I HAVE a sense of humor that partakes of the divine in life—for there are things even in this chaotic irony that are divine. My genius is not divine. My patheticness is not divine. My philosophy is not divine, nor my originality, nor my audacity of thought. These are peculiarly of the earth. But my sense of humor—
It is humor that is far too deep to admit of laughter. It is humor that makes my heart melt with a high, unequaled sense of pleasure and ripple down through my body like old yellow wine.
A rare tone in a person's voice, a densely wrathful expression in a pair of slate-colored eyes, a fine, fine shade of comparison and contrast between a word in a conversation and an angleworm pattern in a calico dressing-jacket—these are things that make me conscious of divine emotion.
One day last summer an Italian peddler-woman stopped at the back door and rested herself. I stood in the doorway, and the peddler-woman and I talked. She had a dirty white handkerchief tied over her head—as all Italian peddler-women do—and she had a telescope valise filled with garters, and hairpins, and soap, and combs, and pencils, and china buttons on blue cards, and bean-shooters, and tacks, and dream-books, and mouth-organs, and green glass beads, and jews-harps. There is something fascinating about a peddler-woman's telescope valise. This peddler-woman wore a black satine wrapper and an ancient cape. She said that she would like to stop and rest a while, and I told her she might. I had always wanted to talk to a peddler-woman, and my mother never would allow one in the house.
"Is it nice to be a peddler?" I asked her.
"It ain't bad," replied the peddler-woman.
"Do you make a great deal of money?" I next inquired.
"Sometime I do, and sometime I don't," said the woman. She spoke with an accent that, while it sounded Italian, still showed unmistakably that she had lived in Butte.
"Well, do you make just enough to live on, or have you saved some money?" I asked.
"I got four hundred dollar in the bank," she replied. "I been peddlin' eight year."
"Eight years of tramping around in all kinds of weather," I said. "Your philosophy must be peripatetic, too. Haven't you ever had rheumatism in your knees?"
"I got rheumatism in every joint in my body," said the woman. "I have to lay off, sometime."
"Have you a husband?" I wished to know.
"I had a man—oh, yes," said the peddler-woman.
"And where is he?"
"Back home—in Italy."
"Why doesn't he come out here and work for you?" I asked.
"Yes, w'y don't he?" said the woman. "Dat-a man, he's dem lucky w'en he can get enough to eat—he is."
"Why don't you send him some money to pay his way out, since you've saved so much?" I inquired.
"Holy God!" said the peddler-woman. "I work hard for dat-a money. I save ev'ry cent. I ain't go'n now to t'row it away—I ain't. Dat-a man, he's all right w'ere he is—he is."
"What did you marry him for?" I asked.
The peddler-woman looked at me with that look which seems to convey the information that curiosity once killed a cat.
"What for?" I persisted—"for love?"
"I marry him w'en I was young girl. And he was young, too."
"Yes—but what did you do it for? Was he awfully nice, and did he say awfully sweet things to you?"
"He was dem sweet—oh, yes," said the peddler-woman. She grinned. "And I was young."
"And you liked it when you were young and he was sweet, didn't you?"
"Yes, I guess so. I was young," she answered.
The fact that one is young seems to imply—in the Italian peddler mind—a lacking in some essential points.
"And don't you like your man now?" I asked.
"Dat-a man, he's all right, in Italy—he is," replied the woman.
"Well," I observed, "if I had a man who had been dem sweet once, when I had been young, but who was not sweet any more, I think I should leave him in Italy, too."
"You'll git a man some day soon," said the peddler-woman.
I was interested to know that.
"They all do—oh, yes," she said. "But you likely to be better off peddlin', I tell you."
"Yes, I think it would be amusing to be a peddler for a while," I said. "But I should want the man, too, as long as he was dem sweet."
The peddler-woman picked up the telescope valise.
"Yes," she remarked, "a man, he's sweet two days, t'ree days, then—holy God! he never work, he git-a drunk, he make-a rough-house, he raise hell."
The peddler-woman nodded at me and limped out of the yard. The telescope valise was heavy. When she walked every muscle in her body seemed to be pressed into the service. She had a heavy, solid look. She seemed as though she might weigh three hundred pounds, though she was not large. The afternoon sun shone down brightly on her dirty white handkerchief, on her brown comely face, on her brown brass-ringed hands, on her black satine wrapper, on her ancient cape.
As I watched her out of sight I thought to myself: "Two days, t'ree days, then—holy God! he never work, he git-a drunk, he make-a rough-house, he raise hell."
I was conscious of an intense humor that was so far beyond laughter that it was too deep even for tears. But I felt tears vaguely as I watched the peddler-woman limping up the road.
It was not pathos. It was humor—humor. My emotion was one of vivid pleasure—pleasure at the sight of the woman, and at the telescope valise, and at her conversation supplemented by my own.
This emotion is divine, and I can not grasp it.
As I looked after the Italian peddler-woman it came to me with sudden force that the earth is only the earth, but that it is touched here and there brilliantly with divine fingers.
Long and often as I've sat in intense silent passion and gazed at the red, red sunset sky, I have never then felt this sense of the divine.
It comes only through humor.
It comes only with things like an Italian peddler-woman in a black satine wrapper and an ancient cape.
My soul—how heavily it goes.
Life is a journeying up a spring-time hill. And at the top we wonder why we are there. Have mercy on me, I implore in a dull idea that the journey is so long—so long, and a human being is less than an atom.
The solid, heavy figure of an Italian peddler-woman with a telescope valise, limping away in the afternoon sunshine, is more convincing of the Things that Are than would be the sound of the wailing of legions of lost souls, could it be heard.
For the world must be amused.
And the world's wind listeth as it bloweth.