Hints to Pilgrims Part 9

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 gra.s.s along the walks. It is a kind of barber's job. But I like the long straightaways, and I could wish that our gra.s.s 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 pa.s.s a few minutes of troubled breathing--not vulgar snores, but a kind of uneasy ripple on the sh.o.r.e 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 aeroplane 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 pa.s.sage.

I pa.s.sed 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 compet.i.tor 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 compet.i.tion 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 a.s.serted by the jealous, is a vacancy that matches the empty s.p.a.ces 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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 sh.e.l.l, they say, which is fetched from the stormy sea that roars all night. My head, alas, by the evidence, is a sh.e.l.l which is brought from a stagnant sh.o.r.e.

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 b.u.t.tons.

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 Hors.e.m.e.n,"

"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 antic.i.p.ation. 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 t.i.tania 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 G.o.d, 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 cla.s.sroom 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 land 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 st.i.tch, 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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.