The couple began work on the allotment in Autumn. Like many of their neighbours they had a mind to stretch their household budget by growing fruit and vegetables, but they were also motivated by fear. That Spring their beloved son had finally left them and having tired of rolling unsteadily around their house, like two shriveling peas, they were desperate for more constructive ways to fill their time. The couple's research had been thorough and they threw themselves into the project with an earnest enthusiasm. First they checked the PH of the soil. Then they built a compost bin, decided which crop varieties were most suited to the composition of the earth and drew up a planting schedule for the Spring. Overwintering vegetables - onions and cauliflower, garlic and leeks - were planted and the rest of their plot was forked and left rough dug, with the roots of any weeds exposed to the frosts that would follow. It had been some time since the couple had met and spoken to anyone new and at first they were ill-at-ease around the more established plot holders. But their diligence was noted and they were soon made to feel welcome. By the end of their first month - as was the tradition with newcomers - they were given gifts of fruit and vegetables from those growers that had been most successful that Summer. They found themselves with bags of runner beans and courgettes, tomatoes and plums. There were squashes and a pumpkin, the biggest they'd seen. By the time people began abandoning the allotment for the Winter, the couple were able to reflect on a satisfying introduction to a community they had found more of a preoccupation than they might have dared hope for. Potentially the most diverting of their new relationships was one they had begun with the old man on the plot next to theirs. They had been told that he had taken ownership of it a month before they had begun work on their own, but beyond that no-one seemed to know anything about him. Despite always arriving on foot, he didn't appear to live on any of the roads in the immediate vicinity of the allotment. His age was a moot point: he could have been 60 something or 70 something or, at a push, a sprightly 80. For whatever reason he wasn't the slightest bit friendly, and most of the people who'd spoken to him had been ignored; furthermore, the few syllables he had offered by way of reply had come with a heavy accent, from Germany perhaps, or Eastern Europe. < 2 > The couple were undeterred by the old man's taciturn manner. There was something exotic about his difference and this appealed to them. Besides. His was a constant presence on the allotment and their relationship with him was clearly going to be central to the experience: every time the couple ventured out that first Autumn – and this was often enough – there he was, bent double and turning over the soil like a peasant in a field. This dedication gave the couple something to work with. If their exploratory 'hello!'s and 'nice day!'s had prompted no response, it would surely be more fruitful to prod the old man about the detail of his plans. It was. One weekend at the beginning of November, it became apparent why he had been working with such urgency when he took delivery of - and set about planting – a dozen rose bushes. This was unusual. Flowers were grown on the allotment; someone had sowed wildflower seeds to create a patch of meadow and the practice of planting marigolds and nasturtiums as companions to carrots and broad beans was widespread. But no-one had given a whole plot over to the cultivation of a particular bloom. The couple saw their opportunity. 'What's the secret then?' they asked their neighbour as he dug and dug, 'to planting roses?' 'You have to bury it deep', he said and although they left it at that the couple were thrilled with the effortlessly enigmatic nature of his reply. Their curiosity was further piqued that Winter, when they began taking walks on the now deserted allotment. They were looking for something to fill the time during which nothing except emptiness grew. One day they were delighted to see a bird emerge from a previously unnoticed hole in a dead tree at the end of their plot. The bird was colourful and distinctive enough for the couple to identify it on their return home: it was a Great Spotted Woodpecker and they hoped its to-ings and fro-ings would hold their attention until Spring. The following week the rain was coming down but the couple remembered the bird, wrapped-up against the cold and ventured out anyway. Approaching the tree they were surprised to see the old man standing in the freezing rain, staring at his hard-worked soil. He was drenched but he stood up straight and proud too, even as the water poured off his flat cap in icy streams. It was as if he was willing the roses to spring forth from the ground, and for days the couple didn't speak of the woodpecker at all. < 3 > With the arrival of Spring, the allotment was full of people again, putting the finishing touches to their preparations for the new season's growing. The frost had worked its magic but there were roots to weed out and manure to tickle into the expectant earth. The couple consulted their plans and sowed carrots and lettuces and covered them with fleece. They secured canes for broad beans near to the onions, in order to deter root fly. They transferred courgette plants from pots to cloches, tomatoes and peppers too, while chitted potatoes were buried in trenches. The old man also busied himself, pruning his rose bushes and weeding assiduously between them. The plants had lain dormant over the winter but had taken well. The leaves were dark red, although some were already showing signs of the vivid green that the couple had learned would come with maturation. By the last week of April, the roses had bloomed. The flowers had large heads and were petalled densely in deep apricot and fiery pink and orange. The bushes were laid out in three precise rows, the earth from which they grew was darkly rich and otherwise clear of plant life and although the flowers had yet to fully inhabit their beauty, the old man's plot provided the most arresting sight on the allotment. One morning in May, the couple ventured out for an early start, only to find their neighbour standing on the exact same spot as he had that Winter. Once again he was staring at his handiwork. 'Looking good,' they ventured, genuinely enough. The old man turned around. He looked past the couple, as though he was unsurprised that his efforts had attracted an audience but also as though he hadn't registered – or didn't care - who it was. He raised a hand to his chin as if lost in thought. 'Not good', he said, 'too strong. Too soon.' Then he turned back to his plot. The couple would have been happy if the encounter had ended there, with this further evidence of the old man's eccentricity, but even as they exchanged glances, they noticed that he had started to sob, his head full and bowed, his whole body convulsing in great wracks of distress. < 4 > The incident alarmed them. While they had sometimes wondered what the old man was doing and why, there was a limit to their curiosity and to how far they would go to occupy their thoughts. The exotic was welcome but this response was raw and deeply unsettling and not one on which they cared to dwell. By the time the arrival of their first cauliflower heads heralded the end of Spring, they had long returned to the counsel and succour of their less challenging neighbours. As I understand criticism it is, like philosophy and history, a kind of novel for the use of discreet and curious minds. And every novel, rightly understood, is an autobiography. The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces. There is no such thing as objective criticism any more than there is objective art, and all who flatter themselves that they put aught but themselves into their work are dupes of the most fallacious illusion. The truth is that one never gets out of oneself. That is one of our greatest miseries. What would we not give to see, if but for a minute, the sky and the earth with the many-faceted eye of a fly, or to understand nature with the rude and simple brain of an ape? But just that is forbidden us. We cannot, like Tiresias, be men and remember having been women. We are locked into our persons as into a lasting prison. The best we can do, it seems to me, is gracefully to recognize this terrible situation and to admit that we speak of ourselves every time that we have not the strength to be silent. To be quite frank, the critic ought to say: "Gentlemen, I am going to talk about myself on the subject of Shakespeare, or Racine, or Pascal, or Goethe subjects that offer me a beautiful opportunity." I had the honor of knowing M. Cuvillier-Fleury, who was a very earnest old critic. One day when I had come to see him in his little house in the Avenue Raphael, he showed me the modest library of which he was proud. "Sir," he said to me, "oratory, pure literature, philosophy, history, all the kinds are represented here, without counting criticism which embraces them all. Yes, the critic is by turn orator, philosopher, historian." M. Cuvillier-Fleury was right. The critic is all that or, at least, he ought to be. He has occasion to show the rarest, most diverse, most varied faculties of the intellect. And when he is a Sainte-Beuve, a Taine, a Jules Lemaître, a Ferdinand Brunetière, he does not fail to do so. Remaining definitely within himself he creates the intellectual history of man. Criticism is the youngest of all the literary forms: it will perhaps end by absorbing all the others. It is admirably suited to a very civilized society with rich memories and long traditions. It is particularly appropriate to a curious, learned and polite humanity. For its prosperity it demands more culture than any of the other literary forms. Its creators were Montaigne, Saint-Evremond, Bayle, Montesquieu. It proceeds simultaneously from philosophy and history. It has required, for its development, an epoch of absolute intellectual liberty. It has replaced theology and, if one were to seek the universal doctor, the Saint Thomas Aquinas of the nineteenth century, of whom would one be forced to think but of Sainte-Beuve?... According to Littré a book is a bound bundle of paper sheets whether hand-written or printed. That definition does not satisfy me. I would define a book as a work of magic whence escape all kinds of images to trouble the souls and change the hearts of men. Or, better still, a book is a little magic apparatus which transports us among the images of the past or amidst supernatural shades. Those who read many books are like the eaters of hashish. They live in a dream. The subtle poison that penetrates their brain renders them insensible to the real world and makes them the prey of terrible or delightful phantoms. Books are the opium of the Occident. They devour us. A day is coming on which we shall all be keepers of libraries, and that will be the end. Let us love books as the mistress of the poet loved her grief. Let us love them: they cost us dear enough. Yes, books kill us. You may believe me who adore them, who have long given myself to them without reserve. Books slay us. We have too many of them and too many kinds. Men lived for long ages without reading and precisely in those ages their actions were greatest and most useful, for it was then that they passed from barbarism to civilization. But because men were then without books they were not bare of poetry and morality: they knew songs by heart and little catechisms. In their childhood old women told them the stories of the Ass's Skin and of Puss in Boots of which, much later, editions for bibliophiles have been made. The earliest books were great rocks covered with inscriptions in an administrative or religious style. It is a long time since then. What frightful progress we have made in the interval! Books multiplied in a marvelous fashion in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Today their production has increased an hundredfold. In Paris alone fifty books are published daily without counting the newspapers. It is a monstrous orgy. We shall emerge from it quite mad. It is man's fate to fall successively into contradictory extremes. In the Middle Ages ignorance bred fear. Thus maladies of the mind reigned then which we no longer know. To-day, through study, we are hastening toward general paralysis. Would it not be wiser and more elegant to keep some measure? Let us be lovers of books and let us read them: but let us not gather them with indiscriminate hands: let us be delicate: let us choose, and, like that lord in one of Shakespeare's comedies, let us say to our book-seller: "I would that they be well-bound and that they speak of love." As I understand criticism it is, like philosophy and history, a kind of novel for the use of discreet and curious minds. And every novel, rightly understood, is an autobiography. The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces. There is no such thing as objective criticism any more than there is objective art, and all who flatter themselves that they put aught but themselves into their work are dupes of the most fallacious illusion. The truth is that one never gets out of oneself. That is one of our greatest miseries. What would we not give to see, if but for a minute, the sky and the earth with the many-faceted eye of a fly, or to understand nature with the rude and simple brain of an ape? But just that is forbidden us. We cannot, like Tiresias, be men and remember having been women. We are locked into our persons as into a lasting prison. The best we can do, it seems to me, is gracefully to recognize this terrible situation and to admit that we speak of ourselves every time that we have not the strength to be silent. To be quite frank, the critic ought to say: "Gentlemen, I am going to talk about myself on the subject of Shakespeare, or Racine, or Pascal, or Goethe subjects that offer me a beautiful opportunity." I had the honor of knowing M. Cuvillier-Fleury, who was a very earnest old critic. One day when I had come to see him in his little house in the Avenue Raphael, he showed me the modest library of which he was proud. "Sir," he said to me, "oratory, pure literature, philosophy, history, all the kinds are represented here, without counting criticism which embraces them all. Yes, the critic is by turn orator, philosopher, historian." M. Cuvillier-Fleury was right. The critic is all that or, at least, he ought to be. He has occasion to show the rarest, most diverse, most varied faculties of the intellect. And when he is a Sainte-Beuve, a Taine, a Jules Lemaître, a Ferdinand Brunetière, he does not fail to do so. Remaining definitely within himself he creates the intellectual history of man. Criticism is the youngest of all the literary forms: it will perhaps end by absorbing all the others. It is admirably suited to a very civilized society with rich memories and long traditions. It is particularly appropriate to a curious, learned and polite humanity. For its prosperity it demands more culture than any of the other literary forms. Its creators were Montaigne, Saint-Evremond, Bayle, Montesquieu. It proceeds simultaneously from philosophy and history. It has required, for its development, an epoch of absolute intellectual liberty. It has replaced theology and, if one were to seek the universal doctor, the Saint Thomas Aquinas of the nineteenth century, of whom would one be forced to think but of Sainte-Beuve?... According to Littré a book is a bound bundle of paper sheets whether hand-written or printed. That definition does not satisfy me. I would define a book as a work of magic whence escape all kinds of images to trouble the souls and change the hearts of men. Or, better still, a book is a little magic apparatus which transports us among the images of the past or amidst supernatural shades. Those who read many books are like the eaters of hashish. They live in a dream. The subtle poison that penetrates their brain renders them insensible to the real world and makes them the prey of terrible or delightful phantoms. Books are the opium of the Occident. They devour us. A day is coming on which we shall all be keepers of libraries, and that will be the end. Let us love books as the mistress of the poet loved her grief. Let us love them: they cost us dear enough. Yes, books kill us. You may believe me who adore them, who have long given myself to them without reserve. Books slay us. We have too many of them and too many kinds. Men lived for long ages without reading and precisely in those ages their actions were greatest and most useful, for it was then that they passed from barbarism to civilization. But because men were then without books they were not bare of poetry and morality: they knew songs by heart and little catechisms. In their childhood old women told them the stories of the Ass's Skin and of Puss in Boots of which, much later, editions for bibliophiles have been made. The earliest books were great rocks covered with inscriptions in an administrative or religious style. It is a long time since then. What frightful progress we have made in the interval! Books multiplied in a marvelous fashion in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Today their production has increased an hundredfold. In Paris alone fifty books are published daily without counting the newspapers. It is a monstrous orgy. We shall emerge from it quite mad. It is man's fate to fall successively into contradictory extremes. In the Middle Ages ignorance bred fear. Thus maladies of the mind reigned then which we no longer know. To-day, through study, we are hastening toward general paralysis. Would it not be wiser and more elegant to keep some measure? Let us be lovers of books and let us read them: but let us not gather them with indiscriminate hands: let us be delicate: let us choose, and, like that lord in one of Shakespeare's comedies, let us say to our book-seller: "I would that they be well-bound and that they speak of love."In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend's friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me to death with some exasperating reminiscence of him as long and as tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it succeeded. I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the dilapidated tavern in the decayed mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up, and gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas W. Smiley--Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, a young minister of the Gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident of Angel's Camp. I added that if Mr. Wheeler could tell me anything about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel under many obligations to him. Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair, and then sat down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned his initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in finesse. I let him go on in his own way, and never interrrupted him once. "Rev. Leonidas W. H'm, Reverend Le--well, there was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of '49--or may be it was the spring of '50--I don't recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume warn't finished when he first come to the camp; but any way, he was the curiosest man about always betting on anything that turned up you ever see, if he could get anybody to bet on the other side; and if he couldn't he'd change sides. Any way that suited the other man would suit him--any way just so's he got a bet, he was satisfied. But still he was lucky, uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner. He was always ready and laying for a chance; there couldn't be no solit'ry thing mentioned but that feller'd offer to bet on it, and take ary side you please, as I was just telling you. If there was a horse-race, you'd find him flush or you'd find him busted at the end of it; if there was a dog-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a chicken-fight, he'd bet on it; why, if there was two birds setting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly first; or if there was a camp-meeting, he would be there reg'lar to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here, and so he was too, and a good man. If he even see a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get to--to wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road. Lots of the boys here has seen that Smiley, and can tell you about him. Why, it never made no difference to him--he'd bet on any thing--the dangdest feller. Parson Walker's wife laid very sick once, for a good while, and it seemed as if they warn't going to save her; but one morning he come in, and Smiley up and asked him how she was, and he said she was considable better--thank the Lord for his inf'nit mercy--and coming on so smart that with the blessing of Prov'dence she'd get well yet; and Smiley, before he thought says, "Well, I'll resk two-and-a-half she don't anyway." Thish-yer Smiley had a mare--the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag, but that was only in fun, you know, because of course she was faster than that--and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards' start, and then pass her under way; but always at the fag-end of the race she'd get excited and desperate-like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side amongst the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose--and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near as you could cipher it down. And he had a little small bull-pup, that to look at him you'd think he warn't worth a cent but to set around and look ornery and lay for a chance to steal something. But as soon as money was up on him he was a different dog; his under-jaw'd begin to stick out like the fo'castle of a steamboat, and his teeth would uncover and shine like the furnaces. And a dog might tackle him and bully-rag him, and bite him, and throw him over his shoulder two or three times, and Andrew Jackson--which was the name of the pup--Andrew Jackson would never let on but what he was satisfied, and hadn't expected nothing else--and the bets being doubled and doubled on the other side all the time, till the money was all up; and then all of a sudden he would grab that other dog just by the j'int of his hind leg and freeze to it--not chaw, you understand, but only just grip and hang on till they throwed up the sponge, if it was a year. Smiley always come out winner on that pup, till he harnessed a dog once that didn't have no hind legs, because they'd been sawed off in a circular saw, and when the thing had gone along far enough, and the money was all up, and he come to make a snatch for his pet holt, he see in a minute how he's been imposed on, and how the other dog had him in the door, so to speak, and he 'peared surprised, and then he looked sorter discouraged-like, and didn't try no more to win the fight, and so he got shucked out bad. He give Smiley a look, as much as to say his heart was broke, and it was his fault, for putting up a dog that hadn't no hind legs for him to take holt of, which was his main dependence in a fight, and then he limped off a piece and laid down and died. It was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would have made a name for hisself if he'd lived, for the stuff was in him and he had genius--I know it, because he hadn't no opportunities to speak of, and it don't stand to reason that a dog could make such a fight as he could under them circumstances if he hadn't no talent. It always makes me feel sorry when I think of that last fight of his'n, and the way it turned out. Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken cocks, and tomcats and all them kind of things, till you couldn't rest, and you couldn't fetch nothing for him to bet on but he'd match you. He ketched a frog one day, and took him home, and said he cal'lated to educate him; and so he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He'd give him a little punch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut--see him turn one summerset, or may be a couple, if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the matter of ketching flies, and kep' him in practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as fur as he could see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do 'most anything--and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster down here on this floor--Dan'l Webster was the name of the frog--and sing out, "Flies, Dan'l, flies!" and quicker'n you could wink he'd spring straight up and snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on the floor ag'in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over more ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see. Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand; and when it come to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers that had traveled and been everywheres, all said he laid over any frog that ever they see. Well, Smiley kep't the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch him down town sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller--a stranger in the camp, he was--come acrost him with his box, and says: "What might it be that you've got in the box?" And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like, "It might be a parrot, or it might be a canary, maybe, but it ain't--it's only just a frog." And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round this way and that, and says, "H'm--so 'tis. Well, what's he good for?" "Well," Smiley says, easy and careless, "he's good enough for one thing, I should judge--he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county." The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look, and give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, "Well," he says, "I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog." "Maybe you don't," Smiley says. "Maybe you understand frogs and maybe you don't understand 'em; maybe you've had experience, and maybe you ain't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've got my opinion and I'll resk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county." And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, "Well, I'm only a stranger here, and I ain't got no frog; but if I had a frog, I'd bet you." And then Smiley says, "That's all right--that's all right--if you'll hold my box a minute, I'll go and get you a frog." And so the feller took the box, and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley's, and set down to wait. So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and filled him full of quail shot--filled him pretty near up to his chin--and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him in, and give him to this feller, and says: "Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his forepaws just even with Dan'l's, and I'll give the word." Then he says, "One--two--three-git!" and him and the feller touched up the frogs from behind, and the new frog hopped off lively, but Dan'l give a heave, and hysted up his shoulders--so--like a Frenchman, but it warn't no use--he couldn't budge; he was planted as solid as a church, and he couldn't no more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was a good deal surprised, and he was disgusted too, but he didn't have no idea what the matter was, of course. The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at the door, he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder--so--at Dan'l, and says again, very deliberate, "Well," he says, "I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog." Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan'l a long time, and at last he says, "I do wonder what in the nation that frog throw'd off for--I wonder if there ain't something the matter with him--he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow." And he ketched Dan'l by the nap of the neck, and hefted him, and says, "Why blame my cats if he don't weigh five pound!" and turned him upside down and he belched out a double handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was the maddest man--he set the frog down and took out after that feller, but he never ketched him. And----" [Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard, and got up to see what was wanted.] And turning to me as he moved away, he said: "Just set where you are, stranger, and rest easy--I ain't going to be gone a second." But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of the enterprising vagabond Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much information concerning the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started away. At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he button-holed me and recommenced: "Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yaller one-eyed cow that didn't have no tail, only jest a short stump like a bannanner, and----" However, lacking both time and inclination, I did not wait to hear about the afflicted cow, but took my leave.