The Friendly Road Part 22

It was just at that hour of evening when the stores and shops are pouring forth their rivulets of humanity to join the vast flood of the streets. I stepped quickly aside into a niche near the corner of an immense building of brick and steel and gla.s.s, and there I stood with my back to the wall, and I watched the restless, whirling, torrential tide of the streets. I felt again, as I had not felt it before in years, the mysterious urge of the city--the sense of unending, overpowering movement.

There was another strange, indeed uncanny, sensation that began to creep over me as I stood there. Though hundreds upon hundreds of men and women were pa.s.sing me every minute, not one of them seemed to see me. Most of them did not even look in my direction, and those who did turn their eyes toward me see me to glance through me to the building behind. I wonder if this is at all a common experience, or whether I was unduly sensitive that day, unduly wrought up? I began to feel like one clad in garments of invisibility. I could see, but was not seen. I could feel, but was not felt. In the country there are few who would not stop to speak to me, or at least appraise me with their eyes; but here I was a wraith, a ghost--not a palpable human being at all. For a moment I felt unutterably lonely.

It is this way with me. When I have reached the very depths of any serious situation or tragic emotion, something within me seems at last to stop--how shall I describe it?--and I rebound suddenly and see the world, as it were, double--see that my condition instead of being serious or tragic is in reality amusing--and I usually came out of it with an utterly absurd or whimsical idea. It was so upon this occasion.

I think it was the image of my robust self as a wraith that did it.

"After all," I said aloud taking a firm hold on the good hard flesh of one of my legs, "this is positively David Grayson."

I looked out again into that tide of faces--interesting, tired, pa.s.sive, smiling, sad, but above all, preoccupied faces.

"No one," I thought, "seems to know that David Grayson has come to town."

I had the sudden, almost irresistible notion of climbing up a step near me, holding up one hand, and crying out:

"Here I am, my friends. I am David Grayson. I am real and solid and opaque; I have plenty of red blood running in my veins. I a.s.sure you that I am a person well worth knowing."

I should really have enjoyed some such outlandish enterprise, and I am not at all sure yet that it would not have brought me adventures and made me friends worth while. We fail far more often by under-daring than by over-daring.

But this imaginary object had the result, at least, of giving me a new grip on things. I began to look out upon the amazing spectacle before me in a different mood. It was exactly like some enormous anthill into which an idle traveller had thrust his cane. Everywhere the ants were running out of their tunnels and burrows, many carrying burdens and giving one strangely the impression that while they were intensely alive and active, not more than half of them had any clear idea of where they were going. And serious, deadly serious, in their haste! I felt a strong inclination to stop a few of them and say:

"Friends, cheer up. It isn't half as bad as you think it is. Cheer up!"

After a time the severity of the human flood began to abate, and here and there at the bottom of that gulch of a street, which had begun to fill with soft, bluish-gray shadows, the evening lights a appeared. The air had grown cooler; in the distance around a corner I heard a street organ break suddenly and joyously into the lively strains of "The Wearin' o' the Green."

I stepped out into the street with quite a new feeling of adventure. And as if to testify that I was now a visible person a sharp-eyed newsboy discovered me--the first human being in Kilburn who had actually seen me--and came up with a paper in his hand.

"Herald, boss?"

I was interested in the shrewd, world-wise, humorous look in the urchin's eyes.

"No," I began, with the full intent of bantering him into some sort of acquaintance; but he evidently measured my purchasing capacity quite accurately, for he turned like a flash to another customer. "Herald, boss?"

"You'll have to step lively, David Grayson," I said to myself, "if you get aboard in this city."

A slouchy negro with a cigarette in his fingers glanced at me in pa.s.sing and then, hesitating, turned quickly toward me.

"Got a match, boss?"

I gave him a match.

"Thank you, boss," and he pa.s.sed on down the street.

"I seem to be 'boss' around here," I said.

This contact, slight as it was, gave me a feeling of warmth, removed a little the sensation of aloofness I had felt, and I strolled slowly down the street, looking in at the gay windows, now ablaze with lights, and watching the really wonderful procession of vehicles of all shapes and sizes that rattled by on the pavement. Even at that hour of the day I think there were more of them in one minute than I see in a whole month at my farm.

It's a great thing to wear shabby clothes and an old hat. Some of the best things I have ever known, like these experiences of the streets, have resulted from coming up to life from underneath; of being taken for less than I am rather than for more than I am.

I did not always believe in this doctrine. For many years--the years before I was rightly born into this alluring world--I tried quite the opposite course. I was constantly attempting to come down to life from above. Instead of being content to carry through life a sufficiently wonderful being named David Grayson I tried desperately to set up and support a sort of dummy creature which, so clad, so housed, so fed, should appear to be what I thought David Grayson ought to appear in the eyes of the world. Oh, I spent quite a lifetime trying to satisfy other people!

Once I remember staying at home, in bed, reading "Huckleberry Finn,"

while I sent my trousers out to be mended.

Well, that dummy Grayson perished in a cornfield. His empty coat served well for a scarecrow. A wisp of straw stuck out through a hole in his finest hat.

And I--the man within--I escaped, and have been out freely upon the great adventure of life.

If a shabby coat (and I speak here also symbolically, not forgetful of spiritual significances) lets you into the adventurous world of those who are poor it does not on the other hand rob you of any true friends.h.i.+p among those who are rich or mighty. I say true friends.h.i.+p, for unless a man who is rich and mighty is able to see through my shabby coat (as I see through his fine one), I shall gain nothing by knowing him.

I've permitted myself all this digression--left myself walking alone there in the streets of Kilburn while I philosophized upon the ways and means of life--not without design, for I could have had no such experiences as I did have in Kilburn if I had worn a better coat or carried upon me the evidences of security in life.

I think I have already remarked upon the extraordinary enlivenment of wits which comes to the man who has been without a meal or so and does not know when or where he is again to break his fast. Try it, friend and see! It was already getting along in the evening, and I knew or supposed I knew no one in Kilburn save only Bill Hahn, Socialist who was little better off than I was.

In this emergency my mind began to work swiftly. A score of fascinating plans for getting my supper and a bed to sleep in flashed through my mind.

"Why," said I, "when I come to think of it, I'm comparatively rich. I'll warrant there are plenty of places in Kilburn, and good ones, too, where I could barter a chapter of Montaigne and a little good conversation for a first-rate supper, and I've no doubt that I could whistle up a bed almost anywhere!"

I thought of a little motto I often repeat to myself:

TO KNOW LIFE, BEGIN ANYWHERE!

There were several people on the streets of Kilburn that night who don't know yet how very near they were to being boarded by a somewhat shabby looking farmer who would have offered them, let us say, a notable musical production called "Old Dan Tucker," exquisitely performed on a tin whistle, in exchange for a good honest supper.

There was one man in particular--a fine, pompous citizen who came down the street swinging his cane and looking as though the universe was a sort of Christmas turkey, lying all brown and sizzling before him ready to be carved--a fine pompous citizen who never realized how nearly Fate with a battered volume of Montaigne in one hand and a tin whistle in the other--came to pouncing upon him that evening! And I am firmly convinced that if I had attacked him with the Great Particular Word he would have carved me off a juicy slice of the white breast meat.

"I'm getting hungry," I said; "I must find Bill Hahn!"

I had turned down a side street, and seeing there in front of a building a number of lounging men with two or three cabs or carriages standing nearby in the street I walked up to them. It was a livery barn.

Now I like all sorts of out-of-door people: I seem to be related to them through horses and cattle and cold winds and suns.h.i.+ne. I like them and understand them, and they seem to like me and understand me. So I walked up to the group of jolly drivers and stablemen intending to ask my directions. The talking died out and they all turned to look at me. I suppose I was not altogether a familiar type there in the city streets.

My bag, especially, seemed to set me apart as a curious person.

"Friends," I said, "I am a farmer--"

They all broke out laughing; they seemed to know it already! I was just a little taken aback, but I laughed, too, knowing that there was a way of getting at them if only I could find it.

"It may surprise you," I said, "but this is the first time in some dozen years that I've been in a big city like this."

"You hadn't 'ave told us, partner!" said one of them, evidently the wit of the group, in a rich Irish brogue.

"Well," I responded, laughing with the best of them, "you've been living right here all the time, and don't realize how amusing and curious the city looks to me. Why, I feel as though I had been away sleeping for twenty years, like Rip Van Winkle. When I left the city there was scarcely an automobile to be seen anywhere--and now look at them snorting through the streets. I counted twenty-two pa.s.sing that corner up there in five minutes by the clock."

This was a fortunate remark, for I found instantly that the invasion of the automobile was a matter of tremendous import to such Knights of Bucephalus as these.

At first the wit interrupted me with amusing remarks, as wits will, but I soon had him as quiet as the others. For I have found the things that chiefly interest people are the things they already know about--provided you show them that these common things are still mysterious, still miraculous, as indeed they are.

After a time some one pushed me a stable stool and I sat down among them, and we had quite a conversation, which finally developed into an amusing comparison (I wish I had room to repeat it here) between the city and the country. I told them something about my farm, how much I enjoyed it, and what a wonderful free life one had in the country. In this I was really taking an unfair advantage of them, for I was trading on the fact that every man, down deep in his heart, has more or less of an instinct to get back to the soil--at least all outdoor men have. And when I described the simplest things about my barn, and the cattle and pigs, and the bees--and the good things we have to eat--I had every one of them leaning forward and hanging on my words.

Harriet sometimes laughs at me for the way I celebrate farm life.