It was thus, then, as an amateur that Stevenson looked on street paving--the even rows of cobbles, the nice tapping to fit the stones against the curb, the neat joint around the drain. And yet, unpardonably, he neglects the tarpot; and this seems the very soul of the business, the finishing touch--almost culinary, as when a cook pours on a chocolate sauce.
I remember pleasantly when our own street was paved. There had been laid a waterpipe, deep down where the earth was yellow--surely gold was near--and several of us young rascals climbed in and out in the twilight when work was stopped. By fits we were both mountaineers and miners. There was an agreeable ga.s.sy smell as if we neared the lower regions. Here was a playground better than the building of a barn, even with its dizzy ladders and the scaffolding around the chimney. Or we hid in the great iron pipes that lay along the gutters, and followed our leader through them home from school. But when the pipes were lowered into place and the surface was cobbled but not yet sanded, then the tarpot yielded gum for chewing. At any time after supper a half dozen of us--blacker daubs against the darkness--might have been seen squatting on the stones, scratching at the tar.
Blackjack, bought at the corner, had not so full a flavor. But one had to chew forward in the mouth--lightly, lest the tar adhere forever to the 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? What circ.u.mstance or necessity drives them? Does choice, after all, always yield to a contrary wind and run for any port? Is hunger always the helmsman? How many of us, after due appraisal of ourselves, really choose our own parts in the mighty drama?--first citizen or second, with our shrill voices for a moment above the crowd--first citizen or second--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, and lace and sword, strutting forward near the lights.
Meditating thus, I frequently poke about the city in the end of afternoon "when the mind of your man of letters requires some relaxation." I peer into shop windows, not so much for the wares displayed as for glimpses of the men and women engaged in their disposal. I watch laborers trudging home with the tired clink of their implements and pails. I gaze into cellarways where tailor and cobbler sit bent upon their work--needle and peg, their world--and through fouled windows into workrooms, to learn which livelihoods yield the truest happiness. For it is, on the whole, a whistling rather than a grieving world, and like little shouts among the hills is laughter echoed in the heart.
I can well understand how one can become a baker or even a small grocer with a pencil behind his ear. I could myself honestly recommend an apple--an astrachan for sauces--or, in the season, offer asparagus with something akin to enthusiasm. Cranberries, too, must be an agreeable consort of the autumn months when the air turns frosty. I would own a cat with a dusty nose to rub along the barrels and sleep beneath the stove. I would carry dried meats in stock were it only for the electric slicing machine. And whole cheeses! Or to a man of romantic mind an old bra.s.s shop may have its lure. To one of musty turn, who would sit apart, there is something to be said for the repair of violins and "cellos. At the least he sweetens discord into melody.
But I would not willingly keep a second-hand bookshop. It is too cluttered a business. There is too free a democracy between good and bad. It was Dean Swift who declared that collections of books made him melancholy, "where the best author is as much squeezed and as obscure as a porter at a coronation." Nor is it altogether rea.s.suring for one who is himself by way of being an author to view the certain neglect that awaits him when attics are cleared at last. There is too leathery a smell upon the premises, a thick deposit of mortality. I draw a deep breath when I issue on the street, grateful for the sunlight and the wind. However, I frequently put my head in at Pratt"s around the corner, sometimes by chance when the family are a.s.sembled for their supper in one of the book alcoves. They have swept back a litter of historians to make room for the tray of dishes. To cut them from the shop they have drawn a curtain in front of their nook, but I can hear the teapot bubbling on the counter. There is, also, a not unsavory smell which, if my old nose retains its cunning, is potato stew, fetched up from the kitchen. If you seek Gibbon now, Pratt"s face will show like a withered moon between the curtains and will request you to call later when the dishes have been cleared.
No one works in cleaner produce than carpenters. They are for the most part a fatherly whiskered tribe and they eat their lunches neatly from a pail, their backs against the wall, their broad toes upturned. I look suspiciously on painters, however, who present themselves for work like slopped and shoddy harlequins, and although I have myself pa.s.sed a delightful afternoon painting a wooden fence at the foot of the garden--and been sc.r.a.ped afterwards--I would not wish to be of their craft.
But perhaps one is of restless habit and a peripatetic occupation may be recommended. For a bachelor of small expense, at a hazard, a wandering fruit and candy cart offers the venture and chance of unfamiliar journeys. There is a breed of lollypop on a stick that shows a handsome profit when the children come from school. Also, at this minute, I hear below me on the street the flat bell of the scissors-grinder. I know not what skill is required, yet it needs a pretty eye and even foot. The ragman takes to an ancestral business and chants the ancient song of his fathers. When distance has somewhat m.u.f.fled its nearer sharpness, the song bears a melody unparalleled among tradesmen"s cries. Window gla.s.s, too, is hawked pleasantly from house to house and requires but a knife and putty. In the spring the vegetable vender, standing in his wagon, utters melodious sounds that bring the housewives to their windows. Once, also, by good luck, I fell into acquaintance with a fellow who peddled brooms and dustpans along the countryside. He was hung both front and back with cheap commodities--a necklace of scrubbing brushes--tins jangling against his knees. A very kitchen had become biped. A pantry had gone on pilgrimage. Except for dogs, which seemed maddened by his strange appearance, it was, he informed me, an engaging livelihood for a man who chafed indoors. Or for one of dreamy disposition the employment of a sandwich man, with billboards fore and aft, offers a profitable repose. Sometimes several of these philosophers journey together up the street in a crowded hour, one behind another with slow introspective step, as befits their high preoccupation.
Or one has an ear, and the street-organ commends itself. Observe the musician at the corner, hat in hand and smiling! Let but a curtain stir and his eye will catch it. He hears a falling penny as "twere any nightingale. His tunes are the herald of the gaudy spring. His are the dancing measures of the sunlight. And is anyone a surer judge of human nature? He allows dyspeptics to slink along the fence. Those of bilious aspect may go their ways unchallenged. Spare me those, he says, who have not music in their souls: they are fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. It was with a flute that the poet Goldsmith starved his way through France. Yet the flute is a cold un-stirring instrument. He would have dined the oftener had he pitched upon a street-organ.
But in this Christmas season there is a man goes up and down among the shoppers blowing shrill tunes upon a pipe. A card upon his hat announces that it is music makes the home and that one of his marvelous implements may be bought for the trifling and altogether insignificant sum of ten cents. A reticule across his stomach bulges with his pipes. He seems to manipulate the stops with his fingers, but I fancy that he does no more than sing into the larger opening. Yet his gay tune sounds above the traffic.
I have wondered where such seasonal professions recruit themselves.
The eyegla.s.s man still stands at his corner with his tray. He is, moreover, too sodden a creature to play upon a pipe. Nor is there any dwindling of shoe-lace peddlers. The merchants of popcorn have not fallen off in number, and peanuts hold up strong. Rather, these Christmas musicians are of the tribe which at other festivals sell us little flags and bid us show our colors. They come from country fairs and circuses. All summer long they bid us gather for the fat man, or they cry up the beauties of a Turkish harem. If some valiant fellow in a painted tent is about to swallow gla.s.s, they are his horn and drum to draw the crowd. I once knew a side-show man who bent iron bars between his teeth and who summoned stout men from his audience to swing upon the bar, but I cannot believe that he has discharged the bawling rascal at his door. I rather choose to think that the piper was one of those self-same artists who, on lesser days, squeeze comic rubber faces in their fingers, or make the monkey climb its predestined stick.
Be this as it may, presently the piper hit on a persuasive tune and I abandoned all thought of the Noah"s ark--my errand of the morning for my nephew--and joined the crowd that followed him. Hamelin Town was come again. But street violins I avoid. They suggest mortgages and unpaid rent.
But with the world before him why should a man turn dentist? He must have been a cruel fellow from his rattle. When did his malicious ambition first sprout up towards molars and bicuspids? Or who would scheme to be a plumber? He is a cellarer--alas, how shrunk from former days! Or consider the tailor! Perhaps you recall Elia"s estimate. "Do you ever see him," he asks, "go whistling along the foot-path like a carman, or brush through a crowd like a baker, or go smiling to himself like a lover?"
Certainly I would not wish to be a bookkeeper and sit bent all day over another"s wealth. I would not want to bring in on lifted fingers the 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 at the rear. A gas lamp flares at the turn. A dingy staircase mounts into a thicker gloom. The locksmith consorts with p.a.w.nbrokers, with cheap sign-makers and with disreputable doctors; yet he is not of them. For there adheres to him a sort of romance. He is a creature of another time, set in our midst by the merest chance. The domestic cat, descended from the jungle, is not more shrunk. Keys have fallen on evil days. Observe the mighty row of them hung discarded along his boxes! Each one is fit to unlock a castle. Warwick itself might yield to 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 his master"s shutter! In a musty play, observe the jailor at the dungeon door! Without ma.s.sive keys jingling at the belt the older drama must have 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 the flower! That mournful smile! That perfect grief! And yet, I am told, undertakers, after hours, go singing home to supper, and spend their evenings 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 how cheerfully the joint went round. One of this sober cloth, moreover, has confided to me that they let themselves loose, above all professions, in their reunions and conventions. If an unusual riot issues from the door and a gay fellow goes walking on the table it is sure that either lawyers or undertakers sit inside.
For myself, if I were to become a merchant, I would choose a shop at a four-corners in the country, and I would stock from shoe-laces to plows. There is no virtue in keeping store in the city. It is merely by favor that customers show themselves. Candidly, your compet.i.tor can better supply their wants. This is not so at the four-corners. Nor is anyone a more influential citizen than a country merchant. He sets the style in calicoes. He judges between check and stripe. His decision against a high heel flattens the housewives by an inch. But if I kept such a country store, I would provide an open fire and, when the shadows lengthened, an easy chair or two for gossips.
I was meditating lately on these strange preferences in livelihoods and was gazing through the city windows for any clue when I was reminded of a tempting scheme that Wee Jessie--a delightful Scots-woman of my acquaintance--has planned for several of us.
We are to be traveling merchants for a season, with a horse and wagon or a motor. My own preference is a motor, and already I see a vehicle painted in bright colors and opening up behind as s.p.a.cious as a waffle cart. There will be windows all around for the display of goods. It is not quite fixed what we shall sell. Wee Jessie leans toward bonnets and little millinery odds and ends. I am for kitchen tins. M---- inclines toward drygoods, serviceable fabrics. It is thought that we shall live on the roof while on tour, with a canvas to draw on wet nights. We shall possess a horn--on which Wee Jessie once practiced in her youth--to gather up the crowd when we enter a village.
Fancy us, therefore, my dear sir, as taking the road late this coming spring in time to spread the summer"s fashions. And if you hear our horn 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 pa.s.s a few days where there lives a dear little boy of less than three. My first knowledge of him every morning is the smothered scuffling through the part.i.tion as he reluctantly splashes in his bath. Here, unless he mend his caution, I fear he will never learn to play the porpoise at the Zoo. Then there is a wee tapping at my door. It is a fairy sound as though Mustard-seed were in the 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 if I sleep with even one ear inside the covers I will not hear it.
The little lad stands in the dim pa.s.sage to greet me, fully dressed, to reproach me with my tardiness. He is a mite of a fellow, but he is as wide awake and shiny as though he were a part of the morning and had been wrought delicately out of the dawn"s first ray. Indeed, I choose to fancy that the sun, being off hurriedly on broader business, has made him his agent for the premises. Particularly he a.s.sists in this pa.s.sage at my bedroom door where the sleepy Night, which has not yet caught the summons, still stretches and nods beyond the turn. It is so dark here on a winter"s morning when the nursery door is shut that even an adventuring sunlight, if it chanced to clamber through the window, would blink and falter in the hazard of these turns. But the sun has sent a subst.i.tute better than himself: for is there not a shaft of light along the floor? It can hardly fall from the window or anywhere from the outside world.
The little lad stands in the pa.s.sage 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 so solemn that the jest is doubled. And now he runs off, jouncing and stiff-legged to his nursery. I hear him dragging his animals from his ark, telling them all that they are lazybones, even his barking dog and roaring lion. Noah, when he saw on that first morning that his ark was grounded on Ararat, did not rouse his beasts so early to leave the ship.
Later I meet the lad at breakfast, locked in his high chair. In these riper hours of day there is less of Cobweb in his composition. He is now every inch a boy. He raps his spoon upon his tray. He hurls food in the general direction of his mouth. If an ear escape the a.s.sault it is gunnery beyond the common. He is bibbed against misadventure. This morning he yearns loudly for m.u.f.fins, which he calls "b.u.ms." He chooses those that are unusually brown with a smudge of the cooking-tin, and these he calls "dirty b.u.ms."
Such is my nephew--a round-cheeked, blue-eyed rogue who takes my thumb in all his fingers when we go walking. His jumpers are slack behind and they wag from side to side in an inexpressibly funny manner, but this I am led to believe springs not from any special genius but is common to all children. It is only recently that he learned to walk, for although he was forward with his teeth and their early sprouting ran in gossip up the street, yet he lagged in locomotion. Previously he advanced most surely on his seat--his slider, as he called it--throwing out his legs and curling them in under so as to draw him after. 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 was quite an unusual method and that it presaged some rare talent for his future, as the scorn of a rattle is said to predict a judge. It was during one of these advances across the kitchen floor where the boards are rough that an accident occurred. As he excitedly put it, with a fitting gesture to the rear, he got a sliver in his slider. But now he goes upon his feet with a waddle like a sailor, and he wags his slider from side to side.
Sometimes we play at hide-and-seek and we pop out at one another from behind the sofa. He lacks ingenuity in this, for he always hides in the same place. I have tempted him for variety to stow himself in the woodbox. Or the pantry would hold him if he squeezed in among the brooms. Nor does my ingenuity surpa.s.s his, for regularly in a certain order I shake the curtains at the door and spy under the table. I stir the wastebasket and peer within the vases, although they would hardly hold his shoe. Then when he is red-hot to be found and is already peeking impatiently around the sofa, at last I cry out his discovery and we begin all over again.
I play ball with him and bounce it off his head, a game of more mirth in the acting than in the telling. Or we squeeze his animals for the noises that they make. His lion in particular roars as though lungs were its only tenant. But chiefly I am fast in his friendship because I 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 over his blocks; at which we call it a game, and begin again. He has named the 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 worth endless repet.i.tion. If I strike a rich deep tone upon the Burmese gong, I must continue to strike upon it until I can draw his attention to something else. Once, the cook, hearing the din, thought that I hinted for my dinner. Being an obliging creature, she fell into such a flurry and so stirred her pans to push the cooking forward, that presently she burned the meat.
Or if I moo like a cow, I must moo until sunset. I rolled off the sofa once to distract him when the ugly world was too much with him.
Immediately he brightened from his complaint and demanded that I do it once more. And lately, when a puppy bounced out of the house next door and, losing its footing, rolled heels over head to the bottom of the steps, at once he pleaded for an encore. To him all the world"s a stage.
My nephew observes me closely to see what kind of fellow I am. I study him, too. He watches me over the top of his mug at breakfast and I stare back at him over my coffee cup. If I wrinkle my nose, he wrinkles his. If I stick out my tongue, he sticks his out, too. He answers wink with wink. When I pet his woolly lamb, however, he seems to wonder at my absurdity. When I wind up his steam engine, certainly he 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 dizzy battlements topping all the country, he brushes them into ruin.
Sometimes I fancy that his glance is mixed with scorn, and that he considers my attempts to amuse him as rather a silly business. I wonder what he thinks about when he looks at me seriously. I cannot doubt his wisdom. He seems to resemble a philosopher who has traveled to us from a distant world. If he cast me a sentence from Plato, I would say, "Master, I listen." Is it Greek he speaks, or a dark language from a corner of the sky? He has a far-off look as though he saw quite through these superficial affairs of earth. His eyes have borrowed the color of his wanderings and they are as blue as the depths beyond the moon. And I think of another child, somewhat older than himself, whose tin soldiers these many years are rusted, a thoughtful silent child who was asked, once upon a time, what he did when 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 few winters, the sun of summer, the revolving stars and seasons--until this lad now serves in France.
My nephew, although he too roams these distant s.p.a.ces of philosophic thought and brings back strange unexpected treasure, has not arrived at the age of mere terrestrial exploration. He is quite ignorant of his own house and has no curiosity about the back stairs--the back stairs that go winding darkly from the safety of the kitchen. Scarcely is 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 of adventure. He does not know the mystery and the twistings of the cellar, or the shadows of the upper hallway and the dim hollows that grow and spread across the twilight.
Dear lad, there is a sunny world beyond the garden gate, cities and rolling hills and far-off rivers with white sails going up and down.
There are wide oceans, and ships with tossing lights, and islands set with palm trees. And there are stars above your roof for you to wonder at. But also, nearer home, there are gentle shadows on the stairs, a dim cellar for the friendly creatures of your fancy, and for your exalted mood there is a garret with dark corners. Here, on a braver morning, you may push behind the trunks and boxes and come to a land unutterable where the furthest Crusoe has scarcely ventured. Or in a more 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 long tin dipper. And these misty kingdoms that open so broadly on the world are near at hand. They are yours if you dare to go adventuring for them.
Soon your ambition will leap its nursery barriers. No longer will you be content to sit inside this quiet room and pile your blocks upon the floor. You will be off on discovery of the long trail that lies along the back hall and the pantry where the ways are dark. You will wander in search of the caverns that lie beneath the stairs when the night has come. You will trudge up steps and down for any lurking ocean on which to sail your pirate ships. Already I see you gazing with wistful eyes into the s.p.a.ces beyond the door--into the days of your great adventure. 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 these shadows of the twilight--which too long have been chased like common miscreants with lamp and candle--are really friendly beings and they wait to romp with you. Because thieves have walked in darkness, shall darkness be called a thief? Rather, let the dark hours take their repute from the countless gracious spirits that are abroad--the quieter fancies that flourish when the light has gone--the gentle creatures that leave their hiding when the sun has set. When a rug lies roughened at close of day, it is said truly that a fairy peeps from under to learn if at last the house is safe. And they hide in the hallway for the signal of your coming, yet so timid that if the fire is stirred they scamper beyond the turn. They huddle close beneath the stairs that they may listen to your voice. They come and go on tiptoe when the curtain sways, in the hope that you will follow. With their long 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 this dull safe hearth and will go on pilgrimage. The back stairs sit patient in the dark for your hand upon the door. The great dim garret that has sat nodding for so many years will smile at last at your coming. It has been lonely so long for the glad sound of running feet and laughter. It has been childless so many years.
But once children"s feet played there and romped through the short winter afternoons. A rope hung from post to post and furnished forth a circus. Here giant swings were hazarded. Here children hung from the knees 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 st.u.r.dy 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 pa.s.sing 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 up on tiptoe to turn the door-k.n.o.b at the top. He listens as a prudent explorer should. Cook rattles her tins below, but it is a far-off sound as from another world. Somewhere, doubtless, the friendly milkman"s bell goes jingling up the street. There is a distant barking of familiar dogs. Will it not be better to return to the safe regions and watch the traffic from the window? But here, beckoning, is the great adventure.
The brave die is cast. He advances with outstretched arms into the darkness. Suddenly, behind him, the door swings shut. The sound of cooking-tins is lost. Silence. Silence, except for branches scratching on the roof. But the garret hears the sound of feet, and it rouses itself and rubs its dusky eyes.