Twice-told tales
the shrinking form of Spring, yet step by step he is compelled to
retreat northward, and spends the summer month within the Arctic
circle.
Such fantasies, intermixed among graver toils of mind, have made the
winter’s day pass pleasantly. Meanwhile, the storm has raged without
abatement, and now, as the brief afternoon declines, is tossing denser
volumes to and fro about the atmosphere. On the window-sill there is a
layer of snow reaching halfway up the lowest pane of glass. The garden
is one unbroken bed. Along the street are two or three spots of
uncovered earth where the gust has whirled away the snow, heaping it
elsewhere to the fence-tops or piling huge banks against the doors of
houses. A solitary passenger is seen, now striding mid-leg deep across
a drift, now scudding over the bare ground, while his cloak is swollen
with the wind. And now the jingling of bells—a sluggish sound
responsive to the horse’s toilsome progress through the unbroken
drifts—announces the passage of a sleigh with a boy clinging behind and
ducking his head to escape detection by the driver. Next comes a sledge
laden with wood for some unthrifty housekeeper whom winter has
surprised at a cold hearth. But what dismal equipage now struggles
along the uneven street? A sable hearse bestrewn with snow is bearing a
dead man through the storm to his frozen bed. Oh how dreary is a burial
in winter, when the bosom of Mother Earth has no warmth for her poor
child!
Evening—the early eve of December—begins to spread its deepening veil
over the comfortless scene. The firelight gradually brightens and
throws my flickering shadow upon the walls and ceiling of the chamber,
but still the storm rages and rattles against the windows. Alas! I
shiver and think it time to be disconsolate, but, taking a farewell
glance at dead Nature in her shroud, I perceive a flock of snowbirds
skimming lightsomely through the tempest and flitting from drift to
drift as sportively as swallows in the delightful prime of summer.
Whence come they? Where do they build their nests and seek their food?
Why, having airy wings, do they not follow summer around the earth,
instead of making themselves the playmates of the storm and fluttering
on the dreary verge of the winter’s eve? I know not whence they come,
nor why; yet my spirit has been cheered by that wandering flock of
snow-birds.
THE SEVEN VAGABONDS
Rambling on foot in the spring of my life and the summer of the year, I
came one afternoon to a point which gave me the choice of three
directions. Straight before me the main road extended its dusty length
to Boston; on the left a branch went toward the sea, and would have
lengthened my journey a trifle of twenty or thirty miles, while by the
right-hand path I might have gone over hills and lakes to Canada,
visiting in my way the celebrated town of Stamford. On a level spot of
grass at the foot of the guide-post appeared an object which, though
locomotive on a different principle, reminded me of Gulliver’s portable
mansion among the Brobdignags. It was a huge covered wagon—or, more
properly, a small house on wheels—with a door on one side and a window
shaded by green blinds on the other. Two horses munching provender out
of the baskets which muzzled them were fastened near the vehicle. A
delectable sound of music proceeded from the interior, and I
immediately conjectured that this was some itinerant show halting at
the confluence of the roads to intercept such idle travellers as
myself. A shower had long been climbing up the western sky, and now
hung so blackly over my onward path that it was a point of wisdom to
seek shelter here.
“Halloo! Who stands guard here? Is the doorkeeper asleep?” cried I,
approaching a ladder of two or three steps which was let down from the
wagon.
The music ceased at my summons, and there appeared at the door, not the
sort of figure that I had mentally assigned to the wandering showman,
but a most respectable old personage whom I was sorry to have addressed
in so free a style. He wore a snuff-colored coat and small-clothes,
with white top-boots, and exhibited the mild dignity of aspect and
manner which may often be noticed in aged schoolmasters, and sometimes
in deacons, selectmen or other potentates of that kind. A small piece
of silver was my passport within his premises, where I found only one
other person, hereafter to be described.
“This is a dull day for business,” said the old gentleman as he ushered
me in; “but I merely tarry here to refresh the cattle, being bound for
the camp-meeting at Stamford.”
Perhaps the movable scene of this narrative is still peregrinating New
England, and may enable the reader to test the accuracy of my
description. The spectacle—for I will not use the unworthy term of
“puppet-show”—consisted of a multitude of little people assembled on a
miniature stage. Among them were artisans of every kind in the
attitudes of their toil, and a group of fair ladies and gay gentlemen
standing ready for the dance; a company of foot-soldiers formed a line
across the stage, looking stern, grim and terrible enough to make it a
pleasant consideration that they were but three inches high; and
conspicuous above the whole was seen a Merry Andrew in the pointed cap
and motley coat of his profession. All the inhabitants of this mimic
world were motionless, like the figures in a picture, or like that
people who one moment were alive in the midst of their business and
delights and the next were transformed to statues, preserving an
eternal semblance of labor that was ended and pleasure that could be
felt no more. Anon, however, the old gentleman turned the handle of a
barrel-organ, the first note of which produced a most enlivening effect
upon the figures and awoke them all to their proper occupations and
amusements. By the selfsame impulse the tailor plied his needle, the
blacksmith’s hammer descended upon the anvil and the dancers whirled
away on feathery tiptoes; the company of soldiers broke into platoons,
retreated from the stage, and were succeeded by a troop of horse, who
came prancing onward with such a sound of trumpets and trampling of
hoofs as might have startled Don Quixote himself; while an old toper of
inveterate ill-habits uplifted his black bottle and took off a hearty
swig. Meantime, the Merry Andrew began to caper and turn somersets,
shaking his sides, nodding his head and winking his eyes in as lifelike
a manner as if he were ridiculing the nonsense of all human affairs and
making fun of the whole multitude beneath him. At length the old
magician (for I compared the showman to Prospero entertaining his
guests with a masque of shadows) paused that I might give utterance to
my wonder.
“What an admirable piece of work is this!” exclaimed I, lifting up my
hands in astonishment.
Indeed, I liked the spectacle and was tickled with the old man’s
gravity as he presided at it, for I had none of that foolish wisdom
which reproves every occupation that is not useful in this world of
vanities. If there be a faculty which I possess more perfectly than
most men, it is that of throwing myself mentally into situations
foreign to my own and detecting with a cheerful eye the desirable
circumstances of each. I could have envied the life of this gray-headed
showman, spent as it had been in a course of safe and pleasurable
adventure in driving his huge vehicle sometimes through the sands of
Cape Cod and sometimes over the rough forest-roads of the north and
east, and halting now on the green before a village meeting-house and
now in a paved square of the metropolis. How often must his heart have
been gladdened by the delight of children as they viewed these animated
figures, or his pride indulged by haranguing learnedly to grown men on
the mechanical powers which produced such wonderful effects, or his
gallantry brought into play—for this is an attribute which such grave
men do not lack—by the visits of pretty maidens! And then with how
fresh a feeling must he return at intervals to his own peculiar home!
“I would I were assured of as happy a life as his,” thought I.
Though the showman’s wagon might have accommodated fifteen or twenty
spectators, it now contained only himself and me and a third person, at
whom I threw a glance on entering. He was a neat and trim young man of
two or three and twenty; his drab hat and green frock-coat with velvet
collar were smart, though no longer new, while a pair of green
spectacles that seemed needless to his brisk little eyes gave him
something of a scholar-like and literary air. After allowing me a
sufficient time to inspect the puppets, he advanced with a bow and drew
my attention to some books in a corner of the wagon. These he forthwith
began to extol with an amazing volubility of well-sounding words and an
ingenuity of praise that won him my heart as being myself one of the
most merciful of critics. Indeed, his stock required some considerable
powers of commendation in the salesman. There were several ancient
friends of mine—the novels of those happy days when my affections
wavered between the _Scottish Chiefs_ and _Thomas Thumb_—besides a few
of later date whose merits had not been acknowledged by the public. I
was glad to find that dear little venerable volume the _New England
Primer_, looking as antique as ever, though in its thousandth new
edition; a bundle of superannuated gilt picture-books made such a child
of me that, partly for the glittering covers and partly for the
fairy-tales within, I bought the whole, and an assortment of ballads
and popular theatrical songs drew largely on my purse. To balance these
expenditures, I meddled neither with sermons nor science nor morality,
though volumes of each were there, nor with a _Life of Franklin_ in the
coarsest of paper, but so showily bound that it was emblematical of the
doctor himself in the court-dress which he refused to wear at Paris,
nor with Webster’s spelling-book, nor some of Byron’s minor poems, nor
half a dozen little Testaments at twenty-five cents each. Thus far the
collection might have been swept from some great bookstore or picked up
at an evening auction-room, but there was one small blue-covered
pamphlet which the pedler handed me with so peculiar an air that I
purchased it immediately at his own price; and then for the first time
the thought struck me that I had spoken face to face with the veritable
author of a printed book.
The literary-man now evinced a great kindness for me, and I ventured to
inquire which way he was travelling.
“Oh,” said he, “I keep company with this old gentlemen here, and we are
moving now toward the camp-meeting at Stamford.”
He then explained to me that for the present season he had rented a
corner of the wagon as a book-store, which, as he wittily observed, was
a true circulating library, since there were few parts of the country
where it had not gone its rounds. I approved of the plan exceedingly,
and began to sum up within my mind the many uncommon felicities in the
life of a book-pedler, especially when his character resembled that of
the individual before me. At a high rate was to be reckoned the daily
and hourly enjoyment of such interviews as the present, in which he
seized upon the admiration of a passing stranger and made him aware
that a man of literary taste, and even of literary achievement, was
travelling the country in a showman’s wagon. A more valuable yet not
infrequent triumph might be won in his conversations with some elderly
clergyman long vegetating in a rocky, woody, watery back-settlement of
New England, who as he recruited his library from the pedler’s stock of
sermons would exhort him to seek a college education and become the
first scholar in his class. Sweeter and prouder yet would be his