My Summer in a Garden | Page 4

Dudley Warner
1warn10.txt or 1warn10.zip

SUMMER IN A GARDEN
and
CALVIN A STUDY OF CHARACTER
By Charles Dudley Warner

INTRODUCTORY LETTER
MY DEAR MR. FIELDS,--I did promise to write an Introduction to
these charming papers but an Introduction,--what is it?--a sort of
pilaster, put upon the face of a building for looks' sake, and usually
flat,--very flat. Sometimes it may be called a caryatid, which is, as I
understand it, a cruel device of architecture, representing a man or a
woman, obliged to hold up upon his or her head or shoulders a structure
which they did not build, and which could stand just as well without as
with them. But an Introduction is more apt to be a pillar, such as one
may see in Baalbec, standing up in the air all alone, with nothing on it,
and with nothing for it to do.
But an Introductory Letter is different. There is in that no formality, no
assumption of function, no awkward propriety or dignity to be
sustained. A letter at the opening of a book may be only a footpath,
leading the curious to a favorable point of observation, and then leaving
them to wander as they will.
Sluggards have been sent to the ant for wisdom; but writers might
better be sent to the spider, not because he works all night, and watches
all day, but because he works unconsciously. He dare not even bring
his work before his own eyes, but keeps it behind him, as if too much
knowledge of what one is doing would spoil the delicacy and modesty
of one's work.
Almost all graceful and fanciful work is born like a dream, that comes
noiselessly, and tarries silently, and goes as a bubble bursts. And yet
somewhere work must come in,--real, well-considered work.
Inness (the best American painter of Nature in her moods of real human
feeling) once said, "No man can do anything in art, unless he has
intuitions; but, between whiles, one must work hard in collecting the
materials out of which intuitions are made." The truth could not be hit
off better. Knowledge is the soil, and intuitions are the flowers which
grow up out of it. The soil must be well enriched and worked.
It is very plain, or will be to those who read these papers, now gathered
up into this book, as into a chariot for a race, that the author has long
employed his eyes, his ears, and his understanding, in observing and
considering the facts of Nature, and in weaving curious analogies.
Being an editor of one of the oldest daily news- papers in New England,

and obliged to fill its columns day after day (as the village mill is
obliged to render every day so many sacks of flour or of meal to its
hungry customers), it naturally occurred to him, "Why not write
something which I myself, as well as my readers, shall enjoy? The
market gives them facts enough; politics, lies enough; art, affectations
enough; criminal news, horrors enough; fashion, more than enough of
vanity upon vanity, and vexation of purse. Why should they not have
some of those wandering and joyous fancies which solace my hours?"
The suggestion ripened into execution. Men and women read, and
wanted more. These garden letters began to blossom every week; and
many hands were glad to gather pleasure from them. A sign it was of
wisdom. In our feverish days it is a sign of health or of convalescence
that men love gentle pleasure, and enjoyments that do not rush or roar,
but distill as the dew.
The love of rural life, the habit of finding enjoyment in familiar things,
that susceptibility to Nature which keeps the nerve gently thrilled in her
homliest nooks and by her commonest sounds, is worth a thousand
fortunes of money, or its equivalents.
Every book which interprets the secret lore of fields and gardens, every
essay that brings men nearer to the understanding of the mysteries
which every tree whispers, every brook murmurs, every weed, even,
hints, is a contribution to the wealth and the happiness of our kind. And
if the lines of the writer shall be traced in quaint characters, and be
filled with a grave humor, or break out at times into merriment, all this
will be no presumption against their wisdom or his goodness. Is the oak
less strong and tough because the mosses and weather-stains stick in all
manner of grotesque sketches along its bark? Now, truly, one may not
learn from this little book either divinity or horticulture; but if he gets a
pure happiness, and a tendency to repeat the happiness from the simple
stores of Nature, he will gain from our friend's garden what Adam lost
in his, and what neither philosophy