Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools | Page 5

of his own in the upper part where he makes
passe-partouts. Here, at his home, madame maintains a simple
restaurant for tramps like me.
These delightful people are old friends of mine, François Laguerre and
his wife and their only child Lucette. They have lived here for nearly a
quarter of a century. He is a straight, silver-haired old Frenchman of
sixty, who left Paris, between two suns, nearly forty years ago, with a
gendarme close at his heels, a red cockade under his coat, and an
intense hatred in his heart for that "little nobody," Napoleon III.
If you met him on the boulevard you would look for the decoration on
his lapel, remarking to yourself, "Some retired officer on half pay." If
you met him at the railway station opposite, you would say, "A French
professor returning to his school." Both of these surmises are partly
wrong, and both partly right. Monsieur Laguerre has had a history. One
can see by the deep lines in his forehead and by the firm set of his eyes
and mouth that it has been an eventful one.
His wife is a few years his junior, short and stout, and thoroughly
French down to the very toes of her felt slippers. She is devoted to
François and Lucette, the best of cooks, and, in spite of her scoldings,
good-nature itself. As soon as she hears me calling, there arise before
her the visions of many delightful dinners prepared for me by her own
hand and ready to the minute--all spoiled by my belated sketches. So
she begins to scold before I am out of the boat or in it, for that matter.

Across the fence next to Laguerre's lives a _confrère_, a brother exile,
Monsieur Marmosette, who also has a shop in the city, where he carves
fine ivories. Monsieur Marmosette has only one son. He too is named
François, after his father's old friend. Farther down on both sides of the
narrow stream front the cottages of other friends, all Frenchmen; and
near the propped-up bridge an Italian who knew Garibaldi burrows in a
low, slanting cabin, which is covered with vines. I remember a dish of
spaghetti under those vines, and a flask of Chianti from its cellar, all
cobwebs and plaited straw, that left a taste of Venice in my mouth for
days.
As there is only the great bridge above, which helps the country road
across the little stream, and the little foot-bridge below, and as there is
no path or road,--all the houses fronting the water,--the Bronx here is
really the only highway, and so everybody must needs keep a boat.
This is why the stream is crowded in the warm afternoons with all sorts
of water craft loaded with whole families, even to the babies, taking the
air, or crossing from bank to bank in their daily pursuits.
There is a quality which one never sees in Nature until she has been
rough-handled by man and has outlived the usage. It is the picturesque.
In the deep recesses of the primeval forest, along the mountain-slope,
and away up the tumbling brook, Nature may be majestic, beautiful,
and even sublime; but she is never picturesque. This quality comes only
after the axe and the saw have let the sunlight into the dense tangle and
have scattered the falling timber, or the round of the water-wheel has
divided the rush of the brook. It is so here. Some hundred years ago,
along this quiet, silvery stream were encamped the troops of the
struggling colonies, and, later, the great estates of the survivors
stretched on each side for miles. The willows that now fringe these
banks were saplings then; and they and the great butternuts were only
spared because their arching limbs shaded the cattle knee-deep along
the shelving banks.
Then came the long interval that succeeds that deadly conversion of the
once sweet farming lands, redolent with clover, into that barren
waste--suburban property. The conflict that had lasted since the days

when the pioneer's axe first rang through the stillness of the forest was
nearly over; Nature saw her chance, took courage, and began that
regeneration which is exclusively her own. The weeds ran riot; tall
grasses shot up into the sunlight, concealing the once well-trimmed
banks; and great tangles of underbrush and alders made lusty efforts to
hide the traces of man's unceasing cruelty. Lastly came this little group
of poor people from the Seine and the Marne and lent a helping hand,
bringing with them something of their old life at home,--their boats,
rude landings, patched-up water-stairs, fences, arbors, and vine-covered
cottages,--unconsciously completing the picture and adding the one
thing needful--a human touch. So Nature, having outlived the wrongs
of a hundred years, has here with busy fingers