Like most such matters, the first energy of the book had its funny and its serious side. A man coming from a far Western village, and visiting Boston for the first time, is said to have approached a bartender, in an exclusive hotel, thus confidentially:
"Excuse me, but I am a stranger in this part of the country, and I want to ask a question. Everywhere I go, I see posters up like this—'The Gates Ajar!' 'The Gates Ajar!' I'm sick to death of the sight of the durn thing; I haven't darst to ask what it is. Do tell a fellar! Is it a new kind of drink?"
There was a "Gates Ajar" tippet for sale in the country groceries; I have fancied that it was a knit affair of as many colors as the jewels in the eternal portals, and extremely openwork. There was a "Gates Ajar" collar—paper, I fear—loading the city counters. Ghastly rumors have reached me of the existence of a "Gates Ajar" cigar. I have never personally set my eyes upon these tangible forms of earthly fame. If the truth must be told, I have kept a cowardly distance from them. Music, of course, took her turn at the book, and popular "pieces" warbled under its title. One of these, I think, is sung in Sunday-schools to this day. Then there was, and still exists, the "Gates Ajar" funeral piece. This used to seem to me the least serious of them all; but, by degrees, when I saw the persistence of force in that elaborate symbol, how many mourning people were so constituted as to find comfort in it, I came to have a tolerance for it which even grows into a certain tenderness. I may frankly admit that I have begun to love it since I heard about the two ragged little newsboys who came to the eminent city florist, with all their savings clenched in their grimy fists, and thus made known their case:
"Ye see, Larks he was our pardner—him an' us sold on the same beat—and he jes' got run over by a 'lectric, and it went over his back. So they tuk him to the horspittle, 'n Larks he up an' died there yestiddy. So us fellars we're goin' to give Larks a stylish funeril, you bet. We liked Larks—an' it went over his back. Say, mister, there ain't nothin' mean 'bout us, come to buryin' of Larks; 'n we've voted to settle on one them 'Gates Ajar' pieces—made o'flowers, doncherknow. So me 'n him an' the other fellars we've saved up all our propurty, for we're agoin' ter give Larks a stylish funeril—an' here it is, mister. I told the kids ef there was more'n enough you's trow in a few greens, anyhow. Make up de order right away, mister, and give us our money's worf now, sure—for Larks."
The gamin proudly counted out upon the marble slab of that fashionable flower store the sum of seventy-five cents.
The florist—blessings on him—is said not to have undeceived the little fellows, but to have duly honored their "order," and the biggest and most costly "Gates Ajar" piece to be had in the market went to the hospital, and helped to bury Larks.
Of course, as is customary in the case of all authors who have written one popular book, requests for work at once rained in on the new study on Andover Hill. For it soon became evident that I must have a quiet place to write in. In the course of time I found it convenient to take for working hours a sunny room in the farm-house of the Seminary estate, a large, old-fashioned building adjoining my father's house. In still later years I was allowed to build over, for my own purposes, the summer-house under the big elm in my father's garden, once used by my mother for her own study, and well remembered by all persons interested in Andover scenery. This building had been for some years used exclusively as a mud-bakery by the boys; it was piled with those clay turnovers and rolls and pies in whose manufacture the most select circles of Andover youth delighted.
But the bakery was metamorphosed into a decent, dear little room, about nine by eleven, and commanding the sun on the four sides of its quadrangle. In fact, it was a veritable sun-bath; and how dainty was the tip-drip of the icicles from the big elm-bough, upon the little roof! To this spot I used to travel down in all weathers; sometimes when it was so slippery on the hill behind the carriage-house (for the garden paths were impassable in winter) that I have had to return to primitive methods of locomotion, and just sit down and coast half the way on the crust. Later still, when an accident and crutches put this delightful method of travelling out of the question, the summer-house (in a blizzard I delighted in the name) was moved up beside my father's study. I have, in fact, always had an out-of-door study, apart from the house I lived in, and have come to look upon it as quite a necessity; so that we have carried on the custom in our Gloucester house. We heartily recommend it to all people who live by their brains and pens. The incessant trotting to and fro on little errands is a wholesome thing. Proof-sheets, empty ink-stands, dried-up mucilage, yawning wood-boxes, wet feet, missing scissors, unfilled kerosene lamps, untimely thirst, or unromantic lunches, the morning mail, and the dinner-bell, and the orders of one's pet dog—all are so many imperious summonses to breathe the tingling air and stir the blood and muscle.
Be as uncomfortable or as cross about it as you choose, an out-of-door study is sure to prove your best friend. You become a species of literary tramp, and absorb something of the tramp's hygiene. It is impossible to be "cooped" at your desk, if you have to cross a garden or a lawn thirty times a day to get to it. And what reporter can reach that sweet seclusion across the distant housemaid's wily and experienced art? What autograph or lion hunter can ruin your best chapter by bombardment in mid-morning?
In the farm-house study I remember one of my earliest callers from the publishing world, that seems always to stand with clawing fingers demanding copy of the people least able to give it. He was an emissary from the "Youth's Companion," who threatened or cajoled me into a vow to supply him with a certain number of stories. My private suspicion is that I have just about at this present time completed my share in that ancient bargain, so patient and long-suffering has this pleasant paper been with me. I took particular delight in that especial visit, remembering the time when the "Companion" gave my first pious little sentence to print, and paid me with the paper for a year.