Snow and Sleigh Bells—“Brooks of Sheffield”—In the Boston Suburbs—Smokeless Coal—At the Somerset Club—Miss Ellen Terry and the Papyrus—A Ladies’ Night—Club Literature—Curious Minutes—“Greeting to Ellen Terry”—St. Botolph—Oliver Wendell Holmes and Charles the First—“Good-by and a Merry Christmas.”
“A TRANSFORMATION scene, indeed!” said Irving. “Yesterday, autumn winds, bright streets, a rattle of traffic—to-day, snow and sleigh-bells—yesterday, wheels—to-day, runners, as they call the enormous skating-irons upon which they appear to have placed every vehicle in the city. I have just returned from rehearsal, and find everybody sleighing. The omnibuses are sleighs—the grocer’s cart is a sleigh—the express-wagons are sleighs; it is a city of sleighs! The snow began to fall in earnest yesterday. Last night it must have been a foot deep. It would have ruined the business at a London theatre. Here it made no difference. We had a splendid house.”
“As I walked to my hotel at midnight,” I replied, “snow-ploughs were in the streets clearing the roads and scouring the car-tracks. Boston tackles the snow in earnest. The trees on the Common were a marvel of beauty. They looked like an orchard of the Hesperides, all in blossom, and the electric lamps added to the fairy-like beauty of the scene.”
“A lovely city. Shall we take a sleigh-ride?”
“‘Why, certainly,’ as they say in ‘The Colonel,’ but rarely in America.”
Irving rings for his colored attendant. He has discovered that his surname is Brooks, and takes a curious pleasure in addressing him as Brooks, sometimes as “Brooks, of Sheffield!”
“Yes, sah,” says the attendant, preparing to go, not hurriedly, for who ever saw a colored gentleman (they are all colored gentlemen) in a hurry?
“Yes, sah,” he says, marching slowly into the next room for the rugs.
“Would you like to go to the theatre one night?”
“Hamlet! Very good. Is there a Mrs. Brooks?”
“‘Deed there is, sah,” answers the darkey, grinning from ear to ear.
“That’s all right. Mr. Stoker shall give all of you seats. See if he is in the hotel.”
As he stalks to the door Stoker comes bounding in (Stoker is always on the run), to the discomfiture of Brooks and his load of rugs.
Brooks picks himself up with dignity. Stoker assures his chief that there is not a seat in the house for anybody.