In finer matters I have no nose. It is ridiculous, really, that this very messenger and forerunner of myself, this trumpeter of my coming, this bi-nasal fellow in the crow’s-nest, should be so deficient. If smells were bears, how often I would be bit! My nose may serve by way of ornament or for the sniffing of the heavier odors, yet will fail in the nice detection of the fainter waftings and olfactory ticklings. Yet how will it dilate on the Odyssean smell of hemp and tar! And I have no explanation of this, for I am no sailor. Indeed, at sea I am misery itself whenever perchance “the ship goes wop (with a wiggle between).” Such wistful glances have I cast upon the wide freedom of the decks when I leave them on the perilous adventure of dinner! So this relish of hemp and tar must be a legacy from a far-off time—a dim atavism, to put it as hard as possible—for I seem to remember being told that my ancestors were once engaged in buccaneering or other valiant livelihood.
But here is a peculiar thing. The chandlery gives me no desire to run away to sea. Rather, the smell of the place urges me indeterminately, diffusedly, to truantry. It offers me no particular chart. It but cuts my moorings for whatever winds are blowing. If there be blood of a pirate in me, it is a shame what faded juice it is. It would flow pink on the sticking. In mean contrast to skulls, bowie-knives and other red villainy, my thoughts will be set toward the mild truantry of trudging for an afternoon in the country. Or it is likely that I’ll carry stones for the castle that I have been this long time building. Were the trick of prosody in me, I would hew a poem on the spot.
Such is my anemia. And yet there is a touch of valiancy, too, as from the days when my sainted ancestors sailed with their glass beads from Bristol harbor; the desire of visiting the sunset, of sailing down on the far side of the last horizon where the world itself falls off and there is sky with swirl of stars beyond.
In the spring of each year everyone should go to Bagdad—not particularly to Bagdad, for I shall not dictate in matter of detail—but to any such town that may happen to be so remote that you are not sure when you look it up whether it is on page 47 which is Asia, or on page 53 which is Persia. But Bagdad will serve: For surely, Reader, you have not forgotten that it was in Bagdad in the surprising reign of Haroun-al-Raschid that Sinbad the Sailor lived! Nor can it have escaped you that scarce a mule’s back distance—such was the method of computation in those golden days—lived that prince of medieval plain-clothes men, Ali Baba!
Historically, Bagdad lies in that tract of earth where purple darkens into night. Geographically, it lies obliquely downward, and is, I compute, considerably off the southeast corner of my basement. It is such distant proximity, doubtless, that renders my basement—and particularly its woodpile, which lies obscurely beyond the laundry—such a shadowy, grim and altogether mysterious place. If there be any part of the house, including certain dark corners of the attic, that is fearfully Mesopotamian after nightfall, it is that woodpile. Even when I sit above, secure with lights, if by chance I hear tappings from below—such noises are common on a windy night—I know that it is the African Magician pounding for the genie, the sound echoing through the hollow earth. It is matter of doubt whether the iron bars so usual on basement windows serve chiefly to keep burglars out, or whether their greater service is not their defense of western Christianity against the invasion from the East which, except for these bars, would enter here as by a postern. At a hazard, my suspicion would fall on the iron doors that open inwards in the base of chimneys. We have been fondly credulous that there is nothing but ash inside and mere siftings from the fire above; and when, on an occasion, we reach in with a trowel for a scoop of this wood-ash for our roses, we laugh at ourselves for our scare of being nabbed. But some day if by way of experiment you will thrust your head within—it’s a small hole and you will be besmirched beyond anything but a Saturday’s reckoning—you will see that the pit goes off in darkness—downward. It was but the other evening as we were seated about the fire that there came upward from the basement a gibbering squeak. Then the woodpile fell over, for so we judged the clatter. Is it fantastic to think that some dark and muffled Persian, after his dingy tunneling from the banks of the Tigris, had climbed the pile of wood for a breath of night at the window and, his foot slipping, the pile fell over? Plainly, we heard him scuttling back to the ash-pit.
Be these things as they may, when you have arrived in Bagdad—and it is best that you travel over land and sea—if you be serious in your zest, you will not be satisfied, but will journey a thousand miles more at the very least, in whatever direction is steepest. And you will turn the flanks of seven mountains, with seven villainous peaks thereon. For the very number of them will put a spell on you. And you will cross running water, that you leave no scent for the world behind. Such journey would be the soul of truantry and you should set out upon the road every spring when the wind comes warm.
Now the medieval pilgrimage in its day, as you very well know, was a most popular institution. And the reasons are as plentiful as blackberries. But in the first place and foremost, it came always in the spring. It was like a tonic, iron for the blood. There were many men who were not a bit pious, who, on the first warm day when customers were scarce, yawned themselves into a prodigious holiness. Who, indeed, would resign himself to changing moneys or selling doves upon the Temple steps when such appeal was in the air? What cobbler even, bent upon his leather, whose soul would not mount upon such a summons? Who was it preached the first crusade? There was no marvel in the business. Did he come down our street now that April’s here, he would win recruits from every house. I myself would care little whether he were Christian or Mohammedan if only the shrine lay over-seas and deep within the twistings of the mountains.
If, however, your truantry is domestic, and the scope of the seven seas with glimpse of Bagdad is too broad for your desire, then your yearning may direct itself to the spaces just outside your own town. If such myopic truantry is in you, there is much to be said for going afoot. In these days when motors are as plentiful as mortgages this may appear but discontented destitution, the cry of sour grapes. And yet much of the adventuring of life has been gained afoot. But walking now has fallen on evil days. It needs but an enlistment of words to show its decadence. Tramp is such a word. Time was when it signified a straight back and muscular calves and an appetite, and at nightfall, maybe, pleasant gossip at the hearth on the affairs of distant villages. There was rhythm in the sound. But now it means a loafer, a shuffler, a wilted rascal. It is patched, dingy, out-at-elbows. Take the word vagabond! It ought to be of innocent repute, for it is built solely from stuff that means to wander, and wandering since the days of Moses has been practiced by the most respectable persons. Yet Noah Webster, a most disinterested old gentleman, makes it clear that a vagabond is a vicious scamp who deserves no better than the lockup.
