Springtime a la Carte (Henry)
Short summary
New York City, early 1900s. Sarah worked as a freelance typewriter, struggling to make ends meet.
She made a deal with Schulenberg's Home Restaurant to type daily menu cards in exchange for three meals a day. The previous summer, Sarah had visited Sunnybrook Farm and fallen in love with a young farmer who proposed marriage in the spring. He had crowned her with dandelions in a shaded lane.
Back in the city, Sarah had not received a letter from Walter in two weeks. One afternoon, while typing the restaurant's menu, she came across dandelions listed as a vegetable and broke down crying, remembering her happy time with Walter. Through her tears, she accidentally typed her feelings instead of the menu item.
That evening, Walter appeared at her door. He had been searching for her all week after finding her old address empty. He explained that he had gone to Schulenberg's restaurant for dinner and spotted her mistake on the menu.
Between the red cabbage and the stuffed green peppers was the item: DEAREST WALTER, WITH HARD-BOILED EGG.
Walter recognized Sarah's distinctive typewriter quirk—the cranky capital W that typed above the line. The lovers reunited, and Sarah's springtime happiness was restored.
Detailed summary
Division into chapters is editorial.
Sarahs typewriting business and the deal with Schulenberg
It was a day in March when Sarah found herself crying over a restaurant menu card.
She worked as a freelance typewriter in New York, struggling to make ends meet in the harsh city. Sarah knew no shorthand and could not join the bright galaxy of office talent, so she canvassed for odd jobs of copying. Her most brilliant achievement was the deal she made with Schulenberg's Home Restaurant, located next door to her boarding house. One evening after dining at the restaurant's forty-cent table d'hote, Sarah took away the bill of fare, which was written in an almost unreadable script that mixed English and German.
The next day Sarah showed the restaurant owner a neat card with the menu beautifully typewritten, with dishes properly organized under their correct headings.
He was so impressed that he committed to an agreement on the spot. Sarah would furnish typewritten bills of fare for the twenty-one tables in the restaurant, with new bills for each day's dinner and for breakfast and lunch as changes occurred. In return, Schulenberg would send three meals per day to Sarah's hall room by a waiter and provide her each afternoon with a pencil draft of the next day's menu. This arrangement gave Sarah food during a cold, dull winter, which was the main thing for her.
Memories of summer love and waiting for spring
One afternoon Sarah shivered in her hall bedroom as winter still gripped the city, despite the almanac's claims that spring had arrived. Looking out her window at the windowless brick wall of the box factory, Sarah saw instead a grassy lane shaded with cherry trees and elms, bordered with raspberry bushes and Cherokee roses. The previous summer Sarah had gone to the country and fallen in love with a farmer.
She had stayed two weeks at Sunnybrook Farm, where she learned to love Walter Franklin, the son of the farm's owner.
He was a modern agriculturist who had a telephone in his cow house and could calculate the effect of Canada's wheat crop on potatoes. In a shaded, raspberried lane, Walter had wooed and won her. Together they sat and wove a crown of dandelions for her hair. He had praised the effect of the yellow blossoms against her brown tresses, and she had walked back to the house wearing the chaplet. They planned to marry in the spring, at the very first signs of spring. Sarah had returned to the city to work her typewriter, but now weeks had passed without a letter from Walter.
A knock at the door brought a waiter with the rough pencil draft of the Home Restaurant's next day's menu in Schulenberg's angular handwriting. Sarah sat down at her typewriter and began her work. She was a nimble worker who could usually complete the twenty-one menu cards in an hour and a half. That day there were more changes than usual on the bill of fare. The soups were lighter, pork was eliminated from the entrees, and the gracious spirit of spring pervaded the entire menu. Lamb appeared with sauce, the song of the oyster diminished, and the frying-pan seemed inactive behind the beneficent bars of the broiler.
Sarah's fingers danced above the keyboard as she worked through the courses, giving each item its position according to its length. Just above the desserts came the list of vegetables: carrots and peas, asparagus on toast, tomatoes and corn and succotash, lima beans, cabbage, and then dandelions.
For she had received no letter from Walter in two weeks, and the next item on the bill of fare was dandelions--dandelions, with whose golden blooms Walter had crowned her his queen of love.
Tears from the depths of some divine despair rose in her heart and gathered to her eyes. Down went her head on the little typewriter stand, and the keyboard rattled a dry accompaniment to her moist sobs. The dandelions were harbingers of spring, her sorrow's crown of sorrow, reminders of her happiest days.
Still in a faint, golden glow from her dandeleonine dream, she fingered the typewriter keys absently...with her mind and heart in the meadow lane with her young farmer.
Soon she came back to the rock-bound lanes of Manhattan, and the typewriter began to rattle and jump. At six o'clock the waiter brought her dinner and carried away the typewritten bill of fare. Sarah set aside the dish of dandelions with a sigh, unable to eat the flowers that had graced the first spiritual banquet of her heart's true affection.
Walters arrival and the accidental love letter
At seven-thirty Sarah settled down to read, but the front door bell rang. She listened as the landlady answered it, then heard a strong voice in the hall below. Sarah jumped for her door and reached the top of the stairs just as her farmer came up three at a jump. He reaped and garnered her with nothing left for the gleaners. Sarah cried out, asking why he had not written. Walter explained that he had come to New York a week ago to her old address and found she had moved. He had been hunting for her with police and otherwise ever since. Sarah insisted she had written, but he never received her letter.
When Sarah asked how he found her, the young farmer smiled a springtime smile. He explained that he had dropped into the Home Restaurant next door that evening, wanting a dish of greens at this time of year. Running his eye down the typewritten bill of fare looking for something in that line, when he got below cabbage he turned his chair over and hollered for the proprietor, who told him where Sarah lived.
I'd know that cranky capital W 'way above the line that your typewriter makes anywhere in the world, said Franklin.
Sarah was surprised, pointing out there was no W in dandelions. The young man drew the bill of fare from his pocket and showed her a line. Sarah recognized the first card she had typewritten that afternoon. There was still the rayed splotch in the upper right-hand corner where a tear had fallen. But over the spot where one should have read the name of the meadow plant, the clinging memory of their golden blossoms had allowed her fingers to strike strange keys. Between the red cabbage and the stuffed green peppers was the item: 'DEAREST WALTER, WITH HARD-BOILED EGG.'