E-text prepared by Kevin Handy, Dave Maddock, Mary Meehan, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
1903
February 2. Candlemas and mild, gray weather. If the woodchuck stirsup his banked life-fire and ventures forth, he will not see his shadow,and must straightway arrange with winter for a rebate in our favour.To-day, however, it seems like the very dawn of winter, and as if thecloud brooms were abroad gathering snow from remote and chilly cornersof the sky.
Six years ago I began the planting of my garden, and at the same time mygirlish habit of journal keeping veered into the making of a "GardenBoke," to be a reversible signal, crying danger in face of forgottenmistakes, then turning to give back glints of summer sunshine when readin the attic of winter days and blue Mondays. Now once again I am in theattic, writing. Not in a garden diary, but in my "Social Experience Boke"this time, for it is "human warious," and its first volume, alreadyfilled out, is lying in the old desk. Martin Cortright said, one stormyday last autumn when he was sitting in the corner I have loaned him of myprecious attic retreat, that, owing to the incursion of the Bluff Colonyof New Yorkers, which we had been discussing, I should call this secondvolume "People of the Whirlpool," because—ah, but I must wait and huntamong my papers for his very words as I wrote them down.
My desk needs cleaning out and rearranging, for the dust flies up as Irummage among the papers and letters that are a blending of past,present, and future. All my pet pens are rusty, and must be replaced fromthe box of stubs, for a stub pen assists one to straightforward, truthfulexpression, while a fine point suggests evasion, polite equivocation, orthin ideas. Even Lavinia Dorman's letters, whose cream-white envelopes,with a curlicue monogram on the flap, quite cover the litter below, havebeen, if possible, more satisfactory since she has adopted a fountainstub that Evan gave her at Christmas.
There are many other things in the desk now beside the hickory-nut beadsand old papers. Little whiffs of subtle fragrance call me backwardthrough time faster than thought, and make me pinch myself to be surethat I am awake, like the little old woman with the cutabout petticoats,who was sure that if she was herself, her little dog would know her,—butthen he didn't!
I am awake and surely myself, yet my old dog is not near to recognize me.This ring of rough,