DAILY DISTRACTIONS.
But the sheep shearing came, and the hay season next, and then the
harvest of small corn ... then the sweating of the apples, and the
turning of the cider mill and the stacking of the firewood, and
netting of the wood-cocks, and the springes to be mended in the
garden and by the hedgerows, where the blackbirds hop to the
molehills in the white October mornings and gray birds come to look
for snails at the time when the sun is rising. It is wonderful how
Time runs away when all these things, and a great many others, come
in to load him down the hill, and prevent him from stopping to look
about. And I, for my part, can never conceive how people who live in
towns and cities, where neither lambs nor birds are (except in some
shop windows), nor growing corn, nor meadow grass, nor even so much
as a stick to cut, or a stile to climb and sit down upon—how these
poor folk get through their lives without being utterly weary of
them, and dying from pure indolence, is a thing God only knows, if
his mercy allows him to think of it.
LORNA DOONE.
A farm-house looks on the outside like a quiet place. No men are seen
about, front windows are closely shaded, front door locked. Go round to
the back door; nobody seems to be at home. If by chance you do find,
after long bruising of knuckles, that you have roused an inmate, it is
some withered, sad-faced old dame, who is indifferent and hopelessly
deaf, or a bare-footed, stupid urchin, who stares as if you had dropped
from another planet, and a cool “Dunno” is the sole response to all
inquiries.
All seems at a dead standstill. In reality everything and everybody is
going at full speed, transpiring and perspiring to such a degree that,
like a swiftly whirling top, it does not appear to move.
Friends think of me as not living, but simply existing, and marvel that
I can endure such monotony. On the contrary, I live in a constant state
of excitement, hurry, and necessity for immediate action.
The cows were continually getting out of pasture and into the corn; the
pigs, like the chickens, evinced decided preference for the garden.
The horse would break his halter and dart down the street, or, if in
pasture, would leap the barbed-wire fence, at the risk of laming his
legs for life, and dash into a neighbor’s yard where children and
babies were sunning on the grass.
Rival butchers and bakers would drive up simultaneously from different
directions and plead for patronage and instant attention.
The vegetables must be gathered and carried to market; every animal was
ravenously hungry at all hours, and didn’t hesitate to speak of it. The
magnificent peacock would wander off two miles, choosing the railroad
track for his rambles, and loved to light on Si Evans’s barn; then a
boy must be detailed to recover the prize bird, said boy depending on
a reward. His modest-hued consort would seek the deep hedges back of a
distant swamp.
Friends would come from a distance to surprise and cheer me in my
lonely retreat just at the time that the butter must positively be
made, while the flowers were choking for water, smothered with weeds,
“pus’ley,” of course, pre-eminent. Then a book agent would appear,
blind, but doubly persistent, with a five-dollar illustrated volume
recounting minutely the Johnstown horror. And one of my dogs would be
apt at this crisis to pursue and slay a chicken or poison himself with
fly-paper. Every laboring man for miles around would come with an air
of great importance to confidentially warn me against every other man
that could be employed, with the stereotyped phrase in closing: “Well,
whatever you do” (as if I might be left to do anything) “don’t hire
John Smallpate or Bill Storer. I’ve known him, man and boy, for thirty
years; you’ll do well not to trust _him_!”
Yet these same men who had so villified each other could be seen
nightly lounging in front of the grocery, discussing politics and
spitting in sweet unison.
The general animosity of my entire family to each other caused constant
interruptions.
“Sandy,” the handsome setter, loathed the pug, and tried to bite his
neck in a fatal way. He also chased the rabbits, trod on young turkeys
so that they were no more, drove the cat out of the barn and up a tree,
barked madly at the cows, enraging those placid animals, and doted on
frightening the horse.
The cat allowed mice to roam merrily through the grain bins, preferring
robins and sparrows, especially young and happy mothers, to a proper
diet; was fond of watching the chickens with wicked, malicious, greedy,
dangerous eyes, and was always ready to make a sly spring for my
canaries.
The rabbits (pretty innocent little creatures I had thought them, as
I gazed at their representatives of white canton flannel, solidly
stuffed, with such charming eyes of pink beads) girded all my young
trees and killed them before I dreamed of such mischief, nibbled at
every tender sprout, every swelling bud, were so agile that they could
not be captured, and became such a maddening nuisance that I hired a
boy to take them away. I fully understand the recent excitement of the
Australians over the rabbit scourge which threatened to devastate their
land.
The relations were strained between my cows; mother and daughter of a
noble line; they always fed at opposite corners of the field, indulging
in serious fights when they met.
My doves! I am almost ready to say that they were more annoying than
all the rest of my motley collection, picked all seeds out of the
ground faster than they could be put in, so large spaces sowed with
rye lay bare all summer, and ate most of the corn and grain that was
intended to fatten and stimulate my fowls.
Doves are poetical and pleasing, pigeons ditto—in literature, and at
a safe distance from one’s own barn. It’s a pretty sight at sunset
on a summer’s eve to see them poising, wheeling, swirling, round a
neighbor’s barn. Their rainbow hues gleam brightly in the sun as they
preen their feathers or gently “coo-oo, I love oo,” on the ridge
pole. I always longed to own some, but now the illusion is past. They
have been admired and petted for ages, consecrated as emblems of
innocence and peace and sanctity, regarded as almost sacred from the
earliest antiquity. They have been idealized and praised from Noah to
Anacreon, both inclined to inebriety! But in reality they are a dirty,
destructive, greedy lot, and though fanciers sell them at high prices,
they only command twenty-five cents per pair when sold for the market!
The hens lost half their feathers, often an eye, occasionally a
life, in deadly feuds. My spunky little bantam game cock was always
challenging one of my monster roosters and laying him low, so he had to
be sent away.
John, my eccentric assistant, could abide no possible rival, insulted
every man engaged to help him, occasionally indulging in a free fight
after too frequent visits to the cider barrels of my next neighbor, so
he had to follow the bantam.
Another distress was the constant calls of natives with the most
undesirable things for me to buy; two or three calls daily for a long
time. Boys with eager, ingenuous faces bringing carrier pigeons—pretty
creatures—and I had been told there was money in pigeons. I paid them
extortionate prices on account of extreme ignorance; and the birds,
of course, flew home as soon as released, to be bought again by some
gullible amateur. I had omitted to secure the names and addresses of
these guileless lads.
A sandy-haired, lisping child with chronic catarrh offered me a lot of
pet _rats_!
“I hear you like pets,” she said, “Well, I’ve got some tame rats, a
father and mother and thirteen little ones, and a mother with four.
They’re orful cunning. Hope you’ll take ’em.”
A big, red-faced, black-bearded, and determined man drove one day into
the yard with an immense wagon, in which was standing a stupid, vicious
old goat, and almost insisted on leaving it at a most ridiculously high
price.
“Heard that the woman that had come to live here wanted most every
animal that Noah got into the ark; was sure she’d like a goat.” It was
with considerable difficulty that he could be induced to take it away.
Dogs, dogs, dogs—from mastiff to mongrel, from St. Bernard to toy
poodle—the yard really swarmed with them just before the first of May,
when dog taxes must be paid!
A crow that could talk, but rather objectionably, was offered me.
A pert little boy, surrounded by his equally pert mates, said, after
coming uninvited to look over my assortment: “Got most everything,
hain’t ye? Got a monkey?”
Then his satellites all giggled.
“No, not yet. Will not _you_ come in?”
Second giggle, less hearty.
A superannuated clergyman walked three miles and a quarter in a heavy
rain, minus umbrella, to bring me a large and common pitcher, badly
cracked and of no original value; heard I was collecting old china.
Then, after making a long call, drew out a tiny package from his vest
pocket and offered for sale two time-worn cheap rings taken from his
mother’s dead hand. They were mere ghosts of rings that had once meant
so much of joy or sorrow, pathetic souvenirs, one would think, to a
loving son. He would also sell me his late father’s old sermons for a
good sum!
This reminded me of Sydney Smith’s remark to an old lady who was sorely
afflicted with insomnia: “Have you ever tried one of my sermons?”
Perhaps I have said enough to prove that life in a bucolic solitude may
be something more varied than is generally—don’t let that old peddler
come into the house, say we want nothing, and then tell the ladies I’ll
be down directly—and, O _Ellen_, call Tom! Those ducks are devouring
his new cabbage-plants and one of the calves has got over the stone
wall and—what?
“He’s gone to Dog Corner for the cow-doctor.”
—Yes, more varied than is generally supposed!