paving--the even rows of cobbles, the nice tapping to fit the stones
against the curb, the neat joint around the drain. And yet,
unpardonably, he neglects the tarpot; and this seems the very soul of
the business, the finishing touch--almost culinary, as when a cook
pours on a chocolate sauce.
I remember pleasantly when our own street was paved. There had been
laid a waterpipe, deep down where the earth was yellow--surely gold
was near--and several of us young rascals climbed in and out in the
twilight when work was stopped. By fits we were both mountaineers and
miners. There was an agreeable gassy smell as if we neared the lower
regions. Here was a playground better than the building of a barn,
even with its dizzy ladders and the scaffolding around the chimney. Or
we hid in the great iron pipes that lay along the gutters, and
followed our leader through them home from school. But when the pipes
were lowered into place and the surface was cobbled but not yet
sanded, then the tarpot yielded gum for chewing. At any time after
supper a half dozen of us--blacker daubs against the darkness--might
have been seen squatting on the stones, scratching at the tar.
Blackjack, bought at the corner, had not so full a flavor. But one had
to chew forward in the mouth--lightly, lest the tar adhere forever to
the teeth.
And yet I am not entirely in accord with Stevenson in his preference.
And how is it, really, that people fall into their livelihoods? What
circumstance or necessity drives them? Does choice, after all, always
yield to a contrary wind and run for any port? Is hunger always the
helmsman? How many of us, after due appraisal of ourselves, really
choose our own parts in the mighty drama?--first citizen or second,
with our shrill voices for a moment above the crowd--first citizen or
second--brief choristers, except for vanity, against a painted scene.
How runs the rhyme?--rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief; doctor,
lawyer, merchant, chief! And a robustious fellow with great voice, and
lace and sword, strutting forward near the lights.
Meditating thus, I frequently poke about the city in the end of
afternoon "when the mind of your man of letters requires some
relaxation." I peer into shop windows, not so much for the wares
displayed as for glimpses of the men and women engaged in their
disposal. I watch laborers trudging home with the tired clink of their
implements and pails. I gaze into cellarways where tailor and cobbler
sit bent upon their work--needle and peg, their world--and through
fouled windows into workrooms, to learn which livelihoods yield the
truest happiness. For it is, on the whole, a whistling rather than a
grieving world, and like little shouts among the hills is laughter
echoed in the heart.
I can well understand how one can become a baker or even a small
grocer with a pencil behind his ear. I could myself honestly recommend
an apple--an astrachan for sauces--or, in the season, offer asparagus
with something akin to enthusiasm. Cranberries, too, must be an
agreeable consort of the autumn months when the air turns frosty. I
would own a cat with a dusty nose to rub along the barrels and sleep
beneath the stove. I would carry dried meats in stock were it only for
the electric slicing machine. And whole cheeses! Or to a man of
romantic mind an old brass shop may have its lure. To one of musty
turn, who would sit apart, there is something to be said for the
repair of violins and 'cellos. At the least he sweetens discord into
melody.
But I would not willingly keep a second-hand bookshop. It is too
cluttered a business. There is too free a democracy between good and
bad. It was Dean Swift who declared that collections of books made him
melancholy, "where the best author is as much squeezed and as obscure
as a porter at a coronation." Nor is it altogether reassuring for one
who is himself by way of being an author to view the certain neglect
that awaits him when attics are cleared at last. There is too leathery
a smell upon the premises, a thick deposit of mortality. I draw a deep
breath when I issue on the street, grateful for the sunlight and the
wind. However, I frequently put my head in at Pratt's around the
corner, sometimes by chance when the family are assembled for their
supper in one of the book alcoves. They have swept back a litter of
historians to make room for the tray of dishes. To cut them from the
shop they have drawn a curtain in front of their nook, but I can hear
the teapot bubbling on the counter. There is, also, a not unsavory
smell which, if my old nose retains its cunning, is potato stew,
fetched up from the kitchen. If you seek Gibbon now, Pratt's face will
show like a withered moon between the curtains and will request you to
call later when the dishes have been cleared.
No one works in cleaner produce than carpenters. They are for the most
part a fatherly whiskered tribe and they eat their lunches neatly from
a pail, their backs against the wall, their broad toes upturned. I
look suspiciously on painters, however, who present themselves for
work like slopped and shoddy harlequins, and although I have myself
passed a delightful afternoon painting a wooden fence at the foot of
the garden--and been scraped afterwards--I would not wish to be of
their craft.
But perhaps one is of restless habit and a peripatetic occupation may
be recommended. For a bachelor of small expense, at a hazard, a
wandering fruit and candy cart offers the venture and chance of
unfamiliar journeys. There is a breed of lollypop on a stick that
shows a handsome profit when the children come from school. Also, at
this minute, I hear below me on the street the flat bell of the
scissors-grinder. I know not what skill is required, yet it needs a
pretty eye and even foot. The ragman takes to an ancestral business
and chants the ancient song of his fathers. When distance has somewhat
muffled its nearer sharpness, the song bears a melody unparalleled
among tradesmen's cries. Window glass, too, is hawked pleasantly from
house to house and requires but a knife and putty. In the spring the
vegetable vender, standing in his wagon, utters melodious sounds that
bring the housewives to their windows. Once, also, by good luck, I
fell into acquaintance with a fellow who peddled brooms and dustpans
along the countryside. He was hung both front and back with cheap
commodities--a necklace of scrubbing brushes--tins jangling against
his knees. A very kitchen had become biped. A pantry had gone on
pilgrimage. Except for dogs, which seemed maddened by his strange
appearance, it was, he informed me, an engaging livelihood for a man
who chafed indoors. Or for one of dreamy disposition the employment of
a sandwich man, with billboards fore and aft, offers a profitable
repose. Sometimes several of these philosophers journey together up
the street in a crowded hour, one behind another with slow
introspective step, as befits their high preoccupation.
Or one has an ear, and the street-organ commends itself. Observe the
musician at the corner, hat in hand and smiling! Let but a curtain
stir and his eye will catch it. He hears a falling penny as 'twere any
nightingale. His tunes are the herald of the gaudy spring. His are the
dancing measures of the sunlight. And is anyone a surer judge of human
nature? He allows dyspeptics to slink along the fence. Those of
bilious aspect may go their ways unchallenged. Spare me those, he
says, who have not music in their souls: they are fit for treasons,
stratagems, and spoils. It was with a flute that the poet Goldsmith
starved his way through France. Yet the flute is a cold un-stirring
instrument. He would have dined the oftener had he pitched upon a
street-organ.
But in this Christmas season there is a man goes up and down among the
shoppers blowing shrill tunes upon a pipe. A card upon his hat
announces that it is music makes the home and that one of his
marvelous implements may be bought for the trifling and altogether
insignificant sum of ten cents. A reticule across his stomach bulges
with his pipes. He seems to manipulate the stops with his fingers, but
I fancy that he does no more than sing into the larger opening. Yet
his gay tune sounds above the traffic.
I have wondered where such seasonal professions recruit themselves.
The eyeglass man still stands at his corner with his tray. He is,
moreover, too sodden a creature to play upon a pipe. Nor is there any
dwindling of shoe-lace peddlers. The merchants of popcorn have not
fallen off in number, and peanuts hold up strong. Rather, these
Christmas musicians are of the tribe which at other festivals sell us
little flags and bid us show our colors. They come from country fairs
and circuses. All summer long they bid us gather for the fat man, or
they cry up the beauties of a Turkish harem. If some valiant fellow in
a painted tent is about to swallow glass, they are his horn and drum
to draw the crowd. I once knew a side-show man who bent iron bars
between his teeth and who summoned stout men from his audience to
swing upon the bar, but I cannot believe that he has discharged the
bawling rascal at his door. I rather choose to think that the piper
was one of those self-same artists who, on lesser days, squeeze comic
rubber faces in their fingers, or make the monkey climb its
predestined stick.
Be this as it may, presently the piper hit on a persuasive tune and I
abandoned all thought of the Noah's ark--my errand of the morning for
my nephew--and joined the crowd that followed him. Hamelin Town was
come again. But street violins I avoid. They suggest mortgages and
unpaid rent.
But with the world before him why should a man turn dentist? He must
have been a cruel fellow from his rattle. When did his malicious
ambition first sprout up towards molars and bicuspids? Or who would
scheme to be a plumber? He is a cellarer--alas, how shrunk from former
days! Or consider the tailor! Perhaps you recall Elia's estimate. "Do
you ever see him," he asks, "go whistling along the foot-path like a
carman, or brush through a crowd like a baker, or go smiling to
himself like a lover?"
Certainly I would not wish to be a bookkeeper and sit bent all day
over another's wealth. I would not want to bring in on lifted fingers
the meats which another eats. Nor would I choose to be a locksmith,
which is a kind of squint-eyed business, up two dismal stairs and at
the rear. A gas lamp flares at the turn. A dingy staircase mounts into
a thicker gloom. The locksmith consorts with pawnbrokers, with cheap
sign-makers and with disreputable doctors; yet he is not of them. For
there adheres to him a sort of romance. He is a creature of another
time, set in our midst by the merest chance. The domestic cat,
descended from the jungle, is not more shrunk. Keys have fallen on
evil days. Observe the mighty row of them hung discarded along his
boxes! Each one is fit to unlock a castle. Warwick itself might yield
to such a weight of metal--rusty now, disused, quite out of fashion,
displaced by a race of dwarfs. In the old prints, see how the London
'prentice runs with his great key in the dawn to take down his
master's shutter! In a musty play, observe the jailor at the dungeon
door! Without massive keys jingling at the belt the older drama must
have been a weakling. Only lovers, then, dared to laugh at locksmiths.
But now locksmiths sit brooding on the past, shriveled to mean uses,
ready for paltry kitchen jobs.
And the undertaker, what shall we say of him? That black coat with the
flower! That mournful smile! That perfect grief! And yet, I am told,
undertakers, after hours, go singing home to supper, and spend their
evenings at the movies like us rougher folk. It was David Copperfield,
you recall, who dined with an undertaker and his family--in the room,
no doubt, next to the coffin storage--and he remarked at the time how
cheerfully the joint went round. One of this sober cloth, moreover,
has confided to me that they let themselves loose, above all
professions, in their reunions and conventions. If an unusual riot
issues from the door and a gay fellow goes walking on the table it is
sure that either lawyers or undertakers sit inside.
For myself, if I were to become a merchant, I would choose a shop at a
four-corners in the country, and I would stock from shoe-laces to
plows. There is no virtue in keeping store in the city. It is merely
by favor that customers show themselves. Candidly, your competitor can
better supply their wants. This is not so at the four-corners. Nor is
anyone a more influential citizen than a country merchant. He sets the
style in calicoes. He judges between check and stripe. His decision
against a high heel flattens the housewives by an inch. But if I kept
such a country store, I would provide an open fire and, when the
shadows lengthened, an easy chair or two for gossips.
I was meditating lately on these strange preferences in livelihoods
and was gazing through the city windows for any clue when I was
reminded of a tempting scheme that Wee Jessie--a delightful
Scots-woman of my acquaintance--has planned for several of us.
We are to be traveling merchants for a season, with a horse and wagon
or a motor. My own preference is a motor, and already I see a vehicle
painted in bright colors and opening up behind as spacious as a waffle
cart. There will be windows all around for the display of goods. It is
not quite fixed what we shall sell. Wee Jessie leans toward bonnets
and little millinery odds and ends. I am for kitchen tins. M----
inclines toward drygoods, serviceable fabrics. It is thought that we
shall live on the roof while on tour, with a canvas to draw on wet
nights. We shall possess a horn--on which Wee Jessie once practiced in
her youth--to gather up the crowd when we enter a village.
Fancy us, therefore, my dear sir, as taking the road late this coming
spring in time to spread the summer's fashions. And if you hear our
horn at twilight in your village--a tune of more wind than melody,
unless Jessie shall cure her imperfections--know that on the morrow,
by the pump, we shall display our wares.
The Tread of the Friendly Giants.
When our Babe he goeth walking in his garden,
Around his tinkling feet the sunbeams play.
It has been my fortune to pass a few days where there lives a dear
little boy of less than three. My first knowledge of him every morning
is the smothered scuffling through the partition as he reluctantly
splashes in his bath. Here, unless he mend his caution, I fear he will
never learn to play the porpoise at the Zoo. Then there is a wee
tapping at my door. It is a fairy sound as though Mustard-seed were in
the hall. Or it might be Pease-blossom rousing up Cobweb in the play,
to repel the red-hipped humble-bee. It is so slight a tapping that if
I sleep with even one ear inside the covers I will not hear it.
The little lad stands in the dim passage to greet me, fully dressed,
to reproach me with my tardiness. He is a mite of a fellow, but he is
as wide awake and shiny as though he were a part of the morning and
had been wrought delicately out of the dawn's first ray. Indeed, I
choose to fancy that the sun, being off hurriedly on broader business,
has made him his agent for the premises. Particularly he assists in
this passage at my bedroom door where the sleepy Night, which has not
yet caught the summons, still stretches and nods beyond the turn. It
is so dark here on a winter's morning when the nursery door is shut
that even an adventuring sunlight, if it chanced to clamber through
the window, would blink and falter in the hazard of these turns. But
the sun has sent a substitute better than himself: for is there not a
shaft of light along the floor? It can hardly fall from the window or
anywhere from the outside world.
The little lad stands in the passage demanding that I get up. "Get up,
lazybones!" he says. Pretty language to his elders! He speaks soberly,
halting on each syllable of the long and difficult word. He is so
solemn that the jest is doubled. And now he runs off, jouncing and
stiff-legged to his nursery. I hear him dragging his animals from his
ark, telling them all that they are lazybones, even his barking dog
and roaring lion. Noah, when he saw on that first morning that his ark
was grounded on Ararat, did not rouse his beasts so early to leave the
ship.
Later I meet the lad at breakfast, locked in his high chair. In these
riper hours of day there is less of Cobweb in his composition. He is
now every inch a boy. He raps his spoon upon his tray. He hurls food
in the general direction of his mouth. If an ear escape the assault it
is gunnery beyond the common. He is bibbed against misadventure. This
morning he yearns loudly for muffins, which he calls "bums." He
chooses those that are unusually brown with a smudge of the
cooking-tin, and these he calls "dirty bums."
Such is my nephew--a round-cheeked, blue-eyed rogue who takes my thumb
in all his fingers when we go walking. His jumpers are slack behind
and they wag from side to side in an inexpressibly funny manner, but
this I am led to believe springs not from any special genius but is
common to all children. It is only recently that he learned to walk,
for although he was forward with his teeth and their early sprouting
ran in gossip up the street, yet he lagged in locomotion. Previously
he advanced most surely on his seat--his slider, as he called
it--throwing out his legs and curling them in under so as to draw him
after. By this means he attained a fine speed upon a slippery floor,
but he chafed upon a carpet. His mother and I agreed that this was
quite an unusual method and that it presaged some rare talent for his
future, as the scorn of a rattle is said to predict a judge. It was
during one of these advances across the kitchen floor where the boards
are rough that an accident occurred. As he excitedly put it, with a
fitting gesture to the rear, he got a sliver in his slider. But now he
goes upon his feet with a waddle like a sailor, and he wags his slider
from side to side.
Sometimes we play at hide-and-seek and we pop out at one another from
behind the sofa. He lacks ingenuity in this, for he always hides in
the same place. I have tempted him for variety to stow himself in the
woodbox. Or the pantry would hold him if he squeezed in among the
brooms. Nor does my ingenuity surpass his, for regularly in a certain
order I shake the curtains at the door and spy under the table. I stir
the wastebasket and peer within the vases, although they would hardly
hold his shoe. Then when he is red-hot to be found and is already
peeking impatiently around the sofa, at last I cry out his discovery
and we begin all over again.
I play ball with him and bounce it off his head, a game of more mirth
in the acting than in the telling. Or we squeeze his animals for the
noises that they make. His lion in particular roars as though lungs
were its only tenant. But chiefly I am fast in his friendship because
I ride upon his bear. I take the door at a gallop. I rear at the turn.
I fall off in my most comical fashion. Sometimes I manage to kick over
his blocks; at which we call it a game, and begin again. He has named
the bear in my honor.
We start all of our games again just as soon as we have finished them.
That is what a game is. And if it is worth playing at all, it is worth
endless repetition. If I strike a rich deep tone upon the Burmese
gong, I must continue to strike upon it until I can draw his attention
to something else. Once, the cook, hearing the din, thought that I
hinted for my dinner. Being an obliging creature, she fell into such a
flurry and so stirred her pans to push the cooking forward, that
presently she burned the meat.
Or if I moo like a cow, I must moo until sunset. I rolled off the sofa
once to distract him when the ugly world was too much with him.
Immediately he brightened from his complaint and demanded that I do it
once more. And lately, when a puppy bounced out of the house next door
and, losing its footing, rolled heels over head to the bottom of the
steps, at once he pleaded for an encore. To him all the world's a
stage.
My nephew observes me closely to see what kind of fellow I am. I study
him, too. He watches me over the top of his mug at breakfast and I
stare back at him over my coffee cup. If I wrinkle my nose, he
wrinkles his. If I stick out my tongue, he sticks his out, too. He
answers wink with wink. When I pet his woolly lamb, however, he seems
to wonder at my absurdity. When I wind up his steam engine, certainly
he suspects that I am a novice. He shows a disregard of my castles,
and although I build them on the windy vantage of a chair, with dizzy
battlements topping all the country, he brushes them into ruin.
Sometimes I fancy that his glance is mixed with scorn, and that he
considers my attempts to amuse him as rather a silly business. I
wonder what he thinks about when he looks at me seriously. I cannot
doubt his wisdom. He seems to resemble a philosopher who has traveled
to us from a distant world. If he cast me a sentence from Plato, I
would say, "Master, I listen." Is it Greek he speaks, or a dark
language from a corner of the sky? He has a far-off look as though he
saw quite through these superficial affairs of earth. His eyes have
borrowed the color of his wanderings and they are as blue as the
depths beyond the moon. And I think of another child, somewhat older
than himself, whose tin soldiers these many years are rusted, a
thoughtful silent child who was asked, once upon a time, what he did
when he got to bed. "Gampaw," he replied, "I lies and lies, Gampaw,
and links and links, 'til I know mos' everysin'." The snow of a few
winters, the sun of summer, the revolving stars and seasons--until
this lad now serves in France.
My nephew, although he too roams these distant spaces of philosophic
thought and brings back strange unexpected treasure, has not arrived
at the age of mere terrestrial exploration. He is quite ignorant of
his own house and has no curiosity about the back stairs--the back
stairs that go winding darkly from the safety of the kitchen. Scarcely
is the fizzing of dinner lost than a new strange world engulfs one.
He is too young to know that a doorway in the dark is the portal of
adventure. He does not know the mystery and the twistings of the
cellar, or the shadows of the upper hallway and the dim hollows that
grow and spread across the twilight.
Dear lad, there is a sunny world beyond the garden gate, cities and
rolling hills and far-off rivers with white sails going up and down.
There are wide oceans, and ships with tossing lights, and islands set
with palm trees. And there are stars above your roof for you to wonder
at. But also, nearer home, there are gentle shadows on the stairs, a
dim cellar for the friendly creatures of your fancy, and for your
exalted mood there is a garret with dark corners. Here, on a braver
morning, you may push behind the trunks and boxes and come to a land
unutterable where the furthest Crusoe has scarcely ventured. Or in a
more familiar hour you may sit alongside a window high above the town.
Here you will see the milkman on his rounds with his pails and long
tin dipper. And these misty kingdoms that open so broadly on the world
are near at hand. They are yours if you dare to go adventuring for
them.
Soon your ambition will leap its nursery barriers. No longer will you
be content to sit inside this quiet room and pile your blocks upon the
floor. You will be off on discovery of the long trail that lies along
the back hall and the pantry where the ways are dark. You will wander
in search of the caverns that lie beneath the stairs when the night
has come. You will trudge up steps and down for any lurking ocean on
which to sail your pirate ships. Already I see you gazing with wistful
eyes into the spaces beyond the door--into the days of your great
adventure. In your thought is the patter and scurry of new creation.
It is almost fairy time for you. The tread of the friendly giants,
still far off, is sounding in the dark....