O make in me these civil wars to cease
I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Make thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,
A rosy garland and a weary head.”
“That’s it,” said my friend, “A weary head, a weary head. Mine is weary, but sleep will not come.” He sat looking at the fire for a long time, and then he turned suddenly with a sort of haunted look in his eyes.
“I wish you would tell me about the best sleep you ever had. Men may tell of their best meal, but I want to know about rest—the best sleep.”
It was a strange request, but as I sat there, my mind went back to a hillside near the New England coast where the valley slopes away to a salt marsh with a sluggish stream running through it. A low, weatherbeaten farmhouse crouches at the foot of the wind-swept hill. It is a lonely place. Few come that way in daylight, and at night there are no household lights to be seen.
It had rained through the night, and the morning brought a thick heavy fog. It was too wet to hoe corn, and Uncle Charles said we could all go gunning. He was an old soldier, a sharpshooter, and a famous shot. So we tramped off along the marsh following the creek until it reached the ocean. What a glorious day that was for a boy! I carried an old army musket that kicked my shoulder black and blue. We tramped along the shore and through the wet marsh, hunting for sandpipers and other sea fowl. Now and then a flock of birds would seem to be lost in the fog, and Uncle Charles would whistle them to where we lay in ambush. It all comes back,—clear and distinct,—the cries of the sea fowl and dull roar of the ocean as it pounded upon the beach. Late in the afternoon we tramped home wet and tired, but with a long string of birds. The ocean roared on behind us louder than ever as the wind arose.
It was not good New England thrift to eat those birds—the guests at the Parker House in Boston would pay good money for them. While we had been hunting, Aunt Eleanor and the girls in the lonely farmhouse had been busy with a “New England Dinner.” There was a big plate of salt codfish, first boiled and then fried crisp with little cubes of browned salt pork mixed with it. There were boiled potatoes which split open in a rich dry flour, boiled onions and carrots and great slices of brown bread and butter. Then the odor from the oven betrayed the crowning act of all—a monstrous pan-dowdy, or apple grunt! Ever eat a genuine pan-dowdy in a New England kitchen as a wet dreary night is coming on after a tiresome day? No? I am both sorry and glad for you. You have missed one of the greatest joys of life, but you have much to look forward to. When Uncle Charles began to cut that pan-dowdy, we boys realized that we could not do it full justice, so we went out and ran around the house half a dozen times to make more room for the top of the feast.