The Street
There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be thosewho say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I will tell of the Street.Men of strength and honour fashioned that Street: good valiant men of ourblood who had come from the Blessed Isles across the sea. At first it was but apath trodden by bearers of water from the woodland spring to the cluster ofhouses by the beach. Then, as more men came to the growing cluster of houses andlooked about for places to dwell, they built cabins along the north side, cabinsof stout oaken logs with masonry on the side toward the forest, for many Indianslurked there with fire-arrows. And in a few years more, men built cabins on thesouth side of the Street.Up and down the Street walked grave men in conical hats, who most of thetime carried muskets or fowling pieces. And there were also their bonneted wivesand sober children. In the evening these men with their wives and children wouldsit about gigantic hearths and read and speak. Very simple were the things ofwhich they read and spoke, yet things which gave them courage and goodness andhelped them by day to subdue the forest and till the fields. And the childrenwould listen and learn of the laws and deeds of old, and of that dear Englandwhich they had never seen or could not remember.There was war, and thereafter no more Indians troubled the Street. The men,busy with labour, waxed prosperous and as happy as they knew how to be. And thechildren grew up comfortable, and more families came from the Mother Land todwell on the Street. And the childrens children, and the newcomers children,grew up. The town was now a city, and one by one the cabins gave place tohousessimple, beautiful houses of brick and wood, with stone steps and ironrailings and fanlights over the doors. No flimsy creations were these houses,for they were made to serve many a generation. Within there were carven mantelsand graceful stairs, and sensible, pleasing furniture, china, and silver,brought from the Mother Land.So the Street drank in the dreams of a young people and rejoiced as itsdwellers became more graceful and happy. Where once had been only strength andhonour, taste and learning now abode as well. Books and paintings and music cameto the houses, and the young men went to the university which rose above theplain to the north. In the place of conical hats and small-swords, of lace andsnowy periwigs, there were cobblestones over which clattered many a bloodedhorse and rumbled many a gilded coach; and brick sidewalks with horse blocks andhitching-posts.There were in that Street many trees: elms and oaks and maples of dignity;so that in the summer, the scene was all soft verdure and twittering bird-song.And behind the houses were walled rose-gardens with hedged paths and sundials,where at evening the moon and stars would shine bewitchingly while fragrantblossoms glistened with dew.So the Street dreamed on, past wars, calamities, and change. Once, most ofthe young men went away, and some never came back. That was when they furled theold flag and put up a new banner of stripes and stars. But though men talked ofgreat changes, the Street felt them not, for its folk were still the same,speaking of the old familiar things in the old familiar accounts. And the treesstill sheltered singing birds, and at evening the moon and stars looked downupon dewy blossoms in the walled rose-gardens.In time there were no more swords, three-cornered hats, or periwigs in theStreet. How strange seemed the inhabitants with their walking-sticks, tallbeavers, and cropped heads! New sounds came from the distancefirst strangepuffings and shrieks from the river a mile away, and then, many years later,strange puffings and shrieks and rumblings from other directions. The air wasnot quite so pure as before, but the spirit of the place had not changed. Theblood and soul of their ancestors had fashioned the Street. Nor did the spiritchange when they tore open the earth to lay down strange pipes, or when they setup tall posts bearing weird wires. There was so much ancient lore in thatStreet, that the past could not easily be forgotten.Then came days of evil, when many who had known the Street of old knew it nomore, and many knew it who had not known it before, and went away, for theiraccents were coarse and strident, and their mien and faces unpleasing. Theirthoughts, too, fought with the wise, just spirit of the Street, so that theStreet pined silently as its houses fell into decay, and its trees died one byone, and its rose-gardens grew rank with weeds and waste. But it felt a stir ofpride one day when again marched forth young men, some of whom never came back.These young men were clad in blue.With the years, worse fortune came to the Street. Its trees were all gonenow, and its rose-gardens were displaced by the backs of cheap, ugly newbuildings on parallel streets. Yet the houses remained, despite the ravages ofthe years and the storms and worms, for they had been made to serve many ageneration. New kinds of faces appeared in the Street, swarthy, sinister faceswith furtive eyes and odd features, whose owners .spoke unfamiliar words andplaced signs in known and unknown characters upon most of the musty houses.Push-carts crowded the gutters. A sordid, undefinable stench settled over theplace, and the ancient spirit slept.Great excitement once came to the Street. War and revolution were ragingacross the seas; a dynasty had collapsed, and its degenerate subjects wereflocking with dubious intent to the Western Land. Many of these took lodgings inthe battered houses that had once known the songs of birds and the scent ofroses. Then the Western Land itself awoke and joined the Mother Land in hertitanic struggle for civilization. Over the cities once more floated the oldflag, companioned by the new flag, and by a plainer, yet glorious tricolour. Butnot many flags floated over the Street, for therein brooded only fear and hatredand ignorance. Again young men went forth, but not quite as did the young men ofthose other days. Something was lacking. And the sons of those young men ofother days, who did indeed go forth in olive-drab with the true spirit of theirancestors, went from distant places and knew not the Street and its ancientspirit.Over the seas there was a great victory, and in triumph most of the youngmen returned. Those who had lacked something lacked it no longer, yet did fearand hatred and ignorance still brood over the Street; for many had stayedbehind, and many strangers had come from distance places to the ancient houses.And the young men who had returned dwelt there no longer. Swarthy and sinisterwere most of the strangers, yet among them one might find a few faces like thosewho fashioned the Street and moulded its spirit. Like and yet unlike, for therewas in the eyes of all a weird, unhealthy glitter as of greed, ambition,vindictiveness, or misguided zeal. Unrest and treason were abroad amongst anevil few who plotted to strike the Western Land its death blow, that they mightmount to power over its ruins, even as assassins had mounted in that unhappy,frozen land from whence most of them had come. And the heart of that plottingwas in the Street, whose crumbling houses teemed with alien makers of discordand echoed with the plans and speeches of those who yearned for the appointedday of blood, flame and crime.Of the various odd assemblages in the Street, the Law said much but couldprove little. With great diligence did men of hidden badges linger and listenabout such places as Petrovitchs Bakery, the squalid Rifkin School of ModernEconomics, the Circle Social Club, and the Liberty Cafe. There congregatedsinister men in great numbers, yet always was their speech guarded or in aforeign tongue. And still the old houses stood, with their forgotten lore ofnobler, departed centuries; of sturdy Colonial tenants and dewy rose-gardens inthe moonlight. Sometimes a lone poet or traveler would come to view them, andwould try to picture them in their vanished glory; yet of such travelers andpoets there were not many.The rumour now spread widely that these houses contained the leaders of avast band of terrorists, who on a designated day were to launch an orgy ofslaughter for the extermination of America and of all the fine old traditionswhich the Street had loved. Handbills and papers fluttered about filthy gutters;handbills and papers printed in many tongues and in many characters, yet allbearing messages of crime and rebellion. In these writings the people were urgedto tear down the laws and virtues that our fathers had exalted, to stamp out thesoul of the old Americathe soul that was bequeathed through a thousand and ahalf years of Anglo-Saxon freedom, justice, and moderation. It was said that theswart men who dwelt in the Street and congregated in its rotting edifices werethe brains of a hideous revolution, that at their word of command many millionsof brainless, besotted beasts would stretch forth their noisome talons from theslums of a thousand cities, burning, slaying, and destroying till the land ofour fathers should be no more. All this was said and repeated, and many lookedforward in dread to the fourth day of July, about which the strange writingshinted much; yet could nothing be found to place the guilt. None could tell justwhose arrest might cut off the damnable plotting at its source. Many times camebands of blue-coated police to search the shaky houses, though at last theyceased to come; for they too had grown tired of law and order, and had abandonedall the city to its fate. Then men in olive-drab came, bearing muskets, till itseemed as if in its sad sleep the Street must have some haunting dreams of thoseother days, when musketbearing men in conical hats walked along it from thewoodland spring to the cluster of houses by the beach. Yet could no act beperformed to check the impending cataclysm, for the swart, sinister men were oldin cunning.So the Street slept uneasily on, till one night there gathered inPetrovitchs Bakery, and the Rifkin School of Modern Economics, and the CircleSocial Club, and Liberty Cafe, and in other places as well, vast hordes of menwhose eyes were big with horrible triumph and expectation. Over hidden wiresstrange messages traveled, and much was said of still stranger messages yet totravel; but most of this was not guessed till afterward, when the Western Landwas safe from the peril. The men in olive-drab could not tell what washappening, or what they ought to do; for the swart, sinister men were skilled insubtlety and concealment.And yet the men in olive-drab will always remember that night, and willspeak of the Street as they tell of it to their grandchildren; for many of themwere sent there toward morning on a mission unlike that which they had expected.It was known that this nest of anarchy was old, and that the houses weretottering from the ravages of the years and the storms and worms; yet was thehappening of that summer night a surprise because of its very queer uniformity.It was, indeed, an exceedingly singular happening, though after all, a simpleone. For without warning, in one of the small hours beyond midnight, all theravages of the years and the storms and the worms came to a tremendous climax;and after the crash there was nothing left standing in the Street save twoancient chimneys and part of a stout brick wall. Nor did anything that had beenalive come alive from the ruins. A poet and a traveler, who came with the mightycrowd that sought the scene, tell odd stories. The poet says that all throughthe hours before dawn he beheld sordid ruins indistinctly in the glare of thearc-lights; that there loomed above the wreckage another picture wherein hecould describe moonlight and fair houses and elms and oaks and maples ofdignity. And the traveler declares that instead of the places wonted stenchthere lingered a delicate fragrance as of roses in full bloom. But are not thedreams of poets and the tales of travelers notoriously false?There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be thosewho say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I have told you of theStreet.
zpostcode
Recruit
weather
mreligion
Yellowpages
sport
constellation
shopping
name
game
directory
literature
Word
tour
furnish
Lottery
tftnews
lyrics
News
digital
car
dir
Edu
Finance
