I have stood at this window for ten minutes together. There are cards for fortune tellers and manuals of astrology, decks with five aces and marked backs, and trick hats and boxes with false bottoms. There are iron cigars to be offered to a friend, and bleeding fingers, and a device that makes a noise like blowing the nose, "only much louder."
Books of magic are displayed, and conjurers" outfits--sh.e.l.l games and disappearing rabbits. There is a line of dribble-gla.s.ses--a humorous contrivance with little holes under the brim for spilling water down the front of an unwary guest. This, it is a.s.serted, breaks the social ice and makes a timid stranger feel at home. And there are puzzle pictures, beards for villains and comic masks--Satan himself, and other painted faces for Hallowe"en.
Some persons, of course, can perform their parlor tricks without this machinery and appliance. I know a gifted fellow who can put on the expression of an idiot. Or he wrinkles his face into the semblance of eighty years, shakes with palsy and asks his tired wife if she will love him when he"s old. Again he puts a coffee cup under the shoulder of his coat and plays the humpback. On a special occasion he mounts a table--or two kitchen chairs become his stage--and recites Richard and the winter of his discontent. He needs only a pillow to smother Desdemona. And then he opens an imaginary bottle--the popping of the cork, the fizzing, the gurgle when it pours. Sometimes he is a squealing pig caught under a fence, and sometimes two steamboats signaling with their whistles in a fog.
I know a young woman--of the newer sort--who appears to swallow a lighted cigarette, with smoke coming from her ears. This was once a man"s trick, but the progress of the weaker s.e.x has shifted it. On request, she is a nervous lady with a fear of monkeys, taking five children to the circus. She is Camille on her deathbed. I know a man, too, who can give the Rebel yell and stick a needle, full length, into his leg. The pulpy part above his knee seems to make an excellent pincushion. And then there is the old locomotive starting on a slippery grade (for beginners in entertainment), the hand-organ man and his infested monkey (a duet), the chicken that is chased around the barnyard, Hamlet with the broken pallet (this is side-splitting in any company) and Moriarty on the telephone. I suppose our best vaudeville performers were once amateurs themselves around the parlor lamp.
And there is Jones, too, who plays the piano. Jones, when he is asked, sits at the keyboard and fingers little runs and chords. He seems to be thinking which of a hundred pieces he will play. "What will you have?"
he asks. And a fat man wants "William Tell," and a lady with a powdered nose asks for "Bubbles." But Jones ignores both and says, "Here"s a little thing of Schumann. It"s a charming bit." On the other hand, when Brown is asked to sing, it is generally too soon after dinner. Brown, evidently, takes his food through his windpipe, and it is, so to speak, a one-way street. He can hardly permit the ascending "Siegfried" to squeeze past the cheese and crackers that still block the crowded pa.s.sage.
There is not a college dinner without the mockery of an eccentric professor. A wag will catch the pointing of his finger, his favorite phrase. Is there a lawyers" dinner without its imitation of Harry Lauder? Isn"t there always someone who wants to sing "It"s Nice to Get Up in the Mornin"," and trot up and down with twinkling legs? Plumbers on their lodge nights, I am told, have their very own Charlie Chaplin.
And I suppose that the soda clerks" union--the dear creatures with their gum--has its local Mary Pickford, ready with a scene from _Pollyanna_.
What jolly dinners dentists must have, telling one another in dialect how old Mrs. Finnigan had her molars out! Forceps and burrs are their unwearied jest across the years. When they are together and the doors are closed, how they must frolic with our weakness!
And undertakers! Even they, I am informed, throw off their solemn countenance when they gather in convention. Their carnation and mournful smile are gone--that sober gesture that waves the chilly relations to the sitting-room. But I wonder whether their dismal shop doesn"t cling always just a bit to their mirth and songs. That poor duffer in the poem who asked to be laid low, wrapped in his tarpaulin jacket--surely, undertakers never sing of him. They must look at him with disfavor for his cheap proposal. He should have roused for a moment at the end, with a request for black broadcloth and silver handles.
I once sat with an undertaker at a tragedy. He was of a lively sympathy in the earlier parts and seemed hopeful that the hero would come through alive. But in the fifth act, when the clanking army was defeated in the wings and Brutus had fallen on his sword, then, unmistakably his thoughts turned to the peculiar viewpoint of his profession. In fancy he sat already in the back parlor with the grieving Mrs. Brutus, arranging for the music.
To undertakers, Caesar is always dead and turned to clay. Falstaff is just a fat old gentleman who drank too much sack, a" babbled of green fields and then needed professional attention. Perhaps at the very pitch of their meetings when the merry gla.s.ses have been three times filled, they pledge one another in what they are pleased to call the embalmers"
fluid. This jest grows rosier with the years. For these many centuries at their banquets they have sung that it was a cough that carried him off, that it was a coffin--Now then, gentlemen! All together for the chorus!--that it was a coffin they carried him off in.
I dined lately with a man who could look like a weasel. When this was applauded, he made a face like the Dude of _Palmer c.o.x"s Brownies_. Even Susan, the waitress, who knows her place and takes a jest soberly, broke down at the pantry door. We could hear her dishes rattling in convulsions in the sink. And then our host played the insect with his fingers on the tablecloth, smelling a spot of careless gravy from the roast with his long thin middle finger. He caught the habit that insects have of waving their forward legs.
I still recall an uncle who could wiggle his ears. He did it every Christmas and Thanksgiving Day. It was as much a part of the regular program as the turkey and the cranberries. It was a feature of his engaging foolery to pretend that the wiggle was produced by rubbing the stomach, and a circle of us youngsters sat around him, rubbing our expectant stomachs, waiting for the miracle. A cousin brought a guitar and played the "Spanish Fandango" while we sat around the fire, sleepy after dinner. And there was a maiden aunt with thin blue fingers, who played waltzes while we danced, and she nodded and slept to the drowsy sound of her own music.
Of my own after-dinner pleasantries I am modest. I have only one trick.
Two. I can recite the fur-bearing animals of North America--the bison, the bear, the wolf, the seal, and sixteen others--and I can go downstairs behind the couch for the cider. This last requires little skill. As the books of magic say, it is an easy and baffling trick. With every step you crook your legs a little more, until finally you are on your knees, hunched together, and your head has disappeared from view.
You reverse the business coming up, with tray and gla.s.ses.
But these are my only tricks. There is a Brahms waltz that I once had hopes of, but it has a hard run on the second page. I can never get my thumb under in time to make connections. My best voice, too, covers only five notes. You cannot do much for the neighbors with that cramped kind of range. "A Tailor There Sat on His Window Ledge" is one of the few tunes that fall inside my poverty. He calls to his wife, you may remember, to bring him his old cross-bow, and there is a great Zum! Zum!
up and down in the ba.s.s until ready, before the chorus starts. On a foggy morning I have quite a formidable voice for those Zums. But after-dinner pleasantries are only good at night and then my ba.s.s is thin. "A Sailor"s Life, Yo, Ho!" is a very good tune but it goes up to D, and I can sing it only when I am reckless of circ.u.mstance, or when I am taking ashes from the furnace. I know a lady who sings only at her sewing-machine. She finds a stirring accompaniment in the whirling of the wheel. Others sing best in tiled bathrooms. Sitting in warm and soapy water their voices swell to Caruso"s. Laundresses, I have noticed, are in l.u.s.tiest voice at their tubs, where their arms keep a vigorous rhythm on the scrubbing-board. But I choose ashes. I am little short of a Valkyr, despite my s.e.x, when I rattle the furnace grate.
With hymns I can make quite a showing in church if the ba.s.s part keeps to a couple of notes. I pound along melodiously on some convenient low note and slide up now and then, by a happy instinct, when the tune seems to require it. The dear little lady, who sits in front of me, turns what I am pleased to think is an appreciative ear, and now and then, for my support, she throws in a pretty treble. But I have no tolerance with a ba.s.s part that undertakes a flourish and climbs up behind the tenor.
This is mere egotism and a desire to shine. "Art thou there, true-penny?
You hear this fellow in the cellarage?" That is the proper ba.s.s.
Dear me! Now that I recall it, we have guests--guests tonight for dinner. Will I be asked to sing? Am I in voice? I tum-a-lum a little, up and down, for experiment. The roar of the subway drowns this from my neighbors, but by holding my hand over my mouth I can hear it. Is my low F in order? No--undeniably, it is not. Thin. And squeaky. The Zums would never do. And that fast run in Brahms? Can I slip through it? Or will my thumb, as usual, catch and stall? Have my guests seen me go down--stairs behind the couch for the cider? Have they heard the fur-bearing animals--the bison, the bear, the wolf, the seal, the beaver, the otter, the fox and racc.o.o.n?
Perhaps--perhaps it will be better to stop at the Trick Shop and buy a dribble-gla.s.s and a long black beard to amuse my guests.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
Little Candles.
High conceit of one"s self and a sureness of one"s opinion are based so insecurely in experience that one is perplexed how their slight structure stands. One marvels why these emphatic builders trust again their glittering towers. Surely anyone who looks into himself and sees its void or malformation ought by rights to shrink from adulation of self, and his own opinion should appear to him merely as one candle among a thousand.
And yet this conceit of self outlasts innumerable failures, and any new pinnacle that is set up, neglecting the broken rubble on the ground and all the wreckage at the base, boasts again of its sure communion with the stars. A man, let us say, has gone headlong from one formula of belief into another. In each, for a time, he burns with a hot conviction. Then his faith cools. His G.o.d no longer nods. But just when you think that failure must have brought him modesty, again he amazes you with the golden prospect of a new adventure. He has climbed in his life a hundred hillocks, thinking each to be a mountain. He has journeyed on many paths, but always has fallen in a bog. Conceit is a thin bubble in the wind, it is an empty froth and breath, yet, hammered into ship-plates, it defies the U-boat.
On every sidewalk, also, we see some fine fellow, dressed and curled to his satisfaction, parading in the sun. An accident of wealth or birth has marked him from the crowd. He has decked his outer walls in gaudy color, but is bare within. He is a cypher, but golden circ.u.mstance, like a figure in the million column, gives him substance. Yet the void cries out on all matters in dispute with firm conviction.
But this cypher need not dress in purple. He is shabby, let us say, and pinched with poverty. Whose fault? Who knows? But does misfortune in itself give wisdom? He is poor. Therefore he decides that the world is sick with pestilence, and accordingly he proclaims himself a doctor. Or perhaps he sits at ease in middle circ.u.mstance. He judges that his is an open mind because he lets a harsh opinion blow upon his ignorance until it flames with hatred. He sets up to be a thinker, and he is resolved to shatter the foundations of a thousand years.
The outer darkness stretches to such a giddy distance! And these thousand candles of belief, flickering in the night, are so insufficient even in their aggregate! Shall a candle wink at flaming Jupiter as an equal? By what persuasion is one"s own tiny wick, shielded in the fingers from misadventure, the greatest light?
Who is there who has read more than a single chapter in the book of life? Most of us have faltered through scarcely a dozen paragraphs, yet we scribble our sure opinion in the margin. We hear a trifling pebble fall in a muddy pool, and we think that we have listened to the pounding of the sea. We hold up our little candle and we consider that its light dispels the general night.
But it has happened once in a while that someone really strikes a larger light and offers it to many travelers for their safety. He holds his candle above his head for the general comfort. And to it there rush the mult.i.tude of those whose candles have been gutted. They relight their wicks, and go their way with a song and cry, to announce their brotherhood. If they see a stranger off the path, they call to him to join their band. And they draw him from the mire.
And sometimes this company respects the other candles that survive the wind. They confess with good temper that their glare, also, is sufficient; that there is, indeed, more than one path across the night.
But sometimes in their intensity--in their sureness of exclusive salvation--they fall to bickering. One band of converts elbows another.
There is a mutual lifting of the nose in scorn, an amused contempt, or they come to blows and all candles are extinguished. And sometimes, with candles out, they travel onward, still telling one another of their band how the darkness flees before them.
We live in a world of storm, of hatred, of blind conceit, of shrill and intolerant opinion. The past is worshiped. The past is scorned. Some wish only to kiss the great toe of old convention. Others shout that we must run bandaged in the dark, if we would prove our faith in G.o.d and man. It is the best of times, and the worst of times. It is the dawn. We grope toward midnight. Our fathers were saints in judgment. Our fathers were fools and rogues. Let"s hold minutely to the past! Any change is sacrilege. Let"s rip it up! Let"s destroy it altogether!
We"ll kill him and stamp on him: He"s a Montague. We"ll draw and quarter him: He"s a Capulet. He"s a radical: He must be hanged. A conservative: His head shall decorate our pike.
A plague on both your houses!
Panaceas are hawked among us, each with a magic to cure our ills.
Universal suffrage is a leap to perfection. Tax reform will bring the golden age. With capital and interest smashed, we shall live in heaven.
The soviet, the recall from office, the six-hour day, the demands of labor, mark the better path. The greater clamor of the crowd is the guide to wisdom. Men with black beards and ladies with cigarettes say that machine-guns and fire and death are pills that are potent for our good. We live in a welter of quarrel and disagreement. One pictures a mighty shelf with bottles, and doctors running to and fro. The poor world is on its back, opening its mouth to every spoon. By the hubbub in the pantry--the yells and scuffling at the sink--we know that drastic and contrary cures are striving for the mastery.
There was a time when beacons burned on the hills to be our guidance.
The flames were fed and moulded by the experience of the centuries. Men might differ on the path--might even scramble up a dozen different slopes--but the hill-top was beyond dispute.
But now the great fires smoulder. The Const.i.tution, it is said,--pecked at since the first,--must now be carted off and sold as junk. Art has torn down its older standards. The colors of t.i.tian are in the dust.
Poets no longer bend the knee to Shakespeare.
Conceit is a pilot who scorns the harbor lights--
Modesty was once a virtue. Patience, diligence, thrift, humility, charity--who pays now a tribute to them? Charity is only a sop, it seems, that is thrown in fright to the swift wolves of revolution.
Humility is now a weakness. Diligence is despised. Thrift is the advice of cowards. Who now cares for the lessons that experience and tested fact once taught? Ignorance sits now in the highest seat and gives its orders, and the clamor of the crowd is its high authority.
And what has become of modesty? A maid once was prodigal if she unmasked her beauty to the moon. Morality? Let"s all laugh together. It"s a quaint old word.
Tolerance is the last study in the school of wisdom. Lord! Lord! Tonight let my prayer be that I may know that my own opinion is but a candle in the wind!
A Visit to a Poet.
Not long ago I accepted the invitation of a young poet to visit him at his lodging. As my life has fallen chiefly among merchants, lawyers and other practical folk, I went with much curiosity.
My poet, I must confess, is not entirely famous. His verses have appeared in several of the less known papers, and a judicious printer has even offered to gather them into a modest sheaf. There are, however, certain vile details of expense that hold up the project. The printer, although he confesses their merit, feels that the poet should bear the cost.