NOBLE VAGABONDS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 806, 2 May 1910, Page 8

NOBLE VAGABONDS.

THE OPEN ROAD. TON SAWYER AND KUOK PANZA.

(By J.Q.X.) . '

It socms strange that in the obitniries and 'appreciations of Mark Twain which appeared in all the papers a few days ago, no writer, so far as I observed, compared the author of "Tom Sawyer" with tie author of "Don Quixote.'/' Yet the likeness is so real that many readers must have noticed it.

Alonzo Qnixana, a Spanish gentleman of the 16i3i century, creeps stealthily out. of his own back-yard and rides away, imagining himself to be one of those knights errant whom ho had only met in, books of romanoe. He renames himself Don Quixote de la Maneha, his lean decrepit horse seems to his fantasy Ha splendid charger ltozimurio. A peasant girl figures in his exalted vows as the Lady Dukrinea del Toboso. And his adventures are told by Cervantes in a book that will ■last as long as human nature. An American schoolboy, Tom Sawyer, steals away from home one midnight to be , a pirate. His comrades must call him "The Black Avenger of iiio Spanish Main," while Joe Harper becomes "The Tenor of the Seas," and Huck Frim is "The Red-Handed" — titles which Tom has culled from his favourite romances. . And tho adventures which follow are set down in the spirit and' manner of Cervantes. It may be objected that the differences, between the delusions of the mad knight. and the make-believe of the schoolboy are fundamental,, and the resemblances - merely superficial. I think, on the contrary, that the chief difference lies altogether on the surface, and thfe resemblances go down to the foundations of thought. Don .Quixote, is knight errant all the time; Tom Sawyer is a victorious general on Saturday, Robin Hood on Monday, a E irate soon after that, and then a Red adian, a Cadet of Temperance, a robber chief, and so forth. Between whiles he is just Tom. That is the difference between Don Quixote's madness . and Tom Sawyer's make-believe. One hero has a fixed idea, the other a quick succession of ideas. Tho one is possessed | by his fantasy,, the other uses his for amusement. Only towards the end of his history does Don Quixote partly give up the notion of knight errantry and decide to turn shepherd. That is -a glimmer of retaining sanity. He is 'becoming .less like tho crazy gentleman and more like the normal boy. He will try another sort of make-believe. Bat both'stories have the 6ame fundamental theme; —tile humorous incongruity of the actual and the imagined —and in both "this incongroity is pcrainified. Huck Finn is to Tom Sawyer what Sancho Panza' is to Don Quixote. When Tom has a raging defire to go 'somewhere ami dig for hidden treasure ■he opens the matter to Hoi, and wins him ccer with talk cf a pot of dollars. / Just in the same way did Don Quix-j cte persuade his simple neighbour to eaßy forth with him and servo hira as Ks equine. Instead of one hundred dollars, he. promised Mm the government of anfebod.; but that is a mere detail., .. ■ Hu<± and Bancho ®oon( cam© 1b serve for low more than for hope of .gain, but neither could enter fatty into 'the fantasies of ( his errant leader. Huck'B description of how Tom managed the rescue of tiie nigger Jsm according to tbe most approved romantic methods, fa entirely in the van of Sancho Paaza. In Smother pjace Huck takes the Wader nito his confidence like this was .always nuts for Tom' - Sawyer—a mystery was; If you'd lay oafc a mystery and a pie before me and him, you wouldn't have to say tako your choice; it was a thing . that • would regulate itself. Because'' in . my. nature I have always run to pie, whilst in la's nature he hasata(ys run- to mystery. People, are made different. Ami jt is the best way." Sancho Panza might hwe said sametiring very much Hks that about himiSelf and Don Quixote. Truly, the two boys who dreamed and doubted and adventured together along tie SEsasedppi wera Don Sawyer and. Hack 'Eficnza. \ Here is a great deal more than this itesemblanca to the work of Cervantes .in Mark Twain's epic of American boyibood, but own if there were not, one iwould not accuse Mart Twain of plagiarism. . He was not am imitator of. Cervantes, but another great nwn with the same philosophic humour. He could toot be himself without being like CerThe resemblance could prqb/ably be traced in everything he wrote. •And he is not alone in giving us, what seem' Eke. echc-oe from "that "matdiless .•page, "y . first outrode <3f\ immortal Pair,— The half-crazed Hero said his hind,— So make Ead' laughter for mankind; .' And whence t&ey faxe. Tiiooghottt all Eiion still,, -. chance ■ Allies life's dnlness with its dreams— !43Ees what is, with what but seems;— East and Romance." Surely we eJI count among our friends Bon Pickwick and Sancho Wel- . ler. The Platonic doctrine which Spenser jmb into the couplet— "Eor of tho soui the body form doth take, 3?or soul is form and doth the bedy make"—' , is true of books as of other things. The Btory of Don Quixote, the "Pickwick Papers," and the yarns about Tom and Huck are all tales without much "plot." They are series of incidents. More than that, their heroes are all by nature wanderers.

So Don. Quixote gets upon Bozinante, Sancho Pauza bestrides his beiwcd Dappk, Mr.- Pickwick sends Sam to book seats on a stage-coach, Tom and Hack, being promised a . voyage down the big river, nearly jump --jut of their skins for joy. Thus also did their creators, Cervantes, Dickens,, and Mark Twain, wander about Southern Europe, England, and America, and' as much further as they could go. They are all—the writers and the written-of— members of the Order of Noble Vagabonds. Among their mates are Borrow, urging his tinker's cart. along TCnglish lanes, or hawking Bibles in Spain; and Whitman, afoot and light-hearted, taking to the open road. All of them are sometimes errant knights tilting against real or imagined wrongs, and sometimes plain men, whose common sense delivers them and us from tyrant fantasies of unreal Chivalry, false Gentility, or many-headed' Cant. They are occupied always—whatever their ostensible business—with the contrast between the actual and the imagined. It moves them in its infinitely varied manifestations, to splendid scorn, to dauntless (though often hopeless) fighting, to universal laughter. From the open road that was their home comes the thought of all in the words of .one : "Allons! After the great Companions, and to belong to them! They, too, are on the road—they axe the swift and majestic men—they are the greatest women." To which there comes an. answer from a ploughman's cottage— -"To make a' happy household clime For wcajia and wife— •That's the true pathos and sublime Of human life"— and the ranks of the Great Companions, the NoMe Vagabonds, are broken. Many of them think the ploughman is risht.'