*> 
 
MORE JONATHAN PAPERS. 
 THE JONATHAN PAPERS. 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
More Jonathan Papers 
 
More Jonathan Papers 
 
 By 
 
 Elisabeth Woodbridge 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 pretftf Camfcrit>0e 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY ELISABETH WOODBRIDGE MORRIS 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published November iqi$ 
 
TO 
 JONATHAN 
 
Contents 
 
 I. THE SEARCHINGS OF JONATHAN ... 1 
 
 II. SAP-TIME 25 
 
 III. EVENINGS ON THE FARM 50 
 
 IV. AFTER FROST 83 
 
 V. THE JOYS OF GARDEN STEWARDSHIP . 97 
 
 VI. TROUT AND ARBUTUS 115 
 
 VII. WITHOUT THE TIME OF DAY . . .138 
 
 VIII. THE WAYS OF GRISELDA ..... 162 
 
 IX. A ROWBOAT PILGRIMAGE , .180 
 
More Jonathan Papers 
 
 The Searchings of Jonathan 
 
 "WHAT I find it hard to understand is, why a 
 person who can see a spray of fringed gentian 
 in the middle of a meadow can t see a book on 
 the sitting-room table." 
 
 "The reason why I can see the gentian," 
 said Jonathan, "is because the gentian is 
 there." 
 
 "So is the book," I responded. 
 
 "Which table? "he asked. 
 
 "The one with the lamp on it. It s a red 
 book, about so big." 
 
 "It isn t there; but, just to satisfy you, 
 I 11 look again." 
 
 He returned in a moment with an argu 
 mentative expression of countenance. "It 
 is n t there," he said firmly. "Will anything 
 else do instead?" 
 
2 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "No, I wanted you to read that special 
 thing. Oh, dear ! And I have all these things 
 in my lap! And I know it is there." 
 
 "And I know it is n t." He stretched him 
 self out in the hammock and watched me as 
 I rather ostentatiously laid down thimble, 
 scissors, needle, cotton, and material and set 
 out for the sitting-room table. There were a 
 number of books on it, to be sure. I glanced 
 rapidly through the piles, fingered the lower 
 books, pushed aside a magazine, and pulled 
 out from beneath it the book I wanted. I 
 returned to the hammock and handed it over. 
 Then, after possessing myself, again rather 
 ostentatiously, of material, cotton, needle, 
 scissors, and thimble, I sat down. 
 
 "It s the second essay I specially thought 
 we d like," I said. 
 
 "Just for curiosity," said Jonathan, with 
 an impersonal air, "where did you find it?" 
 
 "Find what?" I asked innocently. 
 
 "The book." 
 
 "Oh! On the table." 
 
 "Which table?" 
 
 "The one with the lamp on it." 
 
 "I should like to know where." 
 
THE SEARCHINGS OF JONATHAN 3 
 
 "Why just there on the table. There 
 was an Atlantic on top of it, to be sure." 
 
 "I saw the * Atlantic. Blest if it looked as 
 though it had anything under it! Besides, 
 I was looking for it on top of things. You 
 said you laid it down there just before lunch 
 eon, and I did n t think it could have crawled 
 in under so quick." 
 
 "When you re looking for a thing," I said, 
 "you must n t think, you must look. Now 
 go ahead and read." 
 
 If this were a single instance, or even if it 
 were one of many illustrating a common 
 human frailty, it would hardly be worth set 
 ting down. But the frailty under considera 
 tion has come to seem to me rather particu 
 larly masculine. Are not all the Jonathans 
 in the world continually being sent to some 
 sitting-room table for something, and coming 
 back to assert, with more or less pleasantness, 
 according to their temperament, that it is not 
 there? The incident, then, is not isolated; it 
 is typical of a vast group. For Jonathan, read 
 Everyman; for the red book, read any par 
 ticular thing that you want Him to bring; 
 for the sitting-room table, read the place 
 
4 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 where you know it is and Everyman says it 
 isn t. * 
 
 This, at least, is my thesis. It is not, how 
 ever, unchallenged. Jonathan has challenged 
 it when, from time to time, as occasion of 
 fered, I have lightly sketched it out for him. 
 Sometimes he argues that my instances are 
 really isolated cases and that their evidence 
 is not cumulative, at others he takes refuge 
 in a tu quoque in itself a confession of weak 
 ness and alludes darkly to "top shelves" 
 and "bottom drawers." But let us have no 
 mysteries. These phrases, considered as argu 
 ments, have their origin in certain incidents 
 which, that all the evidence may be in, I will 
 here set down. 
 
 Once upon a time I asked Jonathan to get 
 me something from the top shelf in the closet. 
 He went, and failed to find it. Then I went, 
 and took it down. Jonathan, watching over 
 my shoulder, said, "But that was n t the top 
 shelf, I suppose you will admit." 
 
 Sure enough! There was a shelf above. 
 "Oh, yes; but I don t count that shelf. We 
 never use it, because nobody can reach 
 it." 
 
THE SEARCHINGS OF JONATHAN 5 
 
 "How do you expect me to know which 
 shelves you count and which you don t?" 
 
 "Of course, anatomically structurally 
 it is one, but functionally it isn t there at all." 
 
 "I see," said Jonathan, so contentedly that 
 I knew he was filing this affair away for future 
 use. 
 
 On another occasion I asked him to get 
 something for me from the top drawer of the 
 old "high-boy" in the dining-room. He was 
 gone a long while, and at last, growing im 
 patient, I followed. I found him standing on 
 an old wooden-seated chair, screw-driver in 
 hand. A drawer on a level with his head was 
 open, and he had hanging over his arm 
 a gaudy collection of ancient table-covers 
 and embroidered scarfs, mostly in shades of 
 magenta. 
 
 "She stuck, but I ve got her open now. 
 I don t see any pillow-cases, though. It s all 
 full of these things." He pumped his laden 
 arm up and down, and the table-covers 
 wagged gayly. 
 
 I sank into the chair and laughed. "Oh! 
 Have you been prying at that all this time? 
 Of course there s nothing in that drawer." 
 
6 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "There s where you re wrong. There s a 
 great deal in it; I have n t taken out half. If 
 you want to see " 
 
 "I don t want to see! There s nothing I 
 want less ! What I mean is I never put 
 anything there." 
 
 "It s the top drawer." He was beginning 
 to lay back the table-covers. 
 
 "But I can t reach it. And it s been stuck 
 for ever so long." 
 
 "You said the top drawer." 
 
 :< Yes, I suppose I did. Of course what I 
 meant was the top one of the ones I use." 
 
 "I see, my dear. When you say top shelf 
 you don t mean top shelf, and when you say 
 top drawer you don t mean top drawer; in 
 fact, when you say top you don t mean top 
 at all you mean the height of your head. 
 Everything above that does n t count." 
 
 Jonathan was so pleased with this formula 
 tion of my attitude that he was not in the 
 least irritated to have put out unnecessary 
 work. And his satisfaction was deepened by 
 one more incident. I had sent him to the 
 bottom drawer of my bureau to get a shawl. 
 He returned without it, and I was puzzled. 
 
THE SEARCHINGS OF JONATHAN 7 
 
 "Now, Jonathan, it s there, and it s the top 
 thing." 
 
 "The real top," murmured Jonathan, "or 
 just what you call top?" 
 
 "It s right in front," I went on; "and I 
 don t see how even a man could fail to find it." 
 
 He proceeded to enumerate the contents 
 of the drawer in such strange fashion that I 
 began to wonder where he had been. 
 
 "I said my bureau." 
 
 "I went to your bureau." 
 
 "The bottom drawer." 
 
 "The bottom drawer. There was nothing 
 but a lot of little boxes and - 
 
 "Oh, / know what you did! You went to 
 the secret drawer." 
 
 "Is n t that the bottom one?" 
 
 "Why, yes, in a way of course it is; but 
 it does n t exactly count it s not one of the 
 regular drawers it has n t any knobs, or 
 anything " 
 
 "But it s a perfectly good drawer." 
 
 Yes. But nobody is supposed to know 
 it s there; it looks like a molding " 
 
 "But I know it s there." 
 
 "Yes, of course." 
 
8 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "And you know I know it s there." 
 
 "Yes, yes; but I just don t think about 
 that one in counting up. I see what you mean, 
 of course." 
 
 " And I see what you mean. You mean that 
 your shawl is in the bottom one of the regular 
 drawers with knobs that can be alluded 
 to in general conversation. Now I think I can 
 find it." 
 
 He did. And in addition he amused himself 
 by working out phrases about "when is a 
 bottom drawer not a bottom drawer?" and 
 "when is a top shelf not a top shelf?" 
 
 It is to these incidents which I regard as 
 isolated and negligible, and he regards as 
 typical and significant that he alludes on 
 the occasions when he is unable to find a red 
 book on the sitting-room table. In vain do I 
 point out that when language is variable and 
 fluid it is alive, and that there may be two 
 opinions about the structural top and the 
 functional top, whereas there can be but one 
 as to the book being or not being on the table. 
 He maintains a quiet cheerfulness, as of one 
 who is conscious of being, if not invulnerable, 
 at least well armed. 
 
THE SEARCHINGS OF JONATHAN 9 
 
 For a time he even tried to make believe 
 that he was invulnerable as well to set up 
 the thesis that if the book was really on the 
 table he could find it. But in this he suffered 
 so many reverses that only strong natural 
 pertinacity kept him from capitulation. 
 
 Is it necessary to recount instances? Every 
 family can furnish them. As I allow myself to 
 float off into a reminiscent dream I find my 
 mind possessed by a continuous series of dis 
 solving views in which Jonathan is always 
 coming to me saying, "It is n t there," and I 
 am always saying, "Please look again." 
 
 Though everything in the house seems to 
 be in a conspiracy against him, it is perhaps 
 with the fishing-tackle that he has most con 
 stant difficulties. 
 
 "My dear, have you any idea where my 
 rod is? No, don t get up I ll look if you ll 
 just tell me where " 
 
 "Probably in the corner behind the chest 
 in the orchard room." 
 
 "I ve looked there." 
 
 "Well, then, did you take it in from the 
 wagon last night?" 
 
 "Yes, I remember doing it." 
 
10 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "What about the little attic? You might 
 have put it up there to dry out." 
 
 "No. I took my wading boots up, but that 
 was all." 
 
 "The dining-room? You came in that 
 way." 
 
 He goes and returns. "Not there." I re 
 flect deeply. 
 
 "Jonathan, are you sure it s not in that 
 corner of the orchard room?" 
 
 "Yes, I m sure; but I ll look again." He 
 disappears, but in a moment I hear his voice 
 calling, "No! Yours is here, but not mine." 
 
 I perceive that it is a case for me, and I get 
 up. "You go and harness. I 11 find it," I call. 
 
 There was a time when, under such condi 
 tions, I should have begun by hunting in all 
 the unlikely places I could think of. Now I 
 know better. I go straight to the corner of the 
 orchard room. Then I call to Jonathan, just 
 to relieve his mind. 
 
 "All right! I ve found it." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "Here, in the orchard room." 
 
 "Where in the orchard room?" 
 
 "In the corner." 
 
THE SEARCHINGS OF JONATHAN 11 
 
 "What corner?" 
 
 "The usual corner back of the chest." 
 
 "The devil!" Then he comes back to put 
 his head in at the door. "What are you 
 laughing at? " 
 
 " Nothing. What are you talking about the 
 devil for? Anyway, it is n t the devil; it s the 
 brownie." 
 
 For there seems no doubt that the things 
 he hunts for are possessed of supernatural 
 powers; and the theory of a brownie in the 
 house, with a special grudge against Jonathan, 
 would perhaps best account for the way in 
 which they elude his search but leap into sight 
 at my approach. There is, to be sure, one 
 other explanation, but it is one that does not 
 suggest itself to him, or appeal to him when 
 suggested by me, so there is no need to dwell 
 upon it. 
 
 If it is n t the rod, it is the landing-net, 
 which has hung itself on a nail a little to the 
 left or right of the one he had expected to see 
 it on; or his reel, which has crept into a corner 
 of the tackle drawer and held a ball of string 
 in front of itself to distract his vision; or a 
 bunch of snell hooks, which, aware of its pro- 
 
12 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 tective coloring, has snuggled up against the 
 shady side of the drawer and tucked its pink- 
 papered head underneath a gay pickerel-spoon. 
 
 Fishing-tackle is, clearly, "possessed," but 
 in other fields Jonathan is not free from 
 trouble. Finding anything on a bureau 
 seems to offer peculiar obstacles. It is per 
 haps a big, black-headed pin that I want. 
 " On the pincushion, Jonathan." 
 
 He goes, and returns with two sizes of 
 safety-pins and one long hat-pin. 
 
 "No, dear, those won t do. A small, black- 
 headed one at least small compared with a 
 hat-pin, large compared with an ordinary pin." 
 
 "Common or house pin?" he murmurs, 
 quoting a friend s phrase. 
 
 "Do look again! I hate to drop this to go 
 myself." 
 
 "When a man does a job, he gets his tools 
 together first." 
 
 "Yes; but they say women should n t copy 
 men, they should develop along their own 
 lines. Please go." 
 
 He goes, and comes back. "You don t 
 want fancy gold pins, I suppose?" 
 
 "No, no! Here, you hold this, and I ll go." 
 
THE SEARCHINGS OF JONATHAN 13 
 
 I dash to the bureau. Sure enough, he is right 
 about the cushion. I glance hastily about. 
 There, in a little saucer, are a half-dozen of 
 the sort I want. I snatch some and run back. 
 
 "Well, it was n t in the cushion, I bet." 
 
 "No," I admit; "it was in a saucer just be 
 hind the cushion." 
 
 "You said cushion." 
 
 "I know. It sail right." 
 
 "Now, if you had said simply bureau/ I d 
 have looked in other places on it." 
 
 :< Yes, you d have looked in other places!" 
 I could not forbear responding. There is, I 
 grant, another side to this question. One 
 evening when I went upstairs I found a par 
 tial presentation of it, in the form of a little 
 newspaper clipping, pinned on my cushion. 
 It read as follows : 
 
 " My dear," said she, " please run and 
 
 bring me the needle from the haystack." 
 
 " Oh, I don t know which haystack." 
 
 " Look in all the haystacks you 
 
 can t miss it; there s only one needle." 
 
 Jonathan was in the cellar at the moment. 
 When he came up, he said, "Did I hear any 
 one laughing?" 
 
14 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "I don t know. Did you?" 
 "I thought maybe it was you." 
 "It might have been. Something amused 
 me I forget what." 
 
 I accused Jonathan of having written it 
 himself, but he denied it. Some other Jona 
 than, then; for, as I said, this is not a personal 
 matter, it is a world matter. Let us grant, 
 then, a certain allowance for those who hunt 
 in woman-made haystacks. But what about 
 pockets? Is not a man lord over his own 
 pockets? And are they not nevertheless as 
 so many haystacks piled high for his confu 
 sion? Certain it is that Jonathan has nearly 
 as much trouble with his pockets as he does 
 with the corners and cupboards and shelves 
 and drawers of his house. It usually happens 
 over our late supper, after his day in town. 
 He sets down his teacup, struck with a sudden 
 memory. He feels in his vest pockets first 
 the right, then the left. He proceeds to search 
 himself, murmuring, "I thought something 
 came to-day that I wanted to show you 
 oh, here! no, that is n t it. I thought I put it 
 no, those are to be what s this? No, 
 that s a memorandum. Now, where in " 
 
THE SEARCHINGS OF JONATHAN 15 
 
 Pie runs through the papers in his pockets 
 twice over, and in the second round I watch 
 him narrowly, and perhaps see a corner of an 
 envelope that does not look like office work. 
 " There, Jonathan! What s that? No, not 
 that that!" 
 
 He pulls it out with an air of immense 
 relief. "There! I knew I had something. 
 That s it." 
 
 When we travel, the same thing happens 
 with the tickets, especially if they chance to 
 be costly and complicated ones, with all the 
 shifts and changes of our journey printed 
 thick upon their faces. The conductor ap 
 pears at the other end of the car. Jonathan 
 begins vaguely to fumble without lowering 
 his paper. Pocket after pocket is browsed 
 through in this way. Then the paper slides to 
 his knee and he begins a more thorough in 
 vestigation, with all the characteristic clap 
 ping and diving motions that seem to be 
 necessary. Some pockets must always be 
 clapped and others dived into to discover their 
 contents. 
 
 No tickets. The conductor is halfway up 
 the car. Jonathan s face begins to grow seri- 
 
16 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 ous. He rises and looks on the seat and under 
 it. He sits down and takes out packet after 
 packet of papers and goes over them with 
 scrupulous care. At this point I used to be 
 come really anxious to make hasty calcu 
 lations as to our financial resources, immedi 
 ate and ultimate to wonder it conductors 
 ever really put nice people like us off trains. 
 But that was long ago. I know now that 
 Jonathan has never lost a ticket in his life. 
 So I glance through the paper that he has 
 dropped or watch the landscape until he 
 reaches a certain stage of calm and definite 
 pessimism, when he says, "I must have pulled 
 them out when I took out those postcards in 
 the other car. Yes, that s just what has hap 
 pened." Then, the conductor being only a 
 few seats away, I beg Jonathan to look once 
 more in his vest pocket, where he always puts 
 them. To oblige me he looks, though with 
 out faith, and lo ! this time the tickets fairly 
 fling themselves upon him, with smiles almost 
 curling up their corners. Does the brownie 
 travel with us, then? 
 
 I begin to suspect that some of the good 
 men who have been blamed for forgetting to 
 
THE SEAKCHINGS OF JONATHAN 17 
 
 mail letters in their pockets have been, not 
 indeed blameless, but at least misunderstood. 
 Probably they do not forget. Probably they 
 hunt for the letters and cannot find them, and 
 conclude that they have already mailed them. 
 
 In the matter of the home haystacks Jona 
 than s confidence in himself has at last been 
 shaken. For a long time, when he returned 
 to me after some futile search, he used to say, 
 "Of course you can look for it if you like, but 
 it is not there." But man is a reasoning, if not 
 altogether a reasonable, being, and with a suffi 
 cient accumulation of evidence, especially 
 when there is some one constantly at hand to 
 interpret its teachings, almost any set of opin 
 ions, however fixed, may be shaken. So here. 
 
 Once when we shut up the farm for the 
 winter I left my fountain pen behind. This 
 was little short of a tragedy, but I comforted 
 myself with the knowledge that Jonathan 
 was going back that week-end for a day s 
 hunt. 
 
 "Be sure to get the pen first of all," I said, 
 "and put it in your pocket." 
 
 "Where is it? "he asked. 
 
 "In the little medicine cupboard over the 
 
18 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 fireplace in the orchard room, standing up at 
 the side of the first shelf." 
 
 "Why not on your desk?" he asked. 
 
 "Because I was writing tags in there, and 
 set it up so it would be out of the way." 
 
 "And it was out of the way. All right. I ll 
 collect it." 
 
 He went, and on his return I met him with 
 eager hand "My pen!" 
 
 "I m sorry," he began. 
 
 "You did n t forget!" I exclaimed. 
 
 "No. But it was n t there." 
 
 "But did you look?" 
 
 "Yes, I looked." 
 
 "Thoroughly?" 
 
 "Yes. I lit three matches." 
 
 "Matches! Then you didn t get it when 
 you first got there!" 
 
 "Why no I had the dog to attend to 
 and but I had plenty of time when I 
 got back, and it was n t there." 
 
 "Well- Dear me! Did you look any 
 where else? I suppose I may be mistaken. 
 Perhaps I did take it back to the desk." 
 
 " That s just what I thought myself," said 
 Jonathan. " So I went there, and looked, and 
 
THE SEARCHINGS OF JONATHAN 19 
 
 then I looked on all the mantelpieces and 
 your bureau. You must have put it in your 
 bag the last minute bet it s there now!" 
 
 "Bet it is n t." 
 
 It was n t. For two weeks more I was 
 driven to using other pens strange and dis 
 tracting to the fingers and the eyes and the 
 mind. Then Jonathan was to go up again. 
 
 "Please look once more," I begged, "and 
 don t expect not to see it. I can fairly see it 
 myself, this minute, standing up there on the 
 right-hand side, just behind the machine oil 
 
 can. ! 
 
 " Oh, I 11 look," he promised. " If it s there, 
 I 11 find it." 
 
 He returned penless. I considered buying 
 another. But we were planning to go up to 
 gether the last week of the hunting season, 
 and I thought I would wait on the chance. 
 
 We got off at the little station and hunted 
 our way up, making great sweeps and jogs, as 
 hunters must, to take in certain spots we 
 thought promising certain ravines and 
 swamp edges where we are always sure of 
 hearing the thunderous whir of partridge 
 wings, or the soft, shrill whistle of woodcock. 
 
20 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 At noon we broiled chops and rested in the 
 lee of the wood edge, where, even in the late 
 fall, one can usually find spots that are warm 
 and still. It was dusk by the time we came 
 over the crest of the farm ledges and saw the 
 huddle of the home buildings below us, and 
 quite dark when we reached the house. Fires 
 had been made and coals smouldered on the 
 hearth in the sitting-room. 
 
 "You light the lamp," I said, "and I ll 
 just take a match and go through to see if 
 that pen should happen to be there." 
 
 "No use doing anything to-night," said 
 Jonathan. "To-morrow morning you can 
 have a thorough hunt." 
 
 But I took my match, felt my way into the 
 next room, past the fireplace, up to the cup 
 board, then struck my match. In its first 
 flare-up I glanced in. Then I chuckled. 
 
 Jonathan had gone out to the dining-room, 
 but he has perfectly good ears. 
 
 "NO!" he roared, and his tone of dismay, 
 incredulity, rage, sent me off into gales of 
 unscrupulous laughter. He was striding in, 
 candle in hand, shouting, "It was not there!" 
 
 "Look yourself," I managed to gasp. 
 
THE SEARCHINGS OF JONATHAN 21 
 
 This time, somehow, he could see it. 
 
 "You planted it! You brought it up and 
 planted it!" 
 
 "I never! Oh, dear me! It pays for going 
 without it for weeks!" 
 
 "Nothing will ever make me believe that 
 that pen was standing there when I looked 
 for it ! " said Jonathan, with vehement finality. 
 
 "All right," I sighed happily. "You don t 
 have to believe it." 
 
 But in his heart perhaps he does believe it. 
 At any rate, since that time he has adopted a 
 new formula: "My dear, it may be there, of 
 course, but I don t see it." And this position 
 I regard as unassailable. 
 
 One triumph he has had. I wanted some 
 thing that was stored away in the shut-up 
 town house. 
 
 "Do you suppose you could find it? " I said, 
 as gently as possible. 
 
 "I can try," he said. 
 
 "I think it is in a box about this shape 
 see? a gray box, in the attic closet, the 
 farthest-in corner." 
 
 "Are you sure it s in the house? If it s in 
 the house, I think I can find it." 
 
22 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "Yes, I m sure of that." 
 
 When he returned that night, his face wore 
 a look of satisfaction very imperfectly con 
 cealed beneath a mask of nonchalance. 
 
 "Good for you! Was it where I said?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Was it in a different corner?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Where was it?" 
 
 "It was n t in a corner at all. It was n t in 
 that closet." 
 
 "It was n t! Where, then?" 
 
 " Downstairs in the hall closet." He paused, 
 then could not forbear adding, "And it was n t 
 in a gray box; it was in a big hat-box with 
 violets all over it." 
 
 "Why, Jonathan! Are n t you grand! How 
 did you ever find it? I could n t have done 
 better myself." 
 
 Under such praise he expanded. "The 
 fact is," he said confidentially, "I had given 
 it up. And then suddenly I changed my 
 mind. I said to myself, Jonathan, don t 
 be a man! Think what she d do if she 
 were here now. And then I got busy and 
 found it." 
 
THE SEARCHINGS OF JONATHAN 23 
 
 "Jonathan!" I could almost have wept if 
 I had not been laughing. 
 
 "Well," he said, proud, yet rather sheepish, 
 "what is there so funny about that? I gave 
 up half a day to it." 
 
 "Funny! It isn t funny exactly. You 
 don t mind my laughing a little? Why, you Ve 
 lived down the fountain pen we 11 forget 
 the pen " 
 
 "Oh, no, you won t forget the pen either," 
 he said, with a certain pleasant grimness. 
 
 "Well, perhaps not of course it would 
 be a pity to forget that. Suppose I say, then, 
 that we ll always regard the pen in the light 
 of the violet hat-box?" 
 
 "I think that might do." Then he had an 
 alarming afterthought. "But, see here you 
 won t expect me to do things like that often? " 
 
 "Dear me, no! People can t live always on 
 their highest levels. Perhaps you ll never 
 do it again." Jonathan looked distinctly re 
 lieved. " I 11 accept it as a unique effort like 
 Dante s angel and Raphael s sonnet." 
 
 "Jonathan," I said that evening, "what 
 do you know about St. Anthony of Padua? " 
 
 "Not much." 
 
24 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "Well, you ought to. He helped you to-day. 
 He s the saint who helps people to find lost 
 articles. Every man ought to take him as 
 a patron saint." 
 
 "And do you know which saint it is who 
 helps people to find lost virtues like hu 
 mility, for instance?" 
 
 "No. I don t, really." 
 
 "I did n t suppose you did," said Jonathan. 
 
II 
 
 Sap-Time 
 
 IT was a little tree-toad that began it. In a 
 careless moment he had come down to the 
 bench that connects the big maple tree with 
 the old locust stump, and when I went out at 
 dusk to wait for Jonathan, there he sat, in 
 plain sight. A few experimental pokes sent 
 him back to the tree, and I studied him there, 
 marveling at the way he assimilated with its 
 bark. As Jonathan came across the grass I 
 called softly, and pointed to the tree. 
 
 "Well? "he said. 
 
 "Don t you see?" 
 
 "No. What?" 
 
 "Look I thought you had eyes!" 
 
 "Oh, what a little beauty!" 
 
 "And is n t his back just like bark and 
 lichens ! And what are those things in the tree 
 beside him?" 
 
 "Plugs, I suppose." 
 
 "Plugs?" 
 
26 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "Yes. After tapping. Uncle Ben used to 
 tap these trees, I believe." 
 
 "You mean for sap? Maple syrup?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Jonathan! I didn t know these were 
 sugar maples." 
 
 "Oh, yes. These on the road." 
 
 "The whole row? Why, there are ten or 
 fifteen of them! And you never told me!" 
 
 "I thought you knew." 
 
 " Knew ! I don t know anything I should 
 think you d know that, by this time. Do you 
 suppose, if I had known, I should have let all 
 these years go by oh, dear think of all 
 the fun we ve missed! And syrup!" 
 
 "You d have to come up in February." 
 
 "Well, then, I ll come in February. Who s 
 afraid of February?" 
 
 "All right. Try it next year." 
 
 I did. But not in February. Things hap 
 pened, as things do, and it was early April be 
 fore I got to the farm. But it had been a 
 wintry March, and the farmers told me that 
 the sap had not been running except for a few 
 days in a February thaw. Anyway, it was 
 worth trying. 
 
SAP-TIME 27 
 
 Jonathan could not come with me. He was 
 to join me later. But Hiram found a bundle 
 of elder spouts in the attic, and with these 
 and an auger we went out along the snowy, 
 muddy road. The hole was bored a pair 
 of them in the first tree, and the spouts 
 driven in. I knelt, watching in fact, peer 
 ing up the spout-hole to see what might hap 
 pen. Suddenly a drop, dim with sawdust, ap 
 peared gathered, hesitated, then ran down 
 gayly and leapt off the end. 
 
 "Look! Hiram! It s running!" I called. 
 
 Hiram, boring the next tree, made no re 
 sponse. He evidently expected it to run. 
 Jonathan would have acted just like that, too, 
 I felt sure. Is it a masculine quality, I wonder, 
 to be unmoved when the theoretically ex 
 pected becomes actual? Or is it that some 
 temperaments have naturally a certain large 
 confidence in the sway of law, and refuse to 
 wonder at its individual workings? To me the 
 individual workings give an ever fresh thrill 
 because they bring a new realization of the 
 mighty powers behind them. It seems to de 
 pend on which end you begin at. 
 
 But though the little drops thrilled me, I 
 
28 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 was not beyond setting a pail underneath to 
 catch them. And as Hiram went on boring, I 
 followed with my pails. Pails, did I say? 
 Pails by courtesy. There were, indeed, a few 
 real pails berry-pails, lard-pails, and water- 
 pails but for the most part the sap fell into 
 pitchers, or tin saucepans, stew-kettles of 
 aluminum or agate ware, blue and gray and 
 white and mottled, or big yellow earthenware 
 bowls. It was a strange collection of recep 
 tacles that lined the roadside when we had 
 finished our progress. As I looked along the 
 row, I laughed, and even Hiram smiled. 
 
 But what next? Every utensil in the house 
 was out there, sitting in the road. There was 
 nothing left but the wash-boiler. Now, I had 
 heard tales of amateur syrup-boilings, and I 
 felt that the wash-boiler would not do. Be 
 sides, I meant to work outdoors no kitchen 
 stove for me! I must have a pan, a big, flat 
 pan. I flew to the telephone, and called up 
 the village plumber, three miles away. Could 
 he build me a pan? Oh, say, two feet by three 
 feet, and five inches high yes, right away. 
 Yes, Hiram would call for it in the afternoon. 
 
 I felt better. And now for a fireplace ! Oh, 
 
SAP-TIME 29 
 
 Jonathan! Why did you have to be away! 
 For Jonathan loves a stone and knows how 
 to put stones together, as witness the stone 
 "Eyrie" and the stile in the lane. However, 
 there Jonathan was n t. So I went out into 
 the swampy orchard behind the house and 
 looked about no lack of stones, at any rate. 
 I began to collect material, and Hiram, see 
 ing my purpose, helped with the big stones. 
 Somehow my fireplace got made two side 
 walls, one end wall, the other end left open 
 for stoking. It was not as pretty as if Jona 
 than had done it, but " twas enough, twould 
 serve." I collected fire-wood, and there I was, 
 ready for my pan, and the afternoon was yet 
 young, and the sap was drip-drip-dripping 
 from all the spouts. I could begin to boil next 
 day. I felt that I was being borne along on 
 the providential wave that so often floats the 
 inexperienced to success. 
 
 That night I emptied all my vessels into 
 the boiler and set them out once more. A 
 neighbor drove by and pulled up to comment 
 benevolently on my work. 
 
 "Will it run to-night?" I asked him. 
 
 "No no t won t run to-night. Too 
 
30 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 cold. T won t run any to-night. You can 
 sleep all right." 
 
 This was pleasant to hear. There was a 
 moon, to be sure, but it was growing colder, 
 and at the idea of crawling along that road in 
 the middle of the night even my enthusiasm 
 shivered a little. 
 
 So I made my rounds at nine, in the white 
 moonlight, and went to sleep. 
 
 I was awakened the next morning to a con 
 sciousness of flooding sunshine and Hiram s 
 voice outside my window. 
 
 "Got anything I can empty sap into? I ve 
 got everything all filled up." 
 
 "Sap! Why, it is n t running yet, is it?" 
 
 "Pails were flowin over when I came out." 
 
 "Flowing over ! They said the sap would n t 
 run last night." 
 
 "I guest there don t nobody know when 
 sap 11 run and when it won t," said Hiram 
 peacefully, as he tramped off to the barn. 
 
 In a few minutes I was outdoors. Sure 
 enough, Hiram had everything full old 
 boilers, feed-pails, water-pails. But we found 
 some three-gallon milk-cans and used them. 
 A farm is like a city. There are always things 
 
SAP-TIME 31 
 
 enough in it for all purposes. It is only a 
 question of using its resources. 
 
 Then, in the clear April sunshine, I went 
 out and surveyed the row of maples. How 
 they did drip! Some of them almost ran. I 
 felt as if I had turned on the faucets of the 
 universe and did n t know how to turn them 
 off again. 
 
 However, there was my new pan. I set it 
 over my oven walls and began to pour in sap. 
 Hiram helped me. He seemed to think he 
 needed his feed-pails. We poured in sap and 
 we poured in sap. Never did I see anything 
 hold so much as that pan. Even Hiram was 
 stirred out of his usual calm to remark, "It 
 beats all, how much that holds." Of course 
 Jonathan would have had its capacity all cal 
 culated the day before, but my methods are 
 empirical, and so I was surprised as well as 
 pleased when all my receptacles emptied 
 themselves into its shallow breadths and still 
 there was a good inch to allow for boiling up. 
 Yes, Providence my exclusive little fool s 
 Providence was with me. The pan, and 
 the oven, were a success, and when Jonathan 
 came that night I led him out with uncon- 
 
32 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 cealed pride and showed him the pan now 
 a heaving, frothing mass of sap-about-to-be- 
 syrup, sending clouds of white steam down 
 the wind. As he looked at the oven walls, 
 I fancied his fingers ached to get at them, 
 but he offered no criticism, seeing that they 
 worked. 
 
 The next day began overcast, but Provi 
 dence was merely preparing for me a special 
 little gift in the form of a miniature snow 
 storm. It was quite real while it lasted. It 
 whitened the grass and the road, it piled itself 
 softly among the clusters of swelling buds on 
 the apple trees, and made the orchard look as 
 though it had burst into bloom in an hour. 
 Then the sun came out, there were a few 
 dazzling moments when the world was all 
 blue and silver, and then the whiteness faded. 
 
 And the sap! How it dripped! Once an 
 hour I had to make the rounds, bringing back 
 gallons each time, and the fire under my pan 
 was kept up so that the boiling down might 
 keep pace with the new supply. 
 
 "They do say snow makes it run," shouted 
 a passer-by, and another called, "You want 
 to keep skimmin !" Whereupon I seized my 
 
SAP-TIME 33 
 
 long-handled skimmer and fell to work. 
 Southern Connecticut does not know much 
 about syrup, but by the avenue of the road I 
 was gradually accumulating such wisdom as 
 it possessed. 
 
 The syrup was made. No worse accident 
 befell than the occasional overflowing of a 
 pail too long neglected. The syrup was made, 
 and bottled, and distributed to friends, and 
 was the pride of the household through the 
 year. 
 
 "This time I will go early," I said to Jona 
 than; "they say the late running is never 
 quite so good." 
 
 It was early March when I got up there 
 this time early March after a winter whose 
 rigor had known practically no break. Again 
 Jonathan could not come, but Cousin Janet 
 could, and we met at the little station, where 
 Hiram was waiting with Kit and the surrey. 
 The sun was warm, but the air was keen and 
 the woods hardly showed spring at all yet, 
 even in that first token of it, the slight thick 
 ening of their millions of little tips, through 
 the swelling of the buds. The city trees al- 
 
34 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 ready showed this, but the country ones still 
 kept their wintry penciling of vanishing lines. 
 
 Spring was in the road, however. "There 
 ain t no bottom to this road now, it s just 
 dropped clean out," remarked a fellow team 
 ster as we wallowed along companionably 
 through the woods. But, somehow, we 
 reached the farm. Again we bored our holes, 
 and again I was thrilled as the first bright 
 drops slipped out and jeweled the ends of the 
 spouts. I watched Janet. She was interested 
 but calm, classing herself at once with Hiram 
 and Jonathan. We unearthed last year s 
 oven and dug out its inner depths leaves 
 and dirt and apples and ashes it was like 
 excavating through the seven Troys to get to 
 bottom. We brought down the big pan, now 
 clothed in the honors of a season s use, and 
 cleaned off the cobwebs incident to a year s 
 sojourn in the attic. By sunset we had a pan 
 ful of sap boiling merrily and already taking 
 on a distinctly golden tinge. We tasted it. It 
 was very syrupy. Letting the fire die down, 
 we went in to get supper in the utmost con 
 tent of spirit. 
 
 "It s so much simpler than last year," I 
 
SAP-TIME 35 
 
 said, as we sat over our cozy "tea," "hav 
 ing the pan and the oven ready-made, and 
 all" 
 
 "You don t suppose anything could hap 
 pen to it while we re in here?" suggested 
 Janet. "Shan t I just run out and see?" 
 
 "No, sit still. What could happen? The 
 fire s going out." 
 
 "Yes, I know." But her voice was un 
 certain. 
 
 "You see, I ve been all through it once," I 
 reassured her. 
 
 As we rose, Janet said, "Let s go out before 
 we do the dishes." And to humor her I agreed. 
 We lighted the lantern and stepped out on the 
 back porch. It^was quite dark, and as we 
 looked off toward the fireplace we saw gleams 
 of red. 
 
 "How funny!" I murmured. "I didn t 
 think there was so much fire left." 
 
 We felt our way over, through the yielding 
 mud of the orchard, and as I raised the lan 
 tern we stared in dazed astonishment. The pan 
 was a blackened mass, lit up by winking red 
 eyes of fire. I held the lantern more closely. 
 I seized a stick and poked the crisp black 
 
36 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 stuff broke and crumbled into an empty and 
 blackening pan. A curious odor arose. 
 
 "It could n t have!" gasped Janet. 
 
 "It could n t but it has!" I said. 
 
 It was a matter for tears, or rage, or 
 laughter. And laughter won. When we re 
 covered a little we took up the black shell of 
 carbon that had once been syrup-froth; we 
 laid it gently beside the oven, for a keepsake. 
 Then we poured water in the pan, and steam 
 rose hissing to the stars. 
 
 "Does it leak?" faltered Janet. 
 
 "Leak!" I said. I was on my knees now, 
 watching the water stream through the 
 parted seam of the pan bottom, down into the 
 ashes below. 
 
 "The question is," I went on as I got up, 
 "did it boil away because it leaked, or did it 
 leak because it boiled away?" 
 
 "I don t see that it matters much," said 
 Janet. She was showing symptoms of depres 
 sion at this point. 
 
 "It matters a great deal," I said. "Be 
 cause, you see, we ve got to tell Jonathan, 
 and it makes all the difference how we put 
 it." 
 
SAP-TIME 37 
 
 "I see," said Janet; then she added, ex 
 perimentally, "Why tell Jonathan?" 
 
 "Why, Janet, you know better! I wouldn t 
 miss telling Jonathan for anything. What is 
 Jonathan for! " 
 
 "Well of course," she conceded. "Let s 
 do dishes." 
 
 We sat before the fire that evening and I 
 read while Janet knitted. Between my eyes 
 and the printed page there kept rising a vision 
 a vision of black crust, with winking red 
 embers smoldering along its broken edges. I 
 found it distracting in the extreme. . . . 
 
 At some time unknown, out of the blind 
 depths of the night, I was awakened by a 
 voice: 
 
 "It s beginning to rain. I think I ll just 
 go out and empty what s near the house." 
 
 "Janet!" I murmured, "don t be absurd." 
 
 "But it will dilute all that sap." 
 
 "There is n t any sap to dilute. It won t 
 be running at night." After a while the voice, 
 full of propitiatory intonations, resumed: 
 
 "My dear, you don t mind if I slip out. It 
 will only take a minute." 
 
 "I do mind. Go to sleep!" 
 
38 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 Silence. Then: 
 
 "It s raining harder. I hate to think of all 
 that sap - 
 
 "You don t have to think!" I was quite 
 savage. "Just go to sleep and let me!" 
 Another silence. Then a fresh downpour. 
 The voice was pleading : 
 
 " Please let me go ! I 11 be back in a minute. 
 And it s not cold." 
 
 " Oh, well I m awake now, anyway. / // 
 go." My voice was tinged with that high 
 resignation that is worse than anger. Janet s 
 tone changed instantly: 
 
 "No, no! Don t! Please don t! I m going. 
 I truly don t mind." 
 
 "I m going. I don t mind, either, not at 
 all." 
 
 "Oh, dear! Then let s not either of us go." 
 
 "That was my idea in the first place." 
 
 "Well, then, we won t. Go to sleep, and I 
 will too." 
 
 "Not at all! I ve decided to go." 
 
 "But it s stopped raining. Probably it 
 won t rain any more." 
 
 "Then what are you making all this fuss 
 for?" 
 
SAP-TIME 39 
 
 "I didn t make a fuss. I just thought I 
 could slip out " 
 
 " Well, you could n t. And it s raining very 
 hard again. And I m going." 
 
 "Oh, don t! You ll get drenched." 
 
 "Of course. But I can t bear to have all 
 that sap diluted." 
 
 "It doesn t run at night. You said it 
 did n t." 
 
 "You said it did." 
 
 " But I don t really know. You know best." 
 
 "Why didn t you think of that sooner? 
 Anyway, I m going." 
 
 "Oh, dear! You make me feel as if I d 
 stirred you up " 
 
 "You have," I interrupted, sweetly. "I 
 won t deny that you have stirred me up. But 
 now that you have mentioned it" I felt 
 for a match "now that you have men 
 tioned it, I see that this was the one thing 
 needed to make my evening complete, or 
 perhaps it s morning I don t know." 
 
 We found the dining-room warm, and soon 
 we were equipped in those curious compro 
 mises of vesture that people adopt under such 
 circumstances, and, with lantern and um- 
 
40 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 brella, we fumbled our way out to the trees. 
 The rain was driving in sheets, and we 
 plodded up the road in the yellow circle of 
 lantern-light wavering uncertainly over the 
 puddles, while under our feet the mud gave 
 and sucked. 
 
 "It s diluted, sure enough," I said, as we 
 emptied the pails. We crawled slowly back, 
 with our heavy milk-can full of sap-and-rain- 
 water, and went in. 
 
 The warm dining-room was pleasant to re 
 turn to, and we sat down to cookies and milk, 
 feeling almost cozy. 
 
 " I ve always wanted to know how it would 
 be to go out in the middle of the night this 
 way," I remarked, "and now I know." 
 
 "Are n t you hateful!" said Janet. 
 
 "Not at all. Just appreciative. But now, 
 if you have n t any other plan, we ll go back 
 to bed." 
 
 It was half -past eight when we waked next 
 morning. But there was nothing to wake up 
 for. The old house was filled with the rain- 
 noises that only such an old house knows. 
 On the little windows the drops pricked 
 sharply; in the fireplace with the straight flue 
 
SAP-TIME 41 
 
 they fell, hissing, on the embers. On the 
 porch roofs the rain made a dull patter of 
 sound; on the tin roof of the "little attic" 
 over the kitchen it beat with flat resonance. 
 In the big attic, when we went up to see if all 
 was tight, it filled the place with a multitudi 
 nous clamor; on the sides of the house it drove 
 with a fury that re-echoed dimly within doors. 
 
 Outside, everything was afloat. We visited 
 the trees and viewed with consternation the 
 torrents of rain-water pouring into the pails. 
 We tried fastening pans over the spouts to 
 protect them. The wind blew them merrily 
 down the road. It would have been easy 
 enough to cover the pails, but how to let the 
 sap drip in and the rain drip out that was 
 the question. 
 
 "It seems as if there was a curse on the 
 syrup this year," said Janet. 
 
 "The trouble is," I said, "I know just 
 enough to have lost my hold on the fool s 
 Providence, and not enough really to take 
 care of myself." 
 
 " Superstition ! " said Janet. 
 
 "What do you call your idea of the curse? " 
 I retorted. "Anyway, I have an idea! Lo< 
 
42 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 Janet! We ll just cut up these enamel-cloth 
 table-covers here by the sink and everywhere, 
 and tack them around the spouts." 
 
 Janet s thrifty spirit was doubtful. "Don t 
 you need them?" 
 
 "Not half so much as the trees do. Come 
 on! Pull them off. We 11 have to have fresh 
 ones this summer, anyway." 
 
 We stripped the kitchen tables and the 
 pantry and the milk-room. We got tacks and 
 a hammer and scissors, and out we went again. 
 We cut a piece for each tree, just enough to 
 go over each pair of spouts and protect the 
 pail. When tacked on, it had the appearance 
 of a neat bib, and as the pattern was a blue 
 and white check, the effect, as one looked 
 down the road at the twelve trees, was very 
 fresh and pleasing. It seemed to cheer the 
 people who drove by, too. 
 
 But the bibs served their purpose, and the 
 sap dripped cozily into the pails without any 
 distraction from alien elements. Sap doesn t 
 run in the rain, they say, but this sap did. 
 Probably Hiram was right, and you can t tell. 
 I am glad if you can t. The physical mys 
 teries of the universe are being unveiled so 
 
SAP-TIME 43 
 
 swiftly that one likes to find something that 
 still keeps its secret though, indeed, the 
 spiritual mysteries seem in no danger of such 
 enforcement. 
 
 The next day the rain stopped, the floods 
 began to subside, and Jonathan managed to 
 arrive, though the roads had even less "bot 
 tom to em " than before. The sun blazed out, 
 and the sap ran faster, and, after Jonathan 
 had fully enjoyed them, the blue and white 
 bibs were taken off. Somehow in the clear 
 March sunshine they looked almost shocking. 
 By the next day we had syrup enough to try 
 for sugar. 
 
 For on sugar my heart was set. Syrup was 
 all very well for the first year, but now it 
 had to be sugar. Moreover, as I explained to 
 Janet, when it came to sugar, being absolutely 
 ignorant, I was again in a position to expect 
 the aid of the fool s Providence. 
 
 "How much do you know about it? " asked 
 Janet. 
 
 "Oh, just what people say. It seems to be 
 partly like fudge and partly like molasses 
 candy. You boil it, and then you beat it, and 
 then you pour it off." 
 
44 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "I ve got more to go on than that," said 
 Jonathan. "I came up on the train with the 
 Judge. He used to see it done." 
 
 "You ve got to drive Janet over to her 
 train to-night; Hiram can t," I said. 
 
 "All right. There s time enough." 
 
 We sat down to early supper, and took 
 turns running out to the kitchen to "try" 
 the syrup as it boiled down. At least we said 
 we would take turns, but usually we all three 
 went. Supper seemed distinctly a side issue. 
 
 "I m going to take it off now," said Jona 
 than. "Lookout!" 
 
 "Do you think it s time 1 ?" I demurred. 
 
 "We 11 know soon," said Jonathan, with 
 his usual composure. 
 
 We hung over him. "Now you beat it," I 
 said. But he was already beating. 
 
 "Get some cold water to set it in," he com 
 manded. We brought the dishpan with water 
 from the well, where ice still floated. 
 
 "Maybe you ought n t to stir so much 
 do you think?" I suggested, helpfully. "Beat 
 it more up, you know." 
 
 "More the way you would eggs," said 
 Janet. 
 
SAP-TIME 45 
 
 "I ll show you." I lunged at the spoon. 
 
 "Go away! This isn t eggs," said Jona 
 than, beating steadily. 
 
 "Your arm must be tired. Let me take it," 
 pleaded Janet. 
 
 "No, me!" I said. "Janet, you ve got to 
 get your coat and things. You 11 have to start 
 in fifteen minutes. Here, Jonathan, you need 
 a fresh arm." 
 
 "I m fresh enough." 
 
 "And I really don t think you have the 
 motion." 
 
 "I have motion enough. This is my job. 
 You go and help Janet." 
 
 "Janet sail right." 
 
 "So am I. See how white it s getting. The 
 Judge said " 
 
 "Here come Hiram and Kit," announced 
 Janet, returning with bag and wraps. "But 
 you have ten minutes. Can t I help?" 
 
 "He won t let us. He s that sot, " I 
 murmured. "He 11 make you miss your 
 train." 
 
 "You could butter the pans," he counter 
 charged, "and you have n t." 
 
 We flew to prepare, and the pouring began. 
 
46 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 It was a thrilling moment. The syrup, or 
 sugar, now a pale hay color, poured out 
 thickly, blob-blob-blob, into the little pans. 
 Janet moved them up as they were needed, 
 and I snatched the spoon, at last, and en 
 couraged the stuff to fall where it should. But 
 Jonathan got it from me again, and scraped 
 out the remnant, making designs of clovers 
 and polliwogs on the tops of the cakes. Then 
 a dash for coats and hats and a rush to the 
 carriage. 
 
 When the surrey disappeared around the 
 turn of the road, I went back, shivering, to 
 the house. It seemed very empty, as houses 
 will, being sensitive things. I went to the 
 kitchen. There on the table sat a huddle of 
 little pans, to cheer me, and I fell to work 
 getting things in order to be left in the morn 
 ing. Then I went back to the fire and waited 
 for Jonathan. I picked up a book and tried 
 to read, but the stillness of the house was 
 too importunate, it had to be listened to. I 
 leaned back and watched the fire, and the old 
 house and I held communion together. 
 
 Perhaps in no other way is it possible to get 
 quite what I got that evening. It was partly 
 
SAP-TIME 47 
 
 my own attitude; I was going away in the 
 morning, and I had, in a sense, no duties 
 toward the place. The magazines of last fall 
 lay on the tables, the newspapers of last fall 
 lay beside them. The dust of last fall was, 
 doubtless, in the closets and on the floors. It 
 did not matter. For though I was the mistress 
 of the house, I was for the moment even more 
 its guest, and guests do not concern them 
 selves with such things as these. 
 
 If it had been really an empty house, I 
 should have been obliged to think of these 
 things, for in an empty house the dust speaks 
 and the house is still, dumbly imprisoned in 
 its own past. On the other hand, when a 
 house is filled with life, it is still, too; it is 
 absorbed in its own present. But when one 
 sojourns in a house that is merely resting, full 
 of the life that has only for a brief season left 
 it, ready for the life that is soon to return 
 then one is in the midst of silences that are 
 not empty and hollow, but richly eloquent. 
 The house is the link that joins and interprets 
 the living past and the living future. 
 
 Something of this I came to feel as I sat 
 there in the wonderful stillness. There were 
 
48 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 no house noises such as generally form the 
 unnoticed background of one s consciousness 
 
 - the steps overhead, the distant voices, the 
 ticking of the clock, the breathing of the dog 
 in the corner. Even the mice and the chimney- 
 swallows had not come back, and I missed the 
 scurrying in the walls and the flutter of wings 
 in the chimney. The fire purred low, now and 
 then the wind sighed gently about the corner 
 of the "new part," and a loose door-latch 
 clicked as the draught shook it. A branch 
 drew back and forth across a window-pane 
 with the faintest squeak. And little by little 
 the old house opened its heart. All that it 
 told me I hardly yet know myself. It gathered 
 up for me all its past, the past that I had 
 known and the past that I had not known. 
 Time fell away. My own importance dwin 
 dled. I seemed a very small part of the life 
 of the house very small, yet wholly belong 
 ing to it. I felt that it absorbed me as it 
 absorbed the rest those before and after 
 me for time was not. 
 
 There was the sound of slow wheels out 
 side, the long roll of the carriage-house door, 
 and the trampling of hoofs on the flooring 
 
SAP-TIME 49 
 
 within. Then the clinking of the lantern and 
 the even tread of feet on the path behind the 
 house, a gust of raw snow-air and the house 
 fell silent so that Jonathan might come in. 
 
 "Your sugar is hardening nicely, I see," 
 he said, rubbing his hands before the fire. 
 
 "Yes," I said. "You know I told Janet 
 that for this part of the affair we could trust 
 to the fool s Providence." 
 
 "Thank you," said Jonathan. 
 
Ill 
 
 Evenings on the Farm 
 
 I m going out to clean the pasture spring; 
 I 11 only stop to rake the leaves away 
 (And wait to watch the water clear, I may); 
 I shan t be gone long. You come too. 
 
 I m going out to fetch the little calf 
 That s standing by the mother. It s so young, 
 It totters when she licks it with her tongue. 
 I shan t be gone long. You come too. 
 
 ROBERT FROST. 
 
 WHEN we first planned to take up the farm 
 we looked forward with especial pleasure to 
 our evenings. They were to be the quiet 
 rounding-in of our days, full of companion 
 ship, full of meditation. "We ll do lots of 
 reading aloud," I said. "And we ll have long 
 walks. There won t be much to do but walk 
 and read. I can hardly wait." And I chose 
 our summer books with special reference to 
 reading aloud. 
 
 "Of course," I said, as we fell to work at 
 our packing, "we ll have to do all sorts of 
 things first. But the days are so long up there, 
 and the life is very simple. And in the even- 
 
EVENINGS ON THE FARM 51 
 
 ings you ll help. We ought to be settled in a 
 week." 
 
 "Or two or three," suggested Jonathan. 
 
 "Three! What is there to do?" 
 
 "Farm-life is n t so blamed simple as you 
 think." 
 
 "But what is there to do? Now, listen! 
 One day for trunks, one day for boxes and 
 barrels, one day for closets, that s three, one 
 for curtains, four, one day for for the gar 
 ret, that s five. Well one day for odds and 
 ends that I haven t thought of. That s 
 liberal, I m sure." 
 
 "Better say the rest of your life for the 
 odds and ends you have n t thought of," said 
 Jonathan, as he drove the last nail in a neatly 
 headed barrel. 
 
 "Jonathan, why are you such a pessimist? " 
 
 "I m not, except when you re such an 
 optimist." 
 
 "If I d begun by saying it would take a 
 month, would you have said a week?" 
 
 "Can t tell. Might have." 
 
 "Anyway, there s nothing bad about odds 
 and ends. They re about all women have 
 much to do with most of their lives." 
 
52 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 " That s what I said. And you called me a 
 pessimist." 
 
 "I did n t call you one. I said, why were 
 you one." 
 
 "I m sorry. My mistake," said Jonathan 
 with the smile of one who scores. 
 
 And so we went. 
 
 One day for trunks was all right. Any one 
 can manage trunks. And the second day, the 
 boxes were emptied and sent flying out to the 
 barn. Curtains I decided to keep for evening 
 work, while Jonathan read. That left the 
 closets and the attic, or rather the attics, for 
 there was one over the main house and one 
 over the " new part," still "new," although 
 now some seventy years old. They were 
 known as the attic and the little attic. I 
 thought I would do the closets first, and I be 
 gan with the one in the parlor. This was built 
 into the chimney, over the fireplace. It was 
 low, and as long as the mantelpiece itself. It 
 had two long shelves shut away behind three 
 glass doors through which the treasures within 
 were dimly visible. When I swung these open 
 it felt like opening a tomb cold, musty 
 
EVENINGS ON THE FARM 53 
 
 air hung about my face. I brushed it aside, 
 and considered where to begin. It was a de 
 pressing collection. There were photographs 
 and photographs, some in frames, the rest of 
 them tied up in packages or lying in piles. A 
 few had names or messages written on the 
 back, but most gave no clue; and all of them 
 gazed out at me with that expression of com 
 plete respectability that constitutes so im 
 penetrable a mask for the personality behind. 
 Most of us wear such masks, but the older 
 photographers seem to have been singularly 
 successful in concentrating attention on them. 
 Then there were albums, with more photo 
 graphs, of people and of "views." There was 
 a big Bible, some prayer-books, and a few 
 other books elaborately bound with that 
 heavy f ancif ulness that we are learning to call 
 Victorian. One of these was on "The Won 
 ders of the Great West"; another was about 
 "The Female Saints of America." I took it 
 down and glanced through it, but concluded 
 that one had to be a female saint, or at least 
 an aspirant, to appreciate it. Then there were 
 things made out of dried flowers, out of hair, 
 out of shells, out of pine-cones. There were 
 
54 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 vases and other ornamental bits of china and 
 glass, also Victorian, looking as if they were 
 meant to be continually washed or dusted by 
 the worn, busy fingers of the female saints. As 
 I came to fuller realization of all these relics, 
 my resolution flickered out and there fell upon 
 me a strange numbness of spirit. I seemed 
 under a spell of inaction. Everything behind 
 those glass doors had been cherished too long 
 to be lightly thrown away, yet was not old 
 enough to be valuable nor useful enough to 
 keep. I spent a long day one of the longest 
 days of my life browsing through the books, 
 trying to sort the photographs, and glancing 
 through a few old letters. I did nothing in 
 particular with anything, and in the late after 
 noon I roused myself, put them all back, and 
 shut the glass doors. I had nothing to show 
 for my day s experience except a deep little 
 round ache in the back of my neck and a faint 
 brassy taste in my mouth. I complained of it 
 to Jonathan later. 
 
 " It always tasted just that way to me when 
 I was a boy," he said, "but I never thought 
 much about it I thought it was just a 
 closet-taste." 
 
EVENINGS ON THE FARM 55 
 
 "And it is n t only the taste," I went on. 
 "It does something to me, to my state of 
 mind. I m afraid to try the garret." 
 
 "Garrets are different," said Jonathan. 
 "But I d leave them. They can wait." 
 
 "They ve waited a good while, of course," 
 I said. 
 
 And so we left the garrets. We came back 
 to them later, and were glad we had done so. 
 But that is a story by itself. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the evenings, Jonathan 
 helped. 
 
 "I m afraid you were more or less right 
 about the odd jobs," I admitted one night. 
 "They do seem to accumulate." I was hold 
 ing a candle while he set up a loose latch. 
 
 "They ve been accumulating a good many 
 years," said Jonathan. 
 
 16 Yes, that s it. And so the doors all stick, 
 and the latches won t latch, and the shades 
 are sulky or wild, and the pantry shelves 
 have you noticed? they re all warped so 
 they rock when you set a dish on them." 
 
 "And the chairs pull apart," added Jona 
 than. 
 
56 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "Yes. Of course after we catch up we ll be 
 all right." 
 
 "I would n t count too much on catching 
 up." 
 
 " Why not? "I asked. 
 
 "The farm has had a long start." 
 
 "But you re a Yankee," I argued; "the 
 Yankee nature fairly feeds on such jobs 
 putter jobs, you know." 
 
 "Yes, I know." 
 
 "Only, of course, you get on faster if you re 
 not too particular about having the exact 
 tool- 
 
 Considered as a Yankee, Jonathan s only 
 fault is that when he does a job he likes to 
 have a very special tool to do it with. Often 
 it is so special that I have never heard its 
 name before and then I consider he is going 
 too far. He merely thinks I have n t gone far 
 enough. Perhaps such matters must always 
 remain matters of opinion. But even with 
 this handicap we did begin to catch up, and 
 we could have done this a good deal faster if 
 it had not been for the pump. 
 
 The pump was a clear case of new wine in 
 an old bottle. It was large and very strong. 
 
EVENINGS ON THE FARM 57 
 
 The people who worked it were strong too. 
 But the walls and floor to which it was at 
 tached were not strong at all. And so, one 
 night, when Jonathan wanted a w r alk I was 
 obliged instead to suggest the pump. 
 
 "What s the matter there?" 
 
 "Why, it seems to have pulled clear of its 
 moorings. You look at it." 
 
 He looked, with that expression of medi 
 tative resourcefulness peculiar to the true 
 Yankee countenance. "H m needs new 
 wood there, and there; that stuff 11 never 
 hold." And so the old bottle was patched with 
 new skin at the points of strain, and in the zest 
 of reconstruction Jonathan almost forgot to 
 regret the walk. "We ll have it to-morrow 
 night," he said: "the moon will be better." 
 
 The next evening I met him below the turn of 
 the road. " Wonderful night it s going to be," 
 he said, as he pushed his wheel up the last hill. 
 
 ;< Yes "I said, a little uneasily. I was 
 thinking of the kitchen pump. Finally I 
 brought myself to face it. 
 
 "There seems to be some trouble with 
 the pump," I said apologetically. I felt that 
 it was my fault, though I knew it was n t. 
 
58 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "More trouble? What sort of trouble?" 
 
 "Oh, it wheezes and makes funny sucking 
 noises, and the water spits and spits, and then 
 bursts out, and then does n t come at all. It 
 sounds a little like a cat with a bone in its 
 throat." 
 
 "Probably just that," said Jonathan: 
 "grain of sand in the valve, very likely." 
 
 "Shall I get a plumber?" 
 
 " Plumber ! I 11 fix it myself in three shakes 
 of a lamb s tail." 
 
 "Well," I said, relieved: "y u can do that 
 after supper while I see that all the chickens 
 are in, and those turkeys, and then we ll have 
 our walk." 
 
 Accordingly I went off on my tour. When 
 I returned the pale moon-shadows were al 
 ready beginning to show in the lingering dusk 
 of the fading daylight. Indoors seemed very 
 dark, but on the kitchen floor a candle sat, 
 flaring and dipping. 
 
 "Jonathan," I called, "I m ready." 
 
 "Well, I m not," said a voice at my feet. 
 
 "Why, where are you? Oh, there!" I bent 
 down and peered under the sink at a shape 
 crouched there. " Have n t you finished? " 
 
EVENINGS ON THE FARM 59 
 
 "Finished! I ve just got the thing apart." 
 
 "I should say you had!" I regarded the 
 various pieces of iron and leather and wood as 
 they lay, mere dismembered shapes, about 
 the dim kitchen. 
 
 "It does n t seem as if it would ever come 
 together again to be a pump," I said in 
 some depression. 
 
 "Oh, that s easy! It s just a question of 
 time." 
 
 "How much time?" 
 
 "Heaven knows." 
 
 "Was it the valve?" 
 
 "It was several things." 
 
 His tone had the vagueness born of concen 
 tration. I could see that this was no time to 
 press for information. Besides, in the field 
 of mechanics, as Jonathan has occasionally 
 pointed out to me, I am rather like a traveler 
 who has learned to ask questions in a foreign 
 tongue, but not to understand the answers. 
 
 "Well, I ll bring my sewing out here or 
 would you rather have me read to you? 
 There s something in the last number of " 
 
 "No get your sewing blast that 
 screw! Why does n t it start? " 
 
60 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 Evidently sewing was better than the last 
 number of anything. I settled myself under 
 a lamp, while Jonathan, in the twilight be 
 neath the sink, continued his mystic rites, 
 with an accompaniment of mildly vitupera 
 tive or persuasive language, addressed some 
 times to his tools, sometimes to the screws 
 and nuts and other parts, sometimes against 
 the men who made them or the plumbers who 
 put them in. Now and then I held a candle, 
 or steadied some perverse bit of metal while 
 he worked his will upon it. And at last the 
 phoenix did indeed rise, the pump was again 
 a pump, at least it looked like one. 
 
 "Suppose it does n t work," I suggested. 
 
 " Suppose it does," said Jonathan. 
 
 He began to pump furiously. "Pour in 
 water there ! " he directed. " Keep on pouring 
 don t stop never mind if she does spout." 
 I poured and he pumped, and there were the 
 usual sounds of a pump resuming activity: 
 gurglings and spittings, suckings and sudden 
 spoutings; but at last it seemed to get its 
 breath a few more long strokes of the 
 handle, and the water poured. 
 
 "What time is it?" he asked. 
 
EVENINGS ON THE FARM 61 
 
 "Oh, fairly late about ten ten min 
 utes past." 
 
 Instead of our walk, we stood for a mo 
 ment under the big maples before the house 
 and looked out into a sea of moonlight. It 
 silvered the sides of the old gray barns and 
 washed over the blossoming apple trees be 
 yond the house. Is there anything more 
 sweetly still than the stillness of moonlight 
 over apple blossoms! As we went out to 
 the barns to lock up, even the little hencoops 
 looked poetic. Passing one of them, we half 
 roused the feathered family within and heard 
 muffled peepings and a smothered clk-clk. 
 Jonathan was by this time so serene that I 
 felt I could ask him a question that had oc 
 curred to me. 
 
 "Jonathan, how long is three shakes of a 
 lamb s tail?" 
 
 "Apparently, my dear, it is the whole even 
 ing," he answered unruffled. 
 
 The next night was drizzly. Well, we would 
 have books instead of a walk. We lighted a 
 fire, May though it was, and settled down be 
 fore it. "What shall we read?" I asked, feel 
 ing very cozy. 
 
62 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 Jonathan was filling his pipe with a leisurely 
 deliberation good to look upon. With the 
 match in his hand he paused "Oh, I meant 
 to tell you those young turkeys of yours 
 
 they were still out when I came through 
 the yard. I wonder if they went in all right." 
 
 I have always noticed that if the turkeys 
 grow up very fat and strutty and suggestive- 
 of Thanksgiving, Jonathan calls them "our 
 turkeys," but in the spring, when they are 
 committing all the naughtinesses of wild and 
 silly youth, he is apt to allude to them as 
 "those young turkeys of yours." 
 r I rose wearily. "No. They never go in all 
 right when they get out at this time es 
 pecially on wet nights. I 11 have to find them 
 and stow them." 
 
 Jonathan got up, too, and laid down his 
 pipe. "You ll need the lantern," he said. 
 
 We went out together into the May drizzle 
 
 a good thing to be out in, too, if you are 
 out for the fun of it. But when you are hunt 
 ing silly little turkeys who literally don t 
 know enough to go in when it rains, and when 
 you expected and wanted to be doing some 
 thing else, then it seems different, the drizzle 
 
EVENINGS ON THE FARM 63 
 
 seems peculiarly drizzly, the silliness of the 
 turkeys seems particularly and unendurably 
 silly. 
 
 We waded through the drenched grass and 
 the tall, dripping weeds, listening for the 
 faint, foolish peeping of the wanderers. Some 
 we found under piled fence rails, some under 
 burdock leaves, some under nothing more 
 protective than a plantain leaf. By ones and 
 twos we collected them, half drowned yet 
 shrilly remonstrant, and dropped them into 
 the dry shed where they belonged. Then we 
 returned to the house, very wet, feeling the 
 kind of discouragement that usually besets 
 those who are forced to furnish prudence to 
 fools. 
 
 "Nine o clock," said Jonathan, "and we re 
 too wet to sit down. If you could just shut in 
 those turkeys on wet days " 
 
 "Shut them in! Didn t I shut them in! 
 They must have got out since four o clock." 
 
 "Is n t the shed tight?" he asked. 
 
 "Chicken-tight, but not turkey-tight, ap 
 parently. Nothing is turkey-tight." 
 
 "They re bigger than chickens." 
 
 " Not in any one spot they are n t. They re 
 
64 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 like coiled wire when they stretch out to 
 get through a crack they have no dimension 
 except length, their bodies are mere imagin 
 ary points to hang feathers on. You don t 
 know little turkeys." 
 
 It might be said that, having undertaken 
 to raise turkeys, we had to expect them to act 
 like turkeys. But there were other interrup 
 tions in our evenings where our share of re 
 sponsibility was not so plain. For example, 
 one wet evening in early June we had kindled 
 a little fire and I had brought the lamp for 
 ward. The pump was quiescent, the little 
 turkeys were all tucked up in the turkey 
 equivalent for bed, the farm seemed to be 
 cuddling down into itself for the night. We 
 sat for a moment luxuriously regarding the 
 flames, listening to the sighing of the wind, 
 feeling the sweet damp air as it blew in 
 through the open windows. I was considering 
 which book it should be and at last rose to 
 possess myself of two or three. 
 
 "Sh h h!" said Jonathan, a warning 
 finger raised. 
 
 I stood listening. 
 
 "I don t hear anything," I said. 
 
EVENINGS ON THE FARM 65 
 
 " Sh h ! " he repeated. " There ! " 
 
 This time, indeed, I heard faint bird-notes. 
 
 "Young robins!" He sprang up and made 
 for the back door with long strides. 
 
 I peered out through the window of the 
 orchard room, but saw only the reflection of 
 the firelight and the lamp. Suddenly I heard 
 Jonathan whistle and I ran to the back porch. 
 Blackness pressed against my eyes. 
 
 "Where are you?" I called into it. 
 
 The whistle again, quite near me, appar 
 ently out of the air. 
 
 "Bring a lantern," came a whisper. 
 
 I got it and came back and down the steps 
 to the path, holding up my light and peering 
 about in search of the voice. 
 
 "Where are you? I can t see you at all." 
 
 " Right here look here up ! " The 
 voice was almost over my head. 
 
 I searched the dark masses of the tree 
 oh, yes! the lantern revealed the heel of a 
 shoe in a crotch, and above, yes, undoubt 
 edly, the rest of Jonathan, stretched out along 
 a limb. 
 
 "Oh! What are you doing up there?" 
 
 "Get me a long stick hoe clothes- 
 
66 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 pole anything I can poke with. Quick! 
 The cat s up here. I can hear her, but I can t 
 see her." 
 
 I found the rake and reached it up to him. 
 From the dark beyond him came a distressed 
 mew. 
 
 "Now the lantern. Hang it on the teeth." 
 He drew it up to him, then, rake in one hand 
 and lantern in the other, proceeded to squirm 
 out along the limb. 
 
 "Now I see her." 
 
 I saw her too a huddle of yellow, 
 crouched close. 
 
 "I ll have her in a minute. She ll either 
 have to drop or be caught." 
 
 And in fact this distressing dilemma was 
 already becoming plain to the marauder her 
 self. Her mewings grew louder and more 
 frequent. A few more contortions brought 
 the climber nearer his victim. A little judi 
 cious urging with the rake and she was within 
 reach. The rake came down to me, and a 
 long, wild mew announced that Jonathan had 
 clutched. 
 
 " I don t see how you re going to get down," 
 I said, mopping the rain-mist out of my eyes. 
 
EVENINGS ON THE FARM 67 
 
 "Watch me," panted the contortionist. 
 
 I watched a curious mass descend the 
 tree, the lantern, swinging and jerking, fit 
 fully illumined the pair, and I could see, now 
 a knee and an ear, now a hand and a yellow 
 furry shape, now a white collar, nose, and 
 chin. There was a last, long, scratching slide. 
 I snatched the lantern, and Jonathan stood 
 beside me, holding by the scruff of her neck 
 a very much frazzled yellow cat. We returned 
 to the porch where her victims were one 
 alive, in a basket, two dead, beside it, and 
 Jonathan, kneeling, held the cat s nose close 
 to the little bodies while he boxed her ears 
 once, twice; remonstrant mews rose wild, 
 and with a desperate twist the culprit backed 
 out under his arm and leaped into the black 
 ness. 
 
 " Don t believe she 11 eat young robin for a 
 day or two," said Jonathan. 
 
 " Is that what they were? Where were 
 they? " 
 
 " Under the tree. She d knocked them 
 out." 
 
 " Could you put this one back? He seems 
 all right only sort of naked in spots." 
 
68 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 We 11 half cover the basket and hang it 
 in the tree. His folks 11 take care of him." 
 
 Next morning early there began the great 
 est to-do among the robins in the orchard. 
 They shrieked their comments on the affair 
 at the top of their lungs. They screamed 
 abusively at Jonathan and me as we stood 
 watching. "They say we did it!" said Jona 
 than. "I call that gratitude!" 
 
 I wish I could record that from that even 
 ing the cat was a reformed character. An 
 impression had indeed been made. All next 
 day she stayed under the porch, two glowing 
 eyes in the dark. The second day she came 
 out, walking indifferent and debonair, as cats 
 do. But when Jonathan took down the bas 
 ket from the tree and made her smell of it, 
 she flattened her ears against her head and 
 shot under the porch again. 
 
 But lessons grow dim and temptation is 
 freshly importunate. It was not two weeks 
 before Jonathan was up another tree on the 
 same errand, and when I considered the num 
 ber of nests in our orchard, and the number 
 of cats none of them really our cats on 
 the place, I felt that the position of overruling 
 
EVENINGS ON THE FARM 69 
 
 Providence was almost more than we could 
 undertake, if we hoped to do anything else. 
 
 These things tinkering of latches and 
 chairs, pump-mending, rescue work in the 
 orchard and among the poultry filled our 
 evenings fairly full. Yet these are only sam 
 ples, and not particularly representative 
 samples either. They were the sort of things 
 that happened oftenest, the common emer 
 gencies incidental to the life. But there were 
 also the uncommon emergencies, each oc 
 curring seldom but each adding its own touch 
 of variety to the tale of our evenings. 
 
 For instance, there was the time of the 
 great drought, when Jonathan, coming in 
 from a tour of the farm at dusk, said, "I ve 
 got to go up and dig out the spring-hole 
 across the swamp. Everything else is dry, 
 and the cattle are getting crazy." 
 
 "Can I help?" I asked, not without re 
 grets for our books and our evening it was 
 a black night, and I had had hopes. 
 
 "Yes. Come and hold the lantern." 
 
 We went. The spring-hole had been trod 
 den by the poor, eager creatures into a use- 
 
70 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 less jelly of mud. Jonathan fell to work, 
 while I held the lantern high. But soon it 
 became more than a mere matter of holding 
 the lantern. There was a crashing in the 
 blackness about us and a huge horned head 
 emerged behind my shoulder, another loomed 
 beyond Jonathan s stooping bulk. 
 
 "Keep em back," he said. "They ll have 
 it all trodden up again Hi ! You ! Ge 
 back ere!" There is as special a lingo for 
 talking to cattle as there is for talking to 
 babies. I used it as well as I could. I swung 
 the lantern in their faces, I brandished the 
 hoe-handle at them, I jabbed at them reck 
 lessly. They snorted and backed and closed 
 in again, crazy, poor things, with the 
 smell of the water. It was an evening s battle 
 for us. Jonathan dug and dug, and then laid 
 rails, and the precious water filled in slowly, 
 grew to a dark pool, and the thirsty creatures 
 panted and snuffed in the dark just outside 
 the radius of the hoe-handle, until at last we 
 could let them in. I had forgotten my books, 
 for we had come close to the earth and the 
 creatures of the earth. The cows were our 
 sisters and the steers our brothers that night. 
 
EVENINGS ON THE FARM 71 
 
 Sometimes the emergency was in the barn 
 a broken halter and trouble among the 
 horses, or perhaps a new calf. Sometimes a 
 stray creature, cow or horse, grazing 
 along the roadside, got into our yard and 
 threatened our corn and squashes and my 
 poor, struggling flower-beds. Once it was a 
 break in the wire fence around Jonathan s 
 muskmelon patch in the barn meadow. The 
 cows had just been turned in, and if it was 
 n t mended that evening it meant no melons 
 that season, also melon- tainted cream for days. 
 
 Once or twice each year it was the drain 
 pipe from the sink. The drain, like the pump, 
 was an innovation. Our ancestors had al 
 ways carried out whatever they could n t use 
 or burn, and dumped it on the far edge of the 
 orchard. In a thinly settled community, 
 there is much to be said for this method: 
 you know just where you are. But we had the 
 drain, and occasionally we did n t know just 
 where we were. 
 
 "Coffee grounds," Jonathan would sug 
 gest, with a touch of sternness. 
 
 "No," I would reply firmlv; "coffee 
 grounds are always burned." 
 
72 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 44 What then?" 
 
 " Don t know. I ve poked and poked." 
 
 A gleam in the corner of Jonathan s eye 
 "What with?" 
 
 "Oh, everything." 
 
 "Yes, I suppose so. For instance what?" 
 
 "Why hair-pin first, of course, and then 
 scissors, and then button-hook you need 
 n t smile. Button-hooks are wonderful for 
 cleaning out pipes. And then I took a pail- 
 handle and straightened it out " Jona 
 than was laughing by this time "Well, I 
 have to use what I have, don t I? " 
 
 "Yes, of course. And after the pail- 
 handle?" 
 
 "After that oh, yes. I tried your clean 
 ing-rod." 
 
 "The devil you did!" 
 
 "Not at all. It was n t hurt a bit. It just 
 wouldn t go down, that s all. So then I 
 thought I d wait for you." 
 
 "And now what do you expect?" 
 
 "I expect you to fix it." 
 
 Of course, after that, there was nothing for 
 Jonathan to do but fix it. Usually it did not 
 take long. Sometimes it did. Once it took a 
 
EVENINGS ON THE FARM 73 
 
 whole evening, and required the services of a 
 young tree, which Jonathan went out and cut 
 and trimmed and forced through a section of 
 the pipe which he had taken up and laid out 
 for the operation on the kitchen floor. It was 
 a warm evening, too, and friends had driven 
 over to visit us. We received them warmly in 
 the kitchen. We explained that we believed 
 in making them members of the family, and 
 that members of the family always helped in 
 whatever was being done. So they helped. 
 They took turns gripping the pipe while 
 Jonathan and I persuaded the young tree 
 through it. It required great strength and 
 some skill because it was necessary to make 
 the tree and the pipe perform spirally rota 
 tory movements each antagonistic and com 
 plementary to the other. We were all rather 
 tired and very hot before anything began to 
 happen. Then it happened all at once: the 
 tree burst through and not alone. A good 
 deal came with it. The kitchen floor was a 
 sight, and there was undoubtedly there 
 was a strong smell of coffee. Jonathan 
 smiled. Then he went down cellar and re 
 stored the pipe to its position, while the rest 
 
74 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 of us cleared up the kitchen, it s astonish 
 ing what a little job like that can make a 
 kitchen look like, and as our friends started 
 to go a voice from beneath us, like the ghost 
 in "Hamlet," shouted, "Hold em! There s 
 half a freezer of ice-cream down here we can 
 finish." Sure enough there was! And then 
 he would n t have to pack it down. We had 
 it up. We looted the pantry as only irrespon 
 sible adults can loot, in their own pantry, 
 and the evening ended in luxurious ease. 
 Some time in the black of the night our 
 friends left, and I suppose the sound of their 
 carriage-wheels along the empty road set 
 many a neighbor wondering, through his 
 sleep, "Who s sick now?" How could they 
 know it was only a plumbing party? 
 
 As I look back on this evening it seems one 
 of the pleasantest of the year. It is n t so 
 much what you do, of course, as the way you 
 feel about it, that makes the difference be 
 tween pleasant and unpleasant. Shall we say 
 of that evening that we meant to read aloud? 
 Or that we meant to have a quiet evening 
 with friends? Not at all. We say, with all the 
 conviction in the world, that we meant, on 
 
EVENINGS ON THE FARM 75 
 
 that particular evening, to have a plumbing 
 party, with the drain as the piece de resis 
 tance. Toward this our lives had been yearn 
 ing, and lo ! they had arrived ! 
 
 Some few things, however, are hard to 
 meet in that spirit. When the pigs broke out 
 of the pen, about nine o clock, and Hiram 
 was away, and Mrs. Hiram needed our help 
 to get them in there was no use in pretend 
 ing that we meant to do it. Moreover, the 
 labor of rounding up pigs is one of mingled 
 arduousness and delicacy. Pigs in clover 
 was once a popular game, but pigs in a dark 
 orchard is not a game at all, and it will, I am 
 firmly convinced, never be popular. It is, I 
 repeat, not a game, yet probably the only 
 way to keep one s temper at all is to regard 
 it, for the time being, as a major sport, like 
 football and deep-sea fishing and mountain- 
 climbing, where you are expected to take 
 some risks and not think too much about re 
 sults as such. On this basis it has, perhaps, 
 its own rewards. But the attitude is difficult 
 to maintain, especially late at night. 
 
 On that particular evening, as we returned, 
 breathless and worn, to the house, I could 
 
76 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 not refrain from saying, with some edge, "1 
 never wanted to keep pigs anyway." 
 
 "Who says we re keeping them? "remarked 
 Jonathan; and then we laughed and laughed. 
 
 You need n t think I m laughing because 
 you said anything specially funny," I said. 
 " It s only because I m tired enough to laugh 
 at anything." 
 
 The pump, too, tried my philosophy now 
 and then. One evening when I had worn my 
 hands to the bone cutting out thick leather 
 washers for Jonathan to insert somewhere in 
 the circulatory system of that same monster, 
 I finally broke out, "Oh, dear! I hate the 
 pump! I wanted a moonlight walk!" 
 
 "I ll have the thing together now in a 
 jiffy," said Jonathan. 
 
 "Jiffy! There s no use talking about jif 
 fies at half-past ten at night," I snarled. I 
 was determined anyway to be as cross as I 
 liked. "Why can t we find a really simple 
 way of living? This is n t simple. It s highly 
 complex and very difficult." 
 
 "You cut those washers very well," sug 
 gested Jonathan soothingly, but I was not 
 prepared to be soothed. 
 
EVENINGS ON THE FARM 77 
 
 "It was hateful work, though. Now, look 
 what we ve done this evening! We ve shut 
 up a setting hen, and housed the little tur 
 keys, and driven that cow back into the road, 
 and mended a window-shade and the dog s 
 chain, and now we ve fixed the pump and 
 it won t stay fixed at that!" 
 
 "Fair evening s work," murmured Jona 
 than as he rapidly assembled the pump. 
 
 "Yes, as work. But all I mean is it is n t 
 simple. Farm life has a reputation for sim 
 plicity that I begin to think is overdone. It 
 does n t seem to me that my evening has been 
 any more simple than if we had dressed for 
 dinner and gone to the opera or played bridge. 
 In fact, at this distance, that, compared with 
 this, has the simplicity of a I don t know 
 what!" 
 
 "I like your climaxes," said Jonathan, and 
 we both laughed. "There! I m done. Now 
 suppose we go, in our simple way, and lock up 
 the barns and chicken-houses." 
 
 And so the evenings came and went, each 
 offering a prospect of fair and quiet things 
 books and firelight and moonlight and talk; 
 
78 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 many in retrospect full of things quite differ 
 ent drains and latches and fledglings and 
 cows and pigs. Many, but not all. For the 
 evenings did now and then come when the 
 pump ceased from troubling and the "crit 
 ters" were at rest. Evenings when we sat 
 under the lamp and read, when we walked 
 and walked along moonlit roads or lay on the 
 slopes of moon-washed meadows. It was on 
 such an evening that we faced the vagaries of 
 farm life and searched for a philosophy to 
 cover them. 
 
 "I m beginning to see that it will never be 
 any better," I said. 
 
 "Probably not," said Jonathan, talking 
 around his pipe. 
 
 :< You seem contented enough about it." 
 
 "lam." 
 
 "I don t know that I m contented, but 
 perhaps I m resigned. I believe it s neces- 
 sary." 
 
 "Of course it s necessary." 
 
 Jonathan often has the air of having known 
 since infancy the great truths about life that 
 I have just discovered. I overlooked this, and 
 went on, "You see, we re right down close to 
 
EVENINGS ON THE FARM 79 
 
 the earth that is the ultimate basis of every 
 thing, and all the caprices of things touch us 
 immediately and we have to make immediate 
 adjustments to them." 
 
 "And that knocks the bottom out of our 
 evenings." 
 
 "Now if we re in the city, playing bridge, 
 somebody else is making those adjustments 
 for us. We re like the princess with seven 
 teen mattresses between her and the pea." 
 
 "She felt it, though," said Jonathan. "It 
 kept her awake." 
 
 "I know. She had a poor night. But even 
 she would hardly have maintained that she 
 felt it as she would have done if the mat 
 tresses had n t been there." 
 
 "True," said Jonathan. 
 
 "Farm life is the pea without the mat 
 tresses "I went on. 
 
 "Sounds a little cheerless," said Jonathan. 
 
 "Well of course, it is n t really cheerless 
 at all. But neither is it easy. It s full of re 
 morseless demands for immediate adjust 
 ment." 
 
 "That was the way the princess felt about 
 her pea." 
 
80 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "The princess was a snippy little thing. 
 But after all, probably her life was full of 
 adjustments of other sorts. She could n t call 
 her soul her own a minute, I suppose." 
 
 " Perhaps that was why she ran away," 
 suggested Jonathan. 
 
 " Of course it was. She ran away to find the 
 simple life and did n t find it." 
 
 "No. She found the pea even with all 
 those mattresses." 
 
 "And we ve run away, and found several 
 peas, and fewer mattresses," said Jonathan. 
 
 "Let s not get confused " 
 
 "I m not confused," said Jonathan. 
 
 "Well, I shall be in a minute if I don t look 
 out. You can t follow a parallel too far. 
 What I mean is, that if you run away from 
 one kind of complexity you run into another 
 kind." 
 
 "What are you going to do about it?" 
 
 " I m going to like it all," I answered, " and 
 make believe I meant to do it." 
 
 After that we were silent awhile. Then I 
 tried again. "You know your trick of waltz 
 ing with a glass of water on your head? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
EVENINGS ON THE FARM 81 
 
 "Well, I wonder if we could n t do that 
 with our souls." 
 
 "That suggests to me a rather curious 
 picture," said Jonathan. 
 
 "Well you know what I mean. When 
 you do that, your body takes up all the jolts 
 and jiggles before they get to the top of your 
 head, so the glass stays quiet." 
 
 "Well" 
 
 "Well, I don t see why only, of course, 
 our souls are n t really anything like glasses 
 of water, and it would be perfectly detestable 
 to think of carrying them around carefully 
 like that." 
 
 "Perhaps you d better back out of that 
 figure of speech," suggested Jonathan. "Go 
 back to your princess. Say, every man his 
 own mattress." 
 
 "No. Any figure is wrong. The trouble 
 with all of them is that as soon as you use 
 one it begins to get in your way, and say all 
 sorts of things for you that you never meant 
 at all. And then if you notice it, it bothers 
 you, and if you don t notice it, you get drawn 
 into crooked thinking." 
 
 "And yet you can t think without them." 
 
82 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "No, you can t think without them." 
 
 "Well where are we, anyway?" he 
 asked placidly. 
 
 "I don t know at all. Only I feel sure that 
 leading the simple life does n t depend on the 
 things you do it with. Feeding your own cows 
 and pigs and using pumps and candles brings 
 you no nearer to it than marketing by tele 
 phone and using city water supply and elec 
 tric lighting. I don t know what does bring 
 you nearer, but I m sure it must be some 
 thing inside you." 
 
 "That sounds rather reasonable," said 
 Jonathan; "almost scriptural " 
 
 "Yes, I know," I said. 
 
IV 
 
 After Frost 
 
 IT is late afternoon in mid-September. I 
 stand in my garden sniffing the raw air, and 
 wondering, as always at this season, will 
 there be frost to-night or will there not? Of 
 course if I were a woodchuck or a muskrat, or 
 any other really intelligent creature, I should 
 know at once and act accordingly, but being 
 only a stupid human being, I am thrown 
 back on conjecture, assisted by the ther 
 mometer, and an appeal to Jonathan. 
 
 "Too much wind for frost," says he. 
 
 "Sure? I d hate to lose my nasturtiums 
 quite so early." 
 
 "You won t lose em. Look at the ther 
 mometer if you don t believe me. If it s 
 above forty you re safe." 
 
 I look, and try to feel reassured. But I am 
 not quite easy in my mind until next morning 
 when, running out before breakfast, I make 
 the rounds and find everything untouched. 
 
84 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 But a few days later the alarm comes again. 
 There is no wind this time, and, what is 
 worse, an ominous silence falls at dusk over 
 the orchard and meadow. "Why is every 
 thing so still?" I ask myself. "Oh, of course 
 the katydids are n t talking and the 
 crickets, and all the other whirr-y things. 
 Ah! That means business! My poor gar 
 den!" 
 
 "Jonathan!" I call, as I feel rather than 
 see his shape whirling noiselessly in at the 
 big gate after his ride up from the station. 
 "Help me cover my nasturtiums. There ll 
 be frost to-night." 
 
 "Maybe," says Jonathan s voice. 
 
 "Not maybe at all surely. Listen to the 
 katydids!" 
 
 "You mean, listen to the absence of katy 
 dids." 
 
 "Very well. The point is, I want news 
 papers." 
 
 "No. The point is, I am to bring news 
 papers." 
 
 "Exactly." 
 
 "And tuck up your nasturtiums for the 
 night in your peculiarly ridiculous fashion " 
 
AFTER FROST 85 
 
 "I know it looks ridiculous, but really it s 
 sensible. There may be weeks of summer 
 after this." 
 
 And so the nasturtiums are tucked up, 
 cozily hidden under the big layers of sheets, 
 whose corners we fasten down with stones. 
 To be sure, the garden is rather a funny 
 sight, with these pale shapes sprawling over 
 its beds. But it pays. For in the morning, 
 though over in the vegetable garden the 
 squash leaves and lima beans are blackened 
 and limp, my nasturtiums are still pert and 
 crisp. I pull off the papers, wondering what 
 the passers-by have thought, and lo ! my gay 
 garden, good for perhaps two weeks more ! 
 
 But a day arrives when even newspaper 
 coddling is of no avail. Sometimes it is in late 
 September, sometimes not until October, but 
 when it comes there is no resisting. 
 
 The sun goes down, leaving a clear sky 
 paling to green at the horizon. A still cold 
 falls upon the world, and I feel that it is 
 the end. Shears in hand, I cut everything I 
 can nasturtiums down to the ground, 
 leaves, buds, and all, feathery sprays of 
 cosmos, asters by the armful. Those last 
 
86 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 bouquets that I bring into the house are al 
 ways the most beautiful, for I do not have to 
 save buds for later cutting. There will, alas, 
 be no later cutting. 
 
 So I fill my bowls and vases, and next 
 morning I go out, well knowing what I shall 
 see. It is a beautiful sight, too, if one can 
 forget its meaning. The whole golden-green 
 world of autumn has been touched with sil 
 ver. In the low-lying swamp beyond the 
 orchard it is almost like a light snowfall. 
 The meadows rising beyond the barns are 
 silvered over wherever the long tree-shadows 
 still lie. And in my garden, too, where the 
 shadows linger, every leaf is frosted, but as 
 soon as the sun warms them through, leaf and 
 twig turn dark and droop to the ground. It is 
 the end. 
 
 Except, indeed, for my brave marigolds 
 and calendulas and little button asters. It is 
 for this reason that I have given them space 
 all summer, nipping them back when they 
 tried to blossom early, for they seem a bit 
 crude compared with the other flowers. But 
 now that frost is here, my feelings warm to 
 them. I cannot criticize their color and tex- 
 
AFTER FROST 87 
 
 ture, so grateful am I to them for not giving 
 up. And when last night s cuttings have 
 faded, I shall be very glad of a glowing mass 
 of marigold beside my fireplace, and of the 
 yellow stars of calendula, like embodied 
 sunshine, on my dining-table. 
 
 Well, then, the frost has come! And after 
 the first pang of realization, I find that, curi 
 ously enough, the worst is over. Since it has 
 come, let it come ! And now hurrah for the 
 garden house-cleaning! The garden is dead 
 
 the garden of yesterday ! Long live the 
 garden the garden of to-morrow ! For 
 suddenly my mind has leaped ahead to spring. 
 
 I can hardly wait for breakfast to be over, 
 before I am out in working clothes, pulling 
 up things not weeds now, but flowers, or 
 what were flowers. Nasturtiums, asters, cos 
 mos, snapdragon, stock, late-blooming corn 
 flowers up they all come, all the annuals, 
 and the biennials that have had their season. 
 I fling them together in piles, and soon have 
 small haystacks all along my grass paths, and 
 
 there I am ! Down again to the good brown 
 earth ! 
 
 It is with positive satisfaction that I stand 
 
88 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 and survey my beds, great bare patches of 
 earth, glorified here and there by low clumps 
 of calendula and great bushes of marigold. 
 Now, then! I can do anything! I can dig, 
 and fertilize, and transplant. Best of all, I 
 can plan and plan ! The crisp wind stings my 
 cheeks, but as I work I feel the sun hot on the 
 back of my neck. I get the smell of the earth 
 as I turn it over, mingled with the pungent 
 tang of marigold blossoms, very pleasant out 
 of doors, though almost too strong for the 
 house except near a fireplace. I believe the 
 most characteristic fall odors are to me this 
 of marigold, mingled with the fragrance of 
 apples piled in the orchard, the good smell 
 of earth newly turned up, and the flavor of 
 burning leaves, borne now and then on the 
 wind, from the outdoor house-cleaning of the 
 world. 
 
 There is perhaps no season of all the gar 
 den year that brings more real delight to the 
 gardener, no time so stimulating to the im 
 agination. This year in the garden has been 
 good, but next year shall be better. All the 
 failures, or near-failures, shall of course be 
 turned into successes, and the successes shall 
 
AFTER FROST 89 
 
 be bettered. Last year there were not quite 
 enough hollyhocks, but next year there shall 
 be such glories! There are seedlings that I 
 have been saving, over on the edge of the 
 phlox. I dash across to look them up yes, 
 here they are, splendid little fellows, leaves 
 only a bit crumpled by the frost. I dig them 
 up carefully, keeping earth packed about 
 their roots, and one by one I convey them 
 across and set them out in a beautiful row 
 where I want them to grow next year. Their 
 place is beside the old stone-flagged path, and 
 I picture them rising tall against the side of 
 the woodshed, whose barrenness I have be 
 sides more than half covered with honey 
 suckle. 
 
 Then, there are my foxgloves. Some of 
 them I have already transplanted, but not 
 all. There is a little corner full of stocky 
 yearlings that I must change now. And that 
 same corner can be used for poppies. I have 
 kept seeds of this year s poppies funny 
 little brown pepper-shakers, with tiny holes 
 at the end through which I shake out the fine 
 seed dust. Doubtless they would attend to 
 all this without my help, but I like to be sure 
 
90 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 that even my self-seeding annuals come up 
 where I most want them. 
 
 Biennials, like the foxglove and canter 
 bury bells, are of course, the difficult chil 
 dren of the garden, because you have to plan 
 not only for next year but for the year after. 
 Next year s bloom is secured unless they 
 winter-kill in this year s young plants, 
 growing since spring, or even since the fall 
 before. These I transplant for next summer s 
 beauty. But for the year after I like to take 
 double precautions. Already I have tiny 
 seedlings, started since August, but besides 
 these I sow seed, too late to start before 
 spring. For a severe winter may do havoc, 
 and I shall then need the early start given by 
 fall sowing. 
 
 As I work on, I discover all sorts of treas 
 ures young plants, seedlings from all the 
 big-folk of my garden. Young larkspurs 
 surround the bushy parent clumps, and 
 the ground near the forget-me-nots is fairly 
 carpeted with little new ones. I have found 
 that, though the old forget-me-nots will live 
 through, it pays to pull out the most ragged 
 of them and trust to the youngsters to fill 
 
AFTER FROST 91 
 
 their places. These, and English daisies, I let 
 grow together about as they will. They are 
 pretty together, with their mingling of pink, 
 white, and blue, they never run out, and all I 
 need is to keep them from spreading too far, 
 or from crowding each other too much. 
 
 When my back aches from this kind of 
 sorting and shifting, I straighten up and look 
 about me again. Ah! The phlox! Time now 
 to attend to that! 
 
 My white phlox is really the most dis 
 tinguished thing in my garden. I have pink 
 and lavender, too, but any one can have pink 
 and lavender by ordering them from a flor 
 ist. They can have white, too, but not my 
 white. For mine never saw a florist; it is an 
 inheritance. 
 
 Sixty or seventy years ago there was a 
 beautiful little garden north of the old house 
 tended and loved by a beautiful lady. The 
 lady died, and the garden did not long out 
 live her. Its place was taken by a crab-apple 
 orchard, which flourished, bore blossom and 
 fruit, until in its turn it grew old, while the 
 garden had faded to a dim tradition. But one 
 day in August, a few years ago, I discovered 
 
92 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 under the shade of an old crab tree, two slen 
 der sprays of white phlox, trying to blossom. 
 In memory of that old garden and its lady, I 
 took them up and cherished them. And the 
 miracle of life was again made manifest. 
 For from those two little half-starved roots 
 has come the most splendid part of my gar 
 den. All summer it makes a thick green wall 
 on the garden s edge, beside the flagged path. 
 In the other beds it rises in luxuriant masses, 
 giving background and body with its won 
 derful deep green foliage, which is greener 
 and thicker than any other phlox I know. 
 And when its season to bloom arrives a 
 long month, from early August to mid-Sep 
 tember it is a glory of whiteness, the tallest 
 sprays on a level with my eyes, the shortest 
 shoulder high, except when rain weighs down 
 the heavy heads and they lean across the 
 paths barring my passage with their fragrant 
 wetness. 
 
 Here and there I have let the pink and 
 lavender phlox come in, for they begin to 
 bloom two weeks earlier, when the garden 
 needs color. But always my white must 
 dominate. And it does. Most wonderful of 
 
AFTER FROST 93 
 
 all is it on moonlight nights of late August, 
 when it broods over the garden like a white 
 cloud, and the night moths come crowding 
 to its fragrant feast, with their intermittent 
 burring of furry wings. 
 
 Ah, well ! the phlox has passed now, and its 
 trim green leaves are brown and crackly. I 
 can do what I like with it after this. So when 
 my other transplanting grows tiresome, I fall 
 upon my phlox. Every year some of it needs 
 thinning, so quickly does it spread. I take the 
 spading-f ork, and, with what seems like utter 
 ruthlessness, I pry out from the thickest cen 
 ters enough good roots to give the rest breath 
 ing and growing space. Along the path edges 
 I always have to cut out encroaching roots 
 each year, or else soon there would be no 
 path. But all that I take out is precious, 
 either to give to friends for their gardens, or 
 to enlarge the edges of my own. For this 
 phlox needs almost no care, and will fight 
 grass and weeds for itself. 
 
 There are phlox seedlings, too, all over the 
 garden, but I have no way of telling what color 
 they are, though usually I can detect the 
 white by its foliage. I take them up and set 
 
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 them out near the main phlox masses, and 
 wait for the next season s blossoming before I 
 give them their final place. 
 
 This is the time of year, too, when I give 
 some attention to the rocks in my garden. 
 Of course, in order to have a garden at all, 
 it was necessary to take out enough rock 
 to build quite a respectable stone wall. But 
 that was not the end. There never will be an 
 end. A Connecticut garden grows rocks like 
 weeds, and one must expect to keep on taking 
 them out each fall. The rest of the year I try 
 to ignore them, but after frost I like to make 
 a fresh raid, and get rid of another wheel 
 barrow load or so. And I always notice that 
 for one barrow load of stones that go out, it 
 takes at least two barrow loads of earth to 
 fill in. Thus an excellent circulation is main 
 tained, and the garden does not stagnate. 
 Moreover, I take great pleasure in showing 
 my friends especially friends from the 
 more earthy sections of New York and far 
 ther west the piles of rock and the parts of 
 certain stone walls about the place that have 
 been literally made out of the cullings of my 
 garden. They never believe me. 
 
AFTER FROST 95 
 
 As I am thus occupied, digging, plant 
 ing, thinning, sowing, I find it one of the 
 happiest seasons of the year. It is partly the 
 stimulus of the autumn air, partly the pleas 
 ure of getting at the ground. I think there 
 are some of us, city folk though we be, who 
 must have the giant Antaeus for ancestor. We 
 still need to get in close touch with the earth 
 now and then. Children have a true instinct 
 with their love of barefoot play in the dirt, 
 and there are grown folks who still love it 
 but we call it gardening. The sight and the 
 feel and the smell of my brown garden beds 
 gives me a pleasure that is very deep and 
 probably very primitive. 
 
 But there is another source of pleasure in 
 my fall gardening a pleasure not of the 
 senses but of the imagination. 
 
 For as I do my work my fancy is active. 
 As I transplant my young hollyhocks, I see 
 them, not little round-leaved bunches in my 
 hand, but tall and stately, aflare with colors 
 yellows, whites, pinks. As I dig about my 
 larkspur and stake out its seedlings, they 
 spire above me in heavenly blues. As I ar 
 range the clumps of coarse-leaved young 
 
96 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 foxgloves, I seem to see their rich tower-like 
 clusters of old-pink bells bending always a 
 little towards the southeast, where most sun 
 comes from. As I thin my forget-me-not I 
 see it in my mind s eye in a blue mist 
 of spring bloom. Thus, a garden rises in my 
 fancy, a garden where neither beetle, borer, 
 nor cutworm doth corrupt, and where the 
 mole doth not break in or steal, where gentle 
 rain and blessed sun come as they are needed, 
 where all the flowers bloom unceasingly in 
 colors of heavenly light a garden such as 
 never yet existed nor ever shall, till the tales 
 of fairyland come true. I shall never see that 
 garden, yet every year it blooms for me 
 afresh after frost. 
 
The Joys of Garden Stewardship 
 
 I SOMETIMES think I am coining to classify 
 my friends according to the way they act 
 when I talk about my garden. On this basis, 
 there are three sorts of people. 
 
 First there are those who are obviously not 
 interested. Such as these feel no answering 
 thrill, even at the sight of a florist s spring 
 catalogue. A weed inspires in them no desire 
 to pull it. They may, however, be really nice 
 people if they are still young; for, except by 
 special grace, no one under thirty need be 
 expected to care about gardens it is a ma 
 ture taste. But in the mean time I turn our 
 talk in other channels. 
 
 Then there are the people who, when I 
 approach the subject, brighten up, look in 
 telligent, even eager, but in a moment make 
 it clear that what they are eager for is a 
 chance to talk about their own gardens. 
 Mine is merely the stepping-stone, the bridge, 
 
98 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 the handle. This is better than indifference, 
 yet it is sometimes trying. One of my dearest 
 friends thus tests my love now and then when 
 she walks in my garden. 
 
 "Are n t those peonies lovely?" I suggest. 
 
 "Yes," dreamily; "you know I can t have 
 that shade in my garden because " and she 
 trails off into a disquisition that I could, just 
 at that moment, do without. 
 
 "Look at the height of that larkspur!" I say. 
 
 "Yes but, you know, it would n t do for 
 me to have larkspur when I go away so early. 
 What I need is things for April and May." 
 
 "Well, I am not trying to sell you any," I 
 am sometimes goaded into protesting. "I 
 only wanted you to say they are pretty 
 pretty right here in my garden." 
 
 Yes yes of course they are pretty 
 they re lovely you have a lovely gar 
 den, you know." She pulls herself up to give 
 this tribute, but soon her eyes get the far 
 away look in them again, and she is mur 
 muring, "Oh, I must write Edward to see 
 about that hedge. Tell me, my dear, if you 
 had a brick wall, would you have vines on it 
 or wall-fruit?" 
 
JOYS OF GARDEN STEWARDSHIP 99 
 
 It is of no use. I cannot hold her long. I 
 sometimes think she was nicer when she had 
 no garden of her own. Perhaps she thinks I 
 was nicer when I had none. 
 
 But there is another kind of garden man 
 ners a kind that subtly soothes, cheers, 
 perhaps inebriates. It is the manner of the 
 friend who may, indeed, have a garden, but 
 who looks at mine with the eye of adoption, 
 temporarily at least. She walks down its 
 paths, singling out this or that for notice. 
 She suggests, she even criticizes, tenderly, as 
 one who tells you an "even more becoming 
 way" to arrange your little daughter s hair. 
 She offers you roots and seeds and seedlings 
 from her garden, and last touch of flattery 
 she begs seeds and seedlings from yours. 
 
 For garden purposes, give me the man 
 ners of this third class. And, indeed, not for 
 garden purposes alone. They are useful as 
 applied to many things children, particu 
 larly, and houses. 
 
 Undoubtedly the demand that I make 
 upon my friends is a form of vanity, yet I 
 cannot seem to feel ashamed of it. I admit at 
 once that not the least part of my pleasure in 
 
100 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 my flowers is the attention they get from 
 others. Moreover, it is not only from friends 
 that I seek this, but from every passer-by 
 along my country road. There are gardens 
 and gardens. Some, set about with hedges 
 tall and thick, offer the delights of exclusive- 
 ness and solitude. But exclusiveness and sol 
 itude are easily had on a Connecticut farm, 
 and my garden will none of them; it flings 
 forth its appeal to every wayfarer. And I 
 like it. I like my garden to "get notice." As 
 people drive by I hope they enjoy my phlox. 
 I furtively glance to see if they have an eye 
 for the foxglove. I wonder if the calendulas 
 are so tall that they hide the asters. And if, 
 as I bend over my weeding, an automobile 
 whirling past lets fly an appreciative phrase 
 "lovely flowers " "wonderful yellow 
 of " "garden there," my ears are quick 
 to receive it and I forgive the eddies of gaso 
 lene and dust that are also left by the van 
 ishing visitant. 
 
 About few things can one be so brazen in 
 one s enjoyment of recognition. One s house, 
 one s clothes, one s work, one s children, all 
 these demand a certain modesty of de- 
 
JOYS OF GARDEN STEWARDSHIP 101 
 
 meaner, however the inner spirit may puff. 
 Not so one s garden. I fancy this is because, 
 while I have a strong sense of ownership in it, 
 I also have a strong sense of stewardship. 
 As owner I must be modest, but as steward I 
 may admire as openly as I will. Did I make 
 my phlox? Did I fashion my asters? Am I the 
 artificer of my fringed larkspur? Nay, truly, 
 I am but their caretaker, and may glory in 
 them as well as another, only with the added 
 touch of joy that I, even I, have given them 
 their opportunity. Like Paul I plant, like 
 Apollos I water, but before the power that 
 giveth the increase I stand back and wonder. 
 But it is not alone the results of my stew 
 ardship that give me joy. Its very processes 
 are good. Delight in the earth is a primitive 
 instinct. Digging is naturally pleasant, hoe 
 ing is pleasant, raking is pleasant, and then 
 there is the weeding. For I am not the only 
 one who sows seeds in my garden. One of my 
 friends remarked cheerfully that he had 
 planted twenty-seven different vegetables in 
 his garden, and the Lord had planted two 
 hundred and twenty-seven other kinds of 
 things. 
 
102 MORE .JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 This is where the weeding comes in. Now a 
 good deal has been said about the labor of 
 weeding, but little about the gratifications of 
 weeding. I don t mean weeding with a hoe. 
 I mean yanking up, with movements suited 
 to the occasion, each individual growing 
 thing that does n t belong. Surely I am not 
 the only one to have felt the pleasure of this. 
 They come up so nicely, and leave such soft 
 earth behind! And intellect is needed, too, 
 for each weed demands its own way of hand 
 ling: the adherent plantain needing a slow, 
 firm, drawing motion, but very satisfactory 
 when it comes; the evasive clover requiring 
 that all its sprawling runners shall be gath 
 ered up in one gentle, tactful pull; the tender 
 shepherd s purse coming easily on a straight 
 twitch; the tough ragweed that yields to al 
 most any kind of jerk. Even witch-grass, the 
 bane of the farmer, has its rewarding side, 
 when one really does get out its handful of 
 wicked-looking, crawly, white tubers. 
 
 Weeding is most fun when the weeds are 
 not too small. Yes, from the aspect of a sport 
 there is something to be said for letting weeds 
 grow. Pulling out little tender ones is poor 
 
JOYS OF GARDEN STEWARDSHIP 103 
 
 work compared with the satisfaction of haul 
 ing up a spreading treelet of ragweed or a 
 far-flaunting wild buckwheat. You seem to 
 get so much for your effort, and it stirs up 
 the ground so, and no other weeds have grown 
 under the shade of the big one, so its de 
 parture leaves a good bit of empty brown 
 earth. 
 
 Surely, weeding is good fun. If faults could 
 be yanked out of children in the same enter 
 taining way, the orphan asylums would soon 
 be emptied through the craze for adoption as 
 a major sport. 
 
 One of the pleasantest mornings of my life 
 was spent weeding, in the rain, a long-ne 
 glected corner of my garden, while a young 
 friend stood around the edges and explained 
 the current political situation to me, and 
 carted away armfuls of green stuff as I 
 handed them out to him. The rain drizzled, 
 and the air was fragrant with the smell of 
 wet earth and bruised stems. Ideally, of 
 course, weeds should never reach this state 
 of sportive rankness. But most of my friends 
 admit, under pressure, that there are corners 
 where such things do happen. 
 
104 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 Naturally, all this is assuming that one is 
 one s own gardener. There may be pleasure 
 in having a garden kept up by a real gar 
 dener, but that always seems to me a little 
 like having a doll and letting somebody else 
 dress and undress it. My garden must never 
 grow so big that I cannot take care of it 
 and neglect it myself. 
 
 In saying this, however, I don t count 
 rocks. When it comes to rocks, I call in Jona 
 than. And it often comes to rocks. 
 
 For mine is a Connecticut garden. Now 
 in the beginning Connecticut was composed 
 entirely of rocks. Then the little earth 
 gnomes, fearing that no one would ever come 
 there to give them sport, sprinkled a little 
 earth amongst the rocks, partly covered 
 some, wholly covered others, and then hid to 
 see what the gardeners would do about it. 
 And ever since the gardeners have been pa 
 tiently, or impatiently, tucking in their seeds 
 and plants in the thimblefuls of earth left by 
 the gnomes. They have been picking out the 
 rocks, or blowing them up, or burying them, 
 or working around them; and every winter 
 the little gnomes gather and push up a new 
 
JOYS OF GARDEN STEWARDSHIP 105 
 
 lot from the dark storehouses of the under 
 world. In the spring the gardeners begin 
 again, and the little gnomes hold their sides 
 with still laughter to watch the work go on. 
 
 "Rocks?" my friends say. "Do you mind 
 the rocks? But they are a special beauty! 
 Why, I have a rock in my garden that I have 
 treated" 
 
 "Very well," I interrupt rudely. "A rock is 
 all very well. If I had a rock in my garden I 
 could treat it, too. But how about a garden 
 that is all rocks?" 
 
 "Oh why choose another spot." 
 
 Whereupon I reply, "You don t know 
 Connecticut." 
 
 Ever since I began having a garden I have 
 had my troubles with the rocks, but the 
 worst time came when, in a mood of enthusi 
 astic and absolutely unintelligent optimism, 
 I decided to have a bit of smooth grass in the 
 middle of my garden. I wanted it very much. 
 The place was too restless; you could n t sit 
 down anywhere. I felt that I had to have a 
 clear green spot where I could take a chair 
 and a book. I selected the spot, marked it off 
 with string, and began to loosen up the earth 
 
106 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 for a late summer planting of grass seed. 
 Calendulas and poppies and cornflowers had 
 bloomed there before, self-sown and able to 
 look out for themselves, so I had never in 
 vestigated the depths of the bed to see what 
 the little gnomes had prepared for me. Now 
 I found out. The spading-fork gave a famil 
 iar dull clink as it struck rock. I felt about 
 for the edge; it was a big one. I got the crow 
 bar and dropped it, in testing prods; it was a 
 very big one, and only four inches below the 
 surface. Grass would never grow there in a 
 dry season. I moved to another part. An 
 other rock, big too! I prodded all over the 
 allotted space, and found six big fellows lurk 
 ing just below the top of the soil. Evidently 
 it was a case for calling in Jonathan. 
 
 He came, grumbling a little, as a man 
 should, but very efficient, armed with two 
 crowbars and equipped with a natural gen 
 ius for manipulating rocks. He made a few 
 well-placed remarks about queer people who 
 choose to have grass where flowers would 
 grow, and flowers where grass would grow, 
 also about Connecticut being intended for a 
 quarry and not for a garden anyhow. But all 
 
JOYS OF GARDEN STEWARDSHIP 107 
 
 this was only the necessary accompaniment of 
 the crowbar-play. Soon, under the insistent 
 and canny urgency of the bars, a big rock 
 began to heave its shoulder into sight above 
 the soil. I hovered about, chucking in stones 
 and earth underneath, placing little rocks 
 under the bar for fulcrums, pulling them out 
 again when they were no longer needed, 
 standing guard over the flowers in the rest of 
 the garden, with repeated warnings. "Please, 
 Jonathan, don t step back any farther; you ll 
 trample the forget-me-nots!" "Could you 
 manage to roll this fellow out along that 
 path and not across the mangled bodies of 
 the marigolds? " Jonathan grumbled a little 
 about being expected to pick a half-ton peb 
 ble out of the garden with his fingers, or lead 
 it out with a string. 
 
 "Oh, well, of course, if you can t do it I ll 
 have to let the marigolds go this year. But 
 you do such wonderful things with a crowbar, 
 I thought you could probably just guide it a 
 little." And Jonathan responds nobly to the 
 flattery of this remark, and does indeed guide 
 the huge thing, eases it along the narrow 
 path, grazes the marigolds but leaves them 
 
108 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 unhurt, until at last, with a careful arrange 
 ment of stone fulcrums and a skillful twist of 
 the bars, the great rock makes its last re 
 sponse and lunges heavily past the last flower 
 bed on to the grass beyond. 
 
 When the work was done, the edge of the 
 garden looked like Stonehenge, and the spot 
 where my grass was to be was nothing but 
 a yawning pit, crying to be filled. We sur 
 veyed it with interest. " If we had a water- 
 supply, I wouldn t make a grass-plot," I 
 said; " I d make a swimming-pool. It s deep 
 enough." 
 
 . "And sit in the middle with your book?" 
 asked Jonathan. 
 
 But there was no water-supply, so we filled 
 it in with earth. Thirty wheelbarrow loads 
 went in where those rocks came out. And 
 the little gnomes perched on Stonehenge and 
 jeered the while. I photographed it, and the 
 rocks " took " well, but as regards the gnomes, 
 the film was underexposed. 
 
 Thus the grass seed was planted. And we 
 reminded each other of the version of "Amer 
 ica" once given, with unconscious inspira 
 tion, by a little friend of ours: 
 
JOYS OF GARDEN STEWARDSHIP 109 
 
 " Land where our father died, 
 Land where the pilgrims pried." 
 
 It seemed to us to suit the adventure. 
 
 As I have said, I love to have my friends 
 love my garden. But there is one thing about 
 it that I find does not always appeal to them 
 pleasantly, and that is its color-schemes. 
 Yet this is not my doing. For in nothing do 
 I feel more keenly the fact of my mere stew 
 ardship than in this matter of color-scheme. 
 
 I set out with a very rigid one. I was 
 quite decided in my own mind that what 
 I wanted was white and salmon-pink and 
 lavender. Asters, phlox, sweet peas, holly 
 hocks, all were to bend themselves to my 
 rules. At first affairs went very well. White 
 was easy. White phlox I had, and have an 
 inheritance which from a few roots is 
 spreading and spreading in waves of white 
 ness that grow more luxuriant every year. 
 But I bought roots of salmon-pink and lav 
 ender, and then my troubles commenced. 
 About the third season strange things began 
 to happen. The pink phlox had the strength 
 of ten. It spread amazingly; but it forgot all 
 about my rules. It degenerated, some of it 
 
110 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 reverted toward that magenta shade that 
 nature seems so naturally to adore in the 
 vegetable world. To my horror I found my 
 garden blossoming into magenta pink, blue 
 pink, crimson, cardinal all the colors I had 
 determined not under any circumstances to 
 admit. On the other hand, the lavender 
 phlox, which I particularly wanted, was 
 most lovely, but frail. It refused to spread. 
 It effaced itself before the rampant pink and 
 its magenta-tainted brood. I vowed I would 
 pull out the magentas, but each year my 
 courage failed. They bloomed so bravely; I 
 would wait till they were through. But by 
 that time I was not quite sure which was 
 which; I might pull out the wrong ones. And 
 so I hesitated. 
 
 Moreover, I discovered, lingering among 
 the flowers at dusk, that there were certain 
 colors, most unpleasant by daylight, which 
 at that time took on a new shade, and, for 
 perhaps half an hour before night fell, were 
 richly lovely. This is true of some of the 
 magentas, which at dusk turn suddenly to 
 royal purples and deep lavender-blues that 
 are wonderfully satisfying. 
 
JOYS OF GARDEN STEWARDSHIP 111 
 
 For that half -hour of beauty I spare them. 
 While the sun shines I try to look the other 
 way, and at twilight I linger near them and 
 enjoy their strange, dim glories, born literally 
 of the magic hour. But I have trouble ex 
 plaining them, by daylight, to some of my 
 visitors who like color-schemes. 
 
 Insubordination is contagious. And I 
 found after a while that my asters were not 
 running true; queer things were happening 
 among the sweet peas, and in the ranks of the 
 hollyhocks all was not as it should be. And 
 the last charge was made upon me by the 
 children s gardens. Children know not color- 
 schemes. What they demand is flowers, flow 
 ers flowers to pick and pick, flowers to do 
 things with. Snapdragon, for instance, is a 
 jolly playmate, and little fingers love to 
 pinch its cheeks and see its jaws yawn wide. 
 But snapdragon tends dangerously toward 
 the magenta. Then there was the calendula 
 a delight to the young, because it blooms 
 incessantly long past the early frosts, and has 
 brittle stems that yield themselves to the 
 clumsiest plucking by small hands. But cal 
 endula ranges from a faded yellow, through 
 
112 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 really pretty primrose shades, to a deep red- 
 orange touched with maroon. 
 
 And, finally, there was the portulaca. 
 Children love it, perhaps, best of all. It offers 
 them fresh blossoms and new colors each 
 morning, and it is even more easy to pick 
 than the calendula. Who would deny them 
 portulaca? Yet if this be admitted, one may 
 as well give up the battle. For, as we all 
 know, there is absolutely no color, except 
 green, that portulaca does not perpetrate in 
 its blossoms. It knows no shame. 
 
 In short, I am giving up. I am beginning 
 to say with conviction that color-schemes are 
 the mark of a narrow and rigid taste that 
 they are born of convention and are meant 
 not for living things but for wall-papers and 
 portieres and clothes. Moreover, I am really 
 growing callous or is it, rather, broad? 
 Colors in my garden that would once have 
 made my teeth ache now leave them feeling 
 perfectly comfortable. I find myself looking 
 with unmoved flesh no creeps nor with 
 drawals upon a bed of mixed magentas, 
 scarlets, rose-pinks, and yellow-pinks. I even 
 look with pleasure. I begin to think there 
 
JOYS OF GARDEN STEWARDSHIP 113 
 
 may be a point beyond which discord achieves 
 a higher harmony. At least, this sounds well. 
 But, again, I find it hard to explain to some 
 of my friends. 
 
 Indoors, it is another story. When I bring 
 in the spoils of the garden I am again mis 
 tress and bend all to my will. Here I ll have 
 no tricks of color played on me. Sunshine and 
 sky, perhaps, work some spell, for as soon as I 
 get within four walls my prejudices return; 
 scarlets and crimsons and pinks have to live 
 in different rooms. I must have my color- 
 schemes again, and perhaps I am as narrow 
 as the worst. Except, indeed, for the chil 
 dren s bowls; here the pink and the magenta, 
 the lamb and the lion, may lie down together. 
 But it takes a little child to lead them. 
 
 Out in my garden I feel myself less and 
 less owner, more and more merely steward. 
 I decree certain paths, and the phlox says, 
 " Paths? Did you say paths?" and obliter 
 ates them in a season s growth, so that chil 
 dren walk by faith and not by sight. I decree 
 iris in one corner, and the primroses say, 
 "Iris? Not at all. This is our bed. Iris in- 
 
114 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 deed!" And I submit, and move the iris 
 elsewhere. 
 
 And yet this slipping of responsibility is 
 pleasant, too. So long as my garden will let 
 me dig in it and weed it and pick it, so long as 
 it entertains my friends for me, so long as it 
 tosses up an occasional rock so that Jonathan 
 does not lose all interest in it, so long as it 
 plays prettily with the children and flings gay 
 greetings to every passer-by, I can find no 
 fault with it. 
 
 The joys of stewardship are great and I 
 am well content. 
 
VI 
 
 Trout and Arbutus 
 
 EVERY year, toward the end of March, I find 
 Jonathan poking about in my sewing-box. 
 And, unless I am very absent-minded, I know 
 what he is after. 
 
 "No use looking there," I remark; "I keep 
 my silks put away." 
 
 "I want red, and as strong as there is." 
 
 "I know what you want. Here." and I 
 hand him a spool of red buttonhole twist. 
 
 "Ah! Just right!" And for the rest of the 
 evening his fingers are busy. 
 
 Over what? Mending our trout-rods, of 
 course. It is pretty work, calling for strength 
 and precision of grasp, and as he winds and 
 winds, adjusting all the little brass leading- 
 rings, or supplying new ones, and staying 
 points in the bamboo where he suspects weak 
 ness, we talk over last year s trout-pools, and 
 wonder what they will be like this year. 
 
 But beyond wonder we do not get, often 
 for weeks after the trout season is, legisla- 
 
116 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 lively, "open." Jonathan is "busy." I am 
 "busy." We know that, if April passes, there 
 is still May and June, and so, if at the end of 
 April, or early May, we do at last pick up 
 our rods, all new-bedight with red silk 
 windings, and shiny with fresh varnish, it 
 is not alone the call of the trout that decides 
 us, but another call which is to me at least 
 more imperious, because, if we neglect it now, 
 there is no May and June in which to heed it. 
 It is the call of the arbutus. 
 
 Any one with New England traditions 
 knows what this call is. Its appeal is to 
 something far deeper than the love of a pretty 
 flower. For it is the flower that, to our fathers 
 and our grandfathers, and to their fathers and 
 grandfathers, meant spring; and not spring in 
 its prettiness and ease, appealing to the idler 
 in us, nor spring in its melancholy, appealing 
 to shall I say the poet in us? But spring 
 in its blessedness of opportunity, its joyously 
 triumphant life, appealing to the worker in 
 us. Here, of course, we touch hands with all 
 the races of the world for whom winter has 
 been the supreme menace, spring the supreme 
 and saving miracle. But each race has its own 
 
TROUT AND ARBUTUS 117 
 
 symbols, and to the New Englander the sym 
 bol is the arbutus. 
 
 This may seem a bit of sentimentality. 
 And, indeed, we need not expect to find it 
 expressed by any New England farmer. New 
 England does not go out in gay companies to 
 bring back the first blossoms. But New 
 England does nothing in gay companies. It 
 has been taught to distrust ceremonies and 
 expression of any sort. It rejoices with reti 
 cence, it appreciates with a reservation. And 
 yet I have seen a sprig of arbutus in rough 
 and clumsy buttonholes on weather-faded 
 lapels which, the rest of the twelve-month 
 through, know no other flower. And when, 
 in unfamiliar country, I have interrupted the 
 ploughing to ask for guidance, I usually get 
 it: "Arbutus? Yaas. The s a lot of it up 
 along that hillside and in the woods over be 
 yond t was out last week, some of it, I 
 happened to notice" this in the apologetic 
 tone of one who admits a weakness "guess 
 you ll find all you want." I venture to say 
 that of no other wild flower, except those 
 which work specific harm or good, could I get 
 such information. 
 
118 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 To many of us, city-bred, the tradition 
 comes through inheritance. It means, per 
 haps, the shy, poetic side of our father s boy 
 hood, only half acknowledged, after the New 
 England fashion, but none the less real and 
 none the less our possession. It means rare 
 days, when the city whose chief est signs 
 of spring were the flare of dandelions in yards 
 and parks and the chatter of English sparrows 
 on ivy-clad church walls was left behind, 
 and we were "in the country." It was a 
 country excitingly different from the country 
 of the summer vacation, a country not deeply 
 green, but warmly brown, and sweet with the 
 smell of moist, living earth. Green enough, 
 indeed, in the spring-fed meadows and folds of 
 the hills, where the early grass flashes into 
 vividest emerald, but in the woods the soft 
 mist-colored mazes of multitudinous twigs 
 still show through their veilings and dust 
 ings of color palest green of birches, gray- 
 green of poplar, yellow-green of willows, and 
 redder tones of the maples; and along the 
 fence-lines and roadsides blessed, untidy 
 fence-lines and roadsides of New England 
 a fine penciling of red stems the cut-back 
 
TROUT AND ARBUTUS 119 
 
 maple bushes and tangled vines alive to their 
 tips and just bursting into leaf. And every 
 where in the woods, on fence-lines and road 
 sides, the white blossoms of the "shad-blow," 
 daintiest of spring trees, too slight for a 
 tree, indeed, though too tall for a bush and 
 looking less like a tree in blossom than like 
 floating blossoms caught for a moment among 
 the twigs. A moment only, for the first gust 
 loosens them again and carpets the woods 
 with their petals, but while they last their 
 w r hiteness shimmers everywhere. 
 
 Such rare days were all blown through 
 with the wonderful wind of spring. Spring 
 wind is really different from any other. It is 
 not a finished thing, like the mellow winds of 
 summer and the cold blasts of winter. It is an 
 imperfect blend of shivering reminiscence and 
 eager promise. One moment it breathes sun 
 and stirring earth, the next it reminds us of 
 old snow in the hollows, and bleak northern 
 slopes. 
 
 When, on these days, the wind blew to us, 
 almost before we saw it, the first greeting of 
 the arbutus, it always seemed that the day 
 had found its complete and satisfying ex- 
 
120 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 pression. Every one comes to realize, at 
 some time in his life, the power of suggestion 
 possessed by odors. Does not half the power 
 of the Church lie in its incense? An odor, just 
 because it is at once concrete and formless, 
 can carry an appeal overwhelmingly strong 
 and searching, superseding all other expres 
 sion. This is the appeal made to me by the 
 arbutus. It can never be quite precipitated 
 into words, but it holds in solution all the 
 things it has come to mean dear human 
 tradition and beloved companionship, the 
 poetry of the land and the miracle of new 
 birth. 
 
 In late March or early April I am likely to 
 see the first blossom on some friend s table 
 I try not to see it first in a florist s display ! 
 To my startled question she gives reassuring 
 answer, "Oh, no, not from around here. This 
 came from Virginia." 
 
 Days pass, and, perhaps, the mail brings 
 some to me, this time from Pennsylvania or 
 New Jersey, and soon I can no longer ignore 
 the trays of tight, leafless bunches for sale on 
 street corners and behind plate-glass windows. 
 "From York State," they tell me. I grow 
 restive. 
 
TROUT AND ARBUTUS 121 
 
 "Jonathan," I say, holding up a spray for 
 him to smell, "we ve got to go. You can t 
 resist that. We ll take a day and go for it 
 and trout, too." 
 
 It is as well that arbutus comes in the trout 
 season, for to take a day off just to pick a 
 flower might seem a little absurd. But, 
 coupled with trout all is well. Trout is 
 food. One must eat. The search for food 
 needs no defense, and yet, the curious fact is, 
 that if you go for trout and don t get any, it 
 does n t make so much difference as you 
 might suppose, but if you go for arbutus and 
 don t get any, it makes all the difference in 
 the world. And so Jonathan knows that in 
 choosing his brook for that particular day, 
 he must have regard primarily to the arbutus 
 it will give us and only secondarily to the 
 trout. 
 
 Every one knows the kind of brook that is, 
 for every one knows the kind of country 
 arbutus loves hilly country, with slopes 
 toward the north; bits of woodland, prefer 
 ably with pine in it, to give shade, but not too 
 deep shade; a scrub undergrowth of laurel 
 and huckleberry and bay; and always, some- 
 
MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 where within sight or hearing, water. It is 
 curious how arbutus, which never grows in 
 wet places, yet seems to like the neighborhood 
 of water. It loves the slopes above a brook 
 or the shaggy hillsides overlooking a little 
 pond or river. 
 
 Fortunately, there is such a brook, in just 
 such country, on our list. There are not so 
 many trout as in other brooks, but enough to 
 justify our rods; and not so much arbutus as 
 I could find elsewhere, but enough oh, 
 enough! 
 
 To this brook we go. We tie Kit at the 
 bridge, Jonathan slings on a fish-basket, to do 
 for both, and I take a box or two for the 
 flowers. But from this moment on our inter 
 ests are somewhat at variance. The fact is, 
 Jonathan cares a little more about the trout 
 than about the arbutus, while I care a little 
 more about the arbutus than about the 
 trout. His eye is keenly on the brook, mine 
 is, yearningly, on the ragged hillsides that roll 
 up above it. 
 
 Jonathan feels this. "There is n t any for 
 two fields yet might as well stick to the 
 brook." 
 
TROUT AND ARBUTUS 123 
 
 "I know. I thought perhaps I d go on 
 down and let you fish this part. Then I d 
 meet you beyond the second fence " 
 i " Oh, no, that won t do at all. Why, there s 
 a rock just below here down by that wild 
 cherry where I took out a beauty last 
 year, and left another. I want you to go 
 down and get him." 
 
 "You get him. I don t mind." 
 
 "Oh, but I mind. Here, I ve got it all 
 planned: there s a bit of brush-fishing just 
 below" 
 
 "No brush-fishing for me, please!" 
 
 "That s what I m saying, if you ll only 
 give me time. I 11 take that there are 
 always two or three in there and when 
 you ve finished here you can go around me 
 and fish the bend, under the hemlocks, and 
 then the first arbutus is just beside that, and 
 I ll join you there." 
 
 " Well " I assent grudgingly " only, 
 really, I d be just as happy if you d fish the 
 whole thing and let me go right on down " 
 
 " No, you would n t. Now, remember to 
 sneak before you get to that rock. Drop in 
 six feet above it and let the current do the 
 
124 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 rest. They re awfully shy. I expect you to 
 get at least one there, and two down at the 
 bend." He trudges off to his brush-fishing 
 and leaves me bound in honor to extract a 
 trout from under that rock. I deposit my 
 boxes in the meadow above it, and "sneak" 
 down. The sneak of a trout fisherman is like 
 no other form of locomotion, and I am con 
 vinced that the human frame was not evolved 
 with it in mind. But I resort to it in defer 
 ence to Jonathan s prejudices in deference, 
 also, to the fact that when I do not the trout 
 seldom bite. And Jonathan is so trustfully 
 counting on my getting that trout! 
 
 I did get him. I dropped in my line, as per 
 directions, and let the current do the rest; 
 had the thrill of feeling the line suddenly 
 caught and drawn under the rock, held, then 
 wiggled slightly; I struck, felt the weight, 
 drew back steadily, and in a few moments 
 there was a flopping in the grass behind me. 
 
 So that was off my mind. 
 
 I strung him on a twig of wild cherry, 
 gathered up my boxes, and wandered along 
 the faint path, back of the patch of brush 
 where, I knew, Jonathan w r as cheerfully 
 
TROUT AND ARBUTUS 125 
 
 threading his line through tangles of twig, 
 briar, and vine, compared with which the 
 needle s eye is as a yawning barn door. 
 Jonathan s attitude toward brush-fishing is 
 something which I respect without under 
 standing. Down one long field I went, where 
 the brook ran in shallow gayety, and there, 
 ahead, was the bend, a sudden curve of 
 water, deepening under the roots of an over 
 hanging hemlock. I climbed the stone wall 
 beside, glanced at the water very trouty 
 water indeed glanced at the hill-pasture 
 above very arbutusy indeed laid down 
 my rod and my trout and my box, and ran 
 up the low bank to a clump of bay and berry- 
 bushes that I thought I remembered. . . . 
 Yes! There it was! I had remembered ! Ah! 
 The dear things! 
 
 When you first find arbutus, there is only 
 one thing to do: lie right down beside it. 
 Its fragrance as it grows is different from 
 what it is after it is picked, because with the 
 sweetness of the blossoms is mingled the good 
 smell of the earth and of the woody twigs and 
 of the dried grass and leaves. And there are 
 other rewards one gets by lying down. It is 
 
126 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 all very well to talk proudly about man s 
 walking with his head erect and his face to 
 the heavens, but if we keep that posture all 
 the time we miss a good deal. The attitude 
 of the toad and the lizard is not to be scorned, 
 though when the needs of locomotion convert 
 it into the fisherman s "sneak," it is, as I 
 have suggested, to be sparingly indulged in. 
 But if we could only nibble now and then 
 from "the other side" of Alice s mushroom, 
 what a new outlook we should get on the 
 world that now lies about our feet! What 
 new aspects of its beauty would be revealed 
 to us: the forest grandeurs of the grass, the 
 architecture of its slim shafts with their pil 
 lared aisles and pointed arches of interlocking 
 and upspringing curves, their ceiling traceries 
 of spraying tops against a far-away back 
 ground of sky! 
 
 To know arbutus, you must stoop to its 
 level, and look across the fine, frosty fur of 
 its stiff little leaves, and feel the nestle of its 
 stems to the ground, the little up-fling of their 
 tips toward the sun, and the neat radiance 
 of its flower clusters, with their blessed 
 fragrance and their pure, babyish color. 
 
TROUT AND ARBUTUS 127 
 
 But after that? You want to pick it. Yes, 
 you really want to pick it! 
 
 In this it is different from other flowers. 
 Most of them I am well content to leave 
 where they grow. In fact, the love of picking 
 things flowers or anything else is a 
 youthful taste: we lose it as we grow older; 
 we become more and more willing to appre 
 ciate without acquiring, or rather, apprecia 
 tion becomes to us a finer and more spiritual 
 form of acquiring. Is it possible that, after all, 
 the old idea of heaven as a state of enraptured 
 contemplation is in harmony with the trend 
 of our development? 
 
 But if there is arbutus in heaven, I shall 
 need to develop a good deal further not to 
 want to pick it. It suggests picking; it 
 almost invites it. There is something about 
 the way it nestles and hides, that makes you 
 want to see it better. Here is a spray of pure 
 white, living -under a green tent of overlapping 
 leaves; one must raise it, and nip off just one 
 leaf, so that the blossoms can see out. There 
 is another, a pink cluster, showing faintly 
 through the dry, matted grass. You feel for 
 the stem, pull it gently, and, lo, it is many 
 
128 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 stems, which have crept their way under the 
 tangle, and every one is tipped with a cluster 
 of stars or round little buds each on its long 
 stem, fairly begging to be picked. It gets 
 picked. 
 
 Yet sometimes its very beauty has stayed 
 my hand. I shall never forget one clump I 
 found, growing out of a bank of deep green 
 moss, partly shaded by a great hemlock. The 
 soft pink blossoms luxuriant leafy sprays of 
 them were lying out on the moss in a pa 
 gan carelessness of beauty, as though some 
 god had willed it there for his pleasure. I sat 
 beside it a long time, and in the end I left it 
 without picking it. 
 
 On this particular day, Jonathan being 
 still lost in the brush patch, I had risen 
 from my visit with the first-discovered blos 
 soms and wandered on, from clump to clump, 
 wherever the glimpse of a leaf attracted me, 
 picking the choicest here and there and 
 dropping them into my box. After I do not 
 know how long, I was roused by Jonathan s 
 whistle. I was some distance up the hillside 
 by this time, and he was beside the brook, at 
 the bend. 
 
TROUT AND ARBUTUS 129 
 
 "What luck? "he called. 
 
 "Good luck! I ve found lots. Come up!" 
 
 He took a few steps up toward me, so that 
 conversation could drop from shouting to 
 speaking levels. "How many did you get?" 
 he asked. 
 
 "How many? ... Oh ... why ... Oh, I 
 got one up there where you showed me 
 under the rock, you know." 
 
 "Good one?" 
 
 "Eight inches. He s down there by the 
 bars." 
 
 " Good ! And what about the bend? " 
 
 "The bend? Oh, I didn t fish there 
 look at these! Aren t they beauties?" I 
 came down the hill to hold my open box up 
 to his face. But my casual word almost 
 effaced the scent of the flowers. 
 
 "Ah yes delicious didn t fish 
 there? Why not? Did they see you?" 
 
 "Who? The trout? I don t know. But I 
 saw this. And I just had to pick it." 
 
 "Well! You re a great fisherman! And with 
 that water right there beside you! Lord!" 
 
 "With the arbutus right here beside me! 
 Lord!" 
 
130 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "But the arbutus would wait." 
 
 "But the trout would wait. They re wait 
 ing for you now, don t you hear them? Go 
 and fish there!" 
 
 "No. That s your pool." Jonathan has a 
 way of bestowing a trout-pool on me as if it 
 were a bouquet. To refuse its opportunities 
 is almost like throwing his flowers back in his 
 face. 
 
 "Well of course it s a beautiful pool " 
 
 "Best on the brook," murmured Jonathan. 
 
 "But, truly, I d enjoy it just as much to 
 have you fish it." 
 
 "Nobody can fish it now for a while. I 
 thought you d be there, of course, and I came 
 stamping along down, close by the bank. 
 They would n t bite now not for half an 
 hour, anyway." 
 
 "Well, then, that s just right. We ll go on 
 up the hillside for half an hour, and then come 
 back and fish it. Set your rod up against the 
 bayberry here, and come along look there! 
 you re almost stepping on some!" 
 
 Jonathan, gradually adjusting himself to 
 the turn of things, stood his rod up against 
 the bush with the meticulous care of the true 
 
TROUT AND ARBUTUS 131 
 
 sportsman. "Where did you leave yours?" 
 he asked, with a suspiciousness born of a 
 deep knowledge of my character. 
 "Oh, down by the bars." 
 "Standing up or lying down?" 
 "Lying down, I think. It s all right." 
 "It s not all right if it s lying down. Any 
 thing might trample on it." 
 
 " For instance, what? birds or crickets? " 
 "For instance, people or cows." He strode 
 down the hill, and I saw him stoop. As he 
 returned I could read disapproval in his gait. 
 "Will you never learn how to treat a rod! 
 It was lying just beyond the bars. I must 
 have landed within two feet of it when I 
 jumped over." 
 
 "I m sorry. I meant to go back. I know 
 perfectly how to treat a rod. My trouble 
 comes in knowing when to apply my knowl 
 edge. . . . Well, let s go up there. Near those 
 big hemlocks there s some, I remember." 
 And we wandered on, separating a little to 
 scan the ground more widely. 
 
 Once having pried his mind away from the 
 trout, Jonathan was as keen for arbutus as I 
 could wish 3 and soon I heard an exclamation, 
 
132 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 and saw him kneel. "Oh, come over!" he 
 called; "you really ought to see this grow 
 ing!" 
 
 "But there s some I want, right here, 
 that s lovely" 
 
 "Never mind. Come and see this oh, 
 come!" 
 
 Of course I come, and of course I am glad I 
 came, and of course soon I am obliged to call 
 Jonathan to see some I have found "Jon 
 athan, it is truly the loveliest yet! It s the 
 way it grows with the moss and all 
 please come!" And of course he comes. 
 
 We had been on the hillside a long half- 
 hour, much nearer an hour, when Jonathan 
 began to grow restive. "Don t you think you 
 have enough?" he suggested several times. 
 Finally, he spoke plainly of the trout. 
 
 "Oh, yes, of course," I said, "you go down 
 and I ll follow just as soon as I ve gone along 
 that upper path." 
 
 Not at all. That was not what was wanted. 
 So I turned and we went down the hill, back 
 to the bend, whose seductions I had been so 
 puzzlingly able to resist. I am sure Jonathan 
 has never yet quite understood how I could 
 
TROUT AND ARBUTUS 133 
 
 leave that bit of water at my left hand and 
 turn away to the right. 
 
 "Now sneak!" 
 
 We sneaked, and I sank down just back of 
 the edge of the bank. Jonathan crouched 
 some feet behind, coaching me: "Now 
 draw out a little more line not too much 
 there and have some slack in your hand. 
 Now, up-stream fifteen feet allow for the 
 wind wait till that gust passes now ! 
 Good ! First-rate ! Now let her drift there 
 what did I tell you? Give him line! Give him 
 line! Now, feel of him careful! You ll 
 know when to strike . . . there! ... Oh! too 
 bad!" 
 
 For as I struck, my line held fast. 
 
 "Snagged, by gummy! Can t you pull 
 clear? " 
 
 " Not without stirring up the whole pool. 
 You ll have to do the fishing, after all." 
 
 " Oh! too bad! That s hard luck!" 
 
 "Not a bit. I like to watch you do it." 
 
 And so indeed I did. Once having realized 
 that I was temporarily laid by, Jonathan put 
 his whole mind on the pool, while I, being 
 honorably released from all responsibility, 
 
134 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 except that of keeping my line taut, could 
 put my whole mind on his performance. 
 There is a little the same sort of pleasure in 
 watching the skillful handling of a rod that 
 there is in watching the bow-action of a 
 violinist. Both things demand the utmost 
 nicety of adjustment: body, arm, wrist, rin 
 gers uniting in an interplay of efficiency ex 
 actly adapted to the intricately shifting needs 
 of each moment. 
 
 Thus I watched, through the typical stages 
 of the sport: the delicate flip of the bait into 
 the current at just the right spot; its swift 
 descent, imperceptibly guided by the rod s 
 quivering tip; its slower drift toward deep 
 water; its sudden vanishing, and the whir of 
 the reel as the line goes out; then the pause, 
 the critical moments of "feeling for him"; at 
 last the strike . . . and then, a flopping in the 
 grass behind me, and Jonathan crawling 
 back to kill and unhook him. 
 
 "Don t get up. There s probably another 
 one," he said; and soon, by the same reptilian 
 methods, was back for another try. There 
 was another one, and yet another, and then a 
 little fellow, barely hooked. "That s all," 
 
TROUT AND ARBUTUS 135 
 
 said Jonathan, as he rose to put him back into 
 the pool, and we watched the pretty spotted 
 creature fling himself upstream with a wild 
 flourish of his gleaming body. 
 
 "Now I ll get you clear," said Jonathan, 
 wading out into the water, and, with sleeves 
 rolled high, feeling deep, deep down under 
 the opposite bank. "He had you all right 
 it s wound round a root and then jabbed 
 deep into it ... hard luck! I wanted you to 
 get those fellows!" And to this day I am sure 
 he remembers those trout with a tinge of 
 regret. 
 
 I had intended leaving him to fish the rest 
 of the brook, while I went back to that upper 
 path to look up two or three special arbutus 
 clumps that I knew, but seeing his depression 
 over the snag incident, I could not suggest 
 this. Instead I followed the stream with him, 
 accepting his urgent offer of all the best pools, 
 while he, taking what was left, drew out per 
 fectly good trout from the most unhopeful- 
 looking bits of water. And at the end, there 
 was time to return along the upper path and 
 visit my old friends, so both of us were sat 
 isfied. 
 
136 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 i- 
 
 On such days, however, there is always one 
 person who is not satisfied, and that is, Kit 
 the horse. Kit has borne with our vagaries 
 for many years, but she has never come to 
 understand them. She never fails to greet 
 our return, as our voices come within the 
 range of her pricked-up ears, by a prolonged 
 and reproachful whinny, which says as plainly 
 as is necessary, "Back? Well I should 
 think it was time! I should think it was 
 TIME! 9 Now and then we have thought it 
 would be pleasant to have a little motor-car 
 that could be tucked away at any roadside, 
 without reference to a good hitching-place, 
 but if we had it, I am sure we should miss that 
 ungracious welcoming whinny. We should 
 miss, too, the exasperated violence of Kit s 
 pace on the first bit of the home road a 
 violence expressing in the most ostentatious 
 manner her opinion of folks who keep a re 
 spectable horse hitched by the roadside, far 
 from the delights of the dim, sweet stable 
 and the dusty, sneezy, munchy hay. 
 
 But leaving out this little matter of Kit s 
 preference, and also the other little matter of 
 the trout s preference, I feel sure that an arbu- 
 
TROUT AND ARBUTUS 137 
 
 tus-trouting is peculiarly satisfying. It meets 
 every human need the need of food and 
 beauty, the need of feeling strong and skill 
 ful, the need of becoming deeply aware of 
 nature as living and kind. Moreover, it is 
 very satisfying afterwards. As we sat that 
 evening, over a late supper, with a shallow 
 dish of arbutus beside us, I remarked, "The 
 advantage of getting arbutus is, that you 
 bring the whole day home with you and 
 have it at your elbow." 
 
 "The advantage of getting trout," re 
 marked Jonathan dreamily, as if to himself, 
 "is, that you bring your whole day home 
 with you, and have it for breakfast." 
 
VII 
 
 Without the Time of Day 
 
 "JONATHAN, did you ever live without a 
 clock, whole days, I mean, days and 
 days" 
 
 "When I was a boy most of the time, I 
 suppose. But the family did n t like it." 
 
 " Of course. But did you like it?" 
 
 "Yes, I liked it all. I seem to remember 
 getting pretty hungry sometimes, but it s all 
 rather good as I look back on it." 
 
 "Let s do it!" 
 
 "Now?" 
 
 "No. Society is an enlarged family, and 
 would n t like it. But this summer, when 
 we camp." 
 
 "How do you know we re going to camp? " 
 
 "The things we know best we don t always 
 know how we know." 
 
 "Well, then, if we camp " 
 
 "When we camp let s live without a 
 watch." 
 
 "You d need one to get there." 
 
WITHOUT THE TIME OF DAY 139 
 
 "Take one, and let it run down." 
 
 As it turned out, my "when" was truer 
 than Jonathan s "if." We did camp. We 
 did, however, use watches to get there: when 
 we expressed our baggage, when we sent our 
 canoe, when we took the trolley car and the 
 train; and the watch was still going as our 
 laden craft nosed gently against the bank of 
 the river-island that was to be our home for 
 two weeks. It was late afternoon, and the 
 shadows of the steep \voods on the western 
 bank had already turned the rocks in mid 
 stream from silver to gray, and dimmed the 
 brightness of the swift water, almost to the 
 eastern shore. 
 
 "Will there be time to get settled before 
 dark?" I asked, as we stepped out into the 
 shallow water and drew up the canoe to un 
 load. 
 
 "Shall I look at my watch to see?" asked 
 Jonathan, with a note of amiable derision in 
 his voice. 
 
 "Well, I should rather like to know what 
 time it is. We won t begin till to-morrow." 
 
 "You mean, we won t begin to stop watch 
 ing. All right. It s just seventeen and a half 
 
140 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 minutes after five. I ll give you the seconds 
 if you like." 
 
 "Minutes will do nicely, thank you." 
 
 "Lots of time. You collect firewood while 
 I get the tent ready. Then it ll need us both 
 to set it up." 
 
 We worked busily, happily. Ah! The joy 
 ous elation of the first night in camp! Is 
 there anything like it? With days and days 
 ahead, and not even one counted off the 
 shining number! All the good things of 
 childhood and maturity seem pressed into 
 one mood of flawless, abounding happiness. 
 
 By dark the tent was up, the baggage 
 stowed, the canoe secured, the fire glowing 
 in a bed of embers, and we sat beside it, look 
 ing out past the glooms of the hemlocks 
 across the moonlit river, sat and ate city- 
 cooked chicken and sandwiches and drank 
 thermos-bottled tea. 
 
 "To-morrow we ll cook," I said. "To 
 night it s rather nice not to have to. Look at 
 the moonlight on that rock! How black it 
 makes the eddy below!" 
 
 "Good bass under there," said Jonathan. 
 "We ll get some to-morrow." 
 
WITHOUT THE TIME OF DAY 141 
 
 "Maybe." 
 
 "Well, of course, it s always maybe, with 
 bass. Well I m done and it s quarter to 
 ten late! Oh! Excuse me! Maybe you d 
 rather I had n t told you. By the way, do I 
 wind my watch to-night or not?" 
 
 "Not." 
 
 "Not it is, then. Sure you would n t rather 
 have it wound, though? We can leave it 
 hanging in the tent. It won t break loose and 
 bite you." 
 
 "Yes, it would. There would be a some 
 thing a taint " 
 
 "Oh, all right!" 
 
 We slept with the murmur of the river 
 running through our dreams, a murmur of 
 many voices : deep voices, high voices, grum 
 bling voices as the stones go grinding and roll 
 ing along the ever-changing bottom, and 
 only half roused when the dawn chorus of 
 the birds filled the air. That dawn chorus was 
 something we should have been loath to miss. 
 Through the first gray of the morning there 
 comes a stir in the woods, an expectant 
 tremor; a bird peeps softly and is still; then 
 
142 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 another, and another, "softly conferring to 
 gether." As the light grows warmer, comes a 
 clearer note from some leader, then a full, 
 complete song; another, and the woods are 
 awake, flinging out their wonderful song- 
 greeting to the morning. There is in it a prod 
 igality of swift-changing beauty like ocean 
 surf: a continuous and intricate interweaving 
 of rhythms, pulses and ebbings of clear tone, 
 beautiful phrases rising antiphonal, shower- 
 ings of bright notes, moments of subsidence, 
 almost of pause. As the light grows and 
 sharpens, the music reaches a crescendo of 
 exuberance, and at last dies down as real day 
 comes, bringing with it the day s work. On 
 our island the leader of the chorus was al 
 most always a song sparrow, though once or 
 twice a wood thrush came over from the shore 
 woods and filled the hemlock shadows with 
 the limpid splendors of his song. 
 
 Hearing the chorus through our dreams, 
 we slept again, and when I really waked the 
 sun was high, flecking the eastern V of our 
 tent with dazzling patches. I heard Jonathan 
 moving about outside, and the crackling of 
 a new-made fire. I went to the front of the 
 
WITHOUT THE TIME OF DAY 143 
 
 tent and looked out. Yes, there they were, 
 the fire and Jonathan, in a quiet space of 
 shade where the early coolness still hung. 
 Beyond them, half shut out from view by 
 the low-spreading hemlock boughs, was the 
 open river such gayety of swift water ! 
 Such dazzle of midsummer morning! I drew 
 back, eager to be out in it. 
 
 "Bacon and eggs, is it?" called Jonathan, 
 "or shall I run down and try for a bass?" 
 
 "Don t!" I called. I knew that if he once 
 got out after bass he was lost to me for the 
 day. And now we had cut loose from even 
 the mild tyranny of his watch. As I thought 
 of this I went over to the many-forked tree, 
 whose close-trimmed branches served our tent 
 as hat-rack, clothes-rack, everything-that- 
 can-hang-or-perch-rack, and opened Jona 
 than s watch. 
 
 "Well, what time is it?" Jonathan was 
 peering in between the tent-flaps. 
 
 "Twenty-two minutes before five." 
 
 "A.M., I judge. Sorry you did n t let me 
 wind it?" 
 
 "Not a bit. I was just curious to see when 
 it stopped, that was all." 
 
144 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "Well, now you know. Hereafter the offi 
 cial time for the camp is 4.38 A.M. or P.M., 
 according to taste. Come along. The bacon s 
 done, and I m blest if I want to drop in the 
 eggs." 
 
 Dropping an egg will never, I fear, be one 
 of Jonathan s most finished performances. 
 He watched me do it with generous admira 
 tion. "If you could just get over being 
 scared of them," I suggested, as the last one 
 plumped into the pan and set up its gentle 
 sizzle. 
 
 "No use. I am scared of the things. I tap 
 and tap, and nothing happens, and then I 
 get mad and tap hard, and they re all over 
 the place." 
 
 By the time breakfast was over, even the 
 coolness under the hemlocks was beginning to 
 grow warm and aromatic. The birds in the 
 shore woods were quieter, though out at the 
 sunny end of our island, where the hemlocks 
 gave place to low scrub growth, the song 
 sparrow sang gayly now and then. 
 
 "Now," said Jonathan, "what about fish 
 ing?" 
 
 "Well let s fish!" 
 
WITHOUT THE TIME OF DAY 145 
 
 "One up stream and one down, or keep to 
 gether?" 
 
 "Together," I decided. "If we go two 
 ways there s no telling when I 11 ever see 
 you again." 
 
 "Yes, there is: when I m hungry." 
 
 "No; some time after you ve noticed 
 you re hungry." 
 
 "Now, if we had watches it would be so 
 much simpler: we could meet here at, say, 
 one o clock." 
 
 "Simple, indeed! When did you ever look 
 at a watch when you were fishing, unless I 
 made you? No, my way is simple, but we 
 stay together." 
 
 Of course, in river fishing, " together " means 
 simply not absolutely out of sight of each 
 other. Jonathan may be up to his arm-pits in 
 mid-current, or marooned on a rock above a 
 swirling eddy, while I am in a similar situa 
 tion beyond calling distance, but so long as a 
 bend in the river does not cut us off, we are 
 "together/ and very companionable togeth 
 erness it is, too. When I see Jonathan wildly 
 waving to attract my attention, I know he 
 has either just caught a big bass or else just 
 
146 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 lost one, and this gives me something to smile 
 over as I wonder which it is. After a time, if 
 I am catching shiners and no bass, and Jona 
 than does n t seem to be moving, I infer that 
 his luck is better than mine, and drift along 
 toward him. Or it may be the other way 
 around, and he comes to look me up. Bass 
 are the most uncertain of fish, and no one 
 can predict when they will elect to bite, or 
 where. Sometimes they are in the still water, 
 deep or shallow according to their caprice; 
 sometimes they hang on the edges of the 
 rapids; sometimes they are in the dark, 
 smooth eddies below the great boulders; 
 sometimes in the clear depths around the 
 rocks near shore. Each day afresh, indeed, 
 each morning and each afternoon, the 
 fisherman must try, and try, and try, until 
 he discovers what their choice has been for 
 that special time. Yet no fisherman who has 
 once drawn out a good bass from a certain 
 bit of water can help feeling, next time, that 
 there is another waiting for him there. That 
 is one of the reasons why he is always hopeful, 
 and so always happy. The fish he has caught, 
 at this well-remembered spot and that, rise 
 
WITHOUT THE TIME OF DAY 147 
 
 up out of the past and flick their tails at him; 
 and all the stretches between stretches of 
 water that have never for him held anything 
 but shiners, stretches of time diversified by 
 not even a nibble sink into pleasant in 
 significance. 
 
 We banked our fire, stowed everything in 
 the tent that a thunderstorm would hurt, 
 and splashed out into the river. There it lay 
 in all its bright, swift beauty, and we stood 
 a moment, looking, feeling the push of the 
 water about our knees and the warmth of the 
 sun on our shoulders. 
 
 "It makes a difference, sleeping out in it 
 all," I said. "You feel as if it belonged to 
 you so much more. I quite own the river this 
 morning, don t you? " 
 
 "Quite. But not the bass in it. Bet you 
 don t catch one!" 
 
 "Bet I beat you!" 
 
 "Bass, mind you. Sunfish don t count. 
 You re always catching sunfish." 
 
 "They count in the pan. But I ll beat you 
 on bass. I know some places " 
 
 "Who does n t? All right, go ahead!" 
 
 W T e were off; Jonathan, as usual, wading 
 
148 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 up to his chest or perched on a bit of boulder 
 above some dark, slick rapid; I preferring 
 water not more than waist-deep, and not too 
 far from shore to miss the responses of the 
 wood-folk to my passing: soft flurries of 
 wings; shy, half -suppressed peep ings; quick 
 warning notes; light footfalls, hopping or 
 running or galloping; the snapping of twigs 
 and the crushing of leaves. Some sounds tell 
 me who the creature is, the warning of the 
 blue jay, the whirr of the big ruffed grouse, 
 the thud of the bounding rabbit, but many 
 others leave me guessing, which is almost 
 better. When a very big stick snaps, I always 
 feel sure a deer is stealing away, though Jona 
 than assures me that a chewink can break 
 twigs and "kick up a row generally," so that 
 you d swear it was nothing smaller than a 
 wild bull. 
 
 So we fished that day. When I caught a 
 bass, which was seldom, I whooped and 
 waved it at Jonathan, and when I caught a 
 shiner, which was rather often, I waved it 
 too, just to keep his mind occupied. Hours 
 passed, and we met at a bend in the river 
 where the deep water glides close to shore. 
 
WITHOUT THE TIME OF DAY 149 
 
 "Hungry? "I asked. 
 
 "Now you speak of it, yes." 
 
 "Shall we go back?" 
 
 "How can I tell? Now, if we only had that 
 watch we d know whether we ought to be 
 hungry or not." 
 
 "What does that matter, if we are hungry? 
 Besides, if you d had a watch, you d have 
 had to carry it in your teeth. You know per 
 fectly well you would n t have brought it, 
 anyway." 
 
 "Well then, at least when we got back, 
 we should have known whether we ought to 
 have been hungry or not. Now we shall never 
 know." 
 
 "Never! Oh! Look there, Jonathan! 
 We re going to catch it J " A sense of growing 
 shadow in the air had made me look up, and 
 there, back of the steep-rising woods, hung a 
 blue-black cloud, with ragged edges crawling 
 out into the brightness of the sky. 
 
 "Sure enough! The bass 11 bite now, if it 
 really comes. Wait till the first drops, and 
 see what you see." 
 
 We had not long to wait. There came that 
 sudden expectancy in the air and the trees, 
 
150 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 the strange pallor in the light, the chill sweep 
 of wind gusts with warm pauses between. 
 Then a few big drops splashed on the dusty, 
 sun-baked stones about us. 
 
 "Now! Wade right out there, to the edge 
 of that ledge don t slip over, it s deep. 
 I ll go down a little way." 
 
 I waded out carefully, and cast, in the 
 smooth, dark water already beginning to be 
 rain-pocked. It was surprisingly shivery, that 
 storm wind! I glanced toward shore to look 
 for shelter I remembered an overhanging 
 ledge of rock then my line went taut ! I 
 forgot about shelter, forgot about being 
 chilly; I knew it was a good bass. 
 
 I got him in too big to go through the 
 hole in my creel cast for another and 
 another and yet another. The rain began 
 to fall in sheets, and the wind nearly blew me 
 over, but who could run away from such 
 fishing? The surface of the river, deep blue- 
 gray, seemed rising everywhere in little jets 
 to meet the rain. Rapids, eddies, still waters, 
 weedy edges, all looked alike; there were 
 neither waves nor swirls nor glassy slicks, 
 but all were roughly furry under the multi- 
 
WITHOUT THE TIME OF DAY 151 
 
 tudinous assaults of the fierce rain-drops. 
 The sky was mottled lead-color, the wind 
 blew less strongly, but cold cold. And 
 under that water the bass were biting, my rod 
 was bending double, my reel softly screaming 
 as I gave line, and one after another I drew 
 the fish alongside and dipped them out with 
 my landing net. 
 
 Then, as suddenly as they had begun, they 
 stopped biting. I waited long minutes; 
 nothing happened, and all at once I realized 
 that I was very wet and very cold. Wading 
 ashore, I saw Jonathan shivering along up 
 the narrow beach toward me, his shoulders 
 drawn in to half their natural spread, neck 
 tucked in between his collar-bones, knees 
 slightly bent. 
 
 "You can t be cold?" I questioned as soon 
 as he was near enough to hear me through 
 the slash of the rain and wind. 
 
 "No, of course not; are you?" 
 
 We did n t discuss it, but ran up the bank 
 to the rock-ledge and crouched under it, our 
 teeth literally chattering. 
 
 "Did you ever see such fishing?" I man 
 aged to stammer. 
 
152 MOUE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "Great! But oh, why didn t I bring the 
 whiskey bottle?" 
 
 "Let s run for camp ! We can t be wetter." 
 
 We crawled out into the rain again, and 
 first sprinted and then dog-trotted along the 
 river edge. No bird notes now in the woods 
 beside us, no whirring of wings; only the rain 
 sounds: soft swishings and drippings and 
 gusty showerings, very different from the 
 flat, flicking sounds when rain first starts in 
 dry woods. 
 
 Camp looked a little cheerless, but a blaz 
 ing fire, started with dry stuff we had stowed 
 inside the tent, changed things, and dry 
 clothes changed them still more, and we sat 
 within the tent flaps and ate ginger-snaps in 
 great contentment of spirit while we waited 
 for the rain to stop. 
 
 It did stop, and very soon the fish were 
 sizzling in the pan. 
 
 "Of course, if we had a watch, now " 
 suggested Jonathan, as he carefully tucked 
 under the pan little sticks of just the right 
 length. 
 
 "What should we know more than we do 
 now that we re hungry?" I asked. 
 
WITHOUT THE TIME OF DAY 153 
 
 "Well, for one thing, we d know what 
 time it is," replied Jonathan tranquilly. 
 
 " And for another we d know whether it s 
 dinner or supper I m cooking," I supple 
 mented. "But does it matter? Youw^on tget 
 anything different, no matter which it is 
 just fish is what you 11 get. And pretty soon 
 the sun will be out, and you can set up a 
 stick and watch the shadow and make a sun 
 dial for yourself." 
 
 "Oh, I don t really care which it is." 
 
 "Do you suppose I don t know that! And 
 meanwhile, you might cut the bread and 
 make some toast, there are some good 
 embers on your side under the pan, and 
 I ll get the butter, and there we ll be." 
 
 By the time the toast was made and the 
 fish curling brownly away from the pan, the 
 sun had indeed come out, at first pale and 
 watery, then clear, and still high enough in 
 the heavens to set the soaked earth steaming 
 fragrantly with its heat. Odors of hemlock 
 and wet earth mingled with odors of toast 
 and fried fish. 
 
 "Um-m! Smell it all! "I said. "What a lot 
 we should miss if we did n t eat in the kitchen!" 
 
154 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "Or cook in the dining-room which?" 
 
 "And hear that song sparrow! Does n t it 
 sound as if the rain had washed his song a 
 little cleaner and clearer?" 
 
 There followed the wonderful afterlight 
 that a short, drenching rain leaves behind it 
 a hush of light, deeply pervasive and 
 friendly. The sunshine slanted across the 
 gleaming wet rocks in the river, lit up the 
 rain-darkened trunks of the hemlocks, glinted 
 on the low-hanging leaves, and flashed through 
 the dripping edges of sagging fern fronds. As 
 twilight came on, we canoed across to the side 
 of the river where the road lay the other side 
 was steep and pathless woods and walked 
 down to the nearest farmhouse to buy eggs for 
 the morning. Back again by the light of a 
 low-hung moon, and across the dim water to 
 our own island and the embers of our fire. 
 
 "Oh, Jonathan! We never asked them 
 what time it was ! " I said. "I meant to for 
 your sake I thought you d sleep better if 
 you knew." 
 
 "Too bad! Probably I should have. I 
 thought of it, of course, but was afraid that 
 if I asked it would spoil your day." 
 
WITHOUT THE TIME OF DAY 155 
 
 "It would take something pretty bad to 
 spoil a day like this one," I said. 
 
 Two days later the weather turned still and 
 warm, the bass refused to bite, and even the 
 sunfish lay, shy or wary or indifferent, in 
 their shallow, sunny pools, so we resolved to 
 walk down the river to the post-office, four 
 miles away, for possible mail. As we sat on 
 the steps of the little store, looking it over, 
 "Here s news," said Jonathan; "Jack and 
 Molly say they 11 run up if we want them, 
 day after to-morrow up on the morning 
 train, and back on the evening." 
 
 "Good! Tell them to come along." 
 
 "No it s to-morrow letter s been here 
 since yesterday. I ll telegraph." 
 
 As we tramped home we planned the day. 
 "We ll meet them and all walk up together," 
 said Jonathan. 
 
 "We d better catch some bass and leave 
 them all hooked in a pool, ready for them to 
 pull out," I added; "otherwise they may not 
 catch any. And maybe you d better meet 
 them and I ll have dinner ready when you 
 get back." 
 
156 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "Nonsense! You come, and we ll all get 
 dinner when we get back. That s what 
 they re coming for to see the whole thing." 
 
 "But if it s late they ve got to get back 
 for that down train." 
 
 "Well time enough." 
 
 "Oh, Jonathan! What about catching that 
 train?" 
 
 "They 11 have watches watches that 
 go." 
 
 "But what about our meeting them? The 
 train arrives at 10.15, they said. What does 
 10.15 look like in the sky, I wonder!" 
 
 "Or rather, what does 8.45 look like? It 
 takes an hour and a half to get there, count 
 ing crossing the river." 
 
 "Yes dear me! Well, Jonathan, we ll 
 just have to get up early and go, and then 
 wait." 
 
 "Or else take our watch to the farmhouse 
 and set it." 
 
 "Jonathan, I will not! I d rather start at 
 daylight." 
 
 Which was very nearly what we did. The 
 morning opened with a sun obscured, and I 
 felt sure it was stealing a march on us and 
 
WITHOUT THE TIME OF DAY 157 
 
 would suddenly burst out upon us from a 
 noonday sky. We breakfasted hastily, ferried 
 across to shore, and set a swinging pace down 
 the road. As we walked, the sun burned 
 through the mist, and our shadows came out, 
 dim, long things, striding with the exagger 
 ated gait that shadows have, over the grassy 
 banks to our right. 
 
 "I think," said Jonathan, "it may be as 
 late as seven o clock, but perhaps it s only 
 
 six." 
 
 When we reached the station, the official 
 clock registered 8.30. We strolled over to the 
 store-and-post-office and got more letters 
 one from Molly and Jack saying thank you 
 they d come. "They don t entirely under 
 stand our mail system up here," said Jona 
 than. We got some ginger-cookies and some 
 milk and had a second breakfast, and finally 
 wandered back to the station to wait for the 
 train. It came, bearing the expected two, 
 and much friendliness. "Get our letter? 
 There, Jack! He said you wouldn t, but I 
 said you would. I made him send it ... 
 four miles to walk? What fun!" 
 . It was fun, indeed, and all went well until 
 
158 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 after dinner, when Jack saying, "Well, 
 maybe we d better be starting back for that 
 train" drew out his watch. He opened it, 
 muttered something, put it to his ear, then 
 began to wind it rapidly. He wound and 
 wound. We all laughed. 
 
 "Looks as if you had n t remembered to 
 wind it last night," said Jonathan, glancing 
 at me. 
 
 "I haven t done that in months, hang it! 
 Give me the time, will you, Jonathan?" said 
 Jack. 
 
 "Sorry!" Jonathan was smiling genially. 
 "Mine s run down too. It stopped at 
 twenty-two minutes before five A.M., I 
 think." 
 
 "What luck! And Molly didn t bring 
 hers." 
 
 "You told me not to," Molly flicked in. 
 
 "So here we are," said Jonathan, "en 
 tirely without the time of day." 
 
 "But plenty of real time all round us," I 
 said. "Let s use it, and start." I avoided 
 Jonathan s eye. 
 
 We reached the station with an hour and 
 ten minutes to spare bought more ginger- 
 
WITHOUT THE TIME OF DAY 159 
 
 cookies and more milk. As we sat eating 
 them in the midst of the preternatural calm 
 that marks a country railroad station outside 
 of train times, Molly remarked brightly, 
 
 "Well, I don t see but we got on just as 
 well without a watch, did n t we, Jack? Why 
 do we need watches, anyway? Do you see?" 
 she turned to us. "Jack does everything by 
 his watch eats and breathes and sleeps by 
 it" 
 
 Jack returned, watch in hand he had 
 been getting railroad time from the telegraph 
 operator. "Want to set yours while you 
 think of it?" he asked Jonathan. 
 
 "Sorry thank you didn t bring it," 
 said Jonathan. 
 
 "By George, man, what 11 you do?" Real 
 consternation sounded in Jack s tones. 
 
 "Oh, we ll get along somehow," said Jon 
 athan. "You see, we don t have many en 
 gagements, except with the bass, and they 
 never meet theirs, anyhow." 
 
 When the train had gone, I said, "Jona 
 than, why did n t you tell them it was my 
 whim?" 
 
 "Oh, I just did n t," said Jonathan. 
 
160 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 As Jonathan had predicted, we did get 
 along somehow got along rather well, on 
 the whole. There are, of course, some draw 
 backs to an un watched life. You never want 
 to start the next meal till you are hungry, 
 and after that it takes one or two or three 
 hours, as the case may be, to go back to 
 camp and get the meal ready, and by that 
 time you are almost hungrier than you like 
 being. But except for this, and the little 
 matter of meeting trains, it is rather pleasant 
 to break away from the habit of watching the 
 watch, and it was with real regret that, on the 
 last night of our camp, we took our watch 
 to the farmhouse to set it. 
 
 "Run down, did it? Guess you forgot to 
 wind it. Well we do forget things some 
 times, all of us do," the farmer s wife said 
 comfortingly as she went to look at the clock. 
 "Twenty minutes to seven, our clock says. 
 It s apt to be fast, so I guess you won t miss 
 any trains. Father he says he d rather have 
 a clock fast than slow any day, but it don t 
 often get more than ten minutes wrong either 
 way." 
 
 And to us, after our two weeks of camp, 
 
WITHOUT THE TIME OF DAY 161 
 
 ten minutes error in a clock seemed indeed 
 slight. 
 
 "Jonathan," I said, as we walked back 
 along the road, "I hate to go back to clock 
 time. I like real time better." 
 
 "You couldn t do so many things in a 
 day," said Jonathan. 
 
 "No maybe not." 
 
 "But maybe that would n t matter." 
 
 "Maybe it would n t," I said. 
 
VIII 
 
 The Ways of Griselda 
 
 " OF course you don t know what her name 
 is," I said, as we stood examining the sleek 
 little black mare Jonathan had just brought 
 up from the city. 
 
 "No. Forgot to ask. Don t believe they d 
 have known anyway one of a hundred or 
 
 so." 
 
 "Well, we ll name her again. Dear me 
 she s rather plain! Probably she s useful." 
 
 "Hope so," said Jonathan. Then, stepping 
 back a little, in a slightly grieved tone, "But 
 I don t call her plain. Wait till she s groomed 
 up- 
 
 "It s that droop of her neck sort of pa 
 tient and the way she drops one of her 
 hips if they are hips." 
 
 "But we want a horse to be patient." 
 
 "Yes. I don t know that I care about hav 
 ing her look so terribly much so as this. I 
 think I ll call her Griselda." 
 
THE WAYS OF GRISELDA 163 
 
 "Now, why Griselda?" 
 
 "Why, don t you know? She was that 
 patient creature, with the horrid husband 
 who had to keep trying to see just how pa 
 tient she was. It s a hateful story enough 
 to turn any one who brooded on it into a mili 
 tant suffragette." 
 
 "But you can t call a horse Griselda 
 not for common stable use, you know." 
 
 "Call her Griz for short. It does very 
 well." 
 
 Jonathan jeered a little, but in the family 
 the name held. Our man Hiram said noth 
 ing, but I think in private he called her 
 "Fan" or "Beauty" or "Lady," or some 
 such regulation stable name. 
 
 Called by any name, she pleased us, and 
 she was patient. She trotted peacefully up 
 hill and down, she did her best at ploughing 
 and haymaking and all the odd jobs that the 
 farm supplied. She stood when we left her, 
 with that same demure, almost overdone 
 droop of the neck that I had first noticed. 
 When I met Jonathan at the station, she 
 stood with her nose against a snorting train, 
 looking as if nothing could rouse her. 
 
164 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "Good little horse you got there," re 
 marked the station agent. " Where d you 
 find her?" 
 
 "Oh, I picked her out of a bunch down in 
 the city," said Jonathan casually. "I did n t 
 think I knew much about horses, but I guess 
 I was in luck this time." 
 
 " Guess you know more about horses than 
 you re sayin ." And Jonathan, thus pressed, 
 admitted with suitable reluctance that he 
 had now and then been able to detect a good 
 horse by his own observation. 
 
 On the way home he openly congratu 
 lated himself on his find. "I really wasn t 
 sure I knew how to pick out a horse," he re 
 marked, in a glow of retrospective modesty, 
 "but I certainly got a treasure this time." 
 
 Griz had been with us about two weeks, 
 and all went well. Then another horse was 
 needed for farm work, and one was sent up 
 one Kit by name a big, pleasant, rather 
 stupid brown mare. 
 
 "They do say two mares don t git on so 
 well together as a mare n a horse," remarked 
 Hiram. 
 
 "But these are both such quiet creatures," 
 
THE WAYS OF GRISELDA 165 
 
 I protested, to which Hiram made no an 
 swer. Hiram seldom made an answer unless 
 fairly cornered into it. 
 
 For two or three days after the new arri 
 val nothing happened, so far as we knew, 
 except that Griz always laid her ears back, 
 and looked queer about her under lip, when 
 ever Kit was led in or out of the stall next 
 her, while Kit always huddled up close to 
 her manger whenever Griz was led past her 
 heels. Once or twice Griz slipped her halter 
 in the stall, and Hiram said there was a place 
 on Kit that looked as if she had been kicked, 
 but when we scrutinized Griz, neck a-droop 
 and eyes a-blink, we found it hard to think 
 ill of her. Besides, Jonathan was now fairly 
 committed to the opinion that he had "got 
 a treasure this time." "Kit may have hurt 
 herself lying down," he suggested, and again 
 Hiram made no answer. 
 
 Then one night, sometime during the very 
 small, very dark, and very sleepy hours, we 
 were awakened by awful sounds. "What is 
 it? What is it?" I gasped. 
 
 Crash! Bang! Boom! The trampling of 
 hoofs! heavy, hollow pounding! the 
 
166 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 tearing and splintering of wood ! all com 
 ing from the barn, though loud enough, in 
 deed, to have come from the next room. 
 
 Jonathan was up in an instant muttering, 
 "Where are my rubber boots? and my 
 coat?" 
 
 Jonathan ! what a combination ! 
 
 But he was gone, and I heard the snap of 
 the lantern and the slam of the back door 
 almost before the rocking-chair in the sitting- 
 room that he had hit and talked to had 
 stopped rocking. Then I heard him calling 
 outside Hiram s window and then he ran 
 past our window, out to the barn. I wished 
 he had waited for Hiram, but I had an under 
 current of pleasure in hearing him run. Jon 
 athan s theory is that there is never any 
 hurry, and now and then I like to have this 
 notion jolted up a little. 
 
 Meanwhile the awful sounds had ceased. 
 There was the rumble of the stable door, a 
 pause, and Jonathan s voice in conversa 
 tional tones. Next came the flashing of Hi 
 ram s lantern, and the tromp, tromp, tromp, 
 in much quicker tempo than usual, of Hi 
 ram s heavy boots. Hiram s theory was a 
 
THE WAYS OF GRISELDA 167 
 
 good deal like Jonathan s, so this also gave 
 me pleasure. Finally, there came the flash 
 of another lantern, and I recognized the 
 quick, short step of Mrs. Hiram. I smiled to 
 myself, picturing the meeting between her and 
 Jonathan, for I knew just how Jonathan was 
 costumed. In two minutes I heard her steps 
 repassing, and in five minutes Jonathan re 
 turned. He was chuckling quietly. 
 
 "I guess Griz got all she needed did n t 
 know either of em had so much spunk in em." 
 
 "What happened?" 
 
 "Don t know, exactly, but when I opened 
 that door, there was Griz, just inside, no hal 
 ter on, head down, meek as Moses, as far 
 away from Kit s heels as she could get she s 
 got the mark of them on her leg and her flank." 
 
 "Is she hurt? or Kit?" 
 
 "No, not so far as we can see, not to 
 amount to anything except maybe Griz s 
 feelings." 
 
 "And what about Mrs. Hiram s feelings?" 
 
 Jonathan laughed aloud. "I was inside 
 with Kit, and she called out to know if she 
 could help." 
 
 "And what did you say?" 
 
168 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "I said, Not on your life. " 
 
 "So that was why she came back. Did you 
 really say, Not on your life, or did you only 
 imply it in your tone, while you actually said, 
 No, thank you very much ?" 
 
 "I really said it. At least, I don t remem 
 ber conversations the way you do, but I did 
 n t feel a bit like thanking anybody, and I 
 don t believe I did." 
 
 "Well, I wish I d heard you. One misses a 
 good deal " 
 
 "You can see the stable to-morrow T . That 
 11 keep. They must have had a time of it! 
 The walls are marked and splintered as high 
 as I can reach. And I don t believe Kit 11 
 cringe when Griz passes her any more." 
 
 "Of course you remember Hiram said two 
 mares did n t usually get on very well, and 
 even when they re chosen by a good judge of 
 horses " 
 
 After that the two did get along peaceably 
 enough, and Jonathan assured me that all 
 horses had these little affairs. One day we 
 drove over to the main street of the village on 
 an errand. 
 
THE WAYS OF GRISELDA 169 
 
 "Will she stand?" I questioned. 
 
 "Better hitch her, perhaps," said Jona 
 than, getting out the rope. He snapped it 
 into her bit-ring, then threw the other end 
 around a post and started to make a half- 
 hitch. But as he drew up the rope it was sud 
 denly jerked out of his hand. He looked up 
 and saw Griselda s patient head waving high 
 above him on the end of an erect and rebel 
 lious neck, the hitch-rope waggling in loops 
 and spirals in the air, and the whole outfit 
 backing away from him with speed and de 
 cision. He was so astonished that he did 
 nothing, and in a moment Griz had stopped 
 backing and stood still, her head sagging 
 gently, the rope dangling. 
 
 "Well I ll be- I didn t try to 
 remember just what Jonathan said he would 
 be, because it does n t really matter. We 
 both stared at Griz as if -we had never seen her 
 before. Griz looked at nothing in particular, 
 she blinked long lashes over drowsy, dark 
 eyes, and sagged one hip. 
 
 "She s trying to make believe she did n t 
 do it but she did," I said. 
 
 "Something must have startled her," said 
 
170 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 Jonathan, peering up and down the deserted 
 street. Two roosters were crowing antipho- 
 nally in near-by yards, and a dog was barking 
 somewhere far off. 
 
 "What? "I said. 
 
 "You never can tell, with a horse." 
 
 "No, apparently not," I said, smiling to 
 myself; and I added hastily, as I saw Jona 
 than go forward to her head, "Don t try it 
 again, please! I ll stay by her while you go 
 in. Please!" For I had detected on Jonathan s 
 face a look that I very well knew. It was the 
 same expression he had worn that Sunday he 
 led the calf to pasture. He made no answer, 
 but stood examining the hitch-rope. 
 
 "No use," he said, quietly releasing it and 
 tossing its coil into the carriage, "It s too 
 rotten. If it snapped, she d be ruined." 
 
 I breathed freer. I privately hoped that all 
 the hitch-ropes at the farm were rotten. 
 
 " Griz stands perfectly well without hitch 
 ing," I said as we drove home, "Why do you 
 force an issue?" 
 
 "I did n t. She did. She s beaten me. If 
 I don t hitch her now, she 11 know she s mas 
 ter." 
 
THE WAYS OF GRISELDA 171 
 
 "Oh, dear!" I sighed. "Let her be mas 
 ter! Where s the harm? It s just your van- 
 
 ity." 
 
 "Perhaps so," said Jonathan. 
 
 When he agrees with me like that I know 
 it s hopeless. 
 
 The next night he wheeled in at the big gate 
 bearing about his shoulders a coil of heavy 
 rope. 
 
 "It looks like a ship s cable," I said. 
 
 "Yes," he responded, leaning his bicycle 
 against his side, and swinging the coil over 
 his head. "I want it for mooring purposes. 
 Think it 11 moor Griz?" 
 
 "Jonathan!" I exclaimed, "y u won t!" 
 
 "Watch me," said Jonathan, and he pro 
 ceeded to explain to me the working of the 
 tackle. 
 
 One end had a ring in it, and as nearly as 
 I remember, the plan was to put the rope 
 around her body, under what would be her 
 arm-pits if she had arm-pits, horses joints 
 are never called what one would expect, of 
 course, run the end through the ring, then 
 forward between her legs and through the bit- 
 ring. 
 
172 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "Then, when she sets back, it cuts her in 
 two/ he concluded cheerfully. 
 
 "But you don t want her in two," I pro 
 tested. 
 
 "She won t set back," he responded; "at 
 least, not more than once. To-morrow s Sun 
 day; I ll have to hitch her at church." 
 
 I hoped it would rain, so we need n t go, 
 but we were having a drought and the morn 
 ing dawned cloudless. We reached the church 
 just on the last stroke of the bell. The women 
 were all within; the men and boys lounging 
 in the vestibule were turning reluctant feet 
 to follow them. 
 
 "You go right in," said Jonathan, "I ll be 
 
 in soon. : 
 
 I turned to protest, but he was already 
 driving round to the side, and a hush had 
 fallen over the congregation within that made 
 it embarrassing to call. Besides, one of the 
 deacons stood holding open the door for me. 
 
 I slipped into a pew near the back, with 
 the apologetic feeling one often has in an old 
 country church a feeling that one is mak 
 ing the ghosts move along a little. They did 
 move, of course, probably ghosts are al- 
 
THE WAYS OF GRISELDA 173 
 
 ways polite when one really meets them, 
 and I sat down. Indeed, I was thinking very 
 little of ghosts that day, or of the minister 
 either. My ears were cocked to catch and 
 interpret all the noises that came in through 
 the open windows on my left. My eyes wan 
 dered in that direction, too, though the clear 
 panes revealed nothing more exciting than 
 flickering maple leaves and a sky filmed over 
 by veils of cloud. 
 
 The moralists tell us that what we get out 
 of any experience depends upon what we 
 bring to it. What I brought to it that morn 
 ing was a mind agog, attuned to receive these 
 expected outside sounds. To all such sounds 
 the service within was merely a background 
 a background which did n t know its 
 place, since it kept pushing itself more or 
 less importunately into the foreground. I sat 
 there, of course, with perfect propriety of 
 demeanor, but my reactions were something 
 like this : 
 
 Hymn 912 ... seven stanzas! horrors! oh! 
 omit the 3d, 5th, and 6th well, I should 
 hope so! ... I can t hear a thing while this 
 is going on! ... He hasn t come in yet! 
 
174 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 Scripture reading for to-day why can t he 
 give us the passage and let us read it for our 
 selves? well, his voice is rather high and 
 uneven, I think I could make out Jonathan s 
 through the loopholes in it. . . . There ! What 
 was that, I wonder! Sounded like shouting, 
 oh, why can t he talk softly! Let us unite 
 in prayer. Ah! now we ll have a long, quiet 
 time, anyway! ... if only he would n t pray 
 quite so loud! Why pray aloud at all, any 
 way? I like the Quaker way best: a good long 
 strip of silence, where your thoughts can 
 wash around in any fashion that There! 
 No yes no it s just people going by 
 on the road. . . . Maybe he s in the back of 
 the church now, waiting for the close of the 
 prayer. Seems as if I had to look. . . . Well, 
 he is n t. . . . For thy name s sake, amen. 
 
 And then the collection, with an organ 
 voluntary the while now why an organ 
 voluntary? Why not leave people to their 
 thoughts some of the time? 
 
 And at last, the sermon: The text to 
 which I wish to call your attention this morn 
 ing my attention, forsooth! My atten 
 tion was otherwise occupied. Ah! A puff of 
 
THE WAYS OF GRISELDA 175 
 
 warm, sweet air from behind me, and the soft, 
 padding noise of the swinging doors, ap 
 prised me of an incomer. A cautious tread in 
 the aisle I moved along a little to make 
 room. 
 
 In a city church probably I should have 
 thrown propriety to the winds and had the 
 gist of the story out of him at once, but in a 
 country church there are always such listen 
 ing spaces, the very pew-backs and cush 
 ions seem attentive, the hymnals creak in their 
 racks, and the little stools cry out nervously 
 when one barely touches them. It was too 
 much for me. I was coerced into an outer 
 semblance of decorum. However, I snatched 
 a hasty glance at Jonathan s face. It was 
 quite red and hot-looking, but calm, very 
 calm, and I judged it to be the calm, not of 
 defeat nor yet of settled militancy, but of 
 triumph. I even thought I detected the 
 flicker of a grin, the mere atmospheric 
 suggestion of a grin, as if he felt the urgent 
 if furtive appeal in my glance. At any rate, 
 Jonathan was all right, that was clear. And 
 as to Griz whether she was still one mare or 
 two half -mares it did n t so much matter. 
 
176 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 And now for the sermon! I gathered myself 
 to attend. 
 
 As we stood up for the last hymn, I whis 
 pered, "How did it go?" 
 
 "All right. She s hitched," was the answer. 
 
 After church there was the usual stir of 
 sociability, and when I emerged into the glare 
 of the church steps, I saw Jonathan driving 
 slowly around from the rear. Griz walked 
 meekly, her head sagged, her eyes blinked. 
 
 "Good quiet little horse you ve got there," 
 said a deacon over my shoulder; "don t get 
 restless standing, the way some horses do." 
 
 "Yes, she s very quiet," I said. 
 
 I got in, and at last, as we drove off, the 
 flood-gates of my impatience broke : 
 
 "Well? "I said, "well?" 
 
 "Well" said Jonathan. 
 
 "Well? Tell me about it!" 
 
 "I ve told you. I hitched her." 
 
 "How did you hitch her?" 
 
 "Just the way I said I would." 
 
 "Did n t she mind?" 
 
 "Don t know." 
 
 "Did she make a fuss?" 
 
 "Not much." 
 
THE WAYS OF GRISELDA 177 
 
 "What do you mean by much?" 
 
 "Oh, she set back a little." 
 
 "Do any harm?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Hurt herself?" 
 
 "Guess not." 
 
 "Jonathan, you drive me distracted 
 you have no more sense for a story " 
 
 "But there was nothing in particular " 
 
 "Now, Jonathan, if there was nothing in 
 particular, why did n t you get into church 
 till the sermon was begun, and why were you 
 so red and hot?" 
 
 Jonathan smiled indulgently. "Why, of 
 course, she did n t care about being hitched. 
 I thought you knew that. But it was per 
 fectly easy." 
 
 And that was about all I could extract by 
 the most artful questions. I took my revenge 
 by telling Jonathan the deacon s compliment 
 to Griz. " He said she did n t get restless 
 standing, the way so many horses did. I 
 thought of mentioning that you were a rather 
 good judge of horses, in an amateur way, but 
 then I thought it might seem like boasting, 
 so I did n t." 
 
178 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 After that, of course, I did n t really de 
 serve to hear the whole story, but the next 
 night I happened to be in the hammock while 
 Jonathan was talking to a neighbor at the 
 front gate, and he was relating the incident 
 with detail enough to have satisfied the most 
 hungry gossip. Only thus did I learn that 
 Bill Howard, who had wound the rope twice 
 round the post to give himself a little leeway, 
 was drawn right up to the post when she set 
 back; that they had been afraid the headstall 
 would tear off; that they had been rather 
 nervous about the post, and other such little 
 points, which I had not been clever enough 
 to elicit by my questions. 
 
 Now, why? Probably a man likes to tell a 
 story when he likes to tell it. I find myself 
 wondering how much Odysseus told Penelope 
 about his adventures when she got him to 
 herself for a good talk. Is it significant that 
 his really long story was told to the King of 
 the Phseacians? 
 
 As to Griz: it would perhaps not be 
 worth while to recount her subsequent his 
 tory. It was a curious one, consisting of 
 long stretches of continuous and ostentatious 
 
THE WAYS OF GRISELDA 179 
 
 meekness, broken by sudden flare-ups which, 
 after their occurrence, always seemed in 
 credible. She never again "set back" when 
 Jonathan was the one to hitch her, but this 
 was a concession made to him personally, and 
 had no effect on her general habits. We 
 talked of changing her name, but could never 
 manage it. We thought of selling her, but 
 she was too valuable most of the time. And 
 when we finally parted from her our relief 
 was deeply tinged with regret. 
 
 I have sometimes wondered whether such 
 flare-ups were not the natural and necessary 
 means of recuperation from such depths of 
 meekness. I have even wondered whether 
 the original Griselda may not have but 
 this is not a dissertation on early Italian 
 poetry, nor on the nature of women. 
 
IX 
 
 A Rowboat Pilgrimage 
 
 WE were glad that the plan of the rowboat 
 cruise dawned upon us almost a year before 
 it came to pass. We were the gainers by just 
 that rich length of expectancy. 
 
 For the joy that one gets from any cher 
 ished plan is always threefold: there is the joy 
 of looking forward, the joy of the very doing, 
 and the joy of remembering. They are all 
 good, but only the last is eternal. The doing 
 is hedged between limits, and its pleasures 
 are often confused, overlaid with alien or ac 
 cidental impressions. The joy of the forward 
 look is pure and keen, but its bounds, too, 
 are set. It begins at the moment when the 
 first ray of the plan-idea dawns on one s 
 mind, and it ends with the day of fulfillment. 
 If the dawn begins long before the day, so 
 much the better. 
 
 It was early fall, and we had come in from 
 a day by the river, where we had tramped 
 
A ROWBOAT PILGRIMAGE 181 
 
 miles up, to one of its infrequent bridges, and 
 miles down on the other bank. Now we sat 
 before the fire, talking it over. 
 
 "If we only had a boat!" I said. 
 
 "Boat! What do you want a boat for? 
 You would n t want to sit in a boat all day." 
 
 "Who said I would? But I want to get 
 into it, and float off, and get out again some 
 where else. That s my idea of a boat." 
 
 "Oh, of course, a boat would be handy " 
 
 "Handy! You talk as if it was a button 
 hook!" 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Well of course it is handy as you 
 call it but a boat means such a lot of 
 things adventure, romance. When you re 
 in a boat a little boat anything might 
 happen." 
 
 "Yes," said Jonathan, drawing the logs 
 together, "that s just the way your family 
 feels about it when you re young." 
 
 Then we both laughed, and there was a 
 reminiscent pause. 
 
 "What became of your boat?" I asked 
 finally. 
 
 "Sold. You kept yours." 
 
182 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 " Yes. It s in the cellar, there at Nantucket. 
 I could have it sent on." 
 
 "Cost as much as to buy a new one." 
 
 "A new one wouldn t be as good." I 
 bristled a little. Any one who has owned a 
 boat is very sensitive about its virtues. 
 
 "How big?" 
 
 "How should I know? A little boat 
 maybe twelve feet." 
 
 "Two oars?" 
 
 "Four." 
 
 "Round bottom?" 
 
 "Yes. She d ride anything." 
 
 " Well " Jonathan suddenly expanded 
 "here s an idea now! How would you like 
 to have it sent on to the mainland, and then 
 row it the rest of the way along the Rhode 
 Island and Connecticut shores?" 
 
 I sat straight up. "Jonathan! Let s do it 
 now!" 
 
 Jonathan chuckled. "My! What a hurry 
 she sin!" 
 
 "Well, let s!" 
 
 "We could n t. The boat will have to be 
 overhauled first." 
 
 "Oh, dear! I suppose so." 
 
A ROWBOAT PILGRIMAGE 183 
 
 "We could do it next spring, and go up the 
 trout streams." 
 
 "Think of that!" I murmured. 
 
 "Or in September and get the shore hunt 
 ing the salt marshes." 
 
 "Oh, which? which?" Already I was 
 following our course along curving beaches 
 and amongst the yellow marshlands. But 
 Jonathan s mind was working on more prac 
 tical details. 
 
 "Twelve feet, you said?" 
 
 "About that." 
 
 "Pretty close stowing for our dunnage 
 still let s see two guns " 
 
 "Or the rods, if we went in the spring." 
 
 "And rubber coats, and blankets " 
 
 "Jonathan! Should we camp?" 
 
 "Might have to." 
 
 "Let s, anyway." 
 
 "How does that coast-line run? Where s 
 a map?" 
 
 All we had were some railroad maps and an 
 old school geography just enough to tan 
 talize us but we fell upon them eagerly. 
 It is curious what a change comes over these 
 dumb bits of colored paper at such times. 
 
184 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 Every curve of the shore, every bay and head 
 land came to life and spoke to us called to 
 us. 
 
 We decided on the September plan, and for 
 the next eleven months our casual talk was 
 starred with inapropos remarks like these: 
 
 "Jonathan, I know we shall forget a can- 
 opener." 
 
 "Better write it down while you think of it. 
 And have you put down a hatchet?" 
 
 "The camera! It is n t on the list!" 
 
 " Hang it ! Those charts have n t come yet ! " 
 
 "What can we take to look respectable in 
 when we go ashore?" 
 
 Meanwhile the little boat was stirred out 
 of its long sleep in the cellar, overhauled, and 
 painted, and shipped to a port up in Nar- 
 ragansett Bay. And on the last day of Au 
 gust we found ourselves walking down through 
 the little town. Following the instructions 
 of wondering small boys, we came to a gate 
 in a board fence, opened it and let ourselves 
 into a typical New England seaport scene 
 a tiny garden, ablaze with sunshine and gor 
 geous with the yellows and lavenders of fall 
 
A ROWBOAT PILGRIMAGE 185 
 
 flowers, and a narrow brick path, under a 
 grape-vine arch leading down to the sand 
 and the wharf and the sparkling blue waters 
 of the bay. As we passed down through the 
 garden, we saw a little boat, bottom up, daz 
 zling white in the sun. 
 
 "There it is !" I said, with a surge of rem 
 iniscent affection. 
 
 "That little thing!" said Jonathan. "I 
 thought you said twelve feet." 
 1 "Well, isn t it? Anyway, I said about. 
 And it s big enough." 
 
 He was spanning its length with his hands. 
 
 "Eleven foot six. Oh, I suppose she ll do. 
 My boat was fourteen." 
 
 "Now, don t be so patronizing about your 
 boat. Wait till you see how mine behaves." 
 
 He dropped the discussion and got her 
 launched. Is there anything prettier than a 
 pretty boat floating beside a dock! 
 
 The next morning when we came down we 
 found her half full of water. "She ll be all 
 right now she s soaked up," said Jonathan, 
 and we baled her dry and went off to get our 
 stuff. 
 
 I delayed to buy provisions, and when I 
 
186 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 came back I found Jonathan standing on the 
 fioat surrounded by plunder of all sorts. He 
 answered my hail rather solemnly. 
 
 "See here! When this stuff s all stowed, 
 where are we going to sit? That s what s 
 worrying me." 
 
 "Why, won t it go in?" 
 
 "Go! It would n t go in two boats." 
 
 I came down the plank. "Well, let s elim 
 inate." 
 
 We eliminated. We took out extra shoes 
 and coats and "town clothes," we cut down 
 as far as we dared, and expressed a big 
 bundle home. The rest we got into two 
 sailor s dunnage bags, one waterproof, the 
 other nearly so, and one big water-tight 
 metal box. Then there were the guns, and 
 the provisions, and the charts in a long tin 
 tube, and there was a lantern a clumsy 
 thing, which we lashed to a seat. It was al 
 ways in the way and proved of very little use, 
 but we thought we ought to take it. 
 
 While we worked,, some loungers gathered 
 on the wharf above and watched us with that 
 tolerant curiosity that loungers know so well 
 how to assume. As we got in and took up our 
 
A ROWBOAT PILGRIMAGE 187 
 
 oars, one of them called out, "Now, if you 
 only had a little motor there in the stern, 
 you d be all right." 
 
 "Don t want one," said Jonathan. 
 
 "What? Why not?" 
 
 "Go too fast." 
 
 "Eh? What say?" 
 
 "Go too fast." 
 
 "He heard you," I said, "but he can t be 
 lieve you really said it." 
 
 The oars fell into unison, there was the dip 
 of their blades, the grating chunk of the row 
 locks dip-ke-chunk, dip-ke-chunk. As we 
 fell into our stroke the little boat began to 
 respond, the water swished at her bows and 
 gurgled under her stern. The wharf fell away 
 behind us, the houses back of it came into 
 sight, then the wooded hills behind. The 
 whole town began to draw together, with its 
 church steeples as its centers. 
 
 "She does go!" remarked Jonathan. 
 
 " I told you ! Look at us now ! Look at that 
 buoy!" 
 
 Dip-ke-chunk, dip-ke-chunk the red buoy 
 swept by us and dropped into the blue back 
 ground of dancing waves. 
 
188 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 "Are we really off ? Is it really happening? " 
 I said joyously. 
 
 "Do you like it?" said Jonathan over his 
 shoulder. 
 
 "No. Do you?" To such unwisdom of 
 speech do people come when they are happy. 
 
 But there were circumstances to steady 
 us. 
 
 "What I m wondering," said Jonathan, 
 "is, what s going to happen next when we 
 get out there." He tilted his head toward the 
 open bay, broad and windy, ahead of us. 
 "There s some pretty interesting water out 
 there beyond this lee." 
 
 "Oh, she ll take it all right. It s no worse 
 than Nantucket water. It could n t be. 
 You ll see." 
 
 We did see. In half an hour we were in the 
 middle of upper Narragansett Bay, trying to 
 make a diagonal across it to the southwest, 
 while the long rollers came in steadily from 
 the south, broken by a nasty chop of peaked, 
 whitecapped waves. We rowed carefully, our 
 heads over our right shoulders, watching 
 each wave as it came on, with broken com 
 ments : 
 
A ROWBOAT PILGRIMAGE 189 
 
 "That s a good one coming bring her 
 up now there all right, now let her off 
 again hold her so there s another com 
 ing see? that big one, the fifth, the 
 fourth, away row, now we beat it 
 there it goes off astern see it break ! 
 Here s another look out for your oar we 
 can t afford to miss a stroke oh, me! Did 
 that wet you too? My right shoulder is 
 soaked my left is n t now it is!" 
 
 But half an hour of this sort of thing 
 brought about two results confidence in 
 the little boat, which rode well in spite of 
 her load, and confidence in each other s 
 rowing. We found that the four oars worked 
 together, our early training told, and we in 
 stinctively did the same things in each of the 
 varied emergencies created by wind and 
 wave. There was no need for orders, and our 
 talk died down to an exclamation now and 
 then at some especially big wave, or a laugh 
 as one of us got a drenching from the white 
 top of a foaming crest. 
 
 It was not an easy day, that first one. . . . 
 It seems, sometimes, as if there were lit 
 tle imps of malignity that hovered over one 
 
190 F MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 at the beginning of an undertaking little 
 brownies, using all their charms to try to turn 
 one back, discouraged. If there be such, they 
 had a good time with us that long afternoon. 
 First they had said that we should n t load 
 our boat. Then they sent us rough water. 
 Then they set the boat a-leak. 
 
 For leak it did. The soaking over night 
 had done no good. It had, indeed, been 
 "thoroughly overhauled" and pronounced 
 seaworthy, but there was the water, too 
 much to be accounted for as spray, swashing 
 over the bottom boards, growing undeniably 
 and most uncomfortably deeper. The imps 
 made no offer to bale for us, so we had to do 
 it ourselves, losing the much-needed power 
 at the oars, while one of us set to work at the 
 dip-and-toss, dip-and-toss motion so familiar 
 to any one who has kept company with a 
 small boat. 
 
 "I wish my mother could see me now " 
 hummed Jonathan. 
 
 "I wouldn t wish that." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "What would they all think of us if they 
 could see us this minute?" 
 
A ROWBOAT PILGRIMAGE 191 
 
 "Just what they have thought for a long 
 time." 
 
 I laughed. "How true that is, teacher!" 
 I said. 
 
 Finding us still cheerful, the imps tried 
 again. 
 
 "Jonathan do you know I do believe 
 my rowlock socket is working loose." 
 
 He cast a quick look over his shoulder 
 without breaking stroke. Then he said a few 
 words, explicit and powerful, about the man 
 who had "overhauled" the boat. "He ought 
 to be put out in it, in a sea like this, and left 
 to row himself home." 
 
 "Yes, of course, but instead, here we are. 
 It won t last half an hour longer." 
 
 It did not last ten minutes. There it hung, 
 one screw pulled loose, the other barely 
 holding. 
 
 "Take my knife you can get it out of 
 my hip pocket and try to set up that screw 
 with the big blade." 
 
 I did so, and pulled a few strokes. Then 
 "It s come out again. It s no use." 
 
 "We make blamed poor headway with one 
 pair of oars," said Jonathan. 
 
192 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 He meditated. 
 
 "Where are the screw-eyes?" he said after 
 a moment. 
 
 "Oh, good for you! They re in the metal 
 box. I ll get them." 
 
 I drew in my useless oars, turned about 
 and cautiously wriggled up into the bow seat. 
 
 "Look out for yourself! Don t bullfrog 
 out over the bow. I can t hold her any 
 steadier than this." 
 
 "Oh, I m all right." 
 
 With one hand I gripped the gunwale, with 
 the other I felt down into the box and finally 
 fished out the required treasures. I worked 
 my way back into my own seat and tried a 
 screw-eye in the empty, rusted-out hole. 
 
 "Does it bite? 
 
 "I don t know about biting, but it s going 
 in beautifully now it goes hard." 
 
 "Perhaps I can give it a turn." 
 
 "Perhaps you can t! Don t you stop row 
 ing. If this boat wasn t held steady, she d 
 I don t know what she would n t do." 
 
 "If you stick something through the eye 
 you can turn it." 
 
 "Yes. I 11 find something, Here s the can- 
 
A ROWBOAT PILGRIMAGE 193 
 
 opener. Grand! There! It s solid. Now I ll 
 do the other one the same way. Hurrah for 
 the screw-eyes!" 
 
 "You thought of bringing them," said 
 Jonathan magnanimously. 
 
 "You thought of using them," said I, not 
 to be outdone. 
 
 And so again the imps were foiled. But 
 they hung over us, they slapped us with 
 spray, they tossed the whitecaps, jeering, at 
 our heads, over our shoulders, into our laps. 
 They put up the tides to tricks of eddies and 
 back-currents, so that they hindered instead 
 of helping, as by calculation they should 
 have done. They laid invisible hands on our 
 oars and dragged them down, or held them 
 up as the wave raced by, so that we missed 
 a stroke. Once, in the lee of an island, we 
 paused to rest and unroll our chart and get 
 our bearings, while the smooth rise and fall 
 of the ground swell was all there was to re 
 mind us of the riot of water just outside. 
 Then we were off again, and the imps had 
 us. They were busy, those imps, all that long, 
 windy, wave-tossed, wonderful day. 
 
194 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 For it was wonderful, and the imps were 
 indeed frustrate, wholly frustrate. We pulled 
 toward the quiet harbor that evening with 
 aching muscles, hair and clothes matted with 
 salt water, but spirits undaunted. Hungry, 
 too, for we had not been able to do more than 
 munch a few ship s biscuit while we rowed. 
 Wind, tide, waves, all against us, boat leak 
 ing, oars disabled and still "Isn t it 
 great ! " we said, " great great ! " 
 
 Dusk was closing in and lights began to 
 blink along the western shore. We beached 
 on a sandy point and asked our way, where 
 could we put up for the night? Children, 
 barelegged, waded out around the boat, 
 looking at us and our funny, laden craft, with 
 curious eyes. Yes, they said, there was an 
 inn, farther up the harbor, where we saw 
 those lights ten minutes row, perhaps. 
 We pulled off again, stiffly. 
 
 "Tired?" said Jonathan. "I ll take her 
 
 "Indeed you won t! Of course I m tired, 
 but I ve got to do something to keep warm. 
 And I want to get in. I want supper. They 11 
 all be in bed if we don t hurry." 
 
A ROWBOAT PILGRIMAGE 195 
 
 Our tired muscles lent themselves mechani 
 cally to their work and the boat slid across 
 the quiet waters of the moonlit harbor. The 
 town lights grew bigger, wharves loomed 
 above us, and soon we were gliding along 
 under their shadow. The eddies from our 
 oars went lap-lap-lapping off among the great 
 dark spiles and stirred up the keen smell of 
 salt-soaked timbers and seaweed. Blindly 
 groping, we found a rickety ladder, tied our 
 boat and climbed stiffly up, and there we 
 were on our feet again, feeling rather queer 
 and stretchy after seven hours in our cramped 
 quarters. 
 
 Half an hour later we were sitting in the 
 warm, clean kitchen of the old inn, and a 
 kindly but mystified hostess was mothering 
 us with eggs and ham and tea and pie and 
 doughnuts and other things that a New 
 England kitchen always contains. While we 
 ate she sat and rocked energetically, ques 
 tioning us with friendly curiosity and watch 
 ing us with keen though benevolent eyes. 
 
 "Rowed, did you? Jim!" calling back over 
 her shoulder through a half -open door, "did 
 you hear that? These folks have rowed all 
 
196 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 the way across the bay this afternoon yes 
 rowed. What say? Yes, she rowed, too. 
 They say they re goin on to-morrow, round 
 Judith." 
 
 "Say, now," she finally appealed to us in 
 frank perplexity, "what re you doin it for?" 
 
 "We like it," said Jonathan peacefully. 
 
 "Like it, do you? Well, now, if that don t 
 beat all! Say you know? I wouldn t do 
 that, what you re doin , not if you paid me. 
 Have another cup o tea, do." 
 
 The next morning she bade us good-bye 
 with the air of entrusting us to that Provi 
 dence which is known to have a special care 
 for children and fools. 
 
 In fact, through all the varying experiences 
 of our cruise, one thing never varied. That 
 was, the expression on the faces of the people 
 we met. Wind and water and coast and birds 
 all greeted us differently with each new day, 
 but no matter now many new faces we met, 
 we found in them always the same look a 
 look at once friendly and quizzical, the look 
 one casts upon nice children for whose antics 
 one is not responsible, the look one casts upon 
 very small dogs. Why? Is it so odd a thing 
 
A ROWBOAT PILGRIMAGE 197 
 
 to like to row a little boat? If it had been a 
 yacht, now, or even a motor-boat, the ex 
 pression would have been different. Appar 
 ently the oars were what did it. 
 
 On that particular morning, word of our 
 doings must have got abroad, for as we 
 stepped out on the brick sidewalk of the 
 shady main street a little crowd was waiting 
 for us. It was a funny procession: Jona 
 than first, with the guns and the water-jug, 
 then a boy with a wheelbarrow, on which 
 were piled the two dunnage bags, the metal 
 box, the lantern, the axe, the chart tube, and 
 a few other things. An old man and some 
 boys followed curiously, then I came, with 
 two big baking-powder cans, very gorgeous 
 because the red paper was not yet off them, 
 full of provisions pressed on us by our friendly 
 hostess. Tagging behind me, came an old 
 woman, a big girl, and a half-dozen children. 
 It was the kind of escort that usually attends 
 the hand-organ and monkey on their infre 
 quent visits. 
 
 We loaded up the boat and pulled off, a 
 little stiff but fairly fit after all. The group 
 waved us off and then stood obviously talk- 
 
198 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 ing us over. One of the men called after us, 
 with a sudden inspiration, "Pity ye hev n t 
 got a motor in there!" 
 
 Though we did n t want to be a motor- 
 boat, we were not above receiving courtesies 
 from one, and when the Providence tacitly 
 invoked by our hostess sent one chugging 
 along up to us, with the proposal to take us 
 in tow, we accepted with great contentment. 
 The morning was not half over when we made 
 our next landing, and looked up the captain 
 who was to tow us "around Judith." 
 
 For in the matter of Point Judith our 
 friends and advisers had been unanimously 
 firm. There should be a limit, they said, even 
 to the foolishness of a holiday plan. With a 
 light boat, we might have braved their dis 
 approval, but loaded as we were, we decided 
 to be prudent. 
 
 "I d hate to lose the guns," said Jonathan. 
 
 "Yes, and the camera," I added. 
 
 So we accepted the offer of a good friend s 
 knockabout, and sailed around the dreaded 
 Point with our little boat tailing behind at 
 the end of her rope. We saw no water that 
 we could not have met in her, but, as our 
 
A ROWBOAT PILGRIMAGE 199 
 
 friends did not fail to point out, that proved 
 nothing whatever. 
 
 At Stonington we were left once more to 
 our little boat and our four oars, and there we 
 pulled her up and caulked her. 
 
 Strange, how we are always trying to avoid 
 mishaps, and yet when they come we are so 
 often glad of them! A leaky boat had not 
 been in our plans, but if we could change that 
 first wild row across the big bay, if we could 
 cut out that leakiness, that puddling bottom, 
 the difficult shifts of baling and rowing, would 
 we? We would not. Again, as we look back 
 over the days of our cruise, we could ill spare 
 those hours of labor on the hot stretch of 
 sunny beach between the wharves, where we 
 bent half-blinded over the dazzling white 
 boat, our spirits irritated, our fingers aching 
 as they worked at the push-push-push of the 
 cotton waste between the strakes. We said 
 hard words of the man who thought he had 
 put our boat in order for us, and yet if we 
 could cut out those hours of grumbling toil, 
 would we? We would not. For one thing, we 
 should perhaps have missed the precious 
 word of advice given us by a man who sat and 
 
200 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 watched us. He recommended us to put a 
 little motor in the stern. He pointed out to 
 us that rowing was pretty hard work. We 
 said we liked it. His face wore the expression 
 I have already described. 
 
 We launched her again at dusk. Next 
 morning Jonathan was a moment ahead of 
 me on the wharf. 
 
 "Any water in her?" I called, following 
 hard. 
 
 "Dry as a bone," he shouted back, exult 
 ant; but as I came up he added, with his 
 usual conservatism, "of course we can t tell 
 what she may do when she s loaded." 
 
 But our work held. For the rest of the trip 
 we had a dry boat, except for what came in 
 over the sides. 
 
 Now that we were in the home State, we 
 got out our guns and hugged the shore closely, 
 on the lookout for plover. We drifted some 
 times, while we studied our maps for the loca 
 tion of the salt marshes. If we were lucky, we 
 had broiled birds for luncheon or supper; if 
 we were not, we had tinned stuff, which is dis 
 tinctly inferior. When we spent the night at 
 an inn, we breakfasted there, but most of our 
 
A ROWBOAT PILGRIMAGE 201 
 
 meals were eaten along the shore, or, best of 
 all, on some island. 
 
 " Can we find an island for lunch to-day, do 
 you suppose? " I usually asked, as we dipped 
 our oars in the morning. 
 
 "Do you have to have an island for lunch? " 
 
 "I love an island!" choosing to ignore the 
 jest. "That s one of the best things about a 
 boat that it takes you to islands." 
 
 "Now, why an island?" 
 
 "You know as well as I do. An island 
 means oh, it means remoteness, it means 
 quiet possession; while you re on it, it s 
 yours you don t have every passer-by 
 looking over your shoulder you have a 
 little world all to yourself." 
 
 I could feel Jonathan s indulgent smile 
 through the back of his head as he rowed. 
 
 "Well, you know yourself," I argued. 
 "Even a tiny bit of stone and earth, with 
 moss on it, and a flower, out in the middle of 
 a brook, looks different, somehow, from the 
 same things on the bank. It is different 
 it s an island." 
 
 And so we sought islands sometimes 
 little ones, all rocks, too little even to have 
 
MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 collected driftwood for a fire, too little to have 
 grown anything but wisps of beach-grass, 
 low enough to be covered, perhaps, by the 
 highest tides. Sometimes it was a larger 
 island, big enough to have bushes on it, and 
 beaches round its edges. One of these we 
 remember as best of all. It lay a mile off 
 shore, a long island, rocky at its ocean end 
 and at its land end running out to a long 
 slim line of curving beach. In the middle it 
 rose to a plateau, thick-set with grass and 
 goldenrod and bay bushes, from which 
 floated the gay, sweet voices of song spar 
 rows. Ah! There was an island for you! And 
 we made a fire of driftwood, and cooked our 
 luncheon, and lay back on the sand and 
 drowsed, while the sea-gulls, millions of them, 
 circled curiously over our heads, mewing and 
 screaming as they dived and swooped, and 
 behind us the notes of the song sparrows rose 
 sweet. 
 
 If we had had water enough in our jug, we 
 should have camped there. We rowed away 
 at last, slowly, loving it, and in our thoughts 
 we still possess it. As it dropped astern I 
 pulled in my oars and stood up to take its 
 
A ROWBOAT PILGRIMAGE 203 
 
 picture no easy task, with the boat mount 
 ing and plunging among the swells. But I 
 have my picture, its horizon line at a notice 
 able slant, reminiscent of my unsteady bal 
 ance. It means little to other people, but to 
 us it means the sweetness of sunshine and 
 wind and water, the sweetness of grass and 
 bird-notes, all breathed over by the spirit of 
 solitude. 
 
 Then it melted away our island into 
 the waste of waters, and we turned to look 
 toward the misty headlands beyond our bow. 
 Where the marshlands were, we followed 
 them closely, but where the shore was rocky, 
 or, worse still, built up with summer cot 
 tages, we often made a straight course from 
 headland to headland, keeping well out, often 
 a mile or two, to avoid tide eddies. We liked 
 the feeling of being far out, the shore a dark 
 blue, the cottages little dots. But we liked it, 
 too, when the headland before us grew large, 
 its rocks and bushes stood out, and we could 
 see the white rip off its point a rip to be 
 taken with some caution if we hoped to keep 
 our cargo dry. And then, the rip passed, if 
 the bay beyond curved in quiet and unin- 
 
204 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 habited, how we loved to turn and pull along 
 close to shore, watching its beaches and sand- 
 cliffs draw smoothly away beside our stern, 
 or, best of all, pulling about and running in 
 till our bow grated and we jumped to the wet 
 beach and ran up the cliff to look about. Such 
 moments bring in a peculiar way the thrill of 
 discovery. It is one thing to go along a coast 
 by land, and learn its ways so. It is a good 
 thing. But it is quite another to fare over its 
 waters and turn in upon it from without, 
 surprising its secrets as from another world. 
 
 But to do this, your boat must be a little 
 one. As soon as you have a real keel, the case 
 is altered. For a keel demands a special land 
 ing-place a wharf --and a wharf means 
 human habitation, and then where is your 
 thrill of discovery? Ah, no! a little boat! 
 And you can land anywhere, among rocks 
 or in sandy shallows; you can explore the tide 
 creeks and marshes and the little rivers; you 
 can beach wherever you like, wherever the 
 rippling waves themselves can go. A little 
 boat for romance! 
 
 A little boat, but a long cruise, as long as 
 may be. To be sure, a boat and a bit of water 
 
A ROWBOAT PILGRIMAGE 205 
 
 anywhere is good. Even an errand across the 
 pond and back may be a joy. But if you can, 
 now and then, -free yourself from the there- 
 and-back habit, the reward is great. The joy 
 of pilgrimage of going, not there and back, 
 but on, and on, and yet on is a joy by it 
 self. The thought that each night brings 
 sleep in a new and unforeseen spot, with a new 
 journey on the morrow, gives special flavor 
 to the journeying. 
 
 Not the least among the pleasures of the 
 cruise were the night-camps. When the shore 
 looked inviting, and harborage at an inn 
 seemed doubtful, we pulled our boat above 
 tide-water, turned her over and tilted her up 
 on her side for a wind-break, and there we 
 spent the night. The half-emptied dunnage 
 bags were our pillows, the sand was our bed. 
 Sand, to sleep on, is harder than one might 
 suppose, but it is better than earth in being 
 easily scooped out to suit one s needs. Indeed, 
 even on a pneumatic mattress, I should hardly 
 have slept much that first night. It was a 
 new experience. The great world of waters 
 was so close that it seemed, all night long, 
 like a wonderful but ever importunate pres- 
 
206 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 ence. The wind blew that night, too, and 
 there was a low-scudding rack, and a half- 
 smothered moon. As we rolled ourselves 
 up in our blankets and rubber sheets and set 
 tled down, I looked out over the restless 
 water. 
 
 "The bay seems very full to-night 
 brimming," I said. 
 
 "Not brimming over, though," said Jona 
 than. 
 
 "I should hope not! But it does seem to 
 me there are very few inches between it and 
 our feet." 
 
 "And the tide is still rising, of course," 
 said Jonathan, by way of comfort. 
 
 "Jonathan, I know just where high-tide 
 mark is, and we re fully twelve inches above 
 it." 
 
 Silence. 
 
 "Are n t we?" 
 
 "Oh, was that a question?" murmured 
 Jonathan. "Why, yes, I think we are at least 
 that." 
 
 "Of course, there are extra high tides 
 sometimes." 
 
 Silence. 
 
A ROWBOAT PILGRIMAGE 207 
 
 " Jonathan, do you know when they come? " 
 
 "Not exactly." 
 
 "Well, I don t care. I love it, anyway. 
 Only it seems so much bigger and colder at 
 night, the water does." 
 
 At last I drowsed, waking now and then to 
 raise my head and just glance down at those 
 waves they certainly sounded as if they 
 were lapping the sand close by my ear. No, 
 there they were, quite within bounds, fully 
 twenty feet away from my toes. Of course it 
 was all right. I slept again, and dreamed that 
 the tide rose and rose; the waves ran merrily 
 up the beach, ran up on both sides of us, 
 closed in behind us. We were lying on a little 
 sand island, and the waves nibbled at its 
 edges nibbled and nibbled and nibbled 
 the island was being nibbled up. This would 
 never do! We must move! And I woke. 
 Ripple, ripple, swash! ripple, ripple, swash! 
 went the unconscious waves. As I raised my 
 head I saw the pale beach stretching off under 
 the moon-washed mists of middle night. Re 
 assured, I sank back, and when I waked again 
 the big sun was well above the rim of the 
 waters and all the little waves were dancing 
 
208 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 and the wet curves of the beach were gleam 
 ing in the new day. 
 
 The water was not always restless at night. 
 The next time we camped we found a little 
 harbor within a harbor, a crescent curve of 
 fine white sand ending in a point of rock. In 
 one of its clefts we made our fire and broiled 
 our plover, ranging them on spits of bay so 
 that they hung over the two edges of rock 
 like people looking down into a miniature 
 Grand Canon. There were nine of them, fat 
 and sputtering, and while they cooked, we 
 made toast and arranged the camp. Then 
 we had supper, and watched the red coals 
 smouldering and the white moonlight filling 
 the world with a radiance that put out the 
 stars and brought the blue back to the sky. 
 The little basin of the bay was quiet as a pool, 
 the air was full of stillness, with now and then 
 the hushed flip-flip of a tiny wave that had 
 somehow strayed in from the tumbling crowd 
 outside. 
 
 We slept well, but once Jonathan waked 
 me. "Look!" he whispered, "White heron." 
 
 I raised my head. There, quite near us in 
 the shallow water, stood a great pale bird, 
 
A ROWBOAT PILGRIMAGE 209 
 
 motionless, on one long, slim leg, his oval 
 body, long neck, head and bill clearly out 
 lined against the bright water beyond. The 
 mirror of the water reflected perfectly the 
 soft outline, making a double creature, one 
 above and one below, with that slim stem of 
 leg between. 
 
 I watched him until my neck grew tired. 
 He never moved. Out beyond him, more dim, 
 stood his mate, motionless too. Now and 
 then they called to each other, with queer, 
 harsh talk that made the stillness all the 
 stiller when it closed in again. 
 
 When we awoke, they were gone, but we 
 found the heronry that morning on one of the 
 oak-covered knolls that rise like islands out of 
 the heart of the great salt marshes. 
 
 All through the cruise, the big winds were 
 with us more than we had expected. They 
 gave us, for the most part, a right good time. 
 For even in the partly protected Sound it is 
 possible to stir up a sea rough enough to keep 
 one busy. Each wave, as it came galloping 
 up, was an antagonist to be dealt with. If 
 we met it successfully, it galloped on, and left 
 
210 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 us none the worse for it. If we did not, it 
 meant, perhaps, that its foaming white mane 
 brushed our shoulders, or swept across our 
 laps, or, worse still, drowned our guns. Once, 
 indeed, we were threatened with something a 
 little more serious. We were running down out 
 of the Connecticut River, gliding smoothly 
 over sleek water. It was delicious rowing, and 
 the boat shot along swiftly. As we turned 
 westward, it grew rougher, but we were pay 
 ing no special heed to this when suddenly I 
 became conscious of something dark over my 
 right shoulder. I turned my head, and found 
 myself looking up into the evil heart of a dull 
 green breaker. I gasped, "Look out!" and 
 dug my oar. Jonathan glanced, pulled, there 
 was a moment of doubt, then the huge dark 
 bulk was shouldering heavily away, off our 
 starboard quarter. It was only the first of 
 its ugly company. Through sheer careless 
 ness, we had run, as it were, into an ambush 
 - one of the worst bits of water on the Sound, 
 where tide and river currents meet and 
 wrangle. All around us were rearing, white- 
 maned breakers, though the impression we 
 got was less of their white manes than of their 
 
A ROWBOAT PILGRIMAGE 211 
 
 dark sides as they rose over us. Our problem 
 was to meet each one fairly, and yet snatch 
 every moment of respite to slant off toward 
 the harborage inside the breakwaters. It took 
 all our strength and all our skill, and all the 
 resources of the good little boat. But we 
 made it, after perhaps half an hour of stiff 
 work. Then we rested, breathed, and went 
 on. We did not talk much about it until we 
 made camp that night. Then, as we sat look 
 ing out over the quiet water, I told Jonathan 
 about the shadow over my shoulder. 
 
 "It was like seeing a ghost," I said, 
 "no more like feeling the hand of an en 
 emy on your shoulder." 
 
 "The Black Douglas," suggested Jonathan. 
 
 "Yes. Talk about the scientific attitude 
 you Ve just got to personify things when they 
 come at you like that. That wave had an ex 
 pression an ugly one. I don t wonder the 
 Northmen felt as they did about the sea and 
 the waves. They took it all personally they 
 had to!" 
 
 "Were you frightened?" asked Jonathan. 
 
 "No, of course not," I said, almost too 
 promptly. Then I meditated "I don t 
 
MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 know what you d call it but I believe I 
 understand now what people mean when they 
 talk about their hearts going down into their 
 boots." 
 
 "Did yours?" 
 
 " Why, not exactly but well it cer 
 tainly did feel suddenly very thick and heavy 
 as if it had dropped perhaps an inch 
 or two." 
 
 "I believe," said Jonathan gently, "you 
 might almost call that being frightened." 
 
 :< Yes, perhaps you might. Tell me were 
 
 you?" 
 
 " I did n t like it yes, I was anxious and 
 it made me tired to have been such a fool 
 the whole thing was absolutely unnecessary, 
 if we d looked up the charts carefully." 
 
 "Or asked a few questions. But you know 
 you hate to ask questions." 
 
 "You could have asked them." 
 
 "Well, anyway, aren t you glad it hap 
 pened?" 
 
 "Oh, of course; it was an experience." 
 
 "Do you want to do it again?" 
 
 "No" -he was emphatic "not with 
 that load." 
 
A ROWBOAT PILGRIMAGE 213 
 
 "Neither do I." 
 
 If the winds sometimes wearied us a little, 
 they helped us, too. We can never forget the 
 evening we turned into the Thames River, 
 making for the shelter of a friend s hospitable 
 roof. We had battled most of that day with 
 the diagonal onslaughts of a southeast gale, 
 bringing with it the full swing of the ocean 
 swell. It was easier than a south wester would 
 have been, but that was the best that could 
 be said for it. 
 
 We passed the last buoy and turned our 
 bow north. And suddenly, the great waves 
 that had all day kept us on the defensive be 
 came our strong helpers. They took us up and 
 swung us forward on our course with great 
 sweeping rushes of motion. The tide was 
 setting in, too, and with that and our oars 
 we were going almost as fast as the waves 
 themselves, so that when one picked us up, 
 it swung us a long way before it left us. We 
 learned to watch for each roller, wait till one 
 came up astern, then pull with all our might 
 so that we went swooping down its long slope, 
 its crest at first just behind our stern, but 
 drawing more and more under us, until it 
 
214 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 passed beyond our bow and dropped us in the 
 trough to wait for the next giant. It was like 
 going in a swing, but with the downward rush 
 very long and swift, and the upward rise short 
 and slow. How long it took us to make the 
 two miles to our friend s dock we shall never 
 know. Probably only a few minutes. But it 
 was not an experience in time. We had a 
 sense of being at one with the great primal 
 forces of wind and water, and at one with 
 them, not in their moments of poise, but in 
 their moments of resistless power. 
 
 After all, the only drawback to the cruise 
 was that it was over too soon. When, in the 
 quiet afternoon light of the last day, a famil 
 iar headland floated into view, my first feel 
 ing was one of joy; for beyond that headland, 
 what friendly faces waited for us faces 
 turned even now, perhaps, toward the east for 
 a first glimpse of our little boat. But hard 
 after this, came a pang of regret it was 
 over, our water-pilgrimage, and I wanted it 
 to go on. 
 
 It was over. And yet, not really over after 
 all. I sometimes think that pleasures ought 
 
A ROWBOAT PILGRIMAGE 
 
 to be valued according to whether they are 
 over when they are over, or not. "You can 
 not eat your cake and have it too." True, but 
 that is because it is cake. There are other 
 things which you can eat, and still have. And 
 our rowboat cruise is one of these. It is over, 
 and yet it is not over. It never will be. I can 
 shut my eyes indeed, I do not need even 
 to shut them and again I am under the 
 open sky, I am afloat in the sun and the wind, 
 with the waters all around me. I see again 
 the surf -edged curves of the beaches, the lines 
 of the sand-cliffs, the ragged horizon edge, 
 cut and jagged by the waves. I feel the boat, 
 I feel the oars, I am aware of the damp, pure 
 night air, and the sounds of the waves cease 
 lessly breaking on the sand. 
 
 It is not over. Its best things are still ours, 
 and those things which were hardly pleasures 
 then have become such now. As we remember 
 our aching muscles and blistered hands, we 
 smile. As we recall times of intense weariness, 
 of irritation, of anxiety, we find ourselves 
 lingering over them with enjoyment. For 
 memory does something wonderful with ex 
 perience. It is a poet, and life is its raw 
 
216 MORE JONATHAN PAPERS 
 
 material. I know that our cruise was made up 
 of minutes, of oar-strokes, so many that to 
 count them would be weariness unending. But 
 in my memory, these things are re-created. 
 I see a boundless stretch of windy or peaceful 
 waters. I see the endless line of misty coast. 
 I see lovely islands, sleeping alone, waiting 
 to be possessed by those who come. And I see 
 a little, little boat, faring along the coast- 
 lands, out to the islands, over the waters 
 going on, and on, and on. 
 
 THE END 
 
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY