I have seen a great many rules of etiquette for the guidance of country people who go to the city, but I have never run up against a large, blue-book telling city people how to conduct themselves as to avoid adverse criticism while in the country. Every little while some person writes a piece regarding the queer pranks of a countryman in town and acts it out on the stage and makes a whole pile of money on it, but we do not seem to get the other side of this matter at all. What I desire is that you will give us a few hints in regard to the conduct of city people who visit in the rural districts during the heated term. I am not a professional summer-resort tender or anything of that kind, but I am a plain man, that works and slaves in the lumber woods all winter and then blows it in, if you will allow the term, on some New York friends of my wife's who come down, as they state, for the purpose of relaxation, but really to spread themselves out over our new white coverlids with their clothes on, and murmur in a dreamy voice: "Oh, how restful!"
They also kick because we have no elevated trains that will take them down to the depot, whereas I am not able and cannot get enough ahead or forehanded sufficiently to do so, as heaven is my judge.
They bring with them a small son, who is a pale, emaciated little cuss, with a quiet way of catching my three-year-old heifer by the tail and scaring the life out of her that is far beyond his years. His mother thinks he will not live, mayhap, to grow up, and I hope she may not be disappointed. Still he has a good appetite, and one day last summer, besides his meals, he ate:
One pocketful green apples (pippins),
One pocketful green apples (Ben Davis),
Three large steins rhubarb,
One hatful green gooseberries,
Two ginger cookies, without holes,
Three ginger cookies, with holes,
One adult cucumber, with salt on same,
One glass new milk,
Two uncooked hen eggs, on half-shell.
I laid off all that day from haying in order to follow the little rascal around with a lead pencil and a piece of paper and see how much he would eat. That evening I thought what a beautiful night he had selected for his death. The moon was slipping in and out through the frothy, fleece-lined clouds, and I could imagine the angels just behind the battlements putting the celestial bric-a-brac high enough up so that Henry couldn't get hold of it when he came. I had a slow horse concealed behind the barn, with which I intended going for the doctor. It was a horse with which I had failed to get the doctor in time on a similar occasion, and I felt that he could be relied on now.
Night settled down on the riproaring Piscataquis and deepened the shadows at the base of Russell Mountain. The spruce gum tree of the Moosehead Lake region laid aside its work for the day and the common warty toad of the Pine Tree State began to overestimate himself and inflate his person with the bugs of the evening, now and then lighting up his interior with a lightning bug. It was a glorious evening that little Henry had selected and set aside for his death. But he was really the only one in our house who slept well that night, and seemed to wake up thoroughly refreshed. He is still alive as I write and is coming down here in July emptier than ever.
Oh, sir, can you help me? Will you print this poor petition of mine, with the tear-stains on it, and your reply to it in The World and send me a copy of the paper that I can show to Henry's father, who is a cousin of my wife's but otherwise has nothing to which he can point with pride? Yours sincerely,
Eben L. Tewey.
P.S.—I have presumed some on your good nature, because I have been told that you was born here. I am sorry to say that Shirley has never overcome this entirely. It has hurt her with other towns in the State, but you can see yourself that there was no way we could provide against it. My wife sends love, and hopes you will print this letter without giving my name, or if so, with a fictitious name, as they call it, and perhaps it will fall into the hands of those people who come down here every summer with nothing in them but sincere friendship and go home full of victuals. I wish you would put into it some way a piece that says I do not regard a Christmas present of a chalk meershum pipe, with a red celluloid stem, as an offset against a summer's board of a family that has more malaria than good manners. Slap that in, in your genial way, so as not to give offense, and whenever you visit your old birthplace, and want to just let go all holts and have a good time, come right to our house. I have lathed and plastered the cook-room and fitted it up as a kind of Inebriates' Home, and I would feel tickled to death to have you come and see what you think of it.
E. L. T.
P.S. Again. If you print this letter, Slocum would be a good fictitious name to sign to it, and I would want an extra copy of the paper also.
T.
Reply.
Sir: Will you allow me to say that I think it is such letters as the above that create ill-feeling between the people of the country and the people of the city, and cause the relations to be strained, especially those relations that live in the country. Although you are not altogether in the wrong, Eben, and although country people, who live near to nature's heart, have certain inalienable rights which should be respected, yet there is no work on etiquette which covers the case you allude to.
It would be very difficult for me to write out a code of ethics for the government of your relative while in the country, and from the description you give of him I judge that we could not enforce it anyway without calling out the State troops.
I take him to belong to that class of New York business men who are so active doing nothing every day, that in order to impress people with their importance, they are in the habit of pushing a woman or two off the Brooklyn bridge in their wild struggle to get over into the City Hall park and sit down. I presume that he is that kind of a man here, and so we think you ought to get along with him through July and August if we take him for the rest of the year.
He is the kind that would knock down an old woman in the morning, in his efforts to get the first possible elevated train, and then do nothing else all day but try to recover from the shock. I wouldn't be surprised if he ultimately wrote a book on etiquette, which will inform a countryman how to conduct himself while he is in town. Maybe he is writing it now.
I can imagine, Eben, what sad havoc the son of such a man would create in your quiet Piscataquis home. In my mind's eye I can see him trying to carry out his father's lofty notions of refinement and courtesy. I can see his bright smile as he lands at your door and begins to insert himself into your home life, to breathe resinous air of the piney woods, and to pour kerosene into the sugar bowl, to chase the gaudy decalcomanie butterfly, and put angle worms in the churn.
In this man's book on etiquette he will, doubtless, say that should you have occasion while at table to use a toothpick, you should hold a napkin before your mouth while doing so, in order to avoid giving offense to those who are at table. It is not necessary for you to crawl under the table to pick