The Circus, and Other Essays and Fugitive Pieces Part 5

Not that the alarm clock is always a thing monstrous and threatening. It obeys orders with soldierly exactness but its sympathy is most unmartial. Routine cannot deaden its sensitivity. True, its ordinary note is something dry and monotonous. This comes from its perfect sense of the fitness of things; the call to business should be business-like.

But what triumphant peals burst from its tiny belfry when it bids you rise and put on robes of honor! It can mimic the proud mirth of wedding bells; it knows the mighty song that rang from all the towers of London to cheer d.i.c.k Whittington. And that it can utter harsh and strident grief, those know who lie down with Sorrow and must awaken with her.

Even the most materialistic man has for his alarm clock a shame-faced personal regard. He speaks of it deprecatingly, with a humorous show of indignation. He tells how he maltreated it, knocked it from the mantel, smothered it with blankets, and there is a note of almost paternal exultation in his voice when he describes its persistence in ringing.

Franker souls actually parade what may be termed their alarm-clockophilia. A friend of mine, one Carolus Dillingham, talks by the hour of his Nellie. Nellie is not, to the casual observer, an alarm clock of extraordinary merit. She was constructed many years ago and her nickel-plating is nearly gone. She is a small, weak-looking thing, with a great dome absolutely out of proportion to her rickety body. A result of her ridiculous construction is that when the alarm rings, she becomes slightly overbalanced, trembles, and moves a fraction of an inch forward on her feeble legs.

This, according to Carolus, is her chief charm. "I put Nellie," he says, "on the very edge of the shelf by the foot of my bed. When she rings in the morning she topples off and lands on the blankets. So I don't need to get up and walk across the cold floor. I can just reach out and choke her. I think she is the most faithful alarm clock in the world."

One little regarded virtue of the alarm clock is its st.u.r.dy democracy.

It belongs irrevocably to the people, nothing can make it a sn.o.b. There is a watch for every rank; there are coa.r.s.e peasant watches, fat bourgeois watches, and watches delicately aristocratic. But the alarm clock in the tenement of the laborer is the exact duplicate of that which wakens his employer; an alarm clock's an alarm clock for a' that.

America will never really be a decadent nation until its alarm clocks are jeweled and soft-voiced.

The captious critic may object that the reason for the plainness of alarm clocks is that their use is restricted to what is loosely called "the working cla.s.s." There is some truth in this.

Up to the present I have never witnessed the awaking of an aristocrat, or even of a captain of industry, but, I suppose that they are hailed in soft tones by liveried menials, who bring them golden trays absolutely overflowing with breakfast food and remarkably thick cream. But aristocrats and captains of industry are rare birds, and all other people must have alarm clocks.

All other people, that is, who live in cities. For the alarm clock, in spite of its numerous excellences, is as inappropriate in the country as rouge on a milkmaid. The farmer must try to live up to his craft, and one of the aesthetic duties is to depend on mechanism as little as possible. His wife should rise when she hears the poultry saluting the dawn. Then, so nearly as I remember her obligations, she should go out on the front porch and blow a conchsh.e.l.l until her husband wakes up.

The dweller in the suburbs is a creature of compromise. He grows vegetables and keeps chickens, perhaps he grows vegetables for the use of the chickens, and he cultivates a rural manner of speech. But he spends most of his waking hours in the city and every night he brings out with him on the five-twenty-seven some device to alter the simplicity of the country. He is an ambiguous creature, a.n.a.logous to the merman. And the conspicuous symbol of his ambiguity is his alarm clock.

It is in ruralia but not of it. It stands by a window that opens on an orchard, but it indicates the factory and market-place. It is a link between its owner's two personalities, it is the skeleton at the feast, reminding him, when he comes in from weeding the strawberry patch, that he must get up at a quarter to seven the next morning and hurry to the noisy train. Never does an alarm clock look so blatantly mechanical as when it stands in a cottage of one of the people barbarously termed "commuters."

For in the city, where everything is mechanical, the alarm clock seems pleasantly personal. It is at home there, it is perfectly in keeping with its surroundings. It takes on as comfortable an air of domesticity as the most ornate Swiss timepiece that ever said "Cuckoo"; it is contented, sociable, a member of the family. There is a sense of strangeness in the apartment that has no alarm clock; it is like a catless fireside.

And by a.s.sociation with the other sounds of awaking life, which even in the most sordid slum have about them something of energy and hope, the morning chorus of alarm clocks, echoing down the paved canyons from six to eight, make, in the ears of the unprejudiced listener, a cheerful noise. With them comes the mysterious creaking of the dumb-waiter as it ascends with the milk, an adequate subst.i.tute for the lowing of the herd. Kitchens and kitchenettes take on new life, and issue grateful odors of coffee and bacon. And babies, seeing that their weary parents are leaving them, decide at last that it is time to go to sleep.

An alarm clock can, on occasion, preach a sermon that would arouse the envy of Savonarola. When the jaded reveler returns to his home at day-break, wastes ten minutes in a frantic attempt to awaken the elevator boy, and climbs, with cursing and gnashing of teeth, the eight flights of stairs that lead to his apartment, then nothing more sharply reminds him of his truancy than the voices of the alarm clocks calling to each other in the bedrooms of his virtuous neighbors.

Not even the laziest or the weariest man can hate the alarm clock as he does the factory whistle. The shrill blast that comes every morning from the iron throat of this monster has in it a note of contemptuous menace.

The tired laborers awaken at their master's bidding; there is something unnatural about this abrupt wholesale termination of sleep. But the discipline of the alarm clock is another matter; he who hears it listens, it may be said, to his own voice. He himself has set it, he has fixed the very moment of his own awaking. And there is dignity in observing rules self-imposed, however irksome they may be. The alarm clock is the symbol of civilization, that is, of voluntary submission, of free will obedience.

The careful reader will be aware that many aspects of this excellent device have been neglected in this brief consideration. I have said nothing of the alarm clock's sense of humor and of its willingness to become a party to practical jokes. I have said nothing of how it may be pleased, of its pride, for instance, in being referred to as an "alarum clock." But it has one characteristic which I must mention, its usefulness to the suddenly rich.

There is a delightful sort of novel, Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote one, and so did Mr. H. G. Wells, which deals with the adventures of a young man who has unexpectedly inherited a fortune. Samuel Warren's "Ten Thousand a Year" is perhaps the greatest example of this manner of fiction. Well, if I were T. Tembarom, or Kipps, or t.i.ttlebat t.i.tmouse (Dr. Warren's hero), my alarm clock would be necessary for my first act of celebration. Perhaps I should throw it from a window, perhaps I should remove its bell, perhaps I should merely enjoy letting it run down. At any rate, its presence would be necessary to the complete enjoyment of my new freedom.

DAILY TRAVELING

Give a dog a bad name and hang him. Call the custom of daily travel "commuting" and deliver it over to the whips of the scorner. The intransitive verb "to commute" is a barbarous thing; he who is called "commuter" is thereby rudely and ungrammatically taunted with journeying at reduced rates, with being (terrible thought!) the recipient of a railway's charity.

It is lamentable that so picturesque a habit as daily railway travel should be thus misnamed. That it is a picturesque habit is perceived by anyone who takes the trouble to consider it scientifically, shutting resolutely from his mind the odium brought upon it by its odious name.

Suppose, for instance, that you were to go into the tap-room of the Mermaid Tavern some winter evening during the reign of the, so to speak, Good Queen Bess. The venerable Mr. Alfred Noyes would lead you to the table always reserved for Messrs. Shakespeare, Marlowe and Jonson. You would take from your pocket your commutation ticket, and, holding aloft that cabalistically inscribed oblong of colored cardboard, would sonorously declaim:

"By means of this talisman I daily fly across leagues of the New World, from my cottage in a primeval forest to the heart of a mighty city. It enables me to lead two lives; I am on week days urban, sophisticated, a man of commerce; at night and on Sundays I am a smocked yokel, innocent among my innocent vegetables. This little square of cardboard enables me to ride in a splendid vehicle propelled by Nature herself more swiftly than the wind, a vehicle which laughs at time and obliterates s.p.a.ce. The masters of romance, bowing in homage, have bestowed upon me the mystic and awful name 'commuter.'"

Such a tale would draw Marlowe from his Malmsey and thrill the stout heart of mighty Ben. And Avon's bard, charmed by a fact more golden than all his imaginings, would augustly murmur "Very good, Eddie!"

It is a picturesque thing, this daily trip between the meadows and the pavements. By general consent, a vagabond is the most romantic of men; an allusion to the open road, wandering feet or the starlight on one's face is sufficient to turn an ordinary rhymer into that radiant being, a "tramp-poet." Then what glory must cling to those habitual vagabonds, those devotees of the steel highway, whom we call commuters. The common tramp seldom covers more than ten miles from sunrise to sundown; as a rule his pilgrimage is even briefer. Yet he is called a knight of the open road and even the staidest householder has a sneaking admiration for him. The gypsy is no true vagabond, for he takes with him his wife, children, dogs, furniture, and even his canvas-roofed house. Yet our writers, from Borrow to Kipling, delight to urge us to ha' done with the tents of Shem, dear la.s.s, and follow the Romany patteran. The only authentic vagabond is he who every day goes thirty miles from his rural home to the city and every night thirty miles back, diving through mountains, plunging under rivers; twice on every week-day, a wanderer more free and venturesome than Lavengro himself.

But its picturesqueness is not the sole recommendation of daily railway travel. The greatest of its numerous virtues is that it is democratic, the only absolutely democratic inst.i.tution in the United States of America. It is the mighty leveler, the irresistible enemy of social subordination.

In a city, town or village in which the citizens remain night and day there can be no true democracy. The intentions of its inhabitants may be excellent, but circ.u.mstances will be stronger. There is the minister, there is the banker, there is the doctor, there is the grocer, there is the cobbler, there is the minister's hired man. If a New England rural community is under observation there will also be noted the village atheist, the village drunkard, and the village Democrat. The population is sharply divided into cla.s.ses; there may be friendliness among the various grades of humanity, there may be liberty, but there can be no fraternity, no equality.

How different is the community in which people merely dwell, having their business elsewhere! What is their occupation? They go to The City--that is sufficient answer to admit them to fellowship. If curiosity be still unsatisfied, there is the mention of the name of a great firm, and all is well.

The cobbler, you see, keeps his last in the city, away from his home and his neighbors; he does not stick to it, as the unpleasant adage bids him. As he sits on his red velvet chair, enjoying with his neighbors tobacco smoke, rapid travel, and the news of the world, who shall say whether he deals in shoes or in empires? Next to him is Dusenbury, who in addition to going to New York, goes to Wall Street, rumor has it.

What does he do in Wall Street? Does he corner the wheat market or clean out waste baskets? Those who know, who say to him, "Sir" or "Hey, you,"

are not his companions on the 7.57.

There is a certain charm about what is called, ridiculously enough, a "commuting town," which is altogether lacking in other communities. A "commuting town" is wholly a place of homes--not of homes diluted with offices, factories and shops. It is therefore the quintessence of domesticity, being domestic with an intensity which no village which is remote from the centers of civilization, which furnishes employment and supplies to its own citizens can hope to approach.

Such a town is daily divided and joined, diminished and completed, thereby keeping in a state of healthy activity. The 7.57 takes away, the 5.24 brings back. These recurrent separations and reunions are not without their ethical and emotional value.

INCONGRUOUS NEW YORK

That dislike of the obvious which is the chief characteristic of American humor is clearly exemplified in the names of most of New York's streets.

The dwellers in a great European city would give their proudest avenue of great shops and rich clubs some dignified and significant t.i.tle, like the Rue de la Paix or the Friedrichstra.s.se. The Asiatics would give it a name more definitely descriptive and laudatory, like "The Street of the Thousand and One Mirrors of Delight." The New Yorkers, "laconic and Olympian," designate it by a simple numeral. They call it Fifth Avenue.

It comes partly from the national reticence, this prosaic name of a poetic thoroughfare. It is a manifestation of that att.i.tude of mind which makes us to call a venerated and beloved statesman merely "Old Abe," when the English would call him "the Grand Old Man" and the Italians "the Star-crowned Patriarch." Also it is a phase of our democracy. We will not seem to exalt one avenue over another by giving it a fairer name; Fifth Avenue sounds to the uninitiated no more wealthy and aristocratic than Fourth Avenue. Indeed, if there be any partiality in the awarding of names, it would seem to be exercised in favor of First Avenue or Avenue A.

It may be objected that the sponsors of Fifth Avenue did not foresee its destined splendor. But this fact does not alter the case; we continue to call it Fifth Avenue, whereas Europeans would alter its name to something more appropriate to its grandeur.

There was a pilgrim from the Five Towns who said that Fifth Avenue was architecturally the finest street in the world. This might pa.s.s for a guest's flattery, were it not that Mr. Arnold Bennett is of a nation which does not count gracious insincerity among its vices. New York must blushingly admit the truth of his judgment.

It is not (he said) harmonious. Its beauty is made up of units of beauty related only by position. This, too, is characteristically American.

Each building must have its distinctive excellence.

To give a street of wonders an austere name, to build palaces and fill them with offices and shops--these are the acts by which Americans are known. And especially does the New Yorker delight in the whimsical, the inconsistent, the unexpected. He is like a child who likes to dig in the sand with a silver spoon and to eat porridge with a toy shovel.

And this delicate perversity has its refreshing aspect. Fifth Avenue, surely, is a thing to admire in the new sense as well as the old. It sometimes suggests, perhaps, the ill-natured definition of a New Yorker as a man who, when he makes a set of chimes, puts it in a life insurance building. But it more often suggests a restatement of this definition; that is, that a New Yorker is a man who, when he makes a life insurance building, puts a set of chimes in it.

Now, certain masters of the mirthless science of psychology teach that humor depends on incongruity. Whether or not this is true, incongruity has much to do with making life worth while. For incongruity is the soul of romance.

n.o.bility, love, courage, beauty--the possession of these qualities does not give to a man or a woman romantic charm. A person is a hero or a heroine of romance because he or she lives in a contrasting place or age. For example, a cowboy riding a bucking bronco and whirling his lariat under a canvas roof in some sedate Eastern town is properly considered by the spectators to be a romantic figure. A cowboy engaged in the same interesting occupations on a Texas ranch would not be considered a romantic figure by his neighbors. It is incongruity of environment that romantically transforms him.

People and things of bygone ages are romantic to us because the years have gilded them. They were not romantic to their contemporaries. Says Edwin Arlington Robinson:

Minniver loved the Medici And eyed a khaki suit with loathing; He missed the mediaeval grace Of iron clothing.

Exactly. Minniver Cheevy was a true romanticist. A plumed knight, armed cap-a-pie, is a romantic figure when we merely see him through the years from our modern surroundings by means of imagination's powerful lens; he would be a figure even more romantic if we could actually see him shake his lance and lead his warriors against a drab-suited, machine-like company of present-day soldiers. Why, even horse cars, commonplace enough in their day, take on a certain sentimental l.u.s.ter when they lie abandoned in the outskirts of cities proud with electricity. And a subway train will one day be as romantic a spectacle as a stage coach.

Sometimes a building is deliberately given the romance of incongruity.

This certainly is the case with the New York Stock Exchange. This splendid Grecian temple, with its lofty columns and n.o.ble facade, would, if it stood in ancient Athens, be, of course, beautiful, but in no respect romantic. It is romantic because it is in a place where it would not naturally be expected and because it is devoted to uses for which it does not seem to have been intended. If the G.o.d therein worshiped were not Mammon, but altisonant Jupiter, if white-robed priests found the future prefigured in the warm blood of the lambs therein sacrificed--then the building which now houses the clamoring merchants would be merely dignified and practical and not, as it is today, romantic.

The use of this Grecian temple as a counting house is a splendid example of the poetic tendency of a popular mind. The common business terms--"Bull" and "Bear," for example--are incongruous, and therefore romantic. And a successful business man is not realistically called a successful business man; he is romantically called a "merchant prince"

or a "captain of industry."

But most of New York's romantic places get their glory not by plan, but by the accident of design. You turn the corner from a sombre street lined by tall concrete and steel structures that obviously are of your own period and come suddenly upon a mellow bit of New Amsterdam. You would not be surprised to see old Peter Stuyvesant stump down Coenties Slip and drop in for his morning's Hollands at "22-1/2," across the way.