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The Jonathan Papers 
 
 By 
 
 Elisabeth Woodbridge Tit^-v^o^ 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 (^\)t fM'otv^itz pre?? Cambribje 
 1912 
 

 COPYRIGHT, 191 2, BY ELISABETH WOODBRIDGE MORRIS 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published April IQ12 
 
 SCI.A3I.4087 
 
TO JONATHAN 
 
 AND TO ALL PERFECT COMRADESHIP 
 
 WHEREVER ITS JOYOUS SPIRIT IS FOUND 
 
 THIS LITTLE BOOK IS DEDICATED 
 
Contents 
 
 Foreword — On Taking One's Dessert 
 
 'First ix 
 
 [I. A Placid Runaway 3 
 
 II. An Unprogressive Farm .... 14 
 
 III. A Desultory Pilgrimage ... 25 
 
 IV. The Yellow Valley 38 
 
 V. Larkspurs and Hollyhocks . . 49 
 
 VI. The Farm Sunday 68 
 
 VII. The Grooming of the Farm . . 87 
 
 VIII. "Escaped from Old Gardens" . 107 
 
 IX. The Country Road 114 
 
 X. The Lure of the Berry . . . 131 
 
 XL In the Rain 139 
 
 XII. As THE Bee Flies 155 
 
 XIII. A Dawn Experiment .... 171 
 
 XIV. In the Wake of the Partridge . 183 
 XV. Beyond the Realm of Weather. 199 
 
 XVI. Comfortable Books 214 
 
 XVII. In the Firelight 222 
 
 The papers in this volume first appeared in the Outlook, the At- 
 lantic, and Scrihner's. The author wishes to express to the editors 
 of these magazines her appreciation of their courtesy in permitting 
 the republication of the papers. 
 
Foreword 
 
 On Taking One's Dessert First 
 
 When we were children we used to "happen 
 in" to the kitchen just before luncheon to see 
 what the dessert was to be. This was because 
 at the luncheon table we were not allowed to 
 ask, yet it was advantageous to know, for 
 since even our youthful capacity had its lim- 
 its, we found it necessary to "save room," 
 and the question, of course, was, how much 
 room? 
 
 Discovering some favorite dish being pre- 
 pared, we used to gaze with watering mouth, 
 and, though knowing its futility, could seldom 
 repress the plea, "May n't we have our des- 
 sert now?" Of course we never did, of course 
 we waited, and of course, when that same 
 dessert came to us, properly served, at the 
 proper time, after a properly wholesome 
 luncheon preceding, it found us expectant, 
 perhaps, but not eager; appreciative, but not 
 
X 
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 enthusiastic. It was not to us what it would 
 have been at the golden moment when we 
 begged for it. 
 
 In hours of unbridled hostility to domestic 
 conditions we used sometimes to plan for a 
 future when we should be grown up, and then 
 would we not change this sorry scheme of 
 things entire! Would we not have a larder, 
 with desserts in it, our favorite desserts — 
 and would we not devour these same, boldly, 
 recklessly, immediately before the meal for 
 which they were intended ! Just would n't 
 
 we 
 
 And afterward — just did n't we ! Most 
 youthful fancies are doomed to fade unreal- 
 ized, but this one was too fundamentally 
 practical and sane. We are grown up, we 
 have a larder, with now and then toothsome 
 desserts in it, and now and then we grip our 
 conscience till it cowers and is still, we wait 
 till the servants are out, we walk into our 
 pantry — and then — 
 
 Yes, triumphant we still believe what once 
 militant we maintained — that the only way 
 to eat cake is when it is just out of the oven, 
 that the only way to eat ice cream is to dip 
 
FOREWORD xi 
 
 it out of the freezer, down under the apple 
 tree, in the mid-morning or mid-afternoon. 
 Afterward, when it appears in sober decorum, 
 surrounded by all the appurtenances of civ- 
 ilization, it is a very commonplace affair; out 
 under the apple tree it is ambrosia. 
 
 Why not go further? Why not take all our 
 desserts in life when they taste best, instead 
 of at the proper time, when we don't care for 
 them? Desserts are, I suppose, meant to be 
 enjoyed. Why not have them when most 
 enjoyable? I wonder if there is not a certain 
 perverted conscientiousness that leads us to 
 this enforcement of our pleasures. I am my- 
 self conscious that I can scarcely ever ap- 
 proach a pleasure with a mind singly bent on 
 enjoyment. I regard it with something like 
 suspicion, I hedge, I hesitate, I defer. What 
 is the motive force here? Is it an inherited 
 asceticism, bidding us beware of pleasure as 
 such? Is it pride, which will not permit us to 
 make unseemly haste toward our desires? Is 
 it a subtle self -gratification, which seeks to 
 add zest, tone, to our delights by postponing 
 them? Is it fear of anticlimax, which makes 
 us save our pleasure for the last thing, that 
 
xii FOREWORD 
 
 there may be no descent afterward? Cer- 
 tainly the last was the motive in the case of 
 the little boy who, dining out, was given a 
 piece of mince and one of custard pie. He 
 liked the mince best, therefore he saved it 
 until the last, and had just conscientiously 
 finished the custard when his beaming hostess 
 said: "Oh, you like the custard best! Well, 
 dear, you need n't eat the other. Delia, bring 
 another plate for Henry and I'll give him 
 another piece of the custard pie." Pathetic! 
 Yet I confess my sympathy with Henry has 
 always been qualified by disapproval of his 
 methods, which, it seems to me, brought 
 down upon him an awful but not wholly 
 undeserved penalty. 
 
 The incident is worth careful attention. 
 For life, I believe, is continually treating us 
 as that benevolent but misguided hostess 
 treated the incomprehensible Henry. If we 
 postpone our mince pie, it is often snatched 
 from us and we never get it at all. I knew a 
 youth once who habitually rode a bicycle that 
 was too small for him. He explained that he 
 continued to do this because then, when at 
 same future time he did have one that fitted 
 
FOREWORD xiii 
 
 him, he would be so surpassingly comfortable ! 
 Soon after, bicycles went out of fashion, and 
 I fear the moment of supreme luxury never 
 came. His mince pie had, as it were, been 
 snatched from him. One of my friends wrote 
 me once: "It seems to me I am always dis- 
 tractingly busy just getting ready to live, but 
 I never really begin." Most of us are in the 
 same plight. We are like the thrifty house- 
 wife who kept pushing the week's work earlier 
 and earlier, until it backed up into the week 
 before; yet with all her planning she never 
 succeeded in clearing one little spot of leisure 
 for herself. She never got her dessert at all. 
 Probably she would not have enjoyed it if she 
 had had it. For the capacity to enjoy desserts 
 in life is something not to be trifled with. 
 Children have it, and grown people can keep 
 it if, they try, but they don't always try. I 
 knew of a man who worked every minute un- 
 til he was sixty, getting rich. He did get rich. 
 Then he retired; he built him a "stately 
 pleasure palace," and set about taking his 
 pleasure. And lo ! he found that he had for- 
 gotten how! He tried this and that, indoor 
 and outdoor pleasures, the social and the sol- 
 
xiv FOREWORD 
 
 itary, the artistic and the semi-scientific — all 
 to no purpose. Here were all the desserts that 
 throughout his life he had been steadfastly 
 pushing aside; they were ranged before him 
 to partake of, and when he would partake he 
 could not. And so he left his pleasure palace 
 and went back to "business." 
 
 We are not all so far gone as this, but few 
 of us have the courage to take our desserts 
 when they are oflFered, or the free spirit to 
 enjoy them to the uttermost. I get up on a 
 glorious summer morning and gaze out at the 
 new day. With all the strongest and deepest 
 instincts of my nature I long to go out into 
 the green beauty of the world, to fling myself 
 down in some sloping meadow and feel the 
 sunshine envelop me and the warm winds pass 
 over me, to see them tossing the grasses and 
 tugging at the trees and driving the white 
 clouds across the blue, and to feel the great 
 earth revolving under me — for if you lie long 
 enough you can really get the sense of sailing 
 through space. All this I long for — from my 
 window. Then I turn back to my unglorified 
 little house — little, however big, compared 
 with the limitless world of beauty outside — 
 
FOREWORD XV 
 
 and betake myself to my day's routine occu- 
 pations. I read my mail, I answer letters, I 
 go over accounts, I fly to the telephone and 
 give orders and make engagements. And 
 at length, after hours of such stultifying em- 
 ployment, I elect to call myself "free," and 
 go forth to enjoy my "well-earned" leisure. 
 Fool that I am ! As if enjoyment were a thing 
 to be taken up and laid down at will, like a 
 walking-stick. As if one could let the golden 
 moment pass and hope to find it again await- 
 ing our convenience. Why can we not be like 
 Pippa with her one precious day? But if she 
 had been born in New England do you sup- 
 pose her day would have been what it was? 
 Would she have sprung up at daybreak with 
 heart and mind all alight for pleasure? Cer- 
 tainly not. She would have spent the golden 
 morning in cleaning the kitchen, and the 
 golden afternoon in clearing up the attic, and 
 would have gone out for a little walk after the 
 supper dishes were washed, only because she 
 thought she "ought" to take a little exercise 
 in the open air. 
 
 Duty and work are all very well, but we 
 have bound ourselves up in them so com- 
 
xvi FOREWORD 
 
 pletely that we have almost lost the art of 
 spontaneous enjoyment. We can feel com- 
 fortable or uncomfortable, annoyed or grati- 
 fied, but we cannot feel simple, buoyant, in- 
 stinctive enjoyment in anything. We take 
 our very pleasures under the name of duties — 
 "We ought to take a walk," *'We ought not 
 to miss that concert," "We ought to read" 
 a certain book, "We ought" to go and see this 
 friend, or invite that one to see us. Those 
 things that should be our spontaneous pleas- 
 ures we have clothed and masked until they 
 no longer know themselves. A pleasure must 
 present itself under the guise of a duty before 
 we feel that we can wholly give ourselves over 
 to it. 
 
 Ah, let us stop all that! Let us take our 
 pleasures without apology. Let us give up 
 this fashion of shoving them away into the 
 left-over corners of our lives, covering their 
 gleaming raiment with sad-colored robes, and 
 visiting them with half -averted faces. Let 
 us consort with them openly, gayly ! 
 
The Jonathan Papers 
 
The Jonathan Papers 
 
 A Placid Runaway 
 
 Jonathan and I differ about a great many- 
 things; how otherwise are we to avoid the 
 sloughs of bigoted self-satisfaction? But upon 
 one point we agree: we are both convinced 
 that on a beautiful morning in April or May- 
 or June there is just one thing that any right- 
 minded person really wants to do. That is to 
 turn a deaf ear to duty and a blind eye to all 
 other pleasures, and — find a trout brook. 
 We are, indeed, able to understand that duty 
 may be too much for him — may be quite 
 indifferent to his deaf ear and shout in the 
 other, or may even seize him by the shoulders 
 and hold him firmly in his place. He may not 
 be able so much as to drop a line in the brown 
 water all through the maddening spring days. 
 But that he should not want to — ache to — 
 this we cannot understand. We do know that 
 
4 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 it is not a thing to be argued about. It is 
 temperamental, it is in the blood, or it is not. 
 Jonathan and I always want to. 
 
 Once it was almost the end of April, and 
 we had been wanting to ever since March 
 had gone out like a lion — for in some parts 
 of New England a jocose legislature has 
 arranged that the trout season shall begin 
 on April Fool's Day. Those who try to 
 catch trout on April first understand the 
 joke. 
 
 "Jonathan," I said over our coffee, '*have 
 you noticed the weather to-day?" 
 
 " Um-m-pleasant day," he murmured ab- 
 stractedly from behind his newspaper. 
 
 "Pleasant! Have you felt the sunshine? 
 Have you smelt the spring mud.^^ I want to 
 roll in it!" 
 
 Jonathan really looked up over his paper. 
 "Do!" he said, benevolently. 
 
 "Jonathan, let's run away!" 
 
 "Can't. There's a man coming at — " 
 
 "I know. There's always a man coming. 
 Tell him to come to-morrow. Tell him you 
 are called out of town." 
 
 "But you have a lot of things to-day too 
 
A PLACID RUNAWAY 5 
 
 — book clubs and Japanese clubs and such 
 things. You said last night — " 
 
 " I '11 tell them I 'm called out of town too. 
 I am called — we 're both called, you know 
 we are. And we've got to go." 
 
 "Really, my dear, you know I want to, 
 but—" 
 
 "No use! It's a runaway. Get the time- 
 table and see which is the first train to any- 
 where — to nowhere — who cares where!" 
 
 Jonathan went, protesting. I let him pro- 
 test. A man should have some privileges. 
 
 We took the first train. It was a local, of 
 course, and it trundled jerkily along one of 
 the little rivers we knew. When the conduc- 
 tor came to us, Jonathan showed him our 
 mileage book. "Where to?" he asked me- 
 chanically, but stiffened to attention when 
 Jonathan said placidly, "I don't know yet. 
 Where are we going, my dear.'^" 
 
 " I had n't thought," I said; "let's see the 
 places on the map." 
 
 "Well, conductor," said Jonathan, "take 
 off for three stations, and if we don't get off 
 then, you'll find us here when you come 
 around, and then you can take off some more." 
 
6 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 The conductor looked us both over. We 
 were evidently not a bridal couple, and we 
 did n't look quite like criminals — he gave us 
 up. 
 
 When we saw a bit of country that looked 
 attractive, we got off. That was something I 
 had always wanted to do. All my life I have 
 had to go to definite places, and my memory 
 is full of tantalizing glimpses of the charming 
 spots I have passed on the road and could 
 never stop to explore. This time we really did 
 it. We left the little railway station, sitting 
 plain and useful beside the track, went up the 
 road past a few farmhouses, over a fence and 
 across a soft ploughed field, and down to the 
 little river, willow-bordered, shallow, golden- 
 brown, with here and there a deep pool under 
 an overhanging hemlock or a shelving, fretted, 
 bush-tangled bank. 
 
 We sat down in the sun on a willow log 
 and put our rods together. Does anj^thing 
 sound prettier than the whir and click of the 
 reel as one pulls out the line for the first time 
 on an April day.^ We sat and looked at the 
 world for a little, and let the wind, with just 
 the faint chill of the vanishing snows still in 
 
A PLACID RUNAWAY 7 
 
 it, blow over us, and the sun, that was making 
 anemones and arbutus every minute, warm 
 us through. It was almost too good to begin, 
 this day that we had stolen. I felt like a 
 child with a toothsome cake — "I'll put it 
 away for a while and have it later." 
 
 But, after all, it was already begun. We 
 had not stolen it, it had stolen us, and it held 
 us in its power. Soon we wandered on, at 
 first hastening for the mere joy of motion and 
 the freshness of things; then, as the wind 
 lessened and the sun shone hot in the hollows, 
 loitering more and more, dropping a line here 
 and there where a deep pool looked suggest- 
 ive. Trout? Yes, we caught some. Jonathan 
 pulled in a good many; I got enough to seem 
 industrious. I seldom catch as many as Jona- 
 than, though he tries to give me all the best 
 holes ; because really there are so many other 
 things to attend to. Men seem to go fishing 
 chiefly to catch fish. Jonathan spends half 
 an hour working his rod and line through a 
 network of bushes, briers, and vines, to drop 
 it in a chosen spot in a pool. He swears gently 
 as he works, but he works on, and usually 
 gets his fish. I don't swear, so I know I could 
 
8 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 never carry through such an undertaking, 
 and I don't try. 
 
 I did try once, when I was young and reck- 
 less. I headed the tip of my rod, like a lance 
 in rest, for the most open spot I could see. 
 For the fisherman's rule in the woods is not 
 "Follow the flag," but "Follow your tip," 
 and I tried to follow mine. This necessitated 
 reducing myself occasionally to the dimen- 
 sions of a filament, but I was elastic, and I 
 persisted. The brambles neatly extracted 
 my hat-pins and dropped them in the tangle 
 about my feet; they pulled off my hat, but I 
 pushed painfully forward. They tore at my 
 hair; they caught an end of my tie and drew 
 out the bow. Finally they made a simul- 
 taneous and well-planned assault upon my 
 hair, my neck, my left arm, raised to push 
 them back, and my right, extended to hold 
 and guide that quivering, undulating rod. 
 I was helpless, unless I wished to be torn in 
 shreds. At that moment, as I stood poised, 
 hot, bafl3ed, smarting and stinging with 
 bramble scratches, wishing I could swear 
 like a man and have it out, the air was filled 
 with the liquid notes of a wood thrush. I 
 
A PLACID RUNAWAY 9 
 
 love the wood thrush best of all ; but that he 
 should choose this moment! It was the final 
 touch. 
 
 I whistled the blue- jay note, which means 
 *'Come," and Jonathan came threshing 
 through the brush, having left his rod. 
 
 "Where are you.^^" he called; " I can't see 
 
 you." 
 
 "No, you can't," I responded unami- 
 ably. "You probably never will see me 
 again, at least not in any recognizable form. 
 Help me out!" The thrush sang again, one 
 tree farther away. "No! First kill that 
 thrush!" I added between set teeth, as a 
 slight motion of mine set the brambles raking 
 again. 
 
 "Why, why, my dear, what's this?" Then, 
 as he caught sight of me, "Well ! You are tied 
 up! Wait; I '11 get out my knife." 
 
 He cut here and there, and one after an- 
 other, with a farewell stab or scratch, the 
 maddening things reluctantly let go their 
 hold. Meanwhile Jonathan made placid 
 remarks about the proper way to go through 
 brush. "You go too fast, you know. You 
 can't hurry these things, and you can't bully 
 
10 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 them. I don't see how you manage to get 
 scratched up so. I never do." 
 
 ** Jonathan, you are as tactless as the 
 thrush." 
 
 "Don't kill me yet, though. Wait till I 
 cut this last fellow. There! Now you're 
 free. By George! But you 're a wreck ! " 
 
 That was the last time I ever tried to 
 "work through brush," as Jonathan calls it. 
 If I can catch trout by any method compati- 
 ble with sanity, I am ready to do it, but as 
 for allowing myself to be drawn into a situa- 
 tion wherein the note of the wood thrush stirs 
 thoughts of murder in my breast — at that 
 point, I opine, sport ceases. 
 
 So on that day of our runaway I kept to 
 open waters and preserved a placid mind. 
 The air was full of bird notes — in the big 
 open woods the clear "whick-ya, whick-ya, 
 whick-ya" of the courting yellowhammers, 
 in the meadows bluebirds with their shy, 
 vanishing call that is over almost before you 
 can begin to listen, meadowlarks poignantly 
 sweet, song sparrows with a lift and a lilt and 
 a carol, and in the swamps the red-wings 
 triUing jubilant. 
 
A PLACID RUNAWAY 11 
 
 Noon came, and we camped under the 
 sunny lee of a ridge that was all abloom with 
 hepaticas — clumps of lavender and white 
 and rosy -lilac. We found a good spring, and 
 a fallen log, and some dead hemlock tips to 
 start a fire, and soon we had a merry blaze. 
 Then Jonathan dressed some of the trout, 
 while I found a black birch tree and cut 
 forked sticks for broilers. Any one who has 
 not broiled fresh-caught trout outdoors on 
 birch forks — or spice bush will do almost as 
 well — has yet to learn what life holds for 
 him. Chops are good, too, done in that way. 
 We usually carry them along when there is 
 no prospect of fish, or, when we are sure of 
 our country, we take a tin cup and buy eggs 
 at a farmhouse to boil. But the balancing of 
 the can requires a happy combination of 
 stones about the fire that the brief nooning 
 of a day's tramp seldom affords, and baking 
 is still more uncertain. Bacon is good, but 
 broiling the little slices — and how they do 
 shrink ! — takes too long, while frying entails 
 a pan. Curiously enough, a pan, in addition 
 to two fish baskets and a landing-net, does 
 not find favor in Jonathan's eyes. 
 
n THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 After luncheon and a long, lazy rest on our 
 log we went back to the stream and loitered 
 down its bank. Pussy-willows, their sleek sil- 
 ver paws bursting into fat, caterpillary things, 
 covered us with yellow pollen powder as we 
 brushed past them. Now and then we were 
 arrested by the sharp fragrance of the spice 
 bush, whose little yellow blossoms had es- 
 caped our notice. In the damp hollows the 
 ground was carpeted with the rich, mottled 
 green leaves and tawny yellow bells of the 
 adder's-tongue, and the wet mud was sweet 
 with the dainty, short-stemmed white violets. 
 On the dry, barren places were masses of saxi- 
 frage, bravely cheerful; on the rocky slopes 
 fragile anemones blew in the wind, and fluiffy 
 green clumps of columbine lured us on to a 
 vain search for an early blossom. 
 
 As the afternoon waned, and the wind 
 freshened crisply, we guessed that it was 
 milking-time, and wandered up to a farm- 
 house where we persuaded the farmer's wife 
 to give us bread and cheese and warm new 
 milk. We were urged to "set inside," but 
 preferred to take the great white pitcher of 
 milk out to the steps of the little back porch 
 
A PLACID RUNAWAY 13 
 
 where we could hear the insistent note of the 
 little phoebe that was building under the 
 eaves of the woodshed. Our hostess stood in 
 the doorway, watching in amused tolerance 
 as we filled and refilled our goblets. They 
 were wonderful goblets, be it said — the best 
 the house afforded. Jonathan's was of fancy 
 green glass, all covered with little knobs ; mine 
 was yellow, with a head of Washington 
 stamped on one side, and "God Bless our 
 Country" on the other. Finally the good 
 woman broke the silence — "Guess your 
 mothers ain't never weaned ye." Which we 
 were not in a position to refute. 
 
 On our return train we found the same 
 conductor who had taken us out in the morn- 
 ing. As he folded back the green cover of 
 our mileage book he could not forbear re- 
 marking, quizzically, "Know how far you're 
 goin' to-night?" 
 
 "Jonathan," I said, as we settled to toast 
 and tea before our home fireplace that even- 
 ing, "I like running away. I don't blame 
 horses." 
 
II 
 
 An Unprogressive Farm 
 
 Most of our friends, Jonathan's and mine, 
 are occupying their summers in "reclaiming" 
 old farms. We have an old farm, too, but we, 
 I fear, are not reclaiming it, at least not very 
 fast. We have made neither formal gardens 
 nor water gardens nor rose arches; we have 
 not built marble swimming-tanks, nor even 
 cement ones; we have not naturalized forget- 
 me-nots in the brook or narcissus in the mead- 
 ows; we have not erected tea-houses on choice 
 knolls, and after six years of occupancy there 
 is still not a pergola or a sundial on the place ! 
 And yet we are happy. 
 
 To be happy on a farm like ours one must, 
 I fancy, he either very old or very unpro- 
 ' gressive. While we are waiting to grow com- 
 fortably old, we are willing to be considered 
 unprogressive. 
 
 Very old and very, very unprogressive is 
 the farm itseK. There is nothing on it but 
 
AN UNPROGRESSIVE FARM 15 
 
 old apple trees, old lilac bushes, old rocks, 
 and old associations — and, to be sure, the 
 old red house. But the old rocks, piled on the 
 hillsides, are unfailingly picturesque, whether 
 dark and dripping in the summer rains or 
 silver gray in the summer suns. The lilacs 
 are delightful, too. In June they send wave 
 upon wave of fragrance in through the little 
 windows, penetrating even to the remotest 
 corners of the dim old attic, while all day long 
 about their pale lavender sprays the great 
 yellow and black butterflies hang flutteringly. 
 Best of all is the orchard; the old apple trees 
 blossom prodigally for a brief season in May, 
 blossom in rosy-white, in cream-white, in 
 pure white, in green-white, transforming the 
 lane and the hill-slopes into a bower, smother- 
 ing the old house in beauty, brooding over it, 
 on still moonlight nights, in pale clouds of 
 sweetness. And then comes a wind, with a 
 drenching rain, and tears away all the pretty 
 petals and buries them in the grass below. 
 But there are seldom any apples; all this 
 exuberance of beauty is but a dream of youth, 
 not a promise of fruitage. Jonathan, indeed, 
 tells me that if we want the trees to bear we 
 
16 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 must keep pigs in the orchard to root up the 
 ground and eat the wormy fruit as it falls ; but 
 under these conditions I would rather not 
 have the apples. The orchard is old; why not 
 leave it to dream and rest and dream again? 
 
 The old associations are, I admit, of a 
 somewhat mixed character. There is the 
 romance of the milk-room door, through 
 which, in hoary ages past, the "hired girl," 
 at the ripe age of twelve, eloped with her 
 sixteen-year-old lover; there is the story of 
 the cellar nail, a shuddery one, handed down 
 from a yet more remote antiquity; there are 
 tales of the "ballroom" on the second floor, of 
 the old lightning-riven locust stump, of the 
 origin of the "new wing" of the house — still 
 called "new," though a century old. Not a 
 spot, indoors or out, but has its clustering 
 memories. 
 
 Such an enveloping atmosphere of associa- 
 tions, no matter what their quality, in a place 
 where generations have lived and died, is of 
 itself a quieting thing. Life, incrusted with 
 tradition, like a ship weighted with barnacles, 
 moves more and more slowly; the past ap- 
 pears more real than the present. To the old 
 
AN UNPROGRESSIVE FARM 17 
 
 this seems natural and right, to others it is 
 often depressing; but Jonathan and I like it. 
 Our barnacle-clogged ship pleases us — 
 pleases me because I love the slow, drifting 
 motion, pleases Jonathan because — I regret 
 to admit it — he thinks he can get all the 
 barnacles off — and then ! — 
 
 For, whereas my unprogressiveness is ab- 
 solute and unqualified, Jonathan's is, I have 
 discovered, tainted by a sneaking optimism, 
 an ineradicable desire and hope of improve- 
 ment, which, though it does not blossom 
 rankly in pergolas and tea-houses, is none the 
 less there, a lurking menace. It inspired his 
 suggestion regarding pigs in the orchard, it 
 showed itself even more clearly in the matter 
 of the hens. ■ 
 
 I have always liked hens. I doubt if mine 
 are very profitable, — the farm is not, in 
 general, a source of profit, and we cherish no 
 delusions about it, — but I do not keep them 
 for pecuniary gain. If they chance to lay 
 eggs, so much the better; if they furnish forth 
 my table with succulent broilers, with nutri- 
 tious roasters, with ambrosial chicken-pasties, 
 I am not unappreciative; but I realize that all 
 
18 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 these things might be had from my neighbors' 
 barnyards. What I primarily value my own 
 hehs for is their companionship. Talk about 
 the companionship of dogs and cats! Cats 
 walk about my home, sleek and superior; 
 they make me feel that I am there on suffer- 
 ance. One cannot even laugh at them, their 
 manner is so perfect. Dogs, on the other 
 hand, develop an unreasoning and tyrannous 
 devotion to their masters, which is not really 
 good for either, though it may be morbidly 
 gratifying to sentimental natures. 
 
 But hens ! No decorous superiority here, no 
 mush of devotion. No; for varied folly, for 
 rich and highly developed perversities, com- 
 bining all that is choicest of masculine and 
 feminine foible — for this and much more, 
 commend me to the hen. Ever since we came 
 to the farm, my sister the hen has entertained 
 me with her vagaries. Jaques's delight at his 
 encounter with Touchstone is pale compared 
 with mine in their society. Nothing cheers 
 me more than to sit on a big rock in the barn- 
 yard and watch the hens walking about. 
 Their very gait pleases me — the way they 
 bob their heads, the ''genteel" way they have 
 
AN UNPROGRESSIVE FARM 19 
 
 of picking up their feet, for all the world as 
 though they cared where they stepped; the 
 absent and superior manner in which they 
 ** scratch for worms," their gaze fixed on the 
 sky, then cock their heads downwards with 
 an indifferent air, absently pick up a chip, 
 drop it, and walk on ! Did any one ever see a 
 hen really find a worm? I never did. There 
 are no worms in our barnyard, anyhow; 
 Jonathan must have dug them all up for bait 
 when he was a boy. I have even tried throw- 
 ing some real worms to them, and they always 
 respond by a few nervous cackles, and walk 
 past the brown wrigglers with a detached 
 manner, and the robins get them later. And 
 yet they continue to go through all these 
 forms, and we continue to call it "scratching 
 for worms." 
 
 Jonathan has nothing to do with my hens 
 except to give advice. One of his hobbies is 
 the establishing of a breed of hens marked by 
 intelligence, which he maintains might be 
 done by careful selection of the mothers. 
 Accordingly, whenever he goes to the roost 
 to pick out a victim for the sacrificial hatchet, 
 he first gently pulls the tail of each candidate 
 
20 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 in turn, and by the dim light of the lantern 
 carefully observes the nature of their reaction, 
 choosing for destruction the one whose de- 
 portment seems to him most foolish. In this 
 way, by weeding out the extremely silly, he 
 hopes in time to raise the general intellectual 
 standard of the barnyard. But he urges that 
 much more might be done if my heart were in 
 it. Very likely, but my heart is not. Intelli- 
 gence is all very well, but the barnyard, I am 
 convinced, is no place for it. Give me my 
 pretty, silly hens, with all their aimless, silly 
 ways. I will seek intelligence, when I want it, 
 elsewhere. 
 
 In another direction, too, Jonathan's op- 
 timistic temperament has found little encour- 
 agement. This is in regard to the chimney 
 swallows. When we first came, these little 
 creatures were one of my severest trials. 
 They were not a trial to Jonathan. He loved 
 to watch them at dusk, circling and eddying 
 about the great chimney. So, indeed, did I; 
 and if they had but contented themselves 
 with circling and eddying there, I should 
 have had no quarrel with them. I did not even 
 object to their evolutions inside the chimney. 
 
AN UNPROGRESSIVE FARM 21 
 
 At first I took the muffled shudder of wings 
 for distant thunder, and when great masses 
 of soot came tumbling down into the fireplace, 
 I jumped; but I soon grew accustomed to all 
 this. I was even willing to clean the soot out 
 of my neat fireplace daily, while Jonathan 
 comforted me by suggesting that the birds 
 took the place of chimney-sweeps, and that 
 soot was good for rose bushes. Yes, if the 
 little things had been willing to stick to their 
 chimney, I should have been tolerant, if not 
 cordial. But when they invaded my domain, 
 I felt that I had a grievance. And invade it 
 they did. At dawn I was rudely awakened by 
 a rush from the fireplace, a mad scuttering 
 about the dusky room, a desperate exit by the 
 little open window, where the raised shade 
 revealed the pale light of morning. At night, 
 if I went with my candle into a dark room, I 
 was met by a whirling thing, dashing itself 
 against me, against the light, against the 
 walls, in a moth-like ecstasy of self-destruc- 
 tion. In the mornings, as I went about the 
 house pulling up the shades and drawing back 
 the curtains, out from their white folds rushed 
 dark, winged shapes, whirring past my ears. 
 
^ 22 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 fluttering blindly about the room, sinking ex- 
 hausted in inaccessible corners. They were as 
 fooHsh as June bugs, fifty times bigger, and 
 harder to catch. Moreover, when caught, 
 they were not pretty; their eyes were in the 
 top of their heads, hke a snake's, their expres- 
 sion was low and cunning. They were almost 
 as bad as bats! Worst of all, the young birds 
 iad an untidy habit of tumbling out of the 
 nests down into the fireplaces, whether there 
 was a fire or not. Now, I have no conscien- 
 tious objection to roasting birds, but I prefer 
 to choose my birds, and to kill them first. 
 
 One morning I had gathered and carried 
 out of doors eight foolish, frightened, hud- 
 dling things, and one dead young one from 
 the sitting-room embers, and I returned to 
 find Jonathan kneeling on the guest-room 
 Jiearth, one arm thrust far up the chimney. 
 ^' What are you doing, Jonathan?" The next 
 moment there was the familiar rush of wings, 
 which finally subsided behind the fresh pil- 
 lows of the bed. Jonathan sprang up. *' Wait! 
 I'll get it!" He carefully drew away the pil- 
 low, his hand was almost on the poor little 
 quivering wretch, when it made another 
 
AN UNPROGRESSIVE FARM 23 
 
 rush, hurled itself against the mirror, upset a 
 vase full of columbines, and finally sank be- 
 hind the wood-box. At last it was caught, and 
 Jonathan, going over to the hearth, resumed 
 his former position. "Jonathan! Put him 
 out of doors!" I exclaimed. "Sh-h-h," he 
 responded, "I'm going to teach him to go 
 back the way he came. There he goes! see.'*" 
 He rose, triumphant, and began to brush the 
 soot out of his collar and hair. I was sorry to 
 dash such enthusiasm, but I felt my resolu- 
 tion hardening within me. 
 
 ''Jonathan," I said, "we did not come to 
 the farm to train chimney swallows. Besides, 
 I don't wish them trained, I wish them Icept 
 out, I don't regard them as suitable for house- 
 hold pets. If you will sink to a pet bird, get a 
 canary." 
 
 "But you wouldn't have an old house 
 without chimney swallows ! " he remonstrated 
 in tones of real pain. 
 
 "I would indeed." 
 
 It ended in a compromise. At the top of 
 the chimney Jonathan put a netting over half 
 the flues; the others he left open at the top, 
 but set in nettings in the corresponding flues 
 
24 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 just above each fireplace. And so in half the 
 chimney the swallows still build, but the 
 young ones now drop on the nettings instead 
 of in the embers, and lie there cheeping shrilly 
 until somehow their parents or friends convey 
 them up again where they belong. And I no 
 longer spend my mornings collecting apron- 
 fulsof frightened and battered little creatures. 
 At dusk the swallows still eddy and circle 
 about the chimney, but Jonathan has lost the 
 opportunity for training them. Once more 
 the optimist is balked. 
 
 But in these matters I am firm: I do not 
 want the hens made intelligent, or the orchard 
 improved, or the swallows trained. There is, 
 I am sure, matter enough in other parts of the 
 farm upon which one may wreak one's optim- 
 ism. I hold me to my tidy hearths, my com- 
 fortable hens, my old lilacs, and my dream- 
 ing apple trees. 
 
m 
 
 A Desultory Pilgrimage 
 
 Many of our friends seem to be taking auto- 
 mobile trips during the summer months — 
 very rapid trips, since, as they explain, "it 
 strains the machine to go too slowly, you 
 know." Jonathan and I wanted to take a trip 
 too, and we looked about us on the old farm 
 for a conveyance. The closest scrutiny failed 
 to discover an automobile, but there were 
 other vehicles — there was the old sleigh in 
 the back of the woodshed, where the hens 
 loved to steal nests, and the old surrey, 
 shabby but willing, and the business wagon, 
 still shabbier but no less willing; there were 
 the two lumber wagons, one rather more 
 lumbering than the other; and there were also 
 various farming vehicles whose names and 
 uses I have never fathomed, with knives and 
 long raking arrangements, very uncomfortable 
 to step over when hunting in the dark corners 
 of the barns for hens' nests or new kittens. 
 
26 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 Moreover, there was Kit, the old bay mare, 
 also shabby but willing. That is, willing 
 ''within reason," although it must be admitted 
 that Kit's ideas of what was reasonable were 
 distinctly conservative. The chief practical 
 difference between Kit and an automobile, 
 considered as a motive power, was that it did 
 not strain Kit in the least to go slowly. This 
 we considered an advantage, slow-going 
 being what we particularly wished, and we 
 decided that Kit would do. 
 
 For our conveyance we chose the business 
 wagon — a plain box body, with a seat across 
 and room behind for a trunk; but in addition 
 Jonathan put in a shallow box under the seat, 
 nailed to cleats on the bottom of the wagon so 
 that it would not shift and rain would run 
 under it. In this we put the things we needed 
 by the roadside — the camping-kit, drink- 
 ing-cups, bait-boxes, camera, and so on. Then 
 we stowed our trout rods and baskets, and 
 one morning in June we started. 
 
 Our plan was to drive and fish through the 
 day, cook our own noon meal, and put up at 
 night wherever we could be taken in, avoid- 
 ing cities and villages as far as possible. Be- 
 
A DESULTORY PILGRIMAGE 27 
 
 yond that we had no plan. Indeed, this was 
 the best of it all, that we did not have to get 
 anywhere in particular at any particular time. 
 We did not decide on one day where we would 
 go the next; we did not even decide in the 
 morning where we would go in the afternoon. 
 If we found a brook where the trout bit, and 
 there was no inhospitable "poster" warning 
 us away, we said, "Let's stay! who cares 
 whether we get on or not?" And we tied Kit 
 to a tree, took out our rods and baskets, and 
 followed the brook. If noon found us still 
 fishing, we came back to the wagon, fed Kit, 
 got out our camping-outfit, and cooked our 
 fish for luncheon. It did not take long. I col- 
 lected kindling and firewood while Jonathan 
 was laying a few big stones for a fireplace 
 shaped like a squared letter "C," open 
 towards the wind and big enough to hold our 
 frying-pan. Then we started the fire, and 
 while it was settling into shape Jonathan 
 dressed the fish and cut a long stick to fit into 
 the hollow handle of the frying-pan, and I had 
 time to slice bits of pork and set out the rest 
 of the luncheon — bread and butter, milk if 
 we happened to have passed a dairy farm, a 
 
28 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 pineapple or oranges if we happened to have 
 met a peddler, strawberries if we had chanced 
 upon one of the sandy spots where the wild 
 ones grow so thickly. 
 
 Then the pan was set over, the pork was 
 laid in, and soon the little fish were curling up 
 their tails in the fragrant smoke. If they were 
 big and needed long cooking, I had time to 
 toast bread or biscuit in the embers under- 
 neath for an added luxury, and when all was 
 ready we sat down in supreme contentment. 
 And we never forgot to give Kit a lump of 
 sugar, or some clover tops, that she might 
 share in the picnic. But every now and then 
 she would turn and regard us with eyes that 
 expressed many things, but chiefly wonder 
 at the queerness of folks who could prefer not 
 to go back to their own stable to eat. When 
 luncheon was over, the dishes washed in the 
 brook, and the wagon repacked, we ambled 
 on, leaving our little fireplace, with its black- 
 ened stones and its heart of gray ashes. 
 
 No one who has never tried such an aimless 
 life can realize its charm and its restfulness. 
 Most of us spend our days catching trains, 
 and running to the telephone, and meeting 
 
A DESULTORY PILGRIMAGE 29 
 
 engagements. Even our pleasures are seldom 
 emancipated from these requirements; they 
 are dependent on boats and trolley cars and 
 trains, they are measured out in hours and 
 minutes, and we snatch them running, as the 
 Israelites did their water. But this trip of ours 
 was bounded only by the circle of the week, 
 and conditioned only by the limitations of Kit. 
 No one could telephone to us, even at night, 
 because no one knew where we were to be. As 
 for trains, we never once saw one. Now and 
 then we heard one whistle, so far away that 
 it merely emphasized its own remoteness, and 
 a few times we were compelled to cross over 
 or under a track — a very little track, and 
 single at that; beyond this our connection 
 with the symbol of Hurry did not go. 
 
 The limitations of Kit were indeed definite 
 and insurmountable. While her speed on a 
 level was most moderate, uphill it was actu- 
 ally glacial, and going downhill it was little 
 better. For Kit had come from the level West, 
 and being, as we have said, conservative, she 
 could never reach any real understanding of 
 hills. She was willing and conscientious, but 
 prudent, and although she went downhill 
 
30 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 when she was requested to, she did it very 
 much as an old lady might go down a precip- 
 ice — she let herself down, half sitting, with 
 occasional gentle groans, rocking from side to 
 side like a boat in a chop sea. Now all New 
 England is practically either uphill or down- 
 hill, and, if we had been in any haste, these 
 characteristics of Kit might have annoyed us; 
 but inasmuch as we did not care where we 
 went or when we got there, what difference 
 did it make? In fact, it was rather a relief to 
 be thus firmly bound to sobriety. 
 
 In one respect we could not be absolutely 
 irresponsible, however. We found it advisable 
 to seek out our night's lodging while it was 
 yet light enough for the farmer's wife to look 
 us over and see that we were respectable. 
 Our first night out we failed to realize this, and 
 we paid for it by being forced to put up at a 
 commonplace village inn, instead of a farm- 
 house. After that we managed to begin our 
 search for a hostess about milking-time, and 
 we had little further trouble. Indeed, one of 
 the pleasures of the week was the hospitality 
 we received; and our opinion of the New 
 England farmer, his wife and his children. 
 
A DESULTORY PILGRIMAGE 31 
 
 grew higher as the days passed. Courteous 
 hospitality, or, if hospitality had to be with- 
 held, courteous regret, was the rule. Twice, 
 when one house could not take us in, they 
 telephoned — for the telephone is everywhere 
 now — about the neighborhood among friends 
 until they found a lodging for us. And pleas- 
 ant lodgings they always proved. 
 
 One exception there was. We drew up one 
 afternoon by a well-kept little house with a 
 good English name on the post-box, and, as 
 usual, I held the reins while Jonathan went 
 up to the side door to make inquiries. After 
 he had started up the path I saw, from my 
 vantage-point, the lady of the farm returning 
 from her "garden patch," and my heart went 
 out in pity to Jonathan. If I could have called 
 him back I would have done so, merely on the 
 testimony of the lady's gait and figure. I had 
 never fully realized how expressive these 
 could be. Her hips, her shoulders, the set of 
 her head, the way she planted her feet on 
 the uneven flagging-stones of the path, each 
 heavy line and each sodden motion, bespoke 
 inhospitality, intolerance, impenetrable dis- 
 approval of everything unfamiliar. I watched 
 
32 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 Jonathan turn back from the door at the 
 sound of her steps, and in the short colloquy 
 that followed, though I could hear nothing, 
 I could see those hips and shoulders settling 
 themselves yet more decisively, while Jona- 
 than's attitude grew more studiously courte- 
 ous. But when he had lifted his hat again and 
 turned from that monument of immobile 
 unpleasantness I saw his face relax into lines, 
 partly of amusement, partly of chagrin; and 
 as he took his seat beside me and drove on, he 
 murmured snatches of quotation — "No; 
 couldn't possibly," "No; don't know any- 
 body that could," "No; never did such a 
 thing," "No; the people in the next house 've 
 just had a funeral; sure they could n't"; and 
 finally he broke into a chuckle as he quoted, 
 "Well, there is some folks about two mile 
 down might mebbe take ye; they does some- 
 times harbor peddlers 'n' such like." Jona- 
 than was hardly willing to try again so near 
 by; he regarded the whole neighborhood as 
 tainted. Yet it was little more than two miles 
 beyond, on that same afternoon, that we 
 found lodgings with the most delightful, the 
 most hospitable friends of all — for friends 
 
A DESULTORY PILGRIMAGE 33 
 
 they became, taking us into their circle as if 
 we belonged to it by right of birth, coddling 
 us as one ought never to expect to be coddled 
 save by one's own mother or grandmother. 
 
 Ostensibly, our drive was a trout -fishing 
 trip, and part of the fun certainly was the 
 fishing. Not that we caught so many. If we 
 had seriously wished to make a score, we might 
 better have stayed at home and fished in our 
 own haunts, where we knew every pool and 
 just how and when to fish it. But it was inter- 
 esting to explore new brooks, and as we never 
 failed to get enough trout for at least one 
 meal a day, what more could we wish.^^ And 
 such brooks ! New England is surely the land 
 of beautiful brooks. They are all lovely — 
 the meadow brooks, gliding silently beneath 
 the deep-tufted grasses, where the trout live 
 in shadow even at noonday, and their speckled 
 flanks are dark like the pools they lie in; the 
 pasture brooks, whose clear water is always 
 golden from the yellow sand and pebbles and 
 leaves it ripples over, and the trout are sil- 
 very and pale-spotted; the brooks of the deep 
 woods, where the foam of rapids and the spray 
 of noisy little waterfalls alternate with the 
 
34 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 stillness of rock-bound, hemlock-shadowed 
 pools. All the brooks we followed, whether 
 with good luck or with bad, I remember with 
 delight. No, all except one. But I do not 
 blame the brook. 
 
 It happened in this way: One Monday 
 morning, after an abstemious Sunday, the 
 zeal of Jonathan brought us forth at dawn — 
 in fact, a little before dawn. I had consented, 
 because, although my zeal compared to Jona- 
 than's is as a flapping hen compared to a soar- 
 ing eagle, yet I reflected that I should enjoy 
 the sunrise and the early bird-songs. We 
 emerged, therefore, in the dusk of young 
 morning, and I had my first reward in a lovely 
 view of meadows half-veiled in silvery mist, 
 where the brook wound, and upland pastures 
 of pale gray-green against ridges of shadowy 
 woods. But I was not prepared for the sensa- 
 tion produced by the actual plunge into those 
 same meadows. I say plunge advisedly. I 
 shiver yet as I recall the icy chill of that dew- 
 drenched grass. It was worse than wading a 
 brook, because there was no reaction. Jona- 
 than, however, did not seem depressed by it, 
 so I followed his eager steps without remark. 
 
A DESULTORY PILGRIMAGE 85 
 
 We reached the brook, we put our rods to- 
 gether, and baited. "Crawl, now," admon- 
 ished Jonathan; "they're shy fellows in those 
 open pools." We crawled, dropped in, and 
 waited. My teeth were chattering, my lips 
 felt blue, but I would not be beaten by a little 
 wet grass. After a few casts, Jonathan mur- 
 mured, "That's funny," and moved cau- 
 tiously on to the next pool. Then he tried 
 swift water, then little rapids. I proceeded in 
 chilly meekness, glad of a chance at a little 
 exercise now and then when we had to climb 
 around rocks or over a stone wall. Occasion- 
 ally I straightened up and gazed out over the 
 meadows — those clammy meadows — and 
 up toward the high woods, brightening into 
 the deep greens of daylight. The east was all 
 rose and primrose, but I found myself unable 
 to think of the sun as an aesthetic feature; I 
 longed for its good, honest heat. A stove, or a 
 hot soapstone, would have done as well. 
 
 After a quarter of a mile of this I ventured 
 a remark — "Jonathan, you have often told 
 me of the delights of dawn fishing." Jonathan 
 was extricating his line from an alder bush, 
 and did not answer. I could not resist adding. 
 
36 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 ''I think you said that the trout — bit — at 
 dawn." Continued silence warned me that I 
 had said enough, and I tactfully changed the 
 subject: "What I am sorry for is the birds* 
 nests up in those fields. How do the eggs ever 
 hatch — in ice water! And how do the straw- 
 berries ever ripen, in cold storage every night 
 — ugh ! Let 's go back and get some hot coffee 
 and go to bed ! " 
 
 And that is my one experience with dawn 
 fishing. But Jonathan, reacting from the 
 experience with the temper of the true en- 
 thusiast, still maintains that trout do bite at 
 dawn. Perhaps they do. But for me, no more 
 early-dewy meadows, except to look at. 
 
 Those hours of dawn fishing were the hard- 
 est work I did during the week. A lazy week, 
 in truth, and an irresponsible one. Every one 
 who can should snatch such a week and see 
 what it does for him. In some ways it was 
 better than camping, because camping, unless 
 you have guides, is undoubtedly hard work, 
 especially if you keep moving — work that 
 one would never grudge, yet hard w^ork never- 
 theless. The omitting of the night camp cut 
 out practically all the work and made it more 
 
A DESULTORY PILGRIMAGE 37 
 
 comfortable for the horse, while our noon 
 camps made us independent all day, and gave 
 us that sense of being at home outdoors that 
 one never gets if one has to run to cover for 
 every meal. 
 
 And, curiously enough, the spots that seem 
 homelike to me, as I linger in memory among 
 the scenes of that week, are not the places 
 where we spent the nights, pleasant though 
 they were, but rather the spots where we 
 built our little fireplaces. Each was for an 
 hour our hearth-fire, — our own, — and I do 
 not forget them, — some beside the open road, 
 one on a ridge where the sun slants across as it 
 goes down among purpling hills; one in the 
 deep woods, by a little trout brook, where the 
 sound of running water never ceases; one in 
 an open grove by the river we love best, where 
 a tiny brook with brown pools full of the shad- 
 owy trout empties its cold waters into the 
 big, warm current. Perhaps no one else may 
 notice them, but they are there, waiting for 
 us, if haply we may pass that way again. And 
 if we do, we shall surely pause and give them 
 greeting. 
 
IV 
 
 The Yellow Valley 
 
 We were on our way to the Yellow Valley. 
 We had been pushing against the wind, 
 through the red March mud of a ploughed 
 field. Mud is a very good thing in its place, 
 and if its place is not a ploughed field in 
 March, I know of no better. But it does not 
 encourage lightness of foot. At an especially 
 big and burly gust of wind I stopped, turned 
 my back for respite, and dropped into the lee 
 of Jonathan. Wind is a good thing, too, in its 
 place, but one does not care to drown in it. 
 
 "Jonathan," I gasped, "this is n't spring; 
 it's winter of the most furious description. 
 Let's reform the calendar and put up signs 
 to warn the flowers. But I want my spring! 
 I want it now ! " 
 
 "Well," said Jonathan, "there it is. Look!" 
 And he pointed across the brush of the near 
 fence line, where a meadow stretched away, 
 brown with the stubble and matted tangle of 
 
THE YELLOW VALLEY 39 
 
 last year's grass. Halfway up the springy 
 slope, in a little fold of the hillside, was a shim- 
 mer of green — vivid, wonderful. 
 
 I forgot the wind. "Oh-h! Think of being 
 a cow now and eating that! Eating spring 
 itself!" 
 
 "If you were a cow," said Jonathan, with 
 the usual masculine command of applicable 
 information, "they would n't let you eat it." 
 
 "They would n't! Why not.^ Does it make 
 them sick.f^" 
 
 "No; crazy." 
 
 "Crazy!" 
 
 "Just that. Crazy for grass. They won't 
 touch hay any more, and there is n't enough 
 grass for them — and there you are!" 
 
 "Did you make that up as you went along, 
 Jonathan .f^" 
 
 "Ask any farmer." 
 
 But I think I will not ask a farmer. He 
 might say it was not true, and I like to think 
 it is. I am sorry the cows cannot have their 
 grass, but glad they have the good taste to 
 refuse hay. I should, if I were a cow. Not 
 being one, I do not need an actual patch of 
 green nibble to set me crazy. The smell of the 
 
40 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 earth after a thaw, a breath of soft air, a wave 
 of dehcious sweetness, in April, in March, in 
 February, — when it comes in January I 
 harden my heart and try not to notice, — 
 this is enough to spoil me for the dry fodder of 
 winter. Hay may be good and wholesome, 
 but I have had my taste of spring grass, and 
 it is enough. That or nothing. No more hay 
 for me ! 
 
 What that strange sweetness of the early 
 spring is I have never fully discovered. The 
 fragrance of flowers is in it, — hepaticas, 
 white violets, arbutus, — yet it is none of 
 these. It comes before any of the flowers are 
 even astir, when the arbutus buds are still 
 tight little green points, when the hepaticas 
 have scarcely pushed open their winter 
 sheaths, while their soft little gray-furred 
 heads are still tucked down snugly, like a 
 bird's head under its wing. Before even the 
 snowdrops at our feet and the maples over- 
 head have thought of blossoming, a soft 
 breath may blow across our path filled with 
 this wondrous fragrance. It is like a dream of 
 May. One might believe the fairies were pass- 
 ing by. 
 
THE YELLOW VALLEY 41 
 
 For years I was completely bafl3ed by it. 
 But one March, in the farm orchard, I found 
 out part of the secret. I was planting my 
 sweet peas, when the well-remembered and 
 bewildering fragrance blew across me. I 
 sprang up and ran up the wind, and there, in 
 the midst of the old orchard, I came upon an 
 old apple tree just cut down by the thrift of 
 Jonathan's farmer, who has no silly weakness 
 for old apple trees. The fresh-cut wood was 
 moist with sap, and as I bent over it — ah, 
 there it was! Here were my hepaticas, my 
 arbutus, here in the old apple tree! Such a 
 surprise ! I sat down beside it to think it over. 
 I was sorry it was cut down, but glad it had 
 told me its secret before it was made into 
 logs and piled in the woodshed. Blazing in 
 the fireplace it would tell me many things, 
 but it might perhaps not have told me 
 that. 
 
 And so I knew part of the secret. But only 
 part. For the same fragrance has blown to 
 me often where there were no orchards and 
 no newly felled apple trees, and I have never, 
 except this once, been able to trace it. If it is 
 the flowing sap in all trees, why are not the 
 
42 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 spring woods full of it? But they are not full 
 of it; it comes only now and then, with tan- 
 talizing capriciousness. Do sound trees ex- 
 hale it, certain kinds, when the sap starts, or 
 must they have been cut or bruised, if not by 
 the axe, perhaps by the winter winds and 
 the ice storms? I do not know. I only know 
 that when that breath of sweetness comes, 
 it is the very breath of spring itself; it is 
 the call of spring out of winter — spring 
 grass. 
 
 When the call of the spring grass comes, 
 there is always one spot that draws me with a 
 special insistence, and every year we have 
 much the same talk about it. 
 
 "Jonathan," I say, "let's go to the Yellow 
 Valley." 
 
 "Why," says Jonathan, "there will be 
 more new birds up on the ridge." 
 
 "I don't care about new birds. The old 
 ones do very well for me." 
 
 "And you might find the first hepaticas 
 under Indian Rock." 
 
 "I know. We'll go there next." 
 
 "And if we went farther up the river, we 
 might see some black duck." 
 
THE YELLOW VALLEY 43 
 
 **Very likely; but I don't feel as if I par- 
 ticularly had to see black duck to-day." 
 *'What do you have to see?" 
 "Nothing special. Just plain spring." 
 That is the charm of the Yellow Valley. 
 It offers no spectacular inducements, no bar- 
 gain-counter attractions in the shape of new 
 arrivals among the birds or flowers. One re- 
 turns from it with no trophies of any kind, 
 nothing to put down in one's notebook, if 
 one keeps a notebook, — from which industry 
 may I be forever preserved ! But it is a place 
 to go to and be quiet, which is good for us all, 
 especially in the springtime, when there is so 
 much going on in the world, and especially 
 lately, since "nature study" has driven peo- 
 ple into being so unceasingly busy when they 
 are outdoors. Opera-glasses and bird books 
 have their place, no doubt, in the advance of 
 mankind, but they often seem to me nothing 
 but more machinery coming in between us 
 and the real things. Perhaps it was once true 
 that when people went out to view "nature," 
 they did not see enough. Now, I fancy, they 
 see too much; they cannot see the spring for 
 the birds. Their motto is that of Rikki-Tikki, 
 
44 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 the mongoose, "Run and find out" — an 
 excellent motto for a mongoose, — but for 
 people on a spring ramble ! 
 
 The unquenchable ardor of the bird lover, 
 so called, fills me with dismay. One enthus- 
 iast, writing in a school journal, describes the 
 difficulties of following up the birds: *' Often 
 eyes all around one's head, with opera-glasses 
 focused at each pair, would not suffice to keep 
 the restless birds in view." If this is the ideal 
 of the bird lover, it is not mine. I wonder she 
 did not wish for extra pairs of legs to match 
 each set of eyes and opera-glasses, and a divis- 
 ible body, so that she might scamper off in 
 sections after all these marvels. For myself, 
 one pair of eyes gives me, I find, all the satis- 
 faction and delight I know what to do with, 
 and I cannot help feeling that, if I had more, I 
 should have less. The same writer speaks of 
 the ** maddening" warbler notes. Why mad- 
 dening? Because, forsooth, there are thirty 
 warblers, and one cannot learn all their 
 names. What a pity to be maddened by a little 
 warbler! And about a matter of names, too. 
 After all, the bird, the song, is the thing. And 
 it seems a pity to carry the chasing of bird 
 
THE YELLOW VALLEY 45 
 
 notes quite so far. They are meant, I feel 
 sure, to be hearkened to in quietness of spirit, 
 to be tasted delicately, as one would a wine. 
 The life of the opera-glassed bird hunter, com- 
 pared to mine, seems to me like the experi- 
 ence of a tea-taster compared to that of one 
 who sits in cozy and irresponsible enjoyment 
 of the cup her friend hands her. 
 
 And so there always comes a time in the 
 spring when I must go to my Yellow Valley. 
 A car ride, a walk on through plain little sub- 
 urbs, a scramble across fields to a seldom-used 
 railway track, a swing out along the ties, then 
 off across more fields, over a little ridge, and 
 — there! Oh, the soft glory of color! We are 
 at the west end of a miniature valley, full of 
 afternoon sunlight slanting across a level blur 
 of yellows and browns. On one side low brown 
 hills enfold it, on the other runs a swift little 
 river, whose steep farther bank is overhung 
 with hemlocks and laurel in brightening spring 
 green. It is a very tiny valley, — one could 
 almost throw a stone across it, — and the 
 whole bottom is filled with waving grass, 
 waist-high, of a wonderful pale straw color; 
 last year's grass, which the winter snows 
 
46 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 never seem to mat down, thick-set with the 
 tall brown stalks of last year's goldenrod and 
 mullein and primrose. The trees and bushes 
 are dwarf oaks, with their old leafage still 
 clinging in tawny masses, and willows, with 
 their bunches of slim, yellow shoots. Even the 
 little river is yellow-brown, from the sand and 
 pebbles and leaves of its bed, and the sun, as 
 it slants down the length of the valley, wraps 
 it in a warm, yellow haze. 
 
 I call the valley mine, for no one else seems 
 to know it. The long grass is never cut, but 
 left to wave its glory of yellow all through the 
 fall and winter and spring. There is a little 
 footpath running through it, but I never see 
 any one on it. I often wonder who makes 
 all the footpaths I know, where no one ever 
 seems to pass. Is it rabbits, or ghosts.^ Who- 
 ever they may be, in this case they do not 
 trouble me, and the valley is as much mine as 
 though I had cut it out of a mediaeval romance. 
 
 It is always very quiet here. At least it 
 seems so, though full of sound, as the world 
 always is. But its sounds are its own; perhaps 
 that is the secret; the rustle of the oak leaves 
 as the wind fumbles among them; the swish- 
 
THE YELLOW VALLEY 47 
 
 swish of the long dry grasses, which can be 
 heard only if one sits down in their midst, 
 very still; the light, purling sounds of the 
 river; the soft gush of water about some bend- 
 ing branch as its tip catches and drags in the 
 shifting current. The winds lose a little of 
 their fierceness as they drop into the valley, 
 and they seem to have left behind them all 
 the sounds of the outer world which they usu- 
 ally bear. If now and then they waft hither- 
 ward the long call of a locomotive, they soften 
 it till it is only a dreamy reminder. 
 
 It is strange that in a spot so specially full 
 of the tokens of last year's life, — the dry 
 grasses, the old oak leaves not yet pushed off 
 by the new buds, — where the only green is 
 of the hemlocks and laurels that have weath- 
 ered the winter, — it is strange that in such 
 a spot one should feel the immanence of 
 spring. Perhaps it is the bluebird that does it. 
 For it is the bluebird's valley as well as mine. 
 There are other birds there, but not many, 
 and it is the bluebird which best voices the 
 spirit of the place. Most birds in the spring 
 imply an audience. The song sparrow, with 
 the lift and the lilt of his song, sings to the 
 
48 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 universe; the red-wing calls to all the sunny 
 world to be gleeful with him; the long-drawn 
 sweetness of the meadowlark floats over 
 broad meadows and wide horizons ; the bobo- 
 link, in the tumbling eagerness of his jubila- 
 tion, is for every one to hear. But the blue- 
 bird sings to himself. His gentle notes, not 
 heard but overheard, are for those who listen 
 softly. And in the Yellow Valley he is at 
 home. 
 
 I am at home, too, and I find there some- 
 thing that I find nowhere else so well. Its 
 charm is in the simpleness of its appeal : — 
 
 *'0nly the mightier movement sounds and passes. 
 Only winds and rivers — " 
 
 I bring back from it a memory of sunshine 
 and grass, bird notes and running water, the 
 broad realities of nature. Nay, more than a 
 memory — a mood that holds — a certain 
 poise of spirit that comes from a sense of the 
 largeness and sweetness and suflSciency of the 
 whole live, growing world. Spring grass — 
 the rare fragrance of the spring air — is the 
 call. The Yellow Valley holds the answer. 
 
V 
 
 Larkspurs and Hollyhocks 
 
 "Jonathan, let's not have a garden." 
 
 "What 'II we live on if we don't?" 
 
 " Oh, of course, I don't mean that kind of a 
 garden, — peas and potatoes and things, — 
 I mean flowers. Let's not have a flower 
 garden." 
 
 "That seems easy enough to manage," he 
 ruminated; "the hard thing would be to have 
 one." 
 
 "I know. And what's the use.? There are 
 always flowers enough, all around us, from 
 May till October. Let's just enjoy them." 
 
 "I always have." 
 
 I looked at him to detect a possible sarcasm 
 in the words, but his face was innocent. 
 
 "Well, of course, so have I. But what I 
 mean is — people when they have a country 
 place seem to spend such a lot of energy doing 
 things for themselves that nature is doing for 
 them just over the fence. There was Christa- 
 
50 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 bel Vincent last summer, grubbing over yel- 
 low lilies, or something, and I went over into 
 the meadow and got a lovely armful of lilies 
 and brought them in, and no grubbing at all." 
 
 "Perhaps grubbing was what she was 
 after," said Jonathan. 
 
 "Well, anyway, she talked as if it was 
 lilies." 
 
 "I don't know that that matters," he said. 
 
 Jonathan is sometimes so acute about my 
 friends that it is almost annoying. 
 
 This conversation was one of many that 
 occurred the winter before we took up the 
 farm. We went up in April that year, and we 
 planted our corn and our potatoes and all the 
 rest, but no flowers. That part we left to 
 nature, and she responded most generously. 
 From earliest spring until October — nay, 
 November — we were never without flowers : 
 brave little white saxifrage and hepaticas, 
 first of all, then bloodroot and arbutus, ad- 
 der's-tongue and columbine, shad-blow and 
 dogwood, and all the beloved throng of 
 them, at our feet and overhead. In May the 
 pink azalea and the buttercups, in June the 
 
LARKSPURS AND HOLLYHOCKS 51 
 
 laurel and the daisies and — almost best of 
 all — the dear clover. In summer the deep 
 woods gave us orchids, and the open mead- 
 ows lilies and black-eyed Susans. In Sep- 
 tember the river-banks and the brooks 
 glowed for us with cardinal-flower and the 
 blue lobelia, and then, until the frosts settled 
 into winter, there were the fringed gentians 
 and the asters and the goldenrod. And still 
 the half has not been told. If I tried to 
 name all that gay company, my tale would be 
 longer than Homer's catalogue of the ships. 
 
 In early July a friend brought me in a big 
 bunch of sweet peas. I buried my face in their 
 sweetness; then, as I held them off, I sighed. 
 
 "Oh, dear!" I said. 
 
 "What's *oh, dear ^ V said Jonathan, as he 
 took off his ankle-clips. He had just come up 
 from the station on his bicycle. 
 
 "Nothing. Only why do people have ma- 
 genta sweet peas with red ones and pink ones 
 — that special pink.^ It's just the color of 
 pink tooth-powder." 
 
 "You might throw away the ones you don't 
 like." 
 
 " No, I can't do that. But why does any- 
 
52 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 body grow them? If I had sweet peas, I'd 
 have white ones, and pale lavender ones, and 
 those lovely salmon-pink ones, and maybe 
 some pale yellow ones — " 
 
 "Sweet peas have to be planted in March," 
 said Jonathan, as he trundled his wheel ofiE 
 toward the barn. 
 
 "Of course," I called after him. "I'm not 
 going to plant any. I was only saying ^f." 
 
 Perhaps the sweet peas began it, but I 
 really think the whole thing began with the 
 phlox. 
 
 One afternoon in August I walked down the 
 road through the woods to meet Jonathan. 
 As he came up to me and dismounted I held 
 out to him a spray of white phlox. 
 
 "Where do you suppose I found it.^" I 
 asked. 
 
 "Down by the old Talcott place," he 
 hazarded. 
 
 "No. There is some there, but this was 
 growing under our crab-apple trees, right 
 beside the house." 
 
 "Well, now, it must have been some of 
 Aunt Deborah's. I remember hearing Uncle 
 Ben say she used to have her garden there; 
 
LARKSPURS AND HOLLYHOCKS 53 
 
 that must have been before he started the 
 crab orchard. Why, that phlox can't be less 
 than forty years old, anyway." 
 
 *'Dear me ! " I took back the delicate spray; 
 "it does n't look it." 
 
 "No. Don't you wish you could look like 
 that when you're forty?" he philosophized; 
 and added, "Is there much of it.'^" 
 
 "Five or six roots, but there won't be many 
 blossoms, it's so shady." 
 
 "We might move it and give it a chance." 
 
 "Let's! We'll dig it up this fall, and put it 
 over on the south side of the house, in that 
 sunny open place." 
 
 When October came, we took Aunt Deb- 
 orah's phlox and transplanted it to where it 
 could get the sunshine it had been starving 
 for all those years. I sat on a stump and 
 watched Jonathan digging the holes. 
 
 "You don't suppose Henry will cut them 
 down for weeds when they come up, do you.^^ " 
 I said. 
 
 "Seems probable," said Jonathan. "You 
 might stick in a few bulbs that'll come up 
 early and mark the spot." 
 
 "Oh, yes. And we could put a line of sweet 
 
54 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 alyssum along each side, to last along after 
 the bulbs are over." 
 
 "You can do that in the spring if you want 
 to. I'll bring up some bulbs to-morrow." 
 
 The winter passed and the spring came — 
 sweet, tormenting. 
 
 "Jonathan," I said at luncheon one day, 
 "I got the sweet alyssum seed this morn- 
 ing." 
 
 "Sweet alyssum .f^" He looked blank. 
 "What do you want sweet alyssum for? It's 
 a foolish flower. I thought you were n't 
 going to have a garden, anyway." 
 
 "I'm not; but don't you remember about 
 the phlox .f^ We said we'd put in some sweet 
 alyssum to mark it — so it would n't get cut 
 down." 
 
 "The bulbs will do that, and when they're 
 gone it will be high enough to show." 
 
 "Well, I have the seed, and I might as well 
 use it. It won't do any harm." 
 
 "No. I don't believe sweet alyssum ever 
 hurt anybody," said Jonathan. 
 
 That evening when he came in I met him 
 in the hall. I had the florist's catalogue in 
 
LARKSPURS AND HOLLYHOCKS 55 
 
 my hand. ''Jonathan, it says Enghsh daisies 
 are good for borders." 
 
 "Borders ! What do you want of borders ? " 
 
 "Why, up on the farm — the phlox, you 
 know." 
 
 "Oh, the phlox. I thought you had sweet 
 alyssum for a border." 
 
 He took off his coat and I drew him into 
 the study. 
 
 "Why, yes, but that was such a little pack- 
 age. I don't believe there would be enough. 
 And I thought I could try the English daisies, 
 too, and if one did n't do well perhaps the 
 other would. And look what it says — No, 
 never mind the newspaper yet — there is n't 
 any news — just look at this about pansies." 
 
 "Pansies! You don't want them for a 
 border!" 
 
 "Why, no, not exactly. But, you see, the 
 phlox won't blossom till late August, and it 
 says that if you plant this kind of pansies very 
 early, they blossom in June, and then if you 
 cover them they live over and blossom again 
 the next May. And pansies are so lovely! 
 Look at that picture! Don't you love those 
 French-blue ones?" 
 
56 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "I like pansies. I don't know about the 
 nationalities," said Jonathan. ''Of course, if 
 you want to bother with them, go ahead." 
 He picked up his paper. 
 
 "Oh, it won't be any bother. They take 
 care of themselves. Please, your pencil — 
 I'm going to mark the colors I want." 
 
 We went up soon after to look at the farm. 
 We found it very much as we had left it, 
 except that there hung about it that indescrib- 
 able something we call spring. We tramped 
 about on the spongy ground, and sniffed the 
 sweet air, and looked at the apple buds, and 
 kicked up the soft, matted maple leaves to see 
 the grass starting underneath. 
 
 "Oh, Jonathan! Our bulbs!" I exclaimed. 
 We hurried over to them and lifted up 
 the thick blanket of leaves and hay we 
 had left over them. "Look! A crocus!" I 
 said. 
 
 "And here's a snowdrop! Let's take off 
 these leaves and give them a chance." 
 
 "Dear me!" I sighed; "is n't it wonderful? 
 To think those hard little bullets we put in 
 last fall should do all this! And here's the 
 phlox just starting — look — " 
 
LARKSPURS AND HOLLYHOCKS 57 
 
 "Oh, you can't kill phlox," said Jonathan 
 imperturbably. 
 
 "All the better. I hate not giving people 
 credit for things just because they come 
 natural." 
 
 "That is a curious sentence," said Jonathan. 
 
 "Never mind. You know what I mean. 
 You've understood a great many more curi- 
 ous ones than that. Listen, Jonathan. Why 
 could n't I put in my seeds now.'^ I brought 
 them along." 
 
 "Why — yes — it's pretty early for any- 
 thing but peas, but you can try, of course. 
 What are they.? Sweet alyssum and pansy.?" 
 
 "Yes — and I did get a few sweet peas 
 too," I hesitated. "I thought Henry had n't 
 much to do yet, and perhaps he could make a 
 trench — you know it needs a trench." 
 
 "Yes, I know," said Jonathan. I think he 
 smiled. "Let's see your seeds." 
 
 "They're at the house. Come over to the 
 south porch, where it 's warm, and we '11 plan 
 about them." 
 
 I opened the bundle and laid out the little 
 packets with their gay pictures indicating 
 what the seeds within might be expected to 
 
58 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 do. "'Sweet alyssum and pansies," I said, 
 "and here are the sweet peas." 
 
 Jonathan took them — "* Dorothy Eck- 
 ford, Lady Grisel Hamilton, Gladys Unwin, 
 Early Dawn, White Spencer.' By George! 
 you mean to keep Henry busy! Here's ten 
 ounces of peas!" 
 
 "They were so much cheaper by the ounce," 
 I murmured. 
 
 "And — hold up! Did you know they 
 gave you some asters.^ These are n't sweet 
 peas." 
 
 "No — I know — but I thought — you see, 
 sweet peas are over by August, and asters 
 go on all through October — don't you re- 
 member what lovely ones Christabel had.?" 
 
 "Hm! But is n't the world full of asters, 
 anyway, in September and October, without 
 your planting any more.?" He grinned a 
 little. "I thought that was your idea — you 
 said Christabel grubbed so." 
 
 "Why, yes; but asters are n't any trouble. 
 You just put them in — " 
 
 "And weed them." 
 
 "Yes — and weed them; but I wouldn't 
 mind that." 
 
LARKSPURS AND HOLLYHOCKS 59 
 
 "But here's some larkspur!" 
 
 "Yes, but I did n't buy that," I explained, 
 hurriedly. "Christabel sent me that. She 
 thought I might like some from her garden — 
 she has such lovely larkspurs, don't you re- 
 member? And I just brought them along." 
 
 "Yes. So I see. Is that all you've just 
 brought along.?" 
 
 "Yes — except the cosmos. The florist 
 advised that, and I thought there might be a 
 place for it over by the fence. And of course 
 we need n't use it if we don't want to. I can 
 give it to Mrs. Stone." 
 
 "But here's some nasturtiums!" 
 
 "Oh — I forgot about them — but I 
 did n't buy them either. They came from 
 the Department of Agriculture or something. 
 There were some carrots and parsnips, and 
 things like that, too, all in a big brown en- 
 velope. I knew you had all the other things 
 you wanted, so I just brought these. But of 
 course I don't have to plant them, either." 
 
 "But you don't like nasturtiums. You've 
 always said they made you think of railway 
 stations and soldiers' homes — " 
 
 "Well, I did use to feel that way, — an- 
 
60 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 chors and crosses and rock-work on big 
 shaved lawns, — and, besides, nasturtiums 
 always seemed to be the sort of flowers that 
 people picked with short stems, and tied up 
 in a wad, and stuck in a blue-glass goblet, 
 and set on a table with a red cover on it. I 
 did have horrible associations with nastur- 
 tiums." 
 
 "Then why in thunder do you plant 
 them?" 
 
 **I only thought — if there was a drought 
 this summer — you know they don't mind 
 drought; Millie Sutphen told me that. And 
 she had a way of cutting them with long 
 stems, so they trailed, and they were really 
 lovely. And then — there the package was — 
 I thought it would n't do any harm to take 
 it." 
 
 "Oh, you don't have to apologize," said 
 Jonathan. "I did n't understand your plan, 
 that was all. I '11 go and see Henry about the 
 trench." 
 
 I sat on the sunny porch and the March 
 wind swept by the house on each side of me. 
 I gloated over my seed packets. Would they 
 come up.f^ Of course other people's seeds came 
 
LARKSPURS AND HOLLYHOCKS 61 
 
 up, but would mine? It was very exciting. I 
 pinched open a corner of the Lady Grisel 
 Hamiltons and poured some of the pretty, 
 smooth, fawn-colored balls into my hand. 
 Then I opened the cosmos — what funny 
 long thin ones! How long should I have to 
 wait till they began to come up.'^ I read the 
 directions — "Plant when all danger from 
 frost is past." Oh, dear! that meant May — 
 another whole month! Well, I would get in 
 my sweet peas and risk my pansies and alys- 
 sum, anyhow. And I jumped off the porch 
 and went back to the phlox to plan out my 
 campaign. 
 
 By early May we were settled on the farm 
 once more. My pansies and alyssum were 
 up — at least I believed they were up, but I 
 spent many minutes of each day kneeling by 
 them and studying the physiognomy of their 
 cotyledons. I led Jonathan out to them one 
 Sunday morning, and he regarded them with 
 indulgence if not with enthusiasm. As he 
 stooped to throw out a bunch of pebbles in 
 one of the new beds I stopped him. "Oh, 
 don't! Those are my Mizpah stones." 
 
62 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "Your what!" 
 
 "Why, just some httle stones to mark a 
 place. Some of the nasturtiums are there. I 
 did n't know whether they were going to do 
 anything — they looked so like chips — and 
 then, being sent free that way — but they 
 are." 
 
 "How do you know.'^ They are n't up." 
 
 "No, but they will be soon. I — why, I 
 just thought I'd see what they were doing." 
 
 "So you dug them up?" he probed. 
 
 "Not them — just it — just one. That's 
 why I marked the place. I did n't want to 
 keep disturbing different ones. Now what are 
 you laughing at.? Would n't you have wanted 
 to know.? And you would n't want to dig up 
 different ones all the time ! I don't know much 
 about gardening, but — " 
 
 "I'm not laughing," said Jonathan. "Of 
 course I should have wanted to know. And 
 it is certainly better not to dig up different 
 ones. There! Have I put your Mizpah back 
 right.?" 
 
 A few days later Jonathan wheeled into 
 the yard and over near where I was kneeling 
 
LARKSPURS AND HOLLYHOCKS 63 
 
 by the phlox. "I saw a lady-slipper bud al- 
 most out to-day," he said. 
 
 "Did you.^ Look at my sweet alyssum. 
 It's grown an inch since yesterday," I said. 
 *' Don't you think I could plant my cosmos 
 and asters now.^" 
 
 "Thunder!" said Jonathan; "don't you 
 care more about the pink lady-slipper than 
 about your blooming little sweet alyssum .^^ " 
 
 "Why, yes, of course. I love lady-slippers. 
 You know I do," I protested; "only — you 
 see — I can't explain exactly — but — it 
 seems to make a difference when you plant a 
 thing yourself. And, oh, Jonathan! Won't 
 you please come here and tell me if these are 
 young pansies or only plantain.^ I'm so 
 afraid of pulling up the wrong thing. I do 
 wish somebody would make a book with pict- 
 ures of all the cotyledons of all the different 
 plants. It 's so confusing. Millie had an awful 
 time telling marigold from ragweed last sum- 
 mer. She had to break off a tip of each leaf 
 and taste it. Why do you just stand there 
 looking like that.? Please come and help." 
 
 But Jonathan did not move. He stood, 
 leaning on his wheel, regarding me with open 
 
64 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 amusement, and possibly a shade of disap- 
 proval. 
 
 "Lord!" he finally remarked; *'you've got 
 it!" 
 
 ''Got what?" I said, though I knew. 
 
 ''The garden germ." 
 
 Yes. There was no denying it. I had it. I 
 have it still, and there is very little chance of 
 my shaking it off. It is a disease that grows 
 with what it feeds on. Now and then, indeed, 
 I make a feeble fight against its inroads: I 
 will not have another flower-bed, I will not 
 have any more annuals, I will have only 
 things that live on from year to year and take 
 care of themselves. But — 
 
 "Alas, alas, repentance oft before 
 I swore — but was I sober when I swore? 
 And then — and then — came spring — " 
 
 and the florist's catalogues! And is any one 
 who has once given way to them proof against 
 the seductions of those catalogues.^ Those 
 asters! Those larkspurs! Those foxgloves 
 and poppies and Canterbury bells! All that 
 ravishing company, mine at the price of a few 
 cents and a little grubbing. Mine ! There is 
 
LARKSPURS AND HOLLYHOCKS 65 
 
 the secret of it. Out in the great and wonder- 
 ful world beyond my garden, nature works 
 her miracles constantly. She lays her riches 
 at my feet; they are mine for the gathering. 
 But to work these miracles myself, — to have 
 my own little hoard that looks to me for tend- 
 ing, for very life, — that is a joy by itself. 
 My little garden bed gives me something that 
 all the luxuriance of woods and fields can 
 never give — not better, not so good, perhaps, 
 but different. Once having known the thrill 
 of watching the first tiny shoot from a seed 
 that I have planted myself, once having fol- 
 lowed it to leaf and flower and seed again, I 
 can never give it up. 
 
 My garden is not very big nor very beauti- 
 ful. Perhaps the stretch of rocks and grass 
 and weeds beside the house — an expanse 
 which not even the wildest flight of the imagin- 
 ation could call a lawn — perhaps this might 
 be more pleasing if the garden were not there, 
 but it is there, and there it will stay. It 
 means much grubbing. Just putting in seeds 
 and then weeding is, I find, no mere affair of 
 rhetoric. Moreover, I am introduced through 
 my garden to an entirely new set of troubles: 
 
66 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 beetles and cutworms and moles and hens 
 and a host of marauding creatures above 
 ground and below, whose number and energy 
 amaze me. And each summer seems to add 
 to their variety and resourcefulness. Clearly, 
 the pleasures of a garden are not commensur- 
 ate with its pains. And yet — 
 
 But there is one kind of joy which it gives 
 me at which even the Scoffer — to wit, Jona- 
 than — does not scoff. It began with Aunt 
 Deborah's phlox. Then came Christabel's 
 larkspur. The next summer Mrs. Stone sent 
 me over some of her hardy little fall asters — 
 "artemishy," she called them. And Anne 
 Stafford sent on some hollyhock seeds culled 
 from Emerson's garden. And Great-Aunt 
 Sarah was dividing her peony roots, and said 
 I might take one. And Cousin Patty asked 
 me if I would n't like some of her mother's 
 old-fashioned pinks. And so it goes. 
 
 And so it will go, I hope, to the end of the 
 long day. Each year my garden has in it 
 more of my friends, and as I look at it I 
 can adopt poor Ophelia's pretty speech in a 
 new meaning, and say, "Larkspur — that's 
 for remembrance; hollyhocks — that's for 
 
LARKSPURS AND HOLLYHOCKS 67 
 
 thoughts." Remembrance of all those dear 
 other gardens which I have come to know, 
 and in whose beauties I am coming to have a 
 share; thoughts of all those dear other gar- 
 deners upon whom, as upon me, the miracle 
 of the seed has laid a spell from which they 
 can never escape. 
 
VI 
 
 The Farm Sunday 
 
 I HAVE never been able to discover why it is 
 that things always happen Sunday morning. 
 We mean to get to church. We speak of it 
 almost every Sunday, unless there is a steady 
 downpour that puts it quite out of the ques- 
 tion. But, somehow, between nine and ten 
 o'clock on a Sunday morning seems to be the 
 farm's busiest time. If there are new broods 
 of chickens, they appear then; if there is a 
 young calf coming, it is his birthday; if the 
 gray cat — an uninvited resident of the barn 
 — must go forth on marauding expeditions, 
 he chooses this day for his evil work, and the 
 air is rent with shrieks of robins, or of cat- 
 birds, or of phoebes, and there is a \sTecked 
 nest, and scattered young ones, half-fledged, 
 that have to be gathered into a basket and 
 hung up in the tree again by our united ef- 
 forts. And always there is the same conversa- 
 tion : 
 
THE FARM SUNDAY 69 
 
 "Well, what about church?" 
 
 "Church! It's half-past ten now." 
 
 "We can't do it. Too bad!" 
 
 "Now, if it had n't been for that cat!" — 
 or that hen — or that calf! 
 
 There are many Sunday morning stories 
 that might be told, but one must be told. 
 
 It was a hot, still Sunday in July. The 
 hens sought the shade early, and stood about 
 with their beaks half open and a distant look 
 in their eyes, as if they saw you but chose to 
 look just beyond you. It always irritates me 
 to see the hens do that. It makes me feel 
 hotter. Such a day it was. But things on 
 the farm seemed propitious, and we said at 
 breakfast that we would go. 
 
 "I've just got to take that two-year-old 
 Devon down to the lower pasture," said 
 Jonathan, "and then I'll harness. We ought 
 to start early, because it 's too hot to drive Kit 
 fast." 
 
 "Do you think you'd better take the cow 
 down this morning.?" I said, doubtfully. 
 "Could n't you wait until we come back.?" 
 
 "No; that upper pasture is getting burned 
 out, and she ought to get into some good 
 
70 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 grass this morning. I meant to take her down 
 last night." 
 
 "Well, do hurry." I still felt dubious. 
 
 "Oh, it's only five minutes' walk down the 
 road," said Jonathan easily. "I'm all ready 
 for church, except for these shoes. I'll have 
 the carriage at the door before you 're 
 dressed." 
 
 I said no more, but went upstairs, while 
 Jonathan started for the barnyard. A few 
 minutes later I heard from that direction 
 the sounds of exhortation such as are usually 
 employed towards "critters." They seemed 
 to be coming nearer. I glanced out of a 
 front window, and saw Jonathan and his cow 
 coming up the road past the house. 
 
 "Where are you taking her.^" I called. "I 
 thought you meant to go the other way." 
 
 "So I did," he shouted, in some irritation. 
 "But she swung up to the right as she wxnt 
 out of the gate, and I could n't head her oflF 
 in time. Oh, there's Bill Russell. Head her 
 round, will you. Bill.? There, now we're all 
 right." 
 
 "I'll be back in ten minutes," he called up 
 at my window as he repassed. 
 
THE FARM SUNDAY 71 
 
 I watched them go back up the road. At 
 the big farm gate the cow made a break for the 
 barnyard again, but the two men managed to 
 turn her. Just beyond, at the fork in the road, 
 I saw Bill turn down towards the cider-mill, 
 while Jonathan kept on with his convoy over 
 the hill. I glanced at the clock. It was not 
 yet nine. There was plenty of time, of course. 
 
 At half-past nine I went downstairs again, 
 and wandered out toward the big gate. It 
 seemed to me time for Jonathan to be back. 
 In the Sunday hush I thought I heard sounds 
 of distant **hi-ing." They grew louder; yes, 
 surely, there was the cow, just appearing over 
 the hill and trotting briskly along the road 
 towards home. And there was Jonathan, also 
 trotting briskly. He looked red and warm. 
 I stepped out into the road to keep the cow 
 from going past, but there was no need. She 
 swung cheerfully in at the big gate, and fell to 
 cropping the long grass just inside the fence. 
 
 Jonathan slowed down beside me, and, 
 pulling out his handkerchief, began flapping 
 the dust off his trousers while he explained : — 
 
 "You see, I got her down there all right, 
 but I had to let down the bars, and while I 
 
K 
 
 72 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 was doing that she went along the road a bit, 
 and when she saw me coming she just kicked 
 up her heels and galloped." 
 
 ** How did you stop her?" I asked. 
 
 "I didn't. The Maxwells were coming 
 along with their team, and they headed her 
 back for me. Then they went on. Only by 
 that time, you see, she was a bit excited, and 
 when we came along back to those bars she 
 shot right past them, and never stopped till 
 she got here." 
 
 I looked at her grazing quietly inside the 
 fence. "She does n't look as though she had 
 done so much," — and then, as I glanced at 
 Jonathan, I could not forbear saying, — "but 
 you do." 
 
 "I suppose I do." He gave his trousers a 
 last flick, and, putting up his handkerchief, 
 shifted his stick to his right hand. 
 
 "Well, put her back in the inner yard," I 
 said, "and this afternoon I'll help you." 
 
 "Put her back!" said Jonathan. "Not 
 much ! You don't think I 'd let a cow beat me 
 that way!" 
 
 "But Jonathan, it's half-past nine!" 
 
 "What of it? I'll just work her slowly — 
 
THE FARM SUNDAY 73 
 
 she's quiet now, you see, and the bars are 
 open. There won't be any trouble." 
 
 "Oh, I wish you wouldn't," I said. But, 
 seeing he was firm, "Well, if you will go, I'll 
 harness." 
 
 Jonathan looked at me ruefully. "That's 
 too bad — you're all dressed." He wavered, 
 but I would take no concessions based on 
 feminine equipment. "Oh, that does n't mat- 
 ter. I'll get my big apron. First you start 
 her out, and I '11 keep her from going towards 
 the house or down to the mill." 
 
 Jonathan sidled cautiously through the gate 
 and around the grazing cow. Then, with a 
 gentle and ingratiating "Hi there, Bossie!" 
 he managed to turn her, still grazing, towards 
 the road. While the grass held out she drifted 
 along easily enough, but when she reached the 
 dirt of the roadway she raised her head, flicked 
 her tail, and gave a little hop with her hind 
 quarters that seemed to me indicative of an 
 unquiet spirit. But I stood firm and Jonathan 
 was gently urgent, and we managed to start 
 her on the right road once more. She was not, 
 however, going as slowly as Jonathan had 
 planned, and it was with some misgivings that 
 
74 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 I donned my apron and went in to harness 
 Kit. I led her around to the carriage-house 
 and put her into the buggy, and still he had 
 not returned. I got out the lap robe, shook it, 
 and folded it neatly on the back of the seat. 
 No Jonathan! There was nothing more for 
 me to do, so I took off my apron and climbed 
 into the carriage to wait. The carriage-house 
 was as cool a place as one could have found. 
 Both its big sliding doors were pushed back, 
 one opening out toward the front gate, the 
 other, opposite, opening into the inner barn- 
 yard. I sat and looked out over the rolling, 
 sunny country and felt the breeze, warm, but 
 fresh and sweet, and listened to the barn 
 swallows in the barnyard behind me, and 
 wondered, as I have wondered a thousand 
 times, why in New England the outbuildings 
 always have so much better views than the 
 house. 
 
 Ten o'clock! Where was Jonathan? The 
 Morehouses drove past, then the Elkinses; 
 they went to the Baptist. Ten minutes past! 
 There went the O'Neils — they belonged to 
 our church — and the Scrantons, and Billy 
 Howard and his sister, driving fast as usual; 
 
THE FARM SUNDAY 75 
 
 they were always late. Quarter-past ten! 
 Well, we might as well give up church. I 
 thought of unharnessing, but I was very com- 
 fortable where I was, and Kit seemed con- 
 tented as she stood looking out of the door. 
 Hark! What was that.^^ It sounded like the 
 beat of hoofs in the lane — the cattle would 
 n't come up at this hour! I stood up to see 
 past the inner barnyard and off down the 
 lane. "What on earth!" I said to myself. 
 For — yes — surely — that was the two- 
 year-old Devon coming leisurely up the lane 
 towards the yard. In a few moments Jona- 
 than's head appeared, then his shoulders, then 
 his entire dusty, discouraged self. Yes, some- 
 how or other, they must have made the round 
 trip. As this dawned upon me, I smiled, then 
 I laughed, then I sat down and laughed again 
 till I was weak and tearful. It was cruel, and 
 by the time Jonathan had reached the car- 
 riage-house and sunk down on its threshold I 
 had recovered enough to be sorry for him. 
 But I was unfortunate in my first remark. 
 "Why, Jonathan," I gasped, "what have you 
 been doing with that cow.^^" 
 
 Jonathan mopped his forehead. "Having 
 
76 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 iced tea under the trees. Could n't you see that 
 to look at me?" he replied, almost savagely. 
 
 '' You poor thing ! I '11 make you some when 
 we go in. But do tell me, how did you ever get 
 around here again from the back of the farm 
 that way .^" 
 
 ''Easy enough," said Jonathan. "I drove 
 her along to the pasture in great shape, only 
 we were going a little fast. She tried to dodge 
 the bars, but I turned her in through them all 
 right. But some idiot had left the bars down 
 at the other end of the pasture — between 
 that and the back lots, you know — and that 
 blamed cow went for that opening, just as 
 straight — " 
 
 I began to shake again. "Oh, that brought 
 you out by the huckleberry knoll, and the 
 ledges! Why, she could go anywhere!" 
 
 ''She could, and she did," said Jonathan 
 grimly. He leaned back against the doorpost, 
 immersed in bitter reminiscence. "She — 
 certainly — did. I chased her up the ledges 
 and through the sumachs and down through 
 the birches and across the swamp. Oh, we 
 did the farm, the whole blamed farm. What 
 time is it.^^" 
 
THE FARM SUNDAY 77 
 
 "Half-past ten," I said gently; and added, 
 "What are you going to do with her now?" 
 
 His jaw set in a fashion I knew. 
 
 "I'm going to put her in that lower past- 
 ure." 
 
 I saw it was useless to protest. Church was 
 a vanished dream, but I began to fear that 
 Sunday dinner was also doomed. "Do you 
 want me to help.^^" I asked. 
 
 "Oh, no," said Jonathan. "I'll put her in 
 the barn till I can get a rope, and then I'll 
 lead her." 
 
 However, I did help get her into the barn. 
 Then while he went for his rope I unhar- 
 nessed. When he came back, he had changed 
 into a flannel shirt and working trousers. He 
 entered the barn and in a few moments 
 emerged, pulling hard on the rope. Nothing 
 happened. 
 
 "Go around the other way," he called, 
 " and take a stick, and poke that cow till she 
 starts." 
 
 I went in at the back door, slid between the 
 stanchions into the cow stall, and gingerly 
 poked at the animal's hind quarters and said, 
 "Hi!" until at last, with a hunching of hips 
 
78 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 and tossing of head, she bounded out into the 
 sunny barnyard. 
 
 "She'll be all right now," said Jonathan. 
 
 I watched them doubtfully, but they got 
 through the bars and as far as the road with- 
 out incident. At the road she suddenly 
 balked. She twisted her horns and set her 
 front legs. I hurried down from my post of 
 observation in the carriage-house door, and 
 said "Hi!" again. 
 
 "That's no good," panted Jonathan; "get 
 your stick again. Now, when I pull, you hit 
 her behind, and she'll come. I guess she 
 has n't been taught to lead yet." 
 
 "If she has, she has apparently forgotten," 
 I replied. "Now, then, you pull!" 
 
 The creature moved on grudgingly, with 
 curious and unlovely sidewise lunges and 
 much brandishing of horns, where the rope 
 was tied. 
 
 " Hit her again, now ! " said Jonathan. "Oh, 
 hit her ! Hit her harder ! She does n't feel 
 that, ffi^her! There! Now, she's coming." 
 
 Truly, she did come. But I am ashamed to 
 think how I used that stick. As we progressed 
 up the road, over the hill, and down to the 
 
THE FARM SUNDAY 79 
 
 lower pasture, there kept repeating themselves 
 over and over in my head the hnes : — 
 
 *' The sergeant pushed and the corporal pulled. 
 And the three they wagged along." 
 
 But I did not quote these to Jonathan until 
 afterwards. There was something else, too, 
 that I did not quote until afterwards. This 
 was the remark of a sailor uncle of mine: "A 
 man never tackled a job yet that he did n't 
 have to have a woman to hold on to the 
 slack." 
 
 So much for Sunday business. But it 
 should not for a moment be supposed that 
 Sunday is full of these incidents. It is only 
 for a little while in the morning. After the 
 church hour, about eleven o'clock or earlier, 
 the farm settles down. The "critters" are 
 all attended to, the chicks are stowed, the 
 cat has disappeared, the hens have finished 
 all their important business and are lying 
 on their sides in their favorite dirt-holes en- 
 joying their dust-baths, so still, yet so dis- 
 heveled that I used to think they were dead, 
 and poke them to see — with what cacklings 
 and flutterings resulting may be imagined. 
 
80 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 I have often wished for the hen's ability to 
 express indignation. 
 
 Yes, the farm is at peace, and as we sit 
 under the big maples it seems to be reproach- 
 ing us — "See how quiet everything is! And 
 you could n't even manage church ! " 
 
 Other people seem to manage it very com- 
 fortably and quite regularly. On Sunday 
 morning our quiet little road, unfrequented 
 even by the ubiquitous automobile, is gay 
 with church-goers. "Gay" may seem the 
 wrong word, but it is quite the right one. In 
 the city church-going is rather a sober affair. 
 People either walk or take cars. They wear a 
 certain sort of clothes, known as "church 
 clothes," which represent a sort of hedging 
 compromise between their morning and their 
 afternoon wear. They approach the church 
 in decorous silence; as they emerge they ex- 
 change subdued greetings, walk a block or 
 two in little companies, then scatter to their 
 homes and their Sunday dinners. 
 
 But in the country everybody but the vil- 
 lage people drives, and the roads are full of 
 teams, — buggies, surreys, phaetons, — the 
 carriages newly washed, the horses freshly 
 
THE FARM SUNDAY 81 
 
 groomed, the occupants scrupulously dressed 
 in the prettiest things they own — their 
 ** Sunday-go-to-meeting" ones, which means 
 something quite different from "church 
 clothes." As one nears the village there is 
 some friendly rivalry between horses, there is 
 the pleasure of "catching up" with neighbors' 
 teams, or of being caught up with, and at the 
 church door there is the business of alighting 
 and hitching the horses, and then, if it is early, 
 waiting about outside for the "last bell" 
 before going in. 
 
 Even in the church itself there is more free- 
 dom and variety than in our city tabernacles. 
 In these there are always the same memorial 
 windows to look at, — except perhaps once 
 in ten years when somebody dies and a new 
 one goes in, — but in the country stained 
 glass is more rare. In many it has not even 
 gained place at all, and the panes of clear 
 glass let in a glory of blueness and whiteness 
 and greenness to rejoice the heart of the wor- 
 shiper. In others, more ambitious, alas ! there 
 is ground glass with tinted borders; but this is 
 not very disturbing, especially when the 
 sashes are set open aslant, and the ivy and 
 
82 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 Virginia creeper cluster just outside, in bright 
 greens and dark, or cast their shifting shadows 
 on the glass, a dainty tracery of gray on silver. 
 
 And at the altar there are flowers — not 
 florist flowers, contracted for by the year, but 
 neighborhood flowers. There are Mrs. Cum- 
 mings's peonies — she always has such beau- 
 ties; and Mrs. Hiram Brown's roses — no- 
 body else has any of just that shade of yellow; 
 and Mary Lord's foxgloves and larkspur — 
 what a wonder of yellow and white and blue ! 
 Each in its season, the flowers are full of per- 
 sonal significance. The choir, too, is made up 
 of our friends. There is Hiram Brown, and 
 Jennie Sewall, and young Mrs. Harris, back 
 for three weeks to visit her mother, and little 
 Sally Winter, a shy new recruit, very pink 
 over her promotion. The singing is perhaps 
 not as finished as that of a paid quartette, 
 but it is full of life and sweetness, and it makes 
 a direct human appeal that the other often 
 misses. 
 
 After the service people go out slowly, 
 waiting for this friend and that, and in the 
 vestibule and on the steps and in the church- 
 yard they gather in groups. The men saunter 
 
THE FARM SUNDAY 83 
 
 off to the sheds to get the horses, and the 
 women chat while they wait. Then the 
 teams come up, as many as the roadway will 
 hold, and there is the bustle of departure, 
 the taking of seats, the harsh grinding of 
 wheels against the wagon body as the driver 
 "cramps" to turn round, then good-byes, and 
 one after another the teams start off, out into 
 the open country for another week of quiet, 
 busy farm life. 
 
 Yes, church is distinctively a social affair, 
 and very delightful, and when our cows and 
 hens and calves and other "critters" do not 
 prevent, we are glad to have our part in it all. 
 When they do, we yet feel that we have a share 
 in it simply through seeing "the folks" go by. 
 It is a distinct pleasure to see our neighbors 
 trundling along towards the village. And 
 then, if luck has been against us and we can- 
 not join them, it is a pleasure to lie in the 
 grass and listen to the quiet. After the last 
 church-goers have passed, the road is deserted 
 for two hours, until they begin to return. The 
 neighboring farms are quiet, the "folks" are 
 away, or, if some of the men are at home, they 
 are sitting on their doorsteps smoking. 
 
84 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 If there is no wind, or if it is in the right 
 quarter, we can hear the church bells, faintly 
 now, and now very clear; there is the First 
 Church bell, and the Baptist; there is St. 
 John's, on a higher note, and Trinity, a little 
 lower. After a time even the bells cease, and 
 there is no sound but the wind in the big 
 maples and the bees as they drone among the 
 flower heads. 
 
 Sunday, at least Sunday on a Connecticut 
 farm, has a distinct quality of its own. I can 
 hardly say what it means to me — no one, I 
 suppose, could say all that it means. To call 
 it a day of rest does not individualize it 
 enough. It has to be described not so much in 
 terms of rest as of balance and height. I 
 think of the week as a long, sweeping curve, 
 like the curve of a swift, deep wave at sea, 
 and Sunday is the crest, the moment of poise, 
 before one is drawn down into the next great 
 concave, then up again, to pause and look 
 off, and it is Sunday once more. 
 
 The weather does not matter. If it rains, 
 you get one kind of pause and outlook — the 
 intimate, indoor kind. If the sun shines, you 
 get another kind — wide and bright. And 
 
THE FARM SUNDAY 85 
 
 what you do does not matter so long as it is 
 different from the week, and so long as it ex- 
 presses and develops that peculiar Sunday 
 quality of balance and height. I can imagine 
 nothing drearier than seven days all alike, 
 and seven more, and seven more! Sundays 
 are the big beads on the chain. They need not 
 be all of the same color, but there must be the 
 big beads'to satisfy the eye and the finger-tip. 
 
 And a New England Sunday always is 
 different. Whatever changes may have come 
 or may be coming elsewhere, in New England 
 Sunday has its own atmosphere. Over the 
 fields and woods and rocks there is a sense of 
 poise between reminiscence and expectancy. 
 The stir of the morning church-going bright- 
 ens but does not mar this. It adds the human 
 note — rather not a note, but a quiet chord of 
 many tones. And after it comes a hush. The 
 early afternoon of a New England Sunday is 
 the most absolutely quiet thing imaginable. 
 It is the precise middle of the wave crest, the 
 moment when motion ceases. 
 
 From that point time begins to stir again. 
 Life resumes. There is a certain amount of 
 desultory intercourse between farm and farm. 
 
86 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 If people are engaged, or mean to be, they 
 drive out together; if they are married, they 
 go home to ''his folks "or "her folks." Friends 
 walk together, farmers saunter along the road 
 or back on the farms to 'Hake a look" at 
 things. Consciously or not, and usually not, 
 there is a kind of synthesis taking place, a 
 gathering together of the scattered threads 
 of many interests, a vague sense of the whole- 
 ness of life. 
 
 At five o'clock the cows turn towards home, 
 and graze their leisurely way along the barn- 
 yard lanes. And with the cows come duties, — 
 chore-time, — then the simple, cold supper, 
 then the short, quiet evening, and off we 
 swing into the night that sweeps us away 
 from the crest down into the long, blind hol- 
 low of the week. 
 
VII 
 
 The Grooming of the Farm 
 
 There is a story about an artist who espied 
 a picturesque old man and wished to paint 
 him. At the time appointed the model ar- 
 rived — new-shaven, new-washed, freshly 
 attired, with all the delicious and incommun- 
 icable flavor of the years irretrievably lost! 
 Doubtless there are many such stories; doubt- 
 less the thing has happened many, many times. 
 And I am sorrier for the artist now than I 
 used to be, because it is happening to me. 
 
 Only it is not an old man — it is the farm, 
 the blessed old farm, unkempt, unshorn, out 
 at the elbows. In spite of itself, in spite of me, 
 in spite of everybody, the farm is being 
 groomed. 
 
 It is nobody's fault, of course. Like most 
 hopelessly disastrous things, it has all been 
 done with the best possible intentions, per- 
 haps it has even been necessary^ but it is none 
 the less deplorable. 
 
88 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 It began, I think, with the sheds. They had 
 in ages past been added one after another by a 
 method of almost unconscious accretion, as 
 the chambered nautilus makes his shell. They 
 looked as if they had been, not exactly built, 
 but rather laid together in the desultory, pro- 
 visional fashion of the farmer, and held by an 
 occasional nail, or the natural adhesion of the 
 boards themselves. They leaned confidingly 
 against the great barn and settled comfort- 
 ably among the bare faces of rock in the barn- 
 yard, as if they had always been there, as, 
 indeed, they had been there longer than any 
 one now living can remember. Neither they 
 nor the barn had ever been painted, and they 
 had all weathered to a silver-gray — not the 
 gray of any paint or stain ever made, but the 
 gray that comes only to certain kinds of wood 
 when it has lived out in the rain and the sun- 
 shine for fifty, seventy, a hundred years. It is 
 to an old building what white hair is to an old 
 lady. And as not all white hair is beautiful, 
 so not all gray buildings are beautiful. But 
 these were beautiful. When it rained, they 
 grew dark and every knot-hole showed. When 
 the sun came out and baked them dry, they 
 
THE GROOMING OF THE FARM 89 
 
 paled to silver, and the smooth, rain-worn 
 grooves and hollows of the boards glistened 
 like a rifle barrel. 
 
 The sheds were, I am afraid, not very useful. 
 One, they said, had been built to hold ploughs, 
 another for turkeys, another for ducks. One, 
 the only one that was hen-tight, we used for 
 the incarceration of confirmed "setters," and 
 it thus gained the title of * 'Durance Vile.'* 
 The rest were nameless, the abode of cobwebs 
 and rats and old grain-bags and stolen nests 
 and surprise broods of chickens, who dropped 
 through cracks between loose boards and had 
 to be extracted by Jonathan with much diffi- 
 culty. Perhaps it was this that set him against 
 them. At all events, he decided that they 
 must go. I protested faintly, trying to think 
 of some really sensible argument. 
 
 "But Durance Vile," I said. "We need 
 that. Where shall we put the setters.'*" 
 
 "No, we don't. That isn't the way to 
 treat setters, anyway. They should be cooped 
 and fed on meat." 
 
 "I suppose you read that in one of those 
 agricultural experiment station pamphlets," 
 I said. 
 
90 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 Many things that I consider disasters on 
 the farm can be traced to one or another of 
 these little pamphlets, and when a new one 
 arrives I regard it with resignation but with- 
 out cordiahty. 
 
 The sheds went, and I missed them. Pos- 
 sibly the hens missed them too. They wan- 
 dered thoughtfully about the barnyard, step- 
 ping rather higher than usual, cocking their 
 heads and regarding me with their red-rimmed 
 eyes as if they were cluckfully conjuring up 
 old associations. Did they remember Durance 
 Yile? Perhaps, but probably not. For all 
 their philosophic airs and their attitudinizing, 
 I know nobody who thinks less than a hen, 
 or, at all events, their thinking is contempla- 
 tive rather than practical. 
 
 Jonathan also surveyed the raw spot. But 
 Jonathan's mind is practical rather than 
 contemplative. 
 
 "Just the place for a carriage-house," he 
 remarked. 
 
 And the carriage-house was perpetrated. 
 Perhaps a hundred years from now it will 
 have been assimilated, but at present it 
 stands out absolutely undigested in all its 
 
THE GROOMING OF THE FARM 91 
 
 uncompromising newness of line and color. 
 Its ridgepole, its roof edges, its corners, look 
 as if they had been drawn with a ruler, where 
 those of the old barn were sketched freehand. 
 The barn and the sheds had settled into the 
 landscape, the carriage-house cut into it. 
 
 Even Jonathan saw it. "We '11 paint it the 
 old-fashioned red to make it more in keeping," 
 he said apologetically. 
 
 But old-fashioned red is apparently not to 
 be had in new-fashioned cans. And the farm 
 remained implacable: it refused to digest the 
 carriage-house. I felt rather proud of the 
 farm for being so firm. 
 
 The next blow was a heavy one. In the 
 middle of the cowyard there was a wonderful 
 gray rock, shoulder high, with a flat top and 
 three sides abrupt, the other sloping. I used 
 to sit on this rock and feed the hens and watch 
 the "critters" come into the yard at milking- 
 time. I like "critters," but when there are 
 more than two or three in the yard, including 
 some irresponsible calves, I like to have some 
 vantage-point from which to view them — 
 and be viewed. Our cattle are always gentle, 
 but some of them are, to use a colloquial word 
 
92 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 that seems to me richly descriptive, so 
 "nose-y." 
 
 Of course a rock Hke this did not belong in 
 a well-planned barnyard. Nowhere, except 
 in New England, or perhaps in Switzerland, 
 would one occur. But in our part of New 
 England they occur so thickly that they are 
 hard to dodge, even in building a house. I 
 remember an entry in an old ledger discov- 
 ered in the attic: "To blasten rocks in my 
 soUor — £0 3 6." 
 
 Without doubt the rock was in the way. 
 Jonathan used to speak about it in ungentle 
 terms every time he drove in and turned 
 around. But this gave me no anxiety, because 
 I felt sure that it had survived much stronger 
 language than his. I did not think about 
 dynamite. Probably when the Psalmist 
 wrote about the eternal hills he did not think 
 about dynamite either. 
 
 And dynamite did the deed. It broke my 
 pretty rock into little pieces as one might 
 break up a chunk of maple sugar with a pair 
 of scissors. It made a beautiful barnyard, but 
 I missed my refuge, my stronghold. 
 
 But this was only the beginning. Back of 
 
THE GROOMING OF THE FARM 93 
 
 the barns lay the farm itself — scores of 
 acres, chiefly rocks and huckleberry bushes, 
 with thistles and mullein and sumac. There 
 were dry, warm slopes, where the birches 
 grew; not the queenly paper birch of the 
 North, but the girlish little gray birch with its 
 veil of twinkling leaves and its glimmer of 
 slender stems. There were rugged ledges, 
 deep-shadowed with oak and chestnut; there 
 were hot, open hillsides thick-set with cat- 
 brier and blackberry canes, where one could 
 never go without setting a brown rabbit 
 scampering. It was a delectable farm, but 
 not, in the ordinary sense, highly productive, 
 and its appeal was rather to the contempla- 
 tive than to the practical mind. 
 
 Jonathan was from the first infected with 
 the desire of making the farm more productive 
 — in the ordinary sense; and one day, when I 
 wandered up to a distant corner, oh, dismay ! 
 There was a slope of twinkling birches — 
 no longer twinkling — prone! Cut, dragged, 
 and piled up in masses of white stems and 
 limp green leafage and tangled red-brown 
 twigs ! It was a sorry sight. I walked about 
 it much, perhaps, as my white hens had walked 
 
94 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 about the barnyard, and to as little purpose. 
 For the contemplative mind is no match for 
 the practical. I knew this, yet I could not 
 forbear saying, later: — 
 
 "Jonathan, I was up near the long meadow 
 to-day." 
 
 "Wereyou.?^" 
 
 "O Jonathan! Those birches!" 
 
 "What about them.^" 
 
 "All cut!" 
 
 "Oh, yes. We need that piece for pastur- 
 age. 
 
 "Oh, dear! We might as well not have a 
 farm if we cut down all the birches." 
 
 "We might as well not have a farm if we 
 don't cut them down. They'll run us out in 
 no time." 
 
 "They don't look as if they would run any- 
 body out — the dears ! " 
 
 "Why, I did n't know you felt that way 
 about them. We '11 let that other patch stand, 
 if you like." 
 
 "7/1 like!" 
 
 I saved the birches, but other things kept 
 happening. I went out one day and found one 
 of our prettiest fence lines reduced to bare 
 
THE GROOMING OF THE FARM 95 
 
 bones, all its bushes and vines — clematis, 
 elderberry, wild cherry, sweet-fern, bitter- 
 sweet — all cut, hacked, torn away. It looked 
 like a collie dog in the summer when his long 
 yellow fur has been sheared off. And, another 
 day, it was a company of red lilies escaped 
 along a bank above the roadside. There 
 were weeds mixed in, to be sure, and some 
 bushes, a delightful tangle — and all snipped, 
 shaved to the skin ! 
 
 When I spoke about it, Jonathan said: 
 "I'm sorry. I suppose Hiram was just mak- 
 ing the place shipshape." 
 
 "Shipshape! This farm shipshape! You 
 could no more make this farm shipshape than 
 you could make a woodchuck look as though 
 he had been groomed. The farm is n't a ship." 
 
 "I hope it is n't a woodchuck, either," said 
 Jonathan. 
 
 During the haying season there was always 
 a lull. The hand of the destroyer was stayed. 
 Rather, every one was so busy cutting the hay 
 that there was no time to cut anything else. 
 One day in early August I took a pail and 
 sauntered up the lane in the peaceful mood of 
 the berry-picker — a state of mind as satis- 
 
96 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 factory as any I know. One is conscious of 
 being useful — for what more useful than the 
 accumulating of berries for pies? One has 
 suitable ideals — the ideal of a happy home, 
 since in attaining a happy home berry pies are 
 demonstrably helpful. And one is also having 
 a beautiful time. On my way I turned down 
 the side lane to see how the blackberries were 
 coming on. There lay my blackberry canes — 
 lay, not stood — their long stems thick-set 
 with fruit just turning from light red to dark. 
 I do not love blackberries as I do birches; it 
 was rather the practical than the contempla- 
 tive part of me that protested that time, but it 
 was with a lagging step that I went on, over 
 the hill, to the berry patches. There another 
 shock awaited me. Where I expected to see 
 green clumps of low huckleberries there were 
 great blotches of black earth and gray ashy 
 stems, and in the midst a heap of brush still 
 sending up idle streamers and puffs of blue 
 smoke. Desolation of desolations ! That they 
 should do this thing to a harmless berry 
 patch ! 
 
 They were not all burned. Only the heart 
 of the patch had been taken, and after the 
 
THE GROOMING OF THE FARM 97 
 
 first shock I explored the edges to see what 
 was left, but with no courage for picking. I 
 came home with an empty pail and a mind 
 severe. 
 
 "Jonathan," I said that night, "I thought 
 you liked pies.^^" 
 
 "I do," he said expectantly. 
 
 "Well, what do you like in them.?" 
 
 "Berries, preferably." 
 
 "Oh, I thought perhaps you preferred 
 cinders or dried briers." 
 
 Jonathan looked up inquiringly, then a 
 light broke. "Oh, you mean those blackberry 
 bushes. Did n't I tell you about that.? That 
 was a mistake." 
 
 "So I thought," I said, unappeased. 
 
 "I mean, I did n't mean them to be cut. It 
 was that fool hobo I gave work to last week. 
 I told him to cut the brush in the lane. Idiot ! 
 I thought he knew a blackberry bush ! " 
 
 "With the fruit on it, too," I added, re- 
 lenting toward Jonathan a little. Then I 
 stiffened again. "How about the huckleberry 
 patch.? Was that a mistake, too.?" 
 
 Jonathan looked guilty, but held himself 
 as a man should. 
 
98 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "Why, no," he said; *'that is, Hiram 
 thought we needed more ground to plough 
 up next year, and that's as good a piece as 
 there is — no big rocks or trees, you know. 
 And we must have crops, you know." 
 
 "Bless the rocks!" I burst out. "I wish 
 there were more of them ! If it were n't for 
 the rocks the farm would be all crops!" 
 
 Jonathan laughed, then we both laughed. 
 
 "You talk as though that would be a mis- 
 fortune," he said. 
 
 "It would be simply unendurable," I re- 
 plied. 
 
 "Jonathan," I added, "I am afraid you 
 have not a proper subordination of values. 
 I have heard of one farmer — just one — 
 who had." 
 
 "What is it.^ —and who was he.^" said 
 Jonathan, submissively. 
 
 I think he was relieved that the huckleberry 
 question was not being followed up. 
 
 "I believe he was your great-uncle by mar- 
 riage. They say that there was a certain field 
 that was full of butterfly-weed — you know, 
 gorgeous orange stuff — " 
 
 "I know," said he. "What about it.?" 
 
THE GROOMING OF THE FARM 99 
 
 "Well, there was a meadow that was full of 
 it, just in its glory when the grass was ready to 
 cut. Jonathan, what would you have done ? " 
 
 *'Go on," said Jonathan. 
 
 "Well, he always mowed that field himself, 
 and when he came to a clump of butterfly- 
 weed, he always mowed around it." 
 
 "Very pretty," said Jonathan, in an im- 
 personal way. 
 
 "And that," I added, "is what I call hav- 
 ing a proper subordination of values." 
 
 "I see," said he. 
 
 "And now," I went on, with almost too 
 ostentatious sweetness, "if you will tell me 
 where to find a huckleberry patch that is not 
 already reduced to cinders, I will go out to- 
 morrow and get some for pies." 
 
 Jonathan knew, and so did I, that there 
 were still plenty of berry bushes left. Never- 
 theless, he was moved. 
 
 "Now, see here," he began seriously, "I 
 don't want to spoil the farm for you. Only I 
 don't know which things you like. If you'll 
 just tell me the places you don't want touched, 
 I'll speak to Hiram about them." 
 
 "Really.?" I exclaimed. "Why, I'll tell 
 
100 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 you now, right away. There's the lane — 
 you know, that must n't be touched; and the 
 ledges — but you could n't do anything to 
 those, of course, anyway." 
 
 " No, even the hobo would n't tackle them," 
 said Jonathan grimly. 
 
 "And the birches, the ones that are left. 
 You promised me those, you know. And the 
 swamp, of course, and the cedar knoll where 
 the high-bush blueberries grow, and then — 
 oh, yes — that lovely hillside beyond the long 
 meadow where the sumac is, and the dog- 
 wood, and everything. And, of course, the 
 rest of the huckleberries — " 
 
 "The rest of the huckleberries!" said he. 
 "That means all the farm. There is n't a spot 
 as big as your hat where you can't show me 
 some sort of a huckleberry bush." 
 
 "So much the better," I said contentedly. 
 
 "Oh, come now," he protested. "Be rea- 
 sonable. Even your wonderful farmer that 
 you tell about did a little mowing. He mowed 
 around the butterfly- weed, but he mowed. 
 You 're making the farm into solid butterfly- 
 weed, and there'll be no mowing at all." 
 
 "Why, Jonathan, I've left you the long 
 
THE GROOMING OF THE FARM 101 
 
 meadow, and the corner meadow, and the 
 hill orchard, and then there 's the ten-acre lot 
 for corn and potatoes — only I wish you 
 would n't plant potatoes." 
 
 " What 's the matter with potatoes? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. First, they are too neat 
 and green, and then they are all covered with 
 potato-bug powder, and then they wither up 
 and lie all around, and then they are dug, and 
 the field is a sight! Now, rye and corn! 
 They're lovely from beginning to end." 
 
 Jonathan ruminated. "I seem to see my- 
 self expressing these ideas to Hiram," he re- 
 marked dryly. 
 
 "I suppose it all comes down to the simple 
 question, What is the farm for.'^" I said. 
 
 "I am afraid that is what Hiram would 
 think," said Jonathan. 
 
 "Never mind about Hiram," I said se- 
 verely. "Now really, away down deep, have 
 n't you yourself a sneaking desire for — oh, 
 for crops, and for having things look ship- 
 shape, as you call it.? Now, have n't you.?" 
 
 "I wonder," said Jonathan, as though we 
 were talking about a third person. 
 
 "I don't wonder; I know. The trouble with 
 
102 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 men," I went on, "is that when they want to 
 make a thing look well, all they can think of 
 is cutting and chopping. Look at a man when 
 he goes to a party, or to have his picture 
 taken! He always dashes to the barber's 
 first — that is, unless there 's a woman around 
 to interfere. Do you remember Jack Mason 
 when he was married .^^ Face and neck the 
 color of raw beef from sunburn, and hair 
 cropped so close it made his head look like a 
 drab eggV' 
 
 *'I did n't notice," said Jonathan. 
 
 "No, I suppose not. You would have done 
 the same thing — you're all alike. Look at 
 horses ! When men want to make a horse look 
 stylish, why, chop off his tail, of course ! And 
 they are only beginning to learn better. When 
 a man builds a house, what does he do.^ Cuts 
 down every tree, every bush and twig, and 
 makes it 'shipshape,' as you call it. And then 
 the women have to come along and plant 
 everything all over again." 
 
 "But things need cutting now and then," 
 said Jonathan. "You wouldn't like it, you 
 know, if a man never went to the barber's. 
 He'd look like a woodchuck." 
 
THE GROOMING OF THE FARM 103 
 
 ''There are worse-looking things than wood- 
 chucks. Still, of course, there's a medium. 
 Possibly the woodchuck carries neglect to 
 excess." 
 
 The discussion rested there. I do not know 
 whether Jonathan expressed any of these 
 ideas to Hiram, but the grooming process 
 appeared to be temporarily suspended. Then 
 one day my turn came. It was dusk, and I 
 was sitting on an old log at the back of the 
 orchard, looking out over the little swamp, all 
 a-twinkle with fireflies. Jonathan had been 
 up the lane, prowling about, as he often does 
 at nightfall, "to take a look at the farm." I 
 heard his step in the lane, and he jumped over 
 the bars at the far end of the orchard. There 
 was a pause, then a vehement exclamation — 
 too vehement to print. Jonathan's remarks 
 do not usually need editing, and I listened to 
 these in the dusk in some degree of wonder, 
 if not of positive enjoyment. 
 
 Finally I called out, "What's the matter.?" 
 
 "Oh! You there.?" He strode over. "Mat- 
 ter! Come and see what that fool hobo did." 
 
 "You called him something besides that a 
 moment ago," I remarked. 
 
104 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "I hope so. Whatever I called him, he's it. 
 Come over." 
 
 He led me to the orchard edge, and there 
 in the half light I saw a line of stubs and a 
 pile of brush. 
 
 "Not your quince bushes!" I gasped. 
 
 "Just that," he said, grimly, and then 
 burst into further unprintable phrases descrip- 
 tive of the city-bred loafer. "If I ever give 
 work to a hobo again, I'll be — " 
 
 "Sh-h-h," I said; and I could not forbear 
 adding, "Now you know how I have felt 
 about those huckleberry bushes and birches 
 and things, only I had n't the language to 
 express it." 
 
 "You have language enough," said Jona- 
 than. 
 
 Undoubtedly Jonathan was depressed. I 
 had been depressed for some time on account 
 of the grooming of my berry patches and 
 fence lines, but now I found myself growing 
 suddenly cheerful. I do not habitually batten 
 on the sorrow of others, but this was a special 
 case. For how could I be blind to the fact 
 that chance had thrust a weapon into my 
 hand? I knew that hereafter, at critical mo- 
 
THE GROOMING OF THE FARM 105 
 
 ments, I need only murmur "quince bushes" 
 and discussion would die out. It made me 
 feel very gentle towards Jonathan, to be thus 
 armed against him. Gentle, but also cheerful. 
 
 "Jonathan," I said, "it's no use standing 
 here. Come back to the log where I was sit- 
 ting." 
 
 He came, with heavy tread. We sat down, 
 and looked out over the twinkling swamp. 
 The hay had just been cut, and the air was 
 richly fragrant. The hush of night encom- 
 passed us, yet the darkness was full of life. 
 Crickets chirruped steadily in the orchard 
 behind us. From a distant meadow the purr- 
 ing whistle of the whip-poor-will sounded in 
 continuous cadence, like a monotonous and 
 gentle lullaby. The woods beyond the open 
 swamp, a shadowy blur against the sky, were 
 still, except for a sleepy note now and then 
 from some bird half-awakened. Once a wood 
 thrush sang his daytime song all through, ^nd 
 murmured part of it a second time, then sink 
 into silence. 
 
 "Jonathan," I said at last, "the farm is 
 rather a good place to be." 
 
 "Not bad." 
 
106 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "Let's not groom it too much. Let's not 
 make it too shipshape. After all, you know, 
 it is n't really a ship." 
 
 "Nor yet a woodchuck, I hope," said 
 Jonathan. 
 
 And I was content not to press the matter. 
 
VIII 
 
 *' Escaped from Old Gardens" 
 
 In the days when I deemed it necessary to 
 hunt down in my well-thumbed Gray every 
 flower of wood and field, and fit it to its Latin 
 name, I used often to meet this phrase. At 
 first, being young, I resented it. I scorned 
 gardens: their carefully planned and duly 
 tended splendors were not for me. The orchid 
 in the deep woods or by the edge of the lonely 
 swamp, the rare and long-sought heather in 
 the open moorland, these it was that roused 
 my ardor. And to find that some newly dis- 
 covered flower was not a wild flower at all, 
 but merely a garden flower "escaped"! The 
 very word carried a hint of reprobation. 
 
 But as the years went on, the phrase gath- 
 ered to itself meanings vague and subtle. I 
 found myself welcoming it and regarding with 
 a warmer interest the flower so described. 
 From what old garden had it come.^ What 
 associations and memories did it bring out 
 
108 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 of the past? Had the paths where it grew 
 been obKterated by the encroachments of a 
 ruthless civiHzation, or had the tide of human 
 life drawn away from it and left it to be en- 
 gulfed by the forest from which it had once 
 been wrested, with nothing left to mark it 
 but a gnarled old lilac tree? I have chanced 
 upon such spots in the heart of the wood, 
 where the lilac and the apple tree and the old 
 stoned cellar wall are all that are left to test- 
 ify to the human life that once centred there. 
 Or had the garden from which its seed was 
 blown only fallen into a quiet decay, deserted 
 but not destroyed, left to bloom unchecked 
 and untended, and fling its seeds to the sum- 
 mer winds that its flowers might *' escape" 
 whither they would? 
 
 Lately, I chanced upon such a garden. I 
 was walking along a quiet roadside, almost 
 dusky beneath the shade of close-set giant 
 maples, when an unexpected fragrance 
 breathed upon me. I lingered, wondering. It 
 came again, in a warm wave of the August 
 breeze. I looked up at the tangled bank beside 
 me — surely, there was a spray of box peep- 
 ing out through the tall weeds ! There was a 
 
"ESCAPED FROM OLD GARDENS" 109 
 
 bush of it — another ! Ah ! it was a heds-e, a 
 box hedge! Here were the great stone steps 
 leading up to the gate, and here the old, square 
 capped fence-posts, once trim and white, now 
 sunken and silver-gray. The rest of the fence 
 was lying among the grasses and goldenrod, 
 but the box still lived, dead at the top, its leaf- 
 less branches matted into a hoary gray tangle, 
 but springing up from below in crisp green 
 sprays, lustrous and fragrant as ever, and 
 richly suggestive of the past that produced it. 
 For the box implies not merely human life, 
 but human life on a certain scale: leisurely, 
 decorous, well-considered. It implies faith in 
 an established order and an assured future. A 
 beautiful box hedge is not planned for im- 
 mediate enjoyment; it is built up inch by 
 inch through the years, a legacy to one's heirs. 
 Beside the gate-posts stood what must once 
 have been two pillars of box. As I passed be- 
 tween them my feet felt beneath the matted 
 weeds of many seasons the broad stones of the 
 old flagged walk that led up through the gar- 
 den to the house. Following it, I found, not 
 the house, but the wide stone blocks of the old 
 doorsteps, and beyond these, a ruin — gray 
 
110 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 ashes and blackened brick, two great heaps 
 of stone where the chimneys had been, with 
 the stone slabs that lined the fireplaces fallen 
 together. At one end was the deep stone cellar 
 filled now with young beeches as tall as the 
 house once was. Just outside stood two 
 cherry trees close to the old house wall — so 
 close that they had burned with it and now 
 stood, black and bare and gaunt, in silent 
 comradeship. At the other end I almost 
 stumbled into the old well, dark and still, with 
 a glimmer of sky at the bottom. 
 
 But I did not like the ruin, nor the black 
 well lurking in the weeds and ashes. The gar- 
 den was better, and I went back to it and fol- 
 lowed the stone path as it turned past the 
 end of the house and led, under another 
 broad hedge of box now choked by lusty 
 young maples, to the old rose-garden. Beyond 
 were giant lilacs, and groups of waxberry 
 bushes covered with the pretty white balls 
 that children love to string; there was the old- 
 fashioned *' burning-bush," already preparing 
 its queer, angled berries for autumn splendors. 
 And among these, still holding their own in 
 the tangle, clumps of the tall, rose-lilac phloxes 
 
"ESCAPED FROM OLD GARDENS" 111 
 
 that the old people seem specially to have 
 loved, swayed in the light breeze and filled 
 the place with their heavy, languorous fra- 
 grance. 
 
 Truly, it is a lovely spot, my old garden, 
 lovelier, perhaps, than when it was in its 
 golden prime, when its hedges were faultlessly 
 trimmed and its walks were edged with neat 
 flower borders, when their smooth flagging- 
 stones showed never a weed, and even the 
 little heaps of earth piled up, grain by grain, 
 by the industrious ants, were swept away each 
 morning by the industrious broom. Then 
 human life centred here; now it is very far 
 away. All the sounds of the outside world 
 come faintly to this place and take on its 
 quality of quiet, — the lowing of cows in the 
 pastures, the shouts of men in the fields, the 
 deep, vibrant note of the railroad train which 
 goes singing across distances where its rattle 
 and roar fail to penetrate. It is very still here. 
 Even the birds are quieter, and the crickets 
 and the katydids less boisterous. The red 
 squirrels move warily through the tree-tops 
 with almost a chastened air, the black-and- 
 gold butterflies flutter indolently about the 
 
112 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 heads of the phlox, a hummingbird, flashing 
 green, hovers about some belated blossom- 
 heads of the scarlet bee-balm, and then, as if 
 to point the stillness, alights on an apple twig, 
 looking, when at rest, so very small! Only 
 the cicada, as he rustles clumsily about with 
 his paper wings against the flaking bark and 
 yellowing leaves of an old apple tree, seems 
 unmindful of the spell of silence that holds 
 the place. 
 
 And the garden is mine now — mine be- 
 cause I have found it, and every one else, as I 
 like to believe, has forgotten it. Next it is a 
 grove of big old trees. Would they not have 
 been cut down years ago if any one had re- 
 membered them.f^ And on the other side is a 
 meadow whose thick grass, waist-high, ought 
 to have been mowed last June and gathered 
 into some dusky, fragrant barn. But it is for- 
 gotten, like the garden, and will go leisurely 
 to seed out there in the sun; the autumn 
 winds will sweep it and the winter snow will 
 mat down its dried tangle. 
 
 Forgotten — and as I lie in the long grass, 
 drowsy with the scent of the hedge and the 
 phlox, I seem only a memory myself. If I 
 
"ESCAPED FROM OLD GARDENS" 113 
 
 stay too long I shall forget to go away, and 
 no one will remember to find me. In truth, I 
 feel not unwilling that it should be so. Could 
 there be a better place .^ "Escaped from old 
 gardens"! Ah, foolish, foolish flowers! If I 
 had the happiness to be born in an old garden, 
 I would not escape. I would stay there, and 
 dream there, forever! 
 
IX 
 
 The Country Road 
 
 On a June day, years ago, I was walking 
 along our country road. At the top of a steep 
 little hill I paused to rest and let my eyes lux- 
 uriate in the billowing greens and tender blues 
 of the valley below. While I stood there my 
 neighbor came slowly up from the garden, 
 her apron over her head, a basket of green 
 peas on her arm. 
 
 "What a view you have up here on your 
 hill!" I said. 
 
 She drew back her apron and turned to look 
 oflF. "Yes," she said indulgently; "ye-e-s." 
 Then her face brightened and she turned to 
 me with real animation: "But it's better in 
 winter when the leaves is off, 'n' you c'n see 
 the passin' on the lower road." 
 
 Fresh from the city as I was, with all its 
 prejudices and intolerance upon me, I was 
 partly amused, partly irritated, by her answer. 
 So all this glory of greenness, all this wonder of 
 
THE COUNTRY ROAD 115 
 
 the June woodland, was merely tolerated, 
 while the baffled observer waited for the 
 leaves to be "off"! And all for the sake of 
 seeing — what? A few lumber wagons, for- 
 sooth, loaded with ties for the railway, a few 
 cows driven along morning and evening, a few 
 children trudging to and from school, the 
 postman's buggy on its daily rounds, twice a 
 week the meat cart, once a week the grocery 
 wagon, once a month the "tea-man," and 
 now and then a neighbor's team on its way to 
 the feed-store or the blacksmith's shop down 
 at "the Corners." 
 
 For this, then, — not for the beauty of the 
 winter landscape, but for this poor procession 
 of wayfarers, my neighbors waited with im- 
 patience. If I could, I would have snatched 
 up their view bodily and carried it off with me, 
 back to my own farm for my own particular 
 delectation. It should never again have 
 shoved itself in their way. 
 
 But since that time I have lived longer in 
 the country. If I have not made it my home 
 for all twelve months, I have dwelt in it from 
 early April to mid-December, and now, when I 
 think of my neighbor's remark, it is with grow- 
 
116 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 ing comprehension. I realize that I, in my 
 patronizing one-sidedness, was quite wrong. 
 
 City folk go to the country, as they say, to 
 "get away" — justifiable enough, perhaps, 
 or perhaps not. They seek spots remote from 
 the centres; they choose deserted districts, 
 untraveled roads; they criticize their ances- 
 tors unmercifully for their custom of building 
 houses close to the road and keeping the front 
 dooryard clear of shrubbery. But they who 
 built those homes which are our summer 
 refuge did not want to get away; they wanted 
 to get together. The country was not their 
 respite, it was their life, and the road was to 
 them the emblem of race solidarity — nay, 
 more than the emblem, it was the means to 
 it. This is still the case with the country peo- 
 ple, and as I live among them I am coming to 
 a realization of the meaning of the Road. 
 
 In the city one can never get just this. 
 There are streets, of course, but by their very 
 multiplicity and complexity they lose their 
 individual impressiveness and are merged in 
 that great whole, the City. One recoils from 
 them and takes refuge in the sense of one's 
 own home. 
 
THE COUNTRY ROAD 117 
 
 But in the country there is just the Road. 
 Recoil from it? One's heart goes out to it. 
 The road is a part of home, the part that 
 reaches out to our friends and draws them to 
 us or brings us to them. It is our outdoor 
 clubhouse, it is the avenue of the Expected 
 and the Unexpected, it is the Home Road. 
 
 In a sense it does no more for us, and in 
 some ways much less, than our city streets do. 
 Along these, too, our tradesmen's carts come 
 to our doors, along these our friends must fare 
 as they arrive or depart; we seek the streets 
 at our outgoings and our incomings. But they 
 are, after all, strictly a means. We use them, 
 but when we enter our homes we forget them, 
 or try to. Our individual share in the street 
 is not large. So much goes on and goes by 
 that has only the most general bearing on our 
 interests that we cease to give it our attention 
 at all. It is not good form to watch the street, 
 because it is not worth while. When children's 
 voices fly in at our windows, we assume that 
 they are other people's children, and they 
 usually are. When we hear teams, we expect 
 them to go by, and they usually do. When we 
 hear a cab door slam, we take it for granted 
 
118 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 that it IS before some other house, and usually 
 it is. And if, having nothing better to do, we 
 perchance walk to the window and glance out 
 between the curtains, we are repaid by seeing 
 nothing interesting and by feeling a little 
 shamefaced besides. 
 
 Not so in the country. What happens 
 along the Road is usually our intimate con- 
 cern. Most of those who go by on it are our 
 own acquaintances and neighbors, and are 
 interesting as such. The rest are strangers, 
 and interesting as such. For it is the rarity 
 of the stranger that gives him his piquancy. 
 
 And so in the country it is both good form 
 and worth while to watch the Road — to 
 "keep an eye out," as they say. When Jona- 
 than and I first came to the farm, we were 
 incased in a hard incrustation of city ways. 
 When teams passed, we did not look up; when 
 a wagon rattled, we did not know whose it 
 was, and we said we did not care. When one 
 of our neighbors remarked, casually, "Heard 
 Bill Smith's team go by at half-past eleven 
 last night. Wonder if the's anythin' wrong 
 down his way," we stared at one another in 
 amazement, and wondered, "Now, how in the 
 
THE COUNTRY ROAD 119 
 
 world did he know it was Bill Smith's team?" 
 We smiled over the story of a postmistress 
 who had the ill luck to be selling stamps when 
 a carriage passed. She hastily shoved them 
 out, and ran to the side window — too late ! 
 "Sakes!" she sighed; *' that's the second I've 
 missed to-day!" We smiled, but I know now 
 that if I had been in that postmistress's place 
 I should have felt exactly as she did. 
 
 When we began to realize the change in 
 ourselves, we were at first rather sheepish and 
 apologetic about it. We fell into the way of 
 sitting where we could naturally glance out 
 of the windows, but we did this casually, as if 
 by chance, and said nothing about it. When 
 August came, and dusk fell early and lamps 
 were lighted at supper-time, I drew down the 
 shades. 
 
 But one night Jonathan said, carelessly, 
 Why do you pull them all the way down.^" 
 Why not.^" I asked, with perhaps just a 
 suspicion. 
 
 "Oh," he said, "it always seems so cheer- 
 ful from the road to look in at a lighted 
 window." 
 
 I left them up, but I noticed that Jonathan 
 
 (6 
 
120 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 kept a careful eye on the shadowy road out- 
 side. Was he trying to cheer it by pleasant 
 looks, I wondered, or was he just trying to 
 see all that went by? 
 
 Jonathan's seat is not so good as mine for 
 observation. A big deutzia bush looms between 
 his window and the road, while at my window 
 only the tips of a waxberry bush obscure the 
 view, and there is a door beside me. Therefore 
 Jonathan was distinctly at a disadvantage. 
 He offered to change seats, suggesting that 
 there was a draft where I was, and that the 
 light was bad for my eyes, but I found that I 
 did not mind either of these things. 
 
 One day a team passed while Jonathan was 
 carving. He looked up too late, hesitated, 
 then said, rather consciously : " Who was that? 
 Did you see?" 
 
 "7 don't know," I said, with a far-away, 
 impersonal air, as though the matter had 
 no interest for me. But I had n't the heart 
 to keep up the pose, and I added : " Perhaps 
 you'll know. It was a white horse, and a 
 business wagon with red wheels, and the man 
 wore a soft felt hat, and there was a dog on 
 the seat beside him.". 
 
THE COUNTRY ROAD 121 
 
 Before I had finished, Jonathan was grin- 
 ning delightedly. "Suppose we shake these 
 city ways," he said. He deliberately got up, 
 raised the shades, pushed back a curtain, and 
 moved a jug of goldenrod. "There! Can you 
 see better now.^" he asked. 
 
 And I said cheerfully, "Yes, quite a good 
 deal better. And after this, Jonathan, when 
 you hear a team coming, why don't you stop 
 carving till it goes by.^^" 
 
 "I will," said Jonathan. 
 
 It was our final capitulation, and since 
 then we have been much more comfortable. 
 We run to the window whenever we feel in- 
 clined, and we leave our shades up at dusk 
 without apology or circumlocution. We are 
 coming to know our neighbors' teams by 
 their sound, and we are proud of it. Why, in- 
 deed, should we be ashamed of this human 
 interest .f^ Why should we be elated that we 
 can recognize a bluebird by his flight, and 
 ashamed of knowing our neighbor's old bay 
 by his gait? Why should we boast of our 
 power to recognize the least murmur of the 
 deceptive grosbeak, and not take pride in 
 being able to "spot" Bill Smith's team by the 
 
im] THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 peculiar rattle of its board bottom as it 
 crosses the bridge by the mill? Is he not of 
 more value than many grosbeaks? But how 
 can we love om* neighbor if we do not pay 
 some attention to him — him and his horse 
 and his cart and all that is his? And how shall 
 we pay attention to him if we neglect the 
 opportunities of the Road, since for the rest 
 he is busy and we are busy, and we belong 
 each to our own farm? 
 
 I stopped at a friendly door one day to ask, 
 "Have Phil and Jimmy gone by? I wanted 
 to see them." 
 
 "No, I have n't seen them." The bright- 
 faced little lady stood in the doorway glanc- 
 ing over my shoulder out toward the sunny 
 road. "Have you seem them to-day, Nellie? " 
 she called into the dusky sitting-room. " No," 
 she turned back to me, "we have n't seen 
 them. And," she added, with gay directness, 
 "nobody could get by the house without our 
 seeing them; I'm sure of that!" 
 
 Her remark pleased me immensely. I like 
 this frank interest in the Road very much. 
 When I am at home, I have it myself, and I 
 have stopped being ashamed of it. When I 
 
THE COUNTRY ROAD 123 
 
 am on the Road, I like to know that I am an 
 object of interest to the dwellers in the houses 
 I pass. I look up at the windows, whose tiny 
 panes reflect the brightness of outdoors and 
 tell me nothing of the life within, and I like to 
 think that some one behind them knows that 
 I am going by. Often there is some sign of 
 recognition — a motion of the hand through 
 a parted curtain, or rarely a smiling face; now 
 and then some one looks out from a doorway 
 to send a greeting, or glances up from the gar- 
 den or the well ; but even without these tokens 
 I still have the sense of being noticed, and I 
 find it pleasant and companionable. In the 
 city, when I go to see a friend, I approach a 
 house that gives no sign. I mount to a non- 
 committal vestibule and push an impersonal 
 button, and after the other necessary prelim- 
 inaries I find my friends. In the country as I 
 drive up to the house I notice curtains stir- 
 ring, I hear voices, and before I have had 
 time to get out and find the hitch-rope every 
 person in the house is either at the gate or 
 standing in the doorway. Our visit is begun 
 before we have left the Road, the hospitable, 
 social Road. Such ways would probably not 
 
124 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 do for the city. So much the worse for the 
 city. The country ways are best. 
 
 Everything that happens along the Road 
 has the social touch. In the city, orders are 
 given by telephone, and when the delivery 
 wagon comes, it sweeps up with a rush, the 
 boy seizes a basket and jumps out, runs to 
 the back door, shouts the name of the owner, 
 slams down his goods, and dashes back to the 
 wagon, with a crisp '*Git-up!" to the well- 
 trained horse, who starts forward while his 
 driver is still mounting to his seat. 
 
 Not so in the country. The wagon draws 
 peacefully out to the side of the Road, and 
 the horse falls to nibbling grass if he is un- 
 checked, or to browsing on my rosebushes if 
 he is not. If it is the grocer's wagon, the boy 
 comes around to the back porch and we dis- 
 cuss what supplies will probably be needed by 
 the time of his next visit. Incidentally, we talk 
 about weather and crops and woodchucks 
 and trout, or bass or partridges, according to 
 the season. If it is the meat cart or the fish 
 wagon, I seize a platter and go out, the back 
 flap of the cart is lifted up, I step under its 
 shade and peer in, considering what is oflFered 
 
THE COUNTRY ROAD 125 
 
 me and deciding what I will have plucked out 
 for me to carry back to the house. 
 
 Besides the routine visitors, there are 
 others — peddlers with wonderful collections 
 of things to sell (whole clothing shops or furn- 
 iture stores some of them bring with them), 
 peddlers with books, peddlers with silver, 
 peddlers with jewelry. In the course of a few 
 months one is offered everything from shoe- 
 strings to stoves. There are men who want 
 to buy, too, — buyers of old iron, of old rags, 
 of old rubber. "Anny-ting, anny-ting vat 
 you vill sell me, madame, I vill buy it," said 
 one, with outspread hands. 
 
 Cattle go by, great droves of them, being 
 driven along the Road and sold from farm to 
 farm until all are gone. I love the day that 
 brings them. A dust haze down the Road, 
 the mooing of cows and the baaing of calves, 
 the shouts of the drovers, the sound of many 
 hoofs, and the cattle are here. The farmer 
 and the "hired man" leave their work and 
 saunter out to the Road to "look 'em over," 
 the children come running out to watch the 
 pretty creatures, sleek or tousled, soft-eyed or 
 wild-eyed, yearlings with bits of horns, stocky 
 
126 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 two-year-olds, and wabbly-legged youngsters 
 hardly able to keep pace with the rest, all of 
 them glad enough of the chance to pause in 
 the shade and nibble at the rich, cool grass. 
 One or two of the "critters" are approved of, 
 perhaps, and bought, and the rest move on, 
 the sunny dust haze rises and clears, the 
 shouts of the drovers grow faint, and the 
 Road is still again. 
 
 Men go by looking for work; they will clean 
 your well for you, they will file your horses' 
 teeth for you, they will mend your umbrellas 
 and repair your clocks and sharpen your scis- 
 sors. In the city, when we hear the scissors- 
 grinder ding-ding-dinging along the street, 
 we wonder in an impersonal way how he 
 makes a living; but in the country we espy 
 him from afar and are out at the gate to meet 
 him, with all the scissors and knives in the 
 house. 
 
 There are tramps, too, of course. Not the 
 kind one finds near cities, or in crowded 
 summer watering-places. Our Road does not 
 lead to Rome, at least not very directly, and 
 the tramp who chooses it is sure to be a mild 
 and unenterprising creature, a desultory 
 
THE COUNTRY ROAD 127 
 
 tramp who does not really know his business. 
 Some of the same ones come back year after 
 year, and, in defiance of modem sociological 
 science, we offer them the hospitality of the 
 back porch with sandwiches and coffee, while 
 we exchange the commonplaces of the season. 
 It is the custom of the Road. 
 
 And so the procession of the Road moves 
 on. If we wait long enough — and it is not 
 so long either — everything goes by: gay 
 wedding parties, christening parties, slow 
 funerals, the Road bears them all; and to 
 those who live beside it nothing is alien, no- 
 thing indifferent. Throughout the week the 
 daytime is for business — remembering al- 
 ways that on the country Road business is 
 never merely business, but always sociability 
 too; the early evening is for pleasure; the 
 night is for rest, for that stillness that cities 
 never know, broken only when human neces- 
 sity most sharply importunes, in the crises of 
 birth, of death. On Sundays all the world 
 drives to church, or sits on its doorstep and 
 watches the rest. And Sunday and week 
 days alike, every one's interest goes out to the 
 Road. 
 
128 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 I venture to say that when we think of our 
 city homes we think of their interiors, but 
 when we think of our farmhouse homes we 
 think of the Road as well. They are like little 
 islands in a river, — one remembers them 
 together. For the Road is a river — a river of 
 life. Most of our words about roads imply 
 motion. A road comes, we say, and it goes, it 
 sweeps, it curves, it climbs, it descends, it 
 rises and drops, it bends and turns. And, in 
 fact, it means movement, it is always bringing 
 life and taking it again, or if for a time it does 
 neither, it is always inviting, always promis- 
 ing. We have all felt it. As we are whirled 
 along in a railway train even, the thing that 
 stirs our imagination is the roads, the paths. 
 I can still remember glimpses of these that I 
 had years ago — a footpath over a rounded 
 hilltop through long yellow grass, a rough 
 logging-road beside a foaming mountain 
 river, a brushy wood road leading through 
 bars into deep shade, a country road at dusk, 
 curving past a low farmhouse with lights in 
 the windows. I could never follow these 
 roads, but I remember them still, and still 
 they allure me. 
 
THE COUNTRY ROAD 129 
 
 Our Road, as it flows placidly past our 
 farm, suggests nothing very exciting or spec- 
 tacular. It is a pretty bit of road, rounding a 
 rocky corner of the farm and leading past the 
 old house under cool depths of maple shade, 
 out again into a broad space of sunlight, 
 dropping over a little hill, around a curve, and 
 out of sight. I know it well, of course, every 
 rock and flower of it, but its final appeal to 
 me is not through its beauty, it is not even 
 through my sense of ownership in it; it is 
 simply that it is a Road — a road that leads 
 out of Everywhere into Everywhere Else, a 
 road that goes on. About a road that ends 
 there is no glamour. It may be pretty or use- 
 ful, but as a road it is a failure. For the Road 
 is the symbol of endless possibility. From the 
 faintest footpath across a meadow, where as a 
 child one has always felt that some elf or 
 gnome may appear, or along which, if one 
 were to wander with sufficient negligence, one 
 might be led into the realm of " faerie " to the 
 broad turnpike which fares through open 
 country, plunges through the surging cities, 
 and escapes to broad lands beyond — any 
 path, any road, makes this appeal. And so 
 
130 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 long as one has faith that what may be is 
 more than what is, so long as one has the 
 buoyant patience to await it or the will to go 
 forth and seek it, so long as one has the im- 
 agination and the heart of the wayfarer, 
 the charm of the Road will be potent. 
 
X 
 
 The Lure of the Berry 
 
 Men have sung the praises of fishing and 
 hunting, they have extolled the joys of boat- 
 ing and riding, they have dwelt at length 
 upon the pleasures of automobiling. But 
 there is one — sport, shall I call it? — which 
 no one seems to have thought worth mention- 
 ing : the gentle sport of berrying. 
 
 Perhaps calling it a sport is an unfortunate 
 beginning; it gives us too much to live up to. 
 No, it is not a sport, though I can't think why, 
 since it is quite as active as drop-line fishing. 
 Perhaps the trouble is with the game — the 
 fish are more active than the berries, and 
 their excesses cover the deficiencies of the 
 stolid figure in the boat. 
 
 What, then, shall we call it.^^ Not an oc- 
 cupation; it is too desultory for that; nor an 
 amusement, because of a certain tradition of 
 usefulness that hangs about it. Probably it 
 belongs in that small but select group of 
 
132 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 things that people do ostensibly because they 
 are useful but really because they are fun. 
 At any rate, it does not matter how we class 
 it, — it is just berrying. 
 
 But not strawberrying. Strawberries are 
 so far down, and so few! They cannot be 
 picked with comfort by any one over six years 
 old. 
 
 Nor blackberrying ! Blackberries are good 
 when gathered in, but in the gathering pro- 
 cess there is nothing restful or soothing. They 
 always grow in hot places, and the briers 
 make you cross; they pull your hair and 
 ** sprout " your clothes and scratch your wrists. 
 And the berries stain your fingers dark blue, 
 and, moreover, they are frequented by those 
 unpleasant little triangular, greenish-brown 
 creatures known as squash bugs, which I do 
 not believe even the Ancient Mariner could 
 have been called upon to love. No, I do not 
 mean blackberrying. 
 
 What then.^ What indeed but huckleberry- 
 ing ! How can I adequately sing the praises of 
 the gentle, the neat, the comfortable huckle- 
 berry! No briers, no squash bugs, no back- 
 breaking stoop or arm-rending stretch to 
 
THE LURE OF THE BERRY 133 
 
 reach them. Just a big, bushy, green clump, 
 full of glossy black or softly blue berries, and 
 you can sit right down on the tussocks among 
 them, put your pail underneath a bush, and 
 begin. At first, the handfuls drop in with a 
 high-keyed "plinking" sound; then, when the 
 "bottom is covered," this changes to a soft 
 patter altogether satisfactory; and as you sit 
 stripping the crisp branches and letting the 
 neat little balls roll through your fingers, your 
 spirit grows calm within you, you feel the 
 breeze, you look up now and then over 
 stretches of hill, or pasture, or sky, and you 
 settle into a state of complete acquiescence 
 in things as they are. 
 
 For there is always a breeze, and always a 
 view, at least where my huckleberries grow. 
 If any one should ask me where to find a good 
 situation for a house, I should answer, with a 
 comprehensive wave of my arm, "Oh, choose 
 any huckleberry patch." Only 't were pity to 
 demolish so excellent a thing as a huckleberry 
 patch, merely to erect so doubtful a thing as a 
 house. 
 
 I know one such — a royal one even among 
 huckleberry patches. To get to it you go up 
 
134 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 an old road, — up, and up, and up, — you 
 pass big fields, newmown and wide open to 
 the sky, you get broader and broader outlooks 
 over green woodland and blue rolling hills, 
 with a bit of azure river in the midst. You 
 come out on great flats of rock, thinly edged 
 with light turf, and there before you are the 
 "berry lots," as the natives call them, — 
 rolling, windy uplands, with nothing bigger 
 than cedars and wild cherry trees to break 
 their sweep. The berry bushes crowd together 
 in thick-set patches, waist-high, interspersed 
 with big "high-bush" shrubs in clumps or 
 alone, low, hoary juniper, and great, dark 
 masses of richly glossy, richly fragrant bay. 
 The pointed cedars stand about like sentinels, 
 stiff enough save where their sensitive tops 
 lean delicately away from the wind. In the 
 scant herbage between is goldenrod, the earli- 
 est and the latest alike at home here, and red 
 lilies and asters, and down close to the ground, 
 if you care to stoop for them, trailing vines 
 of dewberries with their fruit, the sweetest 
 of all the blackberries. Truly it is a goodly 
 prospect, and one to fill the heart with satis- 
 faction that the world is as it is. 
 
THE LURE OF THE BERRY 135 
 
 The pleasure of huckleberrying is partly in 
 the season — the late summer-time, from 
 mid-July to September. The poignant joys of 
 early spring are passed, and the exuberance of 
 early summer, while the keen stimulus of fall 
 has not yet come. Things are at poise. The 
 haying is over, the meadows, shorn of their 
 rich grass, lie tawny-green under the sky, and 
 the world seems bigger than before. It is not 
 a time for dreams nor a time for exploits; it 
 it a time for — for — well, for berrying! 
 
 But you must choose your days carefully, 
 as you do your fishing and hunting days. 
 The berries "bite best" with a brisk west 
 wind, though a south one is not to be despised, 
 and a north one gives a pleasant suggestion 
 of fall while the sun has still all the fervor of 
 summer. Choose a sky that has clouds in it, 
 too, for you will feel their movement even 
 when you do not look up. Then take your 
 pail and set out. Do not be in a hurry and do 
 not promise to be back at any definite time. 
 Either go alone or with just the right com- 
 panion. I do not know any circumstances 
 wherein the choice of a companion needs more 
 care than in berrying. It may make or mar 
 
136 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 the whole adventure. For you must have a 
 person not too energetic, or a standard of 
 speed will be established that will spoil every- 
 thing; nor too conscientious — it is madden- 
 ing to be told that you have not picked the 
 bushes clean enough; nor too diligent, so that 
 one feels guilty if one looks at the view or 
 acknowledges the breeze; nor too restless, so 
 that one is being constantly haled to fresh 
 woods and pastures new. A slightly garrul- 
 ous person is not bad, with a desultory, semi- 
 philosophic bent, and a gift for being con- 
 tented with easy physical occupation. In 
 fact, I find that I am, by exclusion and inclu- 
 sion, narrowing my description to fit a certain 
 type of small boy. And indeed I believe that 
 here the ideal companion is to be found, — if 
 indeed he is not, as I more than suspect he is, 
 the ideal companion for every form of recrea- 
 tion in life. Yes, the boy is the thing. Some 
 of my choicest hours in the berry lots have 
 been spent with a boy as companion, some 
 boy who loves to be in the wind and sun with- 
 out knowing that he loves it, who philos- 
 ophizes without knowing that he does so, who 
 picks berries with sufficient diligence some- 
 
THE LURE OF THE BERRY 137 
 
 times, and with a delightful irresponsibihty 
 at other times; who hkes to move on, now 
 and then, but is happy to kick turf around the 
 edges of the clump if you are inclined to stay. 
 Who takes pride in filling his pail, but is not 
 so desperately single-minded that he is un- 
 moved by the seductions of goldenrod in 
 bloom, of juniper and bayberries, of dry gold- 
 enrod stalks (for kite sticks), of deserted 
 birds' nests, and all the other delights that 
 fall in his way. 
 
 For berrying does not consist chiefly in 
 getting berries, any more than fishing con- 
 sists chiefly in getting fish, or hunting in 
 getting birds. The essence of berrying is the 
 state of mind that accompanies it. It is 
 a semi-contemplative recreation, providing 
 physical quiet with just enough motion to 
 prevent restlessness — being, in this respect, 
 like "whittling." I said semi-contemplative, 
 because, while it seems to induce meditation, 
 the beauty of it is that you don't really med- 
 itate at all, you only think you are doing so, 
 or are going to. That is what makes it so re- 
 cuperative in its effects. It just delicately 
 shaves^the line between stimulating you to 
 
138 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 thought and boring you because it does not 
 stimulate. Thus it brings about in you a per- 
 fect state of poise most restful in itself and 
 in a complete harmony with the midsummer 
 season. 
 
 Yes, fishing is good, and hunting is good, 
 and all the sports are good in their turn — 
 even sitting in a rocking-chair on a boarding- 
 house piazza has, perhaps, its charms and its 
 benefits for some; — but when the sun is hot 
 and the wind is cool, when the hay is in and 
 the yellowing fields lie broad, when the woods 
 have gathered their birds and their secrets to 
 their very hearts, when the sky is deeply, 
 warmly blue, and the clouds pile soft or float 
 thin and light, then give me a pail and let me 
 wander up, up, to the great open berry lots. 
 I will let the sun shine on me and the wind 
 blow me, and I will love the whole big 
 world, and I will think not a single thought, 
 and at sundown I will come home with a full 
 pail and a contentedly empty mind. 
 
XI 
 
 In the Rain 
 
 It was raining. It had begun to rain the 
 afternoon before; it had rained all night, with 
 the drizzling, sozzling kind of rain that indi- 
 cated persistence. It had rained all the morn- 
 ing; it was obviously going to rain all day. 
 The hollow beside the stone hitching-post, 
 where the grocer's horse and the butcher's 
 horse and the fishman's horse had stamped, 
 all through the drought, was now a pool of 
 brown water, with the raindrops making 
 gooseflesh on it. There was another pond 
 under the front gate, and another under the 
 hammock; and the middle of the road, in the 
 horse rut, was a narrow brown brook. The 
 tiger lilies in the old stump were bending with 
 their load of wetness, the phlox in the garden 
 was weighed down till its white masses nearly 
 touched earth. Indoors, when the wind lulled 
 and the rain fell straighter, we could hear 
 the drops tick-tick-ticking on the bark of 
 
140 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 the birch logs in the fireplace. This flue of the 
 chimney is almost vertical, with a slant to the 
 southward, and I have always liked the way 
 it lets in samples of the weather — a patch of 
 yellow sunshine on clear days, a blur of soft 
 white light on gray ones, and on stormy 
 ones flicks of rain to make the fire sputter, 
 or, as on this particular day, to dampen 
 our kindling if it has been laid ready to 
 light. 
 
 The belated postman's buggy, with pre- 
 sumably a postman inside it somewhere be- 
 hind the sheathing of black rubber, drove up, 
 our mail-box grated open and shut, and the 
 streaming horse sloshed on. Jonathan turned 
 up his collar and dashed out to the box, and 
 dashed in again, bringing with him a great 
 gust of rainy sweetness and the smell of wet 
 woolen. 
 
 "Jonathan," I said, "let's take a walk." 
 
 He was unfolding the damp newspaper 
 carefully so as not to tear it. "What's 
 that? Walk?" 
 
 "That's what I said." 
 
 He had his paper open by this time, and 
 was glancing at the headlines. When a man 
 
IN THE RAIN 141 
 
 is glancing at headlines, it is just as well to let 
 him glance. I gave him fifteen minutes. Then 
 I reopened the matter. 
 
 "Jonathan, I said walk." 
 
 "What's that.^" His tone was vague. It 
 was what I call his newspaper tone. It sug- 
 gests extreme remoteness, but tolerance, even 
 benevolence, if he is let alone. He drifted 
 slowly over to the window and made a pre- 
 tense of looking out, but his eyes were still 
 running down the columns. "My dear," he 
 remarked, still in the same tone, "had you 
 noticed that it is beginning to rain.^" 
 
 "I noticed that yesterday afternoon, about 
 three o'clock," I said. 
 
 "Oh, all right. I thought perhaps you 
 had n't." 
 
 "Well.?" I waited. 
 
 "Well — " he hung fire while he finished 
 the tail of the editorial. Then he threw down 
 the paper. "Don't you think it's rather poor 
 weather for walking.?" 
 
 This was what I had been waiting for, and 
 I responded glibly, "Some one has said there 
 is no such thing as bad weather, there are only 
 good clothes." 
 
142 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "Do you mean mine?" He grinned down 
 at his farm regimentals. 
 /'Well, then— " 
 
 "Why, of course, if you really mean it," he 
 said, and added, as he looked out reflectively 
 at the puddling road, "You'll get your hair 
 wet." 
 
 "Hope so! Now, Jonathan, aren't you 
 silly, really.'^ Anybody would think we'd 
 never been for a walk in the rain before in our 
 lives. Perhaps you 'd rather stay indoors and 
 be a tabby-cat and keep dry." 
 
 "Who got the mail.?" 
 
 "You did. But you wanted the paper — 
 and you ran." 
 
 The fact was, as I very well knew, Jonathan 
 really wanted to go, but he did n't want to 
 start. When people really enjoy doing a 
 thing, and mean to do it, and yet won't get 
 going, something has to be done to get them 
 going. That was why I spoke of tabby-cats. 
 
 Jonathan assumed an alert society tone. 
 "I should enjoy a walk very much, thank 
 you," he said; "the weather seems to me per- 
 fect. But," he added abruptly, "wear woolen; 
 that white thing won't do." 
 
IN THE RAIN 143 
 
 "Of course!" I went ofiF and made myself 
 fit — woolen for warmth, though the day 
 was not cold, a short khaki skirt, an old 
 felt hat, and old shoes. Out we went into 
 the drenched world. Whish! A gust of rain 
 in my eyes half blinded me, and I ran 
 under the big maples. I heard Jonathan 
 chuckle. "I can't help it," I gasped; "I'll be 
 wet enough in a few minutes, and then I 
 shan't care." 
 
 From the maples I made for the lee of the 
 barn eaves, disturbing the hens who were 
 sulking there. They stepped ostentatiously 
 out into the rainy barnyard with an air of 
 pointedly not noticing me, but of knowing all 
 the time whose fault it was. They were n't 
 liking the weather, anyhow, the hens were n't, 
 and showed it plainly in the wet, streaky 
 droop of their feathers and the exasperated 
 look in their red eyes. "Those hens look as if 
 they thought I could do something about it if 
 I only would," I said to Jonathan as we passed 
 them. 
 
 "Yes, they are n't a cordial crowd. Here, 
 we'll show them how to take weather!" 
 
 We were passing under an apple tree; Jona- 
 
144 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 than seized a drooping bough, and a sheet of 
 water shook itself out on our shoulders. I 
 gasped and ducked, and a hen who stood too 
 near scuttered off with low duckings of in- 
 dignation. 
 
 "Now you're really wet, you can enjoy 
 yourself," said Jonathan; and there was 
 something in it, though I was loath to admit 
 it at the moment. A moment before I had 
 felt rather appalled at the sight of the rain- 
 swept lane; now I hastened on recklessly. 
 
 "I think," said Jonathan, "it's the back of 
 my neck that counts. After that 's wet I don't 
 care what happens." 
 
 "Yes," I agreed, "that's a stronghold. But 
 I think with me it's my shoulders." 
 
 It did not really matter which it was; 
 neck and shoulders both were wet, — back, 
 arms, everything. We tramped down across 
 the hollow, over the brook, whose flood was 
 backing up into the swamp on each side. I 
 paused to look off across the huckleberry 
 hillside beyond. 
 
 " How the rain changes everything ! " I said. 
 
 All the colors had freshened and darkened, 
 and the blur of the rain softened the picture 
 
IN THE RAIN 145 
 
 and "brought it together," as the painters 
 say. 
 
 "Well," said Jonathan, "woods or open?" 
 
 "Which is the wettest?" 
 
 "Woods." 
 
 "Then woods." 
 
 And we plunged in under the big chestnuts, 
 through a mass of witch-hazel and birch. 
 
 Jonathan was quite right. Woods were the 
 wettest. One can hardly fancy anything 
 quite so wet. Solid water, like a river, is not 
 comparable, because it is all in one lump; 
 you know where it is, and you can get out of 
 it when you want to. But here in the woods 
 the water was everywhere, ready to hurl itself 
 upon us, from above, from beside us, from 
 below. Every step, every motion, drew upon 
 us drenching showers of great drops that had 
 been hanging heavily in the leaves ready to 
 break away at a touch. Little streamlets of 
 water ran from the drooping edges of my hat 
 and from my chin, water dashed in my eyes 
 and I blinked it out. 
 
 Jonathan, pausing to hold back a dripping 
 spray of blackberry, heavy with fruit, re- 
 marked, "Are n't you getting a little damp? " 
 
146 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "I wonder if I am!" I answered joyously, 
 and plunged on into the next thicket. 
 
 There is as much exhilaration in being out 
 in a big rain and getting really rained through, 
 as there is in being out in surf. It has nothing 
 in common with the sensations that arise 
 when, umbrellaed and mackintoshed and 
 rubber-overshoed, we pick our way gingerly 
 along the street, wondering how much we 
 can keep dry, hoping everything is "up" all 
 round, wishing the wind would n't keep chang- 
 ing and blowing the umbrella so, and fancying 
 how we shall look when we "get there." But 
 when you don't care — when you want to get 
 wet, and do — there is a physical glow that 
 is delightful, a sense of being washed through 
 and through, of losing one's identity almost, 
 and being washed away into the great swirl 
 of nature where one does n't count much, but 
 is glad to be taken in as a part. I fancy this is 
 true with any of the elements — earth, air, 
 water. The tale of Antaeus was no mere leg- 
 end; there is real strength for us in close con- 
 tact with the earth. There is a purifying and 
 uplifting potency in the winds, a potency in 
 the waters — ocean and river and great rain. 
 
IN THE RAIN 147 
 
 Our civilization has dealt with all these so 
 successfully that we are apt to think of them 
 as docile servants, or perhaps as petty annoy- 
 ances, and we lose the sense of their power 
 unless we deliberately go out to meet them in 
 their own domain and let them have their 
 way with us. Then, indeed, they sweep us 
 out of ourselves for a season, and that is 
 good. 
 
 We came out from the thickets on a high, 
 brushy field, sheeted in fine rain that dimmed 
 even the near wood edges. Blackberries grew 
 thick, and we made our way carefully among 
 the briers, following the narrow and devious 
 cow-paths. Suddenly we both stopped. • Just 
 ahead of us, under a blackberry bush, was a 
 huge snapping-turtle. He was standing on his 
 hind legs, with his fore legs resting on a 
 branch loaded with fruit, his narrow dark 
 head stretched far up and out, while he 
 quietly ate berry after berry. He was a hand- 
 some fellow, with his big black shell all bril- 
 liant in the wetness of the rain. As he worked 
 we could see his under side, and notice how it 
 shaded to yellow along the sutures. It was a 
 scene of contentment, and the berries, drip- 
 
148 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 ping with fresh raindrops, looked luscious in- 
 deed as he feasted. 
 
 We stood and watched him for a while, and 
 I got an entirely new idea of turtles. Turtles 
 usually have too much reserve, too much self- 
 consciousness, too little abandon, and I had 
 never seen one so "come out of himself," lit- 
 erally and figuratively, as this fellow did. It 
 made me want to follow up the acquaintance, 
 this happy chance of finding him, so to speak, 
 in his cups; but I repressed the desire, feeling 
 that he might not share it, and we carefully 
 backed away and went around by another 
 path so as not to disturb the reveler. He never 
 knew how much pleasure he had given as well 
 as received. 
 
 Into the woods again — "Look out!" said 
 Jonathan. "Don't step on the lizards!" 
 
 He stooped and picked up one, which struck 
 an attitude among his dripping fingers — 
 sleek back a little arched, legs in odd, uncouth 
 positions, tail set stiffly in a queer curve. They 
 are brilliant little creatures, with their clear 
 orange-red coats, scarlet-spotted, like a trout. 
 
 "Pretty little chap, is n't he.^" said Jona- 
 than. 
 
IN THE RAIN 149 
 
 "Stylish," I said, "but foolish. They never 
 do anything that I can see, except attitud- 
 inize. 
 
 "But they do a great deal of that," said 
 Jonathan, as he set him gently down. 
 
 "Come on," I said; "I can't stand here 
 being sentimental over your pets. It's rain- 
 mg. 
 
 "Oh, if you 'd like to go — " said Jonathan, 
 and set a pace. 
 
 I followed hard, and we raced down through 
 the empty woods, sliding over the great wet 
 rocks, rolling over black fallen tree trunks, 
 our feet sinking noiselessly in the soft leaf 
 mould of the forest floor. Out again, and 
 through the edge of a cornfield where the 
 broad, wavy ribbon leaves squeaked as we 
 thrust them aside, as only corn leaves can 
 squeak. If we had not been wet already, this 
 would have finished us. There is nothing 
 any wetter than a wet cornfield. 
 
 On over the open pastures, with a grassy 
 swamp at the bottom. We tramped care- 
 lessly through it, not even looking for tus- 
 socks, and the water sucked merrily in and 
 out of our shoes. Into brush once more — 
 
150 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 thick hazel and scrub oak; then down a slope, 
 and we were in the hemlock ravine — a won- 
 derful bit of tall woods, dark-shadowed, sol- 
 emn, hardly changed by the rain, only per- 
 haps a thought darker and stiller, with deeper 
 blue depths of hazy distance between the 
 straight black trunks. At the bottom a brook 
 with dark pools lying beneath mossy rock 
 ledges, or swirling under great hemlock roots, 
 little waterfalls, and shallow rapids over 
 smooth-worn rock faces. It is a wonderful 
 place, a place for a German fairy tale. 
 
 The woods were empty — in a sense, yes. 
 Except for the lizards, the animals run to 
 cover during the rain; woodchucks, rabbits, 
 squirrels, are tucked away somewhere out of 
 sight and sound. Bird notes are hushed; the 
 birds, lurking close-reefed under the lee of 
 the big branches or the heavy foliage, or at 
 the heart of the cedar trees, make no sign as 
 we pass. 
 
 Empty, yet not lonely. When the sun is 
 out and the sky is high and bright, one feels 
 that the world is a large place, belonging to 
 many creatures. But when the sky shuts down 
 and the world is close-wrapped in rain and 
 
IN THE RAIN 151 
 
 drifting mist, it seems to grow smaller and 
 more intimate. Instead of feeling the multi- 
 tudinousness of the life of woods and fields, 
 one feels its unity. We are brought together 
 in the bonds of the rain — we and all the 
 hidden creatures — we seem all in one room 
 together. 
 
 Thus swept into the unity of a dominating 
 mood, the woods sometimes gain a voice of 
 their own. I heard it first on a stormy night 
 when I was walking along the wood road to 
 meet Jonathan. It was a night of wind and 
 rain and blackness — blackness so dense that 
 it seemed a real thing, pressing against my 
 eyes, so complete that at the fork in the roads 
 I had to feel with my hand for the wheel ruts 
 in order to choose the right one. As I grew 
 accustomed to the swish of the rain in my face 
 and the hoarse breath of the wind about mv 
 ears I became aware of another sound — a 
 background of tone. I thought at first it was 
 a child calling, but no, it was not that; it was 
 not a call, but a song; and not that either — 
 it was more like many voices, high but not 
 shrill, and very far away, softly intoning. It 
 was neither sad nor joyous; it suggested 
 
152 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 dreamy, reiterant thoughts; it was not music, 
 but the memory of music. If one listened too 
 keenly, it was gone, like a faint star which 
 can be glimpsed only if one looks a little 
 away from it. 
 
 As I had listened that night I began to 
 wonder if it was all my own fancy, and when 
 I met Jonathan I made him stop. 
 
 "Wait a minute," I begged him, "and lis- 
 ten." 
 
 "I hear it. Come on," he had said. Supper 
 was in his thoughts. 
 
 "What do you hear .^" 
 
 "Just what you do." 
 
 "What's that.f^" I had persisted, as we 
 fumbled our way along. 
 
 "Voices — I don't know what you'd call 
 it — the woods. It often sounds like that in a 
 big rain." 
 
 Jonathan's matter-of-factness had rather 
 pleased me. 
 
 "I thought it might be my imagination. 
 I'm glad it was n't," I said. 
 
 "Perhaps it's both our imaginations," he 
 suggested. 
 
 "No. We both do lots of imagining, but 
 
IN THE RAIN 153 
 
 it never overlaps. When it does, it shows it's 
 
 so." 
 
 Perhaps I was not very clear, but he seemed 
 to understand. 
 
 Since then I have heard it now and again, 
 this singing of the rain-swept woods. Not 
 often, for it is a capricious thing, or perhaps 
 I ought rather to say I do not understand the 
 manner of its uprising. Rain alone will not 
 bring it to pass, wind alone will not, and some- 
 times even when they are importuned by wind 
 and rain together the woods are silent. Per- 
 haps, too, it is not every stretch of woods that 
 can sing, or at all seasons. In winter they can 
 whistle, and sigh, and creak, but I am sure 
 that when I have heard these singing voices 
 the trees have always had their full leafage. 
 But however it comes about, I am glad of the 
 times that I have heard it. And whenever I 
 read tales of the Wild Huntsman and all his 
 kind, there come into my mind as an inter- 
 preting background memories of wonderful 
 black nights and storm-ridden woods swept 
 by overtones of distant and elusive sound. 
 
 We did not hear the woods sing that day. 
 Perhaps there was not wind enough, or per- 
 
154 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 haps the woods on the "home piece" are not 
 big enough, for it chances that I have never 
 heard the sound there. 
 
 As we came up the lane at dusk we saw the 
 ghmmer of the house hghts. 
 
 "Does n't that look good?" I said to Jona- 
 than. "And won't it be good when we are all 
 dry and in front of the fire and you have your 
 pipe and I'm making toast?" 
 
 I am perfectly sure that Jonathan agreed 
 with me, but what he said was, "I thought 
 you came out for pleasure." 
 
 "Well, can't I come home for pleasure 
 too?" I asked. 
 
XII 
 
 As the Bee Flies 
 
 Jonathan had taken me to see the "bee 
 tree" down in the "old John Lane lot." 
 Judging from the name, the spot must have 
 been a clearing at one time, but now it is one 
 of the oldest pieces of woodland in the local- 
 ity. The bee tree, a huge chestnut, cut down 
 thirty years ago for its store of honey, is sink- 
 ing back into the forest floor, but we could 
 still see its hollow heart and charred sides 
 where the fire had been made to smoke out 
 the bees. 
 
 "Jonathan," I said, "I'd like to find some 
 wild honey. It sounds so good." 
 
 "No better than tame honey," said Jona- 
 than. 
 
 "It sounds better. I'm sure it would be 
 different scooped out of a tree like this than 
 done up neatly in pound squares." 
 
 "Tastes just the same," persisted Jonathan 
 prosaically. 
 
156 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "Well, anyway, I want to find a bee tree. 
 Let's go bee-hunting!" 
 
 ''What's the use? You don't know a 
 honeybee from a bumblebee." 
 
 *'Well, you do, of course," I answered, 
 tactfully. 
 
 Jonathan, mollified, became gracious. "I 
 never went bee-hunting, but I've heard the 
 old fellows tell how it's done. But it takes all 
 day." 
 
 "So much the better," I said. 
 
 And that night I looked through our books 
 to find out what I could about bees. Over the 
 fireplace in what was once the "best parlor" 
 is a long, low cupboard with glass doors. Here 
 Bibles, albums, and a few other books have 
 always been stored, and from this I pulled 
 down a fat, gilt-lettered volume called "The 
 Household Friend." This book has something 
 to say about almost everything, and, sure 
 enough, it had an article on bees. But the 
 Household Friend had obviously never gone 
 bee-hunting, and the only real information I 
 got was that bees had four wings and six legs. 
 
 "So has a fly," said Jonathan, when I came 
 to him with this nugget of wisdom. 
 
AS THE BEE FLIES 157 
 
 The neighbors gave suggestions. "You 
 want to go when the yeller-top's in bloom," 
 said one. 
 
 "Yellow-top?" I questioned, stupidly 
 enough. 
 
 "Yes. Yeller-top — 't 's in bloom now," 
 with a comprehensive wave of the hand. 
 
 "Oh, you mean goldenrod!" 
 
 "Well, I guess you call it that. Yeller-top 
 we call it. You find one o' them old back 
 fields where the yeller-top's come in, 'n' you'll 
 see bees 'nough." 
 
 Another friend told us that when we had 
 caught our bee we must drop honey on her 
 back. This would send her to the hive to get 
 her friends to groom her off, and they would 
 all return with her to see where the honey 
 came from. This sounded improbable, but we 
 were in no position to criticize our informa- 
 tion. 
 
 As to the main points of procedure all our 
 advisers agreed. We were to put honey in an 
 open box, catch a bee in it, and when she had 
 loaded up with honey, let her go, watch her 
 flight and locate the direction of her home. 
 When she returned with friends for more 
 
158 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 honey, we were to shut them in, carry the box 
 on in the line of flight, and let them go again. 
 We were to keep this up until we reached the 
 bee tree. It sounded simple. 
 
 We got our box — two boxes, to be sure of 
 our resources — baited them with chunks of 
 comb, and took along little window panes for 
 covers. Then we packed up luncheon and set 
 out for an abandoned pasture in our woods 
 where we remembered the "yeller-top" grew 
 thick. Our New England fall mornings are 
 cool, and as we walked up the shady wood 
 road Jonathan predicted that it would be no 
 use to hunt bees. *' They '11 be so stiff they 
 can't crawl. Look at that lizard, now!" He 
 stooped and touched a little red newt lying 
 among the pebbles of the roadway. The little 
 fellow seemed dead, but when Jonathan held 
 him in the hollow of his hand for a few mo- 
 ments he gradually thawed out, began to 
 wriggle, and finally dropped through between 
 his fingers and scampered under a stone. 
 "See.^" said Jonathan. "We'll have to thaw 
 out every bee just that way." 
 
 But I had confidence that the sun would 
 take the place of Jonathan's hand, and re- 
 
AS THE BEE FLIES 159 
 
 fused to give up my hunt. From the main 
 log-road we turned oflf into a path, once a well- 
 trodden way to the old ox pastures, but now 
 almost overgrown, and pushed on through 
 brier and sweet-fern and huckleberry and 
 young birch, down across a little brook, and 
 up again to the "old Sharon lot," a long jBeld 
 framed in big woods and grown up to sumac 
 and brambles and goldenrod. It was warmer 
 here, in the steady sunshine, sheltered from 
 the crisp wind by the tree walls around us, 
 and we began to look about hopefully for bees. 
 At first Jonathan's gloomy prognostications 
 seemed justified — there was not a bee in 
 sight. A few wasps were stirring, trailing their 
 long legs as they flew. Then one or two "yel- 
 low jackets" appeared, and some black-and- 
 white hornets. But as the field grew warmer 
 it grew populous, bumblebees hummed, and 
 finally some little soft brown bees arrived 
 — surely the ones we wanted. Cautiously 
 Jonathan approached one, held his box under 
 the goldenrod clump, brought the glass down 
 slowly from above — and the bee was ours. 
 She was a gentle little thing, and did not seem 
 to resent her treatment at all, but dropped 
 
160 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 down on to the honeycomb and fell to work. 
 Jonathan had providently cut a three-forked 
 stick, and he now stuck this into the ground 
 and set the box on the forks so that it was 
 about on a level with the goldenrod tops. 
 Then he carefully drew off the glass, and we 
 sat down to watch. 
 
 "Should n't you think she must have had 
 enough?" I said, after a while — "Oh! there 
 she comes now!" 
 
 Our bee appeared on the edge of the box, 
 staggering heavily. She rubbed her legs, 
 rubbed her wings, shook herself, girded up 
 her loins, as it were, and brushed the hair out 
 of her eyes, and finally rose, turning on her- 
 self in a close spiral which widened into larger 
 and larger circles above the box, and at 
 length, after two or three wide sweeps w^here 
 we nearly lost track of her, she darted off in a 
 "bee-line" for a tall chestnut tree on a knoll 
 to the westward. 
 
 "Will she come back?" we wondered. Five 
 minutes — ten — fifteen — it seemed an 
 hour. 
 
 "She must have been a drone," said Jona- 
 than. 
 
AS THE BEE FLIES 161 
 
 "Or maybe she was n't a honeybee at all," 
 I suggested, gloomily. " She might be just an- 
 other kind of hornet — no, look ! There she is ! " 
 
 I could hardly have been more thrilled if 
 my fairy godmother had appeared on the 
 goldenrod stalk and waved her wand at me. 
 To think that the bee really did play the game ! 
 I knelt and peered in over the side of the box. 
 Yes, there she was, all six feet in the honey, 
 pumping away with might and main through 
 her little red tongue, or proboscis, or whatever 
 it was. We sank back among the weeds and 
 waited for her to go. As she rose, in the same 
 spirals, and disappeared westward, Jonathan 
 said, "If she does n't bring another one back 
 with her this time, we'll try dropping honey 
 on her back. You wait here and be a land- 
 mark for the bee while I try to catch another 
 one in the other box." 
 
 I settled down comfortably under the yel- 
 low-top, and instantly I realized what a pleas- 
 ant thing it is to be a landmark. For one 
 thing, when you sit down in a field you get a 
 very different point of view from that when 
 you stand. Goldenrod is different looked at 
 from beneath, with sky beyond it; sky is dif- 
 
162 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 ferent seen through waving masses of yellow. 
 Moreover, when you sit still outdoors, the 
 life of things comes to you; when you are 
 moving yourself, it evades you. Down among 
 the weeds where I sat, the sun was hot, but the 
 breeze was cool, and it brought to me, now 
 the scent of wild grapes from an old stonewall, 
 now the spicy fragrance of little yellow apples 
 on a gnarled old tree in the fence corner, now 
 the sharp tang of the goldenrod itself. The 
 air was full of the hum of bees, and soon I 
 began to distinguish their different tones — 
 the deep, rich drone of the bumblebees, the 
 higher singsong of the honeybees, the snarl 
 of the yellow- jacket, the jerky, nasal twang 
 of the black-and-white hornet. They began 
 to come close around me; two bumblebees 
 hung on a frond of goldenrod so close to my 
 face that I could see the pollen dust on their 
 fur. Crickets and grasshoppers chirped and 
 trilled beside me. All the little creatures 
 seemed to have accepted me — all but one 
 black-and-white hornet, who left his proper 
 pursuits, whatever they may have been, to 
 investigate me. He buzzed all around me in 
 an insistent, ill-bred way that was annoying. 
 
AS THE BEE FLIES 163 
 
 He examined my neck and hair with unneces- 
 sary thoroughness, flew away, returned to 
 begin all over again, flew away and returned 
 once more; but at last even he gave up the 
 matter and went off about his business. 
 
 Butterflies came fluttering past me : — big, 
 rust-colored ones pointed in black; pale russet 
 and silver ones; dancing little yellow ones; 
 big black ones with blue-green spots, rather 
 shabby and languid, as at the end of a gay 
 season. Darning-needles darted back and 
 forth, with their javelin-like flight, or mounted 
 high by sudden steps, or lighted near me, with 
 that absolute rigidity that is the positive 
 negation of movement. A flying grasshopper 
 creeping along through the tangle at my feet 
 rose and hung flutteringly over one spot, for 
 no apparent reason, and then, for no better 
 reason, dropped suddenly and was still. A big 
 cicada with green head and rustling wings 
 worked his way clumsily among a pile of last 
 year's goldenrod stalks, freed himself, and 
 whirred away with the harsh, strident buzz 
 that dominates every other sound while it 
 lasts, and when it ceases makes the world 
 seem wonderfully quiet. 
 
164 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 Our bee had gone and come twice before 
 Jonathan returned. ''Hasn't she brought 
 anybody yet? Well, here goes!" He took a 
 slender stem of goldenrod, smeared it with 
 honey, and gently lodged a drop on the bee's 
 back, just where she could not by any possible 
 antics get it off for herself. When the little 
 thing flew she fairly reeled under her burden, 
 tumbled down on to a leaf, recovered herself, 
 and at last flew off on her old line. 
 
 "Now, let's go and cook luncheon," said 
 Jonathan, "and leave her to work it out." 
 
 "But how can I move.^ I'm a land- 
 mark." 
 
 "Oh, leave your handkerchief. Anything 
 white will do." 
 
 So I tied my handkerchief to a goldenrod 
 stalk, and we went back to the brook. W^e 
 made a fire on a flat stone, under which we 
 could hear the brook running, broiled our chops 
 on long, forked sticks, broiled some "beef- 
 steak" mushrooms that we had found on a 
 chestnut stump, and ended with water from 
 the spring under the giant birch tree. Blue 
 jays came noisily to investigate us; a yellow- 
 hammer floated softly down to the branch 
 
AS THE BEE FLIES 165 
 
 overhead, gave a little purring cluck of sur- 
 prise, and flew off again, with a flare of tawny- 
 yellow wings. In the warmth of the Indian 
 summer noon the shade of the woods was 
 pleasant, and I let Jonathan go back to the 
 bees while I lay on a dry slope above the brook 
 and watched the slim, tall chestnuts swaying 
 in the wind. It is almost like being at sea to 
 lie in the woods and look up at the trees. 
 Their waving tops seem infinitely far away, 
 but the sky beyond seems very near, and one 
 can almost feel the earth go round. 
 
 As I lay there I heard a snapping of twigs 
 and rustling of leaves. It was the wrong direc- 
 tion for Jonathan, and I turned gently, expect- 
 ing nothing smaller than a deer — for deer 
 are growing plentiful now in old New England 
 — and met the shameless face of a jerky little 
 red squirrel! He clung to a chestnut trunk 
 and examined me, twitching all over the while, 
 then whisked himself upside down and looked 
 at me from that standpoint, mounted to a 
 branch, clung to the under side and looked 
 again, pretended fright and vanished behind 
 the limb, only to peer over it the next moment 
 to see what I looked like from there — all the 
 
166 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 time clucking and burring like an alarm clock 
 under a pillow. 
 
 The rude thing had broken the spell of 
 quiet, and I got up, remembering the bees, 
 and wandered back to the sunny field, now 
 palpitating with waves of heat. Jonathan was 
 nowhere to be seen, but as I approached the 
 box I discovered him beside it flat on his back 
 among the weeds. 
 
 "Sh-h-h," he warned, "don't frighten them. 
 There were a lot of them when I got here and 
 I've been watching their line. They all go 
 straight for that chestnut." 
 
 "What are you lying down for.^" I asked. 
 
 "I had to. I nearly twisted my neck ofiF 
 following their circles. I'm no owl." 
 
 I sat down near by and we watched a few 
 more go, while others began to arrive. 
 
 "That dab of honey did the work," said 
 Jonathan. "We might as well begin to follow 
 up their line now." 
 
 Waiting till there were a dozen or more in 
 the box, he gently slid on the glass cover, laid 
 a paper over it to darken it, and we set out. 
 Ten minutes' walking brought us past the big 
 chestnut and out to a little clearing. Jonathan 
 
AS THE BEE FLIES 167 
 
 set the box down on a big rock where it would 
 show up well, laid a handkerchief beside it, 
 drew off the glass, and crouched. A bunch of 
 excited bees burst out and away, without 
 noticing their change of place. " They '11 never 
 find their way back there," said Jonathan 
 regretfully; "they'll go straight back to the 
 Sharon lot." 
 
 But there were others in the box, still feed- 
 ing, who had not been disturbed by the move, 
 and these he touched with honey drops. They 
 staggered off, one by one, orienting them- 
 selves properly as they rose, and taking the 
 same old line off to the westward. This was 
 disappointing. We had hoped to see them 
 turn back, showing that we had passed their 
 home tree. However, there was nothing to do 
 but sit and wait for them. In six minutes they 
 began to come back, in twos and threes — 
 evidently the honey drops on their shoulders 
 had told the hive a sufficiently alluring story. 
 Again we waited until the box was well filled 
 with them, then closed it and went on west- 
 ward. Two more moves brought us to a half- 
 cleared ridge from which we could see out 
 across country. To the westward, and sadly 
 
168 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 near, was the end of the big woods and the 
 beginning of pastures and farmland. 
 
 Jonathan scrutinized the farms dotting the 
 slopes. "See that bunch of red barns with a 
 white house?" he said. "That's Bill More- 
 head's. He keeps bees. Bet we 've got bees 
 from his hive and they'll lead us plumb into 
 his back yard." 
 
 It did begin to seem probable, and we took 
 up our box in some depression of spirits. Two 
 more stops, the bees still perversely flying 
 westward, and we emerged in pastures. 
 
 "Here's our last stop," said Jonathan. "If 
 they don't go back into that edge we've just 
 left, they 're Morehead's. There is n't another 
 bit of woods big enough to hold a bee tree for 
 seven miles to the west of us." 
 
 There was no rock to set the box on, so we 
 lay down on the turf; Jonathan set the box 
 on his chest, and partly slid the cover. He 
 had by this time learned the trick of making 
 the bees, even the excited ones, come out 
 singly. We watched each one as she escaped 
 circle above us, circle, circle against the clear 
 blue of the afternoon sky, then dart off — 
 alas ! — vv estward. As the last one flew we 
 
AS THE BEE FLIES 169 
 
 sat up, disconsolately, and gazed across the 
 pasture. 
 
 "Tame bees ! " muttered Jonathan, in a tone 
 of grief and disgust. "Tame bees, down there 
 in my old woodlots. It's trespass!" 
 
 "You might claim some of Morehead's 
 honey," I suggested, "since you've been 
 feeding his bees. But, then," I reflected, "it 
 would n't be wild honey, and what I wanted 
 was wild honey." 
 
 We rose dejectedly, and Jonathan picked 
 up the box. "Are n't you going to leave it for 
 the bees.P" I asked. "They'll be so disap- 
 pointed when they come back." 
 
 "They aren't the only ones to be disap- 
 pointed," he remarked grimly. "Here, we'll 
 have mushrooms for supper, anyway." And 
 he stooped to collect a big puff-ball. 
 
 We walked home, our spirits gradually 
 rising. After all, it is hard to stay depressed 
 under a blue fall sky, with a crisp wind blow- 
 ing in your face and the sense of complete- 
 ness that comes of a long day out of doors. 
 And as we climbed the last long hill to the 
 home farm we could not help feeling cheer- 
 ful. 
 
170 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "Bee-hunting is fun," I said, "even if they 
 are tame bees." 
 
 "It's the best excuse for being a loafer that 
 I've found yet," said Jonathan; "I wonder 
 the tramps don't all go into the business." 
 
 "And some day," I pursued hopefully, 
 "we'll go again and find really wild bees and 
 really wild honey." 
 
 "It would taste just the same, you know," 
 jeered Jonathan. 
 
 And I was so content with life that I let 
 him have the last word. 
 
xm 
 
 A Dawn Experiment 
 
 I HAVE tried dawn fishing, and found it want- 
 ing. I have tried dawn hunting in the woods, 
 after "partridges," and found it not all that 
 Jonathan, in his buoyant enthusiasm, appears 
 to think it. And so, when he grew eloquent 
 regarding the delights of dawn hunting on the 
 marshes, I was not easily fired. I even referred, 
 though very considerately, to some of our 
 previous experiences in affairs of this nature, 
 and confessed a certain reluctance to experi- 
 ment further along these lines. 
 
 "Well, you have had a run of hard luck," 
 he admitted tolerantly, "but you'll find the 
 plover-shooting different. I know you won't 
 be sorry." 
 
 I do not mean to be narrow or prejudiced, 
 and so I consented, though rather hesitat- 
 ingly, to try one more dawn adventure. 
 
 We packed up our guns, ammunition, extra 
 wraps, rubber boots, and alarm clock. These 
 
172 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 five things are essential — nay, six are neces- 
 sary to real content, and the sixth is a bottle 
 of tar and sweet oil. But of that more anon. 
 
 Thus equipped, we went down to a tiny 
 cottage on the shore. We reached the village 
 at dusk, stopped at "the store" to buy bread 
 and butter and fruit, then went on to the 
 little white house that we knew would always 
 be ready to receive us. It has served us as a 
 hunting-lodge many times before, and has 
 always treated us well. 
 
 There is something very pleasant about 
 going back to a well-known place of this sort. 
 It offers the joy of home and the joy of camp- 
 ing, the charm of strangeness and the charm 
 of familiarity. We light the candles and look 
 about. Ah, yes ! There are the magazines we 
 left last winter when we came down for the 
 duck-shooting, there is the bottle of ink we got 
 to fill our pens one stormy day last spring in 
 the trout season, when the downpour quenched 
 the zeal even of Jonathan. In the pantry are 
 the jars of sugar and salt and cereals and tea 
 and coffee and bacon; in the kitchen are the 
 oil stoves ready to light; in the dining-room 
 are the ashes of our last fire. 
 
A DAWN EXPERIMENT 173 
 
 Contentedly I set about making tea and 
 arranging the supper-table, while Jonathan 
 took a basket and pitcher and went off to a 
 neighbor for eggs and milk. We made a fire 
 on the hearth, toasted bread over the embers, 
 and supped frugally but very cozily. 
 
 Afterwards came the setting of the alarm 
 clock — a matter of critical importance. 
 
 "What hour shall it be.'^" inquired Jona- 
 than, his finger on the regulator. 
 
 "Whenever you think best," I answered 
 cheerfully. 
 
 Now, as we both understood, I had no real 
 intention of being literally guided by what 
 Jonathan thought best, — that would have 
 been too rash, — but it opened negotiations 
 pleasantly to say so. 
 
 Jonathan, trying to be obliging against his 
 better judgment, suggested, "Well — six 
 o'clock.?" 
 
 But I refused any such tremendous conces- 
 sion, knowing that I should have to bear the 
 ignominy of it if the adventure proved unfor- 
 tunate. "No, of course not. Six is much too 
 late. Anybody can get up at six." 
 
 "Well, then," he brightened; "say five.?" 
 
174 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "Five," I meditated. ''No, it's quite light 
 at five. We ought to be out there at dayhght, 
 you said." 
 
 Jonathan visibly expanded. He realized 
 that I was behaving very well. I thought so 
 myself, and it made us both very amiable. 
 
 "Yes," he admitted, "we ought to be, of 
 course. And it will take three quarters of an 
 hour to drive out there. Add fifteen minutes 
 to that for breakfast, and fifteen minutes to 
 dress — would a quarter to four be too out- 
 rageous .f^" 
 
 "Oh, make it half-past three," I rejoined 
 recklessly, in a burst of self-sacrifice. 
 
 At least I would not spoke our wheels by 
 slothfulness. The clock was set accordingly, 
 and I went to sleep enveloped in virtue as in 
 a garment, the sound of the sea in my ears. 
 
 Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r ! What has happened.? 
 Oh, the alarm clock! It can't be more than 
 twelve o'clock. I hear the spit of a match, 
 then "Half-past three," from Jonathan. 
 *^No!" I protest. "Yes," he persists, and 
 though his voice is still veiled in sleep, I de- 
 tect in it a firmness to which I foresee I shall 
 
A DAWN EXPERIMENT 175 
 
 yield. My virtue of last night has faded com- 
 pletely, but his zeal is fast colors. I am ready 
 to back out, but, dimly remembering my 
 Spartan attitude of the night before, I don't 
 dare. Thus are we enslaved by our virtues. 
 I submit, with only one word of comment — 
 "And we call this pleasure!" To which Jona- 
 than wisely makes no response. 
 
 We groped our way downstairs, lighted 
 another candle, and sleepily devoured some 
 sandwiches and milk — a necessary but cheer- 
 less process, with all the coziness of the night 
 before conspicuously left out. We heard the 
 carriage being brought up outside, we snatched 
 up our wraps, — sweaters, shawls, coats, — 
 Jonathan picked up the valise with the hunt- 
 ing equipment, we blew out the candles, and 
 went out into the chilly darkness. As our eyes 
 became accustomed to the change, we per- 
 ceived that the sky was not quite black, but 
 gray, and that the stars were fewer than in the 
 real night. We got in, tucked ourselves up 
 snugly, and started off down the road stretch- 
 ing faintly before us. The horse's steps 
 sounded very loud, and echoed curiously 
 against the silent houses as we passed. As we 
 
176 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 went on, the sky grew paler, here and there 
 in the houses a candle gleamed, in the barn- 
 yards a lantern flashed — the farmer was 
 astir. Yes, dawn was really coming. 
 
 After a few miles we turned off the main 
 highway to take the rut road through the great 
 marsh. The smell of the salt flats was about 
 us, and the sound of the sea was growing 
 more clear again. A big bird whirred off from 
 the marsh close beside us. "Meadowlark," 
 murmured Jonathan. Another little one, with 
 silent, low flight, then more. "Sandpipers," 
 he commented; "we don't want them." The 
 patient horse plodded along, now in damp 
 marsh soil, now in dry, deep sand, to thehitch- 
 ing-place by an old barn on the cliff. 
 
 As we pulled up, Jonathan took a little 
 bottle out of his pocket and handed it to me. 
 "Better put it on now," he said. 
 
 "What is it.?" I asked. 
 
 "Tar and sweet oil — for the mosquitoes." 
 
 I smelled of it with suspicion. It was a dark, 
 gummy liquid. "I think I prefer the mosqui- 
 toes." 
 
 "You do!" said Jonathan. "You'll think 
 again pretty soon. Here, let me have it." He 
 
A DAWN EXPERIMENT 177 
 
 had tied the horse and blanketed him, and 
 now proceeded to smear himself with the stuff 
 — face, neck, hands. "You need n't look at 
 me that way!" he remarked genially; "you'll 
 be doing it yourself soon. Just wait." 
 
 We took our guns and cartridges, and 
 plunged down from the cliff to the marsh. As 
 we did so there rose about me a brown cloud, 
 which in a moment I realized was composed 
 of mosquitoes — a crazy, savage, bloodthirsty 
 mob. They beset me on all sides, — they were 
 in my hair, my eyes, nose, ears, mouth, neck. 
 I brushed frantically at them, but a drowning 
 man might as well try to brush back the water 
 as it closes in. 
 
 "Where's the bottle.?" I gasped. 
 
 "What bottle.?" said Jonathan, innocently. 
 Jonathan is human. 
 
 "The tar and sweet oil. Quick!" 
 
 "Oh! I thought you preferred the mosqui- 
 toes." Yes, Jonathan is human. 
 
 "Never mind what you thought!" and I 
 snatched greedily at the blessed little bottle. 
 
 I poured the horrid stuff on my face, my 
 neck, my hands, I out-Jonathaned Jonathan; 
 then I took a deep breath of relief as the mos- 
 
178 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 quito mob withdrew to a respectful distance. 
 Jonathan reached for the bottle. 
 
 "Oh, I can just as well carry it," I said, 
 and tucked it into one of my hunting-coat 
 pockets. 
 
 Jonathan chuckled gently, but I did not 
 care. Nothing should part me from that little 
 bottle of ill-smelling stuff. 
 
 We started on again, out across the marsh. 
 Enough light had come to show us the gray- 
 green level, full of mists and little glimmers 
 of water, and dotted with low haycocks, their 
 dull, tawny yellow showing softly in the faint 
 dawn light. 
 
 "Hark!" said Jonathan. 
 
 We paused. Through the fog came a faint, 
 whistling call, in descending half-tones, inde- 
 scribable, coming out of nowhere, sounding 
 now close beside us, now very far away. 
 
 " Yellowlegs," said Jonathan. "We are n't 
 a bit too soon." 
 
 We pushed out into the midst of the marsh, 
 now sinking knee-deep in the spongy bed, now 
 walking easily on a stretch of firm turf, now 
 stepping carefully over a boundary ditch of 
 unknown depth — out to the haycocks, where 
 
A DAWN EXPERIMENT 179 
 
 we sank down, each beside one, to wait for 
 the birds to move. 
 
 I do not know how long we waited. The 
 haycock was warm, the night wind had fallen, 
 the gray sky was turning white, with prim- 
 rose tones in the east ; the morning star paled 
 and disappeared; the marsh mists partly 
 lifted, and revealed far inland the soft, dark 
 masses of encircling woods. And every little 
 while came the whistling call, plaintive, yet 
 curiously hurried, coming from nowhere. I 
 lay back against the hay, and, contrary to 
 orders, I let my gun slip down beside me. The 
 fact was, I had half forgotten that anything 
 definite was expected of me, and when sud- 
 denly I heard a warning "Lookout!" from 
 Jonathan's mow, I was in no way prepared. 
 There was a rush of wings ; the air was full of 
 the whistling notes of the birds as they flew; 
 they passed over us, circling, rising, sinking, 
 sweeping far up the marsh, then, as Jonathan 
 whistled their call, circling back again out of 
 the mist at incredible speed. 
 
 Probably it would have made no difference 
 if I had been prepared. A new kind of game 
 always leaves me dazed, and now I watched 
 
180 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 them, spellbound, until I heard Jonathan 
 shoot. Then I made a great effort, pulled at 
 my trigger, and rolled backwards from my 
 haycock into the spongy swamp, inches deep 
 with water just there. 
 
 Jonathan called across softly, "Shot both 
 barrels, did n't you.^" 
 
 I rose slowly, wishing there were some way 
 of wringing out my entire back. "Of course 
 not!" I gasped indignantly. 
 
 "Think not.^^" very benevolently from the 
 other cock. " 'T would n't have kicked like 
 that if you had n't. Look at your gun and 
 see." 
 
 I reseated myself damply upon the hay- 
 cock. '' 1 tell y oul did nH. Why should I shoot 
 both at once, I'd like to know! I — never — " 
 
 Here I stopped, for as I broke open my gun 
 I saw two dented cartridges, and as I pulled 
 them out white smoke rolled from both bar- 
 rels. There seemed nothing further to be said, 
 at least by a woman, so I said nothing. Jona- 
 than also, though human, said nothing. It is 
 crises like these that test character. I turned 
 my cool back to the east, that the rising sun, 
 if it ever really got thoroughly risen, might 
 
A DAWN EXPERIMENT 181 
 
 warm it, and grimly reloaded. Jonathan con- 
 tinued his call to the birds, and when they 
 returned again I behaved better. 
 
 By seven o'clock the birds had scattered, 
 and we left our places to go back to the horse. 
 On the way we encountered two hunters 
 wandering rather disconsolately over the 
 marsh. They stopped us to ask what luck, 
 and we tried not to look too self-satisfied, but 
 probably they read our success in our arro- 
 gant faces, streaked with tar and sweet oil as 
 they were. Possibly the bulge of our hunting- 
 coat pockets helped to tell the story. 
 
 "How long have you been out here.^^" they 
 asked enviously. 
 
 "Two hours or so," said Jonathan. 
 
 "How'd you get out so early .^" 
 
 "We got up early," said Jonathan, with 
 admirable simplicity. 
 
 The strangers looked at him twice to see if 
 he meant to jeer, but he appeared impenetra- 
 bly innocent, and they finally laughed, a little 
 ruefully, and went on out into the marsh we 
 were just leaving. Why does it make one feel 
 so immeasurably superior to get up a few 
 hours before other people? 
 
182 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 We drove home along the sunny road, 
 where the bakers' carts and meat wagons 
 were already astir. Could it be the same road 
 that a few hours before had been so cold and 
 gray and still? Were these bare white houses 
 the same that had nestled so cozily into the 
 dark of the roadside? We reached our own 
 plain little white house and went in. In the 
 dining-room our candles and the remains of 
 our midnight breakfast on the table seemed 
 like relics of some previous state of existence. 
 Sleepily I set things in order for a real break- 
 fast, a hot breakfast, a breakfast that should 
 be cozy. Drowsily we ate, but contentedly. 
 Everything since the night before seemed like 
 a dream. 
 
 It still seems so. But of all the dream the 
 most vivid part — more vivid even than the 
 alarm clock, more real than my tumble into 
 wetness — is the vision that remains with me 
 of mist-swept marsh, all gray and green and 
 yellow, with tawny haycocks and glimmer- 
 ings of water and whirrings of wings and whis- 
 tling bird notes and the salt smell of the sea. 
 
 Yes, Jonathan was right. Dawn hunting 
 on the marshes is dififerent, quite diflEerent. 
 
XIV 
 
 In the Wake of the Partridge 
 
 *'The kangaroo ran very fast, 
 
 I ran faster. 
 The kangaroo was very fat, 
 
 I ate him. 
 Kangaroo! Kangaroo!" 
 
 This, the hunting-song of the Australian 
 Bushman, is the best one I know. Without 
 disguise or adornment, it embodies the prim- 
 itive hunting instinct that is in every one of 
 us, whether we hunt people or animals or 
 things or ideas. 
 
 Jonathan and I do not habitually hunt 
 kangaroos, and our hunting, or at any rate 
 my share in it, is not as uniformly successful 
 as the Bushman's seems to have been. For 
 our own uses we should have to amend the song 
 something as follows : — 
 
 "The partridge-bird flew very fast, 
 
 I missed him. 
 The partridge-bird was very fat, 
 
 I ate — chicken. 
 Partridge-bird ! Partridge-bird ! " 
 
 But we do not measure the success of our 
 
184 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 hunting by the size of our bag. The chase, 
 the day out of doors, two or three birds at the 
 most out of the dozen we flush, this is all that 
 we ask. But then, we have a chicken-yard 
 to fall back upon, which the Bushman had not. 
 We sit before a blazing open fire, eating 
 a hunter's breakfast — which means, nearly 
 everything in the pantry. Coffee and toast are 
 all very well for ordinary purposes, but they 
 are poor things to carry you through a day's 
 hunting, especially our kind of hunting. For 
 a day's hunt with us is not an elaborate and 
 well-planned affair. It does not mean a pre- 
 arranged course over "preserved" territory, 
 with a rendezvous at noon where the luncheon 
 wagon comes, bringing out vast quantities of 
 food, and taking home the morning's bag of 
 game. It means a day's hunt that follows 
 whither the birds lead, in a section of New 
 England that is considered "hunted out," 
 over ground sometimes familiar, sometimes 
 wholly new, with no luncheon but a few 
 crackers or a sandwich that has been stowed 
 away in one of Jonathan's game pockets all 
 the morning, and perhaps an apple or two, 
 picked up in passing, from some old orchard 
 
IN THE WAKE OF THE PARTRIDGE 185 
 
 now submerged in the woods — a hunt ending 
 only when it is too dark to shoot, with per- 
 haps a long tramp home again after that. No, 
 coffee and toast would never do! 
 
 As we turn out of the sheltered barnyard 
 through the bars and up the farm lane, the 
 keen wind flings at us, and our numb fingers 
 recoil from the metal of our guns and take a 
 careful grip on the wood. At once we fall to 
 discussing the vital question — Where will 
 the birds be to-day.^ For the partridges, as 
 the New Englander calls our ruffed grouse, 
 are very fastidious about where they spend 
 their days. Sometimes they are all in the 
 swamps, sometimes they are among the white 
 birches of the hillsides, sometimes in the big 
 woods, sometimes on the half-wooded rock 
 ledges, sometimes among the scrub growth of 
 lately cut timberland, and sometimes, in very 
 cold weather, on the dry knolls where the 
 cedars huddle — the warm little brooding 
 cedars that give the birds shelter as a hen 
 does her chicks. 
 
 When I first began to hunt with Jonathan, 
 he knew so much more than I in these matters 
 that I always accepted his judgment. If he 
 
186 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 said, "To-day they will be in the swamps," I 
 responded, "To the swamps let us go." But 
 after a time I came to have opinions of my 
 own, and then the era of discussion set in. 
 
 "To-day," begins Jonathan judicially, 
 "the wind is north, and the birds will be on 
 the south slopes close to the swamp bottoms 
 to keep warm." 
 
 "Now, Jonathan, you know I don't a bit 
 believe in going by the wind. The partridges 
 don't mind wind, their feathers shed it. What 
 they care about is the sun, and to-day the sun 
 is hot, — at least," with a shiver, "it would 
 be if we had feathers on instead of canvas. 
 I believe we shall find them in the big 
 woods." 
 
 I usually advocate the big woods, because 
 I like them best for a tramp. 
 
 Jonathan, too well content at the prospect 
 of a day's hunt to mind contradiction, says 
 genially, "All right; I'll go wherever you 
 say." 
 
 Which always reduces me to terms at once. 
 Above all things, I dislike to make myself an- 
 swerable for the success or failure of the day. 
 I prefer irresponsible criticism beforehand — 
 
, IN THE WAKE OF THE PARTRIDGE 187 
 
 and afterwards. So I say hastily, "Oh, no, no! 
 Of course you know a great deal more than I 
 do. We'll go wherever you think best." 
 
 "Well, perhaps it is too warm for the 
 swamps to-day. Now, they might be in the 
 birches." 
 
 "Oh, dear! Don't let's go to the birches! 
 The birds can't be there. They never are." 
 
 "I thought we were going to go where I 
 thought best." 
 
 "Yes — but only not to the birches. It 's all 
 a private myth of yours about their being 
 there." 
 
 "Is it a private myth of mine that you shot 
 those two woodcock in the birches of the 
 upper farm last year.^ And how about that 
 big gray partridge — " 
 
 "Well — of course — that was later in the 
 season. I suppose the birds do eat birch buds 
 when everything else gives out." 
 
 And so I criticize, having agreed not to. 
 But it's good for Jonathan; it makes him 
 careful. 
 
 "Well, shall it be the swamp.?" 
 
 "No; if you really think they're in the 
 birches, we'll go there. Besides, the swamp 
 
188 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 seems a little — chilly — to begiD with. Wait 
 till I've seen a bird. Then I shan't mind so." 
 
 "Then you do admit it's a cool morning?" 
 
 "To paddle in a swamp, yes^ The birds 
 don't have to paddle." 
 
 We try the birches, and the pretty things 
 whip our faces with their slender twigs in their 
 own inimitable fashion, peculiarly trying to 
 my temper. I can never go through birches 
 long without growing captious. 
 
 "Jonathan," I call, as I catch a glimpse of 
 his hunting-coat through an opening, "I 
 thought the birds were in the birches this 
 morning. They don't seem really abundant." 
 
 Jonathan, unruffled, suggests that I go 
 along on the edge of the woods while he beats 
 out the middle with the dog, which magnan- 
 imous offer shames me into silent if not 
 cheerful acquiescence. Suddenly — whr-r-r — 
 something bursts away in the brush ahead of 
 us. "Mark!" we both call, and, "Did you 
 get his line.^" My critical spirit is stilled, and 
 I am suddenly fired with the instinct to fol- 
 low, follow! It is indeed a primitive instinct, 
 this of the chase. No matter how tired one is, 
 the impulse of pursuit is there. At the close of 
 
IN THE WAKE OF THE PARTRIDGE 189 
 
 a long day's hunt, after fifteen miles or so of 
 hard tramping, — equal to twice that of easy 
 walking, — when my feet are heavy and my 
 head dull, I have never seen a partridge fly 
 without feeling ready, eager, to follow any- 
 where. 
 
 After we move the first bird, it is follow 
 my leader ! And a wild leader he is. Flushed 
 in the birches, he makes straight for the 
 swamp. The swamp it is, then, and down we 
 go after him, and in we go — ugh! how shivery 
 the first plunge is — straight to the puddly 
 heart of it, carefully keeping our direction. 
 We go fast at first, then, when we have nearly 
 covered the distance a partridge usually flies, 
 we begin to slow down, holding back the too 
 eager dog, listening for the snap of a twig or 
 the sound of wings, gripping our guns tighter 
 at every blue jay or robin that flicks across 
 our path. No bird yet; we must have passed 
 him; perhaps we went too far to the left. But 
 no — whr-r-r! Where is he.^^ There! Out of 
 the top of a tall swamp maple, off he goes, 
 sailing over the swamp to the ridge beyond. 
 No wonder the dog was at sea. Well — we 
 know his line, we are oflf again after him in 
 
190 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 spite of the swamp between, with its mud and 
 its rotten tree trunks and its grapevines and 
 its cat briers. 
 
 Up on the ridge at last, we hunt close, find 
 him, get a shot, probably miss, and away we 
 go again. Some hunters, used to a country 
 where game is plenty, will not follow a bird if 
 they miss him on the first rise. They prefer 
 to keep on their predetermined course and 
 find another. But for me there is little pleas- 
 ure in that kind of sport. What I enjoy most 
 is not shooting, but hunting. The chase is the 
 thing — the chase after a particular bird once 
 flushed, the setting of my wits against his in 
 the endeavor to follow up his flight. We have 
 now and then flushed the same bird nine or 
 ten times before we got him — and we have 
 not always got him then. For many and deep 
 are the crafty ways of the old partridge, and 
 we have not yet learned them all. That is 
 why I like partridge-hunting better than 
 quail or woodcock, though in these you get 
 far more and better shooting. Quail start in a 
 bunch, scatter, fly, and drop where you can 
 flush them again, one at a time; w^oodcock 
 fly in a zigzag, drop where they happen to, and 
 
IN THE WAKE OF THE PARTRIDGE 191 
 
 sit still till you almost step on them. But the 
 partridge thinks as he flies — thinks to good 
 advantage. He seems to know what we expect 
 him to do, and then he does something else. 
 How many times have we gone past him when 
 he sat quietly between us, and then heard 
 him fly off stealthily down our back track! 
 How often, in a last desperate search for a 
 vanished bird, have I jumped on every felled 
 cedar top in a field — except the one he was 
 under! How often have I broken open my 
 gun to climb a stone wall, — for we are cau- 
 tious folk, Jonathan and I, — and, as I stood 
 in perilous balance, seen a great bird burst 
 out from under my very feet ! How often — 
 but I am not going to be tempted into telling 
 hunting-stories. For some reason or other, 
 hunting-stories chiefly interest the narrator. 
 I have watched sportsmen telling tales in the 
 evenings, and noted how every man but the 
 speaker grows restive as he watches for a 
 chance to get in his own favorite yarn. 
 
 And it is not the partridges alone with whom 
 we grow acquainted. We have glimpses, too, 
 of the other outdoor creatures. The life of the 
 woods slips away from us as we pass, but only 
 
192 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 just out of sight, and not always that. The 
 blue jays scream in the tree-tops, oJSSciously 
 proclaiming us to the woods; the chickadees, 
 who must see all that goes on, hop close beside 
 us in the bushes; the gray squirrel dodges 
 behind a tree trunk with just the corner of an 
 eye peering at us around it. The chipmunk 
 darts into the stone wall, and doubtless looks 
 at us from its safe depths; the rabbit gallops 
 off from the brier tangle or the brush heap, or 
 sits up, round-eyed, thinking, little silly, that 
 we don't see him. Once I saw a beautiful red 
 fox who leaped into the open for a moment, 
 stood poised, and leaped on into the brush; 
 and once, as I sat resting, a woodchuck, big 
 and uncombed, hustled busily past me, so 
 close I could have touched him. He did not 
 see me, and seemed so preoccupied with some 
 pressing business that I should hardly have 
 been surprised to see him pull a watch out of 
 his pocket, like Alice's rabbit, and mutter, *'I 
 shall be late." I had not known that the wood 
 creatures ever felt hurried except when pur- 
 sued. Another time I was working up the 
 slope on the sunny edge of a run, and, as I 
 drew myself up over the edge of a big rock, I 
 
IN THE WAKE OF THE PARTRIDGE 193 
 
 found myself face to face — nose to nose — 
 with a calm, mild-eyed, cottontail rabbit. He 
 did not remain calm; in fact, we were both 
 startled, but he recovered first, and hopped 
 softly over the side of the rock, and went gal- 
 loping away through the brushy bottom, while 
 I, still kneeling, watched him disappear just 
 as Jonathan came up. 
 
 "What's the joke.?" 
 
 "Nothing, only I just met a rabbit. He 
 sat here, right here, and he was so rabbit-y ! 
 He looked at me just like an Easter card." 
 
 "Why did n't you shoot him.?" 
 
 "I never thought of it. I wish you had 
 seen how his nose twiddled! And, anyhow, 
 I would n't shoot anything sitting up that 
 way, like a tame kitten." 
 
 "Then why did n't you shoot when he 
 ran.?" 
 
 "Shoot a rabbit running! Running in scal- 
 lops! I could n't." 
 
 The fact is, I should n't shoot a rabbit any- 
 way, unless driven by hunger. I am not hu- 
 mane, but merely sentimental about them 
 because they are soft and pretty. Once, in- 
 deed, when I found all my beautiful heads of 
 
194 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 lettuce neatly nibbled off down to the central 
 stalks, I almost hardened my heart against 
 them, but the next time I met one of the little 
 fellows I forgave him all. 
 
 I believe that one of the very best things 
 about our way of following a partridge is the 
 sense of intimacy with the countryside which 
 it creates — an intimacy which nothing else 
 has ever given us. In most outdoor faring 
 one sticks to the roads and paths, in fishing one 
 keeps to the water-courses, in cross-country 
 tramping one unconsciously goes around 
 obstacles. Nothing but the headlong and 
 undeviating pursuit of a bird along a path of 
 his choosing would ever have given me that 
 acquaintance with ledge and swamp and laurel 
 copse that I now possess. I know our swamp 
 as a hippopotamus might, or — to stick to 
 plain Yankee creatures — a mud turtle. It is 
 a very swampy swamp, with spring holes and 
 channels and great shallow pools where the 
 leaves from the tall swamp maples — scarlet 
 and rose and ashes of roses — sift slowly down 
 and float until they sink into the leaf mould 
 beneath. I have favorite paths through it as 
 the squirrels have in the tree-tops; I know 
 
IN THE WAKE OF THE PARTRIDGE 195 
 
 where the mud is too deep to venture, where 
 the sprawling, moss-covered roots of the 
 maples offer grateful support; I know the 
 brushy edges where the blossoming witch- 
 hazel fills the air with its quaint fragrance; I 
 know the sunny, open places where the tufted 
 ferns, shoulder high, and tawny gold after the 
 early frosts, give insecure but welcome foot- 
 ing; I know — too well indeed — the thickets 
 of black alder that close in about me and tug 
 at my gun and drive me to fury. 
 
 Yes, we know that swamp, and other 
 swamps only less well. We know the rock 
 ledges, the big dry woods of oak and chest- 
 nut and maple and beech. We know the 
 ravines where the great hemlocks keep the air 
 always dim and still, and one goes silent- 
 footed over the needle floor. We grow familiar, 
 too, with all the little things about the coun- 
 try. We discover new haunts of the fringed 
 gentian, the wonderful, the capricious, with 
 its unbelievable blue that one sees nowhere 
 else save under the black lashes of some Irish 
 eyes. We find the shy spring orchids, gone to 
 seed now, but we remember and seek them 
 out again next May. We surprise the spring 
 
196 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 flowers in their rare fall blossoming — violets 
 white and blue in the warm, moist bottom- 
 lands, sand violets on the dry knolls, daisies, 
 hepaticas, buttercups, and anemones — I 
 have seen all these in a single day in raw 
 November. We learn where the biggest chest- 
 nuts grow — great silky brown fellows almost 
 twice the size of Jonathan's thumb. We dis- 
 cover old landmarks in the deep woods, sur- 
 veyors' posts, a heap of stones carefully piled 
 on a big rock. We find old clearings, over- 
 grown now, but our feet still feel underneath 
 the weeds the furrows left by the plow. Now 
 and then we come upon a spot where once 
 there must have been a home. There is no 
 house, no timbers even, but the stone cellar is 
 not wholly obliterated, and the gnarled lilac- 
 bush and the apple tree stubbornly cling to a 
 worn-out life amidst the forest of young white 
 oaks and chestnuts that has closed in about 
 them. Once we came upon a little group of 
 gravestones, only three or four, sunken in the 
 ground and so overgrown and weather-worn 
 that we could read nothing. There was no 
 sign of a human habitation, but I suppose 
 they must have been placed there in the old 
 
IN THE WAKE OF THE PARTRIDGE 197 
 
 days when the family burial-ground was in 
 one corner of the farm itself. 
 
 We learn to know where the springs of pure 
 water are, welling up out of the deep ground 
 in a tiny pool under some big rock or between 
 the roots of a great yellow birch tree. And 
 when the sun shines hot at noon, and a lost 
 trail and a vanished bird leave us to the sud- 
 den realization that we are tired and thirsty, 
 we know where is the nearest water. We 
 know, too, the knack of drinking so as not to 
 swallow the little gnats that skim its surface 
 — you must blow them back ever so gently, 
 and drink before they close in again. How 
 good it tastes as we lie at full length on the 
 matted brown leaves ! How good the crackers 
 taste, too, and the crisp apples, as we sit by 
 the spring and rest, and talk over the morn- 
 ing's hunt and plan the afternoon's — subject 
 to the caprices of the birds. 
 
 But I suppose the very best about hunting 
 can never be told at all. That is true of any 
 really good thing, and there is nothing better 
 than a long day after the birds. It is always 
 good to be out of doors. And there are seasons 
 when one is glad to wander slowly over the 
 
198 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 fields and byways; there are times when it 
 seems best of all to be still — in the heart of 
 the woods, on the wide hill pastures, in the 
 deep grass of the meadows. But not in the 
 fall! Is it a breath of the migrating instinct 
 that makes us want to be oflf and away, to go, 
 and go, and go? Yes, fall is the time for the 
 hunt — gay, boisterous fall, rioting in wind 
 and color to keep up its spirits against the 
 stealthy approach of winter. And whether we 
 shoot well or ill, whether our game pockets are 
 heavy or light, no matter what the weather 
 we find or the country we cross, it is all good 
 hunting, very good. And at night we come in 
 to a blazing fire, feeling tired, oh, so tired ! and 
 hungry, oh, so hungry! and with soul and 
 body shriven clean by wind and sun. 
 
XV 
 
 Beyond the Realm of Weather 
 
 Our friends say to us now and then, "But 
 why must you do these things with a gun? 
 Why can't you do the same things and leave 
 the gun at home?" Why, indeed? When I 
 put this question to Jonathan, he smokes on 
 placidly. But of one thing I am sure: if it had 
 not been for the guns and the ducks, I should 
 never have known what the marshes were like 
 in winter fog — what they were like under a 
 winter sky with a wind straight from the North 
 Pole sweeping over their bare stretches. 
 
 It was early afternoon. Through the study 
 window I looked out upon a raw, foggy world, 
 melting snow underfoot and overhead. It 
 was the kind of day about which even the 
 most deliberately cheerful can find little to say 
 except that this sort of thing can't last forever, 
 you know. However, if I had had a true in- 
 stinct for "nature," I should, I suppose, have 
 seen at a glance that it was just the day to go 
 
200 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 and lie in a marsh. But this did not occur to 
 me. Instead, I thought of open fires, and pop- 
 corn, and hot peanuts, and novels, and fudge, 
 and other such things, which are supposed to 
 be valuable as palHatives on days like these. 
 
 The telephone rang. "Oh, it's you, Jona- 
 than! . . . What.f^ No, not really! You 
 wouldn't! . . . Well, if the ducks like it, 
 they may have it all. I'm not a duck. . . . 
 Why, of course, if you really want me to, I '11 
 go, only ... All right, I'll get out the 
 things. . . . Three o'clock train.^^ You'll 
 have to hurry!" 
 
 I hung up the receiver and sat a moment, 
 dazed, looking out at the reek of weather. 
 Then I shook myself and darted upstairs to 
 the hunting-closet. In half an hour the bag 
 was packed and Jonathan was at the door. 
 In an hour we were on the train, and at twi- 
 light we were tramping out into a fog-swept 
 marsh. Grayness was all around us; under- 
 foot was mud, glimmering patches of soft 
 snow, and the bristly stubble of the close-cut 
 marsh grass. 
 
 "What fools we are!" I murmured. 
 
 "Why.^" said Jonathan contentedly. 
 
; BEYOND THE REALM OF WEATHER 201 
 
 "Oh, if you can't see — " I said. 
 
 And then, suddenly, as we walked, my 
 whole attitude changed. The weather, as 
 weather, seemed something that belonged in 
 a city — very far away, and no concern of 
 mine. This was n't weather, here where we 
 walked; it was a gray and boundless world of 
 mystery. We raised our heads high and 
 breathed long, deep breaths as the fog drifted 
 against our faces. We were aware of dim 
 masses of huddling bushes, blurred outlines 
 of sheds and fences. Then only the level 
 marsh stretched out before us and around us. 
 
 "Can we find our way out again?" I mur- 
 mured, though without real anxiety. 
 
 "Probably," said Jonathan. "Isn't it 
 great ! You feel as if you had a soul out here ! 
 By the way, what was it you said about 
 fools.?" 
 
 "I forget," I said. 
 
 We went on and on, I don't know just 
 where or how long, until we came to the creek, 
 where the tide sets in and out. I should have 
 walked into it if Jonathan had n't held me 
 back. As we followed it, there rose a hoarse, 
 raucous ''Ngwak ! ngwak 1 ngwak I " and a great 
 
202 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 rush of wings. Jonathan dropped on one 
 knee, gun up, but we saw nothing. 
 
 "We'll settle down here," he said. "There'll 
 be more coming in soon. Wait a minute — 
 hold my gun." He disappeared in the fog, 
 and came back with an armful of hay, taken 
 from the heart of a haystack of whose exist- 
 ence he seemed, by some sixth or seventh 
 sense, to be aware. "There! That'll keep 
 you oflf the real marsh. Now settle down, and 
 don't move, and listen with all your ears, and 
 be ready. I'll go off a little way." 
 
 I sank down on the hay, and watched him 
 melt into the grayness. I was alone in the dim 
 marsh. There was no wind, no sound but the 
 far-off whistle and rush of a train. I lay there 
 and thought of nothing. I let myself be ab- 
 sorbed into the twilight. I did not even feel 
 that I had a soul. I was nothing but a point of 
 consciousness in the midst of a gray infinity. 
 
 Suddenly I was aware of a sound — a rapid 
 pulsing of soft, high tone — too soft for a 
 whistle, too high for a song, — pervasive, elus- 
 ive; it was overhead, it was beside me, behind 
 me, where? Ah — it was wings! The winnowing 
 of wings! I half rose, grasping my gun, with 
 
BEYOND THE REALM OF WEATHER 203 
 
 a sense of responsibility to Jonathan. But my 
 vision was caught in the grayness as in a web. 
 The sound grew clearer, then fainter, then it 
 passed away. The twilight gathered, and the 
 fog partly dissolved. A fine rain began to fall, 
 and in the intense silence I could hear the faint 
 pricking of the drops on the stiff marsh stub- 
 ble. I had thought the patter of rain on a roof 
 was the stillest sound I knew, but this was 
 stiller. Again came the winnowing of wings — 
 again and again; and sometimes I was able to 
 see the dark shapes passing overhead and 
 vanishing almost before they appeared. Now 
 and then I heard the muffled, flat sound of 
 Jonathan's gun — he was evidently living up 
 to his opportunities better than I was. Oc- 
 casionally, in a spasm of activity, I shot 
 too. 
 
 Until night closed in about us that sound of 
 wings filled the air, and I knelt, listening and 
 watching. It is strange how one can be phys- 
 ically alert while yet one's soul is withdrawn, 
 quiet and receptive. Out of this state, as out 
 of a trance, I was roused by the sense of Jona- 
 than's dim bulk, seeming "larger than mor- 
 tal, " as he emerged from the night. 
 
204 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "Cold?" he said. 
 
 '*I don't know — no, of course I'm not." 
 I found it hard to lay hold on clear ideas 
 again. 
 
 "I heard you shoot. Get any .^ " 
 "I think I hurried them a little." 
 We started back. At least I suppose it was 
 back, because after a while we came to the 
 road we had left. I was conscious only of be- 
 wildering patches of snow that lay like half- 
 veiled moonlight on the dark stretches of the 
 marsh. At last a clump of cedars made them- 
 selves felt rather than seen. ''There's the 
 fence corner ! We 're all right," said Jonathan. 
 A snow-filled horse rut gave faint guidance, the 
 twigs of the hedgerow lightly felt of our faces 
 as we passed. We found the main road, and it 
 led us through the quiet, fog-bound village, 
 whose house lights made tiny blurs on the 
 mist, to the hot, bright little station. Then 
 came the close, flaringly lighted car, and 
 people — commuters — getting on and off, 
 talking about the ''weather," and filling the 
 car with the smell of wet newspapers and um- 
 brellas. We had returned to the land of 
 "weather." Yet it did not really touch us. It 
 
BEYOND THE REALM OF WEATHER 205 
 
 seemed a dream. The reality was the marsh, 
 with its fog and its pricking raindrops and its 
 sentinel cedars, its silence and its wings. 
 
 In the days that followed, the fog passed, 
 and there were long, warm rains. The marsh 
 called us, but we could not go. Then the sky 
 cleared, the wind rose, the mercury began to 
 drop. Jonathan looked across the luncheon 
 table and said, "What about ducks .^" 
 
 *'Can you get off ?" I asked joyously. 
 
 *'I can't, but I will," he replied. 
 
 And this time — Did I think I knew the 
 marsh? Did I suppose, having seen it at dawn 
 in the fall days when the sun still rises early, 
 having seen it in winter twilight, fog-beset, 
 that I knew it.^ Do I suppose I know it now.^ 
 At least I know it better, having seen it under 
 a clearing sky, when the cold wind sweeps it 
 clean, and the air, crystalline, seems like a lens 
 through which one looks and sees a revelation 
 of new things. 
 
 As we struck into the marsh, just at sun- 
 down, my first thought was a rushing prayer 
 for words, for colors, for something to catch 
 and hold the beauty of it. But there are no 
 words, no colors. No one who has not seen 
 
206 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 it can know what a New England shore marsh 
 can be in winter under a golden sky. 
 
 Winter does some things for us that sum- 
 mer cannot do. Summer gives us everything 
 all at once — color, fragrance, line, sound — 
 in an overwhelming exuberance of riches. 
 And it is good. But winter — Ah, winter is 
 an artist, winter has reserves; he selects, he 
 emphasizes, he interprets. Winter says, "I will 
 give you nothing to-day but brown and white, 
 but I will glorify these until you shall wonder 
 that there can be any beauty except thus." 
 And again winter says: "Did you think the 
 world was brown and white .^ Lo, it is blue 
 and rose and silver — nothing else!" And we 
 look, and it is so. On that other evening, in 
 the fog, the world had been all gray — black- 
 gray and pale gray and silver gray. On this 
 evening winter said: " Gray.^^ Not at all. You 
 shall have brown and gold. Behold and mar- 
 vel!" 
 
 I marveled. There was a sweep of golden 
 marsh, under a gold sky, and at its borders 
 low lines of trees etched in rich brown masses, 
 and my sentinel cedars standing singly or by 
 twos and threes — cedars in their winter 
 
BEYOND THE REALM OF WEATHER 207 
 
 tones of olive brown, dull almost to harshness, 
 holding themselves stiffly against the great 
 wind, yielding only at their delicate tips 
 when the gusts came, recovering again in the 
 lulls, to point dauntlessly skyward. The nar- 
 row boundary ditches, already glassing over 
 in the sudden cold, stretched away in rigid 
 lines, flashing back the light of the sky in 
 shivers of gold. The haystacks reiterated the 
 color notes — gold on their sunset side, deep 
 brown on their shadowed one. 
 
 There is a moment sometimes, just at sun- 
 down, when the quality of light changes. It 
 does not fall upon the world from without, it 
 radiates from within. Things seem self-lum- 
 inous. Yet, for all their brightness, we see 
 them less clearly, one's vision is dazzled, 
 enmeshed. It is the time when that wondrous 
 old word "faerie" finds its meaning. It is a 
 magic moment. It laid its spell upon us. 
 
 Jonathan emerged first, bracing himself. 
 '*It will shut down soon. We haven't a 
 minute to spare. We ought to be on the creek 
 now." 
 
 It was hard to believe that such brightness 
 could ever shut down. But it did. By the time 
 
208 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 we reached the creek the gold had vanished, 
 except for a narrow Hne in the western sky. 
 The world lay in clear, brown twilight, and the 
 wind swept over it. 
 
 Jonathan got more hay, and this time I saw 
 the haystack from which he plucked it. I 
 threw myself on it, collar up, cap down, lying 
 as low as possible. 
 
 ''Bad night for ducks, of course," growled 
 Jonathan. "If only the thaw had held twelve 
 hours more! However — " 
 
 He swung off to some chosen spot of his 
 own. 
 
 I lay there and the wind surged over me. 
 There was nothing to stop it, nothing to make 
 it noisy. It sang a little around the flap of my 
 coat, it swished a little in the short marsh 
 grass, but chiefly it rushed by above me, in 
 invisible, soundless might. It seemed as if it 
 must come between me and the stars, but it 
 did not, and I watched them appear, at first 
 one by one, then in companies and cohorts, 
 until the sky was powdered with them. Now 
 and then a dark line of ducks streamed over 
 me, high up, in direct, steady flight, but the 
 sound of their wings was swallowed up by the 
 
BEYOND THE REALM OF WEATHER 209 
 
 wind. I did not even try to shoot; I was try- 
 ing to find myself in an elemental world that 
 seemed bigger and more powerful than I had 
 ever conceived it. 
 
 Gradually I realized that I was cold. The 
 wind seemed suddenly to have become aware 
 of me. It roared down upon me, it shook me, 
 worried me, let me go, and pounced upon me 
 again in the sport of power. I said to myself, 
 "I cannot resist, I will give myself up to it 
 absolutely." I stopped feeling cold. I was 
 no more than a ship's timber lying on the 
 shore — with just a centre, a point of con- 
 sciousness somewhere inside, to be aware of 
 the difference between the elements and the 
 something I knew was myself. 
 
 But at last I moved. It was fatal. A wave 
 of cold started, pricking somewhere in my 
 head, and undulated sinuously through me, 
 down to my feet. More waves followed; they 
 careered through me. I considered them with 
 interest. Then they settled into aches at all 
 the extremities. All at once it ceased to be 
 interesting, and became a personal grievance 
 — against the wind? the ducks? No — Jona- 
 than! Of course it was Jonathan's fault. Why 
 
210 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 did n't he come? I gazed into the twilight 
 where he had disappeared. I could n't go and 
 hunt for him, because I should certainly get 
 lost or fall into a ditch. Ah! What was that.'^ 
 The long red flash of a gun! — another! — 
 then the double report! Well, of course, if he 
 were shooting, I would suspend judgment a 
 reasonable time. 
 
 But it seemed quite an unreasonable time 
 before I felt the impact of his tread on the 
 springy marsh floor. I rose stiffly, feeling 
 cross. 
 
 "Did you think I was never coming.^" 
 
 "I can't think. My brains are stiff." 
 
 "I was delayed. I dropped one in the ditch. 
 He was only wounded. I could n't leave him." 
 
 "Then you got some?" 
 
 "Feel!" 
 
 I felt his game pockets. "One, two — oh, 
 three ! I did n't hear you shoot except twice. 
 Well " — I was stamping and flinging my 
 arms around myself in the endeavor to thaw 
 out — "I think they're very well off: they're 
 bound for a warm oven." 
 
 "Cold? Thunder! I ought to have left 
 you the bottle. Here!" 
 
BEYOND THE REALM OF WEATHER 211 
 
 I took it and gulped, protesting: "Detest- 
 able stuff! Wait, I'll take some more." 
 
 "This from you! You must he cold I Come 
 on! Run! Look out for the little ditches! 
 Jump where I do." 
 
 We started stiffly enough, in the teeth of 
 the big, dark wind, till the motion, and the 
 bottle, began to take effect. A haymow 
 loomed. We flung ourselves, panting, against 
 it, and, sinking back into its yielding bulk, 
 drew long breaths. 
 
 "Did we think it was cold ?" I murmured; 
 "or windy.?" 
 
 We were on the leeward side of it, and it 
 gave generous shelter. The wind sighed gently 
 over the top of the mow, breathed past its 
 sides, never touching us, and we gazed up at 
 the stars. 
 
 "The sky is fairly gray with them," I said. 
 
 "Perhaps," said Jonathan lazily, "it's that 
 bottle, making you see ten stars grow where 
 one grew before." 
 
 "Perhaps," I suggested, choosing to ignore 
 this speech, "it's the wind, blowing the stars 
 around and raising star-dust." 
 
 We lay in our protecting mow, and the 
 
212 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 warmth of our bodies drew out of it faint odors 
 of salt hay. We did not talk. There are times 
 when one seems to exist in poise, with etern- 
 ity on all sides. One's thoughts do not move, 
 they float. 
 
 "Well.^" said Jonathan at last. 
 
 I could hear the hay rustle as he straight- 
 ened up. 
 
 "Don't interrupt," I answered. 
 
 But my spirit had come down to earth, and 
 after the first jolt I realized that, as usual, 
 Jonathan was right. 
 
 We plunged out again into the buflFeting 
 wind and the starlit darkness, and I followed 
 blindly as Jonathan led across the marshes, 
 around pools, over ditches, until we began to 
 see the friendly twinkle of house lights on the 
 edge of the village. On through the lanes to 
 the highroad, stumbling now and then on its 
 stiffened ruts and ridges. As houses thickened 
 the gale grew noisy, singing in telphone wires, 
 whistling around barn corners, slamming 
 blinds and doors, and rushing in the tree-tops. 
 
 "O for that haymow!" I gasped. 
 
 ''The open fire will be better." Jonathan 
 flung back comfort across the wind. 
 
BEYOND THE REALM OF WEATHER 213 
 
 Ten minutes later we had made harbor in 
 the Httle house by the shore. The candles 
 were lighted, the fire set ablaze, and as we sat 
 before it cooking chops and toast I said, "No, 
 Jonathan, the open fire is n't any better than 
 the haymow." 
 
 ''But different.^" he suggested. 
 
 "Yes, quite different." 
 
 "And good in its own poor way.'* 
 
 He turned his chop. Chops and toast and 
 a blazing jBre give forth odors of distracting 
 pleasantness under such circumstances. 
 
 "I think," I said, "that each gives point 
 to the other." 
 
 "Are n't you glad I took you for ducks.'^" 
 he asked. 
 
 I mused, watching my toast. "I suppose," 
 I said, "no one in his senses would leave a 
 comfortable city house to go and lie out in a 
 marsh at night, in a forty-mile gale, with the 
 mercury at ten, unless he had some other mo- 
 tive than the thing itself — ducks, or conspir- 
 acy, or something. And yet it is the thing 
 itself that is the real reward." 
 
 "Is n't that true of almost everything.?" 
 said Jonathan. 
 
XVI 
 
 Comfortable Books 
 
 Jonathan methodically tucked his bookmark 
 into "The Virginians," and, closing the fat 
 green volume, began to knock the ashes out 
 of his pipe against the bricked sides of the 
 fireplace. 
 
 '"The Virginians' is a very comfortable 
 sort of book," he remarked. 
 
 "Is it?" I said. "I wonder why." 
 
 He ruminated. "Well, chiefly, I suppose, 
 because it's so good and long. You get to 
 know all the people, you get used to their 
 ways, and when they turn up again, after a 
 lot of chapters, you don't have to find out who 
 they are — you just feel comfortably ac- 
 quainted." 
 
 I sighed. I had just finished a magazine 
 story — condensed, vivid, crushing a whole 
 life-tragedy into seven pages and a half. In 
 that space I had been made acquainted with 
 sixteen different characters, seven principal 
 
COMFORTABLE BOOKS 215 
 
 ones and the rest subordinate, but all clearly 
 drawn. I had found it interesting, stimulating; 
 as a tour de force it was noteworthy even 
 among the crowd of short-stories — all con- 
 densed, all vivid, all interesting — that had 
 appeared that month. But — comfortable? 
 No. And I felt envious of Jonathan. He had 
 been reading '' The Virginians " all winter. 
 His bookmark was at page 597, and there 
 were 803 pages in all, so he had a great deal 
 of comfort left. 
 
 Perhaps comfort is not quite all that one 
 should expect from one's reading. Certainly 
 it is the last thing one gets from the perusal 
 of our current literature, and any one who 
 reads nothing else is missing something which, 
 whether he realizes it or not, he ought for his 
 soul's sake to have — something which Jona- 
 than roughly indicated when he called it 
 "comfort." The ordinary reader devours 
 short-stories by the dozen, by the score — 
 short short-stories, long short-stories, even 
 short-stories laboriously expanded to a vol- 
 ume, but still short-stories. He glances, less 
 frequently, at verses, chiefly quatrains, at col- 
 umns of jokes, at popularized bits of history 
 
216 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 and science, at bits of anecdotal biography, 
 and nowhere in all this medley does he come 
 in contact with what is large and leisurely. 
 Current literature is like a garden I once saw. 
 Its proud owner led me through a maze of 
 smooth-trodden paths, and pointed out a vast 
 number of horticultural achievements. There 
 were sixty-seven varieties of dahlias, there 
 were more than a hundred kinds of roses, 
 there were untold wonders which at last my 
 weary brain refused to record. Finally I 
 escaped, exhausted, and sought refuge on a 
 hillside I knew, from which I could look across 
 the billowing green of a great rye-field, and 
 there, given up to the beauty of its mani- 
 fold simplicity, I invited my soul. 
 
 It is even so with our reading. When I go 
 into one of our public reading-rooms, and 
 survey the serried ranks of magazines and the 
 long shelves full of "Recent fiction, not to be 
 taken out for more than five days," — nay, 
 even when I look at the library tables of some 
 of my friends, — my brain grows sick and I 
 long for my rye-field. 
 
 Happily, there always is a rye-field at hand 
 to be had for the seeking. Jonathan finds re- 
 
COMFORTABLE BOOKS 217 
 
 fuge from business and the newspapers in his 
 pipe and "The Virginians." I have no pipe, 
 but I sit under the curhng rings of Jonathan's, 
 and I, too, have my comfortable books, my 
 literary rye-fields. Last summer it was Mal- 
 ory's "Morte d'Arthur," whose book I found 
 indeed a comfortable one — most comfortable. 
 I read much besides, many short stories of 
 surpassing cleverness and some of real excel- 
 lence, but as I look back upon my summer's 
 literary experience, all else gives place to the 
 long pageant of Malory's story, gorgeous or 
 tender or gay, seen like a fair vision against 
 the dim background of an old New England 
 apple orchard. Surely, though the literature 
 of our library tables may sometimes weary 
 me, it shall never enslave me. 
 
 But they must be read, these "comfortable" 
 books, in the proper fashion, not hastily, 
 nor cursorily, nor with any desire to "get 
 on" in them. They must lie at our hand to be 
 taken up in moments of leisure, the slowly 
 shifting bookmark — there should always be 
 a bookmark — recording our half-reluctant 
 progress. (I remember with what dismay I 
 found myself arrived at the fourth and last 
 
218 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 volume of Malory.) Thus read, thus slowly 
 woven among the intricacies and distractions 
 of our life, these precious books will link its 
 quiet moments together and lend to it a cer- 
 tain quality of largeness, of deliberation, of 
 continuity. 
 
 For it is surely a mistake to assume, as 
 people so often do, that in a life full of dis- 
 tractions one should read only such things as 
 can be finished at a single sitting and that a 
 short one. It is a great misfortune to read 
 only books that "must be returned within 
 five days." For my part, I should like to see 
 in our public libraries, to oflFset the shelves of 
 such books, other shelves, labeled ''Books 
 that may and should be kept out six months." 
 I would have there Thackeray and George 
 Eliot and Wordsworth and Spenser, Malory 
 and Homer and Cervantes and Shakespeare 
 and Montaigne — oh, they should be shelves 
 to rejoice the soul of the harassed reader ! 
 
 No, if one can read but little, let him by all 
 means read something big. I know a woman 
 occupied with the demands of a peculiarly 
 exigent social position. Finding her one day 
 reading "The Tempest," I remarked on her 
 
COMFORTABLE BOOKS 219 
 
 enterprise. "Not a bit!" she protested. "I 
 am not reading it to be enterprising, I am 
 reading it to get rested. I find Shakespeare 
 so peaceful, compared with the magazines." 
 I have another friend who is taking entire 
 charge of her children, besides doing a good 
 deal of her own housework and gardening. 
 I discovered her one day sitting under a tree, 
 reading Matthew Arnold's poems, while the 
 children played near by. I ventured to com- 
 ment on what seemed to me the incongruity 
 of her choice of a book. " But don't you see," 
 she replied, quickly. ''Thatis just why! lam 
 so busy from minute to minute doing lots of 
 little practical, temporary things, that I sim- 
 ply have to keep in touch with something 
 different — something large and quiet. If I 
 didn't, I should die!" 
 
 I suppose in the old days, in a less "liter- 
 ary" age, all such busy folk found this nec- 
 essary rest and refreshment in a single book 
 — the Bible. Doubtless many still do so, but 
 not so many; and this, quite irrespective of 
 religious considerations, seems to me a great 
 pity. The literary quality of the Scriptures 
 has, to be sure, been partly vitiated by the 
 
220 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 lamentable habit of reading them in isolated 
 "texts," instead of as magnificent wholes; 
 yet, even so, I feel sure that this constant in- 
 tercourse with the Book did for our pre- 
 decessors in far larger measure what some 
 of these other books of which I have been 
 speaking do for us — it furnished that contact 
 with greatness which we all crave. 
 
 It may be accident, though I hardly think 
 so, that to find such books we must turn to 
 the past. Doubtless others will arise in the 
 future — possibly some are even now being 
 brought to birth, though this I find hard to 
 believe. For ours is the age of the short-story 
 — a wonderful product, perhaps the finest 
 flower of fiction, and one which has not yet 
 achieved all its victories or realized all its 
 possibilities. All the fiction of the future will 
 show the influence of this highly specialized 
 form. In sheer craftsmanship, novel-writing 
 has progressed far; in technique, in dexterous 
 manipulation of their material, the novices of 
 to-day are ahead of the masters of yesterday. 
 This often happens in an art, and it is espe- 
 cially true just now in the art of fiction. Yes, 
 there are great things preparing for us in the 
 
COMFORTABLE BOOEB 221 
 
 future, there are excellent things being done 
 momently about us. But while we wait for 
 the great ones, the excellent ones sometimes 
 create in us a sense of surfeit. We cannot 
 hurry the future, and if meanwhile we crave 
 repose, leisure, quiet, steadiness, the sense of 
 magnitude, we must go to the past. There, 
 and not in the yearly output of our own 
 publishers, we shall find our ''comfortable" 
 books. 
 
XVII 
 
 In the Firelight 
 
 Jonathan had improvidently lighted his pipe 
 before he noticed that the fire needed his at- 
 tention. This was a mistake, because, at least 
 in Jonathan's case, neither a fire nor a pipe 
 responds heartily to a divided mind. As I 
 watched him absently knocking the charred 
 logs together, I longed to snatch the tongs 
 from his indifferent hands and "change the 
 sorry scheme of things entire." Big wads of 
 smoke rolled nonchalantly out of the corners 
 of the fireplace and filled the low ceiling with 
 bluish mist, yet I held my peace, and I did 
 not snatch the tongs. I know of no circum- 
 stances wherein advice is less welcome than 
 when offered by a woman to a man on his 
 knees before the fire. When my friends make 
 fudge or rare-bits, they invite criticism, they 
 court suggestion, but when one of them takes 
 the tongs in his hand, have a care what you 
 say to him! In our household a certain con- 
 
IN THE FIRELIGHT 223 
 
 vention of courtesy — fireplace etiquette — 
 has tacitly established itself, in accordance 
 with which the person who wields the tongs, 
 assuming full responsibility for results, is free 
 from criticism or suggestion. Disregard of 
 such etiquette may not have precipitated 
 divorce, but I have known it to produce dis- 
 tinctly strained relations. And so, while 
 Jonathan tinkered in a half-hearted way 
 at the fire, I ruled my tongue. At last, lit- 
 tle vanishing blue flickers began to run 
 along the log edges, growing steadier and 
 yellower until they settled into something 
 like a blaze. 
 
 Jonathan straightened up, but there was a 
 trace of the apologetic in his tone as he said, 
 "That'll do, won't it.^" 
 
 "Why, yes," I replied cautiously, "it's a 
 fire." 
 
 "Well, what's the matter with it .'^" he asked 
 tolerantly. 
 
 "Since you press me, I should say that it 
 lacks — style." 
 
 Jonathan leaned back, puffing comfortably 
 — "Now, what in thunder do you mean by 
 style? "^ 
 
224 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 But I was not to be enticed into an empty 
 discussion of terms. ** Well, then, say frowsy. 
 Call it a frowsy fire. You know what frowsy 
 means, I suppose. Of course, though, I don't 
 mean to criticize, only you asked me." And I 
 added, with perhaps unnecessary blandness, 
 ''I'm warm enough." 
 
 Jonathan smoked a few moments more, 
 possibly by way of establishing his independ- 
 ence, then slowly rose, remarking, "Oh, 
 well, if you want a stylish fire — " 
 
 ''I did n't say stylish, I said style — " 
 
 But he was gone. He must have journeyed 
 out to the woodshed, — however, there was a 
 moon, — for he returned bearing a huge 
 backlog. He had been magnanimous, indeed, 
 for it was the sort that above all others delights 
 my heart — a forked apple log with a big 
 hollow heart. In a moment, I was on my 
 knees clearing a place for it, and he swung it 
 into position on the bed of embers, tucked in 
 some white birch in front, and soon the flames 
 were licking about the flaking gray apple bark 
 and shooting up through the hollow fork in a 
 fashion to charm the most fastidious. 
 
 People whose open fires are machine-fed 
 
IN THE FIRELIGHT 225 
 
 — who arrange for their wood as they do for 
 their groceries, by telephone — know little 
 of the real joys of a fire. It is laid by a serv- 
 ant, — unintelligently laid, — and upon such 
 masses of newspaper and split kindling that it 
 has no choice but to burn. The match is 
 struck, the newspapers flare up, and soon there 
 is a big, meaningless blaze. Handfuls of 
 wood — just wood, any kind of wood — are 
 thrown on from time to time, and perhaps a 
 log or two — any log, taken at random from 
 the woodbox. Truly, this is merest savagery, 
 untrained, undiscriminating; it is the Bush- 
 man's meal compared to the Frenchman's 
 dinner. Not thus are real hearth fires laid. 
 Not thus are they enjoyed. You should plan 
 a fire as you do a dinner party, and your 
 wood, like your people, should be selected and 
 arranged with due regard to age, tempera- 
 ment, and individual eccentricity. A fire thus 
 skillfully planned, with some good talkers 
 among the logs, may be as well worth listen- 
 ing to as the conversation about your table — 
 perhaps better. 
 
 To get the full flavor of a fire you must 
 know your wood — I had almost said, you 
 
226 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 must remember where the tree stood before it 
 was cut — white birch in the dry, w orn-out 
 slopes, black birches from the edges of the 
 pasture lots, chestnut from the ledges, maple 
 from the swamps, apple from the old orchard, 
 oak cut in sorrow when the fullness of time 
 has come, and burned with the honor due to 
 royalty. 
 
 But though this may be a refinement of 
 fancy, it is no fancy that one kind of wood dif- 
 fers from another in glory. There is the white 
 birch, gay, light-hearted, volatile, putting all 
 its pretty self into a few flaring moments — 
 a butterfly existence. There is black birch, 
 reluctant but steady; there is chestnut, viva- 
 cious, full of sudden enthusiasms; the apple, 
 cheerful and willing; the maple and oak, sober 
 and stanch, good for the long pull. Every 
 locality has its own sorts of wood, as its own 
 sorts of people. Mine is a New England wood 
 basket, and as I look at it I recognize all my 
 old friends. Of them all I love the apple best, 
 yet each is in its own way good. For a quick 
 blaze, throw on the white birch; for a long 
 evening of reading, when one does not want 
 distraction, pile on the oak and maple. They 
 
IN THE FIRELIGHT 227 
 
 will burn quietly, unobtrusively, importun- 
 ing you neither for care nor appreciation. But 
 for a fire to sit before with friends, bring in the 
 apple wood. Lay the great backlog, the more 
 gnarled the better, and if there is a hole 
 through which the flames may shoot up, that 
 is best of all — such logs we hoard for special 
 occasions. Then with careful touch arrange 
 the wood in front, your bundles of twigs, 
 your pretty white birch sticks and your dry 
 chestnut to start the fun, then the big apple 
 forelog, the forestick and the backstick, 
 not too much crowding or too much space. 
 Ah, there is a seemly fire! There is a fire for 
 friends ! 
 
 For the renewal of old friendships, as for 
 the perfecting of new ones, there is nothing 
 like a fire. I met a friend after years of separ- 
 ation. We came together in a modern house, 
 just modern enough to be full of steam pipes 
 and registers and gas-logs, but not so modern as 
 to have readopted open fireplaces. The room 
 had no centre — there was no hearth to draw 
 around, there was no reason for sitting in one 
 place rather than another. We could not 
 draw around the steam pipes or the register. 
 
228 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 The gas-log was not turned on, it would have 
 been too hot, and anyhow — a gas-log ! We 
 sat and talked for hours in an aimless, unsat- 
 isfactory sort of way. I felt as if we were, 
 figuratively speaking, sitting on the edges of 
 our chairs. It was better than nothing, but it 
 was not a real meeting. The next year we 
 were together again, but this time it was before 
 our own blazing apple log. We did not talk so 
 much as we had done before, but we were 
 silent a great deal more, which was better. 
 For in really intimate communion, silence 
 is the last, best gift, but it cannot be forced, 
 it cannot be snatched at. You may try it, but 
 you grow restless, you begin to consider your 
 expression, you wonder how long it will last, 
 you fancy it may seem to mean too much, and 
 at last you are hurried over into talk again. 
 But before a fire all things are possible, even 
 silence. Chance acquaintances and intimate 
 friends fall alike under its spell, talk is abso- 
 lutely spontaneous, it flows rapidly or slowly, 
 or dies away altogether. What need for talk 
 when the fire is saying it all — now flaring up 
 in a blaze to interpret our rarest enthusiasms, 
 now popping and snapping with wit or fury. 
 
IN THE FIRELIGHT 229 
 
 now burning with the even heat of steady, 
 rational life, now settling into a contemplat- 
 ive glow of meditation. 
 
 In the circle of the hearth everything is 
 good, but reminiscences are best of all. I 
 sometimes think all life is valuable merely as 
 an opportunity to accumulate reminiscences, 
 and I am sure that the precious horde can be 
 seen to best advantage by firelight. Then is 
 the time for the miser to spread out his treas- 
 ure and admire it. I remember once Jona- 
 than and I were on a bicycle trip. My chain 
 had broken and we had trudged eight long, 
 hot, dusty miles to the river that had to be 
 crossed that night. It was dark when we 
 reached it, and it had begun to rain, a warm, 
 dreary drizzle. As we stumbled over the rail- 
 way track and felt our way past the little 
 station toward the still smaller ferry-house, 
 a voice from the darkness drawled, "Guess 
 ye won't git the ferry to-night — last boat 
 went half an hour ago." 
 
 It was the final blow. We leaned forlornly 
 on our wheels and looked out upon the dark 
 water, whose rain-quenched mirror dully re- 
 flected the lights of the opposite town. Finally 
 
230 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 I said, "Well, Jonathan, anyhow, we're mak- 
 ing reminiscences." 
 
 This remark was, I own, not highly practi- 
 cal, but I intended it to be comforting, and if 
 it failed — as it clearly did — to cheer Jona- 
 than, that was not because it lacked wisdom, 
 but because men are so often devoid of im- 
 agination save as an adornment of their 
 easy moments. 
 
 Finally the same impersonal voice out of 
 the dark uttered another sentence: "Might 
 row ye 'cross if ye've got to go to-night." 
 
 "How much?" said Jonathan. 
 
 "Guess it's wuth a dollar. Mean night to 
 be out there." 
 
 We had, between us, forty-seven cents and 
 three street-car tickets, good in the opposite 
 town. All this we meekly offered him, and 
 in the pause that followed I added desper- 
 ately, "And we can each take an oar and 
 help." 
 
 "Wall — I '11 take ye." 
 
 It seemed to me that the voice suggested 
 an accompanying grin, but I had no proof. 
 
 And so we got across. We never saw the 
 face of our boatman, but on the other side we 
 
IN THE FIRELIGHT 231 
 
 felt for his hand and emptied our pockets into 
 it — nickels and dimes and pennies, and the 
 three car tickets; but as we were turning to 
 grope our way up the dock the voice said, 
 **Here — ye '11 need two of them tickets to 
 git home with. I do' want 'um." 
 
 Now already it must be evident to any one 
 that my remark to Jonathan, though perhaps 
 ill-timed, embodied a profound and cheering 
 truth. The more uncomfortable you are, the 
 more desperate your situation, the better 
 the reminiscences you are storing up to be 
 enjoyed before the fire. 
 I Yes, there is nothing like firelight for remin- 
 iscences. By the clear light of morning — 
 say ten o'clock — I might be forced to admit 
 that life has had its humdrum and unpleasant 
 aspects, but in the evening, with the candles 
 lighted and the fire glowing and flickering, I 
 will allow no such thing. The firelight some- 
 how lights up all the lovely bits, and about 
 the unlovely ones it throws a thick mantle of 
 shadow, like the shadows in the corners of 
 the room behind us. Nor does the firelight 
 magic end here. Not only does it play about 
 the fair hours of our past, making them fairer. 
 
232 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 it also vaguely multiplies them, so that for one 
 real occurrence we see many. It is like stand- 
 ing between opposing mirrors: looking into 
 either, one sees a receding series of reflections, 
 unending as Banquo's royal line. 
 
 Thus, once last winter Jonathan and I 
 spent a long evening reading aloud a tale of 
 the "Earthly Paradise." Once last summer we 
 sat alone before the embers and quietly talked. 
 Once and only once. Yet firelit memory 
 is already laying her touch upon those hours. 
 Already, though my diary tells me they stood 
 alone, I am persuaded that they were many. 
 I look back over a retrospect of many long 
 winter evenings, in whose cozy light I see 
 again the ringed smoke of Jonathan's pipe 
 and hear again the lingering verse of the idle 
 singer's tales; a retrospect of many long sum- 
 mer twilights, wherein the warmth of the 
 settling embers mingles with the sharp cool- 
 ness of a summer night, and pleasant talk 
 gives place to pleasant silence. 
 
 The apple logs have burned through and 
 rolled apart, the great backlog has settled 
 deeper and deeper into the ashes. The fire 
 whispers and murmurs, it whistles soft, low 
 
IN THE FIRELIGHT 233 
 
 notes, it chuckles and sighs, finally it sinks 
 into reverie, stirring now and then to whisper 
 ''sh-h-h-h" lest we break the spell. Only the 
 old clock in the hall refuses to yield, and so- 
 berly persists in its "tick-tock," 'Hick-tock." 
 Jonathan's pipe is smoked out, but he does 
 not fill it, and we sit there, looking deep into 
 the rosy glow, and dreaming, dreaming — 
 
 THE END 
 
APR 25 1912 
 
 CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
 U . S . A 
 
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