University of Virginia Library

18. LETTER XVIII.

Our summer friends are flown, dear Doctor; not a
leaf on the dogwood worth watching, though its fluted
leaves were the last. Still the cottage looks summery
when the sun shines, for the fir-trees, which
were half lost among the flauntings of the deciduous
foliage, look out green and unchanged from the naked
branches of the grove, with neither reproach for our
neglect, nor boast over the departed. They are like
friends, who, in thinking of our need, forget all they
have laid up against us; and, between them and the
lofty spirits of mankind, there is another point of resemblance
which I am woodsman enough to know.
Hew down those gay trees, whose leaves scatter at the
coming of winter, and they will sprout from the trodden
root more vigorously than before. The evergreen,
once struck to the heart, dies. If you are of
my mind, you would rather learn such a pretty mock
of yourself in nature, than catch a fish with a gold
ring in his maw.

A day or two since, very much such another bit of
country wisdom dropped into my ears, which I thought
might be available in poetry, albeit the proof be unpoetical.
Talking with my neighbor, the miller, about
sawing lumber for a stable I am building, I discovered,
incidentally, that the mill will do more work between
sunset and dawn, than in the same number of hours
by daylight. Without reasoning upon it, the miller
knows practically that streams run faster at night. The
increased heaviness of the air, and the withdrawal of
the attraction of light, are probably the causes. But
there is a neat tail for a sonnet coiled up in the fact,
and you may blow it with a long breath to Tom Moore.

Many thanks for your offer of shopping for us, but
you do injustice to the “cash stores” of Owego when
you presume that there is anything short of “a hair
off the great Cham's beard,” which is not found in
their inventory. By the way, there is one article of
which I feel the daily want, and as you live among authors
who procure them ready made for ballads and
romances, perhaps you can send me one before the
canal freezes. I mean a venerable hermit, who having
passed through all the vicissitudes of human life
shall have nothing earthly to occupy him but to live
in the woods and dispense wisdom, gratis, to all comers.
I don't know whether, in your giddy town vocations,
it has ever occurred to you to turn short upon
yourself, in the midst of some grave but insignificant
routine, and inquire (of the gentleman within) whether
this is the fulfilment of your destiny; whether these
little nothings are the links near your eye of the great
chain, which you fancy, in your elevated hours, connects
you with something kindred to the stars. It is
oftenest in fine weather that I thus step out of myself,
and retiring a little space, borrow the eyes of my better
angel, and take a look at the individual I have evacuated.
You shall see him yourself, dear Doctor, with
three strokes of the pen; and in giving your judgment
of the dignity of his pursuits, perform the office to
which I destine the hermit above bespoken.

It is not the stout fellow, with the black London
hat, somewhat rusty, who stands raking away cobs
from the barn-floor, though the hat has seen worshipful
society (having fallen on those blessed days when
hats are as inseparable from the wearer as silk stocking
or culotte), and sports that breadth of brim by
which you know me as far off as your indigenous omnibus.
That's Jem, the groom, to whom, with all its
reminiscences, the hat is but a tile. Nor is it the half
sailor-looking, world-worn, never-smiling man, who is
plying a flail upon that floor of corn, with a look as if
he had learned the stroke with a cutlass, though in his
ripped and shredded upper garment, you might recognise
the frogged and velvet redingote, native of the
Rue de la Paix, which has fluttered on the Symplegades,
and flapped the dust of the Acropolis. That
is my tenant in the wood, who, having passed his youth
and middle age with little content in a more responsible
sphere of life, has limited his wishes to solitude
and a supply of the wants of nature; and though quite
capable of telling story for story with my old fellow-traveller,
probably thinks of it only to wish its ravelled
frogs were horn buttons, and its bursted seams less
penetrable by the rain.

And a third person is one of my neighbors, who can
see nothing done without showing you a “'cuter
way,” and who, sitting on the sill of the barn, is amusing
himself, quite of his own accord, with beheading,
cleaning, and picking an unfortunate duck, whose leg
was accidentally broken by the flail. His voluntary
occupation is stimulated by neither interest nor good
nature, but is simply the itching to be doing something,
which in one shape or another, belongs to every
genuine Jonathan. Near him, in cowhide boots,
frock of fustian, and broad-brimmed sombrero of coarse
straw, stands, breathing from a bout with the flail, the
individual from whom I have stepped apart, and upon
whose morning's worth of existence you shall put a
philosopher's estimate.

I presume my three hours' labor might be done for
about three shillings—my mind, meantime, being entirely
occupied with what I was about, calculating the
number of bushels to the acre, the price of corn farther
down the river, and between whiles, discussing

the merits of a patent corn-sheller, which we had
abandoned for the more laborious but quicker process
of thrashing.

“Purty 'cute tool!” says my neighbor, giving the
machine a look out of the corner of his yellow eye,
“but teoo slow! Corn ought to come off ravin' distracted.
'Taint no use to eat it up in labor. Where
was that got out?”

“'Twas invented in Albany, I rather think.”

“Wal, I guess t'want. It's a Varmount notion.
Rot them Green Mountingeers! they're a spiling
the country. People won't work when them things
lay round. Have you heern of a machine for bottoning
your gallowses behind?”

“No, I have not.”

“Wal, I've been expecting on't. There aint no
other hard work they haint economized. Is them
your hogs in the garding?”

Three vast porkers had nosed open the gate, during
the discussion, and were making the best of their opportunities.
After a vigorous chase, the latch was
closed upon them securely, and my neighbor resumed
his duck.

“Is there no way of forcing people to keep those
brutes at home,” I asked of my silent tenant.

“Yes, sir. The law provides that you may shut
them up, and send word to the owners to come and
take them away.”

“Wal! It's a chore, if you ever tried it, to catch
a hog if he's middlin' spry, and when he's cotch,
you've got to feed him, by law, till he's sent for; and
it don't pay, mister.”

“But you can charge for the feed,” says the other.

“Pesky little, I tell ye. Pig fodder's cheap, and
they don't pay you for carrying on't to 'em, nor for
catching the critters. It's a losin' consarn.”

“Suppose I shoot them.”

“Sartin you can. The owner 'll put his vally on it,
and you can have as much pork at that price as 'll fill
your barn. The hull neighb'r'hood 'll drive their
hogs into your garding.”

I saw that my neighbor had looked at the matter all
round; but I was sure, from his manner, that he could,
if encouraged, suggest a remedy for the nuisance.

“I would give a bushel of that handsome corn,” said
I, “to know how to be rid of them.”

“Be so perlite as to measure it out, mister, while I
head in that hog. I'll show you how the deacon kept
'em out of the new buryin' ground while the fence was
buildin'.”

He laid down the duck, which was, by this time,
fairly picked, and stood a moment looking at the three
hogs, now leisurely turning up the grass at the roadside.
For a reason which I did not at the moment
conceive, he presently made a dash at the thinnest of
the three, a hungry-looking brute, built with an approach
to the greyhound, and missed catching him by
an arm's length. Unluckily for the hog, however, the
road was lined with crooked rail-fence, which deceived
him with constant promise of escape by a short turn,
and by a skilful heading off, and a most industrious
chase of some fifteen minutes, he was cornered at last,
and secured by the hind leg.

“A hog,” said he, dragging him along with the
greatest gravity, “hates a straight line like pizen. If
they'd run right in eend you'd never catch 'em in
natur. Like some folks, aint it? Boy, fetch me a
skrimmage of them whole corn.”

He drove the hog before him, wheelbarrow fashion,
into an open cow-pen, and put up the bars. The boy
(his son, who had been waiting for him outside the barn)
brought him a few ears of ripe corn, and as soon as the
hog had recovered his breath a little, he threw them
into the pen, and drew out a knife from his pocket,
which he whetted on the rail before him.

“Now,” said he, as the voracious animal, unaccus
tomed to such appetizing food, seized ravenously on
the corn, “it's according to law to take up a stray hog
and feed him, aint it?”

“Certainly.”

By this time the greedy creature began to show symptoms
of choking, and my friend's design became clearer.

“And it's Christian charity,” he continued, letting
down the bars, and stepping in as the hog rolled upon
his side, “not to let your neighbor lose his critters by
choking, if you can kill 'em in time to save their meat,
ain't it?”

“Certainly.”

“Wal!” said he, cutting the animal's throat, “you
can send word to the owner of that pork to come and
take it away, and if he don't like to salt down at a minute's
notice, he'll keep the rest at hum, and pay you
for your corn. And that's the way the deacon sarved
my hogs, darn his long face, and I eat pork till I was
sick of the sight on't.”

A bushel of corn being worth about six shillings, I
had paid twice the worth of my own morning's work for
this very Yankee expedient. My neighbor borrowed
a bag, shouldered his grist, and trudged off to the
mill, and relinquishing my flail to Jem, I leaned over
the fence in the warm autumn sunshine, and with my
eyes on the swift yet still bosom of the river below,
fell to wondering, as I said before, whether the hour
of which I have given you a picture, was a fitting link
in a wise man's destiny. The day was one to give
birth to great resolves, bright, elastic, and genial; and
the leafless trees, so lorn and comfortless in cloudier
times, seemed lifting into the sky with heroic endurance,
while the swollen Owaga, flowing on with twice
the summer's depth, seemed gathering soul to defy the
fetters of winter. There was something inharmonious
with little pursuits in everything I could see. Such
air and sunshine, I thought, should overtake one in
some labor of philanthropy, in some sacrifice for
friend or country, in the glow of some noble composition,
or, if in the exercise of physical energy, at least to
some large profit. Yet a few shillings expressed the
whole result of my morning's employment, and the
society by which my thoughts had been colored were
such as I have described. Still this is “farming,” and
so lived Cincinnatus.

Now, dear Doctor, you can be grand among your
gallipots, and if your eye turns in upon yourself, you
may reflect complacently on the almost sublime ends
of the art of healing: but resolve me, if you please,
my little problem. What state of the weather should
I live up to? My present avocations, well enough in
a gray day, or a rainy, or a raw, are quite put out of
countenance by a blue sky and a genial sun. If it
were always like to-day, I should be obliged to seek
distinction in some way. There would be no looking
such a sky in the face three days consecutively, busied
always with pigs and corn. You see the use of a
hermit to settle such points. But adieu, while I have
room to write it.