BY
ALICE BROWN
1899
CONTENTS
DOORYARDS
A MARCH WIND
THE MORTUARY CHEST
HORN-O'-THE-MOON
A STOLEN FESTIVAL
A LAST ASSEMBLING
THE WAY OF PEACE
THE EXPERIENCE OF HANNAH PRIME
HONEY AND MYRRH
A SECOND MARRIAGE
THE FLAT-IRON LOT
THE END OF ALL LIVING
Tiverton has breezy, upland roads, and damp, sweet valleys; but shouldyou tarry there a summer long, you might find it wasteful to take manyexcursions abroad. For, having once received the freedom of familyliving, you will own yourself disinclined to get beyond dooryards,those outer courts of domesticity. Homely joys spill over into them,and, when children are afoot, surge and riot there. In them do thecommon occupations of life find niche and channel. While bright weatherholds, we wash out of doors on a Monday morning, the wash-bench in thesolid block of shadow thrown by the house. We churn there, also, at thehour when Sweet-Breath, the cow, goes afield, modestly unconscious ofher own sovereignty over the time. There are all the varying fortunesof butter-making recorded. Sometimes it comes merrily to the tune of
"Come, butter, come!
Peter stands a-waiting at the gate,
Waiting for his butter-cake.
Come, butter, come!"
chanted in time with the dasher; again it doth willfully refuse, andthen, lest it be too cool, we contribute a dash of hot water, or toohot, and we lend it a dash of cold. Or we toss in a magical handful ofsalt, to encourage it. Possibly, if we be not the thriftiest ofhouseholders, we feed the hens here in the yard, and then "shoo" themaway, when they would fain take profligate dust-baths under thesyringa, leaving unsightly hollows. But however, and with whatcomplexion, our dooryards may face the later year, they begin it withpurification. Here are they an unfailing index of the severer virtues;for, in Tiverton, there is no housewife who, in her spring cleaning,omits to set in order this outer pale of the temple. Long before themerry months are well under way, or the cows go kicking up their heelsto pasture, or plants are taken from the south window and clapped intochilly ground, orderly passions begin to riot within us, and we "clearup" our yards. We gather stray chips, and pieces of bone brought in bythe scavenger dog, who sits now with his tail tucked under him,oblivious of such vagrom ways. We rake the grass, and then, gildingrefined gold, we sweep it. There is a tradition that Miss Lois May oncewent to the length of trimming her grass about the doorstone andclothes-pole with embroidery scissors; but that was a too-hastyencomium bestowed by a widower whom she rejected next week, and whoqualified his statement by saying they were pruning-shears.
After this preliminary skirmishing arises much anxious inspection ofancient shrubs and the faithful among old-fashioned plants, to seewhether they have "stood the winter." The fresh, brown "piny" heads arebrooded over with a motherly care; wormwood roots are loosened, and thehorse-radish plant is given a thrifty touch. There is more than thedelight of occupati