Journeys to Bagdad | Page 6

quitting time yesterday that a dray was discharging cases down a shoot. These cases were secured with metal reinforcement, and this metal being rubbed bright happened to catch a ray of the sun at such an angle that it was reflected in my eye. This flash, which was like lightning in its intensity, together with the roar of the falling case, transported me--it's monstrous what jumps we take when the fit is on us--to the slopes of dim mountains in the night, to the heights above Valhalla with the flash of Valkyrs descending. And the booming of the case upon the slide--God pity me--was the music. It was thus that I was sent aloft upon the mountains of the North, into the glare of lightning, with the cry of Valkyrs above the storm....
But presently there was a voice from the street. "It's the last case to-night, Sam, you lunk-head. It's quitting time."
The light fades on Long Street. The drays have gone home. The Earls of Leicester drowse in their own kitchens, or spread whole slices of bread on their broad, aristocratic palms. Somewhere in the dimmest recesses of those cluttered buildings ten thousand rat-traps await expectant the oncoming of the rats. And in your own basement--the shadows having prospered in the twilight--it is sure (by the beard of the prophet, it is sure) that the ash-pit door is again ajar and that a pair of eyes gleam upon you from the darkness. If, on the instant, you will crouch behind the laundry tubs and will hold your breath--as though a doctor's thermometer were in your mouth, you with a cold in the head--it's likely that you will see a Persian climb from the pit, shake the ashes off him, and make for the vantage of the woodpile, where--the window being barred--he will sigh his soul for the freedom of the night.
[Illustration]

THE WORST EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE

[Illustration]
THE WORST EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE
Reader, if by fortunate chance you have a son of tender years--the age is best from the sixth to the eleventh summer--or in lieu of a son, a nephew, only a few years in pants--mere shoots of nether garments not yet descending to the knees--doubtless, if such fortunate chance be yours, you went on one or more occasions last summer to a circus.
If the true holiday spirit be in you--and you be of other sort, I'll not chronicle you--you will have come early to the scene for a just examination of what mysteries and excitements are set forth in the side-shows. Now if you be a man of humane reasoning, you will stand lightly on your legs, alert to be pulled this way or that as the nepotic wish shall direct, whether it be to the fat woman's booth or to the platform where the thin man sits with legs entwined behind his neck, in delightful promise of what joy awaits you when you have dropped your nickel in the box and gone inside. To draw your steps, it is the showman's privilege to make what blare he please upon the sidewalk; to puff his cheeks with robustious announcement.
If by further fortunate chance, you are addicted, let us say, in the quieter hours of winter, to writing of any kind--and for your joy, I pray that this be so, whether this writing be in massive volumes, or obscure and unpublished beyond its demerit--if such has been your addiction, you have found, doubtless, that your case lies much like the fat woman's; that it is the show you give before the door that must determine what numbers go within--that, to be plain with you, much thought must be given to the taking of your title. It must be a most alluring trumpeting, above the din of rival shows.
So I have named this article with thought of how I might stir your learned curiosity. I have set scholars' words upon my platform, thereby to make you think how prodigiously I have stuffed the matter in. And all this while, my article has to do only with a certain set of Shakespeare in nine calfskin volumes, edited by a man named John Bell, now long since dead, which set happens to have stood for several years upon my shelves; also, how it was disclosed to me that he was the worst of all editors, together with the reasons thereto and his final acquittal from the charge.
John Bell has stood, for the most part, in unfingered tranquillity, for I read from a handier, single volume. Only at cleaning times has he been touched, and then but in the common misery with all my books. Against this cleaning, which I take to be only a quirk of the female brain, I have often urged that the great, round earth itself has been subjected to only one flood,