Long Street, within sight of my window--just where the street gets into its
most tangled traffic--there has hung for many years the painted signboard
of a veterinary surgeon. Its artist was in the first flourish of youth. Old
age had not yet chilled him when he mixed his gaudy colors. The surgeon's
name is set up in modest letters, but the horse below flames with color.
What a flaring nostril! What an eager eye! How arched the neck! Here is a
wrath and speed unknown to the quadrupeds of this present Long Street. Such
mild-eyed, accumbent, sharp-ribbed horses as now infest the curb--mere
whittlings from a larger age--hang their heads at their degeneracy. Indeed,
these horses seem to their owners not to be worth the price of a nostrum.
If disease settles in them, let them lean against a post until the fit is
past! And of a consequence, the doctor's work has fallen off. It has
become a rare occasion when it is permitted him to stroke his chin in
contemplation of some inner palsy. Therefore to give his wisdom scope,
the doctor some time since announced the cellar of the building to be a
hospital for dogs. Must I press the analogy? I have seen the doctor with
bowl and spoon in hand take leave of the cheerful world. He opens the
cellar door. A curdling yelp comes up the stairs. In the abyss below there
are twenty dogs at least, all of them sick, all dangerous. Not since Orion
led his hunting pack across the heavens has there been so fierce a sound.
The door closes. There is a final yelp, such as greets a bone. Doubtless,
by this time, they are munching on the doctor. Good sir, had you lived in
pre-apostolic days, your name would have been lined with Daniel's in the
hymn. I might have spent my earliest treble in your praise.
But there are other kinds of dogs. Gentlest of readers, have you ever
passed a few days at Tunbridge Wells? It lies on one of the roads that run
from London to the Channel and for several hundred years persons have gone
there to take the waters against the more fashionable ailments. Its chief
fame was in the days when rich folk, to ward off for the season a touch of
ancestral gout, travelled down from London in their coaches. We may fancy
Lord Thingumdo crossing his sleek legs inside or putting his head to the
window on the change of horses. He has outriders and a horn to sound his
coming. His Lordship has a liver that must be mended, but also he has
a weakness for the gaming table. Or Lady Euphemia, wrapped in silks,
languishes mornings in her lodgings with a latest novel, but goes forth at
noon upon the Pantilles to shop in the stalls. A box of patches must be
bought. A lace flounce has caught her eye. Bless her dear eyes, as she
bends upon her purchase she is fair to look upon. The Grand Rout is set for
tonight. Who knows but that the Duke will put the tender question and will
ask her to name the happy day?
But these golden days are past. Tunbridge Wells has sunk from fashion. The
gaming tables are gone. A band still plays mornings in the Pantilles--or
did so before the war--but cheaper gauds are offered in the shops. Emerald
brooches are fallen to paste. In all the season there is scarcely a single
demand for a diamond garter. If there were now a Rout, the only dancers
would be stiff shadows from the past. The healing waters still trickle from
the ground and an old woman serves you for a penny, but the miracle has
gone. The old world is cured and dead.
Tunbridge Wells is visited now chiefly by old ladies whose husbands--to
judge by the black lace caps--have left Lombard Street for heaven. At the
hotel where I stopped, which was at the top of the Commons outside the
thicker town, I was the only man in the breakfast room. Two widows, each
with a tiny dog on a chair beside her, sat at the next table. This was
their conversation:
"Did you hear her last night?"
"Was it Flossie that I heard?"
"Yes. The poor dear was awake all night. She got her feet wet yesterday
when I let her run upon the grass."
But after breakfast--if the day is sunny and the wind sits in a favoring
quarter--one by one the widows go forth in their chairs. These are wicker
contrivances that hang between three wheels. Burros pull them, and men walk
alongside to hold their bridles. Down comes the widow. Down comes a maid
with her wraps. Down comes a maid with Flossie. The wraps are adjusted. The
widow is handed in. Her feet are wound around with comforters against a
draft. Her salts rest in her lap. Her ample bag of knitting is safe aboard.
Flossie is placed beside her. Proot! The donkey starts.
All morning the widow sits in the Pantilles and listens to the band and
knits. Flossie sits on the flagging at her feet with an intent eye upon the
ball of worsted. Twice in a morning--three times if the gods are kind--the
ball rolls to the pavement. Flossie has been waiting so long for this
to happen. It is the bright moment of her life--the point and peak of
happiness. She darts upon it. She paws it exultantly for a moment. Brief is
the rainbow and brief the Borealis. The finger of Time is swift.
The poppy blooms and fades. The maid captures the ball of worsted and
restores it.
It lies in the widow's lap. The band plays. The needles click to a long
tune. The healing waters trickle from the ground. The old woman whines
their merits. Flossie sits motionless, her head cocked and her eye upon the
ball. Perhaps the god of puppies will again be good to her.
ROADS OF MORNING
My grandfather's farm lay somewhere this side of the sunset, so near that
its pastures barely missed the splash of color. But from the city it was a
two hours' journey by horse and phaeton. My grandfather drove. I sat next,
my feet swinging clear of the lunchbox. My brother had the outside, a place
denied to me for fear that I might fall across the wheel. When we were
all set, my mother made a last dab at my nose--an unheeded smudge having
escaped my vigilance. Then my grandfather said, "Get up,"--twice, for the
lazy horse chose to regard the first summons as a jest. We start. The great
wheels turn. My brother leans across the guard to view the miracle. We
crunch the gravel. We are alive for excitement. My brother plays we are
a steamboat and toots. I toot in imitation, but higher up as if I were a
younger sort of steamboat. We hold our hands on an imaginary wheel and
steer. We scorn grocery carts and all such harbor craft. We are on a long
cruise. Street lights will guide us sailing home.
Of course there were farms to the south of the city and apples may have
ripened there to as fine a flavor, and to the east, also, doubtless there
were farms. It would be asking too much that the west should have all the
haystacks, cherry trees and cheese houses. If your judgment skimmed upon
the surface, you would even have found the advantage with the south. It was
prettier because more rolling. It was shaggier. The country to the south
tipped up to the hills, so sharply in places that it might have made its
living by collecting nickels for the slide. Indeed, one might think that a
part of the city had come bouncing down the slope, for now it lay resting
at the bottom, sprawled somewhat for its ease. Or it might appear--if your
belief runs on discarded lines--that the whole flat-bottomed earth had been
fouled in its celestial course and now lay aslant upon its beam with its
cargo shifted and spilled about.
The city streets that led to the south, which in those days ended in lanes,
popped out of sight abruptly at the top of the first ridge. And when the
earth caught up again with their level, already it was dim and purple and
tall trees were no more than a roughened hedge. But what lay beyond that
range of hills--what towns and cities--what oceans and forests--how beset
with adventure--how fearful after dark--these things you could not see,
even if you climbed to some high place and strained yourself on tiptoe. And
if you walked from breakfast to lunch--until you gnawed within and were but
a hollow drum--there would still be a higher range against the sky. There
are misty kingdoms on this whirling earth, but the ways are long and steep.
The lake lay to the north with no land beyond, the city to the east. But to
the west--
Several miles outside the city as it then was, and still beyond its
clutches, the country was cut by a winding river bottom with sharp edges of
shale. Down this valley Rocky River came brawling in the spring, over-fed
and quarrelsome. Later in the year--its youthful appetite having caught an
indigestion--it shrunk and wasted to a shadow. By August you could cross it
on the stones. The uproar of its former flood was marked upon the shale and
trunks of trees here and there were wedged, but now the river plays drowsy
tunes upon the stones. There is scarcely enough movement of water to flick
the sunlight. A leaf on its idle current is a lazy craft whose skipper
nods. There were hickory trees on the point above. May-apples grew in the
deep woods, and blackberries along the fences. And in the season sober
horses plowed up and down the fields with nodding heads, affirming their
belief in the goodness of the soil and their willingness to help in its
fruition.
Yet the very core of this valley in days past was a certain depth of water
at a turn of the stream. There was a clay bank above it and on it small
naked boys stood and daubed themselves. One of them put a band of clay
about himself by way of decoration. Another, by a more general smudge, made
himself a Hottentot and thereby gave his manners a wider scope and license.
But by daubing yourself entire you became an Indian and might vent yourself
in hideous yells, for it was amazing how the lungs grew stouter when the
clay was laid on thick. Then you tapped your flattened palm rapidly against
your mouth and released an intermittent uproar in order that the valley
might he warned of the deviltry to come. You circled round and round and
beat upon the ground in the likeness of a war dance. But at last, sated
with scalps, off you dived into the pool and came up a white man. Finally,
you stood on one leg and jounced the water from your ear, or pulled a
bloodsucker from your toes before he sapped your life--for this tiny
creature of the rocks was credited with the gift of prodigious inflation,
and might inhale you, blood, sinews, suspenders and all, if left to his
ugly purpose.
Farms should not be too precisely located; at least this is true of farms
which, like my grandfather's, hang in a mist of memory. I read once of a
wonderful spot--quite inferior, doubtless, to my grandfather's farm--which
was located by evil directions intentionally to throw a seeker off.
Munchausen, you will recall, in the placing of his magic countries, was not
above this agreeable villainy. Robinson Crusoe was loose and vague in the
placing of his island. It is said that Izaak Walton waved a hand obscurely
toward the stream where he had made a catch, but could not be cornered to a
nice direction, lest his pool be overrun. In early youth, I myself went, on
a mischievous hint, to explore a remote region which I was told lay in the
dark behind the kindling pile. But because I moved in a fearful darkness,
quite beyond the pale light from the furnace room, I lost the path. It did
not lead me to the peaks and the roaring waters.
But the farm was reached by more open methods. Dolly and the phaeton were
the chief instruments. First--if you were so sunk in ignorance as not to
know the road--you inquired of everybody for the chewing gum factory, to be
known by its smell of peppermint. Then you sought the high bridge over the
railroad tracks. Beyond was Kamm's Corners. Here, at a turn of the road,
was a general store whose shelves sampled the produce of this whole fair
world and the factories thereof. One might have thought that the proprietor
emulated Noah at the flood by bidding two of each created things to find a
place inside.
Beyond Kamm's Corners you came to the great valley. When almost down the
hill you passed a house with broken windows and unkept grass. This house,
by report, was haunted, but you could laugh at such tales while the morning
sun was up. At the bottom of the hill a bridge crossed the river, with
loose planking that rattled as though the man who made nails was dead.
Beyond the bridge, at the first rise of ground, the horse stopped--for I
assume that you drove a sagacious animal--by way of hint that every one
of sound limb get out and walk to the top of the hill. A suspicious horse
turned his head now and again and cast his eye upon the buggy to be sure
that no one climbed in again.
Presently you came to the toll-gate at the top and paid its keeper five
cents, or whatever large sum he demanded. Then your grandfather--if by
fortunate chance you happened to have one--asked after his wife and
children, and had they missed the croup; then told him his corn was looking
well.
My grandfather--for it is time you knew him--lived with us. Because of a
railway accident fifteen years before in which one of his legs was cut off
just below the knee, he had retired from public office. Several years of
broken health had been followed by years that were for the most part free
from suffering. My own first recollection reverts to these better years.
I recall a tall man--to my eyes a giant, for he was taller even than my
father--who came into the nursery as I was being undressed. There was a
wind in the chimney, and the windows rattled. He put his crutches against
the wall. Then taking me in his arms, he swung me aloft to his shoulder
by a series of somersaults. I cried this first time, but later I came to
demand the performance.
Once, when I was a little older, I came upon one of his discarded wooden
legs as I was playing in the garret of the house. It was my first
acquaintance with such a contrivance. It lay behind a pile of trunks and I
was, at the time, on my way to the center of the earth, for the cheerful
path dove into darkness behind the chimney. You may imagine my surprise. I
approached it cautiously. I viewed it from all sides by such dusty light as
fell between the trunks. Not without fear I touched it. It was unmistakably
a leg--but whose? Was it possible that there was a kind of Bluebeard in the
family, who, for his pleasure, lopped off legs? There had been no breath of
such a scandal. Yet, if my reading and studies were correct, such things
had happened in other families not very different from ours; not in our own
town maybe, but in such near-by places as Kandahar and Serendib--places
which in my warm regard were but as suburbs to our street, to be gained if
you persevered for a hundred lamp-posts. Or could the leg belong to Annie
the cook? Her nimbleness with griddle-cakes belied the thought: And once,
when the wind had swished her skirts, manifestly she was whole and sound.
Then all at once I knew it to be my grandfather's. Grown familiar, I pulled
it to the window. I tried it on, but made bad work of walking.
To the eye my grandfather had two legs all the way down and, except for
his crutches and an occasional squeak, you would not have detected his
infirmity. Evidently the maker did no more than imitate nature, although,
for myself, I used to wonder at the poverty of his invention. There would
be distinction in a leg, which in addition to its usual functions, would
also bend forward at the knee, or had a surprising sidewise joint--and
there would be profit, too, if one cared to make a show of it. The greatest
niggard on the street would pay two pins for such a sight.
As my grandfather was the only old gentleman of my acquaintance, a wooden
leg seemed the natural and suitable accompaniment of old age. Persons, it
appeared, in their riper years, cast off a leg, as trees dropped their
leaves. But my grandmother puzzled me. Undeniably she retained both of
hers, yet her hair was just as white, and she was almost as old. Evidently
this law of nature worked only with men. Ladies, it seemed, were not
deciduous. But how the amputation was effected in men--whether by day or
night--how the choice fell between the right and left--whether the wooden
leg came down the chimney (a proper entrance)--how soon my father would go
the way of all masculine flesh and cast his off--these matters I could not
solve. The Arabian Nights were silent on the subject. Aladdin's uncle,
apparently, had both his legs. He was too brisk in villainy to admit a
wooden leg. But then, he was only an uncle. If his history ran out to the
end, doubtless he would go with a limp in his riper days. The story of the
Bible--although it trafficked in such veterans as Methuselah--gave not a
hint. Abraham died full of years. Here would have been a proper test--but
the book was silent.
My grandfather in those days had much leisure time. He still kept an office
at the rear of the house, although he had given up the regular practice
of the law. But a few old clients lingered on, chiefly women who carried
children in their arms and old men without neckties who came to him for
free advice. These he guided patiently in their troubles, and he would sit
an hour to listen to a piteous story. In an extremity he gave them money,
or took a well-meant but worthless note. Often his callers overran the
dinner hour and my mother would have to jingle the dinner bell at the door
to rouse them. Occasionally he would be called on for a public speech, and
for several days he would be busy at his desk. Frequently he presided at
dinners and would tell a story and sing a song, for he had a fine bass
voice and was famous for his singing.
He read much in those last years in science. When he was not reading
Trowbridge to his grandchildren, it was Huxley to himself. But when his
eyes grew tired, he would on an occasion--if there was canning in the
house--go into the kitchen where my mother and grandmother worked, and help
pare the fruit. Seriously, as though he were engaged upon a game, he would
cut the skin into thinnest strips, unbroken to the end, and would hold up
the coil for us to see. Or if he broke it in the cutting it was a point
against him in the contest.
His diversion rather than his profit was the care and rental of about
twenty small houses, some of which he built to fit his pensioners. My
brother and myself often made the rounds with him in the phaeton. At most
of the houses he was affectionately greeted as "Jedge" and was held in long
conversations across the fence. And to see an Irishman was to see a friend.
They all knew him and said, "Good mornin'," as we passed. He and they were
good Democrats together.
I can see in memory a certain old Irishman in a red flannel shirt, with his
foot upon the hub, bending across the wheel and gesticulating in an endless
discussion of politics or crops, while my brother and I were impatient to
be off. Dolly was of course patient, for she had long since passed her
fretful youth. If by any biological chance it had happened that she had
been an old lady instead of a horse, she would have been the kind that
spent her day in a rocker with her knitting. Any one who gave Dolly an
excuse for standing was her friend. There she stood as though she wished
the colloquy to last forever.
It was seldom that Dolly lost her restraint. She would, indeed, when she
came near the stable, somewhat hasten her stride; and when we came on our
drives to the turning point and at last headed about for home, Dolly would
know it and show her knowledge by a quickening of the ears and the quiver
of a faint excitement. Yet Dolly lost her patience when there were flies.
Then she threw off all repression and so waved her tail that she regularly
got it across the reins. This stirred my grandfather to something not
far short of anger. How vigorously would he try to dislodge the reins
by pulling and jerking! Dolly only clamped down her tail the harder.
Experience showed that the only way was to go slowly and craftily and
without heat or temper--a slackening of the reins--a distraction of Dolly's
attention--a leaning across the dashboard--a firm grasping of the tail out
near the end--a sudden raising thereof. Ah! It was done. We all settled
back against the cushions. Or perhaps a friendly fly would come to our
assistance and Dolly would have to use her tail in another direction.
The whip was seldom used. Generally it stood in its socket. It was
ornamental like a flagstaff. It forgot its sterner functions. But Dolly
must have known the whip in some former life, for even a gesture toward the
socket roused her. If it was rattled she mended her pace for a block. But
if on a rare occasion my grandfather took it in his hand, Dolly lay one ear
back in our direction, for she knew then he meant business. And what an
excitement would arise in the phaeton! We held on tight for fear that she
might take it into her mild old head to run away.
But Dolly had her moments. One sunny summer afternoon while she grazed
peacefully in the orchard, with her reins wound around the whip handle--the
appropriate place on these occasions--she was evidently stung by a bee. My
brother was at the time regaling himself in a near-by blackberry thicket.
He looked up at an unusual sound. Without warning, Dolly had leaped to
action and was tearing around the orchard dragging the phaeton behind
her. She wrecked the top on a low hanging branch, then hit another tree,
severing thereby all connection between herself and the phaeton, and at
last galloped down the lane to the farm house, with the broken shafts and
harness dangling behind her. Kipling's dun "with the mouth of a bell and
the heart of Hell and the head of the gallows-tree," could hardly have
shown more spirit. It was as though one brief minute of a glorious youth
had come back to her. It was a last spurting of an old flame before it sunk
to ash.
My grandfather gave his leisure to his grandchildren. He carved for us with
his knife, with an especial knack for willow whistles. He showed us the
colors that lay upon the world when we looked at it through one of the
glass pendants of the parlor chandelier. He sat by us when we played
duck-on-the-rock. He helped us with our kites and gave a superintendence to
our toys. It is true that he was superficial with tin-tags and did not know
the difference in value between a Steam Engine tag--the rarest of them
all--and a common Climax, but we forgave him as one forgives a friend who
is ignorant of Persian pottery. He employed us as gardeners and put a
bounty on weeds. We watered the lawn together, turn by turn. When I was
no more than four years old, he taught us to play casino with him--and
afterwards bezique. How he cried out if he got a royal sequence! With what
excitement he announced a double bezique! Or if one of us seemed about to
score and lacked but a single card, how intently he contended for the last
few tricks to thwart our declaration! And if we got it despite his lead
of aces, how gravely he squinted on the cards against deception, with his
glasses forward on his nose!
When he took his afternoon nap and lay upon his back on the sofa in the
sitting-room, we made paper pin-wheels to see whether his breath would
stir them. This trick having come to his notice by a sudden awakening, he
sometimes thereafter played to be asleep and snored in such a mighty gust
that the wheels spun. He was like a Dutch tempest against a windmill.
If a Dime Museum came to town we made an afternoon of it. He took us to all
the circuses and gave us our choice of side-shows. We walked up and
down before the stretches of painted canvas, balancing in our desire a
sword-swallower against an Indian Princess. Most of the fat women and all
the dwarfs that I have known came to my acquaintance when in company with
my grandfather. As a young man, it was said, he once ran away from home to
join a circus as an acrobat, having acquired the trick of leaping upon a
running horse. I fancy that his knack of throwing us to his shoulder by a
double somersault was a recollection of his early days. You may imagine
with what awe we looked on him even though he now went on crutches. He was
the epitome of adventure, the very salt of excitement. It was better having
him than a pirate in the house. When the circus had gone and life was drab,
he was our tutor in the art of turning cart-wheels and making hand-stands
against the door.
And once, when we were away from him, he walked all morning about the
garden and in his loneliness he gathered into piles the pebbles that we had
dropped.
I was too young to know my grandfather in his active days when he was
prominent in public matters. His broader abilities are known to others. But
though more than twenty years have passed since his death, I remember his
tone of voice, his walk, his way of handling a crutch, all his tricks of
speech and conduct as though he had just left the room. And I can think of
nothing more beautiful than that a useful man who has faced the world for
seventy years and has done his part, should come back in his old age to the
nursery and be the playfellow of his grandchildren.
But the best holiday was a trip to the farm.