There is no supervised play. They play cops and robbers (only they call it “Jail”) and throw things at one another—snowballs in winter, rose hips in fall. It seems to satisfy them. They also construct darts, pinwheels, and “pick-up sticks” (jackstraws), and the school itself does a brisk trade in penny candy, which is for sale right in the classroom and which contains “surprises.” The most highly prized surprise is a fake cigarette, made of cardboard, fiendishly lifelike.

  The memory of how apprehensive we were at the beginning is still strong. The boy was nervous about the change too. The tension, on that first fair morning in September when we drove him to school, almost blew the windows out of the sedan. And when later we picked him up on the road, wandering along with his little blue lunch-pail, and got his laconic report “All right” in answer to our inquiry about how the day had gone, our relief was vast. Now, after almost a year of it, the only difference we can discover in the two school experiences is that in the country he sleeps better at night—and that probably is more the air than the education. When grilled on the subject of school-in-country vs. school-in-city, he replied that the chief difference is that the day seems to go so much quicker in the country. “Just like lightning,” he reported.

  It is just a year ago as I write this that I made my spring visit to Peter Henderson in Cortlandt Street, home of Convolvulus Major and the early pea. I bought nineteen dollars’ worth of seeds, flower and vegetable. It took the clerk almost an hour, opening and shutting the white drawers, to fish them out; together we studied the list, checked it for errors. Carrying the bundle home in the subway, I was struck with how heavy the seeds were—they weighed as much as a time bomb.

  A negro came into the seed store while I was there. He was in clericals and seemed to be quite a fellow. “Give a penny to de Lawd!” he cried, addressing no one in particular. “Give a penny to de Lawd, who makes all dese wonderful seeds to jeminate!” He was a slick one and got a pretty good haul. I put all my money, however, into direct cultivation—the seeds themselves. They did well enough, and we are still eating them out of jars.

  Now we’re in New York again, for a visit, not just to consult with Peter Henderson but to get back into the good graces of the dentist and to catch up with the theater. I suppose there is no reason for not going to the dentist in the country, but teeth are like sunken reefs: you feel better about them if they are gone over by someone who possesses what the pilot book calls “local knowledge,” someone who’s been over them before. Also, dentistry is more impressive in town—what the rural man calls cleaning the teeth is called “prophylaxis” in New York.

  Quite apart from teeth and dramaturgy and seed buying, it is necessary to come up to the town after a long spell in the country, for a period of privacy and rest. I don’t get enough sleep in the country, as the days are too short for my enterprises, with the result that I rise early, go to bed late, and in general prolong the waking hours. And of course there is no privacy in rural surroundings, where a man can’t even blow his nose without exciting the community. I thought at first I was going to mind this limelight terribly, this being stared at: the men working on the road, looking up, watching, the men in front of the store, in dooryards, old men coming in through the dusk with an armful of stovewood, stopping in their tracks to watch the car go by, women tending the hens, everywhere the fixed eye. I discovered, however, that the situation was instantly relieved as soon as I acquired the knack of staring back. You’ve got to stare back. Besides, after you’ve lived in the country a while you learn that keeping track of the comings and goings of one’s friends and neighbors is a very sensible thing indeed, and that it cannot be set down to idle curiosity. Not a car or team passes my door now but I look up, check its speed and direction, identify the driver if possible, and guess the errand. This isn’t mere gossip hunting, it is a valuable personal intelligence service. I used to waste hours of time hunting up people who, if I’d used my eyes and ears, I should have known were some place else. It’s like war: you’ve got to have a map with pins. The location of the mail truck, the progress of the snow plow, the whereabouts of the expressman and the fish peddler—such information becomes vastly important. I find that keeping abreast of my neighbors’ affairs has increased, not diminished, my human sympathies (if any); and when I get up in the morning and spy one man heading south on foot with a dog and shotgun, and another heading north with a sick child in a blue coupé, the pattern of the day becomes clear and I can conduct my own affairs more wisely and usefully than if I lacked that knowledge. Of course one’s horizon tends to close in: in New York I rise and scan Europe in the Times; in the country I get up and look at the thermometer—a thoroughly self-contained point of view which, if it could infect everybody everywhere, would I am sure be the most salutary thing that could now happen to the world. My isolation is shortlived, however. An hour later I stop by the store to buy a package of soap chips and I hear the radio telling me the temperature in Providence, Rhode Island. Immediately the shell of my comfortable little world is rudely shattered and I shudder in sympathetic response to Rhode Island’s raw mercurial destiny.

  There was a time when only God could make a tree, but now John D. Rockefeller, Jr. can do it too. Our visit to New York happens to coincide with the arrival of the great elms along Fifth Avenue, those lovely seventy-foot trees that are springing full grown from the pavement in front of Radio City. I attended the first of the eight miracles and felt like a character in the Old Testament. Nelson Rockefeller was there wearing rubbers (although it was a dry night) and carrying a brief case. The last time I had seen him was at a groundbreaking, when Radio City was still a blueprint. He looked unchanged by the years (I hastily wondered if I did too) but was less camera-shy and more poised, now that the buildings were there, throwing their majestic weight in support of the whole visionary idea. The elm itself, at first horizontal on a truck, lay as though dead, but soon managed, with the help of a winch, to sit bolt upright and look around. Mr. Rockefeller leapt easily to the bole of earth, and the photographers lay down on their backs on the sidewalk for the angle shot that was to distinguish their art. It was the first time I had ever seen a man lie down on Fifth Avenue, although I once saw a fellow down in a fit.

  A woman, passing, seeing that somebody was up to the prank of setting out a tree in the shopping district, remarked that she thought it was a mighty silly thing, a tree. “What do they want a tree for?” she said. “It will just be in the way.”

  I think elm-birth is the prettiest fairy tale in the city’s wonderbook, for the big trees are delivered at night, when earth hangs down away from the light and fowls are stirring on their roosts. In all the long swing of time there has never been a fortnight such as this—these midnights when late strolling citizens come suddenly on a giant elm, arriving furtively in the marketplace and sliding into position for early risers to discover on their way to work.

  [ April 1939 ]

  A WEEK IN APRIL

  Saturday. A full moon tonight, which made the dogs uneasy. First a neighbor’s dog, a quarter of a mile away, felt the moon—he began shortly after dark, a persistent complaint, half longing. Then our big dog, whose supper had not sat well, took up the moonsong. I shut him in the barn where his bed is, but he kept up the barking, with an odd howl now and again; and I could hear him roaming round in there, answering the neighbor’s dog and stirring up Fred, our dachshund and superintendent, who suddenly, from a deep sleep, roused up and pulled on his executive frown (as a man, waking, might hastily pull on a pair of trousers) and dashed out into the hall as though the moon were a jewel robber. The light lay in watery pools on lawn and drive. The house seemed unable to settle down for the night, and I felt like moaning myself, for there is something about a moon disturbing to man and dog alike.

  Once, when I was a child, I waked from a bad dream to find moonlight pouring into the room, falling across my face like the flashlight of a prowler. I was frightened; the moon seemed an intruder in the bedroom. Since that night I have been uncomfortable on moon nights and have seen to it that the shade was drawn. I don’t know what it is dogs feel, but it must be something very deep troubling them—perhaps an ancient intimation of good hunting.

  Last night my neighbor C. died. He was here at the house in the forenoon, driving his truck. He mentioned that he wasn’t feeling just good. Later, in the afternoon, he took a chill. Before midnight he was dead. C.’s death came just a few months after he had got his life fixed up to suit him—a common enough sequel to endeavor. After years of planning it, he built a new workshop last fall, his proper dream. I think the extra effort it took to get his life arranged to his liking was too much for his strength and brought on his death—a coincidence that, in milder form, happens to everyone.

  Sunday. Woke to find the wind blowing from the sea, and the sky overcast. Three starlings sat gloomily in the Balm o’ Gilead tree, awaiting better times, and in the plowed field some crows held a special meeting and took a vote. In an hour it was snowing.

  Dameron, the lobster fisherman, stopped in tonight to return some books. He is the one book borrower I fully trust. He borrows more of my books than anyone ever has before, but he brings back more too, usually wrapped in paper and tied with a string—which is the proper way to transport a book in unsettled weather. Mrs. D. is one of the two people I know who have read Joseph in Egypt. I know many who own it, few who have read it.

  Dameron stayed a while. He told me that at one time a great deal of clam bait for the Banks fishermen was dug here in this cove. An acre of clams used to be about the best crop any man could cultivate, but nowadays a man can dig a tide in and out and does well to make a dollar. Every tide was good for four to six dollars in the old days. D. says the gulls have ruined clamming: they eat the seed that the clammers leave—that is, the small clams that the rake turns up but that are too small to be harvested. The government protects gulls of course, but D. thinks gulls should be destroyed before they destroy us. Seals too. Seals are death to lobsters. Seals and gulls are the enemies to watch out for, in D.’s opinion, as well as Germany and Italy.

  The rumor got round that I was running for the school board. (There was nothing to it.) D. tells me that it was a lucky thing I didn’t run. “You would have been murdered.” He said he heard a woodcock yesterday and would take me to where I can see its sky dance.

  Monday. The cat, David, is lying beside me, a most unsatisfactory arrangement, as he gives me cat fever.

  My sensitivity to cats defeats the whole purpose of a cat, which is to introduce a note of peace in a room.

  Tuesday. News today from friends who are here in America from Vienna. They are able to stay one year, on a visitor’s passport: but they say that one year sounds to them like eternity, after the day-to-day existence of European living. Although they are, in the phrase, Aryans, they are against the Hitler government; hopefully and patiently they await its end. So, they say, do the majority of the citizens of Vienna.

  In Vienna the only topic of conversation is genealogy. You go out to visit friends and you spend the evening in the branches of their family tree. The matter of blood is so vital, no one can think of anything else. A writer whose wife’s grandmother was a Jew is not permitted to write; a doctor whose father’s half-sister lacked the Aryan stamp is not allowed to practice. “These fine people are dying,” says my friend.

  “But we mustn’t talk about it. Spies are everywhere. We dare not speak of Vienna.”

  Wednesday. Today the warmth struck through for fair and reached the earth, the sun boring into the snow, the ditches alive with overflow and gurgle, the daylight strong and ample along the planks bridging the mud in the yard. Under the spruce boughs that overlay the borders, the first green shoots of snowdrops appeared, the indestructible. When I walked to the mailbox, a song sparrow placed his incomparable seal on the outgoing letters. Spring, however, began officially in the late afternoon when I went into the brooder house, thrust a handful of shavings into the stove and struck a match, starting the fire that must burn steadily and without interruption (dropping 5° a week) for six weeks, warming the two hundred and fifty chicks that are to hatch tomorrow, a hundred miles away, on Maundy Thursday.

  Thursday. Today read in the paper about a plan the Catholics have for a sound hookup of schools in the Archdiocese of New York. According to the newspaper account, the plan is contingent on their finding a commercial sponsor. This was the most important item in the news, I thought, far outdistancing the day’s aggression in Middle Europe. For although the parochial system is not the pattern for our American public schools, nevertheless, most children’s diseases are contagious and I have no doubt this latest one is too. The desire to make one adult voice audible to all children, even though the expenses are best met by a commercial product, is too attractive to be denied for long. Such dissemination is inevitable, just as it was inevitable that one orchestra should serve a hundred hotel dining rooms and that music should be called Muzak. The expenses can be defrayed by the manufacturer of a licorice candy, who then automatically becomes a leading educational force in the nation, holding in his two hands the coveted gift of sound. Probably before these words reach print, the archdiocesan headquarters will be broadcasting direct to the classroom, and one more wall will have crumbled that once made a house. Instruction will be by experts—the invisible experts, speaking with the voice that is not a voice, delivering to the invisible pupil the canned lesson, courtesy of the advertised product.

  One of the proponents of the Catholic communications system explained that it would be a most useful device in academic emergencies—as for instance in the case of an examination containing an unfair question being distributed to the schools. “Attention!” he said, pretending that he was already wired to the children. “There is an error in the test paper for 6B in arithmetic. Question 3, part 2, does not belong … etc.”

  There would then presumably be a slight pause for diocese identification, and a two-minute plug for licorice candy.

  This emergency of the faulty examination paper and the unfair question is, I should think, just a taste of the greater emergencies that a government-sponsored sound system could cope with. For when the time comes the public educator’s voice will be heard in the tiniest schoolhouse on the farthest hill: “Henceforth all children will read only from the Brown book, and will raise the right hand in allegiance to the Third American Realm, saying ‘Hail Peabody!’”

  I have been trying to think who would be the perfect sponsor for the American educational network, the nationwide hookup that would instruct all children from coast to coast, giving them the Word. I have decided that Wheaties is the perfect company, for Wheaties gives flashlights as premiums—and these lights might help the children find their way out of a room that had grown dark.

  Friday. A letter this morning from John McNulty, my most satisfactory correspondent, as he writes infrequently and on matters that concern us both equally. His letter begins: “Dear Andy, Describe in detail the purchase and installation of a Welsbach mantle. In so doing, tell specifically of: (a) The carrying home of the Welsbach mantle and from what kind of store, (b) The kind of box it came in and the method of extraction from the box. (c) The putting of the mantle in place of the old one. (d) Describe the next steps and any attendant spectacle in connection therewith, which may have served to delight the onlookers. P.S. It so happens that on this, the eve of the invasion of Albania, I have spent the afternoon thinking of Welsbach mantles.”

  [ May 1939 ]

  MOVIES

  There is no movie house in this town so I don’t get to many pictures; but I keep in touch with Olympus by reading Motion Picture magazine and the daily papers. On the whole this is a higher type of entertainment than seeing the films—although I miss Tarzan and Lamour, and I am not getting ahead very fast with my study of trees in the movies, a work I have been engaged in for some years.

  The newspapers of course keep one informed of the marriages, births, deaths, separations, divorces, and salaries of the stars. If Gable weds Lombard, I know about it. When Tone and Crawford reach the end of the road, I am informed. Separations and divorces are scented with the same delicate orange blossoms as marriages and elopements, the same romantic good fellowship. One of the most interesting accomplishments of the film community, it seems to me, is that it has made real for America the exquisite beauty of incompatibility. Divorce among the gods possesses the sweet, holy sadness that has long been associated with marriage among the mortals. There is something infinitely tender about the inability of an actor to get along with an actress.

  When it is all over, and the decree is final, the two are even more attentive to each other, are seen oftener together, than ever before. It was a writer in Motion Picture who expressed the whole thing most eloquently. He was telling the inside story of the marriage of Hedy Lamarr and Gene Markey, a union that, however felicitous in other respects, was unfortunately not solemnized until after Mr. Markey’s union and disunion with Joan Bennett, described as “Hollywood’s perfect marriage,” and until after the gift (to Miss Lamarr) of a five-thousand-dollar swimming pool by Mr. Reginald Gardiner, described simply as a five-thousand-dollar swimming pool. The writer is explaining how Mr. Markey, after being given his freedom by Miss Bennett, is again seen around Hollywood in the company of glamorous stars, but not really caring for them half as much as he still cared for his ex-wife. “In the finest Hollywood tradition,” says the journalist, “they remain affectionate friends.”