One way out : $b A middle-class New-Englander emigrates to AmericaBartlett, Frederick Orin
General
One way out : $b A middle-class New-Englander emigrates to America
Bartlett, Frederick Orin
Political fiction; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918 -- Fiction
As for us we had our choice of any number of pleasant occupations. I
insisted that Ruth should make the meals as simple as possible on that
day and both the boy and myself helped her about them. We always
washed the dishes and swept the floor. First of all there was the
roof. I early saw the possibility of this much neglected spot. It was
flat and had a fence around it for it was meant to be used for the
hanging out of clothes. Being a new building it had been built a story
higher than its older neighbors so that we overlooked the other roofs.
There was a generous space through which we saw the harbor. I picked
up a strip of old canvas for a trifle in one of the shore-front
junk-shops which deal in second-hand ship supplies and arranged it
over one corner like a canopy. Then I brought home with me some bits
of board that were left over from the wood construction at the ditch
and nailed these together to make a rude sort of window box. It was
harder to get dirt than it was wood but little by little I brought
home enough finally to fill the boxes. In these we planted radishes
and lettuce and a few flower seeds. We had almost as good a garden as
we used to have in our back yard. At any rate it was just as much fun
to watch the things grow, and though the lettuce never amounted to
much we actually raised some very good radishes. The flowers did well,
too.
We brought up an old blanket and spread it out beneath the canopy and
that, with a chair or two, made our roof garden. A local branch of the
Public Library was not far distant so that we had all the reading
matter we wanted and here we used to sit all day Sunday when we didn't
feel like doing anything else. Here, too, we used to sit evenings. On
several hot nights Ruth, the boy and I brought up our blankets and
slept out. The boy liked it so well that finally he came to sleep up
here most of the summer. It was fine for him. The harbor breeze swept
the air clean of smoke so that it was as good for him as being at the
sea-shore.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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