Part 36

"You needn't tell me! I don't believe C-Cook or P-Peary ever went to the P-Pole. B-r-r-r!"

In the darkness of the parlour bedroom Mrs. Summersox laughed a noiseless laugh. She hadn't had so good a time since she had left the city. She could already see visions of a detached house in Rosedale, with a subdued husband, who was thoroughly cured of his foolish hankering for the country. Meanwhile, the lids banged, paper rustled, and coal rattled. Despite the condition of the temperature Mr. Summersox was evidently working with feverish haste. After a pause, during which he watched the lighted paper flare up and die out, he suddenly yelled in desperation:

"Where do you keep the coal oil?"

"In a wicker-covered carboy in the cellar entrance."

Once more the lids banged and Mr. Summersox splashed the contents of the carboy lavishly over the paper, kindling wood, and coal. Then he struck a match and applied it to the soaked paper. It spluttered once and went out. He lit another match. Same fate. As the last vestiges of his self-control were slipping away he lit a third match. He waited until it was burning brightly and then plunged it into the midst of the paper and kindling. It went out quicker than the others. Then Mr. Summersox lifted up his voice and tore a passion into tatters.

"Confound the greedy, griping, soulless Standard Oil Company anyway. If I didn't want it to light that confounded oil would explode at the sight of the cook's red hair, and here I can't light it with a forced draught. The whole cursed corporation ought to be rooted out and drowned in its own incombustible product. What is the flash point of this condemned coal oil anyway?" Not being a swearing man, Mr. Summersox was greatly handicapped in dealing with so universal a sinner as the Standard Oil. Just as he was going to start on a second outburst his wife called softly:

"Eben, dear. Are you sure you didn't take the carboy of vinegar? It stands beside the coal oil."

"Vinegar, woman? Did you say vinegar?" He sniffed at the fluid, and then his whiskers began to bristle with rage.

"What in blazes do you think I am trying to do? To make a salad? If I didn't have more sense than to put the vinegar beside the coal oil I'd go and run a junk shop, instead of pretending to be a housekeeper."

Mrs. Summersox was altogether too happy to resent the attack. The cosy bed shook with her silent laughter. Meanwhile her husband put fresh paper under the kindling and poured on so much oil to neutralise the vinegar that when he touched a match to it it started with a blaze that singed off his eyebrows. Banging the door shut he started for the parlour bedroom with chattering teeth, and feet so numb with cold that he hobbled rather than ran.

"Turn on the draughts on the heater," shouted his wife.

"It's out!" he snarled as he still approached rapidly like a runaway iceberg on the high seas. Mrs. Summersox was filled with sudden alarm.

"Eben Summersox! Don't you dare to come bouncing into this bed and giving me my death of cold. If you touch me with your cold hands or feet I'll----" But she never told what she would do. With a wild, despairing scramble her husband clawed at the clothes with numb fingers, and then plunged between the blankets like a hunted thing.

"Well, I hope you are satisfied," said Mrs. Summersox tartly. "If this is the way the joys of your youth are going to turn out I should think this would cure you."

"W-what are y-you talking about? The whole trouble is that we tried to bring city conveniences with us to the cu-country. A man needs a course in a technical college before trying to run one of those coal stoves. I am going down town to-day to get a couple of wood stoves, and I'll throw those confounded coal stoves on the scrap heap. The country is all right, but if you are going to live in it and enjoy it you must live as country people do. I am going to root out of this house everything that has to do with city life, and then I can live as a man should."

At this point Mrs. Summersox resumed her air of resignation and sighed deeply. There was silence for a while, and then a knock sounded from the kitchen door. Mr. Summersox blazed with wrath.

"What miserable idiot is knocking at this hour of the morning? He can just knock till he is tired, and then come back at a reasonable hour." The knock sounded again, louder than before. Mr. Summersox sulked. His wife sighed once more and stirred as if about to get up, but was careful not to uncover herself.

"Oh, well, I suppose I must get up and see who it is."

Mr. Summersox threw back the clothes and went to the door intending to work off his wrath on the intruder. When he came back he was almost cheerful.

"It's the cook," he volunteered.

"Well, I am glad she had the kitchen fire lit when she came in out of the cold."

"She hadn't. It went out," snapped Mr. Summersox.

Then silence reigned in the parlour bedroom until the warmth from the newly-lighted heater began to take the chill off the air.

Dec. 31.--I want to fulfil a promise I made some time ago that I would sum up the results of my experiment at farming before the end of the year and tell frankly what it means to get back to the land. I cannot do that in facts and figures because I have not received the returns for my shipment of apples, and yet I feel that I got enough from it to justify me in saying something. But what I got is not the sort of thing that a man can store in his granary or deposit in a bank. It can be set down only in terms of personal satisfaction with the world we live in. What I am treasuring is chiefly the memory of spacious days, serene hours, and emotions that were not even productive of thought. That seems rather hazy, does it not? And yet it seems everlastingly worth while. After having felt the grip and grind of the world it is something to feel peaceful and secure for a few hours.

And now let us get back to the real advantages of farming and country life. The prevailing idea with many people is that it is monotonous and lonely. It has never struck me in that way, and I take much satisfaction in quoting what Thoreau replied when questioned about the loneliness of his life.

"What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men, surely--but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we have found it to issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction. This will vary with different natures, but this is the place where a wise man will dig his cellar."

There are joys surpassing the joys of any success, of good harvests, of fat steers, or anything that most farmers desire and take account of, but these joys cannot be set down in words. I can only ask the poets to suggest them for you. Whitman says in one of those seemingly egotistical passages where he is really voicing the soul of things:

"I will never translate myself at all only to him or her who privately stays with me in the open air."