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<div id="pgheader" class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 4.00em; margin-top: 4.00em"><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 3.00em; margin-top: 3.00em"><p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 2.00em">The Project Gutenberg EBook of More Jonathan Papers by Elisabeth Woodbridge</p></div><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 3.00em; margin-top: 3.00em"><p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost
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eBook</a> or online at <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/license" class="tei tei-xref">http://www.gutenberg.org/license</a></p></div><pre class="pre tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 3.00em; margin-top: 3.00em">Title: More Jonathan Papers
Author: Elisabeth Woodbridge
Release Date: December 19, 2006 [Ebook #20141]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORE JONATHAN PAPERS***
</pre></div>
</div>
<div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
</div>
<hr class="doublepage" /><div class="tei tei-titlePage" style="text-align: center">
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="pageiiii">[pg iiii]</span><a name="Pgiiii" id="Pgiiii" class="tei tei-anchor" style="text-align: center"></a>
<span class="tei tei-docTitle" style="text-align: center">
<span class="tei tei-titlePart" style="text-align: center"><span style="font-size: 173%">
More Jonathan Papers</span><br />
<br />
</span>
</span>
<div class="tei tei-byline" style="text-align: center"><span style="font-size: 120%">By</span><br />
<span class="tei tei-docAuthor" style="text-align: center"><span style="font-size: 120%">Elisabeth Woodbridge</span></span><br />
<br />
</div>
<span class="tei tei-docImprint" style="text-align: center">
BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br />
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY<br />
The Riverside Press Cambridge<br />
</span>
<span class="tei tei-docDate" style="text-align: center">1915</span>
</div>
<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 4.05em; margin-top: 4.05em">
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="pagev">[pg v]</span><a name="Pgv" id="Pgv" class="tei tei-anchor" style="text-align: center"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0.81em"><span style="font-size: 81%">COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY ELISABETH WOODBRIDGE MORRIS</span><br />
<br /><span style="font-size: 81%">
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED</span><br />
<br />
<span class="tei tei-hi" style="text-align: center"><span style="font-size: 81%; font-style: italic">Published November 1915</span></span></p>
</div>
<hr class="doublepage" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="pagevi">[pg vi]</span><a name="Pgvi" id="Pgvi" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 1.00em">TO<br />
JONATHAN</p>
</div>
<hr class="doublepage" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="pageviii">[pg viii]</span><a name="Pgviii" id="Pgviii" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<a name="pdf1" id="pdf1"></a>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">Contents</span></h1>
<ul class="tei tei-index tei-index-toc"><li><a href="#toc2">I. The Searchings of Jonathan</a></li><li><a href="#toc4">II. Sap-Time</a></li><li><a href="#toc6">III. Evenings on the Farm</a></li><li><a href="#toc8">IV. After Frost</a></li><li><a href="#toc10">V. The Joys of Garden Stewardship</a></li><li><a href="#toc12">VI. Trout and Arbutus</a></li><li><a href="#toc14">VII. Without the Time of Day</a></li><li><a href="#toc16">VIII. The Ways of Griselda</a></li><li><a href="#toc18">IX. A Rowboat Pilgrimage</a></li><li><a href="#toc20">Colophon</a></li><li><a href="#toc22">Appendix A: Extra Front Pages</a></li><li><a href="#toc24">Errata</a></li></ul>
</div>
</div>
<div class="tei tei-body" style="margin-bottom: 6.00em; margin-top: 6.00em">
<hr class="doublepage" /><div id="chapter01" class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page001">[pg 001]</span><a name="Pg001" id="Pg001" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<a name="toc2" id="toc2"></a>
<a name="pdf3" id="pdf3"></a>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 2.88em; margin-top: 2.88em"><span class="tei tei-hi" style="text-align: center"><span style="font-size: 173%">More Jonathan Papers</span></span></h1>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">I</span></h1>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 2.88em; margin-top: 2.88em"><span style="font-size: 144%">The Searchings of Jonathan</span></h1>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The reason why I can see the gentian,”</span>
said Jonathan, <span class="tei tei-q">“is because the gentian is
there.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“So is the book,”</span> I responded.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Which table?”</span> he asked.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The one with the lamp on it. It’s a red
book, about <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">so</span></span> big.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It isn’t there; but, just to satisfy you,
I’ll look again.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He returned in a moment with an argumentative
expression of countenance. <span class="tei tei-q">“It
isn’t there,”</span> he said firmly. <span class="tei tei-q">“Will anything
else do instead?”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page002">[pg 002]</span><a name="Pg002" id="Pg002" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No, I wanted you to read that special
thing. Oh, dear! And I have all these things
in my lap! And I know it <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">is</span></span>
there.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And I <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">know</span></span> it
isn’t.”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It’s the second essay I specially thought
we’d like,”</span> I said.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Just for curiosity,”</span> said Jonathan, with
an impersonal air, <span class="tei tei-q">“where did you find it?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Find what?”</span> I asked innocently.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The book.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh! On the table.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Which table?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The one with the lamp on it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I should like to know where.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page003">[pg 003]</span><a name="Pg003" id="Pg003" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Why—just there—on the table. There
was an <span class="tei tei-q">‘Atlantic’</span> on top of it, to be sure.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I saw the <span class="tei tei-q">‘Atlantic.’</span> 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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“When you’re looking for a thing,”</span> I said,
<span class="tei tei-q">“you mustn’t think, you must look. Now
go ahead and read.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page004">[pg 004]</span><a name="Pg004" id="Pg004" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
where you know it is and Everyman says it
isn’t.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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 <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">tu quoque</span></span>—in
itself a confession of weakness—and
alludes darkly to <span class="tei tei-q">“top shelves”</span>
and <span class="tei tei-q">“bottom drawers.”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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, <span class="tei tei-q">“But that wasn’t the top
shelf, I suppose you will admit.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Sure enough! There was a shelf above.
<span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, yes; but I don’t count that shelf. We
never use it, because nobody can reach
it.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page005">[pg 005]</span><a name="Pg005" id="Pg005" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“How do you expect me to know which
shelves you count and which you don’t?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Of course, anatomically—structurally—it
is one, but functionally it isn’t there at all.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I see,”</span> said Jonathan, so contentedly that
I knew he was filing this affair away for future
use.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">On another occasion I asked him to get
something for me from the top drawer of the
old <span class="tei tei-q">“high-boy”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“She stuck, but I’ve got her open now.
I don’t see any pillow-cases, though. It’s all
full of these things.”</span> He pumped his laden
arm up and down, and the table-covers
wagged gayly.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I sank into the chair and laughed. <span class="tei tei-q">“Oh!
Have you been prying at that all this time?
Of <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">course</span></span> there’s nothing in
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">that</span></span> drawer.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page006">[pg 006]</span><a name="Pg006" id="Pg006" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“There’s where you’re wrong. There’s a
great deal in it; I haven’t taken out half. If
you want to see—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">don’t</span></span> want to see!
There’s nothing I
want less! What I mean is—I never put
anything there.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It’s the top drawer.”</span> He was beginning
to lay back the table-covers.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But I can’t reach it. And it’s been stuck
for ever so long.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You said the top drawer.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, I suppose I did. Of course what I
meant was the top one of the ones I use.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page007">[pg 007]</span><a name="Pg007" id="Pg007" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<span class="tei tei-q">“Now, Jonathan, it’s there, and it’s the top
thing.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The real top,”</span> murmured Jonathan, <span class="tei tei-q">“or
just what you call top?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It’s right in front,”</span> I went on; <span class="tei tei-q">“and I
don’t see how even a man could fail to find it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He proceeded to enumerate the contents
of the drawer in such strange fashion that I
began to wonder where he had been.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I said my bureau.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I went to your bureau.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The bottom drawer.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The bottom drawer. There was nothing
but a lot of little boxes and—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">I</span></span> know what you did!
You went to the secret drawer.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Isn’t that the bottom one?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But it’s a perfectly good drawer.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes. But nobody is supposed to know
it’s there; it looks like a molding—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But I know it’s there.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, of course.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page008">[pg 008]</span><a name="Pg008" id="Pg008" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And you know I know it’s there.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, yes; but I just don’t think about
that one in counting up. I see what you mean,
of course.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He did. And in addition he amused himself
by working out phrases about <span class="tei tei-q">“when is a
bottom drawer not a bottom drawer?”</span> and
<span class="tei tei-q">“when is a top shelf not a top shelf?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page009">[pg 009]</span><a name="Pg009" id="Pg009" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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, <span class="tei tei-q">“It isn’t there,”</span> and I
am always saying, <span class="tei tei-q">“Please look again.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Probably in the corner behind the chest
in the orchard room.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I’ve looked there.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, then, did you take it in from the
wagon last night?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, I remember doing it.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page010">[pg 010]</span><a name="Pg010" id="Pg010" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“What about the little attic? You might
have put it up there to dry out.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No. I took my wading boots up, but that
was all.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The dining-room? You came in that
way.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He goes and returns. <span class="tei tei-q">“Not there.”</span> I reflect
deeply.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan, are you <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">sure</span></span>
it’s not in that corner of the orchard room?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, I’m sure; but I’ll look again.”</span> He
disappears, but in a moment I hear his voice
calling, <span class="tei tei-q">“No! Yours is here, but not mine.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I perceive that it is a case for me, and I get
up. <span class="tei tei-q">“You go and harness. I’ll find it,”</span> I call.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“All right! I’ve found it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Where?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Here, in the orchard room.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Where</span></span> in the orchard
room?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“In the corner.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page011">[pg 011]</span><a name="Pg011" id="Pg011" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“What corner?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The usual corner—back of the chest.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The devil!”</span> Then he comes back to put
his head in at the door. <span class="tei tei-q">“What are you
laughing at?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Nothing. What are you talking about the
devil for? Anyway, it isn’t the devil; it’s the
brownie.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page012">[pg 012]</span><a name="Pg012" id="Pg012" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
coloring, has snuggled up against the
shady side of the drawer and tucked its pink-papered
head underneath a gay pickerel-spoon.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Fishing-tackle is, clearly, <span class="tei tei-q">“possessed,”</span> 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.
<span class="tei tei-q">“On the pincushion, Jonathan.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He goes, and returns with two sizes of
safety-pins and one long hat-pin.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Common or house pin?”</span> he murmurs,
quoting a friend’s phrase.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Do look again! I hate to drop this to go
myself.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“When a man does a job, he gets his tools
together first.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes; but they say women shouldn’t copy
men, they should develop along their own
lines. Please go.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He goes, and comes back. <span class="tei tei-q">“You don’t
want fancy gold pins, I suppose?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No, no! Here, you hold this, and I’ll go.”</span>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page013">[pg 013]</span><a name="Pg013" id="Pg013" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, it wasn’t in the cushion, I bet.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No,”</span> I admit; <span class="tei tei-q">“it was in a saucer just behind
the cushion.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You said cushion.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I know. It’s all right.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Now, if you had said simply <span class="tei tei-q">‘bureau,’</span> I’d
have looked in other places on it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, you’d have <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">looked</span></span>
in other places!”</span>
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:—</p>
<div class="block tei tei-quote" style="margin-bottom: 1.80em; margin-left: 3.60em; margin-top: 1.80em; margin-right: 3.60em">
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 0.90em"><span class="tei tei-q"><span style="font-size: 90%">“</span><span style="font-size: 90%">My dear,</span><span style="font-size: 90%">”</span></span><span style="font-size: 90%"> said she, </span><span class="tei tei-q"><span style="font-size: 90%">“</span><span style="font-size: 90%">please run and
bring me the needle from the haystack.</span><span style="font-size: 90%">”</span></span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 0.90em"><span class="tei tei-q"><span style="font-size: 90%">“</span><span style="font-size: 90%">Oh, I don’t know which haystack.</span><span style="font-size: 90%">”</span></span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 0.90em"><span class="tei tei-q"><span style="font-size: 90%">“</span><span style="font-size: 90%">Look in all the haystacks—you
can’t miss it; there’s only one needle.</span><span style="font-size: 90%">”</span></span></p>
</div>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Jonathan was in the cellar at the moment.
When he came up, he said, <span class="tei tei-q">“Did I hear any
one laughing?”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page014">[pg 014]</span><a name="Pg014" id="Pg014" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I don’t know. Did you?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I thought maybe it was you.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It might have been. Something amused
me—I forget what.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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, <span class="tei tei-q">“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—”</span>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page015">[pg 015]</span><a name="Pg015" id="Pg015" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.
<span class="tei tei-q">“There, Jonathan! What’s that? No, not
that—that!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He pulls it out with an air of immense
relief. <span class="tei tei-q">“There! I knew I had something.
That’s it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">No tickets. The conductor is halfway up
the car. Jonathan’s face begins to grow serious.
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page016">[pg 016]</span><a name="Pg016" id="Pg016" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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, <span class="tei tei-q">“I must have pulled
them out when I took out those postcards in
the other car. Yes, that’s just what has happened.”</span>
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?</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I begin to suspect that some of the good
men who have been blamed for forgetting to
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page017">[pg 017]</span><a name="Pg017" id="Pg017" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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,
<span class="tei tei-q">“Of course you can look for it if you like, but
it is <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">not</span></span> there.”</span>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Be sure to get the pen first of all,”</span> I said,
<span class="tei tei-q">“and put it in your pocket.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Where is it?”</span> he asked.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“In the little medicine cupboard over the
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page018">[pg 018]</span><a name="Pg018" id="Pg018" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
fireplace in the orchard room, standing up at
the side of the first shelf.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Why not on your desk?”</span> he asked.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Because I was writing tags in there, and
set it up so it would be out of the way.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And it <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">was</span></span>
out of the way. All right. I’ll
collect it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He went, and on his return I met him with
eager hand—<span class="tei tei-q">“My pen!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I’m sorry,”</span> he began.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You didn’t forget!”</span> I exclaimed.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No. But it wasn’t there.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But—did you look?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, I looked.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Thoroughly?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes. I lit three matches.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Matches! Then you didn’t get it when
you first got there!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Why—no—I had the dog to attend
to—and—but I had plenty of time when I
got back, and it <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">wasn’t</span></span>
there.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well—Dear me! Did you look anywhere
else? I suppose I may be mistaken.
Perhaps I did take it back to the desk.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“That’s just what I thought myself,”</span> said
Jonathan. <span class="tei tei-q">“So I went there, and looked, and
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page019">[pg 019]</span><a name="Pg019" id="Pg019" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Bet it isn’t.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Please look once more,”</span> I begged, <span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, I’ll look,”</span> he promised. <span class="tei tei-q">“If
it’s there, I’ll find it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page020">[pg 020]</span><a name="Pg020" id="Pg020" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You light the lamp,”</span> I said, <span class="tei tei-q">“and I’ll
just take a match and go through to see if
that pen <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">should</span></span>
happen to be there.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No use doing anything to-night,”</span> said
Jonathan. <span class="tei tei-q">“To-morrow morning you can
have a thorough hunt.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Jonathan had gone out to the dining-room,
but he has perfectly good ears.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“NO!”</span> 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, <span class="tei tei-q">“It was
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">not there!</span></span>”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Look yourself,”</span> I managed to gasp.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page021">[pg 021]</span><a name="Pg021" id="Pg021" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">This time, somehow, he could see it.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You planted it! You brought it up and
planted it!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I never! Oh, dear me! It pays for going
without it for weeks!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Nothing</span></span>
will ever make me believe that
that pen was standing there when I looked
for it!”</span> said Jonathan, with vehement finality.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“All right,”</span> I sighed happily. <span class="tei tei-q">“You don’t
have to believe it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">But in his heart perhaps he does believe it.
At any rate, since that time he has adopted a
new formula: <span class="tei tei-q">“My dear, it may be there, of
course, but I don’t see it.”</span> And this position
I regard as unassailable.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">One triumph he has had. I wanted something
that was stored away in the shut-up
town house.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Do you suppose you could find it?”</span> I said,
as gently as possible.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I can try,”</span> he said.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I think it is in a box about this shape—see?—a
gray box, in the attic closet, the
farthest-in corner.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Are you sure it’s in the house? If it’s in
the house, I think I can find it.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page022">[pg 022]</span><a name="Pg022" id="Pg022" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, I’m sure of that.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">When he returned that night, his face wore
a look of satisfaction very imperfectly concealed
beneath a mask of nonchalance.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Good</span></span> for you!
Was it where I said?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Was it in a different corner?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Where was it?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It wasn’t in a corner at all. It wasn’t in
that closet.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It wasn’t! Where, then?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Downstairs in the hall closet.”</span> He paused,
then could not forbear adding, <span class="tei tei-q">“And it wasn’t
in a gray box; it was in a big hat-box with
violets all over it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Why, <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Jonathan!</span></span>
Aren’t you grand! How
did you ever find it? I couldn’t have done
better myself.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Under such praise he expanded. <span class="tei tei-q">“The
fact is,”</span> he said confidentially, <span class="tei tei-q">“I had given
it up. And then suddenly I changed my
mind. I said to myself, <span class="tei tei-q">‘Jonathan, don’t
be a man! Think what she’d do if she
were here now.’</span> And then I got busy and
found it.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page023">[pg 023]</span><a name="Pg023" id="Pg023" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan!”</span> I could almost have wept if
I had not been laughing.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well,”</span> he said, proud, yet rather sheepish,
<span class="tei tei-q">“what is there so funny about that? I gave
up half a day to it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, no, you won’t forget the pen either,”</span>
he said, with a certain pleasant grimness.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I think that might do.”</span> Then he had an
alarming afterthought. <span class="tei tei-q">“But, see here—you
won’t expect me to do things like that often?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Dear me, no! People can’t live always on
their highest levels. Perhaps you’ll
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">never</span></span>
do it again.”</span> Jonathan looked distinctly relieved.
<span class="tei tei-q">“I’ll accept it as a unique effort—like
Dante’s angel and Raphael’s sonnet.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan,”</span> I said that evening, <span class="tei tei-q">“what
do you know about St. Anthony of Padua?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Not much.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page024">[pg 024]</span><a name="Pg024" id="Pg024" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And do you know which saint it is who
helps people to find lost virtues—like humility,
for instance?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No. I don’t, really.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I didn’t suppose you did,”</span> said Jonathan.</p>
</div>
<hr class="page" /><div id="chapter02" class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page025">[pg 025]</span><a name="Pg025" id="Pg025" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<a name="toc4" id="toc4"></a>
<a name="pdf5" id="pdf5"></a>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">II</span></h1>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 2.88em; margin-top: 2.88em"><span style="font-size: 144%">Sap-Time</span></h1>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well?”</span> he said.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Don’t you see?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No. What?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Look—I thought you had eyes!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, what a little beauty!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And isn’t his back just like bark and
lichens! And what are those things in the tree
beside him?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Plugs, I suppose.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Plugs?”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page026">[pg 026]</span><a name="Pg026" id="Pg026" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes. After tapping. Uncle Ben used to
tap these trees, I believe.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You mean for sap? Maple syrup?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan! I didn’t know these were
sugar maples.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, yes. These on the road.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The whole row? Why, there are ten or
fifteen of them! And you never told me!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I thought you knew.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You’d have to come up in February.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, then, I’ll
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">come</span></span> in February. Who’s
afraid of February?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“All right. Try it next year.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page027">[pg 027]</span><a name="Pg027" id="Pg027" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Look! Hiram! It’s running!”</span> I called.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">But though the little drops thrilled me, I
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page028">[pg 028]</span><a name="Pg028" id="Pg028" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I felt better. And now for a fireplace! Oh,
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page029">[pg 029]</span><a name="Pg029" id="Pg029" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
Jonathan! Why did you have to be away!
For Jonathan loves a stone and knows how
to put stones together, as witness the stone
<span class="tei tei-q">“Eyrie”</span> 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 <span class="tei tei-q">“’t was enough, ’t would
serve.”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Will it run to-night?”</span> I asked him.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No—no—’t won’t run to-night. Too
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page030">[pg 030]</span><a name="Pg030" id="Pg030" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
cold. ’T won’t run any to-night. You can
sleep all right.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So I made my rounds at nine, in the white
moonlight, and went to sleep.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I was awakened the next morning to a consciousness
of flooding sunshine and Hiram’s
voice outside my window.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Got anything I can empty sap into? I’ve
got everything all filled up.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Sap! Why, it isn’t running yet, is it?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Pails were flowin’ over when I came out.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Flowing over! They said the sap wouldn’t
run last night.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I guest there don’t nobody know when
sap’ll run and when it won’t,”</span> said Hiram
peacefully, as he tramped off to the barn.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page031">[pg 031]</span><a name="Pg031" id="Pg031" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
enough in it for all purposes. It is only a
question of using its resources.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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, <span class="tei tei-q">“It
beats all, how much that holds.”</span> 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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page032">[pg 032]</span><a name="Pg032" id="Pg032" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“They do say snow makes it run,”</span> shouted
a passer-by, and another called, <span class="tei tei-q">“You want
to keep skimmin’!”</span> Whereupon I seized my
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page033">[pg 033]</span><a name="Pg033" id="Pg033" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<div class="tei tei-tb">* * * * * </div>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“This time I will go early,”</span> I said to Jonathan;
<span class="tei tei-q">“they say the late running is never
quite so good.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page034">[pg 034]</span><a name="Pg034" id="Pg034" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
showed this, but the country ones still
kept their wintry penciling of vanishing lines.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Spring was in the road, however. <span class="tei tei-q">“There
ain’t no bottom to this road now, it’s just
dropped clean out,”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It’s so much simpler than last year,”</span> I
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page035">[pg 035]</span><a name="Pg035" id="Pg035" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
said, as we sat over our cozy <span class="tei tei-q">“tea,”</span>—<span class="tei tei-q">“having
the pan and the oven ready-made, and
all—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You don’t suppose anything could happen
to it while we’re in here?”</span> suggested
Janet. <span class="tei tei-q">“Shan’t I just run out and see?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No, sit still. What could happen? The
fire’s going out.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, I know.”</span> But her voice was uncertain.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You see, I’ve been all through it once,”</span> I
reassured her.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">As we rose, Janet said, <span class="tei tei-q">“Let’s go out before
we do the dishes.”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“How funny!”</span> I murmured. <span class="tei tei-q">“I didn’t
think there was so much fire left.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page036">[pg 036]</span><a name="Pg036" id="Pg036" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
stuff broke and crumbled into an empty and
blackening pan. A curious odor arose.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It couldn’t have!”</span> gasped Janet.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It couldn’t—but it has!”</span> I said.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Does it leak?”</span> faltered Janet.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Leak!”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The question is,”</span> I went on as I got up,
<span class="tei tei-q">“did it boil away because it leaked, or did it
leak because it boiled away?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I don’t see that it matters much,”</span> said
Janet. She was showing symptoms of depression
at this point.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It matters a great deal,”</span> I said. <span class="tei tei-q">“Because,
you see, we’ve got to tell Jonathan,
and it makes all the difference how we put
it.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page037">[pg 037]</span><a name="Pg037" id="Pg037" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I see,”</span> said Janet; then she added, experimentally,
<span class="tei tei-q">“Why tell Jonathan?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Why, Janet, you know better! I wouldn’t
miss telling Jonathan for anything. What is
Jonathan <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">for!</span></span>”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well—of course,”</span> she conceded. <span class="tei tei-q">“Let’s
do dishes.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.…</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">At some time unknown, out of the blind
depths of the night, I was awakened by a
voice:—</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It’s beginning to rain. I think I’ll just
go out and empty what’s near the house.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Janet!”</span> I murmured, <span class="tei tei-q">“don’t be absurd.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But it will dilute all that sap.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“There isn’t any sap to dilute. It won’t
be running at night.”</span> After a while the voice,
full of propitiatory intonations, resumed:—</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“My dear, you don’t mind if I slip out. It
will only take a minute.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I do mind. Go to sleep!”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page038">[pg 038]</span><a name="Pg038" id="Pg038" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Silence. Then:—</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It’s raining harder. I hate to think of all
that sap—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You don’t <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">have</span></span>
to think!”</span> I was quite
savage. <span class="tei tei-q">“Just go to sleep—and let me!”</span>
Another silence. Then a fresh downpour.
The voice was pleading:—</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Please</span></span>
let me go! I’ll be back in a minute.
And it’s not cold.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, well—I’m awake now, anyway.
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">I’ll</span></span>
go.”</span> My voice was tinged with that high
resignation that is worse than anger. Janet’s
tone changed instantly:—</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No, no! Don’t! Please don’t! I’m going.
I truly don’t mind.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">I’m</span></span>
going. I don’t mind, either, not at all.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, dear! Then let’s not either of us go.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“That was my idea in the first place.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, then, we won’t. Go to sleep, and I
will too.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Not at all! I’ve decided to go.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But it’s stopped raining. Probably it
won’t rain any more.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Then what are you making all this fuss
for?”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page039">[pg 039]</span><a name="Pg039" id="Pg039" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I didn’t make a fuss. I just thought I
could slip out—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, you couldn’t. And it’s raining very
hard again. And I’m going.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, don’t! You’ll get drenched.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Of course. But I can’t bear to have all
that sap diluted.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It doesn’t run at night. You said it
didn’t.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You said it did.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But I don’t really know. You know best.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Why didn’t you think of that sooner?
Anyway, I’m going.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, dear! You make me feel as if I’d
stirred you up—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You have,”</span> I interrupted, sweetly. <span class="tei tei-q">“I
won’t deny that you
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">have</span></span> stirred me up. But
now that you have mentioned it”</span>—I felt
for a match—<span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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,
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page040">[pg 040]</span><a name="Pg040" id="Pg040" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It’s diluted, sure enough,”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The warm dining-room was pleasant to return
to, and we sat down to cookies and milk,
feeling almost cozy.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I’ve always wanted to know how it would
be to go out in the middle of the night this
way,”</span> I remarked, <span class="tei tei-q">“and now I know.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Aren’t you hateful!”</span> said Janet.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Not at all. Just appreciative. But now,
if you haven’t any
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">other</span></span> plan, we’ll go back
to bed.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page041">[pg 041]</span><a name="Pg041" id="Pg041" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
they fell, hissing, on the embers. On the
porch roofs the rain made a dull patter of
sound; on the tin roof of the <span class="tei tei-q">“little attic”</span>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It seems as if there was a curse on the
syrup this year,”</span> said Janet.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The trouble is,”</span> I said, <span class="tei tei-q">“I know just
enough to have lost my hold on the fool’s
Providence, and not enough really to take
care of myself.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Superstition!”</span> said Janet.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“What do you call your idea of the curse?”</span>
I retorted. <span class="tei tei-q">“Anyway, I have an idea! Look,
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page042">[pg 042]</span><a name="Pg042" id="Pg042" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
Janet! We’ll just cut up these enamel-cloth
table-covers here by the sink and everywhere,
and tack them around the spouts.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Janet’s thrifty spirit was doubtful. <span class="tei tei-q">“Don’t
you need them?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Not half so much as the trees do. Come
on! Pull them off. We’ll have to have fresh
ones this summer, anyway.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page043">[pg 043]</span><a name="Pg043" id="Pg043" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
swiftly that one likes to find something that
still keeps its secret—though, indeed, the
spiritual mysteries seem in no danger of such
enforcement.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The next day the rain stopped, the floods
began to subside, and Jonathan managed to
arrive, though the roads had even less <span class="tei tei-q">“bottom
to ’em”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“How much <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">do</span></span>
you know about it?”</span> asked Janet.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page044">[pg 044]</span><a name="Pg044" id="Pg044" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I’ve got more to go on than that,”</span> said
Jonathan. <span class="tei tei-q">“I came up on the train with the
Judge. He used to see it done.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You’ve got to drive Janet over to her
train to-night; Hiram can’t,”</span> I said.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“All right. There’s time enough.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We sat down to early supper, and took
turns running out to the kitchen to <span class="tei tei-q">“try”</span>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I’m going to take it off now,”</span> said Jonathan.
<span class="tei tei-q">“Look out!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Do you think it’s time?”</span> I demurred.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“We’ll know soon,”</span> said Jonathan, with
his usual composure.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We hung over him. <span class="tei tei-q">“Now you beat it,”</span> I
said. But he was already beating.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Get some cold water to set it in,”</span> he commanded.
We brought the dishpan with water
from the well, where ice still floated.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Maybe you oughtn’t to stir so much—do
you think?”</span> I suggested, helpfully. <span class="tei tei-q">“Beat
it more—up, you know.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“More the way you would eggs,”</span> said
Janet.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page045">[pg 045]</span><a name="Pg045" id="Pg045" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I’ll show you.”</span> I lunged at the spoon.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Go away! This isn’t eggs,”</span> said Jonathan,
beating steadily.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Your arm must be tired. Let me take it,”</span>
pleaded Janet.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No, me!”</span> I said. <span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I’m fresh enough.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And I really don’t think you have the
motion.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I have motion enough. This is my job.
You go and help Janet.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Janet’s all right.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“So am I. See how white it’s getting. The
Judge said—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Here come Hiram and Kit,”</span> announced
Janet, returning with bag and wraps. <span class="tei tei-q">“But
you have ten minutes. Can’t I help?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“He won’t let us. He’s that
‘sot,’”</span> I murmured. <span class="tei tei-q">“He’ll
make you miss your train.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">could</span></span>
butter the pans,”</span> he counter charged,
<span class="tei tei-q">“and you haven’t.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We flew to prepare, and the pouring began.
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page046">[pg 046]</span><a name="Pg046" id="Pg046" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Perhaps in no other way is it possible to get
quite what I got that evening. It was partly
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page047">[pg 047]</span><a name="Pg047" id="Pg047" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Something of this I came to feel as I sat
there in the wonderful stillness. There were
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page048">[pg 048]</span><a name="Pg048" id="Pg048" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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 <span class="tei tei-q">“new part,”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">There was the sound of slow wheels outside,
the long roll of the carriage-house door,
and the trampling of hoofs on the flooring
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page049">[pg 049]</span><a name="Pg049" id="Pg049" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Your sugar is hardening nicely, I see,”</span>
he said, rubbing his hands before the fire.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes,”</span> I said. <span class="tei tei-q">“You know I
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">told</span></span> Janet
that for this part of the affair we could trust
to the fool’s Providence.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Thank you,”</span> said Jonathan.</p>
</div>
<hr class="page" /><div id="chapter03" class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page050">[pg 050]</span><a name="Pg050" id="Pg050" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<a name="toc6" id="toc6"></a>
<a name="pdf7" id="pdf7"></a>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">III</span></h1>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 2.88em; margin-top: 2.88em"><span style="font-size: 144%">Evenings on the Farm</span></h1>
<div class="tei tei-epigraph" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 1.80em; margin-left: 9.00em">
<div class="tei tei-cit" style="text-align: right">
<span class="tei tei-quote" style="text-align: right">
<div class="tei tei-lg" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 0.90em; margin-top: 0.90em">
<div class="tei tei-l" style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size: 90%">I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;</span></div>
<div class="tei tei-l" style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size: 90%">I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away</span></div>
<div class="tei tei-l" style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size: 90%">(And wait to watch the water clear, I may);</span></div>
<div class="tei tei-l" style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size: 90%">I shan’t be gone long.—You come too.</span></div>
<div class="tei tei-l" style="text-align: left"> </div>
<div class="tei tei-l" style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size: 90%">I’m going out to fetch the little calf</span></div>
<div class="tei tei-l" style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size: 90%">That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,</span></div>
<div class="tei tei-l" style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size: 90%">It totters when she licks it with her tongue.</span></div>
<div class="tei tei-l" style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size: 90%">I shan’t be gone long.—You come too.</span></div>
</div>
<span class="tei tei-bibl" style="text-align: right">
<span class="tei tei-author" style="text-align: right"><span class="tei tei-hi" style="text-align: right"><span style="font-size: 90%; font-variant: small-caps">Robert Frost</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 90%">.
</span></span>
</span>
</div>
</div>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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. <span class="tei tei-q">“We’ll do lots of
reading aloud,”</span> I said. <span class="tei tei-q">“And we’ll have long
walks. There won’t be much to do
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">but</span></span> walk
and read. I can hardly wait.”</span> And I chose
our summer books with special reference to
reading aloud.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Of course,”</span> I said, as we fell to work at
our packing, <span class="tei tei-q">“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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page051">[pg 051]</span><a name="Pg051" id="Pg051" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
you’ll help. We ought to be settled in a
week.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Or two—or three,”</span> suggested Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Three! What is there to do?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Farm-life isn’t so blamed simple as you
think.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But what <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">is</span></span>
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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Better say the rest of your life for the
odds and ends you haven’t thought of,”</span> said
Jonathan, as he drove the last nail in a neatly
headed barrel.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan, why are you such a pessimist?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I’m not, except when you’re such an
optimist.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“If I’d begun by saying it would take a
month, would you have said a week?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Can’t tell. Might have.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Anyway, there’s nothing bad about odds
and ends. They’re about all women have
much to do with most of their lives.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page052">[pg 052]</span><a name="Pg052" id="Pg052" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“That’s what I said. And you called me a
pessimist.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I didn’t call you one. I said, why were
you one.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I’m sorry. My mistake,”</span> said Jonathan
with the smile of one who scores.</p>
<div class="tei tei-tb">* * * * * </div>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">And so we went.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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 <span class="tei tei-q">“new part,”</span>—still <span class="tei tei-q">“new,”</span> 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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page053">[pg 053]</span><a name="Pg053" id="Pg053" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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 <span class="tei tei-q">“views.”</span> 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 <span class="tei tei-q">“The Wonders
of the Great West”</span>; another was about
<span class="tei tei-q">“The Female Saints of America.”</span> 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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page054">[pg 054]</span><a name="Pg054" id="Pg054" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It always tasted just that way to me when
I was a boy,”</span> he said, <span class="tei tei-q">“but I never thought
much about it—I thought it was just a
closet-taste.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page055">[pg 055]</span><a name="Pg055" id="Pg055" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And it isn’t only the taste,”</span> I went on.
<span class="tei tei-q">“It does something to me, to my state of
mind. I’m afraid to try the garret.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Garrets are different,”</span> said Jonathan.
<span class="tei tei-q">“But I’d leave them. They can wait.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“They’ve waited a good while, of course,”</span>
I said.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<div class="tei tei-tb">* * * * * </div>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Meanwhile, in the evenings, Jonathan
helped.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I’m afraid you were more or less right
about the odd jobs,”</span> I admitted one night.
<span class="tei tei-q">“They do seem to accumulate.”</span> I was holding
a candle while he set up a loose latch.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“They’ve been accumulating a good many
years,”</span> said Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And the chairs pull apart,”</span> added Jonathan.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page056">[pg 056]</span><a name="Pg056" id="Pg056" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes. Of course after we catch up we’ll be
all right.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I wouldn’t count too much on catching
up.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Why not?”</span> I asked.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The farm has had a long start.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But you’re a Yankee,”</span> I argued; <span class="tei tei-q">“the
Yankee nature fairly feeds on such jobs—‘putter
jobs,’ you know.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, I know.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Only, of course, you get on faster if you’re
not too particular about having the exact
tool—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The pump was a clear case of new wine in
an old bottle. It was large and very strong.
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page057">[pg 057]</span><a name="Pg057" id="Pg057" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“What’s the matter there?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Why, it seems to have pulled clear of its
moorings. You look at it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He looked, with that expression of meditative
resourcefulness peculiar to the true
Yankee countenance. <span class="tei tei-q">“H’m—needs new
wood there,—and there; that stuff’ll never
hold.”</span> 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. <span class="tei tei-q">“We’ll have it to-morrow
night,”</span> he said: <span class="tei tei-q">“the moon will be better.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The next evening I met him below the turn of
the road. <span class="tei tei-q">“Wonderful night it’s going to be,”</span>
he said, as he pushed his wheel up the last hill.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes—”</span> I said, a little uneasily. I was
thinking of the kitchen pump. Finally I
brought myself to face it.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“There seems to be some trouble—with
the pump,”</span> I said apologetically. I felt that
it was my fault, though I knew it wasn’t.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page058">[pg 058]</span><a name="Pg058" id="Pg058" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“More trouble? What sort of trouble?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Probably just that,”</span> said Jonathan:
<span class="tei tei-q">“grain of sand in the valve, very likely.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Shall I get a plumber?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Plumber! I’ll fix it myself in three shakes
of a lamb’s tail.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well,”</span> I said, relieved: <span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan,”</span> I called, <span class="tei tei-q">“I’m ready.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, I’m not,”</span> said a voice at my feet.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Why, where are you? Oh, there!”</span> I bent
down and peered under the sink at a shape
crouched there. <span class="tei tei-q">“Haven’t you finished?”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page059">[pg 059]</span><a name="Pg059" id="Pg059" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Finished! I’ve just got the thing apart.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I should say you had!”</span> I regarded the
various pieces of iron and leather and wood as
they lay, mere dismembered shapes, about
the dim kitchen.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It doesn’t seem as if it would ever come
together again—to be a pump,”</span> I said in
some depression.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, that’s easy! It’s just a question of
time.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“How much time?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Heaven knows.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Was it the valve?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It was—several things.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No—get your sewing—blast that
screw! Why doesn’t it start?”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page060">[pg 060]</span><a name="Pg060" id="Pg060" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Suppose it doesn’t work,”</span> I suggested.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Suppose it does,”</span> said Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He began to pump furiously. <span class="tei tei-q">“Pour in
water there!”</span> he directed. <span class="tei tei-q">“Keep on pouring—don’t
stop—never mind if she does spout.”</span>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“What time is it?”</span> he asked.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page061">[pg 061]</span><a name="Pg061" id="Pg061" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, fairly late—about ten—ten minutes
past.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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 <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">clk-clk</span></span>.
Jonathan was by this time so serene that I
felt I could ask him a question that had occurred
to me.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan, how long <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">is</span></span>
three shakes of a lamb’s tail?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Apparently, my dear, it is the whole evening,”</span>
he answered unruffled.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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. <span class="tei tei-q">“What shall we read?”</span> I asked, feeling
very cozy.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page062">[pg 062]</span><a name="Pg062" id="Pg062" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Jonathan was filling his pipe with a leisurely
deliberation good to look upon. With the
match in his hand he paused—<span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I have always noticed that if the turkeys
grow up very fat and strutty and suggestive
of Thanksgiving, Jonathan calls them <span class="tei tei-q">“our
turkeys,”</span> but in the spring, when they are
committing all the naughtinesses of wild and
silly youth, he is apt to allude to them as
<span class="tei tei-q">“those young turkeys of yours.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I rose wearily. <span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Jonathan got up, too, and laid down his
pipe. <span class="tei tei-q">“You’ll need the lantern,”</span> he said.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page063">[pg 063]</span><a name="Pg063" id="Pg063" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
seems peculiarly drizzly, the silliness of the
turkeys seems particularly and unendurably
silly.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Nine o’clock,”</span> said Jonathan, <span class="tei tei-q">“and we’re
too wet to sit down. If you could just shut in
those turkeys on wet days—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Shut them in! Didn’t I shut them in!
They must have got out since four o’clock.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Isn’t the shed tight?”</span> he asked.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Chicken-tight, but not turkey-tight, apparently.
Nothing is turkey-tight.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“They’re bigger than chickens.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Not in any one spot they aren’t. They’re
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page064">[pg 064]</span><a name="Pg064" id="Pg064" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
like coiled wire—when they stretch out to
get through a crack they have <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">no</span></span> dimension
except length, their bodies are mere imaginary
points to hang feathers on. You don’t
know little turkeys.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Sh—h—h!”</span> said Jonathan, a warning
finger raised.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I stood listening.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I don’t hear anything,”</span> I said.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page065">[pg 065]</span><a name="Pg065" id="Pg065" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Sh—h!”</span> he repeated. <span class="tei tei-q">“There!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">This time, indeed, I heard faint bird-notes.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Young robins!”</span> He sprang up and made
for the back door with long strides.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Where are you?”</span> I called into it.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The whistle again, quite near me, apparently
out of the air.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Bring a lantern,”</span> came a whisper.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Where are you? I can’t see you at all.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Right here—look—here—up!”</span> The
voice was almost over my head.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh! What are you doing up there?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Get me a long stick—hoe—clothes-pole—anything
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page066">[pg 066]</span><a name="Pg066" id="Pg066" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
I can poke with. Quick!
The cat’s up here. I can hear her, but I can’t
see her.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I found the rake and reached it up to him.
From the dark beyond him came a distressed
mew.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Now the lantern. Hang it on the teeth.”</span>
He drew it up to him, then, rake in one hand
and lantern in the other, proceeded to squirm
out along the limb.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Now I see her.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I saw her too—a huddle of yellow,
crouched close.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I’ll have her in a minute. She’ll either
have to drop or be caught.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I don’t see how you’re going to get down,”</span>
I said, mopping the rain-mist out of my eyes.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page067">[pg 067]</span><a name="Pg067" id="Pg067" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Watch me,”</span> panted the contortionist.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Don’t believe she’ll eat young robin for a
day or two,”</span> said Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Is that what they were? Where were
they?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Under the tree. She’d knocked them
out.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Could you put this one back? He seems
all right—only sort of naked in spots.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page068">[pg 068]</span><a name="Pg068" id="Pg068" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“We’ll half cover the basket and hang it
in the tree. His folks’ll take care of him.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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. <span class="tei tei-q">“They say we did it!”</span> said Jonathan.
<span class="tei tei-q">“I call that gratitude!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page069">[pg 069]</span><a name="Pg069" id="Pg069" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
Providence was almost more than we could
undertake, if we hoped to do anything else.</p>
<div class="tei tei-tb">* * * * * </div>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">For instance, there was the time of the
great drought, when Jonathan, coming in
from a tour of the farm at dusk, said, <span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Can I help?”</span> I asked, not without regrets
for our books and our evening—it was
a black night, and I had had hopes.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes. Come and hold the lantern.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We went. The spring-hole had been trodden
by the poor, eager creatures into a useless
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page070">[pg 070]</span><a name="Pg070" id="Pg070" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Keep ’em back,”</span> he said. <span class="tei tei-q">“They’ll have
it all trodden up again—Hi! You! Ge’
back ’ere!”</span> 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.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page071">[pg 071]</span><a name="Pg071" id="Pg071" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Coffee grounds,”</span> Jonathan would suggest,
with a touch of sternness.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No,”</span> I would reply firmly; <span class="tei tei-q">“coffee
grounds are always burned.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page072">[pg 072]</span><a name="Pg072" id="Pg072" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“What then?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Don’t know. I’ve poked and poked.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">A gleam in the corner of Jonathan’s eye—<span class="tei tei-q">“What
with?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, everything.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, I suppose so. For instance what?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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—”</span> Jonathan
was laughing by this time—<span class="tei tei-q">“Well, I
have to use what I have, don’t I?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, of course. And after the pail-handle?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“After that—oh, yes. I tried your cleaning-rod.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The devil you did!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And now what do you expect?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I expect you to fix it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page073">[pg 073]</span><a name="Pg073" id="Pg073" class="tei tei-anchor"></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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page074">[pg 074]</span><a name="Pg074" id="Pg074" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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 <span class="tei tei-q">“Hamlet,”</span> shouted, <span class="tei tei-q">“Hold ’em! There’s
half a freezer of ice-cream down here we can
finish.”</span> 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, <span class="tei tei-q">“Who’s sick now?”</span> How could they
know it was only a plumbing party?</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page075">[pg 075]</span><a name="Pg075" id="Pg075" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
that particular evening, to have a plumbing
party, with the drain as the
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">pièce de résistance</span></span>.
Toward this our lives had been yearning,
and lo! they had arrived!</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">On that particular evening, as we returned,
breathless and worn, to the house, I could
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page076">[pg 076]</span><a name="Pg076" id="Pg076" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
not refrain from saying, with some edge, <span class="tei tei-q">“I
never wanted to keep pigs anyway.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Who says we’re keeping them?”</span> remarked
Jonathan; and then we laughed and laughed.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You needn’t think I’m laughing because
you said anything specially funny,”</span> I said.
<span class="tei tei-q">“It’s only because I’m tired enough to laugh
at anything.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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, <span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, dear! I hate the
pump! I wanted a moonlight walk!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I’ll have the thing together now in a
jiffy,”</span> said Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jiffy! There’s no use talking about jiffies
at half-past ten at night,”</span> I snarled. I
was determined anyway to be as cross as I
liked. <span class="tei tei-q">“Why can’t we find a really simple
way of living? This isn’t simple. It’s highly
complex and very difficult.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You cut those washers very well,”</span> suggested
Jonathan soothingly, but I was not
prepared to be soothed.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page077">[pg 077]</span><a name="Pg077" id="Pg077" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Fair evening’s work,”</span> murmured Jonathan
as he rapidly assembled the pump.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, as work. But all I mean is—it isn’t
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">simple</span></span>.
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!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I like your climaxes,”</span> said Jonathan, and
we both laughed. <span class="tei tei-q">“There! I’m done. Now
suppose we go, in our simple way, and lock up
the barns and chicken-houses.”</span></p>
<div class="tei tei-tb">* * * * * </div>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">And so the evenings came and went, each
offering a prospect of fair and quiet things—books
and firelight and moonlight and talk;
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page078">[pg 078]</span><a name="Pg078" id="Pg078" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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 <span class="tei tei-q">“critters”</span>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I’m beginning to see that it will never be
any better,”</span> I said.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Probably not,”</span> said Jonathan, talking
around his pipe.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You seem contented enough about it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I am.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I don’t know that I’m contented, but
perhaps I’m resigned. I believe it’s necessary.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Of course it’s necessary.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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, <span class="tei tei-q">“You see, we’re right down close to
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page079">[pg 079]</span><a name="Pg079" id="Pg079" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And that knocks the bottom out of our
evenings.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“She felt it, though,”</span> said Jonathan. <span class="tei tei-q">“It
kept her awake.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“True,”</span> said Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Farm life is the pea without the mattresses—”</span>
I went on.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Sounds a little cheerless,”</span> said Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well—of course, it isn’t really cheerless
at all. But neither is it easy. It’s full of remorseless
demands for immediate adjustment.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“That was the way the princess felt about
her pea.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page080">[pg 080]</span><a name="Pg080" id="Pg080" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Perhaps that was why she ran away,”</span>
suggested Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Of course it was. She ran away to find the
simple life and didn’t find it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No. She found the pea—even with all
those mattresses.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And we’ve run away, and found several
peas, and fewer mattresses,”</span> said Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Let’s not get confused—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I’m not confused,”</span> said Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“What are you going to do about it?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I’m going to like it all,”</span> I answered, <span class="tei tei-q">“and
make believe I meant to do it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">After that we were silent awhile. Then I
tried again. <span class="tei tei-q">“You know your trick of waltzing
with a glass of water on your head?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page081">[pg 081]</span><a name="Pg081" id="Pg081" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, I wonder if we couldn’t do that
with our souls.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“That suggests to me a rather curious
picture,”</span> said Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Perhaps you’d better back out of that
figure of speech,”</span> suggested Jonathan. <span class="tei tei-q">“Go
back to your princess. Say, <span class="tei tei-q">‘every man his
own mattress.’</span> ”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And yet you can’t think without them.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page082">[pg 082]</span><a name="Pg082" id="Pg082" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No, you can’t think without them.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well—where are we, anyway?”</span> he
asked placidly.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I don’t know at all. Only I feel sure that
leading the simple life doesn’t depend on the
things you do it <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">with</span></span>.
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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“That sounds rather reasonable,”</span> said
Jonathan; <span class="tei tei-q">“almost scriptural—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, I know,”</span> I said.</p>
</div>
<hr class="page" /><div id="chapter04" class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page083">[pg 083]</span><a name="Pg083" id="Pg083" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<a name="toc8" id="toc8"></a>
<a name="pdf9" id="pdf9"></a>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">IV</span></h1>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 2.88em; margin-top: 2.88em"><span style="font-size: 144%">After Frost</span></h1>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It is late afternoon in mid-September. I
stand in my garden sniffing the raw air, and
wondering, as always at this season,
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">will</span></span>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Too much wind for frost,”</span> says he.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Sure? I’d hate to lose my nasturtiums
quite so early.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You won’t lose ’em. Look at the thermometer
if you don’t believe me. If it’s
above forty you’re safe.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page084">[pg 084]</span><a name="Pg084" id="Pg084" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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. <span class="tei tei-q">“Why is everything
so still?”</span> I ask myself. <span class="tei tei-q">“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!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan!”</span> I call, as I feel rather than
see his shape whirling noiselessly in at the
big gate after his ride up from the station.
<span class="tei tei-q">“Help me cover my nasturtiums. There’ll
be frost to-night.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Maybe,”</span> says Jonathan’s voice.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Not maybe at all—surely. Listen to the
katydids!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You mean, listen to the absence of katydids.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Very well. The point is, I want newspapers.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No. The point is, I am to bring newspapers.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Exactly.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And tuck up your nasturtiums for the
night in your peculiarly ridiculous fashion—”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page085">[pg 085]</span><a name="Pg085" id="Pg085" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I know it looks ridiculous, but really it’s
sensible. There may be weeks of summer
after this.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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 <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">is</span></span> 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!</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page086">[pg 086]</span><a name="Pg086" id="Pg086" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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,
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page087">[pg 087]</span><a name="Pg087" id="Pg087" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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!</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It is with positive satisfaction that I stand
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page088">[pg 088]</span><a name="Pg088" id="Pg088" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page089">[pg 089]</span><a name="Pg089" id="Pg089" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page090">[pg 090]</span><a name="Pg090" id="Pg090" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
that even my self-seeding annuals come up
where I most want them.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page091">[pg 091]</span><a name="Pg091" id="Pg091" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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!</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page092">[pg 092]</span><a name="Pg092" id="Pg092" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page093">[pg 093]</span><a name="Pg093" id="Pg093" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page094">[pg 094]</span><a name="Pg094" id="Pg094" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
them out near the main phlox masses, and
wait for the next season’s blossoming before I
give them their final place.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page095">[pg 095]</span><a name="Pg095" id="Pg095" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">But there is another source of pleasure in
my fall gardening—a pleasure not of the
senses but of the imagination.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page096">[pg 096]</span><a name="Pg096" id="Pg096" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
</div>
<hr class="page" /><div id="chapter05" class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page097">[pg 097]</span><a name="Pg097" id="Pg097" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<a name="toc10" id="toc10"></a>
<a name="pdf11" id="pdf11"></a>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">V</span></h1>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 2.88em; margin-top: 2.88em"><span style="font-size: 144%">The Joys of Garden Stewardship</span></h1>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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,
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page098">[pg 098]</span><a name="Pg098" id="Pg098" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Aren’t those peonies lovely?”</span> I suggest.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes,”</span> dreamily; <span class="tei tei-q">“you know I can’t have
that shade in my garden because—”</span> and she
trails off into a disquisition that I could, just
at that moment, do without.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Look at the height of that larkspur!”</span> I say.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, I am not trying to
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">sell</span></span> you any,”</span> I
am sometimes goaded into protesting. <span class="tei tei-q">“I
only wanted you to say they are pretty—pretty
right here in <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">my</span></span> garden.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes—yes—of course they are pretty—they’re
lovely—you have a lovely garden,
you know.”</span> She pulls herself up to give
this tribute, but soon her eyes get the faraway
look in them again, and she is murmuring,
<span class="tei tei-q">“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?”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page099">[pg 099]</span><a name="Pg099" id="Pg099" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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 <span class="tei tei-q">“even
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">more</span></span> becoming
way”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page100">[pg 100]</span><a name="Pg100" id="Pg100" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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 <span class="tei tei-q">“get notice.”</span> 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—<span class="tei tei-q">“lovely
flowers—”</span> <span class="tei tei-q">“wonderful yellow
of—”</span> <span class="tei tei-q">“garden there,”</span>—my ears are quick
to receive it and I forgive the eddies of gasolene
and dust that are also left by the vanishing
visitant.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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,
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page101">[pg 101]</span><a name="Pg101" id="Pg101" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page102">[pg 102]</span><a name="Pg102" id="Pg102" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page103">[pg 103]</span><a name="Pg103" id="Pg103" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page104">[pg 104]</span><a name="Pg104" id="Pg104" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">In saying this, however, I don’t count
rocks. When it comes to rocks, I call in Jonathan.
And it often comes to rocks.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page105">[pg 105]</span><a name="Pg105" id="Pg105" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Rocks?”</span> my friends say. <span class="tei tei-q">“Do you mind
the rocks? But they are a special beauty!
Why, I have a rock in my garden that I have
treated—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Very well,”</span> I interrupt rudely.
<span class="tei tei-q">“<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">A rock</span></span> is
all very well. If I had <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">a
rock</span></span> in my garden I
could treat it, too. But how about a garden
that is all rocks?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh—why—choose another spot.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Whereupon I reply, <span class="tei tei-q">“You don’t know
Connecticut.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page106">[pg 106]</span><a name="Pg106" id="Pg106" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">very</span></span>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page107">[pg 107]</span><a name="Pg107" id="Pg107" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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. <span class="tei tei-q">“Please,
Jonathan, don’t step back any farther; you’ll
trample the forget-me-nots!”</span>
<span class="tei tei-q">“<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Could</span></span> you
manage to roll this fellow out along that
path and not across the mangled bodies of
the marigolds?”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, well, of course, if you
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">can’t</span></span> 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.”</span> 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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page108">[pg 108]</span><a name="Pg108" id="Pg108" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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. <span class="tei tei-q">“If we had a water-supply,
I wouldn’t make a grass-plot,”</span> I
said; <span class="tei tei-q">“I’d make a swimming-pool. It’s deep
enough.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And sit in the middle with your book?”</span>
asked Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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 <span class="tei tei-q">“took”</span> well, but as regards the gnomes,
the film was underexposed.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Thus the grass seed was planted. And we
reminded each other of the version of <span class="tei tei-q">“America”</span>
once given, with unconscious inspiration,
by a little friend of ours:—</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page109">[pg 109]</span><a name="Pg109" id="Pg109" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<div class="block tei tei-quote" style="margin-bottom: 1.80em; margin-left: 3.60em; margin-top: 1.80em; margin-right: 3.60em">
<div class="tei tei-l" style="text-align: left"><span class="tei tei-q" style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size: 90%">“</span><span style="font-size: 90%">Land where our father died,</span></span></div>
<div class="tei tei-l" style="text-align: left"><span class="tei tei-q" style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size: 90%">Land where the pilgrims pried.</span><span style="font-size: 90%">”</span></span></div>
</div>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It seemed to us to suit the adventure.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page110">[pg 110]</span><a name="Pg110" id="Pg110" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page111">[pg 111]</span><a name="Pg111" id="Pg111" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page112">[pg 112]</span><a name="Pg112" id="Pg112" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
really pretty primrose shades, to a deep red-orange
touched with maroon.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page113">[pg 113]</span><a name="Pg113" id="Pg113" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<div class="tei tei-tb">* * * * * </div>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Out in my garden I feel myself less and
less owner, more and more merely steward.
I decree certain paths, and the phlox says,
<span class="tei tei-q">“Paths? Did you say paths?”</span> 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,
<span class="tei tei-q">“Iris? Not at all. This is our bed. Iris indeed!”</span>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page114">[pg 114]</span><a name="Pg114" id="Pg114" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
And I submit, and move the iris
elsewhere.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The joys of stewardship are great and I
am well content.</p>
</div>
<hr class="page" /><div id="chapter06" class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page115">[pg 115]</span><a name="Pg115" id="Pg115" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<a name="toc12" id="toc12"></a>
<a name="pdf13" id="pdf13"></a>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">VI</span></h1>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 2.88em; margin-top: 2.88em"><span style="font-size: 144%">Trout and Arbutus</span></h1>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No use looking there,”</span> I remark; <span class="tei tei-q">“I keep
my silks put away.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I want red, and as strong as there is.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I know what you want. Here.”</span> and I
hand him a spool of red buttonhole twist.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Ah! Just right!”</span> And for the rest of the
evening his fingers are busy.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">But beyond wonder we do not get, often
for weeks after the trout season is, legislatively,
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page116">[pg 116]</span><a name="Pg116" id="Pg116" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<span class="tei tei-q">“open.”</span> Jonathan is <span class="tei tei-q">“busy.”</span> I am
<span class="tei tei-q">“busy.”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page117">[pg 117]</span><a name="Pg117" id="Pg117" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
symbols, and to the New Englander the symbol
is the arbutus.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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:—<span class="tei tei-q">“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”</span>—this in the apologetic
tone of one who admits a weakness—<span class="tei tei-q">“guess
you’ll find all you want.”</span> I venture to say
that of no other wild flower, except those
which work specific harm or good, could I get
such information.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page118">[pg 118]</span><a name="Pg118" id="Pg118" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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 <span class="tei tei-q">“in the country.”</span> 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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page119">[pg 119]</span><a name="Pg119" id="Pg119" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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 <span class="tei tei-q">“shad-blow,”</span>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page120">[pg 120]</span><a name="Pg120" id="Pg120" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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, <span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, no, not from around here. This
came from Virginia.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.
<span class="tei tei-q">“From York State,”</span> they tell me. I grow
restive.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page121">[pg 121]</span><a name="Pg121" id="Pg121" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan,”</span> I say, holding up a spray for
him to smell, <span class="tei tei-q">“we’ve got to go. You can’t
resist that. We’ll take a day and go for it—and
trout, too.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page122">[pg 122]</span><a name="Pg122" id="Pg122" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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!</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Jonathan feels this. <span class="tei tei-q">“There isn’t any for
two fields yet—might as well stick to the
brook.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page123">[pg 123]</span><a name="Pg123" id="Pg123" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You get him. I don’t mind.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, but I mind. Here, I’ve got it all
planned: there’s a bit of brush-fishing just
below—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No brush-fishing for me, please!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well”</span>—I assent grudgingly—<span class="tei tei-q">“only,
really, I’d be just as happy if you’d fish the
whole thing and let me go right on down—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page124">[pg 124]</span><a name="Pg124" id="Pg124" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
rest. They’re awfully shy. I expect you to
get at least one there, and two down at the
bend.”</span> 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 <span class="tei tei-q">“sneak”</span>
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!</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So that was off my mind.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page125">[pg 125]</span><a name="Pg125" id="Pg125" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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!</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page126">[pg 126]</span><a name="Pg126" id="Pg126" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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 <span class="tei tei-q">“sneak,”</span> it is, as I
have suggested, to be sparingly indulged in.
But if we could only nibble now and then
from <span class="tei tei-q">“the other side”</span> 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!</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page127">[pg 127]</span><a name="Pg127" id="Pg127" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">But after that? You want to pick it. Yes,
you really want to pick it!</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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?</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page128">[pg 128]</span><a name="Pg128" id="Pg128" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page129">[pg 129]</span><a name="Pg129" id="Pg129" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“What luck?”</span> he called.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Good luck! I’ve found lots. Come up!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He took a few steps up toward me, so that
conversation could drop from shouting to
speaking levels. <span class="tei tei-q">“How many did you get?”</span>
he asked.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“How many?… Oh … why … Oh, I
got one up there where you showed me—under
the rock, you know.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Good one?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Eight inches. He’s down there by the
bars.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Good! And what about the bend?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The bend? Oh, I didn’t fish there—look
at these! Aren’t they beauties?”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Ah—yes—delicious—didn’t fish
there? Why not? Did they see you?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Who? The trout? I don’t know. But I
saw this. And I just had to pick it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well! You’re a great fisherman! And with
that water right there beside you! Lord!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“With the arbutus right here beside me!
Lord!”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page130">[pg 130]</span><a name="Pg130" id="Pg130" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But the arbutus would wait.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But the trout would wait. They’re waiting
for you now, don’t you hear them? Go
and fish there!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No. That’s your pool.”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well—of course it’s a beautiful pool—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Best on the brook,”</span> murmured Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But, truly, I’d enjoy it just as much to
have you fish it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Jonathan, gradually adjusting himself to
the turn of things, stood his rod up against
the bush with the meticulous care of the true
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page131">[pg 131]</span><a name="Pg131" id="Pg131" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
sportsman. <span class="tei tei-q">“Where did you leave yours?”</span>
he asked, with a suspiciousness born of a
deep knowledge of my character.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, down by the bars.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Standing up or lying down?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Lying down, I think. It’s all right.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It’s not all right if it’s lying down. Anything
might trample on it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“For instance, what?—birds or crickets?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“For instance, people or cows.”</span> He strode
down the hill, and I saw him stoop. As he
returned I could read disapproval in his gait.
<span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span>
And we wandered on, separating a little to
scan the ground more widely.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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,
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page132">[pg 132]</span><a name="Pg132" id="Pg132" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
and saw him kneel. <span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, come over!”</span> he
called; <span class="tei tei-q">“you really ought to see this growing!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But there’s some I want, right here,
that’s lovely—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Never mind. Come and see this—oh,
come!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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—<span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan,
it is truly the loveliest
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">yet!</span></span> It’s the
way it grows—with the moss and all—please
come!”</span> And of course he comes.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We had been on the hillside a long half-hour,
much nearer an hour, when Jonathan
began to grow restive. <span class="tei tei-q">“Don’t you think you
have enough?”</span> he suggested several times.
Finally, he spoke plainly of the trout.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, yes, of course,”</span> I said, <span class="tei tei-q">“you go down
and I’ll follow just as soon as I’ve gone along
that upper path.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page133">[pg 133]</span><a name="Pg133" id="Pg133" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
leave that bit of water at my left hand and
turn away to the right.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Now—sneak!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We sneaked, and I sank down just back of
the edge of the bank. Jonathan crouched
some feet behind, coaching me:—<span class="tei tei-q">“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! <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Give</span></span> him
line! Now, feel of him—careful! You’ll
know when to strike … there!… Oh! too
bad!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">For as I struck, my line held fast.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Snagged, by gummy! Can’t you pull
clear?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Not without stirring up the whole pool.
You’ll have to do the fishing, after all.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh! <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">too</span></span>
bad! That’s hard luck!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Not a bit. I like to watch you do it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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,
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page134">[pg 134]</span><a name="Pg134" id="Pg134" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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 <span class="tei tei-q">“feeling for him”</span>; at
last the strike … and then, a flopping in the
grass behind me, and Jonathan crawling
back to kill and unhook him.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Don’t get up. There’s probably another
one,”</span> 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. <span class="tei tei-q">“That’s all,”</span>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page135">[pg 135]</span><a name="Pg135" id="Pg135" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Now I’ll get you clear,”</span> said Jonathan,
wading out into the water, and, with sleeves
rolled high, feeling deep, deep down under
the opposite bank. <span class="tei tei-q">“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!”</span> And to this day I am sure
he remembers those trout with a tinge of
regret.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page136">[pg 136]</span><a name="Pg136" id="Pg136" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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, <span class="tei tei-q">“Back? Well—I should
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">think</span></span> it was time!
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">I should think it was
TIME!</span></span>”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page137">[pg 137]</span><a name="Pg137" id="Pg137" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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, <span class="tei tei-q">“The
advantage of getting arbutus is, that you
bring the whole day home with you and
have it at your elbow.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The advantage of getting trout,”</span> remarked
Jonathan dreamily, as if to himself,
<span class="tei tei-q">“is, that you bring your whole day home
with you, and have it for breakfast.”</span></p>
</div>
<hr class="page" /><div id="chapter07" class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page138">[pg 138]</span><a name="Pg138" id="Pg138" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<a name="toc14" id="toc14"></a>
<a name="pdf15" id="pdf15"></a>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">VII</span></h1>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 2.88em; margin-top: 2.88em"><span style="font-size: 144%">Without the Time of Day</span></h1>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan, did you ever live without a
clock,—whole days, I mean,—days and
days—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“When I was a boy—most of the time, I
suppose. But the family didn’t like it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Of course. But did you like it?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Let’s do it!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Now?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No. Society is an enlarged family, and
wouldn’t like it. But this summer, when
we camp.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“How do you know we’re going to camp?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The things we know best we don’t always
know how we know.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, then,—<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">if</span></span>
we camp—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">When</span></span>
we camp—let’s live without a
watch.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You’d need one to get there.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page139">[pg 139]</span><a name="Pg139" id="Pg139" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Take one, and let it run down.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">As it turned out, my <span class="tei tei-q">“when”</span> was truer
than Jonathan’s <span class="tei tei-q">“if.”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Will there be time to get settled before
dark?”</span> I asked, as we stepped out into the
shallow water and drew up the canoe to unload.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Shall I look at my watch to see?”</span> asked
Jonathan, with a note of amiable derision in
his voice.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, I <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">should</span></span>
rather like to know what
time it is. We won’t begin till to-morrow.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You mean, we won’t begin to stop watching.
All right. It’s just seventeen and a half
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page140">[pg 140]</span><a name="Pg140" id="Pg140" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
minutes after five. I’ll give you the seconds
if you like.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Minutes will do nicely, thank you.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Lots of time. You collect firewood while
I get the tent ready. Then it’ll need us both
to set it up.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“To-morrow we’ll cook,”</span> I said. <span class="tei tei-q">“To-night
it’s rather nice not to have to. Look at
the moonlight on that rock! How black it
makes the eddy below!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Good bass under there,”</span> said Jonathan.
<span class="tei tei-q">“We’ll get some to-morrow.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page141">[pg 141]</span><a name="Pg141" id="Pg141" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Maybe.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Not.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, it would. There would be a something—a
taint—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">all</span></span> right!”</span></p>
<div class="tei tei-tb">* * * * * </div>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page142">[pg 142]</span><a name="Pg142" id="Pg142" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
another, and another, <span class="tei tei-q">“softly conferring together.”</span>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page143">[pg 143]</span><a name="Pg143" id="Pg143" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Bacon and eggs, is it?”</span> called Jonathan,
<span class="tei tei-q">“or shall I run down and try for a bass?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Don’t!”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, what time is it?”</span> Jonathan was
peering in between the tent-flaps.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Twenty-two minutes before five.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“A.M., I judge. Sorry you didn’t let me
wind it?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Not a bit. I was just curious to see when
it stopped, that was all.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page144">[pg 144]</span><a name="Pg144" id="Pg144" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, now you know. Hereafter the official
time for the camp is
<span class="tei tei-reg"><a name="E1" id="E1" class="tei tei-anchor"></a><a href="#e1" class="tei tei-ref">4:38</a></span>—<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-variant: small-caps">A.M.</span></span>
or <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-variant: small-caps">P.M.</span></span>,
according to taste. Come along. The bacon’s
done, and I’m blest if I want to drop in the
eggs.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Dropping an egg will never, I fear, be one
of Jonathan’s most finished performances.
He watched me do it with generous admiration.
<span class="tei tei-q">“If you could just get over being
scared of them,”</span> I suggested, as the last one
plumped into the pan and set up its gentle
sizzle.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No use. I <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">am</span></span>
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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Now,”</span> said Jonathan, <span class="tei tei-q">“what about fishing?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well—let’s fish!”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page145">[pg 145]</span><a name="Pg145" id="Pg145" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“One up stream and one down, or keep together?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Together,”</span> I decided. <span class="tei tei-q">“If we go two
ways there’s no telling when I’ll ever see
you again.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, there is: when I’m hungry.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No; some time after you’ve noticed
you’re hungry.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Now, if we had watches it would be so
much simpler: we could meet here at, say,
one o’clock.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Of course, in river fishing, <span class="tei tei-q">“together”</span> 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
<span class="tei tei-q">“together,”</span> 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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page146">[pg 146]</span><a name="Pg146" id="Pg146" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page147">[pg 147]</span><a name="Pg147" id="Pg147" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It makes a difference, sleeping out in it
all,”</span> I said. <span class="tei tei-q">“You feel as if it belonged to
you so much more. I quite own the river this
morning, don’t you?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Quite. But not the bass in it. Bet you
don’t catch one!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Bet I beat you!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Bass, mind you. Sunfish don’t count.
You’re always catching sunfish.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“They count in the pan. But I’ll beat you
on bass. I know some places—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Who doesn’t? All right, go ahead!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We were off; Jonathan, as usual, wading
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page148">[pg 148]</span><a name="Pg148" id="Pg148" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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 <span class="tei tei-q">“kick up a row generally,”</span> so that
you’d swear it was nothing smaller than a
wild bull.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page149">[pg 149]</span><a name="Pg149" id="Pg149" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Hungry?”</span> I asked.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Now you speak of it, yes.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Shall we go back?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“How can I tell? Now, if we only had that
watch we’d know whether we ought to be
hungry or not.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“What does that matter, if we
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">are</span></span> 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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Never! Oh! Look there, Jonathan!
We’re going to catch it!”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Sure enough! The bass’ll bite now, if it
really comes. Wait till the first drops, and
see what you see.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We had not long to wait. There came that
sudden expectancy in the air and the trees,
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page150">[pg 150]</span><a name="Pg150" id="Pg150" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page151">[pg 151]</span><a name="Pg151" id="Pg151" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You can’t be cold?”</span> I questioned as soon
as he was near enough to hear me through
the slash of the rain and wind.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No, of course not; are you?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We didn’t discuss it, but ran up the bank
to the rock-ledge and crouched under it, our
teeth literally chattering.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Did you ever see such fishing?”</span> I managed
to stammer.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page152">[pg 152]</span><a name="Pg152" id="Pg152" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Great! But oh, <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">why</span></span>
didn’t I bring the whiskey bottle?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Let’s run for camp! We can’t be wetter.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It did stop, and very soon the fish were
sizzling in the pan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Of course, if we had a watch, now—”</span>
suggested Jonathan, as he carefully tucked
under the pan little sticks of just the right
length.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“What should we know more than we do
now—that we’re hungry?”</span> I asked.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page153">[pg 153]</span><a name="Pg153" id="Pg153" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, for one thing, we’d know what
time it is,”</span> replied Jonathan tranquilly.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And for another we’d know whether it’s
dinner or supper I’m cooking,”</span> I supplemented.
<span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, I don’t really care which it is.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Um-m! Smell it all!”</span> I said. <span class="tei tei-q">“What a lot
we should miss if we didn’t eat in the kitchen!”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page154">[pg 154]</span><a name="Pg154" id="Pg154" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Or cook in the dining-room—which?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And hear that song sparrow! Doesn’t it
sound as if the rain had washed his song a
little cleaner and clearer?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, Jonathan! We never asked them
what time it was!”</span> I said. <span class="tei tei-q">“I meant to—for
your sake—I thought you’d sleep better if
you knew.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Too bad! Probably I should have. I
thought of it, of course, but was afraid that
if I asked it would spoil your day.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page155">[pg 155]</span><a name="Pg155" id="Pg155" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It would take something pretty bad to
spoil a day like this one,”</span> I said.</p>
<div class="tei tei-tb">* * * * * </div>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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,—<span class="tei tei-q">“Here’s
news,”</span> said Jonathan; <span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Good! Tell them to come along.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No—it’s to-morrow—letter’s been here
since yesterday. I’ll telegraph.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">As we tramped home we planned the day.
<span class="tei tei-q">“We’ll meet them and all walk up together,”</span>
said Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“We’d better catch some bass and leave
them all hooked in a pool, ready for them to
pull out,”</span> I added; <span class="tei tei-q">“otherwise they may not
catch any. And maybe you’d better meet
them and I’ll have dinner ready when you
get back.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page156">[pg 156]</span><a name="Pg156" id="Pg156" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But if it’s late—they’ve got to get back
for that down train.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well—time enough.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, Jonathan! What about catching that
train?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“They’ll have watches—watches that
go.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But what about our meeting them? The
train arrives at
<span class="tei tei-reg"><a name="E2" id="E2" class="tei tei-anchor"></a><a href="#e2" class="tei tei-ref">10:15</a></span>,
they said. What does
<span class="tei tei-reg"><a name="E3" id="E3" class="tei tei-anchor"></a><a href="#e3" class="tei tei-ref">10:15</a></span>
look like in the sky, I wonder!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Or rather, what does 8.45 look like? It
takes an hour and a half to get there, counting
crossing the river.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes—dear me! Well, Jonathan, we’ll
just have to get up early and go, and then
wait.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Or else take our watch to the farmhouse
and set it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan, I will not! I’d rather start at
daylight.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page157">[pg 157]</span><a name="Pg157" id="Pg157" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I think,”</span> said Jonathan, <span class="tei tei-q">“it may be as
late as seven o’clock, but perhaps it’s only
six.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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. <span class="tei tei-q">“They don’t entirely understand
our mail system up here,”</span> 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. <span class="tei tei-q">“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!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It was fun, indeed, and all went well until
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page158">[pg 158]</span><a name="Pg158" id="Pg158" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
after dinner, when Jack—saying, <span class="tei tei-q">“Well,
maybe we’d better be starting back for that
train”</span>—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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Looks as if you hadn’t remembered to
wind it last night,”</span> said Jonathan, glancing
at me.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I haven’t done that in months, hang it!
Give me the time, will you, Jonathan?”</span> said
Jack.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Sorry!”</span> Jonathan was smiling genially.
<span class="tei tei-q">“Mine’s run down too. It stopped at
twenty-two minutes before
five—<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-variant: small-caps">A. M.</span></span>, I
think.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“What luck! And Molly didn’t bring
hers.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You told me not to,”</span> Molly flicked in.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“So here we are,”</span> said Jonathan, <span class="tei tei-q">“entirely
without the time of day.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But plenty of real time all round us,”</span> I
said. <span class="tei tei-q">“Let’s use it, and start.”</span> I avoided
Jonathan’s eye.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We reached the station with an hour and
ten minutes to spare—bought more ginger-cookies
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page159">[pg 159]</span><a name="Pg159" id="Pg159" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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,—</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">you</span></span> see?”</span>
she turned to us. <span class="tei tei-q">“Jack does everything by
his watch—eats and breathes and sleeps by
it—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Jack returned, watch in hand—he had
been getting railroad time from the telegraph
operator. <span class="tei tei-q">“Want to set yours while you
think of it?”</span> he asked Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Sorry—thank you—didn’t bring it,”</span>
said Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“By George, man, what’ll you do?”</span> Real
consternation sounded in Jack’s tones.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, we’ll get along somehow,”</span> said Jonathan.
<span class="tei tei-q">“You see, we don’t have many engagements,
except with the bass, and they
never meet theirs, anyhow.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">When the train had gone, I said, <span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan,
why didn’t you tell them it was my
whim?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, I just didn’t,”</span> said Jonathan.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page160">[pg 160]</span><a name="Pg160" id="Pg160" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Run down, did it? Guess you forgot to
wind it. Well—we do forget things sometimes,
all of us do,”</span> the farmer’s wife said
comfortingly as she went to look at the clock.
<span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">And to us, after our two weeks of camp,
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page161">[pg 161]</span><a name="Pg161" id="Pg161" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
ten minutes’ error in a clock seemed indeed
slight.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan,”</span> I said, as we walked back
along the road, <span class="tei tei-q">“I hate to go back to clock
time. I like real time better.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You couldn’t do so many things in a
day,”</span> said Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No—maybe not.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But maybe that wouldn’t matter.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Maybe it wouldn’t,”</span> I said.</p>
</div>
<hr class="page" /><div id="chapter08" class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page162">[pg 162]</span><a name="Pg162" id="Pg162" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<a name="toc16" id="toc16"></a>
<a name="pdf17" id="pdf17"></a>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">VIII</span></h1>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 2.88em; margin-top: 2.88em"><span style="font-size: 144%">The Ways of Griselda</span></h1>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Of course you don’t know what her name
is,”</span> I said, as we stood examining the sleek
little black mare Jonathan had just brought
up from the city.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No. Forgot to ask. Don’t believe they’d
have known anyway—one of a hundred or
so.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, we’ll name her again. Dear me—she’s
rather plain! Probably she’s useful.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Hope so,”</span> said Jonathan. Then, stepping
back a little, in a slightly grieved tone, <span class="tei tei-q">“But
I don’t call her plain. Wait till she’s groomed
up—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It’s that droop of her neck—sort of patient—and
the way she drops one of her
hips—if they are hips.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But we want a horse to be patient.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes. I don’t know that I care about having
her <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">look</span></span> so terribly much so as this. I
think I’ll call her Griselda.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page163">[pg 163]</span><a name="Pg163" id="Pg163" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Now, why Griselda?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But you can’t call a horse Griselda—not
for common stable use, you know.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Call her <span class="tei tei-q">‘Griz’</span> for short. It does very
well.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Jonathan jeered a little, but in the family
the name held. Our man Hiram said nothing,
but I think in private he called her
<span class="tei tei-q">“Fan”</span> or <span class="tei tei-q">“Beauty”</span> or <span class="tei tei-q">“Lady,”</span> or some
such regulation stable name.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Called by any name, she pleased us, and
she <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">was</span></span> 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.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page164">[pg 164]</span><a name="Pg164" id="Pg164" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Good little horse you got there,”</span> remarked
the station agent. <span class="tei tei-q">“Where’d you
find her?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, I picked her out of a bunch down in
the city,”</span> said Jonathan casually. <span class="tei tei-q">“I didn’t
think I knew much about horses, but I guess
I was in luck this time.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Guess you know more about horses than
you’re sayin’.”</span> And Jonathan, thus pressed,
admitted with suitable reluctance that he
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">had</span></span> now and then been able to detect a good
horse by his own observation.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">On the way home he openly congratulated
himself on his find. <span class="tei tei-q">“I really wasn’t
sure I knew how to pick out a horse,”</span> he remarked,
in a glow of retrospective modesty,
<span class="tei tei-q">“but I certainly got a treasure this time.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“They do say two mares don’t git on so
well together as a mare ’n a horse,”</span> remarked
Hiram.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But these are both such quiet creatures,”</span>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page165">[pg 165]</span><a name="Pg165" id="Pg165" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
I protested, to which Hiram made no answer.
Hiram seldom made an answer unless
fairly cornered into it.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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 <span class="tei tei-q">“got
a treasure this time.”</span> <span class="tei tei-q">“Kit may have hurt
herself lying down,”</span> he suggested, and again
Hiram made no answer.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Then one night, sometime during the very
small, very dark, and very sleepy hours, we
were awakened by awful sounds. <span class="tei tei-q">“What is
it? What <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">is</span></span> it?”</span> I gasped.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Crash! Bang! Boom! The trampling of
hoofs!—heavy, hollow pounding!—the
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page166">[pg 166]</span><a name="Pg166" id="Pg166" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
tearing and splintering of wood!—all coming
from the barn, though loud enough, indeed,
to have come from the next room.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Jonathan was up in an instant muttering,
<span class="tei tei-q">“Where are my rubber boots?—and my
coat?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan! <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">what</span></span>
a combination!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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 <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">tromp, tromp, tromp</span></span>,
in much quicker tempo than usual, of Hiram’s
heavy boots. Hiram’s theory was a
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page167">[pg 167]</span><a name="Pg167" id="Pg167" class="tei tei-anchor"></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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I guess Griz got all she needed—didn’t
know either of ’em had so much spunk in ’em.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“What happened?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Is she hurt?—or Kit?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No, not so far as we can see, not to
amount to anything—except maybe Griz’s
feelings.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And what about Mrs. Hiram’s feelings?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Jonathan laughed aloud. <span class="tei tei-q">“I was inside
with Kit, and she called out to know if she
could help.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And what did you say?”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page168">[pg 168]</span><a name="Pg168" id="Pg168" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I said, <span class="tei tei-q">‘Not on your life.’</span> ”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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’?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, I wish I’d heard you. One misses a
good deal—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Of course you remember Hiram
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">said</span></span> two
mares didn’t usually get on very well, and
even when they’re chosen by a good judge of
horses—”</span></p>
<div class="tei tei-tb">* * * * * </div>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page169">[pg 169]</span><a name="Pg169" id="Pg169" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Will she stand?”</span> I questioned.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Better hitch her, perhaps,”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well—I’ll—be—”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“She’s trying to make believe she didn’t
do it—but she did,”</span> I said.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Something must have startled her,”</span> said
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page170">[pg 170]</span><a name="Pg170" id="Pg170" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“What?”</span> I said.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You never can tell, with a horse.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No, apparently not,”</span> I said, smiling to
myself; and I added hastily, as I saw Jonathan
go forward to her head,
<span class="tei tei-q">“<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Don’t</span></span> try it
again, please! I’ll stay by her while you go
in. <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Please!</span></span>”</span>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No use,”</span> he said, quietly releasing it and
tossing its coil into the carriage, <span class="tei tei-q">“It’s too
rotten. If it snapped, she’d be ruined.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I breathed freer. I privately hoped that all
the hitch-ropes at the farm were rotten.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Griz stands perfectly well without hitching,”</span>
I said as we drove home, <span class="tei tei-q">“Why do you
force an issue?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I didn’t. She did. She’s beaten me. If
I don’t hitch her now, she’ll know she’s master.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page171">[pg 171]</span><a name="Pg171" id="Pg171" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, dear!”</span> I sighed. <span class="tei tei-q">“Let her
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">be</span></span> master!
Where’s the harm? It’s just your vanity.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Perhaps so,”</span> said Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">When he agrees with me like that I know
it’s hopeless.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The next night he wheeled in at the big gate
bearing about his shoulders a coil of heavy
rope.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It looks like a ship’s cable,”</span> I said.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes,”</span> he responded, leaning his bicycle
against his side, and swinging the coil over
his head. <span class="tei tei-q">“I want it for mooring purposes.
Think it’ll moor Griz?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan!”</span> I exclaimed, <span class="tei tei-q">“you won’t!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Watch me,”</span> said Jonathan, and he proceeded
to explain to me the working of the
tackle.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page172">[pg 172]</span><a name="Pg172" id="Pg172" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Then, when she sets back, it cuts her in
two,”</span> he concluded cheerfully.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But you don’t
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">want</span></span> her in two,”</span> I protested.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“She won’t set back,”</span> he responded; <span class="tei tei-q">“at
least, not more than once. To-morrow’s Sunday;
I’ll have to hitch her at church.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You go right in,”</span> said Jonathan, <span class="tei tei-q">“I’ll be
in soon.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page173">[pg 173]</span><a name="Pg173" id="Pg173" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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:—</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Hymn 912</span></span>
… seven stanzas! horrors! oh!
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">omit the 3d, 5th, and
6th</span></span>—well, I should
hope so!… I can’t hear a thing while this
is going on!… He hasn’t come in yet!
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page174">[pg 174]</span><a name="Pg174" id="Pg174" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Scripture reading for
to-day</span></span>—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! <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Let us unite
in prayer.</span></span> 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.… <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">For
thy name’s sake, amen.</span></span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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?</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">And at last, the sermon:—<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">The text to
which I wish to call your attention this morning</span></span>—my
attention, forsooth! My attention
was otherwise occupied. Ah! A puff of
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page175">[pg 175]</span><a name="Pg175" id="Pg175" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page176">[pg 176]</span><a name="Pg176" id="Pg176" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
And now for the sermon! I gathered myself
to attend.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">As we stood up for the last hymn, I whispered,
<span class="tei tei-q">“How did it go?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“All right. She’s hitched,”</span> was the answer.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Good quiet little horse you’ve got there,”</span>
said a deacon over my shoulder; <span class="tei tei-q">“don’t get
restless standing, the way some horses do.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, she’s very quiet,”</span> I said.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I got in, and at last, as we drove off, the
flood-gates of my impatience broke:—</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well?”</span> I said,—<span class="tei tei-q">“well?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well—”</span> said Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Well?
Tell</span></span> me about it!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I’ve told you. I hitched her.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“How did you hitch her?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Just the way I said I would.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Didn’t she mind?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Don’t know.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Did she make a fuss?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Not much.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page177">[pg 177]</span><a name="Pg177" id="Pg177" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“What do you mean by much?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, she set back a little.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Do any harm?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Hurt herself?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Guess not.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan, you drive me distracted—you
have no more sense for a story—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“But there was nothing in particular—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Now, Jonathan, if there was nothing in
particular, <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">why</span></span>
didn’t you get into church
till the sermon was begun, and why were you
so red and hot?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Jonathan smiled indulgently. <span class="tei tei-q">“Why, of
course, she didn’t care about being hitched.
I thought you knew that. But it was perfectly
easy.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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. <span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page178">[pg 178]</span><a name="Pg178" id="Pg178" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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?</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page179">[pg 179]</span><a name="Pg179" id="Pg179" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
meekness, broken by sudden flare-ups which,
after their occurrence, always seemed incredible.
She never again <span class="tei tei-q">“set back”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
</div>
<hr class="page" /><div id="chapter09" class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page180">[pg 180]</span><a name="Pg180" id="Pg180" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<a name="toc18" id="toc18"></a>
<a name="pdf19" id="pdf19"></a>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">IX</span></h1>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 2.88em; margin-top: 2.88em"><span style="font-size: 144%">A Rowboat Pilgrimage</span></h1>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It was early fall, and we had come in from
a day by the river, where we had tramped
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page181">[pg 181]</span><a name="Pg181" id="Pg181" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
miles up, to one of its infrequent bridges, and
miles down on the other bank. Now we sat
before the fire, talking it over.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“If we only had a boat!”</span> I said.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Boat! What do you want a boat for?
You wouldn’t want to sit in a boat all day.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, of course, a boat would be handy—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Handy! You talk as if it was a buttonhook!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well—of course it
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">is</span></span> 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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes,”</span> said Jonathan, drawing the logs
together, <span class="tei tei-q">“that’s just the way your family
feels about it when you’re young.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Then we both laughed, and there was a
reminiscent pause.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“What became of your boat?”</span> I asked
finally.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Sold. You kept yours.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page182">[pg 182]</span><a name="Pg182" id="Pg182" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes. It’s in the cellar, there at Nantucket.
I could have it sent on.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Cost as much as to buy a new one.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“A new one wouldn’t be as good.”</span> I
bristled a little. Any one who has owned a
boat is very sensitive about its virtues.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“How big?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“How should I know? A little boat—maybe
twelve feet.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Two oars?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Four.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Round bottom?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes. She’d ride anything.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well”</span>—Jonathan suddenly
expanded—<span class="tei tei-q">“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?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I sat straight up. <span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan! Let’s do it
now!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Jonathan chuckled. <span class="tei tei-q">“My! What a hurry
she’s in!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, let’s!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“We couldn’t. The boat will have to be
overhauled first.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, dear! I suppose so.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page183">[pg 183]</span><a name="Pg183" id="Pg183" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“We could do it next spring, and go up the
trout streams.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Think of that!”</span> I murmured.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Or in September and get the shore hunting—the
salt marshes.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, which?—which?”</span> Already I was
following our course along curving beaches
and amongst the yellow marshlands. But
Jonathan’s mind was working on more practical
details.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Twelve feet, you said?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“About that.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Pretty close stowing for our dunnage—still—let’s
see—two guns—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Or the rods, if we went in the spring.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And rubber coats, and blankets—”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan! Should we camp?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Might have to.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Let’s, anyway.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“How does that coast-line run? Where’s
a map?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page184">[pg 184]</span><a name="Pg184" id="Pg184" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
Every curve of the shore, every bay and headland
came to life and spoke to us—called to
us.</p>
<div class="tei tei-tb">* * * * * </div>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We decided on the September plan, and for
the next eleven months our casual talk was
starred with inapropos remarks like these:—</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan, I know we shall forget a can-opener.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Better write it down while you think of it.
And have you put down a hatchet?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The camera! It isn’t on the list!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Hang it! Those charts haven’t come yet!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“What can we take to look respectable in
when we go ashore?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page185">[pg 185]</span><a name="Pg185" id="Pg185" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“There it is!”</span> I said, with a surge of reminiscent
affection.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“That little thing!”</span> said Jonathan. <span class="tei tei-q">“I
thought you said twelve feet.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, isn’t it? Anyway,
I said <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">about</span></span>.
And it’s big enough.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He was spanning its length with his hands.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Eleven foot six. Oh, I suppose she’ll do.
My boat was fourteen.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Now, don’t be so patronizing about your
boat. Wait till you see how mine behaves.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He dropped the discussion and got her
launched. Is there anything prettier than a
pretty boat floating beside a dock!</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The next morning when we came down we
found her half full of water. <span class="tei tei-q">“She’ll be all
right now she’s soaked up,”</span> said Jonathan,
and we baled her dry and went off to get our
stuff.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I delayed to buy provisions, and when I
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page186">[pg 186]</span><a name="Pg186" id="Pg186" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
came back I found Jonathan standing on the
float surrounded by plunder of all sorts. He
answered my hail rather solemnly.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“See here! When this stuff’s all stowed,
where are we going to sit? That’s what’s
worrying me.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Why, won’t it go in?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Go! It wouldn’t go in two boats.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I came down the plank. <span class="tei tei-q">“Well, let’s eliminate.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We eliminated. We took out extra shoes
and coats and <span class="tei tei-q">“town clothes,”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page187">[pg 187]</span><a name="Pg187" id="Pg187" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
oars, one of them called out, <span class="tei tei-q">“Now, if you
only had a little motor there in the stern,
you’d be all right.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Don’t want one,”</span> said Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“What? Why not?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Go too fast.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Eh? What say?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Go—too—fast.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“He heard you,”</span> I said, <span class="tei tei-q">“but he can’t believe
you really said it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The oars fell into unison, there was the dip
of their blades, the grating chunk of the
rowlocks—<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">dip-ke-chunk, dip-ke-chunk</span></span>.
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“She does go!”</span> remarked Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I told you! Look at us now! Look at that
buoy!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Dip-ke-chunk, dip-ke-chunk</span></span>—the
red buoy swept by us and dropped into the blue background
of dancing waves.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page188">[pg 188]</span><a name="Pg188" id="Pg188" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Are we really off? Is it really happening?”</span>
I said joyously.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Do you like it?”</span> said Jonathan over his
shoulder.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No. Do you?”</span> To such unwisdom of
speech do people come when they are happy.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">But there were circumstances to steady
us.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“What I’m wondering,”</span> said Jonathan,
<span class="tei tei-q">“is, what’s going to happen next—when we
get out there.”</span> He tilted his head toward the
open bay, broad and windy, ahead of us.
<span class="tei tei-q">“There’s some pretty interesting water out
there beyond this lee.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, she’ll take it all right. It’s no worse
than Nantucket water. It couldn’t be.
You’ll see.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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:—</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page189">[pg 189]</span><a name="Pg189" id="Pg189" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It was not an easy day, that first one.…
It seems, sometimes, as if there were little
imps of malignity that hovered over one
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page190">[pg 190]</span><a name="Pg190" id="Pg190" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">For leak it did. The soaking over night
had done no good. It had, indeed, been
<span class="tei tei-q">“thoroughly overhauled”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I wish my mother could see me now—”</span>
hummed Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I wouldn’t wish that.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Why not?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“What would they all think of us if they
could see us this minute?”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page191">[pg 191]</span><a name="Pg191" id="Pg191" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Just what they have thought for a long
time.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I laughed. <span class="tei tei-q">“How true that is, teacher!”</span>
I said.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Finding us still cheerful, the imps tried
again.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan—do you know—I do believe—my
rowlock socket is working loose.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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 <span class="tei tei-q">“overhauled”</span> the boat. <span class="tei tei-q">“He ought
to be put out in it, in a sea like this, and left
to row himself home.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, of course, but instead, here we are.
It won’t last half an hour longer.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It did not last ten minutes. There it hung,
one screw pulled loose, the other barely
holding.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Take my knife—you can get it out of
my hip pocket—and try to set up that screw
with the big blade.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I did so, and pulled a few strokes. Then—<span class="tei tei-q">“It’s
come out again. It’s no use.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“We make blamed poor headway with one
pair of oars,”</span> said Jonathan.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page192">[pg 192]</span><a name="Pg192" id="Pg192" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He meditated.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Where are the screw-eyes?”</span> he said after
a moment.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, good for you! They’re in the metal
box. I’ll get them.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I drew in my useless oars, turned about
and cautiously wriggled up into the bow seat.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Look out for yourself! Don’t bullfrog
out over the bow. I can’t hold her any
steadier than this.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, I’m all right.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Does it
bite?<span class="tei tei-add"><a name="E4" id="E4" class="tei tei-anchor"></a><a href="#e4" class="tei tei-ref">”</a></span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I don’t know about biting, but it’s going
in beautifully—now it goes hard.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Perhaps I can give it a turn.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“If you stick something through the eye
you can turn it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes. I’ll find
something<span class="tei tei-corr"><a name="E5" id="E5" class="tei tei-anchor"></a><a href="#e5" class="tei tei-ref">.</a></span>
Here’s the can-opener.
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page193">[pg 193]</span><a name="Pg193" id="Pg193" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
Grand! There! It’s solid. Now I’ll
do the other one the same way. Hurrah for
the screw-eyes!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You thought of bringing them,”</span> said
Jonathan magnanimously.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You thought of using them,”</span> said I, not
to be outdone.</p>
<div class="tei tei-tb">* * * * * </div>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page194">[pg 194]</span><a name="Pg194" id="Pg194" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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—<span class="tei tei-q">“Isn’t it
great!”</span> we said, <span class="tei tei-q">“great—great!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Tired?”</span> said Jonathan. <span class="tei tei-q">“I’ll take her
in.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page195">[pg 195]</span><a name="Pg195" id="Pg195" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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 <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">lap-lap-lapping</span></span>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Rowed, did you? Jim!”</span> calling back over
her shoulder through a half-open door, <span class="tei tei-q">“did
you hear that? These folks have rowed all
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page196">[pg 196]</span><a name="Pg196" id="Pg196" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
the way across the bay this afternoon—yes—rowed.
What say? Yes, <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">she</span></span> rowed, too.
They say they’re goin’ on to-morrow, round
Judith.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Say, now,”</span> she finally appealed to us in
frank perplexity, <span class="tei tei-q">“what’re you doin’ it for?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“We like it,”</span> said Jonathan peacefully.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-corr"><a name="E6" id="E6" class="tei tei-anchor"></a><a href="#e6" class="tei tei-ref">how</a></span>
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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page197">[pg 197]</span><a name="Pg197" id="Pg197" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page198">[pg 198]</span><a name="Pg198" id="Pg198" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
us over. One of the men called after us,
with a sudden inspiration, <span class="tei tei-q">“Pity ye’ hevn’t
got a <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">motor</span></span> in there!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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 <span class="tei tei-q">“around Judith.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I’d hate to lose the guns,”</span> said Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, and the camera,”</span> I added.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page199">[pg 199]</span><a name="Pg199" id="Pg199" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
friends did not fail to point out, that proved
nothing whatever.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">At Stonington we were left once more to
our little boat and our four oars, and there we
pulled her up and caulked her.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">push-push-push</span></span> 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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page200">[pg 200]</span><a name="Pg200" id="Pg200" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We launched her again at dusk. Next
morning Jonathan was a moment ahead of
me on the wharf.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Any water in her?”</span> I called, following
hard.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Dry as a bone,”</span> he shouted back, exultant;
but as I came up he added, with his
usual conservatism, <span class="tei tei-q">“of course we can’t tell
what she may do when she’s loaded.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">But our work held. For the rest of the trip
we had a dry boat, except for what came in
over the sides.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page201">[pg 201]</span><a name="Pg201" id="Pg201" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
meals were eaten along the shore, or, best of
all, on some island.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Can we find an island for lunch to-day, do
you suppose?”</span> I usually asked, as we dipped
our oars in the morning.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Do you have to have an island for lunch?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I love an island!”</span> choosing to ignore the
jest. <span class="tei tei-q">“That’s one of the best things about a
boat—that it takes you to islands.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Now, why an island?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I could feel Jonathan’s indulgent smile
through the back of his head as he rowed.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, you know yourself,”</span> I argued.
<span class="tei tei-q">“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
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">is</span></span> different—it’s
an island.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">And so we sought islands—sometimes
little ones, all rocks, too little even to have
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page202">[pg 202]</span><a name="Pg202" id="Pg202" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page203">[pg 203]</span><a name="Pg203" id="Pg203" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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,
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page204">[pg 204]</span><a name="Pg204" id="Pg204" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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!</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">A little boat, but a long cruise, as long as
may be. To be sure, a boat and a bit of water
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page205">[pg 205]</span><a name="Pg205" id="Pg205" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page206">[pg 206]</span><a name="Pg206" id="Pg206" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The bay seems very full to-night—brimming,”</span>
I said.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Not brimming over, though,”</span> said Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I should hope not! But it does seem to
me there are very few inches between it and
our feet.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“And the tide is still rising, of course,”</span>
said Jonathan, by way of comfort.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan, I know just where high-tide
mark is, and we’re fully twelve inches above
it.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Silence.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Aren’t we?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, was that a question?”</span> murmured
Jonathan. <span class="tei tei-q">“Why, yes, I think we are at least
that.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Of course, there are extra high tides
sometimes.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Silence.</p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page207">[pg 207]</span><a name="Pg207" id="Pg207" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Jonathan, do you know when they come?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Not exactly.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, I don’t care. I love it, anyway.
Only it seems so much bigger and colder at
night, the water does.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Ripple, ripple, swash!</span></span>
<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">ripple, ripple, swash!</span></span>
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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page208">[pg 208]</span><a name="Pg208" id="Pg208" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
and the wet curves of the beach were gleaming
in the new day.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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 <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">flip-flip</span></span>
of a tiny wave that had
somehow strayed in from the tumbling crowd
outside.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We slept well, but once Jonathan waked
me. <span class="tei tei-q">“Look!”</span> he whispered, <span class="tei tei-q">“White heron.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I raised my head. There, quite near us in
the shallow water, stood a great pale bird,
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page209">[pg 209]</span><a name="Pg209" id="Pg209" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<div class="tei tei-tb">* * * * * </div>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page210">[pg 210]</span><a name="Pg210" id="Pg210" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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, <span class="tei tei-q">“Look out!”</span> 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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page211">[pg 211]</span><a name="Pg211" id="Pg211" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“It was like seeing a ghost,”</span>
I said,—<span class="tei tei-q">“no—more
like feeling the hand of an enemy
on your shoulder.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“The Black Douglas,”</span> suggested Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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!”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Were you frightened?”</span> asked Jonathan.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No, of course not,”</span> I said, almost too
promptly. Then I meditated—<span class="tei tei-q">“I don’t
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page212">[pg 212]</span><a name="Pg212" id="Pg212" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Did yours?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Why, not exactly—but—well—it certainly
did feel suddenly very thick and heavy—as
if it had dropped—perhaps an inch
or two.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“I believe,”</span> said Jonathan gently, <span class="tei tei-q">“you
might almost call that being frightened.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Yes, perhaps you might. Tell me—were
you?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Or asked a few questions. But you know
you hate to ask questions.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“You could have asked them.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Well, anyway, aren’t you glad it happened?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Oh, of course; it was an experience.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Do you want to do it again?”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“No”</span>—he was emphatic—<span class="tei tei-q">“not with
that load.”</span></p>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page213">[pg 213]</span><a name="Pg213" id="Pg213" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-q">“Neither do I.”</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page214">[pg 214]</span><a name="Pg214" id="Pg214" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<div class="tei tei-tb">* * * * * </div>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It was over. And yet, not really over after
all. I sometimes think that pleasures ought
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page215">[pg 215]</span><a name="Pg215" id="Pg215" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
to be valued according to whether they are
over when they <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">are</span></span>
over, or not. <span class="tei tei-q">“You cannot
eat your cake and have it too.”</span> 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.</p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">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
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page216">[pg 216]</span><a name="Pg216" id="Pg216" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
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.</p>
<div class="tei tei-tb"> </div>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 1.00em">THE END</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="tei tei-back" style="margin-bottom: 2.00em; margin-top: 6.00em">
<hr class="doublepage" /><div id="colophon" class="tei tei-div" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
<a name="toc20" id="toc20"></a>
<a name="pdf21" id="pdf21"></a>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">Colophon</span></h1>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="page218">[pg 218]</span><a name="Pg218" id="Pg218" class="tei tei-anchor" style="text-align: center"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0.90em"><span style="font-size: 90%">The Riverside Press</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0.81em"><span style="font-size: 81%">CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0.81em"><span style="font-size: 81%">U . S . A</span></p>
</div>
<hr class="doublepage" /><div id="appendix" class="tei tei-div" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
<a name="toc22" id="toc22"></a>
<a name="pdf23" id="pdf23"></a>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">Appendix A: Extra Front Pages</span></h1>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="pagei">[pg i]</span><a name="Pgi" id="Pgi" class="tei tei-anchor" style="text-align: center"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0.90em"><span style="font-size: 90%">
By Elisabeth Woodbridge</span></p>
<div class="tei tei-tb"><hr style="width: 10%" /></div>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0.73em"><span style="font-size: 73%">MORE JONATHAN PAPERS.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 73%">
THE JONATHAN PAPERS.</span></p>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 0.81em"><span style="font-size: 81%">HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY</span><br />
<span class="tei tei-hi" style="text-align: center"><span style="font-size: 73%; font-variant: small-caps">
Boston And New York
</span></span></p>
<div class="tei tei-tb"> </div>
<span class="tei tei-pb" id="pageii">[pg ii]</span><a name="Pgii" id="Pgii" class="tei tei-anchor" style="text-align: center"></a>
<p class="tei tei-p" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 1.00em">More Jonathan Papers</p>
</div>
<hr class="doublepage" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
<a name="toc24" id="toc24"></a>
<a name="pdf25" id="pdf25"></a>
<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">Errata</span></h1>
<a name="e1" id="e1" class="tei tei-anchor"></a><table summary="This is a list." class="tei tei-list" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em; margin-top: 1.00em"><tbody><tr class="tei tei-labelitem"><th class="tei tei-label"></th><td class="tei tei-item">Chapter VII</td></tr><tr class="tei tei-labelitem"><th class="tei tei-label"></th><td class="tei tei-item">Changed camp is <span class="tei tei-hi"><a href="#E1" class="tei tei-ref"><span style="font-weight: 700">4.38</span></a></span>—<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-variant: small-caps">A.M.</span></span> to camp is <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-weight: 700">4:38</span></span>—<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-variant: small-caps">A.M.</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table>
<a name="e2" id="e2" class="tei tei-anchor"></a><table summary="This is a list." class="tei tei-list" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em; margin-top: 1.00em"><tbody><tr class="tei tei-labelitem"><th class="tei tei-label"></th><td class="tei tei-item">Chapter VII</td></tr><tr class="tei tei-labelitem"><th class="tei tei-label"></th><td class="tei tei-item">Changed arrives at <span class="tei tei-hi"><a href="#E2" class="tei tei-ref"><span style="font-weight: 700">10.15</span></a></span>, they to arrives at <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-weight: 700">10:15</span></span>, they</td></tr></tbody></table>
<a name="e3" id="e3" class="tei tei-anchor"></a><table summary="This is a list." class="tei tei-list" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em; margin-top: 1.00em"><tbody><tr class="tei tei-labelitem"><th class="tei tei-label"></th><td class="tei tei-item">Chapter VII</td></tr><tr class="tei tei-labelitem"><th class="tei tei-label"></th><td class="tei tei-item">Changed What does <span class="tei tei-hi"><a href="#E3" class="tei tei-ref"><span style="font-weight: 700">10.15</span></a></span> look to What does <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-weight: 700">10:15</span></span> look</td></tr></tbody></table>
<a name="e4" id="e4" class="tei tei-anchor"></a><table summary="This is a list." class="tei tei-list" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em; margin-top: 1.00em"><tbody><tr class="tei tei-labelitem"><th class="tei tei-label"></th><td class="tei tei-item">Chapter VIII</td></tr><tr class="tei tei-labelitem"><th class="tei tei-label"></th><td class="tei tei-item">Changed “Does it bite?<a href="#E4" class="tei tei-ref"> </a> to
“Does it bite?<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-weight: 700">”</span></span>
</td></tr></tbody></table>
<a name="e5" id="e5" class="tei tei-anchor"></a><table summary="This is a list." class="tei tei-list" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em; margin-top: 1.00em"><tbody><tr class="tei tei-labelitem"><th class="tei tei-label"></th><td class="tei tei-item">Chapter VIIII</td></tr><tr class="tei tei-labelitem"><th class="tei tei-label"></th><td class="tei tei-item">Changed find something<span class="tei tei-hi"><a href="#E5" class="tei tei-ref"><span style="font-weight: 700">,</span></a></span> Here’s to find
something<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-weight: 700">.</span></span> Here’s</td></tr></tbody></table>
<a name="e6" id="e6" class="tei tei-anchor"></a><table summary="This is a list." class="tei tei-list" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em; margin-top: 1.00em"><tbody><tr class="tei tei-labelitem"><th class="tei tei-label"></th><td class="tei tei-item">Chapter VIIII</td></tr><tr class="tei tei-labelitem"><th class="tei tei-label"></th><td class="tei tei-item">Changed no matter <span class="tei tei-hi"><a href="#E6" class="tei tei-ref"><span style="font-weight: 700">now</span></a></span> many to no matter <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-weight: 700">how</span></span> many</td></tr></tbody></table>
</div>
<hr class="doublepage" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
<div id="pgfooter" class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 4.00em; margin-top: 4.00em"><pre class="pre tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 3.00em; margin-top: 3.00em">***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORE JONATHAN PAPERS***
</pre><hr class="doublepage" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 3.00em; margin-top: 3.00em"><a name="rightpageheader26" id="rightpageheader26"></a><a name="pgtoc27" id="pgtoc27"></a><a name="pdf28" id="pdf28"></a><h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: left; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">Credits</span></h1><table summary="This is a list." class="tei tei-list" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em; margin-top: 1.00em"><tbody><tr><th class="tei tei-label tei-label-gloss">December 19, 2006 </th></tr><tr><td class="tei tei-item"><table summary="This is a list." class="tei tei-list" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em; margin-top: 1.00em"><tbody><tr class="tei tei-labelitem"><th class="tei tei-label"></th><td class="tei tei-item">Project Gutenberg Edition</td></tr><tr class="tei tei-labelitem"><th class="tei tei-label"></th><td class="tei tei-item"><span class="tei tei-respStmt">
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