T HE good old times! And the old times were good, my dear; better, much better, than the times that you live in. I know I am an old fogy, Nelly,” said Ephraim Batterby, refilling his pipe, and looking at his granddaughter, who sat with him in front of the fire, with her head bending over her sewing; “I know I am an old fogy, and I glory in it.”
“But you never will be for me, grandpa,” said Nelly, glancing at him with a smile.
“Yes, my dear, I am for everybody. I am a man of the past. Everything I ever cared for and ever loved, excepting you, belongs to the years that have gone, and my affections belong to those years. I liked the people of the old time better than I do those of the new. I loved their simpler ways, the ways that I knew in my boyhood, threescore and more years ago. I am sure the world is not so good as it was then. It is smarter, perhaps; it knows more, but its wisdom vexes and disgusts me. I am not certain, my dear, that, if I had my222 way, I would not sweep away, at one stroke, all the so-called ‘modern conveniences,’ and return to the ancient methods.”
“They were very slow, grandpa.”
“Yes, slow; and for that I liked them. We go too fast now; but our speed, I am afraid, is hurrying us in the wrong direction. We were satisfied in the old time with what we had. It was good enough. Are men contented now? No; they are still improving and improving; still reaching out for something that will be quicker, or easier, or cheaper than the things that are. We appear to have gained much; but really we have gained nothing. We are not a bit better off now than we were; not so well off, in my opinion.”
“But, grandpa, you must remember that you were young then, and perhaps looked at the world in a more hopeful way than you do now.”
“Yes, I allow for that, Nelly, I allow for that; I don’t deceive myself. My youth does not seem so very far off that I cannot remember it distinctly. I judge the time fairly, now in my old age, as I judge the present time, and my assured opinion is that it was superior in its ways, its life, and its people. Its people! Ah, Nelly, my dear, there were three persons in that past who alone would consecrate it to me. I am afraid there are not many women now like your mother and mine, and like my dear wife, whom you never saw. It seems223 to me, my child, that I would willingly live all my life over again, with its strifes and sorrows, if I could clasp again the hand of one of those angelic women, and hear a word from her sweet lips.”
As the old man wiped the gathering moisture from his eyes, Nelly remained silent, choosing not to disturb the reverie into which he had fallen. Presently Ephraim rose abruptly, and said, with a smile,—
“Come, Nelly dear, I guess it is time to go to bed. I must be up very early to-morrow morning.”
“At what hour do you want breakfast, grandpa?”
“Why, too soon for you, you sleepy puss. I shall breakfast by myself before you are up, or else I shall breakfast down town. I have a huge cargo of wheat in from Chicago, and I must arrange to have it shipped for Liverpool. There is one thing that remains to me from the old time, and that is some of the hard work of my youth; but even that seems a little harder than it used to. So, come now; to bed! to bed!”
While he was undressing, and long after he had crept beneath the blankets, Ephraim’s thoughts wandered back and back through the spent years; and, as the happiness he had known came freshly and strongly into his mind, he felt drawn more and more towards it; until the new and old mingled together in strange but placid confusion in his brain, and he fell asleep.
224 When he awoke it was still dark, for the winter was just begun; but he heard—or did he only dream that he heard?—a clock in some neighboring steeple strike six. He knew that he must get up, for his business upon that day demanded early attention.
He sat up in bed, yawned, stretched his arms once or twice, and then, flinging the covering aside, he leaped to the floor. He fell, and hurt his arm somewhat. Strange that he should have miscalculated the distance! The bed seemed more than twice as high from the floor as it should be. It was too dark to see distinctly, so he crept to the bed with extended hands, and felt it. Yes, it was at least four feet from the floor, and, very oddly, it had long, slim posts, such as bedsteads used to have, instead of the low, carved footboard, and the high, postless headboard, which belonged to the bedstead upon which he had slept in recent years. Ephraim resolved to strike a light. He groped his way to the table, and tried to find the match-box. It was not there; he could not discover it upon the bureau either. But he found something else, which he did not recognize at first, but which a more careful examination with his fingers told him was a flint and steel. He was vexed that any one should play such a trick upon him. How could he ever succeed in lighting the gas with a flint and steel!
But he resolved to try, and he moved over225 towards the gas-bracket by the bureau. It was not there! He passed his cold hand over a square yard of the wall, where the bracket used to be, but it had vanished. It actually seemed, too, as if there was no paper on the wall, for the whitewash scaled off beneath his fingers.
Perplexed and angry, Ephraim was about to replace the flint and steel upon the bureau, and to dress in the dark, when his hand encountered a candlestick. It contained a candle. He determined to try to light it. He struck the flint upon the steel at least a dozen times, in the way he remembered doing so often when he was a boy, but the sparks refused to catch the tinder. He struck again and again, until he became really warm with effort and indignation, and at last he succeeded.
It was only a poor, slim tallow candle, and Ephraim thought the light was not much better than the darkness, it was so dim and flickering and dismal. He was conscious then that the room was chill, although his body felt so warm; and, for fear he should catch cold, he thought he would open the register, and let in some warm air. The register had disappeared! There, right before him, was a vast old-fashioned fireplace filled with wood. By what means the transformation had been effected, he could not imagine. But he was not greatly displeased.
“I always did like an open wood fire,” he said, “and now I will have a roaring one.”
226 So he touched the flame of the candle to the light kindling-wood, and in a moment it was afire.
“I will wash while it is burning up,” said Ephraim.
He went to the place where he thought he should find the fixed wash-stand, with hot and cold water running from the pipes, but he was amazed to find that it had followed the strange fashion of the room, and had gone also! There was an old hand-basin, with a cracked china pitcher, standing upon a movable wash-stand, but the water in the pitcher had been turned to solid ice.
With an exclamation of impatience and indignation, Ephraim placed the pitcher between the andirons, close to the wood in the chimney-place; and he did so with smarting eyes, for the flue was cold, and volumes of smoke were pouring out into the room. In a few moments he felt that he should suffocate unless he could get some fresh air, so he resolved to open the upper sash of the window.
When he got to the window he perceived that the panes of glass were only a few inches square, and that the woodwork inclosing them was thrice thicker and heavier than it had been. He strove to pull down the upper sash, but the effort was vain; it would not move. He tried to lift the lower sash; it went up with difficulty; it seemed to weigh a hundred pounds; and, when he got it up, it would not stay. He succeeded, finally, in keeping it open by placing a chair beneath it.
227 When the ice in the pitcher was thawed, he finished his toilette, and then he descended the stairs. As nobody seemed to be moving in the house, he resolved to go out and get his breakfast at a restaurant. He unlocked the front door, and emerged into the street just as daylight fairly had begun.
As Ephraim descended the steps in front of his house, he had a distinct impression that something was wrong, and he was conscious of a feeling of irritation; but it seemed to him that his mind, for some reason, did not operate with its accustomed precision; and, while he realized the fact of a partial and very unexpected change of the conditions of his life, he found that when he tried, in a strangely feeble way, to grapple with the problem, the solution eluded him and baffled him.
The force of habit, rather than a very clearly defined purpose, led him to walk to the corner of the street, just below his dwelling, and to pause there, as usual, to await the coming of the horse-car which should carry him down town. Following a custom, too, he took from his waistcoat pocket two or three pennies (which, to his surprise, had swollen to the uncomfortable dimensions of the old copper cents), and looked around for the news-boy from whom he bought, every morning, the daily paper.
The lad, however, was not to be seen; and Ephraim was somewhat vexed at his absence, because228 he was especially anxious upon that morning to observe the quotations of the Chicago and Liverpool grain markets, and to ascertain what steamers were loading at the wharves.
The horse-car was delayed much longer than he expected, and, while he waited, a man passed by, dressed oddly, Ephraim noticed, in knee-breeches and very old-fashioned coat and hat. Ephraim said to him, politely,—
“Can you tell me, sir, where I can get a morning paper in this neighborhood? The lad I buy from, commonly, is not at his post this morning.”
The stranger, stopping, looked at Ephraim with a queer expression, and presently said,—
“I don’t think I understand you; a morning paper, did you say?”
“Yes, one of the morning papers; the Argus or Commercial—any of them.”
“Why, my dear sir, there is but one newspaper published in this city. It is the Gazette. It comes out on Saturday, and this, you know, is only Tuesday.”
“Do you mean to say that we have no daily papers?” exclaimed Ephraim, somewhat angrily.
“Daily papers! Papers published every day! Why, sir, there is not such a newspaper in the world, and there never will be.”
“Pshaw!” said Ephraim, turning his back upon the man in disgust.
229 The stranger smiled, and, shaking his head as if he had serious doubts of Ephraim’s sanity, passed onward.
“The man is cracked,” said Ephraim, looking after him. “No daily papers! The fellow has just come from the interior of Africa, or else he is an escaped lunatic. It is very queer that car does not come,” and Ephraim glanced up the street anxiously. “There is not a car in sight. A fire somewhere, I suppose. Too bad that I should have lost so much time. I shall walk down.”
But, as Ephraim stepped into the highway, he was surprised to find that there were no rails there. The cobblestone pavement was unbroken.
“Well, upon my word! This is the strangest thing of all. What on earth has become of the street-cars? I must go afoot, I suppose, if the distance is great. I am afraid I shall be too late for business, as it is.”
As he walked onward at a rapid pace, and his eyes fell upon the buildings along the route, he was queerly sensible that the city had undergone a certain process of transformation. It had a familiar appearance, too. He seemed to know it in its present aspect, and yet not to know it. The way was perfectly familiar to him, and he recognized all the prominent landmarks easily, and still he had an indefinable feeling that some other city had stood where this did; that he had known this very230 route under other conditions, and that the later conditions were those that had passed away, while those that he now saw belonged to a much earlier period.
He felt, too, that the change, whatever it was, had brought a loss with it. The buildings that lined the street now he thought very ugly. They were old, misshapen, having pent-roofs with absurdly high gables, and the shop-windows were small, dingy, and set with small panes of glass. He had known it as a handsome street, edged with noble edifices, and offering to the gaze of the pedestrian a succession of splendid windows filled with merchandise of the most brilliant description.
But Ephraim pressed on with a determination to seek his favorite restaurant, for he began to feel very hungry. In a little while he reached the corner where the restaurant should have been, but to his vexation he saw that the building there was a coffee-house of mean appearance, in front of which swung a blurred and faded sign.
He resolved to enter, for he could get a breakfast here, at least. He pushed through the low doorway and over the sanded floor into a narrow sort of box, where a table was spread; and, as he did so, he had a hazy feeling that this, too, was something that he was familiar with.
“It must be,” he said, “that my brain is producing a succession of those sensations that I have231 had sometimes before, which persuade the credulous that we move continually in a circle, and forever live our lives over again.”
As he took his seat a waiter approached him.
“Give me a bill of fare,” said Ephraim.
“Bill of fare, sir? Have no bill of fare, sir. Never have them, sir; no coffee-house has them, sir. Get you up a nice breakfast though, sir.”
“What have you got?”
“Ham, sir; steak, sir; boiled egg, sir; coffee, tea, muffins. Just in from furrin countries, sir, are you?”
“Never mind where I am from,” said Ephraim, testily. “Bring me a broiled steak, and egg, and some muffins and coffee, and bring them quickly.”
“Yes, sir; half a minute, sir. Anything else, sir?”
“Bring me a newspaper.”
“Yes, sir; here it is, sir, the very latest, sir.”
Ephraim took the paper, and glanced at it. It was the Weekly Gazette, four days old; a little sheet of yellow-brown paper, poorly printed, containing some fragments of news, and nothing later from Europe than November 6, although the Gazette bore date December 19. So soon as Ephraim comprehended its worthlessness, he tossed it contemptuously upon the floor, and waited, almost sullenly, for his breakfast.
When it came in upon the tray, carried by the brisk waiter, it looked dainty and tempting enough, and the fumes that rose from it were so savory that232 he grew into better humor. As it was spread before him, he perceived that the waiter had given him a very coarse, two-pronged steel fork.
“Take that away,” said Ephraim, tossing it to the end of the table; “I want a silver fork.”
“Silver fork, sir! Bless my soul, sir! We haven’t got any; never heard of such a thing, sir.”
“Never heard of a silver fork, you idiot!” shouted Ephraim; “why, everybody uses them.”
“No, sir; I think not, sir. I’ve lived with first quality people, sir, and they all use this kind. Never saw any other kind, sir; didn’t know there was any. Do they have ’em in furrin parts, sir?”
“Get out!” said Ephraim, savagely. He was becoming somewhat annoyed and bewildered by the utter disappearance of so many familiar things.
But the breakfast was good, and he was hungry, so he fell to with hearty zest, and, although he found the steel fork clumsy, it did him good service. At the conclusion of the meal, Ephraim walked rapidly to his office—the office that he had occupied for nearly sixty years. As he opened the door, he expected to find his letters in the box wherein the postman thrust them twice or thrice a day. They were not there. The box itself was gone.
“Too bad! too bad!” exclaimed Ephraim. “Everything conspires to delay me to-day. I suppose I must sit here and wait for that lazy letter-carrier233 to come, and meantime my business must wait too.”
With the intent not to lose the time altogether, Ephraim resolved to write a letter or two. He took from the drawer a sheet of rough white paper, and opened his inkstand. He could not find his favorite steel pen anywhere, and there were no other pens in the drawer, only a bundle of quills. Ephraim determined to try to use one of these. He ruined four, and lost ten minutes before he could make with his knife a pen good enough to write with; but with this he finished his letter. Then he had another hunt for an envelope, but he could find one nowhere, and nothing was to be done but to fold the sheet in the fashion that he had known in his boyhood, and to seal it with sealing-wax. He burned his fingers badly while performing the last-named operation.
Still the postman had not arrived, and Ephraim, being very anxious to mail his letter, resolved to go out and drop it into the letter-box at the corner of the street. When he reached the corner, he found that the letter-box had disappeared as so many other things had done; so he resolved to push on to the post-office, where he could leave the letter and get his morning’s mail. As he approached what he had supposed was the post-office, he was dismayed to perceive that another building occupied the site. The post-office had vanished.
234 He turned to a man standing with a crowd which was observing him, and asked him where the post-office could be found. Obeying the direction, he sought the place and found it. Rushing to the single window, behind which a clerk stood, he asked,—
“Are there any letters for Ephraim Batterby?”
“I think not,” said the clerk; “there will be no mail in till to-morrow.”
“Till to-morrow!” shouted Ephraim. “What is the matter?”
“The matter! nothing at all. What’s the matter with you?”
“I am expecting letters from New York and Chicago. Are both mails delayed?”
“Chicago’s a place I never heard of, and the mail from New York comes in only three times a week. It came yesterday, and it will come in to-morrow.”
“Three times a week!” exclaimed Ephraim; “why, it comes four or five times a day, unless I am very much mistaken.”
The clerk turned to a fellow-clerk behind him and said in a low tone something at which both laughed.
“How do you suppose the mails get here four or five times a day?” asked the clerk.
“Upon the mail trains, of course,” replied Ephraim, tartly; and then the clerks laughed again.
235 “Well, sir,” said the man at the window, “we don’t appear to understand each other; but it may straighten things out if I tell you that the New York mails come here upon a stage-coach, which takes twenty-four hours to make the journey, and which reaches here on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.”
Ephraim was about to make an angry reply, but the clerk shut the window and made further discussion impossible. For a moment Ephraim was puzzled. He stopped to think what he should do next, and while he was standing there, he noticed a curious crowd gathering about him, a crowd which seemed to regard him with peculiar interest. And now and then a rude fellow would make facetious comments upon Ephraim’s dress, at which some of the vulgar would laugh. Ephraim was somewhat bewildered, and his confusion became greater when he observed that all of the bystanders wore knee-breeches and very ugly high collars and cravats, in which their chins were completely buried. Ephraim perceived near to him a gentleman who held in his hand a newspaper. Encouraged by his friendly countenance, Ephraim said to him,—
“I am rather confused, sir, by some unexpected changes that I have found about here this morning, will you be good enough to give me a little information?”
“With pleasure, sir.”
236 “I have missed some important letters that I looked for from New York and the We............