As I have said, when I came here I came as a renter, working all of the
first summer without that "open vision" of which the prophet Samuel
speaks. I had no memory of the past and no hope of the future. I fed
upon the moment. My sister Harriet kept the house and I looked after the
farm and the fields. In all those months I hardly knew that I had
neighbours, although Horace, from whom I rented my place, was not
infrequently a visitor. He has since said that I looked at him as though
he were a "statute." I was "citified," Horace said; and "citified" with
us here in the country is nearly the limit of invective, though not
violent enough to discourage such a gift of sociability as his. The
Scotch Preacher, the rarest, kindest man I know, called once or twice,
wearing the air of formality which so ill becomes him. I saw nothing in
him: it was my fault, not his, that I missed so many weeks of his
friendship. Once in that time the Professor crossed my fields with his
tin box slung from his shoulder; and the only feeling I had, born of
crowded cities, was that this was an intrusion upon my property.
Intrusion: and the Professor! It is now unthinkable. I often passed the
Carpentry Shop on my way to town. I saw Baxter many times at his bench.
Even then Baxter's eyes attracted me: he always glanced up at me as I
passed, and his look had in it something of a caress. So the home of
Starkweather, standing aloof among its broad lawns and tall trees,
carried no meaning for me.
Of all my neighbours, Horace is the nearest. From the back door of my
house, looking over the hill, I can see the two red chimneys of his
home, and the top of the windmill. Horace's barn and corn silo are more
pretentious by far than his house, but fortunately they stand on lower
ground, where they are not visible from my side of the hill. Five
minutes' walk in a straight line across the fields brings me to Horace's
door; by the road it takes at least ten minutes.
In the fall after my arrival I had come to love the farm and its
surroundings so much that I decided to have it for my own. I did not
look ahead to being a farmer. I did not ask Harriet's advice. I found
myself sitting one day in the justice's office. The justice was bald and
as dry as corn fodder in March. He sat with spectacled impressiveness
behind his ink-stained table. Horace hitched his heel on the round of
his chair and put his hat on his knee. He wore his best coat and his
hair was brushed in deference to the occasion. He looked uncomfortable,
but important. I sat opposite him, somewhat overwhelmed by the business
in hand. I felt like an inadequate boy measured against solemnities too
large for him. The processes seemed curiously unconvincing, like a game
in which the important part is to keep from laughing; and yet when I
thought of laughing I felt cold chills of horror. If I had laughed at
that moment I cannot think what that justice would have said! But it was
a pleasure to have the old man read the deed, looking at me over his
spectacles from time to time to make sure I was not playing truant.
There are good and great words in a deed. One of them I brought away
with me from the conference, a very fine, big one, which I love to have
out now and again to remind me of the really serious things of life. It
gives me a peculiar dry, legal feeling. If I am about to enter upon a
serious bargain, like the sale of a cow, I am more avaricious if I work
with it under my tongue.
Hereditaments! Hereditaments!
Some words need to be fenced in, pig-tight, so that they cannot escape
us; others we prefer to have running at large, indefinite but inclusive.
I would not look up that word for anything: I might find it fenced in so
that it could not mean to me all that it does now.
Hereditaments! May there be many of them--or it!
Is it not a fine Providence that gives us different things to love? In
the purchase of my farm both Horace and I got the better of the
bargain--and yet neither was cheated. In reality a fairly strong lantern
light will shine through Horace, and I could see that he was hugging
himself with the joy of his bargain; but I was content. I had some money
left--what more does anyone want after a bargain?--and I had come into
possession of the thing I desired most of all. Looking at bargains from
a purely commercial point of view, someone is always cheated, but looked
at with the simple eye both seller and buyer always win.
We came away from the gravity of that bargaining in Horace's wagon. On
our way home Horace gave me fatherly advice about using my farm. He
spoke from the height of his knowledge to me, a humble beginner. The
conversation ran something like this:
HORACE: Thar's a clump of plum trees along the lower pasture fence.
Perhaps you saw 'm----
MYSELF: I saw them: that is one reason I bought the back pasture. In May
they will be full of blossoms.
HORACE: They're _wild_ plums: they ain't good for nothing.
MYSELF: But think how fine they will be all the year round.
HORACE: Fine! They take up a quarter-acre of good land. I've been going
to cut 'em myself this ten years.
MYSELF: I don't think I shall want them cut out.
HORACE: Humph.
After a pause:
HORACE: There's a lot of good body cord-wood in that oak on the knoll.
MYSELF: Cord-wood! Why, that oak is the treasure of the whole farm, I
have never seen a finer one. I could not think of cutting it.
HORACE: It will bring you fifteen or twenty dollars cash in hand.
MYSELF: But I rather have the oak.
HORACE: Humph.
So our conversation continued for some time. I let Horace know that I
preferred rail fences, even old ones, to a wire fence, and that I
thought a farm should not be too large, else it might keep one away from
his friends. And what, I asked, is corn compared with a friend? Oh, I
grew really oratorical! I gave it as my opinion that there should be
vines around the house (Waste of time, said Horace), and that no farmer
should permit anyone to paint medicine advertisements on his barn
(Brings you ten dollars a year, said Horace), and that I proposed to fix
the bridge on the lower road (What's a path-master for? asked Horace). I
said that a town was a useful adjunct for a farm; but I laid it down as
a principle that no town should be too near a farm. I finally became so
enthusiastic in setting forth my conceptions of a true farm that I
reduced Horace to a series of humphs. The early humphs were incredulous,
but as I proceeded, with some joy, they became humorously contemptuous,
and finally began to voice a large, comfortable, condescending
tolerance. I could fairly feel Horace growing superior as he sat there
beside me. Oh, he had everything in his favour. He could prove what he
said: One tree + one thicket = twenty dollars. One landscape = ten cords
of wood = a quarter-acre of corn = twenty dollars. These equations prove
themselves. Moreover, was not Horace the "best off" of any farmer in the
country? Did he not have the largest barn and the best corn silo? And
are there better arguments?
Have you ever had anyone give you up as hopeless? And is it not a
pleasure? It is only after people resign you to your fate that you
really make friends of them. For how can you win the friendship of one
who is trying to convert you to his superior beliefs?
As we talked, then, Horace and I, I began to have hopes of him. There is
no joy comparable to the making of a friend, and the more resistant the
material the greater the triumph. Baxter, the carpenter, says that when
he works for enjoyment he chooses curly maple.
When Horace set me down at my gate that afternoon he gave me his hand
and told me that he would look in on me occasionally, and that if I had
any trouble to let him know.
A few days later I heard by the roundabout telegraph common in country
neighbourhoods that Horace had found a good deal of fun in reporting
what I said about farming and that he had called me by a highly humorous
but disparaging name. Horace has a vein of humour all his own. I have
caught him alone in his fields chuckling to himself, and even breaking
out in a loud laugh at the memory of some amusing incident that
happened ten years ago. One day, a month or more after our bargain,
Horace came down across his field and hitched his jean-clad leg over my
fence, with the intent, I am sure, of delving a little more in the same
rich mine of humour.
"Horace," I said, looking him straight in the eye, "did you call me
an--Agriculturist!"
I have rarely seen a man so pitifully confused as Horace was at that
moment. He flushed, he stammered, he coughed, the perspiration broke out
on his forehead. He tried to speak and could not. I was sorry for him.
"Horace," I said, "you're a Farmer."
We looked at each other a moment with dreadful seriousness, and then
both of us laughed to the point of holding our sides. We slapped our
knees, we shouted, we wriggled, we almost rolled with merriment. Horace
put out his hand and we shook heartily. In five minutes I had the whole
story of his humorous reports out of him.
No real friendship is ever made without an initial clashing which
discloses the metal of each to each. Since that day Horace's jean-clad
leg has rested many a time on my fence and we have talked crops and
calves. We have been the best of friends in the way of whiffle-trees,
butter tubs and pig killings--but never once looked up together at the
sky.
The chief objection to a joke in the country is that it is so
imperishable. There is so much room for jokes and so few jokes to fill
it. When I see Horace approaching with a peculiar, friendly, reminiscent
smile on his face I hasten with all ardour to anticipate him:
"Horace," I exclaim, "you're a Farmer."
[Illustration: "The heat and sweat of the hay fields"]