Itis a simple matter, I have been told, to keep a locomotive running smoothly on its track, once it is well coaled-up and started. In an artistic moment in a summer vacation, Margaret and I likened our house and all its simple well-oiled machinery to a locomotive—Mother and Carrie being the engineer.
Therefore, we accepted rather blandly the charge of the house and grounds while the engineer took a vacation. I rather think we had it in mind to look in occasionally upon the house as it ran along, and to save thebulk of the day for other things. We were already accustomed to the complexities of a house; we had officiated at each separate complexity. But I am not sure that we did not plan to run the house a trifle more nonchalantly than the average anxious housewife, and welcome both our daily duties and any unexpected guests with a minimum of morbid foreboding.
The first thing we noticed after we were left alone was a little steady drip in the back room. This was the refrigerator leaking. When this fact had once been agreed upon, Margaret and I began to see with eyes of the mind fragments of motion pictures in which the refrigerator was being fixed. It is queer what vague remnants of a scene will stay with you, when at the time ofthe scene you were not responsible for the outcome. Margaret, from her ever-active and interesting memory, called up Mother's dream-shape at the silcock, all ready to turn on the garden-hose. I dimly remembered Carrie with her arm under the refrigerator holding the hose and calling respectfully from the back room—“All ready, mum.” So we hatched a plot and proceeded to act it.
We had to assume the pipe at the rear of the ice-box, for we could not see it. We assumed also that it was plugged up. I had chanced once upon Carrie, lying prone on a rug in the back room, directing the nozzle of the hose into this inaccessible pipe-hole near the farther wall. I elected to plumb for the hole, with Margaret to run aboutalternately holding matches for me and working the spray. My arms are the longer; her fear of fire is somewhat less. After I had found the hole, Margaret attached the hose to the silcock outside the house, threaded it through the screen door, passed the nozzle to me, and went back to turn on the water. Hose in hand, face averted,—prone,—I waited. Prone means on your face. If you turn your head to look under the refrigerator, your arm is not long enough. I directed the water almost wholly by the Braille system. Why it should have entered into the heart of man to construct a refrigerator so deep that the arm of man is not long enough to reach its drain, will have to be explained to us when we reach the city four-square. But a good workmannever finds fault with his tools, Margaret said, so we set to work with what Nature offered us.
I soon found that no cue was needed for some of my lines. My manner of shouting, “Turn it off!” was extremely unstudied;—art disguising art. Twice the back room was inundated. I became a saturated solution. I felt like the brave boy of Haarlem. Margaret came in and advanced the theory that, when you have reached a certain stage of wetness, it does not matter at all how much more water you lie in. Acting on this supposition, and with my consent, she turned on all the city's water-power with great suddenness. I shall always think that this did make a difference in my wetness, but it dislodged the obstruction. We could hearthe glad water leaping and gurgling through the pipe out of doors.
Why this pipe should have had any connection with the boiler and attendant pipes behind the stove remains forever shrouded in mystery. These pipes began to leak on the morning of the second day, and we sent for a plumber. He pronounced us unpatchable, unsolderable. Margaret and I convened. We decided, in committee of the whole, to be re-piped and re-boilered. We did not know then that the plumbers were going to find still more serious trouble with the pipes that led to the main. Were we justified in ordering complete repairs? Our eternal query of Life became, “What would Mother do?” We went the whole figure—well up into three figures.
It was not until the third day that we succeeded in making our nonchalance at all prominent. We invited a guest to supper, nonchalantly. She was not the type of guest that you take into the kitchen and tie an apron around. In her honor, we decided to have, among other things, popovers and cherry pie. We decided that we could conventionally have popovers because the hour was really a supper hour; that we might have cherry pie because the meal was really a dinner. To make this strange plan at all intelligible, I shall have to state that, as far as our names are known, we are famous for our popovers and our cherry pie. We were at our nonchalant best.
Our cherry tree is a unique specimen among the vegetables. It has a curiousshort, gnarled trunk just as a cherry tree should; but, aside from that, it runs along the general lines of a spirea. Each main branch, nearly six inches in diameter at the point of departure, sprangles instantly into showers of fragile twigs. These in turn branch gracefully higher and higher, occasional cherries on the outskirts. To pick our cherries, one really ought to be a robin. Each cherry has an exquisite red cheek and a black ant running to and fro across it.
We chose Margaret to pick the cherries. We chose her because she is lighter than I by half a stone; and we thought the fewer stone on the twigs, the better. Then it was going to be her pie.
The cherries which could be reachedfrom the ground were satisfactory in the extreme. They rattled into the pail, just as other people's cherries rattle. It would have been my instinct to leave these till the last. But I was not picking the cherries. I found it impossible, however, to stay away from the cherry-picking. Margaret is rather quick in some of her mannerisms. And her mannerism of mounting our cherry tree was little short of lightning. She was wearing white silk hose and white canvas slippers. Personally I did not consider these correct climbing shoes, but Margaret is accustomed, when far from home, to choose her own boots for all occasions, and to pay for new ones when her choice proves disastrous. So I watched her rise above me without remark.
I freely admit that it always seemsless dangerous to one whose feet can feel the crotches on the tree, and on whose arm the tin pail is, than to the anxious relative on the ground below. As Margaret's manœuvres transmitted unpleasant little cracks along the tree, I recalled bits of sage advice that I had on a time given to my mother concerning her attitude when Geoffrey was climbing trees. I had told Mother that Geoffrey was just as safe in a tree as in his bed. But Margaret did not give this reassuring appearance. Perhaps I like Margaret better than I do Geoffrey. Certainly I was more afraid she would fall out of the cherry tree.
She finally passed out of my sight. After a prolonged interval of silence, I suggested to Margaret that she come down.
“My foot is caught,” returned my sister, her tone of voice wholly explanatory. “It won't come out.”
“The shoe tapers to a point,” I called encouragingly. “Try to turn it sideways and pull backwards at the same time.”
“Barbara,” said my sister tonelessly, “I just said it wouldn't come out.”
“Then you'll have to take your foot out, and leave the slipper up there,” I responded with finality.
“What would Mother do?” called Margaret from her lady's bower.
It was so obvious, even to me, that Mother would not have been up a tree at this hour that I could only repeat my original project of abandoning the slipper. I learned afterwards that it is not an entirely uncomplicated processto buckle in the centre when swinging in a tree-top with one foot stationary and a tin pail on one's arm, and untie a slipper-strap without tipping the pail or falling out of the tree. Margaret soon appeared within my line of vision, listing dangerously, chastened, dignified, and stocking-footed. She reminded me simultaneously, as she descended, of a mystic Russian première danseuse, a barefooted native swinging down his cocoanut grove, and High Diddle Dumpling my son John.
I was rash enough later to inquire into the mechanics of retrieving the slipper, but Margaret, as she finished her tart, replied so appropriately in the words of the Scriptures as to be too sacrilegious to repeat.
As our nonchalant day wore on, Ilighted the gas-oven for popovers. Popovers are casuals. They are not supposed to be achef d'œuvre. They are the high-grade moron of the hot-bread family. A guest expects the popovers to be good, just as he expects the butter to be good. I expected mine to be good.
As they neared the crisis, the city gas was shut off. I acted instantly, treating the phenomenon as a rare exception in housekeeping. I aroused a dying fire in the coal range with great speed and an abundance of kindling, and conveyed my gems across kitchen. It is a sweet-tempered popover, indeed, which will bear shifting from a hot oven to a moderately comfortable one. I began steadily to lose my unconcern. Once on my knees before an oven door, I usually ask no quarter and receiveno advice. Advice is sometimes given me, but my advisers realize that it is not being received. This time I called Margaret in consultation.
“I think they are going to pop,” she pronounced judicially, “but not over.” She was right.
Does Life hold, I wonder, a more sorrowful moment than that time when a true cook has to instruct her guest to scoop out the inside of her popover for the chickens, and eat only the outside? Every one knows that delicate tinkling sound that a good popover makes when tossed on a china plate. These made somewhat the same sound as a Florida orange. We learned quite cogently that evening that Hospitality may depend, not upon greatness of heart, but upon the gas stove.
This experience of ours, however, could not be regarded strictly as a test case. Any one would admit that all of our adversity was unusual. It is the rare exception when all the pipes in the house burst at once, when there is no gas in the gas-stove, and when one loses a slipper in making a cherry pie.
It took another day to show us that running a housenormallyconsists in dealing with a succession of unusual events.
We did not court disaster, or attempt anything ambitious. We had not even planned to invite any more company. But an old friend of Geoffrey's appeared at our door in uniform with his new wife, to wait over a train. Margaret promptly invited them to lunch. Our lunch, as already planned, wassimple. We told them that it would be simple. Margaret leans, during hot weather, to such things as iced tea, lettuces, cheese wafers, and simple frozen desserts. Fiction has it that the water-ices are the simplest of anything. Theyaresimple to eat. We had planned to freeze the water-ice together. But in view of the fact that we had company, Margaret, who had first suggested our simple dessert, slipped quietly out to freeze it alone.
Ice may be cold stuff, but it is heating to chop. Three minutes may freeze a pudding in some freezers, but not in ours. As much time wore away, I gradually hitched my chair in a backward direction, to permit a stealthy glance at Margaret on the back piazza. It is almost as wearing to holdour freezer down as it is to turn the crank. Margaret was doing both at once, stopping frequently to chase a slippery chunk of ice about with her pick, chivying the bits of ice and salt finally into a cup. Her cheeks had become flushed a vivid freight-car color. It was with great relief that I finally saw her peer into the freezer, remove the dasher, and proceed to seal up her confection and cover it with newspapers and an astrakhan cape.
The precise moment when a water-ice becomes simple is when it is smoothly slipped into a long-stemmed sherbet glass. Our guests, we think, enjoyed our simple meal. But after they had gone, the word which exactly described our state of mind was not the word nonchalant.
“Barbara!” said Margaret energetically, “for supper, let's open a box of blueberries.”
We did. Blueberries reallyaresimple. We made our evening meal of them, accompanied by a few left-over popover skins.
Margaret and I still feel that we could deal somewhat hopefully with a leaking pipe. We still think that our calamities were a little out of the ordinary. But we do not wonder quite so much now that Mother does not wholly appreciate her dinner when she has guests, that she does not oftener make simple frozen desserts, or that she stays in such close company with her wheels when they are on their way around.
Thereare people who have a right to boss;—parents, for instance, and generals in the army. With these we are not concerned. But most of us, not officially in authority, now and then have ideas of our own that we are willing to pass on. Some of us have them more than others.
The typical boss is usually a capable executive with a great unselfish imagination and the gift of speech. He usually knows enough to curb himself in public; it is only in the home that his tendencies run riot. In a family where all the brothers and sisters belong to this type, you can run riot only to a certainextent. If you go too far, you meet somebody else also running riot, and collisions ensue.
If you are an elder sister, for instance, with a tendency toward what your younger brothers call “getting bossy,” you find yourself constantly having vivid mental pictures of the best way to do a given thing. With these fancy-pictures in mind, it is hard for you to believe that your companions have any ideas at all. As you look at another person from the outside, you find it hard to believe that his head is working. If our heads were only made like these ovens with glass in the door, so that you could watch the half-baked thinking rise and fall—but no. Your brother sitting carelessly on the veranda may have his mind on the time;he may be planning just how he will presently rush to his room, bathe and change, snatch his hat, run to the station, and connect with the train on daylight-saving time. He may be thinking hard about all this, but he does not look as if he were. You fidget while the minutes go by, and then you go to the window and speak. If your spirit has been broken by much browbeating for past attempts to give advice, you speak timidly. If you are of stouter stuff, you speak roughly to your little boy.
“Tom,” you say (timidly or roughly as the case may be)—“I suppose you know what time it is.”
“Yes,” says Tom.
That ought to end it. But if you are a true boss, you go on. You know thatyou are being irritating. You know that Tom is of age. But you are willing, like all great prophets, to risk unpopularity for the sake of your Message. The spirit of the crier in the wilderness is upon you, and you keep at it until one of two things happens. If Tom is in a good temper, he goes upstairs to humor you, with a condescending tread and a tired sigh. If he is fractious, he argues: Did you ever know him to miss a train? Did you ever hear of his forgetting an appointment? How do you suppose he ever manages to get to places when you are away from home?
My brother Geoffrey, in his day, has been a great sufferer from this kind of thing. As memory reviews his youth, there stands out only one occasion when he really achieved anything like freedomfrom sisterly counsel. This was when he picked the pears. The pears on six large loaded trees were ready to harvest. Geoffrey said that he was willing to pick, but not to pick to order. We would have to engage to let him pick the pears in his own way. We promised, though we knew too well our brother's way of picking pears. He holds quite a little reception from the tree-tops, entertaining passers-by with delightful repartee, and giving everybody a pear. As time goes on, he gets to throwing pears. “Somebody will get hurt,” said our mother anxiously. But a contract is a contract, and we tried not to look out of the window. In this unaccustomed air of freedom, Geoffrey's spirits rose and rose. High in the branches, taking his time, he grewmore and more abandoned. He had just reached the very top of the tallest tree when he saw far up the street the form of the ugliest and largest dog who ever visited our town, a strange white creature named Joe—a dog hard to define, but resembling one's childhood idea of the blood-hound type. Every one spoke of this dog as “Joseph A. Graham”: “Joe” seemed too simple a name to be in scale with his size and ferocity. Down the street he came, loafing along. Geoffrey, ordinarily kind to pets, selected a large mellow pear, aimed it with steady eye, and hit Joseph A. Graham, accurately, amidships. Joseph flew up into the air, landed on a slant, gathered his large feet together for a plunge, and came dashing down the street with murderin his great red eye. At that moment Geoffrey looked down and saw with horror that an elderly gentleman was just coming up the street. It was obvious that Joseph thought that the old gentleman threw the pear. Geoffrey, emitting hoarse cries of warning, came swarming down the tree to the rescue, swinging from branch to branch like an orang-outang. The elderly gentleman, grasping the situation in the nick of time, stepped neatly inside our screen door, and Joseph, thwarted of reprisal, snuffed around the steps, muttered to himself for a few moments, and then went shuffling on down the street. Geoffrey, still ardently apologizing to the passer-by, went back to his tree-top to recover from this, the only troubled moment in that influential day.
By clever bargaining, you can occasionally buy off your natural advisers in this way, and enjoy perfect independence. But there are projects that really call for a good boss. When a number of people are at work together, the trained worker should direct the group. Even in your family, you are allowed to be an autocrat in things that are your specialty. But you are supposed to be pleasant about it. This is not so easy when you are in the full heat of action. When you have your mind on a difficult project, your commands to your helpers are apt to sound curt. You are likely to talk to them as if they were beneath you. The unskilled helper in an affair demanding skill gives the impression of belonging to an inferior class—something a little below thesocial status of a coolie. He even feels inferior, and is therefore touchy. If you order him too gruffly, he is likely to take offence and knock off for the day.
Barbara, for instance, once very nearly lost a valued slave when I was giving her my awkward assistance about the camera. She had decided to take a picture of Israel Putnam's Wolf-Den from a spot where no camera-tripod had ever been pitched before. The Wolf-Den sits on a slant above a cliff in the deep woods. At one side of it there is a capital place from which to take its picture, a level spot on which a tripod will stand securely. From this point most of the pictures hitherto taken of the Den were snapped. But Barbara was resolved to get a full front view to show the lettering on abronze tablet that had recently been placed on the Den. She wanted a time exposure, and she said that she was going to need assistance. Her idea was to stand on a jutting rock just at the edge of the cliff and hold the camera in the desired position while the rest of the party adjusted the legs of the tripod beneath it.
Every one who has ever set up a tripod knows that its loosely hinged legs can be elongated or telescoped by a system of slides and screws. In order to arrange our tripod with all its three pods on the uneven ground, we found that we must shorten one leg to its extreme shortness, and lengthen the second leg to its maximum length. This left the third leg out in the air over the brink of the precipice. Our guest wasto manage the short leg, our mother was to manage the important and strategic leg among the rocks, and I offered to build a combination of bridge and flying buttress out from the slope of the cliff, for the third.
We started our project with that cordial fellow-feeling that rises from a common faith in a visionary enterprise, and I am sure that we could have kept that beautiful spirit to the end if it had not been for the mosquitoes. There are no wolves at the Wolf-Den now, but on a muggy day the mosquitoes are just as hungry. They rise all around in insubstantial drifts, never seeming to alight, yet stinging in clusters. A true Wolf-Den mosquito can land, bite, and make good his escape before you have finished brushinghim out of your eyes. You cannot brush insects out of your eyes, slap the back of your neck, and take a picture at the same time. Barbara, both hands busy holding the camera, was desperately kicking the ankle of one foot with the toe of the other. I counted fifteen mosquitoes sitting unmoved around the rims of her low shoes.
“Don't take too much pains with that bridge,” said she to me in considerate company tones.
“No,” said I respectfully, “but I have to build it up high enough to meet the leg.”
“Well, then, hurry,” said she, still kindly.
“Yes,” said I evenly, “I am.”
When two sisters discourse like this before a guest, there creeps into theirvoices a note of preternatural sweetness, a restraint and simplicity of utterance that speak volumes to the trained ear.
I was hurrying all I could, but for my unnatural bridge I had not the materials I could have wished. I found a weathered wooden fence-rail, balanced one end of it on the cliff and the other end in the crotch of a big tree that leaned over the side hill; but this bridge had to be built up with a pile of sand, leaves, small stones, and stubble balanced carefully upon it. Meanwhile, my mother was busily drilling a hole in the rock to make a firm emplacement at a distance for leg number two.
Finally our three positions were approximately correct, and the more delicateprocess of adjustment began. Barbara, from under her dark cloth, gave muffled directions. We obeyed, shifting, screwing, unscrewing, adjusting. Our guest was still cheery. Success hovered before us in plain sight. So did the mosquitoes. Barbara's directions began to sound tense. They sounded especially tense when she spoke to me. I was balancing precariously part-way down the shale cliff, digging in my heels and doing the best I could with the materials at hand. Looking timidly up at my sister's black-draped, mosquito studded figure, I had been first conciliatory, then surly, then sullen. Barbara had now begun to focus.
“Lower!” said Barbara between her teeth.
Obediently we all three lowered.
“No, no, not you!” said Barbara to me. “Yours was too low already.”
There are moments in this life when the presence of a guest is an impediment to free speech. Barbara, as anybody can see, had the advantage. She was the commanding officer. Any response from me would have been a retort from the ranks. Since one of her other two helpers was her mother and the other a guest, her words to them had to be sugared. In a sugar-shortage, it is the lower classes who suffer. By this time one could easily distinguish her directions to me by their truculent tone.
“Make the bridge a trifle higher,” said she curtly.
I obediently brought another grain of sand.
“Higher!”
I silently added five smooth stones.
“Oh, build it up!” she begged. “You ought to see the slant.”
I pried a large boulder from the ledge and balanced it on the rail.
“Your rail's breaking!” cried my mother, so suddenly that I lost my footing.
I seized the leg of the tripod in one hand, the branch of a tree with the other, while the flying buttress went rumbling down the defile, and I was left clinging to the bare rock, that refuge of the wild goat.
We have now some very attractive pictures of the Den, taken from a spot where no tripod was ever pitched before, and where I hope no tripod will be pitched again. But as we developed the plates that night, I told Barbarathat I did not think that I was qualified to help her much about the camera any more.
“You were all right,” said she kindly. “It was the mosquitoes.”
And I was mollified by this as perhaps I could have been by no logic in the world.
The right to boss is conceded to the expert. It is also sometimes extended to members of the family who are for the time being in the centre of the stage. At such times you are permitted to dictate—when you are to have a guest, for instance, or when you are about to be married. For a day or two before the wedding, your wish is law. You really need to stay on hand until the last minute, however, to enforce the letter of the law to the end. Otherwise,circumstances may get ahead of you.
Geoffrey, for example, directly after announcing his engagement to our best friend Priscilla Sherwood, enjoyed a time of perfect power. He knew that he needed only to say, “Priscilla likes so and so,” and so and so would follow. Barbara and I reminded him that we knew Priscilla better than he did, but we could not say that we were engaged to her. Just before the wedding, Geoffrey took us aside to explain seriously about his plans, and to give us our orders for the day.
“We don't want you to throw anything,” said Geoffrey reasonably. “No rice or confetti or shoes. And you needn't even see us to the train. Priscilla doesn't care about any demonstration, and I think it would be justas well to go off quietly. We'd just as soon the other people on the train didn't know we were a bride and groom.”
Barbara and I, struck with the originality of this point of view, promised to throw nothing. Priscilla, meanwhile, reasoned equally well with her brothers. After the wedding, we all stood cordially on the curbstone and let them drive off to the train. Then, deserted, the two families confronted each other rather blankly.
“It doesn't seem as if they had actually gone, does it?” said Barbara uneasily.
“They wouldn't mind if we waved to them when the train goes out, would they?” began one of the Sherwoods tentatively.
Barbara was inspired. “Come on down to our house,” said she, “and then they can see us from the train.”
One of the advantages of a home near the railway is the fact that you can see your friends off on trips without leaving your dooryard. Each man for himself, we went streaming down the last hill, fearing at any minute to hear the train pull out. To our dismay, we saw that a long freight-train was standing on the siding in such a position as to cut off our view of the express.
“When you are on the train,” I panted as I ran, “you can see our upstairs windows even when freight-cars are in the way.”
“We'll wave out of the front windows,” said Barbara, and we all rushed upstairs.
“They'll never think to look up here, will they?” said one of the brothers Sherwood anxiously as we peered out along the vista of track. “The pear trees are in the way.”
“We might just step outside the window,” said Barbara resourcefully. “The piazza roof is perfectly safe. Then they couldn't help seeing us.”
Wrapping our best clothes about us, we crept out through the window one by one, and went cautiously along the tin roof to a vantage-point beyond the pear trees. When a company of grown people goes walking on a tin roof, there are moments of shock when the tin bubbles snap and crackle, making a sound nothing short of terrifying, like the reverberations of season-cracks in the ice on a pond. We ranged ourselvesin a row near the eaves-pipe, just in time. The train went hooting by. They saw us. We waved the wedding flowers, and they waved back. We saw them laughing. We waved until the end of the train disappeared around the curve. And as we assisted each other politely one by one through the window again, we had a comfortable sensation of having wound up the affair with a finish and completeness that had been lacking after the first farewell.
Still feeling a little uplifted with excitement, we went up the street to report events to our grandmother.
“You mean to say that you went up on to theroofto wave?” said our grandmother.
“Well,” said Barbara thoughtfully, “it didn't seem quite like going upon the roof at the time. It all happened so gradually. We just stepped out.”
“And they saw you?” inquired Grandmother.
“Oh, yes. Nobody could help it. Everybody saw us.” Barbara glowed reminiscently.
“And you waved the wedding flowers?”
“Yes,” said Barbara happily. “Father Sherwood gave us each an armful.”
“Well,” said our grandmother, resuming her sewing, “I shouldn't wonder if the other passengers on that train thought that something had happened to Geoffrey.”
To govern one's own kinsmen successfully, one certainly does need to beon the spot. One cannot afford to leave them for an instant. One should be alert and watchful, and as diplomatic as circumstances will allow. The ability to boss implies a ready understanding and the knack of seeing the end from the beginning. It implies also a hardy constitution and the gift of tongues. But after all, in the last analysis, it is largely a matter of the Will.
I amoften reminded of a lady, who, during the war, volunteered to oversee all the Canteen work for soldiers passing through our town. Her favorite phrase, accompanied by a surprised accent, became the following one: “There's moretothis job than you'd think from the outside looking in.” Then she would proceed with many astounding details: soldiers who required two cups of coffee, or three lumps of sugar, milk that in the course of time became dubious, and trains that in the course of time became late.
I sympathized with this lady and helped her wash the dishes. And I have never questioned her statement. Moreover, I have yet to find the job to which this statement does not apply. I suppose that, until you become a postal clerk, you know very little about the intricacies into which a capital “S” may go, or how the rats eat the stamps. A job is always annotated for the employee.
Certainly, teaching school introduces you to manifold works which could not be anticipated by looking in. In fact, when my friendly janitor once said that it must be very easy to teach the First Grade, I caught myself falling back on the popular phrase with some emotion—“There's more to it than you'd think.” My most baffling problemswere just a little too complex to mention to my janitor.
“What instantly comes to your mind,” says my college friend who is “taking” Psychology, “when I say the word ‘ping-pong’?”
I tell him. By right of which I retaliate, “What instantly comes to your mind when I say the word ‘sand-table’?”
“Oh, little paper pine trees,” responds the student (who is also “taking” Education),—“and wigwams and canoes, and a real piece of glass for a pond.”
All this comes to my mind, too,—with addenda. The addenda, however, come to my mind first: Spilling Sand, Sweeping up Sand, Trailing your fingers in Sand as you march past, and, ifyou areverynewly five years old, Throwing Sand. This is not because I am soured on the sand-table. I have merely learned that there is moretoone than you would suspect from the outside of one, looking in. Sand-tables may mean pine trees, and they may mean pandemonium.
Throw several such freighted words into a mixed group, and the reactions are passionately interesting. If you say, “Muscular movement,” “Interest and Attention,” “Socialized Classes,” or “Projects,” you can sift out the school-teachers by their smile.
In fact, there is a very large group of noun substantives which mark, for an Elementary teacher, at least, the seasons of the year. Usually she has a top drawer full of these. Many a teacherlongs for the horse-chestnut-on-a-string season to appear, if only to finish up the season of the maple-key;—that large pale-green maple-key, which, by clever splitting of the central seed, may be made to stay on one's nose. My young friend Junior O'Brien once read to me “The Three Billy Goats Gruff,” with a maple-key over each ear, one on his freckled nose, and two on his apple cheeks. I gave over my reading-lesson period to researches as to how his hard little cheeks could yield enough slack to accommodate a key; and before I was ready to ask Junior to remove his decorations, the force of gravity intervened.
The maple-key, I suppose, suggests eye-glasses. Certainly a bit of wire, twisted into spectacles, follows keys.These may be very ornate in the upper grades, more nearly approaching the lorgnette, or even the opera-glass. It is a fascinating thing to see what a wire hairpin correctly treated will do to a young face. It lightens my day's load, this vision of grave childish eyes through the twisted rims, and that magnificent effort of will, contrary to nature, to obtain perfect immobility of the nose.
In company with the gross of wire spectacles in my drawer are numerous “snapping-bugs.” These may be bought for one cent each, in the snapping-bug season, of the ice-cream man. They are double bugs of tin, which, if pinched in the proper spot, will yield a sharp click reminiscent of the old-fashioned stereopticon lecture. Snapping-bugsmay go far in “socializing” a First Grade, and in making friends with a newcomer at recess, but when they snap in school they give me an uneasy sense that my audience is in haste to have the picture changed. So I have six snapping-bugs.
I have five tumble-bugs. These are vivid green or purple gelatin capsules about an inch long, each housing a lead ball. Place the bug on an inclined plane, and it will promptly turn right side up, or the other side up, as long as the plane continues to incline. Since tumble-bugs are practically noiseless, their life is somewhat longer than that of their snapping cousins.
I have one sling-shot. It might be argued that First Graders are too young for sling-shots. So they are.They all too often receive their own charge full in the eye. They much prefer their comfortable acorn pipes. These are pandemic in October, as are also balloons.
I once perceived Dominick, in the height of the balloon season, with a frankfurter balloon, a shape then new. The active part was at just that moment inert—a dried and crumpled wisp of rubber. But its tube was unmistakably going to be blown. Dominick will never know how much his teacher wished to see his balloon, properly inflated, swaying and glowing as only a green sausage balloon can glow. I was deterred by a misgiving as to whether this type of balloon collapsed quietly after its magnificent spectacle, or whether it was of that variety whichemits a peculiar penetrating whistle as it shrinks—an unmistakable sound, due to be placed accurately in her list of sounds by my teacher-friend next door, who does not approve of balloons in academic session. Dominick, however, wished more than I did to see his lighter-than-air craft in all its glory. I finally deposited it among the false noses and horse-chestnuts in my drawer.
I used to wonder why a teacherwantedmarbles and walnuts, and pencil-sharpeners shaped like a rabbit. She doesn't. She simply does not want to hear them dropping, dropping, ever dropping, like the pennies in Sabbath School. There is something thrilling toanybody about a real agate. If it is about, you have to look at it. It is so perfectly round. Anything perfectlyround, or perfectly cylindrical, likes, as we learn in Kindergarten, to roll. It likes, upon occasion, to “rest”; but it does not like this nearly as well. It is not fair to a child to let him spend his time playing with an agate in school. Neither is it fair to him to destroy the beauty of an agate for him—the charm of its shape, or the marvel of its construction. A teacher should strike a medium so delicately and absolutely medium that the angels themselves pause lest they jar the weights.
But the most curious phenomenon which I have observed, one which could not possibly be anticipated by an outsider looking in, is the effect of my setting the clock. There are times when a perfectly innocent shuffling of thirty-four feet in the First Grade assumesproportions far more important than Murder in the First Degree. Then it is that I set the clock. If it does not need setting, I set it forward first, and then back again. The clock is high on the wall, reached by the janitor (all too seldom) from a very high step-ladder. I set it from the floor. I take the yardstick and advance on the clock. It is a nice operation to push up the glass crystal with a pliant stick, haul down the minute-hand, and finally to close the door. The door must first be lifted into its proper position, and then hammered shut. Each bang of the yardstick sounds as if it would be followed certainly by showers of broken glass. I think that this uncertainty is what keeps my pupils' hearts fluttering and their feet still. Deathly silence alwaysaccompanies my setting of the clock. An imperceptible sound of relief, like a group-sigh, follows the click of the door in its catch. I can tiptoe back, on that sigh, to quiet industry.
It is true that children, with the best intentions, sometimes bring inappropriate busy-work to school. But teaching them has not dowered me with any disdain for my students. They are beneath me only in years. In fact, I raise my hat to some of them in spirit, as I teach them to raise theirs to me in truth. Here and there I calmly recognize a superior. I am constantly taking care that no youthful James Watt can say to me in later years, “You put out my first tea-kettle which boiled in school.”
I suppose that Pauline will eventuallybe a gracious hostess, saying just the right thing to her guests and to her husband—charming every masculine acquaintance on sight. Even now, I find that she is engaged, provisionally, to James Henry Davis. Perhaps some day Adamoskow, with his long clever fingers and his dreamy eyes, and no head whatever for “number,” will be charging me five dollars a seat to hear him play. His impresario can count the change for him.
And I know that James Henry Davis, at seventeen, will have the power to break hearts to the right of him, and hearts to the left of him, with the same dimple, the same wonderful pompadour, and the same lifted eyebrow that he now uses for the same purpose in Grade I. I know that he will out-dancehis dancing-master at his Junior Prom. I shall wonder, when I see him in his white gloves, how I ever dared to take his acorn pipe away. Therefore I take it away as innocuously as possible, and touch his soft pompadour, in passing, with a reverent hand.
Thefirst steps of certain things are beautiful; the first flush of buds along a maple branch, for instance, or the first smooth launching of an Indian canoe. But the first steps of music are commonly not so. The first note of a young robin is a squawk. The first piercing note of a young violinist is not in tune with the music of any sphere.
Musicians learn to expect a certain amount of wear and tear in first attempts. Even the professional orchestra makes bad work of a new symphony the first time through. And in an amateur orchestra, where the players are ofvarious grades of proficiency, the playing of a new piece of music is a hazardous affair.
In our own orchestra, when we read a new piece of music for the first time, we usually decide to “try it once through without stopping.” Come what will, we will meet it together. The great thing is to keep going. Sometimes we emerge from this enterprise with all bows flying and everybody triumphantly prolonging the same last note. At other times we come out at the finish one by one, each man for himself, like the singers in an old-fashioned round-song rendering of “Three Blind Mice.”
To enjoy playing in an orchestra like ours, the musician should have a great soul and a rugged nervous system. Heshould not be too proud to play his best on music that is too easy for him, and he should not be afraid to try music that is too hard. Music within the easy reach of every member of an amateur orchestra is scarce. The first time through, there is usually somebody who has to skirmish anxiously along, experimenting softly to himself when he loses his place, and coming out strong when he finds it again. From among the many desirable notes in a rapid passage, he chooses as many as he can hit in the time allowed, playing selected grace-notes here and there, and skipping the rest. We cannot all have everything.
Most amateurs call this process “vamping the part.” This, and the clever deed known as “cueing in” passagessupposed to be played by instruments that we lack, are our chief offences against the law.
There are proud spirits in the world who refuse to have anything to do with either of these sins. When they come to a passage that is not well within their reach, they lay down the fiddle and the bow, and sit back tolerantly while the rest go on without them. Their motto is the one made famous by a certain publishing house:Tout bien ou rien.That is a fine watchword for a publisher, but fatal in a scrub orchestra. There, it is likely to mean that “tout” must go “bien,” or you resign.
Nobody has ever resigned from our orchestra. We are called a Trio, because our minimum is three. But, in actual fact, we rarely play with lessthan seven performers. Whenever we are about to play in public, we reënforce ourselves with additional instruments, beginning with a favorite extra violin. If we are to play in the evening, we can count on a viola and a clarinet, played respectively by the senior and the junior partner of a hardware firm: Mr. Bronson and Mr. Billings, of Bronson and Billings. If we are to play on Sunday, we are sure of a double-bass. And on state occasions, we are joined by an attorney-at-law who plays the piccolo. People who invite us to play always request music by Our Trio, and then inquire delicately how many of us there will be.
A trio of this kind is sure to be in demand. In making our way to the place where we are to play, we havelearned to go in relays through the streets. This is not because we are ashamed to be seen carrying the badge of our talent through the town, but because if we all go together there is a discussion about who shall carry what instruments. Barbara, our 'cellist, is the storm-centre of these broils. The 'cello, like some people, has the misfortune to look a great deal heavier than it really is. No gentleman likes to let a lady carry one.
“Really, it's as light as a feather,” says Barbara, swinging it easily alongside.
“But,” reasons the viola earnestly, “think how it looks.”
To avoid all friction, Barbara goes ahead with the gentleman who plays the bass-viol. Together they presenta striking aspect to the passer-by, but they have peace and mutual understanding in their hearts. Nobody could expect a gentleman, however gallant, to carry both a 'cello and a double-bass.
The rest of us follow along at a safe distance, and arrive at becoming intervals at the place where we are to play.
For convenience in talking among ourselves, we have divided our performances into three classes: the platform performance, the semi-screened, and the screened. Our semi-screened programmes are those where we are partly hidden from view, in choir-lofts, conservatories, verandas, and anterooms. The screened are those that take place behind palms. Of all these sorts, we vastly prefer the screened.
Each of us has a special reason forthis preference. Mr. Bronson, the viola, prefers it because, screened, he is allowed to beat time with his foot. There is something very contented-looking about the tilt of his long shoe, thrust out informally amidst the shrubbery—the toe rising and falling in exact rhythm with the music, now legato, now appassionato, our perfect metronome. Such happiness is contagious.
Barbara likes to be screened because then she can dig a tiny hole in the floor for the end-pin of the 'cello, and stick the pin into it once for all, while she plays. The vogue of the waxed hardwood floor is a great trial to 'cellists. It is upsetting to feel your great instrument skidding out from under you suddenly, with a jerk that you canneither foresee nor control. When we go to places where the device of boring a hole in the floor may not be well received, Barbara takes along a neat strip of stair-carpet, anchors it at one end with her chair and at the other with her music-stand, and sits on it firmly, much as the ancient Roman used to camp upon a square of tessellated pavement brought with him from Rome.
Mr. Billings, the clarinet, likes the screened performance because his wife has told him that he has a mannerism of arching his eyebrows when he plays. In playing a wind-instrument, the eyebrows are a great help. He can arch them all he likes, behind the palms.
The rest of us enjoy the sense of cosy safety that comes when we arrangeour racks, distribute the parts, and settle down with our backs to the foliage for an evening of music, out of sight. We can play old favorites, far too tattered to appear on a printed programme; new things not sufficiently rehearsed; extracts from compositions that we cannot play beyond a certain point; and, best of all, those beloved collections of what Mr. Robert Haven Schauffler used to call “derangements.” All these things, barred by the platform artist, we play blissfully, behind the potted plants.
Since everybody outside our leafy covert is talking, we are free, not only from criticism, but also from the obligation of acknowledging applause. All the little niceties of platform procedure—bowings, exits, dealing withencores—are out of the question. Since we play continuously, there is no chance for encores.
There has been one exception to this rule. One night at a Saint Patrick's Day banquet, Our Trio was out in full force. Even the piccolo was with us. Our corner was carefully walled in with heavy burlap screens, because this was a business-men's supper, and no ladies were supposed to be present. We had brought along a sheaf of Irish music in honor of the day, and we played it unexpectedly after a series of other things. As we finished one of the appealing Irish airs, the applause broke out all over the hall in a genuine encore. We listened, electrified, laying an ear to the cracks. Barbara, who thinks that we are altogether too easily set up by theplaudits of the crowd, stood up, 'cello at an angle, and made a series of elaborate bows for our benefit behind the screen. The viola sprang to his feet and joined her, and they were bowing and scraping hand in hand like Farrar and Caruso, when the front screen was thrown suddenly wide open by the toastmaster who had been sent to request an encore, and no less than forty gentlemen looked in. Since that time, we have not felt too sheltered, even with burlap screens.
The question of applause, so nearly negligible in the screened performance, is a matter of the greatest moment on the platform. The process of responding to it is complicated by numbers. A solo artist can step in easily, bow, and step out again. But it takes too longfor a trio of eight or more to step in, bow, and step out. We have to wait behind the scenes for a real encore.
We are highly gratified at a chance to play our encores, of which we carry a supply. The only hitch is the little matter of deciding just what an encore is. The viola thinks that an encore consists of applause going in waves—starting to die out and reviving again in gusts of hearty clapping. Two such gusts, he says, should comprise an encore. But our pianist thinks that we should wait until the clapping stops entirely, and that, if it then bursts out afresh, it shall be esteemed an encore.
One evening the encore was by every standard unmistakable. Our mother was at the piano that night, and, supposing that we were ready, led the wayin. The rest of us, absorbed in giving out the parts of the music, did not see her go. We waited, wondering where she was. Tempests of amused applause meanwhile surged up around our lonely accompanist stranded in the hall. We heard the thundering, and scattered in frantic search. One of us could have played the piano part, but the music for that had disappeared as well as the musician. The double-bass chanced upon the janitor's little boy in the corridor, and asked him if he knew where our accompanist could be.
“Why, yes! Can't you hear 'em clap?” said the boy in surprise. “She's went in.”
I have heard that there are sensitive people who are jarred upon by applause, people who hold the perfect-tributetheory: they think that the audience, out of respect to the artist, ought to remain reverently silent after each number. I cannot answer for the great artist, but I know that our trio does not feel that way about it. We like applause. Silence is a mysterious thing. From behind the stage how are you to tell a reverent hush from a shocked one? The trained ear can instantly classify applause; but silence, however reverent, does not carry well behind the scenes. We like a little something after each number to cheer us on.
We do know, however, that in a small private audience there is a sense of strain if the listeners feel obliged to make a demonstration after each selection. Clapping seems affected in agroup of three or four, and the business of thinking up well-selected remarks is a serious matter. Knowing this, we always relieve our drawing-room audiences of embarrassment by making the remarks ourselves. The moment the last lingering whisper has completely died away from the strings, we turn as one man and begin to compliment the music. “We like that ending better than any other part of the whole thing,” we say appreciatively. This lifts a load of anxiety from the minds of our hearers, and serves to break the hush.
The question of playing to guests in our own home is the subject on which our familyensemblemost nearly came to mutiny. Our father had a way, contrary to orders, of suggesting a little music when we had visitors. The restof us objected to this, especially if the guests were people who did not play. Once, when an evening of hospitality to strangers was in store, our mother was giving us all our final instructions. She turned to our father last of all.
“Endicott,” she began impressively, “this evening you mustn't say the word ‘music’ unless somebody else suggests it. If they want us to play, they will ask us.”
Our father, a little grieved to think that any one should worry lest he do so strange a thing, promised to comply.
But that evening, finding the guests more and more congenial in the midst of firelight conversation, he turned to them cordially and said, “I know that this is just the time when you would enjoy a little music, but I have beentold that I must not say the word unless you suggest it first.”
The guests, highly diverted, rose to the occasion and begged prettily. They said that they had been starving for some music all along. When visitors who do not really care for music have once been launched on the process of asking for it, the kindest thing to do is to play promptly something brief and sweet and trailing—someAbendliedorAlbumblatt, for instance, and have it over. In the presence of guests, such family crises must be tided over with neat persiflage. It was only after the company had gone that the mutiny took place.
But there is one kind of audience that we like the best of all. Sometimes of an early summer evening, when ourwhole orchestra has gathered to rehearse for a performance that we have in store, the relatives and friends of the players ask to be allowed to come and listen. We arrange the hammock and steamer-chairs in a screened corner outside the house, and there our listeners—perhaps the sister of the bass-viol, the business partner of the piccolo, and a neighbor or two—settle themselves comfortably under the windows. Then we play, interrupted only by an occasional shout from outside, when somebody requests an encore, or asks what that last thing was. Our steamer-chair audience has often begged us to announce the composer and the name of each selection as we go along, and we usually appoint somebody to do this, megaphoning the titles through thewindow. But before we have gone very far, we forget our audience. They lie there neglected, scattered on the lawn. The dew falls around them, the shadows gather over them, and they give up the attempt to attract our notice. We are rehearsing now, not performing, and our blood is up.
Sometimes we have a strong-minded guest who refuses to be treated in this way. He declines the steamer-chair, with steamer-rug and cushion, preferring to sit against the wall in a cramped corner of the room where we are playing. We assure him that the music sounds better from a distance, but he begs to be allowed to stay. He says that he likes to watch as well as listen. This does not disturb us; we are rather flattered if the truth were known. Infact, we know a little how he feels. There is a dramatic and pictorial value in the humblest orchestra, no matter how densely you populate your music-room. Usually the guest who enjoys this sight is a person who would like to play if he knew how—one who can join in the excitement when things are going well.
Like all amateurs, we do become excited. And when we are excited, we tend to play faster and faster, and louder and louder, unless something holds us up. “Pianissimo!” shouts the double-bass, fortissimo. Thus exhorted, we settle down just as earnestly, but with more attention to the waymarks and the phrasings of the score.
Probably it is at these moments that we do our very best. The bass-viol standing by the fireplace, his genial faceunsmiling now, intent, takes the rich low harmony with great sweeps of his practised bow. Barbara, over against the music-cabinet, plays smoothly on, her dark old 'cello planted firmly, the shadow of her hair across its great brown pegs. Mr. Billings, with pointed eyebrows arching steeply, pipes and carols above us like a lark. And through it all the vibrant foot of Mr. Bronson faithfully beats time.
“Why don't you get together and play like this often?” inquires the sister of the bass-viol, when the audience at last, with arms full of steamer-rugs and cushions, comes trailing in.
The piccolo, passing sandwiches, looks up with hearty response. “Yes, why can't we?” he asks. “After the reception, let's try to keep it up.”
The rest of us, fastening the covers around our instruments, give enthusiastic consent. “Every other Monday, let's meet without fail,” we say. But in our hearts we know that we shall not. We shall all be busy—all sorts of things will happen to prevent—and the weeks will fly. Yet we know that sooner or later our trio will meet again—probably for a desperate rehearsal some months hence, just in time for the next event where we are asked to play.