"Mercy," I said, "what countess?"
"Oh, don't you know her work? She's a poet and she writes for the people
downstairs. She's the Countess Sillivitch."
"Sillivitch!" I answered, "of course I know her. She is the greatest
poet, maybe, of all time."
"No doubt about it," said the poet excitedly, "and there's a poem of
hers in this number. She writes in italics when she wants you to yell
it. And when she puts it in capitals, my God! you could hear her to the
elevated. It's ripping stuff."
"Dear me," I said, "I should like to read it. Awfully. It must be
funny."
"It isn't funny at all," the poet answered. "It isn't meant to be funny.
Did you read her 'Burning Kiss'?"
"I'm sorry," I answered.
The poet sighed. "It's wonderfully realistic. There's nothing
old-fashioned about that poem. The Countess wears painted stockings."
"Bless me!" I cried.
"Stalks with flowers. She comes from Bulgaria, or Esthonia, or
somewhere. Has a husband in a castle. Incompatible. He stifles her.
Common. In business. Beer spigots. She is artistic. Wants to soar. And
tragic. You remember my study of a soul?"
"The rainy night? Yes, I remember."
"Well, she's the one. She sat on the floor and told me her troubles."
"You don't suppose that I could meet her, do you?" I asked.
The poet looked at me with withering scorn. "You wouldn't like her," he
said. "She's very modern. She says very startling things. You have to be
in the modern spirit to follow her. And sympathetic. She doesn't want
any marriage or government or things like that. Just truth and freedom.
It's convention that clips our wings."
"Conventions are stupid things," I agreed.
"And the past isn't any good, either," the poet said. "The past is a
chain upon us. It keeps us off the mountains."
"Exactly," I assented.
"That's what the Countess thinks. We must destroy the past. Everything.
Customs. Art. Government. We must be ready for the coming of the dawn."
"Naturally," I said. "Candles trimmed, and all that sort of thing. You
don't suppose that I could meet the Countess? Well, I'm sorry. What's
the bit of red paper on the wall? Is it over a dirty spot?"
"It's to stir up my ideas. It's gay and when I look at it I think of
something."
"And then I suppose that you look out of that window, against that brick
wall and those windows opposite, and write poems--a sonnet to the girl
who stuck out her tongue at me."
"Oh, yes."
"Hot in summer up here?"
"Yes."
"And cold in winter?"
"Yes."
"And I suppose that you get some ideas out of that old tin bath-tub and
those ash-cans."
"Well, hardly."
"And you look at the moon through that dirty skylight?"
"No! There's nothing in that old stuff. Everybody's fed up on the moon."
"It's a snug place," I said. And I came away.
I circled the stairs into the denser smell which, by this time, I found
rather agreeable. The embalmer's door was open. In the gloom inside I
saw the apprentice busied in some dark employment. "I got somethin' to
show you," he called.
"Tomorrow," I answered.
As I was opening the street door, a woman came up the steps. She was a
dark, Bulgarian sort of woman. Or Esthonian, perhaps. I held back the
door to let her pass. She wore long ear-rings. Her skirt was looped high
in scollops. She wore sandals--and painted stockings.
Autumn Days.
It was rather a disservice when the poet wrote that the melancholy days
were come. His folly is inexplicable. If he had sung through his nose of
thaw and drizzle, all of us would have pitched in to help him in his
dismal chorus. But October and November are brisk and cheerful months.
In the spring, to be sure, there is a languid sadness. Its beauty is too
frail. Its flowerets droop upon the plucking. Its warm nights, its
breeze that blows from the fragrant hills, warn us how brief is the
blossom time. In August the year slumbers. Its sleepy days nod across
the heavy orchards and the yellow grain fields. Smoke looks out from
chimneys, but finds no wind for comrade. For a penny it would stay at
home and doze upon the hearth, to await a playmate from the north. The
birds are still. Only the insects sing. A threshing-machine, far off,
sinks to as drowsy a melody as theirs, like a company of grasshoppers,
but with longer beard and deeper voice. The streams that frolicked to
nimble tunes in May now crawl from pool to pool. The very shadows linger
under cover. They crouch close beneath shed and tree, and scarcely stir
a finger until the fiery sun has turned its back.
September rubs its eyes. It hears autumn, as it were, pounding on its
bedroom door, and turns for another wink of sleep. But October is
awakened by the frost. It dresses itself in gaudy color. It flings a
scarlet garment on the woods and a purple scarf across the hills. The
wind, at last, like a merry piper, cries out the tune, and its brisk and
sunny days come dancing from the north.
Yesterday was a holiday and I went walking in the woods. Although it is
still September it grows late, and there is already a touch of October
in the air. After a week of sultry weather--a tardy remnant from last
month--a breeze yesterday sprang out of the northwest. Like a good
housewife it swept the dusty corners of the world. It cleared our path
across the heavens and raked down the hot cobwebs from the sky. Clouds
had yawned in idleness. They had sat on the dull circle of the earth
like fat old men with drooping chins, but yesterday they stirred
themselves. The wind whipped them to their feet. It pursued them and
plucked at their frightened skirts. It is thus, after the sleepy season,
that the wind practices for the rough and tumble of November. It needs
but to quicken the tempo into sixteenth notes, to rouse a wholesome
tempest.
Who could be melancholy in so brisk a month? The poet should hang his
head for shame at uttering such a libel. These dazzling days could hale
him into court. The jury, with one voice, without rising from its box,
would hold for a heavy fine. Apples have been gathered in. There is a
thirsty, tipsy smell from the cider presses. Hay is pitched up to the
very roof. Bursting granaries show their golden produce at the cracks.
The yellow stubble of the fields is a promise that is kept. And who
shall say that there is any sadness in the fallen leaves? They are a gay
and sounding carpet. Who dances here needs no bell upon his ankle, and
no fiddle for the tune.
And sometimes in October the air is hazy and spiced with smells. Nature,
it seems, has cooked a feast in the heat of summer, and now its viands
stand out to cool.
November lights its fires and brings in early candles. This is the
season when chimneys must be tightened for the tempest. Their mighty
throats roar that all is strong aloft. Dogs now leave a stranger to go
his way in peace, and they bark at the windy moon. Windows rattle, but
not with sadness. They jest and chatter with the blast. They gossip of
storms on barren mountains.
Night, for so many months, has been a timid creature. It has hid so long
in gloomy cellars while the regal sun strutted on his way. But now night
and darkness put their heads together for his overthrow. In shadowy
garrets they mutter their discontent and plan rebellion. They snatch the
fields by four o'clock. By five they have restored their kingdom. They
set the stars as guardsmen of their rule.
Now travelers are pelted into shelter. Signboards creak. The wind
whistles for its rowdy company. Night, the monarch, rides upon the
storm.
A match! We'll light the logs. We'll crack nuts and pass the cider. How
now, master poet, is there no thirsty passage in your throat? I offer
you a bowl of milk and popcorn. Must you brood tonight upon the barren
fields--the meadows brown and sear? Who cares now how the wind grapples
with the chimneys? Here is snug company, warm and safe. Here are syrup
and griddle-cakes. Do you still suck your melancholy pen when such a
feast is going forward?
On Finding a Plot.
A young author has confessed to me that lately, in despair at hitting on
a plot, he locked himself in his room after breakfast with an oath that
he would not leave it until something was contrived and under way. He
did put an apple and sandwich prudently at the back of his desk, but
these, he swore, like the locusts and wild honey in the wilderness,
should last him through his struggle. By a happy afterthought he took
with him into retirement a volume of De Maupassant. Perhaps, he
considered, if his own invention lagged and the hour grew late, he might
shift its characters into new positions. Rather than starve till dawn he
could dress a courtezan in honest cloth, or tease a happy wife from her
household in the text to a mad elopement. Or by jiggling all the plots
together, like the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, the pieces might
fall into strange and startling patterns.
This is not altogether a new thought with him. While sucking at his pen
in a former drouth he considered whether a novel might not be made by
combining the characters of one story with the circumstance of another.
Let us suppose, for example, that Carmen, before she got into that ugly
affair with the Toreador, had settled down in Barchester beneath the
towers. Would the shadow of the cloister, do you think, have cooled her
southern blood? Would she have conformed to the decent gossip of the
town? Or, on the contrary, does not a hot color always tint the colder
mixture? Suppose that Carmen came to live just outside the Cathedral
close and walked every morning with her gay parasol and her pretty
swishing skirts past the Bishop's window.
We can fancy his pen hanging dully above his sermon, with his eyes on
space for any wandering thought, as if the clouds, like treasure ships
upon a sea, were freighted with riches for his use. The Bishop is
brooding on an address to the Ladies' Sewing Guild. He must find a text
for his instructive finger. It is a warm spring morning and the
daffodils are waving in the borders of the grass. A robin sings in the
hedge with an answer from his mate. There is wind in the tree-tops with
lively invitation to adventure, but the Bishop is bent to his sober
task. Carmen picks her way demurely across the puddles in the direction
of the Vicarage. Her eyes turn modestly toward his window. Surely she
does not see him at his desk. That dainty inch of scarlet stocking is
quite by accident. It is the puddles and the wind frisking with her
skirt.
"Eh! Dear me!" The good man is merely human. He pushes up his spectacles
for nearer sight. He draws aside the curtain. "Dear me! Bless my soul!
Who is the lady? Quite a foreign air. I don't remember her at our little
gatherings for the heathen." A text is forgotten. The clouds are empty
caravels. He calls to Betsy, the housemaid, for a fresh neck-cloth and
his gaiters. He has recalled a meeting with the Vicar and goes out
whistling softly, to disaster.
Alas! In my forgetfulness I have skimmed upon the actual plot. You have
recalled already how La Signora Madeline descended on the Bishop's
Palace. Her beauty was a hard assault. Except for her crippled state she
might herself have toppled the Bishop over. But she pales beside the
dangerous Carmen.
Suppose, for a better example, that the cheerful Mark Tapley who always
came out strong in adversity, were placed in a modern Russian novel. As
the undaunted Taplovitch he would have shifted its gloom to a sunny
ending. Fancy our own dear Pollyanna, the glad girl, adopted by an aunt
in "Crime and Punishment." Even Dostoyevsky must have laid down his
doleful pen to give her at last a happy wedding--flower-girls and
angel-food, even a shrill soprano behind the hired palms and a table of
cut glass.
Oliver Twist and Nancy,--merely acquaintances in the original
story,--with a fresh hand at the plot, might have gone on a bank holiday
to Margate. And been blown off shore. Suppose that the whole excursion
was wrecked on Treasure Island and that everyone was drowned except
Nancy, Oliver and perhaps the trombone player of the ship's band, who
had blown himself so full of wind for fox-trots on the upper deck that
he couldn't sink. It is Robinson Crusoe, lodging as a handsome bachelor
on the lonely island,--observe the cunning of the plot!--who battles
with the waves and rescues Nancy. The movie-rights alone of this are
worth a fortune. And then Crusoe, Oliver, Friday and the trombone player
stand a siege from John Silver and Bill Sikes, who are pirates, with
Spanish doubloons in a hidden cove. And Crusoe falls in love with Nancy.
Here is a tense triangle. But youth goes to youth. Crusoe's whiskers are
only dyed their glossy black. The trombone player, by good luck (you see
now why he was saved from the wreck), is discovered to be a retired
clergyman--doubtless a Methodist. The happy knot is tied. And then--a
sail! A sail! Oliver and Nancy settle down in a semi-detached near
London, with oyster shells along the garden path and cat-tails in the
umbrella jar. The story ends prettily under their plane-tree at the
rear--tea for three, with a trombone solo, and the faithful Friday and
Old Bill, reformed now, as gardener, clipping together the shrubs
against the sunny wall.
Was there a serpent in the garden at peaceful Cranford? Suppose that one
of the gay rascals of Dumas, with tall boots and black moustachios, had
got in when the tempting moon was up. Could the gentle ladies in their
fragile guard of crinoline have withstood this French assault?
Or Camille, perhaps, before she took her cough, settled at Bath and
entangled Mr. Pickwick in the Pump Room. Do not a great hat and feather
find their victim anywhere? Is not a silken ankle as potent at Bath as
in Bohemia? Surely a touch of age and gout is no prevention against the
general plague. Nor does a bald head tower above the softer passions.
Camille's pretty nose is powdered for the onslaught. She has arranged
her laces in dangerous hazard to the eye. And now the bold huzzy
undeniably winks at Mr. Pickwick over her pint of "killibeate." She
drops her fan with usual consequence. A nod. A smile. A word. At the
Assembly--mark her sudden progress and the triumphant end!--they sit
together in the shadows of the balcony. "My dear," says Mr. Pickwick,
gazing tenderly through his glasses, "my love, my own, will you--bless
my soul!--will you share my lodgings at Mrs. Bardell's in Goswell
Street?" We are mariners, all of us, coasting in dangerous waters. It is
the syren's voice, her white beauty gleaming on the shoal--it is the
moon that throws us on the rocks.
And then a dozen dowagers breed the gossip. Duchesses, frail with years,
pop and burst with the pleasant secret. There is even greater commotion
than at Mr. Pickwick's other disturbing affair with the middle-aged lady
in the yellow curl-papers. This previous affair you may recall. He had
left his watch by an oversight in the taproom, and he went down to get
it when the inn was dark. On the return he took a false direction at the
landing and, being misled by the row of boots along the hall, he entered
the wrong room. He was in his nightcap in bed when, peeping through the
curtains, he saw the aforesaid lady brushing her back hair. A duel was
narrowly averted when this startling scandal came to the ears of the
lady's lover, Mr. Peter Magnus. Camille, I think, could have kept this
sharper scandal to herself. At most, with a prudent finger on her lips,
she would have whispered the intrigue harmlessly behind her fan and set
herself to snare a duke.
I like to think, also, of the incongruity of throwing Rollo (Rollo the
perfect, the Bayard of the nursery, the example of our suffering
childhood)--Rollo grown up, of course, and without his aseptic Uncle
George--into the gay scandal, let us say, of the Queen's Necklace.
Perhaps it is forgotten how he and his little sister Jane went to the
Bull Fight in Rome on Sunday morning by mistake. They were looking for
the Presbyterian Church, and hand in hand they followed the crowd. It is
needless to remind you how Uncle George was vexed. Rollo was a prig. He
loved his Sunday school and his hour of piano practice. He brushed his
hair and washed his face without compulsion. He even got in behind his
ears. He went to bed cheerfully upon a hint. Thirty years ago--I was so
pestered--if I could have met Rollo in the flesh I would have lured him
to the alleyway behind our barn and pushed him into the manure-pit. In
the crisp vernacular of our street, I would have punched the everlasting
tar out of him.
It was circumstance that held the Bishop and Rollo down. Isn't
Cinderella just a common story of sordid realism until the fairy
godmother appears? Except for the pumpkin and a very small foot she
would have married the butcher's boy, and been snubbed by her sisters
to the end. It was only luck that it was a prince who awakened the
Sleeping Beauty. The plumber's assistant might have stumbled by. What
was Aladdin without his uncle, the magician? Do princesses still sleep
exposed to a golden kiss? Are there lamps for rubbing, discarded now in
attics?
Sinbad, with a steady wife, would have stayed at home and become an
alderman. Romeo might have married a Montague and lived happily ever
after. It was but chance that Titania awakened in the Ass's
company--chance that Viola was cast on the coast of Illyria and found
her lover. Any of these plots could have been altered by jogging the
author's elbow. A bit of indigestion wrecks the crimson shallop. Comedy
or tragedy is but the falling of the dice. By the flip of a coin comes
the poisoned goblet or the princess.
But my young author's experiment with De Maupassant was not successful.
He tells me that hunger caught him in the middle of the afternoon, and
that he went forth for a cup of malted milk, which is his weakness. His
head was as empty as his stomach.
And yet there are many novels written and even published, and most of
them seem to have what pass for plots. Bipeds, undeniably, are set up
with some likeness to humanity. They talk from page to page without any
squeak of bellows. They live in lodgings and make acquaintance across
the air-shaft. They wrestle with villains. They fall in love. They
starve and then grow famous. And at last, in all good books, journeys
end in lovers' meeting. It is as easy as lying. Only a plot is needed.
And may not anyone set up the puppets? Rich man, poor man, beggarman,
thief! You have only to say _eenie meenie_ down the list, and trot out a
brunette or a blonde. There is broadcloth in the tiring-box, and swords
and velvet; and there is, also, patched wool, and shiny elbows. Your
lady may sigh her soul to the Grecian tents, or watch for honest Tom on
his motor-cycle. On Venetian balcony and village stoop the stars show
alike for lovers and everywhere there are friendly shadows in the night.
Like a master of marionettes, we may pull the puppets by their strings.
It is such an easy matter--if once a plot is given--to lift a beggar or
to overthrow a rascal. A virtuous puppet can be hoisted to a tinsel
castle. A twitching of the thumb upsets the wicked King. Rollo is
pitched to his knees before a scheming beauty. And would it not be fun
to dangle before the Bishop that little Carmen figure with her daring
lace and scarlet stockings?--or to swing the bold Camille by the strings
into Mr. Pickwick's arms as the curtain falls?
Was it not Hawthorne who died leaving a notebook full of plots? And
Walter Scott, when that loyal, harassed hand of his was shriveled into
death, must have had by him a hundred hints for projected books. One
author--I forget who he was--bequeathed to another author--the name has
escaped me--a memorandum of characters and events. At any author's
death there must be a precious salvage. Among the surviving papers there
sits at least one dusty heroine waiting for a lover. Here are notes for
the Duchess's elopement. Here is a sketch how the deacon proved to be a
villain. As old ladies put by scraps of silk for a crazy quilt, shall
not an author, also, treasure in his desk shreds of character and odds
and ends to make a plot?
Now the truth is, I suspect, that the actual plot has little to do with
the merits of a great many of the best books. It is only the bucket that
fetches up the water from the well. It is the string that holds the
shining beads. Who really cares whether Tom Jones married Sophia? And
what does it matter whether Falstaff died in bed or in his boots, or
whether Uncle Toby married the widow? It is the mirth and casual
adventure by the way that hold our interest.
Some of the best authors, indeed, have not given a thought to their
plots until it is time to wind up the volume. When Dickens sent the
Pickwick Club upon its travels, certainly he was not concerned whether
Tracy Tupman found a wife. He had not given a thought to Sam's romance
with the pretty housemaid at Mr. Nupkins's. The elder Mrs. Weller's
fatal cough was clearly a happy afterthought. Thackeray, at the start,
could hardly have foreseen Esmond's marriage. When he wrote the early
chapters of "Vanity Fair," he had not traced Becky to her shabby garret
of the Elephant at Pumpernickel. Dumas, I have no doubt, wrote from
page to page, careless of the end. Doubtless he marked Milady for a bad
end, but was unconcerned whether it would be a cough or noose. Victor
Hugo did no more than follow a trail across the mountains of his
invention, content with the kingdoms of each new turning.
In these older and more deliberate books, if a young lady smiled upon
the hero, it was not already schemed whether they would be lovers, with
the very manner of his proposal already set. The glittering moon was not
yet bespoken for the night. "My dear young lady," this older author
thinks, "you have certainly very pretty eyes and I like the way that
lock of brown hair rests against your ear, but I am not at all sure that
I shall let you marry my hero. Please sit around for a dozen chapters
while I observe you. I must see you in tweed as well as silk. Perhaps
you have an ugly habit of whining. Or safe in a married state you might
wear a mob-cap in to breakfast. I'll send my hero up to London for his
fling. There is an actress I must have him meet. I'll let him frolic
through the winter. On his return he may choose between you."
"My dear madam," another of these older authors meditates, "how can I
judge you on a first acquaintance? Certainly you talk loosely for an
honest wife. It is too soon, as yet, to know how far your flirtation
leads. I must observe you with Mr. Fopling in the garden after dinner.
If, later, I grow dull and my readers nod, your elopement will come
handy."
Nor was a lady novelist of the older school less deliberate. When a
bold adventurer appears, she holds her heroine to the rearward of her
affection. "I'll make no decision yet for Lady Emily," she thinks. "This
gay fellow may have a wife somewhere. His smooth manner with the ladies
comes with practice. It is soon enough if I decide upon their affair in
my second volume. Perhaps, after all, the captain may prove to be the
better man."
And yet this spacious method requires an ample genius. A smaller writer
must take a map and put his finger beforehand on his destination. When a
hero fares forth singing in the dawn, the author must know at once his
snug tavern for the night. The hazard of the morning has been matched
already with a peaceful twilight. The seeds of time are planted, the
very harvest counted when the furrow's made. My heart goes out to that
young author who sits locked in his study, munching his barren apple. He
must perfect his scenario before he starts. How easy would be his task,
if only he could just begin, "Once upon a time," and follow his careless
contrivance.
I know a teacher who has a full-length novel unpublished and concealed.
Sometimes, I fancy, at midnight, when his Latin themes are marked, he
draws forth its precious pages. He alters and smooths his sentences
while the household sleeps. And even in his classroom, as he listens to
the droning of a conjugation, he leaps to horse. Little do his students
suspect, as they stutter with their verbs, that with their teacher,
heedless of convention, rides the dark lady of his swift adventure.
I look with great awe on an acquaintance who averages more than one
story a week and publishes them in a periodical called _Frisky Stories_.
He shifts for variety among as many as five or six pen-names. And I
marvel at a friend who once wrote a story a day for a newspaper
syndicate. But his case was pathetic. When I saw him last, he was
sitting on a log in the north forest, gloomily estimating how many of
his wretched stories would cover the wood-pulp of the state. His health
was threatened. He was resting from the toil
"Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up."
From all this it must appear that the real difficulty is in finding a
sufficient plot. The start of a plot is easy, but it is hard to carry it
on and end it. I myself, on any vacant morning, could get a hero tied
hand and foot inside a cab, but then I would not know where to drive
him. I have thought, in an enthusiastic moment, that he might be lowered
down a manhole through the bottom of the cab. This is an unprecedented
villainy, and I have gone so far as to select a lonely manhole in
Gramercy Park around the corner from the Players' Club. But I am lost
how my hero could be rescued. Covered with muck, I could hardly hope
that his lady would go running to his arms. I have, also, a pretty
pencil for a fight in the ancient style, with swords upon a stairway.
But what then? And what shall I do with the gallant Percival de Vere,
after he has slid down the rope from his beetling dungeon tower? As for
ladies--I could dress up the pretty creatures, but would they move or
speak upon my bidding? No one would more gladly throw a lady and
gentleman on a desert island. At a pinch I flatter myself I could draw a
roaring lion. But in what circumstance should the hungry cannibals
appear? These questions must tax a novelist heavily.
Or might I not, for copy, strip the front from that building opposite?
"The whole of the frontage shaven sheer,
The inside gaped: exposed to day,
Right and wrong and common and queer,
Bare, as the palm of your hand, it lay."
Every room contains a story. That chair, the stove, the very tub for
washing holds its secrets. The stairs echo with the tread of a dozen
lives. And in every crowd upon the street I could cast a stone and find
a hero. There is a seamstress somewhere, a locksmith, a fellow with a
shovel. I need but the genius to pluck out the heart of their mystery.
The rumble of the subway is the friction of lives that rub together. The
very roar of cities is the meshing of our human gear.
I dream of this world I might create. In romantic mood, a castle lifts
its towers into the blue dome of heaven. I issue in spirit with Jeanne
d'Arc from the gate of Orleans, and I play the tragedy with changing
scene until the fires of Rouen have fallen into ashes. I sail the seas
with Raleigh. I scheme with the hump-backed Richard. Out of the north,
with wind and sunlight, my hero comes singing to his adventures.
It would be glorious fun to create a world, to paint a valley in autumn
colors and set up a village at the crossroads. Housewives chatter at
their wash-lines. Wheels rattle on the wooden bridge. Old men doze on
the grocery bench. And now let's throw the plot, at a hazard, around the
lovely Susan, the grocer's clerk. For her lover we select a young
garage-man, the jest of the village, who tinkers at an improvement of a
carburetor. The owner of a thousand acres on the hill shall be our
villain--a wastrel and a gambler. There is a mortgage on his acres. He
is pressed for payment. He steals the garage-man's blueprints. And now
it is night. Susan dearly loves a movie. The Orpheum is eight miles off.
Painted Cupids. Angels with trumpets. The villain. An eight-cylindered
runabout. Susan. B-r-r-r-r! The movie. The runabout again. A lonely
road. Just a kiss, my pretty girl. Help! Help! Chug! Chug! Aha! Foiled!
The garage-man. You cur! You hound! Take that! And that! Susan. The
garage-man. The blueprints. Name the happy day. Oh, joy! Oh, bliss!
It would be fun to model these little worlds and set them up to cool.
Is it any wonder that there are a million stars across the night? God
Himself enjoyed the vast creation of His worlds. It was the evening and
the morning of the sixth day when He set his puppets moving in their
stupendous comedy.
[Illustration]
Circus Days.
There have been warm winds out of the south for several days, soft rains
have teased the daffodils into blossom along the fences, and this
morning I heard the first clicking of a lawn-mower. It seems but
yesterday that winter was tugging at the chimneys, that March freshets
were brawling in the gutters; but, with the shifting of the cock upon
the steeple, the spring comes from its hiding in the hills. At this
moment, to prove the changing of the season, a street organ plays
beneath my window. It is a rather miserable box and is stocked with
sentimental tunes for coaxing nickels out of pity. Its inlaid mahogany
is soiled with travel. It has a peg-leg and it hangs around the
musician's neck as if weary of the road. "Master," it seems to say, "may
we sit awhile? My old stump is wearing off." And yet on this warm
morning in the sunlight there is almost a touch of frolic in the box. A
syncopation attempts a happier temper. It has sniffed the fragrant air,
and desires to put a better face upon its troubles.
The housemaid next door hangs out the Monday's garments to dry, and
there is a pleasant flapping of legs and arms as if impatient for
partners in a dance. Must a petticoat sit unasked when the music plays?
Surely breeches and stockings will not hold back when a lively skirt
shall beckon. A slow waltz might even tempt aunty's night-gown off the
line. If only a vegetable man would come with a cart of red pieplant and
green lettuce and offer his gaudy wares along the street, then the
evidence of spring would be complete.
But there is even better evidence at hand. This morning I noticed that a
circus poster had been pasted on the billboard near the school-house.
Several children and I stopped to see the wonders that were promised.
Then the school-bell rang and they dawdled off. At Stratford, also, once
upon a time, boys with shining morning faces crept like snails to
school. Were there circus billboards in so remote a day? The pundits,
bleared with search, are strangely silent. This morning it will be a
shrewd lesson that keeps the children's thoughts from leaping out the
window. Two times two will hardly hold their noses on the desk.
On the billboard there is the usual blonde with pink legs, balanced on
one toe on a running horse. The clown holds the paper hoop. The band is
blowing itself very red in the face. An acrobat leaps headlong from a
high trapeze. There are five rings, thirty clowns, an amazing variety of
equestrian and slack-wire genius, a galaxy of dazzling beauties; and
every performance includes a dizzy, death-defying dive by a dauntless
dare-devil--on a bicycle from the top of the tent. And of course there
are elephants and performing dogs and fat ladies. One day only--two
performances--rain or shine.
Does not this kind of billboard stir the blood in these languid days of
spring? It is a tonic to the sober street. It is a shining dial that
marks the coming of the summer. In the winter let barns and fences
proclaim the fashion of our dress and tease us with bargains for the
kitchen. But in the spring, when the wind is from the south, fences have
a better use. They announce the circus. What child now will not come
upon a trot? What student can keep to his solemn book? There is a sleepy
droning from the school-house. The irregular verbs--lawless rascals with
a past--chafe in a dull routine. The clock loiters through the hour.
It was by mere coincidence that last night on my way home I stopped at a
news-stand for a daily paper, and saw a periodical by the name of the
_Paste-Brush_. On a gay cover was the picture of another blonde--a
sister, maybe, of the lady of the billboard. She was held by an ankle
over a sea of up-turned faces, but by her happy, inverted smile she
seemed unconscious of her danger.
The _Paste-Brush_ is new to me. I bought a copy, folded its scandalous
cover out of sight and took it home. It proves to be the trade journal
of the circus and amusement-park interests. It announces a circulation
of seventy thousand, which I assume is largely among acrobats,
magicians, fat ladies, clowns, liniment-venders, lion-tamers, Caucasian
Beauties and actors on obscure circuits.
Now it happens that among a fairly wide acquaintance I cannot boast a
single acrobat or liniment-vender. Nor even a professional fat man. A
friend of mine, it is true, swells in that direction as an amateur, but
he rolls night and morning as a corrective. I did once, also, pass an
agreeable hour at a County Fair with a strong man who bends iron bars in
his teeth. He had picked me from his audience as one of convincing
weight to hang across the bar while he performed his trick. When the
show was done, he introduced me to the Bearded Beauty and a talkative
Mermaid from Chicago. One of my friends, also, has told me that she is
acquainted with a lady--a former pupil of her Sunday school--who leaps
on holidays in the park from a parachute. The bantam champion, too, many
years ago, lived behind us around the corner; but he was a distant hero,
sated with fame, unconscious of our youthful worship. But these meetings
are exceptional and accidental. Most of us, let us assume, find our
acquaintance in the usual walks of life. Last night, therefore, having
laid by the letters of Madame d'Arblay, on whose seven volumes I have
been engaged for a month, I took up the _Paste-Brush_ and was carried at
once into another and unfamiliar world.
The frontispiece is the big tent of the circus with side-shows in the
foreground. There is a great wheel with its swinging baskets, a
merry-go-round, a Funny Castle, and a sword-swallower's booth. By a
dense crowd around a wagon I am of opinion that here nothing less than
red lemonade is sold. Certainly Jolly Maude, "that mountain of flesh,"
holds a distant, surging crowd against the ropes.
An article entitled "Freaks I Have Known" is worth the reading. You may
care to know that a celebrated missing-link--I withhold the lady's
name--plays solitaire in her tent as she waits her turn. Bearded ladies,
it is asserted, are mostly married and have a fondness for crocheting
out of hours. A certain three-legged boy, "the favorite of applauding
thousands," tried to enlist for the war, but was rejected because he
broke up a pair of shoes. The Wild Man of Borneo lived and died in
Waltham, Massachusetts. If the street and number were given, it would
tempt me to a pilgrimage. Have I not journeyed to Concord and to
Plymouth? Perhaps an old inhabitant--an antique spinster or rheumatic
grocer--can still remember the pranks of the Wild Man's childhood.
But in the _Paste-Brush_ the pages of advertisement are best. Slot
machines for chewing-gum are offered for sale--Merry-Widow swings, beach
babies (a kind of doll), genuine Tiffany rings that defy the expert,
second-hand saxophones, fountain pens at eight cents each and sofa
pillows with pictures of Turkish beauties.
But let us suppose that you, my dear sir, are one of those seventy
thousand subscribers and are by profession a tattooer. On the day of
publication with what eagerness you scan its columns! Here is your
opportunity to pick up an improved outfit--"stencils and supplies
complete, with twelve chest designs and a picture of a tattooed lady in
colors, twelve by eighteen, for display. Send for price list." Or if you
have skill in charming snakes and your stock of vipers is running low,
write to the Snake King of Florida for his catalogue. "He treats you
right." Here is an advertisement of an alligator farm. Alligator-wrestlers,
it is said, make big money at popular resorts on the southern circuit.
You take off your shoes and stockings, when the crowd has gathered, and
wade into the slimy pool. It needs only a moderate skill to seize the
fierce creature by his tail and haul him to the shore. A deft movement
throws him on his back. Then you tickle him under the ear to calm him
and pass the hat.
Here in the _Paste-Brush_ is an announcement of a ship-load of monkeys
from Brazil. Would you care to buy a walrus? A crocodile is easy money
on the Public Square in old-home week. Or perhaps you are a glass-blower
with your own outfit, a ventriloquist, a diving beauty, a lyric tenor or
a nail-eater. If so, here is an agent who will book you through the
West. The small cities and large towns of Kansas yearn for you. Or if
you, my dear madam, are of good figure, the Alamo Beauties, touring in
Mississippi, want your services. Long season. No back pay.
Would you like to play a tuba in a ladies' orchestra? You are wanted in
Oklahoma. The Sunshine Girls--famous on western circuits--are looking to
augment their number. "Wanted: Woman for Eliza and Ophelia. Also a child
for Eva. Must double as a pony. State salary. Canada theatres."
It is affirmed that there is money in box-ball, that hoop-la yields a
fortune, that "you mop up the tin" with a huckley-buck. It sounds easy.
I wonder what a huckley-buck is like. I wonder if I have ever seen one.
It must be common knowledge to the readers of the _Paste-Brush_, for the
term is not explained. Perhaps one puts a huckley-buck in a wagon and
drives from town to town. Doubtless it returns a fortune in a County
Fair. Is this not an opportunity for an underpaid school-teacher or slim
seamstress? No longer must she subsist upon a pittance. Here is rest for
her blue, old fingers. Let her write today for a catalogue. She should
choose a huckley-buck of gaudy color, with a Persian princess on the
side, to draw the crowd. Let her stop by the village pump and sound a
stirring blast upon her megaphone.
Or perhaps you, my dear sir, have been chafing in an indoor job. You
have been hooped through a dreary winter upon a desk. If so, your gloomy
disposition can be mended by a hoop-la booth, whatever it is. "This
way, gentlemen! Try your luck! Positively no blanks. A valuable prize
for everybody." Your stooped shoulders will straighten. Your digestion
will come to order in a month. Or why not run a stand at the beach for
walking-sticks, with a view in the handle of a "dashing French actress
in a daring pose, or the latest picture of President and Mrs. Wilson at
the Peace Conference."
Or curiosities may be purchased--"two-headed giants, mermaids,
sea-serpents, a devil-child and an Egyptian mummy. New lists ready." A
mummy would be a quiet and profitable companion for our seamstress in
the long vacation. It would need less attention than a sea-serpent. She
should announce the dusty creature as the darling daughter of the
Ptolemies. When the word has gone round, she may sit at ease before the
booth in scarlet overalls and count the dropping nickels. With what
vigor will she take to her thimble in the autumn!
Out in Gilmer, Texas, there is a hog with six legs--"alive and healthy.
Five hundred dollars take it." Here is a merchant who will sell you
"snake, frog and monkey tights." After your church supper, on the stage
of the Sunday school, surely, in such a costume, my dear madam, you
could draw a crowd. Study the trombone and double your income. Can you
yodle? "It can be learned at home, evenings, in six easy lessons."
A used popcorn engine is cut in half. A waffle machine will be shipped
to you on trial. Does no one wish to take the road with a five-legged
cow? Here is one for sale--an extraordinary animal that cleaned up sixty
dollars in one afternoon at a County Fair in Indiana. "Walk up, ladies
and gentlemen! The marvel of the age. Plenty of time before the big show
starts. A five-legged cow. Count 'em. Answers to the name of Guenevere.
Shown before all the crowned heads of Europe. Once owned by the Czar of
Russia. Only a dime. A tenth of a dollar. Ten cents. Show about to
start."
Or perhaps you think it more profitable to buy a steam calliope--some
very good ones are offered second-hand in the _Paste-Brush_--and tour
your neighboring towns. Make a stand at the crossroads under the
soldiers' monument. Give a free concert. Then when the crowd is thick
about you, offer them a magic ointment. Rub an old man for his
rheumatism. Throw away his crutch, clap him on the back and pronounce
him cured. Or pull teeth for a dollar each. It takes but a moment for a
diagnosis. When once the fashion starts, the profitable bicuspids will
drop around you.
And Funny Castles can be bought. Perhaps you do not know what they are.
They are usual in amusement parks. You and a favorite lady enter, hand
in hand. It is dark inside and if she is of an agreeable timidity she
leans to your support. Only if you are a churl will you deny your arm.
Then presently a fiery devil's head flashes beside you in the passage.
The flooring tilts and wobbles as you step. Here, surely, no lady will
wish to keep her independence. Presently a picture opens in the wall. It
is souls in hell, or the Queen of Sheba on a journey. Then a sharp draft
ascends through an opening in the floor. Your lady screams and minds her
skirts. A progress through a Funny Castle, it is said, ripens the
greenest friendship. Now take the lady outside, smooth her off and
regale her with a lovers' sundae. Funny Castles, with wind machines, a
Queen of Sheba almost new, and devil's head complete, can be purchased.
Remit twenty-five per cent with order. The balance on delivery.
Perhaps I am too old for these high excitements. Funny Castles are
behind me. Ladies of the circus, alas! who ride in golden chariots are
no longer beautiful. Cleopatra in her tinsel has sunk to the common
level. Clowns with slap-sticks rouse in me only a moderate delight.
At this moment, as I write, the clock strikes twelve. It is noon and
school is out. There is a slamming of desks and a rush for caps. The
boys scamper on the stairs. They surge through the gate. The acrobat on
the billboard greets their eyes--the clown, also the lady with the pink
legs. They pause. They gather in a circle. They have fallen victims to
her smile. They mark the great day in their memory.
The wind is from the south. The daffodils flourish along the fences. The
street organ hangs heavily on its strap. There will be a parade in the
morning. The freaks will be on their platforms by one o'clock. The great
show starts at two. I shall buy tickets and take Nepos, my nephew.
[Illustration]
In Praise of a Lawn-Mower.
I do not recall that anyone has written the praises of a lawn-mower. I
seem to sow in virgin soil. One could hardly expect a poet to lift up
his voice on such a homely theme. By instinct he prefers the more
rhythmic scythe. Nor, on the other hand, will mechanical folk pay a full
respect to a barren engine without cylinders and motive power. But to me
it is just intricate enough to engage the interest. I can trace the
relation of its wheels and knives, and see how the lesser spinning
starts the greater. In a printing press, on the contrary, I hear only
the general rattle. Before a gas-engine, also, I am dumb. Its sixteen
processes to an explosion baffle me. I could as easily digest a machine
for setting type. I nod blankly, as if a god explained the motion of the
stars. Even when I select a motor I take it merely on reputation and by
bouncing on the cushions to test its comfort.
It has been a great many years since I was last intimate with a
lawn-mower. My acquaintance began in the days when a dirty face was the
badge of freedom. One early Saturday morning I was hard at work before
breakfast. Mother called down through the upstairs shutters, at the
first clicking of the knives, to ask if I wore my rubbers in the dew.
With the money earned by noon, I went to Conrad's shop. The season for
tops and marbles had gone by. But in the window there was a peerless
baseball with a rubber core, known as a _cock-of-the-walk_. By
indecision, even by starting for the door, I bought it a nickel off
because it was specked by flies.
It did not occur to me last week, at first, that I could cut the grass.
I talked with an Irishman who keeps the lawn next door. He leaned on his
rake, took his pipe from his mouth and told me that his time was full.
If he had as many hands as a centipede--so he expressed himself--he
could not do all the work that was asked of him. The whole street
clamored for his service. Then I talked with an Italian on the other
side, who comes to work on a motor-cycle with his lawn-mower across his
shoulder. His time was worth a dollar an hour, and he could squeeze me
in after supper and before breakfast. But how can I consistently write
upstairs--I am puttering with a novel--with so expensive a din sounding
in my ears? My expected royalties shrink beside such swollen pay. So I
have become my own yard-man.
Last week I had the lawn-mower sharpened, but it came home without
adjustment. It went down the lawn without clipping a blade. What a
struggle I had as a child getting the knives to touch along their entire
length! I remember it as yesterday. What an ugly path was left when they
cut on one side only! My bicycle chain, the front wheel that wobbled,
the ball-bearings in the gear, none of these things were so perplexing.
Last week I got out my screw-driver with somewhat of my old feeling of
impotence. I sat down on the grass with discouragement in contemplation.
One set of screws had to be loosened while another set was tightened,
and success lay in the delicacy of my advance. What was my amazement to
discover that on a second trial my mower cut to its entire width! Even
when I first wired a base-plug and found that the table lamp would
really light, I was not more astonished.
This success with the lawn-mower has given me hope. I am not, as I am
accused, all thumbs. I may yet become a handy man around the house. Is
the swirl of furnace pipes inside my intellect? Perhaps I can fix the
leaky packing in the laundry tubs, and henceforth look on the plumber as
an equal brother. My dormant brain cells at last are wakened. But I must
curb myself. I must not be too useful. There is no rest for a handy man.
It is ignorance that permits a vacant holiday. At most I shall admit a
familiarity with base-plugs and picture-wire and rubber washers--perhaps
even with canvas awnings, which smack pleasantly of the sea--but I shall
commit myself no further.
Once in a while I rather enjoy cleaning the garage--raking down the
cobwebs from the walls and windows with a stream from the hose--puddling
the dirt into the central drain. I am ruthless with old oil cans and
with the discarded clothing of the chauffeur we had last month. Why is
an old pair of pants stuffed so regularly in the tool drawer? There is a
barrel at the alley fence--but I shall spare the details. It was the
river Alpheus that Hercules turned through the Augean stables. They had
held three thousand oxen and had not been cleaned for thirty years. Dear
me! I know oxen. I rank this labor ahead of the killing of the Hydra, or
fetching the golden apples of the Hesperides. Our garage can be
sweetened with a hose.
But I really like outside work. Last week I pulled up a quantity of dock
and dandelions that were strangling the grass. And I raked in seed. This
morning, when I went out for the daily paper, I saw a bit of tender
green. The Reds, as I noticed in the headline of the paper, were
advancing on Warsaw. France and England were consulting for the defense
of Poland, but I ignored these great events and stood transfixed in
admiration before this shimmer of new grass.
Our yard, fore and aft, is about an afternoon's work. And now that I
have cut it once I have signed up for the summer. It requires just the
right amount of intelligence. I would not trust myself to pull weeds in
the garden. M---- has the necessary skill for this. I might pull up the
Canterbury bells which, out of season, I consider unsightly stalks. And
I do not enjoy clipping the grass along the walks. It is a kind of
barber's job. But I like the long straightaways, and I could wish that
our grass plot stretched for another hundred feet.
And I like the sound of a lawn-mower. It is such a busy click and
whirr. It seems to work so willingly. Not even a sewing-machine has
quite so brisk a tempo. And when a lawn-mower strikes a twig, it stops
suddenly on its haunches with such impatience to be off again. "Bend
over, won't you," it seems to say, "and pull out that stick. These trees
are a pesky nuisance. They keep dropping branches all the while. Now
then! Are we ready? Whee! What's an apple? I can cut an apple all to
flinders. You whistle and I'll whirr. Let's run down that slope
together!"
On Dropping Off to Sleep.
I sleep too well--that is, I go to sleep too soon. I am told that I pass
a few minutes of troubled breathing--not vulgar snores, but a kind of
uneasy ripple on the shore of wakefulness--then I drift out with the
silent tide. Doubtless I merit no sympathy for my perfection--and yet--
Well, in the first place, lately we have had windy, moonlit nights and
as my bed sets at the edge of the sleeping porch and the rail cuts off
the earth, it is like a ride in an aeroplane to lie awake among the torn
and ragged clouds. I have cast off the moorings of the sluggish world.
Our garden with its flowering path, the coop for our neighbor's
chickens, the apple tree, all have sunk from sight. The prow of my plane
is pitched across the top of a waving poplar. Earth's harbor lights are
at the stern. The Pleiades mark the channel to the open sky. I must hang
out a lantern to fend me from the moon.
I shall keep awake for fifteen minutes, I think. Perhaps I can recall
Keats's sonnet to the night:
"When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance--"
and those lines of Milton about the moon rising in clouded majesty,
unveiling her peerless light.
Here a star peeps out. Presently its companions will show themselves
and I shall know the constellation. Are they playing like little
children at hide-and-seek? Do I catch Arcturus looking from its cover?
Shall I shout hi-spy to Alpha Lyra? A shooting star, that has crouched
behind a cloud, runs home to the goal untagged. Surely these glistening
worlds cannot be hard-fisted planets like our own, holding a close
schedule across the sky. They have looted the shining treasure of the
sunset. They sail the high fantastic seas like caravels blown from
India. In the twilight they have lifted vagrant anchors and they will
moor in strange havens at the dawn.
Are not these ragged clouds the garment of the night? Like the beggar
maiden of an ancient tale she runs with flying raiment. She unmasks her
beauty when the world's asleep. And the wind, like an eager prince upon
his wooing, rides out of the stormy north.
And then! Poof! Sleep draws its dark curtain across the glittering
pageant--
Presently I hear Annie, the cook, on the kitchen steps below, beating me
up to breakfast. She sounds her unwelcome reveille on a tin pan with an
iron spoon. Her first alarm I treat with indifference. It even weaves
itself pleasantly into my dreams. I have been to a circus lately, let us
say, and this racket seems to be the tom-tom of a side-show where a thin
gentleman swallows snakes. Nor does a second outburst stir me. She only
tries the metal and practices for the later din. At the third alarm I
rise, for now she nurses a mighty wrath. I must humor the angry creature
lest in her fury she push over a shelf of crockery. There is a cold
jump for slippers--a chilly passage.
I passed a week lately at a country hotel where there were a number of
bad sleepers--men broken by the cares of business, but convalescent.
Each morning, as I dressed, I heard them on the veranda outside my
window, exchanging their complaints. "Well," said one, "I slept three
hours last night." "I wish I could," said a second. "I never do," said a
third. No matter how little sleep the first man allowed himself, the
second clipped off an hour. The third man told the bells he had
heard--one and two and three and four--both Baptist and Methodist--and
finished with his preceding competitor at least a half hour down. But
always there was an old man--an ancient man with flowing beard--who
waited until all were done, and concluded the discussion just at the
breakfast gong: _"I never slept a wink."_ This was the perfect score.
His was the golden cup. Whereupon the insomnious veranda hung its
defeated head with shame, and filed into the dining-room to be soothed
and comforted with griddle-cakes.
This daily contest recalled to me the story of the two men drowned in
the Dayton and Johnstown floods who boasted to each other when they came
to heaven. Has the story gone the rounds? For a while they were the
biggest lions among all the angels, and harps hung untuned and neglected
in their presence. As often as they met in the windy portico of heaven,
one of these heroes, falling to reminiscence of the flood that drowned
him, lifted the swirling water of Johnstown to the second floor. The
other hero, not to be outdone, drenched the Dayton garrets. The first
was now compelled to submerge a chimney. Turn by turn they mounted in
competition to the top of familiar steeples. But always an old man sat
by--an ancient man with flowing beard--who said "Fudge!" in a tone of
great contempt. Must I continue? Surely you have guessed the end. It was
the old mariner himself. It was the survivor of Ararat. It was Noah.
Once, I myself, among these bad sleepers on the veranda, boasted that I
had heard the bells at two o'clock, but I was scorned as an unfledged
novice in their high convention.
Sleeping too well seems to argue that there is nothing on your mind.
Your head, it is asserted by the jealous, is a vacancy that matches the
empty spaces of the night. It is as void as the untwinkling north. If
there has been a rummage, they affirm, of important matters all day
above your ears, it can hardly be checked at once by popping the tired
head down upon a pillow. These fizzing squibs of thought cannot be
smothered in a blanket. When one has planned a railroad or a revolution,
the mighty churning still progresses in the dark. A dubious franchise
must be gained. Villains must be pricked down for execution. Or bankers
have come up from Paraguay, and one meditates from hour to hour on the
sureness of the loan. Or perhaps an imperfect poem searches for a rhyme,
or the plot of a novel sticks.
It is the shell, they say, which is fetched from the stormy sea that
roars all night. My head, alas, by the evidence, is a shell which is
brought from a stagnant shore.
Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep! Sleep that knits up the
ravell'd sleave of care! That is all very well, and pretty poetry, but I
am afraid, when everything is said, that I am a sleepy-head. I do not,
of course, have to pinch myself at a business meeting. At high noon I do
not hear the lotus song. I do not topple, full of dreams, off the
platform of a street-car. The sleepy poppy is not always at my nose.
Nor do I yawn at dinner behind a napkin, or doze in the firelight when
there are guests about. My manners keep me from this boorishness. In an
extremity, if they sit too late, I stir the fire, or I put my head out
of doors for the wind to waken me. I show a sudden anxiety whether the
garage is locked. I pretend that the lawn-mower is left outside, or that
the awnings are loose and flapping. But I do not dash out the lights
when our guests are still upon the steps. I listen at the window until I
hear their motor clear the corner. Then I turn furiously to my buttons.
I kick off my shoes upon the staircase.
Several of us were camping once in the woods north of Lake Superior. As
we had no guides we did all the work ourselves, and everyone was of
harder endurance than myself. Was it not Pippa who cried out "Morning's
at seven"? Seven! I look on her as being no better than a slug-a-bed.
She should have had her dishes washed and been on her way by six. Our
day began at five. Our tents had to be taken down, our blankets and
duffle packed. We were regularly on the water an hour before Pippa
stirred a foot. And then there were four or five hours of paddling,
perhaps in windy water. And then a new camp was made. Our day matched
the exertions of a traveling circus. In default of expert knowledge I
carried water, cut brouse for the beds and washed dishes. Little jobs,
of an unpleasant nature, were found for me as often as I paused. Others
did the showy, light-fingered work. I was housemaid and roustabout from
sunrise to weary sunset. I was never allowed to rest. Nor was I
permitted to flop the bacon, which I consider an easy, sedentary
occupation. I acquired, unjustly,--let us agree in this!--a reputation
for laziness, because one day I sat for several hours in a blueberry
patch, when work was going forward.
And then one night, when all labor seemed done and there was an hour of
twilight, I was asked to read aloud. Everyone settled himself for a
feast of Shakespeare's sonnets. But it was my ill luck that I selected
the sonnet that begins, "Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed." A great
shout went up--a shout of derision. That night I read no more. I carried
up six or eight pails of water from the spring and followed the
sonneteer's example.
There are a great many books that I would like to read of a winter's
evening if I could stay awake--all of the histories, certainly, of
Fiske. And Rhodes, perhaps. I might even read "The Four Horsemen,"
"Trilby" and "The Education of Henry Adams," so as not to be alone. It
is snug by the fire, and the very wind taps on the window as if it asked
for invitation to share the hearth. I could compile a list, a five-foot
shelf, for these nights of tempest. There is a writer in a Boston paper
who tells us every week the books that he would like to read. His is a
prospect rather than a review, for it is based on his anticipation. But
does he ever read these books? Perhaps he, too, dozes. His book slips
off his knee and his chin drops to comfort on his front. Let me inform
him that a wood fire--if the logs are hardly dry--is a corrective. Its
debility, as water oozes at the end, requires attendance every five
minutes. Even Wardle's fat boy at Manor Farm could have lasted through
the evening if the poker had been forced into his hand so often. "I
read," says Tennyson, "before my eyelids dropt their shade." And wasn't
Alice sitting with her book when she fell asleep and down the
rabbit-hole? "And so to bed," writes Pepys. He, too, then, is one of us.
I wonder if that phrase--he who runs may read--has not a deeper
significance than lies upon the surface. Perhaps the prophet--was it
Habakkuk who wrote the line?--it does not matter--perhaps the bearded
prophet had himself the sleepy habit, and kept moving briskly for remedy
around his study. I can see him in dressing-gown and slippers, with book
in hand--his whiskers veering in the wind--quickening his lively pace
around the kerosene lamp, steering among the chairs, stumbling across
the cat--
In ambition I am a night-hawk. I would like to sit late with old books
and reconstruct the forgotten world at midnight. These bells that I hear
now across the darkness are the mad bells of Saint Bartholomew. With
that distant whistle--a train on the B. & O.--Guy Fawkes gathers his
villains to light the fuse. Through my window from the night I hear the
sounds of far-off wars and kingdoms falling.
And I would like, also, at least in theory, to sit with a merry company
of friends, and let the cannikin clink till dawn.
I would like to walk the streets of our crowded city and marvel at the
windows--to speculate on the thousand dramas that weave their webs in
our common life. Here is mirth that shakes its sides when its neighbors
sleep. Here is a hungry student whose ambition builds him rosy castles.
Here is a light at a fevered pillow where hope burns dim.
On some fairy night I would wish to wander in the woods, when there are
dancing shadows and a moon. Here Oberon holds state. Here Titania
sleeps. I would cross a silver upland. I would stand on a barren
hill-top, like the skipper of the world in its whirling voyage.
But these high accomplishments are beyond me. Habakkuk and the fat boy,
and Alice and Pepys and I, and all the others, must be content. Even the
wet wood and the poker fail. The very wind grows sleepy at the window.
Our chins fall forward. Our books slip off our knees.
And now, at last, our buoyant bed floats among the stars. I have cast
off the moorings of the sluggish world. Earth's harbor lights are at the
stern. The Pleiades mark the channel to the moon--
Poof! Sleep draws again its dark curtain across the glittering pageant.
Who Was Jeremy?