<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<p class="titlepage larger">HOPE FARM NOTES</p>
<p class="titlepage larger"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br/>
HERBERT W. COLLINGWOOD</p>
<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">REPRINTED FROM</span><br/>
THE RURAL NEW YORKER</p>
<div class="figcenter titlepage" style="width: 100px;">
<ANTIMG src="images/hb-co.jpg" width-obs="100" height-obs="100" alt="" /></div>
<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">NEW YORK</span><br/>
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY<br/>
1921</p>
<p class="titlepage smaller">COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY<br/>
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.</p>
<p class="titlepage smaller">THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY<br/>
RAHWAY, N. J.</p>
<hr />
<p class="dedication"><span class="smcap">To<br/>
L. D. C. and A. F. C.<br/>
who represent</span><br/>
“<i>The Hen with one Chicken</i>”<br/>
<span class="smcap">and</span><br/>
<i>The Chicken</i>.</p>
<hr />
<p>Most of these notes were originally printed in the
<i>Rural New-Yorker</i> 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.</p>
<hr />
<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2></div>
<table summary="Contents">
<tr>
<td></td>
<td class="tdpg smaller">PAGE</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">The Sunny Side of the Barn</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#THE_SUNNY_SIDE_OF_THE_BARN">1</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">A Hope Farm Sermon</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#A_HOPE_FARM_SERMON">21</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">Grandmother</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#GRANDMOTHER">26</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">Laughter and Religion</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#LAUGHTER_AND_RELIGION">33</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">A Day in Florida</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#A_DAY_IN_FLORIDA">38</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">The Baseball Game</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#THE_BASEBALL_GAME">45</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">Transplanting the Young Idea</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#TRANSPLANTING_THE_YOUNG_IDEA">51</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">The Sleepless Man</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#THE_SLEEPLESS_MAN">58</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">Lincoln’s Birthday</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#LINCOLNS_BIRTHDAY">63</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">Uncle Ed’s Philosophy</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#UNCLE_EDS_PHILOSOPHY">69</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">A God-forsaken Place</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#A_GOD-FORSAKEN_PLACE">75</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">Louise</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#LOUISE">82</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">Christmas Every Day</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#CHRISTMAS_EVERY_DAY">88</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">“The Finest Lesson”</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#THE_FINEST_LESSON">94</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">“Columbus Day”</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#COLUMBUS_DAY">107</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">The Commencement</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#THE_COMMENCEMENT">114</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">“Organization”</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#ORGANIZATION">122</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">The Face of Liberty</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#THE_FACE_OF_LIBERTY">130</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">Captain Randall’s Hour</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#CAPTAIN_RANDALLS_HOUR">138</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">“Snow Bound”</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#SNOW_BOUND">147</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">“Class”</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#CLASS">155</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">“I’ll Tell God”</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#ILL_TELL_GOD">163</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">A Day’s Work</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#A_DAYS_WORK">171</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">Professor Gander’s Academy</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#PROFESSOR_GANDERS_ACADEMY">181</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">Colonel O’Brien and Sergeant Hill</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#COLONEL_OBRIEN_AND_SERGEANT_HILL">189</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">How the Other Half Lives</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#HOW_THE_OTHER_HALF_LIVES">198</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">The Indians Won</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#THE_INDIANS_WON">206</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">Ike Sawyer’s Hotel</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#IKE_SAWYERS_HOTEL">214</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="smcap">Old-time Politics</span></td>
<td class="tdpg"><SPAN href="#OLD-TIME_POLITICS">224</SPAN></td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_1"></SPAN>[1]</span></p>
<h1>HOPE FARM NOTES</h1>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_SUNNY_SIDE_OF_THE_BARN">THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE BARN</h2></div>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_2"></SPAN>[2]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The old gentleman would come now and then and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_3"></SPAN>[3]</span>
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 <i>is the human
mind</i>. 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:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“Let me have men about me that are fat,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights;</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Yond’ Cassius has a lean and hungry look;</div>
<div class="verse indent0">He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_4"></SPAN>[4]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_5"></SPAN>[5]</span>
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?</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“There is a Power whose care</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Teaches thy way along that pathless coast.”</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse center">...</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“He who from zone to zone,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">In the long way which I must tread alone,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Will lead my steps aright.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>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:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“Let us be patient;</div>
<div class="verse indent0">These severe afflictions</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Not from the ground arise;</div>
<div class="verse indent0">But oftentimes celestial benedictions</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Assume this dark disguise.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>Just think of that, a “celestial benediction”—it
was a great thing for a boy to think about. I looked<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_6"></SPAN>[6]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_7"></SPAN>[7]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_8"></SPAN>[8]</span>
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.</p>
<p>You may surely take it from me that at some time in<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_9"></SPAN>[9]</span>
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:</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_10"></SPAN>[10]</span>
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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>It is in large part a mental trouble, a feeling of deep<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_11"></SPAN>[11]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_12"></SPAN>[12]</span>
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, <i>and Bert represented the
farmer</i>.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_13"></SPAN>[13]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_14"></SPAN>[14]</span>
received it, largely because they have been able to organize
and make a stronger appeal to the imagination.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_15"></SPAN>[15]</span>
opened and out came the woman of the house with the
old minister.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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. <i>The closer you put the pie up to
the sawbuck, the more wood you will have cut.</i>”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_16"></SPAN>[16]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_17"></SPAN>[17]</span>
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.</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“The ox bit his master;</div>
<div class="verse indent2">How came that to pass?</div>
<div class="verse indent0">The ox heard his master say</div>
<div class="verse indent2">‘All flesh is grass!’”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>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:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent8">“We’re coming, Father Abraham,</div>
<div class="verse indent10">Three hundred thousand more,</div>
<div class="verse indent8">From Mississippi’s winding stream</div>
<div class="verse indent10">And from New England’s shore.</div>
<div class="verse indent8">We leave our plows and workshops,</div>
<div class="verse indent10">Our wives and children dear,</div>
<div class="verse indent8">With hearts too full for utterance,</div>
<div class="verse indent10">But with a silent tear.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“We’re coming, we’re coming, the Union to restore;</div>
<div class="verse indent0">We’re coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_18"></SPAN>[18]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_19"></SPAN>[19]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_20"></SPAN>[20]</span>
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.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_21"></SPAN>[21]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_HOPE_FARM_SERMON">A HOPE FARM SERMON</h2></div>
<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_22"></SPAN>[22]</span>
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!</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_23"></SPAN>[23]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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 <i>did</i> 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:</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_24"></SPAN>[24]</span>
iron in his will cannot replace. But “manly silence”
<i>is</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_25"></SPAN>[25]</span>
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:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“Soon or late to all our dwellings come the specters of the mind;</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, in the darkness undefined.</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Round us throng the grim projections of the heart and of the brain,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">And our pride of strength is weakness, and the cunning hand is vain.</div>
<div class="verse indent0">In the dark we cry like children; and no answer from on high</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and no white wings downward fly.</div>
<div class="verse indent0">But the heavenly help we pray for, comes to faith and not to sight,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">And our prayers themselves drive backward all the spirits of the night.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_26"></SPAN>[26]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="GRANDMOTHER">GRANDMOTHER</h2></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_27"></SPAN>[27]</span>
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?</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_28"></SPAN>[28]</span>
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.</p>
<p>“Why do they make you take off your hat?” asked
the Graft, when we came out.</p>
<p>I tried to explain to him that this was one of the
things that people should not be <i>made</i> 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:</p>
<p>“Well, Mother, I shall have to turn this turkey over
after all.”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_29"></SPAN>[29]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“Is Grandmother <i>dead</i> then?”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_30"></SPAN>[30]</span>
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!</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_31"></SPAN>[31]</span>
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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_32"></SPAN>[32]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_33"></SPAN>[33]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="LAUGHTER_AND_RELIGION">LAUGHTER AND RELIGION</h2></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>One great reason why the negro race has come through<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_34"></SPAN>[34]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_35"></SPAN>[35]</span>
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.</p>
<p>“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. <i>Make that man
laugh!</i> It’s a moral obligation for you to do it.”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_36"></SPAN>[36]</span>
“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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“<i>Make them laugh! Give them something humorous!
Make them laugh!</i>”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_37"></SPAN>[37]</span>
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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“John,” said the farmer as he snapped down the
globe of his lantern, “how did you like the show?”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“How’s that?”</p>
<p>“Why, Henry, that young feller was so funny that
<i>I never come so nigh to laughing in the House of God
as I done tonight</i>. When I get home out of sight of the
elder, I am going to stand right up on my hind-legs and
holler.”</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_38"></SPAN>[38]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_DAY_IN_FLORIDA">A DAY IN FLORIDA</h2></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_39"></SPAN>[39]</span>
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.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_40"></SPAN>[40]</span>
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!</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_41"></SPAN>[41]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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”?</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_42"></SPAN>[42]</span>
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!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The minister and the station agent’s wife began to<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_43"></SPAN>[43]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_44"></SPAN>[44]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_45"></SPAN>[45]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_BASEBALL_GAME">THE BASEBALL GAME</h2></div>
<p>“<i>Two strikes, three balls!</i>”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>I enjoyed the crowd as much as the game. Many of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_46"></SPAN>[46]</span>
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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_47"></SPAN>[47]</span>
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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_48"></SPAN>[48]</span>
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!</p>
<p>But we left the umpire standing with his hand up
calling <i>two strikes</i>! 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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_49"></SPAN>[49]</span>
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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_50"></SPAN>[50]</span>
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.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_51"></SPAN>[51]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="TRANSPLANTING_THE_YOUNG_IDEA">TRANSPLANTING THE YOUNG IDEA</h2></div>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_52"></SPAN>[52]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_53"></SPAN>[53]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“A lazy, careless lot. I’d put them all at work!”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_54"></SPAN>[54]</span>
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:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Shall Freedom’s young apostles be.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_55"></SPAN>[55]</span>
life—the undying, gentle, kindly spirit of the
college which a man must carry as long as he lives.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The spirit of this college seemed excellent. It may
be a debatable question with some as to whether a school<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_56"></SPAN>[56]</span>
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:</p>
<p>“Some woman—that!”</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_57"></SPAN>[57]</span></p>
<p>“How can I make this ‘ad’ so it will show true
proportions?”</p>
<p>“Look at me!” said the foreman.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_58"></SPAN>[58]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_SLEEPLESS_MAN">THE SLEEPLESS MAN</h2></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>We sat before this man’s fire late at night, and he<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_59"></SPAN>[59]</span>
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”:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“Come sleep; O Sleep! the certain hour of peace,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">The indifferent judge between the high and low;</div>
<div class="verse indent0">With shield of proof, shield me from out the prease</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw;</div>
<div class="verse indent0">O make in me these civil wars to cease</div>
<div class="verse indent0">I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Make thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">A rosy garland and a weary head.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>“That’s it,” said my friend, “<i>A weary head, a
weary head</i>. 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.</p>
<p>“I wish you would tell me about the <i>best sleep</i> you
ever had. Men may tell of their best meal, but I want
to know about rest—the best sleep.”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_60"></SPAN>[60]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_61"></SPAN>[61]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_62"></SPAN>[62]</span></p>
<p>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:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“Along the aisles of the dim old forest</div>
<div class="verse indent2">I strayed in the dewy dawn</div>
<div class="verse indent0">And heard far away in their silent branches</div>
<div class="verse indent2">The echoes of the morn.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“They stirred my heart with their low, sweet voices,</div>
<div class="verse indent2">Like chimes from a holier land,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">As though far away in those haunted arches</div>
<div class="verse indent2">Were happy—an angel band.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_63"></SPAN>[63]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="LINCOLNS_BIRTHDAY">LINCOLN’S BIRTHDAY</h2></div>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_64"></SPAN>[64]</span>
putting poetry into rural credits or fertilizers, but unless
you can do something of the sort you can never get
very far with them.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_65"></SPAN>[65]</span>
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:</p>
<p>“<i>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.</i>”</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_66"></SPAN>[66]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_67"></SPAN>[67]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_68"></SPAN>[68]</span>
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!</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_69"></SPAN>[69]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="UNCLE_EDS_PHILOSOPHY">UNCLE ED’S PHILOSOPHY</h2></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_70"></SPAN>[70]</span>
Ed slowly fill his pipe. I feel that some sort of homely
philosophy is sure to be smoked out.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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 <i>drop everything and go
fishing</i>. After that I notice things straighten out and
work goes right. You fellows work too hard, and don’t<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_71"></SPAN>[71]</span>
know it. But this won’t buy the woman a dress—we
must hoe this corn out.”</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>As I look back upon it now that seems pretty cheap
talk, but it was the way we looked at it in those days.</p>
<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_72"></SPAN>[72]</span>
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.
<i>You fellows work too hard!</i>”</p>
<p>I undertook to come back with that text about the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_73"></SPAN>[73]</span>
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.” “<i>The
night cometh, when no man can work.</i>”</p>
<p>“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! <i>Am I right?</i>”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_74"></SPAN>[74]</span>
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
<i>you</i> think?</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_75"></SPAN>[75]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_GOD-FORSAKEN_PLACE">A GOD-FORSAKEN PLACE</h2></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_76"></SPAN>[76]</span>
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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_77"></SPAN>[77]</span>
the cradle, where this black-haired little changeling
stared at her!</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_78"></SPAN>[78]</span>
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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_79"></SPAN>[79]</span>
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.</p>
<p>“<i>Jim</i>,” he said, “<i>old fellow, I don’t see how you
live in such a God-forsaken place</i>!”</p>
<p>“Why, Bill,” said Jim, “New York must be like
Paradise to beat the old homestead.”</p>
<p>“Better a week on Broadway than a lifetime on these
lonely hills.”</p>
<p>“I’d like to try it and see!” said Jim.</p>
<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_80"></SPAN>[80]</span>
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.</p>
<p>“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:</p>
<p>“<i>Bill, old fellow, I don’t see how you can live in such
a God-forsaken place!</i>”</p>
<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_81"></SPAN>[81]</span>
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.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_82"></SPAN>[82]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="LOUISE">LOUISE</h2></div>
<p>“<i>How is Louise now?</i>”</p>
<p>“<i>She seems a little better!</i>”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_83"></SPAN>[83]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_84"></SPAN>[84]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_85"></SPAN>[85]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>they</i> sent<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_86"></SPAN>[86]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_87"></SPAN>[87]</span>
looked at each other for a moment. Then there were
six words:</p>
<p>“<i>How is Louise?</i>”</p>
<p>“<i>She is gone!</i>”</p>
<p>We said nothing more, but we were both thinking the
same thing!</p>
<p>“<i>The first break in our big family has come. How
is Louise now?</i>”</p>
<p>There was no way of saving her. Human skill and
human love had failed. She was dead!</p>
<p class="tb">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:</p>
<p>“How is Louise now?”</p>
<p>“She is better! Thank God! She is better!”</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_88"></SPAN>[88]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHRISTMAS_EVERY_DAY">CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY</h2></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_89"></SPAN>[89]</span>
the narrow level valleys, for our country has a badly
wrinkled face.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“Over the chimney the night wind sang,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Chanting a melody no one knew.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_90"></SPAN>[90]</span>
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. “<i>We had
a big time!</i>”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_91"></SPAN>[91]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“O come, all ye faithful,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Joyful and triumphant,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">O come ye! O come ye</div>
<div class="verse indent0">To Bethlehem.</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Come and behold Him</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Born the King of angels,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">O come let us adore Him,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">O come let us adore Him,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">O come let us adore Him,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Christ the Lord.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>They were beautiful singers and our folks will never
forget that Christmas morning.</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“Silent night! Holy night,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">All is calm. All is light.</div>
<div class="verse indent0">’Round young Virgin mother and child</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Holy infant so tender and mild,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Sleep in heavenly peace.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>Finally the car started off, moving slowly down the
road with the music creeping back to us through the
clear air:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“Hark, the Herald angels sing.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_92"></SPAN>[92]</span></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_93"></SPAN>[93]</span>
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.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_94"></SPAN>[94]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_FINEST_LESSON">“THE FINEST LESSON”</h2></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_95"></SPAN>[95]</span></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_96"></SPAN>[96]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_97"></SPAN>[97]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_98"></SPAN>[98]</span>
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 <i>spirit</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_99"></SPAN>[99]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_100"></SPAN>[100]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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:—</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_101"></SPAN>[101]</span></p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“Her little hand was resting</div>
<div class="verse indent2">On my arm as light as foam</div>
<div class="verse indent0">When from Aunt Dinah’s quilting party,</div>
<div class="verse indent2">I was seeing Nellie home.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“I was seeing Nellie. I was seeing Nellie.</div>
<div class="verse indent2">I was seeing Nellie home,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">’Twas from Aunt Dinah’s quilting party,</div>
<div class="verse indent2">I was seeing Nellie home.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_102"></SPAN>[102]</span>
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.”</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.’”</p>
<p>“But, Henry, ain’t you ’shamed to call her homely?”</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>If you ever acted in the capacity of <i>donatee</i> 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.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_103"></SPAN>[103]</span></p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“Hoe in—help yourself!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>And so, almost before I knew it, I found myself reciting
Will Carleton’s poem, “Over the Hill to the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_104"></SPAN>[104]</span>
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”!</p>
<p>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!</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“Over the hill to the poorhouse</div>
<div class="verse indent2">I’m trudging my weary way.</div>
<div class="verse indent0">I a woman of sixty,</div>
<div class="verse indent2">Only a trifle gray,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">I who am smart and chipper.</div>
<div class="verse indent2">For all the years I’ve told,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">As many another woman</div>
<div class="verse indent2">Only one-half as old.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“Over the hill to the poorhouse!</div>
<div class="verse indent2">I can’t quite make it clear;</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Over the hill to the poorhouse,</div>
<div class="verse indent2">It seems so horrid queer!</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Many’s the journey I’ve taken,</div>
<div class="verse indent2">Traveling to and fro,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">But over the hill to the poorhouse</div>
<div class="verse indent2">I never once thought I’d go!”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_105"></SPAN>[105]</span>
and I could read it on her face. A love that endures
after death—until life! And when I stopped I was
<i>done</i>. 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.</p>
<p>“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, <i>this money belongs to the Sunday school</i>!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“<i>Thou art so near and yet so far!</i>”</p>
<p>There is nothing like being a good sport, and so I
bowed and smiled and took my medicine, although I am<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_106"></SPAN>[106]</span>
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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Why, from the way you talk, anybody’d think you
had fallen heir to a big thing!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_107"></SPAN>[107]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="COLUMBUS_DAY">“COLUMBUS DAY”</h2></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_108"></SPAN>[108]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_109"></SPAN>[109]</span>
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!</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_110"></SPAN>[110]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_111"></SPAN>[111]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_112"></SPAN>[112]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_113"></SPAN>[113]</span>
to all this, and finally proposes this one of her own:</p>
<p>“If a woman paid three cents at a hospital for a
baby, how much would a horse cost?”</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“<i>I’s awful sorry!</i>”</p>
<p>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?</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_114"></SPAN>[114]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_COMMENCEMENT">THE COMMENCEMENT</h2></div>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_115"></SPAN>[115]</span>
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.”</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>To me one of the most interesting characters in the
universe is “the hen with one chicken”! These women<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_116"></SPAN>[116]</span>
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?</p>
<p>“<i>And I was afraid and went and hid thy talent in
the earth.</i>”</p>
<p>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
<i>Americanism</i>.</p>
<p>But what about “father” at such a time and place?<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_117"></SPAN>[117]</span>
Where does <i>he</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_118"></SPAN>[118]</span>
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!</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>I have heard human robins talk in just exactly that
way, and for many years the world listened to them and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_119"></SPAN>[119]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_120"></SPAN>[120]</span>
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 <i>her daughter</i>,
with a sane and fine understanding of her relations to
the home and to society.</p>
<p>Ideals are what count. One of the most beautiful<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_121"></SPAN>[121]</span>
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.</p>
<p>“<i>There is nothing in the universe that I fear but
that I shall not know all my duty or shall fail to do it.</i>”</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_122"></SPAN>[122]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="ORGANIZATION">“ORGANIZATION”</h2></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_123"></SPAN>[123]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_124"></SPAN>[124]</span>
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.</p>
<p>Those of us who live close to Nature realize that in
order to know the truth we must find</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“Tongues in trees, Books in running Brooks,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_125"></SPAN>[125]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“<i>Oh! Father, don’t the President have to work?</i>”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_126"></SPAN>[126]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_127"></SPAN>[127]</span>
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?”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_128"></SPAN>[128]</span>
night and saw a light far down the road. Some neighbor
was at home. I thought it a good time for action.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>“That man! I wouldn’t trust him with fifty cents,
and he would be sure to elect himself Treasurer.”</p>
<p>“Well, far across the pasture I see still another light.
Shall we go there?”</p>
<p>“No, that man doesn’t know enough to go in the
house when it rains.”</p>
<p>The farmer’s wife looked up from her sewing as if to
speak, but the man answered for her.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_129"></SPAN>[129]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_130"></SPAN>[130]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_FACE_OF_LIBERTY">THE FACE OF LIBERTY</h2></div>
<p>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:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent2">“Your face, my thane, is as a book</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Where men may read strange matters.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>We all go about wearing a mask, and those who care
how they look may well ask how the mask is made.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_131"></SPAN>[131]</span>
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.”</p>
<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_132"></SPAN>[132]</span>
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,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_133"></SPAN>[133]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>So he told his story, and I give it as nearly as possible
in his own words:</p>
<p>“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,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_134"></SPAN>[134]</span>
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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“‘What is she saying?’ I asked.</p>
<p>“‘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.’</p>
<p>“‘That is the limit. What is <i>he</i> saying?’</p>
<p>“‘Just like every other husband. He is telling her<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_135"></SPAN>[135]</span>
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.”’</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“‘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.’</p>
<p>“He did; a great black-haired man who looked me
right in the eye as I like to have people do.</p>
<p>“‘How long have you been in this country?’ I
asked.</p>
<p>“‘Ten years. You may not remember, but I came
in the ship with you; in the steerage, with my wife
and two boys.’</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“The man more than made good. It is wonderful<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_136"></SPAN>[136]</span>
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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_137"></SPAN>[137]</span>
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:</p>
<p>“‘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.’</p>
<p>“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:</p>
<p>“‘John, she has had her life wish. She has come
to look like the Goddess of Liberty. It was a miracle.’</p>
<p>“And John answered in his slow, thoughtful way:</p>
<p>“‘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?’”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_138"></SPAN>[138]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="CAPTAIN_RANDALLS_HOUR">CAPTAIN RANDALL’S HOUR</h2></div>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_139"></SPAN>[139]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_140"></SPAN>[140]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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!</p>
<p>“‘Forward by the left flank!’</p>
<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_141"></SPAN>[141]</span>
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.”</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>“I don’t care,” said Uncle Isaac. “<i>We’d start, anyway!
We’d move on those breastworks and take our
chances!</i>”</p>
<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_142"></SPAN>[142]</span>
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.”</p>
<p>But Uncle Isaac, at home, humiliated and sad, went
about the farm with something like a prayer in his old
heart.</p>
<p>“Why can’t <i>I</i> do something to help? Don’t make me
know my fighting days are over. What can <i>I</i> do?”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_143"></SPAN>[143]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_144"></SPAN>[144]</span>
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.</p>
<p>“Wait,” he said, “do not that. You lose those
men by fighting. We gain them.”</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“Dey blay der Shtar Banner!”</p>
<p>Then there came into Uncle Isaac’s sad life the great,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_145"></SPAN>[145]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“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:</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_146"></SPAN>[146]</span></p>
<p>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!</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_147"></SPAN>[147]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="SNOW_BOUND">“SNOW BOUND”</h2></div>
<p>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:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“The sled and traveler stopped; the courier’s feet</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Delayed; all friends shut out, the housemates sit</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Around the radiant fireplace enclosed</div>
<div class="verse indent0">In a tumultuous privacy of storm.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>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?</p>
<p>I got my copy of “Snow Bound” in 1872, and I
have read the poem at least once each year since, and I<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_148"></SPAN>[148]</span>
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:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“Shut in from all the world without</div>
<div class="verse indent0">We sat the clean winged hearth about,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Content to let the north wind roar</div>
<div class="verse indent0">In baffled rage at pane and door,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">While the red logs before us beat</div>
<div class="verse indent0">The frost-line back with tropic heat.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse center">...</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“Between the andiron’s straddling feet</div>
<div class="verse indent0">The mug of cider simmered low,</div>
<div class="verse indent0">The apples sputtered in a row</div>
<div class="verse indent0">And close at hand the basket stood</div>
<div class="verse indent0">With nuts from brown October’s wood.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse center">...</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“What matter how the night behaved?</div>
<div class="verse indent0">What matter how the north wind raved?</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Blow high, blow low, not all its snow</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Could quench our hearth fire’s ruddy glow.”</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse center">...</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_149"></SPAN>[149]</span>
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.”</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“Soft o’er the fountain</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Lingering falls the Southern moon.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_150"></SPAN>[150]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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
<i>will not</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_151"></SPAN>[151]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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 <i>do</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_152"></SPAN>[152]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_153"></SPAN>[153]</span>
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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_154"></SPAN>[154]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_155"></SPAN>[155]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="CLASS">“CLASS”</h2></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Her death brings to mind an incident that had long
been forgotten. I had been sent to one of the neighbors<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_156"></SPAN>[156]</span>
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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>It did not strike me as very impressive, but I was
glad to have the experience.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“The trouble with you, John Drake, is that you have
no idea of beauty.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_157"></SPAN>[157]</span></p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Now, Grandpa, you seen a lot of the world. What
do you say? Don’t I look like Ugeeny?”</p>
<p>Old Grandpa nodded his white head and looked at
her critically.</p>
<p>“You’re in her class, Mary—that’s what I’ll say—you’re
in her class!”</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>“Now, Mary, see what you’ve done,” said John
Drake. “You’ve got Grandpa started on that class
business. He’s worse than Ugeeny.”</p>
<p>But Grandpa went right ahead. “Ain’t I in the class
with the old and new prophets? Here I have for years<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_158"></SPAN>[158]</span>
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.”</p>
<p>The old man’s face lighted up as he talked.</p>
<p>“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, <i>Ain’t I in their class?</i>”</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>“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 <i>farm</i> colleges as big as
any, where farming will be taught just like lawing or
doctoring. Then people will see that farming is <i>agriculture</i>,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_159"></SPAN>[159]</span>
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
<i>in her class</i>. 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
<i>class</i>. That hoopskirt and that net are not prisons—they
help to set her free.”</p>
<p>“Well, Grandpa,” said John, good-naturedly, “I
suppose, according to you, I ought to put on a swallow-tailed
coat every time I milk.”</p>
<p>“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, <i>ain’t I in
their class</i>?”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>In August of that year I went up on Black Mount<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_160"></SPAN>[160]</span>
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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_161"></SPAN>[161]</span>
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: <i>Ain’t I in their class?</i>”</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“<i>Ain’t I in their class?</i>”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_162"></SPAN>[162]</span>
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.”</p>
<p>Perhaps, after all, a “divine discontent” is the
noblest legacy of the ages.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p class="center">“<i>The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away!</i>”</p>
<p>If I could have my way I would put up another
stone with this inscription:</p>
<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Grandpa.</span></p>
<p class="center">“<i>He has entered their class.</i>”</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_163"></SPAN>[163]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="ILL_TELL_GOD">“I’LL TELL GOD”</h2></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_164"></SPAN>[164]</span>
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—<i>how
would they know physically when they are dead</i>? 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!</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_165"></SPAN>[165]</span>
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:</p>
<p>“<i>Wake up and get that milking done.</i>”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_166"></SPAN>[166]</span>
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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“I want this child,” said the farmer. “You know
me; get her for me.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Take her, and welcome,” said the sharp-faced
woman. “A good riddance to bad rubbish.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_167"></SPAN>[167]</span>
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.</p>
<p>“What do you mean by picking up a child like you
would a stray kitten? Put her down and leave her
here.”</p>
<p>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 <i>she</i> had not been able to
understand.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_168"></SPAN>[168]</span>
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.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_169"></SPAN>[169]</span></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_170"></SPAN>[170]</span>
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:</p>
<p>“<i>I’ll tell God how good you are.</i>”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_171"></SPAN>[171]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_DAYS_WORK">A DAY’S WORK</h2></div>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>This morning I took this strawberry job from choice—surely<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_172"></SPAN>[172]</span>
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.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_173"></SPAN>[173]</span>
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!</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_174"></SPAN>[174]</span></p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_175"></SPAN>[175]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_176"></SPAN>[176]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_177"></SPAN>[177]</span>
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:</p>
<table summary="Bill for the restaurant meal">
<tr>
<td>Hash</td>
<td class="tdpg">$4.20</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Potatoes</td>
<td class="tdpg">1.40</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Beets</td>
<td class="tdpg">1.40</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Sweet corn</td>
<td class="tdpg">3.60</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Tomatoes</td>
<td class="tdpg">1.40</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Milk</td>
<td class="tdpg">.90</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Bread and butter</td>
<td class="tdpg">1.40</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Baked apples</td>
<td class="tdpg">2.30</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td class="tdpg total">$16.60</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>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.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_178"></SPAN>[178]</span></p>
<p>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 <i>that</i>
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!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>But my day’s work is over—I’m going to adjourn.
I am quite sure that I could have picked 50 bushels of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_179"></SPAN>[179]</span>
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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_180"></SPAN>[180]</span>
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.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_181"></SPAN>[181]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="PROFESSOR_GANDERS_ACADEMY">PROFESSOR GANDER’S ACADEMY</h2></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>No doubt as we pour the thick brown gravy over
Mother’s generous slices Mr. Gander will lead his<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_182"></SPAN>[182]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_183"></SPAN>[183]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_184"></SPAN>[184]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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. <i>For the hen must swim with
her mind before she can swim with her feet!</i> I have<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_185"></SPAN>[185]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_186"></SPAN>[186]</span>
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!</p>
<p>But the real, final test of a goose’s education is made
with the carving-knife. Judging from the empty plates<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_187"></SPAN>[187]</span>
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:</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_188"></SPAN>[188]</span>
him and then halted. He didn’t like the looks of that
sharp beak.</p>
<p>“Good-morning, Mr. Gander! I saw you over in the
next field, and I came to ask how the worms are running
over there!”</p>
<p>As he went back the rooster, after the manner of husbands
generally, sought to pacify his wife.</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_189"></SPAN>[189]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="COLONEL_OBRIEN_AND_SERGEANT_HILL">COLONEL O’BRIEN AND SERGEANT HILL</h2></div>
<p>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 <i>to things of its
own size</i>. You cannot jump flame from a glimmer to a
giant log unless the latter is full of oil or gunpowder.</p>
<p>Two things have brought that to mind recently. My<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_190"></SPAN>[190]</span>
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.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_191"></SPAN>[191]</span></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_192"></SPAN>[192]</span>
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.</p>
<p>Well do I remember the day I walked into the little
brick building where <i>The Southern Live Stock Journal</i>
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:</p>
<p>“Another one of them literary cranks, I’ll bet.”</p>
<p>Colonel O’Brien was more practical.</p>
<p>“Come out and feed the press and then fold these
papers.”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_193"></SPAN>[193]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_194"></SPAN>[194]</span>
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.</p>
<p>“Fine,” said Sergeant Hill. “Splendid. I reckon
you’ll have us all in Heaven 40 years hence?”</p>
<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_195"></SPAN>[195]</span>
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</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“Longs to clutch the golden keys;</div>
<div class="verse indent0">To mold the mighty state’s decrees</div>
<div class="verse indent0">And shape the whisper of the throne!”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>And now, 37 years after, there is nothing left of all
these dreams. Colonel O’Brien and Sergeant Hill have
answered the last call.</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“They know at last whose cause was right</div>
<div class="verse indent0">In God the Father’s sight!”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>Old Sol, the black man who turned the press, has
passed on with them. Years ago <i>The Southern Live
Stock Journal</i> 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,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_196"></SPAN>[196]</span>
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.</p>
<p>“<i>To what base uses we may return, Horatio.</i>”</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“<i>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.</i>”</p>
<p>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 <i>Journal</i>. 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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_197"></SPAN>[197]</span>
soul-inspiring editorial work is appreciated. All things
come round to him who will but wait.”</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“<i>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.</i>”</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_198"></SPAN>[198]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="HOW_THE_OTHER_HALF_LIVES">HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES</h2></div>
<p>“<i>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.</i>”</p>
<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_199"></SPAN>[199]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>And something of the same lack of tolerant understanding<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_200"></SPAN>[200]</span>
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,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_201"></SPAN>[201]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_202"></SPAN>[202]</span>
passed several like it before through our bank, so
I deposited it, as usual. In a few days it came
back unpaid.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_203"></SPAN>[203]</span></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_204"></SPAN>[204]</span>
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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_205"></SPAN>[205]</span>
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.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_206"></SPAN>[206]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_INDIANS_WON">THE INDIANS WON</h2></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Ah, a football game! What is this so-called farmer
doing, wasting part of the price of a barrel of apples<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_207"></SPAN>[207]</span>
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 <i>a peach</i>.” 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!</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_208"></SPAN>[208]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_209"></SPAN>[209]</span>
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 <i>them</i>.
For at that time, if not now, New England <i>knew the
value of a man</i> to the nation. He was far above the
dollar, even though the women and children would be
a care and a danger.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_210"></SPAN>[210]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_211"></SPAN>[211]</span>
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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_212"></SPAN>[212]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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. <i>Organized</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_213"></SPAN>[213]</span>
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.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_214"></SPAN>[214]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="IKE_SAWYERS_HOTEL">IKE SAWYER’S HOTEL</h2></div>
<p>It was last year, as I recall it, at about this season, one
of the children asked me a strange question:</p>
<p>“<i>What was the thankfullest day you ever saw?</i>”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_215"></SPAN>[215]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_216"></SPAN>[216]</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Walk right in,” he said. “Me and Annie can put
you up.” Then he led the way into the rambling old<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_217"></SPAN>[217]</span>
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.</p>
<p>“Ain’t walked for 10 years,” explained her husband.
“I play feet and she plays hands, and between us we
make out fine.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_218"></SPAN>[218]</span>
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
<i>out of their trouble, out of their loneliness, had found
and preserved that most precious of all earth’s blessings—love</i>!</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_219"></SPAN>[219]</span></p>
<p>“Dinner is served!”</p>
<p>Ike Sawyer, when Annie nodded approval, simply
invited:</p>
<p>“<i>Sit by and eat!</i>”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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’.”</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“It’s her—Annie plays hands and I play feet.
Everybody knows hands have more skill than
feet.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_220"></SPAN>[220]</span></p>
<p>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!</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_221"></SPAN>[221]</span></p>
<p>“Why don’t you sell out and move to some town?”
said the practical lumberman.</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>“But isn’t it so <i>awful</i> lonesome?”</p>
<p>It was the young woman who asked, and it was Annie
who softly answered her.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_222"></SPAN>[222]</span>
in that sunny picture took him back to childhood—where
most men go on Thanksgiving Day.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Annie held the young girl’s hand for a moment.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>The girl hesitated a moment and then put her hand
on her husband’s shoulder.</p>
<p>“John, would it mean very much to you if we went
right back to the camp so you could finish your business?”</p>
<p>“Yes, it would—but I am afraid——”</p>
<p>“Then we will <i>not</i> 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.”</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>And the thought in their minds framed itself over
and over into words:</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_223"></SPAN>[223]</span></p>
<p>“<i>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!</i>”</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_224"></SPAN>[224]</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak" id="OLD-TIME_POLITICS">OLD-TIME POLITICS</h2></div>
<p>“What is the matter with this political campaign?”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>I can well remember taking part in the campaign between<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_225"></SPAN>[225]</span>
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:</p>
<p>“Now John Crandall, don’t you dare to say it isn’t
the truth!”</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_226"></SPAN>[226]</span></p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Wait till you hear from the old Pine Tree State.
As Maine goes, so goes the Union!”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_227"></SPAN>[227]</span>
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:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“Wait for the wagon! Wait for the wagon!</div>
<div class="verse indent2">Democratic wagon, and we’ll all take a ride!”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Looks sorter bad. Can it be that Maine has gone
back on us?” said John as he saw the celebrator go on
his way.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_228"></SPAN>[228]</span></p>
<p>“<i>Maine is gone Democratic!</i>” she cried. “<i>Hurrah
for Hancock!</i> 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!”</p>
<p>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:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">“The world he loved so much</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Had turned to dust and ashes at his touch.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>“While I am no expert at either subject, I know
what they mean.”</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_229"></SPAN>[229]</span></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_230"></SPAN>[230]</span>
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:</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>Contrary to what some of the “antis” say woman
has always exercised political power.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>You would have thought the destinies of the nation<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_231"></SPAN>[231]</span>
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.</p>
<p>“What do you want?”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Then they turned on me in sorrow and anger. Everyone<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_232"></SPAN>[232]</span>
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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“Any nominations for county clerk?”</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“I recognize Judge Spaulding,” and there was the
big, fat boss on his feet.</p>
<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_233"></SPAN>[233]</span>
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!”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>We all rode home in the candidate’s wagon. Sarah
was waiting for us at the gate.</p>
<p>“Well, how did you come out?”</p>
<p>“Nominated by acclamation,” said Henry. “John
and the young feller here did it. They made Jake
Spaulding come up!”</p>
<p>“John?”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“That’s what I said. John was fine. Only for
him I’d have been defeated.” And Henry drove on.</p>
<p>“Now you two lazy Republicans, get out and milk
those cows.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Now you sit right down and eat. If I’ve got to<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_234"></SPAN>[234]</span>
be sister to a county clerk I want to know all about it.
Now, John, you tell me just how it happened.”</p>
<p>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?</p>
<SPAN name="endofbook"></SPAN>
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