vegetables, and especially weeds. There was a worthless vine that (or
who) started up about midway between a grape-trellis and a row of
bean-poles, some three feet from each, but a little nearer the trellis.
When it came out of the ground, it looked around to see what it should
do. The trellis was already occupied. The bean-pole was empty. There was
evidently the a little best chance of light, air, and sole
proprietorship on the pole. And the vine started for the pole, and began
to climb it with determination. Here was as distinct an act of choice,
of reason, as a boy exercises when he goes into a forest, and, looking
about, decides which tree he will climb. And, besides, how did the vine
know enough to travel in exactly the right direction, three feet, to
find what it wanted? This is intellect. The weeds, on the other hand,
have hateful moral qualities. To cut down a weed is, therefore, to do a
moral action. I feel as if I were destroying a sin. My hoe becomes an
instrument of retributive justice. I am an apostle of nature. This view
of the matter lends a dignity to the art of hoeing which nothing else
does, and lifts it into the region of ethics. Hoeing becomes, not a
pastime, but a duty. And you get to regard it so, as the days and the
weeds lengthen.
_Observation_.--Nevertheless, what a man needs in gardening is a
cast-iron back, with a hinge in it. The hoe is an ingenious instrument,
calculated to call out a great deal of strength at a great disadvantage.
The striped bug has come, the saddest of the year. He is a moral
double-ender, iron-clad at that. He is unpleasant in two ways. He
burrows in the ground so that you cannot find him, and he flies away so
that you cannot catch him. He is rather handsome, as bugs go, but
utterly dastardly, in that he gnaws the stem of the plant close to the
ground, and ruins it without any apparent advantage to himself. I find
him on the hills of cucumbers (perhaps it will be a cholera-year, and we
shall not want any), the squashes (small loss), and the melons (which
never ripen). The best way to deal with the striped bug is to sit down
by the hills, and patiently watch for him. If you are spry, you can
annoy him. This, however, takes time. It takes all day and part of the
night. For he flieth in the darkness, and wasteth at noonday. If you get
up before the dew is off the plants,--it goes off very early,--you can
sprinkle soot on the plant (soot is my panacea: if I can get the
disease of a plant reduced to the necessity of soot, I am all right);
and soot is unpleasant to the bug. But the best thing to do is set a
toad to catch the bugs. The toad at once establishes the most intimate
relations with the bug. It is a pleasure to see such unity among the
lower animals. The difficulty is to make the toad stay and watch the
hill. If you know your toad, it is all right. If you do not, you must
build a tight fence round the plants, which the toad cannot jump over.
This, however, introduces a new element. I find that I have a zoological
garden on my hands. It is an unexpected result of my little enterprise,
which never aspired to the completeness of the Paris "Jardin des
Plantes."--_My Summer in a Garden_.
THE PLUMBER.
Speaking of the philosophical temper, there is no class of men whose
society is to be more desired for this quality than that of plumbers!
They are the most agreeable men I know; and the boys in the business
begin to be agreeable very early. I suspect the secret of it is, that
they are agreeable by the hour. In the driest days, my fountain became
disabled: the pipe was stopped up. A couple of plumbers, with the
implements of their craft, came out to view the situation. There was a
good deal of difference of opinion about where the stoppage was. I found
the plumbers perfectly willing to sit down and talk about it,--talk by
the hour. Some of their guesses and remarks were exceedingly ingenious;
and their general observations on other subjects were excellent in their
way, and could hardly have been better if they had been made by the job.
The work dragged a little,--as it is apt to do by the hour. The plumbers
had occasion to make me several visits. Sometimes they would find, upon
arrival, that they had forgotten some indispensable tool; and one would
go back to the shop, a mile and a half, after it; and his comrade would
await his return with the most exemplary patience, and sit down and
talk,--always by the hour. I do not know but it is a habit to have
something wanted at the shop. They seemed to me very good workmen, and
always willing to stop and talk about the job, or any thing else, when I
went near them. Nor had they any of that impetuous hurry that is said to
be the bane of our American civilization. To their credit be it said,
that I never observed any thing of it in them. They can afford to wait.
Two of them will sometimes wait nearly half a day while a comrade goes
for a tool. They are patient and philosophical. It is a great pleasure
to meet such men. One only wishes there was some work he could do for
_them_ by the hour. There ought to be reciprocity. I think they have
very nearly solved the problem of Life: it is to work for other people,
never for yourself, and get your pay by the hour. You then have no
anxiety, and little work. If you do things by the job, you are
perpetually driven: the hours are scourges. If you work by the hour, you
gently sail on the stream of Time, which is always bearing you on to the
haven of Pay, whether you make any effort or not. Working by the hour
tends to make one moral. A plumber working by the job, trying to unscrew
a rusty, refractory nut, in a cramped position, where the tongs
continually slipped off, would swear; but I never heard one of them
swear, or exhibit the least impatience at such a vexation, working by
the hour. Nothing can move a man who is paid by the hour. How sweet the
flight of time seems to his calm mind!--_My Summer in a Garden_.
FRANCES LEE PRATT.
(BORN, 1830.)
* * * * *
CAPTAIN BEN'S CHOICE.
An old red house on a rocky shore, with a fisherman's blue boat rocking
on the bay, and two white sails glistening far away over the water.
Above, the blue, shining sky; and below, the blue shining sea.
"It seems clever to have a pleasant day," said Mrs. Davids, sighing.
Mrs. Davids said every thing with a sigh, and now she wiped her eyes
also on her calico apron. She was a woman with a complexion like faded
sea-weed, who seemed always pitying herself.
"I tell them," said she, "I have had real hard luck. My husband is
buried away off in California, and my son died in the army, and he is
buried away down South. Neither one of them is buried together."
Then she sighed again. Twice, this time.
"And so," she continued, taking out a pinch of bayberry snuff, "I am
left alone in the world. _Alone_, I say! why, I've got a daughter, but
she is away out West. She is married to an engineer-man. And I've got
two grandchildren."
Mrs. Davids took the pinch of bayberry and shook her head, looking as
though that was the "hardest luck" of all.
"Well, everybody has to have their pesters, and you'll have to take
yours," rejoined Miss Persis Tame, taking a pinch of snuff--the real
Maccaboy--twice as large, with twice as fierce an action. "I don't know
what it is to bury children, nor to lose a husband; I s'pose I don't;
but I know what it is to be jammed round the world and not have a ruff
to stick my head under. I wish I had all the money I ever spent
travelling,--and _that's_ twelve dollars," she continued, regretfully.
"Why in the world don't you marry and have a home of your own," sighed
Mrs. Davids.
"Well, I don't _expect_ to marry. I don't know as I do at my time of
life," responded the spinster. "I rather guess my day for chances is
gone by."
"You ain't such a dreadful sight older than I am, though," replied Mrs.
Davids, reflectively.
"Not so old by two full years," returned Miss Tame, taking another smart
pinch of snuff, as though it touched the empty spot in her heart and did
it good. "But _you_ ain't looking out for opportunities yet, I suppose."
Mrs. Davids sighed, evasively. "We can't tell what is before us. There
is more than one man in want of a wife."
As though to point her words, Captain Ben Lundy came in sight on the
beach, his head a long way forward and his shambling feet trying in vain
to keep up.
"Thirteen months and a half since Lyddy was buried," continued Mrs.
Davids, accepting this application to her words, "and there is Captain
Ben taking up with just what housekeeper he can get, and _no_
housekeeper at all. It would be an excellent home for you, Persis.
Captain Ben always had the name of making a kind husband."
She sighed again, whether from regret for the bereaved man, or for the
multitude of women bereft of such a husband.
By this time Captain Ben's head was at the door.
"Morning!" said he, while his feet were coming up. "Quite an accident
down here below the lighthouse last night. Schooner ran ashore in the
blow and broke all up into kindling-wood in less than no time. Captain
Tisdale's been out looking for dead bodies ever since daylight."
"I knowed it," sighed Mrs. Davids. "I heard a rushing sound sometime
about the break of day that waked me out of a sound sleep, and I knowed
then there was a spirit leaving its body. I heard it the night Davids
went, or I expect I did. It must have been very nearly at that time."
"Well, I guess it wasn't a spirit, last night," said Captain Ben; "for
as I was going on to say, after searching back and forth, Captain
Tisdale came upon the folks, a man and a boy, rolled up in their wet
blankets asleep behind the life-boat house. He said he felt like he
could shake them for staying out in the wet. Wrecks always make for the
lighthouse, so he s'posed those ones were drowned to death, sure
enough."
"Oh, then it couldn't have been them, I was warned of!" returned Mrs.
Davids, looking as though she regretted it. "It was right over my head,
and I waked up just as the thing was rushing past. You haven't heard,
have you," she continued, "whether or no there was any other damage
done by the gale?"
"I don't know whether you would call it damage exactly," returned
Captain Ben; "but Loizah Mullers got so scared she left me and went
home. She said she couldn't stay and run the chance of another of our
coast blows, and off she trapsed."
Mrs. Davids sighed like November. "So you have some hard luck as well as
myself. I don't suppose you can _get_ a housekeeper to keep her long,"
said she, dismally.
"Abel Grimes tells me it is enough sight easier getting wives than
housekeepers, and I'm some of a mind to try that tack," replied Captain
Ben, smiling grimly.
Mrs. Davids put up her hand to feel of her back hair, and smoothed down
her apron; while Miss Persis Tame blushed like a withered rose, and
turned her eyes modestly out of the window.
"I am _so_. But the difficulty is, who will it be? There are so many to
select from it is fairly bothersome," continued Captain Ben, winking
fast and looking as though he was made of dry corncobs and hay.
Miss Persis Tame turned about abruptly. "The land alive!" she
ejaculated with such sudden emphasis that the dishes shook on their
shelves and Captain Ben in his chair. "It makes me mad as a March hare
to hear men go on as though all they'd got to do was to throw down their
handkerchers to a woman, and, no matter who, she'd spring and run to
pick it up. It is always 'Who will I marry?' and not 'Who will marry
me?'"
"Why, there is twice the number of widders that there is of widderers
here at the P'int. That was what was in my mind," said Captain Ben, in a
tone of meek apology. "There is the Widow Keens, she that was Azubah
Muchmore. I don't know but what she would do; Lyddy used to think every
thing of her, and she is a first-rate of a housekeeper."
"Perhaps so," assented Mrs. Davids, dubiously. "But she is troubled a
sight with the head complaint; I suppose you know she is. That is
against her."
"Yes," assented Miss Tame. "The Muchmores all have weak heads. And, too,
the Widow Keens, she's had a fall lately. She was up in a chair cleaning
her top buttery shelf, and somehow one of the chair-leg's give way,--it
was loose or something, I expect,--and down she went her whole heft.
She keeps about, but she goes with two staves."
"I want to know if that is so," said Captain Ben, his honest soul
warming with sudden sympathy. "The widder has seen a sight of trouble."
"Yes, she has lived through a good deal, that woman has. I couldn't live
through so much, 'pears to me; but we don't know what we can live
through," rejoined Miss Tame.
Captain Ben did not reply, but his ready feet began to move to and fro
restlessly; for his heart, more ready yet, had already gone out toward
the unfortunate widow.
"It is so bad for a woman to be alone," said he to himself, shambling
along the shingly beach a moment after. "Nobody to mend her chairs or
split up her kindlings, or do a chore for her; and she lame into the
bargain. It is _too_ bad."
"He has steered straight for the Widow Keens's, as sure as A is
apple-dumpling," remarked Miss Persis, peering after him from the
window.
"Well, I must admit I wouldn't have thought of Captain Ben's being
en-a-mored after such a sickly piece of business. But men never know
what they want. Won't you just hand me that gum-cam-phyer bottle, now
you are up? It is on that chest of drawers behind you."
"No more they don't," returned Miss Tame, with a plaintive cadence,
taking a sniff from the camphor-bottle on the way. "However, I don't
begrutch him to her,--I don't know as I do. It will make her a good hum,
though, if she concludes to make arrangements."
Meantime, Captain Ben Lundy's head was wellnigh to Mrs. Keens's door,
for it was situated only around the first sand-hill. She lived in a
little bit of a house that looked as though it had been knocked together
for a crockery-crate, in the first place, with two windows and a rude
door thrown in as afterthoughts. In the rear of this house was another
tiny building, something like a grown-up hen-coop; and this was where
Mrs. Keens carried on the business bequeathed to her by her deceased
husband, along with five small children, and one not so small. But,
worse than that, one who was "not altogether there," as the English say.
She was about this business now, dressed in a primitive sort of bloomer,
with a wash-tub and clothes-ringer before her, and an army of
bathing-suits of every kind and color flapping wildly in the fresh sea
air at one side.
From a little farther on, mingling with the sound of the beating surf,
came the merry voices of bathers,--boarders at the great hotels on the
hill.
"Here you be! Hard at it!" said Captain Ben, puffing around the corner
like a portable west-wind. I've understood you've had a hurt. Is that
so?"
"Oh, no! Nothing to mention," returned Mrs. Keens, turning about a face
bright and cheerful as the full moon; and throwing, as by accident, a
red bathing-suit over the two broomsticks that leaned against her tub.
Unlike Mrs. Davids, Mrs. Keens neither pitied herself nor would allow
anybody else to do so.
"Sho!" remarked Captain Ben, feeling defrauded. He had counted on
sacrificing himself to his sympathies, but he didn't give up yet. "You
must see some pretty tough times 'pears to me with such a parcel of
little ones, and only yourself to look to," said he, proceeding
awkwardly enough to hang the pile of wrung-out clothes upon an empty
line.
"I don't complain," returned the widow, bravely. "My children are not
_teusome_; and Jack, why you would be surprised to see how many things
Jack can do, for all he isn't quite right."
As she spoke thus with affectionate pride, Jack came up wheeling a
roughly made cart filled with wet bathing clothes from the beach. He
looked up at sound of his mother's voice with something of the dumb
tenderness of an intelligent dog. "Jack helps, Jack good boy," said he,
nodding with a happy smile.
"Yes, Jack helps. We don't complain," repeated the mother.
"It would come handy, though, to have a man around to see to things and
kind o' provide, wouldn't it, though?" persisted Captain Ben.
"Some might think so," replied Mrs. Keens, stopping her wringer to
reflect a little. "But I haven't any wish to change my situation," she
added, decidedly, going on again with her work.
"Sure on 't?" persisted the Captain.
"Certain," replied the widow.
Captain Ben sighed. "I thought ma'be you was having a hard row to hoe,
and I thought like enough--"
_What_ he never said, excepting by a beseeching glance at the cheerful
widow, for just then an interruption came from some people after
bathing-suits.
So Captain Ben moved off with a dismal countenance. But before he had
gone far it suddenly brightened. "It might not be for the best," quoth
he to himself, "Like enough not. I was very careful not to commit
myself, and I am very glad I didn't." He smiled as he reflected on his
judicious wariness. "But, however," he continued, "I might as well
finish up this business now. There is Rachel Doolittle. Who knows but
she'd make a likely wife? Lyddy sot a good deal by her. She never had a
quilting or a sewing bee but what nothing would do but she must give
Rachel Doolittle an invite. Yes; I wonder I never decided on her before.
She will be glad of a home sure enough, for she haves to live around, as
it were, upon her brothers."
Captain Ben's feet quickened themselves at these thoughts, and had
almost overtaken his head, when behold! at a sudden turn in the road
there stood Miss Rachel Doolittle, picking barberries from a wayside
bush. "My sakes! If she ain't right here, like Rachel in the Bible!"
ejaculated Captain Ben, taking heart at the omen.
Miss Doolittle looked up from under her tied-down brown hat in surprise
at such a salutation. But her surprise was increased by Captain Ben's
next remark.
"It just came into my mind," said he, "that you was the right one to
take Lyddy's place. You two used to be such great knit-ups that it will
seem 'most like having Lyddy back again. No," he continued, after a
little reflection, "I don't know of anybody I had rather see sitting in
Lyddy's chair and wearing Lyddy's things than yourself."
"Dear me, Captain Lundy, I couldn't think of it. Paul's folks expect me
to stay with them while the boarder-season lasts, and I've as good as
promised Jacob's wife I'll spend the winter with her."
"Ain't that a hard life you are laying out for yourself? And then bum-by
you will get old or sick ma' be, and who is going to want you around
then? Every woman needs a husband of her own to take care of her."
"I'm able to take care of myself as yet, thanks to goodness! And I am
not afraid my brothers will see me suffer in case of sickness,"
returned Miss Doolittle, her cheeks flaming up like a sumach in October.
"But hadn't you better take a little time to think it over? Ma' be it
come sudden to you," pleaded Captain Ben.
"No, I thank you. Some things don't need thinking over," answered Miss
Doolittle, plucking at the barberries more diligently than ever.
"I wish Lyddy was here. She would convince you you were standing in your
own light," returned Lyddy's widower in a perplexed tone.
"I don't need one to come from the dead to show me my own mind,"
retorted Miss Doolittle, firmly.
"Well, like enough you are right," said Captain Ben, mildly, putting a
few stems of barberries in her pail; "ma' be it wouldn't be best. I
don't want to be rash."
And with that he moved off, on the whole congratulating himself he had
not decided to marry Miss Doolittle.
"I thought after she commenced her miserable gift of the gab, that Lyddy
used to be free to admit she had a fiery tongue, for all they were such
friends. And I'm all for peace myself. I guess, on the whole, ma' be she
ain't the one for me, perhaps, and it is as well to look further.
_Why_! what in _the_ world! Well, there! what have I been thinking of?
There is Mrs. Davids, as neat as a new cent, and the master hand to
save. She is always taking on; and she will be glad enough to have
somebody to look out for her,--why, sure enough! And there I was right
at her house this very day, and never once thought of her! What an old
dunce!"
But, fortunately, this not being a sin of commission, it could easily be
rectified; and directly Captain Ben had turned about and was trotting
again toward the red house on the beach.
"Pound for pound of the best white sugar," he heard Miss Tame say as he
neared the door.
"White, sugar!" repeated Mrs. Davids, her usual sigh drawn out into a
little groan. "_White_ sugar for _cram_ berries! Who ever heard of such
a thing? I've always considered I did well when I had plenty of brown."
"Poor creeter!" thought Captain Ben. "How she will enjoy getting into my
pantry. Lyddy never complained that she didn't have enough of every
thing to do _with_"
And in the full ardor of his intended benevolence, he went right in and
opened the subject at once. But, to his astonishment, Mrs. Davids
refused him. She sighed, but she refused him.
"I've seen trouble enough a'ready, without my rushing into more with my
eyes wide open," sighed she.
"Trouble? Why, that is just what I was meaning to save you!" exclaimed
the bewildered widower. "Pump right in the house, and stove e'enamost
new. And Lyddy never knew what it was to want for a spoonful of sugar or
a pound of flour. And such a _handy_ buttery and sink! Lyddy used to say
she felt the worst about leaving her buttery of any thing."
"Should thought she would," answered Mrs. Davids, forgetting to sigh.
"However, I can't say that I feel any hankering after marrying a
buttery. I've got buttery-room enough here, without the trouble of
getting set up in a new place."
"Just as you say," returned the rejected. "I ain't sure as you'd be
exactly the one. I _was_ a thinking of looking for somebody a little
younger."
"Well, here is Persis Tame. Why don't you bespeak her? _She_ is younger,
and she is in need of a good home. I can recommend her, too, as the
first-rate of a cook," remarked Mrs. Davids, benevolently.
Miss Tame had been sitting a little apart by the open window, smiling to
herself.
But now she turned about at once. "Hm!" said she, with contempt. "I
should rather live under an umbrella tied to a stake, than marry for a
_hum_."
So Captain Ben went home without engaging either wife or housekeeper.
And the first thing he saw was Captain Jacob Doolittle's old one-eyed
horse eating the apples Loizah Mullers had strung and festooned from
nails against the house, to dry.
The next thing he saw was, that, having left a window open, the hens had
flown in and gone to housekeeping on their own account. But they were
not, like Mrs. Davids, as neat as a new cent, and _not_, also, such
master hands to save.
"Shoo! shoo! Get out. Go 'long there with you!" cried Captain Ben,
waving the dish-cloth and the poker. "I declare for 't! I most hadn't
ought to have left that bread out on the table. They've made a pretty
mess of it, and it is every spec there is in the house too. Well, I
must make a do of potatoes for supper, with a bit of pie and a mouthful
of cake."
Accordingly he went to work building a fire that wouldn't burn. Then,
forgetting the simple matter of dampers, the potatoes wouldn't bake. The
tea-kettle boiled over and cracked the stove, and after that boiled dry
and cracked itself. Finally the potatoes fell to baking with so much
ardor that they overdid it and burnt up. And, last of all, the cake-jar
and pie-cupboard proved to be entirely empty. Loizah had left on the eve
of baking-day.
"The old cat! Well, I'd just as soon live on slapjacks a spell," said
Captain Ben, when he made this discovery.
But even slapjacks palled on his palate, especially when he had them
always to cook for himself.
"'T ain't no way to live, this ain't," said he at last. "I'm a good mind
to marry as ever I had to eat."
So he put on his hat and walked out. The first person he met was Miss
Persis Tame, who turned her back and fell to picking thoroughwort
blossoms as he came up.
"Look a here," said he, stopping short, "I'm dreadful put to 't. I
can't get ne'er a wife nor ne'er a housekeeper, and I am e'enamost
starved to death. I wish you _would_ consent to marry with me, if you
feel as if you could bring your mind to it. I am sure it would have been
Lyddy's wish."
Miss Tame smelt of the thoroughwort blossoms.
"It comes pretty sudden on me," she replied. "I hadn't given the subject
any thought. But you _are_ to be pitied in your situation."