I think it was some such fantastic quality of thought that Horace
Walpole had in mind when he commended the Three Princes of Serendip.
Their Highnesses, it seems, "were always making discoveries, by accident
and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of: for instance,"
he writes, "one of them discovered that a mule blind of the right eye
had traveled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten on the
left side." At first, I confess, this employment seems a waste of time.
Sherlock Holmes did better when he pronounced, on finding a neglected
whisp of beard, that Doctor Watson's shaving mirror had been shifted to
an opposite window. But doubtless the Princes put their deduction to
higher use, and met the countryside and village with shrewd and vivid
observation.
Don Quixote had this same quality, but with more than a touch of
madness. Did he not build up the Lady Tolosa out of a common creature
at an inn? He sought knighthood at the hands of its stupid keeper and
watched his armor all night by the foolish moon. He tilted against a
windmill. I cannot wholeheartedly commend the Don, but, for an
afternoon, certainly, I would prefer his company between town and town
to that of any man who carries his clanking factory on his back.
But, also, I wish a companion of my travels to be for the first time in
England, in order that I may have a fresh audience for my superior
knowledge. In the cathedral towns I wish to wave an instructive finger
in crypt and aisle. Here is a bit of early glass. Here is a wall that
was plastered against the plague when the Black Prince was still alive.
I shall gossip of scholars in cord and gown, working at their rubric in
sunny cloisters. Or if I choose to talk of kings and forgotten battles,
I wish a companion ignorant but eager for my boasting.
It was only last night that several of us discussed vacations. Wyoming
was the favorite--a ranch, with a month on horseback in the mountains,
hemlock brouse for a bed, morning at five and wood to chop. But a horse
is to me a troubled creature. He stands to too great a height. His eye
glows with exultant deviltry as he turns and views my imperfection. His
front teeth seem made for scraping along my arm. I dread any fly or bee
lest it sting him to emotion. I am point to point in agreement with the
psalmist: "An horse is a vain thing for safety." If I must ride, I
demand a tired horse, who has cropped his wild oats and has come to a
slippered state. Are we not told that the horse in the crustaceous
age--I select a large word at random--was built no bigger than a dog?
Let this snug and peerless ancestor be saddled and I shall buy a ticket
for the West.
But I do not at this time desire to beard the wilderness. There is a
camp of Indians near the ranch. I can smell them these thousand miles
away. Their beads and greasy blankets hold no charm. Smoky bacon,
indeed, I like. I can lie pleasurably at the flap of the tent with
sleepy eyes upon the stars. I can even plunge in a chilly pool at dawn.
But the Indians and horses that infest Wyoming do not arouse my present
interest.
I am for England, therefore--for its winding roads, its villages that
nest along the streams, its peaked bridges with salmon jumping at the
weir, its thatched cottages and flowering hedges.
"The chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England--now!"
I wish to see reapers at work in Surrey fields, to stride over the windy
top of Devon, to cross Wiltshire when wind and rain and mist have
brought the Druids back to Stonehenge. At a crossroad Stratford is ten
miles off. Raglan's ancient towers peep from a wooded hill. Tintern or
Glastonbury can be gained by night. Are not these names sweet upon the
tongue? And I wish a black-timbered inn in which to end the day--with
polished brasses in the tap and the smell of the musty centuries upon
the stairs.
At the window of our room the Cathedral spire rises above the roofs.
There is no trolley-car or creaking of any wheel, and on the pavement we
hear only the fall of feet in endless pattern. Day weaves a hurrying
mesh, but this is the quiet fabric of the night.
[Illustration]
I wish to walk from London to Inverness, to climb the ghostly ramparts
of Macbeth's castle, to hear the shrill cry of Duncan's murder in the
night, to watch for witches on the stormy moor. I shall sit on the bench
where Johnson sat with Boswell on his journey to the Hebrides. I shall
see the wizard of the North, lame of foot, walking in the shade of
ruined Dryburgh. With drunken Tam, I shall behold in Alloway Kirk
warlocks in a dance. From the gloomy house of Shaws and its broken tower
David Balfour runs in flight across the heather. Culloden echoes with
the defeat of an outlaw prince. The stairs of Holyrood drip with
Rizzio's blood. But also, I wish to follow the Devon lanes, to rest in
villages on the coast at the fall of day when fishermen wind their nets,
to dream of Arthur and his court on the rocks beyond Tintagel. Merlin
lies in Wales with his dusty garments pulled about him, and his magic
sleeps. But there is wind tonight in the noisy caverns of the sea, and
Spanish pirates dripping with the slime of a watery grave, bury their
treasure when the fog lies thick.
Thousands of years have peopled these English villages. Their pavements
echo with the tread of kings and poets. Here is a sunny bower for lovers
when the world was young. Bishops of the Roman church--Saint Thomas
himself in his robes pontifical has walked through these broken
cloisters. Here is the altar where he knelt at prayer when his assassins
came. From that tower Mary of Scotland looked vainly for assistance to
gallop from the north.
Here stretches the Pilgrims' Way across the downs of Surrey--worn and
scratched by pious feet. From the west they came to Canterbury. The wind
stirs the far-off traffic, and the mist covers the hills as with an
ancient memory.
How many thirsty elbows have rubbed this table in the forgotten years!
How many feasts have come steaming from the kitchen when the London
coach was in! That pewter cup, maybe, offered its eager pledge when the
news of Agincourt was blown from France. Up that stairway Tom Jones
reeled with sparkling canary at his belt. These cobbles clacked in the
Pretender's flight. Here is the chair where Falstaff sat when he cried
out that the sack was spoiled with villainous lime. That signboard
creaked in the tempest that shattered the Armada.
My fancy mingles in the past. It hears in the inn-yard the chattering
pilgrims starting on their journey. Here is the Pardoner jesting with
the merry Wife of Bath, with his finger on his lips to keep their
scandal private. It sees Dick Turpin at the crossroads with loaded
pistols in his boots. There is mist tonight on Bagshot Heath, and men in
Kendal green are out. And fancy rebuilds a ruined castle, and lights the
hospitable fires beneath its mighty caldrons. It hangs tapestry on its
empty walls and, like a sounding trumpet, it summons up a gaudy company
in ruff and velvet to tread the forgotten measures of the past.
Let Wyoming go and hang itself in its muddy riding-boots and khaki
shirt! Let its tall horses leap upward and click their heels upon the
moon! I am for England.
It is my preference to land at Plymouth, and our anchor--if the captain
is compliant--will be dropped at night, in order that the Devon hills,
as the thrifty stars are dimmed, may appear first through the mists of
dawn. If my memory serves, there is a country church with
stone-embattled tower on the summit above the town, and in the early
twilight all the roads that climb the hills lead away to promised
kingdoms. Drake, I assert, still bowls nightly on the quay at Plymouth,
with pins that rattle in the windy season, but the game is done when the
light appears.
We clatter up to London. Paddington station or Waterloo, I care not. But
for arrival a rainy night is best, when the pavements glisten and the
mad taxis are rushing to the theatres. And then, for a week, by way of
practice and to test our boots, we shall trudge the streets of
London--the Strand and the Embankment. And certainly we shall explore
the Temple and find the sites of Blackfriars and the Globe. Here, beyond
this present brewery, was the bear-pit. Tarlton's jests still sound upon
the bank. A wherry, once, on this busy river, conveyed Sir Roger up to
Vauxhall. Perhaps, here, on the homeward trip, he was rejected by the
widow. The dear fellow, it is recorded, out of sentiment merely, kept
his clothes unchanged in the fashion of this season of his
disappointment. Here, also, was the old bridge across the Fleet. Here
was Drury Lane where Garrick acted. Tender hearts, they say, in pit and
stall, fluttered to his Romeo, and sighed their souls across the
candles. On this muddy curb link-boys waited when the fog was thick.
Here the footmen bawled for chairs.
But there are bookshops still in Charing Cross Road. And, for frivolous
moments, haberdashery is offered in Bond Street and vaudeville in
Leicester Square.
And then on a supreme morning we pack our rucksacks.
It was a grievous oversight that Christian failed to tell us what
clothing he carried in his pack. We know it was a heavy burden, for it
dragged him in the mire. But did he carry slippers to ease his feet at
night? And what did the Pardoner put inside his wallet? Surely the Wife
of Bath was supplied with a powder-puff and a fresh taffeta to wear at
the journey's end. I could, indeed, spare Christian one or two of his
encounters for knowledge of his wardrobe. These homely details are of
interest. The mad Knight of La Mancha, we are told, mortgaged his house
and laid out a pretty sum on extra shirts. Stevenson, also, tells us the
exact gear that he loaded on his donkey, but what did Marco Polo carry?
And Munchausen and the Wandering Jew? I have skimmed their pages vainly
for a hint.
For myself, I shall take an extra suit of underwear and another flannel
shirt, a pair of stockings, a rubber cape of lightest weight that falls
below the knees, slippers, a shaving-kit and brushes. I shall wash my
linen at night and hang it from my window, where it shall wave like an
admiral's flag to show that I sleep upon the premises. I shall replace
it as it wears. And I shall take a book, not to read but to have ready
on the chance. I once carried the Book of Psalms, but it was Nick Carter
I read, which I bought in a tavern parlor, fifteen pages missing, from a
fat lady who served me beer.
We run to the window for a twentieth time. It has rained all night, but
the man in the lift was hopeful when we came up from breakfast. We
believe him; as if he sat on a tower with a spy-glass on the clouds. We
cherish his tip as if it came from AEolus himself, holding the winds in
leash.
And now a streak of yellowish sky--London's substitute for blue--shows
in the west.
We pay our bill. We scatter the usual silver. Several senators in
uniform bow us down the steps. We hale a bus in Trafalgar Square. We
climb to the top--to the front seat with full prospect. The Haymarket.
Sandwich men with weary step announce a vaudeville. We snap our fingers
at so stale an entertainment. There are flower-girls in Piccadilly
Circus. Regent Street. We pass the Marble Arch, near which cut-throats
were once hanged on the three-legged mare of Tyburn. Hammersmith.
Brentford. The bus stops. It is the end of the route. We have ridden out
our sixpence. We climb down. We adjust our packs and shoe-strings. The
road to the western country beckons.
My dear sir, perhaps you yourself have planned for a landaulet this
summer and an English trip. You have laid out two swift weeks to make
the breathless round. You journey from London to Bristol in a day.
Another day, and you will climb out, stiff of leg, among the northern
lakes. If then, as you loll among the cushions, lapped in luxury, pink
and soft--if then, you see two men with sticks in hand and packs on
shoulder, know them for ourselves. We are singing on the road to
Windsor--to Salisbury, to Stonehenge, to the hills of Dorset, to
Lyme-Regis, to Exeter and the Devon moors.
It was a shepherd who came with a song to the mountain-top. "The sun
shone, the bees swept past me singing; and I too sang, shouted, World,
world, I am coming!"
[Illustration]
At a Toy-Shop Window.
In this Christmas season, when snowflakes fill the air and twilight is
the pleasant thief of day, I sometimes pause at the window of a toy-shop
to see what manner of toys are offered to the children. It is only five
o'clock and yet the sky is dark. The night has come to town to do its
shopping before the stores are shut. The wind has Christmas errands.
And there is a throng of other shoppers. Fathers of families drip with
packages and puff after street cars. Fat ladies--Now then, all
together!--are hoisted up. Old ladies are caught in revolving doors. And
the relatives of Santa Claus--surely no nearer than nephews (anaemic
fellows in faded red coats and cotton beards)--pound their kettles for
an offering toward a Christmas dinner for the poor.
But, also, little children flatten their noses on the window of the
toy-shop. They point their thumbs through their woolly mittens in a
sharp rivalry of choice. Their unspent nickels itch for large
investment. Extravagant dimes bounce around their pockets. But their
ears are cold, and they jiggle on one leg against a frosty toe.
Here in the toy-shop is a tin motor-car. Here is a railroad train, with
tracks and curves and switches, a pasteboard mountain and a tunnel. Here
is a steamboat. With a turning of a key it starts for Honolulu behind
the sofa. The stormy Straits of Madagascar lie along the narrow hall.
Here in the window, also, are beams and girders for a tower. Not since
the days of Babel has such a vast supply been gathered. And there are
battleships and swift destroyers and guns and armoured tanks. The
nursery becomes a dangerous ocean, with submarines beneath the stairs:
or it is the plain of Flanders and the great war echoes across the
hearth. Chateau-Thierry is a pattern in the rug and the andirons are the
towers of threatened Paris.
But on this Christmas night, as I stand before the toy-shop in the
whirling storm, the wind brings me the laughter of far-off children.
Time draws back its sober curtain. The snow of thirty winters is piled
in my darkened memory, but I hear shrill voices across the night.
Once upon a time--in the days when noses and tables were almost on a
level, and manhood had wavered from kilts to pants buttoning at the
side--once there was a great chest which was lodged in a closet behind
a sitting-room. It was from this closet that the shadows came at night,
although at noon there was plainly a row of hooks with comfortable
winter garments. And there were drawers and shelves to the ceiling where
linen was kept, and a cupboard for cough-syrup and oily lotions for
chapped hands. A fragrant paste, also, was spread on the tip of the
little finger, which, when wiggled inside the nostril and inhaled, was
good for wet feet and snuffles. Twice a year these bottles were smelled
all round and half of them discarded. It was the ragman who bought them,
a penny to the bottle. He coveted chiefly, however, lead and iron, and
he thrilled to old piping as another man thrills to Brahms. He was a sly
fellow and, unless Annie looked sharp, he put his knee against the
scale.
But at the rear of the closet, beyond the lamplight, there was a chest
where playing-blocks were kept. There were a dozen broken sets of
various shapes and sizes--the deposit and remnant of many years.
These blocks had once been covered with letters and pictures. They had
conspired to teach us. C had stood for cat. D announced a dog. Learning
had put on, as it were, a sugar coat for pleasant swallowing. The arid
heights teased us to mount by an easy slope. But we scraped away the
letters and the pictures. Should a holiday, we thought, be ruined by
insidious instruction? Must a teacher's wagging finger always come among
us? It was sufficient that five blocks end to end made a railway car,
with finger-blocks for platforms; that three blocks were an engine, with
a block on top to be a smokestack. We had no toy mountain and pasteboard
tunnel, as in the soft fashion of the present, but we jacked the rug
with blocks up hill and down, and pushed our clanking trains through the
hollow underneath. It was an added touch to build a castle on the
summit. A spool on a finger-block was the Duke himself on horseback,
hunting across his sloping acres.
There was, also, in the chest, a remnant of iron coal-cars with real
wheels. Their use was too apparent. A best invention was to turn
playthings from an obvious design. So we placed one of the coal-cars
under the half of a folding checkerboard and by adding masts and turrets
and spools for guns we built a battleship. This could be sailed all
round the room, on smooth seas where the floor was bare, but it pitched
and tossed upon a carpet. If it came to port battered by the storm,
should it be condemned like a ship that is broken on a sunny river? Its
plates and rivets had been tested in a tempest. It had skirted the
headlands at the staircase and passed the windy Horn.
Or perhaps we built a fort upon the beach before the fire. It was a
pretty warfare between ship and fort, with marbles used shot and shot in
turn. A lucky marble toppled the checkerboard off its balance and
wrecked the ship. The sailors, after scrambling in the water, put to
shore on flat blocks from the boat deck and were held as prisoners until
supper, in the dungeons of the fort. It was in the sitting-room that we
played these games, under the family's feet. They moved above our sport
like a race of tolerant giants; but when callers came, we were brushed
to the rear of the house.
Spools were men. Thread was their short and subsidiary use. Their larger
life was given to our armies. We had several hundred of them threaded on
long strings on the closet-hooks. But if a great campaign was
planned--if the Plains of Abraham were to be stormed or Cornwallis
captured--our recruiting sergeants rummaged in the drawers of the
sewing-machine for any spool that had escaped the draft. Or we peeked
into mother's work-box, and if a spool was almost empty, we suddenly
became anxious about our buttons. Sometimes, when a great spool was
needed for a general, mother wound the thread upon a piece of cardboard.
General Grant had carried black silk. Napoleon had been used on
trouser-patches. And my grandmother and a half-dozen aunts and elder
cousins did their bit and plied their needles for the war. In this
regard grandfather was a slacker, but he directed the battle from the
sofa with his crutch.
Toothpicks were guns. Every soldier had a gun. If he was hit by a marble
in the battle and the toothpick remained in place, he was only wounded;
but he was dead if the toothpick fell out. Of each two men wounded, by
Hague Convention, one recovered for the next engagement.
Of course we had other toys. Lead soldiers in cocked hats came down the
chimney and were marshaled in the Christmas dawn. A whole Continental
Army lay in paper sheets, to be cut out with scissors. A steam engine
with a coil of springs and key furnished several rainy holidays. A red
wheel-barrow supplied a short fury of enjoyment. There were sleds and
skates, and a printing press on which we printed the milkman's tickets.
The memory still lingers that five cents, in those cheap days, bought a
pint of cream. There was, also, a castle with a princess at a window.
Was there no prince to climb her trellis and bear her off beneath the
moon? It had happened so in Astolat. The princes of the gorgeous East
had wooed, also, in such a fashion. Or perhaps this was the very castle
that the wicked Kazrac lifted across the Chinese mountains in the night,
cheating Aladdin of his bride. It was a rather clever idea, as things
seem now in this time of general shortage, to steal a lady, house and
all, not forgetting the cook and laundress. But one day a little girl
with dark hair smiled at me from next door and gave me a Christmas cake,
and in my dreams thereafter she became the princess in my castle.
We had stone blocks with arches and round columns that were too delicate
for the hazard of siege and battle. Once, when a playmate had scarlet
fever, we lent them to him for his convalescence. Afterwards, against
contagion, we left them for a month under a bush in the side yard. Every
afternoon we wet them with a garden hose. Did not Noah's flood purify
the world? It would be a stout microbe, we thought, that could survive
the deluge. At last we lifted out the blocks at arm's length. We smelled
them for any lurking fever. They were damp to the nose and smelled like
the cement under the back porch. But the contagion had vanished like
Noah's wicked neighbors.
But store toys always broke. Wheels came off. Springs were snapped. Even
the princess faded at her castle window.
Sometimes a toy, when it was broken, arrived at a larger usefulness.
Although I would not willingly forget my velocipede in its first gay
youth, my memory of sharpest pleasure reverts to its later days, when
one of its rear wheels was gone. It had been jammed in an accident
against the piano. It has escaped me whether the piano survived the
jolt; but the velocipede was in ruins. When the wheel came off the
brewery wagon before our house and the kegs rolled here and there, the
wreckage was hardly so complete. Three spokes were broken and the hub
was cracked. At first, it had seemed that the day of my velocipede was
done. We laid it on its side and tied the hub with rags. It looked like
a jaw with tooth-ache. Then we thought of the old baby-carriage in the
storeroom. Perhaps a transfusion of wheels was possible. We conveyed
upstairs a hammer and a saw. It was a wobbling and impossible
experiment. But at the top of the house there was a kind of race-track
around the four posts of the attic. With three wheels complete, we had
been forced to ride with caution at the turns or be pitched against the
sloping rafters. We now discovered that a missing wheel gave the
necessary tilt for speed. I do not recall that the pedals worked. We
legged it on both sides. Ten times around was a race; and the audience
sat on the ladder to the roof and held a watch with a second-hand for
records.
Ours was a roof that was flat in the center. On winter days, when snow
would pack, we pelted the friendly milkman. Ours, also, was a cellar
that was lost in darkened mazes. A blind area off the laundry, where the
pantry had been built above, seemed to be the opening of a cavern. And
we shuddered at the sights that must meet the candle of the furnaceman
when he closed the draught at bedtime.
Abandoned furniture had uses beyond a first intention. A folding-bed of
ours closed to about the shape of a piano. When the springs and mattress
were removed it was a house with a window at the end where a wooden flap
let down. Here sat the Prisoner of Chillon, with a clothes-line on his
ankle. A pile of old furniture in the attic, covered with a cloth,
became at twilight a range of mountains with a gloomy valley at the
back. I still believe--for so does fancy wanton with my thoughts--that
Aladdin's cave opens beneath those walnut bed-posts, that the cavern of
jewels needs but a dusty search on hands and knees. The old house, alas,
has come to foreign use. Does no one now climb the attic steps? Has time
worn down the awful Caucasus? No longer is there children's laughter on
the stairs. The echo of their feet sleeps at last in the common day.
Nor must furniture, of necessity, be discarded. We dived from the
footboard of our bed into a surf of pillows. We climbed its headboard
like a mast, and looked for pirates on the sea. A sewing-table with legs
folded flat was a sled upon the stairs. Must I do more than hint that
two bed-slats make a pair of stilts, and that one may tilt like King
Arthur with the wash-poles? Or who shall fix a narrow use for the
laundry tubs, or put a limit on the coal-hole? And step-ladders! There
are persons who consider a step-ladder as a menial. This is an injustice
to a giddy creature that needs but a holiday to show its metal. On
Thursday afternoons, when the cook was out, you would never know it for
the same thin creature that goes on work-days with a pail and cleans the
windows. It is a tower, a shining lighthouse, a crowded grandstand, a
circus, a ladder to the moon.
But perhaps, my dear young sir, you are so lucky as to possess a smaller
and inferior brother who frets with ridicule. He is a toy to be desired
above a red velocipede. I offer you a hint. Print upon a paper in bold,
plain letters--sucking the lead for extra blackness--that he is afraid
of the dark, that he likes the girls, that he is a butter-fingers at
baseball and teacher's pet and otherwise contemptible. Paste the paper
inside the glass of the bookcase, so that the insult shows. Then lock
the door and hide the key. Let him gaze at this placard of his weakness
during a rainy afternoon. But I caution you to secure the keys of all
similar glass doors--of the china closet, of the other bookcase, of the
knick-knack cabinet. Let him stew in his iniquity without chance of
retaliation.
But perhaps, in general, your brother is inclined to imitate you and be
a tardy pattern of your genius. He apes your fashion in suspenders, the
tilt of your cap, your method in shinny. If you crouch in a barrel in
hide-and-seek, he crowds in too. You wag your head from side to side on
your bicycle in the manner of Zimmerman, the champion. Your brother wags
his, too. You spit in your catcher's mit, like Kelly, the
ten-thousand-dollar baseball beauty. Your brother spits in his mit, too.
These things are unbearable. If you call him "sloppy" when his face is
dirty, he merely passes you back the insult unchanged. If you call him
"sloppy-two-times," still he has no invention. You are justified now to
call him "nigger" and to cuff him to his place.
Tagging is his worst offense--tagging along behind when you are engaged
on serious business. "Now then, sonny," you say, "run home. Get nurse to
blow your nose." Or you bribe him with a penny to mind his business.
I must say a few words about paper-hangers, although they cannot be
considered as toys or play--things by any rule of logic. There is
something rather jolly about having a room papered. The removal of the
pictures shows how the old paper looked before it faded. The furniture
is pushed into an agreeable confusion in the hall. A rocker seems
starting for the kitchen. The great couch goes out the window. A chair
has climbed upon a table to look about. It needs but an alpenstock to
clamber on the bookcase. The carpet marks the places where the piano
legs came down.
And the paper-hanger is a rather jolly person. He sings and whistles in
the empty room. He keeps to a tune, day after day, until you know it. He
slaps his brush as if he liked his work. It is a sticky, splashing,
sloshing slap. Not even a plasterer deals in more interesting material.
And he settles down on you with ladders and planks as if a circus had
moved in. After hours, when he is gone, you climb on his planking and
cross Niagara, as it were, with a cane for balance. To this day I think
of paper-hangers as a kindly race of men, who sing in echoing rooms and
eat pie and pickles for their lunch. Except for their Adam's apples--got
with gazing at the ceiling--surely not the wicked apple of the Garden--I
would wish to be a paper-hanger.
Plumbers were a darker breed, who chewed tobacco fetched up from their
hip-pockets. They were enemies of the cook by instinct, and they spat in
dark corners. We once found a cake of their tobacco when they were gone.
We carried it to the safety of the furnace-room and bit into it in turn.
It was of a sweetish flavor of licorice that was not unpleasant. But the
sin was too enormous for our comfort.
But in November, when days were turning cold and hands were chapped, our
parents' thoughts ran to the kindling-pile, to stock it for the winter.
Now the kindling-pile was the best quarry for our toys, because it was
bought from a washboard factory around the corner. Not every child has
the good fortune to live near a washboard factory. Necessary as
washboards are, a factory of modest output can supply a county, with
even a little dribble for export into neighbor counties. Many unlucky
children, therefore, live a good ten miles off, and can never know the
fascinating discard of its lathes--the little squares and cubes, the
volutes and rhythmic flourishes which are cast off in manufacture and
are sold as kindling. They think a washboard is a dull and common thing.
To them it smacks of Monday. It smells of yellow soap and suds. It
wears, so to speak, a checkered blouse and carries clothes-pins in its
mouth. It has perspiration on its nose. They do not know, in their
pitiable ignorance, the towers and bridges that can be made from the
scourings of a washboard factory.
Our washboard factory was a great wooden structure that had been built
for a roller-skating rink. Father and mother, as youngsters in the time
of their courtship, had cut fancy eights upon the floor. And still, in
these later days, if you listened outside a window, you heard a whirling
roar, as if perhaps the skaters had returned and again swept the corners
madly. But it was really the sound of machinery that you heard,
fashioning toys and blocks for us. At noonday, comely red-faced girls
ate their lunches on the window-sills, ready for conversation and
acquaintance.
And now, for several days, a rumor has been running around the house
that a wagon of kindling is expected. Each afternoon, on our return from
school, we run to the cellar. Even on baking-day the whiff of cookies
holds us only for a minute. We wait only to stuff our pockets. And at
last the great day comes. The fresh wood is piled to the ceiling. It is
a high mound and chaos, without form but certainly not void. For there
are long pieces for bridges, flat pieces for theatre scenery, tall
pieces for towers and grooves for marbles. It is a vast quarry for our
pleasant use. You will please leave us in the twilight, sustained by
doughnuts, burrowing in the pile, throwing out sticks to replenish our
chest of blocks.
And therefore on this Christmas night, as I stand before the toy-shop in
the whirling storm, the wind brings me the laughter of these far-off
children. The snow of thirty winters is piled in my darkened memory, but
I hear shrill voices across the night.