_Strawberries and trout. How is that for a combination?_
[Illustration: _I remember that as a golden summer, an enthusiastic
summer, and, on the whole, a successful one_]
I remember that as a golden summer, an enthusiastic summer, and, on the
whole, a successful one. Our early garden grew--also the second
planting and the third. William Deegan made it his business to see that
they did. I realized presently that my special forte lay in directing a
sizable garden like that rather than in performing the actual labor,
especially when June arrived and the sun began to approach the
perpendicular and take on callithump. You probably don't know what
callithump is, but you will find out if you undertake to hoe sod-ground
potatoes in July. It has something to do with brazen trumpets and
violence.
I became acquainted with callithump when I straightened out the
asparagus-bed. The weeds had got a master start there, and the feeble
feathery asparagus shoots were quite overtopped and lost. I said the job
required a microscopic eye and a delicate hand. I would set the
asparagus-bed in order myself.
It is surprising how much ground a hundred asparagus roots can cover.
Elizabeth had superintended their planting, during a period when I had
been absent, and, remembering my mania for having things far apart, she
had let herself go in the matter of space. She had made it rich, too,
and the weeds just loved it. Some of them were up to my waist. I said
they would have to be pulled by hand and I would get up in the cool of
the morning and do it.
It is almost impossible to beat the sun up in June. I was out there at
five o'clock, but the sun was already busy and had got the range. By the
time I had pulled half-way down one row I could feel the callithump
working. Also something else. We claimed to have no mosquitoes in Brook
Ridge, so it could not have been those. Whatever it was kept me swearing
steadily, and pawing and slapping and sweating blood. When I had
finished a row I crept in, got some fresh clothes and a towel, and made
a dash for the brook. I had cleaned out a special pool behind the
ice-house, and built a little dressing-platform. In less than a minute I
was in the water, looking up at the sky and hearing the birds sing. Talk
about luxury! After breakfast I took Elizabeth out to show her my
progress.
"It looks nice," she said, "and how easily you did it!"
It took me four memorable mornings to finish the asparagus-bed, and,
proud as I was of the job, I resigned, after that, in favor of William.
The brazen trumpets of the sky even at high noon could not phase W.
Deegan. Often in July I have sat in the maple shade, with pride watching
him carry out my directions concerning weeds and potato-bugs. I admired
and honored William. I have the greatest respect for honorable toil, but
even more for callithump.
Sometimes in the early morning I went trout-fishing. There is more
fascination and less waste tissue in that. I would creep down while the
house was still and get my rod and basket, and take a sheltered lane
that was like a green tunnel through the woods, where the birds were
just tuning up for a concert, then out across the "bean-lot," to strike
the brook at about the head of navigation--for trout.
They were plenty enough and just of the right size--that is to say,
eight to eleven inches long--and easy enough to get if one was very
careful. You could not cast for them; the brook was too small and
brushy for that. You had to use a very short line, and wind it around
the end of the rod, and work it through the branches, and then
carefully, very carefully, unwind and let the hook drop lightly on the
water. Then as likely as not there would be a swift, tingling tug, and,
if you were lucky, an instant later you would have a beautiful
red-speckled fellow landed among the grass and field flowers, his gay
colors glancing in the sun.
The open places also required maneuvering. One does not walk up to the
bank and fish for wild trout--not in a stream that is as clear as glass
and where every fish in it can see the slightest movement on the bank.
To fish such a place is to lie flat on the stomach and work forward inch
by inch through the grass, Indian fashion, until the water is in reach.
Even then you must not look, but feel, unwinding the line slowly,
slowly, until the fly or worm taps the water. Then if you have done it
well and the trout is there, and it is June, there will be
results--sharp, quick, sudden results that insure the best breakfast in
the world--hot fried trout, fresh from a New England brook.
The Joy went with me on some of these excursions. She liked to have me
call her early and go tiptoing and whispering about our preparations and
to wade off through the dewy grass in her rubber boots, leaving the rest
of the house asleep. She generally carried the basket, and was deeply
interested in my maneuvers when the cry of the "teacher"-bird and the
call of the wood-thrush did not distract her attention. I can still see
the grass up to her fat little waist, her comical blue apron, her
dimpled round face and the sunlight on her hair. She had a deep pity for
the trout, but her sporting instinct was deeper still. Sometimes when
there was a slip, and a big shining fellow would go bouncing and
splashing back into the brook, she would jump up and down and demand,
excitedly:
"Why didn't you catch that one, Daddy? Why didn't you catch him? That
was a big, big, _big_ one?" And she walked very proudly when we had six
or more to carry back for breakfast.
Strawberries and trout--how is that for a breakfast combination in June?
Trout just from the water and strawberries fresh from the garden. We had
planted a good patch of strawberries the August of our arrival and they
had done wonderfully well for the first year. Often by the time we had
come from fishing Elizabeth had been out and filled a bowl, and
sometimes even made a short-cake, for we were old-fashioned enough to
love short-cake--old-fashioned short-cake made with biscuit dough (not
the sweet-cake kind) for breakfast. And breakfast with trout and
short-cake--short-cake with cream, mind you!--in New England in June,
when the windows open on the grass and the wood-thrushes are calling, is
just about as near paradise as you can get in this old world.
[Illustration]