It is said that absence conquers all things, love included; but it has a
contrary effect on a garden. I was absent for two or three weeks. I left
my garden a paradise, as paradises go in this protoplastic world; and
when I returned, the trail of the serpent was over it all, so to speak.
(This is in addition to the actual snakes in it, which are large enough
to strangle children of average size.) I asked Polly if she had seen to
the garden while I was away, and she said she had. I found that all the
melons had been seen to, and the early grapes and pears. The green worm
had also seen to about half the celery; and a large flock of apparently
perfectly domesticated chickens were roaming over the ground, gossiping
in the hot September sun, and picking up any odd trifle that might
be left. On the whole, the garden could not have been better seen
to; though it would take a sharp eye to see the potato-vines amid the
rampant grass and weeds.
The new strawberry-plants, for one thing, had taken advantage of my
absence. Every one of them had sent out as many scarlet runners as an
Indian tribe has. Some of them had blossomed; and a few had gone so
far as to bear ripe berries,--long, pear-shaped fruit, hanging like
the ear-pendants of an East Indian bride. I could not but admire
the persistence of these zealous plants, which seemed determined
to propagate themselves both by seeds and roots, and make sure of
immortality in some way. Even the Colfax variety was as ambitious as the
others. After having seen the declining letter of Mr. Colfax, I did not
suppose that this vine would run any more, and intended to root it out.
But one can never say what these politicians mean; and I shall let this
variety grow until after the next election, at least; although I hear
that the fruit is small, and rather sour. If there is any variety
of strawberries that really declines to run, and devotes itself to a
private life of fruit-bearing, I should like to get it. I may mention
here, since we are on politics, that the Doolittle raspberries had
sprawled all over the strawberry-bed's: so true is it that politics
makes strange bedfellows.
But another enemy had come into the strawberries, which, after all that
has been said in these papers, I am almost ashamed to mention. But does
the preacher in the pulpit, Sunday after Sunday, year after year, shrink
from speaking of sin? I refer, of course, to the greatest enemy of
mankind, “p-sl-y.” The ground was carpeted with it. I should think that
this was the tenth crop of the season; and it was as good as the first.
I see no reason why our northern soil is not as prolific as that of the
tropics, and will not produce as many crops in the year. The mistake we
make is in trying to force things that are not natural to it. I have no
doubt that, if we turn our attention to “pusley,” we can beat the world.
I had no idea, until recently, how generally this simple and thrifty
plant is feared and hated. Far beyond what I had regarded as the bounds
of civilization, it is held as one of the mysteries of a fallen world;
accompanying the home missionary on his wanderings, and preceding the
footsteps of the Tract Society. I was not long ago in the Adirondacks.
We had built a camp for the night, in the heart of the woods, high up on
John's Brook and near the foot of Mount Marcy: I can see the lovely spot
now. It was on the bank of the crystal, rocky stream, at the foot of
high and slender falls, which poured into a broad amber basin. Out of
this basin we had just taken trout enough for our supper, which had been
killed, and roasted over the fire on sharp sticks, and eaten before they
had an opportunity to feel the chill of this deceitful world. We were
lying under the hut of spruce-bark, on fragrant hemlock-boughs, talking,
after supper. In front of us was a huge fire of birchlogs; and over it
we could see the top of the falls glistening in the moonlight; and the
roar of the falls, and the brawling of the stream near us, filled all
the ancient woods. It was a scene upon which one would think no thought
of sin could enter. We were talking with old Phelps, the guide. Old
Phelps is at once guide, philosopher, and friend. He knows the woods and
streams and mountains, and their savage inhabitants, as well as we know
all our rich relations and what they are doing; and in lonely bear-hunts
and sable-trappings he has thought out and solved most of the problems
of life. As he stands in his wood-gear, he is as grizzly as an old
cedar-tree; and he speaks in a high falsetto voice, which would be
invaluable to a boatswain in a storm at sea.
We had been talking of all subjects about which rational men are
interested,--bears, panthers, trapping, the habits of trout, the tariff,
the internal revenue (to wit the injustice of laying such a tax on
tobacco, and none on dogs:--“There ain't no dog in the United States,”
says the guide, at the top of his voice, “that earns his living”), the
Adventists, the Gorner Grat, Horace Greeley, religion, the propagation
of seeds in the wilderness (as, for instance, where were the seeds lying
for ages that spring up into certain plants and flowers as soon as
a spot is cleared anywhere in the most remote forest; and why does
a growth of oak-trees always come up after a growth of pine has been
removed?)--in short, we had pretty nearly reached a solution of many
mysteries, when Phelps suddenly exclaimed with uncommon energy,-- “Wall,
there's one thing that beats me!”
“What's that?” we asked with undisguised curiosity.
“That's 'pusley'!” he replied, in the tone of a man who has come to
one door in life which is hopelessly shut, and from which he retires in
despair.
“Where it comes from I don't know, nor what to do with it. It's in my
garden; and I can't get rid of it. It beats me.”
About “pusley” the guide had no theory and no hope. A feeling of awe
came over me, as we lay there at midnight, hushed by the sound of the
stream and the rising wind in the spruce-tops. Then man can go nowhere
that “pusley” will not attend him. Though he camp on the Upper Au Sable,
or penetrate the forest where rolls the Allegash, and hear no sound save
his own allegations, he will not escape it. It has entered the happy
valley of Keene, although there is yet no church there, and only a
feeble school part of the year. Sin travels faster than they that ride
in chariots. I take my hoe, and begin; but I feel that I am warring
against something whose roots take hold on H.
By the time a man gets to be eighty, he learns that he is compassed
by limitations, and that there has been a natural boundary set to his
individual powers. As he goes on in life, he begins to doubt his ability
to destroy all evil and to reform all abuses, and to suspect that there
will be much left to do after he has done. I stepped into my garden in
the spring, not doubting that I should be easily master of the weeds. I
have simply learned that an institution which is at least six thousand
years old, and I believe six millions, is not to be put down in one
season.
I have been digging my potatoes, if anybody cares to know it. I planted
them in what are called “Early Rose,”--the rows a little less than three
feet apart; but the vines came to an early close in the drought. Digging
potatoes is a pleasant, soothing occupation, but not poetical. It is
good for the mind, unless they are too small (as many of mine are),
when it begets a want of gratitude to the bountiful earth. What small
potatoes we all are, compared with what we might be! We don't plow deep
enough, any of us, for one thing. I shall put in the plow next year, and
give the tubers room enough. I think they felt the lack of it this
year: many of them seemed ashamed to come out so small. There is great
pleasure in turning out the brown-jacketed fellows into the sunshine
of a royal September day, and seeing them glisten as they lie thickly
strewn on the warm soil. Life has few such moments. But then they must
be picked up. The picking-up, in this world, is always the unpleasant
part of it.