Part 10
"After a while it occurred to King Zooks that the cook might know. She had gone to bed--leaving her dishes until morning--so up they climbed. She answered from under the covers, 'Whajuwant?' which shows that she didn't talk English and was probably a Spanish cook or an Indian princess captured very young. So she got up, all excited. My! how she scuffed around, looking for her slippers, trying to find her clothes and getting one or two things on wrong side out! She was so confused that she thought it was morning and brushed her teeth.
"By this time an hour had passed and King Zooks was fidgety. He told his red-faced band to lean their trombones and other things up against the wall, so that he could think. Then he stroked his chin, while the court stood by and tried to think also. Finally the King sent a herald to proclaim around the castle how fidgety he was and that his daughter must be brought to him. But the Princess was not found. Meantime the band ate ice-cream and cocoanut macaroons, and appeared to enjoy itself.
"In a tall tower that stands high above the trees there was a great clock, and, by and by, it began to strike the hour. It did not stop until it had struck ten times. So you see it was growing late and the King had the right to be getting fidgety. When the clock had done, those guests who were not in the habit of sitting up so late, began to grow sleepy; only, of course, they did not yawn out loud, but behind fans and things.
"Meanwhile King Muffin had gone downstairs to the stable. He brought out his horse with the flaring nostrils and another horse also. He took them around to the Princess, who sat waiting for him on a marble bench in the shadow of a tree.
"'Climb up, beautiful Princess,' he said.
"She hopped into her saddle and he into his. They were off like the wind.
"They heard the clock strike ten and they saw the great tower rising above the castle with the silver moon upon it, but they galloped on and on. Through the forest they galloped, over bridges and streams. And the moon climbed off the tower and kept with them--as it does with all good folk--plunging through the clouds like a ship upon the ocean. And still they galloped on. Presently they met Jeppo returning from the tavern with the brass pull-handles. 'Yo, ho!' called out the King, and they passed him in a flash. _Clackety-clack-clack, clackety-clack-clack, clack-clack, clackety-clack!_
"And peasants, who usually slept right through the night, awoke at the sound of their hoofs and although they were very sleepy, they ran and looked out of their windows--being careful to put on slippers so as not to get the snuffles. And King Muffin and the Princess galloped by with the moonlight upon them, and the peasants wondered who they were. But as they were very sleepy, presently they went back to bed without finding out. One of them did, however, stumble against a chair, right on the toe, and had to light a candle to see if it were worth mending.
"But in the morning the peasants found a bauble near the lodge-gate, a cap and bells on the ravine bridge, and on the long road to the border of King Muffin's land they found a jester's coat.
"And to this day, although many years have passed, their children and their children's children, on the way from school, gather the lilies of the valley which flourish in the woods and along the roads. And they think that they are jesters' bells which were scattered in the flight."
Whereupon the old man, having finished his story, wiped the noses of the children, not forgetting the youngest one with the fat legs, and sent them off to bed.
The Crowded Curb.
Recently I came on an urchin in the crowded city, pitching pennies by himself, in the angle of an abutment. Three feet from his patched seat--a gay pattern which he tilted upward now and then--there moved a thick stream of shoppers. He was in solitary contest with himself, his evening papers neglected in a heap, wrapped in his score, unconscious of the throng that pressed against him. He was resting from labor, as a greater merchant takes to golf for his refreshment. The curb was his club. He had fetched his recreation down to business, to the vacancy between editions. Presently he will scoop his earnings to his pocket and will bawl out to his advantage our latest murder.
How mad--how delightful our streets would be if all of us followed as unreservedly, with so little self-consciousness or respect of small convention, our innocent desires!
Who of us even whistles in a crowd?--or in the spring goes with a skip and leap?
A lady of my acquaintance--who grows plump in her early forties--tells me that she has always wanted to run after an ice-wagon and ride up town, bouncing on the tail-board. It is doubtless an inheritance from a childhood which was stifled and kept in starch. A singer, also, of bellowing bass, has confided to me that he would like above all things to roar his tunes down town on a crowded crossing. The trolley-cars, he feels, the motors and all the shrill instruments of traffic, are no more than a sufficient orchestra for his lusty upper register. An old lady, too, in the daintiest of lace caps, with whom I lately sat at dinner, confessed that whenever she has seen hop-scotch chalked in an eddy of the crowded city, she has been tempted to gather up her skirts and join the play.
But none of these folk obey their instinct. Opinion chills them. They plod the streets with gray exterior. Once, on Fifth Avenue, to be sure, when it was barely twilight, I observed a man, suddenly, without warning, perform a cart-wheel, heels over head. He was dressed in the common fashion. Surely he was not an advertisement. He bore no placard on his hat. Nor was it apparent that he practiced for a circus. Rather, I think, he was resolved for once to let the stiff, censorious world go by unheeded, and be himself alone.
On a night of carnival how greedily the crowd assumes the pantaloon! A day that was prim and solemn at the start now dresses in cap and bells. How recklessly it stretches its charter for the broadest jest! Observe those men in women's bonnets! With what delight they swing their merry bladders at the crowd! They are hard on forty. All week they have bent to their heavy desks, but tonight they take their pay of life. The years are a sullen garment, but on a night of carnival they toss it off. Blood that was cold and temperate at noon now feels the fire. Scratch a man and you find a clown inside. It was at the celebration of the Armistice that I followed a sober fellow for a mile, who beat incessantly with a long iron spoon on an ash-can top. Almost solemnly he advanced among the throng. Was it joy entirely for the ending of the war? Or rather was he not yielding at last to an old desire to parade and be a band? The glad occasion merely loosed him from convention. That lady friend of mine, in the circumstance, would have bounced on ice-wagons up to midnight.
For it is convention, rather than our years--it is the respect and fear of our neighbors that restrains us on an ordinary occasion. If we followed our innocent desires at the noon hour, without waiting for a carnival, how mad our streets would seem! The bellowing bass would pitch back his head and lament the fair Isolde. The old lady in lace cap would tuck up her skirts for hop-scotch and score her goal at last.
Is it not the French who set aside a special night for foolery, when everyone appears in fancy costume? They should set the celebration forward in the day, and let the blazing sun stare upon their mirth. Merriment should not wait upon the owl.
The Dickey Club at Harvard, I think, was fashioned with some such purpose of release. Its initiation occurs always in the spring, when the blood of an undergraduate is hottest against restraint. It is a vent placed where it is needed most. Zealously the candidates perform their pranks. They exceed the letter of their instruction. The streets of Boston are a silly spectacle. Young men wear their trousers inside out and their coats reversed. They greet strangers with preposterous speech. I once came on a merry fellow eating a whole pie with great mouthfuls on the Court House steps, explaining meantime to the crowd that he was the youngest son of Little Jack Horner. And, of course, with such a hardened gourmand for an ancestor, he was not embarrassed by his ridiculous posture.
But it is not youth which needs the stirring most. Nor need one necessarily play an absurd antic to be natural. And therefore, here at home, on our own Soldiers' Monument--on its steps and pediment that mount above the street--I offer a few suggestions to the throng.
Ladies and gentlemen! I invite you to a carnival. Here! Now! At noon! I bid you to throw off your solemn pretense. And be yourself! That sober manner is a cloak. Your dignity scarcely reaches to your skin. Does no one desire to play leap-frog across those posts? Do none of you care to skip and leap? What! Will no one accept my invitation?
You, my dear sirs, I know you. You play chess together every afternoon in your club. One of you carries at this moment a small board in his waistcoat pocket. Why hurry to your club, gentlemen? Here on this step is a place to play your game. Surely your concentration is proof against the legs that swing around you. And you, my dear sir! I see that you are a scholar by your bag of books. You chafe for your golden studies. Come, sit alongside! Here is a shady spot for the pursuit of knowledge. Did not Socrates ply his book in the public concourse?
My dear young lady, it is evident that a desire has seized you to practice your soprano voice. Why do you wait for your solitary piano to pitch the tune? On these steps you can throw your trills up heaven-ward.
An ice-wagon! With a tail-board! Is there no lady in her forties, prim in youth, who will take her fling? Or does no gentleman in silk hat wish a piece of ice to suck?
Observe that good-natured father with his son! They have shopped for toys. He carries a bundle beneath his arm. It is doubtless a mechanical bear--a creature that roars and walks on the turning of a key. After supper these two will squat together on the parlor carpet and wind it up for a trial performance. But must such an honest pleasure sit for the coming of the twilight? Break the string! Insert the key! Let the fearful creature stride boldly among the shoppers.
Here is an iron balustrade along the steps. A dozen of you desire, secretly, to slide down its slippery length.
My dear madam, it is plain that the heir is naughty. Rightfully you have withdrawn his lollypop. And now he resists your advance, stiff-legged and spunky. Your stern eye already has passed its sentence. You merely wait to get him home. I offer you these steps in lieu of nursery or woodshed. You have only to tip him up. Surely the flat of your hand gains no cunning by delay.
And you, my dear sir--you who twirl a silk moustache--you with the young lady on your arm! If I am not mistaken you will woo your fair companion on this summer evening beneath the moon. Must so good a deed await the night? Shall a lover's arms hang idle all the day? On these steps, my dear sir, a kiss, at least, may be given as a prelude.
Hop-scotch! Where is my old friend of the lace cap? The game is already chalked upon the stones.
Is there no one in the passing throng who desires to dance? Are there no toes that wriggle for release? My dear lady, the rhythmic swish of your skirt betrays you. A tune for a merry waltz runs through your head. Come! we'll find you a partner in the crowd. Those silk stockings of yours must not be wasted in a mincing gait.
Have lawyers, walking sourly on their business, any sweeter nature to display to us? Our larger merchants seem covered with restraint and thought of profit. That physician with his bag of pellets seems not to know that laughter is a panacea. Has Labor no desire to play leap-frog on its pick and go shouting home to supper? Housewives follow their unfaltering noses from groceries to meats. Will neither gingham nor brocade romp and cut a caper for us?
Ladies and gentlemen! Why wait for a night of carnival? Does not the blood flow red, also, at the noon hour? Must the moon point a silly finger before you start your merriment? I offer you these steps.
Is there no one who will whistle in the crowd? Will none of you, even in the spring, go with a skip and leap upon your business?
A Corner for Echoes.
Sometimes in a quiet hour I see in the memory of my childhood a frame house across a wide lawn from a pleasant street. There are no trees about the yard, in itself a defect, yet in its circumstance, as the house arises in my view, the barrenness denotes no more than a breadth of sunlight across those endless days.
There was, indeed, in contrast and by way of shadowy admonishment, a church near by, whose sober bell, grieving lest our joy should romp too long, recalled us to fearful introspection on Sunday evening, and it moved me chiefly to the thought of eternity--eternity everlasting. Reward or punishment mattered not. It was Time itself that plagued me, Time that rolled like a wheel forever until the imagination reeled and sickened. And on Thursday evening also--another bad intrusion on the happy week--again the sexton tugged at the rope for prayer and the dismal clapper answered from above. It is strange that a man in friendly red suspenders, pipe in mouth as he pushed his lawn-mower through the week, should spread such desolation. But presently, when our better neighbors were stiffly gathered in and had composed their skirts, a brisker hymn arose. Tenor and soprano assured one another vigorously from pew to pew that they were Christian soldiers marching as to war. When they were off at last for the fair Jerusalem, the fret of eternity passed from me. And yet, for the most part, we played in sunlight all the week, and our thoughts dwelt happily on wide horizons.
There was another church, far off across the housetops, seen only from an attic window, whose bells in contrast were of a pleasant jangle. Exactly where this church stood I never knew. Its towers arose above a neighbor's barn and acknowledged no base or local habitation. Indeed, its glittering and unsubstantial spire offered a hint that it was but an imaginary creature of the attic, a pageant that mustered only to the view of him who looked out through these narrow, cobwebbed windows. For here, as in a kind of magic, the twilight flourished at the noon and its shadows practiced beforehand for the night. Through these windows children saw the unfamiliar, distant marvels of the world--towers and kingdoms unseen by older eyes that were grown dusty with common sights.
Yet regularly, out of a noonday stillness--except for the cries of the butcher boy upon the steps--a dozen clappers of the tower struck their sudden din across the city. It appeared that at the very moment of the noon, having lagged to the utmost second, the frantic clappers had bolted up the belfry stairs to call the town to dinner. Or perhaps to an older ear their discordant and heterodox tongue hinted that Roman infallibility had here fallen into argument and that various and contrary doctrine was laboring in warm dispute. Certainly the clappers were brawling in the tower and had come to blows. But a half mile off it was an agreeable racket and did not rouse up eternity to tease me.
Across from our house, but at the rear, with only an alley entrance, there was a building in which pies were baked--a horrid factory in our very midst!--and insolent smoke curled off the chimney and flaunted our imperfection. Respectable ladies, long resident, wearing black poke bonnets and camel's-hair shawls, lifted their patrician eyebrows with disapproval. Scorn sat on their gentle up-turned noses. They held their skirts close, in passing, from contamination. These pies could not count upon their patronage. They were contraband even in a pinch, with unexpected guests arrived. It were better to buy of Cobey, the grocer on the Circle. And the building did smell heavily of its commodity. But despite detraction, as one came from school, when the wind was north, an agreeable whiff of lard and cooking touched the nostrils as a happy prologue to one's dinner. Sometimes a cart issued to the street, boarded close, full of pies on shelves, and rattled cityward.
The fire station was around the corner and down a hill. We marveled at the polished engine, the harness that hung ready from the ceiling, the poles down which the firemen slid from their rooms above. It was at the fire station that we got the baseball score, inning by inning, and other news, if it was worthy, from the outside world. But perhaps we dozed in a hammock or were lost with Oliver Optic in a jungle when the fire-bell rang. If spry, we caught a glimpse of the hook-and-ladder from the top of the hill, or the horses galloping up the slope. But would none of our neighbors ever burn? we thought. Must all candles be overturned far off?
Near the school-house was the reservoir, a mound and pond covering all the block. Round about the top there was a gravel path that commanded the city--the belching chimneys on the river, the ships upon the lake, and to the south a horizon of wooded hills. The world lay across that tumbled ridge and there our thoughts went searching for adventure. Perhaps these were the foothills of the Himalaya and from the top were seen the towers of Babylon. Perhaps there was an ocean, with white sails which were blown from the Spanish coast. On a summer afternoon clouds drifted across the sky, like mountains on a journey--emigrants, they seemed, from a loftier range, seeking a fresh plain on which to erect their fortunes.
But the chief use of this reservoir, except for its wholly subsidiary supply of water, was its grassy slope. It was usual in the noon recess--when we were cramped with learning--to slide down on a barrel stave and be wrecked and spilled midway. In default of stave a geography served as sled, for by noon the most sedentary geography itched for action. Of what profit--so it complained--is a knowledge of the world if one is cooped always with stupid primers in a desk? Of what account are the boundaries of Hindostan, if one is housed all day beneath a lid with slate and pencils? But the geography required an exact balance, with feet lifted forward into space, and with fingers gripped behind. Our present geographies, alas, are of smaller surface, and, unless students have shrunk and shriveled, their more profitable use upon a hill is past. Some children descended without stave or book, and their preference was marked upon their shining seats.
It was Hoppy who marred this sport. Hoppy was the keeper of the reservoir, a one-legged Irishman with a crutch. His superfluous trouser-leg was folded and pinned across, and it was a general quarry for patches. When his elbow or his knees came through, here was a remedy at hand. Here his wife clipped, also, for her crazy quilt. And all the little Hoppies--for I fancy him to have been a family man--were reinforced from this extra cloth. But when Hoppy's bad profile appeared at the top of the hill we grabbed our staves and scurried off. The cry of warning--"Peg-leg's a-comin'"--still haunts my memory. It was Hoppy's reward to lead one of us smaller fry roughly by the ear. Or he gripped us by the wrist and snapped his stinging finger at our nose. Then he pitched us through the fence where a wooden slat was gone.
Hoppy's crutch was none of your elaborate affairs, curved and glossy. Instead, it was only a stout, unvarnished stick, with a padded cross-piece at the top. But the varlet could run, leaping forward upon us with long, uneven strides. And I have wondered whether Stevenson, by any chance, while he was still pondering the plot of "Treasure Island," may not have visited our city and, seeing Hoppy on our heels, have contrived John Silver out of him. He must have built him anew above the waist, shearing him at his suspender buttons, scrapping his common upper parts; but the wooden stump and breeches were a precious salvage. His crutch, at the least, became John Silver's very timber.
The Circle was down the street. In the center of this sunny park there arose an artificial mountain, with a waterfall that trickled off the rocks pleasantly on hot days. Ruins and blasted towers, battlements and cement grottoes, were still the fashion. In those days masons built stony belvederes and laid pipes which burst forth into mountain pools a good ten feet above the sidewalk. The cliff upon our Circle, with its path winding upward among the fern, its tiny castle on the peak and its tinkle of little water, sprang from this romantic period. From the terrace on top one could spit over the balustrade on the unsuspecting folk who walked below. Later the town had a mechanical ship that sailed around the pond. As often as this ship neared the cliffs the mechanical captain on the bridge lifted his glasses with a startled jerk and gave orders for the changing of the course.
Tinkey's shop was on the Circle. One side of Tinkey's window was a bakery with jelly-cakes and angel-food. This, as I recall, was my earliest theology. Heaven, certainly, was worth the effort. The other window unbent to peppermint sticks and grab-bags to catch our dirtier pennies. But this meaner produce was a concession to the trade, and the Tinkey fingers, from father down to youngest daughter, touched it with scorn. Mrs. Tinkey, in particular, who, we thought, was above her place, lifted a grab-bag at arm's length, and her nostrils quivered as if she held a dead mouse by the tail.
But in the essence Tinkey was a caterer and his handiwork was shown in the persons of a frosted bride and groom who waited before a sugar altar for the word that would make them man and wife. Her nose in time was bruised--a careless lifting of the glass by the youngest Miss Tinkey--but he, like a faithful suitor, stood to his youthful pledge.
Beyond the shop was a room with blazing red wall paper and a fiery carpet. In this hot furnace, out-rivaling the boasts of Abednego, the neighborhood perspired pleasantly on August nights, and ate ice-cream. If we arose to the price of a Tinkey layer-cake thick with chocolate, the night stood out in splendor above its fellows.
Around the corner was Conrad's bookstore. Conrad was a dumpy fellow with unending good humor and a fat, soft hand. He sometimes called lady customers, _My dear_, but it was only in his eagerness to press a sale. I do not recall that he was a scholar. If you asked to be shown the newest books, he might offer you the "Vicar of Wakefield" as a work just off the press, and tell you that Goldsmith was a man to watch. A young woman assistant read The Duchess between customers. In her fancy she eloped daily with a duke, but actually she kept company with a grocer's clerk. They ate sodas together at Tinkey's. How could he know, poor fellow, when their fingers met beneath the table, that he was but a substitute in her high romance? At the very moment, in her thoughts, she was off with the duke beneath the moon. Conrad had also an errand boy with a dirty face, who spent the day on a packing case at the rear of the shop, where he ate an endless succession of apples. An orchard went through him in the season.
Conrad's shop was only moderate in books, but it spread itself in fancy goods--crackers for the Fourth--marbles and tops in their season--and for Saint Valentine's Day a range of sentiment that distanced his competitors. A lover, though he sighed like furnace, found here mottoes for his passion. Also there were "comics"--base insulting valentines of suitable greeting from man to man. These were three for a nickel just as they came off the pile, but two for a nickel with selection.