3313 BATEMAN AVENUE, MONT ALTO—30 minutes from City Hall; four rooms and private hallway; bath with shower and spray, private; fine southern exposure two rooms; airy, ample windows; use of parlor, porch, piano and laundry; water-heated; Garrison avenue cars; beautiful neighborhood; splendid view of city and bay; no children; will give breakfast if desired; church within a block; nearest saloon three miles away, but very fast street cars to that point. Burglars shun neighborhood and nobody ever gets drunk.
3313 BATEMAN AVENUE, MONT ALTO—30 minutes from City Hall; four rooms and private hallway; bath with shower and spray, private; fine southern exposure two rooms; airy, ample windows; use of parlor, porch, piano and laundry; water-heated; Garrison avenue cars; beautiful neighborhood; splendid view of city and bay; no children; will give breakfast if desired; church within a block; nearest saloon three miles away, but very fast street cars to that point. Burglars shun neighborhood and nobody ever gets drunk.
There were other things I overlooked, but we decided to let it go at that. Certainly virtues had been mentioned which should overcome any prejudice against suburban life and the crickets. Blithely I passed the copy over the counter and inquired the cost. The man smiled.
"Why don't you make this a display ad. and get a seven-cent flat rate on a six months' contract?" he inquired.
I hate a sarcastic man with a pencil.
"If you don't like that," I said, "do it yourself!"
To make a long recital short, he put it satisfactorily into four linesand we waited for replies. We'll skip the first forty or fifty that didn't suit us. One day there came a gentleman who looked at our four rooms, raved over them and made a proposition, to wit: If we would put a gas range and sink in the red room, open up the wall in the front room and build a sleeping porch for his baby, furnish refrigerating plant for all the baby's milk and allow him the free use of the telephone, he would take our four rooms for three months at $18 a month.
"My good friend," I said, with suppressed emotion, "you overwhelm us. Can't we remove the roof and build a little nursery for the baby,and rig you up a rainy-weather playroom in the basement? We expected to get $50 a month, unfurnished, without changes; but you have made us to see the error of our conceit. Can't we let you have the piano at the end of your three months, to move away to your future home, as an expression of good will?"
He made a gesture of protest.
"No," I insisted, "we will not have it any other way. You must accept our hospitality, sir—you simply must! My wife has a diamond ring that I'm sure she would be delighted to give your wife, and any time you want a trunk carried up or down stairs just call on me. My clothes would aboutfit you—allow me to lend you my dress suit and pajamas! Not a word, sir, not a word! I will not permit you to excel me in generosity. And as for your $18. I wouldn't think of taking it! Give it to a fund to provide red flannel nightshirts for the little heathens in Timbuctoo. They need the night shirts, and, believe me, I thoroughly detest money!"
He went away, and going in told the conductor that he was glad he didn't get roped into that lunatic asylum.
Now the Adventure of the Mysterious Push Button:
What a wonderful lot of pushbuttons a contractor can get into ten rooms and a basement!
My wife and I jammed our thumbs into at least thirty different kinds, trying them out. There were push buttons to turn on the electric light, push buttons to call the indefinite servant, push buttons to ring bells of all sorts. I half expected to find a push button that would kick a collector off the porch, but was disappointed.
We wondered who made all the push buttons, and how much royalty they paid.
A push button in That House I Bought turns on the porch light and another on the second floor lights thehallway at the foot of the grand staircase, so that in case of burglars the lady of the house doesn't have to go down in advance, carrying the lamp.
"That," I said, "is a distinct convenience. I can imagine the discomfiture of the burglar who suddenly finds himself illuminated for a Mardi Gras pageant, all ready to be shot up like a cheese or a porous plaster."
"Would you shoot a burglar?" asked my wife admiringly.
I imitated a pouter pigeon with my chest.
"The extent of my murders," I replied, "would be limited only by the supply of burglars."
It does a fellow a lot of good, when he is just moving into the responsibilities of a real citizen, to perform mental assassinations like that. I piled up my dead and we passed on.
We found, by pushing another button, that the Consolidated Gas and Electric Light Company had provided the chandeliers in both parlor and dining room with as many globes as could be crowded into the set. The man who put them in left them all turned on. We burned fully seven cents' worth of watts before it occurred to us to limit the incandescence by turning off a few globes. Then my wife got a mania for economizing,and it was Uncle Henry on a high chair under every individual set of lights, tickling the little flat black key things into a subdued quiescence. We left one watt incubator in each set, with the understanding that if company came we'd turn on the whole business and average it up on the month by sitting as late as possible on the front porch.
But there was one button that got me. It was in the front bedroom with the double-mirror doors on the big closet. We pushed it and didn't hear a thing. Logically, it ought to do something. I pushed again and listened for the tinkle. My wife went upstairs and downstairs, while Ipushed, and every now and then I'd yell at her.
"Anything happening?"
"No," she would reply. "Push it real quickly and see if you can't take it by surprise!"
I tried every method I could think of to make that push button earn its existence. Every day since I've tried it, determined to learn what it ought to do or die in the attempt. But to this day that push button is a mystery.
The Adventure of the Reluctant Cow:
Billy Pentz wants to know if we will keep a bee at our house. We willnot. And another thing, I don't know why bees are kept in an apiary. I cannot see the line of identification between bees and apes. Apes should be kept in an apiary; bees should be kept in a beeswax.
But we have been thinking about a cow. There is a company cowary right back of our house, and when the wind is from the south the call of the diary is strong upon us. Pardon me, I should have written the dairy. There's another digression. Why should the transportation of two letters change a notebook into a milk foundry?
I watched William milking a cow in the cowary, and the ease withwhich he performed what to me seemed no less than magic was simply astounding. Sitting there as quietly as you please, on an inverted bucket, with an uninverted bucket between his knees, he directed streams of embryo butter and ice-cream and custard into the centre of a foaming pool with no more concern than a Queen of the sixth century would show in knifing a kneeling page.
"We will get a cow," I announced briefly, but with that masterful tone that identifies me in any company.
My wife looked at me, the way some women look at some men. I withered but held my ground.
"Why, you can't even milk a cow!" she said.
Now, I've never taken a dare from any woman. I hiked right back down the patch, careless of the newly sown grass plots, and blundered into the cowary.
"William," I said, "arise and hand me that can! I'm going to show you how I used to milk when I was a cowboy!"
If this were fiction it would be funny, but it's fact; and many a thing that's funny in fiction is tragedy in fact.
William handed me the bucket. I said, "So, Bossy," and seated myself just as I had seen William do it, withmy feet crossed and the bucket between my knees. That it slipped the first time and slopped over my trousers was merely an incident. After I'd managed a half-nelson grip with my knee caps I grabbed a couple of the cow's depending protuberances and squeezed. Nothing happened. I squeezed again and pulled. A couple of drops trickled into the palms of my hands. Encouraged, I tried a jiu-jitsu stunt designed to astonish the cow into yielding to superior intelligence, and she looked around at me and grinned.
I say that cow grinned. Some one once told me that among animals only hyenas could grin. Thenthis cow was a hyena, that's all.
I tackled her again, shoving my head into her ribs after the manner of certain yokels I had observed, as if there must be a secret spring to push open the vents. William and the cow grinned a duet. I pulled and pushed, twisted and tugged, coaxed and threatened, and finally I said something to that cow that was uncouth.
Heaven forgive me for ever speaking rudely to a lady beef!
She lifted her near hind hoof and sent the bucket flying. Then she moved over against me and mingled me with the soft sod. I got up and silently handed William a quarter, winking the while to accent the hush.When I went into the house I said:
"My dear, William informs me that the company may keep a cow around here, but by the terms of our purchase we may not. It's a rank discrimination, but I'm afraid we cannot have a cow. The Duke of Mont Alto and the city ordinances will not permit it!"
The Adventure of the Nasty Little Fat Robin:
I don't know the botanical names of the birds around our house; in fact, I am not sure that botany is the science of birds. But, at any rate, we have half a dozen trees and each oneis a choir loft. No wheezing organ, with rattling foot pedals and thumping water-pump, disturbs the clear harmonies of their music. No sonorous basso in the amen corner growls out a flat profundo to insult the memory of Phœbe Carey; no shrill tenor raises his chin until his Adam's apple sticks out like a loose bung in a cider barrel, to shriek his blasphemy of divine music!
We have just the little birds, whose throats swell and swell until you would think they must burst, and who sing their love-bugles through the branches careless of their audience. Wonderful cadenzas chase each other in a game of lyric tag, neverwearying, never breaking. Trills that can be written only in spirit composition—long notes that sometimes salute a saint, sometimes absolve a sinner—sibilant sighs that bring up memories—all these things we have in our choir, and upon them there is no mortgage!
There's a nasty little fat robin outside our kitchen door, though, who is some day going to meet disaster.
We feed the robins on crumbs, and throw them such little delicacies as cracked marrow bones, chunks of suet and bits of sugar. When they have finished eating they hurry to the end of the house, where there is always a little water trickling out to make abird fountain. (Item: I must build a regular bird fountain.) This nasty little fat robin, who is going straight into trouble, is a hog on wings. All the others will be cheerfully setting about their dinner, when he will rush in, nibble a single bite and then stand guard over the rest, to keep them from it. I do not know whether to call him Rottenfeller for hogging it, or Rosenfelt for fighting.
Now Kadott is my pet. I've called her Kadott for a little missionary Japanese friend, who lives at Hadji Konak, and I wonder if the Japanese at Hadji Konak will appreciate the honor? The one thing that makes me fond of Kadott is that she is verymuch in love with me; but she annoys me, too, because she makes me keep my distance and still coquettes. She has an odd little trick of coming nearly to me, turning her head and cocking her ear, as if to say:
"There is going to be a love scene, and I must beware of eavesdroppers."
Some of these days she will eat from my hand. But now she only comes close and darts away at the first approach. She has built her nest and she has the mother instinct. When she has hatched her little family I'm going to be Uncle Henry to every one of them.
And that is what I've been trying to get to. If the nasty little fat robinbutts into Kadott's family relations, there will be a murder. My hands will be red with the blood of a bandit.
When you come out to That House I Bought, stay all night and listen to the birds in the early morning. It seems to me that a man who listens to the birds in the right spirit ought to make a fairly decent citizen, in time.
My wife is a most observant woman.
"Love," she said to me, apparently apropos of nothing at all, "must be a farce in a country where there is no moonlight."
I nodded assent. It didn't strike me as being worth much more.
"I wonder what is the trouble?" she said, after a pause.
"Trouble?" I repeated inquiringly.
"Across the street," she explained, "there were two Silhouettes in the parlor Monday night, and one wentaway early; the other had her handkerchief to her eyes——"
"Oho! So you've been keeping cases, eh?"
"I don't get your vernacular," she retorted meaningly.
"Well—er—what's this got to do with moonlight?" I demanded, changing the subject.
"It was moonlight last night, and it's moonlight to-night," she replied, "and all the derbies on the hat-rack over there belong to the men in the family, and it's nine-thirty. It seems to me that if I were the Man Silhouette, I'd at least write, but the mailman hasn't stopped there but once in four days, and then he only delivereda circular, because I got one myself and I recognized it by the big red type on the envelope, and—I think it's a shame, that's what I do, and I don't care, so there!"
You know, when a woman doesn't care, so there, she usually gets all worked up about it. It's a way she has of showing her indifference.
"Have you seen him yet—the Man Silhouette?" I asked.
"No," she replied; "but I thought, if he came to-night, it's so bright and all, I'd get a peep at his face. It would be awful if he were a dissipated man!"
"You don't know her, and you don't know him, and you don't know herfolks, and what difference does it make to you whether he runs a church or a roulette wheel?" I asked mildly.
I went into the house and—well, yes, I might as well admit it—sat at the window where I could command a clear view of the parlor opposite. This affair was getting to be personal with me. And then I think a fellow ought to show an interest in anything that is close to his wife's sympathies. So while she watched on the porch, I watched from the window.
He didn't come that night, and he didn't come the next night. But while I was watching—not obtrusively, you know, but just sympathetically—a messenger boy ran up the steps.The door opened halfway and he delivered a message and waited a moment, and then left, dashing up street on his wheel. I was pondering, when our telephone bell rang. I answered. A sweet young voice called:
"Exchange, give me Mount Vernon 1,000, please—the Hotel Belvedere."
I broke in.
"Hello! Hello! You're on a busy wire! Exchange——"
"Oh, please, sir, please get off the line and let me have it! This is very important!"
I mumbled something and hung up the receiver. Then I went back to my window and gazed across thestreet again. The hall light was turned on—the first time I had noticed it alone. The pale blind was down, but the light—why, a Silhouette at the telephone!
I ran to the kitchen, where my wife was messing with pots and pans.
"I've got it, I've got it!" I screamed, waltzing her around.
"You act like it," she said, laughing and disengaging herself. "What have you got?"
"She's calling him up at the Belvedere! Telegram—telephone in hall—light—Silhouette—go look!"
She ran all the way to the window, and then I had to sit down and tell her just how I knew it must be theMan Silhouette. All the circumstances were too plain. There was no doubt of it. Her intuition backed up my judgment. We sat on the porch until after ten, and then a closed taxi was driven rapidly to the little walk. A man, bundled in a big coat, handed the chauffeur something and dismissed him, and hurried up to the porch. The door swung open without summons and he entered.
Ten minutes later my wife said:
"I wonder if the belt has slipped off down at the power house?"
I grunted.
"My dear," I said, "if you had quarreled and if you were making up on a moonlight night, would youbother about wasting kilowatts of electricity?"
She wrinkled her forehead.
"But the moonlight is on the outside of the house."
"That's just where you're mistaken," I ventured. "Itwasall outside, but they're getting all they need of it through the cracks on the sides of the curtain."
She sighed.
"And moreover," I added, "I'm going to bed."
And I did; and there were no Silhouettes. At midnight or worse my wife said:
"I don't know much else about that man, but I know one thing."
"What's that?" I asked.
"He's stingy," was her reply; and I'll admit, myself, that he might have turned up the lights just a little while.
But all this is foreign to the House. We awoke next morning to a busy experience, for our friends descended upon us. You know there is one stage through which you will have to pass when you buy a house, and for the sake of a name we'll call it the Inspection of Your Intimates.
The ink is hardly dry on the deed, or mortgage, or agreement, or whatever your instrument of conveyance may be, before you are on the telephone inviting them out to look atyou. You want all your friends to see your new house—to make faces at it and chuck it under the chin, to talk baby talk to it and admire your pantry.
The first crack out of the box Mrs. Smith walks in, sizes up the exterior with a sweeping glance as she enters, sniffs the atmosphere laden with fresh smells and as you stand at judgment remarks:
"H'm!"
Now, "H-m!" may mean any one of twenty-seven things. You stand on one foot and wait.
"My goodness, what small rooms!" is the next remark, which is somewhat softened by the addition, "butthe wall paper is very pretty," and the reservation damns the praise again, "in places."
All this time you are alternating flushes and chills. Your spinal column is a sort of marathon track for emotions. You go through the house with her and show the bathroom with its shower, over which she enthuses, and you are in the seventh heaven of satisfaction. But the minute she reaches the third floor, which is a sort of three-quarter floor, your heart sinks again, because she remarks:
"I suppose you will just use these little rooms for storage!" And you had fondly thought of occupying them yourself and renting thesecond floor to help out your investment.
Mrs. Smith thinks your piano is too brilliant on the hardwood floor, and when she has gone home you shove a rug under it. Mrs. Jones comes next day and says it sounds dead on the rug, and you put it back on the floor. Mrs. Brown gets you to try it both ways in her presence and concludes that it lacks elevation and would sound better if you took it upstairs; while Mrs. Harris conceives the novel idea of turning the conservatory into a music-room for the benefit of the base tiling.
Your prides-in-chief are the linen closet, the big closets in each room,the gas range, the refrigerator built into the wall and the plumbing fixtures. And you are a bit peeved when Mrs. Johnson passes every one of these features by with calm indifference and raves over an unimportant railing you've had hammered onto the back porch. Nearly every one of your Intimates comments on the fact that your yard looks like a quarry, but you assure each one that William is going to put on a top soil and seed it down and you are going to plant a turnip and substitute a peach tree for the oak that was struck by lightning. You work yourself up into a human catalogue of advantages as you describe your wonderful plans,and then your Intimate shakes her head smilingly.
"My dear," she says, like a blooming icicle, "John and I had all these plans when we owned a house, and we never did get our yard fixed. You have no idea of the work and the expense and the disappointments! And don't plant any Government seeds. They never come up."
It's an odd coincidence that your Congressman has just supplied you with a lot of radish, onion, lettuce, and other seeds, and that you have been lying awake nights passing resolutions of thanks to the Agricultural Department.
But there is one who comes—Heaven bless her!—who goes into seven fits of joy and envies you your happiness. You love her because of it—and because she is your mother.
The real enjoyment of home comes when for the first time you are taking a week off.
"Are you going to Atlantic City?" asks Jones.
You curl your lip in a sneer and tilt your nose and snort, and make yourself superior.
"Atlantic City! Do I look easy? Atlantic City, boardwalk, red hot sun, skinny bathers, flies in the dining-room, at $7 a day? Not on your life! I'm going to stay home and take the rest cure—that's me! I'm going to sleep late, eat four meals aday, spade my garden when I feel like it and enjoy life right. I'm going to take a shower bath every thirty-six minutes and no company—not a blooming visitor—the whole week. What I want is absolute rest."
Jones listens, but with an air of one who is wise.
That was my experience.
I was getting fagged, brain-weary and nervous from a terrific strain of making an appearance at work. The bluff went over and the powers that be told me to go away and cut out the telephone. So out to That House I Bought forthwith hied me—instanter removed. To drop the load, to forget the worries, to submerge thebusiness ego in a week of solid rest! I was getting near to Heaven.
The first morning I awoke with a start, leaped out of bed, shed my pajamas and grabbed for the things on the chair. I was dressed and halfway down stairs before I realized that it was off duty for mine. O joy! I gotThe Sunfrom the porch and read the leading locals and saw half a dozen stories sticking out between the lines. The telephone was handy; I'd call up the office and suggest—whoa! The telephone had been cut out.
"Good!" I exclaimed internally. "I'll have late breakfast and sleep a couple of hours."
My wife came down.
"While I'm getting breakfast," she said, "suppose you turn the hose on the porch, and just kind of dust it off with this broom. The girl won't come until next week, and you know I'm a sick woman."
I squirted the hose and dusted. Scrubbery is one of my short talents. When the sun dried it off, the porch was streaked from end to end, and I had to do it over with my wife supervising.
"It is so sweet for us to be together in our nice new home," she said, as I dutifully toted dishes to the kitchen. "You wipe while I wash them, and then you can take a hammer and some tacks and fix these old chairs for thekitchen. When you get that done you can put up some shelves for me in the fruit pantry, and why don't you arrange your books to-day? They're in all sorts of places. There are lots of sticks and stones around the yard. Suppose you pick them up and mow the lawn. Oh, I know what you can do! You can level up all these little gullies where the rain has cut up the loose dirt in the back yard. Isn't it just too dear for anything for us to have a whole week of fun fixing up around the house? I think after you get through with the yard you can——"
And so on and so on, to the end of the chapter!
Some people think cleaning up around a new house is pie for papa, but it isn't. There is none of that glamour you read about in "The Delights of Home" articles, and it isn't a thing on earth but a case of chuck the cuffs and collars and yield your soul to perspiration and persistence.
First, when you start to follow the carpenter into nooks and corners of the cellar and little hiding places in the top floor, you find that he has invented innumerable kinds of leavings, deftly tucked here and there where nobody but a second-sight man would ever figure on locating them. You begin to pick up and after you've stooped about two thousand times youremember the picture in the liver medicine ad., where the man stands with his hands on the small of his back, looking unhappy and pessimistic.
And it isn't only picking up, but it's cleaning out. What to do with the stuff bothers you. It's a cinch to burn the shavings and little pieces of wood and that kind of material, but you've got to deal again with bits of putty and glass and bent nails and tacks and other unburnable debris, and you hate to throw them into the bathtub because of the plumbing. You finally throw them out the window.
Later you realize that you threw them out unwisely. That's when youstart to work on your lawn and side yard, and every time you stick in the trowel where you are setting out plants you fetch up a quart of junk. The astonishing lot of garbage they used to make the ground you stand on is bad enough, but with the things you've thrown out added to it the situation is exasperating.
You run your lawn mower over a nail, pick it up, and then wonder why providence ever let you get away from an early death, for sheer imbecility. It was the nail you picked up in the third floor and didn't know how to dispose of it. Pulling up a little bit of ground with your hands, to make a place for some dwarfnasturtium, you cut your finger with the piece of glass you threw out the side window. It's vexing. What to do with this wreckage a second time puzzles you, and you finally throw it over into the next lot. That's the time you find that your neighbor was watching you from his windows, and—it's not easy to be nice to people who throw their refuse over the lot line, is it?
But the worst of all this cleaning-up business is that your wife bosses the job.
Somehow or other, the man who loves his wife still draws the line at matrimonial dictatorship, even in so small a thing as picking up after thecarpenter. Neither you nor your wife intended to let it go that far, and she really doesn't intend to go home to her mother, nor do you really intend to drown your domestic griefs in drink. But with some provocations man gets peevish and woman irritable.
The night before it had rained. Our back yard was soaked to the marrow, if a yard has a marrow. We had a wire stretched to mark our lot line and keep people off the grass seed and the garden. On the heels of the rain came one of the company drivers, took down the wire with deliberation and criminal purpose, and drove two goldarned mules and awagon right through that yard, cutting ruts six inches deep and scattering parsnips, parsley, beans, peas, and lettuce all over the place. In a new development you have to stay at home twenty-four hours a day and yell at such people, or they'll have you rutted out of your possession.
It was pitiful to see those great ruts when we had worked so hard, and the torn-up garden with its sprouts here and there showing what it might have been. But it was more pitiful to see me walking around with a pocketful of manslaughter, looking for the driver who did it. Every driver on the place admitted that he didn't do it; so I came to theconclusion that it couldn't have been done at all. I was having delusions. The ruts and ruined gardens were figments of a disordered imagination.
Oh, well, what's the use?
I got the rake, shovel, spade, hoe, hand cultivator, lawn mower, trowel, and a couple of things you lift young plants with and assembled myself on the lawn to put in a good day's work. With the rake I started to rake off the side yard, and got about halfway through when I discovered that the lawn needed mowing. Halfway through with the mowing job my eye spotted certain thick spots of weeds, and so I started weeding. Halfwaythrough with that I stopped to pick up sticks and stones and throw them, as usual, over my neighbor's lot. Then it was this thing and that thing, never finishing anything, until finally I chucked all things and started something new.
That's the way with enthusiasts. For finishing a job, give me the plodder whose imagination is subordinate to his hoe. You see, he is a one-idea man, and the idea may not be his own; but the fellow with the genius for starting things is very seldom there at the finish. He dreams large and turns the details over to more successful men.
This new thing I started concernsthe front plot of garden around the porch. It was a disorganized thing as it stood. I cut out a ditch in front of it, piled all the dirt back against the house and toted baskets of hard stones from a neighboring lot. These I leaned against the sides of the ditch and hammered them in, or cut out the earth and set, making a stone wall that would retain the earth, hold a certain amount of water for irrigation and at the same time be ornamental. It took two hours to make as many yards of this stuff, and several friends called attention to the trouble I was taking for no necessary purpose. Well, that may be so—and probably is—but it is so stupid to bealways doing the necessary things, living on the obvious, plugging along on the course of existence that is common to all.
By the time I had worn my finger nails to a state of complete dishabille—happy thought!—and had become a hopeless problem for the most sanguine manicurist, I began to learn things really. For instance, this is how a lawn ought to be made:
First, grade your ground, then remove all stones and stumps; next roll it and then put on a couple of inches of top soil; then roll that until there isn't a bump in it, sow your grass seed and water constantly, prayerfully. In making our lawn those are the things they didn't do.
I don't dare rake our lawn, because the minute I start, out will come a lot of bolders, leaving terrific yawns in the sod. I'm sure the Duke will forgive me for getting peeved about that lawn, when he understands that there are callouses in my hands and knots in my lawn mower. Also, why on earth, after throwing on the grass seed, do the men drive wagons over it and make ruts and jam their heels into it and make holes, where my vagrant sprinklings with the hose create lakes and puddles and produce never a single grass?
With a little preliminary exercise, pushing the big road-roller on Garrison avenue and shoving marble blocksout of the Courthouse, I tackled our lawn with a new mower, put together by myself in accordance with instructions. Our lawn mower is painted a beautiful green on the blades, to keep out the rust. Also, it was never intended to cut. It would never do, in an emergency, to shave with.
Musically, our lawn mower for the first ten feet sang to my soul a song of sweet, rural peace and contentment.
Then it struck a snag and changed the tune.
In the course of two dashes I discovered that the spectacle of a bald-headed front-yard farmer trotting up and down behind a lawn mower wasa thing to make acquaintance with. Two men I'd never seen in my life stopped and gazed at me, and one of them asked me if I was mowing my lawn. A little girl came by and stood cross-legged with her finger in her mouth, and, when I looked her way, snickered and ran home to tell her mother what a strange sight she had seen. Our grocer lingered to remark that it was a hot afternoon, and as if in confirmation of his remarkable perspicuity a lake of sweat fell like a cloudburst from my brow and drowned a hill of ants.
"Don't work so hard," said my wife, as I made another turn. "Why don't you take it easy?"
"I am taking it easy," I replied. "All I need now is a leather chair and a highball to look like the Maryland Club in repose!"
Sarcasm is one of my strong points, and my wife realized that she had goaded me into sharp retort, so she giggled at me and ran to the telephone to tell her mother that Henry was perfectly crazy about his new lawn mower and couldn't leave it alone for a minute.
With all those people looking on and my lawn mower hitting a rock or a hole every seven revolutions, I felt cheap. I felt as though it might have been myself whose jawbone was broken by Samson, or who boreBalaam to Jerusalem. The crowd kept growing, and a stream of honest toil rolled down my spine. Somehow or other I finished the job. Then I looked at the crowd. I left the lawn mower and walked over to them with a deadly glare in my eye.
"Any of you fellows want to fight?" I demanded rudely.
Nobody replied.
"Because if you do," I said, "I can tie both hands behind me and lick any six of you right now."
The crowd melted away slowly. One man did stay a moment, but he didn't want to fight. He offered to feel my pulse.
In spite of his sarcasm, and in theface of all criticism, I insist that I was beginning to learn. For instance, shall I tell you of the time I astonished Campbell?
Campbell was raised in the country. The smell of sod is strong in his nostrils, and he is a handy man with a hoe. Campbell is an agent for the Duke, but time hangs on his hands at moments and he dropped around in a casual sort of way to look at our back yard.
"I'm thinking of planting a turnip and some onions," said my wife pleasantly.
Campbell smiled.
"In that soil," he said, "you'll never make them completely happy. They'llbe crying for home all the time."
"What's the matter with the soil?" demanded my wife.
"Well, it wasn't built for farming. You always have to put in richer soil. I'll show you."
My wife thinks Campbell is just about right. When he began to talk about how he'd enjoy fixing her garden, and would she please let him have the hoe, rake, spade, and a bucket to tote sod from a pile in the front yard, she began to look upon him as a Dispensation of Providence. Agriculturally, I dwindled in importance as he expanded.
He cut five rows, or furrows, or ditches, or whatever you call them,with the hoe, and into them he dropped peas, beans, onions, parsley, and parsnips. Then he brought buckets of top soil and dumped it on the seeds along the line, and raked the soil over until it was smooth, and stuck the empty envelopes at the end of the rows for fear my wife would get the peas identified as corn, the beans as peanuts, the onions as cauliflower, the parsley as rhubarb, the parsnips as turnips. Campbell let me bring some more buckets of soil. For that favor I have begun to question the degree of Campbell's kindness.
Then I spoke.
"Your rows of top soil will startthe seeds," I said, "but never maintain them when they're out. We must get some commercial fertilizer, and the minute the sprouts show, sprinkle it along the sides of the furrows. Then we must soak the farm with a hose."
My wife sneered. "He's right," said Campbell. My wife winked at him to carry on the joke, but he insisted in sign language that I really had the proper dope. She wilted.
"Now," I said, "we'll have William throw five loads of top soil into this next patch, over which we will run a plough, mixing it not less than a foot deep. Then we'll cover it down, roll it and soak it for a week. We willthen be ready to plant our tomato vines and more onions, along the rows of which we'll sprinkle our fertilizer about two sacks to ten yards. This temporary work you've done is about as practical as a school of journalism or poetry. We'll let it stand as a horrible example, but all this goes under, too, in the fall. Then we'll dig trenches around the yard, a foot deep, fill in solid with top soil and after a week of settling plant a double row of hedge, one foot apart in length and six inches apart in width. Am I right?"
I had her gasping. She stared at me in wonder, and Campbell—well, he just stood with his mouth open likea catfish, admiring and astounded.
That day when a man becomes a hero in his wife's eyes is a triumph such as Napoleon never knew in his greatest moments, and the feel of it outdoes the joy of a Nero in the plaudits of the claque. It isn't necessary to mention that I got it out of a bulletin from the agricultural department.
Getting acquainted is part and parcel of buying a house. There is something in the human chest that yearns for speaking terms, at least with the fellow who is liable to lend you his lawn mower or by whose wife you may some day be called upon for emergency aid in the culinary department.
Our good friends came out, it's true, and last night Kittie and Lucy Eugenie sat on the porch, and afterward had iced tea and peanut sandwiches in the kitchen, but I mean theregular acquaintance of the long day that makes the wife forget distances and isolation.
Whooping cough was our visiting card.
I got acquainted with the nearest neighbor through the courtesy of his advice when I made some fool remark about the nature of the ground for light gardening, and he gave me the benefit of his information to the contrary. We knew one family so intimately that we could almost nod as we passed without fear of being snubbed—but not a soul called, inquired, or seemed to care. It was the busy time, and we didn't mind so much then. When things lightenedup on the labor end we would begin to notice it.
And then we brought Lydie out for the air. Poor little thing! She whooped and whooped and whooped. In the middle of the night she whooped, and she whooped in the morning. She would stop doing almost anything else to run to her auntie and whoop. She knew her responsibility. In the city she had gone from door to door ringing bells and gravely informing the occupants that their children mustn't play with her, because it was catching. She ran her quarantine strictly, but, of course, our new community sharers didn't know that.
The groceryman, milkman, iceman, paper boy, the plumber, carpenter, stableman—all manner of men who circulate—learned that Lydie had the whooping cough. It wasn't long before our neighbors began to take notice—I mean our neighbors several houses removed, and across the street. We already knew our nearest neighbors, and their stout little red-haired heir and the little baby that sang miserere in the stilly night. But the niece with the whooping cough made us talked about and observed. One day a little girl ran up to Lydie.
"My mamma says I can play with you, 'cause I've had the whooping cough!"
Lydie promptly produced her jumping rope. And then there was another from the same house, and we discovered, to our joy, that the children of the horny-handed city editor had also had the whooping cough. We didn't need an introduction there, but the play privilege was pie for the baby. First thing I knew baby was on this porch and that porch, and on the way home in the evening I whistled for her and nodded to the grownups who were entertaining her.
But we've lost our intermediary. The other night baby whooped and I whooped. Mine was nervous indigestion, combined with a lot of imagination that makes the patent medicinebusiness profitable. Between us, baby and I kept up a merry circus all night. She was really sick, and we sent her home to her mother.
What a wonderful thing it is to have a baby in the house!
Every morning Catherine and Eleanor go out and pick buttercups and forget-me-nots, and bring them to my wife; and she puts them in a vase with the greatest show of gratitude you ever saw, and then proceeds to stuff the children with cakes until they choke, and sends them home full.
Every day the little auburn-haired boy king in the House Next Door trots out with his tiny red wagon andlaboriously drags that treasure of childhood up and down the pavement—sometimes prancing like a race horse, sometimes plodding along like a mule that curses his ancestry, sometimes ambling by like a good-natured family horse, guaranteed not to run away or scare at an automobile!
And the little one—the baby in the go-cart. What a time the baby has watching Big Brother, and admiring his strength as he performs miracles, not only pulling and backing the tiny red wagon all by himself, but actually turning it around and running the other way, without so much as getting caught in the cracks or stuck in the sod! You can see admirationfairly oozing from baby's eyes; and when he runs at her and pretends to kick his heels into the dashboard, what a laugh she has!
Up the street, where the apartments are with the shiny sets of bells on the front by the door, and the big rocking chairs and air of solid comfort, there are some other children, but I haven't learned their names. They play around the porch and front yard, and run across the street, scampering up the hill to pick flowers from the lots that soon will feel the plow; and their mothers keep an eye on them—not that any accident could happen, for vehicles are scarce out our way and the street car doesn'tenter the quiet of our lives; but just because—well, mothers are a bit peculiar that way—I mean that way of keeping an eye on the young ones.
A fellow never knows what a remarkable head a child has, if he has none of his own, until he begins borrowing babies from the neighbors.
There's Catherine, for instance. Catherine and Eleanor and I were looking for the little pale anemones that hide around the roots of trees. I picked some four-petaled blue flowers and instructed the children.
"These," I said, "are forget-me-nots."
"No, they're not," said Catherine promptly. "They are bluettes.Forget-me-nots have five petals and these have only four."
"Oh!" I said; "and where did you learn that?"
"My teacher told me, and she told me——" which ran into a long lecture on botany and horticulture and forest-lore and things that made me ashamed, for, frankly, I didn't know whether the tree that shaded us was an oak or a maple. I think there should be a limit on male suffrage, and woman domination, and child education. There are some things that make the average man feel cheap, if he has pride.
But this is all about the babies, and about the House only indirectly.We love children, my wife and I, and, perhaps, we love them the more because we can send them back to where we borrowed them when they become troublesome. But the most wonderful thing about babies to me is that not so long ago we were all, you and I and your neighbor, all helpless, gooing, crowing, dimpling, fat or slim kids, bundled up in carriages and looking wonder-eyed at the great picture life unfolded before us. And these babies around us—some of these days they'll be the men and women, and some of them will borrow babies, and some will cuddle their own.
The babies, God bless 'em!—and the flowers! They are very alike.
When the house was put in order we invited our professional associates jointly—the city editor and myself and our wives—to come out and see us. It was not a dress affair. It was a case of pajamas preferred and boiled shirts common, out under the hot sun in the flat, or lolling under the oaks in the grove, where we had hard benches to make our guests appreciate upholstery. There were fifty guests, boys and girls of all ages, and, Lord, what a time we had! Not that it beat a Hibernian picnic, because itdidn't; but in the pride of your first possession, to have your daily associates come out and look you over and help you enjoy it makes owning a house really worth while.
What with getting ready and getting over it, catching up sleep and massaging aching muscles, that event stands as epochal in the history of our family. For days the wives worried each other to death about what they'd have. First, one would suggest ham sandwiches and chicken salad, and the minute they agreed on that the other would switch in soft crabs and roast beef. Whether to drink coffee, tea, or lemonade, or all three; whether to have a modestmodicum of malt, whether to make a punch or just let the guests drink from the air, like trees and flowers—these were all vexing points, by no means to be settled offhand. And it was not only one night that I was aroused by dream-talk like this:
"Really, I think lemonade would be nicer—and just a few sandwiches and coffee and ice cream, and——" The dream trailed off into a weary sigh that is the closest approach a real lady ever makes to a snore.
Well, it happened. They came by twos and threes, and I toted chairs and camp stools from the house the three long blocks to the grove. At first we made conversation with thechildren—Eleanor and Catherine—and then our intellectual dean, observing a Catholic institution nearby, correctly surmised by its mansard slate roof that it was built before the eighties; it was built in '72. With such mental diversions we killed time until the managing editor arrived and started a game of duck on the rock, at which the city editor skinned his shoulder. We ran races, and the littlest copy reader's legs twinkled with joy over the rough course. The girls jumped rope and screamed, and it was altogether kid-dish. Then we ate ham and roast beef sandwiches and drank coffee and cooled our æsophagi with ice creamand cake chasers. Our member with the porcupine summit insisted upon singing, and the stenographer played all the popular things. We gathered at the reservoir, while two of the men and the healthiest girl ran a marathon around that long mile, and she finished beautifully. Then we sat on the porch and had our pictures taken by flashlight.
Somebody burgled That House and moved the parlor furniture and piano into the dining-room and the dining-room stuff into the parlor. A merry wit tacked attachments to our houses, the managing editor put an "Open for Inspection" sign on the city editor's castle and some one stuck a "ForRent" placard on ours. And then they began leaving, by twos and threes, and the telephone girl was one of the last to go, lingeringly.
We slept that night—slept the sleep of the properly weary. All sorts of dreams romped through the long stillness and entertained us. The Duke of Mont Alto was in one of mine, and he was telling me something about taxes and water rent. But before his conversation got disagreeable I was awakened by a racket on the roof.
There's a fool woodpecker that comes there every morning at six o'clock and tries to drill through the slate. He's after a nest. It must be hard work. But if he ever getsthrough I know how he'll feel. He will have hustled some, but it will have been worth while. Anything is worth while, friend, if the goal is a nest of your own, where you can have your friends out and nobody can tell you to keep off the grass or wipe your feet on the mat—excepting your wife!
Not at all apropo of The House, there's a thought I want to get out of my system. What a lot of braggarts we men are, anyhow—and what a queer old world it is! There are two classes of people in the world—those who are doing something worth while and those who are trying to steal the credit. A modest little hen two orthree doors away laid an egg, and in very few words cackled the event; but you ought to have heard that insufferable rooster! The moment the thing happened he strutted around with his chest out, yelling at the top of his voice, drowning out the whole poultry yard: "Ur-r-r-r, Ur-r-r-r, Ur-r-r-r! I'm the daddy of another egg!" How much more decent it would have been had he quietly stood by, preserving his dignity and judicial calm.
Now we'll get back to the story.
I'm sifting top soil to make our garden right, and my wife is doing wonderful things inside the house with the furniture and fixings.Every day she turns me around three times and shows me something new—something marvelous of her handiwork, immensely flattering to me since it justifies my judgment in the selection of a helpmeet. Every day the business of buying the house looks more possible and less of a financial mountain. Why, I can even afford to joke with the Duke, who asked me what I intended to plant in our front garden against the porch.
"I think," I said, "I'll plant a nice little row of mortgage vines and let 'em grow up and crawl all over the house. A mortgage vine, Duke, has flowers on it all the year round, and it's the most homelike thing I know."
The Duke enjoyed that immensely—but then he can afford to laugh, because he lives on the other side of the road.
And now the time has come to end this recital of everyday incidents in the personal affairs of Yours Truly—a humble man of no importance whatever, who for that reason may be representative of eighty per cent. of the world's population.
In closing, here is a thought that sticks with me: If I had started to buy a home when I was married, that home would long ago have been my clean-title property. If I had started to systematically bank or investtwenty per cent. of my earnings from the date of my first cub job, I'd have owned stock in the newspaper that lets me live. If I had to do it all over again—
Why, Lord bless you, I'd do just as I have done! I'd live the same sort of life, be just the same profligate fellow with no care for the morrow, go through just the same sort of trials and troubles and throw them off with just the same sort of optimism. After all, a fellow isn't capable of appreciating to the full a little possession until he has gone the route of silly extravagances and been pulled together by some sudden impulse to be a better citizen. And listen:
Without the least reflection on the good qualities of other men, the very best citizen of any community is the man who has married early and provided a nest of his own—who pays taxes and contributes his share to the happiness of society at large—who obeys the law and is not ashamed to be in love with his own wife—who works hard and plays hard, and who goes fishing.
Enough of That House I Bought. Come out and sit on our porch, and if there is anything in the larder you may sup with us.
THE END.
WHICH IS A
POSTSCRIPT
You might know it was suggested by a woman. No man ever yet resorted to the postscript.
My wife says it ought to go in after everything else, like the tag of a play. I was in favor of leaving the thing in suspense, and annoying the reader—leaving something to tease the imagination. But she said it would be cruel.
The fact is, there was a Parade of Silhouettes across the street lastnight. There was a Preacher Silhouette, and there were Best Man and Maid of Honor Silhouettes, and their were Jealous Sister Silhouettes—two of them. There were Village Cut-Up Silhouettes and Silhouettes of Little Girls in Pink Ribbons—we knew they were pink because we saw them going in, stepping high to keep their white slippers clean.
All the Silhouettes gathered under a floral Court of Honor hung to the gas jet, and such a screaming and laughing and talking when it was over, you never heard!
"At last," said my wife, "I shall see that Man Silhouette and that Girl Silhouette in the flesh. I shall sit hereuntil they start for the train, and then rush across the street and look right into——"
An odor of something burning came from the kitchen.
"My roast!" screamed my wife, and dashed madly indoors, followed obediently by her husband.
After we had rescued the roast we returned to the porch.
A lot of idiots were throwing rice and shoes and flowers up the street. We followed the line of attack and there was the carriage, being hauled off by galloping horses to catch a train for Niagara Falls, with a slipper rattling out behind, and a streamer bearing the legend:
WE ARE JUST MARRIED!
"And to think," said my wife, "that after all my sisterly solicitude I have never seen the bride!"
"Nor the groom," I ventured.
"Oh, well," she said, "he doesn't count—now!"
And I reckon there may be something in that.
FINIS.