Adventures in Contentment eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 172 pages of information about Adventures in Contentment.

Adventures in Contentment eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 172 pages of information about Adventures in Contentment.

I carried it down to my barn and put it on the open rafters over the cow stalls.  A cow stable is warm and not too dry, so that a hickory log cures slowly without cracking or checking.  There it lay for many weeks.  Often I cast my eyes up at it with satisfaction, watching the bark shrink and slightly deepen in colour, and once I climbed up where I could see the minute seams making way in the end of the stick.

In the summer I brought the stick into the house, and put it in the dry, warm storeroom over the kitchen where I keep my seed corn.  I do not suppose it really needed further attention, but sometimes when I chanced to go into the storeroom, I turned it over with my foot.  I felt a sort of satisfaction in knowing that it was in preparation for service:  good material for useful work.  So it lay during the autumn and far into the winter.

One cold night when I sat comfortably at my fireplace, listening to the wind outside, and feeling all the ease of a man at peace with himself, my mind took flight to my snowy field sides and I thought of the trees there waiting and resting through the winter.  So I came in imagination to the particular corner in the fence where I had cut my hickory sapling.  Instantly I started up, much to Harriet’s astonishment, and made my way mysteriously up the kitchen stairs.  I would not tell what I was after:  I felt it a sort of adventure, almost like the joy of seeing a friend long forgotten.  It was as if my hickory stick had cried out at last, after long chrysalishood: 

“I am ready.”

I stood it on end and struck it sharply with my knuckles:  it rang out with a certain clear resonance.

“I am ready.”

I sniffed at the end of it.  It exhaled a peculiar good smell, as of old fields in the autumn.

“I am ready.”

So I took it under my arm and carried it down.

“Mercy, what are you going to do?” exclaimed Harriet.

“Deliberately, and with malice aforethought,” I responded, “I am going to litter up your floor.  I have decided to be reckless.  I don’t care what happens.”

Having made this declaration, which Harriet received with becoming disdain, I laid the log by the fireplace—­not too near—­and went to fetch a saw, a hammer, a small wedge, and a draw-shave.

I split my log into as fine white sections as a man ever saw—­every piece as straight as morality, and without so much as a sliver to mar it.  Nothing is so satisfactory as to have a task come out in perfect time and in good order.  The little pieces of bark and sawdust I swept scrupulously into the fireplace, looking up from time to time to see how Harriet was taking it.  Harriet was still disdainful.

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Project Gutenberg
Adventures in Contentment from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.