In one such mood as this, on an evening, I was pleased, upon answering the knock at my door, to usher in my neighboring lodger Harrison.In reminiscence we would renew our youth; and to that purpose I started him off upon the desired track.
Harrison poses as something of a philosopher, and he began with some of his customary rot.
"Well," said he, "I have never known a man that talked at all upon the subject who did not follow a calling which was the most trying of all those at which men labor in this world, who did not have a most remarkably hard time in early life, and who did not fondly imagine that he was a very bad boy in his youth. These, I take it, are the three most familiar hallucinations in life. I am a victim to them myself. But I shall not regale you with them to-night. I was thinking of my own boyhood, the wickedness of it, and the happiness. Ah! boyhood, that is the happy time; girlhood may be, too—but I doubt it.
"These many years have I been like poor Joe in 'Bleak House,' I must keep moving along; but when I was a boy I had a home. A strange word it is to me now. I am reminded of the old vaudeville 'stunt': Any old place I hang my hat is home, sweet home, to me. I followa trunk about the world, and a devil of a globe-trotter of a trunk it is.
"But when I was a boy," continued Harrison, the lines in his face softened—and he somehow just now looked very like a boy—"I had a home; there the board was always paid." The lines came back in his face for an instant, then faded away again. "There in the winter it was always warm," he said, looking very hard at my small fire. "There we had great feasting and drinking." I could not but notice how spare he was now. "There were noise and romping," and the softness of his voice now emphasized the extreme desertedness of my chambers. "There were brothers and sisters. Did you ever have a brother?" he asked me rather suddenly.
I replied that I never did.
"Or a sister?" he inquired.
I said "No."
He looked at me with a sort of annoying pity.
"I hope," he said rather irritatedly, "that you had a mother?"
I replied that I had had, but I did not see why we should fight about it.
"Now, don't lose your temper, old man,"said Harrison. "You're such an incorrigible old dope, you know, such a cynical, confirmed old bachelor of a bohemian, I mean; so contented with this lonesome, vagabond life, that I hardly think you ever had a real, happy, wholesome boyhood home. By the way, did you ever have a boyhood?" he asked with something very near to a sneer.
"Now, look here," I said, "if you had such an insufferable home, why didn't you stay there and make your own family miserable instead of wandering about the world bemoaning your fate, wishing yourself back there, and insulting people who are not moved by ties of relationship to be tolerant with your spleen? And who won't be," I added, rising.
"You're a fool," said Harrison, as he banged the door.
FORyears I was a great sufferer from insomnia. At one time this dread scourge had so fastened its terrible fangs upon me that I could scarcely walk. My body became one mass of sleeplessness; I tried many remedies, but without avail, and my friends had all given me up for dead when by chance from a mere acquaintance I heard of this great cure which I would recommend to all who are afflicted as I was.
I remember with horror the tortures I used to endure in agony as I tossed to and fro on the hot pillow, going over in my fevered mind interminably the formulas of the so-called reliefsfrom this peerless disease. An unconscionable number of times I numbered a round of sheep over a stile. I counted up to ten, over and over again; and then up to fifteen, and then twenty, twenty-five, thirty, fifty, only to craze myself with the thought of the futility of this lunacy. I heard my dollar watch tick on the dresser, until in madness I arose and placed it on the restraining pad of a clothes-brush. I heard the clock in the next room relentlessly tell the passing hours; I heard a neighboring public clock follow it through the watches of the night. I heard my happy neighbor snore. I heard the sound of rats near by, and the creaking of floors, and the voice of the wind. I tried bathing my feet before going to bed. I tried eating a light lunch. I tried intoxicating liquors. But always I stared through the blackness of the fearful night until an eerie color tinged my window, and then the dawn came up like thunder across the bay.
It was when my spirit had become worn through my body like elbows through the sleeve of an old coat that I heard the remarkable recipe for insomnia: Think of the top of your head. That is what I was told to do. "Think of the top of your head," I said tomyself with some disdain in the awful grip of the night; "now how in thunder do you think of the top of your head?"
"Do you think of your hair?" I asked, turning my eyeballs upward in their sockets. "Do you think of that lightly hidden baldness?" striving to put my mind, so to say, on the top of my head. "How the Dickens-can-you-think-of——" but a drowsy numbness pained my sense as though of hemlock I had drunk, or emptied some dull opiate to the drains one minute past, and Lethewards had sunk. And I dreamed that quite plainly, as though it were some other fellow's, I saw the top of my head.
MR. DUFFis the tenant of the second floor front. His wife has been away. Mr. Duff himself may be encountered about in the halls. He is a large man with a considerable girth and a face that one knows to be youthful for his age; he cannot be under thirty.
Recently the second floor hall became fragrant with the odor of perfume. Mrs. Duff, presumably, had returned. Yes, Mrs. Duff was at the telephone. She calls, "Hello!" very sweetly, in two syllables. Mr. Duff's first name, it appears, is Walter, pronounced by his doting wife also in two syllables, "Wal-ter." Mrs. Duff bleats, it seems, in two syllables. Mr. Duff's middle name evidently is "Hon-ey."
Mrs. Duff said over the telephone that she "had been ba-ad." She said it, or, so sweetly. She had, she said, taken a little walk and had stayed "too long" and she had been away whenhe had called her up. But she had had the "best little time." She was going to work now, "oh! so ha-rd." She was going to clean out the bureau drawers and "that little box," and unpack her trunk and put away her things. No, she would be careful not to overwork herself. She would see him, Walter Honey Duff, when he came home from work. "Good-by, little boy," she said.
Then she called up a creamery. She wanted the creamery to send her, please, a pint of milk, and the smallest jar it had of cream cheese. How soon could those be sent, please? Oh-h! not till then? Well, she supposed she would have to wait.
The second floor hall is fragrant with the odor of perfume.
"THEYsay," remarked the portly man with several double chins on the back of his neck, "that the Duke is over in the Library."
"I wouldn't walk across the street to see him," said a shabby individual, helping himself to a cracker.
"He's no better than any other man," said the bar-boy.
"I wouldn't look at him if they brought him in to me," announced an aggressive-looking character.
Now this was a remark rich in pictorial suggestion.It was eloquent with dramatic evocation. One instantly imagines the striking scene; the duke is dragged in; the aggressive-looking character is called upon to look at him; this he refuses to do.
"He breathes the same kind of air we do, don't he?" pointedly inquired the shabby individual.
"I guess that's right enough, too!" exclaimed the bar-boy.
I'VEgot a fine wife, too. I tell you, Bob, there's nothin' better can happen to a feller than to get the right woman. I don't care for battin' around any more now. Nothin' I like any better than to go home to my flat at night, take off my shoes and put on my slippers, and listen to my wife play the piano. My wife is musical, vocal and instrumental. Her vocal is on a par with her instrumental. I like music. I always said if ever I got married I'd marry, a wife that was musical. I ain't educated in music, exactly, but I've an ear. A feller told me,—Doc. Hoff, a mighty smart man, I'd like you to know him, his talk sometimes it would take a college professor to understand it,—he says to me, "I'm no phrenologist but I can see you've got an ear for music."
My wife is an aristocrat. When I married her, Thunder! I had no polish, that is tospeak of. You know that, Bob. My talk was the vernacular. My wife's an Episcopalian. She asked me if I had any objection to the Episcopal ceremony for marrying. I said I didn't have no religion; anything would suit me so long as it was legal. I had fifteen hundred dollars to the good. I don't know how I come to have it. I oughtn't to have, by rights. Some of these book makers ought to have had it, accordin' to the life I led. But I did have it, anyhow. I took three hundred dollars and got a sweet of drawing room furniture—Louie fourteenth, or fifteenth, they call it, I forget which. Then I got a mahogany table, solid parts through, for our dining room, and some what they call Chippendale chairs. I got a darn good library up there, too.
My wife don't say "and so forth"; she says "and caetera."
HEwas a sturdy-looking little man, with a square, honest face, and an upright manner, to put it so. He seemed to be a Swede. His companion had something the look of Mr. Heep, and he wore a cap.
"Yes, sir, Will," said his companion, "I'd like to see you own that piece of property. I would. If you owned that piece of property, Will, then you see you'd have something. You'd have something, Will. Something you could always call your own, Will."
"Do you think it's good land?" said Will.
"Oh, yes," said his companion; "that's a very fine piece of land, Will. I know every bit of it. I've worked up there, Will."
"Rocky?" asked Will.
"Oh, no, Will; there's hardly a rock on it."
"How far now does it come down this way?" inquired Will musingly.
"Down the hill, Will?" asked his companion, with great attention.
"Yes," said Will.
"Well, now as to that," said the other, casting his face upward in thought, "I couldn't just exactly say."
"Down to the oak tree, don't it?" said Will.
"That's right, Will!" exclaimed the other, in delighted recognition of the fact. "Down to the oak tree, Will. You're right, Will."
"And how far would you say," asked Will thoughtfully, "does it run back in?"
"Run back in, Will?" said the other as though in surprise. "Well, now you know, Will," shaking his head in doubt, "it's been some time since I was up there, Will."
"It goes back as far as the big rock, don't you think?" said Will, thinking hard.
"Back to the big rock, Will!" cried the other eagerly. "That's right, Will. You're right! Back to the big rock, Will!"
"What's the name of those people who own the land just this way?" Will asked, looking hard into his mind.
"Well, now, Will, I can't just bring to mind the name of those people," answered the other,looking equally hard, apparently, into his own mind.
"Smithers, ain't it?" said Will, gropingly.
"Smithers is the name!" ejaculated the other. "You're right, Will! That's it! Smithers! You're right, Will! Nice people, too, Will!"
"Well, I don't think though that I'll get that land, after all," said Will, in the manner of a man who has at length arrived at a decision.
"Well, of course, Will," said his companion, nodding his head up and down, "property is a great care. I don't know that you're not right, Will. Property's a great care, Will; you're right about that, Will. You can do better, Will. You're right about that!"