I
Can you have a backlog in July? That depends upon circumstances.
In northern New England it is considered a sign of summer when the
housewives fill the fireplaces with branches of mountain laurel, and,
later, with the feathery stalks of the asparagus. This is often, too,
the timid expression of a tender feeling, under Puritanic repression,
which has not sufficient vent in the sweet-william and hollyhock at the
front door. This is a yearning after beauty and ornamentation which has
no other means of gratifying itself.
In the most rigid circumstances, the graceful nature of woman thus
discloses itself in these mute expressions of an undeveloped taste. You
may never doubt what the common flowers growing along the pathway to the
front door mean to the maiden of many summers who tends them;--love and
religion, and the weariness of an uneventful life. The sacredness of the
Sabbath, the hidden memory of an unrevealed and unrequited affection,
the slow years of gathering and wasting sweetness, are in the smell
of the pink and the sweet-clover. These sentimental plants breathe
something of the longing of the maiden who sits in the Sunday evenings
of summer on the lonesome front doorstone, singing the hymns of the
saints, and perennial as the myrtle that grows thereby.
Yet not always in summer, even with the aid of unrequited love and
devotional feeling, is it safe to let the fire go out on the hearth, in
our latitude. I remember when the last almost total eclipse of the sun
happened in August, what a bone-piercing chill came over the world.
Perhaps the imagination had something to do with causing the chill from
that temporary hiding of the sun to feel so much more penetrating
than that from the coming on of night, which shortly followed. It
was impossible not to experience a shudder as of the approach of the
Judgment Day, when the shadows were flung upon the green lawn, and we
all stood in the wan light, looking unfamiliar to each other. The
birds in the trees felt the spell. We could in fancy see those spectral
camp-fires which men would build on the earth, if the sun should slow
its fires down to about the brilliancy of the moon. It was a great
relief to all of us to go into the house, and, before a blazing
wood-fire, talk of the end of the world.
In New England it is scarcely ever safe to let the fire go out; it is
best to bank it, for it needs but the turn of a weather-vane at any
hour to sweep the Atlantic rains over us, or to bring down the chill of
Hudson's Bay. There are days when the steam ship on the Atlantic glides
calmly along under a full canvas, but its central fires must always be
ready to make steam against head-winds and antagonistic waves. Even
in our most smiling summer days one needs to have the materials of a
cheerful fire at hand. It is only by this readiness for a change that
one can preserve an equal mind. We are made provident and sagacious by
the fickleness of our climate. We should be another sort of people if
we could have that serene, unclouded trust in nature which the Egyptian
has. The gravity and repose of the Eastern peoples is due to the
unchanging aspect of the sky, and the deliberation and regularity of the
great climatic processes. Our literature, politics, religion, show
the effect of unsettled weather. But they compare favorably with the
Egyptian, for all that.