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 over my shoulder, said, “But that wasn’t the top shelf, I suppose you will admit.”

Sure enough! There was a shelf above. “Oh, yes; but I don’t count that shelf. We never use it, because nobody can reach it.”

“How do you expect me to know which shelves you count and which you don’t?”

“Of course, anatomically structurally it is one, but functionally it isn’t there at all.”

“I see,” said Jonathan, so contentedly that I knew he was filing this affair away for future use.

On another occasion I asked him to get something for me from the top drawer of the old “high-boy” in the dining-room. He was gone a long while, and at last, growing impatient, I followed. I found him standing on an old wooden-seated chair, screw-driver in hand. A drawer on a level with his head was open, and he had hanging over his arm a gaudy collection of ancient table-covers and embroidered scarfs, mostly in shades of magenta.

“She stuck, but I’ve got her open now. I don’t see any pillow-cases, though. It’s all full of these things.” He pumped his laden arm up and down, and the table-covers wagged gayly.

I sank into the chair and laughed. “Oh! Have you been prying at that all this time? Of course there’s nothing in that drawer.”

“There’s where you’re wrong. There’s a great deal in it; I haven’t taken out half. If you want to see

“I don’t want to see! There’s nothing I want less! What I mean is I never put anything there.”

“It’s the top drawer.” He was beginning to lay back the table-covers.

“But I can’t reach it. And it’s been stuck for ever so long.”

“You said the top drawer.”

“Yes, I suppose I did. Of course what I meant was the top one of the ones I use.”

“I see, my dear. When you say top shelf you don’t mean top shelf, and when you say top drawer you don’t mean top drawer; in fact, when you say top you don’t mean top at all you mean the height of your head. Everything above that doesn’t count.”

Jonathan was so pleased with this formulation of my attitude that he was not in the least irritated to have put out unnecessary work. And his satisfaction was deepened by one more incident. I had sent him to the bottom drawer of my bureau to get a shawl. He returned without it, and I was puzzled. “Now, Jonathan, it’s there, and it’s the top thing.”

“The real top,” murmured Jonathan, “or just what you call top?”

“It’s right in front,” I went on; “and I don’t see how even a man could fail to find it.”

He proceeded to enumerate the contents of the drawer in such strange fashion that I began to wonder where he had been.

“I said my bureau.”

“I went to your bureau.”

“The bottom drawer.”

“The bottom drawer. There was nothing but a lot of little boxes and

“Oh, I know what you did! You went to the secret drawer.”

“Isn’t that the bottom one?”

“Why, yes, in a way of course it is; but it doesn’t exactly count it’s not one of the regular drawers it hasn’t any knobs, or anything

“But it’s a perfectly good drawer.”

“Yes. But nobody is supposed to know it’s there; it looks like a molding

“But I know it’s there.”

“Yes, of course.”

“And you know I know it’s there.”

“Yes, yes; but I just don’t think about that one in counting up. I see what you mean, of course.”

“And I see what you mean. You mean that your shawl is in the bottom one of the regular drawers with knobs that can be alluded to in general conversation. Now I think I can find it.”

He did. And in addition he amused himself by working out phrases about “when is a bottom drawer not a bottom drawer?” and “when is a top shelf not a top shelf?”

It is to these incidents which I regard as isolated and negligible, and he regards as typical and significant that he alludes on the occasions when he is unable to find a red book on the sitting-room table. In vain do I point out that when language is variable and fluid it is alive, and that there may be two opinions about the structural top and the functional top, whereas there can be but one as to the book being or not being on the table. He maintains a quiet cheerfulness, as of one who is conscious of being, if not invulnerable, at least well armed.

For a time he even tried to make believe that he was invulnerable as well to set up the thesis that if the book was really on the table he could find it. But in this he suffered so many reverses that only strong natural pertinacity kept him from capitulation.

Is it necessary to recount instances? Every family can furnish them. As I allow myself to float off into a reminiscent dream I find my mind possessed by a continuous series of dissolving views in which Jonathan is always coming to me saying, “It isn’t there,” and I am always saying, “Please look again.”

Though everything in the house seems to be in a conspiracy against him, it is perhaps with the fishing-tackle that he has most constant difficulties.

“My dear, have you any idea where my rod is? No, don’t get up I’ll look if you’ll just tell me where

“Probably in the corner behind the chest in the orchard room.”

“I’ve looked there.”

“Well, then, did you take it in from the wagon last night?”

“Yes, I remember doing it.”

“What about the little attic? You might have put it up there to dry out.”

“No. I took my wading boots up, but that was all.”

“The dining-room? You came in that way.”

He goes and returns. “Not there.” I reflect deeply.

“Jonathan, are you sure it’s not in that corner of the orchard room?”

“Yes, I’m sure; but I’ll look again.” He disappears, but in a moment I hear his voice calling, “No! Yours is here, but not mine.”

I perceive that it is a case for me, and I get up. “You go and harness.
I’ll find it,” I call.

There was a time when, under such conditions, I should have begun by hunting in all the unlikely places I could think of. Now I know better. I go straight to the corner of the orchard room. Then I call to Jonathan, just to relieve his mind.

“All right! I’ve found it.”

“Where?”

“Here, in the orchard room.”

“Where in the orchard room?”

“In the corner.”

“What corner?”

“The usual corner back of the chest.”

“The devil!” Then he comes back to put his head in at the door. “What are you laughing at?”

“Nothing. What are you talking about the devil for? Anyway, it isn’t the devil; it’s the brownie.”

For there seems no doubt that the things he hunts for are possessed of supernatural powers; and the theory of a brownie in the house, with a special grudge against Jonathan, would perhaps best account for the way in which they elude his search but leap into sight at my approach. There is, to be sure, one other explanation, but it is one that does not suggest itself to him, or appeal to him when suggested by me, so there is no need to dwell upon it.

If it isn’t the rod, it is the landing-net, which has hung itself on a nail a little to the left or right of the one he had expected to see it on; or his reel, which has crept into a corner of the tackle drawer and held a ball of string in front of itself to distract his vision; or a bunch of snell hooks, which, aware of its protective coloring, has snuggled up against the shady side of the drawer and tucked its pink-papered head underneath a gay pickerel-spoon.

Fishing-tackle is, clearly, “possessed,” but in other fields Jonathan is not free from trouble. Finding anything on a bureau seems to offer peculiar obstacles. It is perhaps a big, black-headed pin that I want. “On the pincushion, Jonathan.”

He goes, and returns with two sizes of safety-pins and one long hat-pin.

“No, dear, those won’t do. A small, black-headed one at least small compared with a hat-pin, large compared with an ordinary pin.”

“Common or house pin?” he murmurs, quoting a friend’s phrase.

“Do look again! I hate to drop this to go myself.”

“When a man does a job, he gets his tools together first.”

“Yes; but they say women shouldn’t copy men, they should develop along their own lines. Please go.”

He goes, and comes back. “You don’t want fancy gold pins, I suppose?”

“No, no! Here, you hold this, and I’ll go.” I dash to the bureau. Sure enough, he is right about the cushion. I glance hastily about. There, in a little saucer, are a half-dozen of the sort I want. I snatch some and run back.

“Well, it wasn’t in the cushion, I bet.”

“No,” I admit; “it was in a saucer just behind the cushion.”

“You said cushion.”

“I know. It’s all right.”

“Now, if you had said simply ‘bureau,’ I’d have looked in other places on it.”

“Yes, you’d have looked in other places! I could not forbear responding. There is, I grant, another side to this question. One evening when I went upstairs I found a partial presentation of it, in the form of a little newspaper clipping, pinned on my cushion. It read as follows:

“My dear,” said she, “please run and bring me the needle from the
haystack.”

“Oh, I don’t know which haystack.”

“Look in all the haystacks you can’t miss it; there’s only one
needle.”

Jonathan was in the cellar at the moment. When he came up, he said, “Did I hear any one laughing?”

“I don’t know. Did you?”

“I thought maybe it was you.”

“It might have been. Something amused me I forget what.”

I accused Jonathan of having written it himself, but he denied it. Some other Jonathan, then; for, as I said, this is not a personal matter, it is a world matter. Let us grant, then, a certain allowance for those who hunt in woman-made haystacks. But what about pockets? Is not a man lord over his own pockets? And are they not nevertheless as so many haystacks piled high for his confusion? Certain it is that Jonathan has nearly as much trouble with his pockets as he does with the corners and cupboards and shelves and drawers of his house. It usually happens over our late supper, after his day in town. He sets down his teacup, struck with a sudden memory. He feels in his vest pockets first the right, then the left. He proceeds to search himself, murmuring, “I thought something came to-day that I wanted to show you oh, here! no, that isn’t it. I thought I put it no, those are to be what’s this? No, that’s a memorandum. Now, where in ” He runs through the papers in his pockets twice over, and in the second round I watch him narrowly, and perhaps see a corner of an envelope that does not look like office work. “There, Jonathan! What’s that? No, not that that!”

He pulls it out with an air of immense relief. “There! I knew I had something. That’s it.”

When we travel, the same thing happens with the tickets, especially if they chance to be costly and complicated ones, with all the shifts and changes of our journey printed thick upon their faces. The conductor appears at the other end of the car. Jonathan begins vaguely to fumble without lowering his paper. Pocket after pocket is browsed through in this way. Then the paper slides to his knee and he begins a more thorough investigation, with all the characteristic clapping and diving motions that seem to be necessary. Some pockets must always be clapped and others dived into to discover their contents.

No tickets. The conductor is halfway up the car. Jonathan’s face begins to grow serious. He rises and looks on the seat and under it. He sits down and takes out packet after packet of papers and goes over them with scrupulous care. At this point I used to become really anxious to make hasty calculations as to our financial resources, immediate and ultimate to wonder if conductors ever really put nice people like us off trains. But that was long ago. I know now that Jonathan has never lost a ticket in his life. So I glance through the paper that he has dropped or watch the landscape until he reaches a certain stage of calm and definite pessimism, when he says, “I must have pulled them out when I took out those postcards in the other car. Yes, that’s just what has happened.” Then, the conductor being only a few seats away, I beg Jonathan to look once more in his vest pocket, where he always puts them. To oblige me he looks, though without faith, and lo! this time the tickets fairly fling themselves upon him, with smiles almost curling up their corners. Does the brownie travel with us, then?

I begin to suspect that some of the good men who have been blamed for forgetting to mail letters in their pockets have been, not indeed blameless, but at least misunderstood. Probably they do not forget. Probably they hunt for the letters and cannot find them, and conclude that they have already mailed them.

In the matter of the home haystacks Jonathan’s confidence in himself has at last been shaken. For a long time, when he returned to me after some futile search, he used to say, “Of course you can look for it if you like, but it is not there.” But man is a reasoning, if not altogether a reasonable, being, and with a sufficient accumulation of evidence, especially when there is some one constantly at hand to interpret its teachings, almost any set of opinions, however fixed, may be shaken. So here.

Once when we shut up the farm for the winter I left my fountain pen behind. This was little short of a tragedy, but I comforted myself with the knowledge that Jonathan was going back that week-end for a day’s hunt.

“Be sure to get the pen first of all,” I said, “and put it in your pocket.”

“Where is it?” he asked.

“In the little medicine cupboard over the fireplace in the orchard room, standing up at the side of the first shelf.”

“Why not on your desk?” he asked.

“Because I was writing tags in there, and set it up so it would be out of the way.”

“And it was out of the way. All right. I’ll collect it.”

He went, and on his return I met him with eager hand “My pen!”

“I’m sorry,” he began.

“You didn’t forget!” I exclaimed.

“No. But it wasn’t there.”

“But did you look?”

“Yes, I looked.”

“Thoroughly?”

“Yes. I lit three matches.”

“Matches! Then you didn’t get it when you first got there!”

“Why no I had the dog to attend to and but I had plenty of time when I got back, and it wasn’t there.”

“Well Dear me! Did you look anywhere else? I suppose I may be mistaken. Perhaps I did take it back to the desk.”

“That’s just what I thought myself,” said Jonathan. “So I went there, and looked, and then I looked on all the mantelpieces and your bureau. You must have put it in your bag the last minute bet it’s there now!”

“Bet it isn’t.”

It wasn’t. For two weeks more I was driven to using other pens strange and distracting to the fingers and the eyes and the mind. Then Jonathan was to go up again.

“Please look once more,” I begged, “and don’t expect not to see it. I can fairly see it myself, this minute, standing up there on the right-hand side, just behind the machine oil can.”

“Oh, I’ll look,” he promised. “If it’s there, I’ll find it.”

He returned penless. I considered buying another. But we were planning to go up together the last week of the hunting season, and I thought I would wait on the chance.

We got off at the little station and hunted our way up, making great sweeps and jogs, as hunters must, to take in certain spots we thought promising certain ravines and swamp edges where we are always sure of hearing the thunderous whir of partridge wings, or the soft, shrill whistle of woodcock. At noon we broiled chops and rested in the lee of the wood edge, where, even in the late fall, one can usually find spots that are warm and still. It was dusk by the time we came over the crest of the farm ledges and saw the huddle of the home buildings below us, and quite dark when we reached the house. Fires had been made and coals smouldered on the hearth in the sitting-room.

“You light the lamp,” I said, “and I’ll just take a match and go through to see if that pen should happen to be there.”

“No use doing anything to-night,” said Jonathan. “To-morrow morning you can have a thorough hunt.”

But I took my match, felt my way into the next room, past the fireplace, up to the cupboard, then struck my match. In its first flare-up I glanced in. Then I chuckled.

Jonathan had gone out to the dining-room, but he has perfectly good ears.

“NO!” he roared, and his tone of dismay, incredulity, rage, sent me off into gales of unscrupulous laughter. He was striding in, candle in hand, shouting, “It was not there!”

“Look yourself,” I managed to gasp.

This time, somehow, he could see it.

“You planted it! You brought it up and planted it!”

“I never! Oh, dear me! It pays for going without it for weeks!”

“Nothing will ever make me believe that that pen was standing there when I looked for it!” said Jonathan, with vehement finality.

“All right,” I sighed happily. “You don’t have to believe it.”

But in his heart perhaps he does believe it. At any rate, since that time he has adopted a new formula: “My dear, it may be there, of course, but I don’t see it.” And this position I regard as unassailable.

One triumph he has had. I wanted something that was stored away in the shut-up town house.

“Do you suppose you could find it?” I said, as gently as possible.

“I can try,” he said.

“I think it is in a box about this shape see? a gray box, in the attic closet, the farthest-in corner.”

“Are you sure it’s in the house? If it’s in the house, I think I can find it.”

“Yes, I’m sure of that.”

When he returned that night, his face wore a look of satisfaction very imperfectly concealed beneath a mask of nonchalance.

“Good for you! Was it where I said?”

“No.”

“Was it in a different corner?”

“No.”

“Where was it?”

“It wasn’t in a corner at all. It wasn’t in that closet.”

“It wasn’t! Where, then?”

“Downstairs in the hall closet.” He paused, then could not forbear adding, “And it wasn’t in a gray box; it was in a big hat-box with violets all over it.”

“Why, Jonathan! Aren’t you grand! How did you ever find it? I couldn’t have done better myself.”

Under such praise he expanded. “The fact is,” he said confidentially, “I had given it up. And then suddenly I changed my mind. I said to myself, ‘Jonathan, don’t be a man! Think what she’d do if she were here now.’ And then I got busy and found it.”

“Jonathan!” I could almost have wept if I had not been laughing.

“Well,” he said, proud, yet rather sheepish, “what is there so funny about that? I gave up half a day to it.”

“Funny! It isn’t funny exactly. You don’t mind my laughing a little? Why, you’ve lived down the fountain pen we’ll forget the pen

“Oh, no, you won’t forget the pen either,” he said, with a certain pleasant grimness.

“Well, perhaps not of course it would be a pity to forget that. Suppose I say, then, that we’ll always regard the pen in the light of the violet hat-box?”

“I think that might do.” Then he had an alarming afterthought. “But, see here you won’t expect me to do things like that often?”

“Dear me, no! People can’t live always on their highest levels. Perhaps you’ll never do it again.” Jonathan looked distinctly relieved. “I’ll accept it as a unique effort like Dante’s angel and Raphael’s sonnet.”

“Jonathan,” I said that evening, “what do you know about St. Anthony of Padua?”

“Not much.”

“Well, you ought to. He helped you to-day. He’s the saint who helps people to find lost articles. Every man ought to take him as a patron saint.”

“And do you know which saint it is who helps people to find lost virtues like humility, for instance?”

“No. I don’t, really.”

“I didn’t suppose you did,” said Jonathan.