November, 1895

Away up in Plymouth county, Mass., dwells a happy pair.  They are not only happy, but they are perfectly unique.  Aunt Malina and Uncle Aseph deserve a whole volume written about their quaint ways and sayings.  They live alone in the old homestead that was built by Uncle Aseph’s father, and from whose door went forth a large family of boys and girls to seek their fortunes far away.  Long ago, after a few years of wandering, having in the meantime married Aunt Malina, Uncle Aseph came home to care for his father and mother until they died.  Ever since they have lived alone in the dear old house, not working the farm, for that was worked out years ago, but raising a little fruit and in possession of a small army of hens, the pride of Uncle Aseph’s heart.  Aunt Malina’s watchword is order and cleanliness.  Next to this she places in importance the duty of giving away everything which she does not use or need.  “For,” she argues, “if my house is all cluttered up with a lot of stuff, I shall have to spend all my time keeping it in order.  And then how much good it will do somebody who has not enough to be comfortable with.”  The consequence is that Aunt Malina’s home is rather devoid of ornament, and perhaps would seem trifle bare to the woman whose soul is wrapped up on decoration and bric-a-brac.

One November there came from New York to visit her aunt a young woman.  They had not me since the niece was a child.  A great fire was built on the hearth in the sunny “best room,” and everything shone with the burnishing it had received in honor of the expected visit.  But to the city-bred woman there was a lack, and as soon as she became conscious of it she set about devising a way to fill it.  Into the depths of her trunk she dove, and brought out a gay sofa cushion cover, which she filled with the softest of downy feathers from some of the Uncle Asepth’s defunct darlings.  This made its mark on the hair-cloth sofa and coaxed to nappiness.  On the narrow mantel which stretched its slim length above the fire-place she placed some photographs.  These were not looked upon with entire favor by either aunt or uncle, and truly, they did look rather out of place, being her own pictures in evening dress, having been taken a short time before the visit.

“Now, Patty [short for the more dignified Martha], I hope you don’t wear that short-sleeved dress in winter.  It’s jest a-temptin’ Providence, an’ you’lll jest git your death a-cold.  It don’t seem jest right for a growed-up woman, neither.”

The offending pictures being replaced by some older and plainer ones, Aunt Malina began to look with favor upon the changes going on in her best room.  She was especially pleased when Patty opened the old melodeon – which had been the companion of her aunt’s girlhood and which now stood in polished fineness in a corner – and sang in a low voice, to a somewhat wheezy accompaniment, an old-fashioned song.  She even looked with favor upon a bright silken scar embroidered in gold, held in place by a vase, and a few handsomely bound books of poems, which covered the cold glassiness of the cherished melodeon.  Patty ferreted out some rare old china, some quaint glass-ware, tumblers that would hold a quart, and a pewter “porringer” from which Uncle Aseph had eaten his porridge when a little boy, so many, many years ago.  All these she placed in nooks and corners, beside the old clock, in the deep window-seats, upon the little claw-footed table, but still the lack.

A November Idyl Of The Woods

Like an inspiration came the thought of how to put the crowning touch on all.  Daily this city-surfeited girl took walks in the woods near the house and rambled over the old, worn-out, disused pastures.  A goat would have starved to death in a ten-acre lot of such land as that.  There were great patches of gray moss, over which she walked every day in going to the woods.  In the woods beautiful evergreen ran in strings among the dead leaves.  There were cedar boughs rich in buds of blue, feathery tassels with brown cones nestling among them on the pine trees.  The bitter-sweet was gorgeous in yellow and scarlet, as were the autumn leaves – almost too beautiful to be real.

Patty brought home armfuls and basketfuls, and packed a box to take back to her city home – filled it with the mosses and all the other wood beauties.  So fascinated did she become with the lonely woods and the treasures she found there that every day was spent in wandering and in gathering.  Rover, the old shepherd dog, was her companion, seeming to share her enthusiasm.  Oh, those happy days!  Even when the wind blew and the day was what Uncle Aseph called “raw,” it was warm in the woods.

“What on airth are you going to do with all that?” “trash,” Aunt Malina would have added, if she had not been in fear of wounding Patty.

“Oh, wait; just wait, until the first rainy day and I’ll show you,” said Patty.

“Must be the fire ain’t bright enough,” said Uncle Aseph to himself, as he started for the woodshed to make a collection of pine knots and sticks with which to feed the next rainy day fire.

One morning Patty awoke to find a really truly November day.  There was just a steady downpour, varied by cruel-sounding swishes against the window-pane, as the wind caught the rain and drove it before.  Patty thought: “no out-of-doors for me to-day, but I’ll bring my out-of-doors inside.  So out from various hiding places came yards and yards of evergreen and its bright-hued comrades, boughs of bitter-sweet, feathery pin and dark-green cedar.  With the aid of a kitchen chair, some string, a hammer and a few tacks, Patty soon transformed that room into an apartment where there was no “lack.”  Evergreen, mixed with gray moss and bitter-sweet, framed the pictures.  Over the mirror hung boughs of bright leaves.  The window-seats were banked with moss surrounding big pitchers filled with leaves, bitter-sweet and the red seed-bulbs of wild roses.  Over the mantel hung more festoons of living green.  The garret was robbed of Aunt Malina’s store of “everlasting,” gathered earlier in the season for medicinal purposes, to add a touch of white amid the red, yellow and green.

The old lady surveyed these goings-on at first with alarm and amazement, and then with genuine admiration, not only at the effect, but at the ingenuity displayed by her niece in thinking of such a scheme and her industry in carrying it out.

Uncle Aseph said to himself: “So she didn’t want them dried things to burn, after all.”

Rove said nothing, but no doubt he thought a good deal of the imaginary game which he had had such a good time chasing when he and Patty were scouring the woods.

Patty is older now, and life has since laid many good gifts at her feet, but memory often brings the smell of the spicy evergreen and the beautiful hidden things she found there in the Plymouth woods during those bright November days.

Mary Sargent Hopkins (1895, November). A November idyl of the woods. The Ladies World, Vol. XVI(11), 10.  Retrieved from http://victoriantimes.us/health/a-november-idyl-of-the-woods

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