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I DIDN’T make you know how glad I was | |
To have you come and camp here on our land. | |
I promised myself to get down some day | |
And see the way you lived, but I don’t know! | |
With a houseful of hungry men to feed | 5 |
I guess you’d find…. It seems to me | |
I can’t express my feelings any more | |
Than I can raise my voice or want to lift | |
My hand (oh, I can lift it when I have to). | |
Did ever you feel so? I hope you never. | 10 |
It’s got so I don’t even know for sure | |
Whether I am glad, sorry, or anything. | |
There’s nothing but a voice-like left inside | |
That seems to tell me how I ought to feel, | |
And would feel if I wasn’t all gone wrong. | 15 |
You take the lake. I look and look at it. | |
I see it’s a fair, pretty sheet of water. | |
I stand and make myself repeat out loud | |
The advantages it has, so long and narrow, | |
Like a deep piece of some old running river | 20 |
Cut short off at both ends. It lies five miles | |
Straight away through the mountain notch | |
From the sink window where I wash the plates, | |
And all our storms come up toward the house, | |
Drawing the slow waves whiter and whiter and whiter. | 25 |
It took my mind off doughnuts and soda biscuit | |
To step outdoors and take the water dazzle | |
A sunny morning, or take the rising wind | |
About my face and body and through my wrapper, | |
When a storm threatened from the Dragon’s Den, | 30 |
And a cold chill shivered across the lake. | |
I see it’s a fair, pretty sheet of water, | |
Our Willoughby! How did you hear of it? | |
I expect, though, everyone’s heard of it. | |
In a book about ferns? Listen to that! | 35 |
You let things more like feathers regulate | |
Your going and coming. And you like it here? | |
I can see how you might. But I don’t know! | |
It would be different if more people came, | |
For then there would be business. As it is, | 40 |
The cottages Len built, sometimes we rent them, | |
Sometimes we don’t. We’ve a good piece of shore | |
That ought to be worth something, and may yet. | |
But I don’t count on it as much as Len. | |
He looks on the bright side of everything, | 45 |
Including me. He thinks I’ll be all right | |
With doctoring. But it’s not medicine— | |
Lowe is the only doctor’s dared to say so— | |
It’s rest I want—there, I have said it out— | |
From cooking meals for hungry hired men | 50 |
And washing dishes after them—from doing | |
Things over and over that just won’t stay done. | |
By good rights I ought not to have so much | |
Put on me, but there seems no other way. | |
Len says one steady pull more ought to do it. | 55 |
He says the best way out is always through. | |
And I agree to that, or in so far | |
As that I can see no way out but through— | |
Leastways for me—and then they’ll be convinced. | |
It’s not that Len don’t want the best for me. | 60 |
It was his plan our moving over in | |
Beside the lake from where that day I showed you | |
We used to live—ten miles from anywhere. | |
We didn’t change without some sacrifice, | |
But Len went at it to make up the loss. | 65 |
His work’s a man’s, of course, from sun to sun, | |
But he works when he works as hard as I do— | |
Though there’s small profit in comparisons. | |
(Women and men will make them all the same.) | |
But work ain’t all. Len undertakes too much. | 70 |
He’s into everything in town. This year | |
It’s highways, and he’s got too many men | |
Around him to look after that make waste. | |
They take advantage of him shamefully, | |
And proud, too, of themselves for doing so. | 75 |
We have four here to board, great good-for-nothings, | |
Sprawling about the kitchen with their talk | |
While I fry their bacon. Much they care! | |
No more put out in what they do or say | |
Than if I wasn’t in the room at all. | 80 |
Coming and going all the time, they are: | |
I don’t learn what their names are, let alone | |
Their characters, or whether they are safe | |
To have inside the house with doors unlocked. | |
I’m not afraid of them, though, if they’re not | 85 |
Afraid of me. There’s two can play at that. | |
I have my fancies: it runs in the family. | |
My father’s brother wasn’t right. They kept him | |
Locked up for years back there at the old farm. | |
I’ve been away once—yes, I’ve been away. | 90 |
The State Asylum. I was prejudiced; | |
I wouldn’t have sent anyone of mine there; | |
You know the old idea—the only asylum | |
Was the poorhouse, and those who could afford, | |
Rather than send their folks to such a place, | 95 |
Kept them at home; and it does seem more human. | |
But it’s not so: the place is the asylum. | |
There they have every means proper to do with, | |
And you aren’t darkening other people’s lives— | |
Worse than no good to them, and they no good | 100 |
To you in your condition; you can’t know | |
Affection or the want of it in that state. | |
I’ve heard too much of the old-fashioned way. | |
My father’s brother, he went mad quite young. | |
Some thought he had been bitten by a dog, | 105 |
Because his violence took on the form | |
Of carrying his pillow in his teeth; | |
But it’s more likely he was crossed in love, | |
Or so the story goes. It was some girl. | |
Anyway all he talked about was love. | 110 |
They soon saw he would do someone a mischief | |
If he wa’n’t kept strict watch of, and it ended | |
In father’s building him a sort of cage, | |
Or room within a room, of hickory poles, | |
Like stanchions in the barn, from floor to ceiling,— | 115 |
A narrow passage all the way around. | |
Anything they put in for furniture | |
He’d tear to pieces, even a bed to lie on. | |
So they made the place comfortable with straw, | |
Like a beast’s stall, to ease their consciences. | 120 |
Of course they had to feed him without dishes. | |
They tried to keep him clothed, but he paraded | |
With his clothes on his arm—all of his clothes. | |
Cruel—it sounds. I ’spose they did the best | |
They knew. And just when he was at the height, | 125 |
Father and mother married, and mother came, | |
A bride, to help take care of such a creature, | |
And accommodate her young life to his. | |
That was what marrying father meant to her. | |
She had to lie and hear love things made dreadful | 130 |
By his shouts in the night. He’d shout and shout | |
Until the strength was shouted out of him, | |
And his voice died down slowly from exhaustion. | |
He’d pull his bars apart like bow and bow-string, | |
And let them go and make them twang until | 135 |
His hands had worn them smooth as any ox-bow. | |
And then he’d crow as if he thought that child’s play— | |
The only fun he had. I’ve heard them say, though, | |
They found a way to put a stop to it. | |
He was before my time—I never saw him; | 140 |
But the pen stayed exactly as it was | |
There in the upper chamber in the ell, | |
A sort of catch-all full of attic clutter. | |
I often think of the smooth hickory bars. | |
It got so I would say—you know, half fooling— | 145 |
“It’s time I took my turn upstairs in jail”— | |
Just as you will till it becomes a habit. | |
No wonder I was glad to get away. | |
Mind you, I waited till Len said the word. | |
I didn’t want the blame if things went wrong. | 150 |
I was glad though, no end, when we moved out, | |
And I looked to be happy, and I was, | |
As I said, for a while—but I don’t know! | |
Somehow the change wore out like a prescription. | |
And there’s more to it than just window-views | 155 |
And living by a lake. I’m past such help— | |
Unless Len took the notion, which he won’t, | |
And I won’t ask him—it’s not sure enough. | |
I ’spose I’ve got to go the road I’m going: | |
Other folks have to, and why shouldn’t I? | 160 |
I almost think if I could do like you, | |
Drop everything and live out on the ground— | |
But it might be, come night, I shouldn’t like it, | |
Or a long rain. I should soon get enough, | |
And be glad of a good roof overhead. | 165 |
I’ve lain awake thinking of you, I’ll warrant, | |
More than you have yourself, some of these nights. | |
The wonder was the tents weren’t snatched away | |
From over you as you lay in your beds. | |
I haven’t courage for a risk like that. | 170 |
Bless you, of course, you’re keeping me from work, | |
But the thing of it is, I need to be kept. | |
There’s work enough to do—there’s always that; | |
But behind’s behind. The worst that you can do | |
Is set me back a little more behind. | 175 |
I sha’n’t catch up in this world, anyway.
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I’d rather you’d not go unless you must. | |
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