“You mustn’t shake the car,” he said.
TERRE HAUTE FROM WEST OF THE WABASH
She got down, but only to confer with six or seven other children who had gathered by now, and all of whom had to be enlightened. They ran back for a moment or two to inform inquisitive parents, but soon returned, increased in number. They stood in a group and surveyed the house as though they had never seen it before. Obviously, it had taken on a little luster in their eyes. They climbed up on the running boards and shook the car until Franklin was compelled to order them down again, though it was plain that he was not anxious so to do. Bats were circling in the air overhead—those fine, ricocheting winged mice. There were mosquitoes about, annoying numbers of them—horrible clouds, in fact, which caused me to wonder how people endured living in the neighborhood. People walked by on their way home from work, or going out somewhere, young men in the most dandified and conspicuous garbs, and on porches and front steps were their fathers in shirt sleeves, and women in calico dresses, reading the evening paper. I studied each detail of the house, getting out and looking at it from one side and another, but I could get no least touch of the earlier atmosphere, and I did not want to go in. Interiorly it held no interest for me. I could not remember how it looked on the inside anyhow.
After leaving this house, I decided to look up Ninth and Chestnut, where I was born, but not knowing the exact corner (no one in our family having been able to tell me) I gave it up, only to notice that at that moment I was passing the corner. I looked. There were small houses on every hand. Which one was ours, or had been? Or was it there at all any more? Useless speculation. I did not even trouble to stop the car.
But from here I directed the car to Eighth and Chestnut, a corner at which, in an old red brick house still standing, my mother, as someone had informed me, had once essayed keeping borders. I was so young at the time I could scarcely remember—say six or seven. All I could recall of it was that here once was a little girl in blue velvet, with yellow hair, the daughter of some woman of comparative (it is a guess) means, who was stopping with us, and who, because of her blue velvet dress and her airs, seemed most amazing to me, a creature out of the skies. I remember standing at the head of the stairs and looking into her room—or her mother’s, and seeing a dresser loaded with silver bits, and marveling at the excellence of such a life. Just that, and nothing more, out of a whole period of months. Now I could only recall that the house was of brick, that it had a lawn and trees, a basement with a brick floor, and a sense of abandonment and departed merit. Finding it at this late date was not likely, but we ran the car around there and stopped and looked. There was a brick house there, old but improved. Was it the same? Who can tell, or what matter, really? The difference was to me.
We think of life as a definite, enduring thing, some of us; but what a thin shadow, or nothingness, it must be, really, when the past and your youth and all connected with it goes glimmering thus like smoke. I always think of that passage in Job (XIV: 1-2) “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.” When I think of that, and how ideas and notions and fames and blames go glimmering, I often ask myself what is it all about, anyhow, and what are we here for, and why should anyone worry whether they are low or high, or moral or immoral. What difference does it really make? And to whom? Who actually cares, in the long run, whether you are good, bad or indifferent? There is much talk and much strutting to and fro and much concealment of our past ills and shames, and much parading of our present luxuries and well beings. But, my good friends, the wise know better. You cannot talk to a man or woman of capacity or insight or experience of any of these sharp distinctions. To them they do not exist. We are all low or high according to our dynamic energy to get and keep fame, money, notoriety, information, skill—no more. As for the virtuous, and those supposedly lacking in virtue—the honest and those who are dishonest—kind heaven, we haven’t the first inklings of necessary data wherewith to begin even to formulate a theory of difference! We do not know, and I had almost said we cannot know, though I am not one to be cocksure of anything—not even of the impossibility of perfection.
Allons! Then we moved the car to Seventh and Chestnut Streets, where had stood another house near a lumber yard. In this house was the swing in the basement where I used to swing, the sunlight pouring through a low cellar window, such days as I chose to play there. Outside was a great yard or garden with trees, and close at hand a large lumber yard—it seemed immense to me at the time—pleasingly filled with odoriferous woods, and offering a great opportunity for climbing, playing hide and seek, running and jumping from pile to pile, and avoiding the watchman who wanted to catch us and give us a good beating for coming into it at all.
And beyond that was a train yard full of engines and cars and old broken down cabooses and a repair shop. When I was most adventurous I used to wander even beyond the lumber yard (there was a spur track going out into this greater world), staring at all I saw, and risking no doubt my young life more than once. At one time I fell off a car on which I had adventurously climbed and bruised my hand quite seriously. At another time I climbed up into a worn out and discarded engine, and examined all the machinery with the utmost curiosity. It all seemed so amazing to me. Engineers, firemen, brakemen, yard men—how astonishing they all seemed—the whole clangorous, jangling compact called life.
But this house was now a mere myth or rumor—something that may never have existed at all—so unreal are our realities. It had gone glimmering. There was no house here anything like that which I had in mind. There was a railroad yard, quite a large one, probably greatly enlarged since my day. There was a lumber yard adjoining it, very prosperous looking, and enclosed by a high board fence, well painted, and a long, old, low white house with green shutters. We stopped the car here and I meditated on my mother and sisters and on some laughing school teachers who took meals with us here at this time. Then we moved on. I was glad to go. I was getting depressed.