Journeys to Bagdad | Page 2

far-off time--a dim atavism, to
put it as hard as possible--for I seem to remember being told that my
ancestors were once engaged in buccaneering or other valiant
livelihood.
But here is a peculiar thing. The chandlery gives me no desire to run
away to sea. Rather, the smell of the place urges me indeterminately,
diffusedly, to truantry. It offers me no particular chart. It but cuts my
moorings for whatever winds are blowing. If there be blood of a pirate
in me, it is a shame what faded juice it is. It would flow pink on the
sticking. In mean contrast to skulls, bowie-knives and other red villainy,
my thoughts will be set toward the mild truantry of trudging for an
afternoon in the country. Or it is likely that I'll carry stones for the
castle that I have been this long time building. Were the trick of

prosody in me, I would hew a poem on the spot. Such is my anemia.
And yet there is a touch of valiancy, too, as from the days when my
sainted ancestors sailed with their glass beads from Bristol harbor; the
desire of visiting the sunset, of sailing down on the far side of the last
horizon where the world itself falls off and there is sky with swirl of
stars beyond.
[Illustration]
In the spring of each year everyone should go to Bagdad--not
particularly to Bagdad, for I shall not dictate in matter of detail--but to
any such town that may happen to be so remote that you are not sure
when you look it up whether it is on page 47 which is Asia, or on page
53 which is Persia. But Bagdad will serve: For surely, Reader, you
have not forgotten that it was in Bagdad in the surprising reign of
Haroun-al-Raschid that Sinbad the Sailor lived! Nor can it have
escaped you that scarce a mule's back distance--such was the method of
computation in those golden days--lived that prince of medieval
plain-clothes men, Ali Baba!
Historically, Bagdad lies in that tract of earth where purple darkens into
night. Geographically, it lies obliquely downward, and is, I compute,
considerably off the southeast corner of my basement. It is such distant
proximity, doubtless, that renders my basement--and particularly its
woodpile, which lies obscurely beyond the laundry--such a shadowy,
grim and altogether mysterious place. If there be any part of the house,
including certain dark corners of the attic, that is fearfully
Mesopotamian after nightfall, it is that woodpile. Even when I sit above,
secure with lights, if by chance I hear tappings from below--such noises
are common on a windy night--I know that it is the African Magician
pounding for the genie, the sound echoing through the hollow earth. It
is matter of doubt whether the iron bars so usual on basement windows
serve chiefly to keep burglars out, or whether their greater service is not
their defense of western Christianity against the invasion from the East
which, except for these bars, would enter here as by a postern. At a
hazard, my suspicion would fall on the iron doors that open inwards in
the base of chimneys. We have been fondly credulous that there is

nothing but ash inside and mere siftings from the fire above; and when,
on an occasion, we reach in with a trowel for a scoop of this wood-ash
for our roses, we laugh at ourselves for our scare of being nabbed. But
some day if by way of experiment you will thrust your head within--it's
a small hole and you will be besmirched beyond anything but a
Saturday's reckoning--you will see that the pit goes off in
darkness--downward. It was but the other evening as we were seated
about the fire that there came upward from the basement a gibbering
squeak. Then the woodpile fell over, for so we judged the clatter. Is it
fantastic to think that some dark and muffled Persian, after his dingy
tunneling from the banks of the Tigris, had climbed the pile of wood
for a breath of night at the window and, his foot slipping, the pile fell
over? Plainly, we heard him scuttling back to the ash-pit.
Be these things as they may, when you have arrived in Bagdad--and it
is best that you travel over land and sea--if you be serious in your zest,
you will not be satisfied, but will journey a thousand miles more at the
very least, in whatever direction is steepest. And you will turn the
flanks of seven mountains, with seven villainous peaks thereon. For the
very number of them will put a spell on you. And you will cross
running water, that you leave no scent for the world behind. Such
journey would be the soul of truantry and you should