Komatsu Forklift Truck FD30-17

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cookbook. He ate the ants alive. No shrimp-eater ought to quarrel
with him on that score.
We shall have a nearer view of Lower Lake another day. It is better
to have the first view of some old and famous city from the hill-tops.
That revelation ripens into a picture which ever afterward we hasten
to set over against the squalor and ugliness disclosed by a nearer
view. One need not be wholly disgusted if in place of a trout, he has
caught a mud-turtle from the lake which opened its sheen of waters
to him first from the mountain summit.
The shadows had stretched nearly across the narrow valleys, when it
occurred to us that, in climbing to the highest and baldest peak, the
Indian trail had run out, and that the hot springs—the point of
departure—were eight miles distant, and were shut out of view by
an intervening spur. Either a short cut was to be made, trusting to
luck to find a trail, or there was to be a night on the mountain.
There were two intervening canyons to be crossed before there was
any prospect of striking a trail. It is not pleasant to slide a horse on
his haunches down into one of these chasms without knowing where
one is to bring up. If the most obscure cattle trail can be found
leading in, one may trust to the instincts of horse sense to find it,
and also the one which will most certainly lead out on the other side.
The tinkling of a cow-bell on the table-lands beyond was a welcome
sound. The horses wound into the first canyon, and went out
without much hesitation. The trail for the next, by good luck, had
been found. But it was a suspicious circumstance that these ponies—
accustomed to such defiles, and now heading for home—hesitated,
snuffed, snorted and turned about. The rein was given to them, but,
hungry as they were, they seemed disposed to turn back. The little
Cayuse pony trembled, threw his ears forward, advanced and
retreated, and blew out a column of vapor from each nostril as he
kept up his aboriginal snort. Either two tired and hungry
excursionists must make a night of it, shut in by a canyon in front
and in the rear, or the second one must be crossed without delay.
A horse is generally willing to plant his feet where he sees a man do
it in advance. But these horses were dragged into the chasm,
sometimes dropping on their haunches, and at other times plowing
along with the fore feet braced well ahead. Once at the bottom, a
fresh cinch was taken with the greatest difficulty, as neither horse
could be kept still for a second. A moment afterward the click of the
pony's feet was heard, and the sparks thrown off by his shoes were
distinct enough as he shot up the trail as though projected from a
mortar. The old horse—stiff in the shoulders, and his legs like
crowbars—was not a rod behind him.
"Did you see anything in that canyon?"
"No—yes. I saw the outline of a steer going down to drink."
"Nonsense! Do you think these tired horses, refusing first to come
into the canyon, would have gone out on the other side as if Satan
were after them, if they did not know that that particular steer had
claws. If you had seen twenty mules break out of a yard and
stampede when the foot of a cinnamon bear was thrown over, you
would not blame these horses for blazing the trail with fire as they
thundered up the rocks with the fresh scent of a live grizzly in their
nostrils.
"Then, if you are willing to take the affidavits of these two horses as
to the facts—and the jurat of eight steel-clad hoofs, striking fire on
the rocks, was a very solemn one—you can settle the question in
favor of the grizzly much more comfortably than he would have
settled it for you. It is not necessary that one's scalp should be
pulled over his eyes and his face set awry for life, in order to obtain
a more convincing demonstration. I can refer you to a settler who
has had these things done for him, whereat his satisfaction has in no
whit increased."
An hour afterward two horses with drooping heads went into their
stalls, and two jaded excursionists had each dropped into hot baths
at Harbin's Springs. Nothing externally will neutralize the chill of a
night ride among the mountains better than water which spouts
from this hillside heated to 110 degrees. It is a notable caprice of
Nature that, of three springs within the space of twenty feet, one is
cold and has no mineral qualities; the other two are of about the
same temperature, the waters of one strongly impregnated with iron
and the other with sulphur. The waters of the two mineral springs
combined are not only as hot as a strong man can bear, but they
dissolve zinc bath-tubs, which was a satisfactory reason for the
substitution of ugly wooden bathing-boxes. It is a pleasant nook,
grandly encircled with mountains, with the wonderfully blue heavens
by day, and lustrous stars by night.
Fifty or sixty moping invalids made up the assortment at the hotel.
These taciturn and moody people did not wait for the angel to go
down and trouble the waters, but each went in his own way and
time, and troubled the waters mightily on his personal account. The
fact may be assumed that the angel had been there in advance. For
a thousand years, a great subterranean caldron had been heated,
tempered and medicated, and its vapors had ascended as incense
toward heaven.
This little sanitarium among the mountains, crowded with curious
people—angular, petulant and capricious—was invested with a great
peace and restfulness for brain-weary folk. When the sun went
down, invalids, like children, went off to bed. There was nothing to
do but to sleep through the long cool nights. All the conventionalities
of a more artificial social life were reversed. The people who had
fought Nature and common sense for years, and had been worsted
in the conflict, came here to make their peace with her. They were
up with the opening of the day. They drank medicated waters
heroically; dropped into hot baths with a sensation akin to have
fallen on the points of a million needles; plunged into pools, or were
immersed with the vapors collected in close rooms. There were early
breakfasts, when the boards were swept by invalids with ravenous
appetites; dinners at midday, attended by the same hungry, silent,
introspective people; supper, before sundown, when the same
famishing people were eating away for dear life. A four-horse
passenger wagon arrived just at nightfall, bringing the mail and an
occasional guest. There was a glance at the newspapers, now and
then a letter was read, and then night and a sweet stillness settled
over this mountain dell. Time was of little consequence; people
searched an old almanac for the day of the week or month; the sun
rose above the crest of one mountain and went down behind
another; there were the morning and evening shadows, the same
flood of light in the valley at midday, the monotonous drone of the
little rivulet in the canyon, and at long intervals the twitter of a
solitary bird. Some sauntered along trails, counting the steps with a
sort of mental vacuity; others tilted their chairs under porches, and
slept with hats over their eyes. If a bustling, loud-voiced guest
arrived, in a day or two he fell into the same peaceful and subdued
ways. The repose of sky and mountain came down gently upon him,
and a dreamy indolence shortened his steps and prolonged his
afternoon naps.
There would have been an utter stagnation of life but for the advent
of one of those characters who had been everywhere, seen
everybody, and had become a sort of itinerating museum of odd
conceits and grotesque incidents. There were many invalids who had
separated themselves from business cares, only to brood over their
infirmities. They wanted nothing so much as, in some way, to be led
apart from their own morbid natures. The eccentric little man told
his stories. They were not always fresh, nor always extremely witty.
But, as the assortment never ran out, and the quality improved from
day to day, the fact was alike creditable to his inventive powers and
his benevolence. At first, the worst specimens of morbid anatomy
listened from a distance, and muttered, "Foolish;" "Don't believe a
word of it." The next day they hitched their chairs along a few feet
nearer to this story-telling evangel. One could occasionally see that a
crisis was coming; either these people must laugh, or be put on the
list of hopeless incurables. Observing, on one occasion, a man on
crutches who, after listening for a time with apparent contempt,
suddenly withdrew and hobbled off around a turn of the narrow
road, I ventured to ask him if stories were disagreeable to him.
"Oh, no, that is not it. You see I had not laughed in years. I was
determined that old Hooker should not make me laugh, if I did not
choose to. The fact is, I had either to holler or die. I wouldn't make
a fool of myself, and so I went around the bend in the road, and
turned off into the chaparral."
As this man dropped one crutch in a week from that time, and in ten
days thereafter was walking with a cane, I have never doubted that
he "hollered."
At nightfall generous wood fires glowed upon the hearth of the
sitting room, and there was a more hopeful light in many faces.
People lingered in the doorway, on the stairs, and leaned over the
balustrade for one more story from the genial and eccentric man. A
ripple of half-suppressed laughter went around the room, ran up the
stair-way, and ended in gentle gurgles in the rooms with open doors
at the end of the corridor. The man of anecdote and story had
touched, with healing influences, maladies which no medicated
waters could reach. He exorcised the demons so gently, that these
brooding invalids hardly knew how they were rescued. New and
marvelous virtues were thereafter found in the spring water; there
was a softer sunlight in the dell; the man with the liver complaint
became less sallow, and no longer talked spitefully about "Old
Hooker"; and the woman who did not expect to live a week, no
longer sent down petulant requests that the house might be still, but
only wanted that last story repeated to her "just as he told it."
Once, as the twilight drew on, the face of Hooker seemed to glow
with unwonted radiance, as he unfolded his plans for a sanitary
retreat. His theory was, that civilization had culminated in mental
disorders, and the world was running mad with excitements, which
half-demented people were busy in fomenting. Of the sixty guests at
the Springs, he estimated that, at one time, not more than seven
per cent. were free from some sort of a delusion—the evidence of
lunacy in its milder forms. If put into strait-jackets, or shut up in the
wards of an hospital, or treated otherwise as if insane, they would
become as mad as Bedlam. One delusion must be matched against
another. Every man and woman must be treated as sane, and all
that they did, or thought, or said, as the perfection of reason. The
nonsense of clowns had cured more people than the wisdom of
philosophers. The chemistry of Nature, the sunshine, the pure
mountain air, and all the subtle combinations of thaumaturgic
springs must be supplemented by every art which could beguile and
lead people away from a miserable self-consciousness. A half-hour of
sound sleep is sometimes the bridge over the gulf from death to life.
He would not only make people sleep, but even laugh in their sleep.
He would practice the highest arts of a sanitary magician. His
patients should laugh by night and by day. They should forget
themselves. The time would come when the best story-teller would
be accounted the best physician.
On the evening before leaving the Springs, two hunters, in clay-
colored clothes, deposited upon the porch each a deer and a string
of mountain trout. Hooker, of blessed memory, after whispering
confidentially the bill of fare for an early breakfast, went aside and
talked in an undertone with the hunters, who soon afterward
disappeared in the direction of the canyon we had crossed a few
evenings before. The moon being nearly at full, there would be a
good prospect for deer during the latter part of the night; but there
was a possible hint of larger game, in the chuckling undertone of
one of the hunters as he shouldered his rifle: "Fellers as wear them
kind o' clothes don't know a bar when they see him."
In the early morning, the same hunters were warming their fingers
by the wood fire in the sitting-room. Hooker was already up, and
flitted about—now conferring with the hunters, and then with the
steward. A game breakfast was already assured. Hooker whispered
that the hunters had found the bear which sent the ponies flying out
of the canyon. He had been taken alive, and we should have a
parting look at him in advance of the other guests as we drove down
the road. A Pike, astride of the corral fence, saluted Hooker as we
were climbing to the top rail: "Glad you 'uns found old corn-cracker
up the gulch. He was powerful weak when I turned him out. He's a
good 'un."
One glance at his long, yellow tusks and bristling back was enough.
There was a sudden snap of the whip, and the dust spun from the
wheels as two horses shot down the road on a bright October
morning. The little dell, with its thermal springs, its colony of
invalids, Hooker, the incorrigible, and the "bear" in the corral,
disappeared with a gentle benediction.
One may traverse a thousand miles of the Coast Range, and not find
another mountain road which reveals, at every turn, so many
striking views as the one of twenty miles from Harbin's to Calistoga.
The road, for a considerable distance, follows the windings of a noisy
and riotous little rivulet, which, heading on the easterly side of St.
Helena, runs obstinately due north for several miles. The fringe of
oaks and madronos were wonderfully fresh, as they stood half in
sunlight and half in shadow, still dripping, here and there, with the
moisture which had been condensed during the night. A delegation
of robins had come down from higher latitudes, and were taking an
early and cheery breakfast from the scarlet berries of the madrono.
It needed but the flaming maple and falling chestnuts, with some
prospect of "shell-barks," to round into perfect fullness these
autumnal glories. But no one living east of the Hudson could raise
such a wild and unearthly yell as broke from the Judge every time a
cotton-tail rabbit darted across the road. The obstreperous
woodpecker was awed into silence, and the more industrious ones
dropped in amazement the acorns which they were tapping into the
trunks of the trees, and flitted silently away.
"That," said the Judge, "is not half as loud as I heard Hooker yell six
months ago."
"Then he was demented?"
"Yes; he was as mad as a March hare, and in a strait-jacket at that."
"That clears up one or two mysteries. But you might have made the
revelation before."
"When are you going to start that hilarious institution which you and
Hooker called a sanitarium?"
Just then, the summit of the mountain road had been gained, and
the long perspective of the Napa Valley opened at the base of St.
Helena, and melted away toward the south into the soft, dreamy
atmosphere of an autumnal noonday.

THE HOUSE ON THE HILL.

THE HOUSE ON THE HILL.

A country without grandmothers and old houses needs a great many
balancing compensations. Everywhere one is confronted with staring
new houses, which require an external ripening in the wind and sun
for half a century. If the motherly wisdom of seventy-five years is
lodged therein, it is something of recent importation. I have walked
two miles to see an old lady, who not only bears this transplanting
well, but is as fresh and winsome in thought as a girl of sixteen. If
only there had been an old house, a stone fire-place—wide at the
jambs—and a low, receding roof in the rear, with a bulging second
story and oaken beams, nothing more would have been wanting.
When, therefore, it was whispered, one day, that there was an old
house in the middle of a large lot on a hill, overlooking the Golden
Gate, there was a strong and unaccountable desire to take
possession of it immediately. But when the fact was stated that the
house was ten years old, that there was moss upon the shingles, low
ceilings within, and a low roof without, the destiny of that house was
well nigh settled. The owner wanted money much more than old
houses. In fact, a Californian who refuses to sell anything, except his
wife, is only found after long intervals. The transfer of ownership
was natural enough. It followed that one evening there was a
dreamy consciousness that we were the owner of a small, rusty-
looking cottage, set down in the middle of an acre lot, defined by
dilapidated fences, and further ornamented by such stumps of trees
as had been left after all the stray cattle of the neighborhood had
browsed them at will. As incidents of the transfer, there was the
Golden Gate, with the sun dropping into the ocean beyond; the
purple hills; the sweep of the bay for fifteen miles, on which a white
sail could be seen, here and there; and, later, the long rows of
flickering street lamps, revealing the cleft avenues of the great city
dipping toward the water on the opposite side of the bay.
Consider what an investment accompanies these muniments of title.
It is not an acre lot and an old house merely, with several last year's
birds' nests and a vagrant cat, but the ownership extends ninety-five
millions of miles toward the zenith, and indefinitely toward the nadir.
No one can, in miners' parlance, get an extension above or below. It
is a square acre, bounded by heaven and hades.
If my neighbor builds an ugly house, why should I find fault with it,
since it is the expression of his wants, and not of mine. If these are
honestly expressed, he has compassed the main end of house-
building. He may have produced something that nobody in the wide
world will be suited with, or will ever want but himself. But if it is
adapted to his wants, it is only in some remote and æsthetic way
that his neighbors have anything to do with the matter. They may
wish that he had not made it externally as ugly as original sin; that
he had laid a heavy hand on the antics of architect and carpenter;
that lightning would some day strike the "pilot-house," or some
other excrescence which has been glued on to the top; and that a
certain smart obtrusiveness were toned down a little to harmonize
with a more correct taste. But one could not formulate these defects
and send them to his neighbor without running a risk quite
unwarranted by any good that might be effected.
Taking possession of an old house, its ugliness is to be redeemed,
not rashly, but considerately, and in the spirit of gentleness. Its
homeliness has been consecrated; its doors may have been the
portals both of life and death. Possibly, some one has gone out
whose memory of it in the ends of the earth will transform it into
something of comeliness and beauty.
Investing an old house, the first process is to become thoroughly
acquainted with it, and then, if it is to be enlarged, push it out from
the center with such angles as will catch the sun, and will bring the
best view within range from the windows. It will grow by expansions
and accretions. You want a bed-room on the eastern side, because
of the morning sun. By all means, put it there. The morning
benediction which comes in at the window may temper one to better
ways all the day.
No man will build a house to suit his inmost necessities, unless he
proceeds independently of all modern rules of construction. Some of
these are good enough, but they nearly all culminate in an ambitious
externalism. The better class of dwellings erected seventy-five years
ago contained broad staircases, spacious sleeping-rooms, and a
living-room, where the whole family and the guests, withal, might
gather at the fire-side. The house was an expression of hospitality.
The host had room for friendships in his heart, and room at his
hearthstone. The modern house, with its stiff angularities, narrow
halls, and smart reception-rooms, expresses no idea of hospitality. It
warns the stranger to deliver his message quickly, and be off. It is
well adapted to small conventional hypocrisies, but you will never
count the stars there by looking up the chimney.
One may search long to find the man who has not missed his aim in
the matter of house-building. It is generally needful that two houses
should be built as a sacrifice to sentiment, and then the third
experiment may be reasonably successful. The owner will probably
wander through the first two, seeking rest and finding none. His
ideal dwelling is more remote than ever. There may be a wealth of
gilt and stucco, and an excess of marble, which ought to be piled up
in the cemetery for future use. But the house which receives one as
into the very heaven—which is, from the beginning, invested with
the ministries of rest, of hospitality, of peace, of that indefinable
comfort which seems to converge all the goodness of the life that
now is with the converging sunbeams—such a dwelling does not
grow out of the first crude experiment. It will never be secured until
one knows better what he really wants than an architect or
carpenter can tell him.
"Did you bring the old house up to this ideal standard?" Just about
as near as that pear tree, at the lower end of the garden, has been
brought up to a perfect standard of fruiting. You perceive that where
half of the top was cut away, and new scions inserted, the pears
hung in groups and blushed in the autumnal sun. As you let one of
them melt on your palate, turn to the other side of the tree, and
note that, if ever a premium were offered for puckering, acrid fruit,
these pears from the original stock ought to take it.
Now, if you graft your ideas on to another's, premising that his views
were crude and primitive, the result will be somewhat mixed. We
should say that the grafts put into that old house were tolerably
satisfactory. But we counsel no friend to build over an old house,
unless he owns a productive gold mine, and the bill of particulars at
the end of his exploit is more interesting and gratifying to him than
any modern novel.
There was, however, a shade of regret when it was announced that
nothing more remained to be done. For three months there had
been a series of gentle transitions, and an undercurrent of
pleasurable excitement as a door appeared in a new place, a window
opened here and there, stairways were cut, and old pieces pushed
off and new took their places. It seemed as if these transitions ought
to be always going on, and therefore the most natural thing in the
world that the carpenters should always be cutting or hammering
that house. They might grow old and another set take their places,
but there would always be some room to enlarge, or some want
growing out of the exigencies of a new day. Moreover, the first part
taken in hand would in time decay or become antiquated, and why
not associate builders and house together, since all the jars,
wrenching of timbers, sawing and hammering had become musical,
and seemed to be incorporated as the law of the house? Nothing but
financial considerations prevented a contract for life with the
builders, and the life-long luxury of changing an old house into a
new one. There came a day at last of oppressive silence. Painters
came down from their ladders; the carpenters packed up their tools
and walked thoughtfully around, taking an honest view on all sides
of a structure which had grown under their hands until, outwardly,
there was not the slightest semblance of the old house which they
took in hand some months before. There was a shade akin to
sadness on the face of the master workman. Evidently the idea of
ever leaving that house had overtaken him for the first time that
day. He had grown with the house; or, at any rate, his children had
been growing. Why should he not come back on the morrow, and
plumb, hammer and saw; creeping up the ladder with every new
day, and sliding down with every descending sun?
The loftiest house, and the most perfect, in the matter of
architecture, I have ever seen, was that which a wood-chopper
occupied with his family one winter in the forests of Santa Cruz
County. It was the cavity of a redwood tree two hundred and forty
feet in height. Fire had eaten away the trunk at the base, until a
circular room had been formed, sixteen feet in diameter. At twenty
feet or more from the ground was a knot-hole, which afforded
egress for the smoke. With hammocks hung from pegs, and a few
cooking utensils hung upon other pegs, that house lacked no
essential thing. This woodman was in possession of a house which
had been a thousand years in process of building. Perhaps on the
very day it was finished he came along and entered it. How did all
jack-knife and hand-saw architecture sink into insignificance in
contrast with this house in the solitudes of the great forest!
Moreover, the tenant fared like a prince; within thirty yards of his
coniferous house a mountain stream went rushing past to the sea.
In the swirls and eddies under the shelving rocks, if one could not
land half a dozen trout within an hour, he deserved to go hungry as
a penalty for his awkwardness. Now and then a deer came out into
the openings, and, at no great distance, quail, rabbits and pigeons
could be found. What did this man want more than Nature furnished
him? He had a house with a "cupola" two hundred and forty feet
high, and game at the cost of taking it.
It was a good omen, that the chimneys of the house on the hill had
not been topped out more than a week, before two white doves
alighted on them, glancing curiously down into the flues, and then
toward the heavens. Nothing but the peace which they brought
could have insured the serenity of that house against an untoward
event which occurred a week afterward. Late one evening the
expressman delivered a sack at the rear door, with a note from a
friend in the city, stating that the writer, well knowing our liking for
thoroughbred stock, had sent over one of the choicest game-
chickens in San Francisco. The qualities of that bird were not
overstated. Such a clean and delicately-shaped head! The long
feathers on his neck shaded from black to green and gold. His spurs
were as slender and sharp as lances; and his carriage was that of a
prince, treading daintily the earth, as if it were not quite good
enough for him. There was a world of poetry about that chicken,
and he could also be made to serve some important uses. It is
essential that every one dwelling on a hill, in the suburbs, should be
notified of the dawn of a new day. Three Government fortifications in
the bay let off as many heavy guns at daybreak; and, as the sound
comes rolling in from seaward, the window casements rattle
responsively. But these guns do not explode concurrently; frequently
more than ten minutes intervene from the first report to the last
one. There is ever a lingering uncertainty as to which is making a
truthful report, or whether they are not all shooting wide of the
mark. Then, there is a military school close by, which stirs up the
youngsters with a reveille, a gong and a bell, at short intervals. With
so many announcements, and none of them concurrent, there would
still remain a painful uncertainty as to whether the day had dawned;
but when that game bird lifted up his voice, and sounded his clarion
notes high over the hill, the guns of Alcatraz and the roll of the
drums over the way, there could be no doubt that the day was at the
dawn.
For a week did this mettlesome bird lift up his voice above all the
meaner roosters on the hill; but one morning there was an ominous
silence about the precincts where he was quartered. The Alcatraz
gun had been let off; but the more certain assurance of the new day
had failed. Something had surely happened, for a neighbor was seen
hurrying up the walk in the gray of the morning, red, puffy, and
short of wind, at that unseasonable hour.
"Come with me, and take a look in my yard.... There, is that your
blasted game chicken?"
"Why, yes—no—he was sent over as a present from a friend."
Just then the whole mischief was apparent; a great Cochin rooster
was sneaking off toward the hedge, bloody and blind; two Houdans
lay on their backs, jerking their feet convulsively—in short, that hen-
yard had been swept as with the besom of destruction.
"Do you call that a poetical or sentimental bird, such as a Christian
man ought to worship?"
"No, not exactly."
Just then that game chicken arched his beautiful neck and sent his
clear notes high over the hill and into the very heavens. We hinted,
in a mollifying way, that he had escaped over a fence ten feet high,
but that blood would tell.
"Yes, I think it has told this morning. Never mind the damages; but I
think you had better cut his wings," said our neighbor, already
placated.
That bird was given away before the next sunset. But O! friend; by
the guns of Alcatraz, and the white doves that alighted on the
chimney-tops, emblems of war and peace, send us no more game
chickens, to disturb the peace of the hill, or to finish the work of
destruction begun on that unlucky morning.
From the hill one may look out of the Golden Gate, as through the
tube of a telescope, and see all the watery waste and eternal scene-
shifting beyond. When the dull, undulating hummocks look like a
drove of camels in the desert, you may be sure that the newly-
married couple just embarking on the outward-bound steamer, on a
bridal tour to Los Angeles or the Hawaiian Islands, will cease their
caroling and chirping within an hour. Half an hour after sunset, if the
atmosphere is clear, one may see the wide-off light of the Farallones;
the nearer lights of Point Bonita and Alcatraz, almost in line, dwarfed
to mere fire-flies now; but when the Gate has lost the glow of its
burnished gold, these great sea-lamps, hung over this royal avenue,
tell an honest home story for the battered ships low down on the
horizon.
The little tugs which round under the quarters of the great wheat
ships and rush them out to sea, know how to overcome the inertia
of the great hulks. They tug spitefully, but the ship has to move, and
you see the white sails already beginning to fall down from the
yards, for the work where the blue water begins. It may be a
grotesque association, but have you never seen a small woman, with
a wonderful concentration of energy, tug her great lazy hulk of a
husband out into the broad field of earnest endeavor in much the
same way? Once there, his inertia overcome, the feminine tow-line
cast off, he did brave and honest work, making the race quite
abreast of average men. But the woman, who tugged him from his
lazy anchorage out into a good offing, did as much for that man as
he ever did for himself. Nothing more fortunate can happen to a
great many men than that they be towed out to sea early. And in not
a few instances, nothing more unfortunate could happen than that
they should ever return. This last remark would have been softened
a little, had it not been repeated with emphasis by a tender-hearted
woman.
Just after a winter rain, there are occasionally realistic views of the
great city in the foreground, which are so ugly that one never
forgets them. The hills are brought nigh; all the houses seem to rise
out of the desert, and along the water front the spars of shipping
look like a forest which has been blasted by some devouring flame.
It is certain that these forests will never sprout again; and there is
such a dead look that, were it not for the little tugs going back and
forth, one might imagine that all men had hastened away, and left
the city to silence and the desert. But after nightfall the thousand
lamps glorify the city; the blackened forest along the water front has
faded out; and a mild sort of charity steals over one, suggesting
that, after all, it is a goodly city set upon a hill, and that its peculiar
beauty is not alone in appearing to the best advantage by gaslight.
The background of hills is more angular and jerky than ever before,
because all the softening effect has been taken out of the
atmosphere. There is no distance, no dreamy haze to spread like a
gossamer veil over these hard outlines. Nature is wonderfully honest
and self-revealing. Evidently these hills were never finished. They
lack all the rounded beauty, all the gentle curves and slopes, and all
the fine touches of a perfected work. They look as if, when in a
plastic state, they had been set by the jerk of an earthquake. Who
knows but another jerk might take these kinks out and tone down all
these stiff angles, and otherwise put on the finishing touches? If it
must be done in this way, let the softening undulations be as gentle
as possible. It is very inconvenient to get up in the morning and find
that the chimney-top is either on the garden walk, or that it has
been turned three-quarters round, in the very wantonness and
devilment of Nature.
Some day there will be a closer recognized relation between
landscape gardening and landscape painting. If the work is done
badly in either department, it will make little difference whether an
acre of canvas is hung upon the wall, or whether lines have been
badly drawn and colors crudely laid on to an acre of earth. The style
of trimming trees so that they are a libel on Nature, and the
geometrical diagrams worked up in a garden, can hardly be referred
to any very high standard of art. But if my neighbor is delighted with
trees representing spindles, ramrods, paint brushes, cylinders,
cones, and what not, I would no more quarrel with him than with
the man who is under the pleasing delusion that he is an artist,
because, in a more remote way, he has been traducing Nature with
certain grotesque figures laid on to canvas.
A hedge will bear cutting into line, because it is to be treated as
nothing more than the frame of the landscape to be worked up. The
former may be as stiff and artificial in its way, as a gilt or mahogany
frame, and do no violence to good taste; if it hides an ugly fence, a
point has been gained. One cannot expect much diversity of surface
on a single acre. A large lawn will give the effect of greater flatness.
If you find the hired gardener, bred in some noted school in Europe,
setting out trees in straight lines, exhort him to penitence at once. If
he remain obdurate, cut the trees down with your little hatchet and
pitch them over the fence, but keep your temper as sweet as a June
morning. He will see by that time that you have ideas to be
respected. Grouping the trees, on the lawn and elsewhere,
neutralizes, in part, the effect of a flat surface; it is better than the
poor apology of a little hillock, which suggests an ant's nest, or that
a coyote may be burrowing in that vicinity. Something may be done
in the way of massing colors with annuals to produce good effects.
But ribbon gardening, according to the patterns laid down by florists,
has no nearer relation to art in landscape gardening than crochet
work has to landscape painting. It is a fantastic trick, which may
very well please rural clowns, but is in some sort an offense to good
taste.
Neither is it necessary that all the trees and shrubs which a florist
has for sale should be admitted to the private garden. More than
one-half of them have no merit; they neither set off the grounds,
nor have any peculiarity worth a moment's attention. They figure in
the florist's list under very attractive names, but if taken home they
will probably prove but scrubby little bushes, fit only to be dedicated
to the rubbish-heap and the annual bon-fire in the Spring. A plant or
a shrub which gives no pleasure either in its form or the color of its
flower, and has no suggestive associations, may do well enough for
a botanical garden. Many of us may like occasionally to look at a
hippopotamus or an elephant in the menagerie, or at the zoological
gardens, but we don't want these specimens brought home to our
private grounds. Some of the sequoia gigantea family do very well in
the forest. Once in a lifetime we can afford to make a journey to
look at them. But why undertake to bring home one of these
vegetable elephants as a specimen, when we know that it will
require a thousand years for its growth, and that most of us will
come a little short of that measure of time? Some trees may be
planted for posterity, and others may be safely left to take their
chances. If any one wishes to contemplate upon his grounds a shrub
of the future dimensions of one of the Calaveras group, let him plant
it at once. Most of the vegetable monsters went out with the
ichthyosaurus, and as for the few that remain, they will yet be an
affront to the pigmies who are swarming on the earth.
"Why did we plant cherry trees along the rear fence?" To make
friends with the birds and the children. You can get more songs from
the birds, and more of song and glee from the children, on a small
investment in cherry trees than in any other way. Those last year's
birds' nests tell the story. The robin, thrush, oriole and linnet will
come early and stay late. Groups of children will come in the front
way, and will never be so happy as when invited to go down the rear
garden walk, unless in the supremest moments when they step from
your shoulders into the trees, and never come back until they have
closed their fingers on the last cherry. The man who is not satisfied
to divide all his cherries with the birds and the children is a
curmudgeon; notably so is he who plants cherry trees in front of his
lot, and gets into a white heat of rage because boys of average
Sunday school antecedents could not resist the temptation to borrow
the fruit. Besides, the eclectic judgment of children, the sparrow, the
yellow-jacket and the honey-bee will always tell you where the best
nectarines and plums may be found.
It is well to reserve a nook for little experiments in horticulture or
floriculture which one wishes to make. A great many theories may
be brought home and decently buried, or be made to sprout in such
a corner. The larger the spaces, the more one will be tempted to use
the spade at odd hours; and none of us has yet found out all the
remedial qualities of dry earth freshly turned over day after day. A
hard day's work, taxing brain more than hands, brings on a degree
of nervous irritability. There is a dry electrical atmosphere; the
attrition of trade winds and sand half the year; and the rushing to
and fro of busy and excited men, charged as full of electricity as
they can hold, and bent upon charging everybody else, so that at
nightfall the sparks will snap at the finger-ends, and the air will
crackle like a brush-heap just set on fire. Now, the earth is a very
good conductor. It is better to let this surplus electricity run down
the fingers on to the spade, and along its shining steel blade into the
ground, than to blow up your best friend. An hour of honest battle
with the weeds is better than any domestic thunder storm. By that
time the sun will have dropped down into the ocean, just beyond the
Golden Gate, glorifying garden and hill-top, and setting, for a
moment, its lamp of flame in the western windows. Every plant and
shrub will have some part in a subtile and soothing ministry; and
then, if ever, it will occur to you that this is a mellow old world after
all.

THE GARDEN ON THE HILL.

THE GARDEN ON THE HILL.

It was a plausible theory, and given out in a demure and confiding
way by a feminine oracle, that honeysuckle cuttings should each be
inserted in a potato, and so planted. As the scion had no root and
needed moisture, it would be supplied by the potato. It seemed the
very thing to do. The wonder was that so simple an expedient had
not been suggested before. That theory was honestly tested, and it
has since been laid on the top shelf with a great many other
feminine theories about floriculture. Twenty honeysuckle scions were
each planted with one end in an enormous red potato. Never did
one of those honeysuckles grow; but there sprang up such a growth
of potatoes as never had been seen on the hill. They were under the
doorstep, under the foundation of the house; they shot up
everywhere. Was that the last of the misadventure? By no manner of
means. In the very porch of the church that daughter of Eve
inquired slily, "How are your honeysuckles?" And then she glided in
as if she had done nothing for which she needed forgiveness.
Certain grafting experiments came out a shade better. But every
graft put in on the south side of a tree died, while those on the
north side nearly all lived. These were protected by some degree of
shade, while the hot sun melted the wax on the south side, which
ran down in liquid streams of resin and poisoned the bark around
the cleft. All this might have been known in advance. But a little
modicum of knowledge learned by costly experience will stick to one
through life, while that which costs nothing is rarely laid up as worth
having. It ought to be known, also, that there is no better plan of
grafting a tree than that which our ancestors followed a hundred
years ago, when, with a little moist clay and top-tow, every scion
inserted lived. Then the cider mill was an orthodox institution in
every neighborhood. It is not worth your while to dissent from that
proposition, when you have probably played truant from a summer
school to ride around on the sweep of a cider mill, and suck the new
cider through a straw, being stung the meanwhile occasionally by a
"yellow-jacket." Even now a cider mill by the roadside, with the sour
pomace scattered about, is a humanizing institution. It will send you
back to the old orchard, the great branching elm, and the wide-