Our Mr Wrenn | Page 4

wayfaring.
He jogged down Twenty-third Street to the North River ferries afoot.
Trolleys took money, and of course one saves up for future great
traveling. Over him the April clouds were fetterless vagabonds whose
gaiety made him shrug with excitement and take a curb with a frisk as
gambolsome as a Central Park lamb. There was no hint of sales-lists in
the clouds, at least. And with them Mr. Wrenn's soul swept along,
while his half-soled Cum-Fee-Best $3.80 shoes were ambling past
warehouses. Only once did he condescend to being really on
Twenty-third Street. At the Ninth Avenue corner, under the grimy
Elevated, he sighted two blocks down to the General Theological
Seminary's brick Gothic and found in a pointed doorway suggestions of
alien beauty.
But his real object was to loll on a West and South Railroad in luxury,
and go sailing out into the foam and perilous seas of North River. He
passed through the smoking-cabin. He didn't smoke--the habit used up
travel-money. Once seated on the upper deck, he knew that at last he
was outward-bound on a liner. True, there was no great motion, but Mr.
Wrenn was inclined to let realism off easily in this feature of his
voyage. At least there were undoubted life-preservers in the white racks
overhead; and everywhere the world, to his certain witnessing, was
turned to crusading, to setting forth in great ships as if it were again in
the brisk morning of history when the joy of adventure possessed the
Argonauts.
He wasn't excited over the liners they passed. He was so experienced in
all of travel, save the traveling, as to have gained a calm interested
knowledge. He knew the Campagnia three docks away, and explained
to a Harlem grocer her fine points, speaking earnestly of stacks and
sticks, tonnage and knots.
Not excited, but--where couldn't he go if he were pulling out for
Arcady on the _Campagnia!_ Gee! What were even the building-block

towers of the Metropolitan and Singer buildings and the _Times's_
cream-stick compared with some old shrine in a cathedral close that
was misted with centuries!
All this he felt and hummed to himself, though not in words. He had
never heard of Arcady, though for many years he had been a citizen of
that demesne.
Sure, he declared to himself, he was on the liner now; he was sliding up
the muddy Mersey (see the _W. S. Travel Notes_ for the source of his
visions); he was off to St. George's Square for an organ-recital (see the
English Baedeker); then an express for London and--Gee!
The ferryboat was entering her slip. Mr. Wrenn trotted toward the bow
to thrill over the bump of the boat's snub nose against the lofty swaying
piles and the swash of the brown waves heaped before her as she sidled
into place. He was carried by the herd on into the station.
He did not notice the individual people in his exultation as he heard the
great chords of the station's paean. The vast roof roared as the iron
coursers stamped titanic hoofs of scorn at the little stay-at-home.
That is a washed-out hint of how the poets might describe Mr. Wrenn's
passion. What he said was "Gee!"
He strolled by the lists of destinations hung on the track gates. Chicago
(the plains! the Rockies! sunset over mining-camps!), Washington, and
the magic Southland--thither the iron horses would be galloping, their
swarthy smoke manes whipped back by the whirlwind, pounding out
with clamorous strong hoofs their sixty miles an hour. Very well. In
time he also would mount upon the iron coursers and charge upon
Chicago and the Southland; just as soon as he got ready.
Then he headed for Cortlandt Street; for Long Island, City. finally, the
Navy Yard. Along his way were the docks of the tramp steamers where
he might ship as steward in the all-promising Sometime. He had never
done anything so reckless as actually to ask a skipper for the chance to
go a-sailing, but he had once gone into a mission society's free
shipping-office on West Street where a disapproving elder had
grumped at him, "Are you a sailor? No? Can't do anything for you, my
friend. Are you saved?" He wasn't going to risk another horror like that,
yet when the golden morning of Sometime dawned he certainly was
going to go cruising off to palm-bordered lagoons.
As he walked through Long Island City he contrived conversations

with the sailors he passed. It would have surprised a Norwegian
bos'un's mate to learn that he was really a gun-runner, and that, as a
matter of fact, he was now telling yarns of the Spanish Main to the man
who slid deprecatingly by him.
Mr. Wrenn envied the jackies on the training-ship and carelessly went
to sea