“once upon a time a little girl when she opened a large fruit that had come from the colonies, a big creature came out of it, a green creature, and it bit her and that made her die.”
it was my little friend antoinette (she was six and i seven) who was telling me the story which had been suggested to her because we were about to break and divide an apricot between us. we were at the extreme end of her garden in the lovely month of june under a branching apricot tree. we sat very close together upon the same stool in a house about as big as a bee-hive, which we had built for our exclusive use out of old planks. our dwelling was covered with pieces of foreign matting that had come from the antilles packed about some boxes of coffee. the sunbeams pierced the roof, which was of a coarse straw-colored material, and the warm breeze that stirred the leaves of the trees about us made the sunlight dance as it fell upon our faces and aprons. (during at least two summers it had been our favorite amusement to build, in isolated nooks, houses like the one described in robinson crusoe, and thus hidden away we would sit together and chat.) in the story of the little girl who was bitten by the big creature this phrase, “a very large fruit from the colonies,” had suddenly plunged me into a reverie. and i had a vision of trees, of strange fruits, and of forests filled with marvelously colored birds. ah! how much those magical but disturbing words, “the colonies” conveyed to me in my childhood. to me they meant at that time all tropical and distant countries, which i invariably thought of as filled with giant palms, exquisite flowers, strange black people and great animals. although my ideas were so confused i had an almost true conception, amounting to an intuition, of their mournful splendor and their enervating melancholy.
i think that i saw a palm for the first time in an illustrated book called the “young naturalists,” by madame ulliac-tremadeure; the book was one of my new year's gifts, and i read some parts of it upon new year's evening. (green-house palms had not at that time been brought to our little town.)
the illustrator had placed two of these unfamiliar trees at the edge of a sea-shore along which negroes were passing. recently i was curious enough to hunt in the little yellow, faded book for that picture, and truly i wonder how that illustration had the power to create the very least of my dreams unless it were that my immature mind was already leavened by the memory of memories.
“the colonies!” ah! how can i give an adequate idea of all that awoke in my mind at the sound of these words? a fruit from there, a bird or a shell, had instantly the greatest charm for me.
there were a number of things from the tropics in little antoinette's home: a parrot, birds of many colors in a cage, and collections of shells and insects. in one of her mamma's bureau drawers i had seen quaint necklaces of fragrant berries; in the garret, where we sometimes rummaged, we found skins of animals and peculiar bags and cases upon which could still be made out the names of towns in the antilles; and a faint tropical odor scented the entire house.
antoinette's garden, as i have said, was separated from ours by a very low wall overgrown with roses and jasmine. and the very old pomegranate tree growing there spread its branches into our yard, and at the blooming season its coral-red petals were scattered upon our grass.
often we spoke from one house to the other:
“can i come over and play with you?” i would ask. “will your mamma allow me?”
“no, because i have been naughty and i am being punished.” (that happened very often.)—such an answer always grieved me a great deal; but i must confess that it was more on account of my disappointment over the parrot and the tropical things than because of her punishment.
little antoinette had been born in the colonies, but, curiously enough, she never seemed to value that fact, and they had very little charm for her, indeed she scarcely remembered them. i would have given everything i possessed in the world to have seen, if only for the briefest time, one of those distant countries, inaccessible to me, as i well knew.
with a regret that was almost anguish i thought, alas! that in my life as minister, live as long as i might, i would never, never see those enchanting lands.
