10
HEJIRA
We found we were a bit tied in the Middle West, caught somewhat whether we liked it or not, in the meshes of possession. Steve and I had liked it much out on the Southern California strand.... When one reads in the earlier book,[12] the stress that we put on building that big stone house on Lake Erie; this felicitous hejira may disconcert.
The fact is, we wearied of possession. We found ourselves yearning for that beauty which is unconfined. We were athirst for new things, a different break of seasons and taxes.... The world was so full of people who could build and buy and own and insure, that we decided we should be doing the things that the others could not. We were glad to have built the house for the other fellow. We had to do it. We learned how to run it well, in and out—but it was a stone house. When a man builds a stone house with walls eighteen inches thick, he must leave a hole to get out; also he must be sure that he isn't building on his own chest.... In true Hive spirit, we renounced at the highest moment of possession.
The crowd cannot be seen by one who stands in the crowd. On the same basis a man cannot see the relation of his house to the road or garden from the inside of the house. The world must be regarded from outside to be seen as a whole. The New Race is determined to see it so. This outside is none other than the mystical viewpoint of all world artists and builders.
One does not know what friends are, until one discovers that the secret of friendship is not in getting but in giving. No one knows what love is until he reverses all the laws that the many follow now. I do not mean lawlessness. I mean the higher law that is found at last by the quester after goodness, beauty and truth. We have to finish with the world as it is before we set out in quest of a better country.... We found that we had to become active servants of a finer ideal than householding at its highest. We determined to do more than to dream this ideal; we set about to make a better country. At worst, we work for our children.
It came to us many times before we moved that we were forever done with things as they are; that we had come to the end of show and property-measure and hoarding; to the end of the love of self which destroys the vision for friendship; to the end of domesticity which holds one's neighbour as prey or rival; to the end of civic identification, or relation with any federated commonwealth, which fancies its existence threatened by the prosperity of other political bodies. No heat about it.
We came to the edge of the Lake in vanloads; we went away with bags.... I turned from the eastern distance on the bluff, on one of the last days, and looked at the vined study and the big stone house, the elms so strong and green about it. I remembered the early picture of all this. It began from Stevenson's Treasure of Franchard, many years ago,—how old Dr. Duprez went out in the morning and tried grapes and plums with the dew on them, sniffing the perfumes of his own yard, dwelling in his own orchards.
I remember one day before building that the man came to us about the young trees. He had pictures of them in books—blooms and fruits of such colours that nature would never be guilty of—all the fruits I heard of as a boy—white grapes that never grow in this country, purple ones that grow whether you care or not....