A Far Country | Page 6

and the Civil War. Theirs were generous houses surrounded by
shade trees, with glorious back yards--I have been told--where apricots
and pears and peaches and even nectarines grew.
The business of Breck and Company, wholesale grocers, descended to
my mother's first cousin, Robert Breck, who lived at Claremore. The
very sound of that word once sufficed to give me a shiver of delight;
but the Claremore I knew has disappeared as completely as Atlantis,

and the place is now a suburb (hateful word!) cut up into building lots
and connected with Boyne Street and the business section of the city by
trolley lines. Then it was "the country," and fairly saturated with
romance. Cousin Robert, when he came into town to spend his days at
the store, brought with him some of this romance, I had almost said of
this aroma. He was no suburbanite, but rural to the backbone,
professing a most proper contempt for dwellers in towns.
Every summer day that dawned held Claremore as a possibility. And
such was my capacity for joy that my appetite would depart completely
when I heard my mother say, questioningly and with proper wifely
respect
"If you're really going off on a business trip for a day or two, Mr. Paret"
(she generally addressed my father thus formally), "I think I'll go to
Robert's and take Hugh."
"Shall I tell Norah to pack, mother," I would exclaim, starting up.
"We'll see what your father thinks, my dear."
"Remain at the table until you are excused, Hugh," he would say.
Released at length, I would rush to Norah, who always rejoiced with
me, and then to the wire fence which marked the boundary of the Peters
domain next door, eager, with the refreshing lack of consideration
characteristic of youth, to announce to the Peterses--who were to
remain at home the news of my good fortune. There would be Tom and
Alfred and Russell and Julia and little Myra with her grass-stained
knees, faring forth to seek the adventures of a new day in the shady
western yard. Myra was too young not to look wistful at my news, but
the others pretended indifference, seeking to lessen my triumph. And it
was Julia who invariably retorted "We can go out to Uncle Jake's farm
whenever we want to. Can't we, Tom?"...
No journey ever taken since has equalled in ecstasy that leisurely trip of
thirteen miles in the narrow-gauge railroad that wound through hot
fields of nodding corn tassels and between delicious, acrid-smelling
woods to Claremore. No silent palace "sleeping in the sun," no edifice
decreed by Kubla Khan could have worn more glamour than the house
of Cousin Robert Breck.
It stood half a mile from the drowsy village, deep in its own grounds
amidst lawns splashed with shadows, with gravel paths edged--in
barbarous fashion, if you please with shells. There were flower beds of

equally barbarous design; and two iron deer, which, like the figures on
Keats's Grecian urn, were ever ready poised to flee,--and yet never fled.
For Cousin Robert was rich, as riches went in those days: not only rich,
but comfortable. Stretching behind the house were sweet meadows of
hay and red clover basking in the heat, orchards where the cows
cropped beneath the trees, arbours where purple clusters of Concords
hung beneath warm leaves: there were woods beyond, into which,
under the guidance of Willie Breck, I made adventurous excursions,
and in the autumn gathered hickories and walnuts. The house was a
rambling, wooden mansion painted grey, with red scroll-work on its
porches and horsehair furniture inside. Oh, the smell of its darkened
interior on a midsummer day! Like the flavour of that choicest of
tropical fruits, the mangosteen, it baffles analysis, and the nearest I can
come to it is a mixture of matting and corn-bread, with another element
too subtle to define.
The hospitality of that house! One would have thought we had arrived,
my mother and I, from the ends of the earth, such was the welcome we
got from Cousin Jenny, Cousin Robert's wife, from Mary and Helen
with the flaxen pig-tails, from Willie, whom I recall as permanently
without shoes or stockings. Met and embraced by Cousin Jenny at the
station and driven to the house in the squeaky surrey, the moment we
arrived she and my mother would put on the dressing-sacks I associated
with hot weather, and sit sewing all day long in rocking-chairs at the
coolest end of the piazza. The women of that day scorned lying down,
except at night, and as evening came on they donned starched dresses; I
recall in particular one my mother wore, with little vertical stripes of
black and white, and a full skirt. And how they talked, from the
beginning of the visit until