cuttings no one else would have thought of
trying to cultivate, her last resort being to cut a slip diagonally, insert
the lower end in a small potato, and plant as if rooted. And it nearly
always grew!
There is a shaft of white stone standing at her head in a cemetery that
belonged to her on a corner of her husband's land; but to Mrs. Porter's
mind her mother's real monument is a cedar of Lebanon which she set
in the manner described above. The cedar tops the brow of a little hill
crossing the grounds. She carried two slips from Ohio, where they were
given to her by a man who had brought the trees as tiny things from the
holy Land. She planted both in this way, one in her dooryard and one in
her cemetery. The tree on the hill stands thirty feet tall now, topping all
others, and has a trunk two feet in circumference.
Mrs. Porter's mother was of Dutch extraction, and like all Dutch
women she worked her special magic with bulbs, which she favoured
above other flowers. Tulips, daffodils, star flowers, lilies, dahlias, little
bright hyacinths, that she called "blue bells," she dearly loved. From
these she distilled exquisite perfume by putting clusters, & time of
perfect bloom, in bowls lined with freshly made, unsalted butter,
covering them closely, and cutting the few drops of extract thus
obtained with alcohol. "She could do more different things," says the
author, "and finish them all in a greater degree of perfection than any
other woman I have ever known. If I were limited to one adjective in
describing her, `capable' would be the word."
The author's father was descended from a long line of ancestors of
British blood. he was named for, and traced his origin to, that first
Mark Stratton who lived in New York, married the famous beauty,
Anne Hutchinson, and settled on Stratton Island, afterward corrupted to
Staten, according to family tradition. From that point back for
generations across the sea he followed his line to the family of Strattons
of which the Earl of Northbrooke is the present head. To his British
traditions and the customs of his family, Mark Stratton clung with rigid
tenacity, never swerving from his course a particle under the influence
of environment or association. All his ideas were clear-cut; no man
could influence him against his better judgment. He believed in God, in
courtesy, in honour, and cleanliness, in beauty, and in education. He
used to say that he would rather see a child of his the author of a book
of which he could be proud, than on the throne of England, which was
the strongest way he knew to express himself. His very first earnings he
spent for a book; when other men rested, he read; all his life he was a
student of extraordinarily tenacious memory. He especially loved
history: Rollands, Wilson's Outlines, Hume, Macauley, Gibbon,
Prescott, and Bancroft, he could quote from all of them paragraphs at a
time contrasting the views of different writers on a given event, and
remembering dates with unfailing accuracy. "He could repeat the entire
Bible," says Mrs. Stratton-Porter, "giving chapters and verses, save the
books of Generations; these he said `were a waste of gray matter to
learn.' I never knew him to fail in telling where any verse quoted to him
was to be found in the Bible." And she adds: "I was almost afraid to
make these statements, although there are many living who can
corroborate them, until John Muir published the story of his boyhood
days, and in it I found the history of such rearing as was my father's,
told of as the customary thing among the children of Muir's time; and I
have referred many inquirers as to whether this feat were possible, to
the Muir book."
All his life, with no thought of fatigue or of inconvenience to himself,
Mark Stratton travelled miles uncounted to share what he had learned
with those less fortunately situated, by delivering sermons, lectures,
talks on civic improvement and politics. To him the love of God could
be shown so genuinely in no other way as in the love of his fellowmen.
He worshipped beauty: beautiful faces, souls, hearts, beautiful
landscapes, trees, animals, flowers. He loved colour: rich, bright colour,
and every variation down to the faintest shadings. He was especially
fond of red, and the author carefully keeps a cardinal silk handkerchief
that he was carrying when stricken with apoplexy at the age of
seventy-eight. "It was so like him," she comments, "to have that scrap
of vivid colour in his pocket. He never was too busy to fertilize a
flower bed or to dig holes for the setting of a tree or bush.
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