at the rodmans’, who lived in a huge house on a hill, some of the rooms had inscriptions in them—or what i should have called mottoes—cunningly lettered and set about. some of these were in margaret amelia’s and betty’s room, above the mirror, the bed, the window; and there was one downstairs on a panel above the telephone. the girls said that they had an aunt who had written them “on purpose,” an aunt who had had stories in print. in my heart i doubted the part about the printed stories, and so did mary elizabeth, but we loved margaret amelia and betty too well to let this stand between us. also, we were caught by the inscriptions. they were these:
for a cradle[a]
i cannot tell you who i am
nor what i’m going to be.
212
you who are wise and know your ways
tell me.
[a] copyright, 1908, by harper & brothers.
for the mirror
look in the deep of me. what are we going to do?
if i am i, as i am, who in the world are you?
for an ivory comb
use me and think of spirit, and spirit yet to be.
this is the jest: could soul touch soul if it were not for me?
for the doll’s house
girl-doll would be a little lamp
and shine like something new.
boy-doll would be a telephone
and have the world speak through.
the poet-doll would like to be
a tocsin with a tongue
to other little dolls like bells
most sensitively rung.
the baby-doll would be a flower,
the dinah-doll a star,
and all—how ignominious!
are only what they are.
213
where the boughs touch the window
we lap on the indoor shore—the waves of the leaf mere,
we try to tell you as well as we can: we wonder what you hear?
for another window
i see the stones, i see the stars,
i know not what they be.
they always say things to themselves
and now and then to me.
but when i try to look between
big stones and little stars,
i almost know ... but what i know
flies through the window-bars.
and downstairs, on the telephone:
i, the absurdity,
proving what cannot be.
come, when you talk with me
does it become you well
to doubt a miracle?
we did not understand all of them, but we liked them. and i am sure now that the inscriptions were partly responsible for the fact214 that in a little time, with mary elizabeth and me to give them encouragement, everything, indoors and out, had something to say to us. these things we did not confide to the others, not even to margaret amelia and betty who, when we stood still to spell out the inscriptions, waited a respectful length of time and then plucked at our aprons and said: “come on till we show you something,” which was usually merely a crass excuse to get us away.
so mary elizabeth and i discovered, by comparing notes, that at night our clothes on the chair by the bed would say: “we are so tired. don’t look at us—we feel so limp.”
and the night would say: “what a long time the day had you, and how he made you work. now rest and forget and stop being you, till morning.”
sleep would say: “here i come. let me in your brain and i will pull your eyes shut, like little blinds.”
and in the morning the stairs would say: “come! we are all here, stooping, ready for you to step down on our shoulders.”
breakfast would say: “now i’m going to be you—now i’m going to be you! and i have to be cross or nice, just as you are.”
215 every fire that warmed us, every tree that shaded us, every path that we took, all these “answered back” and were familiars. everything spoke to us, save only one. and this one thing was work. our playthings in the cupboard would talk to us all day long until the moment that we were told to put them in order, and then instantly they all fell into silence. pulling weeds in the four o’clock bed, straightening books, tidying the outdoor play-house—it was always the same. whatever we worked at kept silent.
it was on a june morning, when the outdoors was so busy and beautiful that it was like a golden bee buried in a golden rose, that i finally refused outright to pick up a brown sunhat and some other things in the middle of the floor. everything outdoors and in was smiling and calling, and to do a task was like going to bed, so far as the joy of the day was concerned. this i could not explain, but i said that i would not do the task, and this was high treason.
sitting in a straight-backed chair all alone for half an hour thereafter—the usual capital punishment—was like cutting off the head of the beautiful hour that i had meant to have.216 and i tried to think it out. why, in an otherwise wonderful world, did work have to come and spoil everything?
i do not recall that i came to any conclusion. how could i, at a time that was still teaching the hebraic doctrine that work is a curse, instead of the new gospel—always dimly divined by children before our teaching has corrupted them,—that being busy is being alive, and that all work may be play if only we are shown how to pick out the kind that is play to us, and that doing nothing is a kind of death.
and while i sat there alone on that straight-backed chair, i wish that i, as i am now, might have called in mary elizabeth, whom i could see drearily polishing the new family’s lamp-chimneys, and that i might have told the story of bit-bit.
bit-bit, the smallest thing in the world, sat on the slipperiest edge of the highest mountain in the farthest land, weaving a little garment of sweet-grass. then out of the valley a great deev arose and leaned his elbows on the highest mountain and said what he thought—which is always a dangerous business.
“then out of the valley a great deev arose.”
217 “bit-bit,” said the deev, “how dare you make up my sweet-grass so disgustin’ extravagant?”
(it is almost impossible for a deev to say his ing’s.)
“deevy dear,” said bit-bit, without looking up from his work, “i have to make a garment to help clothe the world. don’t wrinkle up my plan. and don’t put your elbows on the table.”
“about my elbows,” said the deev, “you are perfectly right, though deevs always do that with their elbows. but as to that garment,” he added, “i’d like to know why you have to help clothe the world?”
“deevy dear,” said bit-bit, still not looking up from his work, “i have to do so, because it’s this kind of a world. please don’t wrinkle up things.”
“i,” said the deev, plainly, “will now show you what kind of a world this really is. and i rather think i’ll destroy you with a great destruction.”
then the deev took the highest mountain and he tied its streams and cataracts together to make a harness, and he named the mountain new, and he drove it all up and down the earth. and he cried behind it:
218 “ho, rhumbthumberland, steed of the clouds, trample the world into trifles and plough it up for play. bit-bit is being taught his lesson.”
from dawn he did this until the sky forgot pink and remembered only blue and until the sun grew so hot that it took even the sky’s attention, and the deev himself was ready to drop. and then he pulled on the reins and rhumbthumberland, steed of the clouds, stopped trampling and let the deev lean his elbows on his back. and there, right between the deev’s elbows, sat bit-bit, weaving his garment of sweet-grass.
“thunders of spring,” cried the deev, “aren’t you destroyed with a great destruction?”
but bit-bit never looked up, he was so busy.
“has anything happened?” he asked politely, however, not wishing to seem indifferent to the deev’s agitation—though secretly, in his little head, he hated having people plunge at him with their eyebrows up and expect him to act surprised too. when they did that, it always made him savage-calm.
“the world is trampled into trifles and ploughed up for play,” said the exasperated219 deev, “that’s what’s happened. how dare you pay no attention?”
“deevy dear,” said bit-bit, still not looking up from his task, “i have to work, whether it’s this kind of a world or not. i wish you wouldn’t wrinkle up things.”
then the deev’s will ran round and round in his own head like a fly trying to escape from a dark hole—that is the way of the will of all deevs—and pretty soon his will got out and went buzzle-buzzle-buzzle, which is no proper sound for anybody’s will to make. and when it did that, the deev went off and got a river, and he climbed up on top of rhumbthumberland and he swung the river about his head like a ribbon and then let it fall from the heights like a lady’s scarf, and then he held down one end with his great boot and the other end he emptied into the horizon. from the time of the heat of the sun he did this until the shadows were set free from the west and lengthened over the land, shaking their long hair, and then he lifted his foot and let the river slip and it trailed off into the horizon and flowed each way.
“now then!” said the deev, disgustingly pompous.
220 but when he looked down, there, sitting on his own great foot, high and dry and pleasant, was bit-bit, weaving his garment of sweet-grass and saying:
“deevy dear, a river washed me up here and i was so busy i didn’t have time to get down.”
the deev stood still, thinking, and his thoughts flew in and out like birds, but always they seemed to fly against window-panes in the air, through which there was no passing. and the deev said, in his head:
“is there nothing in this created cosmos that will stop this little scrap from working to clothe the world? or must i play deev in earnest?”
and that was what he finally decided to do. so he said things to his arms, and his arms hardened into stuff like steel, and spread out like mighty wings. and with these the deev began to beat the air. and he beat it and beat it until it frothed. it frothed like white-of-egg and like cream and like the mid-waters of torrents, frothed a mighty froth, such as i supposed could never be. and when the froth was stiff enough to stand alone, the deev took his steel-wing arm for a ladle, and he began to spread the froth upon the earth. and he spread and spread until221 the whole earth was like an enormous chocolate cake, thick with white frosting—one layer, two layers, three layers, disgustingly extravagant, so that the little deevs, if there had been any, would never have got the dish scraped. only there wasn’t any dish, so they needn’t have minded.
and when he had it all spread on, the deev stood up and dropped his steel arms down—and even they were tired at the elbow, like any true, egg-beating arm—and he looked down at the great cake he had made. and there, on the top of the frosting, which was already beginning to harden, was sitting bit-bit, weaving his garment of sweet-grass and talking about the weather:
“i think there is going to be a storm,” said bit-bit, “the air around here has been so disgustingly hard to breathe.”
then, very absently, the deev let the steel out of his arms and made them get over being wings, and, in a place so deep in his own head that nothing had ever been thought there before, he thought:
“there is more to this than i ever knew there is to anything.”
222 so he leaned over, all knee-deep in the frosting as he was, and he said:
“bit-bit, say a great truth and a real answer: what is the reason that my little ways don’t bother you? or kill you? or keep you from making your garment of sweet-grass?”
“why,” said bit-bit, in surprise, but never looking up from his work, “deevy dear, that’s easy. i’m much, much, much too busy.”
“scrap of a thing,” said the deev, “too busy to mind cataracts and an earth trampled to trifles and then frosted with all the air there is?”
“too busy,” assented bit-bit, snapping off his thread. “and now i do hope you are not going to wrinkle up things any more.”
“no,” said the deev, with decision, “i ain’t.” (deevs are always ungrammatical when you take them by surprise.) and he added very shrewdly, for he was a keen deev and if he saw that he could learn, he was willing to learn, which is three parts of all wisdom: “little scrap, teach me to do a witchcraft. teach me to work.”
at that bit-bit laid down his task in a minute.
223 “what do you want to make?” he asked.
the deev thought for a moment.
“i want to make a palace and a garden and a moat for me,” said he. “i’m tired campin’ around in the air.”
“if that’s all,” said bit-bit, “i’m afraid i can’t help you. i thought you wanted to work. out of all the work there is in the world i should think of another one if i were you, deevy.”
“well, then, i want to make a golden court dress for me, all embroidered and flowered and buttoned and gored and spliced,” said the deev, or whatever these things are called in the clothing of deevs; “i want to make one. i’m tired goin’ around in rompers.” (it wasn’t rompers, really, but it was what deevs wear instead, and you wouldn’t know the name, even if i told you.)
“excuse me,” said bit-bit, frankly, “i won’t waste time like that. don’t you want to work?”
“yes,” said the deev, “i do. maybe i don’t know what work is.”
“maybe you don’t,” agreed bit-bit. “but i can fix that. i’m going for a walk now, and there’s just room for you. come along.”
so they started off, and it was good walking, for by now the sun had dried up all the frosting;224 and the deev trotted at bit-bit’s heels, and they made a very funny pair. so funny that almost everything watched them go by, and couldn’t leave off watching them go by, and so followed them all the way. which was what bit-bit had thought would happen. and when he got to a good place, bit-bit stood still and told the deev to turn round. and there they were, staring face to face with almost everything: deserts and towns and men and women and children and laws and governments and railroads and factories and forests and food and drink.
“there’s your work,” said bit-bit, carelessly.
“where?” asked the deev, just like other folks.
“where?” repeated bit-bit, nearly peevish. “look at this desert that’s come along behind us. why don’t you swing a river over your head—you could do that, couldn’t you, deevy?—and make things grow on that desert, and let people live on it, and turn ’em into folks? why don’t you?”
“it ain’t amusin’ enough,” said the deev.
(deevs are often ungrammatical when they don’t take pains; and this deev wasn’t taking any pains.)
225 “well,” said bit-bit, “then look at this town that has come along behind us, full of dirt and disease and laziness and worse. why don’t you harness up a mountain—you could do that, couldn’t you, deevy?—and plough up the earth and trample it down and let people live as they were meant to live, and turn them into folks? why don’t you?”
“it couldn’t be done that way,” said the deev, very much excited and disgustingly certain.
“well,” said bit-bit, “then look at the men and women and children that have come along behind us. what about them—what about them? why don’t you make your arms steel and act as if you had wings, and beat the world into a better place for them to live, instead of making a cake of it. you could do it, deevy—anybody could do that.”
“yes,” said the deev, “i could do that. but it don’t appeal to me.”
(deevs are always ungrammatical when they are being emphatic, and now the deev was being very emphatic. he was a keen deev, but he would only learn what he wanted to learn.)
226 “deevy dear,” cried bit-bit, in distress because the deev was such a disgusting creature, “then at least do get some sweet-grass and make a little garment to help clothe the world?”
“what’s the use?” said the deev. “let it go naked. it’s always been that way.”
so, since the deev would not learn the work witchcraft, bit-bit, very sorrowful, stood up and said a great truth and made a real answer—which is always a dangerous business.
“you will, you will, you will do these things,” he cried, “because it’s that kind of a world.”
and then the deev, who had all along been getting more and more annoyed, pieced together his will and his ideas and his annoyance, and they all went buzzle-buzzle-buzzle together till they made an act. and the act was that he stepped sidewise into space, and he picked up the earth and put it between his knees, and he cracked it hard enough so that it should have fallen into uncountable bits.
“it’s my nut,” said the deev, “and now i’m going to eat it up.”
but lo, from the old shell there came out a fair new kernel of a world, so lustrous and lovely that the deev was blinded and hid his eyes.227 only first he had seen how the deserts were flowing with rivers and the towns were grown fair under willing hands for men and women and children to live there. and there, with almost everything, sat bit-bit in his place, weaving a little garment of sweet-grass to clothe some mite of the world.
“now this time try not to wrinkle things all up, deev,” said bit-bit. “i must say, you’ve been doing things disgustingly inhuman.”
so after that the deev was left camping about in the air, trying to make for himself new witchcrafts. and there he is to this day, being a disgusting creature generally, and only those who are as busy as bit-bit are safe from him.
