Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
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<div class="poem">
<p>With open eyes the sleeping houses stare at the Park:<br />
And among nude boughs the slumbering hanging moons are gazing:<br />
And somnambulant drops of melting snow glide from the roofs and patter on the pave...<br />
I in a dream draw the echoes of my footfall silvery sharp...
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<p>I cannot go:<br />
I dream that behind a window one wakes, a woman:<br />
She is thinking of me.
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<p>We sleep in the eternal arms of night:<br />
We give ourselves, in the heart of peril,<br />
To sheer unconsciousness:<br />
Silently sliding through space, the huge globe turns.
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<p>In the enchantment of the ebb of life,<br />
In the miracle of millions stretched in their rooms unconscious and breathing,<br />
In the sleep of the broadcast people,<br />
In the multitude of dreams rising from the houses,<br />
I pause, frozen in a spell.
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<div class="poem">
<p>Sleep-walking city!<br />
Who are the wide-eyed prowlers in the night?<br />
What nightmare-ridden cars move through their own far thunder?<br />
What living death of the wind rises, crackling the drowsy twigs?
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<div class="poem">
<p>Starless and still...<br />
Who stopped this heart?<br />
Who bound this city in a trance?
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<div class="poem">
<p>"Turn down the side street," yelled my passenger, frantically. I tried to turn, wondering, but the carburetor sputtered and died.
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<p>We got out, sinking ourselves halfway to the knees in gumbo. We were on a lonely road in an absolutely flat country, with not a house on the horizon. We had no ropes, and no shovel. We looked at the poor car, foundered to her knees in sculptor's clay, and wondered how many dismal days we must wait before the morass dried.
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<div class="poem">
<p>"It's a mighty serious offense. But, seein' as yo're a stranger and a lady at that——"
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<p>What an embarrassing position for our passengers! They had accepted our hospitality, egged us on to unlawful speed, and landed us in the court-house,—with pay-day weeks behind. Their chagrin deepened as their efforts to free us unlawfully went for naught. Our indulgent captors could not have regretted it more if we had been their own sisters, but they made it clear we must follow them.
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<div class="poem">
<p>Like "When did you stop beating your wife," his question was one of those which has all the repartee its own way. For six months, we were to hear it several times daily, but it always came as a shock, and as if hypnotized, we were never to alter our response. And it was so true! We <i>were</i> a long ways from home, further than we then realized. At times we seemed so long that we wondered if we should ever see home again. But we were never too far to meet some man, wittier than his fellows, who defined our location accurately.
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<div class="poem">
<p>The formality over, he replied, "I don't know." We suggested planks,—he knew of none. We put him down, bitterly, as an ill-natured dolt. But, as we learned later, Texans move slowly, but their hearts are in the right place. He was only warming up. Finally he spat again, lighted a cigarette, got off his horse, silently untied a rope from his saddle, and bound it about our back wheel, disregarding calmly the mire sucking at his boots. I started the engine. No results. All three watched the fettered Gulliver helplessly. Then, while Toby and I lifted out heavy suitcases and boxes from the seat which held the chains, he watched us, with the mild patience of an ox.
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<p>A LONG WAYS FROM HOME
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<div class="poem">
<p>We accepted our Joseph's suggestion that we allow him to bring us some of the specialties of the house. It was a wise decision,—from the prelude of oysters Rockefeller,—seared in a hot oven with a sauce of chives, butter and crumbs,—to the benediction of café brulôt. Between came a marvel of a fish, covered with Creole sauce, a sublimated chicken <i>a la King</i>, a salad and a sweet, all nicely proportioned to each other, but their memory was crowned by the café brulôt. In came Joseph, like all three Kings of Egypt, bearing a tall silver dish on a silver platter. The platter contained blazing brandy, the dish orange peel, lemon peel, cloves, cinnamon stick, four lumps of sugar, and two spoonfuls of brandy. Joseph stirred them into a melted nectar, then with a long silver ladle and the manner of a vestal virgin, swept the blazing brandy into the mixture above, and stood like a benevolent demon over the flame. An underling brought a pot of black coffee, which was added little by little to the fiery mixture, and stirred. Finally it was ladled into two small glasses. We swam in Swinburnian bliss. We paid our bill, and departed to a new New Orleans, where the secondhand stores were filled with genuine, priceless antiques, the pavings easy on our weary feet, the skies, as the meteorologist in the popular song observed, raining violets and daffodils. Mr. Volstead never tasted café brulôt.
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<div class="poem">
<p>"You go ahead, and I'll show her the way," suggested my tempter. That he had traveled the same road many, many times became evident to us. In fact, he confided that he had been arrested in every state in the Union, and his face was so well known in the Houston court that the judge had wearied of fining him, and now merely let him off with a rebuke. So hoping our faces would have the same effect on the judge, we trustingly following his directions into town, our khaki-clad friends leading.
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<div class="poem">
<p>"On account of the river, miss, we don't bathe tonight." It was a small tragedy for us. Earlier in the voyage we could not bear to see the water sliding up and down in the tub,—so much else was sliding up and down. It was on one of those days that the stewardess informed us that there were "twenty-seven ladies sick on this deck, to say nothing of twenty-four below," and asked us how we would like a little piece of bacon. We firmly refused the bacon, but the Gilbertian lilt of her remark inspired us to composing a ballad with the refrain, "Twenty-seven sea-sick ladies we."
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<div class="poem">
<p>"Now, lady, none of that! You follow right after us."
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<p>As to the purser, we left him severely alone. We did not feel we could flirt with him in the style to which he had been accustomed.
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<div class="poem">
<p>At sight of the fallen car, the mules gave a gently ironic side-glance, stepped into place, waited quietly, and at the word of command, stepped forward nonchalantly, while I started the car simultaneously. It took them exactly five minutes to do what eight men, two women, two Fords and a Cadillac had failed to do in two hours' hard work. For days after, when we passed a mule, we offered him silent homage.
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<div class="poem">
<p>"Yo' know speeding is a very serious offense——"
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