GENTLE READER:—Let me make you acquainted with my book, “Back Home.” (Your right hand, Book, your right hand. Pity’s sakes! How many times have I got to tell you that? Chest up and forward, shoulders back and down, and turn your toes out more.)
It is a little book, Gentle Reader, but please don’t let that prejudice you against it. The General Public, I know, likes to feel heft in its hand when it buys a book, but I had hoped that you were a peg or two above the General Public. That mythical being goes on a reading spree about every so often, and it selects a book which will probably last out the craving, a book which “it will be impossible to lay down, after it is once begun, until it is finished.” (I quote from the standard book notice). A few hours later the following dialogue ensues:
“Henry!”
“Yes, dear.”
“Aren’t you ‘most done reading?”
“Just as soon as I finish this chapter.” A sigh and a long wait.
“Henry!”
“Yes, dear.”
“Did you lock the side-door?” No answer.
“Henry! Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Did you lock the side-door?”
“In a minute now.”
“Yes, but did you?”
“M-hm. I guess so.”
“‘Guess so!’ Did you lock that side-door? They got in at Hilliard’s night before last and stole a bag of clothes-pins.”
“M.”
“Oh, put down that book, and go and lock the side-door. I’ll not get a wink of sleep this blessed night unless you do.”
“In a minute now. Just wait till I finish this...”
“Go do it now.”
Mr. General Public has a card on his desk that says, “Do it Now,” and so he lays down his book with a patient sigh, and comes back to it with a patent grouch.
“Oh, so it is,” says the voice from the bedroom. “I remember now, I locked it myself when I put the milk-bottles out.... I’m going to stop taking of that man unless there’s more cream on the top than there has been here lately.”
“M.”
“Henry!”
“Oh, what is it?”
“Aren’t you ‘most done reading?”
“In a minute, just as soon as I finish this chapter.”
“How long is that chapter, for mercy’s sakes?”
“I began another.”
“Henry!”
“What?”
“Aren’t you coming to bed pretty soon? You know I can’t go to sleep when you are sitting up.”
“Oh, hush up for one minute, can’t ye? It’s a funny thing if I can’t read a little once in a while.”
“It’s a funny thing if I’ve got to be broke of my rest this way. As much as I have to look after. I’d hate to be so selfish.... Henry! Won’t you please put the book down and come to bed?”
“Oh, for goodness sake! Turn over and go to sleep. You make me tired.”
Every two or three hours Mrs. General Public wakes up and announces that she can’t get a wink of sleep, not a wink; she wishes he hadn’t brought the plagued old book home; he hasn’t the least bit of consideration for her; please, please, won’t he put the book away and come to bed?
He reaches “THE END” at 2:30A.M., turns off the gas, and creeps into bed, his stomach all upset from smoking so much without eating anything, his eyes feeling like two burnt holes in a blanket, and wishing that he had the sense he was born with. He’ll have to be up at 6:05, and he knows how he will feel. He also knows how he will feel along about three o’clock in the afternoon. Smithers is coming then to close up that deal. Smithers is as sharp as tacks, as slippery as an eel, and as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. Always looking for the best of it. You need all your wits when you deal with Smithers. Why didn’t he take Mrs. General Public’s advice, and get to bed instead of sitting up fuddling himself with that fool love-story?
That’s how a book should be to be a great popular success, and one that all the typewriter girls will have on their desks. I am guiltily conscious that “Back Home” is not up to standard either in avoirdupois heft or the power to unfit a man for business.
Here’s a book. Is it long? No. Is it exciting? No. Any lost diamonds in it? Nup. Mysterious murders? No. Whopping big fortune, now teetering this way, and now teetering that, tipping over on the Hero at the last and smothering him in an avalanche of fifty-dollar bills? No. Does She get Him? Isn’t even that. No “heart interest” at all. What’s the use of putting out good money to make such a book; to have a cover design for it; to get a man like A. B. Frost to draw illustrations for it, when he costs so like the mischief, when there’s nothing in the book to make a man sit up till ‘way past bedtime? Why print it at all?
You may search me. I suppose it’s all right, but if it was my money, I’ll bet I could make a better investment of it. If worst came to worst, I could do like the fellow in the story who went to the gambling-house and found it closed up, so he shoved the money under the door and went away. He’d done his part.
And yet, on the other hand, I can see how some sort of a case can be made out for this book of mine. I suppose I am wrong-I generally am in regard to everything—but it seems to me that quite a large part of the population of this country must be grown-up people. If I am right in this contention, then this large part of the population is being unjustly discriminated against. I believe in doing a reasonable amount for the aid and comfort of the young things that are just beginning to turn their hair up under, or who rub a stealthy forefinger over their upper lips to feel the pleasant rasp, but I don’t believe in their monopolizing everything. I don’t think it ‘s fair. All the books printed—except, of course, those containing valuable information; we don’t buy those books, but go to the public library for them—all the books printed are concerned with the problem of How She can get Him, and He can get Her.
Well, now. It was either yesterday morning or the day before that you looked in the glass and beheld there The First Gray Hair. You smiled a smile that was not all pure pleasure, a smile that petered out into a sigh, but nevertheless a smile, I will contend. What do you think about it? You’re still on earth, aren’t you? You’ll last the month out, anyhow, won’t you? Not at all ready to be laid on the shelf? What do you think of the relative importance of Love, Courtship, and Marriage? One or two other things in life just about as interesting, aren’t there? Take getting a living, for instance. That ‘s worthy of one’s attention, to a certain extent. When our young ones ask us: “Pop, what did you say to Mom when you courted her?” they feel provoked at us for taking it so lightly and so frivolously. It vexes them for us to reply: “Law, child! I don’t remember. Why, I says to her: ‘Will you have me?’ And she says: ‘Why, yes, and jump at the chance.’ What difference does it make what we said, or whether we said anything at all? Why should we charge our memories with the recollections of those few and foolish months of mere instinctive sex-attraction when all that really counts came after, the years wherein low passion blossomed into lofty Love, the dear companionship in joy and sorrow, and in that which is more, far more than either joy or sorrow, ‘the daily round, the common task?’” All that is wonderful to think of in our courtship is the marvel, for which we should never cease to thank the Almighty God, that with so little judgment at our disposal we should have chosen so wisely.
If you, Gentle Reader, found your first gray hair day before yesterday morning, if you can remember, ‘way, ‘way back ten or fifteen years ago... er... er... or more, come with me. Let us go “Back Home.” Here’s your transportation, all made out to you, and in your hand. It is no use my reminding you that no railroad goes to the old home place. It isn’t there any more, even in outward seeming. Cummins’s woods, where you had your robbers’ cave, is all cleared off and cut up into building lots. The cool and echoing covered bridge, plastered with notices of dead and forgotten Strawberry Festivals and Public Vendues, has long ago been torn down to be replaced by a smart, red iron bridge. The Volunteer Firemen’s Engine-house, whose brick wall used to flutter with the gay rags of circus-bills, is gone as if it never were at all. Where the Union Schoolhouse was is all torn up now. They are putting up a new magnificent structure, with all the modern improvements, exposed plumbing, and spankless discipline. The quiet leafy streets echo to the hissing snarl of trolley cars, and the power-house is right by the Old Swimming-hole above the dam. The meeting-house, where we attended Sabbath-school, and marveled at the Greek temple frescoed on the wall behind the pulpit, is now a church with a big organ, and stained-glass windows, and folding opera-chairs on a slanting floor. There isn’t any “Amen Corner,” any more, and in these calm and well-bred times nobody ever gets “shouting happy.”
But even when “the loved spots that our infancy knew” are physically the same, a change has come upon them more saddening than words can tell. They have shrunken and grown shabbier. They are not nearly so spacious and so splendid as once they were.
Some one comes up to you and calls you by your name. His voice echoes in the chambers of your memory. You hold his hand in yours and try to peer through the false-face he has on, the mask of a beard or spectacles, or a changed expression of the countenance. He says he is So-and-so. Why, he used to sit with you in Miss Crutcher’s room, don’t you remember? There was a time when you and he walked together, your arms upon each other’s shoulders. But this is some other one than he. The boy you knew had freckles, and could spit between his teeth, ever and ever so far.
They don’t have the same things to eat they used to have, or, if they do, it all tastes different. Do you remember the old well, with the windlass and the chain fastened to the rope just above the bucket, the chain that used to cluck-cluck when the dripping bucket came within reach to be swung upon the well-curb? How cold the water used to be, right out of the northwest corner of the well! It made the roof of your mouth ache when you drank. Everybody said it was such splendid water. It isn’t so very cold these days, and I think it has a sort of funny taste to it.
Ah, Gentle Reader, this is not really “Back Home” we gaze upon when we go there by the train. It is a last year’s bird’s nest. The nest is there; the birds are flown, the birds of youth, and noisy health, and ravenous appetite, and inexperience. You cannot go “Back Home” by train, but here is the magic wishing-carpet, and here is your transportation in your hand all made out to you. You and I will make the journey together. Let us in heart and mind thither ascend.
I went to the Old Red School-house with you. Don’t you remember me? I was learning to swim when you could go clear across the river without once “letting down.” I saw you at the County Fair, and bought a slab of ice-cream candy just before you did. I was in the infant-class in Sabbath-school when you spoke in the dialogue at the monthly concert. Look again. Don’t you remember me? I used to stub my toe so; you ought to recollect me by that. I know plenty of people that you know. I may not always get their names just right, but then it’s been a good while ago. You Il recognize them, though; you’ll know them in a minute.
EUGENE WOOD.