After many days of damp, dull, and dolorous weather, we found
ourself unexpectedly moving in a fresh, cool, pure air; an air
which, although there was no sunlight, had the spirit and feeling of
sunlight in it; an air which was purged and lively. And, so
strangely do things happen, after days of various complexion and
stratagem, we found ourself looking across that green field, still
unchanged, at the little house.
Wasn't there--we faintly recall a saccharine tune sung by someone
who strode stiffly to and fro in a glare of amber footlights--wasn't
there a song about: "And I lo-ong to settle down, in that old Long
Island town!" Wasn't there such a ditty? It came softly back,
unbidden, to the sentimental attic of our memory as we passed along
that fine avenue of trees and revisited, for the first time since
we moved away, the wide space of those Long Island fields and the
row of frame cottages. There was the little house, rather more spick
and span than when we had known it, freshly painted in its brown and
white, the privet hedge very handsomely shaven, and its present
occupant busily engaged in trimming some tufts of grass along the
pavement. We did not linger, and that cheerful-looking man little
knew how many ghosts he was living among. All of us, we suppose,
dwell amid ghosts we are not aware of, and this gentleman would be
startled if he knew the tenacity and assurance of certain shades who
moved across his small lawn that afternoon.
It was strange, we aver, to see how little the place had changed,
for it seemed that we had passed round the curves and contours of a
good many centuries in those four or five years. In the open meadow
the cow was still grazing; perhaps the same cow that was once
pestered by a volatile Irish terrier who used to swing merrily at
the end of that cow's tail; a merry and irresponsible little
creature, she was, and her phantom still scampers the road where the
sharp scream of the Freeport trolley brings back her last fatal
venture to our mind. It was strange to look at those windows, with
their neat white sills, and to remember how we felt when for the
first time we slept in a house of our own, with all those Long
Island stars crowding up to the open window, and, waking in drowsy
unbelief, put out a hand to touch the strong wall and see if it was
still there. Perhaps one may be pardoned for being a little
sentimental in thinking back about one's first house.
The air, on that surprising afternoon, carried us again into the
very sensation and reality of those days, for there is an openness
and breezy stir on those plains that is characteristic. In the
tree-lined streets of the village, where old white clapboarded
houses with green or pale blue shutters stand in a warm breath of
box hedges, the feeling is quite different. Out on the Long Island
prairie--which Walt Whitman, by the way, was one of the first to
love and praise--you stand uncovered to all the skirmish of heaven,
and the feathery grasses are rarely still. There was the chimney of
the fireplace we had built for us, and we remembered how the
wood-smoke used to pour gallantly from it like a blue pennon of
defiance. The present owner, we fear, does not know how much
impalpable and unforgotten gold leaped up the wide red throat of
that chimney, or he would not dream of selling. Yes, the neighbours
tell us that he wants to sell. In our day, the house was said to be
worth $3,000. Nowadays, the price is $7,000. Even at that it is
cheap, if you set any value on amiable and faithful ghosts.
Oh, little house on the plains, when our typewriter forgets thee,
may this shift key lose its function!
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