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Title: More Jonathan Papers
Author: Elisabeth Woodbridge
Release Date: December 19, 2006 [Ebook #20141]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO 8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORE
JONATHAN PAPERS***

More Jonathan Papers
By Elisabeth Woodbridge

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge 1915

COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY ELISABETH WOODBRIDGE MORRIS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published November 1915

TO JONATHAN

CONTENTS
I. The Searchings of Jonathan II. Sap-Time III. Evenings on the Farm
IV. After Frost V. The Joys of Garden Stewardship VI. Trout and
Arbutus VII. Without the Time of Day VIII. The Ways of Griselda IX.
A Rowboat Pilgrimage Colophon Appendix A: Extra Front Pages
Errata

More Jonathan Papers
I
The Searchings of Jonathan
"What I find it hard to understand is, why a person who can see a spray
of fringed gentian in the middle of a meadow can't see a book on the
sitting-room table."
"The reason why I can see the gentian," said Jonathan, "is because the
gentian is there."
"So is the book," I responded.

"Which table?" he asked.
"The one with the lamp on it. It's a red book, about so big."
"It isn't there; but, just to satisfy you, I'll look again."
He returned in a moment with an argumentative expression of
countenance. "It isn't there," he said firmly. "Will anything else do
instead?"
"No, I wanted you to read that special thing. Oh, dear! And I have all
these things in my lap! And I know it is there."
"And I know it isn't." He stretched himself out in the hammock and
watched me as I rather ostentatiously laid down thimble, scissors,
needle, cotton, and material and set out for the sitting-room table. There
were a number of books on it, to be sure. I glanced rapidly through the
piles, fingered the lower books, pushed aside a magazine, and pulled
out from beneath it the book I wanted. I returned to the hammock and
handed it over. Then, after possessing myself, again rather
ostentatiously, of material, cotton, needle, scissors, and thimble, I sat
down.
"It's the second essay I specially thought we'd like," I said.
"Just for curiosity," said Jonathan, with an impersonal air, "where did
you find it?"
"Find what?" I asked innocently.
"The book."
"Oh! On the table."
"Which table?"
"The one with the lamp on it."
"I should like to know where."

"Why--just there--on the table. There was an 'Atlantic' on top of it, to
be sure."
"I saw the 'Atlantic.' Blest if it looked as though it had anything under it!
Besides, I was looking for it on top of things. You said you laid it down
there just before luncheon, and I didn't think it could have crawled in
under so quick."
"When you're looking for a thing," I said, "you mustn't think, you must
look. Now go ahead and read."
If this were a single instance, or even if it were one of many illustrating
a common human frailty, it would hardly be worth setting down. But
the frailty under consideration has come to seem to me rather
particularly masculine. Are not all the Jonathans in the world
continually being sent to some sitting-room table for something, and
coming back to assert, with more or less pleasantness, according to
their temperament, that it is not there? The incident, then, is not
isolated; it is typical of a vast group. For Jonathan, read Everyman; for
the red book, read any particular thing that you want Him to bring; for
the sitting-room table, read the place where you know it is and
Everyman says it isn't.
This, at least, is my thesis. It is not, however, unchallenged. Jonathan
has challenged it when, from time to time, as occasion offered, I have
lightly sketched it out for him. Sometimes he argues that my instances
are really isolated cases and that their evidence is not cumulative, at
others he takes refuge in a tu quoque--in itself a confession of
weakness--and alludes darkly to "top shelves" and "bottom drawers."
But let us have no mysteries. These phrases, considered as arguments,
have their origin in certain incidents which, that all the evidence may
be in, I will here set down.
Once upon a time I asked Jonathan to get me something from the top
shelf in the closet. He went, and failed to find it. Then I went, and took
it down. Jonathan, watching