Part 7
"We seek efficiency, or, perhaps, it would be truer to say that we seek the immediate product of efficiency, which is joy. Joy is not pleasure, but the satisfaction of creation. Making money gives pleasure, no doubt, to the artist; his joy, however, comes only from seeing the picture grow under his brush, from feeling that he is bringing something new into the world. It is this joy which, in some form or other, man always seeks."
Man always seeks joy, and he can find it when skidding logs as easily as when painting a picture, and the effort in one case is as noble as in the other. Joy is always evanescent, but I clung to my moment as long as I could.
The poise of my soul is starry high, And wild words rush to my lips As the thought of the world goes racing by Like sunshine after eclipse.
And then, and then I had to come back to the earth and tackle another log. But what does it matter? All things are in the day's work just the same, whether it be heaving on a handspike or doing paragraphs that are wickedly designed--to parody Shelley:
"To pump up oaths from financiers, and grind The gentle spirits of our meek reviews."
In the everyday world where we drudge joylessly most of the time everything seems to be at sixes and sevens, and we could hardly endure it were it not for the moments when something jars us out of ourselves into accord with the great purpose of all things. And I firmly believe that every being that draws the breath of life has such moments, though he may not know how to give them expression. It is in such moments that we feel that all men are free and equal. The joy of the ditcher who accomplishes his task supremely well is the same as that of the millionaire who puts through a successful deal, or of the artist or poet. It is nonsense to say that all the poetry of the world has been written. Every moment of joy is a living poem, and such moments come to all of us somehow, some time.
_March 7._--When the quail came right up to the door I might have known that something good was going to happen. It was during the cold spell--the lion spell--in the beginning of March. Everything was buried under snow and at seven o'clock in the morning the thermometer had touched ten degrees below zero. I was doing the chores at the stable when I heard the quail whistling in the orchard and fully intended going to have a look at them, to see how they were wintering. I had not set out feed for them for, alas, there are enough weeds on the place and in the neighbourhood to feed them fat. But to resume. When I had finished the chores and was starting towards the house I struck the tracks of the quail, looking like a picture of loosely strung barbed wire on the snow. To my surprise I found that they were headed straight for the house. In growing amazement I followed them until they passed around the corner of the house and then I saw the marks of their wings on the snow where they had taken flight, within ten feet of the front door. I felt really disappointed when I found that they had paid me a visit and I had not been at home. I do not know of many from whom I would have so thoroughly enjoyed a little call. No one in the house had noticed them, but judging from the excitement of Sheppy, the dog, he must have seen them and perhaps had something to do with their flight. He kept running about nosing their tracks and barking. It made me feel that I am being accepted in the country, now that the quail are so friendly. They are very careful about their neighbours and it is not every one they are willing to chum with.
On the very next morning after the visit of the quail spring came. The temperature rose fifty degrees in a few hours, a warm wind drove from the south, and almost before we could realise what was happening the snow was a memory. The crows had taken possession of the woods and the sky and were talking crow politics till you couldn't hear yourself think. A couple of song sparrows fluttered around the orchard, but it was too early for them to begin singing. The first thing we knew winter was under foot, beaten to earth by the wind and the sun. Only in the frost under the soft mud was there any trace of it. Then some one said: "I'll bet the sap is running to-day." After a conference in which the prospects of this kind of weather lasting were fully discussed we got the brace and bit and the spiles and began to rinse the sap-buckets. Then we went to the woods and started to tap in earnest. Before the bit could be withdrawn from the first hole the sap was already trickling down the bark. There was no doubt of it! Sap was running! With the help of a little boy who was just tall enough to reach up and hang the buckets on the spiles we went at the work with a will and soon the "tink-tunk" of the falling drops could be heard in every direction. The grave little helper picked what he called "a big fat tree" for his very own so that he can have plenty of hot syrup and taffy. As we are making maple syrup strictly for our own use we tapped only fifty trees. Wood is so scarce that it makes maple syrup an expensive luxury and the current price would not pay for the fuel used, not to mention the labour and the investment in buckets and the boiling kettle. But, at the present writing, as they say on the editorial page, we have twenty pails of sap gathered, and bright and early to-morrow we are going to boil in. The sap was gathered in the twilight with a new moon, a little moon, shedding its blessing on us, and to-night it is freezing a little. It is perfect sugar-weather!
I simply will not write spring poetry! Nature may tempt me as much as she likes, but I will not yield! Never before did I have so much trouble keeping from this world-worn form of folly. It is simply hissing at the safety valve, but I am keeping a firm grip on myself. The flicker of the sunshine on the roofs and fences, the far blue of the sky, the twittering of the birds, the cackling of the hens, the bawling of the cattle, the barking of the dogs, and the echoes that make the woods alive, all conspire to start my thoughts jigging and my words tinkling in rhyme. But I will not give in! I know, I feel that the world is flooded with the life impulse, with the "elan vital" of Bergson, but I have set my teeth and refuse to give in. The big, wise, absurd world laughs at spring poets and what I am enjoying these days is too good to be laughed at. I know that the life stirring in the innumerable roots of the grass and the myriad seeds and the swelling buds is the same life that is flushing me with joy, but I shall be silent at any cost. These favourites of Nature will expand in beauty and be living poems and no one will laugh at them. As I reach out and touch them with my finger tips I seem to feel the fire of life in them and my pulses beat to a new rhyme. And oh, it would be so easy to relieve my soul with a little lyric. A catchy refrain begins to beat in my head:
Sing! you freak of misery!-- If you can't sing, crow!!
No, I will not crow either! The world is full of people who are enjoying this spring glamour as much as I am and they are keeping quiet about it. I wonder if poetry should be written at all. Perhaps it should be lived and enjoyed. Who knows but the poet is simply a leaky vessel spilling out in words the lyrical fire that was meant to warm his heart and keep his pulses attune for the struggle of life. I seem to remember that Walt Whitman asserted somewhere that he had in himself all poems and all books. Who knows but that is true of all of us? And the wise people keep the poetry of life for their own use, knowing that all men have the same poetry in their souls if they will only relax themselves enough to enjoy it. In those beautiful spring days I feel sure that all my fellows of the world are moved with the same poetic urge that is thrilling me with its beauty. Why should I bother them with attempts to put in words what they already have in their hearts?
_March 8._--With fuel so dear and maple syrup so cheap sugar-making is about the most peculiar job a man can get at. The harder you work the more money you lose. It involves the whole problem of the producer and consumer, and if you try to think it out you are likely to get as fatally twisted as the man who was kicked down a spiral staircase. I didn't try to think it out, but as I have a sweet tooth and all the members of the family have sweet teeth I decided to make sugar--in moderation. Fifty trees are not likely to give enough sap to make more syrup than one family will need in a year and the work of boiling in will not be too hard for one leisurely man. Besides, the dead limbs that have fallen from the trees in the past year will furnish enough fuel. Taking sugar-making in this way it resolves itself into a kind of holiday in the woods and I am strong on holidays. My favourite saint is St. Kavin for
"His calendar unrolled With new feast days every year."
When a barrelful of sap had been gathered I took the new boiling pan to the woods and prepared to enjoy myself. Now, don't interrupt to tell me that I should have an up-to-date evaporator and all that sort of thing. I know it would make the work easier and more scientific, but the initial cost would be too great. A sheet-iron pan made by the tinsmith is more within my range, and if it leaks at every rivet-hole to begin with, that is my affair. I can cure that by using furnace cement and by boiling some oatmeal in the pan before beginning with the sap. I also know that I should have an arch instead of a trench cut through a cradle-knoll for the fire, for I have read all the advertisements of the best appliances for making maple sugar, but a man must cut his coat according to his cloth, and even if my temper had "Fourteen rattles and a button on it" before I got that sieve of a pan working right I am not going to tell about it. No one heard the remarks I made except the birds and I shall take a chance on a bird of the air reporting the matter.
When I finally got the pan caulked and the sap boiling briskly the world began to look brighter. Practically all the birds had come back over night. Killdeers and meadow-larks were calling, song-sparrows and horned larks were singing, bluebirds were flashing past and shedding music, and the crows, blackbirds, jays, and robins were gossiping everywhere. A south wind was blowing just enough to make a good draught under the pan and the sun was looking down on everything "Fur's I cud look or listen" and finding it good. Now, most people, when their work is going right and they are feeling happy, begin to whistle. I do not. Trained musicians have told me in confidence that my whistling sounds "like a hog in a high wind" and I have long since given up the practice--by request. My favourite relaxation is to let a few lines of poetry begin drumming in my head. I let that inward voice which puts all our thoughts in shape for us sing or chant the poetry for me over and over until I have tasted all its sweetness. On the particular day I have in mind the poem that thrust itself on me was one of Poe's:
"In the fairest of our valleys, By good angels tenanted--"
But try as I would I could not recall the next two lines of the stanza. After repeating these two lines indefinitely, while my eyes and ears were taking in all that was going on about me in nature, I skipped to the next stanza which I could remember:
"Banners yellow, glorious, golden, From its roof did float and flow-- But this, all this, was in the olden Time long ago."
But Poe is not the poet for the open air and the woods. His gloomy imaginings began to overshadow the day:
"Dropping from out their condor wings Invisible woe."
As quickly as possible I shook off the spell of his haunting word magic. There have been times when I have given myself up to his morbid brooding, for like Vance Thompson I have
"Walked in Broadway, to and fro, With the sombre ghost of Edgar Poe."
But he did not belong in the open sunshine. I had to seek another companion.
In the intervals of gathering brush for the fire and pouring sap into the steaming pan--which still leaked here and there, drat it!--I began to hunt for a poet companion to help me pass the time--not to improve the time, mark you, but to make it pass pleasantly. Naturally I thought of Shakespeare for he is supposed to fit everywhere, but I guess the wrong quotations came to me. Every quotation had a moral tagged to it--sermons in stones, books in the running brooks, etc. Under a roof Shakespeare can be uproariously humorous, wise, witty, sublime, but in the open air he seems to moralise everything "into a thousand similes," to be constantly gathering "honey from the weed" and making "a moral of the devil himself." I would have none of him. Whitman proved equally difficult. I could not attend to my work and at the same time "loaf and invite my soul." Neither could I chum with him in his more cosmical moods. To do that I would have to spurn the earth away with my toe and look at things from "the outer dark."
"I see a great round wonder rolling through space, I see the shaded part on one side where the sleepers are sleeping, and the sunlit part on the other side."
But what would happen to the boiling syrup while I was taking such flights? It would be scorched and burned beyond a doubt. Moreover, I like to keep my feet on the earth--in good Canadian mud--even when indulging the wildest flights of imagination. I would have none of Whitman, even if he is the poet of outdoors. So one by one I tested many poets and rejected them all. They demanded too much.
After all, do the poets amount to so very much? Out in the woods I do not feel that they do. At their best they merely give us a point of view and a mood so that we can see and feel things as they did. But we all have moods and points of view of our own. Why shouldn't we use our own? You will soon find that every point of view overlooks as wonderful a world as any other. And you will find that your own moods attract the thoughts that belong to them as a magnet attracts steel filings. What if they are not the thoughts that you have seen in books? They are better, for they are your own. And that reminds me that we are inclined to make too much of books and even of thoughts. Books are all right to hold facts until we need them, just as a tool-chest holds tools. And thoughts are dangerous, whether they be our own or the thoughts of others, unless we keep them under control. Do you not remember Shelley's picture of one who
"Fled astray With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey."
On this perfect afternoon I did not want to be harried by thoughts, by my own or those of other men. I wanted to let the great sunshine and the earth smells, the sounds of wind and wing, and the homely farm and woodland sights--spreading about me as far as the horizon--seep into my soul through my senses, so that on some future day of storms and sorrow I could recall it entire and regain something of its peace. Is it not wonderful how in this way the things of the material world are constantly entering our minds through our senses, while the things of the inner and immaterial world are constantly passing out into the material world through our words and actions? Our observations and our thoughts are forever being woven into a wonderful tapestry of life and we are a part of the pattern. As I realise that I seem to see the spirit that answered:
"Beside the roaring loom of Time I ply And weave for God the garment that thou seest him by."
And so the afternoon passed, with the poets and without them, with thoughts and without them, until the sun went down in gold and amber and my work was done. With the urge of spring in my heart and a strange music in my brain I bore home my spoils, feeling that the day had not been wasted.
Poets, O Poets! You have had your will! My soul is ever vibrant to your song, And in the glamour of your dreams I live.
Sages, O Sages! I have drunk my fill At all the fountains that to Truth belong, Thirsting for all you give--and cannot give.
Idly, slow-wafted by a magic sail, I drift away in tranced ecstasy, Sole to myself, to Life no more a thrall!
But in those hours supreme you ever fail! You have no music for a soul made free, No words for one who is at one with all! Only a child, unconscious of all art, Could show, unknowing, what is in my heart.
_March 11._--"Now what on earth kind of mess are you making?"
Wasn't that a cheering remark to fling at a man who was having his crowded hour! When it startled and irritated me, I was busy being a pioneer of science, a prose poet, and the patient head of a family, all at the same time. Some people have their crowded hour of glorious life. That is the kind that poets sing about. Mine, as you will notice, was a crowded hour of simple life, and what it was worth will be set down hereinafter with humble truthfulness.
"Do you think that other people have nothing to do but wash saucepans for you to muss up? What do you think you are doing, anyway?"
The phrases of prose-poetry evaporated. The importance of the scientific discovery dwindled, and the dignified attitude necessary to the head of a family was seriously threatened.
"I'm just trying an experiment," I replied in guarded tones that covered a volcano of peevishness. My crowded hour had come during the sugar weather. There had been a cold snap that froze the sap in the buckets and hung icicles from the spiles. I had wandered disconsolately through the bush to investigate the frosty situation, when suddenly I remembered a treat that had been the delight of my youth. Unhooking a bucket, I tilted it over, until the ice-cake loosened, and then a spoonful of clear, thick syrup slipped over the rim into my waiting lips. M-m-mmm, but it did taste good, and right there the idea occurred to me that caused all the trouble.
It was evident that the real sweetness of maple sap did not freeze at the same temperature as water. Now, the whole process of sugar-making consists of removing the water from the sap. This is done by ordinary, prosaic people by boiling it down until all the water has evaporated. Not good enough for me. I would do something unique, characteristic of the north, Canadian, wonderful! (You will notice that the prose-poetry began with the inception of the idea.) If the first freezing removed so much of the water, why couldn't it all be removed by successive freezings--purified in the alembics of frost--perfected in Nature's wind-swept laboratory. Sounds good to me. Here goes:
With me, like Richard, to think is to act. Taking a pail, I went from tree to tree, unhooked bucket after bucket, and secured a grudging spoonful from each. The temperature was ten degrees below freezing, a north wind was blowing as if it had a search warrant, snow was drifting, and long before I had visited all of the hundred trees we had tapped, my fingers were numb. But what of that? Would it not be something to make the Canadian climate perfect the most delicious of all Canadian products? Not even the realms of poetry could furnish anything to equal it. Keats' "Syrops tinct with cinnamon" would be insipid by comparison, and Shakespeare's "Poppies and mandragora, and all the drowsy syrops of the world" but a high-sounding phrase. Cheered by such thoughts as these I kept on, in the words of Katherine Hale:
"With snow upon my shoulders, And courage almost run"
--and also with chattering teeth. An hour of frostbitten industry yielded about a quart of crude syrup, and without waiting to remove my ear-muffs, I raided the kitchen for saucepans. I was simply bubbling over with quotations of poetry, scientific enthusiasm, and phrases in the process of coining. And it was while in this tumultuous mood I was interrupted with the question recorded above. Was ever a man so interrupted?
"What kind of an experiment are you trying?" persisted the unsympathetic inquisitor.
"I am going to make maple syrup by a new process. I shall refine it by cold, instead of heat."
"What good will that do?"
"What good, woman? What good did it do Peary to go to the North Pole? I'll bet Mrs. Galvani stood around and asked just such fool questions when Galvani was making frogs' legs twitch with electricity. What good did that do! huh! It opened the way for all the modern developments of electricity. If it hadn't been for Galvani making frogs' legs twitch, we wouldn't have any Hydro-Electric Power scheme and you wouldn't be able to gossip with your neighbours over the telephone. Just you wait till I have pipe lines carrying the sap from every sugar bush to the Arctic regions, and am refining maple syrup for the whole world by the zero process. You won't ask me then, 'What's the use?' No, indeed! You will just stand 'round wearing diamonds and remarking that you don't see anything very wonderful about it all. Any one might have thought of it. It only happened that I thought of it first."
It will be a draught for Juno when she banquets. It will be a liqueur to be quaffed at the close of the feast from long-stemmed glasses of Venetian artistry. In each there shall be a flake of gold-leaf, beaten from the precious ores of Yukon or Larder Lake. This shall make it give its colour aright, and those who quaff----
"Well, of all the fool notions----" commented another observer.
It was thus, no doubt, that the people of Syracuse joshed Archimedes when he was fussing with the first lever, and making fool remarks about how he could move the world. Yet see what the lever has done for humanity. One after another the grown-ups about the place investigated what was going on, sniffed superior, and went in to warm themselves by the kitchen fire.
Surely this would be the opportunity of a lifetime. A description of frost-refined syrup could be made as eloquent as Ingersoll on whiskey, or Voorhees on the dog. Br-r-r--but it's cold! As the ice formed in the saucepans the thickening syrup was drained off with tender care, but not until the children came from school did I receive any sympathy. As they had no preconceived notions, it seemed quite logical and wonderful to them that syrup should be refined in this way. They forgot their cold fingers and toes in the kindling of their imaginations.
"We'll get a refrigerator to make our syrup with, won't we, father? That'll be better than an evaporator, won't it?"
"Certainly."
When in need of sympathy, go to the young! They are the only ones whose eyes can see the promised land. Moses was right in his dealings with the Israelites. He led them around through the wilderness until the older generation had died off. The older generation has been made up of doubters and knockers since the beginning of time. They all come from Missouri.
By this time it was so cold that the muse went on strike. For the last time the syrup was drained off from the ice, and with the children at my heels, I went into the house to enjoy my triumph. Since the truth must be told, this was a time when those who sat in the seats of the scornful were right. My frost-refined syrup was a sickishly sweet, colourless fluid of no distinction. In all probability it was not true maple syrup at all, but what the scientists call maple honey, a substance derived from maple sap, and which will not crystallise. Still, the Crowded Hour was not in vain. It enabled me to learn at first hand just what the pioneers of progress must have suffered when perfecting their inventions. It was a mere detail that my invention was no good.