Accomplished Facts

Every year Emily Dickinson sent one friend the first arbutus bud in her garden. In a last will and testament Andrew Jackson remembered a friend with the gift of George Washington’s pocket spy-glass. Napoleon too, in a last testament, mentioned a silver watch taken from the bedroom of Frederick the Great, and passed along this trophy to a particular friend. O. Henry took a blood carnation from his coat lapel and handed it to a country girl starting work in a bean bazaar, and scribbled: “Peach blossoms may or may not stay pink in city dust.” So it goes. Some things we buy, some not. Tom Jefferson was proud of his radishes, and Abe Lincoln blacked his own boots, and Bismarck called Berlin a wilderness of brick and newspapers. So it goes. There are accomplished facts. Ride, ride, ride on in the great new blimps— Cross unheard-of oceans, circle the planet. When you come back we may sit by five hollyhocks. We might listen to boys fighting for marbles. The grasshopper will look good to us. So it goes …