New Hampshire · Chapter
A Fountain, a Bottle, a Donkey’s Ears and Some Books explained
The narrator and Old Davis search for a Mormon baptismal font on Kinsman Mountain, but instead find a painted bottle and a formation resembling donkey's ears.
What happens
The narrator and Old Davis search for a Mormon baptismal font on Kinsman Mountain, but instead find a painted bottle and a formation resembling donkey's ears. Davis then leads the narrator to a deserted house where they discover the unsold books of the bedridden poetess Clara Robinson, whose poems have been scattered and damaged by vandals.
Themes in this chapter
Art and Poetry
The chapter centers on Clara Robinson's poetry, the physical books, and the tension between the value of art and its neglect or destruction.
Nature and Transience
The search for the fountain, the decay of the font, and the abandoned house reflect the passage of time and nature's reclamation.
Isolation and Community
Clara Robinson's life 'shut in' for years contrasts with the communal act of publishing and the later abandonment of her home.
Characters to notice
- Old Davis
Guides the narrator on a mountain search for a Mormon font, showing his knowledge of the land and his gruff, pragmatic nature.
- Clara Robinson
The bedridden poetess whose unsold books fill the attic of her deserted house; her life and work are the focus of the chapter's latter half.
- John Smith
Mentioned as the Mormon leader who called the settlers off the mountain to go West.
Key passages
“Old Davis owned a solid mica mountain In Dalton that would some day make his fortune.”
Old Davis possessed a mountain of mica in Dalton that he believed would eventually bring him wealth.
Introduces Davis's background and the promise of mineral wealth.
“The poetess who wrote the book of verses And had it published. It was all about The posies on her inner window sill, And the birds on her outer window sill, And how she tended both, or had them tended: She never tended anything herself. She was ‘shut in’ for life.”
Clara Robinson, a poet confined to her bed, wrote verses about the flowers and birds she could see from her window, though she did not care for them personally.
Describes Clara Robinson's life and the subject of her poetry.
“Books were not thrown irreverently about. They simply lay where some one now and then, Having tried one, had dropped it at his feet And left it lying where it fell rejected.”
The books weren't tossed around disrespectfully; they were just left wherever someone had picked one up, tried it, and discarded it.
Depicts the casual neglect of the poetess's books by visitors.