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Chimney-Pot Papers
by Charles S. Brooks.
Illustrated with wood-cuts
by Fritz Endell.
1920
New Haven: Yale University Press.
London: Humphrey Milford: Oxford University Press
Copyright, 1919, by
Yale University Press.
First published, 1919.
Second printing, 1920.
Publisher's Note:
The Yale University Press makes grateful
acknowledgment to the Editors of the
_Unpopular Review_ and _The Century Magazine_
for permission to include in the
present volume, essays of which they were
the original publishers.
* * * * *
To Minerva, my Wife.
* * * * *
Contents.
I. The Chimney-Pots 11
II. The Quest of the Lost Digamma 19
III. On a Rainy Morning 35
IV. "1917" 43
V. On Going Afoot 47
VI. On Livelihoods 68
VII. The Tread of the Friendly Giants 79
VIII. On Spending a Holiday 89
IX. Runaway Studies 109
X. On Turning into Forty 117
XI. On the Difference between Wit and Humor 128
XII. On Going to a Party 136
XIII. On a Pair of Leather Suspenders 146
XIV. Boots for Runaways 159
XV. On Hanging a Stocking at Christmas 169
* * * * *
The Chimney-Pots.
My windows look across the roofs of the crowded city and my thoughts
often take their suggestion from the life that is manifest at my
neighbors' windows and on these roofs.
Across the way, one story lower than our own, there dwells "with his
subsidiary parents" a little lad who has been ill for several weeks.
After his household is up and dressed I regularly discover him in bed,
with his books and toys piled about him. Sometimes his knees are
raised to form a snowy mountain, and he leads his paper soldiers up
the slope. Sometimes his kitten romps across the coverlet and pounces
on his wriggling toes; and again sleeps on the sunny window-sill. His
book, by his rapt attention, must deal with far-off islands and with
waving cocoanut trees. Lately I have observed that a yellow drink is
brought to him in the afternoon--a delicious blend of eggs and
milk--and by the zest with which he licks the remainder from his lips,
it is a prime favorite of his. In these last few days, however, I have
seen the lad's nose flat and eager on the window, and I know that he
is convalescent.
At another set of windows--now that the days are growing short and
there is need of lights--I see in shadowgraph against the curtains an
occasional domestic drama. Tonight, by the appearance of hurry and
the shifting of garments, I surmise that there is preparation for a
party. Presently, when the upstairs lights have disappeared, I shall
see these folk below, issuing from their door in glossy raiment. My
dear sir and madame, I wish you an agreeable dinner and--if your tooth
resembles mine--ice-cream for dessert.
The window of a kitchen, also, is opposite, and I often look on savory
messes as they ripen on the fire--a stirring with a long iron spoon.
This spoon is of such unusual length that even if one supped with the
devil (surely the fearful adage cannot apply to our quiet street) he
might lift his food in safety from the common pot.
A good many stories lower there is a bit of roof that is set with
wicker furniture and a row of gay plants along the gutter. Here every
afternoon exactly at six--the roof being then in shadow--a man appears
and reads his evening paper. Later his wife joins him and they eat
their supper from a tray. They are sunk almost in a well of buildings
which, like the hedge of a fairy garden, shuts them from all contact
with the world. And here they sit when the tray has been removed. The
twilight falls early at their level and, like cottagers in a valley,
they watch the daylight that still gilds the peaks above them.
There is another of these out-of-door rooms above me on a higher
building. From my lower level I can see the bright canvas and the
side of the trellis that supports it. Here, doubtless, in the cool
breeze of these summer evenings, honest folk sip their coffee and
watch the lights start across the city.
Thus, all around, I have glimpses of my neighbors--a form against the
curtains--a group, in the season, around the fire--the week's darning
in a rocker--an early nose sniffing at the open window the morning
airs.
But it is these roofs themselves that are the general prospect.
Close at hand are graveled surfaces with spouts and whirling vents and
chimneys. Here are posts and lines for washing, and a scuttle from
which once a week a laundress pops her head. Although her coming is
timed to the very hour--almost to the minute--yet when the scuttle
stirs it is with an appearance of mystery, as if one of the forty
thieves were below, boosting at the rocks that guard his cave. But the
laundress is of so unromantic and jouncing a figure that I abandon the
fancy when no more than her shoulders are above the scuttle. She is,
however, an amiable creature and, if the wind is right, I hear her
singing at her task. When clothespins fill her mouth, she experiments
with popular tunes. One of these wooden bipeds once slipped inside and
nearly strangled her.
In the distance, on the taller buildings, water tanks are lifted
against the sky. They are perched aloft on three fingers, as it were,
as if the buildings were just won to prohibition and held up their
water cups in the first excitement of a novice to pledge the cause.
Let hard liquor crouch and tremble in its rathskeller below the
sidewalk! In the basement let musty kegs roll and gurgle with hopeless
fear! _Der Tag!_ The roof, the triumphant roof, has gone dry.
This range of buildings with water tanks and towers stops my gaze to
the North. There is a crowded world beyond--rolling valleys of
humanity--the heights of Harlem--but although my windows stand on
tiptoe, they may not discover these distant scenes.
On summer days these roofs burn in the sun and spirals of heat arise.
Tar flows from the joints in the tin. Tar and the adder--is it not a
bright day that brings them forth? Now washing hangs limp upon the
line. There is no frisk in undergarments. These stockings that hang
shriveled and anaemic--can it be possible that they once trotted to a
lively tune, or that a lifted skirt upon a crosswalk drew the eye? The
very spouts and chimneys droop in the heavy sunlight. All the spinning
vents are still. On these roofs, as on a steaming altar, August
celebrates its hot midsummer rites.
But in winter, when the wind is up, the roofs show another aspect. The
storm, in frayed and cloudy garment, now plunges across the city. It
snaps its boisterous fingers. It pipes a song to summon rowdy
companions off the sea. The whirling vents hum shrilly to the tune.
And the tempests are roused, and the windy creatures of the hills make
answer. The towers--even the nearer buildings--are obscured. The sky
is gray with rain. Smoke is torn from the chimneys. Down below let a
fire be snug upon the hearth and let warm folk sit and toast their
feet! Let shadows romp upon the walls! Let the andirons wink at the
sleepy cat! Cream or lemon, two lumps or one. Here aloft is brisker
business. There is storm upon the roof. The tempest holds a carnival.
And the winds pounce upon the smoke as it issues from the chimney-pots
and wring it by the neck as they bear it off.
And sometimes it seems that these roofs represent youth, and its
purpose, its ambition and adventure. For, from of old, have not poets
lived in garrets? And are not all poets young even if their beards are
white? Round and round the poet climbs, up these bare creaking flights
to the very top. There is a stove to be lighted--unless the woodbox
fails--a sloping ceiling and a window huddled to the floor. The poet's
fingers may be numb. Although the inkpot be full, his stomach may be
empty. And yet from this window, lately, a poem was cast upward to the
moon. And youth and truth still rhyme in these upper rooms. Linda's
voice is still the music of a sonnet. Still do the roses fade, and
love is always like the constant stars. And once, this!--surely from a
garret:
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance--
Poor starved wretches are we who live softly in the lower stories,
although we are fat of body.
If a mighty pair of shears were to clip the city somewhere below these
windy gutters would there not be a dearth of poems in the spring? Who
then would be left to note the changing colors of the twilight and the
peaceful transit of the stars? Would gray beech trees in the winter
find a voice? Would there still be a song of water and of wind? Who
would catch the rhythm of the waves and the wheat fields in the
breeze? What lilts and melodies would vanish from the world! How stale
and flat the city without its roofs!
But it is at night that these roofs show best. Then, as below a
philosopher in his tower, the city spreads its web of streets, and its
lights gleam in answer to the lights above. Galileo in his
tower--Teufelsdroeckh at his far-seeing attic window--saw this
glistening pageantry and had thoughts unutterable.
In this darkness these roofs are the true suburb of the world--the
outpost--the pleasant edge of our human earth turned up toward the
barren moon. Chimneys stand as sentinels on the border of the sky.
Pointed towers mark the passage of the stars. Great buildings are the
cliffs on the shores of night. A skylight shows as a pleasant signal
to guide the wandering skipper of the moon.
The Quest of the Lost Digamma.
Many years ago there was a club of college undergraduates which called
itself the Lost Digamma. The digamma, I am informed, is a letter that
was lost in prehistoric times from the Greek alphabet. A prudent
alphabet would have offered a reward at once and would have beaten up
the bushes all about, but evidently these remedies were neglected. As
the years went on the other letters gradually assumed its duties. The
philological chores, so to speak, night and morning, that had once
fallen to the digamma, they took upon themselves, until the very name
of the letter was all but lost.
Those who are practiced in such matters--humped men who blink with
learning--claim to discover evidence of the letter now and then in
their reading. Perhaps the missing letter still gives a false quantity
to a vowel or shifts an accent. It is remembered, as it were, by its
vacant chair. Or rather, like a ghost it haunts a word, rattling a
warning lest we disarrange a syllable. Its absence, however, in the
flesh, despite the lapse of time--for it went off long ago when the
mastodon still wandered on the pleasant upland--its continued absence
vexes the learned. They scan ancient texts for an improper syllable
and mark the time upon their brown old fingers, if possibly a jolting
measure may offer them a clue. Although it must appear that the
digamma--if it yet rambles alive somewhere beneath the moon--has by
this time grown a beard and is lost beyond recognition, still old
gentlemen meet weekly and read papers to one another on the progress
of the search. Like the old woman of the story they still keep a light
burning in their study windows against the wanderer's return.
Now it happened once that a group of undergraduates, stirred to
sympathy beyond the common usage of the classroom, formed themselves
into a club to aid in the search. It is not recorded that they were
the deepest students in the class, yet mark their zeal! On a rumor
arising from the chairman that the presence of the lost digamma was
suspected the group rushed together of an evening, for there was an
instinct that the digamma, like the raccoon, was easiest trapped at
night. To stay their stomachs against a protracted search, for their
colloquies sat late, they ordered a plentiful dinner to be placed
before them. Also, on the happy chance that success might crown the
night, a row of stout Tobies was set upon the board. If the prodigal
lurked without and his vagrant nose were seen at last upon the window,
then musty liquor, from a Toby's three-cornered hat, would be a
fitting pledge for his return.
I do not know to a certainty the place of these meetings, but I choose
to fancy that it was an upper room in a modest restaurant that went by
the name of Mory's--not the modern Mory's that affects the manners of
a club, but the original Temple Bar, remembered justly for its brown
ale and golden bucks.
There was, of course, a choice of places where the Lost Digamma might
have pushed its search. Waiving Billy's and the meaner joints
conferred on freshmen, there was, to be sure, the scholastic murk of
Traeger's--one room especially at the rear with steins around the
walls. There was Heublein's, also. Even the Tontine might rouse a
student. But I choose to consider that Mory's was the place.
Never elsewhere has cheese sputtered on toast with such hot delight.
Never have such fair round eggs perched upon the top. The hen who laid
the golden egg--for it could be none other than she who worked the
miracle at Mory's--must have clucked like a braggart when the smoking
dish came in. The dullest nose, even if it had drowsed like a Stoic
through the day, perked and quivered when the breath came off the
kitchen. Ears that before had never wiggled to the loudest noise came
flapping forward when the door was opened. Or maybe in those days your
wealth, huddled closely through the week, stretched on Saturday night
to a mutton chop with bacon on the side. This chop, named of the
southern downs, was so big that it curled like an anchovy to get upon
the plate. The sheep that bore it across the grassy moors must have
out-topped the horse. The hills must have shaken beneath his tread.
With what eagerness you squared your lean elbows for the feast, with
knife and fork turned upwards in your fists!
But chops in these modern days are retrograde. Sheep have fallen to a
decadent race. Cheese has lost its cunning. Someone, alas, as the
story says, has killed the hen that laid the golden egg. Mory's is
sunk and gone. Its faded prints of the Old Brick Row, its tables
carved with students' names, its brown Tobies in their three-cornered
hats, the brasses of the tiny bar, the rickety rooms themselves--these
rise from the past like genial ghosts and beckon us toward pleasant
memories.
Such was the zeal in those older days which the members of the Lost
Digamma spent upon their quest that belated pedestrians--if the legend
of the district be believed--have stopped upon the curb and have
inquired the meaning of the glad shouts that issued from the upper
windows, and they have gone off marveling at the enthusiasm attendant
on this high endeavor. It is rumored that once when the excitement of
the chase had gone to an unusual height and the students were beating
their Tobies on the table, one of them, a fellow of uncommon ardor,
lunging forward from his chair, got salt upon the creature's tail. The
exploit overturned the table and so rocked the house that Louis, who
was the guardian of the place, put his nose above the stairs and
cooled the meeting. Had it not been for his interference--he was a
good-natured fellow but unacquainted with the frenzy that marks the
scholar--the lost digamma might have been trapped, to the lasting
glory of the college.
As to the further progress of the club I am not informed. Doubtless it
ran an honorable course and passed on from class to class the
tradition of its high ambition, but never again was the lost digamma
so nearly in its grasp. If it still meets upon its midnight labors, a
toothless member boasts of that night of its topmost glory, and those
who have gathered to his words rap their stale unprofitable mugs upon
the table.
It would be unjust to assume that you are so poor a student as myself.
Doubtless you are a scholar and can discourse deeply of the older
centuries. You know the ancient works of Tweedledum and can
distinguish to a hair's breadth 'twixt him and Tweedledee. Learning is
candy on your tooth. Perhaps you stroke your sagacious beard and give
a nimble reason for the lightning. To you the hills have whispered how
they came, and the streams their purpose and ambition. You have
studied the first shrinkage of the earth when the plains wrinkled and
broke into mountain peaks. The mystery of the stars is to you as
familiar as your garter. If such depth is yours, I am content to sit
before you like a bucket below a tap.
At your banquet I sit as a poor relation. If the viands hold, I fork a
cold morsel from your dish....
But modesty must not gag me. I do myself somewhat lean towards
knowledge. I run to a dictionary on a disputed word, and I point my
inquiring nose upon the page like a careful schoolman. On a spurt I
pry into an uncertain date, but I lack the perseverance and the
wakefulness for sustained endeavor. To repair my infirmity, I
frequently go among those of steadier application, if haply their
devotion may prove contagious. It was but lately that I dined with a
group of the Cognoscenti. There were light words at first, as when a
juggler carelessly tosses up a ball or two just to try his hand before
he displays his genius--a jest or two, into which I entered as an
equal. In these shallow moments we waded through our soup. But we had
hardly got beyond the fish when the company plunged into greater
depth. I soon discovered that I was among persons skilled in those
economic and social studies that now most stir us. My neighbor on the
left offered to gossip with me on the latest evaluations and
eventuations--for such were her pleasing words--in the department of
knowledge dearest to her. While I was still fumbling for a response,
my neighbor on the right, abandoning her meat, informed me of the
progress of a survey of charitable organizations that was then under
way. By mischance, however, while flipping up the salad on my fork, I
dropped a morsel on the cloth, and I was so intent in manoeuvring
my plates and spoons to cover up the speck, that I lost a good part of
her improving discourse.
I was still, however, making a tolerable pretense of attention, when a
learned person across the table was sharp enough to see that I was a
novice in the gathering. For my improvement, therefore, he fixed his
great round glasses in my direction. In my confusion they seemed
burning lenses hotly focused on me. Under such a glare, he thought, my
tender sprouts of knowledge must spring up to full blossom.
When he had my attention, he proceeded to lay out the dinner into
calories, which I now discovered to be a kind of heat or nutritive
unit. He cast his appraisal on the meat and vegetables, and turned an
ear toward the pantry door if by chance he might catch a hint of the
dessert for his estimate, but by this time, being overwrought, I gave
up all pretense, and put my coarse attention on my plate.
Sometimes I fall on better luck. It was but yesterday that I sat
waiting for a book in the Public Library, when a young woman came and
sat beside me on the common bench. Immediately she opened a monstrous
note-book, and fell to studying it. I had myself been reading, but I
had held my book at a stingy angle against the spying of my neighbors.
As the young woman was of a more open nature, she laid hers out flat.
It is my weakness to pry upon another's book. Especially if it is old
and worn--a musty history or an essay from the past--I squirm and
edge myself until I can follow the reader's thumb.
At the top of each page she had written the title of a book, with a
space below for comment, now well filled. There were a hundred of
these titles, and all of them concerned John Paul Jones. She busied
herself scratching and amending her notes. The whole was thrown into
such a snarl of interlineation, was so disfigured with revision, and
the writing so started up the margins to get breath at the top, that I
wondered how she could possibly bring a straight narrative out of the
confusion. Yet here was a book growing up beneath my very nose. If in
a year's time--or perhaps in a six-month, if the manuscript is not
hawked too long among publishers--if when again the nights are raw, a
new biography of John Paul Jones appears, and you cut its leaves while
your legs are stretched upon the hearth, I bid you to recognize as its
author my companion on the bench. Although she did not have beauty to
rouse a bachelor, yet she had an agreeable face and, if a soft white
collar of pleasing fashion be evidence, she put more than a scholar's
care upon her dress.
I am not entirely a novice in a library. Once I gained admittance to
the Reading Room of the British Museum--no light task even before the
war. This was the manner of it. First, I went among the policemen who
frequent the outer corridors, and inquired for a certain office which
I had been told controlled its affairs. The third policeman had heard
of it and sent me off with directions. Presently I went through an
obscure doorway, traversed a mean hall with a dirty gas-jet at the
turn and came before a wicket. A dark man with the blood of a Spanish
inquisitor asked my business. I told him I was a poor student, without
taint or heresy, who sought knowledge. He stroked his chin as though
it were a monstrous improbability. He looked me up and down, but this
might have been merely a secular inquiry on the chance that I carried
explosives. He then dipped his pen in an ancient well (it was from
such a dusty fount that the warrant for Saint Bartholomew went forth),
then bidding me be careful in my answers, he cocked his head and shut
his less suspicious eye lest it yield to mercy.
He asked my name in full, middle name and all--as though villainy
might lurk in an initial--my hotel, my length of stay in London, my
residence in America, my occupation, the titles of the books I sought.
When he had done, I offered him my age and my weakness for French
pastry, in order that material for a monograph might be at hand if at
last I came to fame, but he silenced me with his cold eye. He now
thrust a pamphlet in my hands, and told me to sit alongside and read
it. It contained the rules that govern the use of the Reading Room. It
was eight pages long, and intolerably dry, and towards the end I
nodded. Awaking with a start, I was about to hold up my hands for the
adjustment of the thumb screws--for I had fallen on a nightmare--when
he softened. The Imperial Government was now pleased to admit me to
the Reading Room for such knowledge as might lie in my capacity.
The Reading Room is used chiefly by authors, gray fellows mostly,
dried and wrinkled scholars who come here to pilfer innocently from
antiquity. Among these musty memorial shelves, if anywhere, it would
seem that the dusty padding feet of the lost digamma might be heard.
In this room, perhaps, Christian Mentzelius was at work when he heard
the book-worm flap its wings.
Here sit the scholars at great desks with ingenious shelves and racks,
and they write all day and copy excerpts from the older authors. If
one of them hesitates and seems to chew upon his pencil, it is but
indecision whether Hume or Buckle will weigh heavier on his page. Or
if one of them looks up from his desk in a blurred near-sighted
manner, it is because his eyes have been so stretched upon the distant
centuries, that they can hardly focus on a room. If a scholar chances
to sneeze because of the infection, let it be his consolation that the
dust arises from the most ancient and respected authors! Pages move
silently about with tall dingy tomes in their arms. Other tomes, whose
use is past, they bear off to the shades below.
I am told that once in a long time a student of fresher complexion
gets in--a novitiate with the first scholastic down upon his cheek--a
tender stripling on his first high quest--a broth of a boy barely off
his primer--but no sooner is he set than he feels unpleasantly
conspicuous among his elders. Most of these youth bolt, offering to
the doorman as a pretext some neglect--a forgotten mission at a
book-stall--an errand with a tailor. Even those few who remain because
of the greater passion for their studies, find it to their comfort to
break their condition. Either they put on glasses or they affect a
limp. I know one persistent youth who was so consumed with desire for
history, yet so modest against exposure, that he bargained with a
beggar for his crutch. It was, however, the rascal's only livelihood.
This crutch and his piteous whimper had worked so profitably on the
crowd that, in consequence, its price fell beyond the student's purse.
My friend, therefore, practiced a palsy until, being perfect in the
part, he could take his seat without notice or embarrassment. Alas,
the need of these pretenses is short. Such is the contagion of the
place--a breath from Egypt comes up from the lower stacks--that a
youth's appearance, like a dyer's hand, is soon subdued to what it
works in. In a month or so a general dust has settled on him. Too
often learning is a Rip Van Winkle's flagon.
On a rare occasion I have myself been a student, and have plied my
book with diligence. Not long ago I spent a week of agreeable days
reading the many versions of Shakespeare that were played from the
Restoration through the eighteenth century. They are well known to
scholars, but the general reader is perhaps unfamiliar how Shakespeare
was perverted. From this material I thought that I might lay out an
instructive paper; how, for example, the whirling passion of Lear was
once wrought to soft and pleasant uses for a holiday. Cordelia is
rescued from the villains by the hero Kent, who cries out in a
transport, "Come to my arms, thou loveliest, best of women!" The scene
is laid in the woods, but as night comes on, Cordelia's old nurse
appears. A scandal is averted. Whereupon Kent marries Cordelia, and
they reign happily ever afterward. As for Lear, he advances into a
gentle convalescence. Before the week is out he will be sunning
himself on the bench beneath his pear tree and babbling of his early
days.
There were extra witches in Macbeth. Romeo and Juliet lived and the
quarreling families were united. Desdemona remained un-smothered to
the end. There was one stout author--but here I trust to memory--who
even attempted to rescue Hamlet and to substitute for the distant
rolling of the drum of Fortinbras, the pipes and timbrels of his happy
wedding. There is yet to be made a lively paper of these Shakespeare
tinkers of the eighteenth century.
And then John Timbs was to have been my text, who was an antiquary of
the nineteenth century. I had come frequently on his books. They are
seldom found in first-hand shops. More appropriately they are offered
where the older books are sold--where there are racks before the door
for the rakings of the place, and inside an ancient smell of leather.
If there are barrels in the basement, stocked and overflowing, it is
sure that a volume of Timbs is upon the premises.
I visited the Public Library and asked a sharp-nosed person how I
might best learn about John Timbs. I followed the direction of his
wagging thumb. The accounts of the encyclopedias are meager, a date of
birth and of death, a few facts of residence, the titles of his
hundred and fifty books, and little more. Some neglect him entirely;
skipping lightly from Timbrel to Timbuctoo. Indeed, Timbuctoo turned
up so often that even against my intention I came to a knowledge of
the place. It lies against the desert and exports ostrich feathers,
gums, salts and kola-nuts. Nor are timbrels to be scorned. They were
used--I quote precisely--"by David when he danced before the ark."
Surely not Noah's ark! I must brush up on David.
Timbs is matter for an engaging paper. His passion was London. He had
a fling at other subjects--a dozen books or so--but his graver hours
were given to the study of London. There is hardly a park or square or
street, palace, theatre or tavern that did not yield its secret to
him. Here and there an upstart building, too new for legend, may have
had no gossip for him, but all others John Timbs knew, and the
personages who lived in them. And he knew whether they were of sour
temper, whether they were rich or poor, and if poor, what shifts and
pretenses they practiced. He knew the windows of the town where the
beaux commonly ogled the passing beauties. He knew the chatter of the
theatres and of society. He traced the walls of the old city, and
explored the lanes. Unless I am much mistaken, there is not a fellow
of the _Dunciad_ to whom he has not assigned a house. Nor is any man
of deeper knowledge of the clubs and coffee-houses and taverns. One
would say that he had sat at Will's with Dryden, and that he had gone
to Button's arm in arm with Addison. Did Goldsmith journey to his
tailor for a plum-colored suit, you may be sure that Timbs tagged him
at the elbow. If Sam Johnson sat at the Mitre or Marlowe caroused in
Deptford, Timbs was of the company. There has scarcely been a play
acted in London since the days of Burbage which Timbs did not
chronicle.
But presently I gave up the study of John Timbs. Although I had
accumulated interesting facts about him, and had got so far as to lay
out several amusing paragraphs, still I could not fit them together to
an agreeable result. It was as though I could blow a melodious C upon
a horn, and lower down, after preparation, a dulcet G, but failed to
make a tune of them.
But although my studies so far have been unsuccessful, doubtless I
shall persist. Even now I have several topics in mind that may yet
serve for pleasant papers. If I fail, it will be my comfort that
others far better than myself achieve but a half success. Although the
digamma escapes our salt, somewhere he lurks on the lonely mountains.
And often when our lamps burn late, we fancy that we catch a waving of
his tail and hear him padding across the night. But although we lash
ourselves upon the chase and strain forward in the dark, the timid
beast runs on swifter feet and scampers off.
On a Rainy Morning.
A northeaster blew up last night and this morning we are lashed by
wind and rain. M---- foretold the change yesterday when we rode upon a
'bus top at nightfall. It was then pleasant enough and to my eye all
was right aloft. I am not, however, weather-wise. I must feel the
first patter of the storm before I hazard a judgment. To learn even
the quarter of a breeze--unless there is a trail of smoke to guide
me--I must hold up a wet finger. In my ignorance clouds sail across
the heavens on a whim. Like white sheep they wander here and there for
forage, and my suspicion of bad weather comes only when the tempest
has whipped them to a gallop. Even a band around the moon--which I am
told is primary instruction on the coming of a storm--stirs me chiefly
by its deeper mystery, as if astrology, come in from the distant
stars, lifts here a warning finger. But M---- was brought up beside
the sea, and she has a sailor's instinct for the weather. At the first
preliminary shifting of the heavens, too slight for my coarser senses,
she will tilt her nose and look around, then pronounce the coming of a
storm. To her, therefore, I leave all questions of umbrellas and
raincoats, and on her decision we go abroad.
Last night when I awoke I knew that her prophecy was right again, for
the rain was blowing in my face and slashing on the upper window. The
wind, too, was whistling along the roofs, with a try at chimney-pots
and spouts. It was the wolf in the fairy story who said he'd huff and
he'd puff, and he'd blow in the house where the little pig lived; yet
tonight his humor was less savage. Down below I heard ash-cans
toppling over all along the street and rolling to the gutters. It
lacks a few nights of Hallowe'en, but doubtless the wind's calendar is
awry and he is out already with his mischief. When a window rattles at
this season, it is the tick-tack of his roguish finger. If a chimney
is overthrown, it is his jest. Tomorrow we shall find a broken shutter
as his rowdy celebration of the night.
This morning is by general agreement a nasty day. I am not sure that I
assent. If I were the old woman at the corner who sells newspapers
from a stand, I would not like the weather, for the pent roof drops
water on her stock. Scarcely is the peppermint safe beyond the
splatter. Nor is it, I fancy, a profitable day for a street-organ man,
who requires a sunny morning with open windows for a rush of business.
Nor is there any good reason why a house-painter should be delighted
with this blustering sky, unless he is an idle fellow who seeks an
excuse to lie in bed. But except in sympathy, why is our elevator boy
so fiercely disposed against the weather? His cage is snug as long as
the skylight holds. And why should the warm dry noses of the city,
pressed against ten thousand windows up and down the streets, be flat
and sour this morning with disapproval?
It may savor of bravado to find pleasure in what is so commonly
condemned. Here is a smart fellow, you may say, who sets up a
paradox--a conceited braggart who professes a difference to mankind.
Or worse, it may appear that I try my hand at writing in a "happy
vein." God forbid that I should be such a villain! For I once knew a
man who, by reading these happy books, fell into pessimism and a sharp
decline. He had wasted to a peevish shadow and had taken to his bed
before his physician discovered the seat of his anaemia. It was only by
cutting the evil dose, chapter by chapter, that he finally restored
him to his friends. Yet neither supposition of my case is true. We who
enjoy wet and windy days are of a considerable number, and if our
voices are seldom heard in public dispute, it is because we are
overcome by the growling majority. You may know us, however, by our
stout boots, the kind of battered hats we wear, and our disregard of
puddles. To our eyes alone, the rain swirls along the pavements like
the mad rush of sixteenth notes upon a music staff. And to our ears
alone, the wind sings the rattling tune recorded.
Certainly there is more comedy on the streets on a wet and windy day
than there is under a fair sky. Thin folk hold on at corners. Fat folk
waddle before the wind, their racing elbows wing and wing. Hats are
whisked off and sail down the gutters on excited purposes of their
own. It was only this morning that I saw an artistocratic silk hat
bobbing along the pavement in familiar company with a stranger
bonnet--surely a misalliance, for the bonnet was a shabby one. But in
the wind, despite the difference of social station, an instant
affinity had been established and an elopement was under way.
Persons with umbrellas clamp them down close upon their heads and
proceed blindly like the larger and more reckless crabs that you see
in aquariums. Nor can we know until now what spirit for adventure
resides in an umbrella. Hitherto it has stood in a Chinese vase
beneath the stairs and has seemed a listless creature. But when a
November wind is up it is a cousin of the balloon, with an equal zest
to explore the wider precincts of the earth and to alight upon the
moon. Only persons of heavier ballast--such as have been fed on
sweets--plump pancake persons--can hold now an umbrella to the ground.
A long stowage of muffins and sugar is the only anchor.
At this moment beneath my window there is a dear little girl who
brings home a package from the grocer's. She is tugged and blown by
her umbrella, and at every puff of wind she goes up on tiptoe. If I
were writing a fairy tale I would make her the Princess of my plot,
and I would transport her underneath her umbrella in this whisking
wind to her far adventures, just as Davy sailed off to the land of
Goblins inside his grandfather's clock. She would be carried over
seas, until she could sniff the spice winds of the south. Then she
would be set down in the orchard of the Golden Prince, who presently
would spy her from his window--a mite of a pretty girl, all mussed and
blown about. And then I would spin out the tale to its true and happy
end, and they would live together ever after. How she labors at the
turn, hugging her paper bag and holding her flying skirts against her
knees! An umbrella, however, usually turns inside out before it gets
you off the pavement, and then it looks like a wrecked Zeppelin. You
put it in the first ash-can, and walk off in an attempt not to be
conspicuous.
Although the man who pursues his hat is, in some sort, conscious that
he plays a comic part, and although there is a pleasing relish on the
curb at his discomfort, yet it must not be assumed that all the humor
on the street rises from misadventure. Rather, it arises from a
general acceptance of the day and a feeling of common partnership in
the storm. The policeman in his rubber coat exchanges banter with a
cab-driver. If there is a tangle in the traffic, it comes nearer to a
jest than on a fairer day. A teamster sitting dry inside his hood,
whistles so cheerily that he can be heard at the farther sidewalk.
Good-naturedly he sets his tune as a rival to the wind.
It must be that only good-tempered persons are abroad--those whose
humor endures and likes the storm--and that when the swift dark clouds
drove across the world, all sullen folk scurried for a roof. And is it
not wise, now and then, that folk be thus parceled with their kind?
Must we wait for Gabriel's Trump for our division? I have been
told--but the story seems incredible--that that seemingly cursed
thing, the Customs' Wharf, was established not so much for our
nation's profit as in acceptance of some such general theory--in a
word, that all sour persons might be housed together for their
employment and society be rid of them. It is by an extension of this
obscure but beneficent division that only those of better nature go
abroad on these blustering November days.
There are many persons, of course, who like summer rains and boast of
their liking. This is nothing. One might as well boast of his appetite
for toasted cheese. Does one pin himself with badges if he plies an
enthusiastic spoon in an ice-cream dish? Or was the love of sack ever
a virtue, and has Falstaff become a saint? If he now sing in the Upper
Choir, the bench must sag. But persons of this turn of argument make a
point of their willingness to walk out in a June rain. They think it a
merit to go tripping across the damp grass to inspect their gardens.
Toasted cheese! Of course they like it. Who could help it? This is no
proof of merit. Such folk, at best, are but sisters in the
brotherhood.
And yet a November rain is but an August rain that has grown a beard
and taken on the stalwart manners of the world. And the November wind,
which piped madrigals in June and lazy melodies all the summer, has
done no more than learn brisker braver tunes to befit the coming
winter. If the wind tugs at your coat-tails, it only seeks a companion
for its games. It goes forth whistling for honest celebration, and who
shall begrudge it here and there a chimney if it topple it in sport?
Despite this, rainy weather has a bad name. So general is its evil
reputation that from of old one of the lowest circles of Hell has been
plagued with raw winds and covered thick with ooze--a testament to our
northern March--and in this villains were set shivering to their
chins. But the beginning of the distaste for rainy weather may be
traced to Noah. Certain it is that toward the end of his cruise, when
the passengers were already chafing with the animals--the kangaroos,
in particular, it is said, played leap-frog in the hold and disturbed
the skipper's sleep--certain it is while the heavens were still
overcast that Noah each morning put his head anxiously up through the
forward hatch for a change of sky. There was rejoicing from stem to
stern--so runs the legend--when at last his old white beard, shifting
from west to east, gave promise of a clearing wind. But from that day
to this, as is natural, there has persisted a stout prejudice against
wind and rain.
But this is not just. If a rainy day lacks sunshine, it has vigor for
a substitute. The wind whistles briskly among the chimney tops. There
is so much life on wet and windy days. Yesterday Nature yawned, but
today she is wide awake. Yesterday the earth seemed lolling idly in
the heavens. It was a time of celestial vacation and all the suns and
moons were vacant of their usual purpose. But today the earth whirls
and spins through space. Her gray cloud cap is pulled down across her
nose and she leans in her hurry against the storm. The heavens have
piped the planets to their work.
Yesterday the smoke of chimneys drifted up with tired content from
lazy roofs, but today the smoke is stretched and torn like a
triumphant banner of the storm.
"1917."
I dreamed last night a fearful dream and this morning even the
familiar contact of the subway has been unable to shake it from me.
I know of few things that are so momentarily tragical as awakening
from a frightful dream. Even if you know with returning consciousness
that it was a dream, it seems as if a part of it must have a basis in
fact. The death that was recorded--is it true or not? And in your mind
you grope among the familiar landmarks of your recollection to
discover where the true and the fictitious join.
But this dream of last night was so vivid that this morning I cannot
shake it from me.
I dreamed--ridiculously enough--that the whole world was at war, and
that big and little nations were fighting.
In my dream the round earth hung before me against the background of
the night, and red flames shot from every part.
I heard cries of anguish--men blinded by gases and crazed by
suffering. I saw women dressed in black--a long procession stretching
hideously from mist to mist--walking with erect heads, dry-eyed, for
grief had starved them of tears. I saw ships sinking and a thousand
arms raised for a moment above the waves. I saw children lying dead
among their toys.
And I saw boys throw down their books and tools and go off with glad
cries, and men I saw, grown gray with despair, staggering under heavy
weights.
There were millions of dead upon the earth that hung before me, and I
smelled the battlefield.
And I beheld one man--one hundred men--secure in an outlawed country--who
looked from far windows--men bitter with disappointment--men who blasphemed
of God, while their victims rotted in Flanders.
And in my dream it seemed that I did not have a sword, but that I,
too, looked upon the battle from a place where there were no flames. I
ran little errands for the war.
* * * * *
There is the familiar window--that dull outline across the room. Here
is the accustomed door. The bed is set between. It was but a dream
after all. And yet how it has shaken me!
Of course the dream was absurd. No man--no nation certainly--could be
so mad. The whole whirling earth could not burn with fire. Until the
final trumpet, no such calamity is possible. Thank God, it was but a
dream, and I can continue today my peaceful occupation.
Calico, I'm told, is going up. I must protect our contracts.
On Going Afoot.
There is a tale that somewhere in the world there is a merry river
that dances as often as it hears sweet music. The tale is not precise
whether this river is neighbor to us or is a stream of the older
world. "It dances at the noise of musick," so runs the legend, "for
with musick it bubbles, dances and grows sandy." This tale may be the
conceit of one of those older poets whose verses celebrate the morning
and the freshness of the earth--Thomas Heywood could have written it
or even the least of those poets who sat their evenings at the
Mermaid--or the tale may arise more remotely from an old worship of
the god Pan, who is said to have piped along the streams. I offer my
credence to the earlier origin as the more pleasing. And therefore on
a country walk I observe the streams if by chance any of them shall
fit the tale. Not yet have I seen Pan puffing his cheeks with melody
on a streamside bank--by ill luck I squint short-sightedly--but I
often hear melodies of such woodsy composition that surely they must
issue from his pipe. The stream leaps gaily across the shallows that
glitter with sunlight, and I am tempted to the agreeable suspicion
that I have hit upon the very stream of the legend and that the god
Pan sits hard by in the thicket and beats his shaggy hoof in rhythm.
It is his song that the wind sings in the trees. If a bird sings in
the meadow its tune is pitched to Pan's reedy obligato.
Whether or not this is true, I confess to a love of a stream. This may
be merely an anaemic love of beauty, such as is commonly bred in
townsfolk on a holiday, or it may descend from braver ancestors who
once were anglers and played truant with hook and line. You may recall
that the milk-women of Kent told Piscator when he came at the end of
his day's fishing to beg a cup of red cow's milk, that anglers were
"honest, civil, quiet men." I have, also, a habit of contemplation,
which I am told is proper to an angler. I can lean longer than most
across the railing of a country bridge if the water runs noisily on
the stones. If I chance to come off a dusty road--unless hunger stirs
me to an inn--I can listen for an hour, for of all sounds it is the
most musical. When earth and air and water play in concert, which are
the master musicians this side of the moon, surely their harmony rises
above the music of the stars.
In a more familiar mood I throw stepping stones in the water to hear
them splash, or I cram them in a dam to thwart the purpose of the
stream, laying ever a higher stone when the water laps the top. I
scoop out the sand and stones as if a mighty shipping begged for
passage. Or I rest from this prodigious engineering upon my back and
watch the white traffic of the clouds across the summer sky. The roots
of an antique oak peep upon the flood as in the golden days of Arden.
Apple blossoms fall upon the water like the snow of a more kindly
winter. A gay leaf puts out upon the channel like a painted galleon
for far adventure. A twig sails off freighted with my drowsy thoughts.
A branch of a willow dips in the stream and writes an endless trail of
words in the running water. In these evil days when the whole fair
world is trenched and bruised with war, what wisdom does it send to
the valleys where men reside--what love and peace and gentleness--what
promise of better days to come--that it makes this eternal stream its
messenger!
And yet a stream is best if it is but an incident in travel--if it
break the dusty afternoon and send one off refreshed. Rather than a
place for fishing it invites one to bathe his feet. There are, indeed,
persons so careful of their health as to assert that cold water
endangers blisters. Theirs is a prudence to be neglected. Such persons
had better leave their feet at home safely slippered on the fender. If
one's feet go upon a holiday, is it fair that for fear of consequence
they be kept housed in their shoes? Shall the toes sit inside their
battered caravans while the legs and arms frisk outside? Is there such
torture in a blister--even if the prevention be sure--to outweigh the
pleasure of cold water running across the ankles?
It was but lately that I followed a road that lay off the general
travel through a pleasant country of hills and streams. As the road
was not a thoroughfare and journeyed no farther than the near-by town
where I was to get my supper, it went at a lazy winding pace. If a dog
barked it was in sleepy fashion. He yelped merely to check his
loneliness. There could be no venom on his drowsy tooth. The very cows
that fed along its fences were of a slower breed and more
contemplative whisk of tail than are found upon the thoroughfares.
Sheep patched the fields with gray and followed their sleepy banquet
across the hills.