It is my hope, when the snow is off the ground and the ocean has been
tamed by breezes from the south, to cross to England. Already I fancy
myself seated in the pleasant office of the steamship agent, listening
to his gossip of rates and sailings, bending over his colored charts,
weighing the merit of cabins. Here is one amidships in a location of
greatest ease upon the stomach. Here is one with a forward port that
will catch the sharp and wholesome wind from the Atlantic. I trace the
giant funnels from deck to deck. My finger follows delightedly the
confusing passages. I smell the rubber on the landings and the salty
rugs. From on top I hear the wind in the cordage. I view the moon, and I
see the mast swinging among the stars.
Then, also, at the agent's, for my pleasure, there is a picture of a
ship cut down the middle, showing its inner furnishing and the hum of
life on its many decks. I study its flights of steps, its strange tubes
and vents and boilers. Munchausen's horse, when its rearward end was
snapped off by the falling gate (the faithful animal, you may recall,
galloped for a mile upon its forward legs alone before the misadventure
was discovered)--Munchausen's horse, I insist,--the unbroken, forward
half,--did not display so frankly its confusing pipes and coils. Then
there is another ship which, by a monstrous effort of the printer, is
laid in Broadway, where its stacks out-top Trinity. I pace its mighty
length on the street before my house, and my eye climbs our tallest tree
for a just comparison.
It is my hope to find a man of like ambition and endurance as myself and
to walk through England. He must be able, if necessary, to keep to the
road for twenty-five miles a day, or, if the inn runs before us in the
dark, to stretch to thirty. But he should be a creature, also, who is
content to doze in meditation beneath a hedge, heedless whether the sun,
in faster boots, puts into lodging first. Careless of the hour, he may
remark in my sleepy ear "how the shadows lengthen as the sun declines."
He must be able to jest when his feet are tired. His drooping grunt must
be spiced with humor. When stiffness cracks him in the morning, he can
the better play the clown. He will not grumble at his bed or poke too
shrewdly at his food. Neither will he talk of graves and rheumatism when
a rainstorm finds us unprepared. If he snuffle at the nose, he must
snuffle cheerfully and with hope. Wit, with its unexpected turns, is to
be desired; but a pleasant and even humor is a better comrade on a dusty
road. It endures blisters and an empty stomach. A pack rests more
lightly on its weary shoulders. If he sing, he should know a round of
tunes and not wear a single melody to tatters. The merriest lilt grows
dull and lame when it travels all the day. But although I wish my
companion to be of a cheerful temper, he need not pipe or dance until
the mists have left the hills. Does not the shining sun itself rise
slowly to its noonday glory? A companion must give me leave to enjoy in
silence my sullen breakfast.
A talent for sketching shall be welcome. Let him produce his pencils and
his tablet at a pointed arch or mullioned window, or catch us in absurd
posture as we travel. If one tumbles in a ditch, it is but decency to
hold the pose until the picture's made.
But, chiefly, a companion should be quick with a smile and nod, apt for
conversation along the road. Neither beard nor ringlet must snub his
agreeable advance. Such a fellow stirs up a mixed acquaintance between
town and town, to point the shortest way--a bit of modest gingham mixing
a pudding at a pantry window, age hobbling to the gate on its friendly
crutch, to show how a better path climbs across the hills. Or in a
taproom he buys a round of ale and becomes a crony of the place. He
enlists a dozen friends to sniff outdoors at bedtime, with conflicting
prophecy of a shifting wind and the chance of rain.
A companion should be alert for small adventure. He need not, therefore,
to prove himself, run to grapple with an angry dog. Rather, let him
soothe the snarling creature! Let him hold the beast in parley while I
go on to safety with unsoiled dignity! Only when arbitration and soft
terms fail shall he offer a haunch of his own fair flesh. Generously he
must boost me up a tree, before he seeks safety for himself.
But many a trivial mishap, if followed with a willing heart, leads to
comedy and is a jest thereafter. I know a man who, merely by following
an inquisitive nose through a doorway marked "No Admittance," became
comrade to a company of traveling actors. The play was _Uncle Tom's
Cabin_, and they were at rehearsal. Presently, at a changing of the
scene, my friend boasted to Little Eva, as they sat together on a pile
of waves, that he performed upon the tuba. It seems that she had
previously mounted into heaven in the final picture without any
welcoming trumpet of the angels. That night, by her persuasion, my
friend sat in the upper wings and dispensed flutings of great joy as she
ascended to her rest.
Three other men of my acquaintance were caught once, between towns, on a
walking trip in the Adirondacks, and fell by chance into a kind of
sanitarium for convalescent consumptives. At first it seemed a gloomy
prospect. But, learning that there was a movie in a near-by village,
they secured two jitneys and gave a party for the inmates. In the church
parlor, when the show was done, they ate ice-cream and layer-cake. Two
of the men were fat, but the third, a slight and handsome fellow--I
write on suspicion only--so won a pretty patient at the feast, that, on
the homeward ride--they were rattling in the tonneau--she graciously
permitted him to steady her at the bumps and sudden turns.
Nor was this the end. As it still lacked an hour of midnight the general
sanitarium declared a Roman holiday. The slight fellow, on a challenge,
did a hand-stand, with his feet waving against the wall, while his knife
and keys and money dropped from his pockets. The pretty patient read
aloud some verses of her own upon the spring. She brought down her
water-colors, and laying a charcoal portrait off the piano, she ranged
her lovely wares upon the top. The fattest of my friends, also, eager to
do his part, stretched himself, heels and head, between two chairs. But,
when another chair was tossed on his unsupported middle, he fell with a
boom upon the carpet. Then the old doctor brought out wine and Bohemian
glasses with long stems and, as the clock struck twelve, the company
pledged one another's health, with hopes for a reunion. They lighted
their candles on the landing, and so to bed.
I know a man, also, who once met a sword-swallower at a county fair. A
volunteer was needed for his trick--someone to hold the scarlet cushion
with its dangerous knives--and zealous friends pushed him from his seat
and toward the stage. Afterwards he met the Caucasian Beauties and,
despite his timidity, they dined together with great merriment.
Then there is a kind of humorous philosophy to be desired on an
excursion. It smokes a contented pipe to the tune of every rivulet. It
rests a peaceful stomach on the rail of every bridge, and it observes
the floating leaves, like golden caravels upon the stream. It interprets
a trivial event. It is both serious and absurd. It sits on a fence to
moralize on the life of cows and flings in Plato on the soul. It plays
catch and toss with life and death and the world beyond. And it sees
significance in common things. A farmer's cart is a tumbril of the
Revolution. A crowing rooster is Chanticleer. It is the very cock that
proclaimed to Hamlet that the dawn was nigh. When a cloud rises up, such
a philosopher discourses of the flood. He counts up the forty rainy days
and names the present rascals to be drowned--profiteers in food,
plumbers and all laundrymen.