Hints to Pilgrims

by Charles S. Brooks

Once before, as I have read, there was a corner for echoes. The buildings were set so that the quiet folk who dwelt near by could hear the sound of coming steps—steps far off, then nearer until they tramped beneath the windows. Then, as they listened, the sounds faded. And it seemed to him who chronicled the place that he heard the persons of his drama coming—little steps that would grow to manhood, steps that faltered already toward their final curtain. But there is no plot to thicken around our corner. Or rather, there are a hundred plots. And when I listen in fancy to the echoes, I hear the general tapping of our neighbors—beloved feet that have gone into darkness for a while.

I hear the footsteps of an old man. When he trod our street he was of gloomy temper. The world was awry for him. He was sunk in despair at politics, yet I recall that he relished an apple. As often as he stopped to see us, he told us that the country had gone to the demnition bow-wows, and he snapped at his apple as if it had been a Democrat. His little dog ran a full block ahead of him on their evening stroll, and always trotted into our gateway. He sat on the lowest step with his eyes down the street. "Master," he seemed to say, "here we all are, waiting for you."

John Smith cut the grass on the Circle. He was a friend of children, and, for his nod and greeting, I drove down street my span of tin horses on a wheel. Hand in hand we climbed his rocky mountain to see where the waterfall spurted from a pipe. Below, the neighbors' bonnets, with baskets, went to shop at Cobey's. I still hear the click of his lawn-mower of a summer afternoon.

Darky Dan beat our carpets. He was a merry fellow and he sang upon the street. Wild melodies they were, with head thrown back and crazy laughter. He was a harmless, good-natured fellow, but nurse-maids huddled us close until his song had turned the corner.

I recall a crippled child—maybe of half wit only—who dragged a broken foot. To our shame he seemed a comic creature and we pelted him with snowballs and ran from his piteous anger.

A match-boy with red hair came by on winter nights and was warmed beside the fire. My father questioned him—as one merchant to another—about his business, and mother kept him in mittens. In payment for bread and jam he loosed his muffler and played the mouth-organ. In turn we blew upon the vents, but as music it was naught. Gone is that melody. The house is dark.

There was an old lady lived near by in almost feudal state. Her steps were the broadest on the street, her walnut doors were carved in the deepest pattern, her fence was the highest. Her furniture, the year around, was covered in linen cloths, and the great chairs with their claw feet resembled the horses in panoply that draw the chariot of the Nubian Queen in the circus parade. With this old lady there lived an old cook, an old second-maid, an old laundress and an old coachman. The second-maid thrust a platter at you as you sat at table and nudged you in the ribs—if you were a child—"Eat it," she said, "it's good!" The coachman nodded on his box, the laundress in her tubs, but the cook was spry despite her years. In the yard there was a fountain—all yards had fountains then—and I used to wonder whether this were the font of Ponce de León that restored the aged to their youth. Here, surely, was the very house to test the cure. And when the ancient laundress came by I speculated whether, after a sudden splash, she would emerge a dazzling princess.

With this old lady there dwelt a niece, or a daughter, or a younger sister—relationship was vague—and this niece owned a little black dog. But the old lady was dull of sight and in the dark passages of her house she waved her arm and kept saying, "Whisk, Nigger! Whisk, Nigger!" for she had stepped once on the creature's tail. Every year she gave a children's party, and we youngsters looked for magic in a mirror and went to Jerusalem around her solemn chairs. She had bought toys and trinkets from Europe for all of us.

Then there was an old neighbor, a justice of the peace, who, being devoid of much knowledge of the law, put his cases to my grandfather. When he had been advised, he stroked his beard and said it was an opinion to which he had come himself. He went down the steps mumbling the judgment to keep it in his memory.

It was my grandfather's custom in the late afternoon of summer, when the sun had slanted, to pull a chair off the veranda and sit sprinkling the lawn with his crutch beside him. Toward supper Mr. Hodge, a building contractor and our neighbor, went by. His wagon usually rattled with some bit of salvage—perhaps an iron bath-tub plucked from a building before he wrecked it, or a kitchen sink. His yard was piled with the fruitage of his profession. Mr. Hodge was of sociable turn and he cried whoa to his jogging horse.