The Jonathan Papers

by Elisabeth Woodbridge Morris

In the city one can never get just this. There are streets, of course, but by their very multiplicity and complexity they lose their individual impressiveness and are merged in that great whole, the City. One recoils from them and takes refuge in the sense of one's own home.

But in the country there is just the Road. Recoil from it? One's heart goes out to it. The road is a part of home, the part that reaches out to our friends and draws them to us or brings us to them. It is our outdoor clubhouse, it is the avenue of the Expected and the Unexpected, it is the Home Road.

In a sense it does no more for us, and in some ways much less, than our city streets do. Along these, too, our tradesmen's carts come to our doors, along these our friends must fare as they arrive or depart; we seek the streets at our outgoings and our incomings. But they are, after all, strictly a means. We use them, but when we enter our homes we forget them, or try to. Our individual share in the street is not large. So much goes on and goes by that has only the most general bearing on our interests that we cease to give it our attention at all. It is not good form to watch the street, because it is not worth while. When children's voices fly in at our windows, we assume that they are other people's children, and they usually are. When we hear teams, we expect them to go by, and they usually do. When we hear a cab door slam, we take it for granted that it is before some other house, and usually it is. And if, having nothing better to do, we perchance walk to the window and glance out between the curtains, we are repaid by seeing nothing interesting and by feeling a little shamefaced besides.

Not so in the country. What happens along the Road is usually our intimate concern. Most of those who go by on it are our own acquaintances and neighbors, and are interesting as such. The rest are strangers, and interesting as such. For it is the rarity of the stranger that gives him his piquancy.

And so in the country it is both good form and worth while to watch the Road—to "keep an eye out," as they say. When Jonathan and I first came to the farm, we were incased in a hard incrustation of city ways. When teams passed, we did not look up; when a wagon rattled, we did not know whose it was, and we said we did not care. When one of our neighbors remarked, casually, "Heard Bill Smith's team go by at half-past eleven last night. Wonder if the's anythin' wrong down his way," we stared at one another in amazement, and wondered, "Now, how in the world did he know it was Bill Smith's team?" We smiled over the story of a postmistress who had the ill luck to be selling stamps when a carriage passed. She hastily shoved them out, and ran to the side window—too late! "Sakes!" she sighed; "that's the second I've missed to-day!" We smiled, but I know now that if I had been in that postmistress's place I should have felt exactly as she did.

When we began to realize the change in ourselves, we were at first rather sheepish and apologetic about it. We fell into the way of sitting where we could naturally glance out of the windows, but we did this casually, as if by chance, and said nothing about it. When August came, and dusk fell early and lamps were lighted at supper-time, I drew down the shades.

But one night Jonathan said, carelessly, "Why do you pull them all the way down?"

"Why not?" I asked, with perhaps just a suspicion.

"Oh," he said, "it always seems so cheerful from the road to look in at a lighted window."

I left them up, but I noticed that Jonathan kept a careful eye on the shadowy road outside. Was he trying to cheer it by pleasant looks, I wondered, or was he just trying to see all that went by?