More Jonathan Papers | Page 6

closet." He paused, then could not forbear
adding, "And it wasn't in a gray box; it was in a big hat-box with
violets all over it."
"Why, Jonathan! Aren't you grand! How did you ever find it? I couldn't
have done better myself."
Under such praise he expanded. "The fact is," he said confidentially, "I
had given it up. And then suddenly I changed my mind. I said to myself,
'Jonathan, don't be a man! Think what she'd do if she were here now.'
And then I got busy and found it."
"Jonathan!" I could almost have wept if I had not been laughing.
"Well," he said, proud, yet rather sheepish, "what is there so funny
about that? I gave up half a day to it."
"Funny! It isn't funny--exactly. You don't mind my laughing a little?

Why, you've lived down the fountain pen--we'll forget the pen--"
"Oh, no, you won't forget the pen either," he said, with a certain
pleasant grimness.
"Well, perhaps not--of course it would be a pity to forget that. Suppose
I say, then, that we'll always regard the pen in the light of the violet
hat-box?"
"I think that might do." Then he had an alarming afterthought. "But, see
here--you won't expect me to do things like that often?"
"Dear me, no! People can't live always on their highest levels. Perhaps
you'll never do it again." Jonathan looked distinctly relieved. "I'll
accept it as a unique effort--like Dante's angel and Raphael's sonnet."
"Jonathan," I said that evening, "what do you know about St. Anthony
of Padua?"
"Not much."
"Well, you ought to. He helped you to-day. He's the saint who helps
people to find lost articles. Every man ought to take him as a patron
saint."
"And do you know which saint it is who helps people to find lost
virtues--like humility, for instance?"
"No. I don't, really."
"I didn't suppose you did," said Jonathan.

II
Sap-Time
It was a little tree-toad that began it. In a careless moment he had come

down to the bench that connects the big maple tree with the old locust
stump, and when I went out at dusk to wait for Jonathan, there he sat, in
plain sight. A few experimental pokes sent him back to the tree, and I
studied him there, marveling at the way he assimilated with its bark. As
Jonathan came across the grass I called softly, and pointed to the tree.
"Well?" he said.
"Don't you see?"
"No. What?"
"Look--I thought you had eyes!"
"Oh, what a little beauty!"
"And isn't his back just like bark and lichens! And what are those
things in the tree beside him?"
"Plugs, I suppose."
"Plugs?"
"Yes. After tapping. Uncle Ben used to tap these trees, I believe."
"You mean for sap? Maple syrup?"
"Yes."
"Jonathan! I didn't know these were sugar maples."
"Oh, yes. These on the road."
"The whole row? Why, there are ten or fifteen of them! And you never
told me!"
"I thought you knew."
"Knew! I don't know anything--I should think you'd know that, by this

time. Do you suppose, if I had known, I should have let all these years
go by--oh, dear--think of all the fun we've missed! And syrup!"
"You'd have to come up in February."
"Well, then, I'll come in February. Who's afraid of February?"
"All right. Try it next year."
I did. But not in February. Things happened, as things do, and it was
early April before I got to the farm. But it had been a wintry March,
and the farmers told me that the sap had not been running except for a
few days in a February thaw. Anyway, it was worth trying.
Jonathan could not come with me. He was to join me later. But Hiram
found a bundle of elder spouts in the attic, and with these and an auger
we went out along the snowy, muddy road. The hole was bored--a pair
of them--in the first tree, and the spouts driven in. I knelt, watching--in
fact, peering up the spout-hole to see what might happen. Suddenly a
drop, dim with sawdust, appeared--gathered, hesitated, then ran down
gayly and leapt off the end.
"Look! Hiram! It's running!" I called.
Hiram, boring the next tree, made no response. He evidently expected it
to run. Jonathan would have acted just like that, too, I felt sure. Is it a
masculine quality, I wonder, to be unmoved when the theoretically
expected becomes actual? Or is it that some temperaments have
naturally a certain large confidence in the sway of law, and refuse to
wonder at its individual workings? To me the individual workings give
an ever fresh thrill because they bring a new realization of the mighty
powers behind them. It seems to depend on which end you begin