Meadow Grass | Page 6

for dinner?" as, famished little bears, we rush to the
dairy-wheel, to feed ravenously on the cold, delicious fragments of the
meal eaten without us.
If time ever stood still, if we were condemned to the blank solitude of
hospital nights or becalmed, mid-ocean days, and had hours for
fruitless dreaming, I wonder what viands we should choose, in setting
forth a banquet from that ambrosial past! Foods unknown to poetry and
song: "cold b'iled dish," pan-dowdy, or rye drop-cakes dripping with
butter! For these do we taste, in moments of retrospect; and perhaps we
dwell the more on their homely savor because we dare not think what
hands prepared them for our use, or, when the board was set, what
faces smiled. We are too wise, with the cunning prudence of the years,
to penetrate over-far beyond the rosy boundary of youth, lest we find
also that bitter pool which is not Lethe, but the waters of a vain regret.

FARMER ELI'S VACATION
"It don't seem as if we'd really got round to it, does it, father?" asked

Mrs. Pike.
The west was paling, and the August insects stirred the air with their
crooning chirp. Eli and his wife sat together on the washing-bench
outside the back door, waiting for the milk to cool before it should be
strained. She was a large, comfortable woman, with an unlined face,
and smooth, fine auburn hair; he was spare and somewhat bent, with
curly iron-gray locks, growing thin, and crow's-feet about his deep-set
gray eyes. He had been smoking the pipe of twilight contentment, but
now he took it out and laid it on the bench beside him, uncrossing his
legs and straightening himself, with the air of a man to whom it falls,
after long pondering, to take some decisive step.
"No; it don't seem as if 'twas goin' to happen," he owned. "It looked
pretty dark to me, all last week. It's a good deal of an undertakin', come
to think it all over. I dunno's I care about goin'."
"Why, father! After you've thought about it so many years, an' Sereno's
got the tents strapped up, an' all! You must be crazy!"
"Well," said the farmer, gently, as he rose and went to carry the
milk-pails into the pantry, calling coaxingly, as he did so, "Kitty! kitty!
You had your milk? Don't you joggle, now!" For one eager tabby rose
on her hind legs, in purring haste, and hit her nose against the foaming
saucer.
Mrs. Pike came ponderously to her feet, and followed, with the heavy,
swaying motion of one grown fleshy and rheumatic. She was not in the
least concerned about Eli's change of mood. He was a gentle soul, and
she had always been able to guide him in paths of her own choosing.
Moreover, the present undertaking was one involving his own good
fortune, and she meant to tolerate no foolish scruples which might
interfere with its result. For Eli, though he had lived all his life within
easy driving distance of the ocean, had never seen it, and ever since his
boyhood he had cherished one darling plan,--some day he would go to
the shore, and camp out there for a week. This, in his starved
imagination, was like a dream of the Acropolis to an artist stricken
blind, or as mountain outlines to the dweller in a lonely plain. But the

years had flitted past, and the dream never seemed nearer completion.
There were always planting, haying, and harvesting to be considered;
and though he was fairly prosperous, excursions were foreign to his
simple habit of life. But at last, his wife had stepped into the van, and
organized an expedition, with all the valor of a Francis Drake.
"Now, don't you say one word, father," she had said. "We're goin' down
to the beach, Sereno, an' Hattie, an' you an' me, an' we're goin' to camp
out. It'll do us all good."
For days before the date of the excursion, Eli had been solemn and
tremulous, as with joy; but now, on the eve of the great event, he
shrank back from it, with an undefined notion that it was like death,
and that he was not prepared. Next morning, however, when they all
rose and took their early breakfast, preparatory to starting at five, he
showed no sign of indecision, and even went about his outdoor tasks
with an alacrity calculated, as his wife approvingly remarked, to
"for'ard the v'y'ge." He had at last begun to see his way clear, and he
looked well satisfied when his daughter Hattie and Sereno, her husband,
drove into the yard, in a wagon cheerfully suggestive of a wandering
life. The tents and a small hair-trunk were stored in the back, and the
horse's pail