What Miss Edith Saw From Her Window
Our window’s not much, though it fronts on the street;
There’s a fly in the pane that gets nothin’ to eat;
But it’s curious how people think it’s a treat
For ME to look out of the window!
Why, when company comes, and they’re all speaking low,
With their chairs drawn together, then some one says, “Oh!
Edith dear!—that’s a good child—now run, love, and go
And amuse yourself there at the window!”
Or Bob—that’s my brother—comes in with his chum,
And they whisper and chuckle, the same words will come.
And it’s “Edith, look here! Oh, I say! what a rum
Lot of things you can see from that window!”
And yet, as I told you, there’s only that fly
Buzzing round in the pane, and a bit of blue sky,
And the girl in the opposite window, that I
Look at when SHE looks from HER window.
And yet, I’ve been thinking I’d so like to see
If what goes on behind HER, goes on behind ME!
And then, goodness gracious! what fun it would be
For us BOTH as we sit by our window!
How we’d know when the parcels were hid in a drawer,
Or things taken out that one never sees more;
What people come in and go out of the door,
That we never see from the window!
And that night when the stranger came home with our Jane
I might SEE what I HEARD then, that sounded so plain—
Like when my wet fingers I rub on the pane
(Which they won’t let ME do on my window).
And I’d know why papa shut the door with a slam,
And said something funny that sounded like “jam,”
And then “Edith—where are you?” I said, “Here I am.”
“Ah, that’s right, dear, look out of the window!”
They say when I’m grown up these things will appear
More plain than they do when I look at them here,
But I think I see some things uncommonly clear,
As I sit and look down from the window.
What things? Oh, the things that I make up, you know,
Out of stories I’ve read—and they all pass below.
Ali Baba, the Forty Thieves, all in a row,
Go by, as I look from my window.
That’s only at church time; other days there’s no crowd.
Don’t laugh! See that big man who looked up and bowed?
That’s our butcher—I call him the Sultan Mahoud
When he nods to me here at the window!
And THAT man—he’s our neighbor—just gone for a ride
Has three wives in the churchyard that lie side by side.
So I call him “Bluebeard” in search of his bride,
While I’m Sister Anne at the window.
And what do I call you? Well, here’s what I DO:
When my sister expects you, she puts me here, too;
But I wait till you enter, to see if it’s you,
And then—I just OPEN the window!
“Dear child!” Yes, that’s me! “Oh, you ask what that’s for?
Well, Papa says you’re ‘Poverty’s self,’ and what’s more,
I open the window, when YOU’RE at the door,
To see Love fly out of the window!”
Notes
THE LOST GALLEON. As the custom on which the central incident of this legend is based may not be familiar to all readers, I will repeat here that it is the habit of navigators to drop a day from their calendar in crossing westerly the 180th degree of longitude of Greenwich, adding a day in coming east; and that the idea of the lost galleon had an origin as prosaic as the log of the first China Mail Steamer from San Francisco. The explanation of the custom and its astronomical relations belongs rather to the usual text-books than to poetical narration. If any reader thinks I have overdrawn the credulous superstitions of the ancient navigators, I refer him to the veracious statements of Maldonado, De Fonte, the later voyages of La Perouse and Anson, and the charts of 1640. In the charts of that day Spanish navigators reckoned longitude E. 360 degrees from the meridian of the Isle of Ferro. For the sake of perspicuity before a modern audience, the more recent meridian of Madrid was substituted. The custom of dropping a day at some arbitrary point in crossing the Pacific westerly, I need not say, remains unaffected by any change of meridian. I know not if any galleon was ever really missing. For two hundred and fifty years an annual trip was made between Acapulco and Manila. It may be some satisfaction to the more severely practical of my readers to know that, according to the best statistics of insurance, the loss during that period would be exactly three vessels and six hundredths of a vessel, which would certainly justify me in this summary disposition of ONE.
THE PLIOCENE SKULL. This extraordinary fossil is in the possession of Prof. Josiah D. Whitney, of the State Geological Survey of California. The poem was based on the following paragraph from the daily press of 1868: “A human skull has been found in California, in the pliocene formation. This skull is the remnant not only of the earliest pioneer of this State, but the oldest known human being.... The skull was found in a shaft 150 feet deep, two miles from Angels in Calaveras County, by a miner named James Watson, who gave it to Mr. Scribner, a merchant, who gave it to Dr. Jones, who sent it to the State Geological Survey.... The published volume of the State Survey of the Geology of California states that man existed here contemporaneously with the mastodon, but this fossil proves that he was here before the mastodon was known to exist.”