Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

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 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 exclusiveness and solitude. But exclusiveness and solitude 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 gasolene and dust that are also left by the vanishing 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 demeanor, 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 stewardship that give me joy. Its very processes are good. Delight in the earth is a primitive instinct. Digging is naturally pleasant, hoeing 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.

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 doesn’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 handling: 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 gathered up in one gentle, tactful pull; the tender shepherd’s purse coming easily on a straight twitch; the tough ragweed that yields to almost 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 work compared with the satisfaction of hauling 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 departure leaves a good bit of empty brown earth.

Surely, weeding is good fun. If faults could be yanked out of children in the same entertaining 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-neglected 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.

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 gardener, 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 Jonathan. 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 patiently, 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 lot from the dark storehouses of the underworld. 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 enthusiastic 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 couldn’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 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 investigated the depths of the bed to see what the little gnomes had prepared for me. Now I found out. The spading-fork gave a familiar dull clink as it struck rock. I felt about for the edge; it was a big one. I got the crowbar 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. Another rock, big too! I prodded all over the allotted space, and found six big fellows lurking 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 genius 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 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 pebble 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 unhurt, until at last, with a careful arrangement of stone fulcrums and a skillful twist of the bars, the great rock makes its last response 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 surveyed 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 “America” once given, with unconscious inspiration, by a little friend of ours:—

“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 stewardship 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, hollyhocks, 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 whiteness that grow more luxuriant every year. But I bought roots of salmon-pink and lavender, 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—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.

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 explaining 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, flowers—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 calendula ranges from a faded yellow, through 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 portières 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 withdrawals—upon a bed of mixed magentas, scarlets, rose-pinks, and yellow-pinks. I even look with pleasure. I begin to think there 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 mistress 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 children’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 obliterates them in a season’s growth, so that children 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 indeed!” 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 weakness, 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, legislatively, “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 symbols, and to the New Englander the symbol 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 reticence, 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 beyond—’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.

To many of us, city-bred, the tradition comes through inheritance. It means, perhaps, the shy, poetic side of our father’s boyhood, 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 chiefest 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 dustings 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 maple bushes and tangled vines alive to their tips and just bursting into leaf. And everywhere in the woods, on fence-lines and roadsides, 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 whiteness 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 expression. 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 expression. 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.

“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 doesn’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, preferably with pine in it, to give shade, but not too deep shade; a scrub undergrowth of laurel and huckleberry and bay; and always, somewhere 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 interests 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 isn’t any for two fields yet—might as well stick to the brook.”

“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—”

“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’ll 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 wouldn’t. Now, remember to sneak before you get to that rock. Drop in six feet above it and let the current do the 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 convinced that the human frame was not evolved with it in mind. But I resort to it in deference 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 was cheerfully 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 understanding. 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 overhanging 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 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 pillared aisles and pointed arches of interlocking and upspringing curves, their ceiling traceries of spraying tops against a far-away background 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.

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 appreciate without acquiring, or rather, appreciation 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 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 pagan 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 blossoms 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.

“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!”

“But the arbutus would wait.”

“But the trout would wait. They’re waiting 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 wouldn’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 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. Anything 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 knowledge.… 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, and soon I heard an exclamation, and saw him kneel. “Oh, come over!” he called; “you really ought to see this growing!”

“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—“Jonathan, 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 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, 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, fingers uniting in an interplay of efficiency exactly 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,” 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 perfectly 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 satisfied.

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!_” 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 respectable 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 arbutus-trouting is peculiarly satisfying. It meets every human need—the need of food and beauty, the need of feeling strong and skillful, 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,” remarked 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 didn’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 wouldn’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.”

“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 woods on the western bank had already turned the rocks in midstream 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 unload.

“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 watching. All right. It’s just seventeen and a half 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 joyous 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, looking 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.”

“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 hadn’t told you. By the way, do I wind my watch to-night or not?”

“Not.”

“Not it is, then. Sure you wouldn’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 something—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, grumbling voices as the stones go grinding and rolling 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 another, and another, “softly conferring together.” 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 prodigality of swift-changing beauty like ocean surf: a continuous and intricate interweaving of rhythms, pulses and ebbings of clear tone, beautiful phrases rising antiphonal, showerings 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 almost 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 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 Jonathan’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 didn’t let me wind it?”

“Not a bit. I was just curious to see when it stopped, that was all.”

“Well, now you know. Hereafter the official 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 admiration. “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 fishing?”

“Well—let’s fish!”

“One up stream and one down, or keep together?”

“Together,” I decided. “If we go two ways there’s no telling when I’ll 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 situation beyond calling distance, but so long as a bend in the river does not cut us off, we are “together,” and very companionable togetherness 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 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 Jonathan doesn’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 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 insignificance.

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 doesn’t? All right, go ahead!”