Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862

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BEETS.--The beets came up, little red-veined leaves, struggling for
breath among a tangle of Roman wormwood and garlic; and though they
exhibited great tenacity of life, they also exhibited great irregularity
of purpose. In one spot there would be nothing, in an adjacent spot a
whorl of beets, big and little, crowding and jostling and elbowing each
other, like school-boys round the red-hot stove on a winter's morning.
I knew they had been planted in a right line, and I don't, even now,
comprehend why they should not come up in a right line. I weeded them,
and though freedom from foreign growth discovered an intention, of
straightness, the most casual observer could not but see that skewiness
had usurped its place. I repaired to my friend the gardener. He said
they must be thinned out and transplanted. It went to my heart to pull
up the dear things, but I did it, and set them down again tenderly in
the vacant spots. It was evening. The next morning I went to them.
Flatness has a new meaning to me since that morning. You can hardly
conceive that anything could look so utterly forlorn, disconsolate,
disheartened, and collapsed. In fact, they exhibited a degree of
depression so entirely beyond what the circumstances demanded, that I
was enraged. If they had shown any symptoms of trying to live, I could
have sighed and forgiven them; but, on the contrary, they had flopped
and died without a struggle, and I pulled them up without a pang,
comforting myself with the remaining ones, which throve on their
companions' graves, and waxed fat and full and crimson-hearted, in their
soft, brown beds. So delighted was I with their luxuriant rotundity,
that I made an internal resolve that henceforth I would always plant
beets. True, I cannot abide beets. Their fragrance and their flavor are
alike nauseating; but they come up, and a beet that will come up is
better than a cedar of Lebanon that won't. In all the vegetable kingdom
I know of no quality better than this, growth,--nor any quality that
will atone for its absence.

PARSNIPS.--They ran the race with an indescribable vehemence that fairly
threw the beets into the shade. They trod so delicately at first that
I was quite unprepared for such enthusiasm. Lacking the red veining, I
could not distinguish them even from the weeds with any certainty, and
was forced to let both grow together till the harvest. So both grew
together, a perfect jungle. But the parsnips got ahead, and rushed up
gloriously, magnificently, bacchanalianly,--as the winds come when
forests are rended,--as the waves come when navies are stranded. I am,
indeed, troubled with a suspicion that their vitality has all run to
leaves, and that, when I go down into the depths of the earth for
the parsnips, I shall find only bread of emptiness. It is a pleasing
reflection that parsnips cannot be eaten till the second year. I am told
that they must lie in the ground during the winter. Consequently it
cannot be decided whether there are any or not till next spring. I shall
in the mean time assume and assert without hesitation or qualification
that there are as many tubers below the surface as there are leaves
above it. I shall thereby enjoy a pleasant consciousness, and the
respect of all, for the winter; and if disappointment awaits me in the
spring, time will have blunted its keenness for me, and other people
will have forgotten the whole subject. You may be sure I shall not
remind them of it.

CUCUMBERS.--The cucumbers came up so far and stuck. It must have been
innate depravity, for there was no shadow of reason why they should not
keep on as they began. They did not. They stopped growing in the prime
of life. Only three cucumbers developed, and they hid under the vines so
that I did not see them till they were become ripe, yellow, soft, and
worthless. They are an unwholesome fruit at best, and I bore their loss
with great fortitude.

TOMATOES.--Both dead. I had been instructed to protect them from the
frost by night and from the sun by day. I intended to do so ultimately,
but I did not suppose there was any emergency. A frost came the first
night and killed them, and a hot sun the next day burned up all there
was left. When they were both thoroughly dead, I took great pains to
cover them every night and noon. No symptoms of revival appearing to
reward my efforts, I left them to shift for themselves. I did not think
there was any need of their dying, in the first place; and if they would
be so absurd as to die without provocation, I did not see the necessity
of going into a decline about it. Besides, I never did value plants
or animals that have to be nursed, and petted, and coaxed to live.
If things want to die, I think they'd better die. Provoked by my
indifference, one of the tomatoes flared up and took a new start,--put
forth leaves, shot out vines, and covered himself with fruit and glory.
The chickens picked out the heart of all the tomatoes as soon as they
ripened, which was of no consequence, however, as they had wasted
so much time in the beginning that the autumn frosts came upon them
unawares, and there wouldn't have been fruit enough ripe to be of any
account, if no chicken had ever broken a shell.

SQUASHES.--They appeared above-ground, large-lobed and vigorous. Large
and vigorous appeared the bugs, all gleaming in green and gold, like
the wolf on the fold, and stopped up all the stomata and ate up all the
parenchyma, till my squash-leaves looked as if they had grown for the
sole purpose of illustrating net-veined organizations. In consternation
I sought again my neighbor the Englishman. He assured me he had 'em
on his, too,--lots of 'em. This reconciled me to mine. Bugs are not
inherently desirable, but a universal bug does not indicate special want
of skill in any one. So I was comforted. But the Englishman said they
must be killed. He had killed his. Then I said I would kill mine, too.
How should it be done? Oh! put a shingle near the vine at night and they
would crawl upon it to keep dry, and go out early in the morning and
kill 'em. But how to kill them? Why, take 'em right between your thumb
and finger and crush 'em!

As soon as I could recover breath, I informed him confidentially, that,
if the world were one great squash, I wouldn't undertake to save it in
that way. He smiled a little, but I think he was not overmuch pleased. I
asked him why I couldn't take a bucket of water and dip the shingle in
it and drown them. He said, well, I could try it. I did try it,--first
wrapping my hand in a cloth to prevent contact with any stray bug. To
my amazement, the moment they touched the water they all spread unseen
wings and flew away, safe and sound. I should not have been much more
surprised to see Halicarnassus soaring over the ridge-pole. I had not
the slightest idea that they could fly. Of course I gave up the design
of drowning them. I called a council of war. One said I must put a
newspaper over them and fasten it down at the edges; then they couldn't
get in. I timidly suggested that the squashes couldn't get out. Yes,
they could, he said,--they'd grow right through the paper. Another said
I must surround them with round boxes with the bottoms broken out; for,
though they could fly, they couldn't steer, and when they flew up, they
just dropped down anywhere, and as there was on the whole a good deal
more land on the outside of the boxes than on the inside, the chances
were in favor of their dropping on the outside. Another said that ashes
must be sprinkled on them. A fourth said lime was an infallible remedy.
I began with the paper, which I secured with no little difficulty; for
the wind--the same wind, strange to say--kept blowing the dirt at me
and the paper away from me; but I consoled myself by remembering the
numberless rows of squash-pies that should crown my labors, and May took
heart from Thanksgiving. The next day I peeped under the paper and the
bugs were a solid phalanx. I reported at head-quarters, and they asked
me if I killed the bugs before I put the paper down. I said no, I
supposed it would stifle them,--in fact, I didn't think anything about
it, but if I thought anything, that was what I thought. I wasn't pleased
to find I had been cultivating the bugs and furnishing them with free
lodgings. I went home and tried all the remedies in succession. I could
hardly decide which agreed best with the structure and habits of the
bugs, but they throve on all. Then I tried them all at once and all o'er
with a mighty uproar. Presently the bugs went away. I am not sure that
they wouldn't have gone just as soon, if I had let them alone. After
they were gone, the vines scrambled out and put forth some beautiful,
deep golden blossoms. When they fell off, that was the end of them. Not
a squash,--not one,--not a single squash,--not even a pumpkin. They
were all false blossoms.

APPLES.--The trees swelled into masses of pink and white fragrance.
Nothing could exceed their fluttering loveliness or their luxuriant
promise. A few days of fairy beauty, and showers of soft petals floated
noiselessly down, covering the earth with delicate snow; but I knew,
that, though the first blush of beauty was gone, a mighty work was going
on in a million little laboratories, and that the real glory was yet to
come. I was surprised to observe, one day, that the trees seemed to be
turning red. I remarked to Halicarnassus that that was one of Nature's
processes which I did not remember to have seen noticed in any
botanical treatise. I thought such a change did not occur till autumn.
Halicarnassus curved the thumb and forefinger of his right hand into an
arch, the ends of which rested on the wrist of his left coat-sleeve. He
then lifted the forefinger high and brought it forward. Then he lifted
the thumb and brought it up behind the forefinger, and so made them
travel up to his elbow. It seemed to require considerable exertion in
the thumb and forefinger, and I watched the progress with interest. Then
I asked him what he meant by it.

"That's the way they walk," he replied.

"Who walk?"

"The little fellows that have squatted on our trees."

"What little fellows do you mean?"

"The canker-worms."

"How many are there?"

"About twenty-five decillions, I should think, as near as I can count."

"Why! what are they for? What good do they do?"

"Oh! no end. Keep the children from eating green apples and getting
sick."

"How do they do that?"

"Eat 'em themselves."

A frightful idea dawned upon me. I believe I turned a kind of ghastly
blue.

"Halicarnassus, do you mean to tell me that the canker-worms are eating
up our apples and that we shan't have any?"

"It looks like that exceedingly."

That was months ago, and it looks a great deal more like it now. I
watched those trees with sadness at my heart. Millions of brown, ugly,
villanous worms gnawed, gnawed, gnawed, at the poor little tender leaves
and buds,--held them in foul embrace,--polluted their sweetness with
hateful breath. I could almost feel the shudder of the trees in that
slimy clasp,--could almost hear the shrieking and moaning of the young
fruit that saw its hope of happy life thus slowly consuming; but I
was powerless to save. For weeks that loathsome army preyed upon the
unhappy, helpless trees, and then spun loathsomely to the ground, and
buried itself in the reluctant, shuddering soil. A few dismal little
apples escaped the common fate, but when they rounded into greenness and
a suspicion of pulp, a boring worm came and bored them, and they,
too, died. No apple-pies at Thanksgiving. No apple-roasting in winter
evenings. No pan-pie with hot brown bread on Sunday mornings.

CHERRIES.--They rivalled the apple-blooms in snowy profusion, and the
branches were covered with tiny balls. The sun mounted warm and high in
the heavens and they blushed under his ardent gaze. I felt an increasing
conviction that here there would be no disappointment; but it soon
became palpable that another class of depredators had marked our trees
for their own. Little brown toes could occasionally be seen peeping from
the foliage, and little bare feet left their print on the garden-soil.
Humanity had evidently deposited its larva in the vicinity. There was a
schoolhouse not very far away, and the children used to draw water from
an old well in a distant part of the garden. It was surprising to see
how thirsty they all became as the cherries ripened. It was as if the
village had simultaneously agreed to breakfast on salt fish. Their
wooden bucket might have been the urn of the Danaides, judging from the
time it took to fill it. The boys were as fleet of foot as young zebras,
and presented upon discovery no apology or justification but their
heels,--which was a wise stroke in them. A troop of rosy-cheeked,
bright-eyed little snips in white pantalets, caught in the act, reasoned
with in a semi-circle, and cajoled with candy, were as sweet as
distilled honey, and promised with all their innocent hearts and hands
not to do so any more. But the real _piece de resistance_ was a mass of
pretty well developed crinoline which an informal walk in the infested
district brought to light, engaged in a systematic raid upon the
tempting fruit. Now, in my country, the presence of unknown individuals
in your own garden, plucking your fruit from your trees, without your
knowledge and against your will, is universally considered as affording
presumptive evidence of--something. In this part of the world, however,
I find they do things differently. It doesn't furnish presumptive
evidence of anything. If you think it does, you do so at your own risk.
I thought it did, and escaped by the skin of my teeth. I hinted my
views, and found myself in a den of lions, and was thankful to come out
second-best. Second? nay, third-best, fourth-best, no best at all, not
even good,--very bad. In short, I was glad to get out with my life. Nor
was my repulse confined to the passing hour. The injured innocents come
no more for water. I am consumed with inward remorse as I see them daily
file majestically past my house to my neighbor's well. I have resolved
to plant a strawberry-bed next year, and offer them the fruit of it by
way of atonement, and never, under any provocation, hereafter, to assert
or insinuate that I have any claim whatever to anything under the sun.
If this course, perseveringly persisted in, does not restore the state
of quo, I am hopeless. I have no further resources.

The one drop of sweetness in the bitter cup was, that the cherries,
being thus let severely alone, were allowed to hang on the trees and
ripen. It took them a great while. If they had been as big as hogsheads,
I should think the sun might have got through them sooner than he did.
They looked ripe long before they were so; and as they were very
plenty, the trees presented a beautiful appearance. I bought a stack of
fantastic little baskets from a travelling Indian tribe, at a fabulous
price, for the sake of fulfilling my long-cherished design of sending
fruit to my city friends. After long waiting, Halicarnassus came in one
morning with a tin pail full, and said that they were ripe at last, for
they were turning purple and falling off; and he was going to have them
gathered at once. He had brought in the first-fruits for breakfast. I
put them in the best preserve-dish, twined it with myrtle, and set it
in the centre of the table. It looked charming,--so ruddy and rural and
Arcadian. I wished we could breakfast out-doors; but the summer was one
of unusual severity, and it was hardly prudent thus to brave its rigor.
We had cup-custards at the close of our breakfast that morning,--very
vulgar, but very delicious. We reached the cherries at the same moment,
and swallowed the first one simultaneously. The effect was instantaneous
and electric. Halicarnassus puckered his face into a perfect wheel,
with his mouth for the hub. I don't know how I looked, but I felt badly
enough.

"It was unfortunate that we had custards this morning," I remarked.
"They are so sweet that the cherries seem sour by contrast. We shall
soon get the sweet taste out of our mouths, however."

"That's so!" said Halicarnassus, who _will_ be coarse.

We tried another. He exhibited a similar pantomime, with improvements.
My feelings were also the same, intensified.

"I am not in luck to-day," I said, attempting to smile. "I got hold of a
sour cherry this time."

"I got hold of a bitter one," said Halicarnassus.

"Mine was a little bitter, too," I added.

"Mine was a little sour, too," said Halicarnassus.

"We shall have to try again," said I.

We did try again.

"Mine was a good deal of both this time," said Halicarnassus. "But we
will give them a fair trial."

"Yes," said I, sepulchrally.

We sat there sacrificing ourselves to abstract right for five minutes.
Then I leaned back in my chair, and looked at Halicarnassus. He rested
his right elbow on the table, and looked at me.

"Well," said he, at last, "how are cherries and things?"

"Halicarnassus," said I, solemnly, "it is my firm conviction that
farming is not a lucrative occupation. You have no certain assurance of
return, either for labor or capital invested. Look at it. The bugs eat
up the squashes. The worms eat up the apples. The cucumbers won't grow
at all. The peas have got lost. The cherries are bitter as wormwood and
sour as you in your worst moods. Everything that is good for anything
won't grow, and everything that grows isn't good for anything."

"My Indian corn, though," began Halicarnassus; but I snapped him up
before he was fairly under way. I had no idea of travelling in that
direction.

"What am I to do with all those baskets that I bought, I should like to
know?" I asked, sharply.

"What did you buy them for?" he asked in return.

"To send cherries to the Hudsons and the Mavericks and Fred Ashley," I
replied promptly.

"Why don't you send 'em, then? There's plenty of them,--more than we
shall want."

"Because," I answered, "I have not exhausted the pleasures of
friendship. Nor do I perceive the benefit that would accrue from turning
life-long friends into life-long enemies."

"I'll tell you what we can do," said Halicarnassus. "We can give a party
and treat them to cherries. They'll have to eat 'em out of politeness."

"Halicarnassus," said I, "we should be mobbed. We should fall victims to
the fury of a disappointed and enraged populace."

"At any rate," said he, "we can offer them to chance visitors."

The suggestion seemed to me a good one,--at any rate, the only one that
held out any prospect of relief. Thereafter, whenever friends called
singly or in squads,--if the squads were not large enough to be
formidable,--we invariably set cherries before them, and with generous
hospitality pressed them to partake. The varying phases of emotion which
they exhibited were painful to me at first, but I at length came to take
a morbid pleasure in noting them. It was a study for a sculptor. By long
practice I learned to detect the shadow of each coming change, where a
casual observer would see only a serene expanse of placid politeness.
I knew just where the radiance, awakened by the luscious, swelling,
crimson globes, faded into doubt, settled into certainty, glared into
perplexity, fired into rage. I saw the grimace, suppressed as soon as
begun, but not less patent to my preternaturally keen eyes. No one
deceived me by being suddenly seized with admiration of a view. I
knew it was only to relieve his nerves by making faces behind the
window-curtains.

I grew to take a fiendish delight in watching the conflict, and the
fierce desperation which marked its violence. On the one side were
the forces of fusion, a reluctant stomach, an unwilling oesophagus, a
loathing palate; on the other, the stern, unconquerable will. A natural
philosopher would have gathered new proofs of the unlimited capacity of
the human race to adapt itself to circumstances, from the _debris_ that
strewed our premises after each fresh departure. Cherries were chucked
under the sofa, into the table-drawers, behind the books, under the
lamp-mats, into the vases, in any and every place where a dexterous hand
could dispose of them without detection. Yet their number seemed to
suffer no abatement. Like Tityus's liver, they were constantly renewed,
though constantly consumed. The small boys seemed to be suffering from a
fit of conscience. In vain we closed the blinds and shut ourselves up in
the house to give them a fair field. Not a cherry was taken. In vain we
went ostentatiously to church all day on Sunday. Not a twig was touched.
Finally I dropped all the curtains on that side of the house, and
avoided that part of the garden in my walks. The cherries may be hanging
there to this day, for aught I know.

But why do I thus linger over the sad recital? _"Ab uno disce omnes."_
(A quotation from Virgil: means, "All of a piece.") There may have been,
there probably was, an abundance of sweet-corn, but the broomstick that
had marked the spot was lost, and I could in no wise recall either spot
or stick. Nor did I ever see or hear of the peas,--or the beans. If our
chickens could be brought to the witness-box, they might throw light on
the subject. As it is, I drop a natural tear, and pass on to

THE FLOWER-GARDEN.--It appeared very much behind time,--chiefly Roman
wormwood. I was grateful even for that. Then two rows of four-o'clocks
became visible to the naked eye. They are cryptogamous, it seems.
Botanists have hitherto classed them among the Phaenogamia. A sweet-pea
and a china-aster dawdled up just in time to get frost-bitten. _"Et
praeterea nihil."_ (Virgil: means, "That's all.") I am sure it was no
fault of mine. I tended my seeds with assiduous care. My devotion was
unwearied. I was a very slave to their caprices. I planted them just
beneath the surface in the first place, so that they might have an easy
passage. In two or three days they all seemed to be lying round loose on
the top, and I planted them an inch deep. Then I didn't see them at
all for so long that I took them up again, and planted them half-way
between. It was of no use. You cannot suit people or plants that are
determined not to be suited.

Yet, sad as my story is, I cannot regret that I came into the country
and attempted a garden. It has been fruitful in lessons, if in nothing
else. I have seen how every evil has its compensating good. When I am
tempted to repine that my squashes did not grow, I reflect, that, if
they had grown, they would probably have all turned into pumpkins, or if
they had stayed squashes, they would have been stolen. When it seems
a mysterious Providence that kept all my young hopes underground, I
reflect how fine an illustration I should otherwise have lost of what
Kossuth calls the solidarity of the human race,--what Paul alludes to,
when he says, if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it. I
recall with grateful tears the sympathy of my neighbors on the right
hand and on the left,--expressed not only by words, but by deeds. In my
mind's eye, Horatio, I see again the baskets of apples, and pears, and
tomatoes, and strawberries,--squashes too heavy to lift,--and corn
sweet as the dews of Hymettus, that bore daily witness of human
brotherhood. I remember, too, the victory which I gained over my own
depraved nature. I saw my neighbor prosper in everything he undertook.
_Nihil tetigit quod non crevit._ Fertility found in his soil its
congenial home, and spanned it with rainbow hues. Every day I walked by
his garden and saw it putting on its strength, its beautiful garments.
I had not even the small satisfaction of reflecting that amid all his
splendid success his life was cold and cheerless, while mine, amid all
its failures, was full of warmth,--a reflection which, I have often
observed, seems to go a great way towards making a person contented with
his lot,--for he had a lovely wife, promising children, and the whole
village for his friends. Yet, notwithstanding all these obstacles, I
learned to look over his garden-wall with sincere joy.

There is one provocation, however, which I cannot yet bear with
equanimity, and which I do not believe I shall ever meet without at
least a spasm of wrath, even if my Christian character shall ever become
strong enough to preclude absolute tetanus; and I do hereby beseech all
persons who would not be guilty of the sin of Jeroboam who made Israel
to sin, who do not wish to have on their hands the burden of my ruined
temper, to let me go quietly down into the valley of humiliation and
oblivion, and not pester me, as they have hitherto done from all parts
of the North-American continent, with the infuriating question, "How did
you get on with your garden?"

* * * * *

LYRICS OF THE STREET.

I.

THE TELEGRAMS.

Bring the hearse to the station,
When one shall demand it, late;
For that dark consummation
The traveller must not wait.
Men say not by what connivance
He slid from his weight of woe,
Whether sickness or weak contrivance,
But we know him glad to go.
On, and on, and ever on!
What next?

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