Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 241, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 October 1916 — The IDYL of TWIN FIRES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The IDYL of TWIN FIRES

by WALTER PRICHARD EATON

CHAPTER XVll—Continued. —l7 As the busy autumn days came upon ua. Twin Fires took on a new aspect, and one to us greenhorns indescribably thrilling. In the first place, our field of corn rustled perpetually as we walked past it, and down in the green-ish-golden lanes beneath we could see the orange gleam of pungkins (I shall so spell the word lest it be mispronounced by the ignorant). Great ears of the Stowell’s evergreen were ripe, for Mike's prediction about the early frost had not come true, and we ate the succulent food clean to the cob every day at dinner, besides selling many dozens of ears to the market. In the long light of afternoon, Stella loved to go along the path by the hayfleld wall and then turn in amid the corn, losing sight at once of all the universe and wandering in a new world of rustling leaves. Sbe felt, she said, just as Alice must have felt after she had eaten the cake; and once a rabbit bounded across her foot, to her unspeakable delight. She looked to see if he had dropped his gloves! “ Then there was tbe potato field. We •were eating our own new potatoes now. Often Stella dug them. “It seems so funny to go and dig up a potato,” she declared. “I’ve always felt that potatoes just were. But to see the whole process of growth is quite another matter. Oh, John, it makes them sb much nicer!” “Especially when you are getting seventy-five cents a bushel for them,” I laughed. The loaded tomato vines, too, with the red fruit hanging out from the wire frames and sending a pungent odor Into the surrounding air, appealed to Stella endlessly. I used to see her how and then, as I glanced from the south room of a morning, eating a raw tomato like an apple, her head bent forward so that the juice would not spoil her dress.

man and Japanese iris, alternated for succession, and planted a few Japanese both below and above the pool, close to the brook. We set the Narcissus poetieus bulbs where, if they grew, the flowers could look at themselves In the mirror below the dam. The Empress narcissus we placed on both sides of the pool just beyond the iris. On each side of the bench we placed a bulb of our precious Myridphyllums. and put the tigers into the borders close to the shrubbery on both sides. The hyacinths went Into the sundial beds, the Darwins into the beds at the base of the rose aqueduct, a few crocuses Into the sundial lawn, and the daffodils here and there all over the place, where the fancy struck us and the ground Invited. “Now, I’m going to label everything, and put it on a map besides," cried Stella, “except tbe daffodils. I want to forget where they are. I want surprises in the spring. Oh, John, do you suppose they’ll come up?” “Yes, I suppose they will,” I laughed, “some of them. But do you suppose we’ll ever get the kinks out of our

*Tin willing to go doubled up all the rest of my life for a garden of daffodils all my own,” she cried. A-nd then my heart wltH pleasure thrills And dances with the daffodils — “It was very thoughtful of old Wordsworth, and Shakespeare, and Masefield, and all the rest to write nice things about daffodils, wasn’t it, John? I wonder if gardens would be so Wonderful if it weren’t for all their literary suggestions, and the lovely things they remind you of? Gardens have so much atmosphere! Oh, spring, spring, hurry and come!” I forgot my lame back in her enthusiasm, and later, when the apples were gathered, the potatoes dug, the beets and carrots in the root cellar, our own sweet cider foamed in a glass pitcher on our table, and the first snow spits of December whistled across the fields, we put a little long manure over the irises and other bulbs, and pine boughs over the remaining perennials, and wrapped the ramblers in straw, with almost as much laughing tenderness as you would put a child to bed.

And there were the apples! Already a red astrachan tree invited us on every trip to the brook, and other old trees were bearing fast-reddening fruit. I had wanted to set out more orchard, but we agreed that we could not afford It that year, if we were to build chicken houses against the spring, so I reluctantly gave up the idea. But our old trees, in spite of (or perhaps because of) my spring pruning, were doing fairly well. We had enough for baked apples and create all winter, anyhow, Stella reckoned, smacking her lips at the thought Every day, on our way to the pool, one or the other of us took a hoe along and scraped a tree for five minutes, gradually getting the old bark off, and making a final preparation for a thorough spraying the next winter just so much easier. I used to prune a bit, too, in spare moments, so that by the end of the summer considerable renovation had' been accomplished. And now came the foxglove transplanting. According to the gardener’s directions, we took two long rows where the early peas had stood (and where Mlke m,v instimctlons to spade the vines under, that being a form of green manuring your old-time gardener will not see the value of, I have discovered), trenched them, put in manure and soil, and set out at ’asst three hundred foxglove plants six inches apart. It was a cool, cloudy day. and they stood up as though nothing had happened. Then, as an experiment, we moved scores of tiny hollyhocks from the crowded seedbeds into their position as a screen between the south kitchen windows and the sundial lawn, and as h border on the west side of the same lawn. They," too, were quite unaffected by the change. Meanwhile, we ordered our bulbs — hyacinths, daffodils (which in our eliminate, refuse to take the winds of March with beauty, cowardly waiting till May), a few crocuses, Narcissus poeticns, Empress narcissus, German iris, Japanese iris and Darwin tulips. We ordered the iris and tulips in named varieties. “They have such nice names,” said Stella, “especially the Japanese iris— Klmi-no-meguml, Shirataki, Momochiguma! The tulips are nice, too. Here is Ariadne and Kate Greenaway hobnobbing with Professor Rauwenhoff! What’s the use of having plants that aren’t named? We must show them as much respect as Antony and Cleopatra, or Epictetus and Luella!” We also experimented with lilies — lemon lilies for the shady north side of the house, tigers for the border beyond the pool, and two or three of the expensive Myrlophyllums, just to show that we, too. could go In for the exotic, like our neighbors on the big estates. When the bulbs came, in October, we looked at the boxes sadly. “Whew!" said Stella, “you can’t be IgrWWtWerMnyouT”-'' “I don’t work tomorrow, I guess,” said I. “Shall we ask Mike’s Joe to help us?” “Never!” said my wife. “We’l! put these bulbs in ourselves. If I had any help, I should feel like the Eckstroms, which God forbid!” Bo the next day at seven-thirty we began. We ringed the pool with Ger-

The cows were back in the stable, and Mike had revised his opinion of cork-asphalt floors when he realized the ease of cleaning with a hose; the potatoes and apples and onions and beets and carrots for our family use were stored in barrels and blns In the cellar, or spread on shelves, or burled in sand. The vegetable garden was fiewly plowed, and manure spread on the hayfleld. Antony and Cleopatra had been captured and brought into the dining room, where they were to spend the winter in a glass bowl. Epictetus and Luella and Gladys and Gaynor had all burrowed out of sight into the ground. The pageant of autumn on our hills was over, only an amethyst haze succeeding at sunset time. Wood fires sparkled in our twin hearths. The summer residents had departed. Our first Thanksgiving turkey had been eaten,thougha greatstone crock of Mrs. Pillig’s incomparable mincemeat still yielded up its treasures for ambrosial pies. “And now,” said Stella, “I’m going to find out at last what a country winter is like!” —“And yonr friends are pitying you down in town,” said I. “Don’t you want to go back to them till spring?” Stella looked at the fires, she looked out over the bare garden and the plowed fields to the dun hillsides, she listened a moment to the whistle of the bleak December wind, she looked at me. In her eyes I read her answer.

CHAPTER XVIII. Horas Non Numero Nisi Serenas. But this story is, after all, an idyl, and the idyl is drawing to Its close. Even as the Old Three Deckfer carried tired people to the Islands of the Blest, my little tale can only end with “and they lived happy ever after.” That second summer at Twin Fires, of bourse, showed us many things yet to be done. Neither Rome nor the humblest garden was ever built In a day. Our ramblers did their duty well, but the grape arbor and the pergola would not be covered properly in a season. There were holes in the flower beds to be filled Jjy annuals, and mistakes made In succession, so that July found us with many patches destitute of any bloom. Out in the vegetable area ’ tjiere were first cutworms and then drought and potato blight to be contended with. In our Ignorance we neglected to watch the hollyhocks for red rust till suddenly whole plants began to die, and we.had to spray madly with bordeaux and pull off a great heap of infected leaves, to save any blooms at all. There were clearings TdTje“ma®rfnTEFpTnirfeF"f6rnywotsr and constant work to be done about the pool to keep the wild bushes from coming back. There were chickens to be looked after now, also, and new responsibilities in the village for both of us. We had neither attempted nor desired to avoid our full share of clvle work. We Jived a busy life, with not an hour in the day Idle, and few hoars

In Jhe evening. We lived so full a life, indeed, that It was only by pre* serving an absolute routine for my own bread-winning labors, from 0 a. m. till one, that I was able to resist the siren call of farm and garden, and get my dally stint accomplished. The preceding summer I had made about two hundred dollars out of my produce, which In my first naive enthusiasm pleased me greatly. But It was surely a poor return on my Investment, reckoned merely in dollars and cents, and the second season showed a different result. Having two cows and a small family, I managed to dispose of my surplus milk and cream to a farmer who ran a milk route. This brought me In $73 a year. As I further saved at least SIOO by not having to buy milk, and S6O by Peter’s efforts at the churn, and could reckon a further profit from manure and

calves, my cows were worth between three hundred and four hundred dollars a year to me. Now that we had hens and chickens, we could reckon on another SIOO saved in egg and poultry bills. To this total I was able to add at the end of the summer more than five hundred dollars received from the sale of fruit and vegetables, not only to the market but to the hotels. I was the only person in Bentford who had cultivated raspberries for sale, for instance, and the fact that I could deliver them absolutely fresh to the hotels was appreciated In so delicate a fruit. Stella and Peter were the pickers. I also supplied the inns with peas, cauliflowers and tomatoes. Thus the farm was actually paying me in cash or saving at least a thousand dollars a year—indeed, much more, since we had no fruit nor vegetable bills the year through, Mrs. Pillig being an artist in preserving what would not keep in the cellar. But we will call it a thousand dollars, and let the rest go as interest on the investment represented by seeds and implements. To offset this, I paid Mike S6OO a year, and employed his son Joe at $1.75 a day for twenty weeks. This left me a profit of about two hundred dollars on my first full season at Twin Fires, which paid my taxes and bought my coal. Out of my salary, then, came no rent, no bills for butter, eggs, milk, poultry nor vegetables. I had to pay Mrs. Pillig her S2O a month therefrom, I had to pay the upkeep of the place, and grocery and meas bills (the latter being comparatively small in summer). But with the great item of rent eliminated, and my farm help paying for itself, it was astonishing to me to contemplate what a beautiful, comfortable home we were able to afford on an income which In New York would coop us in an upper West side apartment. We had thirty acres of beautiful land, we had a brook, a pine grove,

an orchard, a not too formal garden, a lovely house, In which we were slowly assembling mahogany furniture which fitted It. We had summer society as sophisticated as we cared to mix with, and winter society to which we could give gladly of our own stores of knowledge or enthusiasm and find joy In the giving. We had health as never before, and air and sunshine and a world of beauty all about us to the far, blue wtfli of hills. Above all, we had the perpetual incentive of gardening to keep our eyes toward the future. A true garden, like a life well lived, is forever becoming, forever In process, forever leading on toward new goals. Life, indeed, goes hand In hand with your garden, and never a fair thought but you write it in flowers, never a beautiful picture but you paint It if you can, and with the striving learn patience, and with the half accomplishment the “divine unrest” '

HORAS NON NUMERO NISI SERE-s===s=^-ssgesa reads the ancient motto on our dial plate, and as I look back on the years of Twin Fires’ genesis, or forward into the future, the hours that are not sunny are indeed not marked for me. I am writing now at a table beneath the pergola. The floor Is of brick, laid (somewhat irregularly) by Stella and me, for we still are poor, as the Eckstroms would reckon poverty, and none of what Mrs. Deland has called “the grim inhibitions of wealth” prevents us from doing whatever we can with our own hands, and finding therein a double satisfaction. Over my head rustle the thick vines—a wistaria among them, which may or may not survive another winter.

It Is June again. I know that a path now wanders up the brook almost to the road, amid the wild tangle, and ends suddenly in the most unexpected nook beneath a willow tree, where irises fringe a second tiny pool. I know that the path still wanders the other way into the pines—pines larger now and more murmurous of the seapast beds of ferns and a lone flower that will bloom in a shafTof sunlight. Somewhere down that path my wife is wandering, and she is not alone. A little form (at least she says it has form!) sleeps beside her, while she sits, perhaps, with a book, or more likely with sewing in her busy fingers, or more likely still with hands that stray toward the sleeping child and ears that listen to the seashell murmur of the pines whispering secrets of the future. Is he to be a Napoleon or a Pasteur? No less a genius, surely, the prophetic pines whisper to the listen-. Ing mother! My own pen halts in its progress and the ink dries on the point. And hark,from..the.plnes.a..tlny.cry! Can he want his father? THE END. _