Blackgum Ag’in’ Thunder
by
THIS STORY IS TOLD BY
JOHN GAYTHER
AND IS CALLED
BLACKGUM AG’IN’ THUNDER
BLACKGUM AG’IN’ THUNDER
John Gayther and the Daughter of the House walked in the garden. The melons were ripe now, and it was a pleasure to push aside the coarse leaves and find beneath them the tropical-looking fruit with the pretty network tracery covering the gray-green rind. The grape-vines, too, were things of beauty, hanging full of great white, yellow, red, and purple clusters. The tomatoes gleamed scarlet and purple-red thickly among the plants. The cabbages had curled themselves up into compact heads that looked like big folded roses set in an open cluster of leaves. There were rows of green-leaved turnips, red-leaved beets, and feathery-leaved carrots. The ears were standing stiff in the corn rows.
In the orchard the peaches were rosy and downy, the plums ready to drop with lusciousness; ruddy-cheeked pears were crowded on the drooping branches; the apples, not so plentiful, were taking on the colors that proclaimed their near fruition; and even the knotty quinces were growing fair and golden. On the upper terrace the stately, delicate cosmos was waving in the wind; great beds of low marigolds were flaunting their rich colors in the bright sunlight; the dahlias lifted into the air, stiffly and proudly, their great blossoms of varying forms; the clove-pinks, lowly and delicate in color, gave forth the fragrance of the springtime which they had held stored up in their tender blossoms; and the early chrysanthemums were unfolding their plumes.
“I love the late August-time,” said John Gayther, as the two sat down to rest in the summer-house after a long stay in the garden. “I have a singular feeling, which I hope is not irreverent, that the great Creator is pleased with me for having brought this work to perfection, and the thought gives me great peace of mind.”
“It does sound a little presumptuous, John,” said the young lady.
“Not in the way I mean it,” replied John. “We are told that God gives abundantly of the fruits and blossoms that gladden our hearts and eyes. But this is only partly true. There may be some lands where nothing need be done to these God-given fruits and vegetables and flowers. I do not know. But in this happy land, although he does abundantly give us the material to work upon, he expects us to do the work. Else what would be the use of gardens? And if there were no need of gardens there would be no gardens; and how desolate would life be without gardens!”
“I see what you mean, John,” said the young lady. “We could not go into the woods, or on to the plains, and find the fruits and vegetables that grow so well in this garden. If they were there at all they would be poor and undeveloped.”
“Exactly so,” said John. “And in my garden I garner up God’s gifts; and I select the best, and then the best of the best, and so on and on; and I watch, oh, so carefully, for everything hurtful; and I water; and I prune off the dead branches; and enrich the ground. And so I work and work, with God’s help of the sunshine and the rain; and at last, when it all comes to what we see to-day, I cannot but feel that God is pleased with me for bringing about the fruition he knew I could accomplish with the material given by what some people call nature and I call God. That is what a garden is for, and in that way it glorifies him.”
They were both silent for some time. The young girl was thinking that while all that John had said was true, she could not, like him, love this season best of all. Its very perfection and full fruition were saddening, for that must inevitably be followed by decay. The old man was thinking that while youth and its promise for the future was beautiful, the resignation and peacefulness of an accomplished life was far more beautiful.