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Page 60
So he stood, still drowsily aghast, while Gissing (the synthetic
dog) frolicked merrily about his unresponsive shins, deeming this
just one more of those surprising entertainments arranged for his
delight.
Now, on such an occasion the experienced commuter makes the best of
a bad job, knowing there is little to be gained by trying to cherish
and succour a feeble remnant of fire. He will manfully jettison the
whole business, filling the cellar with the crash of shunting ashes
and the clatter of splitting kindling. But this pitiable creature
still thought that mayhap he could, by sedulous care and coaxing,
revive the dying spark. With such black arts as were available he
wrestled with the despondent glim. During this period of guilty and
furtive strife he went quietly upstairs, and a voice spoke up from
slumber. "Isn't the house very cold?" it said.
"Is it?" said this wretched creature, with great simulation of
surprise. "Seems very comfortable to me."
"Well, I think you'd better send up some more heat," said this
voice, in the tone of one accustomed to command.
"Right away," said the panic-stricken combustion engineer, and
returned to his cellar, wondering whether he was suspected. How is
it, he wondered, that ladies know instinctively, even when vested in
several layers of blankets, if anything is wrong with the furnace?
Another of the mysteries, said he, grimly, to the synthetic dog. By
this time he knew full well (it was 3 A.M.) that there was naught
for it but to decant the grateful of cinders and set to work on a
new fire.
Such memories throng in the mind of the commuter as he surveys the
dark form of his furnace, standing cold and dusty in the warm spring
weather, and he cleans and drains it for the summer vacation. He
remembers the lusty shout of winter winds, the clean and silver
nakedness of January weather, the shining glow of the golden coals,
the comfortable rustling and chuckle of the boiler when alive with a
strong urgency of steam, the soft thud and click of the pipes when
the pressure was rising before breakfast. And he meditates that
these matters, though often the cause of grumbles at the time, were
a part of that satisfying reality that makes life in the outposts a
more honest thing than the artificial convenience of great apartment
houses. The commuter, no less than the seaman, has fidelities of his
own; and faithful, strict obedience to hard necessary formul�
favours the combined humility and self-respect that makes human
virtue. The commuter is often a figure both tragic and absurd; but
he has a rubric and discipline of his own. And when you see him
grotesquely hasting for the 5:27 train, his inner impulse may be no
less honourable than that of the ship's officer ascending the bridge
for his watch under a dark speckle of open sky.
[Illustration]
BY THE FIREPLACE
We were contemplating our fireplace, in which, some of the
hearth-bricks are rather irregularly disposed; and we said to
ourself, perhaps the brick-layer who built this noble fireplace
worked like Ben Jonson, with a trowel in one hand and a copy of
Horace in the other. That suggested to us that we had not read any
Ben Jonson for a very long time: so we turned to "Every Man in His
Humour" and "The Alchemist." Part of Jonson's notice "To the Reader"
preceding "The Alchemist" struck us as equally valid as regards
poetry to-day:
Thou wert never more fair in the way to be cozened, than in
this age, in poetry; wherein ... antics to run away from
nature, and be afraid of her, is the only point of art that
tickles the spectators ... For they commend writers, as they do
fencers or wrestlers; who if they come in robustuously, and put
for it with a great deal of violence, are received for the
braver fellows.... I deny not, but that these men, who always
seek to do more than enough, may some time happen on some thing
that is good, and great; but very seldom ... I give thee this
warning, that there is a great difference between those, that
utter all they can, however unfitly; and those that use
election and a mean. For it is only the disease of the
unskilful, to think rude things greater than polished; or
scattered more numerous than composed.
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