Twice-Told Tales (15 page)

It is a question with me whether this giddy child or my sage self have
most pleasure in looking at the shop-windows. We love the silks of
sunny hue that glow within the darkened premises of the spruce
dry-goods men; we are pleasantly dazzled by the burnished silver and
the chased gold, the rings of wedlock and the costly love-ornaments,
glistening at the window of the jeweller; but Annie, more than I,
seeks for a glimpse of her passing figure in the dusty looking-glasses
at the hardware-stores. All that is bright and gay attracts us both.

Here is a shop to which the recollections of my boyhood as well as
present partialities give a peculiar magic. How delightful to let the
fancy revel on the dainties of a confectioner—those pies with such
white and flaky paste, their contents being a mystery, whether rich
mince with whole plums intermixed, or piquant apple delicately
rose-flavored; those cakes, heart-shaped or round, piled in a lofty
pyramid; those sweet little circlets sweetly named kisses; those dark
majestic masses fit to be bridal-loaves at the wedding of an heiress,
mountains in size, their summits deeply snow-covered with sugar! Then
the mighty treasures of sugarplums, white and crimson and yellow, in
large glass vases, and candy of all varieties, and those little
cockles—or whatever they are called—much prized by children for
their sweetness, and more for the mottoes which they enclose, by
love-sick maids and bachelors! Oh, my mouth waters, little Annie, and
so doth yours, but we will not be tempted except to an imaginary
feast; so let us hasten onward devouring the vision of a plum-cake.

Here are pleasures, as some people would say, of a more exalted kind,
in the window of a bookseller. Is Annie a literary lady? Yes; she is
deeply read in Peter Parley's tomes and has an increasing love for
fairy-tales, though seldom met with nowadays, and she will subscribe
next year to the
Juvenile Miscellany
. But, truth to tell, she
is apt to turn away from the printed page and keep gazing at the
pretty pictures, such as the gay-colored ones which make this
shop-window the continual loitering-place of children. What would
Annie think if, in the book which I mean to send her on New Year's
day, she should find her sweet little self bound up in silk or morocco
with gilt edges, there to remain till she become a woman grown with
children of her own to read about their mother's childhood? That would
be very queer.

Little Annie is weary of pictures and pulls me onward by the hand,
till suddenly we pause at the most wondrous shop in all the town. Oh,
my stars! Is this a toyshop, or is it fairy-land? For here are gilded
chariots in which the king and queen of the fairies might ride side by
side, while their courtiers on these small horses should gallop in
triumphal procession before and behind the royal pair. Here, too, are
dishes of chinaware fit to be the dining-set of those same princely
personages when they make a regal banquet in the stateliest hall of
their palace—full five feet high—and behold their nobles feasting
adown the long perspective of the table. Betwixt the king and queen
should sit my little Annie, the prettiest fairy of them all. Here
stands a turbaned Turk threatening us with his sabre, like an ugly
heathen as he is, and next a Chinese mandarin who nods his head at
Annie and myself. Here we may review a whole army of horse and foot in
red-and-blue uniforms, with drums, fifes, trumpets, and all kinds of
noiseless music; they have halted on the shelf of this window after
their weary march from Liliput. But what cares Annie for soldiers? No
conquering queen is she—neither a Semiramis nor a Catharine; her
whole heart is set upon that doll who gazes at us with such a
fashionable stare. This is the little girl's true plaything. Though
made of wood, a doll is a visionary and ethereal personage endowed by
childish fancy with a peculiar life; the mimic lady is a heroine of
romance, an actor and a sufferer in a thousand shadowy scenes, the
chief inhabitant of that wild world with which children ape the real
one. Little Annie does not understand what I am saying, but looks
wishfully at the proud lady in the window. We will invite her home
with us as we return.—Meantime, good-bye, Dame Doll! A toy yourself,
you look forth from your window upon many ladies that are also toys,
though they walk and speak, and upon a crowd in pursuit of toys,
though they wear grave visages. Oh, with your never-closing eyes, had
you but an intellect to moralize on all that flits before them, what a
wise doll would you be!—Come, little Annie, we shall find toys
enough, go where we may.

Now we elbow our way among the throng again. It is curious in the most
crowded part of a town to meet with living creatures that had their
birthplace in some far solitude, but have acquired a second nature in
the wilderness of men. Look up, Annie, at that canary-bird hanging out
of the window in his cage. Poor little fellow! His golden feathers are
all tarnished in this smoky sunshine; he would have glistened twice as
brightly among the summer islands, but still he has become a citizen
in all his tastes and habits, and would not sing half so well without
the uproar that drowns his music. What a pity that he does not know
how miserable he is! There is a parrot, too, calling out, "Pretty
Poll! Pretty Poll!" as we pass by. Foolish bird, to be talking about
her prettiness to strangers, especially as she is not a pretty Poll,
though gaudily dressed in green and yellow! If she had said "Pretty
Annie!" there would have been some sense in it. See that gray squirrel
at the door of the fruit-shop whirling round and round so merrily
within his wire wheel! Being condemned to the treadmill, he makes it
an amusement. Admirable philosophy!

Here comes a big, rough dog—a countryman's dog—in search of his
master, smelling at everybody's heels and touching little Annie's hand
with his cold nose, but hurrying away, though she would fain have
patted him.—Success to your search, Fidelity!—And there sits a great
yellow cat upon a window-sill, a very corpulent and comfortable cat,
gazing at this transitory world with owl's eyes, and making pithy
comments, doubtless, or what appear such, to the silly beast.—Oh,
sage puss, make room for me beside you, and we will be a pair of
philosophers.

Here we see something to remind us of the town-crier and his
ding-dong-bell. Look! look at that great cloth spread out in the air,
pictured all over with wild beasts, as if they had met together to
choose a king, according to their custom in the days of Æsop. But they
are choosing neither a king nor a President, else we should hear a
most horrible snarling! They have come from the deep woods and the
wild mountains and the desert sands and the polar snows only to do
homage to my little Annie. As we enter among them the great elephant
makes us a bow in the best style of elephantine courtesy, bending
lowly down his mountain bulk, with trunk abased and leg thrust out
behind. Annie returns the salute, much to the gratification of the
elephant, who is certainly the best-bred monster in the caravan. The
lion and the lioness are busy with two beef-bones. The royal tiger,
the beautiful, the untamable, keeps pacing his narrow cage with a
haughty step, unmindful of the spectators or recalling the fierce
deeds of his former life, when he was wont to leap forth upon such
inferior animals from the jungles of Bengal.

Here we see the very same wolf—do not go near him, Annie!—the
selfsame wolf that devoured little Red Riding-Hood and her
grandmother. In the next cage a hyena from Egypt who has doubtless
howled around the pyramids and a black bear from our own forests are
fellow-prisoners and most excellent friends. Are there any two living
creatures who have so few sympathies that they cannot possibly be
friends? Here sits a great white bear whom common observers would call
a very stupid beast, though I perceive him to be only absorbed in
contemplation; he is thinking of his voyages on an iceberg, and of his
comfortable home in the vicinity of the north pole, and of the little
cubs whom he left rolling in the eternal snows. In fact, he is a bear
of sentiment. But oh those unsentimental monkeys! The ugly, grinning,
aping, chattering, ill-natured, mischievous and queer little brutes!
Annie does not love the monkeys; their ugliness shocks her pure,
instinctive delicacy of taste and makes her mind unquiet because it
bears a wild and dark resemblance to humanity. But here is a little
pony just big enough for Annie to ride, and round and round he gallops
in a circle, keeping time with his trampling hoofs to a band of music.
And here, with a laced coat and a cocked hat, and a riding-whip in his
hand—here comes a little gentleman small enough to be king of the
fairies and ugly enough to be king of the gnomes, and takes a flying
leap into the saddle. Merrily, merrily plays the music, and merrily
gallops the pony, and merrily rides the little old gentleman.—Come,
Annie, into the street again; perchance we may see monkeys on
horseback there.

Mercy on us! What a noisy world we quiet people live in! Did Annie
ever read the cries of London city? With what lusty lungs doth yonder
man proclaim that his wheelbarrow is full of lobsters! Here comes
another, mounted on a cart and blowing a hoarse and dreadful blast
from a tin horn, as much as to say, "Fresh fish!" And hark! a voice on
high, like that of a muezzin from the summit of a mosque, announcing
that some chimney-sweeper has emerged from smoke and soot and darksome
caverns into the upper air. What cares the world for that? But,
well-a-day, we hear a shrill voice of affliction—the scream of a
little child, rising louder with every repetition of that smart,
sharp, slapping sound produced by an open hand on tender flesh. Annie
sympathizes, though without experience of such direful woe.

Lo! the town-crier again, with some new secret for the public ear.
Will he tell us of an auction, or of a lost pocket-book or a show of
beautiful wax figures, or of some monstrous beast more horrible than
any in the caravan? I guess the latter. See how he uplifts the bell in
his right hand and shakes it slowly at first, then with a hurried
motion, till the clapper seems to strike both sides at once, and the
sounds are scattered forth in quick succession far and near.

Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong!

Now he raises his clear loud voice above all the din of the town. It
drowns the buzzing talk of many tongues and draws each man's mind from
his own business; it rolls up and down the echoing street, and ascends
to the hushed chamber of the sick, and penetrates downward to the
cellar kitchen where the hot cook turns from the fire to listen. Who
of all that address the public ear, whether in church or court-house
or hall of state, has such an attentive audience as the town-crier!
What saith the people's orator?

"Strayed from her home, a LITTLE GIRL of five years old, in a blue
silk frock and white pantalets, with brown curling hair and hazel
eyes. Whoever will bring her back to her afflicted mother—"

Stop, stop, town-crier! The lost is found.—Oh, my pretty Annie, we
forgot to tell your mother of our ramble, and she is in despair and
has sent the town-crier to bellow up and down the streets, affrighting
old and young, for the loss of a little girl who has not once let go
my hand? Well, let us hasten homeward; and as we go forget not to
thank Heaven, my Annie, that after wandering a little way into the
world you may return at the first summons with an untainted and
unwearied heart, and be a happy child again. But I have gone too far
astray for the town-crier to call me back.

Sweet has been the charm of childhood on my spirit throughout my
ramble with little Annie. Say not that it has been a waste of precious
moments, an idle matter, a babble of childish talk and a reverie of
childish imaginations about topics unworthy of a grown man's notice.
Has it been merely this? Not so—not so. They are not truly wise who
would affirm it. As the pure breath of children revives the life of
aged men, so is our moral nature revived by their free and simple
thoughts, their native feeling, their airy mirth for little cause or
none, their grief soon roused and soon allayed. Their influence on us
is at least reciprocal with ours on them. When our infancy is almost
forgotten and our boyhood long departed, though it seems but as
yesterday, when life settles darkly down upon us and we doubt whether
to call ourselves young any more,—then it is good to steal away from
the society of bearded men, and even of gentler woman, and spend an
hour or two with children. After drinking from those fountains of
still fresh existence we shall return into the crowd, as I do now, to
struggle onward and do our part in life—perhaps as fervently as ever,
but for a time with a kinder and purer heart and a spirit more lightly
wise. All this by thy sweet magic, dear little Annie!

In some old magazine or newspaper I recollect a story, told as truth,
of a man—let us call him Wakefield—who absented himself for a long
time from his wife. The fact, thus abstractedly stated, is not very
uncommon, nor, without a proper distinction of circumstances, to be
condemned either as naughty or nonsensical. Howbeit, this, though far
from the most aggravated, is perhaps the strangest instance on record
of marital delinquency, and, moreover, as remarkable a freak as may be
found in the whole list of human oddities. The wedded couple lived in
London. The man, under pretence of going a journey, took lodgings in
the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or
friends and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment,
dwelt upward of twenty years. During that period he beheld his home
every day, and frequently the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield. And after so
great a gap in his matrimonial felicity—when his death was reckoned
certain, his estate settled, his name dismissed from memory and his
wife long, long ago resigned to her autumnal widowhood—he entered the
door one evening quietly as from a day's absence, and became a loving
spouse till death.