The Jonathan Papers Part 10

Jonathan's seat is not so good as mine for observation. A big deutzia bush looms between his window and the road, while at my window only the tips of a waxberry bush obscure the view, and there is a door beside me.

Therefore Jonathan was distinctly at a disadvantage. He offered to change seats, suggesting that there was a draft where I was, and that the light was bad for my eyes, but I found that I did not mind either of these things.

One day a team pa.s.sed while Jonathan was carving. He looked up too late, hesitated, then said, rather consciously: "Who was that? Did you see?"

"_I_ don't know," I said, with a far-away, impersonal air, as though the matter had no interest for me. But I hadn't the heart to keep up the pose, and I added: "Perhaps you'll know. It was a white horse, and a business wagon with red wheels, and the man wore a soft felt hat, and there was a dog on the seat beside him."

Before I had finished, Jonathan was grinning delightedly. "Suppose we shake these city ways," he said. He deliberately got up, raised the shades, pushed back a curtain, and moved a jug of goldenrod. "There! Can you see better now?" he asked.

And I said cheerfully, "Yes, quite a good deal better. And after this, Jonathan, when you hear a team coming, why don't you stop carving till it goes by?"

"I will," said Jonathan.

It was our final capitulation, and since then we have been much more comfortable. We run to the window whenever we feel inclined, and we leave our shades up at dusk without apology or circ.u.mlocution. We are coming to know our neighbors' teams by their sound, and we are proud of it. Why, indeed, should we be ashamed of this human interest? Why should we be elated that we can recognize a bluebird by his flight, and ashamed of knowing our neighbor's old bay by his gait? Why should we boast of our power to recognize the least murmur of the deceptive grosbeak, and not take pride in being able to "spot" Bill Smith's team by the peculiar rattle of its board bottom as it crosses the bridge by the mill? Is he not of more value than many grosbeaks? But how can we love our neighbor if we do not pay some attention to him--him and his horse and his cart and all that is his? And how shall we pay attention to him if we neglect the opportunities of the Road, since for the rest he is busy and we are busy, and we belong each to our own farm?

I stopped at a friendly door one day to ask, "Have Phil and Jimmy gone by? I wanted to see them."

"No, I haven't seen them." The bright-faced little lady stood in the doorway glancing over my shoulder out toward the sunny road. "Have you seem them to-day, Nellie?" she called into the dusky sitting-room. "No,"

she turned back to me, "we haven't seen them. And," she added, with gay directness, "n.o.body could get by the house _without_ our seeing them; I'm sure of that!"

Her remark pleased me immensely. I like this frank interest in the Road very much. When I am at home, I have it myself, and I have stopped being ashamed of it. When I am on the Road, I like to know that I am an object of interest to the dwellers in the houses I pa.s.s. I look up at the windows, whose tiny panes reflect the brightness of outdoors and tell me nothing of the life within, and I like to think that some one behind them knows that I am going by. Often there is some sign of recognition--a motion of the hand through a parted curtain, or rarely a smiling face; now and then some one looks out from a doorway to send a greeting, or glances up from the garden or the well; but even without these tokens I still have the sense of being noticed, and I find it pleasant and companionable. In the city, when I go to see a friend, I approach a house that gives no sign. I mount to a noncommittal vestibule and push an impersonal b.u.t.ton, and after the other necessary preliminaries I find my friends. In the country as I drive up to the house I notice curtains stirring, I hear voices, and before I have had time to get out and find the hitch-rope every person in the house is either at the gate or standing in the doorway. Our visit is begun before we have left the Road, the hospitable, social Road. Such ways would probably not do for the city. So much the worse for the city. The country ways are best.

Everything that happens along the Road has the social touch. In the city, orders are given by telephone, and when the delivery wagon comes, it sweeps up with a rush, the boy seizes a basket and jumps out, runs to the back door, shouts the name of the owner, slams down his goods, and dashes back to the wagon, with a crisp "Git-up!" to the well-trained horse, who starts forward while his driver is still mounting to his seat.

Not so in the country. The wagon draws peacefully out to the side of the Road, and the horse falls to nibbling gra.s.s if he is unchecked, or to browsing on my rosebushes if he is not. If it is the grocer's wagon, the boy comes around to the back porch and we discuss what supplies will probably be needed by the time of his next visit. Incidentally, we talk about weather and crops and woodchucks and trout, or ba.s.s or partridges, according to the season. If it is the meat cart or the fish wagon, I seize a platter and go out, the back flap of the cart is lifted up, I step under its shade and peer in, considering what is offered me and deciding what I will have plucked out for me to carry back to the house.

Besides the routine visitors, there are others--peddlers with wonderful collections of things to sell (whole clothing shops or furniture stores some of them bring with them), peddlers with books, peddlers with silver, peddlers with jewelry. In the course of a few months one is offered everything from shoe-strings to stoves. There are men who want to buy, too,--buyers of old iron, of old rags, of old rubber.

"Anny-ting, anny-ting vat you vill sell me, madame, I vill buy it," said one, with outspread hands.

Cattle go by, great droves of them, being driven along the Road and sold from farm to farm until all are gone. I love the day that brings them. A dust haze down the Road, the mooing of cows and the baaing of calves, the shouts of the drovers, the sound of many hoofs, and the cattle are here. The farmer and the "hired man" leave their work and saunter out to the Road to "look 'em over," the children come running out to watch the pretty creatures, sleek or tousled, soft-eyed or wild-eyed, yearlings with bits of horns, stocky two-year-olds, and wabbly-legged youngsters hardly able to keep pace with the rest, all of them glad enough of the chance to pause in the shade and nibble at the rich, cool gra.s.s. One or two of the "critters" are approved of, perhaps, and bought, and the rest move on, the sunny dust haze rises and clears, the shouts of the drovers grow faint, and the Road is still again.

Men go by looking for work; they will clean your well for you, they will file your horses' teeth for you, they will mend your umbrellas and repair your clocks and sharpen your scissors. In the city, when we hear the scissors-grinder ding-ding-dinging along the street, we wonder in an impersonal way how he makes a living; but in the country we espy him from afar and are out at the gate to meet him, with all the scissors and knives in the house.

There are tramps, too, of course. Not the kind one finds near cities, or in crowded summer watering-places. Our Road does not lead to Rome, at least not very directly, and the tramp who chooses it is sure to be a mild and unenterprising creature, a desultory tramp who does not really know his business. Some of the same ones come back year after year, and, in defiance of modern sociological science, we offer them the hospitality of the back porch with sandwiches and coffee, while we exchange the commonplaces of the season. It is the custom of the Road.

And so the procession of the Road moves on. If we wait long enough--and it is not so long either--everything goes by: gay wedding parties, christening parties, slow funerals, the Road bears them all; and to those who live beside it nothing is alien, nothing indifferent.

Throughout the week the daytime is for business--remembering always that on the country Road business is never merely business, but always sociability too; the early evening is for pleasure; the night is for rest, for that stillness that cities never know, broken only when human necessity most sharply importunes, in the crises of birth, of death. On Sundays all the world drives to church, or sits on its doorstep and watches the rest. And Sunday and week days alike, every one's interest goes out to the Road.

I venture to say that when we think of our city homes we think of their interiors, but when we think of our farmhouse homes we think of the Road as well. They are like little islands in a river,--one remembers them together. For the Road is a river--a river of life. Most of our words about roads imply motion. A road comes, we say, and it goes, it sweeps, it curves, it climbs, it descends, it rises and drops, it bends and turns. And, in fact, it means movement, it is always bringing life and taking it again, or if for a time it does neither, it is always inviting, always promising. We have all felt it. As we are whirled along in a railway train even, the thing that stirs our imagination is the roads, the paths. I can still remember glimpses of these that I had years ago--a footpath over a rounded hilltop through long yellow gra.s.s, a rough logging-road beside a foaming mountain river, a brushy wood road leading through bars into deep shade, a country road at dusk, curving past a low farmhouse with lights in the windows. I could never follow these roads, but I remember them still, and still they allure me.

Our Road, as it flows placidly past our farm, suggests nothing very exciting or spectacular. It is a pretty bit of road, rounding a rocky corner of the farm and leading past the old house under cool depths of maple shade, out again into a broad s.p.a.ce of sunlight, dropping over a little hill, around a curve, and out of sight. I know it well, of course, every rock and flower of it, but its final appeal to me is not through its beauty, it is not even through my sense of ownership in it; it is simply that it is a Road--a road that leads out of Everywhere into Everywhere Else, a road that goes on. About a road that ends there is no glamour. It may be pretty or useful, but as a road it is a failure. For the Road is the symbol of endless possibility. From the faintest footpath across a meadow, where as a child one has always felt that some elf or gnome _may_ appear, or along which, if one were to wander with sufficient negligence, one _might_ be led into the realm of "faerie" to the broad turnpike which fares through open country, plunges through the surging cities, and escapes to broad lands beyond--any path, any road, makes this appeal. And so long as one has faith that what may be is more than what is, so long as one has the buoyant patience to await it or the will to go forth and seek it, so long as one has the imagination and the heart of the wayfarer, the charm of the Road will be potent.

X

The Lure of the Berry

Men have sung the praises of fishing and hunting, they have extolled the joys of boating and riding, they have dwelt at length upon the pleasures of automobiling. But there is one--sport, shall I call it?--which no one seems to have thought worth mentioning: the gentle sport of berrying.

Perhaps calling it a sport is an unfortunate beginning; it gives us too much to live up to. No, it is not a sport, though I can't think why, since it is quite as active as drop-line fishing. Perhaps the trouble is with the game--the fish are more active than the berries, and their excesses cover the deficiencies of the stolid figure in the boat.

What, then, shall we call it? Not an occupation; it is too desultory for that; nor an amus.e.m.e.nt, because of a certain tradition of usefulness that hangs about it. Probably it belongs in that small but select group of things that people do ostensibly because they are useful but really because they are fun. At any rate, it does not matter how we cla.s.s it,--it is just berrying.

But not strawberrying. Strawberries are so far down, and so few! They cannot be picked with comfort by any one over six years old.

Nor blackberrying! Blackberries are good when gathered in, but in the gathering process there is nothing restful or soothing. They always grow in hot places, and the briers make you cross; they pull your hair and "sprout" your clothes and scratch your wrists. And the berries stain your fingers dark blue, and, moreover, they are frequented by those unpleasant little triangular, greenish-brown creatures known as squash bugs, which I do not believe even the Ancient Mariner could have been called upon to love. No, I do not mean blackberrying.

What then? What indeed but huckleberrying! How can I adequately sing the praises of the gentle, the neat, the comfortable huckleberry! No briers, no squash bugs, no back-breaking stoop or arm-rending stretch to reach them. Just a big, bushy, green clump, full of glossy black or softly blue berries, and you can sit right down on the tussocks among them, put your pail underneath a bush, and begin. At first, the handfuls drop in with a high-keyed "plinking" sound; then, when the "bottom is covered,"

this changes to a soft patter altogether satisfactory; and as you sit stripping the crisp branches and letting the neat little b.a.l.l.s roll through your fingers, your spirit grows calm within you, you feel the breeze, you look up now and then over stretches of hill, or pasture, or sky, and you settle into a state of complete acquiescence in things as they are.

For there is always a breeze, and always a view, at least where my huckleberries grow. If any one should ask me where to find a good situation for a house, I should answer, with a comprehensive wave of my arm, "Oh, choose any huckleberry patch." Only 'twere pity to demolish so excellent a thing as a huckleberry patch, merely to erect so doubtful a thing as a house.

I know one such--a royal one even among huckleberry patches. To get to it you go up an old road,--up, and up, and up,--you pa.s.s big fields, newmown and wide open to the sky, you get broader and broader outlooks over green woodland and blue rolling hills, with a bit of azure river in the midst. You come out on great flats of rock, thinly edged with light turf, and there before you are the "berry lots," as the natives call them,--rolling, windy uplands, with nothing bigger than cedars and wild cherry trees to break their sweep. The berry bushes crowd together in thick-set patches, waist-high, interspersed with big "high-bush" shrubs in clumps or alone, low, h.o.a.ry juniper, and great, dark ma.s.ses of richly glossy, richly fragrant bay. The pointed cedars stand about like sentinels, stiff enough save where their sensitive tops lean delicately away from the wind. In the scant herbage between is goldenrod, the earliest and the latest alike at home here, and red lilies and asters, and down close to the ground, if you care to stoop for them, trailing vines of dewberries with their fruit, the sweetest of all the blackberries. Truly it is a goodly prospect, and one to fill the heart with satisfaction that the world is as it is.

The pleasure of huckleberrying is partly in the season--the late summer-time, from mid-July to September. The poignant joys of early spring are pa.s.sed, and the exuberance of early summer, while the keen stimulus of fall has not yet come. Things are at poise. The haying is over, the meadows, shorn of their rich gra.s.s, lie tawny-green under the sky, and the world seems bigger than before. It is not a time for dreams nor a time for exploits; it is a time for--for--well, for berrying!

But you must choose your days carefully, as you do your fishing and hunting days. The berries "bite best" with a brisk west wind, though a south one is not to be despised, and a north one gives a pleasant suggestion of fall while the sun has still all the fervor of summer.

Choose a sky that has clouds in it, too, for you will feel their movement even when you do not look up. Then take your pail and set out.

Do not be in a hurry and do not promise to be back at any definite time.

Either go alone or with just the right companion. I do not know any circ.u.mstances wherein the choice of a companion needs more care than in berrying. It may make or mar the whole adventure. For you must have a person not too energetic, or a standard of speed will be established that will spoil everything; nor too conscientious--it is maddening to be told that you have not picked the bushes clean enough; nor too diligent, so that one feels guilty if one looks at the view or acknowledges the breeze; nor too restless, so that one is being constantly haled to fresh woods and pastures new. A slightly garrulous person is not bad, with a desultory, semi-philosophic bent, and a gift for being contented with easy physical occupation. In fact, I find that I am, by exclusion and inclusion, narrowing my description to fit a certain type of small boy.

And indeed I believe that here the ideal companion is to be found,--if indeed he is not, as I more than suspect he is, the ideal companion for every form of recreation in life. Yes, the boy is the thing. Some of my choicest hours in the berry lots have been spent with a boy as companion, some boy who loves to be in the wind and sun without knowing that he loves it, who philosophizes without knowing that he does so, who picks berries with sufficient diligence sometimes, and with a delightful irresponsibility at other times; who likes to move on, now and then, but is happy to kick turf around the edges of the clump if you are inclined to stay. Who takes pride in filling his pail, but is not so desperately single-minded that he is unmoved by the seductions of goldenrod in bloom, of juniper and bayberries, of dry goldenrod stalks (for kite sticks), of deserted birds' nests, and all the other delights that fall in his way.

For berrying does not consist chiefly in getting berries, any more than fishing consists chiefly in getting fish, or hunting in getting birds.

The essence of berrying is the state of mind that accompanies it. It is a semi-contemplative recreation, providing physical quiet with just enough motion to prevent restlessness--being, in this respect, like "whittling." I said semi-contemplative, because, while it seems to induce meditation, the beauty of it is that you don't really meditate at all, you only think you are doing so, or are going to. That is what makes it so recuperative in its effects. It just delicately shaves the line between stimulating you to thought and boring you because it does not stimulate. Thus it brings about in you a perfect state of poise most restful in itself and in a complete harmony with the midsummer season.

Yes, fishing is good, and hunting is good, and all the sports are good in their turn--even sitting in a rocking-chair on a boarding-house piazza has, perhaps, its charms and its benefits for some;--but when the sun is hot and the wind is cool, when the hay is in and the yellowing fields lie broad, when the woods have gathered their birds and their secrets to their very hearts, when the sky is deeply, warmly blue, and the clouds pile soft or float thin and light, then give me a pail and let me wander up, up, to the great open berry lots. I will let the sun shine on me and the wind blow me, and I will love the whole big world, and I will think not a single thought, and at sundown I will come home with a full pail and a contentedly empty mind.

XI

In the Rain

It was raining. It had begun to rain the afternoon before; it had rained all night, with the drizzling, sozzling kind of rain that indicated persistence. It had rained all the morning; it was obviously going to rain all day. The hollow beside the stone hitching-post, where the grocer's horse and the butcher's horse and the fishman's horse had stamped, all through the drought, was now a pool of brown water, with the raindrops making gooseflesh on it. There was another pond under the front gate, and another under the hammock; and the middle of the road, in the horse rut, was a narrow brown brook. The tiger lilies in the old stump were bending with their load of wetness, the phlox in the garden was weighed down till its white ma.s.ses nearly touched earth. Indoors, when the wind lulled and the rain fell straighter, we could hear the drops tick-tick-ticking on the bark of the birch logs in the fireplace.

This flue of the chimney is almost vertical, with a slant to the southward, and I have always liked the way it lets in samples of the weather--a patch of yellow sunshine on clear days, a blur of soft white light on gray ones, and on stormy ones flicks of rain to make the fire sputter, or, as on this particular day, to dampen our kindling if it has been laid ready to light.

The belated postman's buggy, with presumably a postman inside it somewhere behind the sheathing of black rubber, drove up, our mail-box grated open and shut, and the streaming horse sloshed on. Jonathan turned up his collar and dashed out to the box, and dashed in again, bringing with him a great gust of rainy sweetness and the smell of wet woolen.

"Jonathan," I said, "let's take a walk."

He was unfolding the damp newspaper carefully so as not to tear it.

"What's that? Walk?"

"That's what I said."