people--angular, petulant and capricious--was invested with a great
peace and restfulness for brain-weary folk. When the sun went down,
invalids, like children, went off to bed. There was nothing to do but to
sleep through the long cool nights. All the conventionalities of a more
artificial social life were reversed. The people who had fought Nature
and common sense for years, and had been worsted in the conflict, came
here to make their peace with her. They were up with the opening of the
day. They drank medicated waters heroically; dropped into hot baths with
a sensation akin to have fallen on the points of a million needles;
plunged into pools, or were immersed with the vapors collected in close
rooms. There were early breakfasts, when the boards were swept by
invalids with ravenous appetites; dinners at midday, attended by the
same hungry, silent, introspective people; supper, before sundown, when
the same famishing people were eating away for dear life. A four-horse
passenger wagon arrived just at nightfall, bringing the mail and an
occasional guest. There was a glance at the newspapers, now and then a
letter was read, and then night and a sweet stillness settled over this
mountain dell. Time was of little consequence; people searched an old
almanac for the day of the week or month; the sun rose above the crest
of one mountain and went down behind another; there were the morning and
evening shadows, the same flood of light in the valley at midday, the
monotonous drone of the little rivulet in the canyon, and at long
intervals the twitter of a solitary bird. Some sauntered along trails,
counting the steps with a sort of mental vacuity; others tilted their
chairs under porches, and slept with hats over their eyes. If a
bustling, loud-voiced guest arrived, in a day or two he fell into the
same peaceful and subdued ways. The repose of sky and mountain came
down gently upon him, and a dreamy indolence shortened his steps and
prolonged his afternoon naps.
There would have been an utter stagnation of life but for the advent of
one of those characters who had been everywhere, seen everybody, and had
become a sort of itinerating museum of odd conceits and grotesque
incidents. There were many invalids who had separated themselves from
business cares, only to brood over their infirmities. They wanted
nothing so much as, in some way, to be led apart from their own morbid
natures. The eccentric little man told his stories. They were not always
fresh, nor always extremely witty. But, as the assortment never ran out,
and the quality improved from day to day, the fact was alike creditable
to his inventive powers and his benevolence. At first, the worst
specimens of morbid anatomy listened from a distance, and muttered,
"Foolish;" "Don't believe a word of it." The next day they hitched their
chairs along a few feet nearer to this story-telling evangel. One could
occasionally see that a crisis was coming; either these people must
laugh, or be put on the list of hopeless incurables. Observing, on one
occasion, a man on crutches who, after listening for a time with
apparent contempt, suddenly withdrew and hobbled off around a turn of
the narrow road, I ventured to ask him if stories were disagreeable to
him.
"Oh, no, that is not it. You see I had not laughed in years. I was
determined that old Hooker should not make me laugh, if I did not choose
to. The fact is, I had either to holler or die. I wouldn't make a fool
of myself, and so I went around the bend in the road, and turned off
into the chaparral."
As this man dropped one crutch in a week from that time, and in ten days
thereafter was walking with a cane, I have never doubted that he
"hollered."
At nightfall generous wood fires glowed upon the hearth of the sitting
room, and there was a more hopeful light in many faces. People lingered
in the doorway, on the stairs, and leaned over the balustrade for one
more story from the genial and eccentric man. A ripple of
half-suppressed laughter went around the room, ran up the stair-way,
and ended in gentle gurgles in the rooms with open doors at the end of
the corridor. The man of anecdote and story had touched, with healing
influences, maladies which no medicated waters could reach. He exorcised
the demons so gently, that these brooding invalids hardly knew how they
were rescued. New and marvelous virtues were thereafter found in the
spring water; there was a softer sunlight in the dell; the man with the
liver complaint became less sallow, and no longer talked spitefully
about "Old Hooker"; and the woman who did not expect to live a week, no
longer sent down petulant requests that the house might be still, but
only wanted that last story repeated to her "just as he told it."
Once, as the twilight drew on, the face of Hooker seemed to glow with
unwonted radiance, as he unfolded his plans for a sanitary retreat. His
theory was, that civilization had culminated in mental disorders, and
the world was running mad with excitements, which half-demented people
were busy in fomenting. Of the sixty guests at the Springs, he estimated
that, at one time, not more than seven per cent. were free from some
sort of a delusion--the evidence of lunacy in its milder forms. If put
into strait-jackets, or shut up in the wards of an hospital, or treated
otherwise as if insane, they would become as mad as Bedlam. One delusion
must be matched against another. Every man and woman must be treated as
sane, and all that they did, or thought, or said, as the perfection of
reason. The nonsense of clowns had cured more people than the wisdom of
philosophers. The chemistry of Nature, the sunshine, the pure mountain
air, and all the subtle combinations of thaumaturgic springs must be
supplemented by every art which could beguile and lead people away from
a miserable self-consciousness. A half-hour of sound sleep is sometimes
the bridge over the gulf from death to life. He would not only make
people sleep, but even laugh in their sleep. He would practice the
highest arts of a sanitary magician. His patients should laugh by night
and by day. They should forget themselves. The time would come when the
best story-teller would be accounted the best physician.
On the evening before leaving the Springs, two hunters, in clay-colored
clothes, deposited upon the porch each a deer and a string of mountain
trout. Hooker, of blessed memory, after whispering confidentially the
bill of fare for an early breakfast, went aside and talked in an
undertone with the hunters, who soon afterward disappeared in the
direction of the canyon we had crossed a few evenings before. The moon
being nearly at full, there would be a good prospect for deer during the
latter part of the night; but there was a possible hint of larger game,
in the chuckling undertone of one of the hunters as he shouldered his
rifle: "Fellers as wear them kind o' clothes don't know a bar when they
see him."
In the early morning, the same hunters were warming their fingers by the
wood fire in the sitting-room. Hooker was already up, and flitted
about--now conferring with the hunters, and then with the steward. A
game breakfast was already assured. Hooker whispered that the hunters
had found the bear which sent the ponies flying out of the canyon. He
had been taken alive, and we should have a parting look at him in
advance of the other guests as we drove down the road. A Pike, astride
of the corral fence, saluted Hooker as we were climbing to the top rail:
"Glad you 'uns found old corn-cracker up the gulch. He was powerful weak
when I turned him out. He's a good 'un."
One glance at his long, yellow tusks and bristling back was enough.
There was a sudden snap of the whip, and the dust spun from the wheels
as two horses shot down the road on a bright October morning. The little
dell, with its thermal springs, its colony of invalids, Hooker, the
incorrigible, and the "bear" in the corral, disappeared with a gentle
benediction.
One may traverse a thousand miles of the Coast Range, and not find
another mountain road which reveals, at every turn, so many striking
views as the one of twenty miles from Harbin's to Calistoga. The road,
for a considerable distance, follows the windings of a noisy and riotous
little rivulet, which, heading on the easterly side of St. Helena, runs
obstinately due north for several miles. The fringe of oaks and madronos
were wonderfully fresh, as they stood half in sunlight and half in
shadow, still dripping, here and there, with the moisture which had been
condensed during the night. A delegation of robins had come down from
higher latitudes, and were taking an early and cheery breakfast from the
scarlet berries of the madrono. It needed but the flaming maple and
falling chestnuts, with some prospect of "shell-barks," to round into
perfect fullness these autumnal glories. But no one living east of the
Hudson could raise such a wild and unearthly yell as broke from the
Judge every time a cotton-tail rabbit darted across the road. The
obstreperous woodpecker was awed into silence, and the more industrious
ones dropped in amazement the acorns which they were tapping into the
trunks of the trees, and flitted silently away.
"That," said the Judge, "is not half as loud as I heard Hooker yell six
months ago."
"Then he was demented?"
"Yes; he was as mad as a March hare, and in a strait-jacket at that."
"That clears up one or two mysteries. But you might have made the
revelation before."
"When are you going to start that hilarious institution which you and
Hooker called a sanitarium?"
Just then, the summit of the mountain road had been gained, and the long
perspective of the Napa Valley opened at the base of St. Helena, and
melted away toward the south into the soft, dreamy atmosphere of an
autumnal noonday.
THE HOUSE ON THE HILL.
THE HOUSE ON THE HILL.
A country without grandmothers and old houses needs a great many
balancing compensations. Everywhere one is confronted with staring new
houses, which require an external ripening in the wind and sun for half
a century. If the motherly wisdom of seventy-five years is lodged
therein, it is something of recent importation. I have walked two miles
to see an old lady, who not only bears this transplanting well, but is
as fresh and winsome in thought as a girl of sixteen. If only there had
been an old house, a stone fire-place--wide at the jambs--and a low,
receding roof in the rear, with a bulging second story and oaken beams,
nothing more would have been wanting.
When, therefore, it was whispered, one day, that there was an old house
in the middle of a large lot on a hill, overlooking the Golden Gate,
there was a strong and unaccountable desire to take possession of it
immediately. But when the fact was stated that the house was ten years
old, that there was moss upon the shingles, low ceilings within, and a
low roof without, the destiny of that house was well nigh settled. The
owner wanted money much more than old houses. In fact, a Californian who
refuses to sell anything, except his wife, is only found after long
intervals. The transfer of ownership was natural enough. It followed
that one evening there was a dreamy consciousness that we were the owner
of a small, rusty-looking cottage, set down in the middle of an acre
lot, defined by dilapidated fences, and further ornamented by such
stumps of trees as had been left after all the stray cattle of the
neighborhood had browsed them at will. As incidents of the transfer,
there was the Golden Gate, with the sun dropping into the ocean beyond;
the purple hills; the sweep of the bay for fifteen miles, on which a
white sail could be seen, here and there; and, later, the long rows of
flickering street lamps, revealing the cleft avenues of the great city
dipping toward the water on the opposite side of the bay.
Consider what an investment accompanies these muniments of title. It is
not an acre lot and an old house merely, with several last year's birds'
nests and a vagrant cat, but the ownership extends ninety-five millions
of miles toward the zenith, and indefinitely toward the nadir. No one
can, in miners' parlance, get an extension above or below. It is a
square acre, bounded by heaven and hades.
If my neighbor builds an ugly house, why should I find fault with it,
since it is the expression of his wants, and not of mine. If these are
honestly expressed, he has compassed the main end of house-building. He
may have produced something that nobody in the wide world will be suited
with, or will ever want but himself. But if it is adapted to _his_
wants, it is only in some remote and aesthetic way that his neighbors
have anything to do with the matter. They may wish that he had not made
it externally as ugly as original sin; that he had laid a heavy hand on
the antics of architect and carpenter; that lightning would some day
strike the "pilot-house," or some other excrescence which has been glued
on to the top; and that a certain smart obtrusiveness were toned down a
little to harmonize with a more correct taste. But one could not
formulate these defects and send them to his neighbor without running a
risk quite unwarranted by any good that might be effected.
Taking possession of an old house, its ugliness is to be redeemed, not
rashly, but considerately, and in the spirit of gentleness. Its
homeliness has been consecrated; its doors may have been the portals
both of life and death. Possibly, some one has gone out whose memory of
it in the ends of the earth will transform it into something of
comeliness and beauty.
Investing an old house, the first process is to become thoroughly
acquainted with it, and then, if it is to be enlarged, push it out from
the center with such angles as will catch the sun, and will bring the
best view within range from the windows. It will grow by expansions and
accretions. You want a bed-room on the eastern side, because of the
morning sun. By all means, put it there. The morning benediction which
comes in at the window may temper one to better ways all the day.
No man will build a house to suit his inmost necessities, unless he
proceeds independently of all modern rules of construction. Some of
these are good enough, but they nearly all culminate in an ambitious
externalism. The better class of dwellings erected seventy-five years
ago contained broad staircases, spacious sleeping-rooms, and a
living-room, where the whole family and the guests, withal, might gather
at the fire-side. The house was an expression of hospitality. The host
had room for friendships in his heart, and room at his hearthstone. The
modern house, with its stiff angularities, narrow halls, and smart
reception-rooms, expresses no idea of hospitality. It warns the stranger
to deliver his message quickly, and be off. It is well adapted to small
conventional hypocrisies, but you will never count the stars there by
looking up the chimney.
One may search long to find the man who has not missed his aim in the
matter of house-building. It is generally needful that two houses should
be built as a sacrifice to sentiment, and then the third experiment may
be reasonably successful. The owner will probably wander through the
first two, seeking rest and finding none. His ideal dwelling is more
remote than ever. There may be a wealth of gilt and stucco, and an
excess of marble, which ought to be piled up in the cemetery for future
use. But the house which receives one as into the very heaven--which is,
from the beginning, invested with the ministries of rest, of
hospitality, of peace, of that indefinable comfort which seems to
converge all the goodness of the life that now is with the converging
sunbeams--such a dwelling does not grow out of the first crude
experiment. It will never be secured until one knows better what he
really wants than an architect or carpenter can tell him.
"Did you bring the old house up to this ideal standard?" Just about as
near as that pear tree, at the lower end of the garden, has been brought
up to a perfect standard of fruiting. You perceive that where half of
the top was cut away, and new scions inserted, the pears hung in groups
and blushed in the autumnal sun. As you let one of them melt on your
palate, turn to the other side of the tree, and note that, if ever a
premium were offered for puckering, acrid fruit, these pears from the
original stock ought to take it.
Now, if you graft your ideas on to another's, premising that his views
were crude and primitive, the result will be somewhat mixed. We should
say that the grafts put into that old house were tolerably satisfactory.
But we counsel no friend to build over an old house, unless he owns a
productive gold mine, and the bill of particulars at the end of his
exploit is more interesting and gratifying to him than any modern novel.
There was, however, a shade of regret when it was announced that nothing
more remained to be done. For three months there had been a series of
gentle transitions, and an undercurrent of pleasurable excitement as a
door appeared in a new place, a window opened here and there, stairways
were cut, and old pieces pushed off and new took their places. It seemed
as if these transitions ought to be always going on, and therefore the
most natural thing in the world that the carpenters should always be
cutting or hammering that house. They might grow old and another set
take their places, but there would always be some room to enlarge, or
some want growing out of the exigencies of a new day. Moreover, the
first part taken in hand would in time decay or become antiquated, and
why not associate builders and house together, since all the jars,
wrenching of timbers, sawing and hammering had become musical, and
seemed to be incorporated as the law of the house? Nothing but financial
considerations prevented a contract for life with the builders, and the
life-long luxury of changing an old house into a new one. There came a
day at last of oppressive silence. Painters came down from their
ladders; the carpenters packed up their tools and walked thoughtfully
around, taking an honest view on all sides of a structure which had
grown under their hands until, outwardly, there was not the slightest
semblance of the old house which they took in hand some months before.
There was a shade akin to sadness on the face of the master workman.
Evidently the idea of ever leaving that house had overtaken him for the
first time that day. He had grown with the house; or, at any rate, his
children had been growing. Why should he not come back on the morrow,
and plumb, hammer and saw; creeping up the ladder with every new day,
and sliding down with every descending sun?
The loftiest house, and the most perfect, in the matter of architecture,
I have ever seen, was that which a wood-chopper occupied with his family
one winter in the forests of Santa Cruz County. It was the cavity of a
redwood tree two hundred and forty feet in height. Fire had eaten away
the trunk at the base, until a circular room had been formed, sixteen
feet in diameter. At twenty feet or more from the ground was a
knot-hole, which afforded egress for the smoke. With hammocks hung from
pegs, and a few cooking utensils hung upon other pegs, that house lacked
no essential thing. This woodman was in possession of a house which had
been a thousand years in process of building. Perhaps on the very day it
was finished he came along and entered it. How did all jack-knife and
hand-saw architecture sink into insignificance in contrast with this
house in the solitudes of the great forest! Moreover, the tenant fared
like a prince; within thirty yards of his coniferous house a mountain
stream went rushing past to the sea. In the swirls and eddies under the
shelving rocks, if one could not land half a dozen trout within an hour,
he deserved to go hungry as a penalty for his awkwardness. Now and then
a deer came out into the openings, and, at no great distance, quail,
rabbits and pigeons could be found. What did this man want more than
Nature furnished him? He had a house with a "cupola" two hundred and
forty feet high, and game at the cost of taking it.
It was a good omen, that the chimneys of the house on the hill had not
been topped out more than a week, before two white doves alighted on
them, glancing curiously down into the flues, and then toward the
heavens. Nothing but the peace which they brought could have insured the
serenity of that house against an untoward event which occurred a week
afterward. Late one evening the expressman delivered a sack at the rear
door, with a note from a friend in the city, stating that the writer,
well knowing our liking for thoroughbred stock, had sent over one of the
choicest game-chickens in San Francisco. The qualities of that bird were
not overstated. Such a clean and delicately-shaped head! The long
feathers on his neck shaded from black to green and gold. His spurs were
as slender and sharp as lances; and his carriage was that of a prince,
treading daintily the earth, as if it were not quite good enough for
him. There was a world of poetry about that chicken, and he could also
be made to serve some important uses. It is essential that every one
dwelling on a hill, in the suburbs, should be notified of the dawn of a
new day. Three Government fortifications in the bay let off as many
heavy guns at daybreak; and, as the sound comes rolling in from seaward,
the window casements rattle responsively. But these guns do not explode
concurrently; frequently more than ten minutes intervene from the first
report to the last one. There is ever a lingering uncertainty as to
which is making a truthful report, or whether they are not all shooting
wide of the mark. Then, there is a military school close by, which stirs
up the youngsters with a reveille, a gong and a bell, at short
intervals. With so many announcements, and none of them concurrent,
there would still remain a painful uncertainty as to whether the day had
dawned; but when that game bird lifted up his voice, and sounded his
clarion notes high over the hill, the guns of Alcatraz and the roll of
the drums over the way, there could be no doubt that the day was at the
dawn.
For a week did this mettlesome bird lift up his voice above all the
meaner roosters on the hill; but one morning there was an ominous
silence about the precincts where he was quartered. The Alcatraz gun had
been let off; but the more certain assurance of the new day had failed.
Something had surely happened, for a neighbor was seen hurrying up the
walk in the gray of the morning, red, puffy, and short of wind, at that
unseasonable hour.
"Come with me, and take a look in my yard.... There, is that your
blasted game chicken?"
"Why, yes--no--he was sent over as a present from a friend."
Just then the whole mischief was apparent; a great Cochin rooster was
sneaking off toward the hedge, bloody and blind; two Houdans lay on
their backs, jerking their feet convulsively--in short, that hen-yard
had been swept as with the besom of destruction.
"Do you call that a poetical or sentimental bird, such as a Christian
man ought to worship?"
"No, not exactly."
Just then that game chicken arched his beautiful neck and sent his clear
notes high over the hill and into the very heavens. We hinted, in a
mollifying way, that he had escaped over a fence ten feet high, but that
blood would tell.
"Yes, I think it has told this morning. Never mind the damages; but I
think you had better cut his wings," said our neighbor, already
placated.
That bird was given away before the next sunset. But O! friend; by the
guns of Alcatraz, and the white doves that alighted on the
chimney-tops, emblems of war and peace, send us no more game chickens,
to disturb the peace of the hill, or to finish the work of destruction
begun on that unlucky morning.
From the hill one may look out of the Golden Gate, as through the tube
of a telescope, and see all the watery waste and eternal scene-shifting
beyond. When the dull, undulating hummocks look like a drove of camels
in the desert, you may be sure that the newly-married couple just
embarking on the outward-bound steamer, on a bridal tour to Los Angeles
or the Hawaiian Islands, will cease their caroling and chirping within
an hour. Half an hour after sunset, if the atmosphere is clear, one may
see the wide-off light of the Farallones; the nearer lights of Point
Bonita and Alcatraz, almost in line, dwarfed to mere fire-flies now; but
when the Gate has lost the glow of its burnished gold, these great
sea-lamps, hung over this royal avenue, tell an honest home story for
the battered ships low down on the horizon.