waiting, and scrambled in, explaining to the drivers the necessity for
the utmost haste. Chichester's horse was a scrawny, speedy little
beast, called _Le Coq Noir_, the champion trotter of the region. "_Hé,
Coq!_" shouted the driver, flourishing his whip, at the top of the
first long hill; and they started off at a breakneck pace. They passed
through the village of _Sacré Coeur_ a mile and a half ahead of the
other wagon. But on the first steep _côte_ beyond the village, the
inevitable happened. The buckboard went slithering down the slippery
slope of clay, struck a log bridge at the bottom with a resounding
thump, and broke an axle clean across. The wheel flew off, and the
buckboard came to the ground, and Chichester and the driver tumbled
out. The Black Cock gave a couple of leaps and then stood still,
looking back with an expression of absolute dismay.
There was nothing to do but wait for the other buckboard, which arrived
in ten or fifteen minutes. "Will you have the kindness to lend me your
carriage?" said Chichester elaborately. "Oh, don't talk! Get out quick.
You can walk!" They changed horses quickly, and Chichester took the
reins and drove on. Quarter past eleven; half past; quarter to
twelve--and three miles yet to go! It was barely possible to do it. And
perhaps it would have been done, if at that moment the good little
Black Cock had not stumbled on a loose stone, gone down almost to his
knees, and recovered himself with a violent wrench--lame! Chichester
was a fair runner and a good walker. But he knew that the steep sandy
hills which lay between him and Tadousac could never be covered in
fifteen minutes. He gave the reins to the driver, leaned back in the
seat, and folded his arms.
At twenty-five minutes past twelve the buckboard passed slowly down the
main street of Tadousac, bumped deliberately across the bridge, and
drew up before the hotel. The little white chapel on the other side of
the road was shut, deserted, sleeping in the sunlight. On the long
hotel piazza were half a dozen groups of strangers, summer visitors,
evidently in a state of suppressed curiosity and amusement. They fell
silent as the disconsolate vehicle came to a halt, and Arthur Asham,
the Harvard brother, in irreproachable morning costume and perfect
form, moved forward to meet it.
"Well?" said Chichester, as he stepped out.
"Well!" answered the other; and they went a few paces together on the
lawn, shaking hands politely and looking at each other with unspoken
interrogations.
"I'm awfully sorry," Chichester said, "but it couldn't be helped. A
chapter of accidents--I'll explain."
"My dear fellow," answered young Asham, "what good will that do? You
needn't explain to me, and you can't explain to Ethel. She is in her
most lofty and impossible mood. She'll never listen to you. I'm awfully
sorry, too, but I fear it's all over. In fact, she has driven down to
the wharf with the others to wait for the Quebec boat, which goes at
one. I am staying to get the luggage together and bring it on
to-morrow. She gave me this note for you. Will you read it?"
Asham politely turned away, and Chichester read:
MY DEAR MR. CHICHESTER:
Fortunate indeed is the disillusion which does not come too late.
But the bridegroom who comes too late is known in time.
You may be sure that I have no resentment at what you have done; I
have risen to those heights where anger is unknown. But I now see
clearly what I have long felt dimly--that your soul does not keep
time with the music to which my life is set. I do not know what
_other engagement_ kept you away. I do not ask to know. I know
only that ours is at an end, and you are at liberty to return to
your fishing. That you will succeed in it is the expectation of
Your well-wisher, E. ASHAM.
Chichester's chin dropped a little as he read. For the first time in
his life he looked undecided. Then he folded the note carefully, put it
in the breast pocket of his coat, and turned to his companion.
"You will be going up in to-morrow's boat, I suppose. Shall we go
together?"
"My dear fellow," said Arthur Asham, "really, you know--I should be
delighted. But do you think it would be quite the thing?"
BOOKS THAT I LOVED AS A BOY
"It is one thing," said my Uncle Peter, "to be perfectly honest. But it
is quite another thing to tell the truth."
"Are you honest in that remark," I asked, "or are you merely telling
the truth?"
"Both," he answered, with twinkling eyes, "for that is an abstract
remark, in which species of discourse truth-telling is comparatively
easy. Abstract remarks are a great relief to the lazy honest man. They
spare him the trouble of meticulous investigation of unimportant facts.
But a concrete remark, touching upon a number of small details, is full
of traps for the truth-teller."
"You agree, then," said I, "with what the Psalmist said in his haste:
'All men are liars'?"
"Not in the least," he replied, laying down the volume which he was
apparently reading when he interrupted himself. "I have leisure enough
to perceive at once the falsity of that observation which the honest
Psalmist recorded for our amusement. The real liars, conscious,
malicious, wilful falsifiers, must always be a minority in the world,
because their habits tend to bring them to an early grave or a
reformatory. It is the people who want to tell the truth, and try to,
but do not quite succeed, who are in the majority. Just look at this
virtuous little volume which I was reading when you broke in upon me.
It is called 'Books that Have Influenced Me.' A number of authors,
politicians, preachers, doctors, and rich men profess to give an
account of the youthful reading which has been most powerful in the
development of their manly minds and characters. To judge from what
they have written here you would suppose that these men were as mature
and discriminating at sixteen as they are at sixty. They tell of great
books, serious books, famous books. But they say little or nothing of
the small, amusing books, the books full of fighting and adventure, the
books of good stuff poorly written, in which every honest boy, at some
time in his life, finds what he wants. They are silent, too, about the
books which as a matter of fact had a tremendous influence on them--the
plain, dull school-books. For my part, if you asked me what books had
influenced me, I should not be telling the truth if my answer left out
Webster's Spelling-Book and Greenleaf's Arithmetic, though I did not
adore them extravagantly."
"That's just the point, Uncle Peter," said I, "these distinguished men
were really trying to tell you about the books that delighted and
inspired their youth, the books that they loved as boys."
"Well," said my Uncle Peter, "if it comes to love, and reminiscences of
loving, that is precisely the region in which the exact truth is least
frequently told. Maturity casts its prim and clear-cut shadow backwards
upon the vague and glittering landscape of youth. Whether he speaks of
books or of girls, the aged reminiscent attributes to himself a
delicacy of taste, a singleness and constancy of affection, and a
romantic fervour of devotion, which he might have had, but probably did
not. He is not in the least to blame for drawing his fancy-picture of a
young gentleman. He cannot help it. It is his involuntary tribute to
the ideal. Youth dreams in the future tense; age, in the past
participle.
"There is no kind of fiction more amiable and engaging than the droll
legends of infancy and pious recollections of boyhood. Do you suppose
that Wordsworth has given us a complete portrait of the boy that he
was, in 'The Prelude'? He says not a word about the picture of his
grandmother that he broke with his whip because the other children gave
him a 'dare,' nor about the day when he went up into the attic with an
old fencing-foil to commit suicide, nor about the girl with whom he
fell in love while he was in France. Do you suppose that Stevenson's
'Memories and Portraits' represent the youthful R. L. S. with
photographic accuracy and with all his frills? Not at all. Stevenson's
essays are charming; and Wordsworth's poem is beautiful,--in streaks it
is as fine as anything that he ever wrote: but both of these works
belong to literature because they are packed full of omissions,--which
Stevenson himself called 'a kind of negative exaggeration.' No, my dear
boy, old Goethe found the right title for a book of reminiscences when
he wrote _'Wahrheit und Dichtung_.' Truth and poetry,--that is what it
is bound to be. I don't know whether Goethe was as honest a man as
Wordsworth and Stevenson, but I reckon he told about as much of the
truth. Autobiography is usually a man's view of what his biography
ought to be."
"This is rather a disquieting thought, my Uncle Peter," said I, "for it
seems to leave us all adrift on a sea of illusions."
"Not if you look at it in the right way," he answered, placidly. "We
can always get at a few more facts than the man himself gives us, from
letters and from the dispassionate recollections of his friends.
Besides, a man's view of what his life ought to have been is almost as
interesting, and quite as instructive, as a mere chronicle of what it
actually was. The truth is, there are two kinds of truth: one kind
is----"
Crash! went the fire-irons, tumbling in brazen confusion on the
red-brick hearth. When my Uncle Peter has mounted his favourite
metaphysical theory, I know that nothing can make him dismount but
physical violence. I apologized for the poker and the shovel and the
tongs (practising a Stevensonian omission in regard to my own share in
the catastrophe), arranged the offending members in their proper
station on the left of the fire-place, and took the bellows to
encourage the dull fire into a more concrete flame.
"I know enough about the different kinds of truth," said I, working
away at the bellows. "Haven't I just been reading Professor Jacobus on
'Varieties of Religious Experience'? What I want now is something
concrete; and I wish you would try to give it to me, whatever perils it
may involve. Tell me something about the books that you loved as a boy.
Never mind your veracity, Uncle Peter, just be honest, that will be
enough."
"My veracity!" he grunted, "Humph! Impudent academic mocker, university
life has destroyed your last rag of reverence. You have become a mere
pivot for turning another fellow's remarks against himself. However, if
you will just allow me to talk, and promise to let those fire-irons
alone, I will tell you about some of the literary loves of my boyhood."
"I promise not to stir hand or tongue or foot," said I, "unless I see
you sliding towards a metaphysical precipice."
"Very well," said my Uncle Peter, "I will do my best to give you the
facts. And the first is this: there never was a day in my boyhood when
I would not rather go a-fishing than read the best book in the world.
If the choice had been given me, I never would have hesitated between
climbing a mountain or paddling a canoe, and spending hours in a
library. I would have liked also to hunt grizzly bears and to fight
Indians,--but these were purely Platonic passions, detached from
physical experience. I never realized them in hot blood.
"My native preferences were trimmed and pruned by the fortune that
fixed my abode, during nine months of every year, in the city of
Brooklyn, where there were no mountains to climb, no rivers to canoe,
and no bears to hunt. The winter of my discontent, however, was
somewhat cheered by games of football and baseball in the vacant lots
on the heights above Wall Street Ferry, and by fierce battles and
single combats with the tribes of 'Micks' who inhabited the regions of
Furman Street and Atlantic Avenue. There was no High Court of
Arbitration to suggest a peaceful solution of the difficulties out of
which these conflicts arose. In fact, so far as I can remember, there
was seldom a _casus belli_ which could be defined and discussed. The
warfare simply effervesced, like gas from a mineral spring. It was
chronic, geographical, temperamental, and its everlasting continuance
was suggested in the threat with which the combatants usually parted:
'wait till we ketch you alone, down our street!'
"There was also a school which claimed some hours of my attention on
five days of the week. On holidays my father used to take me on the
most delightful fishing excursions to the then unpolluted waters of
Coney Island Creek and Sheepshead Bay; and on Monday afternoons in
midwinter it was a regular thing that I should go with him to New York
to ramble among the old book-shops in Nassau Street and eat oysters at
Dorlon's stall, with wooden tables and sawdust-sprinkled floor, in
Fulton Market. Say what you please about the friendship of books: it
was worth a thousand times more to have the friendship of such a
father.
"But there was still a good deal of unoccupied time on my hands between
the first of October and the first of May, and having learned to read
(in the old-fashioned way, by wrestling with the alphabet and plain
spelling), at the age of about five years, I was willing enough to give
some of my juvenile leisure to books and try to find out what they had
to say about various things which interested me. I did not go to school
until my tenth year, and so there was quite a long period left free for
general reading, beginning with the delightful old-fashioned books of
fairy tales without a moral, and closing with 'Robinson Crusoe,' 'Don
Quixote,' and Plutarch's 'Lives of Illustrious Men.' In the last two
books I took a real and vivid interest, though I now suspect that it
was strictly limited in range. They seemed to open a new world to me,
the world of the past, in which I could see men moving about and doing
the most remarkable things. Both of these books appeared to me equally
historical; I neither doubted the truth of their narratives nor
attended to the philosophical reflections with which they were padded.
The meaning of the long words I guessed at.
"My taste at this time was most indiscriminate. I could find some kind
of enjoyment in almost anything that called itself a book--even a
Sunday-school story, or a child's history of the world--provided only
it gave something concrete for imagination to work upon. The mere
process of reading, with the play of fancy that it quickened, became an
agreeable pastime. I got a great deal of pleasure, and possibly some
good, out of Bunyan's 'Holy War' (which I perversely preferred to 'The
Pilgrim's Progress') and Livingstone's 'Missionary Journals and
Researches,' and a book about the Scotch Covenanters. These volumes
shortened many a Sunday. I also liked parts of 'The Compleat Angler,'
but the best parts I skipped.
"With the coming of school days the time for reading was reduced, and
it became necessary to make a choice among books. The natural instincts
of youth asserted themselves, and I became a devotee of Captain Mayne
Reid and R. M. Ballantyne, whose simple narratives of wild adventure
offered a refuge from the monotony of academic life. It gave me no
concern that the names of these authors were not included in the
encyclopædias of literature nor commented upon in the critical reviews.
I had no use for the encyclopædias or reviews; but 'The Young
Voyageurs,' 'The White Chief,' 'Osceola the Seminole,' 'The Bush Boys,'
'The Coral Island,' 'Red Eric,' 'Ungava,' and 'The Gorilla Hunters'
gave me unaffected delight.
"After about two years of this innocent dissipation I began to feel the
desire for a better life, and turned, by my father's advice, to Sir
Walter Scott. 'Ivanhoe' and 'The Pirate' pleased me immensely;
'Waverley' and 'The Heart of Midlothian' I accepted with
qualifications; but the two of Scott's novels that gave me the most
pleasure, I regret to state, were 'Quentin Durward' and 'Count Robert
of Paris.' Then Dickens claimed me, and I yielded to the spell of
'Oliver Twist,' 'David Copperfield,' and 'Pickwick Papers.'
"By this time it had begun to dawn upon me that there was a difference
among books, not only in regard to the things told, but also in regard
to the way of the telling. Unconsciously I became sensitive to the
magic of style, and, wandering freely through the library, was drawn to
the writers whose manner and accent had a charm for me. Emerson and
Carlyle I liked no better than I liked caviar; but Lamb's Essays and
Irving's Sketches were fascinating. For histories of literature, thank
Heaven, I never had any appetite. I preferred real books to books about
books. My only idea of literature was a vivid reflection of life in the
world of fancy or in the world of fact.
"In poetry, Milton's 'Comus' was about the first thing that took hold
of me; I cannot tell why--perhaps it was because I liked my father's
reading of it. But even he could not persuade me to anything more than
a dim respect for 'Paradise Lost.' Some of Shakespeare's plays
entranced me; particularly 'The Tempest,' 'Romeo and Juliet,' and 'As
You Like It;' but there were others which made no real impression upon
my wayward mind. Dryden and Pope and Cowper I tried in vain to
appreciate; the best that I could attain to was a respectful
admiration. 'The Lady of the Lake' and 'The Ancient Mariner,' on the
contrary, were read without an effort and with sincere joy. The first
book of poetry that I bought for myself was Tennyson's 'Enoch Arden,'
and I never regretted the purchase, for it led me on, somehow or other,
into the poetic studies and the real intimacy with books which enabled
me to go through college without serious damage.
"I cannot remember just when I first read 'Henry Esmond;' perhaps it
was about the beginning of sophomore year. But, at all events, it was
then that I ceased to love books as a boy and began to love them as a
man."
"And do you still love 'Henry Esmond'?" I asked.
"I do indeed," said my Uncle Peter, "and I call it the greatest of
English novels. But very close to it I put 'Lorna Doone,' and 'The
Heart of Midlothian,' and 'The Cloister and the Hearth,' and 'The
Ordeal of Richard Feverel,' and 'John Inglesant.'"
"If you love 'John Inglesant,'" said I, "you must be getting old, Uncle
Peter."
"Oh, no," he answered, comfortably lighting his pipe with a live coal
of wood from the hearth, "I am only growing up."
AMONG THE QUANTOCK HILLS
My little Dorothea was the only one of the merry crowd who cared to
turn aside with me from the beaten tourist-track, and give up the sight
of another English cathedral for the sake of a quiet day among the
Quantock Hills. Was it the literary association of that little corner
of Somersetshire with the names of Wordsworth and Coleridge that
attracted her, I wonder? Or was it the promise that we would hire a
dog-cart, if one could be found, and that she should be the driver all
through the summer day? I confess my incompetence to decide the
question. When one is fifteen years old, a live horse may be as
interesting as two dead poets. Not for the world would I put Dorothea
to the embarrassment of declaring which was first in her mind.
When she and I got out of the railway carriage, in the early morning,
at the humble station of Watchet, (barely mentioned in the guide-book,)
our travelling companions jeered gently at our enterprise. As the train
rumbled away from the platform, they stuck their heads out of the
window and cried, "Where are you going? And how are you going to get
there?" Upon my honour, I did not know. That was just the fun of it.
But there was an inn at Watchet, though I doubt whether it had ever
entertained tourists. The friendly and surprised landlady thought that
she could get us a dog-cart to drive across the country; but it would
take about an hour to make ready. So we strolled about the town, and
saw the sights of Watchet.
They were few and simple; yet something, (perhaps the generous sunshine
of the July day, or perhaps an inward glow of contentment in our
hearts,) made them bright and memorable. There were the quaint, narrow
streets, with their tiny shops and low stone houses. There was the
coast-guard station, with its trim garden, perched on a terrace above
the sea. There was the life-boat house, with its doors wide open, and
the great boat, spick and span in the glory of new paint, standing
ready on its rollers, and the record of splendid rescues in past years
inscribed upon the walls. There was the circular basin-harbour, with
the workmen slowly repairing the breakwater, and a couple of ancient
looking schooners reposing on their sides in the mud at low tide. And
there, back on the hill, looking down over the town and far away across
the yellow waters of the Bristol Channel, was the high tower of St.
Decuman's Church.
"It was from this tiny harbour," said I to Dorothea, "that a great
friend of ours, the Ancient Mariner, set sail on a wonderful voyage. Do
you remember?
"'The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.'
"That was the kirk to which he looked back as he sailed away to an
unknown country."
"But, father," said Dorothea, "the Ancient Mariner was not a real
person. He was only a character!"
"Are you quite sure," said I, "that a character isn't a real person? At
all events, it was here that Coleridge, walking from Nether Stowey to
Dulverton, saw the old sailor-man. And since Coleridge saw him, I
reckon he lived, and still lives. Are we ever going to forget what he
has told us?
"'He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.'"
Just then a most enchanting little boy and his sister, not more than
five years old, came sauntering down the gray street, hand in hand.
They were on their way to school, at least an hour late, round and
rosy, careless and merry, manifest owners of the universe. We stopped
them: they were dismayed, but resolute. We gave each of them a penny;
they radiated wonder and joy. Too happy for walking, they skipped and
toddled on their way, telling everyone they met, children and grown-up
people, of the good fortune that had befallen them. We could see them
far down the street, pausing a moment to look in at the shop-windows,
or holding up their coppers while they stopped some casual passer-by
and made him listen to their story--just like the Ancient Mariner.
By this time the dog-cart was ready. The landlord charged me eighteen
shillings for the drive to Bridgewater, nineteen miles away, stopping
where we liked, and sending back the cart with the post-boy that
evening. By the look on his face I judge that he thought it was too
much. But I did not. So we climbed to the high seat, Dorothea took the
reins and the whip, and we set forth for a day of unguide-booked
pleasure.
What good roads they have in England! Look at the piles of broken stone
for repairs, stored in little niches all along the way; see how
promptly and carefully every hole is filled up and every break mended;
and you will understand how a small beast can pull a heavy load in this
country, and why the big draught-horses wear long and do good work. A
country with a fine system of roads is like a man with a good
circulation of the blood; the labour of life becomes easier, effort is
reduced and pleasure increased.
Bowling along the smooth road we crossed a small river at Doniford,
where a man was wading the stream below the bridge and fly-fishing for
trout; we passed the farmhouses of Rydon, where the steam-thresher was
whirling, and the wheat was falling in golden heaps, and the
pale-yellow straw was mounded in gigantic ricks; and then we climbed
the hill behind St. Audries, with its pretty gray church, and manor
house half hidden in the great trees of the park.