More Jonathan Papers | Page 3

reverses that only strong
natural pertinacity kept him from capitulation.
Is it necessary to recount instances? Every family can furnish them. As
I allow myself to float off into a reminiscent dream I find my mind
possessed by a continuous series of dissolving views in which Jonathan
is always coming to me saying, "It isn't there," and I am always saying,

"Please look again."
Though everything in the house seems to be in a conspiracy against
him, it is perhaps with the fishing-tackle that he has most constant
difficulties.
"My dear, have you any idea where my rod is? No, don't get up--I'll
look if you'll just tell me where--"
"Probably in the corner behind the chest in the orchard room."
"I've looked there."
"Well, then, did you take it in from the wagon last night?"
"Yes, I remember doing it."
"What about the little attic? You might have put it up there to dry out."
"No. I took my wading boots up, but that was all."
"The dining-room? You came in that way."
He goes and returns. "Not there." I reflect deeply.
"Jonathan, are you sure it's not in that corner of the orchard room?"
"Yes, I'm sure; but I'll look again." He disappears, but in a moment I
hear his voice calling, "No! Yours is here, but not mine."
I perceive that it is a case for me, and I get up. "You go and harness. I'll
find it," I call.
There was a time when, under such conditions, I should have begun by
hunting in all the unlikely places I could think of. Now I know better. I
go straight to the corner of the orchard room. Then I call to Jonathan,
just to relieve his mind.
"All right! I've found it."

"Where?"
"Here, in the orchard room."
"Where in the orchard room?"
"In the corner."
"What corner?"
"The usual corner--back of the chest."
"The devil!" Then he comes back to put his head in at the door. "What
are you laughing at?"
"Nothing. What are you talking about the devil for? Anyway, it isn't the
devil; it's the brownie."
For there seems no doubt that the things he hunts for are possessed of
supernatural powers; and the theory of a brownie in the house, with a
special grudge against Jonathan, would perhaps best account for the
way in which they elude his search but leap into sight at my approach.
There is, to be sure, one other explanation, but it is one that does not
suggest itself to him, or appeal to him when suggested by me, so there
is no need to dwell upon it.
If it isn't the rod, it is the landing-net, which has hung itself on a nail a
little to the left or right of the one he had expected to see it on; or his
reel, which has crept into a corner of the tackle drawer and held a ball
of string in front of itself to distract his vision; or a bunch of snell
hooks, which, aware of its protective coloring, has snuggled up against
the shady side of the drawer and tucked its pink-papered head
underneath a gay pickerel-spoon.
Fishing-tackle is, clearly, "possessed," but in other fields Jonathan is
not free from trouble. Finding anything on a bureau seems to offer
peculiar obstacles. It is perhaps a big, black-headed pin that I want. "On
the pincushion, Jonathan."

He goes, and returns with two sizes of safety-pins and one long hat-pin.
"No, dear, those won't do. A small, black-headed one--at least small
compared with a hat-pin, large compared with an ordinary pin."
"Common or house pin?" he murmurs, quoting a friend's phrase.
"Do look again! I hate to drop this to go myself."
"When a man does a job, he gets his tools together first."
"Yes; but they say women shouldn't copy men, they should develop
along their own lines. Please go."
He goes, and comes back. "You don't want fancy gold pins, I suppose?"
"No, no! Here, you hold this, and I'll go." I dash to the bureau. Sure
enough, he is right about the cushion. I glance hastily about. There, in a
little saucer, are a half-dozen of the sort I want. I snatch some and run
back.
"Well, it wasn't in the cushion, I bet."
"No," I admit; "it was in a saucer just behind the cushion."
"You said cushion."
"I know. It's all right."
"Now, if you had said simply 'bureau,' I'd have looked in other places
on it."
"Yes, you'd have looked in other places!" I could not forbear
responding. There is, I grant, another side to this question. One evening
when I went upstairs I found a partial presentation of it, in the form of a
little newspaper clipping, pinned on my cushion. It read as