American Cookery: Thanksgiving Menus and Recipes, - [i have read the book a hundred times TXT] 📗

It is to be supposed that when a man gives up the comforts of town apartments and hies him to the country, it is the garden, the outdoors, which lures him.

Why is it, then, that he seems to take particular pains to arrange his garden so that it is about as much his own as Central Park is?

It might give the average man a great deal of pleasure to be able to say to all the passersby on the Mall, "This little bit of the Park belongs to me! I cut that grass, I weed those flower beds in the evening when I come home from the office; and every Saturday afternoon I take the hose and thoroughly soak that bit of lawn there, you may see me at it any week in the summer."

But then, we are not dealing with the fictitious average man, and we firmly believe that many "commuters" wonder deep down in their hearts why it is they get from their gardens so little of the pleasure they anticipated when they came to live out of the city.

Any one who has traveled abroad, has admired and perhaps coveted the gardens of England, France, and Italy. Their charm is undeniable, and thought to be too elusive for reproduction on American soil without the aid of landscape gardeners and a fair-sized fortune.

Just why we, as a nation, are beset by the idea of reproducing instead of originating beautiful gardens is a question apart from this discussion. But as soon as we try to develop, to their fullest extent, the advantages of our climate, and soil, in combination with our daily life as a people, we shall produce gardens which will equal, without necessarily resembling, those of other countries.

In every case we must, however, follow the same procedure which every successful garden is built upon, whether it be in Mesopotamia or in Long Island City. That is, we must study the place, the people, and the circumstances.

The most general fault in American gardens is their lack of privacy.

No one claims that the high walls of Italy and France or the impenetrable hedges of England would invariably suit the climate here. But there are many ways to obtain seclusion without in any way depriving us of much-needed air in summer and sun in winter. One way is by placing the house rationally upon its lot. Our custom has been to invariably build so that we had a "front yard," "back yard," and two side yards, all equally important, equally uninteresting, unbeautiful and useless.

Of course, we have the porch which in a way takes the place of the outdoor living room, always so attractive in foreign gardens. And recently some laudable efforts are being made to incorporate the porch into the house, where it belongs, as a real American institution, instead of leaving it disconsolately clinging to the outside and bearing no resemblance to the house either in shape or detail.

But after all, a porch is a porch, and a garden is a garden, and one does not take the place of the other.

Especially is this true of the tiny property.

If you have only ten feet of ground to spare outside your tiny house, plan it so that every foot contributes to your joy at being in the country. Arrange it so that on a warm summer evening when the porch seems a bit close and dark, you wander out into your garden and sit beneath the stars in quiet as profound as on the Desert of Sahara. And in the winter, let your garden provide a warm corner out of the wind, where on a bright Sunday morning you may sit and blink in the sun.

Once you have got the desire for a room outdoors, a real garden, which is neither flower beds, nor lawns, nor hedges, nor trees, but a place for your comfort, with all these things contributing to its beauty, you will know as by divine inspiration where to put each flower and bush and path. Your planting will be no longer a problem for landscape architects, but a pleasant occupation for yourself and family.

So then will your successful tiny house stand forth in its real garden, an object of pride to the community and a tribute to one man who has refused to be the impossible average, and has dared to build and plant for his own needs.

May he live forever and ever happy in his tiny house!

The idea for the party came to Polly one night as she was washing the dinner dishes, and that very evening she waved away the boys' objection that Thanksgiving was a family affair pure and simple.

"I'm not planning to have any one in for dinner," she said, "though there's nothing that would suit me better, if the apartment boasted a larger dining room. But there are three girls in my Sunday School class that can't possibly go home this year, and I've no doubt you boys could find somebody that won't be invited anywhere. Thanksgiving is such a cheerless place in a boarding house! If we ask a few young people in for a party in the evening, it will liven things up a bit for them, and I think it will be pretty good fun for us, don't you?"

In the end Polly had her way, and just a week before Thanksgiving, she sent invitations to three girls and to two boys whom Rupert and Harry suggested.

Polly searched the shops for a card of two-eyed white buttons of the size of ten cent pieces. She carefully sewed a button on the upper part of a correspondence card, added eyebrows, nose and mouth with India ink, copied a body and cap from Palmer Cox's "Brownie Book," painted the drawing brown, and behold, a saucy brownie grinned at her from the invitation. Underneath the picture, she carefully printed a jingle.