When I left the house this morning I certainly expected to be back to dinner, but finding how absolutely necessary my presence in the field was I just stayed there, and at three Chloe sent this nice meal. When the procession arrived I exclaimed, "How delightful! Whose idea was the wheelbarrow?" The Imp answered promptly: "De me, ma'am," at which I made him my compliments. It is such a pleasure to be able to commend the poor little Imp, for he has an immense ingenuity in mischief and earns much reproof.
I am quite ashamed of the frame of mind in which I began this, but I will not tear it up. What is written is written. After this episode everything looks so different, and now at 4:30 the four acres are planted and 22-year-old Mollie is drawing a bush over to cover the seed with such rapidity that she keeps Elihu at a run, and even to my eye the field looks fairly respectable, and the darkies think it unspeakably fine. I am making Willing travel over between the tracks where he went before, and so have disposed of the necessary quantity of seed to within a peck. Now I can look up and beyond the gray earth and glory in the beauty of God's world. Half of the field was planted in oats in the winter and it is now splendid, an expanse of intense vivid color. The field, about twenty acres, is a slight elevation surrounded on three sides by a swamp, in which the variety of young green is wonderful. The cypress with its feathery fringe of pale grass green, the water oak with its tender yellow green, the hickory with its true pure green, and the maple with its gamut of pink up and down the scale—pale salmon, rose pink, then a brick-dusty pink, and here at last it rises into rich crimson. Here and there the poplar, with its flowerlike leaves, the black gum with its black tracery of downward turning branches, all edged with tender gray green.
It is too beautiful for words, and behind all, accenting and bringing out the light airy beauty, is the dark blue green of the solemn pine forest. I wish I had brought my crayons and block; I might have had a faint echo of one little corner to send to some poor shut-in who cannot get it first hand in its exquisite reality. And this, too, is but a prelude; in a few days the ideal tenderness will be replaced by a more material and lasting beauty, but not so heart reaching. It certainly seems a pity that one should have to think of and strive after filthy lucre in the midst of all this beauty; but I have reached a point where if I do not struggle and wrestle with the earth, therefrom to draw the said dross, I will have to give up all this life with Nature and find a small room in some city to eke out my days.
It is not a cheap thing to live in this country. One must have horses, one must have servants—but once given a moderate income to cover these things and there is no spot on earth where one can have so much for so little. Wild ducks abound all winter, also partridges, snipe, and woodcock; rabbits and squirrels run over everything. Our streams are filled with bream, Virginia perch and trout. If any one wants better living than these afford, he can have wild turkey and venison for the shooting, as the woods abound in these, and he can have shad daily during two months if he goes to the expense of a small shad net and a man to use it. It is a splendid country for poultry. Turkeys, ducks, and chickens are easily raised, and I believe it could be made to pay handsomely.
My first question to Gerty when she appeared to-day was, "How high is the incubator?" She answered promptly 101, by which I know it is not above 103, and am thankful. I fear the eggs are all cooked, for when I got in from the corn-field Thursday the mercury stood 106½. I had left Gerty to watch and to open the door if it went above 102½. She reads and writes and knows the figures quite well, but does not seem to understand the thermometer.
April 20.
I had told Aphrodite that she must pull up all the grass roots, brambles, etc., in the alfalfa field; as it was new ground the harrow had not got them all out. She came to me to-day and said:—
"Miss, I kyan't wuk een dat fiel' no mo'; de ting cum up too purty, en ef I tromple um I'll kill um."
"Do you mean the alfalfa has come up?"
"Yes, ma'am, de whol' fiel' kiver wid um."