Witch Winnie Part 21

_Chaucer, Prologue to "Canterbury Tales."_

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Drawing of landscape.}]

It must not be imagined that our entire summer was given over to works of charity and mercy. There were times when we quite forgot the Home of the Elder Brother in merry romping and girlish enjoyment; and one of the pleasantest experiences of that season was an excursion in two tin-peddler's carts, or rather, in two carts belonging to one tin-peddler; a pilgrimage which was undertaken solely and simply as a lark, and most successfully realized its aims.

Toward the end of June, while Miss Prillwitz was still with us, father fell into a state of body or mind which he called "the malary." It was the fas.h.i.+on for everyone in our region to dub every disease with which they might be afflicted, from indigestion to inherited insanity, malaria; and the prescription given by our wise old physician for this disease of many manifestations was always the same.

"I don't know exactly what has caused this trouble," he would say, "but I know what will cure it. You need a change. If you've been living high, diet. If you've been starving yourself, have Thanksgiving dinner every day. Take a change of air and a change of scene, a change of occupation, and, above all, a change of habits, and somewhere we'll hit the nail on the head that has done the mischief."

The prescription pleased my father. He decided that he needed a change from the coast to the interior, and from exercise to a sedentary life.

"Instead of tramping around this farm," he said, "I would like to be driving over the western Ma.s.sachusetts hills. I am as sick of this eternal pound, pound of the surf on the sh.o.r.e as of the sea-fog in my throat."

"Take the horses, father," said mother, cheerfully, "and drive through Connecticut up to your brother Asahel's farm in Hawley. I can run this household well enough without you."

"It would be a rather lonesome drive," father demurred, though his eyes shone with longing.

"Zen why not to take us wiz you, Mr. Smiss?" asked Miss Prillwitz. "We would each stand her share of ze expenses, and such a tour of _diligence_ would be most delightful."

Upon this the matter was thoroughly canva.s.sed, and it was finally decided that mother should remain at home with the five little boys, whom Ethel Stanley and the Helpful Ten had agreed to amuse during our absence; and that Miss Prillwitz, Miss Sartoris, Winnie, Mr. Stillman, and I should accompany father. Mr. Stillman was a summer-boarder from New York, who came to us every season to fish and hunt. Hearing that Miss Prillwitz was fond of ornithology, and that the lighthouse-keeper sent her dead birds, he tried to please her by shooting others and bringing them to her, but she soon made him understand that she preferred studying them alive and at liberty.

"Zese poor leetle tears zat haf cast zemself on ze lighthouse," she explained, "zey have not been kill for me, zey could not else, but I wish I could hinder zem of it."

"It is not much fun to shoot birds, after all," Mr. Stillman admitted, "only the exultation in hitting a difficult mark. I hate to pick them up afterward."

"If it is only ze chase and ze difficulty which make you admiration,"

said Miss Prillwitz, "why do you not buy to yourself a camera of detective for ze instantaneousness, whereby you can photograph ze bird on his wing? Zey tell me it shall be much more difficult to do zat zan to shoot him dead."

And so Mr. Stillman had sent to New York for an amateur photographer's outfit, and had fitted up a dark-room in the old smoke-house, where he developed his negatives. He was a man to whom almost everything he tried was easy, and he tried his hand at many things. He had traveled much, and a.s.sured us that wherever he went he tried to learn some new accomplishment. In China he had learned the art of making fireworks, and earlier in the season the smoke-house had served as a chemical laboratory for the manufacture of rockets. Before Miss Prillwitz had suggested amateur photography, Mr. Stillman had amused us by setting off fireworks on the beach at night, but the new craze seemed destined to supersede every other; pyrotechnics were neglected, and the shot-gun and rifle rusted from lack of use.

A tin-peddler lived not far from us--an enterprising man, the proprietor of two carts, one of which his wife was accustomed to conduct, following him in caravan style on his summer journeyings; but this season the man was sick, his wife busied in his care, and the great carts, piled with wares, stood waiting in the sheds.

"I've a notion," said father, "to buy Eben Ware's stock and hire one of his carts. I can hitch my span of horses to it, and I will make enough selling tinware, as we go, to pay the expenses of the whole trip."

This plan did not strike me pleasantly at first, but before I had time to object Mr. Stillman joined in enthusiastically.

"A capital idea, Mr. Smith, but you know our board is to be paid regularly to Mrs. Smith during our absence. Miss Sartoris, Miss Prillwitz, and I all insist upon that. I will take the peddler's horses and his second cart, which I will load up with my photographic outfit, the ladies' baggage, camp supplies, etc., and I will fill in any spare s.p.a.ce with fireworks, which I will offer for sale along the route, all profits to be devoted to the charity in which the ladies are interested.

The Fourth of July is so near that I fancy the rockets will meet with a ready sale."

All joined in the plan with zest. Our wardrobe was reduced to a minimum.

It was discovered that the two carts were arranged to turn into ambulances for camping at night, and would furnish comfortable accommodation for the feminine portion of the party, while a small tent was provided for father and Mr. Stillman. In reality we camped but one night, preferring to stop at wayside inns, but it was pleasant to know that we could do so whenever we wished. A roll of army blankets and comfortables, a few kitchen utensils, and some canned goods were stored away in Mr. Stillman's cart, with Miss Prillwitz's botanizing equipments, Miss Sartoris's sketching materials, his own belongings, and all the fireworks which he could manufacture in time; and still there was room in the capacious interior. The rifle was added at Winnie's urgent request, as a defense against wild beasts, though we all joined in ridiculing her fears that bears might be found in the Ma.s.sachusetts woods, little thinking that we should have a thrilling adventure with a grizzly bear. At the last moment Mr. Stillman added another camera and more chemicals.

"This means," he replied, in answer to our questions, "that I have rented a tintype outfit of a photographer over at the Corners, and propose to add to our resources by taking tintypes as we go."

Mr. Stillman's ready invention, so fertile in expedients, received hearty applause, and the gypsy caravan set out in high feather. We took the steamboat with the carts to New Haven, and from that point struck into the interior by turnpikes and country roads, father leading the way with his jingling coach, Miss Prillwitz and Winnie perched high beside him, and Miss Sartoris, Mr. Stillman, and I, who called ourselves the Art Contingent, bringing up the rear. How beautiful the roads were, shaded by willows or arched by elms! Often fascinating lanes led off from the highway toward comfortable farm-houses, or gra.s.s-grown, deserted roads mounted through shady gorges to the lonely hills, tempting us from the beaten track. But the highway was beautiful enough.

Sometimes it followed the curves of some vagrant stream, or wound around gently undulating hills. Miss Sartoris pointed out the fact that it was most frequently a succession of curves, while French highways are laid out as straight as the surveyor can make them, and do not compose as well in landscape paintings. The Connecticut roads we found easy to travel, well kept, and for the most part level or of easy grade. It was not until we reached western Ma.s.sachusetts that we walked up the hills to lighten the load, or that the driver pressed his foot hard on the brake as the cart coasted down the steep inclines like a toboggan.

Winnie was delighted with a bit of gorge road which played at hide and seek with a wayward brook. "It seems to me," she said, "that the wood is a matter-of-fact business man, and the brook is his sweet but willful little wife. See how he tries to adapt himself to her whims and pranks, keeping as close to her as he can, while the side which she does not touch is stern with rock and shadow! And she, coquettish little thing, wanders away from him into the deepest part of the ravine, where he cannot follow, and hides herself in a tangle of fern and wild-flowers, till, just as the lonely old road, quite in despair at having lost her, crosses the ravine on a bridge of logs, apparently for the sole purpose of seeking her, the merry little brook flies under the mossy bridge and is close beside him on the side which he thought farthest from her."

"That is a very good parable," said father. "You've struck the nail pretty fairly. That's the way it has always been with my wife and me. My daughter, too, is one of the brook kind, but you needn't conclude that the old road doesn't enjoy all the company of blackberry vines and laurel and ferns that the brook attracts to itself, and which never would have come near the road but for the brook. I mean you and Miss Sartoris and the rest."

"And sometimes," Winnie added, "the road has its grains of corn or wheat dropped from a pa.s.sing cart, you know, to give to the sparrows, and the brook likes that ever so much."

Father always called the boys from the Home "the sparrows," and he was pleased by this allusion to his generosity.

We found ourselves following the circus at one stage of our journey, and we pitched our tent and made camp not far from the fair-grounds. We chose for our camp a site which had once been occupied by a house that had been burned to the ground. The only out-building which had escaped the conflagration was a root-house, or cellar, excavated, cave-like, in the side of a hill. It struck Mr. Stillman as a particularly good "dark-room," and we at once pre-empted it. Miss Sartoris painted a sign-board for the photographic studio, and Winnie and I arranged a bower with a flowery background for Mr. Stillman's sitters. We had a rich harvest that day, Winnie acting as cas.h.i.+er, and Miss Sartoris, as a.s.sistant, posing the groups. Mr. Stillman was quite exhausted when evening fell. He said he had never done such a day's work in his life, and his tintype material was nearly used up. We were patronized not only by the country people who came to see the show, sheepish lovers who wished to have their portraits taken together, and parties of merry young people, but also by the showmen themselves. The living skeleton and the fat lady, the strong man supporting a great weight by his teeth, the lion tamer with his pets, and the snake charmer, were all among Mr.

Stillman's patrons. When it was understood that he had an instantaneous camera with him, the equestrienne desired him to take a photograph of her while performing her famous feat of riding five horses at once, and the acrobats challenged him to catch their rapid evolutions. He surprised them by his remarkable success in obtaining a perfect negative. It was our most successful day, from a financial point of view, for we realized over twenty dollars.

Father had a rather annoying experience which made him desire to avoid the circus in the future. Among the articles which the tin-peddler had given him was a soldering furnace and irons, for mending old tinware.

Father made his first attempt to use these tools on this afternoon. The door-keeper of one of the tents brought him his j.a.panned tin strong-box to mend, and father attacked the task laboriously, succeeding in making it firm by a rather too plentiful application of solder. He was so interested in his task that he did not notice that an organ-grinder, one of the followers of the circus, had pressed quite near and was regarding the coins, which the door-keeper had temporarily turned into his handkerchief, with hungry eyes. Suddenly the monkey, which had been tied to the organ, became loose, and springing straight to the little furnace, seized and brandished the heated soldering-iron. A great excitement ensued, for no one dared to take the formidable weapon from the mischievous creature. The owner of the monkey seemed at his wits'

end. He raged, stamped, tore his hair, commanded and entreated the monkey to bring back the iron, all to no avail. The monkey, having burned himself, finally dropped it, but, frightened by the pain or by his master's threats, continued his flight into the woods, followed by the organ-grinder. When the excitement occasioned by this event had subsided, a still greater one ensued on the discovery that the door-keeper's handkerchief and money had disappeared. The man angrily charged father with its theft, but Mr. Stillman came running from his dark-room with a negative which he had just developed. He had been standing at the door, with his detective camera in his hand, and, quite unintentionally, had done real detective work, for, intending only to catch the monkey with the soldering-iron, he had focused upon it at the very first, and the unerring eye of the camera had seen and recorded what every one else had been too preoccupied to discover--the organ-grinder s.n.a.t.c.hing the gate-keeper's money. The negative was a sufficient witness, and the organ-grinder was at once sought for, but the earth seemed to have swallowed him. The monkey was found nursing his burned paw in a tree, but his master and the money were not to be found.

There was such a train of beggars and questionable characters in the wake of the circus that it was decided not to pursue our moneyed advantage by following with them; and the next day we stood back from the road to let the heavy, shambling elephants and long train of gaudily decorated wagons pa.s.s by. Mr. Stillman had his detective camera out, and took some interesting views of the procession. Father had taken a dislike to the soldering outfit, and congratulated himself that the monkey had lost the iron, but the last in the procession, a gypsy fortune-teller, handed it to him, saying that it was a lodestone, which would bring evil fortune to the person who possessed it, and advising him to give it to his worst enemy. "I am a witch," Winnie laughed, "and can reverse all omens--so we need not fear." Turning from the highway, we now struck across the country, through chestnut woods, where Miss Prillwitz taught us to recognize the song of the thrush, the sweetest of New England songsters, and cousin of the mocking-bird. Mr. Stillman was vexed that he could not obtain a single photograph of a thrush, but she is a shy bird, and keeps hidden in leafy thickets, and though we heard her song frequently, we never saw her. Mr. Stillman became very skillful in photographing other birds, even fixing the agile little fly-catchers in their eccentric movements, the watchful bobolink atilt on a mullein-stalk, the swallows skimming the river's surface, and the sagacious crows, who, having proved that a very natural scarecrow was harmless, were less suspicious of him. The withered limbs on certain old apple-trees were favorite perches for the birds, for there was no foliage here to impede their flight, and outlined against the sky they were capital targets for the camera. Mr. Stillman secured a gentlemanly king-bird in such a position, his white breast and black back and tail feathers reminding Winnie of a dandy in full evening dress.

Miss Prillwitz remarked on the brilliant plumage of the New England birds, and said that it was a mistake to imagine that those of the South were more beautiful. She pointed out the black and gold orioles, the lovely bluebird, the scarlet tanagers, as brilliant as flamingoes, the beautiful rose-breasted grosbeaks, with a rich crimson heart upon their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and the red-winged blackbirds, with their scarlet epaulets, reminding one of brisk artillerymen. It was the last of June--the most perfect of all the months--and as we rode we repeated all of the poets'

praises of the month that we could remember. We agreed that Lowell had sung the season best:

"The bobolink has come, and, like the soul Of the sweet season vocal in a bird, Gurgles in ecstasy we know not what, Save June! Dear June! Now G.o.d be praised for June."

But Margaret Deland pleased us nearly as well in her homage to the queen month:

"The dark laburnum's chains of gold She twists about her throat; Perched on her shoulder, blithe and bold, The brown thrush sounds his note!

"And blue of the far dappled sky, That shows at warm, still noon, s.h.i.+nes in her softly smiling eye-- Oh who's so sweet as June?"

Father was not a very successful tin-peddler. The thrifty New England housewives were not pleased because he was unwilling to exchange his wares for rags, after the manner of other itinerant venders. He was uncertain as to the prices which he ought to charge; asking so little for his brooms that one patron purchased all his stock, at a decided loss to himself, as he afterwards learned, and demanding so much for nutmeg graters that a sagacious purchaser showed him the door with scorn. The soldering outfit, too, caused him much woe. It seemed that the original peddler was a clever tinker; and all sorts of broken articles, from clocks to umbrellas, were brought out for father to mend.

At first father good humoredly tried his best, but having burned holes in his clothing, as well as blistered his hands, and succeeding in no instance in satisfying his patrons, he was tempted to throw the little furnace away, but his sense of economy would not allow him to do this, and he stowed it away vindictively in the depths of his cart.

Shortly after this we spent two very interesting days in visiting Mt.

Holyoke and Smith colleges. They gave both to Winnie and me a desire for a higher education than that which we were receiving at Madame's. Miss Sartoris wandered slowly through the Art Building of Smith, looking longingly at its superb equipment. The college is charmingly situated in the old town of Northampton. We were told that the students had just acted a Greek play, the "Electra" of Sophocles, very successfully, and we looked at one another in envy as we thought how impossible it would have been to present such a drama at Madame's.

We pa.s.sed the Holyoke range on July 1. This barrier marks as distinct a climatic change as Cape Cod in the Atlantic currents, for, just as, south of the Cape, and apparently threatened by her bent arm, the Gulf Stream sweeps to the north the tropic sea-weeds, and north of it, and gathered close in its embrace, the Arctic mosses cling to the cold heart of New England; so, south of the Holyoke range the air may be tepid and lifeless, while beyond it invigorating breezes from the Northland are dancing cheerily.

We had eaten the last native Connecticut strawberries, but they were just in their glory north of the barrier, and though the almanac said July, it was June weather still.

Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke stand as sentinels at the entrance of a lovely region, through whose elm-covered villages we drove at leisurely pace, resting over a Sabbath at old Hadley, one of the most charming places, with its princ.i.p.al street a double cloister of elms and maples, and where a Sabbath peace and stillness brooded even on week-days. Mr.

Stillman found, for the next few days, a ready sale for his fireworks, exhausting his stock and adding twenty-five dollars to the treasury.

About twelve miles north of Mount Holyoke rises Mount Toby, a n.o.ble mountain, which a.s.sumes, from certain directions, the shape of a crouching camel. The resemblance is even more marked than that of the Rock of Gibraltar to a lion. It dominates the country round about, and from its summit nearly a score of nestling towns and villages are visible. Among these Mr. Stillman sold his rockets, and proposed that we should spend Fourth of July night on its summit, and there watch the little fire-fountains on the plain below. It was an attractive plan, but Mr. Stillman had not counted the weather into his reckoning. It had been a sultry day. As we stopped at a farm-house on our way from Sunderland to Mount Toby, the good woman told us to look out for rain. "The gra.s.s has been waiting two days to be cut," she said, "but it looks kinder lowry, and the men-folks daresn't begin haying."

There were two superb c.u.mulus clouds in the west, shaped like elm-trees, or wine-gla.s.ses touching rims, and there was a blue rain-cloud in the southeast, with fringes trailing the landscape, and blurring it from our view.

"The rain may not reach Mount Toby at all," father said; "showers travel about among those hills in a curious fas.h.i.+on. I have seen it raining hard on one side of Sugar-Loaf, while the other was dry and dusty. There is a deserted railway station at the foot of Toby, where we can spend the night. There were picnic grounds laid out on the mountain at one time, but the enterprise failed, and trains no longer stop there."

A view of the station, which we reached early in the afternoon, confirmed father's recommendation of it. The roof was weather tight, and it was a roomy, comfortable building, a good refuge should a shower overtake us. We picnicked beside a beautiful cascade, and leaving the horses picketed beside the carts, proceeded to climb the mountain on foot. It was glorious with ma.s.ses of white and pink laurel, which I had never before seen in its perfection, and Miss Prillwitz introduced me to many other plants and flowers new to me. The Amherst basket-fern, shaped like a Corinthian capital, grew in perfection, the Columbine blew her flame-colored trumpets, and the harebell rang her inaudible chimes from mossy clefts in the gray rocks. Miss Prillwitz said she had last picked harebells in Austria.

"You know," said Miss Sartoris, "that Mary Howitt calls the harebell

'The very flower to take Into the heart, and make The cherished memory of all pleasant places; Name but the light harebell, And straight is pictured well Where'er of fallen state lie lonely traces.

Old slopes of pasture ground, Old fosse and moat and mound, Where the mailed warrior and crusader came; Old walls of crumbling stone With ivy overgrown, Rise at the mention of the harebell's name.'"