Those Times and These

In nearly every instance, also, the advertisement was accompanied by a halftone picture of a structure greatly resembling the new county court house they are going to have down at Paducah if the bond issue ever passes. This seemed a suitable place for holding circuit court in, or even fiscal court, but it was not exactly the kind of country home that we had pictured for ourselves. As my wife said, just the detail of washing all those windows would keep the girl busy fully half the time. Nor did I care to invest in any sunken gardens. I had sufficient experience in that direction when we lived in the suburbs and permanently invested about half of what I made in our eight-by-ten flower bed in an effort to make it produce the kind of flowers that the florists’ catalogues described. You could not tell us anything about that subject – we knew where a sunken garden derives its name. We paid good money to know.

None of the places advertised in the monthly seemed sufficiently abandoned for our purposes, so for a little while we were in a quandary. Then I had a bright thought. I said to myself that undoubtedly abandoned farms were so cheap the owners did not expect to get any real money for them; they would probably be willing to take something in exchange. So I began buying the evening papers and looking through them in the hope of running across some such item as this:

To Exchange – Abandoned farm, centrally located, with large farmhouse, containing all antique furniture, barns, outbuildings, family graveyard – planted – orchard, woodland, fields – unplanted – for a collection of postage stamps in album, an amateur magician’s outfit, a guitar with book of instructions, a safety bicycle, or what have you? Address Abandoned, South Squantum Center, Connecticut.

I found no such offers, however; and in view of what we had read this seemed stranger still. Finally I decided that the only safe method would be by first-hand investigation upon the spot. I would go by rail to some small but accessible hamlet in the lower part of New England. On arriving there I personally would examine a number of the more attractive abandoned farms in the immediate vicinity and make a discriminating selection. Having reached this conclusion I went to bed and slept peacefully – or at least I went to bed and did so as soon as my wife and I had settled one point that came up unexpectedly at this juncture. It related to the smokehouse. I was in favor of turning the smokehouse into a study or workroom for myself. She thought, though, that by knocking the walls out and altering the roof and building a pergola on to it, it would make an ideal summer house in which to serve tea and from which to view the peaceful landscape of afternoons.

We argued this back and forth at some length, each conceding something to the other’s views; and finally we decided to knock out the walls and alter the roof and have a summer house with a pergola in connection. It was after we reached this compromise that I slept so peacefully, for now the whole thing was as good as settled. I marveled at not having thought of it sooner.

It was on a bright and peaceful morning that I alighted from the train at North Newburybunkport.

Considering that it was supposed to be a typical New England village, North Newbury-bunkport did not appear at first glance to answer to the customary specifications, such as I had gleaned from my reading of novels of New England life. I had expected that the platform would be populated by picturesque natives in quaint clothes, with straws in their mouths and all whittling; and that the depot agent would wear long chin whiskers and say “I vum!” with much heartiness at frequent intervals. Right here I wish to state that so far as my observations go the native who speaks these words about every other line is no longer on the job. Either I Vum the Terrible has died or else he has gone to England to play the part of the typical American millionaire in American plays written by Englishmen.

Instead of the loafers, several chauffeurs were idling about the station and a string of automobiles was drawn up across the road. Just as I disembarked there drove up a large red bus labeled: Sylvan Dale Summer Hotel, European and American Plans. The station agent also proved in the nature of a disappointment. He did not even say “I swan” or “I cal’late!” or anything of that nature. He wore a pink in his buttonhole and his hair was scalloped up off his forehead in what is known as the lion tamer’s roach. Approaching, I said to him:

“In what direction should I go to find some of the abandoned farms of this vicinity? I would prefer to go where there is a good assortment to pick from.”

He did not appear to understand, so I repeated the question, at the same time offering him a cigar.

“Bo,” he said, “you’ve sure got me winging now. You’d better ask Tony Magnito – he runs the garage three doors up the street from here on the other side. Tony does a lot of driving round the country for suckers that come up here, and he might help you.”

To reach the garage I had to cross the road, dodging several automobiles in transit, and then pass two old-fashioned New England houses fronting close up to the sidewalk. One had the sign of a teahouse over the door, and in the window of the other, picture postcards, birch-bark souvenirs and standard varieties of candy were displayed for sale.

Despite his foreign-sounding name, Mr. Magnito spoke fair English – that is, as fair English as any one speaks who employs the Manhattan accent in so doing.

Even after he found out that I did not care to rent a touring car for sightseeing purposes at five dollars an hour he was quite affable and accommodating; but my opening question appeared to puzzle him just as in the case of the depot agent.

“Mister,” he said frankly, “I’m sorry, but I don’t seem to make you. What’s this thing you is looking for? Tell me over again slow.”

Really the ignorance of these villagers regarding one of their principal products – a product lying, so to speak, at their very doors and written about constantly in the public prints – was ludicrous. It would have been laughable if it had not been deplorable. I saw that I could not indulge in general trade terms. I must be painfully explicit and simple.

“What I am seeking” – I said it very slowly and very distinctly – “is a farm that has been deserted, so to speak – one that has outlived its usefulness as a farm proper, and everything like that!”

“Oh,” he says, “now I get you! Why didn’t you say that in the first place? The place you’re looking for is the old Parham place, out here on the post road about a mile. August’ll take good care of you – that’s his specialty.”

“August?” I inquired. “August who?”

“August Weinstopper – the guy who runs it,” he explained. “You must have known August if you lived long in New York. He used to be the steward at that big hotel at Broadway and Forty-second; that was before he came up here and opened up the old Parham place as an automobile roadhouse. He’s cleaning up about a thousand a month. Some class to that mantrap! They’ve got an orchestra, and nothing but vintage goods on the wine card, and dancing at all hours. Any night you’ll see forty or fifty big cars rolling up there, bringing swell dames and – ”

I judge he saw by my expression that he was on a totally wrong tack, because he stopped short.

“Say, mister,” he said, “I guess you’d better step into the post-office here – next door – and tell your troubles to Miss Plummer. She knows everything that’s going on round here – and she ought to, too, seeing as she gets first chance at all the circulars and postal cards that come in. Besides, I gotter be changing that gasoline sign – gas has went up two cents a gallon more.”

Miss Plummer was sorting mail when I appeared at her wicket. She was one of those elderly, spinsterish-looking, kittenish females who seem in an intense state of surprise all the time. Her eyebrows arched like croquet wickets and her mouth made O’s before she uttered them.

“Name, please?” she said twitteringly.

I told her.

“Ah,” she said in the thrilled tone of one who is watching a Fourth of July skyrocket explode in midair. The news seemed to please her.

“And the initials, please?”

“The initials are of no consequence. I do not expect any mail,” I said. “I want merely to ask you a question.”

“Indeed!” she said coyly. She said it as though I had just given her a handsome remembrance, and she cocked her head on one side like a bird – like a hen-bird.

“I hate to trouble you,” I went on, “but I have experienced some difficulty in making your townspeople understand me. I am looking for a certain kind of farm – a farm of an abandoned character.” At once I saw I had made a mistake.

“You do not get my meaning,” I said hastily. “I refer to a farm that has been deserted, closed up, shut down – in short, abandoned. I trust I make myself plain.”

She was still suffering from shock, however. She gave me a wounded-fawn glance and averted her burning face.

“The Prewitt property might suit your purposes – whatever they may be,” she said coldly over her shoulder. “Mr. Jabez Pickerel, of Pickerel & Pike, real-estate dealers, on the first corner above, will doubtless give you the desired information. He has charge of the Prewitt property.”

At last, I said to myself as I turned away, I was on the right track. Mr. Pickerel rose as I entered his place of business. He was a short, square man, with a brisk manner and a roving eye.

“I have been directed to you,” I began. He seized my hand and began shaking it warmly. “I have been told,” I continued, “that you have charge of the old Prewitt farm somewhere near here; and as I am in the market for an aban-” I got no farther than that.

“In one minute,” he shouted explosively – “in just one minute!”

Still clutching me by the hand, he rushed me pell-mell out of the place. At the curbing stood a long, low, rakish racing-model roadster, looking something like a high-powered projectile and something like an enlarged tailor’s goose. Leaping into this machine at one bound, he dragged me up into the seat beside him and threw on the power. Instantly we were streaking away at a perfectly appalling rate of speed – fully forty-five to fifty-five miles an hour I should say. You never saw anything so sudden in your life. It was exactly like a kidnaping. It was only by the exercise of great self-control that I restrained myself from screaming for help. I had the feeling that I was being abducted – for what purpose I knew not.

As we spun round a corner on two wheels, spraying up a long furrow of dust, the same as shown in pictures of the chariot race in Ben-Hur, a man with a watch in his hand and wearing a badge – a constable, I think – ran out of a house that had a magistrate’s sign over it and threw up his hand authoritatively, as though to stop us; but my companion yelled something the purport of which I could not distinguish and the constable fell back. Glancing rearward over my shoulder I saw him halting another car bearing a New York license that did not appear to be going half so fast as we were.

In another second we were out of town, tearing along a country highway. Evidently sensing the alarm expressed by my tense face and strained posture, this man Pickerel began saying something in what was evidently intended to be a reassuring tone; but such was the roaring of the car that I could distinguish only broken fragments of his speech. I caught the words “unparalleled opportunity,” repeated several times – the term appeared to be a favorite of his – and “marvelous proposition.” Possibly I was not listening very closely anyhow, my mind being otherwise engaged. For one thing I was surmising in a general sort of way upon the old theory of the result when the irresistible force encounters the immovable object. I was wondering how long it would be before we hit something solid and whether it would be possible afterward to tell us apart. His straw hat also made me wonder. I had mine clutched in both hands and even then it fluttered against my bosom like a captive bird, but his stayed put. I think yet he must have had threads cut in his head to match the convolutions of the straw and screwed his hat on, like a nut on an axle.

I have a confused recollection of rushing with the speed of the tornado through rows of trees; of leaping from the crest of one small hill to the crest of the next small hill; of passing a truck patch with such velocity that the lettuce and tomatoes and other things all seemed to merge together in a manner suggestive of a well-mixed vegetable salad.

Then we swung off the main road in between the huge brick columns of an ornate gateway that stood alone, with no fence in connection. We bumpily traversed a rutted stretch of cleared land; and then with a jar and a jolt we came to a pause in what appeared to be a wide and barren expanse.

As my heart began to throb with slightly less violence I looked about me for the abandoned farmhouse. I had conceived that it would be white with green blinds and that it would stand among trees. It was not in sight; neither were the trees. The entire landscape presented an aspect that was indeed remarkable. Small numbered stakes, planted in double lines at regular intervals, so as to form aisles, stretched away from us in every direction. Also there were twin rows of slender sticks planted in the earth in a sort of geometric pattern. Some were the size of switches. Others were almost as large as umbrella handles and had sprouted slightly. A short distance away an Italian was steering a dirtscraper attached to a languid mule along a sort of dim roadway. There were no other living creatures in sight. Right at my feet were two painted and lettered boards affixed at cross angles to a wooden upright. The legend on one of these boards was: Grand Concourse. The inscription on the other read: Nineteenth Avenue West. Repressing a gasp, I opened my mouth to speak.

“Ahem!” I said. “There has been some mistake – ”

“There can be no mistake!” he shouted enthusiastically. “The only mistake possible is not to take advantage of this magnificent opportunity while it is yet possible to do so. Just observe that view!” He waved his arm in the general direction of the horizon from northwest to southeast. “Breathe this air! As a personal favor to me just breathe a little of this air!” He inhaled deeply himself as though to show me how, and I followed suit, because after that ride I needed to catch up with my regular breathing.

“Thank you!” I said gratefully when I had finished breathing. “But how about – ”

“Quite right!” he cried, beaming upon me admiringly. “Quite right! I don’t blame you. You have a right to know all the details. As a business man you should ask that question. You were about to say: But how about the train service? Ah, there spoke the true business man, the careful investor! Twenty fast trains a day each way – twenty, sir! Remember! And as for accessibility – well, accessibility is simply no name for it! Only two or three minutes from the station. You saw how long it took us to get here to-day? Well, then, what more could you ask? Right here,” he went on, pointing, “is the country club – a magnificent thing!”

I looked, but I didn’t see anything except a hole in the ground about fifty feet from us.

“Where?” I asked. “I don’t see it.”

“Well,” he said, “this is where it is going to be. You automatically become a member of the country club; in fact, you are as good as a member now! And right up there at the corner of Lincoln Boulevard and Washington Parkway, where that scraper is, is the public library – the site for it! You’ll be crazy about the public library! When we get back I’ll let you run over the plans for the public library while I’m fixing up the papers. Oh, ‘my friend, how glad I am you came while there was yet time!”

I breasted the roaring torrent of his pouring language.

“One minute,” I begged of him – “One minute, if you please! I am obliged to you for the interest you take in me, a mere stranger to you; but there has been a misunderstanding. I wanted to see the Prewitt place.”

“This is the Prewitt place,” he said.

“Yes,” I said; “but where is the house? And why all this – why all these-” I indicated by a wave of my hand what I meant.

“Naturally,” he explained, “the house is no longer here. We tore it away – it was old; whereas everything here will be new, modern and up-to-date. This is – or was – the Prewitt place, now better known as Homecrest Heights, the Development Ideal!” Having begun to capitalize his words, he continued to do so. “The Perfect Addition! The Suburb Superb! Away From the City’s Dust and Heat! Away From Its Glamor and Clamor! Into the Open! Into the Great Out-of-Doors! Back to the Soil! Villa Plots on Easy Terms! You Furnish the Birds, We Furnish the Nest! The Place For a Business Man to Rear His Family! You Are Married? You Have a Wife? You Have Little Ones?”

“Yes,” I said, “one of each – one wife and one little one.”

“Ah!” he cried gladly. “One Little One – How Sweet! You Love Your Little One – Ah, Yes! Yes! You Desire to Give Your Little One a Chance? You Would Give Her Congenial Surroundings – Refined Surroundings? You Would Inculcate in Her While Young the Love of Nature?” He put an entire sentence into capitals now: “Give Your Little One a Chance! That is All I Ask of You!”

He had me by both lapels. I thought he was going to kneel to me in pleading. I feared he might kiss me. I raised him to his feet. Then his manner changed – it became domineering, hectoring, almost threatening.

I will pass briefly over the events of the succeeding hour, including our return to his lair or office. Accounts of battles where all the losses fall upon one side are rarely interesting to read about anyway. Suffice it to say that at the last minute I was saved. It was a desperate struggle though. I had offered the utmost resistance at first, but he would surely have had his way with me – only that a train pulled in bound for the city just as he was showing me, as party of the first part, where I was to sign my name on the dotted line A. Even then, weakened and worn as I was, I should probably not have succeeded in beating him off if he had not been hampered by having a fountain pen in one hand and the documents in the other. At the door he intercepted me; but I tackled him low about the body and broke through and fled like a hunted roebuck, catching the last car just as the relief train pulled out of the station. It was a close squeeze, but I made it. The thwarted Mr. Pickerel wrote me regularly for some months thereafter, making mention of My Little One in every letter; but after a while I took to sending the letters back to him unopened, and eventually he quit.

I reached home along toward evening. I was tired, but I was not discouraged. I reported progress on the part of the committee on a permanent site, but told my wife that in order to find exactly what we wanted it would be necessary for us to leave the main-traveled paths. It was now quite apparent to me that the abandoned farm-seeker who stuck too closely to the railroad lines was bound to be thrown constantly in contact with those false and feverish metropolitan influences which, radiating from the city, have spread over the country like the spokes of a wheel or an upas tree, or a jauga-naut, or something of that nature. The thing to do was to get into an automobile and go away from the principal routes of travel, into districts where the abandoned farms would naturally be more numerous.

This solved one phase of the situation – we now knew definitely where to go. The next problem was to decide upon some friend owning an automobile. We fixed upon the Winsells. They are charming people! We are devoted to the Winsells. They were very good friends of ours when they had their small four-passenger car; but since they sold the old one and bought a new forty-horse, seven-passenger car, they are so popular that it is hard to get hold of them for holidays and week-ends.

Every Saturday – nearly – some one of their list of acquaintances is calling them up to tell of a lovely spot he has just heard about, with good roads all the way, both coming and going; but after a couple of disappointments we caught them when they had an open date. Over the telephone Winsell objected that he did not know anything about the roads up in Connecticut, but I was able to reassure him promptly on that score. I told him he need not worry about that – that I would buy the road map myself. So on a fair Saturday morning we started.

The trip up through the extreme lower end of the state of New York was delightful, being marred by only one or two small mishaps. There was the trifling incident of a puncture, which delayed us slightly; but fortunately the accident occurred at a point where there was a wonderful view of the Croton Lakes, and while Winsell was taking off the old tire and adjusting a new one we sat very comfortably in the car, enjoying Nature’s panorama.

It was a little later on when we hit a dog. It seemed to me that this dog merely sailed, yowling, up into the air in a sort of long curve, but Winsell insisted that the dog described a parabola. I am very glad that in accidents of this character it is always the victims that describe the parabola. I know I should be at a complete loss to describe one myself. Unless it is something like the boomerang of the Australian aborigines I do not even know what a parabola is. Nor did I dream until then that Winsell understood the dog language. However, those are but technical details.

After we crossed the state line we got lost several times; this was because the country seemed to have a number of roads the road map omitted, and the road map had many roads the country had left out. Eventually, though, we came to a district of gently rolling hills, dotted at intervals with those neat white-painted villages in which New England excels; and between the villages at frequent intervals were farmhouses. Abandoned ones, however, were rarer than we had been led to expect. Not only were these farms visibly populated by persons who appeared to be permanently attached to their respective localities, but at many of them things were offered for sale – such as home-made pastry, souvenirs, fresh poultry, antique furniture, brass door-knockers, milk and eggs, hand-painted crockery, table board, garden truck, molasses taffy, laundry soap and livestock.

At length, though, when our necks were quite sore from craning this way and that on the watch for an abandoned farm that would suit us, we came to a very attractive-looking place facing a lawn and flanked by an orchard. There was a sign fastened to an elm tree alongside the fence. The sign read: For Information Concerning This Property Inquire Within.

To Winsell I said:

“Stop here – this is without doubt the place we have been looking for!”

Filled – my wife and I – with little thrills of anticipation, we all got out. I opened the gate and entered the yard, followed by Winsell, my wife and his wife. I was about halfway up the walk when a large dog sprang into view, at the same time showing his teeth in rather an intimidating way. To prevent an encounter with an animal that might be hostile, I stepped nimbly behind the nearest tree. As I came round on the other side of the tree there, to my surprise, was this dog face to face with me. Still desiring to avoid a collision with him, I stepped back the other way. Again I met the dog, which was now growling. The situation was rapidly becoming embarrassing when a gentleman came out upon the porch and called sharply to the dog. The dog, with apparent reluctance, retired under the house and the gentleman invited us inside and asked us to be seated. Glancing about his living room I noted that the furniture appeared to be a trifle modern for our purposes; but, as I whispered to my wife, you cannot expect to have everything to suit you at first. With the sweet you must ever take the bitter – that I believe is true, though not an original saying.

In opening the conversation with the strange gentleman I went in a businesslike way direct to the point.

“You are the owner of these premises?” I asked. He bowed. “I take it,” I then said, “that you are about to abandon this farm?”

“I beg your pardon?” he said, as though confused.

“I presume,” I explained, “that this is practically an abandoned farm.”

“Not exactly,” he said. “I’m here.”

“Yes, yes; quite so,” I said, speaking perhaps a trifle impatiently. “But you are thinking of going away from it, aren’t you?”