Parnassus on Wheels | Page 2

a business man, but his health failed and, like so many
people in the story books, he fled to the country, or, as he called it, to
the bosom of Nature. He and I were the only ones left in an
unsuccessful family. I was slowly perishing as a conscientious
governess in the brownstone region of New York. He rescued me from
that and we bought a farm with our combined savings. We became real
farmers, up with the sun and to bed with the same. Andrew wore
overalls and a soft shirt and grew brown and tough. My hands got red
and blue with soapsuds and frost; I never saw a Redfern advertisement
from one year's end to another, and my kitchen was a battlefield where
I set my teeth and learned to love hard work. Our literature was
government agriculture reports, patent medicine almanacs, seedsmen's
booklets, and Sears Roebuck catalogues. We subscribed to Farm and
Fireside and read the serials aloud. Every now and then, for real
excitement, we read something stirring in the Old Testament--that
cheery book Jeremiah, for instance, of which Andrew was very fond.
The farm did actually prosper, after a while; and Andrew used to hang

over the pasture bars at sunset, and tell, from the way his pipe burned,
just what the weather would be the next day.
As I have said, we were tremendously happy until Andrew got the fatal
idea of telling the world how happy we were. I am sorry to have to
admit he had always been rather a bookish man. In his college days he
had edited the students' magazine, and sometimes he would get
discontented with the Farm and Fireside serials and pull down his
bound volumes of the college paper. He would read me some of his
youthful poems and stories and mutter vaguely about writing
something himself some day. I was more concerned with sitting hens
than with sonnets and I'm bound to say I never took these threats very
seriously. I should have been more severe.
Then great-uncle Philip died, and his carload of books came to us. He
had been a college professor, and years ago when Andrew was a boy
Uncle Philip had been very fond of him--had, in fact, put him through
college. We were the only near relatives, and all those books turned up
one fine day. That was the beginning of the end, if I had only known it.
Andrew had the time of his life building shelves all round our
living-room; not content with that he turned the old hen house into a
study for himself, put in a stove, and used to sit up there evenings after
I had gone to bed. The first thing I knew he called the place Sabine
Farm (although it had been known for years as Bog Hollow) because he
thought it a literary thing to do. He used to take a book along with him
when he drove over to Redfield for supplies; sometimes the wagon
would be two hours late coming home, with old Ben loafing along
between the shafts and Andrew lost in his book.
I didn't think much of all this, but I'm an easy-going woman and as long
as Andrew kept the farm going I had plenty to do on my own hook. Hot
bread and coffee, eggs and preserves for breakfast; soup and hot meat,
vegetables, dumplings, gravy, brown bread and white, huckleberry
pudding, chocolate cake and buttermilk for dinner; muffins, tea,
sausage rolls, blackberries and cream, and doughnuts for supper--that's
the kind of menu I had been preparing three times a day for years. I
hadn't any time to worry about what wasn't my business.

And then one morning I caught Andrew doing up a big, flat parcel for
the postman. He looked so sheepish I just had to ask what it was.
"I've written a book," said Andrew, and he showed me the title page--
PARADISE REGAINED BY ANDREW McGILL
Even then I wasn't much worried, because of course I knew no one
would print it. But Lord! a month or so later came a letter from a
publisher--accepting it! That's the letter Andrew keeps framed above
his desk. Just to show how such things sound I'll copy it here:
DECAMERON, JONES AND COMPANY PUBLISHERS UNION
SQUARE, NEW YORK
January 13, 1907.
DEAR MR. McGILL:
We have read with singular pleasure your manuscript "Paradise
Regained." There is no doubt in our minds that so spirited an account of
the joys of sane country living should meet with popular approval, and,
with the exception of a few revisions and abbreviations, we would be
glad to publish the book practically as it stands. We would like to have
it illustrated by Mr. Tortoni, some of whose work you