Under a Blue Umbrella

— “ Sweet flelds in living green And rivers of delight,”hummed itself in my brain, on one of those rare turquoise days which Switzerland, like a capricious gray-veiled lady, sometimes holds out to the happy traveler. All at once my attention was attracted to a quaint figure by the roadside, in front of a broadeaved brown chalet. It was a very small tow-headed hoy., in a blue shirt, under a very big blue umbrella, soberly plying innumerable lace bobbins over a cushion set on a stand before him. All about the sunshine played, but this was a little spot of sobriety in the midst of general brightness, half comical, half pathetic. There had been scores of brisk maidens and gray old women making lace by the wayside, and, as I passed, each one of them had either coaxingly displayed her cheapest bit, or run along the road by me to excite my cupidity for her finer wares. This was the first time I had seen the masculine mind applied to lacemaking ; and judging by this small instance, I should say the masculine mind was steadygoing. Little Blue Shirt did not lift his eyes nor try to beguile transient custom ; he was making lace, and — he was likewise making a picture. ‘ There was no feminine volatility in the firm way the weather-beaten umbrella was planted at the side of the small, dumpy workman, and I am sure it was with no base eye to modern æsthetics that he had allowed his shirt to fade to that particular hue, though he could not have done better for a speculation.

A train of wonderment stirred in my idle mind. Is it his idea or his mother’s? Docs he feel the pride of his labor, or is his sense of male dignity bowed by the femininity of it ? Does this fidgety, patient female occupation weigh upon his spirit as the garments of his seven dead sisters did upon that of “ Lamentations-of-Jeremiah Johnson ” ? What is public opinion among the boy-world of the Valley of Springs ? Does the solemn German Swiss (in the germ) ever unbend to cutting youthful jokes and derision of Blue Shirt and his lace pillow ? Is it choice, chance, or fate which chains him to it ? While I wonder, another footsore mile is passed, and little Hercules is hidden by the shoulder of a great mountain. Then I know that, in lazy reverie, I have lost my chance for masculine lace. My first childish love, long ago, was a china boy doll with a skyblue jacket and a flaxen head. His companion, a girl in a pink dress and a speckled apron, had for me none of his gallant, peculiar charm. One day, while performing some of those fantastic persecutions (of the pink girl!) in which children secretly delight, I snapped off the head of my beloved Blue Jacket, and felt a sudden sense of disappointment and desolation which I cannot describe. That lurking weakness first roused by my small doll was waked once more in this year ’93, when little Blue Shirt was lost to sight, and I realized with a pang that my lace was woven by one of the voluble pink sisterhood, and not by the serious-minded, wee personage under the blue umbrella.