Part 11

At Christmas, Conrad displayed china inkstands. There was one of these which, although often near a sale, still stuck to the shelves year after year. The beauty of its device dwelt in a little negro who perched at the rear on a rustic fence that held the penholders. But suddenly, when choice was wavering in his favor, off he would pitch into the inkwell. At this mischance Conrad would regularly be astonished, and he would sell instead a china camel whose back was hollowed out for ink. Then he laved the negro for the twentieth time and set him back upon the fence, where he sat like an interrupted suicide with his dark eye again upon the pool.

Nor must I forget a line of Catholic saints. There was one jolly bit of crockery--Saint Patrick, I believe--that had lost an arm. This defect should have been considered a further mark of piety--a martyrdom unrecorded by the church--a special flagellation--but although the price in successive years sunk to thirty-nine and at last to the wholly ridiculous sum of twenty-three cents--less than one third the price of his unbroken but really inferior mates (Saint Aloysius and Saint Anthony)--yet he lingered on.

Nowhere was there a larger assortment of odd and unmatched letter paper. No box was full and many were soiled. If pink envelopes were needed, Conrad, unabashed, laid out a blue, or with his fat thumb he fumbled two boxes into one to complete the count. Initialed paper once had been the fashion--G for Gladys--and there was still a remnant of several letters toward the end of the alphabet. If one of these chanced to fit a customer, with what zest Conrad blew upon the box and slapped it! But until Xenophon and Xerxes shall come to buy, these final letters must rest unsold upon his shelves.

Conrad was a dear good fellow (Bless me! he is still alive--just as fat and bow-legged, with the same soft hand, just as friendly!) and when he retired at last from business the street lost half its mirth and humor.

Near Conrad's shop and the Circle was our house. By it a horse-car jangled, one way only, cityward, at intervals of twelve minutes. In winter there was straw on the floor. In front was a fare-box with sliding shelves down which the nickels rattled, or, if one's memory lagged, the thin driver rapped his whip-handle on the glass. He sat on a high stool which was padded to eke out nature.

Once before, as I have read, there was a corner for echoes. The buildings were set so that the quiet folk who dwelt near by could hear the sound of coming steps--steps far off, then nearer until they tramped beneath the windows. Then, as they listened, the sounds faded. And it seemed to him who chronicled the place that he heard the persons of his drama coming--little steps that would grow to manhood, steps that faltered already toward their final curtain. But there is no plot to thicken around our corner. Or rather, there are a hundred plots. And when I listen in fancy to the echoes, I hear the general tapping of our neighbors--beloved feet that have gone into darkness for a while.

I hear the footsteps of an old man. When he trod our street he was of gloomy temper. The world was awry for him. He was sunk in despair at politics, yet I recall that he relished an apple. As often as he stopped to see us, he told us that the country had gone to the demnition bow-wows, and he snapped at his apple as if it had been a Democrat. His little dog ran a full block ahead of him on their evening stroll, and always trotted into our gateway. He sat on the lowest step with his eyes down the street. "Master," he seemed to say, "here we all are, waiting for you."

John Smith cut the grass on the Circle. He was a friend of children, and, for his nod and greeting, I drove down street my span of tin horses on a wheel. Hand in hand we climbed his rocky mountain to see where the waterfall spurted from a pipe. Below, the neighbors' bonnets, with baskets, went to shop at Cobey's. I still hear the click of his lawn-mower of a summer afternoon.

Darky Dan beat our carpets. He was a merry fellow and he sang upon the street. Wild melodies they were, with head thrown back and crazy laughter. He was a harmless, good-natured fellow, but nurse-maids huddled us close until his song had turned the corner.

I recall a crippled child--maybe of half wit only--who dragged a broken foot. To our shame he seemed a comic creature and we pelted him with snowballs and ran from his piteous anger.

A match-boy with red hair came by on winter nights and was warmed beside the fire. My father questioned him--as one merchant to another--about his business, and mother kept him in mittens. In payment for bread and jam he loosed his muffler and played the mouth-organ. In turn we blew upon the vents, but as music it was naught. Gone is that melody. The house is dark.

There was an old lady lived near by in almost feudal state. Her steps were the broadest on the street, her walnut doors were carved in the deepest pattern, her fence was the highest. Her furniture, the year around, was covered in linen cloths, and the great chairs with their claw feet resembled the horses in panoply that draw the chariot of the Nubian Queen in the circus parade. With this old lady there lived an old cook, an old second-maid, an old laundress and an old coachman. The second-maid thrust a platter at you as you sat at table and nudged you in the ribs--if you were a child--"Eat it," she said, "it's good!" The coachman nodded on his box, the laundress in her tubs, but the cook was spry despite her years. In the yard there was a fountain--all yards had fountains then--and I used to wonder whether this were the font of Ponce de Leon that restored the aged to their youth. Here, surely, was the very house to test the cure. And when the ancient laundress came by I speculated whether, after a sudden splash, she would emerge a dazzling princess.

With this old lady there dwelt a niece, or a daughter, or a younger sister--relationship was vague--and this niece owned a little black dog. But the old lady was dull of sight and in the dark passages of her house she waved her arm and kept saying, "Whisk, Nigger! Whisk, Nigger!" for she had stepped once on the creature's tail. Every year she gave a children's party, and we youngsters looked for magic in a mirror and went to Jerusalem around her solemn chairs. She had bought toys and trinkets from Europe for all of us.

Then there was an old neighbor, a justice of the peace, who, being devoid of much knowledge of the law, put his cases to my grandfather. When he had been advised, he stroked his beard and said it was an opinion to which he had come himself. He went down the steps mumbling the judgment to keep it in his memory.

It was my grandfather's custom in the late afternoon of summer, when the sun had slanted, to pull a chair off the veranda and sit sprinkling the lawn with his crutch beside him. Toward supper Mr. Hodge, a building contractor and our neighbor, went by. His wagon usually rattled with some bit of salvage--perhaps an iron bath-tub plucked from a building before he wrecked it, or a kitchen sink. His yard was piled with the fruitage of his profession. Mr. Hodge was of sociable turn and he cried _whoa_ to his jogging horse.

Now ensued a half-hour's gossip. It was the comedy of the occasion that the horse, after having made several attempts to start and been stopped by a jerking of the reins, took to craftiness. He put forward a hoof, quite carelessly it seemed. If there was no protest, in time he tried a diagonal hoof behind. It was then but a shifting of the weight to swing forward a step. "Whoa!" yelled Mr. Hodge. "Yes, yes," the old horse seemed to answer, "certainly, of course, yes, yes! But can't a fellow shift his legs?" In this way the sly brute inched toward supper. My grandfather enjoyed this comedy, and once, if I am not mistaken, I caught him exchanging a wink with the horse. Certainly the beast was glancing round to find a partner for his jest. A conversation, begun at the standpipe, progressed to the telegraph pole, and at last came opposite the kitchen. As my grandfather did not move his chair, Mr. Hodge lifted his voice until the neighborhood knew the price of brick and the unworthiness of plumbers. Mr. Hodge was a Republican and he spoke in favor of the tariff. To clinch an argument he had a usual formula. "It's neither here nor there," and he brought his fist against the dashboard, _"it's right here."_ But finally the hungry horse prevailed, Mr. Hodge slapped the reins in consent and they rattled home to supper.

Around this corner, also, there are echoes of children's feet--racing feet upon the grass--feet that lag in the morning on the way to school and run back at four o'clock--feet that leap the hitching posts or avoid the sidewalk cracks. Girls' feet rustle in the fallen leaves, and they think their skirts are silk. And I hear dimly the cries of hide-and-seek and pull-away and the merriment of blindman's buff. One lad rises in my memory who won our marbles. Another excelled us all when he threw his top. His father was a grocer and we envied him his easy access to the candy counter.

And particularly I remember a little girl with yellow curls and blue eyes. She was the Sleeping Beauty in a Christmas play. I had known her before in daytime gingham and I had judged her to be as other girls--creatures that tag along and spoil the fun. But now, as she rested in laces for the picture, she dazzled my imagination; for I was the silken Prince to awaken her. For a week I wished to run to sea, sink a pirate ship, and be worthy of her love. But then a sewer was dug along the street and I was a miner instead--recusant to love--digging in the yellow sand for the center of the earth.

But chiefly it is the echo of older steps I hear--steps whose sound is long since stilled--feet that have crossed the horizon and have gone on journey for a while. And when I listen I hear echoes that are fading into silence.

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End of Project Gutenberg's Hints to Pilgrims, by Charles Stephen Brooks