Why people born and bred for city life _will_ take to the woods; why
people shapen, as it were, for the plow will fly to town, and men
built for a naval gait will attempt to sit in high places on shore, is
one of those elusive problems that are forever defying solution. We
only know that such things exist, and a few of us come up and have a
crack at them, as it were, and fail to make the slightest impression
on their thick skulls. And still the wonder grows. Now it is a naval
hero come ashore from seas where he was master of the situation, laden
with honors and refulgent with glory sufficient for the lifetime of
ten reasonable men, who straightway begins to covet a chair of whose
very shape and proportions he is ignorant, and in which he can only be
conspicuous as a melancholy misfit. O Heroism! why failest them to
reach the judgment? O Glory! why canst thou not touch up the common
sense? Anon we have a yeoman who has struck oil and has been thrown up
on high by its monetary power, forsaking the obscure nook for which
nature shaped him and attempting to sit in our drawing-room, eat at
our dinner-table, and obtrude his rich vulgarity upon gentler guests.
It was in accordance with this lamentable fashion of undertaking that
for which they have no gift; this rushing in of certain folk where
angels fear to tread, that Steve turned farmer. Not that he gave up
his situation on the paper. Ah, no! He tried to be that which no man
could be successfully without supernatural aid--journalist and farmer
both. His work in the city had for some time been such that he could
do much of it in his room if he chose; indeed, there were times--a
day, occasionally--when it was not necessary to go near the office.
Consequently when he repaired to the country with his unique wife, he
thought his affairs were admirably adapted to a dual existence.
It was in the merry month of April when they landed. I use the latter
term advisedly, for they were indeed upon a foreign shore. All about
them Nature was giving evidence of a present awakening from her long
nap. With her quickening circulation there was increased warmth, and
in this the snow speedily slipped away. A chorus of songsters came out
to greet the newly wedded pair, and sang so sweetly of love that
Steve's delicate, sensitive nature thrilled in response. Nannie
listened and looked at them askance, but to her they spoke, like our
opera singers, in a foreign tongue.
Now, this breaking Steve from off his natural tree and grafting him
upon an alien bough occasioned some changes. From being cheerful,
slow, and gentle he suddenly became anxious, hasty, and at times
dictatorial.
"You must have a garden," one of his neighbors said.
Steve went to work like a galley slave upon his spare days, and dug,
and raked, and planted.
"You must keep bees," said another of the neighbors.
Steve bought two hives at once.
"You must keep chickens," said another neighbor, a sort of two-edged
woman, who dwelt over across the swamp and whose scolding voice could
be heard for miles.
So Steve bought thirteen hens and a rooster.
"You must have a cow," said a fourth neighbor, and he promptly sold
Steve a cantankerous beast that wanted to rival him in authority, and
indeed for a time ran the place.
"You must have a cat," said an old woman who wanted to get rid of an
unamiable Thomas, and Steve brought him home in a sack caterwauling
all the way.
"You must get a dog," said a man who had a bull terrier for sale.
"I've got one!" bawled Steve--the man was deaf.
"Bull terrier?"
"No, Scotch! and he's all I want!" and Steve closed the front door
with needless vigor.
"What did you buy those nasty hens for?" asked Nannie, who did not
like chickens.
"Oh, they'll give us something good to eat. It will be so nice to go
out every morning and bring in some new-laid eggs for breakfast.
You'll like to do that, Nannie."
"I guess you'd better," she said with a peculiar look.
So the next morning Steve tiptoed out, through the wet grass, to the
hen-house, in his dressing-gown and slippers, he was so eager to pluck
this new fruit.
He came in empty-handed, but cheerful.
"We could hardly expect them to lay the first day; they have got to
get their bearings."
Every morning before breakfast Steve took this little walk. There was
soon a well-beaten track between the back door and the hen-house. He
always returned empty-handed, and Nannie watched with an impish smile
from an upper window.
One morning she came upon him in the act of taking off a white
door-knob.
"What _are_ you doing?" she demanded.
He looked guilty, but answered with a fair show of spirit:
"I'm going to put this in one of the nests. You see, they must think a
hen has been there and laid it."
Nannie burst into a laugh.
"Well, I wouldn't waste time eating the eggs of hens that would be
such fools as to think any poor old chicken had laid that door-knob!"
But Steve put it in, nevertheless.
And still morning after morning, with lowered head and dragging
footstep, he returned to the house alone--still alone; not so much as
a single egg as companion.
Then it was that a pair of imp-like, black eyes danced 'neath the
careless ringlets above them.
"How would you like your door-knob this morning--hard or soft?"
This raillery went on day after day until even Steve--gentle, patient
Steve had enough.
He looked up at the window and said quietly, but firmly:
"There, Nannie, drop it, if you please."
"On toast?" she screamed, and Steve went into the house.
But his triumph was near at hand, for one morning, about four weeks
after he had bought the chickens, he discovered something besides the
door-knob in one of the nests, and forthwith came strutting toward the
house, holding the egg on high that Nannie might see it from the
window of her room.
Hearing no noise he looked up. Was she dead? Ah, no! There she sat,
straining her eyes through a field-glass to see the yield of his first
month.
"Mix well," she called to him, "thirteen hens, one rooster, one
door-knob, and one month, and you'll have a delicious egg."
And again Steve got into the house.
He was obliged to come out again later on, for there were many things
upon this miniature plantation which were clamoring for attention.
Indeed, Steve was slowly coming to believe in communities, such
associations meaning in his mind a body of men banded together to run
a small acre of ground; one man attending to the chickens, one to the
fruit trees, one to the vegetable garden, one to the horse, several to
the cow, and so on. It will be seen later on why, in this distribution
of labor, Steve always assigned several men--able-bodied at that--to
the cow. It has already been mentioned that he was persuaded early in
his matrimonial career to buy a beast of this variety. This beautiful
animal (for she was handsome, unless she be judged by the homely rule
that regulates beauty by conduct) he immediately presented to Nannie.
Whether she was originally vicious (and this her former owner
vehemently denied) or was affected by the nature of her mistress, no
one knows. Suffice it to say that upon Nannie's flying out of the
house to gaze upon her new possession, the latter lowered her head,
raised her tail like a flagstaff, and galloped to meet her, and it was
only by the execution of a sort of double-barreled backward somersault
that Nannie saved her life.
"Most extraordinary conduct," said Steve. "Threatening from both
ends."
Nannie was in no wise dismayed, and either by reason of her
fearlessness or because of a secret bond between their natures, she
and Sarah Maria--for so she named her after a troublesome
neighbor--became comrades after a fashion. Between Sarah Maria and
Brownie, however, there was always war from horn to heel, and nothing
could effect a reconciliation. The danger of this enmity was clearly
demonstrated on a Sabbath morning, otherwise peaceful, when Nannie
started out with Brownie (the former carrying a milk pail, for some
reason best known to herself, since she knew nothing of milking) and
went down to the pasture for Sarah Maria. The latter was awaiting them
at the bars, and, as it appeared, was ready for the business of the
day. No sooner was she liberated from the bondage of the pasture than
she made a bold charge upon Brownie, who promptly took to cover behind
his mistress, barking the while in a manner both rasping and
aggravating to one of Sarah Maria's irritable nervous system. The
bovine's attention being now drawn to Nannie, it behooved the latter
to clear the path, and in short order, and Steve, who came running to
the scene, attracted by the din of battle, beheld with horror-stricken
sight a confused medley consisting of wife, dog, Sarah Maria, milk
pail--all going head over heels into the nearest ditch.
By some miracle no one was hurt, and an energetic use of the milk
pail--a use unforeseen by the manufacturers--restored quiet to the
agitated district.
It was soon after this escapade that Jacob, the man about the place
thought himself called to some other profession than farming, and
accordingly left. As Sarah Maria remained, it was necessary to secure
a milker. This difficulty was happily surmounted about eleven o'clock
the first morning, when a man selling rustic chairs appeared upon the
scene and good-naturedly consented for the time to step within the
breach made by Jacob's disappearance.
Later on it was borne in on Steve's consciousness that he was the man
to whom Sarah Maria must look for relief. The situation was a
critical one, but Steve's was not a nature to shirk responsibilities
or shun sacrifices. Accordingly, arming himself with a hatchet and a
club, on the end of which latter instrument he suspended the milk
pail, he set out, and in this new business worked with such gentle
deliberation that at the end of an hour he could have shown a quart of
milk for his pains had not Sarah Maria testified to her respect for
the day of small things by lifting the aforementioned pail on high.
By the end of a week, however, Steve succeeded in bringing his milking
lessons to a favorable conclusion, and was ready to take his place not
among the best, it is true, but still among the milkers of the world.
He must have prosecuted his education with remarkable ardor, for his
overalls had given out in spots, and one industrious day Nannie took
it into her head to patch them. Having no suitable material at
hand--such is the misfortune of the newly wedded, with everything
whole about them--she utilized some Scotch plaid pieces left over
from a tea gown. But hardly was the patch well set than she began to
reflect that its rather conspicuous beauty would no doubt catch the
eye of Sarah Maria, and might occasion nothing less than Steve's death
if he were taken unawares when his back was turned. To extract the
patch was not to be thought of for a moment, since it was a wonderful
triumph of art for Nannie, nor could she consent, wicked though she
was, to let Steve walk forth arrayed in all its glory. A bottle of
shoe polish solved the problem and made a somewhat stiff but subdued
foundation, upon which Steve rested with more or less insecurity.