the morning the relatives arrived--thin
+and fat. But if one of them bore a package or if his pockets sagged,
+we showed him an excessive welcome. Sometimes there was a present
+boxed and wrapped to a mighty bulk. From this we threw off thirty
+papers and the bundle dwindled, still no gift appeared. In this lay
+the sweetness of the jest, for finally, when the contents were
+shriveled to a kernel, in the very heart of it there lay a bright
+penny or common marble.
+
+All this time certain savory whiffs have been blowing from the
+kitchen. Twice at least my mother has put her head in at the door to
+count the relatives. And now when the clock on the mantel strikes
+two--a bronze Lincoln deliberating forever whether he will sign the
+Emancipation Bill--the dining-room door is opened.
+
+The table was drawn out to prodigious length and was obliquely set
+across the room. As early as yesterday the extra leaves had been
+brought from the pantry, and we had all taken part in fitting them
+together. Not to disturb the larger preparation, our supper and
+breakfast had been served in the kitchen. And even now to eat in the
+kitchen, if the table is set before the window and there is a flurry
+of snow outside, is to feel pleasantly the proximity of a great
+occasion.
+
+The Christmas table was so long and there were so many of us, that a
+few of the chairs were caught in a jog of the wall and had no proper
+approach except by crawling on hands and knees beneath it. Each year
+it was customary to request my maiden aunt, a prim lady who bordered
+on seventy and had limbs instead of legs, to undertake the passage.
+Each year we listened for the jest and shouted with joy when the
+request was made. There were other jests, too, that were dear to us
+and grew better with the years. My aunt was reproved for boisterous
+conduct, and although she sat as silent as a mouse, she was always
+warned against the cider. Each year, also, as soon as the dessert
+appeared, there was a demand that a certain older cousin tell the
+Judge West story. But the jest lay in the demand instead of in the
+story, for although there was a clamor of applause, the story was
+never told and it teases me forever. Then another cousin, who
+journeyed sometimes to New York, usually instructed us in the latest
+manner of eating an orange in the metropolis. But we disregarded his
+fashionable instruction, and peeled ours round and round.
+
+The dinner itself was a prodigious feast. The cook-stove must have
+rested and panted for a week thereafter. Before long, Annie got so red
+bringing in turkeys and cranberry sauce--countless plates heaped and
+toppling with vegetables and meats--that one might think she herself
+was in process to become a pickled beet and would presently enter on a
+platter.
+
+In the afternoon we rested, but at night there was a dance, for which
+my maiden aunt played the piano. The dear good soul, whose old brown
+fingers were none too limber, had skill that scarcely mounted to the
+speed of a polka, but she was steady at a waltz. There was one
+tune--bink a bunk bunk, bink a bunk bunk--that went around and around
+with an agreeable monotony even when the player nodded. There was a
+legend in the family that once she fell asleep in the performance, and
+that the dancers turned down the lights and left the room; to her
+amazement when presently she awoke, for she thought she had outsat the
+party.
+
+My brother and I had not advanced to the trick of dancing and we built
+up our blocks in the corner of the room in order that the friskier
+dancers might kick them over as they passed. Chief in the performance
+was the Judge West cousin who, although whiskered almost into middle
+age, had a merry heart and knew how to play with children. Sometimes,
+by consent, we younger fry sat beneath the piano, which was of an old
+square pattern, and worked the pedals for my aunt, in order that her
+industry might be undivided on the keys. It is amazing what a variety
+we could cast upon the waltz, now giving it a muffled sound, and
+presently offering the dancers a prolonged roaring.
+
+Midway in the evening, when the atrocities of dinner were but mildly
+remembered, ice-cream was brought in. It was not hard as at dinner,
+but had settled to a delicious softness, and could be mushed upon a
+spoon. Then while the party again proceeded, and my aunt resumed her
+waltz, we were despatched upstairs.
+
+On the bed lay our stockings, still tied with string, that had been
+stuffed with presents in the dawn. But the morning had now sunk into
+immeasurable distance and seemed as remote as Job himself. And all
+through the evening, as we lay abed and listened to the droning piano
+below, we felt a spiritual hollowness because the great day had
+passed.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Chimney-Pot Papers, by Charles S. Brooks
+
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