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diff --git a/25969.txt b/25969.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c03e286 --- /dev/null +++ b/25969.txt @@ -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.) + + + + + + + + + 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. 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