Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
The town-crier has rung his bell at a distant corner, and little Annie
stands on her father’s doorsteps trying to hear what the man with the
loud voice is talking about. Let me listen too. Oh, he is telling the
people that an elephant and a lion and a royal tiger and a horse with
horns, and other strange beasts from foreign countries, have come to
town and will receive all visitors who choose to wait upon them.
Perhaps little Annie would like to go? Yes, and I can see that the
pretty child is weary of this wide and pleasant street with the green
trees flinging their shade across the quiet sunshine and the pavements
and the sidewalks all as clean as if the housemaid had just swept them
with her broom. She feels that impulse to go strolling away—that
longing after the mystery of the great world—which many children feel,
and which I felt in my childhood. Little Annie shall take a ramble with
me. See! I do but hold out my hand, and like some bright bird in the
sunny air, with her blue silk frock fluttering upward from her white
pantalets, she comes bounding on tiptoe across the street.
Smooth back your brown curls, Annie, and let me tie on your bonnet, and
we will set forth. What a strange couple to go on their rambles
together! One walks in black attire, with a measured step and a heavy
brow and his thoughtful eyes bent down, while the gay little girl trips
lightly along as if she were forced to keep hold of my hand lest her
feet should dance away from the earth. Yet there is sympathy between
us. If I pride myself on anything, it is because I have a smile that
children love; and, on the other hand, there are few grown ladies that
could entice me from the side of little Annie, for I delight to let my
mind go hand in hand with the mind of a sinless child. So come, Annie;
but if I moralize as we go, do not listen to me: only look about you
and be merry.
Now we turn the corner. Here are hacks with two horses and
stage-coaches with four thundering to meet each other, and trucks and
carts moving at a slower pace, being heavily laden with barrels from
the wharves; and here are rattling gigs which perhaps will be smashed
to pieces before our eyes. Hitherward, also, comes a man trundling a
wheelbarrow along the pavement. Is not little Annie afraid of such a
tumult? No; she does not even shrink closer to my side, but passes on
with fearless confidence, a happy child amidst a great throng of grown
people who pay the same reverence to her infancy that they would to
extreme old age. Nobody jostles her: all turn aside to make way for
little Annie; and, what is most singular, she appears conscious of her
claim to such respect. Now her eyes brighten with pleasure. A
street-musician has seated himself on the steps of yonder church and
pours forth his strains to the busy town—a melody that has gone astray
among the tramp of footsteps, the buzz of voices and the war of passing
wheels. Who heeds the poor organ-grinder? None but myself and little
Annie, whose feet begin to move in unison with the lively tune, as if
she were loth that music should be wasted without a dance. But where
would Annie find a partner? Some have the gout in their toes or the
rheumatism in their joints; some are stiff with age, some feeble with
disease; some are so lean that their bones would rattle, and others of
such ponderous size that their agility would crack the flagstones; but
many, many have leaden feet because their hearts are far heavier than
lead. It is a sad thought that I have chanced upon. What a company of
dancers should we be! For I too am a gentleman of sober footsteps, and
therefore, little Annie, let us walk sedately on.
It is a question with me whether this giddy child or my sage self have
most pleasure in looking at the shop-windows. We love the silks of
sunny hue that glow within the darkened premises of the spruce
dry-goods men; we are pleasantly dazzled by the burnished silver and
the chased gold, the rings of wedlock and the costly love-ornaments,
glistening at the window of the jeweller; but Annie, more than I, seeks
for a glimpse of her passing figure in the dusty looking-glasses at the
hardware-stores. All that is bright and gay attracts us both.
Here is a shop to which the recollections of my boyhood as well as
present partialities give a peculiar magic. How delightful to let the
fancy revel on the dainties of a confectioner—those pies with such
white and flaky paste, their contents being a mystery, whether rich
mince with whole plums intermixed, or piquant apple delicately
rose-flavored; those cakes, heart-shaped or round, piled in a lofty
pyramid; those sweet little circlets sweetly named kisses; those dark
majestic masses fit to be bridal-loaves at the wedding of an heiress,
mountains in size, their summits deeply snow-covered with sugar! Then
the mighty treasures of sugarplums, white and crimson and yellow, in
large glass vases, and candy of all varieties, and those little
cockles—or whatever they are called—much prized by children for their
sweetness, and more for the mottoes which they enclose, by love-sick
maids and bachelors! Oh, my mouth waters, little Annie, and so doth
yours, but we will not be tempted except to an imaginary feast; so let
us hasten onward devouring the vision of a plum-cake.
Here are pleasures, as some people would say, of a more exalted kind,
in the window of a bookseller. Is Annie a literary lady? Yes; she is
deeply read in Peter Parley’s tomes and has an increasing love for
fairy-tales, though seldom met with nowadays, and she will subscribe
next year to the _Juvenile Miscellany_. But, truth to tell, she is apt
to turn away from the printed page and keep gazing at the pretty
pictures, such as the gay-colored ones which make this shop-window the
continual loitering-place of children. What would Annie think if, in
the book which I mean to send her on New Year’s day, she should find
her sweet little self bound up in silk or morocco with gilt edges,
there to remain till she become a woman grown with children of her own
to read about their mother’s childhood? That would be very queer.
Little Annie is weary of pictures and pulls me onward by the hand, till
suddenly we pause at the most wondrous shop in all the town. Oh, my
stars! Is this a toyshop, or is it fairy-land? For here are gilded
chariots in which the king and queen of the fairies might ride side by
side, while their courtiers on these small horses should gallop in
triumphal procession before and behind the royal pair. Here, too, are
dishes of chinaware fit to be the dining-set of those same princely
personages when they make a regal banquet in the stateliest hall of
their palace—full five feet high—and behold their nobles feasting adown
the long perspective of the table. Betwixt the king and queen should
sit my little Annie, the prettiest fairy of them all. Here stands a
turbaned Turk threatening us with his sabre, like an ugly heathen as he
is, and next a Chinese mandarin who nods his head at Annie and myself.
Here we may review a whole army of horse and foot in red-and-blue
uniforms, with drums, fifes, trumpets, and all kinds of noiseless
music; they have halted on the shelf of this window after their weary
march from Liliput. But what cares Annie for soldiers? No conquering
queen is she—neither a Semiramis nor a Catharine; her whole heart is
set upon that doll who gazes at us with such a fashionable stare. This
is the little girl’s true plaything. Though made of wood, a doll is a
visionary and ethereal personage endowed by childish fancy with a
peculiar life; the mimic lady is a heroine of romance, an actor and a
sufferer in a thousand shadowy scenes, the chief inhabitant of that
wild world with which children ape the real one. Little Annie does not
understand what I am saying, but looks wishfully at the proud lady in
the window. We will invite her home with us as we return.—Meantime,
good-bye, Dame Doll! A toy yourself, you look forth from your window
upon many ladies that are also toys, though they walk and speak, and
upon a crowd in pursuit of toys, though they wear grave visages. Oh,
with your never-closing eyes, had you but an intellect to moralize on
all that flits before them, what a wise doll would you be!—Come, little
Annie, we shall find toys enough, go where we may.
Now we elbow our way among the throng again. It is curious in the most
crowded part of a town to meet with living creatures that had their
birthplace in some far solitude, but have acquired a second nature in
the wilderness of men. Look up, Annie, at that canary-bird hanging out
of the window in his cage. Poor little fellow! His golden feathers are
all tarnished in this smoky sunshine; he would have glistened twice as
brightly among the summer islands, but still he has become a citizen in
all his tastes and habits, and would not sing half so well without the
uproar that drowns his music. What a pity that he does not know how
miserable he is! There is a parrot, too, calling out, “Pretty Poll!
Pretty Poll!” as we pass by. Foolish bird, to be talking about her
prettiness to strangers, especially as she is not a pretty Poll, though
gaudily dressed in green and yellow! If she had said “Pretty Annie!”
there would have been some sense in it. See that gray squirrel at the
door of the fruit-shop whirling round and round so merrily within his
wire wheel! Being condemned to the treadmill, he makes it an amusement.
Admirable philosophy!
Here comes a big, rough dog—a countryman’s dog—in search of his master,
smelling at everybody’s heels and touching little Annie’s hand with his
cold nose, but hurrying away, though she would fain have patted
him.—Success to your search, Fidelity!—And there sits a great yellow
cat upon a window-sill, a very corpulent and comfortable cat, gazing at
this transitory world with owl’s eyes, and making pithy comments,
doubtless, or what appear such, to the silly beast.—Oh, sage puss, make
room for me beside you, and we will be a pair of philosophers.
Here we see something to remind us of the town-crier and his
ding-dong-bell. Look! look at that great cloth spread out in the air,
pictured all over with wild beasts, as if they had met together to
choose a king, according to their custom in the days of Æsop. But they
are choosing neither a king nor a President, else we should hear a most
horrible snarling! They have come from the deep woods and the wild
mountains and the desert sands and the polar snows only to do homage to
my little Annie. As we enter among them the great elephant makes us a
bow in the best style of elephantine courtesy, bending lowly down his
mountain bulk, with trunk abased and leg thrust out behind. Annie
returns the salute, much to the gratification of the elephant, who is
certainly the best-bred monster in the caravan. The lion and the
lioness are busy with two beef-bones. The royal tiger, the beautiful,
the untamable, keeps pacing his narrow cage with a haughty step,
unmindful of the spectators or recalling the fierce deeds of his former
life, when he was wont to leap forth upon such inferior animals from
the jungles of Bengal.
Here we see the very same wolf—do not go near him, Annie!—the selfsame
wolf that devoured little Red Riding-Hood and her grandmother. In the
next cage a hyena from Egypt who has doubtless howled around the
pyramids and a black bear from our own forests are fellow-prisoners and
most excellent friends. Are there any two living creatures who have so
few sympathies that they cannot possibly be friends? Here sits a great
white bear whom common observers would call a very stupid beast, though
I perceive him to be only absorbed in contemplation; he is thinking of
his voyages on an iceberg, and of his comfortable home in the vicinity
of the north pole, and of the little cubs whom he left rolling in the
eternal snows. In fact, he is a bear of sentiment. But oh those
unsentimental monkeys! The ugly, grinning, aping, chattering,
ill-natured, mischievous and queer little brutes! Annie does not love
the monkeys; their ugliness shocks her pure, instinctive delicacy of
taste and makes her mind unquiet because it bears a wild and dark
resemblance to humanity. But here is a little pony just big enough for
Annie to ride, and round and round he gallops in a circle, keeping time
with his trampling hoofs to a band of music. And here, with a laced
coat and a cocked hat, and a riding-whip in his hand—here comes a
little gentleman small enough to be king of the fairies and ugly enough
to be king of the gnomes, and takes a flying leap into the saddle.
Merrily, merrily plays the music, and merrily gallops the pony, and
merrily rides the little old gentleman.—Come, Annie, into the street
again; perchance we may see monkeys on horseback there.
Mercy on us! What a noisy world we quiet people live in! Did Annie ever
read the cries of London city? With what lusty lungs doth yonder man
proclaim that his wheelbarrow is full of lobsters! Here comes another,
mounted on a cart and blowing a hoarse and dreadful blast from a tin
horn, as much as to say, “Fresh fish!” And hark! a voice on high, like
that of a muezzin from the summit of a mosque, announcing that some
chimney-sweeper has emerged from smoke and soot and darksome caverns
into the upper air. What cares the world for that? But, well-a-day, we
hear a shrill voice of affliction—the scream of a little child, rising
louder with every repetition of that smart, sharp, slapping sound
produced by an open hand on tender flesh. Annie sympathizes, though
without experience of such direful woe.
Lo! the town-crier again, with some new secret for the public ear. Will
he tell us of an auction, or of a lost pocket-book or a show of
beautiful wax figures, or of some monstrous beast more horrible than
any in the caravan? I guess the latter. See how he uplifts the bell in
his right hand and shakes it slowly at first, then with a hurried
motion, till the clapper seems to strike both sides at once, and the
sounds are scattered forth in quick succession far and near.
Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
Now he raises his clear loud voice above all the din of the town. It
drowns the buzzing talk of many tongues and draws each man’s mind from
his own business; it rolls up and down the echoing street, and ascends
to the hushed chamber of the sick, and penetrates downward to the
cellar kitchen where the hot cook turns from the fire to listen. Who of
all that address the public ear, whether in church or court-house or
hall of state, has such an attentive audience as the town-crier! What
saith the people’s orator?
“Strayed from her home, a LITTLE GIRL of five years old, in a blue silk
frock and white pantalets, with brown curling hair and hazel eyes.
Whoever will bring her back to her afflicted mother—”
Stop, stop, town-crier! The lost is found.—Oh, my pretty Annie, we
forgot to tell your mother of our ramble, and she is in despair and has
sent the town-crier to bellow up and down the streets, affrighting old
and young, for the loss of a little girl who has not once let go my
hand? Well, let us hasten homeward; and as we go forget not to thank
Heaven, my Annie, that after wandering a little way into the world you
may return at the first summons with an untainted and unwearied heart,
and be a happy child again. But I have gone too far astray for the
town-crier to call me back.
Sweet has been the charm of childhood on my spirit throughout my ramble
with little Annie. Say not that it has been a waste of precious
moments, an idle matter, a babble of childish talk and a reverie of
childish imaginations about topics unworthy of a grown man’s notice.
Has it been merely this? Not so—not so. They are not truly wise who
would affirm it. As the pure breath of children revives the life of
aged men, so is our moral nature revived by their free and simple
thoughts, their native feeling, their airy mirth for little cause or
none, their grief soon roused and soon allayed. Their influence on us
is at least reciprocal with ours on them. When our infancy is almost
forgotten and our boyhood long departed, though it seems but as
yesterday, when life settles darkly down upon us and we doubt whether
to call ourselves young any more,—then it is good to steal away from
the society of bearded men, and even of gentler woman, and spend an
hour or two with children. After drinking from those fountains of still
fresh existence we shall return into the crowd, as I do now, to
struggle onward and do our part in life—perhaps as fervently as ever,
but for a time with a kinder and purer heart and a spirit more lightly
wise. All this by thy sweet magic, dear little Annie!