Part 8

Roses are easy of culture, easy of propagation, requiring almost as little care as dandelions or daisies. The wonder is that every other man is not an enthusiast, and in the month of June a gentle fanatic. Floral insanity is one of the most charming inflictions to which man is heir! One never wishes to be cured, nor should any one wish to cure him. The garden is infectious. Flowers are “catching,” or the love of them is. Men begin with one or two. In a few years they are struck through with floral zeal. Not bees are more sedulous in their researches into flowers than many a man is, and one finds, after the strife and heat and toil of his ambitious life, that there is more pure satisfaction in his garden than in all the other pursuits that promise so much of pleasure and yield so little.

It is pleasant to find in men whose hard and loveless side you see in society, so much that is gentle and beauty-loving in private. Hard capitalists, sharp politicians, grinding business men, will often be found, at home, in full sympathy with the gentlest aspects of nature. One is surprised to find how rich and sweet these monsters often turn out to be! Here is the man whom you have for years heard described, in all the newspapers, as a spectacle of wickedness or a monument of folly. You are, by some convulsion of nature, thrown into his company, and travel for days with him. To your surprise his manners are gentle, his conversation pleasing, his attentions to all about him considerate. This must be artifice. It is a veil to hide that hideous heart of which you have heard so much. You watch and wait. But watching and waiting only satisfy you that this supposed monster is a kind man, with a world of sympathy for beautiful things. And when, in after-months, you have been at his summer-house, and know him in his vineyard and his garden, you smile at yourself that you were ever subject to that illusion which is so often raised about public men.

A man is not always to be trusted because he loves fine horses, or because he follows the stream or hunts in the fields. But if a man that loves flowers, and loves them enough to labor for them, is not to be trusted, where in this wicked world shall we go for trust? A man that carries a garden in his heart has got back again a part of the Eden from which our great forefather was expelled.

XII.

CHESTNUTS.

July 30th.

I fancy that trees have dispositions. At any rate, they have those qualities which suggest dispositions to all who are in sympathy with nature, and who look upon facts as letters of an alphabet, by which one may spell out the hidden meanings of things. Some trees, like the apple, suggest goodness and humility. They put on no airs. They do not exalt themselves. They are patient of climate, full of beauty in blossom, and, in autumn, beautiful in fruit.

The oak, when well grown, has the beauty of rugged strength, and sometimes it has grandeur. Certain live-oak trees on Helena Island, near Beaufort, S. C., with long, pendant moss, like a Druid’s beard, impressed us with a feeling of the sublime in vegetation which we never experience in the presence of any other tree. Down on our backs we lay, and gazed up into their vast tops with a pleasure never since renewed. These were the types of patriarchal dignity.

The American elm is the tree of grace and beauty. It is stately without stiffness. It carries itself up to such a height that its drooping boughs do not suggest feebleness, as the weeping-willow does. And yet, one never has the feeling of sympathy with it or of personal intercourse. One may sit under its branches, but no one ever sat on or among them. We admire, but do not sympathize. Still less did any one ever love a hickory-tree. They are beautiful and stately, but self-contained. When young, they are dandies; and when old, aristocrats.

Not so the chestnut-tree. This darling old fellow is a very grandfather among trees. What a great, open bosom it has! Its boughs are arranged with express reference to ease in climbing. Nature was in a good mood when the chestnut-tree came forth. It is, when well grown, a stately tree, wide-spreading, and of great size. Even in the forest the chestnut is a noble tree. But one never sees its full development except when it has grown in the open fields. It then assumes immense proportions. Having a tendency when cut down to send up many shoots from the stump, old trees are often found with four or five trunks springing from the same root. In such cases, no other American tree covers so wide a space of ground. Not even the oak attains to greater size or longevity. The Tortworth chestnut, in England, is supposed to have been standing before the Conquest, 1066, and must be not far from a thousand years old. The longest known tree in America is the “Rice” chestnut, on the estate of Marshall I. Rice, at Newton Centre, Mass. It measures twenty-four feet and three tenths in circumference at the base, seventy-six feet in height, and spreads its limbs ninety-three feet. It is vigorous, and still bears enormous crops. This, however, is a mere stripling compared with the famous chestnut-tree of Mount Ætna, whose trunk measured about one hundred and sixty feet in circumference, or some fifty-three feet in diameter, and which could shelter a hundred horsemen beneath its branches! But this tree, long hollow, is about giving up the ghost, even if it has not already done so, no doubt dying in the peaceful consciousness of having spent a virtuous life, and fed thousands of people with two thousand years’ full of nuts!

There is living in vigor at Sancerre, in France, a tree which, at six feet from the ground, measures thirty feet in circumference. Michaux says that he measured several trees in the Carolina mountains of fifteen or sixteen feet in circumference; which, if a boy is expected to climb them, is full large enough.

A chestnut-tree in full bloom is a fine sight. It blossoms about the first of July, in clusters of long, yellowish-white filaments, like a tuft of coarse wool-rolls. The whole top of the tree is silvered over. We have never seen them so finely in blossom as this year, and we foresee a grand harvest for the boys. O, those golden days of October! The thought of them brings back the days of boyhood, the brilliant foliage of the forest just putting on its regal garments; the merry sport of squirrels racing on the ground (if one lies dead-still to watch), or scampering up the trunks, and leaping from tree to tree with chirk and bark, if disturbed.

It was a great day when, with bag and basket, the whole family was summoned to go “a-chestnuting!” There was frolic enough, and climbing enough, and shaking enough, and rattling nuts enough, and a sly kiss or two,—but never enough,—and lunch enough, and appetite enough. The silver brook on the hillside carried down, on its murmuring current, the golden leaves which the trees, with every puff of wind, sent shimmering down through the air. Barefooted, as we were all summer long, the prickly chestnut burs were too sharp for our little tough feet, and we were glad to pick our way cautiously under the trees.

Long live the chestnut-tree, and the chestnut woods on the mountain-side, and the boys and girls who frolic under their boughs! And long live the winter nights, with the homely fare of apples and nuts, and no stronger drink than cider; and a merry crowd of boys and girls, with here and there the spectacled old folks; all before a roaring hickory fire, in an old-fashioned fireplace, big as the western horizon with the sun going down in it, and with a roguish stick of chestnut wood in it, which opens such a fusillade of snaps and cracks as sets the girls to screaming, and throws out such mischievous coals upon the calico dresses, as obliges every humane boy to run to the relief of his sweetheart all on fire!

No doubt many an old gentleman will read this article with a face growing more and more full of smiles, and taking off his spectacles at the end, and, looking kindly over at his aged dame, will say, “Do you remember, Polly, when we were at Squire Judson’s—” “Well, well, father, you are too old to be talking about such youthful follies.” Nevertheless, she smiles and looks kindly over at the old rogue who kissed her that night, proposed on the way home, and was married before Christmas.

XIII.

GREEN PEAS.

August 20th.

What a comfort is the consciousness of usefulness! One may dig on his farm or delve in his library for weeks, with nothing to show for it, and with no murmuring applause. But let him once spread the table, put the pot to boiling, and set forth a meal; and the praise of housekeepers begins to ascend, sweet as frankincense or new-made apple-pies. But we are praise-proof in culinary matters. There are others around here that are liable to the puffing-up of vanity, if their domestic performances are loudly applauded. But we, of the stronger sex, can hear our beefsteak commended without a wrinkle upon our tranquil humility. We can have our coffee criticised without a flush of indignation. Even our method of cooking vegetables may be undervalued, without exciting us to controversy; so tranquil is our soul, when once under the inspiration of the cuisine. But some there are who mingle praise with suggestion—a cup of criticism with sugar in it. Thus:—

“We heartily thank him for his descriptions in ’summer Dinners,’ and would mildly suggest, if he would add a pint of nice, thick cream to a quart of peas, taken from milk that has stood just six hours in a cool, airy, and clean cellar—said milk must be milk, to start with; none of your blue, watery stuff, such as some cows are said to give, but rich, golden milk, caught in bright tin pails, so polished that they reflect the happy faces of all who wish to take a peep at them:—with such a dish, I think we could tempt—well, Henry Ward, to dine with us; couldn’t we? especially if we add an apple-pie made after a receipt you gave in the Ledger several years ago.

“Yours, very respectfully, “Twenty-year-old DOT.”

If one wishes a new and composite dish, let the peas be smothered in cream. But, if one wishes peas, pure and simple, in their own flavor,—a flavor chosen out of the whole vegetable realm, and not repeated in any other growing thing,—let him not, let her not, audaciously introduce any rival flavor. Peas are good; cream is good; peas and cream are good,—each in its own severalty. But let each one stand in its own name. Do not call peas and cream, peas. One’s tenderest culinary susceptibility is touched, to be asked if he will take some green peas, and then to find himself eating peas and cream!

The English receipts recommend a sprig or two of mint to be thrown in while green peas are cooking. We do not challenge their right to do it. They may put in anise and cummin too, if they choose. But we do protest, in the name of kitchen literature, against calling such experimental compounds by the ever-dear name of “green peas.”

All smooth peas are tasteless compared with the wrinkled peas. It is proper that wrinkles should bring sweetness. The smooth-faced varieties are fairer to look upon. But they are not inwardly rich. That these should be flavored, enriched, and spiced with herbs, is not altogether against nature or analogy.

Still, if on some bright summer day, soon after the twelve musical strokes on the village bell, we shall find ourselves the guest of the sprightly “Dot,” we shall lay aside all pre-conceived notions and all prejudices; and if it prove to be that peas absorb cream into their bosoms without losing their peahood—nay, if this wedding shall prove, as all true weddings should, that individuality is developed and established—we shall gladly repent, confess, and recant our foregoing protest.

Another fair heart has suffered itself to fall into shocking doubts.

“DEAR SIR: It is with great pleasure that I read your weekly articles in the Ledger, and I have especially relished your ’summer Dinner,’ which was got up in such good style. But—and this is what is very important—did you have to ask your wife the different names of the vegetables, and how to cook them? Or do you believe in Men’s Rights, and so know how to do your own cooking, seasoning, and eating?”

The family should be sacred! This attempt to pry into its secrets must not succeed. This question answered, the next one would be, whether we wrote our own articles for the Ledger, or whether some one dictated them to us? And then would come questions as to who wrote the sermons? Then, when once the stream had broken over the bounds of proper privacy, it would rush through kitchen and pantry, closet and cupboard, cellar and attic, until the slime of curiosity would lie thick on all the sacred places of the household.