It would be glorious fun to create a world, to paint a valley in autumn colors and set up a village at the crossroads. Housewives chatter at their wash-lines. Wheels rattle on the wooden bridge. Old men doze on the grocery bench. And now let's throw the plot, at a hazard, around the lovely Susan, the grocer's clerk. For her lover we select a young garage-man, the jest of the village, who tinkers at an improvement of a carburetor. The owner of a thousand acres on the hill shall be our villain—a wastrel and a gambler. There is a mortgage on his acres. He is pressed for payment. He steals the garage-man's blueprints. And now it is night. Susan dearly loves a movie. The Orpheum is eight miles off. Painted Cupids. Angels with trumpets. The villain. An eight-cylindered runabout. Susan. B-r-r-r-r! The movie. The runabout again. A lonely road. Just a kiss, my pretty girl. Help! Help! Chug! Chug! Aha! Foiled! The garage-man. You cur! You hound! Take that! And that! Susan. The garage-man. The blueprints. Name the happy day. Oh, joy! Oh, bliss!
It would be fun to model these little worlds and set them up to cool.
Is it any wonder that there are a million stars across the night? God Himself enjoyed the vast creation of His worlds. It was the evening and the morning of the sixth day when He set his puppets moving in their stupendous comedy.
Circus Days.
THERE have been warm winds out of the south for several days, soft rains have teased the daffodils into blossom along the fences, and this morning I heard the first clicking of a lawn-mower. It seems but yesterday that winter was tugging at the chimneys, that March freshets were brawling in the gutters; but, with the shifting of the cock upon the steeple, the spring comes from its hiding in the hills. At this moment, to prove the changing of the season, a street organ plays beneath my window. It is a rather miserable box and is stocked with sentimental tunes for coaxing nickels out of pity. Its inlaid mahogany is soiled with travel. It has a peg-leg and it hangs around the musician's neck as if weary of the road. "Master," it seems to say, "may we sit awhile? My old stump is wearing off." And yet on this warm morning in the sunlight there is almost a touch of frolic in the box. A syncopation attempts a happier temper. It has sniffed the fragrant air, and desires to put a better face upon its troubles.
The housemaid next door hangs out the Monday's garments to dry, and there is a pleasant flapping of legs and arms as if impatient for partners in a dance. Must a petticoat sit unasked when the music plays? Surely breeches and stockings will not hold back when a lively skirt shall beckon. A slow waltz might even tempt aunty's night-gown off the line. If only a vegetable man would come with a cart of red pieplant and green lettuce and offer his gaudy wares along the street, then the evidence of spring would be complete.
But there is even better evidence at hand. This morning I noticed that a circus poster had been pasted on the billboard near the school-house. Several children and I stopped to see the wonders that were promised. Then the school-bell rang and they dawdled off. At Stratford, also, once upon a time, boys with shining morning faces crept like snails to school. Were there circus billboards in so remote a day? The pundits, bleared with search, are strangely silent. This morning it will be a shrewd lesson that keeps the children's thoughts from leaping out the window. Two times two will hardly hold their noses on the desk.
On the billboard there is the usual blonde with pink legs, balanced on one toe on a running horse. The clown holds the paper hoop. The band is blowing itself very red in the face. An acrobat leaps headlong from a high trapeze. There are five rings, thirty clowns, an amazing variety of equestrian and slack-wire genius, a galaxy of dazzling beauties; and every performance includes a dizzy, death-defying dive by a dauntless dare-devil—on a bicycle from the top of the tent. And of course there are elephants and performing dogs and fat ladies. One day only—two performances—rain or shine.
Does not this kind of billboard stir the blood in these languid days of spring? It is a tonic to the sober street. It is a shining dial that marks the coming of the summer. In the winter let barns and fences proclaim the fashion of our dress and tease us with bargains for the kitchen. But in the spring, when the wind is from the south, fences have a better use. They announce the circus. What child now will not come upon a trot? What student can keep to his solemn book? There is a sleepy droning from the school-house. The irregular verbs—lawless rascals with a past—chafe in a dull routine. The clock loiters through the hour.