Part 5 (1/2)
”I'll pa.s.s 'em up,” he says; ”that's a man's work. You stand in the wagon and put 'em in.”
So he springs into the yard and the sheep huddle close into the corner, here and there raising a timid head, here and there darting aside in a panic.
”Hi there, it's for you,” shouts the leader, and thrusts his hands deep in the wool of one of the ewes.
”Come up here, you Southdown with the bare belly,” says the man in the wagon.
”That's my old game--wrastling,” the leader remarks, struggling with the next ewe. ”Stiddy, stiddy, now I got you, up with you dang you!”
”That's the idee,” says the man in the wagon.
So I watch and they pa.s.s up the sheep one by one and as I go down the road I hear the leader's thick voice, ”Stiddy, stiddy,” and the response of the other, ”That's the idee.” And so on into the gray day!
My Open Road leads not only to beauty, not only to fresh adventures in outer observation. I believe in the Open Road in religion, in education, in politics: there is nothing really settled, fenced in, nor finally decided upon this earth, Nothing that is not questionable. I do not mean that I would immediately tear down well-built fences or do away with established and beaten roads. By no means. The wisdom of past ages is likely to be wiser than any hasty conclusions of mine. I would not invite any other person to follow my road until I had well proven it a better way toward truth than that which time had established. And yet I would have every man tread the Open Road; I would have him upon occasion question the smuggest inst.i.tution and look askance upon the most ancient habit. I would have him throw a doubt upon Newton and defy Darwin! I would have him look straight at men and nature with his own eyes. He should acknowledge no common G.o.ds unless he proved them G.o.ds for himself. The ”equality of men” which we wors.h.i.+p: is there not a higher inequality? The material progress which we deify: is it real progress?
Democracy--is it after all better than monarchy? I would have him question the canons of art, literature, music, morals: so will he continue young and useful!
And yet sometimes I ask myself. What do I travel for? Why all this excitement and eagerness of inquiry? What is it that I go forth to find? Am I better for keeping my roads open than my neighbour is who travels with contentment the paths of ancient habit? I am gnawed by the tooth of unrest--to what end? Often as I travel I ask myself that question and I have never had a convincing answer. I am looking for something I cannot find. My Open Road is open, too, at the end! What is it that drives a man onward, that scourges him with unanswered questions! We only know that we are driven; we do not know who drives.
We travel, we inquire, we look, we work--only knowing that these activities satisfy a certain deep and secret demand within us. We have Faith that there is a Reason: and is there not a present Joy in following the Open Road?
”And O the joy that is never won, But follows and follows the journeying sun.”
And at the end of the day the Open Road, if we follow it with wisdom as well as fervour, will bring us safely home again. For after all the Open Road must return to the Beaten Path. The Open Road is for adventure; and adventure is not the food of life, but the spice.
Thus I came back this evening from rioting in my fields. As I walked down the lane I heard the soft tinkle of a cowbell, a certain earthy exhalation, as of work, came out of the bare fields, the duties of my daily life crowded upon me bringing a pleasant calmness of spirit, and I said to myself:
”Lord be praised for that which is common.”
And after I had done my ch.o.r.es I came in, hungry, to my supper.
IV
ON BEING WHERE YOU BELONG
Sunday Morning, May 20th.
On Friday I began planting my corn. For many days previously I went out every morning at sun-up, in the clear, sharp air, and thrust my hand deep down in the soil of the field. I do not know that I followed any learned agricultural rule, but somehow I liked to do it. It has seemed reasonable to me, instead of watching for a phase of the moon (for I do not cultivate the moon), to inquire of the earth itself. For many days I had no response; the soil was of an icy, moist coldness, as of death.
”I am not ready yet,” it said; ”I have not rested my time.”
Early in the week we had a day or two of soft suns.h.i.+ne, of fecund warmth, to which the earth lay open, willing, pa.s.sive. On Thursday morning, though a white frost silvered the harrow ridges, when I thrust my hand into the soil I felt, or seemed to feel, a curious response: a strange answering of life to life. The stone had been rolled from the sepulchre!
And I knew then that the destined time had arrived for my planting. That afternoon I marked out my corn-field, driving the mare to my home-made wooden marker, carefully observant of the straightness of the rows; for a crooked corn-row is a sort of immorality. I brought down my seed corn from the attic, where it had hung waiting all winter, each ear suspended separately by the white, up-turned husks. They were the selected ears of last year's crop, even of size throughout, smooth of kernel, with tips well-covered--the perfect ones chosen among many to perpetuate the highest excellencies of the crop. I carried them to the shed next my barn, and sh.e.l.led them out in my hand machine: as fine a basket of yellow dent seed as a man ever saw. I have listened to endless discussions as to the relative merits of flint and dent corn. I here cast my vote emphatically for yellow dent: it is the best Nature can do!
I found my seed-bag hanging, dusty, over a rafter in the shed, and Harriet sewed a buckle on the strip that goes around the waist. I cleaned and sharpened my hoe.
”Now,” I said to myself, ”give me a good day and I am ready to plant.”
The sun was just coming up on Friday, looking over the trees into a world of misty and odorous freshness. When I climbed the fence I dropped down in the gra.s.s at the far corner of the field. I had looked forward this year with pleasure to the planting of a small field by hand--the adventure of it--after a number of years of horse planting (with Horace's machine) of far larger fields. There is an indescribable satisfaction in answering, ”Present!” to the roll-call of Nature; to plant when the earth is ready, to cultivate when the soil begins to bake and harden, to harvest when the grain is fully ripe. It is the chief joy of him who lives close to the soil that he comes, in time, to beat in consonance with the pulse of the earth; its seasons become his seasons; its life his life.
Behold me, then, with a full seed-bag suspended before me, buckled both over the shoulders and around the waist, a s.h.i.+ny hoe in my hand (the scepter of my dominion), a comfortable, rested feeling in every muscle of my body, standing at the end of the first long furrow there in my field on Friday morning--a whole spring day open before me! At that moment I would not have changed my place for the place of any king, prince, or president.
At first I was awkward enough, for it has been a long time since I have done much hand planting; but I soon fell into the rhythmic swing of the sower, the sure, even, accurate step; the turn of the body and the flexing of the wrists as the hoe strikes downward; the deftly hollowed hole; the swing of the hand to the seed-bag; the sure fall of the kernels; the return of the hoe; the final determining pressure of the soil upon the seed. One falls into it and follows it as he would follow the rhythm of a march.