Twice-Told Tales (42 page)

How does Winter herald his approach? By the shrieking blast of latter
autumn which is Nature's cry of lamentation as the destroyer rushes
among the shivering groves where she has lingered and scatters the
sear leaves upon the tempest. When that cry is heard, the people wrap
themselves in cloaks and shake their heads disconsolately, saying,
"Winter is at hand." Then the axe of the woodcutter echoes sharp and
diligently in the forest; then the coal-merchants rejoice because each
shriek of Nature in her agony adds something to the price of coal per
ton; then the peat-smoke spreads its aromatic fragrance through the
atmosphere. A few days more, and at eventide the children look out of
the window and dimly perceive the flaunting of a snowy mantle in the
air. It is stern Winter's vesture. They crowd around the hearth and
cling to their mother's gown or press between their father's knees,
affrighted by the hollow roaring voice that bellows adown the wide
flue of the chimney.

It is the voice of Winter; and when parents and children hear it, they
shudder and exclaim, "Winter is come. Cold Winter has begun his reign
already." Now throughout New England each hearth becomes an altar
sending up the smoke of a continued sacrifice to the immitigable deity
who tyrannizes over forest, country-side and town. Wrapped in his
white mantle, his staff a huge icicle, his beard and hair a
wind-tossed snowdrift, he travels over the land in the midst of the
northern blast, and woe to the homeless wanderer whom he finds upon
his path! There he lies stark and stiff, a human shape of ice, on the
spot where Winter overtook him. On strides the tyrant over the rushing
rivers and broad lakes, which turn to rock beneath his footsteps. His
dreary empire is established; all around stretches the desolation of
the pole. Yet not ungrateful be his New England children (for Winter
is our sire, though a stern and rough one)—not ungrateful even for
the severities which have nourished our unyielding strength of
character. And let us thank him, too, for the sleigh-rides cheered by
the music of merry bells; for the crackling and rustling hearth when
the ruddy firelight gleams on hardy manhood and the blooming cheek of
woman: for all the home-enjoyments and the kindred virtues which
flourish in a frozen soil. Not that we grieve when, after some seven
months of storm and bitter frost, Spring, in the guise of a
flower-crowned virgin, is seen driving away the hoary despot, pelting
him with violets by the handful and strewing green grass on the path
behind him. Often ere he will give up his empire old Winter rushes
fiercely buck and hurls a snowdrift at 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.

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 sensations when, talking poetry while he sold
spelling-books, he should charm the mind, and haply touch the heart,
of a fair country schoolmistress, herself an unhonored poetess, a
wearer of blue stockings which none but himself took pains to look at.
But the scene of his completest glory would be when the wagon had
halted for the night and his stock of books was transferred to some
crowded bar-room. Then would he recommend to the multifarious company,
whether traveller from the city, or teamster from the hills, or
neighboring squire, or the landlord himself, or his loutish hostler,
works suited to each particular taste and capacity, proving, all the
while, by acute criticism and profound remark, that the lore in his
books was even exceeded by that in his brain. Thus happily would he
traverse the land, sometimes a herald before the march of Mind,
sometimes walking arm in arm with awful Literature, and reaping
everywhere a harvest of real and sensible popularity which the
secluded bookworms by whose toil he lived could never hope for.