think of the wrongs the roof has suffered. It is the only part of the
house that has not kept pace with the times. To say that you have a good
roof is taken as meaning that your roof is tight, that it keeps out the
water, that it excels in those qualities in which it excelled equally
three thousand years ago. What you ought to mean is that you have a roof
that is flat and has things on it that make it livable, where you can
walk, disport yourself, or sleep; a house-top view of your neighbors'
affairs; an airy pleasance with a full sweep of stars; a place to listen
of nights to the drone of the city; a place of observation, and if you are
so inclined, of meditation.
Everything but the roof has been improved. The basement has been coddled
with electric lights until a coal hole is no longer an abode of mystery.
Even the garret, that used to be but a dusty suburb of the house and
lumber room for early Victorian furniture, has been plastered and strewn
with servants' bedrooms.
There _was_ a garret once: somewhat misty now after these twenty years. It
was not daubed to respectability with paint, nor was it furnished forth as
bedrooms; but it was rough-timbered, and resounded with drops when the
dark clouds passed above. On bright days a cheerful light lay along the
floor and dust motes danced in its luminous shaft. And always there was
cobwebbed stillness. But on dark days, when the roof pattered and the
branches of trees scratched the shingles and when windows rattled, a
deeper obscurity crept out of the corners. Yet was there little fear in
the place. This was the front garret where the theatre was, with the
practicable curtain. But when the darker mood was on us, there was the
back garret. It was six steps lower and over it the roof crouched as if to
hide its secrets. The very men that built it must have been lowering,
bearded fellows; for they put into it many corners and niches and black
holes. The wood, too, from which it was fashioned must have been gnarled
and knotted and the nails rusty and crooked. One window cast a narrow
light down the middle of this room, but at both sides was immeasurable
night. When you had stooped in from the sunlight and had accustomed your
eyes to the dimness, you found yourself in an uncertain anchorage of old
furniture, abandoned but offering dusty covert for boys with the light of
brigands in their eyes. A pirates' den lay safe behind the chimney,
protected by a bristling thicket of chairs and table legs, to be
approached only on hands and knees after divers rappings. And back there
in the dark were strange boxes--strange boxes, stout and securely nailed.
But the garret has gone.
Whither have the pirates fled? Maybe some rumor of the great change
reached them in their fastnesses; and then in the light of early dawn, in
single file they climbed the ladder, up through the scuttle. And
straddling the ridgepole with daggers between their teeth, alas, they
became dizzy and toppled down the steep shingles to the gutter, to be
whirled away in the torrent of an April shower. Ah me! Had only the roof
been flat! Then it would have been for them a reservation where they might
have lived on and waited for the sound of children's feet to come again.
Then when those feet had come and the old life had returned, then from
aloft you would hear the old cry of Ship-ahoy, and you would know that at
last your house had again slipped its moorings and was off to Madagascar
or the Straits.
Where shall we adventure, to-day that we're afloat,
Wary of the weather and steering by a star?
Shall it be to Africa, asteering of the boat,
To Providence, or Babylon, or off to Malabar?
So a roof must be more than a cover. The roof of a boat, its deck, is
arranged for occupation and is its best part. Consider the omnibus! Even
it has seats on top, the best seats in fine weather. When Martin
Chuzzlewit went up to London it was on the _top_ of the coach he sat.
Pickwick betook himself, gaiters, small-clothes, and all, to the roof.
Even the immaculate Rollo scorned the inside seats. He sat on top, you may
remember, and sucked oranges to ward off malaria, he and that prince of
roisterers, Uncle George. De Quincey is the authority on mail coaches and
for the roof seats he is all fire and enthusiasm. It happened once, to
continue with De Quincey, that a state coach was presented by His Majesty
George the Third of England, as a gift to the Chinese Emperor. This kind
of vehicle being unknown in Peking, "it became necessary to call a cabinet
council on the grand state question, 'Where was the Emperor to sit?' The
hammer cloth happened to be unusually gorgeous; and partly on that
consideration, but partly also because the box offered the most elevated
seat, was nearest the moon, and undeniably went foremost, it was resolved
by acclamation that the box was the Imperial throne, and for the scoundrel
who drove, he could sit where he could find a perch."
Consider that the summer day has ended and that you are tired with its
rush and heat. Up you must climb to your house-roof. On the rim of the sky
is the blurred light from the steel furnaces at the city's edge and,
paneling this, stands a line of poplars stirring and sounding in the night
wind.
Alone upon the house-top to the North
I turn and watch the lightnings in the sky.
Is it fanciful to think that into the mind comes a little of the beauty of
the older world when roofs were flat and men meditated under the stars and
saw visions in the night?
Once upon a time I crossed the city of Nuremberg after dark; the market
cleared of all traces of its morning sale, the "Schöner Brunnen" at its
edge, the narrow defile leading to the citadel, the climb at the top. And
then I came to an open parade above the town--"except the Schlosskirche
Weathercock no biped stands so high." The night had swept away all details
of buildings. Nuremberg lay below like a dark etching, the centuries
folded and creased in its obscurities. Then from some gaunt tower came a
peal of bells, the hour maybe, and then an answering peal. "Thus stands
the night," they said; "thus stand the stars." I was in the presence of
Time and its black wings were brushing past me. What star was in the
ascendant, I knew not. And yet in me I felt a throb that came by blind,
circuitous ways from some far-off Chaldean temple, seven-storied in the
night. In me was the blood of the star-gazer, my emotions recalling the
rejected beliefs, the signs and wonders of the heavens. The waves of old
thought had but lately receded from the world; and I, but a chink and
hollow on the beach, had caught my drop of the ebbing ocean.