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diff --git a/20141-0.txt b/20141-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1f59d0d --- /dev/null +++ b/20141-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4853 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 20141 *** + + More Jonathan Papers + + By + Elisabeth Woodbridge + +BOSTON AND NEW YORK +HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY +The Riverside Press Cambridge +1915 + + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY ELISABETH WOODBRIDGE MORRIS + + ALL RIGHTS RESERVED + + _Published November 1915_ + + + + + + TO + JONATHAN + + + + + + CONTENTS + + +I. The Searchings of Jonathan +II. Sap-Time +III. Evenings on the Farm +IV. After Frost +V. The Joys of Garden Stewardship +VI. Trout and Arbutus +VII. Without the Time of Day +VIII. The Ways of Griselda +IX. A Rowboat Pilgrimage +Colophon +Appendix A: Extra Front Pages +Errata + + + + + + + More Jonathan Papers + + + I + + + The Searchings of Jonathan + + +“What I find it hard to understand is, why a person who can see a spray of +fringed gentian in the middle of a meadow can’t see a book on the +sitting-room table.” + +“The reason why I can see the gentian,” said Jonathan, “is because the +gentian is there.” + +“So is the book,” I responded. + +“Which table?” he asked. + +“The one with the lamp on it. It’s a red book, about _so_ big.” + +“It isn’t there; but, just to satisfy you, I’ll look again.” + +He returned in a moment with an argumentative expression of countenance. +“It isn’t there,” he said firmly. “Will anything else do instead?” + +“No, I wanted you to read that special thing. Oh, dear! And I have all +these things in my lap! And I know it _is_ there.” + +“And I _know_ it isn’t.” He stretched himself out in the hammock and +watched me as I rather ostentatiously laid down thimble, scissors, needle, +cotton, and material and set out for the sitting-room table. There were a +number of books on it, to be sure. I glanced rapidly through the piles, +fingered the lower books, pushed aside a magazine, and pulled out from +beneath it the book I wanted. I returned to the hammock and handed it +over. Then, after possessing myself, again rather ostentatiously, of +material, cotton, needle, scissors, and thimble, I sat down. + +“It’s the second essay I specially thought we’d like,” I said. + +“Just for curiosity,” said Jonathan, with an impersonal air, “where did +you find it?” + +“Find what?” I asked innocently. + +“The book.” + +“Oh! On the table.” + +“Which table?” + +“The one with the lamp on it.” + +“I should like to know where.” + +“Why—just there—on the table. There was an ‘Atlantic’ on top of it, to be +sure.” + +“I saw the ‘Atlantic.’ Blest if it looked as though it had anything under +it! Besides, I was looking for it on top of things. You said you laid it +down there just before luncheon, and I didn’t think it could have crawled +in under so quick.” + +“When you’re looking for a thing,” I said, “you mustn’t think, you must +look. Now go ahead and read.” + +If this were a single instance, or even if it were one of many +illustrating a common human frailty, it would hardly be worth setting +down. But the frailty under consideration has come to seem to me rather +particularly masculine. Are not all the Jonathans in the world continually +being sent to some sitting-room table for something, and coming back to +assert, with more or less pleasantness, according to their temperament, +that it is not there? The incident, then, is not isolated; it is typical +of a vast group. For Jonathan, read Everyman; for the red book, read any +particular thing that you want Him to bring; for the sitting-room table, +read the place where you know it is and Everyman says it isn’t. + +This, at least, is my thesis. It is not, however, unchallenged. Jonathan +has challenged it when, from time to time, as occasion offered, I have +lightly sketched it out for him. Sometimes he argues that my instances are +really isolated cases and that their evidence is not cumulative, at others +he takes refuge in a _tu quoque_—in itself a confession of weakness—and +alludes darkly to “top shelves” and “bottom drawers.” But let us have no +mysteries. These phrases, considered as arguments, have their origin in +certain incidents which, that all the evidence may be in, I will here set +down. + +Once upon a time I asked Jonathan to get me something from the top shelf +in the closet. He went, and failed to find it. Then I went, and took it +down. Jonathan, watching over my shoulder, said, “But that wasn’t the top +shelf, I suppose you will admit.” + +Sure enough! There was a shelf above. “Oh, yes; but I don’t count that +shelf. We never use it, because nobody can reach it.” + +“How do you expect me to know which shelves you count and which you +don’t?” + +“Of course, anatomically—structurally—it is one, but functionally it isn’t +there at all.” + +“I see,” said Jonathan, so contentedly that I knew he was filing this +affair away for future use. + +On another occasion I asked him to get something for me from the top +drawer of the old “high-boy” in the dining-room. He was gone a long while, +and at last, growing impatient, I followed. I found him standing on an old +wooden-seated chair, screw-driver in hand. A drawer on a level with his +head was open, and he had hanging over his arm a gaudy collection of +ancient table-covers and embroidered scarfs, mostly in shades of magenta. + +“She stuck, but I’ve got her open now. I don’t see any pillow-cases, +though. It’s all full of these things.” He pumped his laden arm up and +down, and the table-covers wagged gayly. + +I sank into the chair and laughed. “Oh! Have you been prying at that all +this time? Of _course_ there’s nothing in _that_ drawer.” + +“There’s where you’re wrong. There’s a great deal in it; I haven’t taken +out half. If you want to see—” + +“I _don’t_ want to see! There’s nothing I want less! What I mean is—I +never put anything there.” + +“It’s the top drawer.” He was beginning to lay back the table-covers. + +“But I can’t reach it. And it’s been stuck for ever so long.” + +“You said the top drawer.” + +“Yes, I suppose I did. Of course what I meant was the top one of the ones +I use.” + +“I see, my dear. When you say top shelf you don’t mean top shelf, and when +you say top drawer you don’t mean top drawer; in fact, when you say top +you don’t mean top at all—you mean the height of your head. Everything +above that doesn’t count.” + +Jonathan was so pleased with this formulation of my attitude that he was +not in the least irritated to have put out unnecessary work. And his +satisfaction was deepened by one more incident. I had sent him to the +bottom drawer of my bureau to get a shawl. He returned without it, and I +was puzzled. “Now, Jonathan, it’s there, and it’s the top thing.” + +“The real top,” murmured Jonathan, “or just what you call top?” + +“It’s right in front,” I went on; “and I don’t see how even a man could +fail to find it.” + +He proceeded to enumerate the contents of the drawer in such strange +fashion that I began to wonder where he had been. + +“I said my bureau.” + +“I went to your bureau.” + +“The bottom drawer.” + +“The bottom drawer. There was nothing but a lot of little boxes and—” + +“Oh, _I_ know what you did! You went to the secret drawer.” + +“Isn’t that the bottom one?” + +“Why, yes, in a way—of course it is; but it doesn’t exactly count—it’s not +one of the regular drawers—it hasn’t any knobs, or anything—” + +“But it’s a perfectly good drawer.” + +“Yes. But nobody is supposed to know it’s there; it looks like a molding—” + +“But I know it’s there.” + +“Yes, of course.” + +“And you know I know it’s there.” + +“Yes, yes; but I just don’t think about that one in counting up. I see +what you mean, of course.” + +“And I see what you mean. You mean that your shawl is in the bottom one of +the regular drawers—with knobs—that can be alluded to in general +conversation. Now I think I can find it.” + +He did. And in addition he amused himself by working out phrases about +“when is a bottom drawer not a bottom drawer?” and “when is a top shelf +not a top shelf?” + +It is to these incidents—which I regard as isolated and negligible, and he +regards as typical and significant—that he alludes on the occasions when +he is unable to find a red book on the sitting-room table. In vain do I +point out that when language is variable and fluid it is alive, and that +there may be two opinions about the structural top and the functional top, +whereas there can be but one as to the book being or not being on the +table. He maintains a quiet cheerfulness, as of one who is conscious of +being, if not invulnerable, at least well armed. + +For a time he even tried to make believe that he was invulnerable as +well—to set up the thesis that if the book was really on the table he +could find it. But in this he suffered so many reverses that only strong +natural pertinacity kept him from capitulation. + +Is it necessary to recount instances? Every family can furnish them. As I +allow myself to float off into a reminiscent dream I find my mind +possessed by a continuous series of dissolving views in which Jonathan is +always coming to me saying, “It isn’t there,” and I am always saying, +“Please look again.” + +Though everything in the house seems to be in a conspiracy against him, it +is perhaps with the fishing-tackle that he has most constant difficulties. + +“My dear, have you any idea where my rod is? No, don’t get up—I’ll look if +you’ll just tell me where—” + +“Probably in the corner behind the chest in the orchard room.” + +“I’ve looked there.” + +“Well, then, did you take it in from the wagon last night?” + +“Yes, I remember doing it.” + +“What about the little attic? You might have put it up there to dry out.” + +“No. I took my wading boots up, but that was all.” + +“The dining-room? You came in that way.” + +He goes and returns. “Not there.” I reflect deeply. + +“Jonathan, are you _sure_ it’s not in that corner of the orchard room?” + +“Yes, I’m sure; but I’ll look again.” He disappears, but in a moment I +hear his voice calling, “No! Yours is here, but not mine.” + +I perceive that it is a case for me, and I get up. “You go and harness. +I’ll find it,” I call. + +There was a time when, under such conditions, I should have begun by +hunting in all the unlikely places I could think of. Now I know better. I +go straight to the corner of the orchard room. Then I call to Jonathan, +just to relieve his mind. + +“All right! I’ve found it.” + +“Where?” + +“Here, in the orchard room.” + +“_Where_ in the orchard room?” + +“In the corner.” + +“What corner?” + +“The usual corner—back of the chest.” + +“The devil!” Then he comes back to put his head in at the door. “What are +you laughing at?” + +“Nothing. What are you talking about the devil for? Anyway, it isn’t the +devil; it’s the brownie.” + +For there seems no doubt that the things he hunts for are possessed of +supernatural powers; and the theory of a brownie in the house, with a +special grudge against Jonathan, would perhaps best account for the way in +which they elude his search but leap into sight at my approach. There is, +to be sure, one other explanation, but it is one that does not suggest +itself to him, or appeal to him when suggested by me, so there is no need +to dwell upon it. + +If it isn’t the rod, it is the landing-net, which has hung itself on a +nail a little to the left or right of the one he had expected to see it +on; or his reel, which has crept into a corner of the tackle drawer and +held a ball of string in front of itself to distract his vision; or a +bunch of snell hooks, which, aware of its protective coloring, has +snuggled up against the shady side of the drawer and tucked its +pink-papered head underneath a gay pickerel-spoon. + +Fishing-tackle is, clearly, “possessed,” but in other fields Jonathan is +not free from trouble. Finding anything on a bureau seems to offer +peculiar obstacles. It is perhaps a big, black-headed pin that I want. “On +the pincushion, Jonathan.” + +He goes, and returns with two sizes of safety-pins and one long hat-pin. + +“No, dear, those won’t do. A small, black-headed one—at least small +compared with a hat-pin, large compared with an ordinary pin.” + +“Common or house pin?” he murmurs, quoting a friend’s phrase. + +“Do look again! I hate to drop this to go myself.” + +“When a man does a job, he gets his tools together first.” + +“Yes; but they say women shouldn’t copy men, they should develop along +their own lines. Please go.” + +He goes, and comes back. “You don’t want fancy gold pins, I suppose?” + +“No, no! Here, you hold this, and I’ll go.” I dash to the bureau. Sure +enough, he is right about the cushion. I glance hastily about. There, in a +little saucer, are a half-dozen of the sort I want. I snatch some and run +back. + +“Well, it wasn’t in the cushion, I bet.” + +“No,” I admit; “it was in a saucer just behind the cushion.” + +“You said cushion.” + +“I know. It’s all right.” + +“Now, if you had said simply ‘bureau,’ I’d have looked in other places on +it.” + +“Yes, you’d have _looked_ in other places!” I could not forbear +responding. There is, I grant, another side to this question. One evening +when I went upstairs I found a partial presentation of it, in the form of +a little newspaper clipping, pinned on my cushion. It read as follows:— + + + “My dear,” said she, “please run and bring me the needle from the + haystack.” + + “Oh, I don’t know which haystack.” + + “Look in all the haystacks—you can’t miss it; there’s only one + needle.” + + +Jonathan was in the cellar at the moment. When he came up, he said, “Did I +hear any one laughing?” + +“I don’t know. Did you?” + +“I thought maybe it was you.” + +“It might have been. Something amused me—I forget what.” + +I accused Jonathan of having written it himself, but he denied it. Some +other Jonathan, then; for, as I said, this is not a personal matter, it is +a world matter. Let us grant, then, a certain allowance for those who hunt +in woman-made haystacks. But what about pockets? Is not a man lord over +his own pockets? And are they not nevertheless as so many haystacks piled +high for his confusion? Certain it is that Jonathan has nearly as much +trouble with his pockets as he does with the corners and cupboards and +shelves and drawers of his house. It usually happens over our late supper, +after his day in town. He sets down his teacup, struck with a sudden +memory. He feels in his vest pockets—first the right, then the left. He +proceeds to search himself, murmuring, “I thought something came to-day +that I wanted to show you—oh, here! no, that isn’t it. I thought I put +it—no, those are to be—what’s this? No, that’s a memorandum. Now, where +in—” He runs through the papers in his pockets twice over, and in the +second round I watch him narrowly, and perhaps see a corner of an envelope +that does not look like office work. “There, Jonathan! What’s that? No, +not that—that!” + +He pulls it out with an air of immense relief. “There! I knew I had +something. That’s it.” + +When we travel, the same thing happens with the tickets, especially if +they chance to be costly and complicated ones, with all the shifts and +changes of our journey printed thick upon their faces. The conductor +appears at the other end of the car. Jonathan begins vaguely to fumble +without lowering his paper. Pocket after pocket is browsed through in this +way. Then the paper slides to his knee and he begins a more thorough +investigation, with all the characteristic clapping and diving motions +that seem to be necessary. Some pockets must always be clapped and others +dived into to discover their contents. + +No tickets. The conductor is halfway up the car. Jonathan’s face begins to +grow serious. He rises and looks on the seat and under it. He sits down +and takes out packet after packet of papers and goes over them with +scrupulous care. At this point I used to become really anxious—to make +hasty calculations as to our financial resources, immediate and +ultimate—to wonder if conductors ever really put nice people like us off +trains. But that was long ago. I know now that Jonathan has never lost a +ticket in his life. So I glance through the paper that he has dropped or +watch the landscape until he reaches a certain stage of calm and definite +pessimism, when he says, “I must have pulled them out when I took out +those postcards in the other car. Yes, that’s just what has happened.” +Then, the conductor being only a few seats away, I beg Jonathan to look +once more in his vest pocket, where he always puts them. To oblige me he +looks, though without faith, and lo! this time the tickets fairly fling +themselves upon him, with smiles almost curling up their corners. Does the +brownie travel with us, then? + +I begin to suspect that some of the good men who have been blamed for +forgetting to mail letters in their pockets have been, not indeed +blameless, but at least misunderstood. Probably they do not forget. +Probably they hunt for the letters and cannot find them, and conclude that +they have already mailed them. + +In the matter of the home haystacks Jonathan’s confidence in himself has +at last been shaken. For a long time, when he returned to me after some +futile search, he used to say, “Of course you can look for it if you like, +but it is _not_ there.” But man is a reasoning, if not altogether a +reasonable, being, and with a sufficient accumulation of evidence, +especially when there is some one constantly at hand to interpret its +teachings, almost any set of opinions, however fixed, may be shaken. So +here. + +Once when we shut up the farm for the winter I left my fountain pen +behind. This was little short of a tragedy, but I comforted myself with +the knowledge that Jonathan was going back that week-end for a day’s hunt. + +“Be sure to get the pen first of all,” I said, “and put it in your +pocket.” + +“Where is it?” he asked. + +“In the little medicine cupboard over the fireplace in the orchard room, +standing up at the side of the first shelf.” + +“Why not on your desk?” he asked. + +“Because I was writing tags in there, and set it up so it would be out of +the way.” + +“And it _was_ out of the way. All right. I’ll collect it.” + +He went, and on his return I met him with eager hand—“My pen!” + +“I’m sorry,” he began. + +“You didn’t forget!” I exclaimed. + +“No. But it wasn’t there.” + +“But—did you look?” + +“Yes, I looked.” + +“Thoroughly?” + +“Yes. I lit three matches.” + +“Matches! Then you didn’t get it when you first got there!” + +“Why—no—I had the dog to attend to—and—but I had plenty of time when I got +back, and it _wasn’t_ there.” + +“Well—Dear me! Did you look anywhere else? I suppose I may be mistaken. +Perhaps I did take it back to the desk.” + +“That’s just what I thought myself,” said Jonathan. “So I went there, and +looked, and then I looked on all the mantelpieces and your bureau. You +must have put it in your bag the last minute—bet it’s there now!” + +“Bet it isn’t.” + +It wasn’t. For two weeks more I was driven to using other pens—strange and +distracting to the fingers and the eyes and the mind. Then Jonathan was to +go up again. + +“Please look once more,” I begged, “and don’t expect not to see it. I can +fairly see it myself, this minute, standing up there on the right-hand +side, just behind the machine oil can.” + +“Oh, I’ll look,” he promised. “If it’s there, I’ll find it.” + +He returned penless. I considered buying another. But we were planning to +go up together the last week of the hunting season, and I thought I would +wait on the chance. + +We got off at the little station and hunted our way up, making great +sweeps and jogs, as hunters must, to take in certain spots we thought +promising—certain ravines and swamp edges where we are always sure of +hearing the thunderous whir of partridge wings, or the soft, shrill +whistle of woodcock. At noon we broiled chops and rested in the lee of the +wood edge, where, even in the late fall, one can usually find spots that +are warm and still. It was dusk by the time we came over the crest of the +farm ledges and saw the huddle of the home buildings below us, and quite +dark when we reached the house. Fires had been made and coals smouldered +on the hearth in the sitting-room. + +“You light the lamp,” I said, “and I’ll just take a match and go through +to see if that pen _should_ happen to be there.” + +“No use doing anything to-night,” said Jonathan. “To-morrow morning you +can have a thorough hunt.” + +But I took my match, felt my way into the next room, past the fireplace, +up to the cupboard, then struck my match. In its first flare-up I glanced +in. Then I chuckled. + +Jonathan had gone out to the dining-room, but he has perfectly good ears. + +“NO!” he roared, and his tone of dismay, incredulity, rage, sent me off +into gales of unscrupulous laughter. He was striding in, candle in hand, +shouting, “It was _not there!_” + +“Look yourself,” I managed to gasp. + +This time, somehow, he could see it. + +“You planted it! You brought it up and planted it!” + +“I never! Oh, dear me! It pays for going without it for weeks!” + +“_Nothing_ will ever make me believe that that pen was standing there when +I looked for it!” said Jonathan, with vehement finality. + +“All right,” I sighed happily. “You don’t have to believe it.” + +But in his heart perhaps he does believe it. At any rate, since that time +he has adopted a new formula: “My dear, it may be there, of course, but I +don’t see it.” And this position I regard as unassailable. + +One triumph he has had. I wanted something that was stored away in the +shut-up town house. + +“Do you suppose you could find it?” I said, as gently as possible. + +“I can try,” he said. + +“I think it is in a box about this shape—see?—a gray box, in the attic +closet, the farthest-in corner.” + +“Are you sure it’s in the house? If it’s in the house, I think I can find +it.” + +“Yes, I’m sure of that.” + +When he returned that night, his face wore a look of satisfaction very +imperfectly concealed beneath a mask of nonchalance. + +“_Good_ for you! Was it where I said?” + +“No.” + +“Was it in a different corner?” + +“No.” + +“Where was it?” + +“It wasn’t in a corner at all. It wasn’t in that closet.” + +“It wasn’t! Where, then?” + +“Downstairs in the hall closet.” He paused, then could not forbear adding, +“And it wasn’t in a gray box; it was in a big hat-box with violets all +over it.” + +“Why, _Jonathan!_ Aren’t you grand! How did you ever find it? I couldn’t +have done better myself.” + +Under such praise he expanded. “The fact is,” he said confidentially, “I +had given it up. And then suddenly I changed my mind. I said to myself, +‘Jonathan, don’t be a man! Think what she’d do if she were here now.’ And +then I got busy and found it.” + +“Jonathan!” I could almost have wept if I had not been laughing. + +“Well,” he said, proud, yet rather sheepish, “what is there so funny about +that? I gave up half a day to it.” + +“Funny! It isn’t funny—exactly. You don’t mind my laughing a little? Why, +you’ve lived down the fountain pen—we’ll forget the pen—” + +“Oh, no, you won’t forget the pen either,” he said, with a certain +pleasant grimness. + +“Well, perhaps not—of course it would be a pity to forget that. Suppose I +say, then, that we’ll always regard the pen in the light of the violet +hat-box?” + +“I think that might do.” Then he had an alarming afterthought. “But, see +here—you won’t expect me to do things like that often?” + +“Dear me, no! People can’t live always on their highest levels. Perhaps +you’ll _never_ do it again.” Jonathan looked distinctly relieved. “I’ll +accept it as a unique effort—like Dante’s angel and Raphael’s sonnet.” + +“Jonathan,” I said that evening, “what do you know about St. Anthony of +Padua?” + +“Not much.” + +“Well, you ought to. He helped you to-day. He’s the saint who helps people +to find lost articles. Every man ought to take him as a patron saint.” + +“And do you know which saint it is who helps people to find lost +virtues—like humility, for instance?” + +“No. I don’t, really.” + +“I didn’t suppose you did,” said Jonathan. + + + + + + II + + + Sap-Time + + +It was a little tree-toad that began it. In a careless moment he had come +down to the bench that connects the big maple tree with the old locust +stump, and when I went out at dusk to wait for Jonathan, there he sat, in +plain sight. A few experimental pokes sent him back to the tree, and I +studied him there, marveling at the way he assimilated with its bark. As +Jonathan came across the grass I called softly, and pointed to the tree. + +“Well?” he said. + +“Don’t you see?” + +“No. What?” + +“Look—I thought you had eyes!” + +“Oh, what a little beauty!” + +“And isn’t his back just like bark and lichens! And what are those things +in the tree beside him?” + +“Plugs, I suppose.” + +“Plugs?” + +“Yes. After tapping. Uncle Ben used to tap these trees, I believe.” + +“You mean for sap? Maple syrup?” + +“Yes.” + +“Jonathan! I didn’t know these were sugar maples.” + +“Oh, yes. These on the road.” + +“The whole row? Why, there are ten or fifteen of them! And you never told +me!” + +“I thought you knew.” + +“Knew! I don’t know anything—I should think you’d know that, by this time. +Do you suppose, if I had known, I should have let all these years go +by—oh, dear—think of all the fun we’ve missed! And syrup!” + +“You’d have to come up in February.” + +“Well, then, I’ll _come_ in February. Who’s afraid of February?” + +“All right. Try it next year.” + +I did. But not in February. Things happened, as things do, and it was +early April before I got to the farm. But it had been a wintry March, and +the farmers told me that the sap had not been running except for a few +days in a February thaw. Anyway, it was worth trying. + +Jonathan could not come with me. He was to join me later. But Hiram found +a bundle of elder spouts in the attic, and with these and an auger we went +out along the snowy, muddy road. The hole was bored—a pair of them—in the +first tree, and the spouts driven in. I knelt, watching—in fact, peering +up the spout-hole to see what might happen. Suddenly a drop, dim with +sawdust, appeared—gathered, hesitated, then ran down gayly and leapt off +the end. + +“Look! Hiram! It’s running!” I called. + +Hiram, boring the next tree, made no response. He evidently expected it to +run. Jonathan would have acted just like that, too, I felt sure. Is it a +masculine quality, I wonder, to be unmoved when the theoretically expected +becomes actual? Or is it that some temperaments have naturally a certain +large confidence in the sway of law, and refuse to wonder at its +individual workings? To me the individual workings give an ever fresh +thrill because they bring a new realization of the mighty powers behind +them. It seems to depend on which end you begin at. + +But though the little drops thrilled me, I was not beyond setting a pail +underneath to catch them. And as Hiram went on boring, I followed with my +pails. Pails, did I say? Pails by courtesy. There were, indeed, a few real +pails—berry-pails, lard-pails, and water-pails—but for the most part the +sap fell into pitchers, or tin saucepans, stew-kettles of aluminum or +agate ware, blue and gray and white and mottled, or big yellow earthenware +bowls. It was a strange collection of receptacles that lined the roadside +when we had finished our progress. As I looked along the row, I laughed, +and even Hiram smiled. + +But what next? Every utensil in the house was out there, sitting in the +road. There was nothing left but the wash-boiler. Now, I had heard tales +of amateur syrup-boilings, and I felt that the wash-boiler would not do. +Besides, I meant to work outdoors—no kitchen stove for me! I must have a +pan, a big, flat pan. I flew to the telephone, and called up the village +plumber, three miles away. Could he build me a pan? Oh, say, two feet by +three feet, and five inches high—yes, right away. Yes, Hiram would call +for it in the afternoon. + +I felt better. And now for a fireplace! Oh, Jonathan! Why did you have to +be away! For Jonathan loves a stone and knows how to put stones together, +as witness the stone “Eyrie” and the stile in the lane. However, there +Jonathan wasn’t. So I went out into the swampy orchard behind the house +and looked about—no lack of stones, at any rate. I began to collect +material, and Hiram, seeing my purpose, helped with the big stones. +Somehow my fireplace got made—two side walls, one end wall, the other end +left open for stoking. It was not as pretty as if Jonathan had done it, +but “’t was enough, ’t would serve.” I collected fire-wood, and there I +was, ready for my pan, and the afternoon was yet young, and the sap was +drip-drip-dripping from all the spouts. I could begin to boil next day. I +felt that I was being borne along on the providential wave that so often +floats the inexperienced to success. + +That night I emptied all my vessels into the boiler and set them out once +more. A neighbor drove by and pulled up to comment benevolently on my +work. + +“Will it run to-night?” I asked him. + +“No—no—’t won’t run to-night. Too cold. ’T won’t run any to-night. You can +sleep all right.” + +This was pleasant to hear. There was a moon, to be sure, but it was +growing colder, and at the idea of crawling along that road in the middle +of the night even my enthusiasm shivered a little. + +So I made my rounds at nine, in the white moonlight, and went to sleep. + +I was awakened the next morning to a consciousness of flooding sunshine +and Hiram’s voice outside my window. + +“Got anything I can empty sap into? I’ve got everything all filled up.” + +“Sap! Why, it isn’t running yet, is it?” + +“Pails were flowin’ over when I came out.” + +“Flowing over! They said the sap wouldn’t run last night.” + +“I guest there don’t nobody know when sap’ll run and when it won’t,” said +Hiram peacefully, as he tramped off to the barn. + +In a few minutes I was outdoors. Sure enough, Hiram had everything +full—old boilers, feed-pails, water-pails. But we found some three-gallon +milk-cans and used them. A farm is like a city. There are always things +enough in it for all purposes. It is only a question of using its +resources. + +Then, in the clear April sunshine, I went out and surveyed the row of +maples. How they did drip! Some of them almost ran. I felt as if I had +turned on the faucets of the universe and didn’t know how to turn them off +again. + +However, there was my new pan. I set it over my oven walls and began to +pour in sap. Hiram helped me. He seemed to think he needed his feed-pails. +We poured in sap and we poured in sap. Never did I see anything hold so +much as that pan. Even Hiram was stirred out of his usual calm to remark, +“It beats all, how much that holds.” Of course Jonathan would have had its +capacity all calculated the day before, but my methods are empirical, and +so I was surprised as well as pleased when all my receptacles emptied +themselves into its shallow breadths and still there was a good inch to +allow for boiling up. Yes, Providence—my exclusive little fool’s +Providence—was with me. The pan, and the oven, were a success, and when +Jonathan came that night I led him out with unconcealed pride and showed +him the pan—now a heaving, frothing mass of sap-about-to-be-syrup, sending +clouds of white steam down the wind. As he looked at the oven walls, I +fancied his fingers ached to get at them, but he offered no criticism, +seeing that they worked. + +The next day began overcast, but Providence was merely preparing for me a +special little gift in the form of a miniature snowstorm. It was quite +real while it lasted. It whitened the grass and the road, it piled itself +softly among the clusters of swelling buds on the apple trees, and made +the orchard look as though it had burst into bloom in an hour. Then the +sun came out, there were a few dazzling moments when the world was all +blue and silver, and then the whiteness faded. + +And the sap! How it dripped! Once an hour I had to make the rounds, +bringing back gallons each time, and the fire under my pan was kept up so +that the boiling down might keep pace with the new supply. + +“They do say snow makes it run,” shouted a passer-by, and another called, +“You want to keep skimmin’!” Whereupon I seized my long-handled skimmer +and fell to work. Southern Connecticut does not know much about syrup, but +by the avenue of the road I was gradually accumulating such wisdom as it +possessed. + +The syrup was made. No worse accident befell than the occasional +overflowing of a pail too long neglected. The syrup was made, and bottled, +and distributed to friends, and was the pride of the household through the +year. + + * * * * * + +“This time I will go early,” I said to Jonathan; “they say the late +running is never quite so good.” + +It was early March when I got up there this time—early March after a +winter whose rigor had known practically no break. Again Jonathan could +not come, but Cousin Janet could, and we met at the little station, where +Hiram was waiting with Kit and the surrey. The sun was warm, but the air +was keen and the woods hardly showed spring at all yet, even in that first +token of it, the slight thickening of their millions of little tips, +through the swelling of the buds. The city trees already showed this, but +the country ones still kept their wintry penciling of vanishing lines. + +Spring was in the road, however. “There ain’t no bottom to this road now, +it’s just dropped clean out,” remarked a fellow teamster as we wallowed +along companionably through the woods. But, somehow, we reached the farm. +Again we bored our holes, and again I was thrilled as the first bright +drops slipped out and jeweled the ends of the spouts. I watched Janet. She +was interested but calm, classing herself at once with Hiram and Jonathan. +We unearthed last year’s oven and dug out its inner depths—leaves and dirt +and apples and ashes—it was like excavating through the seven Troys to get +to bottom. We brought down the big pan, now clothed in the honors of a +season’s use, and cleaned off the cobwebs incident to a year’s sojourn in +the attic. By sunset we had a panful of sap boiling merrily and already +taking on a distinctly golden tinge. We tasted it. It was very syrupy. +Letting the fire die down, we went in to get supper in the utmost content +of spirit. + +“It’s so much simpler than last year,” I said, as we sat over our cozy +“tea,”—“having the pan and the oven ready-made, and all—” + +“You don’t suppose anything could happen to it while we’re in here?” +suggested Janet. “Shan’t I just run out and see?” + +“No, sit still. What could happen? The fire’s going out.” + +“Yes, I know.” But her voice was uncertain. + +“You see, I’ve been all through it once,” I reassured her. + +As we rose, Janet said, “Let’s go out before we do the dishes.” And to +humor her I agreed. We lighted the lantern and stepped out on the back +porch. It was quite dark, and as we looked off toward the fireplace we saw +gleams of red. + +“How funny!” I murmured. “I didn’t think there was so much fire left.” + +We felt our way over, through the yielding mud of the orchard, and as I +raised the lantern we stared in dazed astonishment. The pan was a +blackened mass, lit up by winking red eyes of fire. I held the lantern +more closely. I seized a stick and poked—the crisp black stuff broke and +crumbled into an empty and blackening pan. A curious odor arose. + +“It couldn’t have!” gasped Janet. + +“It couldn’t—but it has!” I said. + +It was a matter for tears, or rage, or laughter. And laughter won. When we +recovered a little we took up the black shell of carbon that had once been +syrup-froth; we laid it gently beside the oven, for a keepsake. Then we +poured water in the pan, and steam rose hissing to the stars. + +“Does it leak?” faltered Janet. + +“Leak!” I said. I was on my knees now, watching the water stream through +the parted seam of the pan bottom, down into the ashes below. + +“The question is,” I went on as I got up, “did it boil away because it +leaked, or did it leak because it boiled away?” + +“I don’t see that it matters much,” said Janet. She was showing symptoms +of depression at this point. + +“It matters a great deal,” I said. “Because, you see, we’ve got to tell +Jonathan, and it makes all the difference how we put it.” + +“I see,” said Janet; then she added, experimentally, “Why tell Jonathan?” + +“Why, Janet, you know better! I wouldn’t miss telling Jonathan for +anything. What is Jonathan _for!_” + +“Well—of course,” she conceded. “Let’s do dishes.” + +We sat before the fire that evening and I read while Janet knitted. +Between my eyes and the printed page there kept rising a vision—a vision +of black crust, with winking red embers smoldering along its broken edges. +I found it distracting in the extreme.… + +At some time unknown, out of the blind depths of the night, I was awakened +by a voice:— + +“It’s beginning to rain. I think I’ll just go out and empty what’s near +the house.” + +“Janet!” I murmured, “don’t be absurd.” + +“But it will dilute all that sap.” + +“There isn’t any sap to dilute. It won’t be running at night.” After a +while the voice, full of propitiatory intonations, resumed:— + +“My dear, you don’t mind if I slip out. It will only take a minute.” + +“I do mind. Go to sleep!” + +Silence. Then:— + +“It’s raining harder. I hate to think of all that sap—” + +“You don’t _have_ to think!” I was quite savage. “Just go to sleep—and let +me!” Another silence. Then a fresh downpour. The voice was pleading:— + +“_Please_ let me go! I’ll be back in a minute. And it’s not cold.” + +“Oh, well—I’m awake now, anyway. _I’ll_ go.” My voice was tinged with that +high resignation that is worse than anger. Janet’s tone changed +instantly:— + +“No, no! Don’t! Please don’t! I’m going. I truly don’t mind.” + +“_I’m_ going. I don’t mind, either, not at all.” + +“Oh, dear! Then let’s not either of us go.” + +“That was my idea in the first place.” + +“Well, then, we won’t. Go to sleep, and I will too.” + +“Not at all! I’ve decided to go.” + +“But it’s stopped raining. Probably it won’t rain any more.” + +“Then what are you making all this fuss for?” + +“I didn’t make a fuss. I just thought I could slip out—” + +“Well, you couldn’t. And it’s raining very hard again. And I’m going.” + +“Oh, don’t! You’ll get drenched.” + +“Of course. But I can’t bear to have all that sap diluted.” + +“It doesn’t run at night. You said it didn’t.” + +“You said it did.” + +“But I don’t really know. You know best.” + +“Why didn’t you think of that sooner? Anyway, I’m going.” + +“Oh, dear! You make me feel as if I’d stirred you up—” + +“You have,” I interrupted, sweetly. “I won’t deny that you _have_ stirred +me up. But now that you have mentioned it”—I felt for a match—“now that +you have mentioned it, I see that this was the one thing needed to make my +evening complete, or perhaps it’s morning—I don’t know.” + +We found the dining-room warm, and soon we were equipped in those curious +compromises of vesture that people adopt under such circumstances, and, +with lantern and umbrella, we fumbled our way out to the trees. The rain +was driving in sheets, and we plodded up the road in the yellow circle of +lantern-light wavering uncertainly over the puddles, while under our feet +the mud gave and sucked. + +“It’s diluted, sure enough,” I said, as we emptied the pails. We crawled +slowly back, with our heavy milk-can full of sap-and-rain-water, and went +in. + +The warm dining-room was pleasant to return to, and we sat down to cookies +and milk, feeling almost cozy. + +“I’ve always wanted to know how it would be to go out in the middle of the +night this way,” I remarked, “and now I know.” + +“Aren’t you hateful!” said Janet. + +“Not at all. Just appreciative. But now, if you haven’t any _other_ plan, +we’ll go back to bed.” + +It was half-past eight when we waked next morning. But there was nothing +to wake up for. The old house was filled with the rain-noises that only +such an old house knows. On the little windows the drops pricked sharply; +in the fireplace with the straight flue they fell, hissing, on the embers. +On the porch roofs the rain made a dull patter of sound; on the tin roof +of the “little attic” over the kitchen it beat with flat resonance. In the +big attic, when we went up to see if all was tight, it filled the place +with a multitudinous clamor; on the sides of the house it drove with a +fury that re-echoed dimly within doors. + +Outside, everything was afloat. We visited the trees and viewed with +consternation the torrents of rain-water pouring into the pails. We tried +fastening pans over the spouts to protect them. The wind blew them merrily +down the road. It would have been easy enough to cover the pails, but how +to let the sap drip in and the rain drip out—that was the question. + +“It seems as if there was a curse on the syrup this year,” said Janet. + +“The trouble is,” I said, “I know just enough to have lost my hold on the +fool’s Providence, and not enough really to take care of myself.” + +“Superstition!” said Janet. + +“What do you call your idea of the curse?” I retorted. “Anyway, I have an +idea! Look, Janet! We’ll just cut up these enamel-cloth table-covers here +by the sink and everywhere, and tack them around the spouts.” + +Janet’s thrifty spirit was doubtful. “Don’t you need them?” + +“Not half so much as the trees do. Come on! Pull them off. We’ll have to +have fresh ones this summer, anyway.” + +We stripped the kitchen tables and the pantry and the milk-room. We got +tacks and a hammer and scissors, and out we went again. We cut a piece for +each tree, just enough to go over each pair of spouts and protect the +pail. When tacked on, it had the appearance of a neat bib, and as the +pattern was a blue and white check, the effect, as one looked down the +road at the twelve trees, was very fresh and pleasing. It seemed to cheer +the people who drove by, too. + +But the bibs served their purpose, and the sap dripped cozily into the +pails without any distraction from alien elements. Sap doesn’t run in the +rain, they say, but this sap did. Probably Hiram was right, and you can’t +tell. I am glad if you can’t. The physical mysteries of the universe are +being unveiled so swiftly that one likes to find something that still +keeps its secret—though, indeed, the spiritual mysteries seem in no danger +of such enforcement. + +The next day the rain stopped, the floods began to subside, and Jonathan +managed to arrive, though the roads had even less “bottom to ’em” than +before. The sun blazed out, and the sap ran faster, and, after Jonathan +had fully enjoyed them, the blue and white bibs were taken off. Somehow in +the clear March sunshine they looked almost shocking. By the next day we +had syrup enough to try for sugar. + +For on sugar my heart was set. Syrup was all very well for the first year, +but now it had to be sugar. Moreover, as I explained to Janet, when it +came to sugar, being absolutely ignorant, I was again in a position to +expect the aid of the fool’s Providence. + +“How much _do_ you know about it?” asked Janet. + +“Oh, just what people say. It seems to be partly like fudge and partly +like molasses candy. You boil it, and then you beat it, and then you pour +it off.” + +“I’ve got more to go on than that,” said Jonathan. “I came up on the train +with the Judge. He used to see it done.” + +“You’ve got to drive Janet over to her train to-night; Hiram can’t,” I +said. + +“All right. There’s time enough.” + +We sat down to early supper, and took turns running out to the kitchen to +“try” the syrup as it boiled down. At least we said we would take turns, +but usually we all three went. Supper seemed distinctly a side issue. + +“I’m going to take it off now,” said Jonathan. “Look out!” + +“Do you think it’s time?” I demurred. + +“We’ll know soon,” said Jonathan, with his usual composure. + +We hung over him. “Now you beat it,” I said. But he was already beating. + +“Get some cold water to set it in,” he commanded. We brought the dishpan +with water from the well, where ice still floated. + +“Maybe you oughtn’t to stir so much—do you think?” I suggested, helpfully. +“Beat it more—up, you know.” + +“More the way you would eggs,” said Janet. + +“I’ll show you.” I lunged at the spoon. + +“Go away! This isn’t eggs,” said Jonathan, beating steadily. + +“Your arm must be tired. Let me take it,” pleaded Janet. + +“No, me!” I said. “Janet, you’ve got to get your coat and things. You’ll +have to start in fifteen minutes. Here, Jonathan, you need a fresh arm.” + +“I’m fresh enough.” + +“And I really don’t think you have the motion.” + +“I have motion enough. This is my job. You go and help Janet.” + +“Janet’s all right.” + +“So am I. See how white it’s getting. The Judge said—” + +“Here come Hiram and Kit,” announced Janet, returning with bag and wraps. +“But you have ten minutes. Can’t I help?” + +“He won’t let us. He’s that ‘sot,’” I murmured. “He’ll make you miss your +train.” + +“You _could_ butter the pans,” he counter charged, “and you haven’t.” + +We flew to prepare, and the pouring began. It was a thrilling moment. The +syrup, or sugar, now a pale hay color, poured out thickly, blob-blob-blob, +into the little pans. Janet moved them up as they were needed, and I +snatched the spoon, at last, and encouraged the stuff to fall where it +should. But Jonathan got it from me again, and scraped out the remnant, +making designs of clovers and polliwogs on the tops of the cakes. Then a +dash for coats and hats and a rush to the carriage. + +When the surrey disappeared around the turn of the road, I went back, +shivering, to the house. It seemed very empty, as houses will, being +sensitive things. I went to the kitchen. There on the table sat a huddle +of little pans, to cheer me, and I fell to work getting things in order to +be left in the morning. Then I went back to the fire and waited for +Jonathan. I picked up a book and tried to read, but the stillness of the +house was too importunate, it had to be listened to. I leaned back and +watched the fire, and the old house and I held communion together. + +Perhaps in no other way is it possible to get quite what I got that +evening. It was partly my own attitude; I was going away in the morning, +and I had, in a sense, no duties toward the place. The magazines of last +fall lay on the tables, the newspapers of last fall lay beside them. The +dust of last fall was, doubtless, in the closets and on the floors. It did +not matter. For though I was the mistress of the house, I was for the +moment even more its guest, and guests do not concern themselves with such +things as these. + +If it had been really an empty house, I should have been obliged to think +of these things, for in an empty house the dust speaks and the house is +still, dumbly imprisoned in its own past. On the other hand, when a house +is filled with life, it is still, too; it is absorbed in its own present. +But when one sojourns in a house that is merely resting, full of the life +that has only for a brief season left it, ready for the life that is soon +to return—then one is in the midst of silences that are not empty and +hollow, but richly eloquent. The house is the link that joins and +interprets the living past and the living future. + +Something of this I came to feel as I sat there in the wonderful +stillness. There were no house noises such as generally form the unnoticed +background of one’s consciousness—the steps overhead, the distant voices, +the ticking of the clock, the breathing of the dog in the corner. Even the +mice and the chimney-swallows had not come back, and I missed the +scurrying in the walls and the flutter of wings in the chimney. The fire +purred low, now and then the wind sighed gently about the corner of the +“new part,” and a loose door-latch clicked as the draught shook it. A +branch drew back and forth across a window-pane with the faintest squeak. +And little by little the old house opened its heart. All that it told me I +hardly yet know myself. It gathered up for me all its past, the past that +I had known and the past that I had not known. Time fell away. My own +importance dwindled. I seemed a very small part of the life of the +house—very small, yet wholly belonging to it. I felt that it absorbed me +as it absorbed the rest—those before and after me—for time was not. + +There was the sound of slow wheels outside, the long roll of the +carriage-house door, and the trampling of hoofs on the flooring within. +Then the clinking of the lantern and the even tread of feet on the path +behind the house, a gust of raw snow-air—and the house fell silent so that +Jonathan might come in. + +“Your sugar is hardening nicely, I see,” he said, rubbing his hands before +the fire. + +“Yes,” I said. “You know I _told_ Janet that for this part of the affair +we could trust to the fool’s Providence.” + +“Thank you,” said Jonathan. + + + + + + III + + + Evenings on the Farm + + + I’m going out to clean the pasture spring; + I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away + (And wait to watch the water clear, I may); + I shan’t be gone long.—You come too. + + I’m going out to fetch the little calf + That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young, + It totters when she licks it with her tongue. + I shan’t be gone long.—You come too. + + ROBERT FROST. + + +When we first planned to take up the farm we looked forward with especial +pleasure to our evenings. They were to be the quiet rounding-in of our +days, full of companionship, full of meditation. “We’ll do lots of reading +aloud,” I said. “And we’ll have long walks. There won’t be much to do +_but_ walk and read. I can hardly wait.” And I chose our summer books with +special reference to reading aloud. + +“Of course,” I said, as we fell to work at our packing, “we’ll have to do +all sorts of things first. But the days are so long up there, and the life +is very simple. And in the evenings you’ll help. We ought to be settled in +a week.” + +“Or two—or three,” suggested Jonathan. + +“Three! What is there to do?” + +“Farm-life isn’t so blamed simple as you think.” + +“But what _is_ there to do? Now, listen! One day for trunks, one day for +boxes and barrels, one day for closets, that’s three, one for curtains, +four, one day for—for the garret, that’s five. Well—one day for odds and +ends that I haven’t thought of. That’s liberal, I’m sure.” + +“Better say the rest of your life for the odds and ends you haven’t +thought of,” said Jonathan, as he drove the last nail in a neatly headed +barrel. + +“Jonathan, why are you such a pessimist?” + +“I’m not, except when you’re such an optimist.” + +“If I’d begun by saying it would take a month, would you have said a +week?” + +“Can’t tell. Might have.” + +“Anyway, there’s nothing bad about odds and ends. They’re about all women +have much to do with most of their lives.” + +“That’s what I said. And you called me a pessimist.” + +“I didn’t call you one. I said, why were you one.” + +“I’m sorry. My mistake,” said Jonathan with the smile of one who scores. + + * * * * * + +And so we went. + +One day for trunks was all right. Any one can manage trunks. And the +second day, the boxes were emptied and sent flying out to the barn. +Curtains I decided to keep for evening work, while Jonathan read. That +left the closets and the attic, or rather the attics, for there was one +over the main house and one over the “new part,”—still “new,” although now +some seventy years old. They were known as the attic and the little attic. +I thought I would do the closets first, and I began with the one in the +parlor. This was built into the chimney, over the fireplace. It was low, +and as long as the mantelpiece itself. It had two long shelves shut away +behind three glass doors through which the treasures within were dimly +visible. When I swung these open it felt like opening a tomb—cold, musty +air hung about my face. I brushed it aside, and considered where to begin. +It was a depressing collection. There were photographs and photographs, +some in frames, the rest of them tied up in packages or lying in piles. A +few had names or messages written on the back, but most gave no clue; and +all of them gazed out at me with that expression of complete +respectability that constitutes so impenetrable a mask for the personality +behind. Most of us wear such masks, but the older photographers seem to +have been singularly successful in concentrating attention on them. Then +there were albums, with more photographs, of people and of “views.” There +was a big Bible, some prayer-books, and a few other books elaborately +bound with that heavy fancifulness that we are learning to call Victorian. +One of these was on “The Wonders of the Great West”; another was about +“The Female Saints of America.” I took it down and glanced through it, but +concluded that one had to be a female saint, or at least an aspirant, to +appreciate it. Then there were things made out of dried flowers, out of +hair, out of shells, out of pine-cones. There were vases and other +ornamental bits of china and glass, also Victorian, looking as if they +were meant to be continually washed or dusted by the worn, busy fingers of +the female saints. As I came to fuller realization of all these relics, my +resolution flickered out and there fell upon me a strange numbness of +spirit. I seemed under a spell of inaction. Everything behind those glass +doors had been cherished too long to be lightly thrown away, yet was not +old enough to be valuable nor useful enough to keep. I spent a long +day—one of the longest days of my life—browsing through the books, trying +to sort the photographs, and glancing through a few old letters. I did +nothing in particular with anything, and in the late afternoon I roused +myself, put them all back, and shut the glass doors. I had nothing to show +for my day’s experience except a deep little round ache in the back of my +neck and a faint brassy taste in my mouth. I complained of it to Jonathan +later. + +“It always tasted just that way to me when I was a boy,” he said, “but I +never thought much about it—I thought it was just a closet-taste.” + +“And it isn’t only the taste,” I went on. “It does something to me, to my +state of mind. I’m afraid to try the garret.” + +“Garrets are different,” said Jonathan. “But I’d leave them. They can +wait.” + +“They’ve waited a good while, of course,” I said. + +And so we left the garrets. We came back to them later, and were glad we +had done so. But that is a story by itself. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile, in the evenings, Jonathan helped. + +“I’m afraid you were more or less right about the odd jobs,” I admitted +one night. “They do seem to accumulate.” I was holding a candle while he +set up a loose latch. + +“They’ve been accumulating a good many years,” said Jonathan. + +“Yes, that’s it. And so the doors all stick, and the latches won’t latch, +and the shades are sulky or wild, and the pantry shelves—have you +noticed?—they’re all warped so they rock when you set a dish on them.” + +“And the chairs pull apart,” added Jonathan. + +“Yes. Of course after we catch up we’ll be all right.” + +“I wouldn’t count too much on catching up.” + +“Why not?” I asked. + +“The farm has had a long start.” + +“But you’re a Yankee,” I argued; “the Yankee nature fairly feeds on such +jobs—‘putter jobs,’ you know.” + +“Yes, I know.” + +“Only, of course, you get on faster if you’re not too particular about +having the exact tool—” + +Considered as a Yankee, Jonathan’s only fault is that when he does a job +he likes to have a very special tool to do it with. Often it is so special +that I have never heard its name before and then I consider he is going +too far. He merely thinks I haven’t gone far enough. Perhaps such matters +must always remain matters of opinion. But even with this handicap we did +begin to catch up, and we could have done this a good deal faster if it +had not been for the pump. + +The pump was a clear case of new wine in an old bottle. It was large and +very strong. The people who worked it were strong too. But the walls and +floor to which it was attached were not strong at all. And so, one night, +when Jonathan wanted a walk I was obliged instead to suggest the pump. + +“What’s the matter there?” + +“Why, it seems to have pulled clear of its moorings. You look at it.” + +He looked, with that expression of meditative resourcefulness peculiar to +the true Yankee countenance. “H’m—needs new wood there,—and there; that +stuff’ll never hold.” And so the old bottle was patched with new skin at +the points of strain, and in the zest of reconstruction Jonathan almost +forgot to regret the walk. “We’ll have it to-morrow night,” he said: “the +moon will be better.” + +The next evening I met him below the turn of the road. “Wonderful night +it’s going to be,” he said, as he pushed his wheel up the last hill. + +“Yes—” I said, a little uneasily. I was thinking of the kitchen pump. +Finally I brought myself to face it. + +“There seems to be some trouble—with the pump,” I said apologetically. I +felt that it was my fault, though I knew it wasn’t. + +“More trouble? What sort of trouble?” + +“Oh, it wheezes and makes funny sucking noises, and the water spits and +spits, and then bursts out, and then doesn’t come at all. It sounds a +little like a cat with a bone in its throat.” + +“Probably just that,” said Jonathan: “grain of sand in the valve, very +likely.” + +“Shall I get a plumber?” + +“Plumber! I’ll fix it myself in three shakes of a lamb’s tail.” + +“Well,” I said, relieved: “you can do that after supper while I see that +all the chickens are in, and those turkeys, and then we’ll have our walk.” + +Accordingly I went off on my tour. When I returned the pale moon-shadows +were already beginning to show in the lingering dusk of the fading +daylight. Indoors seemed very dark, but on the kitchen floor a candle sat, +flaring and dipping. + +“Jonathan,” I called, “I’m ready.” + +“Well, I’m not,” said a voice at my feet. + +“Why, where are you? Oh, there!” I bent down and peered under the sink at +a shape crouched there. “Haven’t you finished?” + +“Finished! I’ve just got the thing apart.” + +“I should say you had!” I regarded the various pieces of iron and leather +and wood as they lay, mere dismembered shapes, about the dim kitchen. + +“It doesn’t seem as if it would ever come together again—to be a pump,” I +said in some depression. + +“Oh, that’s easy! It’s just a question of time.” + +“How much time?” + +“Heaven knows.” + +“Was it the valve?” + +“It was—several things.” + +His tone had the vagueness born of concentration. I could see that this +was no time to press for information. Besides, in the field of mechanics, +as Jonathan has occasionally pointed out to me, I am rather like a +traveler who has learned to ask questions in a foreign tongue, but not to +understand the answers. + +“Well, I’ll bring my sewing out here—or would you rather have me read to +you? There’s something in the last number of—” + +“No—get your sewing—blast that screw! Why doesn’t it start?” + +Evidently sewing was better than the last number of anything. I settled +myself under a lamp, while Jonathan, in the twilight beneath the sink, +continued his mystic rites, with an accompaniment of mildly vituperative +or persuasive language, addressed sometimes to his tools, sometimes to the +screws and nuts and other parts, sometimes against the men who made them +or the plumbers who put them in. Now and then I held a candle, or steadied +some perverse bit of metal while he worked his will upon it. And at last +the phœnix did indeed rise, the pump was again a pump,—at least it looked +like one. + +“Suppose it doesn’t work,” I suggested. + +“Suppose it does,” said Jonathan. + +He began to pump furiously. “Pour in water there!” he directed. “Keep on +pouring—don’t stop—never mind if she does spout.” I poured and he pumped, +and there were the usual sounds of a pump resuming activity: gurglings and +spittings, suckings and sudden spoutings; but at last it seemed to get its +breath—a few more long strokes of the handle, and the water poured. + +“What time is it?” he asked. + +“Oh, fairly late—about ten—ten minutes past.” + +Instead of our walk, we stood for a moment under the big maples before the +house and looked out into a sea of moonlight. It silvered the sides of the +old gray barns and washed over the blossoming apple trees beyond the +house. Is there anything more sweetly still than the stillness of +moonlight over apple blossoms! As we went out to the barns to lock up, +even the little hencoops looked poetic. Passing one of them, we half +roused the feathered family within and heard muffled peepings and a +smothered _clk-clk_. Jonathan was by this time so serene that I felt I +could ask him a question that had occurred to me. + +“Jonathan, how long _is_ three shakes of a lamb’s tail?” + +“Apparently, my dear, it is the whole evening,” he answered unruffled. + +The next night was drizzly. Well, we would have books instead of a walk. +We lighted a fire, May though it was, and settled down before it. “What +shall we read?” I asked, feeling very cozy. + +Jonathan was filling his pipe with a leisurely deliberation good to look +upon. With the match in his hand he paused—“Oh, I meant to tell you—those +young turkeys of yours—they were still out when I came through the yard. I +wonder if they went in all right.” + +I have always noticed that if the turkeys grow up very fat and strutty and +suggestive of Thanksgiving, Jonathan calls them “our turkeys,” but in the +spring, when they are committing all the naughtinesses of wild and silly +youth, he is apt to allude to them as “those young turkeys of yours.” + +I rose wearily. “No. They never go in all right when they get out at this +time—especially on wet nights. I’ll have to find them and stow them.” + +Jonathan got up, too, and laid down his pipe. “You’ll need the lantern,” +he said. + +We went out together into the May drizzle—a good thing to be out in, too, +if you are out for the fun of it. But when you are hunting silly little +turkeys who literally don’t know enough to go in when it rains, and when +you expected and wanted to be doing something else, then it seems +different, the drizzle seems peculiarly drizzly, the silliness of the +turkeys seems particularly and unendurably silly. + +We waded through the drenched grass and the tall, dripping weeds, +listening for the faint, foolish peeping of the wanderers. Some we found +under piled fence rails, some under burdock leaves, some under nothing +more protective than a plantain leaf. By ones and twos we collected them, +half drowned yet shrilly remonstrant, and dropped them into the dry shed +where they belonged. Then we returned to the house, very wet, feeling the +kind of discouragement that usually besets those who are forced to furnish +prudence to fools. + +“Nine o’clock,” said Jonathan, “and we’re too wet to sit down. If you +could just shut in those turkeys on wet days—” + +“Shut them in! Didn’t I shut them in! They must have got out since four +o’clock.” + +“Isn’t the shed tight?” he asked. + +“Chicken-tight, but not turkey-tight, apparently. Nothing is +turkey-tight.” + +“They’re bigger than chickens.” + +“Not in any one spot they aren’t. They’re like coiled wire—when they +stretch out to get through a crack they have _no_ dimension except length, +their bodies are mere imaginary points to hang feathers on. You don’t know +little turkeys.” + +It might be said that, having undertaken to raise turkeys, we had to +expect them to act like turkeys. But there were other interruptions in our +evenings where our share of responsibility was not so plain. For example, +one wet evening in early June we had kindled a little fire and I had +brought the lamp forward. The pump was quiescent, the little turkeys were +all tucked up in the turkey equivalent for bed, the farm seemed to be +cuddling down into itself for the night. We sat for a moment luxuriously +regarding the flames, listening to the sighing of the wind, feeling the +sweet damp air as it blew in through the open windows. I was considering +which book it should be and at last rose to possess myself of two or +three. + +“Sh—h—h!” said Jonathan, a warning finger raised. + +I stood listening. + +“I don’t hear anything,” I said. + +“Sh—h!” he repeated. “There!” + +This time, indeed, I heard faint bird-notes. + +“Young robins!” He sprang up and made for the back door with long strides. + +I peered out through the window of the orchard room, but saw only the +reflection of the firelight and the lamp. Suddenly I heard Jonathan +whistle and I ran to the back porch. Blackness pressed against my eyes. + +“Where are you?” I called into it. + +The whistle again, quite near me, apparently out of the air. + +“Bring a lantern,” came a whisper. + +I got it and came back and down the steps to the path, holding up my light +and peering about in search of the voice. + +“Where are you? I can’t see you at all.” + +“Right here—look—here—up!” The voice was almost over my head. + +I searched the dark masses of the tree—oh, yes! the lantern revealed the +heel of a shoe in a crotch, and above,—yes, undoubtedly, the rest of +Jonathan, stretched out along a limb. + +“Oh! What are you doing up there?” + +“Get me a long stick—hoe—clothes-pole—anything I can poke with. Quick! The +cat’s up here. I can hear her, but I can’t see her.” + +I found the rake and reached it up to him. From the dark beyond him came a +distressed mew. + +“Now the lantern. Hang it on the teeth.” He drew it up to him, then, rake +in one hand and lantern in the other, proceeded to squirm out along the +limb. + +“Now I see her.” + +I saw her too—a huddle of yellow, crouched close. + +“I’ll have her in a minute. She’ll either have to drop or be caught.” + +And in fact this distressing dilemma was already becoming plain to the +marauder herself. Her mewings grew louder and more frequent. A few more +contortions brought the climber nearer his victim. A little judicious +urging with the rake and she was within reach. The rake came down to me, +and a long, wild mew announced that Jonathan had clutched. + +“I don’t see how you’re going to get down,” I said, mopping the rain-mist +out of my eyes. + +“Watch me,” panted the contortionist. + +I watched a curious mass descend the tree, the lantern, swinging and +jerking, fitfully illumined the pair, and I could see, now a knee and an +ear, now a hand and a yellow furry shape, now a white collar, nose, and +chin. There was a last, long, scratching slide. I snatched the lantern, +and Jonathan stood beside me, holding by the scruff of her neck a very +much frazzled yellow cat. We returned to the porch where her victims +were—one alive, in a basket, two dead, beside it, and Jonathan, kneeling, +held the cat’s nose close to the little bodies while he boxed her +ears—once, twice; remonstrant mews rose wild, and with a desperate twist +the culprit backed out under his arm and leaped into the blackness. + +“Don’t believe she’ll eat young robin for a day or two,” said Jonathan. + +“Is that what they were? Where were they?” + +“Under the tree. She’d knocked them out.” + +“Could you put this one back? He seems all right—only sort of naked in +spots.” + +“We’ll half cover the basket and hang it in the tree. His folks’ll take +care of him.” + +Next morning early there began the greatest to-do among the robins in the +orchard. They shrieked their comments on the affair at the top of their +lungs. They screamed abusively at Jonathan and me as we stood watching. +“They say we did it!” said Jonathan. “I call that gratitude!” + +I wish I could record that from that evening the cat was a reformed +character. An impression had indeed been made. All next day she stayed +under the porch, two glowing eyes in the dark. The second day she came +out, walking indifferent and debonair, as cats do. But when Jonathan took +down the basket from the tree and made her smell of it, she flattened her +ears against her head and shot under the porch again. + +But lessons grow dim and temptation is freshly importunate. It was not two +weeks before Jonathan was up another tree on the same errand, and when I +considered the number of nests in our orchard, and the number of cats—none +of them really our cats—on the place, I felt that the position of +overruling Providence was almost more than we could undertake, if we hoped +to do anything else. + + * * * * * + +These things—tinkering of latches and chairs, pump-mending, rescue work in +the orchard and among the poultry—filled our evenings fairly full. Yet +these are only samples, and not particularly representative samples +either. They were the sort of things that happened oftenest, the common +emergencies incidental to the life. But there were also the uncommon +emergencies, each occurring seldom but each adding its own touch of +variety to the tale of our evenings. + +For instance, there was the time of the great drought, when Jonathan, +coming in from a tour of the farm at dusk, said, “I’ve got to go up and +dig out the spring-hole across the swamp. Everything else is dry, and the +cattle are getting crazy.” + +“Can I help?” I asked, not without regrets for our books and our +evening—it was a black night, and I had had hopes. + +“Yes. Come and hold the lantern.” + +We went. The spring-hole had been trodden by the poor, eager creatures +into a useless jelly of mud. Jonathan fell to work, while I held the +lantern high. But soon it became more than a mere matter of holding the +lantern. There was a crashing in the blackness about us and a huge horned +head emerged behind my shoulder, another loomed beyond Jonathan’s stooping +bulk. + +“Keep ’em back,” he said. “They’ll have it all trodden up again—Hi! You! +Ge’ back ’ere!” There is as special a lingo for talking to cattle as there +is for talking to babies. I used it as well as I could. I swung the +lantern in their faces, I brandished the hoe-handle at them, I jabbed at +them recklessly. They snorted and backed and closed in again,—crazy, poor +things, with the smell of the water. It was an evening’s battle for us. +Jonathan dug and dug, and then laid rails, and the precious water filled +in slowly, grew to a dark pool, and the thirsty creatures panted and +snuffed in the dark just outside the radius of the hoe-handle, until at +last we could let them in. I had forgotten my books, for we had come close +to the earth and the creatures of the earth. The cows were our sisters and +the steers our brothers that night. + +Sometimes the emergency was in the barn—a broken halter and trouble among +the horses, or perhaps a new calf. Sometimes a stray creature,—cow or +horse,—grazing along the roadside, got into our yard and threatened our +corn and squashes and my poor, struggling flower-beds. Once it was a break +in the wire fence around Jonathan’s muskmelon patch in the barn meadow. +The cows had just been turned in, and if it wasn’t mended that evening it +meant no melons that season, also melon-tainted cream for days. + +Once or twice each year it was the drainpipe from the sink. The drain, +like the pump, was an innovation. Our ancestors had always carried out +whatever they couldn’t use or burn, and dumped it on the far edge of the +orchard. In a thinly settled community, there is much to be said for this +method: you know just where you are. But we had the drain, and +occasionally we didn’t know just where we were. + +“Coffee grounds,” Jonathan would suggest, with a touch of sternness. + +“No,” I would reply firmly; “coffee grounds are always burned.” + +“What then?” + +“Don’t know. I’ve poked and poked.” + +A gleam in the corner of Jonathan’s eye—“What with?” + +“Oh, everything.” + +“Yes, I suppose so. For instance what?” + +“Why—hair-pin first, of course, and then scissors, and then +button-hook—you needn’t smile. Button-hooks are wonderful for cleaning out +pipes. And then I took a pail-handle and straightened it out—” Jonathan +was laughing by this time—“Well, I have to use what I have, don’t I?” + +“Yes, of course. And after the pail-handle?” + +“After that—oh, yes. I tried your cleaning-rod.” + +“The devil you did!” + +“Not at all. It wasn’t hurt a bit. It just wouldn’t go down, that’s all. +So then I thought I’d wait for you.” + +“And now what do you expect?” + +“I expect you to fix it.” + +Of course, after that, there was nothing for Jonathan to do but fix it. +Usually it did not take long. Sometimes it did. Once it took a whole +evening, and required the services of a young tree, which Jonathan went +out and cut and trimmed and forced through a section of the pipe which he +had taken up and laid out for the operation on the kitchen floor. It was a +warm evening, too, and friends had driven over to visit us. We received +them warmly in the kitchen. We explained that we believed in making them +members of the family, and that members of the family always helped in +whatever was being done. So they helped. They took turns gripping the pipe +while Jonathan and I persuaded the young tree through it. It required +great strength and some skill because it was necessary to make the tree +and the pipe perform spirally rotatory movements each antagonistic and +complementary to the other. We were all rather tired and very hot before +anything began to happen. Then it happened all at once: the tree burst +through—and not alone. A good deal came with it. The kitchen floor was a +sight, and there was—undoubtedly there was—a strong smell of coffee. +Jonathan smiled. Then he went down cellar and restored the pipe to its +position, while the rest of us cleared up the kitchen,—it’s astonishing +what a little job like that can make a kitchen look like,—and as our +friends started to go a voice from beneath us, like the ghost in “Hamlet,” +shouted, “Hold ’em! There’s half a freezer of ice-cream down here we can +finish.” Sure enough there was! And then he wouldn’t have to pack it down. +We had it up. We looted the pantry as only irresponsible adults can loot, +in their own pantry, and the evening ended in luxurious ease. Some time in +the black of the night our friends left, and I suppose the sound of their +carriage-wheels along the empty road set many a neighbor wondering, +through his sleep, “Who’s sick now?” How could they know it was only a +plumbing party? + +As I look back on this evening it seems one of the pleasantest of the +year. It isn’t so much what you do, of course, as the way you feel about +it, that makes the difference between pleasant and unpleasant. Shall we +say of that evening that we meant to read aloud? Or that we meant to have +a quiet evening with friends? Not at all. We say, with all the conviction +in the world, that we meant, on that particular evening, to have a +plumbing party, with the drain as the _pièce de résistance_. Toward this +our lives had been yearning, and lo! they had arrived! + +Some few things, however, are hard to meet in that spirit. When the pigs +broke out of the pen, about nine o’clock, and Hiram was away, and Mrs. +Hiram needed our help to get them in—there was no use in pretending that +we meant to do it. Moreover, the labor of rounding up pigs is one of +mingled arduousness and delicacy. Pigs in clover was once a popular game, +but pigs in a dark orchard is not a game at all, and it will, I am firmly +convinced, never be popular. It is, I repeat, not a game, yet probably the +only way to keep one’s temper at all is to regard it, for the time being, +as a major sport, like football and deep-sea fishing and +mountain-climbing, where you are expected to take some risks and not think +too much about results as such. On this basis it has, perhaps, its own +rewards. But the attitude is difficult to maintain, especially late at +night. + +On that particular evening, as we returned, breathless and worn, to the +house, I could not refrain from saying, with some edge, “I never wanted to +keep pigs anyway.” + +“Who says we’re keeping them?” remarked Jonathan; and then we laughed and +laughed. + +“You needn’t think I’m laughing because you said anything specially +funny,” I said. “It’s only because I’m tired enough to laugh at anything.” + +The pump, too, tried my philosophy now and then. One evening when I had +worn my hands to the bone cutting out thick leather washers for Jonathan +to insert somewhere in the circulatory system of that same monster, I +finally broke out, “Oh, dear! I hate the pump! I wanted a moonlight walk!” + +“I’ll have the thing together now in a jiffy,” said Jonathan. + +“Jiffy! There’s no use talking about jiffies at half-past ten at night,” I +snarled. I was determined anyway to be as cross as I liked. “Why can’t we +find a really simple way of living? This isn’t simple. It’s highly complex +and very difficult.” + +“You cut those washers very well,” suggested Jonathan soothingly, but I +was not prepared to be soothed. + +“It was hateful work, though. Now, look what we’ve done this evening! +We’ve shut up a setting hen, and housed the little turkeys, and driven +that cow back into the road, and mended a window-shade and the dog’s +chain, and now we’ve fixed the pump—and it won’t stay fixed at that!” + +“Fair evening’s work,” murmured Jonathan as he rapidly assembled the pump. + +“Yes, as work. But all I mean is—it isn’t _simple_. Farm life has a +reputation for simplicity that I begin to think is overdone. It doesn’t +seem to me that my evening has been any more simple than if we had dressed +for dinner and gone to the opera or played bridge. In fact, at this +distance, that, compared with this, has the simplicity of a—I don’t know +what!” + +“I like your climaxes,” said Jonathan, and we both laughed. “There! I’m +done. Now suppose we go, in our simple way, and lock up the barns and +chicken-houses.” + + * * * * * + +And so the evenings came and went, each offering a prospect of fair and +quiet things—books and firelight and moonlight and talk; many in +retrospect full of things quite different—drains and latches and +fledglings and cows and pigs. Many, but not all. For the evenings did now +and then come when the pump ceased from troubling and the “critters” were +at rest. Evenings when we sat under the lamp and read, when we walked and +walked along moonlit roads or lay on the slopes of moon-washed meadows. It +was on such an evening that we faced the vagaries of farm life and +searched for a philosophy to cover them. + +“I’m beginning to see that it will never be any better,” I said. + +“Probably not,” said Jonathan, talking around his pipe. + +“You seem contented enough about it.” + +“I am.” + +“I don’t know that I’m contented, but perhaps I’m resigned. I believe it’s +necessary.” + +“Of course it’s necessary.” + +Jonathan often has the air of having known since infancy the great truths +about life that I have just discovered. I overlooked this, and went on, +“You see, we’re right down close to the earth that is the ultimate basis +of everything, and all the caprices of things touch us immediately and we +have to make immediate adjustments to them.” + +“And that knocks the bottom out of our evenings.” + +“Now if we’re in the city, playing bridge, somebody else is making those +adjustments for us. We’re like the princess with seventeen mattresses +between her and the pea.” + +“She felt it, though,” said Jonathan. “It kept her awake.” + +“I know. She had a poor night. But even she would hardly have maintained +that she felt it as she would have done if the mattresses hadn’t been +there.” + +“True,” said Jonathan. + +“Farm life is the pea without the mattresses—” I went on. + +“Sounds a little cheerless,” said Jonathan. + +“Well—of course, it isn’t really cheerless at all. But neither is it easy. +It’s full of remorseless demands for immediate adjustment.” + +“That was the way the princess felt about her pea.” + +“The princess was a snippy little thing. But after all, probably her life +was full of adjustments of other sorts. She couldn’t call her soul her own +a minute, I suppose.” + +“Perhaps that was why she ran away,” suggested Jonathan. + +“Of course it was. She ran away to find the simple life and didn’t find +it.” + +“No. She found the pea—even with all those mattresses.” + +“And we’ve run away, and found several peas, and fewer mattresses,” said +Jonathan. + +“Let’s not get confused—” + +“I’m not confused,” said Jonathan. + +“Well, I shall be in a minute if I don’t look out. You can’t follow a +parallel too far. What I mean is, that if you run away from one kind of +complexity you run into another kind.” + +“What are you going to do about it?” + +“I’m going to like it all,” I answered, “and make believe I meant to do +it.” + +After that we were silent awhile. Then I tried again. “You know your trick +of waltzing with a glass of water on your head?” + +“Yes.” + +“Well, I wonder if we couldn’t do that with our souls.” + +“That suggests to me a rather curious picture,” said Jonathan. + +“Well—you know what I mean. When you do that, your body takes up all the +jolts and jiggles before they get to the top of your head, so the glass +stays quiet.” + +“Well—” + +“Well, I don’t see why—only, of course, our souls aren’t really anything +like glasses of water, and it would be perfectly detestable to think of +carrying them around carefully like that.” + +“Perhaps you’d better back out of that figure of speech,” suggested +Jonathan. “Go back to your princess. Say, ‘every man his own mattress.’ ” + +“No. Any figure is wrong. The trouble with all of them is that as soon as +you use one it begins to get in your way, and say all sorts of things for +you that you never meant at all. And then if you notice it, it bothers +you, and if you don’t notice it, you get drawn into crooked thinking.” + +“And yet you can’t think without them.” + +“No, you can’t think without them.” + +“Well—where are we, anyway?” he asked placidly. + +“I don’t know at all. Only I feel sure that leading the simple life +doesn’t depend on the things you do it _with_. Feeding your own cows and +pigs and using pumps and candles brings you no nearer to it than marketing +by telephone and using city water supply and electric lighting. I don’t +know what does bring you nearer, but I’m sure it must be something inside +you.” + +“That sounds rather reasonable,” said Jonathan; “almost scriptural—” + +“Yes, I know,” I said. + + + + + + IV + + + After Frost + + +It is late afternoon in mid-September. I stand in my garden sniffing the +raw air, and wondering, as always at this season, _will_ there be frost +to-night or will there not? Of course if I were a woodchuck or a muskrat, +or any other really intelligent creature, I should know at once and act +accordingly, but being only a stupid human being, I am thrown back on +conjecture, assisted by the thermometer, and an appeal to Jonathan. + +“Too much wind for frost,” says he. + +“Sure? I’d hate to lose my nasturtiums quite so early.” + +“You won’t lose ’em. Look at the thermometer if you don’t believe me. If +it’s above forty you’re safe.” + +I look, and try to feel reassured. But I am not quite easy in my mind +until next morning when, running out before breakfast, I make the rounds +and find everything untouched. + +But a few days later the alarm comes again. There is no wind this time, +and, what is worse, an ominous silence falls at dusk over the orchard and +meadow. “Why is everything so still?” I ask myself. “Oh, of course—the +katydids aren’t talking—and the crickets, and all the other whirr-y +things. Ah! That means business! My poor garden!” + +“Jonathan!” I call, as I feel rather than see his shape whirling +noiselessly in at the big gate after his ride up from the station. “Help +me cover my nasturtiums. There’ll be frost to-night.” + +“Maybe,” says Jonathan’s voice. + +“Not maybe at all—surely. Listen to the katydids!” + +“You mean, listen to the absence of katydids.” + +“Very well. The point is, I want newspapers.” + +“No. The point is, I am to bring newspapers.” + +“Exactly.” + +“And tuck up your nasturtiums for the night in your peculiarly ridiculous +fashion—” + +“I know it looks ridiculous, but really it’s sensible. There may be weeks +of summer after this.” + +And so the nasturtiums are tucked up, cozily hidden under the big layers +of sheets, whose corners we fasten down with stones. To be sure, the +garden _is_ rather a funny sight, with these pale shapes sprawling over +its beds. But it pays. For in the morning, though over in the vegetable +garden the squash leaves and lima beans are blackened and limp, my +nasturtiums are still pert and crisp. I pull off the papers, wondering +what the passers-by have thought, and lo! my gay garden, good for perhaps +two weeks more! + +But a day arrives when even newspaper coddling is of no avail. Sometimes +it is in late September, sometimes not until October, but when it comes +there is no resisting. + +The sun goes down, leaving a clear sky paling to green at the horizon. A +still cold falls upon the world, and I feel that it is the end. Shears in +hand, I cut everything I can—nasturtiums down to the ground,—leaves, buds, +and all,—feathery sprays of cosmos, asters by the armful. Those last +bouquets that I bring into the house are always the most beautiful, for I +do not have to save buds for later cutting. There will, alas, be no later +cutting. + +So I fill my bowls and vases, and next morning I go out, well knowing what +I shall see. It is a beautiful sight, too, if one can forget its meaning. +The whole golden-green world of autumn has been touched with silver. In +the low-lying swamp beyond the orchard it is almost like a light snowfall. +The meadows rising beyond the barns are silvered over wherever the long +tree-shadows still lie. And in my garden, too, where the shadows linger, +every leaf is frosted, but as soon as the sun warms them through, leaf and +twig turn dark and droop to the ground. It is the end. + +Except, indeed, for my brave marigolds and calendulas and little button +asters. It is for this reason that I have given them space all summer, +nipping them back when they tried to blossom early, for they seem a bit +crude compared with the other flowers. But now that frost is here, my +feelings warm to them. I cannot criticize their color and texture, so +grateful am I to them for not giving up. And when last night’s cuttings +have faded, I shall be very glad of a glowing mass of marigold beside my +fireplace, and of the yellow stars of calendula, like embodied sunshine, +on my dining-table. + +Well, then, the frost has come! And after the first pang of realization, I +find that, curiously enough, the worst is over. Since it has come, let it +come! And now—hurrah for the garden house-cleaning! The garden is dead—the +garden of yesterday! Long live the garden—the garden of to-morrow! For +suddenly my mind has leaped ahead to spring. + +I can hardly wait for breakfast to be over, before I am out in working +clothes, pulling up things—not weeds now, but flowers, or what were +flowers. Nasturtiums, asters, cosmos, snapdragon, stock, late-blooming +cornflowers—up they all come, all the annuals, and the biennials that have +had their season. I fling them together in piles, and soon have small +haystacks all along my grass paths, and—there I am! Down again to the good +brown earth! + +It is with positive satisfaction that I stand and survey my beds, great +bare patches of earth, glorified here and there by low clumps of calendula +and great bushes of marigold. Now, then! I can do anything! I can dig, and +fertilize, and transplant. Best of all, I can plan and plan! The crisp +wind stings my cheeks, but as I work I feel the sun hot on the back of my +neck. I get the smell of the earth as I turn it over, mingled with the +pungent tang of marigold blossoms, very pleasant out of doors, though +almost too strong for the house except near a fireplace. I believe the +most characteristic fall odors are to me this of marigold, mingled with +the fragrance of apples piled in the orchard, the good smell of earth +newly turned up, and the flavor of burning leaves, borne now and then on +the wind, from the outdoor house-cleaning of the world. + +There is perhaps no season of all the garden year that brings more real +delight to the gardener, no time so stimulating to the imagination. This +year in the garden has been good, but next year shall be better. All the +failures, or near-failures, shall of course be turned into successes, and +the successes shall be bettered. Last year there were not quite enough +hollyhocks, but next year there shall be such glories! There are seedlings +that I have been saving, over on the edge of the phlox. I dash across to +look them up—yes, here they are, splendid little fellows, leaves only a +bit crumpled by the frost. I dig them up carefully, keeping earth packed +about their roots, and one by one I convey them across and set them out in +a beautiful row where I want them to grow next year. Their place is beside +the old stone-flagged path, and I picture them rising tall against the +side of the woodshed, whose barrenness I have besides more than half +covered with honeysuckle. + +Then, there are my foxgloves. Some of them I have already transplanted, +but not all. There is a little corner full of stocky yearlings that I must +change now. And that same corner can be used for poppies. I have kept +seeds of this year’s poppies—funny little brown pepper-shakers, with tiny +holes at the end through which I shake out the fine seed dust. Doubtless +they would attend to all this without my help, but I like to be sure that +even my self-seeding annuals come up where I most want them. + +Biennials, like the foxglove and canterbury bells, are of course, the +difficult children of the garden, because you have to plan not only for +next year but for the year after. Next year’s bloom is secured—unless they +winter-kill—in this year’s young plants, growing since spring, or even +since the fall before. These I transplant for next summer’s beauty. But +for the year after I like to take double precautions. Already I have tiny +seedlings, started since August, but besides these I sow seed, too late to +start before spring. For a severe winter may do havoc, and I shall then +need the early start given by fall sowing. + +As I work on, I discover all sorts of treasures—young plants, seedlings +from all the big-folk of my garden. Young larkspurs surround the bushy +parent clumps, and the ground near the forget-me-nots is fairly carpeted +with little new ones. I have found that, though the old forget-me-nots +will live through, it pays to pull out the most ragged of them and trust +to the youngsters to fill their places. These, and English daisies, I let +grow together about as they will. They are pretty together, with their +mingling of pink, white, and blue, they never run out, and all I need is +to keep them from spreading too far, or from crowding each other too much. + +When my back aches from this kind of sorting and shifting, I straighten up +and look about me again. Ah! The phlox! Time now to attend to that! + +My white phlox is really the most distinguished thing in my garden. I have +pink and lavender, too, but any one can have pink and lavender by ordering +them from a florist. They can have white, too, but not my white. For mine +never saw a florist; it is an inheritance. + +Sixty or seventy years ago there was a beautiful little garden north of +the old house tended and loved by a beautiful lady. The lady died, and the +garden did not long outlive her. Its place was taken by a crab-apple +orchard, which flourished, bore blossom and fruit, until in its turn it +grew old, while the garden had faded to a dim tradition. But one day in +August, a few years ago, I discovered under the shade of an old crab tree, +two slender sprays of white phlox, trying to blossom. In memory of that +old garden and its lady, I took them up and cherished them. And the +miracle of life was again made manifest. For from those two little +half-starved roots has come the most splendid part of my garden. All +summer it makes a thick green wall on the garden’s edge, beside the +flagged path. In the other beds it rises in luxuriant masses, giving +background and body with its wonderful deep green foliage, which is +greener and thicker than any other phlox I know. And when its season to +bloom arrives—a long month, from early August to mid-September—it is a +glory of whiteness, the tallest sprays on a level with my eyes, the +shortest shoulder high, except when rain weighs down the heavy heads and +they lean across the paths barring my passage with their fragrant wetness. + +Here and there I have let the pink and lavender phlox come in, for they +begin to bloom two weeks earlier, when the garden needs color. But always +my white must dominate. And it does. Most wonderful of all is it on +moonlight nights of late August, when it broods over the garden like a +white cloud, and the night moths come crowding to its fragrant feast, with +their intermittent burring of furry wings. + +Ah, well! the phlox has passed now, and its trim green leaves are brown +and crackly. I can do what I like with it after this. So when my other +transplanting grows tiresome, I fall upon my phlox. Every year some of it +needs thinning, so quickly does it spread. I take the spading-fork, and, +with what seems like utter ruthlessness, I pry out from the thickest +centers enough good roots to give the rest breathing and growing space. +Along the path edges I always have to cut out encroaching roots each year, +or else soon there would be no path. But all that I take out is precious, +either to give to friends for their gardens, or to enlarge the edges of my +own. For this phlox needs almost no care, and will fight grass and weeds +for itself. + +There are phlox seedlings, too, all over the garden, but I have no way of +telling what color they are, though usually I can detect the white by its +foliage. I take them up and set them out near the main phlox masses, and +wait for the next season’s blossoming before I give them their final +place. + +This is the time of year, too, when I give some attention to the rocks in +my garden. Of course, in order to have a garden at all, it was necessary +to take out enough rock to build quite a respectable stone wall. But that +was not the end. There never will be an end. A Connecticut garden grows +rocks like weeds, and one must expect to keep on taking them out each +fall. The rest of the year I try to ignore them, but after frost I like to +make a fresh raid, and get rid of another wheelbarrow load or so. And I +always notice that for one barrow load of stones that go out, it takes at +least two barrow loads of earth to fill in. Thus an excellent circulation +is maintained, and the garden does not stagnate. Moreover, I take great +pleasure in showing my friends—especially friends from the more earthy +sections of New York and farther west—the piles of rock and the parts of +certain stone walls about the place that have been literally made out of +the cullings of my garden. They never believe me. + +As I am thus occupied,—digging, planting, thinning, sowing,—I find it one +of the happiest seasons of the year. It is partly the stimulus of the +autumn air, partly the pleasure of getting at the ground. I think there +are some of us, city folk though we be, who must have the giant Antæus +for ancestor. We still need to get in close touch with the earth now and +then. Children have a true instinct with their love of barefoot play in +the dirt, and there are grown folks who still love it—but we call it +gardening. The sight and the feel and the smell of my brown garden beds +gives me a pleasure that is very deep and probably very primitive. + +But there is another source of pleasure in my fall gardening—a pleasure +not of the senses but of the imagination. + +For as I do my work my fancy is active. As I transplant my young +hollyhocks, I see them, not little round-leaved bunches in my hand, but +tall and stately, aflare with colors—yellows, whites, pinks. As I dig +about my larkspur and stake out its seedlings, they spire above me in +heavenly blues. As I arrange the clumps of coarse-leaved young foxgloves, +I seem to see their rich tower-like clusters of old-pink bells bending +always a little towards the southeast, where most sun comes from. As I +thin my forget-me-not I see it—in my mind’s eye—in a blue mist of spring +bloom. Thus, a garden rises in my fancy, a garden where neither beetle, +borer, nor cutworm doth corrupt, and where the mole doth not break in or +steal, where gentle rain and blessed sun come as they are needed, where +all the flowers bloom unceasingly in colors of heavenly light—a garden +such as never yet existed nor ever shall, till the tales of fairyland come +true. I shall never see that garden, yet every year it blooms for me +afresh—after frost. + + + + + + V + + + The Joys of Garden Stewardship + + +I sometimes think I am coming to classify my friends according to the way +they act when I talk about my garden. On this basis, there are three sorts +of people. + +First there are those who are obviously not interested. Such as these feel +no answering thrill, even at the sight of a florist’s spring catalogue. A +weed inspires in them no desire to pull it. They may, however, be really +nice people if they are still young; for, except by special grace, no one +under thirty need be expected to care about gardens—it is a mature taste. +But in the mean time I turn our talk in other channels. + +Then there are the people who, when I approach the subject, brighten up, +look intelligent, even eager, but in a moment make it clear that what they +are eager for is a chance to talk about their own gardens. Mine is merely +the stepping-stone, the bridge, the handle. This is better than +indifference, yet it is sometimes trying. One of my dearest friends thus +tests my love now and then when she walks in my garden. + +“Aren’t those peonies lovely?” I suggest. + +“Yes,” dreamily; “you know I can’t have that shade in my garden because—” +and she trails off into a disquisition that I could, just at that moment, +do without. + +“Look at the height of that larkspur!” I say. + +“Yes—but, you know, it wouldn’t do for me to have larkspur when I go away +so early. What I need is things for April and May.” + +“Well, I am not trying to _sell_ you any,” I am sometimes goaded into +protesting. “I only wanted you to say they are pretty—pretty right here in +_my_ garden.” + +“Yes—yes—of course they are pretty—they’re lovely—you have a lovely +garden, you know.” She pulls herself up to give this tribute, but soon her +eyes get the faraway look in them again, and she is murmuring, “Oh, I must +write Edward to see about that hedge. Tell me, my dear, if you had a brick +wall, would you have vines on it or wall-fruit?” + +It is of no use. I cannot hold her long. I sometimes think she was nicer +when she had no garden of her own. Perhaps she thinks I was nicer when I +had none. + +But there is another kind of garden manners—a kind that subtly soothes, +cheers, perhaps inebriates. It is the manner of the friend who may, +indeed, have a garden, but who looks at mine with the eye of adoption, +temporarily at least. She walks down its paths, singling out this or that +for notice. She suggests, she even criticizes, tenderly, as one who tells +you an “even _more_ becoming way” to arrange your little daughter’s hair. +She offers you roots and seeds and seedlings from her garden, and—last +touch of flattery—she begs seeds and seedlings from yours. + +For garden purposes, give me the manners of this third class. And, indeed, +not for garden purposes alone. They are useful as applied to many +things—children, particularly, and houses. + +Undoubtedly the demand that I make upon my friends is a form of vanity, +yet I cannot seem to feel ashamed of it. I admit at once that not the +least part of my pleasure in my flowers is the attention they get from +others. Moreover, it is not only from friends that I seek this, but from +every passer-by along my country road. There are gardens and gardens. +Some, set about with hedges tall and thick, offer the delights of +exclusiveness and solitude. But exclusiveness and solitude are easily had +on a Connecticut farm, and my garden will none of them; it flings forth +its appeal to every wayfarer. And I like it. I like my garden to “get +notice.” As people drive by I hope they enjoy my phlox. I furtively glance +to see if they have an eye for the foxglove. I wonder if the calendulas +are so tall that they hide the asters. And if, as I bend over my weeding, +an automobile whirling past lets fly an appreciative phrase—“lovely +flowers—” “wonderful yellow of—” “garden there,”—my ears are quick to +receive it and I forgive the eddies of gasolene and dust that are also +left by the vanishing visitant. + +About few things can one be so brazen in one’s enjoyment of recognition. +One’s house, one’s clothes, one’s work, one’s children, all these demand a +certain modesty of demeanor, however the inner spirit may puff. Not so +one’s garden. I fancy this is because, while I have a strong sense of +ownership in it, I also have a strong sense of stewardship. As owner I +must be modest, but as steward I may admire as openly as I will. Did I +make my phlox? Did I fashion my asters? Am I the artificer of my fringed +larkspur? Nay, truly, I am but their caretaker, and may glory in them as +well as another, only with the added touch of joy that I, even I, have +given them their opportunity. Like Paul I plant, like Apollos I water, but +before the power that giveth the increase I stand back and wonder. + +But it is not alone the results of my stewardship that give me joy. Its +very processes are good. Delight in the earth is a primitive instinct. +Digging is naturally pleasant, hoeing is pleasant, raking is pleasant, and +then there is the weeding. For I am not the only one who sows seeds in my +garden. One of my friends remarked cheerfully that he had planted +twenty-seven different vegetables in his garden, and the Lord had planted +two hundred and twenty-seven other kinds of things. + +This is where the weeding comes in. Now a good deal has been said about +the labor of weeding, but little about the gratifications of weeding. I +don’t mean weeding with a hoe. I mean yanking up, with movements suited to +the occasion, each individual growing thing that doesn’t belong. Surely I +am not the only one to have felt the pleasure of this. They come up so +nicely, and leave such soft earth behind! And intellect is needed, too, +for each weed demands its own way of handling: the adherent plantain +needing a slow, firm, drawing motion, but very satisfactory when it comes; +the evasive clover requiring that all its sprawling runners shall be +gathered up in one gentle, tactful pull; the tender shepherd’s purse +coming easily on a straight twitch; the tough ragweed that yields to +almost any kind of jerk. Even witch-grass, the bane of the farmer, has its +rewarding side, when one really does get out its handful of +wicked-looking, crawly, white tubers. + +Weeding is most fun when the weeds are not too small. Yes, from the aspect +of a sport there is something to be said for letting weeds grow. Pulling +out little tender ones is poor work compared with the satisfaction of +hauling up a spreading treelet of ragweed or a far-flaunting wild +buckwheat. You seem to get so much for your effort, and it stirs up the +ground so, and no other weeds have grown under the shade of the big one, +so its departure leaves a good bit of empty brown earth. + +Surely, weeding is good fun. If faults could be yanked out of children in +the same entertaining way, the orphan asylums would soon be emptied +through the craze for adoption as a major sport. + +One of the pleasantest mornings of my life was spent weeding, in the rain, +a long-neglected corner of my garden, while a young friend stood around +the edges and explained the current political situation to me, and carted +away armfuls of green stuff as I handed them out to him. The rain +drizzled, and the air was fragrant with the smell of wet earth and bruised +stems. Ideally, of course, weeds should never reach this state of sportive +rankness. But most of my friends admit, under pressure, that there are +corners where such things do happen. + +Naturally, all this is assuming that one is one’s own gardener. There may +be pleasure in having a garden kept up by a real gardener, but that always +seems to me a little like having a doll and letting somebody else dress +and undress it. My garden must never grow so big that I cannot take care +of it—and neglect it—myself. + +In saying this, however, I don’t count rocks. When it comes to rocks, I +call in Jonathan. And it often comes to rocks. + +For mine is a Connecticut garden. Now in the beginning Connecticut was +composed entirely of rocks. Then the little earth gnomes, fearing that no +one would ever come there to give them sport, sprinkled a little earth +amongst the rocks, partly covered some, wholly covered others, and then +hid to see what the gardeners would do about it. And ever since the +gardeners have been patiently, or impatiently, tucking in their seeds and +plants in the thimblefuls of earth left by the gnomes. They have been +picking out the rocks, or blowing them up, or burying them, or working +around them; and every winter the little gnomes gather and push up a new +lot from the dark storehouses of the underworld. In the spring the +gardeners begin again, and the little gnomes hold their sides with still +laughter to watch the work go on. + +“Rocks?” my friends say. “Do you mind the rocks? But they are a special +beauty! Why, I have a rock in my garden that I have treated—” + +“Very well,” I interrupt rudely. “_A rock_ is all very well. If I had _a +rock_ in my garden I could treat it, too. But how about a garden that is +all rocks?” + +“Oh—why—choose another spot.” + +Whereupon I reply, “You don’t know Connecticut.” + +Ever since I began having a garden I have had my troubles with the rocks, +but the worst time came when, in a mood of enthusiastic and absolutely +unintelligent optimism, I decided to have a bit of smooth grass in the +middle of my garden. I wanted it very much. The place was too restless; +you couldn’t sit down anywhere. I felt that I had to have a clear green +spot where I could take a chair and a book. I selected the spot, marked it +off with string, and began to loosen up the earth for a late summer +planting of grass seed. Calendulas and poppies and cornflowers had bloomed +there before, self-sown and able to look out for themselves, so I had +never investigated the depths of the bed to see what the little gnomes had +prepared for me. Now I found out. The spading-fork gave a familiar dull +clink as it struck rock. I felt about for the edge; it was a big one. I +got the crowbar and dropped it, in testing prods; it was a _very_ big one, +and only four inches below the surface. Grass would never grow there in a +dry season. I moved to another part. Another rock, big too! I prodded all +over the allotted space, and found six big fellows lurking just below the +top of the soil. Evidently it was a case for calling in Jonathan. + +He came, grumbling a little, as a man should, but very efficient, armed +with two crowbars and equipped with a natural genius for manipulating +rocks. He made a few well-placed remarks about queer people who choose to +have grass where flowers would grow, and flowers where grass would grow, +also about Connecticut being intended for a quarry and not for a garden +anyhow. But all this was only the necessary accompaniment of the +crowbar-play. Soon, under the insistent and canny urgency of the bars, a +big rock began to heave its shoulder into sight above the soil. I hovered +about, chucking in stones and earth underneath, placing little rocks under +the bar for fulcrums, pulling them out again when they were no longer +needed, standing guard over the flowers in the rest of the garden, with +repeated warnings. “Please, Jonathan, don’t step back any farther; you’ll +trample the forget-me-nots!” “_Could_ you manage to roll this fellow out +along that path and not across the mangled bodies of the marigolds?” +Jonathan grumbled a little about being expected to pick a half-ton pebble +out of the garden with his fingers, or lead it out with a string. + +“Oh, well, of course, if you _can’t_ do it I’ll have to let the marigolds +go this year. But you do such wonderful things with a crowbar, I thought +you could probably just guide it a little.” And Jonathan responds nobly to +the flattery of this remark, and does indeed guide the huge thing, eases +it along the narrow path, grazes the marigolds but leaves them unhurt, +until at last, with a careful arrangement of stone fulcrums and a skillful +twist of the bars, the great rock makes its last response and lunges +heavily past the last flower bed on to the grass beyond. + +When the work was done, the edge of the garden looked like Stonehenge, and +the spot where my grass was to be was nothing but a yawning pit, crying to +be filled. We surveyed it with interest. “If we had a water-supply, I +wouldn’t make a grass-plot,” I said; “I’d make a swimming-pool. It’s deep +enough.” + +“And sit in the middle with your book?” asked Jonathan. + +But there was no water-supply, so we filled it in with earth. Thirty +wheelbarrow loads went in where those rocks came out. And the little +gnomes perched on Stonehenge and jeered the while. I photographed it, and +the rocks “took” well, but as regards the gnomes, the film was +underexposed. + +Thus the grass seed was planted. And we reminded each other of the version +of “America” once given, with unconscious inspiration, by a little friend +of ours:— + + + “Land where our father died, + Land where the pilgrims pried.” + + +It seemed to us to suit the adventure. + +As I have said, I love to have my friends love my garden. But there is one +thing about it that I find does not always appeal to them pleasantly, and +that is its color-schemes. Yet this is not my doing. For in nothing do I +feel more keenly the fact of my mere stewardship than in this matter of +color-scheme. + +I set out with a very rigid one. I was quite decided in my own mind that +what I wanted was white and salmon-pink and lavender. Asters, phlox, sweet +peas, hollyhocks, all were to bend themselves to my rules. At first +affairs went very well. White was easy. White phlox I had, and have—an +inheritance—which from a few roots is spreading and spreading in waves of +whiteness that grow more luxuriant every year. But I bought roots of +salmon-pink and lavender, and then my troubles commenced. About the third +season strange things began to happen. The pink phlox had the strength of +ten. It spread amazingly; but it forgot all about my rules. It +degenerated, some of it—reverted toward that magenta shade that nature +seems so naturally to adore in the vegetable world. To my horror I found +my garden blossoming into magenta pink, blue pink, crimson, cardinal—all +the colors I had determined not under any circumstances to admit. On the +other hand, the lavender phlox, which I particularly wanted, was most +lovely, but frail. It refused to spread. It effaced itself before the +rampant pink and its magenta-tainted brood. I vowed I would pull out the +magentas, but each year my courage failed. They bloomed so bravely; I +would wait till they were through. But by that time I was not quite sure +which was which; I might pull out the wrong ones. And so I hesitated. + +Moreover, I discovered, lingering among the flowers at dusk, that there +were certain colors, most unpleasant by daylight, which at that time took +on a new shade, and, for perhaps half an hour before night fell, were +richly lovely. This is true of some of the magentas, which at dusk turn +suddenly to royal purples and deep lavender-blues that are wonderfully +satisfying. + +For that half-hour of beauty I spare them. While the sun shines I try to +look the other way, and at twilight I linger near them and enjoy their +strange, dim glories, born literally of the magic hour. But I have trouble +explaining them, by daylight, to some of my visitors who like +color-schemes. + +Insubordination is contagious. And I found after a while that my asters +were not running true; queer things were happening among the sweet peas, +and in the ranks of the hollyhocks all was not as it should be. And the +last charge was made upon me by the children’s gardens. Children know not +color-schemes. What they demand is flowers, flowers—flowers to pick and +pick, flowers to do things with. Snapdragon, for instance, is a jolly +playmate, and little fingers love to pinch its cheeks and see its jaws +yawn wide. But snapdragon tends dangerously toward the magenta. Then there +was the calendula—a delight to the young, because it blooms incessantly +long past the early frosts, and has brittle stems that yield themselves to +the clumsiest plucking by small hands. But calendula ranges from a faded +yellow, through really pretty primrose shades, to a deep red-orange +touched with maroon. + +And, finally, there was the portulaca. Children love it, perhaps, best of +all. It offers them fresh blossoms and new colors each morning, and it is +even more easy to pick than the calendula. Who would deny them portulaca? +Yet if this be admitted, one may as well give up the battle. For, as we +all know, there is absolutely no color, except green, that portulaca does +not perpetrate in its blossoms. It knows no shame. + +In short, I am giving up. I am beginning to say with conviction that +color-schemes are the mark of a narrow and rigid taste—that they are born +of convention and are meant not for living things but for wall-papers and +portières and clothes. Moreover, I am really growing callous—or is it, +rather, broad? Colors in my garden that would once have made my teeth ache +now leave them feeling perfectly comfortable. I find myself looking with +unmoved flesh—no creeps nor withdrawals—upon a bed of mixed magentas, +scarlets, rose-pinks, and yellow-pinks. I even look with pleasure. I begin +to think there may be a point beyond which discord achieves a higher +harmony. At least, this sounds well. But, again, I find it hard to explain +to some of my friends. + +Indoors, it is another story. When I bring in the spoils of the garden I +am again mistress and bend all to my will. Here I’ll have no tricks of +color played on me. Sunshine and sky, perhaps, work some spell, for as +soon as I get within four walls my prejudices return; scarlets and +crimsons and pinks have to live in different rooms. I must have my +color-schemes again, and perhaps I am as narrow as the worst. Except, +indeed, for the children’s bowls; here the pink and the magenta, the lamb +and the lion, may lie down together. But it takes a little child to lead +them. + + * * * * * + +Out in my garden I feel myself less and less owner, more and more merely +steward. I decree certain paths, and the phlox says, “Paths? Did you say +paths?” and obliterates them in a season’s growth, so that children walk +by faith and not by sight. I decree iris in one corner, and the primroses +say, “Iris? Not at all. This is our bed. Iris indeed!” And I submit, and +move the iris elsewhere. + +And yet this slipping of responsibility is pleasant, too. So long as my +garden will let me dig in it and weed it and pick it, so long as it +entertains my friends for me, so long as it tosses up an occasional rock +so that Jonathan does not lose all interest in it, so long as it plays +prettily with the children and flings gay greetings to every passer-by, I +can find no fault with it. + +The joys of stewardship are great and I am well content. + + + + + + VI + + + Trout and Arbutus + + +Every year, toward the end of March, I find Jonathan poking about in my +sewing-box. And, unless I am very absent-minded, I know what he is after. + +“No use looking there,” I remark; “I keep my silks put away.” + +“I want red, and as strong as there is.” + +“I know what you want. Here.” and I hand him a spool of red buttonhole +twist. + +“Ah! Just right!” And for the rest of the evening his fingers are busy. + +Over what? Mending our trout-rods, of course. It is pretty work, calling +for strength and precision of grasp, and as he winds and winds, adjusting +all the little brass leading-rings, or supplying new ones, and staying +points in the bamboo where he suspects weakness, we talk over last year’s +trout-pools, and wonder what they will be like this year. + +But beyond wonder we do not get, often for weeks after the trout season +is, legislatively, “open.” Jonathan is “busy.” I am “busy.” We know that, +if April passes, there is still May and June, and so, if at the end of +April, or early May, we do at last pick up our rods,—all new-bedight with +red silk windings, and shiny with fresh varnish,—it is not alone the call +of the trout that decides us, but another call which is to me at least +more imperious, because, if we neglect it now, there is no May and June in +which to heed it. It is the call of the arbutus. + +Any one with New England traditions knows what this call is. Its appeal is +to something far deeper than the love of a pretty flower. For it is the +flower that, to our fathers and our grandfathers, and to their fathers and +grandfathers, meant spring; and not spring in its prettiness and ease, +appealing to the idler in us, nor spring in its melancholy, appealing +to—shall I say the poet in us? But spring in its blessedness of +opportunity, its joyously triumphant life, appealing to the worker in us. +Here, of course, we touch hands with all the races of the world for whom +winter has been the supreme menace, spring the supreme and saving miracle. +But each race has its own symbols, and to the New Englander the symbol is +the arbutus. + +This may seem a bit of sentimentality. And, indeed, we need not expect to +find it expressed by any New England farmer. New England does not go out +in gay companies to bring back the first blossoms. But New England does +nothing in gay companies. It has been taught to distrust ceremonies and +expression of any sort. It rejoices with reticence, it appreciates with a +reservation. And yet I have seen a sprig of arbutus in rough and clumsy +buttonholes on weather-faded lapels which, the rest of the twelve-month +through, know no other flower. And when, in unfamiliar country, I have +interrupted the ploughing to ask for guidance, I usually get it:—“Arbutus? +Yaas. The’s a lot of it up along that hillside and in the woods over +beyond—’t was out last week, some of it, I happened to notice”—this in the +apologetic tone of one who admits a weakness—“guess you’ll find all you +want.” I venture to say that of no other wild flower, except those which +work specific harm or good, could I get such information. + +To many of us, city-bred, the tradition comes through inheritance. It +means, perhaps, the shy, poetic side of our father’s boyhood, only half +acknowledged, after the New England fashion, but none the less real and +none the less our possession. It means rare days, when the city—whose +chiefest signs of spring were the flare of dandelions in yards and parks +and the chatter of English sparrows on ivy-clad church walls—was left +behind, and we were “in the country.” It was a country excitingly +different from the country of the summer vacation, a country not deeply +green, but warmly brown, and sweet with the smell of moist, living earth. +Green enough, indeed, in the spring-fed meadows and folds of the hills, +where the early grass flashes into vividest emerald, but in the woods the +soft mist-colored mazes of multitudinous twigs still show through their +veilings and dustings of color—palest green of birches, gray-green of +poplar, yellow-green of willows, and redder tones of the maples; and along +the fence-lines and roadsides—blessed, untidy fence-lines and roadsides of +New England—a fine penciling of red stems—the cut-back maple bushes and +tangled vines alive to their tips and just bursting into leaf. And +everywhere in the woods, on fence-lines and roadsides, the white blossoms +of the “shad-blow,” daintiest of spring trees,—too slight for a tree, +indeed, though too tall for a bush and looking less like a tree in blossom +than like floating blossoms caught for a moment among the twigs. A moment +only, for the first gust loosens them again and carpets the woods with +their petals, but while they last their whiteness shimmers everywhere. + +Such rare days were all blown through with the wonderful wind of spring. +Spring wind is really different from any other. It is not a finished +thing, like the mellow winds of summer and the cold blasts of winter. It +is an imperfect blend of shivering reminiscence and eager promise. One +moment it breathes sun and stirring earth, the next it reminds us of old +snow in the hollows, and bleak northern slopes. + +When, on these days, the wind blew to us, almost before we saw it, the +first greeting of the arbutus, it always seemed that the day had found its +complete and satisfying expression. Every one comes to realize, at some +time in his life, the power of suggestion possessed by odors. Does not +half the power of the Church lie in its incense? An odor, just because it +is at once concrete and formless, can carry an appeal overwhelmingly +strong and searching, superseding all other expression. This is the appeal +made to me by the arbutus. It can never be quite precipitated into words, +but it holds in solution all the things it has come to mean—dear human +tradition and beloved companionship, the poetry of the land and the +miracle of new birth. + +In late March or early April I am likely to see the first blossom on some +friend’s table—I try not to see it first in a florist’s display! To my +startled question she gives reassuring answer, “Oh, no, not from around +here. This came from Virginia.” + +Days pass, and, perhaps, the mail brings some to me, this time from +Pennsylvania or New Jersey, and soon I can no longer ignore the trays of +tight, leafless bunches for sale on street corners and behind plate-glass +windows. “From York State,” they tell me. I grow restive. + +“Jonathan,” I say, holding up a spray for him to smell, “we’ve got to go. +You can’t resist that. We’ll take a day and go for it—and trout, too.” + +It is as well that arbutus comes in the trout season, for to take a day +off just to pick a flower might seem a little absurd. But, coupled with +trout—all is well. Trout is food. One must eat. The search for food needs +no defense, and yet, the curious fact is, that if you go for trout and +don’t get any, it doesn’t make so much difference as you might suppose, +but if you go for arbutus and don’t get any, it makes all the difference +in the world. And so Jonathan knows that in choosing his brook for that +particular day, he must have regard primarily to the arbutus it will give +us and only secondarily to the trout. + +Every one knows the kind of brook that is, for every one knows the kind of +country arbutus loves—hilly country, with slopes toward the north; bits of +woodland, preferably with pine in it, to give shade, but not too deep +shade; a scrub undergrowth of laurel and huckleberry and bay; and always, +somewhere within sight or hearing, water. It is curious how arbutus, which +never grows in wet places, yet seems to like the neighborhood of water. It +loves the slopes above a brook or the shaggy hillsides overlooking a +little pond or river. + +Fortunately, there is such a brook, in just such country, on our list. +There are not so many trout as in other brooks, but enough to justify our +rods; and not so much arbutus as I could find elsewhere, but enough—oh, +enough! + +To this brook we go. We tie Kit at the bridge, Jonathan slings on a +fish-basket, to do for both, and I take a box or two for the flowers. But +from this moment on our interests are somewhat at variance. The fact is, +Jonathan cares a little more about the trout than about the arbutus, while +I care a little more about the arbutus than about the trout. His eye is +keenly on the brook, mine is, yearningly, on the ragged hillsides that +roll up above it. + +Jonathan feels this. “There isn’t any for two fields yet—might as well +stick to the brook.” + +“I know. I thought perhaps I’d go on down and let you fish this part. Then +I’d meet you beyond the second fence—” + +“Oh, no, that won’t do at all. Why, there’s a rock just below here—down by +that wild cherry—where I took out a beauty last year, and left another. I +want you to go down and get him.” + +“You get him. I don’t mind.” + +“Oh, but I mind. Here, I’ve got it all planned: there’s a bit of +brush-fishing just below—” + +“No brush-fishing for me, please!” + +“That’s what I’m saying, if you’ll only give me time. I’ll take that—there +are always two or three in there—and when you’ve finished here you can go +around me and fish the bend, under the hemlocks, and then the first +arbutus is just beside that, and I’ll join you there.” + +“Well”—I assent grudgingly—“only, really, I’d be just as happy if you’d +fish the whole thing and let me go right on down—” + +“No, you wouldn’t. Now, remember to sneak before you get to that rock. +Drop in six feet above it and let the current do the rest. They’re awfully +shy. I expect you to get at least one there, and two down at the bend.” He +trudges off to his brush-fishing and leaves me bound in honor to extract a +trout from under that rock. I deposit my boxes in the meadow above it, and +“sneak” down. The sneak of a trout fisherman is like no other form of +locomotion, and I am convinced that the human frame was not evolved with +it in mind. But I resort to it in deference to Jonathan’s prejudices—in +deference, also, to the fact that when I do not the trout seldom bite. And +Jonathan is so trustfully counting on my getting that trout! + +I did get him. I dropped in my line, as per directions, and let the +current do the rest; had the thrill of feeling the line suddenly caught +and drawn under the rock, held, then wiggled slightly; I struck, felt the +weight, drew back steadily, and in a few moments there was a flopping in +the grass behind me. + +So that was off my mind. + +I strung him on a twig of wild cherry, gathered up my boxes, and wandered +along the faint path, back of the patch of brush where, I knew, Jonathan +was cheerfully threading his line through tangles of twig, briar, and +vine, compared with which the needle’s eye is as a yawning barn door. +Jonathan’s attitude toward brush-fishing is something which I respect +without understanding. Down one long field I went, where the brook ran in +shallow gayety, and there, ahead, was the bend, a sudden curve of water, +deepening under the roots of an overhanging hemlock. I climbed the stone +wall beside, glanced at the water—very trouty water indeed—glanced at the +hill-pasture above—very arbutusy indeed—laid down my rod and my trout and +my box, and ran up the low bank to a clump of bay and berry-bushes that I +thought I remembered.… Yes! There it was! I had remembered! Ah! The dear +things! + +When you first find arbutus, there is only one thing to do:—lie right down +beside it. Its fragrance as it grows is different from what it is after it +is picked, because with the sweetness of the blossoms is mingled the good +smell of the earth and of the woody twigs and of the dried grass and +leaves. And there are other rewards one gets by lying down. It is all very +well to talk proudly about man’s walking with his head erect and his face +to the heavens, but if we keep that posture all the time we miss a good +deal. The attitude of the toad and the lizard is not to be scorned, though +when the needs of locomotion convert it into the fisherman’s “sneak,” it +is, as I have suggested, to be sparingly indulged in. But if we could only +nibble now and then from “the other side” of Alice’s mushroom, what a new +outlook we should get on the world that now lies about our feet! What new +aspects of its beauty would be revealed to us: the forest grandeurs of the +grass, the architecture of its slim shafts with their pillared aisles and +pointed arches of interlocking and upspringing curves, their ceiling +traceries of spraying tops against a far-away background of sky! + +To know arbutus, you must stoop to its level, and look across the fine, +frosty fur of its stiff little leaves, and feel the nestle of its stems to +the ground, the little up-fling of their tips toward the sun, and the neat +radiance of its flower clusters, with their blessed fragrance and their +pure, babyish color. + +But after that? You want to pick it. Yes, you really want to pick it! + +In this it is different from other flowers. Most of them I am well content +to leave where they grow. In fact, the love of picking things—flowers or +anything else—is a youthful taste: we lose it as we grow older; we become +more and more willing to appreciate without acquiring, or rather, +appreciation becomes to us a finer and more spiritual form of acquiring. +Is it possible that, after all, the old idea of heaven as a state of +enraptured contemplation is in harmony with the trend of our development? + +But if there is arbutus in heaven, I shall need to develop a good deal +further not to want to pick it. It suggests picking; it almost invites it. +There is something about the way it nestles and hides, that makes you want +to see it better. Here is a spray of pure white, living under a green tent +of overlapping leaves; one must raise it, and nip off just one leaf, so +that the blossoms can see out. There is another, a pink cluster, showing +faintly through the dry, matted grass. You feel for the stem, pull it +gently, and, lo, it is many stems, which have crept their way under the +tangle, and every one is tipped with a cluster of stars or round little +buds each on its long stem, fairly begging to be picked. It gets picked. + +Yet sometimes its very beauty has stayed my hand. I shall never forget one +clump I found, growing out of a bank of deep green moss, partly shaded by +a great hemlock. The soft pink blossoms—luxuriant leafy sprays of +them—were lying out on the moss in a pagan carelessness of beauty, as +though some god had willed it there for his pleasure. I sat beside it a +long time, and in the end I left it without picking it. + +On this particular day, Jonathan being still lost in the brush patch, I +had risen from my visit with the first-discovered blossoms and wandered +on, from clump to clump, wherever the glimpse of a leaf attracted me, +picking the choicest here and there and dropping them into my box. After I +do not know how long, I was roused by Jonathan’s whistle. I was some +distance up the hillside by this time, and he was beside the brook, at the +bend. + +“What luck?” he called. + +“Good luck! I’ve found lots. Come up!” + +He took a few steps up toward me, so that conversation could drop from +shouting to speaking levels. “How many did you get?” he asked. + +“How many?… Oh … why … Oh, I got one up there where you showed me—under +the rock, you know.” + +“Good one?” + +“Eight inches. He’s down there by the bars.” + +“Good! And what about the bend?” + +“The bend? Oh, I didn’t fish there—look at these! Aren’t they beauties?” I +came down the hill to hold my open box up to his face. But my casual word +almost effaced the scent of the flowers. + +“Ah—yes—delicious—didn’t fish there? Why not? Did they see you?” + +“Who? The trout? I don’t know. But I saw this. And I just had to pick it.” + +“Well! You’re a great fisherman! And with that water right there beside +you! Lord!” + +“With the arbutus right here beside me! Lord!” + +“But the arbutus would wait.” + +“But the trout would wait. They’re waiting for you now, don’t you hear +them? Go and fish there!” + +“No. That’s your pool.” Jonathan has a way of bestowing a trout-pool on me +as if it were a bouquet. To refuse its opportunities is almost like +throwing his flowers back in his face. + +“Well—of course it’s a beautiful pool—” + +“Best on the brook,” murmured Jonathan. + +“But, truly, I’d enjoy it just as much to have you fish it.” + +“Nobody can fish it now for a while. I thought you’d be there, of course, +and I came stamping along down, close by the bank. They wouldn’t bite +now—not for half an hour, anyway.” + +“Well, then, that’s just right. We’ll go on up the hillside for half an +hour, and then come back and fish it. Set your rod up against the bayberry +here, and come along—look there! you’re almost stepping on some!” + +Jonathan, gradually adjusting himself to the turn of things, stood his rod +up against the bush with the meticulous care of the true sportsman. “Where +did you leave yours?” he asked, with a suspiciousness born of a deep +knowledge of my character. + +“Oh, down by the bars.” + +“Standing up or lying down?” + +“Lying down, I think. It’s all right.” + +“It’s not all right if it’s lying down. Anything might trample on it.” + +“For instance, what?—birds or crickets?” + +“For instance, people or cows.” He strode down the hill, and I saw him +stoop. As he returned I could read disapproval in his gait. “Will you +never learn how to treat a rod! It was lying just beyond the bars. I must +have landed within two feet of it when I jumped over.” + +“I’m sorry. I meant to go back. I know perfectly how to treat a rod. My +trouble comes in knowing when to apply my knowledge.… Well, let’s go up +there. Near those big hemlocks there’s some, I remember.” And we wandered +on, separating a little to scan the ground more widely. + +Once having pried his mind away from the trout, Jonathan was as keen for +arbutus as I could wish, and soon I heard an exclamation, and saw him +kneel. “Oh, come over!” he called; “you really ought to see this growing!” + +“But there’s some I want, right here, that’s lovely—” + +“Never mind. Come and see this—oh, come!” + +Of course I come, and of course I am glad I came, and of course soon I am +obliged to call Jonathan to see some I have found—“Jonathan, it is truly +the loveliest _yet!_ It’s the way it grows—with the moss and all—please +come!” And of course he comes. + +We had been on the hillside a long half-hour, much nearer an hour, when +Jonathan began to grow restive. “Don’t you think you have enough?” he +suggested several times. Finally, he spoke plainly of the trout. + +“Oh, yes, of course,” I said, “you go down and I’ll follow just as soon as +I’ve gone along that upper path.” + +Not at all. That was not what was wanted. So I turned and we went down the +hill, back to the bend, whose seductions I had been so puzzlingly able to +resist. I am sure Jonathan has never yet quite understood how I could +leave that bit of water at my left hand and turn away to the right. + +“Now—sneak!” + +We sneaked, and I sank down just back of the edge of the bank. Jonathan +crouched some feet behind, coaching me:—“Now—draw out a little more +line—not too much—there—and have some slack in your hand. Now, up-stream +fifteen feet—allow for the wind—wait till that gust passes—now! Good! +First-rate! Now let her drift—there—what did I tell you? Give him line! +_Give_ him line! Now, feel of him—careful! You’ll know when to strike … +there!… Oh! too bad!” + +For as I struck, my line held fast. + +“Snagged, by gummy! Can’t you pull clear?” + +“Not without stirring up the whole pool. You’ll have to do the fishing, +after all.” + +“Oh! _too_ bad! That’s hard luck!” + +“Not a bit. I like to watch you do it.” + +And so indeed I did. Once having realized that I was temporarily laid by, +Jonathan put his whole mind on the pool, while I, being honorably released +from all responsibility, except that of keeping my line taut, could put my +whole mind on his performance. There is a little the same sort of pleasure +in watching the skillful handling of a rod that there is in watching the +bow-action of a violinist. Both things demand the utmost nicety of +adjustment: body, arm, wrist, fingers uniting in an interplay of +efficiency exactly adapted to the intricately shifting needs of each +moment. + +Thus I watched, through the typical stages of the sport: the delicate flip +of the bait into the current at just the right spot; its swift descent, +imperceptibly guided by the rod’s quivering tip; its slower drift toward +deep water; its sudden vanishing, and the whir of the reel as the line +goes out; then the pause, the critical moments of “feeling for him”; at +last the strike … and then, a flopping in the grass behind me, and +Jonathan crawling back to kill and unhook him. + +“Don’t get up. There’s probably another one,” he said; and soon, by the +same reptilian methods, was back for another try. There was another one, +and yet another, and then a little fellow, barely hooked. “That’s all,” +said Jonathan, as he rose to put him back into the pool, and we watched +the pretty spotted creature fling himself upstream with a wild flourish of +his gleaming body. + +“Now I’ll get you clear,” said Jonathan, wading out into the water, and, +with sleeves rolled high, feeling deep, deep down under the opposite bank. +“He had you all right—it’s wound round a root and then jabbed deep into it +… hard luck! I wanted you to get those fellows!” And to this day I am sure +he remembers those trout with a tinge of regret. + +I had intended leaving him to fish the rest of the brook, while I went +back to that upper path to look up two or three special arbutus clumps +that I knew, but seeing his depression over the snag incident, I could not +suggest this. Instead I followed the stream with him, accepting his urgent +offer of all the best pools, while he, taking what was left, drew out +perfectly good trout from the most unhopeful-looking bits of water. And at +the end, there was time to return along the upper path and visit my old +friends, so both of us were satisfied. + +On such days, however, there is always one person who is not satisfied, +and that is, Kit the horse. Kit has borne with our vagaries for many +years, but she has never come to understand them. She never fails to greet +our return, as our voices come within the range of her pricked-up ears, by +a prolonged and reproachful whinny, which says as plainly as is necessary, +“Back? Well—I should _think_ it was time! _I should think it was TIME!_” +Now and then we have thought it would be pleasant to have a little +motor-car that could be tucked away at any roadside, without reference to +a good hitching-place, but if we had it, I am sure we should miss that +ungracious welcoming whinny. We should miss, too, the exasperated violence +of Kit’s pace on the first bit of the home road—a violence expressing in +the most ostentatious manner her opinion of folks who keep a respectable +horse hitched by the roadside, far from the delights of the dim, sweet +stable and the dusty, sneezy, munchy hay. + +But leaving out this little matter of Kit’s preference, and also the other +little matter of the trout’s preference, I feel sure that an +arbutus-trouting is peculiarly satisfying. It meets every human need—the +need of food and beauty, the need of feeling strong and skillful, the need +of becoming deeply aware of nature as living and kind. Moreover, it is +very satisfying afterwards. As we sat that evening, over a late supper, +with a shallow dish of arbutus beside us, I remarked, “The advantage of +getting arbutus is, that you bring the whole day home with you and have it +at your elbow.” + +“The advantage of getting trout,” remarked Jonathan dreamily, as if to +himself, “is, that you bring your whole day home with you, and have it for +breakfast.” + + + + + + VII + + + Without the Time of Day + + +“Jonathan, did you ever live without a clock,—whole days, I mean,—days and +days—” + +“When I was a boy—most of the time, I suppose. But the family didn’t like +it.” + +“Of course. But did you like it?” + +“Yes, I liked it all. I seem to remember getting pretty hungry sometimes, +but it’s all rather good as I look back on it.” + +“Let’s do it!” + +“Now?” + +“No. Society is an enlarged family, and wouldn’t like it. But this summer, +when we camp.” + +“How do you know we’re going to camp?” + +“The things we know best we don’t always know how we know.” + +“Well, then,—_if_ we camp—” + +“_When_ we camp—let’s live without a watch.” + +“You’d need one to get there.” + +“Take one, and let it run down.” + +As it turned out, my “when” was truer than Jonathan’s “if.” We did camp. +We did, however, use watches to get there: when we expressed our baggage, +when we sent our canoe, when we took the trolley car and the train; and +the watch was still going as our laden craft nosed gently against the bank +of the river-island that was to be our home for two weeks. It was late +afternoon, and the shadows of the steep woods on the western bank had +already turned the rocks in midstream from silver to gray, and dimmed the +brightness of the swift water, almost to the eastern shore. + +“Will there be time to get settled before dark?” I asked, as we stepped +out into the shallow water and drew up the canoe to unload. + +“Shall I look at my watch to see?” asked Jonathan, with a note of amiable +derision in his voice. + +“Well, I _should_ rather like to know what time it is. We won’t begin till +to-morrow.” + +“You mean, we won’t begin to stop watching. All right. It’s just seventeen +and a half minutes after five. I’ll give you the seconds if you like.” + +“Minutes will do nicely, thank you.” + +“Lots of time. You collect firewood while I get the tent ready. Then it’ll +need us both to set it up.” + +We worked busily, happily. Ah! The joyous elation of the first night in +camp! Is there anything like it? With days and days ahead, and not even +one counted off the shining number! All the good things of childhood and +maturity seem pressed into one mood of flawless, abounding happiness. + +By dark the tent was up, the baggage stowed, the canoe secured, the fire +glowing in a bed of embers, and we sat beside it, looking out past the +glooms of the hemlocks across the moonlit river,—sat and ate city-cooked +chicken and sandwiches and drank thermos-bottled tea. + +“To-morrow we’ll cook,” I said. “To-night it’s rather nice not to have to. +Look at the moonlight on that rock! How black it makes the eddy below!” + +“Good bass under there,” said Jonathan. “We’ll get some to-morrow.” + +“Maybe.” + +“Well, of course, it’s always maybe, with bass. Well—I’m done—and it’s +quarter to ten—late! Oh! Excuse me! Maybe you’d rather I hadn’t told you. +By the way, do I wind my watch to-night or not?” + +“Not.” + +“Not it is, then. Sure you wouldn’t rather have it wound, though? We can +leave it hanging in the tent. It won’t break loose and bite you.” + +“Yes, it would. There would be a something—a taint—” + +“Oh, _all_ right!” + + * * * * * + +We slept with the murmur of the river running through our dreams,—a murmur +of many voices: deep voices, high voices, grumbling voices as the stones +go grinding and rolling along the ever-changing bottom,—and only half +roused when the dawn chorus of the birds filled the air. That dawn chorus +was something we should have been loath to miss. Through the first gray of +the morning there comes a stir in the woods, an expectant tremor; a bird +peeps softly and is still; then another, and another, “softly conferring +together.” As the light grows warmer, comes a clearer note from some +leader, then a full, complete song; another, and the woods are awake, +flinging out their wonderful song-greeting to the morning. There is in it +a prodigality of swift-changing beauty like ocean surf: a continuous and +intricate interweaving of rhythms, pulses and ebbings of clear tone, +beautiful phrases rising antiphonal, showerings of bright notes, moments +of subsidence, almost of pause. As the light grows and sharpens, the music +reaches a crescendo of exuberance, and at last dies down as real day +comes, bringing with it the day’s work. On our island the leader of the +chorus was almost always a song sparrow, though once or twice a wood +thrush came over from the shore woods and filled the hemlock shadows with +the limpid splendors of his song. + +Hearing the chorus through our dreams, we slept again, and when I really +waked the sun was high, flecking the eastern V of our tent with dazzling +patches. I heard Jonathan moving about outside, and the crackling of a +new-made fire. I went to the front of the tent and looked out. Yes, there +they were, the fire and Jonathan, in a quiet space of shade where the +early coolness still hung. Beyond them, half shut out from view by the +low-spreading hemlock boughs, was the open river—such gayety of swift +water! Such dazzle of midsummer morning! I drew back, eager to be out in +it. + +“Bacon and eggs, is it?” called Jonathan, “or shall I run down and try for +a bass?” + +“Don’t!” I called. I knew that if he once got out after bass he was lost +to me for the day. And now we had cut loose from even the mild tyranny of +his watch. As I thought of this I went over to the many-forked tree, whose +close-trimmed branches served our tent as hat-rack, clothes-rack, +everything-that-can-hang-or-perch-rack, and opened Jonathan’s watch. + +“Well, what time is it?” Jonathan was peering in between the tent-flaps. + +“Twenty-two minutes before five.” + +“A.M., I judge. Sorry you didn’t let me wind it?” + +“Not a bit. I was just curious to see when it stopped, that was all.” + +“Well, now you know. Hereafter the official time for the camp is 4:38—A.M. +or P.M., according to taste. Come along. The bacon’s done, and I’m blest +if I want to drop in the eggs.” + +Dropping an egg will never, I fear, be one of Jonathan’s most finished +performances. He watched me do it with generous admiration. “If you could +just get over being scared of them,” I suggested, as the last one plumped +into the pan and set up its gentle sizzle. + +“No use. I _am_ scared of the things. I tap and tap, and nothing happens, +and then I get mad and tap hard, and they’re all over the place.” + +By the time breakfast was over, even the coolness under the hemlocks was +beginning to grow warm and aromatic. The birds in the shore woods were +quieter, though out at the sunny end of our island, where the hemlocks +gave place to low scrub growth, the song sparrow sang gayly now and then. + +“Now,” said Jonathan, “what about fishing?” + +“Well—let’s fish!” + +“One up stream and one down, or keep together?” + +“Together,” I decided. “If we go two ways there’s no telling when I’ll +ever see you again.” + +“Yes, there is: when I’m hungry.” + +“No; some time after you’ve noticed you’re hungry.” + +“Now, if we had watches it would be so much simpler: we could meet here +at, say, one o’clock.” + +“Simple, indeed! When did you ever look at a watch when you were fishing, +unless I made you? No, my way is simple, but we stay together.” + +Of course, in river fishing, “together” means simply not absolutely out of +sight of each other. Jonathan may be up to his arm-pits in mid-current, or +marooned on a rock above a swirling eddy, while I am in a similar +situation beyond calling distance, but so long as a bend in the river does +not cut us off, we are “together,” and very companionable togetherness it +is, too. When I see Jonathan wildly waving to attract my attention, I know +he has either just caught a big bass or else just lost one, and this gives +me something to smile over as I wonder which it is. After a time, if I am +catching shiners and no bass, and Jonathan doesn’t seem to be moving, I +infer that his luck is better than mine, and drift along toward him. Or it +may be the other way around, and he comes to look me up. Bass are the most +uncertain of fish, and no one can predict when they will elect to bite, or +where. Sometimes they are in the still water, deep or shallow according to +their caprice; sometimes they hang on the edges of the rapids; sometimes +they are in the dark, smooth eddies below the great boulders; sometimes in +the clear depths around the rocks near shore. Each day afresh,—indeed, +each morning and each afternoon,—the fisherman must try, and try, and try, +until he discovers what their choice has been for that special time. Yet +no fisherman who has once drawn out a good bass from a certain bit of +water can help feeling, next time, that there is another waiting for him +there. That is one of the reasons why he is always hopeful, and so always +happy. The fish he has caught, at this well-remembered spot and that, rise +up out of the past and flick their tails at him; and all the stretches +between—stretches of water that have never for him held anything but +shiners, stretches of time diversified by not even a nibble—sink into +pleasant insignificance. + +We banked our fire, stowed everything in the tent that a thunderstorm +would hurt, and splashed out into the river. There it lay in all its +bright, swift beauty, and we stood a moment, looking, feeling the push of +the water about our knees and the warmth of the sun on our shoulders. + +“It makes a difference, sleeping out in it all,” I said. “You feel as if +it belonged to you so much more. I quite own the river this morning, don’t +you?” + +“Quite. But not the bass in it. Bet you don’t catch one!” + +“Bet I beat you!” + +“Bass, mind you. Sunfish don’t count. You’re always catching sunfish.” + +“They count in the pan. But I’ll beat you on bass. I know some places—” + +“Who doesn’t? All right, go ahead!” + +We were off; Jonathan, as usual, wading up to his chest or perched on a +bit of boulder above some dark, slick rapid; I preferring water not more +than waist-deep, and not too far from shore to miss the responses of the +wood-folk to my passing: soft flurries of wings; shy, half-suppressed +peepings; quick warning notes; light footfalls, hopping or running or +galloping; the snapping of twigs and the crushing of leaves. Some sounds +tell me who the creature is,—the warning of the blue jay, the whirr of the +big ruffed grouse, the thud of the bounding rabbit,—but many others leave +me guessing, which is almost better. When a very big stick snaps, I always +feel sure a deer is stealing away, though Jonathan assures me that a +chewink can break twigs and “kick up a row generally,” so that you’d swear +it was nothing smaller than a wild bull. + +So we fished that day. When I caught a bass, which was seldom, I whooped +and waved it at Jonathan, and when I caught a shiner, which was rather +often, I waved it too, just to keep his mind occupied. Hours passed, and +we met at a bend in the river where the deep water glides close to shore. + +“Hungry?” I asked. + +“Now you speak of it, yes.” + +“Shall we go back?” + +“How can I tell? Now, if we only had that watch we’d know whether we ought +to be hungry or not.” + +“What does that matter, if we _are_ hungry? Besides, if you’d had a watch, +you’d have had to carry it in your teeth. You know perfectly well you +wouldn’t have brought it, anyway.” + +“Well—then, at least when we got back, we should have known whether we +ought to have been hungry or not. Now we shall never know.” + +“Never! Oh! Look there, Jonathan! We’re going to catch it!” A sense of +growing shadow in the air had made me look up, and there, back of the +steep-rising woods, hung a blue-black cloud, with ragged edges crawling +out into the brightness of the sky. + +“Sure enough! The bass’ll bite now, if it really comes. Wait till the +first drops, and see what you see.” + +We had not long to wait. There came that sudden expectancy in the air and +the trees, the strange pallor in the light, the chill sweep of wind gusts +with warm pauses between. Then a few big drops splashed on the dusty, +sun-baked stones about us. + +“Now! Wade right out there, to the edge of that ledge—don’t slip over, +it’s deep. I’ll go down a little way.” + +I waded out carefully, and cast, in the smooth, dark water already +beginning to be rain-pocked. It was surprisingly shivery, that storm wind! +I glanced toward shore to look for shelter—I remembered an overhanging +ledge of rock—then my line went taut! I forgot about shelter, forgot about +being chilly; I knew it was a good bass. + +I got him in—too big to go through the hole in my creel—cast for +another—and another—and yet another. The rain began to fall in sheets, and +the wind nearly blew me over, but who could run away from such fishing? +The surface of the river, deep blue-gray, seemed rising everywhere in +little jets to meet the rain. Rapids, eddies, still waters, weedy edges, +all looked alike; there were neither waves nor swirls nor glassy slicks, +but all were roughly furry under the multitudinous assaults of the fierce +rain-drops. The sky was mottled lead-color, the wind blew less strongly, +but cold—cold. And under that water the bass were biting, my rod was +bending double, my reel softly screaming as I gave line, and one after +another I drew the fish alongside and dipped them out with my landing net. + +Then, as suddenly as they had begun, they stopped biting. I waited long +minutes; nothing happened, and all at once I realized that I was very wet +and very cold. Wading ashore, I saw Jonathan shivering along up the narrow +beach toward me, his shoulders drawn in to half their natural spread, neck +tucked in between his collar-bones, knees slightly bent. + +“You can’t be cold?” I questioned as soon as he was near enough to hear me +through the slash of the rain and wind. + +“No, of course not; are you?” + +We didn’t discuss it, but ran up the bank to the rock-ledge and crouched +under it, our teeth literally chattering. + +“Did you ever see such fishing?” I managed to stammer. + +“Great! But oh, _why_ didn’t I bring the whiskey bottle?” + +“Let’s run for camp! We can’t be wetter.” + +We crawled out into the rain again, and first sprinted and then +dog-trotted along the river edge. No bird notes now in the woods beside +us, no whirring of wings; only the rain sounds: soft swishings and +drippings and gusty showerings, very different from the flat, flicking +sounds when rain first starts in dry woods. + +Camp looked a little cheerless, but a blazing fire, started with dry stuff +we had stowed inside the tent, changed things, and dry clothes changed +them still more, and we sat within the tent flaps and ate ginger-snaps in +great contentment of spirit while we waited for the rain to stop. + +It did stop, and very soon the fish were sizzling in the pan. + +“Of course, if we had a watch, now—” suggested Jonathan, as he carefully +tucked under the pan little sticks of just the right length. + +“What should we know more than we do now—that we’re hungry?” I asked. + +“Well, for one thing, we’d know what time it is,” replied Jonathan +tranquilly. + +“And for another we’d know whether it’s dinner or supper I’m cooking,” I +supplemented. “But does it matter? You won’t get anything different, no +matter which it is—just fish is what you’ll get. And pretty soon the sun +will be out, and you can set up a stick and watch the shadow and make a +sundial for yourself.” + +“Oh, I don’t really care which it is.” + +“Do you suppose I don’t know that! And meanwhile, you might cut the bread +and make some toast,—there are some good embers on your side under the +pan,—and I’ll get the butter, and there we’ll be.” + +By the time the toast was made and the fish curling brownly away from the +pan, the sun had indeed come out, at first pale and watery, then clear, +and still high enough in the heavens to set the soaked earth steaming +fragrantly with its heat. Odors of hemlock and wet earth mingled with +odors of toast and fried fish. + +“Um-m! Smell it all!” I said. “What a lot we should miss if we didn’t eat +in the kitchen!” + +“Or cook in the dining-room—which?” + +“And hear that song sparrow! Doesn’t it sound as if the rain had washed +his song a little cleaner and clearer?” + +There followed the wonderful afterlight that a short, drenching rain +leaves behind it—a hush of light, deeply pervasive and friendly. The +sunshine slanted across the gleaming wet rocks in the river, lit up the +rain-darkened trunks of the hemlocks, glinted on the low-hanging leaves, +and flashed through the dripping edges of sagging fern fronds. As twilight +came on, we canoed across to the side of the river where the road lay—the +other side was steep and pathless woods—and walked down to the nearest +farmhouse to buy eggs for the morning. Back again by the light of a +low-hung moon, and across the dim water to our own island and the embers +of our fire. + +“Oh, Jonathan! We never asked them what time it was!” I said. “I meant +to—for your sake—I thought you’d sleep better if you knew.” + +“Too bad! Probably I should have. I thought of it, of course, but was +afraid that if I asked it would spoil your day.” + +“It would take something pretty bad to spoil a day like this one,” I said. + + * * * * * + +Two days later the weather turned still and warm, the bass refused to +bite, and even the sunfish lay, shy or wary or indifferent, in their +shallow, sunny pools, so we resolved to walk down the river to the +post-office, four miles away, for possible mail. As we sat on the steps of +the little store, looking it over,—“Here’s news,” said Jonathan; “Jack and +Molly say they’ll run up if we want them, day after to-morrow—up on the +morning train, and back on the evening.” + +“Good! Tell them to come along.” + +“No—it’s to-morrow—letter’s been here since yesterday. I’ll telegraph.” + +As we tramped home we planned the day. “We’ll meet them and all walk up +together,” said Jonathan. + +“We’d better catch some bass and leave them all hooked in a pool, ready +for them to pull out,” I added; “otherwise they may not catch any. And +maybe you’d better meet them and I’ll have dinner ready when you get +back.” + +“Nonsense! You come, and we’ll all get dinner when we get back. That’s +what they’re coming for—to see the whole thing.” + +“But if it’s late—they’ve got to get back for that down train.” + +“Well—time enough.” + +“Oh, Jonathan! What about catching that train?” + +“They’ll have watches—watches that go.” + +“But what about our meeting them? The train arrives at 10:15, they said. +What does 10:15 look like in the sky, I wonder!” + +“Or rather, what does 8.45 look like? It takes an hour and a half to get +there, counting crossing the river.” + +“Yes—dear me! Well, Jonathan, we’ll just have to get up early and go, and +then wait.” + +“Or else take our watch to the farmhouse and set it.” + +“Jonathan, I will not! I’d rather start at daylight.” + +Which was very nearly what we did. The morning opened with a sun obscured, +and I felt sure it was stealing a march on us and would suddenly burst out +upon us from a noonday sky. We breakfasted hastily, ferried across to +shore, and set a swinging pace down the road. As we walked, the sun burned +through the mist, and our shadows came out, dim, long things, striding +with the exaggerated gait that shadows have, over the grassy banks to our +right. + +“I think,” said Jonathan, “it may be as late as seven o’clock, but perhaps +it’s only six.” + +When we reached the station, the official clock registered 8.30. We +strolled over to the store-and-post-office and got more letters—one from +Molly and Jack saying thank you they’d come. “They don’t entirely +understand our mail system up here,” said Jonathan. We got some +ginger-cookies and some milk and had a second breakfast, and finally +wandered back to the station to wait for the train. It came, bearing the +expected two, and much friendliness. “Get our letter? There, Jack! He said +you wouldn’t, but I said you would. I made him send it … four miles to +walk? What fun!” + +It was fun, indeed, and all went well until after dinner, when +Jack—saying, “Well, maybe we’d better be starting back for that +train”—drew out his watch. He opened it, muttered something, put it to his +ear, then began to wind it rapidly. He wound and wound. We all laughed. + +“Looks as if you hadn’t remembered to wind it last night,” said Jonathan, +glancing at me. + +“I haven’t done that in months, hang it! Give me the time, will you, +Jonathan?” said Jack. + +“Sorry!” Jonathan was smiling genially. “Mine’s run down too. It stopped +at twenty-two minutes before five—A. M., I think.” + +“What luck! And Molly didn’t bring hers.” + +“You told me not to,” Molly flicked in. + +“So here we are,” said Jonathan, “entirely without the time of day.” + +“But plenty of real time all round us,” I said. “Let’s use it, and start.” +I avoided Jonathan’s eye. + +We reached the station with an hour and ten minutes to spare—bought more +ginger-cookies and more milk. As we sat eating them in the midst of the +preternatural calm that marks a country railroad station outside of train +times, Molly remarked brightly,— + +“Well, I don’t see but we got on just as well without a watch, didn’t we, +Jack? Why do we need watches, anyway? Do _you_ see?” she turned to us. +“Jack does everything by his watch—eats and breathes and sleeps by it—” + +Jack returned, watch in hand—he had been getting railroad time from the +telegraph operator. “Want to set yours while you think of it?” he asked +Jonathan. + +“Sorry—thank you—didn’t bring it,” said Jonathan. + +“By George, man, what’ll you do?” Real consternation sounded in Jack’s +tones. + +“Oh, we’ll get along somehow,” said Jonathan. “You see, we don’t have many +engagements, except with the bass, and they never meet theirs, anyhow.” + +When the train had gone, I said, “Jonathan, why didn’t you tell them it +was my whim?” + +“Oh, I just didn’t,” said Jonathan. + +As Jonathan had predicted, we did get along somehow—got along rather well, +on the whole. There are, of course, some drawbacks to an unwatched life. +You never want to start the next meal till you are hungry, and after that +it takes one or two or three hours, as the case may be, to go back to camp +and get the meal ready, and by that time you are almost hungrier than you +like being. But except for this, and the little matter of meeting trains, +it is rather pleasant to break away from the habit of watching the watch, +and it was with real regret that, on the last night of our camp, we took +our watch to the farmhouse to set it. + +“Run down, did it? Guess you forgot to wind it. Well—we do forget things +sometimes, all of us do,” the farmer’s wife said comfortingly as she went +to look at the clock. “Twenty minutes to seven, our clock says. It’s apt +to be fast, so I guess you won’t miss any trains. Father he says he’d +rather have a clock fast than slow any day, but it don’t often get more +than ten minutes wrong either way.” + +And to us, after our two weeks of camp, ten minutes’ error in a clock +seemed indeed slight. + +“Jonathan,” I said, as we walked back along the road, “I hate to go back +to clock time. I like real time better.” + +“You couldn’t do so many things in a day,” said Jonathan. + +“No—maybe not.” + +“But maybe that wouldn’t matter.” + +“Maybe it wouldn’t,” I said. + + + + + + VIII + + + The Ways of Griselda + + +“Of course you don’t know what her name is,” I said, as we stood examining +the sleek little black mare Jonathan had just brought up from the city. + +“No. Forgot to ask. Don’t believe they’d have known anyway—one of a +hundred or so.” + +“Well, we’ll name her again. Dear me—she’s rather plain! Probably she’s +useful.” + +“Hope so,” said Jonathan. Then, stepping back a little, in a slightly +grieved tone, “But I don’t call her plain. Wait till she’s groomed up—” + +“It’s that droop of her neck—sort of patient—and the way she drops one of +her hips—if they are hips.” + +“But we want a horse to be patient.” + +“Yes. I don’t know that I care about having her _look_ so terribly much so +as this. I think I’ll call her Griselda.” + +“Now, why Griselda?” + +“Why, don’t you know? She was that patient creature, with the horrid +husband who had to keep trying to see just how patient she was. It’s a +hateful story—enough to turn any one who brooded on it into a militant +suffragette.” + +“But you can’t call a horse Griselda—not for common stable use, you know.” + +“Call her ‘Griz’ for short. It does very well.” + +Jonathan jeered a little, but in the family the name held. Our man Hiram +said nothing, but I think in private he called her “Fan” or “Beauty” or +“Lady,” or some such regulation stable name. + +Called by any name, she pleased us, and she _was_ patient. She trotted +peacefully up hill and down, she did her best at ploughing and haymaking +and all the odd jobs that the farm supplied. She stood when we left her, +with that same demure, almost overdone droop of the neck that I had first +noticed. When I met Jonathan at the station, she stood with her nose +against a snorting train, looking as if nothing could rouse her. + +“Good little horse you got there,” remarked the station agent. “Where’d +you find her?” + +“Oh, I picked her out of a bunch down in the city,” said Jonathan +casually. “I didn’t think I knew much about horses, but I guess I was in +luck this time.” + +“Guess you know more about horses than you’re sayin’.” And Jonathan, thus +pressed, admitted with suitable reluctance that he _had_ now and then been +able to detect a good horse by his own observation. + +On the way home he openly congratulated himself on his find. “I really +wasn’t sure I knew how to pick out a horse,” he remarked, in a glow of +retrospective modesty, “but I certainly got a treasure this time.” + +Griz had been with us about two weeks, and all went well. Then another +horse was needed for farm work, and one was sent up—one Kit by name—a big, +pleasant, rather stupid brown mare. + +“They do say two mares don’t git on so well together as a mare ’n a +horse,” remarked Hiram. + +“But these are both such quiet creatures,” I protested, to which Hiram +made no answer. Hiram seldom made an answer unless fairly cornered into +it. + +For two or three days after the new arrival nothing happened, so far as we +knew, except that Griz always laid her ears back, and looked queer about +her under lip, whenever Kit was led in or out of the stall next her, while +Kit always huddled up close to her manger whenever Griz was led past her +heels. Once or twice Griz slipped her halter in the stall, and Hiram said +there was a place on Kit that looked as if she had been kicked, but when +we scrutinized Griz, neck a-droop and eyes a-blink, we found it hard to +think ill of her. Besides, Jonathan was now fairly committed to the +opinion that he had “got a treasure this time.” “Kit may have hurt herself +lying down,” he suggested, and again Hiram made no answer. + +Then one night, sometime during the very small, very dark, and very sleepy +hours, we were awakened by awful sounds. “What is it? What _is_ it?” I +gasped. + +Crash! Bang! Boom! The trampling of hoofs!—heavy, hollow pounding!—the +tearing and splintering of wood!—all coming from the barn, though loud +enough, indeed, to have come from the next room. + +Jonathan was up in an instant muttering, “Where are my rubber boots?—and +my coat?” + +“Jonathan! _what_ a combination!” + +But he was gone, and I heard the snap of the lantern and the slam of the +back door almost before the rocking-chair in the sitting-room that he had +hit—and talked to—had stopped rocking. Then I heard him calling outside +Hiram’s window and then he ran past our window, out to the barn. I wished +he had waited for Hiram, but I had an undercurrent of pleasure in hearing +him run. Jonathan’s theory is that there is never any hurry, and now and +then I like to have this notion jolted up a little. + +Meanwhile the awful sounds had ceased. There was the rumble of the stable +door, a pause, and Jonathan’s voice in conversational tones. Next came the +flashing of Hiram’s lantern, and the _tromp, tromp, tromp_, in much +quicker tempo than usual, of Hiram’s heavy boots. Hiram’s theory was a +good deal like Jonathan’s, so this also gave me pleasure. Finally, there +came the flash of another lantern, and I recognized the quick, short step +of Mrs. Hiram. I smiled to myself, picturing the meeting between her and +Jonathan, for I knew just how Jonathan was costumed. In two minutes I +heard her steps repassing, and in five minutes Jonathan returned. He was +chuckling quietly. + +“I guess Griz got all she needed—didn’t know either of ’em had so much +spunk in ’em.” + +“What happened?” + +“Don’t know, exactly, but when I opened that door, there was Griz, just +inside, no halter on, head down, meek as Moses, as far away from Kit’s +heels as she could get—she’s got the mark of them on her leg and her +flank.” + +“Is she hurt?—or Kit?” + +“No, not so far as we can see, not to amount to anything—except maybe +Griz’s feelings.” + +“And what about Mrs. Hiram’s feelings?” + +Jonathan laughed aloud. “I was inside with Kit, and she called out to know +if she could help.” + +“And what did you say?” + +“I said, ‘Not on your life.’ ” + +“So that was why she came back. Did you really say,‘Not on your life,’ or +did you only imply it in your tone, while you actually said, ‘No, thank +you very much’?” + +“I really said it. At least, I don’t remember conversations the way you +do, but I didn’t feel a bit like thanking anybody, and I don’t believe I +did.” + +“Well, I wish I’d heard you. One misses a good deal—” + +“You can see the stable to-morrow. That’ll keep. They must have had a time +of it! The walls are marked and splintered as high as I can reach. And I +don’t believe Kit’ll cringe when Griz passes her any more.” + +“Of course you remember Hiram _said_ two mares didn’t usually get on very +well, and even when they’re chosen by a good judge of horses—” + + * * * * * + +After that the two did get along peaceably enough, and Jonathan assured me +that all horses had these little affairs. One day we drove over to the +main street of the village on an errand. + +“Will she stand?” I questioned. + +“Better hitch her, perhaps,” said Jonathan, getting out the rope. He +snapped it into her bit-ring, then threw the other end around a post and +started to make a half-hitch. But as he drew up the rope it was suddenly +jerked out of his hand. He looked up and saw Griselda’s patient head +waving high above him on the end of an erect and rebellious neck, the +hitch-rope waggling in loops and spirals in the air, and the whole outfit +backing away from him with speed and decision. He was so astonished that +he did nothing, and in a moment Griz had stopped backing and stood still, +her head sagging gently, the rope dangling. + +“Well—I’ll—be—” I didn’t try to remember just what Jonathan said he would +be, because it doesn’t really matter. We both stared at Griz as if we had +never seen her before. Griz looked at nothing in particular, she blinked +long lashes over drowsy, dark eyes, and sagged one hip. + +“She’s trying to make believe she didn’t do it—but she did,” I said. + +“Something must have startled her,” said Jonathan, peering up and down the +deserted street. Two roosters were crowing antiphonally in near-by yards, +and a dog was barking somewhere far off. + +“What?” I said. + +“You never can tell, with a horse.” + +“No, apparently not,” I said, smiling to myself; and I added hastily, as I +saw Jonathan go forward to her head, “_Don’t_ try it again, please! I’ll +stay by her while you go in. _Please!_” For I had detected on Jonathan’s +face a look that I very well knew. It was the same expression he had worn +that Sunday he led the calf to pasture. He made no answer, but stood +examining the hitch-rope. + +“No use,” he said, quietly releasing it and tossing its coil into the +carriage, “It’s too rotten. If it snapped, she’d be ruined.” + +I breathed freer. I privately hoped that all the hitch-ropes at the farm +were rotten. + +“Griz stands perfectly well without hitching,” I said as we drove home, +“Why do you force an issue?” + +“I didn’t. She did. She’s beaten me. If I don’t hitch her now, she’ll know +she’s master.” + +“Oh, dear!” I sighed. “Let her _be_ master! Where’s the harm? It’s just +your vanity.” + +“Perhaps so,” said Jonathan. + +When he agrees with me like that I know it’s hopeless. + +The next night he wheeled in at the big gate bearing about his shoulders a +coil of heavy rope. + +“It looks like a ship’s cable,” I said. + +“Yes,” he responded, leaning his bicycle against his side, and swinging +the coil over his head. “I want it for mooring purposes. Think it’ll moor +Griz?” + +“Jonathan!” I exclaimed, “you won’t!” + +“Watch me,” said Jonathan, and he proceeded to explain to me the working +of the tackle. + +One end had a ring in it, and as nearly as I remember, the plan was to put +the rope around her body, under what would be her arm-pits if she had +arm-pits,—horses’ joints are never called what one would expect, of +course,—run the end through the ring, then forward between her legs and +through the bit-ring. + +“Then, when she sets back, it cuts her in two,” he concluded cheerfully. + +“But you don’t _want_ her in two,” I protested. + +“She won’t set back,” he responded; “at least, not more than once. +To-morrow’s Sunday; I’ll have to hitch her at church.” + +I hoped it would rain, so we needn’t go, but we were having a drought and +the morning dawned cloudless. We reached the church just on the last +stroke of the bell. The women were all within; the men and boys lounging +in the vestibule were turning reluctant feet to follow them. + +“You go right in,” said Jonathan, “I’ll be in soon.” + +I turned to protest, but he was already driving round to the side, and a +hush had fallen over the congregation within that made it embarrassing to +call. Besides, one of the deacons stood holding open the door for me. + +I slipped into a pew near the back, with the apologetic feeling one often +has in an old country church—a feeling that one is making the ghosts move +along a little. They did move, of course,—probably ghosts are always +polite when one really meets them,—and I sat down. Indeed, I was thinking +very little of ghosts that day, or of the minister either. My ears were +cocked to catch and interpret all the noises that came in through the open +windows on my left. My eyes wandered in that direction, too, though the +clear panes revealed nothing more exciting than flickering maple leaves +and a sky filmed over by veils of cloud. + +The moralists tell us that what we get out of any experience depends upon +what we bring to it. What I brought to it that morning was a mind agog, +attuned to receive these expected outside sounds. To all such sounds the +service within was merely a background—a background which didn’t know its +place, since it kept pushing itself more or less importunately into the +foreground. I sat there, of course, with perfect propriety of demeanor, +but my reactions were something like this:— + +_Hymn 912_ … seven stanzas! horrors! oh! _omit the 3d, 5th, and 6th_—well, +I should hope so!… I can’t hear a thing while this is going on!… He hasn’t +come in yet! _Scripture reading for to-day_—why can’t he give us the +passage and let us read it for ourselves?—well, his voice is rather high +and uneven, I think I could make out Jonathan’s through the loopholes in +it.… There! What was that, I wonder! Sounded like shouting,—oh, why can’t +he talk softly! _Let us unite in prayer._ Ah! now we’ll have a long, quiet +time, anyway!… if only he wouldn’t pray quite so loud! Why pray aloud at +all, anyway? I like the Quaker way best: a good long strip of silence, +where your thoughts can wash around in any fashion that—There! +No—yes—no—it’s just people going by on the road.… Maybe he’s in the back +of the church now, waiting for the close of the prayer. Seems as if I had +to look.… Well, he isn’t.… _For thy name’s sake, amen._ + +And then the collection, with an organ voluntary the while—now why an +organ voluntary? Why not leave people to their thoughts some of the time? + +And at last, the sermon:—_The text to which I wish to call your attention +this morning_—my attention, forsooth! My attention was otherwise occupied. +Ah! A puff of warm, sweet air from behind me, and the soft, padding noise +of the swinging doors, apprised me of an incomer. A cautious tread in the +aisle—I moved along a little to make room. + +In a city church probably I should have thrown propriety to the winds and +had the gist of the story out of him at once, but in a country church +there are always such listening spaces,—the very pew-backs and cushions +seem attentive, the hymnals creak in their racks, and the little stools +cry out nervously when one barely touches them. It was too much for me. I +was coerced into an outer semblance of decorum. However, I snatched a +hasty glance at Jonathan’s face. It was quite red and hot-looking, but +calm, very calm, and I judged it to be the calm, not of defeat nor yet of +settled militancy, but of triumph. I even thought I detected the flicker +of a grin,—the mere atmospheric suggestion of a grin,—as if he felt the +urgent if furtive appeal in my glance. At any rate, Jonathan was all +right, that was clear. And as to Griz—whether she was still one mare or +two half-mares—it didn’t so much matter. And now for the sermon! I +gathered myself to attend. + +As we stood up for the last hymn, I whispered, “How did it go?” + +“All right. She’s hitched,” was the answer. + +After church there was the usual stir of sociability, and when I emerged +into the glare of the church steps, I saw Jonathan driving slowly around +from the rear. Griz walked meekly, her head sagged, her eyes blinked. + +“Good quiet little horse you’ve got there,” said a deacon over my +shoulder; “don’t get restless standing, the way some horses do.” + +“Yes, she’s very quiet,” I said. + +I got in, and at last, as we drove off, the flood-gates of my impatience +broke:— + +“Well?” I said,—“well?” + +“Well—” said Jonathan. + +“_Well? Tell_ me about it!” + +“I’ve told you. I hitched her.” + +“How did you hitch her?” + +“Just the way I said I would.” + +“Didn’t she mind?” + +“Don’t know.” + +“Did she make a fuss?” + +“Not much.” + +“What do you mean by much?” + +“Oh, she set back a little.” + +“Do any harm?” + +“No.” + +“Hurt herself?” + +“Guess not.” + +“Jonathan, you drive me distracted—you have no more sense for a story—” + +“But there was nothing in particular—” + +“Now, Jonathan, if there was nothing in particular, _why_ didn’t you get +into church till the sermon was begun, and why were you so red and hot?” + +Jonathan smiled indulgently. “Why, of course, she didn’t care about being +hitched. I thought you knew that. But it was perfectly easy.” + +And that was about all I could extract by the most artful questions. I +took my revenge by telling Jonathan the deacon’s compliment to Griz. “He +said she didn’t get restless standing, the way so many horses did. I +thought of mentioning that you were a rather good judge of horses, in an +amateur way, but then I thought it might seem like boasting, so I didn’t.” + +After that, of course, I didn’t really deserve to hear the whole story, +but the next night I happened to be in the hammock while Jonathan was +talking to a neighbor at the front gate, and he was relating the incident +with detail enough to have satisfied the most hungry gossip. Only thus did +I learn that Bill Howard, who had wound the rope twice round the post to +give himself a little leeway, was drawn right up to the post when she set +back; that they had been afraid the headstall would tear off; that they +had been rather nervous about the post, and other such little points, +which I had not been clever enough to elicit by my questions. + +Now, why? Probably a man likes to tell a story when he likes to tell it. I +find myself wondering how much Odysseus told Penelope about his adventures +when she got him to herself for a good talk. Is it significant that his +really long story was told to the King of the Phæacians? + +As to Griz:—it would perhaps not be worth while to recount her subsequent +history. It was a curious one, consisting of long stretches of continuous +and ostentatious meekness, broken by sudden flare-ups which, after their +occurrence, always seemed incredible. She never again “set back” when +Jonathan was the one to hitch her, but this was a concession made to him +personally, and had no effect on her general habits. We talked of changing +her name, but could never manage it. We thought of selling her, but she +was too valuable—most of the time. And when we finally parted from her our +relief was deeply tinged with regret. + +I have sometimes wondered whether such flare-ups were not the natural and +necessary means of recuperation from such depths of meekness. I have even +wondered whether the original Griselda may not have—but this is not a +dissertation on early Italian poetry, nor on the nature of women. + + + + + + IX + + + A Rowboat Pilgrimage + + +We were glad that the plan of the rowboat cruise dawned upon us almost a +year before it came to pass. We were the gainers by just that rich length +of expectancy. + +For the joy that one gets from any cherished plan is always threefold: +there is the joy of looking forward, the joy of the very doing, and the +joy of remembering. They are all good, but only the last is eternal. The +doing is hedged between limits, and its pleasures are often confused, +overlaid with alien or accidental impressions. The joy of the forward look +is pure and keen, but its bounds, too, are set. It begins at the moment +when the first ray of the plan-idea dawns on one’s mind, and it ends with +the day of fulfillment. If the dawn begins long before the day, so much +the better. + +It was early fall, and we had come in from a day by the river, where we +had tramped miles up, to one of its infrequent bridges, and miles down on +the other bank. Now we sat before the fire, talking it over. + +“If we only had a boat!” I said. + +“Boat! What do you want a boat for? You wouldn’t want to sit in a boat all +day.” + +“Who said I would? But I want to get into it, and float off, and get out +again somewhere else. That’s my idea of a boat.” + +“Oh, of course, a boat would be handy—” + +“Handy! You talk as if it was a buttonhook!” + +“Well?” + +“Well—of course it _is_ handy—as you call it—but a boat means such a lot +of things—adventure, romance. When you’re in a boat—a little boat—anything +might happen.” + +“Yes,” said Jonathan, drawing the logs together, “that’s just the way your +family feels about it when you’re young.” + +Then we both laughed, and there was a reminiscent pause. + +“What became of your boat?” I asked finally. + +“Sold. You kept yours.” + +“Yes. It’s in the cellar, there at Nantucket. I could have it sent on.” + +“Cost as much as to buy a new one.” + +“A new one wouldn’t be as good.” I bristled a little. Any one who has +owned a boat is very sensitive about its virtues. + +“How big?” + +“How should I know? A little boat—maybe twelve feet.” + +“Two oars?” + +“Four.” + +“Round bottom?” + +“Yes. She’d ride anything.” + +“Well”—Jonathan suddenly expanded—“here’s an idea now! How would you like +to have it sent on to the mainland, and then row it the rest of the +way—along the Rhode Island and Connecticut shores?” + +I sat straight up. “Jonathan! Let’s do it now!” + +Jonathan chuckled. “My! What a hurry she’s in!” + +“Well, let’s!” + +“We couldn’t. The boat will have to be overhauled first.” + +“Oh, dear! I suppose so.” + +“We could do it next spring, and go up the trout streams.” + +“Think of that!” I murmured. + +“Or in September and get the shore hunting—the salt marshes.” + +“Oh, which?—which?” Already I was following our course along curving +beaches and amongst the yellow marshlands. But Jonathan’s mind was working +on more practical details. + +“Twelve feet, you said?” + +“About that.” + +“Pretty close stowing for our dunnage—still—let’s see—two guns—” + +“Or the rods, if we went in the spring.” + +“And rubber coats, and blankets—” + +“Jonathan! Should we camp?” + +“Might have to.” + +“Let’s, anyway.” + +“How does that coast-line run? Where’s a map?” + +All we had were some railroad maps and an old school geography—just enough +to tantalize us—but we fell upon them eagerly. It is curious what a change +comes over these dumb bits of colored paper at such times. Every curve of +the shore, every bay and headland came to life and spoke to us—called to +us. + + * * * * * + +We decided on the September plan, and for the next eleven months our +casual talk was starred with inapropos remarks like these:— + +“Jonathan, I know we shall forget a can-opener.” + +“Better write it down while you think of it. And have you put down a +hatchet?” + +“The camera! It isn’t on the list!” + +“Hang it! Those charts haven’t come yet!” + +“What can we take to look respectable in when we go ashore?” + +Meanwhile the little boat was stirred out of its long sleep in the cellar, +overhauled, and painted, and shipped to a port up in Narragansett Bay. And +on the last day of August we found ourselves walking down through the +little town. Following the instructions of wondering small boys, we came +to a gate in a board fence, opened it and let ourselves into a typical New +England seaport scene—a tiny garden, ablaze with sunshine and gorgeous +with the yellows and lavenders of fall flowers, and a narrow brick path, +under a grape-vine arch, leading down to the sand and the wharf and the +sparkling blue waters of the bay. As we passed down through the garden, we +saw a little boat, bottom up, dazzling white in the sun. + +“There it is!” I said, with a surge of reminiscent affection. + +“That little thing!” said Jonathan. “I thought you said twelve feet.” + +“Well, isn’t it? Anyway, I said _about_. And it’s big enough.” + +He was spanning its length with his hands. + +“Eleven foot six. Oh, I suppose she’ll do. My boat was fourteen.” + +“Now, don’t be so patronizing about your boat. Wait till you see how mine +behaves.” + +He dropped the discussion and got her launched. Is there anything prettier +than a pretty boat floating beside a dock! + +The next morning when we came down we found her half full of water. +“She’ll be all right now she’s soaked up,” said Jonathan, and we baled her +dry and went off to get our stuff. + +I delayed to buy provisions, and when I came back I found Jonathan +standing on the float surrounded by plunder of all sorts. He answered my +hail rather solemnly. + +“See here! When this stuff’s all stowed, where are we going to sit? That’s +what’s worrying me.” + +“Why, won’t it go in?” + +“Go! It wouldn’t go in two boats.” + +I came down the plank. “Well, let’s eliminate.” + +We eliminated. We took out extra shoes and coats and “town clothes,” we +cut down as far as we dared, and expressed a big bundle home. The rest we +got into two sailor’s dunnage bags, one waterproof, the other nearly so, +and one big water-tight metal box. Then there were the guns, and the +provisions, and the charts in a long tin tube, and there was a lantern—a +clumsy thing, which we lashed to a seat. It was always in the way and +proved of very little use, but we thought we ought to take it. + +While we worked, some loungers gathered on the wharf above and watched us +with that tolerant curiosity that loungers know so well how to assume. As +we got in and took up our oars, one of them called out, “Now, if you only +had a little motor there in the stern, you’d be all right.” + +“Don’t want one,” said Jonathan. + +“What? Why not?” + +“Go too fast.” + +“Eh? What say?” + +“Go—too—fast.” + +“He heard you,” I said, “but he can’t believe you really said it.” + +The oars fell into unison, there was the dip of their blades, the grating +chunk of the rowlocks—_dip-ke-chunk, dip-ke-chunk_. As we fell into our +stroke the little boat began to respond, the water swished at her bows and +gurgled under her stern. The wharf fell away behind us, the houses back of +it came into sight, then the wooded hills behind. The whole town began to +draw together, with its church steeples as its centers. + +“She does go!” remarked Jonathan. + +“I told you! Look at us now! Look at that buoy!” + +_Dip-ke-chunk, dip-ke-chunk_—the red buoy swept by us and dropped into the +blue background of dancing waves. + +“Are we really off? Is it really happening?” I said joyously. + +“Do you like it?” said Jonathan over his shoulder. + +“No. Do you?” To such unwisdom of speech do people come when they are +happy. + +But there were circumstances to steady us. + +“What I’m wondering,” said Jonathan, “is, what’s going to happen next—when +we get out there.” He tilted his head toward the open bay, broad and +windy, ahead of us. “There’s some pretty interesting water out there +beyond this lee.” + +“Oh, she’ll take it all right. It’s no worse than Nantucket water. It +couldn’t be. You’ll see.” + +We did see. In half an hour we were in the middle of upper Narragansett +Bay, trying to make a diagonal across it to the southwest, while the long +rollers came in steadily from the south, broken by a nasty chop of peaked, +whitecapped waves. We rowed carefully, our heads over our right shoulders, +watching each wave as it came on, with broken comments:— + +“That’s a good one coming—bring her up now—there—all right, now let her +off again—hold her so—there’s another coming—see?—that big one, the fifth, +the fourth, away—row, now—we beat it—there it goes off astern—see it +break! Here’s another—look out for your oar—we can’t afford to miss a +stroke—oh, me! Did that wet you too? My right shoulder is soaked—my left +isn’t—now it is!” + +But half an hour of this sort of thing brought about two +results—confidence in the little boat, which rode well in spite of her +load, and confidence in each other’s rowing. We found that the four oars +worked together, our early training told, and we instinctively did the +same things in each of the varied emergencies created by wind and wave. +There was no need for orders, and our talk died down to an exclamation now +and then at some especially big wave, or a laugh as one of us got a +drenching from the white top of a foaming crest. + +It was not an easy day, that first one.… It seems, sometimes, as if there +were little imps of malignity that hovered over one at the beginning of an +undertaking—little brownies, using all their charms to try to turn one +back, discouraged. If there be such, they had a good time with us that +long afternoon. First they had said that we shouldn’t load our boat. Then +they sent us rough water. Then they set the boat a-leak. + +For leak it did. The soaking over night had done no good. It had, indeed, +been “thoroughly overhauled” and pronounced seaworthy, but there was the +water, too much to be accounted for as spray, swashing over the bottom +boards, growing undeniably and most uncomfortably deeper. The imps made no +offer to bale for us, so we had to do it ourselves, losing the much-needed +power at the oars, while one of us set to work at the dip-and-toss, +dip-and-toss motion so familiar to any one who has kept company with a +small boat. + +“I wish my mother could see me now—” hummed Jonathan. + +“I wouldn’t wish that.” + +“Why not?” + +“What would they all think of us if they could see us this minute?” + +“Just what they have thought for a long time.” + +I laughed. “How true that is, teacher!” I said. + +Finding us still cheerful, the imps tried again. + +“Jonathan—do you know—I do believe—my rowlock socket is working loose.” + +He cast a quick look over his shoulder without breaking stroke. Then he +said a few words, explicit and powerful, about the man who had +“overhauled” the boat. “He ought to be put out in it, in a sea like this, +and left to row himself home.” + +“Yes, of course, but instead, here we are. It won’t last half an hour +longer.” + +It did not last ten minutes. There it hung, one screw pulled loose, the +other barely holding. + +“Take my knife—you can get it out of my hip pocket—and try to set up that +screw with the big blade.” + +I did so, and pulled a few strokes. Then—“It’s come out again. It’s no +use.” + +“We make blamed poor headway with one pair of oars,” said Jonathan. + +He meditated. + +“Where are the screw-eyes?” he said after a moment. + +“Oh, good for you! They’re in the metal box. I’ll get them.” + +I drew in my useless oars, turned about and cautiously wriggled up into +the bow seat. + +“Look out for yourself! Don’t bullfrog out over the bow. I can’t hold her +any steadier than this.” + +“Oh, I’m all right.” + +With one hand I gripped the gunwale, with the other I felt down into the +box and finally fished out the required treasures. I worked my way back +into my own seat and tried a screw-eye in the empty, rusted-out hole. + +“Does it bite?” + +“I don’t know about biting, but it’s going in beautifully—now it goes +hard.” + +“Perhaps I can give it a turn.” + +“Perhaps you can’t! Don’t you stop rowing. If this boat wasn’t held +steady, she’d—I don’t know what she wouldn’t do.” + +“If you stick something through the eye you can turn it.” + +“Yes. I’ll find something. Here’s the can-opener. Grand! There! It’s +solid. Now I’ll do the other one the same way. Hurrah for the screw-eyes!” + +“You thought of bringing them,” said Jonathan magnanimously. + +“You thought of using them,” said I, not to be outdone. + + * * * * * + +And so again the imps were foiled. But they hung over us, they slapped us +with spray, they tossed the whitecaps, jeering, at our heads, over our +shoulders, into our laps. They put up the tides to tricks of eddies and +back-currents, so that they hindered instead of helping, as by calculation +they should have done. They laid invisible hands on our oars and dragged +them down, or held them up as the wave raced by, so that we missed a +stroke. Once, in the lee of an island, we paused to rest and unroll our +chart and get our bearings, while the smooth rise and fall of the ground +swell was all there was to remind us of the riot of water just outside. +Then we were off again, and the imps had us. They were busy, those imps, +all that long, windy, wave-tossed, wonderful day. + +For it was wonderful, and the imps were indeed frustrate, wholly +frustrate. We pulled toward the quiet harbor that evening with aching +muscles, hair and clothes matted with salt water, but spirits undaunted. +Hungry, too, for we had not been able to do more than munch a few ship’s +biscuit while we rowed. Wind, tide, waves, all against us, boat leaking, +oars disabled—and still—“Isn’t it great!” we said, “great—great!” + +Dusk was closing in and lights began to blink along the western shore. We +beached on a sandy point and asked our way,—where could we put up for the +night? Children, barelegged, waded out around the boat, looking at us and +our funny, laden craft, with curious eyes. Yes, they said, there was an +inn, farther up the harbor, where we saw those lights—ten minutes’ row, +perhaps. We pulled off again, stiffly. + +“Tired?” said Jonathan. “I’ll take her in.” + +“Indeed you won’t! Of course I’m tired, but I’ve got to do something to +keep warm. And I want to get in. I want supper. They’ll all be in bed if +we don’t hurry.” + +Our tired muscles lent themselves mechanically to their work and the boat +slid across the quiet waters of the moonlit harbor. The town lights grew +bigger, wharves loomed above us, and soon we were gliding along under +their shadow. The eddies from our oars went _lap-lap-lapping_ off among +the great dark spiles and stirred up the keen smell of salt-soaked timbers +and seaweed. Blindly groping, we found a rickety ladder, tied our boat and +climbed stiffly up, and there we were on our feet again, feeling rather +queer and stretchy after seven hours in our cramped quarters. + +Half an hour later we were sitting in the warm, clean kitchen of the old +inn, and a kindly but mystified hostess was mothering us with eggs and ham +and tea and pie and doughnuts and other things that a New England kitchen +always contains. While we ate she sat and rocked energetically, +questioning us with friendly curiosity and watching us with keen though +benevolent eyes. + +“Rowed, did you? Jim!” calling back over her shoulder through a half-open +door, “did you hear that? These folks have rowed all the way across the +bay this afternoon—yes—rowed. What say? Yes, _she_ rowed, too. They say +they’re goin’ on to-morrow, round Judith.” + +“Say, now,” she finally appealed to us in frank perplexity, “what’re you +doin’ it for?” + +“We like it,” said Jonathan peacefully. + +“Like it, do you? Well, now, if that don’t beat all! Say—you know? I +wouldn’t do that, what you’re doin’, not if you paid me. Have another cup +o’ tea, do.” + +The next morning she bade us good-bye with the air of entrusting us to +that Providence which is known to have a special care for children and +fools. + +In fact, through all the varying experiences of our cruise, one thing +never varied. That was, the expression on the faces of the people we met. +Wind and water and coast and birds all greeted us differently with each +new day, but no matter how many new faces we met, we found in them always +the same look—a look at once friendly and quizzical, the look one casts +upon nice children for whose antics one is not responsible, the look one +casts upon very small dogs. Why? Is it so odd a thing to like to row a +little boat? If it had been a yacht, now, or even a motor-boat, the +expression would have been different. Apparently the oars were what did +it. + +On that particular morning, word of our doings must have got abroad, for +as we stepped out on the brick sidewalk of the shady main street a little +crowd was waiting for us. It was a funny procession:—Jonathan first, with +the guns and the water-jug, then a boy with a wheelbarrow, on which were +piled the two dunnage bags, the metal box, the lantern, the axe, the chart +tube, and a few other things. An old man and some boys followed curiously, +then I came, with two big baking-powder cans, very gorgeous because the +red paper was not yet off them, full of provisions pressed on us by our +friendly hostess. Tagging behind me, came an old woman, a big girl, and a +half-dozen children. It was the kind of escort that usually attends the +hand-organ and monkey on their infrequent visits. + +We loaded up the boat and pulled off, a little stiff but fairly fit after +all. The group waved us off and then stood obviously talking us over. One +of the men called after us, with a sudden inspiration, “Pity ye’ hevn’t +got a _motor_ in there!” + +Though we didn’t want to be a motor-boat, we were not above receiving +courtesies from one, and when the Providence tacitly invoked by our +hostess sent one chugging along up to us, with the proposal to take us in +tow, we accepted with great contentment. The morning was not half over +when we made our next landing, and looked up the captain who was to tow us +“around Judith.” + +For in the matter of Point Judith our friends and advisers had been +unanimously firm. There should be a limit, they said, even to the +foolishness of a holiday plan. With a light boat, we might have braved +their disapproval, but loaded as we were, we decided to be prudent. + +“I’d hate to lose the guns,” said Jonathan. + +“Yes, and the camera,” I added. + +So we accepted the offer of a good friend’s knockabout, and sailed around +the dreaded Point with our little boat tailing behind at the end of her +rope. We saw no water that we could not have met in her, but, as our +friends did not fail to point out, that proved nothing whatever. + +At Stonington we were left once more to our little boat and our four oars, +and there we pulled her up and caulked her. + +Strange, how we are always trying to avoid mishaps, and yet when they come +we are so often glad of them! A leaky boat had not been in our plans, but +if we could change that first wild row across the big bay, if we could cut +out that leakiness, that puddling bottom, the difficult shifts of baling +and rowing, would we? We would not. Again, as we look back over the days +of our cruise, we could ill spare those hours of labor on the hot stretch +of sunny beach between the wharves, where we bent half-blinded over the +dazzling white boat, our spirits irritated, our fingers aching as they +worked at the _push-push-push_ of the cotton waste between the strakes. We +said hard words of the man who thought he had put our boat in order for +us, and yet—if we could cut out those hours of grumbling toil, would we? +We would not. For one thing, we should perhaps have missed the precious +word of advice given us by a man who sat and watched us. He recommended us +to put a little motor in the stern. He pointed out to us that rowing was +pretty hard work. We said we liked it. His face wore the expression I have +already described. + +We launched her again at dusk. Next morning Jonathan was a moment ahead of +me on the wharf. + +“Any water in her?” I called, following hard. + +“Dry as a bone,” he shouted back, exultant; but as I came up he added, +with his usual conservatism, “of course we can’t tell what she may do when +she’s loaded.” + +But our work held. For the rest of the trip we had a dry boat, except for +what came in over the sides. + +Now that we were in the home State, we got out our guns and hugged the +shore closely, on the lookout for plover. We drifted sometimes, while we +studied our maps for the location of the salt marshes. If we were lucky, +we had broiled birds for luncheon or supper; if we were not, we had tinned +stuff, which is distinctly inferior. When we spent the night at an inn, we +breakfasted there, but most of our meals were eaten along the shore, or, +best of all, on some island. + +“Can we find an island for lunch to-day, do you suppose?” I usually asked, +as we dipped our oars in the morning. + +“Do you have to have an island for lunch?” + +“I love an island!” choosing to ignore the jest. “That’s one of the best +things about a boat—that it takes you to islands.” + +“Now, why an island?” + +“You know as well as I do. An island means—oh, it means remoteness, it +means quiet—possession; while you’re on it, it’s yours—you don’t have +every passer-by looking over your shoulder—you have a little world all to +yourself.” + +I could feel Jonathan’s indulgent smile through the back of his head as he +rowed. + +“Well, you know yourself,” I argued. “Even a tiny bit of stone and earth, +with moss on it, and a flower, out in the middle of a brook, looks +different, somehow, from the same things on the bank. It _is_ +different—it’s an island.” + +And so we sought islands—sometimes little ones, all rocks, too little even +to have collected driftwood for a fire, too little to have grown anything +but wisps of beach-grass, low enough to be covered, perhaps, by the +highest tides. Sometimes it was a larger island, big enough to have bushes +on it, and beaches round its edges. One of these we remember as best of +all. It lay a mile off shore, a long island, rocky at its ocean end and at +its land end running out to a long slim line of curving beach. In the +middle it rose to a plateau, thick-set with grass and goldenrod and bay +bushes, from which floated the gay, sweet voices of song sparrows. Ah! +There was an island for you! And we made a fire of driftwood, and cooked +our luncheon, and lay back on the sand and drowsed, while the sea-gulls, +millions of them, circled curiously over our heads, mewing and screaming +as they dived and swooped, and behind us the notes of the song sparrows +rose sweet. + +If we had had water enough in our jug, we should have camped there. We +rowed away at last, slowly, loving it, and in our thoughts we still +possess it. As it dropped astern I pulled in my oars and stood up to take +its picture—no easy task, with the boat mounting and plunging among the +swells. But I have my picture, its horizon line at a noticeable slant, +reminiscent of my unsteady balance. It means little to other people, but +to us it means the sweetness of sunshine and wind and water, the sweetness +of grass and bird-notes, all breathed over by the spirit of solitude. + +Then it melted away—our island—into the waste of waters, and we turned to +look toward the misty headlands beyond our bow. Where the marshlands were, +we followed them closely, but where the shore was rocky, or, worse still, +built up with summer cottages, we often made a straight course from +headland to headland, keeping well out, often a mile or two, to avoid tide +eddies. We liked the feeling of being far out, the shore a dark blue, the +cottages little dots. But we liked it, too, when the headland before us +grew large, its rocks and bushes stood out, and we could see the white rip +off its point—a rip to be taken with some caution if we hoped to keep our +cargo dry. And then, the rip passed, if the bay beyond curved in quiet and +uninhabited, how we loved to turn and pull along close to shore, watching +its beaches and sand-cliffs draw smoothly away beside our stern, or, best +of all, pulling about and running in till our bow grated and we jumped to +the wet beach and ran up the cliff to look about. Such moments bring in a +peculiar way the thrill of discovery. It is one thing to go along a coast +by land, and learn its ways so. It is a good thing. But it is quite +another to fare over its waters and turn in upon it from without, +surprising its secrets as from another world. + +But to do this, your boat must be a little one. As soon as you have a real +keel, the case is altered. For a keel demands a special landing-place—a +wharf—and a wharf means human habitation, and then—where is your thrill of +discovery? Ah, no!—a little boat! And you can land anywhere, among rocks +or in sandy shallows; you can explore the tide creeks and marshes and the +little rivers; you can beach wherever you like, wherever the rippling +waves themselves can go. A little boat for romance! + +A little boat, but a long cruise, as long as may be. To be sure, a boat +and a bit of water anywhere is good. Even an errand across the pond and +back may be a joy. But if you can, now and then, free yourself from the +there-and-back habit, the reward is great. The joy of pilgrimage—of going, +not there and back, but on, and on, and yet on—is a joy by itself. The +thought that each night brings sleep in a new and unforeseen spot, with a +new journey on the morrow, gives special flavor to the journeying. + +Not the least among the pleasures of the cruise were the night-camps. When +the shore looked inviting, and harborage at an inn seemed doubtful, we +pulled our boat above tide-water, turned her over and tilted her up on her +side for a wind-break, and there we spent the night. The half-emptied +dunnage bags were our pillows, the sand was our bed. Sand, to sleep on, is +harder than one might suppose, but it is better than earth in being easily +scooped out to suit one’s needs. Indeed, even on a pneumatic mattress, I +should hardly have slept much that first night. It was a new experience. +The great world of waters was so close that it seemed, all night long, +like a wonderful but ever importunate presence. The wind blew that night, +too, and there was a low-scudding rack, and a half-smothered moon. As we +rolled ourselves up in our blankets and rubber sheets and settled down, I +looked out over the restless water. + +“The bay seems very full to-night—brimming,” I said. + +“Not brimming over, though,” said Jonathan. + +“I should hope not! But it does seem to me there are very few inches +between it and our feet.” + +“And the tide is still rising, of course,” said Jonathan, by way of +comfort. + +“Jonathan, I know just where high-tide mark is, and we’re fully twelve +inches above it.” + +Silence. + +“Aren’t we?” + +“Oh, was that a question?” murmured Jonathan. “Why, yes, I think we are at +least that.” + +“Of course, there are extra high tides sometimes.” + +Silence. + +“Jonathan, do you know when they come?” + +“Not exactly.” + +“Well, I don’t care. I love it, anyway. Only it seems so much bigger and +colder at night, the water does.” + +At last I drowsed, waking now and then to raise my head and just glance +down at those waves—they certainly sounded as if they were lapping the +sand close by my ear. No, there they were, quite within bounds, fully +twenty feet away from my toes. Of course it was all right. I slept again, +and dreamed that the tide rose and rose; the waves ran merrily up the +beach, ran up on both sides of us, closed in behind us. We were lying on a +little sand island, and the waves nibbled at its edges—nibbled and nibbled +and nibbled—the island was being nibbled up. This would never do! We must +move! And I woke. _Ripple, ripple, swash!_ _ripple, ripple, swash!_ went +the unconscious waves. As I raised my head I saw the pale beach stretching +off under the moon-washed mists of middle night. Reassured, I sank back, +and when I waked again the big sun was well above the rim of the waters +and all the little waves were dancing and the wet curves of the beach were +gleaming in the new day. + +The water was not always restless at night. The next time we camped we +found a little harbor within a harbor, a crescent curve of fine white sand +ending in a point of rock. In one of its clefts we made our fire and +broiled our plover, ranging them on spits of bay so that they hung over +the two edges of rock like people looking down into a miniature Grand +Cañon. There were nine of them, fat and sputtering, and while they +cooked, we made toast and arranged the camp. Then we had supper, and +watched the red coals smouldering and the white moonlight filling the +world with a radiance that put out the stars and brought the blue back to +the sky. The little basin of the bay was quiet as a pool, the air was full +of stillness, with now and then the hushed _flip-flip_ of a tiny wave that +had somehow strayed in from the tumbling crowd outside. + +We slept well, but once Jonathan waked me. “Look!” he whispered, “White +heron.” + +I raised my head. There, quite near us in the shallow water, stood a great +pale bird, motionless, on one long, slim leg, his oval body, long neck, +head and bill clearly outlined against the bright water beyond. The mirror +of the water reflected perfectly the soft outline, making a double +creature, one above and one below, with that slim stem of leg between. + +I watched him until my neck grew tired. He never moved. Out beyond him, +more dim, stood his mate, motionless too. Now and then they called to each +other, with queer, harsh talk that made the stillness all the stiller when +it closed in again. + +When we awoke, they were gone, but we found the heronry that morning on +one of the oak-covered knolls that rise like islands out of the heart of +the great salt marshes. + + * * * * * + +All through the cruise, the big winds were with us more than we had +expected. They gave us, for the most part, a right good time. For even in +the partly protected Sound it is possible to stir up a sea rough enough to +keep one busy. Each wave, as it came galloping up, was an antagonist to be +dealt with. If we met it successfully, it galloped on, and left us none +the worse for it. If we did not, it meant, perhaps, that its foaming white +mane brushed our shoulders, or swept across our laps, or, worse still, +drowned our guns. Once, indeed, we were threatened with something a little +more serious. We were running down out of the Connecticut River, gliding +smoothly over sleek water. It was delicious rowing, and the boat shot +along swiftly. As we turned westward, it grew rougher, but we were paying +no special heed to this when suddenly I became conscious of something dark +over my right shoulder. I turned my head, and found myself looking up into +the evil heart of a dull green breaker. I gasped, “Look out!” and dug my +oar. Jonathan glanced, pulled, there was a moment of doubt, then the huge +dark bulk was shouldering heavily away, off our starboard quarter. It was +only the first of its ugly company. Through sheer carelessness, we had +run, as it were, into an ambush—one of the worst bits of water on the +Sound, where tide and river currents meet and wrangle. All around us were +rearing, white-maned breakers, though the impression we got was less of +their white manes than of their dark sides as they rose over us. Our +problem was to meet each one fairly, and yet snatch every moment of +respite to slant off toward the harborage inside the breakwaters. It took +all our strength and all our skill, and all the resources of the good +little boat. But we made it, after perhaps half an hour of stiff work. +Then we rested, breathed, and went on. We did not talk much about it until +we made camp that night. Then, as we sat looking out over the quiet water, +I told Jonathan about the shadow over my shoulder. + +“It was like seeing a ghost,” I said,—“no—more like feeling the hand of an +enemy on your shoulder.” + +“The Black Douglas,” suggested Jonathan. + +“Yes. Talk about the scientific attitude—you’ve just got to personify +things when they come at you like that. That wave had an expression—an +ugly one. I don’t wonder the Northmen felt as they did about the sea and +the waves. They took it all personally—they had to!” + +“Were you frightened?” asked Jonathan. + +“No, of course not,” I said, almost too promptly. Then I meditated—“I +don’t know what you’d call it—but I believe I understand now what people +mean when they talk about their hearts going down into their boots.” + +“Did yours?” + +“Why, not exactly—but—well—it certainly did feel suddenly very thick and +heavy—as if it had dropped—perhaps an inch or two.” + +“I believe,” said Jonathan gently, “you might almost call that being +frightened.” + +“Yes, perhaps you might. Tell me—were you?” + +“I didn’t like it—yes, I was anxious—and it made me tired to have been +such a fool—the whole thing was absolutely unnecessary, if we’d looked up +the charts carefully.” + +“Or asked a few questions. But you know you hate to ask questions.” + +“You could have asked them.” + +“Well, anyway, aren’t you glad it happened?” + +“Oh, of course; it was an experience.” + +“Do you want to do it again?” + +“No”—he was emphatic—“not with that load.” + +“Neither do I.” + +If the winds sometimes wearied us a little, they helped us, too. We can +never forget the evening we turned into the Thames River, making for the +shelter of a friend’s hospitable roof. We had battled most of that day +with the diagonal onslaughts of a southeast gale, bringing with it the +full swing of the ocean swell. It was easier than a southwester would have +been, but that was the best that could be said for it. + +We passed the last buoy and turned our bow north. And suddenly, the great +waves that had all day kept us on the defensive became our strong helpers. +They took us up and swung us forward on our course with great sweeping +rushes of motion. The tide was setting in, too, and with that and our oars +we were going almost as fast as the waves themselves, so that when one +picked us up, it swung us a long way before it left us. We learned to +watch for each roller, wait till one came up astern, then pull with all +our might so that we went swooping down its long slope, its crest at first +just behind our stern, but drawing more and more under us, until it passed +beyond our bow and dropped us in the trough to wait for the next giant. It +was like going in a swing, but with the downward rush very long and swift, +and the upward rise short and slow. How long it took us to make the two +miles to our friend’s dock we shall never know. Probably only a few +minutes. But it was not an experience in time. We had a sense of being at +one with the great primal forces of wind and water, and at one with them, +not in their moments of poise, but in their moments of resistless power. + + * * * * * + +After all, the only drawback to the cruise was that it was over too soon. +When, in the quiet afternoon light of the last day, a familiar headland +floated into view, my first feeling was one of joy; for beyond that +headland, what friendly faces waited for us—faces turned even now, +perhaps, toward the east for a first glimpse of our little boat. But hard +after this, came a pang of regret—it was over, our water-pilgrimage, and I +wanted it to go on. + +It was over. And yet, not really over after all. I sometimes think that +pleasures ought to be valued according to whether they are over when they +_are_ over, or not. “You cannot eat your cake and have it too.” True, but +that is because it is cake. There are other things which you can eat, and +still have. And our rowboat cruise is one of these. It is over, and yet it +is not over. It never will be. I can shut my eyes—indeed, I do not need +even to shut them—and again I am under the open sky, I am afloat in the +sun and the wind, with the waters all around me. I see again the +surf-edged curves of the beaches, the lines of the sand-cliffs, the ragged +horizon edge, cut and jagged by the waves. I feel the boat, I feel the +oars, I am aware of the damp, pure night air, and the sounds of the waves +ceaselessly breaking on the sand. + +It is not over. Its best things are still ours, and those things which +were hardly pleasures then have become such now. As we remember our aching +muscles and blistered hands, we smile. As we recall times of intense +weariness, of irritation, of anxiety, we find ourselves lingering over +them with enjoyment. For memory does something wonderful with experience. +It is a poet, and life is its raw material. I know that our cruise was +made up of minutes, of oar-strokes, so many that to count them would be +weariness unending. But in my memory, these things are re-created. I see a +boundless stretch of windy or peaceful waters. I see the endless line of +misty coast. I see lovely islands, sleeping alone, waiting to be possessed +by those who come. And I see a little, little boat, faring along the +coast-lands, out to the islands, over the waters—going on, and on, and on. + + + + THE END + + + + + + + COLOPHON + + + The Riverside Press + + CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS + + U . S . A + + + + + + APPENDIX A: EXTRA FRONT PAGES + + + By Elisabeth Woodbridge + + ------- + + MORE JONATHAN PAPERS. + THE JONATHAN PAPERS. + + HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY + BOSTON AND NEW YORK + + + + More Jonathan Papers + + + + + + ERRATA + + + Chapter VII + Changed camp is *4.38*—A.M. to camp is *4:38*—A.M. + + Chapter VII + Changed arrives at *10.15*, they to arrives at *10:15*, they + + Chapter VII + Changed What does *10.15* look to What does *10:15* look + + Chapter VIII + Changed “Does it bite? to “Does it bite?*”* + + Chapter VIIII + Changed find something*,* Here’s to find something*.* Here’s + + Chapter VIIII + Changed no matter *now* many to no matter *how* many + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 20141 *** |