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Man, we suspect, is the only animal capable of persuading himself
that his hardships are medicine to the soul, of flattering
himself into a conviction that some mortal spasm was a fortifying
discipline.
Having just moved our household goods for the fourth time in four
years, we now find ourself in the singular state of trying to
believe that the horrors of the event have added to our supply of
spiritual resignation. Well, let us see.
The brutal task of taking one's home on trek is (we can argue) a
stirring tonic, a kind of private rehearsal of the Last Judgment,
when the sheep shall be divided from the shoats. What could be a
more convincing reminder of the instability of man's affairs than
the harrowing upheaval of our cherished properties? Those dark
angels, the moving men, how heartless they seem in their brisk
and resolute dispassion--yet how exactly they prefigure the
implacable sternness of the ultimate shepherds. A strange life is
theirs, taking them day after day into the bosom of homes
prostrated by the emigrating throe. Does this matter-of-fact
bearing conceal an infinite tenderness, a pity that dare not show
itself for fear of unmanly collapse? Are they secretly broken by
the sight of the desolate nursery, the dismantled crib, the
forgotten clockwork monkey lying in a corner of the cupboard
where the helpless Urchin laid it with care before he and his
smaller sister were deported, to be out of the way in the final
storm? Does the o'ermastering pathos of a modest household turned
inside out, its tender vitals displayed to the passing world,
wring their breasts? Stoic men, if so, they well conceal their
pangs.
They have one hopelessly at a disadvantage. In the interval that
always elapses before the arrival of the second van, there is a
little social chat and utterance of reminiscences. There is a
lively snapping of matchheads on thumbnails, and seated at ease
in the debris of the dismantled living room our friends will
tell of the splendour of some households they have moved before.
The thirty-eight barrels of gilt porcelain, the twenty cases of
oil paintings, the satin-wood grand piano that their spines
twinge to recall. Once our furnitures were moved by a crew of
lusty athletes who had previously done the same for Mr. Ivy Lee,
and while we sat in shamed silence we heard the tale of Mr. Lee's
noble possessions. Of what avail would it have been for us to
protest that we love our stuff as much as Mr. Lee did his? No, we
had a horrid impulse to cry apology, and beg them to hurl the
things into the van anyhow, just to end the agony.
This interval of social chat being prolonged by the blizzard, the
talk is likely to take a more ominous turn. We are told how, only
last week, a sister van was hit by a train at a crossing and
carried a hundred yards on the engine pilot. Two of the men were
killed, though one of these lived from eleven o'clock Saturday
morning until eleven o'clock Monday night. How, after hearing
this, can one ask what happened to the furniture, even if one is
indecent enough to think of it? Then one learns of another of the
fleet, stalled in a drift on the way to Harrisburg, and hasn't
been heard from for forty-eight hours. Sitting in subdued
silence, one remembers something about "moving accidents by flood
and field," and thanks fortune that these pitiful oddments are
only going to a storage warehouse, not to be transported thence
until the kindly season of spring.
But packing for storage instead of for moving implies subtler and
more painful anguishes. Here indeed we have a tonic for the soul,
for election must be made among one's belongings: which are to be
stored, and which to accompany? Take the subject of books for
instance. Horrid hesitation: can we subsist for four or five
months on nothing but the "Oxford Book of English Verse" and
Boswell's Johnson? Suppose we want to look up a quotation, in
those late hours of the night when all really worthwhile reading
is done? Our memory is knitted with a wide mesh. Suppose we want
to be sure just what it was that Shakespeare said happened to him
in his "sessions of sweet silent thought," what are we going to
do? We will have to fall back on the customary recourse of the
minor poet--if you can't remember one of Shakespeare's sonnets,
at least you can write one of your own instead. Speaking of
literature, it is a curious thing that the essayists have so
neglected this topic of moving. It would be pleasant to know how
the good and the great have faced this peculiarly terrible crisis
of domestic affairs. When the Bard himself moved back to
Stratford after his years in London, what did he think about it?
How did he get all his papers packed up, and did he, in mere
weariness, destroy the half-done manuscripts of plays? Charles
Lamb moved round London a good deal; did he never write of his
experience? We like to think of Emerson: did he ever move, and if
so, how did he behave when the fatal day came? Did he sit on a
packing case and utter sepulchral aphorisms? Think of Lord Bacon
and how he would have crystallized the matter in a phrase.
Of course in bachelor days moving may be a huge lark, a humorous
escapade. We remember some high-spirited young men, three of
them, who were moving their chattels from rooms on Twenty-first
Street to a flat on Irving Place. Frugality was their necessary
watchword, and they hired a pushcart in which to transport the
dunnage. It was necessary to do this on Sunday, and one of the
trio, more sensitive than the others, begged that they should
rise and accomplish the public shame early in the morning, before
the streets were alive. In particular, he begged, let the route
be chosen to avoid a certain club on Gramercy Park where he had
many friends, and where he was loath to be seen pushing his
humble intimacies. The others, scenting sport, and brazenly hardy
of spirit, contrived to delay the start on one pretext or another
until the middle of the forenoon. Then, by main force, ignoring
his bitter protest, they impelled the staggering vehicle, grossly
overloaded, past the very door of the club my friend had wished
to avoid. Here, by malicious inspiration, they tilted the wain to
one side and strewed the paving with their property. They skipped
nimbly round the corner, and with highly satisfactory laughter
watched their blushing partner labouring dismally to collect the
fragments. Some of his friends issuing from the club lent a hand,
and the joy of the conspirators was complete.
But to the family man, moving is no such airy picnic. Sadly he
goes through the last dismal rites and sees the modest fragments
of his dominion hustled toward the cold sepulture of a motor van.
Before the toughened bearing of the hirelings he doubts what
manner to assume. Shall he stand at the front door and exhort
them to particular care with each sentimental item, crying "Be
careful with that little chair; that's the one the Urchin uses
when he eats his evening prunes!" Or shall he adopt a gruesome
sarcasm, hoping to awe them by conveying the impression that even
if the whole van should be splintered in collision, he can get
more at the nearest department store? Whatever policy he adopts,
they will not be much impressed. For, when we handed our
gratuity, not an ungenerous one, to the driver, asking him to
divide it among the gang, we were startled to hear them burst
into loud screams of mirth. We asked, grimly, the cause. It
appeared that during the work one of our friends, apparently
despairing of any pourboire appropriate to his own conceptions of
reward, had sold his share of the tip to the driver for fifteen
cents. We are not going to say how much he lost by so doing. But
this gamble put the driver in such a good humour that we believe
he will keep away from railroad crossings.