Methinks, for a person whose instinct bids him rather to pore over the
current of life than to plunge into its tumultuous waves, no
undesirable retreat were a toll-house beside some thronged thoroughfare
of the land. In youth, perhaps, it is good for the observer to run
about the earth, to leave the track of his footsteps far and wide, to
mingle himself with the action of numberless vicissitudes, and,
finally, in some calm solitude to feed a musing spirit on all that he
has seen and felt. But there are natures too indolent or too sensitive
to endure the dust, the sunshine or the rain, the turmoil of moral and
physical elements, to which all the wayfarers of the world expose
themselves. For such a man how pleasant a miracle could life be made to
roll its variegated length by the threshold of his own hermitage, and
the great globe, as it were, perform its revolutions and shift its
thousand scenes before his eyes without whirling him onward in its
course! If any mortal be favored with a lot analogous to this, it is
the toll-gatherer. So, at least, have I often fancied while lounging on
a bench at the door of a small square edifice which stands between
shore and shore in the midst of a long bridge. Beneath the timbers ebbs
and flows an arm of the sea, while above, like the life-blood through a
great artery, the travel of the north and east is continually
throbbing. Sitting on the aforesaid bench, I amuse myself with a
conception, illustrated by numerous pencil-sketches in the air, of the
toll-gatherer’s day.
In the morning—dim, gray, dewy summer’s morn—the distant roll of
ponderous wheels begins to mingle with my old friend’s slumbers,
creaking more and more harshly through the midst of his dream and
gradually replacing it with realities. Hardly conscious of the change
from sleep to wakefulness, he finds himself partly clad and throwing
wide the toll-gates for the passage of a fragrant load of hay. The
timbers groan beneath the slow-revolving wheels; one sturdy yeoman
stalks beside the oxen, and, peering from the summit of the hay, by the
glimmer of the half-extinguished lantern over the toll-house is seen
the drowsy visage of his comrade, who has enjoyed a nap some ten miles
long. The toll is paid; creak, creak, again go the wheels, and the huge
hay-mow vanishes into the morning mist. As yet nature is but half
awake, and familiar objects appear visionary. But yonder, dashing from
the shore with a rattling thunder of the wheels and a confused clatter
of hoofs, comes the never-tiring mail, which has hurried onward at the
same headlong, restless rate all through the quiet night. The bridge
resounds in one continued peal as the coach rolls on without a pause,
merely affording the toll-gatherer a glimpse at the sleepy passengers,
who now bestir their torpid limbs and snuff a cordial in the briny air.
The morn breathes upon them and blushes, and they forget how wearily
the darkness toiled away. And behold now the fervid day in his bright
chariot, glittering aslant over the waves, nor scorning to throw a
tribute of his golden beams on the toll-gatherer’s little hermitage.
The old man looks eastward, and (for he is a moralizer) frames a simile
of the stage-coach and the sun.
While the world is rousing itself we may glance slightly at the scene
of our sketch. It sits above the bosom of the broad flood—a spot not of
earth, but in the midst of waters which rush with a murmuring sound
among the massive beams beneath. Over the door is a weatherbeaten board
inscribed with the rates of toll in letters so nearly effaced that the
gilding of the sunshine can hardly make them legible. Beneath the
window is a wooden bench on which a long succession of weary wayfarers
have reposed themselves. Peeping within-doors, we perceive the
whitewashed walls bedecked with sundry lithographic prints and
advertisements of various import and the immense show-bill of a
wandering caravan. And there sits our good old toll-gatherer, glorified
by the early sunbeams. He is a man, as his aspect may announce, of
quiet soul and thoughtful, shrewd, yet simple mind, who of the wisdom
which the passing world scatters along the wayside has gathered a
reasonable store.
Now the sun smiles upon the landscape and earth smiles back again upon
the sky. Frequent now are the travellers. The toll-gatherer’s practised
ear can distinguish the weight of every vehicle, the number of its
wheels and how many horses beat the resounding timbers with their iron
tramp. Here, in a substantial family chaise, setting forth betimes to
take advantage of the dewy road, come a gentleman and his wife with
their rosy-cheeked little girl sitting gladsomely between them. The
bottom of the chaise is heaped with multifarious bandboxes and
carpet-bags, and beneath the axle swings a leathern trunk dusty with
yesterday’s journey. Next appears a four-wheeled carryall peopled with
a round half dozen of pretty girls, all drawn by a single horse and
driven by a single gentleman. Luckless wight doomed through a whole
summer day to be the butt of mirth and mischief among the frolicsome
maidens! Bolt upright in a sulky rides a thin, sour-visaged man who as
he pays his toll hands the toll-gatherer a printed card to stick upon
the wall. The vinegar-faced traveller proves to be a manufacturer of
pickles. Now paces slowly from timber to timber a horseman clad in
black, with a meditative brow, as of one who, whithersoever his steed
might bear him, would still journey through a mist of brooding thought.
He is a country preacher going to labor at a protracted meeting. The
next object passing townward is a butcher’s cart canopied with its arch
of snow-white cotton. Behind comes a “sauceman” driving a wagon full of
new potatoes, green ears of corn, beets, carrots, turnips and summer
squashes, and next two wrinkled, withered witch-looking old gossips in
an antediluvian chaise drawn by a horse of former generations and going
to peddle out a lot of huckleberries. See, there, a man trundling a
wheelbarrow-load of lobsters. And now a milk-cart rattles briskly
onward, covered with green canvas and conveying the contributions of a
whole herd of cows, in large tin canisters.
But let all these pay their toll and pass. Here comes a spectacle that
causes the old toll-gatherer to smile benignantly, as if the travellers
brought sunshine with them and lavished its gladsome influence all
along the road. It is a barouche of the newest style, the varnished
panels of which reflect the whole moving panorama of the landscape, and
show a picture, likewise, of our friend with his visage broadened, so
that his meditative smile is transformed to grotesque merriment. Within
sits a youth fresh as the summer morn, and beside him a young lady in
white with white gloves upon her slender hands and a white veil flowing
down over her face. But methinks her blushing cheek burns through the
snowy veil. Another white-robed virgin sits in front. And who are these
on whom, and on all that appertains to them, the dust of earth seems
never to have settled? Two lovers whom the priest has blessed this
blessed morn and sent them forth, with one of the bride-maids, on the
matrimonial tour.—Take my blessing too, ye happy ones! May the sky not
frown upon you nor clouds bedew you with their chill and sullen rain!
May the hot sun kindle no fever in your hearts! May your whole life’s
pilgrimage be as blissful as this first day’s journey, and its close be
gladdened with even brighter anticipations than those which hallow your
bridal-night! They pass, and ere the reflection of their joy has faded
from his face another spectacle throws a melancholy shadow over the
spirit of the observing man. In a close carriage sits a fragile figure
muffled carefully and shrinking even from the mild breath of summer.
She leans against a manly form, and his arm enfolds her as if to guard
his treasure from some enemy. Let but a few weeks pass, and when he
shall strive to embrace that loved one, he will press only desolation
to his heart.
And now has Morning gathered up her dewy pearls and fled away. The sun
rolls blazing through the sky, and cannot find a cloud to cool his face
with. The horses toil sluggishly along the bridge, and heave their
glistening sides in short quick pantings when the reins are tightened
at the toll-house. Glisten, too, the faces of the travellers. Their
garments are thickly bestrewn with dust; their whiskers and hair look
hoary; their throats are choked with the dusty atmosphere which they
have left behind them. No air is stirring on the road. Nature dares
draw no breath lest she should inhale a stifling cloud of dust. “A hot
and dusty day!” cry the poor pilgrims as they wipe their begrimed
foreheads and woo the doubtful breeze which the river bears along with
it.—“Awful hot! Dreadful dusty!” answers the sympathetic toll-gatherer.
They start again to pass through the fiery furnace, while he re-enters
his cool hermitage and besprinkles it with a pail of briny water from
the stream beneath. He thinks within himself that the sun is not so
fierce here as elsewhere, and that the gentle air doth not forget him
in these sultry days. Yes, old friend, and a quiet heart will make a
dog-day temperate. He hears a weary footstep, and perceives a traveller
with pack and staff, who sits down upon the hospitable bench and
removes the hat from his wet brow. The toll-gatherer administers a cup
of cold water, and, discovering his guest to be a man of homely sense,
he engages him in profitable talk, uttering the maxims of a philosophy
which he has found in his own soul, but knows not how it came there.
And as the wayfarer makes ready to resume his journey he tells him a
sovereign remedy for blistered feet.
Now comes the noontide hour—of all the hours, nearest akin to midnight,
for each has its own calmness and repose. Soon, however, the world
begins to turn again upon its axis, and it seems the busiest epoch of
the day, when an accident impedes the march of sublunary things. The
draw being lifted to permit the passage of a schooner laden with wood
from the Eastern forests, she sticks immovably right athwart the
bridge. Meanwhile, on both sides of the chasm a throng of impatient
travellers fret and fume. Here are two sailors in a gig with the top
thrown back, both puffing cigars and swearing all sorts of forecastle
oaths; there, in a smart chaise, a dashingly-dressed gentleman and
lady, he from a tailor’s shop-board and she from a milliner’s back
room—the aristocrats of a summer afternoon. And what are the haughtiest
of us but the ephemeral aristocrats of a summer’s day? Here is a
tin-pedler whose glittering ware bedazzles all beholders like a
travelling meteor or opposition sun, and on the other side a seller of
spruce beer, which brisk liquor is confined in several dozen of stone
bottles. Here conic a party of ladies on horseback, in green ridings
habits, and gentlemen attendant, and there a flock of sheep for the
market, pattering over the bridge with a multitude nous clatter of
their little hoofs; here a Frenchman with a hand-organ on his shoulder,
and there an itinerant Swiss jeweller. On this side, heralded by a
blast of clarions and bugles, appears a train of wagons conveying all
the wild beasts of a caravan; and on that a company of summer soldiers
marching from village to village on a festival campaign, attended by
the “brass band.” Now look at the scene, and it presents an emblem of
the mysterious confusion, the apparently insolvable riddle, in which
individuals, or the great world itself, seem often to be involved. What
miracle shall set all things right again?
But see! the schooner has thrust her bulky carcase through the chasm;
the draw descends; horse and foot pass onward and leave the bridge
vacant from end to end. “And thus,” muses the toll-gatherer, “have I
found it with all stoppages, even though the universe seemed to be at a
stand.” The sage old man!
Far westward now the reddening sun throws a broad sheet of splendor
across the flood, and to the eyes of distant boatmen gleams brightly
among the timbers of the bridge. Strollers come from the town to quaff
the freshening breeze. One or two let down long lines and haul up
flapping flounders or cunners or small cod, or perhaps an eel. Others,
and fair girls among them, with the flush of the hot day still on their
cheeks, bend over the railing and watch the heaps of seaweed floating
upward with the flowing tide. The horses now tramp heavily along the
bridge and wistfully bethink them of their stables.—Rest, rest, thou
weary world! for to-morrow’s round of toil and pleasure will be as
wearisome as to-day’s has been, yet both shall bear thee onward a day’s
march of eternity.—Now the old toll-gatherer looks seaward and discerns
the lighthouse kindling on a far island, and the stars, too, kindling
in the sky, as if but a little way beyond; and, mingling reveries of
heaven with remembrances of earth, the whole procession of mortal
travellers, all the dusty pilgrimage which he has witnessed, seems like
a flitting show of phantoms for his thoughtful soul to muse upon.