I went out one morning to build a barn. Not that I knew exactly how to
build a barn, but I knew very well how to keep up a mighty clatter, till
some one should come that did know, which amounts to the same thing.
There was, indeed, already a barn on our plantation. It was there many
years before we were. I ought to say, a part of it; for the barn is a
conglomerate, the further end stretching far back into antiquity, and
the hither end coming down to a period which is within the memory of men
still living. Of course its ancient history is involved in obscurity;
but as we read in the rocks somewhat of the earth's otherwise unwritten
story, so in our barn are many marks which point out to the curious
student the different eras of its creation. The main line of demarcation
comes in the centre, and consists chiefly of a kind of bulge. That part
of the front which dates back to the Lower Silurian epoch ran
south-southwest, but at some time during the Drift period it turned to
the right about and drifted to the north-northeast. The result is a bold
front, subtending an obtuse angle. People who have nothing else in the
world to annoy them might afford to be annoyed by this departure from a
right line; but unless one is reduced to such straits, he will do well
to call it a bow-window, and be at rest,--which, indeed, it is, only the
window is a little to the windward of the bow.
Viewed in certain aspects, an old barn is far superior to a new one. If
you build a new barn, you have no resources. It is all finished, and you
know where you are. There is a place for everything, and everything in
its place. There is no use in looking for anything. If it is not where
it belongs, it will not be anywhere. An old barn, on the contrary, is a
mine of wealth. It has nooks and corners full of rubbish waiting to be
turned to all manner of beautiful use. Do you want a shingle, a board,
a door, a window, a log, a screw, a wedge? There are heaps and piles of
them somewhere, if you do not mind cobwebs. The old barn has a sort of
sympathy with you, welcomes you to secret recesses, and never snubs you
with primness when you are at a pinch: not to mention the dove-cotes,
and the martins' nests, and the mouse-holes, and the lurking-places
loved of laying hens.
I will tell you a very romantic story, too, about this old barn.--Once,
a great many years before any of us were born, there lived on this
plantation a charming young princess, beloved by all who knew her. One
day the king sent word that he was coming down to sup with her. But it
so happened that on the day the king was to come to supper, the princess
and all her household were to be away on an excursion which was called
in the somewhat homely language of that day a "clam-bake." However, the
princess concluded to go to the clam-bake, and come home in season to
sit with the king at supper. So they cooked mightily beforehand. For it
was the fixed law of royal suppers in that day to have cream-toast, the
cream flowing in rivers, cheese and jelly, pound-cake and plum-cake, and
cranberry-tart, and three kinds of pie, mince, apple, and squash, or
die! Whereat the people of other countries laughed; but they ate the
suppers, for all that,--the starvelings,--and came again. So the pies
were all made with elaborate scalloped edges, and the hoar-frost of the
cake; and all was set carefully away, awaiting the eventful hour, and
the princess and her household went forth and locked the door behind
them, the princess taking the front-door key, and her chief steward the
postern. And when the time was fully come, the princess left the
clam-bake, and waited by the roadside till the king came by, and then
they both went together to the princess' house. And as they went up the
steps to the house, the charming young princess, who never drank tea
herself, said seductively to the king, "Do you mind, if you don't have
tea? It is a great trouble every way, and the self-denial will do you
good." And the king, lured into a wrong story by the music of her voice,
suppressed a rising sigh, and said no, it was no matter. And then the
princess unlocked the door, and essayed to go in; but though the door
was unlocked, it refused to open. And suddenly the unhappy princess
bethought herself that she had locked the door upon the inside, and
bolted it, and herself passed out through the postern-gate, of which her
lord high-steward still held the key. So there they were. Then,
troubled, they marched hither and thither around the house with stately
and majestic step, trying every door and window, and finding every
avenue of approach barricaded except the sink-nose, which Libby
prisoners might try, intent on getting out, but not a constitutional
monarch, however anxious to get in. As two mice, lurking near the full
cheese-safe, prowl around the crevices, braving cold and darkness in the
middle of the night; safe on the shelf the cheese reposes, unmindful;
they, fierce and heedless with anger, rave against it out of reach and
emit a squeal; a rage for eating, collected from a long fast, and
throats dry from curd, urge them on: not otherwise anger inflamed the
king and princess surveying the walls, and anguish burned in their
bones; by what way they might obtain access; in what manner they might
dislodge the rations shut up in inaccessible places. _Nequicquam!_ They
could only look at each other with a wild surmise, and then, unfriended,
melancholy, slow, betake themselves to the rude shelter and frugal fare
of the barn. Then the scene was suddenly changed. The westering sun came
serenely in. The dreamy mist of graceful cobwebs, festooning and
fantastic, and many a tiny window all adust, softened his brilliancy to
a dim, religious light. The brown old rafters shone, amber-hued, in that
mellow glory. The rough floors were fretted gold. A hundred summer
sunsets glowed in the yellow corn that lay massed in ridged and
burnished splendor. Mounds of apples, ruddy and round, loaded the air
with their rich fragrance. Innumerable clover-blossoms, succulent with
evening dews and morning showers, impurpled in the dusky silence of June
nights, and cut down with all their sweetness in them, treasured up
their dense deliciousness for balm-breathed cows, but did not disdain to
flood our human sphere with tides of pleasant perfume. Meeting and
mingling with these dear home-scents came gales from far Spice Islands
and Araby the Blest, breathing over wild Western seas, to be tangled in
pungent grasses and freight with welcome burden our rustic gondolas. (I
mean English hay and salt hay.) And there, soothed into exceeding peace
by Nature's subtile lullaby, borne into ethereal realms on her clouds of
unseen incense, all through the golden afternoon sat the king and
princess, discoursing dreamily of the time
"when men
With angels may participate, and find
No inconvenient date, nor too light fare;
And from these corporal nutriments perhaps
Our bodies may at last turn all to spirit."
While ever and anon a squat old hen or an elegant young rooster would
hop up the steps and tread into the rooms, looking curiously at the
unwonted sight, whereat the king would rise from his throne on an old
cider-cask, and make a right royal speech, "Go to! Base
intruder!"--emphasizing his peroration by hurling an ear of corn at his
visitors, which, as our wayward sisters were wont to say, when our
generals had done them a particularly bad turn, was just what they
wanted. So the afternoon sang itself peacefully away; only the princess
was of an evil mind, and would mar the king's pleasure, when he was
solacing himself with a remainder-biscuit brought in the princess'
basket from the clam-bake, by saying, "Do you see that window? There is
the closet where the cake is kept. Just behind that clapboard stands the
jar of jam. Two feet to the right, I should think, reposes a
cranberry-tart, the crust flaky and fantastic as a January snow-wreath,
the jelly rich and red as the curve of Fantasima's lip"; and then the
king would roll his eyes around at her in a fine frenzy, and gnaw his
crust with a still more wrathful despair.--And that is the end of my
romance of the barn.
Still, it must be confessed, an old barn is not without its
disadvantages, which the impartial historian must not pass silently by.
It shakes wonderfully in a high wind. You hardly dare drive a nail
anywhere, for fear the whole edifice should rattle down over your head.
We desired to set up in the loft one of Dr. Dio Lewis's
jumping-machines; but, upon minute investigation, Halicarnassus said
no,--with the first antic we should find ourselves in the barn-cellar.
In short, an old barn, in an advanced stage of disintegration, must be
treated as tenderly as a loveress. (There seems to be a movement
nowadays towards the introduction of feminine nouns; so I venture to
make my contribution.)
When the seeds were to be sown, it became necessary to shut up the
hens,--necessary, but difficult. I closed the door myself every night
with unwearied assiduity, but bright and early every morning came the
homely hens and the stately-stepping rooster, treading and pecking as
innocently as if they had never suspected they were on forbidden ground.
I instituted a search one day; and no wonder they got out. We might have
barricaded the door to our heart's content, and they would have tossed
their crests in scorn. For there, directly under their perch, was a
great hole in the side of the edifice. Hole do I say? It was many holes
run into one. Hole was the rule, and barn the exception. It was vacancy
bounded by a rough, serrate-dentate coast of decayed boards. It is
little to say chicken,--an elephant might have contemplated imprisonment
there undismayed. Of course reparation must be made, or farewell, dream
of early peas! At the same time, the evil to be remedied was so
overgrown, and a monster evil to be disposed of is so much greater an
undertaking than a mere new measure to be carried, that I think it no
exaggeration, but at worst only what we classic writers call
synecdoche, to say, as I did at the beginning of this paper, that I went
out to build a barn.
What brilliant success would have crowned heroic effort, if knowledge
had been, as the old copy-books used to say it was, power! It was clear
enough what needed to be done, and there was abundance of material to do
it with,--plenty of boards, a little rough, to be sure, and plenty of
nails, a little rusty. But boards are so uncommonly heavy! and a ladder
affords a footing at once so contracted and so uncertain! and a hammer
has such a will of its own, coming down with ill-timed fervor in the
most unexpected places! And when a board has been lifted and pulled and
balanced by main force into position, it takes both hands to hold it
there; and then how are you going to drive in the nails to make it stay,
I should like to know, especially with your ladder continually
threatening a change of base? I am confident, moreover, that our boards
were made of mahogany, or some other impenetrable substance; for when,
by dexterous manipulation, by close crowding up against them, and
holding them up with my elbows, I at length proceeded to strike an
effective blow, do you think the nail went in? Not in the least. It did
everything else. It skewed off to one side, it doubled up, it snapped
short, it plunged about frantically whenever it was touched, to say
nothing of the not innumerous occasions on which the stroke aimed at its
unprincipled head fell with crushing force--elsewhere. Then my strength
would begin to fail, and the board would slowly, slowly slide away from
me, till I let it go, and it dashed with a crash to the ground.