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So instead of running away I remained and tried to give her a truthful picture of border conditions. She understood my words but she could not visualize what the cabins stood for. They were so many humble habitations, undesirable for the town-bred to dwell in, rather than the symbols of many, happy American homes.
So far, I find, I have chiefly dealt with the Art of Putting Things as practised by the "urbane" or town-bred classes. Let me give a few instances of "pagan" or countrified use. A village blacksmith was describing to me with unaffected pathos the sudden death of his very aged father; "and," he added, "the worst part of it was that I had to go and break it to my poor old mother."
Every town-bred person who travels in a rich country region, knows what it is to see a neat white house planted in a pretty situation, in a shrubbery, or commanding a sunny common, or nestling between two hills, and to say to himself, as the carriage sweeps past its gate, "I should like to live there," "I could be very happy in that pretty place."
But, what was more interesting to us, he had detailed record of the period of the change to the present state of things, and told us a great deal about it, and especially of that exodus of the people from the town to the country, and the gradual recovery by the town-bred people on one side, and the country-bred people on the other, of those arts of life which they had each lost; which loss, as he told us, had at one time gone so far that not only was it impossible to find a carpenter or a smith in a village or small country town, but that people in such places had even forgotten how to bake bread, and that at Wallingford, for instance, the bread came down with the newspapers by an early train from London, worked in some way, the explanation of which I could not understand.
Then, at times, she would become almost animated in conversation, listening with lively interest to all I told her about the great world of which she was so ignorant, and laughing, too, at her own ignorance of things known to every town-bred child.
Even if they noticed them, they probably never dreamed of any connexion between the puppet of corn-stalks on the sunny stubble-field and the marble divinity in the shady coolness of the temple. Still the writings even of these town-bred and cultured persons afford us an occasional glimpse of a Demeter as rude as the rudest that a remote German village can show.
Here comes another with a sou'-wester and a bombazine cloak. No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one I mean a downright bumpkin dandy a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands.
Once more a young man was telling his love, was placing in her hands all he had to give; and once more she could but hearken in mute embarrassment, only saved from awkwardness by her immobility and silence. Town-bred girls had thought her stupid, when she was but honest and truthful; very close to nature which takes no account of words.
Andrew, emerging suddenly from the wings, stood wonder-stricken. "But you are a bird-woman," said he. "I have heard of such, but never seen one." From that moment, the town-bred, town-compelled woman who had thought of bird-life only in terms of sparrows, set about to test her unsuspected powers.
It would have been still more remarkable if the ill-conditioned, thin- blooded, town-bred "servants" and apprentices had not suffered first and most. It is significant that eight out of nine of the male "servants" should have died in the first four months. It was impossible that scurvy should not have been prevalent with both passengers and crew.
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