I AM HUMBLED BY A DRAG SCRAPER
One of the advantages of being a bachelor when you are building or
restoring a house is that you can spend most of your time in the
garden. I am by nature a trusting soul anyway (which no woman and
possibly no wise man ever is where carpenters, builders, and plumbers are
concerned), and I trusted Hard Cider implicitly. He told me the plumbers
were "doin' all right," and I believed him. That he himself was doing
all right my own eyes told me, for he had by now reached the south
rooms, removed the dividing partition, revealing the old, hand-hewn oak
beam at the top, and was cutting a double door out in the centre on
either side of the great oak upright, toward my future sundial lawn.
I stood in this new door, looking back at my twin fireplaces, with
their plain-panelled old mantels.
"Mr. Howard," said I, "those mantels are about as plain as you could
make 'em, and yet they are very handsome, somehow, dingy as they are."
"It's the lines," said Hard Cider. "Jest the right lines. Lower 'em
six inches, and whar'd they be?"
"Could you build me a bookcase, against the wall, just like them, from
one to the other and bring it out at right angles five feet into the room
from the centre, making it the back of a double settle?" I asked.
"I'm a carpenter," Hard replied laconically.
"Could you draw me what it would look like first?"
"I ain't said I wuz an artist," he answered. "Draw it yerself."
I took his proffered pencil, and sketched what I wanted on a clean board.
"Yer got too much curve on the base and arms o' them settles," he said
judicially. "Ain't no curves in your mantels. You want 'em square,
with a panel like them over your fireplaces."
He took the pencil away from me, and made a quick, neat, accurate sketch
of just what I instantly saw I did want.
[Illustration:]
I shrugged my shoulders. "Go ahead!" said I. "What did you ask me to
draw it for in the first place?"
"Folks likes to think they hev their own idees," he answered.
I turned away, through the new south door, into the May sunshine. The
pergola was not commenced. In fact, I had decided not to build it till
the following spring. Those beastly painters whom I had forgotten were
going to eat up too much of my slender capital. Before me stretched the
250 feet of ploughed slope which was to be my sundial lawn. At the end of
it was my line of stakes where the ramblers were to climb. Beyond that
was the vegetable garden, newly harrowed and fertilized, where Mike and
Joe were busily working, the one planting peas, the other setting out a
row of beets. The horse was not in evidence. I could have him at last,
to make my lawn! I ran around the house to the stable, clumsily put on
his harness, for I was not used to horses, led him to the shed where my
tools were stored, hitched him to my new drag scraper, and drove him to
the slope.
As I have said, the ground here sloped down eastward toward the brook,
and if I was to have a level lawn south of my house, I should have to
remove at least two feet of soil from the western end and deposit it on
the eastern end. I wisely decided to start close to the house. Hauling at
the handles of the heavy scraper and yelling "Back up, there!" at the
horse, I got the steel scoop into the ground at the line of my proposed
grape arbour, tipped down the blade, and cried, "Giddup!" I hung to
the reins as best I could, twisting them about my wrist, and the horse
started obediently forward. The scoop did its work very nicely. In
fact, it was quite full after we had gone six feet, and I had only to
let the horse drag it the remaining ninety-four feet of the proposed
width of the lawn, and empty it. Then I went back, and repeated the
process. After five repetitions of the same process, the perspicacious
reader will have reckoned that I had shaved off something less than
half the width of my lawn, on one furrow, and was still a long, long
way from being down to the required depth of two feet at the higher
end. My arms already ached. As the scraper covered a furrow but two feet
wide, that meant 125 furrows to scrape my entire lawn as planned, and
at least twenty trips to the furrow. I did some rapid multiplication as
I paused to wipe my brow. "Twenty times 125 is 2,500," thought I. I
dropped the reins and moved toward my stakes. I saw that Joe and Mike
were looking at me.
"I think," said I, with some dignity, as I began to pull the stakes
up, "that this lawn will look better square. As it's a hundred feet
broad, a hundred feet will be far enough to extend it from the house."
"Sure," said Mike, "the big road scraper 'll be over here to-morrow,
scrapin' the road, and it do be easier an' quicker to borry that."
In some ways, I consider this remark of Mike's, under the circumstances,
one of the most gentlemanly I ever heard! And I jumped at his suggestion.
"Mike," said I, "I'll admit this job is bigger than I thought. How
can I borrow the road scraper?"
"Sure, ain't me frind Dan Morrissy one o' the selictmen?" said Mike,
"and ain't he the road boss, and ain't he willin' to earn an extra
penny for--for the town?"
"H'm," said I; "for the town! Well, I've got to have this lawn! You
get your friend Dan in the morning. Just the same, I don't love the town
so much that I want a 250-foot lawn."
I took my line of stakes back 150 feet, and replanted them. That gave me
a more intimate lawn, like a large outdoor south room, I thought. It
also increased my vegetable garden acreage. I returned to the scraper
and the patient horse with a new humbleness, a new realization of what
one man cannot do in a day. That, perhaps, is one of the first and
most important lessons of farming and gardening. Once you have learned
it, you are either discouraged or fired anew with the persistence of
patience. I was not discouraged. Besides, I had Mike's friend Dan, the
selectman, to fall back on! It is always well to be friends with Tammany
Hall. First, I decided not to grade even my smaller lawn to a dead
level, but merely to smooth it off, letting that process counteract the
slope as much as it would. Then I started to scoop again, bringing
down the soil from the higher western side directly to the south face
of my house and dumping it there, to be packed into a terrace which next
season should be the floor of my pergola.
Did you ever try to handle a drag scraper and drive the horse at the
same time, dear reader? It requires more muscle and as much patience as
golf. Joe offered to come and drive for me, but I preferred him to
plant, and kept on by myself. It is amazing how much dirt you can dump in
one place without increasing the pile perceptibly. The only thing more
amazing is the amount of dirt you can take out of one place without
perceptibly increasing the depth of your hole. I ran the scoop along
the edge of my proposed grape arbour time after time, dumping the
contents in front of my new south door, but still that first furrow
didn't sink more than six inches, and still the sills of my house
rose above the piles. Noon came and found me with aching arms and
strained shoulder sockets. I had brought some lunch, to save the walk
back to Mrs. Temple's, and I took it into my big south room to eat it.
Hard was in there eating his. The plumbers were eating theirs in the
new kitchen, already completed.
Hard, I found, had begun the bookcase, which was just the height of the
mantels. He had been preparing the top moulding with his universal plane
when noon came, and the sweet shavings lay curled on the floor. I scuffed
my feet in them, and even hung one from my ear, as children do, while
Hard Cider regarded me scornfully.
"I'm going to have great times in this room!" I exclaimed. "Books
between the fireplaces, books along the walls, just a few pictures,
including my Hiroshiges, over the mantels, my desk by the west window,
and out there the green garden! A man ought to write something pretty
good in this room, eh?"
Hard looked at me with narrowed eyes. "I don't know nothin' about
writin'," he said, "but it 'pears to me a feller could write most
anywhar pervided he had somethin' ter say."
Whereupon Hard concluded by biting into a large piece of prune pie.
The Yankee temperament is occasionally depressing! I went outdoors again,
eating my doughnuts as I walked, and strolled into the vegetable garden
to survey the staked rows which denoted beets and peas. Then I went
down the slope into my little stand of pines, into the cool hush of
them, and unconsciously my brain relaxed in the bath of their peace, and
for ten minutes I lay on the needles, neither asleep nor awake, just
blissfully vacant. Then I returned to my scooping, marvellously rested.
I scooped till three o'clock, led the horse back to the barn, got a
shovel and rake, and began to spread my terrace. As this south end of my
house (and accordingly my big south room) was but thirty-three feet long,
the task was not very severe, particularly as the upper, or western, end,
did not require much grading. I built the terrace out about twelve feet
from the wall, stamped up and down on it to pack it, and raked it
smooth. I realized that it would settle, of course, and I should need
more earth yet upon it before it was sown down to grass, or, if I could
afford it, bricked; but in order to hold the bank, I got some grass
seed and planted the edge, and also got a couple of planks to stretch
from the south door across the terrace and down to the lawn, until I
could build my proposed brick path and steps. It was six o'clock when I
had finished. Palm-sore and weary, I drank a great tin dipperful of
water from my copper pump in the kitchen, took a last look at Hard's
bookcase, which had already been built out the required five feet into
the room along the line of the old partition, fourteen inches wide to
hold books on both sides, tried the doors to see that they were locked,
and tramped up the dusty road to supper.
Mrs. Temple was beaming when I came down from my bath.
"Why so happy?" said I.
"Well," said she, "in the first place, I've got you the housekeeper I
want."
"By which I infer that she's the one _I_ want, too?" I asked.
"Of course," said Mrs. Temple, on whom irony had no effect. "She's
Mrs. Pillig, from Slab City, and she's an artist in pies."
"Go on; you interest me strangely!" I cried. "Is her husband dead,
and has she got a small boy?" (Here I winked at Bert.)
"Pillig ain't dead, worse luck," said Mrs. Temple, "but he's whar
he won't trouble you. I guess Peter won't trouble you none, neither.
He's a nice boy, and he'll be awful handy round the place."
"Peter Pillig!" I exclaimed. "There ain't no such animal! If there
is, Dickens was his grandfather. How old is Peter?"
"Peter's eleven," Mrs. Bert replied. "He's real nice and bright.
His mother's brought him up fine. Anyhow, she was a Corliss."
"But, eugenically speaking, Peter may have a predisposition to follow in
father's footsteps, which I infer led toward the little green swinging
doors," I protested.
"Speakin' U. S. A., tommyrot!" said Mrs. Temple. "Anyhow, it's the
door o' the drugstore in this town. They sell more'n sody water down
to Danforth's."
"What am I to pay the author of Peter and the pies?" I asked.
"Well, seein's how you keep Peter, as it were, and Mrs. Pillig
calc'lates she can rent her house up to Slab City, she's goin' to
come to you for $20 a month. She's wuth it, too. You'll have the best
kept and cleanest house in Bentford."
I rose from the table solemnly. "Mrs. Temple," said I, "I accept Mrs.
Pillig, Peter, and the pies at these terms, but only on one condition:
_She is never to clean my study!_"
"Why?" asked Mrs. Temple.
"Because," said I, "you can never tell where an orderly woman will put
things."
Bert chuckled as he filled his pipe. Mrs. Temple grinned herself. I was
about to make a triumphant exit, when these words from Mrs. Temple's
lips arrested me:
"Bert," she said, "did you clean the buggy to-day? You know you gotter
go over ter the deepot to-morrow an' git that boarder."
"That _what?_" I cried.
Mrs. Bert's eyes half closed with a purely feminine delight. "Oh,
ain't I told you?" she said innocently. "We're goin' ter hev another
boarder, a young lady. From Noo York, too. Her health's broke down,
she says, only that's not the way she said it, and somehow she heard
of us. We ain't never taken many boarders, but I guess our name's in
that old railroad advertisin' book. I wouldn't hev took her, only I
thought maybe you wuz kind o' lonesome here with jest us."
"Mrs. Temple," said I, "your solicitude quite overwhelms me. Comfort
me with petticoats! Good Lord! And an anaemic, too! I'll bet she has
nerves! When can Mrs. Pillig come to me, woman?"
Mrs. Bert's eyes closed still farther. "Oh, your house ain't near
ready yet," she said. "Why, the painters ain't even began."
I fled to my chamber, and hauled forth a manuscript. A female boarder! No
doubt she'd expect me to shave every day and change my working clothes
for the noonday dinner! Heavens! probably she'd come down and advise
me how to lay out my garden! So far, I had been blissfully free from
advice. I had gone to the village just once--to open my account at the
bank. I had not met a soul in the town. One or two of the early arrivals
on the estates had driven by in their cars and stared curiously, but I
had ignored them. I didn't want advice. I was having fun in my own way.
"Hang Mrs. Temple!" I muttered, reading a whole paragraph of manuscript
without taking in a word of it. In fact, I gave up all attempt to work,
and crossly and wearily went to bed, where I lay on one of my strained
shoulders and dreamed that a sick female with spectacles was hauling at
my arm and begging me to come and rescue her sciatic nerve, which had
fallen into my not-yet-built garden pool and was being swallowed by a
gold fish.