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Title: Hope Farm Notes
Author: Collingwood, Herbert W. (Herbert Winslow)
Language: English
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HOPE FARM NOTES
BY
HERBERT W. COLLINGWOOD
REPRINTED FROM
THE RURAL NEW YORKER
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
1921
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
RAHWAY, N. J.
TO
L. D. C. AND A. F. C.
WHO REPRESENT
“_The Hen with one Chicken_”
AND
_The Chicken_.
Most of these notes were originally printed in the _Rural New-Yorker_
from week to week and covering a period of about 20 years. Many readers
of that magazine have expressed the desire to have a collection of
them in permanent form. It has been no easy task to make a selection,
and I wish to acknowledge here the great help which I have received
from my daughter, Ava F. Collingwood, in arranging this matter. It has
been thought best to arrange the notes in chronological order. “A Hope
Farm Sermon,” and “Grandmother” were originally printed in 1902. The
others follow in the order of their original publication. The reader
must understand that the children alluded to represent two distinct
broods,—the second brood appearing just after the sketch entitled
“Transplanting the Young Idea.” From the very first the object of these
notes has been to picture simply and truthfully the brighter, cheerful
side of Farm Life.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE BARN 1
A HOPE FARM SERMON 21
GRANDMOTHER 26
LAUGHTER AND RELIGION 33
A DAY IN FLORIDA 38
THE BASEBALL GAME 45
TRANSPLANTING THE YOUNG IDEA 51
THE SLEEPLESS MAN 58
LINCOLN’S BIRTHDAY 63
UNCLE ED’S PHILOSOPHY 69
A GOD-FORSAKEN PLACE 75
LOUISE 82
CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY 88
“THE FINEST LESSON” 94
“COLUMBUS DAY” 107
THE COMMENCEMENT 114
“ORGANIZATION” 122
THE FACE OF LIBERTY 130
CAPTAIN RANDALL’S HOUR 138
“SNOW BOUND” 147
“CLASS” 155
“I’LL TELL GOD” 163
A DAY’S WORK 171
PROFESSOR GANDER’S ACADEMY 181
COLONEL O’BRIEN AND SERGEANT HILL 189
HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES 198
THE INDIANS WON 206
IKE SAWYER’S HOTEL 214
OLD-TIME POLITICS 224
HOPE FARM NOTES
THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE BARN
As a boy on a little Yankee farm I had a “stent” set out for me every
day. During the Winter it was sawing and splitting wood. Our barn stood
so that somehow on a Winter’s day one side of it faced the road, and
it always seemed to be warm and sunny. The other was turned so it was
always cold and frosty, with little if any sun. The hens, the cow and the
sheep always made for the sunny side of the barn, which represented the
comfortable and the bright side of life. The old gentleman who brought
me up always put the woodpile on the frosty side of the barn. He argued
that if the boy worked too much on the sunny side, he would stop to look
at the passers-by, feel something of the joy of living, and stop his work
to absorb a little of it. We were brought up to believe that labor was
a curse, put upon us for our sins, a serious matter, a discipline and
never a joy. When the boy worked on the frosty side, he must move fast in
order to keep warm. He would not stop to loaf in the sun, he could not
throw stones or practise baseball so long as he had to keep his mittens
on to keep his fingers warm. Thus the argument was that the boy would
accomplish more on the frosty side, and realize that labor represented
the primal curse which somehow seemed to rest particularly hard upon the
farmer. And so as a child I did my work and passed much of my life on the
frosty side of the barn, silent and thoughtful, while the hens cackled
and sang on the sunny side. It seemed strange to me that people could not
see that the thing which made the hens lay would surely make the boy work.
There will always be a dispute as to whether a boy or a man does his
best work under the spur of necessity, or out of a full bag of the oats
of life. And they do it with greater or less cruelty as more or less of
their life has been spent on the frosty side. I never yet saw a self-made
man who did anything like a perfect job on himself. They usually spoil
their own sons by giving them too easy a time, while work is a necessity
in building character. Work without play of some sort is labor without
soul, and that is one of the most cruel and dangerous things in the
world. I have noticed that most men who pass their childhood on the
frosty side of the barn have what I call a squint-eyed view of youth.
They spend a large part of their time telling how they had to work as
a boy, and how much inferior their own sons are since they do not have
chores to do. That man’s boys will pay no attention except when his eye
is upon them, and rightly so, I think. The man looks across the table at
mother, with a shake of his head, for is not the Smith family responsible
for the fact that these boys do not equal their wonderful sire? I have
learned better than to expect much sympathy from my boys for what
happened 50 years ago.
The old gentleman would come now and then and look around the corner of
the barn to see if I was at work. The frosty side of the barn in youth
has one advantage. It forces the boy to think and reason out the justice
of life. Uncle Daniel had not read enough of history to know that Guizot,
the great French historian, says that the only thing which those who
represent tyranny, injustice or evil are afraid of _is the human mind_.
What he means is that whenever you can get the plain, common people to
think clearly and with their own brains, they will sooner or later wipe
off the slate of history and write freedom in big letters. On the sunny
side I think I should have talked and so rid myself of my thought before
it could print itself upon my little brain, but there on the frosty side
of the barn I know that I said little, but reasoned it out with the clear
wisdom of childhood. If Uncle Daniel had been a student of Shakespeare,
he would have gone straight to that famous passage in Julius Cæsar which
probably expresses the thought of 90 per cent of the humans capable of
thinking, who have ever lived to maturity:
“Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights;
Yond’ Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.”
I was thinking out my problem, and I want to tell you younger men that
the questions which started at the teeth of my saw on the frosty side
of that old barn have cut their way through the years, and chased
and haunted me all through life. The injustice of labor and social
conditions—that is the foundation of the trouble in the world. Upon
it all helpful education should be based. Youth’s ideals will always
chase you like that, if you give them half a chance, and you never can
have better mental companions. I was trying to reason out one of two
resolutions. Off in that dim future of manhood when I should grow up, my
time would come, and I might have power over some other boy, or maybe a
man. I could put him on the frosty or on the sunny side of the barn, as
I saw fit. What would I do to him to pay for my session on the frosty
side? Somehow I think it is natural for human beings to seek reparation
and promise themselves to take their misfortunes out of someone else when
their power comes. I think I should have grown up with something of that
determination in mind had it not been for the poet Longfellow.
Now you will smile, you successful farmers, you dry old analyzers and
solemn teachers and you budding young hopes. What has poetry to do with
farming or agricultural education? What did the poet Longfellow ever do
for farming? Did he ever have a hen in an egg-laying contest that laid
300 eggs in a year? Did he ever raise a prize pumpkin, or a prize crop of
potatoes? Did he even originate the Longfellow variety of flint corn? Do
not men need solid pith rather than flabby poetry in their thought? It is
true that Longfellow would have starved to death on a good farm. Yet his
poetry and the thought that went with it were one of the things that made
New England dominate this country in thought. My childhood was passed
at a time when we had no science to study. Bacteria were swimming all
about us in the air, the food and the water. I had, no doubt, swallowed
millions of them at every mouthful, and we grew fat on them. We had
no books on science or bulletins, but every farmhouse had its copy of
Bryant, Whittier, Longfellow, Emerson and Holmes. The best duck-raiser
in our town was a man who could recite Bryant’s poem, “To a Water
Fowl,” with his eyes shut. I think I could safely challenge many famous
poultrymen to recite even one verse of that poem, yet who would say that
he would not be a better poultryman and a better man if he could carry in
his heart a few verses of that poem?
“There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast.”
...
“He who from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way which I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.”
I had recited Longfellow’s “Resignation” in school. I gave it about as
a parrot would, but on the frosty side of the old barn one verse shoved
itself into my little brain:
“Let us be patient;
These severe afflictions
Not from the ground arise;
But oftentimes celestial benedictions
Assume this dark disguise.”
Just think of that, a “celestial benediction”—it was a great thing for a
boy to think about. I looked both words up in the dictionary and got,
perhaps, half of their meaning. In all our town there seemed to be no one
except our old minister to come around on the frosty side of the barn
with comfort or promise, but this celestial benediction which the poet
told about got right to you. It might even live under that awful pile of
wood which I was to saw, and it would be worth the job of sawing it if I
could find such a thing under the pile. I heard people speak of a “nigger
in the woodpile” in terms of reproach, but a celestial benediction down
under the wood was certainly entitled to all respect. I did not fully
understand it, or what it meant, but it got into me and stayed there,
where the multiplication table or the rule of square root never would
remain. My belief is that if I had committed to memory in place of that
poem some excellent classroom lecture at college I should have become a
little anarchist, and gone through life pushing such people as I could
reach toward the frosty side of the barn. As it was, that poem, repeated
over and over, made me vow as a child that if I ever could influence or
direct the lives of farmers I would do my best to see that they lived and
did their work on the sunny side of the barn.
In my day children were brought up on “the Scriptures and a stick,” both
well applied, and yet all these “lectures and lickings” never stuck in
my life as did the noble poetry we read in school, and the few pictures
which hung on the walls of the home. There is a curious thing about some
of these pictures. I am told of a case where two boys in the Tennessee
mountains volunteered for the navy. Their mountain home was as far
removed from the ocean as it well could be. They had never seen even a
large pond. For three generations not one of their ancestors had ever
seen the salt water. Yet these boys would not listen to any call for the
army, but they demanded a place in the navy. The story came to an officer
in a nearby camp, and he became interested and visited that home. Both
father and mother were puzzled over the action of their boys, and they
could not understand why Henry and William had demanded the ocean. As the
officer turned away he noticed hanging on the wall in the living-room
of that house the crude picture of a ship under full sail and on an
impossible blue ocean. It had come into that family years before, wrapped
around a package of goods, and mother had hung it on the wall. From their
youth those boys had grown up with that picture before them, and it had
decided their lives. It was stronger than the influence of father and
mother—they could not overcome it. I speak of that in order that you men
and women with children of your own may understand how the dreams, the
poetry, the visions of youth may prove stronger influences than any of
the science, the wisdom, or the fine examples you may put before your
little ones.
On the wall of our old living-room at home was a chromo entitled “Joseph
and His Brethren.” It was an awful work of art. It showed a group of men
putting a boy down into a hole in the ground. It would have made the head
of an art department weep in misery, and yet it affected me deeply. I
used to stand and study it, with the result that at least one chapter of
the Bible gave me great joy, and that was the story of Joseph and his
brothers. That story helped to keep me sweet and hopeful on the frosty
side of the barn, for I reasoned it all out as I worked. Here, I thought,
was a farm boy. He did rather more than his share of living on the frosty
side, and see what he came to. I used to picture Joseph in mind as he
came walking over the desert carrying his father’s instructions about the
sheep and the management of the farm. His brothers saw him coming, and
they said among themselves, “Behold, this dreamer cometh.” You see, even
in those days, practical men could not understand the value of a dreamer,
a poet or a thinker as the first aid to practical agriculture. I have no
doubt that Joseph the dreamer often forgot to water the sheep. I have no
doubt but that they got away from him when he was herding them, and so
his brothers quickly got rid of him, and they sent him off to the place
where they thought dreams never came true. And that is where they made
their mistake, and the same mistake is often made in these days by other
practical farmers, for dreams that are based on faith and pure ambition
always come true. If Joseph had not been a dreamer, carrying the ideals
of his childhood into Egypt, we can readily understand which side of the
barn his brothers would have gone to when they appeared before him later.
But Joseph was a man who remembered the dreams and the hopes of his
childhood kindly; he gave those brothers the sunniest side of the barn,
and by doing so he made himself one of the great men in history.
You may surely take it from me that at some time in your life, if you
prove worth the salt you have eaten, your State or your country will call
you up before the judgment seat, and will say to you:
“I demand your life. In your youth you had ideals of manhood and of
service. I have trained you and given you knowledge. I now demand your
life as proof that your old ideals were true.”
That comes to all men not only on the battlefield, but in all the humble
walks of life—the farm, the factory, the shop, wherever men are put
at labor, and it means a life given to service, the use of power and
knowledge, in order that men less fortunate may live on the sunny side of
the barn.
We had something of an illustration of this when America entered the
great war. Many of us felt honestly that our boys were not quite up to
the standard. We thought they were a little lazy, inefficient or spoiled,
because they did not think as we did about labor and the necessity for
work. We did not realize what the trouble was, and so we generally
charged it to the influence of mother’s side of the family. We could not
understand that by education, training and example, we had simply taught
those boys only the material and selfish side of life. They demanded
unconsciously more of its poetry and romance and thus the war swept
them away in a blaze of glory. We suddenly woke up to find that under
the inspiration of an unselfish desire, our lazy and careless boys had
become the finest soldiers this world has ever seen. They were made so
through the power of poetry and imagination, for “making the world safe
for democracy” is only another name for making the great life offering
in order that helpless men and women may know the comfort and glory of
living on the “sunny side of the barn.”
I think I have lived long enough and under conditions which fit me to
know human nature better than most men know books. Our present improved
man came from a savage. Originally man was a confirmed dweller on the
frosty side of the barn. As human life has developed, the tendency has
been for this man to run for a warm place on the sunny side. In order to
get there, his natural tendency has been to crowd some weaker brother
back into the frost. We may not like to admit it, but as we have crowded
poetry and imagination and love out of agricultural education, we have
lost track of the thought that there is one great duty we owe to society
for the great educational machine she has given us. That one great life
duty is to try to carry some more unfortunate brother out of the frost
into the comfort of the sunny side of the barn. We are too much in the
habit of trying to leave this practical betterment to the Legislature
or to the Federal Government, when it never can be done unless we do it
ourselves, as a part of human sacrifice. You must remember that in spite
of all our scientific work, the world is still largely fed and clothed
by the plain farmers, whose stock in trade is largely human nature and
instinct. The shadow which undoubtedly lies over farming today is due to
the fact that too many of these men and women feel that they are booked
hopelessly to spend their lives on the frosty side of the barn.
It is in large part a mental trouble, a feeling of deep resentment,
such as in a very much smaller way came to me as a little boy, for
you will see how real and true are the ideals of childhood. The great
aim of all education should be to find some way of putting poetry and
imagination into the hearts of the men and women who are now on the
frosty side of the barn. There is more in this than any mere increase
of food production, or increase of land values. A great industrial
revolution is facing this nation. Such things have come before again and
again. They were always threatening, and every time they appeared strong
men and women feared for the future of their country. Yet in times past
these dark storms have always broken themselves against a solid wall of
contented and prosperous freeholders. They always disappear and turn into
a gentle, reviving rain when they strike the sunny side of the barn. That
is where the errors and mistakes of society are taken apart and remade,
better than ever before, by skilled and happy workmen. It is on the
frosty side of the barn, in the unhappy shadows, where men tear down and
destroy without attempting to rebuild, for there can be no human progress
except that which is finally built upon contentment and faith. Men and
women must be brought to the sunny side of the barn if this nation is to
remain the land of opportunity, and such men and women as we have here
must do the work.
If you ask me how this is to be done, I can only go back to childhood
once more for an illustration. I know all the characters of the following
little drama. We will call the children John, Mary and Bert. John and
Mary were relatives of the old gentleman who owned the farm, and they
came for a long visit. Bert was the farm boy, put out to work on that
farm for his board and clothes, one of the thousands of war orphans who
represented a great legacy which the Civil War had left to this country.
John and Mary were bright and petted and pampered. You know how such
smart city children can usually outshine and outbluff a farm boy. The
woman of the house, a thrifty New England soul, decided that this was her
chance to get the woodshed filled with dry wood, and so she put the three
children at it. Before Bert knew what was going on, those city children
had it all “organized.” Bert was to work on the frosty side of the barn
where the woodpile was, and he was to saw and split all the wood. John
played until Bert had split an armful, then John carried it about two
rods to the shed, where Mary took it out of his arms and piled it inside.
I have lived some years since that time, and I have seen many enterprises
come and go, and if that arrangement is not typical of thousands of cases
which show the relation between the farmer and middleman and handler, I
have simply lived and observed in vain, _and Bert represented the farmer_.
And the distribution of the rewards received in exchange for that
combination was still more typical. Now and then the woman would think
the woodshed was not filling very fast, so that some form of bribery
to labor was necessary. She would then come out with half a pie, or a
few cookies, to stimulate the work. Strange to say, the distribution of
this prize was always given to the girl. She was doing that absolutely
useless work of piling the wood, and yet the pie and the cookies were
handed to her for distribution. For a great many centuries, it must be
said that the farmer never had much of a chance with the town man when it
came to receiving favors from the ladies, and in the distribution of that
pie John and Mary usually ate about seven-eighths of it, and handed the
balance to Bert, for even then those city children had formed the idea
that a silent, unresisting farm boy was made to be the beast of burden,
fit for the frosty side of the barn.
And just as happens in other and larger forms of business, there were,
in that toy performance of a great drama, forms of legislative bribery
for middlemen and farmers. Those children were told that if they would
hurry and get the woodshed filled up, they would receive pleasure and a
present. John and Mary, as middlemen, might go to the circus, while the
boy on the saw would receive a fine present. This would be a book which
told how a splendid little boy sawed 15 cords of wood in two weeks,
and then asked his mother if he couldn’t please go down the road and
saw five cords more for a poor widow woman during his play time. Ever
since the world began, that seems to have been the idea of agricultural
legislation. The real direct pleasure and profit have gone to John and
Mary, while to Bert has gone the promise of an education which will teach
him how to work a little harder. Looking back over the world’s history,
the most astonishing thing to me is that society has failed to see that
the best investment of public money and power is that made closest up to
the ground, the great mother of us all. Other interests have received
it, largely because they have been able to organize and make a stronger
appeal to the imagination.
Of course in every drama of human life there has to be a crisis where
the actors come to blows, and it happened so in this case. There came
one day particularly cold, and with a special run of hard and knotty
wood to be sawed. That gave John and Mary more time for play, and put an
extra job on Bert. I cannot tell just how the battle started; it may have
been caused by Mary, for a thousand times in the history of the world
the relations between two boys and a girl have upset all calculations
and changed the course of history. Or it may be that the spirit of
injustice boiled up in the heart of that boy on the saw, and swept away
his peaceful disposition. At any rate, when John found fault because he
did not work faster, Bert dropped his saw and tackled the tormentor. If I
am to tell the truth, I am forced to admit that there was no science at
all about the battle which that boy put up for the rights of farm labor.
He should, I suppose, have imitated some of the old heroes described
by Homer and Virgil, but as the rage of battle came over him, the most
effective fighter he could think of was the old ram, and I regret to say
that he lowered his head, and, without regard for science, butted John in
the stomach and knocked him down. Then he sat on his enemy, took hold of
his hair with both hands, and proceeded to pound his head on the frosty
ground, while Mary danced about, not caring to interfere, but evidently
waiting to bestow her favors upon the victor. And just as John was
getting ready to call “enough” the kitchen door opened and out came the
woman of the house with the old minister.
She certainly looked like a very stern picture of justice as she peered
over her spectacles at the boys on the ground, and the three children
were arraigned before her. “What shall I do with these children? I shall
never get this job done. I have spent nearly five pies on these children
already, and see how little they have piled, and here they are fighting
over it. I think the best thing I can do is to whip that lazy boy at the
saw.”
I wish you could have seen the face of the old minister as he rolled up
his wrinkles and prepared to answer. It was worth a good deal to see how
he looked out of the corner of his eye at the boy on the saw.
“My good friend,” said he, “this is not a case for prayer or for
punishment, or for investigation, or for education. It is a case for
an adjustment of labor and pie. That boy on the saw has been doing
practically all of the work, and getting almost nothing of the reward. He
is discouraged, and I don’t blame him. You cannot crowd more work out of
him with a stick. Move him out into the sun, give him the pie, and let
him eat his share and distribute the rest. Make the other boy split and
carry and pile all that wood, and put that girl at washing windows. _The
closer you put the pie up to the sawbuck, the more wood you will have
cut._”
Now tell me, you scientists and you wise men, if that does not tell the
whole story. It is the pie of life, or the fair distribution of that pie,
which leads men and women to the sunny side of the barn. What we need
most of all in this country is some power like that of the old minister,
who can drive that thought home to human society, and it will not be
driven home until our leaders and our teachers have in their hearts more
of the poetry and the imagination which lead men and women to attempt the
impossible and work it out. You will not agree with me when I say that in
a majority of the farm homes today there is greater need of the gentle,
humanizing influence of poetry and vision than of the harder and sterner
influence of science and sharp business practice. As the years go on you
will come to see that I am right.
I know that is one of the hardest things on earth for some of us to
understand, for modern education has led us away from the thought. In
our grasp for knowledge we have tried to substitute science entirely
for sentiment, forgetting that the really essential things of life
cannot stand close analysis, because they are held together by faith. In
reaching out after power we have tried too hard to imitate the shrewd
scheming of the politician and the big interests. We have failed thus far
because we have neglected too many of our natural weapons. Over 200 years
ago Andrew Fletcher wrote:
“I knew a very wise man who believed that if a man were permitted to make
all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.”
Andrew Fletcher’s wise man knew what he was talking about. Very likely
some of you older people can remember the famous Hutchinson family in
the days before the Civil War. I have seen the New Hampshire farmhouse
where they were raised. It was just a group of plain farmers who traveled
about the country singing simple little songs about freedom. That plain
farm family did more to make the American people see the sin of slavery
than all the statesmen New England could muster or all the laws she could
make. There was little science and less art about their singing, but it
was in the language of the common people and they understood it.
“The ox bit his master;
How came that to pass?
The ox heard his master say
‘All flesh is grass!’”
There came a crisis in the Civil War when soldier and statesman stood
still wondering what to do next, for they were powerless without the
spirit of the people. Then William Cullen Bryant wrote the great song in
which he poured out the burning thought of the people:
“We’re coming, Father Abraham,
Three hundred thousand more,
From Mississippi’s winding stream
And from New England’s shore.
We leave our plows and workshops,
Our wives and children dear,
With hearts too full for utterance,
But with a silent tear.
“We’re coming, we’re coming, the Union to restore;
We’re coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!”
Had it not been for such songs and the spirit they aroused the Civil War
never could have been won. We now understand that during the great war
the French army was at the point of mutiny, and was saved not by stern
discipline but by a renewal of its spiritual power. I think it will be as
hard as for a man to try and lift himself by his boot straps to try to
put farming into its proper place through science and material prosperity
alone. We need poets to give us songs and playwrights to put our story in
such pictures that the world must listen to it and understand. The one
great thing which impels us to work on and fight is the hope that the
property which we may leave behind us will be safe and put to reasonable
use. Some of us may leave cash and lands; others can give the world only
a family of children, but at heart our struggle is to see that this
heritage may be made safe.
For most of us make a great mistake in locating a storage place for the
heritage which we hope to leave to the future. We work and we toil; we
struggle to improve conditions; we strive to capitalize our worry and our
work into money and into land in order that our children may carry on our
work. Have you ever stopped to think who holds the future of all this?
Many of you no doubt will say that the future of this great nation lies
in the banks and vaults of the cities where money is piled up mountains
high. We have all acted upon that principle too long, digging wealth
from the soil and then sending it into the town for investment, until
we have come to think that our future lies there. We are wrong; it is a
mistake. The future of this land, and all it means to us, lies in the
hands of little children, who are playing on the city streets or in the
open fields of the country, and it is not so much in their hands as in
the pictures which are being printed on their little minds and souls.
And this future will be safer with poetry and imagination than with the
multiplication table alone.
I know about this from my own start in life. I was expected to be
satisfied with work until I was 21, and then have a suit of clothes and a
yoke of oxen. One trouble with the farmers of New England was that they
thought this a sufficient outfit for their boys. I think I might have
fallen in with that plan and contented my life with it had it not been
for a crude picture which hung in the shop where we pegged shoes. It was
a poor color scheme, a perfect daub of art, in which some amateur artist
had tried to express a thought which was too large for his soul. A bare
oak tree, with most of its branches gone, was framed against the Winter
sky. It was evening; a few stars had appeared, and the sky was full of
color. The artist had tried to arrange the stars and the sky colors so
that they represented a crude American flag, with the oak tree serving
as the staff. His great unexpressed thought was that at the close of
the Civil War God had painted His promise of freedom on the sky in the
coloring of that flag. As a child, that crude picture became a part of
my life. I have never been able to forget the glory of it, as I have
forgotten the meanness, the poverty, the narrow blindness of our daily
lives, so that all through the long and stormy years, wherever I have
walked, I have seen that flag upon the sky, and I have waited hopefully
for the coming of the sunrise of that day when, through the work of real
education, when with the help of such men and such women as are here
today, every hopeless man, every lonely woman, every melancholy child
upon a sad and desolate hill farm, may feel the thrill of opportunity,
and the joy and the glory of living upon the sunny side of the barn.
A HOPE FARM SERMON
No use talking, the best part of a vacation is getting home. We were all
sorry to leave Cape Cod. To tell you the truth duty seemed to be stuck
full of thorns a foot long as we looked back at it from the easy bed of a
loafer on his vacation. No wonder the poor little Bud cried when our good
host kissed her good-bye. We looked at her with much the same expression
as that on the face of the woman who missed an important train by half a
minute and listened to the forcible remark of a man who was also left! We
got over that, however. The harness was put on our shoulders so gently
that we hardly felt it, and here we are again with a soft pad of gentle
and happy memories to put where the rub comes hardest. Everything was
all O. K. at home. Grandmother was in good spirits, the Chunk reported
good sales, and the weather had been fair for farm work. The boys had
the corn all cleaned up and the weeds mostly cut. The strawberries have
been transplanted; the alfalfa clipped off; the squashes have grown into
a perfect tangle of vines, the sweet potatoes look well, and there is no
blight in the late white ones! The children found nine new little pigs
and 30 new chickens waiting them. Yes! Yes! It was a happy homecoming. I
climbed the hill on Sunday and looked off over the old familiar valley.
There were the same glorious old hills with the shadows chasing along
them, the little streams stealing down through their fringes of grass
and bushes, the cultivated fields, and the homes of neighbors peeping
out through the orchards! Surely home is a goodly place after all. Other
places are good to come away from, but home is the place to go to!
Now, I know that many of my readers are in trouble. I am, and every
mail brings news from people who are carrying crosses and facing hard
duties with more or less bravery. There are women left alone on the farm,
striving to drag a heavy heart through life. Men have seen wife and child
pass away. Others have seen hopes and ambitions crushed out. This season
has been hard for many. I will quote from a letter just at hand from
central New York, where flood and storm have scarred the hillsides and
ruined crops:
“One neighbor hung himself; one says he shall have an auction and go to
the old ladies’ home; another had the blues until he cried.”
Now, in spite of all the talk we have of the Nation’s great prosperity, I
know that there are thousands of sad hearts in country homes, sad because
they have seen the cherished things of life and the work of self-denying
years swept out of their grasp by a power which they could neither master
nor comprehend. The picture of a strong man dropping his head upon the
table and crying like a child is the saddest vision that can rise before
our eyes. Farm life has its tragic side, and the sadness of it would
crush us down at times if we would permit it to do so. No wonder men and
women grow despondent when with each year comes a little more of the
living blight which slowly destroys hope and faith in one’s physical
ability to master the secret of happiness. I do not blame men and women
who give way to despondency under pressure of griefs which have staggered
me. I only regret that they cannot realize that for most of the afflicted
of middle years the only true help is a moral one.
I feel like repeating that last sentence, though it may come like the
application of a liniment I knew as a boy. The old man who brought me
up invented a certain “lotion.” Whenever I cut or burned my flesh that
lotion bottle was hauled out, a hen’s feather inserted and a liberal
allowance smeared over the wound. It was like rubbing liquid fire on the
flesh, but it _did_ pull the smart out and carry it far away. I used to
imagine that the “lotion” gathered the pain all into a lump and pulled it
out by the roots with one quick twitch. One of the most helpful books I
have ever read is a little volume entitled “Deafness and Cheerfulness.” I
read it over and over, and I wish that every deaf man or friend of a deaf
man could have it. I find in this little book the following message which
I commend to all who feel their courage giving way:
“The noblest dealing with misfortune is in manly silence to bear it;
the next to the meanest is in feebleness to weep over it; the wholly
unpardonable is to ask others to weep also.”
With the first and third of these propositions I fully agree. It is not
always a sign of weakness for a man to get off into solitude somewhere
and find relief in tears. When the tear glands are completely dried up
the man loses an element of character which all the iron in his will
cannot replace. But “manly silence” _is_ the “noblest dealing with
misfortune”—and also the hardest. It is human to cry out and complain at
the pain of what we call injustice, but if the child is human should not
the grown man be something more? What are years and the burning balm of
experience given us for if not to enable us to rise up nearer to divine
strength? As I look about me it occurs that most of us who have reached
middle life or beyond have grown unconsciously away from childhood and
youthful strength. We somehow feel that people ought to regard us as
others did 25 years ago. The fat man of 45 is no longer the young sprout
of 20, though he may think so. If I am not mistaken, one great trouble
with many of us is the fact that we crave and beg for the things that
go with youth when in reality we are grown-up men and women! It is our
duty now to face life and its problems, not with the careless hope of
youth, but with the sober and abiding faith that should come with mature
years. Run over a child’s ambitions and, after his short grief, his
spirits rise again for the next opportunity. The man’s hopes are shaken
by repeated defeat, and hope of physical victory finds itself caged at
every turn by former defeat. We may grieve or despond over this and play
the child; or we may act the man, raise our hopes and ideals above the
range of former defeat, and find comfort and courage in doing the things
which shame infirmity and affliction. I know some of you will say that
this complacent man may moralize—but give him a touch of trouble, and
how he would whine! I hope not! Trouble has taken many a mouthful out
of us but, if I thought any honest friend really meant that, it would be
the greatest trouble of all. I repeat that the greatest comfort to the
despondent must be a moral one, yet the riding of some harmless hobby
helps one to walk with fortitude. Let a man say to himself that he will
study and work to breed the finest pigs or raise the finest strawberries
or master some science or public question, and he will find strength and
comfort in his work! I’ll promise not to attempt any more preaching for
a good while if you will let me end this little sermon with a quotation
from Whittier:
“Soon or late to all our dwellings come the specters of the mind;
Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, in the darkness undefined.
Round us throng the grim projections of the heart and of the brain,
And our pride of strength is weakness, and the cunning hand is vain.
In the dark we cry like children; and no answer from on high
Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and no white wings downward fly.
But the heavenly help we pray for, comes to faith and not to sight,
And our prayers themselves drive backward all the spirits of the night.”
GRANDMOTHER
The last celebration of Thanksgiving was about the most startling that
any of the Hope Farmers remember. I have passed this holiday under quite
varied conditions. “Boy” on a New England farm and in a boarding-house,
cattle herder on a Colorado ranch, sawyer in a lumber camp, teacher in
a country school district, hired man and book agent on a Michigan farm,
“elocutionist” in a dramatic company, “professor of modern languages”
(with a slim grip on English alone) in a young ladies’ seminary,
printer’s devil in a Southern newspaper office, ditcher in a swamp, and
other capacities too numerous to mention. A man may perhaps lay claim to
a bit of helpful philosophy if he can find some fun in all such days and
carry along in his mental pocket “much to be thankful for.” He is sure
to come to a time in life when these “treasures of memory” will be very
useful. I would not refer to family matters that might well be marked
“private” and locked away with the skeleton in the closet if I did not
know that the plain, simple matters of family record are things that all
the world have in common.
A pirate or a man trying to hide himself might have seen virtues in the
dull, misty fog that settled upon the city the night before Thanksgiving.
Grandmother had been slowly failing through the day. The night brought
her greater pain than ever. All through these long months we had been
able to keep from her the real nature of her disease. I took it upon
myself to keep the children happy. If we grown-ups found it hard to be
thankful we would see that the little folks put out enough thanks for the
whole family. I took them down to the market to pick out a turkey! We had
a great time, and finally found a turkey fat enough. The market man gave
each of the children a handful of nuts—and they now want Mother to give
him all her trade. They went home fairly radiant with happiness. Was it
not better for them to go to sleep with the pleasant side of the day in
their hearts rather than the shadow which the rest of us could feel near
us?
The morning came dark and dismal. It didn’t seem like Thanksgiving
as the Bud and I went after the doctor. The clerks and professional
people seemed to be taking a holiday, but the drivers, the diggers and
heavy workmen were at their jobs as usual. The streets were filled with
children dressed up in ridiculous costumes, wearing masks or with faces
blackened. These urchins went about begging money from passers-by. Our
little folks were rather shocked at this way of celebrating Thanksgiving.
Where this ridiculous mummery came from or how it crept into a
Thanksgiving celebration is more than I can say. It may be as close as a
city child can come to thanking Nature for a bountiful harvest! Charlie
and his family came in from the farm, and Jack came from his school.
Grandmother made a desperate struggle and was finally able to sit up so
that her children and grandchildren might be about her. As the children
grew restless in the house I took them out and we walked along the
river. My mind was busy with other matters relating to other days, but
the little folks, happily, saw only the great bright side of the future.
Their past was too small to cast any shadow. We went as far as Grant’s
Tomb and passed through the room where the great general’s remains are
lying. As we passed in, the Graft and Scion saw the men take off their
hats and they did the same.
“Why do they make you take off your hat?” asked the Graft, when we came
out.
I tried to explain to him that this was one of the things that people
should not be _made_ to do. They should do it because they wanted to show
their respect or reverence. I doubt if I made him understand it, for when
a boy is hungry and other boys are playing football in a nearby vacant
lot even the gentlest sermon loses its point. Our dinner was such a
success that we did not have chairs enough to go around. The children had
to sit on boxes and baskets. A taste of everything from turkey down went
in to Grandmother, but she could eat little. The plates came back again
and again until the Hope Farm man was obliged to say:
“Well, Mother, I shall have to turn this turkey over after all.”
He had not only to turn it over but scrape many of the bones clean. The
farm folks finally went home and Jack too was obliged to go. Happily
the little folks were tired out and they were asleep early. About two
o’clock Mother woke me. She did not do it before, because it might have
alarmed Grandmother, who did not, I think, clearly understand her
true condition. There was apparently no pain or struggle at the end.
We noticed that her face lighted up with a strange, puzzled look, of
surprise and wonder—and well it might when one is called upon to lay
down the troubles and toil of such a life as hers in the dim, mysterious
country which one must die to enter.
Perhaps the hardest part of it all was to tell the children about it.
They must have known that some strange thing was happening. They woke up
early and saw the undertaker passing through the room. Then Mother got
them together and told them that poor Grandmother had suffered so long
that God pitied her and had taken her to Him. The little folks sat with
thoughtful faces for a while and then one of them said with wide-open
eyes:
“Is Grandmother _dead_ then?”
And so the body of poor Grandmother passed away from us while her spirit
and memory passed deeper than ever into the lives of the Hope Farm folks.
Life with her had ceased to be comfortable. It was merely a steady,
hopeless struggle against pain and depression. Mother was able to go
through these long months calmly and hopefully because she knows that her
mother had every service that love could render. It is with that thought
in mind that I feel like saying a solemn word to those whom I have never
met, yet who seem to be as close as personal friends can be. Do not for
an instant begrudge the money, the time or toil which you may spend upon
those of your loved ones who need your help. That is a part of the cross
which you must carry cheerfully or reject. Do not let those whom you
serve see that it is a cross, but glorify it from day to day. It is not
merely a part of hard, cold duty, but the vital force in the development
of character. It may be that I am now talking to someone who is putting
personal comfort above the self-denial which goes with the sacred trust
which God has put into our lives. Where will the flag of “comfort” lead
them when the discomforting days come? A conscience is a troublesome
thing at best, but one that has been gently and truly developed through
self-sacrifice is a better companion than the barbed finger of trouble
thrust into the very soul at last by the relentless hand of fate!
A novelist could weave a startling romance out of the plain life record
of this typical American woman. She was born in Massachusetts—coming
from the best stock this country has ever produced. This is not the
narrow-eyed, cent-shaving Yankee, but the children from the hillside
farms who went to the valleys and at the little water-powers laid the
foundations of New England’s manufacturing. These sturdy people saw
clearly into the future, and as they harnessed and trained the power of
the valley streams they cultivated and restrained their own powers until
the man as well as the machine became a tremendous force. Honorable
misfortune befell this manufacturing family, but could not crush it.
In those days the boys, under such circumstances, dropped all their
own ambitions and took the first job that presented itself, without
a murmur and with joy that they could do it. The girls did the same,
though there were few openings for women then outside of housework and
the schoolroom. Grandmother had a taste for music, and became a music
teacher. She finally secured a position as teacher in a little town
in Mississippi, and in about the year that the Hope Farm man was born
she went into what was then a strange country for the daughter of a
Massachusetts Abolitionist! What a journey that must have been, before
the Civil War, for a young woman such as Grandmother was then. The South
was in a blaze of excitement, yet this quiet, gentle Northern girl won
the love and respect of all. There she met the man who was to be her
husband—a young lawyer, able and ambitious, but weighted down by family
cares, political convictions and ill health. He was a Union man whose
family had made their slaves free and who opposed secession to the last.
Grandmother was married and went to the South just before the storm
broke. What a life that was in the dreary little town during those years
of fighting! Her husband was at one time drafted into the Confederate
service and sent to the front only to have a surgeon declare him too
feeble and sick for even that desperate service. He cobbled shoes,
leached the soil in old smokehouses for salt, and “lived” as best he
could. Once he took Grandmother through the lines with a bale of cotton
which he sold to pay passage money to the North. After the war he was
State Senator and Judge under the patched-up government which followed.
Carpetbaggers and rascals from the North lined their pockets with gold
and brought shame upon their party and torture and death to the ignorant
black men who followed them. In the midst of this carnival of shame and
thieving Grandmother’s husband never touched a dishonest dollar and did
his best to give character to a despised and degraded race. Of course
he failed, for the race did not have strength enough to see that what
he tried to offer them was better than the hatred of their old masters
and the dollars which the carpet-baggers held out. It was not all lost,
for when he was buried I am told that around his grave there was a thick
fringe of white people and back—at a respectful distance—acres of black,
shining faces which betrayed the crude, awkward stirring of manhood in
hearts untrained yet appreciating true service to country.
I speak of these things to make my point clear that Grandmother was a
woman capable of supporting her husband through these trials and still
capable of holding the love of those who opposed him. In the face of
an opposition so frightful that few of us can realize it this quiet,
unflinching woman kept steadily on, respected and trusted by all. She
took up her burdens without complaint, hid her troubles in her heart,
and walked bravely on in her quiet, humble way, until at last she found
a safe haven with her children. A true and sincere Christian woman she
lived and acted out her faith and did her life’s duty with dignity and
cheerfulness. The little folks as they sit beneath the tree at Hope Farm
and talk of Grandmother will have only blessed memories of her.
LAUGHTER AND RELIGION
I have learned to have deep sympathy for the man who cannot laugh. He may
have great learning or power or skill or wealth, but if fate has denied
him a keen sense of humor he is like a McIntosh apple with the glorious
flavor left out. Most of the deaf are denied what we may call “the
healing balm of tears.” Unless there chance to be some volcanic eruption
of the heart they must go in dry-eyed sorrow through their years. Yet,
if they are able to laugh it is probable that the deaf see more of the
ludicrous side of life than do those who have full hearing. It comes to
be amusing to notice how men and women strive and worry over the poor
non-essential things of conversation, and waste time and strength trying
to make others understand simple things which the deaf man comes to know
at a glance. Those who are so unfortunate that they are forced to hear
all the litter and waste-basket stuff of conversation may wonder why the
inability to hear may act as a torture to the tender heart. They do not
know how closely sound is related to the emotions. They cannot understand
without losing many of the finer things of life. Yet, as between the
tearless man and the unfortunate soul who is denied the joy of laughter,
the latter is more deserving of sympathy. One may be nearer insanity but
the other is nearer the gallows.
One great reason why the negro race has come through its troubles with
reasonable success is because fate has given the black man the blessed
privilege of laughter. Many a time when other races would have gone out
to rob and kill the black man has been able to sing or laugh his troubles
away. So, as between the man who cannot weep or lash himself into a rage
and he who cannot laugh, the latter is a far more dangerous citizen and
far more to be pitied.
I suppose I ought to be an authority on this subject, as some years
ago I was in the business of trying to inoculate some very serious and
sad-minded people with the germ of laughter. We had some specimens so
tough and so hard-boiled that it was a difficult matter to start them. I
was stranded in a farm neighborhood in a Western State working as hired
man through a very dull winter. Back among the hills, off the main roads
when prices are low and crops are poor, you strike a gloom and social
stagnation which the modern town man can hardly realize. I did my work
by day and at night went about to churches and schoolhouses “speaking
pieces.” We called those gloomy and discouraged people together and tried
to make them laugh.
I remember one such entertainment held in a country schoolhouse far back
in the mud of a January thaw. The dimly lighted room was crowded with
sad-faced, discouraged men and women to whom life had become a tragedy
through dwelling constantly upon their own troubles. At intervals during
my entertainment two sad-faced women and a couple of men who would have
made a success as undertakers at any funeral sang doleful songs about
beautiful women who died young or children who proved early in life
that they were too good for this world. During one of these intervals a
farmer led me outdoors for a conference. Your modern artist can command
a salary which enables him to ignore criticism, but in that neighborhood
the financial manager was the boss.
“See here now,” said the farmer, “we hired you to come here and make us
laugh. Why don’t you do it? I’ve got my hired man in there. He’s all
ready to go on a spree and he will do it if you don’t make him laugh. We
have paid you $2.50 to come here and speak. That means $1.25 an hour or
$12.50 for a 10-hour day. No other man in this neighborhood gets such
wages. It’s big money, now go back and earn it. _Make that man laugh!_
It’s a moral obligation for you to do it.”
There was the hired man, a great hulk of humanity feeling that he would
be a hero, the champion of the neighborhood, if he could hold humor at
bay. When I went back into the schoolroom the teacher stood up by the
stove and said it was the unanimous request of the audience that I should
read or recite the “Raven,” by Edgar Allan Poe. That was not exactly in
my line, but who is large enough to resist such an appeal? Years before
I had heard a great actor in Boston recite the poem, and with the noble
courage of youth I started the best imitation I could muster. No one, not
even the author, ever considered the “Raven” as a humorous poem, but it
struck the hired man that way. I had cracked jokes in and out of dialect.
I had “made faces” and played the clown generally without affecting the
hired man. Yet, at the third repetition of “Quoth the Raven—Nevermore!”
the hired man exploded with a roar that shook the building, and the rest
of the entertainment was one long laugh for him. The rest of the audience
joined with him, and long after the meeting closed and the lanterns
twinkled down the dark and muddy roads, you could hear roars of laughter
from the farmers, as they journeyed home. Just what there was about the
“Raven” to explode that man I have never known. It changed his life.
It broke a spring somewhere inside of him and his jokes and roars of
laughter changed the whole social life of that neighborhood. The minister
told me in the Spring that his people had received a great spiritual
uplifting during the Winter. He gave no credit whatever to Poe and the
hired man.
That same Winter I went to a church for another entertainment. I sat in
the pulpit beside the minister and every time I stopped for breath he
would lean over and whisper:
“_Make them laugh! Give them something humorous! Make them laugh!_”
He saw that laughter was religion at such a time. It was a gloomy night.
The people were sad and discouraged. Their religion was a torment to them
at the time. Nothing but laughter could cure them, and I did my best
with discouraging results. I will confess that I lost faith for once in
my life and quit trying. There was one intelligent and prosperous farmer
in the front pew. He seemed to be a leader and I directed my efforts
straight to him. It came to be the one desire of my life to make that
solemn-faced man laugh, and he would not do it. It seemed to me as if he
sat there with his solemn face a little bent forward, like some wise old
horse listening to the chatter of a young colt. I could not stir him and
I confess that I quit ingloriously and “took up the collection.”
But, when we all went out on the church steps while lanterns were being
lighted and the boys brought up the horses I saw my solemn-faced friend
talking with another farmer.
“John,” said the farmer as he snapped down the globe of his lantern, “how
did you like the show?”
“Well, Henry, it was good all the way through. I am so sore around my
ribs that I’m going home to rub liniment on my sides.”
“How’s that?”
“Why, Henry, that young feller was so funny that _I never come so nigh
to laughing in the House of God as I done tonight_. When I get home out
of sight of the elder, I am going to stand right up on my hind-legs and
holler.”
A DAY IN FLORIDA
A man told me last week that Florida was too dull for him. He would
rust out. There was “more life and human nature on Broadway, New York,
in 15 minutes than in a week of Florida.” So I thought I would see how
much “real human nature” the sun could observe as Putnam County revolved
beneath his eye.
As I came outdoors the sun was bright with hardly a cloud in the sky.
The mercury stood at about 65 degrees. Most of the bloom had fallen
from the orange trees and the young fruit had begun to form, while the
new leaves showed their light green against the darker old leaves. On
the tree by the gate, there were peaches as large as walnuts. A drove
of half-wild hogs from the woods went slowly along the village street,
with one eye open for food and the other watching for a possible hole
in a fence through which they might crawl into a grove or garden. For
while no one seems to think it worth while to bolt or even shut a house
door at night except for warmth, there must be barbed wire around every
growing thing that a hog could fancy. Two red hens with their broods
of chickens ran about under the orange trees. In front of the house I
found a group of “redheads and towheads” gathered around a fisherman who
carried a fertilizer sack. He had caught three young alligators and the
children were buying them. They finally got the three for a dollar, and
they intend taking the hideous things back to New Jersey to “raise”
them. You may yet see an improved breed of Hope Farm alligator. Finally
the school bell rang and the older children scattered while the little
ones played on. I have said that the child crop is a vanishing product in
this locality. I understand there are but four white children of school
age—not enough to maintain a school! There is a broken and abandoned
schoolhouse here, but it has not been occupied for some years. There
is a school for colored children. Our people opened a school here, but
in this locality the State actually does more for educating colored
children than for whites. Think over what that means and see if Broadway
can match the “human nature” which comes out of such a situation. Our
own children are rosy as flowers. They ought to be, for they have played
out in the sun every day since December 1. They would have gone barefoot
nine days out of ten, but for sand burrs and hookworms—for that dread
disease gets into the system through the feet. Florida is surely a Winter
paradise for children and elderly people. As these children pen up their
alligators and separate for school and play, an old man walks with firm
and active steps down the shaded street to the store. He is 89 years old
and is still planting a garden—very likely for the seventieth time! On
the platform of the store he will meet a group of men who will sit for
hours discussing the weather or looking off through the pines toward
the blue lake. On Broadway, people are rushing to and fro with set,
anxious faces, tearing their hearts out in the fierce struggle for food,
clothing, amusement and shelter. There is quite as much “human nature”
about these slow and gentle dreamers, basking in the Florida sun. In
this little place where our folks have wintered there are nine different
men who live alone. There are perhaps 30 voters in this district, and
strange as it may seem they are about evenly divided between the two
great parties. That is because a number of old soldiers have moved in
here. They draw their pensions, work their gardens or groves and live
in peace in this carefree land. “Human nature?” Ask these old soldiers
with “warfare over,” as the sun goes down and they look out over the
lake, why they ever came to Florida, and if they are disappointed. If you
started a contest with a prize for the man who can take the longest time
to travel a mile, I could enter several citizens. Yet it was in Florida
that the world’s record for speed with a motor car was recently made.
While some of our neighbors might consume two hours in going a mile, it
was in Florida that Oldfield drove a car one mile in 27⅓ seconds. This
contest in speed is a very good illustration of the contrary character of
Florida climate and conditions. Many people fail here because they try to
fit Broadway “human nature” to this balmy gentle land. You cannot use the
same brand!
The forenoon wore off lazily. Across the road a man was working a mule
on a cultivator—tearing up the surface of an old orange grove. The only
auto in the town went by over the pine-paved road, the very cough of
the exhaust pipe sounding like a lung rapidly healing in the soft air.
Charlie went by followed by a big colored man. They carry spades and
axes for Charlie is sexton, and this is one of the rare occasions when
a grave is to be dug, for some old resident is being brought home to be
buried.
Mother and I had planned to take the train at noon and go south for a few
miles to do some shopping and look up a “colony” or land boom scheme.
So we got ready and went to the station in ample time. And there we
waited, as everyone else does in this land of tomorrow. An hour crawled
by, and still there was nothing in sight up the track except the distant
pines and the heat rising from the sands. No one quarrels with fate in
Florida—what is the use? Under similar circumstances in New Jersey I
should have been held in some way responsible for the delay, but here it
did not matter—if the train did not come, another day would do. We waited
about 100 long minutes and then the good lady announced that she was
going home, as there would not be time to get around, and home she went,
good-natured and smiling as the Florida sun.
Let me add that the next day we waited nearly two hours again and then
went home once more, but who cares whether he goes today or some future
“tomorrow”?
Having been cut out of our trip I became interested in the funeral. A
little group of wagons was drawn up under the pines waiting for the
train. I have said that an old resident was coming “home”—to be buried
by the side of husband and relatives—in the rough little cemetery behind
the pines. At last, a puff of thick smoke up the track showed where the
dawdling train was showing the true speed of a hearse. Down the grade it
came, halting with many a wheeze and groan in front of the little station
where the fated box was taken off. Our little funeral procession was
quickly made up. Uncle Ed drove old Frank ahead with the minister and the
Hope Farm Man as passengers. Then came the dead in a farm wagon, and half
a dozen one-horse teams straggling on behind. Your funeral on Broadway
with its gilded hearse, black horses and nodding plumes might be far more
inspiring. Who can say, however, that there was less of “human nature” in
this little weatherbeaten string crawling over the Florida sand? I was
thinking as we went how this dead woman had seen what seemed like the
death of hope in this land. For right where we were passing, on these
dead fields, she had seen orange groves in full fruitage, and had seen
them all wiped out in a day of frost!
You would have said that Charlie stood leaning on his spade beside two
great heaps of snow. The soil was pure white sand, and as they threw
it from the grave it had drifted in over the sides until no dark color
showed. On Broadway there would have been an imposing procession, the
organ pouring out tones that seemed to carry a message far beyond the
comprehension of the living. Here in this lonely little clearing, my
friend the minister led the way, the little group of mourners followed,
and Charlie and Uncle Ed with a few neighbors carried the dead. I wish I
could have had you there with me—you who say that life and human nature
crowd into the “lively” places. I wish I could paint the picture as I saw
it.
The minister and the station agent’s wife began to sing. One of the men
who helped carry the coffin laid down his load and joined the singers.
They wanted me to make a quartette, but I am no musician and I could
not have made a sound. It was better for me to stand in the background
against a tree, by the side of the colored man who leaned on his shining
spade and bowed his gray head. For does not the color line fade out at
the grave? I wish you could have seen it, the trio of singers, the sad
group under the pines, the earth piled up like snowdrifts, the pine tops
quivering and moaning, and the Florida sun streaming over all. I felt the
pine tree against which I leaned tremble as the wind blew through it.
In a tree over us a gray squirrel turned his ear as if to listen. For
gathered around those piles of glistening sand were men and women who
carried all the world holds of “human nature”—tragedy, despair, hope,
sorrow and peace. Not 100 feet from where I stood was a row of six little
white stones where six old army comrades were buried. I studied their
names, six men of the army and navy from New York, Maine, New Hampshire,
South Carolina, Vermont and Ohio. There they lie in the sand, sleeping
“the sleep that knows no waking.” And this woman wanted to be brought
back to this lonely place that she might rest with her people. “Human
nature?” I made a dull companion as old Frank toiled back with us to the
village.
Our folks had left the house and I followed them along the shady path to
the lake. The younger people had been in bathing. They were sitting on
the lake shore, the children were shouting and playing as they ran about
the beach. I am glad they were not at the funeral. As Mother and I walked
slowly back, the little ones came trailing on, waving branches of palm
and singing. And there over the fence was our famous gallon-and-a-half
cow—easily the most energetic citizen in the place.
Night comes quickly in Florida and brings a chill with it. The sun seems
to tumble directly into the west and to leave little warmth behind.
Before we ended our slow walk home, darkness had fallen and Uncle Ed had
started a grateful fire of logs. As if to demonstrate the Florida axiom
that there are only two absolutely sure things—death and taxes—we found
the county assessor before the fire. He had reached us on his rounds and
was ready to tell us how much we owed the State. You will see therefore
that the human life in Florida is much the same as anywhere else only
“more so” for here there is no artifice or straining after effect. Men
and women are naturally human—as they were meant to be.
THE BASEBALL GAME
“_Two strikes, three balls!_”
A silence so intense that you could feel it fell upon 60,000 people who
saw the umpire put up his hand to announce the second strike. It was the
crisis of the first baseball game for the world’s championship between
New York and Philadelphia. The great stands were black with people, and
thousands more were perched upon the rocks which rose above the level in
which the ball grounds are laid out. The boy and I sat on the bleachers.
It was the only place we could get; we sat there three hours before the
game began—and we were among the last to get in. Of course you will say
we should have been at home picking apples—but without discussing that I
will admit that we were packed away in that “bleacher” crowd.
There were some 25,000 of us crowded on those wooden benches with our
feet hanging down. Here and there in this black mass of hats a spot of
lighter color showed where a woman had crowded in with the rest. There
may have been 100 women in this crowd. The “stands” where the reserved
seats are placed were bright with women’s gay colors. Our seats were not
reserved, but well “deserved” after our struggle for them.
I enjoyed the crowd as much as the game. Many of you have no doubt read
that description in “Ben Hur” of the motley crowd which surged out to the
Crucifixion. Gibbon describes the masses of humans who attended the Roman
games. The world as known at that time gathered at these spectacles, yet
I doubt if those old-time hordes could produce the variety of blood or
color which showed within 1,000 feet of where we sat. Within four feet
sat two colored men showing traces of two distinct African races. The
young man on my right was certainly an Irishman. The fat man, who was
wide enough to fill two seats, was a German. In front an Italian, behind
a Swede, off there a Frenchman, a Spaniard and even a Chinaman. There
was an Arab whose father ate dates in the desert. The son looked forward
to this date as an oasis in the desert of hard work. Here were Indians,
Japanese, Mexicans, Russians, Turks—the entire world had poured the blood
of its races into that vast crowd. I do not believe the great Coliseum
at Rome ever held a larger company. Yet this crowd was different. In
the savage hordes of centuries ago the air was filled with a babel of
sound—each race shrieking in its own language. This vast army of “fans”
thought and spoke in the common languages of English and baseball. For
there is a true language of baseball. Nothing can be popular unless it
acquires a language of its own. It was an orderly crowd too. Somehow
these waiting men seemed to feel that they had come to the hush and
dignity of a great occasion. You may laugh at us—you poor unfortunate
people who do not know a home run from a fly catch, but you have missed
a lot of the thrill and joy of life. We feel sorry for you. To the true
baseball crank this game represented the climax of the year, for here
were the best 18 players in the world ready for the supreme struggle.
So these thousands sat silent and watchful. As you know, when stirred
by passion 60,000 people can give vent to the most hideous and awesome
sound. Yet when stilled by the thought of what is to come the silence of
this great army is most profound. Now, of course, you and I may say—what
a pity that all these people and all the energy and money they represent
could not be used for some more useful purpose. I could name half a dozen
things which this country needs. If it were possible to gather 60,000
people in behalf of any of these things with the claws of elemental
savagery barely covered with thin cotton gloves no Legislature in the
land would dare refuse the demanded law. That is true, but it is also
true that human nature has not yet evolved from the point where at the
last analysis the physical power and what it stands for appeals first
to the young and strong. You cannot get away from that, and it must be
considered in all our regrets about the “younger generation.” We can have
anything we want in legislation and reform whenever we can work up a
spirit and a demand for it which is akin to this baseball feeling! For in
this silent, orderly crowd there was nothing but cotton over the claws.
There was a dignified-looking citizen not far from us who looked like a
fair representative of the “City of Brotherly Love.” You would choose
him as one of a thousand to take charge of a Sunday school. Yet when a
Philadelphia player raced home with the first run there came a hoarse cry
that might have startled even a listless Cæsar 2,000 years ago. There
was our Philadelphia friend on one foot waving his hat and shrieking
defiance and taunts at the crowd of New York “fans.” Why, the germ of
that man’s mind was back in the centuries, clad in hairy flesh and skins
shouting a war cry at what were then its enemies! And when New York tied
the score the entire bleachers seemed to rise like a great black wave of
humanity with shrieks and cries and waving hats. For the moment these
were hardly human beings—as we like to consider the race. They were crazy
barbarians lapsed for the moment back to elemental motives. And as I came
back to find myself standing up with the rest I was not sure but that the
brief trip back to barbarism had after all been a profitable one!
But we left the umpire standing with his hand up calling _two strikes_!
It was the fifth inning, with the score one to one. There were two out
and New York had worked a man around to third base. One more pitched ball
would tell the story. Consider the mix-up of the races in this “American
game.” The man on third base straining like a greyhound to get home was
an Indian. The man at bat was of French blood, while the next batter was
an Irishman with a Jew close behind him. The catcher was an Englishman
and the pitcher a pure Indian. This Indian stood there like a silent
representative of fate with the ball in his hand, eyeing that Frenchman,
who shook his bat defiantly. I presume neither of them thought for the
instant how 200 years ago it would have been tomahawk against musket in
place of ball and bat. Yet the race traits were evident—the light and
airy nerve of the Gaul and the crafty silence of the red man! Oh, how
that ball did go in! “Ball!” shouted the umpire and the batter took his
base. Then it seemed as if bedlam had broken loose. Men and women shouted
and cheered and laughed and cried, for they thought that the Indian was
“rattled” at last. But his ancestors went through too much fire for that.
He stood in the center as cool as a cake of ice. The play for the man on
first was to run to second when the ball was pitched, and run he did.
I noticed that the catcher jumped six feet to the right as that Indian
threw the ball. It went like lightning right into the catcher’s hands.
The second baseman had run up behind the pitcher and took the throw from
the catcher. Of course the runner on third tried to run in on this throw,
but back came the ball ahead of him and he was out! Then in an instant
the mighty crowd saw that New York had been ambushed. It was a great
trick, and played so accurately and quickly and with such daring that
even the Philadelphia “fans” were mind-paralyzed and forgot to cheer.
The silence which followed the Indian to the players’ bench was the most
eloquent tribute of the day. And it happened, as every “sport” already
knows, that New York finally won two to one. The needed runs were made
on mighty hits by an Indian and an Irishman, and the great crowd filed
out and home to talk it over. I wish I could tell my children how some
Cape Cod Yankee had a hand in it, but too many of these are occupied in
telling what they or their ancestors used to do. I think the game was
invented and developed by Yankees, and that they have made the most
money out of it. Probably Cape Cod is willing to rest content with this
and let the others handle the ball. I am ready to admit we ought to have
been home picking apples, but we saw the game, and the apple harvest will
go better to pay for it.
TRANSPLANTING THE YOUNG IDEA
Of all the planting that a farmer finds it necessary to do there is
nothing quite equal to transplanting home-grown plants in the garden
of education. Some homes might be called hotbeds, others are very cold
frames, and there are grades running all between. Children grow up away
from childhood and show that they are ready for transplanting—with
evidences around the head to be compared with those on a tomato plant.
You cut off their roots, and try to trim their heads and plant them in
the hard field of practical life or in the sheltered garden of education.
It is a large undertaking, for here is the best crop of your farm put out
at a hazard. You may not have grown or trimmed it right, and the soil in
which you plant it may not prove congenial, or some wild old strain from
a remote ancestor may “come back” when it should “stay out.” You cannot
tell about these things except by experiment, therefore there is nothing
quite equal to this sort of transplanting. That is the way Mother and
I felt as we took the two older children off to college. My experience
has taught me both the power and the weakness of an education. He who
can grasp the true spirit of it acquires a trained mind, and that means
mastery. He who simply “goes to college” and drifts along with the crowd
without real mental training is worse off than if he never had entered.
He cannot live up to his reputation as a college man, and when a man
must go through life always dragging behind his reputation he is only a
tin can tied to the tail of what was once his ambition. I can imagine
an intelligent parrot going through college, and perhaps passing the
examinations, but all his life he would be a parrot, unable to apply
what he had learned to practical things. I made up my mind long ago to
give each one of the children opportunity. That means a chance to study
through a good college. Each and every one must pay back to me later the
money which this costs. My backing continues just as long as they show
desire, through their labor, to think and work out the real worth of
education. Should they become mentally and morally lazy and assume that
“going to college” is like having the measles or raising a beard—out
they come at once, for if I know anything at all it is the fact that the
so-called student who goes through college just because his parents think
it is the thing to do makes about as poor a drone as the human hive can
produce.
Where should the children go? The case of the girl was quickly settled
by her mother. Years ago this good lady had her own dreams of a college
education and knew just where she wanted to go. Denied the privilege of
going herself, she nominated her daughter as her substitute. That settled
it—there was no primary or referendum or special election. There seemed
to me something of poetic realization in this setting of the only bud
into the long-desired and long impossible tree of knowledge. As for the
boy—the case was different. I would like to send at least one child back
to my old college, and I think a couple of the smaller ones will go
later. I know better than to try to crowd boys into associations which
are not congenial. If your boy has intelligence enough to justify his
going to college let him use his intelligence to decide something of what
he wants. I advised the boy to select one of the smaller colleges of high
reputation and keep away from the great universities. He made what I
call a good choice—an institution of high character, lonely location and
with one great statesman graduate who stands up in history like a great
lighthouse, to show the glory of public life and the dangerous rock of
his own private habits.
Well, Mother and I traveled close to 900 miles up and down through New
England on this trip of planning in the garden of education. I could
write a book on the memories and anticipations which filled the minds of
this Hope Farm quartette. As the train rushed up the country, winding
through villages and climbing hills, we took on groups of bright-faced
boys on their way to college. Before we reached the end of our journey
the train was crowded with them. There was one sour-faced old fellow on
the train who viewed those boys with no benevolent eye.
“A lazy, careless lot. I’d put them all at work!”
The old man was wrong—he was sour. Even the evidence of hope and faith in
the future which those bright-eyed boys brought could not sweeten him.
Here were the thinkers and dreamers and workers of the future. Underneath
their fun and careless hope they carried the prayers of their mothers
and the poorly expressed dreams of fathers who saw in those boys the
one chance to carry on a life work. While the old man scowled on I found
myself quoting from “Snow Bound,” Whittier’s picture of the college boy
who taught the winter school:
“Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he
Shall Freedom’s young apostles be.”
The responsibility of acting as “young apostles” would have wearied these
boys, but unconsciously they were absorbing part of the spirit which will
fit them for the work. Finally the train stopped and poured us out into
a dusty road. There were not teams enough to carry 10 per cent of the
crowd, and the rest of us cheerfully took up our burdens, crossed the
river and mounted a steep and dusty hill. It took me back 30 years and
more, to my first three-mile dusty walk to college. At the hilltop, as
the glory of the college campus stood revealed in the shimmering light
of the setting sun, it must have seemed to the freshmen that they had
surely been “walking up Zion’s hill.” To me it was like old times patched
up and painted with perhaps a few ornaments added. Two boys went by
bending under the weight of mattresses. When I first hit college I bought
a bedtick, carried it to the barn and stuffed it with straw. It was all
the same, only there was the difference which the years naturally bring
in comfort and convenience. But finally the darkness came and the moon
seemed to climb up over the college buildings, flooding the campus with
long bright splinters of light. As we walked back under the trees there
came back to me the one, unchangeable, holy thing of college life—the
undying, gentle, kindly spirit of the college which a man must carry as
long as he lives.
We got up before five o’clock and traveled far down the Connecticut
Valley to plant the family flower. Those of you who have read “The
Princess” and have fairly active imaginations may realize how the Hope
Farm man felt at this institution. Here men did not even reach a back
seat. There was absolutely nothing for me to do except stand about, hat
in hand, and pay the bills. At the railroad station three good-looking
girls of the Y. W. C. A. met us and told us just where to go. At the
college another girl took a suitcase and walked off with it to show my
daughter’s room. The express business and the trunks were all handled
by a fine-looking woman who gave points on good-nature to any express
agent I ever saw. The sale of furniture, the bureau of information, the
handling of money—the complete organization was conducted by women and
girls. It was all well done, in a thoroughly business-like manner and
with rare courtesy. True, the girls who conducted the information bureau
stopped now and then to eat popcorn or candy. College boys of equal rank
would probably have smoked cigarettes. There was just one other man in
the hall, who, like me, had brought his daughter there to plant her in
the garden of education. I caught his eye, and knew that our thoughts
were twins. I fully expected at any time to see “two stalwart daughters
of the plow” approaching to do their duty.
The spirit of this college seemed excellent. It may be a debatable
question with some as to whether a school taught, organized and
conducted entirely by women is more desirable than one taught by men or
where co-education is permitted. There is no debate in our family, since
the ruling spirit, whose instincts are usually right, has decided the
question. It seemed to me that the training at this school is sure to
give these girls responsibility and dignity. My two girls went into a
store to buy furniture for the room, and I stayed outside until the time
came for my part of the deal—paying for it. Across the campus and up the
street came a beautiful woman walking slowly and thoughtfully on. Tall
and shapely, but for her years she might have represented Tennyson’s
Princess. Every movement of her body gave the impression of power. Her
face seemed like a mask of patient suffering with an electric light of
knowledge and faith behind it. I remember years ago to have seen another
such woman walking across the village green in a country town. A rough
man a stranger to me, took off his hat and said:
“Some woman—that!”
Yes, indeed—“some woman!” It is possible that some of these “daughters
of the plow” had an eye on the Hope Farm man for watching ladies walking
across the campus, but had they arrested me I should have told them the
story of Billy Hendricks. Billy was apprentice in a printer’s shop in
England. The boss offered a prize and a raise in wages to the apprentice
who could set up a certain advertisement in the best form. Billy needed
the money. He went to the foreman and asked:
“How can I make this ‘ad’ so it will show true proportions?”
“Look at me!” said the foreman.
There he stood, big and broad-shouldered, a true figure of a man, and as
Billy studied him he found the words of that “ad” shaping themselves in
his mind. The others were mechanical. Billy had vision and won. Some of
us who must admit that we have neither beauty nor shape are glad to have
before our children an example of what the coming woman ought to be.
THE SLEEPLESS MAN
Some of our people are telling us about the best or the most satisfying
meal they ever ate. This question of food seems to depend on habit,
hunger and personal taste. I saw a man once in a lumber camp eat plate
after plate of a stew made of meat, potatoes and carrots—cooked in a
big iron kettle over an open fire. At home, this man would have growled
at turkey or terrapin, but here he was pushing back his plate again and
again asking the cook to put more carrots in. “Why,” he said, “I thought
carrots were made for horses to eat. I didn’t know human beings ate
them!” He never had been a real human before—not until hunger caught him
and pulled him right up to that iron pot. At his club in the city he
could not have eaten three mouthfuls of that stew.
It is different with sleep. The man with no appetite can get on after a
fashion, but if he cannot sleep he is a pitiable object. I met one once—a
rich man who had worked too hard—starved himself for sleep in order to
get hold of rather more than his share of money and power. He had passed
the limit of nerves and was denied the power of sleeping. A few snatches
of rest were all he could get, but through the long still nights he lay
awake, thinking, thinking with the constant terror that this would end in
a disordered mind.
We sat before this man’s fire late at night, and he told me all about
it. To you sleep seems like a very common and simple thing. The night
finds you tired and you shut your eyes and before you know it you are
sailing off into a peaceful, unknown country. Here was a man who could
not sleep. He must remain chained to the cares and terrors of his daily
life, and the bitterness of it was that all the money he had slaved so
hard to obtain could not buy him what comes to you and me with the mere
closing of the eyes. It seemed to me the most despairing mockery for this
man to repeat Sir Philip Sidney’s “Ode to Sleep”:
“Come sleep; O Sleep! the certain hour of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,
The indifferent judge between the high and low;
With shield of proof, shield me from out the prease
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw;
O make in me these civil wars to cease
I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Make thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,
A rosy garland and a weary head.”
“That’s it,” said my friend, “_A weary head, a weary head_. Mine is
weary, but sleep will not come.” He sat looking at the fire for a long
time, and then he turned suddenly with a sort of haunted look in his eyes.
“I wish you would tell me about the _best sleep_ you ever had. Men may
tell of their best meal, but I want to know about rest—the best sleep.”
It was a strange request, but as I sat there, my mind went back to
a hillside near the New England coast where the valley slopes away
to a salt marsh with a sluggish stream running through it. A low,
weatherbeaten farmhouse crouches at the foot of the wind-swept hill. It
is a lonely place. Few come that way in daylight, and at night there are
no household lights to be seen.
It had rained through the night, and the morning brought a thick heavy
fog. It was too wet to hoe corn, and Uncle Charles said we could all go
gunning. He was an old soldier, a sharpshooter, and a famous shot. So
we tramped off along the marsh following the creek until it reached the
ocean. What a glorious day that was for a boy! I carried an old army
musket that kicked my shoulder black and blue. We tramped along the shore
and through the wet marsh, hunting for sandpipers and other sea fowl.
Now and then a flock of birds would seem to be lost in the fog, and
Uncle Charles would whistle them to where we lay in ambush. It all comes
back,—clear and distinct,—the cries of the sea fowl and dull roar of the
ocean as it pounded upon the beach. Late in the afternoon we tramped
home wet and tired, but with a long string of birds. The ocean roared on
behind us louder than ever as the wind arose.
It was not good New England thrift to eat those birds—the guests at the
Parker House in Boston would pay good money for them. While we had been
hunting, Aunt Eleanor and the girls in the lonely farmhouse had been busy
with a “New England Dinner.” There was a big plate of salt codfish, first
boiled and then fried crisp with little cubes of browned salt pork mixed
with it. There were boiled potatoes which split open in a rich dry flour,
boiled onions and carrots and great slices of brown bread and butter.
Then the odor from the oven betrayed the crowning act of all—a monstrous
pan-dowdy, or apple grunt! Ever eat a genuine pan-dowdy in a New England
kitchen as a wet dreary night is coming on after a tiresome day? No? I
am both sorry and glad for you. You have missed one of the greatest joys
of life, but you have much to look forward to. When Uncle Charles began
to cut that pan-dowdy, we boys realized that we could not do it full
justice, so we went out and ran around the house half a dozen times to
make more room for the top of the feast.
After supper the dishes were washed, the house cleaned up, and we washed
out our guns. The old musket had kicked my shoulder so that I could
hardly raise the arm, but no human being could have made me admit it.
We got Uncle Charles to tell us about the time he shot at the officer
at Port Hudson during the war, and about the humpbacked man who carried
the powder from Plymouth to Boston during the Revolution. Then through
the gloom and fog came two young men to call on the girls. In those days
it seemed to me very poor taste for one to listen to the conversation
of girls rather than war stories. True, the war stories were time-worn,
but the girl conversation was older yet. Soon the little melodeon was
talking up and a quartette was singing the old songs of half a century
ago. It may have been the day’s tramping, the old musket, the last plate
of pan-dowdy or the tap of the rain on the windows, but sitting there by
the warm kitchen stove, I felt a delicious drowsiness stealing over me.
Bed is the place for sleep, and we boys climbed the stairs past the great
center chimney, and quickly tumbled into bed. In the room below that
quartette had started an old favorite:
“Along the aisles of the dim old forest
I strayed in the dewy dawn
And heard far away in their silent branches
The echoes of the morn.
“They stirred my heart with their low, sweet voices,
Like chimes from a holier land,
As though far away in those haunted arches
Were happy—an angel band.”
There was one great booming bass voice which had unconsciously fallen
into the key of the dull roar which the distant ocean was making. The
rain was gently tapping on the roof, and all the joys and pleasant
memories of youth were whispering happy things in our ears as we sailed
off on the most beautiful voyage to dreamland.
I told this as best I could before the fire while my weary friend
listened, leaning back in his easy-chair with his hand shading his face.
And when I stopped sleep had come to him at last—sweet and blessed sleep.
There are very few of us who would stand for a photograph taken while we
were asleep, but this man’s face was free from care. An orator might not
think it a high tribute to his powers that he sent his audience to sleep,
but I am not an orator, and I would like to be able to give my friends
what they consider the blessed things of life! And Peace, blissful Peace,
had put her healing hand upon my poor friend’s head.
LINCOLN’S BIRTHDAY
It brought the worst storm we have had this Winter. This season will pass
on into history as about the roughest we have had in 20 years. There came
a whirl of snow which filled the air and sifted in through every crack
and hole. We let the storm alone, and got away from it. Merrill sorted
out seed corn at the barn. Philip had some inside painting to do, the
women folks kept at their household work, and the children got out into
the storm. They came in now and then to stand by the fire—with faces the
color of their hair. As for me, I cannot say that I hurt myself with hard
labor. We piled the logs in the open fireplace and started a roaring
fire. With a pile of books on one side and a pen and paper at the other,
my big chair gave a very good foundation for a Lincoln celebration. I
presume we all have our personal habits of reading. Some people read only
one kind of books, and stick to the one in hand until it is finished.
My plan is different. Right now I am reading Dante, “Rural Credits,”
“Manufacture of Chemical Manure,” Whittier’s Poems and Lowell’s essay on
Abraham Lincoln. A poor jumble of stuff for a human head you will say,
but I turn from one to another, so that instead of a mixed-up jumble I
try to have these different thoughts in layers through the mind. In this
way one may get a blend which is better than a hash. It may seem absurd
to think of putting poetry into rural credits or fertilizers, but unless
you can do something of the sort you can never get very far with them.
That was the great secret of Lincoln’s power. As judged by knowledge or
training or what we call “education,” there were many abler men in the
country at his time, but Lincoln knew how to appeal to the imagination
of the plain, common people. Read his speeches and papers and see how
he framed a fact with a mental picture which the common people could
understand. There were some wonderful pictures at the World’s Fair in
Chicago. Some were called masterpieces of fabulous value. People stood
before them and went on with something of awe in their heart—not quite
grasping the artist’s meaning. One less pretentious picture was named
“The Breaking of Home Ties,” and day by day a great throng stood before
it, silent and wet-eyed. It was a very simple home scene, picturing a boy
leaving his country home. Men studied it, walked away and then turned and
slowly came back that they might see it once more. As long as they live
people will remember that picture, because the poetry of it appealed to
them as the higher art could not do. I think Lincoln held the imagination
of the plain people much as that picture did. He was one who had suffered
and had been brought up with plain and simple family habits which were
fixed.
The children have come running in to warm their hands. They are lined
up in front of the big fire, rosy-faced and covered with snow. They
stand looking at me as I write. Dinner is nearly ready, and there is no
question about their readiness for it. Here comes Mother to look out at
the storm, and she forgets to remember that this group of snowbirds by
my fire have forgotten to stamp the snow off their feet. There will be a
puddle of water when they move off—but it will soon dry up. As I watch
them all it seems a good time to pick up Lowell’s essay on Lincoln:
“_He is so eminently our representative man, that, when he speaks, it
seems as if the people were listening to their own thinking aloud.... He
has always addressed the intelligence of men. Never their prejudices,
their passion or their ignorance._”
Now I think that intelligence and power to speak as people think can only
come out of good family relations. Do I mean to say that the family group
is superior to the college, the school or the other great institutions
for training human thought? I do, wherever the family group is bound
together as it should be by love, good will, ambition and something of
sacrifice!
This nation and every other is ruled by the family spirit. All public
government is based on self-government, and the family is the training
school for all. What could the college or the school do with a great
crowd or mob of students who have never known the restraints of good
family life? Ask any teacher to tell you the difference between children
reared in a clean, careful family and those reared where the family
relations are much like a cross-cut saw. Line up the adults you know,
make a fair estimate of their character and see whether you can select
those who in their childhood had a fair chance in family life. There are,
of course, exceptions to all rules, but generally the boy or girl will
carry through life the habits and the human policies which are given him
in the family. As a rule these will be carried into the new family which
the boy or girl may start, and thus be handed on like those qualities
which are transmitted through blood lines. No use talking—the family unit
is the most important element in human society. A nation’s fame rests
upon the nation’s family.
I think a man may fairly be judged by the way he treats his parents, his
children and his wife. I do not care how he gets out and shows himself
off as a great man and a good citizen. He might get an overwhelming vote
for Congress or Governor, but God will judge him more by the votes of
father, mother, son, daughter, wife! To me there can be nothing more
beautiful than the best relation between a man of middle years and his
aged parents. Perhaps the latter are feeble and not well-to-do. When
they can sit in their son’s home happy and comfortable, knowing that
the entire family has been taught to put them first of all in family
regard, you have struck about the finest test of a man’s character that
good citizenship can offer. When the children chase their father about
and, out of their own thought, run to anticipate his wants, you can
make up your mind that in that family are being trained men and women
who can go out and absorb education and financial power which will be
used for the true benefit of humanity. Most of us can never hope to be
great men or to handle large public affairs, but we can make our family
a training school for good citizenship. I have no thought that in this
group of bright-eyed youngsters lined up by my fire we are to have any
great statesmen or authors or merchant princes or big folk generally. On
the whole I hope not, as it would seem to me that the great man has a
rather lonely life. I do expect, however, that these children will always
remember Hope Farm, and that in future years when the world may turn a
very cold side to them they will remember this stormy day and will feel
the warmth of this kindly fire.
I have wandered away from what I wanted to say about Lincoln and his
power over the people. It was this family feeling which made him strong,
and if you want your boy or girl to be really worth while you must give
them and their mother the best family surroundings you can possibly
secure. The man who taps the spring or the well and sends the water
running through his house does far more for his country than he who runs
for Congress and taps the public pocket-book.
But here comes Mother again, with “Come now, dinner’s ready. Don’t let it
get cold!” Get cold? The children are already at the table! I wish you
could come right along with me. I would put two sausage cakes on your
plate and fill it up with mealy potatoes and yellow turnips. Then you
would have rice in another dish. There is a dish of thick, brown gravy
and nothing would suit me better than to have you call for an egg—fried
or boiled. The Reds are laying well now. There are two kinds of bread and
plenty of butter, and we will take a family vote as to whether we shall
take peaches, strawberries, Kieffer pears, cherries or raspberries off
the pantry shelves. I vote for Crosby peaches, but you will have a free
choice and all you can eat. Surely the table makes a very strong family
tie. Come on!
UNCLE ED’S PHILOSOPHY
Uncle Ed had his home in Florida, but spent the Summer working at Hope
Farm. At the time I speak of we were hoeing corn at the top of our hill.
We had just planted the apple orchard, and we both realized the long
and weary years of toilsome waiting before there could be any fruit. It
was a hot day, and at the end of the row we stopped to rest under the
big cherry tree where the stone wall is broad and thick. It was a clear
day, and far off across the rolling country to the East we could see
the sparkle of the sun on some gilded-top building in New York. It gave
one a curious feeling to stand in that shady retreat on $50 land in a
lonely neighborhood, practically untouched by modern development, and
glance across to the millions and the might crowded at the mouth of the
Hudson. Most of us feel a sort of pride on viewing the evidence of wealth
and power, even though we have no share in it, or even when we know it
means blood money taken from our own lives. I felt something of this as
I pointed it out to Uncle Ed, and told him how probably the overflow of
that great city would some day make an acre of our orchard worth more
than a farm in Florida.
This did not seem to impress him greatly. He ran his eye over the glowing
prospect and then slowly filled his pipe for a smoke. I am no friend of
tobacco, but I confess that sometimes I enjoy seeing a man like Uncle Ed
slowly fill his pipe. I feel that some sort of homely philosophy is sure
to be smoked out.
“The trouble with you folks up in this country,” said Uncle Ed, “is that
you work too hard. You get so that there is nothing in you but work and
save. And for what? How many of you ever get the benefit of your own
work? Down where I live we don’t exist for the mere sake of working. I
have known the time when I got up determined to do a good day’s work
cultivating. I got the horse all harnessed, only to find that my neighbor
on the south had borrowed the cultivator, and I couldn’t do that. Then
I thought I’d hoe, but the boys lost the hoe in the brush and couldn’t
find it. Then there was the woodpile to be cut up, but my neighbor on the
north had borrowed the ax.
“Now up in this country if fate challenged a man like that he would
start picking up stones and making a stone wall. Here is one now that
we are resting against. I’ll bet some old owner of this farm piled up
this heap of stones because he was determined that the boys never should
play or go fishing. It is now the most useless thing you have on your
farm. If, instead of picking up stones and building this useless wall,
that old-timer had quit when fate gave him the sign, taken a day off and
let the boys go fishing or play ball, this farm would be worth far more
than it is today. Down in my country when the cultivator and the hoe and
the ax all get away from us we accept it as a voice from some higher
authority, and we _drop everything and go fishing_. After that I notice
things straighten out and work goes right. You fellows work too hard, and
don’t know it. But this won’t buy the woman a dress—we must hoe this
corn out.”
The rows ran to the south, and as we hoed on I could see, far away, that
bright sparkle on the gilding of the big city. And I answered with the
old familiar argument:
“You have just told in a few words why there are more savings of the poor
and middle-class people in that big city yonder than there are in the
entire State of Florida.” That was 16 years ago and the statement was
probably true at the time. Florida has gained since then.
“Up in this country we believe that the Lord gives every man of decent
mind and reasonable body a chance to provide for himself and family
before he is 45. If he doesn’t do it by that time, he isn’t likely to do
it at all. We think that there are three ways of getting money. You can
earn it through labor, steal it, or have it given to you. For most of
us there is only one way—that is to dig it out by the hardest work, and
then practice self-denial in order to hold it. Up in this country the men
who quit and go fishing when conditions turn against them, spend their
declining years without any bait. That money off there where you see that
sparkle was produced by men who did not go fishing when conditions turned
against them.”
As I look back upon it now that seems pretty cheap talk, but it was the
way we looked at it in those days.
“I know,” said Uncle Ed, “but how much better off are they when you sum
it all up? I claim that the man who goes fishing gets something that the
man who built that stone wall never knew. Who piled up all that money
in the big city? Some of mine is there. The interest I have paid on my
mortgage has come into one of these big buildings for investment. The
profit on many a box of oranges I shipped before the freeze never got
away from New York. It stuck there and you can’t get it out. And that’s
just what I mean. You fellows work your fingers stiff and make a little
money, and then you put it into some bank or big company or into stocks
or bonds. In the end it all gets away from you and runs down hill to that
big city. The hired man took $25 to the county fair. Ten dollars of it
went for beer and rum. The local saloonkeeper passed the $10 on to the
wholesaler, he to the brewer and he sent part of it to Germany and the
rest to Wall Street. The other $15 mostly went in chance games or petty
gambling. He lost $5 betting that he could find the little red ball under
the hat. The man who won his $5 lost it that night playing poker. The
gambler who won it lost it a few nights later in a gambling house. The
gambling house man bought bogus oil and mining stocks and lost it that
way. The oil stock man had sense enough to salt it down in respectable
securities, and there it is now under that bright sparkle in the big
city. You and the rest of you do pretty much the same. This man who built
your stone wall did it. The money he made was not invested here. If it
had been you never could have bought this farm. It is off there under
that bright sparkle—and the boys and girls run after it. _You fellows
work too hard!_”
I undertook to come back with that text about the man who provideth
not for his family—but I never was good at remembering texts. That is
probably because I do not study them as I ought to. But at any rate I
undertook to argue that it is a man’s first duty to provide for his
family and also for his own “rainy day.” “_The night cometh, when no man
can work._”
“Down where I live,” said Uncle Ed, “we don’t have such rainy days as you
do up here. Life is simple and straight and old people are cared for.
We want them to live with us—we are not waiting for them to pass off
and leave their money. Off in that big city where your money is turning
over and over, thousands of human lives get under it and are crushed
out of all shape. Down there under that sparkle only the poor know what
neighbors are. Many a man lives his life in some tenement or apartment
house never knowing or caring what goes on in the room on the other side
of the wall. There may be joy or sorrow, death or life, virtue or crime.
He doesn’t know and he doesn’t care, because this never-ending grind of
work has changed sympathy into selfishness. And in the end that is what
all those dollars which you folks dump into the big city come to. If
the habit is so strong that you’ve got to work and try to catch up with
the man who has a little more than you have, why not invest your money
at home and in the farm? Those fellows off under that sparkle will come
chasing after your money if you invest it here, and you would be boss
instead of servant! _Am I right?_”
That was 16 years ago, and many things have happened since then. Uncle Ed
has passed away—after many troubles and misfortunes. The world has been
shaken up by the war and by great discoveries, so that we hardly know it.
Yet there is a brighter sparkle than ever on the gilded roofs of the big
city—greater wealth and more blinding poverty crouching beneath it. The
hill where we hoed corn is now covered with big apple trees. Where then
Bob and Jerry toiled slowly along with half a ton of fruit the truck now
flashes down the hard, smooth road with two tons. But sitting on the old
stone wall of a Sunday afternoon in late August I look across the valley
and wonder how much there really is in Uncle Ed’s philosophy after all.
What do _you_ think?
A GOD-FORSAKEN PLACE
James and William Hardy were twins—born and bred on a New Hampshire
farm. The family dated far back to pioneer times, when John Hardy and
Henry Graham, with their young wives, went into the wilderness as the
advance guard of civilization. It came to be a common understanding that
a Hardy should always marry a Graham, and through four generations at
least this family law had been observed until there had been developed
one of those fine, purebred New England families which represent just
about the highest type of the American. As the father of these twins
married a Graham girl you had a right to expect them to be as much alike
as two peas in the family pod—both in appearance and in character. Here
you surely might expect one of those cases where the twins are always
being mixed up, when not even their mother could be sure which was Jim
and which was Bill. In truth, however, the boys were distinctly different
from the day they were born—different in size, in appearance and in
character.
These twins innocently brought to the surface a sad spot of family
history which both the Grahams and the Hardys hoped had been buried too
far down ever to show itself. Far back in the French and Indian war a
band of raiders from Canada burst out of the forest and carried off
a dozen prisoners. Among them was the pride of the Graham family—a
beautiful girl of 16. The settlers, hiding in their blockhouse, could
only look on and see their relatives start on the long march to Canada.
The next year some of these prisoners were ransomed, and came back to say
that the girl had married a young Frenchman. She was happy, and sent word
to her parents that she preferred to stay with her husband. Years went
by, until one night there came to Henry Graham’s house a Canadian ranger
and a young girl. It was their granddaughter and her father. The mother
had died and had begged her husband to take her daughter back to the old
folks as her offering of love. The father delivered his message, bade his
daughter farewell and silently vanished into the forest. They never saw
him again, but they realized that he had given full measure of devotion
to his dead wife. The girl grew up to be a beautiful creature much like
her mother, only darker, and at times there was a bright glitter in her
eyes. She married a Hardy and settled down as a farmer’s wife. She was
dutiful and kind, but sometimes her husband would see her standing at
the door—looking off into the Northern forests with a look which made
him shake his head. Years went by, and this spot on the family history
had been forgotten until these twins uncovered it! Their mother knew in
her heart that the spirit of the restless Frenchman was watching her
from the cradle through the black shiny eyes of her strange baby. James,
the light-haired, steady, purebred infant, slept calmly or acted just
as a good Hardy should, but the wild spirit of the forest had jumped
three generations right into the cradle, where this black-haired little
changeling stared at her!
There never were two children more unlike than these twins. Jim was
solid, sound, a little slow, but absolutely trustworthy—“a born Hardy” as
they said. Bill was bright, quick, restless, full of plans and visions.
He did not like to work, and had no respect for the family skeleton. This
was a mortgage, which for many years had sunk its claws into the rocky
little farm. The truth was that this farm never should have been cleared
and settled. It was rocky and sandy; farther out of date than the old
mill rotting unused by the old mill pond. The mortgage hung like a wolf
at the back door, demanding its due, which came out of the little farm
like blood money. Jim Hardy, like his father and grandfather, grew up to
regard that mortgage as a fixed and sacred institution. It was a family
heirloom or tradition—something like the old musket which an older Hardy
carried at Bunker Hill, or like grandmother’s old spinning-wheel. As for
the poor, rocky farm, Jim and his father would stay and grind themselves
away in a hopeless struggle just because the Hardys who went before them
had done so. It was different with Bill. He had no use for the mortgage
or for the rocky pastures, for the dash of French blood had put rubber,
or yeast, into the covering of the stern New England thought. His father
never could understand him and one day, when Bill was 17, the blood of
the “changeling” burst into open mutiny. The father knew of only one way
to act. He ordered the boy around behind the barn and took the horsewhip
to him. As a Hardy, Bill was expected to stand and take his punishment
without a murmur. As the descendant of a wild forest ranger he could only
resent the blows. What he did was to catch his father’s arms and hold
them like a vice. Neither spoke a word. They just looked at each other.
The older man struggled, but he was powerless—he knew that his son was
the master. He dropped the whip from his hand and bowed his head. The boy
released him, broke the whip in two, and threw it away. The father walked
to the house, a dazed and broken man. Bill watched him and then walked
out to the back lot where Jim, the steady and faithful, was building a
fence.
“Good-bye, Jim,” he said. “I’m off. It had to come. I’m different, and
yet the same, as you will see. You stay here and look after father and
mother. I will help some day.” It was the Hardy in both the boys which
made it impossible for them to come any closer in feeling. Bill walked on
over the pasture hill; at the top he paused to wave his hand. Then he was
gone.
Bill was clean and sound at heart, and the French blood had given him
a quick active brain. Instead of striking for the wilderness he headed
for New York and he prospered. The old French ancestor drove him on
with tireless energy, and the long line of clean farm breeding kept him
true to his purpose to go back some day and show the old folks that he
was still a Hardy. Years passed, until one day there came to Bill an
uncontrollable longing to go home. Just a few brief, unresponsive letters
had passed between him and Jim, but the time came when Bill longed with
a great longing to see the old farm once more. And so, the next day, a
well-dressed, prosperous man walked into the old yard and looked about
him. There was Jim, the same old Jim, walking in from the barn with the
night’s milk. Father was cutting wood at the wood pile and mother stood
at the kitchen door—just the same home picture which Bill knew so well.
Bill did great things during his short stay. He paid that mortgage,
ordered a new barn built and left capital for Jim to improve the farm.
He did everything that a Hardy ought to do—and more—and yet he could not
satisfy himself. It all seemed so small and narrow. He had hoped to find
great music in the wind among the pines, but it filled him with a great
loneliness, which he could not overcome. He had hoped to find peace and
rest, but these were for the untried farm boy—not for the restless and
worried business man. It broke out of him at night on the second day,
when he and Jim were on the pasture hill looking for the sheep. The
loneliness of the early Fall day fairly entered his heart.
“_Jim_,” he said, “_old fellow, I don’t see how you live in such a
God-forsaken place_!”
“Why, Bill,” said Jim, “New York must be like Paradise to beat the old
homestead.”
“Better a week on Broadway than a lifetime on these lonely hills.”
“I’d like to try it and see!” said Jim.
So Jim Hardy, the plain farmer, went to New York to visit Brother Bill.
He had everything he could call for. Bill lived in a beautiful apartment,
and he gave Jim a white card to see and do what he wanted. Bill was too
busy to go around much, but Jim made his way. For a couple of days it
was fine—then somehow Jim, just like Bill at the old farm, began to grow
lonesome and oppressed. Right through the wall of Bill’s apartment house
was a family with one child. The janitor told him the child was sick,
so Jim knocked at the door to sympathize with the neighbors. They froze
him with a few words and got rid of him. He saw a man on the street and
stopped to converse with him. “Get out!” said the stranger. “You can’t
bunco me.” Day after day Jim Hardy, the farmer, saw the fierce, selfish
struggle for life in the big city. The great buildings, the theaters,
Broadway at night—they were all splendid, but behind and under them lay
the meanness, the selfish spirit, the lack of neighborly feeling, which
galled the farmer to the heart. On the third night Bill took his brother
to a great reception. Just as they walked into the brilliant room Jim
glanced from the window and saw a policeman throw a weak and sickly man
out of a public room where he was trying to get warm.
“What did I tell you, Jim?” said Bill. “Isn’t this worth a year on your
old hills?” And Jim could only think of one thing to say:
“_Bill, old fellow, I don’t see how you can live in such a God-forsaken
place!_”
What do you make of it? One brother thinks God has forsaken the country,
while the other says He has forsaken the city! To me they prove that God
is everywhere. Some may not find Him, since they look for Him only in
things which are agreeable to them, and those are rarely the places in
which to look. I think, too, that, like Jim and Bill, all children come
into the world with natural tendencies and inclinations which, if worthy,
should be encouraged rather than repressed. Both Jim and Bill are needed
in American life.
LOUISE
“_How is Louise now?_”
“_She seems a little better!_”
That message came over the ’phone on Friday evening, just as the members
of the Hope Farm family were separating for the night. Early in the year
we had a letter from a woman in the West who came back to the paper after
15 years’ absence. As a girl she lived in New York State. Father took the
paper and she remembered the talks about the Bud, Scion and Graft. “What
has become of those children?” she asked. “Since I left home I have lost
track of them. Now that I have a home and children of my own I would like
to know what they came to.”
These were the names given to the four children of our first brood. We
had one little girl of our own whom I called the Bud. Her mother did not
want her brought up alone, so we took in a small boy—a little fellow of
an uncertain age. We did not adopt him, but he was treated just like
our own child, and “grew up” in our home. I called him the Seedling! A
noted botanist argued with me to prove that these names should have been
transposed—but I let them go, for we tried to graft good things upon the
Seedling. Then came two other little ones—Mother’s niece and nephew,
needing home and protection. We took them in, and I called them Graft
and Scion. These names may not have betrayed any great knowledge of
botany, but they seemed to fit the children, although as the little ones
grew up we were glad to let those names drop.
This quartette of little ones grew and thrived. It was at times rather
hard sledding for the Hope Farmers in those early years, but youth
greases the runners with hope, and kids never know the true taste of
tough mutton. They grew on through sickness, the wilfulness of childhood,
powers of heredity and all the things which confront common children. For
they always seemed to me just kids of very common clay, though Mother
would at times come back from places where other children “behaved” and
say: “You must understand that we have some very superior youngsters!” Of
course I realized that the “Bud” would most likely be pretty much what
her parents were, and it was a long-time hope that she would throw out
our many undesirable qualities and concentrate upon the few good ones.
Now comes our friend asking what has become of them—and I will try to
answer for all! The Bud is a senior at one of the great Women’s Colleges;
the Graft is with an engineering party running a new railroad through the
Arizona wilderness; the Seedling is a captain in the Salvation Army—the
Scion! ah! That is why I am writing this!
Louise grew up a small, rather delicate young woman, ambitious,
clear-brained and with a quick, active mind. There came a time when
greater family responsibilities came upon us all. Her father died, and
her mother became hopelessly ill, and four younger brothers and sisters
came to us to form what we call our second brood. Even as a young girl
Louise began to realize the stern responsibilities of life for those
little ones. When she finished high school her ambition to be of service
to this family group became fixed. She wanted to become self-supporting
and to have a hand in helping with these younger children. Teaching
is the great resource of educated women who are naturally fitted for
the work, and Louise saw in the schoolroom her best chance for useful
service. I think this was one of the rare cases where women are willing
to work and prepare themselves for true unselfish service. Louise was
timid and naturally nervous—not strong or with great dominating power. I
do not think any of us understood how much it really meant to her to face
direct responsibility and force her way through.
Mother and I have always felt that if any of our children show real,
self-sacrificing desire for an education we will practise any form
of needed self-denial that the child may be college-trained. For an
education worked out in that way will become a glory and an honor to all
who have to do with it. So we felt it no burden, but rather a privilege,
to send Louise to the Normal School. How well and faithfully she worked
no one can ever realize. I often think that most reputations for bravery
in this world are not fairly earned. Some strong, well-bred, naturally
optimistic character, with health and heritage from a long line of
dominating ancestors pushes and smashes his way through obstacles and
acquires a great reputation for courage. I think such are far less
deserving than women like Louise, small and delicate and nervous, who
conquer natural timidity and force themselves to endure the battle.
It is even harder to win confidence in yourself—to conquer the inside
forces—than to fight the outside ones.
Louise did this. She did it well, without boasting or great complaint
and without flinching. At times she was depressed, for the task seemed
too much for her, but she rose above it and won. She won honors at her
school, and long before she expected it, on her own little, honest record
in the schoolroom, she was employed to teach at a good salary. It was to
be only four miles from home—amid the best surroundings—and there was
no happier woman on earth than was Louise when she wrote us the first
news about it. It came just before Christmas. There are many women who
could not see any cause for Christmas joy in the thought of long years of
monotonous and wearying service, but Louise saw in this something of the
joy of achievement, for through honest, trained labor, the outcome of her
own patience and determination, she was to become self-supporting and a
genuine help to the children. I presume no one but a conscientious and
ambitious woman can realize what that means. I know women who would look
upon such power of self-support simply as selfish freedom. Louise saw
in it the power of greater service. We have tried our best to train our
children for that view of a life work.
You may therefore imagine that the holidays at Hope Farm seemed like holy
days indeed. They were all there except the Seedling and the Graft, and
_they_ sent messages which left no regret, no sadness to creep in out of
the past. Somehow I hope all you older people may know before you pass on
something of what Mother and I did about our two broods as the old year
passed on.
Yet there it comes again—the old question. I came home a little later
than usual on Friday night. The night was wet and foggy, and Mother met
me at the train. One of the little boys who usually comes for me had gone
to meet Louise. Her first week of school was over, and she was coming
home—a teacher! As we drove into the yard the family ran out to meet
us—“Something has happened—they want you on the ’phone at once!” Ah!
but these country tragedies may flash upon us without warning. Halfway
home Louise had been stricken desperately ill, and she now lay at the
parsonage—three miles away—helpless. Just as quickly as fingers could put
the harness on our fastest horse, Mother and “Cherry-top” were driving
off into the fog and rain. We waited until they reached the parsonage
and then we kept the ’phone busy. The poor girl, riding home after her
first fine week in the schoolroom, had been stricken with an internal
hemorrhage—and it was doubtful if she could rally! At nine o’clock came
the message: “She seems to be better.” The little boys were coming
home—and they soon appeared, white and troubled. Mother was to stay all
night and she sent a hopeful message about coming in the morning with
Louise. We went to bed to get strength and nerve for any emergency. In
the early morning Mother walked into my room and turned up the light. We
looked at each other for a moment. Then there were six words:
“_How is Louise?_”
“_She is gone!_”
We said nothing more, but we were both thinking the same thing!
“_The first break in our big family has come. How is Louise now?_”
There was no way of saving her. Human skill and human love had failed.
She was dead!
* * * * *
It was a beautiful service. There were only our own family and perhaps
a dozen friends. We all wanted it so. We do not like the wild grief and
public curiosity so often displayed at large funerals. There was just
a great bank of flowers, a white casket and a simple service over this
brave and loyal girl. I do not say “poor” girl, nor do I dwell upon the
sadness of it. I thought that all out as Mother and I sat at the head of
the casket. She died gloriously—like a soldier at his duty. She died when
life was young. She had just won her little battle in the great world of
affairs. She died in the joy of victory and in the faith that all things
are possible. The wine of life was full. She never knew the sting of
defeat, the shame and meanness of false friendships and ambitions, which
has come to those of us who linger on the way. And so at the end of it
all I ask the old question once more:
“How is Louise now?”
“She is better! Thank God! She is better!”
CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY
It is well enough to keep the Christmas tree standing until Spring
cleaning at least. There may be those who open the closet door once a
year and let the Christmas spirit out—somewhat like the family skeleton,
to food and water—and then lock it up again. That does not suit me, for I
would like to keep the door open so that Christmas may be with us every
day in the year. The celebration just closed is about the best our family
and community ever had, and it will do us permanent good.
On Wednesday evening the children had their celebration at the church. It
was a cold clear night, with good sleighing, so we hitched the two big
grays to the bob sled and filled the box with straw, and the children
cuddled down into this nest and pulled blankets over them. The Hope Farm
man drove, with Mother on the seat beside him to direct the job and tell
him when and where to turn out. Tom and Broker seemed to feel that they
were, in their way, playing the part of reindeer, for they trotted off
in great shape—a little clumsy on their feet, perhaps, but with strength
enough to pull down a house. Broker is inclined to be lazy, and Tom did
most of the pulling unless we stirred his partner up with the stick.
Through the clear starlight we went crunching and jingling on over the
hills and through the narrow level valleys, for our country has a badly
wrinkled face.
Part of the way lies through the woods, and then a stretch along the
banks of a little river. There was just enough wind to make a little
humming in the trees. Now and then a rabbit jumped out of the shadow and
went hopping off across the snow. There was no danger—it was Christmas,
and we do not carry firearms. I think I can tell you much about a
person’s character and circumstances if you will tell me what comes into
mind on a lonely road, when the wind is playing its wild tunes among the
trees.
“Over the chimney the night wind sang,
Chanting a melody no one knew.”
To some this melody brings sad memories or fear of trouble, but the
happy group in our big sled heard nothing of these in the sound. As Tom
and Broker pulled their load on beneath the trees I think each one of
us heard in the wind’s singing something of the song which the angels
sang when the shepherds listened long years ago. This may be but a fancy
of mine, yet I think our little group came nearer to understanding what
Christmas means—on that lonely road—than we had before.
You know how pleasant it is to come trotting along a country road on a
cold starry night and see the lights of the church burst into view far
ahead. Our church is an old stone structure, full of years and honorable
history. It was here, at least part of it, during the Revolution,
and at one time Hessian prisoners were confined in it. There were no
prisoners except those of hope inside the church that night. The boys
and I made Tom and Broker comfortable and then we went inside to find a
big Christmas tree and a crowd of happy children. Surely Christmas is
children’s day, and they owned the church that night. Mother marshaled
her big primary class for one chorus, and it seemed as if the entire end
of the church was made of children. A couple of our Cherry-tops lent a
little color to it. The Hope Farm man was escorted up to a front seat,
where he was expected to look the part of prominent citizen. They ran him
into the programme too for a Christmas story, so he got up and told the
company about “Pete Shivershee’s Miracle”—a little Christmas memory of
life in a lumber camp many years ago. Finally the simple presents were
distributed, the sleepy little ones aroused, good wishes spoken and we
all piled in once more for the home trip. Broker takes life as it comes,
but Tom was chilly and disposed to be a trifle gay over the prospect of
barn and cornstalks once more. He proceeded to pull the entire load,
Broker trotting on with dangling traces! It was a sleepy and happy crowd
that finally turned off the road into Hope Farm. “_We had a big time!_”
In two of the villages near us the people organized community Christmas
trees. These trees were placed in the public square or some prominent
spot, the electric wires were connected, and colored bulbs hung all over
to take the place of candles. These were lighted on Christmas Eve and
kept going all through the holiday week. It was a great success, for it
brought people together, made a better community spirit, and helped us
all. In addition to this community tree arrangements were made to have
singers go about the town singing the old Christmas carols. This revival
of the old English custom was a beautiful thing and a great success.
Shortly after three on Christmas morning our folks were awakened by
music. I think the Cherry-tops thought it was Santa Claus, as it probably
was. Out in front of our house a motor car carrying six young men had
turned in from the road. There in the frosty morning they were singing:
“O come, all ye faithful,
Joyful and triumphant,
O come ye! O come ye
To Bethlehem.
Come and behold Him
Born the King of angels,
O come let us adore Him,
O come let us adore Him,
O come let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.”
They were beautiful singers and our folks will never forget that
Christmas morning.
“Silent night! Holy night,
All is calm. All is light.
’Round young Virgin mother and child
Holy infant so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace.”
Finally the car started off, moving slowly down the road with the music
creeping back to us through the clear air:
“Hark, the Herald angels sing.”
Our folks heard them at the next neighbor’s, far down the road. I have
no doubt many a weary and troubled soul waking in the night at the sound
went back to happier dreams of a better tomorrow. It was a beautiful
thing to do, and never before did Christmas morning come to us so happily
as this year.
I thought of these things all day, and the conviction has grown upon me
that what we people who live in the country need more than anything else
is something of this spirit which binds people together and holds them.
We need it in our work, our play and in our battles. It is another name
for patriotism, which means the unselfish love of country. The Duke of
Wellington said the battle of Waterloo was won on the playgrounds of
England, where boys were trained in manly sports. He told only half of
it, for the spirit which turned that play into war came from the singers
who in English villages sang Christmas carols or English folk songs. In
like manner the wonderful national spirit which the German nation has
shown has been developed largely through the singing societies which have
expressed German feeling in song. In 1792 a band of Frenchmen marched
from the south of France to Paris dragging cannon through a cloud of
dust and singing the Marseillaise hymn, and even to this day the loyal
spirit of France traces down from those dusty singers. Do I mean to say
that farmers can come together and sing their troubles away? No, for some
of the troubles have grown so strong and penetrated so deep that they
must be pulled out by the roots. What I do say is that before we can
hope to remove these troubles and make our conditions what they should
be we must feel toward our friends and neighbors the sentiments which
are expressed in these beautiful old songs. The time has gone by when
we can hope to obtain what we should have from society as individuals
playing a cold, selfish game of personal interest. We have tried that for
many years and steadily lost out on it. The only hope for us now is in
a true community spirit of loyalty and sacrifice, instead of the effort
to get all we can for ourselves. That is why I say that there should be
something of Christmas in every day of the year, and why I give these
holiday memories.
“THE FINEST LESSON”
It is the privilege of youth and old age to make comparisons. One has
little or nothing of experience to use as a yardstick—the other has
everything life can offer him. One compares with imagination, the other
with fact, and youth, having a wider pasture for thought, usually finds
pleasanter places for feeding. My children have spent nearly every
Christmas thus far before this open fire, while I have ranged far and
wide, from Florida to the Great Lakes, and from Cape Cod to Colorado. As
we sit in silence before our fire the boys can imagine themselves in some
hunter’s camp, or with the soldiers in France, while the girls can drop
themselves down from the wings of fancy in Cuba or Brazil. I might try
that, but stern fact drags me down to other days, and old-time companions
come creeping out of the past to say “Merry Christmas” and stand here, a
little sorrowful that they cannot give the children something of their
story. So I must be their spokesman, it seems, and the children give me
a chance when after dreaming a while they come and ask me to tell about
the real Christmas. “What was the finest Christmas lesson you ever had?”
They do not put it in quite these words, but that is the sense of it.
So there comes to me a great desire to live up to the highest test of
story-telling—that is, so to interest your audience that they will forget
to eat their apples.
The room seems full of the shadowy forms of men and women who have
stepped out of the past to bring back a Christmas memory. Which of these
old life teachers ever gave me the best lesson? They were all good—even
that big fellow who tried to kick me out of a lumber camp—and failed—or
that slimy little fraud who beat me out of a week’s wages! I think,
however, that those two women over by the window lead all the rest. One
is an old woman—evidently a cripple; the other younger—you cannot see
her face in the dim light, but she stands by the older woman’s chair.
Yes, they represent the best Christmas lesson I have had. So come up to
the fire, forget the wind roaring outside, and listen to it. I was a
hired man that Winter in a Western State. Some of the farmers who read
this will remember me—not for any great skill I showed at farm work, but
because I spent my spare time (that meant nights) going around “speaking
pieces.” I am greatly afraid that as an agriculturist I did better work
at keeping air hot than I ever did at heating plowshares through labor.
You see, it was this way. I was a freshman at an agricultural college, at
a time when these institutions were struggling hard to live. The average
freshman thinks he is the salt of the earth, forgetting that he is salt
which has not gained its savor through losing its freshness. A man gets
very little salt in his character until he goes out and assaults the
world! At any rate, I had no money salted down and no fresh supplies
coming in. I had to get out during the Winter and earn the price of
another term at college. I tried canvassing for a book. We will draw the
curtain down over that act. Some men tell me of making small fortunes
as book agents. From my experience I judge these men to be supermen or
superior prevaricators, to put it mildly. I worked the job for all I was
worth in spite of all obstacles, such as the wrath of farmers who had
been cheated through signing papers, the laughter of pretty girls and
the teeth of dogs, and sold four books in two weeks! At last I struck a
farmer who offered me a job digging a ditch. I made him a present of my
“sample copy” and went to work.
A dollar makes an interrogation point with a barb on it. About all a farm
produced in Winter, those days, was enough to eat and drink and something
to sell for the taxes. The farmer I worked for had a red colt that was to
settle with the tax man, but just before the taxes were due the colt ran
away and broke his neck. I cannot say that my labor was worth much, but
education is not one of the few things which come to us without money or
price. Then I suddenly made the discovery that I was “a talented young
elocutionist.” At least that is what the local paper stated, and do we
not know that all we see in print must be true? I suppose I could tell
you of one Christmas long ago that I spent as “supe” in a big theater and
what befell us behind the scenes. At any rate, I could “speak pieces,”
and I had a long string of them in mind. So what was a rather poor mimic
in a city became a “talented elocutionist” far back over muddy roads. You
want to remember that this was a long time before the bicycle had grown
away from the clumsy “velocipede.” There were few, if any “good roads.”
No one dreamed of gasoline engines or automobiles. During an open Winter
the mud was 10 to 20 inches deep, and every mile of travel was to be
multiplied by the number of inches of mud. Amid such surroundings it is
not so hard to be known as a “talented elocutionist” when your voice is
strong, your tongue limber, your memory good, and you have had a chance
to see and hear some of the great actors from behind the scenes.
I made what they called “a big hit” at night, with audiences all the
way from four or five up to 200. When life was dull and blue a neighbor
would come with his family to our farmhouse and I would sit by the
kitchen fire and entertain them. Once a farmer had a little trouble with
his mother-in-law, who seemed to hold the mortgage. On his invitation
I dropped in one night and a few of my “funny pieces” made this good
lady laugh so that she forgave her son-in-law. Then I was called into
the chamber of a very sick man to recite several “religious pieces.” I
shall not soon forget that scene. The poor sick man lying there with eyes
closed, the entire family and some of the neighbors grouped around like
a company of mourners, and the “talented elocutionist” standing by the
head of the bed in the gray light of the dying day. Yes, sir, the man
recovered! They have a famous saying here in New York. “It’s a great life
if you don’t weaken!” I found it so that Winter, and as life was young
and full ambition had not been severely wounded, I did not weaken.
But all this, of course, was mere practice for larger occasions. Whenever
I could work up a crowd I would go about to schoolhouses and churches,
entertain as best I could and then “pass the hat”! What evenings they
were! They were usually in old-fashioned schoolhouses with the big iron
stove in the center of the room. Such houses were rarely used at night,
and there would be no light except as some of the audience brought lamps
or candles. The room was usually crowded and the stove red-hot. In most
cases the meeting would be opened with prayer and some local politician
might make a speech. Then the “talented elocutionist” would stand up near
the stove. He never was an “impressive figure” at his best. In those
old days the best he could afford was a pair of thick cowhide boots, a
second-hand coat which came from a long, thin man, and trousers evidently
made originally for a fat man. Still, the light was dim and the speaker
remembered hearing James E. Murdock say that if you could only put
yourself into the _spirit_ of your talk the audience would follow you
there and forget how you looked. I had seen a great actor play the part
of Fagin in “Oliver Twist,” and at these entertainments I tried giving
an imitation of him, until a big husky farmer tried to whip me. I had a
job to explain to my friends that he was trying to punch Fagin—not me.
The audiences knew no middle ground. They wanted some burlesque or some
tragedy of their own lives which would tear at their heartstrings. Now
and then as I recited in those hot, dim schoolhouses the keen humor of
the thing would come to me, or like a flash the poverty and pathos of my
own struggle would sweep over me with overwhelming force. Then I could
feel that audience moving with me and for a brief moment I got out of the
ditch of life and knew the supreme joy of the complete mastery of one
who can separate the human imagination from the flesh and compel it to
walk with him where he wills.
These moments were all too brief. Back we came finally to the dim,
stifling room, and the rather ignoble and commonplace job of trying to
measure the value of a thrill by a voluntary contribution. I have had
many a high hope and many a dream of a new suit of clothes blackballed
on “passing the hat.” At first, when a man got up and said: “Gents, this
show is worth a dollar, and I will pass the hat,” I took him at his word
and expected a hat full of bills. Yet even when I shook out the lining I
could find nothing larger than a dime. During that Winter I made a fine
collection of buttons. It may be that most men want to keep the left hand
from knowing what the right hand is up to, but evidently you must have
one hand or the other under public observation if you expect much out of
the owner. I have learned to have no quarrel with human nature, and I
imagine after all that the hire fitted the value of the laborer’s efforts
fairly well.
Christmas came to us in that valley with the same beautiful message which
was carried to all. It was a cold Christmas, and as we went about our
chores before day and at night the stars were brilliant. The crinkle of
the ice and snow and the hum of the wind over the fences and through
the trees came to me like the murmur of a faraway song. It touched us
all. We saw each other in something of a new light of glory. The woman
of the house, I think, regarded me as a sort of awkward hired man. Now
she seemed to see a boy, far from home, struggling with rather feeble
hands against the flood which swept him away from the ambition to earn an
education. I am sure that it came to her that the Christmas spirit must
be capitalized to help me on my way. So she organized a big gathering
for Christmas Eve at which I was to “speak” and accept a donation. It
was to be over in the next district, and that good woman took the sleigh
and drove all over that county drumming up an “audience.” I am sure
that there never was a “star” before or since who had such an advance
or advertising agent as I did on that occasion. She was a good trainer,
too. The day before Christmas I husked corn in the cold barn, and this
delicate woman ran through the snow with two hot biscuits and a piece of
meat. There I worked through the day husking corn with my hands while I
“rehearsed” a few new ones with my brain and sent my heart way back to
New England, where I knew the folks were thinking of me.
In these times there would have been a fleet of automobiles moored near
the farmhouse, but in those days no engine had yet coughed out the
gasoline in its throat. We came in sleighs and big farm “pungs.” Standing
by the barn in the clear moonlight you could see the lanterns gleaming
along the road, and hear the tinkle of the sleighbells and the songs
which the young people were singing. Far down the road came a big farm
sled loaded with young people who were singing “Seeing Nellie Home.”
Sweet and clear came their fresh young voices through the crisp, frosty
air:—
“Her little hand was resting
On my arm as light as foam
When from Aunt Dinah’s quilting party,
I was seeing Nellie home.
“I was seeing Nellie. I was seeing Nellie.
I was seeing Nellie home,
’Twas from Aunt Dinah’s quilting party,
I was seeing Nellie home.”
The old farmer on the front seat sat nodding his head to the music, and
his wife beside him took her hand out of the muff and slid it under his
arm. These were the fine old days of simple pleasures, when the country
entertained itself and was satisfied. The other night my young folks
took me off to a moving picture theater where we saw a great actress
portraying human emotion in a way to make you shudder. My mind went back
to my own feeble efforts as a star performer, and I was forced to admit
that the usual Sunday school entertainment could have but a small chance
in competition with this powerful exhibition. The thing to do is to carry
this strong attraction to the country and not force our young people to
travel to the city after it.
Each sleigh brought not only its load of human freight, but a big basket
of food, for there was to be a feast of the body with food as well as of
the spirit with oratory. As the guest of honor I rode over with one of
the school trustees, and he proved a good local historian.
“This farm we visit tonight is owned by the Widder Fairchild. A nice
woman, but homely enough to stop a clock. Her father left her the farm,
and she got to be quite an old maid. We all thought she had settled
down for such when she up and married the hired man, a nice man, but
no farmer, and no property except a cough and an old aunt mighty nigh
bed-ridden. Then the husband died and left the old lady on her hands. She
might have sent the old thing to the poorhouse—ain’t no kin of hers—but
just because her husband promised to keep her, Mrs. Fairchild has kept
the old lady on. There the two women live on one of the best farms in the
county.”
“It’s the best because the Lord has blessed it.” That came from the wife
on the back seat. She had tried to get in a word before.
“No, no! Farms are made good by hard work and judgment. The minister went
and talked to her about it, but all he got out of her was ‘And Ruth said,
Entreat me not to leave thee or to return from following after thee: for
whither thou goest I will go.’”
“But, Henry, ain’t you ’shamed to call her homely?”
“No, because it’s the truth. It wouldn’t be about you, now, but I told
the minister that once. He has to be diplomatic and he hemmed and hawed
and finally said, ‘She has a strong face.’ He’s right! Mighty strong!”
If you ever acted in the capacity of _donatee_ at such a party you know
the feeling. The big house was filled. Out in the kitchen the women
sorted out the food and arranged it for supper. In the front room, beside
a little table, sat “the hired man’s old aunt,” a beautiful old lady with
white hair and a sweet, patient face. On the table stood a few house
plants in pots. One geranium had opened a flower.
“The only one in the neighborhood for Christmas,” said the old lady.
“You don’t know how proud I am of it. It has been such a joy to me to
see it slowly grow, and, oh, think of what it means to have it come at
Christmas!”
But the donatee has little time for small talk. He always earns his
donation, and whatever happened to it later, I earned it that night.
They finally stopped me for supper. The minister alluded to it as “the
bounteous repast which we are now asked to enjoy.” My friend the trustee
stood by the door and shouted:
“Hoe in—help yourself!”
It was getting on toward Christmas Day when I stood up in the corner
to end the entertainment. I had intended to end with Irwin Russell’s
“Christmas Night in the Quarters,” with negro dialect, but as I was about
to start my eye fell upon a group by that little table. The “old aunt”
sat looking at me, and by her side stood the “homely” woman, her hand
resting upon the older woman’s shoulder. I wonder if you have ever had a
vision come to you at Christmas—or any other time! A great, mysterious,
beautiful vision, in which you look forward into the years and are given
to see some great thing which is hidden from most men until too late. It
came to me as I watched those women that the finest test of character,
the noblest part of the Christmas spirit, was not the glory of caring for
helpless childhood, but the higher sacrifice of love and duty for the
aged.
And so, almost before I knew it, I found myself reciting Will Carleton’s
poem, “Over the Hill to the Poorhouse!” What a sentiment to bring into a
happy Christmas party—by the donatee at that—one who had been hired “to
make them laugh”!
I knew it all, yet my mind jumped across the long miles and I thought
of my own mother growing old and waiting in silence that I might have
opportunity!
“Over the hill to the poorhouse
I’m trudging my weary way.
I a woman of sixty,
Only a trifle gray,
I who am smart and chipper.
For all the years I’ve told,
As many another woman
Only one-half as old.
“Over the hill to the poorhouse!
I can’t quite make it clear;
Over the hill to the poorhouse,
It seems so horrid queer!
Many’s the journey I’ve taken,
Traveling to and fro,
But over the hill to the poorhouse
I never once thought I’d go!”
It was a great 10 minutes. It is worth a good many years to have 600
ticks of the clock pass by like that. Could all of us have lived, for 10
years with that 10-minute feeling—what a neighborhood that would have
been. I was looking at those two women by the table. I saw their hands
come together. It is true that the trustee had not done great injustice
to her appearance, but as she stood there by “the hired man’s old aunt”
there came upon her face a beauty such as God alone can bring upon the
face of those who are beloved by Him. A light from within illuminated
her life story, and I could read it on her face. A love that endures
after death—until life! And when I stopped I was _done_. The power had
all gone from me. Not so with my manager, the trustee. He could sense
a psychological moment even if he could not spell it, and he got his
hat into action before the rich spirit of that crowd could get to the
poorhouse. I saw him coming with the hat full—there were surely several
bills there. Say, did you ever spend money before you got your fingers on
it? I never have since that night. I know better. As I saw that money I
figured on several Christmas presents, a new coat and at least one term
at college. The trustee cleared his throat for a few remarks and I stood
there pleasantly expectant, anticipating a few compliments—and the money.
“Now, friends, we thank you one and all for your generous gift, and we
thank our talented young friend here for the great assistance he has
given us. He will rejoice when he learns the full amount, for, my dear
friends, _this money belongs to the Sunday school_!”
And he proceeded forthwith to gather up the money and stuff it into his
pockets, leaving me with my mouth half open, and my hand half extended.
What could you do? There was a roar of protest from several farmers who
demanded their money back, though they never got it. Happily the humor of
it struck me. The first thing that came into my mind was an old song I
had often heard:
“_Thou art so near and yet so far!_”
There is nothing like being a good sport, and so I bowed and smiled and
took my medicine, although I am sure the party would have ended in a
fight if I had said the word. But the “old aunt” looked at me for a
moment and then cut off that geranium bloom, tied two leaves on it and
handed it to me without a word. And the woman with the shining face took
my hand in both hers and said: “Do not get discouraged. I know you will
win out.”
I rode home with a farmer who, with his two big sons, roared profanely
at what they called the “injustice of that miser.” They vowed to get up
another donation, which they did later. They offered to go and “lick
the trustee” and take the money from him. I think they were a little
disappointed when I told them that he needed it more than I did.
“Why, from the way you talk, anybody’d think you had fallen heir to a big
thing!”
I had. That little flower in my pocket carried a Christmas spirit and a
Christmas lesson that the whole world could not buy. The thing paying the
largest dividend, the finest companion that ever walked with one along
the roadway of life—unselfish love, and sacrifice.
“COLUMBUS DAY”
I would like to know where you are tonight, and what you have been doing
all through this “Liberty Day.” With us the day has been cloudy and
wet, and just as the sun went down Nature took the liberty of sending a
cold, penetrating rain. So here I am before my big fire with a copy of
Washington Irving’s “Life of Christopher Columbus.” That seems the proper
way to end Columbus Day, for in trying to tell the children about him I
found that I did not really know much more than they do about the great
discoverer. So here I am back some 400 years in history wondering if
any of these pompous and bigoted ways of seeking for new worlds or new
methods can be applied to modern life in New Jersey.
My back aches, for I have been digging potatoes all day—and I thought I
had graduated from that job some years ago. Perhaps you will say that we
should have been out selling Liberty bonds or parading. Personally, I am
a poor salesman, and we all subscribed for our bonds some days ago. There
are eight bondholders in this family. The influenza has left us without
labor except for the children while the school is closed. There are
still over 100 barrels of apples to pick, potatoes to dig, plowing and
seeding to be done, and a dozen other jobs all pressing. So I decided to
celebrate Liberty Day by digging those Bible School potatoes. We planted
a patch of potatoes between rows of young peach trees and promised the
crop to the Bible Teachers’ Training School. Last year we tried this, and
I put in a few of the latest scientific touches which the experts told
us about. The plant lice came in a swarm and ruined the patch. We had a
few potatoes about the size of marbles. This year we avoided scientific
advice, and just planted potatoes in the old-fashioned way. They were not
cultivated in the best possible manner, but they made a good crop. So
when Liberty Day dawned with a thick, gray mist over the land I decided
to get those potatoes out instead of going on the march or singing “The
Star Spangled Banner.” From what I read of Columbus I imagine he would
have chosen the parade and left the digging to others. The world has
taken on new ideas about labor since then.
So, after breakfast, Cherry-top and I took our forks and started digging.
The soil was damp and the air full of mist and meanness which made me
sneeze and cough as we worked on. Happily, out on our hills we are not
fined $20 for sneezing outside of a handkerchief, as is the case in New
York. If anyone has discovered any poetry or philosophy in the job of
digging potatoes he may have the floor. I call it about the most menial
job on the farm, and therefore fine discipline for “Liberty Day.” While
we were working Philip and the larger boy went by with the team to seed
rye. They have thrashed out enough grain by hand, and this is not only
ideal weather, but about the last limit for seeding. The land was plowed
some two weeks ago, a big crop of ragweed and grass being turned under.
If we only had the labor this ground would have been disked twice and
then harrowed. As it is, we can only work it once with the spring-tooth.
Then Philip goes ahead seeding in the rye by hand, while the boy follows
with the Acme harrow to cover the grain. It is rough seeding and would
not answer for wheat, but rye is tough and enduring, and it will imitate
Columbus and discover a new world in that decaying mass of ragweed. So
I watch the seed sowers travel slowly along the hillside as I dig, and
wonder what was doing on this farm 427 years ago, and what will be doing
here 100 years hence! Such reflections were the most cheerful mental
accompaniment I could find for digging potatoes. They are impractical,
while digging is the most practical thing on earth!
As we dug on a man and woman came up the lane. They came after apples,
having engaged them before. The boy went down to attend to them, while I
kept on digging. Then the boy came back with two more apple customers.
The trouble with us is that we have more customers than apples this
year, but these were old patrons, and they were served. The boy finally
came back with $41.80 as a result of his trading, and we went at our
job with new vigor. As we dug along we noticed a curious thing about
those potatoes. Here and there was a vine large and strong, and still
perfectly green. The great majority of the hills were dead, but those
green ones were as vigorous as they were in June. The variety was Green
Mountain, and we soon found that on the average these big green vines
were producing twice as much as the dead hills. Some of these living
vines carried three or four big potatoes. Others had a dozen, with seven
or eight of market size, while others had about 16 tubers, mostly small.
Just why these vines should act in this way I do not know. There are so
many possible reasons that I should have to guess at it, as Columbus
did when, as his ship sailed on and on into the west, the compass began
to vary. The boy and I decided that here was where we might discover a
good strain of Green Mountain on Columbus Day. So we have selected 15
of the best hills. They will be planted, hill by hill, next year and
still further selection made. We discarded the hills with only a few big
potatoes and also those with many small ones, and selected those with a
good number of medium-sized tubers. It may come to nothing, but we will
try it. Experience and careful figures show that an ordinary crop of
potatoes in this country does not pay. The same is true of a flock of
ordinary poultry, or a drove of scrub pigs. There is no profit except
in well-bred, selected stock. That’s what we think we have in pigs and
poultry—perhaps we may get something of the same thing in potatoes.
But there is one sure thing about digging potatoes—you work up a great
appetite. At noon there came a most welcome parade up the lane. It was
not a woman suffrage procession, but Mother, Aunt Eleanor, Rose and the
little girls bringing the picnic dinner in baskets and pails. The boy had
built a fire up above the Spring and piled stones up around it. By the
time I had washed my hands and face in the brook Mother had a frying pan
over this fire with slices of bacon sizzling and giving up their fat.
When this bacon was brown the slices were taken out and the fat kept on
bubbling and dancing. Then Aunt Eleanor cut up slices of Baldwin apples
and dropped them into this fat. They tell me Ben Davis is best for this
fried-apple performance, but I found no fault with Baldwin as it jumped
out of that fat. The chemist will no doubt explain how the bacon fat
combined with the acid of the apple, etc., etc., etc. Let him talk; it
does him good—but have another fried apple! Men may come and men may go,
but they will seldom find more appetizing food or a more perfect balanced
ration than the Hope Farmers discovered around that fire. There were
bread and butter, fried bacon, fried apple, pot cheese and several of our
choice Red hen’s eggs boiled hard and chopped fine with a little onion.
Of course, eggs are worth good and great money just now, but nothing
is too good for an occasion like this. And so, on that cheerless day,
sitting around our fire, we all concluded that Columbus did a great thing
when he discovered America.
But our job was not to be ended by eating fried apples and bacon,
pleasant as that occupation is, and when I put out my hand I was obliged
to admit that the first faint evidence of rain was beginning. The larger
boy went back to his rye seeding, and very soon Tom and Broker could be
seen on the lower farm pounding back and forth over the field like gray
giants hauling up the guns. All hands went to picking up potatoes. Mother
picked two bushels and then had to go back to her housework. Little Rose
claimed that she picked up 20 potatoes. Her chief job was to hold on to
her throat and ask if it was not time to eat one more of those sweet
throat tablets I had in my pocket. The rain slowly developed from mist to
good-sized drops. I know what it means to get wet, and in any other cause
I would have left the job, but we were there to finish those potatoes,
and we stayed by it until they were all picked up. The last barrel or two
came up out of the mud, and our hands and feet were surely plastered with
common clay—but we finished our job. Then came the boys with Broker and
the fruit wagon to carry the crop to the barn. One of these boys had on
a rubber coat—the other a sack over his shoulders. They went on up the
hill to get a load of apples and on their way back brought down the Bible
potatoes, where they will dry out and be ready for delivery. When we got
to the barn there was another party after apples.
We finished it all at last, dried off before the fire and found ourselves
none the worse for the day. In the present condition of my back I would
not from choice go to a dance tonight, but that will limber out in time.
The fire roars away, the rain taps at the window, and we are safe and
warm. We have had our supper, and I suppose I could tell where Aunt
Eleanor has hidden a pan of those famous ginger cookies. I will make it a
one to five chance that I can also find a pan of baked apples. I think I
will not reveal the secret publicly at this time. The Food Administrator
might accuse her of using too much ginger or sweetening! School has been
closed on account of the influenza, but the children are still working
their “examples,” and I give them a few original sums to work out. Little
Rose listens to all this, and finally proposes this one of her own:
“If a woman paid three cents at a hospital for a baby, how much would a
horse cost?”
Personally, I will give that up, and go back to the “Life of Columbus.”
The most interesting thing to me is the account of the council of wise
men to whom Columbus tried to explain his theories. They told him that
since the old philosophers and wise men had not discovered any new world,
it was great presumption for an ordinary man to claim that there remained
any great discovery for him to make. Seems to me I have heard that same
argument ever since I was able to read and understand. Perhaps it is well
that all who come, like Columbus, with a theory and vision of new worlds
must fight and endure and suffer before the slow and prejudiced public
will give them a chance. But here comes a message for me to come upstairs
and see a strange thing. Little Rose cannot have her own way, and she has
gone into a passion altogether too big for her little frame. She will not
even let me come near her, and back I come a little sadly to my book and
my fire. They are not quite so satisfying as before. But who comes here?
It is Mother carrying a very pink and repentant morsel of humanity—little
Rose. She hunts up my electric hearing device and with the ear piece at
my ear I hear a trembly little voice saying:
“_I’s awful sorry!_”
And that is a fine ending for Liberty Day. Perhaps, like Columbus on that
fateful night at the end of his voyage, this little one sees the first
faint light of a new world! Who knows?
THE COMMENCEMENT
You could hardly have crowded another human into the great hall. From
the gowned and decorated dignitaries on the stage to the great orchestra
in the upper gallery every square foot of floor space was packed, as the
president of the great woman’s college arose to open the commencement
exercises. This followed one of the most impressive scenes I have ever
witnessed. The great audience had been waiting long beyond the appointed
time for starting, when suddenly the orchestra started a slow and stately
march and we all rose. A dignified woman in cap and gown, with soft gray
hair, marched slowly up the aisle, and following her came long lines of
“sweet girl graduates,” as Tennyson puts it. The woman walked to the
steps which led to the stage, and standing there reviewed the long lines
of girls as they filed silently in and occupied the seats reserved for
them. In their black gowns and white bands they seemed, as they were,
a trained and steadfast army. As they seated themselves and rose again
it seemed like the swelling of a great ocean tide. And following them
came men and women who had gained distinction in education or public
life. They, too, were in cap and gown, with bands of red, purple, white,
green or brown, to designate their college or their studies. The bright
sunshine flooded in at the open windows. Outside, the beautiful green
college campus stretched away in gently rolling mounds and little
valleys. I noticed a robin perched on a tree with his head on one side,
calmly viewing the great professor who with the bright red band across
his breast was delivering the address. Very likely this wise bird was
saying, “You should not be too proud of that dash of red on your gown.
There are others! Your red badge is man made. It will not appear on your
children, and it may even be taken from you. The red on my breast is a
finger-print of Nature, and cannot be removed.”
I know that there are those who would call this impressive service
mere pomp and vain parade, yet, to the plain man and woman sitting in
the front row of the balcony, it all seemed a noble part of a great
proceeding, and a great pride for them. Just where the balcony curved
around like a horseshoe this gray-haired couple sat—just like hundreds of
other men and women who, in other places, with strange thought in mind,
were watching their boys and girls pass out of training into the race of
life. The Hope Farm man is supposed to be a farmer, and “as the husband
so the wife is.” He worked out as hired man for some years and otherwise
qualified for the position, while Mother probably never saw a working
farm before she was married. But at any rate there they were—like the
hundreds of other plain men and women, while down below them the best
work of their lives was coming to fruition. For the daughter was part of
that army in cap and gown and was about to receive her certificate of
education!
To me one of the most interesting characters in the universe is “the
hen with one chicken”! These women with one child of their own! Having
added just one volume to the book of life it is their duty and privilege
to regard it as a masterpiece. When you come to think of it, what a day,
what a moment, that must have been for a woman like Mother. Here was her
only child, a girl who, from the cradle, had never given her a moment’s
uneasiness or a single lapse of confidence, now standing up big and
straight and fine to take her college degree. It had been the dream of
Mother’s girlhood to go through this same great college, but that had
been denied her. Yet the years had swung around in their relentless march
and here was her daughter, big, trained, fine and unspoiled, making noble
use of the opportunity which failed to knock at her mother’s door! Many
of you women who read this will know that there can be no prouder moment
in a woman’s life. Is it any wonder that there was a very suspicious
moisture on Mother’s glasses as the minister read the 25th chapter of St.
Matthew?
“_And I was afraid and went and hid thy talent in the earth._”
Would you not, as she did, have sung with all your power when that great
audience rose like a mighty wave to sing “The Star Spangled Banner”? The
members of the orchestra stood up to play the tune. As you know, a group
of musicians will usually show a large proportion of European faces, but
all these markings of foreign blood faded away as they played, and there
came upon each countenance the light of what we call _Americanism_.
But what about “father” at such a time and place? Where does _he_
come in? At a woman’s college he stays out—he is a mere incident, and
properly so. If he is wise he will accept the situation. For this big
girl marching in line has his shoulders and head; she walks as he does,
and people are kind enough to remark, “How much your daughter looks like
you!” Now this is no fly in the ointment of Mother’s pride and joy,
unless you refer to it too much. Far better take a back seat and let the
good lady take full pride in her daughter. I confess that when those 200
girls sat together at the front of the room, all in cap and gown, and
most of them with their hair arranged alike, I could not be sure of my
own girl until her name was called! My mind was back in the years busy
with many memories. More than a full generation ago at an agricultural
college I walked up to receive my “certificate.” I remember that I had on
some clothes which had been discarded by two other men. I played the part
of tailor to clean and press them into service. There were no be-gowned
and decorated dignitaries on the platform—just a few farmers, several of
them right out of the harvest field. I remember how two of these tired
men fell asleep through our class “orations.” I had in my pocket just
enough money to get me to a farm where I had agreed to cut corn. And
this proud and happy lady beside me! At just about the same time she was
graduating from a normal college at the South. She was then a mere slip
of a pretty girl, not out of her ’teens, with a plain white dress and a
bright ribbon, and no “graduation present” but the bare price of a ticket
home. And within a few weeks she was off, giving the acid test to her
certificate of education by teaching school in Texas! What a world it all
is anyway! The years had ironed out the rather poor scientific farmer and
the smart girl teacher into the parents of this young woman who, as we
fondly hope, has adopted the good qualities of both sides of the house
and cast out the poor ones. A great world, certainly a good world, and
probably a wise one!
The orator of the day made an impressive speech. He made a powerful
comparison between Crœsus, the rich Persian king, and Leonidas, the
Greek hero. Then he compared the life of the Emperor Tiberius with that
of Jesus. It was a powerful plea for a life of service—for making full
use of training and culture. I saw my old friend the robin on his perch
outside regarding the orator critically. I take him to be one of these
exponents of a “practical” education. Very likely he was saying:
“Very fine! Very fine! ‘Words, my lord, words.’ But if I had a daughter
I would want more of housekeeping and practical homemaking in her
education. With all your culture and literature you cannot build a house
as my daughter can. You cannot tell when it is time to go South, as we
can, nor can you defend yourself against enemies as we are able to do.
All very fine, no doubt, for human beings, but if birds were educated
with any such ideas the race would be extinct in three generations.
Reading, writing and housekeeping are the only things that women need to
know.”
I have heard human robins talk in just exactly that way, and for many
years the world listened to them and believed what they said. Their talk
was about like the song of the robin, only not 10 per cent as musical.
They were opposed to the “educated” woman, and most of all to the woman’s
college. There are still some of these pessimists left. I thought of
one in particular as one by one those girls stood up to receive their
diplomas—and the robin flew away in disgust. Woman can never again be set
aside as a slave or underling or inferior partner of man. She has a right
to the best there is in life. Some of those who read this will say, “What
will become of farming if our country women get the idea that they are
entitled to education and culture, as others are?” Farming will be better
off than ever before, because when our women get this idea firmly in mind
we shall all proceed to demand the things which will enable us to give
opportunity to every country girl.
Of all the wonderful changes in the past 25 years, few have been so
remarkable as the growth of opportunity for women. The full ballot is now
to be given them, and the war opened many a door of industry. Those doors
cannot be shut. They have lost their hinges. A new element is coming into
business and political life. I do not think we need new development of
science or mechanical skill half as much as we need vision, poetry and
the finer imagination. It must be said that while man alone has done
wonders in developing material power he has failed to combine it with
spiritual power. That is what we need today more than anything else, and
I think the finely educated women are to bring it. I was thinking about
this all through that great day. Suppose my daughter and the 200 other
graduates had all been trained as lawyers, doctors, business women, etc.;
would they really benefit the world more than they will now do with
broad, strong culture and with minds stored with the best that literature
can give them? I doubt it. No matter what they may do hereafter, their
lives and their influence will be strong for this sort of training. I can
hardly think of any better missionary to go into a country neighborhood
to live than one of these hopeful, trained and useful young women. Mother
selected the college for her daughter before that young person was out
of her cradle. I thought some more practical training would be better,
but I never had a chance to argue. I now conclude that Mother was right.
She knew what she was doing, and evidently sized up the spirit of her own
flesh and blood. If you ask me what I think is the finest thing about a
college education I can quickly tell you. It is having a son or daughter
go through a great college with credit and come out wholly unspoiled by
the process. It seems to me that most people use the college as a trading
place in life. They bring away from it knowledge and culture, but they
leave behind too much of youth, too much of the plain home life, too much
of the simple, homely, kindly things which the world needs and longs for.
So that we may all pardon Mother her pride and satisfaction as she looks
down upon this big girl in cap and gown and knows that her daughter has
mastered the course at a great college and still remains _her daughter_,
with a sane and fine understanding of her relations to the home and to
society.
Ideals are what count. One of the most beautiful ceremonies of this
commencement was the placing of the laurel chain. The senior class,
dressed in white, marched to the grave where lies the founder of the
college, carrying a great chain or wreath of laurel. While the students
sang, these seniors draped the laurel around the little fence which
enclosed the grave. It was as if the youngest daughter of the college had
come to pay reverence to the founder. A beautiful ceremony, and after it
was over I went back and copied the inscription on one side of the little
monument. I have seen nothing finer as a message to educated youth.
“_There is nothing in the universe that I fear but that I shall not know
all my duty or shall fail to do it._”
“ORGANIZATION”
The other day a city man came to the farm after apples. He loaded up
his car and, rendered good-natured by eating three mellow Baldwins,
he proceeded to tell us where farmers were behind the times. It
is a pleasure for many city men to do this and the average farmer
good-naturedly listens, always glad to have his customers enjoy
themselves. This man said he wondered why farmers have never organized
properly so as to defend and control their business. It is quite easy for
a man of large affairs to see what could be done if all the farmers could
get together in a great business organization.
“The trouble with you folks is that you don’t know how to do team work,”
said my city friend. “Suppose there are twelve million farmers in the
country. Suppose they all joined and organized and pledged by all they
hold sacred to each put up $5.00 every month as a working fund. Suppose
they hired the greatest organizing brain in the country and instructed
its owner and carrier to go to it. It would simply mean world control by
the most patient and deserving class on earth. Why don’t you do it?”
That’s the way your city business man talks, and he cannot understand
why our farmers do not promptly carry out the plan. Of course that word
“suppose” takes the bottom out of most facts, but it is hard for the
business man to realize why farmers have not been able to do full team
work. This man said that large business enterprises in the city were
controlled by boards of directors. There might be men on the board who
personally hated each other with all the intensity of business hatred.
Yet when it came to a matter of business policy for the company they all
got together and put the proposition through. He said it was different
with a farmer, who if he had trouble with his neighbor over a line fence
would not under any circumstances vote for him even if he stood for a
sound business proposition.
That is the way many of these city men feel. It is largely a matter of
ignorance through not understanding country conditions. Those of us who
spend our lives among the hills can readily understand why it is hard for
a farmer to surrender a large share of his individuality and put it into
the contribution box of society. Many of us, I fear, would dodge or cheat
the contribution box in church unless we felt we were under the watchful
eye of our wives. Possibly we shall contribute more freely to society now
that our wives and daughters have the privilege of voting. When a man
has lived his life among brick and stone with ancestors who have been
constantly warned to “keep off the grass” he comes to be incapable of
understanding what is probably the greatest problem of American society.
That is the effort to keep our country people contented and feeling
that they are getting a fair share of life, so that they will continue
cheerfully to feed and clothe the world. You cannot convince a man unless
you can understand his language or read his thought. One of the worst
misfortunes of the present day is the fact that city and country have
grown apart, so that they have no common language.
Those of us who live close to Nature realize that in order to know the
truth we must find
“Tongues in trees, Books in running Brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
The trouble with the city man is that he has been denied the blessed
privilege of studying that way. Therefore, if you would make him know why
in the past it has been so difficult for farmers to organize thoroughly
you must go to the primary motives of life and not to the high school.
When our first brood of children were small, I thought it well to give
them an early lesson in organization. There were four children, and as
Spring came upon us there was a great desire to start a garden. So we
proceeded in the most orderly manner to organize the Hope Farm Garden
Association. We had a constitution and full set of rules and by-laws.
These stated the full duties of all the officers, but somehow we forgot
to provide for the plain laborers. The largest boy was President and the
smaller boy was Vice-President. My little girl was Secretary, and the
other girl Treasurer. It was an ideal arrangement, for each one held an
important office, and all were directors. I had a piece of land plowed
and harrowed. I bought seeds and tools and the Association voted to start
the garden at once. They started under directions of the President and I
went up the hill to work in the orchard. It proved to be a case where the
controlling director should have remained on the job. Halfway up the hill
I glanced back and saw the Hope Farm Garden Association headed for the
rocks. The President and Vice-President were fighting and the Treasurer
and Secretary were crying. No one was working except the black hen, and
she was industriously eating up the seeds.
I came back to save the Association if possible and the Secretary ran
to meet me with the minutes of the meeting on her cheeks. Her hands had
been in the soil and she had succeeded in transferring a portion of it
to her face. Through this deposit the tears had forced their way in a
track as crooked as the course of the Delaware River, in its effort to
carve the outline of a human face on the western coast of New Jersey. The
poor little Secretary came up the lane with the old industrial cry which
has come down to us out of the ages, tearing apart the efforts of men to
combine and improve their condition.
“_Oh! Father, don’t the President have to work?_”
The minutes of the meeting clearly revealed the trouble. It seemed
that the President of the Association made the broad claim that his
duty consisted simply in being President. There was nothing in the
constitution about his working. Of course, a dignified President could
not perform manual labor. The Secretary followed with the claim that her
duty was to write in a book; how could she do that if she worked? Then
came the Treasurer proving by the by-laws that her duty was to hold the
money; if she tried to work at the same time she might lose the cash. So
naturally she could not work. Thus it happened that there was no laborer
left except the Vice-President. He had resigned and the President was
trying to accept his resignation in italics.
These were the same children who had settled a debate on the previous
Sunday afternoon. The question was whether they would rather have the
minister read his sermon or talk off-hand. The vote was 3 to 1 in favor
of having him read it. The prevailing argument was that when the minister
read his sermon he knew when he got through. The one negative vote was
passed on the hope that when he talked off-hand he might be a little
off-head, forget one or two pages and thus get through sooner. You may
learn from that one reason why it has been so hard in the past for
certain farmers to organize.
And one reason why there has grown up an industrial advantage in the town
and city may perhaps be learned from another sermon in stones. Some years
ago we had two boys on the farm. Largely in order to keep them busy their
mother made a bargain with them to wash windows. They were to be paid so
much for each window properly cleaned. Of course their mother supposed
that the work would be done in the good old-fashioned way of scrubbing
the glass by hand with a wet cloth. The object was more to keep them busy
than to have any skilled work performed. One boy was a patient plodding
character who did not object seriously to hand labor. He took a cloth
and a pail of hot water and slowly and carefully rubbed off the glass in
the old-fashioned way. The other boy never did like to work and after
some thought he went to the neighbor’s and borrowed a small hand-pump
with a hose and fine nozzle. He filled this with hot water with the soap
dissolved in it and sprayed his windows with the hot mixture. He got them
just as clean as the other boy did, but he did three windows while his
companion was doing one. Then there arose an argument as to whether this
boy with the pump should be paid the same price per window as the other
boy who did the work by hand. These boys both went to the Sunday school
and the boy with the pump was able to refer to the parable of the man
who hired the workmen at different hours during the day. When they came
to settle up the men who had worked all day grumbled because they got
no more than the men who had worked half a day. The answer of the boss
applied to this window washing. “Did I not agree with thee for a penny?”
Now in a way the city man with his advantage in labor is not unlike the
boy with the pump. The city workman has been able to take advantage of
many industrial developments of much machinery which has not yet reached
the country. Some day there will be an adjustment and then the countryman
will have his inning.
Some years ago I spent the night with a farmer far back in a country
neighborhood. After supper he described in great detail a plan he had
evolved for organizing all American farmers in one great and powerful
body. His plan was complete and he had worked out every detail except
one which he did not seem to think essential. I looked out of the window
through the dark night and saw a light far down the road. Some neighbor
was at home. I thought it a good time for action.
“There,” I said, “is a chance to start this big scheme of yours. Down the
road I see the light from your neighbor’s window. Put on your hat, take
the hired man and your boys and we will go right down there and organize
the first chapter of this organization. No time like the present.”
The farmer’s face clouded. “Why, I haven’t spoken, to that man for three
years. He would not keep up the line fence and I had to go to law and
make him do it.”
I looked out of the window once more and saw another light to the north
of us dimly visible in the darkness. “Well, then let us go to this other
neighbor. I saw several men there as I came by.”
“That man! I wouldn’t trust him with fifty cents, and he would be sure to
elect himself Treasurer.”
“Well, far across the pasture I see still another light. Shall we go
there?”
“No, that man doesn’t know enough to go in the house when it rains.”
The farmer’s wife looked up from her sewing as if to speak, but the man
answered for her.
“Oh, the women meet at the sewing circle and church, and while they talk
about each other they keep together and do things for the neighborhood,
but somehow the men folks don’t get on.”
Yet here was a man who planned to bring all the farmers of the country
together and yet could not organize his own neighborhood, because men
were kept apart by little prejudices and fancied wrongs. The women
combined because they knew enough to realize that these petty things were
non-essential, while the great community things could only be remembered
by forgetting the meanness of every-day life.
Your city men will smile at this sermon in stones, and say that those
farmers never can forget their differences and organize. Yet city life is
worse yet. Many a man lives for years within a foot of his neighbor, yet
never knows him. There may be only a brick wall between the two families,
yet they might as well be 10 miles apart, so far as any community feeling
is concerned. If dwellers on any block in the city could combine as a
renting or buying association they would quickly settle the High Cost
of Living burden, but while their interests are all in common they are
unable to play the part of real neighbors. Farmers are coming to it
largely through their women and children and the great National Farm
Organization is by no means impossible for the future.
THE FACE OF LIBERTY
I suppose every person of middle age wears a mask. It is his face, and as
the years go by it settles into an expression of the man’s chief aim in
life, if he can be said to have one. That is why a shrewd observer can
usually tell much of a man’s character by looking keenly in his face and
observing him under excitement. One of the most observing dairymen I know
of says he can tell the quality of a cow by looking at her face. I notice
that the expert hen men who select birds for the poultry contest spend
considerable time looking at the hen’s eye and face! There she seems to
show whether she is a bad egg or a good one! Lady Macbeth put it well
when she said to her terrified husband:
“Your face, my thane, is as a book
Where men may read strange matters.”
We all go about wearing a mask, and those who care how they look may well
ask how the mask is made.
I once roomed with a young man who used to get before a mirror and
practise a smile and a laugh. He was a commercial traveler, and thought
it paid him to laugh at the jokes and smile as he talked. So he trained
the muscles of his face and throat into a machine-made twist and noise
which represented his stock in trade! He wore a mask. I have heard people
say that the face powders and massage and tricks of rolling the eyes
about gave them a mask of beauty. Not long ago I talked with a great
business man who had simply given his life up to the accumulation of
property. He had succeeded, but this success had stamped his face with a
mask as hard and flinty as steel. This man sat and told me that a good
share of his money had been made by his ability to read character in the
face. When he found a man showing indecision or fear in his features this
man knew he could handle him as he saw fit. He claimed that thought or
sentiment had little to do with it; it was simply what a man did or did
not do which made the mask of life. As for this theory that character or
sentiment “light a candle behind the face and illuminate it,” he said
that was simply “poetic nonsense.” “If a woman wanted to be thought
beautiful after she got to be forty she must rub the beauty in from the
outside.”
This seemed to me a mighty cynical theory, for the most beautiful women I
know of are over fifty and never use anything but soap and water to “rub
the beauty in.” They wear a mask which seems like concentrated sunshine,
and it comes from within. Yet my friend sat there and spoke with all the
conviction of a man who has only to write his name on a piece of paper
to bring a million dollars to support his word. And he had come to think
that is about the only support worth having. I asked him if he had ever
read Hawthorne’s story of “The Old Stone Face.” No, he had never heard of
it before—had no time for fiction or dreaming. So I told him the story
briefly; of the boy who grew up among the hills, within sight of the
“old stone face.” This was a great rock on the side of a high mountain.
The wind and the storm had slowly eaten it away until, when viewed from
a certain angle, it bore a rude resemblance to a human face. It was a
stern, gloomy, thoughtful face, and it seemed to this boy to have been
carved out of the rock by the very hand of God to show the world an ideal
of power and majesty on the human countenance. To most of the neighbors
it was merely “the old man of the mountain”—merely a common rock with an
accidental shape. But this boy grew up to manhood believing in his heart
that God had put on the lonely mountain his ideal of the mask of noble
human character. And the boy went through life thinking that if he could
only find a human being with a face like that on the mountain he would
find a great man—one carrying in his life a great message to mankind.
And so, whenever he heard of any great statesman or poet or preacher
appearing anywhere within reach this man traveled to see him in the
hope of finding the mask of the “stone face” upon the celebrity. He was
always disappointed. These great men all showed on their faces the marks
of dissipation or pride or some weakness of character, along with their
power. He would come back and look up at the face on the mountain—always
showing the same calm dignity and strength whether the happy June
sunshine played over it, or whether the January storm bit at its rude
features. So this man lived his simple life and died—disappointed because
he had never been able to find God’s ideal character worked out in a
human face! One by one men who were considered great came to the valley,
only to disappoint him, but finally, after long years of waiting and
searching, the neighbors suddenly found that their friend, who had
carried the ideal so long in his heart, also carried on his face the
nobility and grandeur of the figure on the mountain. Search for the ideal
in others had brought it home to his own life.
To my surprise, the rich and strong man who, I supposed, had no poetry or
sentiment in his heart, listened attentively and nodded his head.
“I have seen that stone face in the White Mountains. Your story of course
is a mere fancy. There might have been some idle dreamer to whom that
happened. I will not deny it, because I know of a case which is somewhat
in the same line. I confess that I would not believe it had I not seen it
myself.”
So he told his story, and I give it as nearly as possible in his own
words:
“It must have been fifteen years ago that I was returning from a
business trip to Europe. On the boat I met a college man from my city,
an expert in modern languages. We were much together on the trip, and
one day we went down into the steerage to look over the immigrants. My
friend figured that this group of strange human beings talked with him
in fifteen different languages or dialects. One family in particular
interested me. They were from the south of Poland; a man and woman of
perhaps thirty-five, with two little boys. They were of the dull, heavy,
ox-like type—mere beasts of burden in their own country. The woman seemed
to me just about the plainest, homeliest creature I had ever seen. Low
forehead, flat features, small eyes and great mouth, with huge hands and
feet, she seemed, beside the dainty women of our own party, like some
inferior animal. I offered her a good-sized bill—they looked as if they
needed it—but the woman just pulled her two black-eyed boys closer to her
and refused to take it.
“They passed out of my mind, until one fine, sunny morning old Sandy Hook
seemed to rise up out of the water, and we headed straight for New York
Harbor. I stood with my college friend in front, looking down upon the
steerage passengers as they crowded forward to get their first view of
America. Strangely enough that little Polish family that had interested
me stood right below us, and my friend could hear what they were saying.
The ship crawled up the harbor, past Staten Island, and then came to
the Statue of Liberty. Most of us have become so familiar with this
bronze beauty that we do not even glance at it. I think her strong, fine
face and uplifted torch mean little more than old-time habit to many
Americans. Not so with that flat-faced, plain Polish woman. As we came
even with the ‘bronze goddess’ this woman tore off the little shawl she
had tied around her head, reached out her hand and talked excitedly to
her husband. My college friend listened to the conversation and laughed.
“‘What is she saying?’ I asked.
“‘Why, the poor, homely thing is telling her husband that it would be
the pride and joy of her life if she could only be as beautiful as that
statue—if her face were only like that.’
“‘That is the limit. What is _he_ saying?’
“‘Just like every other husband. He is telling her that to him she is
handsomer than the old goddess, and for good measure he tells her that
under freedom in America she will come to look like “Miss Liberty.”’
“In all my life I had never heard anything so ridiculous, and I laughed
aloud. The little family below us looked up at the sound and saw we were
laughing at them. A great shadow fell over their day dream and they were
silent until we docked, though I noticed that they stood hand in hand all
the way. The story seemed so good that I told it everywhere, and it was
called the standard joke of the season.
“It faded out of mind and I never thought of it again until about ten
years later one of the foremen in the factory died suddenly. I asked the
manager who should be put in his place.
“‘Well,’ he said, ‘there is a man out in the shop just fitted for it. I
can’t pronounce his name, but I will bring him in.’
“He did; a great black-haired man who looked me right in the eye as I
like to have people do.
“‘How long have you been in this country?’ I asked.
“‘Ten years. You may not remember, but I came in the ship with you; in
the steerage, with my wife and two boys.’
“It flashed into my mind at once; this was what America had done for the
man. I smiled as I thought of the flat-faced woman who wanted to look
like the Goddess of Liberty, and the man whose faith in America was such
that he told her this dream could come true.
“The man more than made good. It is wonderful how things happen in this
country. Those two black-eyed boys were at school with my boy and played
on the football team with him. They were all three to go to college
together.
“Then you know how, before we entered the war, the women organized to do
Red Cross work? One day my wife came home and told me how a Polish woman
had made the most wonderful talk before her society. Before we knew it
America had entered the war, and we were all at it. You couldn’t keep my
boy here. He volunteered the first week after war was declared, and these
two black-haired boys belonging to my foreman volunteered with him, and
they all went over the sea to fight for America.
“I had not seen their mother, and I was curious to see what she looked
like after American competence and success had been rubbed in. We had a
big parade in our town during one of the Liberty Loan drives, and there
was one division of women who carried service flags. I stood in the
window of my club watching the parade, and as it happened within six feet
of me on the sidewalk stood John, my foreman. I did not laugh this time,
nor was he shamed into silence for what he thought of his wife.
“Oh, how that war did stir up and level the elements of American society!
There passed before us in parade, side by side, my wife with a service
flag of one star and John’s wife with two stars in her flag! And as they
passed they turned and looked at us. My wife told me later that they had
been talking as they marched. My wife had asked her comrade if she did
not feel dreadfully to think of her two great boys far away in France.
And the woman with the flat, homely face had answered:
“‘No, I feel glorified to think that I, the poor immigrant woman, can
offer my boys in part payment for what America has done for me and my
people.’
“And it was just then that I saw her face. I give you my word that at
that moment it was the most beautiful face I ever saw. There was a calm
beauty and dignity, a light of joy upon it which made me forget the flat
nose, the narrow forehead and the great mouth. They passed on, and John,
the foreman, looked up at me. We were both thinking the same thing,
master and man though we were. I couldn’t reach him with my hand, but I
did say:
“‘John, she has had her life wish. She has come to look like the Goddess
of Liberty. It was a miracle.’
“And John answered in his slow, thoughtful way:
“‘No, not a miracle—always she has had that great spirit in her heart;
always that great love in her soul. She has kept that love and spirit
pure all through these hard years, and now at the great sacrifice it
shone out through her face. Said I not right that my wife would come to
be the most beautiful woman on earth?’”
My friend told the story in a matter-of-fact way, and then fell into a
silence. I did not ask him how he reconciled this experience with his
statement that beauty is rubbed in from the outside. It wasn’t worth
while; we both knew better. The face of mature years is a mask. It is the
candle behind it that gives it character and beauty.
CAPTAIN RANDALL’S HOUR
Uncle Isaac Randall was the last Grand Army man in our town. All the
other old comrades had passed on. As a boy I used to try to imagine what
“the last Grand Army man” would be like. Poets and artists have tried to
picture him, but when he actually appears you know how far the real must
travel to reach the ideal. For poet and artist would have us look upon
some calm, dignified man, carried by the wings of great achievement far
above the mean and petty things of life which surround us like a thick
fog in a narrow valley. For that, I fear, is what most of us find life
to be unless the memory of some great sacrifice or some great devotion
can lift our heads up into the perpetual sunshine. Those who knew Uncle
Isaac saw little of the hero about him. He was just a little, thin,
nervous man, very deaf, irritable and disappointed. No one can play the
part of a deaf man with any approach to success unless he be a genuine
philosopher, and Uncle Isaac was unfitted by nature for that. Sometimes
in Summer, when the sun went down, you would see the old man standing in
the barn looking off to the crimson West, over the purpling hills where
the shadows came creeping up from the valley. A man with some poetry and
philosophy would have seen in the darkening notch where the hills gave
way, to let the road pass through, an approach to the beautiful gate
through which wife and children and old comrades had passed on, to wait
for him beyond the hills. But Uncle Isaac was cursed with that curiosity
which is the torture of the deaf—he saw the hired man up on the hill
talking to the neighbor’s boy, and his burning desire was to know what
they were talking about as they stood in the twilight.
The Great War came, and Uncle Isaac’s two grandsons volunteered. Before
they shipped overseas they came back to the farm—very trim and natty
in their brown uniforms. It irritated the old man to think that these
boys—hardly more than babies—hardly to be trusted to milk a kicking
cow—should be sent to fight America’s battles. And those little rifles!
They were not much better than popguns, compared with his old army
musket. The old man took the gun down from the nail where it had hung for
years. He had kept it polished, and the lock with its percussion cap was
still working. He would show these young sniffs what real warfare meant.
So they went out in the pasture—the old soldier carrying his musket,
carefully loaded with a round bullet—pushed in with the iron ramrod. In
order to show these boy soldiers what real warfare might be, the old man
sighted the musket over the fence and aimed at a board about 300 yards
away. The bullet went at least five feet wide, while the old musket
kicked back so hard that Uncle Isaac winced with the pain. Then one of
the boys quietly raised his “popgun” and aimed at a bush at least half
a mile away across the valley. In a fraction of a minute he fired half
a dozen bullets which tore up the ground all around that bush. Then the
boys hung one of their brown uniforms on the fence across the pasture,
and put Grandpa’s old blue coat beside it. You could hardly distinguish
the brown coat against the background, while the blue coat stood out
like a target. It was hard for the old man to realize that both he and
his musket belonged to a vanished past. The boys looked at the gun and
at Grandpa marching home—trying to throw his old shoulders back into
military form—and smiled knowingly at each other as youth has ever done
in the pride of its power. They could not see—who of us ever can see?—the
spiritual forces of patriotism which walked beside the old man, waiting
for the time to show their power.
The weeks went by, and day by day Grandpa read his paper with growing
indignation. You remember how for months the army in France seemed to
stand still before that great “Hindenburg line” which stretched out like
an iron wall in front of Germany. It seemed to Uncle Isaac as if his boys
and the rest of the army were cowards—afraid to march up to the line and
fight. One day he threw down his paper and expressed himself fully, as
only an old soldier can.
“I told you those boys never would fight. At the Battle of the Wilderness
Lee had a line of defense twice as strong as this Hindenburg ever had.
Did General Grant sit still and wait for something to happen? Not much!
“‘Forward by the left flank!’
“That was the order, and we went forward. Don’t you know what he said
at Fort Donelson? ‘I propose to move on your works at once.’ If General
Grant was in France that’s what he’d say, and within an hour you’d
see old Hindenburg coming out to surrender! My regiment fought all day
against a regiment from North Carolina. I’ll tell you what! Let me have
my old regiment and that North Carolina regiment alongside and I’ll
guarantee that we will break right through that Hindenburg line, march
right across the Rhine, hog-tie the Kaiser and bring him back with us.”
“But, father,” said his daughter gently, “don’t you remember what Harry
writes? They don’t fight that way now. The cannon must open a way first.
Harry says they fire shells so large and powerful that when they strike
the ground they make a hole so large you could put the barn into it.
Suppose one of these big shells struck in the middle of your regiment?”
“I don’t care,” said Uncle Isaac. “_We’d start, anyway! We’d move on
those breastworks and take our chances!_”
And mother wrote about it to her boys in the army over in France. The
young fellows laughed at the thought of those old white-haired men,
with their antiquated weapons, lined up before the death-dealing power
of Germany. It seemed such a foolish thing to youth. The letter finally
came to the grey-haired colonel of the regiment—an elderly man who had
in some way held his army place in the ocean of youth which surrounded
him. His eyes were moist as he read it, for he knew that if that group of
wasted, white-haired men had lined up in front of the army they would not
have been alone. Down the aisles of history would have come a throng of
old heroes—the spirit of the past would have stood with them. They would
have stilled the laughter, and if these old veterans had started forward
the whole great army would have thrown off restraint, broken orders and
followed them through the “Hindenburg line.”
But Uncle Isaac, at home, humiliated and sad, went about the farm with
something like a prayer in his old heart.
“Why can’t _I_ do something to help? Don’t make me know my fighting days
are over. What can _I_ do?”
And Uncle Isaac finally had his chance. Perhaps you remember how at one
time during the war things seemed dark enough. Our boys were swarming
across the ocean, and submarines were watching for them. Food was
scarce. Frost and storm had turned against us. Money was flowing out
like water. Spies and German sympathizers were poisoning the public
mind, and the Liberty Loan campaign was lagging. Uncle Isaac, reading
it all day by day in his paper, felt like a man in prison galled to
the soul by his inability to help. There came a big patriotic meeting
at the county town. It was a factory town with many European laborers.
They were restless and uneasy, opposed to the draft, tired of the war
and not yet in full sympathy with America. Uncle Isaac determined to go
to this meeting, though his daughter did all she could to dissuade him.
There was no stopping him when he once made up his mind, so his daughter
let him have his way, but she sent old John Zabriski along with him.
Old John was a German Pole who came to this country as a young man out
of the German army. He had lived on Uncle Isaac’s farm for years, and
just as a cabbage or a tomato plant seems the stronger and better for
transplanting, so this transplanted European in the soil of this country
had grown into the noblest type of American. So the daughter, standing in
the farmhouse door with eyes that were a little dimmed, watched these two
old men drive away to the meeting.
They had the speaker’s stand in front of the court house. The street
was packed with a great crowd. Right in front was a group of sullen,
defiant foreigners who had evidently come for trouble. The sheriff was
afraid of them, and inside the court house out of sight, but ready for
instant service, was a squad of soldiers. A young man who was running
for the Legislature caught sight of Uncle Isaac and led him through the
court house to the speaker’s platform, and John went, too, as bodyguard.
The old veteran sat there in his blue coat and hat with the gold braid,
unable to hear a word, but full of the spirit which had come down to him
from the old days.
Something was wrong. Even Uncle Isaac could see that, and John Zabriski
beside him looked grave and anxious. That solid group of rough men in
front began to sway back and forth like the movement of water when the
high wind blows over it, and a sullen murmur, growing louder, came from
the crowd. A small, effeminate-looking man was making a speech. Very
likely his ancestors came originally to this country two centuries ago,
but somewhere back in the years this man’s forebears had made a fortune.
Instead of serving as a tool to spur the family on to finer things it had
been spread out like a soft cushion to carry them through life without a
bruise or bump. And these rough men, whose life had been all bruise and
turmoil, knew that this soft little American was here talking platitudes
when he should have been over in France. Perhaps you have never heard the
angry murmur of a sullen crowd grow into a roar of rage, until the crowd
becomes like a wild beast. The sheriff had heard this, and he was frankly
frightened. He started a messenger back into the court house to notify
the soldiers, but old John Zabriski stopped him.
“Wait,” he said, “do not that. You lose those men by fighting. We gain
them.”
Then, before anyone could stop him, old John stepped up in front and
barked out strange words which seemed like a command. Then a curious
thing happened. The angry murmur stilled. The crowd stopped its movement,
and then every man stood at attention! Almost every man there had in
former years served in one of the European armies, and what old John
had barked at them was the old army command which had been drilled into
them years before. And through force of habit which had become instinct,
that order, for the moment, changed that mob into an army of attentive
soldiers. The bandmaster was a man of imagination, and as quickly as
his men could catch up their instruments they began playing “The Star
Spangled Banner.” Poor old Uncle Isaac heard nothing of this. He could
only guess what it was all about until John Zabriski laboriously wrote on
a piece of paper:
“Dey blay der Shtar Banner!”
Then there came into Uncle Isaac’s sad life the great, glorious joy of
power and opportunity. He walked down to the front of the stage, took off
his gold-braided hat and bowed his white head before them all. And old
John Zabriski, the transplanted European, came and stood at his side. A
young woman, dressed all in white, caught up a flag and came and stood
beside the two old men. Then a wounded soldier with one empty sleeve
pinned to his breast followed her. And there in that sunlit street a
great, holy silence fell over that vast crowd. For there before them on
that platform stood the glory, the pride, the precious legacy of American
history. The last Grand Army man, the European peasant made over into
an American, and the young people who represented the promise and hope
shining in the legacy which men like Uncle Isaac and John Zabriski have
given them.
When the band stopped playing a mighty cheer went up from that great
crowd, and one by one the men of that sullen group in front took off
their hats and joined in the cheering. They made Uncle Isaac get up again
and again to salute, and no less a person than Judge Bradley shook both
hands and said:
“We all thank you, Captain Randall. You have saved this great meeting and
made this town solidly patriotic.” It was a proud old soldier who marched
into the farmhouse kitchen that night, and in answer to his daughter’s
questioning eyes he said:
“Annie, I want you to write those boys all about it. Tell ’em they are
not doing it all. Tell ’em Judge Bradley called me cap’n and said I saved
the meeting. I only wish General Grant could have been there!”
All of which goes to show that those of you who have come to white hair
should not feel that you are out of the game yet. Material things may go
by us, but the spirit of the good old days is still the last resort!
“SNOW BOUND”
This is the one night of the year for reading “Snow Bound.” Every man
with New England blood in his veins should read Whittier’s poem at least
once a year. That becomes as much of a habit as eating baked beans and
fishballs. For two days now the storm has roared over our hills and shut
us in. It must have been on just such a night as this that Emerson wrote:
“The sled and traveler stopped; the courier’s feet
Delayed; all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.”
Of course, Emerson lived at a time when the telephone and the electric
light and the steam-heated house were dreams too obscure even for his
great mind to comprehend. So, in spite of this fearful storm, the strong
arm of the electric current still reaches our house, and while the
telephone is slow, we can get our message through, after a fashion. But
we are shut in. The car and the truck are useless tonight. The horses
stamp contentedly in the barn—not troubling about the head-high drifts
which are piled along the roadway. A bad night for a fire or for a hurry
call for the doctor; but why worry about that as we sit here before the
fire?
I got my copy of “Snow Bound” in 1872, and I have read the poem at least
once each year since, and I have carried it all over the country with
me. It is a little shabby now, but somehow that is the way I like to see
old friends:
“Shut in from all the world without
We sat the clean winged hearth about,
Content to let the north wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat.
...
“Between the andiron’s straddling feet
The mug of cider simmered low,
The apples sputtered in a row
And close at hand the basket stood
With nuts from brown October’s wood.
...
“What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth fire’s ruddy glow.”
...
There is no finer picture of the old-time Northern farm home, and we
Yankees are bound to think that with all her faults New England did in
those days set the world an example of what a farm home ought to be. So I
lay aside the book and look about me to see how close New Jersey can come
on this fearful night to matching this old-time picture.
Here we are before the fire. Great logs of apple wood are blazing up
into the black chimney. In Whittier’s day the open fire produced all the
light, but here we have our electric light blazing, and I think as I sit
here how miles away the great engines are working to send the current
far up among the lonely hills to our home. For supper we had a thick
tomato soup, a big dish of cornmeal mush—the grain ground in our little
grinder—pot cheese, entire wheat bread and butter, baked apples and
all the milk we could drink. Just run that over and see if it does not
furnish as fine a balanced ration and as good a lot of vitamines as any
$2 dinner in New York—and nearly 80 per cent of it was produced on this
farm. Now the girls have washed the dishes and planned breakfast, and
here we are. Mother sits in the first choice of seats before the fire.
That is where she belongs. She is mending a pair of stockings, and as
her fingers fly, no doubt she is thinking of those warmer days back in
Mississippi. My daughter has just put a new record into her Victrola. The
music comes softly to us—“Juanita.”
“Soft o’er the fountain
Lingering falls the Southern moon.”
I wonder what Whittier’s folks would have said to that! Two of the little
girls are looking over some music, trying to get the air in “I dreamt
that I dwelt in marble halls!” There is no “frost line” in this house for
the fire to drive back, for there is a good hot-water radiator in the
corner. The pipe from the spring seems to have frozen, but the faithful
old windmill, standing over the well at the barn, has stretched out its
arms to catch this roaring gale and make it carry the water up to the
tank. Thomas and three of the boys are playing parchesi, while the rest
of the company give them all advice about playing from time to time. I
have a big chair by the corner of the fireplace—where grandfather is
supposed to sit—and little Rose is curled up on my lap eating an apple. I
wish you were here. We could easily make room for you right in front of
the fire, and we would surely call on you for a new story.
The wind is howling on the outside. As we sit here in comfort there comes
an eager, pitiful face at the window pleading to be taken in. No, it is
not the old story of the wayward child coming back to the lights of home.
The nearest we can come to that at Hope Farm is the black cat with the
dash of white at her face and throat. She and her tribe are expected to
stay at the barn and catch rats, but there she is out in the cold looking
in at the window. Mother is as stern as a Spartan mother when it comes to
cats in the house. She _will not_ have them there. But, after all, they
are Hope Farm folks, and the little girls plead so hard that the good
lady looks the other way when the baby opens the door. In comes the black
cat and, though they were not invited, three of her brothers and sisters
run in with her! So now I shall sit with little Rose on my lap, while on
her lap is a cushion on which the white-faced kitty purrs contentedly. In
the original “Snow Bound” the mug of cider simmered between the andirons.
No hot drinks for us. A little of that cold pasteurized apple juice goes
well. We see no use in cooking apples before the fire. There is that
big basket of Baldwins by the table. Help yourself—we like them cold.
Cherry-top was ahead in the game, but Thomas has just taken his leading
“man” and sent him back to the starting point. The boy is a good sport.
He takes a big bite out of a fresh Baldwin and goes after them again.
The nearest we can come to “nuts from brown October’s wood” is a big bag
of roasted peanuts. We have all been eating them and throwing the hulls
at the fire. They have accumulated so that Mother’s idea of neatness
compels her to get up and brush them all into the blaze. I did not tell
you that we are starting up our little Florida farm again. Jack will grow
a crop of sugar cane and peanuts.
And so, here in New Jersey, as well as in old-time New England, we care
not how the wind blows or how the storm roars. This is home, and we are
satisfied with it—all of us, from the white-faced kitty up to the Hope
Farm man. We have all worked to make this home. It is a co-operative
affair. None of us could be called rich or great, yet nothing could ever
buy what we see in our big fire. Every now and then Mother looks up from
her work and glances across the room at me with a smile. I know what she
has in mind. Some of us rise to the power of animals in our ability to
communicate thought without words. Life has been very much of a fight
with us, but it seems worth while as we look at this big room full of
eager young people, content and happy with the simple things of life.
As little Rose snuggles up closer to me and pulls the kitty with her I
begin to think of some of the complaining fault-finding people I know.
I _do_ know some star performers at the job of pitying themselves and
magnifying their own troubles. On a night like this I will wager an apple
that they are pouring out the gloom and trouble like a man tipping over
a barrel of cold water. It’s their rheumatism or their debts or the
Administration or the Republican party, or something else that they hold
responsible for their troubles. I wish I could have some of those fellows
here tonight, and also some of you folks who know the joy of looking on
the bright side. We would do our best to rub some of the gloom out of
them. I will guarantee that any one of us could, if we wanted to, tell
the truth about our own troubles so that these gloomy individuals would
look like “pikers” in their poor little self-pity! I would like to read
extracts from two new books to them. One is “A Labrador Doctor,” by W. T.
Grenfell; the other, “The Great Hunger,” by John Bojer.
I have just been reading these books, and I shall read them over again.
Dr. Grenfell has given his life to service in the far North among the
fishermen of Labrador. A man of his ability could easily have gained
fame and wealth by practising his profession in some great city. He went
where he was most needed—into the cold, lonely places where humanity
hungers and suffers for help. It has always seemed to me just about the
noblest thing in life for a man of great natural ability to gain what
science and education can give him and carry that great gift out to those
who need it most. Grenfell did that, and this modest story of his life
is wonderful to anyone who can get the message. I have always thought
that the greatest teachers and preachers and wise men generally are
not so much needed in the big cities as in the lonely country places.
The city owes all it has in men and money to the country, but it will
seldom acknowledge the gift. The city itself is able to offer as a gift
knowledge, science and training. Yet those who receive this gift desire
for the most part to remain in the city, when they should carry their
gift out into the lonely and hard places where the city must finally go
for strength. The storm seems hard tonight, but it is a mere zephyr to
the Winters which Dr. Grenfell’s people endure. I wish I could tell you
some of the wonderful things which have happened in that lonely land. At
one place the doctor found a girl dying of typhoid. There was no way of
saving her, and as soon as she was buried it was necessary to burn the
rude bunk and the straw in which she lay. They carried it to the top of
a hill and built a fire. For several days one of the fishing boats had
been lost at sea in the fog, and had been given up for lost with all on
board. The despairing men in that boat—far out at sea—saw the light when
that hideous bed was burned and were able to get to land! Some of you
self-pitying people ought to read how Dr. Grenfell organized a little
orphans’ home to care for the little waifs of this lonely place. In one
case a little girl of four, while her father was away hunting, crawled
out into the snow, so that both legs were badly frozen. Gangrene set in
halfway to the knee, and the father actually chopped both legs off to
save her life! Think of such a child in the frozen North. I think of
her as little Rose hugs the kitty close. Dr. Grenfell took this child,
operated on her, obtained artificial legs, and now she can run about like
other children. I wish I could tell you more about this book. At one
time two men came together after medicine. One took a bottle of cough
mixture, the other a strong turpentine liniment for a sprained knee. By
mistake they mixed up the medicine. One rubbed the cough medicine on
his knee, the other drank the liniment. If I had some fellow who thinks
the Lord has put a special curse on him before our fire tonight I would
tell him what others have endured. The chances are we could make him
contribute something to the cause before we were done with him.
The other book I mentioned, “The Great Hunger,” is a story of Norwegian
life and, as I think, very powerful. A boy born to poverty and disgrace
grew up with a great hunger in his heart—he knew not what it was. He felt
that power and material wealth would bring him the happiness he sought.
He gained education, power, wealth and love, yet still the great hunger
tortured him. Poverty, sickness, the deepest sorrow fell upon him, and
at last the great hunger was satisfied by doing a needed service for the
man who had done him the most hideous wrong! I wish I could tell you more
about it. It is a powerful book; but it is time for little Rose to go to
bed. Off she goes with a hug for all, and the children follow her one by
one. I am not going to put more logs on that fire. Let it die down. The
end of the day has come. Let the storm howl through the night like a pack
of wolves at the door. They cannot get at us. Even if they did they can
never destroy the memory of this night.
“CLASS”
The other day the papers announced the death of the ex-Empress Eugénie.
She lingered along, feeble and half-blind, until she was nearly 95 years
old. She has been called “the Queen of Sorrows,” for few other women have
lived a sadder life. Very few of this generation knew or cared anything
about her. I presume most of our young people skipped the details of her
life as given in the papers. Yet when I was a boy, shortly before the
war between France and Germany, the women of the world regarded this sad
empress as the great model of beauty and fashion. I suppose it would
be hard for women in these days to realize how this beautiful empress
dictated to people in every land how they should arrange their hair and
wear their dresses. At that time most women wore their hair in short nets
bunched just below the neck, and it was the age of “hoopskirts”—most of
them, as it seemed, four to five feet wide. Just how this woman managed
to put her ideas of fashion into the imagination of her sisters I never
could understand. From the big city to the little backwoods hamlet women
were studying to see what “Ugeeny” advised them to wear. I have often
wondered if in her last days the poor, blind, feeble woman remembered
those days of power.
Her death brings to mind an incident that had long been forgotten. I
had been sent to one of the neighbors to borrow some milk, since our
cow was dry. In those days, any caller—even a little boy—was like a
pond in which one went fishing for compliments. The woman of the house,
an immense, fat creature, with the shape of a barrel, a short, thick
neck and a round moon face, had arrayed herself in glad clothes of the
latest style—several years, I imagine, behind Paris. She wore an immense
hoopskirt, which gave her the appearance of walking inside of a hogshead.
Her hair was parted in the middle and brought down beside her wide face
to be caught in a net just below her ears. I know so little and care so
much less about style in clothes that I can remember in detail only two
costumes that I have ever seen women wear. This outfit is one of them.
“This is just what Ugeeny is wearing,” said the fat lady as she poured
out the milk. “You can tell your aunt that you have seen one lady dressed
just like Paris.”
It did not strike me as very impressive, but I was glad to have the
experience.
“You can tell her, too, that a very fine gentleman came here today and
said I looked enough like Ugeeny to be her half-sister—dressed as I am
now. He has been in Paris, too.”
“It was a book agent,” put in her husband, “and sold her a book on the
strength of that yarn. Say, Mary, you don’t look any more like Ugeeny
than old Spot does—and you don’t need to.”
“The trouble with you, John Drake, is that you have no idea of beauty.”
“I know it. I may not have any soul, but I’ve got a stomach, and I know
that you can make the best doughnuts and Indian pudding ever made in
Bristol County. That’s more than Ugeeny ever did, or ever can do. You are
worth three of her for practical value to the world, and I think you a
handsome woman—but you can’t look like her, because you haven’t got the
shape, and I’m glad of it.”
But where was there ever a woman who could be satisfied with such evident
truth, and who did not reach out after the impossible? She turned to old
Grandpa, who sat back in the corner, away from the light.
“Now, Grandpa, you seen a lot of the world. What do you say? Don’t I look
like Ugeeny?”
Old Grandpa nodded his white head and looked at her critically.
“You’re in her class, Mary—that’s what I’ll say—you’re in her class!”
“You’re in her class,” repeated Grandpa. “The people in this world are
divided into two classes—strung together like beads on different strings.
Some strings are like character, others like looks or shape or thinking
or maybe meanness. You can’t get out of your class—for the Lord organized
it and teaches it. You look at me; I’m in the class with some of the
finest men that ever lived on earth!”
“Now, Mary, see what you’ve done,” said John Drake. “You’ve got Grandpa
started on that class business. He’s worse than Ugeeny.”
But Grandpa went right ahead. “Ain’t I in the class with the old and
new prophets? Here I have for years been telling what is coming to the
world. Folks won’t always be down as they are now. My wife killed herself
carrying water and fuel to get up vittles and keep the house clean.
Some day or ’nuther every farmhouse will have water and heat and light
right inside. There’ll be power to do all this heavy work. In those days
farmers will be kings.”
The old man’s face lighted up as he talked.
“You don’t believe me now, but it will all come. I’m out ahead of the
crowd. So was Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison and Charles
Sumner on the slavery question. Folks hooted at them, laughed them down
and did all they could to stop their ideas. But you can’t stop one of
these ideas when there’s a man back of it. Those men lived to see what
the world called fool notions made into wisdom. They just had visions
which don’t come to common men. That’s what I’ve got now, and what I ask
is, _Ain’t I in their class?_”
“If I was in your place I wouldn’t mind, Grandpa,” said Mary, as she
shook out that great hoopskirt. “That’s not good talk for boys; it makes
them discontented!”
“But that’s why they’ve got to be if the world is going ahead,” put in
Grandpa. “What’s the matter with farming today, I’ll ask? Education has
all gone to other things. Farmers think the common schools are plenty
good enough for farmers, while the colleges are all for lawyers and
such like. You mark what I say—some day or ’nuther there will be _farm_
colleges as big as any, where farming will be taught just like lawing or
doctoring. Then people will see that farming is _agriculture_, and the
difference between the two will change the world. This Ugeeny doesn’t
amount to much as a woman, and I don’t believe this Prince Imperial will
ever rule France, but Ugeeny has put women like Mary _in her class_.
These clothes look foolish to me, but every woman who follows Ugeeny in
dress gets into her class, and it’s like a schoolgirl passing from one
grade to another, for some day they’ll pass out of that hoopskirt and
that bob net for their hair and rise up to better things, and it will
be Ugeeny that started them. She may be only a painted doll, but she
has given the women ideas of beauty and something better than common.
Sometime or ’nuther you will see the result of her idle life. That’s
why I say Mary’s in Ugeeny’s class. She’s got the vision of beauty and
something far ahead of you, John. You are smart and strong, but Mary’s
getting _class_. That hoopskirt and that net are not prisons—they help to
set her free.”
“Well, Grandpa,” said John, good-naturedly, “I suppose, according to you,
I ought to put on a swallow-tailed coat every time I milk.”
“No; not when you milk, John, but if you shaved every day and put on your
best clothes once a day for supper, you would get in the upper class,
and carry your boys with you. But I ask this boy here, _ain’t I in their
class_?”
I was sure of it, but just then we heard the horn sounding far down the
road. I knew that Uncle Daniel had grown tired of waiting for the milk,
so he blew the horn to remind me that I was still in the class of errand
boys.
In August of that year I went up on Black Mount after huckleberries,
and ran upon Grandpa once more. He sat on a rock resting, while Mary and
three children were picking near by. The hill was thick with a tangle of
berry vines and briars, with snakes and woodchucks as sole inhabitants.
Old Grandpa sat on the rock and waved his stick about.
“In my younger days this hill was a cornfield. I have seen it all in
wheat. Farmers let education and money get away, and, of course, the
best boys chased out after them. But it won’t always be so. Some day or
’nuther this field will come back. It won’t pay in these coming days to
raise huckleberries in this way. They will be raised in gardens like
strawberries and raspberries. This hill will have to produce something
that is worth more—peaches or apples.”
“But how can they make peaches grow on this sour hill, Grandpa?” asked
one of the boys. “There’s a seedling now—10 years old and not four feet
high!”
“They will bring in lime for the soil as they will coal in place of wood.
I don’t know how it will be done, but some day or ’nuther they will use
yeast in the soil as they do in bread to make it come up, and they’ll
harness the lightning to ’lectrify it. You wait till these farm colleges
give us knowledge. And farmers, too. They won’t always stand back and
fight each other and backbite and try to get each other’s hide. Some day
or ’nuther grown-up men and women are going to see what life ought to be.
They will come together to live, instead of standing apart to die. I may
not see it, and people laugh at me for saying what I know must come true.
But didn’t they laugh at Columbus? Didn’t they try to kill Galileo?
Wasn’t Morse voted a fool? Hasn’t it always been so with the men and
women who looked far over the valley and saw the light ahead? And, tell
me this: _Ain’t I in their class?_”
That was 50 years and more ago. I had forgotten it, and yet when I read
the headlines announcing the death of Empress Eugénie I had to put the
paper down, for there rose before me a picture of that sunny Summer day
on the New England hills. On the rock in that lonely pasture sat old
Grandpa pointing with his stick far across the rolling valley, far to the
shadow on the distant hills, where he knew the immortals were awaiting
him—as one who had kept his soul clean and his faith undimmed. I wish I
could look across the valley to the distant hills with the sublime hope
with which he asked his old question:
“_Ain’t I in their class?_”
A year or two ago I went back to the old town. Ah, but if Grandpa could
see it now! The old house with its “beau” windows and new roof seemed
to be dressed with as much taste as Eugénie would be if she were still
Empress of France. There were power and light and heat all through it.
Two boys and a girl were home from an agricultural college—one of the
boys being manager of the local selling organization. Black Mount was a
forest of McIntosh and Baldwin apple trees, the old swamp was drained and
lay a thick mat of clover. Grandpa’s vision had come true—all but one
thing. Education and power had brought material things, which would have
seemed to be miracles to John and Mary. Yet farmers were not “kings,”
after all, as Grandpa said they would be, for there was still discontent
and talk of injustice. But, after all, that is what Grandpa said—“That’s
what they’ve got to be, if the world is going ahead.”
Perhaps, after all, a “divine discontent” is the noblest legacy of the
ages.
But in the churchyard back in one corner I came upon Grandpa’s grave. It
was not very well cared for. It had not been trimmed. A bird had made
her nest and reared her brood right by the side of the headstone. It was
a lonely place. As I stood there a cow in the adjoining pasture put her
head over the stone wall and tried to gnaw the grass on that neglected
grave. And this was what they had carved on the stone:
“_The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away!_”
If I could have my way I would put up another stone with this inscription:
GRANDPA.
“_He has entered their class._”
“I’LL TELL GOD”
Just at this time many people seem to be concerned about what they call
“the unseen world.” That means the state of existence after death. Many
of our readers have written asking what I think or know about this. Most
of those who write me seem to be living in lonely places or under rather
hard conditions. They have all lost wife or husband, parent, child, or
some dear friend. Now like most other reasoning people, I have tried to
imagine what really happens to a human being after what we call death,
and I have had some curious experiences which you might or might not
credit. When I was a boy, I was thrown much into the society of avowed
spiritualists. I knew several so-called “mediums” and attended many
“séances.” The evident clumsy and vulgar “fakes” about most of those
things disgusted me, yet I must admit that some of these “mediums” did
possess a strange and peculiar power which I have never been able to
understand.
Most of these sincere “mediums” seemed to be people who had suffered
greatly and had carried through life some great affliction or trouble
over which they constantly brooded. I have come to believe that the blind
and deaf and all seriously afflicted see and understand things which most
others do not. An afflicted person is forced to develop extraordinary
power in order to make up for the loss of the missing limb or organ or
faculty. The blind man must learn to see with his fingers and his ears.
The deaf man must hear with his eyes or develop a sort of quick judgment
or instinct of decision. The man plunged into grief or despondency at
the loss of fortune, friends or health must rise out of it through some
extraordinary development of faith and hope and will-power. Someone has
said that the blind or deaf man is “half dead,” and in his efforts to do
anything like a full man’s work in the world, he must borrow power from
the great “unseen world.” For example, I will ask you this question: Take
a woman like Helen Keller, without sight or speech or hearing. Take a man
who is totally deaf and also blind—_how would they know physically when
they are dead_? I think I can understand why it is that real advancement
in true religion and Christian thought has for the most part been made by
some “man of sorrows,” or people who through great affliction have been
forced to go to the “unseen world” for help!
Years ago, in a Western State, there lived a farmer. I do not know
whether he is living now or not. Perhaps he will read this. Perhaps he
has gone into the silent country to learn what influence the little
child had with the Ruler of the universe. This man was deaf. Through
long years, his hearing had slowly failed and its going left a dark
discouragement upon him. He owned his farm and was moderately well-to-do.
A hard worker and honest man, he went about his work mechanically,
through habit, with a great hunger in his heart. He did not know what it
was; a longing for human sympathy and love. His wife was a good woman
but all her childhood had been starved of sympathy and poetry and she
could not understand. She made her husband comfortable and loved him
in her strange, inexpressive way, but it is hard, after all, to get
over the feeling that the afflicted are abnormal and strange. They had
no children, their one little girl had died in babyhood. Sometimes at
night you would see the deaf man standing in the barnyard at the gate,
looking off over the hills to the west where the clouds were glorious
in the sunset. And his practical wife would see him standing there with
the empty milk pail on his arm. She could not understand the vision and
glory, the message from the unseen world which filled her husband’s soul
at such times. So she would go out to the barnyard, shake her dreaming
husband by the arm and shout in his ear:
“_Wake up and get that milking done._”
She meant well, and her husband never complained. She meant to save his
money, but he knew in such moments that money never could pay his passage
off through the purple sunset to the “unseen land.”
Some day, I think I will tell some of the “adventures in the silence,”
which fall to the daily life of the deaf man. One Saturday afternoon
this man and his wife drove to town together. While his wife was doing
her shopping the man walked about to meet some of his old friends. As he
stood on the street, a sharp-faced woman came out of the store followed
by a little child. It was a little black-haired thing with great brown
eyes which carried the look of some hunted wild animal. A poor thin
little thing with a shabby dress and tattered shoes. As she passed, the
child glanced up at the farmer and saw something in his face that gave
her confidence, for she smiled at him and held out her little hand. The
woman turned sharply and the frightened child stumbled over a little
stone.
“You awkward little brat,” shrilled the woman, “take that,” and with her
heavy hand she slapped the thin little face. Then something like the love
of a lioness for her cub suddenly started in that farmer’s heart. Many
fool jokes have been made about “love at first sight,” but it is really
nothing short of a divine message when two lives are suddenly welded
together forever. Under excitement, the deaf are rarely dignified, but
they are strangely and forcibly emphatic. The woman quailed before the
roar of that farmer and the little girl ran to him and held his hand for
protection. A crowd gathered and Lawyer Brown came running down from his
office.
“I want this child,” said the farmer. “You know me; get her for me.”
It was not very hard to do. The woman had married a man with this little
girl. The man had run away and left her (I do not much blame him), and
this “brat” had been left on her hands.
“Take her, and welcome,” said the sharp-faced woman. “A good riddance to
bad rubbish.”
So Lawyer Brown fixed it up legally and the deaf man walked off to where
his wagon stood, with the little girl hanging tight to his big finger.
When the woman came with her load of packages, she found her husband
sitting on the wagon seat with the little girl sitting on his lap. She
had found that she could not make him hear, so she just sat there
looking into his face, and they both understood. But the good woman did
not understand.
“What do you mean by picking up a child like you would a stray kitten?
Put her down and leave her here.”
But that was as far as she got. Her husband looked at her with a fierce
glare, and there was a sound in his throat which she did not like. I can
tell you that when these good-natured and long-suffering men finally
assert themselves, there is a great clumsy force about it that cannot be
resisted. And when they got home and the little child sat up at the table
between them, something of mother-love stirred in the woman’s heart. She
actually tried to kiss the little thing, but the child trembled and ran
to the farmer and climbed on his knee. The woman paused at her work to
watch them as they sat before the fire, and something that was like the
beginning of jealous rage came into her heart, for it came to her that
this little one had seen at once something in her husband’s life and soul
that _she_ had not been able to understand.
There was something more than beautiful in the strange intimacy which
sprang up between the deaf farmer and the little girl. In some way she
made herself understood and she followed him about day by day at his work
or on his lonely walk of a Sunday afternoon. You would see her riding
on the wagon beside him, standing near as he milked, or holding his
finger as he came down the lane at sunset. On a sunny Sunday afternoon,
you might come upon them sitting at the top of a high hill with the
old dog beside them, looking off across the pleasant country. And as
the shadows grew longer, they would come home, the farmer carrying the
little one, and the old dog walking ahead. I cannot tell you the peace
and renewed hope which the little waif brought to that farmer’s heart
through the gentle yet mighty force of love. And the farmer’s wife would
look out of the window and see them coming. She could not walk with
her husband through lonely places and make him understand, because she
had never learned how. Yet the little one was drawing the older people
closer together and was showing them more of the greatest mystery and the
greatest meaning of life. But there came a Sunday when the little one
could not walk over the hills. The day was bright and fair, the farmer
stood looking at the cool shadows of the blue pines sadly and the old
dog put his head on one side and regarded his master curiously. They
could both hear the voice of the hills calling them away. And the voices
came to the little one, hot and weary with fever, tossing on her little
bed upstairs. The doctor shook his head when they called him in. The
child was done with earthly things,—surely called off into the Country
Unseen just as love and home had come to her. The farmer went up into the
sick-room where his wife sat by the little sufferer. This man had never
regarded his wife as a handsome woman, but he was startled at her face as
she bent over the child. For at last in the face of death and sacrifice,
love had really come to that woman’s lonely heart, and the joy of it
illuminated her face like a lamp within.
The farmer was left alone with the child. She knew him and beckoned him
to come near and moved her lips to speak. The man lay on the bed beside
her and put his ear close to the little mouth, but try as he would, he
could not hear her message. I suppose there can be no sadder picture in
the book of time than this denial by fate of the right to hear the last
message of love from one passing off into the long journey from which
there comes no report. Hopeless and bitter with disappointment, the man
found pencil and paper and a large book and gave them to the child.
Sitting up in bed with a last painful effort the little one painfully
wrote or printed a single sentence and gave it to him with her little
face aflame with love. He hid the note in his pocket as his wife and the
doctor came in—for the message from the unseen world seemed to him too
sacred for other human eyes.
The woman watched her husband closely and wondered why he felt so
cheerful as the days passed by. The little one was no longer with him,
yet he went about his work with cheerfulness and often with a smile.
She could not understand, but now and then she would see him take from
his pocket an envelope, open it and read what seemed to be a letter. He
would sometimes sit before the fire at night, silent and thoughtful.
As she went about her work, she would see him take out this mysterious
letter and read it over and over, as one would read a message from a
friend very dear of old and happy days. And she wondered what it could
be that brought the happy, beautiful smile to his face, and then there
came the time when one evening in June the sun seemed to pass behind
the western hill with royal splendor. It seemed as if there had never
been such gorgeous coloring as the western sky put on that night, and the
practical wife looked from her back-door and saw her husband standing in
the barnyard gate like one in a glorious vision. The cows stood in the
lane, the empty milk pail hung on a post, yet the farmer stood gazing
off to the west unheeding the call to his work. And as the woman waited
she saw her dreaming husband take that mysterious letter from his pocket
and read it once more. She could see the look of joy which spread over
his face as he read it. And this plain, practical woman, moved by some
sudden impulse, walked down to the gate and put her hand gently on her
husband’s shoulder. He started out of his dream and looked guiltily at
the empty milk pail, but she only smiled and pointed to the paper he had
in his hand. He hesitated shyly for a moment, and then he passed it to
her. It was just the scrawl which the little child had written after her
failure to make him hear. It was the last message from one who stood on
the threshold of the unseen country, and was permitted to look within.
And this was what the woman read, written in straggling childish letters:
“_I’ll tell God how good you are._”
And the shy, unresponsive man and woman, starved of love and sympathy
through all these years, standing in the lonely silence of that golden
sunset knew that God’s blessing had fallen upon them out of the unseen
country through the influence of that little child.
A DAY’S WORK
“Well, boys, I’m going to quit and call it a day!” As the Hope Farm man
spoke he got up from his knees in the strawberry patch and proceeded to
straighten out his back. It was half past four on Saturday, September 4.
Our week’s work was done—all but the chores. Our folks had picked and
packed and shipped four big truckloads of produce, with a surplus of
nearly 100 bushels of apples and 60 baskets of tomatoes ahead for next
week. This in addition to regular farm work—and one day off fishing for
the boys. It does not seem possible that September has come upon us! I do
not know how she even got here—yet the big hand on the clock’s calendar
points to that date. When the foolish finger of “daylight saving” appears
on the clock we can discount it, but there is no discounting the mark on
the calendar. That is like the finger of fate. Yet it seems out of date.
We have not finished picking Gravenstein apples. In former years Labor
Day found us clearing up the McIntosh. This year we have not even touched
them! Last year the Mammoth sweet corn was about cleaned out in August.
Now we are beginning to pick. The season and the calendar are fighting
this year. Now if they will both turn in and hold Jack Frost up for a
couple of weeks later than usual we will forgive the season.
This morning I took this strawberry job from choice—surely no one
else wanted it. Thomas had not come back from his night on the market.
Philip cleaned up the chores, while the rest went to picking apples and
tomatoes. My daughter goes across the lawn with 100 or more chickens
at her heels. They are black Jersey Giants and R. I. Reds going to
breakfast. Out on the cool back porch Mother is playing the part of
family “Red.” That is, she is canning tomatoes. This porch is screened
in, and there is an oil stove to put heat into the canning outfit. The
lady is peeling a basket of big red fruit; her hands and arms are well
smeared with the blood—not of martyrs, but of tomatoes! This job of mine
would make one of those model gardeners too disgusted for comment. We set
out the strawberry plants in April, in rows three feet apart, the plants
two feet in the row. The soil is strong, and we wanted to push it hard.
So in part of the patch we planted early peas between the rows, and in
the rest early potatoes. The theory of this plan is sound enough. You get
a big crop of peas and potatoes, and take them out in time for the berry
plants to run out and cover the patch. In practice this does not always
work. While the pea and potato vines stood up straight we kept the patch
clean. Then came a time when these vines fell down and refused to get up.
Then came the constant rains and the crab grass, and weeds came from all
over to seek shelter under these vines. Before we could interfere the
patch was a mass of this foul stuff, and the long rains kept it growing.
The richness of the soil delayed ripening of the potatoes, and by the
time we got them out the strawberry plants seemed lost in the tangle.
Here I am cleaning up this mess. Most of the work must be done with the
fingers—a hoe would tear up too many runners. You have to get down on
your knees and pull. As I crawl across the patch I leave a pile of weeds
behind me like a windrow. I hold up my fingers and it seems surprising
that they are not worn down at least half an inch. If I had kept those
peas and potatoes out of here the berries would be far better, and I
would not have this crawling job. I am not to be alone here after all.
That big black chicken leaves his crowd on the lawn and comes over here
to scratch beside me. The Jersey Giants are very tame and enterprising.
This one stays right at my elbow for hours—the only member of my family
to take this job from choice. He will have all the worms I can dig out!
There is a rattle and a sputter on the driveway and the truck comes
snorting into the barnyard. At the same time Tom and Broker, the big
grays, come down the hill with a load of apples. Tom scents the gasoline
and pricks back his ears with a snort. You can see him turn his head as
if talking to sober old Broker:
“That fellow thinks he’s smart, but what fearful breath he has! For years
we went on the road like honest horses and did all the marketing on the
farm. Why does this man keep such a great awkward thing around? It may
have speed, but I’ll bet it eats him out of house and home!”
“Well, now,” said old Broker, “every horse to his job. Working right on
this farm is good enough for me. Let that truck do the road work, says I.
No place like home for an honest horse like me.”
“Not much. I like a little life now and then. I want to get out on the
road among horses and see what is going on. That great, lazy, smelling
thing has got us farm-bound where nobody sees us or knows what we are
doing. And look at the gasoline that thing eats up, and its keep—my
stars!”
“Well, you have something of an appetite yourself. A gallon of oats costs
something, too. I’ll bet this man can’t feed and shoe and harness you for
less than $200 a year! Let’s be glad this thing takes some of the work
off our shoulders!”
“But I saw this man’s bill for repairs”—but there came a jerk on the
lines and “Get up!” and Tom put his mighty shoulders into the collar and
pulled the load up to the shed, while the truck with a snort that sounded
like a sneer moved on into the barn—just as if a repair bill for $273 was
a very small matter.
Thomas was tired—as you might expect after a night on the market. The
load sold for $106.95. It was a mixture of corn, apples and tomatoes.
That looks right at first thought, but one year ago the corresponding
load of about the same class of goods brought $143. That is about the
way they have gone this season. Our prices are certainly lower, and
every item of cost is higher. There can be no question about that, yet
our friends who buy food are paying as much as they ever did. But for
the truck we would be worse off than we are now. We never could handle
our crop with the horses. It is more and more necessary to get the goods
right into market promptly and with no stop. While the truck has become a
necessity, let no man think that it works for nothing. Old Tom is right
in saying that I have a bill for $273 for refitting the truck this year
and putting it in shape for the season. That item alone will add quite
a few cents to the cost of carrying each package. Some of the smaller
farmers on well-traveled roads are selling at roadside markets. This is
a hard life, and includes Sunday work, and I understand that for some
reason people are not buying such goods as they did. The retail trade is
rarely satisfactory when one produces a fairly large crop. I think the
plan for the future will mean a combination of farmers to open a store in
the market town and retail and deliver their own goods co-operatively.
My back feels as if there were three hard knots in it. I must straighten
them out by a change of occupation. I am going up on the hill to look at
the apple picking for a time. Little Rose, barefooted and bareheaded,
dressed in a pair of overalls, trots along with me. She eats two tomatoes
on the way up, and then I find her a couple of mellow McIntosh. The dirt
on the tomatoes has been transferred to her little face, and I think some
of it follows the apple into her mouth. Oh, well, these scientists will
probably find vitamines in dirt before they are done. We are picking
Gravensteins today—big rosy fellows—some of the trees running 15 bushels
or more. I planted a block of these trees as an experiment. Now I wish I
had more of them. The last lot brought $5.25 per barrel. I do not care
much for them for eating, but as baking apples they sell well. This year
any big apple brings a fair price. For instance, that despised Wolf River
has been our best seller. The boys own several trees of Twenty Ounce,
which are bringing about $20 per tree this year. Cherry-top is going to
Paterson this afternoon to put some of his apple money into a bicycle. I
have told in past years how I gave my boys a few bearing apple trees and
how they have bought others. These trees have given surprising returns.
The larger boy is just starting for college, and his trees will go a long
way toward paying expenses. The objection to giving such trees or selling
at a low price is that the boy finds the income very “easy money.” It
would be better for him to plant the young tree and stay by it till it
comes in bearing. The only chemical I know of for extracting character
out of money is warm sweat. I’d like to spend the day on the hills—here
in the sunshine with the apples blushing on the trees and the grapes
purpling on the walls and the clouds drifting over us. But that would
never clean up those strawberries, and so little Rose and I go down on a
load of apples—big Tom and Broker creeping down the steep hillside as if
they realized that here was a job which the truck could not copy.
I got at those weeds once more. Philip had carried several bushels to the
geese, and these wise birds make much of them. The big sow, too, stands
chewing a big red root as a boy would chew candy. Nearby on a grassy
corner little Missy has been tied out. She is a very proud little cow,
for just inside the barn her yellow daughter lies in the straw—pretending
to chew her small cud. We shall have to call this young lady Sippi to
complete her mother’s name. Missy has given us a taste of real cream
already. But here is a pull at my shoulder, and little Rose, her face
washed and hair brushed, comes to lead me in to dinner. There will be 14
of us today. I wish you could make it 15. The food is all on the table,
so we can see what there is to start with. Have some of this soft hash.
That means a hash baked in a deep dish, with considerable liquid in it.
You may think we live on hash, but a busy Saturday is a good time for
working up the odds and ends. Then you can have boiled potatoes, boiled
beets, sweet corn, tomatoes, bread and butter, baked apples and all the
milk you want. We are all hearty eaters, and I figure that if I took my
family to the restaurant in the city where I sometimes have my dinner,
the bill would be about as follows:
Hash $4.20
Potatoes 1.40
Beets 1.40
Sweet corn 3.60
Tomatoes 1.40
Milk .90
Bread and butter 1.40
Baked apples 2.30
-----
$16.60
That is a very low estimate of what this dinner would cost us. Now what
would a farmer get at wholesale for what we have eaten? Not quite $1.30
at the full limit. Last week I ordered a baked apple and was charged 30
cents for it! But no matter what this dinner would cost elsewhere, it
is free here, and I hope you will have another baked apple. Try another
glass of milk. Our folks have a way of pouring some of that thick cream
in when they drink it.
That dinner provided heart and substance to all of us. I am back at those
berries, and Philip has come to help me. Our folks have stopped picking
apples for the day and will cut sweet corn fodder—where the ears have
been picked off. That will have to be our “hay” this winter. The women
folks and a couple of the boys have started for town to do a little
shopping. Philip and I have a pile of weeds here as large as a henhouse,
and the strawberry plants as they come out of the tangle look better than
I expected. A car has just rolled in with a family after apples. One
well-groomed young man is viewing me appraisingly over his glasses. He is
talking to the soft, fluffy young woman at his side. “Is _that_ the Hope
Farm man? A rather tough-looking citizen! Why does he do that very common
work? He ought to hire that job done and get up out of that dirt!”
This young man will never know what it will mean next Spring when the
vines are full of big red berries to know that he saved them and with his
own labor turned them from failure to success. He probably never will
know any such feeling—and that is his misfortune. This weed-pulling gets
to be mechanical. It doesn’t require much thought and I have a chance to
consider many things as we work. A short distance away is that patch of
annual sweet clover. The plant we have been measuring is now 60 inches
tall and still growing. The plants are seeding at different dates—some of
them earlier than others. What a wonder this clover will be for those of
us who have the vision to make use of it.
But my day’s work is over—I’m going to adjourn. I am quite sure that I
could have picked 50 bushels of Gravenstein apples from those low trees
instead of working here, but this seemed to be my job for the day. What
now? I’m going to make an application of hot water and get this soil off
my hands and arms, shave, put on some clean clothes and take my book out
on the front porch until the girls come home. What book? Well, I found in
an old bookstore a copy of James G. Blaine’s “Twenty Years of Congress.”
As I had just read Champ Clark’s book I wanted to read Blaine’s. I can
well remember when about 40 per cent of the people of this country
considered James G. Blaine a hero. The trouble was that about 60 per cent
thought otherwise. His book is a sound and serious discussion of the
legislation which covered the Civil War and 20 years after. As I worked
here today I have been thinking of what Blaine says of Senator Matt
Carpenter. This man was a brilliant student, but suddenly went blind.
For three years he sat in darkness. Yet this affliction proved a great
blessing, for he forced himself to review and analyze and prove what he
had read, so that when sight came back to him his reasoning powers were
remarkable. This book contains the best statement I have ever read of the
reasons for trying to impeach President Andrew Johnson, and how and why
the effort failed. What’s that got to do with farming? Well, I think the
political events which clustered around that incident came about as near
to smashing the Constitution and wrecking the Government as anything that
has yet happened. But here comes Cherry-top on his new wheel. He actually
got home ahead of the car. I must hurry, or our folks will not find that
literary reception committee waiting for them. Better come along with
me. I have some other books that will make you think, and I’ll guarantee
that thinking will do you more good right now than a day’s work.
PROFESSOR GANDER’S ACADEMY
Our Thanksgiving turkey this year will be a goose—or rather a pair of
geese. As you read this they will be browning and sizzling in the oven,
with plenty of “sage and onion” to stuff in the desired quality. They
will come to the table flanked by half a dozen vegetables and backed
by several big pumpkin pies. I shall resign the position of carver,
remembering my old experience with the roast duck and the minister. The
duck got away from my knife, and slid all over the table, ending by
upsetting the gravy in front of the minister’s plate. After the usual
objections Mother will apply the carving knife to the geese, secretly
proud of her skill as an anatomist. She can do everything with a roasted
goose except provide white meat. Since Nature decided not to implant that
delicacy in the breast of a goose, man cannot supply it. Therefore the
lady must content herself with brown meat. I’ll guarantee that most blind
men eating the white breast of a turkey and then the brown breast of a
goose would call for more of the latter. It is something like this rather
foolish preference for white-shelled eggs. Like “the Colonel’s lady and
Judy O’Grady,” they are sisters under the shell! Anyway, a goose, well
stuffed and roasted, is a thank-offering well suited to the Hope Farm
table.
No doubt as we pour the thick brown gravy over Mother’s generous slices
Mr. Gander will lead his family across the lawn and find something to
be thankful for. I have learned, this Summer, to have great respect for
Gander and his wife, the gray goose. Nature may have left the white
meat out of the goose in order to prepare a finer delicacy, but she put
an extra quantity of gray matter into the goose brain. It seems to me
that Mr. Gander and his able assistant are about the most successful
teachers of youth I have ever known. To many a learned educator I would
say, “Go to the goose, thou wise man, and learn how to train the young
for a successful life.” Take this young bird, whose meat is rapidly
disappearing from the Thanksgiving altar. Mother has scraped the bones
nearly clean. What little remains will be boiled out as soup. This bird
has lived what I may call an eminently successful life. He ends his
career in the highest place possible to be conceived of in the philosophy
of a goose. He was trained and educated from the start, and as I look at
Gander and goose on the lawn I cannot think of any human teachers who
have had any greater success in training their charges into just what a
man or woman ought to be.
In the Spring the gray goose selected a place in the old barn and laid 21
eggs. We rather expected more, but the goose was master of ceremonies.
She came back to the same place each day, and finally we found her there
hissing like the steam escaping from a broken pipe. It was her signal
that she was ready to serve as incubator. So we put 13 eggs under her
and eight more under a big Red hen. This big hen was a great failure as
a layer, but as nurse and incubator she had proved a wonder. She had
raised three broods of chicks with great success. Surely she ought to be
a better guide and teacher of youth than a young goose with her first
brood! If you were selecting teachers for your children would you not
choose those who have had experience? In due time, and on the same day,
the goose walked out with 10 goslings, while the Red hen sat on her nest
and compelled five to stay under her. The two broods kept apart. The
hen was evidently disappointed with the way the goose handled children,
and she punished her brood whenever they tried to mingle with their own
brothers and sisters. They all lived, but after about eight weeks I
noticed a strange thing. The hen’s brood, though eating the same food,
would average at least 30 per cent lighter than the goslings which ran
with the goose. There was no question about it—the hen’s charges were
inferior in size and weight and in “common sense,” or the art of looking
out for themselves.
There being no chance for an argument about it, I concluded that it was
very largely a matter of education, and we began to study the methods
of teaching employed by Mr. and Mrs. Gander and Mrs. Red Hen. The first
thing we noticed was the influence of the male side of the family. Roger
Red, the big rooster, paid no attention to his wife’s family. All he did
was to mount the fence and crow, or go gallivanting off after worms or
seeds. If one of the goslings got in his way he kicked it to one side and
gave not even a suggestion to his busy wife. He was like one of those men
who will not even wheel the baby carriage, but make the wife carry the
child. On the other hand, Mr. Gander was a true head of the family. He
kept right with the goose, brooded part of the flock at night, fought off
rats and even a weasel, and was ready to battle with a hawk or a cat. In
time of danger the rooster ran for shelter, but the gander stepped right
out in front of his brood with his wing extended like a prizefighter’s
arm, and that great bill open to nip a piece of flesh out of the enemy.
He taught his children to graze on weeds and grass. When anyone forgot to
feed them the gander wasted no time in complaint. He led his family right
into the garden, where they picked up their share. He led the goslings
through the wet grass and into the brook, where they cleaned out all the
watercress and weeds. On the other hand, the hen hung around the barnyard
and cried if breakfast did not come on time. She would not let her
children wade through the wet grass or get into the water, and she did
not know that a young goose can eat grass like a calf. The hen worried
herself insane when her family followed the natural instincts of geese
and headed for the brook.
Now, Mrs. Hen is not the first teacher who has failed to understand the
first law of education—to train a child properly you must understand
his natural instincts and tendencies and build upon them. For many
generations the hen has feared water, and has been taught that all
feathered young must be kept away from it. I have no doubt that a race
of swimming hens could be developed, provided the fear of water could
be taken from the mind of the hen. _For the hen must swim with her mind
before she can swim with her feet!_ I have seen many cut-and-dried
teachers as much afraid of the truth as this big Red hen was afraid of
water. At any rate, we learned why one set of goslings was far superior
to the other. One set had the benefit of father’s example and influence.
Their teacher knew from long experience just what a young goose ought to
know. The teacher knew that because she had been a goose herself, and
could remember her youth. The hen’s brood knew nothing of their father’s
example—no more than some little humans who only seem to know there is a
man in the world who claims to be the detached head of the family. The
hen’s goslings were brought up in one of these beheaded families. Their
teacher ranked as a successful educator, but as she had never been a
young goose herself she could not teach her children what they ought to
know. It was not unlike trying to make a blacksmith out of a poet, or
a drygoods salesman out of a natural farmer. These feathered children
were fed and warmed and defended, but they could not make perfect geese
because they were not trained to work out a goose job.
The result was clearly evident. The young geese under the hen were
undersized and fell into the hen character. After centuries of
domestication or slavery the average hen loses the independence of the
wild bird. Now and then a nobler specimen will feel some dormant brain
cell thrill within her, remember the freedom of centuries ago and fly
into the trees, but for the most part the modern hen is a selfish,
fawning, tricky creature. She drives her family away as soon as the
children become tiresome, and there is little or no real community
life among hens. When their usual food is not forthcoming all but a few
adventurous spirits stand slouching about waiting for help. Thus the
goslings were taught to fawn upon man for their food and reject their
brothers and sisters in the other brood. It was an unnatural life for a
goose, and these little ones could not thrive under such training. On
the other hand, Mr. Gander’s pupils were taught by an expert on goose
training. They were taught to swim, to bathe in the wet grass, to eat
grass or hay, to get out and find their own breakfast if man did not do
his duty. As a result they grew up with strong independence of character.
While the others might fawn and beg for food, the gander’s class were
taught to scorn such subservient behavior. And they were taught family
life and co-operation. While the hens separate and lead their selfish,
separate lives, the geese live in a group. There they go now in a solid
bunch across the lawn. Throw a stick into a flock of hens or let a dog
run at them, and they will scatter in all directions. Try the same with a
flock of young geese, and they will line up in solid array “all for each
and each for all.” I do not know of anything finer in the education of
geese or children than this thorough idea of co-operation. In the future
those groups which are taught like the geese will rule the nation. Those
which are taught to fear strange things or live the selfish life of a hen
will always serve. In other words, the future of this country depends on
its teachers and their wisdom? You are right!
But the real, final test of a goose’s education is made with the
carving-knife. Judging from the empty plates I think this one will
pass a good examination. If I am not mistaken this was one of the hen’s
goslings. When we saw that their teacher was a failure we put them into
Mr. Gander’s class. He looked them over and knocked them down with his
wing a few times. Then he put his wise head to one side as if to say:
“I’ll do my best with them. They have been spoiled, and I must take
some of the conceit out of them first. If the law forbidding corporal
punishment holds in New Jersey I will resign the task, because no
goose can ever live a successful life unless those foolish hen ideas
are whipped out of him. And another thing: I won’t have that Red hen
bothering around me. The influence of a foolish mother is the worst thing
a teacher has to contend with. I’ll try to make geese out of them, but
keep that hen away!”
The Red hen put up a great cry for a time. She ran out and called for her
“darling children” to leave those low companions. The goose took those
“darling children” right by the tail feathers and pulled them back. The
gander waddled up to the hen and took one nip which sent her squawking to
the barnyard, where the big rooster was challenging the world.
“I’ve been insulted!” she screamed, “and my dear children have been
stolen from me. If you have the courage of a mouse you will defend your
wife!”
“Where is he?” roared the rooster, and he started on a run for the
orchard. There was the goose with all her children at school, and right
in front was the gander with his great beak open and that right wing all
unslung for a blow. The rooster got within about six feet of him and
then halted. He didn’t like the looks of that sharp beak.
“Good-morning, Mr. Gander! I saw you over in the next field, and I came
to ask how the worms are running over there!”
As he went back the rooster, after the manner of husbands generally,
sought to pacify his wife.
“After all, your children are in a good school, and you will now have
more time for your neglected household duties. Nursing those children has
been a hard strain on you. Now for a little recreation!”
From my own experience I can testify that Professor Gander is right.
No one can train a child properly if the mother is foolish naturally,
and seeks to interfere with the child’s education. Those who undertake
to “take a child” into their family may well take heed from Professor
Gander. It were far better that such a child never saw his mother again.
She may easily ruin the life which she brought into the world.
But at any rate, this bird on the table was well educated to live the
perfect life of a goose. Have another slice! I know you can eat another
helping of this dressing. Pass back your plate. Of course I know Mother
would like to hold that other goose back for a later meal, but that is
not the true Thanksgiving spirit. Pass back for another slice and I will
use my influence with the housekeeper to carve the second goose. Its
education has been finished.
COLONEL O’BRIEN AND SERGEANT HILL
I imagine that most of us, at one time or another, expect to set the
world on fire. So we start what we consider a nice little blaze and stand
back to see it spread. For we think the world is as dry as a stack of hay
in a drought—only needing our little flare of flame to start it going. We
find the world more like a soggy swamp. It does not flare up—our little
blaze strikes the wet spots, and not having heat enough to dry out the
water it comes to an end. Missionaries who have been among the savage
tribes of Africa say that the most wonderful thing to the average savage
is the simple act of striking a match. These men and their ancestors
have for centuries obtained fire only after long and patient rubbing of
two sticks together. Often many hours of this laborious friction were
needed before they could obtain even a glow at the end of a stick, and
then nurse it into flame. Here at one scratch this “magic stick” produced
the effect of hours of hard toil! One savage stole a box of matches and
undertook to “show off” before his friends. He could start the little
flame of the match well enough, but he tried to make a fire out of big
logs or damp sticks, direct from the match. Of course, the little match
flame could only spread _to things of its own size_. You cannot jump
flame from a glimmer to a giant log unless the latter is full of oil or
gunpowder.
Two things have brought that to mind recently. My young friend, Henry
Barkman, came the other day with an oration which he was to deliver
before some political society. When a man is well satisfied with his
own literary production, he goes about shedding the evidence of his
admiration. When you come to be as old as I am, you will recognize the
signs. I knew Henry felt that he had produced a world-beater—one of those
great bursts of mental flame which every now and then set the world
on fire. Yet no honest person, except perhaps his mother or sister or
sweetheart, would imagine that society would stumble or even pause for
an instant at its delivery. Henry would deliver it with a loud voice and
many gestures, and then wait for the world to blaze up. When there was no
blaze he would feel that he had been casting pearls before swine, when in
truth he had thrown his match into a soggy pile of large sticks, where it
sputtered for a moment and then flickered out. Youth cannot understand
how long years of drudgery are required to split and splinter those big
sticks and dry them out with the fire of faith before the match can start
the blaze, and then in after years the man who throws in the match gets
the credit which belongs to the patient workers, who have been silently
splitting and drying the wood. I tried to tell Henry that when Lincoln
delivered his speech at Gettysburg few people realized that it was to
become a classic. A new generation with the power to look back through
the mellowing haze of the years was needed to give it a full place in
the American mind. Henry could not see it. When did youth ever know the
back-looking vision of age? It is a wise thing that youth must ever look
ahead.
I had all these things in mind as we came to the last lap of our journey
to Starkville, Miss. That pleasant town lies west of the Mobile & Ohio
Railroad—on a side road of its own. When I went there 37 years ago the
track wound on through what seemed like a wilderness, with here and there
a negro cabin. Now it seemed like one continuous stretch of farm villages
or blue grass pastures. In former years the streets of Starkville were
just ribbons of mud or dust, as the seasons determined. I knew a man who
came to town in November and bought an empty wagon. He could not haul it
home until the following April, so deep was the mud. Now the main street
was as smooth and solid as Broadway, and firm stone roads branched out
into the country in all directions. The streets were thickly lined with
cars. Here, as in Kentucky, I saw men riding on genuine saddle horses,
which shuffled quickly along like a rocking-chair on four animated legs.
It seemed like a moving-picture show taken from some old fairy tale, and
it is no wonder that the years fell away and I went back in memory to
those old days.
It was in 1883 that I was graduated at an agricultural college and went
down to “reform and uplift the South.” Since then I have heard the motive
or spirit of such a wildcat enterprise variously called “cheek,” “gall,”
“nerve,” “assurance” or “foolishness,” with various strong adjectives
pinned to the latter! Yet, looking back upon it now, I feel that while
perhaps all these terms were appropriate, they do not cover the essential
thing. I had a smattering of such science as could be taught in those
days. I had a great abiding faith in the power of education to lift
men up and set them free. A few years before I had given up the thought
of ever being anything except an ordinary workman, because I had had no
training which fitted me to do anything well. It seemed to me that the
agricultural college had given me almost the miraculous help which came
to the man with the darkened mind. Who could blame youth for feeling that
the great joy and power of education could actually remove mountains
of depression and trouble? I had been told that the chief assets of
Mississippi were “soil, climate, character and the determination of a
proud and well-bred race to train their hands to labor!” That was surely
in line with my stock of material assets, and so I came to set the South
on fire with ambition and vision.
Well do I remember the day I walked into the little brick building where
_The Southern Live Stock Journal_ was printed. Colonel O’Brien and
Sergeant Hill looked me over. Colonel O’Brien was tall and straight—every
inch a soldier. Sergeant Hill was short and fat. You would not think it,
but he was with Forrest when they captured Fort Pillow. Sergeant Hill’s
remark was:
“Another one of them literary cranks, I’ll bet.”
Colonel O’Brien was more practical.
“Come out and feed the press and then fold these papers.”
And almost before I knew it my job of uplifting the South was on. I
suppose you might call me a “useful citizen.” I fed the press, set type,
swept the office, did the mailing, acted as fighting editor, tried to
sing in the church choir, taught “elocution,” pitched baseball on the
town nine and filled columns of the paper with soul-stirring editorials.
At least, they stirred me if they had no effect upon any other reader.
Those were the days when living was a joy. Some days there would be a
little run of subscriptions and perhaps a big advertisement would come.
Now and then some ball club would come to town and our boys would send
them home in defeat and disgrace. These occasions were bright spots on
the calendar, but they were as nothing in the bright lexicon of youth to
the great editorials I ground out at that battered and shaky table in the
corner. Among other things I broke a labor strike in that town, alone and
unassisted. It was the talk of the town, but to me it seemed a very poor
thing beside the great editorial on “The South’s Future,” which I wrote
on that stormy day in Christmas week.
It comes back to me now as I write this. In those days everybody “knocked
off” during Christmas week and we printed no paper. Yet we all seemed to
come to the shop a few hours each day as part of our “holiday.” It was
cold and wet, with mud nearly to your hips. Colonel O’Brien had started a
fire in the fireplace, and he and Sergeant Hill stood before it smoking
their pipes and telling war stories. Colonel O’Brien was telling how he
heard the soldiers around their fires at night saying it was “a rich
man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” Sergeant Hill told about the Indian
who went after the molasses and glue to make into printer’s rollers, and
how in consequence the Yankees captured the printing outfit. I must tell
you that story some day. And while these two old vets kept down on the
ground in thought I was up on the heights developing a glorious future
for the “Sunny South.” And at the last flourish of the pen I cleared
my throat and read it to these old soldiers. And, honestly, I did not
get the humor of it. These two men had given all they had of youth,
ambition, money and hope to their section. They must walk softly all
their remaining days amid the ruins and the melancholy of defeat. And
here was I without the least conception of what life must have meant to
the Southern people, with the enthusiasm of a boy, pouring out dreams of
a future which seemed even beyond the vision of an Isaiah. Great is youth
and glorious are its prophetic visions. At any rate, the old soldiers let
their pipes go out as they listened.
“Fine,” said Sergeant Hill. “Splendid. I reckon you’ll have us all in
Heaven 40 years hence?”
“Fine,” said Colonel O’Brien. “Fine. I hope I’ll be here to see it; but
today I saw that paper collector from New Orleans in town. We can’t pay
his bill. He’ll have to leave on the night train. Better shut up the
office.” And they tramped out into the mud, and I knew that as they
plowed up the street they were looking at each other as men do when
they feel a pity for some weak-minded lunatic who has stepped out in
front of the crowd with a thought or an act that is called unorthodox.
And I locked the door and sat before the fire polishing that editorial.
Collectors might pound on the door, paper and ink might run short—what
were these poor material things to one whose winged thoughts were to save
the country? Surely, I had it all planned out that night, and went home,
rising far up above the fog and rain, and bumping my head against the
stars! Do I not know just how Henry Barkman felt about his great oration?
Heaven give him the philosophy to endure with patience the day which
finally came to me when I had to realize that I was not an uplifter,
after all! And yet cursed be he who would, with a sneer, deny to youth
the glorious foolishness with which he
“Longs to clutch the golden keys;
To mold the mighty state’s decrees
And shape the whisper of the throne!”
And now, 37 years after, there is nothing left of all these dreams.
Colonel O’Brien and Sergeant Hill have answered the last call.
“They know at last whose cause was right
In God the Father’s sight!”
Old Sol, the black man who turned the press, has passed on with them.
Years ago _The Southern Live Stock Journal_ was absorbed by a stronger
publication. It is doubtful if in all the town or country you could find
an old copy of the paper. Those great editorials which I climbed into the
clouds to write were evidently too thin and light for this world. They
have all sailed away far from the mind of man. The little building where
we started the candle flame which was to burn up all the prejudice and
depression in the South seems to be occupied as a negro hotel or boarding
house. The little shop where (with Sol on the crank of the press and I
feeding in the papers) we turned out what we felt to be a mental feast,
is now a kitchen where cow peas, bacon and greens and corn bread form a
more substantial food than we ever served up in printer’s ink. It was no
longer a molder of public opinion.
“_To what base uses we may return, Horatio._”
And yet the sky was blue, the day was fair—the vision had come true. I
wished that Colonel O’Brien and Sergeant Hill might stand in front of the
old building and look about them. No longer a sea of mud, but smooth,
firm pavements. The sidewalks were lined with cars. Beautiful trees
shaded the streets, until the town seemed like a New England Village with
six generations behind it. Outside, stretching away in every direction,
was the thick, beautiful carpet of blue grass and clover. Here and there
was a young man in the uniform of the American Union. In the vaults of
the banks were great bundles of Liberty bonds. And a gray-haired man on
the street corner told me this:
“_You will find that the very States which sixty years ago tried to break
up the Union will, in the future, prove to be the very ones which must
hold it together._”
Yet let me tell Henry Barkman and the millions who felt as he did about
his oration, that no one in all that town remembered my former editorials
or the great work of the _Journal_. My literary work has been blown away
as completely as the clouds among which it was composed. At the end of
the great college commencement exercises a man came on the stage with a
great bunch of flowers and bowed in my direction. I am not much in the
habit of having verbal bouquets fired at me, but I will confess that I
thought: “Here is where my soul-inspiring editorial work is appreciated.
All things come round to him who will but wait.”
But this orator, like the rest of them, never dreamed that I ever tried
to “uplift the South.” He said I entered into the young life of the town
and was remembered with affection because I played baseball with skill
and taught that community how to pitch a curved ball!
And let me say to the Henry Barkmans who read this that the lesson of all
this is the truest thing I know. Many a man has gone out into life like
a knight on a crusade, armed with what he thinks are glorious weapons.
In after years people cannot remember what his weapons were, but he got
into their hearts with some simple, common thing which seemed foolish
beside his great deeds. Nobody remembered my brain children, though they
were embalmed in ink and cradled in a printing press. But I put a twist
on a baseball, overcame the force of gravity and made the ball dodge
around a corner, and my memory remains green for 40 years! Not one of my
old subscribers spoke of the paper, but seven of the old baseball club,
gray or bald, near-sighted or rheumatic, yet still with the old flame of
youth, got together.
I think you older people will get my point. For the benefit of Henry
Barkman and his friends perhaps I can do no better than to quote the
following:
“_God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise;
and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things
that are mighty._”
HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES
“_Then I began to think that it is very true which is commonly said, that
the one-half of the world knoweth not how the other half liveth._”
That was written by François Rabelais over 500 years ago. It is so true
that it has entered the language as a proverb, or “old saying.” We hear
it again and again in all classes of society. It is true that the great
majority of us has no idea of the life or the life ambitions of the great
world outside of our own little valley of thought. I suppose this failure
to understand the “other half” is one of the things which do most to keep
people apart and prevent anything like fair co-operation. It is the basis
of most of the bitter intolerance which has ever been used by the “ruling
classes” to keep the great mass of the people in subjection. Years ago
some old lord or baron would build a strong castle on a hill and make the
farmers for miles around believe that he “protected” them. Therefore,
they built his castle free, gave their sons for his soldiers, and toiled
on the land that he might live in idleness. And what did he “protect”
them from? Why, from another group of farmers a few miles away, who, in
like manner, were supporting another idle gang of cutthroats in another
strong castle. These two groups of farmers did not need to be “protected”
from each other. They had the same needs, the same wrongs and the same
desires. Left to understand each other and to work together, they would
have had no trouble, but would have led happier and far more prosperous
lives. As it was they did not understand “how the other half liveth,” and
thus they fought when they should have fraternized.
I find much of the same feeling between city people and farmers—consumers
and producers. They do not understand how “the other half liveth,”
and they find fault when they should from every point of economy work
together. Your city man thinks the farmer has a soft job, and that with
present high prices he is making a barrel of money. Either that or he
is a slow-thinking drudge—a sort of inferior being, who doesn’t know
any better than to carry the load which others strap on his back. He is
“the backbone of the country” all right in a political campaign—but the
backbone is merely a mechanical contrivance if you detach it from the
brain. And the average farmer regards the city worker or commuter as a
grafter—getting far more than he earns, and putting in short, easy days.
It isn’t all graft and ease by a long way. Many of these city workers
must travel miles to their jobs, and some of them put in longer hours
than the average farmer. Many of them save little or nothing, and the
wolf is always prowling around the door. Between these two classes it is
a case of not knowing “how the other half liveth,” and this failure to
understand has created a form of intolerance which separates two classes
about as the old barons separated the groups of farmers years ago.
And something of the same lack of tolerant understanding has separated
classes of farmers. The grain farmers, live-stock men, dairymen,
gardeners and fruit growers all think at times that they have the hardest
lot. The labor question, the markets or the weather all seem to turn
against them. For instance, the dairymen usually think their lot is
harder than that of others. They must work day after day in all sorts of
weather and under hard conditions. I know about this, for I have worked
on a dairy farm where conditions were very hard. Yet I also know that at
this season the average dairyman has a good job compared with the life of
the market gardener or fruit grower. On our own farm it has rained each
day and night for many days. Get into a sweet corn or tomato field and
pick the crop in a pouring rain, or pick early apples while the foliage
is like a great sponge. Then sort out and pack, load the truck and travel
through the rain to market, stand out in the rain and sell the load out
to peddlers and dealers, and then hurry back home for another round of
the same work. The fruit and vegetables are nearly as perishable as milk,
and must be rushed promptly away. The dairyman knows beforehand what
his milk will bring. The price may not be what he thinks is right, but
he knows for weeks or months in advance what he can surely expect. We
never know when we start what our stuff will bring. We must take what we
can get for perishable fruit. We know what we have already spent, and
what each load must bring in order to get our money back. Thus far corn
is about equal in price to last year, tomatoes are lower, apples are at
least 30 per cent lower, and so on. The dairyman has his troubles, but
let him follow this job for a month and he would realize that “there are
others.” In much the same way I can show that the potato men, the hay and
grain farmers, the sheep men and all the rest, have their troubles—and
hard ones at that. If farmers could only understand these things better,
and realize that there are thorns and tacks in every so-called “soft
job,” there would be greater tolerance in the world, and that is the only
thing that can ever lead to true co-operation and fair treatment.
Pretty much the same thing is true of business. We ran upon a strange
incident the other day. The city of Paterson, N. J., is a good market
town. Work is well paid and the workmen are free spenders. It is a city
of many breeds and races of men. On the market you will probably hear
more languages and dialects than were used on the Tower of Babel. A large
share of farm produce is distributed by peddlers—most of them of foreign
blood. They are shrewd and tireless workers. I never can see when they
sleep. Night after night they come on the market to buy produce, and day
after day—through heat and cold, rain or shine—you see them driving their
horses up and down the streets and lanes—always good-natured, always
with a smile. Well, we sold Spot, our black cow, to one of these men—an
Italian. Thomas had done business with him for some years. We had sold
him many goods—he had always paid for them. He made part payment for the
cow by giving about the most remarkable looking check I ever saw. It
was on a first-class bank made out in a straggling hand, and signed by
two names. We had passed several like it before through our bank, so I
deposited it, as usual. In a few days it came back unpaid.
Thomas and I went to Paterson that night to see what was wrong. I wish
some of you whose lives have been spent entirely in the country could
see how this “other half liveth.” This man lived on a side street. The
lower part of his house had been fitted as a little store. In the small
backyard were several milk goats, a small flock of chickens and a shed,
in which were two horses. Under a small, rude shelter of boards was old
Spot, chewing away at green cornstalks. The man was a big, pleasant-faced
Italian. You would mark him for an honest man on his appearance. There
was a brood of children—eight or nine, I should say—and a pleasant-faced
little wife, who carried the latest arrival around at her work. When
confronted with the protested check, this man merely smiled and waved his
hands. He could not read it! Two small boys—the oldest perhaps 12 years
of age—seemed to be the only members of the family who could read and
write English. They read the protest paper to their father and made him
understand. He only smiled and spread out his hands as people do who talk
with their shoulders. These two little boys had made out the check and
signed it for their parents. They either did not figure out their bank
balance, or figured it wrong. There was no attempt at dishonesty, and the
check would finally be honored. That seemed to be all there was to it.
These little boys, through the public school, represented all that these
older people know of the great business life of America.
I know a good many Americans whose pedigrees run back close to Plymouth
Rock. If some of them had let that check go in this way I should have
loaded old Spot right on the truck and carried her home. Thomas knew
this man and his reputation, and his way of doing business. He will pay,
and in a few days of peddling he will pad out his bank account and then
the check will go through. So we shook hands with him and came home. But
that is the way “the other half liveth.” This man and woman came to a
strange land too late in life to acquire a business education. They can
work and plan, but must depend upon those little boys to do business
which requires bookkeeping or banking. All the boys know about American
business is what they learn at the public schools. I wish you could have
seen the way that check was made out—yet any old piece of paper may be
worth more than a gold-plated certificate if there is genuine character
back of it. I am told that in most mill towns the banks carry a good many
accounts just like this one; in fact, a good proportion of the business
is conducted in about that way. It is said that some of the smaller
manufacturers do not keep any set of books which enable them to figure
their income tax! There are some men who could not buy a cow or a cat
from us on credit, while others could have what credit they need right on
their face and reputation.
There is another thing about this trade that will interest dairymen.
We found old Spot giving about 18 quarts of milk per day, on a feed of
green cornstalks and a little grain. This milk will sell for 18 cents,
at least. The cow can live in that little shed until the middle of
December, or about 120 days. In that time she will give 1,500 quarts or
more, which, at 18 cents, means $270, and she can then be sold for at
least $90 for beef! That makes $360 gross income for one cow in four
months. Her feed will be mostly refuse tops and stalks from vegetables
and a small amount of grain. She will be well cared for, carded and
brushed every day, and made comfortable. Thus not half the cows know “how
the other half liveth.” Someone will take these figures, multiply them by
25, and show what tremendous incomes our dairymen are making. The fact
is this man can keep just one cow at a profit. If he kept two the extra
cost of food would about eat up his profits. So we went whirling home
through the dusk, thinking that we had had a glimpse at a little of the
life of the other half, and it made me feel something more of charity for
my fellow men. When you come to think of what the American public school
means to that family, you realize the immense responsibility that goes
with education. We can hardly be too careful about what our schools teach
and how they teach it. I wonder how many of us, if we were transplanted
to some foreign land, would be willing to turn our business over to
our children and let them conduct it as they learned to do it from the
schools! I think we would all be more tolerant and reasonable if we would
let our children bring to us more of the spirit of youth and more of hope
of the future. The rain had stopped, the sky had cleared, the wind had
dried the grass, and on the lawn in front of the house our great army
of children were dancing and playing as if there were no such thing as
tomato rot, wet corn and low prices. I think that these handicaps would
have seemed much lighter if we could have gone out and danced with the
kids. I wonder where, along the road, we gave up doing that.
THE INDIANS WON
Thanksgiving is a time for physical feasting and mental fasting. By the
latter I mean trying to think out some of the problems of life which come
as a sort of shade when we remember all our mercies. A bunch of these
problems came up to me through a cloud of memories as I sat with my feet
on the concrete and my collar turned up.
It was a gray, raw, miserable day—good Indian weather as it turned out.
It seemed as if the sun had covered its face with a blanket in one of
those fits of depression when the impulse is to hide the face from human
eyes. Some 12,000 people were grouped—piled up tier above tier—around a
great field marked out with long white stripes. It was a cold crowd, for
all had their feet on a concrete floor. At one side a devoted little band
of college boys screamed and sang their songs, but for the most part this
great crowd sat cold-eyed and impartial. At one side of the field there
was a dash of bright color where a group of stolid Indians sat wrapped in
big red blankets. Just across from these was another group of men with
green blankets. Between them in the center of the field was a tangled
mass of 22 husky boys in red or green, all fighting for the possession of
a football.
Ah, a football game! What is this so-called farmer doing, wasting part
of the price of a barrel of apples when he ought to be at work? Of
course it is my privilege to say, “That’s my business if I want to,”
but I will answer by saying that I was renewing my youth and studying
human nature. You can’t improve on either operation for a man of my age.
Up some 250 miles nearer the Canadian line the boy had been one of the
1,000 yelling young maniacs who sent these green-clad boys down to meet
the Indians. He could not come, but he wrote me, “Be sure to see the
game; it will be _a peach_.” As a peach grower, I am interested in all
new varieties, and this certainly turned out to be one. It must be said
that these green-clad boys came down out of their hills with a haughty
spirit, wearing pride as conspicuously as they will wear their first
high hat. They had not lost a game, but had trampled over two of the
greatest colleges in the country. They represented the section where
the purest-bred white Americans are to be found. One more victory and
no one could deny their boast that they could stand any other football
team on its head. So they came marching out on the field, very airy, very
confident, and fully convinced of the great superiority of the white man!
I know very little about football. When I played it was more like a
game of tag than a human battering ram. Here, however, was a round of
the great human game which would make anyone thoughtful. Here were
representatives of two races about to grapple. The great majority of the
white thousands who watched them were unconcerned—for a New York audience
is composed of so many races and tongues that it has little sentiment.
All around me, however, there seemed standing up hundreds of swarthy,
dark men whose eyes glittered as they watched the game. You could not
realize how many there were with Indian and Negro blood until such a test
of the white and red races was presented. Then you began to realize what
a race question really means when the so-called inferior race gets a
chance to test its real manhood on terms of equality.
It would have made a theme for a great historian as these young men lined
up for the game. The whites trotted out confident and proud. Why not?
The “betting” favored them, their record was superior, as their race was
supposed to be. The Indians slouched to their places and shambled through
their motions, silent and without great show of confidence. It came to me
as not at all unlikely that a few centuries before the ancestors of these
boys had faced each other under very different circumstances. Francis
Parkman, the historian, tells of a famous battle in the upper Connecticut
Valley. The white settlers had built a stockade as protection against
roving bands of French and Indians. One day this fort was attacked by
such a band, which had come down the valley capturing prisoners and
booty. It was a savage fight, but the white men held their own, and
finally a Frenchman came forward with a white flag for a parley. He
actually offered to buy a supply of corn, as they were out of food, and
then to retreat. In that gray mist, with my feet on the concrete, I could
shut my eyes and see the ancestors of these football players. Stern
white men, gun in hand, peering over the stockade, and silent red men
creeping noiselessly out of the forest to pile up their booty in sight—as
price for the corn. The frost on the leaves told them that Winter with
all its cold and peril was approaching. Here were the necessities of
life—a tremendous bargain. Yet back in the shadow of the woods were the
captives—men, women and children—and the white settlers held out for
_them_. For at that time, if not now, New England _knew the value of a
man_ to the nation. He was far above the dollar, even though the women
and children would be a care and a danger.
In a way, something of the spirit of those grim old fighters lay in the
hearts of these green-clad boys who had come down from these historic old
hills. At that instant, at least, they, too, knew the value of a man. It
was expressed by their little band of singers and cheerers led by the
writhing “cheer leaders”—the glory and fame of the good old college on
the hill. You could not have bought one of these boys for $1,000,000.
On the other hand, these shambling and big-boned Indians seemed to have
something of the same spirit in their hearts. Silent and impassive,
they seemed for the moment to have cast off their college training and
gone back to the free, wild life, only carrying the discipline which
authority and college training had given them. I wonder if any of these
red men thought as they lined up on that field that it was the lack of
just this stern discipline which lost them this country and nearly wiped
out their race? Men fitted to play this game of football never would
have given away Manhattan Island, or permitted a handful of white men to
drive them from the coast. Over 1,000 men, each with the burning drop
of Indian or Negro blood in his veins, were hoping and praying that in
this modern battle the red men would humble the pride of Manhattan, as
their ancestors had lost the island. Out of the gray mist there seemed to
stride ghosts of stout Dutchmen and thin Yankees and silent, noiseless
Indians to watch this fairer combat.
At the signal the ball was kicked far down the field by a white man whose
ancestors may have come with Hendrik Hudson. It was caught by a red man,
whose ancestors may have been kings or chiefs while the white man’s
were European peasants. Back he came running with the ball to form the
basement of a pile of 10 struggling fighters, and the game was on. You
must get someone else to describe the game. I do not understand it well
enough. The two groups of players lined up against each other, and one
side tried to batter the other down, or send a man through with the ball.
Again and again came this fierce shock, and a strange and unexpected
thing was happening. The Indians had no band of singers or cheer leaders,
no pretty girls were urging them on, no pride of superior dominating
race, but silently and resolutely they were smashing the white men back.
It was hard. These boys in green died well. There was one light man who
took the ball and ran through the Indians as his ancestors may have run
the gauntlet, but they pulled him down. Inch by inch the white men were
battered back over the line. The air seemed full of red blankets, for
those substitutes at the side lines were back into the centuries coming
home from a season on the warpath. Yet the green singers yelled on and
shouted their defiance. Then the white men made a great rally and forced
the Indians back, grimly battling over the other line. At the end of the
first half the score stood 10 to 7, in favor of the white men. “It’s all
over,” said a man who sat next to me. “They will come back and trample
all over the Indians, for white men always have the endurance.” A man
nearby with a touch of bronze in his skin glared at us with a look in
his eyes that was not quite good to see. Back came the players, at it
again. There was great trampling, but of the unexpected kind. These
slouching and shambling Indians suddenly turned into human tigers, and
the plain truth is that they both outwitted and walked right over the
green-clad whites. There was no stopping them. All the cheering and
singing and sentiment and “race-superiority” went for nothing. For here
was where pride and a haughty spirit ran up against destruction, and
great was the fall thereof. Yet I was proud of the way these white boys
met their fate. They had been too confident, and had lost what is called
the “psychological drop” on the enemy. The Indians had them at the stake
with a hot fire burning, for no one knows what a victory right there
would have meant for the good old college far away among the hills. Yet,
face to face with fate, cruel, silent and relentless, those boys never
faltered, but fought on. I liked them better in defeat than in their airy
confidence before the game. When it was all over they got up out of the
mud of defeat and gave their college war cry. There may have been a few
cracked and corner-clipped notes in it, but it was fine spirit and good
losing. Nearby the Indians waved their blankets and gave another college
yell. And the 1,000 or more men with that burning drop of blood in their
veins went home with shining faces and gleaming eyes, with better dreams
for the future of their race. For they had made the white man’s burden of
superiority a hard burden to carry.
My football days are over. No use for me to tell what great things I did
30 years ago. This age demands a “show me,” and I cannot give it. If I
had my way I would introduce football, baseball, basketball, pushball
and all other clean and organized games into every country town. I would
organize leagues and contests and get country children to play. Do you
ever stop to think that work, long and continuous, for ourselves and our
children, has not taught us how to organize or use our forces together
as we should? It is true. _Organized_ play will do more to bring our
children together for co-operative work than anything I can think of.
It will give discipline, which is what we need. Two of these green-clad
boys stood an Indian on his head and whirled him around like a top. It
was part of the game. He got up good-naturedly and took his place in the
line. Imagine what his grandfather would have done! One white boy was
running with the ball and two Indians butted him, while another got him
by the legs. The boy simply held on to the ball. It was discipline and
training in self-control. Step on a city man’s foot in a crowded car
and he would want to fight. Our country people need such discipline and
spirit before they can compete with organized business. If I could have
my way I would have our country children drilled in just such loyalty to
the home town or district as these college boys displayed on the field.
Tell me, if you will, how it can be gained now in any way except through
organized and loyal play for our children. You know very well what I
mean. Work is an essential of life, and it must be made the foundation
of character. Organized and clean play is another essential, as I see it
now, and I think its development and firm direction is to be one of the
greatest forces in building up life in the country.
IKE SAWYER’S HOTEL
It was last year, as I recall it, at about this season, one of the
children asked me a strange question:
“_What was the thankfullest day you ever saw?_”
Now I have seen somewhere around 20,000 days come and go, and every one
of them has brought a dozen things to be thankful for. I sometimes think
as the hands crawl around the clock at Hope Farm that the day they are
recording right now is about the best of all. I have passed Thanksgiving
Day in the mud, in the snow, in a swamp, on a mountain, in a crowded
city, on a lonely farm—under about all the conditions you can mention. I
have given hearty thanks over baked beans, salt pork, bread and cheese,
turkey and all the rest, but before the fire tonight somehow they all
burn away except that experience in Ike Sawyer’s Hotel.
They were stuck in the mud—with a broken axle—in a swamp in Northern
Michigan. No one had dreamed of an auto in those days. You forded the
swamp and stream in the primitive old way. It was a rich, middle-aged
lumberman and his young wife. How this tough, hard pine knot of a man
ever selected this soft-handed and selfish girl I cannot see. She had
come with him into the woods on one of his business trips, and the
silence by day and the whispering of the pines at night had filled her
with terror. The rough, sturdy man suddenly saw that, unlike his first
wife, this girl was not a helper and a partner, but a toy—a hothouse
flower who could not live his life or help fight his battles. He had a
great business deal on hand which required all his energies, but this
girl could not understand or help him. She had begged and cried to go
back to “civilization,” and they were on their way. And in this lonely
place the axle of the carriage had snapped and left them in the mud.
It had been one of those gray, melancholy days which seem to fit best
into the idea of a New England Thanksgiving. Now twilight was coming
on and there were dark shadows in the swamp. The woman had climbed out
of the mud and stood on a log by the roadside. She had been crying in
her disappointment, for she had expected to reach the railroad that
night, and spend Thanksgiving in the distant city—far from this lonely
wilderness. Her husband was bargaining with an old farmer who finally
agreed to haul the broken carriage back to the blacksmith shop for
repairs.
“I’ve got entertainment for beast,” he said, “but not for man—so I can’t
put you up. Quarter of a mile down the road Ike Sawyer runs a sorter
hotel.”
He hauled the carriage out of the mud and started back along the road.
There was nothing for us to do but hunt for the hotel. You may have seen
some strong, capable man come to a crisis in his life where it suddenly
flashes upon him that the woman of his choice is after all made of common
clay, with little of that spirit or courage which we somehow think should
belong to the thoroughbred. It was a very doleful, unhappy little woman
and a sad and silent big man who walked through the mud and up the
little sand hill in search of the hotel. They had nothing to be thankful
for, and, yet did they but know it, they were to find the most precious
thing in life in this lonely wilderness.
Around a turn in the road we came in sight of a long, rambling
building, weatherbeaten and out of repair. Over the door was a faded
sign, “Farmers’ Rest.” On the little porch just under this sign sat a
white-haired woman in a wheel-chair. In front of the house a little man
with a bald head and a pair of great spectacles perched at the end of
his nose was chasing a big Plymouth Rock rooster about the yard. The old
people had not noticed us, and we stopped in the road to watch them. The
old man finally cornered the rooster by the garden fence and carried
him flapping and squawking to the old lady. She examined him carefully,
and evidently approved the choice, for the old man, still holding the
rooster, pushed the wheel-chair into the house and then, picking up his
ax, started for the chopping block just as we turned in from the road. We
startled him so that he dropped the rooster. The gray bird did not stop
to welcome us, but darted off into the shadows. He mounted the roost in
the henhouse from which the old man easily pulled him a little later.
You may have seen old pictures of country hotel-keepers bowing and
scraping as their guests arrive. Ike Sawyer could not play the part. He
just peered at us over his spectacles and rubbed his hands together.
“Walk right in,” he said. “Me and Annie can put you up.” Then he led
the way into the rambling old house. It was dark now, and the old man
lighted a lamp so that we could look about us. The old woman did not rise
from her chair, but she smiled up a welcome.
“Ain’t walked for 10 years,” explained her husband. “I play feet and she
plays hands, and between us we make out fine.”
The old man bustled about and started a fire in the big fireplace. The
young woman had entered the poor old building with an angry snarl of
discontent on her face. It was all so mean and hateful to be obliged to
stay in this lonely, dreadful place. As the fire blazed up and filled
the room with warm light, I noticed that the snarl faded out and she sat
watching the old lady with wondering eyes. She went to her room for a
moment, but soon came back to sit by the fire and watch the sweet-faced
old lady “play hands.” On the other side of the fireplace, silent and
strong, her husband sat watching his wife with eyes half closed under his
thick, bushy eyebrows.
I have seen the cook in a quick lunch counter stand in his little box and
toss food together, and I have seen a chef earning nearly as much as the
President daintily working in his great kitchen, but nothing will ever
seem to equal the way that meal was prepared when Annie played hands and
Ike played feet. Ike pushed a little table up in front of his wife, and
at her call brought flour and milk and all that she needed for making
biscuits. He stood beside her chair as the thin fingers did their work.
Now and then he laid his hand upon her shoulder, and once he touched her
beautiful head. As though forgetting her guests Annie would smile back
at him—a beautiful smile which brought a strange look to the face of the
young woman who sat watching them. At first it seemed like an amused
sneer. Then there came a puzzled, curious look—the first faint glimmering
of the thought that this old man and woman _out of their trouble, out
of their loneliness, had found and preserved that most precious of all
earth’s blessings—love_!
When a fellow has eaten more than 60,000 meals, as I have in my time, it
must be a very good performance in that line to stand out like a bump or
a peg in memory. Through all my days I can never forget that supper in
the fire-lighted room where Ike played feet and Annie played hands and
brains. Ike started a roaring fire in the kitchen stove. Then he brought
in a basket of potatoes and Annie selected the best ones for baking.
He came with a fragrant brown ham, and cut slices, under her eye, she
measuring with her thin finger to make sure they were not too thick. She
cut the bread herself, selected the eggs for frying, mixed the gravy
and seemed to know by the sputter in the pan when the ham was done. Ike
pushed her chair over to the table so she could spread the cloth and
arrange the service. Then at a word he pushed her chair to the window
where half a dozen plants were blooming. She cut two little nosegays and
put them beside the plates of her guests. Ike brought in the ham and
eggs, the great, mealy baked potatoes, the brown biscuits and the apple
pie. In her city home a servant would have approached the lady and gently
announced:
“Dinner is served!”
Ike Sawyer, when Annie nodded approval, simply invited:
“_Sit by and eat!_”
It was all so simple and human that it seemed a perfectly natural thing
to do when the discontented and peevish young woman picked up the little
nosegay at her husband’s plate and pinned it on his coat. She even patted
his shoulder just as Ike had done with Annie. We were all ready to begin,
when Ike, standing by Annie’s chair, took off his great spectacles and
held up his hand.
“I don’t know who you be or whether you’re church folks or not, but me
an’ Annie always makes every day a season for Thanksgivin’.”
Then in the deep silence with only the popping of the fire and the dim
noises of the night, as accompaniment, the old man bowed his head and
made his prayer. He prayed that the “stranger within our gates” might
find peace and strength and go on his way thankful for all the blessings
of life. Under those great bushy eyebrows the eyes of the strong, rich
man glowed with a strange light. The young wife glanced at him, and the
sneer faded away from her face. Then Ike became the landlord once more
and he bustled about, tempting us to eat a little more of this or another
piece of that, and at every word of praise falling back upon his stock
explanation:
“It’s her—Annie plays hands and I play feet. Everybody knows hands have
more skill than feet.”
After supper the big man and his wife stood at the window looking out
into the wet, dismal night. After a little hesitation he put his arm
gently around her. She did not throw it away as she did when he tried
to comfort her in the swamp, but rather pulled it closer. After Ike had
cleared up his dishes and caught and dressed the gray rooster we all sat
before the fire and talked. With a few shrewd questions the lumberman
drew out Ike’s story. Years before he and Annie had owned a good farm in
New York. There they heard of the wonderful new town that was to be built
in Northern Michigan. A city was to arise there, the railroad was coming,
and fortune was to float on golden wings over the favored place. It is
strange how people like Ike and Annie cannot see how much they need home
and old friends and old scenes to make life satisfying. They are not made
of the stuff used in building pioneers, but they cannot realize it and
they listen to plausible dreams and go chasing after the impossible. So
Ike and Annie sold the farm and came to start the great city. It never
started. The railroad headed 20 miles west. Out among the scrub oaks you
could find some of the rotting stakes marked “Broadway,” “Clay St.,” or
“Lake Avenue.” The swamp and forest refused to be civilized. Ike built
his hotel in anticipation of the human wave which would wash prosperity
his way. It never came, and only a rough, rambling house remained as the
weatherbeaten gravestone of Sawdust City. Of all the pioneers there were
only Ike and Annie—last of them all—celebrating their happy Thanksgiving!
“Why don’t you sell out and move to some town?” said the practical
lumberman.
“Well, sir—it would be too far from home! Me and Annie know this
place—every corner of it. Every crick of a timber at night brings a
memory. We are just part of the place. And the little girl is buried off
there by the brook. We couldn’t go away from that, could we?”
“But isn’t it so _awful_ lonesome?”
It was the young woman who asked, and it was Annie who softly answered
her.
“No, for we have great company. I have Ike and he has me. All these long
years have tried us out. We know each other, and we are satisfied. Each
Thanksgiving finds us happier than before, because we know that our last
years are to be our best years.”
The rich man looked over to Ike and Annie with something of hopeless envy
printed on his face. His wife nodded her head gently and then sat gazing
into the fire until Ike gave us clearly to understand that 10 o’clock was
the hour for retiring at the “Farmers’ Rest.”
We stayed for our Thanksgiving dinner, and the gray rooster, stuffed
with chestnuts and bread-crumbs, might well have stood up in the platter
to crow at the praises heaped upon him. The forenoon was gloomy and
dull, but just as we came to the table the sun broke through the clouds.
A long splinter of sunshine broke through the window—falling upon
Annie’s snow-white hair. Ike hurried to move her chair out of the sun,
but the rich man asked Ike to leave her there, for I think something
in that sunny picture took him back to childhood—where most men go on
Thanksgiving Day.
And shortly after dinner the farmer came up the road with the carriage.
The axle had been mended and the horses rested. We all shook hands with
Ike and Annie. I was to go my way and the other guests were to pass out
of our little world.
Annie held the young girl’s hand for a moment.
“My dear, I hope you will soon be back in the city among your friends,
where you will not be so lonely. It must be hard for you here.”
The girl hesitated a moment and then put her hand on her husband’s
shoulder.
“John, would it mean very much to you if we went right back to the camp
so you could finish your business?”
“Yes, it would—but I am afraid——”
“Then we will _not_ go home yet, but we will go back until you are
through. I have had a beautiful Thanksgiving. I would rather stay in the
woods.”
And so they turned in their tracks and went back through the swamp. The
night before she said she should always hate the place where the accident
had made Ike Sawyer’s hotel a necessity. Now as she passed it she smiled
and gave her husband a pinch—a trick she must have learned from Annie.
And so they went on through the sunny afternoon of the “thankfullest day
of their lives.” They were thinking of the working force at the “Farmers’
Rest”—the feet and the hands!
And the thought in their minds framed itself over and over into words:
“_Out of their poverty, out of their trouble and loneliness, this man and
woman have found each other, and thus have found the most beautiful and
precious thing in life—love!_”
OLD-TIME POLITICS
“What is the matter with this political campaign?”
An old man who can remember public events far back of the Civil War and
beyond asked that question the other day. He said this campaign reminded
him more of a Sunday school convention. Nobody was fighting, and very
few such epithets as “liar” or “thief” or “rascal” were being used. In
these days no one seems to care who is to be elected. We are all too
busy trying to pay our bills. The old man bewailed the loss of power and
interest in this generation. He thought this quiet indifference meant
that as a nation we have lost our political vigor. Having been through
some of those old-time battles, I cannot fully agree with him. It is
true that few people seem interested, yet they will vote this year, and
I think the quiet and thoughtful study most of them are making will
prove as effective as the big noise and excitement we used to have. We
are merely doing things differently now. Whether the great excitement
of those old political days made us better citizens is a question which
has long puzzled me. I know that in those nervous and high-strung days
we did many foolish things as a part of “politics.” On the other hand, I
wish sometimes that our people could get as thoroughly worked up over the
tribute we are paying to the profiteers as we did in those old days over
the tariff and the slavery issue.
I can well remember taking part in the campaign between Garfield and
Hancock. The Democrats felt that they had been robbed of the Presidency
in ’76, but as they failed to renominate Tilden the Republicans called
them quitters. I had dropped out of college for awhile to work as hired
man for a farmer in a Western State, and we certainly had a great time.
This farmer was an old soldier; he was a good talker and thought well of
his own exploits. When you found that combination 40 years ago you struck
a red-hot partisan. The man’s wife was a Democrat, because her father had
been. She was one of those small, black-eyed women who acquire the habit
of dominating things in the schoolroom and then concentrate the habit
when they take a school of one pupil in the home. Her brother lived on
the next farm. He had turned Republican because he wanted to be elected
county clerk. It was fully worth the price of admission to sit by the
fire some stormy night and hear this woman put those two Republicans on
the broiler of her tongue. They were big men, fully capable of holding
their own in any ordinary argument, but this small woman cowed them as
she formerly did her A B C pupils. It was enough to make any young man
very thoughtful about marrying a successful teacher to see this small
woman point a finger at her big husband and say:
“Now John Crandall, don’t you dare to say it isn’t the truth!”
And John didn’t dare, though from his political religion it might be a
base fabrication. One day, after a particularly hard thrust, John and I
were digging potatoes, and he unburdened his mind a little:
“I’ll tell you one thing: any man who marries a good school-marm takes
his life in his hands—his political life, anyway!” and he pushed his
fork into the ground as though he was spearing a Democrat! “And yet,” he
added, as he threw out a fine hill of potatoes, “sometimes I kinder think
it’s worth the risk.”
My great regret is that this lady did not live to celebrate the
Nineteenth Amendment! With the ballot in her hand she would have stirred
excitement even into this dull campaign!
We worked all day, and went around arguing most of the night during that
hot campaign. The names we had for the Democrats would not bear repeating
here. The other side went around with pieces of chalk, making the figures
“321” on every fence and building or on stones. That represented the sum
of money which General Garfield was said to have stolen. The Republicans
marched around in processions carrying a pair of overalls tied to a
pole, representing one of the Democratic candidates. Oh, it was a
“campaign of education” without doubt! And then Maine voted! John and his
brother-in-law had been playing Maine as their trump card.
“Wait till you hear from the old Pine Tree State. As Maine goes, so goes
the Union!”
John felt so sure of it that even his wife was a little fearful. The day
after the Maine election John and I were seeding wheat on a hill back
from the road. There were no telephones in those days, and news traveled
slowly—we were eight miles from town. In the late afternoon we heard
a noise from the distant road. There was Peleg Leonard driving his old
white horse up the road at full speed and roaring out an old campaign
song:
“Wait for the wagon! Wait for the wagon!
Democratic wagon, and we’ll all take a ride!”
The demand for prohibition in those days was confined to a few “wild-eyed
fanatics,” and Peleg was not one of them, especially on those rare
occasions when the Democrats got a chance to yell. We saw him stop in
front of the house and wave his arms as he told the news to Sarah.
“Looks sorter bad. Can it be that Maine has gone back on us?” said John
as he saw the celebrator go on his way.
We usually had a cold supper on such days, but now we saw the smoke
pouring from the kitchen chimney, and the horn blew half an hour earlier
than usual. John and I put up the horses, washed our faces at the pump
and walked into the kitchen as only two dejected Republicans can travel.
You see, it wasn’t so bad for the Democrats. They were used to being
defeated, and had made no great claims. I was young then, and youth is
intensely partisan. Since that day I have voted on four different party
tickets, and glory in the fact that I am not “hide-bound.”
Sarah had on her best black silk and the white apron with lace edges.
She had cooked some hot biscuit and dished up some of her famous plum
preserve and actually skimmed a pan of milk to serve thick cream.
“_Maine is gone Democratic!_” she cried. “_Hurrah for Hancock!_ Bread and
water’s good enough for Republicans in this hour of triumph, but I know
the fat of the land will taste like gall to both of you. Sit right down
and feast, because the country’s safe!”
Physically that supper was perfect. There never were finer hot biscuits
or better plum preserve or finer cold chicken! Spiritually it was the
saddest and most depressing meal on record. We made a full meal. I can go
back into the years and see that big farmer gnawing half a chicken under
command of his wife. You remember “King Robert of Sicily” in Longfellow’s
poem:
“The world he loved so much
Had turned to dust and ashes at his touch.”
And so with poor John. That fine chicken tasted exactly like crow as
Sarah sat by and “rubbed it in.” Oh, politics, where are the charms we
formerly saw in thy face?
John and I surely dawdled over our chores that night. We had no great
desire to go in and hear the news. Finally Sarah came to the door and
called us.
“Say,” said John to me as we started for the house, “you go to college.
Have you ever studied logic or what they call psychology?”
“While I am no expert at either subject, I know what they mean.”
“Well, now, suppose your wife got after you like that, how would you use
those studies to keep her quiet? What’s the use of an education if it
don’t help you keep peace in the family?”
So I unwisely told John that he ought to tell his wife that a woman by
law obtained her citizenship from her husband. That citizenship was the
essence of politics; therefore the wife should by law belong to her
husband’s party. I am older now in years, and I know better than to give
any man arguments in a debate with his wife. The Maine election, however,
had made us desperate. So John marched in with a very confident step and
elaborated my arguments. He was quite impressive when he assured her that
the law declared that a woman acquired her political principles from her
husband. It did not work, however.
“Don’t you tell me! I didn’t marry any principles at all when I married
you. How is a man going to give any principles to his wife when he never
had any to give? My father was a Democrat, and I take my politics from
him. He was the best man that ever lived, and you know it. I inherit my
politics, I do—I didn’t marry them!”
The truth is that Sarah’s father was an old war Democrat who came near
being tarred and feathered by his neighbors, but one of the saving graces
of modern civilization is the fact that a woman’s father is always an
immortal—never needing any defense—his virtues being self-evident, while
her husband is a de-mortal who can hardly hope to become a good citizen
except through long years of patient service! His only hope lies in the
future when he has a daughter of his own.
And Henry Wilkins, Sarah’s brother, was running for county clerk. We held
a caucus at the blacksmith shop, where John and I and two farmers were
elected delegates to the county convention. We all went to the county
seat one Saturday afternoon to nominate a ticket. The last we heard from
Sarah was:
“Now, Henry, if you get nominated on that renegade ticket, I know one man
that won’t vote for you and that’s John Crandall. I won’t let him vote if
he has to stay in bed all day!”
Contrary to what some of the “antis” say woman has always exercised
political power.
When we got to town we found the “drug-store ring” in control. This was a
little group of politicians led by Jacob Spaulding. It was the “Tammany
Hall” of Oak County. This ring had decided to nominate an undertaker from
the west side of the county for clerk. Most of the farmers were all ready
to quit when Jake Spaulding said the word, for he usually handed out the
little political jobs. I was young and inexperienced in politics and
ready for a fight. It hurt me to see that great crowd of farmers ready
to give up the fight when a big, fat brute like Jake Spaulding and a few
of his creatures shook their heads. So I called our delegates together
and proposed that we go right in where Jake was and “talk turkey” to him.
Strange, but John Crandall was the only outspoken supporter I had. John
was bossed at home until he was like a lamb, but get him out among men
and the pent-up feelings in the lamb expanded that innocent animal into
a lion. So we had our way, and about 25 of us marched down the street
to the courthouse, where in the sheriff’s room the county committee was
making up the ticket.
You would have thought the destinies of the nation were at stake as we
filed into that room. Half of our delegates were ready to quit when Jake
Spaulding glared at us over his spectacles.
“What do you want?”
Dr. Walker was our spokesman, and Jake Spaulding had a mortgage on his
house. You could see that mortgage peeking out from behind every sentence
of the doctor’s speech. In effect he asked those politicians if they
wouldn’t please nominate Henry Wilkins for county clerk. It didn’t take
Jake long to put us where we belonged.
“No; the delegates to this convention are going to nominate Hiram Green.
Nothing doing here. Just fall in and work for the grand old Republican
party! And now, boys, good day; we’re busy.”
Several of our delegates started for the door. They were well-disciplined
soldiers. I was not, and I did what most of them thought a very foolish
thing. Before I well knew it I was up in front making a speech to Jake
Spaulding. At that time no one had ever heard of the 35-cent dollar.
The word “profiteer” was not in the language; but I think I did make it
clear that these farmers were there to nominate Henry Wilkins or “bust”
the convention. As I look back upon it now I think it was the most bold
and palpable “bluff” ever attempted at a country convention. And John
Crandall stood beside me and pounded his big hands together until the
rest of the delegates forgot their fear and joined in. When I finished
there was nothing to do for us but to file out of the courthouse.
Then they turned on me in sorrow and anger. Everyone would now be a
marked man. They never could get any office from Jake Spaulding. Even
Henry, the candidate, felt I had injured his chances, for if he kept
quiet perhaps he might make a deal to get to be deputy clerk. But John
Crandall stood by me.
“Good,” he said; “I’m a fighter. Get right up in convention and give ’em
another. I’m going to vote for Henry till the last man is out.”
But these faint hearts did not know what was going on inside the
sheriff’s room. When our delegation marched out the county committee sat
and looked at each other.
“Boys,” said Jake Spaulding, “it looks like they mean business. We can’t
let that spread. I guess we’ll have to take Henry on!”
There was a big crowd in the courthouse, and the convention went off like
a well-oiled machine. They nominated sheriff and probate judge and then
the chairman asked:
“Any nominations for county clerk?”
I had my throat all cleared and stood up with: “Mr. Chairman,”—but no one
paid much attention to me. The chairman turned to the platform and said:
“I recognize Judge Spaulding,” and there was the big, fat boss on his
feet.
“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “today our glorious country lives or dies! The
grand old Republican party is on trial. Every patriot is needed in this
great crisis. Ho! Israel, every man to his tent! I therefore take great
pleasure in nominating that splendid farmer, that incomparable patriot,
that popular citizen, Henry Wilkins of Adams township. I ask you in the
name of our glorious citizenship to put him through with bells on!”
I stood there all through the speech too dazed to sit, until John
Crandall pulled me down. Then I realized that for once a bluff had
worked. And after the convention I met Jake Spaulding in front of the
courthouse. “Young feller,” he said, “if you decide to settle down in
this county, let me know. I’ll have a little job for you.”
We all rode home in the candidate’s wagon. Sarah was waiting for us at
the gate.
“Well, how did you come out?”
“Nominated by acclamation,” said Henry. “John and the young feller here
did it. They made Jake Spaulding come up!”
“John?”
If some actress could put into a single word the scorn and surprise which
Sarah packed into her husband’s name her fortune would be made. And John
and I stood there like a couple of truant schoolboys waiting for the
verdict.
“That’s what I said. John was fine. Only for him I’d have been defeated.”
And Henry drove on.
“Now you two lazy Republicans, get out and milk those cows.”
We went, but when we got back the kitchen stove was roaring, and Sarah
was just taking out a pan of biscuits. There were ham and eggs on the
stove.
“Now you sit right down and eat. If I’ve got to be sister to a county
clerk I want to know all about it. Now, John, you tell me just how it
happened.”
Ah, but those were the happy days of politics. Do you wonder that we
old-timers consider the present campaign about like dishwater—in more
ways than one?
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Hope Farm Notes" ***
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