 | The luck of Roaring Camp, and other sketches |  |
FROM A BACK WINDOW.
I REMEMBER that long ago, as a sanguine and
trustful child, I became possessed of a highly
colored lithograph, representing a fair Circassian
sitting by a window. The price I paid for this
work of art may have been extravagant, even in
youth's fluctuating slate-pencil currency; but the
secret joy I felt in its possession knew no pecuniary
equivalent. It was not alone that Nature in
Circassia lavished alike upon the cheek of beauty
and the vegetable kingdom that most expensive of
colors, — Lake; nor was it that the rose which
bloomed beside the fair Circassian's window had no
visible stem, and was directly grafted upon a marble
balcony; but it was because it embodied an
idea. That idea was a hinting of my Fate. I felt
that somewhere a young and fair Circassian was
sitting by a window looking out for me. The
idea of resisting such an array of charms and
color never occurred to me, and to my honor be it
recorded, that during the feverish period of adolescence
I never thought of averting my destiny.
But as vacation and holiday came and went, and
as my picture at first grew blurred, and then faded
in my atlas, so its charm seemed mysteriously
to pass away. When I became convinced
that few females, of Circassian or other origin, sat
pensively resting their chins on their henna-tinged
nails, at their parlor windows, I turned my attention
to back windows. Although the fair Circassian
has not yet burst upon me with open shutters,
some peculiarities not unworthy of note have
fallen under my observation. This knowledge has
not been gained without sacrifice. I have made
myself familiar with back windows and their
prospects, in the weak disguise of seeking lodgings,
heedless of the suspicious glances of land-ladies
and their evident reluctance to show them.
I have caught cold by long exposure to draughts.
I have become estranged from friends by unconsciously
walking to their back windows during a
visit, when the weekly linen hung upon the line,
or where Miss Fanny (ostensibly indisposed) actually
assisted in the laundry, and Master Bobby, in
scant attire, disported himself on the area railings.
But I have thought of Galileo, and the invariable
experience of all seekers and discoverers of truth
has sustained me.
Show me the back windows of a man's dwelling,
and I will tell you his character. The rear of a
house only is sincere. The attitude of deception
kept up at the front windows leaves the back area
but nature comes out at the back passage. That
glossy, well-brushed individual, who lets himself
in with a latch-key at the front door at night, is a
very different being from the slipshod wretch who
growls of mornings for hot water at the door of the
kitchen. The same with Madame, whose contour
of figure grows angular, whose face grows pallid,
whose hair comes down, and who looks some ten
years older through the sincere medium of a back
window. No wonder that intimate friends fail to
recognize each other in this dos à dos position.
You may imagine yourself familiar with the silver
door-plate and bow-windows of the mansion where
dwells your Saccharissa; you may even fancy you
recognize her graceful figure between the lace curtains
of the upper chamber which you fondly
imagine to be hers; but you shall dwell for months
in the rear of her dwelling and within whispering
distance of her bower, and never know it. You
shall see her with a handkerchief tied round her
head in confidential discussion with the butcher,
and know her not. You shall hear her voice in
shrill expostulation with her younger brother, and
it shall awaken no familiar response.
I am writing at a back window. As I prefer
the warmth of my coal-fire to the foggy freshness
of the afternoon breeze that rattles the leafless
shrubs in the garden below me, I have my window-sash
shrilly altercation that has been going on in the
kitchen of No. 7 just opposite. I have heard fragments
of an entertaining style of dialogue usually
known as “chaffing,” which has just taken place
between Biddy in No. 9 and the butcher who
brings the dinner. I have been pitying the chilled
aspect of a poor canary, put out to taste the fresh
air, from the window of No. 5. I have been watching
— and envying, I fear — the real enjoyment of
two children raking over an old dust-heap in the
alley, containing the waste and débris of all the
back yards in the neighborhood. What a wealth
of soda-water bottles and old iron they have acquired!
But I am waiting for an even more familiar
prospect from my back window. I know
that later in the afternoon, when the evening paper
comes, a thickset, gray-haired man will appear in
his shirt-sleeves at the back door of No. 9, and,
seating himself on the door-step, begin to read.
He lives in a pretentious house, and I hear he is a
rich man. But there is such humility in his attitude,
and such evidence of gratitude at being allowed
to sit outside of his own house and read his
paper in his shirt-sleeves, that I can picture his
domestic history pretty clearly. Perhaps he is following
some old habit of humbler days. Perhaps
he has entered into an agreement with his wife not
to indulge his disgraceful habit in-doors. He does
dressing-gown. In front of his own palatial residence,
I know him to be a quiet and respectable
middle-aged business-man, but it is from my back
window that my heart warms toward him in his
shirt-sleeved simplicity. So I sit and watch him
in the twilight as he reads gravely, and wonder
sometimes, when he looks up, squares his chest, and
folds his paper thoughtfully over his knee, whether
he does n't fancy he hears the letting down of bars,
or the tinkling of bells, as the cows come home
and stand lowing for him at the gate.
| The luck of Roaring Camp, and other sketches | |