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diff --git a/44226-0.txt b/44226-0.txt index e50ae62..cc992e9 100644 --- a/44226-0.txt +++ b/44226-0.txt @@ -1,34 +1,4 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Abandoned Farmers, by Irvin S. Cobb - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The Abandoned Farmers - His Humorous Account of a Retreat from the City to the Farm - -Author: Irvin S. Cobb - -Release Date: November 18, 2013 [EBook #44226] -Last Updated: March 11, 2018 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ABANDONED FARMERS *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger - - - - - +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44226 *** THE ABANDONED FARMERS @@ -4426,358 +4396,4 @@ THE END End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Abandoned Farmers, by Irvin S. 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Cobb </title> @@ -38,42 +39,7 @@ The Abandoned Farmers, by Irvin S. Cobb </style> </head> <body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Abandoned Farmers, by Irvin S. Cobb - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The Abandoned Farmers -His Humorous Account of a Retreat from the City to the Farm - -Author: Irvin S. Cobb - -Release Date: November 18, 2013 [EBook #44226] -Last Updated: March 11, 2018 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ABANDONED FARMERS *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger - - - - - -</pre> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44226 ***</div> <div style="height: 8em;"> <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> @@ -5017,378 +4983,6 @@ THE END <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> </div> - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Abandoned Farmers, by Irvin S. 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-The Abandoned Farmers, by Irvin S. Cobb
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Abandoned Farmers, by Irvin S. Cobb
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: The Abandoned Farmers
-His Humorous Account of a Retreat from the City to the Farm
-
-Author: Irvin S. Cobb
-
-Release Date: November 18, 2013 [EBook #44226]
-Last Updated: March 11, 2018
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ABANDONED FARMERS ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Widger
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
-<div style="height: 8em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h1>
-THE ABANDONED FARMERS
-</h1>
-<h3>
-His Humorous Account Of A Retreat From The City To The Farm
-</h3>
-<h2>
-By Irvin S. Cobb
-</h2>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<p>
-<b>CONTENTS</b>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>THE ABANDONED FARMERS</b> </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. WHICH REALLY IS A PREFACE IN DISGUISE
-</a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER II. THE START OF A DREAM </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER III. THREE YEARS ELAPSE </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER IV. HAPPY DAYS FOR MAJOR GLOOM </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER V. IN WHICH WE BORE FOE WATER </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VI. TWO MORE YEARS ELAPSE </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VII. “AND SOLD TO——” </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER VIII, THE ADVENTURE OF LADY MAUDE </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER IX. US LANDED PROPRIETORS </a>
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-THE ABANDONED FARMERS
-</h2>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER I. WHICH REALLY IS A PREFACE IN DISGUISE
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t is the inclination of the average reader to skip prefaces. For this I
-do not in the least blame him. Skipping the preface is one of my favorite
-literary pursuits. To catch me napping a preface must creep up quietly and
-take me, as it were, unawares.
-</p>
-<p>
-But in this case sundry prefatory remarks became necessary. It was
-essential that they should be inserted into this volume in order that
-certain things might be made plain. The questions were: How and where?
-After giving the matter considerable thought I decided to slip them in
-right here, included, as they are, with the body of the text and further
-disguised by masquerading themselves under a chapter heading, with a view
-in mind of hoodwinking you into pursuing the course of what briefly I have
-to say touching on the circumstances attending the production of the main
-contents. Let me explain:
-</p>
-<p>
-Chapter II, coming immediately after this one, was written first of all;
-written as an independent contribution to American letters. At the time of
-writing it I had no thought that out of it, subsequently, would grow
-material for additional and supplementary offerings upon the same general
-theme and inter-related themes. It had a basis of verity, as all things in
-this life properly should have, but I shall not attempt to deny that
-largely it deals with what more or less is figurative and fanciful. The
-incident of the finding of the missing will in the ruins of the old mill
-is a pure figment of the imagination; so, too, the passage relating to the
-search for the lost heir (Page 55) and the startling outcome of that
-search.
-</p>
-<p>
-Three years later, actual events in the meantime having sufficiently
-justified the taking of such steps, I prepared the matter which here is
-presented in Chapters III, IV and V, inclusive. Intervened then a break of
-approximately two years more, when the tale was completed substantially in
-its present form. In all of these latter installments I adhered closely to
-facts, merely adding here and there sprinklings of fancy, like dashes of
-paprika on a stew, in order to give, as I fondly hoped, spice to my
-recital.
-</p>
-<p>
-One of the prime desires now, in consolidating the entire narrative within
-these covers, is to round out, from inception to finish, the record of our
-strange adventures in connection with our quest for an abandoned farm and
-on our becoming abandoned farmers, trusting that others, following our
-examples, may perhaps profit in some small degree by our mistakes as here
-set forth and perhaps ultimately when their dreams have come true, too,
-share in that proud joy of possession which is ours. Another object,
-largely altruistic in its nature, is to afford opportunity for the reader,
-by comparison of the chronological sub-divisions into which the story
-falls, to decide whether with the passage of time, my style of writing
-shows a tendency toward improvement or an increasing and enhanced
-faultiness. Those who feel inclined to write me upon the subject are
-notified that the author is most sensible in this regard, being ever ready
-to welcome criticism, provided only the criticism be favorable in tone.
-Finally there is herewith confessed a third motive, namely, an ambition
-that a considerable number of persons may see their way clear to buy this
-book.
-</p>
-<p>
-Quite aside from my chief aim as a writer, which is from time to time to
-enrich our native literature, I admit to sharing with nearly all writers
-and with practically all publishers a possibly selfish but not altogether
-unnatural craving. When I have prepared the material for a volume I desire
-that the volume may sell, which means royalties, which means cash in hand.
-The man who labors for art's sake alone nearly always labors for art's
-sake alone; at least usually he appears to get very little else out of his
-toil while he is alive. After his death posterity may enshrine him, but
-posterity, as some one has aptly said, butters no parsnips. I may state
-that I am almost passionately fond of my parsnips, well-buttered. My
-publisher is also one of our leading parsnip-lovers. These facts should be
-borne in mind by prospective purchasers of the book.
-</p>
-<p>
-I believe that is about all I would care to say in the introductory phase.
-With these few remarks, therefore, the attention of the reader
-respectfully is directed to Chapter II and points beyond.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER II. THE START OF A DREAM
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>or years it was the dream of our life—I should say our lives, since
-my wife shared this vision with me—to own an abandoned farm. The
-idea first came to us through reading articles that appeared in the
-various magazines and newspapers telling of the sudden growth of what I
-may call the aban-doned-farm industry.
-</p>
-<p>
-It seemed that New England in general—and the state of Connecticut
-in particular—was thickly speckled with delightful old places which,
-through overcultivation or ill-treatment, had become for the time being
-sterile and non-productive; so that the original owners had moved away to
-the nearby manufacturing towns, leaving their ancestral homesteads empty
-and their ancestral acres idle. As a result there were great numbers of
-desirable places, any one of which might be had for a song. That was the
-term most commonly used by the writers of these articles—abandoned
-farms going for a song. Now, singing is not my forte; still, I made up my
-mind that if such indeed was the case I would sing a little, accompanying
-myself on my bank balance, and win me an abandoned farm.
-</p>
-<p>
-The formula as laid down by the authorities was simple in the extreme:
-Taking almost any Connecticut town for a starting point, you merely
-meandered along an elm-lined road until you came to a desirable location,
-which you purchased for the price of the aforesaid song. This formality
-being completed, you spent a trivial sum in restoring the fences, and so
-on, and modernizing the interior of the house; after which it was a
-comparatively easy task to restore the land to productiveness by processes
-of intensive agriculture—details procurable from any standard book
-on the subject or through easy lessons by mail. And so presently, with
-scarcely any trouble or expense at all, you were the possessor of a
-delightful country estate upon which to spend your declining years. It
-made no difference whether you were one of those persons who had never to
-date declined anything of value; there was no telling when you might start
-in.
-</p>
-<p>
-I could shut my eyes and see the whole delectable prospect: Upon a gentle
-eminence crowned with ancient trees stood the rambling old manse, filled
-with marvelous antique furniture, grandfather's clocks dating back to the
-whaling days, spinning wheels, pottery that came over on the <i>Mayflower</i>,
-and all those sorts of things. Round about were the meadows, some under
-cultivation and some lying fallow, the latter being dotted at appropriate
-intervals with fallow deer.
-</p>
-<p>
-At one side of the house was the orchard, the old gnarly trees crooking
-their bent limbs as though inviting one to come and pluck the sun-kissed
-fruit from the burdened bough; at the other side a purling brook wandering
-its way into a greenwood copse, where through all the golden day sang the
-feathered warblers indigenous to the climate, including the soft-billed
-Greenwich thrush, the Peabody bird, the Pettingill bird, the red worsted
-pulse-warmer, and others of the commoner varieties too numerous to
-mention.
-</p>
-<p>
-At the back were the abandoned cotes and byres, with an abandoned rooster
-crowing lustily upon a henhouse, and an abandoned bull calf disporting
-himself in the clover of the pasture. At the front was a rolling vista
-undulating gently away to where above the tree-tops there rose the spires
-of a typical New England village full of old line Republicans and
-characters suitable for putting into short stories. On beyond, past where
-a silver lake glinted in the sunshine, was a view either of the distant
-Sound or the distant mountains. Personally I intended that my
-establishment should be so placed as to command a view of the Sound from
-the east windows and of the mountains from the west windows. And all to be
-had for a song! Why, the mere thought of it was enough to make a man start
-taking vocal culture right away.
-</p>
-<p>
-Besides, I had been waiting impatiently for a long time for an opportunity
-to work out several agricultural projects of my own. For example, there
-was my notion in regard to the mulberry. The mulberry, as all know, is one
-of our most abundant small fruits; but many have objected to it on account
-of its woolly appearance and slightly caterpillary taste. My idea was to
-cross the mulberry on the slippery elm—pronounced, where I came
-from, ellum—producing a fruit which I shall call the mulellum. This
-fruit would combine the health-giving qualities of the mulberry with the
-agreeable smoothness of the slippery elm; in fact, if my plans worked out
-I should have a berry that would go down so slick the consumer could not
-taste it at all unless he should eat too many of them and suffer from
-indigestion afterward.
-</p>
-<p>
-Then there was my scheme for inducing the common chinch bug to make chintz
-curtains. If the silk worms can make silk why should not the chinch bug do
-something useful instead of wasting his energies in idle pursuits? This is
-what I wished to know. And why should this man Luther Burbank enjoy a
-practical monopoly of all these propositions? That was the way I looked at
-it; and I figured that an abandoned farm would make an ideal place for
-working out such experiments as might come to me from time to time.
-</p>
-<p>
-The trouble was that, though everybody wrote of the abandoned farms in a
-broad, general, allur-ing way, nobody gave the exact location of any of
-them. I subscribed for one of the monthly publications devoted to country
-life along the Eastern seaboard and searched assiduously through its
-columns for mention of abandoned farms. The owners of most of the country
-places that were advertised for sale made mention of such things as
-fourteen master's bedrooms and nine master's baths—showing
-undoubtedly that the master would be expected to sleep oftener than he
-bathed—sunken gardens and private hunting preserves, private golf
-links and private yacht landings.
-</p>
-<p>
-In nearly every instance, also, the advertisement was accompanied by a
-halftone picture of a structure greatly resembling the new county court
-house they are going to have down at Paducah if the bond issue ever
-passes. This seemed a suitable place for holding circuit court in, or even
-fiscal court, but it was not exactly the kind of country home that we had
-pictured for ourselves. As my wife said, just the detail of washing all
-those windows would keep the girl busy fully half the time. Nor did I care
-to invest in any sunken gardens. I had sufficient experience in that
-direction when we lived in the suburbs and permanently invested about half
-of what I made in our eight-by-ten flower bed in an effort to make it
-produce the kind of flowers that the florists' catalogues described. You
-could not tell us anything about that subject—we knew where a sunken
-garden derives its name. We paid good money to know.
-</p>
-<p>
-None of the places advertised in the monthly seemed sufficiently abandoned
-for our purposes, so for a little while we were in a quandary. Then I had
-a bright thought. I said to myself that undoubtedly abandoned farms were
-so cheap the owners did not expect to get any real money for them; they
-would probably be willing to take something in exchange. So I began buying
-the evening papers and looking through them in the hope of running across
-some such item as this:
-</p>
-<p>
-To Exchange—Abandoned farm, centrally located, with large farmhouse,
-containing all antique furniture, barns, outbuildings, family graveyard—planted—orchard,
-woodland, fields—unplanted—for a collection of postage stamps
-in album, an amateur magician's outfit, a guitar with book of
-instructions, a safety bicycle, or what have you? Address Abandoned, South
-Squantum Center, Connecticut.
-</p>
-<p>
-I found no such offers, however; and in view of what we had read this
-seemed stranger still. Finally I decided that the only safe method would
-be by first-hand investigation upon the spot. I would go by rail to some
-small but accessible hamlet in the lower part of New England. On arriving
-there I personally would examine a number of the more attractive abandoned
-farms in the immediate vicinity and make a discriminating selection.
-Having reached this conclusion I went to bed and slept peacefully—or
-at least I went to bed and did so as soon as my wife and I had settled one
-point that came up unexpectedly at this juncture. It related to the
-smokehouse. I was in favor of turning the smokehouse into a study or
-workroom for myself. She thought, though, that by knocking the walls out
-and altering the roof and building a pergola on to it, it would make an
-ideal summer house in which to serve tea and from which to view the
-peaceful landscape of afternoons.
-</p>
-<p>
-We argued this back and forth at some length, each conceding something to
-the other's views; and finally we decided to knock out the walls and alter
-the roof and have a summer house with a pergola in connection. It was
-after we reached this compromise that I slept so peacefully, for now the
-whole thing was as good as settled. I marveled at not having thought of it
-sooner.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was on a bright and peaceful morning that I alighted from the train at
-North Newburybunkport.
-</p>
-<p>
-Considering that it was supposed to be a typical New England village,
-North Newbury-bunkport did not appear at first glance to answer to the
-customary specifications, such as I had gleaned from my reading of novels
-of New England life. I had expected that the platform would be populated
-by picturesque natives in quaint clothes, with straws in their mouths and
-all whittling; and that the depot agent would wear long chin whiskers and
-say “I vum!” with much heartiness at frequent intervals. Right here I wish
-to state that so far as my observations go the native who speaks these
-words about every other line is no longer on the job. Either I Vum the
-Terrible has died or else he has gone to England to play the part of the
-typical American millionaire in American plays written by Englishmen.
-</p>
-<p>
-Instead of the loafers, several chauffeurs were idling about the station
-and a string of automobiles was drawn up across the road. Just as I
-disembarked there drove up a large red bus labeled: Sylvan Dale Summer
-Hotel, European and American Plans. The station agent also proved in the
-nature of a disappointment. He did not even say “I swan” or “I cal'late!”
- or anything of that nature. He wore a pink in his buttonhole and his hair
-was scalloped up off his forehead in what is known as the lion tamer's
-roach. Approaching, I said to him:
-</p>
-<p>
-“In what direction should I go to find some of the abandoned farms of this
-vicinity? I would prefer to go where there is a good assortment to pick
-from.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He did not appear to understand, so I repeated the question, at the same
-time offering him a cigar.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Bo,” he said, “you've sure got me winging now. You'd better ask Tony
-Magnito—he runs the garage three doors up the street from here on
-the other side. Tony does a lot of driving round the country for suckers
-that come up here, and he might help you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-To reach the garage I had to cross the road, dodging several automobiles
-in transit, and then pass two old-fashioned New England houses fronting
-close up to the sidewalk. One had the sign of a teahouse over the door,
-and in the window of the other, picture postcards, birch-bark souvenirs
-and standard varieties of candy were displayed for sale.
-</p>
-<p>
-Despite his foreign-sounding name, Mr. Magnito spoke fair English—that
-is, as fair English as any one speaks who employs the Manhattan accent in
-so doing.
-</p>
-<p>
-Even after he found out that I did not care to rent a touring car for
-sightseeing purposes at five dollars an hour he was quite affable and
-accommodating; but my opening question appeared to puzzle him just as in
-the case of the depot agent.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Mister,” he said frankly, “I'm sorry, but I don't seem to make you.
-What's this thing you is looking for? Tell me over again slow.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Really the ignorance of these villagers regarding one of their principal
-products—a product lying, so to speak, at their very doors and
-written about constantly in the public prints—was ludicrous. It
-would have been laughable if it had not been deplorable. I saw that I
-could not indulge in general trade terms. I must be painfully explicit and
-simple.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What I am seeking”—I said it very slowly and very distinctly—“is
-a farm that has been deserted, so to speak—one that has outlived its
-usefulness as a farm proper, and everything like that!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh,” he says, “now I get you! Why didn't you say that in the first place?
-The place you're looking for is the old Parham place, out here on the post
-road about a mile. August'll take good care of you—that's his
-specialty.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“August?” I inquired. “August who?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“August Weinstopper—the guy who runs it,” he explained. “You must
-have known August if you lived long in New York. He used to be the steward
-at that big hotel at Broadway and Forty-second; that was before he came up
-here and opened up the old Parham place as an automobile roadhouse. He's
-cleaning up about a thousand a month. Some class to that mantrap! They've
-got an orchestra, and nothing but vintage goods on the wine card, and
-dancing at all hours. Any night you'll see forty or fifty big cars rolling
-up there, bringing swell dames and-”
- </p>
-<p>
-I judge he saw by my expression that he was on a totally wrong tack,
-because he stopped short.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Say, mister,” he said, “I guess you'd better step into the post-office
-here—next door—and tell your troubles to Miss Plummer. She
-knows everything that's going on round here—and she ought to, too,
-seeing as she gets first chance at all the circulars and postal cards that
-come in. Besides, I gotter be changing that gasoline sign—gas has
-went up two cents a gallon more.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Miss Plummer was sorting mail when I appeared at her wicket. She was one
-of those elderly, spinsterish-looking, kittenish females who seem in an
-intense state of surprise all the time. Her eyebrows arched like croquet
-wickets and her mouth made O's before she uttered them.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Name, please?” she said twitteringly.
-</p>
-<p>
-I told her.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ah,” she said in the thrilled tone of one who is watching a Fourth of
-July skyrocket explode in midair. The news seemed to please her.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And the initials, please?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The initials are of no consequence. I do not expect any mail,” I said. “I
-want merely to ask you a question.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Indeed!” she said coyly. She said it as though I had just given her a
-handsome remembrance, and she cocked her head on one side like a bird—like
-a hen-bird.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I hate to trouble you,” I went on, “but I have experienced some
-difficulty in making your townspeople understand me. I am looking for a
-certain kind of farm—a farm of an abandoned character.” At once I
-saw I had made a mistake.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You do not get my meaning,” I said hastily. “I refer to a farm that has
-been deserted, closed up, shut down—in short, abandoned. I trust I
-make myself plain.”
- </p>
-<p>
-She was still suffering from shock, however. She gave me a wounded-fawn
-glance and averted her burning face.
-</p>
-<p>
-“The Prewitt property might suit your purposes—whatever they may
-be,” she said coldly over her shoulder. “Mr. Jabez Pickerel, of Pickerel
-& Pike, real-estate dealers, on the first corner above, will doubtless
-give you the desired information. He has charge of the Prewitt property.”
- </p>
-<p>
-At last, I said to myself as I turned away, I was on the right track. Mr.
-Pickerel rose as I entered his place of business. He was a short, square
-man, with a brisk manner and a roving eye.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I have been directed to you,” I began. He seized my hand and began
-shaking it warmly. “I have been told,” I continued, “that you have charge
-of the old Prewitt farm somewhere near here; and as I am in the market for
-an aban-” I got no farther than that.
-</p>
-<p>
-“In one minute,” he shouted explosively—“in just one minute!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Still clutching me by the hand, he rushed me pell-mell out of the place.
-At the curbing stood a long, low, rakish racing-model roadster, looking
-something like a high-powered projectile and something like an enlarged
-tailor's goose. Leaping into this machine at one bound, he dragged me up
-into the seat beside him and threw on the power. Instantly we were
-streaking away at a perfectly appalling rate of speed—fully
-forty-five to fifty-five miles an hour I should say. You never saw
-anything so sudden in your life. It was exactly like a kidnaping. It was
-only by the exercise of great self-control that I restrained myself from
-screaming for help. I had the feeling that I was being abducted—for
-what purpose I knew not.
-</p>
-<p>
-As we spun round a corner on two wheels, spraying up a long furrow of
-dust, the same as shown in pictures of the chariot race in Ben-Hur, a man
-with a watch in his hand and wearing a badge—a constable, I think—ran
-out of a house that had a magistrate's sign over it and threw up his hand
-authoritatively, as though to stop us; but my companion yelled something
-the purport of which I could not distinguish and the constable fell back.
-Glancing rearward over my shoulder I saw him halting another car bearing a
-New York license that did not appear to be going half so fast as we were.
-</p>
-<p>
-In another second we were out of town, tearing along a country highway.
-Evidently sensing the alarm expressed by my tense face and strained
-posture, this man Pickerel began saying something in what was evidently
-intended to be a reassuring tone; but such was the roaring of the car that
-I could distinguish only broken fragments of his speech. I caught the
-words “unparalleled opportunity,” repeated several times—the term
-appeared to be a favorite of his—and “marvelous proposition.”
- Possibly I was not listening very closely anyhow, my mind being otherwise
-engaged. For one thing I was surmising in a general sort of way upon the
-old theory of the result when the irresistible force encounters the
-immovable object. I was wondering how long it would be before we hit
-something solid and whether it would be possible afterward to tell us
-apart. His straw hat also made me wonder. I had mine clutched in both
-hands and even then it fluttered against my bosom like a captive bird, but
-his stayed put. I think yet he must have had threads cut in his head to
-match the convolutions of the straw and screwed his hat on, like a nut on
-an axle.
-</p>
-<p>
-I have a confused recollection of rushing with the speed of the tornado
-through rows of trees; of leaping from the crest of one small hill to the
-crest of the next small hill; of passing a truck patch with such velocity
-that the lettuce and tomatoes and other things all seemed to merge
-together in a manner suggestive of a well-mixed vegetable salad.
-</p>
-<p>
-Then we swung off the main road in between the huge brick columns of an
-ornate gateway that stood alone, with no fence in connection. We bumpily
-traversed a rutted stretch of cleared land; and then with a jar and a jolt
-we came to a pause in what appeared to be a wide and barren expanse.
-</p>
-<p>
-As my heart began to throb with slightly less violence I looked about me
-for the abandoned farmhouse. I had conceived that it would be white with
-green blinds and that it would stand among trees. It was not in sight;
-neither were the trees. The entire landscape presented an aspect that was
-indeed remarkable. Small numbered stakes, planted in double lines at
-regular intervals, so as to form aisles, stretched away from us in every
-direction. Also there were twin rows of slender sticks planted in the
-earth in a sort of geometric pattern. Some were the size of switches.
-Others were almost as large as umbrella handles and had sprouted slightly.
-A short distance away an Italian was steering a dirtscraper attached to a
-languid mule along a sort of dim roadway. There were no other living
-creatures in sight. Right at my feet were two painted and lettered boards
-affixed at cross angles to a wooden upright. The legend on one of these
-boards was: Grand Concourse. The inscription on the other read: Nineteenth
-Avenue West. Repressing a gasp, I opened my mouth to speak.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ahem!” I said. “There has been some mistake—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“There can be no mistake!” he shouted enthusiastically. “The only mistake
-possible is not to take advantage of this magnificent opportunity while it
-is yet possible to do so. Just observe that view!” He waved his arm in the
-general direction of the horizon from northwest to southeast. “Breathe
-this air! As a personal favor to me just breathe a little of this air!” He
-inhaled deeply himself as though to show me how, and I followed suit,
-because after that ride I needed to catch up with my regular breathing.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Thank you!” I said gratefully when I had finished breathing. “But how
-about——”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Quite right!” he cried, beaming upon me admiringly. “Quite right! I don't
-blame you. You have a right to know all the details. As a business man you
-should ask that question. You were about to say: But how about the train
-service? Ah, there spoke the true business man, the careful investor!
-Twenty fast trains a day each way—twenty, sir! Remember! And as for
-accessibility—well, accessibility is simply no name for it! Only two
-or three minutes from the station. You saw how long it took us to get here
-to-day? Well, then, what more could you ask? Right here,” he went on,
-pointing, “is the country club—a magnificent thing!”
- </p>
-<p>
-I looked, but I didn't see anything except a hole in the ground about
-fifty feet from us.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Where?” I asked. “I don't see it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well,” he said, “this is where it is going to be. You automatically
-become a member of the country club; in fact, you are as good as a member
-now! And right up there at the corner of Lincoln Boulevard and Washington
-Parkway, where that scraper is, is the public library—the site for
-it! You'll be crazy about the public library! When we get back I'll let
-you run over the plans for the public library while I'm fixing up the
-papers. Oh, 'my friend, how glad I am you came while there was yet time!”
- </p>
-<p>
-I breasted the roaring torrent of his pouring language.
-</p>
-<p>
-“One minute,” I begged of him—“One minute, if you please! I am
-obliged to you for the interest you take in me, a mere stranger to you;
-but there has been a misunderstanding. I wanted to see the Prewitt place.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“This is the Prewitt place,” he said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” I said; “but where is the house? And why all this—why all
-these-” I indicated by a wave of my hand what I meant.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Naturally,” he explained, “the house is no longer here. We tore it away—it
-was old; whereas everything here will be new, modern and up-to-date. This
-is—or was—the Prewitt place, now better known as Homecrest
-Heights, the Development Ideal!” Having begun to capitalize his words, he
-continued to do so. “The Perfect Addition! The Suburb Superb! Away From
-the City's Dust and Heat! Away From Its Glamor and Clamor! Into the Open!
-Into the Great Out-of-Doors! Back to the Soil! Villa Plots on Easy Terms!
-You Furnish the Birds, We Furnish the Nest! The Place For a Business Man
-to Rear His Family! You Are Married? You Have a Wife? You Have Little
-Ones?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” I said, “one of each—one wife and one little one.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah!” he cried gladly. “One Little One—How Sweet! You Love Your
-Little One—Ah, Yes! Yes! You Desire to Give Your Little One a
-Chance? You Would Give Her Congenial Surroundings—Refined
-Surroundings? You Would Inculcate in Her While Young the Love of Nature?”
- He put an entire sentence into capitals now: “Give Your Little One a
-Chance! That is All I Ask of You!”
- </p>
-<p>
-He had me by both lapels. I thought he was going to kneel to me in
-pleading. I feared he might kiss me. I raised him to his feet. Then his
-manner changed—it became domineering, hectoring, almost threatening.
-</p>
-<p>
-I will pass briefly over the events of the succeeding hour, including our
-return to his lair or office. Accounts of battles where all the losses
-fall upon one side are rarely interesting to read about anyway. Suffice it
-to say that at the last minute I was saved. It was a desperate struggle
-though. I had offered the utmost resistance at first, but he would surely
-have had his way with me—only that a train pulled in bound for the
-city just as he was showing me, as party of the first part, where I was to
-sign my name on the dotted line A. Even then, weakened and worn as I was,
-I should probably not have succeeded in beating him off if he had not been
-hampered by having a fountain pen in one hand and the documents in the
-other. At the door he intercepted me; but I tackled him low about the body
-and broke through and fled like a hunted roebuck, catching the last car
-just as the relief train pulled out of the station. It was a close
-squeeze, but I made it. The thwarted Mr. Pickerel wrote me regularly for
-some months thereafter, making mention of My Little One in every letter;
-but after a while I took to sending the letters back to him unopened, and
-eventually he quit.
-</p>
-<p>
-I reached home along toward evening. I was tired, but I was not
-discouraged. I reported progress on the part of the committee on a
-permanent site, but told my wife that in order to find exactly what we
-wanted it would be necessary for us to leave the main-traveled paths. It
-was now quite apparent to me that the abandoned farm-seeker who stuck too
-closely to the railroad lines was bound to be thrown constantly in contact
-with those false and feverish metropolitan influences which, radiating
-from the city, have spread over the country like the spokes of a wheel or
-an upas tree, or a jauga-naut, or something of that nature. The thing to
-do was to get into an automobile and go away from the principal routes of
-travel, into districts where the abandoned farms would naturally be more
-numerous.
-</p>
-<p>
-This solved one phase of the situation—we now knew definitely where
-to go. The next problem was to decide upon some friend owning an
-automobile. We fixed upon the Winsells. They are charming people! We are
-devoted to the Winsells. They were very good friends of ours when they had
-their small four-passenger car; but since they sold the old one and bought
-a new forty-horse, seven-passenger car, they are so popular that it is
-hard to get hold of them for holidays and week-ends.
-</p>
-<p>
-Every Saturday—nearly—some one of their list of acquaintances
-is calling them up to tell of a lovely spot he has just heard about, with
-good roads all the way, both coming and going; but after a couple of
-disappointments we caught them when they had an open date. Over the
-telephone Winsell objected that he did not know anything about the roads
-up in Connecticut, but I was able to reassure him promptly on that score.
-I told him he need not worry about that—that I would buy the road
-map myself. So on a fair Saturday morning we started.
-</p>
-<p>
-The trip up through the extreme lower end of the state of New York was
-delightful, being marred by only one or two small mishaps. There was the
-trifling incident of a puncture, which delayed us slightly; but
-fortunately the accident occurred at a point where there was a wonderful
-view of the Croton Lakes, and while Winsell was taking off the old tire
-and adjusting a new one we sat very comfortably in the car, enjoying
-Nature's panorama.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was a little later on when we hit a dog. It seemed to me that this dog
-merely sailed, yowling, up into the air in a sort of long curve, but
-Winsell insisted that the dog described a parabola. I am very glad that in
-accidents of this character it is always the victims that describe the
-parabola. I know I should be at a complete loss to describe one myself.
-Unless it is something like the boomerang of the Australian aborigines I
-do not even know what a parabola is. Nor did I dream until then that
-Winsell understood the dog language. However, those are but technical
-details.
-</p>
-<p>
-After we crossed the state line we got lost several times; this was
-because the country seemed to have a number of roads the road map omitted,
-and the road map had many roads the country had left out. Eventually,
-though, we came to a district of gently rolling hills, dotted at intervals
-with those neat white-painted villages in which New England excels; and
-between the villages at frequent intervals were farmhouses. Abandoned
-ones, however, were rarer than we had been led to expect. Not only were
-these farms visibly populated by persons who appeared to be permanently
-attached to their respective localities, but at many of them things were
-offered for sale—such as home-made pastry, souvenirs, fresh poultry,
-antique furniture, brass door-knockers, milk and eggs, hand-painted
-crockery, table board, garden truck, molasses taffy, laundry soap and
-livestock.
-</p>
-<p>
-At length, though, when our necks were quite sore from craning this way
-and that on the watch for an abandoned farm that would suit us, we came to
-a very attractive-looking place facing a lawn and flanked by an orchard.
-There was a sign fastened to an elm tree alongside the fence. The sign
-read: For Information Concerning This Property Inquire Within.
-</p>
-<p>
-To Winsell I said:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Stop here—this is without doubt the place we have been looking
-for!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Filled—my wife and I—with little thrills of anticipation, we
-all got out. I opened the gate and entered the yard, followed by Winsell,
-my wife and his wife. I was about halfway up the walk when a large dog
-sprang into view, at the same time showing his teeth in rather an
-intimidating way. To prevent an encounter with an animal that might be
-hostile, I stepped nimbly behind the nearest tree. As I came round on the
-other side of the tree there, to my surprise, was this dog face to face
-with me. Still desiring to avoid a collision with him, I stepped back the
-other way. Again I met the dog, which was now growling. The situation was
-rapidly becoming embarrassing when a gentleman came out upon the porch and
-called sharply to the dog. The dog, with apparent reluctance, retired
-under the house and the gentleman invited us inside and asked us to be
-seated. Glancing about his living room I noted that the furniture appeared
-to be a trifle modern for our purposes; but, as I whispered to my wife,
-you cannot expect to have everything to suit you at first. With the sweet
-you must ever take the bitter—that I believe is true, though not an
-original saying.
-</p>
-<p>
-In opening the conversation with the strange gentleman I went in a
-businesslike way direct to the point.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You are the owner of these premises?” I asked. He bowed. “I take it,” I
-then said, “that you are about to abandon this farm?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I beg your pardon?” he said, as though confused.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I presume,” I explained, “that this is practically an abandoned farm.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Not exactly,” he said. “I'm here.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes, yes; quite so,” I said, speaking perhaps a trifle impatiently. “But
-you are thinking of going away from it, aren't you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” he admitted; “I am.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Now,” I said, “we are getting round to the real situation. What are you
-asking for this place?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Eighteen hundred,” he stated. “There are ninety acres of land that go
-with the house and the house itself is in very good order.”
- </p>
-<p>
-I considered for a moment. None of the abandoned farms I had ever read
-about sold for so much as eighteen hundred dollars. Still, I reflected,
-there might have been a recent bull movement; there had certainly been
-much publicity upon the subject. Before committing myself, I glanced at my
-wife. Her expression betokened acquiescence.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That figure,” I said diplomatically, “was somewhat in excess of what I
-was originally prepared to pay; still, the house seems roomy and, as you
-were saying, there are ninety acres. The furniture and equipment go with
-the place, I presume?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Naturally,” he answered. “That is the customary arrangement.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And would you be prepared to give possession immediately?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Immediately,” he responded.
-</p>
-<p>
-I began to feel enthusiasm. By the look on my wife's face I could tell
-that she was enthused, too.
-</p>
-<p>
-“If we come to terms,” I said, “and everything proves satisfactory, I
-suppose you could arrange to have the deed made out at once?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The deed?” he said blankly. “You mean the lease?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The lease?” I said blankly. “You mean the deed?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The deed?” he said blankly. “You mean the lease?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The lease, indeed,” said my wife. “You mean——”
- </p>
-<p>
-I broke in here. Apparently we were all getting the habit.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Let us be perfectly frank in this matter,” I said. “Let us dispense with
-these evasive and dilatory tactics. You want eighteen hundred dollars for
-this place, furnished?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Exactly,” he responded. “Eighteen hundred dollars for it from June to
-October.” Then, noting the expressions of our faces, he continued
-hurriedly: “A remarkably small figure considering what summer rentals are
-in this section. Besides, this house is new. It costs a lot to reproduce
-these old Colonial designs!”
- </p>
-<p>
-I saw at once that we were but wasting our time in this person's company.
-He had not the faintest conception of what we wanted. We came away.
-Besides, as I remarked to the others after we were back in the car and on
-our way again, this house-farm would never have suited us; the view from
-it was nothing extra. I told Winsell to go deeper into the country until
-we really struck the abandoned farm belt.
-</p>
-<p>
-So we went farther and farther. After a while it was late afternoon and we
-seemed to be lost again. My wife and Winsell's wife were tired; so we
-dropped them at the next teahouse we passed. I believe it was the
-eighteenth teahouse for the day. Winsell and I then continued on the quest
-alone. Women know so little about business anyway that it is better, I
-think, whenever possible, to conduct important matters without their
-presence. It takes a masculine intellect to wrestle with these intricate
-problems; and for some reason or other this problem was becoming more and
-more complicated and intricate all the time.
-</p>
-<p>
-On a long, deserted stretch of road, as the shadows were lengthening, we
-overtook a native of a rural aspect plodding along alone. Just as we
-passed him I was taken with an idea and I told Winsell to stop. I was
-tired of trafficking with stupid villagers and avaricious land-grabbers. I
-would deal with the peasantry direct. I would sound the yeoman heart—which
-is honest and true and ever beats in accord with the best dictates of
-human nature.
-</p>
-<p>
-“My friend,” I said to him, “I am seeking an abandoned farm. Do you know
-of many such in this vicinity?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“How?” he asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-I never got so tired of repeating a question in my life; nevertheless, for
-this yokel's limited understanding, I repeated it again.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well,” he said at length, “whut with all these city fellers moving in
-here to do gentleman-farming—whatsoever that may mean—farm
-property has gone up until now it's wuth considerable more'n town
-property, as a rule. I could scursely say I know of any of the kind of
-farms you mention as laying round loose—no, wait a minute; I do
-recollect a place. It's that shack up back of the country poor farm that
-the supervisors used for a pest house the time the smallpox broke out.
-That there place is consider'bly abandoned. You might try—”
- </p>
-<p>
-In a stern tone of voice I bade Winsell to drive on and turn in at the
-next farmhouse he came to. The time for trifling had passed. My mind was
-fixed. My jaw was also set. I know, because I set it myself. And I have no
-doubt there was a determined glint in my eye; in fact, I could feel the
-glint reflected upon my cheek.
-</p>
-<p>
-At the next farm Winsell turned in. We passed through a stone gateway and
-rolled up a well-kept road toward a house we could see in glimpses through
-the intervening trees. We skirted several rather neat flower beds, curved
-round a greenhouse and came out on a stretch of lawn. I at once decided
-that this place would do undoubtedly. There might be alterations to make,
-but in the main the establishment would be satisfactory even though the
-house, on closer inspection, proved to be larger than it had seemed when
-seen from a distance.
-</p>
-<p>
-On a signal from me Winsell halted at the front porch. Without a word I
-stepped out. He followed. I mounted the steps, treading with great
-firmness and decision, and rang the doorbell hard. A middle-aged person
-dressed in black, with a high collar, opened the door.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Are you the proprietor of this place?” I demanded without any preamble.
-My patience was exhausted; I may have spoken sharply.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, no, sir,” he said, and I could tell by his accent he was English;
-“the marster is out, sir.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I wish to see him,” I said, “on particular business—at once! At
-once, you understand—it is important!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Perhaps you'd better come in, sir,” he said humbly. It was evident my
-manner, which was, I may say, almost haughty, had impressed him deeply.
-“If you will wait, sir, I'll have the marster called, sir. He's not far
-away, sir.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Very good,” I replied. “Do so!”
- </p>
-<p>
-He showed us into a large library and fussed about, offering drinks and
-cigars and what-not. Winsell seemed somewhat perturbed by these
-attentions, but I bade him remain perfectly calm and collected, adding
-that I would do all the talking.
-</p>
-<p>
-We took cigars—very good cigars they were. As they were not banded I
-assumed they were home grown. I had always heard that Connecticut tobacco
-was strong, but these specimens were very mild and pleasant. I had about
-decided I should put in tobacco for private consumption and grow my own
-cigars and cigarettes when the door opened, and a stout elderly man with
-side whiskers entered the room. He was in golfing costume and was
-breathing hard.
-</p>
-<p>
-“As soon as I got your message I hurried over as fast as I could,” he
-said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You need not apologize,” I replied; “we have not been kept waiting very
-long.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I presume you come in regard to the traction matter?” he ventured.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No,” I said, “not exactly. You own this place, I believe?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I do,” he said, staring at me.
-</p>
-<p>
-“So far, so good,” I said. “Now, then, kindly tell me when you expect to
-abandon it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He backed away from me a few feet, gaping. He opened his mouth and for a
-few moments absent-mindedly left it in that condition.
-</p>
-<p>
-“When do I expect to do what?” he inquired. “When,” I said, “do you expect
-to abandon it?” He shook his head as though he had some marbles inside of
-it and liked the rattling sound.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I don't understand yet,” he said, puzzled.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I will explain,” I said very patiently. “I wish to acquire by purchase or
-otherwise one of the abandoned farms of this state. Not having been able
-to find one that was already abandoned, though I believe them to be very
-numerous, I am looking for one that is about to be abandoned. I wish, you
-understand, to have the first call on it. Winsell”—I said in an
-aside—“quit pulling at my coat-tail! Therefore,” I resumed,
-readdressing the man with the side whiskers, “I ask you a plain question,
-to wit: When do you expect to abandon this one? I expect a plain answer.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He edged a few feet nearer an electric push button which was set in the
-wall. He seemed flustered and distraught; in fact, almost apprehensive.
-</p>
-<p>
-“May I inquire,” he said nervously, “how you got in here?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Your servant admitted us,” I said, with dignity. “Yes,” he said in a
-soothing tone; “but did you come afoot—or how?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I drove here in a car,” I told him, though I couldn't see what difference
-that made.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Merciful Heavens!” he muttered. “They do not trust you—I mean you
-do not drive the car yourself, do you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Here Winsell cut in.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I drove the car,” he said. “I—I did not want to come, but he”—pointing
-to me—“he insisted.” Winsell is by nature a groveling soul. His tone
-was almost cringing.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I see,” said the gentleman, wagging his head, “I see. Sad case—very
-sad case! Young, too!” Then he faced me. “You will excuse me now,” he
-said. “I wish to speak to my butler. I have just thought of several things
-I wish to say to him. Now in regard to abandoning this place: I do not
-expect to abandon this place just yet—probably not for some weeks or
-possibly months. In case I should decide to abandon it sooner, if you will
-leave your address with me I will communicate with you by letter at the
-institution where you may chance to be stopping at the time. I trust this
-will be satisfactory.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He turned again to Winsell.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Does your—ahem—friend care for flowers?” he asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” said Winsell. “I think so.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Perhaps you might show him my flower gardens as you go away,” said the
-side-whiskered man. “I have heard somewhere that flowers have a very
-soothing effect sometimes in such cases—or it may have been music. I
-have spent thirty thousand dollars beautifying these grounds and I am
-really very proud of them. Show him the flowers by all means—you
-might even let him pick a few if it will humor him.”
- </p>
-<p>
-I started to speak, but he was gone. In the distance somewhere I heard a
-door slam.
-</p>
-<p>
-Under the circumstances there was nothing for us to do except to come
-away. Originally I did not intend to make public mention of this incident,
-preferring to dismiss the entire thing from my mind; but, inasmuch as
-Winsell has seen fit to circulate a perverted and needlessly exaggerated
-version of it among our circle of friends, I feel that the exact
-circumstances should be properly set forth.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was a late hour when we rejoined our wives. This was due to Winsel's
-stupidity in forgetting the route we had traversed after parting from
-them; in fact, it was nearly midnight before he found his way back to the
-teahouse where we left them. The teahouse had been closed for some hours
-then and our wives were sitting in the dark on the teahouse porch waiting
-for us. Really, I could not blame them for scolding Winsell; but they
-displayed an unwarranted peevishness toward me. My wife's display of
-temper was really the last straw. It was that, taken in connection with
-certain other circumstances, which clinched my growing resolution to let
-the whole project slide into oblivion. I woke her up and in so many words
-told her so on the way home. We arrived there shortly after daylight of
-the following morning.
-</p>
-<p>
-So, as I said at the outset, we gave up our purpose of buying an abandoned
-farm and moved into a flat on the upper west side.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER III. THREE YEARS ELAPSE
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> wound up the last preceding chapter of this chronicle with the statement
-that we had definitely given up all hope of owning an abandoned farm.
-After an interval of three years the time has now come to recant and to
-make explanation, touching on our change of heart and resolution. For at
-this writing I am an abandoned farmer of the most pronounced type and,
-with the assistance of my family, am doing my level best to convert or, as
-it were, evangelize one of the most thoroughly abandoned farms in the
-entire United States. By the same token we are also members in good
-standing of the Westchester County—New York—Despair
-Association.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Westchester County Despair Association was founded by George Creel,
-who is one of our neighbors. In addition to being its founder he is its
-perpetual president. This association has a large and steadily growing
-membership. Any citybred person who moves up here among the rolling hills
-of our section with intent to get back to Nature, and who, in pursuance of
-that most laudable aim, encounters the various vicissitudes and the varied
-misfortunes which, it would seem, invariably do befall the amateur
-husbandman, is eligible to join the ranks.
-</p>
-<p>
-If he builds a fine silo and promptly it burns down on him, as so
-frequently happens—silos appear to have a habit of deliberately
-going out of their way in order to catch afire—he joins
-automatically. If his new swimming pool won't hold water, or his new road
-won't hold anything else; if his hired help all quit on him in the busy
-season; if the spring freshets flood his cellar; if his springs go dry in
-August; if his horses succumb to one of those fatal diseases that are so
-popular among expensive horses; if his prize Jersey cow chokes on a
-turnip; if his blooded hens are so busy dying they have no time to give to
-laying—why, then, under any one or more of these heads he is
-welcomed into the fold. I may state in passing that, after an experimental
-test of less than six months of country life, we are eligible on several
-counts. However, I shall refer to those details later.
-</p>
-<p>
-Up until last spring we had been living in the city for twelve years, with
-a slice of about four years out of the middle, during which we lived in
-one of the most suburban of suburbs. First we tried the city, then the
-suburb, then the city again; and the final upshot was, we decided that
-neither city nor suburb would do for us. In the suburb there was the daily
-commuting to be considered; besides, the suburb was neither city nor
-country, but a commingling of the drawbacks of the city and the country,
-with not many of the advantages of either. And the city was the city of
-New York.
-</p>
-<p>
-Ours, I am sure, had been the common experience of the majority of those
-who move to New York from smaller communities—the experience of
-practically all except the group from which is recruited the confirmed and
-incurable New Yorker. After you move to New York it takes several months
-to rid you of homesickness for the place you have left; this period over,
-it takes several years usually to cure you of the lure of the city and
-restore to you the longing for the simpler and saner things.
-</p>
-<p>
-To be sure, there is the exception. When I add this qualification I have
-in mind the man who wearies not of spending his evenings from eight-thirty
-until eleven at a tired-business-man's show; of eating
-tired-business-man's lunch in a lobsteria on the Great White Way from
-eleven-thirty p. m. until closing time; of having his toes trodden upon by
-other tired business men at the afternoon-dancing parlor; of twice a day,
-or oftener, being packed in with countless fellow tired business men in
-the tired cars of the tired Subway—I have him in mind, also the
-woman who is his ordained mate.
-</p>
-<p>
-But, for the run of us, life in the city, within a flat, eventually gets
-upon our nerves; and life within the city, outside the flat, gets upon our
-nerves to an even greater extent. The main trouble about New York is not
-that it contains six million people, but that practically all of them are
-constantly engaged in going somewhere in such a hurry. Nearly always the
-place where they are going lies in the opposite direction from the place
-where you are going. There is where the rub comes, and sooner or later it
-rubs the nap off your disposition.
-</p>
-<p>
-The everlasting shooting of the human rapids, the everlasting portages
-about the living whirlpools, the everlasting bucking of the human cross
-currents—these are the things that, in due time, turn the thoughts
-of the sojourner to mental pictures of peaceful fields and burdened
-orchards, and kindfaced cows standing knee-deep in purling brooks, and
-bosky dells and sylvan glades. At any rate, so our thoughts turned.
-</p>
-<p>
-Then, too, a great many of our friends were moving to the country to live,
-or had already moved to the country to live. We spent week-ends at their
-houses; we went on house parties as their guests. We heard them babble of
-the excitement of raising things on the land. We thought they meant garden
-truck. How were we to know they also meant mortgages? At the time it did
-not impress us as a fact worthy of being regarded as significant that we
-should find a different set of servants on the premises almost every time
-we went to visit one of these families.
-</p>
-<p>
-What fascinated us was the presence of fresh vegetables upon the table—not
-the car-sick, shopworn, wilted vegetables of the city markets, but really
-fresh vegetables; the new-laid eggs—after eating the other kind so
-long we knew they were new-laid without being told; the flower beds
-outside and the great bouquets of flowers inside the house; the milk that
-had come from a cow and not from a milkman; the home-made butter; the rich
-cream—and all.
-</p>
-<p>
-We heard their tales of rising at daybreak and going forth to pick from
-the vines the platter of breakfast berries, still beaded with the dew.
-They got up at daybreak, they said, especially on account of the berry
-picking and the beauties of the sunrise. Having formerly been city
-dwellers, they had sometimes stayed up for a sunrise; but never until now
-had they got up for one. The novelty appealed to them tremendously and
-they never tired of talking of it.
-</p>
-<p>
-In the country—so they told us—you never needed an alarm clock
-to rouse you at dawn. Subsequently, by personal experience, I found this
-to be true. You never need an alarm clock—if you keep chickens. You
-may not go to bed with the chickens, but you get up with them, unless you
-are a remarkably sound sleeper. When it comes to rousing the owner, from
-slumber before the sun shows, the big red rooster and the little brown hen
-are more dependable than any alarm clock ever assembled. You might forget
-to wind the alarm clock. The big red rooster winds himself. You might
-forget to set the alarm clock. The little brown hen does her own setting;
-and even in cases where she doesn't, she likes to wake up about
-four-forty-five and converse about her intentions in the matter in a
-shrill and penetrating tone of voice.
-</p>
-<p>
-It had been so long since I had lived in the country I had forgotten about
-the early-rising habits of barnyard fowl. I am an expert on the subject
-now. Only this morning there was a rooster suffering from hay fever or a
-touch of catarrh, or something that made him quite hoarse; and he strolled
-up from the chicken house to a point directly beneath my bedroom window,
-just as the first pink streaks of the new day were painting the eastern
-skies, and spent fully half an hour there clearing his throat.
-</p>
-<p>
-But I am getting ahead of my story. More and more we found the lure of the
-country was enmeshing our fancies. After each trip to the country we went
-back to town to find that, in our absence, the flat had somehow grown more
-stuffy and more crowded; that the streets had become more noisy and more
-congested. And the outcome of it with us was as the outcome has been with
-so many hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands of others. We
-voted to go to the country to live.
-</p>
-<p>
-Having reached the decision, the next thing was to decide on the site and
-the setting for the great adventure. We unanimously set our faces against
-New Jersey, mainly because, to get from New Jersey over to New York and
-back again, you must take either the ferry or the tube; and if there was
-one thing on earth that we cared less for than the ferry it was the tube.
-To us it seemed that most of the desirable parts of Long Island were
-already preëmpted by persons of great wealth, living, so we gathered, in a
-state of discriminating aloofness and, as a general rule, avoiding social
-association with families in the humbler walks of life. Round New York the
-rich cannot be too careful—and seldom are. Most of them are
-suffering from nervous culture anyhow.
-</p>
-<p>
-Land in the lower counties of Connecticut, along the Sound, was too
-expensive for us to consider moving up there. But there remained what
-seemed to us then and what seems to us yet the most wonderful spot for
-country homes of persons in moderate circumstances anywhere within the New
-York zone, or anywhere else, for that matter—the hill country of the
-northern part of Westchester County, far enough back from the Hudson River
-to avoid the justly famous Hudson River glare in the summer, and close
-enough to it to enable a dweller to enjoy the Hudson River breezes and the
-incomparable Hudson River scenery.
-</p>
-<p>
-Besides, a lot of our friends lived there. There was quite a colony of
-them scattered over a belt of territory that intervened between the
-magnificent estates of the multi-millionaires to the southward and the
-real farming country beyond the Croton Lakes, up the valley. By a process
-of elimination we had now settled upon the neighborhood where we meant to
-live. The task of finding a suitable location in this particular area
-would be an easy one, we thought.
-</p>
-<p>
-I do not know how the news of this intention spread. We told only a few
-persons of our purpose. But spread it did, and with miraculous swiftness.
-Overnight almost, we began to hear from real-estate agents having other
-people's property to sell and from real-estate owners having their own
-property to sell. They reached us by mail, by telephone, by messenger, and
-in person. It was a perfect revelation to learn that so many perfectly
-situated, perfectly appointed country places, for one reason or another,
-were to be had for such remarkable figures. Indeed, when we heard the
-actual amounts the figures were more than remarkable—they were
-absolutely startling. I am convinced that nothing is so easy to buy as a
-country place and nothing is so hard to sell. This observation is based
-upon our own experiences on the buying side and on the experiences of some
-of my acquaintances who want to sell—and who are taking it out in
-wanting.
-</p>
-<p>
-In addition to agents and owners, there came also road builders, well
-diggers, interior decorators, landscape gardeners, general contractors, an
-architect or so, agents for nurseries, tree-mending experts, professional
-foresters, persons desiring to be superintendent of our country place,
-persons wishful of taking care of our livestock for us—a whole shoal
-of them. It booted us nothing to explain that we had not yet bought a
-place; that we had not even looked at a place with the prospect of buying.
-Almost without exception these callers were willing to sit down with me
-and use up hours of my time telling me how well qualified they were to
-deliver the goods as soon as I had bought land, or even before I had
-bought it.
-</p>
-<p>
-From the ruck of them as they came avalanching down upon us two or three
-faces and individualities stand out. There was, for example, the chimney
-expert. That was what he called himself—a chimney expert. His
-specialty was constructing chimneys that were guaranteed against smoking,
-and curing chimneys, built by others, which had contracted the vice. The
-circumstance of our not having any chimneys of any variety at the moment
-did not halt him when I had stated that fact to him. He had already
-removed his hat and overcoat and taken a seat in my study, and he
-continued to remain right there. He seemed comfortable; in fact, I believe
-he said he was comfortable.
-</p>
-<p>
-From chimneys he branched out into a general conversation with me upon the
-topics of the day.
-</p>
-<p>
-In my time I have met persons who knew less about a wider range of
-subjects than he did, but they had superior advantages over him. Some had
-traveled about over the world, picking up misinformation; some had been
-educated into a broad and comprehensive ignorance. But here was a
-self-taught ignoramus—one, you might say, who had made himself what
-he was. He may have known all about the habits and shortcomings of flues;
-but, once you let him out of a chimney, he was adrift on an uncharted sea
-of mispronounced names, misstated facts and faulty dates.
-</p>
-<p>
-We discussed the war—or, rather, he erroneously discussed it. We
-discussed politics and first one thing and then another, until finally the
-talk worked its way round to literature; and then it was he told me I was
-one of his favorite authors. “Well,” I said to myself, at that, “this
-person may be shy in some of his departments, but he's all right in
-others.” And then, aloud, I told him that he interested me and asked him
-to go on.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, sir,” he continued; “I don't care what anybody says, you certainly
-did write one mighty funny book, anyhow. You've wrote some books that I
-didn't keer so much for; but this here book, ef it's give me one laugh
-it's give me a thousand! I can come in dead tired out and pick it up and
-read a page—yes, read only two or three lines sometimes—and
-just natchelly bust my sides. How you ever come to think up all them
-comical sayings I don't, for the life of me, see! I wonder how these other
-fellers that calls themselves humorists have got the nerve to keep on
-tryin' to write when they read that book of yours.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What did you say the name of this particular book was?” I asked, warming
-to the man in spite of myself.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It's called Fables in Slang,” he said.
-</p>
-<p>
-I did not undeceive him. He had spoiled my day for me. Why should I spoil
-his?
-</p>
-<p>
-Then, there was the persistent nursery-man's agent, with the teeth. He was
-the most toothsome being I ever saw. The moment he came in, the thought
-occurred to me that in his youth somebody had put tooth powders into his
-coffee. He may not have had any more teeth than some people have, but he
-had a way of presenting his when he smiled or when he spoke, or even when
-his face was in repose, which gave him the effect of being practically all
-teeth. Aside from his teeth, the most noticeable thing about him was his
-persistence. I began protesting that it would be but a waste of his time
-and mine to take up the subject of fruit and shade trees and shrubbery,
-because, even though I might care to invest in his lines, I had at present
-no soil in which to plant them. But he seemed to regard this as a mere
-technicality on my part, and before I was anywhere near done with what I
-meant to say to him he had one arm round me and was filling my lap and my
-arms and my desk-top with catalogues, price lists, illustrations in color,
-order slips, and other literature dealing with the products of the house
-he represented.
-</p>
-<p>
-I did my feeble best to fight him off; but it was of no use. He just
-naturally surrounded me. Inside of three minutes he had me as thoroughly
-mined, flanked and invested as though he'd been Grant and I'd been
-Richmond. I could tell he was prepared to stay right on until I
-capitulated.
-</p>
-<p>
-So, in order for me to be able to live my own life, it became necessary to
-give him an order. I made it as small an order as possible, because, as I
-have just said and as I told him repeatedly, I had no place in which to
-plant the things I bought of him, and could not tell when I should have a
-place in which to plant them. That petty detail did not concern him in the
-least. He promised to postpone delivery until I had taken title to some
-land somewhere; and then he smiled his all-ivory smile and released me
-from captivity, and took his departure.
-</p>
-<p>
-Two months later, when we had joined the landed classes, the consignment
-arrived—peach, pear, quince, cherry and apple. I was quite shocked
-at the appearance of the various items when we undid the wrappings. The
-pictures from which I had made my selections showed splendid trees, thick
-with foliage and laden with the most delicious fruit imaginable. But here,
-seemingly, was merely a collection of golf clubs in a crude and unfinished
-state—that is to say, they were about the right length and the right
-thickness to make golf clubs, but were unfinished to the extent that they
-had small tentacles or roots adhering to them at their butt ends.
-</p>
-<p>
-However, our gardener—we had acquired a gardener by then—was
-of the opinion that they might develop into something. Having advanced
-this exceedingly sanguine and optimistic belief, he took out a
-pocket-knife and further maimed the poor little things by pruning off
-certain minute sprouts or nubs or sprigs that grew upon them; and then he
-stuck them in the earth. Nevertheless, they grew. At this hour they are
-still growing, and in time I think they may bear fruit. As a promise of
-future productivity they bore leaves during the summer—not many
-leaves, but still enough leaves to keep them from looking so much like
-walking sticks, and just enough leaves to nourish certain varieties of
-worms.
-</p>
-<p>
-I sincerely trust the reader will not think I have been exaggerating in
-detailing my dealings with the artificers, agents and solicitors who
-descended upon us when the hue and cry—personally I have never seen
-a hue, nor, to the best of my knowledge, have I ever heard one; but it is
-customary to speak of it in connection with a cry and I do so—when,
-as I say, the presumable hue and the indubitable cry were raised in regard
-to our ambition to own a country place. Believe me, I am but telling the
-plain, unvarnished truth. And now we come to the home-seeking enterprise:
-</p>
-<p>
-Sometimes alone, but more frequently in the company of friends, we toured
-Westchester, its main highways and its back roads, its nooks and its
-corners, until we felt that we knew its topography much better than many
-born and reared in it. Reason totters on her throne when confronted with
-the task of trying to remember how many places we looked at—places
-done, places overdone, places underdone, and places undone. Wherever we
-went, though, one of two baffling situations invariably arose: If we liked
-a place the price for that place uniformly would be out of our financial
-reach. If the price were within our reach the place failed to satisfy our
-desires.
-</p>
-<p>
-After weeks of questing about, we did almost close for one estate. It was
-an estate where a rich man, who made his money in town and spent it in the
-country, had invested a fortune in apple trees. The trees were there—several
-thousand of them; but they were all such young trees. It would be several
-years before they would begin to bear, and meantime the services of a
-small army of men would be required to care for the orchards and prune
-them, and spray them, and coddle them, and chase insects away from them. I
-calculated that if we bought this place it would cost me about seven
-thousand dollars a year for five years ahead in order to enjoy three weeks
-of pink-and-white beauty in the blossoming time each spring.
-</p>
-<p>
-Besides, it occurred to me that by the time the trees did begin to bear
-plentifully the fashionable folk in New York might quit eating apples; in
-which case everybody else would undoubtedly follow suit and quit eating
-them too. Ours is a fickle race, as witness the passing of the vogue for
-iron dogs on front lawns, and for cut-glass vinegar cruets on the dinner
-table; and a lot of other things, fashionable once but unfashionable now.
-</p>
-<p>
-Also, the house stood on a bluff directly overlooking the river, with the
-tracks of the New York Central in plain view and trains constantly
-ski-hooting by. At the time of our inspection of the premises, long
-restless strings of freight cars were backing in and out of sidings not
-more than a quarter of a mile away. We were prepared, after we had moved
-to the country, to rise with the skylarks, but we could not see the
-advantage to be derived from rising with the switch engines. Switch
-engines are notorious for keeping early hours; or possibly the engineers
-suffer from insomnia.
-</p>
-<p>
-At length we decided to buy an undeveloped tract and do our own
-developing. In pursuance of this altered plan we climbed craggy heights
-with fine views to be had from their crests, but with no water anywhere
-near; and we waded through marshy meadows, where there was any amount of
-water but no views. This was discouraging; but we persevered, and
-eventually perseverance found its reward. Thanks to some kindly souls who
-guided us to it, we found what we thought we wanted.
-</p>
-<p>
-We found a sixty-acre tract on a fine road less than a mile and a half
-from one of the best towns in the lower Hudson Valley. It combined
-accessibility with privacy; for after you quitted the cleared lands at the
-front of the property, and entered the woodland at the back, you were
-instantly in a stretch of timber which by rights belonged in the
-Adirondacks. About a third of the land was cleared—or, rather, had
-been cleared once upon a time. The rest was virgin forest running up to
-the comb of a little mountain, from the top of which you might see, spread
-out before you and below you, a panorama with a sweep of perhaps forty
-miles round three sides of the horizon.
-</p>
-<p>
-There were dells, glades, steep bluffs and rolling stretches of fallow
-land; there were seven springs on the place; there was a cloven rift in
-the hill with a fine little valley at the bottom of it, and the first time
-I clambered up its slope from the bottom I flushed a big cock grouse that
-went booming away through the underbrush with a noise like a burst of baby
-thunder. That settled it for me. All my life I have been trying to kill a
-grouse on the wing, and here was a target right on the premises. Next day
-we signed the papers and paid over the binder money. We were landowners.
-Presently we had a deed in the safe-deposit box and some notes in the bank
-to prove it.
-</p>
-<p>
-Over most of our friends we had one advantage. They had taken
-old-fashioned farms and made them over into modern country places. But
-once upon a time, sixty or seventy years back, the place of which we were
-now the proud proprietors had been the property of a man of means and good
-taste, a college professor; and, by the somewhat primitive standards of
-those days, it had been an estate of considerable pretensions.
-</p>
-<p>
-This gentleman had done things of which we were now the legatees. For
-example, he had spared the fine big trees, which grew about the dooryard
-of his house; and when he had cleared the tillable acres he had left in
-them here and there little thickets and little rocky copses which stood up
-like islands from the green expanses of his meadows. The pioneer American
-farmer's idea of a tree in a field or on a lawn was something that could
-be cut down right away. Also the original owner had planted orchards of
-apples and groves of cherries; and he had thrown up stout stone walls,
-which still stood in fair order.
-</p>
-<p>
-But—alas!—he had been dead for more than forty years. And
-during most of those forty years his estate had been in possession of an
-absentee landlord, a woman, who allowed a squatter to live on the
-property, rent free, upon one unusual condition—namely, that he
-repair nothing, change nothing, improve nothing, and, except for the patch
-where he grew his garden truck, till no land. As well as might be judged
-by the present conditions, the squatter had lived up to the contract. If a
-windowpane was smashed he stuffed up the orifice with rags; if a roof
-broke away he patched the hole with scraps of tarred paper; if a tree fell
-its molder-ing trunk stayed where it lay; if brambles sprang up they
-flourished unvexed by bush hook or pruning blade.
-</p>
-<p>
-Buried in this wilderness was an old frame residence, slanting tipsily on
-its rotted sills; and the cellar under it was a noisome damp hole, half
-filled with stones that had dropped out of the tottering foundation walls.
-There was a farmer's cottage which from decay and neglect seemed ready to
-topple over; likewise the remains of a cow barn, where no self-respecting
-cow would voluntarily spend a night; the moldy ruins of a coach house, an
-ice house and a chicken house; and flanking these, piles of broken,
-crumbling boards to mark the sites of sundry cribs and sheds.
-</p>
-<p>
-The barn alone had resisted neglect and the gnawing tooth of time. This
-was because it had been built in the time when barns were built to stay.
-It had big, hand-hewn oak sticks for its beams and rafters and sills; and
-though its roof was a lacework of rotted shingles and its sides were full
-of gaps to let the weather in, its frame was as solid and enduring as on
-the day when it was finished. This, in short and in fine, was what we in
-our ignorance had acquired. To us it was a splendid asset. Persons who
-knew more than we did might have called it a liability.
-</p>
-<p>
-All our friends, though, were most sanguine and most cheerful regarding
-the prospect. Jauntily and with few words they dismissed the difficulties
-of the prospect that faced us; and with the same jauntiness we, also,
-dismissed them.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, you won't have so very much to do!” I hear them saying. “To be sure,
-there's a road to be built—not over a quarter of a mile of road,
-exclusive of the turnround at your garage—when you've built your
-garage—and the turn in front of your house—when you've built
-your house. It shouldn't take you long to clear up the fields and get them
-under cultivation. All you'll have to do there is pick the loose stones
-off of them and plow the land up, and harrow it and grade it in places,
-and spread a few hundred wagonloads of fertilizer; and then sow your grass
-seed. That old horsepond yonder will make you a perfectly lovely swimming
-pool, once you've cleaned it out and deepened it at this end, and built
-retaining walls round it, and put in a concrete basin, and waterproofed
-the sides and bottom. You must have a swimming pool by all means!
-</p>
-<p>
-“And then, by running a hundred-foot dam across that low place in the
-valley you can have a wonderful little lake. You surely must have a lake
-to go with the swimming pool! Then, when you've dug your artesian well,
-you can couple up all your springs for an emergency supply. You know you
-can easily pipe the spring water into a tank and conserve it there. Then
-you'll have all the water you possibly can need—except, of course,
-in very dry weather in mid-summer.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And, after that, when you've torn the old house down and put up your new
-house, and built your barn and your stable, and your farmer's cottage and
-your ice house, and your greenhouses, and your corn-crib, and your
-tool-shed, and your tennis court, and laid out some terraces up on that
-hillside yonder, and planned out your flower gardens and your vegetable
-garden, and your potato patch and your corn patch, and stuck up your
-chicken runs, and bought your work stock and your cows and chickens and
-things—oh, yes, and your kennels, if you are going in for dogs—No?
-All right, then; never mind the kennels. Anyhow, when you've done those
-things and set out your shrubs and made your rose beds and planted your
-grapevines, you'll be all ready just to move right in and settle down and
-enjoy yourselves.”
- </p>
-<p>
-I do not mean that all of these suggestions came at once. As here
-enumerated they represent the combined fruitage of several conversations
-on the subject. We listened attentively, making notes of the various
-notions for our comfort and satisfaction as they occurred to others. If
-any one had advanced the idea that we should install a private race track,
-and lay out nine holes, say, of a private golf course, we should have
-agreed to those items too. These things do sound so easy when you are
-talking them over and when the first splendid fever of land ownership is
-upon you!
-</p>
-<p>
-Had I but known then what I know now! These times, when, going along the
-road, I pass a manure heap I am filled with envy of the plutocrat who owns
-it, though, at the same time, deploring the vulgar ostentation that leads
-him to spread his wealth before the view of the public. When I see a
-masonry wall along the front of an estate I begin to make mental
-calculations, for I understand now what that masonry costs, and know that
-it is cheaper, in the long run, to have your walls erected by a lapidary
-than by a union stonemason.
-</p>
-<p>
-And as for a bluestone road—well, you, reader, may think bluestone
-is but a simple thing and an inexpensive one. Just wait until you have had
-handed to you the estimates on the cost of killing the nerve and cleaning
-out the cavities and inserting the fillings, and putting in the falsework
-and the bridgework, and the drains and the arches—and all! You might
-think dentists are well paid for such jobs; but a professional road
-contractor—I started to say road agent—makes any dentist look
-a perfect piker.
-</p>
-<p>
-And any time you feel you really must have a swimming pool that is all
-your very own, take my advice and think twice. Think oftener than twice;
-and then compromise on a neat little outdoor sitz bath that is all your
-very own.
-</p>
-<p>
-But the inner knowledge of these things was to come to us later. For the
-time being, pending the letting of contracts, we were content to enjoy the
-two most pleasurable sensations mortals may know—possession and
-anticipation: the sense of the reality of present ownership and, coupled
-with this, dreams of future creation and future achievement. We were on
-the verge of making come true the treasured vision of months—we were
-about to become abandoned farmers.
-</p>
-<p>
-No being who is blessed with imagination can have any finer joy than this,
-I think—the joy of proprietorship of a strip of the green footstool.
-The soil you kick up when you walk over your acres is different soil from
-that which you kick up on your neighbor's land—different because it
-is yours. Another man's tree, another man's rock heap, is a simple tree or
-a mere rock heap, as the case may be; and nothing more. But your tree and
-your rock heap assume a peculiar value, a special interest, a unique and
-individual picturesqueness.
-</p>
-<p>
-And oh, the thrill that permeates your being when you see the first furrow
-of brown earth turned up in your field, or the first shovel-load of sod
-lifted from the spot where your home is to stand! And oh, the first walk
-through the budding woods in the springtime! And the first spray of
-trailing arbutus! And the first spray of trailing poison ivy! And the
-first mortgage! And the first time you tread on one of those large slick
-brown worms, designed, inside and out, like a chocolate éclair!
-</p>
-<p>
-After all, it's the only life! But on the way to it there are pitfalls and
-obstacles and setbacks, and steadily mounting monthly pay rolls.
-</p>
-<p>
-As shall presently develop.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER IV. HAPPY DAYS FOR MAJOR GLOOM
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>oon after we moved to the country we became eligible to join the
-Westchester County Despair Association, on account of an artesian well—or,
-to be exact, on account of three artesian wells, complicated with several
-springs.
-</p>
-<p>
-I spoke some pages back of the Westchester County Despair Association,
-which was founded by George Creel and which has a large membership in our
-immediate section. As I stated then, any city-bred man who turns amateur
-farmer and moves into our neighborhood, and who in developing his country
-place has a streak of hard labor, is eligible to join this organization.
-And sooner or later—but as a general thing sooner—all the
-urbanites who settle up our way do join. Some day we shall be strong
-enough to club in and elect our own county officers on a ticket pledged to
-run a macadam highway past the estate of each member.
-</p>
-<p>
-Our main claim to qualification was based upon the water question; and yet
-at the outset it appeared to us that lack of water would be the very least
-of our troubles. When we took title to our abandoned farm, and for the
-first time explored the bramble-grown valley leading up from the proposed
-site of our house to the woodland, we several times had to wade, and once
-or twice thought we should have to swim. Why, we actually congratulated
-ourselves upon having acquired riparian rights without paying for them.
-</p>
-<p>
-This was in the springtime; and the springs along the haunches of the
-hills upon either side of the little ravine were speaking in burbly
-murmuring voices, like overflowing mouths, as they spilled forth their
-accumulated store of the melted snows of the winter before; and the April
-rainstorms had made a pond of every low place in the county.
-</p>
-<p>
-In our ignorance we assumed that, since there was now plenty of water of
-Nature's furnishing, there always would be plenty of water forthcoming
-from the same prodigal source—more water than we could possibly ever
-need unless we opened up a fresh-water bathing beach in the lower meadow
-of our place. So we dug out and stoned up the uppermost spring, which
-seemed to have the most generous vein of them all, and put in pipes. The
-lay of the land and the laws of gravity did the rest, bringing the flow
-downgrade in a gurgling comforting stream, which poured day and night
-without cessation.
-</p>
-<p>
-This detail having been attended to, we turned our attention to other
-things. Goodness knows there were plenty of things requiring attention. I
-figured at that period of our pioneering work that if we got into the
-Despair Association at all it would follow as the result of my being
-indicted for more or less justifiable manslaughter in having destroyed an
-elderly gentleman of the vicinity, whom upon the occasion of our first
-meeting I rechristened as Old Major Gloom, and of whom we still speak
-behind his back by that same name.
-</p>
-<p>
-The major lived a short distance from us, within easy walking distance,
-and he speedily proved that he was an easy walker. I shall not forget the
-first day he came to call. He ambled up a trail that the previous tenants,
-through a chronic delusion, had insisted upon calling a road; and he found
-me up to my gills in the midst of the preliminary job of trying to decide
-where we should make a start at clearing out the jungle, which once upon a
-time, probably back in the Stone Age, as nearly as we might judge from its
-present condition, had been the house garden.
-</p>
-<p>
-We had been camping on the place only a few days. We climbed over, through
-and under mystic mazes of household belongings to get our meals, or to get
-to our beds, or to get anywhere, and altogether were existing in a state
-of disorder that might be likened to the condition the Germans created
-with such thoroughgoing and painstaking efficiency when falling back from
-an occupied French community.
-</p>
-<p>
-I trust we are not lacking in hospitality; but, for the moment, we were in
-no mood to receive visitors. However, upon first judgment the old major's
-appearance was such as to disarm hostility and re-arouse the slumbering
-instincts of cordiality. He was of a benevolent aspect, with fine white
-whiskers and an engaging manner. If you can imagine one of the Minor
-Prophets, who had stepped right out of the Old Testament, stopping en
-route at a ready-made clothing store, you will have a very fair mental
-picture of the major as he looked when he approached me, with hand
-outstretched, and in warm tones bade me welcome to Upper Westchester. He
-fooled me; he would have fooled anybody unless possibly it were an expert
-criminologist, trained at discerning depravity when masked behind a
-pleasing exterior.
-</p>
-<p>
-When he spoke I placed him with regard to his antecedents, for I had been
-on the spot long enough to recognize the breed to which he belonged. There
-is a type of native-born citizen of this part of New York State who comes
-of an undiluted New England strain, being the descendant of pioneering
-Yankees who settled along the lower Hudson Valley after the Revolution and
-immediately started in to trade the original Dutch settlers out of their
-lands and their eyeteeth.
-</p>
-<p>
-The subsequent generations of this transplanted stock have preserved some
-of the customs and many of the idioms of their stern and rock-bound
-forebears; at the same time they have acquired most of the linguistic
-eccentricities of the New York cockney. Except that they dwell in
-proximity to it, they have nothing in common with the great city that is
-only thirty or forty miles away as the motorist flies. Generally they
-profess a contempt for New York and all its works. They may not visit it
-once a year; but, all the same, its influence has crept up through the
-hills to tincture their mode of speech with queer distinctive modes of
-pronunciation.
-</p>
-<p>
-The result is a composite dialectic system not to be found anywhere else
-except in this little strip of upland country and in certain isolated
-communities over on Long Island, along the outer edge of the zone of
-metropolitan life and excitement. For instance, a member of this race of
-beings will call a raspberry a “rosbry”; and he will call a bluebird a
-“blubbud,” thereby displaying the inherited vernacular of the Down East
-country. He will say “oily” when he means early, and “early” when he means
-oily, and occasionally he will even say “yous” for you—peculiarities
-which in other environment serve unmistakably to mark the born-and-bred
-Manhattanite.
-</p>
-<p>
-The major at once betrayed himself as such a person. He introduced
-himself, adding that as a neighbor he had felt it incumbent to call. I
-removed a couple of the family portraits and a collection of Indian relics
-and a few kitchen utensils, and one thing and another, from the seat of a
-chair, and begged him to sit down and make himself at home, which he did.
-He accepted a cigar, which I fished out of a humidor temporarily tucked
-away beneath a roll of carpet; and we spoke of the weather, to which he
-gave a qualified and cautious indorsement. Then, without further delay, he
-hitched his chair over and laid a paternal hand upon my arm.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I hear you've got Blank, the lawyer, searching out the title to your
-propputty here.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” I said; “Mr. Blank took the matter in hand for us. Fine man, isn't
-he?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, some people think so,” he said with an emphasis of profound
-significance.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Doesn't everybody think so?” I inquired. “Listen,” he said; “my motto is,
-Live and let live. And, anyhow, I'm the last man in the world to go round
-prejudicing a newcomer against an old resident. Now I've just met you and,
-on the other hand, I've known Blank all my life; in fact, we're sort of
-related by marriage—a relative of his married a relative of my
-wife's. So, of course, I've got nothing to say to you on that score except
-this—and I'm going to say it to you now in the strictest confidence—if
-I was doing business with Blank I'd be mighty, mighty careful, young man.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You astonish me,” I said. “Mr. So-and-So”—naming a prominent
-business man of the county seat—“recommended his firm to me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, So-and-So, eh? I wonder what the understanding between those two is?
-Probably they've hatched up something.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why, isn't So-and-So above suspicion?” I asked. “I wouldn't say he was
-and I wouldn't say he wasn't. But, just between you and me, I'd think
-twice about taking any advice he gave me. They tell me you've let the
-contract for some work to Dash & Space?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes; I gave them one small job.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Too bad!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What's too bad?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You'll be finding out for yourself before you're done; so I won't say
-anything more on that subject neither. I could tell you a good deal about
-those fellows if I was a-mind to; but I never believed in repeating
-anything behind a man's back I wouldn't say to his face. Live and let
-live!—that's my motto. Anyhow, if you've already signed up with Dash
-& Space it's too late for you to be backing out—but keep your
-eyes open, young man; keep your eyes wide open. Who's your architect going
-to be?”
- </p>
-<p>
-I told him. He repeated the name in rather a disappointed fashion.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Never heard of him,” he admitted; “but I take it he's like the run of his
-kind of people. I never yet saw the architect that I'd trust as far as I
-could sling him by the coat-tails. Say, ain't that Bink's delivery wagon
-standing over yonder in front of your stable?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I think so. We've been buying some things from Bink.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You've opened up a regular account with him, then?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, I wouldn't reflect on Bink's honesty for any amount of money in the
-world. Of my own knowledge I don't know anything against him one way or
-the other. Of course, from time to time I've heard a lot of things that
-other people said about him; but that's only hearsay evidence, and I make
-it a rule not to repeat gossip about anybody. Still”—he lingered
-over the word—“still, if it was me instead of you, I'd go over his
-bills very carefully—that's all!
-</p>
-<p>
-“I don't blame any fellow for trying to get along in his business; and I
-guess the competition is so keen in the retail merchandising line that
-oncet in a while a man just naturally has to skin his customers a little.
-But that's no argument why he should try to take the entire hide off of
-'em. They tell me Bink's bookkeeper is a regular wizard when it comes to
-making up an account, 'specially for a stranger.” He took a puff or two at
-his cigar, meantime squinting across our weed-grown fields. “Don't I see
-'Lonzo Begee chopping dead trees down there alongside the road?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes; I believe that's his name. He only came to work for us this morning.
-Seems to be a hustler.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Does he, now? Well, ain't it a curious circumstance how many fellers
-starting in at a new job just naturally work their heads off and wind up
-at the end of the second week loafing? Strikes me that's particularly the
-case with the farm laborers round here. Now you take 'Lonzo Begee's case.
-He never worked for me—I'm mighty careful about who I hire, lemme
-tell you!—but it always struck me as a strange thing that 'Lonzo
-changes jobs so often. I make it a point to keep an eye on what's
-happening in this neighborhood; and seems like every time I run acrost him
-he's working in a different place for a different party.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And yet you never can tell—he might turn out to be a satisfactory
-hand for you. Stranger things have happened. And besides, what suits one
-man don't suit another. I believe in letting a man find out about these
-things for himself. The bitterer the experience and the more it costs him,
-the more likely he is to remember the lesson and profit by it. Don't you
-think so yourself?”
- </p>
-<p>
-I told him I thought so; and presently he took his departure, after
-remarking that we had purchased a place with a good many possibilities in
-it; though, from what he had heard, we probably paid too much for it, and
-he only hoped we didn't waste too much money in developing. He left me
-filled with so many doubts and so many misgivings that I felt congested.
-Within two days he was back, though, still actuated by the neighborly
-spirit, to warn me against a few more persons with whom we had already had
-dealings, or with whom we expected to have dealings, or with whom
-conceivably we might some day have dealings.
-</p>
-<p>
-And within a week after that he returned a third time to put me on my
-guard against one or two more individuals who somehow had been overlooked
-by him in his previous visits. Rarely did he come out in the open and
-accuse anybody of anything. He was too crafty, too subtle for that. The
-major was a regular sutler. But he certainly did understand the art of
-planting the poison. Give him time enough, and he could destroy a fellow's
-confidence in the entire human race.
-</p>
-<p>
-He specialized in no single direction; his gifts were ample for all
-emergencies. When he tired of making you distrustful of those about you,
-or when temporarily he ran out of material, he knew the knack of making
-you distrustful of your own judgment. For example, there was the time, in
-the second month of our acquaintance I think it was, when he meandered in
-to inspect the work of renovation that had just been started on the
-stable. He spent perhaps ten minutes going over the premises, now and then
-uttering low, disparaging, clucking sounds under his breath. I followed
-him about fearsomely. I was distressed on account of the disclosures that
-I felt would presently be forthcoming.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Putting on a slate roof, eh?” he said when he was done with the
-investigation. “Expect it to stay put?”
- </p>
-<p>
-I admitted that such had been the calculation of the builder.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Nothing like being one of these here optimists,” he commented dryly. “But
-I want to tell you that it's the biggest mistake you ever made to put a
-slate roof on those sloping gables without sticking in some metal uprights
-to keep the snow from sliding off in a lump when the winter thaws come.”
- </p>
-<p>
-It had always seemed to me that snow had few enough pleasures as it was.
-Though I had given the subject but little thought, it appeared to me that
-if sliding off a roof gave the snow any satisfaction it would ill become
-me or any one else to interfere. I ventured to say as much.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I guess you don't get my meaning,” he explained. “When the snow starts
-sliding, if there's enough of it, it's purty sure to take most of those
-slates along with it. And then where'll you be, I want to know?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Is—is it too late to put up some anti-sliding thingumbobs now?” I
-asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, yes,” he said comfortingly; “it's too late now unless you ripped the
-whole job off and started all over again. I judge you'll just have to let
-Nature take its course. I see you've got a chimney that don't come over
-the ridge of the roof. Are you calculating that it'll draw?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I rather hoped it would—that was the intention, I believe.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, then, you're in for another disappointment there. But if I was you
-I shouldn't fret myself about that, because it'll be some months yet
-before you'll be building a fire in the fireplace, what with the warm
-weather just coming on; and you can have the top of the chimney lifted
-almost any time.... I don't want to alarm you needlessly; but it looks to
-me like mighty faulty drainpipes the plumber's been putting in for you.
-You'll have to snatch all that out before a great while and have new pipes
-put in proper. Don't it beat all what sharpers plumbers are? But then,
-they're no worse than other artisans, taking them by and large. F'r
-instance, what could be a worse job than that plastering in your bedroom,
-or those tin gutters up yonder at your eaves? The plastering may stay up a
-while, but the first good hard storm ought to bring the gutters down. I
-don't like your masonry work, either, if you're asking me for my opinion;
-and I see the carpenters are slipping in some mighty sorry-looking
-flooring on you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-I am not exaggerating. I am repeating, as accurately as I can, a
-conversation that really took place.
-</p>
-<p>
-For a while the major was in a fair way to spoil the present century for
-me. If the inhabitants of the countryside were in a conspiracy to strip
-the pelfry off a fresh arrival and divide it among them as souvenirs, if
-there was no honesty left anywhere in a corrupted world, what, then, was
-the use of living? Why not commit suicide according to one of the standard
-methods and have done with the struggle, trusting that the undertaker
-would not be too much of a gouge and that the executors of the estate
-would leave a trifle of it for the widow and the orphan?
-</p>
-<p>
-But, after a spell, during which from the various firms, corporations and
-persons who had been traduced by him we uniformly had considerate and fair
-and scrupulously honorable treatment and service, we began to disregard
-the major's danger signals and to steer right past them. He, though,
-wearied not in well-doing. At every chance he dropped in, a poison viper
-disguised as a philanthropist, to hang another red light on the switch for
-us. It was inevitable that his ministrations should get on our nerves. I
-began to have visions centering about justifiable acts of homicide, always
-with the major for the chosen victim of my violence.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was after having such a dream that I figured myself as getting into
-George Creel's Despair Association by virtue of having to stand trial over
-at White Plains for murder. As a matter of fact, I spared the major; and
-at last accounts he was still going to and fro in the land, planting
-slanders on all likely sites. I take it that there is one counterpart for
-him among every so many human beings; but it is in the country where every
-one has a chance to find out every one's business, and where the excuses
-of being neighborly and friendly give him opportunity for plying his trade
-that he is most in evidence.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER V. IN WHICH WE BORE FOE WATER
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e joined the Despair Association finally by reason of our water problem.
-However, that was to come into our lives later. Through the springtime we
-had more water than we could possibly hope to use, and we focused our
-attentions and our energies upon hacking a homestead out of the briar
-patch we had bought.
-</p>
-<p>
-A painful acre at a time, we cleared lands that once had been cleared. As
-I may have stated already, forty-odd years of disuse had turned lawn
-space, garden space and meadow into one conglomerate jungle of towering
-weeds and tangled thorny underbrush, stretching from the broken fences
-along the highroad straight back to the dooryard of the moldering
-tumbledown dwelling. With a gang of men under a competent foreman, and a
-double team of hired horses, we assaulted that tangle, bringing to the
-undertaking much of the same ardor and some of the same fortitude which I
-imagine must have inspired Stanley on the day when he began chopping his
-way through the trackless wilds of the dark forest to find Doctor
-Livingstone.
-</p>
-<p>
-It gave one the feeling of being a pioneer and a pathfinder—no, not
-a pathfinder; a pathmaker—to stand by, superintending in a large,
-broad, general, perfectly ignorant fashion the job of opening up those
-thickets of ours to the sunlight that had not visited them for ever so
-long. Off of one segment of our property, a slope directly behind the main
-house, we took over four hundred wagonloads of stumps, roots, trunks,
-boughs and brush—the fruitage of nearly two months of steady labor
-on the part of men and horses.
-</p>
-<p>
-The brambles were shorn down and piled in heaps to be burned. The locusts,
-thousands of them, varying in size from half-grown trees to switchy
-saplings, were by main force snatched out of the ground bodily. A number
-of long-dead chestnuts and hickories, great unsightly snags that reared
-above the uptom harried earth like monuments to past neglect, were felled
-and sawed into cordwood lengths and carted away.
-</p>
-<p>
-What emerged after these things had been done more than repaid us for all
-our pains. When the rumpled soil had been smoothed back and plowed and
-harrowed, and sown to grass, and when the grass had sprouted as promptly
-as it did, there stood forth a dimpling green expanse where before had
-been a damp, moldy and almost impenetrable tangle, hiding treasure-troves
-of old tin cans, heaps of rusted and broken farming implements and here
-and there the bleached-out bones of a dead cow or a deceased horse.
-</p>
-<p>
-To our abounding astonishment, we found ourselves the owners of a
-considerable number of old but healthy apple trees and a whole grove of
-cherry trees that we hadn't known were there at all, so thoroughly had
-they been buried in the locusts and the sumacs. It was just like finding
-them. Indeed, it was finding them.
-</p>
-<p>
-The old house came down next, with some slight assistance from a crew of
-wreckers. Being almost ready to come down of its own accord it met them
-halfway. They had merely to pry into the foundations, hit her a hard
-wallop in the ribs, and then run for their lives. From the wreckage we
-reclaimed, out of the cellar, which was pre-Revolutionary, some hand-hewn
-oak beams in a perfect state of preservation; and out of the upper floors,
-which were pre-James K. Polk, a quantity of interior trim, along with door
-frames and window sashes.
-</p>
-<p>
-Incidentally we dispossessed a large colony of rats and a whole synod of
-bats, a parish of yellow wasps and a small but active congregation of
-dissenting cats—half-wild, glary-eyed, roach-backed, mangy cats that
-resided under the broken flooring. In all there were fourteen of these
-cats—swift and rangy performers, all of them. One and all, they
-objected to being driven from home. They hung about the razed wreckage,
-and by night they convened in due form upon a bare knoll hard by, and held
-indignation meetings.
-</p>
-<p>
-Parliamentary disputes arose frequently, with the result that the
-proceedings might be heard for a considerable distance. I took steps to
-break up these deliberations, and after several of the principal debaters
-had met a sudden end—I am a very good wing shot on cats—the
-survivors saw their way clear to departing entirely from the vicinity.
-Within a week thereafter the song birds, which until then had been
-strangely scarce upon the premises, heard the news, and began coming in
-swarms. We put up nesting boxes and feeding shelves, and long before June
-arrived we had hundreds of feathered boarders and a good many pairs of
-feathered tenants.
-</p>
-<p>
-One morning in the early part of the month of June I counted within sight
-at one time fourteen varieties of birds, including such brilliantly
-colored specimens as a scarlet tanager and his mate; a Baltimore oriole; a
-bluebird; an indigo bunting; a chat; and a flicker—called, where I
-came from, a yellow hammer. Robins were probing for worms in the rank
-grass; two brown thrashers and a black-billed cuckoo were investigating
-the residential possibilities of a cedar tree not far away; and from the
-woods beyond came the sound of a cock grouse drumming his amorous fanfare
-on a log.
-</p>
-<p>
-Think of what that meant to a man who, for the better part of twelve
-years, had been hived up in a flat, with English sparrows for company,
-when he craved a bit of wild life!
-</p>
-<p>
-What had been a gardener's cottage stood at the roadside a hundred yards
-away from the site of the main house. On first examination it seemed fit
-only for the scrap heap; but one of those wise elderly persons who are to
-be found in nearly every rural community—a genius who was part
-carpenter, part mason, part painter, part glazier and part plasterer—was
-called into consultation, and he decided that, given time and material for
-mending, he might be able to do something with the shell. Modestly he
-called himself an odd-jobs man; really he was a doctor to decrepit and
-ailing structures.
-</p>
-<p>
-From neglect and dry rot the patient was almost gone; but he nursed it
-back to a new lease on life, trepanning its top with new rafters,
-splinting its broken sides with new clapboards. He cured the cellar walls
-of rickets, the roof of baldness, and the inside woodwork of tetter; and
-he so wrought with hammer and saw and nails, with lime and cement, with
-paintbrush and putty knife, that presently what had been a most
-disreputable blot on the landscape became not only a livable little house
-but an exceedingly picturesque one, what with its wide overhanging gables,
-its cocky little front veranda, and its new complexion of roughcast
-stucco.
-</p>
-<p>
-While this transformation was accomplished in the lower field, we were
-doing things to the barn up on the hillside. It had good square lines, the
-barn had; and, though its outer casing was in a woeful state of nonrepair,
-its frame, having been built sixty or seventy years ago of splendid big
-timbers, stood straight and unskewed. Thanks to the ability of our
-architect to dream an artistic dream and then to create it, this
-structure, without impairment of its general lines and with no change at
-all in its general dimensions, presently became a combination garage and
-bungalow.
-</p>
-<p>
-The garage part was down below, occupying the space formerly given over to
-horse stalls and cow sheds. Here, also, a furnace room, a laundry and a
-servant's room were built in. Above were the housekeeping quarters—three
-bedrooms; two baths; a big living hall, with a wide-mouthed fireplace in
-it; a kitchen, and a pantry. This floor had been the haymow; but I'll
-warrant that if any of the long-vanished hay which once rested there could
-have returned it wouldn't have known the old place.
-</p>
-<p>
-The roof of the transmogrified mow was sufficiently high to permit the
-construction of a roomy attic, with accommodations for one sleeper at one
-end of it, and ample storage space besides.
-</p>
-<p>
-At the back of the building, where the teams had driven in, a little
-square courtyard of weathered brick was laid; a roof of rough Vermont
-slate was laid on in an irregular splotchy pattern of buff and yellow and
-black squares; and finally, upon the front, at the level of the second
-floor, the builder hung on a little Italian balcony, from which on clear
-days, looking south down the Hudson, we have a forty-mile stretch of
-landscape and waterscape before us.
-</p>
-<p>
-On the nearer bank, two miles away, the spires of the market town show
-above the tree tops; on the further bank, six miles away, the rumpled blue
-outlines of the Ramapo Hills bulk up against the sky line; and back of
-those hills are sunsets such as ambitious artists try, more or less
-unsuccessfully, to put on canvas.
-</p>
-<p>
-All this had not cost so much as it might have, because all the interior
-trim, all the doors and windows, and all the studs and joists and beams
-had been reclaimed from the demolished main building. The chief
-extravagances had been a facing of stonework for the garage front and a
-stucco dress for the upper walls. We broke camp and moved in.
-</p>
-<p>
-For a month or so we went along swimmingly. One morning we quit swimming.
-All of a sudden we woke up to find there was no longer sufficient water
-for aquatic pastimes.
-</p>
-<p>
-The absolutely unprecedented dry spell that occurs every second or third
-year in this part of the North Temperate Zone had descended upon us,
-taking us, as it were, unawares. The brooks were going dry; the grass on
-hillsides where the soil was thin turned from a luscious green to a
-parched brown; and the mother spring of our seven up the valley, which had
-gushed so plenteously, now diminished overnight, as it were, into a puny
-runlet. There were no indications that the spring would be absolutely dry;
-but there was every indication that it would continue to lessen in the
-volume of its output—which it did. We summoned friends and
-well-wishers into consultation, and by them were advised to dig an
-artesian well.
-</p>
-<p>
-We did not want to bother with artesian wells then. We were living very
-comfortably upstairs over the garage and we were planning the house we
-meant to build. We had drawn plans, and yet more plans, torn them up and
-started all over again; and had found doing this to be one of the deepest
-pleasures of life. Time without end we had conferred with friends who had
-built houses of their own, and who gave us their ideas of the things which
-would be absolutely indispensable to our comfort and happiness in our new
-house. We had incorporated these ideas with a few of our own, and then we
-had found that if we meant to construct a house which would please all
-concerned, ourselves included, there would be needed a bond issue to float
-the enterprise and the completed structure would be about the size of a
-cathedral. So then we would trim down, paring off a breakfast porch here
-and a conservatory there, until we had a design for a compact edifice not
-much larger than an averagesized railroad terminal.
-</p>
-<p>
-Between times, when not engaged in the pleasing occupation of building our
-house on paper, we chose the site where it should stand. This, also,
-consumed a good many days, because each time we decided on a different
-location. One of our favorite recreations was shifting the house we meant
-to build about from place to place. We put imaginary wheels under that
-imaginary home of ours and kept it traveling all over the farm. The
-trouble with us was we had too much latitude. With half an acre of land at
-our disposal, we should have been circumscribed by boundary lines. On half
-an acre you have to be reasonably definite about where you are going to
-build; slide too far one way or the other, and you are committing
-trespass, and litigation ensues. But we had sixty acres from which to pick
-and to choose—sixty acres, with desirable sites scattered all over
-the tract.
-</p>
-<p>
-No sooner had we absolutely and positively settled on one spot as the spot
-where the house must stand than we would find half a dozen others equally
-desirable, or even more so; and then, figuratively speaking, we would pick
-up the establishment and transport it to one of the newly discovered
-spots, and wheel it round to face in a different direction from the
-direction in which it had just been facing. If a thing that does not yet
-physically exist may have sensations, the poor dizzy thing must have felt
-as if it were a merry-go-round.
-</p>
-<p>
-Likewise we were very busy putting in our road. Up until a short time ago
-Miss Anna Peck, who makes a specialty of scaling supposedly inaccessible
-crags, was probably the only living person who could have derived any
-pleasure from penetrating to our mountain fastness, either afoot or
-otherwise. When we heard an engine in difficulties coughing down under the
-hill, followed by the sound of a tire blowing out, or by the smell of
-rubber scorching as the brakes clamped into the fabric, we knew some of
-our friends had been reckless enough to undertake to climb up by motor.
-So, unless we wanted to become hermits, we felt it incumbent upon us to
-put in a road.
-</p>
-<p>
-When we got the estimates on the job we decided that the contractor must
-have figured on building our road of chalcedony or onyx or moss agate or
-some other of the semi-precious stones. It didn't seem possible that he
-meant to use any native material—at that price. It turned out,
-though, that his bid was fairly moderate—as processed blue-stone
-roads go in this climate; and ours has cost us only about eight times as
-much as I had previously supposed a replica of the Appian Way would cost.
-However, it has been pronounced a very good road by critics who should
-know; not a fancy road, but a fair average one.
-</p>
-<p>
-It would look smarter, of course, with wide brick gutters down either side
-of it for its entire length; and I should add brick gutters, too, if I
-were as comfortably fixed, say, as Mr. Charles Schwab, and felt sure that
-I could get some of the Vanderbilt boys to help me out in case I ran short
-of funds before the job was completed. Still, for persons who live simply
-it does very well.
-</p>
-<p>
-With all these absorbing employments to engage us, we naturally were loath
-to turn our attentions to water. We had lived too long in a flat where,
-when you wanted water, you merely turned a faucet. To us water had always
-been a matter of course. But now the situation was different. With each
-succeeding day the flow from our spring was slackening. In its present
-puniness it was no more than a reminder of the brave stream of the
-springtime.
-</p>
-<p>
-There was a water witch, so called, in the neighborhood—a gentleman
-water witch. We were recommended to avail ourselves of his services. It
-was his custom, we were told, to arm himself with a forked peach-tree
-switch and walk about over the land, holding the wand in front of him by
-its two prongs, meantime muttering strange incantations. When he came to a
-spot where water lay close to the surface the other end of his divining
-rod would dip magically toward the earth. You dug there, and if you struck
-water the magician took the credit for it; and if you didn't strike water
-it was a sign the peach-tree switch had wilfully deceived its proprietor,
-and he cut a fresh twig off another and more dependable tree and gave you
-a second demonstration at half rates. However, before opening negotiations
-with this person, I bethought me to interview the man who had contracted
-to do the boring.
-</p>
-<p>
-The latter gentleman proved to be the most noncommittal man I ever met in
-my life. He was as chary about making predictions as to the result of
-operations in his line as the ticket agent of a jerkwater railroad down
-South is about estimating the probable time of arrival of the next
-passenger train—always conceding that there is to be any next train;
-and that is as chary as any human being can possibly be. Only upon one
-thing was he positive, which was that no peach-tree switch in the world
-could be educated up to the point where it could find water that was
-hidden underground.
-</p>
-<p>
-Man and boy, he had been boring wells for thirty years, he said; and it
-was all guess. One shaft would be put down—at three dollars a foot—until
-it pierced the roof of Tophet, and the only resultant moisture would be
-night sweats for the unhappy party who was footing the bills. Or the same
-prospector might dig his estate so full of circular holes that it would
-resemble honeycomb tripe, and never get anything except monthly statements
-for the work to date. On the other hand, a luckier man, living right
-across the way, had been known to start sinking a shaft, and before the
-drill had gone twenty feet it became necessary to remove the women and
-children to a place of safety until the geyser had been throttled down.
-</p>
-<p>
-This particular well digger's business, as he himself explained, was
-digging wells, not filling them after they were dug. He guaranteed to make
-a hole in the ground of suitable caliber for an artesian well, but Nature
-and Providence must do the rest. With this understanding, he fetched up
-his outfit and greased himself and the machinery all over, and announced
-that he was ready to start.
-</p>
-<p>
-So we picked out a spot where it would be convenient to build a pump house
-afterward, and he fixed up the engine and began grinding away. And he
-ground and ground and ground. Every morning, whistling a cheerful air, he
-would set his drills in circular motion, and all day he would keep it
-turning and turning. At eventide I would call on him and he would report
-progress—he had advanced so many feet or so many yards in a
-southerly direction and had encountered such and such a formation.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Any water?” At first I would put up the question hopefully, then
-nervously, and finally for the sake of regularity merely.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No water,” he would reply blithely; “but this afternoon about three
-o'clock I hit a stratum of the prettiest white quartz you ever saw in your
-life.” And, with the passion of the born geologist gleaming in his eye, he
-would pick up a handful of shining specimens and hold them out for me to
-admire; but I am afraid that toward the last any enthusiasm displayed by
-me was more or less forced.
-</p>
-<p>
-And the next night it would be red sandstone, or gray mica, or sky-blue
-schist, or mottled granite, or pink iron ore—or something! This
-abandoned farm of ours certainly proved herself to be a mighty variegated
-mineral prospect. In the course of four weeks that six-inch hole brought
-forth silver and solder, soda and sulphur, borax and soapstone, crystal
-and gravel, amalgam fillings and a very fair grade of moth balls.
-</p>
-<p>
-It brought forth nearly everything that may be found beneath the surface
-of the earth, I think, except radium—and water. On second thought, I
-am not so sure about the radium. It occurs to me that we did strike a
-trace of something resembling radium at the two-hundred-foot level—I
-won't be positive. But I am absolutely sure about the water. There wasn't
-any.
-</p>
-<p>
-At the end of a long and expensive month we abandoned that hole, fruitful
-though it was in mineral wealth, moved the machinery a hundred yards west,
-and began all over again. We didn't get any water here, either; but before
-we quit we ran into a layer of wonderful white marble. If anybody ever
-discovers a way of getting marble for monuments and statuary out of a hole
-six inches in diameter and a hundred and seventy-five feet deep our
-fortunes are made. We have the hole and the marble at the bottom of it;
-all he will have to provide is the machinery.
-</p>
-<p>
-By now we were desperate, but determined. We sent word to George Creel to
-rush us application blanks for membership in his Despair Association. We
-transferred the digging apparatus to a point away down in the valley, and
-the contractor retuned his engine and inserted a new steel drill—his
-other one had been worn completely out—and we began boring a third
-time. And three weeks later—oh, frabjous joy!—we struck water—plenteous
-oodles of it; cold, clear and pure. And then we broke ground for our new
-house.
-</p>
-<p>
-That isn't all—by no means is it all. Free from blight, our potatoes
-are in the bin; our apples have been picked; and our corn has been
-gathered, and in a rich golden store, it fills our new corncrib. We are
-eating our own chickens and our own eggs; we are drinking milk from our
-own cow; and we are living on vegetables of our own raising.
-</p>
-<p>
-Until now I never cared deeply for turnips. Turnips, whether yellow or
-white, meant little in my life. But now I know that was because they were
-strange turnips, not turnips which had grown in our own soil and for which
-I could have almost a paternal affection. Last night for dinner I ate a
-derby hatful of mashed turnips, size seven and an eighth.
-</p>
-<p>
-Let the servants quit now if they will—and do. Only the day before
-yesterday the laundress walked out on us. It was our new laundress, who
-had succeeded the old laundress, the one who stayed with us for nearly two
-consecutive weeks before the country life palled upon her sensitive
-spirit. And the day before that we lost a perfect treasure of a housemaid.
-She disliked something that was said by some one occupying the
-comparatively unimportant position of a member of the family, and she took
-umbrage and some silverware and departed from our fireside. We've had our
-troubles with cooks, too.
-</p>
-<p>
-When the latest one showed signs of a gnawing discontent I offered to take
-lessons on the ukulele and play for her in the long winter evenings that
-are now upon us. I suggested that we think up charades and acrostics—I
-am very fertile at acrostics—and have anagram parties now and then
-to while away the laggard hours. But no; she felt the call of the city and
-she must go. We are expecting a fresh candidate to-morrow. We shall try to
-make her stay with us, however brief, a pleasant one.
-</p>
-<p>
-But these domestic upsets are to us as nothing at all; for we have struck
-water, and we are living, in part at least, on our own home-grown
-provender, and shortly we shall start the home of our dreams. And to-day
-something else happened that filled our cup of joy to overflowing. In the
-middle of the day a dainty little doe came mincing down through our garden
-just as confidently as though she owned the place.
-</p>
-<p>
-We are less than an hour by rail from the Grand Central Station; and yet,
-as I write this line, a lordly cock grouse is strutting proud and unafraid
-through the undergrowth not fifty yards from my workroom! Last night, when
-I opened my bedroom window—in the garage—to watch the distant
-reflection of the New York lights, flickering against the sky to the
-southward, I heard a dog fox yelping in the woods!
-</p>
-<p>
-Let Old Major Gloom, the human Dismal Swamp, come over now as often as
-pleases him. Our chalice is proof against his poison.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER VI. TWO MORE YEARS ELAPSE
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>s the reader will have no trouble in recalling, we broke ground for our
-house. That, however, was after we had altered the design so often that
-the first lot of plans and specifications got vertigo and had to be
-retired in favor of a new set. For one thing, we snatched one entire floor
-out of the original design—just naturally jerked it out from under
-and cast it away and never missed it either. And likewise this was after
-we had shifted the site of the house from one spot to another spot and
-thence to a third likely spot, and finally back again to the first spot.
-This, however, had one thing in its favor at least. It enabled us to do
-our moving without taking our household goods from storage, and yet during
-the same period to enjoy all the pleasurable thrill of shifting about from
-place to place. I find moving in your mind is a much less expensive way
-than the other way is and gives almost as much pleasure to a woman, who—being
-a woman—is naturally a mover at heart.
-</p>
-<p>
-Finally, though, all this preliminary skirmishing came to an end and we
-actually started work on our house. I should say, we started work on what
-formerly we had thought was going to be our house. It turned out we were
-wrong. As it stands to-day, two years after the beginning, in a state
-approaching completion, it is a very satisfactory sort of house we think,
-artistically as well as from the standpoint of being practical and
-comfortable; but it is no longer entirely our house. The architect is
-responsible for the general scheme of things, for the layout and the
-assembling of the wood and the brick and the cement and the stonework and
-all that sort of thing, and to him largely will attach the credit if the
-effect within and without should prove pleasing to the eye. Likewise, here
-and there are to be found the traces of ideas which we ourselves had, but
-I must confess the structure is also a symposium of the modified ideas of
-our friends and well-wishers mated to our ideas.
-</p>
-<p>
-To me human nature presents a subject for constant study. For a thing so
-widely distributed as it is, I regard it as one of the most interesting
-things there are anywhere. It seems to me one of the chief peculiarities
-of human nature is that it divides all civilized mankind into two special
-groups—those who think they could run any newspaper better than the
-man who is trying to run it, and those who think they could run any hotel
-better than the man who is hanging on as manager or proprietor of it.
-There are subdivisional classifications of course—for example, women
-who think they can tell any other woman how to bring up her children
-without spoiling them to death, and women who are absolutely sure no woman
-on earth can tell them anything about the right way to bring up their own
-children; which two groupings include practically all women. And I have
-yet to meet the man who did not believe that he was a good judge of either
-horses, diamonds, wines, women, salad dressings, antique furniture,
-Oriental rugs or the value of real estate. And finally all of these,
-regardless of sex and regardless, too, of previous experience in the line,
-know better how a house intended for living purposes should be designed
-and arranged than the individuals who are paying the bills and who expect
-to tenant the house as a home when it is done. By the same token—or
-by the inverse ratio of the same token—the persons who are building
-the house invariably begin to have doubts and misgivings regarding the
-worth of their own pet notions in regard to the said house the moment some
-outsider offers a counter argument. I do not know why this last should be
-so, but it is. It merely is one of the inexplicable phases of the common
-phenomenon called human nature.
-</p>
-<p>
-In our own case the force of this fact applied with a pronounced emphasis.
-When the tentative draft of the house of our dreams was offered for our
-inspection it seemed to us a gem—perfect, precious and rare. Filled
-with pride as we were, we showed the drawings to every one who came to see
-us. Getting out the drawings when somebody called became a regular habit
-with us. Being ourselves so deeply interested in them, we couldn't
-understand why our friends shouldn't be interested too. And they were—I'll
-say that much for them; they were all interested. And why not? For one
-thing, it gave them a chance to show how right they were regarding the
-designing of a house; not our house particularly, but anything under a
-roof, ranging from St. Peter's at Rome to the façade of the government
-fish hatchery in Tupelo, Mississippi. For another thing, it gave them a
-chance to show us how completely wrong we were on this subject. Not a
-single soul among them but pounced at the opportunity. Until then I never
-realized how many born pouncers—not amateur pouncers but
-professional expert master pouncers—I numbered in my acquaintance.
-Right from the beginning the procedure followed a certain ritual. A caller
-or pouncer would drop in and have off his things and get comfortably
-settled. We would produce the sketches, fondling them lovingly, and spread
-them out and invite the attention of our guest to probably the only
-perfect design of a house fashioned by the mind of man since the days of
-the mound builders on this hemisphere. In our language we may not have
-gone quite so far as to say all this, but our manner indicated that such
-was the case.
-</p>
-<p>
-He—for convenience in the illustration I shall make him a man,
-though in the case of a woman the outcome remained the same—he would
-consider the matchless work of inventive art presented for his
-consideration and then he would say; “An awfully nice notion—splendid,
-perfectly splendid! And still, you know, if I were——”
- </p>
-<p>
-And so on.
-</p>
-<p>
-Or perhaps it would be: “Oh, I like the general idea immensely! But—you'll
-pardon my making a little suggestion, won't you?—but if I were
-tackling this proposition—” And so on.
-</p>
-<p>
-It has been my observation that all complimentary remarks uttered by a
-member of the human race in connection with a house which somebody else
-contemplates building end in “but.”
- </p>
-<p>
-You just simply can't get away from it.
-</p>
-<p>
-From the treasure-troves of my memory I continue to quote:
-</p>
-<p>
-“But if I were tackling this proposition I would certainly not put the
-dining room here were you've got it. I'd switch it over there right next
-to the living room and give a vista through. See, like this!”
- </p>
-<p>
-And out would come his lead pencil.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But that would mean eliminating the main hall,” one of us would venture.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Of course it would,” Brother Pounce would say. “Next to giving a vista
-through, cutting out the hall is the principal idea I had in mind. What do
-you want with a hall here? For that matter, what do you want with a hall
-any place that you can get along without it? Why, my dear people, don't
-you know that hallways are no earthly good except to catch dust and be
-drafty and make extra work for servants? And besides, in modern houses
-people are cutting the hallways down to a minimum—to an absolute
-minimum.”
- </p>
-<p>
-We gathered that in a modern house—and, of course, a modern house
-was what we devoutly craved to own—persons going from one part of it
-to another didn't pass through a hall any more; they passed through a
-minimum. The idea seemed rather revolutionary to persons reared—as
-we had been—in houses with halls in them. Still, this person spoke
-as one having authority and we would listen with due respect to his words
-as he went on:
-</p>
-<p>
-“All right, then, we'll consider the hallway as chopped out. By chopping
-it out that gives us a chance to put the dining room here in this place
-and give a vista through into the living room. Here, I'll show you exactly
-what I mean—what did I do with my lead pencil? Because no matter
-what else you do or do not have, you must have a vista through.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Before he had finished with this alteration and taken up with the next one
-we were made to understand that a house without a vista through was
-substantially the same as no house at all. Ashamed that we had been guilty
-of so gross an oversight, I would make a note, “Vista through,” on a
-scratch pad which I kept for that very purpose. Under the spell of his
-eloquence and compelling personality, I had already decided that first we
-would build a vista through, and then after that if any money was left we
-would sort of flank the vista through with bedrooms and a kitchen and
-other things of a comparatively incidental nature.
-</p>
-<p>
-Having scored this important point, the king of the pouncers—now
-warming to his work and with his eyes feverishly lit by the enthusiasm of
-the zealot—would proceed to claw the quivering giblets out of
-another section of our plan. Hark to him: “And say, see here now, how
-about your sun parlor? I can see two—no, three places suitable for
-tacking on a sun parlor merely by moving some walls round and putting the
-main entrance at the east front instead of the south front—funny the
-architect didn't think of that! He should have thought of that the very
-first thing if he calls himself a regular architect—and I suppose he
-does. What's the idea, leaving off the sun parlor?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Then weakly, with an inner sinking of the heart, we would confess that we
-had not calculated on including any sun parlors in the general scope and
-he for his part would proceed to show us how deadly an omission, how
-grievous an offense this would be.
-</p>
-<p>
-It is a curious psychological paradox that we dreaded these suggestions
-and yet welcomed them, too. That is to say, we would begin by dreading
-them—resenting them would perhaps be a better term—and
-invariably would wind up by welcoming them. Nevertheless, there were times
-when I gave my celebrated imitation of the turning worm. Jarred off my
-mental balance by a proposed change which seemed entirely contrary to the
-trend of the style of house we had in mind for our house, I would offer at
-the outset a faint counter argument in defense, especially if a notion
-which was about to be offered as a sacrifice on the altar of friendly
-counsel had been a favorite little idea of my own—one that I had
-found in my own head, as the saying went in the Army. Though knowing in
-advance that I was fighting a losing fight, I would raise a meek small
-voice in protest. Never once did my protesting avail. There was one stock
-answer which my fellow controversialist always had handy—ready to
-belt me with.
-</p>
-<p>
-“One moment!” he would say, smiling the superior half-pitying smile which
-was really responsible for Cain's killing Abel that time.
-</p>
-<p>
-Abel smiled just exactly in that way and so Cain killed him, and if you're
-asking me, he got exactly what was coming to him. “One moment!” he would
-say. “You've never built a house before, have you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No,” I would confess, “but—but—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Then, pardon me, but I have! What I am trying to do is to keep you from
-making the mistakes I made. Almost anybody will make mistakes building his
-first house. I only wish I'd had somebody round to advise me as I'm
-advising you before I O. K.'d the plans and signed the contract. As it
-was, it cost me four thousand dollars to pull out two walls so that we
-could have a sun parlor. If you go ahead and build your house without
-having a sun parlor you'll never regret it but once—and that'll be
-all the time you live in it. Look here now, while I show you how easily
-you can do it.” And so on and so forth until we would capitulate and I'd
-write “Memo—sun parlor, sure,” on my little pad.
-</p>
-<p>
-Take for example the matter of sleeping porches.
-</p>
-<p>
-Personally I have never been drawn greatly to the idea of sleeping
-outdoors. I used to think an outdoor bedroom must be almost as
-inconvenient as an outdoor bathroom, and with me bathing has always been a
-solitary pleasure. I have felt that I would not be at my best while
-bathing before an audience. That may denote selfishness on my part, but
-such is my nature and I cannot change it. I suppose this prejudice against
-bathing before a crowd is constitutional with me—hereditary, as it
-were. All my folks were awfully peculiar that way.
-</p>
-<p>
-When they felt that they needed bathing they also felt that they needed
-privacy. I sometimes think that my family must have been descended from
-Susanna. She was a Biblical lady and so did not have any last name, but
-you probably recall her from the circumstance of her having been surprised
-while bathing by two snoopy elders. Whenever one of the Old Masters ran
-out of other subjects to paint, he would paint a picture of Susanna and
-the elders. In no two of their pictures did she look alike, but in all of
-them that I've ever seen she looked embarrassed. Yes, I dare say Susanna
-was our direct ancestress. Like practically all Southern families, ours is
-a very old family and I've always been led to believe that we go back a
-long way. True, I've never heard the Old Testament mentioned in this
-connection, but in view of the fact of our family being such an old or
-Southern family I reckon it is but fair to presume that we go back fully
-that far if not farther.
-</p>
-<p>
-Indeed I have been told that in my infancy a friend of the family, a man
-who had delved rather into archeology, on calling one day remarked that I
-had a head shaped exactly like a cuneiform Chaldean brick. It was years
-later, however, before my parents learned what a cuneiform Chaldean brick
-looked like and by that time the person who had paid me the compliment was
-dead and it was too late to take offense at him. And anyhow, in the
-meantime the contour of my skull had so altered that it was now possible
-for me to wear a regular child's hat bought out of a store. I point out
-the circumstance merely as possible collateral evidence showing
-semiprehistoric hereditary influences to corroborate the more or less
-direct evidence that as a family we antedate nearly all—if not all—of
-these Northern families by going back into the very dawn of civilization.
-I have a great aunt who rather specializes in genealogies and especially
-our own genealogy and the next time I see her I mean to ask her to consult
-the authorities and find out whether there is a strain of the Susanna
-blood in our stock. If she confirms my present belief that there is I
-shall be very glad to let everybody know about it in an appendix to the
-next edition of this work.
-</p>
-<p>
-As with taking a bath outdoors, so with sleeping outdoors; this always was
-my profound conviction. I had a number of arguments, all good arguments I
-thought, to offer in support of my position. To begin with, I am what
-might be called a sincere sleeper, a whole-souled sleeper. I have been
-told that when I am sleeping and the windows are open everybody in the
-vicinity knows I am actually sleeping and not lying there tossing about
-restlessly upon my bed. I would not go so far as to say that I snore, but
-like most deep thinkers I breathe heavily when asleep. On board a sleeping
-car I have been known to breathe even more heavily than the locomotive
-did. I know of this only by hearsay, but when twenty or thirty passengers,
-all strangers to you, unite in a common statement to the same effect you
-are bound to admit, if you have any sense of fairness in your make-up,
-that there must be an element of truth in what they allege.
-</p>
-<p>
-Very well, then, let us concede that I sleep with the muffler cut out
-open. In view of this fact I have felt that I would not care to sleep in
-the open where my style of sleeping might invite adverse comment. In such
-a matter I try to have a proper consideration for the feelings of others.
-Indeed I carried it to such a point that when we lived in the closely
-congested city, with neighboring flat dwellers just across a narrow
-courtyard, I placed the head of my bed in such a position that I might do
-the bulk of my breathing up the chimney.
-</p>
-<p>
-Besides—so I was wont to argue—what in thunder was the good of
-having a comfortable cozy bedroom with steam heat and everything in it,
-and a night lamp for reading if one felt like reading, and a short cut
-down to the pantry if one felt hungry in the small hours, and then on a
-cold night deliberately to crawl out on a wind-swept porch hung against
-the outer wall of the house and sleep there? I once knew one of these
-sleeping-porch fiends who was given to boasting that in wintertime he
-often woke to find the snow had drifted in on the top of him while he
-slept. He professed to like the sensation; he bragged about it. From his
-remarks you gleaned that his idea of a really attractive boudoir was the
-polar bear's section up at the Bronx Zoo. I was sorry his name had not
-been Moe instead of Joe—which was what it was—because if it
-had only been the former I had thought up a clever play on words. I was
-going to catch him in company and trap him into boasting about loving to
-sleep in a snowdrift and then I was going to call him Eskimo, which should
-have been good for a laugh every time it was spontaneously sprung on a
-fresh audience.
-</p>
-<p>
-In short, taking one thing with another, I have never favored sleeping
-porches. But after listening to friends who either had them or who were so
-sorry they didn't have them that they were determined we should have a
-full set of them on our house, we concurred in the consensus of opinion
-and decided to cast aside old prejudices and to have them at all hazards.
-I believe in the rule of the majority—of course with a few private
-reservations from time to time, as for instance, when the majority gets
-carried away by this bone-dry notion.
-</p>
-<p>
-I recall in particular one friend who was especially emphatic and
-especially convincing in the details of offering suggestions and advice,
-and—where he deemed such painful measures necessary—in
-administering reproof for and correction of our faulty misconceptions of
-what a house should be. But then he was a Bostonian by birth and a Harvard
-graduate and had the manner—shall we call it the slightly superior
-manner?—which so often marks one who may boast these two
-qualifications. When you meet a well-bred native Bostonian who has been
-through Harvard it is as though you had met an egg which had enjoyed the
-unique distinction of having been laid twice and both times successfully.
-Our friend was distinctly that way. When he had rendered judgment there
-was no human appeal. It never occurred to us there could be any appeal.
-</p>
-<p>
-So we incorporated sleeping porches and vistas through and sun parlors and
-a hundred other things—more or less—into the plan. Obeying the
-wills of stronger natures than ours, we figuratively knocked out walls and
-then on subsequent and what appeared to be superior counsel figuratively
-stuck them back in again. We lifted the roof for air and we lowered it for
-style. We tiled the floors and then untiled them and put down beautiful
-mental hardwood all over the place. We rejected paneled wainscotings in
-favor of rough-cast plaster and then abolished the plaster for something
-in the nature of a smooth finish for our walls. By direction we tacked on
-an ell here and an annex there. If we had kept all the additions which at
-one period or another we were quite sure we must keep in order to make our
-home complete we should have had a house entirely unsuitable for persons
-of our position in life to reside in, but could have made considerable
-sums of money by renting it out for national conventions.
-</p>
-<p>
-On one point and only one point did we remain adamant. Otherwise we were
-as clay in the hands of the potter, as flax to the loom of the weaver; but
-there we were as adamant as an ant. We concurred in the firm and
-unswervable decision that—no matter what else we might have or might
-not have in our house—we would not have a den in it. By den I mean
-one of those cubby-holes opening off a living room or an entrance hall
-that is fitted up with woolly hangings and an Oriental smoking set where
-people are supposed to go and sit when they wish to be comfortable—only
-nobody in his right mind ever does. In my day I have done too much
-traveling on the Pullman of commerce to crave to have a section of one in
-my home. Call them dens if you will; I know a sleeping-car compartment
-when I see it, even though it be thinly disguised by a pair of
-trading-stamp scimitars crossed over the door and a running yard of
-mailorder steins up on a shelf. Several earnest advocates of the den
-theory tried their persuasive powers on us, but each time one or the other
-of us turned a deaf ear. When her deaf ear was tired from turning I would
-turn mine a while, and vice versa. There is no den in our home. Except
-over my dead body there never shall be one.
-</p>
-<p>
-While on this general subject I may add that if anybody succeeds in
-sticking a Japanese catalpa on our lawn it will also be necessary to
-remove my lifeless but still mutely protesting remains before going ahead
-with the planting. I have accepted the new state income tax in the spirit
-in which it seems to be meant—namely, to confiscate any odd
-farthings that may still be knocking round the place after the Federal
-income tax has been paid, and a very sound notion, too. What is money for
-if it isn't for legislators to spend? Should the Prohibitionists put
-through the seizure-and-search law as a national measure I suppose in time
-I may get accustomed to waking up and finding a zealous gent with a badge
-and one of those long prehensile noses especially adapted for poking into
-other people's businesses, such as so many professional uplifters have,
-prowling through the place on the lookout for a small private bottle
-labeled “Spirits Aromatic Ammonia, Aged in the Wood.” With the passage of
-time I may become really enthusiastic over the prospect of having my
-baggage ransacked for contraband essences every time I cross the state
-line. My taste in pyjamas has been favorably commented on and there is no
-reason why my fellow travelers should not enjoy a treat as the inspector
-dumps the contents of the top tray out on the car floor. The main thing is
-to get used to whatever it is that we have got to get used to.
-</p>
-<p>
-But I have a profound conviction that in the matter of a Japanese catalpa
-on the lawn, just as in the matter of a den opening off the living room
-and taking up the space which otherwise would make a first-rate
-umbrella-and-galosh closet, I could never hope to get used. Nor do I yearn
-for a weeping mulberry tree about the premises. I dislike its prevalent
-shape and the sobbing sound it makes when especially moved by the distress
-which chronically afflicts the sensitive thing. Nature endowed our
-abandoned farm with a plenteous selection of certain deciduous growths
-common to the temperate zone—elms and maples and black walnuts and
-hickories and beeches and birches and dogwoods and locusts; also pines and
-hemlocks and cedars and spruces. What the good Lord designed as suitable
-arboreal adornment for the eastern seaboard is good enough for me. I have
-no desire to clutter up the small section of North America to which I hold
-the title deeds with trees which do not match in with the rest of North
-America. I should as soon think of putting a pagoda on top of Pike's Peak
-or connecting the Thousand Islands with a system of pergolas.
-</p>
-<p>
-Having got that out of my system, let us get off the grounds and back to
-the house proper. As I was remarking just before being diverted from the
-main line, a den was about the only voluntary offering which we positively
-refused to take over. Every other notion of whatsoever nature was duly
-adopted and duly carried on to the architect He was a wonderful man. All
-architects, I am convinced, must be wonderful men, but him I would call
-one of the pick of his breed. How he managed to make practical use of some
-of the ideas we brought to him and fit them into the plan; how without
-hurting our feelings or the feelings of our friends he succeeded in curing
-us of sundry delusions we had acquired; how he succeeded in confining the
-ground plan to a scale which would not make the New York Public Library
-seem in comparison a puny and inconsequential edifice; and how taking a
-number of the suggestions which came to him and rejecting the others he
-yet preserved the structural balance and the suitable proportions which he
-had had in his mind all along—these, to my way of thinking,
-approximate the Eighth Wonder. No, it is the first wonder; the remaining
-seven finish place, show and also ran.
-</p>
-<p>
-After a season of debate, compromise and conciliation, when the gray in
-his hair had perceptibly thickened and the lines in his face had deepened,
-though still he wore his chronic patient smile which makes strangers like
-him, the final specifications were blue-printed and the work was started.
-A lady to whom I have the honor of being very closely related by marriage
-removed the first shovel load of loam from the contemplated excavation.
-She is not what you would call a fancy shoveler and the net result of her
-labor, I should say offhand, was about a heaping dessert-spoonful of
-topsoil. Had I guessed what that inconsequential pinch of earth would
-subsequently mean to us in joy I should have put it in a snuffbox and
-carried it about with me as the first tangible souvenir of a great
-accomplishment and a reminder to me never again to look slightingly upon
-small things. Bulk does not necessarily imply ultimate achievement. If Tom
-Thumb had been two feet taller and eighteen inches broader than he was I
-doubt whether he would amounted to much as a dwarf.
-</p>
-<p>
-Well, we reared the foundations and then one fine April morning our
-country abandoned its policy of watchful waiting for one of swatful
-hating. While we were at war it did not seem patriotic to try to go ahead.
-There was another reason—a variety of reasons rather. Very soon
-labor was not to be had, or materials either. Take the detail of concrete.
-Now that the last war is over and the next war not as yet started, I
-violate no confidence and betray no trust in stating that one of our chief
-military secrets had to do with this seemingly harmless product. We were
-shooting concrete at the Germans. In large quantities it was fatal; in
-small, mussy. And while the Germans were digging the gummy stuff out of
-their eyes and their hair our fellows would swarm over the top and capture
-them. And if you are not sure that I am telling the exact truth regarding
-this I only wish you had tried during active hostilities—as I did—to
-buy a few jorums and noggins of concrete. Trying would have made a true
-believer of you, too. And the same might be said for steel girders and cow
-hair to put into plaster so it will stick, and ten-penny nails. We were
-firing all these things at the enemy. It must have disconcerted him
-terribly to be expecting high explosives and have a keg of ten-penny nails
-or a bale of cow hair burst in his midst. Without desire to detract from
-the glory of the other branches of the service, I am of the opinion that
-it was ten-penny nails that won the war. And in bringing about this
-splendid result I did my share by not buying any in large amount for going
-on eighteen months.
-</p>
-<p>
-I couldn't.
-</p>
-<p>
-War having come and concrete having gone, the contractor on our little job
-knocked off operations until such time as Germany had been cured of what
-principally ailed her. Even through the delay, though, we found pleasure
-in our project. We would perch perilously upon the top of the jagged walls
-and enjoy the view the while we imagined we sat in our finished dream
-house. We could see it, even if no one else could. In rainy weather we
-brought umbrellas along. The fact that a passerby beheld us thus on a
-showery afternoon I suppose was responsible for the report which spread
-through the vicinity that a couple of lunatics were roosting on some stone
-ruins halfway up the side of Mott's Mountain. We didn't mind though. The
-great creators of this world have ever been the victims of popular
-misunderstanding. Sir Isaak Walton, sitting under an apple tree and
-through the falling of an apple discovering the circulation of the blood,
-is to us a splendid figure of genius; but I have no doubt the neighbors
-said at the time that he would have been much better employed helping Mrs.
-W. with the housework. And probably there was a lot of loose and scornful
-talk when Benjamin Franklin went out in a thunderstorm with a kite and a
-brass key and fussed round among the darting lightning bolts until he was
-as wet as a rag and then came home and tried to dry his sopping feet
-before one of those old-fashioned open fireplaces so common in that
-period. But what was the result?
-</p>
-<p>
-The Franklin heater—that's what. With such historic examples behind
-us, what cared we though the tongue of slander wagged while we inhabited
-our site with the leaky heavens for a roof to our parlor and the far
-horizons for its wall. Not to every one is vouchsafed the double boon of
-spending long happy days in one's home and at the same time keeping out in
-the open air.
-</p>
-<p>
-On the day the United Press scooped the opposition by announcing the
-cessation of hostilities some days before the hostilities really cessated,
-thereby scoring one of the greatest journalistic beats since the
-Millerites prognosticated the end of the world, giving day, date and hour
-somewhat prematurely in advance of that interesting event, which as a
-matter of fact has not taken place yet—on that memorable day the
-country at large celebrated the advent of peace. We also celebrated the
-peace, but on a personal account we celebrated something else besides. We
-celebrated the prospect of an early resumption of work in the construction
-of our house.
-</p>
-<p>
-During the months that followed I learned a lot about the intricacies and
-the mysteries of house building. Beforehand, in my ignorance I figured
-that the preliminary plans might be stretched out or contracted in to suit
-the shifting mood of the designer and the sudden whim of his client, but
-that once the walls went up and the beams went across and the rafters came
-down both parties were thereafter bound by set metes and bounds. Not at
-all. I discovered that there is nothing more plastic than brickwork,
-nothing more elastic than a girder. A carpenter spends days of his time
-and dollars of your money fitting and joining a certain section of
-framework; that is to say, he engages in such craftsmanship when not
-sharpening his saw. It has been my observation that the average
-conscientious carpenter allows forty per cent of his eight-hour day to saw
-sharpening. It must be a joy to him to be able to give so much time daily
-to putting nice keen teeth in a saw, knowing that somebody else is paying
-him for it at the rate of ninety cents an hour. Watching him at work in
-intervals between saw filing, you get from him the impression that unless
-this particular angle of the wooden skeleton is articulated just so the
-whole structure will come tumbling down some day when least expected. At
-length he gets the job done to his satisfaction and goes elsewhere.
-</p>
-<p>
-Along comes a steamfitter and he, whistling merrily the while, takes a
-chisel or an adze or an ax and just bodaciously haggles a large ragged
-orifice in the carpenter's masterpiece. Through the hole he runs a Queen
-Rosamond's maze of iron pipes. He then departs and the carpenter is called
-back to the scene of the mutilation. After sharpening his saw some more in
-a restrained and contemplative manner, he patches up the wound as best he
-can. Enter, then, the boss plumber accompanied by a helper. The boss
-plumber finds a comfortable two-by-four to sit on and does sit thereon and
-lights up his pipe and while he smokes and directs operations the
-assistant or understudy, with edged tools provided for that purpose, tears
-away some of the cadaver's most important ribs and several joints of its
-spinal column for the forthcoming insertion of various concealed fixtures.
-</p>
-<p>
-Following the departure of these assassins the patient carpenter returns
-and to the best of his ability reduces all the compound fractures that he
-conveniently can get at, following which he sharpens his saw—not the
-big saw which he sharpened from eight-forty-five to ten-fifteen o'clock
-this morning, but the little buttonhole saw which he has not sharpened
-since yesterday afternoon; this done, he calls it a day and goes home to
-teach his little son Elmer, who expects to follow in the paternal
-footsteps, the rudiments of the art of filing a saw without being in too
-much of a hurry about it, which after all is the main point in this
-department of the carpentering profession.
-</p>
-<p>
-And the next day the plumber remembers where he left his sack of smoking
-tobacco, or the steam fitter's attention is directed to the fact that when
-he stuck in the big pipe like a bass tuba he forgot to insert alongside it
-the little pipe like a piccolo, and therefore it becomes necessary to
-maltreat the already thrice-mangled remains of woodwork. A month or so
-later the plasterers arrive—they were due in a week, but a plasterer
-who showed up when he was expected or any time within a month after he had
-solemnly promised on his sacred word of honor that he meant to show up
-would have his card taken away from him and be put out of the union. Hours
-after Gabriel has blown his trump for the last call it is going to be
-incumbent upon the little angel bell hops to go and page the plasterers,
-else they won't get there for judgment at all.
-</p>
-<p>
-Be that as it may and undoubtedly will be, in a month or so the plasterers
-arrive, wearing in streaks the same effects in laid-on complexion that so
-many of our leading débutantes are wearing all over their faces. The chief
-plasterer looks over the prospect and decides that in order to insure a
-smooth and unbroken surface for his plaster coat the plumbing and the
-heating connections must have their elbows tucked in a few notches, which
-ultimatum naturally requires the good offices of the carpenter, first to
-snatch out and afterward to hammer back into some sort of alignment the
-shreds and fragments of his original job. When this sort of thing, with
-variations, has gone on through a period of months, a house has become an
-intricate and complicated fabric of patchworks and mosaics held together,
-as nearly as a layman can figure, by the power of cohesion and the
-pressures of dead weights. The amazing part of it is that it stays put. I
-am quite sure that our house will stay put, because despite the vagaries—perhaps
-I should say the morbid curiosity—of various artificers intent on
-taking the poor thing apart every little while, it was constructed of
-materials which as humans compute mutabilities are reasonably permanent in
-their basic characters.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was our desire to have a new house that would look like an old house; a
-yearning in which the architect heartily concurred, he having a distaste
-for the slick, shiny, look-out-for-the-paint look which is common enough
-in American country houses. In this ambition a combination of
-circumstances served our ends. For the lower walls we looted two of the
-ancient stone fences which meandered aimlessly across the face of our
-acres. According to local tradition, those fences dated back to
-pre-Revolutionary days; they were bearded thick with lichens and their
-faces were scored and seamed. In laying them up we were fortunate enough
-to find and hire a stonemason who was part artificer but mostly real
-artist—an Italian, with the good taste in masonry which seems to be
-inherent in his countrymen; only in this case the good taste was developed
-to a very high degree. Literally he would fondle a stone whose color and
-contour appealed to him and his final dab with the trowel of mortar was in
-the nature of a caress.
-</p>
-<p>
-On top of this find came another and even luckier one. Three miles away
-was an abandoned brickyard. Once an extensive busy plant, it had lain idle
-for many years. Lately it had been sold and the new owners were now
-preparing to salvage the material it contained. Thanks to the forethought
-of the architect, we secured the pick of these pickings. From old pits we
-exhumed fine hard brick which had been stacked there for a generation,
-taking on those colors and that texture which only long exposure to wind
-and rain and sun can give to brick. These went into our upper walls. For a
-lower price than knotty, wavy, fresh-cut, half-green spruce would have
-cost us at a lumber yard, modern prices and lumber yards being what they
-are, we stripped from the old kiln sheds beautiful dear North Carolina
-boards, seasoned and staunch. These were for the rough flooring and the
-sheathing. The same treasure mine provided us with iron bars for
-reënforcing; with heavy beams and splendid thick wide rafters; with fire
-brick glazed over by clays and minerals which in a molten state had flowed
-down their surfaces; with girders and underpinnings of better grade and
-greater weight than any housebuilder of moderate means can afford these
-times. Finally, for roofing we procured old field slates of all colors and
-thicknesses and all sizes; and these by intent were laid on in irregular
-catch-as-catch-can fashion, suggestive when viewed at a little distance of
-the effect of thatching. Another Italian, a wood carver this time,
-craftily cut the scrolled beam ends which show beneath our friendly eaves
-and in the shadows of our gables. It was necessary only to darken with
-stains the newly gouged surfaces; the rest had been antiquated already by
-fifty years of Hudson River climate. Before the second beam was in place a
-wren was building her nest on the sloped top of the first one. We used to
-envy that wren—she had moved in before we had.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER VII. “AND SOLD TO——”
- </h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen the house was up as far as the second floor and the first mortgage,
-talk rose touching on the furnishings. To me it seemed there would be
-ample time a decade or so thence to begin thinking of the furnishings. So
-far as I could tell there was no hurry and probably there never would be
-any hurry. For the job had reached that stage so dismally familiar to any
-one who ever started a house with intent to live in it when completed, if
-ever. I refer to the stage when a large and variegated assortment of hired
-help are ostensibly busy upon the premises and yet everything seems
-practically to be at a standstill. From the standpoint of a mere bystander
-whose only function is to pay the bills, it seems that the workmen are
-only coming to the job of a morning because they hate the idea of hanging
-round their own homes all day with nothing to do.
-</p>
-<p>
-So it was with us. Sawing and hammering and steam fitting and plumbing and
-stone-lying and brick-lying were presumed to be going on; laborers were
-wielding the languid pick; a roof layer was defying the laws of
-gravitation on our ridgepole; at stated intervals there were great gobs of
-payments on account of this or that to be met and still and yet and
-notwithstanding, to the lay eye the progress appeared infinitesimal. For
-the first time I could understand why Pharaoh or Rameses or whoever it was
-that built the Pyramids displayed peevishness toward the Children of
-Israel. Indeed I developed a cordial sympathy for him. He had my best
-wishes. They were four or five thousand years late, but even so he had 'em
-and welcome.
-</p>
-<p>
-Accordingly when the matter of investing in furnishings was broached I
-stoutly demurred. As I recall, I spoke substantially as follows:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Why all this mad haste? Rome wasn't built in a day, as I have often
-heard, and in view of my own recent experiences I am ready to make
-affidavit to the fact. I'll go further than that. I'll bet any sum within
-reason, up to a million dollars, that the meanest smokehouse in Rome was
-not built in a day. No Roman smokehouse—Ionic, Doric, Corinthian or
-Old Line Etruscan—is barred.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Unless workingmen have changed a whole lot since those times, it was not
-possible to begin to start to commence to get ready to go ahead to proceed
-to advance with that smokehouse or any other smokehouse in a day. And
-after they did get started they dallied along and dallied along and killed
-time until process curing came into fashion among the best families of
-Ancient Rome and smokehouses lost their vogue altogether. Let us not be
-too impetuous about the detail of furnishings. I have a feeling—a
-feeling based on my own observations over yonder at the site of our own
-little undertaking—that when that house is really done the only
-furnishings we'll require will be a couple of wheel chairs and something
-to warm up spoon victuals in.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Anyhow, what's wrong with the furnishings we already have in storage?
-Judging by the present rate of non-progress—of static advancement,
-if I may use such a phrase—long before we have a place to set them
-up in our furnishings will be so entirely out of style that they'll be
-back in style all over again, if you get me. These things move in cycles,
-you know. One generation buys furniture and uses it. The next generation
-finding it hopelessly old-fashioned and out of date burns it up or casts
-it away or gives it away or stores it in the attic—anything to get
-rid of it. The third generation spends vast sums of money trying to
-restore it or the likes of it, for by that time the stuff which was
-despised and discarded is in strong demand and fetching fancy prices.
-</p>
-<p>
-“The only mistake is to belong to the middle generation, which curiously
-enough is always the present one. We crave what our grandparents owned but
-our parents did not. Our grandchildren will crave what we had but our own
-children won't. They'll junk it. To-day's monstrosity is
-day-after-tomorrow's art treasure just as today's museum piece is
-day-before-yesterday's monstrosity. Therefore, I repeat, let us remain
-calm. I figure that when we actually get into that house our grandchildren
-will be of a proper age to appreciate the belongings now appertaining to
-us, and all will be well.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Thus in substance I spoke. The counter argument offered was that—conceding
-what I said to be true—the fact remained and was not to be gainsaid
-that we did not have anywhere near enough of furnishings to equip the
-house we hoped at some distant date to occupy.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You must remember,” I was told, “that for the six or eight years before
-we decided to move out here to the country we lived in a flat.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What of it?” I retorted instantly. “What of it?” I repeated, for when in
-the heat of controversy I think up an apt bit of repartee like that I am
-apt to utter it a second time for the sake of emphasis. Pausing only to
-see if my stroke of instantaneous retort had struck in, I continued:
-</p>
-<p>
-“That last flat we had swallowed up furniture as a rat hole swallows sand.
-First and last we must have poured enough stuff into that flat to furnish
-the state of Rhode Island. And what about the monthly statements we are
-getting now from the storage warehouse signed by the president of the
-company, old man Pl. Remit? Doesn't the size of them prove that in the
-furniture-owning line at least we are to be regarded as persons of
-considerable consequence?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Don't be absurd,” I was admonished. “Just compare the size of the largest
-bedroom in that last flat we had in One Hundred and Tenth Street with the
-size of the smallest bedroom we expect to have in the new place. Why, you
-could put the biggest bedroom we had there into the smallest bedroom we
-are going to have here and lose it! And then think of the halls we must
-furnish and the living room and the breakfast porch and everything. Did we
-have a breakfast porch in the flat? We did not! Did we have a living room
-forty feet one way and twenty-eight the other? We did not! Did we have a
-dining room in that flat that was big enough to swing a cat in?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“We didn't have any cat.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“All the same, we—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I doubt whether any of the neighbors would have loaned us a cat just for
-that purpose.” I felt I had the upper hand and I meant to keep it.
-“Besides, you know I don't like cats. What is the use of importing foreign
-matters such as cats—and purely problematical cats at that—into
-a discussion about something else? What relation does a cat bear to
-furniture, I ask you? Still, speaking of cats, I'm reminded—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Never mind trying to be funny. And never mind trying to steer the
-conversation off the right track either. Please pay attention to what I am
-saying—let's see, where was I? Oh, yes: Did we have a hall in that
-flat worthy to be dignified by the name of a hall? We did not! We had a
-passageway—that's what it was—a passageway. Now there is a
-difference between furnishing a mere passageway and a regular hall, as you
-are about to discover before you are many months older.”
- </p>
-<p>
-On second thought I had to concede there was something in what had just
-been said. One could not have swung one's cat in our dining room in the
-flat with any expectation of doing the cat any real good. And the hallway
-we had in our flat was like nearly all halls in New York flats. It was
-comfortably filled when you hung a water-color picture up on its wall and
-uncomfortably crowded if you put a clarionet in the corner. It would have
-been bad luck to open an umbrella anywhere in our flat—bad luck for
-the umbrella if for nothing else. Despite its enormous capacity for
-inhaling furniture it had been, when you came right down to cases, a
-form-fitting fiat. So mentally confessing myself worsted at this angle of
-the controversy, I fell back on my original argument that certainly it
-would be years and years and it might be forever before we possibly could
-expect—at the current rate of speed of the building operations, or
-speaking exactly, at the current rate of the lack of speed—to move
-in.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But the architect has promised us on his solemn word of honor—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Don't tell me what the architect has promised!” I said bitterly. “Next to
-waiters, architects are the most optimistic creatures on earth. A waiter
-is always morally certain that twenty minutes is the extreme limit of time
-that will be required to cook anything. You think that you would like,
-say, to have a fish that is not listed on the bill of fare under the
-subheading 'Ready Dishes'—it may be a whale or it may be a minnow:
-that detail makes no difference to him—and you ask the waiter how
-about it, and he is absolutely certain that it will be possible to borrow
-a fishing pole somewhere and dig bait and send out and catch that fish and
-bring it back in and clean it and take the scales and the fins off and
-garnish it with sprigs of parsley and potatoes and lemon and make some
-drawn butter sauce to pour over it and bring it to you in twenty minutes.
-If he didn't think so he would not be a waiter. An architect is exactly
-like a waiter, except that he thinks in terms of days instead of terms of
-minutes. Don't tell me about architects! I only wish I were as sure of
-heaven as the average architect is regarding that which no mortal possibly
-can be sure of, labor conditions being what chronically they are.”
- </p>
-<p>
-But conceded that the reader is but a humble husbandman—meaning by
-that a man who is married—he doubtless has already figured out the
-result of this debate. Himself, he knows how such debates usually do
-terminate. In the end I surrendered, and the final upshot was that we set
-about the task of furnishing the rooms that were to be. From that hour
-dated the beginning of my wider and fuller education into the system
-commonly in vogue these times in or near the larger cities along our
-Atlantic seaboard for the furnishing of homes. I have learned though. It
-has cost me a good deal of time and some money and my nervous system is
-not what it was, having suffered a series of abrupt shocks, but I have
-learned. I know something now—not much, but a little—about
-period furniture.
-</p>
-<p>
-A period, as you may recall, is equal to a full stop; in fact a period is
-a full stop. This is a rule in punctuation which applies in other
-departments of life, as I have discovered. Go in extensively for the
-period stuff in your interior equipments and presently you will be coming
-to a full stop in your funds on hand. The thing works out the same way
-every time. I care not how voluminously large and plethoric your cash
-balance may be, period furniture carried to an excess will convert it into
-a recent site and then the bank will be sending you one of those little
-printed notices politely intimating that “your account appears overdrawn.”
- And any time a banker goes so far as to hint that your account appears
-overdrawn you may bet the last cent you haven't left that he is correct.
-He knows darned good and well it is overdrawn and this merely is his
-kindly way of softening the blow to you.
-</p>
-<p>
-I have a theory that when checks begin to roll in from the clearing house
-made out to this or that dealer in period furniture the paying teller
-hastens to the adjusting department to see how your deposits seem to be
-bearing up under the strain. It is as though he heard you were buying oil
-stocks or playing the races out of your savings and he might as well begin
-figuring now about how long approximately it will be before your account
-will become absolutely vacant in appearance.
-</p>
-<p>
-As I was remarking, I know a trifle about period furniture. Offhand now, I
-can distinguish a piece which dates back to Battle Abbey from something
-which goes back no farther than Battle Creek. Before I could not do this.
-I was forever getting stuff of the time of the Grand Monarch confused with
-something right fresh out of Grand Rapids. Generally speaking, all
-antiques—whether handed down from antiquity or made on the premises—looked
-alike to me. But in the light of my painfully acquired knowledge I now can
-see the difference almost at a glance. Sometimes I may waver a trifle. I
-look at a piece of furniture which purports to be an authentic antique. It
-is decrepit and creaky and infirm; the upholstering is frayed and faded
-and stained; the legs are splayed and tottery; the seams gape and there
-are cracks in the paneling. If it is a chair, no plump person in his or
-her right mind would dare sit down in it. If it is a bedstead, any sizable
-adult undertaking to sleep in it would do so at his peril. So, outwardly
-and visibly it seems to bear the stamp of authenticity. Yet still I doubt.
-It may be a craftily devised counterfeit. It may be something of
-comparatively recent manufacture which has undergone careless handling. In
-such a case I seek for the wormholes—if any—the same as any
-other seasoned collector would.
-</p>
-<p>
-Up until comparatively recently wormholes, considered as such, had no
-great lure to me. If I thought of them at all I thought of them as a topic
-which was rather lacking in interest to begin with and one easily
-exhausted. If you had asked me about wormholes I—speaking offhand—probably
-would say that this was a matter which naturally might appeal to a worm
-but would probably hold forth no great attraction for a human being,
-unless he happened to be thinking of going fishing. But this was in my
-more ignorant, cruder days, before I took a beginner's easy course in the
-general science of wormholes. I am proud of my progress, but I would not
-go so far just yet as to say that I am a professional. Still I am out of
-the amateur class. I suppose you might call me a semi-pro, able under
-ordinary circumstances to do any given wormhole in par.
-</p>
-<p>
-For example, at present I have an average of three correct guesses out of
-five chances—which is a very high average for one who but a little
-while ago was the veriest novice at distinguishing between ancient
-wormholes, as made by a worm, and modern wormholing done by piece-work. I
-cannot explain to you just how I do this—it is a thing which after a
-while just seems to come to you. But of course you must have a natural
-gift for it to start with—an inherent affinity for wormholes, as it
-were.
-</p>
-<p>
-However, I will say that I did not thoroughly master the cardinal
-principles of this art until after I had studied under one of the leading
-wormhole experts in this country—a man who has devoted years of his
-life just to wormholes. True, like most great specialists he is a person
-of one idea. Get him off of wormholes and the conversation is apt to drag,
-but discussing his own topic he can go on for hours and hours. I really
-believe he gets more pleasure out of one first-class, sixteenth-century
-wormhole than the original worm did. And as Kipling would say: I learned
-about wormholes from him.
-</p>
-<p>
-At the outset I must confess I rather leaned toward a nice, neat,
-up-to-date wormhole as produced amid sanitary surroundings in an inspected
-factory out in Michigan, where no scab wormholes would be tolerated,
-rather than toward one which had been done by an unorganized foreign worm—possibly
-even a pauperized worm—two or three hundred years ago, when there
-was no such thing as a closed shop and no protection against germs.
-Whenever possible I believe in patronizing the products of union labor.
-But the expert speedily set me right on this point. He made me see that in
-furnishings and decorations nothing modern can possibly compare with
-something which is crumbly and tottery with the accumulated weight of the
-hoary years.
-</p>
-<p>
-He taught me about patina, too. Patina is a most fascinating subject, once
-you get thoroughly into it. Everybody who goes in for period furniture
-must get into it sooner or later, and the sooner the better, because if
-you are not able to recognize patina at a glance you are as good as lost
-when you undertake to appraise antique furniture. When a connoisseur lays
-hold upon a piece of furniture al-leged to have rightful claims to
-antiquity the first thing he does is to run his hand along the exposed
-surfaces to ascertain by the practiced touch of his fingers whether the
-patina is on the level or was applied by a crafty counterfeiter. After
-that he upends it to look for the wormholes. If both are orthodox he gives
-it his validation as the genuine article. If they are not he brands the
-article a spurious imitation and rejects it with ill-concealed scorn.
-There are other tests, but these two are the surest ones.
-</p>
-<p>
-For the benefit of those who may not have had any advantages as recently
-and expensively enjoyed I will state that patina is the gloss or film
-which certain sorts of metal and certain sorts of polished woods acquire
-through age, long usage and wear. With the passage of time fabrics also
-may acquire it. You may have noticed it in connection with a pair of black
-diagonal trousers that had seen long and severe wear or on the elbows of
-summer-before-last's blue serge coat. However, patina in pants or on the
-braided seams of a presiding elder's Sunday suit is not so highly valued
-as when it occurs in relation to a Jacobean church pew or a
-William-and-Mary what-not.
-</p>
-<p>
-When I look back on my untutored state before we began to patronize the
-antique shops and the auction shops I am ashamed—honestly I am. The
-only excuse I can offer is based on the grounds of my earlier training.
-Like so many of my fellow countrymen, born and reared as I was in the
-crude raw atmosphere of interior America—anyhow, almost any wealthy
-New Yorker will tell you it is a crude raw atmosphere and not in any way
-to be compared with the refined atmosphere which is about the only thing
-you can get for nothing in Europe—as I say, brought up as I was amid
-such raw surroundings and from the cradle made the unconscious victim of
-this environment, I had an idea that when a person craved furniture he
-went for it to a regular furniture store having ice boxes and porch
-hammocks and unparalleled bargains in golden oak dining-room sets in the
-show windows, and there he made his selection and gave his order and paid
-a deposit down and the people at the shop sent it up to his house in a
-truck with historic scenes such as Washington Crossing the Delaware and
-Daniel in the Lions' Den painted on the sides of the truck, and after that
-he had nothing to worry about in connection with the transaction except
-the monthly installments.
-</p>
-<p>
-You see, I date back to the Rutherford B. Hayes period of American
-architecture and applied designing—-a period which had a solid
-background of mid-Victorian influence with a trace of Philadelphia
-Centennial running through it, being bounded at the farther end by such
-sterling examples of parlor statuary as the popular pieces respectively
-entitled, “Welcoming the New Minister,” “Bringing Home the Bride,” and
-“Baby's First Bath,” and bounded at the nearer end by burnt-wood plaques
-and frames for family portraits with plush insets and hand-painted flowers
-on the moldings. By the conceptions of those primitive times nothing so
-set off the likeness of a departed great-aunt as a few red-plush insets.
-</p>
-<p>
-Some of my most cherished boyhood memories centered about bird's-eye-maple
-bedroom sets and parlor furniture of heavy black walnut trimmed in a
-manner which subsequently came to be popular among undertakers for the
-adornment of the casket when they had orders to spare no expense for a
-really fashionable or—as the saying went then—a tony funeral.
-Tony subsequently became nobby and nobby is now swagger, but though the
-idioms change with the years the meaning remains the same. When the parlor
-was opened for a formal occasion—it remained closed while the
-ordinary life of the household went on—its interior gave off a rich
-deep turpentiny smell like a paint-and-varnish store on a hot day. And the
-bird's-eye maple, as I recall, had a high slick finish which, however, did
-not dim the staring, unwinking effect of the round knots which so
-plentifully dappled its graining. Lying on the bed and contemplating the
-footboard gave one the feeling that countless eyes were looking at one,
-which in those days was regarded as highly desirable.
-</p>
-<p>
-I remember all our best people favored bird's-eye maple for the company
-room. They clung to it, too. East Aurora had a hard struggle before it
-made any noticeable impress upon the decorative tendencies of West
-Kentucky, for we were a conservative breed and slow to take up the mission
-styles featuring armchairs weighing a couple of hundred pounds apiece and
-art-craft designs in hammered metals and semi-tanned leathers. Moreover, a
-second-hand shop in our town was not an antique shop; it was what its name
-implied—a second-hand shop. You didn't go there to buy things you
-wanted, but to sell things you did not want.
-</p>
-<p>
-So in view of these youthful influences it should be patent to all that,
-having other things to think of—such, for example, as making a
-living—I did not realize that in New York at least those wishful of
-following the modes did not go to a good live shop making a specialty of
-easy payments when they had a house-furnishing proposition on their hands.
-That might be all very well for the pedestrian classes and for those
-living in the remote districts who kept a mail-order catalogue on the
-center table and wrote on from time to time with the money order enclosed.
-</p>
-<p>
-I soon was made to understand that the really correct thing was first of
-all to call in a professional decorator, if one could afford it. A
-professional decorator is a person of either sex who can think up more
-ways and quicker ways of spending other people's money than the director
-of a shipping board can. But whether you retained the services of a
-regular decorator or elected to struggle along on your own, you went for
-your purchases to specialty shops or to antique shops, or—best of
-all—to the smart auction shops on or hard by Fifth Avenue and
-Madison Avenue.
-</p>
-<p>
-Than the auction rooms in the Fifth Avenue district I know of no places
-better adapted for studying patina, wormholing and human nature in a
-variety of interesting phases. To such an establishment, on the days when
-a sale is announced—which means two or three times a week for a good
-part of the year—repair wealthy patrons, patrons who were wealthy
-before the mania for bidding in things came upon them, as it does come
-upon so many, and patrons who are trying to look as though they were
-wealthy. The third group are in the majority.
-</p>
-<p>
-Amateur collectors come, on the lookout for lace fans or Japanese bronzes
-or Chinese ceramics or furniture or pictures or hangings or rugs or
-tapestries, or whatever it is that constitutes their favorite hobby. There
-are sure to be prominent actor folk and author folk in this category.
-Dealers are on hand, each as wise looking as a barnful of hoot-owls and
-talking the jargon of the craft.
-</p>
-<p>
-Agents from rival auction houses are sometimes seen, ready, should the
-opportunity present itself, to snap up a bargain with intent to reauction
-it at their own houses at a profit. With the resident proprietor one of
-this gentry is about as popular as a bat in a boarding school, but since
-there is no law to bar him out and since it is in the line of business for
-him to be present, why present he generally is.
-</p>
-<p>
-Rich women drive up in their town cars and shabby purveyors of antique
-wares from little clutter-hole shops on cross streets at the fringe of the
-East Side shamble in on their fiat arches. Then, too, there are the
-habitués of the auction room habit; women mostly, but some men too,
-unfortunate creatures who have fallen victim to an incurable vice and to
-whom the announcement in the papers of an unusual sale is lure sufficient
-to draw them hither whether or not they hope to buy anything; and finally
-there are representatives of a common class in any big city—individuals
-who go wherever free entertainment is provided and especially to spots
-where they are likely to see assembled notables of the stage or society or
-of high financial circles.
-</p>
-<p>
-The auctioneer almost invariably is of a compounded and composite type
-that might be described as part matinée idol, part professional
-revivalist, part floor walker, part court jester and part jury pleader,
-with just a trace of a suggestion of the official manner of the well-to-do
-undertaker stirred into the mixture. By sight at least he knows all of his
-regular customers and is inclined with a special touch of respectful
-affection toward such of them as prefer on these occasions to be known by
-an initial rather than by name.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And sold to Mr. B.,” he says with a gracious smile. Or—“Now then,
-Mrs. H., doesn't this bea-u-tiful varse mean anything to you?” he inquires
-deferentially when the bidding lags. “Did I hear you offer seven hundred
-and fifty, Colonel J.?” he asks in a tone of deep solicitude.
-</p>
-<p>
-By long acquaintance with his regular clientèle, or perhaps by a sort of
-intuition which is not the least of his gifts, he is able to interpret
-into sums of currency a nod, a wink, a raised finger, a shrug or the lift
-of an eyebrow, at a distance of anywhere from ten to sixty feet.
-</p>
-<p>
-In the face of disappointments manifolded a thousand times a month this
-man yet remains an unfailing optimist. Watching him in action one gets the
-impression that he reads none but glad books, goes to none save glad plays
-and when the weather is inclement shares the viewpoint of that sweet
-singer of the Sunny South who wrote to the effect that it is not raining
-rain to-day, it's raining daffodils, and then two lines further along
-corrects his botany to state that having been convinced of his error of a
-moment before he now wishes to take advantage of this opportunity to
-inform the public that it is not raining rain to-day, but on the contrary
-is raining roses down, or metrical words to that general tenor. He was a
-good poet, as poets go, but not the sort of person you would care to loan
-your best umbrella to.
-</p>
-<p>
-In another noticeable regard our auctioneer friend betrays somewhat the
-same abrupt shiftings of temperamental manifestations that are reputed to
-have been shown by Ben Bolt's lady friend. I am speaking of the late
-lamented Sweet Alice, who—as will be recalled—would weep with
-delight when you gave her a smile, but trembled with fear at your frown.
-Apparently Alice couldn't help behaving in this curious way—one
-gathers that she must have been the village idiot, harmless enough but
-undoubtedly an annoying sort of person to have hanging round, weeping
-copiously whenever anybody else was cheerful, and perhaps immediately
-afterward trembling in a disconcerting sort of way. She must have spoiled
-many a pleasant party in her day, so probably it was just as well that the
-community saw fit to file her away in the old churchyard in the obscure
-corner mentioned more or less rhythmically in the disclosures recorded as
-having been made to Mr. Bolt upon the occasion of his return to his native
-shire after what presumably had been a considerable absence.
-</p>
-<p>
-The poet chronicler, Mr. English, is a trifle vague on this point, but
-considering everything it is but fair to infer that Alice's funeral was
-practically by acclamation. Beyond question it must have been a relief to
-all concerned, including the family of deceased, to feel that a person so
-grievously afflicted mentally was at last permanently planted under a
-certain slab of stone rather loosely described in the conversation just
-referred to as granite so gray. One wishes Mr. English had been a trifle
-more exact in furnishing the particular details of this sad case. Still, I
-suppose it is hard for a poet to be technical and poetical at the same
-time. And though he failed to go into particulars I am quite sure that
-when asked if he didn't remember Alice, Mr. Bolt answered in the decided
-affirmative. It is a cinch he couldn't have forgotten her, the official
-half-wit and lightning-change artist of the county.
-</p>
-<p>
-But whereas this unfortunate young woman's conduct may only be accounted
-for on the grounds of a total irresponsibility, there is method behind the
-same sharply contrasted shift of mood as displayed by the chief salesman
-of the auction room. He is thrilled—visibly and physically thrilled—at
-each rapidly recurring opportunity of presenting an article for disposal
-to the highest bidder; hardly can he control his emotions of joy at the
-prospect of offering this particular object to an audience of
-discriminating tastes and balanced judgment. But mark the change: How
-instantly, how completely does a devastating and poignant distress
-overcome him when his hearers perversely decline to enter into spirited
-competition for a thing so priceless! A sob rises in his throat, choking
-his utterance to a degree where it becomes impossible for him to speak
-more than three or four hundred words per minute; grief dims his eye;
-regret—not on his own account but for others—droops his
-shoulders. When it comes to showing distress he makes that poor
-feeble-minded Alice girl look like a beginner. Yet repeated shocks of this
-character fail to daunt the sunniness of his true nature. The harder his
-spirits are dashed down to earth the greater the resiliency and the
-buoyancy with which they bounce up again. The man has a soul of new
-rubber!
-</p>
-<p>
-Let us draw near and scrutinize the scene that unfolds itself at each
-presentation: The attendants fetch out an offering described in the
-printed catalogue, let us say, as Number 77 A: Oriental Lamp with Silk
-Shade. Reverently they place it upon a velvet-covered stand in a space at
-the back end of the salesroom, where a platform is inclosed in draperies
-with lights so disposed overhead and in the wings as to shed a soft
-radiance upon the inclosed area. The helpers fade out of the picture
-respectfully. A tiny pause ensues; this stage wait has been skillfully
-timed; a suitable atmosphere subtly has been created. Oh, believe me, in
-New York we do these things with a proper regard for the dramatic values—culture
-governs all!
-</p>
-<p>
-The withdrawal of the attendants is the cue for our sunny friend, perched
-up as he is behind his little pulpit with his little gavel in his hand, to
-fall gracefully into a posture bespeaking in every curve of it a
-worshipful, almost an idolatrous admiration.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And now, ladies and gentlemen”—hear him say it—“I have the
-pleasure and the privilege of submitting for your approval one of the
-absolute gems of this splendid collection. A magnificent example of the
-Ming period—mind you, a genuine Ming. I am confidentially informed
-by the executors of the estate of the late Mr. Gezinks, the former owner
-of these wonderful belongings, that it was the prize piece of his entire
-collection. Look at the color—just look at the shape! Worth a
-thousand dollars if it is worth a cent. Try to buy it in one of the
-antique shops round the corner for that—just try, that's all I ask
-you to do. Now then”—this with a cheery, inviting, confident smile—“now
-then, what am I offered? Who'll start it off at five hundred?”
- </p>
-<p>
-There is no answer. A look of surprise not unmixed with chagrin crosses
-his mobile countenance. From his play of expression you feel that what he
-feels, underlying his other feelings, is a sympathy for people so blinded
-to their own good luck as not to leap headlong and en masse at this
-unparalleled chance.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Tut tut!” he exclaims and again, “tut tut! Very well, then,”—his
-tone is resigned—“do I hear four hundred and seventy-five—four
-hundred and fifty? Who'll start it at four twenty-five?”
- </p>
-<p>
-His gaze sweeps the faces of the assemblage. It is a compelling gaze,
-indeed you might say mes-meristic. There is a touch of pathos in it,
-though, an unuttered appeal to the gathering to consider its own several
-interests.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Do I hear four hundred?” He speaks of four hundred as an ostrich might
-speak of a tomtit's egg—as something comparatively insignificant and
-puny.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Twenty dollars!” pipes a voice.
-</p>
-<p>
-He clasps his hand to his brow. This is too much; it is much too much. But
-business is business. He rallies; he smiles bitterly, wanly. His soul
-within him is crushed and bruised, but he rallies. Rallying is one of the
-best things he does and one of the most frequent. The bidding livens,
-slackens, lags, then finally ceases. With a gesture betokening utter
-despair, with lineaments bathed in the very waters of woe, he
-heart-brokenly knocks the vase down to somebody for $88.50.
-</p>
-<p>
-But by the time the hired men have fetched forth Lot 78 he miraculously
-has recovered his former confidence and for the forty-oddth time since two
-o'clock—it is now nearly three forty-five—is his old cheerful
-beaming self. Thirty seconds later his heart has been broken in a fresh
-place; yet we may be sure that to-morrow morning when he rises he will be
-whistling a merry roundelay, his faith in the innate goodness of human
-nature all made new and fully restored to him. He would make a perfectly
-bully selection if you were sending a messenger to a home to break to an
-unsuspecting household some such tragic tidings, say; as that the head of
-the family, while rounding a turn on high, had skidded and was now being
-removed from the front elevation of an adjacent brick wall with a putty
-knife. If example counted for anything at all, he would have the mourners
-all cheered up again and the females among them discussing the most
-becoming modes in black crepe in less than no time at all.
-</p>
-<p>
-My, my, but how my sense of understanding did broaden under the influence
-of the auction sales we attended through the spring and on into the
-Summer. When the morning paper came we would turn to the advertising
-section and look for auction announcements. If there was to be one, and
-generally there was—one or more—we canceled all other plans
-and attended. Going to auctions became our regular employment, our
-pastime, our entertainment. It became our obsession. It almost became our
-joint calling in life. To our besetting mania we sacrificed all else.
-</p>
-<p>
-I remember there was one afternoon when John McCormack was billed to sing.
-I am very fond of hearing John McCormack. For one thing, he generally
-sings in a language which I can understand, and for another, I like his
-way of singing. He sings very much as I would sing if I had decided to
-take up singing for a living instead of writing. This is only one of the
-sacrifices I have made for the sake of English literature.
-</p>
-<p>
-McCormack that day had to struggle through without me. Because there was a
-sale of Italian antiques billed for three p. m., and we were going to have
-an Italian hall and an Italian living room in the new house, and we felt
-it to be our bounden duty to attend.
-</p>
-<p>
-It took some time and considerable work on the part of those fitted to
-guide me in the matter of decorations before I fell entirely into the idea
-of an Italian room, this possibly being due to the fact that I was born so
-far away from Italy and passed through childhood with so few Italian
-influences coming into my life. Even now I balk at the idea of hanging any
-faded red-silk stoles or copes, or whatever those ecclesiastical garments
-are, on my walls. I reserve the right to admire such a vestment when it is
-worn by the officiating cleric at church, but for the life of me and
-despite all that has repeatedly been said to me on the subject I fail to
-see where it belongs in a simple household as a part of the scheme of
-ornamentation.
-</p>
-<p>
-I do not think it proper to display a strange clergyman's cast-off costume
-in my little home any more than I would expect the canon of a cathedral to
-let me hang up a pair of my old overalls in his cathedral. Nor—if I
-must confess it—have I felt myself greatly drawn to the suggestion
-that we should have a lot of tall hand-painted candles sitting or standing
-round in odd spots. I mean those candlesticks which are painted in faded
-colors, with touches of dull gilt here and there on them and which are
-called after a lady named Polly Crome—their original inventor, I
-suppose she was, though her name does sound more as if Arnold Bennett had
-written her than as if she were a native Italian. I imagine she thought up
-this idea of a hand-painted candlestick nine feet tall and eighteen inches
-through at the base, and then in her honor the design was called after
-her, which in my humble opinion was compounding one mistake on top of
-another. Likewise I fear that I shall never become entirely reconciled to
-these old-model Italian chairs. My notion of a chair is something on which
-a body can sit for as long as half an hour without anesthetics. In most
-other details concerning antique furniture they have made a true believer
-out of me, but as regards chairs I am still some distance from being
-thoroughly converted. In chairs I favor a chair that is willing to meet
-you halfway, as it were, in an effort to be mutually comfortable. The
-other kind—the kind with a hard flat wooden seat and short legs and
-a stiff high back, a chair which looks as though originally it had been
-designed to be used by a clown dog in a trained animal act—may be
-artistic and beautiful in the chasteness of its lines and all this and
-that; but as for me, I say give me the kind of chair that has fewer
-admirers and more friends in the fireside circle. I take it that the early
-Italians were not a sedentary race. They could not have figured on staying
-long in one place.
-</p>
-<p>
-I suppose the trouble with me is that I was born and brought up on the
-American plan and have never entirely got over it. In fact I was told as
-much, though not perhaps in exactly those words, when antiques first
-became a vital issue in our domestic life. In no uncertain terms I was
-informed that everybody who is anybody goes in for the Italian these
-times. I believe the only conspicuous exceptions to the rule are the
-Italians who have emigrated to these shores. They, it would appear, are
-amply satisfied with American fixtures and fittings. I have a suspicion
-that possibly some of them in coming hither may have been actuated by a
-desire to get as far away as possible from those medieval effects in
-plumbing which seem to be inseparable from Old World architecture.
-</p>
-<p>
-My education progressed another step forward on the occasion of my first
-visit to an auction room where presumably desirable pieces of Italian
-workmanship were displayed as a preliminary to their being disposed of by
-public outcry. I was accompanied by a friend—the wormholeist already
-mentioned—and when he lapsed into rhapsodies over a pair of gilt
-mirrors, or rather mirrors which once upon a time, say about the time of
-the Fall of the Roman Empire, had been gilded, I was astonished.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Surely,” I said, “nobody would want those things. See where the glass is
-flawed—the quicksilver must be pretty nearly all gone from the backs
-of them. And the molding is falling off in chunks and what molding is left
-is so dingy and stained that it doesn't look like anything at all. If
-you're asking me, I'd call those mirrors a couple of total losses.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Exactly!” he said. “That is precisely what makes them so desirable. You
-can't counterfeit such age as these things show, my boy.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I shouldn't care to try,” I said. “Where I came from, when a mirror got
-in such shape that you couldn't see yourself in it it was just the same to
-us as a chorus girl that had both legs cut off in a railroad accident—it
-was regarded as having lost most of its practical use in life. Still, it
-is not for me, a raw green novice, a sub-novice as you might say, to set
-myself up against an expert like you. Anyhow, as the fellow said, live and
-learn. Let us move along to the next display of moldy remains.”
- </p>
-<p>
-We did so. We came to a refectory table. Ordinarily a refectory table
-mainly differs in outline from the ordinary dining table by being
-constructed on the model of a dachshund. But this table, I should guess
-offhand, had seen about four centuries of good hard steady refecting at
-the hands of succeeding generations of careless but earnest feeders. Its
-top was chipped and marred by a million scars, more or less. Its legs were
-scored and worn down. Its seams gaped. From sheer weakness it canted far
-down to one side. The pressure of a hand upon it set the poor, slanted,
-crippled wreck to shaking as though along with all its other infirmities
-it had a touch of buck ague.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What about this incurable invalid?” I asked. “Unless the fellow who buys
-it sends it up in a padded ambulance it'll be hard to get it home all in
-one piece. I suppose that makes it all the more valuable, eh?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Absolutely!” he said. “It's a perfectly marvelous thing! I figure it
-should bring at least six hundred dollars.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And cheap enough,” I said. “Why, it must have at least six hundred
-dollars' worth of things the matter with it. A good cabinet-maker could
-put in a nice busy month just patching—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You don't understand,” he said. “You surely wouldn't touch it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I shouldn't dare to,” I said. “I was speaking of a regular cabinet-maker.
-No green hand should touch it—he'd have it all in chunks in no
-time.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But the main value of it lies in leaving it in its present shape,” he
-told me. “Don't you realize that this is a condition which could never be
-duplicated by a workman?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, I've seen some house wreckers in my time who could produce a pretty
-fair imitation,” I retorted playfully. I continued in a musing vein, for
-the sight of that hopelessly damaged wreck all worn down and dented in and
-slivered off had sent my mind backward to a memory of early childhood. I
-said:
-</p>
-<p>
-“I can see now how my parents made a mistake in stopping me from doing
-something I tackled when I was not more than six years old. I was an
-antiquer, but I didn't know it and they didn't know it. They thought that
-I was damaging the furniture, when as a matter of fact in my happy,
-innocent, childish way I was adding touches to it which would have been
-worth considerable money by now.”
- </p>
-<p>
-What I was thinking of was this: On my sixth birthday, I think it was, an
-uncle of mine for whom I was named gave me a toy tool chest containing a
-complete outfit of tools. There was a miniature hammer and a plane and a
-set of wooden vises and a gimlet and the rest of the things which belong
-in a carpenter's kit, but the prize of the entire collection to my way of
-thinking was a cross-cut saw measuring about eight inches from tip to tip.
-</p>
-<p>
-Armed with this saw, I went round sawing things, or rather trying to. I
-could not exactly saw with it, but I could haggle the edges and corners of
-wood, producing a gnawed, frazzled effect. My quest for stuff suitable to
-exercise my handicraft on led me into the spare, or company room, where I
-found material to my liking. I was raking away at the legs of a rosewood
-center table—had one leg pretty well damaged to my liking and was
-preparing to start on another—when some officious grown person
-happened in on me and stopped me with violent words. If I had but been
-left undisturbed for half an hour or so I doubtless would have achieved a
-result which now after a lapse of thirty-odd years would have thrilled a
-lover of antiques to the core of his being. But this was not to be.
-</p>
-<p>
-My present recollection of the incident is that I was chided in a painful
-physical way. The latter-day system of inculcating lessons in the mind of
-the child according to a printed form chart of soothing words was not
-known in our community at that time. The old-fashioned method of using the
-back of a hairbrush and imparting the lesson at the other end of the child
-from where the mind is and letting it travel all the way through him was
-employed. I was then ordered to go outdoors where there would be fewer
-opportunities for engaging in what adults mistakenly called mischief.
-</p>
-<p>
-Regretting that the nurse that morning had seen fit to encase me in
-snug-fitting linen breeches instead of woolen ones, I wandered about
-carrying my saw in one hand and with the other hand from time to time
-rubbing a certain well-defined area of my small person to allay the
-afterglow. In the barnyard I came upon an egg lying on the edge of a mud
-puddle under the protecting lee of the chicken-yard fence. I can shut my
-eyes and see that egg right now. It was rather an abandoned-looking egg,
-stained and blotched with brownish-yellow spots. It had the look about it
-of an egg with a past—a fallen egg, as you might say.
-</p>
-<p>
-Some impulse moved me to squat down and draw the toothed blade of my saw
-thwartwise across the bulge of that egg. For the first time in my little
-life I was about to have dealings with a genuine antique, but naturally at
-my age and with my limited experience I did not realize that. Probably I
-was actuated only by a desire to find out whether I could saw right
-through the shell of an egg amidships. That phase of the proceedings is
-somewhat blurred in my mind, though the dénouement remains a vivid memory
-spot to this very day.
-</p>
-<p>
-I imparted a brisk raking movement to the saw. It is my distinct
-recollection that a fairly loud explosion immediately occurred. I was
-greatly shocked. One too young to know aught of the chemical effect on the
-reactions following the admission of fresh air to gaseous matter, which
-has been forming to the fulminating point within a tightly sealed casing,
-would naturally be shocked to have an egg go off suddenly in that violent
-manner. Modern military science, I suppose, would classify it as having
-been a contact egg.
-</p>
-<p>
-Not only was I badly shocked, but also I had a profound conviction that in
-some way I had been taken advantage of—that my confidence had in
-some strange fashion been betrayed. I left my saw where I had dropped it.
-At the moment I felt that never again would I care to have anything to do
-with a tool so dangerous. I also left the immediate vicinity of where the
-accident had occurred and for some minutes wandered about in rather a
-distracted fashion. There did not seem to be any place in particular for
-me to go, and yet I could not bear to stay wherever I was. I wished, as it
-were, to get entirely away from myself—a morbid fancy perhaps for a
-mere six-year-old to be having, and yet, I think, a natural one under the
-circumstances.
-</p>
-<p>
-I had a conviction that I would not be welcomed indoors and at the same
-time realized that even out in the great open where I could get air—and
-air was what I especially craved—I was likely to be shunned by such
-persons as I might accidentally encounter. Indeed I rather shunned myself,
-if you get what I mean. I was filled with a general shunning sensation. I
-felt mortified, too. And this emotion, I found a few minutes later, was
-shared by the black cook, who, issuing from the kitchen door, happened
-upon me in the act of endeavoring to freshen up myself somewhat from a
-barrel of rain water which stood under the eaves. She evidently decided
-offhand that not only had mortification set in but that it had reached an
-advanced stage. Her language so indicated.
-</p>
-<p>
-And now, after more than three and a half decades, here on Fifth Avenue
-more than a thousand miles remote from those infantile scenes, I was
-gleaning another memorable lesson about antiques. I was learning that junk
-ceases to be junk if only it costs enough money, and thereafter becomes
-treasure.
-</p>
-<p>
-Having had this great principal fact firmly implanted in my consciousness,
-I shortly thereafter embarked in congenial company upon the auction-room
-life upon which already I have touched. We went to sales when we had
-anything to buy and when we had nothing to buy—somehow we did not
-seem to be able to stay away. The joy of bidding a thing up and maybe of
-having it knocked down to us undermined our pooled will power; it weakened
-our joint resistance.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And sold to——” became our slogan, our shibboleth and our most
-familiar sentence. By day we heard it, by night it dinned in our ears as
-we slept, dreaming dreams of going bankrupt in this mad, delirious pursuit
-which had mastered us and spending our last days in a poorhouse entirely
-furnished in Italian antiques.
-</p>
-<p>
-But taking everything into consideration, I must say the game was worth
-the candle. By degrees we acquired the furnishings for our two Italian
-rooms and our other rooms—which, thank heaven, are not Italian but
-what you might call fancy-mixed! And by degrees likewise I perfected my
-artistic education. Of course we made mistakes in selection, as who does
-not? We have a few auction-room skeletons tucked away in our closet, or to
-speak more exactly, in the attic of the new house. But in the main we are
-satisfied with what we have done and no doubt will continue to be until
-Italian-style furniture goes out and Aztec Indian or Peruvian Inca or
-Thibetan Grand Llama or some other style comes in.
-</p>
-<p>
-And when our friends drop in for an evening we talk decorations and
-furnishings—it is a subject which never wears out. Mostly the women
-callers favor discussions of tapestries and brocades with intervals spent
-in fits of mutual wonder over the terrible taste shown by some other woman—not
-present—in buying the stuff for her house; and the men are likely to
-be interested in carvings or paintings; but my strong suit is wormholing
-in all its branches—that and patina. I am very strong on the latter
-subject, also. In fact among friends I am now getting to be known as the
-Patina Kid.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER VIII, THE ADVENTURE OF LADY MAUDE
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> have dealt at length with our adventures at Fifth Avenue auction houses
-when we were amassing the furnishings for our Italian rooms and our
-Italian hallway. But I forgot to make mention of the many friends we
-encountered at the salesrooms—people who always before had seemed to
-us entirely normal, but now were plainly to be recognized for devotees of
-the same passion for bidding-in which had lain its insidious clutches upon
-us. I recall one victim in particular, a young woman whom I shall call
-Maude because that happens to be her name.
-</p>
-<p>
-Theretofore this Maude lady had impressed mo as being one of the sanest,
-most competent females of my entire acquaintance—good-looking, witty
-and with a fine sense of proportion. Yet behold, here she was, balanced on
-the edge of a folding chair in an overheated, overcrowded room, her eyes
-feverish with a fanatical light, a printed catalogue clutched in her left
-hand and her right ready to go up in signal to the hypnotic gentleman on
-the auctioneer's block. At a glance we knew the symptoms because in them
-we saw duplicated our own. We knew exactly what ailed her: She was bidding
-on various articles, not because she particularly wanted them, but because
-she feared unless she bought them some stranger might.
-</p>
-<p>
-After the sale had ended and her excitement—and ours—had
-abated we exchanged confidences touching on our besetting mania.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Just coming and buying something that I wish afterward I hadn't bought
-isn't the worst of it,” she owned. “That is destructive only to my
-spending allowance. My chief trouble is that I've gotten so I can't bear
-to think of spending my afternoons anywhere except at this place or one of
-the places like it. And if there happen to be two sales going the same day
-at different shops I'm perfectly miserable. All the time I'm sitting in
-one I'm distracted by the thought that possibly I'm missing some perfectly
-wonderful bargain at the other. Sometimes I suspect that my intellect is
-beginning to give way under the strain, and then again I'm sure I'm on the
-verge of a nervous breakdown. My husband has his own diagnosis. He says
-I'm just plain nutty, as he vulgarly expresses it. He has taken to calling
-me Nutchita, which he says is Spanish for a little nut. You know since
-Scott came back from South America he just adores to show off the Spanish
-he learned. He loves to tell how he went to a bull fight down there and
-saw the gallant mandatory stab the charging parabola to the heart with his
-shining bolero or whatever you call it.
-</p>
-<p>
-“He says there is no hope of curing me and he appreciates the fact that
-teams of horses couldn't drag me away from these auction rooms, but he
-suggested that maybe we might be saved from spending our last days at the
-almshouse if before I started out on my mad career each afternoon I'd get
-somebody to muffle me and tie my arms fast so I couldn't bid on anything.
-But even if I couldn't speak or gesticulate I could still nod, so I
-suppose that wouldn't help. Besides, as I said to him, I would probably
-attract a good deal of attention riding down Fifth Avenue with my hands
-tied behind my back and a gag in my mouth. But he says he'd much rather I
-were made conspicuous now than that I should be even more conspicuous
-later on at a feeble-minded institute; he says they'd probably keep me in
-a strait-jacket anyhow after I reached the violent stage and that I might
-as well begin getting used to the feeling now.
-</p>
-<p>
-“All joking aside, though, I really did have a frightful experience last
-winter,” she continued. “There was a sale of desirable household effects
-advertised to take place up at Blank's on West Forty-fifth Street and of
-course I went. I've spent so much of my time at Blank's these last few
-months I suppose people are beginning to think I live there. Well, anyway,
-I was one of the first arrivals and just as I got settled the auctioneer
-put up a basket; a huge, fiat, curious-looking, wickerwork affair, it was.
-You never in all your life saw such a basket! It was too big for a
-soiled-clothes hamper and besides wasn't the right shape. And it was too
-flat to store things in and it didn't have any top on it either. I suppose
-you would just call it a kind of a basket.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, the man put it up and asked for bids on it, but nobody bid; and
-then the auctioneer looked right at me in an appealing sort of way—I
-feel that everybody connected with the shop is an old friend of mine by
-now, and especially the auctioneer—so when he looked in my direction
-with that yearning expression in his eye I bid a dollar just to start it
-off for him. And what do you think? Before you could say scat he'd knocked
-it down to me for a dollar. I just hate people who catch you up suddenly
-that way! It discouraged me so that after that the sale was practically
-spoiled for me. I didn't have the courage to bid on another thing the
-whole afternoon.
-</p>
-<p>
-“When the sale was over I went back to the packing room to get a good look
-at what I'd bought. And, my dear, what do you suppose? I hadn't bought a
-single basket—that would have been bad enough—but no. I'd
-bought a job lot, comprising the original basket and its twin sister that
-was exactly like it, only homelier if anything, and on top of that an
-enormous square wooden box painted a bright green with a great lock
-fastening the lid down. That wretch of an auctioneer had deliberately
-taken a shameful advantage of me. How was I to know I was bidding in a
-whole wagonload of trash? Obtaining money under false pretenses, that's
-what I call it.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, I stood aghast—or perhaps I should say I leaned aghast,
-because the shock was so great I felt I had to prop myself up against
-something. Why, the box alone must have weighed a hundred and fifty
-pounds. It didn't seem to be the sort of box you could put anything in
-either. It wouldn't do for a wood box or a coal box or a dog house or
-anything. It was just as useless as the baskets were, and they were
-nothing more nor less than two orders of willow-ware on the half shell.
-Even if they had been of any earthly use, what could I do with them in the
-tiny three-room apartment that we were occupying last winter? Isn't it
-perfectly shameful the way these auction-room people impose on the public?
-They don't make any exceptions either. Here was I, a regular customer, and
-just see what they had done to me, all because I'm so good-natured and
-sympathetic. I declare sometimes I'm ready to take a solemn oath I'll
-never do another favor for anybody so long as I live. It's the selfish
-ones who get along in this world!
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, when I realized what a scandalous trick had been played on me I was
-seized with a wild desire to get away. I decided I would try to slip out.
-But the manager had his eye on me. You know the rule they have: 'Claim all
-purchases and arrange for their removal before leaving premises, otherwise
-goods will be stored at owner's risk and cost.' And he called me back and
-told me my belongings were ready to be taken away and would I kindly get
-them out of the house at once because they took up so much room. Room?
-They took up all the room there was. You had to step into one of the
-baskets to get into the place and climb over the box to get out again.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I asked him how I was going to get those things up to my address and he
-suggested a taxi. I told him I would just run out and find a taxi,
-meaning, of course, to forget to come back. But he told me not to bother
-because there was a taxi at the door that had been ordered to come for
-somebody else and then wasn't needed. And before I could think up any
-other excuse to escape he'd called the taxi driver in. And the taxi man
-took one look at my collection of junk and then he asked us if we thought
-he was driving a moving van or a Noah's ark and laughed in a low-bred way
-and went out.
-</p>
-<p>
-“At that I had a faint ray of hope that maybe after all I might be saved,
-because I had made up my mind to tell the manager I would just step
-outside and arrange to hire a delivery wagon or something, and that would
-give me a chance to escape; but I think he must have suspected something
-from my manner because already he was calling in another taxi driver from
-off the street, and there I was, trapped. And the driver of the second
-taxi was more accommodating than the other one had been, though goodness
-knows his goodness of heart was no treat to me. I should have regarded it
-as a personal kindness on his part if he had behaved as the first driver
-had done. But no, nothing would do but that he must load that ghastly
-monstrosity of a box up alongside him on the rack where they carry trunks,
-and two of the packing-room men tied it on with ropes so it couldn't fall
-off and get lost. I suppose they thought by that they were doing me a
-favor! And then I got in the cab feeling like Marie Antoinette on her way
-to be beheaded, and they piled those two baskets in on top of me and the
-end of one of them stuck out so far that they couldn't get the door shut
-but had to leave it open. And then we rode home, only I didn't feel like
-Marie Antoinette any more; I felt like something that was being delivered
-in a crate and had come partly undone on the way.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And when we got up to Eighty-ninth Street that bare-faced robber of a
-taxicab driver charged me two extra fares—just think of such things
-being permitted to go on in a city where the police are supposed to
-protect people! And then he unloaded all that mess on the sidewalk in
-front of the apartment house and drove off and left me there standing
-guard over it—probably the forlornest, most helpless object in all
-New York at that moment.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I got one of the hallboys to call the janitor up from the basement and I
-asked him if he would be good enough to store my box and my two baskets in
-the storeroom where the tenants keep their trunks. And he said not on my
-life he wouldn't, because there wasn't any room to spare in the trunk room
-and then he asked me what I was going to do with all that truck anyway,
-and though it was none of his business I thought it would be tactful to
-make a polite answer and I told him I hadn't exactly decided yet and that
-I certainly would appreciate his kindness if he could just tuck my things
-away in some odd corner somewhere until I had fully made up my mind. While
-I was saying that I was giving him one of my most winning smiles, though
-it hurt like the toothache to smile under the circumstances and
-considering what I'd already been through.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But all he said was: 'Huh, lady, you couldn't tuck them things away at
-Times Square and Forty-third Street and that's the biggest corner I knows
-of in this town.'
-</p>
-<p>
-“The impudent scoundrel wouldn't relent a mite either, until I'd given him
-a dollar for a tip, and then he did agree to keep the baskets in the coal
-cellar for a couple of days but no longer. But he absolutely refused to
-take the box along too, so I had to have it sent upstairs to the apartment
-and put in the bedroom because it was too big to go in the hall. And when
-the men got it in the bedroom I could hardly get in myself to take off my
-hat. And after that I sat down and cried a little, because really I was
-frightfully upset, and moreover I had a feeling that when Scott came home
-he would be sure to try to be funny. You know how husbands are, being one
-yourself!
-</p>
-<p>
-“Sure enough, when he came in the first thing he saw was that box. He
-couldn't very well help seeing it because he practically fell over it as
-he stepped in the door. He said: 'What's this?' and I said: 'It's a box'—just
-like that. And he said: 'What kind of a box?' And I didn't like his tone
-and I said: 'A green box. I should think anybody would know that much.'
-And he said: 'Ah, indeed,' several times in a most aggravating way and
-walked round it. He couldn't walk all the way round it on account of the
-wall being in the way; but as far round it as he could walk without
-bumping into the wall. And he looked at it and felt it with his hand and
-kicked it once or twice and then he sniffed and said: 'And what's it for?'
-And I said: 'To put things in.' And he said: 'For instance, what?'
-</p>
-<p>
-“Now I despise for people to be so technical round me, and besides, of all
-the words in the English language I most abhor those words 'for instance';
-but I kept my temper even if I was boiling inside and I said: 'It's to put
-things in that you haven't any other place to put them in.' Which was
-ungrammatical, I admit, but the best I could do under the prevalent
-conditions. And then he looked at me until I could have screamed, and he
-said: 'Maude, where did you get that damned thing?' And I said it wasn't a
-damned thing but a perfectly good box made out of wood and painted green
-and everything; and that I'd got it at an auction sale for a dollar and
-that I considered it a real bargain. I didn't feel called on to tell him
-about the two baskets down in the coal cellar just yet. So I didn't
-mention them; and anyhow, heaven knows I was sick and tired of the whole
-subject and ready to drop it, but he kept on looking at it and sniffing
-and asking questions. Some people have no idea how a great strong brute of
-a man can nag a weak defenseless woman to desperation when he deliberately
-sets out to do it.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Finally I said: 'Well, even if you don't like the box I think it's a
-perfectly splendid box, and look what a good strong lock it has on it—surely
-that's worth something.' And he said: 'Well, let's see about that—where's
-the key?' And, my dear, then it dawned on me that I didn't have any key!
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, a person can stand just so much and no more. I'm a patient
-long-suffering woman and I've always been told that I had a wonderful
-disposition, but there are limits. And when he burst out laughing and
-wouldn't stop laughing but kept right on and laughed and laughed and
-leaned up against something and laughed some more until you could have
-heard him in the next block—why then, all of a sudden something
-seemed to give way inside of me and I burst out crying—I couldn't
-hold in another second—and I told him that I'd never speak to him
-again the longest day he lived and that he could go to Halifax or some
-other place beginning with the same initial and take the old box with him
-for all I cared; and just as I burst out of the room I heard him say: 'No,
-madam, when I married you I agreed to support you, but I didn't engage to
-take care of any air-tight, burglar-proof, pea-green box the size of a
-circus cage!' And I suppose he thought that was being funny, too. A
-perverted sense of humor is an awful cross to bear—in a husband!
-</p>
-<p>
-“So I went and lay down on the living-room couch with a raging, splitting,
-sick headache and I didn't care whether I lived or died, but on the whole
-rather preferred dying. After a little he came in, trying to hold his face
-straight, and begged my pardon. And I told him I would forgive him if he
-would do just two things. And he asked me what those two things were and I
-told him one was to quit snickering like an idiot every few moments and
-the other was never to mention boxes to me again as long as he lived. And
-he promised on his solemn word of honor he wouldn't, but he said I must
-bear with him if he smiled a little bit once in a while as the evening
-wore on, because when he did that he would be thinking about something
-very funny that had happened at the office that day and not thinking about
-what I would probably think he was thinking about at all. And then he said
-how about running down to the Plaza for a nice little dinner and I said
-yes, and after dinner I felt braced up and strong enough to break the news
-to him about the two baskets.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And he didn't laugh; in justice to him I must say that much for him. He
-didn't laugh. Only he choked or something, and had a very severe coughing
-spell. And then we went home and while he was undressing he fell over the
-box and barked his shins on it, and though it must have been a strain on
-him he behaved like a gentleman and swore only a little.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But, my dear, the worst was yet to come! The next day I had to arrange to
-send the whole lot to storage because we simply couldn't go on living with
-that box in the only bedroom we had; and the bill for cartage came to two
-dollars and a quarter. After I had seen them off to the storage warehouse
-I tried to forget all about them. As a matter of fact they never crossed
-my mind again until we moved out to the country in April and then I
-suddenly remembered about them—getting a bill for three months'
-storage at two dollars a month may have had something to do with bringing
-them forcibly to my memory—and I telephoned in and asked the manager
-of the storage warehouse if he please wouldn't give them to somebody and
-he said he didn't know anybody who would have all that junk as a gift. So
-it seemed to me the best thing and the most economical thing to do would
-be to pay the bill to date and bring them on out to the place.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But, as it turned out, that was a financial mistake, too. Because what
-with sending the truck all the way into town, thirty-eight miles and back
-again, and the wear and tear on the tires and the gasoline and the man's
-time who drove the truck and what Scott calls the overhead—though I
-don't see what he means by that because it is an open truck without any
-top to it at all—we figure, or rather Scott does, that the cost of
-getting them out to the country came to fourteen dollars.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And we still have them, and if you should happen to know of anybody or
-should meet anybody who'd like to have two very large roomy wicker baskets
-and a very well-made wooden box painted in all-over design in a very good
-shade of green and which may contain something valuable, because I haven't
-been able to open it yet to find out what's inside, and with a lock that
-goes with it, I wish you'd tell them that they can send up to our place
-and get them any time that is convenient to them. Or if they don't live
-too far away I'd be very glad to send the things over to them. Only I'd
-like for them to decide as soon as possible because the gardener, who is
-Swedish and awfully fussy, keeps coming in every few days and complaining
-about them and asking why I don't have them moved out of the greenhouse,
-which is where we are keeping them for the present, and put some other
-place where they won't be forever getting in his way. Only there doesn't
-seem to be any other suitable place to keep them in unless we build a shed
-especially for that purpose. Isn't it curious that sometimes on a
-hundred-acre farm there should be so little spare room? I should hate to
-go to the added expense of building that shed, and so, as I was saying
-just now, if you should happen upon any one who could use those baskets
-and that box please don't forget to tell them about my offer.”
- </p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER IX. US LANDED PROPRIETORS
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>o the best of my ability I have been quoting Lady Maude verbatim; but if
-unintentionally I have permitted any erroneous quotations to creep into
-her remarks they will be corrected before these lines reach the reader's
-eye, because the next time she and Scott come over—they are
-neighbors of ours out here in Westchester—I mean to ask her to t
-read copy on this book. They drop in on us quite frequently and we talk
-furnishings, and Scott sits by and smokes and occasionally utters low
-mocking sounds under his breath, for as yet he has not been entirely won
-over to antiques. There are times when I fear that Scott, though a most
-worthy person in all other regards, is hopelessly provincial. Well, I was
-a trifle provincial myself before I took the cure.
-</p>
-<p>
-Perhaps I should say that sometimes we talk furnishings with Mistress
-Maude, but more often we talk farming problems, with particular reference
-to our own successes and the failures of our friends in the same sphere of
-endeavor. Indeed, farming is the commonest topic of conversation in our
-vicinity. Because, like us, nearly all our friends in this part of the
-country were formerly flat dwellers and because, like us, all of them have
-done a lot of experimenting in the line of intensified, impractical
-agriculture since they moved to the country.
-</p>
-<p>
-We seek to profit by one another's mistakes, and we do—that is, we
-profit by them to the extent of gloating over them. Then we go and make a
-few glaring mistakes on our own account, and when the word of it spreads
-through the neighborhood, seemingly on the wings of the wind, it is their
-turn to gloat. We have a regular Gloat Club with an open membership and no
-dues. If an amateur tiller of the soil and his wife drop in on us on a
-fine spring evening to announce that yesterday they had their first mess
-of green peas, whereas our pea vines are still in the blossoming state; or
-if in midsummer they come for the express purpose of informing us that
-they have been eating roasting ears for a week—they knowing full
-well that our early corn has suffered a backset—we compliment them
-with honeyed words, and outwardly our manner may bespeak a spirit of
-friendly congratulation, but in our souls all is bitterness.
-</p>
-<p>
-After they have left one catches oneself saying to one's helpmeet: “Well,
-the Joneses are nice people in a good many respects. Jones would loan you
-the last cent he had on earth if you were in trouble and needed it, and in
-most regards Mrs. Jones is about as fine a little woman as you'd meet in a
-day's ride. But dog-gone it, I wish they didn't brag so much!” Then one of
-us opportunely recalls that last year their potatoes developed a slow and
-mysterious wasting disease resembling malignant tetter, which carried off
-the entire crop in its infancy, whereas we harvested a cellarful of
-wonderful praties free from skin blemishes of whatever sort; and warmed by
-that delectable recollection we cheer up a bit. And if our strawberries
-turn out well or our apple trees bear heavily or our cow has twin calves,
-both of the gentler sex, we lose no time in going about the countryside to
-spread the tidings, leaving in our wake saddened firesides and hearts all
-abrim with the concentrated essence of envy.
-</p>
-<p>
-Practically all our little group specialize. We go in for some line that
-is absolutely guaranteed to be profitable until the expense becomes too
-great for a person of limited means any longer to bear up under. Then we
-drop that and specialize in another line, also recommended as being highly
-lucrative, for so long as we can afford it; and then we tackle something
-else again. It is a never-ending round of new experiences, because no
-matter how disastrously one's most recent experiment has tinned out the
-agricultural weeklies are constantly holding forth the advantages of a
-field as yet new and untried and morally insured to be one that will yield
-large and nourishing dividends. It is my sober conviction that the most
-inspired fiction writers in America—the men with the most buoyant
-imaginations—are the regular contributors to our standard
-agricultural journals. And next to them the most gifted romancers are the
-fellows who sell bulbs and seeds. They are not fabulists exactly, because
-fables have morals and frequently these persons have none, but they are
-inspired fancifiers, I'll tell the world.
-</p>
-<p>
-Each succeeding season finds each family among us embarking upon some new
-and fascinating venture. For instance, I have one friend who this year
-went in for bees—Italian bees, I think he said they were, though why
-he should have been prejudiced against the native-born variety I cannot
-understand. He used to drop in at our place to borrow a little cooking
-soda—he was constantly running out of cooking soda at his house
-owing to using so much of it on his face and hands and his neck for
-poulticing purposes—and tell us what charming creatures bees were
-and how much honey he expected to lay by that fall. From what he said we
-gathered that the half had never been told by Maeterlinck about the
-engaging personal habits and captivating tribal customs of bees; bees, we
-gathered, were, as a race, perhaps a trifle quicktempered and hot-headed,
-or if not exactly hotheaded at least hot elsewhere, but ever ready to
-forgive and forget and, once the heat of passion had passed, to let
-bygones be bygones. A bee, it seemed from his accounts, was one creature
-that always stood ready to meet you halfway.
-</p>
-<p>
-He finally gave up bee culture though, not because his enthusiasm had
-waned, for it did not, but for professional reasons solely. He is a
-distinguished actor and when he got the leading rôle in a new play it
-broke in on his study of the part to be dropping the manuscript every few
-minutes and grabbing up a tin dish and running out in an endeavor, by the
-power of music, to induce a flock of swarming bees to rehive themselves,
-or whatever it is bees are supposed to do when favored with a pie-pan
-solo. It seemed his bees had a perfect mania for swarming. The least
-little thing would set them off. There must have been too much artistic
-temperament about the premises for such emotional and flighty creatures as
-bees appear to be.
-</p>
-<p>
-Then there was another reason: After the play went on he found it
-interfered with his giving the best that was in him to his art if he had
-to go on for a performance all bumpy in spots; also he discovered that
-grease paint had the effect of irritating a sting rather than soothing it.
-The other afternoon he came over and offered to give me his last remaining
-hive of bees. Indeed, he almost pressed them on me.
-</p>
-<p>
-I declined though. I told him to unload his little playmates on some
-stranger; that I valued his friendship and hoped to keep it; the more
-especially, as I now confessed to him, since I had lately thought that if
-literature ever petered out I might take up the drama as a congenial mode
-of livelihood, and in such case would naturally benefit through the good
-offices of a friend who was already in the business and doing well at it.
-Not, however, that I felt any doubt regarding my ultimate success. I do
-not mean by this that I have seriously considered playwriting as a regular
-profession. Once I did seriously consider it, but nobody else did, and
-especially the critics didn't. Remembering what happened to the only
-dramatic offering I ever wrote, I long ago made up my mind that if ever I
-wrote another play—which, please heaven, I shall not—I would
-call it Solomon Grundy, whether I had a character of that name in it or
-not. You may recall what happened to the original Solomon Grundy—how
-he was born on a Monday, began to fail on Thursday, passed away on
-Saturday of the same week and was laid to eternal rest on Sunday. So even
-though I never do another play I have the name picked out and ready and
-waiting.
-</p>
-<p>
-No, my next venture into the realm of Thespis, should necessity direct my
-steps thither, would land me directly upon the histrionic boards. Ever
-since I began to fill out noticeably I have nourished this ambition
-secretly. As I look at it, a pleasing plumpness of outline should be no
-handicap but on the contrary rather a help. My sex of course is against my
-undertaking to play The Two Orphans, otherwise I should feel no doubt of
-my ability to play both of them, and if they had a little sister I
-shouldn't be afraid to take her on, too. But I do rather fancy myself in
-the title rôles of The Corsican Brothers. If I should show some
-enterprising manager how he might pay out one salary and save another,
-surely the idea would appeal to him; and some of these fine days I may
-give the idea a try. So having this contingency in mind I gently but
-firmly told my friend to take his bees elsewhere. I told him I had no
-intention of looking a gift bee in the mouth.
-</p>
-<p>
-We have another neighbor who has gone in rather extensively for blooded
-stock with the intention ultimately of producing butter and milk for the
-city market. During practically all his active life he has been a
-successful theatrical manager, which naturally qualifies him for the cow
-business. He is doing very well at it too. So long as he continues to
-enjoy successful theatrical seasons he feels that he will be able to go on
-with cows. Being a shrewd and far seeing business man he has it all
-figured out that a minimum of three substantial enduring hits every autumn
-will justify him in maintaining his herd at its present proportions,
-whereas with four shows on Broadway all playing to capacity he might even
-increase it to the extent of investing in a few more head of registered
-thoroughbred stock.
-</p>
-<p>
-From him I have gleaned much regarding cows. Before, the life of a cow
-fancier had been to me as a closed book. Generally speaking, cows, so far
-as my personal knowledge went, were divided roughly into regular cows
-running true to sex, and the other kind of cows, which were invariably
-referred to with a deep blush by old-fashioned maiden ladies. True enough,
-we owned cows during the earlier stages of our rural life; in fact, we own
-one now, a mild-eyed creature originally christened Buttercup but called
-by us Sahara because of her prevalent habits. But gentle bone-dry Sahara
-is just a plain ordinary cow of undistinguished ancestry. In the preceding
-generations of her line scandal after scandal must have occurred; were she
-a bagpipe solo instead of a cow scarcely could she have in her more mixed
-strains than she has. We acquired her at a bargain in an auction sale; she
-is a bargain to any one desiring a cow of settled and steady habits,
-regular at her meals, always with an unfailing appetite and having a deep
-far-reaching voice. There is also an expectation that some future day we
-may also derive from her milk. However, this contingency rests, as one
-might say, upon the laps of the gods.
-</p>
-<p>
-The point I am getting at though is that Sahara, whatever else of merit
-she may possess in the matters of a kind disposition and a willingness to
-eat whatever is put before her, is after all but a mere common
-country-bred cow; whereas the cows whose society my wealthy neighbor
-cultivates are the pedigreed aristocrats of their breed, and for buying
-and selling purposes are valued accordingly. Why, from the way the
-proprietors of registered cows brag about their ancient lineage and their
-blue-blooded forbears you might think they were all from South Carolina or
-Massachusetts—the cows, I mean, not necessarily the proprietors.
-</p>
-<p>
-So it is with the man of whom I have been speaking. Having become a
-breeder of fancy stock he now appraises a cow not for what she can do on
-her own intrinsic merits but for the size of her family tree, provided she
-brings with her the documents to prove it. So far as cows are concerned he
-has become a confirmed ancestor worshipper. I am sure he would rather own
-a quarter interest in a collateral descendant of old Prince Bullcon the
-First of the royal family of the Island of Guernsey, even though the
-present bearer of the name were but an indifferent milker and of unsettled
-habits, than to be the sole possessor of some untitled but versatile cow
-giving malted milk and whipped cream. Such vagaries I cannot fathom. In a
-democratic country like this, or at least in a country which used to be
-democratic, it seems to me we should value a cow not for what her
-grandparents may have been; not for the names emblazoned on her
-genealogical record, but for what she herself is.
-</p>
-<p>
-The other Sunday we drove over to his place ostensibly to pay a neighborly
-call but really to plant distress in his fireside circle by incidentally
-mentioning that our young grapevines were bearing magnificently.
-</p>
-<p>
-You see, a member of the Gloat Club is expected to work at his trade
-Sundays as well as weekdays; and besides we had heard that his arbors,
-with the coming of the autumn, had seemed a bit puny. So the opportunity
-was too good to be lost and we went over.
-</p>
-<p>
-After I had driven the harpoon into his soul and watched it sink into him
-up to the barbs he took me out to see the latest improvements he had made
-in his cow bam and to call upon the newest addition to his herd. These
-times you can bed a hired hand down almost anywhere, but if you go in for
-blooded stock you must surround them with the luxuries to which they have
-been accustomed, else they are apt to go into a decline. He invited my
-inspection of the porcelain-walled stalls and the patent feeding devices
-and the sanitary fixtures which abounded on every hand, and to his
-recently installed cream separator. In my youth the only cream separator
-commonly in vogue was the type of drooping mustache worn by the average
-deputy sheriff, and anyhow, with it, cream separating was merely
-incidental, the real purposes of the mustache being to be ornamental and
-impressive and subtly to convey a proper respect for the majesty of the
-law. Often a town marshal wore one too. But the modern separator is a
-product of science and not a gift of Nature skillfully elaborated by the
-art of the barber. It costs a heap of money and it operates by machinery
-and no really stylish dairy farm is complete without it.
-</p>
-<p>
-When I had viewed these wonders he led me to a glorified pasture lot and
-presented me to the occupant—a smallish cow of, a prevalent henna
-tone. Except that she had rather slender legs and a permanent wave between
-the horns she seemed to my uninitiated eyes much the same as any other cow
-of the Jersey persuasion. I realized, however, that she must be very
-high-church. My friend, I knew, would harbor no nonconformist cows in his
-place, and besides, she distinctly had the high-church manner, a thing
-which is indefinable in terms of speech but unmistakably to be recognized
-wherever found. Otherwise, though, I could observe nothing about her
-calculated to excite the casual passer-by. But my friend was all
-enthusiasm.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Now,” he said proudly, “what do you think of that for a perfect
-specimen?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well,” I said, “anybody could tell that she's had a lot of refining
-influences coming into her life. She's no doubt cultured and ladylike to a
-degree; and she has the fashionable complexion of the hour and she's all
-marcelled up and everything, but excepting for these adornments has she
-any special accomplishments that are calculated to give her class?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Class!” he repeated. “Class, did you say? Say, listen! That cow has all
-the class there is. She's less than two years old and she cost me a cool
-fifteen hundred cash—and cheap at the figure, at that.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Fifteen hundred,” I murmured dazedly. “What does she give?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why, she gives milk, of course,” he explained. “What else would she be
-giving?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well,” I said, “I should think that at that price she should at least
-give music lessons. Perhaps she does plain sewing?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Say,” he demanded, “what do you expect for fifteen hundred dollars?
-Fifteen hundred is a perfectly ridiculous price to pay for a cow with a
-pedigree such as this cow has. She's registered back I don't know how far.
-It's the regal breeding you pay for when you get an animal like this—not
-the animal herself.”
- </p>
-<p>
-But I refused to be swept off my feet. Before this I had associated with
-royalty. I once met a lineal descendant of William the Conqueror; he told
-me so himself. Being a descendant was apparently the only profession he
-had, and I judged this cow was in much the same line of business. “Well,”
- I replied, “all I can say is that I wouldn't care if her ancestors came
-over on the Mayflower—if she belonged to me she'd have to show me
-something in the line of special endeavor. She'd have to have talents or
-we'd part company pretty pronto, I'm telling you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It is evident you do not understand anything about blooded stock,” he
-said. “The grandmother of this cow was insured for fifteen thousand
-dollars, and her great-grandfather, King Bulbul, was worth a fortune. The
-owner was offered fifty thousand for him—and refused it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-In my surprise I could only mutter over and over again the name of William
-Tell's brother. A great many people do not know that William Tell ever had
-a brother. His first name was Wat.
-</p>
-<p>
-After that my friend gave me up as one hopelessly sunken in ignorance, and
-by a mutual yet unspoken consent we turned the subject to the actors'
-strike, which was then in full blast. But at intervals ever since I have
-been thinking of what he told me. To my way of thinking there is something
-wrong with the economic system of a country which saddles an income tax on
-an unmarried man with an income of more than two thousand dollars a year
-and if he be married sinks the ax into all he makes above three thousand,
-leaving him the interest deduction on the extra one thousand, amounting, I
-believe, to about twelve dollars and a half, for the support of his wife,
-on the theory that under the present scale of living any reasonably
-prudent man can suitably maintain a wife on twelve-fifty a year—I
-repeat, there is something radically wrong with a government which does
-this to the wage-earner and yet passes right on by a cow that carries
-fifteen thousand in life insurance and a bull worth fifty thousand in his
-own right. It amounts to class privilege, I maintain. It's almost enough
-to make a man vote the Republican ticket, and I may yet do it, too,
-sometime when there aren't any Democrats running, just to show how I feel
-about it.
-</p>
-<p>
-Yet others of our acquaintances in the amateur-farming group have taken up
-fruit growing or pigeons or even Belgian hares. Belgian hares have been
-highly recommended to us as being very prolific. You start in with one
-pair of domestic-minded Belgian hares and presently countless thousands of
-little Belgian heirs and heiresses are gladdening the landscape. From what
-I can hear the average Belgian hare has almost as many aunts and uncles
-and cousins as a microbe has. They pay well, too. You can sell a Belgian
-hare to almost anybody who hat never tried to eat one. But as we have only
-about sixty acres and part of that in woodland, we have felt that there
-was scarcely room enough for us to go in for Belgian hares without
-sacrificing space which we may require for ourselves.
-</p>
-<p>
-Mainly our experiments have been confined to hogs and poultry. I will not
-claim that we have been entirely successful in these directions. The
-trouble seems to be that our pigs are so tremendously opposed to race
-suicide and that our hens are so firmly committed to it. Now offhand you
-might think an adult animal of the swine family that completely gave
-herself over to the idea of multiplying and replenishing the earth with
-her species would be an asset to any farm, but in my own experience I have
-found that such is not always the case. Into the world a brood of little
-pinky-white squealers are ushered. They grow apace, devouring with avidity
-the most expensive brands of pig food that the grocer has in stock; and
-then, just when your mind is filled with delectable visions of hams in the
-smokehouse and flitches of bacon in the cellar and tierces of lard in the
-cold-storage room and spare-ribs and crackling and home-made country
-sausage and pork tenderloins on the table—why, your prospects
-deliberately go and catch the hog cholera and are shortly no more. They
-have a perfect mania for it. They'll travel miles out of their way to
-catch it; they'll sit up until all hours of the night in the hope of
-catching it. Hogs will swim the Mississippi River—and it full of ice—to
-get where hog cholera is. Our hogs have been observed in the act of
-standing in the pen with their snouts in the air, sniffing in unison until
-they attracted the germs of it right out of the air. It is very
-disheartening to be counting on bacon worth eighty cents a pound only to
-find that all you have on your hands is a series of hurried interments.
-</p>
-<p>
-In their own sphere of life turkeys are as suicidally minded as hogs are.
-I speak with authority here because we tried raising turkeys, too. For a
-young turkey to get its feet good and wet spells doom for the turkey, and
-accordingly it practically devotes its life to getting its feet wet. If it
-cannot escape from the pen into the damp grass immediately following a
-rain it will in its desperation take other measures with a view to
-catching its death of cold. One of the most distressing spectacles to be
-witnessed in all Nature is a half-grown feebleminded turkey obsessed with
-the maniacal idea that it was born a puddle duck, running round and round
-a coop trying to find a damp spot to stand on; it is a pitiful sight and
-yet exasperating. In order to get its feet wet an infant turkey has been
-known to jump down an artesian well two hundred feet deep. This is not
-mere idle rumor; it if a scientific fact well authenticated. If somebody
-would only invent a style of overshoe that might be worn in comfort by an
-adolescent turkey without making the turkey feel distraught or
-self-concious, that person would confer a boon upon the entire turkey race
-and at the same time be in a fair way to reap a fortune for himself. I
-know that a few months back if such an article had been in the market I
-would gladly have taken fifty pairs, assorted misses' and children's
-sizes.
-</p>
-<p>
-As for hens, I confess that at times I have felt like altogether
-abandoning my belief in the good faith and honest intentions of hens.
-Naturally one thinks of hens in connection with fresh-laid eggs, but my
-experience has been that the hen does not follow this line of reasoning.
-She prefers to go off on a different bent. She figures she was created to
-adorn society, not to gladden the breakfast platter of man. Or at any rate
-I would state that this has been the obsession customarily harbored by the
-hens which we have owned and which we persistently continue, in the face
-of disappointment compounded, to go on owning.
-</p>
-<p>
-We started out by buying, at a perfectly scandalous outlay, a collection
-of blooded hens of the white Plymouth Rock variety. We had been told that
-the sun never set on a setting white Plymouth Rock hen; that a white
-Plymouth Rock hen which had had the right sort of influences in her life
-and the right sort of hereditary instincts to guide her in her maturer
-career would inevitably dedicate her entire being to producing eggs. And
-we believed it until the hens we had purchased themselves offered proof to
-the absolute contrary.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was enough almost to break one's heart to see a great broad-beamed,
-full-busted husky hen promenading round the chicken run, eating her head
-off, gadding with her sister idlers, wasting the precious golden hours of
-daylight in idle social pursuits and at intervals saying to herself: “Lay
-an egg? Well, I guess not! Why should I entail a strain on my nervous
-system and deny myself the pleasures of the gay life for the sake of these
-people? If they were able to pay four dollars for me, sight unseen, they
-are sufficiently affluent to buy their own eggs. Am I right? I'll say I
-am!”
- </p>
-<p>
-You could look at her expression and tell what she was thinking. And then
-when you went and made the rounds of the empty and untenanted nests you
-knew that you had correctly fathomed the workings of her mind.
-</p>
-<p>
-We tried every known argument on those hens in an effort to make them see
-the error of their ways and the advantages of eggs. We administered to
-them meat scraps and fresh carrots and rutabagas and sifted gravel and
-ground-up oyster shells; the only result was to make them finicky and
-particular regarding their diet. No longer were they satisfied with the
-things we ate ourselves; no, they must have special dishes; they wished to
-be pampered like invalids. We bought for them large quantities of costly
-chick feed—compounds guaranteed to start the most confirmed spinster
-hen to laying her head off.
-</p>
-<p>
-So far as I might observe, this, too, was of no avail. The more confirmed
-imbibers of the special dishes merely developed lumpy dropsical figures
-and sat about in shady spots and brooded in a morbid way as though they
-had heavy loads on their minds. We killed one of them as a sacrifice to
-scientific investigation and cut her open, and lo, she was burdened inside
-with half-developed yolks—a case, one might say, of mislaid eggs.
-</p>
-<p>
-In desperation I even thought of invoking the power of mental suggestion
-on them. Possibly it might help to hang up a picture of a lady sturgeon in
-the henhouse? Or would it avail to shoo them into a group and read aloud
-to them the begat chapter in the Old Testament?
-</p>
-<p>
-While I was considering these expedients some one suggested that probably
-the trouble lay in the fact that our fowls either were too highly bred or
-were too closely related and perhaps an infusion of new blood was what was
-needed. So now we went to the other extreme and added to our flock a
-collection of ordinary scrub hens, mixed as to breed and homely as to
-their outward appearance, but declared—by their former owner—to
-be passionately addicted to the pursuit of laying eggs. Conceding that
-this was true, the fact remained that immediately they passed into our
-possession they became slackers and nonproducers. I imagine the mistake we
-made was in permitting them to associate with the frivolous white
-débutantes we already owned; undoubtedly those confirmed bachelor maids
-put queer ideas into their heads, causing them to believe there was no
-nourishment in achieving eggs to be served up with a comparative
-stranger's fried ham. On the theory that they might require exercise to
-stimulate their creative faculties we let them range through the meadows.
-Some among them promptly deserted the grassy leas to ravage our garden;
-others made hidden nests in the edges of the thickets, where the hawks and
-the weasels and the skunks and the crows might fatten on the fruits of
-their misdirected industry. So we cooped them up again in their run,
-whereupon they developed rheumatism and sore eyes and a perverted craving
-for eating one another's tail feathers. At present our chicken yard is
-nothing more nor less than a hen sanitarium. But we do not despair of
-ultimate success with our hens. We may have to cross them with the Potomac
-shad, but we mean to persevere until victory has perched upon our roosts.
-As Rupert Hughes remarked when, after writing a long list of plays which
-died a-borning, he eventually produced a riotous hit of hits: “Well, I'm
-only human—I couldn't fail every time.”
- </p>
-<p>
-I should have said that there is one fad to which all our Westchester
-County colony of amateur farmers are addicted. Some may pursue one
-agricultural hobby and some another, but almost without exception the
-members of our little community are confirmed hired-help fanciers. You
-meet a neighbor and he tells you that after a disastrous experience with
-Polled Polaks he is now about to try the White Face Cockneys; they have
-been highly recommended to him. And next month when you encounter him
-again he is experimenting with Italian road builders or Scotch gardeners
-or Swedish stable hands or Afro-American tree trimmers or what not.
-</p>
-<p>
-One member of our group after a prolonged season of alternating hopes and
-disappointments during which he first hired and then for good and
-sufficient reasons fired representatives of nearly all the commoner
-varieties—plain and colored, domestic and imported, strays, culls
-and mavericks—decided to try his luck in the city at one of the
-employment agencies specializing in domestic servitors for country places.
-He procured the address of such an establishment and repaired thither—simply
-attired in his everyday clothes. As soon as he entered the place he
-realized that he was in the wrong pew; here, plainly, was a shop to which
-repaired the proprietors of ostentatious estates rather than the modest
-owners of farms, among whom he numbered himself. He tried to back out,
-making himself as inconspicuous as possible in so doing, but at that
-before he succeeded in escaping he had two good jobs offered to him—one
-as assistant groom in a racing stable over on Long Island and one as
-general handyman at a yacht club up in Connecticut. He is convinced now
-that the rich are so hard pressed for servants that they'll hire almost
-anybody without requiring references.
-</p>
-<p>
-None of us will ever be rich; we're all convinced of that, the cost of
-impractical farming being what it is, but by the same token none of us
-would give up the pleasures of a landed proprietor's lot—the word
-landed being here used to imply one baited, hooked and caught; i.e., a
-landed sucker—for the life of a flat dweller again. It's a great
-life if a fellow doesn't weaken—and we'll never weaken.
-</p>
-<h3>
-THE END
-</h3>
-<div style="height: 6em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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