Page:The Dial (Volume 73).djvu/451

Rh animal life during the period when the world of vegetable life slept the sweet sleep of winter.

It was a thing to think about too. Everywhere, all about him must be men and women who lived altogether unaware of such things. To tell the truth he had himself been, all his life, unaware. He had just eaten food, stuffed it into his body through his mouth. There had been no joy. He had not really tasted things, smelled things. How filled with fragrant suggestive smells life might be.

It must have come about that as men and women went out of the fields and hills to live their lives in cities, as factories grew and as the railroads and steamboats came to pass the fruits of the earth back and forth a kind of dreadful unawareness must have grown in people. Not touching things with their hands people lost the sense of them. That was it, perhaps.

John Webster remembered that, when he was a boy, such matters were differently arranged. He lived in the town and knew nothing much of country life, but at that time town and country were more closely wed.

In the fall, at just this time of the year, for one thing, farmers used to drive into town and deliver things at his father's house. At that time everyone had great cellars under their houses and in the cellars were bins that were to be filled with potatoes, apples, turnips, and such things. There was a thing man had learned to do. Straw was brought in from fields near the town and many things, pumpkins, squashes, heads of cabbage, and other solid vegetables were wrapped in straw and put into a cool part of the cellar. He remembered that his mother wrapped pears in bits of paper and kept them sweet and fresh for months.

As for himself, although he did not live in the country he was, at that time, aware of something quite tremendous going on. Wagons arrived bringing things to his father's house. On Saturdays a farm woman, who drove an old grey horse, came to the front door and knocked. She was bringing the Websters their weekly supply of butter and eggs and often a chicken for the Sunday dinner. John Webster's mother went to the door to meet her and the child ran along, clinging to his mother's skirts.

The farm woman came into the house and sat up stiffly in a chair in the parlour while her basket was being emptied and while the butter was being taken out of its stone jar. The boy stood with his back to the wall in a corner and studied her. Nothing was said.