Hints to Pilgrims

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Charles Brooks. Hints to Pilgrims

Hints to Pilgrims

I Plan a Vacation

At a Toy-Shop Window

Sic Transit —

The Posture of Authors

After-Dinner Pleasantries

Little Candles

A Visit to a Poet

Autumn Days

On Finding a Plot

Circus Days

In Praise of a Lawn-Mower

On Dropping Off to Sleep

Who Was Jeremy?

A Chapter for Children

The Crowded Curb

A Corner for Echoes

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IT is my hope, when the snow is off the ground and the ocean has been tamed by breezes from the south, to cross to England. Already I fancy myself seated in the pleasant office of the steamship agent, listening to his gossip of rates and sailings, bending over his colored charts, weighing the merit of cabins. Here is one amidships in a location of greatest ease upon the stomach. Here is one with a forward port that will catch the sharp and wholesome wind from the Atlantic. I trace the giant funnels from deck to deck. My finger follows delightedly the confusing passages. I smell the rubber on the landings and the salty rugs. From on top I hear the wind in the cordage. I view the moon, and I see the mast swinging among the stars.

Then, also, at the agent's, for my pleasure, there is a picture of a ship cut down the middle, showing its inner furnishing and the hum of life on its many decks. I study its flights of steps, its strange tubes and vents and boilers. Munchausen's horse, when its rearward end was snapped off by the falling gate (the faithful animal, you may recall, galloped for a mile upon its forward legs alone before the misadventure was discovered) – Munchausen's horse, I insist, – the unbroken, forward half, – did not display so frankly its confusing pipes and coils. Then there is another ship which, by a monstrous effort of the printer, is laid in Broadway, where its stacks out-top Trinity. I pace its mighty length on the street before my house, and my eye climbs our tallest tree for a just comparison.

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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.

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