I once remarked that I thought New York City a most friendly and
neighborly place, and was greeted with howls of derision. I suppose I
said it because that morning a dear old lady in an oculist's office had
patted me, saying, "My dear, it would be a pity to put glasses on you,"
and an imposing blonde in a smart Fifth Avenue shop had sold me a hat
that I couldn't afford either to miss or to buy, for half price, because
she said I'd talked to her like a human being, the year before--all of
which had warmed my heart. I think perhaps my statement was too
sweeping. Since we have changed oceans I notice that the atmosphere
of the West has altered my old standards somewhat. There is an
easy-going fellowship all through every part of life on this side
of the Rocky Mountains.
Take banks, for instance. Can you picture a dignified New York Trust
Company with bowls of wild flowers placed about the desks and a general
air of hospitality? In one bank I have often had a pleasant half-hour
very like an afternoon tea, where all the officers, from the president
down, came to shake hands and ask after the children. Of course, that is
a rather unusually pleasant and friendly bank, even for California.
Always I am carefully, tenderly almost, escorted to my motor. At first
this flattered me greatly, till I discovered that there is a law in
California that if you slip and hurt yourself on any one's premises,
they pay the doctor's bill. Hence the solicitude. I was not to be
allowed to strain my ankle, even if I wanted to.
Probably the same geniality existed in the East fifty years ago. I have
been told that it did. It is a very delightful stage of civilization
where people's shells are still soft, if they have shells at all. There
is an accessibility, a breeziness and camaraderie about even the
prominent men--the bulwarks of business and public life. We are accused
of bragging and "boosting" in the West. I am afraid it is true. They are
the least pleasant attributes of adolescence.
Banking isn't the only genial profession. There is real estate. Of
course about half the men in California are in real estate for reasons
too obvious to mention. Providence was kind in putting us into the hands
of an honest man, better still, one with imagination, when we came to
look for a winter bungalow. He saw that we had to have something with
charm, even if the furniture was scarce, and took as much pains over
realizing our dream as if we had been hunting for a palace. It was he
who found our "Sabine Farm," which brought us three of the best gifts of
the gods--health, happiness, and a friend. We had almost decided to take
a picturesque cot that I named "The Jungle," from its tangle of trees
and flowers, even though the cook could reach her abode only by an
outside staircase. The boys had volunteered to hold an umbrella over her
during the rainy season, but I wasn't quite satisfied with this
arrangement. Just then we saw an enchanting bungalow set in a garden of
bamboos, roses and bananas, and looked no further! It belonged to an
English woman who raised Toggenburg goats, which made it all the more
desirable for us as the goats were to stay at the back of the garden,
and provide not only milk but interest for the boys.
J---- dubbed it "El rancho goato" at once. Our friends in the East were
delighted with the idea, and many were their gibes. One in particular
always added something to the address of his letters for the guide or
diversion of the R. F. D. postman: "Route 2, Box so-and-so, you can tell
the place by the goats"; or during the spring floods this appeared in
one corner of the envelope: "Were the goats above high water?"
It wasn't just an ordinary farm. There was a certain something--I think
the names of the goats had a lot to do with it--Corella, Coila, Babette,
Elfa, Viva, Lorine, and so on, or perhaps it was the devotion of their
mistress, who expended the love and care of a very large heart on a
family that I think appreciated it as far as goats are capable of
appreciation. If she was a little late coming home (she had a tiny shack
on one corner of the place) they would be waiting at the gate calling
plaintively. There is a plaintive tone about everything a goat has to
say. In his cot on the porch J---- composed some verses one morning
early--I forget them except for two lines:
"The plaintive note of a querulous goat
Over my senses seems to float."
Of course that was the difficulty--creatures of one kind or another
do not lie abed late. Our Sabine Farm was surrounded by others and
there was a neighborhood hymn to the dawn that it took us some time
to really enjoy--if we ever did. Sopranos--roosters; altos--pigeons,
and ducks; tenors--goats; bassos--cows, and one donkey. There was
nothing missing to make a full, rich volume of sound. Of course
there is no place where it is so difficult to get a long, refreshing
night's sleep as the country.
One rarely comes through any new experience with all one's preconceived
ideas intact. Our first season on the Sabine Farm shattered a number of
mine. I had always supposed that a mocking-bird, like a garden, was "a
lovesome thing, God wot." Romantic--just one step below a nightingale!
There was a thicket of bamboos close to my window, and every night all
the young mocking-birds gathered there to try out their voices. It was
partly elocutionary and partly vocal, but almost entirely
exercises--rarely did they favor me with a real song. This would go on
for some time, then just as I dared to hope that lessons were over,
another burst of ill-assorted trills and shrills would rouse me to fury.
I kept three pairs of boots in a convenient place, and hurled them into
the bamboos, paying the boys a small reward for retrieving them each
morning. Sometimes, if my aim was good, a kind of wondering silence
lasted long enough for me to fall asleep. There is an old song--we all
know it--that runs:
"She's sleeping in the valley, etc., etc.,
And the mocking-bird is singing where she lies."
That, of course, would be impossible if the poor little thing hadn't
been dead.
By day I really enjoyed them. To sit in the garden, which smelled
like a perpetual wedding, reading Lafcadio Hearn and listening to
mocking-birds and linnets, would have undermined my New England
upbringing very quickly, had I had time to indulge often in such
a lotus-eating existence.
Then there was "Boost." He was a small bantam rooster, beloved of our
landlady, which really proves nothing because she was such a
tender-hearted person that she loved every dumb creature that wandered
to her door. Had Boost been dumb I might have loved him too. He had a
voice like the noise a small boy can make with a tin can and a resined
string. He had a malevolent eye and knew that I detested him, so that he
took especial pains to crow under my windows, generally about an hour
after the mocking-birds stopped. I think living with a lot of big hens
and roosters told on his nervous system, and he took it out on me. Great
self-restraint did I exercise in not wringing his neck, when help came
from an unexpected quarter. Boost had spirit--I grant him that--and one
day he evidently forgot that he wasn't a full-sized bird, and was
reproved by the Sultan of the poultry-yard in such a way that he was
found almost dead of his wounds. Dear Miss W----'s heart was quite
broken. She fed him brandy and anointed him with healing lotions, but
to no avail. He died. I had felt much torn and rather doublefaced in
my inquiries for the sufferer, because I was so terribly afraid he
might get well, so it was a great relief when he was safely buried
in the back lot.
Though I love animals I have had bloodthirsty moments of feeling that
the only possible way to enjoy pets was to have them like those wooden
Japanese eggs which fit into each other. If you have white mice or a
canary, have a cat to contain the canary, and a dog to reckon with the
cat. Further up in the scale the matter is more difficult, of course.
One of our "best seller" manufacturers, in his early original days,
wrote a delightful tale. In it he said: "A Cheetah is a yellow streak
full of people's pet dogs," so perhaps that is the answer. The ultimate
cheetah would, of course, have to be shot and stuffed, as it would
hardly be possible to have a wild-cat lounging about the place. I think
the idea has possibilities. So many of our plans are determined by pets.
"No, we can't close the house and go motoring for a week, because there
is no one with whom to leave the puppies." "Yes, we rented our house to
Mrs. S---- for less than we expected to get for it, because she is so
fond of cats and promised to take good care of Pom Pom"--which recalls
to my mind a dear little girl who had a white kitten that she was
entrusting to a neighbor. The neighbor, a busy person with eight
children, received the kitten without demonstration of any kind. Little
Lydia looked at her for a few moments and then said, "Mrs. F----, that
kitten must be loved." That is really the trouble, not only must they be
loved, but they are loved and then the pull on your heart-strings
begins. We have a pair of twin silver-haired Yorkshire terriers, who are
an intimate part of our family circle. I sometimes feel like a friend of
mine in San Francisco, who has a marvellous Chinese cook, and says she
hopes she will die before Li does. I hope "Rags" and "Tags" will live as
long as I do--and yet they are a perfect pest. If they are outdoors they
want to come in, or vice versa. It is practically impossible to sneak
off in the motor without their escort and they bark at my best callers.
Since they made substantial sums of money begging for the Red Cross,
they have added a taste for publicity to their other insistent qualities
and come into the drawing-room, and sit up in front of whoever may be
calling, with a view to sugar and petting. And the worst of it is I
can't maintain discipline at all. Rags has had to be anointed with a
salve compounded of tar and sulphur. It is an indignity and quite
crushes his spirit, so that after it has been put on he wishes to sit
close to me for comfort. The result is that I become like a winter
overcoat just emerging from moth-balls rather than hurt his feelings. Of
course it makes some difference whether the pet that is annoying you
belongs to you or a neighbor. I doubt whether I could have loved Boost,
however, even if I had known him from the shell.
In spite of these various drawbacks we led a most happy life. It was so
easy. The bungalow was so attractively furnished; our own oranges and
limes grew at the door. There was just room for us with nothing to
spare, that had to be kept in order, and our landlady was as different
from the cold-hearted ones we had known as the bankers and real-estate
men. She seemed to be always trying to think of what we might need, and
to provide it. Dear Miss W----, she will never be a good business woman
from the world's point of view; she is too generous and too unselfish!
We all loved her. Many were the hours I inveigled her into wasting while
we sat on bales of the goats' hay and discussed life and the affairs of
the country--but mostly life with its curious twists and turns--its
generosities and its stinginesses. The boys spent their time in the
goat-pen making friends of the little kids, whose various advents added
so much interest to the spring, and learning much from Miss W----, whose
attitude towards life was so sane and wholesome for them to know.
"Buckaboo," the only buck on the ranch when we came, was a dashing young
creature, prancing about and kicking up his heels for the pure joy of
living. Joedy informed J---- that he reminded him of him, "only in a
goat way, father"--a tribute to the light-heartedness that California
had already brought to at least one member of the family.
If our Sabine Farm's vocation was goats, its avocation was surely roses.
We were literally smothered in them. A Cecil Brunner with its perfect
little buds, so heavily perfumed, covered one corner of the house. The
Lady Bankshire, with its delicate yellow blossoms, roofed our porch, and
the glorious Gold of Ophir, so thorny and with little fragrance,
concealed our laundry from the road. There was a garden of bush roses of
all kinds to cut for the house, and the crowning glory of all was a
hedge of "Tausend Schön," growing luxuriantly, and a blaze of bloom in
May. After years of illness and worry, it was good to feel life coming
back joyously in a kind of haven--or heaven--of roses.
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