"Ah, well!--ah, well! Suit yourself. Take your trunk and pitch into
Vesuvius, if you like. I won't stand in your way."
His acquiescence was ungraciously, and I believe I may say ambiguously,
expressed; but it mattered little, for in three days from that time I
took my trunk, Halicarnassus his cane, and we started on our travels. An
evil omen met us at the beginning. Just as I was stepping into the car,
I observed a violent smoke issuing from under it. I started back in
alarm.
"They are only getting up steam," said Halicarnassus. "Always do, when
they start."
"I know better!" I answered briskly, for there was no time to be
circumlocutional. "They don't get up steam under the cars."
"Why not? Bet a sixpence you couldn't get Uncle Cain's dobbin out of his
jog-trot without building a fire under him."
"I know that wheel is on fire," I said, not to be turned from the direct
and certain line of assertion into the winding ways of argument.
"No matter," replied Halicarnassus, conceding everything, "we are
insured."
Upon the strength of which consolatory information I went in. By-and-by
a man entered and took a seat in front of us. "The box is all afire,"
chuckled he to his neighbor, as if it were a fine joke. By-and-by
several people who had been looking out of the windows drew in their
heads, rose, and went into the next car.
"What do you suppose they did that for?" I asked Halicarnassus.
"More aristocratical. Belong to old families. This is a new car, don't
you see? We are _parvenus_."
"Nothing of the sort," I rejoined. "This car is on fire, and they have
gone into the next one so as not to be burned up."
"They are not going to write books, and can afford to run away from
adventures."
"But suppose I am burned up in my adventure?"
"Obviously, then, your book will end in smoke."
I ceased to talk, for I was provoked at his indifference. I leave every
impartial mind to judge for itself whether the circumstances were such
as to warrant composure. To be sure, somebody said the car was to
be left at Jeru; but Jeru was eight miles away, and any quantity of
mischief might be done before we reached it,--if, indeed, we were
not prevented from reaching it altogether. It was a mere question of
dynamics. Would dry wood be able to hold its own against a raging fire
for half an hour? Of course the conductor thought it would; but even
conductors are not infallible; and you may imagine how comfortable it
was to sit and know that a fire was in full blast beneath you, and to
look down every few minutes expecting to see the flames forking up under
your feet. I confess I was not without something like a hope that one
tongue of the devouring element would flare up far enough to give
Halicarnassus a start; but it did not. No casualty occurred. We reached
Jeru in safety; but that does not prove that there was no danger, or
that indifference was anything but the most foolish hardihood. If our
burning car had been in mid-ocean, serenity would have been sublimity,
but to stay in the midst of peril when two steps would take one out of
it is idiocy. And that there was peril is conclusively shown by the fact
that the very next day the Eastern Railroad Depot took fire and was
burned to the ground. I have in my own mind no doubt that it was a
continuation of the same fire, and if we had stayed in the car much
longer, we should have shared the same fate.
We found Jeru to be a pleasant city, with only one fault: the
inhabitants will crowd into a car before passengers can get out;
consequently the heads of the two columns collide near the car-door, and
there is a general choke. Otherwise Jeru is a delightful city. It is
famous for its beautiful women. Its railroad-station is a magnificent
piece of architecture. Its men are retired East-India merchants.
Everybody in Jeru is rich and has real estate. The houses in Jeru
are three stories high and face on the Common. People in Jeru are
well-dressed and well-bred, and they all came over in the Mayflower.
We stopped in Jeru five minutes.
When we were ready to continue our travels Halicarnassus seceded into
the smoking-car, and while the engine was shrieking off its inertia, a
small boy, laboring under great agitation, hurried in, darted up to me,
and, thrusting a pinchbeck ring with a pink glass in it into my face,
exclaimed, in a hoarse whisper,--
"A beautiful ring, Ma'am! I've just picked it up. Can't stop to find the
owner. Worth a dollar, Ma'am; but if you'll give me fifty cents"--
"Boy!"
I rose fiercely, convulsively, in my seat, drew one long breath, but
whether he thought I was going to kill him,--I dare say I looked it,--or
whether he saw a sheriff behind, or a phantom gallows before, I know
not; but without waiting for the thunderbolt to strike, he rushed from
the car as precipitately as he had rushed in. I _was_ angry,--not
because I was to have been cheated, for I have been repeatedly and
atrociously cheated and only smiled, but because the rascal dared
attempt on me such a threadbare, ragged, shoddy trick as that. Do I
_look_ like a rough-hewn, unseasoned backwoodsman? Have I the air of
never having read a newspaper? Is there a patent innocence of eye-teeth
in my demeanor? Oh, Jeru! Jeru! Somewhere in your virtuous bosom you are
nourishing a viper, for I have felt his fangs. Woe unto you, if you do
not strangle him before he develops into mature anacondaism! In point of
natural history I am not sure that vipers do grow up anacondas, but
for the purposes of moral philosophy the development theory answers
perfectly well.
In Boston a dreadful thing happened to me,--a thing too horrible to
relate. I have no reason to suppose that the outrage was intentional;
but if I were absolute monarch of all I survey, there is one house in
one street in Boston which I would have razed to the ground; and tobacco
I would banish forever from the haunts of civilization.
In Boston we had three hours to spare; so we sent our luggage,--that is,
my trunk--to the Worcester Depot, and walked leisurely ourselves. I had
a little shopping to do, to complete my outfit for the journey,--a very
little shopping,--only a nightcap or two. Ordinarily such a thing is
a matter of small moment, but in my case the subject had swollen
into unnatural dimensions. Nightcaps are not generally considered
healthy,--at least not by physicians. Nature has given to the head its
sufficient and appropriate covering, the hair. Anything more than this
injures the head, by confining the heat, preventing the soothing,
cooling contact of air, and so deranging the circulation of the blood.
Therefore I have always heeded the dictates of Nature, which I have
supposed to be to brush out the hair thoroughly at night and let it fly.
But there are serious disadvantages connected with this course. For
Nature will be sure to whisk the hair away from your ears where you want
it, and into your eyes where you don't want it, besides crowning you
with magnificent disorder in the morning. But as I have always believed
that no evil exists without its remedy, I had long been exercising my
inventive genius in attempts to produce a head-gear which should at once
protect the ears, confine the hair, and let the skull alone. I regret
to say that my experiments were an utter failure, notwithstanding the
amount of science and skill brought to bear upon them. One idea lay at
the basis of all my endeavors. Every combination, however elaborate or
intricate, resolved into its simplest elements, consisted of a pair of
rosettes laterally to keep the ears warm, a bag posteriorly to put the
hair into, and some kind of a string somewhere to hold the machine
together. Every possible shape into which lace or muslin or sheeting
could be cut or plaited or sewed or twisted, into which crewel or cord
could be crocheted or netted or tatted, I make bold to declare was
essayed, until things came to such a pass that every odd bit of dry
goods lying around the house was, in the absence of any positive
testimony on the subject, assumed to be one of my nightcaps,--an utterly
baseless assumption, because my achievements never went so far as
concrete capuality, but stopped short in the later stages of abstract
idealism. However, prejudice is stronger than truth; and, as I said,
every fragment of every fabric that could not give an account of itself
was charged with being a nightcap till it was proved to be a dishcloth
or a cart-rope. I at length surrendered at discretion, and remembered
that somewhere in my reading I had met with exquisite lace caps, and I
did not know but that from the combined fineness and strength of their
material they might answer the purpose, even if in form they should not
be everything that was desirable,--and I determined to ascertain, if
possible, whether such things existed anywhere out of poetry.
As you perceive, therefore, my Boston shopping was not every-day
trading. It was to mark the abandonment of an old and the inauguration
of a new line of policy. Thus it was with no ordinary interest that I
looked carefully at all the shops, and when I found one that seemed to
hold out a possibility of nightcaps, I went in. Halicarnassus obeyed the
hint which I pricked into him with the point of my parasol, and stopped
outside. The one place in the world where a man has no business to be is
the inside of a dry-goods shop. He never looks and never is so big and
bungling as there. A woman skips from silk to muslin, from muslin to
ribbons, from ribbons to table-cloths with the grace and agility of a
bird. She glides in and out among crowds of her sex, steers sweepingly
clear of all obstacles, and emerges triumphant. A man enters and
immediately becomes all boots and elbows. He needs as much room to turn
round in as the English iron-clad Warrior, and it takes him about as
long. He treads on all the flounces, runs against all the clerks, knocks
over all the children, and is generally under-foot. If he gets an idea
into his head, a Nims's battery cannot dislodge it. You thought of
buying a shawl; but a thousand considerations in the shape of raglans,
cloaks, talmas, pea-jackets, induce you to modify your views. He stands
by you. He hears all your inquiries and all the clerk's suggestions. The
whole process of your reasoning is visible to his naked eye. He sees the
sack, or visite, or cape put upon your shoulders and you walking off
in it, and when you are half-way home, he will mutter, in idiotic
amazement, "I thought you were going to buy a shawl!" It is enough to
drive one wild.
No! Halicarnassus is absurd and mulish in many things, but he knows
I will not be hampered with him when I am shopping, and he obeys the
smallest hint and stops outside.
To be sure, he puts my temper on the rack by standing with his hands in
his pockets, or by looking meek, or, likely as not, peering into the
shop-door after me with great staring eyes and parted lips; and this is
the most provoking of all. If there is anything vulgar, slipshod, and
shiftless, it is a man lounging about with his hands in his pockets. If
you have paws, stow them away; but if you are endowed with hands, learn
to carry them properly, or else cut them off. Nor can I abide a man's
looking as if he were under control. I want him to _be_ submissive, but
I don't want him to look so. I want him to do just as he is bidden, but
I want him to carry himself like the man and monarch he was made to be.
I want him to stay where he is put, yet not as if he were put there, but
as if he had taken his position deliberately. But, of all things, to
have a man act as if he were a clod just emerged for the first time from
his own barnyard! Upon this occasion, however, I was too much absorbed
in my errand to note anybody's demeanor, and I threaded straightway the
crowd of customers, went up to the counter, and inquired in a clear
voice,--
"Have you lace nightcaps?"
The clerk looked at me with a troubled, bewildered glance, and made no
reply. I supposed he had not understood me, and repeated the question.
Then he answered, dubiously,--
"We have breakfast-caps."
It was my turn to look bewildered. What had I to do with breakfast-caps?
What connection was there between my question and his answer? What field
was there for any further inquiry? "Have you ox-bows?" imagine a farmer
to ask. "We have rainbows," says the shopman. "Have you cameo-pins?"
inquires the elegant Mrs. Jenkins. "We have linchpins." "Have you young
apple-trees?" asks the nursery-man. "We have whiffle-trees." If I had
wanted breakfast-caps, shouldn't I have asked for breakfast-caps? Or do
the Boston people take their breakfast at one o'clock in the morning? I
concluded that the man was demented, and marched out of the shop. When I
laid the matter before Halicarnassus, the following interesting colloquy
took place.