THERE are two writers, among them all, to whom I owe thanks for countless hours of complete pleasure. Not the pleasure that stirs and fires one, but the pleasure which enters into the entire personality, and rests and satisfies a common, unstrained mind. 'Tis the same pleasure that comes with eating all by myself—eating peaches and a fine, tiny lamb chop in the middle of the day.
One of these two writers is J. T. Trowbridge who has writtten young-books.
Often I have thought, Life would be different, and duller colored, and less thickly sprinkled with marigolds-and-cream, had I never known my Trowbridge.
Often I have thanked the happy fate that put into my hands my first young-book of Trowbridge. 'Twas when I was fourteen—one day in October, when I lived in a flat, windy town that was named Great Falls, in Montana. Since that time I have never been without the young-books of J. T. Trowbridge. There have but seven years passed since then, but when seven years more, and seven years again, up to threescore, have gone, I still shall spend one-half my rest-hours, my pleasure-hours, my loosely-comfortable, unstrained hours with the young-books of Trowbridge.
When I go to a theater I enjoy it thoroughly. A theater is a good thing, and the actor is a stunning person—but how eagerly and gladly I come back into my own room where there is a faithful, little, tan deer standing waiting, all so pathetic and sweet, upon the desk.
When I go out into two crowded rooms among some fascinating persons that I have heard of before—women with fine-wrought gowns—I like that, too, and I wouldn't have missed it—but how utterly restful and adorable it is to come back to my own room where there is my comfortable quiet friend in a rusty black flannel frock, sitting waiting—and her hands so soft and good to feel.
When I read gold treasures of literature—Vergil, it may be, or a Browning, or Kipling—I am enchanted and enthralled. I marvel at these people and how they can write. I think how marvelous is writing, at last—but how gladly and thankfully, after two hours or three, I return back to these my young-books of Trowbridge.
They are about people living on farms, and they are written so that you know that red-root grows among wheat-spears, and must be weeded out, and that the farmer's boys have to milk the cows mornings before breakfast and evenings after supper. For they have supper in the Trowbridge books—and it is even attractive and tastes good.
When the lads go to gather kelp to spread on the land, and are gone for the day by the seashore, they eat roasted ears of corn, and cold-boiled eggs, and bread-and-butter, and three bottles of spruce beer—and if you really know the Trowbridge books you can eat of these with them, and with a wonderful appetite.
When a slim boy of sixteen goes to hunt for his uncle's horse that had been stolen in the night (because the boy left the stable door unlocked), along pleasant country roads and smiling farms in Massachusetts—if you really know the Trowbridge books—the slim boy of sixteen is not more anxious to find the horse than you are. When the boy and the reader first start after the horse they are far too wretched and anxious to eat—for the crabbed uncle told them they needn't come back to the farm without that horse. But long before noon they are glad enough that they have a few doubled slices of buttered bread to eat as they go. When at last they come upon the horse calmly feeding under a cattle-shed at a county fair twenty miles away, they are quite hungry, and in their joy they purchase a wedge of pie and some oyster crackers, so that they needn't be out of sight of the horse while they eat. And the reader—if he really knows the Trowbridge books—would fain stop here, for there is trouble ahead of him. He would fain—but he can not. He must go on—he must even come in crucial contact with Eli Badger's hickory club—he must go with the boy until he sees him and the horse at last safely back at Uncle Gray's farm, the horse placidly munching oats in his own stall, and the boy eating supper once more with appetite unimpaired, and the crabbed uncle once more serene. And—if you know Trowbridge's books—you can eat, too, tranquilly.
When a boy is left alone in the world by the death of his aunt and starts out to find his uncle in Cincinnati—if you know Trowbridge's books—you prepare for hardship and weariness, but still occasional sandwiches and doughnuts (but not the greasy kind). And always you know there must be a haven in the house of the uncle in Cincinnati. Only—if you know the Trowbridge books—you are fearful when you get to the uncle's door, and you would a little rather the boy went in to meet him while you waited outside. Trowbridge's uncles are apt to be so sour as to heart, and so bitter as to tongue, and so sarcastic in their remarks relating to boys who come in from the country to the city in order that they—the uncles—may have the privilege of supporting them. Though you know—if you know the Trowbridge books—that Trowbridge's boys never come into the city for that purpose. The heavy-tempered uncles, too, are made aware of this before long, and change the tenor of their remarks accordingly—and after some just pride on the part of the nephews, all goes well. Whereupon your feeling of satisfaction is more than that of the boy, of the uncle, of Trowbridge himself.
But these roasted ears of corn and cold-boiled eggs are among the lesser delights of the young-books of Trowbridge. The most fascinating things in them are the conversations. They are so real that you hear the voices and see the expressions of the faces.
Trowbridge is one of the kind that listens twice and thrice to persons talking, so that he hears the key-note and the detail, and his pen is of the kind that can write what he hears. It is never too much, never too little; it is not noticeable at all, because it is all harmony.
It is entirely and utterly common.
And it is real.
In the young-books of Trowbridge, and nowhere else, I have heard boys talking together so that I knew how their faces looked, and how carelessly and loosely their various collars were worn, and their dubious hats. I have heard a grasping, grouty old man pound on the kitchen floor with his horn-headed cane—he had come over while the family were at breakfast to inform them that their dog had killed five of his sheep, and to demand the dog's life. I have heard the lessons and other things they said in a country school-room sixty years ago, where boys were sometimes obliged, for punishment, to sit on nothing against the door. I have heard the extreme discontent in the voice of another grouty, grasping farmer when it became evident to him that he would be obliged to give up a horse that had been stolen before he bought him. But here I must quote, as nearly correctly as I can without the book:
"'And sold him to this Mr. Badger' (said Kit) 'for seventy dollars.'
"'Seventy gim-cracks!' exclaimed Uncle Gray, aghast. 'I should think any fool might know he's worth more than that.'
"He was thinking of Brunlow, but Eli applied the remark to himself.
"'I did know it,' he growled. 'That's why I bought him. And mighty glad I am now I didn't pay more.'
"'Sartin!' replied Uncle Gray; 'but didn't it occur to you 't no honest man would want to sell an honest hoss like that for any such sum?'
"'I didn't know it,' said Eli, groutily. 'He told a pooty straight story. I got took in, that's all.'
"'Took in!' repeated Uncle Gray. 'I should say, took in! I know the rogue and I'm amazed that any man with common sense and eyes in his head shouldn't 'a' seen through him at once.'
"'Maybe I ain't got common sense, and maybe I ain't got eyes in my head,' said Eli, with a dull fire in the place where eyes should have been if he had had any. 'But I didn't expect this.'
"Kit hastened to interpose between the two men."
Always I have been sorry that the boy interposed just there.
I have read the book surely seven-and-seventy times. Each time this talk over the horse comes exceeding pungent to my ears. How impossible it is to weary of Trowbridge, because there is no effort in the writing, and no effort in the reading, and because of a deep-reaching, never-failing sense of humor.
How flat seem these words!
The young-books of Trowbridge can not be set down in words. What with the simplicity, what with the quality of naturalness, what with a delicate tenderness for all human things, what with the rare, rare quality of commonness that is satisfying and quieting as the vision of a little green radish-bed, what with an inner sympathy between Trowbridge and his characters and, above all, an inner sympathy with his readers, what with Truth itself and the sweet gift of portraying the sunshiny days as they are—why talk of Trowbridge?
Is it not all there written?
Can one not read and rest in it?