Chapter 12

But it is not always practicable, even to the most stalwart and seasoned passenger, to spend his time on the open deck. To stand out on the front (one can hardly call it a prow, where the periphery is that of an average wash-tub) or at the stern is to be drowned by rain or sawn asunder by icy winds or broiled like an oyster, and to cower under the upper deck is to get a lively sense of the Cave of the Winds. One with a healthy sense of smell and an instinct for oxygen may well shrink from entering the cabin, and prefer the perils and discomforts of too much atmosphere to those of a depleted and poisoned one. David may have been wise in choosing to be punished for his sins by pestilence rather than by famine or the sword, but he put it on very doubtful ground when he thought he was thereby falling into "the hand of the Lord" in some special manner. For I am confident that bad air is the devil, and that it is this "power of the air" of which he is "prince." And he has no more impregnable stronghold than the cabin of a ferry-boat in winter. In the cars one can brave public opinion and elude the brakeman's eye so as to open something in his "Black Hole." But the cabin windows are hermetically sealed and the doors jealously guarded by an unsleeping dragon. On some of these boats they have an ingenious method of intensifying the sickening odor by anointing the floors with a rancid oil, which affords the tender stomach all the advantages of the famous crossing of the English Channel.

The entire code of the cabin is still to be rescued from the civilization of the cave-dwellers. The essence of politeness has been shown to be self-sacrifice in small things. The average American is naturally as unselfish a being as dwells upon the planet, but he often appears to disadvantage beside far meaner races by reason of an insane haste which tramples politeness under its feet. "After you, sir,"--a phrase which contains in a nutshell the very kernel of all courtesy,--puts the thing in a shape which is almost a physical impossibility to the American temperament. Our fellow-citizen will go ahead of you with the utmost gallantry, though it be to storm a Malakoff or grapple with a mad dog; but to stand aside and let you get on or off a ferry-boat before him is a strain upon his manners enough to dislocate their every limb. Well, remembering that the passive mood comes after the active in grammatical sequence, we will not despair of a development of the passive virtues even in the "go-ahead" American. And then the law of the cabin will no longer be mob-law, nor its motto, "Every man for himself, and ---- take the ladies."

It is really ridiculous to see the uneasiness and prematureness of most persons as the boat begins to approach the shore. Though conscious that it will not bring the boat and the dock any nearer together, there is a hunger of the eye to seize the latter from afar. Sometimes the movement of an asphyxiated passenger for the door, or the momentary stoppage of the boat in mid-stream, will bring half the cabin to its feet. It is the same impulse which leads passengers, when waiting in the ferry-house, to glue their faces to the gate for five minutes before the boat arrives, which throngs the platforms and aisles of a car long before the depot is entered, which in church varies the closing hymn with an overcoat drill and causes the benediction to be pronounced amid a rattling discharge of hymn-books into the book-racks.

Having entered the cabin, it is always an interesting question on which side we shall sit,--not to say at which end of the boat. I think that temperament has much to do with the decision of these questions. And it might be well for some psychologist and sociologist to investigate why it is that certain persons will instinctively select the rear of the cabin and others advance to the front; also why some will invariably take their seats on the outer and others on the inner side of the cabin. This being with myself not a matter of instinct but of reason, perhaps my experience is of little value, but I freely and confidentially offer it in the interests of science. I choose the inner row of seats for the following reasons: first, they are warmer in winter by reason of the steam-pipes which run underneath them, and cooler in summer by being more directly in the draught from the open doors; secondly, because the boat is steadier there, and one can read one's paper, if so inclined, with less painful adjustment of the eyes to the shaking type; but chiefly because in that position one has before one the panorama of the river, which is the next best thing to being out on deck. One of the mysteries of human nature is that so large a proportion of ferry-passengers appear to take no more notice of the glorious scenes through which they pass twice a day than if it were a tunnel. They will hurry into the cabin in all weathers, seat themselves with their backs to the river, and spend the voyage buried in the newspaper or gazing into vacancy. They do not seem even to appreciate the study of life afforded by their fellow-passengers. I am sure Dickens would have revelled in the opportunity and found no end of Quilps and Chadbands, Swivellers and Turveydrops, Little Nells and Mrs. Nicklebys, Pickwicks and Artful Dodgers. I have found splendid models for almost every type of civilization and not a few types of barbarism. And the eccentricities of dress are hardly less noteworthy.

One learns to enter heartily into the joys and sorrows of the groups, and even of the individuals, whom he thus watches perhaps from day to day. He comes to be a mind-reader, and works out many a little life-story, as did the ingenious Silas Wegg concerning the people who passed his corner or lived in the houses of the neighborhood. Among the more familiar types are college-students cramming for the day's recitation, giggling school-girls, dapper clerks, pert messenger-boys improving the time by reading a blood-and-thunder story-paper in the very smallest of type, business-men, all nerve in the morning, and in the afternoon chatting affably or half asleep, ladies keen for a shopping-"meet" on Fourteenth Street, housewives with market-baskets, and workingmen with tin pails. Each hour of the day develops its own tide and type of travel, beginning with the lowest class of laborer and ending with the belated reveller. There is a still hour in the morning, awhile before noon, when the idlers and the dissipated begin to dribble into or out of the city, and studies of the odd and the sad alike abound for the Hogarthian pencil and imagination.

The "basket brigade" constitutes a large and regular detachment of the trans-Hudson army. Pleasant it is (I can hear the parody-fiend murmur), when things are green and price of meat is low, to move amid the market-scene, where gourmands stout and housewives lean with baskets come and go. Tempting too, alike to the dainty and the thrifty. Like Robinet in the "Evenings at Home," it adds much to the relish of one's little supper to have selected it one's self out of a whole marketful and to inhale its imaginary savors all the way home. Then, it is so nice to surprise the wife with the earliest of the season, or to pour out upon the table a dozen golden oranges, or to bring a little light into the invalid's eye by a basket of grapes or a fragrant bunch of flowers, or to delight Tiny Tim with a trinket, or to let little Jacob "know what oysters is." Especially on Saturday afternoons does the basket brigade come out in force, and many a homely little idyl may be conjured out of the family groups or the purveying parents who throng and cumber the boat at such times. The capacities of the market-basket, as then and there revealed, are prodigious, rivalling those of the trunk of travel; and yet out of the cover will still protrude the legs of unadjustable "broilers" and the green fringes of garden-stuff, and all this not counting in the oyster-pail, or the great watermelon which has to be carried separately by its wooden handle. The epicurean prospect of the Sunday dinner reflected in the restful face as well as materialized in the basket can hardly fail to elicit a gentle thought from the sternest Sabbatarian's heart.

With the excursion-season comes another phase of our little idyllic studies, as we watch the groups and couples intent upon a picnic at the sea-side or among the Jersey villages. Here is a representative family party which I followed with my eyes, and still farther with my imagination, on their way to Coney Island on a fine, fresh summer morning. There was the grandma, a bright-eyed, beaming old lady, beginning to bend somewhat with years, but as pleased with the day's outing as any of them. There was the mother, sharing her responsibility with the neat and pretty young-lady daughter. There was a youth, somewhat of the Abel Garland type, who might have been the young lady's brother, but who was a happy man even if he was not. There was a small boy; and who need be told what a day that was for him? Lastly, there were two charming little ringleted girls, who walked hand in hand in the prettiest way, with eyes that fairly danced and feet that could hardly help doing so. There was no baby to utter a discordant note or to hang as a Damocles' sword of apprehension over the heads of the group. But in so affectionate and well-regulated a family I am not sure that its presence would not have constituted a new source of happiness. And by and by, as the afternoon waned, I could imagine the father meeting them at the beach, with perhaps the real brother (or would it be the real not-brother?), and coming home with them in the cool evening and the sweet moonlight.

On Saturdays there is an earlier current of home-going working-people; and it is easy to detect a quite different air about them from what they wear on other days. There is no shadow of next morning impending over them. One realizes anew the Sabbath as made for man,--the man who works,--and blesses the Son of Man who is "Lord also of the Sabbath." This is the evening when they carry home their reading for the week, as well as their Sunday dinner. I wish more could be said for the general quality, intellectual or moral, of this literature. But most of it is better than mental vacancy, and a great advance on the illiteracy in which these classes were sunk not so very long ago. And it must be borne in mind that the transient and sensational reading which so many of us carry in cars and cabins, or buy at news-stands, or take out of libraries, would misrepresent us if supposed to be all we had or loved to read. There is in more of these homes than perhaps we suspect a shelf with its well-thumbed "Pilgrim's Progress," its "Robinson Crusoe" with one cover gone, its odd volume of Waverley or Dickens, its copy of Burns or Longfellow, its row of school histories and science, and its pile of magazines.

At certain hours, when the trains are due, the basket brigade is reinforced by the carpet-bag battalion; and a crowd of home-coming or out-going travellers is a never-ending source of sympathetic and imaginative study to the leisurely looker-on. What an anachronism that word "carpet-bag" has become, by the way! I saw not long ago on the ferry-boat a genuine and literal specimen, which carried back my thoughts for a generation to the day when bags were really made of carpet and the most fastidious social Bourbon did not disdain to carry them. They flourished in the age of shawls, and came in not long after the epoch of "gum" shoes. They were of every conceivable pattern, from the sober symphony in brown to a gorgeous wealth of color that might vie with the most audacious wall-paper of an aesthetic age. This "belated traveller" of a carpet-bag had all the appearance of a faded and bedraggled gentility,--was, in fact, a veritable tramp among luggage. It sagged down as it stood on the floor. It ran here and there into strings, as of shoes untied and coat fastened together by twine in lieu of buttons. And it was trampy with mouldy discoloration and travel-stains. It was of vast dimensions, and, as was always the way with carpet-bags, bulging in all directions with its contents. I was not surprised to discover, through its orifice, that it had long ceased to be a receptacle for clothing and was filled with honest workman's tools. Burglars, the police-reports tell us, affect the carpet-bag for their jimmies and the like, but in such case it may be depended on to be as reputable in appearance and as close-mouthed as the last defaulting treasurer or trustee. The modern luggage is a type of advanced thought, if not civilization, whether we consider the Saratoga trunk, the Russia-leather satchel, the school-boy's knapsack, or the commercial traveller's double-locked valise. There is "nothing like leather:" men live now in their trunks, and America's proudest contribution to the world is the railway-check.

But my boat bumps on the shore, and I must pass out, to the marching music of the rattling chains and the swashing tide, to my business,--perhaps a "better" one to be "about" than writing these idle observations on a North-River Ferry.

F. N. ZABRISKIE.

THE ART OF READING.

Statistics as to the number of men and women of good standing in the world who cannot read might have a certain interest. There are probably more persons laboring under that disability than is usually supposed, and this with no reference to unfortunates who in early life have missed the opportunity of learning their A B C, but thinking only of those who have never found the way to utilize a knowledge of letters,--of persons, in short, who do not know what to do with a book. Trustworthy statistics, however, would not be easily obtained: there is too strong a prejudice in favor of books for any one to be very forward in confessing a distaste for them. Now and then such an admission is made, but, for the most part, people like to think that under auspicious conditions--if they had time, or quiet, or health, or what not--they should be great readers. It is a point on which it is quite possible to deceive one's self and almost impossible to deceive others.

You are acquainted, perhaps, with some lady on whose table lies the book that every one is talking about: it is not a novel, we will suppose. "Ah, you have that!" you say to her. Yes, and she expects to enjoy it _immensely_. She lifts the cover and casts a caressing glance upon its pages, for all the world as if she could not wait to be at it. You know the feeling, and sympathize with her. The next time you are there, seeing the book again reminds you to ask how she liked it. "Why, positively," she says, "I haven't had _a single minute_ in which I could take it up!" But she still cherishes the same agreeable anticipations as before with regard to it. After a considerable lapse of time, on the occasion of another call you may notice a mark protruding in the region of the first chapter, and if mischief or malice or any other inborn propensity to evil prompts you to allude to the subject once more and inquire if the book pleases her, on the whole, she will probably say that it does _as far as she has read_, only there is an unconscious plaintiveness about this statement which betrays that enthusiasm has waned: the fact is, everybody is talking of another book now, and she has the uncomfortable feeling of being behind-hand. But all the same she may be just as intimately persuaded that it is only a concatenation of adverse circumstances which has prevented her finishing the book long ago, as you are that she will never finish it.

However, as already said, there may sometimes be found among non-readers a clear apprehension of the state of their case. Thus, a lady once avowed, when a conversation had turned upon the profit and pleasure of reading, that she had not the least liking for books and never had had. She regretted it extremely; she felt when she saw any one absorbed in reading that she had missed something; there were times when if she could forget herself in a book she should be very glad, but she could not; she had never been taught to care for reading when she was a child, and it was too late to learn now. Still, on being persuaded to think that she might at least try, she expressed an ambition to enjoy Thackeray, and asked to have his best novel recommended. "Vanity Fair" was accordingly suggested as most likely to please her, and, it being procured, she announced on the following evening that she had read _thirty pages_ that day, and meant to continue at the same rate. Her admiration, alas! was plainly more for her own achievement than for that of her author; nevertheless, the literary adviser talked encouragingly, as the medical adviser often must, in spite of bad signs, and for a few nights the number of pages kept pretty well up to the mark, then steadily declined, and, after an hiatus or two, "Vanity Fair" was mentioned no more. It was, as the lady herself had thought, too late. But on another point also she may have been right,--namely, in the implied belief that childhood was the time when she might have learned to like reading.

There is certainly a wide-spread impression that children ought to display some taste for literature, so that to say a child does not care for his book is rather a damaging statement: it is made with reluctance: one is "_afraid_ Charlie does not like to read;" one always adds, if possible, that "he likes to be read to, however," and in any case the obliging by-stander hastens to say, "Oh, well, perhaps he will take to reading as he grows older," which remark, on the principle that one never knows what may happen, is incontrovertible as far as it goes. No one would wish to assert dogmatically that Charlie will not ripen into a reader, but at the same time no one very seriously supposes that he will. "As the twig is bent the tree's inclined" is felt to be peculiarly applicable in his case.

And still one ought not to be fatalistic about the twig: for the tree, indeed, it is too late, but that means nothing, if not that for the twig it is yet time. In certain ways this idea is recognized and acted upon, as, for instance, when a taste for music is to be cultivated children are held to practise daily on the piano, even though they hate it; if dancing is necessary to secure a graceful carriage, they must learn to dance, notwithstanding that they might prefer to swarm up and down the sidewalk on roller-skates. And so, when a relish for books is to be awakened, why should it not follow that children must read? Why content one's self with anything short of that? To read to a child, otherwise than occasionally and with the occult purpose of giving a lesson in ease of utterance, is evidently pernicious. It may sound well to say that Charlie likes to be read to, but the real sense of the statement is that he considers reading laborious, and that we are doing our best to strengthen him in that opinion. To be sure he is right,--reading _is_ more or less laborious at the outset; but then the obvious deduction from this would seem to be that the more seriously he applies himself to it the better.

To some persons such an axiom will have a brain-feverish sound: children are heard of who are devoted to books to the injury of their health, and so it is assumed that to incite any child to read may be a tempting of Providence. This is a groundless supposition. Even in the few authentic cases of precocious development efficient parents may easily take measures to check the ravages of intellect, while in the far greater number of instances where the mental and physical qualities are pretty evenly balanced, parental efficiency would be well displayed in cherishing rather than in repressing a love for literature. If one thinks what a companion a book may be in hours of loneliness, what a comforter in weary illness or in sorrow, and, above all, what a blessing in the temporary escape it offers from the every-day trials of existence, which tend to take on huge proportions if one settles down among them, but will look of a very reasonable size to one who comes back to them with sight refreshed after a judicious absence,--if one thinks of all this, the art of playing on the piano or of dancing sinks greatly in importance as compared with the art of reading. Even considering only the respective duration of advantage, one would have to decide for reading if a choice must be made, for girls generally give up music when they marry, and at some not quite so definitely fixed period dancing is renounced by both sexes, while books remain appropriate to every age and condition of life.

Happily, however, there is no need to choose: reading may be cultivated side by side with more florid accomplishments. To provide an interesting book and appoint an hour for its perusal may just as easily be done as to set apart an hour for the piano,--indeed, in some cases more easily, since there would be no bills coming in for the reading-lessons. And who will say that a child might not learn to like reading, might not insensibly get into the spirit of the art, by this simple method when duly insisted on? Perhaps it would fail sometimes; there may be persons absolutely incapable of the prolonged attention required for reading; but one cannot help thinking that in most minds this power of attention could be aroused and fostered, and that, therefore, if a child does not like books at the start, that need not be accounted a fatal sign. People who have detested their music-lessons at first have been known to come finally to the enjoyment of music through those very means.

When children should begin to read, and how they should learn, are questions which lie rather outside the scope of this paper and concern those who "take to reading" as well as those who "like to be read to;" but, stating the case broadly, one might say that they can begin at any time and learn anyhow. It has been seriously advocated that children be not taught to read until they are ten years old; and certainly it would be quite possible to prevent their reading before then. On the other hand, as an actual fact, they do read at seven and eight years of age, and used to read at five or even earlier. Regarded by the light of modern theory, what they used to do was, of course, deplorable; still, the fact remains, and is mitigated by circumstances, for the children were not considered prodigies at that time, and a due proportion of them lived to grow up, and may be seen to-day, as men and women, walking about the world in tolerable health and spirits.