I never met the old man's equal for parsimony. "The last man--the man
who worked for me before you came--he was a Pole, who could hardly speak
English. He left because he didn't like the food ... yes, that was what
he had the impudence to announce ... and you can see that I am not so
bad ... don't I give you a slice of jelly roll with your beans, every
other night?"
I assented to what the old man said. He had been the milkman to the
Emerson and Thoreau families, and, in that capacity, had known both the
great men. And I was more eager to hear what he had to say about them,
than to draw wages for my work.
But he had little to say about them, except that they were as great
fools as the outside world esteemed them great men.
"They talked a lot about work and a man's being independent, earning his
living with his own hands, from the soil, but,--did they follow their
teachings?... that's the test....
"And I saw them, often, strolling out a-field together, talking and
talking a lot of nonsense about philosophy, and going on, regardless,
across their neighbours' crops."
And that was the only information I could get of these famous men from
their milkman.
* * * * *
Sowerby kept pigs under the barn.... For economy's sake the cows' dung
was shovelled down to them. And over them the outhouse was also built,
so that our human efforts might not be wasted....
* * * * *
One night, despite a hard day's work, I could not sleep. So I went out
on the hillside to enjoy the moonlight.
On my way back to the attic I observed a light in the barn. I stopped in
to see who was there. It was Sowerby, cleaning out the stable, to the
plain disgust of the horses and cows.
I asked him if anything was the matter. I learned that he had risen in
the middle of the night and gone to work ... because that was his
happiness, his only happiness.
* * * * *
Driven by an impulse of distaste for him and his house and market
garden, I started to leave in secret. What money was coming to me for my
two weeks' work I did not care about--in the face of the curious
satisfaction it would give me just to quit, and to have the old man call
up to me and find me missing....
I heard him pottering back to his bedroom again.... I waited till he was
quiet and back to sleep--then I stole forth in the quiet moonlight near
dawn.
It gave me a pleasure to vanish like smoke. I thought of the time when I
had that job plowing in Southern California; that time I had driven the
horses to the further end of the field, and left them standing there
under the shade of a tree and then made off, wishing to shout and sing
for the sheer happiness of freedom from responsibility and regular work.
Each time I have made off that way, from a multitude of varying
employments, it has not been, surely, to the detriment of my successive
employers. I have always decamped with wages still owing me.
* * * * *
I swung a scythe for a week for another Yankee farmer, on a marsh where
the machine couldn't be driven in--which I was informed was King
Phillip's battle ground.
* * * * *
I visited the inn where Longfellow was supposed to have gotten his
inspiration for _Tales of a Wayside Inn_.
I must see all the literary landmarks, even those where I considered the
authors that had caused the places to be celebrated, as dull and third
rate....
* * * * *
With gathering power in me grew my desire to attend college. I would
tramp, as I was doing, through the country, and end up at some western
university for the fall term.
* * * * *
The art workers' community lay in my way at Eos.