 | Dream life |  |
I.
Rain in the Garret.
IT is an old garret with big, brown rafters; and the
boards between are stained darkly with the rain-storms
of fifty years. And as the sportive April
shower quickens its flood, it seems as if its torrents
would come dashing through the shingles, upon you,
and upon your play. But it will not; for you know
that the old roof is strong; and that it has kept you,
and all that love you, for long years from the rain, and
from the cold: you know that the hardest storms of
winter will only make a little oozing leak, that trickles
down the brown stains,—like tears.
You love that old garret roof; and you nestle down
under its slope, with a sense of its protecting power
that no castle walls can give to your maturer years.
the old family garret, with a grateful affection, and an
earnest confidence, that the after years—whatever may
be their successes, or their honors—can never re-create.
Under the roof-tree of his home, the boy feels SAFE:
and where, in the whole realm of life, with its bitter
toils, and its bitterer temptations, will he feel safe
again?
But this you do not know. It seems only a grand
old place; and it is capital fun to search in its corners,
and drag out some bit of quaint old furniture, with a
leg broken, and lay a cushion across it, and fix your
reins upon the lion's claws of the feet, and then—
gallop away! And you offer sister Nelly a chance, if
she will be good; and throw out very patronizing
words to little Charlie, who is mounted upon a much
humbler horse,—to wit, a decrepid nursery-chair,—as
he of right should be, since he is three years your
junior.
I know no nobler forage ground for a romantic, venturesome,
mischievous boy, than the garret of an old
family mansion, on a day of storm. It is a perfect
field of chivalry. The heavy rafters, the dashing rain,
the piles of spare mattresses to carouse upon, the
big trunks to hide in, the old white coats and hats
hanging in obscure corners, like ghosts—are great!
And it is so far away from the old lady, who keeps
a scolding, for twisting off the fringe of the rug. There
is no baby in the garret to wake up. There is no
`company' in the garret to be disturbed by the noise.
There is no crotchety old Uncle, or Grand-Ma, with
their everlasting—“Boys—boys!”—and then a look of
such horror!
There is great fun in groping through a tall barrel
of books and pamphlets, on the look-out for startling
pictures; and there are chestnuts in the garret, drying,
which you have discovered on a ledge of the chimney;
and you slide a few into your pocket, and munch them
quietly,—giving now and then one to Nelly, and
begging her to keep silent;—for you have a great fear
of its being forbidden fruit.
Old family garrets have their stock, as I said, of
cast-away clothes, of twenty years gone by; and it is
rare sport to put them on; buttoning in a pillow or
two for the sake of good fulness; and then to trick out
Nelly in some strange-shaped head-gear, and old-fashioned
brocade petticoat caught up with pins; and
in such guise, to steal cautiously down stairs, and creep
slily into the sitting-room,—half afraid of a scolding,
and very sure of good fun;—trying to look very sober,
and yet almost ready to die with the laugh that you
know you will make. And your mother tries to look
harshly at little Nelly for putting on her grandmother's
and the mother spoils all her scolding with a
perfect shower of kisses.
After this, you go marching, very stately, into the
nursery; and utterly amaze the old nurse; and make
a deal of wonderment for the staring, half-frightened
baby, who drops his rattle, and makes a bob at you, as
if he would jump into your waistcoat pocket.
But you grow tired of this; you tire even of the
swing, and of the pranks of Charlie; and you glide
away into a corner, with an old, dog's-eared copy of
Robinson Crusoe. And you grow heart and soul into
the story, until you tremble for the poor fellow with his
guns, behind the palisade; and are yourself half dead
with fright, when you peep cautiously over the hill
with your glass, and see the cannibals at their orgies
around the fire.
Yet, after all, you think the old fellow must have
had a capital time, with a whole island to himself; and
you think you would like such a time yourself, if only
Nelly, and Charlie, could be there with you. But this
thought does not come till afterward; for the time, you
are nothing but Crusoe; you are living in his cave
with Poll the parrot, and are looking out for your
goats, and man Friday.
You dream what a nice thing it would be, for you to
slip away some pleasant morning—not to York, as
as a sailor; and how, if they knew you were
going, there would be such a world of good-byes; and
how, if they did not know it, there would be such a
world of wonder!
And then the sailor's dress would be altogether such
a jaunty affair; and it would be such rare sport to lie
off upon the yards far aloft, as you have seen sailors in
pictures, looking out upon the blue and tumbling sea.
No thought now in your boyish dreams, of sleety
storms, and cables stiffened with ice, and crashing
spars, and great ice-bergs towering fearfully around
you!
You would have better luck than even Crusoe; you
would save a compass, and a Bible, and stores of
hatchets, and the captain's dog, and great puncheons
of sweetmeats (which Crusoe altogether overlooked);
and you would save a tent or two, which you could set
up on the shore, and an American flag, and a small
piece of cannon, which you could fire as often as you
liked. At night, you would sleep in a tree—though
you wonder how Crusoe did it,—and would say the
prayers you had been taught to say at home, and fall
to sleep,—dreaming of Nelly and Charlie.
At sunrise, or thereabouts, you would come down,
feeling very much refreshed; and make a very nice
breakfast off of smoked herring and sea-bread, with a little
would haul ashore a chest or two of the sailors' clothes,
and putting a few large jack-knives in your pocket,
would take a stroll over the island, and dig a cave
somewhere, and roll in a cask or two of sea-bread.
And you fancy yourself growing after a time very tall
and corpulent, and wearing a magnificent goat-skin
cap, trimmed with green ribbons, and set off with
a plume. You think you would have put a few more
guns in the palisade than Crusoe did, and charged
them with a little more grape.
After a long while, you fancy a ship would arrive,
which would carry you back; and you count upon
very great surprise on the part of your father, and little
Nelly, as you march up to the door of the old family
mansion, with plenty of gold in your pocket, and
a small bag of cocoanuts for Charlie, and with a great
deal of pleasant talk, about your island, far away in
the South Seas.
—Or, perhaps it is not Crusoe at all, that your
eyes and your heart cling to, but only some little story
about Paul and Virginia;—that dear little Virginia!
how many tears have been shed over her—not in garrets
only, or by boys only!
You would have liked Virginia—you know you
would; but you perfectly hate the beldame aunt, who
sent for her to come to France; you think she must
boxes your ears with the cover of the spelling-book, or
makes you wear one of the girls' bonnets, that smells
strongly of paste-board, and calico.
As for black Domingue, you think he was a capital
old fellow; and you think more of him, and his bananas,
than you do of the bursting, throbbing heart of
poor Paul. As yet, Dream-life does not take hold on
love. A little maturity of heart is wanted, to make up
what the poets call sensibility. If love should come to
be a dangerous, chivalric matter, as in the case of Helen
Mar and Wallace, you can very easily conceive of it,
and can take hold of all the little accessories of male
costume, and embroidering of banners; but as for pure
sentiment, such as lies in the sweet story of Bernardin
de St. Pierre, it is quite beyond you.
The rich, soft nights, in which one might doze in his
hammock, watching the play of the silvery moonbeams
upon the orange leaves, and upon the waves,
you can understand; and you fall to dreaming of that
lovely Isle of France; and wondering if Virginia did
not perhaps have some relations on the island, who
raise pine-apples, and such sort of things, still?
—And so, with your head upon your hand, in
your quiet garret corner, over some such beguiling
story, your thought leans away from the book, into
your own dreamy cruise over the sea of life.
| Dream life | |