Viewed in certain aspects, an old barn is far superior to a new one. If you build a new barn, you have no resources. It is all finished, and you know where you are. There is a place for everything, and everything in its place. There is no use in looking for anything. If it is not where it belongs, it will not be anywhere. An old barn, on the contrary, is a mine of wealth. It has nooks and corners full of rubbish waiting to be turned to all manner of beautiful use. Do you want a shingle, a board, a door, a window, a log, a screw, a wedge? There are heaps and piles of them somewhere, if you do not mind cobwebs. The old barn has a sort of sympathy with you, welcomes you to secret recesses, and never snubs you with primness when you are at a pinch: not to mention the dove-cotes, and the martins' nests, and the mouse-holes, and the lurking-places loved of laying hens.
I will tell you a very romantic story, too, about this old barn.—Once, a great many years before any of us were born, there lived on this plantation a charming young princess, beloved by all who knew her. One day the king sent word that he was coming down to sup with her. But it so happened that on the day the king was to come to supper, the princess and all her household were to be away on an excursion which was called in the somewhat homely language of that day a "clam-bake." However, the princess concluded to go to the clam-bake, and come home in season to sit with the king at supper. So they cooked mightily beforehand. For it was the fixed law of royal suppers in that day to have cream-toast, the cream flowing in rivers, cheese and jelly, pound-cake and plum-cake, and cranberry-tart, and three kinds of pie, mince, apple, and squash, or die! Whereat the people of other countries laughed; but they ate the suppers, for all that,—the starvelings,—and came again. So the pies were all made with elaborate scalloped edges, and the hoar-frost of the cake; and all was set carefully away, awaiting the eventful hour, and the princess and her household went forth and locked the door behind them, the princess taking the front-door key, and her chief steward the postern. And when the time was fully come, the princess left the clam-bake, and waited by the roadside till the king came by, and then they both went together to the princess' house. And as they went up the steps to the house, the charming young princess, who never drank tea herself, said seductively to the king, "Do you mind, if you don't have tea? It is a great trouble every way, and the self-denial will do you good." And the king, lured into a wrong story by the music of her voice, suppressed a rising sigh, and said no, it was no matter. And then the princess unlocked the door, and essayed to go in; but though the door was unlocked, it refused to open. And suddenly the unhappy princess bethought herself that she had locked the door upon the inside, and bolted it, and herself passed out through the postern-gate, of which her lord high-steward still held the key. So there they were. Then, troubled, they marched hither and thither around the house with stately and majestic step, trying every door and window, and finding every avenue of approach barricaded except the sink-nose, which Libby prisoners might try, intent on getting out, but not a constitutional monarch, however anxious to get in. As two mice, lurking near the full cheese-safe, prowl around the crevices, braving cold and darkness in the middle of the night; safe on the shelf the cheese reposes, unmindful; they, fierce and heedless with anger, rave against it out of reach and emit a squeal; a rage for eating, collected from a long fast, and throats dry from curd, urge them on: not otherwise anger inflamed the king and princess surveying the walls, and anguish burned in their bones; by what way they might obtain access; in what manner they might dislodge the rations shut up in inaccessible places. Nequicquam! They could only look at each other with a wild surmise, and then, unfriended, melancholy, slow, betake themselves to the rude shelter and frugal fare of the barn. Then the scene was suddenly changed. The westering sun came serenely in. The dreamy mist of graceful cobwebs, festooning and fantastic, and many a tiny window all adust, softened his brilliancy to a dim, religious light. The brown old rafters shone, amber-hued, in that mellow glory. The rough floors were fretted gold. A hundred summer sunsets glowed in the yellow corn that lay massed in ridged and burnished splendor. Mounds of apples, ruddy and round, loaded the air with their rich fragrance. Innumerable clover-blossoms, succulent with evening dews and morning showers, impurpled in the dusky silence of June nights, and cut down with all their sweetness in them, treasured up their dense deliciousness for balm-breathed cows, but did not disdain to flood our human sphere with tides of pleasant perfume. Meeting and mingling with these dear home-scents came gales from far Spice Islands and Araby the Blest, breathing over wild Western seas, to be tangled in pungent grasses and freight with welcome burden our rustic gondolas. (I mean English hay and salt hay.) And there, soothed into exceeding peace by Nature's subtile lullaby, borne into ethereal realms on her clouds of unseen incense, all through the golden afternoon sat the king and princess, discoursing dreamily of the time
"when men
With angels may participate, and find
No inconvenient date, nor too light fare;
And from these corporal nutriments perhaps
Our bodies may at last turn all to spirit."
While ever and anon a squat old hen or an elegant young rooster would hop up the steps and tread into the rooms, looking curiously at the unwonted sight, whereat the king would rise from his throne on an old cider-cask, and make a right royal speech, "Go to! Base intruder!"—emphasizing his peroration by hurling an ear of corn at his visitors, which, as our wayward sisters were wont to say, when our generals had done them a particularly bad turn, was just what they wanted. So the afternoon sang itself peacefully away; only the princess was of an evil mind, and would mar the king's pleasure, when he was solacing himself with a remainder-biscuit brought in the princess' basket from the clam-bake, by saying, "Do you see that window? There is the closet where the cake is kept. Just behind that clapboard stands the jar of jam. Two feet to the right, I should think, reposes a cranberry-tart, the crust flaky and fantastic as a January snow-wreath, the jelly rich and red as the curve of Fantasima's lip"; and then the king would roll his eyes around at her in a fine frenzy, and gnaw his crust with a still more wrathful despair.—And that is the end of my romance of the barn.
Still, it must be confessed, an old barn is not without its disadvantages, which the impartial historian must not pass silently by. It shakes wonderfully in a high wind. You hardly dare drive a nail anywhere, for fear the whole edifice should rattle down over your head. We desired to set up in the loft one of Dr. Dio Lewis's jumping-machines; but, upon minute investigation, Halicarnassus said no,—with the first antic we should find ourselves in the barn-cellar. In short, an old barn, in an advanced stage of disintegration, must be treated as tenderly as a loveress. (There seems to be a movement nowadays towards the introduction of feminine nouns; so I venture to make my contribution.)
When the seeds were to be sown, it became necessary to shut up the hens,—necessary, but difficult. I closed the door myself every night with unwearied assiduity, but bright and early every morning came the homely hens and the stately-stepping rooster, treading and pecking as innocently as if they had never suspected they were on forbidden ground. I instituted a search one day; and no wonder they got out. We might have barricaded the door to our heart's content, and they would have tossed their crests in scorn. For there, directly under their perch, was a great hole in the side of the edifice. Hole do I say? It was many holes run into one. Hole was the rule, and barn the exception. It was vacancy bounded by a rough, serrate-dentate coast of decayed boards. It is little to say chicken,—an elephant might have contemplated imprisonment there undismayed. Of course reparation must be made, or farewell, dream of early peas! At the same time, the evil to be remedied was so overgrown, and a monster evil to be disposed of is so much greater an undertaking than a mere new measure to be carried, that I think it no exaggeration, but at worst only what we classic writers call synecdoche, to say, as I did at the beginning of this paper, that I went out to build a barn.
What brilliant success would have crowned heroic effort, if knowledge had been, as the old copy-books used to say it was, power! It was clear enough what needed to be done, and there was abundance of material to do it with,—plenty of boards, a little rough, to be sure, and plenty of nails, a little rusty. But boards are so uncommonly heavy! and a ladder affords a footing at once so contracted and so uncertain! and a hammer has such a will of its own, coming down with ill-timed fervor in the most unexpected places! And when a board has been lifted and pulled and balanced by main force into position, it takes both hands to hold it there; and then how are you going to drive in the nails to make it stay, I should like to know, especially with your ladder continually threatening a change of base? I am confident, moreover, that our boards were made of mahogany, or some other impenetrable substance; for when, by dexterous manipulation, by close crowding up against them, and holding them up with my elbows, I at length proceeded to strike an effective blow, do you think the nail went in? Not in the least. It did everything else. It skewed off to one side, it doubled up, it snapped short, it plunged about frantically whenever it was touched, to say nothing of the not innumerous occasions on which the stroke aimed at its unprincipled head fell with crushing force—elsewhere. Then my strength would begin to fail, and the board would slowly, slowly slide away from me, till I let it go, and it dashed with a crash to the ground.
Then, to use the language of the poet,—
"A man I know,
But shall not discover,
Since ears are dull,
And time discloses,"
was aroused to unwonted activity by the pounding, and sauntered out into the midst of the mêlée. I do not know how long he had been watching me; for I was so absorbed in my architectural problem as to be dead to the outer world; but into the recesses of my complications penetrated a sound which seemed very much like what the world's people call a—a—a—snicker! I looked around, and there he was. Very sober, very blameless, having very much the air of being just arrived; but could my ears deceive me? Then up spake I, cheerily, "O Halicarnassus, you are just in time to hold this board steady while I hammer it on,"—as if I had that moment adjusted it for the first time. He took his stand under the ladder, and held on as I told him, with a beautiful docility. I did not hurry in selecting a nail; for he was strong, and I thought it would do him good to be in an uncomfortable position a little while, particularly as I was not quite satisfied about the—half-suppressed, broken laugh (definition of snicker given by "The Best").