第38章 ON FURNISHED APARTMENTS.(4)

No,for living in give me a suit of rooms on the first floor of a Piccadilly mansion (I wish somebody would!);but for thinking in let me have an attic up ten flights of stairs in the densest quarter of the city.I have all Herr Teufelsdrockh's affection for attics.

There is a sublimity about their loftiness.I love to "sit at ease and look down upon the wasps'nest beneath;"to listen to the dull murmur of the human tide ebbing and flowing ceaselessly through the narrow streets and lanes below.How small men seem,how like a swarm of ants sweltering in endless confusion on their tiny hill!How petty seems the work on which they are hurrying and skurrying!How childishly they jostle against one another and turn to snarl and scratch!They jabber and screech and curse,but their puny voices do not reach up here.They fret,and fume,and rage,and pant,and die;"but I,mein Werther,sit above it all;I am alone with the stars."The most extraordinary attic I ever came across was one a friend and Ionce shared many years ago.Of all eccentrically planned things,from Bradshaw to the maze at Hampton Court,that room was the most eccentric.The architect who designed it must have been a genius,though I cannot help thinking that his talents would have been better employed in contriving puzzles than in shaping human habitations.No figure in Euclid could give any idea of that apartment.It contained seven corners,two of the walls sloped to a point,and the window was just over the fireplace.The only possible position for the bedstead was between the door and the cupboard.To get anything out of the cupboard we had to scramble over the bed,and a large percentage of the various commodities thus obtained was absorbed by the bedclothes.

Indeed,so many things were spilled and dropped upon the bed that toward night-time it had become a sort of small cooperative store.

Coal was what it always had most in stock.We used to keep our coal in the bottom part of the cupboard,and when any was wanted we had to climb over the bed,fill a shovelful,and then crawl back.It was an exciting moment when we reached the middle of the bed.We would hold our breath,fix our eyes upon the shovel,and poise ourselves for the last move.The next instant we,and the coals,and the shovel,and the bed would be all mixed up together.

I've heard of the people going into raptures over beds of coal.We slept in one every night and were not in the least stuck up about it.

But our attic,unique though it was,had by no means exhausted the architect's sense of humor.The arrangement of the whole house was a marvel of originality.All the doors opened outward,so that if any one wanted to leave a room at the same moment that you were coming downstairs it was unpleasant for you.There was no ground-floor--its ground-floor belonged to a house in the next court,and the front door opened direct upon a flight of stairs leading down to the cellar.

Visitors on entering the house would suddenly shoot past the person who had answered the door to them and disappear down these stairs.

Those of a nervous temperament used to imagine that it was a trap laid for them,and would shout murder as they lay on their backs at the bottom till somebody came and picked them up.

It is a long time ago now that I last saw the inside of an attic.Ihave tried various floors since but I have not found that they have made much difference to me.Life tastes much the same,whether we quaff it from a golden goblet or drink it out of a stone mug.The hours come laden with the same mixture of joy and sorrow,no matter where we wait for them.A waistcoat of broadcloth or of fustian is alike to an aching heart,and we laugh no merrier on velvet cushions than we did on wooden chairs.Often have I sighed in those low-ceilinged rooms,yet disappointments have come neither less nor lighter since I quitted them.Life works upon a compensating balance,and the happiness we gain in one direction we lose in another.As our means increase,so do our desires;and we ever stand midway between the two.When we reside in an attic we enjoy a supper of fried fish and stout.When we occupy the first floor it takes an elaborate dinner at the Continental to give us the same amount of satisfaction.