Elisabeth Woodbridge Morris

“ 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. ”

“ 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 wonderful 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-September—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. ”

“ The joy of pilgrimage—of going, not there and back, but on, and on, and yet on—is a joy by itself. 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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 recklessly. 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ For a keel demands a special landing-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 [pg 205] anywhere is good. Even an errand across the pond and back may be a joy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 portià ̈res 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. ”

“ 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 [pg 119] maple bushes and tangled vines alive to their tips and just bursting into leaf. ”

“ Evidently sewing was better than the last number of anything. I settled myself under a lamp, while Jonathan, in the twilight beneath the sink, continued his mystic rites, with an accompaniment of mildly vituperative or persuasive language, addressed sometimes 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 phœnix did indeed rise, the pump was again a pump,—at least it looked like one. ”

“ 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 cottages, we often made a straight course from headland to headland, keeping well out, often a mile or two, to avoid tide eddies. ”

“ 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, curiously enough, the worst is over. Since it has come, let it come! ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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 background of dancing waves.
[pg 188] “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. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ We’re like the princess with seventeen 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 mattresses hadn’t been there.”
“True,” said Jonathan.
“Farm life is the pea without the mattresses—” I went on.
“Sounds a little cheerless,” said Jonathan.
“Well—of course, it isn’t really cheerless at all. But neither is it easy. It’s full of remorseless demands for immediate adjustment.” ”

“ 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, [pg 101] 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? ”

“ 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 multitudinous [pg 151] assaults of the fierce rain-drops. The sky was mottled lead-color, the wind blew less strongly, but cold—cold. ”

“ I feel the boat, I feel the oars, I am aware of the damp, pure night air, and the sounds of the waves ceaselessly 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 experience. It is a poet, and life is its raw [pg 216] material. ”