might be oppressive. But every change of the wind, and every drifting
cloud across the sky, gives a new blending of color and tone. If
to-morrow the south wind shall blow, or a gale come piping down from the
north, the face of the deep will have been created anew, as much so, in
an aesthetic view, as if it had been poured out for the first time on the
surface of the globe. Is there not a perpetual series of creations on
both sea and land? The waters are taken up in the clouds, and poured out
again. Mountains are disintegrated, and go down to the valleys, but
other mountains are lifted up out of the sea and out of the arid plains.
Climbing a hill, more than four hundred feet above the surface of the
water, and five miles inland from the present shore line, one may find
thousands of marine shells, many of mollusks not yet extinct as species,
and read on the face of this conglomerate, as in open volume, the record
of a physical creation, whether by the subsidence of the sea or the
elevation of the land, as fresh, geologically, as if all this had
occurred but a century ago. This world of waters creates no sense of
isolation. Observe, too, that whoever has been born and bred by the
shore will evermore look out on the sea and be glad. A sail is better
than a horse, and the breaking of the waves hath more majesty and a
diviner music than any organ touched by human hands. _Mem._: the man who
has gone over the rocks, and is filling his pockets with mussels in a
furtive sort of a way, is from the interior. He wants salting. He is
looking out drift wood, and will strike a match presently. Let him
fancy, if he will, that his feast is fit for the gods. To-night he will
probably dream that one of these wrecks, covered with barnacles and
sea-weed, has rolled over, and is lying athwart his capacious
diaphragm.
The Patriarch went out into the fields at eventide. Was it any the worse
for him that his meditations were gilded with a touch of romance? What
if he thought less of the lilies of the field, and more of the veiled
lily from Nahor? Was not that human? So we go down to the seashore as
the soft twilight comes on apace, and think it no worse that the voices
of lovers blend with the cadence of waters. If there is no higher
inspiration for them, let Isaac speak to Rebecca. It is little to them
that there is a blush in the horizon, and that a moment ago the sea was
opalescent, and the mountains put on and off their royal vestments of
purple.
This homestead by the sea was an accident. It was the result of a bit of
facetiousness, that had a solemn termination, as it were. Riding past
the court-house in Santa Cruz, nineteen years ago, when that town had
not as many hundred people, the wag of a sheriff was dividing his time
between crying a ranch at public sale, to close an estate, and whittling
a stick. No bids for the last hour. Would the citizen on horseback halt
a minute and accommodate him with a bid, just to relieve the dullness of
the occasion? The last bid was raised five dollars. What did that
madcap of a sheriff do but slap his hands together and declare that the
estate was sold. There have been earthquakes which were inconveniently
sudden, and thunder-claps from a clear sky; but such an investiture of
real property had not been known in many a day. The sheriff shut up his
jack-knife; the bystanders closed theirs, and they all went round the
corner, as they said, to consult a barometer--a proceeding which that
official never did fully explain. When one has been overtaken by a
surprise, a climax, or even a joke, which has at the bottom of it such a
flavor of real estate, it is best to sleep on it for one night, and take
a fresh view of the situation on the following day. Does not the ideal
country estate in some way enter into the sleeping or waking dreams of
most sanguine men? There are to be many broad acres, parks, and
fountains, orchards drooping with fruit; vineyards creeping up the
hillsides; a trout stream in which "chubs" greatly abound; a capacious
mansion, with hospitable doors swinging open as if by instinct on the
approach of friends; barns filled with fragrant hay; thoroughbred stock,
from the horse down to the dog and cat; Alderney cows, coming up at
night with cream in their horns, mild-eyed and gentle, with breath as
sweet as the wild clover they had eaten; gilt-edged butter, not handed
round in pats as large as a shilling, for admiration, but set forth in
solid cubes, like gold which had been honestly assayed and run into
ingots; strawberries perennial, and always smothered in cream;
bellflowers and pippins, ripening in the Autumn sun; scientific farming,
not for profit, but just to demonstrate how it can be done; long,
tranquil days, restful and full of indescribable peace, when bees go
droning by, and the perfume of the orchard comes in at the open windows.
That is pretty nearly an outline of your dream, with some minor
variation of details thrown in; such, for instance, as a great chamber
looking toward the rising sun, where the one epic poem of the nineteenth
century is to be written. Are there some twinges of pain about the heart
that this dream has never been quite realized? Consider for a moment
that heaven, so far as it relates to this world, is for the most part an
ideal conception. It is not what one has reduced to possession, but what
he hopes to have. Now, one can put a great deal of heaven into the
ideal country home, and not realize largely on the investment. If the
strawberries cost a dollar apiece, and the favorite horse has a trick of
putting his heels up toward the stars, the chickens stagger about with
the gapes, and the phylloxera browns the vineyard as if a subterranean
fire had been burning at the roots, these touches of realism may chasten
the expectations somewhat, and at the same time serve to plant the
amateur farmer more firmly on his feet. It is a pity that the world
could not be enriched by the experience of the gilt-edged farmer from
the city. What is most wanted is a book of failures--an honest filling
in of the blanks between the ideal and real country life.
A survey of the new purchase disclosed a number of particulars; and,
among others, that a dead man's pre-emption claim, when sold under the
form of law, passes a rather shadowy title to the buyer. It was needful
to become a constructive pre-emptor, and to exhort a number of
impenitent squatters to early penitence and reformation. The Saxon's
hunger for land is generally matched by his appetite for land stealing.
If two parcels of land of equal area and value be shown him, one
already claimed and the other open to settlement, the chances are that
this descendant of ancient land-robbers would much prefer to pounce on
the land already occupied, and fight it out. If he is not reconstructed
in his inmost soul, he will always be wanting his neighbor's vineyard.
The new purchase met all aesthetic requirements. It was on the edge of
the town, and hardly more than a mile from the sea. It had a grove in
the foreground, a trout stream on either side, with a fringe of tall
redwoods, a backing of mountains, and a water view comprising the whole
of Monterey Bay, and as much of the ocean as the eye could reduce to
constructive possession. Not a fence to mark a boundary; but the
two-room shanty, with its great stone chimney on the outside, loomed up
like a palace. There was a fire-place which yawned like an immense cave.
An old rifle-barrel, planted in the chimney, served well enough as a
crane. The opening at the top was liberally adjusted for astronomical
observations, but had been slightly abridged by the nest of a pair of
gray wood squirrels, which kept up a perpetual racing on the dry roof at
night.
It is not probable that the primitive man had any such house to await
his coming; and having his constitution adjusted to a tropical climate
at the outset, he had little use for a stone fire-place where the
back-log lasted a week. It would furnish a curious commentary on the
evolution of dwellings if one could establish the fact that the first
house was built of _adobes_, like those which one now sees along the
bluff of the Branciforte, and which have more than one quality of the
perfect country house. A breastwork of earth might have been raised
first, to break off tempests; afterward, it would have four sides, then
perhaps a thatch of palm leaves--and the primitive _adobe_ dwelling
stood in its glory. In such a habitation the sun could not smite by day,
and only the fleas could smite powerfully at night. If any learned
archaeologist finds fault with this theory, let him make a better one out
of _adobes_ if he can.
It was an odd circumstance that the grove had been the chosen place for
many a camp meeting, the board buildings still remaining; while on the
opposite side an eccentric African had occupied for many years a hut,
and led a sort of mystic life. He was skillful in compounding simples,
the potency of which was greatly increased by his incantations. It was
even said that he had the gift of hoo-dooing, and always kept the roughs
at bay by threatening to fix his eye on them. There was a trace of
orthodoxy in his methods--since, if the wicked cannot be won by love,
they can sometimes be scared into decency by sending the devil after
them. Here were signs of grace on one side, and diabolism on the other.
But neither effected much in "Squabble Hollow," two miles beyond. It is
a pity that the African had not done a little hoo-dooing up there among
the pioneers, so that the reign of peace might have set in at an earlier
day. It is quiet enough now, because Time, with his scythe, has cut a
clean swath there.
If one has planted his own orchard, he will eat the fruit with greater
satisfaction. He will have an affection for the trees which he once
carried under his arm, and will trim them tenderly in the spring.
Whoever ate the cherries which he bought in the market with such secret
satisfaction as those which he plucked from his own trees in the early
morning? If your neighbor invites you to his cherry orchard, he honors
you above kings. It is doubtful if royalty ever poised itself on a
rickety chair, or reached for cherries so deftly as that school girl,
who read her graduating essay, with pendent blue ribbons, last month.
She is not greatly changed now, except that her mouth has increased
about a hundred per cent. Every tree which one sets with his own hands
is better than those which the hireling and stranger have set. He
establishes secret relations with it, communes with it, eats of the
fruit as if the tree itself rejoiced in bestowing such a benediction.
When the apples fall to the ground, in the still autumn day, it is as if
they dropped from the opening heavens. Every one is the symbol of
wisdom, and hath, in its malic acid, a subtile essence, which carries
health to the morbid liver. And no individual is ever wise when that
organ is in trouble, or, at least, he has an unhappy way of expressing
his wisdom. From this sanitary point of view, it will accord with a
healthy conscience if a little cider mill is set up under the
wide-branching oak hard by. If you have any scruples, you need not taste
of the cider, but you can smell of the pomace, and note how the bees
and yellow-jackets are drawn to it for honey. The bees go in a straight
line to a knot-hole in the dead top of a redwood tree. The taking up of
a wild swarm, which had stored honey in another tree, was not a happy
experiment. When the tree came down, there was a black, boiling mass of
enraged bees. No lack of honey. But if one wishes to know what is meant
by the "iron entering into the soul," let a dozen bees go under his
necktie, and prod him along his back--the last one, by way of a tiger,
prodding the tip of his nose, because at that very instant one must
sneeze or die. How can one tell what is sweet except there be some
bitterness in contrast? It was evident that old dog "Samson," who
dropped his tail and yelled when the bees lit on him, was not given to
much philosophical reflection; but the speed of that disconsolate cur
was mightily helped on his way back to the kennel. If an invitation were
now extended to him to take up another hive, he would do nothing more
than wave his tail and send regrets.
That platform in the grove is maintained for the benefit of free speech,
with reasonable limitations. Clerical and political orators have had
their day there. In short, it is the platform of all nations, newly
consecrated every summer by the rhythmic feet and gleesome voices of
childhood. Then, if ever, the oak and madrono spread their branches of
perpetual green over such more tenderly, as symbols of the immortal
freshness of youth. Is not this succession of life from chaos eternal,
and the race itself only in its infancy? Neither the woodman's axe nor
the fire could take the vitality out of that redwood stump, for the
saplings have sprung out of its clefts, and the old roots are sending
these new spires up toward the heavens. As little does the destruction
of a nation affect the genesis of the race, or its everlasting
succession. The orchard is the symbol of peace, abundance, the
mellowness of life. It is the sign of a gentle civilization grafted on
to the wildness of nature. The wild blackberry and strawberry, which
grow along the fences and hedgerows, have an aboriginal flavor. When
they are domesticated they are a hundredfold better. The wild trees of
the forest take to themselves new qualities when set in the open
grounds. The ship built of "pasture oak" is a better craft, because the
toughness of fiber of such trees was gained in the open field, where
they had given shelter to ruminating cows. Was not the yew tree, which
grew about the ancestral homes generations ago, chosen for the cross-bow
because of its toughness and elasticity? This solitary ash by the fence
is more lithe and graceful for its introduction to domestic life; and
this wide-branching oak before the door, casting now its shadows aslant,
made handsome obeisance to the earthquake, sweeping the ground with its
lateral branches. Not a fracture of one of its elastic limbs; but that
ancient stone chimney rumbled fearfully, and stood apart in moody
isolation. When the dog abandons the civilized community and hears no
human speech, he loses his bark. The lowest type of humanity has only a
few guttural sounds. The civilized master follows the condition of his
dog--that is, if he be cast on some solitary island, he gradually loses
his speech. Dog and man have finally gone back to dumb nature. Why is
the fruit of the ancient pear tree, standing by some deserted homestead
of ante-revolutionary days, more acrid and pungent than it was a hundred
years ago? It had lost association with human kind. If one could grasp
the sweeter subtleties of Nature, he might find a gracious accord, a
point of sympathetic contact, where the mellowness of the individual,
the rich and generous juices of his nature, give a finer quality to the
fruits of the trees which he has planted. Something may come back to
him, also, in the aroma of the orchard, helping him by its fragrance to
a gentler and more thoughtful life.
SUBURBAN ETCHINGS.
SUBURBAN ETCHINGS.
It accords with the folk-lore, or traditions of the "Hill," that one
must not offer violence to a black cat. Now it happened that in the
season of spring chickens--in the very callow time of their existence--a
vagrant cat installed himself in the garden. Charcoal was grey in
contrast with the depth of his blackness; and his yellow eyes were
flanked by jowls indicating that he fared sumptuously. If a cat of this
hue is a symbol of evil, why not induce him to move on at once?
"Bridget" was questioned for a satisfactory answer. "Because you
mustn't. It is bad luck to harm a black cat." And so this superstition
from the heart of the African continent was respected for a time. There
might be some occult influence by which the cat propagated the
superstition; creating it and living, as it were, in its very
atmosphere. Hoodooing possibly is not confined to Africans. It has some
relation to blackness, midnight, weird and mysterious eyes. This
prowling feline may have in him the spirit of mischief. A symbol of
evil may sometimes be the thing itself. It is a strange custom to mourn
for lost friends by wearing black. What more natural interpretation than
that the wearer also is dead? Whereas the "heathen" have hit upon a
better symbol, wearing white for the loss of friends, signifying that
they have entered into light, that the world itself is all luminous for
the living.
Now that cat, the spirit and essence of darkness, the forerunner of
diabolism, was true to the symbol. What did he do but leap over a high
fence every morning and take from the inclosure the tenderest of spring
chickens. Then an hour afterward he would go down the garden walk for a
greeting, as if he were not a knave and a hypocrite, arching his back
and curving his tail beautifully, rubbing his sleek coat against one and
looking up in the face as much as to say, "The only honest trades in the
world are yours and mine." It is true that the business economy of the
world is mainly a system of reprisals. But there ought to be a spiritual
economy which should teach something better. It is evident that this cat
must be converted with other than spiritual weapons. In a millennial
sense shotguns, no doubt, may become "organ pipes of peace," and even
now they may be used to project a sermon to a considerable distance. One
by one that brood of chickens disappeared, and another was just coming
off. A neighbor was consulted as to the best manner of getting around
the superstition that no harm must be done to a black cat. The case was
plain enough. He had a beautiful breech-loading shotgun, costing, he
suggested, a hundred and twenty dollars. All that was necessary to be
done in the premises was to exhort that marauder with that gun. He would
show us how to use it. Then followed a drill in its use. The cartridges
went in at the breech, an eye was to be squinted along the barrel--and
then came the crisis. What a beautiful implement! And how wonderful the
contrast with the old Queen's arm, the relic of revolutionary days
stored in the garret, with its flint lock, priming wire and muzzle, into
which went five fingers of powder and shot, and one of wads! That gun,
the use of which was always interdicted to small boys, had been let down
from the garret window many a time by a toe-string manufactured for the
occasion, and the first hint which maternal government got of that
sleight of hand was a report in the nearest woods, which all the heavens
echoed to the old homestead. That honest revolutionary piece would not
lie. It spoke the truth even if we had to suffer the consequences. The
draft made on a clump of hazel bushes near by, was the serious part of
the business. But it abides in the memory that no red squirrel running
on a ziz-zag fence was wholly safe when that Queen's arm was pointed at
him.
The breech-loader was taken down and stored in the library for an
aggravated occasion. It came in a few days. The man of all work came
bowling up the walk red and wrathful. "That old son of perdition has got
another chicken!" Now then, his time had come. He shall be swept with
the besom of destruction. Superstitions go this day for nothing. A
hundred and twenty dollar shotgun, silver mounted, and a patent
cartridge! "Rest it across my back, 'Squire, and take good aim. Aim for
his shoulder, and don't kill the chicken in his mouth."--"Did you fetch
the cat?" Well, not exactly. The old superstition that day had a
powerful effect. That cat dropped the chicken, though, and ran toward
the gunner as if to salute him, and then leaped over a ten-feet fence
and disappeared. That was not all. There were four chickens feeding in
the grass beyond, every one of which was laid out cold, and a fifth was
struck in the head and had the blind staggers so that it was counted in
with the dead. There had been a little variance in the "besom of
destruction" which operated in favor of that mysterious cat. Then there
was the salutation of Bridget: "Didn't I tell you that it is bad luck to
kill a black cat!" "Well, I haven't killed him by a long way. But you
might go down in the back lot and gather up an apron full of spring
chickens." That gun was returned with thanks. It was an elegant piece.
But, somehow, it didn't work like the Queen's arm. The next day that cat
returned as if nothing had happened, and took the regular toll of a
chicken a day. For a whole year more these depredations went on at
intervals, regulated by the supply of young chickens. Here was
enterprise. A hundred-dollar chicken yard, constructed and arranged on
"scientific principles," was just adequate for the supply of one black
cat, on which no impression could be made with a breech-loader, while
chickens were bought every week in the market to meet the home demand!
In this extremity a new plan was evolved.
A cash premium--a new dollar from the mint--shall go for the destruction
of this particular cat and all successors. Robert, the utility man, soon
claimed the dollar. He had exhorted the sleek old hypocrite with a
hoe-handle, and brought him to sudden repentance.
"It is bad luck to kill a black cat," said Bridget the next morning;
"and you didn't kill him, neither." Well, I paid Robert a premium of a
dollar, and he took him off. "Hang all superstitions."
"But the black cat is down in the garden now."
There was that thieving rascal, or a duplicate, at the old business.
Robert offered to show the original underground. The premium business
was continued, and went into the monthly statement. No sooner was one
taken off than another appeared, provided always that it was not the
original vagabond. The same predatory habits, the same midnight and
diabolical expression, the same decimation in the chicken yard. What did
it all mean? There was some occult diabolism that could not be
explained. "Didn't I tell you," says Bridget, with an air of triumph,
"that you can't kill a black cat."
No, I can't, with a breech-loader. But Robert is drawing a regular
premium. The black cat premium fund was exhausted. Now, state your
account, my boy. "Well, I have killed _five_, upon honor, and have my
eye upon another one." There was a suspicion that the original was still
there. But the superstition vanished in the clear light of day when it
was shown that number six had a little fleck of white between the four
legs. But the depredations still go on, and you cannot convince the
honest old house-servant that a black cat has ever been killed--and
looking out into the garden just now, as that sleek black rascal lies in
the grass, with a waving motion of his tail and his yellow eye fixed
upon a callow brood, it is clearer than ever before that the succession
of black cats is eternal. They do not come in single file, but sun
themselves on the fences by the half dozen, run over the green-house,
breaking panes of glass, climb up on the outside to the gable window of
the barn, flit across the garden walks at twilight, conceal themselves
under the low shrubbery, as if defying all efforts at dislodgement. Then
there is the comment of Patrick, our neighbor's utility man: "They know
the char-_ac_ter you've made with that gun."
Nor was it a mitigating circumstance that a sympathizing friend proposed
to regulate the succession of cats by sending over a small half-grown
terrier. If well brought up, he would keep the peace in the interest of
spring chickens. He did occasionally run the black vagrants to the trees
handsomely. But as an incidental diversion, he would lay out half a
dozen chickens on any fine morning. Where was the gain? Cats could be
exhorted with a shotgun, at least there was one experiment of that kind.
But when "Towser" was exhorted with a switch, a wail went up from the
Hill. It was as if the spirits of all the dogs in Christendom had united
to pierce the heavens. So great a noise for so small a catastrophe! But
this elementary education cannot be interrupted on account of noises.
There is a Hindoo proverb that you cannot get the crook out of a dog's
tail by mollifying appliances. But what was needed in that particular
case was to get the crook out of his intellect. It ought to have been
settled long ago, as a principal of moral and mental philosophy, that
you cannot beat honesty and virtue into men or dogs. And so this young
canine rascal will come back to do to-morrow what he has done to-day.
Does the boy rob bird's nests or plum trees any the less because he
gets a sprouting now and then? He has in his moral system a thousand
years of inherited aptitude for such predatory excursions.