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Robin Hood's Barn 
 
EACH JUNE I TURN INTO THE COW LANE THAT LEADS TO 
 KSIGHBOaiNG FIELDS 
 
ROBIN HOOD'S BARN 
 
 The Confessions of a Garden Adventurer 
 
 BY 
 
 MARGARET EMERSON BAILEY 
 
 WITH DRAWINGS BY 
 
 WHITMAN BAILEY 
 
 NEW T2r^ YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
5J3 H-55 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1922, 
 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 EOBIN HOOD'S BARN. I 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA 
 
 NOV io 1922 
 
 ) Cl A 6 9 2 4 4 
 "Tic* I 
 
TO 
 
 WILLIAM WHITMAN BAILEY 
 
 A SLIGHT RETURN FOR RICH INHERITANCE 
 
The author acknowl- 
 edges with thanks the 
 permission to reprint such of these articles 
 as appeared in country life and "This 
 Thornhush, 3Iy Thornhush," which ap- 
 peared in the providence neavs, and 
 "Content'* which appeared in the provi- 
 dence JOURNAL. 
 
I Pen Pricks 
 
 LISTENING 
 
 II Among the Prophets 
 lot's wife 
 
 III Keeping One's Place 
 
 DUSK 
 
 IV Dinner "with Diversions 
 
 MY COVERLID 
 
 V Friendly Spying 
 VI Solomon or Sheba? 
 
 SOLACE 
 
 VII Job's Pool 
 
 CONTENT 
 
 VIII Garden Hospitality 
 
 THE HUNTRESS 
 
 17 
 
 35 
 
 37 
 53 
 
 55 
 79 
 
 81 
 97 
 99 
 
 113 
 129 
 
 131 
 
 145 
 
 147 
 157 
 
 [xi] 
 
Contents 
 
 IX Round Robin Hood's Barn 159 
 
 X Fair Game 177 
 
 TRIBUTE 197 
 
 XI Garden Airs and Graces 199 
 
 XII Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 217 
 
 GROWTH 235 
 
 XIII This Thornhush, My Thornbush 287 
 
 THE ALCHEMIST 247 
 
 XIV Comrades in Crime 249 
 XV Followers of Saint Francis 261 
 
 RAG-TAG AND BOB-TAIL 279 
 
 XVI Parting Guests 281 
 
 XVII Condescension That Withers 295 
 
 [xii] 
 

 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Each June I turn into the cow lane that leads to neighbor- 
 ing fields Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Below a murky pit lies darkling, rich in blacks 27 
 
 / come back from my pilgrimage with brushes clean, 
 
 my canvas all untoiiched 41 
 
 Unknown to me, the garden has been reaching out 59 
 
 This little gully is a thoroughfare for birds 87 
 
 It is a pleasant prospect, this first border 103 
 
 The lure for me lay in the clouds that took the bay at 
 
 a fine gallop and went racing out to sea 137 
 
 This pond is for me a place of high excitement 165 
 
 / missed the whir of knives, the rattle of the chains, 
 
 the driver's ringing call 181 
 
 Seated on the top of an embankment, I spread my bait 
 
 enticingly upon my lap 221 
 
 Our crowning achievement in my eyes was our first 
 
 transplanted cedar 241 
 
 Here he finds it pleasant to lie still and watch the 
 
 flickering shadows of the willow 265 
 
 [xiii] 
 
I: Pen Pricks 
 
I: Pen Pricks 
 
 IF," said my brother as he turned the last page 
 of an article I had contrived to fit his draw- 
 ings, "if I could only write." 
 
 "If," said I, as I scanned a pen and ink that 
 somehow failed to illustrate my article, "if I 
 could only draw." 
 
 By which you are to understand that it is not 
 only in the matter of technique that we fall be- 
 hind the Hales or Pennells. That is as it may 
 be. But what stops us short is the irksomeness 
 of double harness. We do not wear it easily. 
 One it makes balkish and the other skittish; 
 one "whoas," the other "goes." Liking to 
 
 [17] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 prance alone, to express our individual moods 
 by dancing or curvetting, we could do without 
 that yoke-fellow who holds down our high-step- 
 ping and keeps us steady to his pace. 
 
 So it is that while my brother turns the pages 
 of "Our Sentimental Journey," those early ad- 
 ventures of the Pennells made by tricycle through 
 France and Spain, you must not think he is ad- 
 miring solely the genius of the master-craf stman. 
 True, he cannot help lingering over the small 
 sketches scattered through the volume; poplars 
 blown against a wind-swept sky; lanes winding 
 in and out beside a hedge of bristling willows; 
 courtyards set cool and deep in shadow by the 
 foreground's sultry blaze; or peasants caught in 
 an unconscious attitude by dextrous and unerring 
 stroke. But deeper than his envy of the artist 
 lies his envy of the man. That cantankerous cur- 
 mudgeon, old Joe Pennell, who will admit no il- 
 lustrator save himself since the brave swagger- 
 ing days of Howard Pyle ! Let him bluster, let 
 him grumble. Why, the man has the patience 
 of a saint. Witness the books — a whole half- 
 dozen — he has turned out with his wife. 
 
 [i8] 
 
Pen Pricks 
 
 And I, too, have my own reflections. My les- 
 son in humility comes from the Hales. It is my 
 country, that New England which they redis- 
 covered on their last happy trip. Gay are the 
 sketches, full of beating light and sunshine, 
 whether it falls on pastures, self-sown with rocks 
 and little cedars, on the uncompromising bleak- 
 ness of the village church, or on mill towns hud- 
 dled close about a dingy river side. But there 
 is the tartness of a Rhode Island greening to the 
 text. It delights where it most piques. To some 
 I know it has given a wry mouth. And why 
 not ? What else would you expect from her who 
 recently played "Mamma Bett"? Impossible 
 that that peppery old lady who could so chastise 
 with the valor of her tongue, should write with 
 other than a caustic pen. In "Beyond the Hori- 
 zon," too, did not her grim humor crackle like 
 a lightning flash across the blackness of the sky ? 
 Inimitable, but, so you insist, a person of one 
 part. Last year she had recovered from a spell 
 and was meddlesomely up from her wheel-chair. 
 She would be lost without her "tantrims." I tell 
 you I know better. For many years she played 
 
 [19] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 Griselda, patient and submissive. Look at the 
 books she wrote to provide her husband with a 
 text. 
 
 Now when we compare ourselves to Joseph 
 Pennell and Louise Closser Hale, we feel that we 
 are better tempered publicly. My brother can- 
 not growl and I can never snap. One of us is 
 mellow and the other mild, though I prefer not 
 to say which. But let us take our pens in hand 
 and they inevitably turn upon each other. We 
 fence, cross-hatch with spluttering jibe. Prick 
 follows prick. 
 
 "You see," my brother was now thinking how 
 he would have liked to write my article on Poe 
 and Mrs. Whitman. How differently it would 
 have read! "I don't know the meanings of the 
 words you use. Decorum, I don't see where that 
 comes in." 
 
 Yet it was that word I knew that had fought 
 and stifled passion, single-handed. Alone, it had 
 held bound Poe's "Helen of a thousand dreams." 
 
 "And there's another." This time my brother's 
 manner was reminiscent of the nursery. You 
 might think that I had taken some unfair ad- 
 
 [20] 
 
Pen Pricks 
 
 vantage of his age and size. "It begins with 
 'trans.' I thought that it was never going to 
 end." 
 
 "Transcendentalism," I finished out politely. 
 Then I paused. It was as well that he should not 
 know that writers sometimes use words which 
 they too cannot explain. In any case his inter- 
 est in it was merely in its length of buzz. He 
 made it clear that he was unpleasantly impressed. 
 
 "If I should come to call on you," he said, "I 
 could last out just fifteen minutes. I could talk 
 that long on art. Then I should have to make a 
 bolt." 
 
 "But suppose I talked on literature." 
 
 The bolt was an accomplished fact. 
 
 He had gone to the piano which serves him 
 oftenest as an easel and stood looking at his 
 sketches with an appreciative eye. One was Mrs. 
 Whitman's house, prim and square, set rigidly 
 upon the pavement, a little smug in the self -con- 
 sciousness with which it toed the mark. From 
 my point of view it offered opportunity for con- 
 trast. Poe, crying out the anguish of his part- 
 ing within those spare, unyielding walls. His 
 
 [21] 
 
Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 Helen recovering from the precautionary fumes 
 of ether just long enough to say farewell. Bleak 
 harborage for tragic romance! But for my 
 brother, this lady whose inheritance had kept her 
 fluttering in bondage, had chosen her house 
 wisely. Certainly for his convenience. Nice per- 
 spective to the silent empty street. Nice the 
 shadows on the roof and doorway that fell spat- 
 tering from the high elm. And that other picture 
 of the garden ! There he felt that I had had my 
 chance. A tale of moonlight and midsummer 
 madness. Past twelve o'clock, and Poe abroad 
 in Providence, that staid New England city that 
 still kept curfew and tucked itself so early into 
 bed. The drift of perfume in the darkness. 
 Sweetbrier and flowering currant, misty in the 
 radiance. And below them, with a silver glamour 
 full upon her, Helen seated on a flowery bank. 
 Was there ever such a meeting? They two in the 
 whole slumbrous town, awake. And I had 
 stopped to talk of literary coteries and transcen- 
 dentalism. Yes, it really was a pity that a fellow 
 could not write. 
 
 My failure, of course, was unintentional. But 
 [22] 
 
Pen Pricks 
 
 it was a giddy business, teaming. He never knew 
 when I would walk soberly past crossroads or 
 when take the bit between my teeth. Now in mat- 
 ters more prosaic, I plodded forward with de- 
 corxmi. You see he had learned the meaning of 
 the word and now used it as a sidewise prankish 
 nip. 
 
 There was that article I did on the American 
 Screw Industry. He had dropped it on me sud- 
 denly because he liked the chance it offered him; 
 chimneys smirching a clear sky ; the plant itself, 
 great slabs of light and shadow; the mill-stream 
 tumbling forward from obscurity in curds of 
 foam. But he had not guessed that I could 
 write so well the history of tacks and cold-cut 
 nails. And that square in a provincial suburb; 
 a dowdy little row of shops where business came 
 to life at six o'clock with the closing of the mills. 
 I had never seen it and he had had to draw for 
 me a map. Baker here and butcher there, depart- 
 ment store and notions, with the druggist's just 
 around the corner. Yet somehow, constructed 
 on such slight foundations, it stood firm. He had 
 gone out to see in the eager fashion that he has, 
 
 [23] 
 
Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 the night his picture went to press. And the 
 people liked it. What's more they liked my ar- 
 ticle. It was a ten strike. Why, the market 
 man had said I wrote as easily as he himself 
 cleaned fish. I remember the elation with which 
 my brother bore that tribute home. 
 
 But when it came to romance, I showed my- 
 self a college woman. You understand that I 
 belong to a generation when education was re- 
 garded as a virus left forever in the blood. I 
 was overcultivated, timorous of sentiment. I 
 stumbled and fell down before it. When I met 
 it in the road, I balked. 
 
 Such times, however, as I ask my brother to 
 illustrate my articles, it is he who strains the har- 
 ness. In an unhappy day he saw the work of 
 Lester Hornby and at the same time heard the 
 application of the word "quaint." No use since 
 then to give him the freedom of your city. You 
 may shut off your boulevards, wrap up your mon- 
 uments, exclude him from your public hospitals 
 and libraries, from all that stirs your civic pride. 
 He will not give a rap. For already he will have 
 wandered down a by-way, have set his stool upon 
 
 [24] 
 
Pen Pricks 
 
 Si dump, and be hard at work on a prospect of 
 the backs of houses, of tumbled shanties, and old 
 sheds. No use to put on a good front. He will 
 catch your city from the rear. 
 
 So at least he caught my garden. It was a 
 sketch made at my request and to accompany a 
 fantasy for Country Life. Not hard to imagine 
 the kind that I desired. Some corner of my own 
 half -acre that could be entered in a competition 
 with a fine estate. Now he had skill at omissions. 
 Wouldn't he be willing, just by the mere blank- 
 ness of the paper, to tell a convenient white lie? 
 Let the pathway trail off to a distant prospect, 
 and couldn't the whole thing at the edges be left 
 a little vague? In other words, I had been a 
 braggart with my tongue and with his hand, I 
 expected him to help me out. 
 
 He promised solemnly and disappeared. For 
 a good two hours, whenever I peered cautiously 
 between the curtains, I saw his white cap gleam- 
 ing in the distance. Then in he came. At first 
 he would not let me see his handiwork. It must 
 not be grabbed and regarded at close range. A 
 shade was drawn, another shade pulled up until 
 
 [25] 
 
Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 the light was properly adjusted. But when at 
 length he unveiled his vision of my garden, I 
 beheld, not the circling pathways and trim hedges 
 I had boasted; not the bird-bath and arbor, my 
 sole garden ornaments ; no, not even flowers. He 
 had done the onion patch, bald pates nodding in 
 the sunhght; and behind a shelving rock loomed 
 two dead scraggly trees ! 
 
 Nor is it safe to let him have his way with 
 country rambles. I must act as guide and take 
 the lead. Even then I dare not skirt a barn, 
 but make for open pastures and go far afield. 
 For let a weathervane but tip the hilltop and he 
 makes straight towards it, as though homing to 
 his stall. The attraction — ^if you will have it — 
 comes from his knowledge that somewhere below 
 a murky pit lies darkling, rich in blacks. I have 
 told him firmly that it is trite, that it has been 
 done a thousand times before. Of no avail. Let 
 him once find it and it seizes hold of his imagina- 
 tion. Talk as I will, he does not even hear. Look 
 at that oblong window festooned with silver cob- 
 webs. Look at that silver light that filters 
 through it to the muck below. How it throws 
 
 [26] 
 
BELOW A MURKY PIT LIES DARKLING, RICH IK BLACKS. 
 
 [27] 
 
Pen Pricks 
 
 back in shadow every dim recess. And that Leg- 
 horn rooster on the pile. Can't I see that he adds 
 the necessary touch of utter white. Nor does 
 my brother wait for me to answer. Without 
 more ado he has perched himself upon the wall 
 that binds the cowlane, his pad upon his knees, 
 his pencil out. 
 
 It is not merely his delight in homely scenes, 
 however, that works havoc with my articles. 
 Sometimes it is his way of jumping facts. His- 
 torical accuracy is for him no bar. In contrast 
 to my own heavj^-footed plodding, he does not 
 see his obstacles and clears them nimbly without 
 knowing they are there. 
 
 Not long ago in an old volume, I ran foul of a 
 pirate who lurked about New England shores. A 
 satisfying brigand so I found him. In fact, "his 
 deeds of prowess could not be related," said the 
 author, "without giving Nature a too grievous 
 shock." Such, however, as I might considerately 
 retell for a still more queasy generation called 
 for a background, sinister and grim. Trium- 
 phantly, my brother called it forth ; a coast where 
 tumbled bowlders were pitched high, clouds omi- 
 
 [29] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 nous and brooding, the running dash and foam of 
 heavy seas. With desperation to her leeward 
 tack and slanting masts, a boat was speeding, 
 small, defenseless, towards the skyline. And 
 overhauling her, a brig had set its sails full to the 
 gale and had clapped upon its mizzen-mast an 
 ugly flag. There was no question but the sketch 
 was done with cruelty and gusto. Yet in one 
 corner in the pettifogging way I have, I noticed 
 something not quite congruous. By 1724, my 
 buccaneer had come to his bad end, and high on 
 the cliff a modern lighthouse bhnked its star. 
 
 "It's needed by the composition," said my 
 brother firmly. "It cannot come out." 
 
 So in it stayed, its beacon thrown a Httle dis- 
 concertingly upon my scholarship. Still while 
 I yielded, I could not help thinking that instead 
 of deacon and divine, it was a pity that the Puri- 
 tans had not begot an artist. It would have been 
 so much more practical. The Hesperus had not 
 been wrecked. A Hghthouse would have stood 
 on Norman's Woe, sprung complete and Jove- 
 born from the artist's brain. 
 
 After so much frankness, it is only fair to state 
 
 [30] 
 
Pen Pricks 
 
 that very different is our attitude when we in- 
 vade each other's province. Let my brother bring 
 a caption he has written for a drawing and I do 
 not carp or criticize. At most I twist a clause 
 or clip a participle and not before I tell him that 
 I like his use of words. Or happier times there 
 are on Sunday mornings when I too go sketch- 
 ing, a pleasant fiction on our part, sustained 
 chiefly as it brings companionship. At most I 
 have what in music would be called a natural 
 touch and surprise as one of those prodigies who 
 "has never had a lesson." But for all that I do 
 not fear my brother's comments. Inevitably at 
 the end of a long silent morning in which we sit 
 just out of sight, yet warmly conscious of each 
 other's nearness, a shadow falls across my work 
 and I hear a voice exclaim, "You've hit on a nice 
 composition." In a moment my 'brother is cross- 
 legged on the grass beside me. "You don't 
 mind." He lays an accent on my walls, picks 
 out the high-hghts on my haystacks, sweeps in a 
 sky. Nor does his generosity refuse me a whole 
 foreground. Before I know it, he has pulled the 
 
 [31] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 scattered details all together. I am bewildered. 
 It seems that I have done a sketch. 
 
 "That's nice," he says, as he returns it to me. 
 "It's a pity really that you do not draw." 
 
 I reach my handiwork before me until it bal- 
 ances against my upturned toes. Then I smile 
 broadly at him. 
 
 "It's a pity," I reply, "that you don't write." 
 
 [32] 
 
II: Among the Prophets 
 
LISTENING 
 
 These are the sounds I hsten for: 
 The lift of the gray dawn. 
 
 It rises up inaudibly 
 
 Like breath of wind, newborn. 
 
 The rush of speeding clouds that race 
 
 Elate above the gale. 
 They spread their sheet rebelliously 
 
 With smack of unfurled sail. 
 
 The liquid notes that sunshine spills 
 On sheltered roofs and walls. 
 
 It spatters down as merrily 
 As spray from waterfalls. 
 
 The quivering of noonday glare 
 
 Upon the stubborn hill. 
 It chips off light relentlessly 
 
 As though with workman's drill. 
 
 [35] 
 
Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 The murmur that blue shadows make 
 
 In settling down to rest. 
 They drop to ground as tenderly 
 
 As brooding bird to nest. 
 
 The moon's arrest of ecstasy 
 
 In coming on the bay. 
 I've heard it pause exultantly 
 
 Before it took its way. 
 
 [36] 
 
II: Among the Prophets 
 
 IT was my fortune recently in an old New 
 England primer to come upon a list of 
 the true prophets, the spelling of whose names 
 and the facts of whose existence every Christian 
 child should know. And among those who had 
 known and followed the true God, I found not 
 Saul, but Mahomet — ^branded. "A celebrated 
 impostor who pretended to be a prophet." 
 Clearly there was no more to be said. Nor should 
 
 [37] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 I myself have dared to question this authoritative 
 dictum, had not its spokesman later lowered his 
 eyes from spiritual realms to the kingdom of this 
 earth. A little further on, where he had placed 
 the essentials of geography meetly following the 
 essentials of religion, there was another list, this 
 time of our great rivers — and in their midst I 
 hailed the Mississippi with a burst of pride. Not 
 national, mind you. Personal. I still could spell 
 it. My tongue was already playing hop-scotch 
 with its double consonants as in more agile days. 
 "I-double-s, i-double-s, i-double-p." I had made 
 it and landed firm on the last i. But there I 
 stopped dismayed. Flowing just beneath it, rac- 
 ing it, almost outrunning it across the page, was 
 the Piscataqua of Maine. By a more successful 
 imposition than Mahomet's, it had disguised its 
 real importance and taking on false dignity, was 
 out on masquerade. 
 
 I like to think how many years it sidled by and 
 went uncaught. For I am on the side of all pre- 
 tenders, whether they lay claim to a mantle of 
 green hills and snowy mountain sources or to 
 the mantle of Elijah; whether it be Mahomet the 
 
 [38] 
 
Among the Prophets 
 
 unbeliever, or the Piscataqua of Maine. It is 
 enough for me that there was aspiration. To 
 filch the title of great river was at least to dream 
 upon the beauties consequent. To steal the title 
 of true prophet was for the first Mussulman to 
 seek his revelations in the desert solitudes ; and in 
 praying with his face towards Mecca, to hft his 
 eyes upon the glory of the setting sun. Who 
 would not play false when he so might wrongly 
 win? 
 
 Not I at least ; for it is much in the same spirit 
 that I pretend to paint. To be sure I do not 
 bring my revelations home. I seek no converts. 
 I fear that should I do so even with the sword, I 
 could but martyr truth. And though in these 
 usurping days any upstart may arise self- 
 knighted, I make no attempt to take my place 
 among the master painters and to head their for- 
 mal list. My pretensions are set forth with a 
 far different intent. Not that I may win great 
 place, but a remote one. Not that a multitude 
 shall greet me with acclaim, but that they shall 
 grant me to depart in peace. I would have them 
 gain for me the privilege of an occasional hegira, 
 
 [39] 
 
Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 a pilgrimage where I may seek my shrines in sol- 
 itude, be rapt clean out of myself. 
 
 And without pretensions, it is not so easy. 
 Even with them, the Piscataqua must have found 
 it hard to persuade those who knew its sluggish 
 habits, that it was fitted for other than a service- 
 able hfe. And without them, Mahomet, faring 
 forth into the desert, would have found a staying 
 hand upon his camel's bridle and the Widow of 
 Medina impertinently asking at what hour she 
 might expect him home. I know; for let me, 
 like any other person, say that I am going off to 
 walk, that I have need of solitude, and there are 
 a hundred duties that intrude. The votary of 
 woods and fields is soon transformed to vestal, a 
 common bondsmaid of the hearth. Such rags and 
 tatters of the day as I may gather will do at 
 best for comfortable gossip. It is in the gleam- 
 ing widespread raiment of the morning that I 
 would set forth to commune. 
 
 If I am to don it, I must announce a far dif- 
 ferent intention. Boldly must I make it known 
 that I am starting off to paint. But not, you 
 understand, so baldly. There must be prepara- 
 
 [40] 
 

 :-..S:C- A/. 
 
 [ C05IE BACK V^OISI MY PIU5RIMAOK WITH BRUSHES CLEAN, MY CAKTAS 
 ALL UNTOUCHED. 
 
 [41] 
 
Among the Prophets 
 
 tions as for service. With a quiet stir, I must 
 lift the vessels of my priestly office from the desk 
 which is their shrine. Then as I begin to lay 
 them out, canvas, brush, and palette, and to pre- 
 pare them with solemnity, the voices of demand 
 are stilled; there is a reverent hush. The wives 
 of Joseph Smith would as soon have asked for a 
 distribution of affection at the moment that he 
 placed the golden spectacles upon his brow and 
 took down the golden book. 
 
 But should you too desire a right to your es- 
 cape, you must first acquire a legend. My own 
 dates back, as any prophet's should, to childish 
 days when wide-eyed in wonder at the honor that 
 had come upon me, I reported the authoritative 
 voice. Impossible then to suspect one so conven- 
 tionally round and rosy, so stolid in acceptance, 
 of subterfuge or guile. Moreover, I could lead 
 all scoffers to the very place. It was at East 
 Gloucester. At the end of a long walk through 
 bayberry and bracken, I had come upon a beach 
 scooped out between red cliffs. And here with 
 sketch pad on my knee, I sat among the salvage, 
 washing in crude surfaces of black and white. 
 
 [43] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 Little enough had they to do with the prospect 
 before me; a sky of windy power, a sea where 
 purple shadows raced the clouds above them, and 
 where a fitful sun struck sparks of glinting steel. 
 As I dipped my brush into the ink-well, I heard 
 a crunching step, a pause, and then the sound of 
 laughter rising through a shaggj^ throat. 
 
 "Does nothing tell you, young one," said a 
 voice behind me, "that you can't do a day of 
 mystery with a bottle of black ink?" 
 
 I answered honestly that nothing did. 
 
 "Suppose then that I tell you." There was a 
 chuckle. 
 
 "And who are you?" 
 
 "Twachtman, the painter." 
 
 But as he crossed his legs and dropped in 
 friendly fashion on the beach beside me, I knew 
 him for the goat-god, Pan. How not know the 
 thatch of hair thrust upward as by horns, the 
 grotesque face, the shaggy pelt? Yet though I 
 had heard him to be wayward and arrogant in 
 the glimpses of himself he gave to mortals, there 
 seemed no reason for alarm. Mirth was in his 
 eyes and round his bearded mouth and the shout 
 
 [44] 
 
Among the Prophets 
 
 of merriment he gave was at my young presump- 
 tion. I had refused his lore on trust. 
 
 "Shall I show you?" 
 
 I snuggled close to watch beside his arm. 
 
 In a second he had begun to pour forth strange 
 melody upon a canvas and the pipes he used 
 were brushes flecked with paint. Against the 
 sunny brilliance of the sky, clouds sped, free- 
 moving. Wind stirred the deep troughs of the 
 water and lifted from it foam that was as fugi- 
 tive as dreams. And where the waves curved 
 and broke in rout of white along the shore, there 
 was exultancj" that had behind it, the whole wild 
 pushing tumult of the sea. It was the sea grown 
 conscious, with rhythm and with pulse. 
 
 Then swiftly with its satisfaction, the Piper's 
 mood had gone. His eyes that had been staring 
 out with stern iirtelligence turned downward, 
 lightly mocking at the silence of my wonder ; and 
 with a shaking free of sand, he had risen to his 
 feet. 
 
 "Now run home, youngster," with a smile both 
 prankish and companionable, he sped me on my 
 
 [45] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 Marathon, "and tell your mother that I'll teach 
 you how to paint." 
 
 He was to disappear, however, far too soon for 
 that. And though I like sometimes to think he 
 might have worked his miracle, I know that I 
 am blinking facts. Still, a little he did teach me 
 of his close companioning with earth. That trees 
 were not to be interpreted alone by outline and 
 by color, but by an understanding of their 
 growth. There was the timidity of aspens that 
 put them in a flutter before they felt the breeze, 
 the light way of willows in the wind, the compas- 
 sionate nobility of elms. The oak drew stuff for 
 gallantry from its far-reaching roots. The pine 
 was always solitary with loneliness a-stirring in 
 its heart. And he made clear the ways of clouds. 
 The wanton ones that frisked across the sky to 
 little purpose and must be rendered with a gay- 
 ety just equal to their own. Those bolder ones 
 that went adventuring. And thunder clouds, 
 brigands that ran up their great black flags 
 against a western sky-line and bore down upon 
 a world they robbed of gold. Nor was the wind 
 always the same mad bullying fellow with his 
 
 [46] 
 
Among the Prophets 
 
 cheeks outpuff ed. If you were to catch him thus, 
 you had to work with gusto. But there were bet- 
 ter days when he was content with whistling; and 
 then you showed his presence by the bend of 
 branch and tree-top and the dancing shadows 
 that he shook. Or on other days he came slowly, 
 lilting; and you could only hint his presence 
 gently by the play of light among the leaves. 
 Sometimes, moreover, he was drowsed by summer 
 heat ; and you had to give the clew to fitful slum- 
 ber by the stir of grass or bracken on the moors. 
 Water, too, like wind, was undependable, never 
 twice the same. Here at the coast it was often 
 fierce and often sullen, yet threatening always in 
 its power. But in hidden inland places the as- 
 pect that you tried to give it, was one of delicacy 
 and shimmering grace. And lucky were you if 
 you could contrive to show the surface faintly 
 warmed above the icy springs below. Line and 
 rhythm you might hope to capture, but never 
 space. Nor depth — that was not final, though 
 mysteriously deepening, fold on fold. But what- 
 ever you were after, you were to look with eyes 
 of wonder, with perpetual astonishment. The 
 
 [47] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 new beauty of each day was your very own to 
 seek. 
 
 However, as I later came to know, this beauty 
 was no light-of-love to be forced and hurried into 
 yielding. Sought roughly, come on carelessly, it 
 escaped the memory after a faint tingling of the 
 sense. If it was to draw close, to show its open 
 face, it must be sought as the painter seeks it, 
 in quietness, in patience, and in peace. Each 
 bravery of color, each grace of line, must be taken 
 first into the mind, considered carefully, and rev- 
 erently held. So only would it give itself into 
 possession; a possession so complete that it 
 merged with consciousness and became a part of 
 one's own self. 
 
 What matter that I cannot set such wonders 
 down, translate them to a testament ; that I come 
 back from my pilgrimage with brushes clean, my 
 canvas all untouched? Surely it is something 
 awesome to have seen; and to have in the holy 
 places of my mind a beauty beyond my own ca- 
 pacity to paint. Tarnished might grow the clear 
 yellow of the mustard fields beneath my touch, 
 and dulled the azure that slopes down so bril- 
 
 [48] 
 
Among the Prophets 
 
 liantly to meet the rising crest. Muddy might 
 turn the purple richness of the cedar plumes and 
 the red shafts that rise so straight from tugging 
 with the open clefts. The mast of the old button- 
 wood might soar less straight and white up to its 
 broken rigging and the brave tatter of its sails. 
 And surely the scurrying clouds that stream 
 across the sky would lag, the wind among the 
 com would pass less fleet. But in my imagina- 
 tion they keep their beauty in a high clean soli- 
 tude. There, inviolate, they rest secure. 
 
 And so conscious of their haunting presence 
 am I, that I too would take my place among the 
 prophets; those who go forth to desert and to 
 wilderness for the communication that will come 
 to them, alone. Should you, however, meet me 
 returning empty-handed and, like many another 
 skeptic ask what I had gone to seek, I could only 
 give you an old answer, 
 
 "A reed shaken by the wind." 
 
 Aye, verily, and in my answer there would be 
 the reverence of one to whom this vision has been 
 once vouchsafed. 
 
 [49] 
 
Ill: Keeping One's Place 
 
LOT'S WIFE 
 
 I like to think that Lot's Wife, 
 
 Defiant of the Lord, 
 Could brave His flaming anger, 
 
 The flash of His bright sword. 
 To turn a backward look upon 
 
 The city He abhorred. 
 
 I hope she saw her roof -tree 
 Before the brimstone came, 
 
 The little plot in Sodom 
 
 That Lot bought in her name, 
 
 And that it stayed untouched until 
 Her eyes were seared with flame. 
 
 She turned perhaps half -doubting 
 
 A Righteousness so grim 
 As to destroy her hearthstone 
 
 For some strange Man-God's whim. 
 Before she turned to salt, I'm sure 
 
 She had strange thoughts of Him. 
 
 [53] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 No matter what compelled her. 
 Some treasure she forsook, 
 
 A wish to ease the burden 
 Of memories she took, 
 
 I know I should have pardoned her 
 For that brave, backward look. 
 
 [54] 
 
Ill: Keeping- One's Place 
 
 TT is a fortunate matter that my misalliance 
 -*- with Touisset was contracted not with a per- 
 son, but a place. Had it been the former, I 
 should have proved an intolerable wife. Not un- 
 faithful, mind you. There have been at least 
 twelve summers to show how eagerly I make re- 
 turn to bed and board. But times there have been 
 when my fidelity was a discomfortable virtue, 
 
 [55] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 attended by too zealous prodding. In Puritan 
 days, I should have found my duck-pond incon- 
 venient; for beshrew me, I am sharp of tongue. 
 I nag. 
 
 Not that I have ever had excuse for railing. 
 Touisset won me by no false pretense. On that 
 first day when I alighted at its little station, it 
 made no promise of prosperity and laid bare its 
 prospects manfully in the full blaze of a June sun. 
 So easily it might have met me with deception and 
 have tricked me with a mist. As I later came to 
 know it has its days of silver beauty when fog 
 hangs low upon the shallows and the headlands, 
 fusing even ugly features to a blur and giving an 
 unearthly glamour to the distant city on the hill. 
 
 This day, however, it was in no mood for com- 
 promise or for concealment. It made it evident 
 what I might take or leave. With a stark hon- 
 esty it had sent out the tide that comes swelling 
 up the bay until it brims each cove and marshy 
 inlet ; and with the ebb that sucked back to a nar- 
 row gut of channel, a waste of ooze and clam- 
 shells lay revealed. Waves there were, wind- 
 shadows ruffling the sedge grass. But I might 
 
 [56] 
 
Keeping One*s Place 
 
 go elsewhere clearly if I wished a beach. So 
 might I, if in the accepted sense I wished a view. 
 Across an estuary a causeway ran off sidling 
 without a decent shred of green to veil its flank. 
 More remote, tide water shanties were cast up 
 pitch and toss like so much wreckage about the 
 farther shore. And above this sandy bluff of 
 land which turned and ran out sharply at right 
 angles, the mill turrets of Fall River rose grim 
 and harsh against the sky. Entrenched on its 
 high seat. Capital looked down on Labor even 
 while on hoHday. W as I eager then for romance ? 
 Here was no strange wildness to enchant me and 
 to make me fall an easy conquest. Was I wist- 
 ful after sentiment? Here was no appearance to 
 deceive me by tenderness of color or bj^ suavity of 
 line. The humdrimi facts of life were what con- 
 fronted me. I must face them if I wished to set- 
 tle down. 
 
 Nor need I — at least if I had social aspira- 
 tions — dally on the single sandy road that looped 
 about the shore. One house there was, set cool 
 and deep in shadow, that had a patriarchal dig- 
 nity. Its first owner had built its chimney big 
 
 [57] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 and made broad its eaves to give a generous and 
 lasting shelter. Staunch it stood, timbered with 
 great beams. The elms which surged around it 
 had not struck a deeper root. But the other 
 houses were of a new domestic architecture, con- 
 structed hastily, scrub growth arising from the 
 boles of old out-buildings and low-lying sheds. 
 Slant of roof and width of front, dovecot still 
 worn cap-a-pie, told of the forced conversion from 
 an earlier purpose. Where there was narrow 
 entrance, a wider door had once stood open to 
 the garnering of crops. The small bungalows, 
 waist deep in grass, told plainly that they had 
 kept, not chosen, a humility of rafters to which 
 fowls at dusk had fluttered up to roost. Sum- 
 mer cottages, these now were advertised. Yet 
 they wore their new adornments with no swag- 
 ger of prosperity and rising fortunes. Rather 
 with a tolerant good humor. Though they had 
 put on porch and stoop, they could not put on 
 airs. It was only when it came to simple human 
 needs that they were willing to oblige. 
 
 So inconspicuous was the position which I was 
 to occupy among them that it was hard to find. 
 
 [58] 
 
»*.-* 
 
 UNKNOWN TO BfE, THE GAADEN HAD BEEN REACHINO OTTT. 
 
 [59] 
 
Keeping One's Place 
 
 No doubt it was my own young arrogance that 
 blinded me. I remember that I had just chanced 
 upon a writer who referred to his place raptur- 
 ously as "the seat of his soul." The seat of mine I 
 It demanded — so at least I thought — a gate, high 
 hedge, stone walls for its protection from all 
 casual contact; a flagged pathway, adrift with 
 the perfume of spiced pinks or phlox for its deh- 
 cate approach. What perversity of fortune then 
 or what acknowledgment of crudity had turned 
 my feet up a glaring clam-shell drive ? My sanc- 
 tuary, moreover, was to be withdrawn a little 
 from the common highway. With a certain 
 hauteur and detachment I was to watch its cu- 
 rious doings and to furnish — so I liked to 
 fancy, glimpses of enticement for the passer-by. 
 A willful aloofness, not enforced retirement was 
 the vision I had held. Yet once I had reached 
 the circle that had as its pivot an urn of gay pe- 
 tunias, I realized that my front might as appro- 
 priately be termed some one's else back yard. 
 This was democracy undreamed! 
 
 When, however, I beheld the settlement that 
 might be mine in return for a most modest dowry, 
 
 [6i] 
 
Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 I took a liking to it at first sight. And not the 
 tepid f eehng that makes a woman warm to her 
 one chance. True, it was a mere frame house, 
 not much to look at in the common parlance. A 
 child might easily have planned it, adding its 
 wide porch as a fine place to romp on and extend- 
 ing it above the marsh that it might have the 
 semblance of a deck almost a-wash above the 
 rising tide. What I saw in the place, I should — 
 to worldly minded folk, sure to think I might do 
 better — find it most difficult to explain. But 
 it had a character its own. A candor that was 
 not my blurting frankness, close following each 
 attempt at reticence. It had no failings which 
 in a shame-faced way, it felt called on to "dis- 
 cuss." Even its drive, its urn, its wooden chim- 
 ney caught drying off upon the grass, left it com- 
 pletely unabashed. Suppose they were all wrong, 
 though to it they seemed all right. Even so — 
 there was its youth, its newness. Mellowness 
 and dignity? Those came with years, the touch 
 of time. What it offered was a trig readiness for 
 the play of wind and weather. The fun was all 
 before. Tranquilhty and brooding hush? What 
 
 [62] 
 
Keeping Ones Place 
 
 was the torpid dozing over memories, the mere 
 pottering in the past beside the eager quiet of 
 expectancy? No, it had not seen better days. 
 None better than that which now sunned its 
 shingles and first coat of paint and drew up the 
 fragrance of pink ramblers and syringas planted 
 close about it. Surely it was something to stand 
 there clean and fresh, untouched by past affec- 
 tions, unbattered by experience, with traditions 
 still to make. 
 
 The impression was not superficial for it was 
 confirmed inside. The two main rooms on which 
 the door directly opened, gave forth no hint of 
 mustiness, no empty odor of disuse. From ceil- 
 ings, walls, and floors, came the savor of pine, as 
 keen and resinous as though the trees had just 
 been felled. Their matched boards were inno- 
 cent of all design, but the arrested sap had left 
 a pattern on their yellow surface that shimmered 
 like a watered silk. Whatever history they held 
 was this frank tracing of their last year's growth. 
 Nowhere, moreover, were there the remnants left 
 from old and intimate associations ; no books, no 
 ornaments, no pictures to mark the peccadillos of 
 
 [63] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 an earlier fancy, no signs of an allegiance which 
 I might find it wise to overlook. The closets, 
 too, were guiltless of all subterfuge, the corners 
 of evasion. Search as I might, I could not find 
 the shadow of a past. The place was almost too 
 immaculate, too young for its year. It seemed 
 absurd to have nothing more to show. Why I, at 
 two and twenty was scarce older, and yet at a 
 pinch, I had more that I might find it provocative 
 to confess. However, it had a simpHcity to which 
 I had not then attained. It dared to state its 
 poverty, a poverty so neat, so bare, so stripped 
 of all save fundamentals that the room seemed 
 like the cabin of a ship in dry-dock before her 
 maiden trip. And as though it were lying snug 
 in harbor, the port-holes held little landscapes 
 of bright color. The arch and sweep of elms, 
 elders breaking into foam above an old gray wall, 
 a stream seen only where it caught the light in 
 filtering through the sedge; and rolling back 
 from this deep trough of marshland, pastures that 
 broke into green crest against a western sky. 
 
 As I stood confronted by this brightness, im- 
 mediate and inescapable, I felt a strange reversal 
 
 [64] 
 
Keeping Ones Place 
 
 of my earlier desire. Seclusion had grown moldy 
 and by many shades too somber. I could not 
 live so furtively. Arrogance now seemed austere. 
 Surely there was something more approachable, 
 more gracious even in this openness of manner 
 that let the whole world in. Thus I accounted 
 later for my quick surrender and the hurried cer- 
 emony necessary to the sealing of our bond. 
 
 In our first summer, still so happy to remem- 
 ber, it was I who claimed indulgence. Ours was, 
 in fact, a poor one-sided bargain in which I 
 shirked my part. I was no housewife. What's 
 more I was wayward ; and the sober ritual set me 
 I made no attempt to learn. That New England 
 ancestor of mine who in virtuous reproof wrote 
 the word "Slut" upon her neighbor's dusty table 
 would have called my easy going by a harsher 
 name than "slicking up." It was much simpler 
 than the lazy efforts of a slattern, for I raised 
 the windows high to a sea gale that raked the 
 place from end to end. A more sweetening pro- 
 cess to my way of thinking, this that smacked of 
 salt and bayberries, than the stir of dust from mop 
 or broom. I had, too, my own blithe ideas about 
 
 [65] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 bed-making and preferred for thorough airing 
 those mornings when I answered to the call of 
 a full tide. And if my dishes did not "stand," 
 my tidiness was due to the position of the kitchen 
 sink. This was no solitary place of penance to 
 transform the gadabout to drudge. Through the 
 window just above it, I had clear access to the 
 fields and orchard and might watch for all that 
 stirred the world outside. Quite often, as I 
 rinsed, and scoured, and scrubbed, I was specta- 
 tor at a quiet drama. A quail with courting crest 
 erect would come mincing down my path and se- 
 cure of solitude would call softly to his mate. A 
 pair of yellow warblers, always debonair and un- 
 concerned at my appearance, would calm down 
 to their domestic duties and make discovery of 
 their small nest. Or a heron would fly up from 
 the stream and settling on the wall, would slyly 
 preen his quaker plumage. But as a rule I played 
 unseen official and reviewed maneuvers on the 
 duck pond where a white flotilla was at sea. A 
 far different business this, that was the mere ac- 
 companiment to pastime, than any earlier en- 
 counters I had had with pots and pans. Even 
 
 [66] 
 
Keeping Ones Place 
 
 provisioning took on a zest since I did not have 
 to compromise myself by telephone and might 
 go out to fill my basket inspirationally from the 
 truck teams on the road. Suppose things were 
 not ordered. Suppose at my caprice, I dropped 
 them, overlooked them, let them wait. My house 
 was no domestic tyrant. When I chanced to look 
 its way it was complacent and brought me up 
 with no sharp reminders of indifference or of neg- 
 lect. It was there it seemed to say to hold my 
 peace in keeping. So long as I was happy, it 
 would not interfere. 
 
 It was not long, however, before our security 
 was threatened from outside. Those friends with 
 whom I thought to break off short by disappear- 
 ance, had got wind of my whereabouts. Sweetly 
 rustic, so it sounded. But was my attachment 
 sordid or romantic? They would not drop me 
 until they had been to see. And so one after- 
 noon I met the first outrider scouting on the road. 
 She had been looking for my place, she couldn't 
 seem to find it. Some one had said something 
 of a marsh. I pointed to it lying tawny in the 
 sunlight and then to the strip of shells that 
 
 [67] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 edged its girdling wall with a white stare. Could 
 she drive in ? Much better not, unless she wished 
 to back the whole way out. So this then was my 
 entrance? How amusing. But was it healthy 
 to have the swamp right there beneath my nose? 
 Surely, too, I must find it living at close quar- 
 ters to have neighbors quite so near. And the 
 cottage ! In one second, she had taken in its size 
 and the brave errors of its taste. Still she had 
 no doubt that it was handy. By that, she meant 
 that I had not even had an eye for looks. And 
 of a sudden I saw my house only as she saw it, 
 small, hot, violently flushed, devoid of spacious- 
 ness and cool repose. 
 
 Nor had I that high loyalty of silence that 
 meets criticism with contempt. I affected to dis- 
 claim my own. This affair of mine was, I pro- 
 tested, a free union, not a settled matter. I had 
 entered on it lightly; I had incurred no respon- 
 sibilities. When I felt myself growing weary, 
 there were no ties to keep me bound. 
 
 No ties? Were places where birth and love 
 and death had written in their history, the only 
 ones that held ? Were human happenings all that 
 
 [68] 
 
Keeping One's Place 
 
 counted and not the recollections of things seen 
 and felt? Not that of the dimness that preceded 
 dawn, the bay all silver smoke, the city looming 
 faintly on the hill. Not that of mornings when 
 every branch was swinging in the wind, when 
 there was the scurry of white clouds from the 
 northeast, and little waves came spanking in 
 towards shore? Or the noontide drowse of pas- 
 tures, or the golden light of afternoon that tipped 
 the spires of cedars and the crown of oaks as it 
 came sliding down the fields? And what of the 
 steady drip of rain so close above the roof, the 
 fine sift of mist through open windows, the gur- 
 gle of the stream beneath the stars, the rustle of 
 the trees outside? As I sat that night upon my 
 porch and watched the moonlight take the valley, 
 I knew that I should find these hard to leave. 
 
 Suppose then, that I abided by my choice, 
 cherished it and kept it. At least I had the sense 
 to know that I should be making no mistake. 
 Vulgarity and commonness alone were irretriev- 
 able. The more one tried to hide them, the more 
 blatantly they showed. But this place of mine 
 was different. It simply didn't know. It had 
 
 [69] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 gone wrong not from any pushing wish for self- 
 advancement, but from a desire to please. Surely 
 if I worked with it and showed it, insinuated here 
 and prodded there, it would make response. 
 
 How cleverly it would catch on, how far it 
 would outdistance me, my condescension did not 
 let me guess! 
 
 My first proposal it acceded to with little 
 hesitation. If, in truth, we had lived too much 
 alone and were in need of company, there was 
 an easy remedy. It was in a position to spread 
 out. Not much — we could not splurge. But we 
 might manage a small guest room. And while 
 we were about it, why not a maid's room. No 
 doubt my affection had turned critical from the 
 strain of doing my own work. 
 
 And reticence, on which I had so evidently set 
 my heart ! That, too, was something which might 
 be easily acquired. From its own stolid point of 
 view there seemed small need for hurry. Before 
 we shut out prying eyes, we should ha,ve some- 
 thing worthy to enclose. Still once I had made 
 selection of materials, it did the manual labor. 
 It built the underpinning firm with privet and 
 
 [70] 
 
Keeping Ones Place 
 
 with barberries, then turned its energies to rear- 
 ing maples, willows, and small fir trees in a high 
 green wall. 
 
 But cultivation was a different matter. At 
 first it couldn't get the hang of it. There was no 
 telling how things worked. I hadn't seemed to 
 mind its running wild. When it looked frowsy 
 and unshorn, I hadn't made remarks. Even its 
 gay fancy for a scarlet poppy springing up be- 
 fore the steps, an ox-eyed daisy glowing in the 
 path, I was apt to pardon and protect. But 
 the path itself in which it had felt pride — its one 
 attempt at social manners — I had avoided from 
 the first. And now I was attempting to put 
 that gleaming front aside and overlay it with a 
 garb of weeds. Women surely had odd ways ! 
 
 It was only when I mapped out our first 
 course, a front garden binding our pretense at 
 lawn — that the place awoke to interest and took 
 hold. Here was a tongue that it might learn 
 to speak, if I would only give it time. At least 
 one winter it must have for thorough ground- 
 ing in this language and a sober study of the 
 roots. And sure enough by spring, it roused it- 
 
 [71] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 self from its brown study and displayed its learn- 
 ing gayly. If it had not acquired real fluency, 
 it was "spelling it with flowers." 
 
 No wonder that I felt pride in its teaching. 
 No wonder that I pushed and overworked it, 
 gave it no summer holiday for rest. Peonies, 
 sweet-william, phlox. Those in simple forms it 
 had already mastered. But there were subtleties, 
 rare shades of meaning which they could not ex- 
 press. Fringed pinks would add both edge and 
 spice to our remarks, and iris spears a point. 
 Campanulas would give a purity of diction. 
 Spirea and gypsophila would veil our meaning 
 by elusiveness and shy half -hints. And whj^ not 
 violas for roguish chuckle and primroses for run- 
 ning comment or convenient small talk? It had 
 not occurred to me that the place might grow too 
 voluble, that I might provoke a clamorous am- 
 bition not easy to suppress. 
 
 Proper gardens, so I soon admonished, didn't 
 talk so loud. They showed that they were care- 
 fully brought up. I had seen them, always on 
 their good behavior, unobtrusive and controlled. 
 They had silences of leaves between their bursts 
 
 [72] 
 
Keeping Ones Place 
 
 of merriment. They held in check their gayety 
 by f alhng into sober moods of purple or reveries 
 of blue. There were things, moreover, that when 
 uttered in a tone of insolent magenta had better 
 not be said. 
 
 All very well — the answer showed precocity — 
 the less one suffered from restrictions, the easier 
 to be subdued. Things popped out from the very 
 effort to hold in, things like those jolly prim- 
 roses, unapropos beside the phlox, but quite pat 
 in their own place. The trouble was this garden 
 had to get a hearing all at once. If I wished for 
 more than jargon, for both brilliancy and depth, 
 I must give more space for utterance. How 
 have any sequence of ideas, how emphasize by 
 repetition, how work towards any climax in an 
 impromptu speech of at the most nine feet by 
 twelve? We must have extension courses before 
 its public speaking could be done with any form. 
 
 Then should I have stilled the aspirations of 
 my place, with confession of my inability. Be- 
 fore worst came to worst, I should have abdi- 
 cated from my chair. However, I had known 
 most fallible instructors who managed somehow. 
 
 [73] 
 
Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 Surely I might keep a step ahead if they could 
 keep a page. Unfortunately I depended on the 
 limitations of mere human energy. I did not re- 
 alize that natural energy proceeds by leaps and 
 bounds. Before I had grown ghb on "yellows," 
 their height, their habit, and their time of bloom, 
 the place had started off on its own explorations. 
 It did no good to murmur "papaver nudicaule" 
 and "rudbeckia." It was not going to stop for 
 Latin names. There they were, the plants, their 
 former pertness now transformed to joyousness 
 behind a springing hedge. All right in their way. 
 But what it wanted was a harder problem. Well, 
 what next? 
 
 As I faltered it came forward with its own 
 suggestion. It had chanced upon its real voca- 
 tion. Unknown to me it had been reaching out. 
 And really I had no idea how well those seedlings 
 looked against the grape-vine arbor enclosing 
 the north walk. They weren't right for it of 
 course. They spoke too humbly. It was just 
 that fact that had given it the clew. This was a 
 spot for loftiness and piety, for spires of delphin- 
 ium and hollyhocks, slim tapers of white phy- 
 
 [74] 
 
Keeping One s Place 
 
 sostegia, foxglove chimes and canterbury-bells. 
 And were there not platycodons and veronicas 
 to bind these soberly to earth? Let's see what 
 we could do with preaching against a chancel of 
 green leaves. 
 
 There was no doubt that here it felt the call. 
 But before the benedictions fell, before I had 
 completed my novitiate, it had turned foreign 
 missionary. Restive at its cincture, it was off 
 unsmocked, itinerant to proselyte among the 
 neighboring fields. The great thing now was a 
 revival meeting in that open plot of ground be- 
 hind the house. Let's sing lustily all the old 
 favorites, morning bride and mignonette, mari- 
 gold and candytuft. They went better with lay 
 sermons since they had a rousing burden to their 
 chorus and gave a message to take home. What's 
 more they were popular, they drew a crowd. 
 
 Not long thereafter rumors of eloquence be- 
 gan to go abroad. My garden has now its steady 
 congregation, its increasing band of converts. 
 Pilgrims even seek it from afar. Moreover, 
 since they do not recognize a formal time for 
 service, they drop in upon it at all hours. And 
 
 [75] 
 
Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 as I join them at the entrance, I know how they 
 will greet me. There will be no personal interest 
 in their comment, "I came in for a moment just 
 to see your place." 
 
 For the most part I am little jealous, proud of 
 its success, and well content to serve. Meekly, I 
 take part in its parochial duties. I act as verger 
 without fee. In great armfuls, I distribute tracts. 
 I bear its messages among the sick. By menial 
 labor, I make possible its public life. But in 
 such times as we are left alone, I turn unpleas- 
 antly domestic. What was its humble origin, 
 I beg leave to remind it. Who gave it its start? 
 In spite of all its airs and graces where would 
 it be without me? Not for a moment will I let 
 it so outgrow me as to think it was self-made. 
 
 [76] 
 
IV: Dinner With Diversions 
 
DUSK 
 
 If we might have one hour to be 
 Each other's silent company, 
 We'd choose the gray tranquillity 
 That broods in the half-light. 
 
 When one small breeze on nimble feet, 
 Left frisking with the meadow-sweet, 
 Goes searching after winds more fleet 
 And vanishes from sight. 
 
 When every careless bird that sings, 
 Feels purpose in its nomad wings. 
 And wheels from its adventurings 
 Resolved on homeward flight. 
 
 When spider drops from dusky beam 
 To weave the pattern of her dream, 
 Half gossamer, half silver gleam 
 Against the velvet night. 
 
 [79] 
 
IV: Dijiner With 
 Diversions 
 
 TN setting forth a banquet, it was no small part 
 -*• of the Elizabethan magnificence to furnish 
 diversion with the feast. Enough was never as 
 good to those exuberant people who accounted 
 poor the pleasures that came singly, and who held 
 as paupers' fare, whether it was peacock -pie or 
 swan, roasted ox or venison, the bountj?^ which 
 left the outer vision still unoccupied. Young in 
 spirit, they ate as they lived, with a child's lusty 
 appetite and half -attention ; their appetite in the 
 very moment of enjoyment, racing on to further 
 quest. So it was that any proper host provided 
 pomp and revel, masque and pageantry, not to 
 
 [8i] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 interrupt, but to enliven the mere business of the 
 feast. 
 
 There is, I confess it frankly, nothing Eliza- 
 bethan about my fare. For the most part it is 
 inspirational. At the close of work as I come in 
 from my garden, my eye is caught by a crisp 
 head of lettuce or by slim hanging pods as I pass 
 by the beanpoles. Or again it may be at a later 
 season that, as I run my hand along the corn 
 stalks, I feel with a kind of ecstasy, the proper 
 swell. In a few moments I am emptying out 
 upon the kitchen table, the contents of full 
 pockets and of apron; my selection made at the 
 eleventh hour. 
 
 Nor is there for that matter anything Eliza- 
 bethan about the capacity of my enjoyment. It 
 coincides exactly with the contents of my plate; 
 and there is a wholeheartedness about it that no 
 minstrelsy could woo. But there are times on 
 summer evenings when the breeze drifts hot across 
 the meadows, that I like best those pleasures of 
 the outer vision, a dinner with diversions, and in 
 full view of the stage. 
 
 In my case, my point of vantage is a platform 
 
 [82] 
 
Dinner With Diversions 
 
 extended for the purpose, open to the sky and 
 above a little marsh where the tide makes in until 
 it has set the tall sedge grass awash beneath my 
 very feet. Certain advantages it has, moreover, 
 in that my table bears no marks of rank, no place 
 below the salt from which to crane one's neck 
 for better view. It matters not which seat you 
 choose; though in one case you may look off 
 upon the distant city, its spires slim and delicate, 
 its windows flashing back the sun ; and more close 
 at hand a stretch of water, unrippled on such 
 evenings, save at the edge where you may see it 
 brimming faintly to a bar of richest green. Or 
 if you look off to the westward, there are mead- 
 ows outlined with stone wall and thicket, rolling 
 softly upwards to where a generous barn and 
 wood stand out against the deepening sky. 
 
 At first you might think my stage was empty 
 and that I had come out to watch the slow pro- 
 cessional of cloud and shadows; of color that 
 brightens suddenly before it dies. And, in truth, 
 there is much to occupy me in mere shift of scene. 
 Often it is gradual, a matter of month and sea- 
 son ; a change so slow that in the day time, I have 
 
 [83] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 scarcely time to notice it. But as I sit here, if it 
 is June, I become aware of a brightening to the 
 sharp sedges as they push through the matted 
 growth below me, or of a creamy mist upon the 
 elder bushes that overhang the farther bank. It 
 is here as a rule that I see the first wild rose, 
 flaunting its gay pink along the water's edge; or 
 in August, the transparencies of the sea-lavender 
 lifted just above the tide. Here, too, with a sink- 
 ing of the heart, I am first aware of the advance 
 of autumn, and realize that already it has touched 
 the marsh with tawny gold. There are other 
 changes that come more swiftly and are a mat- 
 ter of the hour. The trees lose their play of 
 light. The shadows creep farther and farther 
 down the hillside, sharply pointed where they 
 mark the outline of the cedars, spreading fanwise 
 from the roots of buttonwood or oak. Gradually 
 the bay has lost its color and turned to purpHsh 
 blue; and behind it, the city is marked now by 
 the refulgence of its Hghts. With a sudden wink, 
 the road lamps flash on ; the meadows melt to sil- 
 ver ; and below me the little stream gathers dark- 
 ness until a place of mystery, of soft gurgles and 
 
 [84] 
 
Dinner With Diversions 
 
 squelching noises, it runs an intermittent line of 
 black. 
 
 But all the while there has been more active 
 drama, unexpected and spontaneous ; for my ac- 
 tors have no more formal prompting than their 
 instinct, and no notion of their cues. Often they 
 will leave the stage quite empty. As often they 
 will be upon it, taking possession of it with an 
 onslaught from both wings. But even if they are 
 absent when I take my seat, I know where to 
 find them; for this little gully is a thoroughfare 
 for birds who find it the clearest course to their 
 nests behind my house, and for creeping things 
 who use it as their mart and build their houses 
 in the swale. 
 
 Out over the bay the fishhawks are still cir- 
 cling, the sweep of their great wings now dark 
 against the sky, now glinting white as they soar 
 aloft and catch the last splendor of the sun. 
 Down they drop, sometimes to rise after a fruit- 
 less plunge, sometimes to wing straight towards 
 me as they make their way to the gaunt button- 
 wood midway upon the hill. Often they fly so high 
 that I can see only the regular beat of their great 
 
 [85] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 pinions, but occasionally so low that for a second 
 I am darkened by their shadow and make out the 
 booty clutched in their crooked claws. Already 
 there is a clamor from the outlook on the nest 
 and an answering querulous cry. They are a 
 fretful family. There is no affection in that wail 
 that has just shrilled above my head. There is 
 neither respect nor gratitude in the outcry that 
 has brought it forth. And as the hawk in spiral 
 flight, settles over her unruly brood, I can imag- 
 ine the squabble that ensues over the partition 
 of the meager meal. 
 
 Better I like the kingfisher with his neat front 
 and jaunty crest, who is waiting on the rock for 
 his last dive. He takes his time about it and 
 gives no warning. His performance is for his 
 own interest, not for mine. But of a sudden there 
 is an unswerving plunge, a scattering of silver, 
 and he too is speeding towards me up the thor- 
 oughfare. His flight is low and on a level with 
 my porch. At first he does not see me. But as 
 I move, he gives a rattle of defiance, a ruffling of 
 his crest at my impertinence, and veers off across 
 the fields. 
 
 [86] 
 
<^ 
 
 
 
 THIS LTTTtE OTT1J.T IS A THOEOtlGHFABj: FOR BIBDS. 
 
 [87] 
 
Dinner With Diversions 
 
 Now come the real lovers of twilight, the swal- 
 lows at their game of tag. They are my circus 
 acrobats. How they dart and circle overhead as 
 though from invisible trapezes, vaulting high into 
 the air, then dipping in swift flight to the very 
 surface of the water, skimining it so nearly that 
 I expect to see the momentary feathering of oars. 
 They have marked out one of their number for 
 pursuit. After him they go, light as gossamer 
 until their gay chatter grows more distant and 
 they have disappeared around the corner of the 
 house. Back they come. This time, mad wags, 
 they make me their mark and their game is to see 
 how near they may approach me. Many a time I 
 have been startled by their presumption and have 
 fancied as they gave a sudden swerve that I have 
 felt the stiff vibration of their wings. In the 
 twitter that they give as they pass by me, there 
 is much of the chuckling satisfaction of the per- 
 former who has pulled off a clever trick. 
 
 At this time, moreover, if the tide is low, there 
 are other visitants; a pair of night herons who 
 come slowly down the stream, their shoulders 
 hunched, their necks close-furled, their feet lifted 
 
 [89] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 fastidiously, for all the world like old aristocrats 
 who in their old age have been forced to indulge 
 in gainful toil. There is a delicate melancholy 
 about their companionship, a dignity and reserve 
 to their silent mood. Do they never communi- 
 cate? Is theirs the silence born of understand- 
 ing, or was their courtship one of those late make- 
 shift affairs, based not on passion but respect? 
 I think pleasantly of the jolly companionship of 
 robins, their fresh undisciplined squabbles, their 
 frank approaches and am sure that my elderly 
 couple would take as lack of breeding, so much 
 chatter of vituperation and acknowledgment of 
 a mistake. 
 
 Nor is their formality exacted only of each 
 other. I, too, have paid my tribute of immobility 
 and of respect. One evening as I sat late in the 
 twilight, I was surprised to see a pair of great 
 wings sailing towards me and a figure settle on 
 the very pillar of the porch, wobbling there for 
 a moment on ungainly leg. No hint did the bird 
 give of his surprise at finding me, no ill-mannered 
 squawk of embarrassment or of rebuke. With 
 lank neck held erect, he accorded me an eye of 
 
 [90] 
 
Dinner With Diversions 
 
 gleaming red that sheathed itself suspiciously 
 from time to time as though he had let up a 
 screen against my observation. Nor was he to 
 be hurried to unseemly flight. He stretched him- 
 self to his full height, shook out his mouse-gray 
 plumage. And it was only after I had had time 
 to notice the green around his nostrils and the 
 regularity of the white spots that circled his 
 wings as though spilled there thickly from a 
 paint-brush, that he gave a decorous flap and 
 trailed his legs behind him in swift transforma- 
 tion from gawkiness to grace. 
 
 All the more marked in contrast with their 
 dignity, is the zest with which these birds devour 
 their evening meal. At the moment they have 
 stationed themselves below me, where the stream 
 runs swift and shallow, and stand there patient 
 and ungainly, pursuing without comment their 
 silent task. But let a beak strike out with light- 
 ning stab and a fish be tilted up as in a vise, 
 and there is real gusto to the gulp that sends him 
 rippling down a shirt front. It is, however, but 
 the momentary betrayal of an appetite. In a 
 second the neck is again refurled, the sharp eyes 
 
 [91] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 are watching, and the birds stand together, dusky 
 silhouettes among the sedges, until they fade 
 to phantoms in the twilight. 
 
 If, on the other hand, the tide is high, their 
 place is taken by the muskrat. I have never 
 known the secret of his swims. Is he washed out 
 of his hole by the slow rise of the tide that seeps 
 httle by little into the stone wall, or does he come 
 out for diversion? Leisurely he moves as though 
 his exercise were pastime, now lost to view 
 among the tussocks of long grass, now barging 
 his waj'- among the floatage. Sometimes when 
 the drift clogs the channel, he will clamber out 
 upon the bank, dragging his flat naked tail be- 
 hind him, and throwing off the water in dense 
 spray, will sit there busily working his small paws 
 at furbishing his whiskers. A solemn business 
 that, and one that calls for gravity. 
 
 Despite the sobriety with which he polishes his 
 snout, his eyes have a twinkle, as though a clown 
 at heart, he made a conscious joke of all efforts 
 spent at foppishness. You would not think to 
 see him sitting there so comfortably on his plump 
 quarters that he could vanish easily. But an in- 
 
 [92] 
 
Dinner With Diversions 
 
 cautious movement on my part will send him 
 scurrying for his tunnel. There will be a slap 
 of the tail, a quick dive, and he will leave no 
 hint of the direction he has taken. Better 
 I like to leave him to his whims, to watch him 
 disappear into the night, sculHng ahead with 
 widening furrows left behind him. 
 
 But as he leaves the curtain slowly falls. 
 Softly it descends over the hill-tops and the val- 
 ley until rustling in the nimble wind, it settles 
 on the stream below. And when at last it has 
 concealed my stage in shadow, the last actor 
 comes upon it from one corner of the porch, in- 
 visible at first, until in one tiny corner of its 
 black immensity, he begins to weave with silver 
 thread his delicate design. 
 
 t93] 
 
V: Friendly Spying 
 
MY COVERLID 
 
 Your coverlid is homespun, 
 
 Warp and woof of loom ; 
 White tassels are the flowers 
 
 Shorn before they bloom ; 
 A clipped fringe for a border. 
 
 Primness in each fold. 
 Linen, smooth, immaculate, 
 
 It turns a body cold. 
 
 But mine is bright in springtime, 
 
 Stitched with thread of green. 
 Slim needle buds come pricking 
 
 Through its satin sheen. 
 Adorned with lace of cobweb 
 
 Woven in the rain. 
 Is it not a coverlid 
 
 To make a body vain? 
 
 In summer it is motley 
 Patched with every hue, 
 
 [97] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 Applique of foxglove bells, 
 Snips of larkspur blue. 
 
 Purple of campanula, 
 Coreopsis spray. 
 
 Is it not a coverlid 
 To make a body gay? 
 
 In autumn it is yellow 
 
 Overcast with leaves, 
 Orange quilt of marigold 
 
 Spread among the sheaves. 
 Dim traceries of asters 
 
 On a tawny ground. 
 Is it not a coverlid 
 
 To keep a body sound? 
 
 A counterpane in winter 
 
 Made of driven snow, 
 Pillowing of feathered down, 
 
 Flounce and furbelow, 
 A blanket folded over. 
 
 Brown beneath the white. 
 Is it not a coverlid 
 
 To warm my thoughts at night? 
 
 [98] 
 
A,\ ^ 
 
 -~ /«-'=^ 
 
 V: Friendly Spying 
 
 IN the formal days of the eighteenth century 
 every visit to a garden was a personally con- 
 ducted tour. There was no dropping in and pok- 
 ing about in our intrusive modern fashion; no 
 roving eye caught and drawn by some glad bit 
 of color, no triumph of discovery. Perspectives 
 in those days were solemn matters and permitted 
 of no prying. Vistas repelled all unmannerly ad- 
 vances and allowed no intimacies of approach. 
 One was led with decorous steps from labyrinth 
 
 [99] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 to grotto, from grotto on to wilderness, in an 
 unswerving circuit designed to prove an arti- 
 ficial stimulus to varying moods. No pleasant 
 progress that, made under the close scrutiny of 
 a guide who found the test of one's gentility in 
 one's manner of response. 
 
 And yet it could be made with gayety; for 
 there was, the story goes, a prankish gentleman 
 who had access to Pope's garden from a strategic 
 position at the rear, and who with every show of 
 innocence and flattery would lead his guests 
 through the famous Twickenham by a reversal 
 of its intended order, upsetting its perspectives, 
 despoiling its vistas, routing its moods, and pro- 
 voking its ill-tempered little owner, "the wicked 
 wasp," to sally forth to implant what proved to 
 be an ineffectual sting. 
 
 There are no formalities to my own little gar- 
 den and yet I must confess I should not want 
 that gentleman residing at my gates. No, not 
 at either ; whether in the rear it led to wilderness, 
 or in front to what in the elegance of his own 
 language, he would term my "desert." I, too, 
 wish to lead my guests on a personally conducted 
 
 [lOO] 
 
Friendly Spying 
 
 tour. My motive, however, is humility, not pride. 
 I desire not to display, but to conceal; and the 
 test is of my own gentility, not theirs. 
 
 Am I to let them chance alone on that long 
 arid stretch of iris which lines my pathway and 
 which when out of bloom, despite all efforts spent 
 at furbishing, is a waste of rusted spears? To 
 be sure I do disclaim it as outlying territory, and 
 obviously it is not under my control. Yet half 
 the greeting which I call out from my doorstep 
 is to distract the gaze; to lead visitors well up 
 the path before they have a chance to look. Once 
 there, moreover, I still try to put on blinders. 
 It is a pleasant prospect, this first border, cir- 
 cling from maple tree to little cedar and flanked 
 all the way by a green hedge. In June, they can- 
 not fail to be entranced by the anchusa, bright 
 against the fir tree and showering in great sprays 
 its flowers of gentian blue; or by the stretch of 
 salmon pink sweet-william among which the 
 campanulas hft snowy chalices and primroses 
 droop their delicately tinted heads. No clash- 
 ing color there, not even later when it is a mass 
 of subtly blended phlox. For one not given to 
 
 [lOl] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 restrictions, it represents an admirable effort to 
 harmonize and to subdue. But it is my one fling 
 at estheticism and my guests must look ahead; 
 for behind them — I hope safely — is a gorgeous 
 patch of zinnias. If they turn, they will ask me 
 in a moment, their reproof veiled with politeness, 
 if I have never tried the pastel shades. Nor will 
 any protestations on my part that to me a zinnia 
 bed looks peaked when it is put on diet, reinstate 
 me as a person of good taste. Have they not as 
 evidence against me those tawny oranges and dull 
 magentas? If I like them in their garishness, 
 their place is in the cutting garden, not where 
 in the early morning I may see them flaunting 
 in the sunlight, the bumblebees tumbling over 
 their great scarlet cones. 
 
 When my guests pass through the arch, more- 
 over, and come upon my yellow border, I must 
 follow close at heel. Even as it is the chances are 
 that they will overlook my Iceland poppies, the 
 primroses and yellow loosestrife, all proper gar- 
 den flowers. Their eyes will fall with disap- 
 proval on the tarnished gold of tansy or the black- 
 eyed Susans which they will think have wan- 
 
 [102] 
 

 
 IT IS A PLEASAKT PROSPECT, THIS FIRST BORDER. 
 
 [103] 
 
Friendly Spying 
 
 dered in upon me from the roadside or strayed in 
 from neighboring fields. I must be there to tell 
 them that both were diligently sought for, lifted 
 with protestations from surroundings where they 
 felt themselves at home, and encouraged to ac- 
 commodate themselves to a more cultivated life. 
 And the blue weed in the border just beyond, first 
 cousin to anchusa, but descendant of some rude 
 pioneering branch. Are my guests not to know 
 that at the risk of ridicule I stopped for it at a 
 grimy little station, a mere place for backing and 
 filling, and lifted it from the cinders in which 
 with its rough hardihood it chose to hve? They 
 will not see, unless I tell them, that it is needed 
 by the yellow daisies; that its imcouthness and 
 unconsciousness of its rough beauty, lend a con- 
 trast to the daisies' airy and sophisticated grace. 
 But while such arrangements for the most part 
 have been planned and have reason behind their 
 apparent shiftlessness, what am I to say when 
 they walk through my rose garden and are halted 
 by a mullein in the very center of the path? Of 
 one thing I am certain : they must not treat with 
 violence that stalwart sentinel. The countersign 
 
 [105] 
 
Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 I have discovered, is a friendly hand laid on its 
 great stalk and woolly leaves. And while its pro- 
 tection was never sought for and all unasked it 
 mounted guard, now that I have grown accus- 
 tomed to its sharp arrest, I should miss it from 
 its post. 
 
 So it is that no matter where my visitors may 
 wander, there are matters that must he explained. 
 The pea-bed that has run to poppies ! Why, they 
 cannot see the vines for all the nodding heads. 
 If there be a choice I tell them quickly the pref- 
 erence is shown to poppies. Peas I can buy. 
 They are in the market, things of barter. But 
 where could I purchase those great somber blooms 
 of wine dark red? No, my garden needs too 
 much explanation to permit of any browsing. 
 All visitors I must keep close at hand. 
 
 But when it comes to others' gardens, with 
 true perversity and little of the spirit of reci- 
 procity, I like best to make my way alone. If 
 I am to catch their charm, the owner must not 
 be there to distract me with her pride in her 
 possessions. I must chance upon her treasures 
 if I am to know their worth. 
 
 [io6] 
 
Friendly Spying 
 
 I remember one time in particular when I in- 
 dulged in friendly spying, while supposedly I 
 was quite safe in bed. I had arrived at dusk and 
 from the windows I could see no garden, only a 
 stretch of lawn closely cropped in contrast to 
 the marshlands which lay just beyond it, and 
 twisted pines, massed dark against the evening 
 sky. But in the room about me there were 
 flowers which could be the product of no green- 
 house; tea-roses, heliotrope, nicotiana with its 
 sweet-scented stars, little vincas, dead white 
 against their glossy leaves. 
 
 I resolved that night to find them growing and 
 before they were displayed, so at an early hour 
 I rose and unobserved, slipped out upon the lawn. 
 The mist had risen from the sea, but shreds of 
 cloud still lingered in the marshlands, and the 
 pine trees were cutting through their silver 
 shroud. At first, however, I could not find the 
 garden, not a sign of blossoms; only shrubs, 
 their leaves sparkling with a myriad little jets of 
 xflame. Then suddenly a heavy fragrance came 
 upon me — clethra, its feathery spikes still wet 
 >vith dew — and I made my way to what had 
 
 [107] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 seemed an impenetrable hedge. There, led by- 
 earthy smells and languorous perfumes, I was 
 soon inside. But not even then were all the 
 mysteries revealed. In a small enclosure I had 
 come upon the roses, some still pointed buds, 
 others cupping in their depths the radiance of ap- 
 proaching day. But the garden itself was a 
 labyrinth in the true sense; no mere matter of 
 clipped hedges and intricate design, but fash- 
 ioned out of natural growth from clethra and 
 wild clematis. Elusive and provocative, they led 
 me by their fragrance to what they held beyond. 
 Sometimes they opened out upon a prospect of 
 gold-banded lilies, their spotted petals and bronze 
 stamens just unfolding to the first pale rays of 
 sunlight; or upon begonias, so low the sun had 
 not yet reached them and flaming like great 
 moths that had ventured forth into some tropic 
 twilight. At times, they closed in upon a niche 
 of green where, as though left undisturbed, tall 
 ferns uncurled their fronds amid a tracery of 
 leaves. And suddenly, when I had grown accus- 
 tomed to the dimness and the shadows, I came 
 out upon the world ablaze, the sky bare and 
 
 [io8] 
 
Friendly Spying 
 
 cloudless overhead, and below me, beyond a rosy 
 stretch of mallow, the glitter of the sea. 
 
 Later in the day I revisited the garden, but 
 the praise which I expressed then to my hostess 
 was not for its noontide beauty as I saw it with 
 her guidance, but for that which, stealthily and 
 unobserved, I had chanced on earlier; beauty 
 born of a magic hour. 
 
 In these autumn days when my cottage is 
 closed already for the winter, but the garden is 
 still blooming as though it had laid by a store of 
 gold, I like best to think about that stolen ramble. 
 It gives me confidence. Is it possible that my 
 own garden, which is now unguarded, has not 
 needed my protection ; that chance visitors, com- 
 ing in upon it from the roadside and responding 
 to an invitation more confident than mine, will 
 find a beauty for themselves in its haphazard 
 growth ; a charm which I myself perhaps by rea- 
 son of my stewardship have but half guessed. 
 
 [109] 
 
VI: Solomon or Sheha? 
 
VI: Solomon or Sheba? 
 
 "Neither was there any such spice as the 
 Queen of Sheba gave King Solomon." 
 
 THERE was never a question of regality — 
 scarcely of identity. It was Solomon — or 
 Sheba from the first. How else explain the glory 
 arrayed in which our prisoner came to exile save 
 as his arrogance — or hers? For no sooner had 
 we pried apart the box that formed a rude in- 
 carceration than there came a flash of the imperial 
 scarlet from breast, from crested head-dress, and 
 from flaunting train. Surely, too, the wisdom in 
 the wrinkled cheeks and shrewd, cold eyes was 
 either hers who came to put hard questions, — or 
 
 [113] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 his who left no spirit in her before the half was 
 told. The nose, moreover, aristocratic in its 
 curving downward sweep, was unmistakably the 
 son of David's — or hers of some collateral line. 
 
 But it seemed a little academic to debate the 
 problem with the triumphal march of occupation 
 in full swing above our heads. Our monarch, 
 flinging back the wings of a blue mantle, had 
 swept off to search the confines of a narrow king- 
 dom and to take possession of a throne. Thus 
 was our wise concern just then court etiquette, 
 the proper manner of approach and of retreat. 
 Those couchings and low-crooked curtsies so 
 spurned by Caesar, were, I am afraid, the very 
 forms we used. We dodged the royal wrath, we 
 bent before it; we quailed, I know I shook. Gone 
 was our republic with its traditionary rights of 
 man. Life was no longer safe. Liberty was 
 threatened. "Lord God Almighty," said my 
 father, as foregoing his pursuit of happiness, he 
 fled upstairs. One thing alone was clear. We 
 were in the grip of the relentless tyrant, subjects 
 not of the mailed fist, but of the iron beak. It 
 even seemed a pity that such an instrument of 
 
 [114] 
 
Solomon or Sheba? 
 
 torture should be confined to so few victims. It 
 might more properly have been Inquisitorial. 
 With mechanical precision, it would have wrung 
 a full confession and extorted a complete return 
 to faith. 
 
 When, however, we had formed our Royal 
 Household, we began to have our speculations. 
 It was not that we were troubled over the suc- 
 cession. Why worry over scions when the 
 dynasty established was likely to outlast our 
 time? But the proprieties! They set us think- 
 ing! With a retinue so scarce, we were hard- 
 pressed to fill all offices and allotted the appoint- 
 ments as the need arose. And was it altogether 
 fitting — we could not help wondering — that at 
 twilight my mother should convey a sleepy 
 monarch up to bed? Should she, Lady-in- Wait- 
 ing, be the first to answer to all morning calls? 
 Once a week, moreover, she took her station on the 
 lawn, a small green watering pot her insignia of 
 office. Efficiently she wielded it — still who knew 
 how decorously? — as Mistress of the Bath. My 
 brother had avoided all such menial duties. He 
 insisted on his rights as Chamberlain, High Chan- 
 
 [115] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 cellor, and Minister of State. It was his privilege 
 to grant an audience and to present. Yet might 
 he not more becomingly have installed himself as 
 Knight of the Bedchamber or First Groom? 
 About my father and myself, it did not much 
 matter. We were the trembling populace whom 
 fear makes neuter. We kept a proper distance 
 from the throne. 
 
 For the most part we were convinced that we 
 were servitors of Solomon. More terrible than 
 an army with banners he had come among us 
 and had seized upon his kingdom with a preda- 
 tory clutch. Sheba, we knew, for a lady fond 
 of panoply and trappings. She would have in- 
 sisted on full coronation rites, preferring a 
 graceful exaltation to her chair of state to any 
 greedy downward swoop. And being feminine, 
 she would have striven for a personal adulation 
 and have contrived to win her subjects' hearts by 
 luring wile. 
 
 Besides our sovereign's appetite was mascu- 
 line. So was his thirst. Sheba would have simu- 
 lated delicacj^ at the table and have sought in- 
 dulgence in a woman's nibbling way between her 
 
 [ii6] 
 
Solomon or Shebaf 
 
 meals. Not so Solomon. He was not content 
 with his own ever ready banquet or to be in his 
 own cups. He must be in ours. We were re- 
 duced to humble tasters of his fare with no safe 
 social barrier below the salt. Unimpeded by his 
 sweeping length of train, he progressed from 
 plate to plate and course to course. And let 
 there be the pop of cork, the sound of contents 
 flowing, and he was close at elbow before a glass 
 was filled. There was a deep intake, a guzzling 
 chuckle, a roisterous head thrown back, and a 
 large bead gathering on his beak. Sheba, too, 
 would no doubt have liked her nip. But this was 
 Solomon who stood his liquor like a man and 
 guttled down a swig. 
 
 His pastimes, also, were the traditionary ones 
 of the war-lord in exile. A good part of the day 
 he spent in splitting wood. Clothes-pins, spools, 
 cigar boxes, tribute furnished him in desperation, 
 he regarded as mere child's play. They were 
 reduced to jackstraws before our backs were 
 turned. What suited him exactly as fit material 
 for exercise were window frames and cornices, 
 banisters and doors. Indeed, had he been 
 
 [117] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 forced to earn an honest living, he might have 
 traveled as a journeyman house-wrecker with his 
 kit in beak. 
 
 But it was as a bagger of big game that he 
 found his chief exhilaration. A ring of the front 
 door bell was the jolly flourish that proclaimed 
 the hunt was up. The old sport of routing 
 Philistines! His father's blood was in him. 
 David had slain his ten thousands. Then could 
 not Solomon rest until he, too, had shown his 
 prowess. He must secure his captives or send 
 the cravens scurrying in flight. And did less 
 worthy sport provide, he would content himself 
 with any minion who dared pop a black face 
 from the burrow below the kitchen stairs. A 
 low taste and he knew it. Far different was his 
 pursuing scuttle from the grand manner of his 
 usual charge. It was, however, as though Balkis, 
 Queen of Sheba, had left rankling the bitterness 
 of an unfinished conquest, so deep-lying was 
 his anger against the least member of her dusky 
 race. 
 
 Late in the afternoon with wrath expended, 
 it was his habit to sit at the western window, the 
 
 [ii8] 
 
Solomon or Shebaf 
 
 sunlight robing him in the full splendor of scar- 
 let and barbaric gold. With head ruffled up in 
 thought or held pensively in one crooked claw, 
 he formulated proverbs which were the residue 
 of his old, wicked mind. They were, indeed, 
 dark sayings. I could not understand the words 
 of wisdom though I inclined my ear. But it was 
 impossible to miss the balance, the biblical monot- 
 ony of repetition, so forcible in driving home 
 the truth. And who knew better the way of sin- 
 ners; of those "whose feet rim to evil and make 
 haste to shed blood"? 
 
 One evening, though, the words grew suddenly 
 articulate and I was troubled with a doubt. 
 
 "Poor Solomon. Poor old Solomon. Sol- 
 omon is a bad boy. Poor Sol." 
 
 The voice was deep and gruff, yet full of a 
 commiseration that decency and natural pride 
 forbade to be expended on oneself. And Sol? 
 The use of the absurd diminutive! A pet name 
 no doubt bestowed by Sheba, in a moment of 
 affection daring to make free. Was this then 
 she, lamenting with that mothering instinct that 
 
 [119] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 is always mixed with passion, the one whom she 
 had loved? 
 
 There were other reasons for so thinking. 
 What of those days when she showed a zest for 
 house-cleaning and set her servants by the ears? 
 Solomon would have detailed his administrative 
 duties. Sheba, on the contrary, was a good 
 housewife, trained in domesticity. She must 
 know herself how everything was run. Seated 
 on the carpet sweeper, she went back and forth 
 across the floors, her eye vigilant for pins or 
 thread. And when apparently the rooms were 
 cleaned, she would run her beak along the floor 
 cracks until she had left a narrow strip of lint 
 as her reminder of our laxity with dust. She 
 lowered herself to supervise the scrubbing and 
 was never happier than when tagging after brush 
 and pail. Such times, too, as she penterated to 
 the kitchen, she was in and out of everything. 
 Often she inspected all the ironing and in her 
 high-handed fashion cast upon the floor a gar- 
 ment not turned out to the queen's taste. Or 
 she sat upon a gas fixture, the very place for out- 
 look, and surveyed the baking, frying, scouring 
 
 [I20] 
 
Solomon or Shebaf 
 
 that went on below. Had we been servants and 
 not slaves, we should have told our mistress she 
 was "nosey" and have promptly taken leave. 
 
 Moreover, she had a daintiness about her per- 
 son that would in Solomon have been offensive, 
 and have marked him as a dude. On a rainy 
 day she would go over her whole raiment until 
 she was quite sure that it was free from blemish 
 and that every feather was in place. Her azure 
 mantle must fit sleek to show the curves of her 
 trim figure. Her train must be spread out until 
 it hung in proper folds. Since her subjects were 
 dowdy even in their court dress, she herself must 
 be the quintessence of finery and of good style. 
 
 In odd contrast were her moments, sometimes 
 weak and sometimes wanton, when she simply 
 must be fondled and caressed. Such moods 
 would have come to Solomon when the affairs 
 of state were over and when legitimately he 
 might seek affection as a mental rest. But they 
 came at any time to Sheba as they come to every 
 woman. No use to tell her that at office hours 
 her demonstrations were unseemly, hampering, 
 ridiculously out of place. As little to impress 
 
 [121] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 upon her that a living must be earned for her 
 provision. She refused to see that she was break- 
 ing business rules. Really she was not intruding, 
 she would be quite good, she wouldn't say a word, 
 she only wanted to be near. And in a moment of 
 persistence she had attained to her desire. Many 
 a sketch has my brother made with her upon his 
 shoulder. Many a page has my mother written 
 with Sheba snuggled in her lap. 
 
 It was to Solomon, however, and apparently 
 absorbed in deviltry, that I told the story that 
 let the secret out. 
 
 In New York not long before, I had met a 
 woman who had charmed me with the tale of 
 Harry, her own pet macaw. A nice fellow was 
 he, likable and democratic, and with no preten- 
 sions to great place. And since he was living in 
 his own tropic land where the choice was large 
 and there need be no great to-do about the mat- 
 ter, she had decided to set him up in housekeep- 
 ing and provide him with a mate. There was 
 no doubt at all that Harry was amenable. He 
 was young then, and impressionable ; and before 
 the introduction ended, he was deep in love. Too 
 
 [122] 
 
Solomon or ShebaP 
 
 guileless to conceal his feeling and to feign indif- 
 ference, he put on his courting crest, shook out 
 his plumage, and danced a "buck and wing." He 
 had supposed, you see, that he had found a will- 
 ing partner. Not for some time did he realize 
 that she had failed to join him and that he was 
 executing a pas sevl. Whether he was clumsy, 
 loutish, less skilled than some earlier acquaint- 
 ance, I do not know. In any case he had put 
 his heart into the dance and she had fled. 
 
 Were that all, it would be a trite story — 
 scarcely worth the telling. The pathos lies in the 
 memory she left behind. For had she loved 
 Harry, it would have been his duty, according to 
 the strange marriage vows of his own tribe, to 
 relieve her of maternal cares. He, not she, would 
 have had to build the nest and hover and keep 
 warm the eggs. And deep down in Harry's con- 
 sciousness, she had stirred all his paternal feeling. 
 He wanted children — if not his own, then those 
 of some one else. 
 
 He sought the farmyard where the chances of 
 adoption seemed most likely. The hens, settled 
 to their duty, he drove from off their nests. Their 
 
 [123] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 big, brown likely eggs he tried to convey to some 
 shelter of his own, propelling them by beak and 
 claw. Disaster naturally awaited each attempt. 
 There was a crash, a spill. In despair at last 
 Harry made choice of six stones, conveying 
 them beneath the porch where he arranged them 
 in a neat round clutch. And on these, with loss 
 of voice and appetite, of temper and of plumage, 
 he expended his paternity for three long weeks. 
 Such faith in the Creative Power, I felt deserved 
 a miracle, and not the cynicism of defeat. 
 
 My own emotion was deeply shared by Sol- 
 omon ; but at the moment I could not guess from 
 the cold calculating eye turned up to mine, how 
 profoundly my audience was moved. In two 
 days, however, there was a marked change in 
 his demeanor. It was clear that I had given 
 pause for thought. Suddenly turned seer, he 
 sat hunched in speculation on the banisters and 
 as though darkness lent reality to visions, he 
 tucked his head beneath his wing. That he was 
 not asleep, I knew, for when I prodded him 
 with some inducement to his old-time deviltry, 
 he rebuked my trivial interruptions with a rumi- 
 
 [124] 
 
Solomon or Shebaf 
 
 nating gaze. And since I alone had been the 
 cause of his unsettlement, he began to treat me 
 with a caustic beak. In a snug shelter beneath 
 the bed or bureau he lay in ambush for me. If 
 I walked through my room, forgetful of my 
 peril, there would be a sudden sally. And lucky 
 was I if I won the bath-tub as a safe retreat. 
 
 Yet never once did I hit upon the cause of 
 his disturbance. It was, I thought, a mood to 
 be put to flight by trickery; and with jester's 
 bells, I sought to win a chuckle and a return to 
 his old care-free ways. With music I sought to 
 break in upon his meditations, much as his own 
 father had attempted to let in a gleaming ray 
 upon the darkened mind of Saul. I even danced 
 before him. I danced with psalter and stringed 
 instruments. Of no avail. Nor could the Court 
 Physician whom I called in consultation, give 
 diagnosis of the ailment. With professional pat- 
 ter, he prescribed a tonic and a rest to nerves. 
 And since our royal patient had grown delirious 
 and wandering at night time, my brother must 
 play night-nurse and keep him safe in bed. 
 
 Then, just when our temper had turned brittle 
 
 [125] 
 
Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 and we had resolved on insurrection, the miracle 
 was worked. Protesting a right mind and able 
 body, Solomon declared that for the moment 
 he intentionally was not himself. If formerly 
 an infant had aroused him to his highest feat of 
 justice, this time the mere idea of one had stirred 
 him to compassion. Moved beyond belief, he had 
 transformed himself to Sheba and had done his 
 best for Harry. Rank had not mattered, nor had 
 distance; not even sex, or the long years that 
 lay between. There had been a tragic hole left 
 in my story and he had proudly filled it with the 
 contribution of one large, beautiful, white egg. 
 
 But there his responsibility was ended. In 
 the morning when I laid the gleaming shell be- 
 fore him he eyed it without tenderness, without 
 solicitude, and shook off all claim which it might 
 have upon him by a firm, destructive kick. 
 
 [126] 
 
VII: Job's Pool 
 
SOLACE 
 
 Job's Pool. In what still mood 
 
 Did he who wandered from the common way 
 
 So name your solitude ? 
 
 Misdoubting, did he guess 
 
 That at the roots of revery there lay 
 
 A well of bitterness ? 
 
 Or did he stoop to hear 
 
 Beneath the earth's corruption and decay 
 
 A cleansing spring run clear? 
 
 [129] 
 
VII: Job's Pool 
 
 IN one of the five porches of Bethesda stood a 
 sheepman who looked upon the pool with un- 
 imaginative eyes. About its rim he saw a crowd 
 collected, eager and expectant, and he wondered 
 at the faith that drew them to this place. It was, 
 you see, his sheep -pond and as such a mere con- 
 venience. In the morning and at noontide and 
 again at evening, he led his flock to its cool water 
 and stood waiting while they drank. So did it 
 lose its mystery by the very act of ownership and 
 by its practical importance in the day's routine. 
 
 [131] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 Though he listened with the multitude, he could 
 not hear the angel coming, and though he 
 watched he could not see the swift approach. 
 For what was to the pilgrims a celestial radiance, 
 was to him the first white peep of dawn or sun- 
 light striking a dark place. What to them was 
 the firm beat of pinions, was to him the stir of 
 wind that left him blinded not by vision, but by- 
 dust. It was not that he was irreligious; he 
 believed in miracles. His, however, he knew that 
 he must seek afar. He must come upon them, 
 weary, footsore, after pilgrimage. He could not 
 hope to gain a benediction by sauntering down to 
 his own pool from his own porch. 
 
 Thus, though Job's Pool is but a stone's throw 
 from our house, my father would not visit it by 
 method so direct. Instead, on a brisk autumn 
 morning, he would set forth in the opposite direc- 
 tion, his pack upon his back, his stave in hand. 
 Nor did he speed like Christian, too breathless 
 for his soul's salvation to take pleasure by the 
 way. Such ingratitude for the world's abun- 
 dance he would have thought an arrogance of 
 spirit, and he sauntered down the highway with 
 
 [132] 
 
Job's Pool 
 
 his eye alert for all enticements and with no pro- 
 tective fingers in his ears. 
 
 Indeed, while I walked along as the observant 
 Faithful, I used to think that Christian was 
 miscast. Had he only been a naturalist, with 
 what rapture he would have chanced upon the 
 Slough! How he would have botanized it! 
 With what delight he would have catalogued its 
 flora, forgetting in the joy of recognition and 
 discovery all commandments laid upon him to 
 preserve the straight and narrow path. Once, 
 moreover, that he had made his way through the 
 white flutter of buck-bean, through thrusting 
 arrow-heads and slim clean sheaths of cat-tail, 
 with what regret he would have reached the 
 farther bank. Certainly my father made no ges- 
 ture of entreaty or of supplication as he prodded 
 for tight-fisted little plants that clutched the base 
 of tussocks or ventured on the quagmire for small 
 spreading growths. Curiosity made for his val- 
 iance and he even plunged for treasure held 
 remote. Nor did I hear him make a feint of 
 weariness about his pack soon filled with a rich 
 freight. Sometimes, to be sure, he would call me 
 
 [133] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 forth from dalliance, but it was never for assist- 
 ance or for those heartening counsels that one 
 calls out safe from shore. He had found the 
 elderberries thridded with a vine whose misty- 
 blossoms gave out rare fragrance. He had come 
 upon a gentian too exquisite to pluck. Or close 
 by the culvert and buried underneath high brake, 
 he had discovered wealth of hard metallic gold. 
 And as I heard him call "Bidens Chrysanthe- 
 moides" or "Mycania Scandens," I did not need 
 his terms of praise translated to the vulgate. It 
 was, I knew, another version for the cry of "Life, 
 eternal hfe." 
 
 The Hill of Difficulty, too, which Christian 
 took at a slow trudge, my father made a glad 
 ascent. Why not, when it ran upward with a 
 rush of crimson and of russet that smoldered 
 into fire against the sky. In this season of the 
 year when all the world went gorgeously appar- 
 eled, it was as though each growing thing com- 
 bined for his elation. Blare of orange from the 
 poison-ivy, blast of scarlet from the sumach, rich 
 notes of gold and bronze and umber from the 
 ferns along the wall, even the deep bass of purple 
 
 [134] 
 
Job*s Pool 
 
 ironweed and aster were to him like martial music. 
 They gave his step a quickness and a spring, put 
 an eagerness into his pulses until he scaled the 
 height and stood beneath the hornbeam that was 
 ruddy as old wine and crowned the hill-top, a 
 triumphal arch. 
 
 Beyond it, where among thin blowing grass, 
 fall dandelions lay like sifted stars was the Del- 
 icate Plain called Ease, and here my father 
 walked with much content. The lure for me lay 
 backward in the valley, surcharged with the full 
 power of the tremendous sunshine, and in the 
 gusty clouds that went speeding down the slope, 
 took the bay at a fine gallop, and went racing 
 out to sea. But from the gray-headed ledge, 
 from stone wall and from the flowering of the 
 open meadow, more intimate demands came tug- 
 ging at him for response. Not always was it 
 the botanist who answered, though it was he who 
 always marveled at blue grass for its fine bee 
 track or wild carrot for the clew it offered by its 
 single fleck of blood. The man would draw him- 
 self erect before the dignity of mullein and ad- 
 mire its steadfastness and calm repose. And let 
 
 [135] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 my father come upon a thistle. It was not all 
 fun and still less mockery that brought him 
 quickly to attention, his stave held erect in a 
 salute. The fighter in him that so firmly under- 
 lay his mildness, made him pay his tribute to this 
 knight who took his solitary stand against the 
 cattle and held his plume so valiantly erect above 
 the silver spikings of his shield. And if the boy 
 in him went searching milkweeds for a chrysalis 
 — and found it too, green pendant to the rib of 
 leaf, it was the child who would break open a full 
 pod and send its gossamer afloat to the four 
 winds. 
 
 Suppose, too, a late quail called out its single 
 note from By Path Meadow. Entreaty met with 
 swift assurance; back and forth until all question- 
 ing was stilled. Not so blithe would my father 
 have whistled back his answer to the call of any 
 inner voice. 
 
 And once that I had urged him forward to 
 a path close-walled with clethra and swamp blue- 
 berry, I found it was no use to warn him out of 
 hurly-burly, pool, and pitfall. These murky dan- 
 gers from which Christian fled so piteously were 
 
 [136] 
 

 THE LUBE FOR ME LAY IN THE CLOUDS THAT TOOK THE BAY AT A FINE GALLOP 
 AND WENT RACING OUT TO SEA. 
 
 [137] 
 
Job's Pool 
 
 the very places that he searched for; and unerring 
 instinct led him to their hoard. Even turtle-head 
 was worth a scramble and though he would not 
 filch the casket, he would risk a tumble to look 
 upon the gentian's tight locked box of blue. But 
 should he catch the glimpse of scarlet robe, no 
 papal guard of bush or briar could withhold him 
 from a fine conference of Cardinals. He must 
 see their Eminences at their sitting, though he 
 was too reverent to disturb their meditations with 
 a word. 
 
 At last, however, of his own accord, he headed 
 for a beech, wedged tight against a cliff and 
 holding to the rocks below with silver sinuous 
 roots. This beech he used to say was like some 
 jolly friar with ruddy face and comfortable girth 
 who understood the frailties of men and took a 
 greater interest in their gossip than their sins. 
 In its companionship could one talk freely, tell 
 a jest, or open up a bottle, and be sure of hearing 
 a quick chuckle in the leaves. 
 
 The pine ahead was of a different order, of 
 an austere brotherhood whose vows set it apart. 
 To such a one, a sinner made confession not of 
 
 [139] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 little venial errings, but of some grave cardinal 
 sin that weighed upon his soul. And having eased 
 himself through stern reproof and penance, he 
 went forth upon his way forgetful, leaving his 
 confessor brooding over the secret he had told. 
 For all that my father would draw near the pine 
 tree and listen to the little grieving sigh that 
 went running through its boughs. 
 
 But from the great elm that stood solitary in 
 the open pasture, he preferred to keep apart. At 
 a distance he could best realize the beauty of its 
 holiness, see its unhurried dignity of growth, and 
 feel the import of the faith that drew it upward 
 in a single prayer. 
 
 Strange that the path should slip so quickly 
 down — from this mood of exaltation to a tangle 
 where all was tussle, a midsummer passion, and 
 hot lust. Here was flamboyancy to brightness, 
 and a heavy sensuality to fragrance that was 
 different from the wholesome smell of earth. 
 Freebooting vines reached out, rapacious, and 
 strangled with a leap, a clutch. And in the mad 
 jostle and abandon that took place among them, 
 the purple aster lost its comeliness, the joepye- 
 
 [140] 
 
Job's Pool 
 
 weed its delicacy. The goldenrod turned brazen 
 and wore its yellow like a harlot's robe. 
 
 Yet not ten yards beyond, it was as though we 
 had stepped out of the traffic with its discordant 
 jargon, into a dim cathedral, vaulted high with 
 boughs and buttressed to its slender groinings 
 with the trunks of trees. Dank coolness rose up 
 from the floor as in a place long closed to sun- 
 light. The air had ceased to breathe. And in 
 the center of this silence lay a little pit-black 
 pool. The ferns that grew about it were the 
 very fringe of mystery for at their roots we saw 
 the miracle take place. Mold and sodden leaves 
 were cleansed of their decay. Softly, irresistibly, 
 the creative power drew all things to itself and 
 informed them with new birth. Corruption put 
 on incorruption and revealed itself as means of 
 the eternal life. 
 
 Communion at this service was too profound 
 for utterance. But as we stood in silence there 
 together, we were bound more close in the com- 
 panionship of those who acknowledge the same 
 God and who rise to the same creed. 
 
 [141] 
 
VIII: Garden Hospitality 
 
CONTENT 
 
 The symbol of the soul, you say, 
 
 Is that gay butterfly 
 That dreams upon a scarlet phlox 
 
 Beneath an azure sky. 
 
 Will all the tranced ecstasy 
 Which I have missed on earth. 
 
 Be mine upon a scarlet phlox 
 When my soul finds rebirth? 
 
 Then Christian heaven is beyond 
 The aim of my surprise; 
 
 I'd rather dream on scarlet phlox 
 In pagan Paradise. 
 
 [145] 
 

 VIII: Garden Hospitality 
 
 rjlHERE is no doubt about it — I am not a 
 -*• genial giver. From the moment that I arm 
 a guest with scissors, I am acutely miserable until 
 her appetite is satisfied. I offer them, indeed, 
 much in the manner of a spoiled child who has 
 been told that it is but courteous to share her 
 playthings and who does so perfunctorily, and 
 with an air of pained politeness. At first I look 
 
 [147] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 carelessly in the opposite direction. I stir the 
 earth or stiffen a stake as if that were my sole 
 preoccupation. But, in reality, I am casting a 
 glance over one shoulder at the depredations that 
 I have invited. 
 
 She has begun with my sweet-william, a just 
 scourge to my vainglory. Will she spare that 
 one of cherry-red of which I wish the seedlings? 
 No, it is laid low. She has reached the variety 
 called Newport Pink. At this moment I call 
 her attention swiftly to the skill with which I 
 have attained a continuous stretch of bloom ; but 
 she has already opened up a breach. I know with- 
 out turning what she will lay her hands on next. 
 Just around the corner there are Iceland poppies, 
 orange and scarlet. She cannot miss the nodding 
 of their delicately crinkled cups. In a moment 
 they are tufts of leaves. And it will be a week 
 before their soft, fuzzy buds, so tightly curled 
 like little fronds, will straighten out upon the 
 crooked stems. 
 
 With an eager eye for acquisitions she has come 
 upon the roses — not the perpetuals of which one 
 gives so gladly — but the York and Lancaster of 
 
 [148] 
 
Garden Hospitality 
 
 which there is one remaining bud. I want that 
 bud! I want to see its yellow center and jaunty 
 streaked face. But swiftly it disappears. By this 
 time, I am at her heels. Will she never reach the 
 calendulas in their first gaudy bloom and clamor- 
 ing to be cropped? She has passed them for 
 those she has at home; so has she bachelor's but- 
 tons. And hastily she makes her way to my 
 sweet-peas. 
 
 Once there, you would think I might breathe 
 freely, as indeed I might; for do not I have to 
 toil twice daily to keep them giving bounty ? But 
 in a moment she has snipped off a whole gadding 
 vine with I know not how many buds, how much 
 capacity of growth. I recognize perfectly that 
 hers is the proper way to pick sweet-peas; that 
 arranged in a cluster of pure color they are hid- 
 eous, and that they need to nod among their own 
 green leaves. But I have never had the courage 
 to pick such a bouquet for myself. 
 
 While I am merely martyred during the cus- 
 tomary ravage, there are certain plants where an 
 attack will transform me to Knight Templar with 
 my sword unsheathed. To be sure these plants 
 
 [149] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 seldom need armed intervention. There is a kind 
 of sanctity that guards the canterbury-bells, the 
 tall spires of foxglove and delphinium. They 
 have a dignity that repels the invader. To fell 
 them would be sacrilege indeed ! 
 
 Once my guest has departed a keen shame sets 
 in. "The gift without the giver is bare." But I 
 plead, my complaint is that too much of me has 
 gone out with my gift. I think, however, of a 
 garden not far off. When I visit it I can scarcely 
 recognize it for what it is. Hens wallow out 
 their sun-baths in its midst or crane their necks 
 to crop a bloom. Children romp through it care- 
 lessly. There is scarcely a blossom in sight. And 
 yet I have never visited it without in some mirac- 
 ulous fashion leaving it full-handed. Sometimes 
 it is with great bunches of California poppies 
 which its owner knows I cannot grow in my clay 
 soil. Sometimes it is with mignonette. In my 
 father's day it was usually with some treasured 
 offering that had been grown almost as it were to 
 find pleasure in his sight. This garden yields 
 itself as the famous pitcher yielded milk, from 
 the source of hospitality abounding. 
 
 [150] 
 
Garden Hospitality 
 
 Another friend I have who is a source of much 
 reproach. To be sure she has more space at her 
 command, but hers is only generosity expanded. 
 Almost any day she will stop her household tasks 
 to take you "farming"; a delightful word in her 
 own whimsical interpretation. Little enough has 
 it to do with grubbing and hoeing. There are 
 vegetables on her farm I know, but I have never 
 seen them ; she keeps them out of sight. But once 
 among her flowers she will present you with a 
 basket for each arm and a formidable pair of 
 scissors and lead you to a low swamp where her 
 Japanese iris unfolds its crumpled flowers. Or if 
 it is August, to a sunny patch where in neat long 
 rows she grows her new and rare gladioli, the 
 primulinus hybrids. Then she will disappear quite 
 carelessly about her tasks. And when she returns 
 a good half hour later to find that you have but 
 helped yourself in the manner expected of your 
 guests, she lays about her, until you go home 
 staggering under your gay burden. 
 
 After so much frankness I can only plead that 
 much different is my own feeling when I part 
 with plants. A rainy day in August is a sign that 
 
 [151] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 he who runs may read ; and I welcome any guest 
 who comes armed with box and trowel. There 
 are many plants that do not comit — sweet -rocket, 
 garden heliotrope, the yellow primrose. These 
 are current coin. But the same sweet-william 
 that I hoarded in its bloom, I can now lift 
 eagerly; and the same Iceland poppies. The 
 peach-blow canterbury-bells where a rash hand 
 laid earlier would have routed my politeness, I 
 can now spade up recklessly in great clumps each 
 one of which when wedged apart would fill a 
 border. Nor is the seed-bed, the inner sanctuary 
 now inviolate. Here dwell mysteries, plants that 
 have never flowered. Is the plant one lifts the 
 Rocky Mountain columbine? Is the one that 
 stays the usual dingy double purple ? No matter. 
 Somewhere next June it will be expanding its 
 long spurs and pendulous buds. 
 
 So to salve my pride I have come to this con- 
 clusion, that what may seem my stinginess is not 
 really that. Plants from my garden you may 
 have in plenty. You may even dig them your- 
 self and I shall not look. I, too, will go uncon- 
 cernedly about my tasks. And flowers you may 
 
 [152] 
 
Garden Hospitality 
 
 have, those which if cut will come again. But 
 I offer my hospitality with restrictions. Nip it 
 tenderly and as it were from the rear. Seek out 
 those blossoms that perversely turn their faces 
 to the wall. And on your life, touch not those 
 that have lain dormant a full year to store 
 vigor for their bloom. For such flowers, even 
 when they are given me from others' gardens, fail 
 in beauty when I know that the plant has been 
 sacrificed in strength. 
 
 [153] 
 
IX: Round Robin Hood's Barn 
 
THE HUNTRESS 
 
 Artemis, the huntress, 
 
 Loves all small, wild things. 
 Little bears on tumbling legs. 
 
 Birds with unfledged wings, 
 Fox cubs peering out of holes 
 
 With a strange surprise 
 At the baying of her hounds 
 
 In their puzzled eyes. 
 Doe with spots on tawny flanks, 
 
 Lion whelps at play; 
 These she spares when she sets forth 
 
 With intent to slay. 
 
 Artemis, the huntress. 
 
 Slays them when they're grown; 
 Makes their beauty and their power 
 
 Tribute to her own; 
 Traps the lion in his lair, 
 
 Flays him of his pelt; 
 
 [157] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 Brings the stag with antlers down 
 
 For a doe-skin belt. 
 Tiger's jagged lightning stripes. 
 
 Panther's sleek black hide, 
 She must wear as ornament, 
 
 Robing for her pride. 
 
 How shall I blame Artemis? — 
 
 I, who wear a coat, 
 Lined with tiny squirrel skins 
 
 Soft at wrist and throat. 
 Trimmed with beaver's borrowed warmth, 
 
 Pretty, so I think, — 
 Though I wish I could afford 
 
 Richer gloss of mink. 
 
 I would fi*ee a silver fox 
 
 From the hunter's trap; 
 Yet how carelessly I buy 
 
 Beauty, for a wrap. 
 
 [158] 
 
IX: Round Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 I AM not one who would see the sun rise daily 
 from beyond a new horizon or set behind a 
 different verge. When it dawns above the dis- 
 tant city, I consider that it is but turning in the 
 proper groove; and when it disappears behind 
 a ridge of cedars, I feel that it has finished out 
 its proper circuit and gone becomingly to rest. 
 Neither do I wish to-morrow's gift to be fresh 
 woods and pastures new. I would far rather 
 have the warm security of pasturelands with 
 which I am familiar and, with none of the ex- 
 
 [159] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 plorer's spirit, I would wander through them on 
 those narrow cow-paths that have been thudded 
 out by daily passage of the herd. For the miracle 
 I wonder at is sameness and not novelty. I 
 breathe quickest when I find that every stick and 
 stone, every bush and tree and thicket is mar- 
 velously as it was. 
 
 So, after a winter's absence, I find a real exhil- 
 aration in tugging at the gate that leads into the 
 cow-lane and starting off upon a visit to old 
 haunts. How much have I forgotten? Will 
 remembrance come back sharply by some gaunt 
 omission or gently by the presence of familiar 
 scent and shape and sound? 
 
 As I pick my way through the clutter of the 
 barnyard, assurance greets me swiftly in the 
 earthy smell. When have I ever failed to catch 
 in this rich reek, the pungency of fever-few, and 
 when on looking down, have I failed to find the 
 groundmallow rounding out its little cheeses in 
 this churn of muck. On either side of the straight 
 way are open fields which surely some day must 
 be planted to ground crops. To-day they are as 
 I best remember them. Theirs is a surface yield 
 
 [i6o] 
 
Round Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 of springing corn and grain that takes the wind 
 in ripples, and the shadows of the clouds above. 
 And suddenly as I grow fearful of the stillness, 
 there is a song of chuckling merriment and in a 
 parting of the timothy, I see a bobolink's tan pate. 
 I might have known that he would be there, a 
 part of the June lushness, brimming the meadows 
 with his song. From the high cross-yards of the 
 buttonwood, a conkoree sends out his warning. 
 His scarlet epaulettes must be, I think, the badge 
 of some patrol; for never yet have I passed by 
 his watch-tower without arousing his alarm. It 
 is he who always brings to my attention the silver 
 mainmast of his old square-rigger and leaves me 
 wondering how late it will hang out its sails. 
 Beneath, along the wall, the blackberry vines are 
 putting out their long green feelers and the poi- 
 son-ivy wears its summer gloss. Through their 
 leaves a chipmunk scampers nimbly, turns tail, 
 and disappears. I know, however, from old habit, 
 that curiosity will have the best of him. Ten 
 feet ahead, I shall look into some dim crevice 
 and catch a bright, unwinking eye. Nor does 
 the woodchuck fail me. There he is in midfield 
 
 [i6i] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 above the same old dug-out, sitting plumply on 
 his haunches with fore-paws upheld. Unvaried 
 is the greeting that he gives me, a shrill whistling 
 note. Never yet, moreover, have I escaped to 
 open pastures before my way was blocked by the 
 slow, forward browse of the returning herd. In 
 all the years of our acquaintance these sober Hol- 
 steins have acquired no grace of manner. My 
 feet have but to come within their range of vision 
 and each head lifts upward for a long, slow stare. 
 With feigned stolidity they wait for the encoun- 
 ter ; but as I come near there is a tentative warm 
 breath, a swift withdrawal, a frantic edging to 
 the further wall. In a moment horns are prod- 
 ding into flanks and haunches in the effort to get 
 by me. There is panic and a clumping rout. 
 
 The field that lies behind them on the hill-top 
 is a place of open sunlight and slow shadows that 
 come pointing from the west. Its outer edge is 
 rough and bubbly, each scar of rock concealed 
 by spires of hardback and tufts of meadow-sweet. 
 As I make my way among them, I am reminded 
 of those wiseacres who preach philandering with 
 nature as proof against a later disillusionment 
 
 [162] 
 
Round Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 and shock. They have not, they say, the courage 
 for revisiting. It was their mood that tricked 
 out the scene with false adornments. Imagina- 
 tion tends to magnify ; and beauty recollected, is 
 beauty safely kept. 
 
 Theirs is, I think, a rare presumption. Cer- 
 tainly my own imagination is not big enough to 
 hold the spread of the gigantic elm tree that con- 
 fronts me, nor so fine as to conceive an imitation 
 of its perfect curve and droop. It cannot put 
 so delicate an edge upon the blades of cedars, nor 
 place below them where they flank the wall, a 
 blue shadowing so cool. And how should it keep 
 pace with the clouds, how conjure up a brilliance 
 so intense? My memory of comeliness, of radi- 
 ance, of fleetness, may well be measured with 
 reahty. I dare take the risk. 
 
 Through lawless growth of clethra and of 
 button-ball, there are a hundred little cow-paths, 
 intersecting, doubling, but each driving wedge- 
 like backward to the pond. This pond is for 
 me a place of high excitement. Suppose for 
 once, I should come out from a lane of bumpy 
 darkness to find it quite unoccupied, emptied of 
 
 [163] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 the flittings, dartings, scurryings, that make up 
 its busy hfe. It will not be to-day, for already 
 I catch a well-known ''chip," and am upheld by 
 the yellow-throat in his diminutive black mask. 
 Is he the same highwayman who so ineffectually 
 crossed my path last year? I am more certain 
 of the catbird as an old acquaintance ; for I rec- 
 ognize in his agility with notes a sudden drop to 
 plaintiveness. Some years ago he heard and 
 made his own the wistful song of the chewink. 
 He also has acquired no knowledge of my friend- 
 liness, and with one glimpse of me he stops his 
 careless practicing and reiterates an expostulat- 
 ing "mew." Surely, too, I have disturbed before, 
 just here, a pair of redstarts; have seen their 
 restlessness acquire a sudden purpose, and 
 watched the female keep before me, flirting at 
 me the full spread of her buff tail. Always it 
 is she whose uneasiness reminds me that the pleas- 
 ures of renewal are mine alone, and that I must 
 move warily, if I am not to put to flight the very 
 ones I seek. 
 
 Not that I expect to get a glimpse again of 
 the Carolina rail, his long beak held even with the 
 
 [164] 
 
THIS POXD IS FOR ME A PLACE OP HIGH EXCITEMENT. 
 
 [165] 
 
Round Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 surface of the water, his white tail bobbing 
 through the sedge. But the rock-island in the 
 center has its accompaniment of turtles, their 
 shells baked gray by the hot sun. On the pickerel 
 and the arrow-heads, I catch already the gleam 
 of iridescent wings. Where is the muskrat? 
 Those are his waterways that have broken the 
 green scum and pushed aside the hly-pads in a 
 straight reach from dock to dock. As I keep a 
 quiet place, I hear a chew and nibble and know 
 where to find him by the stir and shake of grass. 
 Then suddenly I recognize quite close beside me, 
 an undercurrent of small sounds. Somewhere 
 along the wa-ter's edge, a sandpiper is clucking 
 softly to her brood. With tip and tilt of her 
 small form she comes, picking her way among the 
 cat -tails at a pace too rapid for her little scuttling 
 balls of fluff. Were I to appear, how frantically 
 would she gather them about her and how swiftly 
 would they slip from sight. But she does not 
 fear the taciturnity of the old bittern who for 
 many years has made this pool his haunt. And 
 no wonder. He is a crabbed bachelor who will 
 
 [167] 
 
Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 not lower his gaze to watch the chicks who run 
 so impudently close about his yellow legs. 
 
 Even my later presence at his side, he regards 
 as no great matter for disturbance. With one 
 blink of his red eye, he has decided that I am 
 not worth the trouble of a flight. And this de- 
 spite the fact that many a time I have been guilty 
 of an intimate approach. It is his proud indif- 
 ference that provokes me to such rudeness. With 
 a motive not dissimilar, a barbarian reached out 
 to stroke a Roman senator's white beard. 
 
 The rest of the inhabitants have not developed 
 such philosophy of fear. They stand not upon 
 the order of their going, but go at once. Quickly 
 the muskrat has sprung to his oars and is steering 
 for the farther shore. And before I reach the 
 hoof -holes at the margin, the frogs spring out 
 from beneath my steps and make the pond in 
 one lean dive. The kingfisher gives an angry 
 rattle at invasion of his privacy and darts past 
 me in a flash of blue. The turtles, always a little 
 late in realizing danger, rear inquiring heads at 
 the commotion. Then slipping slowly forward, 
 they drop beneath the surface with a heavy plop. 
 
 [i68] 
 
Round Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 Bubbles rise that mark the ways of swimmers 
 down below. Save for the bittern who is im- 
 perturbable, the pond is quite deserted. I must 
 return a good hour later, if I am to find the 
 drama on, the roles resumed. 
 
 There is small cause to hnger solitary, grilling 
 in the sunlight, for if I skirt a cape of swampy 
 undergrowth, I shall come into a tunnel walled 
 with bayberry and roofed with boughs and droop- 
 ing vines. You would never think that I could 
 find a break in all this tangle, and yet I know 
 that I could foot it blind. Much would I miss 
 of color, the flecks and shafts of sun on solemn 
 green, the tawny brown in which each winter 
 leaves the oak trees standing ankle deep. Yet 
 by a most sweet perfume that assails me, I should 
 know where the swamp azalea was blowing 
 out its sticky trumpets and breaking the cool 
 shadows with white gleams. And with its scent 
 would come back an old association. I should 
 image close below the Canadian lily lifting up 
 its single scarlet cup. Moreover, where the path 
 turns slippery with needles and is charged with 
 resin, I should go scrambling up until I made my 
 
 [169] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 way to my accustomed seat by the soft feel of 
 moss. Surely, too, the breeze that comes so 
 nimbly up this height, would carry with it much 
 of the quickness and the frolic of the birch trees 
 down beneath. I am glad, however, that I may 
 look out upon this brilhant clearing and see the 
 slim lithe trunks, the leaves so sensitive to wind 
 and light. 
 
 Their memory is too gay to carry with me on 
 my backward j ourney through the woods. Under 
 this vault is no snug intimacy, no small loveliness ; 
 rather an apathy of gloom, a loneliness too deep 
 to share. Between the colonnades there reigns 
 a twilight stillness and the stir in the high 
 branches is elusive and subdued. What plants 
 there are, have the fragility and reticence of long 
 seclusion. Set in the sun, the pipsissewa could 
 not send forth so delicate a fragrance or put 
 forth so shy a bloom. Something would the 
 mitchella lose if forced out in the open. It 
 must feel its way beneath a covering of leaves. 
 The Jacks and lady-slippers, too, have an appro- 
 priate sobriety in their dim luster and dress to 
 a somber mood. And in contrast to the frank 
 
 [170] 
 
Round Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 dismay I met with in the open pastures, here I 
 have the sense of being watched by infinite sly 
 life. I may not come upon it in the trooping 
 shadows. It creeps warily upon the farther side 
 of some great trunk, lurks under cover, or in bur- 
 row, peers at me from above. Yet though I hear 
 no sound save my own deadened footfall, I know 
 I am observed. 
 
 Straight through the silence and the dimness 
 runs a belt of rock, heaved up in tumult and split 
 asunder in great slabs and clefts that are a miracle 
 of accident and poise. Along this ridge, tradi- 
 tion has it that the Indian chief, King Philip, 
 dogged by the white man, sped homeward to 
 Mount Hope to die. A strange sense of justice 
 was it surely that condemned the body of this 
 warrior to be drawn and quartered as a traitor's 
 for his fierce loyalty to these, his woods. It is 
 in his steps I walk ; at first along a low outcrop- 
 ping, a reef washed over by the surge of leaves. 
 Then as the cliff mounts, my mind begins to leap 
 ahead. Somewhere to the left I remember a 
 great bowlder that has sagged and slipped until 
 it rests, a wedge, between high walls. I must 
 
 [171] 
 
Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 see it for its cap of bladed ferns. And just 
 beyond, I shall come upon the roof of a deep 
 cavern where through a gaping slice of rock, 
 I may gaze down into the dripping dark- 
 ness and make out, just faintly, the oven-bird on 
 her high shelf. Or if I wish, I may descend and 
 push through the blackness where the air is close 
 and dank and cold. But best of all I like the last 
 ascent, a great protruding shoulder where the 
 rocks run up, a mountain range in miniature, its 
 valley padded with green moss and freshened by 
 the fall of tiny streams. Here I must hand my- 
 self across diminutive ravines by tug at branch 
 and grasp of trunk, and scramble to each higher 
 ledge by the firm clutch of bush. 
 
 At last I stand even with the tops of trees and 
 look down and out upon a surge of green. In no 
 other place have I had so completely the sense of 
 suspension, of being held among the boughs 
 and moved by wind. With each sway new 
 glimpses open and before the branches close 
 again, I catch the glimmer of a pool, the soft 
 unfurling of an oak, the soar of one dark pine. 
 Or at my feet, where the parapet drops sheer, 
 
 [172] 
 
Round Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 I see the fierce grappling roots of trees and vines 
 that scale the heights. Sometimes, too, as the 
 branches lift, my spirit is lifted with them to the 
 open sky. In such moments, reality gives new 
 vigor to the mind's possession, freshens the color 
 that has faded in a winter's memory, and restores 
 a beauty that has blurred. 
 
 No wonder that when I make my way down 
 a descending trail, I have no capacity for further 
 seeing — no, not even as I cross the bog for a 
 glimpse of the treasures that it holds in its black 
 heart. I have enough to carry with me out 
 across the pastures still filled with the warmth 
 and savor of the day. For what I have brought 
 back is the sense of security that springs from 
 great possessions; possessions not bewildering 
 in their novelty or grandeur, but rich by reason 
 of familiarity and the habit of past years. 
 
 [173] 
 
X: Fair Game 
 
X: Fair Game 
 
 "She drew herself up and looked him from top to toe." 
 
 SO Dido at iEneas, according to Virgil who 
 was a great stickler for the dignity of sex. 
 Over goddesses, of course, he could not exert 
 control. No use to struggle with a younger 
 generation that was endowed perpetually with 
 youth. They were, he admitted, buccaneers in 
 courtship. Let a personable youth go strolling 
 unattended, let him dispose himself to rest upon 
 a hillside, and some one of them would be sure 
 to take pity on him pitilessly in a way to compro- 
 
 [177] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 mise him and sweep him off his feet. But when 
 it came to women folks — ^the best of them — the 
 Mantuan saw to it that they were quick to put 
 presumption in its place. A glance, swift and 
 sure as the arrow of chaste Artemis, was the 
 weapon they employed. 
 
 It is, I confess it frankly, an envy complex 
 that makes me remember from the whole iEneid 
 that sole line, ^neas awakened in me no filial 
 piety. Achates no fidehty. Hector no valorous 
 zest for the unequal combat. Ulysses taught no 
 trippings to my tongue. But when I came to 
 Dido, I was "thrilled" by her decorum. "There," 
 said I, seizing on a model for my conduct, "that 
 is the kind of woman I shall be." I was fifteen 
 at the time and I forgot that my two stubby pig- 
 tails must first be turned up and under to a crown 
 of hair; that my red flannel shirt-waist and plaid 
 skirt must be transformed to less serviceable and 
 more alluring raiment ; that my chubbiness must 
 first pass through the state of figure before it 
 could attain to noble form. Exhilarated I looked 
 forward to the time when I might emulate the 
 
 [178] 
 
Fair Game 
 
 fair barbarian and by a sacrosanct propriety 
 make some man feel mean. 
 
 Well, I have never done so — ^though I am a 
 long way now from my first aspiration. Why, 
 I cannot tell you. My intention certainly has 
 been unswerving. Opportxmity has not been 
 lacking. There is no reason why my presence, 
 with both height and weight to lend assistance, 
 should do other than command. And yet, and 
 yet, ... I have drawn myself up Hke Dido 
 only to feel a chuckling commotion force me to 
 unbend. I have shot my arrow, that death-deal- 
 ing glance, only to see it fall short of the mark 
 or twinkle as it hit. And in a moment I was 
 quarry and not huntress. The safeguarding of 
 my dignity lay in my flight. 
 
 Fortunately the climax of my failure was long 
 withheld, though even in my college days I think 
 I had an inkhng of disaster. Strange place to 
 serve apprenticeship to prudery, that cool cloister 
 where learning was pursued with a self -conscious- 
 ness and where we set ourselves apart not with 
 a vow of maidenhood, but of contempt. Gareth 
 in his scullery a-burnishing his pots and pans felt 
 
 [179] 
 
Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 himself not more remote from the sharp frays 
 that were to win him knighthood than I from 
 those encounters where I was to queen it with 
 a classic art. Yet as I look back upon the cam- 
 pus, clean-swept of men save ministrants, I see 
 grotesque figures against the past horizon and 
 myself, breathless and startled, ignominiously on 
 the run. 
 
 This is, you are to understand, not a vaunt of 
 prowess, but a confession of defeat. Boast comes 
 not from the attitude of flight, but from the for- 
 tune and the face of the pursuant. And imagine 
 Dido picking up her train and scuttling from the 
 druggist's clerk, who left her potions and love 
 filters in the lower court. The fact that I ever 
 saw his shuffling figure and came to know the 
 patience expressed in his cadaverous face as per- 
 sonal, was proof of my long distance from 
 Decorum's throne. Once, moreover, that I had 
 tried the blinding flash and seen it fizzle out, it 
 was my glance that changed, not his. It grew 
 furtive, peering. I looked before I leaped. 
 Instead of passing with my academic robes afloat, 
 
 [i8o] 
 

 #. 
 
 I MISSED THE WHIR OF KXIVES, THE RATTLE OF CHAINS, THE DRIVES S 
 RINGIXQ CALL. 
 
 [i8i] 
 
Fair Game 
 
 I gathered them about me and slipped out by the 
 back door. 
 
 And would Dido as a damsel intent upon her 
 sacrifices and their omens, have stirred the aspira- 
 tions of her priest or been conscious of them if 
 she had? She saw him, I feel sure, but as an inter- 
 mediary who should make her hetacombs accept- 
 able to jealous gods. Think you, as they smoked 
 upward to the quiet heavens that he would have 
 broken in upon her piety with the request that 
 she breakfast with him at the "templum domes- 
 ticum" next door. A sense of fitness would have 
 told him that it were better to incur the wrath of 
 Jove and Juno for once united though in anger, 
 than to so presume. His chariot, a snug two- 
 wheeler, suited modestly to his parochial duties, 
 but otherwise the legendary vehicle for court- 
 ship, was — he would have known — not quite the 
 thing to convey her from devotions home. 
 
 A bizarre memory comes back to me of myself, 
 round-eyed in wonder at my own predicament, 
 sharing at the rectory a breakfast that I had not 
 known how politely to refuse. Very dark the 
 room and very far removed from the bright com- 
 
 [183] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 mon aspects of the world outside. Very bleak 
 the empty table. And across it a looming figure 
 still frocked in the habiliments of office — rather 
 like Silenus in his coffee cups. I should like now 
 to know of what during that strange inclusion in 
 the morning service, I found it appropriate 
 matter to converse. Of one thing I am certain; 
 that when the old white horse and buggy had 
 shambled to my dormitory, I sprang too quick 
 for courtesy or dignity from my place of priv- 
 ilege beside the Cloth. 
 
 Where was my demeanor, where my compo- 
 sure? Too late to recall them as I fluttered safe 
 to my retreat. Still I had excuses and a-plenty 
 with which to prop my toppled pride. The 
 encounter I expected was to leap from under 
 cover with a step both rash and gamesome. And 
 instead it had borne down upon me in the open 
 with a heavy and encumbered tread. The target 
 for which I kept my arrows pointed was a gay 
 sprig, at most a summer wilding. I could not — 
 for very sportsmanship — have let one fly against 
 such a massive bulwark of the chmxh. Now, 
 however, I was on my guard and should go 
 
 [184] 
 
Fair Game 
 
 armored in my piety. It was only necessary to 
 look rapt. 
 
 But with an eye fixed vigilant upon me, it 
 seemed the part of prudence not to trust too far 
 the right of sanctuary. The benediction fell 
 upon the multitude as I put safe space between 
 me and the chancel door. The self-confidence 
 of Dido was not in me. I lacked her regality 
 of aspect. I wanted the assurance of her slow- 
 traveling gaze. 
 
 Far better to try graciousness, that other 
 queenly attribute. Since it came more easily 
 to stoop the head than rear it, I might, by conde- 
 scending to grant favors, conceal my inner quak- 
 ings and the tremor in my limbs. Besides in my 
 next ordeal as preceptress in a Western univer- 
 sity, I was not given chance for flight. A sub- 
 terranean cavern was my throne room. Here 
 with my sole barricade my desk, I must sit imper- 
 ative, grant interviews, and levy tax of daily 
 themes. I could not abdicate. There was no 
 egress save where my servitors came crowding 
 through the door. Indeed, my bleak cellar vault 
 was so devoid of all appurtenances — is not that 
 
 [185] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 the name for royal furnishings? — ^that I could 
 not even step behind the arras. Turn where I 
 would, I had my back against a white-washed 
 wall. 
 
 I shall not forget the first time that I passed 
 within to grant an audience. A mob awaited me 
 that had no thought of breaking into serried 
 ranks at my approach. Caps fluttered not in doff 
 and flourish. Rather as a gay salute above my 
 head and often perilously near. I was, it seems, 
 a "dame," a "queen." Doubtful titles when con- 
 ferred with such rejoicing upon the evident 
 approachability of my young years. But after 
 all my business was to administer the King's 
 English. By precept and example I might make 
 clear the doubtful meaning of the terms. And 
 wise provision — in the case of failure I might 
 pronounce sentence of exile or of execution, for 
 the reins of government were in my hands. 
 Surely though, for the moment it was wiser with 
 these roguish faces all about me, to err a little 
 on the side of clemency, to try first to win my 
 people by my leniency and my compassion. Even 
 Dido had her melting moods. 
 
 [i86] 
 
Fair Game 
 
 My brief reign was, in short, an era of good 
 feeling until abruptly terminated by a council of 
 the larger powers. 
 
 Now of us two, Dido and I, I paid the higher 
 price for my capitulate humanity. The Cartha- 
 ginian queen, when once she won to Hades found 
 a splendid isolation waiting for her where con- 
 spicuously aloof and with no appeasements for 
 the easy conscience of iEneas, she might still 
 uphold her desperate pride. But as tutor I went 
 into exile also in a plutocratic region, where I 
 lived a wandering shade somewhere between 
 an upper and a lower world. And in this indef- 
 inite twilight, I had not even an allotted place. 
 I was supposed to hover, delicate and indeter- 
 minate. Whenever I was chanced upon, I was 
 conveniently to fade away or merge. Yet even so 
 my fancy did not lose its knack at quick embellish- 
 ment. Romantically I viewed myself. Where 
 all else was positive, to be negative was, I felt, 
 to go conspicuously attired. Who knew? I 
 might attract a dangerous attention by the mouse- 
 colored robes of my obliterating tact. Then 
 would not the eldest son, a languid exquisite, 
 
 [187] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 grow mettlesome ? Then would he not rouse him- 
 self from feigned indifference, and choosing 
 so to speak, the leaden casket, give and hazard 
 all he had? And with what clemency and high 
 disdain — I had not decided which — should I be 
 led to spurn my glittering chance. 
 
 Daydreaming I was caught. It was not the 
 scion, but the butler who took flame from my 
 quiet dignity, and stepped forth from the pantry 
 to champion my cause. Had not stout hearts 
 once beat beneath the weight of breastplates? 
 Then why should I suppose his paralyzed to a 
 mechanical inertia by a mere starched front? It 
 was moved kindly from the first by my impris- 
 oned youth. Constant were his little acts of lib- 
 eration. Sometimes a nosegay from the garden 
 where flowers were not to pluck. Sometimes a 
 tidbit from the kitchen where he ruled as Chanti- 
 cleer. Sometimes a shilling-shocker from the 
 library that circulated below stairs. And all 
 proffered with impassive mien, silently, obse- 
 quiously, with no comment for offense. How 
 should I suspect I had a "follower" even when 
 one day upon a solitary ramble, I heard his hur- 
 
 [i88] 
 
Fair Game 
 
 ried, overtaking steps? It was for something 
 which apparently I had forgotten that I slowed 
 my pace. 
 
 "I thought," he said, "you might be lonely 
 going." And before I knew it, he had fallen into 
 step. 
 
 There seemed no two ways about acceptance 
 of his conduct. Not as an upstart surely could 
 I rebuke so grave and dignified a cavalier. Nor 
 as we walked out along the country roads did I 
 regret my escort. For in him, of all men alone, 
 I foimd the humble attitude which I, in emulat- 
 ing Dido, had so zealously desired. At the same 
 time I recognized the tristful prelude to depar- 
 ture. On the morrow I must again assume the 
 attitude of flight. 
 
 But it was at Touisset, a place of small adven- 
 ture, that the ultimate irony took place. Its hero 
 this time was a farm-hand, a Portuguese of 
 roguish, impudent good looks, who delighted in 
 what undeniably was his, and in a spendthrift 
 way that would have put Narcissus as a niggard 
 quite to shame. Seated upon a load of hay, he 
 was elate upon a throne; and the quick-flashing 
 
 [189] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 smiles which he dispensed along the highway were 
 the largess of a generous king. Indeed, as he 
 drove his plowshare through the field behind our 
 house, or charioteered his steeds in a round in- 
 closing course, I must confess that I took pleas- 
 ure in him as part of the primitive beauty of the 
 landscape. He was eloquent of the rich and un- 
 tamed vigor of the earth. But I protest not once 
 had it occurred to me to detach him as a person 
 from the scene. 
 
 Still of his drama that was so ignominiously 
 to include me, I was aware with just the tail-end 
 corner of my eye. In the hot, sultry morn, I 
 had seen him drive into the meadow, ripe for 
 mowing with a clattering of his machine and a 
 loud heartening of his steeds. And for a space, 
 I had paused to watch the timothy as it fell over 
 stiffly in broad silver swathes. But later as I 
 worked about my place, I was disturbed by 
 unaccustomed stillness. I missed the whir of 
 knives, the rattle of the chains, the driver's ring- 
 ing calls. Then looking out I saw the horses 
 standing idle munching, belly deep in grass, what 
 should have been a winter meal. From the cool 
 
 [190] 
 
Fair Game 
 
 gloom beneath a distant cedar, I heard, more 
 over, the sound of mellow, careless laughter and 
 saw the flutter of white skirt. 
 
 Well, why not? Hay-making and love-mak- 
 ing went ever arm in arm together since tillage 
 first began. The work fared better for admiring 
 eyes that watched the prowess, for the snack 
 brought to the bars, for the cool drink offered as 
 excuse for dilly-dally and an hour's repose. 
 
 In this field, however, love-making had the best 
 of it. At eve the shadows fell across a rippling 
 sea of green. And not for three days was the 
 summer idyling interrupted; were the culprits 
 caught. 
 
 The first herald of disaster was a rap upon my 
 door. Had I seen Manuel? His master's eye 
 was humorously upon me. Not since early morn- 
 ing when we had passed the time of day. Where 
 was the fellow anyhow? I supposed he must 
 be knocking off for lunch. Knocking off from 
 what? A contemptuous gesture took in the whole 
 upstanding field of grain. Still, soft-hearted 
 towards young romance, I did my best for the 
 
 [191] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 rapscallion, not guessing how completely I had 
 been made to serve. 
 
 His master gave a chuckle of derision at the 
 zealousness of my defense. It did not equal in 
 conviction Manuel's own. Could I guess what 
 the rogue had answered when he was accused of 
 sloth? I shook my head, but the appropriate 
 gesture would have been to shield my face. 
 
 It was not the heat that he had offered as 
 excuse, not the whole back-and-forward length 
 of burning course. Such would have been reflec- 
 tion on his manly vigor. It was, so he had 
 claimed, my own impending interest that has 
 stayed his hand and clogged his wheels; the en- 
 cumbrance of what was after all a very natural 
 tribute. How could he "^rk when I came out to 
 talk? I could imagine the explanatory shrug of 
 his broad shoulders. Certainly the full implica- 
 tion of his grudging courtesy, his master made 
 quite clear to me with a shrewd Yankee twinkle 
 that took for granted my enjoyment of the joke. 
 
 My quick answer was to point to where a dis- 
 tant figure in blue jeans lay stretched at length 
 beneath the tree, engaged if I might judge in 
 
 [192] 
 
Fair Game 
 
 pleasant dalliance. Retribution I delivered over, 
 but I sped it on its course. 
 
 All mji;hology, however, this daring act had 
 tinted for me with new colors. The goddesses, 
 flushed so wantonly in all their amorous histories, 
 I now saw chaste of hue, downcast, and modest- 
 pale. Their lovers, self -professed and known to 
 be obedient only to divine solicitations, I knew 
 for tricksters, hypocrites, and cheats. Father 
 Anchises, reverend patriarch! He had been 
 frisking with some rustic in a daisy-field, not led 
 by any Queen of Love to meadows set with 
 asphodel. Endymion, that shy, gauche youth 
 who drooped before the moon's advance. He had 
 slept snug beneath some cottage roof, not out 
 upon a dewy hillside where Artemis had held him 
 captive by her beams. And I by right of my 
 humiliation now stood firm with Venus and with 
 Artemis, those innocent celestials. Of such stuff 
 as theirs, at least, was my last legend made. 
 
 [193] 
 
XI: Garden Airs and Graces 
 
TRIBUTE 
 
 I can afford some modesty 
 
 With Patsy by my side; 
 He'll never let my garden droop 
 
 For lack of proper pride. 
 
 He makes inspection of the sprays 
 
 While I toil at the roots. 
 Say I, "They're doing fairly well." 
 
 Says he, "Now ain't they beauts." 
 
 The salmon phlox and larkspur blue 
 
 Cause us astonishment. 
 Say I, "They're making a fine show." 
 
 Says he, "They'll raise the rent." 
 
 When mullein throws out blood red stars 
 
 From leaves all silver A'^hite, 
 Say I, "I like a silky pink." 
 
 Says he, "My fav-o-rite." 
 
 [197] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 If York and Lancaster blooms full, 
 
 We wonder at our luck. 
 Say I, "It has eight perfect buds." 
 
 Says he, "Each worth a buck." 
 
 And when we ask the neighbors in, 
 I mix my boast with leaven. 
 
 Say I, "The garden's at its height." 
 Says Patsy, "Come see heaven." 
 
 [198] 
 
XI: Garden Airs and Graces 
 
 I HAVE no pride in my personal appearance. 
 At least I can endure such comments on it 
 as are made for my own good. You need only tell 
 me that my petticoat is hanging to see how pleas- 
 antly I will say "thank you" and depart for rem- 
 edies upstairs. Or you may pick a thread from off 
 my coat, shp a button into place, tuck in a hair- 
 pin, and you will not see me flinch from under 
 your corrective hand. Even when you inform 
 
 [199] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 me that my hat has shpped back on my head — a 
 sure sign of advancing years — I will let you 
 bring it forward to the proper youthful tilt. 
 
 But when it comes to pride in the appearance 
 of my garden, that is a different matter! You 
 had best not wound it. There is no remedy to 
 bring quick healing and each slight will leave 
 a scar. I know ; for my vanity quite consciously 
 divides all visitors into those who show me garden 
 graces and those who show me garden airs. 
 
 It is easy to tell one of the toplofty in her first 
 surveyal of my place. As I stand beside her, I 
 may watch the deadly working of her glance. 
 Each quarrelsome, bold color starts to blare its 
 challenge at her loudly. Each soft mediating 
 hue, in an effort to escape, goes colorless and 
 drab. And every plant at once becomes "vul- 
 garis," not "splendens" or "elegans" as I had 
 fondly hoped. Before her is a bed of German 
 iris, its pennants shifting out of saffron into 
 lavender, then deepening into purple and ma- 
 roon. There is, I know, nothing rare in these 
 varieties ; and yet I had not thought that princes 
 met in conclave lost anything of royal blood. 
 [200] 
 
Garden Airs and Graces 
 
 They remind her, however, only of her recent 
 acquisition. Have I tried the "pallida dal- 
 matica" ? It has much more distinction. Indeed, 
 she has dispensed with German iris. Had she 
 known that I still grew it, she would have sent 
 me down some roots. And my spirea, that I 
 grow as an edging, with a liking for its little 
 feathered tufts. How it dwarfs and dwindles in 
 her sight. The thing to get is that new hybrid — 
 Alexandria — it makes a better showing with its 
 rosy sprays. Or her eye turns to my columbines, 
 a hundred nodding heads of palest yellow, 
 lavender, and pink. Despite the beauty of their 
 upturned faces, she detects a shortening to their 
 spurs. How quickly plants run out; and a 
 kindly prompting makes her tell me where she 
 gets her seed. It is the same with the sweet- 
 william. She sees that I have striven for a bed 
 of Newport pink; a lovely color to my way of 
 thinking when lightened by the sprays of white 
 campanula and softened by small violas that 
 run below it in a band of mauve. But there is 
 one clump that has reverted, gathering in the 
 greedy way it has a sprig of every colored bloom 
 
 [201] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 into one head. Why don't I pull it out ? 1 pro- 
 test with little hope of understanding that I 
 never lift a plant in flower. I dare not tell the 
 truth that I have taken an odd liking to this 
 mixed bouquet. 
 
 Perhaps instead, a little later in the season, she 
 confronts the larkspur which I have grown so 
 patiently from seed. There is, so far as I can 
 see, no lack of beautj^ to its blueness that ranges 
 from the azure of a noonday sky to the dull pur- 
 ple of shadows falhng somberly at dusk. Her 
 one comment, however, is to ask me, if I have 
 ever thought of sending over to Lemoine. She 
 has found his French seed so satisfactory in pro- 
 ducing new varieties and, just for a start, she 
 may be able to spare me a few plants. Inevitably, 
 she is a person with a preference for double flow- 
 ers. She would muffle up my canterbury-bells 
 in whose great dusky cups the pollened clappers 
 lie so lightly. The rosettes of hollyhocks, re- 
 flexed in such fine curves, so delicately fluted, she 
 would have resemble the artificial pompons of a 
 Pierrot. Even the petticoats of single poppies 
 are too frank in their allure. She would turn a 
 
 [202] 
 
Garden Airs and Graces 
 
 gypsy to a ballet dancer, overskirted, crinolined, 
 befrilled. Nothing will she have as God designed 
 it, in simplicity. It must be improved into a sea- 
 son's novelty by hand of man. 
 
 You may imagine then that her own taste in 
 beauty is one based on size. No doubt wisely, it 
 had not occurred to me to put a yard stick to my 
 zinnias. It was enough for me that they had 
 bloomed in other colors than magenta, and I had 
 felt relief when each tight bud disclosed itself as 
 ivory, a rich canary yellow, salmon, or dull pink. 
 But she has measured hers, and though I may not 
 believe it — they are each a good six inches ; Mam- 
 moths, curled and crested are the variety she gets. 
 She does not need to inform me what she thinks 
 of my sweet -peas. I, too, long ago succumbed to 
 Giant Spencers, and there they are, great butter- 
 flies atilt upon the vines. Still close by I grow 
 the old varieties that yield so much more perfume 
 from their smaller hooded bloom. The Lady 
 Grizel Hamilton with fragrance in her very 
 name! I cannot save her from a snub. I wish, 
 moreover, if it is their season, that I might keep 
 my new gladioli close-hidden. I like them not 
 
 [203] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 too tropical and in ordering pass over those 
 starred as an extra size. Yet in a moment I shall 
 see, not the slender grace that I have sought for, 
 but the ruffled hugeness that there should have 
 been. My friend's, of course, are a prize mixture 
 and gold-medaled. Why, she has had to stake 
 each plant. 
 
 But in late summer it is my dahlias that suffer 
 most from condescension. Hers are her hobby. 
 She grows them with the greatest care, with such 
 selection, with such rigorous exclusion of those 
 which have not toed the mark. And the result! 
 Each plant, its stalk as big as her own arm, yields 
 exhibition flowers. Not, I am to understand, the 
 old varieties, but those not yet upon the market 
 and secured by hook and crook. With mine, she 
 long ago cut her acquaintanceship. Lady Car- 
 michael! I learn that she has grown plebeian for 
 all her high-bred air and golden gown. And 
 Queen Wilhelmina! Clad in white samite, she 
 looks entirely regal, yet for all that a high tri- 
 bunal has voted her dethroned. No wonder that 
 I give the shelter of my back to Bobby, that 
 perennial urchin who every summer sticks up his 
 
 [204], 
 
Garden Airs and Graces 
 
 round head to show he is not crowded out. In all 
 my wealth of bloom, I grow only two varieties 
 which this connoisseur has in her garden. You 
 will not be surprised to learn that they are a 
 scarlet British Lion and an apoplectic Mil- 
 lionaire. 
 
 Well, dahlias aren't my hobby. The thick 
 stuff of their petals is to me as inappropriate as 
 felt hats worn in summer, and I only like them 
 in the autumn months. But about the weakness 
 of my own clay soil, I am as sensitive as though 
 it were a personal defect. Like a cripple, I at- 
 tempt to hide it, displaying my full strength in 
 peonies, in phlox, in all rank growers, so that you 
 may not guess how much I miss of grace. At 
 once this friend of mine perceives that I go halt- 
 ing. Do I never use gypsophila to soften my 
 effects? She has found it useful in veiling a 
 crude color, like that of my salmon phlox, for 
 instance, that needs to be subdued. Or I might 
 try lavender. It gives such subtlety with its 
 fine mists. Unluckily mine has never reached 
 precipitation and I must use globe-thistle, platy- 
 codons, and veronicas to give more solid shadow- 
 
 [205] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 ing of gray or blue. And snapdragon! Do I 
 never grow it? Quite as though I had not tried 
 a hundred times for a gaudy-sunset colored bed 
 of coral and of amber, and with such pitiful few 
 gleams. How odd! She has no trouble with it, 
 nor with salpiglossis, another of my failures. 
 She cuts great bowlsful of them every day. 
 There, too, against the dark green of the hedge 
 and among the sky blue of delphiniums she spies 
 the right place for Madonna lilies. And I, too, 
 have spied them there in my imagination, but I 
 may not translate them into facts. Hers again 
 increase if anything too rapidly. She has to give 
 away whole baskets of their little corms. 
 
 No wonder with such wealth in mind, she is 
 surprised at coming to the end of my small gar- 
 den. "Is that all?" she questions. "Oh, that next 
 border is your neighbor's." Then back we come 
 by the same path. 
 
 Now is the time for giving me prescriptions 
 and sound advice on questions of the common 
 weal. My roses should not be grown in and out 
 of other plants that take their nourishment and 
 they would do far better for harsh pruning to a 
 
 [206] 
 
Garden Airs and Graces 
 
 central bud. My iris needs transplanting. 
 Surely I can see that its tuberous roots have 
 crowded to the surface in the search for space. 
 Phlox needs to be divided j^early, if I am to keep 
 grass from its roots. And she hopes that I won't 
 mind. She can't resist a weed. There! Out it 
 comes, yanking with it a whole tuft of columbine. 
 Then as she thrusts back a naked root, her eye is 
 caught by a suspicious silvering on the larkspur's 
 lower leaves. Mildew ! And in her bated breath 
 there is the horror of pestilence and death. 
 What a pity that my plants are done for. But 
 possibly I maj^ still save them by administering 
 Bordeaux. That's good, too, for rust on holly- 
 hocks. She has noticed that mine have it. Hers 
 she has kept safe from taint. 
 
 Before she can go further, I turn her to the 
 praise of her own garden and save the remnants 
 of my own. An act of malice, envy, and bad 
 temper, I admit it. Had she come to rifle me, 
 I should forgive her. I could bail out a robber 
 for the compliment he paid me by his act of theft. 
 But how be generous to one who passes by your 
 
 [207] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 gold as trumpery and leaves a tarnish on your 
 heap of coin? 
 
 Fortunately for my pride I have another 
 friend whose visitation is an act of grace. How 
 swift she is to understand my problems and the 
 goal towards which I work. My front garden 
 she remembers as a place of bleakness and of 
 grilling sunlight. How then have I transformed 
 it to this dim retreat ? The gloss of willows, the 
 shadowing from maple and from fir tree will not 
 alone account for a breath of freshness and of 
 coolness like the breath of woods. And at once 
 she sees that the hint is not accidental; that here 
 I have chosen plants not only for their delicacy, 
 but their fragrance ; not for their intrinsic beauty, 
 but for the associations they suggest. Campan- 
 ulas and primroses, starry in their whiteness. 
 So pale anemones add depth to forest gloom. 
 Purple columbines, too heavy and too dingy in 
 the sunlight, lend a richness to the shadows and 
 an appropriateness to the little blades of ferns. 
 And planted close about the pool, the English 
 iris speaks the hidden moistness of the swamp. 
 Any one would think of using foxgloves ; but how 
 
 [208] 
 
Garden Airs and Graces 
 
 had I guessed that valerian transferred from the 
 open border would acquire the delicate trans- 
 parency of meadow-rue; or that sweet-rocket, a 
 drift of mauve beneath the willow, has the same 
 light fluttering grace of wild geranium, that al- 
 ways blows in the half -shade. Even the sudden 
 blue of the anchusa, I need not explain to her. 
 She knows it plays the part of sky glimpsed 
 through the tops of trees. 
 
 It is thus with a feeling of elation and of con- 
 fidence that I persuade her forward from so- 
 briety to the sunny stretch of color that flows 
 backward from my house. Here I may set her 
 free of guidance and be sure she will find com- 
 pany; for to her no flower is dowdy because it is 
 old-fashioned, or vulgar because common, or poor 
 if it but does its part. I prefer, however, to fol- 
 low at her heels, waiting on her quick discoveries 
 and her slow loitering, and finding all the while 
 a pleasurable freshness in my handiwork as seen 
 through her enchanted eyes. 
 
 Her first comment is a chuckle at my obedience 
 to fashion. So I too like yellow — that discarded 
 color; yet not so bravely that I do not keep my 
 
 [209] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 fancy hid. She would flaunt such Iceland pop- 
 pies, their flame crinkling through spirea and 
 anthemis so that it leaps more vivid in contrast 
 to cool whiteness and pale buff. And surely 
 columbine — a rare canary, the primroses and 
 golden iris are not so shameful that I must con- 
 ceal illicit fondness for them behind a high green 
 hedge. I protest with news of the late comers 
 who will be my give-aways; hypericums that 
 force a gay disclosure, rudbekia that for all their 
 single petals, make a brazen proclamation to the 
 sky. But she will not be convinced of me as a 
 great lover until she finds that I have given blue 
 anchusa to enhance the beauty of a yellow briar 
 rose. 
 
 Fortunately she finds other combinations that 
 grow to prove a greater hardihood and these she 
 eagerly commends. If it so happens that her 
 visit is in early June, there are the Oriental pop- 
 pies, their silver caps a-tumble on staid spires of 
 lupin or caught in their fall by delicate five- 
 fingered leaves. She, too, has Victoria Louise, 
 though she cannot resist a fallen petal and 
 spreads out on her palm its sheen of salmon 
 
 [210] 
 
Garden Airs and Graces 
 
 splotched with black. But how came I by its 
 neighbor which is new to her? How well its deep 
 maroon tones down the brilliance of the others to 
 the pui'ple lupin hoods below. Mahoney, is it? 
 It ought at least to be Prince Regent. For its 
 rebuke to gayety she would call it, John of Gaunt. 
 Or perhaps instead she stops before a group of 
 peonies. They came from my father's garden 
 and you might call old-fashioned, their rich, glow- 
 ing red. But was it art or accident, she asks me, 
 that placed beside them the perennial corn- 
 flowers that have caught the crimson just above 
 them in their shaggy disks? She professes, too, 
 that she would never dare to try her hand at my 
 long border where my courage lies in my re- 
 straint. Have I the faith to think that in all 
 those lavenders and pinks a magenta is not lurk- 
 ing, or that a hectic rose will never spread through 
 the cool pinks? All very well, now that I have 
 columbine to help me. It is a mediator despite its 
 spurs. Yet let the phlox once come into its own 
 and she will wager that I have a quarrel on my 
 hands. She has, however, a long pause for the 
 rising mist of garden heliotrope, for clumps of 
 
 [211] 
 
Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 white and purple iris, for the thridding of spiced 
 pinks and tufted pansies that is my signal of 
 success. 
 
 Better still I like to have her come upon my 
 favorites, so inevitably do they prove her own. 
 No hybrid perpetual in the market can compare 
 in fineness with the damask rose. Let Frau Karl 
 Droschky lift her wax white petals. She is too 
 immoderate and too soulless in her chastity. So 
 is the Lady Alice Stanley too arrogant in her re- 
 serves. Even Ophelia will go mincing beside this 
 thoroughbred of old colonial gardens, with her 
 light yielding grace and frank simplicity of heart. 
 Surely, too, it is not the flavor of a name that 
 gives its bravery to York and Lancaster. With 
 what a swagger, it displays its badge of blood! 
 At the same time, my friend feels as I do my- 
 self, that roses I could best spare from my gar- 
 den. Much would it lose of richness. But to do 
 without campanula would be to extinguish all its 
 starry lights. Without the columbine it would 
 lose all its dancing gayety, and without the lark- 
 spur, aspiration. For sense of humor it must 
 have the chuckle of the violas. And how might 
 
 [212] 
 
Garden Airs and Graces 
 
 it keep its mystery without the opium poppies 
 that hold strange dreams close-curtained in their 
 folds. My friend, in short, has caught the spirit 
 of my garden and does not see its failui'es for 
 the quickness of its charm. 
 
 To such a one I offer all my bounty and care 
 not how lavishly she helps herself. At the same 
 time I am not surprised by her last act of 
 courtesy, which is refusal. To sheer off bloom, 
 would be to spoil her vision of my garden. In 
 the autumn she will hope for a remembrance. 
 Her present compliment she pays by making out 
 for reference a list of all the seeds and roots 
 which she desires. 
 
 [213] 
 
XII: Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 
 
XII: Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 
 
 WE live each summer threatened with inva- 
 sion. On the side where danger lies we 
 are protected for a little by a marshy inlet, a 
 moat flooded at full tide. But just where it 
 passes out from under the high rampart of our 
 wall and makes its way into the hostile country, 
 it widens suddenly and is lost among the open 
 fields. 
 
 [217] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 Here, knee-deep among the brackish pools or 
 at their ease among the meadow bowlders, the 
 enemy, a tribe of Holsteins, are encamped. Their 
 concern apparently is in their cud, and you would 
 never guess that they were laying siege. There 
 is not even speculation in their mild glance. It is 
 demurely innocent of all design and speaks 
 placidity, not patience. If, however, you go far- 
 ther through the orchard and look over its tum- 
 bling barricade, you will see a narrow wavering 
 path that is the sign of their unceasing vigilance. 
 What time that path is worn I have never made 
 discovery. I cannot catch my adversaries at their 
 spying. But I suspect on starlit nights they 
 keep their scouts on duty, beating their way 
 among the bayberries until at last they come 
 upon a breach. For usually it is at dawn that I 
 hear a blast of bellowing which is the signal of 
 an onslaught, or a trimnphant proclamation of 
 success. 
 
 Unarmed and unaccoutered, I leap to the en- 
 counter, and as I plunge through dripping grass 
 with hoe or rake already couched for combat, my 
 anger rises high against my landlord who is 
 
 [218] 
 
Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 
 
 keeper of the gate. His duty it is to repair my 
 fortress and to make it safe against assault. For 
 a moment I resolve in malice to turn the tide of 
 war against him, and by a swift flanking move- 
 ment to send the enemy scattering through his 
 cornfield, destruction in the wake of thudding 
 hoofs. Full tilt I charge. But as I come upon 
 the foe, the spoils still sweet upon their tongues, 
 I am brought up short by the shock of their 
 reproachful stare. Where there should be dis- 
 may and guilty rout, there is only confidence. 
 Once they have seen who it is that shouts at them 
 with lusty lungs, they fall again to cropping. 
 And in the very friendliness with which they take 
 my prods, I know myself for an arch-traitor. 
 Never would they have raised their heads so high 
 in aspiration, had it not been for our stolen meet- 
 ings; had I not discovered to them the riches of 
 our kingdom ; and let them savor furtively of the 
 wealth behind its walls. 
 
 My betrayal is not a matter of intention. I 
 have the missionary spirit, not the Christian. I 
 like to give, not share. Self-consciously I dole 
 out bounty, and supposedly from the safe 
 
 [219] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 abundance of my own preserves. Awake, more- 
 over, to the insurgency of knowledge, I start each 
 summer resolute that I shall have no dealings 
 with these upstarts; that ignorance shall be the 
 price of past presumptions. They shall nip the 
 bristling tops from little cedars or munch their 
 field grass as though there were no better food. 
 But at last there comes a day when the first 
 peas are shelled. As they drum into the pan and 
 I feel them spring from under my prying fingers, 
 temptation stirs. How green and luscious they 
 look, those tight round jackets as they glisten 
 in the sunlight. How eagerly would they be 
 snuffed up; how searchingly each long rough 
 tongue would curl for the last pod. Before I 
 know it, I have stowed them in my basket and 
 am off to make my overtui*es. Warily my trip 
 is made and with avoidance of all open places. 
 For let me come within the range of kitchen 
 windows and I shall meet with sharp arrest. 
 But at length, after careful reconnoitering, I 
 reach a place protected by a grove of maples, 
 and seated on the top of an embankment, I spread 
 my bait enticingly upon my lap. 
 
 [220] 
 
^C^9)\-- 
 
 SEATED ON THE TOP OF AN EMBANKMKNT, I SPREAD MY BAIT ENTTCINGLY UPON 
 MY LAP. 
 
 [221] 
 
Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 
 
 At first I have to do some courting. Under 
 the shade of a big oak the enemy are standing, 
 their heads drowsed forward; and though as I 
 appear they come quickly to attention, they rec- 
 ognize no flag of truce. Nor is their conquest 
 to be made by a mellifluous call. Their bare, 
 bright world of hillside and of lowland pastures 
 has contained few human beings save their owner, 
 whose voice on his chance visits is one of gruff 
 command. But as I lift a handful of the pods 
 and scatter them below me, they catch the flash 
 of green and recognize the signal with an arrested 
 gaze. Their ears prick forward with a strange 
 slow wonderment. There is a pause, low mutter- 
 ings of confidence, and at last the first ambas- 
 sador steps forth. 
 
 Timidly she comes, with nostrils wide for the 
 first scent of danger, though flinging back from 
 time to time a look of high disdain for the craven 
 hearts who will not even follow at her heels. 
 She stops midway and to conceal an ebb in cour- 
 age, falls to cropping or lets the spikes of a scrub 
 apple tree rake along her legs. But despite her 
 halts the glamour of adventure is upon her, and 
 
 [223] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 she will not cease her solitary march until she 
 has investigated the terms laid down in my glanc- 
 ing heap. At last she is within my range and 
 pauses there for parley, the sunlight hot upon 
 her glossy flanks. Once, however, that she has 
 accepted my silence for safe conduct, her head 
 goes down and a cautious breathing faintly stirs 
 the pods. In a moment her stertorous snuffle 
 is followed by a gulp, and soon I hear the steady 
 crunch of fresh young green. From then on she 
 has no eyes for me. It is only when her earthen 
 platter is swept clean that she lifts a solemn, 
 eager face to mine and proclaims with the last 
 ruminating mouthful that a compact has been 
 sealed. 
 
 By the next morning confidence has spread. 
 No sooner do I appear upon the parapet than 
 I am hailed by all the host. This time my ambas- 
 sador transforms herself to general and with a 
 new swagger comes attended by a cavalcade in 
 single file. She is a stern believer in ofiicialdom, 
 and once she has her head deep in my basket, she 
 insists as ranking officer upon sole rights. Her 
 staff may only salvage what she lets fall. If 
 
 [224] 
 
Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 
 
 they so much as crowd around her in their maneu- 
 vering for place, she administers a reprimand by 
 kick or butt. Such autocracy is not to be endured. 
 Insubordination follows and in a few days by 
 mass formation they reduce her to the ranks. 
 The old marching order gives place to a wild 
 charge in which all leadership is gained by wind. 
 And as I recognize myself as the object of this 
 jostling tumult, I make a swift retreat behind my 
 breastwork and receive it with a solid wall 
 between. 
 
 From now on my effort is to conceal my per- 
 fidy. I cannot teach the enemy that ours is a 
 secret treaty and to be pursued by stealth. They 
 are barbarians, innocent of diplomatic knowledge, 
 and at a glimpse of me they will proclaim con- 
 spiracy to the four winds. Let it be borne from 
 the south and it will reach headquarters. I shall 
 be court-martialed, broke, confined. So it is that 
 I attempt to silence their accusing voice. 
 
 And indeed I might well silence it forever. 
 For as peas grow scarce, I reenforce myself with 
 apples, early wind-falls crammed into bulging 
 pockets. Dangerous fare they look, as I bring 
 
 [225] 
 
Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 them forth. The very food for coKc. But before 
 I yield to doubt, a moist nose is nuzzling at my 
 palm. There is a quick wet slip, a crunch, and 
 a hot breath upon me. At once the horde per- 
 ceives that here is matter for contention, and 
 a dozen pairs of horns are swiftly tilting in the 
 fray. Lest I be brought to earth, I dissipate 
 the ranks by flinging wide my whole stock of 
 provisions and by stirring up a civil strife, I 
 make my own ignored retreat. 
 
 I need, however, but a glimpse of the pushing, 
 crowding heads behind me to know that I have 
 made a tactical mistake. Peas were as nothing, 
 a mere side dish in comparison. This time I have 
 whetted appetite, aroused a conquering lust. 
 Never again -will my antagonists be content with 
 simple rationing. Gone are the bleak beggarly 
 days. They will have satisfaction, if not supplied, 
 then seized. Better the earlier summons that 
 drifted plaintively across the meadows in terms 
 of question and entreaty than this full-voiced 
 demand that swells in volume if I venture forth. 
 I cannot even go about my household tasks or 
 creep about my garden without the consciousness 
 
 [226] 
 
Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 
 
 of the disturbing chorus ; and as it grows insistent, 
 I am surprised before accusing eyes into a guilty 
 start. Moreover, there are signs of feverish activ- 
 ity. The path about my fortress is now beaten 
 brown. Its battlements are stripped for scaling, 
 freed from the grape vines' curling tendrils and 
 glossy leaves. In panic I attempt to shift my 
 front by strategy and make my entry, not from 
 my own but from my neighbors' fields. But the 
 enemy are not to be diverted by such feints. 
 They change their bivouac methodically, moving 
 up from under cover of the oak tree to a first 
 line trench, held in the open and not ten feet 
 from my wall. There, mustering their number, 
 they stand in close formation, their bayonetsi 
 lifted, awaiting the signal of assault. 
 
 When it comes, it is unheralded. Dusk has 
 settled in the valley ; and as I sit off guard upon 
 my porch, I hear only the chafing of the tide and 
 soft squelching noises as a muskrat fares his hid- 
 den way among the swale. Then suddenly a 
 sentry gives the sharp alarm. "The cows are in 
 the corn. They're at your Peep of Day." Sack 
 and pillage, desecration ! Gone is my weak-kneed 
 
 [227] 
 
Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 altruism, my missionary spirit of enlightenment 
 and of assuagement. With the sacred fury of 
 a medieval knight, I rush forth to the battle, and 
 the challenge that I cry is "a I'outrance." There 
 shall be no quarter. As I bear down, however, 
 on the first invader, she nods a careless recog- 
 nition and refuses to give ground. Even when 
 hard-pressed with shaft and bludgeon, she sets 
 her legs and raises questioning eyes. And stol- 
 idly all the while her mouth travels down a dis- 
 appearing corn-stalk. It is only after a last tug 
 has ripped it from the earth and secured it with 
 roots dangling, that she turns tail. Then hastily 
 I engage in a new contest and brandishing aloft 
 my weapons, I hurl myself upon each foe. What 
 though I be outnumbered ten to one ? My blood 
 is up. No force can stand against my holy rage. 
 I beat them back. I drive them fleeing in dis- 
 order. The orchard rings with war-cries and the 
 tumult of the rout. But when at last they are 
 repulsed and there is a lull in combat, I send 
 for reenforcements and recover strength while I 
 mount guard. 
 
 They are a long time in arriving. Darkness 
 [228] 
 
Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 
 
 closes in and as sentinel, I face a wall of silent, 
 solid black. Somewhere behind it in their ambush 
 the enemy are lurking; and though I cannot 
 guess their movements, I know that they are ral- 
 lying to attack. With a clutching of the heart, 
 I hear at last the footing of their cavalry. It 
 deepens ominously as it gathers speed. There 
 is a rending of the apple boughs and soon the 
 whole orchard is swaying to the charge. Dim 
 shapes rush forth that gather size as they plunge 
 from the shadows until they loom like legendary 
 beasts. Gone is my elation, gone my valiance. I 
 am no Viking to contend with monstrous hosts. 
 I would make offer of an armistice and before I 
 am battered to consent of half my stores. It is 
 only my pride that keeps weight in my heels. 
 However, just as the column dashes forward I 
 find myself sustained upon both wings. On the 
 left it brings up against my mother's outstretched 
 lance and wheeling suddenly to the right, it is 
 confronted by my landlord whose weapon is his 
 voice. Back it reels, repulsed, into the dark. 
 
 But though beleaguering, we are beleaguered. 
 There is no chance of pressing forward to a mil- 
 
 [229] 
 
Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 Wary victory. Nor may we bring our prisoners 
 in. For we have set a trap we may not spring 
 and to make good our conquest, we must hold 
 painful vigil at the mouth. We should be in 
 for a long night's watch were it not that at last 
 a lantern wavers down the hillside and that suc- 
 cor comes. This time it is brought by the com- 
 mander of the enemy who has had news of the 
 fray. Little he cares for our predicament. He 
 gives no greeting, makes no comment, but goes 
 silentljT^ to work. Thud follows thud as he levels 
 a portion of the rampart and opens up a breach. 
 And once he has made an exit for escape, he 
 musters quietly his forces till with a crackling 
 of the underbrush he leads them through. 
 
 As we make repairs by reconstructing a tem- 
 porary entanglement, I know that the nice 
 moment for recriminations has arrived. There is 
 no commendation for any meritorious service, and 
 no reward for valor. By my landlord I am ac- 
 cused of willful treason in treating with the enemy 
 and hotly I make countercharge of sloth. Repri- 
 mands fly back and forth. Now pressure is 
 removed there is division in the ranks. But when 
 
 [230] 
 
Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 
 
 at last I stand convicted before a high tribunal, 
 there is no need for my judges to affix a penalty. 
 I have brought one on myself. The enemy have 
 learned the way to storm my citadel and in this 
 preliminary skirmish they have been repulsed, 
 not vanquished. Next time they will select their 
 hour more wisely and make profit of the dawn. 
 Gone for the summer is our pleasant intercourse, 
 and gone is my security. I have made sacrifice 
 of slumber and never — not until next season — 
 shall I know "glad confident morning again." 
 
 [231] 
 
XIII: This Thornhush, My Thornbush 
 
GROWTH 
 
 So far the willow reaches down, 
 
 It meets a hidden spring; 
 And in the ripple of its leaves 
 
 Is water murmuring. 
 
 So hard the cedar cleaves the ledge, 
 It finds its strength renewed; 
 
 And shapes its somber blade and hilt. 
 From granite fortitude. 
 
 So close the beech tree keeps within 
 The dusk which it has made, 
 
 That every silver root receives 
 Companionship of shade. 
 
 So strong the elm has felt the swell 
 Of growth beneath the turf. 
 
 It flows up to a reef of clouds 
 And breaks into green surf. 
 
 [235] 
 
XIII: This Thornbush, My Thornbush 
 
 I LIKE color, swads of it." I remember many 
 a morning at Touisset when, as I toiled about 
 the roots of plants noticing only an increase in 
 girth or a new sturdiness of growth, my father 
 would stand behind me, uttering patiently these 
 mild words of censure. In those early days of 
 our garden only the hollyhocks contented him. 
 When in a stalwart array they began to unfold 
 their crumpled petals, salmon, maroon, blood red, 
 he would stand before them, watching the bees 
 tumble over their dusty stamens with a look of 
 
 [237] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 iniSnite satisfaction. But the moment that they 
 had lost their ruffled skirts and I had borne away 
 their stalks to ward off an army of small seed- 
 lings, there followed the old complaint, "I like 
 color in a garden, swads of it." 
 
 How could one procure it? Even the gardener 
 with an unlimited acreage of seed-beds would 
 have had difficulty in satisfying so exigent a 
 critic; one who took the fields and swamps as his 
 own garden and would lead me, when I made 
 protest of my inability, to a special tangle that 
 he loved, ablaze with our own Turk's cap lilies. 
 They were often some five feet tall, towering 
 well above his shoulders as he stood among them, 
 cap in hand, in token of no mock respect. This 
 place, I think he regarded as peculiarly his own. 
 Certainly he had a scowl for each marauder, and 
 would, had he been able, have stationed as its 
 guard, an angel with a flaming sword. 
 
 It was there that I had my inspiration. I 
 could not, to be sure, lift unharmed one of its 
 glories from this cool swamp. But might I not 
 in a smaller, less pretentious way make the fields 
 my seed-bed. Not much later and in secret, I 
 
 [238] 
 
This Thornhush, My Thornbush 
 
 made my first attempt. In a neighboring 
 meadow, I fomid the furry tufts of the rudbeckia 
 (ox-eyed Susan) which shorn by the scythe of 
 its first crop, was just ready for an autumn 
 blossoming. I waited for a rain. Then all unbe- 
 knownst I toiled, lifting each plant with a thick 
 ball of earth. For several days their green con- 
 cealed them. Then little by little their calyxes 
 relaxed, until one morning I looked out to see 
 their petals open to the sun, a flaunting glow of 
 orange. I had achieved success. At last we had 
 color, "swads of it." 
 
 Our walks after this took on an added zest, 
 though we were now encumbered with a spade, 
 and though we were often forced to make return 
 trips to the scene of pillage. We were ambitious 
 in those days and had not yet known failure. 
 That came later when we tried to make our own 
 the ironweed with its deep purple, funereal almost 
 in its gloomy splendor. Our next attempt was 
 the cardinal flower, lifted only by sinking the 
 arms deep in muck. Hectic days followed that 
 act of bravado. Each morning as part of his 
 routine, my father would hurry forth with his own 
 
 [239] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 pitcher to fortify it against the summer heat. 
 Many a time during the day, moreover, its droop- 
 ing stalk would reveal the need of further sus- 
 tenance. But when at last it had unfurled its 
 crimson banner in the shade of our old maple, 
 as if indeed it had sought there its own habita- 
 tion, we had again achieved success. Less ardu- 
 ous, though not in transportation, was our garden 
 of fall asters. The most beautiful of these, Aster 
 Novae Angliae, only whose full title my father 
 thought was consonant with its dignity, we placed 
 at the rear, a background of rich purple, its flow- 
 ers folding at dusk their petals over starry yellow 
 centers. And before them, the wild white aster 
 that in autumn silvers our fields like hoar frost. 
 Then at last content with present store we laid 
 in a treasure for the coming year; Aquilegia 
 Canadensis, the scarlet columbine, and the ferns 
 surrounding it, "little polys," as my father affec- 
 tionately called them, moved together that they 
 might not seem incongruous among our more 
 pretentious purchases ; Iris Prismatica that grows 
 so thickly through our open swamps that it lends 
 them in its season violet shadows ; sweetbriar from 
 
 [240] 
 
Comrades in Crime 
 
 pea-leaves steeped in dew or beans just free of 
 their petals. And for salad, something far better 
 than hearts of lettuce, the tiny twin leaves. By 
 this time they had to take a stroll and straighten 
 their waistcoats before arriving at a wide choice 
 in sweets. My banquet, in short, was progressive, 
 of the sort once in fashion, its object being, how- 
 ever, not the acquaintance with more guests but 
 more food. I am not sure that in my sleep I did 
 not long to be with Shellover and Creep, an 
 unprincipled epicure, too, and with a capacity 
 equal to theirs. In the approved modern fashion 
 I did understand the psychology of my criminals. 
 But that was before I had caught them. Once 
 they were mine, I felt that the obligation should 
 have been mutual and that it was not too much 
 to ask of my criminals to have entered into the 
 psychology of their judge. 
 
 [257] 
 
XV: Followers of Scant Francis 
 
^-^^^*^ 
 
 
 XV: Followers of Saint Francis 
 
 SOME years ago when friends were young and 
 found a bravery in bluntness, there was one 
 who objected frankly to my character. It was, 
 she said, too amiably rounded. It had no corners. 
 In its adjustment to a convex world, it had 
 become concave; and the Olympian serenity 
 which its amplitude suggested might just as weU 
 be termed a stodgy calm. I think she even added 
 that mine was a lowly nature, that it hugged the 
 ground, and basked in mellow sunlight, looking 
 never so absurdly bland as in a time of storm. 
 
 [261] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 In short, I have never been a wind-break. 
 Gales surge above that never reach me. Mares' 
 tails whisk across an open sky and never catch 
 upon my crown. A mackerel sky will lower and 
 still not rest its sullenness upon my roof. Hud- 
 dled close along the base of nobler structures, 
 I intercept at best ground flurries. Only such 
 unpleasant httle gusts as otherwise would whirl 
 into a corner, only such spiteful httle puffs as 
 would find a niche for spiral or for eddy, do I 
 make it my business to send glancing off. 
 
 How it happened thus I could not tell you. 
 For my family considered architecturally, are 
 Gothic. Their passions have a loftiness about 
 them and go soaring upward to a dizzy peak. 
 Their prejudices raise sharp battlements, their 
 dislikes will shut like massive doors. Their con- 
 victions, too, fly out like buttresses with an oppos- 
 ing jog and thrust. And whereas you might 
 walk around my smooth exterior and not discover 
 where I pointed, their base you would immedi- 
 ately recognize as square and built to face north 
 east. 
 
 You will be wise then if you visit me but in 
 [262] 
 
Followers of Saint Francis 
 
 the mildest weather. A pavilion built for pleas- 
 ure is no refuge. When tempests rage, when 
 troubles brew, you had best seek out my people 
 and the girdhng safety of their convent walls. 
 
 Only you need not hope to enter unless you 
 are possessed of four legs, a creeping belly, or 
 a pair of wings. If you were a dinosaur, they 
 would give you a God's rest from leaping and 
 offer you the porch. If you were leviathan and 
 wallowed up the tide-stream, they would shine 
 with interest and keep dinner waiting while they 
 eased you of your hook. Were you behemoth, 
 they would lead you to the marsh, and in its 
 ooziness invite you to cool off your sides. Even 
 were you Adam's serpent, they would apply cold 
 cream and lotion to your head so grievously 
 afflicted and erase the bruise of human heel. But 
 as man, you will not win attention. To gain 
 more than a passing notice, you must crawl or 
 flutter in. For they are followers of St. Francis, 
 that friend of hide and fur and feathers. So are 
 the retreats they offer never cots, but nests and 
 burrows, crevices and lairs. 
 
 [263] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 If you do not believe me, drop unwarily into 
 the water-lane that winds slowly backward past 
 our house and act as though you thought it pub- 
 lic property. Its chuckling pools are in reality 
 the very place for bait and your net will come 
 scooping up with treasure. But before you have 
 waded to mid -channel, my mother will have heard 
 your splash and stir and be making down the 
 path in a mad scurry. Then will you learn that 
 your presence is affront and that you have 
 intruded on her convent close. In fact, quite as 
 though you thought yourself upon the highroad, 
 you are tramphng through each still recess. 
 
 Her rebuke is breathless. "Don't you touch 
 my turtle." . 
 
 Startled, you protest you have not seen him. 
 Nor has she. Some three weeks at least he has 
 spent in retreat, executing doubtless some strange 
 vow of solitude. Even on feast days he is unap- 
 proachable and reticent, capricious in his grat- 
 itude. At the same time, if you were not there, 
 she might perhaps detect his ugly head thrust 
 forward from the folds of his black cowl and a 
 
 [264] 
 
HE&E HE FINDS IT PLEASANT TO UE STILL AND WATCH THE FMGKEKING 
 SHADOWS OF THE WILLOW. 
 
 [265] 
 
Followers of Saint Francis 
 
 lackluster eye that blinked at her inquiringly. 
 Or under the dark arch of the bridge, she might 
 catch him lying coolly at his ease, his great body 
 stayed against the tide by just the laziest waving 
 of fringed claws. So at least he oftenest finds 
 it pleasant to lie still and watch the flickering 
 shadows of the willow. That twice or thrice a 
 season in the past six years she has so found him 
 or has heard his flop and squelching footfall in 
 the night, is his title to domain and hers to inti- 
 mate possession. 
 
 Only since my mother finds it good to watch 
 her brethren dwell in unity, she makes him share 
 his quarters. They are also the muskrat's who 
 takes them for his swims, emerging from the 
 dankness of his cell in the stone wall for his due 
 share of exercise and pastime. A more quiet 
 purpose, too, they serve when they grow dim in 
 the half-light. For here at dusk night herons 
 come like monks austerely hooded in chill gray, 
 the embodiments of a pale spiritual melancholy. 
 Slowly they steal down the corridors of sedge 
 and once they reach the pool stand silent at 
 
 [267] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 their vespers. Their quiet service, as lay-sister, 
 I am privileged to share, but your presence, I 
 assure you, will be taken as an act of sacrilege. 
 
 Nor need you imagine that you may take 
 delight in the garden which lures you from the 
 road by its bright wave of color. Not for human 
 eyes are its inducements offered. Each fir tree 
 and spruce which you regard for shape and shade 
 or for fine subtleties of texture, my mother 
 judges for the practicable thickness of its walls 
 for nests and bj^ the stoutness of its scaffolding. 
 The gooseberry or cherry which you would plump 
 so carelessly into your mouth with pleasure in 
 its spurt of coolness, is meant to be pouched whole 
 by chipmunk or pecked by robin to a juicy froth. 
 Should you idly beg a spray of columbine, you 
 will be made to understand that its deep cups 
 are serviceable beakers set to assuage the thirst 
 of a long bill or of a curved proboscis. Indeed, 
 the privet hedge I think serves less with its green 
 shield from curious eyes than with its public pegs 
 on which fat yellow spiders may stretch taut their 
 silver clothes-Hnes. Down this path and down 
 
 [268] 
 
Followers of Saint Francis 
 
 that, you may go only under guidance. Else is 
 it certain that you will stroll blundering in on 
 shy domestic rites. And lest your carelessness 
 turn to intentioned prying, my mother leads your 
 steps with apparent reasons that are her subtle 
 feints. "Would you like to have some roses?" 
 she implores you, as you stand precariously near 
 the pear tree. "There are more buds for cutting 
 in the border just beyond." And how are you 
 to guess that all the bounty she snips off for you, 
 is her glad exchange for your dull blindness to 
 the yellow warblers who were flitting just above 
 you and to a little horse hair cup built snug in 
 a low crotch? Never would you be sharp enough 
 to take your yieldings from the seed-bed as a 
 service to the catbird. Yet how else save by such 
 proffer were you to be induced from the syringa 
 where a clean and brisk-eyed fellow was waiting 
 to take the froth of blossoms in a dive. Only 
 my mother will grow frank in desperation if you 
 disturb the wood-thrush, a shy visitant who in 
 rare times of drouth will deign to use our pool. 
 It is not for you to catch a ghmpse of her white 
 breast in an upthrown shower of spray no more 
 
 [269] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 than it was meet for Acteon to gaze on the fleet 
 form of Artemis. 
 
 Not more welcome are you on the porch, for it 
 long since was taken over and converted to a 
 nursery and hospital for vagrants. At one end, 
 to be sure, there is a private room, decently with- 
 drawn, close-curtained with the broad flat leaves 
 of pipe-vine. This bed is, I think, perpetually 
 endowed. Certainly the same family of robins 
 refurbish it each spring and in late summer leave 
 it waiting, trim and tidy. But at the other end, 
 walled with wistaria and stanchioned by a climb- 
 ing briar, there is a pubhc ward where berths are 
 given out without regard for race or creed or 
 color. Even English sparrows, pariahs from 
 all other charitable organizations, are given wel- 
 come here. Indeed, in the top tier they take the 
 adventure of maternity like the coarse peasants 
 that they are, with a frank talk of all its signs 
 and symptoms. Certainly they shock their little 
 chirping cousin upon whom they look down with 
 no regard for her shy reticence and nervous 
 apprehension. 
 
 It is because of her, however, that you may not 
 [270] 
 
Followers of Saint Francis 
 
 stretch out in the Gloucester hammock and let 
 your mind fill with the peace that brims rich pas- 
 ture lands and sun-soaked valley. For with each 
 slow creak and swing of the long chain, my 
 mother sees a tiny cinnamon cap upraised until 
 at last a fluttering bravery has end in rout. Then 
 will talk grow distrait until the house physician 
 has explained that you had better change your 
 seat since eggs are perilously cooling for your 
 pleasure. 
 
 But, if when nesting time is over and the nur- 
 sery left vacant, you sup with us upon the porch, 
 you will find the shoe upon the other foot. It 
 is you who are imperiled. You will not think 
 perhaps the quiet scene in front could hold a 
 threat. The pale arc of sky, the spreading shad- 
 ows that reach softly out from waning light, the 
 salt breeze that smells of dusk, lead you to expect 
 a meal where all is dilly-dally and calm leisure. 
 But in a moment you are springing from your 
 seat as a black wasp, straightforward and direct, 
 comes swinging towards you with his long legs 
 traiUng. He is a lean and vigorous fellow, you 
 are sure of that, and of his personal malice. It 
 
 [271] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 is only quick avoidance on your part and an 
 uncertain lunge on his, that prevent the parry 
 and thrust of swift collision. As you seat your- 
 self again, you find another wasp has dropped 
 upon your plate and is punctuating his slow prog- 
 ress round its rim with tilt of tail and quivering 
 vicious stabs. Then to calm your perturbation, 
 my mother will explain that if you pay him no 
 attention, eat so to speak around him, the chances 
 are he will not harm you. You are merely in the 
 right of way to his especial vaulted cell beneath 
 the eaves. 
 
 It is within the house that you will find the 
 strangest topsyturveydom and most extravagant 
 reversal. A window that must not be opened, less 
 for the danger it will bring to you than for the 
 disturbance to the yellow- jackets whose nest of 
 wattled silver hangs pendulous outside. Another 
 window that must not be raised except with care- 
 ful courtesy for the spider, a black ogre, lurking 
 in his cavern. Or perhaps pinned on a door there 
 is a notice that forbids all entrance until a spar- 
 row, too late rescued, has been given chance 
 for quiet and unhurried death. Last summer, 
 
 [272] 
 
Followers of Saint Francis 
 
 moreover, I received a hurry call from town to 
 make ready for an inmate, this time a womided 
 pigeon. To me a roomy box upon the porch 
 seemed the largess of hospitality. But once my 
 brother saw a desperate agate eye fixed on him 
 from this prison gloom and a sleek silver breast 
 pressed rounding through the bars, the free hab- 
 itat of his own bureau top came as his natural 
 suggestion. Its usual adornments were not 
 among the real importances of life. Its narrow 
 glossy surface was adapted to quick cleanliness. 
 Newspapers might be spread, a bowl of water 
 might be placed, grain for delectation might be 
 scattered here and there, and lest the coral feet 
 might weary with long standing, there might be 
 sprinkled a soft cool covering of dirt. Suppose 
 the kernels of round corn did whisk upon the 
 floor, or that dust was lifted in a cloud by stretch- 
 ing wings, or water slopped in a long creeping 
 puddle. Was this not after all my brother's 
 room? To share it was small price to pay for 
 the bestowal of emancipation. Not once did it 
 occur to him that such as looked within might 
 find as matter for their mirth, the squatting fig- 
 
 [273] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 ure whose plumpness took the place of pin- 
 cushion. There was even nothing to remark 
 when the whole explanation of the matter was so 
 simple. 
 
 Yet not so simple seem those folk who hold a 
 different attitude of mind; and it is in conflict 
 with them that I could wish my people in addi- 
 tion to their other vows, had sealed their lips 
 with vow of silence. If my Franciscans you 
 would see at their Gothic best, be with them when 
 they chance upon some victim of man's tyranny 
 or ignorance. Brute cruelty, they call it. A hen 
 too tightly cooped and pecking through the wires 
 for a near blade of grass will send them out to 
 proselji;e at once and with no pleasant mincing 
 of their charges. A flock of geese left quacking- 
 dry upon a sultry day will drive them forth to 
 preach the gospel of assuagement and benefi- 
 cence. A horse, yanked and beaten on the road 
 will transform them to Knights Templars. In 
 a second they are up in arms ; the cudgel, not the 
 gospel their stern method with such heathen. 
 And no matter what the provocation for it, let 
 them come upon a biting steel-edged trap, and 
 
 [274] 
 
Followers of Saint Francis 
 
 you are in to hear in a blood-curdling volley the 
 whole round of their anathemas. To expiate 
 such curse, there is no sufficient penance. To 
 them it is nothing that our neighbors look at us 
 askance, that the market-man will pass us by, 
 that we shall be cut off from provisions and from 
 f riendhness. Theirs is the blood of martyrs ; and 
 though for it they starve or are cast out, they 
 must defend the truth that rises in them. There 
 is no finesse to your convinced fanatic. 
 
 It is these attempts at forced conversion that 
 I make it my business to forestall by my own 
 lowly means of guile and subterfuge. For the 
 hen, — ^if at least the chances are that she will 
 come within my brother's range, I offer half my 
 store of chicken wire and the suggestion that she 
 might lay better for a little freedom. For the 
 geese, I fetch and carry surreptitiously on a warm 
 day until I set them guzzhng. You might even 
 think that I was one of the devout and not a 
 lover of mere human amity. For the horse, left 
 waiting in the road and likely to gain punish- 
 ment for his willful edging towards the hedge, 
 I idly amble down the path and keep him out of 
 
 [275] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 mischief by stuffing with long wisps his eager, 
 quivering muzzle. I have even contemplated 
 planting lettuce at the burrow of the woodchuck 
 in little weekly crops. Such at least as I conceive 
 them are my duties as lay-sister to this order of 
 Franciscans ; those humble offices which preserve 
 relationship between the austere brethren of the 
 convent and the unprofessed and unenlightened 
 who so blithely go their gait outside our walls. 
 
 [276] 
 
XVI: Parting Guests 
 
RAG-TAG AND BOB-TAIL 
 
 Rag-tag and bob-tail, 
 
 Finery won't last; 
 All display is laid aside 
 
 Now that summer's past. 
 
 The catbird's doffed his cutaway, 
 
 The robin, his loud vest; 
 The oriole, his robe of flame; 
 
 The quail, his visored crest. 
 
 There's tarnish on the marigold, 
 The corn-flower's blue cockade 
 
 Is rent and tattered. At their edge 
 The dahlia cuffs are frayed. 
 
 The poplar's lost its glossiness, 
 
 The willow tree its gleams, 
 The facing of the maple leaves 
 
 Shows wear along the seams. 
 
 Rag-tag and bob-tail. 
 
 Who would ever guess 
 Spring's young joy in foppery 
 
 And in gaudiness? 
 
 [279] 
 
''^ 
 
 -^— >-•- 
 
 XVI: Parting Guests 
 
 IN the Chinese language there is a picture for 
 the word "hospitahty," which any foreigner 
 might guess. Two quick strokes of the pen in 
 a fork to represent a biped, a flat stroke above 
 him, the proffered roof. Take the horizontal 
 stroke away and you have mere man, destitute 
 and seeking shelter. Add it and you stand com- 
 mitted. What you have is his. That that simple 
 act is fraught with responsibilities, we discovered, 
 when in a similar attempt to communicate by 
 
 [281] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 sign language, we planted vines about our porch. 
 And how lavish we were with our oifer, much 
 as if the Chinaman had repeated his symbol down 
 the length of an interminable page to catch first, 
 not the understanding, but the eye. At one end 
 it took the form of a pipe vine, its great leaves 
 a flat curtain against the sun. In front, of ram- 
 bler roses whose comfortable crotches could not 
 be missed ; and over them to eke out the foliage, 
 the akebia twined its delicate five-fingered leaves. 
 At the other end were tangles of soft clematis 
 and a wistaria to furnish stiff support. Was it 
 any wonder that those who flew might read ? 
 
 Such an offer we should never have extended 
 to human beings. We live in a churlish fashion 
 back from the road and talk a great deal of our 
 privacy and the length of our approach. We like 
 people to come when invited. We do not like 
 them to drop in. But let there be a flicker from 
 an early redbreast and there is a supply of string 
 already cut. In a moment it is strewn about the 
 grass where a quick eye may see it. Let the 
 chipmunk scamper across the lawn. He will 
 hardly have assmned his pauper's attitude and 
 
 [282] 
 
Parting Guests 
 
 have settled himself upon his little haunches 
 before a supply of grain is under his quivering 
 nostrils. It takes bird or beast to find our 
 manners. 
 
 When, thus, on our arrival for the summer, 
 we found a robin had installed herself upon the 
 porch we at once surrendered ownership. If 
 she had taken possession of the front door, well 
 then, as proper hosts we took the back. There 
 was a magnificence about that act of surrender 
 that should have been attended with a greater 
 pomp. No royal abdication could have wrought 
 more personal inconvenience. Bags, boxes, 
 trunks, were heaped up at the rear by an irate 
 expressman who had no patience with such fine- 
 ness of courtesy and who refused to manipulate 
 them through the smaller door. It seemed a pity 
 that it should look less like an act of hospitality 
 than an eviction. But that day no foot was set 
 upon the porch, and when night came, the cur- 
 tain was drawn early that the light might not 
 shine into the robin's eyes. 
 
 Later we found that we had acted with an 
 excess of courtesy. Our guest was quite willing 
 
 [283] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 to share her province. Indeed, I think she pre- 
 ferred to; for, as she sat spread out above her 
 eggs with the tip of a tail and her shy head show- 
 ing, she would cast a friendly eye upon me as I 
 passed beneath, quite as though I gave diversion 
 to her patient vigil. Sometimes her mate would 
 scold me as I whisked a broom about the porch 
 and from his vantage point on the top maple 
 twig, would flap his wings and give sharp testy 
 squawks. But his displeasure seemed to come 
 from a masculine aversion to my house-cleaning 
 rather than from any personal distrust. And 
 surely on the day the eggs were hatched, I was 
 taken into confidence. There was a tap of the 
 bill, a quick turn of the head to see if I was 
 watching. Then as I betrayed my eagerness, the 
 mother bird would settle to her task again with 
 an upward tilt of the beak that was sure reproof 
 to my mere spinster's patience. 
 
 But after that day she had little time for me 
 in the midst of her busy, flurried trips. Her mate, 
 with whom I now made close acquaintance, was 
 far more formal. His advance was methodical 
 and made in calculated stages. Three hops up 
 
 [284] 
 
Parting Guests 
 
 the steps and a flick of the tail, a flutter to the 
 chair-back then a quick dart to the nest while 
 all the time a worm was dangling down his waist- 
 coat. It was his duty to provide, but he took his 
 time about it and gave it an air of pompous con- 
 descension. 
 
 In a short time three yellow beaks appeared 
 above the rim, opening at the first sign of 
 approach. Then only I learned the meaning of 
 the word "maw." There was no closing them. 
 A quick gulp and again they were open. A few 
 more days and three long necks were visible. It 
 was at this stage that I marveled at maternal 
 pride. But when at last the birds had feathered 
 out and sat facing me, their beaks tilted upward 
 and their white bibs showing, I berated myself 
 for my distrust. By this time they had begun to 
 give themselves airs. They would plume them- 
 selves like old fops, they resented cuddling; and 
 even on cold days when their mother tried to 
 hover them, she found it awkward work. No 
 sooner would she settle over them, than a head 
 pried up each wing and a small plump figure 
 would sprawl out from her breast. 
 
 [285] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 At last an evening came when protection was 
 no longer possible. That night as I pulled the 
 curtain down, I think I sensed their danger, 
 tucked in for the first time without a sheltering 
 wing. But I was not prepared for the sharp cry 
 of anguish that later brought me to my feet. I 
 arrived just in time to flash my torch upon two 
 beady eyes and a large gray figure scampering 
 down the vines. When at last I had clambered 
 to the nest and put my hand in, it was empty. 
 Then as my mother held a flaring lamp, I reached 
 about the ground below. In a moment my hands 
 were on something soft and warm, a fat, downy, 
 little ball. Then another. The last I thought 
 that I should never find. Indeed, had I not had 
 in mind the evil face among the vines, I had given 
 up the search. But finally I came across it, cow- 
 ering perilously under foot. The first receptacle 
 that we found in our desperation was the fireless 
 cooker. There, after covering it with a warm 
 cloth, we left our charges ill-contented with their 
 new abode. 
 
 I slept impatiently that night. I could not 
 bear to think of the long patient weeks of brood- 
 
 [286] 
 
Parting Guests 
 
 ing and with no avail. At an early houi' I heard 
 a quick eager caroling. It was followed by a 
 hush, the silence of discovery. When into the 
 cool gray dawn I had rushed out with my bur- 
 den, the father was already on the trellis, a worm 
 dribbling from, his beak, the mother making fran- 
 tic search among the leaves. As I moved the 
 tin upon the lawn and waited, they eyed me with 
 suspicion. Was I making sport of tragedy ? But 
 as I lifted one fledgling in my hand, then placed 
 it fluttering on the grass, there was an instant 
 sign of recognition, a quick tilt of the head. Back 
 I put the bird and disappeared. In a moment 
 I saw the mother swoop to within a foot of the 
 can, hop towards it cautiously, peck its gleaming 
 surface and then listen, head cocked on one side. 
 Round and round she went, much as I might 
 have encircled an oil tank had I known it to 
 contain my off^spring. At last after a breathless 
 pause, she hopped upon the rim and regarded 
 fixedly the miracle before her eyes. But she was 
 above all things practical and was soon on the 
 wing in search for food. Once I was sure that 
 the tank had conveyed the idea of home, I moved 
 
 [287] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 it to the porch, and as she fluttered to it, almost 
 before I had set it down, I knew that I at least 
 was vindicated in her ej^es. 
 
 And well I might be, for from that day my 
 labors far exceeded hers. Each morning, to be 
 sure when I arose at dawn to put out my hungry 
 charges, their parents were already waiting, 
 though now quite patientlj^ with worm in beak. 
 But after all they were providers and their duties 
 were intermittent. I was nurse-maid and mine 
 never ceased. There was no reasoning with my 
 foundlings. No amount of pressure could con- 
 vince them of their present safety. They simply 
 didn't like the fireless cooker. They had only 
 tolerated their nest because it gave them an unim- 
 peded outlook on the world outside. Sometimes 
 a bee had buzzed by and they had opened their 
 little beaks, or a fish-hawk had swooped by and 
 they had cowered in a dehghtful terror. But this 
 was prison without a view. They protested, they 
 summoned up their growing strength and in two 
 days the strongest of the trio had fluttered to 
 the rim where he sat hunched like an old man, 
 yet with a look of inquiry and daring in his young 
 
 [288] 
 
Partmg Guests 
 
 eyes. Nor was it long before one and all, they 
 had passed from my control. I could only guard 
 them from afar, heading them off from places of 
 danger by driving them in a quick succession of 
 hops across the lawn. 
 
 In the daytime the mother seemed quite confi- 
 dent. As I met her running down the path 
 attended closely by her hungry brood she would 
 scold me roundly for my officious watchfulness 
 and bid me cease my interference. But at dusk 
 she grew plainly anxious and would summon me 
 to her assistance by sharp squawks, fretful at 
 first, but insistent if I delayed. Then as I 
 appeared bearing in one hand the fireless cooker, 
 she would flutter low before me until one by one 
 I had gathered in her flock. They, too, seemed 
 to expect me as they crouched low in the grass 
 like young runaways, their beaks uptilted for a 
 peek at my covering hand. With that one sign 
 of resistance, however, their bravado vanished and 
 they were ready to snuggle down. In these bed- 
 time rites the father took no part. He would 
 merely select his perch as spectator and watch 
 with an interest which, if keen, was detached, 
 
 [289] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 and held nothing of obhgation. But once I had 
 started homeward with my burden he would fol- 
 low me with song, uttered just before flight as 
 an act of exquisite courtesy. 
 
 One evening I was suddenly aware that I 
 had heard no summons. I suspected that silence 
 meant my discharge, but I wished to make sure. 
 Low on the syringa bush I found the mother. 
 This time she made no move to share her secrets. 
 She flew by without sign of recognition. Indeed, 
 I might have been a nurse-maid whom she had 
 dismissed. Yet, glad as I was to be rid of my 
 charges I could not return her slight with indif- 
 ference. I had been in the family too long for 
 that. Instead I continued my search until high 
 in the grape vines, I came upon a figure, wee and 
 defenseless, but with a determined clutch to his 
 claws and a set to his stubby tail that bade me 
 defiance. Protection I saw at a glance would 
 be an insult. He was no mollycoddle, but a man 
 of the world. 
 
 Lonely as I was at their departurie, I was de- 
 termined that I should have no more guests. Had 
 I been the Chinaman with the scroll I should have 
 
 [290] 
 
Parting Guests 
 
 quickly made an erasure and scratched out the 
 roof. Unfortunately, however, my offer of hos- 
 pitaHty had been put in more permanent form. 
 I could not uproot it. Whenever it met with an 
 eager acceptance, I could only rush forth with 
 a broom and proclaim by acts of persistent dis- 
 courtesy that my invitation had been recalled. 
 
 [291] 
 
XVII: Condescension that Withers 
 
XVII: Condescension that Withers 
 
 IF you purchased a cheap car, you would not, 
 I know, engage a chauffeur who had run 
 only those of an impressive make. You would 
 have the wisdom to foresee machinery turned 
 mulish and an engine stalled. But I have never 
 hired a gardener who, because of his own garden, 
 did not have a snobbish attitude towards mine. 
 The worst of it is that these men are not really 
 gardeners but such as "oblige me" with scant 
 extra hours of daylight. They have other tasks 
 in which they exert professional skill. I employ 
 
 [295] 
 
Robin Hood*s Barn 
 
 them, moreover, as mere implements to turn the 
 soil. Certainly I do not hire them as advisers, 
 as scientific producers of crops, and least of all 
 as critics. Yet let them set a foot upon my place. 
 What a swift glance of appraisal they cast! 
 What a look of contented rivalry I The most 
 that they can hope to accomplish for my garden 
 is to make it approach a little distantly, the patri- 
 otic vision that shines forth so jubilantly from 
 their eyes. 
 
 To see them you might not believe me. There 
 is Healey, the flagman. All day he slumbers 
 by the station, his chair tilted in the sunlight, his 
 cap drawn down over his purple cheeks and heavy 
 jowl. His insignia of office droops in one lax 
 hand. Even when he trundles to the track his 
 red flag is only half unfurled. Yet somewhere 
 under his slouching figure there are muscles that 
 are firm with hoeing. His rounding shirt-front 
 has been double creased in a stiff fight with 
 weeds. I know — if at least there be any justice; 
 for I ache in every limb, and Healey's tomatoes 
 have begun to flower while mine are but a single 
 
 [296] 
 
Condescension that Withers 
 
 stalk ; Healey's beans are up the bean-poles while 
 mine have not begun to coil. 
 
 And there is Tim. He shovels coal of nights 
 at the pumping station, sleeping in the morning 
 and emerging late in the afternoon like a little 
 gnome who has ventured forth to find the day- 
 light blinding. There are certain tasks that I 
 should never think of giving him. Even as he 
 turns the sod, his small legs staggering under 
 his big shovel, it is only my sex and his boasts 
 that keep me from lending him a hand. But 
 while my potatoes are a scant two bushels, mere 
 little brown eggs that leave my fervor at low ebb, 
 Tim's have grown unblighted and in half my 
 ground he has tripled my yield. 
 
 With Patsy I feel less humiliation. As he 
 comes up the drive in his scarlet blazer, his broad 
 face and gold teeth shining under his visored cap, 
 you could best imagine him chinning with the 
 bleachers or sending a swift ball to third. In 
 reality he is a barber. Is it that I often wonder 
 that makes him so skillful with his clippers? 
 What trim edges he leaves. Is the gravel path a 
 collar to his imagination? Do the peony bushes 
 
 [297] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 stand out from it in the place of ears? In any 
 case when he has finished, the garden has a pro- 
 fessional cut. But leave him for an instant. 
 In that instant all the children of the neighbor- 
 hood will have gathered close about him. Or he 
 will have wandered up the track to borrow a hoe, 
 or he will be sending his great voice down the 
 drive to hail every passerby. Even under my di- 
 rection, he works with half an eye. The other eye 
 is down the road where human interest travels. 
 "There is a man who can take the heart out of 
 your razor for you." He points with a flourish 
 at an indistinguishable figure. And a moment 
 before he had been telhng me that my roses threw 
 a lovely bloom. Now when I work I set my mind 
 upon my task. I look firmly to the end of the 
 row that dazzles in the sunlight and bend my 
 back towards it like a mole, my mind closed to 
 all distractions. Yet this man who can work 
 so nonchalantly has kept me enviously peering 
 through my pea vines for the first white bonnet. 
 Nor does the pride of these men stop with their 
 own prowess. It has other forms with which it 
 is as hard to cope. Healey's father was a gar- 
 
 [398] 
 
Condescension that Withers 
 
 dener on an English estate. He himself was thus 
 brought up on ribbon beds. If you will listen, 
 he will tell you. First a row of lobelia, then 
 feathery-few, then Phlox Drummondii. He rolls 
 out the last name as the proudest part of his 
 inheritance, and with a contemptuous glance 
 looks down upon my edging of clove pinks. His 
 foot is already on his spade in menace. Mine to 
 him is a grubby little place. There, there were 
 "h'acres and h'acres of h'orchids." Do you won- 
 der that he cannot keep to my diminutive paths? 
 His feet once strode up avenues of green sward. 
 Is it strange that he tramples carelessly upon 
 my seed-bed? What was even a "h'orchid from 
 a whole h'acre?" Tim's pretensions rest on one 
 sole day when he toiled in a famous garden in 
 the neighborhood. Since then I may not grow 
 my dahlias as the vulgar grow them in the open 
 earth. They must rise out of grass; though 
 underneath their branches if you look, you will 
 find circles of brown soil cut with a compass and 
 trimmed with disproportionate care. Tim, too, 
 knows what's right. But for sheer undermining 
 gi'owth no condescension equals Patsy's. It 
 
 [299] 
 
Robin Hood's Barn 
 
 would be impossible to uproot it. You cannot 
 tell to what inconspicuous places it has reached. 
 It has forced itself indoors. Surely not its prov- 
 ince. "Ain't you got electric lights?" you find 
 yourself asked suddenly. And before you can 
 retort, he adds, "I got 'em in my cellar." Or it 
 may suddenly turn personal. As we lean upon 
 our hoes, his eye will fall upon my earth-caked 
 hands. Now he couldn't afford to have his hands 
 look like mine. His he must keep in condition. 
 So it is that when the noon hour comes and I 
 serve him dinner underneath the peach tree, I 
 spread before him the whole bounty of our larder. 
 Unobserved I dine on scraps. So far, at least, 
 I have not learned what he would have had at 
 home. 
 
 Is it any wonder that when I am so craven 
 under condescension, the garden should be struck 
 as by a blight. Christian Scientists, they tell me, 
 by holding the thought of infinite affluence may 
 add to their estate. May not these men by an 
 inverse process be devastating mine. Infinite 
 poverty! They would express it differently, but 
 that they hold the thought is evident in every 
 
 [300] 
 
Condescension that Withers 
 
 glance. Certain it is that under the malevolent 
 spell, my peas must be twice planted, my tomato 
 plants replaced. Even the feelers of my beans 
 that usually reach forth so lustily, must ignomini- 
 ously be coaxed with twine around the poles. 
 What wonder that they need assistance. Jack's 
 bean stalk grew not so fast as those with which 
 they must contend. 
 
 One remedy I have and loyalty compels its 
 use. I should visit some of those other gardens. 
 I suspect them. I have grown their kind myself. 
 But, to tell the truth, though one is but a stone's 
 throw from my cottage, I have never seen it. 
 Instead, I skirt it gingerly, afraid, lest unawares, 
 I shall receive one rash illuminating peek. For 
 if I too have "played the braggart with my 
 tongue," I have also paid the price. And I want 
 mercy, I do not cry for judgment. The devasta- 
 tion that would follow, the ruthless tearing down 
 of jungle growth, is a toll that I for one cannot 
 exact. 
 
 THE END 
 
 [301] 
 

 
 
 
 
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