Was there a serpent in the garden at peaceful Cranford? Suppose that one of the gay rascals of Dumas, with tall boots and black moustachios, had got in when the tempting moon was up. Could the gentle ladies in their fragile guard of crinoline have withstood this French assault?
Or Camille, perhaps, before she took her cough, settled at Bath and entangled Mr. Pickwick in the Pump Room. Do not a great hat and feather find their victim anywhere? Is not a silken ankle as potent at Bath as in Bohemia? Surely a touch of age and gout is no prevention against the general plague. Nor does a bald head tower above the softer passions. Camille's pretty nose is powdered for the onslaught. She has arranged her laces in dangerous hazard to the eye. And now the bold huzzy undeniably winks at Mr. Pickwick over her pint of "killibeate." She drops her fan with usual consequence. A nod. A smile. A word. At the Assembly—mark her sudden progress and the triumphant end!—they sit together in the shadows of the balcony. "My dear," says Mr. Pickwick, gazing tenderly through his glasses, "my love, my own, will you—bless my soul!—will you share my lodgings at Mrs. Bardell's in Goswell Street?" We are mariners, all of us, coasting in dangerous waters. It is the syren's voice, her white beauty gleaming on the shoal—it is the moon that throws us on the rocks.
And then a dozen dowagers breed the gossip. Duchesses, frail with years, pop and burst with the pleasant secret. There is even greater commotion than at Mr. Pickwick's other disturbing affair with the middle-aged lady in the yellow curl-papers. This previous affair you may recall. He had left his watch by an oversight in the taproom, and he went down to get it when the inn was dark. On the return he took a false direction at the landing and, being misled by the row of boots along the hall, he entered the wrong room. He was in his nightcap in bed when, peeping through the curtains, he saw the aforesaid lady brushing her back hair. A duel was narrowly averted when this startling scandal came to the ears of the lady's lover, Mr. Peter Magnus. Camille, I think, could have kept this sharper scandal to herself. At most, with a prudent finger on her lips, she would have whispered the intrigue harmlessly behind her fan and set herself to snare a duke.
I like to think, also, of the incongruity of throwing Rollo (Rollo the perfect, the Bayard of the nursery, the example of our suffering childhood)—Rollo grown up, of course, and without his aseptic Uncle George—into the gay scandal, let us say, of the Queen's Necklace. Perhaps it is forgotten how he and his little sister Jane went to the Bull Fight in Rome on Sunday morning by mistake. They were looking for the Presbyterian Church, and hand in hand they followed the crowd. It is needless to remind you how Uncle George was vexed. Rollo was a prig. He loved his Sunday school and his hour of piano practice. He brushed his hair and washed his face without compulsion. He even got in behind his ears. He went to bed cheerfully upon a hint. Thirty years ago—I was so pestered—if I could have met Rollo in the flesh I would have lured him to the alleyway behind our barn and pushed him into the manure-pit. In the crisp vernacular of our street, I would have punched the everlasting tar out of him.
It was circumstance that held the Bishop and Rollo down. Isn't Cinderella just a common story of sordid realism until the fairy godmother appears? Except for the pumpkin and a very small foot she would have married the butcher's boy, and been snubbed by her sisters to the end. It was only luck that it was a prince who awakened the Sleeping Beauty. The plumber's assistant might have stumbled by. What was Aladdin without his uncle, the magician? Do princesses still sleep exposed to a golden kiss? Are there lamps for rubbing, discarded now in attics?
Sinbad, with a steady wife, would have stayed at home and become an alderman. Romeo might have married a Montague and lived happily ever after. It was but chance that Titania awakened in the Ass's company—chance that Viola was cast on the coast of Illyria and found her lover. Any of these plots could have been altered by jogging the author's elbow. A bit of indigestion wrecks the crimson shallop. Comedy or tragedy is but the falling of the dice. By the flip of a coin comes the poisoned goblet or the princess.
But my young author's experiment with De Maupassant was not successful. He tells me that hunger caught him in the middle of the afternoon, and that he went forth for a cup of malted milk, which is his weakness. His head was as empty as his stomach.
And yet there are many novels written and even published, and most of them seem to have what pass for plots. Bipeds, undeniably, are set up with some likeness to humanity. They talk from page to page without any squeak of bellows. They live in lodgings and make acquaintance across the air-shaft. They wrestle with villains. They fall in love. They starve and then grow famous. And at last, in all good books, journeys end in lovers' meeting. It is as easy as lying. Only a plot is needed.
And may not anyone set up the puppets? Rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief! You have only to say eenie meenie down the list, and trot out a brunette or a blonde. There is broadcloth in the tiring-box, and swords and velvet; and there is, also, patched wool, and shiny elbows. Your lady may sigh her soul to the Grecian tents, or watch for honest Tom on his motor-cycle. On Venetian balcony and village stoop the stars show alike for lovers and everywhere there are friendly shadows in the night.
Like a master of marionettes, we may pull the puppets by their strings. It is such an easy matter—if once a plot is given—to lift a beggar or to overthrow a rascal. A virtuous puppet can be hoisted to a tinsel castle. A twitching of the thumb upsets the wicked King. Rollo is pitched to his knees before a scheming beauty. And would it not be fun to dangle before the Bishop that little Carmen figure with her daring lace and scarlet stockings?—or to swing the bold Camille by the strings into Mr. Pickwick's arms as the curtain falls?
Was it not Hawthorne who died leaving a notebook full of plots? And Walter Scott, when that loyal, harassed hand of his was shriveled into death, must have had by him a hundred hints for projected books. One author—I forget who he was—bequeathed to another author—the name has escaped me—a memorandum of characters and events. At any author's death there must be a precious salvage. Among the surviving papers there sits at least one dusty heroine waiting for a lover. Here are notes for the Duchess's elopement. Here is a sketch how the deacon proved to be a villain. As old ladies put by scraps of silk for a crazy quilt, shall not an author, also, treasure in his desk shreds of character and odds and ends to make a plot?
Now the truth is, I suspect, that the actual plot has little to do with the merits of a great many of the best books. It is only the bucket that fetches up the water from the well. It is the string that holds the shining beads. Who really cares whether Tom Jones married Sophia? And what does it matter whether Falstaff died in bed or in his boots, or whether Uncle Toby married the widow? It is the mirth and casual adventure by the way that hold our interest.
Some of the best authors, indeed, have not given a thought to their plots until it is time to wind up the volume. When Dickens sent the Pickwick Club upon its travels, certainly he was not concerned whether Tracy Tupman found a wife. He had not given a thought to Sam's romance with the pretty housemaid at Mr. Nupkins's. The elder Mrs. Weller's fatal cough was clearly a happy afterthought. Thackeray, at the start, could hardly have foreseen Esmond's marriage. When he wrote the early chapters of "Vanity Fair," he had not traced Becky to her shabby garret of the Elephant at Pumpernickel. Dumas, I have no doubt, wrote from page to page, careless of the end. Doubtless he marked Milady for a bad end, but was unconcerned whether it would be a cough or noose. Victor Hugo did no more than follow a trail across the mountains of his invention, content with the kingdoms of each new turning.
In these older and more deliberate books, if a young lady smiled upon the hero, it was not already schemed whether they would be lovers, with the very manner of his proposal already set. The glittering moon was not yet bespoken for the night. "My dear young lady," this older author thinks, "you have certainly very pretty eyes and I like the way that lock of brown hair rests against your ear, but I am not at all sure that I shall let you marry my hero. Please sit around for a dozen chapters while I observe you. I must see you in tweed as well as silk. Perhaps you have an ugly habit of whining. Or safe in a married state you might wear a mob-cap in to breakfast. I'll send my hero up to London for his fling. There is an actress I must have him meet. I'll let him frolic through the winter. On his return he may choose between you."
"My dear madam," another of these older authors meditates, "how can I judge you on a first acquaintance? Certainly you talk loosely for an honest wife. It is too soon, as yet, to know how far your flirtation leads. I must observe you with Mr. Fopling in the garden after dinner. If, later, I grow dull and my readers nod, your elopement will come handy."
Nor was a lady novelist of the older school less deliberate. When a bold adventurer appears, she holds her heroine to the rearward of her affection. "I'll make no decision yet for Lady Emily," she thinks. "This gay fellow may have a wife somewhere. His smooth manner with the ladies comes with practice. It is soon enough if I decide upon their affair in my second volume. Perhaps, after all, the captain may prove to be the better man."
And yet this spacious method requires an ample genius. A smaller writer must take a map and put his finger beforehand on his destination. When a hero fares forth singing in the dawn, the author must know at once his snug tavern for the night. The hazard of the morning has been matched already with a peaceful twilight. The seeds of time are planted, the very harvest counted when the furrow's made. My heart goes out to that young author who sits locked in his study, munching his barren apple. He must perfect his scenario before he starts. How easy would be his task, if only he could just begin, "Once upon a time," and follow his careless contrivance.
I know a teacher who has a full-length novel unpublished and concealed. Sometimes, I fancy, at midnight, when his Latin themes are marked, he draws forth its precious pages. He alters and smooths his sentences while the household sleeps. And even in his classroom, as he listens to the droning of a conjugation, he leaps to horse. Little do his students suspect, as they stutter with their verbs, that with their teacher, heedless of convention, rides the dark lady of his swift adventure.
I look with great awe on an acquaintance who averages more than one story a week and publishes them in a periodical called Frisky Stories. He shifts for variety among as many as five or six pen-names. And I marvel at a friend who once wrote a story a day for a newspaper syndicate. But his case was pathetic. When I saw him last, he was sitting on a log in the north forest, gloomily estimating how many of his wretched stories would cover the wood-pulp of the state. His health was threatened. He was resting from the toil
| "Of dropping buckets into empty wells, |
| And growing old in drawing nothing up." |
From all this it must appear that the real difficulty is in finding a sufficient plot. The start of a plot is easy, but it is hard to carry it on and end it. I myself, on any vacant morning, could get a hero tied hand and foot inside a cab, but then I would not know where to drive him. I have thought, in an enthusiastic moment, that he might be lowered down a manhole through the bottom of the cab. This is an unprecedented villainy, and I have gone so far as to select a lonely manhole in Gramercy Park around the corner from the Players' Club. But I am lost how my hero could be rescued. Covered with muck, I could hardly hope that his lady would go running to his arms. I have, also, a pretty pencil for a fight in the ancient style, with swords upon a stairway. But what then? And what shall I do with the gallant Percival de Vere, after he has slid down the rope from his beetling dungeon tower? As for ladies—I could dress up the pretty creatures, but would they move or speak upon my bidding? No one would more gladly throw a lady and gentleman on a desert island. At a pinch I flatter myself I could draw a roaring lion. But in what circumstance should the hungry cannibals appear? These questions must tax a novelist heavily.
Or might I not, for copy, strip the front from that building opposite?
| "The whole of the frontage shaven sheer, |
| The inside gaped: exposed to day, |
| Right and wrong and common and queer, |
| Bare, as the palm of your hand, it lay." |
Every room contains a story. That chair, the stove, the very tub for washing holds its secrets. The stairs echo with the tread of a dozen lives. And in every crowd upon the street I could cast a stone and find a hero. There is a seamstress somewhere, a locksmith, a fellow with a shovel. I need but the genius to pluck out the heart of their mystery. The rumble of the subway is the friction of lives that rub together. The very roar of cities is the meshing of our human gear.
I dream of this world I might create. In romantic mood, a castle lifts its towers into the blue dome of heaven. I issue in spirit with Jeanne d'Arc from the gate of Orleans, and I play the tragedy with changing scene until the fires of Rouen have fallen into ashes. I sail the seas with Raleigh. I scheme with the hump-backed Richard. Out of the north, with wind and sunlight, my hero comes singing to his adventures.
It would be glorious fun to create a world, to paint a valley in autumn colors and set up a village at the crossroads. Housewives chatter at their wash-lines. Wheels rattle on the wooden bridge. Old men doze on the grocery bench. And now let's throw the plot, at a hazard, around the lovely Susan, the grocer's clerk. For her lover we select a young garage-man, the jest of the village, who tinkers at an improvement of a carburetor. The owner of a thousand acres on the hill shall be our villain—a wastrel and a gambler. There is a mortgage on his acres. He is pressed for payment. He steals the garage-man's blueprints. And now it is night. Susan dearly loves a movie. The Orpheum is eight miles off. Painted Cupids. Angels with trumpets. The villain. An eight-cylindered runabout. Susan. B-r-r-r-r! The movie. The runabout again. A lonely road. Just a kiss, my pretty girl. Help! Help! Chug! Chug! Aha! Foiled! The garage-man. You cur! You hound! Take that! And that! Susan. The garage-man. The blueprints. Name the happy day. Oh, joy! Oh, bliss!
It would be fun to model these little worlds and set them up to cool.
Is it any wonder that there are a million stars across the night? God Himself enjoyed the vast creation of His worlds. It was the evening and the morning of the sixth day when He set his puppets moving in their stupendous comedy.
Circus Days.
THERE have been warm winds out of the south for several days, soft rains have teased the daffodils into blossom along the fences, and this morning I heard the first clicking of a lawn-mower. It seems but yesterday that winter was tugging at the chimneys, that March freshets were brawling in the gutters; but, with the shifting of the cock upon the steeple, the spring comes from its hiding in the hills. At this moment, to prove the changing of the season, a street organ plays beneath my window. It is a rather miserable box and is stocked with sentimental tunes for coaxing nickels out of pity. Its inlaid mahogany is soiled with travel. It has a peg-leg and it hangs around the musician's neck as if weary of the road. "Master," it seems to say, "may we sit awhile? My old stump is wearing off." And yet on this warm morning in the sunlight there is almost a touch of frolic in the box. A syncopation attempts a happier temper. It has sniffed the fragrant air, and desires to put a better face upon its troubles.
The housemaid next door hangs out the Monday's garments to dry, and there is a pleasant flapping of legs and arms as if impatient for partners in a dance. Must a petticoat sit unasked when the music plays? Surely breeches and stockings will not hold back when a lively skirt shall beckon. A slow waltz might even tempt aunty's night-gown off the line. If only a vegetable man would come with a cart of red pieplant and green lettuce and offer his gaudy wares along the street, then the evidence of spring would be complete.
But there is even better evidence at hand. This morning I noticed that a circus poster had been pasted on the billboard near the school-house. Several children and I stopped to see the wonders that were promised. Then the school-bell rang and they dawdled off. At Stratford, also, once upon a time, boys with shining morning faces crept like snails to school. Were there circus billboards in so remote a day? The pundits, bleared with search, are strangely silent. This morning it will be a shrewd lesson that keeps the children's thoughts from leaping out the window. Two times two will hardly hold their noses on the desk.
On the billboard there is the usual blonde with pink legs, balanced on one toe on a running horse. The clown holds the paper hoop. The band is blowing itself very red in the face. An acrobat leaps headlong from a high trapeze. There are five rings, thirty clowns, an amazing variety of equestrian and slack-wire genius, a galaxy of dazzling beauties; and every performance includes a dizzy, death-defying dive by a dauntless dare-devil—on a bicycle from the top of the tent. And of course there are elephants and performing dogs and fat ladies. One day only—two performances—rain or shine.
Does not this kind of billboard stir the blood in these languid days of spring? It is a tonic to the sober street. It is a shining dial that marks the coming of the summer. In the winter let barns and fences proclaim the fashion of our dress and tease us with bargains for the kitchen. But in the spring, when the wind is from the south, fences have a better use. They announce the circus. What child now will not come upon a trot? What student can keep to his solemn book? There is a sleepy droning from the school-house. The irregular verbs—lawless rascals with a past—chafe in a dull routine. The clock loiters through the hour.
It was by mere coincidence that last night on my way home I stopped at a news-stand for a daily paper, and saw a periodical by the name of the Paste-Brush. On a gay cover was the picture of another blonde—a sister, maybe, of the lady of the billboard. She was held by an ankle over a sea of up-turned faces, but by her happy, inverted smile she seemed unconscious of her danger.
The Paste-Brush is new to me. I bought a copy, folded its scandalous cover out of sight and took it home. It proves to be the trade journal of the circus and amusement-park interests. It announces a circulation of seventy thousand, which I assume is largely among acrobats, magicians, fat ladies, clowns, liniment-venders, lion-tamers, Caucasian Beauties and actors on obscure circuits.
Now it happens that among a fairly wide acquaintance I cannot boast a single acrobat or liniment-vender. Nor even a professional fat man. A friend of mine, it is true, swells in that direction as an amateur, but he rolls night and morning as a corrective. I did once, also, pass an agreeable hour at a County Fair with a strong man who bends iron bars in his teeth. He had picked me from his audience as one of convincing weight to hang across the bar while he performed his trick. When the show was done, he introduced me to the Bearded Beauty and a talkative Mermaid from Chicago. One of my friends, also, has told me that she is acquainted with a lady—a former pupil of her Sunday school—who leaps on holidays in the park from a parachute. The bantam champion, too, many years ago, lived behind us around the corner; but he was a distant hero, sated with fame, unconscious of our youthful worship. But these meetings are exceptional and accidental. Most of us, let us assume, find our acquaintance in the usual walks of life. Last night, therefore, having laid by the letters of Madame d'Arblay, on whose seven volumes I have been engaged for a month, I took up the Paste-Brush and was carried at once into another and unfamiliar world.
The frontispiece is the big tent of the circus with side-shows in the foreground. There is a great wheel with its swinging baskets, a merry-go-round, a Funny Castle, and a sword-swallower's booth. By a dense crowd around a wagon I am of opinion that here nothing less than red lemonade is sold. Certainly Jolly Maude, "that mountain of flesh," holds a distant, surging crowd against the ropes.
An article entitled "Freaks I Have Known" is worth the reading. You may care to know that a celebrated missing-link—I withhold the lady's name—plays solitaire in her tent as she waits her turn. Bearded ladies, it is asserted, are mostly married and have a fondness for crocheting out of hours. A certain three-legged boy, "the favorite of applauding thousands," tried to enlist for the war, but was rejected because he broke up a pair of shoes. The Wild Man of Borneo lived and died in Waltham, Massachusetts. If the street and number were given, it would tempt me to a pilgrimage. Have I not journeyed to Concord and to Plymouth? Perhaps an old inhabitant—an antique spinster or rheumatic grocer—can still remember the pranks of the Wild Man's childhood.
But in the Paste-Brush the pages of advertisement are best. Slot machines for chewing-gum are offered for sale—Merry-Widow swings, beach babies (a kind of doll), genuine Tiffany rings that defy the expert, second-hand saxophones, fountain pens at eight cents each and sofa pillows with pictures of Turkish beauties.
But let us suppose that you, my dear sir, are one of those seventy thousand subscribers and are by profession a tattooer. On the day of publication with what eagerness you scan its columns! Here is your opportunity to pick up an improved outfit—"stencils and supplies complete, with twelve chest designs and a picture of a tattooed lady in colors, twelve by eighteen, for display. Send for price list." Or if you have skill in charming snakes and your stock of vipers is running low, write to the Snake King of Florida for his catalogue. "He treats you right." Here is an advertisement of an alligator farm. Alligator-wrestlers, it is said, make big money at popular resorts on the southern circuit. You take off your shoes and stockings, when the crowd has gathered, and wade into the slimy pool. It needs only a moderate skill to seize the fierce creature by his tail and haul him to the shore. A deft movement throws him on his back. Then you tickle him under the ear to calm him and pass the hat.
Here in the Paste-Brush is an announcement of a ship-load of monkeys from Brazil. Would you care to buy a walrus? A crocodile is easy money on the Public Square in old-home week. Or perhaps you are a glass-blower with your own outfit, a ventriloquist, a diving beauty, a lyric tenor or a nail-eater. If so, here is an agent who will book you through the West. The small cities and large towns of Kansas yearn for you. Or if you, my dear madam, are of good figure, the Alamo Beauties, touring in Mississippi, want your services. Long season. No back pay.
Would you like to play a tuba in a ladies' orchestra? You are wanted in Oklahoma. The Sunshine Girls—famous on western circuits—are looking to augment their number. "Wanted: Woman for Eliza and Ophelia. Also a child for Eva. Must double as a pony. State salary. Canada theatres."
It is affirmed that there is money in box-ball, that hoop-la yields a fortune, that "you mop up the tin" with a huckley-buck. It sounds easy. I wonder what a huckley-buck is like. I wonder if I have ever seen one. It must be common knowledge to the readers of the Paste-Brush, for the term is not explained. Perhaps one puts a huckley-buck in a wagon and drives from town to town. Doubtless it returns a fortune in a County Fair. Is this not an opportunity for an underpaid school-teacher or slim seamstress? No longer must she subsist upon a pittance. Here is rest for her blue, old fingers. Let her write today for a catalogue. She should choose a huckley-buck of gaudy color, with a Persian princess on the side, to draw the crowd. Let her stop by the village pump and sound a stirring blast upon her megaphone.
Or perhaps you, my dear sir, have been chafing in an indoor job. You have been hooped through a dreary winter upon a desk. If so, your gloomy disposition can be mended by a hoop-la booth, whatever it is. "This way, gentlemen! Try your luck! Positively no blanks. A valuable prize for everybody." Your stooped shoulders will straighten. Your digestion will come to order in a month. Or why not run a stand at the beach for walking-sticks, with a view in the handle of a "dashing French actress in a daring pose, or the latest picture of President and Mrs. Wilson at the Peace Conference."
Or curiosities may be purchased—"two-headed giants, mermaids, sea-serpents, a devil-child and an Egyptian mummy. New lists ready." A mummy would be a quiet and profitable companion for our seamstress in the long vacation. It would need less attention than a sea-serpent. She should announce the dusty creature as the darling daughter of the Ptolemies. When the word has gone round, she may sit at ease before the booth in scarlet overalls and count the dropping nickels. With what vigor will she take to her thimble in the autumn!
Out in Gilmer, Texas, there is a hog with six legs—"alive and healthy. Five hundred dollars take it." Here is a merchant who will sell you "snake, frog and monkey tights." After your church supper, on the stage of the Sunday school, surely, in such a costume, my dear madam, you could draw a crowd. Study the trombone and double your income. Can you yodle? "It can be learned at home, evenings, in six easy lessons."
A used popcorn engine is cut in half. A waffle machine will be shipped to you on trial. Does no one wish to take the road with a five-legged cow? Here is one for sale—an extraordinary animal that cleaned up sixty dollars in one afternoon at a County Fair in Indiana. "Walk up, ladies and gentlemen! The marvel of the age. Plenty of time before the big show starts. A five-legged cow. Count 'em. Answers to the name of Guenevere. Shown before all the crowned heads of Europe. Once owned by the Czar of Russia. Only a dime. A tenth of a dollar. Ten cents. Show about to start."
Or perhaps you think it more profitable to buy a steam calliope—some very good ones are offered second-hand in the Paste-Brush—and tour your neighboring towns. Make a stand at the crossroads under the soldiers' monument. Give a free concert. Then when the crowd is thick about you, offer them a magic ointment. Rub an old man for his rheumatism. Throw away his crutch, clap him on the back and pronounce him cured. Or pull teeth for a dollar each. It takes but a moment for a diagnosis. When once the fashion starts, the profitable bicuspids will drop around you.
And Funny Castles can be bought. Perhaps you do not know what they are. They are usual in amusement parks. You and a favorite lady enter, hand in hand. It is dark inside and if she is of an agreeable timidity she leans to your support. Only if you are a churl will you deny your arm. Then presently a fiery devil's head flashes beside you in the passage. The flooring tilts and wobbles as you step. Here, surely, no lady will wish to keep her independence. Presently a picture opens in the wall. It is souls in hell, or the Queen of Sheba on a journey. Then a sharp draft ascends through an opening in the floor. Your lady screams and minds her skirts. A progress through a Funny Castle, it is said, ripens the greenest friendship. Now take the lady outside, smooth her off and regale her with a lovers' sundae. Funny Castles, with wind machines, a Queen of Sheba almost new, and devil's head complete, can be purchased. Remit twenty-five per cent with order. The balance on delivery.
Perhaps I am too old for these high excitements. Funny Castles are behind me. Ladies of the circus, alas! who ride in golden chariots are no longer beautiful. Cleopatra in her tinsel has sunk to the common level. Clowns with slap-sticks rouse in me only a moderate delight.
At this moment, as I write, the clock strikes twelve. It is noon and school is out. There is a slamming of desks and a rush for caps. The boys scamper on the stairs. They surge through the gate. The acrobat on the billboard greets their eyes—the clown, also the lady with the pink legs. They pause. They gather in a circle. They have fallen victims to her smile. They mark the great day in their memory.
The wind is from the south. The daffodils flourish along the fences. The street organ hangs heavily on its strap. There will be a parade in the morning. The freaks will be on their platforms by one o'clock. The great show starts at two. I shall buy tickets and take Nepos, my nephew.
In Praise of a Lawn-Mower.
IDO not recall that anyone has written the praises of a lawn-mower. I seem to sow in virgin soil. One could hardly expect a poet to lift up his voice on such a homely theme. By instinct he prefers the more rhythmic scythe. Nor, on the other hand, will mechanical folk pay a full respect to a barren engine without cylinders and motive power. But to me it is just intricate enough to engage the interest. I can trace the relation of its wheels and knives, and see how the lesser spinning starts the greater. In a printing press, on the contrary, I hear only the general rattle. Before a gas-engine, also, I am dumb. Its sixteen processes to an explosion baffle me. I could as easily digest a machine for setting type. I nod blankly, as if a god explained the motion of the stars. Even when I select a motor I take it merely on reputation and by bouncing on the cushions to test its comfort.
It has been a great many years since I was last intimate with a lawn-mower. My acquaintance began in the days when a dirty face was the badge of freedom. One early Saturday morning I was hard at work before breakfast. Mother called down through the upstairs shutters, at the first clicking of the knives, to ask if I wore my rubbers in the dew. With the money earned by noon, I went to Conrad's shop. The season for tops and marbles had gone by. But in the window there was a peerless baseball with a rubber core, known as a cock-of-the-walk. By indecision, even by starting for the door, I bought it a nickel off because it was specked by flies.
It did not occur to me last week, at first, that I could cut the grass. I talked with an Irishman who keeps the lawn next door. He leaned on his rake, took his pipe from his mouth and told me that his time was full. If he had as many hands as a centipede—so he expressed himself—he could not do all the work that was asked of him. The whole street clamored for his service. Then I talked with an Italian on the other side, who comes to work on a motor-cycle with his lawn-mower across his shoulder. His time was worth a dollar an hour, and he could squeeze me in after supper and before breakfast. But how can I consistently write upstairs—I am puttering with a novel—with so expensive a din sounding in my ears? My expected royalties shrink beside such swollen pay. So I have become my own yard-man.
Last week I had the lawn-mower sharpened, but it came home without adjustment. It went down the lawn without clipping a blade. What a struggle I had as a child getting the knives to touch along their entire length! I remember it as yesterday. What an ugly path was left when they cut on one side only! My bicycle chain, the front wheel that wobbled, the ball-bearings in the gear, none of these things were so perplexing. Last week I got out my screw-driver with somewhat of my old feeling of impotence. I sat down on the grass with discouragement in contemplation. One set of screws had to be loosened while another set was tightened, and success lay in the delicacy of my advance. What was my amazement to discover that on a second trial my mower cut to its entire width! Even when I first wired a base-plug and found that the table lamp would really light, I was not more astonished.
This success with the lawn-mower has given me hope. I am not, as I am accused, all thumbs. I may yet become a handy man around the house. Is the swirl of furnace pipes inside my intellect? Perhaps I can fix the leaky packing in the laundry tubs, and henceforth look on the plumber as an equal brother. My dormant brain cells at last are wakened. But I must curb myself. I must not be too useful. There is no rest for a handy man. It is ignorance that permits a vacant holiday. At most I shall admit a familiarity with base-plugs and picture-wire and rubber washers—perhaps even with canvas awnings, which smack pleasantly of the sea—but I shall commit myself no further.
Once in a while I rather enjoy cleaning the garage—raking down the cobwebs from the walls and windows with a stream from the hose—puddling the dirt into the central drain. I am ruthless with old oil cans and with the discarded clothing of the chauffeur we had last month. Why is an old pair of pants stuffed so regularly in the tool drawer? There is a barrel at the alley fence—but I shall spare the details. It was the river Alpheus that Hercules turned through the Augean stables. They had held three thousand oxen and had not been cleaned for thirty years. Dear me! I know oxen. I rank this labor ahead of the killing of the Hydra, or fetching the golden apples of the Hesperides. Our garage can be sweetened with a hose.
But I really like outside work. Last week I pulled up a quantity of dock and dandelions that were strangling the grass. And I raked in seed. This morning, when I went out for the daily paper, I saw a bit of tender green. The Reds, as I noticed in the headline of the paper, were advancing on Warsaw. France and England were consulting for the defense of Poland, but I ignored these great events and stood transfixed in admiration before this shimmer of new grass.
Our yard, fore and aft, is about an afternoon's work. And now that I have cut it once I have signed up for the summer. It requires just the right amount of intelligence. I would not trust myself to pull weeds in the garden. M—— has the necessary skill for this. I might pull up the Canterbury bells which, out of season, I consider unsightly stalks. And I do not enjoy clipping the grass along the walks. It is a kind of barber's job. But I like the long straightaways, and I could wish that our grass plot stretched for another hundred feet.
And I like the sound of a lawn-mower. It is such a busy click and whirr. It seems to work so willingly. Not even a sewing-machine has quite so brisk a tempo. And when a lawn-mower strikes a twig, it stops suddenly on its haunches with such impatience to be off again. "Bend over, won't you," it seems to say, "and pull out that stick. These trees are a pesky nuisance. They keep dropping branches all the while. Now then! Are we ready? Whee! What's an apple? I can cut an apple all to flinders. You whistle and I'll whirr. Let's run down that slope together!"
On Dropping Off to Sleep.
I SLEEP too well—that is, I go to sleep too soon. I am told that I pass a few minutes of troubled breathing—not vulgar snores, but a kind of uneasy ripple on the shore of wakefulness—then I drift out with the silent tide. Doubtless I merit no sympathy for my perfection—and yet—
Well, in the first place, lately we have had windy, moonlit nights and as my bed sets at the edge of the sleeping porch and the rail cuts off the earth, it is like a ride in an aëroplane to lie awake among the torn and ragged clouds. I have cast off the moorings of the sluggish world. Our garden with its flowering path, the coop for our neighbor's chickens, the apple tree, all have sunk from sight. The prow of my plane is pitched across the top of a waving poplar. Earth's harbor lights are at the stern. The Pleiades mark the channel to the open sky. I must hang out a lantern to fend me from the moon.
I shall keep awake for fifteen minutes, I think. Perhaps I can recall Keats's sonnet to the night:
| "When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, |
| Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance—" |
and those lines of Milton about the moon rising in clouded majesty, unveiling her peerless light.
Here a star peeps out. Presently its companions will show themselves and I shall know the constellation. Are they playing like little children at hide-and-seek? Do I catch Arcturus looking from its cover? Shall I shout hi-spy to Alpha Lyra? A shooting star, that has crouched behind a cloud, runs home to the goal untagged. Surely these glistening worlds cannot be hard-fisted planets like our own, holding a close schedule across the sky. They have looted the shining treasure of the sunset. They sail the high fantastic seas like caravels blown from India. In the twilight they have lifted vagrant anchors and they will moor in strange havens at the dawn.
Are not these ragged clouds the garment of the night? Like the beggar maiden of an ancient tale she runs with flying raiment. She unmasks her beauty when the world's asleep. And the wind, like an eager prince upon his wooing, rides out of the stormy north.
And then! Poof! Sleep draws its dark curtain across the glittering pageant—
Presently I hear Annie, the cook, on the kitchen steps below, beating me up to breakfast. She sounds her unwelcome reveille on a tin pan with an iron spoon. Her first alarm I treat with indifference. It even weaves itself pleasantly into my dreams. I have been to a circus lately, let us say, and this racket seems to be the tom-tom of a side-show where a thin gentleman swallows snakes. Nor does a second outburst stir me. She only tries the metal and practices for the later din. At the third alarm I rise, for now she nurses a mighty wrath. I must humor the angry creature lest in her fury she push over a shelf of crockery. There is a cold jump for slippers—a chilly passage.
I passed a week lately at a country hotel where there were a number of bad sleepers—men broken by the cares of business, but convalescent. Each morning, as I dressed, I heard them on the veranda outside my window, exchanging their complaints. "Well," said one, "I slept three hours last night." "I wish I could," said a second. "I never do," said a third. No matter how little sleep the first man allowed himself, the second clipped off an hour. The third man told the bells he had heard—one and two and three and four—both Baptist and Methodist—and finished with his preceding competitor at least a half hour down. But always there was an old man—an ancient man with flowing beard—who waited until all were done, and concluded the discussion just at the breakfast gong: "I never slept a wink." This was the perfect score. His was the golden cup. Whereupon the insomnious veranda hung its defeated head with shame, and filed into the dining-room to be soothed and comforted with griddle-cakes.
This daily contest recalled to me the story of the two men drowned in the Dayton and Johnstown floods who boasted to each other when they came to heaven. Has the story gone the rounds? For a while they were the biggest lions among all the angels, and harps hung untuned and neglected in their presence. As often as they met in the windy portico of heaven, one of these heroes, falling to reminiscence of the flood that drowned him, lifted the swirling water of Johnstown to the second floor. The other hero, not to be outdone, drenched the Dayton garrets. The first was now compelled to submerge a chimney. Turn by turn they mounted in competition to the top of familiar steeples. But always an old man sat by—an ancient man with flowing beard—who said "Fudge!" in a tone of great contempt. Must I continue? Surely you have guessed the end. It was the old mariner himself. It was the survivor of Ararat. It was Noah. Once, I myself, among these bad sleepers on the veranda, boasted that I had heard the bells at two o'clock, but I was scorned as an unfledged novice in their high convention.
Sleeping too well seems to argue that there is nothing on your mind. Your head, it is asserted by the jealous, is a vacancy that matches the empty spaces of the night. It is as void as the untwinkling north. If there has been a rummage, they affirm, of important matters all day above your ears, it can hardly be checked at once by popping the tired head down upon a pillow. These fizzing squibs of thought cannot be smothered in a blanket. When one has planned a railroad or a revolution, the mighty churning still progresses in the dark. A dubious franchise must be gained. Villains must be pricked down for execution. Or bankers have come up from Paraguay, and one meditates from hour to hour on the sureness of the loan. Or perhaps an imperfect poem searches for a rhyme, or the plot of a novel sticks.
It is the shell, they say, which is fetched from the stormy sea that roars all night. My head, alas, by the evidence, is a shell which is brought from a stagnant shore.
Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep! Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care! That is all very well, and pretty poetry, but I am afraid, when everything is said, that I am a sleepy-head. I do not, of course, have to pinch myself at a business meeting. At high noon I do not hear the lotus song. I do not topple, full of dreams, off the platform of a street-car. The sleepy poppy is not always at my nose.
Nor do I yawn at dinner behind a napkin, or doze in the firelight when there are guests about. My manners keep me from this boorishness. In an extremity, if they sit too late, I stir the fire, or I put my head out of doors for the wind to waken me. I show a sudden anxiety whether the garage is locked. I pretend that the lawn-mower is left outside, or that the awnings are loose and flapping. But I do not dash out the lights when our guests are still upon the steps. I listen at the window until I hear their motor clear the corner. Then I turn furiously to my buttons. I kick off my shoes upon the staircase.
Several of us were camping once in the woods north of Lake Superior. As we had no guides we did all the work ourselves, and everyone was of harder endurance than myself. Was it not Pippa who cried out "Morning's at seven"? Seven! I look on her as being no better than a slug-a-bed. She should have had her dishes washed and been on her way by six. Our day began at five. Our tents had to be taken down, our blankets and duffle packed. We were regularly on the water an hour before Pippa stirred a foot. And then there were four or five hours of paddling, perhaps in windy water. And then a new camp was made. Our day matched the exertions of a traveling circus. In default of expert knowledge I carried water, cut brouse for the beds and washed dishes. Little jobs, of an unpleasant nature, were found for me as often as I paused. Others did the showy, light-fingered work. I was housemaid and roustabout from sunrise to weary sunset. I was never allowed to rest. Nor was I permitted to flop the bacon, which I consider an easy, sedentary occupation. I acquired, unjustly,—let us agree in this!—a reputation for laziness, because one day I sat for several hours in a blueberry patch, when work was going forward.
And then one night, when all labor seemed done and there was an hour of twilight, I was asked to read aloud. Everyone settled himself for a feast of Shakespeare's sonnets. But it was my ill luck that I selected the sonnet that begins, "Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed." A great shout went up—a shout of derision. That night I read no more. I carried up six or eight pails of water from the spring and followed the sonneteer's example.
There are a great many books that I would like to read of a winter's evening if I could stay awake—all of the histories, certainly, of Fiske. And Rhodes, perhaps. I might even read "The Four Horsemen," "Trilby" and "The Education of Henry Adams," so as not to be alone. It is snug by the fire, and the very wind taps on the window as if it asked for invitation to share the hearth. I could compile a list, a five-foot shelf, for these nights of tempest. There is a writer in a Boston paper who tells us every week the books that he would like to read. His is a prospect rather than a review, for it is based on his anticipation. But does he ever read these books? Perhaps he, too, dozes. His book slips off his knee and his chin drops to comfort on his front. Let me inform him that a wood fire—if the logs are hardly dry—is a corrective. Its debility, as water oozes at the end, requires attendance every five minutes. Even Wardle's fat boy at Manor Farm could have lasted through the evening if the poker had been forced into his hand so often. "I read," says Tennyson, "before my eyelids dropt their shade." And wasn't Alice sitting with her book when she fell asleep and down the rabbit-hole? "And so to bed," writes Pepys. He, too, then, is one of us.
I wonder if that phrase—he who runs may read—has not a deeper significance than lies upon the surface. Perhaps the prophet—was it Habakkuk who wrote the line?—it does not matter—perhaps the bearded prophet had himself the sleepy habit, and kept moving briskly for remedy around his study. I can see him in dressing-gown and slippers, with book in hand—his whiskers veering in the wind—quickening his lively pace around the kerosene lamp, steering among the chairs, stumbling across the cat—
In ambition I am a night-hawk. I would like to sit late with old books and reconstruct the forgotten world at midnight. These bells that I hear now across the darkness are the mad bells of Saint Bartholomew. With that distant whistle—a train on the B. & O.—Guy Fawkes gathers his villains to light the fuse. Through my window from the night I hear the sounds of far-off wars and kingdoms falling.
And I would like, also, at least in theory, to sit with a merry company of friends, and let the cannikin clink till dawn.
I would like to walk the streets of our crowded city and marvel at the windows—to speculate on the thousand dramas that weave their webs in our common life. Here is mirth that shakes its sides when its neighbors sleep. Here is a hungry student whose ambition builds him rosy castles. Here is a light at a fevered pillow where hope burns dim.
On some fairy night I would wish to wander in the woods, when there are dancing shadows and a moon. Here Oberon holds state. Here Titania sleeps. I would cross a silver upland. I would stand on a barren hill-top, like the skipper of the world in its whirling voyage.
But these high accomplishments are beyond me. Habakkuk and the fat boy, and Alice and Pepys and I, and all the others, must be content. Even the wet wood and the poker fail. The very wind grows sleepy at the window. Our chins fall forward. Our books slip off our knees.
And now, at last, our buoyant bed floats among the stars. I have cast off the moorings of the sluggish world. Earth's harbor lights are at the stern. The Pleiades mark the channel to the moon—
Poof! Sleep draws again its dark curtain across the glittering pageant.
Who Was Jeremy?
WHO was Jeremy Bentham? I have run on his name recently two or three times. I could, of course, find out. The Encyclopedia—volume Aus to Bis—would enlighten me. Right now, downstairs in the bookcase—up near the top where the shabby books are kept—among the old Baedekers—there is a life of him by Leslie Stephen. No! That is a life of Hobbes. I don't know anything about Hobbes either. It seems to me that he wrote the "Leviathan," whatever that was. But there is a Bentham somewhere around the house. But I have not read it.
In a rough way I know who Bentham was. He lived perhaps a hundred years ago and he had a theory of utility. Utility was to clean the infected world. Even the worst of us were to rise out of the tub white and perfect. It was Bentham who wished to revisit the world in a hundred years to see how sweet and clean we had become. He was to utility what Malthus was to population. Malthus! There is another hard one. It is the kind of name that is cut round the top of a new City Hall to shame citizens by their ignorance.
I can go downstairs this minute and look up Bentham. Is it worth while? But then I might be called to dinner in the middle of the article, or I might be wanted to move the refrigerator. There is a musty smell, it seems, in the drain pipe, and the stubborn casters are turned sidewise. It hardly seems worth the chance and effort.
There are a great many things that really do stir my curiosity, and even those things I don't look up. Or tardily, after my ignorance has been exposed. The other day the moon arose—as a topic—at the round table of the club where I eat lunch. It had really never occurred to me that we had never seen its other side, that we never could—except by a catastrophe—unless it smashed into a planet and was thrown heels up. How does it keep itself so balanced that one face is forever hid? Try to roll an apple around a pumpkin and meanwhile spin the pumpkin. Try this on your carpet. I take my hat off to the moon.
I have been very ignorant of the moon. All of these years I have regarded it as a kindly creature that showed itself now and then merely on a whim. It was just jogging around of an evening, so I supposed, and looked us up. It was an old neighbor who dropped in after dinner, as it were, for a bit of gossip and an apple. But even the itinerant knife-grinder—whose whirling wheel I can hear this minute below me in the street—even the knife-grinder has a route. He knows at what season we grow dull. What necessity, then, of ours beckons to the moon? Perhaps it comes with a silver brush to paint the earth when it grows shabby with the traffic of the day. Perhaps it shows itself to stir a lover who halts coldly in his suit. The pink god, they say, shoots a dangerous arrow when the moon is full.
The extent of my general ignorance is amazing. And yet, I suppose, by persistence and energy I could mend it. Old Doctor Dwight used to advise those of us who sat in his classroom to read a hard book for half an hour each day. How those half hours would mount up through the years! What a prodigious background of history, of science, of literature, one would gain as the years revolved! If I had followed his advice I would today be bursting with knowledge of Jeremy Bentham; I would never have been tripped upon the moon.
How ignorant most of us are of the times in which we live! We see the smoke and fires of revolution in Europe. We hear the cries of famine and disease, but our perception is lost in the general smudge. How are the Balkans parceled? How is the nest of nationalities along the Danube disposed? This morning there is revolt in Londonderry. What parties are opposite in the quarrel? Trouble brews in Chile. Is Tacni-Arica a district or a mountain range? The Åland Islands breed war in the north. Today there is a casualty list from Bagdad. The Bolsheviki advance on Warsaw. Those of us who are cobblers tap our shoes unruffled, tailors stitch, we bargain in the market—all of us go about on little errands without excitement when the news is brought.
And then there is mechanics. This is now so preeminently a mechanical world that no one ought to be entirely ignorant of cylinders and cogs and carburetors. And yet my own motor is as dark as Africa. I am as ignorant of a carburetor as of the black stomach of a zebra. Once a carpenter's bench was given me at Christmas, fitted up with all manner of tricky tools. The bookshelves I built in my first high enthusiasm have now gone down to the basement to hold the canned fruit, where they lean with rickets against the wall. Even the box I made to hold the milk bottles on the back steps has gone the way of flesh. Any chicken-coop of mine would topple in the wind. Well-instructed hens would sit around on fence-posts and cackle at my efforts with a saw. Certainly, if a company of us were thrown on a desert island, it would not be I who proved the Admirable Crichton. Not by my shrewdness could we build a hut. Robinson Crusoe contrived a boat. If I tied a raft together it would be sure to sink.
Where are the Virgin Islands? What makes a teapot bubble? What forces bring the rain and tempest?
In cooking I go no farther than an egg. Birds, to me, are either sparrows or robins. I know an elm and a maple, but hemlocks and pines and firs mix me up. I am not to be trusted to pull the weeds. Up would come the hollyhocks. Japanese prints and Chinese vases sit in a world above me.
I can thump myself in front without knowing whether I jar my stomach or my liver. I have no notion where my food goes when it disappears. When once I have tilted my pudding off its spoon my knowledge ceases. It is as a child of Israel on journey in the wilderness. Does it pass through my thorax? And where do my lungs branch off?
I know nothing of etchings, and I sit in gloomy silence when friends toss Whistler and Rembrandt across the table. I know who our mayor is, but I scratch my head to name our senator. And why does the world crumple up in hills and mountains?
I could look up Jeremy Bentham and hereafter I would know all about him. And I could look up the moon. And Hobbes. And Leslie Stephen, who wrote a book about him. And a man named Maitland who wrote a life of Stephen. Somebody must have written about Maitland. I could look him up, too. And I could read about the Balkans and tell my neighbors whether they are tertiary or triassic. I could pursue the thorax to its lair. Saws and chicken-coops, no doubt, are an engaging study. I might take a tree-book to the country, or seek an instructive job in a garage.
But what is the use? Right in front of Jeremy Bentham, in Aus to Bis, is George Bentham, an English botanist. To be thorough I would have to read about him also. Then following along is Bentivoglio, and Benzene—a long article on benzene. And Beowulf! No educated person should be quite ignorant of him. Albrecht Bitzius was a Swiss novelist. Somehow he has escaped me entirely. And Susanna Blamire, "the muse of Cumberland"! She sounds engaging. Who is there so incurious that he would not give an evening to Borneo? And the Bryophyta?—which I am glad to learn include "the mosses and the liverworts." Dear me! it is quite discouraging.
And then, when I am gaining information on Hobbes, the Hittites, right in front, take my eye. Hilarius wrote "light verses of the goliardic type"—whatever that means. And the hippopotamus! "the largest representative of the non-ruminating artiodactyle ungulate mammals." I must sit with the hippopotamus and worm his secret.
And after I have learned to use the saw, I would have to take up the plane. And then the auger. And Whistler. And Japanese prints. And a bird book.
It is very discouraging.
I stand with Pope. Certainly, unless one is very thirsty and has a great deal of vacant time, it is best to avoid the Pierian spring.
Jeremy can go and hang himself. I am learning to play golf.
A Chapter for Children.
ONCE upon a time—for this is the way a story should begin—there lived in a remote part of the world a family of children whose father was busy all day making war against his enemies. And so, as their mother, also, was busy (clubs, my dear, and parties), they were taken care of and had their noses wiped—but in a most kindly way—by an old man who loved them very much.
Now this old man had been a jester in his youth. For these were the children of a king and so, of course, they had a jester, just as you and I, if we are rich, have a cook. He had been paid wages—I don't know how many kywatskies—merely to stand in the dining-room and say funny things, and nobody asked him to jump around for the salt or to hurry up the waffles. And he didn't even brush up the crumbs afterward.
I do not happen to know the children of any king—there is not a single king living on our street—yet, except for their clothes, they are much like other children. Of course they wear shinier clothes. It is not the shininess that comes from sliding down the stair rail, but a royal shininess, as though it were always eleven o'clock on Sunday morning and the second bell of the Methodist church were ringing, with several deacons on the steps. For if one's father is a king, ambassadors and generals keep dropping in all the time, and queens, dressed up in brocade so stiff you can hear them breathe.
One day the children had been sliding down hill in the snow—on Flexible Flyers, painted red—and their mittens and stockings were wet. So the old man felt their feet—tickling their toes—and set them, bare-legged, in a row, in front of the nursery fire. And he told them a story.
"O children of the king!" he began, and with that he wiped their noses all round, for it had been a cold day, when even the best-mannered persons snuffle now and then. "O children of the king!" he began again, and then he stopped to light a taper at the fire. For he was a wise old man and he knew that when there is excitement in a tale, a light will keep the bogies off. This old man could tell a story so that your eyes opened wider and wider, as they do when Annie brings in ice-cream with raspberry sauce. And once in a while he said Odd Zooks, and God-a-Mercy when he forgot himself.
"Once upon a time," he began, "there lived a king in a far-off country. To get to that country, O children of a king, you would have to turn and turn, and spell out every signpost. And then you climb up the sides of seventeen mountains, and swim twenty-three streams precisely. Here you wait till dusk. But just before the lamps are lighted, you get down on all-fours—if you are a boy (girls, I believe, don't have all-fours)—and crawl under the sofa. Keep straight on for an hour or so with the coal-scuttle three points starboard, but be careful not to let your knees touch the carpet, for that wears holes in them and spoils the magic. Then get nurse to pull you out by the hind legs—and—there you are.
"Once upon a time, then, there lived a king with a ferocious moustache and a great sword which rattled when he walked around the house. He made scratches all over the piano legs, but no one felt like giving him a paddy-whack. This king had a pretty daughter.
"Now it is a sad fact that there was a war going on. It was between this king who had the pretty daughter and another king who lived near by, on an adjoining farm, so to speak. And the first king had sworn by his halidome—and at this his court turned pale—that he would take his enemy by his blasted nose.
"Both of these kings lived in castles whose walls were thick and whose towers were high. And around their tops were curious indentings that looked as your teeth would look if every other one were pulled. These castles had moats with lily pads and green water in them, which was not at all healthful, except that persons in those days did not know about it and were consequently just as well off. And there were jousting fields and soup caldrons (with a barrel of animal crackers) and a tun of lemonade (six glasses to a lemon)—everything to make life comfortable.
"Here's a secret. The other king who lived near by was in love with the first king's daughter. Here are two kings fighting each other, and one of them in love with the other's daughter, but not saying a word about it.
"Now the second king—the one in love—was not very fierce, and his name was King Muffin—which suggests pleasant thoughts—whereas the first king with the beautiful daughter was called King Odd Zooks, Zooks the Sixth, for he was the sixth of his powerful line. And my story is to show how King Muffin got the better of King Zooks and married his daughter. It was a clever piece of business, for the walls of the castle were high, and the window of the Princess was way above the trees. King Muffin didn't even know which her window was, for it did not have any lace curtains and it looked no better than the cook's, except that the cook sometimes on Monday tied her stockings to the curtain cord to dry. And of course if King Muffin had come openly to the castle, the guards would have cut him all to bits.
"One day in June King Muffin was out on horseback. He had left his crown at home and was wearing his third-best clothes, so you would have thought that he was just an ordinary man. But he was a good horseman; that is, he wasn't thinking every minute about falling off, but sat loosely, as one might sit in a rocking-chair.
"The country was beautiful and green, and in the sky there were puffy clouds that looked the way a pop-over looks before it turns brown—a big pop-over that would stuff even a hungry giant up to his ears. And there was a wind that wiggled everything, and the noise of a brook among the trees. Also, there were birds, but you must not ask me their names, for I am not good at birds.
"King Muffin, although he was a brave man, loved a pleasant day. So he turned back his collar at the throat in order that the wind might tickle his neck and he dropped his reins on his horse's back in a careless way that wouldn't be possible on a street where there were trolley-cars. In this fashion he rode on for several miles and sang to himself a great many songs. Sometimes he knew the words and sometimes he said tum tum te tum tum, but he kept to the tune.
"King Muffin enjoyed his ride so much that before he knew it he was out of his own kingdom and at least six parasangs in the kingdom of King Zooks. My dear, use your handkerchief!
"And even then King Muffin would not have realized it, except that on turning a corner he saw a young man lying under a tree in a suit that was half green and half yellow. King Muffin knew him at once to be a jester—but whose? King Zooks's jester, of course, his mortal enemy. For jesters have to go off by themselves once in a while to think up new jokes, and no other king lived within riding distance. Really, the jester was thinking of rhymes to zithern, which is the name of the curious musical instrument he carried, and is a little like a mandolin, only harder to play. It cannot be learned in twelve easy lessons. And the jester was making a sorry business of it, for it is a difficult word to find rhymes to, as you would know if you tried. He was terribly woeful.
"King Muffin said 'Whoa' and stopped his horse. Then he said 'Good morning, fellow,' in the kind of superior tone that kings use.
"The jester got off the ground and, as he did not know that Muffin was a king, he sneezed; for the ground was damp. It was a slow sneeze in coming, for the ground was not very wet, and he stood waiting for it with his mouth open and his eyes squinting. So King Muffin waited too, and had a moment to think. And as kings think very fast, very many thoughts came to him. So, by the time the sneeze had gone off like a shower bath, and before the pipes filled up for another, some interesting things had occurred to him. Well! things about the Princess and how he might get a chance to speak with her. But he said:
"'Ho, ho! Methinks King Zooks's jester has the snuffles.'
"At this, Jeppo—for that was the jester's name—looked up with a wry face, for he still kept a sneeze inside him which he couldn't dislodge.
"'By my boots and spurs!' the King cried again, 'you are a woeful jester.'
"Jeppo was woeful. For on this very night King Zooks was to give a grand dinner—not a simple dinner such as you have at home with Annie passing dishes and rattling the pie around the pantry—but a dinner for a hundred persons, generals and ambassadors, all dressed in lace and eating from gold plates. And of course everyone would look to Jeppo for something funny—maybe a new song with twenty verses and a rol-de-rol-rol chorus, which everyone could sing even if he didn't know the words. And Jeppo didn't know a single new thing. He had tried to write something, but had stuck while trying to think of a rhyme for zithern. So of course he was woeful. And King Muffin knew it.
"All this while King Muffin was thinking hard, although he didn't scowl once, for some persons can think without scowling. He wished so much to see the Princess, and yet he knew that if he climbed the tallest tree he couldn't reach her window. And even if he found a ladder long enough, as likely as not he would lean it up against the cook's window, not noticing the stockings on the curtain cord. King Muffin should have looked glum. But presently he smiled.
"'Jeppo,' he said, 'what would you say if I offered to change places with you? Here you are fretting about that song of yours and the dinner only a few hours off. You will be flogged tomorrow, sure, for being so dull tonight. Just change clothes with me and go off and enjoy yourself. Sit in a tavern! Spend these kywatskies!' Here King Muffin rattled his pocket. 'I'll take your place. I know a dozen songs, and they will tickle your king until, goodness me! he will cry into his soup.' King Muffin really didn't give King Zooks credit for ordinary manners, but then he was his mortal enemy, and prej'iced.
"Well, Jeppo was terribly woeful and that word zithern was bothering him. There was pithern and dithern and mithern. He had tried them all, but none of them seemed to mean anything. So he looked at King Muffin, who sat very straight on his horse, for he wasn't at all afraid of him, although he was a tall horse and had nostrils that got bigger and littler all the time; and back legs that twitched. Meanwhile King Muffin twirled a gold chain in his fingers. Then Jeppo looked at King Muffin's clothes and saw that they were fashionable. Then he looked at his hat and there was a yellow feather in it. And those kywatskies. King Muffin, just to tease him, twirled his moustache, as kings will.
"So the bargain was made. There was a thicket near, so dense that it would have done for taking off your clothes when you go swimming. In this thicket King Muffin and Jeppo exchanged clothes. Of course Jeppo had trouble with the buttons for he had never dressed in such fine clothes before, and many of a king's buttons are behind.
"And now, when the exchange was made, Jeppo inquired where he would find an expensive tavern with brass pull-handles on the lemonade vat, and he rode off, licking his lips and jingling his kywatskies. But King Muffin, dressed as a jester, vaulted on his horse and trotted in the direction of King Zooks's castle, which had indentings around the top like a row of teeth if every other one were pulled.
"And after a little while it became night. It is my private opinion, my dear, which I shall whisper in the middle of your ear—the outer flap being merely ornamental and for 'spection purposes—that the sun is afraid of the dark, because you never see him around after nightfall. Bless you, he goes off to bed before twilight and tucks himself to the chin before you or I would even think of lighting a candle. And, on my word, he prefers to sleep in the basement. He goes down the back stairs and cuddles behind the furnace. And he has the bad habit, mercy! of reading in bed. A good half hour after he should be sound asleep, you can see the reflection of his candle on the evening clouds."
At this point the old man paused a bit, to see if the children were still awake. Then he wiped their noses all around, not forgetting the youngest with the fat legs, and began again.
"During all this time King Zooks had been getting ready for the party, trying on shiny coats, and getting his silk stockings so that the seams at the back went straight up and didn't wind around, which is the way they naturally do unless you are particular. And he put a clean handkerchief into every pocket, in case he sneezed in a hurry—for King Zooks was a lavish dresser.
"His wife was dressing in another room, keeping three maids busy with safety pins and powder-puffs, and getting all of the snarls out of her hair. And, in still another room of the castle, his daughter was dressing. Now his wife was a nice-looking woman, like nurse, except that she wore stiff brocade and didn't jounce. But his daughter was beautiful and didn't need a powder-puff.
"When they were all dressed they met outside, just to ask questions of one another about handkerchiefs and noses and behind the ears. The Queen, also, wished to be very sure that there wasn't a hole in the heel of her stocking, for she wore black stockings, which makes it worse. King Zooks was fond of his wife and fond of his daughter, and when he was with them he did not look so fierce. He kissed both of them, but when he kissed his daughter—which was the better fun—he took hold of her nose—but in a most kindly way—so that her face wouldn't slip.
"Then they went down the marble stairs, with flunkies bowing up and down.
"But how worried King Zooks would have been if he had known that at that very moment his enemy, King Muffin, was coming into the castle, disguised as a jester. Nobody stopped King Muffin, for wandering jesters were common in those days.
"And now the party started with all its might.
"King Zooks offered his arm to the wife of the Ambassador, and Queen Zooks offered hers to the General of the army. There was a fight around the Princess, but she said eenie meenie minie moe, catch a nigger by the toe and counted them all out but one. And so they went down another marble stairway to the dining-room, where a band was blowing itself red in the face—the trombonist, in particular, seeming to be in great distress.
"And where was King Muffin?
"King Muffin came in by the postern—the back stoop, my dear—and he washed his hands and ears at the kitchen sink and went right up to the dining-room. And there he was standing behind the King's chair, where King Zooks couldn't see him but the Princess could. You can see from this what a crafty person King Muffin was. Queen Zooks, to be sure, could see him, but she was an unsuspicious person, and was very hungry. There were waffles for dinner, and when there were waffles she didn't even talk very much.
"King Muffin was very funny. He told jokes which were old at his own castle, but were new to King Zooks. And King Zooks, thinking he was a real jester, laughed until he cried—only his tears did not get into his soup, for by that time the soup had been cleared away. A few of them, however—just a splatter—did fall on his fish, but it didn't matter as it was a salt fish anyway. But all the guests, inasmuch as they were eating away from home, had to be more particular. And when the rol-de-rol-rol choruses came, how King Zooks sang, throwing back his head and forgetting all about his ferocious moustache!
"No one enjoyed the fun more than King Muffin. Whenever things quieted down a bit he said something even funnier than the last. But during all this time it had not occurred to King Zooks to inquire for Jeppo, or to ask why a new fool stood behind his chair. He just laughed and nudged the wife of the Ambassador with his elbow and ate his waffles and enjoyed himself.
"So the dinner grew merrier and merrier until at last everyone had had enough to eat. They would have pushed back a little from the table to be more comfortable in front, except for their manners. King Zooks was the last to finish, for the dinner ended with ice-cream and he was fond of it. He didn't have it ordinary days. In fact he was so eager to get the last bit that he scraped his spoon round and round upon the dish until Queen Zooks was ashamed of him. When, finally, he was all through, the guests folded their napkins and pushed back their chairs until you never heard such a squeak. A few of them—but these had never been out to dinner before—had spilled crumbs in their laps and had to brush them off.
"And now there was a dance.
"So King Zooks offered his arm to the wife of the Ambassador and Queen Zooks offered hers to the General of the army, and they started up the marble stairway to the ballroom. But what should King Muffin do but skip up to the Princess while she was still smoothing out her skirts. (Yellow organdie, my dear, and it musses when you sit on it.) Muffin made a low bow and kissed her hand. Then he asked her for the first dance. It was so preposterous that a jester should ask her to dance at all, that everyone said it was the funniest thing he had done, and they went into a gale about it on the marble stairway. Even Queen Zooks, who ordinarily didn't laugh much at jokes, threw back her head and laughed quite loud—but in a minute, when everybody else was done. And then to everyone's surprise the Princess consented to dance with King Muffin, although the General of the army stood by in a kind of empty fashion. But everybody was so merry, and in particular King Zooks, that no one minded.