Parnassus on Wheels

Andrew got to be less and less of a farmer and more and more of a literary man. He bought a typewriter. He would hang over the pigpen noting down adjectives for the sunset instead of mending the weather vane on the barn which took a slew so that the north wind came from the southwest. He hardly ever looked at the Sears Roebuck catalogues any more, and after Mr. Decameron came to visit us and suggested that Andrew write a book of country poems, the man became simply unbearable.

And all the time I was counting eggs and turning out three meals a day, and running the farm when Andrew got a literary fit and would go off on some vagabond jaunt to collect adventures for a new book. (I wish you could have seen the state he was in when he came back from these trips, hoboing it along the roads without any money or a clean sock to his back. One time he returned with a cough you could hear the other side of the barn, and I had to nurse him for three weeks.) When somebody wrote a little booklet about “The Sage of Redfield” and described me as a “rural Xantippe” and “the domestic balance-wheel that kept the great writer close to the homely realities of life” I made up my mind to give Andrew some of his own medicine. And that’s my story.

II

It was a fine, crisp morning in fall⁠—October I dare say⁠—and I was in the kitchen coring apples for apple sauce. We were going to have roast pork for dinner with boiled potatoes and what Andrew calls Vandyke brown gravy. Andrew had driven over to town to get some flour and feed and wouldn’t be back till noontime.

Being a Monday, Mrs. McNally, the washerwoman, had come over to take care of the washing. I remember I was just on my way out to the wood pile for a few sticks of birch when I heard wheels turn in at the gate. There was one of the fattest white horses I ever saw, and a queer wagon, shaped like a van. A funny-looking little man with a red beard leaned forward from the seat and said something. I didn’t hear what it was, I was looking at that preposterous wagon of his.

It was coloured a pale, robin’s-egg blue, and on the side, in big scarlet letters, was painted:

R. Mifflin’s Travelling Parnassus

Good Books for Sale

Shakespeare, Charles Lamb, R. L. S. Hazlitt, and All Others

Underneath the wagon, in slings, hung what looked like a tent, together with a lantern, a bucket, and other small things. The van had a raised skylight on the roof, something like an old-fashioned trolley car; and from one corner went up a stove pipe. At the back was a door with little windows on each side and a flight of steps leading up to it.

As I stood looking at this queer turnout, the little reddish man climbed down from in front and stood watching me. His face was a comic mixture of pleasant drollery and a sort of weather-beaten cynicism. He had a neat little russet beard and a shabby Norfolk jacket. His head was very bald.

“Is this where Andrew McGill lives?” he said.

I admitted it.

“But he’s away until noon,” I added. “He’ll be back then. There’s roast pork for dinner.”

“And apple sauce?” said the little man.

“Apple sauce and brown gravy,” I said. “That’s why I’m sure he’ll be home on time. Sometimes he’s late when there’s boiled dinner, but never on roast pork days. Andrew would never do for a rabbi.”

A sudden suspicion struck me.

“You’re not another publisher, are you?” I cried. “What do you want with Andrew?”

“I was wondering whether he wouldn’t buy this outfit,” said the little man, including, with a wave of the hand, both van and white horse. As he spoke he released a hook somewhere, and raised the whole side of his wagon like a flap. Some kind of catch clicked, the flap remained up like a roof, displaying nothing but books⁠—rows and rows of them. The flank of his van was nothing but a big bookcase. Shelves stood above shelves, all of them full of books⁠—both old and new. As I stood gazing, he pulled out a printed card from somewhere and gave it to me:

Roger Mifflin’s
Travelling Parnassus

Worthy friends, my wain doth hold
Many a book, both new and old;
Books, the truest friends of man,
Fill this rolling caravan.
Books to satisfy all uses,
Golden lyrics of the Muses,
Books on cookery and farming,
Novels passionate and charming,
Every kind for every need
So that he who buys may read.
What librarian can surpass us?

Mifflin’s Travelling Parnassus

By R. Mifflin, Prop’r.

Star Job Print, Celeryville, Va.

While I was chuckling over this, he had raised a similar flap on the other side of the Parnassus which revealed still more shelves loaded with books.

I’m afraid I am severely practical by nature.

“Well!” I said, “I should think you would need a pretty stout steed to lug that load along. It must weigh more than a coal wagon.”

“Oh, Peg can manage it all right,” he said. “We don’t travel very fast. But look here, I want to sell out. Do you suppose your husband would buy the outfit⁠—Parnassus, Pegasus, and all? He’s fond of books, isn’t he?”

“Hold on a minute!” I said. “Andrew’s my brother, not my husband, and he’s altogether too fond of books. Books’ll be the ruin of this farm pretty soon. He’s mooning about over his books like a sitting hen about half the time, when he ought to be mending harness. Lord, if he saw this wagonload of yours he’d be unsettled for a week. I have to stop the postman down the road and take all the publishers’ catalogues out of the mail so that Andrew don’t see ’em. I’m mighty glad he’s not here just now, I can tell you!”

I’m not literary, as I said before, but I’m human enough to like a