Prayer From Number Eight

MY favorite bedroom in the Club is Number Eight. I do not know why this is so, unless perhaps you include the fact that in seven years of occasional transiency I have slept there in only one other. I was sick with a fever first in Number Eight. One does n’t often revisit with pleasure the spots where one has been sick. But I bear no grudge in this case. It was congenial to me then, and is to-night when I am quite well and writing this essay because I drank too much coffee for dinner.

In the first place, Number Eight is blessed by situation. It has a cheering outlook. From the fourth floor you gaze directly into the fourth floor of the Ritz. If there is nothing instructive going on in the fourth floor, then you gaze into the fifth. And so on to the fourteenth, which tells you practically nothing that you want to know. The idea that the fourth or some other floor of the Ritz may be gazing at me is of indifferent concern. I have nothing to show them beyond a reading lamp at night and a bearded face in the morning. Let them speculate. I am one window against a hundred.

But the view out is the smallest fraction of the charm of Number Eight. It is the queerness and the comfort within that I desire. Two doors separate me from my kind. They swing on nearly identical hinges. One of them offers hermetical sealing, the other the resembling freemasonry of a saloon. From under and over the latter come the faintly audible sounds of Club life; and indeed, as I lie in bed and glance casually toward the hall, a number of strange, listless feet go by, or bald heads float past the top like the rolling of gigantic eggs in some Gargantuan race.

I have escaped, I say. It is still only ten o’clock. Smoke, argument, drink, food, games, life, and boredom lie below me on another floor, and I have only this broken sound of occasional people retreating from them. Interruption has stalked off to sleep, and I lie here humbly, gathering a little strength to meet him in the morning. I bless this quiet place and the man who laid thick carpets in the hall. I bless the servant who hung the white Club bathrobe in the closet, and the Chinaman or Malay who invented the clean straw sandals beside my bed. I bless the Art Committee who fixed two etchings and a water color on the walls, and the artists who made them and gave them to the Club. I bless their separate talents and hope that they have since improved. I bless the genius who kept the telephone from my room and a radio from this floor, and the modest electrician who installed but the simplest circuit of an electric bell. I bless the fact that even that won’t work.

I bless the street which is far enough down to be remote yet visible. I bless the sound of my city, reduced here to the fleeting murmur of another planet. I bless the fair rectangle of sky which I can just see without falling from the window, and the one or two stars in it that are granted to my coffeewakened eyes. I bless the blue Club stationery on my table, and the many long and overdue letters which I shall not write. I bless the occult nearness of friends and the factual remoteness of creditors. I bless the strength of that caffeine and the patience I have to write this essay.

I bless the books which I had the forethought to bear in with me, and the generous failure of the House Committee to provide a shelf of others I should not want. I bless an anthology of poems which brings me, without charge whatever, the sound of the sea, the wine of autumn, the fall of leaves, tears I am not obliged to shed, wind in the western grasses, and the imaginations of other men. I bless by Chesterton a book of heretical statement, and some of his lies and the best of his many half-truths. I bless the man who wrote this mystery which I cannot possibly solve, and his unexpected wit which is rare enough in all hasty writing. I bless unopened one red volume which has been neither recommended to me by a critic nor sent me by the publisher. I bless whatever charm it may possess, and the hopeful excitement wherein I shall ’ presently begin it. I do not bless this sudden crick in my back.

I bless my pipe and a good supply of matches. I bless the blue smoke of tobacco which I keep out of my bedroom at home but which in Number Eight is a necessary and comforting part of the atmosphere. I bless my black shell briar and the whiteness of ringed ash in its bowl. I bless all difference to me and my indifference to the world.

I bless my watch and the ticking of its mechanism, sparsely jeweled. I bless the present hour and the hours that lie between me and the dawn. I bless my bed and the extraordinary fact that none shall call me from it.

These, then, are all my blessings, and to them I add one more: I bless the magazine that prints my quiet words.