Tiverton Tales

								

mortality of man; and this morning the butcher had brought him news of
death in a neighboring town. The butcher had gone by, and I was going;
but Deacon Pitts stood there, dramatically intent upon his mournful
morsel. I judged that he was pondering on the possibility of attending
the funeral without the waste of too much precious time now due the
crops. Suddenly, as he turned back toward the house, bearing a pan of
liver, his pondering eye caught sight of his aged wife toiling across
the fields, laden with pennyroyal. He set the pan down hastily--yea,
even before the advancing cat!--and made a trumpet of his hands.
"Sarah!" he called piercingly. "Sarah! Mr. Amasa Blake's passed away!
Died yesterday!"
I do not know whether he was present at that funeral, but it would be
strange if he were not; for time and tide both served him, and he was
always on the spot. Indeed, one day he reached a house of mourning in
such season that he found the rooms quite empty, and was forced to wait
until the bereaved family should assemble. There they sat, he and his
wife, a portentous couple in their dead black and anticipatory gloom,
until even their patience had well-nigh fled. And then an arriving
mourner overheard the deacon, as he bent forward and challenged his wife
in a suspicious and discouraged whisper:--
"Say, Sarah, ye don't s'pose it's all goin' to fush out, do ye?"
They had their funeral.
To the childish memory, so many of the yards are redolent now of wonder
and a strange, sweet fragrance of the fancy not to be described! One,
where lived a notable cook, had, in a quiet corner, a little grove of
caraway. It seemed mysteriously connected with the oak-leaf cookies,
which only she could make; and the child, brushing through the delicate
bushes grown above his head, used to feel vaguely that, on some
fortunate day, cookies would be found there, "a-blowin' and a-growin'."
That he had seen them stirred and mixed and taken from the oven was an
empty matter; the cookies belonged to the caraway grove, and there they
hang ungathered still. In the very same yard was a hogshead filled with
rainwater, where insects came daily to their death and floated
pathetically in a film of gauzy wings. The child feared this innocent
black pool, feared it too much to let it alone; and day by day he would
hang upon the rim with trembling fingers, and search the black, smooth
depths, with all Ophelia's pangs. And to this moment, no rushing river
is half so ministrant to dread as is a still, dull hogshead, where
insects float and fly.
These are our dooryards. I wish we lived in them more; that there were
vines to sing under, and shade enough for the table, with its wheaten
loaf and good farm butter, and its smoking tea. But all that may come
when we give up our frantic haste, and sit down to look, and breathe,
and listen.

A MARCH WIND

When the clouds hung low, or chimneys refused to draw, or the bread