The Hills of Hingham Part 4

I have come to the conclusion that there might not be any less light were the Lord allowed to do his own shining, and that probably there might be quite as good teaching if the teacher stuck humbly to his desk, and after school kept chickens and a cow. The egg-money and cream "would help immensely," even the Professor admits, the Professor's wife fully concurring no doubt.

Don't we all take ourselves a little seriously--we college professors and others? As if the Lord could not continue to look after his light, if we looked after our students! It is only in these last years that I have learned that I can go forth unto my work and to my labor until the evening, quitting then, and getting home in time to feed the chickens and milk the cow. I am a professional man, and I dwell in the midst of professional men, all of whom are inclined to help the Lord out by working after dark--all of whom are really in dire const.i.tutional need of the early roosting chickens and the quiet, ruminating cow.

To walk humbly with the hens, that's the thing--after the cla.s.ses are dismissed and the office closed. To get out of the city, away from books, and theories, and students, and patients, and clients, and customers--back to real things, simple, restful, healthful things for body and soul, homely domestic things that lay eggs at 70 cents per dozen, and make b.u.t.ter at $2.25 the 5-pound box! As for me, this does "help immensely," affording me all necessary hair-cuts (I don't want the "Eugenic Review"), and allowing Her to send the family washing (except the flannels) to the laundry.

Instead of crippling normal man's normal work, country living (chickens and a cow) will prevent his work from crippling him--keeping him a little from his students and thus saving him from too much teaching; keeping him from reading the "Eugenic Review" and thus saving him from too much learning; curing him, in short, of his "const.i.tution" that is bound to come to some sort of a collapse unless rested and saved by chickens and a cow.

"By not too many chickens," she would add; and there is no one to match her with a chicken--fried, stewed, or turned into pie.

The hens are no longer mine, the boys having taken them over; but the gardening I can't give up, nor the seed catalogues.

The one in my hands was exceptionally radiant, and exceptionally full of Novelties and Specialties for the New Year, among them being an extraordinary new pole bean--an Improved Kentucky Wonder. She had backed away, as I have said, and instead of looking at the page of beans, looked solemnly at me; then with something sorrowful, something somewhat Sunday-like in her voice, an echo, I presume, of lessons in the Catechism, she asked me--

"Who makes you plant beans?"

"My dear," I began, "I--"

"How many meals of pole beans did we eat last summer?"

"I--don't--re--"

"Three--just three," she answered. "And I think you must remember how many of that row of poles we picked?"

"Why, yes, I--"

"Three--just three out of thirty poles! Now, do you think you remember how many bushels of those beans went utterly unpicked?"

I was visibly weakening by this time.

"Three--do you think?"

"Multiply that three by three-times-three! And now tell me--"

But this was too much.

"My dear," I protested, "I recollect exactly. It was--"

"No, I don't believe you do. I cannot trust you at all with beans.

But I should like to know why you plant ten or twelve kinds of beans when the only kind we like are limas!"

"Why--the--catalogue advises--"

"Yes, the catalogue advises--"

"You don't seem to understand, my dear, that--"

"Now, _why_ don't I understand?"

I paused. This is always a hard question, and peculiarly hard as the end of a series, and on a topic as difficult as beans. I don't know beans. There is little or nothing about beans in the history of philosophy or in poetry. Th.o.r.eau says that when he was hoeing his beans it was not beans that he hoed nor he that hoed beans--which was the only saying that came to mind at the moment, and under the circ.u.mstances did not seem to help me much.

"Well," I replied, fumbling among my stock of ready-made reasons, "I--really--don't--know exactly why you don't understand. Indeed, I really don't know--that _I_ exactly understand. _Everything_ is full of things that even I can't understand--how to explain my tendency to plant all kinds of beans, for instance; or my 'weakness,' as you call it, for seed catalogues; or--"

She opened her magazine, and I hastened to get the stool for her feet.

As I adjusted the light for her she said:--

"Let me remind you that this is the night of the annual banquet of your Swampatalk Club; you don't intend to forego that famous roast beef for the seed catalogues?"

"I did n't intend to, but I must say that literature like this is enough to make a man a vegetarian. Look at that page for an old-fashioned New England Boiled Dinner! Such carrots. Really _they_ look good enough to eat. I think I 'll plant some of those improved carrots; and some of these parsnips; and some--"

"You had better go get ready," she said, "and please put that big stick on the fire for me," drawing the lamp toward her, as she spoke, so that all of its green-shaded light fell over her--over the silver in her hair, with its red rose; over the pink and lacy thing that wrapped her from her sweet throat to the silver stars on her slippers.

"I'm not going to that Club!" I said. "I have talked myself for three hours to-day, attended two conferences, and listened to one address.

There were three different societies for the general improving of things that met at the University halls to-day with big speakers from the ends of the earth. To-morrow night I address The First Century Club in the city after a dinner with the New England Teachers of English Monthly Luncheon Club--and I would like to know what we came out here in the woods for, anyhow?"

"If you are going--" She was speaking calmly.

"Going where?" I replied, picking up the seed catalogues to make room for myself on the couch. "_Please_ look at this pumpkin! Think of what a jack-o'-lantern it would make for the boys! I am going to plant--"

"You 'll be cold," she said, rising and drawing a steamer rug up over me; then laying the open magazine across my shoulders while giving the pillow a motherly pull, she added, with a sigh of contentment:--

"Perhaps, if it had n't been for me, you might have been a great success with pumpkins or pigs--I don't know."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Dustless-Duster]

V

THE DUSTLESS-DUSTER

There are beaters, brooms and Bissell's Sweepers; there are dry-mops, turkey-wings, whisks, and vacuum-cleaners; there are--but no matter.

Whatever other things there are, and however many of them in the closet, the whole dust-raising kit is incomplete without the Dustless-Duster.

For the Dustless-Duster is final, absolute. What can be added to, or taken away from, a Dustless-Duster? A broom is only a broom, even a new broom. Its sphere is limited; its work is partial. Dampened and held persistently down by the most expert of sweepers, the broom still leaves something for the Dustless-Duster to do. But the Dustless-Duster leaves nothing for anything to do. The dusting is done.

Because there are many who dust, and because they have searched in vain for a dustless-duster, I should like to say that the Dustless-Duster can be bought at department stores, at those that have a full line of departments--at any department store, in fact; for the Dustless-Duster department is the largest of all the departments, whatever the store.

Ask for it of your jeweler, grocer, milliner. Ask for "The Ideal,"

"The Universal," "The Indispensable," of any man with anything to sell or preach or teach, and you shall have it--the perfect thing which you have spent life looking for; which you have thought so often to have, but found as often that you had not. You shall have it. I have it.

One hangs, rather, in the kitchen on the clothes-dryer.

And one (more than one) hangs in the kitchen closet, and in the cellar, and in the attic. I have often brought it home, for my search has been diligent since a certain day, years ago,--a "Commencement Day" at the Inst.i.tute.

I had never attended a Commencement exercise before; I had never been in an opera house before; and the painted light through the roof of windows high overhead, the strains of the orchestra from far below me, the banks of broad-leaved palms, the colors, the odors, the confusion of flowers and white frocks, were strangely thrilling. Nothing had ever happened to me in the woods like this: the exaltation, the depression, the thrill of joy, the throb of pain, the awakening, the wonder, the purpose, and the longing! It was all a dream--all but the form and the face of one girl graduate, and the t.i.tle of her essay, "The Real and the Ideal."

I do not know what large and lofty sentiments she uttered; I only remember the way she looked them. I did not hear the words she read; but I still feel the absolute fitness of her theme--how real her simple white frock, her radiant face, her dark hair! And how ideal!

I had seen perfection. Here was the absolute, the final, the ideal, the indispensable! And I was fourteen! Now I am past forty; and upon the kitchen clothes-dryer hangs the Dustless-Duster.