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. 

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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

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The Chimney-Pots. 

My windows look across the roofs of the crowded city and my thoughtsoften take their suggestion from the life that is manifest at myneighbors' windows and on these roofs. 

Across the way, one story lower than our own, there dwells "with hissubsidiary 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 areraised to form a snowy mountain, and he leads his paper soldiers upthe slope. Sometimes his kitten romps across the coverlet and pounceson his wriggling toes; and again sleeps on the sunny window-sill. Hisbook, by his rapt attention, must deal with far-off islands and withwaving cocoanut trees. Lately I have observed that a yellow drink isbrought to him in the afternoon--a delicious blend of eggs andmilk--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 haveseen the lad's nose flat and eager on the window, and I know that heis convalescent. 

At another set of windows--now that the days are growing short andthere is need of lights--I see in shadowgraph against the curtains anoccasional domestic drama. Tonight, by the appearance of hurry andthe shifting of garments, I surmise that there is preparation for aparty. Presently, when the upstairs lights have disappeared, I shallsee these folk below, issuing from their door in glossy raiment. Mydear sir and madame, I wish you an agreeable dinner and--if your toothresembles mine--ice-cream for dessert. 

The window of a kitchen, also, is opposite, and I often look on savorymesses 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 thedevil (surely the fearful adage cannot apply to our quiet street) hemight lift his food in safety from the common pot. 

A good many stories lower there is a bit of roof that is set withwicker furniture and a row of gay plants along the gutter. Here everyafternoon exactly at six--the roof being then in shadow--a man appearsand reads his evening paper. Later his wife joins him and they eattheir supper from a tray. They are sunk almost in a well of buildingswhich, like the hedge of a fairy garden, shuts them from all contactwith the world. And here they sit when the tray has been removed. Thetwilight 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 higherbuilding. From my lower level I can see the bright canvas and theside of the trellis that supports it. Here, doubtless, in the coolbreeze of these summer evenings, honest folk sip their coffee andwatch the lights start across the city. 

Thus, all around, I have glimpses of my neighbors--a form against thecurtains--a group, in the season, around the fire--the week's darningin a rocker--an early nose sniffing at the open window the morningairs. 

But it is these roofs themselves that are the general prospect. 

Close at hand are graveled surfaces with spouts and whirling vents andchimneys. Here are posts and lines for washing, and a scuttle fromwhich once a week a laundress pops her head. Although her coming istimed to the very hour--almost to the minute--yet when the scuttlestirs it is with an appearance of mystery, as if one of the fortythieves were below, boosting at the rocks that guard his cave. But thelaundress is of so unromantic and jouncing a figure that I abandon thefancy when no more than her shoulders are above the scuttle. She is, however, an amiable creature and, if the wind is right, I hear hersinging at her task. When clothespins fill her mouth, she experimentswith popular tunes. One of these wooden bipeds once slipped inside andnearly strangled her. 

In the distance, on the taller buildings, water tanks are liftedagainst the sky. They are perched aloft on three fingers, as it were, as if the buildings were just won to prohibition and held up theirwater cups in the first excitement of a novice to pledge the cause. Let hard liquor crouch and tremble in its rathskeller below thesidewalk! In the basement let musty kegs roll and gurgle with hopelessfear! _Der Tag!_ The roof, the triumphant roof, has gone dry. 

This range of buildings with water tanks and towers stops my gaze tothe North. There is a crowded world beyond--rolling valleys ofhumanity--the heights of Harlem--but although my windows stand ontiptoe, 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 abright day that brings them forth? Now washing hangs limp upon theline. There is no frisk in undergarments. These stockings that hangshriveled and anĉmic--can it be possible that they once trotted to alively tune, or that a lifted skirt upon a crosswalk drew the eye? Thevery spouts and chimneys droop in the heavy sunlight. All the spinningvents are still. On these roofs, as on a steaming altar, Augustcelebrates its hot midsummer rites. 

But in winter, when the wind is up, the roofs show another aspect. Thestorm, in frayed and cloudy garment, now plunges across the city. Itsnaps its boisterous fingers. It pipes a song to summon rowdycompanions off the sea. The whirling vents hum shrilly to the tune. And the tempests are roused, and the windy creatures of the hills makeanswer. The towers--even the nearer buildings--are obscured. The skyis gray with rain. Smoke is torn from the chimneys. Down below let afire be snug upon the hearth and let warm folk sit and toast theirfeet! Let shadows romp upon the walls! Let the andirons wink at thesleepy cat! Cream or lemon, two lumps or one. Here aloft is briskerbusiness. There is storm upon the roof. The tempest holds a carnival. And the winds pounce upon the smoke as it issues from the chimney-potsand wring it by the neck as they bear it off. 

And sometimes it seems that these roofs represent youth, and itspurpose, its ambition and adventure. For, from of old, have not poetslived in garrets? And are not all poets young even if their beards arewhite? Round and round the poet climbs, up these bare creaking flightsto the very top. There is a stove to be lighted--unless the woodboxfails--a sloping ceiling and a window huddled to the floor. The poet'sfingers may be numb. Although the inkpot be full, his stomach may beempty. And yet from this window, lately, a poem was cast upward to themoon. And youth and truth still rhyme in these upper rooms. Linda'svoice is still the music of a sonnet. Still do the roses fade, andlove is always like the constant stars. And once, this!--surely from agarret:

 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 thesewindy gutters would there not be a dearth of poems in the spring? Whothen would be left to note the changing colors of the twilight and thepeaceful transit of the stars? Would gray beech trees in the winterfind a voice? Would there still be a song of water and of wind? Whowould catch the rhythm of the waves and the wheat fields in thebreeze? What lilts and melodies would vanish from the world! How staleand flat the city without its roofs!

But it is at night that these roofs show best. Then, as below aphilosopher in his tower, the city spreads its web of streets, and itslights gleam in answer to the lights above. Galileo in histower--Teufelsdröckh at his far-seeing attic window--saw thisglistening pageantry and had thoughts unutterable. 

In this darkness these roofs are the true suburb of the world--theoutpost--the pleasant edge of our human earth turned up toward thebarren moon. Chimneys stand as sentinels on the border of the sky. Pointed towers mark the passage of the stars. Great buildings are thecliffs on the shores of night. A skylight shows as a pleasant signalto guide the wandering skipper of the moon. 

The Quest of the Lost Digamma. 

Many years ago there was a club of college undergraduates which calleditself the Lost Digamma. The digamma, I am informed, is a letter thatwas lost in prehistoric times from the Greek alphabet. A prudentalphabet would have offered a reward at once and would have beaten upthe bushes all about, but evidently these remedies were neglected. Asthe years went on the other letters gradually assumed its duties. Thephilological chores, so to speak, night and morning, that had oncefallen to the digamma, they took upon themselves, until the very nameof the letter was all but lost. 

Those who are practiced in such matters--humped men who blink withlearning--claim to discover evidence of the letter now and then intheir reading. Perhaps the missing letter still gives a false quantityto a vowel or shifts an accent. It is remembered, as it were, by itsvacant chair. Or rather, like a ghost it haunts a word, rattling awarning lest we disarrange a syllable. Its absence, however, in theflesh, despite the lapse of time--for it went off long ago when themastodon still wandered on the pleasant upland--its continued absencevexes the learned. They scan ancient texts for an improper syllableand mark the time upon their brown old fingers, if possibly a joltingmeasure may offer them a clue. Although it must appear that thedigamma--if it yet rambles alive somewhere beneath the moon--has bythis time grown a beard and is lost beyond recognition, still oldgentlemen meet weekly and read papers to one another on the progressof the search. Like the old woman of the story they still keep a lightburning in their study windows against the wanderer's return. 

Now it happened once that a group of undergraduates, stirred tosympathy beyond the common usage of the classroom, formed themselvesinto a club to aid in the search. It is not recorded that they werethe deepest students in the class, yet mark their zeal! On a rumorarising from the chairman that the presence of the lost digamma wassuspected the group rushed together of an evening, for there was aninstinct that the digamma, like the raccoon, was easiest trapped atnight. To stay their stomachs against a protracted search, for theircolloquies sat late, they ordered a plentiful dinner to be placedbefore them. Also, on the happy chance that success might crown thenight, a row of stout Tobies was set upon the board. If the prodigallurked without and his vagrant nose were seen at last upon the window, then musty liquor, from a Toby's three-cornered hat, would be afitting pledge for his return. 

I do not know to a certainty the place of these meetings, but I chooseto fancy that it was an upper room in a modest restaurant that went bythe name of Mory's--not the modern Mory's that affects the manners ofa club, but the original Temple Bar, remembered justly for its brownale and golden bucks. 

There was, of course, a choice of places where the Lost Digamma mighthave pushed its search. Waiving Billy's and the meaner jointsconferred on freshmen, there was, to be sure, the scholastic murk ofTraeger's--one room especially at the rear with steins around thewalls. There was Heublein's, also. Even the Tontine might rouse astudent. 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 laidthe golden egg--for it could be none other than she who worked themiracle at Mory's--must have clucked like a braggart when the smokingdish came in. The dullest nose, even if it had drowsed like a Stoicthrough the day, perked and quivered when the breath came off thekitchen. Ears that before had never wiggled to the loudest noise cameflapping forward when the door was opened. Or maybe in those days yourwealth, huddled closely through the week, stretched on Saturday nightto a mutton chop with bacon on the side. This chop, named of thesouthern downs, was so big that it curled like an anchovy to get uponthe plate. The sheep that bore it across the grassy moors must haveout-topped the horse. The hills must have shaken beneath his tread. With what eagerness you squared your lean elbows for the feast, withknife and fork turned upwards in your fists!

But chops in these modern days are retrograde. Sheep have fallen to adecadent race. Cheese has lost its cunning. Someone, alas, as thestory says, has killed the hen that laid the golden egg. Mory's issunk and gone. Its faded prints of the Old Brick Row, its tablescarved with students' names, its brown Tobies in their three-corneredhats, the brasses of the tiny bar, the rickety rooms themselves--theserise from the past like genial ghosts and beckon us toward pleasantmemories. 

Such was the zeal in those older days which the members of the LostDigamma spent upon their quest that belated pedestrians--if the legendof the district be believed--have stopped upon the curb and haveinquired the meaning of the glad shouts that issued from the upperwindows, and they have gone off marveling at the enthusiasm attendanton this high endeavor. It is rumored that once when the excitement ofthe chase had gone to an unusual height and the students were beatingtheir Tobies on the table, one of them, a fellow of uncommon ardor, lunging forward from his chair, got salt upon the creature's tail. Theexploit overturned the table and so rocked the house that Louis, whowas the guardian of the place, put his nose above the stairs andcooled the meeting. Had it not been for his interference--he was agood-natured fellow but unacquainted with the frenzy that marks thescholar--the lost digamma might have been trapped, to the lastingglory of the college. 

As to the further progress of the club I am not informed. Doubtless itran an honorable course and passed on from class to class thetradition of its high ambition, but never again was the lost digammaso nearly in its grasp. If it still meets upon its midnight labors, atoothless member boasts of that night of its topmost glory, and thosewho have gathered to his words rap their stale unprofitable mugs uponthe 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 oldercenturies. You know the ancient works of Tweedledum and candistinguish to a hair's breadth 'twixt him and Tweedledee. Learning iscandy on your tooth. Perhaps you stroke your sagacious beard and givea nimble reason for the lightning. To you the hills have whispered howthey came, and the streams their purpose and ambition. You havestudied the first shrinkage of the earth when the plains wrinkled andbroke into mountain peaks. The mystery of the stars is to you asfamiliar as your garter. If such depth is yours, I am content to sitbefore you like a bucket below a tap. 

At your banquet I sit as a poor relation. If the viands hold, I fork acold morsel from your dish.... 

But modesty must not gag me. I do myself somewhat lean towardsknowledge. I run to a dictionary on a disputed word, and I point myinquiring nose upon the page like a careful schoolman. On a spurt Ipry into an uncertain date, but I lack the perseverance and thewakefulness for sustained endeavor. To repair my infirmity, Ifrequently go among those of steadier application, if haply theirdevotion may prove contagious. It was but lately that I dined with agroup of the Cognoscenti. There were light words at first, as when ajuggler carelessly tosses up a ball or two just to try his hand beforehe displays his genius--a jest or two, into which I entered as anequal. In these shallow moments we waded through our soup. But we hadhardly got beyond the fish when the company plunged into greaterdepth. I soon discovered that I was among persons skilled in thoseeconomic and social studies that now most stir us. My neighbor on theleft offered to gossip with me on the latest evaluations andeventuations--for such were her pleasing words--in the department ofknowledge dearest to her. While I was still fumbling for a response, my neighbor on the right, abandoning her meat, informed me of theprogress of a survey of charitable organizations that was then underway. By mischance, however, while flipping up the salad on my fork, Idropped a morsel on the cloth, and I was so intent in manoeuvringmy plates and spoons to cover up the speck, that I lost a good part ofher improving discourse. 

I was still, however, making a tolerable pretense of attention, when alearned person across the table was sharp enough to see that I was anovice in the gathering. For my improvement, therefore, he fixed hisgreat round glasses in my direction. In my confusion they seemedburning lenses hotly focused on me. Under such a glare, he thought, mytender sprouts of knowledge must spring up to full blossom. 

When he had my attention, he proceeded to lay out the dinner intocalories, which I now discovered to be a kind of heat or nutritiveunit. He cast his appraisal on the meat and vegetables, and turned anear toward the pantry door if by chance he might catch a hint of thedessert for his estimate, but by this time, being overwrought, I gaveup all pretense, and put my coarse attention on my plate. 

Sometimes I fall on better luck. It was but yesterday that I satwaiting for a book in the Public Library, when a young woman came andsat beside me on the common bench. Immediately she opened a monstrousnote-book, and fell to studying it. I had myself been reading, but Ihad 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 oldand worn--a musty history or an essay from the past--I squirm andedge myself until I can follow the reader's thumb. 

At the top of each page she had written the title of a book, with aspace below for comment, now well filled. There were a hundred ofthese titles, and all of them concerned John Paul Jones. She busiedherself scratching and amending her notes. The whole was thrown intosuch a snarl of interlineation, was so disfigured with revision, andthe writing so started up the margins to get breath at the top, that Iwondered how she could possibly bring a straight narrative out of theconfusion. Yet here was a book growing up beneath my very nose. If ina year's time--or perhaps in a six-month, if the manuscript is nothawked too long among publishers--if when again the nights are raw, anew biography of John Paul Jones appears, and you cut its leaves whileyour legs are stretched upon the hearth, I bid you to recognize as itsauthor my companion on the bench. Although she did not have beauty torouse a bachelor, yet she had an agreeable face and, if a soft whitecollar of pleasing fashion be evidence, she put more than a scholar'scare upon her dress. 

I am not entirely a novice in a library. Once I gained admittance tothe Reading Room of the British Museum--no light task even before thewar. This was the manner of it. First, I went among the policemen whofrequent the outer corridors, and inquired for a certain office whichI had been told controlled its affairs. The third policeman had heardof it and sent me off with directions. Presently I went through anobscure doorway, traversed a mean hall with a dirty gas-jet at theturn and came before a wicket. A dark man with the blood of a Spanishinquisitor asked my business. I told him I was a poor student, withouttaint or heresy, who sought knowledge. He stroked his chin as thoughit were a monstrous improbability. He looked me up and down, but thismight have been merely a secular inquiry on the chance that I carriedexplosives. He then dipped his pen in an ancient well (it was fromsuch a dusty fount that the warrant for Saint Bartholomew went forth), then bidding me be careful in my answers, he cocked his head and shuthis less suspicious eye lest it yield to mercy. 

He asked my name in full, middle name and all--as though villainymight lurk in an initial--my hotel, my length of stay in London, myresidence in America, my occupation, the titles of the books I sought. When he had done, I offered him my age and my weakness for Frenchpastry, in order that material for a monograph might be at hand if atlast I came to fame, but he silenced me with his cold eye. He nowthrust a pamphlet in my hands, and told me to sit alongside and readit. It contained the rules that govern the use of the Reading Room. Itwas eight pages long, and intolerably dry, and towards the end Inodded. Awaking with a start, I was about to hold up my hands for theadjustment of the thumb screws--for I had fallen on a nightmare--whenhe softened. The Imperial Government was now pleased to admit me tothe 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 fromantiquity. Among these musty memorial shelves, if anywhere, it wouldseem that the dusty padding feet of the lost digamma might be heard. In this room, perhaps, Christian Mentzelius was at work when he heardthe 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. Ifone of them hesitates and seems to chew upon his pencil, it is butindecision whether Hume or Buckle will weigh heavier on his page. Orif one of them looks up from his desk in a blurred near-sightedmanner, it is because his eyes have been so stretched upon the distantcenturies, that they can hardly focus on a room. If a scholar chancesto sneeze because of the infection, let it be his consolation that thedust arises from the most ancient and respected authors! Pages movesilently about with tall dingy tomes in their arms. Other tomes, whoseuse is past, they bear off to the shades below. 

I am told that once in a long time a student of fresher complexiongets in--a novitiate with the first scholastic down upon his cheek--atender stripling on his first high quest--a broth of a boy barely offhis primer--but no sooner is he set than he feels unpleasantlyconspicuous among his elders. Most of these youth bolt, offering tothe doorman as a pretext some neglect--a forgotten mission at abook-stall--an errand with a tailor. Even those few who remain becauseof the greater passion for their studies, find it to their comfort tobreak their condition. Either they put on glasses or they affect alimp. I know one persistent youth who was so consumed with desire forhistory, yet so modest against exposure, that he bargained with abeggar for his crutch. It was, however, the rascal's only livelihood. This crutch and his piteous whimper had worked so profitably on thecrowd that, in consequence, its price fell beyond the student's purse. My friend, therefore, practiced a palsy until, being perfect in thepart, he could take his seat without notice or embarrassment. Alas, the need of these pretenses is short. Such is the contagion of theplace--a breath from Egypt comes up from the lower stacks--that ayouth's appearance, like a dyer's hand, is soon subdued to what itworks in. In a month or so a general dust has settled on him. Toooften learning is a Rip Van Winkle's flagon. 

On a rare occasion I have myself been a student, and have plied mybook with diligence. Not long ago I spent a week of agreeable daysreading the many versions of Shakespeare that were played from theRestoration through the eighteenth century. They are well known toscholars, but the general reader is perhaps unfamiliar how Shakespearewas perverted. From this material I thought that I might lay out aninstructive paper; how, for example, the whirling passion of Lear wasonce wrought to soft and pleasant uses for a holiday. Cordelia isrescued from the villains by the hero Kent, who cries out in atransport, "Come to my arms, thou loveliest, best of women!" The sceneis laid in the woods, but as night comes on, Cordelia's old nurseappears. A scandal is averted. Whereupon Kent marries Cordelia, andthey reign happily ever afterward. As for Lear, he advances into agentle convalescence. Before the week is out he will be sunninghimself on the bench beneath his pear tree and babbling of his earlydays. 

There were extra witches in Macbeth. Romeo and Juliet lived and thequarreling families were united. Desdemona remained un-smothered tothe end. There was one stout author--but here I trust to memory--whoeven attempted to rescue Hamlet and to substitute for the distantrolling of the drum of Fortinbras, the pipes and timbrels of his happywedding. There is yet to be made a lively paper of these Shakespearetinkers of the eighteenth century. 

And then John Timbs was to have been my text, who was an antiquary ofthe nineteenth century. I had come frequently on his books. They areseldom found in first-hand shops. More appropriately they are offeredwhere the older books are sold--where there are racks before the doorfor the rakings of the place, and inside an ancient smell of leather. If there are barrels in the basement, stocked and overflowing, it issure that a volume of Timbs is upon the premises. 

I visited the Public Library and asked a sharp-nosed person how Imight best learn about John Timbs. I followed the direction of hiswagging thumb. The accounts of the encyclopedias are meager, a date ofbirth and of death, a few facts of residence, the titles of hishundred and fifty books, and little more. Some neglect him entirely;skipping lightly from Timbrel to Timbuctoo. Indeed, Timbuctoo turnedup so often that even against my intention I came to a knowledge ofthe place. It lies against the desert and exports ostrich feathers, gums, salts and kola-nuts. Nor are timbrels to be scorned. They wereused--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 hada fling at other subjects--a dozen books or so--but his graver hourswere given to the study of London. There is hardly a park or square orstreet, palace, theatre or tavern that did not yield its secret tohim. Here and there an upstart building, too new for legend, may havehad no gossip for him, but all others John Timbs knew, and thepersonages who lived in them. And he knew whether they were of sourtemper, whether they were rich or poor, and if poor, what shifts andpretenses they practiced. He knew the windows of the town where thebeaux commonly ogled the passing beauties. He knew the chatter of thetheatres and of society. He traced the walls of the old city, andexplored the lanes. Unless I am much mistaken, there is not a fellowof the _Dunciad_ to whom he has not assigned a house. Nor is any manof deeper knowledge of the clubs and coffee-houses and taverns. Onewould say that he had sat at Will's with Dryden, and that he had goneto Button's arm in arm with Addison. Did Goldsmith journey to histailor for a plum-colored suit, you may be sure that Timbs tagged himat the elbow. If Sam Johnson sat at the Mitre or Marlowe caroused inDeptford, Timbs was of the company. There has scarcely been a playacted in London since the days of Burbage which Timbs did notchronicle. 

But presently I gave up the study of John Timbs. Although I hadaccumulated interesting facts about him, and had got so far as to layout several amusing paragraphs, still I could not fit them together toan agreeable result. It was as though I could blow a melodious C upona horn, and lower down, after preparation, a dulcet G, but failed tomake a tune of them. 

But although my studies so far have been unsuccessful, doubtless Ishall persist. Even now I have several topics in mind that may yetserve for pleasant papers. If I fail, it will be my comfort thatothers far better than myself achieve but a half success. Although thedigamma escapes our salt, somewhere he lurks on the lonely mountains. And often when our lamps burn late, we fancy that we catch a waving ofhis tail and hear him padding across the night. But although we lashourselves upon the chase and strain forward in the dark, the timidbeast runs on swifter feet and scampers off. 

On a Rainy Morning. 

A northeaster blew up last night and this morning we are lashed bywind 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 allwas right aloft. I am not, however, weather-wise. I must feel thefirst patter of the storm before I hazard a judgment. To learn eventhe quarter of a breeze--unless there is a trail of smoke to guideme--I must hold up a wet finger. In my ignorance clouds sail acrossthe heavens on a whim. Like white sheep they wander here and there forforage, and my suspicion of bad weather comes only when the tempesthas whipped them to a gallop. Even a band around the moon--which I amtold is primary instruction on the coming of a storm--stirs me chieflyby its deeper mystery, as if astrology, come in from the distantstars, lifts here a warning finger. But M---- was brought up besidethe sea, and she has a sailor's instinct for the weather. At the firstpreliminary shifting of the heavens, too slight for my coarser senses, she will tilt her nose and look around, then pronounce the coming of astorm. To her, therefore, I leave all questions of umbrellas andraincoats, and on her decision we go abroad. 

Last night when I awoke I knew that her prophecy was right again, forthe rain was blowing in my face and slashing on the upper window. Thewind, too, was whistling along the roofs, with a try at chimney-potsand spouts. It was the wolf in the fairy story who said he'd huff andhe'd puff, and he'd blow in the house where the little pig lived; yettonight his humor was less savage. Down below I heard ash-canstoppling over all along the street and rolling to the gutters. Itlacks a few nights of Hallowe'en, but doubtless the wind's calendar isawry and he is out already with his mischief. When a window rattles atthis season, it is the tick-tack of his roguish finger. If a chimneyis overthrown, it is his jest. Tomorrow we shall find a broken shutteras his rowdy celebration of the night. 

This morning is by general agreement a nasty day. I am not sure that Iassent. If I were the old woman at the corner who sells newspapersfrom a stand, I would not like the weather, for the pent roof dropswater on her stock. Scarcely is the peppermint safe beyond thesplatter. 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 delightedwith this blustering sky, unless he is an idle fellow who seeks anexcuse to lie in bed. But except in sympathy, why is our elevator boyso fiercely disposed against the weather? His cage is snug as long asthe skylight holds. And why should the warm dry noses of the city, pressed against ten thousand windows up and down the streets, be flatand sour this morning with disapproval?

It may savor of bravado to find pleasure in what is so commonlycondemned. Here is a smart fellow, you may say, who sets up aparadox--a conceited braggart who professes a difference to mankind. Or worse, it may appear that I try my hand at writing in a "happyvein. " God forbid that I should be such a villain! For I once knew aman who, by reading these happy books, fell into pessimism and a sharpdecline. He had wasted to a peevish shadow and had taken to his bedbefore his physician discovered the seat of his anĉmia. It was only bycutting the evil dose, chapter by chapter, that he finally restoredhim to his friends. Yet neither supposition of my case is true. We whoenjoy wet and windy days are of a considerable number, and if ourvoices are seldom heard in public dispute, it is because we areovercome by the growling majority. You may know us, however, by ourstout boots, the kind of battered hats we wear, and our disregard ofpuddles. To our eyes alone, the rain swirls along the pavements likethe mad rush of sixteenth notes upon a music staff. And to our earsalone, the wind sings the rattling tune recorded. 

Certainly there is more comedy on the streets on a wet and windy daythan there is under a fair sky. Thin folk hold on at corners. Fat folkwaddle before the wind, their racing elbows wing and wing. Hats arewhisked off and sail down the gutters on excited purposes of theirown. It was only this morning that I saw an artistocratic silk hatbobbing along the pavement in familiar company with a strangerbonnet--surely a misalliance, for the bonnet was a shabby one. But inthe wind, despite the difference of social station, an instantaffinity had been established and an elopement was under way. 

Persons with umbrellas clamp them down close upon their heads andproceed blindly like the larger and more reckless crabs that you seein aquariums. Nor can we know until now what spirit for adventureresides in an umbrella. Hitherto it has stood in a Chinese vasebeneath the stairs and has seemed a listless creature. But when aNovember wind is up it is a cousin of the balloon, with an equal zestto explore the wider precincts of the earth and to alight upon themoon. Only persons of heavier ballast--such as have been fed onsweets--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 whobrings home a package from the grocer's. She is tugged and blown byher umbrella, and at every puff of wind she goes up on tiptoe. If Iwere writing a fairy tale I would make her the Princess of my plot, and I would transport her underneath her umbrella in this whiskingwind to her far adventures, just as Davy sailed off to the land ofGoblins inside his grandfather's clock. She would be carried overseas, until she could sniff the spice winds of the south. Then shewould be set down in the orchard of the Golden Prince, who presentlywould spy her from his window--a mite of a pretty girl, all mussed andblown about. And then I would spin out the tale to its true and happyend, and they would live together ever after. How she labors at theturn, hugging her paper bag and holding her flying skirts against herknees! An umbrella, however, usually turns inside out before it getsyou off the pavement, and then it looks like a wrecked Zeppelin. Youput it in the first ash-can, and walk off in an attempt not to beconspicuous. 

Although the man who pursues his hat is, in some sort, conscious thathe plays a comic part, and although there is a pleasing relish on thecurb at his discomfort, yet it must not be assumed that all the humoron the street rises from misadventure. Rather, it arises from ageneral acceptance of the day and a feeling of common partnership inthe storm. The policeman in his rubber coat exchanges banter with acab-driver. If there is a tangle in the traffic, it comes nearer to ajest 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 whosehumor endures and likes the storm--and that when the swift dark cloudsdrove across the world, all sullen folk scurried for a roof. And is itnot wise, now and then, that folk be thus parceled with their kind?Must we wait for Gabriel's Trump for our division? I have beentold--but the story seems incredible--that that seemingly cursedthing, the Customs' Wharf, was established not so much for ournation's profit as in acceptance of some such general theory--in aword, that all sour persons might be housed together for theiremployment and society be rid of them. It is by an extension of thisobscure but beneficent division that only those of better nature goabroad on these blustering November days. 

There are many persons, of course, who like summer rains and boast oftheir liking. This is nothing. One might as well boast of his appetitefor toasted cheese. Does one pin himself with badges if he plies anenthusiastic spoon in an ice-cream dish? Or was the love of sack evera virtue, and has Falstaff become a saint? If he now sing in the UpperChoir, the bench must sag. But persons of this turn of argument make apoint of their willingness to walk out in a June rain. They think it amerit to go tripping across the damp grass to inspect their gardens. Toasted cheese! Of course they like it. Who could help it? This is noproof of merit. Such folk, at best, are but sisters in thebrotherhood. 

And yet a November rain is but an August rain that has grown a beardand taken on the stalwart manners of the world. And the November wind, which piped madrigals in June and lazy melodies all the summer, hasdone no more than learn brisker braver tunes to befit the comingwinter. If the wind tugs at your coat-tails, it only seeks a companionfor its games. It goes forth whistling for honest celebration, and whoshall 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 evilreputation that from of old one of the lowest circles of Hell has beenplagued with raw winds and covered thick with ooze--a testament to ournorthern March--and in this villains were set shivering to theirchins. But the beginning of the distaste for rainy weather may betraced to Noah. Certain it is that toward the end of his cruise, whenthe passengers were already chafing with the animals--the kangaroos, in particular, it is said, played leap-frog in the hold and disturbedthe skipper's sleep--certain it is while the heavens were stillovercast that Noah each morning put his head anxiously up through theforward hatch for a change of sky. There was rejoicing from stem tostern--so runs the legend--when at last his old white beard, shiftingfrom west to east, gave promise of a clearing wind. But from that dayto this, as is natural, there has persisted a stout prejudice againstwind and rain. 

But this is not just. If a rainy day lacks sunshine, it has vigor fora substitute. The wind whistles briskly among the chimney tops. Thereis so much life on wet and windy days. Yesterday Nature yawned, buttoday she is wide awake. Yesterday the earth seemed lolling idly inthe heavens. It was a time of celestial vacation and all the suns andmoons were vacant of their usual purpose. But today the earth whirlsand spins through space. Her gray cloud cap is pulled down across hernose and she leans in her hurry against the storm. The heavens havepiped the planets to their work. 

Yesterday the smoke of chimneys drifted up with tired content fromlazy roofs, but today the smoke is stretched and torn like atriumphant banner of the storm. 

"1917. "

I dreamed last night a fearful dream and this morning even thefamiliar contact of the subway has been unable to shake it from me. 

I know of few things that are so momentarily tragical as awakeningfrom a frightful dream. Even if you know with returning consciousnessthat it was a dream, it seems as if a part of it must have a basis infact. The death that was recorded--is it true or not? And in your mindyou grope among the familiar landmarks of your recollection todiscover where the true and the fictitious join. 

But this dream of last night was so vivid that this morning I cannotshake it from me. 

I dreamed--ridiculously enough--that the whole world was at war, andthat big and little nations were fighting. 

In my dream the round earth hung before me against the background ofthe night, and red flames shot from every part. 

I heard cries of anguish--men blinded by gases and crazed bysuffering. I saw women dressed in black--a long procession stretchinghideously from mist to mist--walking with erect heads, dry-eyed, forgrief had starved them of tears. I saw ships sinking and a thousandarms raised for a moment above the waves. I saw children lying deadamong their toys. 

And I saw boys throw down their books and tools and go off with gladcries, and men I saw, grown gray with despair, staggering under heavyweights. 

There were millions of dead upon the earth that hung before me, and Ismelled the battlefield. 

And I beheld one man--one hundred men--secure in an outlawed country--wholooked from far windows--men bitter with disappointment--men who blasphemedof 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. Iran little errands for the war. 

 * * * * *

There is the familiar window--that dull outline across the room. Hereis the accustomed door. The bed is set between. It was but a dreamafter all. And yet how it has shaken me!

Of course the dream was absurd. No man--no nation certainly--could beso mad. The whole whirling earth could not burn with fire. Until thefinal trumpet, no such calamity is possible. Thank God, it was but adream, 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 riverthat dances as often as it hears sweet music. The tale is not precisewhether this river is neighbor to us or is a stream of the olderworld. "It dances at the noise of musick, " so runs the legend, "forwith musick it bubbles, dances and grows sandy. " This tale may be theconceit of one of those older poets whose verses celebrate the morningand the freshness of the earth--Thomas Heywood could have written itor even the least of those poets who sat their evenings at theMermaid--or the tale may arise more remotely from an old worship ofthe god Pan, who is said to have piped along the streams. I offer mycredence to the earlier origin as the more pleasing. And therefore ona country walk I observe the streams if by chance any of them shallfit the tale. Not yet have I seen Pan puffing his cheeks with melodyon a streamside bank--by ill luck I squint short-sightedly--but Ioften hear melodies of such woodsy composition that surely they mustissue from his pipe. The stream leaps gaily across the shallows thatglitter with sunlight, and I am tempted to the agreeable suspicionthat I have hit upon the very stream of the legend and that the godPan 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 inthe 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 maybe merely an anĉmic love of beauty, such as is commonly bred intownsfolk on a holiday, or it may descend from braver ancestors whoonce were anglers and played truant with hook and line. You may recallthat the milk-women of Kent told Piscator when he came at the end ofhis 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 mostacross the railing of a country bridge if the water runs noisily onthe stones. If I chance to come off a dusty road--unless hunger stirsme to an inn--I can listen for an hour, for of all sounds it is themost musical. When earth and air and water play in concert, which arethe master musicians this side of the moon, surely their harmony risesabove the music of the stars. 

In a more familiar mood I throw stepping stones in the water to hearthem splash, or I cram them in a dam to thwart the purpose of thestream, laying ever a higher stone when the water laps the top. Iscoop out the sand and stones as if a mighty shipping begged forpassage. Or I rest from this prodigious engineering upon my back andwatch the white traffic of the clouds across the summer sky. The rootsof 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 kindlywinter. A gay leaf puts out upon the channel like a painted galleonfor 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 ofwords in the running water. In these evil days when the whole fairworld is trenched and bruised with war, what wisdom does it send tothe valleys where men reside--what love and peace and gentleness--whatpromise of better days to come--that it makes this eternal stream itsmessenger!

And yet a stream is best if it is but an incident in travel--if itbreak the dusty afternoon and send one off refreshed. Rather than aplace for fishing it invites one to bathe his feet. There are, indeed, persons so careful of their health as to assert that cold waterendangers blisters. Theirs is a prudence to be neglected. Such personshad better leave their feet at home safely slippered on the fender. Ifone's feet go upon a holiday, is it fair that for fear of consequencethey be kept housed in their shoes? Shall the toes sit inside theirbattered caravans while the legs and arms frisk outside? Is there suchtorture in a blister--even if the prevention be sure--to outweigh thepleasure of cold water running across the ankles?

It was but lately that I followed a road that lay off the generaltravel through a pleasant country of hills and streams. As the roadwas not a thoroughfare and journeyed no farther than the near-by townwhere I was to get my supper, it went at a lazy winding pace. If a dogbarked it was in sleepy fashion. He yelped merely to check hisloneliness. There could be no venom on his drowsy tooth. The very cowsthat fed along its fences were of a slower breed and morecontemplative whisk of tail than are found upon the thoroughfares. Sheep patched the fields with gray and followed their sleepy banquetacross the hills. 

The country was laid out with farms--orchards and soft fields of grainthat waved like a golden lake--but there were few farmhouses. In allthe afternoon I passed but one person, a deaf man who asked fordirection. When I cried out that I was a stranger, he held his hand tohis ear, but his mouth fell open as if my words, denied by deafnessfrom a proper portal, were offered here a service entrance. I spreadmy map before him and he put an ample thumb upon it. Then inquiringwhether I had crossed a road with a red house upon it where his friendresided, he thanked me and walked off with such speed as his years hadleft him. Birds sang delightfully on the fences and in the field, yetI knew not their names. Shall one not enjoy a symphony without preciseknowledge of the instrument that gives the tune? If an oboe sound amelody, must one bestow a special praise, with a knowledge of itsfunction in the concert? Or if a trombone please, must one know thebrassy creature by its name? Rather, whether I listen to horns orbirds, in my ignorance I bestow loosely a general approbation; yet isthe song sweet. 

All afternoon I walked with the sound of wind and water in my ears, and at night, when I had gained my journey's end and lay in bed, Iheard beneath my window in the garden the music of a little runnelthat was like a faint and pleasant echo of my hillside walk. I fellasleep to its soothing sound and its trickle made a pattern across mydreams. 

But perhaps you yourself, my dear sir, are addicted to these countrywalks, either for an afternoon or for a week's duration with arucksack strapped across your back. If denied the longer outing, Ihope that at least it is your custom to go forth upon a holiday tolook upon the larger earth. Where the road most winds and dips and thedistance is of the finer purple, let that direction be your choice!Seek out the region of the hills! Outposts and valleys here, withsmoke of suppers rising. Trains are so small that a child might drawthem with a string. Far-off hills are tumbled and in confusion, as ifa giant were roused and had flung his rumpled cloak upon the plain. 

Or if a road and a stream seem close companions, tag along with them!Like three cronies you may work the countryside together! There areold mills with dams and mossy water wheels, and rumbling coveredbridges. 

But chiefly I beg that you wander out at random without too preciseknowledge of where you go or where you shall get your supper. If youare of a cautious nature, as springs from a delicate stomach or toosheltered life, you may stuff a bar of chocolate in your pocket. Or anapple--if you shift your other ballast--will not sag you beyondlocomotion. I have known persons who prize a tomato as offering bothfood and drink, yet it is too likely to be damaged and squirt insidethe pocket if you rub against a tree. Instead, the cucumber is to becommended for its coolness, and a pickle is a sour refreshment thatshould be nibbled in turn against the chocolate. 

Food oftentimes is to be got upon the way. There is a kind of cocoanutbar, flat and corrugated, that may be had at most crossroads. I nolonger consider these a delicacy, but in my memory I see a boybargaining for them at the counter. They are counted into his dirtypalm. He stuffs a whole one in his mouth, from ear to ear. His bicycleleans against the trough outside. He mounts, wabbling from side toside to reach the pedals. Before him lie the mountains of the world. 

Nor shall I complain if you hold roughly in your mind, subject to awhim's reversal, an evening destination to check your hunger. But donot bend your circuit back to the noisy city! Let your march end atthe inn of a country town! If it is but a station on your journey andyou continue on the morrow, let there be an ample porch and a rail torest your feet! Here you may sit in the comfortable twilight whencrammed with food and observe the town's small traffic. Country folkcome about, if you are of easy address, and engage you on their crops. The village prophet strokes his wise beard at your request and, squinting at the sky, foretells a storm. Or if the night is cold, afire is laid inside and a wrinkled board for the conduct of the wardebates upon the hearth. But so far as your infirmity permits, goforth at random with a spirit for adventure! If the prospect pleasesyou as the train slows down for the platform, cast a penny on yourknee and abide its fall!

Or if on principle you abhor a choice that is made wickedly on thefalling of a coin, let an irrelevant circumstance direct yourdestination! I once walked outside of London, making my start atDorking for no other reason except that Sam Weller's mother-in-law hadonce lived there. You will recall how the elder Mr. Weller in the hourof his affliction discoursed on widows in the taproom of the Marquisof Granby when the funeral was done, and how later, being pesteredwith the Reverend Mr. Stiggins, he immersed him in the horse-trough toease his grief. All through the town I looked for red-nosed men whomight be descended from the reverend shepherd, and once when I passeda horse-trough of uncommon size I asked the merchant at the corner ifit might not be the very place. I was met, however, by such a vacantstare--for the fellow was unlettered--that to rouse him I bought acucumber from an open crate against the time of lunch, and I followedmy pursuit further in the town. The cucumber was of monstrous lengthand thin. All about the town its end stuck out of my pocketinquisitively, as though it were a fellow traveler down from London tosee the sights. But although I inquired for the Weller family, itseems that they were dead and gone. Even the Marquis of Granby haddisappeared, with its room behind the bar where Mr. Stiggins drankpineapple rum with water, _luke_, from the kettle on the hob. 

We left Dorking and walked all afternoon through a pleasant sunnycountry, up hill and down, to the town of Guildford. At four o'clock, to break the journey, we laid out our lunch of bread and cheese andcucumber, and rested for an hour. The place was a grassy bank along aroad above a fertile valley where men were pitching hay. Their shoutswere carried across the fields with an agreeable softness. Today, doubtless, women work in those fields. 

On another occasion we walked from Maidstone to Rochester onpilgrimage to the inn where Alfred Jingle borrowed Mr. Winkle's coatto attend the Assembly, when he made love to the buxom widow. War hadjust been declared between Britain and Germany, and soldiers guardedthe roads above the town. At a tea-room in the outskirts armyofficers ate at a neighboring table. Later, it is likely, they were inthe retreat from Mons: for the expeditionary force crossed the channelwithin a week. Yet so does farce march along with tragedy that ourchief concern in Rochester was the old inn where the ball was held. 

A surly woman who sat behind the cashier's wicket fixed me with hereye. "Might we visit the ballroom?" I inquired. Evidently not, unlesswe were stopping at the house. "Madame, " I said, "perhaps you areunaware that the immortal Mr. Pickwick once sojourned beneath yourroof. " There was no response. "The celebrated Mr. Pickwick, G. C. M. P. C. , " I continued, "who was the discoverer of the sources of theHampstead Ponds. " At this--for my manner was impressive--she fumbledthrough the last few pages of her register and admitted that he mighthave been once a patron of the house, but that he had now paid hisbill and gone. 

I was about to question her about the poet Augustus Snodgrass, who hadbeen with Mr. Pickwick on his travels, when a waiter, a humorousfellow with a vision of a sixpence, offered to be our guide. Weclimbed the stairs and came upon the ballroom. It was a small room. Three quadrilles must have stuffed it to the edge--a dingy place withbare windows on a deserted innyard. At one end was a balcony thatwould hold not more than three musicians. The candles of its formerbrightness have long since burned to socket. Vanished are "Sir ThomasClubber, Lady Clubber and the Miss Clubbers!" Gone is the HonorableWilmot Snipe and all the notables that once crowded it! Vanished isthe punchbowl where the amorous Tracy Tupman drank too many cups ofnegus on that memorable night. I gave the dirty waiter a sixpence andcame away. 

I discourage the usual literary pilgrimage. Indeed, if there is arumor that Milton died in a neighboring town, or a treaty ofconsequence was signed close by, choose another path! Let neitherOliver Cromwell nor the Magna Carta deflect your course! One of myfinest walks was on no better advice than the avoidance of acelebrated shrine. I was led along the swift waters of a river, through several pretty towns, and witnessed the building of a loftybridge. For lunch I had some memorable griddlecakes. Finally I rode ontop of a rattling stage with a gossip for a driver, whose long fingerpointed out the sights upon the road. 

But for the liveliest truancy, keep an eye out for red-haired andfreckled lads, and make them your counselors! Lads so spotted andcolored, I have found, are of unusual enterprise in knowing the bestwoodland paths and the loftiest views. A yellow-haired boy, being ofpaler wit, will suck his thumb upon a question. A touzled blackexhibits a sulky absorption in his work. An indifferent brown, atbest, runs for an answer to the kitchen. But red-haired and freckledlads are alive at once. Whether or not their roving spirit, which isthe basis of their deeper and quicker knowledge, proceeds from themagic of the pigment, the fact yet remains that such boys are surerthan a signpost to direct one to adventure. This truth is so generalthat I have read the lives of the voyagers--Robinson Crusoe, CaptainKidd and the worthies out of Hakluyt--if perhaps a hint might dropthat they too in their younger days were freckled and red-haired. SirWalter Raleigh--I choose at random--was doubtless called "Carrots" byhis playmates. But on making inquiry of a red-haired lad, one musthave a clear head in the tumult of his direction. I was once lost forseveral hours on the side of Anthony's Nose above the Hudson because Ijumbled such advice. And although I made the acquaintance of a hermitwho dwelt on the mountain with a dog and a scarecrow for his garden--afellow so like him in garment and in feature that he seemed hisyounger and cleaner brother--still I did not find the top or see theclear sweep of the Hudson as was promised. 

If it is your habit to inquire of distance upon the road, do notquarrel with conflicting opinion! Judge the answer by the source!Persons of stalwart limb commonly underestimate a distance, whereasthose of broken wind and stride stretch it greater than it is. But itis best to take all answers lightly. I have heard of a man who spenthis rainy evenings on a walking trip in going among the soda clerksand small merchants of the village, not for information, but tocontrast their ignorance. Aladdin's wicked uncle, when he inquireddirection to the mountain of the genii's cave, could not have been somisdirected. Shoemakers, candy-men and peddlers of tinware--if suchmodest merchants existed also on the curb in those magic days--musthave been of nicer knowledge or old Kazrac would never have found thelamp. In my friend's case, on inquiry, a certain hotel at which weaimed was both good and bad, open and shut, burned and unburned. 

There is a legend of the Catholic Church about a certain holy chapelthat once leaped across the Alps. It seems gross superstition, yetalthough I belong to a protesting church, I assert its likelihood. ForI solemnly affirm that on a hot afternoon I chased a whole villagethat skipped quite as miraculously before me across the country. Itwas a village of stout leg and wind and, as often as I inquired, itstill kept seven miles ahead. Once only I gained, by trotting on adescent. Not until night when the village lay down to rest beside aquiet river did I finally overtake it. And the next morning I aroseearly in order to be off first upon my travels, and so keep the livelyrascal in the rear. 

In my country walks I usually carry a book in the pocket opposite tomy lunch. I seldom read it, but it is a comfort to have it handy. I amtold that at one of the colleges, students of smaller application, inorder that they may truthfully answer as to the length of time theyhave spent upon their books, do therefore literally sit upon a pile ofthem, as on a stool, while they engage in pleasanter and more secularreading. I do not examine this story closely, which rises, doubtless, from the jealousy of a rival college. Rather, I think that thesestudents perch upon the books which presently they must read, on awise instinct that this preliminary contact starts their knowledge. And therefore a favorite volume, even if unopened in the pocket, doesnevertheless by its proximity color and enhance the enjoyment of theday. I have carried Howell, who wrote the "Familiar Letters, " unreadalong the countryside. A small volume of Boswell has grown dingy in mypocket. I have gone about with a copy of Addison with long S's, but Iread it chiefly at home when my feet are on the fender. 

I had by me once as I crossed the Devon moors a volume of "RichardFeverel. " For fifteen miles I had struck across the upland where thereis scarcely a house in sight--nothing but grazing sheep and wildponies that ran at my approach. Sometimes a marshy stream flowed downa shallow valley, with a curl of smoke from a house that stood in thehollow. At the edge of this moorland, I came into a shady valley thatproceeded to the ocean. My feet were pinched and tired when I heardthe sound of water below the road. I pushed aside the bushes and saw astream trickling on the rocks. I thrust my head into a pool until thewater ran into my ears, and then sat with my bare feet upon the coolstones where the runnel lapped them, and read "Richard Feverel. " Tothis day, at the mention of the title, I can hear the pleasant brawlof water and the stirring of the branches in the wind that wandereddown the valley. 

Hazlitt tells us in a famous passage with what relish he once read"The New Eloise" on a walking trip. "It was on the 10th of April, 1798, " he writes, "that I sat down to a volume of the New Eloise, atthe inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken. " Iam quite unfamiliar with the book, yet as often as I read theessay--which is the best of Hazlitt--I have been teased to buy it. Perhaps this springs in part from my own recollection of Llangollen, where I once stopped on a walking trip through Wales. The town lies onthe river Dee at the foot of fertile hills patched with fences, onwhose top there stand the ruins of Dinas Bran, a fortress of forgottenhistory, although it looks grimly towards the English marches as ifits enemies came thence. Thrown across the river there is a peakedbridge of gray stone, many centuries old, on which the village folkgather at the end of day. I dined on ale and mutton of such excellencethat, for myself, a cold volume of the census--if I had fallen solow--must have remained agreeably in memory. I recall that astreet-organ stopped beneath the window and played a merry tune--orperhaps the wicked ale was mounting--and I paused in my onslaughtagainst the mutton to toss the musician a coin. 

I applaud those who, on a walking trip, arise and begin their journeyin the dawn, but although I am eager at night to make an early start, yet I blink and growl when the morning comes. I marvel at the poet whowas abroad so early that he was able to write of the fresh twilight onthe world--"Where the sandalled Dawn like a Greek god takes thehurdles of the hills"--but for my own part I would have slept andmissed the sight. But an early hour is best, despite us lazybones, andto be on the road before the dew is gone and while yet a mist arisesfrom the hollows is to know the journey's finest pleasure. 

Persons of early hours assert that they feel a fine exaltation. I ammyself inclined to think, however, that this is not so much anexaltation that arises from the beauty of the hour, as from a feelingof superiority over their sleeping and inferior comrades. It is akinto the displeasing vanity of those persons who walk upon a boat witheasy stomach while their companions lie below. I would discourage, therefore, persons that lean toward conceit from putting a foot out ofbed until the second call. On the other hand, those who are of aself-depreciative nature should get up with the worm and bird. A manof my own acquaintance who was sunk in self-abasement for many years, was roused to a salutary conceit by no other tonic. 

And it is certain that to be off upon a journey with a rucksackstrapped upon you at an hour when the butcher boy takes down hisshutters is a high pleasure. Off you go through the village withswinging arms. Off you go across the country. A farmer is up beforeyou and you hear his reaper across the field, and the neighing of hishorses at the turn. Where the hill falls sharp against the sky, therehe stands outlined, to wipe the sweat. And as your nature is, swift orsluggish thoughts go through your brain--plots and vagrant fancies, which later your pencil will not catch. It is in these earliest hourswhile the dew still glistens that little lyric sentences leap intoyour mind. Then, if at all, are windmills giants. 

There are cool retreats where you may rest at noon, but Stevenson haswritten of these. "You come, " he writes, "to a milestone on a hill, orsome place where deep ways meet under trees; and off goes theknapsack, and down you sit to smoke a pipe in the shade. You sink intoyourself, and the birds come round and look at you; and your smokedissipates upon the afternoon under the blue dome of heaven; and thesun lies warm upon your feet, and the cool air visits your neck andturns aside your open shirt. If you are not happy, you must have anevil conscience. "

And yet a good inn at night holds even a more tranquil joy. M---- andI, who frequently walk upon a holiday, traversed recently a mountainroad to the north of West Point. During the afternoon we had scrambledup Storm King to a bare rock above the Hudson. It was just such anoutlook as Rip found before he met the outlandish Dutchmen with theirninepins and flagon. We lay here above a green world that was rimmedwith mountains, and watched the lagging sails and puffs of smoke uponthe river. It was late afternoon when we descended to the mountainroad that runs to West Point. During all the day there had beendistant rumbling of thunder, as though a storm mustered in a far-offvalley, --or perhaps the Dutchmen of the legend still lingered at theirgame, --but now as the twilight fell the storm came near. It was sixo'clock when a sign-board informed us that we had seven miles to go, and already the thunder sounded with earnest purpose. Far below in thedusk we saw the lights of West Point. On a sudden, while I was stillfumbling for my poncho which was rolled inside my rucksack, the stormburst upon us. We put up the umbrella and held the poncho against thewind and driving rain. But the wind so whisked it about and the rainwas so eager to find the openings that presently we were drenched. Inan hour we came to West Point. Luckily the cook was up, and sheserved us a hot dinner in our rooms with the washstand for a table. When we started there was a piece of soap in the dish, but I think weate it in our hunger. I recall that there was one course that foamedup like custard and was not upon the bill. It was a plain room withmeager furniture, yet we fell asleep with a satisfaction beyond theCecils in their lordly beds. I stirred once when there was a clamor inthe hall of guests returning from a hop at the Academy--a prattle ofgirls' voices--then slept until the sun was up. 

But my preference in lodgings is the low sagging half-timberedbuilding that one finds in the country towns of England. It has leanedagainst the street and dispensed hospitality for three hundred years. It is as old a citizen as the castle on the hill. It is an inn whereTom Jones might have spent the night, or any of the rascals out ofSmollett. Behind the wicket there sits a shrewish female with a coldeye towards your defects, and behind her there is a row of bells whichjangle when water is wanted in the rooms. Having been assigned a roomand asked the hour of dinner, you mount a staircase that rises with asqueak. There is a mustiness about the place, which although it isunpleasant in itself, is yet agreeable in its circumstance. A longhall runs off to the back of the house, with odd steps here and thereto throw you. Your room looks out upon a coach-yard, and as you washyou overhear a love-passage down below. 

In the evening you go forth to see the town. If it lies on the ocean, you walk upon the mole and watch the fisher folk winding up theirnets, or sitting with tranquil pipes before their doors. Maybe a boothhas been set up on the parade that runs along the ocean, and a huskyfellow bids you lay out a sixpence for the show, which is the verysame, he bawls, as was played before the King and the Royal Family. This speech is followed by a fellow with a trombone, who blows himselfvery red in the face. 

But rather I choose to fancy that it is an inland town, and that thereis a quieter traffic on the streets. Here for an hour after dinner, while darkness settles, you wander from shop to shop and put your noseupon the glass, or you engage the lamplighter as he goes his rounds, for any bit of news. 

Once in such a town when the night brought rain, for want of otheremployment, I debated divinity with a rigid parson, and until a latehour sat in the thick curtain of his attack. It was at an inn of oneof the midland counties of England, a fine old weathered building, called "The King's Arms. " In the tap--for I thrust my thirsty headinside--was an array of old pewter upon the walls, and two or threeprints of prize fighters of former days. But it was in the parlor theparson engaged me. In the corner of the room there was a timidfire--of the kind usually met in English inns--imprisoned behind agrill that had been set up stoutly to confine a larger and rowdierfire. My antagonist was a tall lank man of pinched ascetic face anddark complexion, with clothes brushed to shininess, and he belonged toa brotherhood that lived in one of the poorer parts of London alongthe wharves. His sojourn at the inn was forced. For two weeks in theyear, he explained, each member was cast out of the conventualbuildings upon the world. This was done in penance, as the members ofmore rigid orders in the past were flagellants for a season. So herefor a whole week had he been sitting, for the most part in rainyweather, busied with the books that the inn afforded--advertisingbooklets of the beauties of the Alps--diagrams of steamships--andpeeking out of doors for a change of sky. 

It was a matter of course that he should engage me in conversation. Hewas as lonesome for a chance to bark as a country dog. Presently whenI dissented from some point in his creed, he called me a heretic, andI with gentlest satire asked him if the word yet lived. But he was notangry, and he told me of his brotherhood. It had a branch in America, and he bade me, if ever I met any of its priests, to convey to themhis warm regards. As for America, it was, he said, too coldly ethical, and needed most a spiritual understanding; to which judgment Iassented. I wonder now whether the war will bring that understanding. Maybe, unless blind hatred smothers it. 

This priest was a mixture of stern and gentle qualities, and seemed tobe descended from those earlier friars that came to England in cordand gown, and went barefoot through the cities to minister comfort andsalvation to the poor and wretched. When the evening was at lastspent, by common consent we took our candles on the landing, where, after he inculcated a final doctrine of his church with waving finger, he bade me good night, with a wish of luck for my journey on themorrow, and sought his room. 

My own room lay down a creaking hallway. When undressed, I opened mywindow and looked upon the street. All lights were out. At last therain had ceased, and now above the housetops across the way, through abroken patch of cloud, a star appeared with a promise of a fairtomorrow. 

On Livelihoods. 

Somewhere in his letters, I think, Stevenson pronounces street pavingto be his favorite occupation. I fancy, indeed, --and I have ransackedhis life, --that he never applied himself to its practice for an actuallivelihood. That was not necessary. Rather, he looked on at the curbin a careless whistling mood, hands deep in the pockets of his breeks, in a lazy interval between plot and essay. The sunny morning haddropped its golden invitation through his study windows, and he haswandered forth to see the world. Let my heroes--for thus I interprethim at his desk as the sunlight beckoned--let my heroes kick theirheels in patience! Let villains fret inside the inkpot! Down, sirs, down, into the glossy magic pool, until I dip you up! Pirates--forsurely such miscreants lurked among his papers--let pirates, he cries, save their red oaths until tomorrow! My hat! My stick!

It was thus, then, as an amateur that Stevenson looked on streetpaving--the even rows of cobbles, the nice tapping to fit the stonesagainst the curb, the neat joint around the drain. And yet, unpardonably, he neglects the tarpot; and this seems the very soul ofthe business, the finishing touch--almost culinary, as when a cookpours on a chocolate sauce. 

I remember pleasantly when our own street was paved. There had beenlaid a waterpipe, deep down where the earth was yellow--surely goldwas near--and several of us young rascals climbed in and out in thetwilight when work was stopped. By fits we were both mountaineers andminers. There was an agreeable gassy smell as if we neared the lowerregions. Here was a playground better than the building of a barn, even with its dizzy ladders and the scaffolding around the chimney. Orwe hid in the great iron pipes that lay along the gutters, andfollowed our leader through them home from school. But when the pipeswere lowered into place and the surface was cobbled but not yetsanded, then the tarpot yielded gum for chewing. At any time aftersupper a half dozen of us--blacker daubs against the darkness--mighthave been seen squatting on the stones, scratching at the tar. Blackjack, bought at the corner, had not so full a flavor. But one hadto chew forward in the mouth--lightly, lest the tar adhere forever tothe 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? Whatcircumstance or necessity drives them? Does choice, after all, alwaysyield to a contrary wind and run for any port? Is hunger always thehelmsman? How many of us, after due appraisal of ourselves, reallychoose our own parts in the mighty drama?--first citizen or second, with our shrill voices for a moment above the crowd--first citizen orsecond--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, andlace and sword, strutting forward near the lights. 

Meditating thus, I frequently poke about the city in the end ofafternoon "when the mind of your man of letters requires somerelaxation. " I peer into shop windows, not so much for the waresdisplayed as for glimpses of the men and women engaged in theirdisposal. I watch laborers trudging home with the tired clink of theirimplements and pails. I gaze into cellarways where tailor and cobblersit bent upon their work--needle and peg, their world--and throughfouled windows into workrooms, to learn which livelihoods yield thetruest happiness. For it is, on the whole, a whistling rather than agrieving world, and like little shouts among the hills is laughterechoed in the heart. 

I can well understand how one can become a baker or even a smallgrocer with a pencil behind his ear. I could myself honestly recommendan apple--an astrachan for sauces--or, in the season, offer asparaguswith something akin to enthusiasm. Cranberries, too, must be anagreeable consort of the autumn months when the air turns frosty. Iwould own a cat with a dusty nose to rub along the barrels and sleepbeneath the stove. I would carry dried meats in stock were it only forthe electric slicing machine. And whole cheeses! Or to a man ofromantic mind an old brass shop may have its lure. To one of mustyturn, who would sit apart, there is something to be said for therepair of violins and 'cellos. At the least he sweetens discord intomelody. 

But I would not willingly keep a second-hand bookshop. It is toocluttered a business. There is too free a democracy between good andbad. It was Dean Swift who declared that collections of books made himmelancholy, "where the best author is as much squeezed and as obscureas a porter at a coronation. " Nor is it altogether reassuring for onewho is himself by way of being an author to view the certain neglectthat awaits him when attics are cleared at last. There is too leatherya smell upon the premises, a thick deposit of mortality. I draw a deepbreath when I issue on the street, grateful for the sunlight and thewind. However, I frequently put my head in at Pratt's around thecorner, sometimes by chance when the family are assembled for theirsupper in one of the book alcoves. They have swept back a litter ofhistorians to make room for the tray of dishes. To cut them from theshop they have drawn a curtain in front of their nook, but I can hearthe teapot bubbling on the counter. There is, also, a not unsavorysmell which, if my old nose retains its cunning, is potato stew, fetched up from the kitchen. If you seek Gibbon now, Pratt's face willshow like a withered moon between the curtains and will request you tocall later when the dishes have been cleared. 

No one works in cleaner produce than carpenters. They are for the mostpart a fatherly whiskered tribe and they eat their lunches neatly froma pail, their backs against the wall, their broad toes upturned. Ilook suspiciously on painters, however, who present themselves forwork like slopped and shoddy harlequins, and although I have myselfpassed a delightful afternoon painting a wooden fence at the foot ofthe garden--and been scraped afterwards--I would not wish to be oftheir craft. 

But perhaps one is of restless habit and a peripatetic occupation maybe recommended. For a bachelor of small expense, at a hazard, awandering fruit and candy cart offers the venture and chance ofunfamiliar journeys. There is a breed of lollypop on a stick thatshows a handsome profit when the children come from school. Also, atthis minute, I hear below me on the street the flat bell of thescissors-grinder. I know not what skill is required, yet it needs apretty eye and even foot. The ragman takes to an ancestral businessand chants the ancient song of his fathers. When distance has somewhatmuffled its nearer sharpness, the song bears a melody unparalleledamong tradesmen's cries. Window glass, too, is hawked pleasantly fromhouse to house and requires but a knife and putty. In the spring thevegetable vender, standing in his wagon, utters melodious sounds thatbring the housewives to their windows. Once, also, by good luck, Ifell into acquaintance with a fellow who peddled brooms and dustpansalong the countryside. He was hung both front and back with cheapcommodities--a necklace of scrubbing brushes--tins jangling againsthis knees. A very kitchen had become biped. A pantry had gone onpilgrimage. Except for dogs, which seemed maddened by his strangeappearance, it was, he informed me, an engaging livelihood for a manwho chafed indoors. Or for one of dreamy disposition the employment ofa sandwich man, with billboards fore and aft, offers a profitablerepose. Sometimes several of these philosophers journey together upthe street in a crowded hour, one behind another with slowintrospective step, as befits their high preoccupation. 

Or one has an ear, and the street-organ commends itself. Observe themusician at the corner, hat in hand and smiling! Let but a curtainstir and his eye will catch it. He hears a falling penny as 'twere anynightingale. His tunes are the herald of the gaudy spring. His are thedancing measures of the sunlight. And is anyone a surer judge of humannature? He allows dyspeptics to slink along the fence. Those ofbilious aspect may go their ways unchallenged. Spare me those, hesays, who have not music in their souls: they are fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. It was with a flute that the poet Goldsmithstarved his way through France. Yet the flute is a cold un-stirringinstrument. He would have dined the oftener had he pitched upon astreet-organ. 

But in this Christmas season there is a man goes up and down among theshoppers blowing shrill tunes upon a pipe. A card upon his hatannounces that it is music makes the home and that one of hismarvelous implements may be bought for the trifling and altogetherinsignificant sum of ten cents. A reticule across his stomach bulgeswith his pipes. He seems to manipulate the stops with his fingers, butI fancy that he does no more than sing into the larger opening. Yethis 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 anydwindling of shoe-lace peddlers. The merchants of popcorn have notfallen off in number, and peanuts hold up strong. Rather, theseChristmas musicians are of the tribe which at other festivals sell uslittle flags and bid us show our colors. They come from country fairsand circuses. All summer long they bid us gather for the fat man, orthey cry up the beauties of a Turkish harem. If some valiant fellow ina painted tent is about to swallow glass, they are his horn and drumto draw the crowd. I once knew a side-show man who bent iron barsbetween his teeth and who summoned stout men from his audience toswing upon the bar, but I cannot believe that he has discharged thebawling rascal at his door. I rather choose to think that the piperwas one of those self-same artists who, on lesser days, squeeze comicrubber faces in their fingers, or make the monkey climb itspredestined stick. 

Be this as it may, presently the piper hit on a persuasive tune and Iabandoned all thought of the Noah's ark--my errand of the morning formy nephew--and joined the crowd that followed him. Hamelin Town wascome again. But street violins I avoid. They suggest mortgages andunpaid rent. 

But with the world before him why should a man turn dentist? He musthave been a cruel fellow from his rattle. When did his maliciousambition first sprout up towards molars and bicuspids? Or who wouldscheme to be a plumber? He is a cellarer--alas, how shrunk from formerdays! Or consider the tailor! Perhaps you recall Elia's estimate. "Doyou ever see him, " he asks, "go whistling along the foot-path like acarman, or brush through a crowd like a baker, or go smiling tohimself like a lover?"

Certainly I would not wish to be a bookkeeper and sit bent all dayover another's wealth. I would not want to bring in on lifted fingersthe 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 atthe rear. A gas lamp flares at the turn. A dingy staircase mounts intoa thicker gloom. The locksmith consorts with pawnbrokers, with cheapsign-makers and with disreputable doctors; yet he is not of them. Forthere adheres to him a sort of romance. He is a creature of anothertime, set in our midst by the merest chance. The domestic cat, descended from the jungle, is not more shrunk. Keys have fallen onevil days. Observe the mighty row of them hung discarded along hisboxes! Each one is fit to unlock a castle. Warwick itself might yieldto 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 hismaster's shutter! In a musty play, observe the jailor at the dungeondoor! Without massive keys jingling at the belt the older drama musthave 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 theflower! That mournful smile! That perfect grief! And yet, I am told, undertakers, after hours, go singing home to supper, and spend theirevenings 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 howcheerfully the joint went round. One of this sober cloth, moreover, has confided to me that they let themselves loose, above allprofessions, in their reunions and conventions. If an unusual riotissues from the door and a gay fellow goes walking on the table it issure that either lawyers or undertakers sit inside. 

For myself, if I were to become a merchant, I would choose a shop at afour-corners in the country, and I would stock from shoe-laces toplows. There is no virtue in keeping store in the city. It is merelyby favor that customers show themselves. Candidly, your competitor canbetter supply their wants. This is not so at the four-corners. Nor isanyone a more influential citizen than a country merchant. He sets thestyle in calicoes. He judges between check and stripe. His decisionagainst a high heel flattens the housewives by an inch. But if I keptsuch a country store, I would provide an open fire and, when theshadows lengthened, an easy chair or two for gossips. 

I was meditating lately on these strange preferences in livelihoodsand was gazing through the city windows for any clue when I wasreminded of a tempting scheme that Wee Jessie--a delightfulScots-woman of my acquaintance--has planned for several of us. 

We are to be traveling merchants for a season, with a horse and wagonor a motor. My own preference is a motor, and already I see a vehiclepainted in bright colors and opening up behind as spacious as a wafflecart. There will be windows all around for the display of goods. It isnot quite fixed what we shall sell. Wee Jessie leans toward bonnetsand little millinery odds and ends. I am for kitchen tins. M----inclines toward drygoods, serviceable fabrics. It is thought that weshall live on the roof while on tour, with a canvas to draw on wetnights. We shall possess a horn--on which Wee Jessie once practiced inher youth--to gather up the crowd when we enter a village. 

Fancy us, therefore, my dear sir, as taking the road late this comingspring in time to spread the summer's fashions. And if you hear ourhorn 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 dearlittle boy of less than three. My first knowledge of him every morningis the smothered scuffling through the partition as he reluctantlysplashes in his bath. Here, unless he mend his caution, I fear he willnever learn to play the porpoise at the Zoo. Then there is a weetapping at my door. It is a fairy sound as though Mustard-seed were inthe 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 ifI 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 isas wide awake and shiny as though he were a part of the morning andhad been wrought delicately out of the dawn's first ray. Indeed, Ichoose to fancy that the sun, being off hurriedly on broader business, has made him his agent for the premises. Particularly he assists inthis passage at my bedroom door where the sleepy Night, which has notyet caught the summons, still stretches and nods beyond the turn. Itis so dark here on a winter's morning when the nursery door is shutthat even an adventuring sunlight, if it chanced to clamber throughthe window, would blink and falter in the hazard of these turns. Butthe sun has sent a substitute better than himself: for is there not ashaft of light along the floor? It can hardly fall from the window oranywhere 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 sosolemn that the jest is doubled. And now he runs off, jouncing andstiff-legged to his nursery. I hear him dragging his animals from hisark, telling them all that they are lazybones, even his barking dogand roaring lion. Noah, when he saw on that first morning that his arkwas grounded on Ararat, did not rouse his beasts so early to leave theship. 

Later I meet the lad at breakfast, locked in his high chair. In theseriper hours of day there is less of Cobweb in his composition. He isnow every inch a boy. He raps his spoon upon his tray. He hurls foodin the general direction of his mouth. If an ear escape the assault itis gunnery beyond the common. He is bibbed against misadventure. Thismorning he yearns loudly for muffins, which he calls "bums. " Hechooses those that are unusually brown with a smudge of thecooking-tin, and these he calls "dirty bums. "

Such is my nephew--a round-cheeked, blue-eyed rogue who takes my thumbin all his fingers when we go walking. His jumpers are slack behindand they wag from side to side in an inexpressibly funny manner, butthis I am led to believe springs not from any special genius but iscommon to all children. It is only recently that he learned to walk, for although he was forward with his teeth and their early sproutingran in gossip up the street, yet he lagged in locomotion. Previouslyhe advanced most surely on his seat--his slider, as he calledit--throwing out his legs and curling them in under so as to draw himafter. 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 wasquite an unusual method and that it presaged some rare talent for hisfuture, as the scorn of a rattle is said to predict a judge. It wasduring one of these advances across the kitchen floor where the boardsare rough that an accident occurred. As he excitedly put it, with afitting gesture to the rear, he got a sliver in his slider. But now hegoes upon his feet with a waddle like a sailor, and he wags his sliderfrom side to side. 

Sometimes we play at hide-and-seek and we pop out at one another frombehind the sofa. He lacks ingenuity in this, for he always hides inthe same place. I have tempted him for variety to stow himself in thewoodbox. Or the pantry would hold him if he squeezed in among thebrooms. Nor does my ingenuity surpass his, for regularly in a certainorder I shake the curtains at the door and spy under the table. I stirthe wastebasket and peer within the vases, although they would hardlyhold his shoe. Then when he is red-hot to be found and is alreadypeeking impatiently around the sofa, at last I cry out his discoveryand we begin all over again. 

I play ball with him and bounce it off his head, a game of more mirthin the acting than in the telling. Or we squeeze his animals for thenoises that they make. His lion in particular roars as though lungswere its only tenant. But chiefly I am fast in his friendship becauseI 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 overhis blocks; at which we call it a game, and begin again. He has namedthe 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 worthendless repetition. If I strike a rich deep tone upon the Burmesegong, I must continue to strike upon it until I can draw his attentionto something else. Once, the cook, hearing the din, thought that Ihinted for my dinner. Being an obliging creature, she fell into such aflurry and so stirred her pans to push the cooking forward, thatpresently she burned the meat. 

Or if I moo like a cow, I must moo until sunset. I rolled off the sofaonce to distract him when the ugly world was too much with him. Immediately he brightened from his complaint and demanded that I do itonce more. And lately, when a puppy bounced out of the house next doorand, losing its footing, rolled heels over head to the bottom of thesteps, at once he pleaded for an encore. To him all the world's astage. 

My nephew observes me closely to see what kind of fellow I am. I studyhim, too. He watches me over the top of his mug at breakfast and Istare back at him over my coffee cup. If I wrinkle my nose, hewrinkles his. If I stick out my tongue, he sticks his out, too. Heanswers wink with wink. When I pet his woolly lamb, however, he seemsto wonder at my absurdity. When I wind up his steam engine, certainlyhe 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 dizzybattlements topping all the country, he brushes them into ruin. 

Sometimes I fancy that his glance is mixed with scorn, and that heconsiders my attempts to amuse him as rather a silly business. Iwonder what he thinks about when he looks at me seriously. I cannotdoubt his wisdom. He seems to resemble a philosopher who has traveledto us from a distant world. If he cast me a sentence from Plato, Iwould say, "Master, I listen. " Is it Greek he speaks, or a darklanguage from a corner of the sky? He has a far-off look as though hesaw quite through these superficial affairs of earth. His eyes haveborrowed the color of his wanderings and they are as blue as thedepths beyond the moon. And I think of another child, somewhat olderthan himself, whose tin soldiers these many years are rusted, athoughtful silent child who was asked, once upon a time, what he didwhen 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 fewwinters, the sun of summer, the revolving stars and seasons--untilthis lad now serves in France. 

My nephew, although he too roams these distant spaces of philosophicthought and brings back strange unexpected treasure, has not arrivedat the age of mere terrestrial exploration. He is quite ignorant ofhis own house and has no curiosity about the back stairs--the backstairs that go winding darkly from the safety of the kitchen. Scarcelyis 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 ofadventure. He does not know the mystery and the twistings of thecellar, or the shadows of the upper hallway and the dim hollows thatgrow and spread across the twilight. 

Dear lad, there is a sunny world beyond the garden gate, cities androlling hills and far-off rivers with white sails going up and down. There are wide oceans, and ships with tossing lights, and islands setwith palm trees. And there are stars above your roof for you to wonderat. But also, nearer home, there are gentle shadows on the stairs, adim cellar for the friendly creatures of your fancy, and for yourexalted mood there is a garret with dark corners. Here, on a bravermorning, you may push behind the trunks and boxes and come to a landunutterable where the furthest Crusoe has scarcely ventured. Or in amore 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 longtin dipper. And these misty kingdoms that open so broadly on the worldare near at hand. They are yours if you dare to go adventuring forthem. 

Soon your ambition will leap its nursery barriers. No longer will yoube content to sit inside this quiet room and pile your blocks upon thefloor. You will be off on discovery of the long trail that lies alongthe back hall and the pantry where the ways are dark. You will wanderin search of the caverns that lie beneath the stairs when the nighthas come. You will trudge up steps and down for any lurking ocean onwhich to sail your pirate ships. Already I see you gazing with wistfuleyes into the spaces beyond the door--into the days of your greatadventure. 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.... 

Dear little lad, in this darkness may there be no fear! For theseshadows of the twilight--which too long have been chased like commonmiscreants with lamp and candle--are really friendly beings and theywait to romp with you. Because thieves have walked in darkness, shalldarkness be called a thief? Rather, let the dark hours take theirrepute from the countless gracious spirits that are abroad--thequieter fancies that flourish when the light has gone--the gentlecreatures that leave their hiding when the sun has set. When a ruglies roughened at close of day, it is said truly that a fairy peepsfrom under to learn if at last the house is safe. And they hide in thehallway for the signal of your coming, yet so timid that if the fireis stirred they scamper beyond the turn. They huddle close beneath thestairs that they may listen to your voice. They come and go on tiptoewhen the curtain sways, in the hope that you will follow. With theirlong thin shadowy fingers they beckon for you beneath the sofa. 

The time is coming when you can no longer resist their invitation, when you will leave your woolly lamb and your roaring lion on thisdull safe hearth and will go on pilgrimage. The back stairs sitpatient in the dark for your hand upon the door. The great dim garretthat has sat nodding for so many years will smile at last at yourcoming. It has been lonely so long for the glad sound of running feetand laughter. It has been childless so many years. 

But once children's feet played there and romped through the shortwinter afternoons. A rope hung from post to post and furnished forth acircus. Here giant swings were hazarded. Here children hung from theknees until their marbles and other wealth dropped from their pockets. And for less ambitious moments there were toys--

 The little toy dog is covered with dust, But sturdy and stanch he stands; And the little toy soldier is red with rust, And his musket moulds in his hands. Time was when the little toy dog was new, And the soldier was passing fair; And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue Kissed them and put them there. 

And now Little Boy Blue again climbs the long stairs. He stretches upon tiptoe to turn the door-knob at the top. He listens as a prudentexplorer should. Cook rattles her tins below, but it is a far-offsound as from another world. Somewhere, doubtless, the friendlymilkman's bell goes jingling up the street. There is a distant barkingof familiar dogs. Will it not be better to return to the safe regionsand watch the traffic from the window? But here, beckoning, is thegreat adventure. 

The brave die is cast. He advances with outstretched arms into thedarkness. Suddenly, behind him, the door swings shut. The sound ofcooking-tins is lost. Silence. Silence, except for branches scratchingon the roof. But the garret hears the sound of feet, and it rousesitself and rubs its dusky eyes. 

But when darkness thickens and the sunlight has vanished from thefloor, then comes the magic hour. The garret then tears from its eyesthe blind bandage of the day. Strange creatures lift their heads. Andnow, as you wait expectant, there comes a mysterious sound from thedarkest corner. Is it a mouse that stirs? Rather, it seems a far-offsound, as though a blind man, tapping with his stick, walked on themargin of the world. The noise comes near. It gains in volume. It isclose at hand. Dear lad, you have come upon the magic hour. It is thetread of the friendly giants that is sounding in the dark.... 

On Spending a Holiday. 

At a party lately a worn subject came under discussion. 

Our host lives in a triangular stone-paved courtyard tucked off fromthe thoroughfare but with the rattle of the elevated railway close athand. The building is of decent brick, three stories in height, and itexhibits to the courtyard a row of identical doorsteps. The entranceto the courtyard is a swinging shutter between buildings facing on thestreet, and it might seem a mystery--like the apple in thedumpling--how the building inside squeezed through so narrow anentrance. Yet here it is, with a rubber plant in one corner and atrellis for imaginary vines in the other. 

In this courtyard, _Pomander Walk_ might be acted along the stoops. For a necessary stage property--you recall, of course, the lamplighterwith his ladder in the second act!--there is a gas lamp of old designin the middle of the enclosure, up near the footlights, as it were. From the stoops the main comedy might proceed, with certain businessat the upper windows--the profane Admiral with the timber leg poppinghis head out of one, the mysterious fat man--in some sort the villainof the piece--putting his head out of another to woo the buxom widowat a third. And then the muffin man! In the twilight when the lamp islighted and the heroine at last is in the hero's arms, there would bea pleasant crunching of muffins at all the windows as the curtainfalls. 

But I shall not drop even a hint as to the location of this courtyard. Many persons think that New York City is but a massive gridiron, andthey are ignorant of the nooks and quirks and angles of the lowertown. Enough that the Indian of a modest tobacconist guards theswinging shutter of the entrance to the courtyard. 

Here we sat in the very window I had designed for the profane Admiral, and talked in the quiet interval between trains. 

One of our company--a man whom I shall call Flint--was hardy enough tosay that he never employed his leisure in going to the country--that awalk about the city streets was his best refreshment. Flint'slivelihood is cotton. He is a dumpish sort of person who looks as ifhe needed exercise, but he has a sharp clear eye. At first his remarkfell on us as a mere perversity, as of one who proclaims a humorouswhim. And yet he adhered tenaciously to his opinion, urging smoothpavements against mud, the study of countless faces against the songof birds and great buildings against cliffs. 

Another of our company opposed him in this--Colum, who chafes as anaccountant. Colum is a gentle dreamy fellow who likes birds. Allwinter he saves his tobacco tins which, in his two weeks' vacation inthe country, he sets up in trees as birdhouses. He confesses that hetook up with a certain brand of tobacco because its receptacle ispopular with wrens. Also he cultivated a taste for waffles--which atfirst by a sad distortion of nature he lacked--for no other reasonexcept that syrup may be bought in pretty log-cabin tins particularlysuited for bluebirds. If you chance to breakfast with him, he urgesthe syrup on you with pleasant and insistent hospitality. Withsatisfaction he drains a can. By June he has a dozen of these emptycabins on the shelf alongside his country boots. Time was when he waslean of girth--as becomes an accountant, who is hinged dyspepticallyall day across his desk--but by this agreeable stowage he has nowgrown to plumpness. When in the country Colum rises early in order tostretch the pleasures of the day, and he walks about before breakfastfrom tree to tree to view his feathered tenants. He has even acquired, after much practice, the knack of chirping--a hissing conjunction ofthe lips and teeth--which he is confident wins the friendly attentionof the birds. 

Flint heard Colum impatiently, and interrupted before he was done. "Pooh!" he said. "There's mud in the country, and not much of anyplumbing, and in the morning it's cold until you light a fire. "

"Of course, " said Colum. "But I love it. Perhaps you remember, Flint, the old willow stump out near the road. I put a Barking Dog on top ofit, and now there's a family of wrens inside. "

"Nonsense, " said Flint. "There is too much climate in thecountry--much more than in town. It's either too hot or too cold. Andit's lonely. As for you, Colum, you're sentimental about yourbirdhouses. And you dislike your job. You like the country merelybecause it is a symbol of a holiday. It is freedom from an irksometask. It means a closing of your desk. But if you had to live in thecountry, you would grumble in a month's time. Even a bullfrog--and heis brought up to it, poor wretch--croaks at night. "

Colum interrupted. "That's not true, Flint. I know I'd like it--tolive on a farm and keep chickens. Sometimes in winter, or more oftenin spring, I can hardly wait for summer and my two weeks. I look outof the window and I see a mirage--trees and hills. " Colum sighed. "It's quite wonderful, that view, but it unsettles me for my ledger. "

"That's it, " broke in Flint. "Your sentimentality spoils yourhappiness. You let two weeks poison the other fifty. It's immoral. "

Colum was about to retort, when he was anticipated by a new speaker. It was Quill, the journalist, who has long thin fingers andindigestion. At meals he pecks suspiciously at his plate, and he eatsfood substitutes. Quill runs a financial supplement, or something ofthat kind, to a daily paper. He always knows whether Steel is strongand whether Copper is up or down. If you call on him at his office, heglances at you for a moment before he knows you. Yet in his slippershe grows human. 

"I like the country, too, " he interposed, "and no one ever said that Iam sentimental. " He tapped his head. "I'm as hard as nails up here. "Quill cracked his knuckles in a disagreeable habit he has, andcontinued: "I have a shack on the West Shore, and I go thereweek-ends. My work is so confining that if I didn't get to the countryonce in a while, I would play out in a jiffy. I'm a nervous frazzle--anervous frazzle--by Saturday noon. But I lie on the grass all Sunday, and if nobody snaps at me and I am let alone, by Monday morning I amfit again. "

"You must be like Antĉus. "

This remark came from Wurm, our host. Wurm is a bookish fellow whowears great rimmed glasses. He spends much of his time in companythinking up apposite quotations and verifying them. He has worn outtwo Bartlett's. Wurm is also addicted to maps and dictionaries, and isa great reader of special articles. Consequently his mind is a poundfor stray collarless facts; or rather, in its variety of contents, itmore closely resembles a building contractor's back yard--oddsalvage--rejected doors--a job of window-frames--a pile of bricks forchipping--discarded plumbing--broken junk gathered here and there. Mr. Aust himself, a building contractor who once lived on ourstreet--a man of no broad fame--quite local--surely unknown toyou--did not collect so wide a rubbish. 

However, despite these qualities, Wurm is rather a pleasant andharmless bit of cobweb. For a livelihood, he sits in a bank behind agrill. At noon he eats his lunch in his cage, and afterwards with arubber band he snaps at the flies. In the hunting season he kills in aday as many as a dozen of these pests' and ranges them in his pentray. On Saturday afternoon he rummages in Malkan's and thesecond-hand bookshops along Fourth Avenue. To see Wurm in his mostcharacteristic pose, is to see him on a ladder, with one legoutstretched, far off his balance, fumbling for a title with hisfinger tips. Surely, in these dull alcoves, gravity nods on its job. Then he buys a sour red apple at the corner and pelts home to dinner. This is served him on a tin tray by his stout landlady who comespuffing up the stairs. It is a bit of pleasant comedy that whateverdish is served happens to be the very one of which he was thinking ashe came out of the bank. By this innocent device he is popular withhis landlady and she skims the milk for him. 

Wurm rapped his pipe bowl on the arm of his chair. "You must be likeAntĉus, " he replied. 

"Like what?" asked Flint. 

"Antĉus--the fellow who wrestled with Hercules. Each time that Antĉuswas thrown against the earth his strength was doubled. He was finallyin the way of overcoming Hercules, when Hercules by seizing him aroundthe middle lifted him off the ground. By this strategy he deprived himof all contact with the earth, and presently Antĉus weakened and wasvanquished. "

"That's me, " said Quill, the journalist. "If I can't get back to myshack on Sunday, I feel that Hercules has me, too, around the middle. "

"Perhaps I can find the story, " said Wurm, his eye running toward thebookshelves. 

"Don't bother, " said Flint. 

There was now another speaker--Flannel Shirt, as we called him--whohad once been sated with formal dinners and society, and is nowinclined to cry them down. He leans a bit toward socialism and freeverse. He was about to praise the country for its freedom fromsordidness and artificiality, when Flint, who had heard him before, interrupted. 

"Rubbish!" he cried out. "All of you, but in different ways, areslaves to an old tradition kept up by Wordsworth, who would himself, doubtless, have moved to London except for the steepness of the rents. You all maintain that you like the country, yet on one excuse oranother you live in the city and growl about it. There isn't acommuter among you. Honest folk, these commuters, with marrow in theirbones--a steak in a paper bag--the sleet in their faces on theferryboat. I am the only one who admits that he lives in the citybecause he prefers it. The country is good enough to read about--Ilike it in books--but I choose to sit meantime with my feet on a cityfender. "

Here Wurm broke in again. "I see, Flint, " he said, "that you have beenreading Leslie Stephen. "

Flint denied it. 

"Well, anyway, you have quoted him. Let me read you a bit of his essayon 'Country Books. '"

Flint made a grimace. "Wurm always has a favorite passage. "

Wurm went to a shelf and took down a volume. He blew off the dust andsmoothed its sides. "Listen to this!" he said. "Picked up the volumeat Schulte's, on the twenty-five cent table. 'A love of the country istaken, '" he read, "'I know not why, to indicate the presence of allthe cardinal virtues.... We assert a taste for sweet and innocentpleasures and an indifference to the feverish excitements ofartificial society. I, too, like the country, ... ' (you'll like this, Flint) 'but I confess--to be duly modest--that I love it best inbooks. In real life I have remarked that it is frequently damp andrheumatic, and most hated by those who know it best.... Though acockney in grain, I love to lean upon the farmyard gate; to hear Mrs. Poyser give a bit of her mind to the squire; to be lulled into aplacid doze by the humming of Dorlecote Mill; to sit down in DandieDinmont's parlour ... Or to drop into the kitchen of a good oldcountry inn, and to smoke a pipe with Tom Jones or listen to thesimple-minded philosophy of Parson Adams. '"

"You hit on a good one then, " said Flint. "And now as I was saying--"

Wurm interposed. "Just a moment, Flint! You think that that quotationsupports your side of the discussion. Not at all. It shows merely thatsometimes we get greater reality from books than we get from life. Leslie Stephen liked the real country, also. In his holidays heclimbed the Swiss mountains--wrote a book about them--it's on that topshelf. Don't you remember how he loved to roll stones off a cliff? Andas a pedestrian he was almost as famous as George Borrow--walked theshirt off his back before his college trustees and all that sort ofthing. But he got an even sharper reality from books. He liked thecity, too, but in many a mood, there's no doubt about it, he preferredto walk to Charing Cross with Doctor Johnson in a book, rather than tojostle on the actual pavement outside his door. "

"Speed up, Wurm!" This from Quill, the journalist. "Inch along, oldcaterpillar!"

"As far as I am concerned, " Wurm continued, "I would rather go withCharles and Mary Lamb to see _The Battle of Hexham_ in their gallerythan to any show in Times Square. I love to think of that fine oldpair climbing up the stairs, carefully at the turn, lest they tread ona neighbor's heels. Then the pleasant gallery, with its great lanternto light their expectant faces!"

Wurm's eyes strayed again wistfully to his shelves. Flint stayed him. "And so you think that it is possible to see life completely in amirror. "

"By no means, " Wurm returned. "We must see it both ways. Nor am I, asyou infer, in any sense like the Lady of Shalott. A great book cannotbe compared to a mirror. There is no genius in a mirror. It merelyreflects the actual, and slightly darkened. A great book shows lifethrough the medium of an individuality. The actual has been liftedinto truth. Divinity has passed into it through the unobstructedchannel of genius. "

Here Flint broke in. "Divinity--genius--the Swiss Alps--_The Battle ofHexham_--what have they to do with Quill's shack out in Jersey orColum's dirty birdhouses? You jump the track, Wurm. When everybody isheading for the main tent, you keep running to the side-shows. "

Quill, the journalist, joined the banter. "You remind me, Wurm--I hateto say it--of what a sea captain once said to me when I tried to loanhim a book. 'Readin', ' he said, 'readin' rots the mind. '"

It was Colum's turn to ask a question. "What do _you_ do, Flint, " heasked, "when you have a holiday?"

"Me? Well, I don't run off to the country as if the city were afireand my coat-tails smoked. And I don't sentimentalize on the evils ofsociety. And I don't sit and blink in the dark, and moon around on ashelf and wear out books. I go outdoors. I walk around and look atthings--shop windows and all that, when the merchants leave theircurtains up. I walk across the bridges and spit off. Then there's theBronx and the Battery, with benches where one may make acquaintances. People are always more communicative when they look out on the water. The last time I sat there an old fellow told me about himself, hiswife, his victrola and his saloon. I talk to a good many persons, first and last, or I stand around until they talk to me. So manypersons wear blinders in the city. They don't know how wonderful itis. Once, on Christmas Eve, I pretended to shop on Fourteenth Street, just to listen to the crowd on its final round--mother's carpetsweeper, you understand, or a drum for the heir. A crowd on Christmasis different--it's gayer--reckless--it's an exalted Saturday night. Afterwards I heard Midnight Mass at the Russian Cathedral. Then thereare always ferryboats--the band on the boat to Staten Island--God!What music! Tugs and lights. I would like to know a tug--intimately. If more people were like tugs we'd have less rotten politics. WallStreet on a holiday is fascinating. No one about. Desolate. But fullof spirits. "

Flint took a fresh cigar. "Last Sunday morning I walked in CentralPark. There were all manner of toy sailboats on the pond--big andlittle--thirty of them at the least--tipping and running in thebreeze. Grown men sail them. They set them on a course, and then theytrot around the pond and wait for them. Presently I was curious. A manupward of fifty had his boat out on the grass and was adjusting therigging. 

"'That's quite a boat, ' I began. 

"'It's not a bad tub, ' he answered. 

"'Do you hire it from the park department?' I asked. 

"'No!' with some scorn. 

"'Where do you buy them?'

"'We don't buy them. '

"'Then how--?' I started. 

"'We make 'em--nights. '

"He resumed his work. The boat was accurately and beautifullyturned--hollow inside--with a deck of glossy wood. The rudder wascontrolled by finest tackle and hardware. Altogether, it was asdelicately wrought as a violin. 

"'It's this way!'--its builder and skipper laid down his pipe--'Thereare about thirty of us boys who are dippy about boats. We can't affordreal boats, so we make these little ones. Daytimes I am an interiordecorator. This is a thirty-six. Next winter--if my wife will standthe muss (My God! How it litters up the dining-room!) I am going tobuild a forty-two. All of the boys bring out a new boat each spring!'The old fellow squinted at his mast and tightened a cord. Then hecontinued. 'If you are interested, come around any Sunday morninguntil the pond is frozen. And if you want to try your hand at a boatthis winter, just ask any of us boys and we will help you. Your firstboat or two will be sad--_Ju-das!_ But you will learn. '"

Flint was interrupted by Quill. "Isn't that rather a silly occupationfor grown men?"

"It's not an occupation, " said Flint. "It's an avocation, and it isn'tsilly. Any one of us would enjoy it, if he weren't so self-conscious. And it's more picturesque than golf and takes more skill. And whatcourtesy! These men form what is really a club--a club in itsprimitive and true sense. And I was invited to be one of them. "

Flannel Shirt broke in. "By George, that _was_ courtesy. If you hadhappened on a polo player at his club--a man not known to you--hewouldn't have invited you to come around and bring your pony forinstruction. "

"It's not an exact comparison, is it, Old Flannel Shirt?"

"No, maybe not. "

There was a pause. It was Flint who resumed. "I rather like to thinkof that interior decorator littering up his dining-room everynight--clamps and glue-pots on the sideboard--hardly room for thesugar-bowl--lumber underneath--and then bringing out a new boat inthe spring. "

Wurm looked up from the couch. "Stevenson, " he said, "should haveknown that fellow. He would have found him a place among his LanternBearers. "

Flint continued. "From the pond I walked down Fifth Avenue. "

"It's Fifth Avenue, " said Flannel Shirt, "everything up aboveFifty-ninth Street--and what it stands for, that I want to get awayfrom. "

"Easy, Flannel Shirt, " said Flint. "Fifth Avenue doesn't interest memuch either. It's too lonely. Everybody is always away. The big stonebuildings aren't homes: they are points of departure, as somebodycalled them. And they were built for kings and persons of spaciouslives, but they have been sublet to smaller folk. Or does no one liveinside? You never see a curtain stir. There is never a face at awindow. Everything is stone and dead. One might think that a Gorgonhad gone riding on a 'bus top, and had thrown his cold eye upon thehouse fronts. " Flint paused. "How can one live obscurely, as thesefolk do, in the twilight, in so beautiful a shell? Even a crustaceansometimes shows his nose at his door. And yet what a wonderful streetit would be if persons really lived there, and looked out of theirwindows, and sometimes, on clear days, hung their tapestries and rugsacross the outer walls. Actually, " added Flint, "I prefer to walk onthe East Side. It is gayer. "

"There is poverty, of course, " he went on after a moment, "andsuffering. But the streets are not depressing. They have fun on theEast Side. There are so many children and there is no loneliness. Ifthe street is blessed with a standpipe, it seems designed as a postfor leaping. Any vacant wall--if the street is so lucky--serves for agame. There is baseball on the smooth pavement, or if one has a pieceof chalk, he can lay out a kind of hopscotch--not stretched out, forthere isn't room, but rolled up like a jelly cake. One must hop to themiddle and out again. Or perhaps one is an artist and with a crayon hespends his grudge upon an enemy--these drawings can be no likeness ofa friend. Or love guides the chalky fingers. And all the timeslim-legged girls sit on curb and step and act as nursemaids to theyounger fry. "

"But, my word, what smells!"

"Yes, of course, and not very pleasant smells. Down on these streetswe can learn what dogs think of us. But every Saturday night on GrandStreet there is a market. I bought a tumbler of little nuts from anold woman. They aren't much good to eat--wee nuts, all shell--and theystill sit in the kitchen getting dusty. It was raining when I boughtthem and the woman's hair was streaked in her face, but she didn'tmind. There were pent roofs over all the carts. Everything on God'searth was for sale. On the cart next to my old woman's, there washardware--sieves, cullenders--kitchen stuff. And on the next, wearinggear, with women's stockings hung on a rope at the back. A girl camealong carrying a pair of champagne-colored shoes, looking forstockings to match. Quite a belle. Somebody's girl. Quill, go downthere on a Saturday night. It will make a column for your paper. Iwonder if that girl found her stockings. A black-eyed Italian. 

"But what I like best are the windows on the East Side. No one thereever says that his house is his castle. On the contrary it is hispoint of vantage--his outlook--his prospect. His house front neverdozes. Windows are really windows, places to look out of--not openingsfor household exhibits--ornamental lamps or china things--at everywindow there is a head--somebody looking on the world. There is apleasant gossip across the fire-escapes--a recipe for onions--a hintof fashion--a cure for rheumatism. The street bears the general life. The home is the street, not merely the crowded space within fourwalls. The street is the playground and the club--the common stage, and these are the galleries and boxes. We come again close to thebeginning of the modern theatre--an innyard with windows round about. The play is shinny in the gutters. Venders come and go, selling fruitand red suspenders. An ice wagon clatters off, with a half-dozenchildren on its tailboard. "

Flint flecked his ashes on the floor. "I wonder, " he said at length, "that those persons who try to tempt these people out of the congestedcity to farms, don't see how falsely they go about it. They shouldreproduce the city in miniature--a dozen farmhouses must be huddledtogether to make a snug little town, where all the children may playand where the women, as they work, may talk across the windows. Theymust build villages like the farming towns of France. 

"But where can one be so stirred as on the wharves? From here even thenarrowest fancy reaches out to the four watery corners of the earth. No nose is so green and country-bred that it doesn't sniff the spicesof India. Great ships lie in the channel camouflaged with war. If wecould forget the terror of the submarine, would not these lines andstars and colors appear to us as symbols of the strange mystery of thefar-off seas?

"Or if it is a day of sailing, there are a thousand barrels, oilmaybe, ranged upon the wharf, standing at fat attention to go aboard. Except for numbers it might appear--although I am rusty at thelegend--that in these barrels Ali Baba has hid his forty thieves forroguery when the ship is out to sea. Doubtless if one knocked upon atop and put his ear close upon a barrel, he would hear a villain'sguttural voice inside, asking if the time were come. 

"Then there are the theatres and parks, great caverns where a subwayis being built. There are geraniums on window-sills, wash hanging ondizzy lines (cotton gymnasts practicing for a circus), a roar oftraffic and shrill whistles, men and women eating--always eating. There has been nothing like this in all the ages. Babylon and Ninevehwere only villages. Carthage was a crossroads. It is as though all thecities of antiquity had packed their bags and moved here to a commonspot. "

"Please, Flint, " this from Colum, "but you forget that the faces ofthose who live in the country are happier. That's all that counts. "

"Not happier--less alert, that's all--duller. For contentment, I'llwager against any farmhand the old woman who sells apples at thecorner. She polishes them on her apron with--with spit. There is anItalian who peddles ice from a handcart on our street, and he neversees me without a grin. The folk who run our grocery, a man and hiswife, seem happy all the day. No! we misjudge the city and we havedone so since the days of Wordsworth. If we prized the city rightly, we would be at more pains to make it better--to lessen its suffering. We ought to go into the crowded parts with an eye not only for thepoverty, but also with sympathy for its beauty--its love ofsunshine--the tenderness with which the elder children guard theyounger--its love of music--its dancing--its naturalness. If we hadthis sympathy we could help--_ourselves_, first--and after that, maybe, the East Side. "

Flint arose and leaned against the chimney. He shook an accusingfinger at the company. "You, Colum, ruin fifty weeks for the sake oftwo. You, Quill, hypnotize yourself into a frazzle by Saturday noonwith unnecessary fret. You peck over your food too much. A littleclear unmuddled thinking would straighten you out, even if you didn'tlet the ants crawl over you on Sunday afternoon. Old Flannel Shirt isblinded by his spleen against society. As for Wurm, he doesn't count. He's only a harmless bit of mummy-wrapping. "

"And what are you, Flint?" asked Quill. 

"Me? A rational man, I hope. "

"You--you are an egotist. That's what you are. "

"Very well, " said Flint. "It's just as you say. "

There was a red flash from the top of the Metropolitan Tower. Flintlooked at his watch. "So?" he said, "I must be going. "

And now that our party is over and I am home at last, I put out thelight and draw open the curtains. Tomorrow--it is to be a holiday--Ihad planned to climb in the Highlands, for I, too, am addicted to thecountry. But perhaps--perhaps I'll change my plan and stay in town. I'll take a hint from Flint. I'll go down to Delancey Street and watchthe chaffering and buying. What he said was true. He overstated hisposition, of course. Most propagandists do, being swept off in thecurrent of their swift conviction. One should like both the city andthe country; and the liking for one should heighten the liking for theother. Any particular receptiveness must grow to be a generalreceptiveness. Yet, in the main, certainly, Flint was right. I'll tryDelancey Street, I concluded, just this once. 

Thousands of roofs lie below me, for I live in a tower as ofTeufelsdröckh. And many of them shield a bit of grief--darkened roomswhere sick folk lie--rooms where hope is faint. And yet, as I believe, under these roofs there is more joy than grief--more contentment andhappiness than despair, even in these grievous times of war. If Quillhere frets himself into wakefulness and Colum chafes for the coming ofthe summer, also let us remember that in the murk and shadows of theserooms there are, at the least, thirty sailors from Central Park--oneold fellow in particular who, although the hour is late, still putterswith his boat in the litter of his dining-room. Glue-pots on thesideboard! Clamps among the china, and lumber on the hearth! And downon Grand Street, snug abed, dreaming of pleasant conquest, sleeps thedark-eyed Italian girl. On a chair beside her are her champagne boots, with stockings to match hung across the back. 

Runaway Studies. 

In my edition of "Elia, " illustrated by Brock, whose sympathetic pen, surely, was nibbed in days contemporary with Lamb, there is a sketchof a youth reclining on a window-seat with a book fallen open on hisknees. He is clad in a long plain garment folded to his heels whichcarries a hint of a cathedral choir but which, doubtless, is theprescribed costume of an English public school. This lad is gazingthrough the casement into a sunny garden--for the artist's vaguestippling invites the suspicion of grass and trees. Or rather, doesnot the intensity of his regard attest that his nimble thoughts havejumped the outmost wall? Already he journeys to those peaks and loftytowers that fringe the world of youth--a dizzy range that casts amagic border on his first wide thoughts, to be overleaped if he seekto tread the stars. 

And yet it seems a sleepy afternoon. Flowers nod upon a shelf in theidle breeze from the open casement. On the warm sill a drowsy sunlightfalls, as if the great round orb of day, having labored to the top ofnoon, now dawdled idly on the farther slope. A cat dozes with lazycomfort on the window-seat. Surely, this is the cat--if the old storybe believed--the sleepiest of all her race, in whose dull ear themouse dared to nest and breed. 

This lad, who is so lost in thought, is none other than Charles Lamb, a mere stripling, not yet grown to his black small-clothes and sobergaiters, a shrill squeak of a boy scarcely done with his battledore. And here he sits, his cheek upon his palm, and dreams of the future. 

But Lamb himself has written of this window-seat. Journeying northwardout of London--in that wonderful middle age of his in which the Eliapapers were composed--journeying northward he came once on the greatcountry house where a part of his boyhood had been spent. It had beenbut lately given to the wreckers, "and the demolition of a few weeks, "he writes, "had reduced it to--an antiquity. "

"Had I seen those brick-and-mortar knaves at their process ofdestruction, " he continues, "at the plucking of every pannel I shouldhave felt the varlets at my heart. I should have cried out to them tospare a plank at least out of that cheerful storeroom, in whose hotwindow-seat I used to sit and read Cowley, with the grass-plat before, and the hum and flappings of that one solitary wasp that ever hauntedit about me--it is in mine ears now, as oft as summer returns.... "

I confess to a particular enjoyment of this essay, with its memory oftapestried bedrooms setting forth upon their walls "the unappeasableprudery of Diana" under the peeping eye of Actĉon; its echoinggalleries once so dreadful when the night wind caught the candle atthe turn; its hall of family portraits. But chiefly it is thiswindow-seat that holds me--the casement looking on the garden and itssouthern sun-baked wall--the lad dreaming on his volume of Cowley, andleaping the garden border for the stars. These are the things that Iadmit most warmly to my affection. 

It is not in the least that I am a lover of Cowley, who seems anunpleasantly antiquated author. I would choose, instead, that theyouthful Elia were busy so early with one of his favoriteElizabethans. He has himself hinted that he read "The Vicar ofWakefield" in later days out of a tattered copy from a circulatinglibrary, yet I would willingly move the occasion forward, coincidentto this. And I suspect that the artist Brock is also indifferent toCowley: for has he not laid two other volumes handy on the shelf forthe sure time when Cowley shall grow dull? Has he not even put Cowleyflat down upon his face, as if, already neglected, he had slipped fromthe lad's negligent fingers--as if, indeed, Elia's far-stridingmeditation were to him of higher interest than the stiff measure ofany poet?

I recall a child, dimly through the years, that lay upon the rugbefore the fire to read his book, with his chin resting on both hishands. His favorite hour was the winter twilight before the familycame together for their supper, for at that hour the lamplighter wenthis rounds and threw a golden string of dots upon the street. He drovean old thin horse and he stood on the seat of the cart withup-stretched taper. But when the world grew dark the flare of the firewas enough for the child to read, for he lay close against the hearth. And as the shadows gathered in the room, there was one story chiefly, of such intensity that the excitement of it swept through his body andout into his waving legs. Perhaps its last copy has now vanished offthe earth. It dealt with a deserted house on a lonely road, wherechains clanked at midnight. Lights, too, seemingly not of earth, glimmered at the windows, while groans--such was the dark fancy of theauthor--issued from a windy tower. But there was one supreme chapterin which the hero was locked in a haunted room and saw a candle at achink of the wall. It belonged to the villain, who nightly playedthere a ghostly antic to frighten honest folk from a buried treasure. 

And in summer the child read on the casement of the dining-room withthe window up. It was the height of a tall man from the ground, andthis gave it a bit of dizziness that enhanced the pleasure. This sillcould be dully reached from inside, but the approach from the outsidewas riskiest and best. For an adventuring mood this window was a kindof postern to the house for innocent deception, beyond the eye of boththe sitting-room and cook. Sometimes it was the bridge of a loftyship with a pilot going up and down, or it was a lighthouse to mark achannel. It was as versatile as the kitchen step-ladder which--onThursday afternoons when the cook was out--unbent from its soberhousehold duties and joined him as an equal. But chiefly on this sillthe child read his books on summer days. His cousins sat inside onchairs, starched for company, and read safe and dimpled authors, buthis were of a vagrant kind. There was one book, especially, in which alad not much bigger than himself ran from home and joined a circus. Ascolding aunt was his excuse. And the child on the sill chafed at hisown happy circumstance which denied him these adventures. 

In a dark room in an upper story of the house there was a great boxwhere old books and periodicals were stored. No place this side ofCimmeria had deeper shadows. Not even the underground stall of theneighbor's cow, which showed a gloomy window on the garden, gave quitethe chill. It was only on the brightest days that the child dared torummage in this box. The top of it was high and it was blind fumblingunless he stood upon a chair. Then he bent over, jack-knife fashion, until the upper part of him--all above the legs--disappeared. In theobscurity--his head being gone--it must have seemed that Solomon livedupon the premises and had carried out his ugly threat in that oldaffair of the disputed child. Then he lifted out the papers--inparticular a set of _Leslie's Weekly_ with battle pictures of theCivil War. Once he discovered a tale of Jules Verne--a journey to thecenter of the earth--and he spread its chapters before the window inthe dusty light. 

But the view was high across the houses of the city to a range ofhills where tall trees grew as a hedge upon the world. And it was thehours when his book lay fallen that counted most, for then he builtpoems in his fancy of ships at sea and far-off countries. 

It is by a fine instinct that children thus neglect their books, whether it be Cowley or Circus Dick. When they seem most truant theyare the closest rapt. A book at its best starts the thought and sendsit off as a happy vagrant. It is the thought that runs away across themargin that brings back the richest treasure. 

But all reading in childhood is not happy. It chanced that lately inthe long vacation I explored a country school for boys. It stood onthe shaded street of a pretty New England village, so perched on ahilltop that it looked over a wide stretch of lower country. Therewere many marks of a healthful outdoor life--a football field andtennis courts, broad lawns and a prospect of distant woodland for aholiday excursion. It was on the steps of one of the buildings usedfor recitation that I found a tattered dog-eared remnant of _TheMerchant of Venice_. So much of its front was gone that at the veryfirst of it Shylock had advanced far into his unworthy schemes. Evidently the book, by its position at the corner of the steps, hadbeen thrown out immediately at the close of the final class, as ifalready it had been endured too long. 

In the stillness of the abandoned school I sat for an hour and readabout the choosing of the caskets. The margins were filled withdrawings--one possibly a likeness of the teacher. Once there was afigure in a skirt--straight, single lines for legs--_Jack'sgirl_--scrawled in evident derision of a neighbor student's amatoryweakness. There were records of baseball scores. Railroads were drawnobliquely across the pages, bending about in order not to touch thewords, with a rare tunnel where some word stood out too long. Here andthere were stealthy games of tit-tat-toe, practiced, doubtless, behindthe teacher's back. Everything showed boredom with the play. Whatmattered it which casket was selected! Let Shylock take his pound offlesh! Only let him whet his knife and be quick about it! All's one. It's at best a sad and sleepy story suited only for a winter's day. But now spring is here--spring that is the king of all the seasons. 

A bee comes buzzing on the pane. It flies off in careless truantry. The clock ticks slowly like a lazy partner in the teacher's dullconspiracy. Outside stretches the green world with its trees andhills and moving clouds. There is a river yonder with swimming-holes. A dog barks on a distant road. 

Presently the lad's book slips from his negligent fingers. He placesit face down upon the desk. It lies disregarded like that volume ofold Cowley one hundred years ago. His eyes wander from the black-boardwhere the _Merchant's_ dry lines are scanned and marked. 

 ´ ´ ´ ´ ´ _In sooth, I know not why I am so sad. _

And then ... His thoughts have clambered through the window. They haveleaped across the schoolyard wall. Still in his ears he hears thejogging of the _Merchant_--but the sound grows dim. Like that otherlad of long ago, his thoughts have jumped the hills. Already, withgiddy stride, they are journeying to the profound region of the stars. 

[Illustration]

On Turning Into Forty. 

The other day, without any bells or whistles, I slipped off from thethirties. I felt the same sleepiness that morning. There was noapparent shifting of the grade. 

I am conscious, maybe, that my agility is not what it was fifteenyears ago. I do not leap across the fences. But I am not yet comic. Yonder stout man waddles as if he were a precious bombard. He strainsat his forward buttons. Unless he mend his appetite, his shoes will belost below his waistcoat. Already their tops and hulls, like batteredcaravels, disappear beneath his fat horizon. With him I bear nofellowship. But although nature has not stuffed me with her sweets tothis thick rotundity; alas, despite of tubes and bottles, no shadowygarden flourishes on my top--waving capillary grasses and a prim pathbetween the bush. Rather, I bear a general parade and smooth pleasanceopen to the glimpses of the moon. 

And so at last I have turned into the forties. I remember now howheedlessly I had remarked a small brisk clock ticking upon the shelfas it counted the seconds--paying out to me, as it were, for mypleasure and expense, the brief coinage of my life. I had heard, also, unmindful of the warning, a tall and solemn clock as I lay awake, marking regretfully the progress of the night. And I had been toldthat water runs always beneath the bridge, that the deepest rosesfade, that Time's white beard keeps growing to his knee. These phrasesof wisdom I had heard and others. But what mattered them to me when mylong young life lay stretched before me? Nor did the revolving starsconcern me--nor the moon, spring with its gaudy brush, nor gray-cladwinter. Nor did I care how the wind blew the swift seasons across theearth. Let Time's horses gallop, I cried. Speed! The bewildering peaksof youth are forward. The inn for the night lies far across themountains. 

But the seconds were entered on the ledger. At last the gray penmanhas made his footing. The great page turns. I have passed out of thethirties. 

I am not given to brooding on my age. It is only by checking the yearson my fingers that I am able to reckon the time of my birth. In theelection booth, under a hard eye, I fumble the years and invitesuspicion. Eighteen hundred and seventy-eight, I think it was. Buteven this salient fact--this milepost on my eternity--I remember mostquickly by the recollection of a jack-knife acquired on my tenthbirthday. By way of celebration on that day, having selected thelongest blade, I cut the date--1888--in the kitchen woodwork withrather a pretty flourish when the cook was out. The swift events thatfollowed the discovery--the dear woman paddled me with a great spoonthrough the door--fastened the occurrence in my memory. 

It was about the year of the jack-knife that there lived in ourneighborhood a bad boy whose name was Elmer. I would have quiteforgotten him except that I met him on the pavement a few weeks ago. He was the bully of our street--a towering rogue with red hair and onesuspender. I remember a chrome bandage which he shifted from toe totoe. This lad was of larger speech than the rest of us and he couldspit between his teeth. He used to snatch the caps of the younger boysand went off with our baseball across the fences. He was wrapped, too, in mystery, and it was rumored--softly from ear to ear--that once hehad been arrested and taken to the station-house. 

And yet here he was, after all these years, not a bearded brigand witha knife sticking from his boot, but a mild undersized man, hat inhand, smiling at me with pleasant cordiality. His red hair had fadedto a harmless carrot. From an overtopping rascal he had dwindled to myshoulder. It was as strange and incomprehensible as if the brokenmiddle-aged gentleman, my familiar neighbor across the street who nodsall day upon his step, were pointed out to me as Captain Kidd retired. Can it be that all villains come at last to a slippered state? DoesDick Turpin of the King's highway now falter with crutch along agarden path? And Captain Singleton, now that his last victim haswalked the plank--does he doze on a sunny bench beneath his pear tree?Is no blood or treasure left upon the earth? Do all rascals lose theirteeth? "Good evening, Elmer, " I said, "it has been a long time sincewe have met. " And I left him agreeable and smiling. 

No, certainly I do not brood upon my age. Except for a gift I forgetmy birthday. It is only by an effort that I can think of myself asrunning toward middle age. If I meet a stranger, usually, by apleasant deception, I think myself the younger, and because of anold-fashioned deference for age I bow and scrape in the doorway forhis passage. 

Of course I admit a suckling to be my junior. A few days since Ihappened to dine at one of the Purple Pups of our Greenwich Village. At my table, which was slashed with yellow and blue in the fashion ofthese places, sat a youth of seventeen who engaged me in conversation. Plainly, even to my blindness, he was younger than myself. The milkwas scarcely dry upon his mouth. He was, by his admission across thesoup, a writer of plays and he had received already as many as threepleasant letters of rejection. He flared with youth. Strange gases andopinion burned in his speech. His breast pocket bulged withmanuscript, for reading at a hint. 

I was poking at my dumpling when he asked me if I were a socialist. No, I replied. Then perhaps I was an anarchist or a Bolshevist, hepersisted. N-no, I answered him, sadly and slowly, for I foresaw hisscorn. He leaned forward across the table. Begging my pardon for anintrusion in my affairs, he asked me if I were not aware that theworld was slipping away from me. God knows. Perhaps. I had comefrisking to that restaurant. I left it broken and decrepit. Theyoungster had his manuscripts and his anarchy. He held the wrigglingworld by its futuristic tail. It was not my world, to be sure, but itwas a gay world and daubed with color. 

And yet, despite this humiliating encounter, I feel quite young. Something has passed before me that may be Time. The summers have comeand gone. There is snow on the pavement where I remember rain. I see, if I choose, the long vista of the years, with diminishing figures, and tin soldiers at the start. Yet I doubt if I am growing older. Tomyself I seem younger than in my twenties. In the twenties we arequite commonly old. We bear the whole weight of society. The world hasbeen waiting so long for us and our remedies. In the twenties we scornold authority. We let Titian and Keats go drown themselves. We areskeptical in religion, and before our unrelenting iron throneimmortality and all things of faith plead in vain. Although I can showstill only a shabby inventory, certainly I would not exchange myselffor that other self in the twenties. I have acquired in these last fewyears a less narrow sympathy and a belief that some of my colderreasons may be wrong. Nor would I barter certain knacks ofthoughts--serious and humorous--for the renewed ability to leap acrossa five-foot bar. I am less fearful of the world and its accidents. Ihave less embarrassment before people. I am less moody. I tack andveer less among my betters for some meaner profit. Surely I am growingyounger. 

I seem to remember reading a story in which a scientist devised ameans of reversing the direction of the earth. Perhaps an explosion ofgases backfired against the east. Perhaps he built a monstrous leverand contrived the moon to be his fulcrum. Anyway, here at last was theearth spinning backward in its course--the spring precedingwinter--the sun rising in the west--one o'clock going beforetwelve--soup trailing after nuts--the seed-time following upon theharvest. And so it began to appear--so ran the story--that human life, too, was reversed. Persons came into the world as withered grandamesand as old gentlemen with gold-headed canes, and then receded likecrabs backward into their maturity, then into their adolescence andbabyhood. To return from a protracted voyage was to find your youngerfriends sunk into pinafores. But the story was really too ridiculous. 

But in these last few years no doubt I do grow younger. The greatcamera of the Master rolls its moving pictures backward. Perhaps I amonly thirty-eight now that the direction is reversed. 

[Illustration]

I wonder what you thought, my dear X----, when we met recently atdinner. We had not seen one another very often in these last fewyears. Our paths have led apart and we have not been even at shoutingdistance across the fields. It is needless to remind you, I hope, thatI once paid you marked attention. It began when we were boy and girl. Our friends talked, you will recall. You were then less than a yearyounger than myself, although no doubt you have since lost distance. What a long time I spent upon my tie and collar--a stiff high collarthat almost touched my ears! Some other turn of fortune'swheel--circumstance--a shaft of moonlight (we were young, my dear)--awhite frock--your acquiescence--who knows?

I jilted you once or twice for other girls--nothing formal, ofcourse--but only when you had jilted me three or four times. We oncerowed upon a river at night. Did I take your hand, my dear? If Ilisten now I can hear the water dripping from the oar. There wasdarkness--and stars--and youth (yourself, white-armed, the symbol ofits mystery). Yes, perhaps I am older now. 

Was it not Byron who wrote?

 I am ashes where once I was fire, And the soul in my bosom is dead; What I loved I now merely admire, And my heart is as gray as my head. 

I cannot pretend ever to have had so fierce a passion, but at least myfire still burns and with a cheery blaze. But you will not know thislove of mine--unless, of course, you read this page--and even so, youcan only suspect that I write of you, because, my dear, to be quitefrank, I paid attention to several girls beside yourself. 

Yes, they say that I have come to the top of the hill and thathenceforth the view is back across my shoulder. I am counseled thatwith a turn of the road I had best sit with my back to the horses, forthe mountains are behind. A little while and the finer purple will beshowing in the west. Yet a little while, they say, and the bewilderingpeaks of youth will be gray and cold. 

Perhaps some of the greener pleasures are mine no longer. Certainly, last night I went to the Winter Garden, but left bored after the firstact; and I had left sooner except for climbing across my neighbors. Isuppose there are young popinjays who seriously affirm that Ziegfeld'sBeauty Chorus is equal to the galaxy of loveliness that once prancedat Weber and Field's when we came down from college on Saturday night. At old Coster and Bial's there was once a marvelous beauty who swungfrom a trapeze above the audience and scandalously undressed herselfdown to the fifth encore and her stockings. And, really, are thereplays now as exciting as the _Prisoner of Zenda_, with its great fightupon the stairs--three men dead and the tables overturned--RedRudolph, in the end, bearing off the Princess? Heroes no longer wearcloak and sword and rescue noble ladies from castle towers. 

And Welsh rabbit, that was once a passion and the high symbol ofextravagance, in these days has lost its finest flavor. In vain do weshake the paprika can. Pop-beer and real beer, its manly cousin, haveneither of them the old foaming tingle when you come off the water. Yes, already, I am told, I am on the long road that leads down to thequiet inn at the mountain foot. I am promised, to be sure, many wideprospects, pleasant sounds of wind and water, and friendly greetingsby the way. There will be a stop here and there for refreshments, apause at the turn where the world shows best, a tightening of thebrake. Get up, Dobbin! Go 'long! And then, tired and nodding, at last, we shall leave the upland and enter the twilight where all roads end. 

A pleasant picture, is it not--a grandfather in a cap--yourself, mydear sir, hugging your cold shins in the chimney corner? Is it not abrave end to a stirring business? Life, you say, is a journey up anddown a hill--aspirations unattained and a mild regret, castles atdawn, a brisk wind for the noontide, and at night, at best, the lightsof a little village, the stir of water on the stones, and silence. 

Is this true? Or do we not reiterate a lie? I deny old age. It is afalse belief, a bad philosophy dimming the eyes of generations. Menand women may wear caps, but not because of age. In each one's heart, if he permit, a child keeps house to the very end. If Welsh rabbitlose its flavor, is it a sign of decaying power? I have yet to knowthat a relish for Shakespeare declines, or the love of one's friends, or the love of truth and beauty. Youth does not view the loftiestpeaks. It is at sunset that the tallest castles rise. 

My dear sir--you of seventy or beyond--if no rim of mountainsstretches up before you, it is not your age that denies you but thequality of your thought. It has been said of old that as a man thinksso he is, but who of us has learned the lesson?

The journey has neither a beginning nor an end. Now is eternity. Ourbirth is but a signpost on the road--our going hence, another post tomark transition and our progress. The oldest stars are brief lampsupon our way. We shall travel wisely if we see peaks and castles allthe day, and hold our childhood in our hearts. Then, when at last thenight has come, we shall plant our second post upon a windy heightwhere it will be first to catch the dawn. 

On the Difference Between Wit and Humor. 

I am not sure that I can draw an exact line between wit and humor. Perhaps the distinction is so subtle that only those persons candecide who have long white beards. But even an ignorant man, so longas he is clear of Bedlam, may have an opinion. 

I am quite positive that of the two, humor is the more comfortable andmore livable quality. Humorous persons, if their gift is genuine andnot a mere shine upon the surface, are always agreeable companionsand they sit through the evening best. They have pleasant mouthsturned up at the corners. To these corners the great Master ofmarionettes has fixed the strings and he holds them in his nimblestfingers to twitch them at the slightest jest. But the mouth of amerely witty man is hard and sour until the moment of its discharge. Nor is the flash from a witty man always comforting, whereas ahumorous man radiates a general pleasure and is like another candle inthe room. 

I admire wit, but I have no real liking for it. It has been too oftenemployed against me, whereas humor is always an ally. It never pointsan impertinent finger into my defects. Humorous persons do not sitlike explosives on a fuse. They are safe and easy comrades. But awit's tongue is as sharp as a donkey driver's stick. I may gallop thefaster for its prodding, yet the touch behind is too persuasive forany comfort. 

Wit is a lean creature with sharp inquiring nose, whereas humor has akindly eye and comfortable girth. Wit, if it be necessary, uses maliceto score a point--like a cat it is quick to jump--but humor keeps thepeace in an easy chair. Wit has a better voice in a solo, but humorcomes into the chorus best. Wit is as sharp as a stroke of lightning, whereas humor is diffuse like sunlight. Wit keeps the season'sfashions and is precise in the phrases and judgments of the day, buthumor is concerned with homely eternal things. Wit wears silk, buthumor in homespun endures the wind. Wit sets a snare, whereas humorgoes off whistling without a victim in its mind. Wit is sharpercompany at table, but humor serves better in mischance and in therain. When it tumbles wit is sour, but humor goes uncomplainingwithout its dinner. Humor laughs at another's jest and holds itssides, while wit sits wrapped in study for a lively answer. But it isa workaday world in which we live, where we get mud upon our boots andcome weary to the twilight--it is a world that grieves and suffersfrom many wounds in these years of war: and therefore as I think of myacquaintance, it is those who are humorous in its best and truestmeaning rather than those who are witty who give the more profitablecompanionship. 

And then, also, there is wit that is not wit. As someone has written:

 Nor ever noise for wit on me could pass, When thro' the braying I discern'd the ass. 

I sat lately at dinner with a notoriously witty person (a really wittyman) whom our hostess had introduced to provide the entertainment. Ihad read many of his reviews of books and plays, and while I confesstheir wit and brilliancy, I had thought them to be hard andintellectual and lacking in all that broader base of humor which aimsat truth. His writing--catching the bad habit of the time--is tooready to proclaim a paradox and to assert the unusual, to throw asidein contempt the valuable haystack in a fine search for a paltryneedle. His reviews are seldom right--as most of us see the right--butthey sparkle and hold one's interest for their perversity andunexpected turns. 

In conversation I found him much as I had found him in hiswriting--although, strictly speaking, it was not a conversation, whichrequires an interchange of word and idea and is turn about. Aconversation should not be a market where one sells and another buys. Rather, it should be a bargaining back and forth, and each personshould be both merchant and buyer. My rubber plant for your victrola, each offering what he has and seeking his deficiency. It was my friendB---- who fairly put the case when he said that he liked so much totalk that he was willing to pay for his audience by listening in histurn. 

But this was a speech and a lecture. He loosed on us from the coldspigot of his intellect a steady flow of literary allusion--a practicewhich he professes to hold in scorn--and wit and epigram. He seemedtorn from the page of Meredith. He talked like ink. I had believedbefore that only people in books could talk as he did, and then onlywhen their author had blotted and scratched their performance for aseventh time before he sent it to the printer. To me it was anentirely new experience, for my usual acquaintances are good commonhonest daytime woollen folk and they seldom average better than onebright thing in an evening. 

At first I feared that there might be a break in his flow of speechwhich I should be obliged to fill. Once, when there was a slightpause--a truffle was engaging him--I launched a frail remark; but itwas swept off at once in the renewed torrent. And seriously it doesnot seem fair. If one speaker insists--to change the figure--on layingall the cobbles of a conversation, he should at least allow another tocarry the tarpot and fill in the chinks. When the evening was over, although I recalled two or three clever stories, which I shall botchin the telling, I came away tired and dissatisfied, my tongue dry withdisuse. 

Now I would not seek that kind of man as a companion with whom to bebecalmed in a sailboat, and I would not wish to go to the country withhim, least of all to the North Woods or any place outside ofcivilization. I am sure that he would sulk if he were deprived of anaudience. He would be crotchety at breakfast across his bacon. Certainly for the woods a humorous man is better company, for hishumor in mischance comforts both him and you. A humorous man--and herelies the heart of the matter--a humorous man has the high gift ofregarding an annoyance in the very stroke of it as another man shallregard it when the annoyance is long past. If a humorous person fallsout of a canoe he knows the exquisite jest while his head is stillbobbing in the cold water. A witty man, on the contrary, is sour untilhe is changed and dry: but in a week's time when company is about, hewill make a comic story of it. 

My friend A---- with whom I went once into the Canadian woods hasgenuine humor, and no one can be a more satisfactory comrade. I do notrecall that he said many comic things, and at bottom he was serious asthe best humorists are. But in him there was a kind of joy andexaltation that lasted throughout the day. If the duffle were piledtoo high and fell about his ears, if the dinner was burned or the tentblew down in a driving storm at night, he met these mishaps as thoughthey were the very things he had come north to get, as though withoutthem the trip would have lacked its spice. This is an easy philosophyin retrospect but hard when the wet canvas falls across you and therain beats in. A---- laughed at the very moment of disaster as anotherman will laugh later in an easy chair. I see him now swinging his axefor firewood to dry ourselves when we were spilled in a rapids; andagain, while pitching our tent on a sandy beach when another storm haddrowned us. And there is a certain cry of his (dully, _Wow!_ on paper)expressive to the initiated of all things gay, which could never issuefrom the mouth of a merely witty man. 

Real humor is primarily human--or divine, to be exact--and after thatthe fun may follow naturally in its order. Not long ago I saw LouisJouvet of the French Company play Sir Andrew Ague-Cheek. It was a mosthumorous performance of the part, and the reason is that the actormade no primary effort to be funny. It was the humanity of hisplaying, making his audience love him first of all, that provoked thecomedy. His long thin legs were comical and so was his drawling talk, but the very heart and essence was this love he started in hisaudience. Poor fellow! How delightfully he smoothed the feathers inhis hat! How he feared to fight the duel! It was easy to love such adear silly human fellow. A merely witty player might have drawn asmany laughs, but there would not have been the catching at the heart. 

As for books and the wit or humor of their pages, it appears that witfades, whereas humor lasts. Humor uses permanent nutgalls. But isthere anything more melancholy than the wit of another generation? Inthe first place, this wit is intertwined with forgotten circumstance. It hangs on a fashion--on the style of a coat. It arose from aforgotten bit of gossip. In the play of words the sources of the punare lost. It is like a local jest in a narrow coterie, barren to anoutsider. Sydney Smith was the most celebrated wit of his day, but heis dull reading now. Blackwood's at its first issue was a witty daringsheet, but for us the pages are stagnant. I suppose that no one nowlaughs at the witticisms of Thomas Hood. Where are the wits ofyesteryear? Yet the humor of Falstaff and Lamb and Fielding remainsand is a reminder to us that humor, to be real, must be founded onhumanity and on truth. 

On Going to a Party. 

Although I usually enjoy a party when I have arrived, I seldomanticipate it with pleasure. I remain sour until I have hung my hat. Isuspect that my disorder is general and that if any group of formaldiners could be caught in preparation midway between their tub andover-shoes, they would be found a peevish company who might beexpected to snap at one another. Yet look now at their smiling faces!With what zest they crunch their food! How cheerfully they clatter ontheir plates! Who would suspect that yonder smiling fellow who strokeshis silky chin was sullen when he fixed his tie; or that this pleasantbabble comes out of mouths that lately sulked before their mirrors?

I am not sure from what cause my own crustiness proceeds. I am of noessential unsociability. Nor is it wholly the masquerade ofunaccustomed clothes. I am deft with a bow-knot and patient with mycollar. It may be partly a perversity of sex, inasmuch as we men aresometimes "taken" by our women folk. But chiefly it comes from anunwillingness to pledge the future, lest on the very night my ownhearth appear the better choice. Here we are, with legs stretched forcomfort toward the fire--easy and unbuttoned. Let the rain beat on theglass! Let chimneys topple! Let the wind whistle to its shrillcompanions of the North! But although I am led growling and reluctantto my host's door--with stiffened paws, as it were, against thesill--I usually enjoy myself when I am once inside. To see me acrossthe salad smiling at my pretty neighbor, no one would know howchurlish I had been on the coming of the invitation. 

I have attended my share of formal dinners. I have dined with themagnificent H----s and their Roman Senator has announced me at thedoor; although, when he asked my name in the hall, I thought at firstin my ignorance that he gave me directions about my rubbers. No onehas faced more forks and knives, or has apportioned his implementswith nicer discrimination among the meats. Not once have I been forcedto stir my after-dinner coffee with a soup spoon. And yet I look backon these grand occasions with contentment chiefly because they arepast. I am in whole agreement with Cleopatra when she spokeslightingly of her salad days--surely a fashionable afternoon affairat a castle on the river Nile--when, as she confessed, she was youngand green in judgment. 

It is usually a pleasure to meet distinguished persons who, as a rule, are friendly folk who sit in peace and comfort. But if they are luggedin and set up stiffly at a formal dinner they are too much anexhibition. In this circumstance they cannot be natural and at theirbest. And then I wonder how they endure our abject deference andflabby surrender to their opinions. Would it not destroy all interestin a game of bowling if the wretched pins fell down before the hitwere made? It was lately at a dinner that our hostess held incaptivity three of these celebrated lions. One of them was a famoustraveler who had taken a tiger by its bristling beard. The second wasa popular lecturer. The third was in distemper and crouched quietly ather plate. The first two are sharp and bright and they roared toexpectation. But I do not complain when lions take possession of thecage, for it reduces the general liability of talk, and a common man, if he be industrious, may pluck his bird down to the bone in peace. 

A formal reception is even worse than a dinner. One stands around withstalled machinery. Good stout legs, that can go at a trot all day, become now weak and wabbly. One hurdles dispiritedly over trailingskirts. One tries in conversation to think of the name of a play hehas just seen, but it escapes him. It is, however, so nearly in hisgrasp, that it prevents him from turning to another topic. Benson, theessayist, also disliked formal receptions and he quotes Prince Hal intheir dispraise. "Prithee, Ned, " says the Prince--and I fancy that hehas just led a thirsty Duchess to the punchbowl, and was now in thevery act of escaping while her face was buried in the cup--"Prithee, Ned, " he says, "come out of this fat room, and lend me thy hand tolaugh a little!" And we can imagine these two enfranchised rogues, easy at heart, making off later to their Eastcheap tavern, and thepassing of a friendly cup. But now, alas, today, all of the rooms ofthe house are fat and thick with people. There is a confusion oftongues as when work on the tower of Babel was broken off. There is noescape. If it were one's good luck to be a waiter, one could at leastconsole himself that it was his livelihood. 

The furniture has been removed from all the rooms in order that morepersons may be more uncomfortable. Or perhaps the chairs and tables, like rats in a leaky ship, have scuttled off, as it were, now thatfashion has wrecked the home. A friend of mine, J----, resents theseentertainments. No sooner, recently, did he come into such a bareapartment where, in happier days his favorite chair had stood, than hehinted to the guests that the furniture had been sold to meet theexpenses of the day. This sorry jest lasted him until, on whisperingto a servant, he learned that the chairs had been stored in an upperhall. At this he proposed that the party reassemble above, where atleast they might sit down and be comfortable. When I last saw J----that evening he was sitting at the turn of the stairs behind an exoticshrubbery, where he had found a vagrant chair that had straggledbehind the upper emigration. 

The very envelope that contains a formal invitation bears a forbiddinglook. It is massive and costly to the eye. It is much larger than aletter, unless, perhaps, one carries on a correspondence with a giantfrom Brobdingnag. You turn it round and round with sad premonition. The very writing is coldly impersonal without the pinch of a morehuman hand. It practices a chill anonymity as if it contains a warrantfor a hanging. At first you hope it may be merely an announcement fromyour tailor, inasmuch as commerce patterns its advertisements on thesesocial forms. I am told that there was once a famous man--adistinguished novelist--who so disliked formal parties but was sotimid at their rejection that he took refuge in the cellar wheneverone of these forbidding documents arrived, until he could forge aplausible excuse; for he believed that these colder and more barrenrooms quickened his invention. The story goes that once when he was inan unusually timid state he lacked the courage to break the seal andso spent an uneasy morning upon the tubs, to the inconvenience of thelaundress who thought that he fretted upon the plot. At last, ontearing off the envelope, he found to his relief that it was only anotice for a display of haberdashery at a fashionable shop. In hisgratitude at his escape he at once sought his desk and conferred ablushing heiress on his hero. 

But perhaps there are persons of an opposite mind who welcome aninvitation. Even the preliminary rummage delights them when theirclothes are sent for pressing and their choice wavers among theirplumage. For such persons the superscription on the envelope now seemswritten in the spacious hand of hospitality. 

But of informal dinners and the meeting of friends we can all approvewithout reserve. I recall, once upon a time, four old gentlemen whomet every week for whist. Three of them were of marked eccentricity. One of them, when the game was at its pitch, reached down to the rungsof his chair and hitched it first to one side and then to the other, mussing up the rugs. The second had the infirmity of nodding his headcontinuously. Even if he played a trivial three spot, he sat on thedecision and wagged his beard up and down like a judge. The thirdsucked his teeth and thereby made hissing noises. Later in the eveningthere would be served buttermilk or cider, and the sober party wouldadjourn at the gate. But there were two young rascals who practicedthese eccentricities and after they had gone to bed, for theexquisite humor of it, they nodded their heads, too, and sucked theirteeth with loud hissing noises. 

No one entertains more pleasantly than the S---- family and no one ismore informal. If you come on the minute for your dinner, it is likelythat none of the family is about. After a search J---- is found in aflannel shirt in his garden with a watering-can. "Hello!" he says insurprise. "What time is it? Have you come already for dinner?"

"For God's sake, " you reply--for I assume you to be of familiar andprofane manners--"get up and wash yourself! Don't you know that youare giving a party?"

J---- affects to be indignant. "Who is giving this party, anyway?" heasks. "If it's yours, you run it!" And then he leads you to the house, where you abuse each other agreeably as he dresses. 

Once a year on Christmas Eve they give a general party. This has beena custom for a number of years and it is now an institution as fixedas the night itself. Invitations are not issued. At most a rumor goesabroad to the elect that nine o'clock is a proper time to come, whenthe children, who have peeked for Santa Claus up the chimney, have atlast been put to bed. There is a great wood fire in the sitting-roomand, by way of andirons, two soldiers of the Continental Army keep uptheir endless march across the hearth. The fireplace is encircled by aline of leather cushions that rest upon the floor, like a window-seatthat has undergone amputation of all its legs. 

But the center of the entertainment is a prodigious egg-nog that risesfrom the dining table. I do not know the composition of the drink, yetmy nose is much at fault if it includes aught but eggs and whiskey. Atthe end of the table J---- stands with his mighty ladle. It is hisjest each year--for always there is a fresh stranger who has not heardit--it is his jest that the drink would be fair and agreeable to thetaste if it were not for the superfluity of eggs which dull themixture. 

No one, even of a sour prohibition, refuses his entreaty. My aunt, whospeaks against the Demon, once appeared at the party. She camesniffing to the table. "Ought I to take it, John?" she asked. 

"Mildest thing you ever drank, " said John, and he ladled her out acup. 

My aunt smelled it suspiciously. 

"It's eggs, " said John. 

"Eggs?" said my aunt, "What a funny smell they have!" She said thiswith a facial expression not unlike that of Little Red Ridinghood, when she first saw the old lady with the long nose and sharp eyes. 

"Nothing bad, I hope, " said John. 

"N-no, " said my aunt slowly, and she took a sip. 

"Of course the eggs spoil it a little, " said John. 

"It's very good, " said my aunt, as she took another sip. 

Then she put down her glass, but only when it was empty. "John, " shesaid, "you are a rogue. You would like to get me tipsy. " And at thisshe moved out of danger. Little Red Ridinghood escaped the wolf asnarrowly. But did Little Red Ridinghood escape? Dear me, how oneforgets!

But in closing I must not fail to mention an old lady and gentleman, both beyond eighty, who have always attended these parties. They havemet old age with such trust and cheerfulness, and they are so eager ata jest, that no one of all the gathering fits the occasion half sowell. And to exchange a word with them is to feel a pleasant contactwith all the gentleness and mirth that have lodged with them duringthe space of their eighty years. The old gentleman is an astronomerand until lately, when he moved to a newer quarter of the town, he hadbehind his house in a proper tower a telescope, through which heshowed his friends the moon. But in these last few years his work hasbeen entirely mathematical and his telescope has fallen into disorder. His work finds a quicker comment among scientists of foreign landsthan on his own street. 

It is likely that tonight he has been busy with the computation of theorbit of a distant star up to the very minute when his wife brought inhis tie and collar. And then arm and arm they have set out for theparty, where they will sit until the last guest has gone. 

Alas, when the party comes this Christmas, only one of these oldpeople will be present, for the other with a smile lately fellasleep. 

[Illustration]

On a Pair of Leather Suspenders. 

Not long since I paid a visit to New Haven before daylight of a wintermorning. I had hoped that my sleeper from Washington might be late andI was encouraged in this by the trainman who said that the dear oldthing commonly went through New Haven at breakfast time. But it wasbarely three o'clock when the porter plucked at me in my upper berth. He intruded, happily, on a dream in which the train came rockingacross the comforter. 

Three o'clock, if you approach it properly through the evening, issaid to have its compensations. There are persons (with a hiccough)who pronounce it the shank of the evening, but as an hour of morningit has few apologists. It is the early bird that catches the worm; butthis should merely set one thinking before he thrusts out a foot intothe cold morning, whether he may justly consider himself a bird or aworm. If no glad twitter rises to his lips in these early hours, hehad best stay unpecked inside his coverlet. 

It is hard to realize that other two-legged creatures like myself arehabitually awake at this hour. In a wakeful night I may have heard thewhistles and the clank of far-off wheels, and I may have known dimlythat work goes on; yet for the most part I have fancied that theworld, like a river steamboat in a fog, is tied at night to its shore:or if it must go plunging on through space to keep a schedule, thathere and there a light merely is set upon a tower to warn the planets. 

A locomotive was straining at its buttons, and from the cab a smokyengineer looked down on me. A truck load of boxes rattled down theplatform. Crates of affable familiar hens were off upon a journey, bragging of their families. Men with flaring tapers tapped at wheels. The waiting-room, too, kept, as it were, one eye open to the night. The coffee-urn steamed on the lunch counter, and sandwiches sat insidetheir glass domes and looked darkly on the world. 

It was the hour when "the tired burglar seeks his bed. " I had thoughtof dozing in a hotel chair until breakfast, but presently a floodappeared in the persons of three scrub women. The fountains of thegreat deep were opened and the waters prevailed. 

It still lacked an hour or so of daylight. I remembered that thereused to be a humble restaurant and kitchen on wheels--to the vulgar, adog-wagon--up toward York Street. This wagon, once upon a time, hadappeased our appetites when we had been late for chapel and Commons. As an institution it was so trite that once we made of it a fraternityplay. I faintly remember a pledge to secrecy--sworn by the moon andthe seven wandering stars--but nevertheless I shall divulge the plot. It was a burlesque tragedy in rhyme. Some eighteen years ago, itseems, Brabantio, the noble Venetian Senator, kept this samedog-wagon--he and his beautiful daughter Desdemona. Here came Othello, Iago and Cassio of the famous class of umpty-ump. 

The scene of the drama opens with Brabantio flopping his dainties onthe iron, chanting to himself a lyric in praise of their tenderjuices. Presently Othello enters and when Brabantio's back is turnedhe makes love to Desdemona--a handsome fellow, this Othello, with themanner of a hero and curled moustachios. Exit Othello to a nineo'clock, Ladd on Confusions. Now the rascal Iago enters--myself! withflowing tie. He hates Othello. He glowers like a villain andsoliloquizes:

 In order that my vengeance I may plot Give me a dog, and give it to me hot!

That was the kind of play. Finally, Desdemona is nearly smothered butis returned at last to Othello's arms. Iago meets his deserts. He iscondemned to join [Greek: Delta, Kappa, Epsilon], a rival fraternity. But the warm heart of Desdemona melts and she intercedes to save himfrom this horrid end. In mercy--behind the scenes--his head is choppedoff. Then all of us, heroines and villains, sat to a late hour aroundthe fire and told one another how the real stage thirsted for us. Wedrank lemonade mostly but we sang of beer--one song about

 Beer, beer, glorious beer! Fill yourself right up to here!

accompanied with a gesture several inches above the head. As theverses progressed it was customary to stand on chairs and to reach upon tiptoe to show the increasing depth. 

But the dog-wagon has now become a gilded unfamiliar thing, twice itsformer size and with stools for a considerable company. I questionedthe proprietor whether he might be descended from the noble Brabantio, but the dull fellow gave no response. The wagon has passed to meanerownership. 

Across the street Vanderbilt Hall loomed indistinctly. To the ignorantit may be necessary to explain that its courtyard is open to ChapelStreet, but that an iron grill stretches from wing to wing and keepsout the town. This grill is high enough for Hagenbeck, and it used tobe a favorite game with us to play animal behind it for the street'samusement. At the hour when the crowd issued from the matinée at theHyperion Theatre, our wittiest students paced on all fours up and downbehind this grill and roared for raw beef. E---- was the wag of thebuilding and he could climb up to a high place and scratch himselflike a monkey--an entertainment of more humor than elegance. Elatedwith success, he and a companion later chartered a street-organ--adoleful one-legged affair--and as man and monkey they gathered penniesout Orange Street. 

I turned into the dark Campus by Osborn Hall. It is as ugly a buildingas one could meet on a week's journey, and yet by an infelicity allclass pictures are taken on its steps. Freshman courses are given inthe basement--a French class once in particular. Sometimes, when wewere sunk dismally in the irregular verbs, bootblacks and old-clothesmen stopped on the street and grinned down on us. And all the drearyhour, as we sweated with translation, above us on the pavement thefeet and happy legs of the enfranchised went by the window. 

Yale is a bad jumble of architecture. It is amazing how suchincongruous buildings can lodge together. Did not the Old Brick Rowcry out when Durfee was built? Surely the Gothic library uttered aprotest against its newer adjunct. And are the Bicentennial buildingsso beautiful? At best we have exchanged the fraudulent woodenramparts of Alumni Hall for the equally fraudulent inside columns ofthese newer buildings. It is a mercy that there is no style andchanging fashion in elm trees. As Viola might have remarked about theCampus: it were excellently done, if God did all. 

Presently in the dark I came on the excavations for the Harknessquadrangle. So at last Commons was gone. In that old building we ateduring our impoverished weeks. I do not know that we saved much, forwe were driven to extras, but the reckoning was deferred. There was acertain tutti-frutti ice-cream, rich in ginger, that has now vanishedfrom the earth. Or chocolate èclairs made the night stand out. Irecall that one could seldom procure a second helping of griddlecakesexcept on those mornings when there were ants in the syrup. Also, Irecall that sometimes there was a great crash of trays at the pantrydoors, and almost at the instant two old Goodies, harnessed ready withmops and pails, ran out and sponged up the wreckage. 

And Pierson Hall is gone, that was once the center of Freshman life. Does anybody remember _The Voice_? It was a weekly paper issued in theinterest of prohibition. I doubt if we would have quarreled with itfor this, but it denounced Yale and held up in contrast the purity ofOberlin. Oberlin! And therefore we hated it, and once a week we burnedits issue in the stone and plaster corridors of Pierson. 

There was once a residence at the corner of York and Library whereFreshmen resided. The railing of the stairs wabbled. The bookcase doorlacked a hinge. Three out of four chairs were rickety. The bath-tub, which had been the chemical laboratory for some former student, wasstained an unhealthy color. If ever it shall appear that Harlequinlodged upon the street, here was the very tub where he washed hisclothes. Without caution the window of the bedroom fell out into theback yard. But to atone for these defects, up through the scuttle inthe hall there was an airy perch upon the roof. Here Freshmen mightsmoke their pipes in safety--a privilege denied them on thestreet--and debate upon their affairs. Who were hold-off men! Whowould make [Greek: Boulê!] Or they invented outrageous names for thefaculty. My dear Professor Blank, could you hear yourself described bythese young cubs through their tobacco smoke, your learned ears, soalert for dactyl and spondee, would grow red. 

Do Scott's boys, I wonder, still gather clothes for pressing aroundthe Campus? Do they still sell tickets--sixteen punches for adollar--five punches to the suit? On Monday mornings do coloredlaundresses push worn baby-carts around to gather what we were pleasedto call the "dirty filth"? And do these same laundresses push backthese self-same carts later in the week with "clean filth" aboard? Arestockings mended in the same old way, so that the toes look throughthe open mesh? Have college sweeps learned yet to tuck in the sheetsat the foot? Do old-clothes men--Fish-eye? Do you remember him?--doold-clothes men still whine at the corner, and look you up and down incheap appraisal? Pop Smith is dead, who sold his photograph toFreshmen, but has he no successor? How about the old fellow who soldhot chestnuts at football games--"a nickel a bush"--a rare contractionmeant to denote a bushel--in reality fifteen nuts and fifteen worms. Does George Felsburg still play the overture at Poli's, reading hisnewspaper the while, and do comic actors still jest with him acrossthe footlights?

Is it still ethical to kick Freshmen on the night of Omega Lambda Chi?Is "nigger baby" played on the Campus any more? The loser of thisprecious game, in the golden days, leaned forward against the wallwith his coat-tails raised, while everybody took a try at him with atennis ball. And, of course, no one now plays "piel. " A youngster willhardly have heard of the game. It was once so popular that all thestone steps about the college showed its marks. And next year we heardthat the game had spread to Harvard. 

Do students still make for themselves oriental corners with Bagdad stripesand Turkish lamps? Do the fair fingers of Farmington and Northampton stillweave the words "'Neath the Elms" upon sofa pillows? Do Seniors still bowthe President down the aisle of Chapel? Do students still get out theirGreek with "trots"? It was the custom for three or four lazy students togather together and summon up a newsy to read the trot, while they, lollingwith pipes on their Morris chairs, fumbled with the text and interlined itagainst a loss of memory. Let the fair-haired goddess Juno speak! Ulysses, as he pleases, may walk on the shore of the loud-sounding sea. Thereafterin class one may repose safely on his interlineation and snap at flies witha rubber band. This method of getting a lesson was all very well exceptthat the newsy halted at the proper name. A device was therefore hit on ofcalling all the gods and heroes by the name of Smith. Homeric combat thenran like this: _the heart of Smit was black with anger and he smote Smitupon the brazen helmet. And the world grew dark before his eyes, and hefell forward like a tower and bit the dust and his armor clanked about him. But at evening, from a far-off mountain top the white-armed goddessSmit-Smit_ (Pallas-Athena) _saw him, and she felt compash--compassion forhim. _

And I suppose that students still sing upon the fence. There was aFreshman once, in those early nights of autumn when they were still aprey to Sophomores, who came down Library Street after his supper atCommons. He wondered whether the nights of hazing were done and wasunresolved whether he ought to return to his room and sit close. Presently he heard the sound of singing. It came from the Campus, fromthe fence. He was greener than most Freshmen and he had never heardmen sing in four-part harmony. With him music had always been a singletune, or at most a lost tenor fumbled uncertainly for the pitch. Anygrunt had been a bass. And so the sound ravished him. In the open airand in the dark the harmony was unparalleled. He stole forward, stillwith one eye open for Sophomores, and crouched in the shadowy angle ofNorth Middle. Now the song was in full chorus and the branches of theelms swayed to it, and again a bass voice sang alone and the othershummed a low accompaniment. 

Occasionally, across the Campus, someone in passing called up to awindow, "Oh, Weary Walker, stick out your head!" And then, after apause, satirically, when the head was out, "Stick it in again!" On thestones there were the sounds of feet--feet with lazy purpose--loudfeet down wooden steps, bound for pleasure. At the windows there werelights, where dull thumbs moved down across a page. Let A equal B tofind our Z. And let it be quick about it, before the student nod! Andto the Freshman, crouching in the shadow, it seemed at last that hewas a part of this life, with its music, its voices, its silent elms, the dim buildings with their lights, the laughter and the glad feetsounding in the dark. 

I came now, rambling on this black wintry morning, before the sinisterwalls of Skull and Bones. 

I sat on a fence and contemplated the building. It is as dingy as everand, doubtless, to an undergraduate, as fearful as ever. What ritesand ceremonies are held within these dim walls! What awfulcelebrations! The very stones are grim. The chain outside that swingsfrom post to post is not as other chains, but was forged at midnight. The great door has a black spell upon it. It was on such a door, iron-bound and pitiless, that the tragic Ygraine beat in vain formercy. 

It is a breach of etiquette for an undergraduate in passing even toturn and look at Bones. Its name may not be mentioned to a member ofthe society, and one must look furtively around before pronouncing it. Now as I write the word, I feel a last vibration of the fearfultremor. 

Seniors compose its membership--fifteen or so, and membership isranked as the highest honor of the college. But in God's name, what isall this pother? Are there not already enough jealousies without thisone added? Does not college society already fall into enough lockedcoteries without this one? No matter how keen is the pride ofmembership, it does not atone for the disappointments and theheart-burnings of failure. It is hinted obscurely for expiation thatit and its fellow societies do somehow confer a benefit on the collegeby holding out a reward for hard endeavor. This is the highest goal. I distrust the wisdom of the judges. There is an honester repute to begained in the general estimate of one's fellows. These societies cutan unnatural cleavage across the college. They are the source ofdishonest envy and of mean lick-spittling. For three years, until theelection is announced, there is much playing for position. A favoredfellow, whose election is certain, is courted by others who stand on aslippery edge, because it is known that in Senior elections one israted by his association. And is it not preposterous that fifteenyoungsters should set themselves above the crowd, wear obscure jewelryand wrap themselves in an empty and pretentious mystery?

But what has this rambling paper to do with a pair of leathersuspenders? Nothing. Nothing much. Only, after a while, just beforethe dawn, I came in front of the windows of a cheap haberdasher. And Irecalled how I had once bought at this very shop a pair of leathersuspenders. They were the only ones left--it was hinted that Seniorsbought them largely--and they were a bargain. The proprietor blew offthe dust and slapped them and dwelt upon their merits. They would lastme into middle age and were cheap. There was, I recall, a kind oftricky differential between the shoulders to take up the slack oneither side. Being a Freshman I was prevailed upon, and I bought themand walked to Morris Cove while they creaked and fretted. And here wasthe very shop, arising in front of me as from times before the flood. With it there arose, too, a recollection of my greenness and timidity. And mingled with all the hours of happiness of those times there werehours, also, of emptiness and loneliness--hours when, newcome to mysurroundings, for fear of rebuff I walked alone. 

The night still lingers. These dark lines of wall and tree and towerare etched by Time with memories to burn the pattern. The darknessstirs strangely, like waters in the solemn bowl when a witch reads offthe future. But the past is in this darkness, and the December windthis night has roused up the summer winds of long ago. In that cleftis the old window. Here are the stairs, wood and echoing with analmost forgotten tread. A word, a phrase, a face, shows for an instantin the shadows. Here, too, in memory, is a pageantry of old customwith its songs and uproar, victory with its fires and dance. 

Forms, too, I see bent upon their books, eager or dull, with intent orsleepy finger on the page. And I hear friendly cries and the sound ofmany feet across the night. 

Dawn at last--a faint light through the elms. From the Chapel towerthe bells sound the hour and strike their familiar melody. Dawn. Andnow the East in triumphal garment scatters my memories, born of night, before its flying wheel. 

[Illustration]

Boots for Runaways. 

Not long ago, having come through upon the uppers of my shoes, Iwrapped the pair in a bit of newspaper and went around the corner intoSixth Avenue to find a cobbler. This is not difficult, for there areat least three cobblers to the block, all of them in basements four orfive steps below the sidewalk. Cobblers and little tailors who pressand repair clothing, small grocers and delicatessen venders--these arethe chief commerce of the street. I passed my tailor's shop, which isnext to the corner. He is a Russian Jew who came to this countrybefore the great war. Every Thursday, when he takes away my off suit, I ask him about the progress of the Revolution. At first I found himhopeful, yet in these last few months his opinions are a littlebroken. His shop consists of a single room, with a stove to heat hisirons and a rack for clothes. It is so open to the street that oncewhen it was necessary for me to change trousers he stood between meand the window with one foot against the door by way of moratorium onhis business. His taste in buttons is loud. Those on my dinner coatare his choice--great round jewels that glisten in the dark. 

Next to my tailor, except for a Chinese laundry with a damp celestialsmell, is a delicatessen shop with a pleasant sound of French acrossthe counter. Here are sausages, cut across the middle in order that noone may buy the pig, as it were, in its poke. Potato salad is set outeach afternoon in a great bowl with a wooden spoon sticking from itstop. Then there is a baked bean, all brown upon the crust, which ishoused with its fellows in a cracked baking dish and is not to bedespised. There is also a tray of pastry with whipped cream oozingagreeably from the joints, and a pickle vat as corrective to thesesweets. But behind the shop is the bakery and I can watch a wholesomefellow, with his sleeves tucked up, rolling pasties thin on a greatwhite table, folding in nuts and jellies and cutting them deftly forthe oven. 

Across the street there resides a mender of musical instruments. Hekeeps dusty company with violins and basses that have come to brokenhealth. When a trombone slips into disorder, it seeks his sanitarium. Occasionally, as I pass, I catch the sound of a twanging string, asif at last a violin were convalescent. Or I hear a reedy nasal uppernote, and I know that an oboe has been mended of its complaint andthat in these dark days of winter it yearns for a woodside stream andthe return of spring. It seems rather a romantic business tinkeringthese broken instruments into harmony. 

Next door there is a small stationer--a bald-headed sort of business, as someone has called it. Ruled paper for slavish persons, plainsheets for bold Bolshevists. 

Then comes our grocer. There is no heat in the place except what comesfrom an oil stove on which sits a pan of steaming water. Behind thestove with his twitching ear close against it a cat lies at all hoursof the day. There is an engaging smudge across his nose, as if he hadbeen led off on high adventure to the dusty corners behind the applebarrel. I bend across the onion crate to pet him, and he stretches hispaws in and out rhythmically in complete contentment. He walks alongthe counter with arched back and leans against our purchases. 

Next our grocer is our bootblack, who has set up a sturdy but shabbythrone to catch the business off the "L. " How majestically one sitsaloft here with outstretched toe, for all the world like the Popeoffering his saintly toe for a sinner's kiss. The robe pontifical, thetriple crown! Or, rather, is this not a secular throne, seized once ina people's rising? Here is a use for whatever thrones are discardedby this present war. Where the crowd is thickest at quittingtime--perhaps where the subway brawls below Fourteenth Street--there Iwould set the German Kaiser's seat for the least of us to clamber on. 

I took my shoes out of their wrapper. The cobbler is old and wrinkledand so bent that one might think that Nature aimed to contrive a hoopof him but had botched the full performance. He scratched my name uponthe soles and tossed them into the pile. There were big and littleshoes, some with low square heels and others with high thin heels asif their wearers stood tiptoe with curiosity. It is a quality, theysay, that marks the sex. On the bench were bits of leather, hammers, paring-knives, awls, utensils of every sort. 

On arriving home I found an old friend awaiting me. B---- has beenengaged in a profitable business for fifteen years or so and he hasamassed a considerable fortune. Certainly he deserves it, for he hasbeen at it night and day and has sacrificed many things to it. He haskept the straight road despite all truant beckoning. But his too closeapplication has cramped his soul. His organization and his profits, his balance sheets and output have seemed to become the whole of him. 

But for once I found that B---- was in no hurry and we talked moreintimately than in several years. I discovered soon that his hardbusyness was no more than a veneer and that his freer self stilllived, but in confinement. At least he felt the great lack in hislife, which had been given too much to the piling up of things, to thesustaining of position--getting and spending. Yet he could see no end. He was caught in the rich man's treadmill, only less horrible thanthat of the poor man with its cold and hunger. 

Afterwards, when he had gone, I fell into a survey of certain othermen of my acquaintance. Some few of them are rich also, and they heapup for themselves a pile of material things until they stifle in themidst. They run swiftly and bitterly from one appointment to anotherin order that they may add a motor to their stable. If they lie awakeat night, they plan a new confusion for the morrow. They are gettingand spending always. They have been told many times that some day theywill die and leave their wealth, yet they labor ceaselessly toincrease their pile. It is as if one should sweat and groan to load acart, knowing that soon it goes off on another road. And yet not oneof these persons will conceive that I mean him. He will say thatnecessity keeps him at it. Or he will cite his avocations to prove heis not included. But he plays golf fretfully with his eye always onthe score. He drives his motor furiously to hold a schedule. Yet inhis youth many of these prosperous fellows learned to play upon afiddle, and they dreamed on college window-seats. They had time forfriendliness before they became so busy holding this great world byits squirming tail. 

Or perhaps they are not so _very_ wealthy. If so, they work theharder. To support their wives and children? By no means. To supportthe pretense that they are really wealthy, to support a neighbor'scompetition. It is this competition of house and goods that keepstheir noses on the stone. Expenditure always runs close upon theirincome, and their days are a race to keep ahead. 

I was thinking rather mournfully of the hard and unnecessary conditionof these persons, when I fell asleep. And by chance, these unluckypersons, my boots and my cobbler, even the oboe mender, all of themsomehow got mixed in my dream. 

It seems that there was a cobbler once, long ago, who kept a shopquite out of the common run and marvelous in its way. It stood in ashadowy city over whose dark streets the buildings toppled, untilspiders spun their webs across from roof to roof. And to this cobblerthe god Mercury himself journeyed to have wings sewed to his flyingshoes. High patronage. And Atalanta, too, came and held out her swiftfoot for the fitting of a running sandal. But perhaps the cobbler'smost famous customer was a well-known giant who ordered of him hisseven-league boots. These boots, as you may well imagine, were ofprodigious size, and the giant himself was so big that when he lefthis order he sat outside on the pavement and thrust his stockingedfoot in through the window for the cobbler to get his measure. 

[Illustration]

I was laughing heartily at this when I observed that a strangeprocession was passing by the cobbler's door. First there was a manwho was burdened with a great tinsel box hung with velvet, in whichwere six plush chairs. After him came another who was smothered withrugs and pictures. A third carried upon his back his wife, a great fatcreature, who glittered with jewels. Behind him he dragged a dozentrunks, from which dangled brocades and laces. This was all so absurdthat in my mirth I missed what followed, but it seemed to be a longline of weary persons, each of whom staggered under the burden of anunworthy vanity. 

As I laughed the night came on--a dull hot night of summer. And in theshop I saw the cobbler on his bench, an old and wrinkled man like adwarf in a fairy tale. There was a sign now above his door. "Boots forRunaways, " it read. About its margin were pictures of many kinds ofboots--a shoe of a child who runs to seek adventure, Atalanta'ssandals, and sturdy boots that a man might wear. 

And now I saw a man coming in the dark with tired and drooping head. In both hands he clutched silver pieces that he had gathered in theday. When he was opposite the cobbler's shop, the great sign caughthis eye. He wagged his head as one who comes upon the place he seeks. "Have you boots for me?" he asked, with his head thrust in the door. 

"For everyone who needs them, " was the cobbler's answer. 

"My body is tired, " the man replied, "and my soul is tired. "

"For what journey do you prepare?" the cobbler asked. 

The man looked ruefully at his hands which were still tightly clenchedwith silver pieces. 

"Getting and spending, " said the cobbler slowly. 

"It has been my life. " As the man spoke he banged with his elbow onhis pocket and it rattled dully with metal. 

"Do you want boots because you are a coward?" the cobbler asked. "Ifso, I have none to sell. "

"A coward?" the man answered, and he spoke deliberately as one in deepthought. "All my life I have been a coward, fearing that I might notkeep even with my neighbors. Now, for the first time, I am brave. "

He kicked off his shoe and stretched out his foot. The cobbler tookdown from its nail his tape line and measured him. And the twilightdeepened and the room grew dark. 

And the man went off cheerily. And with great strides he went into thewindy North. But to the South in a slow procession, I saw those otherswho bore the weary burden of their wealth, staggering beneath theirload of dull possessions--their opera boxes, their money-chests andstables, their glittering houses, their trunks of silks and laces, andon their backs their fat wives shining in the night with jewels. 

On Hanging a Stocking at Christmas. 

As Christmas is, above all, a holiday for children, it is proper inits season to consider with what regard they hold its celebration. Butas no one may really know the secrets of childhood except as heretains the recollection of his own, it is therefore in the well ofmemory that I must dip my pen. The world has been running these manyyears with gathering speed like a great wheel upon a hill, and I mustroll it backward to the heights to see how I fared on the night andday of Christmas. 

I can remember that for a month before the day I computed itsdistance, not only in hours and minutes but even in seconds, until theanswer was scrawled across my slate. Now, when I multiply 24 x 60 x60, the resulting 86, 400 has an agreeable familiarity as the amount Istruck off each morning. At bedtime on Christmas Eve I had still36, 000 impatient seconds yet to wait, for I considered that Christmasreally started at six o'clock in the morning. 

There was, of course, a lesser celebration on Christmas Eve when wehung our stockings. There were six of them, from mother's long one tofather's short one. Ours, although built on womanish lines, lacked thegreater length and they were, consequently, inferior for the purposeof our greed; but father's were woefully short, as if fashioned to themeasure of his small expectancy. Even a candy cane came peeping fromthe top, as if curiosity had stirred it to look around. 

Finally, when the stockings were hung on the knobs of the mantel, wewent up the dark stairs to bed. At the landing we saw the last glimmerfrom the friendly sitting-room. The hall clock ticked solemnly in theshadow below with an air of firmness, as much as to say that it wouldnot be hurried. Fret as we might, those 36, 000 seconds were not to bejostled through the night. 

In the upper hall we looked from a window upon the snowy world. Perhaps we were too old to believe in Santa Claus, but even so, onthis magic night might not a skeptic be at fault--might there not be achance that the discarded world had returned to us? Once a year, surely, reason might nod and drowse. Perhaps if we put our noses onthe cold glass and peered hard into the glittering darkness, we mightsee the old fellow himself, muffled to his chin in furs, going on hisyearly errands. It was a jingling of sleigh bells on the street thatstarted this agreeable suspicion, but, alas, when the horse appeared, manifestly by his broken jogging gait he was only an earthly creatureand could not have been trusted on the roof. Or the moon, sailingacross the sky, invited the thought that tonight beyond the accustomedhour and for a purpose it would throw its light across the roofs tomark the chimneys. 

Presently mother called up from the hall below. Had we gone to bed?Reluctantly now we began to thumb the buttons. Off came our clothes, both shirts together tonight for better speed in dressing. And all thenight pants and drawers hung as close neighbors, one within the other, with stockings dangling at the ends, for quick resumption. We slippedshivering into the cold sheets. Down below the bed, by specialpermission, stood the cook's clock, wound up tight for its explosionat six o'clock. 

Then came silence and the night.... 

Presently, all of a sudden, Brrr--! There arose a deafening racket inthe room. Had the reindeer come afoul of the chimney? Had the loadedsleigh crashed upon the roof? Were pirates on the stairs? We awokefinally, and smothered the alarm in the pillows. A match! The gas! Andnow a thrill went through us. Although it was still as black as inkoutside, at last the great day of all the year had come. 

It was, therefore, before the dawn that we stole downstairs in ourstockings--dressed loosely and without too great precision in ourhurry. Buttons that lay behind were neglected, nor did it fret us if agarment came on twisted. It was a rare tooth that felt the brush thismorning, no matter how it was coddled through the year. 

We carried our shoes, but this was not entirely in consideration forthe sleeping house. Rather, our care proceeded from an enjoyment ofour stealth; for to rise before the dawn when the lamps were stilllighted on the street and issue in our stockings, was to tasteadventure. It had not exactly the zest of burglary, although it was ofkin: nor was it quite like the search for buried treasure which weplayed on common days: yet to slink along the hallway on a pitch-blackChristmas morning, with shoes dangling by the strings, was to realizea height of happiness unequaled. 

Quietly we tiptoed down the stairs on whose steep rail we had so oftenslid in the common light of day, now so strangely altered by theshadows. Below in the hall the great clock ticked, loudly and withsatisfaction that its careful count was done and its seconds alldespatched. There was a gurgle in its throat before it struck thehour, as some folk clear their throats before they sing. 

As yet there was not a blink of day. The house was as black as if itpracticed to be a cave, yet an instinct instructed us that now atleast darkness was safe. There were frosty patterns on the windows ofthe sitting-room, familiar before only on our bedroom windows. Here inthe sitting-room arose dim shapes which probably were its accustomedfurniture, but which to our excited fancy might be sleds andvelocipedes. 

We groped for a match. There was a splutter that showed red in thehollow of my brother's hand. 

After the first glad shock, it was our habit to rummage in the generalmidden outside our stockings. If there was a drum upon the heap, should not first a tune be played--softly lest it rouse the house? Orif a velocipede stood beside the fender, surely the restless creaturechafed for exercise and must be ridden a few times around the room. Orperhaps a sled leaned against the chair (it but rested against therigors of the coming day) and one should feel its runners to learnwhether they are whole and round, for if flat and fixed with screws itis no better than a sled for girls with feet tucked up in front. Onsuch a sled, no one trained to the fashions of the slide would deignto take a belly-slammer, for the larger boys would cry out with scornand point their sneering mittens. 

The stocking was explored last. It was like a grab-bag, but glorifiedand raised to a more generous level. On meaner days shriveledgrab-bags could be got at the corner for a penny--if such mild fortunefell your way--mere starvelings by comparison--and to this shop youhad often trotted after school when learning sat heaviest on yoursoul. If a nickel had accrued to you from the sale of tintags, it wasbetter, of course, to lay it out in pop; but with nothing better thana penny, there was need of sharp denial. How you lingered before thehorehound jar! Coltsfoot, too, was but a penny to the stick andpleased the palate. Or one could do worse than licorice. But finallyyou settled on a grab-bag. You roused an old woman from her knittingbehind the stove and demanded that a choice of grab-bags be placedbefore you. Then, like the bearded phrenologist at the side-show ofthe circus, you put your fingers on them to read their humps. Perhapsan all-day sucker lodged inside--a glassy or an agate--marbles bestfor pugging--or a brass ring with a ruby. 

Through the year these bags sufficed, but the Christmas stocking was adeeper and finer mystery. In the upper leg were handkerchiefs fromgrand-mother--whose thoughts ran prudentially on noses--mittens and acap--useful presents of duller purpose--things that were due youanyway and would have come in the course of time. But down in thedarker meshes of the stocking, when you had turned the corner of theheel, there were the sweet extras of life--a mouth-organ, a baseball, a compass and a watch. 

Some folk have a Christmas tree instead of hanging their stockings, but this is the preference of older folk rather than the preference ofchildren. Such persons wish to observe a child's enjoyment, and thisis denied them if the stocking is opened in the dawn. Under a pretenseof instruction they sit in an absurd posture under the tree; but theydo no more than read the rules and are blind to the obscurer uses ofthe toys. As they find occasion, the children run off and play in aquieter room with some old and broken toy. 

Who can interpret the desires of children? They are a race apart fromus. At times, for a moment, we bring them to attention; then there isa scurry of feet and they are gone. Although they seem to sit at tablewith us, they are beyond a frontier that we cannot pass. Their wordsare ours, but applied to foreign uses. If we try to follow theirtruant thoughts, like the lame man of the story we limp behind ashooting star. We bestow on them a blind condescension, not knowinghow their imagination outclimbs our own. And we cramp them with ourbarren learning. 

I assert, therefore, that it is better to find one's presents in thedawn, when there is freedom. In all the city, wherever there arelights, children have taken a start upon the day. Then, although thetoys are strange, there is adventure in prying at their uses. If onecommits a toy to a purpose undreamed of by its maker, it but rousesthe invention to further discovery. Once on a dark and frostyChristmas morning, I spent a puzzling hour upon a coffee-grinder--apresent to my mother--in a delusion that it was a rare engine destinedfor myself. It might have been a bank had it possessed a slot forcoins. A little eagle surmounted the top, yet this was not asufficient clue. The handle offered the hope that it was a music-box, but although I turned it round and round, and noises issued from itsbody quite foreign to my other toys, yet I could not pronounce itmusic. With sails it might have been a windmill. I laid it on its sideand stood it on its head without conclusion. It was painted red, andthat gave it a wicked look, but no other villainy appeared. To thisday as often as I pass a coffee-grinder in a grocer's shop I turn itshandle in memory of my perplexing hour. And even if one remainsunschooled to the uses of the toys, their discovery in the dawn whileyet the world lies fast asleep, is far beyond their stale performancethat rises with the sun. 

And yet I know of an occurrence, to me pathetic, that once attendedsuch an early discovery. A distant cousin of mine--a man really notrelated except by the close bond of my regard--was brought up manyyears ago by an uncle of austere and miserly nature. Such goodness asthis uncle had once possessed was cramped into a narrow and smotheringpiety. He would have dimmed the sun upon the Sabbath, could he havereached up tall enough. He had no love in his heart, nor mirth. Mycousin has always loved a horse and even in his childhood this lovewas strong. And so, during the days that led up to Christmas whenchildren speculate upon their desires and check them on their fingers, he kept asking his uncle for a pony. At first, as you might know, hisuncle was stolid against the thought, but finally, with many winksand nods--pleasantries beyond his usual habit--he assented. 

Therefore in the early darkness of the day, the child came down tofind his gift. First, probably, he went to the stable and climbing onthe fence he looked through the windows for an unaccustomed forminside the stalls. Next he looked to see whether the pony might behitched to the post in front of the house, in the manner of the familydoctor. The search failing and being now somewhat disturbed withdoubt, he entered his nursery on the slim chance that the pony mightbe there. The room was dark and he listened on the sill, if he mighthear him whinny. Feeling his way along the hearth he came on nothinggreater than his stocking which was tied to the andiron. It bulged andstirred his curiosity. He thrust in his hand and coming on somethingsticky, he put his fingers in his mouth. They were of a delightfulsweetness. He now paused in his search for the pony and drawing out ahuge lump of candy he applied himself. But the day was near and he hadfinished no more than half, when a ray of light permitted him to seewhat he ate. It was a candy horse--making good the promise of hisuncle. This and a Testament had been stuffed inside his stocking. TheTestament was wrapped in tissue, but the horse was bitten to themiddle. It had been at best but a poor substitute for what he wanted, yet his love was so broad that it included even a sugar horse; andthis, alas, he had consumed unknowing in the dark. And even now whenthe dear fellow tells the story after these many years have passed, and comes to the sober end with the child crying in the twilight ofthe morning, I realize as not before that there should be no Christmaskept unless it be with love and mirth. 

It was but habit that we hung our stockings at the chimney--the pianowould have done as well--for I retain but the slightest memory of abelief in Santa Claus: perhaps at most, as I have hinted, a far-offhaze of wonder while looking through the window upon the snowy sky--atnight a fancied clatter on the roof, if I lay awake. And therefore ina chimney there was no greater mystery than was inherent in any holethat went off suspiciously in the dark. There was a fearful cavebeneath the steps that mounted from the rear to the front garret. Thiswas wrapped in Cimmerian darkness--which is the strongest pigmentknown--and it extended from its mouth beyond the furthest stretch ofleg. To the disillusioned, indeed, this cave was harmless, for itmerely offset the lower ceiling of the bathroom below; yet to us itwas a cave unparalleled. Little by little we ventured in, until intime we could sit on the snug joists inside with the comfortablefeeling of pirates. Presently we hit on the device of hanging a row ofshining maple-syrup tins along the wall outside where they were caughtby the dusty sunlight, which was thus reflected in on us. By the lightof these dim moons the cave showed itself to be the size of a librarytable. And here, also, we crouched on dark and cloudy days when thetins were in eclipse, and found a dreadful joy when the wind scratchedupon the roof. 

In the basement, also, there was a central hall that disappearedforever under an accumulation of porch chairs and lumber. Here was nolight except what came around two turns from the laundry. Even Anniethe cook, a bold venturesome person, had never quite penetrated to afull discovery of this hallway. A proper approach into the darknesswas on hands and knees, and yet there were barrels and boxes toovercome. Therefore, as we were bred to these broader discoveries, amere chimney in the sitting-room, which arose safely from the fenders, was but a mild and pleasant tunnel to the roof. 

And if a child believes in Santa Claus and chimneys, and that hispresents are stored in a glittering kingdom across the wintry hills, he will miss the finer pleasure of knowing that they are hiddensomewhere in his own house. For myself, I would not willingly foregocertain dizzy ascents to the topmost shelves of the storeroom, where, with my head close under the ceiling and my foot braced against thewall, I have examined suspicious packages that came into the house bystealth. As likely as not, at the ringing of the door-bell, we hadbeen whisked into a back room. Presently there was a foot sounding onthe stairs and across the ceiling. Then we were released. Butsomething had arrived. 

Thereafter we found excitement in rummaging in unlikely places--a warylifting of summer garments laid away, for a peek beneath--a journey onone's stomach under the spare-room bed--a pilgrimage around the cellarwith a flaring candle--furtive explorations of the storeroom. And whenwe came to a door that was locked--Aha! Here was a puzzle and aproblem! We tried every key in the house, right side up and upsidedown. Bluebeard's wife, poor creature, --if I read the talearight, --was merely seeking her Christmas presents around the housebefore the proper day. 

The children of a friend of mine, however, have been brought up to abelief in Santa Claus, and on Christmas Eve they have the prettycustom of filling their shoes with crackers and scraps of bread by wayof fodder for the reindeer. When the shoes are found empty in themorning, but with crumbs about--as though the hungry reindeer spilledthem in their haste--it fixes the deception. 

But if one must have a Christmas tree, I recommend the habit of somefriends of mine. In front of their home, down near the fence, is atrim little cedar. T---- connects this with electric wires and hangson it gayly colored lamps. Every night for a week, until the new year, these lights shine across the snow and are the delight of travelers onthe road. The Christmas stars, it seems, for this hallowed seasonhave come to earth. 

We gave the family dinner. On my mother fell the extra labor, but wetook the general credit. All the morning the relatives arrived--thinand fat. But if one of them bore a package or if his pockets sagged, we showed him an excessive welcome. Sometimes there was a presentboxed and wrapped to a mighty bulk. From this we threw off thirtypapers and the bundle dwindled, still no gift appeared. In this laythe sweetness of the jest, for finally, when the contents wereshriveled to a kernel, in the very heart of it there lay a brightpenny or common marble. 

All this time certain savory whiffs have been blowing from thekitchen. Twice at least my mother has put her head in at the door tocount the relatives. And now when the clock on the mantel strikestwo--a bronze Lincoln deliberating forever whether he will sign theEmancipation Bill--the dining-room door is opened. 

The table was drawn out to prodigious length and was obliquely setacross the room. As early as yesterday the extra leaves had beenbrought from the pantry, and we had all taken part in fitting themtogether. Not to disturb the larger preparation, our supper andbreakfast had been served in the kitchen. And even now to eat in thekitchen, if the table is set before the window and there is a flurryof snow outside, is to feel pleasantly the proximity of a greatoccasion. 

The Christmas table was so long and there were so many of us, that afew of the chairs were caught in a jog of the wall and had no properapproach except by crawling on hands and knees beneath it. Each yearit was customary to request my maiden aunt, a prim lady who borderedon seventy and had limbs instead of legs, to undertake the passage. Each year we listened for the jest and shouted with joy when therequest was made. There were other jests, too, that were dear to usand grew better with the years. My aunt was reproved for boisterousconduct, and although she sat as silent as a mouse, she was alwayswarned against the cider. Each year, also, as soon as the dessertappeared, there was a demand that a certain older cousin tell theJudge West story. But the jest lay in the demand instead of in thestory, for although there was a clamor of applause, the story wasnever told and it teases me forever. Then another cousin, whojourneyed sometimes to New York, usually instructed us in the latestmanner of eating an orange in the metropolis. But we disregarded hisfashionable instruction, and peeled ours round and round. 

The dinner itself was a prodigious feast. The cook-stove must haverested and panted for a week thereafter. Before long, Annie got so redbringing in turkeys and cranberry sauce--countless plates heaped andtoppling with vegetables and meats--that one might think she herselfwas in process to become a pickled beet and would presently enter on aplatter. 

In the afternoon we rested, but at night there was a dance, for whichmy maiden aunt played the piano. The dear good soul, whose old brownfingers were none too limber, had skill that scarcely mounted to thespeed of a polka, but she was steady at a waltz. There was onetune--bink a bunk bunk, bink a bunk bunk--that went around and aroundwith an agreeable monotony even when the player nodded. There was alegend in the family that once she fell asleep in the performance, andthat the dancers turned down the lights and left the room; to heramazement when presently she awoke, for she thought she had outsat theparty. 

My brother and I had not advanced to the trick of dancing and we builtup our blocks in the corner of the room in order that the friskierdancers might kick them over as they passed. Chief in the performancewas the Judge West cousin who, although whiskered almost into middleage, had a merry heart and knew how to play with children. Sometimes, by consent, we younger fry sat beneath the piano, which was of an oldsquare pattern, and worked the pedals for my aunt, in order that herindustry might be undivided on the keys. It is amazing what a varietywe could cast upon the waltz, now giving it a muffled sound, andpresently offering the dancers a prolonged roaring. 

Midway in the evening, when the atrocities of dinner were but mildlyremembered, ice-cream was brought in. It was not hard as at dinner, but had settled to a delicious softness, and could be mushed upon aspoon. Then while the party again proceeded, and my aunt resumed herwaltz, we were despatched upstairs. 

On the bed lay our stockings, still tied with string, that had beenstuffed with presents in the dawn. But the morning had now sunk intoimmeasurable distance and seemed as remote as Job himself. And allthrough the evening, as we lay abed and listened to the droning pianobelow, we felt a spiritual hollowness because the great day hadpassed. 

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