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twg_000000046300 | corner. There is a story of the place, that once a raw clerk having been sent to rummage in the basement, his candle tipped off the shelf. He was left in so complete darkness that his fears overcame his judgment and for two hours he roamed and babbled among the barrels. Nor was his absence discovered until the end of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046301 | the day when, as was the custom, the clerks counted noses at the door. When they found him, he bolted up the steps, nor did he cease his whimper until he had reached the comforting twilight of the outer world. He served thereafter in the shop a full two years and had a beard coming--so the story runs--before he would | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046302 | again venture beyond the third turning of the passage; to the stunting of his scholarship, for the deeper books lay in the farther windings. Or it may appear credible that in ages past a jealous builder contrived the place. Having no learning himself and being at odds with those of better opportunity, he twisted the pattern of the house. Such | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046303 | was his evil temper, that he set the steps at a dangerous hazard in the dark, in order that scholars--whose eyes are bleared at best--might risk their legs to the end of time. Those of strict orthodoxy have even suspected the builder to have been an atheist, for they have observed what double joints and steps and turnings confuse the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046304 | passage to the devouter books--the Early Fathers in particular being up a winding stair where even the soberest reader might break his neck. Be these things as they may, leather bindings in sets of "grenadier uniformity" ornament the upper and lighter rooms. Biography straggles down a hallway, with a candle needed at the farther end. A room of dingy plays--Wycherley, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046305 | Congreve and their crew--looks out through an area grating. It was through even so foul an eye, that when alive, they looked upon the world. As for theology, except for the before-mentioned Fathers, it sits in general and dusty convention on the landing to the basement, its snuffy sermons, by a sad misplacement--or is there an ironical intention?--pointing the way | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046306 | to the eternal abyss below. It was in this shop that I inquired whether there was published a book on piracy in Cornwall. Now, I had lately come from Tintagel on the Cornish coast, and as I had climbed upon the rocks and looked down upon the sea, I had wondered to myself whether, if the knowledge were put out | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046307 | before me, I could compose a story of Spanish treasure and pirates. For I am a prey to such giddy ambition. A foul street--if the buildings slant and topple--will set me thinking delightfully of murders. A wharf-end with water lapping underneath and bits of rope about will set me itching for a deep-sea plot. Or if I go on broader | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046308 | range and see in my fancy a broken castle on a hill, I'll clear its moat and sound trumpets on its walls. If there is pepper in my mood, I'll storm its dungeon. Or in a softer moment I'll trim its unsubstantial towers with pageantry and rest upon my elbow until I fall asleep. So being cast upon the rugged | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046309 | Cornish coast whose cliffs are so swept with winter winds that the villages sit for comfort in the hollows, it was to be expected that my thoughts would run toward pirates. There is one rock especially which I had climbed in the rain and fog of early morning. A reckless path goes across its face with a sharp pitch to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046310 | the ocean. It was so slippery and the wind so tugged and pulled to throw me off, that although I endangered my dignity, I played the quadruped on the narrower parts. But once on top in the open blast of the storm and safe upon the level, I thumped with desire for a plot. In each inlet from the ocean | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046311 | I saw a pirate lugger--such is the pleasing word--with a keg of rum set up. Each cranny led to a cavern with doubloons piled inside. The very tempest in my ears was compounded out of ships at sea and wreck and pillage. I needed but a plot, a thread of action to string my villains on. If this were once | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046312 | contrived, I would spice my text with sailors' oaths and such boasting talk as might lie in my invention. Could I but come upon a plot, I might yet proclaim myself an author. With this guilty secret in me I blushed as I asked the question. It seemed sure that the shopkeeper must guess my purpose. I felt myself suspected | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046313 | as though I were a rascal buying pistols to commit a murder. Indeed, I seem to remember having read that even hardened criminals have become confused before a shopkeeper and betrayed themselves. Of course, Dick Turpin and Jerry Abershaw could call for pistols in the same easy tone they ordered ale, but it would take a practiced villainy. But I | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046314 | in my innocence wanted nothing but the meager outline of a pirate's life, which I might fatten to my uses. But on a less occasion, when there is no plot thumping in me, I still feel a kind of embarrassment when I ask for a book out of the general demand. I feel so like an odd stick. This embarrassment | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046315 | applies not to the request for other commodities. I will order a collar that is quite outside the fashion, in a high-pitched voice so that the whole shop can hear. I could bargain for a purple waistcoat--did my taste run so--and though the sidewalk listened, it would not draw a blush. I have traded even for women's garments--though this did | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046316 | strain me--without an outward twitch. Finally, to top my valor, I have bought sheet music of the lighter kind and have pronounced the softest titles so that all could hear. But if I desire the poems of Lovelace or the plays of Marlowe, I sidle close up to the shopkeeper to get his very ear. If the s visible, I | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046317 | point my thumb at it without a word. It was but the other day--in order to fill a gap in a paper I was writing--I desired to know the name of an author who is obscure although his work has been translated into nearly all languages. I wanted to know a little about the life of the man who wrote | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046318 | _Mary Had a Little Lamb_, which, I am told, is known by children over pretty much all the western world. It needed only a trip to the Public Library. Any attendant would direct me to the proper shelf. Yet once in the building, my courage oozed. My question, though serious, seemed too ridiculous to be asked. I would sizzle as | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046319 | I met the attendant's eye. Of a consequence, I fumbled on my own devices, possibly to the increase of my general knowledge, but without gaining what I sought. They had no n the Bath shop on piracy in Cornwall. I was offered instead a work in two volumes on the notorious highwaymen of history, and for a moment my plot | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046320 | swerved in that direction. But I put it by. To pay the fellow for his pains--for he had dug in barrels to his shoulders and had a smudge across his nose--I bought a copy of Thomson's "Castle of Indolence," and in my more energetic moods I read it. And so I came away. On leaving the shop, lest I should | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046321 | be nipped in a neglect, I visited the Roman baths. Then I took the waters in the Assembly Room. It was Sam Weller, you may recall, who remarked, when he was entertained by the select footmen, that the waters tasted like warm flat-irons. Finally, I viewed the Crescent around which the shirted Winkle ran with the valorous Dowler breathing on | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046322 | his neck. With such distractions, as you may well imagine, Cornish pirates became as naught. Such mental vibration as I had was now gone toward a tale of fashion in the days when Queen Anne was still alive. Of a consequence, I again sought the bookshop and stifling my timidity, I demanded such volumes as might set me most agreeably | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046323 | to my task. I have in mind also a bookshop of small pretension in a town in Wales. For purely secular delight, maybe, it was too largely composed of Methodist sermons. Hell fire burned upon its shelves with a warmth to singe so poor a worm as I. Yet its signboard popped its welcome when I had walked ten miles | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046324 | of sunny road. Possibly it was the chair rather than the divinity that keeps the place in memory. The owner was absent on an errand, and his daughter, who had been clumping about the kitchen on my arrival, was uninstructed in the price marks. So I read and fanned myself until his return. Perhaps my sluggishness toward first editions--to which | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046325 | I have hinted above--comes in part from the acquaintance with a man who in a linguistic outburst as I met him, pronounced himself to be a numismatist and philatelist. One only of these names would have satisfied a man of less conceit. It is as though the pteranodon should claim also to be the spoon-bill dinosaur. It is against modesty | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046326 | that one man should summon all the letters. No, the numismatist's head is not crammed with the mysteries of life and death, nor is a philatelist one who is possessed with the dimmer secrets of eternity. Rather, this man who was so swelled with titles, eked a living by selling coins and stamps, and he was on his way to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046327 | Europe to replenish his wares. Inside his waistcoat, just above his liver--if he owned so human an appendage--he carried a magnifying glass. With this, when the business fit was on him, he counted the lines and dots upon a stamp, the perforations on its edge. He catalogued its volutes, its stipples, the frisks and curlings of its pattern. He had | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046328 | numbered the very hairs on the head of George Washington, for in such minutiae did the value of the stamp reside. Did a single hair spring up above the count, it would invalidate the issue. Such values, got by circumstance or accident--resting on a flaw--founded on a speck--cause no ferment of my desires. For the buying of books, it is | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046329 | the cheaper shops where I most often prowl. There is in London a district around Charing Cross Road where almost every shop has books for sale. There is a continuous rack along the sidewalk, each title beckoning for your attention. You recall the class of street-readers of whom Charles Lamb wrote--"poor gentry, who, not having wherewithal to buy or hire | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046330 | a book, filch a little learning at the open stalls." It was on some such street that these folk practiced their innocent larceny. If one shopkeeper frowned at the diligence with which they read "Clarissa," they would continue her distressing adventures across the way. By a lingering progress up the street, "Sir Charles Grandison" might be nibbled down--by such as | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046331 | had the stomach--without the outlay of a single penny. As for Gibbon and the bulbous historians, though a whole perusal would outlast the summer and stretch to the colder months, yet with patience they could be got through. However, before the end was come even a hasty reader whose eye was nimble on the page would be blowing on his | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046332 | nails and pulling his tails between him and the November wind. But the habit of reading at the open stalls was not only with the poor. You will remember that Mr. Brownlow was addicted. Really, had not the Artful Dodger stolen his pocket handkerchief as he was thus engaged upon his book, the whole history of Oliver Twist must have | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046333 | been quite different. And Pepys himself, Samuel Pepys, F.R.S., was guilty. "To Paul's Church Yard," he writes, "and there looked upon the second part of Hudibras, which I buy not, but borrow to read." Such parsimony is the curse of authors. To thumb a volume cheaply around a neighborhood is what keeps them in their garrets. It is a less | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046334 | offence to steal peanuts from a stand. Also, it is recorded in the life of Beau Nash that the persons of fashion of his time, to pass a tedious morning "did divert themselves with reading in the booksellers' shops." We may conceive Mr. Fanciful Fopling in the sleepy blink of those early hours before the pleasures of the day have | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046335 | made a start, inquiring between his yawns what latest novels have come down from London, or whether a new part of "Pamela" is offered yet. If the post be in, he will prop himself against the shelf and--unless he glaze and nod--he will read cheaply for an hour. Or my Lady Betty, having taken the waters in the pump-room and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046336 | lent her ear to such gossip as is abroad so early, is now handed to her chair and goes round by Gregory's to read a bit. She is flounced to the width of the passage. Indeed, until the fashion shall abate, those more solid authors that are set up in the rear of the shop, must remain during her visits | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046337 | in general neglect. Though she hold herself against the shelf and tilt her hoops, it would not be possible to pass. She is absorbed in a book of the softer sort, and she flips its pages against her lap-dog's nose. But now behold the student coming up the street! He is clad in shining black. He is thin of shank | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046338 | as becomes a scholar. He sags with knowledge. He hungers after wisdom. He comes opposite the bookshop. It is but coquetry that his eyes seek the window of the tobacconist. His heart, you may be sure, looks through the buttons at his back. At last he turns. He pauses on the curb. Now desire has clutched him. He jiggles his | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046339 | trousered shillings. He treads the gutter. He squints upon the rack. He lights upon a treasure. He plucks it forth. He is unresolved whether to buy it or to spend the extra shilling on his dinner. Now all you cooks together, to save your business, rattle your pans to rouse him! If within these ancient buildings there are onions ready | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046340 | peeled--quick!--throw them in the skillet that the whiff may come beneath his nose! Chance trembles and casts its vote--eenie meenie--down goes the shilling--he has bought the book. Tonight he will spread it beneath his candle. Feet may beat a snare of pleasure on the pavement, glad cries may pipe across the darkness, a fiddle may scratch its invitation--all the rumbling | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046341 | notes of midnight traffic will tap in vain their summons upon his window. Any Stick Will Do To Beat A Dog Reader, possibly on one of your country walks you have come upon a man with his back against a hedge, tormented by a fiend in the likeness of a dog. You yourself, of course, are not a coward. You | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046342 | possess that cornerstone of virtue, a love for animals. If at your heels a dog sniffs and growls, you humor his mistake, you flick him off and proceed with unbroken serenity. It is scarcely an interlude to your speculation on the market. Or if you work upon a sonnet and are in the vein, your thoughts, despite the beast, run | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046343 | unbroken to a rhyme. But pity this other whose heart is less stoutly wrapped! He has gone forth on a holiday to take the country air, to thrust himself into the freer wind, to poke with his stick for such signs of Spring as may be hiding in the winter's leaves. Having been grinding in an office he flings himself | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046344 | on the great round world. He has come out to smell the earth. Or maybe he seeks a hilltop for a view of the fields that lie below patched in many colors, as though nature had been sewing at her garments and had mended the cloth from her bag of scraps. On such a journey this fellow is travelling when, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046345 | at a turn of the road, he hears the sound of barking. As yet there is no dog in sight. He pauses. He listens. How shall one know whether the sound comes up a wrathful gullet or whether the dog bays at him impersonally, as at the distant moon? Or maybe he vents himself upon a stubborn cow. Surely it | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046346 | is not an idle tune he practices. He holds a victim in his mind. There is sour venom on his churlish tooth. Is it best to go roundabout, or forward with such a nice compound of innocence, boldness and modesty as shall satisfy the beast? If one engross oneself on something that lies to the lee of danger, it allays | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046347 | suspicion. Or if one absorb oneself upon the flora--a primrose on the river's brim--it shows him clear and stainless. The stupidest dog should see that so close a student can have no evil in him. Perhaps it would be better to throw away one's stick lest it make a show of violence. Or it may be concealed along the outer | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046348 | leg. Ministers of Grace defend us, what an excitement in the barnyard! Has virtue no reward? Shall innocence perish off the earth? Not one dog, but many, come running out. There has gone a rumor about the barn that there is a stranger to be eaten, and it's likely--if they keep their clamor--there will be a bone for each. Note | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046349 | how the valor oozes from the man of peace! Observe his sidling gait, his skirts pulled close, his hollowed back, his head bent across his shoulder, his startled eye! Watch him mince his steps, lest a lingering heel be nipped! Listen to him try the foremost dog with names, to gull him to a belief that they have met before | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046350 | in happier circumstances! He appeals mutely to the farmhouse that a recall be sounded. The windows are tightly curtained. The heavens are comfortless. You remember the fellow in the play who would have loved war had they not digged villainous saltpetre from the harmless earth. The countryside, too, in my opinion, would be more peaceful of a summer afternoon were | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046351 | it not overrun with dogs. Let me be plain! I myself like dogs--sleepy dogs blinking in the firelight, friendly dogs with wagging tails, young dogs in their first puppyhood with their teeth scarce sprouted, whose jaws have not yet burgeoned into danger, and old dogs, too, who sun themselves and give forth hollow, toothless, reassuring sounds. When a dog assumes | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046352 | the cozy habits of the cat without laying off his nobler nature, he is my friend. A dog of vegetarian aspect pleases me. Let him bear a mild eye as though he were nourished on the softer foods! I would wish every dog to have a full complement of tail. It's the sure barometer of his warm regard. There's no | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046353 | art to find his mind's construction in the face. And I would have him with not too much curiosity. It's a quality that brings him too often to the gate. It makes him prone to sniff when one sits upon a visit. Nor do I like dogs addicted to sudden excitement. Lethargy becomes them better. Let them be without the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046354 | Gallic graces! In general, I like a dog to whom I have been properly introduced, with an exchange of credentials. While the dog is by, let his master take my hand and address me in softest tones, to cement the understanding! At bench-shows I love the beasts, although I keep to the middle of the aisle. The streets are all | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046355 | the safer when so many of the creatures are kept within. Frankly, I would enjoy the country more, if I knew that all the dogs were away on visits. Of course, the highroad is quite safe. Its frequent traffic is its insurance. Then, too, the barns are at such a distance, it is only a monstrous anger can bring the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046356 | dog. But if you are in need of direction you select a friendly white house with green shutters. You swing open the gate and crunch across the pebbles to the door. To the nearer eye there is a look of "dog" about the place. Or maybe you are hot and thirsty, and there is a well at the side of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046357 | the house. Is it better to gird yourself to danger or to put off your thirst until the crossroads where pop is sold? Or a lane leads down to the river. Even at this distance you hear the shallow brawl of water on the stones. A path goes off across a hill, with trees beckoning at the top. There is | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046358 | a wind above and a wider sweep of clouds. Surely, from the crest of the hill the whole county will lie before you. Such tunes as come up from the world below--a school-bell, a rooster crowing, children laughing on the road, a threshing machine on the lower meadows--such tunes are pitched to a marvellous softness. Shall we follow the hot | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046359 | pavement, or shall we dare those lonely stretches? There is a kind of person who is steeped too much in valor. He will cross a field although there is a dog inside the fence. Goodness knows that I would rather keep to the highroad with such humility as shall not rouse the creature. Or he will shout and whistle tunes | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046360 | that stir the dogs for miles. He slashes his stick against the weeds as though in challenge. One might think that he went about on unfeeling stalks instead of legs as children walk on stilts, or that a former accident had clipped him off above the knees and that he was now jointed out of wood to a point beyond | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046361 | the biting limit. Or perhaps the clothes he wears beneath--the inner mesh and very balbriggan of his attire--is of so hard a texture that it turns a tooth. Be these defenses as they may, note with what bravado he mounts the wall! One leg dangles as though it were baited and were angling for a bite. There is a French | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046362 | village near Quebec whose population is chiefly dogs. It lies along the river in a single street, not many miles from the point where Wolfe climbed to the Plains of Abraham. There are a hundred houses flat against the roadway and on the steps of each there sits a dog. As I went through on foot, each of these dogs | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046363 | picked me up, examined me nasally and passed me on, not generously as though I had stood the test, but rather in deep suspicion that I was a queer fellow, not to be penetrated at first, but one who would surely be found out and gobbled before coming to the end of the street. As long as I would eventually | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046364 | furnish forth the common banquet, it mattered not which dog took the first nip. Inasmuch as I would at last be garnished for the general tooth, it would be better to wait until all were gathered around the platter. "Good neighbor dog," each seemed to say, "you too sniff upon the rogue! If he be honest, my old nose is | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046365 | much at fault." Meantime I padded lightly through the village, at first calling on the dogs by English names, but later using such wisps as I had of French. "Aucassin, mon pauvre chien. Voici, Tintagiles, alors donc mon cherie. Je suis votre ami," but with little effect. But the dogs that one meets in the Canadian woods are of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046366 | fiercest breed. They border on the wolf. They are called huskies and they are so strong and so fleet of foot that they pull sleds for hours across the frozen lakes at almost the speed of a running horse. It must be confessed that they are handsome and if it happens to be your potato peelings and discarded fish that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046367 | they eat, they warm into friendliness. Indeed, on these occasions, one can make quite a show of bravery by stroking and dealing lightly with them. But once upon a time in an ignorant moment two other campers and myself followed a lonely railroad track and struck off on a path through the pines in search of a certain trapper on | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046368 | a fur farm. The path went on a broken zigzag avoiding fallen trees and soft hollows, conducting itself on the whole with more patience than firmness. We walked a quarter of a mile, but still we saw no cabin. The line of the railroad had long since disappeared. An eagle wheeled above us and quarrelled at our intrusion. Presently to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046369 | test our course and learn whether we were coming near the cabin, we gave a shout. Immediately out of the deeper woods there came a clamor that froze us. Such sounds, it seemed, could issue only from bloody and dripping jaws. In a panic, as by a common impulse we turned and ran. Yet we did not run frankly as | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046370 | when the circus lion is loose, but in a shamefaced manner--an attempt at a retreat in good order--something between a walk and a run. At the end of a hundred yards we stopped. No dogs had fallen on us. Danger had not burst its kennel. We hallooed again, to rouse the trapper. At last, after a minute of suspense, came | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046371 | his answering voice, the sweetest sound to be imagined. Whereupon I came down from my high stump which I had climbed for a longer view. I am convinced that I am not alone in my--shall I say diffidence?--toward dogs. Indeed, there is evidence from the oldest times that mankind, in its more honest moments, has confessed to a fear of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046372 | dogs. In recognition of this general fear, the unmuzzled Cerberus was put at the gate of Hades. It was rightly felt that when the unhappy pilgrims got within, his fifty snapping heads were better than a bolt upon the door. It was better for them to endure the ills they had, than be nipped in the upper passage. He, also, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046373 | who first spoke the ancient proverb, _Let sleeping dogs lie_, did no more than voice the caution of the street. And he, also, who invented the saying that the world is going to the bow-wows, lodged his deplorable pessimism in fitting words. It was Daniel who sat with the lions. But there are degrees of bravery. On Long Street, within | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046374 | sight of my window--just where the street gets into its most tangled traffic--there has hung for many years the painted signboard of a veterinary surgeon. Its artist was in the first flourish of youth. Old age had not yet chilled him when he mixed his gaudy colors. The surgeon's name is set up in modest letters, but the horse below | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046375 | flames with color. What a flaring nostril! What an eager eye! How arched the neck! Here is a wrath and speed unknown to the quadrupeds of this present Long Street. Such mild-eyed, accumbent, sharp-ribbed horses as now infest the curb--mere whittlings from a larger age--hang their heads at their degeneracy. Indeed, these horses seem to their owners not to be | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046376 | worth the price of a nostrum. If disease settles in them, let them lean against a post until the fit is past! And of a consequence, the doctor's work has fallen off. It has become a rare occasion when it is permitted him to stroke his chin in contemplation of some inner palsy. Therefore to give his wisdom scope, the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046377 | doctor some time since announced the cellar of the building to be a hospital for dogs. Must I press the analogy? I have seen the doctor with bowl and spoon in hand take leave of the cheerful world. He opens the cellar door. A curdling yelp comes up the stairs. In the abyss below there are twenty dogs at least, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046378 | all of them sick, all dangerous. Not since Orion led his hunting pack across the heavens has there been so fierce a sound. The door closes. There is a final yelp, such as greets a bone. Doubtless, by this time, they are munching on the doctor. Good sir, had you lived in pre-apostolic days, your name would have been lined | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046379 | with Daniel's in the hymn. I might have spent my earliest treble in your praise. But there are other kinds of dogs. Gentlest of readers, have you ever passed a few days at Tunbridge Wells? It lies on one of the roads that run from London to the Channel and for several hundred years persons have gone there to take | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046380 | the waters against the more fashionable ailments. Its chief fame was in the days when rich folk, to ward off for the season a touch of ancestral gout, travelled down from London in their coaches. We may fancy Lord Thingumdo crossing his sleek legs inside or putting his head to the window on the change of horses. He has outriders | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046381 | and a horn to sound his coming. His Lordship has a liver that must be mended, but also he has a weakness for the gaming table. Or Lady Euphemia, wrapped in silks, languishes mornings in her lodgings with a latest novel, but goes forth at noon upon the Pantilles to shop in the stalls. A box of patches must be | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046382 | bought. A lace flounce has caught her eye. Bless her dear eyes, as she bends upon her purchase she is fair to look upon. The Grand Rout is set for tonight. Who knows but that the Duke will put the tender question and will ask her to name the happy day? But these golden days are past. Tunbridge Wells has | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046383 | sunk from fashion. The gaming tables are gone. A band still plays mornings in the Pantilles--or did so before the war--but cheaper gauds are offered in the shops. Emerald brooches are fallen to paste. In all the season there is scarcely a single demand for a diamond garter. If there were now a Rout, the only dancers would be stiff | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046384 | shadows from the past. The healing waters still trickle from the ground and an old woman serves you for a penny, but the miracle has gone. The old world is cured and dead. Tunbridge Wells is visited now chiefly by old ladies whose husbands--to judge by the black lace caps--have left Lombard Street for heaven. At the hotel where I | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046385 | stopped, which was at the top of the Commons outside the thicker town, I was the only man in the breakfast room. Two widows, each with a tiny dog on a chair beside her, sat at the next table. This was their conversation: "Did you hear her last night?" "Was it Flossie that I heard?" "Yes. The poor dear was | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046386 | awake all night. She got her feet wet yesterday when I let her run upon the grass." But after breakfast--if the day is sunny and the wind sits in a favoring quarter--one by one the widows go forth in their chairs. These are wicker contrivances that hang between three wheels. Burros pull them, and men walk alongside to hold their | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046387 | bridles. Down comes the widow. Down comes a maid with her wraps. Down comes a maid with Flossie. The wraps are adjusted. The widow is handed in. Her feet are wound around with comforters against a draft. Her salts rest in her lap. Her ample bag of knitting is safe aboard. Flossie is placed beside her. Proot! The donkey starts. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046388 | All morning the widow sits in the Pantilles and listens to the band and knits. Flossie sits on the flagging at her feet with an intent eye upon the ball of worsted. Twice in a morning--three times if the gods are kind--the ball rolls to the pavement. Flossie has been waiting so long for this to happen. It is the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046389 | bright moment of her life--the point and peak of happiness. She darts upon it. She paws it exultantly for a moment. Brief is the rainbow and brief the Borealis. The finger of Time is swift. The poppy blooms and fades. The maid captures the ball of worsted and restores it. It lies in the widow's lap. The band plays. The | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046390 | needles click to a long tune. The healing waters trickle from the ground. The old woman whines their merits. Flossie sits motionless, her head cocked and her eye upon the ball. Perhaps the god of puppies will again be good to her. ROADS OF MORNING My grandfather's farm lay somewhere this side of the sunset, so near that its pastures | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046391 | barely missed the splash of color. But from the city it was a two hours' journey by horse and phaeton. My grandfather drove. I sat next, my feet swinging clear of the lunchbox. My brother had the outside, a place denied to me for fear that I might fall across the wheel. When we were all set, my mother made | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046392 | a last dab at my nose--an unheeded smudge having escaped my vigilance. Then my grandfather said, "Get up,"--twice, for the lazy horse chose to regard the first summons as a jest. We start. The great wheels turn. My brother leans across the guard to view the miracle. We crunch the gravel. We are alive for excitement. My brother plays we | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046393 | are a steamboat and toots. I toot in imitation, but higher up as if I were a younger sort of steamboat. We hold our hands on an imaginary wheel and steer. We scorn grocery carts and all such harbor craft. We are on a long cruise. Street lights will guide us sailing home. Of course there were farms to the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046394 | south of the city and apples may have ripened there to as fine a flavor, and to the east, also, doubtless there were farms. It would be asking too much that the west should have all the haystacks, cherry trees and cheese houses. If your judgment skimmed upon the surface, you would even have found the advantage with the south. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046395 | It was prettier because more rolling. It was shaggier. The country to the south tipped up to the hills, so sharply in places that it might have made its living by collecting nickels for the slide. Indeed, one might think that a part of the city had come bouncing down the slope, for now it lay resting at the bottom, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046396 | sprawled somewhat for its ease. Or it might appear--if your belief runs on discarded lines--that the whole flat-bottomed earth had been fouled in its celestial course and now lay aslant upon its beam with its cargo shifted and spilled about. The city streets that led to the south, which in those days ended in lanes, popped out of sight abruptly | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046397 | at the top of the first ridge. And when the earth caught up again with their level, already it was dim and purple and tall trees were no more than a roughened hedge. But what lay beyond that range of hills--what towns and cities--what oceans and forests--how beset with adventure--how fearful after dark--these things you could not see, even if | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046398 | you climbed to some high place and strained yourself on tiptoe. And if you walked from breakfast to lunch--until you gnawed within and were but a hollow drum--there would still be a higher range against the sky. There are misty kingdoms on this whirling earth, but the ways are long and steep. The lake lay to the north with no | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046399 | land beyond, the city to the east. But to the west-- Several miles outside the city as it then was, and still beyond its clutches, the country was cut by a winding river bottom with sharp edges of shale. Down this valley Rocky River came brawling in the spring, over-fed and quarrelsome. Later in the year--its youthful appetite having caught | 60 | gutenberg |
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