CHAPTER III.
THE VIEW UPON THE RIVER; A MAGNIFICENT PANORAMA--MR. AND MRS. COOLEY--MATRIMONIAL INFELICITIES--THE CASE OF MRS. SAWYER; A BLIGHTED LIFE--A PRESENT: OUR CENTURY PLANT AND ITS PECULIARITIES.
We have a full view of the river from our chamber window, and it is amagnificent spectacle that greets us as we rise in the morning and flingthe shutters wide open. The sun, in this early summer-time, has alreadycrept high above the horizon of the pine-covered shore opposite, and hasflooded the unruffled waters with its golden light until they aretransformed for us into a sea of flame. There comes a fleet of grimycoal schooners moving upward with the tide, their dingy sails hangingalmost listless in the air; now they float, one by one, into the yellowglory of the sunshine which bars the river from shore to shore. Yonderis a tiny tug puffing valorously as it tows the great merchantman--homefrom what distant land of wonders?--up to the wharves of the great city.And look! there is another tug-boat going down stream, with a score ofcanal-boats moving in huge mass slowly behind it. They come from far upamong the mountains of the Lehigh and the Schuylkill with their burdensof coal, and they are bound for the Chesapeake. Those men lounginglazily about upon the decks while the women are getting breakfast readyspend their lives amid some of the wildest and noblest scenery in theworld. I would rather be a canal-boat captain, Mrs. Adeler, and throughall my existence float calmly and serenely amid those regions of beautyand delight, without ever knowing what hurry is, than to be the greatestand busiest of statesmen--that is, if one calling were as respectableand lucrative as the other.
That fellow upon the boat at the rear is playing upon his bugle. Thecanal-boat bugler is not an artist, but he makes wonderful musicsometimes when he blows a blast up yonder in the heart of Pennsylvania,and sets the wild echoes flying among the canyons of those mighty hills.And even now it is not indifferent. Listen! The tones come to usmellowed by the distance, and so indistinct that they have lost all butthe sweetness which makes them seem so like the sound of
"Horns of Elfland, faintly blowing."
That prosaic tooter floating there upon the river doubtless would besurprised to learn that he is capable of such a suggestion; but he is.
Off there in the distance, emerging from the shadowy mantle of mistthat rests still upon the bosom of the stream to the south, comesthe steamboat from Salem, with its decks loaded down with rosy andfragrant peaches, and with baskets of tomatoes and apples and potatoesand berries, ready for the hungry thousands of the Quaker City. Theschooner lying there at the wharf is getting ready to move away, sothat the steamer may come in. You can hear the screech made by theblock as the tackle of the sail is drawn swiftly through it. Now sheswings out into the stream, and there, right athwart her bows, see thatfisherman rowing homeward with his net piled high in tangled meshes inthe bow of his boat. He has a hundred or two silver-scaled shiners athis feet, I'll warrant you, and he is thinking rather of the price theywill bring than of the fact that his appearance in his rough batteaugives an especially picturesque air to the beauty of that matchlessscene. I wish I was a painter. I would pay any price if I could flingupon canvas that background of hazy gray, and place against it the fierysplendor of the sunlit river, with steamer and ship and weather-beatensloop and fishing-boat drifting to and fro upon the golden tide.
There, too, is old Cooley, our next-door neighbor on the east. He is outearly this morning, walking about his garden, pulling up a weed hereand there, prowling among his strawberry vines and investigating thecondition of his early raspberries. That dog which trots behind him,my dear, is the one that barked all night. I shall have to ask Cooleyto take him in the house after this. We had enough of that kind ofdisturbance in the city; we do not want it here.
"I don't like the Cooleys," remarked Mrs. A.
"Why not?"
"Because they quarrel with each other. Their girl told our girl that'him and her don't hit it,' and that Mr. Cooley is continually havingangry disputes with his wife. She says that sometimes they even come toblows. It is dreadful."
"It is indeed dreadful. Somebody ought to speak to Cooley about it. Heneeds overhauling. Perhaps he is too ignorant a man to have perceivedthe true road to happiness. Of course, Mrs. A., _you_ know the secret ofreal happiness in married life?"
She said she had never thought much about it. She was happy, and itseemed natural to be so. She thought it very strange that there shouldever be any other condition of things between man and wife.
"Mrs. Adeler, the secret of conjugal felicity is contained in thisformula: demonstrative affection and self-sacrifice. A man should notonly love his wife dearly, but he should tell her he loves her, and tellher very often. And each should be willing to yield, not once or twice,but constantly and as a practice, to the other. The man who never takesthe baby from his wife, who never offers to help her in her domesticduties, who will sit idly by, indulging himself with repose while sheis overwhelmed with care and work among the children, or with othermatters, is a mean wretch who does not deserve to have a happy home. Anda wife who never holds up her husband's hands in his struggle with theworld, who displays no interest in his perplexities and trials, who hasnever a word of cheer for him when he staggers under his heavy burden,is not worthy the name of a wife. Selfishness, my dear, crushes outlove, and most of the couples who are living without affection for eachother, with cold and dead hearts, with ashes where there should be abright and holy flame, have destroyed themselves by caring too much forthemselves and too little for each other."
"To me," said Mrs. Adeler, "the saddest thing about such coldness andindifference is that both the man and the woman must sometimes think ofthe years when they loved each other."
"Yes, and can you imagine anything that would be more likely to give awoman the heartache than such a recollection? When her husband comeshome and enters the house without a smile or a word of welcome; whenhe growls at his meals, and finds fault with this and that domesticarrangement; when he buries his nose in his newspaper after supper, andnever resurrects it excepting when he has a savage word of reproof forone of his children, or when he goes out again to spend the evening andleaves his wife alone, the picture which she brings up from the pastcannot be a very pleasant one.
"Indeed, my dear, the man's present conduct must fill the woman'ssoul with bitter pain when she contrasts it with that which won heraffection. For there must have been a time when she looked forwardwith joy to his coming, when he caressed her and covered her withendearments, when he looked deep into her eyes and said that heloved her, and when he said that he could have no happiness in thisworld unless she loved him wholly and truly. When a man makes such adeclaration as that to a woman, he is a villain if he ever treats herwith anything but loving-kindness. And I take the liberty of doubtingwhether he who leads a young girl into wedlock with such pledges, andthen acts in direct violation of them, ought not to be prosecuted forobtaining valuable consideration upon false pretences. It is infinitelyworse, in my opinion, than stealing ordinary property."
Mrs. Adeler expressed the opinion that death at the stake might beregarded as an appropriate punishment for criminals of this class.
"But there is a humorous side even to this melancholy business. Do youremember the Sawyers, who used to live near us in the city? Well, beforeSawyer's marriage I was his most intimate friend; and when they returnedfrom their wedding-trip, of course I called upon them. Mrs. Sawyeralone was at home, and after a brief discussion of the weather, theconversation turned upon Sawyer. I had known him for many years, and Itook pleasure in making Mrs. Sawyer believe that he had as much virtueas an omnibus load of patriarchs. Mrs. Sawyer assented joyously to itall, but I thought I detected a shade of sadness on her face while shespoke. I asked her if anything was the matter--if Sawyer's health wasnot good.
"'Oh yes,' she said, 'very good indeed, and I love him dearly. He is thebest man in the world; but--but--'
"Then I assured Mrs. Sawyer that she might speak frankly to me, asI was Sawyer's friend, and cou
ld probably smooth away any littleunpleasantness that might mar their happiness. She then said it wasnothing. It might seem foolish to speak of it; she knew it was nother dear husband's fault, and she ought not to complain; but it washard, hard to submit when she reflected that there was but one thingto prevent her being perfectly happy; yes, but one thing, 'for oh, Mr.Adeler, I would ask for nothing more in this world if Ezekiel only had aRoman nose!'
"It is an awful thing, Mrs. Adeler, to think of two young lives beingmade miserable for want of one Roman nose, isn't it?"
Mrs. A. gently intimated that she entertained a suspicion that I hadmade up the story; and if I had not, why, then Mrs. Sawyer certainly wasa very foolish woman.
My wife's cousin, Bob Parker, came down a fortnight ago to stay a day ortwo on his way to Cape May, with the intent to tarry at thatwatering-place for a week or ten days, and then to return here to remainwith us for some time. Bob is a bright youth, witty in his own smallway, fond of using his tongue, and always overflowing with animalspirits. He came partly to see us, but chiefly, I think, because hecherishes a secret passion for a certain fair maid who abides here.
He brought me a splendid present in the shape of an American agave, orcentury plant. It was offered to him in Philadelphia by a man whobrought it to the store and wanted to sell it. The man said it hadbelonged to his grandfather, and he consented to part with it onlybecause he was in extreme poverty. The man informed Bob that the plantgrew but half an inch in twenty years, and blossomed but once in acentury. The last time it bloomed, according to the information obtainedfrom the gray-haired grandsire of the man, was in 1776, and it wouldtherefore certainly burst out again in 1876. Patriotism and a desire tohave such a curiosity in the family combined to induce Mr. Parker topurchase it at the price of fifty dollars.
I planted the phenomenon on the south side of the house, against thewall. Two days afterward I called Bob's attention to the circumstancethat the agave had grown nearly three feet since it was placed in theground. This seemed somewhat strange after what the man said aboutthe growth of half an inch in two decades. But we concluded that thesurprising development must be due to the extraordinary fertility of thesoil, and Bob exulted as he thought how he had beaten the man by gettinga century plant so much larger and so much more valuable than he hadsupposed. Bob said that the man would be wofully mad if he should calland see that century plant of his grandfather's getting up out of theground so splendidly.
That afternoon we all went down to Cape May, and for two weeks weremained there. Upon our return, Bob remarked, as we stepped from theboat, that he wanted to go around the first thing and see how the plantwas coming on. He suggested gloomily that he should be bitterlydisappointed if it had perished from neglect during our absence.
But it was not dead. We saw it as soon as we came near the house. It hadgrown since our departure. It had a trunk as thick as my leg, and thebranches ran completely over three sides of the house; over the windowshutters, which were closed so tightly that we had to chop the centuryplant away with a hatchet; over the roof, down the chimneys, which wereso filled with foliage that they wouldn't draw; and over the grapevinearbor, in such a fashion that we had to cut away vines and all to getrid of the intruder.
The roots, also, had thrown out shoots over every available square footof the yard, so that I had eight or ten thousand century plants in anexceedingly thriving condition, while a branch had grown through theopen cellar window, and was getting along so finely that we could onlyreach the coal-bin by tramping through a kind of an East Indian jungle.
Mr. Parker, after examining the vegetable carefully, observed:
"I'm kind of sorry I bought that century plant, Max. I have half an ideathat the man who sold it to me was a humorist, and that hisRevolutionary grandfather was an octogenarian fraud."
If anybody wants a good, strong, healthy century plant that will standany climate, and that is warranted to bloom in 1876, mine can be had fora very reasonable price. This may be regarded as an unparalleledopportunity for any young agriculturist who does not want to wait longfor his vegetables to grow.