WHAT is the first wild flower of the spring? Each of us has his own
first flower. It varies with the locality and the special season. Here
it was the hepatica, that lifted its little faintly blushing face from
the edge of a patch of melting snow. I plucked it, remembering the words
of Old Kate, at Les Rapides: “Ef you pluck yer first flower and kill yer
first snake, you’ll prevail over yer enemies for the comin’ year.”
I did not trouble her poor mind by inquiring: “What if your enemy is also
plucking his first flower and killing his first snake. Who, then, would
prevail?”
I know of no enemy, but I gathered the hepatica. Whether I shall kill
the snake remains a matter of doubt. If it is old Josephine, who will
soon be sunning herself on a flat rock at the bathing beach, I will not.
That snake has been a friend of mine too long.
After the hepatica came the dicentra cucularia, or Dutchman’s breeches—a
wide patch of them, nodding from a shaded ledge of rock, and then the
trillium, lifting its white chalices by thousands through the woods. If
Saint Patrick had known the trillium, I cannot think that he would ever
have chosen the shamrock as his emblem of the Trinity. The
golden-throated flower rises three-petaled from a cup of three green
sepals. Below this is an inch or so of thick, green stem and below that
the leaves, three in a whorl. So three and three and three says the
plant with every part of its being.
The air is full of the spring songs of birds and the dry whir of
innumerable wings. A colony of gold finches moved in last night, and
they are singing like hundreds of canaries in the cedars. “Konker-ree,”
call the redwings over in the meadow. “Purity-purity,” sings the
bluebird, and “Quick-quick-quick,” snaps the flicker. Busy brown
sparrows slip through the dry leaves. On an oak tree the woodpecker is
playing his xylophone, sounding a different note on each branch that he
strikes with his little red hammer.
From the drowned lands come the boom of the frogs and the rattling signal
of the kingfisher, and to-day—the seventeenth of April—I heard the first
call of the returning loons. The water is very still, with schools of
pin-long striped fishes swimming in the sunny shallows.
The leaves came out in a night. One evening there was only a purple haze
over the bare twigs, and the next day the swollen buds had burst out into
a very vehemence of leafage, and all the woods were green. The fields on
the mainland also turned green that day, and on the island the wild
cherry blossoms opened in drifts of white, that loaded all the branches.
With all this newness out of doors, the thought of fresh foods possessed
me and I started forth on a foraging expedition, to find out whether the
hens had waked to their duty, and whether the cows were ready to give
milk again. Verily I was aweary of tinned milk, stored eggs, and packed
foods of all varieties. So I took the skiff and started for the
Jacksons’.
The Jackson farmhouse stands on a high hill, commanding the lake. From
her kitchen door Anna Jackson can see every boat that passes. Therefore,
long before one comes to shore, she is ready, wearing a frilled tea apron
and a welcoming smile, when the panting visitor comes toiling up the
steep slope from the landing. To-day the winds were contrary and I took
her unaware, by creeping along the shore in the lee, and Anna, in her
work dress, was digging stones out of the garden.
Grandma Jackson was knitting beside the stove in the sunny kitchen. A
peddler, a low voiced, dark-eyed young Jew, sat in the corner. At my
entrance he began unpacking his big oilcloth-covered case, drawing out
aprons, handkerchiefs, shirtwaists, stockings, until the floor was strewn
with its contents. Every article that one could name seemed stowed away
in that great pack—enough to have stocked a small department store. When
all had been displayed he began putting them away again.
“That’s all what I got,” he said with a patient smile. Presently he
shouldered his load and walked away, bending under its weight. We heard
him coughing as he passed through the gate.
These peddlers begin their travels with the spring, being heralded by the
telephones all along the line. It seems impossible that they should make
a living, but I suppose they do, for, after being shut in for a long
winter, few women can resist buying a ribbon or some lace when it is
brought to the very door.
“That feller won’t sleep at Joshua White’s to-night,” quoth Grandma
Jackson, watching the stooping figure out of sight. “All tramps and
peddlers and such like always put up at Joshua’s. He’d give them all a
supper and a bed.”
But Joshua White died yesterday, and his house was the “wake house” now,
for they still have wakes in this country—when the neighbors gather to
condole with the bereaved, extol the virtues of the deceased, and partake
of supper at midnight, when the whisky and the clay pipes are passed
around. In this case there would be no difficulty about praising the
dead man. Joshua White was a man of good standing, and wide charity, a
good neighbor and a kind friend. The community mourned his loss.
“Joshua was an awful proud man too,” said Grandma. “Do you think that he
would ever carry a handkerchief with a colored border? Well, I guess
not.”
At that moment the telephone bell rang.
“Gran,” said Anna, after a moment’s conversation, “Mary wants to know the
age of Alec’s eldest boy. Can you tell her?”
“I dunno,” answered Mrs. Jackson. “Let me see. No, I can’t remember.
Ask Mary haven’t they got some old horse or cow that they can reckon by?
There’s always some old critter on every farm that they counts the young
ones’ ages by. Alec’s Charley was born the spring they bought old Nance.
They must know how old she is.”
Just then the three Jackson children came in from school, with their bags
of books and little tin dinner pails. There was no running or shouting;
they sat down quietly at table. Six-year-old Beryl’s small face was pale
and grave. She had started that morning at seven o’clock, had walked
four miles to school, had sat all day on a hard bench with her little
feet dangling. At noon she had eaten her dinner of cold potatoes, “bread
and jell,” cake and pie, and at four o’clock she had started home again,
trudging those four long, muddy miles to a put-away supper. No wonder
she looked subdued. She was tired in mind and in her frail, small body,
but she is getting an education. Beryl is at the head of her class. She
tells you this with a little grown-up air.
It seems a topsy-turvey thing, this way of keeping schools open during
the winter, when only the children living close to the schoolhouses can
reach them through the snowdrifts and the mud, and closing them in summer
when the roads are good. I should turn things the other way round, and
give the long holiday in winter; but I am told that my plan would never
do. The farmers need the children. So in the rural districts the weeks
spent at lessons are few. It is only in the spring and fall that the
children can go to school and there is no such thing as “regular
attendance,” that bugbear of public instruction.
After all, I fancy that the youngsters learn as much while they toss the
hay in the clean, hot meadows, or when they drive the cattle along the
shady roads to the lakes, as they would if penned in the little one-room
houses, where some eighteen-year-old girl, just from high school,
struggles with the work of all the grades at once.
This thing of getting an education is a mighty matter in Canada. The
roads are dotted with schoolhouses, the papers have long columns of
advertisements for teachers, and it is always specified as to whether
Catholic or Protestant is needed. It seems the dear ambition of each
family to produce at least one teacher, and the Normal School at
Queensport turns them out by the score. On Monday mornings and Friday
afternoons vehicles of every description travel to and from town, taking
the girls home for Sundays and back for the week’s work.
Students hire a room in Queensport for two dollars a month, and with it
goes the privilege of cooking on the family stove and sitting in a warm
room to study. Those who live near enough to town bring their food from
home, so food costs them nothing. Thus they work their difficult way
through to the little country schools.
My neighbor, Mrs. Spellman, is doubly proud, for her two daughters are
teaching, one in Alberta, the other in far-away British Columbia.
“It was hard work to give them their training,” she says. “Their father
had no patience with the notion of sending them to high school, so he
wouldn’t help. But I made up my mind that they should have their chance.
They’d not be tied down to a farm all their days, as I’ve been. Mary, my
eldest, was always such a home girl too. She wouldn’t hear of leaving me
until I promised that she should come home every week. There wasn’t
anyone to drive her to town and back but me, but I seen to it that she
got home. Every Friday noon I’d harness up and go for her, coming back
long after dark. Every Monday morning I’d be up before day, to feed the
horse and cook breakfast in time to take her back to school again, and
she never was late. I always had her there by nine o’clock. Sometimes
the roads were so dark that I’d drive all the way with the reins in my
two hands. I was afraid to hold them in the one hand lest I should get
them crossed in the darkness and pull the horse out of the road and into
the drifts. I’d feel sometimes as though my hands was frozen. But I
never missed a week all those two long years. When Nellie, my second
girl, went, it wasn’t so hard for me. The two stayed in Queensport
together, and they didn’t get so homesick. Yes, it was a hard pull, but
I’d do it all over again, for my children did well. They stood at the
head of their class. I’m proud of them when they come home, summers.”
I have often wondered at these little schoolma’ams, with their youth,
their high spirits, and their wholly innocent love of pretty clothes and
beaux and good times. They have to board at one house and another,
accustoming themselves to all sorts of food, all kinds of families. They
must toil through rough weather to their work. They must learn to please
all parents, to conciliate school boards and supervisors. They must have
sense to steer a difficult way through neighborhood prejudice and to
avoid giving rise to gossip. A task for a strong woman, it has always
seemed to me, but I wonder no longer that so many succeed in it, since I
know something of the strength of the mothers who stand behind them.