=A Fire at Night=:--If possible, found this theme on actual observation

and experience. Tell of your first knowledge of the fire--the smoke and

the flame, or the ringing of bells and the shouting. From what point of

view did you see the fire? Tell how it looked when you first saw it. Use

words of color and action, as Mr. Muir does. Perhaps you can make your

description vivid by means of sound-words. Tell what people did and what

they said. Did you hear anything said by the owners of the property that

was burning? Go on and trace the progress of the fire, describing its

change in volume and color. Try at all times to make your reader see the

beauty and fierceness and destructiveness of the fire. You might close

your theme with the putting out of the fire, or perhaps you will prefer

to speak of the appearance of the ruins by daylight. When you have

finished your theme, read it over, and see where you can touch it up to

make it clearer and more impressive. Read again some of the most

brilliant passages in Mr. Muir's description, and see how you can profit

by the devices he uses.

=In the Woods=:--Give an account of a long or a short trip in the woods,

and tell what you observed. It might be well to plan this theme a number

of days before writing it, and in the interim to take a walk in the

woods to get mental notes. In writing the theme, give your chief

attention to the trees--their situation, appearance, height, manner of

growth from the seedling up, peculiarities. Make clear the differences

between the kinds of trees, especially between varieties of the same

species. You can make good use of color-words in your descriptions of

leaves, flowers, seed-receptacles (cones, keys, wings, etc.), and

berries. Keep your work simple, almost as if you were talking to some

one who wishes information about the forest trees.

COLLATERAL READINGS

Our National Parks John Muir

My First Summer in the Sierra " "

The Mountains of California " "

The Story of my Boyhood and Youth " "

Stickeen: The Story of a Dog " "

The Yosemite John Muir

The Giant Forest (chapter 18 of _The Mountains_) Stewart Edward White

The Pines (chapter 8 of _The Mountains_) " " "

The Blazed Trail " " "

The Forest " " "

The Heart of the Ancient Wood C.G.D. Roberts

The Story of a Thousand-year Pine

(in _Wild Life on the Rockies_) Enos A. Mills

The Lodge-pole Pine

(in _Wild Life on the Rockies_) " "

Rocky Mountain Forests

(in _Wild Life on the Rockies_) " "

The Spell of the Rockies " "

Under the Sky in California C.F. Saunders

Field Days in California Bradford Torrey

The Snowing of the Pines (poem) T.W. Higginson

A Young Fir Wood (poem) D.G. Rossetti

The Spirit of the Pine (poem) Bayard Taylor

To a Pine Tree J.R. Lowell

Silverado Squatters Robert Louis Stevenson

Travels with a Donkey " " "

A Forest Fire (in _The Old Pacific Capital_) " " "

The Two Matches (in _Fables_) " " "

In the Maine Woods Henry D. Thoreau

Yosemite Trails J.S. Chase

The Conservation of Natural Resources Charles R. Van Hise

Getting Acquainted with the Trees J.H. McFarland

The Trees (poem) Josephine Preston Peabody

For biographical material relating to John Muir, consult: With John o'

Birds and John o' Mountains, Century, 80:521 (Portraits); At Home with

Muir, Overland Monthly (New Series), 52:125, August, 1908; Craftsman,

7:665 (page 637 for portrait), March, 1905; Craftsman, 23:324

(Portrait); Outlook, 80:303, January 3, 1905; Bookman, 26:593,

February, 1908; World's Work, 17:11355, March, 1909; 19:12529,

February, 1910.

WAITING

JOHN BURROUGHS

Serene, I fold my hands and wait,

Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea;

I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,

For lo! my own shall come to me.

I stay my haste, I make delays,

For what avails this eager pace?

I stand amid the eternal ways,

And what is mine shall know my face.

Asleep, awake, by night or day,

The friends I seek are seeking me;

No wind can drive my bark astray

Nor change the tide of destiny.

What matter if I stand alone?

I wait with joy the coming years;

My heart shall reap where it has sown,

And garner up its fruit of tears.

The law of love binds every heart

And knits it to its utmost kin,

Nor can our lives flow long apart

From souls our secret souls would win.

The stars come nightly to the sky,

The tidal wave comes to the sea;

Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high

Can keep my own away from me.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

This poem is so easy that it needs little explanation. It shows the

calmness and confidence of one who feels that the universe is right, and

that everything comes out well sooner or later. Read the poem through

slowly. _Its utmost kin_ means its most distant relations or

connections. _The tidal wave_ means the regular and usual flow of the

tide. _Nor time nor space_:--Perhaps Mr. Burroughs was thinking of the

Bible, Romans 8:38, 39.

Does the poem mean to encourage mere waiting, without action? Does it

discourage effort? Just how much is it intended to convey? Is the theory

expressed here a good one? Do you believe it to be true? Read the verses

again, slowly and carefully, thinking what they mean. If you like them,

take time to learn them.

COLLATERAL READINGS

For a list of Mr. Burrough's books, see page 177.

Song: The year's at the spring Robert Browning

The Building of the Chimney Richard Watson Gilder

With John o'Birds and John o'Mountains (Century Magazine, 80:521)

A Day at Slabsides (Outlook, 66:351) Washington Gladden

Century, 86:884, October, 1915 (Portrait); Outlook, 78:878, December 3,

1904.

EXERCISES

Try writing a stanza or two in the meter and with the rhyme that Mr.

Burroughs uses. Below are given lines that may prove suggestive:--

1. One night when all the sky was clear

2. The plum tree near the garden wall

3. I watched the children at their play

4. The wind swept down across the plain

5. The yellow leaves are drifting down

6. Along the dusty way we sped (In an Automobile)

7. I looked about my garden plot (In my Garden)

8. The sky was red with sudden flame

9. I walked among the forest trees

10. He runs to meet me every day (My Dog)

THE PONT DU GARD

HENRY JAMES

(Chapter XXVI of _A Little Tour in France_)

It was a pleasure to feel one's self in Provence again,--the land where

the silver-gray earth is impregnated with the light of the sky. To

celebrate the event, as soon as I arrived at Nîmes I engaged a calèche

to convey me to the Pont du Gard. The day was yet young, and it was

perfectly fair; it appeared well, for a longish drive, to take

advantage, without delay, of such security. After I had left the town I

became more intimate with that Provençal charm which I had already

enjoyed from the window of the train, and which glowed in the sweet

sunshine and the white rocks, and lurked in the smoke-puffs of the

little olives. The olive-trees in Provence are half the landscape. They

are neither so tall, so stout, nor so richly contorted as I have seen

them beyond the Alps; but this mild colorless bloom seems the very

texture of the country. The road from Nîmes, for a distance of fifteen

miles, is superb; broad enough for an army, and as white and firm as a

dinner-table. It stretches away over undulations which suggest a kind of

harmony; and in the curves it makes through the wide, free country,

where there is never a hedge or a wall, and the detail is always

exquisite, there is something majestic, almost processional. Some twenty

minutes before I reached the little inn that marks the termination of

the drive, my vehicle met with an accident which just missed being

serious, and which engaged the attention of a gentleman, who, followed

by his groom and mounted on a strikingly handsome horse, happened to

ride up at the moment. This young man, who, with his good looks and

charming manner, might have stepped out of a novel of Octave Feuillet,

gave me some very intelligent advice in reference to one of my horses

that had been injured, and was so good as to accompany me to the inn,

with the resources of which he was acquainted, to see that his

recommendations were carried out. The result of our interview was that

he invited me to come and look at a small but ancient château in the

neighborhood, which he had the happiness--not the greatest in the world,

he intimated--to inhabit, and at which I engaged to present myself after

I should have spent an hour at the Pont du Gard. For the moment, when we

separated, I gave all my attention to that great structure. You are very

near it before you see it; the ravine it spans suddenly opens and

exhibits the picture. The scene at this point grows extremely beautiful.

The ravine is the valley of the Gardon, which the road from Nîmes has

followed some time without taking account of it, but which, exactly at

the right distance from the aqueduct, deepens and expands, and puts on

those characteristics which are best suited to give it effect. The gorge

becomes romantic, still, and solitary, and, with its white rocks and

wild shrubbery, hangs over the clear, colored river, in whose slow

course there is here and there a deeper pool. Over the valley, from side

to side, and ever so high in the air, stretch the three tiers of the

tremendous bridge. They are unspeakably imposing, and nothing could well

be more Roman. The hugeness, the solidity, the unexpectedness, the

monumental rectitude of the whole thing leave you nothing to say--at the

time--and make you stand gazing. You simply feel that it is noble and

perfect, that it has the quality of greatness. A road, branching from

the highway, descends to the level of the river and passes under one of

the arches. This road has a wide margin of grass and loose stones, which

slopes upward into the bank of the ravine. You may sit here as long as

you please, staring up at the light, strong piers; the spot is extremely

natural, though two or three stone benches have been erected on it. I

remained there an hour and got a complete impression; the place was

perfectly soundless, and for the time, at least, lonely; the splendid

afternoon had begun to fade, and there was a fascination in the object I

had come to see. It came to pass that at the same time I discovered in

it a certain stupidity, a vague brutality. That element is rarely absent

from great Roman work, which is wanting in the nice adaptation of the

means to the end. The means are always exaggerated; the end is so much

more than attained. The Roman rigidity was apt to overshoot the mark,

and I suppose a race which could do nothing small is as defective as a

race that can do nothing great. Of this Roman rigidity the Pont du Gard

is an admirable example. It would be a great injustice, however, not to

insist upon its beauty,--a kind of manly beauty, that of an object

constructed not to please but to serve, and impressive simply from the

scale on which it carries out this intention. The number of arches in

each tier is different; they are smaller and more numerous as they

ascend. The preservation of the thing is extraordinary; nothing has

crumbled or collapsed; every feature remains; and the huge blocks of

stone, of a brownish-yellow (as if they had been baked by the Provençal

sun for eighteen centuries), pile themselves, without mortar or cement,

as evenly as the day they were laid together. All this to carry the

water of a couple of springs to a little provincial city! The conduit on

the top has retained its shape and traces of the cement with which it

was lined. When the vague twilight began to gather, the lonely valley

seemed to fill itself with the shadow of the Roman name, as if the

mighty empire were still as erect as the supports of the aqueduct; and

it was open to a solitary tourist, sitting there sentimental, to believe

that no people has ever been, or will ever be, as great as that,

measured, as we measure the greatness of an individual, by the push they

gave to what they undertook. The Pont du Gard is one of the three or

four deepest impressions they have left; it speaks of them in a manner

with which they might have been satisfied.

I feel as if it were scarcely discreet to indicate the whereabouts of

the château of the obliging young man I had met on the way from Nîmes; I

must content myself with saying that it nestled in an enchanting

valley,--_dans le fond_, as they say in France,--and that I took my

course thither on foot, after leaving the Pont du Gard. I find it noted

in my journal as "an adorable little corner." The principal feature of

the place is a couple of very ancient towers, brownish-yellow in hue,

and mantled in scarlet Virginia-creeper. One of these towers, reputed to

be of Saracenic origin, is isolated, and is only the more effective; the

other is incorporated in the house, which is delightfully fragmentary

and irregular. It had got to be late by this time, and the lonely

_castel_ looked crepuscular and mysterious. An old housekeeper was sent

for, who showed me the rambling interior; and then the young man took me

into a dim old drawing-room, which had no less than four

chimney-pieces, all unlighted, and gave me a refection of fruit and

sweet wine. When I praised the wine and asked him what it was, he said

simply, "C'est du vin de ma mère!" Throughout my little journey I had

never yet felt myself so far from Paris; and this was a sensation I

enjoyed more than my host, who was an involuntary exile, consoling

himself with laying out a _manège_, which he showed me as I walked away.

His civility was great, and I was greatly touched by it. On my way back

to the little inn where I had left my vehicle, I passed the Pont du

Gard, and took another look at it. Its great arches made windows for the

evening sky, and the rocky ravine, with its dusky cedars and shining

river, was lonelier than before. At the inn I swallowed, or tried to

swallow, a glass of horrible wine with my coachman; after which, with my

reconstructed team, I drove back to Nîmes in the moonlight. It only

added a more solitary whiteness to the constant sheen of the Provençal

landscape.

NOTES

=The Pont du Gard=:--A famous aqueduct built by the Romans many years

ago.

=Provence=:--One of the old provinces in southeast France.

=Nîmes=:--(N[=e][=e]m) A town in southeast France, noted for its Roman

ruins.

=calèche=:--(ka l[=a]sh') The French term for a light covered carriage

with seats for four besides the driver.

=Octave Feuillet=:--A French writer, the author of _The Romance of a

Poor Young Man_; Feuillet's heroes are young, dark, good-looking, and

poetic.

=château=:--The country residence of a wealthy or titled person.

=Gardon=:--A river in France flowing into the Rhone.

=nice=:--Look up the meaning of this word.

=dans le fond=:--In the bottom.

=Saracenic=:--The Saracen invaders of France were vanquished at Tours in

732 A.D.

=castel=:--A castle.

=C'est=, etc.:--It is some of my mother's wine.

=manège=:--A place where horses are kept and trained.

QUESTIONS FOR STUDY

Can you find out anything about Provence and its history? By means of

what details does Mr. James give you an idea of the country? What is

meant by _processional_? Why is the episode of the young man

particularly pleasing at the point at which it is related? How does the

author show the character of the aqueduct? What does _monumental

rectitude_ mean? Why is it a good term? What is meant here by "a certain

stupidity, a vague brutality"? Can you think of any great Roman works of

which Mr. James's statement is true? What did the Romans most commonly

build? Can you find out something of their style of building? Are there

any reasons why the arches at the top should be smaller and lighter than

those below? What does this great aqueduct show of the Roman people and

the Roman government? Notice what Mr. James says of the way in which we

measure greatness: Is this a good way? Why would the Romans like the way

in which the Pont du Gard speaks of them? Why is it not "discreet" to

tell where the young man's château is? Why does the traveler feel so far

from Paris? Why does the young man treat the traveler with such

unnecessary friendliness? See how the author closes his chapter by

bringing the description round to the Pont du Gard again and ending with

the note struck in the first lines. Is this a good method?

THEME SUBJECTS

A Bridge

Country Roads

An Accident on the Road

A Remote Dwelling

The Stranger

At a Country Hotel

Roman Roads

A Moonlight Scene

A Picturesque Ravine

What I should Like to See in Europe

Traveling in Europe

Reading a Guide Book

The Baedeker

A Ruin

The Character of the Romans

The Romans in France

Level Country

A Sunny Day

The Parlor

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING

=At a Country Hotel=:--Tell how you happened to go to the hotel (this

part may be true or merely imagined). Describe your approach, on foot or

in some conveyance. Give your first general impression of the building

and its surroundings. What persons were visible when you reached the

entrance? What did they say and do? How did you feel? Describe the room

that you entered, noting any striking or amusing things. Tell of any

particularly interesting person, and what he (or she) said. Did you have

something to eat? If so, describe the dining-room, and tell about the

food. Perhaps you will have something to say about the waiter. How long

did you stay at the hotel? What incident was connected with your

departure? Were you glad or sorry to leave?

=The Bridge=:--Choose a large bridge that you have seen. Where is it,

and what stream or ravine does it span? When was it built? Clearly

indicate the point of view of your description. If you change the point

of view, let the reader know of your doing so. Give a general idea of

the size of the bridge: You need not give measurements; try rather to

make the reader feel the size from the comparisons that you use.

Describe the banks at each end of the bridge, and the effect of the

water or the abyss between. How is the bridge supported? Try to make the

reader feel its solidity and safety. Is it clumsy or graceful? Why? Give

any interesting details in its appearance. What conveyances or persons

are passing over it? How does the bridge make you feel?

COLLATERAL READINGS

A Little Tour in France Henry James

A Small Boy and Others " "

Portraits of Places " "

Travels with a Donkey R.L. Stevenson

An Inland Voyage " "

Along French Byways Clifton Johnson

Seeing France with Uncle John Anne Warner

The Story of France Mary Macgregor

The Reds of the Midi Felix Gras

A Wanderer in Paris E.V. Lucas

An American in Europe (poem) Henry Van Dyke

Home Thoughts from Abroad Robert Browning

In and Out of Three Normandy Inns Anna Bowman Dodd

Cathedral Days " " "

From Ponkapog to Pesth T.B. Aldrich

Our Hundred Days in Europe O.W. Holmes

One Year Abroad Blanche Willis Howard

Well-worn Roads F.H. Smith

Gondola Days " "

Saunterings C.D. Warner

By Oak and Thorn Alice Brown

Fresh Fields John Burroughs

Our Old Home Nathaniel Hawthorne

Penelope's Progress Kate Douglas Wiggin

Penelope's Experiences " " "

A Cathedral Courtship " " "

Ten Days in Spain Kate Fields

Russian Rambles Isabel F. Hapgood

For biography and criticism of Mr. James, see: American Writers of

To-day, pp. 68-86, H.C. Vedder; American Prose Masters, pp. 337-400,

W.C. Brownell; and (for the teacher), Century, 84:108 (Portrait) and

87:150 (Portrait); Scribners, 48:670 (Portrait); Chautauquan, 64:146

(Portrait).

THE YOUNGEST SON OF HIS FATHER'S HOUSE

ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH

The eldest son of his father's house,

His was the right to have and hold;

He took the chair before the hearth,

And he was master of all the gold.

The second son of his father's house,

He took the wheatfields broad and fair,

He took the meadows beside the brook,

And the white flocks that pastured there.

"_Pipe high--pipe low! Along the way

From dawn till eve I needs must sing!

Who has a song throughout the day,

He has no need of anything!_"

The youngest son of his father's house

Had neither gold nor flocks for meed.

He went to the brook at break of day,

And made a pipe out of a reed.

"_Pipe high--pipe low! Each wind that blows

Is comrade to my wandering.

Who has a song wherever he goes,

He has no need of anything!_"

His brother's wife threw open the door.

"Piper, come in for a while," she said.

"Thou shalt sit at my hearth since thou art so poor

And thou shalt give me a song instead!"

Pipe high--pipe low--all over the wold!

"Lad, wilt thou not come in?" asked she.

"Who has a song, he feels no cold!

My brother's hearth is mine own," quoth he.

"_Pipe high--pipe low! For what care I

Though there be no hearth on the wide gray plain?

I have set my face to the open sky,

And have cloaked myself in the thick gray rain._"

Over the hills where the white clouds are,

He piped to the sheep till they needs must come.

They fed in pastures strange and far,

But at fall of night he brought them home.

They followed him, bleating, wherever he led:

He called his brother out to see.

"I have brought thee my flocks for a gift," he said,

"For thou seest that they are mine," quoth he.

"_Pipe high--pipe low! wherever I go

The wide grain presses to hear me sing.

Who has a song, though his state be low,

He has no need of anything._"

"Ye have taken my house," he said, "and my sheep,

But ye had no heart to take me in.

I will give ye my right for your own to keep,

But ye be not my kin.

"To the kind fields my steps are led.

My people rush across the plain.

My bare feet shall not fear to tread

With the cold white feet of the rain.

"My father's house is wherever I pass;

My brothers are each stock and stone;

My mother's bosom in the grass

Yields a sweet slumber to her son.

"Ye are rich in house and flocks," said he,

"Though ye have no heart to take me in.

There was only a reed that was left for me,

And ye be not my kin."

"_Pipe high--pipe low! Though skies be gray,

Who has a song, he needs must roam!

Even though ye call all day, all day,

'Brother, wilt thou come home?_'"

Over the meadows and over the wold,

Up to the hills where the skies begin,

The youngest son of his father's house

Went forth to find his kin.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

The stanzas in italic are a kind of refrain; they represent the music of

the youngest son.

Why does the piper not go into the house when his brother's wife invites

him? What does he mean when he says, "My brother's hearth is mine own"?

Why does he say that the sheep are his? What does he mean when he says,

"I will give ye my right," etc.? Why are his brothers not his kin? Who

are the people that "rush across the plain"? Explain the fourteenth

stanza. Why did the piper go forth to find his kin? Whom would he claim

as his kindred? Why? Does the poem have a deeper meaning than that which

first appears? What kind of person is represented by the youngest son?

What are meant by his pipe and the music? Who are those who cast him

out? Re-read the whole poem with the deeper meaning in mind.

COLLATERAL READINGS

The Prophet Josephine Preston Peabody

The Piper: Act I " " "

The Shepherd of King Admetus James Russell Lowell

The Shoes that Danced Anna Hempstead Branch

The Heart of the Road and Other Poems " " "

Rose of the Wind and Other Poems " " "

TENNESSEE'S PARTNER

BRET HARTE

I do not think that we ever knew his real name. Our ignorance of it

certainly never gave us any social inconvenience, for at Sandy Bar in

1854 most men were christened anew. Sometimes these appellatives were

derived from some distinctiveness of dress, as in the case of "Dungaree

Jack"; or from some peculiarity of habit, as shown in "Saleratus Bill,"

so called from an undue proportion of that chemical in his daily bread;

or from some unlucky slip, as exhibited in "The Iron Pirate," a mild,

inoffensive man, who earned that baleful title by his unfortunate

mispronunciation of the term "iron pyrites." Perhaps this may have been

the beginning of a rude heraldry; but I am constrained to think that it

was because a man's real name in that day rested solely upon his own

unsupported statement. "Call yourself Clifford, do you?" said Boston,

addressing a timid newcomer with infinite scorn; "hell is full of such

Cliffords!" He then introduced the unfortunate man, whose name happened

to be really Clifford, as "Jaybird Charley,"--an unhallowed inspiration

of the moment that clung to him ever after.

But to return to Tennessee's Partner, whom we never knew by any other

than this relative title. That he had ever existed as a separate and

distinct individuality we only learned later. It seems that in 1853 he

left Poker Flat to go to San Francisco, ostensibly to procure a wife. He

never got any farther than Stockton. At that place he was attracted by a

young person who waited upon the table at the hotel where he took his

meals. One morning he said something to her which caused her to smile

not unkindly, to somewhat coquettishly break a plate of toast over his

upturned, serious, simple face, and to retreat to the kitchen. He

followed her, and emerged a few moments later, covered with more toast

and victory. That day week they were married by a justice of the peace,

and returned to Poker Flat. I am aware that something more might be made

of this episode, but I prefer to tell it as it was current at Sandy

Bar,--in the gulches and bar-rooms,--where all sentiment was modified by

a strong sense of humor.

Of their married felicity but little is known, perhaps for the reason

that Tennessee, then living with his partner, one day took occasion to

say something to the bride on his own account, at which, it is said, she

smiled not unkindly and chastely retreated,--this time as far as

Marysville, where Tennessee followed her, and where they went to

housekeeping without the aid of a justice of the peace. Tennessee's

Partner took the loss of his wife simply and seriously, as was his

fashion. But to everybody's surprise, when Tennessee one day returned

from Marysville, without his partner's wife,--she having smiled and

retreated with somebody else,--Tennessee's Partner was the first man to

shake his hand and greet him with affection. The boys who had gathered

in the cañon to see the shooting were naturally indignant. Their

indignation might have found vent in sarcasm but for a certain look in

Tennessee's Partner's eye that indicated a lack of humorous

appreciation. In fact, he was a grave man, with a steady application to

practical detail which was unpleasant in a difficulty.

Meanwhile a popular feeling against Tennessee had grown up on the Bar.

He was known to be a gambler; he was suspected to be a thief. In these

suspicions Tennessee's Partner was equally compromised; his continued

intimacy with Tennessee after the affair above quoted could only be

accounted for on the hypothesis of a copartnership of crime. At last

Tennessee's guilt became flagrant. One day he overtook a stranger on his

way to Red Dog. The stranger afterward related that Tennessee beguiled

the time with interesting anecdote and reminiscence, but illogically

concluded the interview in the following words: "And now, young man,

I'll trouble you for your knife, your pistols, and your money. You see

your weppings might get you into trouble at Red Dog, and your money's a

temptation to the evilly disposed. I think you said your address was San

Francisco. I shall endeavor to call." It may be stated here that

Tennessee had a fine flow of humor, which no business preoccupation

could wholly subdue.

This exploit was his last. Red Dog and Sandy Bar made common cause

against the highwayman. Tennessee was hunted in very much the same

fashion as his prototype, the grizzly. As the toils closed around him,

he made a desperate dash through the Bar, emptying his revolver at the

crowd before the Arcade Saloon, and so on up Grizzly Cañon; but at its

farther extremity he was stopped by a small man on a gray horse. The men

looked at each other a moment in silence. Both were fearless, both

self-possessed and independent, and both types of a civilization that in

the seventeenth century would have been called heroic, but in the

nineteenth simply "reckless."

"What have you got there?--I call," said Tennessee quietly.

"Two bowers and an ace," said the stranger as quietly, showing two

revolvers and a bowie-knife.

"That takes me," returned Tennessee; and, with this gambler's epigram,

he threw away his useless pistol and rode back with his captor.

It was a warm night. The cool breeze which usually sprang up with the

going down of the sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was that

evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little cañon was stifling with

heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on the Bar sent forth

faint sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day and its fierce

passions still filled the camp. Lights moved restlessly along the bank

of the river, striking no answering reflection from its tawny current.

Against the blackness of the pines the windows of the old loft above the

express-office stood out staringly bright; and through their curtainless

panes the loungers below could see the forms of those who were even then

deciding the fate of Tennessee. And above all this, etched on the dark

firmament, rose the Sierra, remote and passionless, crowned with remoter

passionless stars.

The trial of Tennessee was conducted as fairly as was consistent with a

judge and jury who felt themselves to some extent obliged to justify, in

their verdict, the previous irregularities of arrest and indictment. The

law of Sandy Bar was implacable, but not vengeful. The excitement and

personal feeling of the chase were over; with Tennessee safe in their

hands, they were ready to listen patiently to any defense, which they

were already satisfied was insufficient. There being no doubt in their

own minds, they were willing to give the prisoner the benefit of any

that might exist. Secure in the hypothesis that he ought to be hanged

on general principles, they indulged him with more latitude of defense

than his reckless hardihood seemed to ask. The Judge appeared to be more

anxious than the prisoner, who, otherwise unconcerned, evidently took a

grim pleasure in the responsibility he had created. "I don't take any

hand in this yer game," had been his invariable but good-humored reply

to all questions. The Judge--who was also his captor--for a moment

vaguely regretted that he had not shot him "on sight" that morning, but

presently dismissed this human weakness as unworthy of the judicial

mind. Nevertheless, when there was a tap at the door, and it was said

that Tennessee's Partner was there on behalf of the prisoner, he was

admitted at once without question. Perhaps the younger members of the

jury, to whom the proceedings were becoming irksomely thoughtful, hailed

him as a relief. For he was not, certainly, an imposing figure. Short

and stout, with a square face, sunburned into a preternatural redness,

clad in a loose duck "jumper" and trousers streaked and splashed with

red soil, his aspect under any circumstances would have been quaint, and

was now even ridiculous. As he stooped to deposit at his feet a heavy

carpetbag he was carrying, it became obvious, from partially developed

legends and inscriptions, that the material with which his trousers had

been patched had been originally intended for a less ambitious covering.

Yet he advanced with great gravity, and after shaking the hand of each

person in the room with labored cordiality, he wiped his serious

perplexed face on a red bandana handkerchief, a shade lighter than his

complexion, laid his powerful hand upon the table to steady himself, and

thus addressed the Judge:--

"I was passin' by," he began, by way of apology, "and I thought I'd just

step in and see how things was gittin' on with Tennessee thar,--my

pardner. It's a hot night. I disremember any sich weather before on the

Bar."

He paused a moment, but nobody volunteering any other meteorological

recollection, he again had recourse to his pocket-handkerchief, and for

some moments mopped his face diligently.

"Have you anything to say on behalf of the prisoner?" said the Judge

finally.

"Thet's it," said Tennessee's Partner, in a tone of relief. "I come yar

as Tennessee's pardner,--knowing him nigh on four year, off and on, wet

and dry, in luck and, out o' luck. His ways ain't aller my ways, but

thar ain't any p'ints in that young man, thar ain't any liveliness as

he's been up to, as I don't know. And you sez to me, sez

you,--confidential-like, and between man and man,--sez you, 'Do you know

anything in his behalf?' and I sez to you, sez I,--confidential-like, as

between man and man,--'What should a man know of his pardner?'"

"Is this all you have to say?" asked the Judge impatiently, feeling,

perhaps, that a dangerous sympathy of humor was beginning to humanize

the court.

"Thet's so," continued Tennessee's Partner. "It ain't for me to say

anything agin' him. And now, what's the case? Here's Tennessee wants

money, wants it bad, and doesn't like to ask it of his old pardner.

Well, what does Tennessee do? He lays for a stranger, and he fetches

that stranger; and you lays for _him_, and you fetches _him_; and the

honors is easy. And I put it to you, bein' a fa'r-minded man, and to

you, gentlemen all, as fa'r-minded men, ef this isn't so."

"Prisoner," said the Judge, interrupting, "have you any questions to ask

this man?"

"No! no!" continued Tennessee's Partner hastily. "I play this yer hand

alone. To come down to the bed-rock, it's just this: Tennessee, thar,

has played it pretty rough and expensive-like on a stranger, and on this

yer camp. And now, what's the fair thing? Some would say more, some

would say less. Here's seventeen hundred dollars in coarse gold and a

watch,--it's about all my pile,--and call it square!" And before a hand

could be raised to prevent him, he had emptied the contents of the

carpetbag upon the table.

For a moment his life was in jeopardy. One or two men sprang to their

feet, several hands groped for hidden weapons, and a suggestion to

"throw him from the window" was only overridden by a gesture from the

Judge. Tennessee laughed. And apparently oblivious of the excitement,

Tennessee's Partner improved the opportunity to mop his face again with

his handkerchief.

When order was restored, and the man was made to understand, by the use

of forcible figures and rhetoric, that Tennessee's offense could not be

condoned by money, his face took a more serious and sanguinary hue, and

those who were nearest to him noticed that his rough hand trembled

slightly on the table. He hesitated a moment as he slowly returned the

gold to the carpetbag, as if he had not yet entirely caught the elevated

sense of justice which swayed the tribunal, and was perplexed with the

belief that he had not offered enough. Then he turned to the Judge, and

saying, "This yer is a lone hand, played alone, and without my pardner,"

he bowed to the jury and was about to withdraw, when the Judge called

him back:--

"If you have anything to say to Tennessee, you had better say it now."

For the first time that evening the eyes of the prisoner and his strange

advocate met. Tennessee smiled, showed his white teeth, and saying,

"Euchred, old man!" held out his hand. Tennessee's Partner took it in

his own, and saying, "I just dropped in as I was passin' to see how

things was gettin' on," let the hand passively fall, and adding that "it

was a warm night," again mopped his face with his handkerchief, and

without another word withdrew.

The two men never again met each other alive. For the unparalleled

insult of a bribe offered to Judge Lynch--who, whether bigoted, weak, or

narrow, was at least incorruptible--firmly fixed in the mind of that

mythical personage any wavering determination of Tennessee's fate; and

at the break of day he was marched, closely guarded, to meet it at the

top of Marley's Hill.

How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused to say anything, how

perfect were the arrangements of the committee, were all duly reported,

with the addition of a warning moral and example to all future

evil-doers, in the "Red Dog Clarion," by its editor, who was present,

and to whose vigorous English I cheerfully refer the reader. But the

beauty of that midsummer morning, the blessed amity of earth and air and

sky, the awakened life of the free woods and hills, the joyous renewal

and promise of Nature, and above all, the infinite serenity that

thrilled through each, was not reported, as not being a part of the

social lesson. And yet, when the weak and foolish deed was done, and a

life, with its possibilities and responsibilities, had passed out of the

misshapen thing that dangled between earth and sky, the birds sang, the

flowers bloomed, the sun shone, as cheerily as before; and possibly the

"Red Dog Clarion" was right.

Tennessee's Partner was not in the group that surrounded the ominous

tree. But as they turned to disperse, attention was drawn to the

singular appearance of a motionless donkey-cart halted at the side of

the road. As they approached, they at once recognized the venerable

"Jenny" and the two-wheeled cart as the property of Tennessee's Partner,

used by him in carrying dirt from his claim; and a few paces distant the

owner of the equipage himself, sitting under a buckeye-tree, wiping the

perspiration from his glowing face. In answer to an inquiry, he said he

had come for the body of the "diseased," "if it was all the same to the

committee." He didn't wish to "hurry anything"; he could "wait." He was

not working that day; and when the gentlemen were done with the

"diseased," he would take him. "Ef thar is any present," he added, in

his simple, serious way, "as would care to jine in the fun'l, they kin

come." Perhaps it was from a sense of humor, which I have already

intimated was a feature of Sandy Bar,--perhaps it was from something

even better than that, but two thirds of the loungers accepted the

invitation at once.

It was noon when the body of Tennessee was delivered into the hands of

his partner. As the cart drew up to the fatal tree, we noticed that it

contained a rough oblong box,--apparently made from a section of

sluicing,--and half filled with bark and the tassels of pine. The cart

was further decorated with slips of willow and made fragrant with

buckeye-blossoms. When the body was deposited in the box, Tennessee's

Partner's drew over it a piece of tarred canvas, and gravely mounting

the narrow seat in front, with his feet upon the shafts, urged the

little donkey forward. The equipage moved slowly on, at that decorous

pace which was habitual with Jenny even under less solemn

circumstances. The men--half curiously, half jestingly, but all

good-humoredly--strolled along beside the cart, some in advance, some a

little in the rear of the homely catafalque. But whether from the

narrowing of the road or some present sense of decorum, as the cart

passed on, the company fell to the rear in couples, keeping step, and

otherwise assuming the external show of a formal procession. Jack

Folinsbee, who had at the outset played a funeral march in dumb show

upon an imaginary trombone, desisted from a lack of sympathy and

appreciation,--not having, perhaps, your true humorist's capacity to be

content with the enjoyment of his own fun.

The way led through Grizzly Cañon, by this time clothed in funereal

drapery and shadows. The redwoods, burying their moccasined feet in the

red soil, stood in Indian file along the track, trailing an uncouth

benediction from their bending boughs upon the passing bier. A hare,

surprised into helpless inactivity, sat upright and pulsating in the

ferns by the roadside as the cortège went by. Squirrels hastened to gain

a secure outlook from higher boughs; and the blue-jays, spreading their

wings, fluttered before them like outriders, until the outskirts of

Sandy Bar were reached, and the solitary cabin of Tennessee's Partner.

Viewed under more favorable circumstances, it would not have been a

cheerful place. The unpicturesque site, the rude and unlovely outlines,

the unsavory details, which distinguish the nest-building of the

California miner, were all here with the dreariness of decay superadded.

A few paces from the cabin there was a rough inclosure, which, in the

brief days of Tennessee's Partner's matrimonial felicity, had been used

as a garden, but was now overgrown with fern. As we approached it, we

were surprised to find that what we had taken for a recent attempt at

cultivation was the broken soil about an open grave.

The cart was halted before the inclosure, and rejecting the offers of

assistance with the same air of simple self-reliance he had displayed

throughout, Tennessee's Partner lifted the rough coffin on his back, and

deposited it unaided within the shallow grave. He then nailed down the

board which served as a lid, and mounting the little mound of earth

beside it, took off his hat and slowly mopped his face with his

handkerchief. This the crowd felt was a preliminary to speech, and they

disposed themselves variously on stumps and boulders, and sat expectant.

"When a man," began Tennessee's Partner slowly, "has been running free

all day, what's the natural thing for him to do? Why, to come home. And

if he ain't in a condition to go home, what can his best friend do? Why,

bring him home. And here's Tennessee has been running free, and we

brings him home from his wandering." He paused and picked up a fragment

of quartz, rubbed it thoughtfully on his sleeve, and went on: "It ain't

the first time that I've packed him on my back, as you see'd me now. It

ain't the first time that I brought him to this yer cabin when he

couldn't help himself; it ain't the first time that I and Jinny have

waited for him on yon hill, and picked him up and so fetched him home,

when he couldn't speak and didn't know me. And now that it's the last

time, why"--he paused and rubbed the quartz gently on his sleeve--"you

see it's sort of rough on his pardner. And now, gentlemen," he added

abruptly, picking up his long-handled shovel, "the fun'l's over; and my

thanks, and Tennessee's thanks, to you for your trouble."

Resisting any proffers of assistance, he began to fill in the grave,

turning his back upon the crowd, that after a few moments' hesitation

gradually withdrew. As they crossed the little ridge that hid Sandy Bar

from view, some, looking back, thought they could see Tennessee's

Partner, his work done, sitting upon the grave, his shovel between his

knees, and his face buried in his red bandana handkerchief. But it was

argued by others that you couldn't tell his face from his handkerchief

at that distance, and this point remained undecided.

In the reaction that followed the feverish excitement of that day,

Tennessee's Partner was not forgotten. A secret investigation had

cleared him of any complicity in Tennessee's guilt, and left only a

suspicion of his general sanity. Sandy Bar made a point of calling on

him, and proffering various uncouth but well-meant kindnesses. But from

that day his rude health and great strength seemed visibly to decline;

and when the rainy season fairly set in, and the tiny grass-blades were

beginning to peep from the rocky mound above Tennessee's grave, he took

to his bed.

One night, when the pines beside the cabin were swaying in the storm and

trailing their slender fingers over the roof, and the roar and rush of

the swollen river were heard below, Tennessee's Partner lifted his head

from the pillow, saying, "It is time to go for Tennessee; I must put

Jinny in the cart"; and would have risen from his bed but for the

restraint of his attendant. Struggling, he still pursued his singular

fancy: "There, now, steady, Jinny,--steady, old girl. How dark it is!

Look out for the ruts,--and look out for him, too, old gal. Sometimes,

you know, when he's blind drunk, he drops down right in the trail. Keep

on straight up to the pine on the top of the hill. Thar! I told you

so!--thar he is,--coming this way, too,--all by himself, sober, and his

face a-shining. Tennessee! Pardner!"

And so they met.

NOTES

=Sandy Bar=:--The imaginary mining-camp in which Bret Harte laid the

scenes of many of his stories.

=dungaree=:--A coarse kind of unbleached cotton cloth.

=I call=:--An expression used in the game of euchre.

=bowers=:--_Bower_ is from the German word _bauer_, meaning a

peasant,--so called from the jack or knave; the right bower, in the game

of euchre, is the jack of trumps, and the left bower is the other jack

of the same color.

=chaparral=:--A thicket of scrub-oaks or thorny shrubs.

=euchred=:--Defeated, as in the game of euchre.

=Judge Lynch=:--A name used for the hurried judging and executing of a

suspected person, by private citizens, without due process of law. A

Virginian named Lynch is said to have been connected with the origin of

the expression.

"=diseased=":--Tennessee's Partner means _deceased_.

=sluicing=:--A trough for water, fitted with gates and valves; it is

used in washing out gold from the soil.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

Why is the first sentence a good introduction? Compare it with the first

sentence of _Quite So_, page 21. In this selection, why does the author

say so much about names? Of what value is the first paragraph? Why is it

necessary to tell about Tennessee's Partner's earlier experiences? Who

were "the boys" who gathered to see the shooting? Why did they think

there would be shooting? Why was there not? Why does the author not give

us a fuller picture of Tennessee? What is the proof that he had "a fine

flow of humor"? Try in a few words to sum up his character. Read

carefully the paragraph beginning "It was a warm night": How does the

author give us a good picture of Sandy Bar? Tell in your own words the

feelings of the judge, the prisoner, and the jury, as explained in the

paragraph beginning "The trial of Tennessee." What does the author gain

by such expressions as "a less ambitious covering," "meteorological

recollection"? What does Tennessee's Partner mean when he says "What

should a man know of his pardner"? Why did the judge think that humor

would be dangerous? Why are the people angry when Tennessee's Partner

offers his seventeen hundred dollars for Tennessee's release? Why does

Tennessee's Partner take its rejection so calmly? What effect does his

offer have on the jury? What does the author mean by "the weak and

foolish deed"? Does he approve the hanging? Why does Tennessee's Partner

not show any grief? What do you think of Jack Folinsbee? What is gained

by the long passage of description? What does Tennessee's Partner's

speech show about the friendship of the two men? About friendship in

general? Do men often care so much for each other? Is it possible that

Tennessee's Partner died of grief? Is the conclusion good? Comment on

the kind of men who figure in the story. Are there any such men now? Why

is this called a very good story?

Some time after you have read the story, run through it and see how many

different sections or scenes there are in it. How are these sections

linked together? Look carefully at the beginning of each paragraph and

see how the connection is made with the paragraph before.

THEME SUBJECTS

Two Friends

A Miner's Cabin

The Thief

The Road through the Woods

The Trial

A Scene in the Court Room

Early Days in our County

Bret Harte's Best Stories

The Escaped Convict

The Highwayman

A Lumber Camp

Roughing It

The Judge

The Robbers' Rendezvous

An Odd Character

Early Days in the West

A Mining Town

Underground with the Miners

Capturing the Thieves

The Sheriff

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING

=Two Friends=:--Tell where these two friends lived and how long they had

known each other. Describe each one, explaining his peculiarities;

perhaps you can make his character clear by telling some incident

concerning him. What seemed to be the attraction between the two

friends? Were they much together? What did people say of them? What did

they do for each other? Did they talk to others about their friendship?

Did either make a sacrifice for the other? If so, tell about it rather

fully. Was there any talk about it? What was the result of the

sacrifice? Was the friendship ever broken?

=Early Days in our County=:--Perhaps you can get material for this from

some old settlers, or from a county history. Tell of the first

settlement: Who was first on the ground, and why did he choose this

particular region? What kind of shelter was erected? How fast did the

settlement grow? Tell some incidents of the early days. You might speak

also of the processes of clearing the land and of building; of primitive

methods of living, and the difficulty of getting supplies. Were there

any dangers? Speak of several prominent persons, and tell what they did.

Go on and tell of development of the settlements and the surrounding

country. Were there any strikingly good methods of making money? Was

there any excitement over land, or gold, or high prices of products?

Were there any misfortunes, such as floods, or droughts, or fires, or

cyclones? When did the railroad reach the region? What differences did

it make? What particular influences have brought about recent

conditions?

=The Sheriff=:--Describe the sheriff--his physique, his features, his

clothes, his manner. Does he look the part? Do you know, or can you

imagine, one of his adventures? Perhaps you will wish to tell his story

in his own words. Think carefully whether it would be better to do this,

or to tell the story in the third person. Make the tale as lively and

stirring as possible. Remember that when you are reporting the talk of

the persons involved, it is better to quote their words directly. See

that everything you say helps in making the situation clear or in

actually telling the story. Close the story rather quickly after its

outcome has been made quite clear.

COLLATERAL READINGS

How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar Bret Harte

The Outcasts of Poker Flat " "

The Luck of Roaring Camp " "

Baby Sylvester " "

A Waif of the Plains " "

How I Went to the Mines " "

M'liss " "

Frontier Stories " "

Tales of the Argonauts " "

A Sappho of Green Springs and Other Stories " "

Pony Tracks Frederic Remington

Crooked Trails " "

Coeur d'Alène Mary Hallock Foote

The Led-Horse Claim " " "

Wolfville Days Alfred Henry Lewis

Wolfville Nights " " "

The Sunset Trail " " "

Pathfinders of the West Agnes C. Laut

The Old Santa Fé Trail H. Inman

Stories of the Great West Theodore Roosevelt

California and the Californians D.S. Jordan

Our Italy C.D. Warner

California Josiah Royce

The West from a Car Window R.H. Davis

The Story of the Railroad Cy Warman

Roughing It S.L. Clemens

Poems Joaquin Miller

Appropriate poems by Bret Harte:--

John Burns of Gettysburg

In the Tunnel

The Lost Galleon

Grizzly

Battle Bunny

The Wind in the Chimney

Reveille

Plain Language from Truthful James (The Heathen Chinee)

Highways and Byways in the Rocky Mountains Clifton Johnson

Trails of the Pathfinders G.B. Grinnell

Stories of California E.M. Sexton

Glimpses of California Helen Hunt Jackson

California: Its History and Romance J.S. McGroarty

Heroes of California G.W. James

Recollections of an Old Pioneer P.H. Bennett

The Mountains of California John Muir

Romantic California E.C. Peixotto

Silverado Squatters R.L. Stevenson

Jimville: A Bret Harte Town

(in _Atlantic Monthly_, November, 1902) Mary Austin

The Prospector (poem) Robert W. Service

The Rover " " "

The Life of Bret Harte H.C. Merwin

Bret Harte Henry W. Boynton

Bret Harte T.E. Pemberton

American Writers of To-day, pp. 212-229 H.C. Vedder

Bookman, 15:312 (see also map on page 313).

For stories of famous friendships, look up:--

Damon and Pythias (any good encyclopedia).

Patroclus and Achilles (the Iliad).

David and Jonathan (the Bible: 1st Samuel 18:1-4; 19:1-7; chapter 20,

entire; 23:16-18; chapter 31, entire; 2d Samuel, chapter 1, entire).

The Substitute (Le Remplaçant) François Coppée

(In _Modern Short-stories_ edited by M. Ashmun.)

THE COURSE OF AMERICAN HISTORY

WOODROW WILSON

(In _Mere Literature_)

Our national history has been written for the most part by New England

men. All honor to them! Their scholarship and their characters alike

have given them an honorable enrollment amongst the great names of our

literary history; and no just man would say aught to detract, were it

never so little, from their well-earned fame. They have written our

history, nevertheless, from but a single point of view. From where they

sit, the whole of the great development looks like an Expansion of New

England. Other elements but play along the sides of the great process by

which the Puritan has worked out the development of nation and polity.

It is he who has gone out and possessed the land: the man of destiny,

the type and impersonation of a chosen people. To the Southern writer,

too, the story looks much the same, if it be but followed to its

culmination,--to its final storm and stress and tragedy in the great

war. It is the history of the Suppression of the South. Spite of all her

splendid contributions to the steadfast accomplishment of the great task

of building the nation; spite of the long leadership of her statesmen in

the national counsels; spite of her joint achievements in the conquest

and occupation of the West, the South was at last turned upon on every

hand, rebuked, proscribed, defeated. The history of the United States,

we have learned, was, from the settlement at Jamestown to the surrender

at Appomattox, a long-drawn contest for mastery between New England and

the South,--and the end of the contest we know. All along the parallels

of latitude ran the rivalry, in those heroical days of toil and

adventure during which population crossed the continent, like an army

advancing its encampments, Up and down the great river of the continent,

too, and beyond, up the slow incline of the vast steppes that lift

themselves toward the crowning towers of the Rockies,--beyond that,

again, in the gold-fields and upon the green plains of California, the

race for ascendency struggled on,--till at length there was a final

coming face to face, and the masterful folk who had come from the loins

of New England won their consummate victory.

It is a very dramatic form for the story. One almost wishes it were

true. How fine a unity it would give our epic! But perhaps, after all,

the real truth is more interesting. The life of the nation cannot be

reduced to these so simple terms. These two great forces, of the North

and of the South, unquestionably existed,--were unquestionably projected

in their operation out upon the great plane of the continent, there to

combine or repel, as circumstances might determine. But the people that

went out from the North were not an unmixed people; they came from the

great Middle States as well as from New England. Their transplantation

into the West was no more a reproduction of New England or New York or

Pennsylvania or New Jersey than Massachusetts was a reproduction of old

England, or New Netherland a reproduction of Holland. The Southern

people, too, whom they met by the western rivers and upon the open

prairies, were transformed, as they themselves were, by the rough

fortunes of the frontier. A mixture of peoples, a modification of mind

and habit, a new round of experiment and adjustment amidst the novel

life of the baked and untilled plain, and the far valleys with the

virgin forests still thick upon them: a new temper, a new spirit of

adventure, a new impatience of restraint, a new license of life,--these

are the characteristic notes and measures of the time when the nation

spread itself at large upon the continent, and was transformed from a

group of colonies into a family of States.

The passes of these eastern mountains were the arteries of the nation's

life. The real breath of our growth and manhood came into our nostrils

when first, like Governor Spotswood and that gallant company of

Virginian gentlemen that rode with him in the far year 1716, the Knights

of the Order of the Golden Horseshoe, our pioneers stood upon the ridges

of the eastern hills and looked down upon those reaches of the continent

where lay the untrodden paths of the westward migration. There, upon the

courses of the distant rivers that gleamed before them in the sun, down

the farther slopes of the hills beyond, out upon the broad fields that

lay upon the fertile banks of the "Father of Waters," up the long tilt

of the continent to the vast hills that looked out upon the

Pacific--there were the regions in which, joining with people from every

race and clime under the sun, they were to make the great compounded

nation whose liberty and mighty works of peace were to cause all the

world to stand at gaze. Thither were to come Frenchmen, Scandinavians,

Celts, Dutch, Slavs,--men of the Latin races and of the races of the

Orient, as well as men, a great host, of the first stock of the

settlements: English, Scots, Scots-Irish,--like New England men, but

touched with the salt of humor, hard, and yet neighborly too. For this

great process of growth by grafting, of modification no less than of

expansion, the colonies,--the original thirteen States,--were only

preliminary studies and first experiments. But the experiments that most

resembled the great methods by which we peopled the continent from side

to side and knit a single polity across all its length and breadth, were

surely the experiments made from the very first in the Middle States of

our Atlantic seaboard.

Here from the first were mixture of population, variety of element,

combination of type, as if of the nation itself in small. Here was never

a simple body, a people of but a single blood and extraction, a polity

and a practice brought straight from one motherland. The life of these

States was from the beginning like the life of the country: they have

always shown the national pattern. In New England and the South it was

very different. There some of the great elements of the national life

were long in preparation: but separately and with an individual

distinction; without mixture,--for long almost without movement. That

the elements thus separately prepared were of the greatest importance,

and run everywhere like chief threads of the pattern through all our

subsequent life, who can doubt? They give color and tone to every part

of the figure. The very fact that they are so distinct and separately

evident throughout, the very emphasis of individuality they carry with

them, but proves their distinct origin. The other elements of our life,

various though they be, and of the very fibre, giving toughness and

consistency to the fabric, are merged in its texture, united, confused,

almost indistinguishable, so thoroughly are they mixed, intertwined,

interwoven, like the essential strands of the stuff itself: but these

of the Puritan and the Southerner, though they run everywhere with the

rest and seem upon a superficial view themselves the body of the cloth,

in fact modify rather than make it.

What in fact has been the course of American history? How is it to be

distinguished from European history? What features has it of its own,

which give it its distinctive plan and movement? We have suffered, it is

to be feared, a very serious limitation of view until recent years by

having all our history written in the East. It has smacked strongly of a

local flavor. It has concerned itself too exclusively with the origins

and Old-World derivations of our story. Our historians have made their

march from the sea with their heads over shoulder, their gaze always

backward upon the landing-places and homes of the first settlers. In

spite of the steady immigration, with its persistent tide of foreign

blood, they have chosen to speak often and to think always of our people

as sprung after all from a common stock, bearing a family likeness in

every branch, and following all the while old, familiar, family ways.

The view is the more misleading because it is so large a part of the

truth without being all of it. The common British stock did first make

the country, and has always set the pace. There were common institutions

up and down the coast; and these had formed and hardened for a

persistent growth before the great westward migration began which was to

re-shape and modify every element of our life. The national government

itself was set up and made strong by success while yet we lingered for

the most part upon the eastern coast and feared a too distant frontier.

But, the beginnings once safely made, change set in apace. Not only so:

there had been slow change from the first. We have no frontier now, we

are told,--except a broken fragment, it may be, here and there in some

barren corner of the western lands, where some inhospitable mountain

still shoulders us out, or where men are still lacking to break the

baked surface of the plains and occupy them in the very teeth of hostile

nature. But at first it was all frontier,--a mere strip of settlements

stretched precariously upon the sea-edge of the wilds: an untouched

continent in front of them, and behind them an unfrequented sea that

almost never showed so much as the momentary gleam of a sail. Every step

in the slow process of settlement was but a step of the same kind as the

first, an advance to a new frontier like the old. For long we lacked, it

is true, that new breed of frontiersmen born in after years beyond the

mountains. Those first frontiersmen had still a touch of the timidity of

the Old World in their blood: they lacked the frontier heart. They were

"Pilgrims" in very fact,--exiled, not at home. Fine courage they had:

and a steadfastness in their bold design which it does a faint-hearted

age good to look back upon. There was no thought of drawing back.

Steadily, almost calmly, they extended their seats. They built homes,

and deemed it certain their children would live there after them. But

they did not love the rough, uneasy life for its own sake. How long did

they keep, if they could, within sight of the sea! The wilderness was

their refuge; but how long before it became their joy and hope! Here was

their destiny cast; but their hearts lingered and held back. It was only

as generations passed and the work widened about them that their thought

also changed, and a new thrill sped along their blood. Their life had

been new and strange from their first landing in the wilderness. Their

houses, their food, their clothing, their neighborhood dealings were all

such as only the frontier brings. Insensibly they were themselves

changed. The strange life became familiar; their adjustment to it was at

length unconscious and without effort; they had no plans which were not

inseparably a part and a product of it. But, until they had turned their

backs once for all upon the sea; until they saw their western borders

cleared of the French; until the mountain passes had grown familiar, and

the lands beyond the central and constant theme of their hope, the goal

and dream of their young men, they did not become an American people.

When they did, the great determining movement of our history began. The

very visages of the people changed. That alert movement of the eye, that

openness to every thought of enterprise or adventure, that nomadic habit

which knows no fixed home and has plans ready to be carried any

whither,--all the marks of the authentic type of the "American" as we

know him came into our life. The crack of the whip and the song of the

teamster, the heaving chorus of boatmen poling their heavy rafts upon

the rivers, the laughter of the camp, the sound of bodies of men in the

still forests, became the characteristic notes in our air. A roughened

race, embrowned in the sun, hardened in manner by a coarse life of

change and danger, loving the rude woods and the crack of the rifle,

living to begin something new every day, striking with the broad and

open hand, delicate in nothing but the touch of the trigger, leaving

cities in its track as if by accident rather than design, settling again

to the steady ways of a fixed life only when it must: such was the

American people whose achievement it was to be to take possession of

their continent from end to end ere their national government was a

single century old. The picture is a very singular one! Settled life and

wild side by side: civilization frayed at the edges,--taken forward in

rough and ready fashion, with a song and a swagger,--not by statesmen,

but by woodsmen and drovers, with axes and whips and rifles in their

hands, clad in buckskin, like huntsmen.

It has been said that we have here repeated some of the first processes

of history; that the life and methods of our frontiersmen take us back

to the fortunes and hopes of the men who crossed Europe when her

forests, too, were still thick upon her. But the difference is really

very fundamental, and much more worthy of remark than the likeness.

Those shadowy masses of men whom we see moving upon the face of the

earth in the far-away, questionable days when states were forming: even

those stalwart figures we see so well as they emerge from the deep

forests of Germany, to displace the Roman in all his western provinces

and set up the states we know and marvel upon at this day, show us men

working their new work at their own level. They do not turn back a long

cycle of years from the old and settled states, the ordered cities, the

tilled fields, and the elaborated governments of an ancient

civilization, to begin as it were once more at the beginning. They carry

alike their homes and their states with them in the camp and upon the

ordered march of the host. They are men of the forest, or else men

hardened always to take the sea in open boats. They live no more roughly

in the new lands than in the old. The world has been frontier for them

from the first. They may go forward with their life in these new seats

from where they left off in the old. How different the circumstances of

our first settlement and the building of new states on this side the

sea! Englishmen, bred in law and ordered government ever since the

Norman lawyers were followed a long five hundred years ago across the

narrow seas by those masterful administrators of the strong Plantagenet

race, leave an ancient realm and come into a wilderness where states

have never been; leave a land of art and letters, which saw but

yesterday "the spacious times of great Elizabeth," where Shakespeare

still lives in the gracious leisure of his closing days at Stratford,

where cities teem with trade and men go bravely dight in cloth of gold,

and turn back six centuries,--nay, a thousand years and more,--to the

first work of building states in a wilderness! They bring the steadied

habits and sobered thoughts of an ancient realm into the wild air of an

untouched continent. The weary stretches of a vast sea lie, like a full

thousand years of time, between them and the life in which till now all

their thought was bred. Here they stand, as it were, with all their

tools left behind, centuries struck out of their reckoning, driven back

upon the long dormant instincts and forgotten craft of their race, not

used this long age. Look how singular a thing: the work of a primitive

race, the thought of a civilized! Hence the strange, almost grotesque

groupings of thought and affairs in that first day of our history.

Subtle politicians speak the phrases and practice the arts of intricate

diplomacy from council chambers placed within log huts within a

clearing. Men in ruffs and lace and polished shoe-buckles thread the

lonely glades of primeval forests. The microscopical distinctions of the

schools, the thin notes of a metaphysical theology are woven in and out

through the labyrinths of grave sermons that run hours long upon the

still air of the wilderness. Belief in dim refinements of dogma is made

the test for man or woman who seeks admission to a company of pioneers.

When went there by an age since the great flood when so singular a thing

was seen as this: thousands of civilized men suddenly rusticated and

bade do the work of primitive peoples,--Europe _frontiered_!

Of course there was a deep change wrought, if not in these men, at any

rate in their children; and every generation saw the change deepen. It

must seem to every thoughtful man a notable thing how, while the change

was wrought, the simples of things complex were revealed in the clear

air of the New World: how all accidentals seemed to fall away from the

structure of government, and the simple first principles were laid bare

that abide always; how social distinctions were stripped off, shown to

be the mere cloaks and masks they were, and every man brought once again

to a clear realization of his actual relations to his fellows! It was as

if trained and sophisticated men had been rid of a sudden of their

sophistication and of all the theory of their life, and left with

nothing but their discipline of faculty, a schooled and sobered

instinct. And the fact that we kept always, for close upon three hundred

years, a like element in our life, a frontier people always in our van,

is, so far, the central and determining fact of our national history.

"East" and "West," an ever-changing line, but an unvarying experience

and a constant leaven of change working always within the body of our

folk. Our political, our economic, our social life has felt this potent

influence from the wild border all our history through. The "West" is

the great word of our history. The "Westerner" has been the type and

master of our American life. Now at length, as I have said, we have lost

our frontier; our front lies almost unbroken along all the great coast

line of the western sea. The Westerner, in some day soon to come, will

pass out of our life, as he so long ago passed out of the life of the

Old World. Then a new epoch will open for us. Perhaps it has opened

already. Slowly we shall grow old, compact our people, study the

delicate adjustments of an intricate society, and ponder the niceties,

as we have hitherto pondered the bulks and structural framework, of

government. Have we not, indeed, already come to these things? But the

past we know. We can "see it steady and see it whole"; and its central

movement and motive are gross and obvious to the eye.

Till the first century of the Constitution is rounded out we stand all

the while in the presence of that stupendous westward movement which has

filled the continent: so vast, so various, at times so tragical, so

swept by passion. Through all the long time there has been a line of

rude settlements along our front wherein the same tests of power and of

institutions were still being made that were made first upon the sloping

banks of the rivers of old Virginia and within the long sweep of the Bay

of Massachusetts. The new life of the West has reacted all the

while--who shall say how powerfully?--upon the older life of the East;

and yet the East has moulded the West as if she sent forward to it

through every decade of the long process the chosen impulses and

suggestions of history. The West has taken strength, thought, training,

selected aptitudes out of the old treasures of the East,--as if out of

a new Orient; while the East has itself been kept fresh, vital, alert,

originative by the West, her blood quickened all the while, her youth

through every age renewed. Who can say in a word, in a sentence, in a

volume, what destinies have been variously wrought, with what new

examples of growth and energy, while, upon this unexampled scale,

community has passed beyond community across the vast reaches of this

great continent!

NOTES

=Jamestown=:--A town in Virginia, the site of the first English

settlement in America (1607).

=Appomattox=:--In 1865 Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, Virginia.

=epic=:--A long narrative poem recounting in a stirring way some great

series of events.

=Governor Spotswood=:--Governor of Virginia in the early part of the

eighteenth century.

=Knights of the Golden Horseshoe=:--In 1716 an exploring expedition

under Governor Spotswood made a journey across the Blue Ridge. The

Governor gave each member of the party a gold horseshoe, as a souvenir.

=Celts=:--One of the early Aryan races of southwestern Europe; the Welsh

and the Highland Scotch are descended from the Celts.

=Slavs=:--The race of people inhabiting Russia, Poland, Bohemia, and

Servia.

=Latin races=:--The French, Spanish, and Italian people, whose languages

are derived chiefly from the Latin.

=Orient=:--The far East--India, China, Japan, etc.

=Norman=:--The Norman-French from northern France had been in possession

of England for the greater part of a century (1066-1154) when Henry, son

of a Saxon princess and a French duke (Geoffrey of Anjou) came to

England as Henry II, the first of the Plantagenet line of English kings.

=Stratford=:--A small town on the Avon River in England; the birthplace

of Shakespeare.

=dight=:--Clothed. (What does an unabridged dictionary say about this

word? Is it commonly used nowadays? Was it used in Shakespeare's time?

Why does the author use it here?)

=see it steady and see it whole=:--A quotation from the works of Matthew

Arnold, an English poet and critic.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

What has been the disadvantage of having our history written by New

England men? Do you know what particular New England men have written of

American history? What state is President Wilson from? What is meant by

the "Suppression of the South"? Why does the author put in the phrase

"we have learned"? Does he believe what he is saying? Show where he

makes his own view clear. What "story" is it that one "almost wishes"

were true? _Went out from the North_: Where? How are the Northerners and

the Southerners changed after they have gone West? What "new temper" do

they have? How do they show their "impatience of restraint"? What

eastern mountains are meant here? How did our nation gain new life when

the pioneers looked westward from the eastern ridges? Why are we spoken

of as a "great compounded nation"? What are our "mighty works of peace"?

The author now shows how the Middle Seaboard States were a type of the

later form of the nation, because they had a mixed population. What does

he think about the influence of the Puritan and the Southerner? Note the

questions that he asks regarding the course of American history. See how

he answers them in the pages that follow. Why does he say that the first

frontiersmen were "timid"? When, according to the author, did the "great

determining movement" of our history begin? Why does he call the picture

that he draws a "singular" one? What is meant by "civilization frayed at

the edges"? How do the primitive conditions of our nation differ from

the earliest beginnings of the European nations? (See the long passage

beginning "How different.") What is meant by "Europe frontiered"? Look

carefully on page 261, to see what the author says is "the central and

determining fact of our national history." What is the "great word" of

our history? Has the author answered the questions he set for himself on

page 256? What is happening to us as a nation now that we have lost our

frontier? What is the relation between the East and the West? Perhaps

you will like to go on and read some more of this essay, from which we

have here only a selection. Do you like what the author has said? What

do you think of the way in which he has said it?

THEME SUBJECTS

Life in the Wilderness

The Log Cabin

La Salle

My Friend from the West

My Friend from the East

Crossing the Mountains

Early Days in our State

An Encounter with the Indians

The Coming of the Railroad

Daniel Boone

A Home on the Prairies

Cutting down the Forest

The Homesteader

A Frontier Town

Life on a Western Ranch

The Old Settler

Some Stories of the Early Days

Moving West

Lewis and Clark

The Pioneer

The Old Settlers' Picnic

"Home-coming Day" in our Town

An Explorer

My Trip through the West (or the East)

The President

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING

=La Salle=:--Look up, in Parkman's _La Salle_ or elsewhere, the facts of

La Salle's life. Make very brief mention of his life in France. Contrast

it with his experiences in America. What were his reasons for becoming

an explorer? Give an account of one of his expeditions: his plans; his

preparations; his companions; his hardships; his struggles to establish

a fort; his return to Canada for help; his failure or success. Perhaps

you will want to write of his last expedition, and its unfortunate

ending. Speak of his character as a man and an explorer. Show briefly

the results of his endeavors.

=Daniel Boone=:--Look up the adventures of Daniel Boone, and tell some

of them in a lively way. Perhaps you can imagine his telling them in his

own words to a settler or a companion. In that case, try to put in the

questions and the comments of the other person. This will make a kind of

dramatic conversation.

=Early Days in our State=:--With a few changes, you can use the outline

given on page 249 for "Early Days in our County."

=An Encounter with the Indians=:--Tell a story that you have heard or

imagined, about some one's escape from the Indians. How did the hero

happen to get into such a perilous situation? Briefly describe his

surroundings. Tell of his first knowledge that the Indians were about to

attack him. What did he do? How did he feel? Describe the Indians. Tell

what efforts the hero made to get away or to protect himself. Make the

account of his action brief and lively. Try to keep him before the

reader all the time. Now and then explain what was going on in his mind.

This is often a good way to secure suspense. Tell very clearly how the

hero succeeded in escaping, and what his difficulties were in getting

away from the spot. Condense the account of what took place after his

actual escape. Where did he take refuge? Was he much the worse for his

adventure?

COLLATERAL READINGS

The Course of American History

(in _Mere Literature_) Woodrow Wilson

The Life of George Washington " "

The Winning of the West Theodore Roosevelt

Stories of the Great West " "

Hero Tales from American History Roosevelt and Lodge

The Great Salt Lake Trail Inman and Cody

The Old Santa Fé Trail H. Inman

Rocky Mountain Exploration Reuben G. Thwaites

Daniel Boone " " "

How George Rogers Clark Won the Northwest " " "

Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road H.A. Bruce

The Crossing Winston Churchill

The Conquest of Arid America W.E. Smythe

The Last American Frontier F.L. Paxon

Northwestern Fights and Fighters Cyrus Townsend Brady

Western Frontier Stories The Century Company

The Story of Tonty Mary Hartwell Catherwood

Heroes of the Middle West " " "

Pony Tracks Frederic Remington

The Different West A.E. Bostwick

The Expedition of Lewis and Clark J.K. Hosmer

The Trail of Lewis and Clark O.D. Wheeler

The Discovery of the Old Northwest James Baldwin

Boots and Saddles Elizabeth Custer

La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West Francis Parkman

The Oregon Trail " "

Samuel Houston Henry Bruce

The Story of the Railroad Cy Warman

The Pioneers Walt Whitman

The Story of the Cowboy Emerson Hough

Woodrow Wilson W.B. Hale

Recollections of Thirteen Presidents John S. Wise

Presidential Problems Grover Cleveland

The Story of the White House Esther Singleton

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

(From _My Summer in a Garden_)

NINTH WEEK

I am more and more impressed with the moral qualities of vegetables, and

contemplate forming a science which shall rank with comparative anatomy

and comparative philology,--the science of comparative vegetable

morality. We live in an age of protoplasm. And, if life-matter is

essentially the same in all forms of life, I purpose to begin early, and

ascertain the nature of the plants for which I am responsible. I will

not associate with any vegetable which is disreputable, or has not some

quality that can contribute to my moral growth. I do not care to be seen

much with the squashes or the dead-beets....

This matter of vegetable rank has not been at all studied as it should

be. Why do we respect some vegetables, and despise others, when all of

them come to an equal honor or ignominy on the table? The bean is a

graceful, confiding, engaging vine; but you never can put beans into

poetry, nor into the highest sort of prose. There is no dignity in the

bean. Corn, which in my garden grows alongside the bean, and, so far as

I can see, with no affectation of superiority, is, however, the child of

song. It waves in all literature. But mix it with beans, and its high

tone is gone. Succotash is vulgar. It is the bean in it. The bean is a

vulgar vegetable, without culture, or any flavor of high society among

vegetables. Then there is the cool cucumber, like so many people,--good

for nothing when it is ripe and the wildness has gone out of it. How

inferior in quality it is to the melon, which grows upon a similar vine,

is of a like watery consistency, but is not half so valuable! The

cucumber is a sort of low comedian in a company where the melon is a

minor gentleman. I might also contrast the celery with the potato. The

associations are as opposite as the dining-room of the duchess and the

cabin of the peasant. I admire the potato, both in vine and blossom; but

it is not aristocratic. I began digging my potatoes, by the way, about

the 4th of July; and I fancy I have discovered the right way to do it. I

treat the potato just as I would a cow. I do not pull them up, and shake

them out, and destroy them; but I dig carefully at the side of the hill,

remove the fruit which is grown, leaving the vine undisturbed: and my

theory is that it will go on bearing, and submitting to my exactions,

until the frost cuts it down. It is a game that one would not undertake

with a vegetable of tone.

The lettuce is to me a most interesting study. Lettuce is like

conversation: it must be fresh and crisp, so sparkling that you scarcely

notice the bitter in it. Lettuce, like most talkers, is, however, apt to

run rapidly to seed. Blessed is that sort which comes to a head, and so

remains, like a few people I know; growing more solid and satisfactory

and tender at the same time, and whiter at the centre, and crisp in

their maturity. Lettuce, like conversation, requires a good deal of oil,

to avoid friction, and keep the company smooth; a pinch of attic salt; a

dash of pepper; a quantity of mustard and vinegar, by all means, but so

mixed that you will notice no sharp contrasts; and a trifle of sugar.

You can put anything, and the more things the better, into salad, as

into a conversation; but everything depends upon the skill of mixing. I

feel that I am in the best society when I am with lettuce. It is in the

select circle of vegetables. The tomato appears well on the table; but

you do not want to ask its origin. It is a most agreeable _parvenu_. Of

course, I have said nothing about the berries. They live in another and

more ideal region: except, perhaps, the currant. Here we see that, even

among berries, there are degrees of breeding. The currant is well

enough, clear as truth, and exquisite in color; but I ask you to notice

how far it is from the exclusive _hauteur_ of the aristocratic

strawberry, and the native refinement of the quietly elegant raspberry.

I do not know that chemistry, searching for protoplasm, is able to

discover the tendency of vegetables. It can only be found out by outward

observation. I confess that I am suspicious of the bean, for instance.

There are signs in it of an unregulated life. I put up the most

attractive sort of poles for my Limas. They stand high and straight,

like church-spires, in my theological garden,--lifted up; and some of

them have even budded, like Aaron's rod. No church-steeple in a New

England village was ever better fitted to draw to it the rising

generation on Sunday than those poles to lift up my beans towards

heaven. Some of them did run up the sticks seven feet, and then

straggled off into the air in a wanton manner; but more than half of

them went galivanting off to the neighboring grape-trellis, and wound

their tendrils with the tendrils of the grape, with a disregard of the

proprieties of life which is a satire upon human nature. And the grape

is morally no better. I think the ancients, who were not troubled with

the recondite mystery of protoplasm, were right in the mythic union of

Bacchus and Venus.

Talk about the Darwinian theory of development and the principle of

natural selection! I should like to see a garden let to run in

accordance with it. If I had left my vegetables and weeds to a free

fight, in which the strongest specimens only should come to maturity,

and the weaker go to the wall, I can clearly see that I should have had

a pretty mess of it. It would have been a scene of passion and license

and brutality. The "pusley" would have strangled the strawberry; the

upright corn, which has now ears to hear the guilty beating of the

hearts of the children who steal the raspberries, would have been

dragged to the earth by the wandering bean; the snake-grass would have

left the place for the potatoes under ground; and the tomatoes would

have been swamped by the lusty weeds. With a firm hand, I have had to

make my own "natural selection." Nothing will so well bear watching as a

garden except a family of children next door. Their power of selection

beats mine. If they could read half as well as they can steal a while

away, I should put up a notice, "_Children, beware! There is Protoplasm

here._" But I suppose it would have no effect. I believe they would eat

protoplasm as quick as anything else, ripe or green. I wonder if this is

going to be a cholera-year. Considerable cholera is the only thing that

would let my apples and pears ripen. Of course I do not care for the

fruit; but I do not want to take the responsibility of letting so much

"life-matter," full of crude and even wicked vegetable-human tendencies,

pass into the composition of the neighbors' children, some of whom may

be as immortal as snake-grass.

There ought to be a public meeting about this, and resolutions, and

perhaps a clambake. At least, it ought to be put into the catechism, and

put in strong.

TENTH WEEK

I THINK I have discovered the way to keep peas from the birds.

I tried the scarecrow plan, in a way which I thought would outwit the

shrewdest bird. The brain of the bird is not large; but it is all

concentrated on one object, and that is the attempt to elude the devices

of modern civilization which injure his chances of food. I knew that, if

I put up a complete stuffed man, the bird would detect the imitation at

once; the perfection of the thing would show him that it was a trick.

People always overdo the matter when they attempt deception. I therefore

hung some loose garments, of a bright color, upon a rake-head, and set

them up among the vines. The supposition was, that the bird would think

there was an effort to trap him, that there was a man behind, holding up

these garments, and would sing, as he kept at a distance, "You can't

catch me with any such double device." The bird would know, or think he

knew, that I would not hang up such a scare, in the expectation that it

would pass for a man, and deceive a bird; and he would therefore look

for a deeper plot. I expected to outwit the bird by a duplicity that was

simplicity itself. I may have over-calculated the sagacity and reasoning

power of the bird. At any rate, I did over-calculate the amount of peas

I should gather.

But my game was only half played. In another part of the garden were

other peas, growing and blowing. To these I took good care not to

attract the attention of the bird by any scarecrow whatever! I left the

old scarecrow conspicuously flaunting above the old vines; and by this

means I hope to keep the attention of the birds confined to that side of

the garden. I am convinced that this is the true use of a scarecrow: it

is a lure, and not a warning. If you wish to save men from any

particular vice, set up a tremendous cry of warning about some other,

and they will all give their special efforts to the one to which

attention is called. This profound truth is about the only thing I have

yet realized out of my pea-vines.

However, the garden does begin to yield. I know of nothing that makes

one feel more complacent, in these July days, than to have his

vegetables from his own garden. What an effect it has on the market-man

and the butcher! It is a kind of declaration of independence. The

market-man shows me his peas and beets and tomatoes, and supposes he

shall send me out some with the meat. "No, I thank you," I say

carelessly: "I am raising my own this year." Whereas I have been wont to

remark, "Your vegetables look a little wilted this weather," I now say,

"What a fine lot of vegetables you've got!" When a man is not going to

buy, he can afford to be generous. To raise his own vegetables makes a

person feel, somehow, more liberal. I think the butcher is touched by

the influence, and cuts off a better roast for me. The butcher is my

friend when he sees that I am not wholly dependent on him.

It is at home, however, that the effect is most marked, though sometimes

in a way that I had not expected. I have never read of any Roman supper

that seemed to me equal to a dinner of my own vegetables, when

everything on the table is the product of my own labor, except the

clams, which I have not been able to raise yet, and the chickens, which

have withdrawn from the garden just when they were most attractive. It

is strange what a taste you suddenly have for things you never liked

before. The squash has always been to me a dish of contempt; but I eat

it now as if it were my best friend. I never cared for the beet or the

bean; but I fancy now that I could eat them all, tops and all, so

completely have they been transformed by the soil in which they grew. I

think the squash is less squashy, and the beet has a deeper hue of rose,

for my care of them.

I had begun to nurse a good deal of pride in presiding over a table

whereon was the fruit of my honest industry. But woman!--John Stuart

Mill is right when he says that we do not know anything about women. Six

thousand years is as one day with them. I thought I had something to do

with those vegetables.

But when I saw Polly seated at her side of the table, presiding over the

new and susceptible vegetables, flanked by the squash and the beans, and

smiling upon the green corn and the new potatoes, as cool as the

cucumbers which lay sliced in ice before her, and when she began to

dispense the fresh dishes, I saw at once that the day of my destiny was

over. You would have thought that she owned all the vegetables, and had

raised them all from their earliest years. Such quiet, vegetable airs!

Such gracious appropriation!

At length I said,--

"Polly, do you know who planted that squash, or those squashes?"

"James, I suppose."

"Well, yes, perhaps James did plant them to a certain extent. But who

hoed them?"

"We did."

"_We_ did!" I said in the most sarcastic manner. "And I suppose _we_ put

on the sackcloth and ashes, when the striped bug came at four o'clock,

A.M., and we watched the tender leaves, and watered night and

morning the feeble plants. I tell you, Polly," said I, uncorking the

Bordeaux raspberry vinegar, "there is not a pea here that does not

represent a drop of moisture wrung from my brow, not a beet that does

not stand for a backache, not a squash that has not caused me untold

anxiety, and I did hope--but I will say no more."

_Observation._--In this sort of family discussion, "I will say no more"

is the most effective thing you can close up with.

I am not an alarmist. I hope I am as cool as anybody this hot summer.

But I am quite ready to say to Polly or any other woman, "You can have

the ballot; only leave me the vegetables, or, what is more important,

the consciousness of power in vegetables." I see how it is. Woman is now

supreme in the house. She already stretches out her hand to grasp the

garden. She will gradually control everything. Woman is one of the

ablest and most cunning creatures who have ever mingled in human

affairs. I understand those women who say they don't want the ballot.

They purpose to hold the real power while we go through the mockery of

making laws. They want the power without the responsibility. (Suppose my

squash had not come up, or my beans--as they threatened at one time--had

gone the wrong way: where would I have been?) We are to be held to all

the responsibilities. Woman takes the lead in all the departments,

leaving us politics only. And what is politics? Let me raise the

vegetables of a nation, says Polly, and I care not who makes its

politics. Here I sat at the table, armed with the ballot, but really

powerless among my own vegetables. While we are being amused by the

ballot, woman is quietly taking things into her own hands.

NOTES

=comparative philology=:--The comparison of words from different

languages, for the purpose of seeing what relationships can be found.

=protoplasm=:--"The physical basis of life"; the substance which passes

life on from one vegetable or animal to another.

=attic salt=:--The delicate wit of the Athenians, who lived in the state

of Attica, in Greece.

=parvenu=:--A French word meaning an upstart who tries to force himself

into good society.

=Aaron's rod=:--See Numbers, 17:1-10.

=Bacchus and Venus=:--Bacchus was the Greek god of wine; Venus was the

Greek goddess of love.

=Darwinian theory=:--Charles R. Darwin (1809-1882) was a great English

scientist who proved that the higher forms of life have developed from

the lower.

=natural selection=:--One of Darwin's theories, to the effect that

nature weeds out the weak and unfit, leaving the others to continue the

species; the result is called "the survival of the fittest."

=steal a while away=:--A quotation from a well known hymn beginning,--

I love to steal a while away

From every cumbering care.

It was written in 1829, by Deodatus Dutton.

=Roman supper=:--The Romans were noted for the extravagance of their

evening meals, at which all sorts of delicacies were served.

=John Stuart Mill=:--An English philosopher (1806-1873). He wrote about

theories of government.

=Polly=:--The author's wife.

=the day of my destiny=:--A quotation from Lord Byron's poem, _Stanzas

to Augusta_ [his sister]. The lines run:--

Though the day of my destiny's over,

And the star of my fate hath declined,

Thy soft heart refused to discover

The faults that so many could find.

=sack-cloth and ashes=:--In old Jewish times, a sign of grief or

mourning. See Esther, 4:1; Isaiah, 58:5.

=Bordeaux=:--A province in France noted for its wine.

QUESTIONS FOR STUDY

The author is writing of the ninth and tenth weeks of his work; he now

has time to stop and moralize about his garden. Do not take what he says

too seriously; look for the fun in it. Is he in earnest about the moral

qualities of vegetables? Why cannot the bean figure in poetry and

romance? Can you name any prose or verse in which corn does? Explain

what is said about the resemblance of some people to cucumbers. Why is

celery more aristocratic than potato? Is "them" the right word in the

sentence: "I do not pull them up"? Explain what is meant by the

paragraph on salads. Why is the tomato a "_parvenu_"? Does the author

wish to cast a slur on the Darwinian theory? Is it true that moral

character is influenced by what one eats? What is the catechism? What do

you think of the author's theories about scarecrows? About "saving men

from any particular vice"? Why does raising one's own vegetables make

one feel generous? How does the author pass from vegetables to woman

suffrage? Is he in earnest in what he says? What does one get out of a

selection like this?

THEME SUBJECTS