Adopting An Abandoned Farm, Kate Sanborn [best mobile ebook reader .txt] 📗

the effort was over I tried to sound him as to my success. He was unusually reticent, and would only say: "Wall, the only man I heard speak on't, said 'twas different from anything he ever heard." This reminded me of a capital story told me by an old family doctor many years ago. It was that sort of anecdote now out of fashion with <i>raconteurs - a long preamble, many details, a gradual increase of interest, and a vivid climax, and when told by a sick bed would sometimes weary the patient. A man not especially well known had given a lecture in a New Hampshire town without rousing much enthusiasm in his audience, and as he rode away on the top of the stage coach next morning he tried to get some sort of opinion from Jim Barker, the driver. After pumping in vain for a compliment the gentleman inquired: "Did you hear nothing about my lecture from any of the people? I should like very much to get some idea of how it was received."

"Wall, no, stranger, I can't say as I heerd much. I guess the folks was purty well pleased. No one seemed to be ag'in it but Square Lothrop."

"And may I ask what he said?"

"Wall, I wouldn't mind it, if I'se you, what he said. He says just what he thinks - right out with it, no matter who's hurt - and he usually gets the gist on't. But I wouldn't mind what he said, the public was purty generally pleased." And the long whip lash cracks and Jim shouts, "Get an, Dandy."

"Yes," persisted the tortured man; "but I do want very much to know what Squire Lothrop's opinion was."

"Now, stranger, I wouldn't think any more about the Square. He's got good common sense and allers hits the nail on the head, but as I said, you pleased 'em fust rate."

"Yes, but I must know what Squire Lothrop did say."

"Wall, if you will have it, he did say (and he's apt to get the gist on't) he did say that <i>he thought 'twas <i>awful shaller!"

Many epigrammatic sayings come back to me, and one is too good to be omitted, An old woman was fiercely criticising a neighbor and ended in this way: "Folks that pretend to be somebody, and don't act like nobody, ain't anybody!"

Another woman reminded me of Mrs. Partington. She told blood-curdling tales of the positive reappearance of departed spirits, and when I said, "Do you really believe all this?" she replied, "Indeed, I do, and yet I'm not an <i>imaginary woman!" Her dog was provoked into a conflict with my setters, and she exclaimed: "Why, I never saw him so completely
<i>ennervated."

Then the dear old lady who said she was a free thinker and wasn't ashamed of it; guessed she knew as much as the minister 'bout this world or the next; liked nothing better than to set down Sunday afternoons after she'd fed her hens and read Ingersoll. "What books of his have you?" I asked.

She handed me a small paper-bound volume which did not look like any of "Bob's" productions. It was a Guide Book through Picturesque Vermont by Ernest Ingersoll!

And I must not omit the queer sayings of a simple-hearted hired man on a friend's farm.

Oh, for a photo of him as I saw him one cold, rainy morning tending Jason Kibby's dozen cows. He had on a rubber coat and cap, but his trouser legs were rolled above the knee and he was barefoot, "Hannibal," I shouted, "you'll take cold with your feet in that wet grass!"

"Gueth not, Marm," he lisped back cheerily. "I never cared for shooth mythelf."

He was always shouting across the way to inquire if "<i>thith wath hot enough or cold enough to thute <i>me?" As if I had expressed a strong desire for phenomenal extremes of temperature. One morning he suddenly departed. I met him trudging along with three hats jammed on to his head and a rubber coat under his arm, for 'twas a fine day.

"Why, Hanny!" I exclaimed, "where are you going in such haste?"

"Mithter Kibby told me to go to Halifax, and - I'm going!"

Next, the man who was anxious to go into partnership with me. He would work my farm at halves, or I could buy his farm, cranberry bog, and woodland, and he would live right on there and run that place at halves; urged me to buy twelve or fourteen cows cheap in the fall and start a milk route, he to be the active partner; then he had a chance to buy a lot of "essences" cheap, and if I'd purchase a peddling-wagon, he'd put in his old horse, and we'd go halves on that business, or I could buy up a lot of calves or young pigs and he'd feed 'em and we'd go halves.

But I will not take you through my entire picture-gallery, as I have two good stories to tell you before saying good-by.

Depressing remarks have reached me about my "lakelet," which at first was ridiculed by every one. The struggle of evolution from the "spring hole" was severe and protracted. Experts were summoned, their estimates of cost ranging from four hundred to one thousand dollars, and no one thought it worth while to touch it. It was discouraging. Venerable and enormous turtles hid in its muddy depths and snapped at the legs of the ducks as they dived, adding a limp to the waddle; frogs croaked there dismally; mosquitoes made it a camping ground and head center; big black water snakes often came to drink and lingered by the edge; the ugly horn pout was the only fish that could live there. Depressing, in contrast with my rosy dreams! But now the little lake is a charming reality, and the boat is built and launched. Turtles, pout, lily roots as big as small trees, and two hundred loads of "alluvial deposit" are no longer "in it," while carp are promised me by my friend Commissioner Blackford. The "Tomtoolan"[2] is not a large body of water - one hundred and fifty feet long, seventy-five feet wide - but it is a delight to me and has been grossly traduced by ignorant or envious outsiders. The day after the "Katy-Did" was christened (a flat-bottomed boat, painted prettily with blue and gold) I invited a lady to try it with me. Flags were fluttering from stem and stern. We took a gayly colored horn to toot as we went, and two dippers to bail, if necessary. It was not exactly "Youth at the prow and Pleasure at the helm," but we were very jolly and not a little proud.

[Footnote 2: Named in honor of the amateur engineers.]

A neglected knot-hole soon caused the boat to leak badly. We had made but one circuit, when we were obliged to "hug the shore" and devote our entire energies to bailing. "Tip her a little more," I cried, and the next instant we were both rolled into the water. It was an absurd experience, and after scrambling out, our clothes so heavy we could scarcely step, we vowed, between hysteric fits of laughter, to keep our tip-over a profound secret.

But the next time I went to town, friends began to smile mysteriously, asked me if I had been out on the lake yet, made sly and jocose allusions to a sudden change to Baptistic faith, and if I cordially invited them to join me in a row, would declare a preference for surf and salt water, or, if pressed, would murmur in the meanest way something about having a bath-tub at home.

It is now nearly a year since that little adventure, but it is still a subject of mirth, even in other towns. A friend calling yesterday told me the version he had just heard at Gillford, ten miles away!

"You bet they have comical goings-on at that woman's farm by the Gooseville depot! She got a regular menagerie, fust off - everything she see or could hear of. Got sick o' the circus bizness, and went into potatoes deep. They say she was actually up and outdoors by day-break, working and worrying over the tater bugs!

"She's a red-headed, fleshy woman, and some of our folks going by in the cars would tell of seeing her tramping up and down the long furrows, with half a dozen boys hired to help her. Soon as she'd killed most of her own, a million more just traveled over from the field opposite where they had had their own way and cleaned out most everything. Then, what the bugs spared, the long rains rotted. So I hear she's giv' up potatoes.

"Then she got sot on scooping out a seven by nine mud hole to make a pond, and had a boat built to match.

"Well, by darn, she took a stout woman in with her, and, as I heerd it, that boat just giv' one groan, and sunk right down!"

As to the potatoes, I might never have escaped from that terrific thralldom, if a city friend, after hearing my woful experience, had not inquired quietly:

"Why have potatoes? It's much cheaper to buy all you need!"

I had been laboring under a strange spell - supposed I <i>must plant potatoes; the relief is unspeakable.

Jennie June once said, "The great art of life is to <i>eliminate." I admired the condensed wisdom of this, but, like experience, it only serves to illume the path over which I have passed.

One little incident occurred this spring which is too funny to withhold. Among the groceries ordered from Boston was a piece of extra fine cheese. A connoisseur in cheese had advised me to try it. It recommended itself so strongly that I placed it carefully under glass, in a place all by itself. It <i>was strong - strong enough to sew buttons on, strong as Sampson, strong enough to walk away alone. One warm morning it seemed to have gained during the night. Its penetrating, permeating power was something, almost supernatural. I carried it from one place to another, each time more remote. It would not be lonely if segregrated, doubtless it had ample social facilities within itself! At last I became desperate. "Ellen," I exclaimed, "just bring in that cheese and burn it. It comes high, too high. I can not endure it." She opened the top of the range and, as the cremation was going on, I continued my comments. "Why, in all my life, I never knew anything like it; wherever I put it - in pantry, swing cupboard, on the cellar stairs, in a tin box, on top of the refrigerator - way out on that - " Just then Tom opened the door and said:

"Miss, your fertilizer's come!"

I have told you of my mistakes, failures, losses, but have you any idea of my daily delights, my lasting gains?

From invalidism to health, from mental depression to exuberant spirits, that is the blessed record of two years of amateur farming. What has done this? Exercise, actual hard work, digging in the dirt. We are made of dust, and the closer our companionship with Mother Earth in summer time the longer we shall keep above ground. Then the freedom from conventional restraints of dress; no necessity for "crimps," no need of foreign hirsute adornment, no dresses with tight arm holes and trailing skirts, no high-heeled slippers with pointed toes, but comfort, clear comfort, indoors and out.

Plenty of rocking chairs, lounges that make one sleepy just to look at them, open fires in every room,