Chapter 4

When he took his afternoon nap and lay upon his back on the sofa in the sitting-room, we made paper pin-wheels to see whether his breath would stir them. This trick having come to his notice by a sudden awakening, he sometimes thereafter played to be asleep and snored in such a mighty gust that the wheels spun. He was like a Dutch tempest against a windmill.

If a Dime Museum came to town we made an afternoon of it. He took us to all the circuses and gave us our choice of side-shows. We walked up and down before the stretches of painted canvas, balancing in our desire a sword-swallower against an Indian Princess. Most of the fat women and all the dwarfs that I have known came to my acquaintance when in company with my grandfather. As a young man, it was said, he once ran away from home to join a circus as an acrobat, having acquired the trick of leaping upon a running horse. I fancy that his knack of throwing us to his shoulder by a double somersault was a recollection of his early days. You may imagine with what awe we looked on him even though he now went on crutches. He was the epitome of adventure, the very salt of excitement. It was better having him than a pirate in the house. When the circus had gone and life was drab, he was our tutor in the art of turning cart-wheels and making hand-stands against the door.

And once, when we were away from him, he walked all morning about the garden and in his loneliness he gathered into piles the pebbles that we had dropped.

I was too young to know my grandfather in his active days when he was prominent in public matters. His broader abilities are known to others. But though more than twenty years have passed since his death, I remember his tone of voice, his walk, his way of handling a crutch, all his tricks of speech and conduct as though he had just left the room. And I can think of nothing more beautiful than that a useful man who has faced the world for seventy years and has done his part, should come back in his old age to the nursery and be the playfellow of his grandchildren.

But the best holiday was a trip to the farm.

This farm--to which in our slow trot we have been so long a time in coming--lay for a mile on the upper land, and its grain fields and pastures looked down into the valley. The buildings, however, were set close to the road and fixed their interest on such occasional wagons as creaked by. A Switzer occupied the farm, who owned, in addition to the more immediate members of his family, a cuckoo clock whose weights hung on long cords which by Saturday night reached almost to the floor. When I have sat at his table, I have neglected cheese and the lesser foods, when the hour came near, in order not to miss the cuckoo's popping out. And in the duller spaces, when the door was shut, I have fancied it sitting in the dark and counting the minutes to itself.

The Switzer's specialty was the making of a kind of rubber cheese which one could learn to like in time. Of the processes of its composition, I can remember nothing except that when it was in the great press the whey ran from its sides, but this may be common to all cheeses. I was once given a cup of this whey to drink and I brightened, for until it was in my mouth, I thought it was buttermilk. Beyond was the spring-house with cans of milk set in the cool water and with a trickling sound beneath the boards. From the spring-house there started those mysterious cow-paths that led down into the great gorge that cut the farm. Here were places so deep that only a bit of the sky showed and here the stones were damp. It was a place that seemed to lie nearer to the confusion when the world was made, and rocks lay piled as though a first purpose had been broken off. And to follow a cow-path, regardless of where it led, was, in those days, the essence of hazard; though all the while from the pastures up above there came the flat safe tinkling of the bells.

The apple orchard--where Dolly was stung by the bee--was set on a fine breezy place at the brow of the hill with the valley in full sight. The trees themselves were old and decayed, but they were gnarled and crotched for easy climbing. And the apples--in particular a russet--mounted to a delicacy. On the other side of the valley, a half mile off as a bird would fly, were the buildings of a convent, and if you waited you might hear the twilight bell. To this day all distant bells come to my ears with a pleasing softness, as though they had been cast in a quieter world. Stone arrow-heads were found in a near-by field as often as the farmer turned up the soil in plowing. And because of this, a long finger of land that put off to the valley, was called Indian Point. Here, with an arm for pillow, one might lie for a long hour on a sunny morning and watch the shadows of clouds move across the lowland. A rooster crows somewhere far off--surely of all sounds the drowsiest. A horse in a field below lifts up its head and neighs. The leaves practice a sleepy tune. If one has the fortune to keep awake, here he may lie and think the thoughts that are born of sun and wind.

And now, although it is not yet noon, hunger rages in us. The pancakes, the syrup, the toast and the other incidents of breakfast have disappeared the way the rabbit vanishes when the magician waves his hand. The horrid Polyphemus did not so crave his food. And as yet there is no comforting sniff from the kitchen. Scrubbing and other secular matters engage the farmer's wife. There is as yet not a faintest gurgle in the kettle.

To divert ourselves, we climb three trees and fall out of one. Is twelve o'clock never to come? Have Time and the Hour grown stagnant? We eat apples and throw the cores at the pig to hear him grunt. Is the great round sun stuck? Have the days of Joshua come again? We walk a rail fence. Is it not yet noon? Shrewsbury clock itself--reputed by scholars the slowest of all possible clocks--could not so hold off. I snag myself--but it is nothing that shows when I sit.

Ah! At last! My grandfather is calling from the house. We run back and find that the lunch is ready and is laid upon a table with a red oil-cloth cover. We apply ourselves. Silence....

The journey home started about five o'clock. There was one game we always played. Each of us, having wisely squinted at the sky, made a reckoning and guessed where we would be when the sun set. My grandfather might say the high bridge. I named the Sherman House. But my brother, being precise, judged it to a fraction of a telegraph pole. Beyond a certain turn--did we remember?--well, it would be exactly sixteen telegraph poles further on. What an excitement there was when the sun's lower rim was already below the horizon! We stood on our knees and looked through the little window at the back of the phaeton. With what suspicion we regarded my grandfather's driving! Or if Dolly lagged, did it not raise a thought that she, too, was in the plot against us? The sun sets. We cry out the victor.

The sky flames with color. Then deadens in the east. The dusk is falling. The roads grow dark. Where run the roads of night? While there is light, you can see the course they keep across the country--the dust of horses' feet--a bridge--a vagrant winding on a hill beyond. All day long they are busy with the feet of men and women and children shouting. Then twilight comes, and the roads lead home to supper and the curling smoke above the roof. But at night where run the roads? It's dark beyond the candle's flare--where run the roads of night.

My brother and I have become sleepy. We lop over against my grandfather--

We awake with a start. There is a gayly lighted horse-car jingling beside us. The street lights show us into harbor. We are home at last.

The Man Of Grub Street Comes From His Garret

I have come to live this winter in New York City and by good fortune I have found rooms on a pleasant park. This park, which is but one block in extent, is so set off from the thoroughfares that it bears chiefly the traffic that is proper to the place itself. Grocery carts jog around and throw out their wares. Laundry wagons are astir. A little fat tailor on an occasion carries in an armful of newly pressed clothing with suspenders hanging. Dogs are taken out to walk but are held in leash, lest a taste of liberty spoil them for an indoor life. The center of the park is laid out with grass and trees and pebbled paths, and about it is a high iron fence. Each house has a key to the enclosure. Such social infection, therefore, as gets inside the gates is of our own breeding. In the sunny hours nurses and children air themselves in this grass plot. Here a gayly painted wooden velocipede is in fashion. At this minute there are several pairs of fat legs a-straddle this contrivance. It is a velocipede as it was first made, without pedals. Beau Brummel--for the velocipede dates back to him--may have walked forth to take the waters at Tunbridge Wells on a vehicle not far different, but built to his greater stature. There is also a trickle of drays and wagons across the park--a mere leakage from the streets, as though the near-by traffic in the pressure had burst its pipes. But only at morning and night when the city collects or discharges its people, are the sidewalks filled. Then for a half hour the nozzle of the city plays a full stream on us.

The park seems to be freer and more natural than the streets outside. A man goes by gesticulating as though he practiced for a speech. A woman adjusts her stocking on the coping below the fence with the freedom of a country road. A street sweeper, patched to his office, tunes his slow work to fit the quiet surroundings. Boys skate by or cut swirls upon the pavement in the privilege of a playground.

My work--if anything so pleasant and unforced can carry the name--is done at a window that overlooks this park. Were it not for several high buildings in my sight I might fancy that I lived in one of the older squares of London. There is a look of Thackeray about the place as though the Osbornes might be my neighbors. A fat man who waddles off his steps opposite, if he would submit to a change of coat, might be Jos Sedley starting for his club to eat his chutney. If only there were a crest above my bell-pull I might even expect Becky Sharp in for tea. Or occasionally I divert myself with the fancy that I am of a still older day and that I have walked in from Lichfield--I choose the name at hazard--with a tragedy in my pocket, to try my fortune. Were it not for the fashion of dress in the park below and some remnant of reason in myself, I could, in a winking moment, persuade myself that my room is a garret and my pen a quill. On such delusion, before I issued on the street to seek my coffee-house, I would adjust my wig and dust myself of snuff.

But for my exercise and recreation--which for a man of Grub Street is necessary in the early hours of afternoon when the morning fires have fallen--I go outside the park. I have a wide choice for my wanderings. I may go into the district to the east and watch the children play against the curb. If they pitch pennies on the walk I am careful to go about, for fear that I distract the throw. Or if the stones are marked for hop-scotch, I squeeze along the wall. It is my intention--from which as yet my diffidence withholds me--to present to the winner of one of these contests a red apple which I shall select at a corner stand. Or an ice wagon pauses in its round, and while the man is gone there is a pleasant thieving of bits of ice. Each dirty cheek is stuffed as though a plague of mumps had fallen on the street. Or there may be a game of baseball--a scampering on the bases, a home-run down the gutter--to engage me for an inning. Or shinny grips the street. But if a street organ comes--not a mournful one-legged box eked out with a monkey, but a big machine with an extra man to pull--the children leave their games. It was but the other day that I saw six of them together dancing on the pavement to the music, with skirts and pigtails flying. There was such gladness in their faces that the musician, although he already had his nickel, gave them an extra tune. It was of such persuasive gayety that the number of dancers at once went up to ten and others wiggled to the rhythm. And for myself, although I am past my sportive days, the sound of a street organ, if any, would inflame me to a fox-trot. Even a surly tune--if the handle be quickened--comes from the box with a brisk seduction. If a dirge once got inside, it would fret until it came out a dancing measure.

In this part of town, on the better streets, I sometimes study the fashions as I see them in the shops and I compare them with those of uptown stores. Nor is there the difference one might suppose. The small round muff that sprang up this winter in the smarter shops won by only a week over the cheaper stores. Tan gaiters ran a pretty race. And I am now witness to a dead heat in a certain kind of fluffy rosebud dress. The fabrics are probably different, but no matter how you deny it, they are cut to a common pattern.

In a poorer part of the city still nearer to the East River, where smells of garlic and worse issue from cellarways, I came recently on a considerable park. It was supplied with swings and teeters and drew children on its four fronts. Of a consequence the children of many races played together. I caught a Yiddish answer to an Italian question. I fancy that a child here could go forth at breakfast wholly a Hungarian and come home with a smack of Russian or Armenian added. The general games that merged the smaller groups, aided in the fusion. If this park is not already named--a small chance, for it shows the marks of age--it might properly be called _The Park of the Thirty Nations_.

Or my inclination may take me to the lower city. Like a poor starveling I wander in the haunts of wealth where the buildings are piled to forty stories, and I spin out the ciphers in my brain in an endeavor to compute the amount that is laid up inside. Also, lest I become discontented with my poverty, I note the strain and worry of the faces that I meet. There is a story of Tolstoi in which a man is whispered by his god that he may possess such land as he can circle in a day. Until that time he had been living on a fertile slope of sun and shadow, with fields ample for his needs. But when the whisper came, at a flash, he pelted off across the hills. He ran all morning, but as the day advanced his sordid ambition broadened and he turned his course into a wider and still wider circle. Here a pleasant valley tempted him and he bent his path to bring it inside his mark. Here a fruitful upland led him off. As the day wore on he ran with a greater fierceness, because he knew he would lose everything if he did not reach his starting place before the sun went down. The sun was coming near the rim of earth when he toiled up the last hill. His feet were cut by stones, his face pinched with agony. He staggered toward the goal and fell across it while as yet there was a glint of light. But his effort burst his heart. Does the analogy hold on these narrow streets? To a few who sit in an inner office, Mammon has made a promise of wealth and domination. These few run breathless to gain a mountain. But what have the gods whispered to the ten thousand who sit in the outer office, that they bend and blink upon their ledgers? Have the gods whispered to them the promise of great wealth? Alas, before them there lies only the dust and heat of a level road, yet they too are broken at the sunset.

Less oppressive are the streets where commerce is more apparent. Here, unless you would be smirched, it is necessary to walk fast and hold your coat-tails in. Packing cases are going down slides. Bales are coming up in hoists. Barrels are rolling out of wagons. Crates are being lifted in. Is the exchange never to stop? Is no warehouse satisfied with what it has? English, which until now you judged a soft concordant language, shows here its range and mastery of epithet. And all about, moving and jostling the boxes, are men with hooks. One might think that in a former day Captain Cuttle had settled here to live and that his numerous progeny had kept the place.

Often I ride on a bus top like a maharajah on an elephant, up near the tusks, as it were, where the view is unbroken. I plan this trip so that I move counter to the procession that goes uptown in the late afternoon. Is there a scene like it in the world? The boulevards of Paris in times of peace are hardly so gay. Fifth Avenue is blocked with motor cars. Fashion has gone forth to select a feather. A ringlet has gone awry and must be mended. The Pomeranian's health is served by sunlight. The Spitz must have an airing. Fashion has wagged its head upon a Chinese vase--has indeed squinted at it through a lorgnette against a fleck--and now lolls home to dinner. Or style has veered an inch, and it has been a day of fitting. At restaurant windows one may see the feeding of the over-fed. Men sit in club windows and still wear their silk hats as though there was no glass between them and the windy world. Footmen in boots and breeches sit as stiffly as though they were toys grown large and had metal spikes below to hold them to their boxes. They look like the iron firemen that ride on nursery fire-engines. For all these sights the bus top is the best place.

And although we sit on a modest roof, the shopkeepers cater to us. For in many of the stores, is there not an upper tier of windows for our use? The commodities of this second story are quite as fine as those below. And the waxen beauties who display the frocks greet us in true democracy with as sweet a simper.

My friend G---- while riding recently on a bus top met with an experience for which he still blushes.

There was a young woman sitting directly in front of him, and when he came to leave, a sudden lurch threw him against her. When he recovered his footing, which was a business of some difficulty, for the bus pitched upon a broken pavement, what was his chagrin to find that a front button of his coat had hooked in her back hair! Luckily G---- was not seized with a panic. Rather, he labored cautiously--but without result. Nor could she help in the disentanglement. Their embarrassment might have been indefinitely prolonged--indeed, G---- was several blocks already down the street--when he bethought him of his knife and so cut off the button. As he pleasantly expressed it to the young woman, he would give her the choice of the button or the coat entire.

Reader, are you inclined toward ferry boats? I cannot include those persons who journey on them night and morning perfunctorily. These persons keep their noses in their papers or sit snugly in the cabin. If the market is up, they can hardly be conscious even that they are crossing a river. Nor do I entirely blame them. If one kept shop on a breezy tip of the Delectable Mountains with all the regions of the world laid out below, he could not be expected to climb up for the hundredth time with a first exhilaration, or to swing his alpenstock as though he were on a rare holiday. If one had business across the Styx too often--although the scenery on its banks is reputed to be unusual--he might in time sit below and take to yawning. Father Charon might have to jog his shoulder to rouse him when the boat came between the further piers.

But are you one of those persons who, not being under a daily compulsion, rides upon a ferry boat for the love of the trip? Being in this class myself, I laid my case the other night before the gateman, and asked his advice regarding routes. He at once entered sympathetically into my distemper and gave me a plan whereby with but a single change of piers I might at an expense of fourteen cents cross the river four times at different angles.

It was at the end of day and a light fog rested on the water. Nothing was entirely lost, yet a gray mystery wrapped the ships and buildings. If New Jersey still existed it was dim and shadowy as though its real life had gone and but a ghost remained. Ferry boats were lighted in defiance of the murk, and darted here and there at reckless angles. An ocean liner was putting out, and several tugs had rammed their noses against her sides. There is something engaging about a tug. It snorts with eagerness. It kicks and splashes. It bursts itself to lend a hand. And how it butts with its nose! Surely its forward cartilages are of triple strength, else in its zest it would jam its nasal passages.

Presently we came opposite lower New York. Although the fog concealed the outlines of the buildings, their lights showed through. This first hour of dark is best, before the day's work is done and while as yet all of the windows are lighted. The Woolworth Tower was suffused in a soft and shadowy light. The other buildings showed like mountains of magic pin-pricks. It was as though all the constellations of heaven on a general bidding had met for conference.

The man of Grub Street, having by this time somewhat dispelled the fumes of dullness from his head, descends from his ferry boat and walks to his quiet park. There is a dull roar from the elevated railway on Third Avenue where the last of the day's crowd goes home. The sidewalks are becoming empty. There is a sheen of water on the pavement. In the winter murk there is a look of Thackeray about the place as though the Sedleys or the Osbornes might be his neighbors. If there were a crest above his bell-pull he might even expect Becky Sharp in for tea.

Now that Spring is here

When the sun set last night it was still winter. The persons who passed northward in the dusk from the city's tumult thrust their hands deep into their pockets and walked to a sharp measure. But a change came in the night. The north wind fell off and a breeze blew up from the south. Such stars as were abroad at dawn left off their shrill winter piping--if it be true that stars really sing in their courses--and pitched their voices to April tunes. One star in particular that hung low in the west until the day was up, knew surely that the Spring had come and sang in concert with the earliest birds. There is a dull belief that these early birds shake off their sleep to get the worm. Rather, they come forth at this hour to cock their ears upon the general heavens for such new tunes as the unfaded stars still sing. If an ear is turned down to the rummage of worms in the earth--for to the superficial, so does the attitude attest--it is only that the other ear may be turned upward to catch the celestial harmonies; for birds know that if there is an untried melody in heaven it will sound first across the clear pastures of the dawn. All the chirping and whistling from the fields and trees are then but the practice of the hour. When the meadowlark sings on a fence-rail she but cons her lesson from the stars.