In Pastures Green

by Peter McArthur

"With ape-like glee,
By the teeth or tail or eyelid
To the slippery mango tree."

While occupying my position of vantage I had a rush of primordial feelings that made me almost a believer in the Darwinian theory. It could be nothing but the stirring of some hereditary emotion that made me long to throw pears at the people below who were sending up exclamations of caution and advice. There would be a joy in it such as must have been felt by our ancestors when:

"Side by side 'twas theirs to ravage
The potato ground and cut
Down the unsuspecting savage
With the well-aimed cocoanut."

Before my task was finished I was led to reflect that a prehensile tail must be a great advantage to a climber. Yet there can be no advantage without its penalty. I remember a joke in Life about a monkey that was complaining because it had slipped and sprained its tail.

While picking the pears I had a chance to overlook the activities of the whole neighbourhood, but my interest was largely centred in my own cornfield, where a band of original Canadians, Indians, were busy husking. That corn had been hanging over me like an incubus, for I thought I would have to husk it all myself, but

"The red man came, the roaming hunter tribe,"

and I promptly made a treaty with them. But the consideration was not glass beads and red cotton handkerchiefs. Not at all. They are civilised—as civilised as an imported hired man. They insisted on getting five and a half cents a bushel—"and find themselves." Reflecting that even at that price I would not make much more than board wages, I agreed to pay. And as I looked at the cornfield from the pear tree I felt glad that I had done so, for real judges have estimated that there will be at least five hundred bushels. I will have enough to do in hauling home the ears and stalks. The piles of yellow ears delighted my eye, and then I noticed the golden sprinkling of pumpkins in the field, and I called down orders for pies. Somehow, in this country life our appetites are always with us.

Looked at from the height I was occupying, the world seemed more alive than usual. I could see men working in their fields or about their buildings for a mile or two in every direction. Ordinarily we see only the people and animals on our own farms, and are oppressed by a sense of loneliness. From my tree-top I could see that I really have neighbours. As I realised this I was struck by the thought that all our activities take place within a few feet of the ground. In spite of our boasted freedom of action we are the slaves of the law of gravity which keeps us "crawling 'twixt the earth and heaven." But because we can walk and run and travel in trains, and even fly a little, we think ourselves entirely free and are not conscious of the fact that gravity binds us as with chains. Who knows but in a similar way our actions, both moral and intellectual, are governed by laws of which we are unconscious? Perhaps if we could make our analysis keen enough we would find that our lives impinge on the peripheries of other spheres than that of the earth, and that we are whirled around on them forever like Ixion on his wheel. Such a discovery would settle to the satisfaction of all the endless debate regarding predestination and free will. But it does not do to indulge in such metaphysical flights while clambering around in a tree forty feet from the ground. They might make us giddy, and then "What a fall would be there, my fellow-countrymen." Still it was worth the climb to get away for a little while from the flatness of things and to realise that there is much in life that is missed by the sensible people who keep their feet constantly on the ground. We need an occasional breath from the heights, and I am inclined to think there was much wisdom in the words of the poetess who closed a notable poem in a recent number of The Forum with the couplet:

"He whose soul is flat, the sky
Will cave in on him by and by."

Oct. 10.—Why are there no good quotations about October? We are having weather just now that makes one long for a burst of poetry that will surpass "What is so rare as a day in June?" as much as ripeness surpasses greenness. Poe has something about "the lonesome October" that gives one cold chills to remember. Is it because the only decent rhyme for October is "sober" that the poets have been unable to get enthusiastic? And what a peculiar touch of irony it is that "sober" is the only rhyme for the month of wine-pressing, cider-making, and "brown October ale." But perhaps the trouble is that the poets cannot do the subject justice. At no other season of the year is the country so bewilderingly beautiful—so "beautiful exceedingly." The frost has worked miracles with the foliage. The staid green of summer has given place to "a riot of colour" (good old phrase) ranging from the most delicate yellow to crimson and purple. After the frosty nights the air has an exhilarating quality not to be described in a country where prohibition sentiment is so strong. The October sunshine has a satisfying warmth that makes a man as mellow as a fall pippin. Some one has somewhere described this as "the season when every schoolboy trudges along the country roads munching a ripe apple." That does very well for prose, but the subject is one that demands poetry. We should have something as meaty as the well-filled granaries and as luscious as the closely-packed apple barrels. Let our poets get busy. Some American magazine will be glad to pay a proper price for the gem when it is completed.