Hints to Pilgrims. Charles Brooks

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СКАЧАТЬ with a smile and nod, apt for conversation along the road. Neither beard nor ringlet must snub his agreeable advance. Such a fellow stirs up a mixed acquaintance between town and town, to point the shortest way – a bit of modest gingham mixing a pudding at a pantry window, age hobbling to the gate on its friendly crutch, to show how a better path climbs across the hills. Or in a taproom he buys a round of ale and becomes a crony of the place. He enlists a dozen friends to sniff outdoors at bedtime, with conflicting prophecy of a shifting wind and the chance of rain.

      A companion should be alert for small adventure. He need not, therefore, to prove himself, run to grapple with an angry dog. Rather, let him soothe the snarling creature! Let him hold the beast in parley while I go on to safety with unsoiled dignity! Only when arbitration and soft terms fail shall he offer a haunch of his own fair flesh. Generously he must boost me up a tree, before he seeks safety for himself.

      But many a trivial mishap, if followed with a willing heart, leads to comedy and is a jest thereafter. I know a man who, merely by following an inquisitive nose through a doorway marked "No Admittance," became comrade to a company of traveling actors. The play was Uncle Tom's Cabin, and they were at rehearsal. Presently, at a changing of the scene, my friend boasted to Little Eva, as they sat together on a pile of waves, that he performed upon the tuba. It seems that she had previously mounted into heaven in the final picture without any welcoming trumpet of the angels. That night, by her persuasion, my friend sat in the upper wings and dispensed flutings of great joy as she ascended to her rest.

      Three other men of my acquaintance were caught once, between towns, on a walking trip in the Adirondacks, and fell by chance into a kind of sanitarium for convalescent consumptives. At first it seemed a gloomy prospect. But, learning that there was a movie in a near-by village, they secured two jitneys and gave a party for the inmates. In the church parlor, when the show was done, they ate ice-cream and layer-cake. Two of the men were fat, but the third, a slight and handsome fellow – I write on suspicion only – so won a pretty patient at the feast, that, on the homeward ride – they were rattling in the tonneau – she graciously permitted him to steady her at the bumps and sudden turns.

      Nor was this the end. As it still lacked an hour of midnight the general sanitarium declared a Roman holiday. The slight fellow, on a challenge, did a hand-stand, with his feet waving against the wall, while his knife and keys and money dropped from his pockets. The pretty patient read aloud some verses of her own upon the spring. She brought down her water-colors, and laying a charcoal portrait off the piano, she ranged her lovely wares upon the top. The fattest of my friends, also, eager to do his part, stretched himself, heels and head, between two chairs. But, when another chair was tossed on his unsupported middle, he fell with a boom upon the carpet. Then the old doctor brought out wine and Bohemian glasses with long stems and, as the clock struck twelve, the company pledged one another's health, with hopes for a reunion. They lighted their candles on the landing, and so to bed.

      I know a man, also, who once met a sword-swallower at a county fair. A volunteer was needed for his trick – someone to hold the scarlet cushion with its dangerous knives – and zealous friends pushed him from his seat and toward the stage. Afterwards he met the Caucasian Beauties and, despite his timidity, they dined together with great merriment.

      Then there is a kind of humorous philosophy to be desired on an excursion. It smokes a contented pipe to the tune of every rivulet. It rests a peaceful stomach on the rail of every bridge, and it observes the floating leaves, like golden caravels upon the stream. It interprets a trivial event. It is both serious and absurd. It sits on a fence to moralize on the life of cows and flings in Plato on the soul. It plays catch and toss with life and death and the world beyond. And it sees significance in common things. A farmer's cart is a tumbril of the Revolution. A crowing rooster is Chanticleer. It is the very cock that proclaimed to Hamlet that the dawn was nigh. When a cloud rises up, such a philosopher discourses of the flood. He counts up the forty rainy days and names the present rascals to be drowned – profiteers in food, plumbers and all laundrymen.

      A stable lantern, swinging in the dark, rouses up a race of giants —

      I think it was some such fantastic quality of thought that Horace Walpole had in mind when he commended the Three Princes of Serendip. Their Highnesses, it seems, "were always making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of: for instance," he writes, "one of them discovered that a mule blind of the right eye had traveled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten on the left side." At first, I confess, this employment seems a waste of time. Sherlock Holmes did better when he pronounced, on finding a neglected whisp of beard, that Doctor Watson's shaving mirror had been shifted to an opposite window. But doubtless the Princes put their deduction to higher use, and met the countryside and village with shrewd and vivid observation.

      Don Quixote had this same quality, but with more than a touch of madness. Did he not build up the Lady Tolosa out of a common creature at an inn? He sought knighthood at the hands of its stupid keeper and watched his armor all night by the foolish moon. He tilted against a windmill. I cannot wholeheartedly commend the Don, but, for an afternoon, certainly, I would prefer his company between town and town to that of any man who carries his clanking factory on his back.

      But, also, I wish a companion of my travels to be for the first time in England, in order that I may have a fresh audience for my superior knowledge. In the cathedral towns I wish to wave an instructive finger in crypt and aisle. Here is a bit of early glass. Here is a wall that was plastered against the plague when the Black Prince was still alive. I shall gossip of scholars in cord and gown, working at their rubric in sunny cloisters. Or if I choose to talk of kings and forgotten battles, I wish a companion ignorant but eager for my boasting.

      It was only last night that several of us discussed vacations. Wyoming was the favorite – a ranch, with a month on horseback in the mountains, hemlock brouse for a bed, morning at five and wood to chop. But a horse is to me a troubled creature. He stands to too great a height. His eye glows with exultant deviltry as he turns and views my imperfection. His front teeth seem made for scraping along my arm. I dread any fly or bee lest it sting him to emotion. I am point to point in agreement with the psalmist: "An horse is a vain thing for safety." If I must ride, I demand a tired horse, who has cropped his wild oats and has come to a slippered state. Are we not told that the horse in the crustaceous age – I select a large word at random – was built no bigger than a dog? Let this snug and peerless ancestor be saddled and I shall buy a ticket for the West.

      But I do not at this time desire to beard the wilderness. There is a camp of Indians near the ranch. I can smell them these thousand miles away. Their beads and greasy blankets hold no charm. Smoky bacon, indeed, I like. I can lie pleasurably at the flap of the tent with sleepy eyes upon the stars. I can even plunge in a chilly pool at dawn. But the Indians and horses that infest Wyoming do not arouse my present interest.

      I am for England, therefore – for its winding roads, its villages that nest along the streams, its peaked bridges with salmon jumping at the weir, its thatched cottages and flowering hedges.

      "The chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

      In England – now!"

      I wish to see reapers at work in Surrey fields, to stride over the windy top of Devon, to cross Wiltshire when wind and rain and mist have brought the Druids back to Stonehenge. At a crossroad Stratford is ten miles off. Raglan's ancient towers peep from a wooded hill. Tintern or Glastonbury can be gained by night. Are not these names sweet upon the tongue? And I wish a black-timbered inn in which to end the day – with polished brasses in the tap and the smell of the musty centuries upon the stairs.

      At the window of our room the Cathedral spire rises above the roofs. There is no trolley-car or creaking of any wheel, and on the pavement we hear only the fall of feet in endless pattern. Day weaves a hurrying mesh, but this is the quiet fabric of the night.

      I wish to walk from London to Inverness, to climb the СКАЧАТЬ