Chapter 8 - Page 2

burned to flax-colour burns too like burnished brass. A pillar
of dust on the long hog-back of the road across the hills shows where a
team is lathering between farms, and the roofs of the wooden houses
flicker in the haze of their own heat. Overhead the chicken-hawk is the
only creature at work, and his shrill kite-like call sends the gaping
chickens from the dust-bath in haste to their mothers. The red squirrel
as usual feigns business of importance among the butternuts, but this is
pure priggishness. When the passer-by is gone he ceases chattering and
climbs back to where the little breezes can stir his tail-plumes. From
somewhere under the lazy fold of a meadow comes the drone of a
mowing-machine among the hay--its _whurr-oo_ and the grunt of the tired
horses.

[Footnote 2: See 'In Sight of Monadnock.']

Houses are only meant to eat and sleep in. The rest of life is lived at
full length in the verandah. When traffic is brisk three whole teams
will pass that verandah in one day, and it is necessary to exchange news
about the weather and the prospects for oats. When oats are in there
will be slack time on the farm, and the farmers will seriously think of
doing the hundred things that they have let slide during the summer.
They will undertake this and that, 'when they get around to it.' The
phrase translated is the exact equivalent to the _mañana_ of the
Spaniard, the _kul hojaiga_ of Upper India, the _yuroshii_ of the
Japanese, and the long drawled _taihod_ of the Maori. The only person
who 'gets around' in this weather is the summer boarder--the refugee
from the burning cities of the Plain, and she is generally a woman. She
walks, and botanizes, and kodaks, and strips the bark off the white
birch to make blue-ribboned waste-paper baskets, and the farmer regards
her with wonder. More does he wonder still at the city clerk in a
blazer, who has two weeks' holiday in the year and, apparently,
unlimited money, which he earns in the easiest possible way by 'sitting
at a desk and writing,' The farmer's wife sees the fashions of the
summer boarder, and between them man and woman get a notion of the
beauties of city life for which their children may live to blame them.
The blazer and the town-made gown are innocent recruiting sergeants for
the city brigades; and since one man's profession is ever a mystery to
his fellow, blazer and gown believe that the farmer must be happy and
content. A summer resort is one of the thousand windows whence to watch
the thousand aspects of life in the Atlantic States. Remember that
between June and September it is the desire of all who can to get away
from the big cities--not on account of wantonness, as people leave
London--but because of actual heat. So they get