We set sail for Thousand Island Park and have a real good time, but Josiah murmurs about Coney.
25
CHAPTER TWO
WE SET SAIL FOR THOUSAND ISLAND
PARK AND HAVE A REAL GOOD TIME,
BUT JOSIAH MURMURS ABOUT CONEY.
Soon after, Whitfield wuz obleeged to go to Canada agin on that bizness and go through them Thousand Islands, and said he felt like jumpin’ off the boat, swimmin’ ashore and buyin’ the hull on ’em, they wuz so entrancin’ly lovely. But by holdin’ onto his principles and patience (of course he’d got quite a lot of patience, he’d been married a number of years) he managed to git through without jumpin’ off the boat and tacklin’ the job of buyin’ ’em, but said to himself, “If my life is spared to finish up that bizness I’ll come back and buy ten or a dozen.”
So sure enough on his way back he stopped off at Alexandria Bay and tackled a real estate agent to see what he would ask for a few islands close to the beautiful Bay. He had a idee, I spoze, of locatin’ the relation on his side and hern round on the different Islands, mebby an 26 island apiece. But to his surprise and horrow he found that the price for the smallest one wuz appallin’. But he vowed that if it took every cent of money he had (and he’s quite well off) he would own a piece of one big enough for a house.
So, after searchin’ both by water and by land, he found a buildin’ spot he felt able to buy. It wuz on one end of an island that wuz called Shadow Island, mebby because the shadder of the tall trees upon it wuz mirrored so plain in the water, makin’ it look as if there wuz another and fairer isle below.
There wuz a big empty house standin’ on one end of the Island, the owner bein’ in Europe and not wantin’ to rent it. There wuz a portion of it smooth and grassy, though the grass wuz kinder thin in places, the rocks come up so clost to the surface. But as I told Whitfield, stun is cleaner than dirt, and more healthy, unless you have ’em both throwed at you, in that case dirt is more healthy. He said the spot wuz dry and there wuz some hemlock and pine trees standin’ on one end on’t, and under ’em wuz a carpet of the rich brown leaves and pine needles that Whitfield thought would be beautiful for little Delight to play in. 27
And on the spot he’d picked out for a house the soil wuz deep enough for a good suller. Tirzah Ann always did love sullers; she kinder took to ’em. She has to go down suller most the first thing when she comes home visitin’. She never seems to want anything, only to sort o’ look round. Some say her ma wuz so; but there is worse things to take to than sullers, and I wuz glad enough there wuz a place there where Tirzah Ann could have one.
Well, I declare I fell in love with the place myself. And he beset us to go out and see it, and early in the summer we sot sail, the hull on us, for the Thousand Island Park, a good noble campin’ ground, though middlin’ hot in some spots. I’ve been asked what made it so much hotter there round the Tabernacle than it was up to Summer Land, where the Universalists wuz encamped. And I don’t spoze it is because they believe in hotter places, but it kinder sets folks to thinkin’. Both places are pleasant and cool enough in moderate weather.
I hadn’t no idee that so beautiful a spot wuz so nigh us. For as near as we’ve lived to ’em, Josiah and I never laid eyes on them islands before. But I’ve hearn of folks that lived within’ hearin’ of Niagara Falls that never see 28 that grand and stupendous wonder of the world; they didn’t see it just because they could. Queer, hain’t it? But it is a law of nater, and can’t be changed.
So one warm lovely mornin’ we sot out. We went by way of Cape Vincent which we found afterwards wuzn’t the nearest way, but we didn’t care, for it gin us a bigger and longer view of the noble St. Lawrence. Cape Vincent is a good-lookin’ place, though like Josiah and myself, it looks as if it had been more lively and frisky in its younger days. Pretty soon the big boat hove in sight. We embarked and got good seats, Whitfield full of bliss to think he wuz started for his islands.
And sure enough, tongue can never tell the beauty and grandeur we floated by that afternoon; nor pen can’t, no, a quill pen made out of a eagle’s wing couldn’t soar high enough. And my emotions, as I took in that seen, would been a perfect sight if anybody could got holt of ’em, as I rode along on that mighty river that is more like a ocean than a river, holdin’ the water that flows from the five great inland seas of North America, the only absolutely tide-less river in the world. It is so immense in size that the spring freshets that disturbs other big 29 rivers has no effect on its mighty depths, though once in a while, every three years, I think it is, the river draws in her old breath in an enormous sithe two or three feet deep, and stays so for some time. I d’no what makes it nor nobody duz. But truly there is enough in this old world to sithe about, as deep sithes as a mortal or a river can heave.
But to resoom forwards. The beautiful river bore us onwards, the green shores receedin’ on each side till pretty soon it got to be not much shore but seemin’ly all river, all freshness and freedom and blue sparklin’ water, and blue sky above. Nater wuz foldin’ us in her faithful arms and sweepin’ us away from the too civilized world into the freshness and onstudied beauty of her own hants.
I sot there perfectly entranced, and nothin’ occurred to break my rapt musin’s save my pardner’s request for a nut cake and a biled egg, and a longin’ murmer about Coney Island and a wish that he wuz started for there. But that didn’t seem to quell my emotions down. I handed the food to him with a hand that seemed some distance off from my real self.
The first big island we went by wuz called Carleton. Standin’ on it, loomin’ up tall and 30 solemn and mysterious, wuz some high stun towers. They stood up there as if tellin’ us how little we knew. They looked like great exclamation points set there to express the futility of our boasted knowledge.
Who built them chimblys? Who started the fires under ’em? Who drinked the tea that wuz steeped there? What kind of tea wuz it? Did the water bile? How did them tea drinkers feel and look and act while them chimblys carried off the smoke of their fire? What wuz their highest aspirations and idees? What wuz their deepest joy and keenest pain? What goles did they see ahead on ’em, and did they ever set down on them goles? I can’t tell nor Josiah can’t. A hundred years ago one moulderin’ old head-stun leaned over the grave of one of that company. Wuz it a glad or a sad heart that rested there in that ancient grave? Well, the sadness or the joy is jest as much lost and forgot as the smoke that wafted up towards the sky on the June and December mornin’s of 1600 odd.
As I thought of all these things, them lofty towers riz up like gigantick skeleton fingers outstretched mockin’ly. They seemed to be sayin’ to me and Josiah and the world at large, “You 31 may boast of your inventions, your marvels of this age, your civilization, your glory, your pryin’ into dark continents and unexplored regions of land and science. But what do you know anyway? Of what consequence are you? How soon your life and your memory will be utterly wiped out and forgotten. How soon the careless sun will forget the shadow you cast on the earth’s bosom. How soon the green grass of the forgettin’ earth will grow fresh and untrodden and cover up the traces of your eager footsteps, no matter how deep you thought you had made the track you walked in. How soon it is all wiped away as if it had never been. And Mom Nater, instead of weepin’ over your loss, goes on wreathin’ new flowers for new hands to gather, and mebby forgits to drop even a bud on the dusty mound where you lay sleepin’—the sleep of long forgetfulness.
“Of what account are you anyway? Poor blind voyagers, floatin’ by me jest as so many generations have gone past—canoe and white sails floatin’ along, floatin’ along, comin’ in view of me in the fur blue hazy distance, comin’ into the broad light before me and glidin’ off and disappearin’ in the shadows. Forever