XIX

WHEN it comes to pass in the country that we must leave our houses alone and empty by night in order to attend some village festivity, we all of us do so more or less unwillingly. To leave the farm untended and unwatched, even for a moment, goes against the grain, and where the neighbors have children of a competent age, farm households often work out some arrangement whereby the youngsters will take their school books with them to the house, and study there at the kitchen table until the farm family returns before the clock has ticked away too many hours. This kind of neighborly help is much appreciated in winter time, when the visitors not only keep an eye on things in general but also put wood on the kitchen fire. Many a time I have seen the oilcloth of such a table scattered over with sheets of arithmetic paper and village school books, and found somebody’s youngsters standing up by their chairs waiting for their small reward and ready to be taken home.

When there are no neighbors handy, there is nothing one can do but abandon the house to its loneliness. A profound instinct then sends us through the house to check every fire, to blow out every lamp, and figuratively to look into every corner. If we are satisfied, out we go, closing the door behind us on the warm, empty, and forsaken darkness within, and trusting all will be in proper order when we return. Few of us lock the door.

*   *   *

It was after eleven when I reached the farm last night after having been to a Grange meeting with my kind neighbors, Carroll and Louise. Knowing that it would be pitch dark when we returned, I carried with me to their farm a lantern to light me home. The old-fashioned lantern is our traveling light here, and on winter nights when we hear the voices of visitors outside, we look from the window to see a yellow lantern light moving towards us across the snow. Flashlights are creeping in, being enormously convenient, but the cheerful lighted lantern is what we really like. Having arrived at Carroll and Louise’s, I blew out the flame and stood the lantern on the kitchen table to await my home coming. When their farm had been put in order, and the cat turned out into the shed, we all got into Carroll’s truck and drove off to the village and the meeting.

It was a pleasant session, and friendly with the natural friendliness of a neighborhood gathering united in a common aim. Our Grange, moreover, accomplishes something whose importance is often overlooked in America; it mingles together in a social goodtime the elderly, the middle-aged, and the young of a community. The various generations, in our republic, tend to live far too much to themselves.

The meeting at an end, and a sort of cheerful picnic meal consumed, people began to say goodby, and presently Carroll drove us home down the country roads. Once we had reached his farm, I myself said goodnight, lit my lantern, and struck out for the farm.

As I walked ahead into the country silence with the pond to my right and the pine forest to my left across the upper field, I began to see how summer had rolled back into the sky. So early had I been going to bed that I had not been aware of the great change in the heavens. The winter constellations had vanished in the west, sinking into the clear, luminous sky beyond the dark of the woods, and out of the east had rolled the thinner-strewn summer signs and starry figures. Dominant in the starry depth of the abyss and giving particular beauty to the night, the noble planet Jupiter hung aloft as lord of the spring, his golden lamp just beyond the reach of the bright claws of the Scorpion. Putting down my lantern awhile, and pausing to stare and listen, I could hear from far away the tiny, exultant bells of the spring-peepers in the marsh.

How still was the red house and empty the stare of the unlighted windows! Opening the door into its lingering warmth, I walked quickly to the kitchen range, and put a few pieces of dry wood on the glowing ashes of the fire.

FARM DIARY

A warm rain of the kind some call “a growing rain” comes with a S. W. wind, and in the bright sunshine of the next morning I notice that the grass looks greener than ever and that the apple tree buds are preparing to open. / Another warm day with vapor masses drifting in from seaward, and the roads now being passable, the first country trading wagon comes to the door. The driver, a lean grey-haired man of middle age, very neatly dressed in out o’door country clothes, looks like a retired school principal, and for all I know, may be one, as in this region people like to have something to do once they settle down. He comes into the kitchen carrying a big market basket full of everything from shaving soaps to tins of kitchen spices. I buy an assortment of household needs; we talk a little, and away he goes. / Glad to see that the perennials Elizabeth planted last season have apparently come through the winter unusually well. / A fisherman friend from one of the outer islands, a husky youngster in blue civilian pants, a Navy seajacket, and a peaked cap, hails me on the street in Damariscotta and we discuss the approaching arrival of those small land birds who—to some extent—travel by sea. Rather surprisingly, the prize seafarer here is the ruby-throated humming bird, and the fishermen often tell me of seeing humming birds far out on Penobscot Bay.

*   *   *

Some of the religions have outspokenly taught the depravity of man, others have insisted on a rather sugary natural goodness. I hold to neither extreme. Save for those tragic individuals whom something physiological or mental twists towards what is wrong, I have always thought that people, on the whole, are as good as they are able to be. As they are able to be—that is the point, and if such is the natural direction, there is surely something very touching and decent in our troubled race. What is clear is that we simply cannot get on without giving the inclination a chance and providing it with some definite pattern and teaching of morality.