American Agriculturist. August 2, 1924 
U 
71 
Masterful Men ”-bv j esse Easter 
G 
RANDFATHER Preble swept the 
change off the counter, hastily 
stuffed Grannie's crochet thread into his 
pocket and followed Sam’l onto the side¬ 
walk. His eyes shifted from the dande¬ 
lions to the rutty street, across to the 
brown cottages with the starched curtains, 
and into the air. 
“Old Hooper,” he said casually, with 
a jerk of his thumb back toward Hinkens- 
ville’s Grocery, “ Seems to think a man’s 
valler if he lets a woman have her say-so.” 
‘ Wal, I dunno,” said Sam’l like one not 
wishing to hurt another’s feelings. “ When 
it comes down to it, seems like worn in 
generally likes to have a feller do what 
they pertend they don’t want him to do.” 
“Tut, tut,—nonsense.” 
“You jest perk up yer ears and yer eyes, 
Preble,” SamT stopped to wave his can 
perilously near Gramp’s whiskers. “ You’ll 
find its those ‘masterful men’ the novels 
are alwus cackling about that the womin 
folks respect, yes sir!” And Sam’l 
pranced off lifting his feet 
high and bringing them down 
ringing. 
Grandfather Preble 
chuckled along the way at 
the unexpected foolishness of 
Sam'l. “Did Sam’l think 
then that Grannie didn’t re¬ 
spect him? That she wished 
him more masterful?—after 
all these years with never a 
set-to? Dern foolishness!” 
And Gramp turned up the 
wooden walk hitching his arm 
comfortably over the pur¬ 
chases for Grannie. 
B UT there are little shafts 
that persist, that nourish 
themselves in the dark and 
spread. For usually grand¬ 
father Preble’s goatee faced 
the world at a notable angle 
and usually he walked with 
a jerky briskness up and down 
the garden paths that he and 
Grannie “puttered around in 
mornings an’ odd times.” 
With hands behind his back, 
one loosely catching the other 
that held a charred pipe, he 
would sniff the breezes that 
mingled the fragrance of the 
honeysuckle and wild currant, watch the 
round-bodied bees burrowing into the 
thick clusters of pink blossoms and twist 
a wrinkled finger under the white rose with 
the petals that clung. 
Now he shuffled up and down the center 
path in a grumpy abstraction while a 
gopher kicked moist black earth into a 
little hill at the roots of the cactus. When 
his shoulders began to smart under the 
sun, he jammed the pipe into his mouth 
and pulled himself up the two back stairs, 
stair by stair. 
At the kitchen door the odor of boiling 
soup, rich with garden carrots and green 
peas, made him raise his head quickly, 
then lift his feet with minute care and 
direction toward the magazine lying open 
at his breakfast place. 
“Gramp, are you there?” came a voice 
serene with the placidness of years and full 
of that something that would give a tramp 
at the back door no hesitation in asking 
for a meal; a voice intangibly coaxing and 
hard to refuse. 
But Gramp snorted, shoved a hand over 
to the range and gave the flame a twist 
down. 
“Uh huh,” he growled. 
“Then please turn the gas low under the 
I soup. It must be most done by now.” 
‘Humph!” and Gramp switched his 
magazine off the table and into the dining 
room to his chair with its faded cushions 
worn thread bare where the head and 
shoulders rested, and placed by the win¬ 
dow where he could watch “that college 
ohap a trying to raise them fool chickens,” 
and any chance peddlers or canvassers 
before they rang the bell. On the wall 
opposite was an enlarged copy of his and 
Grannie’s wedding photograph now forty- 
eight years old. He was sitting with con¬ 
scious manliness, stiff and stern; while 
Grannie stood shyly by his side, one arm 
resting on the back of the chair. 
In those days they had sung, “When 
You and I Were Young, Maggie,” and 
walked by the “creek and the creaking old 
mill,”' and Grannie had said that she 
knew Gramp would never turn out like 
that shifty Tom Simpkins, and Gramp 
had told Grannie that she’d never be can¬ 
tankerous like Sal Williams. No, they 
would always be just as they were. Well, 
Grannie had been a mighty bright house¬ 
keeper; the chair backs were never with¬ 
out their crocheted doilies, nor the table 
■without its bowl of flowers, but— 
Gramp twitched down into the hollows 
of his chair and as he shifted his glasses, 
shot an injured glance at the placid 
Grannie enjoying the morning’s news. 
Then he sat glaring at the illustrated pigs, 
their arrested little eyes staring straight 
out of the picture, but with no appreci- 
limits. She had asked, “ Please, what time 
is it? ’’when she was right next to the clock! 
“Cain’t you see?” roared Gramp. 
“Dear me,” exclaimed Grannie,“Didn’t 
Hooper sell you the right kind of to¬ 
bacco?” 
S OMETHING must be done, Gramp 
resolved. But how? Perhaps the 
best way would be just not to hear 
Grannie. Yes, when Sam’l came, he 
would fetch no shawl. 
Soon the regular vibrations of SamT’s 
cane sounded along the walk. Very 
softly Gramp raised himself out of the 
chair and started for the front door. 
“Will you see if I left my shawl in the 
hall, please?” came Grannie’s beseech¬ 
ing voice as her soft white ringlets ap¬ 
peared above the newspaper. “The air’s 
still a bit chilly these mornin’s.” 
Gramp shuffled straight on. When he 
came back he was talking with great 
emphasis on pig raising. 
ANOTHER BROAD HIGHWAY SETTING 
A NOTHER American Agriculturist reader who has lived in the Broad Highway country and knows 
the familiar spots mentioned in that delightful serial has sent us in an actual picture of the forge 
where Peter worked and the tavern called The Bull, across the roadway. Our readers will remember that 
Mrs. Hopkins of Cortland, N. Y. sent pictures of other spots, but did not have one of Sissinghurst. 
Mrs. Allen Albee of Hamilton, N. Y. has sent in this picture and writes: 
“I too was interested in the story, The Broad Highway, having been born next door to the Forge where 
Peter worked and it was my home for twenty-nine years. The sign post of the Bull is to the right of the 
picture and the Forge is the low building across the road.” 
ation of their pork and bacon values. 
Soon SamT Snipe would totter along and 
“stop fer a bit” in his morning walk. 
Then they would argue awhile on how the 
Battle of Bull Run would have been 
fought if aeroplanes “had been thought 
of” or how the Bluecoats would have 
managed with submarines. And when 
SamT’s voice ascended the cracking pitch, 
and he waved his cane along Gramp’s 
whiskers, Gramp would suggest a walk in 
the garden. After that SamT w r ould make 
a start for home, moving to the door by 
degrees. 
But that was not all, not by a long shot. 
When Gramp got up to let SamT in, 
Grannie would probably say, “Will you 
see if I left my shawl in the hall, please? 
The air’s still a bit chilly these mornins.” 
And then before he sat down,, “Please 
hand me the rest of the paper,” or if she 
happened to be darning, “Dear me, I 
must have left the scissors in the kitchen! 
I thought sure I brought them in with 
me,” and she would look earnestly around 
her chair and the floor until Gramp 
pranced after them. . 
Always Gramp had done these little 
errands with a sort of big brother pride 
and a certain unsuspected chivalry until 
lately he suspicioned a slight hiccuping 
chuckle from SamT. Then he found him¬ 
self waiting for Grannie to speak as he 
moved from one place to another, and he 
began to wonder if there wasn’t some part 
of the house that didn’t hold something 
of immediate need. Once he had mut¬ 
tered and grumbled and Grannie had 
said, “Dear me, you h’aint got a tooth¬ 
ache, Gramp? ’Cause there’s a whole 
bottle of oil o’ cloves in the pantry.” 
But this morning she had passed all 
“ Didn’t you bring my shawl? ” Grannie 
leaned her head around in searching sur¬ 
prise. For a moment Gramp hesitated,^ 
then banged out into the hall. And that 
morning it was SamT who suggested a 
walk in the garden. 
Gramp followed him with ears alert. 
“Just see if there’s water enough in the 
will you? It 
might 
be 
boiling 
soup : 
away.” Grannie’s voice followed. 
This time Gramp walked straight on 
out after SamT. He puttered around 
pointing out this flower and that, calling 
the hollyhocks poppies, and the blue 
marguerites for-get-me-nots; Sam'l cor¬ 
recting w r ith patient regularity. Gramp 
rapped his pipe against a manzanita. The 
soup could boil to nothing for all he cared! 
“Ha, jest look at this feller,” called 
Sam'l pointing to the gopher hole. 
“Jest a minut,” called Gramp, “and 
we’ll fix him. Grannie has some gas balls 
that do the work.” And he hurried into 
the house where he poured plenty of 
water into the soup. Then he went out 
w r ith the gas balls. 
“But something’s got to be done, just 
the same,” he kept muttering to himself. 
“Well, they oughter do the work,” said 
SamT peering over his glasses. 
“Eh, —oh, yes, yes.” The Gramp 
chuckled in an uncalled for way. “Yes 
that oughter do the work,” he said. 
That evening he complained of a pain 
in his arm. The next morning it was 
w r orse. 
“Speck it’s rheumatism,” said Gramp 
with a twist of the mouth betokening pain. 
“Dear me,” said Grannie anxiously, 
“I’ll jest write to Belle to be sure and drop 
in this week end. You’d best take care 
right at the start.” 
Gramp fidgeted. Belle was the young¬ 
est granddaughter and had just become a 
graduate nurse. Well, he could swear 
there was a pain and she couldn’t say 
there wasn’t. So Gramp kept to his chair 
that morning and when Sam’l came it was, 
“Please give this paper To Gramp.” And 
when they were going out, “Mr. Snipe, 
jest see that the beans ain’t burning, 
please.” At which Gramp would beam, 
chin w'hiskers extended, as he watched 
SamT’s stooped back. 
But SamT’s hands were large and 
awkward and the gas would go out al¬ 
together, or the water would spill all over 
the linoleum. He never could see the 
scissors if they were right under his nose; 
while his muttered cussing made Gramp’s 
brows furrow unevenly, and he would 
give the door a quick shove, lest Grannie 
hear. 
“Chuckle-headed,” Gramp scoffed to 
himself, and took to wandering back and 
forth from kitchen to dining room. It 
was a nuisance, too, to keep 
his arms inert, or use them 
and make a wry face; he 
complained inwardly. 
“Well if here ain’t Mis’ 
Snipe,” Grannie broke in on 
his abstractions. 
“Humph!” said Gramp. 
“ I’ll clear out. She’s enough 
to drive a person deaf with 
her quacking.” But her 
quacking became very inter¬ 
esting to Gramp when he 
heard “rheumatism.” He 
stepped softly into the 
kitchen doorway. 
“Yes, they do say that 
onc’t a person gets the 
rheumatism they’ve got it 
fer good. And I always did 
think as how you and Mr. 
Preble got along so nice-like 
—he being such a help and 
all. My SamT never was 
much of a hand a helpin’ 
around the house, and at the 
end o’the day I’m clean 
petered out. I says, J If 
there were only a few more 
men like Mr. Preble,’ says 
I, ‘There wouldn’t be sech 
a heap o’ divorces!’ ” 
“Gramp,” said Grannie in 
a soft and proud voice, “Is what I call 
a masterful man. He jest takes and 
manages everything,—jest like I alwus 
knew he would.” 
“That’s jest it,” sighed Mrs. Snipe, 
•‘If w r e only—” 
But Gramp had heard enough. As 
(Grannie took the biscuits out of the oven 
for dinner, he busied himself setting the 
table. 
“Dear me,” said Grannie, “Don’t 
strain your arm, Gramp!” 
“Humph! It was only a little cold— 
all gone. Jest look!” And Gramp swung 
his arms side ways, over head, and around 
Grannie. 
“Dear me,” gasped Grannie, and then, 
“ Dear me, I forgot to bring in the cream.” 
“I’ll fetch it,” and Gramp pranced out 
with a jerky briskness. 
You Can Have Tea Roses 
W E all want tea roses. We can have 
them too. Buy the small plants in 
pots of your favorite kinds and they will 
grow in a bed of good soil and bloom 
until frost, and along in the fall they will 
be fine. Feed them in the summer, first 
with a sprinkling of nitrate of soda and 
later with bonemeal; or you can water 
once every two weeks with liquid manure 
made by soaking a peck of mixed cow and 
poultry manure in a tub of water and 
diluting until the color of weak tea. 
Make a water tight box to cover them in 
winter and most of them will live over all 
right.— Rachel Rae. 
Truths and roses have thorns 
them.—P roverbs of Spain. 
about 
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